Duke Crocker (
betterthanaplan) wrote2019-11-18 05:38 pm
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The Cape Rouge, Port of Fandom, Monday
Bolstered with caffeine thanks to the Perk, Duke had returned to his boat to see just how much damage his younger self had managed to wreak over the weekend. The place was a wreck, especially the galley, with weapons (that had been toys, which was reassuring and terrifying in equal measure) strewn about wherever wee!Duke had happened to drop them, and a sticky film of grape jelly coating pretty much everything. He'd thankfully been quick enough even as a ten year old to keep the small fire he'd started trying to use the waffle iron contained to a very small space, so that wouldn't take much more than replacing the outlet and maybe resanding part of a cabinet.
And, as predicted, there were five pizzas, two giant cookies, and a rather unholy amount of Pepsi leftover in his fridge. Also, most of a frittata, at least half a serving of beef stew, and several stale and/or smashed cookies. He fed those last items to the porgs, who were all terribly pleased to see him, and set about making the Rouge a proper home again.
He had the door to the deck propped open to air out the smell of small semi-feral boy and to be able to hear if Octavia -- or anyone else -- came around. And, well, if he ended up humming some Violent Femmes under his breath while he did, well. Not everything he remembered from being a kid was a bad memory.
[expecting one, but also open]
And, as predicted, there were five pizzas, two giant cookies, and a rather unholy amount of Pepsi leftover in his fridge. Also, most of a frittata, at least half a serving of beef stew, and several stale and/or smashed cookies. He fed those last items to the porgs, who were all terribly pleased to see him, and set about making the Rouge a proper home again.
He had the door to the deck propped open to air out the smell of small semi-feral boy and to be able to hear if Octavia -- or anyone else -- came around. And, well, if he ended up humming some Violent Femmes under his breath while he did, well. Not everything he remembered from being a kid was a bad memory.
[expecting one, but also open]
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She was carrying a bag from Turtle & Canary which did not have any Oreos in it, thank you very much.
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"That you, Tavi?" Duke called. He was in the midst of
swabbing the poop deckmopping the floor (seriously, how had he manged to get everything sticky?), and as such moved a little gingerly to keep from falling as he headed for the hatch. "Careful coming in, the floor's a little wet."no subject
She was willing to take partial blame/credit. She'd been here for a while yesterday, too.
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In so many ways.
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In so many ways.
Octavia held up the bag. "I brought... some fruit and juice, mostly." She'd had cravings for fresh things after three days on a diet consisting 75% of cookies. "There's some chocolate in there, too."
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And also: "Other kinds might be fine. Guess we'll find out."
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Well, she'd mostly just nicked the corners, but it was a start.
"Beau gave me one of her throwing stars, I was practising with that."
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There were so many guns on this boat. So many. There was, in fact, one taped to the underside of the very table he was finishing setting. It had been armed with Nerf darts, which he'd fired at some seagulls.
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Tiny Octavia, you were a disappointment.
(Or possibly not.)
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Yes, but those parts hadn't stuck.
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Then she looked up again, and nodded at the pizza she was holding. "Warmed up, or are we doing the standard leftover pizza barbarism?"
She could say that because she was kind of a barbarian herself!
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There was a stash of restaurant scraps somewhere around here he still needed to find. Assuming the porgs hadn't already eaten it all.
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She had a healthy appreciation of both ovens as well as warm pizza. Probably evident in the ease with which she went to use the former to make the latter happen right after saying that.
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"It's why I'm half made of Oreos now, too," she said. "And cake."
Liam had used his precocious adorableness for good to get them that.
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"I was very impressed with your stashing abilities, by the way." Even if he'd also been pretty sure Bellamy had kidnapped her for nefarious purposes. "And the cute bunny, too."
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"My mom made it for me," she said, as she popped the strawberry container open. "His name was Bunny."
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"That's really sweet." It didn't make up for keeping her under the floor though. "So was having an extra kid really punishable by death on the Ark?"
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"Yeah."
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He knew a little something about your community thinking you should never have been born.
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Focusing on doing something with her hands, instead of her words.
"You asked about Unity Day," she said, after a long pause.
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And she'd believed him, both because he was Bellamy, and because she'd just wanted it so badly.
She sighed. "He took me to watch my first moonrise, and we went to the party, but --" Here her voice got much more dry. "-- surprise, surprise, everything went to shit when there was a solar flare alert."
