paranoia paranoia everybody's coming to get me

[meanwhileback]

Who: Penelope Lane and Snape, Severus Snape (the younger)
What: An exchange of information and not-as-controlled-as-it-maybe-should-be substances, possibly some rude conversation involving assault and battery
Where: Penelope and Ruby's Haunted-Ass Apartment, Chimer
When: after this
Notes: Closed to just Penelope and babbysnape, plz :3
Warnings: Probably talking about assault/bodily violence, so be aware!

The neighborhood in Chimer where Penelope and Ruby's apartment sits is fairly unremarkable, for Baedal. Tall, somewhat narrow rowhouses sit, in their brightly painted, pleasant, unobjectionable way, in long blocks situated around curving streets which really ought to be picturesque, if they weren't so ordinary looking.

That said, for anyone who can notice those sorts of things, about two blocks from the apartment, the sheer volume and intensity of warding on the unassuming little building begin to make themselves apparent. One would think that having a slightly mean thought while walking down the street by the house would result in being blown clear out of the neighborhood, if it weren't for Penelope herself, who would surely have been rocketed across town by now if that were the case. By the time you're at its front steps, two things may make themselves known to people who are slightly more attuned; One, that its upper floor is haunted as all fuck, and two, that whoever is inside it is most likely piss-scared of something, given the accumulation of all the given information.

People that don't notice this kind of thing will just think it looks like a rather nice neighborhood.

When the doorbell rings, it takes a second for Penelope to open the door, given she's navigating with a crutch and a casted foot, and all. But when she does, and it turns out it's Severus, she turns and just starts hobbling back into her apartment towards the living room, with a vague wave to indicate an invitation inside. Make yourself at home, apparently.

"Hope you didn't have any trouble getting out here. The trains have been full of fucking weirdos lately." Penelope collapses onto the couch in the living room with a surprising amount of sinking-into-pillows for someone so petite, and puts her plaster-casted foot up on the coffee table. She declines to say why these weirdos are any different from the weirdos that normally inhabit Baedal's train system.

Comments

[meanwhileback]

The revelation that apparently most of the worlds that contain magic end up having hideous magic-assisted wars is not surprising. It is somewhat surprising, though, that her world has more or less avoided those kinds of conflicts. Not that the great number of magic-using people in her world are any smarter or less power-hungry than the rest of humanity, but generally speaking they kept most conflicts to the level of family feuds with the occasional Montague/Capulet-style handful of casualties. Or necromancers. Everybody hates fucking necromancers.

"So, I'm sorry, you're trying to do what here, save my soul? Because I can absolutely assure you if you've got this impression that I'm some kind of innocent virgin who needs protection I am not only so far beyond perplexed as to find it laughable that you've gotten that impression but also kind of annoyed that there's someone out there spreading the vile rumor that I'm anything but the rank bitch I spend a frankly staggering amount of personal energy on maintaining the self-image of. Dishonor. Dishonor on them, dishonor on their cow, dishonor on their whole family."

Penelope smokes like that wasn't the strangest series of phrases ever uttered by mankind.

[inkdamage]

The cultural reference is, predictably, lost on Severus; eve if he was the Disney-watching type, his contemporary time is a few decades behind for that one.

Instead, his only reaction is to look vaguely bemused. Protection is not something he is offering, merely advice - he wonders if she realizes that now that she's given him that note, he'll be going off to do this with or without her blessing. To anyone who half-glances at her, that attitude is a deliberately cultivated thing. People who kill don't cultivate anything. Penelope is attempting to seem broken; Severus is.

It's strange to see someone want to be that way. Even if she is funny when she gets going.

"The time for your needing protection has, evidently, passed." Well, that wasn't nice, Severus. "Your soul is your own business; your ability to make good on your threats is another matter. I do not believe you are a killer."

[meanwhileback]

Whether or not her attitude is an affectation his more or less irrelevant, in Penelope's view. It's a necessity, one that she's convinced herself through trial and error is the kindest way of metaphorically grabbing people by the face and pushing them over backwards. If they don't like her in the first place, they won't be disappointed when that friendship later ends up getting them hideously killed!

And, you know, she just genuinely doesn't like a majority of people anyway, so. Bonus.

If she were a different person, she might have taken offense at his rude reminder of the assault, but since her casts have been doing a pretty consistent job of doing that anyway, it just produces a shrug and a flicker of a facial expression translating as 'okay, fair enough.'

"Okay but now it sounds like you're daring me to do it. Which, I really gotta say, not the greatest way of trying to get an American to not do something. In general." She's enjoying this.

[inkdamage]

"I hadn't factored petty stereotypes into things," he admits, unbothered. "And I still don't believe you."

He probably won't ever, either; if she decides to ~prove him wrong~ and murder somebody to make a point to him, well... she's got bigger problems than her current predicament.

"I'll let you know if anything comes of it."

[meanwhileback]

"Well, jesus, don't let me stop you. What the fuck am I supposed to do in the meantime, sit here with my thumb up my ass and play dumb if anyone asks? I mean I'm kind of invested in this now, and you're just gonna take the ball and run with it and leave me sitting here useless? I mean god knows I'm not exactly the most, like, learned individual--"

You have no idea how accurate that is, Penelope.

"--but I have to do something. I need... I don't know. Something."

It's that combination of her desire for vengeance and the absolute necessity to take her control back that makes her shake with rage at night, when nobody else is around to laugh at her for it and think her even weaker than she's recently been made well aware that she is.

[inkdamage]

"Unless you'd like to be an accessory? Yes."

If he needs to end up sanctioned by a guild retroactively, he supposes he could, but honestly it's easier to just handle things his own way - if he wanted to, Severus could very well argue that Penelope has hired him, via this conversation. He'll just be waiving her fee as a community service, being such a nice guy.

"I'm afraid I can't help you with the rest."

Soul-searching beyond 'don't become a murderer, it isn't pleasant' is beyond him. She obviously can't go hunt these people down and kill them on her own, and it would be recklessly stupid to take her with him. She's got to square it with herself on her own.