triangularity | Open RP post for Maggie Garcia

Duke shakes his head at the question. He doesn't know how to put it to words. Audrey and Nathan moved on once they realized he was going on about something they couldn't understand. It's so- It's so common to their lives. It's something they all know so well at this point.

He moves forward, opening the door to The Gull.

"You've really thought a lot about armor, Maggie. You got other Knights picking you up from the floor like this?"

That wasn't an answer, which Maggie quietly takes note of for later.

"The last person who picked me up was Shaun, and while he's often wearing Kevlar, it isn't quite the same thing." If Duke would rather stick to banter for a few minutes, he can have that.

"I write a lot of genres, and I have spent far too much time thinking about the practicalities of fairy tales. You should see any writer's search history. One minute we're writing battles and the next minute we're down a search engine rabbit hole looking up the tensile strength of steel."

Duke manages to get her inside of his office, and he sets her down gently there on the couch. He slips his fingers through her hair. It's an unconscious, worried gesture more than anything, but he doesn't know much about bullets or their wounds. For all his criminal activities, he's managed to keep just in front of such deep injuries.

"Jesus," he says, breathing out, shaking his head with a tiny smile tugging across his lips from this close distance. "I'm mildly afraid of your search history, Mag. But God, it is so good to see you after everything, after all of it."

She's here, and it means so much to him even if Mara is- Well, she's probably his only solution to the whole world exploding inside him.

When he strokes her hair, the audible sigh that slips out has nothing to do with pain and everything to do with comfort. Maggie craves company and contact in a way most of her frightened isolationist culture has discarded. She isn't even touch averse with strangers, and she loves being touched by anyone she likes.

"My browser history has nothing on a mystery writer's," she promises, reaching out for Duke's hand before she adds, "I've missed you too."

Maggie thought that choosing to go home meant that she'd lost Duke and everyone else she cared about from Teleios for good.

Edited 2018-02-09 09:03 (UTC)

Duke smiles soft even as he continues moving forward toward the Gull, stepping through the doors. No one else is here. It's a quiet night. No one to blame him, to claim him for their own damage. He hesitates.

His throat locks up.

"Yeah." He moves her into the office, setting her down on to the couch. "Missed you too. Haven's screwed up, but- Gotta worry about you first."

He won't talk about the rest until she's well.

"I'll be fine," Maggie assures him. "Promise. I had very good doctors, and I've already been under observation for a few days. The bullet nicked my liver, so I'm under orders not to exert myself for a bit longer, but I'm out of any immediate danger."

Maggie doesn't go into the other measures taken to save her life. Scrubbed plasma transfusions, filtering her own blood so the viral load stayed low and she didn't join the walking dead. It was a very close call. They made it just in time, after Maggie had already passed out from blood loss.

But those omissions don't mean she's lying about the rest of it. Maggie really will be alright.

"I need a little rest. That's all. Conveniently, I'm capable of listening while I lie uselessly on your couch."

Duke studies her expression, but he nods. She wouldn't lie to him about this even if she's not one who will easily accept being carried around if she doesn't need it. He understands this is a- it's an act she lets him do, because she trusts him, because she cares about him.

"Uselessly might be selling yourself a bit short, Maggie," he says, lifting an eyebrow with a smirk on his face. "You do a very good job of being incredibly attractive to look at."

Just saying.

He might be stalling, but he figures she won't mind.

Maggie dialed back her flirting with Duke a little bit after the night she got drunk and asked him to bed, but it's nice to fall back into that. Comfortable. And it's still sinking in that she gets to see him again. A grin flashes briefly across her face.

"Only appreciated for my looks," she laments dramatically. "In that case it's a good thing my mother got to me before I fell through a rift between universes. My hair was dreadful for days."

It's braided neatly enough now, with just a few curls escaping.

"I appreciate you for far more than that, but at the moment, you don't have to worry about doing anything else but looking surprisingly gorgeous for someone who's been shot recently," Duke says with a quirk of his lips to the side as he meets her gaze, and he nearly winces. Her falling through here means she won't get to see her mother again likely.

It's not like he has any idea of how to help her get back to her home and family. ...not that it seems like things were safe there either.

"...feel a little bad that it's so good to see you when you got torn out of your own home, away from your mother to be here."

