Ward Meachum is totally fucked. Seriously. And not for the first time, either. Actually, it sort of feels like this happens every other month or so. This time, though, oh, this time, he’s really done it.
He hasn’t been in America for fifteen years. Exactly one half of his life. The thing is, fifteen versus thirty is a huge gap, but time has ways of being funny when you’ve been hopping dimensions and training as a mystic warrior. It slips away, loops back on itself and spins. Ward keeps being startled by his own reflection.
All things considered, it’s fitting to be back here at the beginning. Where else do you go when the story’s run its course? Circles and all that.
Ward looks up at the skyscraper in front of him. It’s got that kind of height that makes you dizzy, that makes the world zoom out a bit. He hasn’t seen anything that tall (outside of dreams and visions and the like) since he left. He hasn’t seen a lot since he’s left. Or maybe he’s seen everything. What’s the difference, anyway?
Of course, it’s New York, and he hasn’t entirely forgotten New York, and he was expecting the hundreds of people milling around him, he just wasn’t expecting to be so… calm about it. When he was younger, he hated crowds, couldn’t be in them without crying or clinging to his mother. He was an anxious, angry kid, and he’s grown into a bitter, angry adult, but apparently, the knowledge that you could kill any passerby without breaking a sweat does wonders for paranoia. He can feel them around him. He would know if he was in danger.
He crosses the street without waiting for the light to change. A car honks at him and he gives it the finger.
There it is. Rand Enterprises. It’s the same, mostly. Not much to be done to the outside of some glass and concrete monolith like all the other glass and concrete monoliths on the block, he supposes. That’s New York for you. Beauty from symmetry and elegance in the small differences. Dirt in the cracks. Life.
He checks his reflection in the mirror. Unsurprisingly, the intercontinental journey hasn’t been kind to him. He’s skinnier than he remembers being a month ago, and his hair is hanging in his eyes. He blows it up off his forehead and glances at his clothes. Nothing special, just whatever he could grab from the first Goodwill he found. Cleanish jeans and a black tee shirt. Half-dead Converse with Sharpie on them. Classy, Ward, really classy.
“You have to look nice for the party tonight, sweetheart. It’s just a tie.”
“Your clothes are your introduction and your equipment. Choose wisely, and choose subtly.”
Ward shakes his head, blinking. Is this what it feels like to split in two? Ward Meachum the billionaire’s kid has been making his reappearances ever since Ward Meachum the Iron Fist stepped on that first boat away from K’un L’un.
He dismisses the child and opens the door. A businessman he feels like he must have seen before nearly flattens him.
“‘Scuse me, kid.”
Ward stops, turning to watch him go, and nearly gets hit again. Wow. Okay, so maybe interacting with other people would be a bit more of a change of pace than he’d originally planned for.
He steps through the door and dodges the last of an outgoing stream of businesspeople, walking up to the counter with what he hopes is the appropriate gait for a long-last heir to the company and not a magical warrior very, very far out of his element.
“Hello, welcome to Rand Enterprises. How can I help you?” The front desk lady’s nice, at least.
“Uh, hi.” How can she help him? What the actual fuck is he supposed to say to her? Oh, hi, my name’s Ward Meachum. You know, the long dead heir to the company? Can I speak with the big boss, please? It’s not like he can challenge their master, much as he’d like to. Ward had never been one for K’un L’un politics, and right now, he was missing the simplicity of fists and meditation and long, quiet runs where no one could catch him to bother him. “Actually, never mind. Wrong building. Sorry.” He walks out before she can give him much more than a weird look.
Well, so much for walking right back into his life. Now that he thinks about it, Ward’s not exactly sure how he would have gone about that, had he been able to get through the door. Funny how that works. You have a month to think something through. But you never see the flaws until after the moment’s passed.
Now he’s back on the street. Nothing particularly new in that. He’s just got to find a way to make it in New York for a little while, long enough to figure out some next steps. Feeling at home is dangerous, he’s learned, and he needs to stay on his toes if he plans on staying ahead of them. New York no longer has any meaning to the Iron Fist, but it can be tied to Ward Meachum. Do any of them even know he is Ward Meachum?
