Forgiveness For Lack of Tact

Who: Peyton and Hannah
Where: The streets near Peyton's house
When: Afteroon (post-Geo scene)

After leaving Geo, Peyton took the longer route home. She wasn't too eager to sit around at home by herself. Tyler was probably home, but she wasn't sure she could be around him and not tell him everything going on. He already knew something was up just by looking at her, but she'd been able to dodge actually telling him the truth so far. She was pretty close to cracking and filling him on what she knew, but she still thought he would just think she was crazy. Or sick. Or both.

At the moment her mind was preoccupied. She wasn't sure she was comfortable with Geo working at some crazy bar that, according to him, moved. She didn't like not being able to see Isaac, though she understood the reasoning behind it. She didn't like lying to her brother - or her dad for that matter. She didn't like worrying about Leija, or any of her friends that seemed to have a lot of heavy stuff piling up - especially when she wasn't sure what she could do to help them. She was trying to deal with her own fears, but it wasn't like she could just pour them all out on anyone. Things were hard enough - people were being attacked and hurt, and on the defense. It was appropriate of her at all to make them listen to her when her problems were so minuscule compared to theirs. But she knew Geo at least had Sammy, and his sister to an extent. And Isaac was with Kaysen and Thom, so she knew he wasn't alone. She thought about calling Leija, but Leija was dealing with her own personal issues - and Herbert... well, he usually resorted to awkwardly patting her on the back if he knew she was upset.

But it was okay. She could deal. It wasn't like she was frail, or made of glass. Peyton would be okay - she'd just.. handle it and do what she could when she could. That was the important thing, right? Feeling a bit tired, she went to sit on the curb a few streets away from her house. She couldn't see any shadows - which was a relief. She hoped maybe they were gone for good, but who knew? Pulling her knees up, she set her bag beside her and inhaled deeply.

"Well, look who it is," came a voice from a little down the sidewalk. Hannah had begged a little while off from snipering-- and from Chance-- to go for a walk. She had been starting to feel trapped, inside that damn house for a good twenty-four hours now, and she needed a good boost of negative energy to speed her healing along. Besides, she was so used to being alone that so much time spent with Chance was starting to make her snappish, and she didn't really want him getting snappish back, so off she went. She'd been out longer than an hour now, though-- she'd just come from a little fight in the cemetery, in fact-- and she hadn't quite gotten up the gumption to go back yet.

She had, however, spotted Peyton, and she didn't actually feel the urge to avoid her. Maybe female company was what she needed, she of the (comparatively) many male friends and generally boyish demeanor. "Hi, Peyton," she said, coming up beside her and dropping to a crouch next to her. She didn't look too pretty, a big fat band-aid across her forehead and various bandages peeking out through holes in sleeves and things, but she was smiling, anyway.

The voice startled her, but only for a second, and Peyton looked over to see that girl - Hannah. Peyton forced a smile and forced herself to relax a bit. "Hey." Her eyes shifted over Hannah. "Are you all right?" She looked terrible, with the bandages and torn up clothes. It made Peyton think about Isaac and wonder if he was still all right and in one piece.

"Never better," she said, waving a hand to wave the concern off. The poor girl was practically dripping with bad mood. Despite hanging out at the graveyard, well, there was still sun to counteract, and maybe she could do a little good here. "What about you?" Hannah shifted to sit, not quite touching but definitely within that cloud of darkness, siphoning it off slowly. Peyton could surely make more... but only if she actually wanted to. "You look awfully glum out here by yourself."

"I'm fine," Peyton told her, straightening a bit. She didn't want to come across as glum at all. Especially when the girl looked like she'd been through a war zone. Peyton managed another smile. "Just trying to enjoy the fresh air while I can. Feel like I've been holed up inside a lot lately. I'm guessing by the look you've got going on that you've been still fighting off those shadows?"

"Fuck do I feel that one," Hannah groaned sympathetically. "I've been holed up inside for pretty much twenty-four hours straight. It's been nice to get out. But yeah, there's always the shadow-bitches... I'm gonna look even more scarred up after all this." She scratched idly at the bandage around her leg, through her cargoes leg. That was one of the older ones-- well, from earlier the previous day, anyway-- and it was starting to itch. "But hey, could be worse. Did get a hidey-hole I can snipe from, could still be fighting from my car."

Sniping. That just sounded strange. She imagined the girl was using that knife still - and from the sounds of it, a gun. She was pretty sure Isaac was reduced to a baseball bat, which she sort of preferred. The idea of Isaac with a gun made her feel extremely uneasy. "You don't look so bad," Peyton offered, even though Hannah did. "But I'm glad you've got a safer place to be than your car. The sooner those things are gone, the better. I can see them now." She hadn't been able to when they first met. "They're not attacking or anything, but I see them."

