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[ct_7567]

WHO: Those who have been invited & anyone who would have a reason to visit Maurtia Falls #010! Wondering if you fit into that category? Just contact anyone with an involved character (Andy; Rex; Martin; Cassandra Igarashi; Dio; Archie) and ask!
WHERE: Maurtia Falls #010
WHEN: TONIGHT? TONIGHT.
WHAT: The soldierfam has decided that regular group dinners are good for Martin, and this time they've got a few party crashers!
WARNINGS: None anticipated; will change if necessary!



At a glance, one could easily mistake Maurtia Falls #010 for being entirely uninhabited. Dio rarely returns home and Rex and Marty only have a handful of belongings between the two of them and Rex is meticulously tidy, returning everything to exactly where it ought to be - if anything, it's Andy who makes the biggest mess around the place, and she doesn't even live here.

Despite every sign to the contrary, however, they do live here, and it winds up being a hub of activity whenever one of Martin's guardians - if that's truly what they can call themselves - decides that it's about time to get everyone together for dinner. In Anderson's absence, Rex has taken on the opinion that cooking can't be that hard, which is how they wind up with one window open, a casserole dish burned black soaking in the sink and an assortment of take-out on the table.

(As it turns out, it is that hard - and he found a combination pizza & Chinese food take-out place, whiich means that it can only be better.)

In all, there's not much to do or see here; there's food, Rex the goldfish in his tank, a soccer ball neatly tucked close to the house in the backyard, and a mysterious shelf called "Martin's Things" in the cupboard. Otherwise, you're stuck with nothing more than some potential awkward conversation. Have fun, kids!

Comments

[ct_7567]

"Millions of us, yeah." He glances over at Cassandra thoughtfully when she brings up Cassandra, something wry in the tilt of his mouth. "And besides those millions, everyone's different from me."

But that's probably just being purposefully dense, isn't it? He and Andy don't make sense as friends on the surface. Where Rex is deliberate, detail-oriented, careful never to have a foot or hair out of line, Andy glides through life rambling and rough-shod, surviving in the way she knows how. Rex can admire that, in its own way.

"She's a good woman." He pauses. "She's a friend. I probably wouldn't have met her a second time if not for Martin, but here we are. She may seem a bit rough around the edges, but she's a stalwart ally with a good heart - and atrocious knitting skills."

If Cassandra's seen knitting being left around the house, well, that certainly doesn't belong to Rex.

[queenofseers]

"Millions?" God, Rex, just when she thinks she's reached the limit with you. She has to back herself up before she gets into an argument again- millions of clones? "You say that like everyone else being different from you isn't...normal."

God, okay, she really does need to change topic. "Whatever. It makes sense if she's another Martin-based acquisition, I guess. He tends to attract help." She glances inside- Archie, for example, is a complete weirdo, but him wanting to help Martin certainly fits.

"And I can't even see her knitting, so I can believe that," she remarks. "But what's her story? She's kind of mum about it, other than that she did a lot of...well, killing. And I'm not sure if it's circumstances like yours or something else."

[ct_7567]

Everyone else being different from him isn't normal. Being here is the most contact he's had with natural-borns since he was made, unless you count the Kaminoans. Rex doesn't. They may be natural-born, but there's nothing natural about them. Even after all the time spent in their company, Rex has a hard time seeing them as people with a world outside of the cold, staid facility he'd called home.

"That he does. It's a good thing, too. It's not as though any of us turn away the help."

Out of all of them, it's Archie that seems like he has the most experience with kids like Martin and that's... Archie. Point being, it's a group effort and thank god for that, otherwise they may just wind up screwing this up more than they already have.

"Her story's not mine to tell. If she decided she didn't want to tell you, that's her business." Which is to say, he does know it - he's just not particularly inclined to share.

[queenofseers]

"He's got a fucking sad kitten face, Rex. I've barely talked to kids that young since I was one, but then he just kept...showing up."

The kind of bullshit other people would call fate, but there's so many imPorts in one town. Rex is a friend- she would have run into Martin again, right? Right.

And, though she's not eager to admit it, he has a point about Andy. It makes the journalist in her antsy, but considering she's trying to scale back a bit on her hounding? "Well, nothing she's done makes it need to know. You'll...probably end up knowing if that changes."

Sometimes it does, after all.

[ct_7567]

"I will." Rex pauses, then sighs, glancing back at the house with an arch of his brow. "It's the face, isn't it? It's awful."

Like a sad kitten. Rex had never thought about it in that way - and, in truth, has had very little to do with felines in general considering the fact that he tends not to like animals in general - but he's struck by how absolutely correct that comparison is. "I haven't exactly got much experience with kids myself, but... he showed up." He shrugs. "It'd take a crueler man than myself to turn him away."

Now, though? He wouldn't have it any other way. Martin is his, for better or for worse. It's funny - for all that he's always telling others not to get attached to him, he's the one who's gotten attached. This place changes them all.

[queenofseers]

God, it is awful. Anything most people would call "maternal" in Cassandra really isn't; it's more that she has a massive sense of responsibility, and tends to notice when the people around her are fucking up. And even in the times she's turned out to be in over her head, she still tends to notice a multitude of flaws in their actions. She wants to believe things can be different.

