xp_logs | Amanda and Adrienne

x-adrienne.livejournal.com posting in

After this encounter with Nico, Adrienne takes her questions and fears to Amanda, and gets some good advice on how to deal with troubled girls from someone very familiar with the situation.

A karaoke bar seemed to Adrienne like the perfect place to meet with a witch and discuss magic, since both karaoke and magic confused the hell out of her and both were the hobbies of crazy people, or so she'd always thought. She sipped a glass of red wine almost nervously as she watched the other patrons fighting over which songs they were going to sing from the tatty, food-stained, finger-printed books on each table. "I'm starting to think this was a bad idea," she muttered to her wine, cringing at the off-key, decibel-shattering rendition of 'Love Hurts' being blasted by a teen girl in a Hello Kitty shirt with pink hair obscuring her entire face.

Amanda winced. "And people say I can't sing," she muttered, taking a gulp of her beer. "What on earth possessed you to choose this place to talk, Adri?" she asked louder. "Feel like a bit of aural torture or something?"

"I don't know if Kane would approve of you giving me oral torture," Adrienne pointed out, "but then again..." She smirked and waved off the mental image that statement wrought. "I just figured it was a place where no one would be able to overhear us, and even if they do they're probably more crazy than the topic I need to discuss and they won't think anything of it."

"That sounds ominous." Amanda said, leaning back in her chair and getting more comfortable. "What mess are you in this time?" It was said with a teasing tone.

"Why is it everyone I'm fond of sees me as this trouble or mess magnet?" Adrienne asked in a whiny tone, though the question was rather rhetorical since she did seem to get herself into messes fairly often. "But now that you mention it, there was a bit of a mess- not literally, well unless you count what's in my head. Sometimes I wonder if the section of my brain that stores images to play everything I've ever read back in perfect clarity will ever get full... never mind." She pushed her wine away; clearly she'd had enough already.

"Anyway. You explained to me once before about Nico's magic coming from blood, or a bad place or what have you and how it could tempt her to do the wrong thing? When you said that, did you mean in the sense that that staff of hers could be a sentient being? That it could think for itself and tempt her, influence her physical actions and how she interacts with other people?"

Amanda froze in the act of picking up her glass and then leaned forward. "Wait," she said urgently. "Go back to the beginning. What about the Staff of One? What the fuck happened?" All signs of humour or casual interaction were gone, the witch all business now and almost... frightened?

"Nico was meditating in my classroom," Adrienne began, flicking her silver lighter over the fingers of her right hand distractedly, "the staff was out, on a desk. I went in to read some of the desks to make sure no one was cheating on their latest math test. The fucking staff moved. Put itself right in my fucking hand and I read it. Strangest reading I've ever experienced- different sensations, perspective. When I woke up Nico was claiming it did it on its own, and I remembered you saying that it could tempt her to do things, so I want to know if that thing jumped at me because of my powers, if it wanted me to see what I saw, if it can think and if it's going to decide to kosh some poor unspecting student on the head next time."

"Oh bloody buggering fuck." Fortunately it was hissed under Amanda's breath rather than said out loud, since the feeling behind the cursing would have gained attention even in the noisy bar. "I haven't had a chance to get much on the thing on my own - there's not a lot in the literature. What did you see?"

"Umm, well, I saw her naked in bed with a fat naked man who had either raped or was attempting to rape her until she used the staff to incinerate him, and I was nearly able to get myself out of the reading there- I even opened my fucking hand but it was as if the thing was attached to me with glue or something- but it was if it pulled me back in because it wanted me to see more. I saw its creation. By some witchy woman flying above a village. Talking about a servant and master, doing a chant thing. She looked like Nico, but not exactly. Fangs. Black eyes, but permanently, whereas Nico's only do that when she uses her magic? The chant made some wind appear? This would be a lot easier if you were a telepath and could see it in my mind," she grumbled, and her lack of concentration had her dropping her lighter so it clattered onto the table. "The wind... it was if it ate this village. The entire thing disappeared, and the wind swirled into the witchy woman, and then this golden light came out and it became the staff. Pretty trippy, huh? I got out of it but then it was like the images just kept hitting me, and my circuit breaker kicked in and I passed out."

