Margaret "Molly" Katherine Amanda Carpenter (ragged_lady) wrote in blood_red_sky, @ 2011-12-06 19:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | harry dresden, molly carpenter |
A conversation-lude (Harry/Molly)
[ooc: backdated to before When Molly Meets Phaedra]
After what she was calling The Great Troll Incident Molly slept for most of a day. That sunlight trick had taken a lot out of her. It hadn’t really been that hard since it wasn’t that far off from what she already did with light, but picking out one specific light wave had taken a lot of focus, and a lot of concentration. It had been worth it though and Molly was proud of that piece of modern art sculpture she’d left behind in the cow pasture.
She had fallen over on the couch in Murphy’s living room, but woke up in the bedroom she was staying in. She didn’t remember how or when she had gotten there, and sleepy thoughts of the ex-cop having to firemen’s carry her made Molly giggle as she made coffee. In between yawns that is.
A shower and caffeine injection later she was on her way to Harry’s. She had forgotten to leave him a message that she wouldn’t be over the day before so she expected a bit of a talking to when she showed up for more lessons. Hence the bag of Burger King in one hand, and a box donuts in the other. It was mid-day but when could you go wrong with donuts?
She had to put box and bag down to open the door, and work the min-spell to get through Harry’s wards but that only took a moment of letting cold air into his house. She didn’t even bother looking around just called out. “Hey, boss! It’s me, and I have a perfectly reasonable explanation!”
Harry bolted out of his lab at the sound of Molly's voice, head pounding from the enchantments he'd been laying on a new version of what might eventually become Little York. Little Chicago had been a great success, and he was hoping to duplicate at least some of that usability here. But his wayward apprentice had been missing for a day, and only the short call to Murphy had kept him from tracking her down himself.
There was the scent of Burger King and confectioner's sugar in the air. He slowed his pace as he moved closer, then held out his hand, palm up. "Burger me. Then explain."
He wasn't mad at her, just concerned. But since she had an explanation, before he'd even addressed anything of the sort, he was curious to hear it.
A quarter pounder with cheese was placed into his hand with a barely contained knowing smirk. “Is there ever a time of day you aren’t cranky?” Molly dug out some onion rings for herself. Burger King onion rings were made by the angels themselves. She’d swear to it!
Popping one into her mouth was priority and she spoke around the mouthful. “There wah a twoll.” She hastily swallowed then washed it down with a diet Coke. “Troll. Jo and I handled it but it wiped me out. Had to make up an impromptu seventy degrees and sunny spell on the fly. There’s a statue still in the cow pasture just outside of town if you want to go see. I’m hoping to get it into the Louvre.”
"Grumpy," Harry corrected, his mouth full of Whopper goodness. "Wizards are grumpy. It's in the contract." He tried not to choke when she explained about the troll, and arched a brow at her. "You pulled out sunlight? Nice! What time was it? Dusk? Full night?"
Sunlight was a tricky one. To get it right, to get it just right, you needed to be happy. Or have a lot of skill. It wasn't mere illusion, not that kind of sunlight. Something like that had to be real. No wonder it had exhausted her.
He'd have to check on the statue. Make sure it was completely stone. He didn't doubt the grasshopper's word, but it was his responsibility to make certain. "Damn right I want to see."
Molly chuckled and knew she’d been forgiven for poofing without warning. She grinned proudly as she pulled up a chair at his excuse for a dining table. “Yes. Full night and good because I wanted you to help me break it apart. You’re a lot better at the kaboom magic than I am.”
She nabbed another onion ring then perked and pointed at her mentor with it. “Which reminds me of something else I wanted to talk to you about. I have this idea for a charged up baseball bat based on the same principle as your power rings.” She took a nibble of the tasty fried ring. “Which if you put molded Green Lantern symbols on them would make them way cooler.”
