Night's Omen

Stavros was not pleased in the slightest.

That should have come as no surprise to anyone around him, considering what exactly had been happening as of late, but it still bore mentioning because he could be fucking brutal when he was pissed off, and had been on occasion.  Lily had seen Tucker for the first time in five years a few months ago, then been attacked by her former mentor in a fit of...something.  It had been described as rage, but Stav was of the opinion that it was more complicated than that.  Obsession, passion, fury, jealousy.  They could all make a very nasty little cocktail if put together and shaken up, but that was Devraj's problem at the moment.  Onyx was not Stavros' guild to worry about, even if the houses were all far more involved with each other in the last few years than they ever had been before, and both Lucien and Dev had a very close eye on Zaine at the moment.  Stav had bigger problems, anyway.

Tucker, namely. 

If that one sighting reported after Lily was dosed up with one of the worst venoms in the world had been it, he might have lost faith by this point, but it wasn't.  There had been others, and some of them had been brief bits of surveillance footage that might have been dismissed if they hadn't known what they were looking for.  Jason Murphy had been integral to the search, hitting up all of the technological ends that Stav had no patience for and supplying him with the physical proof to go with the reports he was getting in little pieces.  It was never a lot to go on, witnesses to 'accidents' and sometimes outright assassinations or terroristic attacks on specific locations, but they were painting a very odd picture to him.  Something was wrong, and it wasn't merely what Tucker was doing.

One photo showed life, personality, and the other, nothing.  It made Stavros' blood run cold to see the young man he'd raised and trained looking like he was taking such enjoyment out of burning a man from the inside out, but it was almost worse when he got a new set of data just a few weeks later to find something that looked more like Quinn in terminator mode moving in and eliminating his target with cold, brutal efficiency and not an ounce of anything that looked human on his face.  He didn't know what was happening to him, but he didn't have high hopes for the man's mental condition if he was experiencing such extremes.  He shared some of the surveillance data Jason supplied him with, but some of it was kept between himself, Dev and Indrani, who he assumed was going to be very involved in getting a grasp on his mental state, if they ever recovered him.

That was the difficult part, at the moment.  As far as they could tell, he was being held in Midnight and usually had a team with him or nearby for his exit when he was on the move, which would make him more difficult to approach than he already was, and they would have to know where to find him in order to even make the attempt.  'They' were another point of interest, and sometimes the source of Stavros' headache, since the number of people interested in offering their services to this venture had grown and changed a bit as the situation developed.  Chase was still on hand for whatever Stavros needed and Connor was being kept in the loop for obvious reasons, but Scott and Mandy Payne had been brought in, Jeff Hudson came with Scott, and Quinn was a solid fixture with Lily as often as seemed possible since Zaine's attack.  It made for a lot of opinions, which was putting it mildly.

Currently, Scott and Mandy were expressing those opinions, and very loudly. 

"It's not like pulling a fucking rabbit out of a hat, Mandy, he's a person!  I've never yanked anything that big, it might fuck something up!" he snapped, and to be fair, they'd started out fairly quietly.  It was when she'd grabbed him and locked his elbow out to puppet him towards the closet that he'd started getting loud, and Hudson's attempts to slow her down or get her to let go weren't helping the noise level, or really stopping her.  Stav put his hand up to his forehead, like he was holding off a headache, which was partially true.  They were the headache, and he was trying to keep from telling them to shut the fuck up if they didn't have anything useful to add, but he was also a little disappointed because he'd hoped Mandy's idea would work.  Scott's arguments suggested otherwise, so he was ready to move on.

People didn't often see Mandy lose her temper, but one of the bad attributes that Samael had brought out in her was impatience. He told her so often that if she could simply make people do what she wanted, why did she bother with asking? In that moment, she heard him in her head, asking her that very question - and she decided that he was right.

Mandy lashed out suddenly, snatching her brother's entire upper body from behind. She thrust his arm forward, locking his elbow at the joint, and pushed him with her own body half-into the closet. "I said reach in there and pull him out, Scott. Now DO IT!" she practically shouted. At that moment, she was more angry with insubordination than concerned for anyone's safety, and in that moment, Stavros and her brother got a glimpse of the nasty personality that she tried very hard to hide. The personality she couldn't say for certain that Samael had created, but merely helped along.

She used her own ability to amp her strength up, making it impossible for her brother to break free, regardless of any struggle he might have given her. She put the rest of her concentration into his body, cranking up his metabolism and adrenaline stores to juice his power up beyond his normal capacity. If pulling a person through a closet with a good idea might have taken 80% of his ability, she took into consideration that they didn't know precisely where Tucker was, and juiced Scott up to 110%. And since that's not a real number, she ran her brother straight into the red, increasing all of his energy and upping his temperature to near-brain damage proportions.

As soon as Scott grasped something firm, Mandy willed him to rip Tucker back through the door. As soon as he had completed the command and had he snatched the very surprised former-hunter and ripped him through the closet, Mandy released her hold on him completely and fix her concentration directly onto their new guest.

