03-03-2014, 03:35 PM
Payback's a Verbena Witch
There is a sluggish start to Tuesday morning. Amelia wakes up slowly. Even before her eyes crack open - and crack they do, lashes tearing free of lashes glued together by dried salt water overnight - she knows that this is wrong. The feel of the sheets against her skin is wrong, the smell of the room is wrong. When she manages to peek her eyes open, she looks at the crack between the blackout curtains and the fall of the light is wrong.
Today is the day that she makes everything right, or almost everything. First things first. There are morning rituals to be observed, so a shower is taken, her teeth are brushed, her hair is combed. She puts on a clean t-shirt and yesterday's jeans beneath her heavy winter coat, pushes her feet into her Vaans, and heads out. There's a McDonald's close to the motel where she gets a McGriddle and hash browns before getting the hell out again.
The first stop is Andy. Young and stupid even at twenty-six, Amelia figures he's going to be the easiest to find and she's not wrong. After all these years he's still working at the same auto shop. She enters, asks after him and as luck would have it (luck, hah, like she's not very good at bending fate to suit her purposes) Andy's working today. Someone called in sick and he had to take his place. After a few minutes of waiting Andy enters the lobby from the garage, dressed in dark blue coveralls and wiping his hands on a dirty rag. His hair is a dirty, grimy brown stiff with grease from running his filthy hands through it over and over throughout the morning. His eyes are a bright clear blue that can become quite wide, as they do when they settle on the tall red haired woman.
"What's the matter, Andy? You look like you've seen a ghost." He has, she's dead, she's supposed to be dead, he saw her dead didn't he? She knows, but she can't help the quip as she jerks her head, indicating they should go outside. Stunned, the younger man can only follow her out into the harsh, bitter Pennsylvania winter.
The cold here is harder than the cold in Denver. It crystallizes in the lungs and pierces to the bone. Andy, stepping out without a coat, furiously rubs his hands together to warm them, but stops when Amelia turns to face him. The Arctic Circle would be warmer than being trapped in that cold, hard, angry stare.
"You're going to delive a message to Cody and Eli for me."
He tries to shrug her off. How much can she have changed in the last few years? She's still the nerd, the scientist, and he remembers the daughter of the junkie didn't fall far from the tree. "Why should I--"
"Don't." He throws up his hands, hey hey don't hurt me, and that icy look of hers turns positively glacial as she steps into his space. She feels empowered and she feels fucking ecstatic, but most of all she feels desperate. Desperate people can do some amazing things, he's seen it himself a time or two. And he has no idea of the power coiling around her now, the way she digs her nails into her palm hard enough to draw blood so she can focus.
"That didn't work for me," she says, her voice so low it's nearly lost on the wind despite their closeness. "I don't have to let it work for you. You're going to deliver a message to them for me. Tell them to meet me at the field at two o'clock this afternoon." Her own message delivered she turns and starts to walk away across the parking lot.
"Which field!" he shouts after her. Without pausing, she turns to glare at him over her shoulder. "The only one that matters!" she calls back, and she lets go of her weaving.
=====
Two o'clock rolls around and no one is at the field in question. It's not really a proper field, more a snow-covered expanse between a freeway and a shopping complex. Not really the best place to dump a body, but they were trying to make a statement. They were leaving a message and now, after all of these years, she's making her own statement.
A little after two a car pulls into the lot not far from her. Amelia slides down in the seat of her rental, watching them. She is a steak knife sitting on the passenger seat, its serrated edge stained pinkish, and a swath of sticky dried blood dabbed on her left forearm. Magic coils around her again, hovering near her until she sees one, two, three people step out of the other vehicle. Andy either decided or was dragged along. Chances are, it's the latter. No matter. He is not her target.
