Amanda and Adrienne

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Amanda brings a gross present to Adrienne and the two discuss addictions and the Hellfire Club.



Cutting the ignition on her bike, Adrienne pulled her helmet off, shook out her hair, and grinned to herself when she noticed Amanda's Broomstick parked in the garage. She grabbed a baggie from the storage area of the bike and loped around to the smoker's porch in search of the witch. About twenty feet away from her destination, however, she noticed that her baggie was leaking and let out a squeal of surprise as she realized there was liquid from her knee all the way down one leather-clad leg. "Fuck! Fucking pet store fuckers!"

Amanda was indeed on the smoker's porch - while she and Angelo had split, she still had plenty of people to visit at the school and she always tended to get her nic hit before she came inside. At Adrienne's squeal, she stubbed out of cigarette and came investigating. "Need some help?" she asked, amused at the sight of Adrienne squirming around trying to deal with the leak emergency.

"Why do I always tend to spill things on myself when you're involved?" Adrienne called out in mock exasperation, making a face as she continued towards the porch. She glared at the baggie of a half-dozen snails, now sans most of their water, and set it on the rail of the porch. "Do you believe in karma? I never thought I did but if this is what happens when I take the bike out without a license, I think I'm sold."

Amanda wrinkled her nose at the bag's contents. "Dinner for you or the fish?" she asked with a grin. "'Cause I've got to say, ew."

"I know!" Adrienne agreed wholeheartedly. "But my laziness trumped the eew factor in this instance. These puppies are supposed to keep the tank cleaner so I won't have to do it as often. Plus, I don't eat fish anymore, after the poisoning incident where Manuel had to nursemaid me. That was embarrassing."

"I still don't know how you managed to eat dodgy fish," Amanda teased, pulling her cigarettes out to light up another since her other one had been interrupted. "Or get Manny to nursemaid you, for that matter. He's awful around vomit."

Adrienne shrugged and lit up her own cigarette. "Beats me. Especially considering I'd thrown up on him before; you'd think the memory of that encounter would have led him to run the other way when he saw me coming. He's not turned on by vomit or anything, is he?"

"Definitely not. And I certainly did enough of it around him when I was detoxing, so I'd know. Maybe he just likes to be useful and act the nursemaid," she suggested with another grin. "Oh, speaking of vomit, I've got something for you. Just don't upchuck on my shoes, yeah?"

The face Adrienne had been making at Amanda's mention of detoxing vanished into a look of curiosity. "I'll try," she promised, at a complete loss as to what Amanda had for her and why it might be vomit-inducing.

The witch never made a point of hiding her addiction issues - hiding them had caused half the problem - and Adrienne's icky face hadn't really mattered. She reached into her pocket again, pulling out a small polystyrene box wrapped in a plastic bag, tape securing holding the whole thing together. "A little present from Symkaria. I figured I'd been promising you enough, I'd better deliver."

Eyebrow raised, Adrienne pulled the tape off the bag and opened it, pulling the lid off the foam box and laughing out loud when she saw its contents among the dry ice it was packed in. "Christ, that is disgusting!" she cried out, though she sounded delighted. "I can't believe you actually brought me a bad guy finger!"

"Well, you bloody well nagged enough, so there you go. Cut it off some bastard involved in a Russian mutant weaponisation project meself. It was a cunt to get it into the country, so you'd better appreciate it." Amanda was watching Adrienne's reaction carefully, to gauge just how much she'd actually wanted the thing. It hadn't been a big deal to appropriate it - the bloke had been dead, after all. She just wished it had come off a certain higher-up in Symkaria. Then again, once word of Zakharov's death got out, she doubted any of his people would be safe.

Grinning widely, Adrienne lined the box up next to the baggie of snails on the porch railing and admired the two rather gross items side by side. "I do appreciate it. Thank you. You know, for all that I nagged, I didn't actually expect that you'd do it just because I nagged. You could have just told me to shut the hell up about it. You're a good friend, Sefton."

"Some people say it with flowers. I say it with severed body parts." Amanda shrugged. "I have to admit, part of it was just 'cause I wanted to see how you'd react if you actually got one."

