Topic: Obligation To Survive

The Redneck

Date: 2017-06-07 00:04 EST
With her abilities greatly hindered, and her belated realization of it, Thorn thought it best to reassure her Paladin. The reassurance would serve as a wellness check at the same time. She hadn't made direct contact with the welder since the events in February, and they'd both admit it was for the best.

When he'd resurrected the child he'd come damn close to burning himself out, and she'd come damn close to letting him do it. She'd known how much he needed that one thing, to at the very least try to bring a child who'd looked somewhat like his own back. To pull an innocent back across the bridge. She'd known how much it would have cost him if he hadn't, and how much it would've broken him had he tried and failed. His Two had heard the stories, had helped nurse him back to health after he'd had his vengeance, but they hadn't know him before.

Hadn't known just what it was he'd lost.

And so it was with no little trepidation, and a great deal of courage, that she knocked on his door and waited.

Dave had been, for quite some time, entirely too powerful, and entirely too far gone to give a fuck about right or wrong. All he'd known had been the need to make every power pay for what had been done to him. Make them scream and writhe before snuffing their existence out like a cap to a candle's flame. Now he was worn and tired for a variety of reasons. And two of those reasons were a matching pair of half blood Ba'atezu who looked altogether too much like the Erinyes they were descended from. Raxa flicked a look at the door and arched a brow, but made no move to answer it after he gestured that he'd get it.

She did however move to a different room, settled herself in a comfortable sprawl across the bed when he mouthed the name of their visitor. The announcement hadn't been necessary really, his attention had been on the door well before the knock had come. Only one person drew Dave's attention that completely, there was only one person whose presence he'd know before she was within sight. And while she enjoyed the game of playful animosity she, her sister, and the woman played, Raxa still held onto a bit more anger than ease where the blonde was concerned.

Young or not, the redneck damn well should have taken Dave's overall condition into consideration before opening herself up to his call and letting the child be resurrected.

The Redneck

Date: 2017-06-07 00:06 EST
For his part Dave took a few moments, snapping his fingers and staring intently at the door. "Magic, work!" Thrice he tried to will the door to open, and thrice the power to do so didn't even flutter. With a sigh of resignation he levered himself off the couch to cross the room and open the door.

"'Bout damn time. Where y' been hidin' woman?" Dry humor delivered with a twist of his lips to the right in something like an indulgent smirk as he stepped back to let her in before closing the door. When she gave him a backhanded slap in the chest he chuffed out a laugh and pulled her in for a tightly squeezing hug.

She laughed even as she felt her ribs creak and the breath rush out of her. Thorn brought her arms around him and squeezed tight as she could. "After all that mess? Thought it best if I kept my distance a while." With an extra squish for good measure she stepped away. Completely comfortable in his space she settled with a leg tucked under her and turned to face him when he plopped back into his ass groove on the couch.

"Probably a good thing that. Couple of people were highly pissed at you." Nodded his head to the wall that separated the living space from the bedroom. "Mostly down to a mild simmer now, not so likely to boil up an' over."

"They had damn good reason Dave, lettin' you pull that outta your ass could'a burned you out." The mischief softened into contrite concern. Laying a hand on his knee she gave a squeeze that was meant to push the point further.

"Yeah." He nodded in agreement, smirking all the while. "Or killed me. They told me, a lot." Dave sent a more-than-fond smile in the same direction he'd sent the nod a few moments before. "Ever since they've kept me damn well fed, and damn tired out, in the best of ways." By his tone, all his appetites were being well seen to.

She shook her head, laughing wry under her breath and rolled her eyes. "Well, since we both know why I shouldn't've letcha, 'm pretty damn sure we both know why I had to letcha. No question of it Dave. Had to." He'd been owed that much at the least. And he'd been owed it for entirely too long.

For several long moments they sat in silence with Thorn pretending not to see the tears in his eyes, or the tight swallowing that seemed an unconscious thing, and Dave pretending not to know that she was pretending.
~
Then he sighed, slapped a hand on her thigh and asked, "what the hell's goin' on lately?"

Once the spell had been broken she cut him a confused look and quirked an auburn brow. "Whatcha mean? 'Cause, hoo boy, there's about a fuck ton." The gesture she made of scooting her hands together was meant to encourage him to narrow the field that the question covered more.

As though begging for patience he rolled his eyes and looked to the ceiling. "I haven't been able to use a lick of magic in a week or so now. You give it all up? Did you get all kinds'a twisted up an' decide I"m not..?" The last question was the meat, the one he hadn't exactly meant to ask so baldly. But once it was in the air he made no effort to retract it, he did start plucking at the sleeve of her shirt as a distraction when he found he couldn't quite force himself to meet her eye.

After everything he'd done, everything he'd been through, if she found him wanting or unworthy, he couldn't bear to face it.

Her confusion would have been evident had he been looking at her, so she pressed her fingertips to the underside of his chin and tipped his head up. Forcing him to meet her eyes by will alone. "No Dave. I've not found you wanting. I've not turned my back on you or withheld power willfully. It's just, I have smiting sickness." And instead of the laughter she expected, or the snide comments, she watched the grizzled welder relax. Watched him sag in relief and scrub his hands across his face.

