Demonology. Stephie and Peter. PG13
Stephie arrived home midafternoon Monday after a rather sleepless night at Tasha's, her mind full. There was clearly something wrong with the girl (that she thought, almost everyone she knew would agree on) that went beyond just the fear the anonymous messages were invoking. Maybe two weeks ago Stephie would have put the jumpiness, the intense paranoia, the nightmares down to just that, simple paranoia, but with the sudden appearance of demons in her world Stephie wanted to explore more of the options. What if there had been something demonic in the Tower of London?- she wouldn't be surprised.
One thought that kept popping up, that she really, really didn't want to entertain was- if it was supernatural in nature, what if it was Deirdre? She knew she hated Tasha and Tasha was the reason she'd gone all wingy in the first place. But no, Stephie wasn't going to let herself think that about Deirdre.
She closed her bedroom door and flopped down on her bed, shuffling through them to find her place from last time and read, a frown growing deeper with every one of Peter's failures.
It was beyond creepy to recognise yourself in the description of a killer, especially something more than human. Oh, not everything, but the sudden outbursts of anger and destruction- Stephie knew she was capable of that. And she'd know, right? She'd know if she was a demon, like Deirdre had. Her stomach turning, reached over to the nightstand and grabbed her metal candle stick. She closed her fingers around it and strained with all her might to bend it, break it.
Nothing. Stephie laughed a little sheepishly and put the candlestick back, then shook her hands. Ow. Nope, she was still a puny human.
Deirdre reminds me of a case I saw in Munich only 2 years ago. A university student that did terrible things to her mother and step-father. She said it was as if she had no control over her body. She finally killed them both on a winter day, and then fixed herself some coffee, and left for class.
How could he compare Deirdre to something so heartless! Deirdre was packed with heart! Stephie frowned at Peter via the book, annoyed first at him, then at her own hypocrisy. So she was allowed to have suspicions about her friend and he wasn't? That wasn't fair. She tried to aline herself in a world where Deirdre was capable of doing the things she's read about. Killing, breaking, manipulating, writing across the walls in blood. No way, Deirdre knew how long it took to get blood stains out of things, she wouldn't dare.
It wasn't working. Even after seeing Deirdre loose it in her room last week, even after seeing her wings and talk to Peter and Pierre and Deirdre herself about the reality of this, Stephie couldn't picture it in her head. She trusted Deirdre, loved her, even, and that, she knew, was a pretty damn big blind spot. It was frustrating, she didn't like being in denial yet she kept ending up back there!
Stephie shook her head and read on. She was going to memories these, then go and talk to Peter about what he'd actually seen and done. The more she knew about it, the less she'd ignore it it something went wrong.
Then she hit the entries about Svetlana, and the death of his friend and she remembered what she'd told Peter. If Deirdre had lost it again and gone after Jude, she would have jumped right back in there to try and stop her. And that set another dilemma in her mind: would she still try and do something if the situation arose, now that she knew what demons were capable of?
She hardly thought she'd stand by and watch, but she didn't want to get herself killed either. There had to be something that could be done! Even, like, horse tranquilisers.
She'd have to ask what he'd tried, and if anything worked. Sliding off the bed, with the blanket wrapped around her shoulder against the cold, she made her way to the phone in the hall to call and see if he was home.
"Hello?" Peter answered. He'd returned from the rink and Anna was off drawing millions of pictures for Olivia. Lydia was following him around like a shadow.
"Hey, it's Stephie. I guess you're home then."
"I am home. Hello, Stephie." Peter smiled. "Is everything allright?"
"Yup," said Stephie, maybe a little too quickly. "I've just been reading your diaries. About the demons." Yeah, like he'd givin her any other kind. "Anyway, I just wanted to, um, know more. About everything."
"Oh, of course. Would you like to come over and I can answer any questions you might have. As long as you don't mind little girls running around." He put his hand on Lydia's back again.
Oh great, small children. "Uh," said Stephie uneasily, "how many? Nono, it doesn't matter." She shook her head at herself, silly girl. "It okay if I come over now?"
Peter chuckled. "There's two. And of course you can. I'll see you soon."
"Kay, see you." Stephie hung up and went to exchange her blanket for a coat and helmet. Half an hour later she was nicely warmed from scating and moments away from Peter's door. She could hear the kids laughing from inside the brightly lit windows. The house looked warm and inviting. She knocked on the door and unbuckled her helmet, shaking out her hair.