"Well, I hope I reacted satisfactorily," she grinned. "Unless you wanted me to upchuck somewhere other than your shoes, in which case I'm sorry to disappoint." Taking a drag on her cigarette, she studied the younger woman for a moment. Now that the initial excitement over her present had passed, Adrienne's mind was whirling with questions about their earlier topic of conversation. She nearly predicated her question with an 'I'm sorry to pry', except that statement had never made much sense to her since obviously, you were trying to pry or you wouldn't be asking. "You did a detox preogramme here in New York, if Manny was with you, or did you go out west?" Her voice held a tone that indicated her question was more than just idle conversation.

"Well, I wouldn't go displaying it to your students or anything - they might wonder about your sanity," Amanda replied. Her eyebrows went up at question. "I started it here, while I was still at the school, and then finished things up down in New Orleans when I got expelled," she answered, in a tone that almost dared Adrienne to disapprove. "I was hooked on my powers, so I couldn't really do normal detox, but I had problems with booze as well. And Manny himself, if you want to look at it that way - I've got what the shrinks call an 'addictive personality' so I've got to watch myself to make sure I'm not latching onto something to cover the need for a fix." She reflected briefly that perhaps that was one of the reasons she'd moved from friendship to romance with Angelo - they'd both been having a hard time and needed something, or someone, to make the pain go away. She frowned to herself. Second guessing yourself was a right royal pain in the arse.

"Powers? Fuck," Adrienne sympathized, finishing off one cigarette and lighting another, "that's... fuck. I thought a coke addiction was bad. They don't treat powers addiction at Sierra Tuscon, last I checked," she chuckled wanly. "I don't know of any places that offer powers rehab, actually. Did you find much support when you needed the help? Despite being expelled, I mean?" It suddenly seemed very scary when Adrienne tried to think back to her own past and realized that being around so many addicts, so many people with the same problems, had been the thing to kick her habit. She couldn't imagine how hard it must have been for Amanda, especially after being expelled.

"Yes and no. I mean, people wanted to help, and they tried, but they weren't used to dealing with magic and I didn't make things easy for them. And Manny... he tried, but he only understood doing things in terms of his powers back then, and I didn't want to switch one habit for another, you know what I mean? Everything was already co-dependent enough without having me hooked on him giving me happy feelings." Amanda leaned on the railing, looking out over the lawn, eyes distant. "I got myself into a right mess trying to sort my shite out - I wound up making a deal with Selene and nearly got a bunch of people killed, as well as getting myself expelled for draining energy from people to stop Remy dying. After that, I couldn't go back to the school, too many bridges burned. There's a houdon, down in New Orleans that Remy hooked me up with. She sorted me out." She glanced over at Adrienne. "So, you've been there yourself?"

Adrienne offered Amanda a cigarette and her silver lighter in case the witch wanted another one. "I'm so old, it seems like a million years ago," she answered, trying to sound flippant. "The summer before I went to college. Someone made me go- I can't even remember who now, just that I got dragged kicking and screaming. I was such a typical case people knew exactly how to deal with me, but I didn't make it easy either. Because of the coke, I'd lost all control I had over my powers, except for me, that was what probably saved me in the end. I read so much around the Center, saw what had happened to so many other addicts, what would happen to so many more, what could happen to myself. Hell of a wake-up call." She tried to blow a smoke ring, frowned at the cloud of smoke that resulted. "I've read a little about Selene, but don't know much about her except she's in the ocean now. What did she offer you?"

"A cure. There was an...accident. I used someone as a fix - my powers were different back then, I could only latch onto magical energy sources - but after that, I would have done anything to stop the addiction." Blue eyes turned darker in memory. "And I did. Selene wanted me as her Black Knight for five years and in return, she used her magic to fix the physical need." A bitter-sounding snort escaped her. "Sort of like those programs where they use that stuff to shift the drugs from your system. Selene cured me, taught me to use people as a power source for healing and when I got expelled, I went to her to cover my end of the bargain. Only, I couldn't go through with it. What she wanted me to do... I wasn't enough of a monster to do it, and I wound up with the leather brigade saving my arse."


