[[Leo sinks down to his knees and leans sideways against to wall.|Algieba]]
He's running late and he's still not entirely sure he knows where he's going. Navigating a city like this isn't something that a person who has lived their whole life in rural north Florida gets used to in a week.\n\n[["Excuse me? Young man? Please, I need some help. Do you have a moment to spare?"|Denebola]]
It would take hours to walk to the next homeless shelter. By then it would be morning anyway.\n\n[[He has a feeling he wouldn't have much luck anywhere else either.|Z24]]
<i>Our apologies, but the Algieba Homeless Shelter Waiting List is currently at capacity.</i>\n\n[[Leo feels numb.|Z23]]
<i> We are sorry, but the Algieba Homeless Shelter is currently at capacity. Please return in the morning for a spot on the waiting list.</i>\n\n[[A smaller piece of paper is taped just under the first one.|Z22]]
Leo drops his bag and stumbles up to the stoop, caked in grime and peppered with litter and various items its inhabitants have left behind. He raises his fist to knock at the deadbolted front door. Just as his hand is about to meet with dense and ancient wood, [[he notices a sign affixed to the center of the door.|Z21]]
[[Leo hates everything about it.|S4]]
Nightclubs and bars seem to absorb the lights and sounds from the streets in the daytime and spill them out a hundredfold in the sun's absence. The lights of the crossword-puzzle windows of skyscrapers replace the constellations they blot out.\n\n[[The city is vibrant and beautiful.|S3]]
There is always something happening in the city. \nEven at night, the streams of humanity slow to a trickle, [[but never really stop.|S2]]
[["How do you know my name? What do you want with me?" Leo chokes out.|L2]]
He won't mess it up. He <i>can't</i> mess it up. Sure, watch-repair shop clerk isn't exactly the most ideal job title for an aspiring artist, but it's something, and that's better than anything he has at the moment. \n\n[[Leo checks his watch and picks up his pace.|S8]]
the energy of the city when you have no money, no job, and only the pity of a friend standing between you and the streets.\n\nIt's hard, Leo thinks, to stay excited about all the opportunities the city holds for a young painter in his prime while relying on the charity of (notoriously unreliable) friends to keep a roof over your head.\n\n[[But today is his first ever interview.|S7]]
[[the people|S6]]
It's hard to enjoy [[the lights|S5]]
It's autumn in the city, and Leo Hartman pulls the collar of his jacket up around his ears. Wind cleaves apart the dense mass of his dark, overgrown hair. His cheeks are red, raw, and chafed from hours of job hunting from streetcorner to streetcorner.\n\n[[His hands are fists in his pockets as he cuts through the endless river of foot traffic overflowing into the streets and alleys around him.|S1]]
From the folds of his ripped and ancient clothes, Mister Chertan pulls a huge, solid gold key on a golden chain.\n\nLeo's mouth falls open. [[So the old man really did have money after all...|C16]]
Algieba was the worst this town had to offer. The dirtiest, the biggest, the poorest. [[If there was space anywhere else, that's where these people would be too.|Z25]]
Leo checks the intersection as Mister Chertan strides down the pavement ahead of him, limping slightly. They're only a few blocks away from the nearest homeless shelter, maybe Leo can...\n\n[[Mister Chertan takes a sharp left turn, veering off the main road and into a little alley so small Leo almost didn't notice it.|C14]]
Leo sighs and falls back into line behind the old man. Mister Chertan has hardly exchanged ten words with him during the course of their journey through the city, but Leo can't help but feel like he's already in too deep.\n\n[[He can't just let this strange, silent, slightly off-kilter old man wander to his death in the streets.|C13]]
But Mister Chertan ignores him. Instead he picks up his pace, shaking off the hand that Leo tries to place gently on his shoulder.\n\n[["We're...almost there..." the old man says, a determined gleam in his vacant eyes.|C12]]
Try another path.\n\n<<timedgoto "Start" 3s >>
"No one's in here, Mister Chertan," Leo says. He pushes the door open for the man to reveal a room full of pitch darkness. Leo notices that the doorframe looks slightly scorched. "See?"\n\n[[Mister Chertan pushes past Leo and runs into the carvernous darkness without another word.|C18]]
