greatdeliverer | Open RP Post

He and Lou have been traveling for a while now. Having the car was all well and good until they got to the base of the mountain and had to keep going on foot. He's cold, he knows Lou must be cold, as much as he tries to keep her warm in her little sling against his chest.

It sucks, to put it mildly, that they have to go off the grid like this. But at least he knows a lot of preppers now, most of whom are very grateful to him. Some of whom are still distrustful enough of the UCA that he might be able to count on them to help hide him.

But he doesn't run into any of them. No, what he comes across is what he now knows to be Higgs's place. But at least the man himself is still on a Beach somewhere. Away from where he can do any harm.

So he steps into the house, pausing for a moment at the front to rub Lou's back, whistling a quiet lullaby to her to get her to stop crying.

To be frank, he doesn't know what's lead to him being back in the world of the living. There was no getting off of that Beach, and yet here he is. Among the living.

And the doesn't even have his goddamn mask with him.

No mask, no quipu.... not even that wretched BB doll. Not that he'd had a choice... but he's not making that mistake every again. Fuck helping people; he'd rather be alone.

He manages to make it to his shelter— despite giving Sam his location, there isn't a single sign the Bridges has gone through his stuff. The books and pizza are all right where he left it when he'd been convinced he'd never see the place again.

He doesn't even bother turning the climate control on to warm the place back up, he just collapses onto his cot still covered in tar, sand, and blood.

Right. Time to get himself and Louise settled. She seems calm enough now. Maybe the two of them can get some sleep before they head out in the morning.

So he moves down further into the house and opens the inner door -- and freezes. No, it couldn't be possible. Fragile had left him on the Beach, hadn't she?

"Higgs, what the fuck?" is all he can think of to say as he stands, stupidly, in the doorway, staring down at Higgs on the cot.

The voice is enough to stir Higgs awake, who frankly looks baffled and more than a little alarmed. His first instinct is to pull the hood up over his face, which... honestly doesn't do much at all, but at the very least it's enough for him to be able to look at Sam.

"Sammy boy! And here I was thinkin' I'd never see you again."

"Pretty sure I left you on a Beach." His hand comes up protectively over Lou's back. Muscles tensing. Ready to take her and run at the first sign of a fight.

There's no fight in him at all when he properly sits up. "So did I!"

Without hesitation, he keeps on talking. "Did you know repatriation is possible from the Beach? I was under the impression it was not."

"I also had that impression," he says, cautiously. Then again, what Amelia had managed to do had completely destroyed every idea he had about Beaches, so who the hell knows what's possible, now.

Higgs shrugs.

The less he thinks about the Beach the better. "Ain't like there are any other repatriates." Though normally the sort who doesn't stop talking, he just sort of... stops with that.

"Pretty much just the two of us." They're more alike than Sam could have thought, really. Both just trying to find better lives away from their families. Both hopelessly manipulated by Amelie with promises of a better world.

He takes a step closer. "But now we're both here. No more Beach, just us."

"Mm," is all he says.

He's not really certain what to say, all of a sudden. He'd been following a script for all of that, but an actor on a stage. "Why come out here? I barely lived in here myself."

"You ordered pizza often enough." Lou fusses a little and Sam shifts to hold her against his chest, rubbing her back to soothe her.

Should he tell him the truth? Should he trust Higgs that far? He was only doing what Amelia wanted, after all. He sighs, because right now? What choice does he have. He won't tell him the whole story, not yet, but he at least deserves to know why Sam was breaking into his house.

"Needed a place to stay. Thought this place would be empty."

He shrugs at that again, still quite... subdued. He's always been shit at lying, and has always defaulted to the truth when he can. "It's about the only thing a guy can get on the surface, and you're the only competent porter runnin' around." No sense in denying it when they're sitting in the damn place with plenty of evidence that Sam was far from the only porter who arrived here.

"You had good reason to think it empty. Though I would've guessed you'd have alerted Bridges about my place bein' so close to a Knot City."