"And you steer clear," Hannah said seriously, ignoring that "not looking too bad" because she knew that was a lie. Well, actually, she didn't look that bad-- unless you weren't used to bandages. She'd been worse off before, but to someone like Peyton, she was sure she looked pretty horrible. "Yesterday they'd have ignored you, but today apparently they'll attack people who get in their way, too. They haven't bothered you yet, I hope?" She probably wouldn't be out in the open if she had been, but she had to ask. Just to be sure.

Peyton's smile was small, but genuine, at Hannah's advice. "I'm steering clear as well as I can," she promised. "I saw one yesterday, but it didn't come after me. And I haven't been around anyone who's been affected by them since except for my friend Geo, and he made it a point to break every mirror between where he was and the park where we met." A tiny laugh escaped her throat at the audacity of the whole thing. She lifted her hands to frame her face briefly and took a breath. "I assume vandalism is okay if you're doing it to save your life."

"Oh, hey, you know Geo?" Hannah remembered that name, he was the crow-boy she'd rescued... and then promptly forgot about in the wake of the shadows coming out of the mirrors. Oops? "He doing okay? They're after hi, too, huh?" Poor kid couldn't seem to catch a break.

Peyton blinked in surprise that Hannah knew Geo too. Really, she shouldn't have been - it wasn't hard to meet people in this town. "He's a friend of mine, yeah. I think he's doing okay. As well as he can, given the circumstances he's been going through. He told me they were after him, but only after he visited this bar in town." Somewhere. Peyton eyed Hannah curiously, pushing her morose attitude down for a moment. "Have you ever heard of Babylon?"

"He's another Babylon victim, huh?" Hannah said sympathetically. "Yeah, I know about it. Buddy of mine got the shadows cuz of it, too. I had 'em before, but the place is definitely a source of the problem, even if it's not the source. If you see him again, tell him that smashing mirrors while they come out means that one, at least, doesn't come back." Hannah would have done it herself, if she had any contact info. He'd seemed like an okay guy, poor kid.

Babylon victim didn't make her feel any better about the situation. Peyton filed away the information and shook her head. "Geo works there now. Apparently he's going to be tending bar? I don't think it's a good idea, but I think he's got some kind of hard on for his boss--" Peyton paused, eyes slightly wide. "Sorry, that was crude of me. I just mean I think certain aspects of the place interest him. Your... buddy...is he... uhm... different?" That was the best way she could put it without asking if he was a supernatural being.

Hannah had to clap a hand to her mouth to keep from braying a laugh at Peyton's sudden backpedaling, and even then her voice was shaky with amusement when she answered. "Telekinetic. My friend. As for Geo... well, the woman is pretty fucking hot," she gave him, she'd seen the woman hanging around and was pretty sure she was the one he meant. "Not that I'd trust her within ten feet of me. I don't trust the gorgeous, smug-looking ones. But hey, good for him, getting a job." Must not have very high standards there. "Even if it's at a supernatural bar on its own fuckin' plane or some shit."

Telekinetic? She knew that was moving stuff with your mind. Now wouldn't that be a useful ability? Peyton scowled a bit at Hannah and shrugged. "Well, I told him she could be some kind of tentacled demon." If they even existed. "And he said she kind of scared him. So... whatever. I just don't want him to get in over his head and like, get sucked into some other dimension or whatever. But he needs the job, so I just hope it works for him. I've never seen Babylon. Never heard of it before Geo told me about it." She realized that quite obviously Hannah had been there. And had attacked the then-invisible shadows. "What are you?" she asked bluntly, wondering if Hannah would tell her.

The scowl made Hannah try to school her features into something more appropriate-- key word being "try". "He'll probably be okay. I'll stop in on him sometime and check on him, how's that." She had no real problem telling Peyton what she was-- girl had probably never heard of them, anyway. "I'm a Fade," she said. "Definition available upon request."

Her scowl softened a bit and she nodded. "Yeah, if you could." Since she quite obviously couldn't do it on her own - which bugged her. She looked Hannah over again, trying to decipher what a "fade" was exactly. "Okay, a fade... I think I'd have to request the definition of that."

Softening the annoyance a little brought a smile, and Hannah kept quietly drawing off that negative energy. She was starting to get to the point where she'd be full, but she could store a little for a while. Share with Chance, who she had a feeling would feel better for a good meal. "A Fade," Hannah explained, "is somebody made from a spell, from a normal person. We come back the next day if we die, we eat negative energy, and we can take on other people's injuries so they won't be hurt anymore." Of course, that meant she had to be hurt, but that was a minor detail. "Oh, and we live a fucking long time."

That was probably the most surreal sounding thing she'd heard yet. It sounded incredibly unbelievable, but was she really in a position to doubt the girl? Or remain skeptical? "So," Peyton began slowly, "you're immortal? Who can heal people, and eats... negative energy." Peyton opened her hand, holding out her palm where a thin cut was scabbed over. She'd cut herself while cleaning up the broken mirror after Isaac had left. "Can you heal that?" It was sort of a test - just to see if even part of her explanation was true.

