triangularity | Open RP post for Maggie Garcia

Duke swallows at the question, and he leans into her touch instinctively. His eyes close, and he breathes out against her hand. He reaches up, sliding his hand over her own, closing his eyes as he does so. The question makes him pause- makes him hesitate.

What else can he say?

"My Trouble was always complicated. If I kill someone in that person's family, I end the Trouble. Forever," he says and then shakes his head. "...and then the person who made all those Troubles? Turns out they're aliens from another universe using aether- a dark material to do so- Well, I trusted her. All these Troubles were inside of me- every single one my family ever ended, and I- I needed help dealing with it, and she was the only one who could."

He swallows. It still feels stupid to have done so.

"She did something to me, and now I'm a ticking bomb. So there's that."

Maggie hates that she's too sore to pull Duke into her arms and hold on tight when she hears what comes next. She leaves her hand where it is, at least, thumb brushing his cheek. Her voice is soft and warm.

"When you're desperate, you trust where you have to, and sometimes that goes wrong." She can hear the self recrimination in his voice, and she doesn't like it there. "You did what you needed to. Yes, she betrayed you, but it doesn't sound like you had many other options."

Only after that does she ask, worried gaze on Duke, "What do you mean you're a ticking bomb?"

Dorena paused, stiffening at the L word but relaxing when Maggie continued onward. "I'm invited to stay? That certainly makes me more comfortable."

She dropped her hands to Maggie's waist, squeezing her waist lightly. "For breakfast? Tea, toast, turkey bacon. Those are always accepted."

Maggie notes the discomfort but doesn't react to it. She won't push, she just wanted to say how she felt at least the once.

"I happen to have all of those in stock. What about non-breakfast requests?"

"My body kept letting Troubles out, and I didn't know how to stop it, but I'd already put enough people in danger. She could help me stop a Trouble when it was let out of me or so I thought," Duke says, taking comfort in her reassurance, leaning into her touch out of instinct.

There's a pause at the question. "I mean, far as I can tell, she did something to me. There are all these Troubles in me- in my blood, and she sounded like they were all gonna explode. out of me, hitting everyone in its path with a Trouble of its own."

He shakes his head.

"You might not really be safe here either."

But he knows Maggie won't care about that.

Maggie used to want to walk into a story, but she outgrew that in Teleios, and this was never the genre she intended.

Deadly serious, she tells him, "I won't be safe here, period, from what you've just told me. That being the case, I'm certainly not leaving you unless you insist."

It's a struggle to conjure up even a weak joke, so the best she can manage is, "You're stuck with me, Duke." Even then, her smile only lasts a moment before she sobers again.

"And if there's anything I can do to make things easier on you, I want to."

"What a terrible thing," Duke says with a smile of his own since he's being sarcastic, lifting a hand up to frame her face briefly as he does so. It falls when her own does, and he bites down on his lip, shaking his head, thinking through any possibility. "You being here will make things easier on me. ...harder cause I'll worry about you, but easier because you're... you."

And he hasn't felt like he's really had anyone in his corner lately.

It's another reason he got so tied in with Mara.

"Then you have me," she promises. "I can probably manage a little bit in addition to just being myself, but it's nice to know your expectations are reasonable."

She shifts slightly as he moves his hand away from her face. "I know I'm injured, but I can handle moving enough to make space for you on the couch if you'd like. I don't suppose you have painkillers handy for when mine wear off in a few hours?"

Duke smiles as he reaches down to lift her up gently, sinking down beside her on the couch and then drawing her in against him. His arm winds around her shoulders as he does so, fingers tightening his hold against her arm.

"I would like, yeah." He has been stressed out. Though he hasn't been shot so he's got that going for him. "I have plenty of painkillers, heavy duty kind too. I have my ways."

"Clearly I fell onto the right dock." Maggie leans against him and rests her head on Duke's shoulder with a sigh. She needed this. No one but her parents has really held onto her since she got hurt, and she tried her hardest to downplay the extent of how upset and hurt she was around them. They already worry enough.

"You brought me to a bar after a liver injury," she points out, smiling. "Surrounded by alcohol I can't drink, and this is definitely a week where I want to. I might have had to rebel if you didn't have painkillers to offer in its place."

Duke leans over, resting his chin on top of her head, as if protectively. His thumb slides over her shoulder, tightening his hold on her protectively as he does so. He breathes her in, taking in the reality of her being there.

"I wouldn't let you. I'd just tackle you away from all the booze, reopening your wound likely, but heroically saving you from taking a drink."

So heroically.