"Say goodnight, Tucker," she greeted him. Then she hit him in the face with the force of - well, Cerberus, if we're comparing strength. Tucker and Scott hit the ground right about the same time, and Mandy let out an angry sigh at having had to take control of the situation. Scott's body functions were returning to normal as soon as she'd dumped him, but that didn't mean damage wasn't done - he'd have one hell of a headache and an empty stomach when he came back around. It would have been something if she looked worried or even remorseful, but she just stood there with her arms crossed between the two bodies, surveying the damage with her lips puckered in an expression of frustration.

"He should have just done what I said."

Insubordination was a funny thing right then and there, since the only person actually present that Scott felt like he needed to listen to was Stavros, and that bastard was currently looking slightly murderous and like they were annoying the piss out of him.  He was not, however, giving any orders; despite Mandy offering an idea, Stav hadn't told Scott to do it, and why would he?  Scott didn't think he could, and he'd said that straight out.  Even if he did, he wasn't sure what yanking a living thing with his ability would do.  He'd only ever used it on inanimate objects, and he would have liked to try rabbits or something (the joke made sense) before he tried to pull his lost best friend out of a closet.  If the rabbit didn't suddenly start drooling and staring off into space, bleeding from all of its orifices or die on the spot, then trying it on Tucker might have been an option.

"I don't give a shit what you said, I'm not fucking doing it!" he snapped back at her, and this was actually impressive.  They used to argue all the time, as siblings sometimes do, but those had lessened significantly since she'd come back, for what should have been obvious reasons.

Mandy didn't seem to give a shit about his concerns with safety, though.  He definitely struggled against her suddenly painfully strong grip, because he wasn't a bitch and he wasn't about to let his little sister shove him around like he was, but there was no fucking budging.  He walked right on into the closet because the only other choice he had was to rag-doll and hope she didn't break his arm accidentally, and Hudson really wasn't helping all that much.  Scott heard him trying to talk Mandy down, but she was ignoring him as much as she was ignoring Scott's complaints that she was going to break his arm with that grip.

Then, he lost his ability to even rag-doll if he wanted to.  He knew what her ability could do, had seen her use it and even experienced it (in much smaller, consensual doses) since she'd gotten back and trained with the guilds, but this?  This was above and beyond.  The sudden boost hit him so hard that his vision spotted, everything felt hot, and whether he wanted to do the job, or not, he wanted that energy gone before it burned him all up.  It wouldn't occur to him until afterwards just how hard she'd pushed the command as well, but in that instant, all that mattered was grabbing Tucker and dumping that energy.  His free hand shot out into the dark toward the back of the closet and he pumped the power that felt like it was coming off of him in waves down his arm, from his fingers and into the shadows. 

Something opened up around his hand, the air cold and damp, and then his fingers brushed over cloth.  He grasped at it, at the flesh beneath it, and held on as hard as he could as he tore his arm backwards.  It effectively tossed Tucker seemingly out of nowhere and into the hallway where nobody (except maybe Mandy) was quite prepared to see him, and that included Scott.  His sister let go of him before Tucker even caught his balance, and that would have been fine except that he wavered without the support, the heat of the energy having rushed out just as quickly as it arrived, and it left cold in its wake.  He'd never actually felt this light-headed, and it was going to hurt his pride a little that he reached up to feel his nose bleeding before he dropped, but it totally wasn't over the blood.  He was just used up, running on fumes, and all of his vitals going from HOLYSHITGOGOGO to zero with no warning just leveled him.

At least he wasn't the only one to suffer Hurricane Mandy right then.  They name those storms after women for a reason.

Why did Stavros let it go on?  It was possible that he was working up to shutting them both up so that they could discuss like professionals where to go next, but there was also a slight chance that he was hoping something would be accomplished.  He was known for being brutal and getting results, which he didn't necessarily mind here and now, but he was willing to bet that Scott was going to mind.  What surprised him was the sense of what was happening as the younger Payne manhandled her brother into the closet, and not because she was able to do it, because he knew that she had the ability and had been so conditioned to use it abusively that it had been hard to break, but that she did it to her brother.

That was a discussion he didn't want to be present for, and fortunately for him, it wasn't going to take place right there in the hallway at that moment.  He was focused far more on the extra body in their midst, stumbling and catching himself with a sharp glance around to take in his surroundings, and Stavros moved a fraction of a second after Mandy.  Since she was closer and had been expecting Tucker to appear, she was there first, though it was probably better that Stav wasn't far behind.  She cold-clocked Tucker so hard that he was unconscious before he even dropped, and Stavros caught him with a grip under his arms from behind; they didn't know what shape he was in, and multiple head wounds as soon as they had him probably wasn't for the best.

The Arun didn't miss the fact that nobody had done the same for Scott, who hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, but Hudson was too busy staring at Tucker to have caught his friend. 

"Damn it, Payne," he said as he snapped into movement, shaking his head like that would eliminate the shock of what had just happened, and it wasn't clear which of the Paynes he was talking to.  Probably both.  He knelt down to check on Scott, mostly because he had blood on his face, but he had a pulse and it didn't sound like he was dying, so Hudson pulled him up and looked to Stavros expectantly.

Stavros, for his part, only shot Mandy a slightly annoyed look, because he knew what she'd done and that she let her shit get the best of her, but he wasn't going over it here and wasn't sure he was ever going to.  They both knew it was an issue, she was working on it and knew he was there to help, and it had gotten the job done.  It meant they had two unconscious bodies currently, but that wasn't going to last too terribly long, so moving was a good idea. 

