Closed RP: Susan is Not Happy (and when Susan ain't happy, NOBODY is happy)

[usethepoker]

((Backdated to February 10, just after Stephen's popcorn-letter))

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part 2 of 2

[charlesmacaulay]

He wrote two messages as quickly as possible.

Ryder,

I think I understand what you were talking about now. Something's happened to Susan and I don't know what, except that it looks really, really bad. Bad as in she's carrying a scythe around and she looks like she's planning on using it.

Any ideas?

Charles Macaulay

He was hoping Ryder would know what to do about this. God, was he hoping.

The other message ... well, maybe it wasn't necessary. He didn't know. He wasn't willing to take a chance.

Henry,

Take Camilla somewhere safe. I don't care where or how, just do it. Hogwarts is not a safe place to be right now and I don't want her in danger. I'll explain later if you want to hear.

This is not a joke. This is not a trick. I don't give a damn what you think about me but I need to be sure Mil Camilla is safe and I think you would agree with that much.

Charles

Once that was sent he wasn't sure what he wanted to do next, or what he ought to do next. He wasn't sure where Susan would go next, either. Maybe

Re: part 2 of 2

[johnryder]

Ryder read the owl, wondering what in the hell Charles had done to her. Oh, fuck, this was...bad, and what was more it was waaaay outside his ability to deal with. In fact he only knew of one person in the entire school who could probably handle Susan, if she had really gone China Syndrome. He dashed off two owls, each in his untidy scrawl.

Charles,

Just hang out--I'm going to go get Odin.

-Ryder

He gave the note to the owl, but didn't let it leave yet--it was going to have to do double-duty, since he didn't have time to go and get a second.

Odin Mr. Wednesday,

I don't know what the fuck happened to her, but apparently Susan's gone critical. No way in hell can I field this one--can you help?

-Ryder.

in the Owlery

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles received Ryder's message first. He was still sitting in the Owlery, unsure where else to go, and more importantly where else he could go without doing something damned foolish. Part of him wanted to go chase Susan down and try to fix things. Part of him knew that was utterly futile and would only get him decapitated. Part of him didn't care about getting decapitated. Part of him just wanted a drink, and that was the strongest part of all, strong enough that Charles felt almost certain if he did leave the Owlery he'd head straight for the Ravenclaw bar. That couldn't be allowed to happen.

He read it. He blinked at it. He read it again.

Just hang out, Ryder wrote. What? As if Charles could just sit by and let all this happen ... Oh. Well. Charles guessed that was actually what he was doing. All right.

I'm going to go get Odin, Ryder wrote. Odin? As in the Norse god Odin? Or maybe a superhero Odin, like the comic-book Thor. Maybe Odin was the name of some kind of weapon or vehicle. Charles rubbed at his

Re: in the Owlery

[johnryder]

Knowing he would be of no use whatesoever to Wednesday, Ryder instead went to hunt down Charles, intent on finding out just what in the name of all hell could have triggered this. Something had to have really upset her to get her to such a point, and given that Charles had been the first to spot her, either A.) he knew what it was, or B.) it was his fault.

So he hoofed it to the Owlery, bringing both his knife and his gun despite the fact that he knew both would be useless. At this point, he just wanted to be armed, and fuck practicality. Fortunately, Charles had indeed stayed put, and in one piece.

"Hey, kid," Ryder said. "Good, she didn't kill you. All right, what the fuck happened? Susan's not the kind to get set off like that for nothing."

[charlesmacaulay]

His head tilted back, his eyes closed, Charles had been sitting still with his back against the wall. At the sound of Ryder's voice, he snapped to alertness. "I was hoping you'd be able to say what happened, really. I mean, I can tell you what caused it -"

Something sank in, then. Oh, hell.