Peter went to let her in. He smiled at her, and hope that his incredibly bruised eye didn't freak her out too much. "Come in, Slink. We can talk in the dining room, my sister's girlfriend came home and she can watch the girls."
"Whooo, who put you through the blender?" Stephie asked Peter's eye as she entered the house, kicking off her boots.
Peter bit his lip. "Deirdre actually. I'll explain it all in time."
Stephie's grin dropped from her face. That was probably the last thing she wanted to hear. "Are you alright?" She demanded, ignoring the promise of a later explanation.
"I'm fine, Stephie. Everything is fine." He lead Steph into the dining room and closed the door so no one would overhear.
"Your battle wounds kind of speak differently, but sure." Stephie said, sitting down on one of the chairs.
"Well...my battle wounds are why everything is okay now. Did you have any specific questions about the journals?"
"Can we do the why-on-earth-Deirdre-was-beating-you-up thing first?" Stephie asked.
"All right." Peter took a seat and swallowed. "Deirdre and Evanna went out to eat a few nights ago and they got mugged. Apparently Deirdre drained the soul of the first one and then took care of the second one by hitting him against a building. It scared Evanna, and Deirdre was upset that she'd slipped and scared her cousin. She locked herself in her room even though I told her not to. I knew that separating herself was the most dangerous thing she could do. She was slipping away. She was losing her battle ton control herself, so I did the only think I could think of to do, which was to bring her here and lock her in a room with me. That way, anything she did, she had to do it to me first."
He wondered if that made even the least bit of sense.
A look of growing concern was spreading across Stephie's features. Goddamnit! She's been so occupied watching Jude for a slip up that she hadn't even noticed what was going on with Deirdre. She sighed, she was going to have to work on this multitasking thing. Looking up at Peter, she couldn't stop herself smiling, and she shook her head, impressed. "You are the stuff Spiderman is made of, you know?"
Peter chuckled. "Spider-Man, huh? Well...thank you. I just knew I had an advantage with her and that advantage was me. She cared about me, so I used it. She got pretty bad but she reached a point where she had to make a decision and she made it. She chose the right one and she chose it herself. I wasn't exactly in the position to make that one for her. Heh." His hand went to his throat unconsciously. "Either way...she's doing a lot better now."
"I've noticed. She's been extra bouncy around the house lately." Stephie paused for a moment. "And I'm glad you're not dead and she's not a homocidal winged maniac. Um, how likely is that? That she'll snap again? None of the demons in your books were like Deirdre."
"Because she is what she is, I can't tell you for certain, but she...she's not addicted to the souls anymore like she was. That was the main reason for it. She might slip again, sometimes the taking of a soul is an instinct like jumping when someone surprises you. BUt now if it happens, she'll know just to be around her friends and have fun until the problem goes away. And if anything does arise, I can always bring her here again. The thing is...she made the decision to not let herself go at a very critical moment. I truely believe that if she can come back from that, she should be allright. The rest of them from my diaries, they didn't want to be helped. Deirdre does. And I didn't have enough information back then to tell them how they could be helped." He shook his head and sighed.
Stephie sighed with relief. "Good news." She smiled at Peter, then turned serious with the other question she was going to ask. "If- if something does go wrong, if she does slip and you're not around and- what do we do?"
"If all she does is take someone's soul and she's not being violent, spend time with her. She won't hurt you. If she's being violent, I...I think the best thing to do would be to leave her alone until she calms down." He was going to suggest that pierre stay with her because the boy could clearly take care of himself the the mental image of Pierre with a knife to his throat flashed across his vision and he couldn't say it.
"But, you can call me at any time, day or night."
"I figured that," she grinned at him again. "But isn't there anything we can do to, I don't know, calm her down? No that's not exactly what I mean, um. It's close enough. If she's like how she was the other night and I'm not saying I don't have faith in your letting her beat you up method because I do and that seems to be working. But... you don't know any other way of making her act human again once something's got her started?"
Peter looked down at his hands. "No. I mean, I'm not sure. I just tried to get her to realise what she was doing. You could do that but...you have to understand what could happen." He paused and decided to tell Slink the exact details. "Deirdre had a knife to my throat. But in the end she couldn't kill me. For which I am eternally grateful. The same thing would probably happen if you or Pierre were to do it. I mean that she wouldn't be able to kill you but she might hurt you badly." And if that happened, Peter would feel incredibly guilty, let alone Deirdre.