"Hell's bells." Amanda was already making a mental note to talk to her student about the incident - there was plenty here that need to be addressed. "A whole village... Fuck, we're talking some serious blood sacrifice." She met Adrienne's eyes. "Would you be up to having one of the 'paths read the scene for me? I think I'm gunna need some fine details if I'm going to work out what the fuck this Staff is and whether it actually does have a mind of its own." The fact it stayed out of sight whenever Amanda was around was certainly a telling point, however.

"You mean create a link between my mind and yours? Or have them take the image from my head and put it in yours? Or do you mean have them read it in my head and relate it to you in words? Because I can be just as detailed as any telepath in explaining it to you in words if that's what you want," Adrienne pointed out, feeling a twinge to her pride. "But I'd wanted to speak to Emma about it anyway, 'see if she can erase it for me the way she erased what I saw in Remy's staff, so if she can create a link for you to see it or implant it in your head that's fine. What is it about staffs being so fucking evil?" she asked as a side note. "So you don't know if it has its own agenda or not? Why it showed me what it did?"

"A link or putting it into my head," Amanda clarified, grimacing a little at the thought of a telepathic link - she still had Issues. "I don't doubt you could explain it all to me, but you don't know magic and so you wouldn't know what to look for or what you were actually seeing in terms of the ritual." She chewed on her thumbnail a little, thinking. "I can't say for sure now - I haven't had enough experience with the bloody thing to know one way or another - but it's not a good influence. Problem is, there's no way to seperate it from Nico without killing her - that much I do know. So I'll keep on keeping an eye on her and trying to get her to avoid using it where she can."

"If it's a part of Nico, that means it really was an ancestor I saw creating it? It was passed down through the bloodline because it's a part of her or something?" Adrienne's curiosity was piqued enough that she wished she'd read more of the staff's history between its creation and Nico's summoning it. Not that she was curious enough to ever touch it again, considering the way it had controlled her power when it was forcing her to see what it wanted. "Maybe there's something in historical reference about her grandmother and great-great-great grandmother witches in her ancestry using it; witness accounts, things like that? And you can learn more about it that way?"

"Possibly," Amanda agreed. "Magic runs in families and an artifact like the Staff that needs to be bound to a person, could easily have been handed down from generation to generation. It's probable her parents were going to bind her to it eventually, only she got in the way and wound up with it sooner than they'd expected, without the training. But yeah, I should be able to dig up some info on her family through the network. Generations of dark magic users? They're bound to have cropped up before."

"Her parents sound pretty fucked up," Adrienne muttered, taking her wine back and draining the glass. "Well, hopefully you can learn more about it from your network. I would offer to read it again for you, but I'm growing a little weary of getting knocked to the floor in pursuit of answers. If you need me to do it, however," she amended, making a face, "I'm at your disposal, as usual. The thing just creeps me the hell out. I've never felt that sensation of having something else controlling my readings before."

"Black magic doesn't usually mix well with parenting. I've mentioned the bloke who stole me and brought me up, haven't I?" Amanda said wryly. "Nico's gunna need a lot of help if she's going to get past this sort of history, but I don't think it will come down to another reading. If anything, if it is aware, I don't want it catching on that we're onto it." It sounded daft, talking about an inanimate object in this way, but such was the world of magic. Cities with personalities and evil sentient sticks. "Do me a favour? Nudge her towards Samson for the abuse stuff? If you saw her being raped or close to, she'll need to talk about it and I don't know if she'll tell me."

Adrienne nodded curtly. "I'll try." She let out an annoyed sort of sigh. "She asked me what I saw when I mentioned seeing her using the staff, but I couldn't even tell her, because I knew if I told her, it would open up a conversation about it, and I... I don't know how to talk to her about something like that. Brings up too many personal demons I can't even face," she admitted, "I've never even talked about my own experiences with anyone, which makes trying to give advice and comfort to someone else seem even more ridiculous to me. But she didn't seem bothered by it, if she guessed what I saw, so maybe she would talk to you about it. Or Samson. I'll try to get her to talk to someone, yeah."

