Talent Scout

Dave:

The most irritating part of head injuries is probably that, eighty percent of the time, you have no idea what the hell knocked you out in the first place. Take right now, for example—your head hurts, not much else hurts, so you know that your handy-dandy healing factor's hard at work repairing what's probably a concussion or some shit, but that's pretty much all you know. You can't remember shit.

Okay, that's not quite true. The short-term memory's right there, you know it is, it almost always is, you just can' t quite access it right this second. A lot like vision, probably, because you can't see shit either...wait, no. You just got your eyes closed. Of course you do.

So open them, dumbass. It's not rocket science.

True, but it sure feels like it at this point. The fact that you do manage it proves that you're as much of a goddamn genius as Hal 'n Dirk are, and your brain rewards you by not putting you in extreme pain as soon as you crack your eyelids open. The lower light level probably helps on that one, though; whoever the fuck the woman leaning over you is, she obviously has some experience with head injuries.

Huh. Did you lose a bigger chunk of your memory than usual, or do you legit not know her? If it's the former, you probably have a major problem...eh, don't worry about that right now. How about you sit up instead?

"Whoa, whoa, how about no?" Her eyes widen as she leans forward to pin you down, and you get super distracted for a second because you've literally never seen eyes that pretty—like, part of it might be that you've never been this close to anyone with brown eyes before, but you don't think that irises flecked with gold and ringed with even darker brown are standard issue. Like holy shit that's in the top five most fascinating eye colors that you've ever seen in your life, and you're part of a family whose mutation shows up in their eyes. You've spent a decent amount of your time staring at a fucking alien, for fuck's sake, and hers measure up to that pretty fucking well.

"Dave?"

Oh. Shit. That's not the first time she's said your name, is it. "Yeah, I'm still here." Hard to be otherwise, what with her palm pressed flat against your chest. You kind of can't believe she's capable of holding you down this easily, although part of that might have to do with the fact that you haven't really gotten around to trying to get up. Maybe you should do that now.

...nope, that'd be a no go. She really is strong. She—

—reached past you and touched the collar around Ambrose's throat, found the catch and—

Shit. No. Shit. Strong as she is, the surge of horror and outrage that the return of your short-term memory gives you is apparently a little more than she can handle. Either that, or she recognizes that you're probably gonna end up hurting her (or yourself) unless she gets her fucking hands off you.

You only really realize you're on a bed when you scramble past her and off of it. And no, you don't really correct for the drop; your hands end up between you and the floor thanks to muscle memory from every other time you've almost faceplanted, but that just means that you don't break your dumbass face. You're still hella off balance, enough that it seems easier to let yourself collapse all the way onto the floor and roll onto your side instead of trying to save any shred of dignity you might have left.

Dignity. Why the fuck would you give a shit about dignity right now? Ambrose...

Yeah. He's probably dead. Hal and Dirk, they rigged the collar before they put it on him, back in the facility y'all found him in, before everything got clarified, and they didn't trust him enough to unrig it, in the first couple months, and after? How the fuck would they remember after? Your family has issues with remembering to adjust shit sometimes, and even if this is something potentially lethal, you can just barely hold onto the hope that this lil' feature was the exception to the rule.

But.

You can hold onto it. You gotta. So you push yourself up off the floor—and bang into the woman as she kneels to lean over you and check if you just died or not. The impact's centered on the top of your head, adding a second impact to the one from the car; you're not sure where you hit her, but from the yelp she lets out? It hurt.

Not that you're gonna apologize. This is a room in somebody's house or something, not a fuckin' hospital or anywhere else reasonable to take someone as injured as yourself, and anyway why the fuck would somebody who's not a paramedic or directly related to you move you? The car wasn't gonna explode. Hell, the gas tank wasn't even in the part you were in anymore, right?

Okay so maybe you're still having memory issues from the knock on the head, because there is no fucking way that you're remembering that right. There was no reason for the car to be in two halves. That can't be right. Why would—

The woman whose name you still haven't even tried to get reaches for you, and you—completely on panic-induced autopilot at this point because of course you are, you get fuckin' dangerous when you're this close to the tipover point for an honest to god meltdown—you grab her wrist and bear down, twist until she yelps again and lets herself be turned so her back's to you. Oddly enough, the ease with which you get the upper hand doesn't really help your mental state at all. Nope, you're still kneeling on unfamiliar carpeted floor, breathing even and barely a little bit fast because hyperventilating'll put you in more danger than you already are, trying really really hard to think yourself down from this shit.

Letting her go would probably help, but you can't actually seem to do that right now. Deliberately closing your eyes is a poor second choice, but it's the best one you have right this second. You need to calm down, you need to not snap this woman's arm like a stick, you need to get ahold of how fuckin' scared you are—

"Julia," an unfamiliar male voice says dryly, "you seem to have lost the advantage here."

