Amanda, Adrienne - Wednesday
Jun. 4th, 2008 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsHaving dropped off Angelo's car, Amanda comes across Adrienne and takes advantage of the moment to talk to her about Bedlam.
Humming to herself, Adrienne tested the soil in the flats of seedlings she was keeping on the smoker's porch, watering can at the ready. She was on her knees in front of the wilting plants in black capris and a red cotton tshirt in a new design she hadn't found a buyer for yet, willing herself not to get upset over the fact that the little seedlings weren't doing so well. They needed to be planted at her house in Boston, but the NYPD weren't being too understanding about the necessity of Adrienne taking another trip out of town when she'd been away three times in the past month. Where was Emma with her mind-wiping abilities when you needed them?
Approaching footsteps had her jumping in fright, sloshing water on the porch and herself, but she forced herself to act casual instead of whipping around to see who was coming. "Whoever you are, you'd better not be coming to blow smoke on my plants- they're sick enough as it is."
"'S just me," came a familiar British-accented voice, and Amanda climbed the last of the steps, raising her eyebrows at the sight of the normally-impeccable Adrienne kneeling down with water all over her. "And yeah, judging from the look of those, they need all the fresh air and sun they can get. The evil habit can hold off a bit longer." She tucked her cigarettes back into the pocket of her inevitable leather jacket. "I've been meaning to track you down, actually."
"They came all the way from Ireland and I don't think they're very happy with the fact that the nice policemen won't let me bring them home to Boston to get planted," Adrienne answered with distaste souring her voice. She'd relaxed when Amanda first spoke, but by the time the blonde had finished, Adrienne was feeling uneasy again, making an assumption as to why Amanda wanted to track her down. "Nice to see you back here in one piece," she said with a nervous smile. "What's on your mind?"
Amanda reached into her pocket, pulling out a small package wrapped in tissue paper. "Thank you present," she said with a grin at the other woman's obvious unease. She knew exactly why Adrienne was worried. She held out the gift for her to take. "'S not much, but Ange and Emma told me what you did and I wanted to show my appreciation."
"I didn't mean to- what?" Stunned, Adrienne fumbled the package as she reached to take it in one hand and barely managed to catch it in the other before it could fall through the deck. "A-a present?" When was the last time anyone had given her a present without having an ulterior motive behind it? Never? Guilt reared its ugly head and contorted the blank look on her face. "I-I shouldn't- I can't- I publicized the fact that you were back when I shouldn't have, just to spite Emma- I can't accept a gift from you; it doesn't feel right, you should be hitting me or something..." She held the tissue-wrapped gift back out to Amanda, sheepish.
Wrinkling her nose and shaking her head, Amanda made a shooing gesture. "Take it, go on. What you did... 's worth more than one little fuck up that doesn't really matter any way. I doubt anyone..." Well, except Manuel and Emma. "...even noticed. 'S not like anyone's pinning me down and demanding to know why they were lied to and wanting to know where I was." Her grin turned wry. "Besides, I've been kidnapped often enough they're probably grateful they didn't have to know and worry about it. After the fact? Well, I'm okay, and they can see that."
"Emma noticed," Adrienne corrected, still feeling wracked with guilt. "I shouldn't have used your kidnapping to push her buttons - I'm sorry for that." She was a little confused as to why she felt guilty- it wasn't as if screwing someone over to annoy an enemy was an alien concept for her, and she'd rarely felt guilty before- but she did. It was probably the present that was causing it, she reasoned. "I didn't even do that much. I tried to find your medallion, to use that, but I couldn't find it." Amanda's 'kidnapped often enough' comment made her shiver. "I've said it before and I'll say it again, getting kidnapped once was one more time than I ever needed. I don't even know why I'm still here. How do you cope with it?" She held the gift-wrapped package out to Amanda again.
The witch deliberately put her hands behind her back, refusing to take the gift back. "Make jokes," she replied ironically. "It helps cope with things to laugh about it, at least with me. You have to laugh or you scream, you know?" She shrugged. "And you might not think you did much, but you gave Ange hope when he was losing it, and that means huge amounts to me."
"I've been told I don't have a problem making serious issues seem frivolous, so I suppose I shouldn't have trouble laughing this off." Except she was having trouble. Canting her head towards Amanda in silent thanks, Adrienne tugged carefully at the edges of the tissue paper until she'd freed a beautiful Zippo lighter from the gift wrap. She felt a lump come to her throat when she flipped it over her fingers, admiring the weight, and noticed her initials embossed on it in fancy scrawl. "I don't know what to say," she mumbled, managing to find her way to a patio chair so she wasn't kneeling on the deck any longer. "This is... thank you. I- it's so sweet of you, I-" she shrugged with a laugh, at loss for words. She pulled two cigarettes from a pack in her back pocket and used the lighter to light them both. "I don't think the plants will mind if we stay a little ways away," she grinned, holding one out to Amanda. "You're very lucky to have someone like Angelo," she said with a nod in response to the witch's comment about having given him hope. "He would have gone into Hell itself to find you."
