Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lawrence came down to the pod room because it was quiet. He had to be careful getting in, choosing the days when there were people on the door who didn't know who he was or who were too apathetic to care. He avoided the ones who didn't forget the story of the pods that had been unplugged and what had happened to their occupants.

He liked the patient slow thrum of the pods and found it soothing in a way only repetition could be. He didn't need it so much these days, with other sources of quiet around, but still he came out of habit, to look at the face of still and silent not-quite death and feel all the more alive for the experience. It was always a little cold too, and he kept his jacket on throughout.

When one of the doors swung open he made a "tch" of irritation at the disturbance and picked up one of the clipboards set around for noting the names of the waking hunters, along with a checklist of information to impart which few actually did. He didn't look at the young man right away, instead moved to read the name on his pod as if he wasn't there.

And then froze.

And read it again.

Lawrence didn't even want to look away from the name tag, didn't want to have to deal with what he knew he was dealing with the moment he heard the word father. It was tempting to turn and walk out, pretend he hadn't seen anything at all, let someone else deal with it.

But it was a small island. He took a shallow breath in through his nose and exhaled, speaking in a mixture of English and Swedish out of habit.

"I'm not a scientist. Not officially anyway. I don't know why you are here, it would be better if you were not." They were severing all the ties he had to the outside world one by one. He looked older, a lot older, hair so pale it bordered on white in places. "You made a mistake by saying yes to them. I never did."

Malkam grabbing his coat warranted what could only be described as a bitchy expression as he glanced at his hands. He didn't ask him to let go but the implication was clear.

"Mikael is here." he said. "Melody is dead." Though there was another Melody around in her place. "And now here you are."

Finally looking the boy over he could see the similarities, along with the differences, sure he could see something of his mother in him too. "Hopefully you fare more fortunately against our many, many enemies."

Lawrence found himself fairly hostile right off the bat, seeing the boy as a threat more than a dear or long lost family member. Here was another young thing, another unknown figure who just happened to be carrying around some of him in their genetics. He shrugged and looked away.

"I was there." he said, "She was killed by a species known as horsemen. They hunt us down." And without thinking he gestured with his missing hand as if he still had one and brushed his coat with the other. "They hunted her down too obviously and one day given half a chance would hunt you down too."

He looked down at the boy, feeling better while he was taller than him. "Mikael is fine, he lives here too now, I have a house in towns."

Lawrence's first reaction was to say no, to say that he couldn't see Mikael. There were after all no end of excuses he could make, the island wasn't safe, policy dictated otherwise and so on. But he didn't. Here in front of him was the last earthly part of him, untainted by weapons or the occult, soft and human. If he summoned his weapon he could cut through the boy like nothing. He was young, alive and brimming with emotion.

"We can see him if you like." He said quietly. It would be another hour of humanity to bask in, a version of him without Butch in his head.

<>

He offered his good arm for support. "But you need to go to the weapon cove afterwards

Lawrence froze up at the question, still walking but everything in his expression seeming to ice over. If he'd been Jan it would have been easy. Just lie, lie and say it was exactly the reason and that some complex delay was why he hadn't arrived on the island till later. It would come to him easy as breathing and he could bask in admiration and joy, even for a little while. But someone would tell him the truth here and he'd need to deal with the hassle of freshly shattered trust rather than something much older.

Besides, there was a feeling, lingering and complicated, which told him that explaining that lie to Rodney would be uncomfortable later.

He exhaled deeply.

"I wish it was." He said. "I left the final time because Maja left me. She said she would take Mik and go to her mothers in Sweden. And she left. So I went too, to make a new life for myself elsewhere." But still the lies crept in like they always did, looking to soften the harsh truth.

"I wanted to see you but your mother and everyone else blocked my efforts snd said it was best if I didn't. They didn't support my lifestyle. I suppose you met melody after I was gone from everyone's life." He knew from facebook of all places, searched long after he came to the island using the alias Mikael said his mother used, that she had hunted down the others. He should have asked the boy more questions but he never thought to and he was never forthcoming.

"Do you know if she was clever?" He asked. It had troubled him for a long time. He'd assumed as she looked like her mother that she was equally silly, but he'd never had a chance to truly know her.

Lawrence made a face at this harsh recount of his past misdemeanours combined with the knowledge that Melody had actually liked to read. "It was a lot more complicated than that." he said wearily. "But yes, I suppose. I was cheating, that's fairly difficult to deny to you of all people. But it is very complicated, your mother would never have kept me around. And no, Deus was something I stumbled into later, when I'd made a life apart from all that had gone before. Kidnap. I didn't choose this."

He shrugged, finding himself hoping that the deaths had hit everyone he'd ever hated hard. "Well, I'm sure everyone was doing well getting rid of all their problems with me. The others perhaps less so, though Mikael was threatening to be a drain on special education." His smile turned a bit bitter.

"I bet Luke was glad to get rid of me though, that was his little dream."