infomodder | IC Contact [Asgard]

Should take them up on that.

[As long as it's someone good. Or someone who's more see through with their lack of goodness.]

Fire spread through the school because that's what it does. It's fire. Can't change its nature. Destructive, but pure. Intentions don't change that about fire. Intentions can change what information is being spread. How out of hand it gets.

[This is about as subtle as writing "hint" on a brick and throwing it.]

You think it's gotten out of hand yet?

[Gotten out of hand as in it's become twisted for sensationalism. Out of hand because it's spread too far. Out of hand for her on a personal level of not being able to cope.

Pick a hand, any hand.]

[Ellie goes quiet again, just listening to him. If she sits down and thinks about it, she'll get what he's saying, but for now she's just too pissed and worried to really think it through.]

This fire's already lit, Will.

What are you going to do? Try to do it all yourself?

Fire's always been lit. No one had to start it. It's been burning since the worlds have been turning. Sometimes it just gets a little gas thrown on it, that's all.

[Not all of them have Billy Joel. But if she knows old fart music and calls him on it, no problem.]

More interest you show in him, more gas is going to get slung. For you and everyone you talk to at length. People you like. Make that like obvious. Can't let him rile you up, Ellie. Makes it worse in the end.

[Someone else might lose an arm. Again.]

[That little pun doesn't escape her notice. Ellie is silent for a time, just sitting with him, just breathing.

Can't let him rile you up.]

... if he tries, he's going to find out just how many of the rumors about me are true.

[It's second nature at this point in time, for better or worse.]

Tries. [Verbal, physical, everyone has their differences there.] What's your idea of trying, Ellie? Every word you say to him is another bullet in the gun, and if he pulls it on you or anyone you care about, he did it. Not you. But he can lay that blame, that it was your fault. That nudge. To do it again until it's all you can associate with him. Feed a fire in you, too—is that what you want?

[Silence, again. So thick she might choke on it. She knows how to defend herself. She knows how to fight, how to protect someone else, how to endure and survive.

But if he stalks her, terrorizes her, chips away and uses the people she loves and her need to protect them, he taps into her worst fears.]

... okay. I get it.

[Too young to have fears like that, it could be said. Pretty true, but that's not the world. The world is full of people so good they sweeten everything they touch and people so rotten they turn the entire barrel that way, sometimes without the barrel realizing it was happening until they were all withered. Young or old, that's never stopped it from happening.]

So you're gonna talk to your teacher, right? And if they're not familiar with this Asgard telepathy or needs more information about it, tell them to talk to me. Or you can talk to me. [About telepathy, about anything she might want to get off her chest.] If Barty talks to you, what are you gonna tell him?

"Fuck off, I don't have time for your shit."

[It sounds like a plan. And it feels good to say it. If it'll keep Riley safe, then... she'll swallow her pride and do it.]

Will.

What if he's already talked to me?

[A rush of air exhaled through flared nostrils with a brief noise that portrays amusement is what he lets pass for a laugh, for his idea of laughing. The situation isn't funny at all, but he's been in much worse that have had humor injected into them. Bad humor, not fuck off, I don't have time for your shit.]

Don't think Barty cares so much about being rude, and that's. You. [Not being rude, her mouth. The language.] Being you is an asset. If he's talked to you already, can't change that now. What we can change is this concept...let's call it discretion. A filter. Not for how you talk, but what you really say. You follow me?

[If he can try to explain why people just don't kill their douchebag social workers and shove them inside horses as a means to avenge, he can explain just about anything to anyone.]

Edited 2014-07-05 11:55 (UTC)

I follow.

[Sherlock had been the first to really help her fine-tune that part of it. Ellie was herself, couldn't always help the unhealthy interest other developed in her, but she wasn't an idiot. Jim Moriarty could attest to that part.]

... what can you tell me about Barty? I don't get him.

[People with unhealthy interests were the worst. Might be good cooks, but.]

Why don't you tell me what you perceive Barty to be, what you think you get about him, if anything, and we go from there?

[Easier to explain with a sounding board. Help him know if she's got technical terms stowed away to sling out and how to go from there.]

He says he didn't really want to hurt anybody but Teach, and that he's not targeting me.

... and I guess he's dead back home. So he's making the best of the time he's got.

I just don't get what his angle is.

[Pieces are coming together. Have come together. How can he make them come together for her?]

