withintenfeet | TLV Inbox

She adopted me. I've never had a sister before so there's a bit of a learning curve. She makes it easy though.

She makes a pretty good bowl of popcorn, too. You ever had it?

That's how you know you've done it right. [ He's definitely speaking with experience there.

...And then his eyes light up a little. ] I have, and I miss the real thing.

Nothing but real junkfood tonight.

[That's a promise, sealed with a wink, and then they're at Maggie's door and he lets them in]

Maggie?

Maggie's in the kitchen, which smells of mingled chocolate chip cookies and butter popcorn. She's just leaning over the oven to retrieve a cookie sheet as they come in. "Hey, darling. Get some drinks while I get these out of the oven."

And to Zerxus, she adds as she straightens. "Hi, I'm Maggie. A pleasure."

Zerxus breathes deep as they cross the threshold, eyes alight with almost boyish excitement. His expression turns a bit shy, once they land on Maggie, but he smiles and nods his head. "Zerxus, and the pleasure is definitely mine. You have cookies."

Real baking. He hasn't tasted that - the steady work, the individual flare - for seven years.

"That's how I tricked him into coming here," Jesus teases. "I told him about the first cookies you gave me."

How it stopped him dead in his tracks to smell real sugar after so long.

"Come sit down I'll get you some." He's in Maggie's kitchen often enough that he moves through it like it's his own.

Maggie laughs brightly.

"It's all part of my cunning plan to lure people over so my house is hardly ever empty. I'm very bad at solitude. Also to spoil my brother; I was an only child and I've never had a brother to spoil before. Have to be strategic about these things."

It feels dangerously like slipping back through time, but Zerxus already agreed to come and refusing to enjoy himself would just be rude. So he sits down, and lets himself reminisce a little. "I found mine when we were teenagers."

"I was a rotten teenager, Maggie wouldn't have wanted me," Jesus laughs.

He gets a plate, loads it with cookies, gets a glass of milk to go with it. "What was your brother's name?"

"Nydas, and he was also a rotten teenager." It's impressive, how fondly he manages to say that. "He stabbed me the first time we met. Not on purpose - he was trying to be intimidating and got carried away."

"Screw you, I love all sorts of difficult people." Maggie gives Jesus a quick hug on her way to put water on for tea, then leans against the counter as she waits for it to heat. "But I was a minor disaster then anyway."

She's settled into her skin in the years since, sure of who she is and what she wants. Sure that the people in her life are there for her.

"I feel like it happens less, off of the Barge. My team are my heart's family, but they're not... siblings. They're just mine, to protect and take care of and keep together." She asks Zerxus, "How did you get from stabbing to brotherhood?'

"Yeah. The colonies used to call each other family, but." Well they aren't talking now and Jesus has always felt outside of them anyway.

He looks at Zerxus. "I want to hear this story too."

Some of the weight seems to lift from his shoulders as he watches them, as he thinks back to a time before all of the grief, all of the mistakes, all of the compromises.

"It wasn't a deep cut, but there was quite a lot of blood, and he was terrified - apparently being a pirate is one thing, but actually stabbing someone is another." He smirks a little, smugly playful in a way that only surfaced with certain people. "I calmed him down, we wrapped the wound, and he looked like he hadn't a good meal in weeks so I invited him for dinner."

Maggie laughs. "You're like me. Adopting strays and feeding them a good meal. I decided Jesus was mine the second I saw his face when he got a whiff of my baking."

Wryly, she notes, "Although your particular story wouldn't translate to my world. We're all so blood averse, nobody'd follow me home for dinner if I were bleeding. Too much infection worry."

"Every good friend I have at home has held a gun to my head at least once," Jesus laughs. "Or punched me in the face. Sometimes the strays are just rabid."

He winks at Maggie.

He's grinning even as he shakes his head. "It astounds me that you both lived through that in worlds without any magic at all."

The idea of realms where he can't burn away infection with his touch alone is deeply stressful. Especially with undead hordes to deal with, which frankly seems unfair.

"I don't know anything else. I was born during the first couple years of the Rising, after the dead started walking. And technically, these days my disease kills fewer people than one of the diseases it was meant to cure used to."

Maggie shakes her head. "That's why my deal isn't for a full cure. It's to change the virus, keep the benefits but eliminate the nasty side effect. No more walking dead."

Jesus could argue that he didn't live through it; the dead caught up with him in the end. But it's a melancholy thought and he's here to have fun.

"Whereas mine is to make all living people immune. I can't turn back what happened and I can't undo the billions of undead, but I can make it so we stay dead. No one will have to put their loved ones down again."

Thinking about Nydas in the context of killing the people you love, because you love them -

There's a moment where his gaze turns inward, and there's unspeakable pain there. Then it passes, because he learned how to do that a long time ago. His smile is still sincere, looking up at them.

"Both good worlds to work towards."

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