So her approach to Martin is more about...knowing he can change, she supposes. Learn things about the world. It'd be wrong not to help him.

"How did you meet him, anyway? I didn't even know you had a kid with you until...the shitshow went down. He doesn't seem like somebody who'd go out asking for help on his own."

[ct_7567]

"I found him."

This, at least, is his own story to tell, and he's aware that Cassandra will want a bigger, better explanation than that. Unfortunately, Rex can't provide that. The way he and Martin wound up together makes absolutely no sense, not even to Rex, and he knows he'd be hard pressed to explain it to anyone who actually knows him as the soldier he is, not whatever he's become since he got here. Rex himself doesn't care to think much about what he's become either. It's too strange, too complicated.

"It was his first day out, and he nearly got himself run over in the streets. I helped him out and sent him packing to his assigned housing. Figured the government would take care of the rest." He tilts his head towards their backyard, now squared away as the place where Martin does... that gross thing he does. "Found him a few days later sleeping in my backyard. So I told him he'd be staying with me from now on. And that's exactly what happened."

As though it's not daft for a career soldier, for someone with absolutely no experience with kids to take one in full-time after finding himself on a strange new world without anything or anyone to lean on for assistance, as though it's not daft to take a child in like you would a stray animal, as though it's not daft that Martin just accepted it and stayed.

But it's how it worked. And for what it's worth, it's been working. He can't argue with the results.

[queenofseers]

None of that is a real surprise, but she frowns at it. Martin's situation is too extreme to comprehend, sometimes; it's not just that the world he's from seems mostly unrecognizable, but that his upbringing seems cruel and unusual if anything. She supposes it's no wonder he ended up with Rex, but she's not sure Martin would end up as surprisingly well-adjusted as Rex is.

"He already acts like he was raised by wolves sometimes, so I shouldn't be surprised about him sleeping outside..." She glances toward the house, wondering how Martin would feel if he knew people spoke of him so much. "He's a good kid, I just don't know what would have happened to him if you weren't there. He really wants to do right by you, you know. He's sweet. Just weird."

[ct_7567]

"I don't think he's accustomed to sleeping outside. He was just scared."

He's always scared. Sometimes it reminds Rex of some of his youngest brothers so keenly that he feels it in a pit in his chest, the wide-eyed terror of someone leaving everything they had known for the first time, only to find themselves thrown into the thick of things. Other times he seems so different that he may as well be another species - which, Rex keeps forgetting, he is.

He shakes his head. "I know he does. There's not a soul out there that could fault him for not trying hard enough. It's lucky that we got to him first." He glances at Cassandra, thinking of all the other kids he's had run-ins with since. "But it should have never been up to luck. By all rights, he should have never wound up with me."

He should have wound up with someone else, some kind person willing to take in a scared child, someone used to them and equipped with the skills to truly care for them in the way they need. If someone were to take Martin away now, he'd fight tooth and nail, no escaping that, but that doesn't change the truth of the situation. Rex should have never been able to take in a child like Martin and it certainly shouldn't have been as easy as telling Martin what to do. Something like that could have gone wrong in ways that he doesn't like to think about it.

[queenofseers]

The fact that Rex isn't eagerly embracing the idea of taking care of Martin surprises her. He clearly seems protective of the kid, and on top of that Martin is certainly very fond of him; she expected a little paternal pride, although she's never known Rex to be especially emotional.

His last statement, in particular, catches her. Who better for Martin to be with than Rex? She can't think of anyone.

"What are you talking about? All I can tell is that you're good for each other. You get his...weird child-soldier shit, if you don't mind me saying it. And you've got the patience to put up with all the weird stuff he thinks. Where do you think he should be?"

[ct_7567]

Rex lets out a quiet bark of laughter. "I suppose you could see it that way. We do have an understanding."

And it's true - he doesn't know that anyone else would understand Martin as well as he does. They may be better at taking care of him, well-equipped to help him rehabilitate and figure out his place here, equipped to knowing how to live a civilian life and what resources are available for a kid like Martin, but they don't have that same, bone-deep understanding that they were made for a purpose only to have that purpose taken from them. There is a sense of aimlessness that comes with that, a certain loss of identity. Rex understands what that's like because he feels it, knows that Martin feels it too.

But understanding someone doesn't mean that you should be their primary guardian.

"But look at it this way: I've never dealt with a child for more than a minute or so at a time before coming here." And even then, it had been simple things - instructing them where to go, asking where to find their guardians, inquiring as to their health or whether or not they needed something to eat, nothing that he wouldn't have also asked of an adult. He supposes there's Ahsoka, but she's hardly a child. The girl's his commanding officer, for heaven's sake. "That I was able to simply..." Adopt? No. That's not the right word, no matter how many times Andy refers to them as a family. "Pick him up off the street without so much as a background check isn't what I'd call a good thing."

He crosses his arms. "That said, he's here now. I've no interest in handing over primary guardianship to anyone else."