nexus_crossings | There's a Starman...

There's a Starman...

Tommy stepped through the door into the Plaza. For some, it might be a shock to have a door lead somewhere unexpected or that it has never lead to before. He was far passed caring about so many things, or perhaps, it is the years of imprisonment that made any outside space welcome even when he had no idea where this was.
He watched the video of the man to inform him about the location with a frown. He seems arrogant to the alien. The information is welcome though and Tommy quickly looks over the brochures. They remind him of Holiday brochures for a trip. Was that what people thought ending up randomly on a planet was? A vacation?

It was hard to tear his eyes away from the paper to gaze at the people moving around. It was a pleasant spring day, on the warmer side, but Tommy still wore a suit and overcoat. Everything was always too cold for him given the planet he came from. His gaze turns up to the two suns and he frowns. They were messing with his vision which was well beyond the spectrum humans, or even their equipment could see.

The pamphlet is tossed on the table with a sigh. "What do you do when everything you wanted is gone?"

He wasn't talking to anyone, himself maybe. He's been wrestling with this question for nearly half a century. His whole purpose for leaving home, coming to Earth.. none of it mattered anymore.

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It's an excellent hair color, particularly for spring weather! She has a couple tiny braids in her hair as well, with little shells tied to the ends.

"Purpose and want are two different things," she says, coming a step or two closer and setting her drink on a nearby table. "If you have a duty, you should do it. If not, it's not hard to find someone who needs some kind of help you can give."

"In a general sense, I mean. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, specifically." There's a flicker of something sheepish across her face, but it doesn't linger long.

"I think you have to grieve anything that's lost, though."

His own hair is not far off from her shade, orange and a little less natural perhaps.

"Why would you have a purpose that is something you don't want to do?" Here is where his alien mindset may come rushing forward. Freedom and pacifism before coming to Earth and then the horrible brutality of humanity has produced a jaded cynic. Duty. That word pulls away whatever begining of a smile there was. "I don't want to help anyone."

He didn't. Helping someone gave him heartbreak and, in the end, betrayal and torture. Grieving too was something he couldn't get through. His eyes flicker away from the woman. "I can't get away from it."

Everyone thought visions would be amazing to have, but Tommy knew better. His crushed everything, sometimes his will to go on.

She has an answer for that, as well, and it's probably ingrained in her own alien mindset. "Because you are a part of something greater. A clan, a people, a world, a universe, a story. One of those, or maybe all of them."

His words are cynical, but the sadness in them screams at her. She drags a chair out from under the table she's set her drink on, and sits, crossing her ankles delicately and resting her bag on the ground. "You have nothing you want, then, but you have something you don't want. That's a start, isn't it?"

Granted, the idea of not wanting to help anyone is foreign to her. "It makes sense to hurt, if you've had awful things happen to you. It would be abnormal if you didn't. Sometimes it takes a long time to feel that hurt, before it starts to be bearable."

"I'm not." He's bluntly serious about that answer. Unless the other sent out was successful, which he doubts from his vision, Tommy was the last of a species.

"It's too late to be rid of it." He wishes the distrust of humans wasn't so strong. It left him lonely and brooding in his traumas.

Awful? He ruminated on that word wile the woman spoke. It was inadequate but Tommy couldn't place why. His mind turns to abnormal and the voices of humans screaming that he was a freak surged into his mind. Even Mary Lou lashed out at him with that word often enough. She'd be dead soon too, not that she cared that he might feel anything about it.

He finally sits at the table elbows on the table and face propped in his hands. He felt weak, not that his people died easily, but they could. A brief thought passed of the human concept of dying from heartbreak.

"Half a century, a whole century?" He asks off-hand.

She's not sure she believes that. Partly that's her own cultural mindset, which bears some resemblance to early Midgardian cultures that placed the good of the group over the individual. Her people find meaning in their place and contribution to their society. On the other hand, she's spent enough time with Loki at this point that she's started to look at things from his perspective, and he is not precisely a team player.