"Oh a knife," Stephie gave a small nervous laugh. "Fun. Hey- can they be hurt?"
"Yes. They can. But they can also feed off of people's souls to heal themselves. They can't be killed though, insofar as I am aware."
"She's immortal!" Stephie exclaimed. "Awesome! Uh, I mean. That's bad. So all the crazy one's you wrote about... they're still around?"
Peter nodded. "Most of them are in institutions. There's only one...I don't know where Svetlana is." Peter ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. "And yes, they're immortal. I don't want Deirdre to have to spend the rest of...forever in a place like that. That's why I did what I did."
Svetlana. The worst one. How was this man not a bundle of shattered nerves? "Neither do I." Stephie agreed gravely.
)
Peter smiled across at Stephie. "Well with friends like you, Renee and Pierre, she won't ever have to. Were there any other questions or things that confused you?"
"There was something, but I don't know if it has anything to do with demons. You never made any mention of it in any of your diaries but still. Do you know if they can mess with people's mind. Not like in the human way, but... making them see things? Hear things?"
"Not that I know of. Demons are generally just destructive things. When they feed off of your soul sometimes you feel terrible and you see black spots in front of your eyes but never any images or anything. I have someone I can ask, but that doesn't sound like something a demon could do to me."
Stephie nodded. Oh well, it was worth a try. "There's someone who knows more about these things than you do?" She asked, curious again. "Who?"
"Are you familiar with Avery Driscoll?"
Stephie flapped her hangs like they were wings sprouting from her shoulders and raised her eyes questioningly. "That Avery?"
Peter chuckled. "That Avery. His mother told me alot about these things. And I have a friend back at the monastery who has told me a bit as well. He's the one I'd be calling, since I think Claire has other things to worry about."
"I know. Well, kind of. I've read the anti-tabloid rants and seen how upset Deirdre gets about it, but yeah." A light dawned on her face. "The craziness with the hospital has something to do with the wings, doesn't it? Oh duh. So he's an Angel, right? Jeez, what else is there out there?"
Peter smiled. "I don't know really. But you're right about Avery." And several other people. Now he had to ask Rolf what else there WAS out there.
"Headtrippy" was Stephie's only comment.
"Indeed." Peter studied her for a second and then smiled.
One thought that kept popping up, that she really, really didn't want to entertain was- if it was supernatural in nature, what if it was Deirdre? She knew she hated Tasha and Tasha was the reason she'd gone all wingy in the first place. But no, Stephie wasn't going to let herself think that about Deirdre.
She closed her bedroom door and flopped down on her bed, shuffling through them to find her place from last time and read, a frown growing deeper with every one of Peter's failures.
It was beyond creepy to recognise yourself in the description of a killer, especially something more than human. Oh, not everything, but the sudden outbursts of anger and destruction- Stephie knew she was capable of that. And she'd know, right? She'd know if she was a demon, like Deirdre had. Her stomach turning, reached over to the nightstand and grabbed her metal candle stick. She closed her fingers around it and strained with all her might to bend it, break it.
Nothing. Stephie laughed a little sheepishly and put the candlestick back, then shook her hands. Ow. Nope, she was still a puny human.
Deirdre reminds me of a case I saw in Munich only 2 years ago. A university student that did terrible things to her mother and step-father. She said it was as if she had no control over her body. She finally killed them both on a winter day, and then fixed herself some coffee, and left for class.
How could he compare Deirdre to something so heartless! Deirdre was packed with heart! Stephie frowned at Peter via the book, annoyed first at him, then at her own hypocrisy. So she was allowed to have suspicions about her friend and he wasn't? That wasn't fair. She tried to aline herself in a world where Deirdre was capable of doing the things she's read about. Killing, breaking, manipulating, writing across the walls in blood. No way, Deirdre knew how long it took to get blood stains out of things, she wouldn't dare.
It wasn't working. Even after seeing Deirdre loose it in her room last week, even after seeing her wings and talk to Peter and Pierre and Deirdre herself about the reality of this, Stephie couldn't picture it in her head. She trusted Deirdre, loved her, even, and that, she knew, was a pretty damn big blind spot. It was frustrating, she didn't like being in denial yet she kept ending up back there!
