Amanda, Pete - Aftermath
Aug. 19th, 2004 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xp_daytripper posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsAnother one for the wayback machine...
After the incident at the art exhibition, Pete goes for his usual (not)coping mechanism and devotes himself to getting very, very drunk. Pity he called Romany beforehand - she sets Amanda onto him.
Well, bollocks. The fucking bottle was empty. Still, he was sure he had
another one around here somewhere. He patted himself down, checking his
pockets. Surely that couldn't have been his spare bottle, could it? He
wasn't nearly drunk enough. Fuck. Served him right.
No, here it was. Just a half bottle. Cheap filth, too. No sense in
wasting the good stuff on a serious fucking bender. He settled back down
against the tree, and fished around for his cigarettes, fumbling with the
lighter. Eventually, he got one lit, and leant his head back against the
trunk, staring past the cherry glow up to the sky. It really was quite pretty.
Romany had called. That was possibly the most worrisome part, the fact Rom
was concerned enough about Pete to call her. Amanda frowned as she followed
the small green mote of light that was her short-range location spell,
hoping that for once the damn thing was leading her in the right direction.
She didn't know Pete as well as she could have, but she knew him better
than say, most of the students, and only some pretty seriously heavy shite
would make him lose his control like this, especially where any of the
others could see it. That, on top of the phone call, told her pete was
definitely not in a good place right now. And she was buggered if she knew
what to say to him, but Rom had seemed to think she could do some good.
Besides, there was that conversation they'd had in Jamie's tree house that
time. She owed him the attempt, at least.
There was the small red glow of a cigarette up ahead, under one of the
trees, and the location spell homed in on it, dancing around the dark shape
like a demented firefly. She cancelled the spell with a word, wincing at
the brief throbbing of her head, and sat down quietly next to Pete, not so
close she crowded him, but close enough to let him know she was there for
him. "Got a spare fag?" she asked, even though she had a full pack in her
pocket. It was as good a place as any to start.
If it'd been anyone else, he'd have told them to fuck off. Why'd it have
to be her?
"Yeah, sure." He tossed the packet over to her, and made some effort to
focus. "I'd ask what brings you out here, but I think the glowing thing
gave it away. Nice trick, though. Does it work for finding lost
socks?" He was enunciating a little too clearly, talking just a little too
slowly to hide how drunk he was.
The tactic didn't fool Amanda - how often had she tried that on various
teachers and foster families? "Only works on people an' places, an' then
it's sort of dodgy. Got a mind of it's own, sometimes." She pulled a
cigarette out of the mostly-empty packet, and began patting her pockets for
her lighter. "Rom called," she mumbled through the fag in her mouth. "Fuck,
must've left me lighter behind. Got a light?"
Pete threw her the lighter he'd been using. "It's me own bloody fault,
then. One day, I'm going to get over phoning her when I'm in a bad mood
with meself, and just stick with the getting ratted out of me tiny little
mind." He took a swig from the bottle. "What did she say?"
Pete never used a lighter. Ever. Lighting cigarettes was one of the
few non-nasty things he could do with his power, according to him. Amanda
lit up, exhaling the first mouthful of smoke before answering. "She was
worried," she replied, still coming to grips with that simple fact in and
of itself. Rom being worried was something new to her. "Said yer'd be doin'
nasty t' yerself over what happened with Nate." She shifted slightly so she
could look at him, or at least the shadows falling over his face. "Nate,
he... You had t' do somethin'."
"Yeah. But y'know what the complete cunt of it is? I completely fucked it
up, from end to end. Jumped in there with nothing better than 'hope
someone cleverer than me figures out what to do before he kills me'. He
went as easy on me as he fucking could, and I still couldn't do the fucking
job right - I was half a second from dead when you saved the pair of us.
Thanks for that, by the way." Pete took a drag on his cigarette.
"But y'know, I'd feel a whole lot better about the fact that I actually
gave killing another one of my mates a go, if it weren't for the fact that
I feel bad for fucking it up. And that ain't the fucking worst of
it. Nate's dead right - there's no way I should be teaching fucking kids."
Amanda shrugged off the thanks. "Like I'd sit back an' let you two kill
each other," she said, not mentioning the mind-paralysing fear she'd
experienced at the time. It wasn't the point, not now. But she was buggered
if she knew how to tell him what she wanted to. "The whole thing was fucked
up, right from the start. From when they came after him at Columbia." She
shuddered a little at the memory. Time to change tack. "I wouldn't still be
here if it weren't for you, you do realise that, don't you?" she said,
almost abruptly. "If you hadn't been here... I would've just shot through,
be fuck-knows-where now."
