Pepper Potts (potts) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2017-05-05 19:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !complete, !log, [plot] barbarian!methos, ~2017 may, ~25 points, ~~methos (chivalrysstupid), ~~pepper potts (potts) |
WHO Pepper & Methos
WHAT Uh oh
WHEN Friday, late in the evening
WHERE In town
WARNINGS Mentions of death
STATUS Closed | Complete
Pepper was worried about Sara and the girls, who'd been missing for a few days now, but she was also worried about how Steve and Bucky were handling this. She wasn't keen on getting in their way until the girls were found so she kept her head down and went about her work to keep herself occupied. She wouldn't be of any use, without any tracking skills and the like, but she did try to stick to the busier areas while this Methos character was out and about.
Except, she'd gotten a bit too focused on work and lost track of time. It was nearly full dark by the time she left the Law Offices and it was a decent walk to her apartment. Great. She felt stupid for waiting so long, but she knew that with Extremis, she'd honestly be alright despite still being afraid. Pepper held her bag close on her shoulder, and walked with purpose, trying not to draw too much attention to herself.
***
Methos still needed information to make plans for doing anything here. Being able to speak the language helped but after he’d found that he couldn’t even leave the damn area because of some barrier he couldn’t see he was in a foul mood. The intelligent thing would be to leave and regroup but he wasn’t offered that as a choice. That meant he was stuck trying to figure out which of the bad plans that left him with that was going to work best.
There was a difference between people here. He’d found there was a section called refugees and they were the ones he had to worry about. They were also the ones that probably knew more.
Tonight he started to follow a woman with long hair who knew she was out at a dangerous time. She might be doing her best to walk like she belonged and with confidence but something about her still stood out. So Methos dropped in behind her when she passed one alley where he was hidden and followed her.
***
Pepper, unfortunately, didn't quite notice right away when someone started to follow her. It wasn't until she had to stop to cross the street that she looked behind her, more because she was standing still than anything else. She startled when she saw someone was behind her, but she didn't immediately recognize him either thanks to how dark it was.
"Sorry," she murmured, because it was rude to be startled. He didn't look like someone who'd been born and raised in the town, but there was also an aura about him that said he wasn't the sort of person to mess. It was that sense that had her looking a bit more closely at him and Pepper gasped.
"You're him."
***
“Who am I?” Methos smirked watching all those different emotions going across her face. She was certainly an open book in many ways. “Please, tell me what you know.” He stepped closer so that he could cut her off from running across the road where it would be too open to effectively follow. And hopefully being that close he could grab and restrain her easily instead of having to just kill her.
“I’m curious.”
***
"You took Molly." Pepper blinked in disbelief, and she fought to keep calm. It wouldn't do any good to attack him now, but maybe she could get information out of him as to where the girls were. "Ella too, and Sara." As if she knew the latter two aside from in passing, but he didn't need to know that.
"You're dangerous. Your friend said as much, warned us all." Pepper cast about in her memory for the man's name. "Duncan is his name, and you're Methos." She clutched her bag as if it could help her and it was, but it was helping her from letting her fear completely overtake her.
"Why did you take them?"
***
“Why do you care?” Methos smirked as he walked around her to circle her and either make her turn with him or let him walk behind her without knowing what he was doing. “Are you related to them? Because they are just women, just like you’re a woman, and there’s no reason to care.” It would be interesting to see what her answer was to that.
“And my name is Death, not Methos.”
***
"She's- They're my friends," Pepper replied, summoning up as much of her assertive businesswoman side as she could. She stood completely still, squaring her shoulders as he walked around her. It was foolish more than likely, but she only tracked his movements with her head, turning this way or that to keep him in her eyeline.
He sounded like Ultron. Just a little. It was the disregard for people and the grandstanding that she was making the comparison to and was relieved that she hadn't had to deal directly with that mess. Focusing on the task at hand, Pepper didn't respond to the correction of his name other than a slight inclination of her head. Fine. He could be Death if that was what he wanted.
"Did you kill them?"
