theweirdos | TLV: Inbox

It's a few minutes before she replies, most of which she spends staring at the text, shoulders hunched up around her ears, wondering if she can pitch her communicator overboard and pretend she'd lost it before she even saw his message, or the pairing notification.

Thought you wardens could all magically find your inmates whenever you wanted.

He'd just track her down in person anyway. You can't hide forever, Nancy.

I mean technically yeah, but if you're not in trouble it's nicer to ask first.

I'm in the greenhouse. If you're bringing drinks, I want a Jack and Coke.

If they're going to talk about her sins, or her penance, or whatever it is a permanent warden's supposed to do, she needs a damn drink.

You got it

And he does in fact show up with two glasses, one of scotch for him, and one a... well, he thinks it's a jack and coke. He's assuming that's Jack Daniels mixed with soda. Hopefully he got the mix right.

He also has a folder under his arm.

He'll find her by the pond, trailing one hand in the water for the fish to lip at her fingers. It tickles, a little.

She looks up at his approach, and holds out her other hand for one of the glasses. "Awesome. Gimme."

He holds it out. "Don't get too mad if it doesn't taste quite right. I've never made one before."

Then he drops to sit next to her, again staying out of touching reach, but close enough for conversation. The file sits on his knees. "I'm going to be weird and start this off by talking about me. So you don't need to talk about any of this quite yet." He taps the folder with one finger.

"Pretty sure it's impossible to screw up," Nancy says as she takes the glass, which really only proves that she is, in fact, a 16-year-old whose experience with drinking has largely been limited to high school parties, and stealing from parental liquor cabinets.

She takes a swallow of the drink, and eyes him a little bit warily. "...Okay. Shoot."

"So when witches on my world turn eighteen, we get a kind of-- power up," he begins. "Except it kind of manifests like this big nasty lightning storm. I was in the car with my adoptive parents when it happened, on the highway, because I sure as hell didn't know it was going to happen. My magic killed them both. Then I tracked down my birth father and tortured him to death for information, and for his power. Then I tracked down the other witches he told me about, aiming to kill one of them for their power. It didn't work, obviously, he killed me, instead. But that was the plan. So a lot of this?" He taps her file again. "It makes sense to me. I can see me doing a lot of it."

"Shit," she says. "You're hardcore."

She pauses a moment, then adds quietly, "I'm sorry about your parents. That really fucking sucks."

Chase shakes his head. "I'm not hardcore. I'm a drama queen who got in way over his head." At least he can admit it. Looking back, he wonders a little if he just was kind of insane for a couple months. It was a stupid plan.

He pauses, then adds a little awkwardly, "But thanks. It was-- yeah, it was pretty bad. Killing my parents kind of broke me for a while, I think. Maybe I'm still broken. That's why I did all that: I wanted the power to bring them back to life. I had to fix what I did."

"Yeah," she says. "Okay, that makes sense."

If he didn't know any other witches, if he wasn't willing to trust them to form a coven - if magic in his world even works that way, if it can be amplified with numbers. It makes a certain kind of sense.

She's not sure what she would've done, if she'd hurt her mother when she'd killed Ray.

"I lucked out when the Admiral invited me here-- I got asked, unlike most inmates," Chase continues. "I had time to calm down, to realize my plan wasn't even going to work the way I really wanted it to, and get over myself a little." Not a lot, he's still not exactly a humble guy, but enough to be self-aware about some things.

Regardless: "I'm pretty sure my graduating isn't going to be like yours, you aren't exactly obsessed with one thing like I am, but I do think that's why we're together for this. I think I understand at least some of your stuff, here. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. And I definitely don't blame you for any of it."

"You're probably the only one," Nancy says, a little bit bitterly. It isn't exactly true - Sarah had been the only one who blamed her for Ray, for Chris - but it feels like it at the moment.

She pulls her hand back out of the water, shaking droplets from her fingers before drying them against the side of her leg. "We both wanted power to fix shit," she notes. His had been the accident his magic caused, and hers had been the shitty life she'd been born to, but the solution had been similar for both of them.

"Maybe, maybe not. I'm guessing not a lot of people know about it to judge," Chase points out. "But we did. I think yours might've at least started off more successful than mine. My plan would've killed me, using that much power at once. Yours was-- looks like it was pretty instinctive, right? You didn't really mean to do the first few things, exactly. Even if your step-dad absolutely had it coming." God, what an asshole.