Pete waved a hand. "Give yourself some bloody credit, would you? If I
hadn't been here, you'd have found another reason." He smiled
lopsidedly. "Besides, if you had, I'm sure Romany would've given me a bell
at that point, anyway. She likes to try and balance out my karma when she
thinks I won't notice. Like she's got any fucking chance. I'm expecting
to come back an some kind of invertebrate next time."
She rolled her eyes at him this time. "Yer startin' t' sound like me. Give
yerself some credit while yer at it, will you? After the whole potion
business, an' the stuff with me power, you think it was me wantin' a decent
education that kept me from lightin' out? It was you - I didn't want t' let
you an' Rom down, since you were the only fuckin' people up t' that point
who ever thought I'd be anythin' more than a fuckin' two-quid tom." He
seemed about to say something, but she went on. "Yeah, yer a nasty bastard
sometimes an' yer history ain't exactly what the PTA look for..." She'd
been picking up American terms again. "...But you ain't a bloody failure.
Yer've done more for kids like me an' Jono an' Ange an' Sarah than the rest
of the do-gooders put together. An' if you can't handle that, then,
bollocks to you." Amanda gave him a long look. "Yer stuck with me, no
matter how much of a prick you think you are."
"Ah, fuck, Amanda, it ain't the thought of being a fucking failure that
bothers me. That'd be a fucking result all round. It's getting to good at
me job that's got me sticking this crap-" He paused, glaring at the bottle
like it was offensive "down me neck. It ain't the taking a shot at killing
Nate. That's been on the cards for a few months."
He took a drag on his cigarette.
"MacInnis came to see me. Explained that they could seriously fuck Mistra
up if they could just use Nate, like they'd been planning after they
kidnapped him back in May. I was all set to go along with it, right up
until Charlie found out it'd kill Nate. If it hadn't been Nate, if it
hadn't been a mate, I probably still would have."
Amanda was quiet for a long moment. No-one had told her that part, and she
could see why. But then again, one life, in exchange for shutting Mistra
down entirely? Before they could hurt anyone else? She could see the
benefits in that, having seen them in 'action' herself. And knowing they'd
seen her too, or at least, what seemed to be her, taking down the retrieval
team. "How d'you mean, 'fuck Mistra up'? Blow the place up or somethin',
you mean?" she asked.
"It was supposed to break the conditioning of all the bastards in the
base. Like they did with Nate's. Cut 'em in half at a go." He took
another swig. "And all it'd cost is one poor bastard who never did
anything to deserve it." A last drag on his cigarette, then he flicked it
away into the darkness.
"Fuck," Amanda said. There wasn't anything much else to say. Faced with
that choice... "I would've done the same," she said at last. "You saw what
they did at Columbia - if there was a chance of stoppin' somethin' like
that ever happenin' again, an' cuttin' loose the people they'd already
taken..." She reached inside her jacket, pulled out a bottle of scotch.
"Here. 'S better than the shite yer've got there."
"Nah, don't waste the good stuff. I'm fucked already - wouldn't be able to
tell the difference." He looked back up at the sky. "Ah, shit, I don't
know. I suppose when you get right down to it, I'm just indulging in a
little self-pity. Fucking woe is me, I'm a bastard." He smiled
slightly. "You know I wanted to be a copper when I was a kid?"
"Really? You a copper?" Amanda couldn't keep the incredulity out of her
voice - the idea was impossible. "An' hey, self-pity ain't that bad in
small doses. It's character buildin', or somethin'."
"Yeah, a copper. Like Dad. He wouldn't have any of it - said I was going
to do better bloody things than him. Said he'd talk to his mates, stop me
getting on the force, and I believed him. So I wound up doing this
instead. But y'know, just sometimes, I think it'd have been nice to have
turned into someone who..." He trailed off. "Well, someone else." He
looked across at her. "But then I suppose I wouldn't have met Charlie,
wound up here. So I wouldn't have met you."
"Yer Dad sounds like a right prat," Amanda said decisively, and a small
grin appeared at the implied compliment. "'M gunna take that as a good
thing." She watched Pete light another cigarette with his lighter. "Powers
out?" she asked, knowing they weren't.
