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Date & Time: about 10/25 on
Location: VR room
Characters: Peter and whoever
Summary: Peter's made some of Hemlock Grove in the VR. he might show some people, but anyone can wander in.
Warnings: Peter has a dirty mouth?

It takes him the better part of two weeks, but after a lot of trial and error and database combing, he finally manages to get it right. Home. Well, home for the moment. The VR opens right into the middle of a winding, nearly-shoulderless Pennsylvania road, facing a rusty mailbox that reads Rumancek in peeling reflective letter stickers. There's a break in the metal shoulder-guard and a set of stairs leading down a rather steep hill to a flat area below, where an old blue trailer sits in a bit of clearing upon which the woods is definitely encroaching. It's nothing much to look at; whoever lives there obviously does not value any sort of lawn maintenance. The backyard has a hammock stretched between two trees and an ancient fridge that's entirely purposed for beer storage, judging by the bottles littered nearby. There's a creek nearby, and on the other side of it and up the hill a bit is a pond overlooked by a huge house. Mostly there's just a lot of trees, though, and the occasional low rumble of a train passing in the distance.

Sometimes it's summer, all verdant green and buzzing cicadas and humid heat that just barely avoids being oppressive. Other times it's autumn, and the trees are ablaze in red and orange and brown. Either way, there's almost always a breeze making the leaves whisper overhead and the screened back door of the trailer is always propped open.

Peter can often be found in the hammock, but sometimes there's no sign of any human presence in the VR at all. Sometimes, the only hint of another presence might be the brown blur of a wolf running near-silent through the trees.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Takes all sorts, right? Somebody's got to live everywhere." His eyes sweep over the scars on her legs, but he doesn't stare (except possibly in a damn, nice legs sort of way, because seriously, bat-gams) and he doesn't ask. It's not even remotely his business, and just because someone shows you something doesn't mean they're inviting conversation about it. He's pretty scar free, just a smattering of frecklish moles and a tattoo of a stylized letter g on his left ribs.

"Yeah." He looks around. "I know it's not real. Hell, I can feel it's not real. But it's still kinda better. Weird, huh?" He raises his arms over his head and half-backdives, half-backflops into the pond, mostly disappearing beneath the dark water and then reappearing again a few feet away. "Bottom drops out pretty suddenly," he advises.

"It feels like everyone's trying to live in the city," Her tone and smile are wry, because she knows that's not really true, there's just a lot of urban sprawl in Gotham.

When he dives under, she's tempted to follow, wrinkling her nose at the water because she knows, logically, that it's not going to get her dress wet, but it feels so real that it's hard to fight the instinct to keep her clothes dry. With a sigh at herself, she lets go of the skirt of her dress and wades in up to her waist, careful of the drop Peter warned her about.

"I don't really think it's weird, it was the same for me," The first time she'd finished the program and stepped into what felt like Gotham air, it had been like a pressure in her chest had loosened up, "When you're a long way from home you kind of cling to any piece of it you can get."

And they sure are a hell of a long way from home.

"Somebody sold the glamour of urban living real hard to everybody not already in the city to know better." He flashes a wry grin and stretches out to float on his back.

"Far from home, huh?" He's looking up at the sky, not at her, his ears bobbing in and out of the water. "Like I said, we moved a lot. Never thought much about a place as being home, really. Like in the way where I'd miss it when we left. Not sure if I miss this place or just...this." He lifts a hand out of the water and waves it, which makes the rest of him sink a bit. What he actually means is freedom, although he's not going to come out and say so.

Another laugh, and she drags her hand through the water to make little eddies, "That wouldn't work in Gotham, everyone knows she'll chew you up and spit you out."

There's something almost reverent in her tone, the way there always is when she talks about Gotham. It's gotten worse the longer she's been away, because she really does miss it, the same way she misses her mom and Tim and Cass.

Peter's response doesn't really surprise her, since, yeah, he did saw he moved around a lot. It's a little tricky to wrap her head around, the idea of not having a home turf, even though she knows most people don't have cities in their blood. What she thinks he means, about this, is being back in the universe they belong, instead of trapped in this one.

So she's sort of on track.

"It's still your home universe, if nothing else," So very dryly, because she's aware of how ridiculous a sentence like that sounds, "And it's nice to see the sun."

"That friendly? Too bad we don't have one." But he's looking at her, because he hears the reverence in her tone. "What's it like?" Peter can imagine having a turf as much as Steph can imagine being a nomad, really. The idea of staying in one place too long seems stagnant and stifling to him, where his lifestyle would probably leave her feeling perpetually unmoored.

