recolle | [Closed] At the end of it all...

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[Closed] At the end of it all...

WHO: Penelopes and Freya
WHERE: Penelope's apartment
WHEN: Post Event
WHAT: A reunion, dinner, comparing notes from the last three weeks and other things
WARNINGS: Language, likely mention of violence, death, body horror, and other unpleasant topics.

The battle had left Penelope drained in a way that only a fight could, even more than three weeks of near constant anxiety and terror. When Retrospec's announcement had gone up and everything returned to normal, it'd all come crashing down at once and as loathe as she was to suggest splitting up...it had to happen for a time. Freya needed to get clothes and stuff from home, and probably needed to follow up with Minako, and Pen desperately needed not only a shower but also to calm the damn cat down.

And put in the order for food. Food was required. And not just any food. The best damn stuff she could get off Grubhub on short notice. So, she'd lent her girlfriend the car and set about these tasks, waiting for Freya's return. The delivery came quickly enough, and she'd stuck it in the oven to keep it warm. Steaks, potatoes, greens, a jug of water and a nice bottle of red wine Yuff had left before she'd frittered off for the weekend like nothing weird had happened. At least they'd not have to deal with that particular distraction.

Glancing up at the clock from her perch on the seat nearest the door, Pen rocks back and forth, an uncomfortable knot forming in her stomach. It'd only been a day. Plenty of time for reality to shift again. She hopes that's just anxiety talking, and she wants to hope that she'll hear the keys turning in the lock soon...but can she really expect it?

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Freya didn't want to keep her partner waiting long. The girl hated being alone, most of the time, and god knows she's seen troubling and trying things over the course of the last month. Still... Freya wouldn't abandon her roommate the day after her world was shattered for anything less than an emergency. She owed Minako too much, even setting aside Freya's self-imposed role in Ryoji's death.

It's not a short follow-up, but not long enough to leave Pen feeling stood-up. When Freya enters the house again, there's a small duffle slung over her shoulder, and she's free of the backwaters workclothes she'd been wearing for the last twelve days in favor of a familiar tanktop and sweats.

When Freya crosses the threshold, her face twists up in an expression almost like pain; the aroma of the food's nearly too much, after three weeks of inadequate amounts of apples, questionably stale crackers, alligator jerky, protein bars, and suspect water. The dull, persistent ache of hunger that's long faded into the background suddenly focuses so sharply it's almost sickening.

She drops her duffle immediately and kicks the door shut with her heel, bee-lining for the food. Despite the tangle of emotions wreaking havoc on her body for the last 24 hours, everything bows before that one, basic, primal need.

"Christ, I'm hungry," slips out of Freya's mouth without much though, and she moves with the desperate undercurrents of... well, someone who's been slowly starving for the last month.

There's no more need to pretend like her portions were big enough, that she needed less than the teenage boys, or that the stress was strangling her appetite. She could eat now, safely, and freely.

Pen understood, she did. That was why she'd done everything she could to ease Freya's burden with the car, the food, and everything else. Emotionally she'd soldier on for another few hours, and it wasn't like she was completely alone. The was the cat and the familiar whirr of computers and roombas, and a few minutes to put up a quick apology video to her viewers. But once her partner pushed through that door, she was up in a flash, making her way towards the kitchen. This too she understood. The smell had been driving her insane.

"I know what you mean," she said as she opened the oven to start pulling out the literal feast. The largest steaks she could order, mountains of vegetables, and a pile of fluffy mashed potatoes, the kinds of solid American food she'd been craving. Setting that down on the middle of the table, she pulls the wine out of the freezer and the water out of the fridge with the kind of eager-to-please smile she very often wears for the camera.

"We lived off vending machine food for weeks," she says as she uncaps the water jug and starts pouring. "I haven't had anything resembling real protein since the nuts I had from my con bag ran out. I can't imagine you were any better off."

It strikes Freya, as she's watching Pen set this all out, just how lucky she was to find her, as a friend and a partner.

She reaches immediately for one of the roasted carrots. It's downright blissful, something fresh and not canned or dried or god knows how old. "Then why were you waiting on me? You need to eat every bit as much as I do." It's a nice notion, Freya admits, but practicality takes preference, all considered.

Dimly, she aware of those survivalist stories, of people who get lost in the wilderness for long stretches of time; people that survive, only to gorge themselves into sickness or death upon return. She makes a mental note to take it slow as she reaches for another carrot, something immediately gratifying that did not require picking up the utensils.