Maggie closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, admitting, "I'm concerned about my parents. I..." she pauses, because she knows how utterly awkward this must sound to anyone from a world besides her own. "I have a microchip beneath my collarbone that transmits my vital signs. It was my father's condition on giving me complete freedom to do what I wanted and go anywhere I pleased. It doesn't track my location, as proven by the amount of trouble I got into during my party girl phase, just makes sure my heart never stops. I hate that I've gone out of range and it isn't transmitting anymore."

So the Garcias will almost certainly immediately panic and assume their daughter is dead. At least it won't pick back up again after the blip. They won't think she's undead. If Maggie gets home, her arrival will be treated as a miracle, but the people she loves won't spend the intervening time trying to track her down and lay her to rest.

She squeezes Duke's hand. "But you know this isn't the first time I've fallen into another world. I'm just grateful there was a friend waiting on the other side this time around."

Duke studies her expression when she pauses, when she trails off. He cannot help his reaction to the microchip, because yeah by his world's standards, it's creepy. Also, he did not have a good relationship with either of his parents. The idea they could just know where he was at all time?

It's different for her. She cares about her parents.

"I'm sorry. I wish there was a way to get back through to them- to get you back through to them. ...totally not used to microchips on children being a thing, but I can tell you love them."

It would be hard then to leave them. His hand slides over her own, and he tightens his hold there. "...by some miracle you fell right on to my front door step. Practically. I've missed you."

"They were very good to me. It's amazing I'm not spoiled completely rotten, but they drilled in some personal responsibility along with giving me everything I wanted." It worked out very well. They didn't even mind when Maggie walked away from the family business to live alone in the woods and make her living writing poetry and porn. They just wanted their daughter safe and happy.

"If I get home, I get home. I'm not willing to give up on that possibility. But you don't need to apologize, both because you didn't do it and because I missed you just as much as you missed me." She pauses, then adds, "I need to hear about what I've fallen into, when you're ready. It doesn't have to be right this minute. Soon, though."

"Good. It's good to hear about your parents, how they care about you. It's because of them you're- you're who you are," Duke says, and he really loves the person Maggie is.

There's a pause then as he nods with a soft smile that then fades, because he realizes he has stalled long enough. He tilts his head to the side. "I told you about Troubles before, didn't I? I know I mentioned my blood was special-"

She'd worried about infecting him maybe, but he's not sure it would stick- not with all the aether inside him.

"You've told me a little. Not much. I didn't want to press for more, because there was no need to bring up things that were clearly difficult for you to talk about. I never wanted to force matters."

Now, though, she has reason. It's hard enough to stay safe in a world she has reason to believe is full of more hazards than most if she knows what to avoid. Without that knowledge, Maggie doesn't like her chances.

"You credited your blood with remaining free of my virus, though I'm still reluctant to trust that you're immune."

"I believe it more than ever with what I've learned about my blood, about what's become of my blood now."

It's writhing with troubles, with aether in ways it never was before because he let Mara get her hands on him, and she left her mark. He swallows then, knowing he has to go more in depth. It's important she knows what she's getting into.

"In Haven, there are these things called the Troubles. They run in families. They're like curses more than anything. Sure, some might try to control them- try to run off with those powers, but that usually ends up blowing up in their faces, getting them or someone else killed. Every so many years, they'd show up again, and someone came along, went into the barn, and ended those Troubles until this most recent time."

"You have one?" Maggie asks, her gaze on him soft and sympathetic. "And it's tied to your blood."

She considers, because the implications of that could cover a wide range of horrors. Maggie has read too many books and watched too many movies. Her imagination is vivid, and given the way Duke talks about them, she knows the reality won't be pretty. "What are some examples of the Troubles?"

Mention of the barn is just confusing. A power source for the Troubles? Maybe.

Edited 2018-02-27 18:24 (UTC)

"Let's just say everyone who is Troubled? Their blood is... different." Duke's own Trouble makes him more susceptible to all that Troubled blood, and it means his blood is more overflowing with aether than the rest especially after Mara had her way with him.

He closes his eyes, breathing out. "So let's see examples... being able to make people spontaneously combust, controlling the weather, making taxidermy come back to life, being able to make people do whatever you say, crying and making people die every time you do. Y'know, the usual cursed stuff."