"No tackling, please. I promise to be a good patient. I'll even let you carry me to bed later if you insist." She sighs.

"It's been a rough couple months at home, too. That's all it's been since the last time I saw you. Strange to think. Not even two months. A month and a half. We spent awhile in a mad scientist's secret lair, then Mahir and I went off looking for an identity forger so everyone from our team but me could go into hiding. The CDC cloned my dead boss in an effort to manipulate my living one. She escaped and found us before they could make a duplicate with behavioral modifications. And we just learned that the president's family have been hostages to force him into helping cover up the fact that our virus is incurable."

Maggie reaches up to rest her hand on Duke's over her shoulder. "It's all tangled up with my immune system. If it were cured, I'd die of the first germs to come along. Glad I wished for a big dog instead, when the Agents granted presents back in Teleios." It was probably a near thing. If she'd been coherent rather than making wishes in dreams, she very well might have wished herself dead without ever knowing what was about to happen.

In the end, portals to other worlds are almost becoming second nature for the Rowdy 3. Sure Windermere was a thing, and a life, and it changed a lot for him and the others, but this is different.

For one there's no weird fairytale aspects that he realizes right away, most seeming to be fairly normal. Secondly, he's alone which is the most worrisome of all.

At first he thought it was merely separation, landing in different places which he imagines could happen easily with all of this time traveling, and worlds and whatever else magic this is. He thinks if Amanda had done this, she would be right there with him, so someone else had a hand in this. Perhaps literally.

After all, it was technically a hand through a portal that had plucked him and the others out of a concrete prison like tomb and dropped them into Windermere so surely it's the same.

Except he's still alone days later, and there's nothing to make him think the others are anywhere near. The last time, even when Vogel was apart, he could feel him. Now there's an emptiness in the center of his chest and he can't seem to get rid of it.

Add to that people in this place seem more vigilant, more wary, than he's used to in even war torn parts of the country and he starts getting curious about what the hell kind of messed up world he's landed in.

Which, given the first time he gives in and feeds from someone in a high emotional state, he realizes just how different things are. They aren't right. Not wrong, but definitely not right.

At length he finds a bat, one old and used that some kid left behind and he starts wailing on a car. Frustrated and hungry and doing it in a rhythm, almost as if he hopes the sound might resonate with someone and draw out those he's missing.

A van careens around the corner, driving faster than any van probably ought to, but then, the roads are anything but heavily trafficked. She slows. Considers. Rolls down her window a few inches so as to be audible, one foot poised above the gas ready to floor it.

"You might want to stop that, honey," she calls. "Erratic behavior is one of the early signs of amplification, and getting shot dead would be an unpleasant end to your day."

Of course, he could actually be amplifying. He could be either confused or angry as his life slowly draws to a close, legally dead already, in which case a bullet before he forgets who he is might be a mercy. There's a gun in her glove compartment. She hates the idea of using it anywhere but a firing range. Maggie doesn't see a bite wound, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Her windows are shatterproof glass, she has one foot on the gas and one hand on the window button, and she'll take off and leave him in the dust if she has to.

Martin's head shoots up the moment he sees the van. His eyes light up, grinning widely, expecting the doors to open and to see three familiar faces hooping and hollering as they poured out.

Instead there's a woman warning him about getting shot.

Slowly he lowers the bat, taking a cigarette from behind his ear and putting it between his lips. Pulling out a lighter, he lit the cigarette, all the while watching her curiously. He makes no move to step closer, still kind of waiting for the doors to open. Taking a drag and exhaling slowly, he shakes his head.

"I'm erratic as a course of action. Just the man I am. So far my day is unpleasant, and being shot heals like most things."

Taking another drag, considering her.

"You haven't seen three fairly erratic men around here? Maybe with a pretty thing, about this tall," he says, gesturing with his hand. "Who they're likely looking to as their queen?"

Duke crosses his finger over his heart as if promising. No tackling. On his honor.

He frowns as she explains in detail how the last few months have been. His heart aches with it- with all of it. He can hardly wrap his head around what she's saying. "Jesus, Maggie," he says, reaching up to take her hand as it rested on his shoulder. His hand squeezes hers tightly, and he shakes his head.

His hand tightens over her own at the reality of how close she came to- how close she came to a lot of things. To her death. That's not something he can wrap his head around.

"I'm glad you did too. I'm glad you're here. Can't imagine anything else. Wouldn't want to."