She watches them for a few minutes, gathering the last few tendrils of the Tapestry where she wants them to be, making up a pattern as she does. Outside the men are talking. One of them smacks Andy upside the head, no doubt annoyed at having his time wasted. The other one is searching, searching, searching, there. He sees her seated in her car and starts toward her, but goes no more than two steps when he feels it. It starts as a dull throbbing ache in their right shoulders and it spreads from there. She does not cause any physical harm to them, but it feels like she does. It feels like their legs are broken, their ribs cracked. It feels like the bone wants to break free of the skin of their arms. Amelia doesn't have the knowledge to fill them with her memories, her fear from that day, her abject terror. She can do something this, though. She can make them feel her pain.
Two of the men, Cody and Eli, drop to the ground to writhe helplessly in the snow and the frozen concrete, with Andy standing over them, bewildered and confused. Amelia spares him the slightest glance before dropping to a crouch between the men.
"I don't think you'd be here if you didn't know who I am." If not for an undercurrent of fury she would almost sound conversational. "Do you want this to stop?" Taking their groans, their creaks and guttural sounds for yesses, she pulls a plain white bottle that rattles with pills from her pocket. "I know you've assaulted someone recently," that's a lie, she's assuming, but she doubts her assumption is off the mark. "You're going to turn yourselves in. Both of you, now. Do you understand?" Again, their whimpers are taken for yes. Untwisting the cap, she shakes two pills into her palm before closing and pocketing the bottle again.
"What's that?" asks Andy.
"The antidote." Another lie. It's acetaminophen. She shoves a pill a piece into each of the men's mouths, not terribly concerned they'll try to bite her. She may not trust in people's emotions, but she does trust in their survival instinct. They want this pain to end, she'll make it end. Once she's sured they've swallowed what she's given them she rises.
"Where's Vincent?" This to Andy, who looks down at his...what, comrades? Friends? He could do better, or maybe he could have done better. Maybe it's not too late for him. Amelia shifts, limbs adjusting like to move toward him and the movement catches his attention. He startles and he takes a step away from her. Part of her feels satisifed, yes, be afraid. Know what I went through.
Another part of her is not so happy. He was always just a kid to her, an underclassman who fell in with the wrong crowd. It makes her think of those kids in Boulder she and Pan found. They were young and stupid, too, and on their own. But their stupidity had one of them leveling a shotgun at her, so. Her pity for him, for all of them, is a fragile, temporary thing, a slip of paper burnt to a crisp when the memories flare up in her mind's eye.
"H-he's at the shop. We got some, some new product in," he offers, but in hopes of what she does not know and does not care. Already she's turning away.
"Make sure they do as they're told, Andy. You're not going to like it if I have to come back." When she gets to the car, she lifts her Working and lets them go.
=====
The shop is a small house in a neighborhood well out in the suburbs. It's quiet there when Amelia pulls up to the curb. She does a scan of the area, namely the house. It's not completely empty but she doesn't count many Life patterns. When she thinks she feels the one she's looking for her body tightens and her teeth grind, but she holds herself back. She does not go tearing off inside of there. Falling back into the old trap will accomplish nothing for her.
The steak knife she stole is already filled with Prime energy. Now she waits, carefully braiding and bending the strands of Fate around those patterns she feels. The four people inside are probably aware that an old problem has surfaced to come calling, stirring up dirt where the dirt should have been settled years ago. They think they're prepared for the scientist. Those unlucky bastards don't know what's coming.
It's a nice, quiet little neighborhood. The residents to eiter side of this house likely have their suspicions about the people who use it, they've seen them, they've seen the sorts of people who come here. They're not going to cause any trouble by looking out in its direction when a pretty redhaired woman walks up the drive to knock on the front door. Soon as it's opened she pushes past the one who stands there, one of the guards, a lackey or something, she doesn't care. She just ducks beneath his arm and slips inside.
"Hey you can't-!" he tries, but she lets Fate drop around him and all the others. The man at the door starts for her, but trips over a bend an area rug and falls to the floor, knocking his head into the edge of a coffee table, rendering himself unconscious. Somewhere, two other thumps sound as the other two fall into a flailing jumble of limbs from which they won't be escaping any time soon.