"Don't tell me you think I did this." He should have known. Everything was always his fault. "Look, if I did this I wouldn't be in one piece right now, would I?" Well, there were probably ways he could have done it and still avoided immediate reprisal. Sent her a Dear Jane letter, maybe. Got caught in bed with his sister. All kinds of things Charles could have managed to do, some of them hopefully nothing Ryder would ever suspect. Still, it wasn't Charles's fault, not this time!

"It was that damn whaling captain of hers. Ship's doctor. Whatever he is. Was. He turned into popcorn and she got a letter about it. Saw it on her desk."

[johnryder]

"Ship's doctor..." Was that the guy, the one Camilla said had actually made Susan cry? "That guy? Well, fuck, no wonder she went like...that." He waved a hand, a gesture that tried to encompass 'that' and failed. "I never knew her when she was with the guy, but I saw what she was like for a while after...shit." Ryder himself didn't really understand what might be called the emotional nuances of the whole relationship thing, but he'd seen one or two humans it had gone bad on--he could kind of see why Susan would have a few problems. Unfortunately, when the granddaughter of Death had 'a few problems', she could probably take it out in some really creative ways.

"Okay," he said, trying to find some kind of silver lining in the whole thing, and failing completely. "Odin's after her, at least--he's probably the only person in all of fucking Britain who can handle her. I hope." He had a fairly good idea of the scope of a god's powers, but Susan was an unknown quantity--she wasn't a god, but he didn't know just what she really was. "We...

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles took a deep breath. "Yes. That guy. From what he wrote, it sounded like he expected this to happen to him, and the letter Susan got wasn't terribly personal. It also sounded like he hadn't given anyone any more forewarning than that." A headshake, slow and rueful. "If my -- if someone I loved did that, I don't know what I'd do. She must have been in a state ... Well, I don't know, actually. I wasn't there when she got this letter. I don't know if anything would have turned out different if I had been there. Maybe I could have ..." Made her feel better? Distracted her? Charles knew damn well that he and Susan weren't that important to one another. They were friends, sure. Really good friends. They made one another feel better in certain limited ways. There wasn't a thing he could have done to assuage her grief over someone who'd really, truly mattered to her

[johnryder]

Ryder had seen that in Susan--how self-contained she was in many ways. She wasn't the sort to give anything of herself away easily, and when she did she probably did it whole hog--which meant this doctor-guy's popping was probably like the end of a little piece of her world. Shit.

"No," he agreed. "Probably not. It's just as well nobody was with her when she got it, or maybe they'd be a corpse right now. I don't know how that scythe thing works, but I wouldn't want to bet my life on the Rule working against it." Death was Death, after all. Could anything stand against its actual incarnation? He hoped they wouldn't have to find out. "Shaun and Liz and your sister...they're not like her. Having them around would just be, as you say, more cannon-fodder. This Sansa, though

[charlesmacaulay]

The scythe thing. Henry's owls had given Charles a more chilling idea about how that might work than he could ever have suspected on his own.

There had been times in Charles's life when he didn't care whether he personally lived or died. This was not one of those times. If Camilla had been cut down, then Charles might not have cared what happened next. While she was alive, and while she loved him (for she did, he had no doubt), Charles had definite reason to live.

"Whatever works," he said. It was a reckless desperate tone any of the Hampden gang might have recognized, Charles's voice a little edgy, a little ragged. "Whatever works to get her back on an even keel and off whatever unholy trip she's on. Do you think that would work, though? Sansa, I mean. It seems a little like -- well, like hunting a unicorn. Using Sansa as bait."

[johnryder]

"It kind of is like hunting a unicorn," Ryder said, tapping out a cigarette and lighting it distractedly. "A scary, deadly, probably half-crazy unicorn. Look at it this way, though--if using Sansa as bait works, it works, and if not...well, we're all screwed anyway, so what's it matter?" God, he couldn't ever remember being this agitated, but then he'd never been faced with the prospect of the mass extinction of the human race, either. It would, as Wednesday had said, definitely put him out of a job.