A snort escaped her as she found herself chuckling unexpectedly. "Funny how you get burned by a kid you wanted to help so you tell yourself you're not gonna help anyone else cuz you don't wanna get burned anymore, and then you just go and do it all over again when the next kid comes along."

"If I can winkle it out of her, I'll take her myself," Amanda promised. "I just don't want her thinking there's a huge conspiracy behind her back." She smiled wistfully then at the other woman. "I never really got it before, why keep trying when they throw it back in your face. The thing is, and I know this from personal experience, is that sometimes kids are too stupid to appreciate the help at the time. So they act up and get into trouble and sometimes they hurt people. Doesn't mean they don't still need the support. Nico's my student, for better or worse - I'll stick by her."

Adrienne spun her lighter around the table distractedly. "How do you do it?" she asked, sounding pained. "I understand what you're saying and I've got the personal experience to match it- getting into shit and hurting the people who wanted to help me, pushing them away and being too stupid to care at the time." Like she'd done to Emma. "But it was always my experience that eventually people give up. Everyone has to have a breaking point." Like Morgan had said, sometimes people were just rotten to the core. "How do you not hit your breaking point? I've been trying, with Cammie," she admitted, "but she doesn't want me to stick by her, because she doesn't believe she's worth it. How do you support someone who doesn't want your help? How can you not give up on them?"

"Because a bunch of people gave up on me," Amanda replied simply. "And I nearly was gone for good. I went over to Selene, asked her to help me instead. And all it was going to cost was my soul." She gulped at her beer, washing away the taste of that particular memory. "Remy and Pete tho', they were there for me, no matter what. And that saved me. Now it's my turn to repay the world the favour and help out Nico before she winds up getting someone killed, like I did."

"Aww, you're just like the Little Mermaid with the evil sea-hag," Adrienne commented with a smirk, though she quickly regained seriousness. "Maybe it's a timing thing then. Maybe because I was old and set in my ways before I met people who stuck by me, it just hasn't sunk in yet about sticking by people." Her head dropped onto the table with a thud. "This is ridiculous. Even if I did know how to help Cammie, she doesn't want to be helped. I think that's the difference between her and Nico? I know Nico would be devastated if she hurt someone," she pointed out, remembering how upset the girl had seemed over Adrienne losing consciousness and the actions of the staff. "I think she wants to be helped, she wants to be better than she is. Cammie wants to believe she's worthless. I don't understand that at all. I was never like that; even for all I pushed people away, it was because I wanted to make my own way, not because I didn't believe I was worth people believing in me."

"I have no idea what you mean by the sea-hag thing, but I'll believe you," the witch snorted. "And the thing is, it's when we don't think we're worth helping that we need it most of all. Cammie's got a lot of front - she's got a power that means anyone who does get close to her runs the risk of getting sick and possibly dying. That's a hell of a lot to put on a young kid. She pushes people away because she wants to keep them safe - I get that, I did the same when I was hooked on the magic way back when. So it's basically up to you to decide if you want to keep trying or not. She won't make it easy and she'll disappoint you over and over again because it's the only thing she knows how to do. But if you think she's worth it, then you'll keep going back to prove it to her."

"And if I do keep going back, then eventually she'll wise up and turn into you?" Adrienne queried, smile playing around the corner of her mouth. "'Cuz that would be good."

"That I can't guarantee. But Kurt seems to see the good in her, so there's a chance." Amanda shrugged and finished her beer. "Hey, you want to get out of here and find somewhere less painful? My ears are gunna start bleeding soon."

"Aww," Adrienne pouted, "but I wanted to hear you sing me some Journey! Or maybe ABBA!"

"There are several countries where my singing has been declared a cruel and inhuman punishment," the witch replied darkly. "Just ask Manuel."