tushanshu_logs | Do You Walk in the Shadow of Men...

Entry tags:

Do You Walk in the Shadow of Men...

Characters: Valdis and open
Date: The Month of May
Location: Throughout Keeliai
Situation: Various
Warnings/Rating: In Headers

Moving out of the hotel didn’t take long. Valdis hired a few kedan to help her move her things to the small house near the former palace gardens. It was a comfortable enough space, moreso because Wan had built it. She wasn’t entirely certain why she had waited so long to move here, but perhaps she had just needed time to let go of Anton. The house needed a bit of work after having sat empty for so long, but not much and nothing she wasn’t willing to do. Valdis was capable of creating things, not just destroying them.

The KPD hasn’t let up on patrols and she’s renewed the watches on the water sources. She now had thirty-seven officers and the support of the Justice Guild, a far cry from where she had started almost a year ago. The addition of four Kirin to the KPD resources had been a bright spot, but now Valdis had to find a caretaker for them. She hoped that the four mounts could help reduce response times to crisis as well as aid in crowd control should something arise. Allying with the Guild of Justice and Arbitration had been a wise move as it seemed to calm things down a bit and give both parties a more stabilizing structure. Now she could hunt...

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Things had not exactly gone well the last time Valdis and Pepper crossed paths. The accusations leveled against Valdis anonymously are also definitely not helping the situation, and Pepper can only assume that her friend is under a great deal of stress. Bakura getting arrested wasn't Valdis' fault, and Pepper had never thought it was.

She keeps her head up and her shoulders down when she reaches Valdis' office, nods hello to the guard, and knocks before entering. "Hey, uh... mind if I come in?" Pepper asks, peeking around the door.

Valdis had finally put the law book aside, tired of it for now and was instead sketching an image of Wan and Mula in the battered sketchbook she had had in her drawer. The details weren't quite right, so she kept trying over and over again to get that loving, soft glint in his eyes. But perhaps mimicking such a thing was impossible.

She looks up as Pepper knocks, not entirely certain she is in the mood to speak to anyone, much less Pepper.

"I do, but you might as well come in anyway," she replies, going back to the sketch. There was very little that the girl could say to make this better, but Valdis was willing to hear her out, if only to let off some of her own steam.

Pepper's brow pinches together in a slight frown. That's a contradiction of terms if she's ever heard one, and it sets an unpleasant tone right off the bat. After a few seconds of thought, Pepper steps the rest of the way into the office, tucking one arm behind her and holding the opposite arm at her elbow. It's not a defensive posture, but neither is it quite vulnerable.

"Look, I'm not here to fight," she begins, forcing herself to keep her eyes up. "But I'm also seriously not interested in being one more thing that's making your life crazy stressful, because apparently that's what I am right now, and I don't know about you? But I don't like it. I care a lot more about helping you, and the rest of the city, get through what's going on right now. So, can we try to figure this out?"

"That's fascinating," Valdis says, not looking at Pepper, but continuing to draw short strokes, still trying to get it right. It had to be possible, she wasn't sure what she would do if it wasn't.

"Because last we spoke it was rather clear that not only do you not trust my judgment or my morality, but that Bakura is more important to you than this city or your other friends."

Valdis knew from experience that love made people into fools, the cliffs of Evidet had proven that, but that didn't mean she was ready to forgive anything. Perhaps that wasn't fair, but she wouldn't offer a false hope or reassurance.

Almost immediately, Pepper's eyebrows go up in surprise. She honestly hadn't been expecting that to be the issue.

"I was asking for information," she says, sounding faintly confused. "And yeah, I was distracted by what happened with Bakura, but no one called me to tell me what else was going on or ask me to come in," Pepper points out, intentionally neutral. 'No one' is not meant to mean Valdis, but everyone at the KPD. She hadn't been keeping an eye on the network at the time, but she did carry her handset everywhere. "I wasn't there as an officer; I was there as family, so you're right that my priorities were a little shifted for a few hours." Her mouth thins for a moment; Pepper can't deny being irked by what Valdis has said, but she's doing her best to keep level. "But me being a thrown off by everything that happened--" And Valdis doesn't know everything that happened. "--is not remotely the same thing as not caring as much about the city or the rest of my family and friends. You know I'd be first in line to stop Bakura if I had to, and I was."

