Summary:Jean runs into Hod in the park, hears about more doom and gloom. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Hod is angry. And scared. And unsettled. And feeling a smidgen of hopelessness. Which is to say it must be Tuesday again, because … Hod. For added spice and a hint of something different, there is a taste of desperation added in for kicks. BAM! Like Emeril says. Also, there's the booze, so you know, that's super helpful.
Hod sits at the base of a tree in Central Park not that far from where he met Jean the first time, a bit off the beaten path, in the dappled moonlight and shadows. Easy to overlook and no notice it would take someone likely looking for him, and knowing him well, to even have a chance to spot the old curmudgeonly bastard. Or someone following the soft clink of glass on glass.
Jean is in the process of moving back to Xavier's, but before she leaves the city, she wants a chance to enjoy some of the best things about it. Which includes the park. It wasn't planned to incude a grumpy, paranoid god, but some things are just unavoidable.
Hearing the sounds, she lets her mind reach out a bit to see who's there. And once she touches the chill darkness that is Hod's mind, there's no choice aside from going in.
"Hey, buuuuddy," she singsongs a bit as she approaches, moving to sit next to him. "How's things?"
Jean may have to clear away a few empty bottles of … well, pick a liqour. Doesn't matter. There's likely one there. "we're all gonna die." he mutters at her before thrusting a fist her direction, one that's holding about 3/4's of a bottle of spiced carribean rum.
"Eventually, yep," Jean agrees, gingerly brushing away some bottles before she settles in. "Though I'm not planning on it just yet. I mean, I've got things I'd like to get around to. And what would happen to Rachel and Nate? They'd just…poof out of existence or something."
She takes a count of the bottles, quirking a brow before she looks back to him. "Something new on the armageddon front?"
Hod snickers as if she'd said something funny, "Prolly nothin'." he comments, "Alternate timelines being what they are, unlikely anything would happen to them at all. Predestination at it's most basic. Nothing we do matters. The end is nigh. Imma kill Baldur and doom us all. This rum is good. Have some." he shakes the bottle at her invitingly.
"Wow. You'rea few degrees past your usual level of doom and gloom. Which is saying something, oh god of doom and gloom." Jean reaches out to take the bottle, though she doesn't seem to be in any hurry to take a drink. "Look, I don't know much about prophesy, but I feel like I know you pretty well at this point, and the one thing I know about you for sure is that you'd do literally anything in your power not to hurt your brother," she points out.
Hod shakes his head, "Just gloom really." he points out, "Doom is my fiance." it's really hard to tell when he's kidding. "And yet," he says, his words trailing off for a long moment before his head jerks as if he's just woken back up, "My father plucked out his own eye and tossed it into the Well of Mimir at the roots of Yggdrasil, this grants him Sight Beyond Sight, the power to see what can't be seen and know what can't be known. Pretencious way of saying he's a seer."
Hod reaches up and after a couple of missed attempts manages to pull the glasses from his face, turning the empty socket holes in his head her direction. In the night they seem to swallow more light then they should, seeming deeper and more unnatural then a pair of holes in someone's head that shouldn't be there would otherwise appear, "I was born without any. My Mother is Queen of the Vanir, Seeress extraordinaire, powerful caster and reader of the runes, a natural Seer. Guess what I am." he says, pushing his glasses back onto his face after three attempts. They're cockeyed of course. "Everything I 'see' comes true. Everything. Where do you think the prophecy of Baldur's murder originated?" he asks, leading her down the obvious path once she has the other facts.
"One day, somewhere, sometime, I won't have a choice. Predestination." he says again before patting about him as if searching for a bottle. "Kormir, the guy from the rooftop?" he asks, as if Jean is likely to forget, "Was found torn limb from limb inside of a precint station along with a dozen of NYPD's finest. Literally every cop that shared a single word with him was violently rent assunder," he makes a squelching noise with his mouth and rips something apart with his hands in the air, "down to the booking officer that took his fingerprints. The assailant apparently soaked up automatic gunfire like it was a faint breeze on a sunny day, and then left. There is no record of his confession." pause, "You gonna drink that rum or pass it back?"
Jean listens. It's something she's good at, really. Listening, on all levels. And in the end, she grimaces at Hod, holding the bottle of rum a little bit closer before finally taking a sip without looking away from him.
She doesn't offer it back, though.
"So, that's cool. Adding that to my list of things to worry about. Dude who shrugs off gunfire looking for anyone who heard what the other dude said, which is now a total of Hod and Jean."
She's quiet for a moment, considering. "So. Any thoughts on who this guy is?"