So, is this man like Prince Loki, she wonders? Nobly born and cast aside? Or perhaps there's something else happening here, that she cannot comprehend. Either way, contradicting him won't help. She's young but wise enough to know that. So she quiets for a moment, studying him seriously. There's a level of intensity in her eyes, like she's a mute Alice-in-Wonderland trying to work things out when they make no sense.

"I don't think there's a set timeline," she says gently at last. "I don't think it even corresponds to a person's lifespan."

"What's your name? I'm Fǫnn Hauksdóttir. Of Asgard, except Asgard no longer exists as a place."

Tommy just stares off, ignoring the intensity of stare. Doctors had been staring at him like an animal in a cage for most of his time on Earth. Though when she speaks, his attention snaps back to her face suggesting he wasn't as zoned out as he appeared to be.

He nods because Tommy had accepting that idea. He would suffer until he died, whenever that might happen.

"Thomas Newton." He almost said Tommy but he doesn't think he could take anyone calling him by that name. Not now for certain. However, the revelation about her home brings the closest Tommy has to sympathy; a neutral tone with a deep sigh. "Everything ends in eternity."

"Well met, Mr. Newton," she says, hoping she's interpreting the naming conventions correctly here. "I hope you will find some solace in the Nexus."

Folding her hands in her lap, she looks down and nods. "My people are relatively long-lived. The oldest among us now is almost three-thousand Midgard years, and could well live twice that long. We're living on Midgard now. A little colony in the north. So much of what we are has been destroyed, it's hard to know what we will become."

"It's not as uncommon as it should be, to lose everything. I don't know how everybody manages, just how I keep going forward. My work, mostly, and my people, the few that are left, who need me."

He's usually closed off and tight lipped. Maybe it is the woman or the years of torture and then wandering aimlessly. Whatever it was he spoke, quiet, slow and steady toned. "We don't count years any more."

No one knew how old anyone was and no one cared. They still celebrated the years for children but once you drifted into adulthood it was forgotten and years didn't matter. It had never bothered him to not have an age though humans asked about it relentlessly.

"There are no more." The words are heavy and thick. Even Tommy swallowed hard after saying them. As far as he knew, and really his travel ability, there weren't any others. He was alone in the way few others would be. It had driven him to do eccentric things with his wealth on Earth. Perspective changes drastically when you get to this point.

She is not human, and she's already gathered that he isn't either. It's not unusual to meet non-humans in the Nexus, but this one seems so terribly hurt, and alone. If nothing else, she will come away from this encounter with a tremendous appreciation for the few thousand other Asgardians that remain. She nods soberly when he says they don't count years, understanding that this implies an even longer-lived species than her own. Truly immortal, maybe? She hopes not; that sounds awful.

"I'm so sorry," she says quietly, reaching out with one hand, then thinking better of offering the comforting touch. He might not like that. He seems very wary, as well as lonely.

"We're lucky," she says. "Our planet was destroyed, and we lost a lot of people. And then the ship we were traveling in was attacked and destroyed as well, and we lost more. But not all. And we still have our king, and our prince, and our Valkyrie. There are a few thousand of us."

It could be so much worse. She had no idea, and now she's heartbroken for this stranger she's talked to for less than ten minutes.

"...I don't know what to do to help you, or if you even want that."

He doesn't pulls away when she reaches out, merely watches her hand. Experiences with humans has made him ambivalent to contact; positive or negative. There had been so much unwanted contact in his time on Earth that his natural pacifism left him enduring if verbal complaint didn't work.

"There was a drought." Drought was probably a misnomer because it had started before his birth and he wondered if it ended. Did the weather end if there was no one to see it? "I only wanted to take water home. We could have made more."

