The Beacon

@.Longshot.: "Tell me about it. If I put thought to all the people I've let down.. I'd probably have a breakdown."

@Amelia_: "In the end, no matter how many people you save, it's the ones you can't save that define you." He lay his hand down over the photograph and bowed his head in shadow.

@.Longshot.: "Yeah.. they do." She let the word hang in the air, not able to add anything of note. Her fingers reached up to clench at her bicep.

Leon walks in having just resently gone rouge, decided to check out the hero places and crap to see what there all like. he proceeds to go to the gym and work out

@Amelia_: "It's cold..." he said, "I can start a fire."

@ragman1138: (IC, how did you manage to find the Beacon? Just curious)

@.Longshot.: "That'd be nice, yeah." She almost felt a little awkward, remaining at her place on the wall for a reason she couldn't quite discern.

@.Longshot.: Leon looks up at him with cold lifeless eyes. "i heard about it from a couple acquaintances. said they heard some weird things goin on around here so i desired it was worth checking out... thought it was haunted but i see i was dead wrong.

@Amelia_: "Alright." he said, turning the picture on its face as he stood up and crossed the room and threw some logs in the fire place, igniting them. He turned to her, allowing the clashing lights of the moon and the fire to properly illuminate his disfigured form. "Sit down." He gestured to the soft chair positioned next to the couch.

@ragman1138: "That's debatable." the archer said, dropping from his pocket of shadow in the corner of the ceiling, "Just depends on what you consider 'haunting'. But obviously, it's a legitimate reason to barge into my home uninvited."

@.Longshot.: well once you you hear old legends of phantoms and crap flying around one cant help but wonder.. so this is your home huh?

@.Longshot.: After a noticeable amount of time, a distant look faded from her eyes, and she finally went to move. "Sorry.. zoned out, heh." Quietly, she made her way to the chair, sitting down and immediately bringing her knees up to her chest. For the first time, she got a good look at him. And unlike the reaction so many others probably had, she didn't react with fear. Or disgust, not even interest. She viewed him like she would any other person.

@ragman1138: "The only one I've got." Longshot replied, "And that hinges on the fact that it's a well kept secret." He eyed the intruder accusingly.

@.Longshot.: leon tilts his head. "well its obvious that this place isn't as haunted as everyone says..so u hideout here? why? from ur get up u got on u look like ur a do gooder.. wat use is there in hiding.."

@Amelia_: It had been so long since someone had treated him like a human being, even in such a subtle way as how they looked at him. Most looked upon him as a monstrosity. A rare and questionable few looked upon him as some bizarre work of art, but so few in number were those who simply looked at him... as a man. He didn't know how to return the favor. His only interaction with people was with fists and arrows. He had forgotten how to be compassionate. He had forgotten how to be the man she saw when she looked at him. He simply sat down and watched the flames flicker, the heat radiating across the room and striking his pale, scarred face just as strongly as the orange light.

@ragman1138: "I don't come here to hide. I come here to heal, to rest, to reequip myself, and to offer others a safe haven when they need it. It's not a haunted house, and it's NOT a tourist spot."

@.Longshot.: Within seconds, her gaze had drifted to the floor. Not the bright light of the fire. Nor the beauty of Alaska beyond the window. Just the floor, her thoughts trying to find something to distract herself. She started to notice one of her hands shaking the tiniest bit. Eventually, she found something to distract her.. but it wasn't any better than what had been on her mind. After even more moments of torturous silence, a singular tear started to roll down the side of her face. She didn't make any effort to wipe it off or try to turn her head away so that the darkness concealed it. Instead, she just bit down on her lip. It didn't take long for a small well of blood to spring up from her bottom lip.

@.Longshot.: "alright than. i guess i shall take out the ones who lead me on this wild goose chase..my apologies for disturbing u." and with that black mist engulfs his body and he leaves the site.

@Amelia_: He smelled the salt of a tear, heard her lip quiver as teeth sunk into the supple skin inside her mouth. The copper tinge of blood caught his attention and he could ignore it no longer. "Why are you crying?" he asked coolly.

@.Longshot.: "It's nothing." Out of several excuses, including 'there's something in my eye', she just went for the simple two-word denial. "I'm fine." And again, she repeated those words. Words that were very obviously a complete lie.

@Amelia_: "No. You're not. As somebody who's said that more times than I can count, I know what that really means."

@.Longshot.: Her throat made an audible noise as she swallowed. "Even if I'm not.. you don't need to worry about it." She barely managed to bite back a remark about how it shouldn't matter anyways, because she'd probably be gone as soon as Melissa figured out what to do with her. He hadn't done anything to deserve that.

@Amelia_: He leaned back and answered in a chillingly detached manner, "I'm a superhero. It's my job to worry."

@.Longshot.: "No, it's not. Especially not about me. There are people who deserve being worried about far more than I do." The tears were coming out in a steady stream now, and her eyes had become visibly wetter than they previously were.

@Amelia_: "Amelia, I've screwed up a lot in my life. I always thought I didn't deserve compassion from anybody. But if there wasn't somebody out there who gave a damn about me, I'd be dead by now."

@.Longshot.: "Pretty sure the only reason I'm still alive is that it's damn near impossible to pull off killing me. And Melissa seems determined to not let me die."

@Amelia_: "Yeah. You've got more people in your corner than you realize. And they're not particularly good at giving up."

The Rumor swooped by in his advanced jet and jettisoned out of the bottom, in an elegant glide with his cape taking a wing shape he gently landed on the fresh snow outside of the beacon.

@.Longshot.: "I seriously don't have many." She cracked a fake, pained smile, sliding down to the floor. "Yeah, sometimes I wish they just would give up."

