ic Turned Every Witch Way

[Electra]

Erik could see Raina's expression become more closed-off as he spoke, her eyes going wary even as she slipped on a practiced sardonic smile. She was an excellent liar, especially for someone her age, but it was tough to kid a kidder. "Wait, so you're saying that the whole spiel about your crazy superteam shenanigans and rising from the dead and folk hero to bees and all that was to try and show me how alike you and I are?" she quipped, taking the starting stance with her foil. Her positioning was better this time, easier without having to control the existence of the sword as well. "Somebody might be exaggerating just how exciting my life is." 

[Gizmo]

"I didn't say it was a good example," Erik clarified breezily, going through the came cycle of movements, a little more quickly this time. "Although how's your school full of meta-kids doing? Comfortable for your super intelligent monkey and that kid who used to be a statue? You've even got a slightly mental sharpshooter from another dimension. We should make bingo cards." He sped up just a little more with each repetition, just enough that Raina had to continue to work to keep up as she got more and more comfortable with it. "But I'm not talking about exciting anyway. I'm talking about pissed. You can't tell me you don't have reasons to be pissed."

[Electra]

"Pissed? Why should I be pissed?" The sardonic grin was still in place, though there were teeth behind it now, just for a moment. She repeated the forms as well, careful and steady, not as fast as Erik but with increasing accuracy. "I lead a charmed life. I grew up rich and popular, with everything my little heart desired. I even got to be a supervillain for one very exciting night and didn't go to jail for it. Now I'm in hero school and I've got a rich boyfriend who lives a thousand miles away but wants me to be happy and I've got superpowers. Doesn't really seem like such a bad deal, does it?" By now a fine sheen of sweat was visible on her skin. Raina wasn't in bad shape, but she also wasn't used to a lot of sustained physical exercise. 

[Gizmo]

"See, to the untrained ear that might sound like a sarcastic deflection," Erik drawled, abruptly adding a new component into the routine, holding speed until he was sure Raina had integrated into her own repetitions. "Y'know, I dated a couple cheerleaders in high school. Got to compete in front of some decent sized crowds, made the other guys look like they were standing still. Not rich, sure but I had that free ride lined up, who knows, maybe Olympics." With the new step successfully added he continued, trusting Raina's pride to keep her motivated as the burn started to set in. "Then hey, because of some @#$% mi mama can't walk and I'm working at two different convenience stores so that mi hermanita can maybe go to school. And getting powers, hey, that was pretty great but it didn't make up for the bad stuff, it didn't all even out so I felt fine. When the things that are important to you get taken away and you can't stop it? No amount of magic is going to make you feel less powerless. Somebody saying 'look at all the good things in your life' isn't going to make you less angry."

 

He stopped the drills and let out a long breath, the faint sheen of sweat having returned to his bare shoulder. "Look. Ask me why I don't live in a brownstone with a bunch of loveable losers anymore."

[Electra]

Raina tried to follow along with the lesson, watching the new move, copying it, trying to keep up, but she couldn't concentrate. How was she supposed to concentrate on the lesson when he wouldn't stop talking? If she could've plugged her ears she would've, but not only was that unfeasible with the sword still in her hand, it was tactical suicide. She knew better than to let anybody know when they'd scored a hit on a weak point.

 

But Erik wasn't content to just score a hit, he had to really smash it home, like knuckles grinding against her sternum, making her lungs burn and her throat close. He knew, somehow he knew, and he wasn't going to just let it lie. By the time he called off the drill, she wasn't even looking at him anymore, not a great strategy for swordfighting. She threw her foil on the ground and shook her head, not entirely trusting her own voice. 

[Gizmo]

Erik gave a small nod of understanding, largely to himself and not looking particularly victorious. He set his own foil down and quickly retrieved a pair of water bottles from the mini fridge tucked in amongst the equipment racks. Keeping a pace back to give Raina her space he held one out to her. "So I'm kind of an asshole. Half asshole, on my old man's side. Jokes." He couldn't keep all of the concern off of his face but hoped it at least didn't come across as patronizing. "Deep breaths, yeah? That was a pretty good workout there." He tilted his head a little trying to get a better look at her expression. "Scale of one to immolation, how mad at me are you right now?"