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She'd stayed in her family's quarters -- which he had to assume were not large -- for sixteen years. He hadn't even managed to stay at his parents' house regularly for ten, and he'd at least been allowed outside. What exactly had her mom been planning to do with her when she grew up? Just keep her shut inside forever?
Jesus.
"What'd they do about it?"
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"Demoted Bel to working sanitation, threw me in a cell to rot... And floated Mom."
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"I already told you, once." The first time she'd been on his boat. Which felt to her like a lot longer ago than the month and a half it actually was. "Getting locked up for being born probably sounds like a quip without the context."
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The Chief was really kind of surprisingly reasonable, given Haven's . . . unique issues. Just maybe not where Duke -- and his relationship with the Chief's son -- were concerned.
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"Guess that's the apocalypse for you," she drawled. "Everything just gets worse."
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Running away was one of his very favorite coping mechanisms!
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Which, oddly enough, would probably make him fit in even more with Floukru and their whole "we're just going to live over here on our rig in peace, thanks y'all" attitude.
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But she wasn't saying that now. A quiet "Mm" was her only response. Then she let the silence stretch out for a little while she finished chopping up the pineapple, before she asked, a little more lightly, "Still think my first nickname's a dumb sigh?"
Well, she'd been thinking about names, just now.
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No one called him 'Bel' but her, either.
"And I was lying to you a lot, anyway," she added, cleaning up the pineapple carnage to throw away the non-edible bits. "Felt bad about it, but stil."
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She did not mind that at all.
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She'd been called out on her hidden depths enough lately to know that one still applied to adult her, too.
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And/or been repeatedly traumatized.
"I am sorry I called you a dummy, though. Like I said, I was kind of a dick."
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Tiny!Duke wasn't alone in being kind of a dick, was her point.
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"Looks like we've got quite the feast going, here. Em laik nom-nom."
That was not how you said that.
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Was it the training in the preserve or this space feeling oddly safe for her that made her throw around a word like 'cute' that comfortably?
Might've been the drink, too.
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"Ste non-non," he repeated, nodding to himself and trying to parse the grammar. "Ste is 'to be' for objects? Or does it mean something else?"
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Yeah, Octavia was no linguist, and neither was anyone she'd learned Trig from, so she was going to have to take a second to think on it.
"It's like the difference between yu ste briyon and yu laik briyon hef," she settled on. "Like if it's 'smart' on it's own, you say ste. But if it's 'smart man', then it's laik. Also if it's just 'man'. Yu laik hef."
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(If only because this was not the time to get started on the difference between oso and osir.
... Or yumi.)
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"Em ste non-non and oso ste meizen," Duke said, finishing his toast. ". . . I should probably learn how to say 'and' at some point, too."
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That was where most of her experience with toasts came from, yes.
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Which really made her 'thank you' at the Perk this morning all the more impressive.
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Yeah, she didn't actually think that. She followed it up with a big bite of pizza and some thoughtful chewing, all the same.
"And it gets things done." That, she actually did believe.
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She worked best if someone else did the diplomatic talking.
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"Teamwork," he said, picking up a strawberry and taking a bite. "Makes the world go 'round."
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... And apparently two of those in a row were enough to finally annoy her into putting down what she was eating so that she could unzip her hoodie and peel it off. Even though it was oversized and baggy on her, the tank top underneath still meant less fabric over the tattoo.
She tried not to be obvious about her little sigh of relief as she settled back down. "Can't wait to have a functional arm again."
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Maybe she couldn't do polite, but she could do quietly sincere.
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Duke gave her a salute and went to grab the coconut oil from his pantry. "What have you been using on it so far?"
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She stopped chewing on the inside of her bottom lip as soon as she realized she was doing it.
"Some kind of ointment I was recommended."
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But then so was the word that followed, too. And soft. "Sha."
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"Has it started to itch yet?" he asked after a moment. "Or is it still just sore?"
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That was Octavia's main takeaway from this.
She drew her hair over her other shoulder, and tilted her head away, for the part that traveled up to the side of her neck. "Still mostly just sore," she said. "But getting there."
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Because she stubborned her way through things, and dealt with the consequences as they came.
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"Think this is the most care I've ever actually put towards healing."
That was true on a few levels. More than she realized, too.
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And that he'd wanted to help her through it.
"I just know they were a big deal. Every warrior had tattoos."
