Baking is therapy! (Open RP, canon updating--SPOILERS)

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

So here's a thought exercise.

You've decided to go back home to help out your friends, because maybe you've had a long enough rest and it's time to use what you know. You get kicked out of the city you thought would accept you, and end up living off-shore on a resurrected fake asteroid that used to belong to a really bad guy who is now living with you and maybe one of the good guys. You're dealing with that, and one day you get kidnapped by demons who use your own powers against you and your friends. You find out that your parents aren't who you thought they were--and you aren't what you thought you were.

And then, just when you're starting to accept that, your mentor gets killed, and you get ordered to go back to hell to rescue the evil psycho she-demon who ripped out part of your soul. Yeah. Good times.

Megan came back to Hogwarts, less bloody and concussed than last time, but somehow twenty times more beaten-down. There was a limit, and she had just about reached it.

Moping was not going to help her. If she started thinking about it--any of it--she might very well start screaming and never stop. Instead, after 'porting back, she slipped very quietly into the kitchens and enlisted the help of several house elves. They tried to do all the work, but she needed something to do to keep her in constant motion, something to keep her from thinking.

After a sleepless night, she set out trays with heaps of baked goods in the Great Hall, all with the lumpy appearance of genuinely homemade treats. She taped up her sign ("Free! Guaranteed NO HEXES OR POTIONS!") and sat back with a sigh, wings folding neatly behind her and a slightly too-desperate smile on her tired face.

Comments

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

"Well, I know that. The people who actually love you, that's not the part in question. What I'm angry about is that Mum thought she could just make it so I thought I was something else entirely, like my life wasn't even my own. I've been going to a school for mutants, and now I find out that I'm not even a real mutant?" She huffed, letting her head fall forward, some of her pink hair threaded with black falling over her face. "And my real father tried to kill a lot of them a long time ago, or brainwash them and make them evil, too. I don't even deserve to go there."

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

"Oh," Sam said, looking chastened. "Well, sometimes parents decide to keep stuff from kids. They might think it's a good idea at the time.. even if they're wrong." Like making deals with yellow-eyed demons and turning your youngest into a freak, for example.

Before he knew what he was doing, Sam reached out and straightened a wayward lock of her hair. "But you're not evil, you didn't do any of that. So why shouldn't you be allowed to go there? Did they try and kick you out or something?"

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

"Most parents don't magic memories right out of their children's minds," she grumbled.

She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. "I could be evil. I'm not, not yet, but... I'm missing part of my soul. Someone stole it, and put black magic where it used to be, and now I have a dagger, and when I use it, I get cold, and I can feel dark evil stuff like a magnet. And Illyana was like me once, and she's--she's her. She's the one who took the first bit of my soul, down in Limbo." She shuddered. "And I guess if they let her stay, and Magneto, they'd be fine with me staying, but if I go bad...? I already stabbed--" No, she wasn't going to think about that, it still hurt too much, especially now that he was-- "I don't like hurting people."

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

Sam gave her a pained smile. "I've got demon blood in me. When I was six months old, I ingested demon blood. The same demon murdered my mom that night. I.. uh, when I was older, I um.. I got addicted to demon blood. It made me stronger. I could force a demon out of a person - I could kill it with my mind."

He let out a breath and raked fingers through his hair. "It was all part of a setup. To make me strong enough to become a vessel for Lucifer. Because I was stupid and arrogant and I let him out of his cage."

"So, I kinda know what you mean," he offered. "I don't go near demon blood, but I can still feel it. It'd be easy to fall back if.. if it wasn't for family. You make your own decisions. You decide if you're going to slip or not."

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

While Sam talked, Megan's eyes got big. Biger. She had met demons in Limbo--met being a polite term, most of them had tried to kill her, or use her to kill other people, or used other people to try and kill her. They had all been big, ugly, and uniformly terrifying.

She really couldn't imagine becoming addicted to the blood of one of those things, even if she could sympathize entirely too well with having something dark and creepy living inside you where normal person parts should be.

"Oh," she said in a small voice. "Wow. I'm really sorry."

However evil Illyana and Witchfire and Belasco were, she was pretty sure none of them were the actual devil. Not even if they all had horns. The actual devil was a separate league all on its own.

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

He gave a little half shrug. "So I, um. I kinda know what you mean. I know it's not exactly the same, but I know what it's like to feel that dark place inside and to just decide that it isn't gonna run you."

