2022-04-26 - A Ray of Sunshine

It's a very nice day, all things considered. The sun is shining, only a few clouds in the sky, and even if the breeze is a bit cold, it's nothing that a light jacket won't take care of. It's the sort of day that attracts all sorts of people to this smattering of bird and monkey cages optimistically labelled 'Zoo'. Maybe it's the nice weather, or maybe it's just the peaceful chirping of the birds, but there Robin sits on the ground just past the top of the hill leading to the pond, holding a plastic bag with half a bread loaf and surrounded by an increasingly eager flock of geese and ducks. His expression is distracted as he mechanically tears off a bit of bread and throws it into the milling mess of feathers. He watches distantly as the birds chase after the bread, and when it has disappeared down one feathered throat or another, he starts the cycle over.

It's not even enough of a zoo to have a proper gate, not enough of a proper zoo to keep just anyone from ambling into the space like they own it. Or like they're tourists. Or like they're super curious about what's behind the bars. Certainly there's nobody who really does more than glare a little at the large, rather shaggy Tervuren accompanying Nicasia to the park - and the zoo - today. Lady is very clearly interested in the birds but actually too well-behaved to do more than look, ears up, tail wagging a little. She doesn't even strain on the leash, doesn't put any tension on the lead, keeps her very careful distance just a few inches behind Nicasia's left leg. She's a little more athletically dressed than she was the last time, in black leggings and a tank top under a laughably oversized hoodie, zipper-fronted, undone for ventilation. Earbud wires trace black lines up toward her ears, but those are pulled loose when she spots the man in the center of the flock, a prelude to a touch of conversational staring as they close at least a little bit of the distance.

Robin wasn't really paying attention to anyone passing on the path above the pond. There goes a harrassed mom with three kids who can't wait to see the monkeys. There goes another young couple, holding hands and giggling as they wander together in search of a more secluded corner of the park. Here comes the lady who fell through a rift and swam a whiskey river... Robin double-takes when he realizes Nicasia is there, and almost reflexively glances toward the front of the park and the improper 'gate' that leads to the rest of the park. But he doesn't flee, at least! Instead, he offers a tentative sort of wave and waits to see if she turns back or continues her approach.

Ahhh but to flee, he'd have to go past her, and wouldn't that be even more awkward? The path kind of winds that direction naturally, as naturally as anything in the very manmade part of the park can. Nicasia is just not really in a hurry, as if she's giving him ample room to run the other way. Or go swimming. Or transform into a goose and fly away. Or... no. There's a spot where the path curves, arcing away from the pond, and that's where she stops with the dog to return the wave with a two-fingered gesture of her own. "Hey," she calls. "You know if those birds are giving you a hard time, I know a guy."

Robin slowly climbs to his feet when it's clear that Nicasia has recognized him and /isn't/ immediately fleeing the other direction. It's a slow process, that involves a bit of brushing off any dust that may be clinging to him from sitting on the ground. The smile he returns her may be lacking its usual energy, but at least his usual friendliness is still present. "Eh, it's no problem. They're all a bunch of chickens." They're geese and ducks, Robin. But apparently that's the best he can do when it comes to joking around. He ties off the bread back and carries it along as he makes his way back up to the actual path, as the ducks and geese slowly lose interest and start waddling off in search of new victims. "Hey. Sorry I left my toolbox at your house. And...everything else."

It seems to be a common affliction; Nicasia doesn't quite have the same sharp edge she has previously, dulled and slightly dampened but not at all down and out. There's a wry little twist of smile for his bird joke, accompanied by a wag of dog-tail before Lady sits herself down and waits. And watches the ducks, and the geese, maybe disappointed that they aren't going to get any closer. Robin's apology is waved off, however. "You can come pick it up any time; you know where we live. And it doesn't seem to be moving any time soon." She knows. They tried.

The other part takes a little longer to deal with. Long enough for her to take a little breath. To straighten up a little, and then let out that same breath in a quiet sigh. "I really don't think that was your fault. Pretty much everybody warned us that was likely to happen. Just. You know. I didn't think it was going to happen then, there. Fuck, man, I have to live in that house."