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She shook her head. "Not many. And not for very long. I... spent some time around the Seconds from the other clans, especially the ones from Azgeda and Sangedakru, but that's it. We were deep in Trikru territory."
And deep in a war between them and Skaikru for most of her time on the ground, no less.
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Probably.
"Don't know," she said. "It means Ice Nation. But Trikru is sometimes just Trikru, and sometimes Trigedakru, and sometimes just Trigeda, which means 'forest'. Maybe Azgeda do the same thing amongst themselves."
She and Atohl hadn't exactly chit-chatted enough for that to come up.
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"Guess that makes sense. If they want to call themselves Azgeda, I am definitely in no position to argue."
Even setting aside the part where he would never meet any of them, telling people what to call themselves was rude.
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She had a healthy respect of all the clans, to be honest.
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She looked down her arm, to where his hand was. And noted, softly, "You've run out of tattoo."
It wasn't a complaint.
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Actually she'd thought about asking him if he wanted to, because there was nothing greater than distancing yourself from your own stupidly small wishes as much as possible.
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Well, the ones they'd known about, anyway.
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"Had to be a hell of an adjustment. Even just . . . dealing with weather."
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"My great-grandfather's generation was the last to know Earth before us," Octavia noted softly. "Sunlight, the wind... It was all new for everyone."
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He'd mentioned as much when Jack was still around, too. The whole idea of living in space messed with his head. There wasn't any air out there!
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With her history of captivity, though... Yeah.
"It's not something I really want to go back to, either."
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It was the spot on the island where she could really let go of her sense of place, the way she really couldn't anywhere else, because there was always something reminding her of exactly where she was.
But he'd probably seen how much she'd liked being out on the water, too. The principle was the same.
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And, would you look at that: there was a faint, crooked smirk.
"With or without added target practice."
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She should never have checked how many people lived in just Baltimore.
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Hear that, tiny Duke? It could be a positive sound, too!
"I think I'd like that."
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"I'll make some calls then. In the meantime . . . you have a preferred day for hiking and target practice?"
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(This right here was a part of her recalibrating, too. But this was different.)
"Everything past my shift on Thursday is free, though."
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Her head tilted a bit, as she watched him for a second - and then, seeming to come to some kind of a decision, moved to take the hand he'd had rubbing her arm.
And to lace her fingers with his.
Maybe she owed that to her kid self, too.
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"Friday. Should I bring a sword?"
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The weight was going to explain some of the muscle in her arms.
"Much less throwing it."
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After the last couple of years, her sword was an extension of her. A part of her.
"But, you might be a jaka, but not one dumb enough to take weapons from yu bezer gona. You're fine to try it out."
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That was more teasing than anything else.
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The little squeeze she gave his fingers said otherwise.
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It'd mostly been cults and kidnappers.
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It was just something that had stuck with her.
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It was a hell of a stash of cookies for someone he presumed was a runaway!
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... What a bleak feeling that was, wow.
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Half-hearted attempt at a joke, but it was good enough.
"Anyway." Enough about her. "You were a cute kid, too."
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He was thinking that she could be quite snuggly when she was in the mood for it, though.
"I was a terror," he said easily. "I think I called at least four people 'dummy'."
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That was like the textbook opposite of a terror.
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Over whether or not Duke was a real name, of all things.
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If anything, it was consistency.
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It was a word she generally reserved for porgs and kittens, if she said it out loud at all, but she'd make an exception for little kids calling other little kids 'Grandpa'.
"Also no, doesn't count."
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Probably mostly to himself, trying to play pirate.
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So many, Octavia. So many.
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Either way, the answer was a lot.
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"I think that's an answer in itself," she drawled. "Is it all guns?"
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And that was even leaving out his father's weapons, hidden in an antique silver box below decks. Mostly because Duke didn't know they existed yet.
"Most of them serve some other purpose, you know? Tools that can be weaponized instead of just flat out weapons. Makes them easier for people to overlook."
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It just made Octavia feel more at home, somehow. For better or for worse.
She nodded approvingly. "I think I'd like a closer look at some of those, sometime." But not right now. He felt warm against her, and she knew that if she got up or let him go right now, she probably wouldn't be able to talk herself into returning to as cuddly a state. "You're better stocked than I am."
Still, there was a knife in her boot even now.
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She'd genuinely been better at it than the adult version was.
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It was a good sigh, anyway.
"I think they did," she rasped quietly. "Eventually."