It was comparatively minor against the extent of Bakura's powers and what he might be able to do (such as destroy this entire universe), but Pepper would stand and fight, no matter how much it hurts. No matter how much it hurts to only think about.

Valdis continued to sketch.

"Asking me if his arrest was a blanket order? As if I'd agree to a targeted arrest against someone not completely in control of themselves. Telling me to not restrain him because someone might get hurt? You forget that I know exactly what he is capable of. Why else would I come myself instead of just sending my officers? In addition, did it even cross your mind that I didn't involve you because of your relationship with him? I couldn't make you part of his arrest in that way."

"I am relieved that you were there," she continued, but her tone was still hard, "Because I doubt Bakura would have complied if you hadn't been, but you were so caught up in your own feelings that you didn't even stop to consider how I might feel about it. I didn't want to arrest Bakura. We might not always get along, but I do respect him and he has gone out of his way to help me more than once. Following that order felt like a betrayal."

And Pepper's pointed, irrational questions hadn't helped the matter.

For a moment, Pepper has to close her eyes, gripping her arm tightly. There are some things that Valdis doesn't know, and that Valdis probably shouldn't know, at least not right now. Valdis has enough going on without learning that Bakura hit her hard (which Pepper can admit was the result of her own mistake) and ordered Vee around through force of will.

She may have to let Valdis think the worst of her here, to bite back the response that's fairly leaping off her tongue and be the bigger person. It's not something she's good at, but it'll probably be a price well paid.

"And did it even cross your mind that maybe I was upset with the person who gave that order, and not you, and that you had the crappy responsibility of having to put your face on it? Because I wasn't upset with you. I was just upset," Pepper replies, quiet. "You were unlucky enough to be the direction I was upset in, and I am sorry for that. It wasn't right. But being angry with me for acting the way I did because I care about Bakura, acting like family instead of an officer, and keeping me out of arresting him for the same reasons isn't fair."

Valdis is trying to have it both ways, and is also reacting way more extremely than Pepper thinks is reasonable, but she's the offending party, not the offended. Her intent isn't the only factor to consider here. All throughout this, Pepper is doing her best to keep her tone as even as possible, but there's a tightness in it she can't quite quash.

"You know me well enough to make that decision to keep me out of it, and I am seriously, seriously grateful for that. Obviously I wouldn't have been able to do my job, even if it were an order. I can jump to stupid conclusions when I don't have my head on straight, and when I don't know all of what's going on, especially when people I care about are hurting. But maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions, either, when you don't have all the information. I was acting the way I did because of Bakura, yeah, but not for all the reasons you probably think." That's as close as Pepper will be getting to saying there was more to the situation than Valdis is privy to. Here, though, her voice takes on a little more edge. "And if you're going to punish me or be angry with me for doing something that hurt you, at least look me in the eye when you do it. I was disrespectful, I get it; don't do the same thing back to prove a point about how it felt. It won't teach me anything."

Though she had been trying to avoid it, Valdis does as Pepper asks, lifting her gaze away from the sketch and placing it squarely on Pepper.

"I am not angry with you for loving Bakura." Valdis' tone was nearing freezing temperatures, a stark contrast to the bloody-red glow of her eyes. "God knows that man needs something to keep him from destroying the world on a whim."

She hasn't forgotten the threat he made when she visited him either.