[Electra]

She took the bottle and drank the whole thing in long gulps, fast enough to give herself a faint cold headache, slow enough to let her regain most of her composure before she had to turn and look at him again. When it was finished, she carefully recapped the bottle and tossed it into the trash can. From the corner of her eye she could see Merlin lurking in the shadows by the door, called from his work by her internal upheaval. He'd wait, at least for now. Piecing together her rather battered emotional armor, she managed to give Erik a grin that was only a few degrees short of cocky. "Not nearly as mad now as I will be tomorrow when I can't move my arms," she assured him. "I still think I'm better off with fireballs." 

[Gizmo]

"That's fair. I'm still probably going to make you sit through some Zorro at some point on movie night. Because swords are the coolest." Erik took a few more leisurely pulls from his own bottle of water while retrieving Raina's discarded foil. "And not for nothing but you actually picked that up pretty quickly and in non-ideal conditions. Talya was right about your footwork getting good."

 

He packed up the practice weapons and turned back to her, water bottle pressed to the back of his neck. "So. I know you don't want to talk about it... but do you want to talk about it? You don't have to. I owe you ice cream either way."

[Electra]

Raina rummaged in the minifridge until she found the fruit that was usually stored in there, today a little plastic box of melon balls. She wasn't sure if the fruit was left for her or if she was stealing it from somebody else, but nobody had ever told her not to. Merlin came over, still somewhat cautiously, and accepted a few of the treats as well. "Not really," she finally told Erik. "Like you said, nothing makes you feel better about it, right? Usually talking about it just makes it worse. Either they feel sorry for you and it's weird because you've made them feel bad, or they don't feel sorry for you and make you feel like crap because oh boo-hoo they took your pony away because your parents are criminals and some people actually have real problems." She at another melon ball. "What kind of ice cream have you got?" 

[Gizmo]

Erik gave Merlin a nod of acknowledgement and grunted noncommittally. "I rode a unicorn once. Basically a horse with a sword on its head, so." It was a bit of a reach but it was about as close as he could come to empathizing with the experience of owning a pony. "Pony's sort of a pet, yeah? It'd suck if somebody took your dog or whatever. And I said it doesn't go away but it can get better." He walked over the coat rack attached to the wall in the space between the training room and the entranceway. "C'mon, we'll go to McGillicutty's. Ice cream does not last long here." The ice cream parlour was only about a block away and it was a good excuse to get some fresh air and a bit of a cool down walk anyway.

[Electra]

"Okay, but you better bring some home for the kids or I'm not responsible," Raina warned. Merlin hopped into her backpack with the rest of the melon balls in his greedy little grasp, letting her zip it up most of the way. "Did you have fun playing with Vince?" she asked the monkey. Merlin indicated that he did indeed have fun playing with VINCE and that although there was much left to do to make the dojo sufficiently cool as far as technology went, they'd made a good start. Raina just nodded along. 

 

McGillicutty's was one of those destination ice cream shops, retro in design and expansive in selection, with a vast glassed-in counter showing off dozens of ice cream flavors that customers could buy and consume in tacky red vinyl booths. Raina hemmed and hawed over her choice for a few moments before choosing Blue Moon, then waited for Erik to get his and pay. It was only when they were sitting in a booth that she spoke again. "Why don't you live in the brownstone house?" 

[Gizmo]

With a single scoop of surprisingly plain strawberry in hand took a moment to visibly steel himself, exhaling softly. "So that super genius I mentioned? Guy who brought us together in the first place. Turns out he had this bad side he couldn't control and that he didn't tell us about." The fencer grimaced in spite of himself, looking away briefly. "Used some technology to turn a bunch of us into puppets, make us hurt people. And then he blew it up. Our base. Our home. With Min inside. Chris, too and all of Vince's servers." Anger crept into his voice and there was a soft crunch as his thumb dug a divot into his waffle cone. "He's the one that built Vince in the first place. #$%@, he just wanted to make the guy proud. Managed to upload most of himself or something, I don't really know how that stuff works." Ice cream started to dribble onto his fingers and he paused the story to eat enough of it to keep pace with the melting.