"Brig for everyone except Scott and Hudson.  Have Victor look him over, then send him downstairs to us," he instructed, shifting his grip on Tucker and starting for the stairs.  He naturally expected his orders to be obeyed, and Hudson didn't disappoint.  As soon as he had their new captive in the cell at the back corner (farthest away from everything possible and outfitted to Stavros' specifications with input from Dash and help from Emerson with the firestone), he called Devraj, who would be in contact with Indrani.

They had him.

Mandy was still reeling when she went down to the brig, but it was more from the fact that she'd just forced her brother to do something he didn't want to do, and she'd probably hurt him in the process. That wasn't her. That wasn't who she wanted to be. That was the thing Samael had carefully crafted out of who she had been, and she wasn't that person anymore. So what the fuck happened? She felt dirty, and she paused before going into the white room where Tucker had been moved, because she didn't need to walk in there with that just rolling off of her. She closed her eyes, and counted to ten, then counted back down to one. She'd have a lot of talking to do later, to Scott and probably to Stavros and whoever else was going to want to sit down with her and demand answers, but right now, she needed to focus.

She pushed open the door, closing it behind her with her foot. Tucker was awake, at least, but it was apparent he'd already tried to escape and found that in his absence their containment room for magical creatures had been improved upon.

"Since when did you start contracting work from Salvatore?" he asked. He had tested his boundaries as soon as he'd come to. Funny, he'd been telling them to do some upgrades based on the ever-growing appearance of more supernatural in the area. It appeared they'd taken his advice, much to his displeasure.

"I don't know. I just got back myself," Mandy said glibly. "But it can hold just about anything, or so I'm told." She wondered if it could hold a demon. She'd be interested in testing that theory, if she wasn't shitting-pants-terrified of Samael, that is. She smiled, pushing the thoughts back into the recesses of her mind. She refused to deal with it right now.

"Since when did you start working for Midnight?" she questioned. She folded her arms and took a step forward, ready in case he tried something. The last time Tucker saw her, she hadn't nearly as much control over her power. She didn't want to hurt him, but she absolutely would. She wanted to see how much he remembered; clearly he knew who Dash was, and he remembered the guildhouse enough. Did he remember Lily? Or his daughter?

Tucker's mind was a very strange, very dangerous place right about then, so Mandy keeping her shit under control and focused while in his presence was probably in her best interests, because she had all of his attention as soon as she walked in, whether he let that on, or not.  The room had a very serious level of security on it, but it didn't exactly help if the other person was in there with him, which made it interesting that she would join him like she was.  Was she that certain of her abilities, or just confident that he wouldn't hurt her?  That seemed incredibly foolish of her, either way, though the crack she'd given him when he'd first been pulled through the...whatever that was definitely lent her a little bit of faith.  He was appropriately cautious, for the moment.

He also, despite what was likely expected based on surveillance, was not feeling particularly murderous at the moment, so the conversation was quite alright with him.  He'd already checked out the room after waking up a floor that he would have considered cold if he wasn't better acquainted with Midnight's dungeons, and he recognized Salvatore's work despite not really understanding why he knew who that was - that was a lot of his understanding in this stage, though he remembered more all the time.  It didn't help much that it was mostly Midnight-related, but since that was what he'd been dealing with, it was more useful than memories of someone like Dash would have been previously.  His mind was sharp and resilient still, just horribly abused, and it snapped back faster than even Niall seemed comfortable with, if some of his recently returned memories were anything to judge by.  Here, it helped to be able to pinpoint who had done the work and what that meant (Salvatore's work was the best in the business, he knew that), and just the fact that he got that far said good things about his mental state.  The harder he was scrambled to prevent him from getting mutinous, the less complicated he could handle in the way of magic; he went very blunt instrument after a wipe.

The question got some sort of conversation going, with her confirming what he'd already guessed about the room's capabilities (he also thought that perhaps part of those capabilities were his fault, but he didn't remember who he was that he'd have told them to increase the security on the room), but her return question made him stiffen just the slightest bit where he'd turned to face her, more because it suggested she knew things that he didn't.  That was usual for him, but he wasn't used to it being potential enemies that knew more.  The fact that she took that step forward, looking like she'd like to deck him again at any second, didn't help his estimation on that 'potential enemy' thing.  This was a hunting guild, which suggested they were supposed to be the 'good guys', but he had no delusions about that one.

"Since when haven't I been?" he shot back, his tone almost casual as he actually put his back to her, headed for the wall opposite the door, where he sat his ass down on the floor.  It put him at a disadvantage, but he wasn't escaping through force, and if he was in a non-aggressive position and she struck him, it'd make her look bad to whichever one of the people watching their exchange was an actual good guy.  From the floor, he tilted his head, but shrugged.  "If you were looking for someone with tactical information on Midnight, we can talk, but shared life experiences, I'm out.  Niall and I have this thing where whenever I start to talk back too much, he puts my brain through the nightmares and crazy blender he and his dad do, and then we see how long it takes me to learn how to be human again.  If that's what you call 'working', then 'as long as I remember' is my answer, which is....I guess a few months, with some exceptions."

