All you can do is try to know who your friends are

[lists_to_port]

Who: Open to noprevaricating CR and anyone involved in the House 7 Player Plot (and their CR? I dunno. I like to involve people.)
When: June 8 (the day after this gruesome discovery.) Any time.
Where: Various places around the village
Summary: erythrophilia decided to take out her fury at lists_to_port on one of his friends--an act of misplaced anger that she later seemed to regret. folkloristic is

Comments

[slaying]

Sometime after this reached its end, Buffy Summers hurried back to House Seven. She knew she should not have left it so impulsively and yet -- Grell had spent the past little while with her, right? Practically an act of protection all on its own. This is how she decided to spin it to herself as she unlocked the front door and...empty. Everyone was missing. Of course they were missing. Bones had been called to help and a quick check back over the journals suggested to her that Jilly had gone along. Good. She needn't worry over that, then.

Dawn. She had to check on Dawn. But she had told the girl to stay put and goddammit she trusted her. She shouldn't have trusted her. But the younger Summers would've realized that this was a chips-are-down situation, right? Buffy tossed aside her jacket. The sun was coming up.

To know the future of his soul. God damn, Jack! Buffy shoved a side-table hard and rough and it flew across the room, crashing against the opposite wall. Leaving kindling on the floor below. But -- these were roads she had

[slaying]

She turned back to face the pirate. Her pirate, still? It was hard to say. Except...how could that not be the case when -- this morning -- she had gambled so much for not just everyone but for him in particular.

"Does it look like I fought her?" Untouched. Unharmed. Physically, at least.

[lists_to_port]

Sparrow couldn't look at her face; the sight of McCoy in his bloodstained clothing, of Archie lying perfectly still, was occupying his inner vision.

"No. But you've spoken with her, Buffy."

He tried not to sound accusatory. After all, he had no right to cast stones, all things considered.

[slaying]

"We talked -- this morning." After Archie...

It bothered her that he wouldn't look her in the eye. It bothered her that she could feel the moment slipping away from her. Could feel herself slipping away from her. Long gone was the comforting humanity found in Jilly's hug.

[lists_to_port]

"So our accord did not stand."

The implication was there: now it's my turn, if I so choose.

"You found it enlightening, I presume?"

[slaying]

"How could it stand? Jack, she -- Archie."

A twinge of an expression across her face. More than she had managed to show any of the others; after all, Jack shared her burden. His follies with the god might have instigated this but she was the hero. She was the champion. She developed a responsibility by proxy.

Enlightening was not a word she would use and so instead she used none at all to address that second statement.

[lists_to_port]

"Aye, Archie. And if anyone were to have words with Grell, it would be me. Not you."

The anger he'd tried so hard to swallow was threatening to break, now. Jack stood, the dagger still clutched tight in his hand.

"You didn't even tell me."

[slaying]

Oh, she did not have the energy for this. Or even, really, the inclination. However -- some battles had to be fought.

"Gee, I wasn't aware I was under any kind of obligation to report to anyone about my comings and goings." It wasn't fair. It wasn't what should be done at this point in time. But the indignation just tumbled out. "Archie's not just one of yours, Jack. He's one of ours." Me and mine. You and yours. Such proprietary language; she had once called him out on it. Now she fell easily into it.

[lists_to_port]

He strode forward and caught her by the upper arm. "Aye. And you're--" mine. "He's ours. That's an even more better reason for you to tell me, isn't it." Jack reached up to touch the locket with his free hand.

"What were you afraid of, Buffy?" he asked hollowly. "That I'd try to stop you?"

[slaying]

"Who says I was afraid?"

Her eyes widen. The locket. He has, perhaps, touched a little too closely upon the gist of her conversation with Grell. If Jack suspected...Buffy tugged half-heartedly to free her arm.

She had been afraid but not that he would try to stop her. That he would succeed in stopping her. That her resolve would be decimated by...by things like that look on his face, right now.

[lists_to_port]

"Now, of course, you being mine and I being yours and Kennedy being ours, you are going to tell me what you spoke of with the death god."

Not letting go of that arm; nope. "What does she require? Why did she attack Kennedy, of all people?!"

[slaying]

"Strategy," she spat the word. Upset with it. Far more upset with it than any of this I'm yours and you're mine tango. The command in his voice chafed up against her. She tugged harder. Possibly too hard. She wanted to be free.

"And...silence. She wants to keep up her little normality act.

[lists_to_port]

Jack freed her and crossed to the other side of the small room, where he could lean against the rough-cut window frame. Her tone and gestures had cut him to the quick.

He responded, of course, with his own brand of stubbornness.

"You bargained with her, then. And what is the exchange? Silence for...?"

[slaying]

"She didn't like what I was offering. No bites."

Not strictly true. There had been some biting -- purely the metaphorical kind, of course. The bargaining had mostly failed although knowledge was power and she had a little more of that, now.

Arms crossed, again.

[lists_to_port]

"And what, exactly, did you offer, child?"

[slaying]

"Collateral. For a collective cone-of-silence."

Don't make me say it, Jack.