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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[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...."

He paused, thinking. "Susan was some kind of governess or teacher or something, on her world. She's used to working with kids. Maybe this kid could be useful--kids're harmless, you know? She doesn't have to feel threatened by 'em. Sticking the kid in front of her might make her think."

[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.

He had to laugh at himself, a painful sound, wrenched from somewhere deep in his gut. What did he think he was going to do? Save Susan from herself? How melodramatic, how foolish, how utterly wrongheaded. She'd mow him down without remorse.

He said what he was thinking anyway.

"She's somewhere in there, then. And she's not going to forget what she's done, when this is over, if it's ever over. And she's not going to forgive herself and no one else will forgive her either."

He hauled himself up from his slump against the wall. There was no steel in his backbone, anyone could have seen that; but he made himself stand upright, and he was supple, not oak but willow, and he could stand.

"So you want to put this Sansa kid in front of her and see whether that gets through to the real Susan somewhere inside? What if it doesn't? Are we aiming for a Pyrrhic victory here? Susan kills Sansa and the shock jolts her out of murderous robot mode? Then what happens?"

[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.

"Yeah, she's in there," he agreed, crushing out his cigarette and earning a reproving look from the owl nearest him. "In there looking out, and--and I'm just speaking from personal experience, mind you--I'll bet you anything part of her wants someone to stop her." As he'd wanted Jim to--it was his job to find someone capable of doing so, but it was also something he enjoyed. Susan's reasons for wanting someone to take her out--assuming that was in fact what part of her wanted--would be a lot more complicated than that, he was sure.

He watched Charles with some approval--the kid had guts. Kind of like Jim, really, though Charles was a hell of a lot smarter than Halsey had been. And, though he and Susan weren't much more than friends to each other, he wanted to help partly for her own sake, which Ryder also approved of. It meant she'd have some kind of support once she came down off this weird high of hers.

"My guess," he said, lighting another cigarette, "is that she won't be able to do it in the first place. I've never seen this kid, but like you say--Susan's in there somewhere, and I can't imagine her ever doing anything to a kid." He'd had a hard time picturing her crying, but at least he could do it; picturing her hurting a child just didn't work. "I don't think she's thought this out, see? If she had, she wouldn't be doing it. Something needs to actually make her stop and think, and that's the only thing I can come up with. This Sansa's not just any kid, she's a kid Susan knows, and probably cares about." And, he didn't add, if Susan could mow the girl down, she probably wouldn't have enough human left in her to care or stop.

[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.

If Susan had truly lost or submerged all vestiges of her own humanity, she'd stop at nothing. And if Susan would stop at nothing, Camilla would eventually fall to her scythe just like everybody else. Charles had to remind himself of that. It's for Milly I'm doing this. He would throw any number of innocent children, babies, puppies, whatever into Susan's path if that shielded his sister.

He swiped a hand over his weary eyes. "A unicorn hunt," he muttered. He felt disgusted, the way he'd felt sitting around Henry's kitchen table with the others planning Bunny's demise. He felt disgusted with himself and with Ryder. He felt disgusted with Henry for suggesting that they do Susan in with her own damn scythe (well, sword, but Charles hadn't told Henry about the sword).

"So we set Sansa ... somewhere. In Susan's path. I guess your Odin is the one who'll be able to predict that?" Like some kind of weatherman, and Susan a tornado. God, how did they ever come to this? "Sansa plays Iphigeneia to her Artemis. And we hope that Susan's conscience wakes up, and if not, well, Sansa's totally defenseless ..."

He wished they could set Henry there instead of Sansa. Henry might even like that. He could use the goddamn sword. Susan wouldn't stop for someone like Henry, but that wouldn't matter to Henry at all, he'd just leap out with the sword and -

- maybe that was it. Charles blinked suddenly, gray eyes wide and hopeful.

"We can give Sansa the sword," he said.

(Whether or not Ryder knew what he meant was, for the moment, wholly immaterial.)

[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.

"I'm hoping that Odin's already found her," he said. "He went out to hunt for her, anyway, and to anyone like us she's bound to stick out like a beacon. Dunno just what he could do against her, but he's a god--he can probably at least keep her in one place, if nothing else. What I don't know is how to get ahold of him, to tell him about this plan."

He didn't know about the sword, and so looked at Charles, curious and confused. "Huh?" he said. "What sword?" It would not have occurred to him that Death--any Death--might have two weapons, since the Earth wasn't the Discworld. On the Disc, Death dealt differently with royalty than he did with the common man; the sword was the right of kings and other nobility, usually because so many of them met their mortal ends at the end of one. He would have had a hard time seeing a girl--even a teenage girl--knowing how to use a sword, but then it might be more use as a symbol than an actual weapon. Something to make Susan pause, and that pause was what would be important. Make her stop, make her actually think--give some of that occasionally appallingly sensible nature a chance to break through. It would at least be a start.

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles had begun to pace. It agitated the owls. He didn't seem to notice.

"The Iphigeneia story works two ways. In one version, Iphigeneia is sacrificed to Artemis. That's straightforward. The other one's more complicated. Artemis comes to claim her sacrifice, but actually rescues her instead. It's in Euripides ... Milly would remember ... Maybe we have a chance for things to work out like you say. Sansa might stop Susan just by being Sansa: young, innocent, something Susan would want to protect rather than cut down."

He stopped and looked Ryder straight on.

"But if it doesn't work that way, maybe Sansa can at least have a fighting chance. See, when Susan left, she left behind a trunk, and it's got a sword in it. I think maybe if we give Sansa that sword ... well, it would be a last resort, and I hope to God she wouldn't have to use it." His eyes were almost pleading.