Hod reaches into his vest and pulls out something curved and wickedly sharp. It looks a bit like a raptor's talon from that dinosaur movie, large and curved, though this one also comes complete with an apparently natural sharp edge along the inside of the curve. It's pitted where something struck it, gunfire maybe, and on it's surface is an image of a moon eclipsing the sun. It's smooth and hard as glass where the pits are not, so there's no indention over the symbol to give it away. One has to hold it just right to spot the image in reflected light. "I'm starting to suspect that the Envoy is literally that. An Envoy." touching the talon gives one the full body willies, it's like holding a peice of a fractured psyche in one's hand, it exudes madness and leeches willpower slowly when held.
It's very unpleasent. "For the Elder Gods." he adds, holding out his empty hand her direction as if expecting the bottle to plop into it.
Jean eyes the talon, and when her mind finds the feeling of it, she declines to actually touch it. That's some bad juju right there, no thank you. She does, however, deliver the bottle into his hand.
"Cool. Sounds fun. Hey." She leans over enough to bump her shoulder against his, watching him closely. "Literal God. You know what the best thing about us puny humans is?"
Hod sways alarmingly at the bump, "Diet god." he says, holding up a finger as if correcting her were important on the point, "Um. You invented Mexican food? Perfected bourbon? Delta blues? Public transport? You're not giving me anything to go on here. Been a fan of you people for two and a half millenia, I can make a very long and comprehensive list."
"All true," Jean agrees. "I assume. I don't actually know if any of your kind interfered with any of that," she waves a hand, reaching over to catch him before he can fall over.
"But no. The thing is, Hod, we don't live very long, all things considered. But maybe because we don't have a whole lot of time for living, we don't give up. So. If the puny humans can not give up, even knowing that we're all going to die, and we're probably going to do it after living sad, short, ordinary lives? So can you."
Hod shakes his head, "Not really. The muse-goddesses can provide inspiration, but they don't shape it's form. Just… a little jolt of the creative spirit you people already have in heaps. Like a coffee in the morning, but for the soul. But picking what it becomes? That's all mortal stuff." He is unaware when he's righted. Oddly enough he dosen't slur his speech when he's drunk, but his balance is clearly all manner of fucked up. But, given how his inner ear is very important to him, it's likely this side effect is heightened in him. Or he's good at hiding it in his speech. Practice makes perfect they say.
He reaches up an oddly calloused hand, feels about for a moment, then patpat's Jean's cheek in a fond manner, "Oh, I'm not giving up kid. Giving up would be me marching into the embassy and just letting them skewer me on a pike. Or marching into the Envoy's camp and letting them skewer me with a pike. Or killing my brother. This?" he lifts the rum to his lips and takes a heavy pull, "This is halftime. I'm taking a sit down, catching my breath. Our hope of exonerating us is gone. The Envoy has some link to the Ogdru eb Jurhad. I'm on their shit list. And I'm all out of leads to follow that involve me contacting people I /really/ don't want to contact." heavy sigh. "Refueling. Yeah. That's what this is." his hand drops back down to his lap. "Just refueling."
"Oh good. 'Cause it was starting to look like self-pity, and that's not a great look on anyone." Jean leans back against the tree, drawing her knees up toward her chest and tipping her head back to look up at the sky.
"I'm moving back to the school," she says, on an unrelated note. "Graduated here, and it's not like I've got a high-paying job waiting for me to pay for living in the city. So if you're looking for me, you should probably call. School's a little bit touchy about unscheduled visitors."
Hod snorts, "Call." he says flatly, "Like on a phone? One of those little electrical devices with the tracking bits in them?" out loud this sounds a bit like he's mocking the idea. Okay. A lot of bits. "You should warn the school then, let them know a blind guy may occasionally wander around their campus yelling for you." because of course everyone should amend their lives to convenience him. Still a hint of the Asgardian Prince bouncing around in there somewhere.
"Why you moving back to the school? You need a place to stay you can have one of my apartments for a bit, get your feet under you." he makes a face of distain, "Everytime you mention having come from the school, you mope a bit and get evasive when talking about your one eyed friend and his romantic entanglement." swig, "And by everytime, I mean twice."
Jean groans, tilting her head further back until she's looking straight up. "It's just- Look, you get it. You're just being dense. Family's complicated. And the people at school are family. I grew up with them. But normally you grow up and you leave your family. Except we're not leaving each other. We all just…stay."
She reaches up, linking her fingers at the back of her neck. "The school is important and the people there are important. And it's safe. And it's guaranteed. But that makes me feel like going back there or staying there is a failure, and I get all that wrapped up in trying to decide what it is I actually want."
Her nostrils flare as she takes a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. "And yeah, the whole Scott thing is a thing. He doesn't have one eye, by the way. He has two eyes. He just…keeps them covered, because otherwise he shoots these beams of concussive force out of them and he can't actually control it, which is a whole different can of worms."