His explanation, complete with an absolutely fake smile that Eli would have been proud of, was given as easily as if he was discussing a tv show that he wasn't sure he liked or explaining how trying to find a decent pair of dress pants had gone (he used to hate that, and they always seemed to get ruined so easily), and not like it was his own torturous cycle.  In all honesty, it really was torture, and that didn't include the physical pain added on when he fucked up or 'forgot his place', not to mention that one time he'd actually attempted to escape, but he wasn't giving her room to think that she could intimidate or overly concern him - she actually couldn't.  He spent time hanging out with the vampire whose very presence inspired fear as leisure, and not many people could compare to Niall or Justinian.  This situation couldn't really go any worse for him than what he was going back to when Niall inevitably managed that, so he wasn't particularly worried about what she said or did.

"My turn.  What's your work-out routine that makes you hit like a brick wall?  Gotta say, not many humans can take me out in one swing like that, and none of them are your size."

Mandy raised her eyebrow a little as Tucker answered her question with a question. When he elaborated a little, she made a face at his ridiculous statement. "If you ask when you haven't been employed by Midnight, and then say the last six months or so, because that seems to be all you remember, wouldn't that aid the belief that maybe you worked somewhere else first before they started pimping out your so-called power?" she asked.

If Tucker wasn't scared of her, she definitely wasn't scared of him either - and actually, for much the same reasons. Really, the two could be a support group at this point, from all the traumatic experiences they'd endured over the last five or so years. Mandy's lack of intimidation was just as plainly read as his, either. He obviously didn't remember who she'd been before, or it would have bothered him, but Mandy didn't really think about that so much as focus on him offering to trade info.

"This isn't a recon mission where you tell us vital information for our plight, David," she informed him, using his first name for once. She paused. "This was, oddly enough, a rescue. If you want it to be an interrogation, it can be, but I don't think you want me to dig through those layers your vampire daddy tried so hard to fry. It'll hurt," she added, her right eye narrowing a little as she nodded for emphasis.

Stav chose that moment to make his presence known, only with a stern, "Mandy." He didn't need to say anything else, because after seeing what she was capable of when her temper got the better of her, he wasn't prepared to let her cause a valuable asset - no, a man who was practically his son - undue pain. He hated to think that he was trying to avoid conflict, but he hadn't been on the planet as long as he had by just letting emotion guide him blindly.

Mandy changed gears quickly; even her tone of voice changed. "I guess you could say we both had a little bit of a rough few years," she informed him, answering his question to the best of her ability without sharing anything at all. "Do you remember your daughter?" she pressed. If they were going to go back and forth, she may as well make it count. There was no guarantee he'd even answer her questions, but she figured if she pressed his buttons enough, he'd yell something out eventually.

She didn't have to use her ability to get a reaction out of him. She could do that just by being herself.

With most people, being herself would probably have gotten a hell of a reaction at this point, and back before he'd been taken, he would have gotten into a loud discussion about what she was on that she was talking about his 'so-called power', though it would have been in good humor and possibly with something showy and fun to 'prove his point'.  Now, he laughed, though it sounded more dead and not at all funny than it should have, and nothing like he had the last time they'd seen each other.  They both had really had a rough few years.  "I didn't say six months, and I didn't say that was all I remember, just that the last time Niall took me apart was a few months back," he pointed out, tone lighter than the laugh had been and just as false - he was imitating behaviors that he'd seen, going with what felt natural to him from things he didn't remember, but they were empty gestures because all of the things that had made them real once were gone. 

The fact that he did wonder what he'd done before Midnight didn't touch his face, not yet, because he wasn't sure what she was getting at and giving her something so soon wasn't quite in his favor.  That she wasn't afraid of him made him wonder if she knew who, and more importantly what he was, or if it was just who she was.  He was a monster, carefully crafted by the master of nightmares, and he thought that perhaps he was looking at something that was something like him, which only prompted him to study her more closely, however much he didn't seem to be. 

Then, she called him 'David', and even schooling himself like he was, he blinked rapidly at the name and then regarded her more curiously.  It wasn't some ON switch that just set his memory off and it didn't make him suddenly rage out, but it had his attention because it sounded...strange.  It was just a name, but it wasn't one he'd heard in five years, whether he knew it or not, and then it wasn't just a name.  It didn't feel like his, but he couldn't just shrug it off and give her a hard time, though he wanted to when she went on about it being a rescue mission, of all things.  Who would want to rescue him, and how fitting was it that the person who had would let him know that it could be an interrogation if he wanted it to be?  He was actually more comfortable with the idea of an interrogation, to be honest.

"Really?  A rescue?  You have good timing, at least.  Another day and this conversation wouldn't have been very stimulating, but jumping from a leash to a cage isn't really much of an improvement, so go ahead, spice it up.  Dig around and see if you like it," he challenged, because that was a hell of a lot easier to address than the idea of that name or the idea that there were people who knew who he was, and he was actually a little curious if she could go digging through what he couldn't reach.  What was under there that he didn't have access to, and how much of it could he get back if she did?  The idea of it hurting didn't even matter, not when Niall and Justinian caused so much pain each and every time they had a go at him, though it seemed to bother someone, if the voice from the other side of the door suggested anything.  He tilted to look past her like it could see who was standing on the other side, but obviously, not.  "Careful, Mandy, you're gonna get in trouble with your own daddy."

