Into the Woods with a Side of Vodka

Who: Jerilyn and Pandect
Where: the woods near the Lamplighter motel
When: early evening

Pandect was heading back to the Lamplighter through the woods instead of by the roadside, with all the trouble he'd been having lately, especially last night he didn't want to take any risks on being stopped by someone again. He knew that kids sometimes parked in the woods to do all the things that kids do (he had been young once) but he was still slightly irritated at the spot of red against the trees. He was going to circle around until he saw the figure huddled down around the steering wheel. And he knew it was none of his business, and he definitely wasn't going to go check it out. Who knows what the kid was up to?

Pandect sighed, stopped and changed route so that he curved just close enough to see in the window, far enough to give privacy. When he got close enough he saw a girl, curving like she was trying to pull into herself. Crying. He was headed toward the driver's side before he knew what he was doing. He knocked gently on the window, and when he saw her poor sweet face... Mon dieu. There would be retribution for whomever had done this.

He had the car door open in an instant (a little voice in the back of his head tsking that she had left the door unlocked) and was down on his knees in front of the door his finger tips gentle on her chin, turning her face so that he was struck with the scent of alcohol and the green-purple-blue bruises.

Jerilyn had been having one of those horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad days (as the title said, or whatever, she was somewhat too drunk to remember it exactly). Besides the fact that Kavin's mother had basically confirmed that he wasn't coming back ever, Jeri had packed up her few things she had over there and brought them back to her house. Of course, her father had been there. And Jeri was looking to release the pent up anger and misery on someone. While she had verbally flayed the man, he tended to use his fists, and slightly over half her face was now various interesting shades of unhealthy blacks, purples, blues, greens, and even a smear or two of now dried blood just for kicks. Not handling anything particularly well right then, she'd proceeded to the liquor cabinet and taken a bottle of vodka - and just because she figured the sugar would help at some point, she'd gotten the orange juice from the fridge. Her mother's car keys were on the counter-top, and she'd taken those, too. And off to the woods she'd gone.

Jeri, for all that she was definitely a pot-head, wasn't actually a heavy drinker, but she at least knew that about a quarter or so into the vodka bottle she was much too drunk to drive anymore, and that really sucked because she wanted to go see Kavin. But oh yeah, Kavin wasn't there anymore and wouldn't be again. And that ball of tight misery down in the pit of her stomach had welled up and started to run down her face in the form of tears.

...well, until some strange man opened her car door and started touching her face. Even normal unexpected touching made Jeri flinch, so this wasn't a good thing, even if it wasn't painful. Which was also definitely, even in her inebriated state, creepy. Jeri sincerely considered upending the remainder of the vodka on his head.

Clicking his tongue once at himself Pandect pulled back his hand and moved back on his haunches when he saw the blurry raised eyebrow that the young lady was giving him. He was having a bit of a hard time not glowering at her, well not at her, at her face and whomever had done this to her, he focused instead on the girl. Drunk and bruised in a car in the woods.

"Yer weird!" Jeri accused him. Yeah. She wasn't exactly at her most verbally intelligent right then. "No touchy."

"Pardon me miss," he said gently. "Are you alright?" She obviously wasn't, and not just because of the sharp scent of vodka that was lurking inside her car, but it was a little pretentious to just try and take over. Instead he offered her his handkerchief (the clean one in his left pocket, the one in his right pocket he used to clean his hands after working on the Lamplighter's various repairs.) and remained back at a nonthreatening distance. "Are you still bleeding?"

"I dunno." Completely oblivious to the handkerchief available to her, she brushed her fingers under her nose and examined the digits critically. And then she did it with her mouth. After a moment or two of this, she shook her head, which made the world spin slightly in an interesting but slightly nauseating fashion. "I dun think so."