Amelia moves through the house to find the one she seeks, and she finds him in a back room lounging in a chair watching the television. It's an act, it must be, no one comes here to relax, it's not a vacation home.
"Vincent," she says, leaning against the door jamb. He looks at her and he gives her a queasy smile that turns her stomach. He looks the same as the last time she saw him. Very round and not very tall, with greasey blonde hair that's fading to white at his temples. His dark eyes twinkle with malice at her.
"Amy! Long time no see," he says, like he's surprised, but there's a gun in his hand that he aims at her. "I should have done this years ago," he grumbles, like he's been reminded he needs to do the dishes or clena out a cat box. Amelia's blood goes cold at the sight, and a tingle of fear travels up her spine. If he shoots her, she still has a chance, if he shoots her...He pulls the trigger but the gun jams in his hand. Instantly, that fear turns to a fire of hate and anger and sadness and grief. She crosses the room, knife in hand. She presses it to his throat, and for one, two, ten, thirty seconds she struggles with the desire not to slice across the soft, pudgy flesh. All that anger that she kept locked away inside of her comes loose, because of what he did to her, what he allowed to be done to her. It was his voice coming from the front seat warning the others "Not yet." It was he who said, "You know what, forget it, it shouldn't be this hard to fuck a girl." He was the one who entangled her mother and made their lives hell. If it wasn't for him she wouldn't have had to run away. She wouldn't have gone to Denver and Jim wouldn't have met her and everything would be okay.
Even as she thinks it she knows that it's not true. She doesn't know what fate would have befallen the Cultist if she hadn't met him. She doesn't know what road her life would have taken if she'd never left or if she'd never Awakened. Tears well up in her eyes and as they spill over her hot, reddened cheeks, Amelia knows she's not going to do this. She's not going to kill him because she's not a murderer. Much as she would like to be in this moment.
Swiping at her cheeks, she says to him, "You're going to sit here. And the police are going to come and they're going to put you away for a long long time." Yes, justice. Not vengeance. Justice. That will still make things right, and keep her soul from turning very black.
He has the audacity to laugh at her. Probably because he knows she's not going to kill him. She doesn't have the guts. "You think they can keep me away?" he asks, incredulous. "You think I won't come for you when I get out?" He starts to move but she presses the knife to his throat a little harder. One of the little edges catches and tears at his throat. His eyes widen, because that pain is surprising. It can't be pleasant feeling your Pattern tear. Amelia's eyes narrow on him.
"I do, and you won't. You're going to stay where they put you because if you get out I'm coming back and I'm going to put you in the ground. For me and for everyone else you've ever hurt."
"You gonna put me next to your ma? Man I gotta say, I miss lookin' at that ass of hers, did you get it? Turn around for me, sweetheart, let me--"
Her eyes widen, then narrow as they fill with tears. Her hand shakes, tearing at his skin a little more and a little more. His eyes squeeze shut and he grunts with the pain of it. Finally, she pulls her hand away from him because if she doesn't she's going to kill him. She's going to kill him she's going to kill him she's going to--
Suddenly she traightens. Straining her ears, she hears it. Hears them. Sirens coming in the distance. She smiles down at him. Andy said they had a shipment today. With Fate working against them, no one in here is going anywhere until Amelia's out of range or lets them go. Pocketing the knife, she steps away. "No." She backs out of the room, and if she knocks into something on her way so what. This is enough, she tells herself.
This is enough.
=====
niko @ 11:30PM
In other news, magic dice, let me know a thing. [WP, +2]
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 2 ) VALID
jamie @ 11:31PM
What was that
Samael @ 11:31PM
Witnessed!
niko @ 11:31PM
Nothing ¬_¬
niko @ 11:32PM
Again
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 1 ) VALID
niko @ 11:32PM
And again
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 1 ) VALID
niko @ 11:32PM
And in conclusion
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7) ( fail ) VALID
niko @ 11:32PM
Awwwww
jamie @ 11:32PM
http://i.imgur.com/NQHKSVE.gif
niko @ 11:33PM
Hahahaha
There is a sluggish start to Tuesday morning. Amelia wakes up slowly. Even before her eyes crack open - and crack they do, lashes tearing free of lashes glued together by dried salt water overnight - she knows that this is wrong. The feel of the sheets against her skin is wrong, the smell of the room is wrong. When she manages to peek her eyes open, she looks at the crack between the blackout curtains and the fall of the light is wrong.