Had Ryder known of Henry's speculations regarding the effectiveness of Susan's own weapons if used against her, he would have just shaken his head and sighed. Even if they did work, who in the hell could actually get close enough to use one? No mere human could pull it off--hell, Ryder himself couldn't, if it came to that. When it came to sneaking up on something like Susan, it just wasn't gonna happen.

[charlesmacaulay]

The owls didn't seem to object to Ryder's cigarette smoke, for whatever reason. Charles decided not to try their patience by adding a cigarette of his own to the mix. Owls had sharp talons.

He hoped the smoke would improve the atmosphere. Even though house-elves kept the place pretty clean, owls didn't smell very good when there were so many of them concentrated into one room.

"Scary, deadly, half-crazy," he repeated, distracted by any number of thoughts and puzzlements, not all of which concerned owls. "None of that is Susan. Is she even really in there, somewhere?" He ran a hand back through his hair (Camilla-gesture, twin-gesture, distraught and careless). "I don't want her getting hurt."

Of all the unlikely things to say. But it was true.

[johnryder]

Ryder took a deep drag off his cigarette, for once needing the nicotine. "You ask me, she's hiding in the middle of it. I didn't know her before she was Death, but once she went back to what's normal for her--that whole Death thing was some kind of wall, I think. This guy, this ship's doctor, he'd hurt her once already, and Susan...obviously doesn't deal well with that kind of thing. Whatever he did to her the first time needed a wall, and maybe now she just needs a bigger wall."

Ryder's attempt at psychoanalysis was actually pretty close to the mark--he'd had enough bizarre talks with her about the nature of humanity vs. inhumanity to have at least a rough understanding of her mindset. It was like he'd told Charles last time he'd talked to him--she wasn't one thing or the other, and this, in some really fucked-up way, was how she handled all the shit a normal human didn't want to deal with. She had a way of not having to deal with it; it was just one that was extremely unfortunate for the rest of the world.

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles knew what it was like to snap.

He didn't know what it was like for Susan to snap. He was only mortal, and his coping mechanisms were fewer and less byzantine. He did, however, know what it was like to hit a point worse than rock bottom, go right through the rock and hit lava underneath. Go homicidal.

Despite all his machinations and plans, there was a part of Charles that knew he'd never truly be forgiven for what he'd done that day in the Albemarle Inn. He wanted nothing more than to go back: hence the appeal of obliviation; hence the bittersweet savor of that afternoon he'd spent playing cards with a Camilla magically returned to childhood. The Macaulay twins excelled at self-delusion, and he wanted nothing more than to go back, though he'd never want to take back trying to kill Henry (he still wanted to do that). But part of him knew it was no good

[johnryder]

In that, as in many other things, Charles understood Susan much better than Ryder ever could. Despite what he was and what he did for a living, Ryder didn't know what it was to 'snap'; even when he'd been chasing Jim over half of Texas and southern California, he hadn't ever gotten what one might call angry. For a demon, he was quite even-keeled, which was why he was so good at his job to begin with

[charlesmacaulay]

(( reposted for corrections >.< )) Charles was not one for cold-blooded murder. Crimes of passion were more his style. He had not wanted to kill Bunny; in fact he had protested against Henry's plan more than once, though never with any particular force. He had waited on the cliff above the ravine with Francis and Richard while Henry did the dirty work and Camilla followed. The idea of setting Sansa in front of Susan as deliberate bait did not sit well with Charles

[johnryder]

Ryder being what he was, he saw nothing wrong with the idea of using a child as bait. His interests were primarily selfish--he didn't want Susan destroying the human race and thus putting him out of a job. The fact that he liked Susan as a person did factor into the whole thing, but he was a demon; the idea of protecting people was a difficult one for him to get his mind around. He'd promised Camilla he would look after Susan, and that too had some bearing in what he now did; this was, in a way, just another facet of 'looking after' Susan. In some ways the woman was far older even than him, but in others she was almost naive, and it was almost certainly that quasi-naivete that had gotten her hurt now