"They're here. My children are in here," the old man says, pushing the key into the lock of a tall door, hidden in the shadows. Chipped and faded black paint marks the door as the entrance to the Regulus Center. Whatever <i>the Regulus Center</i> had once been, it was clear that this building had been out of commission for years now.\n\n[["Please, help me get to them..."|C17]]
He is sitting at a street corner. His clothes are torn and caked in filth. He is empty. He is watching people come and go. He is hungry. He is tired. He is looking for something but he is not yet sure what.\n\n[[He speaks to the shifting, flowing, stream of faces.|Ras Elased]]
"Hey!" Leo says, sneakers skidding on the pavement as he whips around to follow. "What are you doing? Mister Chertan, I seriously doubt that your kids are..."\n\nMister Chertan ignores him again, this time in favor of fumbling with [[something around his neck.|C15]]
Leo had taken it upon himself to get familiar with as many local homeless shelters as he could before moving to the city. Just in case.\n\n[[What Leo lacked in luck, he more than made up for in planning ahead.|C11]]
"Excuse me? Young man? I need some help, do you have a moment to spare?"\n\n<<timedgoto "beginagain" 3s >>
Two figures are illuminated. A man and a woman stand side by side dressed all in white, almost identical but for their hair. The woman has an afro, like Leo, but hers sits like a halo on her shoulders. The man at her side is shaved bald.\n\nMr. Chertan stands far to the side, just barely illuminated by the candle light. [[His eyes are filled with lucid, manic glee.|R3]]
Leo has been following the man around the city since midmorning, and now the threat of nighttime loomed on the horizon. He is trying to be supportive, trying to be the kind of caring voice that he felt certain this man had not heard in a long time.\n\n[[But being out this late was dangerous.|C9]]
"Did I do well?" [[Mister Chertan asks eagerly.|R4]]
He did not want to have to choose between saving himself and defending this old man if someone were to try to jump them. He liked to think that he would stand and fight, but he prefers not to have to test his moral conviction. Not tonight.\n\n"Come on," Leo says. "I know a few places you might be able to stay tonight. [[I'll take you there.|C10]]"
✧\n\nLeo Hartman turns around to see an old man, bewildered, shaking, obviously many years homeless, sitting on an abandoned stoop. The man's grimy fingers wriggle out into the open air from his pile of rags as he attempts to get to his feet. A thick wheezing escapes his throat as he clutches the stucco wall. Leo looks from his watch, to them man, to his watch again.\n\n[["No, I'm already late. Sorry.|Zosma]]\n[["Yeah, I guess so.|Chertan]]
✧\n\n"This tribute will be more than acceptable," says the man.\n\n"We have been waiting a long time for you, Leo," says the woman.\n\n[[A wide grin spreads simultaneously across both sets of lips.|L1]]
He is in a cell.\nHe is in the street.\nHe is in a dark room.\nHe is on the sidewalk in the dead of night.\nThe noise, the voices always chanting, the lights.\nThere is no freedom. There is no plan.\n[[There is no peace.|Rasalas]]
✧\n\nLeo averts his eyes and pulls up his collar. This interview could well be the only thing keeping Leo out of that stoop himself. Years of experience told him that counting on the charity of others to survive was most always more dangerous than remaining solitary. Involving forces beyond one's control always, <i>always</i> complicates matters, and Leo doesn't need his matters any more complicated than they already are. Risking a promising interview in favor of humoring the delusions of a mentally ill vagrant sounds to Leo like the epitome of extraneous complications to his life.\n\n"Please," rasped the old man. "I can pay you for your time. I have gold, lots of it! Please...help me..."\n\n[[Guilt sinks like tar to the pit of Leo's stomach. He sighs and turns back around. "Whatever money you have, you need more than I do, man. What do you need help with?"|Chertan]]\n\n[["I'm sorry, but I'm very busy. I can't help you."|Z1]]
"You're damn right this will never happen again! You wasted your chance, son. [[Now get out of my shop|Z9]]."