"I'll have to be careful. I don't want to cause the zombie uprising in your world. If I do need a doctor later, are there any we can trust to take extra precautions and not to call the CDC?" She's good on the couch for now and has no intention of letting go of Duke anytime soon, but these are important questions to ask. "You have enough to worry about in this town without adding my virus to the mix."

"There are people that I trust here," Nathan and Audrey. Dwight's questionable at times. He doesn't know if he could trust him to do what Duke says is best ver what Dwight thinks is best. "But you're right. I don't want to have the CDC storming the town. They'll find more than enough that they might consider a disease," Duke says with a grimace at the thought, glancing up toward her. Of course, he didn't think about that. "And I don't want them getting their hands on you."

"We'll make sure that doesn't happen," Maggie assures him, though she doesn't have the ability to make sure of much of anything here. "I just thought it might be best to plan ahead, in case. For now at least, I only need rest. Would you mind if I take a nap? Even falling into another world can only keep morphine side effects at bay for so long."

"Yes, I'd mind terribly, Maggie," Duke says with a slight smirk and a look in her direction. The smirk slips into something softer in his expression before he nods. "Sleep, okay? I'll... try to find you more morphine for when you wake up."

He's pretty sure her pain levels will be an issue again then, and he doesn't want her hurting.

But God, it really is so good to see her again.

She stretches out on the couch once Duke gets up, unsuccessfully trying to stifle a wince at the movement. She still isn't getting around so well quite yet. "Thanks. I'll see you in a little while."

Maggie sleeps deeply for a solid three hours before pain wakes her. She groans, and it takes a few disoriented seconds for her to figure out where she is. Haven. Not her room at the Agora. "Duke?"

Izzy didn't look back. Had she looked back, she would have seen her house- no. Her mother's- no, that isn't right either. Elena's House in flames. A fire she didn't get to start.

But Izzy didn't look back, she headed to the bus station, and booked herself a ticket to New York City, to look for clues to find the only person to truly see her. See who she was, and not hate it. Not treat her like an outcast or monster. Moody tried, but it wasn't like he could get it. Still, she had a plan, she had the same information her mo- Elena had, she could hunt down the same information.

She was an artist, she knew Mia. She loved Mia. It should be easy.

...That was four months ago. Given how little of a plan she had, she did pretty well in New York City. It was trying to get Mia's trail after New York that she ran into a few problems. Well, for one, the money she had didn't stretch as far as she wanted. Izzy had planned to find Mia months ago, so she didn't really expect to need more than what she'd squirreled away. But that was the least of her problems.

The last bus she got on was a bit too convenient. But she needed to keep moving, and the driver said he was going the way to get her where she needed to be. And now she was in the woods, no idea what state she was in. But she picked a direction and trudged on. To find a farmhouse. Well, she was cute and she didn't have any other option but sleep in the woods. "Hello?"

Maggie's house is currently at one of its lowest security levels, most of the gates around the house standing open. The last one is shut, though, and Maggie gets a warning from the security guards who are well-concealed in the woods. She heads outside herself rather than sending them to check it out, to their dismay.

"Hello," she calls as she steps onto the front stoop. "I'm Maggie. How in the world did you get here on foot? I'm miles from anyone."

She's curious. Maggie won't leave this kid alone in the woods, but she's also not letting her in without a clean blood test.

"Um, a bus?" It didn't sound convincing. It was true, but it wasn't convincing. The woman being surprised at someone out here said that Izzy shouldn't be out here. Which means that something's gotten weird. Of course, a lot of things had gotten weird for Izzy.

That was why she ran away, after all.

"Maybe I could come in and use your-" Izzy initially was going to say 'phone.' But who could she call. Mia was who-knows-where, and she couldn't call home. She refused. But she didn't like the idea of staying out here.

Especially when a home is so... fortified. That's not really endearing, although the woman seems nice enough. Through a gate. That's locked.

Maggie raises her eyebrows. "If I knew who was driving that bus, I'd give them a piece of my mind about letting anyone off in the middle of the woods without shelter immediately nearby. You're welcome to come in, as long as you can show me a clean blood test first. There's a testing panel to your left." How to use it is pretty self explanatory, the universal language of an outline of a hand to press her own hand to.

Sorry, Izzy. You're now in a post zombie uprising world, with all the paranoia that entails.

"You can stay here awhile, or I'll help you get where you need to go."

Open RP post for Maggie Garcia

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Pick a world. Any world. Hers. His. A random game world. I'm open for anything.

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/coming back to this nearly a year later ;o; as duke returns to me

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Izzy got spirited away by a magic bus is all I got for explanation here...

Re: Izzy got spirited away by a magic bus is all I got for explanation here...

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