"I guess 'universe' is enough wandering room even for me." He grins, then arches his back and pinwheels his arms so that he does a flip before his head pops out of the water again. "Pretty big fan of the whole sun and sky and moving air thing. Should make the rest of the air on the base smell this good, things would be less fucking dismal."

Before answering, she finally gives in and dives under the surface of the water, coming back up a few feet away and smoothing back her hair. It gives her time to think about how to explain Gotham, because no matter how many times she does it, she always feels the need to chose her words carefully.

"I know it sounds crazy, but it's like she has a soul. Gotham can be awful; until the last decade it was mostly run by the mob, the cops were all corrupt and most of the city was struggling to survive," Unless they were the lucky ones, Gotham's elite, like the Waynes, "But people stuck around, 'cause Gothamites are stubborn, and they wouldn't give up just 'cause things were tough. It was the same after the quake, the city was in ruins but so many of us refused to abandon her, even when the rest of the wold did. She'll look after you, if you're like that, if you keep fighting. She looked after me."

And with the realization of how much she just said and how crazy that really does sound, she ducks her head, sheepish, and can't think of anything to say in response to the rest of what Peter said.

Steph might think what she said is weird, but Peter doesn't. He knows that there's something dark sleeping deep beneath Hemlock Grove, he knows that there's real magic in the world. "Maybe she does. Stranger shit has happened."

He kicks out into a deeper part of the pond and stays there, treading water. It feels good to use his body like this. "The thing about magic is that it only works when you don't abuse it, when you follow the rules and you don't waste it. Maybe your city's like that. Everything's got a price, and none of it's payable in cash." A lot of it, though, is payable in blood, and the way Steph talks about Gotham, he's betting that those scars are receipts.

There's magic in her world, too, but it's strange to think about it in the context of Gotham, where even with all their insanity, it's grounded in reality. There's nothing mythical about the Joker, or Zsasz, or Sionis; even Langstrom's monstrous form is a product of science.

Still, it makes sense, what Peter says, and she's quiet for a long moment as she mulls it over. Her thoughts go in the same direction as his, and he's right about those scars.

"Guess that makes all the blood she's gotten from me worth it," If it was a payment for the fact she's still alive, for Gotham steering her in the right direction and looking after her. Without missing a beat, she adds: "I know a girl who can talk to cities, actually."

And there's a random fact for the day.

"The big stuff usually is." As far as Peter's concerned, magic is as much a part of reality as taxes and electricity. More, really, since it's been around longer. Then again, he's a werewolf and was raised in a family where magic is a matter of course, and he's done his own share of paying in blood recently. It probably looks different from other places. Either way, he figures the talking to cities bit for being more interesting and also an excellent way to avoid unnecessarily awkward topics.

"No shit, really? That's pretty metal. Definitely don't know anybody who can do that. Us Rumanceks are a bit smaller-scale."

"If I ever see her again I'll let her know a werewolf thinks she's metal," It's only a little bit teasing, and she's more than happy to run with the different topic. (It's part of why she brought it up, anyway).

"I'm not really sure how it all works, but she called it urban magic," Traci was a pretty cool girl, even if Steph only met her once and chatted a few times after that, "There's all sorts of weird shit back home, I went to a dimension inhabited by Amish witches, once."

That was an adventure.

"Amish witches." Peter's tone manages to perfectly bridge skepticism and amusement. "That must've been a hell of a thing. So what's the weirdest thing you've ever seen? Gotta get a sense of scale."

"Yeah, like, they had the little bonnets and everything. I had to dress up to blend in," He's free to imagine Steph dressed in traditional Amish clothes and laugh, she won't hold it against him.

As for the weirdest thing, she hums thoughtfully, casting a glance at the sky, wracking her memory. For all that she's a superhero, she's tends to have dealt with the more mundance stuff, "I think that might actually be it. I mean, my ex dated Zeus' daughter and my best friend's an alien, but I tended to stick to your run of the mill criminals and non-powered supervillains. Seeing Clayface turn into me was pretty fucking weird, and I got hit by a drug made from a plant from another world that put me in a coma and made me live out about twenty differnt lives, but..." A shrug, "That's pretty small scale stuff, considering what some of my friends have dealt with."

