Test Drive 01

[cognitivus]

ɢᴇᴛ ᴄʟᴜsᴛᴇʀᴇᴅ

A Sense8 AU Sandbox

IN THE BEGINNING

It doesn't happen all at once — the world does not reorient itself and thrust upon you seven other cluster mates. No, it happens in stages. Snatches at a time. Moments, sometimes individually, sometimes in sets of two or three. Maybe you're reading a book, and you notice someone sitting beside you on the couch. Maybe you're surfing, and suddenly there's a second person on the board. Maybe you see them in passing, or maybe you both stand there, face to face, equally confused, wondering how you can both speak the same language when one of you is from Middle Earth and the other is clearly in Tokyo.

There's time to talk. Time to figure it out.

Unless, of course, there isn't. It's entirely possible that your first meeting is not during a calm, cozy, collected moment. Maybe you call on one of your sensates during a time of need. A fight, a chase scene, a moment of public speaking in the spotlight. A time when you're truly out of your depth, and you need someone with a particular, complimentary set of skills that can step in on your behalf.

It's time.

warnings : violence, psychological horror

GETTING STARTED

WELCOME TO THE CLUSTER!


On this TDM, don't worry too much about your official cluster pairing. This is for either workshopping different combinations, or different characters. If, in the end, you find you really like a certain combination, simply be sure to ask to be in the same cluster as the folks you've threaded with! For now, worry instead about playing out first meetings. It could look a little something like this:

Tag in with your character name & canon.

Set a scene by providing a variety of moments other characters can witness and jump into.

If you're going to tag into the same prompt someone else has already tagged into, consider making it a group thread; the premise eof this sandbox revolves highly around multi-person interactions. Don't be shy! These are your cluster mates, after all.

Or, if you're feeling especially daring and dramatic (and let's face it, we all are):

Set up a scene from an impactful moment around your intended canonpoint.

AU it to your heart's content. Maybe things go exactly the same as they did in canon, or maybe with a sensate cluster influencing things, it begins the path that deviates things wildly from the canon we all know and love. It's entirely up to you!

---

NETWORK USAGE

Communication via text is still very possible!

Through the magic of the powers of the human mind, that group text across universes still totally exists. Maybe it appears as an actual text chain to you, or maybe it's freshly dried ink on that magical scroll that keeps writing itself the more messages are exchanged.

Whatever the case, your mind retains the communications written down by your cluster, and all correspondences to one another are visible — unless otherwise stated to be private, of course. Create a prompt on your top level with some inbox action, and do a little lowkey texting!

Be sure to specify if a thread is private, otherwise you may have a handful of other folks chiming in with their opinion on your back-and-forth exchange at any time!

---

ANYTHING ELSE

Check out the info page for details, or post to the enable me please meme with information about characters you're considering bringing in! If you have any additional questions, feel free to ask me below, or on plurk!

Comments

[brandingproblem]

He tastes panic like copper on the back of his tongue. It's not his but it's also his. It's not coming from him. But it is coming.

Kuba raises his head, cocking his square doggy face at him, and Clint is only vaguely aware. Because he blinks, swears he was only blinking, and then he's--

--got blood-slicked hands making the vice grip on the handgun that much more precarious.

He's aware of someone beside him, but there's a tall man with a knife to a young girl's neck, so Clint gets his priorities quickly in line. (There is no danger from the man beside him.) (He simply knows this.) There's panic and motion and movement. And someone with less honed reflexes might have more hesitation. Someone with worse aim might inadvertently hurt the girl.

Clint's never had a problem with either of those. His hands still, his aim raises, his finger pulls the trigger, once.

The man's head snaps back, and his arm pulls. The knife slides through her skin like butter. Not all the way across her throat, but enough, but enough along the pulse for him to know she may die very quickly.

It pulls his attention. The man is dead; he is certain without having to check the way the body starts to fall backwards and slumps in the kitchen corner. The girl collapses on the floor, and he knows his hands are already damp with blood, but she needs pressure now. The panic is starting to become his fully, because he is not going to let an innocent girl die on his watch, he won't. His eyes snap across the kitchen as he expertly holsters the weapon, looking past his companion, and snatches up a hanging dishtowel. It's not the most sterile option, but neither are his hands.