Today is the day that she makes everything right, or almost everything. First things first. There are morning rituals to be observed, so a shower is taken, her teeth are brushed, her hair is combed. She puts on a clean t-shirt and yesterday's jeans beneath her heavy winter coat, pushes her feet into her Vaans, and heads out. There's a McDonald's close to the motel where she gets a McGriddle and hash browns before getting the hell out again.
The first stop is Andy. Young and stupid even at twenty-six, Amelia figures he's going to be the easiest to find and she's not wrong. After all these years he's still working at the same auto shop. She enters, asks after him and as luck would have it (luck, hah, like she's not very good at bending fate to suit her purposes) Andy's working today. Someone called in sick and he had to take his place. After a few minutes of waiting Andy enters the lobby from the garage, dressed in dark blue coveralls and wiping his hands on a dirty rag. His hair is a dirty, grimy brown stiff with grease from running his filthy hands through it over and over throughout the morning. His eyes are a bright clear blue that can become quite wide, as they do when they settle on the tall red haired woman.
"What's the matter, Andy? You look like you've seen a ghost." He has, she's dead, she's supposed to be dead, he saw her dead didn't he? She knows, but she can't help the quip as she jerks her head, indicating they should go outside. Stunned, the younger man can only follow her out into the harsh, bitter Pennsylvania winter.
The cold here is harder than the cold in Denver. It crystallizes in the lungs and pierces to the bone. Andy, stepping out without a coat, furiously rubs his hands together to warm them, but stops when Amelia turns to face him. The Arctic Circle would be warmer than being trapped in that cold, hard, angry stare.
"You're going to delive a message to Cody and Eli for me."
He tries to shrug her off. How much can she have changed in the last few years? She's still the nerd, the scientist, and he remembers the daughter of the junkie didn't fall far from the tree. "Why should I--"
"Don't." He throws up his hands, hey hey don't hurt me, and that icy look of hers turns positively glacial as she steps into his space. She feels empowered and she feels fucking ecstatic, but most of all she feels desperate. Desperate people can do some amazing things, he's seen it himself a time or two. And he has no idea of the power coiling around her now, the way she digs her nails into her palm hard enough to draw blood so she can focus.
"That didn't work for me," she says, her voice so low it's nearly lost on the wind despite their closeness. "I don't have to let it work for you. You're going to deliver a message to them for me. Tell them to meet me at the field at two o'clock this afternoon." Her own message delivered she turns and starts to walk away across the parking lot.
"Which field!" he shouts after her. Without pausing, she turns to glare at him over her shoulder. "The only one that matters!" she calls back, and she lets go of her weaving.
=====
Two o'clock rolls around and no one is at the field in question. It's not really a proper field, more a snow-covered expanse between a freeway and a shopping complex. Not really the best place to dump a body, but they were trying to make a statement. They were leaving a message and now, after all of these years, she's making her own statement.
A little after two a car pulls into the lot not far from her. Amelia slides down in the seat of her rental, watching them. She is a steak knife sitting on the passenger seat, its serrated edge stained pinkish, and a swath of sticky dried blood dabbed on her left forearm. Magic coils around her again, hovering near her until she sees one, two, three people step out of the other vehicle. Andy either decided or was dragged along. Chances are, it's the latter. No matter. He is not her target.
