If I can live through this I can do anything

[lasergrenades]

Characters: Pepper Potts, Devin Parker, and you!
Date: Throughout August
Location: Around Aifaran
Situation: Pepper gets turned tiny and is a small terror, and Devin is dealing with the fallout of Bobby's visit
Warnings/Rating: Probable discussions of torture, violence, murder


A. [Pepper] Arts 3 | Around Aifaran | Open

Not having anything particularly against Igheeri and also not being particularly busy at the moment they grab her, Pepper is willing to go along with the gag. It's clearly a serious enterprise for them, and despite literally nothing being either a style that works for her or something that isn't completely hideous, she's having fun. For the first hour, anyway. After that it starts getting a bit ridiculous, and then when she tries to disentangle herself it is not as easy as she would like. "Really, this has been super fun, but, uh, I'm supposed to be meeting a friend nearby."

B. [Pepper] To be a child again | Aug 8 - 14 | Around Aifaran | Open

Well, this is awkward. Pepper woke up about twenty-five or twenty-six once in Keeliai, and that was a bit strange but not substantially problematic. Waking up ten, however… very problematic. Part of that problem is that, while she remembers Aifaran and Keeliai and all of that history, she's also much more her ten-year-old self than her actual age in some ways: more stubborn, more chatty, and more (visibly) insatiably curious. She tries to go to work, and the Sentry tell her she'll have to wait until it wears off (it had better wear off). The kitchen counter is annoyingly high but she insists on trying to cook anyway. None of her clothes fit, which means she can go shopping but everyone treats her like the child she appears to be, and therefore don't talk to her like she's just a human being. Bakura and Gene are elected to help make the shopping nightmare bearable. More than one person is threatened with arrest.

Worse, Pepper can't wear the Rescue armor properly, and the one time she tries she falls on her face in the middle of a park. When her ka is tangible, Pepper looks almost laughably small next to the fully-armored woman, and Vee teases her once by appearing at her ten-foot height. The redhead retaliates by climbing her.

C. [Devin] Apartment | August 1 | X

Valdis tells him that Bobby is gone, and the last shred of composure Devin has been clinging to finally shatters. He doesn't sit so much as collapse heavily onto his couch, head in hands and shoulders shaking. It's over. It should have been over when they trapped her, when they fought on the most even terms possible and when Devin had the chance to just kill her. He had her life in his hands for the first time, and he didn't want it. She wasn't worth it to him; she was still a threat, to be sure, but not in the apocalyptic way he had feared. What was left to her was her ability to destroy Devin from the inside out with just words, a powerful language to manipulate reality, and the knowledge that harming people he cares about would unhinge him.

She will never remember this incident, but Devin is left trying to pick up the pieces of himself in her wake. She's gone but the world hasn't stopped spinning out of his control.

D. [Devin] The turtle's head | Mid or Late August | The Fool

It's obscenely early in the morning when Devin reaches the turtle's head. Neither his apartment nor the Fool's is a neutral enough location for this conversation, and he couldn't think of anywhere else that would be both private and neutral. Visitors usually don't show up until after breakfast here, even though it's no guarantee of complete privacy. What it does offer is a sense of calm that has evaded Devin for the better part of three months. Even if it's only by inches, it is better than nothing. There's a flat spot on the rocks that isn't carved but is like a naturally formed bench, and Devin claims the spot to watch the sun rise.

He told the Fool when he'd be there, but didn't request that he arrive quite this early if he doesn't want to. The vampire doesn't need as much sleep as most humans. He hasn't been getting it either, and it's starting to show even in the pale rays of morning.

E. [Devin] A Bar | Late August | Kit

So, a lot happened last month. A Lot. Taking on his demonic ex-girlfriend and sealing her into a giant bloody cross until she vanished from Aifaran was not undertaken lightly, and Devin has been dealing with the consequences in one way or another ever since. Getting drunk and hiding was the first order of things, but then he had to help keep an eye on a foal-sized Hellhound and was forced to stop drowning in his own self-hatred and misery for five minutes. He knows he needs to have a conversation with everyone who was involved; Valdis can wait, since the whole guardianship thing will take some more unpacking of its own and she wasn't miffed about anything but not killing Bobby. Klaus understood the gravity of her presence even if she was much less powerful than anticipated, and Devin also isn't sure how this situation will affect their already rocky interactions.

Kit, however, had objected strongly to her murder and to sealing her, and as much as Devin would like to Never Ever speak of these events again, he has to. There is too much that Kit doesn't know, and not enough familiarity between them to let this sit by the wayside. Devin purchases himself a double helping of liquor and tells the bartender he'll get Kit's, too.