"Okay," he says quietly, half to himself, half to her gasping and choking and struggling, "okay, I got you, gonna get you help." Blood soaks the towel instantly as he presses in hard, but he's got a better grip this way. He doesn't know where he's getting help from. (There's someone else, isn't there? Calling an ambulance? There was a shot fired. Someone else has to do something here or he's going to watch her slowly bleed out--)

[cognitivus]

Despite what he does for a living, Will Graham has not personally watched a lot of people die. He comes in after the fact. He comes in when things are crime scenes, when the bodies are lifeless, or when the only thing that remains is photographs. He comes in after. He doesn't have to see the moment of.

But Mrs. Hobbs dies in front of him, grasping for him, and he can feel every scrap of her fear, her terror, her life slipping away. The begging she'd be doing inside her own mind. The adrenaline. The sheer, unadulterated panic of knowing that you're going to die. He felt it. He felt it, and he held her, and he watched the life leave her, and he felt the life leave himself, and then —

And then he had to force himself to keep moving, because there's a girl inside, and because the world does not stop for death whether or not Will Graham is the one experiencing it. He's trained. He's trained for this. He always knew it was an inevitability, and he's readied himself for it as best as one possibly can, he's a consummate professional. He-

Is on autopilot, disassociating his way through a panic attack, his body is moving itself and he is watching from the outside.

No.

Wait.

That was true for a moment, and then it wasn't. It's not himself he's watching, but it is, but it's someone else behind the wheel, and he knows behind the partition he could be behind his own eyes again but he isn't, because this man is far more capable of handling this moment than he is, this man knows what to do, this man—

Is inside him. Is him. Isn't him.

The words that come from his lips are in his voice to everyone around him, but not to him. And the man watching this scene unfold is sharp enough to notice the difference in speech, in body language, in action.

But there's no time to dwell on it.

Hannibal slips his hand around Abigail Hobbs' throat, and Will sits back on his haunches again, firmly tethered to his own body once more, as everything that unfolded in the last twenty seconds plays and replays and replays inside his mind, waiting for him to process it for real, like a skipping record.

He raises his eyes and, still shaking, looks directly at Clint. He knows, in that way that Will Graham connects dots and pieces together seemingly impossible puzzles and draws conclusions he can't quite explain, in that way that Will Graham simply knows things, that this man is about to become everything to him.

But he cannot find words, is still speechless, still feels blood on his hands. In this moment, he is Mrs. Hobbs and he is Abigail Hobbs and he is Clint, and he is—

turning his eyes to Garrett Jacob Hobbs, whose eyes are open and lifeless, and yet they affix onto Will. Both Will and Clint will see the corpse whisper to him; see... see... a hushed breath from the lips of a dead man.

— and he is Garret Jacob Hobbs.

[brandingproblem]

Sometime in the moments seconds minutes eterneties lifetimes instances of his hand that is not his hand but is his hand around a girl's neck, there is a man that he doesn't know but immediately recognizes, and then he is no longer on the floor on his knees.

He watches the man watch the scene with an odd calm, no, passivity? No? With a certainty that is calming in its own way. There is no longer blood on his hands. He's him.

Whatever that's worth.

His companion, [friendallylovesoulmateheart] looks at him, directly at him, and in this moment is the first he feels a true crack in his own composure. He's not meant to be seen. Why is he still here? Why is he here at all? What the actual fuck is he doing in Minnesota?

Will. Will is shaken, shaking, and Clint can see the way things are flashing before his eyes, seeing these victims, being these victims in a way he's not sure he could articulate if asked. The corpse speaks. It can't. It's a corpse. Garret Jacob Hobbs is dead as an entire doornail. But there's a ghost of something that might be a smile, pale lips, see--

He crouches on the other side of the girl's body, attention honed in on Will, makes him look. "Focus."

Kuba makes a huffing noise, and when Clint looks askance--

--he's back where he should be, dog wiggling his body with a well-worn rope to tug on bumping against Clint's knee.

[cognitivus]

His eyes snap to Clint again, severing his connection to the dead. Severing his connection to every member of the Hobbs family. Planting him firmly back inside his own mind, rather than leaving him adrift to spiral endlessly outward through three separate storms. He's never been more grateful to anyone for anything in his entire life.

And then Clint is gone, and the sirens are wailing, and Will drags himself through a blurry reality as they load her into the back of an ambulance and as he answers questions with a numb kind of stupor. He cannot afford to think about the helpful hallucination for a while. Not if he wants to pass any kind of scrutiny. It's okay; he's nothing if not well-versed in faking his way through sanity, through normalcy.