Robin's gaze skitters away when Nicasia brings up difficult topics like fault. He takes a deep breath, holds it a moment, then lets it out in a slow, controlled exhale. "I guess? Some of that wasn't me," he admits, tentatively. "And none of it was the house. The dreams don't give a shit about houses." He gives a lopsided smile, and looks down at his feet, then finally back to Nicasia. "Listen. When we were in there... You said someone told you to use your powers to get out. I've never--" He stops and glances around, making sure no one is standing close enough to overhear something awkward. "I've never done that before. Intentionally escape, I mean. I didn't know I /could/. Who told you about that?"

This is... well. This is. Nicasia deliberates for just a minute before waving at the grass a few steps off the path and going to sit there. It's an open invitation, but it gives the dog something to do other than just sit: no, now the dog can lay down and get pettin's while watching the birds that she can't chase. "I'm glad to know it wasn't the house. Gotta admit, I have been very low-key afraid that the ghost of my f...partner's father might still be floating around in there. Given a choice between an angry alcoholic asshole poltergeist and a basement that might also be hell, I think I'll go with the basement that I can just board the door to over." And is maybe glad that this isn't going to be necessary. So. The other part leaves her quiet for a moment. "I don't..." She starts. "It came up in a coffee shop the other day. Somebody warned me about them, made it sound like there was nothing you could do about them. And apparently maybe sometimes there is nothing you can do about them, but other times you can... what'd he say? use your brain."

Robin joins Nicasia, tossing the bag of bread on the ground nearby as he sits down on the grass. The answer to who gave her that bit of information leave him looking just a little disappointed, but he doesn't seem too surprised. "I see. I mean, he's not totally wrong. It happens when it happens, and it's not really possible to avoid it. But you can make it better or worse if you keep your cool." Another lopsided, humorless smile, and he glances over to the dog to give her a scratch behind the ears. "Sometimes it's kind of hard to do that, though." He glances back at Nicasia, a shadow of worry flashing across his face. "You still might see him, you know. If you do, just remember it's not /really/ him. It's just... some creature modeled after your memories or something."

Nicasia snorts a tiny bit of very brittle laughter at the notion of keeping her cool when it happens. It's not really funny, except that it is. "It would make sense though, right? You have to be able to get out somehow, else that shit would just trap you eventually. For real. Forever." Lady accepts the ear scritching happily, tail wagging in a contented sort of swish. "I really feel like it should be explained better, you know? People who have been there a few times, done it a lot, maybe could figure out how to express it a little more coherently than oh yeah that happens sometimes." His shadow of worry gets a wary look. "Some creature? That's real reassuring." It's not.

Robin gives a bark of unamused laughter, and focuses his attention on the dog for a moment, giving her some much deserved love. Nothing like a dog to diffuse tension. "People who have been there don't want to talk about it. I'm only talking to you because... I don't know, I figure I owe you. You invited me in to fix your plumbing and I got you sucked into the shadows." He frowns a little, more in concentration than dismay, and finally offers, "Here's my theory. I don't think they /want/ to kill us. Not too quickly, anyway. If they trapped us there forever, we'd starve or dehydrate to death before they're done. So they might beat you to within an inch of your life, but they'll eventually have to let you out to recover. So they can take you again."

It very much what dogs are good for and this one is no different. Nicasia ends up petting her too, running her fingers through coarse black and golden fur. "I appreciate you talking to me. I gather it may not be the kind of thing you want to talk about, though in that same conversation two different people talked about the same... experience," let's go with that, "they had. Just casually volunteered it." Then he gives his theory and she tenses a little, posture shifting into something subtly more defensive. "But what do you do? There has to be something. Has to be."

Robin doesn't answer that right away. He seems overly preoccupied with the dog, running fingers through the softer fur under her chin. After an awkwardly long silence, he finally admits, "Most of the time what I do is get beat up until they're bored." Something sharpens in his eyes, then, subtly darker with a grim satisfaction. "But if I can do like I did yesterday? I'm never doing that again."