[Electra]

Raina listened carefully to his story, taking neat spoonfuls of her ice cream from its paper cup. Every so often there was a faint crunch from inside the bag as Merlin worked on his own (empty) waffle cone. "So the guy who was supposed to get you all set up and help you do the hero stuff was a bad guy at heart?" she summarized when he finished. "Sucks. What happened to him? Is he down in Blackstone now, or did he die in the whole fighting thing?" 

[Gizmo]

"It... was a little more complicated than that. We'd been working together for years by then. I trusted the guy. He was my friend." Erik's teeth grated audibly over that last word but he pushed on. "So we pulled the bad side out of him and it turned into a giant monster and it was a pretty crappy night all things considered. But what was left over was still the guy who'd lied to our faces and screwed us over by not dealing with his baggage. We trusted him but he never trusted us." He finished his scoop of ice cream and bit into the cone. "You let that stuff fester, especially with powers involved? He was smart enough to know exactly how that was going to shake out. So I told him to stay the @#$% away from my family."

[Electra]

Raina picked at her ice cream, which was not a color that had ever occurred in nature, and listened to Erik's story. "I get that," she finally said. "You can't trust the guy anymore. Even if there were extenuating circumstances, even if maybe he didn't mean for things to happen the way they did, it was still his fault, and he still completely screwed up all of your lives." She flicked a quick glance up at him, then looked down again. "I guess I just wonder... do you ever wish he'd come back anyway? Just so you can see him?" 

[Gizmo]

Erik opened his mouth to reply then closed it again, pressing his lips into a thin line as he considered. "Part of me does," he admitted after a long pause. "A lot of the best things in my life wouldn't have happened without him and it'd honestly be easy to make excuses for him. But... okay, this is going to sound bad but stay with me."

 

He bought himself a moment to marshall his thoughts while finishing the last of his waffle cone. "People are going to let you down. Sometimes people you trust and sometimes in big ways. Maybe they're not who you thought they were or they just do something selfish. And you can decide to just not trust anybody but that leaves you more vulnerable not less." He spread his hands in an apologetic shrug. "But for me what that does is just makes me not want to be one of those people, see? I want to be somebody who's worthy of trust, I want to have my friends' backs and do the right thing even if it's not easier for me personally. Because the only person you really get to control is yourself." The fencer rubbed the back of his head, a little self-conscious about the philosophical tone he was wandering into. "So if it were just about me maybe I'd give the guy another chance. But it's my team now, my people and I'm not willing to roll the dice for them, too. If that makes sense?"

[Electra]

"I just..." Raina poked her ice cream savagely with her spoon. "I don't understand how somebody can get totally betrayed by someone they trusted, somebody who was supposed to be looking out for them and taking care of them, how they can have their whole lives ruined by that betrayal and then still miss the people who did it." Her ice cream was beginning to melt now, pooling sadly in the bottom of the paper bowl like a melted Smurf. "I mean, you got beyond it, right? You learned your valuable lesson, you got your family back together and now you have to think about it to even know what you'd do if you ever saw him again. That makes so much more sense than missing them all the time. Missing the people who betrayed you and were going to hurt you is stupid." 

[Gizmo]

"Hey. Raina, look at me." Erik leaned forward over the table to try to catch the teenager's eyes as she speared the preternaturally blue puddle. "He was my boss and my friend but he wasn't my dad. Hell, my old man wasn't even my dad." His expression didn't read as pity so much as genuine concern, a sort of frank focus on her body language and reaction as he spoke slowly and carefully compared to his usual rapid-fire. "I told you all that because I think it's similar and I think you and me react to that sort of thing in similar ways but it's not the same. The fact that you've got your life back on track as much as you have is freaking amazing, kid. I'd be more worried if you didn't miss them." Erik's eyes hardened as his jaw set, teeth grinding quietly. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you what I think of your folks but they sure as hell don't have a stupid daughter, alright?"