It's days later when the world's gone quiet that he finally stops. Sitting on his front porch steps, breathing cool West Virginia air, smelling grass, watching the sun sink low in the sky, Will closes his eyes...

And searches his mind.

He finds doors. Most of them are closed. One of them is open. None of them were here before. Tentatively, carefully, he nudges that door open wider, and he slips through it to see what exists on the other side.

[brandingproblem]

When they aren't hunting, things can be shockingly normal. They're all human at the end of the day. Frank can live off cans of whatever happens to be cheap and around for months on end, and Clint can live off of literally whatever he's allowed to have, and they would both be fine.

But they don't have to live that way. They can shop for actual fucking groceries. Like real people do. Easier when it's Clint; he's a collar and nobody looks at him twice for running errands. Might look twice if the Big Bad Punisher pushes a squeaky shopping cart around, though.

He's looking at boxes of dog biscuits. Wonders about Kuba's health, if maybe he should pick up something a little leaner. But something changes. Something's different.

He doesn't raise his head in alarm, but his eyes slide over where he gets that sensation of being watched. Nobody should be watching a collar. Their eyes should pass over the hunk of metal locked around his neck and then pass over him right after. He puts one box back as an excuse to look up.

[cognitivus]

He's no stranger to the concept of stepping into his mind and coming out somewhere else, but it's never been — like this. It's never taken him to another world, another life, to another mind entirely, someone still thinking and breathing and separate from him, but not separate from him. It's...

Overwhelming. Unbelievable. Incredible. Terrifying. Awe inspiring.

Will's eyes aren't affixed on Clint; they're trailing around the store taking in every detail, lips parted faintly in his wonderment. The different brands. The different people. The — collars that he's only just starting to notice on certain people, and the way they keep their eyes downcast, and the way some people aren't wearing them, and —

Then to Clint, finally, with a furrow in his brow.

"They're not making eye contact with anyone," he says — and it's a question. A statement and a question. Is that against a rule? Are they not allowed? The other collars, he means. Not that he's the biggest fan of that himself either, but it's... different.

[brandingproblem]

It’s a question and not a question at the same time. Clint’s brow matches Will’s furrow, still not looking directly at him. There is a part of him that thinks that, maybe, just maybe, this is someone else, someone different, someone who isn’t talking to him.

Futile, he knows. He knows it intrinsically, and he’s not sure that he likes it. It feels...intrusive? No, but it doesn’t, is the thing. But it’s strange, and he’s not sure what to do about it. It’s the same man from what had felt like a dream that he knew wasn’t a dream. It’s Will. And he knows Will. But he’s never met Will. But…

If he’s being spoken to, he can speak back. Anyone can speak to him if they so wish. Frank’s never told him not to speak to anyone; he would never order such a thing. He dares, at last, to look askance.

“You look better this way,” he says, which does not answer the question-statement. He means not covered in blood and panicking and dissociating literally out of your body, is what he means. But also: “Do you wear contacts?” Since he’s not wearing glasses right now.

His voice is quiet, though. He does hate this, this back and forth that makes it harder to get used to the idea of being a full person, being who he could be, is allowed to be, around Frank versus what he has to be in public. He knows Frank doesn’t like it, either, but it’s easier this way. Fewer eyes, fewer questions.

[cognitivus]

It's such an absurd thing, isn't it? Out of all of the things they could be talking about, out of all of the questions, all of the things they could be asking each other, it's why don't they make eye contact and do you wear contact lenses? Maybe it's just that the bigger question feels —

Something. It feels like an answer in and of itself. It feels too big to have an answer. He knows, innately, somehow, that Clint doesn't hold that answer in his mind anyway, and so asking it seems pointless. They're both at a loss.

"No, I--" He gestures vaguely toward his face without actually bothering to lift his hands much higher than his sternum. "Nearsighted. Not- enough to need them all of the time, just... sometimes."

When he's driving. When he's trying to do everything in his power to avoid making eye contact with thirty or forty people at once. When he'd really rather not be having a conversation with somebody who is, most likely, a stranger — or worse, isn't one.

"I think..." he says slowly, head tipping to the side ever so slightly, "That where I come from and where you come from may have very different social customs surrounding- that."

A nod at Clint's throat.

For starters, the fact that he and so many others are wearing that in public, in a grocery store.

[brandingproblem]

Clint hesitantly brings up a hand near his collar. Doesn't touch it. Finally, at last, he properly looks at Will. "...You're not from Canada." Not a question. Statement. He knows this. But the idea that someone is from a culture where this has different social customs just sounds like Canada. Where they don't have the social customs. They don't have collars.

