exsiliumlogs | (no subject)

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(no subject)

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

"Ah - I was almost fifteen, I should say. My birthday was that coming winter. But I wanted to see the world and travel a bit - my parents were alright with it, too."

She smiles a bit, briefly, before she sighs. She stays quiet for a tad longer after that, almost as if she's done explaining things, before she speaks up again. "They do fuck things up, don't they." She hardly ever curses in this language, but it fit. "My village was destroyed, because somebody else did not like the good thing we had."

Peter just nods at that. He's been beaten up too many times for the horrific crime of being unapologetically different to expect anything different. Some people just couldn't let other folks keep on keeping on if their way of keeping on wasn't the same.

"Only takes a couple to ruin it for everybody." He's silent for a moment. "You weren't there?"

"No, I was there." She says, and she finally lifts a hand to trace the outline of a cloud through the branches. A distraction from the memories she's dragging up. But now that she's started talking about it, she can't stop.

"When it started, I ran to find Maias - a young man we had saved a few weeks prior. My . . . boyfriend, I believe is what he would be considered now." She says it almost as if she's amused by the thought - but she isn't. Far from it. "To beg his help, and then to beg him to stop when he told me that he and his men were responsible."

She hums a bit, tracing the branches above next. "He had been watching from the mountain overlooking my village. When I refused to go with him, he pushed me off."

Well. That explains a lot. Really a lot. More than Peter probably wanted to know, strictly speaking. But now he does, and now he needs to figure out what to do with that. This isn't like Roman blurting out his family weirdnesses in the small hours of the night in the midst of an evening of grave desecration, or Isaac's confusing and grief-fueled explanations about Scott. This is something else, somehow, although it makes Peter wonder what it is about him that makes people tell him things.

Still, he doesn't know what to say. What is there to say? So in the end all he does is bring his arm down from where it's been hanging off the hammock and puts his hand over the hand she's not tracing the tree branches with. Doesn't take her hand, doesn't hold it, just puts his hand there, fingers overlapping hers.

Contact is something Tempest isn't used to. Maybe once, long ago when she was still a child she was used to it, but living the life she had, she pushed most attempts away. She had a reputation to uphold, a persona she'd crafted to keep people at arm's length and then some.

But Exsilium was proving to be a horrible place for that persona. Every person she talked to, every one that showed her even the littlest bit of kindness chipped away at it, leaving her confused and awkward and unsure in so many ways. It's why her hand twitches under his, why she tenses up for a moment despite her best efforts not to.

Instead of pulling her hand away, though, she forces herself to relax and almost hesitantly turns her hand enough to curl her fingers around his. Enough that he can pull away if he wants to.

"Sorry." She says after a long moment. "Not the most pleasant of topics, hm?"

It's not an entirely un-awkward thing for Peter, either, this being in the position of comforter. It's not the contact that feels awkward, though, it's the reaching out. He doesn't have any practice at it, has spent most of his life doing the exact opposite. Usually, Peter waits for people to reach out to him, doesn't ever elbow his way into anything, which goes far to explain why he's never had any friends. But when Tempest finally turns over her hand he shifts his fingers to make it easier to hold them. His hand is warm, skin a little dry and fingers a little calloused.

"Nah, it's fine." He shrugs, turning his head to look at her for the first time. "Things aren't always pleasant. And I asked." He really means that. "You'd make it, though, even still."

It's almost a cautious movement, let her fingers naturally relax to rest laced between his. Her hand is cooler than his, calloused more than his from a life spent using a sword. But as her hand tightens a little, there's nothing where her ring finger should be.

She turns her head to look at him, finally, letting her other hand drop. She isn't sure she understands what he means, and it's clear on her face. "I am here, yes?"

Peter smiles in a way that isn't exactly happy, lets out a breath that sounds amused but isn't. "You're here." There's something about the way he says it that indicates this is a not insignificant fact. She did, after all, get pushed off a mountain, and Peter's recent experiences with mortal peril have left him with a certain appreciation for the fragility of existence. But this was all a long time ago for Tempest, when she was younger than him, from the sound of it.

"I meant you'd make one of these--" he lifts his other hand and gestures to the VR around them "--if you could."