"Apples lasted two days. Nothin' much else until we got out of the mines. Then on, it's canned beans and mystery jerky. Gator, most likely. Beans ran out soon enough; couldn't carry all of it, and eleven mouths are hard to provide for."

...speaking of, Freya's not sure she ever saw Ryoji eat. She pauses only long enough to eat a piece of zucchini. "A couple protein bars and the last of the jerky carried us the last week." Asparagus, this time.

Edited 2017-08-26 16:41 (UTC)

Pen's already reaching for the asparagus, setting a few sprigs on her plate and shaking her head at the comment.

"I...don't like eating alone, if I don't have to. And tonight I didn't, so I waited. It's fine." That probably says something about her and her mental state right now. She hated the idea of having all this food just to herself, and while she'd definitely been hungry it wouldn't be okay to take to it. It just wouldn't have felt okay.

She shoves a piece of asparagus into her mouth, chewing heavily while reaching for the mashed potato spoon for a big glob. It plops onto her plate with a wet smack, and she frowns at it, swallowing the greens.

"Sounds like you had it rougher than we did. We...found a vending machine in that stupid waiting room. Sandwiches and prepackaged salads for a few days, but eventually it came down to Cheetos and Milky Ways."

In some ways she's grateful, and in others...? Well, watching her girlfriend devour this stuff like there's no tomorrow, that tells her something. She's been starving, and if the way she looks is any indication, she's lost weight, and not in a good way. That makes her upset, probably more than it has any right to, and her nose wrinkles in in dismay. She also has a feeling that Freya herself was deliberately eating less to make sure others had more. Something about that 'providing for' makes her think of a mother bear tending a group of cubs.

"I know you did what you could to keep everyone fed. I bet your hunting skills came in handy."

"Mm, I don't know. Cheetos and Milky Ways sounds like a special kind'a hell," Freya says around her asparagus. She takes another thin piece, taking the time to start slicing up her steak as she chews. After swallowing, she tries to focus on talking to give her stomach time to adjust. No doubt it shrunk over the course of this adventure. She's oblivious to Pen's gaze, focused as she is.

"I wish. Nothing to hunt. El and Yuri got to the only alligator we found first. No one was sure if the mutant rats or the yeti was safe to eat." Freya's mouth twists a little in disgust. "Probably would've tried if we didn't find the canned stuff later that day."

She pauses. "Had a couple of kids with us. Mostly older high schoolers, but... one was pretty young. Maybe 13, 14. Responsible kid. Pretty tough. Hope this isn't gonna stunt his growth." Not to mention she had other reasons to worry about Ritsu. Maybe she should try to contact him. Freya shook her head to clear the thought, turning back to her steak. "I was one of the oldest there. Me and some rich guy. Wasn't right."

Pen eats a little more slowly, slicing and carving at the meat until it's on long, thin strips that she practically shoves into her mouth. Something like this is what she's been dreaming about, when it wasn't people and hallucinomemories. Good food, juicy and rich and filling. It's heavenly.

She feels a little bad bringing up hunting, but then she'd had it on the brain. That last stint in those biomes made the anacondas she'd killed seem much, much more appealing than they would ordinarily.

"Heh. Yeah...we were kinda the same, a bunch of late teens and rich folks. I was the third oldest after Seto and Ms. Sandiego. Everyone else was Lucy's age or a little younger. Kids, and while yeah a bunch of them have weird powers...they should've been getting ready to go back to class, not that."

Ritsu she actually knew, he seemed like a pretty good kid, but she wasn't quite ready to contact anybody from Yzma. Not after all that time with them, especially Seto Kaiba. And Dave. She takes a spoonful of mashed potatoes and swallows with a blissful sigh before going on.

"Had Dave with us too though. He and that kid Emil were really resourceful, saved us a hell of a lot of trouble."

"Emil, I've met. Strange guy."

And now, only steak. After days of alligator of varying quality, the steak was unbelievably fantastic. Between the greens and the meat, Freya very, very much looked forward to being rid of the every constant fatigue of iron-deficiency.

"Tell me about space."

"He's definitely that."

Taking a big bite of meat, she reached for water and washed it down, tilting her head to consider Space.

"Right I guess we met up before I got another message out. Thank god, my phone was on it's last legs. Space was...weird. It was pretty, looking out at the stars and everything, but it was cold. Kinda felt like the universe was staring back at me, trying to make me blink."

