Margot
Four nights. Four nights of sleeping in shifts on a futon, Ned mercifully often working evenings and Margot typically being up and moving around, preparing without much enthusiasm or focus for school. She'd been keeping up with classes and homework, often from a clear space on the floor with legs crossed and books in front of her.
Tonight, though, they were shifting locations. Margot had concluded a short part-time shift at the dispensery where she worked and texted: My place tonight?
And so they would be. Margot was a ball of conflict, simultaneously relieved to be 'home' (not quite home yet, that word didn't work for the apartment, but she was trying to make it stick) and on edge for what she anticipated was soon to come. Who, to be more to the point. It was that anticipation that brought her back here. She wanted to set up 'defenses'.
"Not as good as magick," she was saying while tucking a little spherical web-cam into a potted plant on the tiny end table beside her couch. "But technology was magic once. Still is, if you ask some folks." Content with where the camera was set in place, she'd started tinkering with settings on her phone to try and get the two to sync up.
Ned
"Camera's just passive security. It'll show someone coming in but it won't do you much good if you're home."
Ned's been inspecting the apartment, trying to get the various locations and sections that could promise to keep her safe or hidden if push came to show. He'd concluded the bathroom was about the only secure place in the entire apartment and that would leave her trapped.
Still, some weapons in the right places (A couple of knives duct taped and secured up the kitchen table. One in the bathroom cabinet, all of which he'd taken from his place because he rarely cooked and they were collecting dust) would be suitable enough. Those of course were the mundane things.
He'd taken pains to bringing over a half a pound of Salt and a satchel of soot and ash. It had taken some finagling but at some point or another, one of the parks where people could legally have fires, was raided for it's cooled off pit. The pieces and chunks were ground down and put into a baggy; Ash.
Bleeding Margot, of course, was an option but not a very good one.
Ned was sitting on her couch, the bag of ash and box of salt sitting on the table. He was filling various medical vials full of the stuff. A half a dozen of each so far. Secreted around the apartment, with tiny gold stars, marking their locations (picked up from the dollar store) it gave Margot access to her 'better weaponry'.
"I can go and pick up a baseball bat for you at some point if you're more comfortable with that." Because he was sure she wouldn't have been comfortable with the knives on bringing them with him.
Margot
It was with a grim expression but no protest that Margot acknowledged Ned's mission to stash knives in different strategic locations around her apartment-- a knife under the small two-person kitchen table, one in the bathroom cabinet, and one that Margot chose to stash between the wall and the head of her bed, taped secure to the wall. The salt was appreciated, and the gift of ash and soot had Margot impressed with the idea of where to mine such supplies.
Margot's brow pinched together while she tapped away at her phone, and in turn checked the little camera here and there to make sure it was doing what it needed to. Not the most tech-savvy person in the world, but she was smart and born in the right generation for this kind of a task.
"I suppose," she agreed distractedly to the suggestion of a baseball bat, trailing off in the manner of someone who had another thought but it was held up. A dozen seconds later, though, she was finished-- a video of her door (grainy, delayed, but there) was able to play on her phone screen. Content with the successful set-up, she set her phone down on the table by the plant pot. "At least I'll see if he's come sniffing around if I'm not home. I'll know if he's here waiting. Takes one unpleasant surprise out of the mix."
Her attention shifted to the work Ned was doing, watching him funnel soot and salt into various vials. Watched as though half-entranced by the waterlike flow of many grains into their container.
"...I'm honestly better defending myself without, I think. I learned a few things, but never really got familiar with a weapon." With the thought of a weapon, or with actually using one? Maybe both, knowing her. Hands went to her hips and she lifted her gaze to scan around the small apartment, like she was hunting for missed details or inspiration. "Hopefully I won't need one."
Ned
"Weapons aren't for holding they are for throwing. You'll just give him a reason to stab or hurt you if you close the gap. Never close the gap. Throw and run to the next knife or available throwable weapon. Aim for the legs, put them on the ground as often as possible and always scream bloody murder until you can't anymore."
Ned's dictating like he pulled this all together after numerous drunken conversations over pitchers of beer with dumbass frat boys wondering about the Zombie apocalypse and their chain-saw wielding badassdom. Or some such imagining.
"Magic-wise, what do you have available as far as practiced stuff goes? You want quick activation, so no blood letting or drawing circles or anything. Quick and dirty is the key."
Margot
While pointers for defending and escaping were given, Margot drifted past the couch and coffee table and made her way to the door out to the balcony. It had been kept closed, for the city was cold tonight, but now she opened it with a creak of old hinges just enough to lean her torso outside.
"If there's confrontation here, the gap space available isn't very big to start. Luke's only got the one arm, it's not like he's going to have much luck holding me still or pinning me down. If he just wanted to... cut my throat in the middle of the night or something then he probably wouldn't be toying with me or texting me. He'd just show up and do it without giving me the heads up to be on the look out. But..."
With a sigh she leaned back in and closed the door. Kept a hand on the knob while looking out the cloudy old glass window pane at its top, at the street below with a watchful frown.
"Who the fuck knows what someone'll do when they're strung out."
