Bated Breath

Kada

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Broen frowned heavily and looked at Jude, them back to Zora. "I- well I mean... before I got rid of the Headmaster, probably."

He fidgeted a bit and thought about something briefly. "What all did he say exactly?"
 
Romi

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The entire thing was so out of the blue that Jude almost laughed. He had to fight back the urge. The image he'd had of Gallant had been replaced, but the idea that he was some kind of crackpot was even farther from his image of Gallant, and now he was having to try and reconcile things.

And then the gears started whirring, and pieces started to click together.

Oh. Oh. He exchanged a glance with Broen, and then turned back to Zora.

He worried he was going to hear exactly what he was going to hear.
 
Zora

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Sitting forward on the park bench a bit, Zora looked a bit strangely at Broen and Jude for a second. How could she even tell them what Frederick had said to her without sounding slightly mad herself or even accusing, she wondered.

"Well... Crawford seems to think that you murdered a man here on Manta Carlos and that now you are after him too," she told them fairly calmly, trying not to make much more of it than ravings of a paranoid crackpot as she looked at Broen almost apologetically. She felt bad for even repeating what he had told her.
 
Kada

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"Oh. Well, that wasn't..."

Broen sighed. Had he not told Zora this? He wracked his brain, unsure. Surely it had come up at some point. But the more he thought about it, the bigger his friends got.
"Fuck..."

Looking at Jude apprehensively, then glancing up to Zora, Broen outwardly flinched and grimaced. "I killed a man, yeah. It wasn't here on the island. It was back in London. When I first showed up. He looked just like him and I knew it was him." He quickly added in his own defense, "But he was his doppleganger and I was still under the Headmaster's influence. Now? He's not worth the effort it'd take to pick up the fuckin fire poker..."

He winced again, unsure of what would happen now that she knew he had blood on his hands. Well. More blood than she was aware of.
 
Romi

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If Jude had the ability to simply fall backwards into a pocket dimension, he would have. Things were unbelievably awkward from more or less the moment Zora said it. It was clearly she thought it was completely ridiculous, but there it was--the truth.

Broen had killed someone. He'd killed the man his father almost was.

"This explains it, though," Jude said quietly, trying to make things less insufferably awkward. "Why he's in hiding. He found out about that and now he thinks you're coming to him, so he's trying to hedge his bets. He probably has some amount of security in there or something. But at least at home he can guard himself more."
 
Zora

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Zora's eyes widened when she heard Broen's confession and then narrowed as she regarded him quietly. She was not quite sure whether she should be angry or not. She knew that the Broen here before her now was not the same man who came through the portal all those months ago. That one had been possessed by something evil that even now the thought of the Headmaster chilled her.

Glancing at Jude then, her gaze inscrutable, Zora just shook her head. This was just... surreal. Jude had known too and said nothing... Not sure what to say to all this, Zora just took a long second before answering.

"No more secrets, okay?" Zora said finally as she glanced meaningfully at Broen and then at Jude. "I .. I am not mad, or angry... I am just, I don't know, surprised, confused, but not, if that makes any sense.." she confessed tiredly, feeling a tension headache coming on.

"I told Crawford that if you had killed somebody that looked like him, then there was probably a reason for it," she told them honestly and with a sigh, not realising how close to the truth her glib accusations had been.
 
Kada

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Broen was... yeah it was as bad as he'd thought. His stomach folded in on itself and he crumpled the bag of his snacks he was holding. He was one hundred percent cringe in this moment.

"Yeah I'll... do my best on that front. At the time I didn't think it was important. But..." Broen looked up at Zora and kin of set his jaw. "You told him what?" That implicated her. Any and all chance that Fredrick didn't know she was involved with him was gone. Broen's frown only grew. "There was no good reason for it. He didn't do anything to me. He just looked like my old man. That's it..."
 
Romi

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Oh god. Oh god, it was awful. It was obvious she hadn't been told anything, and everyhting she said... Jude's cringe was on a whole other level. Crawford no doubt realized she was connected to Broen now, if he hadn't already, and the idea that there was a good reason...

He liked Broen. He liked him a lot. He considered him one of his best friends. But he wouldn't go that far. Broen had done a truly awful thing, and trying to explain it away.

"I'm going to, uh," Jude said quietly. "Go over there. Just wave me down when you need me, but this feels like a... like a personal thing."

He didn't want Zora to feel like they were teaming up on her, and the whole thing was awkward enough as he quickly scooted away to the far side of the park. Enough he could see them, but enough he wasn't going to hear what they were saying.
 
Zora

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Zora just nodded at Jude when he said that he was going to leave them alone to talk, she could guess why he had wanted to give them space and truthfully, she didn't blame him.

As soon as he left, she looked at Broen, pursed her lips together and sighed. "I did not implicate you," she said. "The comment I just made now was not in context." she said as she got up and sat beside him.

"Crawford was trying to make it seem like because you had killed the other man, you did it in cold blood and without any reason behind it," she explained quietly as she watched Jude walk away a little bit and watch them talk.

"I know that you didn't do it, not like that, not like he implied. I was basically trying to tell him that kids don't lash out at their parents unless their parents had done something to them," she said as she looked at Broen meaningfully.

"And don't worry, he's too self-absorbed, I think, to even know what I was getting at, " she said with a frown.
 
Kada

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Broen waited until Jude was out of earshot, watching him go and internally screaming a bit. Fuck why was he alone with this now? He turned back to Zora, inhaling sharply. "Yes? That is... like exactly what happened? Zora, Fredrick Crawford, aka the superhero Gallant, aka the man who actually sired me is the one who did all those things. Dorian Crawford, as far as I know... fuck he didn't do anything. Certainly nothing to me. The only thing he said was hey what are you doing in my house? before I hit him the first time."

He just kind of stared at her, slack jawed and a little horrified as all that realization hit him as hard as it did.
 
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