Leo feels the Red Sea crashing down around his ears.\n\nWhat could he do now? This was his only promising lead, and it had just fallen to ashes before his very eyes. He had been feeling so confident about this job that he hadn't even brought any extra resumés with him. All he has left are his sorrows [[and maybe a bottle of liquor back at the dorm he was crashing at to wash them down with.|Z10]]
He tries to let the thought of a divine plan comfort him again as it did in his youth. He came to this city to follow his dreams; he had made it this far, so perhaps this was his destiny after all. Perhaps his dreams and his fate were intertwined.\n\nIf fixing watches for minimum wage was what it took to follow his destiny, Leo decides, then so be it.\n\n[[So be it.|Z5]]\n\n~
denebola <p>(or <i>the ascension and declination of leo</i>)</p>
Leo tries to ignore his ticking watch as he extends his hand to help the man up.\n\n[["Are you alright, sir?"|C2]]
"Please," Leo gasps, still trying to catch his breath. "Mr. Zosma, I'm sorry I was late, I'm still new to the city. But I know where the shop is now! Please give me a chance! This will never happen again, [[I promise you|Z8]]."
Leo is still having a hard time believing that this is the man's real name. But it was the answer that the man had mumbled when Leo asked, so that is the name Leo calls him.\n\n"Mister Chertan, we've been wandering the streets for hours now. [[I think it might be time to call it quits|C8]]."
[[Leo feels sick to his stomach for even thinking about taking the money.|Z2]]
It had been a brief but undeniable urge. <i>Desperate times call for desperate measures...</i> he had found himself thinking. But the moment had passed, and he realized in retrospect that the chances of that man actually having more than a few cents to his name were slim to none.\n\nAnd times were not all that desperate yet. Leo still had a job interview at least. [[Maybe.|Z3]]
Leo doubles his pace, bouncing down the street, the crowd parting noisily before him, like the Red Sea. He tries to imagine himself as Moses, beginning his great mission, his destiny written in the stars.\n\n"No matter what happens, Leo," his mother had told him as a child. "Just know that God has a plan for you."\n\nThat used to make him feel better, [[but now he wasn't so sure.|Z4]]
"Yes," says the man.\n\n"Very well," says the woman.\n\n[[The candle flickers in time with their words.|R5]]
Leo notices that a huge, black circle is painted on the floor with a candle at the very center. They are all standing within it, [[except Mister Chertan.|Leo]]
He freezes.\n\n"Mister Chertan?" Leo asks. [[Ringing silence follows his words into the darkness.|Regulus]]
The man stutters, his eyes darting around through the empty air above Leo's head.\n\n"My...my children...I lost them in the city...please, help me find them. [[I can pay you!"|C3]]
[[A candle flickers to life in the center of the room.|R2]]
Unluckily, none of those preparations lead to particularly desirable outcomes. But he has no other choice now.\n\nLeo squares his jaw, sets his shoulders, and limps out of the building and into the street, [[wandering in the direction of one of the homeless shelters he had memorized directions to before moving to the city.|Z19]]
After hours of walking, the sun is set, and a darkness heavier than the bag on Leo's back has settled in around him. In this part of town, not even the glittering lights of cars and skyscrapers pierce the night and keep him company. No one in their right mind would be here at this hour if they didn't have to.\n\n[[The Algieba Homeless Shelter was just ahead.|Z20]]
Leo reads the note three times to make sure his eyes aren't failing him. After the third readthrough he drops the note to the floor and bends to pick up his biggest bag; clothes mostly, hopefully a comb and a toothbrush. He isn't feeling up to rummaging through all of his earthly belongings, measuring out what was worth taking and what was better left.\n\nAnything else worth having would be stolen by the end of the night if he tried dragging it across the city with him anyway.\n\n<i>Merry Christmas bro,</i> Leo thinks bitterly. [[<i>It's all yours.</i>|Z17]]
[[Luckily, he has prepared for this outcome.|Z18]]
[[He looks up to see a note taped to the door, bright pink paper covered in a casual scrawl.|Z15]]
<i>Hey Leo,\n\nSorry I couldn't be here to see you out. I got invited to a party with that girl Jessica from the other night! I gotta make my move, now or never man, right? You understand. Anyway, the RAs found out about you today and they said you have to move out right away. They changed the locks and everything, bro. Sorry, I hope you find somewhere else to be. Come visit sometime though, yeah?\n\n[[See you around!</i>|Z16]]