Stephie shook her head and read on. She was going to memories these, then go and talk to Peter about what he'd actually seen and done. The more she knew about it, the less she'd ignore it it something went wrong.
Then she hit the entries about Svetlana, and the death of his friend and she remembered what she'd told Peter. If Deirdre had lost it again and gone after Jude, she would have jumped right back in there to try and stop her. And that set another dilemma in her mind: would she still try and do something if the situation arose, now that she knew what demons were capable of?
She hardly thought she'd stand by and watch, but she didn't want to get herself killed either. There had to be something that could be done! Even, like, horse tranquilisers.
She'd have to ask what he'd tried, and if anything worked. Sliding off the bed, with the blanket wrapped around her shoulder against the cold, she made her way to the phone in the hall to call and see if he was home.
"Hello?" Peter answered. He'd returned from the rink and Anna was off drawing millions of pictures for Olivia. Lydia was following him around like a shadow.
"Hey, it's Stephie. I guess you're home then."
"I am home. Hello, Stephie." Peter smiled. "Is everything allright?"
"Yup," said Stephie, maybe a little too quickly. "I've just been reading your diaries. About the demons." Yeah, like he'd givin her any other kind. "Anyway, I just wanted to, um, know more. About everything."
"Oh, of course. Would you like to come over and I can answer any questions you might have. As long as you don't mind little girls running around." He put his hand on Lydia's back again.
Oh great, small children. "Uh," said Stephie uneasily, "how many? Nono, it doesn't matter." She shook her head at herself, silly girl. "It okay if I come over now?"
Peter chuckled. "There's two. And of course you can. I'll see you soon."
"Kay, see you." Stephie hung up and went to exchange her blanket for a coat and helmet. Half an hour later she was nicely warmed from scating and moments away from Peter's door. She could hear the kids laughing from inside the brightly lit windows. The house looked warm and inviting. She knocked on the door and unbuckled her helmet, shaking out her hair.
Peter went to let her in. He smiled at her, and hope that his incredibly bruised eye didn't freak her out too much. "Come in, Slink. We can talk in the dining room, my sister's girlfriend came home and she can watch the girls."
"Whooo, who put you through the blender?" Stephie asked Peter's eye as she entered the house, kicking off her boots.
Peter bit his lip. "Deirdre actually. I'll explain it all in time."
Stephie's grin dropped from her face. That was probably the last thing she wanted to hear. "Are you alright?" She demanded, ignoring the promise of a later explanation.
"I'm fine, Stephie. Everything is fine." He lead Steph into the dining room and closed the door so no one would overhear.
"Your battle wounds kind of speak differently, but sure." Stephie said, sitting down on one of the chairs.
"Well...my battle wounds are why everything is okay now. Did you have any specific questions about the journals?"
"Can we do the why-on-earth-Deirdre-was-beating-you-up thing first?" Stephie asked.
"All right." Peter took a seat and swallowed. "Deirdre and Evanna went out to eat a few nights ago and they got mugged. Apparently Deirdre drained the soul of the first one and then took care of the second one by hitting him against a building. It scared Evanna, and Deirdre was upset that she'd slipped and scared her cousin. She locked herself in her room even though I told her not to. I knew that separating herself was the most dangerous thing she could do. She was slipping away. She was losing her battle ton control herself, so I did the only think I could think of to do, which was to bring her here and lock her in a room with me. That way, anything she did, she had to do it to me first."
He wondered if that made even the least bit of sense.
A look of growing concern was spreading across Stephie's features. Goddamnit! She's been so occupied watching Jude for a slip up that she hadn't even noticed what was going on with Deirdre. She sighed, she was going to have to work on this multitasking thing. Looking up at Peter, she couldn't stop herself smiling, and she shook her head, impressed. "You are the stuff Spiderman is made of, you know?"
Peter chuckled. "Spider-Man, huh? Well...thank you. I just knew I had an advantage with her and that advantage was me. She cared about me, so I used it. She got pretty bad but she reached a point where she had to make a decision and she made it. She chose the right one and she chose it herself. I wasn't exactly in the position to make that one for her. Heh." His hand went to his throat unconsciously. "Either way...she's doing a lot better now."
