Warnings: Sequel to Rhizomorph,Slash (Colt/Punk) Profanity, Future smut, AU setting and 1st person perspective opening chapter - 3rd person in subsequent ones.
People meet people, every day you meet people. It's something we've all done, and meeting gods is pretty common too, even if you don't know it. Every day you meet people with incredible powers, and whilst you don't know it, I do. There are times I wish I was like you, that I was ignorant of the other gods, but I'm not. I'm not like you, but there are times I wish I was, more recently, but that's for something to talk about later.
Not every person you meet is important, well important to you at least. Everyone is important to someone. There are no unimportant people, not really, some people are more important than others, and there are some people that when you meet them you know it. You just know that they're going to be invaluable to you, they're going to be someone that you're going to want to keep forever. They're the type of person you hope wants to keep you just as long. The type of person you need.
The day I met Scott, Colt now I guess, the day I met him I knew he was going to be important. I'd never had a friend before, never met someone like him before, and I knew he was going to important to me. I didn't know the full extent of just how important he was going to be, but I knew he was important.
He's like my missing half, my deficiencies are his strengths, and visa versa. His power is kind of the opposite of mine, control over body and not mind. Is it more powerful to bypass the mental, and go straight to the physical? There's a part of me that wants to try my own power against him properly. That football game, it wasn't a fair test, I didn't know we were playing and that wasn't fair. But over the time I've known Colt, I've learnt that there's not a lot of anything that's fair in life. If the World were fair, I don't think the Warehouse would have gone down the way it did. If the World were fair, Amy and the kids wouldn't be fuck knows where. If the World were fair, we wouldn't be dead. If the World were fair I wouldn't be picking my way through the garbled memories of Heyman.
I've never met anyone like Scott, my Colt, my other half, and after everything we've been through together it still feels weird to think of him in those terms, but he is mine. Together we brought down Heyman, we brought down Lesnar, we lost those kids, but we did set them free, hopefully at least. We did something wonderful (kind of), we did something impressive (mostly), we did something fucking dumb.
Now... I'm not sure what we're doing, hiding out in the city, hiding out together, getting to know each other better, getting to know each other's bodies better, and waiting for someone to try and find us. I don't doubt that someone will come for us eventually. They won't be fooled forever.
Piper and Hacksaw might have vanished after we convinced the general populace that Scott Colton and Philip Jack Brooks were dead. It was kind of surprising how quickly they gave up, but I can't say I mind overly. I've not finished sorting though Heyman's memories, but there's nothing that paints anyone in a particularly good light so far. The whole thing is a shady mess of disjointed thoughts and half-remembered places. Making sense of everything I have in my head is taking time, and I know it's worrying Colt. I know he wants to be doing something. I know that sitting watching me sort through things he can't help me with frustrates him.
I know Heyman's memories are tainted, but in this whole mess, the only person who seems to have not had much in the way of an ulterior motive was Heyman himself. He was creepy, and he definitely had designs on me that I was in no way intending to indulge. As pitiful and kind of fifties romantic as it is, I don't want anyone else to touch me. Colt is my first, my only, and I'm more than happy with that idea. His hands, his body, his lips, his mind, they're the only ones I want, he's the only one I want. I think that's probably a little pathetic. I mean, there might be a whole world of awesome sex that I'm missing out on, but I don't care, I don't want it, I want what I have, I love what I have, I love Colt. It's taken me a long time, far longer than it really should have, but I know I love him. Just the touch of his hand against mine, the warmth of his breath on my neck, even the thought of him sitting beside me fills me with this stupid giddy happiness. This wasn't what I wanted to be talking about. Sorry, I get distracted, it's not my fault. Love... It's a great and terrible thing really, and it sidetracks even gods.
Heyman was a mercenary, a man motivated by money, and his children. Both ungifted and being raised by a family convinced that they're their own. Heyman worked for money to send to his children, they were his only motivation, his only interest. Apart from the creepy observation that he thought I was pretty, Heyman's interest in me went as far as wondering how strong he could make me. He wanted to mould me into something dangerous, something deadly, something I'm not sure I could be. Sure, I've killed, twice now, and I did whatever it is I did to Heyman, I'm still not entirely sure what that was, but I'm not the weapon Heyman saw me as. I don't want to be little more than something you point at your enemies and pull the trigger. I don't think I could be, no matter what Heyman thought, I don't think I could be moulded into that kind of monster.
It's been three months since the warehouse burned down, three months of me trying to make sense of Heyman's memories, three months of Colt and I trying to plan what we're going to do. There's more to this whole situation. On one side there's the shady people Heyman worked for, and on the other there's the equally shady people Piper's employed by. Heyman's memories are fuzzy, like a copy of a copy of a copy, but I think the Old Man with the vision Piper told me about is the same one Heyman worked for. There's a strange hazy memory of a teenage Heyman talking to a younger Piper, of Piper telling him about an organisation that could help him. It's all circular, and I don't know what to trust as true and what to trust as a fabrication made up by Heyman to distract me. I don't doubt that in his last moments of clarity Heyman would be strong enough to pull a stunt like that.
There's a part of me that feels something like loyalty to Piper, he helped me more than he had to, but that might have been motivated by his desire to recruit Colt and me. We're something that both sides, if there really are two sides, want. Based on Heyman's memories, we're valuable, as valuable as the little sequencer. I still don't know enough about the kids. Heyman's memories of them are somewhere in amongst the mess I pulled from his head, but I'm not sure where. There's no order, everything's tangled up like a string of Christmas tree lights, and I can't find the start of the strand.
I might be nowhere near through trying to make sense of the information I have from Heyman, but I can tell something's going to happen soon. There's something in the air, and it's not just the weather getting colder. I think Colt can sense it too, he seems restless, more restless, but truth be told I am too. We need to do something, but this time we need to plan.
A goal isn't enough, not in our situation. A goal is only good enough in soccer. What we need is a plan, and a good plan at that, because something's coming, I just don't know what.
Hello ladies and gentlemen! Did you come back? If so, hi! It's good to see you again! If you're new, go have a read of Rhizomorph that'll help things make more sense.
Second arc, and once more we start with Punk's journal. (I had initially wanted him to have these Rorschach's Journal moments throughout the whole thing, but when getting into deeper planning we decided that would be more hassle than it was worth, however he'd getting his two pence [3 US cents] worth in now.)
If I thought I was concerned about the first part of this story, you have no idea just how freaked out by this one I am...
As ever trepidation haunts me with this fic... as such: Please leave a review, even if it's just "Hey, that didn't suck", I'd be so far and beyond grateful. Heck even if you thought it did suck, tell me too, something is better than nothing after all. :D