He almost asks about the railroad, but this is not a place to bring that up. He sets the box of dog treats in the cart and makes a point of glancing around, makes sure he's not in the way, keeps himself as pressed to the shelves as he reasonably can. Glances at Will again, then looks distantly not at him again.

"How did you find me?"

[cognitivus]

That nearly startles a laugh from him — Canada? No, no he's very much not from Canada, and the puzzlement that passes across his features, while brief, is all the confirmation Clint needs. Are the rules surrounding slavery different in Canada? It would make sense, he thinks, in a bizarre way. It would line up consistently with the disparity between America and its neighbor, their values, the political landscape...

This is-
Baffling. Impossible. There are some very well-educated people who would be overcome with the idea of studying the point in history where the trajectory of things began to skew, people who would have a thousand better, smarter questions than Will does right now. His concern isn't with the alternate histories of parallel universes, though.

A far higher priority to him is the connection.

"You left the door open," he says, as though that will make any sense at all. It does, just... maybe only to Will. "Although... the fact that there are doors at all is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around."

[brandingproblem]

"Door..." He doesn't really know what that means. He left...himself? Open? He left something in his head open? Like when you don't eject a USB drive? Like when you don't put a password on your wifi?

"So it happened? That happened." He didn't look. He didn't go looking up information, didn't turn on the news, didn't ask Frank to borrow the laptop to look at the idea of murder in Minnesota. He picked up the name. Not sure how he knows the name. Like he flipped through a psychic rolodex and... "Garret Jacob Hobbs."

[cognitivus]

That happened; he nods, a little sideways, a little jerky, but an affirmative. It happened; unquestionably, repressively, life-alteringly. It happened.

"Dead," he says, as if that were ever any question — Clint put a bullet directly through his skull. It would take some kind of insane miracle or someone absolutely superhuman to survive something like that. But more relevantly, "His daughter lived. Thanks to you."

All credit where it's due: it was Clint that saved Abigail Hobbs' life. Will cannot reliably say whether or not he'd have pulled the trigger himself. He'd like to think so, but it would've been seconds later. Long enough to make a difference. Long enough for a deeper cut. He'd have hesitated. Clint didn't.

[brandingproblem]

"I didn't question what was happening." Which is baffling in hindsight. "Something was happening, and I saw the situation, and I acted accordingly. I got the impression you needed help."

Clint shakes his head a little, pushes the cart. "Listen, if we're going to talk, you can come with me, okay? I can look like I belong to you if need be. If you've...got questions, I can try answering. Unless you're as confused as I am."

But Will found him through a door. So. Maybe Will's the one with answers instead.

[cognitivus]

I can look like I belong to you. This is... concerning, but also, just a reaffirmation of the things Will was beginning to suspect, beginning to worry about. There aren't very many conclusions one can reasonably jump to when people wearing collars avert their eyes away from the people who aren't. There's a hierarchical structure at play here that leads him to believe he can guess nearly exactly when the history of their worlds began to deviate...

"Ignoring what that implies about where either of us falls on the social ladder, I'm afraid there might be a flaw in your plan," it's a gentle observation, one delivered as he slowly falls into step with Clint, trailing beside the squeaky cart, studying Clint's expression with carefully cast, surreptitious glances. "That being-"

As if on cue, a dog comes bounding down the aisle. An energetic Australian Shepherd, quickly trailed by a smaller Jack Russel. Will kneels down to greet them with familiarity, absently scratching behind the larger's ears; they tussle about his ankles until he clicks his teeth softly, jerking his head off to the side. They peel themselves out from under him and take off, disappearing into the shelves.

The problem being: he's not actually there — and for a moment, neither is Clint. They, the both of them, sit side by side on his front porch steps, cast in the glow of a warm orange setting sun over a green field that stretches out in every direction.

It feels important to point out, mainly because Will doesn't know what the laws are where Clint comes from. If he's meant to be chaperoned or accompanied, relying on Will to play the part of an owner won't do him any good. He'd hate to get the guy in hot water.

[brandingproblem]

Everything gets a little bit turned on its head. He's aware, really, on some level, that he was there but not there in Minnesota. That he was doing things but when he stepped back out of Will he was no longer there. That when Will's...friend? Appeared to take charge of the situation with large and steady hands, the man had looked at him with dark assessing eyes and then--and then had largely not noticed him further after that.