Amanda noted the emotion and gave Adrienne a nod in return, accepting the cigarette with a small smile. "Well, I have the professional help too - I've got Sofia and Emma tag-teaming at the moment to put my head back together after losing my marbles for a while there. But if I sit and think about all the shite that happens too much... well, been there, done that, had the whole emo teenager making fucked up choices thing to show for it." Again another grin and a gesture with the lit cigarette. "And yeah, Ange'd do anything for me. Which is a bit scary sometimes - I worry 'bout him being stuck in the middle too much sometimes, trying to be two different things."
Adrienne inhaled deeply as she continued to flip the new lighter over the fingers of her one gloved hand (the other glove having been removed to keep clean while she'd been digging in the plants). "'Emo teenager' works as a valid excuse for so many bad choices these days, doesn't it?" she asked with a wry laugh, "I wish I'd been able to use that one. So how do you figure you're causing Angelo to be two different things, if you don't mind my asking? What's he stuck in the middle of?"
Leaning back in her seat, Amanda took another drag as she thought about how to proceed. Adrienne had seen the team in action, and she wasn't stupid. "Well, you know about the X-Men, yeah?" she asked first, partly to confirm and partly to give herself time to think of the best way to talk about it. Emma's warning still rang in her ears, but she'd also seen Adrienne's reaction to being 'caught out' as it were.
"Scott mentioned Angelo was an X-Man," Adrienne confirmed, not wanting Amanda to feel like she was confessing something she shouldn't be. "I just wasn't sure that's what you meant: that the two 'different things' were boyfriend and X-Man. I also know about you and Emma's secret group," she said with a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I came by under the cover of darkness and read the brownstone when I was returning from one of my fun-filled interrogation sessions on Monday night. I don't usually read buildings as they tend to cause awful headaches, but was curious about Emma's little on-the-side organization after speaking to Garrison and Scott. Plus, I feel the need to show Emma I can keep a secret when it suits me."
There was a long moment where Amanda just stared at Adrienne, mouth agape. And then she threw back her head and laughed. "Well, that's one way to get around the whole awkward 'there's stuff I do that I can't tell you about because if I do I'll have to kill you', thing," she replied at last, when she was able. "You sure you don't want a job with our lot? You're sneaky enough."
Adrienne shared Amanda's laughter. "That was exactly my thinking. I didn't want to put certain people in compromising positions for saying anything to me - the wrath of Emma is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy - yet I really, really wanted to know what was going on." She took a satisfied drag on her cigarette, convinced Amanda's reaction meant she wouldn't go running off to tell Emma. "No offense," she added with a smile, "but I wouldn't take a job with you guys if you gave me... well, no matter what you gave me. Not for all the cigarette lighters in the world. I had more than my fill of adventure last week. I don't think all the jokes in the world would allow me to cope with that sort of emotional trauma on a daily basis."
"Well, at least you get why I couldn't say anything. With what we do, the people we do it to... any outright connection between the Trenchcoats and Snow Valley and our cover's fucked and so are we. Not to mention the school - if we're the anonymous bastards, they can't hit back at us through the kids. And if you people don't know anything, well, it keeps you safer too." A certain cynical tone had entered Amanda's voice as she spoke of her job. "And it's why I worry 'bout Ange - what I do... we do it because someone needs to. The X-Men... they're heroes. They're good people, and there are things they need to avoid doing if they want to stay that way. Ange... he's still trying to work out which side of the fence he's on and it doesn't help that the two most important people in his life are on different sides of it."
"Trenchcoats... that has a nice ring to it," Adrienne chuckled. "Wait, you're saying if the group wasn't anonymous, we'd be even less safe than we are now? That's a truly frightening thought." She shook her head amusedly, then fell silent as she considered the rest of Amanda's words, and the implications that went with them. The X-Men didn't kill- she knew that much. So the 'sides of the fence' weren't too hard to figure out. "Like you said, you do what you do because someone needs to," she pointed out quietly, knowing what she'd done to Steven had put her firmly on Amanda's side of the fence. There was a lot she wanted to say, about not believing Amanda wasn't a good person just because of what her job required of her; that she had to believe good people could inhabit both sides of the fence. Instead, all she could come up with was: "good people are highly overrated. They're not much fun."
Amanda chuckled at that, blowing smoke out in a long stream. "Well, I can't deny it's a hell of a lot of fun sometimes. Even when we're being shot at." She grinned at Adrienne. "But I'm kind of odd that way."