"You were pretty badass," Nicasia volunteers, totally overlooking the part where they were all running like terrified children. That part's easy. Less so is, "I don't know if that'll work, though. I mean, I will never, ever, ever suggest you not fight back. Fuck laying down and letting anyone or anything beat you without at least trying to get a few licks of your own in." She also scritches dog fur, idly combing it with her fingers. "But it sounds like that doesn't always work. I don't know. Maybe it does, maybe it only works on some of them. I feel like it might work just fine against those teenage shitheads that showed up. But if that were the only answer, surely somebody would've figured it out by now."

Nicasia earns herself a startled look for that comment, followed by a slow little grin. It's possibly the first /genuine/ smile he's given since she arrived, though it soon fades a bit as she goes on. "Well? I mean, maybe it doesn't /always/ work. I can't always 'find' things, either, but this is the only new weapon I've discovered in a long time." He lifts a shoulder. "So what are /your/ ideas, then? I mean, I've been doing this by myself a long time. If someone else has suggestions, I'm all ears."

"Maybe it doesn't always work," Nicasia concedes, "but why not try it? Why not kick 'em in the ... teeth if that's what your instincts tell you to do? It is generally safest to run, but sometimes you stand your ground and you fight like a rabid chipmunk." She pets with one hand, and pulls some grass loose with the other, the same general raking motion, but only one succeeds in tearing stuff free. "I honestly don't know," she admits, then. There's a look over her shoulder, in the direction she came from. "Before last week, this was all basically a mystery. I still don't even know what I can do, or how to do it."

Robin rubs at one eye, and finally leaves the dog alone so he can lie back on the grass, folding his arms behind his head to look up at the sky. "Look, I /fight/. Maybe call me when they've been torturing /you/ for ten years, and we can compare battle scars." He watches her out of the corner of his eye, thoughtfully. "You did something yesterday, though," he offers, tentatively. "I mean, I don't know what it /was/. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have got it together to find our way out if you weren't there. I mean, I was losing it pretty hard, and you..." He waves a hand vaguely. "/Did/ something."

Nicasia holds up a hand like she's trying to make peace. "Hey, I didn't mean you. Though you seemed a little surprised by the idea. Maybe. I don't know. It is all still painfully new, like a burn, like I just got my hand pushed down on an electric griddle and it's gonna be raw for a while." Her fingers flex a little in imaginary ache. "Did I?" It isn't denial, just not ready identification. One of them, Doc Brennon, seems pretty confident I have sort of mental mojo. Telepathy, empathy. Apparently also the ability to shoot lightning bolts, which probably would've been a lot more useful there, but..." She lifts a shoulder in a languid little shrug. "I suspect Myles and I have been doing Things for a while, just never really noticed. Rationalization, justification. Surely you know how that goes."

Robin sits up suddenly, turning to face Nicasia and sit cross-legged. "Yeah, yeah, he does things like me," Robin replies, dismissively. "But what you did was different." He taps his fingers on his knees, watching Nicasia like she has suddenly become the most interesting puzzle. Maybe it's just a convenient distraction. "Try doing it again. Not lightning bolts. The telepathy voodoo like you did before."

Maybe it is a convenient distraction, but it makes her twist slightly away, straighten up like maybe she's not used to being the puzzle. But. "Alright," Nicasia says, very slowly.

For a minute then she just sits there, looking back at Robin. Watchful, wary, clearly with no idea of what to actually do and only a vague recollection of what even happened. What must've happened. As that time runs itself out she closes her eyes and takes a breath and lets it out. And sure enough. Sure enough there is that soft pulse of something, like a little brush of static electricity, the faintest ephemeral tickle. The warmth. The stillness, like she somehow managed to bottle up an afternoon sunning on some dock on a lake with nothing to do but lay around and drink and smoke and tan and otherwise turn into a boneless lump of peace. Absolute calm. Stronger this time, too. More focused. Maybe because she is actively trying. Maybe because she is not also about to run for her life again.