Maggie takes a deep, steadying breath. Right. Teleios got her used to the existence of magic and bizarre occurrences, but it was never this bad. A new reality to get used to. "And their cycle didn't end this time around in the same way it always has previously," she repeats.

She raises a hand to rest against Duke's cheek. "How bad have things been for you since you got home?"

Note the important phrase in that question. 'For you.' Her priorities are crystal clear. They always have been. While she's good at seeing a big picture and she wants, in general, for everyone to be taken care of, her primary focus is the people she cares about. Maggie has never been unselfish enough to do things solely for the greater good. She was willing to chase truth and justice and answers with the rest of After the End Times, but she did it first and foremost because she loved her team.

Here, there's a single person she cares about. Her focus has narrowed considerably.

Duke swallows at the question, and he leans into her touch instinctively. His eyes close, and he breathes out against her hand. He reaches up, sliding his hand over her own, closing his eyes as he does so. The question makes him pause- makes him hesitate.

What else can he say?

"My Trouble was always complicated. If I kill someone in that person's family, I end the Trouble. Forever," he says and then shakes his head. "...and then the person who made all those Troubles? Turns out they're aliens from another universe using aether- a dark material to do so- Well, I trusted her. All these Troubles were inside of me- every single one my family ever ended, and I- I needed help dealing with it, and she was the only one who could."

He swallows. It still feels stupid to have done so.

"She did something to me, and now I'm a ticking bomb. So there's that."

Maggie hates that she's too sore to pull Duke into her arms and hold on tight when she hears what comes next. She leaves her hand where it is, at least, thumb brushing his cheek. Her voice is soft and warm.

"When you're desperate, you trust where you have to, and sometimes that goes wrong." She can hear the self recrimination in his voice, and she doesn't like it there. "You did what you needed to. Yes, she betrayed you, but it doesn't sound like you had many other options."

Only after that does she ask, worried gaze on Duke, "What do you mean you're a ticking bomb?"

"My body kept letting Troubles out, and I didn't know how to stop it, but I'd already put enough people in danger. She could help me stop a Trouble when it was let out of me or so I thought," Duke says, taking comfort in her reassurance, leaning into her touch out of instinct.

There's a pause at the question. "I mean, far as I can tell, she did something to me. There are all these Troubles in me- in my blood, and she sounded like they were all gonna explode. out of me, hitting everyone in its path with a Trouble of its own."

He shakes his head.

"You might not really be safe here either."

But he knows Maggie won't care about that.

Maggie used to want to walk into a story, but she outgrew that in Teleios, and this was never the genre she intended.

Deadly serious, she tells him, "I won't be safe here, period, from what you've just told me. That being the case, I'm certainly not leaving you unless you insist."

It's a struggle to conjure up even a weak joke, so the best she can manage is, "You're stuck with me, Duke." Even then, her smile only lasts a moment before she sobers again.

"And if there's anything I can do to make things easier on you, I want to."

"What a terrible thing," Duke says with a smile of his own since he's being sarcastic, lifting a hand up to frame her face briefly as he does so. It falls when her own does, and he bites down on his lip, shaking his head, thinking through any possibility. "You being here will make things easier on me. ...harder cause I'll worry about you, but easier because you're... you."

And he hasn't felt like he's really had anyone in his corner lately.

It's another reason he got so tied in with Mara.

"Then you have me," she promises. "I can probably manage a little bit in addition to just being myself, but it's nice to know your expectations are reasonable."

She shifts slightly as he moves his hand away from her face. "I know I'm injured, but I can handle moving enough to make space for you on the couch if you'd like. I don't suppose you have painkillers handy for when mine wear off in a few hours?"

Duke smiles as he reaches down to lift her up gently, sinking down beside her on the couch and then drawing her in against him. His arm winds around her shoulders as he does so, fingers tightening his hold against her arm.

"I would like, yeah." He has been stressed out. Though he hasn't been shot so he's got that going for him. "I have plenty of painkillers, heavy duty kind too. I have my ways."

Open RP post for Maggie Garcia

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/coming back to this nearly a year later ;o; as duke returns to me

Re: /coming back to this nearly a year later ;o; as duke returns to me

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