"I don't want her hurt. I really don't." And he didn't mean Sansa, though he didn't want Sansa hurt either.

[johnryder]

Hmm... "That's what I was hoping," he said. "The second one. Susan--obviously she's got it in her to be this crazy evil merciless thing, but that's not what she actually is. Part of her's a lot more human than I think she realizes, though I bet she'd be damn insulted if I ever told her so. And I think there's no way in hell that part of her would let her kill a kid--any kid, but especially not one she knows." What Ryder didn't have the eloquence to articulate was that Susan was, despite how odd the term might seem on the surface, a caretaker. She looked after people, even when she herself was a mess, and she'd apparently been kind of looking after this kid in particular already. There was an attachment there, and that was important.

Charles really meant that, didn't he? Ryder's estimation of the kid went up yet again. Not knowing about all the incestuous...fun...between the Macaulay twins, he didn't know that Charles really was capable of almost inhuman devotion; from what he'd seen when he first met the man, Charles was a nice enough guy but also one who was definitely looking out for himself. Which, especially to Ryder, there was absolutely nothing wrong with--Ryder himself generally took 'selfish' to knew and previously unexplored heights.

"A second one, huh? Well, there's a thing." Ryder himself remained still, thoughtful. "Yeah, we could give it to the kid. I hope she doesn't have to use it, either." Largely because he wouldn't put money on her odds of actually succeeding to use it. "Look, I don't want to have to gut Susan, either, but I don't think we'll have to. She's a smart woman, even if she is a little weird even at the best of times--and, all this shit notwithstanding, she's not a bad person. Susan is good enough--as far as humans go, anyway, and humans are pretty mixed bag--so we just have to make Susan come back to the forefront. Put her back in charge of herself."

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles bent his head and reached back to pinch the nape of his neck. All this was giving him the mother of all headaches. He wanted a drink so infernally badly.

"She is smart. And she is good. Too good for all this shit," he said. His voice sounded flat and weird in his own ears. "You know how you kept telling me she needed to believe she was okay? How she needed to know it was okay to be what she was? Well, assuming Odin and Sansa can get her through this, and assuming we all make it through in one piece, this whole experience is going to be one hell of a setback. And you know what? That's not even remotely fair."

He was remembering the months at Nana's house after the twins had left Hampden. The way Camilla acted around him sometimes, the way she looked at him sometimes out of the corner of her eye. As if she were afraid of him. She wouldn't ever let him make it up to her. I'm trying now. She's letting me now. But it had been years of separation first, years between then and now.

"I'm not going to be afraid," he muttered. Not of Susan. Not if whatever insanity had taken hold of her could be made to fall away.

At the same time, he wasn't willing to play Julian and see only what he wanted to see. Susan herself might be a good sane sensible nice person, but that Susan wasn't in control right now. Right now the thing that looked like Susan was a monster. The question was how they could talk Sansa Stark into putting herself in that monster's path.

"What do we tell Sansa? Or do we leave that up to Odin, too?" And here Charles had no way of knowing a key element, that Wednesday had his own connection to Sansa.

[johnryder]

For once, Ryder refrained from saying that life wasn't fair. Hell, it was patently obvious just now anyway.

"No," he said. "It's not, and it sure as hell isn't going to help her later. She's got you and Shaun and Liz and your sister, though, and that girl Sansa, assuming the poor kid isn't completely traumatized by all this. I'm not a hell of a lot of good when it comes to shit like this, but I'll still keep an eye on her, too. And," he added, taking a last drag off his cigarette and flicking it out the window, "it's good you're not afraid. She'll need that. I don't know how in the hell you're not, since even I'm just a little uneasy, but it's a good thing, so keep it up, if you can."

He lit yet another cigarette--he wasn't used to chain-smoking like this, but he needed something to do. "I think we're gonna have to get Sansa," he said. "Odin's probably got his hands full dealing with Susan, wherever they've gone." He wasn't sensing Susan anywhere close by, so presumably Wednesday and found somewhere slightly more suitable for a creature like her. "And...well, fuck, I'm not sure." It wasn't like Ryder was really good with people in general, let alone children--or adolescents, in Sansa's case. "Tell her we need her help, I guess. And maybe leave out the fact that there's a chance Susan will cut her in half."

[charlesmacaulay]

The good thing about holing up in the Owlery was that it made sending owls very, very easy.

Charles wrote. A response came with surprising and gratifying alacrity. Charles read it over once, swore, and handed it to Ryder.

"All right, now what do we tell her?"

[johnryder]

He thought about this, grimacing. "We need to meet her somewhere," he said. "Probably not in here," he added, since it was pretty messy and more than a little smelly, "but somewhere close--Room of Requirement, maybe? I just wish I knew how the hell to get in contact with Odin, now that I'm pretty damn sure he's taken Susan somewhere else." Just what kind of 'Somewhere Else' that might be, Ryder didn't know; he was just a demon, after all. Whatever the high-stakes players might get up to, they didn't usually bother to tell demons like him.

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles racked his brain. "He's a god, right? A Norse god." Odin. Father of the gods. Had one eye. Had ... lightning bolts? No, that was Zeus but also Thor. Indo-European deities were supposed to stay analogous to one another, damn it. "I was a classics major," he told Ryder, a little defensively. "Odin is a little far north for anything I'd have read much about. I don't remember him having any special tracking powers, though. So I don't know how he's going to find us, either. I'm guessing wherever he took Susan, owls can't reach him?"