"I've noticed. She's been extra bouncy around the house lately." Stephie paused for a moment. "And I'm glad you're not dead and she's not a homocidal winged maniac. Um, how likely is that? That she'll snap again? None of the demons in your books were like Deirdre."
"Because she is what she is, I can't tell you for certain, but she...she's not addicted to the souls anymore like she was. That was the main reason for it. She might slip again, sometimes the taking of a soul is an instinct like jumping when someone surprises you. BUt now if it happens, she'll know just to be around her friends and have fun until the problem goes away. And if anything does arise, I can always bring her here again. The thing is...she made the decision to not let herself go at a very critical moment. I truely believe that if she can come back from that, she should be allright. The rest of them from my diaries, they didn't want to be helped. Deirdre does. And I didn't have enough information back then to tell them how they could be helped." He shook his head and sighed.
Stephie sighed with relief. "Good news." She smiled at Peter, then turned serious with the other question she was going to ask. "If- if something does go wrong, if she does slip and you're not around and- what do we do?"
"If all she does is take someone's soul and she's not being violent, spend time with her. She won't hurt you. If she's being violent, I...I think the best thing to do would be to leave her alone until she calms down." He was going to suggest that pierre stay with her because the boy could clearly take care of himself the the mental image of Pierre with a knife to his throat flashed across his vision and he couldn't say it.
"But, you can call me at any time, day or night."
"I figured that," she grinned at him again. "But isn't there anything we can do to, I don't know, calm her down? No that's not exactly what I mean, um. It's close enough. If she's like how she was the other night and I'm not saying I don't have faith in your letting her beat you up method because I do and that seems to be working. But... you don't know any other way of making her act human again once something's got her started?"
Peter looked down at his hands. "No. I mean, I'm not sure. I just tried to get her to realise what she was doing. You could do that but...you have to understand what could happen." He paused and decided to tell Slink the exact details. "Deirdre had a knife to my throat. But in the end she couldn't kill me. For which I am eternally grateful. The same thing would probably happen if you or Pierre were to do it. I mean that she wouldn't be able to kill you but she might hurt you badly." And if that happened, Peter would feel incredibly guilty, let alone Deirdre.
"Oh a knife," Stephie gave a small nervous laugh. "Fun. Hey- can they be hurt?"
"Yes. They can. But they can also feed off of people's souls to heal themselves. They can't be killed though, insofar as I am aware."
"She's immortal!" Stephie exclaimed. "Awesome! Uh, I mean. That's bad. So all the crazy one's you wrote about... they're still around?"
Peter nodded. "Most of them are in institutions. There's only one...I don't know where Svetlana is." Peter ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. "And yes, they're immortal. I don't want Deirdre to have to spend the rest of...forever in a place like that. That's why I did what I did."
Svetlana. The worst one. How was this man not a bundle of shattered nerves? "Neither do I." Stephie agreed gravely.
)
Peter smiled across at Stephie. "Well with friends like you, Renee and Pierre, she won't ever have to. Were there any other questions or things that confused you?"
"There was something, but I don't know if it has anything to do with demons. You never made any mention of it in any of your diaries but still. Do you know if they can mess with people's mind. Not like in the human way, but... making them see things? Hear things?"
"Not that I know of. Demons are generally just destructive things. When they feed off of your soul sometimes you feel terrible and you see black spots in front of your eyes but never any images or anything. I have someone I can ask, but that doesn't sound like something a demon could do to me."
Stephie nodded. Oh well, it was worth a try. "There's someone who knows more about these things than you do?" She asked, curious again. "Who?"
"Are you familiar with Avery Driscoll?"
Stephie flapped her hangs like they were wings sprouting from her shoulders and raised her eyes questioningly. "That Avery?"
Peter chuckled. "That Avery. His mother told me alot about these things. And I have a friend back at the monastery who has told me a bit as well. He's the one I'd be calling, since I think Claire has other things to worry about."
"I know. Well, kind of. I've read the anti-tabloid rants and seen how upset Deirdre gets about it, but yeah." A light dawned on her face. "The craziness with the hospital has something to do with the wings, doesn't it? Oh duh. So he's an Angel, right? Jeez, what else is there out there?"
Peter smiled. "I don't know really. But you're right about Avery." And several other people. Now he had to ask Rolf what else there WAS out there.
"Headtrippy" was Stephie's only comment.
"Indeed." Peter studied her for a second and then smiled.