Jack Wilder

They're coming up on the end of all this, and Jack has one more big item on his list to check off. He's been putting it off, both out of necessity and because this is a level of thievery that he never thought he would ever consider reaching. He's stolen all manner of things without a single feeling of guilt, but stealing a body makes him feel a little like a ghoul.

Still, it has to be done. Thanks to Henley, he has a nametag bearing his real face but a fake name that gets him into the building. His own lightfootedness gets him to what looks like a break room unnoticed, and he picks up a lab coat where someone's left it draped over a chair, shrugging it on and replacing the nametag with his own fake.

The door beeps as he swipes the badge, and he lets himself into the morgue, taking a moment to adjust to the smell of formaldehyde and other chemicals before he heads for the computer. Also thanks to Henley, he knows who he's looking for: a John Doe from one of the local hospitals that's gone so far unclaimed. He just needs to find where they are.

He finds the man's file on the computer and pushes back from the desk, heading for the drawers. Somewhere across the room, another door beeps and opens, and he takes a few quick steps to duck around a corner, peeking out after a moment to look for who might have come in.

There's no immediate sign of anyone, and he reaches for a nearby gurney, heading for the drawer he needs.

From Plurk:

Questions

( Responses )

What: 6 of the times Jack called Dylan "Dad"

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The carousel in Central Park has been one of Jack's favorite places for as long as he can remember. He and his mother spent a lot of afternoons in the park; it was somewhere fun to go that didn't cost money, and a ride on the carousel was usually something she could manage even when money was low.

After her death, Jack stayed away. He had too many memories of going there with his mother, and most of his fosters didn't have the time or interest to take him anyway. As he got older, though, and started spending more and more time on the streets, that changed again, and he began to find himself drifting back. There was something warm there that he needed and had a hard time finding anywhere else. A lot of homework got done on the nearby benches when he couldn't bear to go back to whoever Madeline had stuck him with this time.

Again, the carousel becomes synonymous with safety. He again finds himself there more and more, especially when he starts doing street magic in the park to get extra money. (He never picks pockets or hustles near it; that feels like blasphemy somehow.) There are always enough people in the area around the carousel for him to draw a decent audience, and he feels like the staff approves, considering he's noticed the girl in the ticket booth watching him on more than one occasion.

The first few weeks he lives with Dylan, he doesn't get to the carousel much. He's trying to give it an actual shot, trying to set some kind of routine that will give him an actual idea of what kind of foster parent the man is. When Dylan misses their meeting with Madeline and Jack throws out all the alcohol in the house, it's the carousel he runs to, out of fear of what Dylan might do. He finds out soon enough that he didn't need to worry - and then finds out just how appropriate his fascination with the carousel actually is.

After their time in Vegas, it's a little bit of time before he gets back to the park. He has homework to catch up on from his time away, and he wants to spend time with Dylan - with his dad - to regain their equilibrium.

When Dylan goes back to work, Jack starts spending time in the park again. He goes back to his street magic but stops hustling and picking pockets altogether - though he finds a magician on MySpace who uses pickpocketing skills in his routines, and that opens up a whole new world.

The weather's just starting to get cool on the afternoon when he goes to pay for a ride on the carousel and the girl at the ticket booth glances up at him, pops her gum, and pushes his money back through the slot. "You're good."

"I'm... what?" he stammers, and she sets her magazine aside and reaches to pick up a coin, sliding it to him.

"You're good," she says again and taps the coin with a nail painted with silver glitter. As she does, Jack sees a faint spark, and the image of an eye glows faintly on the coin. She pushes the coin forward a little more and settles back in her chair, reaching again for her magazine. "Just use that like a Metro Card or whatever."

"Oh, uh. Thanks," Jack manages after a moment, and she pops her gum again and nods as she goes back to reading. Jack picks up the coin, heading for the turnstiles. Part of him is convinced for a moment that it's not going to work, but the kid at the control booth just offers him a nod as he approaches. Jack touches the coin to the top of the turnstile, and the mechanism unlocks with a clunk before he pushes through.

"Cool," he mutters and hears a chuckle, and he looks over to see the guy at the controls grinning. Jack just smirks back and steps up onto the turntable, heading for his favorite: a sleek black horse with gold and green trim and a red saddle.

The next time he knows Dylan is going to be late getting home, he takes his backpack with him onto the turntable, claiming the back seat of one of the chariots and spreading his reading out on his lap. He's lost track of how many runs the carousel's been through when he becomes aware of someone sitting down in the chariot's front seat, and he glances up just long enough to register the balding head in front of him before he goes back to his history book.

IDK, I felt like writing wing-fic.

Title: Five Times Jack Wilder Kept His Feet on the Ground and One Time He Learned to Fly
Warning for child abuse.

Jack's wings look like a magpie's, and Max's are a lappet-faced vulture.

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For the first time since before his mother's death, Jack is managing to relax. It took some effort, and he still has the occasional nightmare about things that have happened in the past, but for the first time in longer than he can actually remember, he's starting to be sure that everything's okay. If fucking up a couple of times himself didn't mess anything up, and then putting his foster in the hospital didn't get him kicked back into the system, he's not sure what he could actually do to make it happen.

To say he's cool with that is putting it mildly, too. When all this started, when he tried to rob a freaking fed and ended up getting fostered by him, he never would have imagined it. It's still beyond anything he could have imagined, between finding out that magic is real, and that he has it, and that Dylan has it, and that there's a whole bunch of other people out there with it, and finding out about the double life Dylan's been leading for years, now, like some actual high budget thriller, well. All his dreams about ending up with the perfect foster parent never looked like this, but he's pretty sure it's better.

This afternoon, he's taking up the entirety of the couch in the Brownstone, finished homework to one side of him, the remains of his after school snack to the other where he hasn't bothered to get up and put the dishes in the sink yet, and his laptop in his lap as he screws around on MySpace, looking through magic videos.

When the door opens, he glances at it long enough to make sure it's Dylan before he goes back to turning a distinctly unimpressed look at his screen.