asgardmeridiem | Open | Getting all parkour in here

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Open | Getting all parkour in here

Who: Riley and ANYONE
What: Riley is getting back into the swing of things and that means roof running.
When: D460
Where: Various districts...feel free to pick one.
Rating: PG for her mouth

Riley had been out of touch for a couple of weeks. Honestly, it had sucked because it had kept her from finding away to save Ellie or going down with her. It was a fucked up situation, especially with what her girlfriend knew about what her future was like. She hated that she couldn't be there for her back home but that was kind of the price of being, well, dead.

That really did come up a lot in her mind. Here she could do things for Ellie and be there for her but in the end they'd have to part ways because Ellie lived and she died. Perhaps she should have hated her for that, hated her for all the love she got from everyone too. It would have been fair really. Though it didn't seem like it, Ellie had it going on. People loved her and cared about her. They'd always put her first. Hell, Riley put her first too.

She was jealous. Who had actually given that much of a shit about her since her parents died? Well, besides Ellie.

Not a damn person.

Today, she just needed to clear her head. Then she could go back and be all smiles and laughter for Ellie again since that was what she needed. She needed her to be awesome as fuck and she had to make sure she had her head in the game for that. Which meant she was now running along rooftops, swinging along ledges. It wasn't anything anyone had taught her to do, she'd figured it out on her own and had the guts to bother to try. Practice had made her pretty damn good at it too.

Landing on another rooftop, she took a breath of air and planted her gloved hands on her hips. It was nice being alive. It really was.

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Desmond kicked his legs too, scraping the heels of his trainers against the ledge. Ah. Suddenly the portrait of Riley was a little clearer. He shrugged at her last remark and sat up straight, pushing his hood back to scratch his scalp.

"Are you kidding? I couldn't judge you for that, not with the shit I pulled at your age." He snorted. "I ran away, too. Just dropped everything and ran my ass off on my sixteenth birthday, didn't say goodbye and didn't look back. At least you had something to run for."

"Maybe. We had a big fight before I ran away without a goodbye to join the Fireflies. She could have just told me to go fuck off."

Riley smiled a little because obviously Ellie hadn't. Somehow they'd made it work again.

"Come on. You don't want to hear about this shit. It's just stupid."

"I do though. It's not stupid at all. Maybe not the wisest thing to do, but I get why you did it."

He pulled one leg up on the ledge, bracing his elbow on his knee, chin rested on his palm.

"Tell you what, I've pried enough today, got anything you'd like to ask me in turn? Besides the worst work story, you already got that one."

Riley looked him over. Desmond was different from most people, she could see that quite clearly. Especially since he'd just learned about her having been a Firefly and doing terrible things with them.

Now he was opening it up for her to pry too?

She gave him a look that clearly said people just didn't do that before she asked, "You don't want to find out more about me?"

Was she even willing to tell him? Honestly, she hadn't decided yet. Whatever the case, it was weird that he was letting it go and offering to open up too.

The difference was that Riley didn't put on airs about it. Most people he knew who did terrible shit and gave no fucks often gave no fucks very loudly, or were dead silent to the point that you never knew they were awful people in the first place. Good people who got caught up in bad shit? It clung to them like cigarette smell on a pack-a-day smoker, they wore their guilt heavily like its own brand of penance.

Riley's not a bad kid, but he knew how easy it was to get in over your head.

"Well I do, but at your pace, not mine."

So he really wanted to know more about her but was willing to give her space to get it out. That was definitely new. She thought about it a bit, looking out over the Odin district then decided on something.

"You know what? I'm going to ask you something and then you're going to ask me something. We're going to go back and forth with that. If you don't want to answer, that's cool, we move on."

It wouldn't feel like being cornered or anything and it would let her see if he really did give enough of a shit to want to learn more about her or if he was just saying that.

Desmond sat up straighter, attentive, shrugging a shoulder with a little smile.

"Shoot, go for it. Same rules for you, don't feel like you have to answer if you don't want."

Riley thought about her question carefully, wanting to make it a good one. None of this, dancing around bullshit.

Ah.

"What were you running from when you left home?"

"Ah." Considering her question, he looked back out over the district rooftops, cast his gaze down to the streets, where a Native was going about his business, walking hand in hand with his son. Desmond glanced back at Riley.

"Everything. Nothing. The Farm. It's where I grew up- pretty much something like a small commune deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I lived there with my parents and a handful of other families, never saw much of the outside world until I bailed. There was a lot I didn't understand when I left, and that's really what drove me out. It's not that Mom and Dad tried to hide the world from me, more like...it was like all the things we had to fear didn't feel real. It all felt like cultist horseshit without anything tangible to back it up."

He huffed, rubbing his other shoulder. The stump was starting to ache again beneath the compression dressing. "So that's what it really was, I was tired of the fear, tired of not knowing, tired of feeling like there was something more outside the gates."

Leaning forward to see what he was doing, she finally caught sight of something. Or rather, a lack of something. She wanted to ask about it but hey...rules were rules. So she sat back instead. If she didn't think of another question, it could be her next one.

"You got out and got into being a bartender. Booze specialist. Okay, I can see it."

Smiling a bit, she kicked her legs a bit.

"Your turn. Shoot."

That made him grin. Something like that, grasshopper.

"Right. Easy one, because I've been curious- just when were you born, Riley?"