And then he's silent, looking away when she offers to help. As much as he wants help there's a blockade now that those he trusted turned him over to imprisonment. It's a strange feeling. A long momemt hangs silent before his attention goes back to her. He had a wandering mind usually and confronted with this place made it worse. "Where do people stay here?"

It seemed as good a place as any and it was away from the eyes constantly looking for him.

Her fingertips brush his arm very lightly before withdrawing. The last thing she would want is to cause injury or discomfort.

"A drought..." She worries her lip. It would be such a simple thing for Thor to summon rain for them, though it might not fix the problem in the long term. And it sounds as though it's too late now. "I wish we had met sooner."

Asgard certainly could have given him water, if nothing else. Sensing he needs a moment to compose himself, she waits, saying nothing but watching the grass around their feet blow in the light wind. She's relieved by the question, giving a sober nod. "There are several hotels. Some cost money but some are free or accept payment in light labor, like gardening or washing dishes. Shall I show you?"

That single light touch is enough to feel it. The bones beneath his skin are slender, delicate even if he were a human as slim as he appears, and the skin is different in its smooth hairlessness. There is a lingering sensation from that touch of otherworldliness that often drew people to Tommy when they touched, and he rarely was touched with interest in his well being any longer. He doubted the doctors noticed the pull like others did.

"I wish I had come sooner." He says quietly. He could have brought the last of them here. How many were there when he left? It's hard to remember now; 40 maybe 50, mostly children that parents had sacrificed themselves to save, giving the last of their water and nourishment to them.

He looks up at the buildings around them and feels the same oppressive feeling as Earth, the gravity and weight of the air. "I need to be on the ground."

He realized it was an odd request but still so soon after escaping his health was still fragile. He couldn't endure elevators or navigate stairs now.

Spun glass is the first thing her mind conjures up, which is an exaggeration of course, but the smoothness and fine bones are striking. The otherworldliness, by contrast, makes her feel just a bit homesick. She gets a strong mental image of the Bifrost arced across the night sky on Asgard.

She blushes faintly, needing a moment to shake off the impressions, but her attitude toward him doesn't shift from soft concern. "I'm sure that can be arranged easily enough," she promises, and stands, picking up her bookbag. "Would you rather be away from people, at the edge of the plaza maybe?"

He stands slowly as if he's old, though he isn't. The ache is there in his joints from gravity and sitting. "It doesn't matter."

He smiles faintly while waiting for her to lead the way. "Thank you."

Maybe here there will be a tiny bit of hope to find.

"Well," she says thoughtfully, "there is a place at the edge of the park that some of my people stayed in when we first arrived here. It's simple, but the staff are very kind."

She beckons him after her, picking her way through the grass until she reaches a slate path, then following it through a grove of well-manicured trees. It's anybody's guess how the grounds around the Nexus are maintained. Certainly she's never seen anyone trimming the trees or picking weeds, but it always looks like a park and not a wild place. They pass a pond full of carp as well, and she has to pause to watch them for just a few seconds--they're colorful, and a novelty to her--before turning up a walkway to a small hotel. It's three stories, the architecture designed to mimic an old world village, with dark beams and pale stucco under a tile roof.

"They serve breakfast and lunch in the dining room here, as well," she says. "If you're hungry at all. I might actually buy one of their coffee cakes to take home anyway."

Tommy follows slowly and is easily distracted once they get into the area with the trees, but it is the pond that totally derails his mind. He's abandoned Fonn to go to the bank and stare at the water. Water was so precious and so abundant. He'd seen the ocean once but even small bodies of water like this pond hypnotized him. It was a combination of incredible sorrow and awestruck with the beauty of something he had never seen before arriving on Earth. On Anthea, it was rare to even see a full drop of water.

After a moment, he bends down touching the surface of the water. It was a divine experience for the alien to see so much water and he touched it with great reverence. Too distracted by the colors and the coolness on his skin, he's yet to remember he was with anyone, or that she might be waiting for him somewhere.

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There's a Starman...

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