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[evocation]

@kyna.medina | ■ ▲ ◌ ▼

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[withmeinparadise]

[ Fair--he's earned a shove. Sam wanders over to the couch, stretching out his legs in front of him. ]

All right, all right, no rubbing it in. So. Whaddaya wanna talk about?

[evocation]

[Hmm. That's the hard part, isn't it? She plunks the glasses down and sits beside him, cross-legged.]

I don't know.

[She makes a face, head tilting.]

Have you ever... you know. Fucked up really badly?

[withmeinparadise]

Huh? Sure.

[ Well, hell. It's not hesitation, exactly, but he's a nanosecond too slow to answer. But maybe it'll read like he just isn't expecting her to go in that direction. ]

Everyone has. [ Right? He really wants that to be right. And he gives her a smile, one arm resting on the back of the couch like it's an extra armrest. ] You wanna talk about fucking things up?

[evocation]

[Kyna doesn't seem to notice the hesitation, at least, and his assurance does make her feel better.]

No. Yes. I don't know.

[She distracts herself by pouring some of the whiskey into a glass, but doesn't drink it. It's clear stalling.]

I guess... Being back here kind of feels like cheating, you know? But being back home and not remembering anything about here is fucking shitty, too.

[withmeinparadise]

[ Once she's poured herself a glass, he takes the bottle and dashes a share of it into his. Even if it is stalling, it's something to do, something to hold. Worthwhile, in the moment. ]

How much of it's cheating when no one asked us about coming or going? [ Or remembering, for that matter. ] You didn't pack up and move here, y'know--you were kidnapped.

[evocation]

Yeah.

[He's right. Of course he's right.]

It's just that... Um. Back home, I did something dumb, and someone I really care about got hurt.

[withmeinparadise]

[ Which is what she's probably all eaten up about in the first place. Even if it weren't obvious by context--she brought him over for something--the fact that she's stumbling over every third word all of a sudden gives it away. ]

Yeah?

[evocation]

Yeah.

[She sighs, swirling the whiskey in her glass.]

It's... kind of complicated. I don't know how much you want to hear.

[withmeinparadise]

It'd probably suck less if it weren't.

[ Sam watches her, trying to get a feel for just how bad she's talking here. Truthfully, he's not sure just how much he wants to hear about, but it's less for lack of interest--he's curious, of course he is--and more out of the vaguely formed concern that it'll be way too much and he'll...what, have to figure out what to say?

He's not terrible at that. He used to be okay at it, when it was just him and Nathan. Passable at least, right? Maybe it'll be fine. ]

C'mon, lay it on me.

[evocation]

Okay.

[Does she sound hesitant? Probably. It's getting into stupid family bullshit, and she's only really told Ian this stuff so far. Lance knows bits and pieces, but that's because he knew a different version of her, and that's cheating. It's not the same as laying it out for someone.]

Um... I got my magic from my dad, right? He was obsessed with it. But he was also an asshole, and he ditched us when I was like, ten. We saw him a couple of times after that, and then he just disappeared.

[withmeinparadise]

Sounds familiar.

[ Dryly, taking a sip of whiskey after. And then, a little more tentative, in explanation: ]

Got dumped at an orphanage when I was nine. We, uh, weren't actually orphans.

[evocation]

Oh, Jesus.

[She wasn't expecting that at all.]

I'm sorry.

[But weirdly, it puts her a little more at ease. It's always miserable talking about this shit with people from perfect families.]

[withmeinparadise]

Eh. [ He waves a hand--the one with the whiskey in it, though he's practiced enough at doing so that it doesn't slosh--dismissively. ] Happened a long time ago. Don't worry about it. So, your dad left.

[evocation]

Uh... Yeah.

[She hesitates again, sitting up a little straighter.]

A lot of this is all tangled up in magic. You're not going to be weird about that, right?

[Because Fenris was the first person she trusted here, and he was always weird about it. It kind of stuck with her.]

[withmeinparadise]

[ That's not a bad question, because magic's inherently weird. Of course he'll be weird about it--by her standards, anyway.

But, you know. For her sake, he'll try. ]

Tell me what I gotta know, and I'll...follow along.

[evocation]

Okay. I guess... you just need to know that it's pretty common for us to make deals with things. Spirits or entities or whatever you want to call them. A lot of families have one that they've got like... a long-standing relationship with, you know?

[She wincing now, because this is the stuff that would have freaked Fenris out.]