F. Wildcard!

Comments

[annihilist]

Under nearly any other circumstances, Devin would not allow X to come anywhere this close. As it stands now, he both wants to push X away and collapse into his hold, and the tension between those results in him simply not moving.

Aside from the chest-aching shudders that are clearly his attempt at containing the swell of emotion that X is feeling too, that is. It helps that Devin doesn't need to say a word, as much as X knowing intimately how he's feeling is also more than Devin is equipped to deal with right now.

You're not alone. Not here, not now. People had come to his aid, and Devin isn't sure what he's done to deserve it. People had also been put at risk or harmed because of him. The rational part of him tries to remind Devin that Bobby had attacked strangers in their home world, that friendship only made the wounds worse for him as much as it made them targets.

The certainty of needing allies at his back to destroy her when he goes back feels like ice in his stomach. The hunters already insisted on that truth despite the likelihood that they'll become fodder. He needs them more than they need him, and in ways he can't bear to acknowledge yet. Devin has never really learned to deal with grief.

He shakes his head and ignores the probability that tears have escaped him. It's all too much to even consider in this moment. She's gone, and Aifaran is safe from her. The slightest lean into X is a much larger concession than the short distance would imply.

[psituational]

And X knows it. That Devin hasn't pushed him away, has instead surrendered even slightly into being held, says more about his state of mind than either of them could ever put into words. X can acknowledge, admire, and respect that unexpected intimacy even as he curses Bobby and the situation that caused it. For men like Devin, intimacy is a weakness, but for X, intimacy is a learned survival skill. And Devin has always been one of those people who trauma forges into diamond.

For many long minutes, X doesn't move. He's just there. He's there as a reminder that, even in this utterly hopeless moment, even against Devin's better judgement, he's not alone. It's many long minutes later before X tries to draw anything else out of him, and even then, it's gentle, it's soft. It's a question without obligation.

"Did she hurt anyone else?"

[annihilist]

By the time X speaks again, Devin is marginally more calm. Exhaustion weighs on his shoulders, no longer shuddering but trembling. Later, he will grapple with what has happened in these private moments with X when he has the bandwidth to consider it. For now, he does not have the space to care much.

He shakes his head. "Not that I know of," Devin mutters, and wipes away moisture at his lashline with the back of a hand. Other than him, and the few scrapes that Kit or Klaus may have gotten when they sealed her, he hasn't heard of anyone actually being injured. He takes a deep, unsteady breath and lets it out slowly. "Just-- spent time with people."

Studying them, or for fun, or because she was bored. Devin had never been certain of Bobby's motivations. She and Valdis had gotten into a scrap, but Bobby was clearly the worse for wear on that one. The entire day she spent with the Fool, however-- that still sends chills down his spine.

[psituational]

Spent time with people. There's an immediate tension in X's thoughts -- what people, where, for how long -- which he knows comes from Devin's memories. And Devin chose to say it, not as an alternative to injury, but as a companion to it. Something there is hurting him, but X doesn't have the presence of mind to pinpoint what it is. A friend, or the Fool, or even the simple knowledge of how close she'd come to people Devin cared about.

"Tell me more," says X. He's still holding Devin, still hasn't moved. "It's going to hurt, but it's important. If she came back, what would you do?"

[annihilist]

If she came back; he can't help but think it will be a when. Or, if not her, than any of the other long line of people that he's pissed off and/or murdered throughout his lifetime. It's a long list. At least the vampires he can kill repeatedly.

A hysterical little laugh leaves Devin's mouth. "I'd try the one thing no one here would let me do," he answers. He would give himself up; she can't just kill him to get what she wants and it's possible she can't extract the aspect at all here. She can kill him repeatedly - which would be horrible - but better him than other people.

"Barring that-- I don't know," Devin admits, frustrated. "If she were powerless, something similar to what we already did. If she weren't--" His breath hitches on the very idea of it. "I don't know. She's not stuck pulling puppet strings here, she can level the city for fun and running wouldn't even help--!"

Devin has no idea what the full extent of her powers are, and that is a deeply disturbing fact. Even if she and Valdis went at it, casualties would be high and there was no guarantee who would win.

[psituational]

It hurts. It hurts X as much as it hurts Devin, to talk about any of this out loud, because there aren't any good solutions. There never will be. They're at the mercy of the Dreaming for this, and Devin isn't a man who's comfortable unless he can exert control over what's happening around him. Or, failing that, unless he has full foreknowledge of what's going to happen around him.

But, X reminds himself with a deep and shuddering breath, it's not solutions that are important right now.

"You've been here longer than I have," X says. "Has the Dreaming ever had repeat visitors before?"