He'd couple that with another question after she'd had her turn, expecting an answer he wasn't quite sure he wanted to hear for his next go, because he was already guessing at what she might say. Right now though, basic stuff.

Riley grinned back at him.

"Sure you give me the easy one. 2017."

She'd made it all the way to 2033 and wouldn't see anything else back home. Thinking of her next question she hummed. Riley could have asked about the arm but she knew she could get to that later.

"Alright then, easy one back at you. How old are you?"

"Aw, you're not even a baby yet where I come from. And I'm. Huh."

Wait a second, he's got to calculate. Months were shorter in Asgard, a slightly different system than what he was used to, so...

"Twenty-six. Amazingly enough." An edge of his smile was muted. Made it here, but not home.

"How did you and Ellie meet?" He'll save the hard stuff for later.

Edited 2014-06-10 09:07 (UTC)

Oh now her face really lit up. Just like a fucking Christmas tree. She loved telling this story.

"So Ellie was new to the school and tiny as hell even then. Well, she was also a shit too and there were these big guys, bigger than me, picking on her and beating her up. I watched long enough to figure out she was only going to get her ass handed to her and walked over to tell them to leave her alone. They decided I was small and they could take me."

Riley laughed and mimicked a punch.

"I fucking took both of them down. Made them run off with broken noses. Of course, Ellie was a fucker and so I stole her Walkman as payment. Man, she had such shit taste in music. Anyway, she left and then she confronted me to get it back. Later that night, she caught me sneaking out and made me teach her how to do it first or I'd get fucking caught with her. We ran out of the QZ and almost got killed a bunch of times that night and we were friends from then on."

He took in her story with a certain amount of admiration and deep amusement. The thought of Riley saving Ellie, and getting grief for it? So very Ellie, especially in light of El's recent annoyance at Desmond for stepping in front when it came to Fenrir. He laughed, shaking his head.

"Christ, you two are made for each other."

It was equal parts teasing and pleasantly honest. "She's lucky to have you in her corner. Even if you're both brats."

"Thank you. I take that as a compliment."

Most wouldn't but Riley wasn't at all that kind of person. There was nothing wrong with being a brat. In fact, it just meant that she was enjoying life, finding the goodness still left in it no matter what shit was thrown her way.

"My turn then. If you could go back to the Farm now, would you?"

Oh, now that sobered him up just a bit. Time to look into the middle distance and gather his thoughts. Shaun had been there with Rebecca, said the Templars demolished it, a task they were very well suited to.

"Yes and no," he said slowly, considering. "I'd go only to see the people there, not to stick around. For closure, maybe, but I'd want to come back here after all's said and done. Anyway it's a moot point. Can't go home and the Farm was found and destroyed."

He looked askance at Riley. "Not so cultish horseshit after all."

She was really wondering what the cultish horseshit was and the fact that she wanted to was written all over her face. Still, she managed not to do it, settling for a nod.

"Guess not. Your question now."

"Right. So. Got any family back home?"

What happened to your parents is what he'd like to ask, but there was something too harsh in it, too direct. A side-step around seemed the better option.

Hesitating, she almost told him that she didn't want to answer this one. It was hard for her to remember how her parents had died. But...

"No. My dad got infected and ripped up my mom. Then he turned on me and I killed him to live."

She refused to look at it as she said it, hands shoved in her pockets like she didn't want to see her dad's blood on them again.

Desmond released a breath. Oh no, that's worse than he thought, far worse. For a moment he floundered in silence, unsure of what to say. She probably heard every last half-assed apology and platitude under the sun, or maybe just radio silence in the end, bundled off to a military school that didn't give a shit about her.

He owed her his honesty.

"Jesus Christ, Riley...that's fucked up." Anyone else might have exclaimed that to the high heavens, but he was quiet, sympathetic, from someone who's seen and had to do some pretty fucked up things in his own life.

"I'm so sorry it came to that. You had to make a really shitty call, that most people will never in their life have to make."

Yeah. It was fucked up and she still remembered every detail of it. But, she couldn't change that past. She'd done it and...

Yeah. Just...yeah...

She'd panicked after watching him rip into her mom. She just remembered not wanting to die too.

"It was awhile ago." Which, since she was sixteen, said how young she'd been when it had happened. Now, she just wanted to change the subject.

"What's the cultish horseshit you were talking about?"

Jesus. Still, he let her have an out from the start, and he wasn't going to push. Desmond was less surprised that learning about such a painful point in Riley's life did little to change his opinion of her. She was well and truly a fighter.

Right now though, Farm stuff. He had to pause a moment, to wrap his head back around his own issues.

"That much of the world's interests are controlled by the Templar Knights, who masquerade as a multinational corporation that has its finger in about every pie there is, from pharmaceuticals to video games. They say they're out for peace, for unity, but at the cost of sacrificing individual liberties, smothering personal freedoms. They've been doing this in some form or fashion since the Crusades, turning societal conflicts to their advantage and brutally attempting to silence anyone who gets in their way. Everyone is a cog in their machine, while they sit at the top of the pile, and they've been doing that for almost a thousand years."

He wet his lips, glancing at her. "And here's the kicker: it's all true."

Riley listened and thought it sounded like some sort of thing they'd make up for a comic book. No. Really. A fucking comic book would have that kind of thing going on it.

But hey, if she could come from the shroom zombie apocalypse then he could come from a world where people called Templars wanted to fuck over the world with peace by stealing freedoms. Sure. She'd believe it.

"The douchebags."

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