Humming to herself, Adrienne tested the soil in the flats of seedlings she was keeping on the smoker's porch, watering can at the ready. She was on her knees in front of the wilting plants in black capris and a red cotton tshirt in a new design she hadn't found a buyer for yet, willing herself not to get upset over the fact that the little seedlings weren't doing so well. They needed to be planted at her house in Boston, but the NYPD weren't being too understanding about the necessity of Adrienne taking another trip out of town when she'd been away three times in the past month. Where was Emma with her mind-wiping abilities when you needed them?
Approaching footsteps had her jumping in fright, sloshing water on the porch and herself, but she forced herself to act casual instead of whipping around to see who was coming. "Whoever you are, you'd better not be coming to blow smoke on my plants- they're sick enough as it is."
"'S just me," came a familiar British-accented voice, and Amanda climbed the last of the steps, raising her eyebrows at the sight of the normally-impeccable Adrienne kneeling down with water all over her. "And yeah, judging from the look of those, they need all the fresh air and sun they can get. The evil habit can hold off a bit longer." She tucked her cigarettes back into the pocket of her inevitable leather jacket. "I've been meaning to track you down, actually."
"They came all the way from Ireland and I don't think they're very happy with the fact that the nice policemen won't let me bring them home to Boston to get planted," Adrienne answered with distaste souring her voice. She'd relaxed when Amanda first spoke, but by the time the blonde had finished, Adrienne was feeling uneasy again, making an assumption as to why Amanda wanted to track her down. "Nice to see you back here in one piece," she said with a nervous smile. "What's on your mind?"
Amanda reached into her pocket, pulling out a small package wrapped in tissue paper. "Thank you present," she said with a grin at the other woman's obvious unease. She knew exactly why Adrienne was worried. She held out the gift for her to take. "'S not much, but Ange and Emma told me what you did and I wanted to show my appreciation."
"I didn't mean to- what?" Stunned, Adrienne fumbled the package as she reached to take it in one hand and barely managed to catch it in the other before it could fall through the deck. "A-a present?" When was the last time anyone had given her a present without having an ulterior motive behind it? Never? Guilt reared its ugly head and contorted the blank look on her face. "I-I shouldn't- I can't- I publicized the fact that you were back when I shouldn't have, just to spite Emma- I can't accept a gift from you; it doesn't feel right, you should be hitting me or something..." She held the tissue-wrapped gift back out to Amanda, sheepish.
Wrinkling her nose and shaking her head, Amanda made a shooing gesture. "Take it, go on. What you did... 's worth more than one little fuck up that doesn't really matter any way. I doubt anyone..." Well, except Manuel and Emma. "...even noticed. 'S not like anyone's pinning me down and demanding to know why they were lied to and wanting to know where I was." Her grin turned wry. "Besides, I've been kidnapped often enough they're probably grateful they didn't have to know and worry about it. After the fact? Well, I'm okay, and they can see that."
"Emma noticed," Adrienne corrected, still feeling wracked with guilt. "I shouldn't have used your kidnapping to push her buttons - I'm sorry for that." She was a little confused as to why she felt guilty- it wasn't as if screwing someone over to annoy an enemy was an alien concept for her, and she'd rarely felt guilty before- but she did. It was probably the present that was causing it, she reasoned. "I didn't even do that much. I tried to find your medallion, to use that, but I couldn't find it." Amanda's 'kidnapped often enough' comment made her shiver. "I've said it before and I'll say it again, getting kidnapped once was one more time than I ever needed. I don't even know why I'm still here. How do you cope with it?" She held the gift-wrapped package out to Amanda again.
The witch deliberately put her hands behind her back, refusing to take the gift back. "Make jokes," she replied ironically. "It helps cope with things to laugh about it, at least with me. You have to laugh or you scream, you know?" She shrugged. "And you might not think you did much, but you gave Ange hope when he was losing it, and that means huge amounts to me."
"I've been told I don't have a problem making serious issues seem frivolous, so I suppose I shouldn't have trouble laughing this off." Except she was having trouble. Canting her head towards Amanda in silent thanks, Adrienne tugged carefully at the edges of the tissue paper until she'd freed a beautiful Zippo lighter from the gift wrap. She felt a lump come to her throat when she flipped it over her fingers, admiring the weight, and noticed her initials embossed on it in fancy scrawl. "I don't know what to say," she mumbled, managing to find her way to a patio chair so she wasn't kneeling on the deck any longer. "This is... thank you. I- it's so sweet of you, I-" she shrugged with a laugh, at loss for words. She pulled two cigarettes from a pack in her back pocket and used the lighter to light them both. "I don't think the plants will mind if we stay a little ways away," she grinned, holding one out to Amanda. "You're very lucky to have someone like Angelo," she said with a nod in response to the witch's comment about having given him hope. "He would have gone into Hell itself to find you."
