Log:Reunion Rumble Redux

Reunion Rumble Redux
Participants Merle, Sophia	23 January, 2017 Merle finds out what Sophia's REALLY become.
Location Outside Cyclone; Sophia's Apartment
Once outside, before they've fully cleared the shutting door, Merle is already at it again, at least verbally. "What the /fuck/ Sophia? I mean--" she flaps an arm at the side as if to try and point something out but there's nothing really /to/ point at, she's just talking in generalities. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Were you... were you /avoiding me/? I thought... I thought you were dead. I thought I might never find you. I didn't know if you were alive, if I killed you, if -- I don't know what happened. You were gone. And now you're... you're here. And you think what, that I'm going to come after you? For what, for making me look for you? Find you? Chase after you across fucking state lines? Why didn't... why didn't you call me?" That last bit sounds mildly hurt. Sophia shoves Merle, mostly gently, up against the wall, holding her in place with a forearm. "Because, sis. It wasn't to hurt you, it was to protect you. What were we chasing that night, do you remember, Mer?" An old nickname, one she rarely uses cuz Merle hates it, but she uses it here so tenderly Merle can get mad but it'd look dumb. "Yeah we were... we-- There was... It's like it was..." Merle stammers, pretty uselessly. "Wait, what do you mean to /protect/ me? I'm not fucking Merida, Soap. You don't send me away to protect me. *I* protect /you/. Me." She thumps her finger into her chest for emphasis, using the other hand to push Sophia away a little. Not hard, just to give her some breathing room. Sophia stares into her sister's eyes. "We were chasing a goddamn fairy, and you thought it was all a joke." You'd think that after years of hunting down vampires, demons, shifters, even humans with weird powers and terrible agendas, it wouldn't be a shocking thing to have found out that the "fairy" that they were after was, in fact, a fairy. But to Merle, who wasn't snatched away, the whole thing was a weird blur. Not quite a drug trip, but definitely not a normal reality. "I-- Soap, it can't have been a real fairy. Fairies... they're little, have wings, don't exist." Sophia grits her teeth. "I'm telling you they're real, Merle. Two of those three years you've been looking for me?" Not the past three years. Those years. Weird phrasing. "I was -gone-, Mer. I was somewhere else. The Gentry--sorry, fairy--took me. I was a fighter in some eternal bloodbath that had no point and no purpose." "What do you mean real and... gone?" Merle asks, a hint of sincerity and something along the lines of concern creeping into her voice. "Did that thing do something to you? I-- you were.. then you were gone and you came back but it wasn't... Sophia, I killed you. Because it... I thought it was playing tricks on my head or something. I don't even really remember what happened. I don't even know what it looked like. I just know how it... felt. And it has nothing to do with being drunk or high or any of that. It was something fucking with my head." But still, there's a strange lack of underlying surprise to the whole thing, like she might have halfheartedly been expecting to hear this. She pushes off, taking a step away and turning a bit so she can dig into her pocket for a pack of cigarettes and fumble one out as she continues. "I did everything I could to find you. I thought if I found you, if I /knew/ I didn't kill you somehow, that it would... that I'd be alright." Sighing and rubbing her forehead, Sophia looks at her sister with a strange mix of sympathy and exasperation. "I really wanted Johnny here for this, but you pissed him off. Okay. Can you come with me? Just to my apartment. I want to show you something. I swear on my life I won't hurt you, sis." She smiles, then, the old one that was just for Merle, the sisters' smile. "It'll freak you out bad, but I need you to see." "Johnny?" Merle asks, glancing back toward the bar. "That the guy in the bar in there? Your weird friend? And fuck him, I didn't do shit to him. He's got no right to be pissed at me." She runs a hand over her face and into her hair, dislodging the sunglasses up there so she tugs them off and puts them on, cigarette hanging from her lips unlit. "You did hurt me, not telling me you're fucking alive. But I have no worries about you /hurting/ me." Sophia nods. "You also did shit to him by hurting me," she says softly. "But that's neither here nor there. And before you ask, no, I'm not dating him. I'm single, for the moment." And then she starts