(Is he Ward Meachum?)
Central Park is… different than he remembers. When he was young, even as he drew towards the cusp of manhood, of eighteen and inheritance and predetermined destiny, the park was a magical sort of place. It was big and different and ready at all times to take Ward out of his head and run him around in the clouds for a little while.
It’s realer now, more grounded in both the metaphorical and metaphysical sense. Ward can feel the threads of other things wrapping around him, their dynamism feeding into the power sink they find in his chi. Ward is the most powerful thing in the general area. He’s comforted by that, comforted by the way it tells him that they haven’t found him yet, haven’t even gotten close.
He breathes slowly, deeply, not only the biggest but the calmest. Controlled.
Like they want you to be.
He sucks a breath in through his teeth, arm twitching halfway through a movement. Irritability spikes through him, quick and sharp like a slap on the hand. No. He’s beyond that. He’s controlled because he wants to be, because it keeps him safe, keeps him sane, keeps him ready for whatever the fucking world he lives in decides to throw at him next.
...Which turns out to be a handful of dollar bills.
Well, they’re not thrown at him, per se, but they are tossed at the general vicinity of his empty coffee cup. The thrower, revealed when Ward opens his eyes, is a woman about his age, muscular and tallish and Asian with long hair tied up in a ponytail. She’s already walking away.
“Hey! I don’t want this.” Ward brandishes the crumpled money in the general direction of the retreating figure.
She turns around. “What?”
“I don’t want this,” he huffs. “I wasn’t asking for money, I was just practicing.” It’s true. Ward’s never done martial arts for money in his life, hasn’t even considered it. Normally, he wouldn’t turn down a buck, especially on the run like this, but it just doesn’t seem right. Disrespectful. “I wasn’t asking for money.”
“Oh.” She frowns, walking back towards him but stopping just shy of arm’s reach. “Well, keep it anyway, I guess? You’re good.” She gives him a little wave and turns around again.
Ward rescinds his proffered hand, staring after her. Huh. Alright.
Ward turns slowly in pace, trying to make out exactly what was going on. Something’s got fear dripping down the back of his throat in cold, slimy rivulets. He shivers.
Every time he looks around, the scenery changes, anything significant dancing just beyond the scope of his vision, which is tunneled as though he might pass out. From out of the foggy nothing, a hand passes before him.
“Ward.”
“What?” he hisses, spinning dizzily in search of the voice. His knees are weak. Everything’s weak.
“Ward.”
“I said ‘what?’”
Someone’s standing in front of him. He can’t see their face, but he thinks it might be Joy. “Ward, what did you do?”
“Do? I didn’t do anything.” He didn’t do anything. He didn’t. They did, though. He knows it, even if no one else does. Something sparks, and the scene changes.
He’s in his old room, but where there used to be posters, there are neat little tears in space-time. He glances into one, and it bites him. Well, not exactly, but close enough. If he steps through, he’ll be in K’un L’un. How does he know that? Do all roads lead to K’un L’un, or only one, unknowable except to those unlucky few lost enough to find it?
His dad’s there. Shit.
“Dad, what do you want?”
“Do you feel that?”
“I don’t feel shit, Dad, what are you-”
Ward snaps awake, sitting up with a gasp. His heart’s pounding, but he can’t remember what was so frightening about the dream he had. Joy, Dad, some weird circular conversations, nothing out of the ordinary for a homecoming night.
Well, sometimes, Ward’s mind does strange things. He’s long since come to terms with that.
Ward rolls his shoulders and peers into the semi-darkness of the alley. He couldn’t crash in Central Park, not with the druggies and the police and the couples having sex, which was gross, so he found an alley behind a store-apartment combo-complex sort of thing. He’s found himself forgetting words he swears he used to know now that he’s back.
Closer to the street, a door opens. Light floods the hall, warm and orangey and taken up by the fluid shadow of someone in the doorframe.
“Hey,” calls a voice. The owner of the shadow and voice comes around the edge of the door and Ward wants to scream. What are the chances? “Dude, you can’t sleep back there. I’m sorry, but the landlord’ll have my ass again.”
