summer has come and passed, the innocent can never last | open, with starters

[wrathfulkhan]

Characters: Eyebrow Squad Gene, Jackie, Deon, and you!
Date: Throughout September 15 days late with Starbucks
Location: Keeliai and the rest of the shell
Situation: September interactions for Eyebrow Squad.
Warnings/Rating: None initially, but subject to change.

A. [Gene] House Iron Dragon | September 15 | closed to Pepper
So this has been a long time coming, and things have come to the point where Pepper and Gene need to - gasp! - talk their problems out. Gene's sensed this coming for a while. He's made tea, and is sitting at the table, waiting for Pepper.

B. [Jackie] Dove's Place | early September | closed to Dove
Jackie is in an unusually good mood today. Yunxu seems to be ignoring him for now, so he's not sure what to do with himself...aside from hang with his Snake brothers. He's still itching for something more than gang life, and talking to Dove usually seems to make him chill out; while he is in a good mood, there's some anxiety lingering about him for sure.

C. [Deon] China's Place | early September | closed to China
Deon's been avoiding China ever since Erskine had accused him of being a spy. Confrontation is not his style. But learning sigils from her had been fascinating, and he'd been wavering between continuing his studies while keeping his head low, and telling her exactly where she could go shove her information requests. Perhaps if Deon had been taken a week or two before, he might have gone with the former; now, he's more inclined to opt for the latter. But he'll hear her out. She deserves a fair shake.

He takes a deep breath, and knocks.

D. [Gene] Fire Sector | throughout September | open
Gene is keeping a weather eye on the Chihuelans as they make their way through the city. And not a particularly kindly one, either. In fact, it could be read as a downright stink-eye, if they ever took notice of him.

E. [Jackie] Sky Sector | throughout September | open
Jackie can be found in the Sky Sector this month, slumming it with his Snake buddies, gambling in alleyways and generally being a hooligan and a layabout.

F. [Deon] Metal Sector | throughout September | open
Of course, Deon isn't Deon if he's not working on some ridiculous project or other. He's going around the Metal Sector in his off-time, picking up bits and pieces to tinker with. He might even find something worthwhile.

G. [Deon] Deon's Room | early September | closed to Tom
Deon's been sitting in his room all day, working on cracking the security of the laptop that he'd come upon in the market. It's been a side project more than anything - current events had kept him busy - but he's still interested in breaking in. It's not his laptop, but it's Tetravaal, so that makes it a little something of home.

H. [Gene] House Iron Dragon | early September | closed to Tony
Mail wasn't something the occupants of House Iron Dragon were accustomed to getting, so the pair of letters shoved under the door while Gene and Tony were out were a surprise.

"What, is Pepper leaving us notes now?" Gene asks, stooping to pick them up - and stops when he sees the name scrawled on one envelope, in what's unmistakably his handwriting.

铁木真.

I. [Deon] the Morrigan | early September | closed to Shay
Deon has gotten to know the former Assassin's ship (not a boat) passably well, and he knows it's here he can go to find Shay when he needs him. He knocks gently on the cabin door. "Shay?"

Comments

[lasergrenades]

"Uh?" That was not the response she was expecting. Maybe some questions, but not this. It sounded clear enough in her head, and Pepper is pretty sure it was mostly coherent out loud.

"That's... that's what being a family means, Gene. It means you can be upset with someone but still care about them. Sometimes you're upset with them because you care about them and they did something dumb and got hurt or whatever. That's... part of the reason I'm angry with you, honestly. Because I know you're a good person, but you did something pretty stupid," Pepper tries to explain, but she worries she's making things worse. "It's like... aren't you ever irritated or upset with Tony? I can't imagine you aren't ever upset with him, I mean, come on, it's Tony, he does stuff that gets him into trouble all the time."

She pauses, waiting to see if some kind of comprehension dawns.

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene continues to stare at her blankly until she gets to the end of her spiel. Then it seems to make sense.

"There was one time in particular," he says slowly. "With Malicant." That Tony would refuse to kill Gene and save the rest of the Foreigners from him, if Malicant were to corrupt his mind again...Gene had been furious with Tony about it, but he still loved Tony, maybe even more because of it.