He said it only to have some return fire when she was already trying to get under his skin, but she still absolutely had the upper hand, and he didn't like it.  It was rare for anyone to bother talking to him like this outside of a select few individuals, and they didn't say and do anything that would shake things up in his head.  That was generally a no-no, and she wasn't finished.  Her tone changed after the admonishment from the other side of the door, but her tactic didn't, not entirely.  She wasn't threatening violence anymore, which he still thought he would have preferred because it was familiar and that nice tone just put him on edge waiting for the other shoe to fall.  He knew she had teeth, so why smile so pretty to cover them up?

He wasn't waiting long, but she said what was possibly the absolute last thing he would have expected.  "Daughter?" he demanded, and congratulations to her, he didn't manage to laugh at the ridiculousness of that suggestion, even if he wanted to.  He wanted to be impassive or completely cool and untouchable so that she didn't have anything to go on, but the longer he went without a reset, the more emotions and memories and real he felt.  The machine he usually was wouldn't have had trouble with this, but daughter?  "I can't tell if you're serious or just trying to fuck with my head, but let's be honest, it doesn't really matter.  If I had a daughter once, I'm dead and gone."

It bothered him, points to her, and it showed in a bit of bitterness in the end, but it was brief.  He was right, he thought, that it didn't matter.  She could very well be making shit up to take advantage of his messed up head, and if there was some mystery daughter missing her father, he wasn't going to be an improvement over the dead man she'd once known and he needed to disappear before Niall figured out where he was and how to get at him.  "If you don't want information, what do you want?  It's not going to take them long to find me, so I want to get out of here before that happens, if you don't mind."

At least he didn't call her Amanda, she thought wistfully, listening to him, ironically, refer to Stavros as her daddy. She knew it was merely a retort for her referring to Niall as his, but it was funnier to her because Stav pretty much had raised Sean and Tucker side-by-side. If she knew that he was be-fri's with Raphael it would have driven the irony home like a goddamn bullet to the brain, since Raphael was actually related to Sean by a few hundred years of bloodline. Of course, Mandy didn't know that - Stavros didn't advertise, Sean didn't talk about his weird vampire cousin or whatever he was, and nobody was creeped out by it.

But it was still funny.

Alas, his invitation to flay his brain was something she had to, regretfully, decline. True, the more she tried to play calm, the more she calmed, but Samael's teachings always had a way to creep back up round when she was applying herself. Fucking demons. As far as she could tell her ability was totally useless against their chemical makeup - oh, she'd tried. She hadn't tested the theory with vampires, but she wouldn't wager that it worked the same on them, either.

"If you think that a room where Midnight can't track you isn't an improvement, then I don't know what to tell you. You don't exactly seem eager to get back, though, so maybe you should just enjoy the silence for a while," she suggested. She could tell he didn't want to return there, that much was obvious. It looked more, and sounded actually, like he would rather just disappear. The idea was further reinforced when he said that if he did have a daughter, it was better that whoever he'd been stay dead.

She knew someone who wanted to keep running better than most. She had a little experience in that area. It was why she hadn't wanted to go home; Samael had commanded it of her. He wanted her to go back, some pathetic shell of who she used to be. He just hadn't anticipated that she wouldn't be rejected, because he'd seen it happen to most every other one he'd ever grabbed onto and wrecked. When he flat out said he needed to keep moving, it only confirmed what she'd already been picking up off of him. Point for Mandy.

"You do have a daughter. Her name is Alice. She's thirteen. Your old fiancee Lilyana raised her in your absence. And oddly enough, Lily never seemed to fully subscribe to the idea that you were dead. The guy who replaced you sure did, though," she added, eyes widening a little at mention of Zaine. She couldn't tell what would get through to him and what wouldn't, but lately Zaine was pissing everyone off, so she took a guess that Tuck might not find exception to that.

"Actually, I have proof, because I figured you would think this was some shitty mind technique. I can assure you, I'm not interested in lies," she promised him, and something in her voice conveyed that he should believe it. Maybe, maybe she was applying her ability just a little. She reached back against the door and rapped on it with her knuckles. From the outside, it opened, and she was handed a stack of photos, which she took over to where Tucker had seated himself.

"Here. This is Alice," she said. She flicked a baby photo at him. She flicked another one with a much younger him holding her. "You named her after the character from Alice in Wonderland, because it was her late mother's favourite book. Personally I think it's a weird story written by a pedo, but we all have our opinions." She flicked a few more photos at him; birthdays, picnics, school events. She paused at a photo of he, Lily and Alice, and it was visible.

In her hands was the last photo she remembered before she herself had been taken. She remembered the day, actually, because it had been the annual guild summer festival, and there had been a petting zoo and rides and tons of families were there. She shook her head a little, the smile returning to her face, and reached out, dropping that one in his lap. She paused at the next one, too, because it was the same photo, except it was dated three years later, and it was Lily and Alice - but instead of Tucker, it was Zaine. He had his arm around Lily possessively, but all their smiles were otherwise real.

