nexus_sages | (no subject)

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"Hey, uh . . . anyone here ever had to, you know . . . reconnect with anyone before?"

The question comes from a man seated at the edge of the forum. A heavy, fringed overcoat is draped over the back of the speaker's chair, and he's kicked his pair of dusty boots up on a nearby tabletop. Overall, it looks like the man would be more at home in the American west: he wears a bolo tie and bandana around his neck, embroidered denim shirt, heavy belt buckle holding up crossed gun holsters and reinforced jeans. The tanned, scarred skin of his face contrasts starkly with his shaggy white hair. At a glance, he appears to be (at least) in his late 40's, but his eyes have a youthful, fiery spark to them.

The gunslinger swings his boots down off the table so he can sit forward and pour himself another shot from a brown-bagged bottle.

"Family in particular?" He adds before taking a swig.

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The military man in the blue uniform looks as though he's trying to find the right opening to answer the posed question for several minutes before approaching. Despite the slow approach, he carries an air of easy confidence as he walks up to the man at the edge of the Forum.

"Seems like most of us have family to get back to, though I reckon the situation isn't the same for all of us as it is for others." Hughes is trying to, subtly, point out that if a man is drinking that heavily while asking questions about reconnecting with family, he's obviously not in a good place. He tries not to give off an air of pity as he says it, but it's obvious to anyone who didn't miss the subtext in his statement.

Jesse is, as of late, sensitive to any acknowledgement of his drinking habit. He rests an elbow on the table and props his chin on his hand, downplaying the now-mostly-empty bottle and glass. (Part of the credit for that goes to zombie-Jesse at this point.)

"What's your story, friend?" The military uniform is easy to pick out regardless of most origins. "Were you deployed somewhere away from yours?"

Hughes pulls up a chair to a respectable distance and sits. He ignores the booze bottle and the glass. To each his own, especially when it comes to coping with family issues.

"I'm lucky enough to live near where I'm stationed, though I suppose that's a perk of being near the top in my branch. I get to go home to my wife and daughter every night." Old habits die hard. Despite the obvious pain Jesse has regarding his situation, Hughes pulls a photograph out of his pocket and holds out it out for Jesse to see. "Luckiest man alive to go home to these smiling faces every night." A smile slowly creeps across his face. No matter how much being stuck in the Nexus downright sucks, the thought of his girls keeps him going.

"Lovely family." Jesse allows himself a smile at this dad kinship, and takes a good look at the offered photo.

"Military duty is tough. I used to serve when I was younger. Gotta say, it was a challenge putting in long, hard hours on a mission and then coming home to a fussy toddler. My son was, a uh, surprise and I was young. I didn't have a ton of patience or maturity back then.

"But don't get me wrong! I still love both my kids to pieces." He unfastens the breast pocket of his shirt and pulls out an envelope. From this there comes an old, worn photo of his own family: a smiling woman in rustic clothes sits on a porch step with a toddler of indeterminate gender and a bowl-cut-wearing preteen boy gathered up next to her.

"You seem like you're all on board for the parenthood thing? I wish I'd had your enthusiasm. At least, enough to properly appreciate my kids when they were just tiny things."

"I got my active away-from-home duty done long before my wife and I were married. I knew her before that, but she was kind enough to wait for me." Damn I'm a lucky man. He doesn't rub it in anymore than that. He feels bad about gloating as much as he has already, a rarity for him.

After gently putting away his own photo, Hughes leans forward and looks over the one Jesse holds out to him. He can't help but smile. "A lovely family. I wish you luck in reconnecting with them."

He leans back in his chair slowly. "I've been on board with the parenting thing all my life. I always wanted kids and the moment my wife said she was ready? I couldn't have been happier. Suppose that's not hard, though, given my daughter." A small chuckle escapes him before he regards this unlikely brother-in-arms in front of him with a rather somber expression on his face. "There's always a chance to make up for sins of the past. If they're good people, they'll recognize the effort you're making and will give you the second chance you're looking for."

Edited 2015-08-13 19:22 (UTC)

"Thanks . . . I'm probably just being impatient. My daughter's acting like I never left, and she was still in diapers when I left. My son's the cautious one, but I would be too, in his shoes."

He shrugs. "I never really planned on kids. Down the road, I thought. But, ahem, I was a stupid teenager who couldn't keep it in his pants." Family planning is hard when you're all of nineteen.

He realizes he's still holding the photo and carefully returns it to his pocket. "Starting a family takes a certain kind of optimism about the future, you know? Confidence that there's gonna be a good, safe world for them to grow up in. For a while, I was questioning that. Stuff's settled down now, knock on wood." He raps his knuckles on the table.

"How old is your daughter?"

The bit about a 'good, safe world' strikes a cord with Hughes. "It's because I want a safer, better world for my family that I do what I do. It's the reason there are nights I don't come home while I finish paperwork at the office and I never tell my wife more than she needs to know about the details of my work. I'd give anything to protect them. Anything."

He gives a small sigh. That came out a little more harsh than he had meant. He hopes Jesse understands. It's that protective instinct that only comes from having something you would lay down your very life for, if that's what it took.

"My daughter's four now." He smiles, another photo appearing in his hand as he removes it from his pocket. The small girl, with ponytails high on her head, is smiling and laughing with a stuffed animal as big as she is. He shows it to Jesse. "Her birthday was only a few weeks ago. I can't believe how big she's gotten in that time."

"Yeah, nothing like kids to help you reprioritize. Not sure where I'd be right now if I didn't have my wife and kids to help me see the world from a different angle." He obviously does know, because he gets caught staring into the middle distance, at least until he's distracted by the next picture.

"Hah! What a cutie!" Jesse's smile takes a turn for the wistful. He scarcely sees that kind of carefree joy on his own daughter's face. "At a fun age, too. They're acting more like little people. 'course that means they get their own ideas about what they do and don't wanna do.

"They grow like weeds! You gonna have another?"

Hughes happily takes the distraction of Elysia's photo and runs with the enthusiasm about it from Jesse. "She's always asking if she can help her mother out around the house. I swear, if Elysia could fit into them, she'd be wearing her mother's clothes, too." He laughs heartily as he thinks about it. There had been a morning where Elysia had tried just that not too long before he ended up in the Nexus. It was a fond memory.

"Uh, well..." You'd think a man who'd been in the military as long as Hughes or who constantly teased his best friend about getting a wife as much as Hughes did would be above embarrassment. "Things have been a little... dicey in my world. My wife's all for starting on the next one, but I want to wait a little longer. I do want another, though."

Jesse avoids making eye contact as Hughes describes his daughter's antics with her mother. A hand rasps over his stubble and he looks pointedly at the bagged bottle at the table, but he knows it's long since empty.

"Fair enough. But!" He points a finger for emphasis. "Mind your age gap! I've got nine years between mine and that's just fine if you want the elder to help look after the younger. Otherwise ... better get to work!"

It's quickly obvious that Hughes took his nonstop babble about his family went too far. Back home, he didn't care. Hell, he loved teasing his best friend about it all the time. It was his distraction technique when people annoyed him or when he wanted them to calm the hell down. Now, it just made him an ass. Oops.

"I... hadn't really thought about it like that." His cheeks take on a light, rosy shade of pink as he slips the picture of Elysia back into his pocket. "Guess there's a lot more to think about than I'd imagined. Now some of those conversations with my wife are beginning to make sense. I thought she was just being impatient until now."

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