"I don't see why you'd feel that way about me, though."

[lasergrenades]

Pepper opens her mouth. And then she closes it.

Congratulations, Gene, you've manage to make her speechless.

After gaping for a moment or two, she covers her face with her hands.

"I'm going to have to spell this out for you, aren't I?" she says, but her hands don't fully muffle the mild exasperation in her tone. "I can't believe I'm even going to say this, but I seriously don't think you're going to get it any other way." She peers out from behind her fingers. "Gene, I love you, but I'm not in love with you."

Pepper drops her hands and gives him a look of deep embarrassment.

[wrathfulkhan]

?? ???? ??????? ????????????? ???????????????

Gene looks at her like she's from Mars.

"Thanks, I guess?" He's still a little iffy on the distinction, but honestly, for all his talk about family, he's never had a family bigger than two before. For a time, it had been himself and his mother; in Keeliai, it had been himself and Tony. And now Pepper's added to the mix, and he's not at all sure how this is going to work.

He takes a sip of his tea, still looking confused. This was not at all how he'd expected this conversation to go.

[lasergrenades]

Pepper groans and puts her head on the table. Boys. She seems to be surrounded by lots of dumb ones.

"Look, I'm still furious with you over what you did. I don't understand why you did it. Why you... why you betrayed us," she says from the table. "You could have come back. You could have let Mr. Stark go. It would have been awful but we wouldn't let anything bad happen to you. I wouldn't, anyway," Pepper mutters. "What I understand even less is the whole 'take over the world thing.' That was... that was worse than almost everything else."

Because there had been a moment when she had briefly, fleetingly, momentarily entertained the thought that she might have possibly been wrong about him truly being a good person who was just deeply messed up. It was an ugly moment.

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene looks down at his tea, and says nothing for a moment, just watching the steam curl up.

"I was going to do it," he said quietly, his voice pained. "After the fifth ring, I...I had a moment of clarity, I realized that I was wrong." He swallowed hard, trying to figure out how to proceed. "It wasn't worth it. It wasn't. All that power wasn't worth losing almost all of the only people who ever cared about me."

He looks back up at Pepper. "I threw them away. I didn't want them anymore. But it was the Temple of Sacrifice for a reason, and throwing them away...showed me where the rest were."

Then he looks down again, unwilling to keep meeting her eyes. "It was easier to go after the rings than to go back to you all. If I apologized, I didn't think you'd forgive me. That part of my life had ended; I killed it myself when I walked out of the dragon's mouth."

He's gripping the mug so tightly his hands are burning from the heat, but he doesn't care. "I thought, maybe...if I had them all...I could show you, and you'd understand. I did those things because I wanted to make the world better. I thought it was my destiny to make the world better. I wanted to rule, but I was going to use that power to...fix things."

Then he laughs bitterly. "Even if the Makluans hadn't come, I don't think I would have been too good at that."

[lasergrenades]

Pepper raises her head as Gene speaks. She hadn't really expected him to explain, or at least try to explain. And he looks miserable; he won't meet her eyes. It's like watching a dog that's been beaten. Or, she realizes with some horror, a person that's been beaten.

"You could have tried," she says, but there's no venom in it. Pepper takes a careful sip of tea before continuing. "I think it's better that they did come, actually. Otherwise we would have had to stop you. I... don't think that would have ended well. For any of us." She sighs heavily. "At least this way you learned... something."

Pepper isn't entirely sure what, but he knows what he did was wrong.

CW for child abuse description in this tag

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene's shoulders tense at that, and he grips the mug a little tighter; what Pepper said struck a nerve she had no way of knowing about.

You don't learn, Zhang had taunted, picking him up in his stolen armor and throwing him like a ragdoll. You need to be taught a lesson.

He's biting the inside of his lip when he comes out of the sudden violent memory, not quite hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to distract him.

"That seems to be the only way I learn," he says, more archly than he'd intended.

[lasergrenades]

The sudden tension across the table makes Pepper bite back any retort she might have made in response to his tone; clearly she said something that upset him, without meaning to.