"Yeah, that was your replacement," she added. She visibly bit back nausea, letting the photo drift to the ground. "I don't suppose you remember him, either. Or her. Actually, you probably don' remember any of this. To tell you the truth, neither do I. Between you and me, I can't say that I'm super sad to have missed your ex and your kid totally get upswept into someone else's life. It's really weird returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak, finding out they all moved on."

That wasn't her experience, though. Her brother had never stopped looking for her. So no, he hadn't moved on. But neither had Lily, not really. She could say she had, but by the simple fact that she had always kept Zaine, even after she'd come back to the guild, at an emotional arm's length, it spoke volumes. It just wasn't something people could really see, because they didn't get into the personal lives of trainers like that. Mandy saw it, though - Dev had, too, and so had a few others. Lily might not have totally held out, but she also hadn't lost hope. That was pretty amazing. Mandy couldn't say that, at this juncture in her life, if she could do the same.

Thanks, Samael.

It was absolutely just a retort after she'd referred to Niall as his daddy, but the irony was definitely there and totally lost on him, but he was left out of so many jokes at this point that it wasn't even worth it.  Actually, Stavros and Sean would probably be the only ones who truly understood the full gravity of all of the crazy 'coincidences', and neither of them were likely to bring it up anytime soon.  Hell, Tucker didn't even know who either of them were right then, and since she was turning down his invitation to dig around in his brain and see what she could drum up, he wasn't likely to remember either of them before he saw them next.  Pity.

Sadly, he really did think it was something of a missed opportunity that she didn't go for it, though he figured the man outside the room would probably be unhappy about her attempting such a drastic move.  Even so, his mind was so conditioned at this point to change and adapt under certain duress that her pushing and pulling at memories might have actually worked.  That it hurt would only put him into that usual place in his head where things happened, and hopefully the difference in what she was doing compared to the vampires would be enough to keep him from losing his grip.  Since it hadn't happened, he had no idea what the results would be, but the fact that he didn't actually care and wasn't really afraid of the results definitely said something about what he was used to and how much he thought he had to lose.

"You might have a point, but I can find other places where they can't track me and I could fight back, if necessary," he told her, and he wasn't wrong; as a planeswalker, he wasn't bound to this realm, and Midnight didn't really have much pull in other places, or access to them.  He could disappear pretty damn well, if he wanted to, which was why Niall was usually so damn careful with him.  He wasn't disputing Mandy's assumption that he didn't want to get back, because that would be a lie and he wasn't really inclined to lie to her for no reason.  If he did, that would give her more reason to lie to him in return, and then things got convoluted.  Of course, that didn't mean she wouldn't lie, and he knew that, but he got the feeling that she was telling him the truth so far.  Somehow, that seemed even more dangerous, especially when she wanted to push the issue of him having a daughter.

Scratch that, this wasn't a 'push'.  It was a dump.  Once she caught onto that point, she just started dropping details in quick, sharp points apparently meant to drive them home harder.  Daughter.  Alice.  Thirteen.  Fiancee, Lily.  She didn't believe he was dead.  Replacement.  He didn't even know who these people were, and somehow, that still made his lips press together, because there was something there.  Thirteen didn't sound right, not when he had this vague impression of a much younger girl, a blonde woman, but it wasn't enough for him to do anything with, and he sure as hell wasn't going to tell Mandy she was getting anywhere.  He wanted to remember things, but like he'd said already, what did it matter?  If he remembered people he may have cared about once, it wasn't going to accomplish anything; he wasn't a good person, and really, he wasn't even much of a person at all sometimes, so it's not like he could go play house with a wife and daughter.  It sounded like there wasn't much of a 'house' left, either.  Replacement.

That Mandy had been prepared for him to bounce between cautiously wondering if she was telling the truth to dismissing it as lies and manipulation (which was exactly where he was at, the bitch), didn't really do anything to make him feel any less paranoid, but he tensed despite not wanting her to think he was on his guard when she went for the door.  He didn't want to believe her, but she was promising that she wasn't interested in lying, and something made him want to believe her.  He didn't like it.

He liked her turning back around with her proof even less.  It was one thing to consider that she might be telling the truth or tell himself that she was lying, but pictures were a little more difficult to dismiss.  The first was of a baby, and as babies went, he didn't think it was anything particularly telling.  It looked like a baby, and based on the hat on its head being pink and therefore assigning it the female gender, it could have been any baby.  That said, he still eyed it without touching it (like contact would make it real, or something equally useless), and before he could decide if he was willing to buy what she was selling, there was another, and it was much more convincing.

As a machine of death and destruction sent out to do the Master of Midnight's bidding, his reflection wasn't really of much importance.  It had taken him nearly two months to really pay it any mind, but with that sense of self had come curiosity and more awareness, and he definitely recognized himself in the photo, though it didn't look like the man he'd seen staring back at him the last time he'd looked.  The one in the picture was smiling and looking down at the sleeping baby he was holding like it was the most important thing in the world, and the one sitting in that white room didn't actually understand how anything could be as important as that look suggested.  The pictures kept coming, one after another, and they showed years passing and the child growing up, sometimes with that man that looked like him and sometimes on her own, but he was having trouble reasoning out a way for them to be lies.  There were too many, and it made his head feel shaky, like there was static at the edges, too much going on.