"Nah, I just don't feel much like using 'em at the moment. Never do after
something like that. Usually lasts as long as it takes me to loose a
lighter." He smiled ruefully. "one of life's little fucking ironies - I
don't seem to be able to sprain me powers like almost everyone else
can. They did loads of tests on me when they recruited me, and as far as
anyone can tell, using the bloody things puts no strain on me at
all. Doesn't even burn fucking calories. Only limit's in me head."
Amanda nodded. The rare times she'd used her powers offensively, she
usually needed to do some healing or the like afterwards, to re-establish
her balance. Or at least make herself feel better about it all. It made
sense. "Wish I could say the same," she said, enscrewing the cap on the
bottle she'd brought out with her - if Pete didn't want some didn't mean
she was going to abstain. "Wouldn't miss the headaches an' the nosebleeds
an' the like, believe me."
"Give it time, you'll get there." He grinned. "You think I could always
light me fags with the end of me finger? If I weren't immune to me own
powers, I'd've been wearing an eyepatch after the first time I tried it."
Amanda giggled at the image. "Like a pirate, you mean? Hey, I could always
borrow Bella for you..."
Pete waved his hands, making a warding off gesture. "Keep that damn bird
away from me. I don't trust it. It's far to fucking clever for a bird,
and I'm sure it's up to something. Besides, me Keef impression isn't very
good, and I don't like rum."
"Spoilsport." Amanda pouted a little, then spoiled the effect by grinning.
"Pity, tho'. Yer'd be very dashin' as a pirate. Dom'd love it."
Pete raised an eyebrow. "Dom can bloody put up with me the way I am, like
everyone else. The closest I get to fancy dress is a tux, and only when I
can't bloody avoid it."
"Knew I had to get it from somewhere," she said, still grinning. "An' you
an' Rom gave me so much shite about that Asgard dress I figured I owed you
some." She scooted a little closer and nudged his shoulder. "You gunna be
all right?"
His expression turned sombre again. "Yeah, I think I probably am. I'll
have a hangover like a bastard in the morning, and I'll probably feel a bit
guilty for a week or two, but I think I'm done beating meself up for
now." Then he grinned again. "And that dress was fucking hysterical."
After the incident at the art exhibition, Pete goes for his usual (not)coping mechanism and devotes himself to getting very, very drunk. Pity he called Romany beforehand - she sets Amanda onto him.
Well, bollocks. The fucking bottle was empty. Still, he was sure he had
another one around here somewhere. He patted himself down, checking his
pockets. Surely that couldn't have been his spare bottle, could it? He
wasn't nearly drunk enough. Fuck. Served him right.
No, here it was. Just a half bottle. Cheap filth, too. No sense in
wasting the good stuff on a serious fucking bender. He settled back down
against the tree, and fished around for his cigarettes, fumbling with the
lighter. Eventually, he got one lit, and leant his head back against the
trunk, staring past the cherry glow up to the sky. It really was quite pretty.
Romany had called. That was possibly the most worrisome part, the fact Rom
was concerned enough about Pete to call her. Amanda frowned as she followed
the small green mote of light that was her short-range location spell,
hoping that for once the damn thing was leading her in the right direction.
She didn't know Pete as well as she could have, but she knew him better
than say, most of the students, and only some pretty seriously heavy shite
would make him lose his control like this, especially where any of the
others could see it. That, on top of the phone call, told her pete was
definitely not in a good place right now. And she was buggered if she knew
what to say to him, but Rom had seemed to think she could do some good.
Besides, there was that conversation they'd had in Jamie's tree house that
time. She owed him the attempt, at least.
There was the small red glow of a cigarette up ahead, under one of the
trees, and the location spell homed in on it, dancing around the dark shape
like a demented firefly. She cancelled the spell with a word, wincing at
the brief throbbing of her head, and sat down quietly next to Pete, not so
close she crowded him, but close enough to let him know she was there for
him. "Got a spare fag?" she asked, even though she had a full pack in her
pocket. It was as good a place as any to start.
If it'd been anyone else, he'd have told them to fuck off. Why'd it have
to be her?
"Yeah, sure." He tossed the packet over to her, and made some effort to
focus. "I'd ask what brings you out here, but I think the glowing thing
gave it away. Nice trick, though. Does it work for finding lost
socks?" He was enunciating a little too clearly, talking just a little too
slowly to hide how drunk he was.