There's something she's leaving out, a dream that feels more like a memory, snatches of images and Cass's hand in hers, when she was in close to death those few months after Sionis. But she's not sure how to talk about that, or if it was even real.

Edited 2013-10-29 12:30 (UTC)

"You'd look cute in the little bonnet. And you have an excellent capacity for weird." He says that like it's high praise, which is exactly how he means it. Most people ignored the magic happening right in front of their faces, it seems like Steph didn't do that even before she ended up in the post-apocalyptic alternate future or on the moon.

"As far as undercover goes, I preferred the school girl uniform, but I did rock the bonnet," The praise gets a genuine smile, because she does pride herself on being able to handle anything that gets thrown her way, "It helps if you start young, I got, uh--" She flops onto her back, floating on the water, so Peter can see where she taps the scars on her left leg, "That, when I was sixteen, after a dude possessed by a magical staff that he'd plunged into his chest threw a bike at me."

Sixteen isn't that young, really, but it feels like so long ago that she kind of thinks it is.

"Schoolgirl uniform beats bonnet, hands down." Steph seems much more the rolled-up skirt Catholic school type than the modest farmer sort. Or maybe Peter just thinks she has really great legs. One of those.

But the sixteen part makes him shake his head and chuckle. "I'm seventeen. But I guess we all gotta get our formative years in sometime. Rough entrance into the world of magic, though."

"A lot easier to fight in, too," Which is the most legitimate concern she has when picking out clothes, and tends to come second after whether it'll cover up her scars, "Which was handy, since the other girls tried to hang me."

Yep.

"I would've pegged you as eighteen," So close, "But yeah, I spent my childhood dealing with murderers and thieves, the magic didn't come 'till later."

"Jesus, Steph, you really know how to fall in with the right people." By which, of course, he means the wrong ones. Peter's been picked on for most of his life, but nobody in school has ever made a good shot at killing him. "Bullies in Gotham don't fuck around."

"That was in Britain, actually," Not that he doesn't have a good point about her falling in with the right people, or bullies in Gotham, but still, "The school was training girls to be assassins and brainwashing them into a cult, and I was sent to stop it. But they caught on that someone was sending messages from inside the school, so..."

So they tried to hang her.

"Assassin bullies, even better." He throws up his hands, kicking his legs hard enough that he bobs a bit out of the water instead of going under. "Guess it's never boring being you." On one hand, he can appreciate the desire for a life that's never boring. On the other, Peter is pretty comfortable with the lack of constant mortal danger in his existence. He'd like to be done with heroics already almost as much as Steph thrives in that place.

"You'd think that, but the downtime when I get injured is a killer," Being practically bedridden with a broken leg was the worst, second only to being stuck in hospital after Sionis, "I think I've watched more daytime TV than any sane person should."

"It's not too bad until you can follow the soaps. Then you're in trouble." He shakes his head, pushes his hair back. "I'll take my relatively ordinary life of lycanthropy with the occasional side of semi-legal activities, though, thanks. People only try to kill me sometimes, if kind of a lot lately."

"Nah, it's when you're hooked on the telenovelas," Although it helped that she can speak Spanish, so she could actually follow those.

She laughs at the lycanthropy comment, "Lately as in Exsilium, or did you get yourself into trouble back home?"

"Spanish is not my second language of choice, but I see your point."

He waves a hand. "Home. You know how it is, crazed werewolf comes to town and starts eating teenaged girls, people start rumors, get you framed for murder. The normal stuff." Except it's not normal stuff, and he doesn't entirely manage as causal a tone as he was aiming for. It's not amish witches or schoolgirl assassins, but it was still pretty fucked up.

"Romani?" She might not be a detective on the same level as Bruce or Tim, but she knows how to put a few clues together.

And no, it's not amish witches or schoolgirl assassins, but that doesn't make it any less shitty, and she winces sympathetically, "Jesus, did it all get cleared up?"

She's been framed for murder before, and she can't imagine having it hanging over her head while being stuck here.

"You got it. Halfbreed, but that's good enough for me." He shrugs. "Technically, yeah. Vargulf's dead, no more girls are dying, public has someone to blame who was actually a better person than all the rest of us put together." And as much as it was his ass that was saved by that framing, it still chafes that everyone in town was so ready to take for a monster the girl with the sweetest soul in all of Hemlock Grove. "But people don't just forget. Not like that whole story's ever coming out for real. Cops are cops, they'll take any excuse to harass us. The Man's got a real hard-on for persecuting my people." That's just a plain old fact of life.