Robin closes his own eyes, the moment he feels that first brush, slightly familiar from the first time. As it grows, a little smile curves his lips. A tension drains from his shoulders that hadn't even been obvious before. Slowly, he takes a deep breath and lets it out. After a few moments of just enjoying the total lack of anxiety of any kind, he gives a faint little laugh and falls back to lie on the grass again, though this time he turns on his side and props his head up on one arm. "Jesus, lady. Bottle that up and nobody's ever going to buy Xanax again."

It might be amusing that Nicasia doesn't even know it's working until she cracks an eye open and peers at him, sidelong. Finds him laying back in the grass, finally relaxed. "Huh. Too bad it doesn't work on me. Might make me a nicer person." She smiles back though, faintly amused by this little turn of events, but quickly resumes scritching Lady's ears. "Of course now I suppose that's going to come and bite me in the ass. I'll fry the microwave, or spend tomorrow with everything tasting purple and sounding like cheese."

Robin smiles back at Nicasia, still enjoying the calm for now, even if it's bound not to last for long. "I once got a pencil stuck to my hand for two days. Workplace hazard." His smirk turns into a grin at that bit of misfortune, but he's already casting around, thinking through the implications of Nicasia's power. "Do you think you could do it backward? Like... make people less calm? Do you think it works on the creatures?"

There's another little snicker of laughter. "A whole pencil, huh." For some reason Nicasia finds that funnier than she ought, but mostly contains it to the shake of her shoulders, the bow of her head. Then, "I don't know. I'm pretty good at making people less calm even without magical powers. As for the creatures... I don't know. Maybe? Maybe not? What's the worst that could happen if I tried?" This last is not a hypothetical question; she seems to expect him to have SOME kind of clue.

Robin gives the question due consideration. "I don't know," he finally admits. "One time there was a creature that... Well, say I punched him, right? I'd be the one that got the bruise, like I was punching myself. But it only happened once." He waves his hand again, at nothing in particular. "But my powers are more like...physical stuff, right? I don't really know if it would work the same for yours."

"So hypothetically it could backfire and I could just turn myself into not-a-psychotic-monster? That doesn't seem so bad." Nicasia doesn't sound at all convinced of this, rather very wary. Very. Wary. Lady licks her hand a couple of times to reassure her that it is in fact going to be okay, which only works in the here and the now. "Somebody's probably tried it. Hell, I expect I'll get a chance to, at some point, if you are all correct and it is just going to keep on happening."

"It'll probably be harder to calm them down," Robin remarks, matter-of-factly. "I mean, as far as I'm concerned, this stuff is the shit. You can voodoo me any time you like. I don't think the creatures would feel that way. Might be easier to kind of...redirect them." He plucks some strands of grass, idly watching them flutter away on the breeze. "Make them go psychotic on each other instead of on you, you know? But /that/ could backfire badly."

"If they're not actually going to kill me for trying..." Nicasia doesn't follow that thought to its conclusion, but she does smile at Robin, more thoroughly amused by his reaction to the effect. "Hopefully that doesn't turn into a bad trip. I honestly have no idea how it works, or what it'll do. But if it helps? Well. If nothing else I assume it's preferable to mortal terror, in a pinch. I guess we'll see." She curls her leg up underneath of her, then pushes up to her feet. "I should probably finish this walk before somebody thinks my rabid dog is trying to eat the monkeys, though. It was good to see you again, though, and I'm glad you're not totally soured on me. Us." Whatever. "Let me know when you want to come get your toolbox."

Robin rolls back onto his back as Nicasia is standing up. Surely the mildly sedating effect of that dose of calm is starting to wear off, but he seems content to hang out there on the grass for now. "Well, I'll let you know if it does," he promises. "More information is better. You're going to need people to experiment on, you know. Practice." He folds his hands behind his head and closes his eyes, feeling the sun on his face. "I'm glad you don't think it was my fault. Thanks for... I don't know. Whatever this was."