Oooh, tests! Hannah could do those. Hell, she hadn't healed anybody in too long, anyway, and that one was so tiny it wouldn't even sting, she bet-- not a drop in the bucket of her other wounds. Hannah put her palm atop Peyton's obligingly, and with a little /tugging/ motion that was purely mental, pulled the half-healed cut onto her own hand. "How's that," she said more than asked, grinning.

Peyton pulled back her palm to study it. The tiny cut was completely gone. Eyes wider now, Peyton looked at Hannah. She didn't know what to say at first and she clenched her fist before finally speaking. "That must come in pretty damn handy." Her eyes were curious. "Why can't you heal your own wounds?"

"Can't take my own wounds," Hannah shrugged, showing off the transferred cut on her own palm, now. "Nowhere for them to go, see? I can only take them from other people, because the only place I can put them is on me. I'd get some kind of fuckin' feedback loop or whatever. But hey, I don't mind, means I get to help people. I heal faster than a regular person, anyway-- not a lot, but enough that it's noticeable." It all depended on how much she ate, heh. And she planned to gorge herself for the next few damn days.

"God, I'm sorry," Peyton breathed, noting her cut was now on Hannah. She felt immensely guilty for the second time that afternoon. "I didn't know... I'm sorry. I wouldn't have made you do that if I'd known. That's a really, really unfair drawback." She sighed and then smiled faintly. "If you feed off of negative energy... are you getting an appetizer from me? Or an entree?"

"Dude, don't worry about it," Hannah said, waving a hand lightly. "This is nothing, and I knew perfectly well what it'd do. If I weren't ready to take the consequences, I wouldn't've done it. Seriously, I like helping people, weird as that might sound from somebody like me." She grinned, and prodded Peyton's side with a finger. "So cut out with the guilty-feelings. It's much prettier than glum, but not so good for you, and harder to make go away! And yes, I was taking some of that lovely black cloud I see around you, in the hopes it'd help you feel better. Not a lot, but some." She was getting on over-stuffed now, actually.

Hearing she had a lovely black cloud of negative energy around her forced her to snap her hands up to her mouth to muffle the fit of nervous giggles that threatened. Only she was too tired to actually giggle. "I think," she said once she was sure she wasn't going to start laughing - or crying, "that you could tell me you're an Oompa Loompa from another dimension who siphons people's life force from their eyelashes, and I'd probably believe you. Or I'd have too. There's not much time to sit around and really... let it sink in properly." She felt like it had all sort of been dumped on her and there hadn't been much quiet, normal time between scariness and death to really deal.

"I'd offer to hang around and let you bounce things off me, but I've only got--" Hannah pulled a pocket-watch out of one of her many pockets to check. "--probably fifteen minutes until I get bombarded again, and I figure it'd take longer than that. But hell, if you want fifteen minutes, you've got 'em. I've been told I'm a good listener."

And with that pointedly overly-serious last comment, she turned to face Peyton more fully, giving her a rather comical "full attention" sort of look. She was going for a laugh, though she really didn't know how well Peyton would take to it. She'd only met the girl twice now.

"It's okay," Peyton said, smiling weakly again. She didn't really expect a girl she barely knew to actually want to sit and listen to Peyton dump her issues on her. She pushed herself up from the curb to stand. "I've got to get home anyway, and I don't want you to risk... getting hurt, or whatever because of me." She slipped her bag over her shoulder. "Be careful out there, okay?"

Damn, not even a grin. Well, she'd tried. "Hey, a girl needs to talk to another girl sometimes. I'm holed up in a house with a guy, and the only people I'm talkin' to besides him on the phone are also guys. So, hey, fortuitous and shit, right?" She got up, too, and clapped Peyton on the shoulder lightly. "Was good to see you and hear you're okay, and all. Even if you are kinda unhappy."

"I'm okay," Peyton said, thinking she ought to tattoo that on her forehead at this point. She did force herself to smile again, because she hated projecting her mood onto other people. She liked being optimistic, and hopeful. One thing Peyton despised was feeling like this. "We can do the girl talk another time... when you know, you're not being stalked by creepy, violent shadows."

"Your words to their ears, girlie," Hannah said fervently. "This used to be fun, but really? I'm getting fucking sick of it." She tugged at little at one of the bandages under her sleeves. Very fucking sick of it. "Keep in touch, okay? And chin up," she added with a little grin of her own. "Things'll get better."

She nodded. Things would get better. She was the one always saying that, right? She just had to keep believing it. "I know. And yeah, I'll keep in touch." Peyton waved a bit and stepped back up to the sidewalk. "Talk to you later, Hannah."

Grinning more broadly, Hannah tipped an imaginary hat to Peyton and turned on her heel to head back to Chance's house. She was positively buzzing with energy for him, and he'd sure as hell better appreciate it.