"I wanted him to die," she says bluntly. And because he'd killed his own birth father, and because he'd agreed Ray deserved what he'd got, it's matter-of-fact rather than hostile. "I didn't think it'd happen, but it wasn't an accident. When the power rose, I wanted him dead."

Before he did worse than grab her ass and shove her around. Before he put her mother in the hospital, or worse.

Chase nods. "Yeah. But just because you want something, even want it really bad, doesn't mean you had any control over what happened. It's like what happened with your friend's boyfriend, right? You wanted him gone, and the magic took that to mean out the window. And I got to say, that is... a really bad way to practice magic. That happened to me once, too, there was one kid I killed just out of panic that he was going to ruin my plan. I didn't mean to, but it still happened. Running magic on emotion alone is just asking for somebody you like to get hurt, because you didn't have control over what your emotions right in the moment wanted the power to do." Like with Gale, he hopes he doesn't have to say.

He leans forward a little. "So I going to suggest that one of the first things we do is work out the exact limits of your power, and practice until you can't do magic on accident like that, without shaping it on purpose and directing it exactly how you want. Get you to get full control over it, so it doesn't control you."

"You mean the guy who tried to rape her, then went to a party like nothing happened?" Nancy snaps, anger sparking in her eyes. "Yeah, big fucking loss there, having one less asshole around to ruin women's lives."

Everything else is going to have to wait - she's fixed on that, on the painting of Chris as a victim. That might have been a misstep.

"Look, I'm not saying I think it was necessarily a bad idea-- if somebody did that to Yelena, I'd probably have done the same thing. I'm just saying--" He sighs a little. Fine. He's going to say it. "Your magic is like that gun you have, right now. If you're too jumpy or angry or whatever to control it, it's going to hurt people who don't deserve it, too, like what happened with Gale. You need to have control over your power. And right now, you don't. If you had actual control over your power, you could've, I don't know, made Chris impotent for life instead, which frankly would've been way more satisfying than just a one-time broken neck, in my book."

"Yeah, well, maybe you should ask her what she'd do," Nancy says. "Because it's all fucking academic to you."

Her hand tightens around her glass, knuckles briefly going white. "If I had my magic, I woulda knocked Gale on his ass. That's all. I'm not some fucking...psychotic out of control time bomb."

"I'm pretty sure Yelena would shank a guy for doing it, to begin with, because she's a badass." He shrugs. "But I'll agree, I've never had anyone try to do that to me. I also never had any friends before I came here, and I know what it's like to be protective of somebody now. It's a big thing."

He rubs a hand through his hair. "And you don't have to be psychotic to have your magic act outside your control, don't put words in my mouth. You just have to not be in control. Maybe your magic would've knocked him on his ass so hard he broke his back or got a crack in his skull. You don't know, because you don't have control over it." He looks back at her seriously and adds, "That doesn't make you a bad person, Nancy, it makes you a sixteen year old who's never had power before. Now you do. Now you got to learn how to use it without it doing things you aren't expecting."

She scowls at him, pale grey eyes narrowing. "So, what, you're gonna keep me on the Admiral's leash until you decide I can use my magic the way you think I should? 'Cause I can tell you the exact limits of what I have right now. What do you think I've been doing the last six months?"

"Of course not, how would that help you get control over the big, powerful stuff?" Chase shakes his head. "I'm going to get you the rest of your magic back, obviously. I just wanted to ask you a couple things first. Like if you want me to put any limits on it, like I did on the gun, or if you want it just like normal. Or if you want it all at once or, I don't know, in stages." He shrugs. "It's totally up to you."

Nancy doesn't respond immediately, just continues to regard him narrow-eyed, looking for the catch.

"Why would I want it back in pieces?" she asks, sounding faintly disgusted.

"Honestly no idea," Chase shrugs. "I was just trying to come up with other options for not-the-whole-thing in case it wasn't something you thought about. Like I said, this is up to you. I just want to you be comfortable, here. If you kill somebody on accident, I'll manage it with the other wardens, it's not like it hasn't been done before, but I don't want it to mess you up."

Her gaze flicks away, and her jaw clenches, pride warring with the visceral memory of recoil shuddering down her wrist and the sight of spreading blood.

"Fuck," she says, and tosses back a slug of her drink, only just able to keep herself from coughing at the burn in the back of her throat. "Yeah, okay. No lethal shit unless my life's in danger. Or someone else's is, I guess. I don't wanna be held back if that demon asshole goes all psycho killer again."

Re: A few hours after the pairing, text

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