The tactic didn't fool Amanda - how often had she tried that on various
teachers and foster families? "Only works on people an' places, an' then
it's sort of dodgy. Got a mind of it's own, sometimes." She pulled a
cigarette out of the mostly-empty packet, and began patting her pockets for
her lighter. "Rom called," she mumbled through the fag in her mouth. "Fuck,
must've left me lighter behind. Got a light?"
Pete threw her the lighter he'd been using. "It's me own bloody fault,
then. One day, I'm going to get over phoning her when I'm in a bad mood
with meself, and just stick with the getting ratted out of me tiny little
mind." He took a swig from the bottle. "What did she say?"
Pete never used a lighter. Ever. Lighting cigarettes was one of the
few non-nasty things he could do with his power, according to him. Amanda
lit up, exhaling the first mouthful of smoke before answering. "She was
worried," she replied, still coming to grips with that simple fact in and
of itself. Rom being worried was something new to her. "Said yer'd be doin'
nasty t' yerself over what happened with Nate." She shifted slightly so she
could look at him, or at least the shadows falling over his face. "Nate,
he... You had t' do somethin'."
"Yeah. But y'know what the complete cunt of it is? I completely fucked it
up, from end to end. Jumped in there with nothing better than 'hope
someone cleverer than me figures out what to do before he kills me'. He
went as easy on me as he fucking could, and I still couldn't do the fucking
job right - I was half a second from dead when you saved the pair of us.
Thanks for that, by the way." Pete took a drag on his cigarette.
"But y'know, I'd feel a whole lot better about the fact that I actually
gave killing another one of my mates a go, if it weren't for the fact that
I feel bad for fucking it up. And that ain't the fucking worst of
it. Nate's dead right - there's no way I should be teaching fucking kids."
Amanda shrugged off the thanks. "Like I'd sit back an' let you two kill
each other," she said, not mentioning the mind-paralysing fear she'd
experienced at the time. It wasn't the point, not now. But she was buggered
if she knew how to tell him what she wanted to. "The whole thing was fucked
up, right from the start. From when they came after him at Columbia." She
shuddered a little at the memory. Time to change tack. "I wouldn't still be
here if it weren't for you, you do realise that, don't you?" she said,
almost abruptly. "If you hadn't been here... I would've just shot through,
be fuck-knows-where now."
Pete waved a hand. "Give yourself some bloody credit, would you? If I
hadn't been here, you'd have found another reason." He smiled
lopsidedly. "Besides, if you had, I'm sure Romany would've given me a bell
at that point, anyway. She likes to try and balance out my karma when she
thinks I won't notice. Like she's got any fucking chance. I'm expecting
to come back an some kind of invertebrate next time."
She rolled her eyes at him this time. "Yer startin' t' sound like me. Give
yerself some credit while yer at it, will you? After the whole potion
business, an' the stuff with me power, you think it was me wantin' a decent
education that kept me from lightin' out? It was you - I didn't want t' let
you an' Rom down, since you were the only fuckin' people up t' that point
who ever thought I'd be anythin' more than a fuckin' two-quid tom." He
seemed about to say something, but she went on. "Yeah, yer a nasty bastard
sometimes an' yer history ain't exactly what the PTA look for..." She'd
been picking up American terms again. "...But you ain't a bloody failure.
Yer've done more for kids like me an' Jono an' Ange an' Sarah than the rest
of the do-gooders put together. An' if you can't handle that, then,
bollocks to you." Amanda gave him a long look. "Yer stuck with me, no
matter how much of a prick you think you are."
"Ah, fuck, Amanda, it ain't the thought of being a fucking failure that
bothers me. That'd be a fucking result all round. It's getting to good at
me job that's got me sticking this crap-" He paused, glaring at the bottle
like it was offensive "down me neck. It ain't the taking a shot at killing
Nate. That's been on the cards for a few months."
He took a drag on his cigarette.
"MacInnis came to see me. Explained that they could seriously fuck Mistra
up if they could just use Nate, like they'd been planning after they
kidnapped him back in May. I was all set to go along with it, right up
until Charlie found out it'd kill Nate. If it hadn't been Nate, if it
hadn't been a mate, I probably still would have."
