THE DARKEST HEARTS OF MEN // DES

[GABRIEL]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-size: 9.4pt; line-height: 1.4;"]He didn't know what had gotten into Moon. The kid always had a sharp tongue, sure, liked to give better than what he got, but there was an edge to him that hadn't been there before. It...well, Gabe shouldn't be surprised, considering he'd been tortured, and he'd seen someone he might have considered a frenemy stand on the sidelines as it happened. Regardless, Des wasn't involved in that. He wished he had the time to say that Des had been a saint compared to the rest of the people in The Typhoon, but would Moon have even believed him? Gabe was more than willing to vouch for Des, even with whatever lurked beneath the surface threatening to protrude. Was there no room for redemption anymore? For doing better? Or had all thoughts of that died with Suiteheart and Margaery? No fucking wonder The Ascendants was all out of sorts. Nothing was as it had been, and he wanted- he had wanted Des to find something here, despite his inadvertent arrival. The Ascendants could be good for him, but he wouldn't blame him for not thinking the same.

He'd gotten off on the wrong foot with one too many people for the experience to be more than bitter. Maybe he needed to have a talk with Moon about whatever was hounding him, but for now, the more physically injured kid took priority, as he had back when he crash-landed. If only everyone'd gotten the same memo about that.

Grimacing, he rubbed hard at his head, the constant throbbing beginning to really piss him off. Okay, so the list: visit Des, make sure Des isn't worse than he was before, check in with Laz, check in with Moon, try not to tear own head off. First things first, then, and he trudged off to the area for Des' recovery, occasionally passing through solid objects and unable to find it within himself to give a shit about it. Just one more thing falling apart. Nothing new in the grand scheme of life.

Poking his head into this section of the Observatory, he drew in and released several careful breaths before approaching their crashed UFO. Truth be told, shit probably would've gone better for Des if he were an alien, because evidently, all anyone gave a shit about was allegiance, so even if the aliens were hell-bent on destroying the earth, at least they weren't from The Typhoon, right? Gabe wasn't even making sense anymore. Fucking migraine, or whatever it was.

"You holding up okay in here? I brought a li'l pick-me-up." He turned his neck around, grabbing the bottle he'd kept between his wings and setting it down to roll over. "Probably not as good as your stash, but I don't think anyone's got a collection like that."
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