Humans can't really do anything permanent on their own. So if you want to make a ward or cast something protective, you need help. And usually it isn't dangerous if you're not an idiot.

[withmeinparadise]

And if you are, s'more like, uh. Doing a deal with the devil?

[ ...Okay, this is more of a strain to his Catholic upbringing than he might've expected. Sounds cool, also like a sin--which isn't a dealbreaker for Sam Drake, Sinful Adventurer, but which does make it a little harder to imagine as a purely neutral transaction. ]

So what was your family's...[ don't say devil again, don't say demon ]...entity?

[evocation]

Yeah, like that. And ours is... I don't know. It looks different every time I see it. It's always some kind of animal, like a rabbit, or a dog, or whatever, but I can only ever see it out of the corner of my eye. It's pretty protective of us.

[She shrugs a bit, biting her lip.]

My dad's one of the idiots. He made a deal with something else, and it didn't go well.

[withmeinparadise]

Huh.

[ It have a name? he wants to ask, but who knows what's gonna be weird to her? There's a little more caution in him than there might be if he were talking to someone else: less joking, a faintly concerned furrow to his brow. ]

So what happens when this stuff doesn't "go well"?

[evocation]

It, uh... It was draining him. Killing him.

[She hesitates, because for the first time, she realizes that if she tells him the rest, he might look at her differently. Oddly enough, this is the easier part of the story to barrel through. Her father was practically a stranger. She's never thought what he did had anything to do with her, and Ian didn't either, but Ian's always been preternaturally chill. Maybe other people won't be.

So Kyna looks down, eyes locking on her drink. She wrestles with it for a long moment, weighs the option of just bailing.

Screw it.]

So he... Um. He started... feeding other people to it. And when I found out, my brother said to leave it, that the cops would deal with it, but I couldn't, you know?

[withmeinparadise]

Yeah. I know.

[ Not in the same way at all--this is something he maybe could've turned a blind eye to, if he'd had reason to--but he knows what it is to need to do something, what it is to disbelieve the cops' ability to do anything besides make things worse. ]

So you, ah...what'd you do?

[evocation]

So, um... we knew where he was, and I went to find him. My friend—his name is Sam, too, uh. He tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn't listen, so he came with. But it all just went... As bad as it fucking could have.

[withmeinparadise]

[ The way she says it, he kind of has to pause: does that mean I killed him or something else? He's trying to think of the alternatives, and all of them sound like something out of a bad movie from his childhood. What, she locks him in some other dimension with her spooky, definitely-not-weird magic?

What exactly happened isn't really the point, he knows--that look on her face is, that sadness trying to masquerade as mere seriousness.

But she said she wanted to talk about it. So he asks. It comes out more like a statement than a question. ]

How bad's that?

[evocation]

My dad wasn't really... In control anymore.

[Her voice is quieter now, halting, like she's forcing herself to continue. She has her eyes locked on a loose thread on his jeans, and she reaches for it impulsively, twisting it around her finger.]

Sam got hurt trying to protect me. And he must have called my brother before we left, because he showed up, and it was just the two of us with Sam unconscious, and...

[Deep breath, Kyna. Get through it. Sam isn't freaking out so far. It's fine. She's practically radiating anxiety and regret, though, and she knows it.]

So we tried to, you know... banish the thing. I mean, I did. Nico can't use magic, so. [So he couldn't.] But sometimes when a binding goes wrong, or whatever, it's like... like putting two pieces of tape together sticky sides down, you know? The person and the spirit are too tangled up. So it didn't...

[She clears her throat, eyes still locked on that little thread, catching it with her fingernails.]

He didn't make it. But Sam did.

[withmeinparadise]

[ There's a lot of he in the things she says, and he has to think about it to untangle it all. For a second, he thinks: wait, your brother got killed? But no, it's her father, isn't it? She tried to save her father, and she killed him instead.

Sam doesn't want to think about how familiar that sounds. ]

C'mere.

[ He's no good at this shit, but this much, he knows: if you're talking to a girl, and she gets a look like that on her face, you gotta do something. Usually, he'd find a way to make a quick exit, but Kyna's different--and anyway, she's picking at a thread on his jeans, and somehow, that connection between them feels unbreakable. It's a thread, and it's more than that.

So he sets his drink down on an endtable and puts his arm around her and wonders if this is what he's supposed to be doing here, pulling her into his side and trying not to think too much about what it feels like to hold onto her. ]