Then came three of them together, the man who looked like him if he believed he could be a person, Alice who he'd just seen grow up in a series of photos and the blonde woman.  He finally gave in and reached out for that one, and he didn't fail to notice Mandy actually smiling over the photo, but he didn't care.  She didn't know that before he'd seen the pictures, he'd had the impression of the little girl and the blonde woman, and he wasn't telling, but it was there nonetheless and seeing them both staring out of the picture at him was filling in the blanks some and making those 'impressions' into images.  It was no quick fix and didn't suddenly inspire a flood of memories or anything so dramatic as that, but this was no joking matter and he didn't have any snappy comments anymore.  He could hear phantom giggles, laughter over tickles and ice cream and a whole other world that didn't make sense to him but didn't seem any less real for his current lack of a frame of reference. 

Naturally, then came a whole new blow.  It was one thing to hear about a 'replacement' in a life that he didn't even remember having with people he didn't remember knowing, but she dropped the next photo and it was like he'd never existed.  Alice looked older by a couple of years, Lily was there and smiling right along with her, and instead of the man that was supposed to be him, it was someone else.  That should have been bad enough, and it caused his jaw to clench just looking at it and trying to process that growing mess in his skull, but there was so much more going on than just looking at some pictures that suggested they'd moved on and he was unnecessary in whatever life she was suggesting he'd had.  That man...

He didn't know it for certain, but when he started remembering things between resets, it was usually more recent things, particularly weird or impactual things, and it wasn't so long ago that he'd seen two of the three people together in that last photograph, though they hadn't been smiling.  It was outside of a building that was partially on fire (and he might have been to blame, he wasn't sure, but he liked fire), and she'd looked right at him.  She'd yelled his name, that part rang through so fucking clear all of a sudden, and then that bastard had grabbed her and he'd gotten some distance, but he hadn't missed the fighting.  He hadn't missed the flash of teeth and the woman going down, but survival and gargoyles and a triste, Raphael had been there.  There was a lot that wasn't clear, but that bastard and Lily were.  That was his 'replacement'?

He hadn't noticed his hand fisting around that last photo when it was happening, but he released both to fall to the floor as soon as he realized, and he sat back against the wall with an effort to rein in that white noise feeling, but it was so damn unsteady, too much moving around in there to really have much in the way of footing.  "So if they moved on and found some asshole to play house with, what's the point here?  Even if I remember anything, I'm not exactly fit to be around a kid and I'll probably murder that fucker, so what do you want from me?"

Mandy didn't doubt the truth of Tucker's statement that he could go somewhere they couldn't follow. But he'd get tired of running, and the whole point was not to let him vanish into the ether if she could help it. Nobody else seemed to think they were capable enough, come to think of it - nobody wanted to be anywhere near that room right now. Scott would have, but he probably would have been a little too emotional at one more person in his life vanishing and coming back wrong. Stavros was present, but not bearing down on them, because he trusted Mandy's ability. They flat out hadn't told Lilyana just yet, because things were tense all around for her, and Mandy was trying to influence her as little as possible.

She dropped down into a crouch in front of him suddenly, realizing that in this case she did empathize. "Okay, so maybe what I said wasn't fair," she admitted. "It's easier to think you've been replaced so you can just move on rather than try to work around the existing damage to fix the situation, though. Trust me, I know," she added, eyes widening for emphasis. "And to be honest, she's able to give you the full story a lot better than I can. But replace wasn't an honest word in context." She paused. "I just wanted to piss you off a little." At that, she grinned, and it was slightly sadistic, but nowhere near what Tucker would have been used to seeing in Midnight. In fact, he would get the impression of impishness rather than malevolence from her.

"Now, I'm going to make you an offer, since you seem to be functioning rationally enough to be able to decide for yourself. You can either stay here off the radar, and I can set you up in a room that's furnished, albeit modestly, for the time being, until you unscramble a little further - or I can let you go. But if you walk out that door, you're never going to see Lily or Alice again. And trust me when I say that running is going to get really fucking old." Mandy wasn't volunteering her ability much, trying to let Tucker make his own choices, but he would get the strong impression that she had experience in this area and was a good voice of reason.

She decided to sweeten the deal, despite having absolutely not cleared it with Stavros prior. "I'll even try to get Lily down here if you agree to stay, but you have to understand that you what you've missed isn't all gumdrops and rainbows." She paused. "I was taken after you were. Not by Midnight. By something else. So it takes time to fill in the gaps, and to feel normal again. But it is possible." She paused. "Mostly," she added, tilting her head from side to side and glancing up for a second.

She stood back up. "If you want to go, though, no Lily, no Alice. I'm not going to give you the opportunity to drag them through you taking off. Because this time, it wouldn't be against your will." She walked towards the door.

It was good that she didn't doubt his claim that he could go somewhere they couldn't follow, because that at least put them on something of an understanding, though he still had trouble with the concept that someone wanted him around, and that it wasn't for the purpose of killing things.  It just didn't click properly for him right then because that had been his entire purpose for longer than he remembered, and that made him suspicious of her motives from the start of all of this.  The idea of a family that cared hadn't occurred to him before, and he still hadn't fully branched out mentally into the understanding that there were other family members who were looking for him, that he'd had friends.  The best idea he had of a 'friend' right then was Raphael, and he wasn't even sure if that was really what that was.  Everything was a mess, and frankly, he wouldn't have been surprised to hear about nor blamed anyone that didn't want to be anywhere near his room. 