"Love, it seems, is an unfortunate accompaniment to human emotion and I am well aware of how irrational it can make people. It makes people do things they wouldn't normally consider." Like destroying an entire city. "I am angry because you treated me about as well as whoever posted that message on the network. You were mistrustful, questioned my morality and did it rather loudly, though I'll admit far less publicly. You may have been there as family for Bakura, but you are still an officer, you can't separate the two aspects of yourself."

Edited 2017-05-07 21:31 (UTC)

Pepper almost misses the entire second half of what Valdis is saying because of that very first sentence, her eyes going a little wide and expression almost slack. No one on the turtle knows that, except Vee. Bakura doesn't even know, and it makes Pepper's stomach settle somewhere around her ankles.

If her silence is anything to go by, the shock struck deeply. Pepper is rarely without words. Valdis knowing that is actually frightening, and she's not sure why, but it makes her heart pound against her ribs in a way that the dressing down has thus far failed to do so.

"That's how I made you feel," Pepper manages softly when she's gathered herself some, although there's a buzzing in her ears like a swarm of gnats. "That's not what I meant, and I'm sorry. I trust you with my life and I trust your judgement, but I'm also human and not perfect and I do stupid things sometimes. I've never had to try to separate those things before, and I wasn't asked to, either - is it really that surprising that I fell on my face? Isn't that part of why you didn't make me be involved in arresting him?"

Her voice is wavering now, despite her best efforts. Pegging her on the same level as that horrible network post-- if this is how she made Valdis feel, then Pepper is all the more regretful - it hurts and it makes it hard to breathe - but that is low. That's a pointed insult, and Valdis knows it.

"But I would never, ever claim that you protect cultists, or that you're like them or say you should bare all your secrets to the world like some ignorant jerk and comparing me to that ungrateful, disgusting smear of a person is not fair. I screwed up and I knew it and I came here to try to fix that because you are family and that's why I'm apologizing and now-- now you're calling me-- you're calling me that?" God, she's going to cry and Pepper hates it, she hates this whole situation, she hates that she hurt someone she cares about trying to protect someone she loves and that it's pushed Valdis to this somehow and this is all wrong and there are tears leaking out anyway. "I made a mistake, I did something dumb, but I didn't do it on purpose! I-- I already fell on my face. I don't-- I don't deserve you grinding it into the mud, too. I'm just trying to fix this so I can help you because you are important to me and you-- you don't have to be mean about it," Pepper says, her voice small. "I'm just-- just trying to fix this and it doesn't seem like you want to let me. If there's no point in even trying, just-- just tell me to go and I will."

The girl's long silence only confirmed what Valdis had already suspected, but even that information, originally garnered from her empathetic abilities, did little to curb her anger. Pepper's apology hits harder than the original insult, far harder and it takes every ounce of restraint she possesses for Valdis to not give into tears herself. She hates this far more than almost anything she had ever done and keeping the cold facade up as the redhead begins to cry is no small feat.

Valdis has always been skilled at finding ways to hurt, she always knew just where to press to cause pain. Pepper was right, she didn't deserve this, to be hurt by someone she cared about and no amount of real anger could justify what she had just done. But not all the anger was real, just enough that she had been able to find the right weak points. Valdis hated herself so much in this moment, but it was a bit late to turn back now.

"I'm sorry, Pepper," She says, turning her eyes back to sketch so that Pepper can't seen the pain that is surely visible in them, "You should go."

This isn't right. This isn't right. Valdis may have a quick temper sometimes, might hold grudges but this is going way beyond what makes any kind of sense, not the least of which because she's just apologized and sent Pepper away in the same sentence. The math isn't adding up here, but the pain overrides most of the logic. Pain and not a little bit of anger.

Pepper takes a moment to rally herself, to clear her face of tears and try to look less upset until she can find privacy. No one needs to see her like this, no one needs to be asking more questions.

"Fine. Fine," she says, sniffing and turning away. "I'll just go back to doing my job." Apparently, that's all she matters for anymore. "You know where to find me."

And with that, Pepper opens the door and leaves.

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Do You Walk in the Shadow of Men...

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