Taking another sip of water, she shakes her head and goes for the wine bottle now that it's had a moment to breathe.

"The station we were on had a bunch of biomes. I only saw two. One was supposed to simulate the deep sea. Seto and I checked that one out. There was all sorts of weird shit down there. Those freaky tube worms that are all white except red lips, jellyfish that glow in the dark...and those weird fish with all the sharp teeth and lanterns on their heads. Those things are actually really tiny?"

Oh right! She brightens a bit.

"And I met an octopus that could talk."

"Mm, that so?" That was... interesting. A talking octopus? "Sounds surreal. Talking animals in space and all."

Freya, for now, is sticking to the water. Wonderful, cold, clean water. She switches back to the vegetables and the greens.

"And you found the robot somewhere up there, yeah?"

"Everything was surreal, babe. There was also a jungle, and I had to kill a bunch of snakes."

Talking animals, space, anacondas...all of it was crazy. Pouring out wine, she swirls it a little, shaking her head.

"We found pieces. There was a sphinx up there that asked us to find them. We...found all the parts in the biomes. And she put it all back together and had us fight an alien. Then we landed and the mech broke apart and that's when I met up with you."

Looking down at the plate, she considered what Surrina had said.

"She told us some stuff. About the...things that've been going on. Weird stuff, that's kinda heavy. We'll have to talk about that at some point, but for now why don't you tell me about what happened to you. I saw a photo of you fighting a yeti?"

The irony almost made Freya laugh: avoiding the heavy stuff for some more heavy stuff.

"Yeah. Woke up in a mine, the first day. The entrance was sealed, and the beast made it's home in that chamber, go figure. Dante and I took it down. The yeti wasn't bad, really, though I think it broken Kasen's ribs. Bastard didn't say anything until days later."

Freya pokes some food around her plate idly, thinking. That... seemed so long ago.

"That was the worst week, food-wise. Just had the apples. Everything aside, the caverns were something. Had all these glowing... crystals, I guess, embedded in the walls. Wish I thought to take a picture."

Pen chuckles a little, because she actually had thought of that. She'd known somehow that the yeti wouldn't have been too bad. Or that Freya would say that at least.

Shoveling potato into her mouth, she listened, then gulped down some water before nodding.

"I've had some memories of places like that. Several memories, in fact. Crystal caves, and not just the ones with those damn bats. Kinda cool. Though where'd you find the apples in a mine?"

Look, the yeti was super underleveled, okay.

"Remember that sack the roo was carryin' around? That was those. Just popped out of those weird chests at the con." Freya frowned. "Like they were preparing us for that. I know an apple's almost nothin', but... hard to say what kind of shape we would've been in without anything to eat at all."

Another pause as Freya takes a bite of each thing on her plate. "When we came outta the mines, we were in some kinda swamp. Big river runnin' through it. Found a shack with camping gear and the beans, and a few days later, boats drifted along. Carried us down into a lagoon, a buncha run down shacks all over the place, and some big abandoned mansion loomin' in the distance. Green house and private cemetery and all. Nothin' exciting happened to me there; found a slaughter house with a bunch of jerky in the making. Think Yuri wrestled a gator. El adopted a swamp beast. The boys argued over something stupid in the graveyard."

Freya taps her fork on her plate lazily, scouring her memories. "Oh, right. Giant carnivorous plant. Almost ate Dante. Everyone sprung on it at once, made short work the bastard." She says, conversationally, like 15' carnivorous plants were the norm.

"Lucky. I just got a knife out of that chest."

And she'd almost been insulted. Implying she didn't carry knives. Almost.

Still quiet, more or less, she listened to Freya's statements about the house and lagoon and...pretty much just took all of that in without any real comment. Boys would be boys, Eleanor was a weird kid (she knew this for true), and jerky was jerky. None of that seemed weird at this point, which probably should have said something about her mental state but...

"A giant plant almost ate Dante...are you serious?"

"Mhmm. One of the boys got a better look at it than I did. Ballparked it around fifteen feet. When the thing got riled up, apparently it could direct other, smaller plants in the greenhouse."

Freya shrugs. "Was preoccupied with the big one, so I didn't get a good look at the others. There was some strange key under its tongue that went to the door of the mansion along with two others. There was a note on the door."

She frowns again, not quite glaring at her food before taking a bite of steak. "Callin' us fools, inviting us in for a game... usual melodramatic shit."

"Of course there was. Gods...that sounds almost painfully hackneyed."