She watches them for a few minutes, gathering the last few tendrils of the Tapestry where she wants them to be, making up a pattern as she does. Outside the men are talking. One of them smacks Andy upside the head, no doubt annoyed at having his time wasted. The other one is searching, searching, searching, there. He sees her seated in her car and starts toward her, but goes no more than two steps when he feels it. It starts as a dull throbbing ache in their right shoulders and it spreads from there. She does not cause any physical harm to them, but it feels like she does. It feels like their legs are broken, their ribs cracked. It feels like the bone wants to break free of the skin of their arms. Amelia doesn't have the knowledge to fill them with her memories, her fear from that day, her abject terror. She can do something this, though. She can make them feel her pain.
Two of the men, Cody and Eli, drop to the ground to writhe helplessly in the snow and the frozen concrete, with Andy standing over them, bewildered and confused. Amelia spares him the slightest glance before dropping to a crouch between the men.
"I don't think you'd be here if you didn't know who I am." If not for an undercurrent of fury she would almost sound conversational. "Do you want this to stop?" Taking their groans, their creaks and guttural sounds for yesses, she pulls a plain white bottle that rattles with pills from her pocket. "I know you've assaulted someone recently," that's a lie, she's assuming, but she doubts her assumption is off the mark. "You're going to turn yourselves in. Both of you, now. Do you understand?" Again, their whimpers are taken for yes. Untwisting the cap, she shakes two pills into her palm before closing and pocketing the bottle again.
"What's that?" asks Andy.
"The antidote." Another lie. It's acetaminophen. She shoves a pill a piece into each of the men's mouths, not terribly concerned they'll try to bite her. She may not trust in people's emotions, but she does trust in their survival instinct. They want this pain to end, she'll make it end. Once she's sured they've swallowed what she's given them she rises.
"Where's Vincent?" This to Andy, who looks down at his...what, comrades? Friends? He could do better, or maybe he could have done better. Maybe it's not too late for him. Amelia shifts, limbs adjusting like to move toward him and the movement catches his attention. He startles and he takes a step away from her. Part of her feels satisifed, yes, be afraid. Know what I went through.
Another part of her is not so happy. He was always just a kid to her, an underclassman who fell in with the wrong crowd. It makes her think of those kids in Boulder she and Pan found. They were young and stupid, too, and on their own. But their stupidity had one of them leveling a shotgun at her, so. Her pity for him, for all of them, is a fragile, temporary thing, a slip of paper burnt to a crisp when the memories flare up in her mind's eye.
"H-he's at the shop. We got some, some new product in," he offers, but in hopes of what she does not know and does not care. Already she's turning away.
"Make sure they do as they're told, Andy. You're not going to like it if I have to come back." When she gets to the car, she lifts her Working and lets them go.
=====
The shop is a small house in a neighborhood well out in the suburbs. It's quiet there when Amelia pulls up to the curb. She does a scan of the area, namely the house. It's not completely empty but she doesn't count many Life patterns. When she thinks she feels the one she's looking for her body tightens and her teeth grind, but she holds herself back. She does not go tearing off inside of there. Falling back into the old trap will accomplish nothing for her.
The steak knife she stole is already filled with Prime energy. Now she waits, carefully braiding and bending the strands of Fate around those patterns she feels. The four people inside are probably aware that an old problem has surfaced to come calling, stirring up dirt where the dirt should have been settled years ago. They think they're prepared for the scientist. Those unlucky bastards don't know what's coming.
It's a nice, quiet little neighborhood. The residents to eiter side of this house likely have their suspicions about the people who use it, they've seen them, they've seen the sorts of people who come here. They're not going to cause any trouble by looking out in its direction when a pretty redhaired woman walks up the drive to knock on the front door. Soon as it's opened she pushes past the one who stands there, one of the guards, a lackey or something, she doesn't care. She just ducks beneath his arm and slips inside.
"Hey you can't-!" he tries, but she lets Fate drop around him and all the others. The man at the door starts for her, but trips over a bend an area rug and falls to the floor, knocking his head into the edge of a coffee table, rendering himself unconscious. Somewhere, two other thumps sound as the other two fall into a flailing jumble of limbs from which they won't be escaping any time soon.