"Oh, you think?" Okay, so she's nowhere near as unnerved by this whole situation as you are, which is almost weird considering that she's the one in danger of getting injured right now. Then again, maybe she's just got more confidence in your ability to control yourself than you do.

"Dave." A hand touches your shoulder, and you flinch back (drawing a pained noise from poor Julia) and open your eyes.

Well, you don't recognise this dude at all. He's old enough that you don't feel even a tiny ping of guilt over classifying him as "an old dude," seems really fucking tall and probably is even though some of that impression is because you're on the floor and he's leaning over you. Weirdass metal helmet thing that covers up most of his silver-white hair (why the fuck do you actually feel proud that yours is closer to pure white? why, exactly?) A fucking cape.

What the actual fuck have you ended up in?

"Dave, do you intend to break her arm, or not?" One silvery eyebrow arches up. "Either way, I suggest you end the stalemate."

"...'stalemate.'" Yeah, you might be on a different wavelength than this dude right now. Then again, you really don't want to break Julia's arm. She seems nice other than the kidnapping thing, and you're kind of just assuming there is a kidnapping thing. Maybe you're wrong. So yeah, you let go, and Julia huffs and mutters something under her breath and scoots away from you, and you cross your arms because your hands are shaking and glare up at the new dude. Old dude. What-fucking-ever. "Happy now, fucker?"

Maybe cussing at him isn't the best move, but he doesn't seem as offended as most people would be—all you get from him is a wry smile and an offered hand. You have no fucking clue what to do with the latter. Wait, no, it's probably as simple as him wanting to help you up. Maybe.

"I'm not touchin' you." Too blunt, but you're rattled. "Who the fuck are you? You know Wade's gonna kill you for this, right?"

Julia laughs, which is kind of a relief because it sounds genuine and makes you a lil' more sure that you didn't really hurt her but also irritates the shit out of you because it's Wade she's laughing at, dammit, and he might not care if he was here but you do care and you are here—and the old dude shakes his head at her. You don't like how fast she silences herself at that, but it's not like she stays quiet for long.

"Let him try," she says, and you scowl at her.

"Fuck off."

"For a kid, you sure have a potty mouth."

"Fuck you."

"Children. Please." The old guy rubs his forehead like he's got a migraine starting, which isn't exactly an unsurprising developement. Hey, you're pretty sure he's the reason your head hurts, he fuckin' deserves it. "Julia, we brought him here for a r—"

"I'm not talking to you."

"...what."

"You just called me a child, Eric! What did you expect?" She sticks her tongue out at him and crosses her arms over her chest. (You're starting to wonder if you should revise your estimate of her age down a couple years. Sure, she looks somewhere between twenty-something and thirty-something, but she kinda acts like she's fourteen.) "You deal with him."

"I thought you weren't talking to him, not me," you feel the need to point out.

"You told me to fuck off."

Oh good point. But that means you gotta either talk to Eric the weird old helmet dude, or ignore both of them until Roxy shows up to take you home. Then again, how exactly do you even take something like that back? Will just saying I take it back do the job, or do you have to coax her into talking to you again? How would you even start to talk her into it?

While you're still considering that, shit goes to hell in less time than you would have believed possible.

By "going to hell," you mean that two more people that you don't know—well, one person in a wheelchair and one guy who looks about as human as Karkat does, just with blue skin instead of grey and a tail that moves like it's prehensile instead of nubby horns—literally appear out of nowhere behind Eric. The whole materializing thing isn't really that alarming—Roxy can do something pretty close, after all—and the blue guy doesn't even register as a threat, even if he gives you a nervous and very sharp-toothed grin for the second you meet his golden eyes.

The guy in the wheelchair, though...

You don't even get a chance to look at him, really. Which is stupid, you should know better than to assume the one who doesn't look human is the threat, you of all people should know better than this—but beating yourself up over this shit isn't going to do anything. You look at Blue Dude, you don't look at the other guy, you blink and feel someone else behind your eyes.

Funny. It's funny, that you're always so close to this kind of fear. You'd think it was funny, if you could think of anything but getting away from the other mind sifting through your brain. Not that there's anywhere to go—you're in the corner of the room furthest from the door, and who even knows what's on the other side of that door? Who knows how far this guy's mental influence can reach?

Not you, that's for sure. But even as freaked out as you are, you do know that you can get him out of your head without moving an inch, with just a lil' mental twist. Takes you way too long to remember how to do it, but you close your eyes and slap your hands over your ears, shift yourself right the fuck out of time until everything around you crawls to a stop and the presence in your head evaporates into nothing.

Unfortunately, you still can't breathe, can't move, can't see, can't leave—fuck, okay, you're done. You're done. You're so fucking done.