to walk to her apartment, not far from here. "You will never trust me again, probably," she mutters. Maybe Merle can hear her, if she can keep up with the somewhat swiftly walking Summer. "But you may at least understand once I show you." Merle probably does hear. After all, she has exceptional hearing for the most part to go with her rather well-trained senses. Being fully mortal, any enhanced senses had to be trained over time, after all. "I don't understand," she mentions though she keeps up with her sister. "Soap, just talk to me. Whatever it is, we can do this together. We're family, you aren't supposed to have cut me out like this. I don't care if you were in Arcadia or whatever it is they call it." Wait, who ever said anything about that name to her? Certainly not during this conversation. "I just-- just /try/ at least? Just tell me why you would cut me out, avoid me. I thought we were finally past all that shit and going to be a real family." Sophia whirls on her sister. "Where did you hear that word?" Luckily, she only lives like two buildings over from that bar, so she is already inside the shitty lobby of her shitty apartment building. "What research have you done, Merle?" As the lobby of the apartment swallows her and echoes the words back to her, Merle almost-but-not-quite flinches for a moment. Merle does not flinch. Merle is constantly braced against anything, verbal or physical, to be slapped in her direction. But there is a hint of something flinch-like for that moment. "You were gone. I-- I refused to believe that I killed you even if my brain tried to tell me I did. It wasn't you. It was... I didn't even know if there was something there at all. My brain was-" and she motions to her head absently for a second, "-scrambled. Alien. That's the only way I can describe it. The world was running in rewind and everything was inside out. So I started trying to figure out what had that effect on people." A pause. "You can learn a lot in three years. Especially with the... resources I've had. It was, until now, just one of the things that could have happened." Sophia sighs and leads Merle upstairs, in silence, after pausing to collect her mail from a locked mailbox. It's addressed to Sophia Caruso, not Dunlin. Which makes sense. It's the little details like that that Merle notices but doesn't comment on. It's likely part of The Story. Part of what she's going to get out of her sister. Even if it means taking the story back to the beginning to get to that part. Her cigarette was long ago tucked behind the earpiece of her sunglasses and she moves it to push the glasses back atop her head once more, cigarette then tucked behind an ear. Her arms cross over her chest for lack of anything else to do with them. There's still the rod-straight posture and the balance of her weight on the balls of her feet to show that she might not be an active Hunter anymore, but she's still going to be on guard without hesitation for it. Some habits die hard. Some never die at all. And so she just waits for the apartment to open, taking in the details of the place. Oh, it's a shithole. A place to leave at a moment's notice. Merle can notice that before Sophia even lets her inside. Ratty furniture from secondhand stores--the only thing that shows it's Sophia instead of anyone else living here is the bookshelf of cheap Harlequin novels instead of a TV. Merle steps inside, but doesn't go any further inward than that. She just stands there, eyes giving a detail-revealing scan of the place, fingers brushing across the door as she shuts it, perhaps weighing the wood and effectiveness as cover or something. Once upon a time she lived in a place like this, but it wasn't transient. It was reinforced and ready for danger at any second. It was almost, 'almost/, enough of a place that Merle could feel a subtle hint of relaxed there. This place just puts her more on edge. "Talk." It's a single quiet word. A statement, not an invitation. Sophia takes her time. She moves to sit, first, and then says, "Okay, fine. I was Taken by a Gentry that night, Merle. Dread Commander Sof. How much do you know?" she counters. "I won't repeat what you know, because it's a waste of your time and mine." "Shit," Merle mutters softly, mostly to herself as she finally moves to sit as well, shrugging out of her coat and hoodie to let them fall behind her after she's settled. "Sometimes... sometimes people go missing. Only they were actually kidnapped by a monster. Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they were never gone in the first place. It's confusing. Stories, texts, they contradict themselves. There's not a lot on the subject. But from what I could piece together, and going based just on how I /felt/ when all that shit went down, it sounded... plausible. As plausible as any of the rest of the shit we've seen. I just didn't think it was true. It sounds like fairytales. Closest I could think is one of those magic addicts that like to fuck with reality got to me, maybe made me kill you, maybe just made me think I did. Some sort of twisted revenge." Ah. Mages. Merle made enemies of some of those, too, in her life. Anyone shocked? Sophia listens. "That's exactly what happened. And of course there's not a lot on the subject, Mer--we're changed. We're monsters." Her laughter, full and deep, is also bitter and angry. She's what she used to hunt. Merle's eyes roll slightly. "Sophia, depending on who you ask, we've been monsters for years. Now what the fuck actually happened? What do you mean changed? Yeah. You went through something. it's bound to make you feel and act and think a little differently. But you're still my fucking sister and I'm sorry if I'm a little angry because I thought that would mean something to you." Sophia growls. "You want to see? Fine." She stands up and paces in front of her sister. She then takes a deep breath and--wow. That's not much of a change, but it's definitely weird. It's still Sophia standing in front of her, but it's not? The eyes, the tattoos, the skin color are all different. She stares at her sister defiantly. "Do you want to end up like this? Do you?" She shoves a pale finger into her sister's chest. "Because hanging out around me is what it'll get you. Taken. And it's not a fun fucking ride, let me tell you." Merle lets the finger poke at her. Hard. Repeatedly if she wants to. She makes no attempt to move from it or be pushed back by the finger as its shoved into her chest. She just stares, lips slightly parted, eyes reflecting back the vision of the tattoos. She stares. And stares. Then shakes her head and blinks a few times as if to clear her head and her vision. Like maybe she's having some sort of bad trip on some new designer drug she didn't remember taking. She might not be speaking verbally, but her body language is screaming. Confusion. Uncertainty. Anger, both at her sister and on her sister's behalf. On her own behalf. It's in the set of her jaw. In the way her eyes squint at the corners. In the way her breathing catches in her chest. She clearly has questions. Many of them. But she's not even close to capable of formulating words at the moment. Sophia waits a while for Merle to get a good damn look, before fixing her Mask back in place. Now she looks like the Sophia Merle knows best. "That's what I was turned into. And it's only going to get weirder as I get more Fae-like." She stares at her sister. "So the question is, do I swear you to secrecy on my powers, or just trust you not to say something?" "Fuck you," Merle growls back, finally finding her words. "You really have to ask if you can trust me?" The words are snapped as they are spoken, her eyes shifting to show an expression of hurt within them. Yes. Merle can, apparently, still /hurt/. "I've spent three years, Sophia. Three /years/. Looking for you. Trying to find you to prove you were alive. That I didn't let you die. That I didn't kill you. That I didn't fuck up again and let something terrible happen to you. So if you don't think you can trust me, if you think I'm untrustworthy, just tell me. Just..." She shakes her head, clearly wanting to blurt out more but at the moment she just lets those words hang in the air. Sophia sighs softly. "It's not just my secret, sis. There are others." It's met with silence. Even the sound of her breathing, of her heartbeat, is almost muffled. "How?" comes a quiet question, drifting up from Merle's hair as she dips her head down in order to better take this all in, forehead resting in her fingertips, her elbow resting on her thigh. "How do you get there? I'll go-- I'll go kill it. Then whatever you're worried about will be done. We'll... we'll get you fixed. Maybe one of the spellcasters up north knows the way. We'll get you fixed, good as new, get you out of here and go home." Sophia laughs gently, not unkindly. "Sis, there's no fix. And killing it is hard for /us/, if not impossible." She settles in next to her sister, and tries, slowly, to loop an arm around her back in a side-hug. Merle doesn't shrug out of the hug, but doesn't lean into it. Not yet. She's too busy vibrating with these emotions that swirl in her and the overriding anger at the fact that she is /having/ emotions. Merles do not