Sam picked up another cookie. He hadn't had any home baked goods since that time at Bobby's.. with the zombies. Ok. Not hungry anymore.

"So.. what's the sign for?" he asked.

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

"Yeah. I guess so." She managed a wan smile. If she hadn't killed Illyana, the one who had taken that first bit of her soul, when Illyana had taunted--begged?--her to, she was probably going to be okay for now. Right? Right.

"Oh, that." She laughed nervously. "I thought you'd said you'd been here before, but maybe you'd missed it? The food that gets put out, except people curse it or put drugs in it. By the way, I've heard you probably shouldn't eat anything from the Potions classroom. I haven't tried it yet, but, y'know, stories. I'm hoping that people see it and think, 'Oh, it's guaranteed!' and take a few, but..." she nodded at the piles of things still on trays. "It only works so well after you've been hexed, I guess."

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

"It still sucks though. Sometimes I feel like Dean and Bobby are watching me.. a little too close, you know? I know they want to make sure that I don't slip but.. " he sighed. "I didn't. I set it all right. I stuffed Lucifer right back in his cage."

He seemed to shake himself. "I guess it's all a little hazy still, but I'll remember to watch where I grab food."

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

"I get what you mean. Santo--he's a friend of mine, and a good friend--but he called me 'Dark Pixie' for a little while after I lost the first bit of my soul. It was kind of scary, since I didn't know if I was actually going to be evil or not. And my roommates don't look at me the same any more, not since--I got them kidnapped a few weeks back, see." She fidgeted. "I thought we were going to a concert, and instead we got kidnapped by demons who used my dust and magic to torture us all, and it was all my doing, since I guess it's me who really controls what they see. And now they know about my Mum and my real father, and it's all a big mess."

She flopped, pouting. "I wish I had normal high school stuff to worry about. Or just the food thing, at least. I could handle that. It's never usually anything too bad, I don't think. Just a lot of weirdness, which is about right for here."

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

He shook his head. “Sounds like Dean. I think.. I think what I did hurt him, but he could never come out and really say it. So instead he’d get mad and say stuff like that. It is scary,” he agreed with a sigh. “I don’t want to let them down by slipping again. But how do you apologize for almost ending the world? They don’t exactly make a Hallmark card for that.”

“Wait, hang on. How was it your fault that you got kidnapped by demons?” he asked, cocking his head at her in what Dean always called his ‘confused puppy dog’ look. Poor kid. He could remember how that felt. Raised as a Hunter and all he wanted was a normal life. Which didn’t quite turn out the way it was supposed to..

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

It really would be easier if they made cards for that. Or if there was a fruit basket big enough to make up for it.

"It was a fake invitation to a private concert," she said. "I know it sounds stupid, but Dazzler and I were kind of... not really friends, because she's famous and a lot older than me but she visited me in the hospital and got me drunk after a few of her concerts, so I thought maybe it was just a friends type of thing. And I wanted to share it with my friends, so I invited Cessily, and Hisako, and Laura even though she's kind of scary but she's my roommate too. Except it wasn't a concert, it was a bunch of demons who wanted to use me and steal my dust and Souldagger and trap my mother, and they all got tortured because they were with me. And with my mind. Or dust, or something, but it was using my mind, or something... It used to only show nice things."

She paused long enough to breathe. "If they hadn't been with me, they wouldn't have been kidnapped. And even if they had been kidnapped by someone else, it wouldn't have been someone who used me to do it to them."

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. "But that's not your fault. You didn't know you were being set up. Trust me, I've been set up by demons before," he said ruefully. "They don't exactly make it obvious."

"I.. um. I did some pretty awful things while I was under the influence of demon blood. I.." he swallowed. "I hurt the two people in this world that gave a damn about me. It was a long time before they could look at me without this kind of.. shadow in their eyes. But it did go away. If they're your friends, then they'll realize that it wasn't your fault. You didn't do it intentionally."
Like I did.

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

"It's kind of my fault if I dragged them along. Hisako thought it looked shady, and I don't think Laura even really wanted to go."

Intellectually, she knew all of that. There were a lot of times in the past that weird, evil things had happened and people that she knew had flipped out and done really bad stuff--sometimes even killed the people they now lived with. (Life became really, really complicated when you were an X-man.) Even Rogue and Ms. Frost had been evil once. And everyone still liked Illyana, for some reason that Megan couldn't fathom.