Her only smile isn't very happy either. But she's trying, and here she is, sitting in a hammock holding hands with someone she just told a big part of her life to. "I may, at some point." She says slowly, thinking about it. Even if it was long ago, she remembers every detail, even about the forest surrounding her home.

"Although . . . " It's a little forced, but no less impish. "I think I would leave the mountain out of it." It's an attempt at a joke at her own expense, a way of lightening the mood that she ruined.

That makes him snort in something much closer to genuine amusement. "Nah, just make it so you can fly."

"Despite being tossed off it, it was rather fun to climb as a child."

Her smile widens just a bit, a bit more genuine. "But flying would be cheating, I think. If I cannot cast such a spell, why would I put it in?"

"Because it'd be fun as hell?" Peter says this like it's the most obvious thing in the world, because hello, it totally is. "Don't know why I didn't build flying into here. I've got swimming, but that's way less cool."

"Excuse you." She shoots back. "Swimming is not less cool than flying." God, she hasn't been swimming in years.

"Well, if that's how you feel about it, I've got a thing for you." He tips his head back, points at the pond behind them. "No idea how it works, but I can't tell it's not real water except for how I'm magically dry when the VR turns off."

Tempest tilts her head back as well to look at the pond, then back to Peter. Despite the lingering emotion that comes with talking about her past, there's a certain, childish glee in her eyes. "Truly? I can go swim in that?"

"Sure can. I do all the time." He sits up, anchoring the hammock so that she can stand. "Not sure I'd wear your boots. Everything sure does feel waterlogged, and it gets pretty deep in the middle."

She immediately leans down to start unlacing her boots. "I think my boots would weigh me down, honestly." She pulls one off, and it makes a soft 'thunk' as it hits the dirt. The other one soon follows, and she stands up carefully, just in case she accidentally tips the hammock.

"I've not swam in years, so - I trust that you will keep this between us?" Because she's definitely going to embarrass herself somehow. She just knows it.

"Who'm I gonna tell?" Peter rolls his eyes, waits for Tempest to stand before heaving himself out of the hammock with practiced ease and heading toward the pond. "Besides, it's way more fun to know things that other people don't."

"True enough, but you may use it against me one day." She could care less, honestly, and it's all in good fun. She follows him over to the pond, and after a moment's thought and thoughtful glance upwards, reaches down to tug off her shirt.

. . . it shouldn't be any surprise that she has a tanktop underneath, though.

Peter is expecting the tanktop. He's hoping for the tanktop, even, because as much as he enjoys breasts (which is a lot) the combination of literal and emotional nudity is a bit much to contemplate at the moment, especially from someone as guarded as Tempest.

When they get to the pond, he wades a few feet into the water before diving, disappearing beneath the water and reemerging a few yards closer to the center of the pond, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

"Water's fine."

Modesty is not something Tempest has, as guarded as she is. The tanktop is merely an added layer to keep her warm. Thankfully, in this case, she's glad she wore it.

She wades in after him, then ducks under the water for a moment. When she comes back up, she shakes her hair out with a laugh. She's going to be freezing after she gets out, summer weather or not, but this is so worth it.

"So it is."

Peter swims a lot, and he's comfortable in the water, treading water easily as he watches Tempest. "Don't get to do this much, huh?"

"I haven't swam in a good . . . goodness, I haven't a clue how long it's been." She recalls being tossed in a lake once, but that was work. It didn't count. "And besides, it would ruin my reputation were I to go out and swim in the lake like a girl, back home."

"Swim in the lake like a girl? What, boys are too cool for swimming?" Peter almost sounds insulted by the idea. "I come out here all the time at night. Came. Whatever." His head disappears beneath the water as he flops backward into a flip, belly and then legs and then feet showing before his head breaks the surface again. "Fuck 'em if they can't have fun."

"Grown boys are, apparently." She grins at him, and it makes her look much younger than she is. When he comes back up from the water, she splashes him. "I was a mercenary, and a feared one on top of that. I had to uphold that image, you know."

Because dripping wet, her hair sticking up and looking like a child going swimming for the first time, she absolutely looks as threatening as she claims.