The dogs come bounding, and then they're gone again, except when they're not gone because he's sitting on the porch at home. No. Not home. Yes home. A home. Not his home. (Not...wherever he's at that he considers home at any given time.)

And maybe it's a good thing he's sitting, at this moment.

"I don't understand." Parts of him understand. He understands, except when he thinks about it, and then doesn't understand. Clint turns his head, and he's in the aisle again, turns his head the other way, and he's sitting with Will. One of the dogs, oh, it's a third one now, comes ambling out onto the porch, and he lifts a hand. This one's calm, leans into his touch with a happy pant and a waggy tail like they've known each other forever.

"I'm not petting a dog in New York. What am I doing, am I just standing around in a trance looking like I'm having a fit, what--" He laughs, something breathy, a huff of sound, barely there. "Are you still there too?"

[cognitivus]

"I can't pretend to know how it works any better than you do," Will starts, hedging, slow and tentative — because he doesn't know. He has no concrete answers, but he has... ideas. Concepts. Things of the abstract tend to come more naturally to him than they do most people, things based in cognition, things rooted in the mind. In thought and in feeling. It's a familiar, oft-tread path. Maybe not this branch of it, though. "But I think... you're not here, just like I'm not there."

He speaks with his hands absently, a thoughtless gesture, gesticulating at nothing in particular.

"To put it another way... when asked to recount the events that unfolded at the Hobbs residence, nobody made mention of a man matching your description. Everything you did was attributed to me. And, I suspect, if I were to do this--"

They're in the store. He reaches out, picks a box of cereal from the shelf, and places it in the cart. It's there. It's visibly, physically there, in the cart.

"--the security camera footage would only show you, reaching out to take the box. Because we're not- separate. We aren't two separate people. I think we were, but... I don't think we are anymore. Not- distinctly. Not in the way we understand the concept of separation. Certainly not to the people around us."

Those doors in his mind... they don't look like intrusions. They don't look like things that were built there by some other hand. They don't look out of place. They look organic; they grew with the landscape. They were always there in another form, waiting to become what they are now.

He thinks. He thinks.
He knows how it sounds, it sounds completely insane. Absolutely unhinged, but also... right.

[brandingproblem]

"It's all happening but it's not happening right now. Except that it's happening."

Clint scrubs at his eyes. Will's eyes? Whose eyes is he watching from behind? It isn't that it feels wrong. Because it doesn't, not really. Strange, weird, a little distressing. But not wrong.

"Okay. I killed someone and saved his daughter. You didn't exactly have it under control. And you came and found me. And I'm...just existing. I'm gonna...finish my errand. Go home, unpack the groceries, and then, I don't know. Something. I'll do something. And we'll just wander in and out of each others lives."

Simple-complicated enough. Sure. That's fine. This is fine.

"How many dogs do you have?"

[cognitivus]

As it so happens, Will's eyes are tired, dry, sore — he's not entirely sure why. Allergies, maybe. Too much time swapping between glasses and no glasses? It doesn't matter, it's not important.

The way he looks at Clint feels an awful lot like commiseration. It's companionable, comfortable, the apologetic little smile he wears. Not that it's his fault, it's just... he understands the fatigue. He really, really understands.

His lips only quirk up a little higher at the question and, after a lengthy beat, he finally answers, "Seven." And then, "For now."

No guarantees it won't become eight one day; not that he's looking, not that he's searching it's just... if he should happen to come across another stray...

"...Would you like to meet them?"

[brandingproblem]

Clint, for all he'd been laser focused and deadly serious in the Hobbs home, for all he'd been sullen and demure in the store, slowly but steadily perks up at the offer. It feels...almost forbidden.

And in a way, it is, isn't it? If he's somewhere else. Somewhere nobody can find him (kind of, sort of, because he's still in New York physically), and Will isn't about to pull the rug out from under him. He knows this. In his core. The same as he knows that Frank will never hit him, will never ever lie to him. Will does not look at him and see collar.

Hell, Will clearly has barely any concept of what a collar is, which is--thrilling, actually. Exciting in a lot of ways, strange and foreign and kind of funny in a way.

"Yeah." He'd love to meet a pack of seven dogs! Please.

[cognitivus]

That smile grows, blooming into something pleased and sincere — and then he turns his attention outward toward the field. One sharp whistle carries through, and on comes the stampede. An absolute herd of dogs all bounding up to him at once, sniffing curiously, darting around him, circling, tails wagging as if they're meeting some new fun stranger even though it's just Will — they know that it isn't. They know there is someone else here, somehow, in that instinctive way only dogs know things.