"Well, hell's bells. That explains so damn much then." Almost gleeful once the theoretical source of his distress had been eliminated, he moved his head away from her fingers only enough to buss a kiss to the palm of her hand. "Made no damn sense y'ken? I'd gotten no displeasure from you, no anger or an'thin' like that directed my way, then suddenly, after this big assed surge'a som'thin', I get nothin'. Well, y'know, the connection's still there. But there's no power, no blessin's or magics comin' through."

Then his attention returned completely to her. "So, what'd you do to get slapped down, and who did it?"

"Cellin, 'cause I was playin' with Krist's Keys." At his confusion she shrugged and told the tale. "Krist, you know 'bout him." Maybe not all of it, but enough really. "He was the Wind, the personal assassin, attack dog of the Lady of Pain, God-Ruler of Sigil. When he escaped her service and reach, he took his keys with him. The Keys, they'll open any realm, all you gotta do is know the right combination. Looks like a normal key ring, some'a the keys're kinda ornate, some're plain as fuck. But, use 'em right, and you can go anywhere/ Even locked realms."

And that statement led further. "Locked realms, like Coi'Cor is right now. An' it's locked 'because of family drama and ugly and, the whole Plane is erasing itself, so it's locked off to keep what's happenin' there from spillin' out to the rest of the Multiverse. No one can get in, or out. Only way I could've, was the keys."

Now it was her turn to toy with the hem of her shirt. "Cellin warned me, 'cause I'd already tried the backdoors, the nine Gates, an' they're all sealed off. I had to, had to try gettin' there. Was like almost an obsession for a while. It's still a really big want, but it's not a need anymore. So I told Cellin what I was feelin' an' he warned me he'd smite me." From the slow spread of realization on his face, he followed her well enough that she could skip some of the details.

"So one night I was spinnin' 'em 'round on a finger, like you do keys right? Was distracted an' talkin' on the phone. Caught 'em mid-spin, which snapped 'em together, which, rattled the keys. An' that, enacted the spell." Thorn was looking anywhere but at Dave. "Next thing I knew, I was comin' back to life with a couple friends hoverin' over me, worried as fuck."
~

The Redneck

Date: 2017-06-07 00:06 EST
"Wait, wait. You got distracted, and forgot that the keys you had were keys to Everything, then got smote because you forgot what they were. And you'd already been warned by your grampa, frigging Nature himself, what would happen if you fucked around like that?" Just to be clear.

The question may have been rhetorical because he launched into a creative round of cursing incredulously and staring at her like she'd sprouted another head, or three. "Jesus fuck Thorn. Only you." Amusement flared under it all, tangled through to the point where all he could do was shake his head in disbelief. "Then again, half the time you forget how much power you can call on don't you?"

Her shrug would have to serve as an answer to all of that. It was a sheepish thing that spoke volumes and had more layers of meaning than a simple physical gesture really should.

"So, when's it wear off?" As often as it struck him, he was too used to the redneck's foibles to linger on them long.

Puffing out a breath she was very much relieved he changed the subject. "Prolly three weeks more, long's I don' get slapped down again." Anticipating his next statement she held up a finger. "And I already gave Roan the Keys, so that's not likely."

With the qualification he subsided, a little. At least until something else caught his attention. "So, what're y'all, the gods, doin' about Coi'Cor erasin'?"

"Nothin' we can do Dave. Jus', those of us who got out can only wait an' trust to a group'a mortals to handle shit."

Silent and thoughtful, he nodded a few times.

"All'a that, an' checkin' on you wasn't the only reason I came by though." Fast and brutal, sometimes it was best. With Dave, pussy-footing was never a good idea.

"Surogot's dead. Ralyks' boys, an' her mate took him down. Cost the boys their lives, but Silver survived." She waited in silence then, fell utterly still and stared at the wall, waiting.

"Couldn't've happened to a nicer dick bag." The only hesitation he'd felt had been from the shock of the news. There was a surge of something in his chest that he recognized much easier now than he had before. Joy. And that was quickly tainted with dreadful knowledge. "He had a few cults here. What's that mean about his followers?"

His response had been expected, but when he slid past it so quickly, right into the deeper problem, her pride in her Paladin deepened. "They're gonna scramble. Snag people left and right some of 'em, sacrifices tryin' to regain his favor. Some might've fallen over dead from the shock. Others'll prolly shift to other gods. It's gonna be a cluster fuck of bad Dave." No sugar coating no.

"All of that bastard was on the realm when he was wiped out. Even the bits you had hidden in the snow." One of the sources of his power before had been a dirty little secret; the bones of a god ground fine and mixed with cocaine. That, tangled with insanity had allowed the man to become a god killer. Now though, his stash, and the bag that'd held what was left of Surogot's remains were empty, long gone.

He waited a beat, thinking and considering. "All right then. Looks like the girls an' I're gonna be busy as fuck for the next little while."