Amanda noted the emotion and gave Adrienne a nod in return, accepting the cigarette with a small smile. "Well, I have the professional help too - I've got Sofia and Emma tag-teaming at the moment to put my head back together after losing my marbles for a while there. But if I sit and think about all the shite that happens too much... well, been there, done that, had the whole emo teenager making fucked up choices thing to show for it." Again another grin and a gesture with the lit cigarette. "And yeah, Ange'd do anything for me. Which is a bit scary sometimes - I worry 'bout him being stuck in the middle too much sometimes, trying to be two different things."
Adrienne inhaled deeply as she continued to flip the new lighter over the fingers of her one gloved hand (the other glove having been removed to keep clean while she'd been digging in the plants). "'Emo teenager' works as a valid excuse for so many bad choices these days, doesn't it?" she asked with a wry laugh, "I wish I'd been able to use that one. So how do you figure you're causing Angelo to be two different things, if you don't mind my asking? What's he stuck in the middle of?"
Leaning back in her seat, Amanda took another drag as she thought about how to proceed. Adrienne had seen the team in action, and she wasn't stupid. "Well, you know about the X-Men, yeah?" she asked first, partly to confirm and partly to give herself time to think of the best way to talk about it. Emma's warning still rang in her ears, but she'd also seen Adrienne's reaction to being 'caught out' as it were.
"Scott mentioned Angelo was an X-Man," Adrienne confirmed, not wanting Amanda to feel like she was confessing something she shouldn't be. "I just wasn't sure that's what you meant: that the two 'different things' were boyfriend and X-Man. I also know about you and Emma's secret group," she said with a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I came by under the cover of darkness and read the brownstone when I was returning from one of my fun-filled interrogation sessions on Monday night. I don't usually read buildings as they tend to cause awful headaches, but was curious about Emma's little on-the-side organization after speaking to Garrison and Scott. Plus, I feel the need to show Emma I can keep a secret when it suits me."
There was a long moment where Amanda just stared at Adrienne, mouth agape. And then she threw back her head and laughed. "Well, that's one way to get around the whole awkward 'there's stuff I do that I can't tell you about because if I do I'll have to kill you', thing," she replied at last, when she was able. "You sure you don't want a job with our lot? You're sneaky enough."
Adrienne shared Amanda's laughter. "That was exactly my thinking. I didn't want to put certain people in compromising positions for saying anything to me - the wrath of Emma is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy - yet I really, really wanted to know what was going on." She took a satisfied drag on her cigarette, convinced Amanda's reaction meant she wouldn't go running off to tell Emma. "No offense," she added with a smile, "but I wouldn't take a job with you guys if you gave me... well, no matter what you gave me. Not for all the cigarette lighters in the world. I had more than my fill of adventure last week. I don't think all the jokes in the world would allow me to cope with that sort of emotional trauma on a daily basis."
"Well, at least you get why I couldn't say anything. With what we do, the people we do it to... any outright connection between the Trenchcoats and Snow Valley and our cover's fucked and so are we. Not to mention the school - if we're the anonymous bastards, they can't hit back at us through the kids. And if you people don't know anything, well, it keeps you safer too." A certain cynical tone had entered Amanda's voice as she spoke of her job. "And it's why I worry 'bout Ange - what I do... we do it because someone needs to. The X-Men... they're heroes. They're good people, and there are things they need to avoid doing if they want to stay that way. Ange... he's still trying to work out which side of the fence he's on and it doesn't help that the two most important people in his life are on different sides of it."
"Trenchcoats... that has a nice ring to it," Adrienne chuckled. "Wait, you're saying if the group wasn't anonymous, we'd be even less safe than we are now? That's a truly frightening thought." She shook her head amusedly, then fell silent as she considered the rest of Amanda's words, and the implications that went with them. The X-Men didn't kill- she knew that much. So the 'sides of the fence' weren't too hard to figure out. "Like you said, you do what you do because someone needs to," she pointed out quietly, knowing what she'd done to Steven had put her firmly on Amanda's side of the fence. There was a lot she wanted to say, about not believing Amanda wasn't a good person just because of what her job required of her; that she had to believe good people could inhabit both sides of the fence. Instead, all she could come up with was: "good people are highly overrated. They're not much fun."
Amanda chuckled at that, blowing smoke out in a long stream. "Well, I can't deny it's a hell of a lot of fun sometimes. Even when we're being shot at." She grinned at Adrienne. "But I'm kind of odd that way."