"Everybody, this is Clint. Clint, this is Max, Buster, Jack, Zoe, Harley, Ellie, and Winston," he says, pointing to each of them in turn. "Don't worry, there's a quiz later."

He's kidding. He doesn't expect anyone that isn't himself to keep track of all the names. It's fine. The dogs don't mind either, they're just ecstatic to meet the guy that smells identical to Will but is not Will.

[brandingproblem]

And what a contrast it must be. From the sure and steady man that raised a gun and smoothly put one bullet right where it needed to be.

And what a contrast this is, from the shaking, gasping man seeing visions of the dead.

Clint might not actually get quizzed on this later, but rest assured, he's memorizing each dog and their name. For later. It's not going to be the most useful information, but he'll remember it anyway. It'll be useful to him. He's ecstatic to be greeted by so many wiggly waggily faces and excited tongues lapping at him. "Hi, guys! Hello!" Is this heaven? Is this a slice of heaven?

Why would he ever want to leave?

Oh. He knows exactly why. But if he can stay here just a little bit longer...

"I've got one at--" He stops just short of saying 'at home'. "You'd like him. Maybe later you can meet him."

[cognitivus]

He doesn't miss it; I've got one at... He'll ask later. Some things can wait. They're only just starting to get used to the concept of the other existing, not everything needs to be pulled out and spilled all over the table right away. They need to be able to breathe. They need to be able to think. They need to be able to just... sit, and pet some dogs. Therapy for the soul.

"I'd like that," he says softly, and means it.

The moment doesn't last; it can't. Back at the grocery store, somebody shoulder-checks Clint on their way past, muttering, "Watch it," like Clint wasn't standing perfectly still and they weren't the ones responsible. It strikes Will then, just how utterly invisible that thing around Clint's throat makes him.

Is it wrong of him to feel a little jealous?
It is, he knows it is. Still, the concept of fading into the background is more appealing than it has any right to be, to a man like Will. He'll keep that thought firmly to himself; common sense is all it takes to know that there are far worse things associated with a collar than invisibility.

[brandingproblem]

Clint gets yanked back to reality--his reality--with a quietly mumbled "Sorry, sir", and decides to take this moment to breathe. And figure this out. He's in the middle of something. Okay. He cannot, in fact, just stop here and decide to stay in a dog-filled world for as long as he wants.

His hands flex on the cart handle. Dares to look, for just a moment, for Will. "I should finish here," he informs softly. Once he's back where they're staying at, once he's back inside and with Frank...hell, once he's packed the groceries up in the van and is behind the wheel, that's when he can be more himself again.

He can't do that here. Can't do that now. And...it's strange. How he doesn't know this guy, but he suddenly can't imagine being without this shadow. Like something's slotted into place that he never knew was missing. So is it weird to feel kind of ashamed, like he doesn't want Will to see him in this technically rightful place? Has he gotten so used to being allowed more freedoms with Frank that sometimes realizing that's special treatment is gutting?

Can't allow himself more dog time until he's done being public-facing, at the very least.

[cognitivus]

It's not an uncommon thing, for Will to understand things he'd rather not understand. For him to see things the way other people see them — he's reluctant to say that he sees them as they are, because such a statement implies a level of objectivity that simply isn't fair or accurate. The way he views Clint is not the same as the way the man who shoulder checked him views Clint, which is not the way Clint views himself, and none of them are wrong just as none of them are right. The truth lies somewhere in a more complicated gray area. The truth is in the eye of the beholder. The truth is... he can't stand around in this grocery store all day.

The truth is, he feels ashamed and self-conscious, and lesser. The truth is, he needs something bolstering, and he's not getting that. Humans call things self-confidence and self-worth like they're entirely internal concepts. Like the world and the people around them don't feed into those things. It's simply not true.

He reaches over and, very gently, wraps a hand around Clint's wrist. Light. Reassuring. Just to gently squeeze something comforting into the skin there — and it's incredible what the human mind can do, the way it can convince itself it feels something. For all Clint's perceived reality knows, he really has just been touched. The right signals in his brain fire, the right nerve endings light up. It feels real.

"For what it's worth... I think you're handling this better than most people could," And then, just as lightly, he lets go and steps back. "I'll be- you know. Around."

That last bit is a little wry — you know where to find me.

And then he's gone from the store, gone from Clint's vision. But never very far away.