Pandect's eyebrows came together, "You are very drunk," he said to avoid getting angry at how practiced and casual she checked her injuries. "My name is Pandect. Has someone attacked you?" If someone attacked her here in the woods, he needed to get her somewhere safe preferably a hospital. He barely resisted the urge to clean her face for her, that would hardly be appropriate, the girl was just a baby.

Jeri barked an unpleasant and completely humorless laugh. Instead, she picked up the vodka bottle and took a pull right from it. "Yup. But it's okay." That part was said oddly reassuringly, and she reached out to pat his shoulder with the hand that wasn't occupied with a bottle of liquor. "I'm used to it. Can't even hurt me, just make me unpretty."

"Ma fifille, I don't think anything could make you unpretty," Pandect gently grabbed the vodka bottle and pulled it easily out of her drunken grasp and replaced it with the handkerchief. "I think you've had quite enough of that, wipe your face ma fifille. Who has done this to you?" He kept himself crouched down, the girl had spunk he liked, she was no wilting flower (although Pandect had never actually met a wilting flower, they may have been one of those mythological beings they told men about in the hunting camps over firelight) and he was glad of it. But he couldn't imagine any reason to strike a girl, a little one, like that.

"Tha's mine!" Jeri dropped the cloth and went after the liquor bottle. It wasn't technically hers, but she'd been the one to crack it open and the first one to drink, and that made it her responsibility not to waste. Or something. She reached for it, but something held her back. Jerilyn frowned and tried again. "...'m stuck."

Sighing Pandect edged the bottle further away, he didn't want to intimidate the girl, he knew he was a little on the tall side, (although he was fast getting the feeling that, at last in this state, making her nervous was highly unlikely), but he could get much done crouched down like this. "Yes you are, let me help you with that," he reached gently into the car, glad that he was thin enough so that he could see what he was doing without groping around. He unbuckled her seat belt and moved back a little, "Although I think you should cut down on the vodka." She didn't look near drinking age.

"Why? I fucking well deserve it. I have to lose blood to get my vodka, and this event... even... Communist Mother Russia! Gimme my bottle." She reached for it again and basically fell out of her mother's Camry.

Catching the girl in his arms Pandect sighed again (she seemed to require a lot of sighing, he wondered how that boded for her later in life to avoid his anger again, he skirted sharply around the edges of it, he had more important things to worry about now) and stood, setting her somewhat up right. "I suspect it was not your bottle to begin with unless the liquor stores in Marquette have stopped carding their customers. Or rather liquor store. Even in Communist Mother Russia I'm afraid I wouldn't give it back to you. There are far more constructive ways of dealing with injury than drinking yourself into a stupor. Do you have any other injuries ma fifille?" since she was conveniently standing right in front of him, he rescued his handkerchief and started drying off her tear tracts as gently as he could.

"You're speaking French!" Jeri all but yelled. Not in a particularly angry way, more in a completely drunk way. "Kavin spoke French. And Communist. But he left. Can't even break up like a normal fucking person, had to go somewhere else and prolly die. Boys are dumb... ow! Don't! Tha' hurt."

"Sorry," Pandect said, wincing a little at her holler. "I do that occasionally," he said, bending down to get his handkerchief wet on clean snow. "Speak French not hurt people. Although I may hurt whomever does this to you on such a regular basis," he muttered in French. "This might sting a little, I'll be as gentle as I can, but I can't judge your injuries with all that blood in the way." He tipped her head back a little and clean the line of blood off her chin. "Give me a good punch to the shoulder if I hurt you too much."

Jeri was pretty damn bad at staying still when she was supposed too, particularly when drunk, so she ended up jerking back the first couple times Pandect tried touching her face. Because it hurt, mostly. But she didn't lift a finger to punch him; sometimes you were just really well trained not to fight back. But she did cringe.

Making a soft apologetic sound Pandect smoothed her hair back a little with one hand, the top of her head had a couple inches of good clearance under his chin, but he thought a hug might be a little much right now. "I'm sorry ma fifille, go ahead give me a good pop." He pointed to his right shoulder. "Its okay."