"Knowing that and feeling it are different," she said slowly, actually taking the time to think it out for once. "Right now, it's still pretty fresh in all of our minds. And whenever we see each other again, there's probably going to be something to come up that will make us put it all aside or put it in perspective. But right now, it's still really, really... big." There was an accompanying hand gesture, something wavy and at about head-height, that did very little to actually convey what she meant but would have been very inconvenient to anyone passing in front of her.

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

With surprisingly quick reflexes, he caught her hand and held it between his own, larger ones. "It wasn't your fault," he reiterated. "But I know. I got tricked.. goaded.. into starting the Apocalypse by setting Lucifer free. It doesn't get much bigger than that. Every time Dean or Bobby looked at me, I could see it, just behind their eyes. Like they wanted to say 'this is all your fault' .. even if I didn't intentionally set out to start it all."

He looked down and let her hand go. "I guess all we can do is try and set things right and hope that they can look at us a little differently when some time passes."

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

((Let's see if LJ eats this one!))

She didn't wince when Sam caught her hand (okay, maybe a little, but only because it was unexpected.) And this time, she actually listened to what he was saying, because that was what you did when people held your hand, or your shoulder, or things like that. She didn't just kind of hear while looking around and staying stuck in her own thoughts.

And it really stuck this time: this guy had actually caused the Apocalypse, or thought he had, which was the same thing if he believed it and so did everyone else. So yeah, there was guilt there, and he was living with it.

She stared toward her hand for a few seconds after Sam let go of it, not at it really but letting her thoughts order themselves. She finally settled on the conclusion of I think eventually I'll accept it all and not just pretend it's not there, and she flung herself at him. Not in an attack, like that awful day with Nightcrawler and the Souldagger. She squeezed him in as big a hug as she could manage.

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

((Stupid LJ))

He watched her think, hoping he managed to say the right thing. Dean would have berated him, calling it another "Sammy chick flick moment", but it was something she needed to hear. Hell, it was something he needed to hear.. not that Bobby or Dean ever would.

The hug was a little unexpected, but he smiled at it. Sam carefully put his arms around her - because he had never hugged anyone with real wings before - and returned it. He rested his cheek on the top of her head for a moment before drawing back.

"Maybe there's hope here for both of us, huh?"

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

Wings took some getting used to. She kept hers pressed down fairly flat and out of the way, but she appreciated the caution after she'd had time to think about it--her wings had been broken in a vicious attack by anti-mutant thugs once.

"Yeah," she said after she pulled back, slightly pink-faced. She was a huggy person and always had been, but he was still an older guy that she had only just met. Then again, he was also a new friend, which made it less weird. "And hey, we're at a magic school. Anything's possible, right?"

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

"Right. And no one who has baking skills like this can be remotely evil. It's just not possible," he said with a grin.

"Things will be fine," Sam assured, even if he wasn't quite convinced that things would ever be fine for him again. "I'm over in Gryffindor if you ever need someone to talk to,"

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

Megan blushed full-on red at that. "I'm not that good at it," she mumbled, but she still smiled happily at the compliment.

"Oh hey, so am I!" She perked up. "I haven't really been back to my room yet, but it's pretty easy to find. I put a sign on the door that says 'Pixie' out front--that's my code name when I'm with the X-men, they're the people who ran the other school I was at and they protect mutants--and it's all done in pink and glitter. I mean, if it's still there. So there's that. And I'm kind of hard to miss. You know, if you need someone to talk to."

[hunter-returns.livejournal.com]

"Trust me. After living on diner food for as long as I have, this stuff is amazing. Nothing beats homemade."

"I.. thanks. I might take you up on that." He still had terrible nightmares most nights, but he could always hold out until morning. It might be considered more than a little weird for him to be at a teenager's door in the middle of the night.

[my-soul-itches.livejournal.com]

She didn't press the issue, but secretly she agreed. After living for the past several weeks on whatever supplies Wolverine and Nightcrawler (Nightcrawler... she knew that eventually she'd be able to think of him without the stab of loss, like she could now think of DJ and Callie and Nicky, but it was still so close) could scrounge up and whatever donors could send in--mostly canned foods and things that wouldn't go bad for a while, with the occasional treat of ice cream or some promotional item thrown in--she was happy for anything cooked. Even if she'd made it herself.

"Do that. I'm around at weird hours anyway." She was familiar with nightmares. Red Bull had become a very good friend since she was fourteen.