Amanda was quiet for a long moment. No-one had told her that part, and she
could see why. But then again, one life, in exchange for shutting Mistra
down entirely? Before they could hurt anyone else? She could see the
benefits in that, having seen them in 'action' herself. And knowing they'd
seen her too, or at least, what seemed to be her, taking down the retrieval
team. "How d'you mean, 'fuck Mistra up'? Blow the place up or somethin',
you mean?" she asked.
"It was supposed to break the conditioning of all the bastards in the
base. Like they did with Nate's. Cut 'em in half at a go." He took
another swig. "And all it'd cost is one poor bastard who never did
anything to deserve it." A last drag on his cigarette, then he flicked it
away into the darkness.
"Fuck," Amanda said. There wasn't anything much else to say. Faced with
that choice... "I would've done the same," she said at last. "You saw what
they did at Columbia - if there was a chance of stoppin' somethin' like
that ever happenin' again, an' cuttin' loose the people they'd already
taken..." She reached inside her jacket, pulled out a bottle of scotch.
"Here. 'S better than the shite yer've got there."
"Nah, don't waste the good stuff. I'm fucked already - wouldn't be able to
tell the difference." He looked back up at the sky. "Ah, shit, I don't
know. I suppose when you get right down to it, I'm just indulging in a
little self-pity. Fucking woe is me, I'm a bastard." He smiled
slightly. "You know I wanted to be a copper when I was a kid?"
"Really? You a copper?" Amanda couldn't keep the incredulity out of her
voice - the idea was impossible. "An' hey, self-pity ain't that bad in
small doses. It's character buildin', or somethin'."
"Yeah, a copper. Like Dad. He wouldn't have any of it - said I was going
to do better bloody things than him. Said he'd talk to his mates, stop me
getting on the force, and I believed him. So I wound up doing this
instead. But y'know, just sometimes, I think it'd have been nice to have
turned into someone who..." He trailed off. "Well, someone else." He
looked across at her. "But then I suppose I wouldn't have met Charlie,
wound up here. So I wouldn't have met you."
"Yer Dad sounds like a right prat," Amanda said decisively, and a small
grin appeared at the implied compliment. "'M gunna take that as a good
thing." She watched Pete light another cigarette with his lighter. "Powers
out?" she asked, knowing they weren't.
"Nah, I just don't feel much like using 'em at the moment. Never do after
something like that. Usually lasts as long as it takes me to loose a
lighter." He smiled ruefully. "one of life's little fucking ironies - I
don't seem to be able to sprain me powers like almost everyone else
can. They did loads of tests on me when they recruited me, and as far as
anyone can tell, using the bloody things puts no strain on me at
all. Doesn't even burn fucking calories. Only limit's in me head."
Amanda nodded. The rare times she'd used her powers offensively, she
usually needed to do some healing or the like afterwards, to re-establish
her balance. Or at least make herself feel better about it all. It made
sense. "Wish I could say the same," she said, enscrewing the cap on the
bottle she'd brought out with her - if Pete didn't want some didn't mean
she was going to abstain. "Wouldn't miss the headaches an' the nosebleeds
an' the like, believe me."
"Give it time, you'll get there." He grinned. "You think I could always
light me fags with the end of me finger? If I weren't immune to me own
powers, I'd've been wearing an eyepatch after the first time I tried it."
Amanda giggled at the image. "Like a pirate, you mean? Hey, I could always
borrow Bella for you..."
Pete waved his hands, making a warding off gesture. "Keep that damn bird
away from me. I don't trust it. It's far to fucking clever for a bird,
and I'm sure it's up to something. Besides, me Keef impression isn't very
good, and I don't like rum."
"Spoilsport." Amanda pouted a little, then spoiled the effect by grinning.
"Pity, tho'. Yer'd be very dashin' as a pirate. Dom'd love it."
Pete raised an eyebrow. "Dom can bloody put up with me the way I am, like
everyone else. The closest I get to fancy dress is a tux, and only when I
can't bloody avoid it."
"Knew I had to get it from somewhere," she said, still grinning. "An' you
an' Rom gave me so much shite about that Asgard dress I figured I owed you
some." She scooted a little closer and nudged his shoulder. "You gunna be
all right?"
His expression turned sombre again. "Yeah, I think I probably am. I'll
have a hangover like a bastard in the morning, and I'll probably feel a bit
guilty for a week or two, but I think I'm done beating meself up for
now." Then he grinned again. "And that dress was fucking hysterical."