"I didn't mean it like that, Gene. I just meant... I meant that you changed. You changed because of what happened. In a good way," she stresses. "You're a good person, and you got the chance to show that to other people. If the Makluans hadn't showed up... Let's just say I'd much rather have Tony dating you than Tony murdering you. Or, you know, any variation of that. I'm sorry, I'm seriously not saying this right."

She shakes her head and looks back down at her tea.

[wrathfulkhan]

"I'm not a good person," Gene says, matter-of-factly. "You don't have to try and soothe my ego. I know that. What I've done...I can't ever be good." And he's accepted that. He's come to terms with never being good. But maybe one day he can be good enough.

[lasergrenades]

Pepper sighs; Gene had argued with her on this before, and she imagines this won't be the last time.

"I'm not saying you're a good person just to be nice. I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it," she says fiercely, looking up with determination written all over her face. "I wouldn't be as angry as I am if I didn't know it." How had Bakura put it? "Doing something cruel or awful doesn't unequivocally make a person bad," she quotes.

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene shrugs noncommittally. "I'm not sure I believe that. I was too cruel for too long." Then he smiles thinly. "That's right; you weren't there. When we were taken by Yogthulu into his demonic realm, he rejected me, because my soul was impure."

He shakes his head and takes a sip of his tea. "I appreciate the thought. But there's more wrong with me than just cruel deeds in my past."

[lasergrenades]

"And you're gonna take the word of some gibbering horror from beyond the stars over mine?" Pepper challenges. "Besides, maybe.. maybe he just meant that you had Makluan DNA, that you weren't, you know, average Homo sapien material. Maybe Makluan DNA tastes bad to gibbering horrors," she offers lightly.

She leans onto her elbows, resting her head on one of her hands.

"I don't know what else has happened, Gene, but it won't change my mind," she says stubbornly. "You saved my life, and you didn't have to. You could have let me die, and then you would have had one less person in your way. But you didn't. You didn't even want to fight me when you could have easily flattened me. I won't ever forget that."

[wrathfulkhan]

Stop being so understanding, Pepper. It's really weirding him out.

"Of course I wasn't going to let you die," he says. "I'd thought of you as a friend, then. I still do. And I want to...mend fences."

He sighs. "Like I said before...it's always been different, with Tony. And you know there's no love lost between me and Rhodes. But I think you were actually the first real friend I'd ever made."

[lasergrenades]

That...that was not what she was expecting to hear. Pepper blinks at him for a moment, a little stunned.

"Uh. Like, ever ever?" If that's true then Gene's childhood was even worse than she thought. "That's, uh, wow."

Pepper looks at him blankly for a moment, and then smiles.

"Well, I better not give that title up. Way better than 'Hall Monitor'."

[wrathfulkhan]

"...really?"

He is perplexed by this. Why would anyone value his friendship? Especially after everything he's done?

[lasergrenades]

"Yeah. I mean, sure, I'm upset about what you did still, but I wouldn't be living with you if I didn't like you," Pepper explains.

"Seriously though, your first friend ever? Did Zhang keep you in a bubble or something?" She wouldn't be surprised if it was a very spiky bubble, in fact. "Was high school the first time you were around people your own age?"

[wrathfulkhan]

"...basically, yeah. When my mother was still alive, we lived on a rural estate, but after that...I was homeschooled. Partly I taught myself, partly some Tong instructed me. Zhang wanted to keep me on a tight leash, since I was his only remaining lead to find the rings."

[lasergrenades]

"Yikes. He was a super mega evil jerkface," Pepper replies, making a face at the non-existent stepfather. "I knew he was a criminal. I mean, I didn't know know, but with all of my dad's files and stuff, it was totally obvious."

She takes a sip of her tea.

"So, you were basically raised by ninjas? That's kinda cool, if you forget all the other stuff."

[wrathfulkhan]

"Yes," he says dryly, and sips his own tea.

"It killed me to have to defend him to you like I did."

[lasergrenades]

"You did seem pretty irritated about it. I thought you just didn't like to be teased," Pepper recalls. "It makes a lot more sense now."

She looks down at her mug; the tea is almost gone.

"Thanks for putting up with me," she says finally.