Hod nods his head, "So he chose to name himself after a not so mythical creature who's favorite past times were eating human flesh, stomping villages and their contents into pudding, and trying to murder Greecian heroes because he bares a /passing/ resembelence to the one physical handicap said creature happened to have? Seems…" he grins a bit at her, "short sighted." he beams. "Not a perfect pun, but I'm drunk and sticking with it." he nudges her with a shoulder, which mostly involves him almost flopping on her and having to slowly push himself back up right by planting the bottle into the ground and pushing.
"I understand family drama, more then most be honest, but if you let it it can become an anchor that weighs you down and keeps them from moving forward. You wanna be at the school? Then be at the school kid, teach finger painting or whatever it is kids do these days, bad inaccurate history for starters, and rock on. Be the hot teacher all the boys drool over. If you don't wanna, then don't, and try not to beat yourself up over choosing, for once, to follow your own dreams. Like you said kid, your lives are short and frought with danger, don't waste any of the time you have, it's the one currency that once spent you can never get back."
"It was more of a screw you to people who made fun of him, I think," Jean adds academically on the topic of Scott, letting out another breath as she helps straighten Hod back up.
"Yeah, I know. I'm working on it. I just don't feel like I've got all that much of a dream when it comes down to it." There's something about that that doesn't ring true, though. "Not a solid one, at least. I'm just tired of hiding, I guess. And going back feels like more hiding."
Hod lets his head fall back against the tree with a soft thunk, "Lie to me if you want, but have the dignity to know you're shit at it." he quips lightly before immediately changing that topic as if in the end it didn't matter, "Then I don't see the problem. You don't want to hide. Going back feels like hiding." he holds the bottle out, "So don't do what you don't want to do. I don't see the problem here." he reaches into the vest and pulls out a ring of keys. He sifts along it, feeling the shape of each of the key heads, then starts to pull one off the ring, "Here." he says once it's spun the circle and freed itself.
3 "This gets you into a basement apartment in The Bronx. It's under ground, it's naturally cool, it has no lighting, no heat, no air, one door, no windows, and one hidden exit out the back. You want lighting? Buy bulbs and put them in, I don't need them. The furniture is nice, but most people don't find it comfy where as I do, so if you want a bed that's not hard, buy one, put it in. Don't get a pet that isn't a nocturnal animal, don't tell me how many lovers you have over to stain my countertops, pay me what you can when you can but know it doesn't matter so much to me so don't go broke trying to polish your honor or whatever." he holds the key out to her, "I'm an exile and an outcast in every society I enter, I can still name every friend I've had in three thousand years and it wouldn't take me a full minute. What's a place to crash between friends?" he asks flatly.
"Go be alone in the dark and the cool, away from everything that presses on you, give it a think. An honest one, no input from anyone else, force yourself to ask the tough questions and give the tough answers. Move out when you have a goal, a means to accomplish it, and you /know/ where you stand kid." he wiggles the key her way, "I've been where you are and someone gave me a cot, a helm, and a sheild to match my spear. He was my first friend. He once told me that there is no shame in the weakness of self, only in the refusal to face it. First friend I ever had that didn't come out of the same womb as me."
Jean eyes the key, then eyes Hod. The key. Hod. "One of these days, we should talk about real estate," she says. But… she takes the key, turning it over in her fingers. "I'll think about it," she finally says, though she does reach over to sling an arm around his shoulders. "Buddy."
Because hey, why not add a little levity to the situation?
"Also, for the record, I don't go dragging lovers all around the place, so you can probably not worry about that. It gets weird when you read people's minds. There, now you know a thing you probably didn't need to know."
Hod tenses a bit when the arm lands around him, and it's clear he doesn't know how to respond to physical affection. Like. At all. Also touching him is chilling, literally, if one does it long enough. Not like painfully so, but similar to laying on cold concrete. It becomes pervasive. "I saw you." he says after a minute, "In the dark on the rooftop. I saw you. You're a looker kid, maybe you /should/ drag a few lovers through the place. I don't know anything about reading minds, but trust a guy who spend his first four centuries on this planet a virgin, time, currency, ain't coming back. And so long as they're decent fellas, or ladies! I don't judge. Then a good time is a good time and with Ragnarok looming I figure we could all use more good times." for all his tenseness, he doesn't pull away. Just sort of… sits there still and cautious, like a child holding baby bird afraid it'll bolt at any moment.
"Thanks. But it's not really about looks." Jean falls silent for a bit, arm around his shoulders, just watching the sky and the few pinpricks of stars that can be seen through the city's light pollution. "It's about minds. And other things."
She reaches for that bottle, taking another sip before handing it back. Another long moment of silence, and then: "Four hundred years, huh? Hod, buddy. I feel like you could have used better guidance on this god business."