As tempting as that might be... "No!" Nodding as if that settled the matter, Jeri started digging in her pockets for one of the joints Socko'd given her and she'd been saving. Or she thought she'd been saving, since she couldn't really find it. "'m not gonna hit you. Tha's daft."

Pandect patted her head again, "Thank you then for sparing me from your wrath. Tell me at least you haven't been drinking on an empty stomach."

"I had orange juice!" Jeri declared, because that was true. Though admittedly at some point the orange juice had been more for coloring than for flavor, and there was still the vast majority of the carton left. Somewhere in the car.

Pandect almost sighed but stopped himself just in time and started patting around his sweater until he came up with an octopus shaped cookie compliments of Jamie's bakery and held it out to her. "Have an octopus cookie."

"They have jellyfish cookies in Japan." Jeri said, taking the cookie and nibbling on it, looking somewhat happier now. Mostly because she had a cookie, and while that might've seemed like a very simple pleasure, to her it was a rare treat. "Made from fellyjish."

"I think its just made of regular cookie dough," he saw her smile at the cookie and immediately searching for another one. "Here you go ma fifille."

"I can't." Jeri said mournfully, looking at the second cookie - she still had the majority of her original one left, though. "'m diabetic. One cookie."

Pandect nodded sharply and stuck the cookie back in the plastic bag in his pocket. He didn't really know much about diabetes, other than it had something to do with sugar, he would have to trust the girl to know her own limits. "Very well then, now the question of the hour, who did this to you?" He kept his hands to himself, and tried to keep his face calm.

"Got me drunk?" Jeri gave him a not very sober look at all and weaved slightly unsteadily on her feet. "Got it from m'dad's liquor cabinet. Doesn't look ... lock... it. Yes." She nodded. A serious conversation probably would've been completely out of her reach.

Pandect sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Alright ma fifille, I can see philosophical discussions aren't going to feature prominently in the near future. Do you know where the Lamplighter Motel is?"

"It's in Marquette!... where the hell am I, then?" She looked around, and all she really saw was woods, and that wasn't really conductive to the whole knowing where she was thing. Jeri was reasonably sure she was still in Marquette, but she was also reasonably sure (and absolutely correct) that she was sloshed out of her gourd, so it might not have been. "Who're you!"

"You're still in Marquette, and my name is Pandect," he said again. "I work at the Lamplighter Motel, would you mind if I drove you there, just to keep an eye on you while you're drunk? I can set you up in the back room, there's a little sofa there you can sleep on if you need to." He'd offer to check her into a room, but with all the men of questionable sexual practices today, and others who wish to do harm to innocent (or nearly) young ladies he didn't think it would be appropriate, and might scare her off before he could offer her assistance. "If you're still feeling... sloshed in a couple hours I can drive you home, or have someone else drive you if you'd prefer." He was sure he could talk Amy into it, and she was already at the motel.

Jerilyn frowned at him. "I can have my bottle back?"

Persistent thing, "That, I'm afraid, I can't do for you. Any more Vodka and your liver will need a boat, your options are home, friend's house, motel, or cookie, and since cookie seems to be out..." La fifille was rather focused on the bottle, but Pandect had been stuck between Joshua and Mache, he could dig his heels in when he had to. He crossed his arms and gave her his best stubborn face.

"...if I can't have my bottle back, I want to sleep." Jeri declared in a rather annoyed tone, but she was promptly distracted by the way the world was spinning in new and interesting ways. She had the feeling she should be hanging onto the ground before she fell off, really. "Sleeping is good."

Pandect saw la fifille weave precariously, an odd sort of look on her face, one of either deep contemplation or confusion and caught her gently by her shoulders (after all, he didn't know where or how badly she had been injured any where else) to keep her upright, "To the Lamplighter then little one, once you are feeling a little more sober you can drive back home. Let us get you to the passenger side."