It’s the girl from earlier, the money girl. She steps into the alley and Ward stands up, gathering his bag and pushing his hair out of his face. “Jeez, sorry, I’ll find somewhere else,” he grouses. He doesn’t mean to be quite so harsh, but it’s the middle of the night and he’s kind of stressed and he doesn’t like meeting the same person twice, not when it’s an accident.
He steps into the pool of light and she does a double take. “Wait, you’re-”
“Yeah.”
She frowns. “Not to be rude or anything, but if you’re homeless, why weren’t you trying to collect tips? You look like you need it.”
Ward glances down at himself and bites back a harsh reply because, well, she’s kind of right. He’s dirty and his jeans have a new tear in them, one with an accompanying cut across his lower thigh. And, there’s, you know. The whole sleeping in the alley thing. “I’m not homeless,” he says instead.
“Then why are you sleeping in an alley?”
Ward does not dignify this with a response. Sometimes, things just happen. They’ve been doing that a lot lately.
“Look, man, I’m not trying to be difficult. Do you want to come in for a couple of minutes? Maybe get something to eat or drink? Like I said, you look a little rough.”
Ward looks her up and down. She’s obviously physically competent, sure, but nothing Ward couldn’t handle. He doesn’t get any sort of bad vibe from her, and he’s sort of hungry, so he relents. “Sure, why not.”
The woman starts as though she hadn’t really been expecting him to agree. “Um… alright. I’m Colleen, by the way. Colleen Wing.” She extends her hand.
Ward takes it. “Ward M- Ward.”
“Just Ward?”
“Just Ward,” he repeats, letting go of her hand.
She gestures inside. “Well, come on, Just Ward. I’ll get you some tea.”
“So,” Colleen starts, pushing a mug across the table to him. “What’s your deal?”
“What do you mean?” They’ve been sitting in relative silence for the last five minutes, or rather, Ward’s been sitting and Colleen’s been making tea with a decidedly unsure air about her. Silence had lost its awkwardness for Ward long ago, it had to, but the same is clearly not true for Colleen.
She shrugs. “I mean, you don’t sound crazy and you don’t look like a druggie. You don’t look like you’ve been hungry for a long time, you’re not really young or really old, and you haven’t asked me to make a phone call to the wife yet, so why are you out on the streets?
You don’t have to tell me, I was just trying to make conversation.”
Ward takes a moment to consider his next words. “Well, I’m not really homeless, it’s more like I’m in transit. I ran into some trouble with the last people I stayed with, and now I’m looking for the next place to stay. I have family in the city, I just haven’t been able to make contact yet.” No lies, easy to maintain. Just keep it vague, Ward. Just keep it vague. “How about you, what’s your story?” He’s searched the room for personal information, but he’s become somewhat out of touch with the normal populace.
She purses her lips, sipping her tea before responding. “Similar, actually. I’m new to the city, only been here for a few years. I don’t have family here, but I have a boyfriend and I run a dojo. It’s just downstairs.”
Ward blinks. Somehow, he’s forgotten that other people practice martial arts and go to dojos and do the whole song and dance. Of course, they go right back to their lives afterwards. “Right. You Buddhist?”
She shrugs. “Maybe once. I don’t know, you know?”
Ward raises his eyebrows and takes a drink. “Oh, I know.” Another lull comes, and with it, more comfort and human contact than Ward’s had in, well, he doesn’t know. A while, that’s for sure. It’s broken when Colleen’s phone chimes.
She flips it over and swipes at the screen. Ward’s used to touchscreens enough by now to not react strangely around them, but they’re still unsettling. “It’s my boyfriend. He’s at the door, I’m going to go let him in. Hang tight, I’ll introduce you two.”
She stands up and goes to the door, unlocking it and stepping back as it opens. “Hi, Danny. Just a heads up, I’ve got someone over. His name’s Ward. You’ve never met him before, but I’m sure you’ll get along.”
The door closes and Ward looks up. The world grinds to a halt.
There are some things you just can’t forget, things you’ll never move past, no matter how hard you try. They don’t always hurt, but they’re always there, growing and changing with you. This face is one of those things. Ward’s entirely sure of it.
“Ward, this is-”
“Danny Rand.”