Remember how you thought that maybe he was looking into my head to see layouts of the school? Told you that wasn't the case, didn't I? It wasn't. [He would have known, knew that much, knew that much as much as he knew anything else. Good to know things.] He's got bad blood with Professor Snape. You were on the sidelines—lots of us were on the sidelines. You're not a target. You were just. There. Collateral damage.

[At the start...]

You've already over-analyzed one thing, but try this: why does someone have to have an angle to do anything they do, good or bad? You think everyone has an angle?

Then why was he asking me how my girlfriend was?

[She says it softly. Barty doesn't care, she'll never believe that. She just can't figure out what he wants -- Voldemort always wanted to hurt her, why shouldn't Barty want to finish his master's work?]

Everybody has something they want, and something they're afraid of. He has a grudge against Teach because of bullshit with his boss- and if I don't know if you know but I shot his boss's face off. He hasn't exactly forgotten that.

Because you have one. He knows you have one. If we're talking like we are now, and I ask you how your girlfriend is, it would just be conversation. Not with him. Wants to see how you react to those words coming out from someone who's proven himself dangerous as opposed to...anyone else.

[Will can be dangerous, but he doesn't want to be thought of that way. Dangerous on behalf of others, not dangerous in the purely destructive way.]

I know. I saw. I was here. I just didn't say much. Scale of "shut up" to "go fuck yourself right off a cliff"—what'd you tell Barty when he asked about her?

[Ellie has no illusions about anybody being dangerous, and just being capable of violence isn't scary to her. The danger comes from the way of thinking, the intent. Barty isn't David or Voldemort level, or even Jim Moriarty, but she's determined not to underestimate him all the same.]

I told her he was fine, and if he messed with her she'd rip his head off.

[With more cursing.]

[Yes, he assumes there was more cursing involved. He's heard a little informative fire, and all this combined—well.]

Is that what you'd always say or do you think it's stress adding up and— [eating away at you] —making it difficult to catch a breath?

[Will goes fishing when he needs a breath (or drinks until he can). That is not at all everyone's thing.]

... I would've just hung up. Or gone to show Joel.

But the last time I did that, he ended up missing an arm, and Tess died. Besides, Riley can take care of herself.

[Stress. It's stress, and fear, and him hitting her while she's still vulnerable.]

[Will's got experience with helping people get their arms hacked off. Only, she had done nothing to "earn" it. She'd just been held captive and he had conspired to bring her killer (or so it was thought) into the light.]

He ended up missing an arm because he acted on what you showed him, right? So now you don't want to set him off. Is everyone you know hotheaded?

[Will used to be hotheaded.

When his brain was physically inflamed.]

Joel and Tess are really... good at what they do. There's a reason I ended up with them. Most people would've fucked right off.

But they're not the biggest, baddest motherfuckers on the playing field right now.

[Truth be told, Ellie alone is probably more dangerous than most people in this fucking city.]

You're not saying that Barty is the biggest, baddest motherfucker on the playing field right now, are you?

[Will's well aware that he can sit on a bench and talk amicably with someone and them still be dangerous to other people, eventually himself. Snakes react differently to different creatures.]

Because none of us are. If anyone out there stuck in the same place as you and me and everyone else is talking about being so bigger and badder, then they're delusional.

[Sorry Satan.]

Edited 2014-07-07 01:38 (UTC)

Not even close.

[It might sound like she's underestimating him, but she knows he's not one for a stand-up fight. Her fear is what he can do when her back is turned, not what physical damage he could deal her.]

... but you know what I mean. Sometimes just knowing what you're capable of is enough to keep people from fucking with you.

Or make them more interested.

[If it sounds like he's speaking from experience, it's because he is. A lot of experience, for what Will he was capable of, what he could become capable of, and what it was thought he was capable of. He thinks she knows what he means in her own way, if she ended up locked in a cage.]

What do you do to de-stress here? Have you done it lately?

["I make myself pot"?]

Yeah, it kinda works the opposite way for the psychopaths.

... and Will-

[She half-laughs, trails off.]

Is that your way of telling me to chill out?

[Doesn't it just.]

Might be. [Yes.] You've got a lot on your plate and Barty's got under your skin. [Haha.] I don't know what you do, but I'd suggest giving it a go. [Because his suggestions never help get people killed, no way!!!!] It's only going to get worse. Have to take care of yourself if you're going to make it through.

[Because Will totally did that himself.

Not.]

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