Hell, he didn't want to be here, and it was his own problems.

Having Mandy back up a step and admit that something she'd said wasn't fair threw him off yet again, not to mention her crouching down to put herself on level with him, and he had to wonder if that was intentional to put him off-step or legitimately her feeling bad that she'd been a jerk, but since he didn't exactly register emotions properly, it wasn't like he gave too many fucks.  He wasn't even properly jealous at the concept that he'd been replaced, because he remembered so little and the emotional attachments were tenuous, at best, but logic suggested that going through all of the trouble of staying and trying to remember was useless if he wasn't wanted.  It really was a lot easier to hold onto that and try to move on with whatever fresh hell he could make of his life than try to work through all of this, and maybe it was her ability pushing to suggest that she knew what she was talking about, or maybe he was just seeing something familiar in her, but he wasn't telling her off or putting on some show of apathy.  The admission that she just wanted to piss him off got an almost-amused snort out of him, however, and it was true that he didn't get a sense of malevolence from her, but he appreciated the bluntness.  It made him wonder if she knew him, or if that was just who she was, though.

He wasn't asking, not currently.  He was going to sit on that and wonder, try to work it out on his own instead of offering up any additional insight into his mental state when he was so off-kilter; it was one thing to throw it out there that he really wasn't of any use in certain areas with the nonchalance he'd had earlier, but entirely another to admit ignorance in a situation where it could seriously damage his ability to deal, and she was interested in making offers suddenly.  That would have thrown him off if he hadn't asked her what she wanted, but all of the personal information and the photos, then an offer bringing him right back to his original attempt at negotiation was still a little jarring.  It had been a rescue mission, but now here he was being offered a deal, or a choice, he supposed. 

That in itself was unfamiliar to him now, because choice wasn't a big thing for him under Niall's command.  Sure, there were small things, mostly how to approach a target or situation, but this was a major decision.  He could run, which was his first instinct when he was fairly certain it was a fight he couldn't win coming for him, and even as she said it, his mind clamped down on that 'can let you go' like it was a thing set in stone and exactly what he wanted, if only for a moment.  Staying in this place just sounded dangerous, like he was simply waiting to be found, and running would give him time to himself to figure out what the fuck was happening in his head, but she turned around with another ultimatum immediately.  Leave, and he'd never see Lily or Alice again.  There was still that initial impulsive 'who the fuck cares', because the association wasn't there properly, but he wasn't stupid.  Even when he was at his most scrambled, his most robotic, he was never stupid, and he knew that even this conversation would have been impossible for him to have two months ago.  Just because it wasn't there now didn't mean that he wouldn't care very much about Lily and Alice in a few months, and 'never' was a long damn time.  He was inclined to believe her when she said running would get old.

Of course, the other option was just as terrifying as the idea of running for what could be the rest of his life.  Stay there, try to remember, and who knew what messes he would be starting and involved in?  Even if it went according to what these people, and even perhaps him when he remembered more, wanted, was it going to be safe?  He couldn't stay in this room forever, and wouldn't he just draw dangerous attention to the people that he might want to protect later?  It sounded like a fucking nightmare either way. 

The kicker, what made his decision for right then, was her sweetening it.  Trying to get Lily down there to talk to him might make the decision for the future right away, because he remembered seeing her outside of that bar, and it had struck him even then that there was something.  Talking to her might get his brain to do something important, but that was a risk, wasn't it?  What if he agreed now, and then he wanted to leave after talking to her?  Or she wanted him to leave?  How the fuck was he supposed to make this decision like this?  Maybe Mandy was wrong, and he wasn't actually functioning rationally enough to do this, not when his brain was dealing with that static and definitely not when there were so many variables he didn't understand.  It was a big fucking deal.

"If you know all this and I'm supposed to trust you, then you have to get how hard it is to make a decision to do a thing that you're not even sure you can do.  I could say I'll stay and talk to Lily, then remember something and want to go, and then what?  I don't even know what normal is anymore, and if she's smart, she's not going to want me around," he pointed out.  Just because he didn't remember who he'd been or what Lily might have known of him didn't mean that he wasn't aware that he was not what someone would want around long-term.  Still, he couldn't shake that feeling like she knew what she was talking about, had possibly even experienced it herself, and was giving good advice about running and it getting old.  He didn't know her situation, so he couldn't guess whether it was really that similar, but these people weren't Midnight.  He could agree, give it a try, and if it really just wasn't working, what was really going to stop him from taking off?  He wasn't wrong in thinking they couldn't keep him in here forever, not if they were going to try to peddle the idea of 'normal' to him, and they weren't going to let their own people be miserable.  If Lily wanted him gone, he was betting they wouldn't try to stop him from taking off.

"I'll give it a try.  No guarantees, but you get her down here, and I'll stick it out to see what happens.  Not like I have anywhere better to be right now," he said suddenly, shaking his head like even he thought he was being stupid, and maybe he was.  He couldn't tell, but being around people who weren't Midnight would be good for getting him socialized a little better, if nothing else.  He needed some of that.