"The Black Court seems exceptionally fond of testing just how far people will go for power," Adrienne muttered wryly, "or rather, making people test themselves to see how far they'll go for power. Too bad for them we're much too... whatever... to go along with their shit. Pretty," she grinned. 'Good' didn't really seem like the appropriate word somehow. "Much too pretty. And we have leather-clad people to help us."

"Well, lucky for me Pete was working on the inside at the time - it was him that got Selene dropped in the river." Amanda dragged on her cigarette again. "Sounds like you've had first hand experience of what they do - I thought you weren't associating with them any more?"

Guiltily, Adrienne averted her gaze from Amanda and stared at the box containing the finger. "Well, I joined the Club for the social ties, since I had the heriditary claim," she admitted, "and I was sort of feeling out the power structures until I had an encounter with Shaw's right-hand man that involved a couch and grabby hands as a display of my powerlessness and worthlessness, and a reminder that Hellfire Club power involves doing whatever the Courts dictate."

She poked at the snails, absently wondering if she should get them into water. "I decided that I don't want or need the kind of power from those sources. I'm never going to be Emma, but I realized I'm actually pretty okay with that. We talked about it and decided I would stay on the outside, playing on my public position as an Emma-hater and not associating with either court. That way I can gather information about Shaw and Wyngarde so I can do something about shutting them down, because I believe they need to be stopped."

As Adrienne had talked, Amanda's face had stilled, her expression growing remote. "So, she got another one," she replied with a sigh. "At least you're not pretending you can change the world from inside that place, so I don't need to tell you what I told Doug. Just... be careful. That place changes people and I'd hate to lose a mate."

Offering a reassuring smile, Adrienne faced the younger woman. "It already has changed me. If I hadn't joined intending to take the power the Club offers, I never would have realized that I don't want the power the Club offers. I never would have realized that as some consequence of living here, I found integrity. I probably wouldn't have been able to face down Steven, come to terms with my feelings for Emma; probably wouldn't be dating Kane..."
The slightly stony look vanished. "You're dating the Mountie? Score!" She grinned. "So, I actually managed decent advice for a change, making you go talk to him?"

"No, because when I took your advice he said I was fidgiting and clamming up and he threw me in the pool. Twice," Adrienne retorted, though she couldn't hold the glare she had plastered on her face and broke into a smile. "Well, we've only been out on one actual date so it's nothing serious. I don't think either of us is willing to lose our friendship if the dating thing doesn't work, so we're just taking things one date at a time, which is completely foreign territory for me, honestly, but I'm treating it as if I were playing a baseball game and just trying to go one inning at a time. Do you know baseball at all?"

"Sounds like Gar. Canadians are a weird lot." Amanda finished off her cigarette and tossed the butt in the sand bucket. "But you sound like you're enjoying yourself and that's the important thing." She gave Adrienne an innocent look. "That's the game where you hit the ball and run around in a big circle, isn't it?"


Following suit with her own cigarette, Adrienne gave the younger woman a withering look. "That could also be cricket the way you're describing it. I think I may have to take you to a game," she announced benevolently. "I have a box in Boston and my team's in the playoffs, so if you ever want to check it out and experience the baseball stadium beer, food, and crowd, let me know. I think Kane's too bitter about the defeat of his beloved Jays to join me."

"In cricket you run up and down between the wickets," the Brit explained with a grin. "You want to take this somewhere with beer and comfy chairs and possibly food?"


"And in baseball you run around a diamond," Adrienne shot back with a snort. "Yes, I very much would. I just have to run this stuff upstairs and hide it from the children," she smirked, gesturing to the finger and the snails. "Are we taking my bike or your car?"

"Like I said, running around in circles," teased Amanda. "Broomstick, I think. I'm heading back to New York after any way and I kind of like having skin on my knees and elbows."


Adrienne's look was patronizingly sympathetic this time. "Sweetie, the cricket players have to get back to where they started too which makes it just as much of a circle as a baseball diamond is, does it not?" She nearly tossed the finger at the witch as her jaw dropped in mock indignation. "Hey! I don't skin people when I drive! I'm a very good driver!"

"You also don't have a licence," the witch pointed out mildly. "And far be it for me to aid and abet an upstanding staff member in breaking the law." She paused and grinned. "I only do bad guy fingers."