do well with the feels. "I'm a fucking Hunter, Soap, it's what I do. Did. Was. I-- Just because I've been out of the game since you left doesn't mean I'm not capable of being one again. Everything can die. Everything can be taken out. Find the weakness. So how do I find it? We'll make a list. Everything you know. Everything the others you said were... whatever. Compare them. Make a game plan. I still have that knife that was blessed by every known religion and forged with the blood of a demon in it. That's gotta be good for /something/." Sophia sighs. "Want some cranberry juice and vodka, extra on the vodka?" Instead of answering Merle's question. An obvious dodge by the older of the two half-sisters. "Maybe it won't even take special weapons and it can be-- it /does/ have a corporeal form, right?" Merle continues to muse, mostly to herself. "Hmm? Oh yeah. uh-- make it a double. You got a notepad? Nevermind, I'll remember." No she won't. Sophia knows better. "What'd it look like? This... what did you even call it? Because it has like a thousand names from what I read." Clearly she thinks there is /one/ True Fae. "That cute guy in the bar? He one of yours? He seemed... off. I couldn't put my finger on it. It was kinda hot, but sickening at the same time." Sophia doesn't answer, just lets Merle muse. She knows how her sister works. "I can't answer that one way or the other," she says of the last question. "I'll make it a triple." She disappears into the rathole's kitchen. Merle will probably take that as a yes. Or a maybe. Poor guy, next time she sees him. Poor poor guy. "So reports I saw have it going back to like seventeen something. Or maybe something in its family. It sounds like it's just one thing, though. So it's clearly not working with the life span of a mortal. But is it immortal, undead, incapable of dying or just really fucking old? And if there are an army's worth of you there, why not just start a rebellion? Could be our secret weapon. Go in, start an insurrection, take advantage of the chaos and strike." Thankfully the booze will very shortly be a good and complete distraction. She might not even remember half her good ideas if she gets enough alcohol into her. She does pause from her mental plotting of a coup and looks up at the kitchen where Sophia disappeared. "I-- I still can't believe it's you. That you're alive. And I swear, Soapi, I swear on... on Merida's life. I will make this right. I'll fix this and we can go home. Put all this behind us." Sophia smiles as she exits, looking at her sister with love. "I'm sorry I hid. I wasn't sure if you'd killed it. The thing replacing me. I thought you were living and fighting alongside it." She hands the drink over, and settles back in next to Merle. "That /thing/? That thing that looked like you? I-- Soap, I killed it. Destroyed it. I thought it was something sent to taunt me or something," Merle says quietly as she takes the drink and slams a solid half of it in one huge gulp. "And then when I finished, it was... everything was gone. It was normal again. Or whatever normal seems like. And there wasn't a trace of you, of it, of anything. I never gave up looking for you. You're all I had left in this world and I had to prove you were alive. That I didn't let you die or... or kill you myself." Sophia nods. "I understand that. I'm glad you never gave up." Her husky voice grows thick with emotion. "You didn't kill me. It's not your fault I was Taken." That was probably a lie. But it was an okay one, for as unskilled at them as she's become, in general. "I missed you." That's the honest truth, right there. After swallowing down the rest of the drink, Merle shoves it aside and turns a bit toward her sister. Her eyes scan Sophia's face, like they're taking in every detail. "I-- I missed you. I'm expecting to find out I'm being punked or something but... it's you. I knew it the second I heard your voice." Sophia opens her arms. "I could really use a hug." Her voice is wholly gruff now, as she tries to blink back the tears in her eyes. Merle leans in, slowly at first but then grabs Sophia up in a quick tight hug, pulling her against her almost harshly. "You're still a bitch and I still hate you," she says, words catching on faint sobs and unshed tears that well in her eyes. Sophia begins to cry outright. "You're still the skankiest skank to ever skank," she sobs. Merle clings and clutches onto her sister, not sounding as much like she is crying as she is just letting tears fall, shredding her massive amounts of eyeliner and leaving splotches on Sophia's shoulder. Shut up. I'm not crying. You're crying!