Leon walks back looking at the bacon, now having allied himself with the "heroes" as they called themselves decided to look at the place from the outside.

@Amelia_: "Well, we're not going to." he replied, burning holes through the overturned photograph with his eyes, "Because none of us can handle another person we couldn't save on our conscience. "

@.Longshot.: "I know. Just trying to find excuses to get people to forget about it. Pretty sure you know the feeling." Quietly, she started to tap her fingers against her leg in a set of four beats. It didn't distract her much, but it helped a little.

@Amelia_: "Yeah..." he sighed, turning the picture face up again, but sliding it to the edge of the table opposite her, "Yeah, I do. When people keep trying to get through to you even though all you want is to be alone with your thoughts... no matter how much they hurt."

@.Longshot.: "Or when you want nothing more just to let the guilt get to you." Again, she let the silence hang in the air. After awhile, she stood up, obviously turning to leave. "Well, I'll just stop bothering you. Kind of seems like you'd prefer alone time to having to put up with me."

@Amelia_: "No..." the archer called out to stop her. He snatched up the picture and held it in his lap, staring at the image so dull in the flickering light of the fire. "If it's alright with you, I'd like some company for just a little longer. For once..." he whispered, "I don't want to be alone."

@.Longshot.: "Oh." She stopped halfway in the process of walking around the chair. "Never thought I'd be the person someone would want as company." Turning back around, she sat in the chair again, her hands folded in her lap.

@.Longshot.: Rumor pressed his finger against his cowl and connected to Longshot's helmet comm. "Longshot..We need to talk, warp me in.."

@Amelia_: Longshot took a long, deep breath before turning to face Amelia, eyes like coal buried deep inside their sockets. "If you could go back and do one thing differently, just one, what would it be?"

@TheRumor: Longshot stood atop a moving monorail train in Seattle as he took the communicator from his belt. "It doesn't work that way." he said, typing in the code for the Beacon on his teleporter console with his free hand. "Besides," he said as an aura of light built around him, "I thought somebody as efficient as yourself would opt for using the front door." As the train slowed and pulled into its next stop, the archer was gone.

@.Longshot.: That question. One she asked herself way too many times. "I.." She swallowed, breaking eye contact to stare at the floor. Every inch of her resisted the urge to say what she wanted to say. For once, she managed to hold her tongue. "I don't know."

@.Longshot.: "I thought I would ask before you and I have another unnecessary scrap..I can see you just don't care" Rumor grappled up to an open heat vent and quickly dived in and descended to the main floor. "The new works like a charm, with just a bit more bulkiness it almost eliminates my age out of the equation..Let alone the honor it is that Gambler bestowed it to me..". The Rumor dropped to the ground and waited to be noticed.

@Amelia_: "Yes you do." Longshot replied, for once cutting through her lies instead of letting them slide. This was no time to treat her with kid gloves. "We all make mistakes, but there's always one that eats away at us more than all the others. What's yours?"

@.Longshot.: Her lip trembled visibly again. If there was anything she wanted to avoid, it was letting this exact information out of her lips. It took her a period that seemed to stretch out for ages, but she finally said it. "Falling in love with someone when I know they won't return it."

@TheRumor: "Cut to the chase." the archer replied sternly, crossing his arms as he stood at the top step of the teleporter station on the ground floor.

@.Longshot.: The assassin kept his stern and upright pose as he looked to the archer. "Cain Panell..Easy enough to get records but I need to know what he can do from someone that has battled him first hand.." His voice was cold.

@Amelia_: "And how could you change that?"

@.Longshot.: "By not letting it happen in the first place." One of her nails started to prick the skin on her arm.

@TheRumor: The archer paused. He ground his teeth slightly before descending the steps as he spoke, "Cain uses his reputation as a violent, poorly educated drunk to hide his tactical capabilities. He walks into a fight armed to the teeth, distracts the enemy with profanity and insults, then establishes the upper hand with an aimless hail of gunfire, often expending the first magazine of his primary weapon in seconds. You have approximately six seconds to attack before he either reloads that weapon or draws another. Fight on your own ground, or he'll seize the advantage without hesitation. Bombs, backup weapons, traps, all planted ahead of time. He will use anything and everything to kill you, including his words. If you can shut him out, if you can take away the home field advantage, and if you can anticipate him, you stand a chance of walking out alive." he paused as he walked up to the stranger who had taken such an interest in his life and asked, "Why are you going after him?"

@Amelia_: "But you can't control who you fall in love with." he answered, "And you can't control how much they hurt you."

@.Longshot.: "Because he ruined his son's life by just being his father on a biological level...You have my thanks archer.." Rumor nodded and turned to leave, he gritted his teeth as he turned around as he heard someone remind him just how much of a terrible man his father is.

@.Longshot.: "I can control how much I shut it out, though." The frustration she'd accumulated over so long of doing just that started to rise. "It's just so.. stupid. I fall madly in love with a chick and she doesn't even notice!" Just like the minute trembling of her bottom lip, the tears had started to leak out of her eyes again, and the nail pressing into her arm had managed to draw a small line of blood.

@Amelia_: "I tried pushing Melissa away." Longshot said plainly, staring into the fire, "It put her through hell, because as much as she cared about me, and as much as I cared about her, I knew it could never work. And she paid the price. So, ask yourself... are you really ready to do that to her? Are you ready to shut her out because you're afraid of those unrequited feelings? Because that will hurt her far worse than this hurts you. And if you really love her, that can't be what you want."

@TheRumor: And suddenly, everything fell into place. Even that lingering scent he couldn't quite place clicked in the archer's head. "You're his son..." he whispered.

@.Longshot.: Rumor halted for just a moment and slightly looked back with narrowed eyes, after a long silence he continued to leave the tower.