Next, a small shake of her head. "I can think of a million things that I would do with my Craft if I could-- I'd steal his senses instead of dampening my own, or block his spine so his legs would stop working. I'd turn any weapon he tried to use on me into putty, I'd gnarl his hands up like Kha'vadi woman did to Doc's wrists. Right now? I think my best chance is my weak-spots scan and seeing Distance to have more of a... path for throwing and aiming. Beyond that, I'm open to suggestions."
Ned
"This is general knowledge. You're still surprisingly normal in your thinking patterns after having run ins with various monstrosities, walking zombies, voodoo spirit travelers and goblinoid things..."
Ned's finally putting a cap on the fifteenth and final vial. 9 salt and 6 Ash in total and his hands are a mess. He dusts them off slightly on his jeans, black hoodie hiding most of the stains well (save for the flecks of salt grains clinging to the well aged fuzziness). He moves toward the kitchen, eyeballing Margot at the balcony door.
"Who the fuck knows is the best possible reason to be prepared for the worst. One arm makes him handicapped but not stupid or incapable. He brings a knife and you don't close the distance. He finds a gun and that one hand is going to be more trouble than you can handle."
The faucet goes on as he vanishes into the kitchen. The sound of snapping fingers, eager for her attention arrives with running water.
"Distance and Life beacons. Can narrow your aiming scope while giving his body light-up cues for where major organs and tendons for movement are. Quick scan and you should be able to make it easier on you to throw and strike accurately and with results. That's good..."
A pause. The faucet turns off.
"If you can minimize all the lights in here. Drapes on the windows and doors. Take out all of your lightbulbs except those in a few select places. Lamps connected to a central power bar. Turn off all the lights and then go darkvision with Life or Forces. It isn't the same as ruining his senses internally but does the same job."
Margot
A glance was cut back over her shoulder when Ned accused her of having normal thinking patterns, a half-hearted warning, a silent hey, watch it, but it was short lived. He was eyeballing her right back as he rose to go wash his hands in the kitchen sink, and the warning slipped and gave way to general discontent once more. Worry was a shawl she wore often, but it hadn't stopped showing in her face and shoulders for the better part of the week. It was getting to be enough that she now closed her eyes to rub at her forehead with a couple of fingers, like she was massaging to banish a headache.
"The lights... that's a good idea." Straight away she moved into the kitchen as well and pulled out a drawer to Ned's left, at about knee level, and pulled out a couple of dish towels to pile on the countertop. Straightened up and looked around to try and pinpoint where the duct tape had gotten off to.
It wasn't immediately visible because it was on her bed mattress, hidden from the kitchen's view by the room divider that separated her sleeping space from the rest of the studio. So she started piling the towels one at a time into her arms instead, moving heavy with reluctance and thought. The gears in her mind were whirling quickly, burning oil while trying to plot out alternate courses of action.
"....shit, if only I could wipe memory. I'd so much sooner he just forget everything and go back to fucking off at home, or anywhere else. We're planning on it having to come to bloodshed but I just..." Another sigh, this one heavy enough that it may as well be riding on Atlas's shoulders. "God damnit."
Ned
"Memory is a tricky thing. I'm not sure any spell or working could accurately erase someone's memory for too long. Not without regular adjustments and indicators. Our understanding of the brain is-...well, yeah. Memory wiping. Temporary solution at best, I would say."
Ned's empathy for the moment is low. Not incredibly, just...there's more to be done in planning practically than in trying to organize your feelings. Brother or not. He watches her struggle with the towels but doesn't offer to help. Margot was the sort to need things to do (as evidenced by some earlier time when he came home to a small pile of folded laundry, sitting on the edge of the futon) to keep herself busy. This served it's purpose.
"You keep concentrating on what ifs and daydreams. Andraste is probably rolling her eyes about now." He frowns, clucking his tongue. "You're not getting out of this with wishes and wants. We either prove he's doing something wrong and get him put back in jail so he's alive but can't hurt you? Or we make sure he just can't ever hurt you again. Period."
Margot
"Of course she is. I haven't taken up arms and declared war against my own blood, that's gonna be a moment too good for her to want me passing up." Frustration manifested in bitterness toward the diety, proving humanity's tendancies to thank, praise, curse and blame their Gods on a smaller and more direct scale. It was less of a loose complaint about the universe in Margot's case.
"He was in jail before, that only holds for so long and apparently not long enough. He saw and experienced something that's outside the realms of anything else before-- didn't Awaken, but Sleepers don't get to witness that stuff anyways. I get why he'd start driving across the country for answers. If answering his questions will help him calm down and go away, great, but.."
She didn't sigh this time, though the pause was appropriate for it. Instead she furrowed her brow with some kind of resolve and looked at the towels in her arms. Wadded the pile up tightly and gave it a heft-and-toss over the top of the room divider so that they'd land on her bed-- the window and door were over in that direction anyways. One missed and hit the floor instead but she'd worry about that later. Now she'd turned to face Ned more directly instead.
"He drove me from home once before, but not a second time. I'm not going to let him. More than just that, though; you're not letting me let him either. So we're gonna be okay."
No more wishes or what-ifs, but hope could remain on the table still.
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