***
Ah she’d revealed something there. Molly had been the first name and she’d had to correct herself to include all three as friends. It meant he knew which one she cared about most. “Not all of them. Just the girl. She was making too much of a fuss so I cut her throat and left her as an example to the others.” It was a lie of course but he said it without emotion as he came out in front of her again, as if he didn’t care at all about the death of a teenager.
He didn’t. But he wouldn’t kill someone he might need in the future without a reason and he didn’t have one yet.
***
Pepper immediately jumped to the conclusion that he'd cut Molly's throat, eyes widening in horror at the thought of Steve's daughter being dead. She could feel the need to lash out start to bubble up, but the more clinical, rational side of her - which sounded suspiciously like Phil in that moment - reminded her that he hadn't said which girl.
"You bastard. You'd kill a mother and her child just to prove a point?" There wasn't enough anger, necessarily, but Pepper tried to imagine if Molly had been older, pregnant. What that would have done, the pain it would have caused. That was enough to get her temperature rising, but she wasn't glowing just yet. It was her eyes that had a hint of orange in the irises now. She hoped her ploy would work.
***
“Of course not. Ella is fine, she’s serving me quite willing so she’s safe for now. I believe they called the one I killed Molly...Dolly...something similar. It wasn’t Sara, who told me her name before I took her.” He’d been amused by the anger that was in there. She was trying to be calm but Methos was very good at pushing buttons.
“But she was just a girl. No real loss. There’s always some other out there to whelp out mewling children for the men.”
***
That was enough to anger her into action. She moved to slap him before she even realized she'd done it, her hand much hotter than a normal human's, but would it hurt him? Would she even connect, her hand on his face? It wouldn't bring back Molly, but Pepper would never have been able to stand in front of Steve or Bucky again if she didn't do something when she had the chance.
***
It did hit his face because Methos didn’t even bother to try to move. It was just a slap, he wasn’t worried about that. When it connected it was hot enough to startle him. It was like when you moved the rocks in a fire ring or picked up a burning branch too close to where it was burning.
It had left a red scorch mark on his face but it quickly started to fade back to its normal color. The amusement was gone from his expression now. “You should have just run.”
Methos pulled a knife instead of his sword, they were on the street and the sword was much too flashy if he was trying to avoid making people run up to help.
***
Pepper was surprised that her blow landed, but it only startled him where a human with a more average pain tolerance might have been more seriously injured. The way his face healed so quickly had her eyes widening in fear. Yea, she should have just run.
Her hands started to turn molten almost, the color mottling her skin to look like she was glowing from the inside out. Her eyes burned orange, Extremis coursing through her veins in a way it hadn't since she'd first been injected. It scared her just as much as Methos did.
She turned too quickly, tripping over her feet and catching her heel the wrong way, causing it to break with a sharp snap. Pepper left the broken heel, hobbling on her broken shoe, as she tried to run, keeping to her tiptoes so she could run more successfully. She didn't scream, but she didn't want to be killed either.
***
It had been strange enough that she had burned him when she hit him. When she started to glow from inside and her eyes had lit up like that it was more of a shock. But from what he could see she looked almost more scared of herself than of him. That was interesting. He followed her at a trot for a little ways to keep the fear in her but if she was that scared it didn’t speak of control of whatever it was she was doing. He didn’t want to court that.
“Where do you think you can go?”
***
She hadn't had to use Extremis in so long, hadn't had to worry beyond keeping her stress to a minimum. It was a reflex she hadn't been scared of but the disuse and the thought of having to tell Captain Rogers his daughter was dead terrified her. Sergeant Barnes, more so. Death was following her, a fact she confirmed each time she whipped her head to look behind her. She wasn't going fast enough.
Pepper stopped along a wall to pull off her shoes, figuring it would be quick. It was not. The shoe that had a broken heel was stuck and she didn't have the leverage of her heel to pry it off. She knew it was taking too long so she gave up and spun around to face him. At least she could hurt him even if he injured her to the point Extremis couldn't heal her.
"You're right," she replied, as if it had been the plan all along. She barely managed it. "We're all trapped here. You won't evade them forever."
***