Especially to someone who was at least somewhat genre savvy. It was weird, really weird, just how this lined up with her expectations for a bad horror movie.

"What was the game?"

Freya shook her head slightly, and as the conversation shifted to the mansion, the casual tone and body language seemed to drain from her.

"Not really a game. The first hall had these portraits of other people—including you, lookin' around some sick operating room. Thought it was tryin' to scare us until I got your calls. When we hit the main foyer, the door locked up tight and some voice went boomin' through the mansion about some... 'death day' celebration."

She sighs, and her fork goes still. "...that's when it all started goin' to hell. We'd been fine, if you think about all that happened, Kasen's ribs aside." A brief pause. "Guess there were a couple games. Ryoji said he played with some zombie kids in the garden. Dante and one of the other boys played some demented version of Family Feud. ...the other kid came back as some kinda spirit, shit you not."

Edited 2017-08-27 04:29 (UTC)

Penelope straightened up at the shift in tone, finally taking a sip of wine and holding her tongue. No more snappy comments. Much more serious, concerned, even worried. Sliding her chair a little closer, she still ate, but much more slowly.

That...legit sounded scary, even to her.

Actually, especially to her.

"Someone...came back as a spirit? What...?"

"Mm. We could all see the kid, and Dante was carrying around his body. Didn't get the details from him; he looked pretty rattled. Don't know what happened to him, either, since—since I followed Ryoji to the hospital."

Her voice remained decently steady barring that little stumble, and if a little flat. She gestures vaguely to her arms, and all the scabs and pink, healing woulds covering both arms and hands.

"Got these from the house library. You know that one scene from Forces of Darkness? The bit where the book had teeth? Was like that, but every damn book in the library had teeth. Whoever was last there was reading some pretty messed up stuff that sounded like technical jargon for brainwashing."

Pen nods at the comment about the movie. As if she didn't know that scene? Please. Better to talk about that than Ryoji, too. Monster books were easier than dead people.

"I was wondering about those. I...always thought that scene was kind of crazy, and a little freaky. I'm sorry that happened."

She reaches for Freya's hand, the one not holding the fork, intending to give it a squeeze.

"Thankfully that part's over."

Freya's fingers curled around hers automatically in response, holding tightly. "Yeah. Whole house was like that, to some degree or other. Bathroom tried to drown me and one of the kids. Fought literal skeletons in closets. Someone found a giant spider, someone else flying cutlery. Chandelier dropped on Ryoji and Ritsu. Some got sucked into a painting. Others turned into marionettes and had to entertain ghosts. Basically, if it happened in a movie, it happened. 'cept for a room catching on fire; that was on us."

She tilts her head back, staring at the ceiling. "Got knocked around by poltergeists. Went crazy and tried to kill Dante, I think." Freya gestured to her black eye. The swelling went down a while ago. "That's apparently from an exorcism or whatever."

There was more to say, and one thing she couldn't. "...Then he was wounded." She didn't need to specify who. "Found blueprints and contracts about the Retrospec building right before the whole place unraveled around us. Don't know who has 'em right now. You know the rest."

Still quiet, Pen's fingers clutched at Freya's, holding fast and firm. Her thumb rubs along the outside as she eats and listens. This...is considerably less pleasant, and considerably more troubling.

"You got possessed?" she asks softly...because other than the fighting and Ryoji that's the most important thing she's taking from this.

Freya's gaze shifts back to her partner, giving her a look just short of curious.

"Yeah. Not long. Ghosts were pretty harmless after we destroyed the crazy one."

The possession was a relatively minor note in her mind. She'd... wounded Dante, yet, and he did the same to her in defense, but they both survived the experience.

Hell, the incident with the books left a bigger impression on her than the ghosts.

It'd just always been something she was slightly afraid of. It's not a big deal to her, but the thought of blacking out and waking up knowing you hadn't been in control terrified her just a bit.

"Good. That's good. And then you...were back in reality."

And no need to say what happened next. She glosses that over with a smile and holds up a strip of steak for her girlfriend.

"Minako's a saint, you know. She took care of Mr. Fluffernutter."

Freya's face twitches with the first flicker of genuine amusement she's felt—the resulting smile is weak and tired, but it's there—since her return when Pen offers to feed her. It seems more than a bit ridiculous to her, but Freya accepts nonetheless, brushing a thumb along the hand clasping hers.

"...Yeah, she is." She didn't deserve any of this. "Especially for not giving you shit for your cat's name."

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