Amelia moves through the house to find the one she seeks, and she finds him in a back room lounging in a chair watching the television. It's an act, it must be, no one comes here to relax, it's not a vacation home.
"Vincent," she says, leaning against the door jamb. He looks at her and he gives her a queasy smile that turns her stomach. He looks the same as the last time she saw him. Very round and not very tall, with greasey blonde hair that's fading to white at his temples. His dark eyes twinkle with malice at her.
"Amy! Long time no see," he says, like he's surprised, but there's a gun in his hand that he aims at her. "I should have done this years ago," he grumbles, like he's been reminded he needs to do the dishes or clena out a cat box. Amelia's blood goes cold at the sight, and a tingle of fear travels up her spine. If he shoots her, she still has a chance, if he shoots her...He pulls the trigger but the gun jams in his hand. Instantly, that fear turns to a fire of hate and anger and sadness and grief. She crosses the room, knife in hand. She presses it to his throat, and for one, two, ten, thirty seconds she struggles with the desire not to slice across the soft, pudgy flesh. All that anger that she kept locked away inside of her comes loose, because of what he did to her, what he allowed to be done to her. It was his voice coming from the front seat warning the others "Not yet." It was he who said, "You know what, forget it, it shouldn't be this hard to fuck a girl." He was the one who entangled her mother and made their lives hell. If it wasn't for him she wouldn't have had to run away. She wouldn't have gone to Denver and Jim wouldn't have met her and everything would be okay.
Even as she thinks it she knows that it's not true. She doesn't know what fate would have befallen the Cultist if she hadn't met him. She doesn't know what road her life would have taken if she'd never left or if she'd never Awakened. Tears well up in her eyes and as they spill over her hot, reddened cheeks, Amelia knows she's not going to do this. She's not going to kill him because she's not a murderer. Much as she would like to be in this moment.
Swiping at her cheeks, she says to him, "You're going to sit here. And the police are going to come and they're going to put you away for a long long time." Yes, justice. Not vengeance. Justice. That will still make things right, and keep her soul from turning very black.
He has the audacity to laugh at her. Probably because he knows she's not going to kill him. She doesn't have the guts. "You think they can keep me away?" he asks, incredulous. "You think I won't come for you when I get out?" He starts to move but she presses the knife to his throat a little harder. One of the little edges catches and tears at his throat. His eyes widen, because that pain is surprising. It can't be pleasant feeling your Pattern tear. Amelia's eyes narrow on him.
"I do, and you won't. You're going to stay where they put you because if you get out I'm coming back and I'm going to put you in the ground. For me and for everyone else you've ever hurt."
"You gonna put me next to your ma? Man I gotta say, I miss lookin' at that ass of hers, did you get it? Turn around for me, sweetheart, let me--"
Her eyes widen, then narrow as they fill with tears. Her hand shakes, tearing at his skin a little more and a little more. His eyes squeeze shut and he grunts with the pain of it. Finally, she pulls her hand away from him because if she doesn't she's going to kill him. She's going to kill him she's going to kill him she's going to--
Suddenly she traightens. Straining her ears, she hears it. Hears them. Sirens coming in the distance. She smiles down at him. Andy said they had a shipment today. With Fate working against them, no one in here is going anywhere until Amelia's out of range or lets them go. Pocketing the knife, she steps away. "No." She backs out of the room, and if she knocks into something on her way so what. This is enough, she tells herself.
This is enough.
=====
niko @ 11:30PM
In other news, magic dice, let me know a thing. [WP, +2]
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 2 ) VALID
jamie @ 11:31PM
What was that
Samael @ 11:31PM
Witnessed!
niko @ 11:31PM
Nothing ¬_¬
niko @ 11:32PM
Again
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 1 ) VALID
niko @ 11:32PM
And again
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 1 ) VALID
niko @ 11:32PM
And in conclusion
Roll: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7) ( fail ) VALID
niko @ 11:32PM
Awwwww
jamie @ 11:32PM
http://i.imgur.com/NQHKSVE.gif
niko @ 11:33PM
Hahahaha