"After everything that happened, didn't think you were a problem anymore." He realizes that he still doesn't; Amelie had been pulling Higgs's strings the whole time, and Higgs just seems... defeated.

He remembers being in the tar with him. That moment where Higgs had just -- clung to him. At first Sam had thought Higgs would try to pull him under but he'd just held him.

"Are you a problem?"

It's pretty clear Higgs doesn't know what to do with the question.

"I don't think so. Not like I have reason to do much of anything anymore." Free of Amelie's influence, it's clear he just doesn't know what to do with himself.

Lost. That's what it is. Higgs seems oddly lost. Unsure. Maybe that's why Sam is willing to chance it, at least for a night.

"Look, it's getting dark, and I don't want to chance running into MULEs or wandering into BT territory when I have Lou with me. Let me stay the night here, and in the morning it'll be like I wasn't even here."

"Lou?"

He stares blankly for a long moment before noticing the baby in his arms. Huh. "...Yeah. Sure. I don't have blankets or nothin' like that, though. Sorry about that."

"You've got your -- cape. Whatever that thing is. Let me borrow it so I can make a little bed for her. I'll sleep on the floor next to her." He'd ask for the cot for her, but it's too small for Sam to curl up next to her, and he doesn't want her to roll off. Can't roll off the floor.

"It's pretty dirty," he says, freezing up a bit like he's going to refuse, and then he just sorts of... pulls it off of himself. The armor still masks it well enough, but without the cape on it's a little more clear how thing Higgs actually is.

"It'll do." He settles Lou into the sling he's fashioned to hold her against his chest so he can have at least one hand free. He grabs the cape and shakes it out as best he can, trying to get all the sand off of it, but that's proving to be futile.

Either way, it's better than concrete, so he sits himself on the floor next to the cot and bundles the cape into some sort of bed-like shape. Then he undoes the sling and settles Lou in his lap for a moment, bunching the fabric of the sling on top of the cape. "It'll be fine for tonight." He settles Lou on top of it, then grabs his canteen, a bag of powdered formula, and a small baby bottle, setting about making her her dinner.

"Thank you. For letting us stay here." Not that Sam really left him much room for negotiation.

Higgs doesn't say anything at the thanks, looking like he's never had someone thank him before, but lacks the wherewithal to actually voice it. He just sort of... pulls himself closer in on himself, looking more than a little awkward without the coat.

"Kinda chilly for someone so small, isn't it?"

It doesn't sound like an accusation of any kind, just a curiosity.

"The formula or your shelter?" It should be heated up, the formula. But he hadn't been able to do that for the past few days, moving from Capital Knot City to here, so poor Lou's had to have cold formula for her last dozen or so meals.

As for the shelter -- well, it's made of concrete, and Higgs apparently isn't here as often as his e-mails and delivery orders had implied. Maybe he doesn't have or need a heating system.

He shakes up the bottle to mix the formula together, then takes Lou up in his arms again, trying to coax her into eating.

"The shelter," Higgs says.

He doesn't really make a move to get closer to the computers, though. "I didn't exactly expect to come back here." Or to have guests, for that matter. In other words, it's not cold because he doesn't come here often, but because he didn't see a reason to leave the heat on in an abandoned shelter.

Something clicks and Sam's chest clenches. For all his bravado, Higgs was expecting to die on that Beach. One final boss fight, one he wasn't planning to win. Amelie had beaten them both already.

Lou finally decides she wants her bottle, and Sam breathes a sigh of relief, deciding to concentrate on that instead of how small Higgs looks without his mask and cloak.

"Well we're here now."

"You are," He agrees. He stands a little unsteadily on his feet. "Guess that's something. I did allow you to peruse my secrets. Ain't like there's much about me you don't already know."

Higgs is many things, but he's never once lied to Sam.

"I thumbed through your journal," he admits, sounding a little sheepish about it. "You seemed to be keeping a pretty close eye on me, thought I'd return the favour." He gestures with his elbow at the wall covered in pictures of him.

"There's a lot about you I don't know. And there's a lot about me you don't know. But from what I do know, we have a lot more in common than you might think."

for [finalrequest]

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