The sun is setting by the time Leo shuffles to the dorm doorstep. He had gotten lost again, and it had taken twice as long to get back from the watch shop as it had taken to get there.\n\n[[Leo feels as though he could sleep for ten years.|Z13]]
He walks down the hall in a daze, not thinking, not feeling, just tired. Until his foot collides with a pile of junk just outside the door of his shared, temporary home. Leo looks down at the unwelcome intrusion into his haze of self pity.\n\n[[<i>That's...That's </i>my<i> junk...</i>|Z14]]
Leo allows the tide of people to crash and break over him as he trudges back through the streets. [[He isn't Moses.|Z11]]
He's that asshole Pharaoh who couldn't give up his dream of having it all, and got plagued straight into eternal damnation. \n\n[[God's plan, huh...|Z12]]
"Oh man..."\n\nLeo's heart sinks. This man is almost certainly crazy. If this man had any money there was no way he would be out here in this condition. He looks old enough to be a grandfather, certainly far too old to have children young enough to be lost in the city.\n\n[[If he couldn't find them, then they probably did not want to be found.|C4]]
Leo feels his knees hit the floor and everything...goes...[[dark...|Adhafera]]\n\n~
"That is for us to know," says the woman.\n\n"And you to find out," says the man.\n\nBefore Leo can fight his constricted throat for control, [[the twins begin to chant in unison.|L3]]
"Denebola. Zosma. Chertan. Algieba. Regulus. Leo."\n\n"Adhafera. Rasalas. Ras Elased."\n\n[[<i>"Adhafera. Rasalas. Ras Elased..."</i>|L4]]
[["You cannot be serious."|Z6]]
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A man who appears to be about 60 years old, but with skin perfectly smooth and completely devoid of laugh lines looks at Leo like he has just crawled from the gutter.\n\n"Zosma's Watch Shop has been in my family for generations! You think I would risk sullying its great reputation by hiring some young'un who can't even be bothered to show up to an interview on time? [[Not a chance!|Z7]]"
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✧\n\n[["Fuck."|Adhafera]]\n\n~
[[The moment Leo crosses the threshold, the door slams shut behind him.|C20]]
[["Mister...uh...Mister Chertan?"|C7]]
"Hey! Wait! Mister Chertan!"\n\nLeo sprints in after him. In his experience, abandoned, burnt out buildings were not the safest places to hang around in the middle of the night. Who knew wht kind of people might have set up shop here. \n\nLeo tries not to think too much about the key. The door must have been unlocked the whole time. Why would a place like this need to be sealed a solid gold key? How would an elderly homeless man have stumbled across the only key? [[It made no sense.|C19]]
Leo sighs and hooks his arm through the old man's. At the very least, Leo knew of a few homeless shelters that were marginally better than this stoop.\n\n"Keep your money. [[Where did you last see them?"|C6]]\n\n~
✧\n\n[["Fuck."|R1]]
erin strubbe
Leo looks the man up and down. There is a vacant, despairing look in the man's small, wet eyes. His whole body is shaking slightly, whether from cold or nervousness or something else, Leo wasn't quite sure.\n\n[[He can't leave this man all alone to fend for himself.|C5]]
✧\n\nLeo has only been in town for a week but he can empathise with this man's circumstances. The city is harsh and unforgiving. It is a great machine, cogs ticking on and on, never hesitating to crush those who slip between the cracks of the clockwork. He has seen it happen time and time again. He certainly wasn't the first person from his town to try to make it in the big city, and he certainly wouldn't be the last, but he <i>would</i> be the one who actually made it.\n\nBut looking at this man, Leo can't help but stop. In this man he sees his friends, his neighbors, his elementary school classmates who grew up only to get lost without a trace in the city-machine. Leo needs the job and the money that comes with it desperately, but the fear and desperation are palpable in every line of this man's face. \n\n[[Leo pulls his collar up against the razor-sharp wind and steps up to the alcove the old man is hiding in. He's not sure he could live with himself if he ignored this man's cries for help.|C1]]\n\n[[Leo blinks hard to rid himself of these visions of more familiar unfortunates. This man is not his friend or his neighbor, and Leo needs to get to that interview before it's too late. "Actually, I'm sorry, but I really have to be going."|Zosma]]