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

[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

[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

[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

[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?"

[johnryder]

"Yeah, Norse," Ryder said. "And I don't think he does--we're going to have to find him. I've got a little power in that area, but out here, since I'm not at work, it doesn't amount to much. I am pretty sure that if he's taken her somewhere outside this world, no owl's going to find him."

He went to the tall, unglassed window, peering out into the dark. His radar, such as it was, wasn't picking up either one of them, which might or might not be a good thing. Even if Wednesday had taken Susan somewhere Outside (wherever or whatever the hell that might be), there was always a chance she'd somehow find a way back. They had to deal with her as she was, somehow.

[callmewednesday]

Out there in the darkness, a figure could be seen swooping across the lambent moon. It was a tall man in an overcoat, riding on a broomstick.

Charles peered out the window around Ryder. "Of all the nights for someone to want to play daredevil on a broom," he said, rather irritably.

Then the figure swooped toward them - rocketed toward them, really. On instinct Charles pulled Ryder away from the window.

He needn't have worried. Wednesday decelerated in plenty of time to make a light landing amongst the owls.

"And here I was aiming for the only sizable unglazed window in the castle, never dreaming you boys had decided to make my life easier by waiting right here for me. Or is this an ambush?" Gone were his backstage trappings. He was the dapper businessman again.

[johnryder]

...That was almost too easy, Ryder thought--what the hell was going to go wrong now? Something had to balance out that piece of good luck.

"No, we were actually going to try to look for you," he said. "We think we might know how to snap Susan out of this--there's a girl we have to talk to first, and make sure she'll do it, but if she will I think it'll make Susan actually stop and think about what in the name of all fuck she's doing."

[callmewednesday]

Good luck? No. It was Wednesday's luck, plain and simple.

"Didn't I ever tell you I'm a lucky guy? It's lucky I am, too, with this mess we're in. Who's the girl and why haven't you talked to her already?" Had they been twiddling their thumbs while Wednesday escorted Madame Hell-Hath-No-Fury behind the curtain?

"Her name's Sansa Stark," contributed a pale and shaky Charles. "Susan's been tutoring her, I think. Something like that. We hadn't talked to her yet because we weren't sure how we'd find you. Now that's taken care of, let me owl her."

"I suggest you don't invite her to the Owlery. The ambience leaves something to be desired," said Wednesday dryly.

"No. I'm going to tell her to meet us in Susan's room. I've got a key. There's something there I want to give Sansa, if she's willing to help us."

[johnryder]

Ryder, in spite of everything, wanted a look at that sword himself. He'd had no idea Death could have two weapons, nor had he ever thought he'd get the chance to actually see one, except in a terminal sense.

"You've got Susan somewhere safe for now?" he said. It was only half a question; if anyone could keep a creature like Susan somewhere she couldn't annihilate the population, it would be a god. "She can't get out, can she?"

[callmewednesday]

Wednesday only grunted. "With an eidetic memory and a good command of runes, she could get out."

Charles was setting loose an owl with his short missive to Sansa. He rounded on Wednesday. "You didn't hurt her." It wasn't a question.

"No," said Wednesday mildly, "I didn't."

[johnryder]

Eidetic memory...shit. "Which she probably has," Ryder said, crushing out his cigarette on his boot. "One, if not both. We'd better get moving."

He watched the exchange between Charles and Wednesday, interested. Charles definitely really was turning out to be a lot less self-centered than Ryder had pegged him--if he didn't know any better, he'd say the kid was actually being protective.

[charlesmacaulay]

Wednesday could read that vibe quite well. Charles was being protective, all right, and it had everything to do with self-interest. Beyond that, of course, he couldn't know what was going through Charles's mind, not without probing it in a way he had neither time nor interest to do.

Charles didn't know what was going through his own mind himself, really. All he knew was that things were happening fast, and time was of the essence, and he didn't want Susan to get hurt if it was at all possible to prevent that, because Susan was the only person around here who gave a damn about him.

Charles looked hard at Wednesday. "You're Odin?"

Wednesday shrugged. "I have many names. You can call me Wednesday."

Charles turned to Ryder. "He's Odin? And you trust him?"

If what Charles remembered of Norse myth was at all right, no one should trust Odin.