[Electra]

Raina didn't look up but she listened intently, pulling her arms and shoulders in tight as she stared ferociously into her ice cream. She wasn't sure why she'd said any of that to Erik, not really, not when she hadn't been able to say it to Talya or anybody, except that he seemed like maybe he got it in a way that other people didn't. Or at least he wouldn't get judgey or parent-murdery about like like some people might. "They're supposed to be going to trial soon," she muttered in the direction of the table. "It's been taking forever. The prosecutor wanted me to testify, but they ended up taking a deposition instead because... I don't really know. My lawyer wanted it that way." She shrugged. "I didn't really know anything. But I don't have to go to the trial, and if I don't and if I don't go visit them, maybe I'll never see them again. It's a weird feeling." 

[Gizmo]

"It's a weird situation," Erik agreed, resting an elbow on the table and leaning his hear against his closed hand. "I don't think there's any easy answer there but you don't have to decide right now and it's okay if you change your mind down the road. If you do want to visit them one of us will always go with you. If you don't want to see them we'll support that, too." He didn't bother raising the possibility that the Sandersons might not be convicted; they both knew the trail was practically a formality at this point.

 

He gave her a faint smile even if she hadn't looked up yet. "And I know talking about this stuff is pretty much your least favourite thing of all time but if you need to vent or just be pissed without having to pretend for bit I'm not going anywhere."

[Electra]

Raina considered the offer, turning it over in her mind for a moment before tucking it away for later examination. Seeing her parents the once had been good and terrible at the same time, she certainly couldn't have done it without Talya, wasn't sure she wanted to do it again. She definitely wasn't sure she wanted to do this whole venting thing again, but there were worse people than Erik to have a mini therapy session with. And it was a good way to get some free ice cream, she supposed. 

 

Tipping her head up to look at him, she gave him what might have been just the ghost of a smile. "i'll keep it in mind," she told him. "But the blue moon here doesn't taste right. Hot fudge sundae next time." Or banana split, Merlin suggested from the bag. "Or banana split. You gonna take some home for the girls?" she asked Erik.

[Gizmo]

Erik sighed theatrically as he extricated himself from the booth with more acrobatic fluidity than was probably strictly necessary. "See, this is why you're their favourite. Can't compete." Returning to the counter he picked up a pair of small to-go cartons, carefully accommodating the flavours Mia was absolutely refusing to touch this month.

 

He held the door open for Raina as they headed back, making a small sound in the back of his throat as something occurred to him. "Speaking of, melon balls went over alright?" he asked, directing the question both to the teenager and the occupant on her backpack. "Min's convinced that Claremont doesn't feed you well enough."

[Electra]

"Oh yeah, they're good," Raina assured him. "Claremont's fine, but they've got a lot of mouths to feed on a budget. Most of their fruit comes out of a can or a bucket. Getting fresh stuff is nice." Merlin chirruped agreement from the backpack, which Raina was certain was now full of ice-cream-cone crumbs. "But now you've told me we're not stealing it from you, it probably won't taste so good." She was still uncomfortable inside, rubbed raw in some emotional sore spots, but she was definitely finished dealing with them for now. The faster she could get herself outwardly back to normal, the better she felt. ""Tell her I said thanks."

[Gizmo]

"You can always keep pretending," Erik suggested, his voice light in a way that served to assure Raina he too was ready to move on from heavier topics for the time being. "I think Min enjoys feeling like she's pulling a fast one to get you to eat better anyway or she would have asked you herself." Some of that might have been from dealing with fussy toddlers and some of it might have been Talya rubbing off on her.

 

Holding the door open to the school before following Raina in he added, "I'm not actually going to hound you over the sword thing but if you want to work on it let me know, yeah? I know you're already putting in a lot of time training with Talya and I've been told that running fencing drills isn't widely considered relaxing, weirdly enough. No accounting for taste."