"Never gonna get it in the Louvre if it's in bits, grasshopper." He shook his head. "If you want it to be gravel, that's fine. But there's other ways to make sure it's inert. I'll teach you." They would be easy for her, since she was a sensitive. She only needed to know what to look for.
He perked up at her idea. "Baseball bat, huh? It'd be a pretty big store, but simple wood doesn't hang onto kinetic force very well. An aluminum bat, maybe, depending on what's in the core." He rubbed his chin for a moment, then looked at the silver braided rings on his fingers. "While my geek self tends to agree, it'd screw with the flow. What brought this on?"
Molly gave him something of a bland look. "Okay, you realize the Louvre thing was a joke, right?" But the idea of learning yet another new thing distracted her from that and her eyes lit up. Lea hadn't really taught her anything new so much as refine what she already knew and make creative variations on her talents. While fun, it had stopped being a challenge.
She shrugged a shoulder as she reached for another onion ring, completely ignoring the chicken nuggets she also had. "I'm not really that good with the assault stuff. I don't even want to consider fire since I'd most likely fry my eyebrows off than successfully get off what you can do. I'm out there now. I could use all the help I can get, and some big ugly demon wouldn't expect a baseball bat to pack a punch like that." Obviously she was not intending on slinking back into the lab now that Harry was back in the world. She'd had a taste for working the streets that didn't seem to be diminishing.
"Ah, Molly. It pains me when you neglect the wisdom inherent to my ass." Especially when he was carrying on her jokes. In any case, it was still a way to show her a new bit of practical application. Harry himself would have just blasted the damn thing into gravel, but Molly could do otherwise. It would be easier for her. Wasn't it his job to teach her how to work things out for herself, too?
At her explanation, he was nodding. It made sense. And since she'd gotten a taste for field work, he wasn't going to deny her that chance. He wouldn't have thought combat would ever be her strong suit, but at least it wouldn't be a liability, if she got some practical experience under her belt. "I'm not sure about carrying a bat, but we can start on it with that in mind. I use rings, but... remember Elaine? She used bracelets, necklaces, chains... maybe something like that could work well for you."
He shrugged. "The principle is sound. Let's start off with a Louisville Slugger and see where we get with that." But part of it was keeping the foci something that didn't appear to be a weapon. That's what kept it a surprise. Most enemies didn't even notice Harry's rings until he used them.
Molly perked sarcastically with a mischievous smirk on her face. “Oh! You mean the piercings might actually be more functional than what is typically intended?” She grinned around an onion ring knowing he was going to flip out at the reminder of her ah…body modifications, but if he was going to bring up his ass then she had better ammunition.
She chuckled before washing down the onion ring with a drink of Diet. “I have an idea about etching the runes into the metal. Instead of fussing around with a stylus with a diamond tip, what about acid etching? Jewelers do it all the time.”
Harry choked slightly on a bite of food when she mentioned the piercings, tried to hide it, and shouldn't have bothered. He gave in with a sigh, and nodded. "Yes. Though I'm not sure they're as well suited for violent energy attacks. Clothing tearing in places tends to be a bit of a distraction. Not good for your allies."
Acid etching. Harry rubbed his chin with one hand as he considered it. "I'd have to see the technique. The diamond-tipped stylus might not be your thing, but it's a good rood for focusing the energy you want. If it works the same way as say, a tattoo gun? I should be able to use it. That's how I enchant my duster."
“Really?” Molly perked up at that. She had tattoos too. An elbow got planted on the table and her fist propped up her head against her jaw. “So if you can enchant protections into a leather coat with a tattoo gun wouldn’t it stand to reason that you could tattoo those same protections onto yourself? Or would you have to be operating the gun, tattooing yourself while working the magic because I could see how that could get tedious.”
One thought led to the next and her head came up off her fist. “Hey, what if that was a new wizard career? Magical tattoos. Customized. Designed or the subject could come up with a design.” She smiled kind of proud of herself. “Neat.”
Harry shook his head. "Wouldn't work. The human body has it's own flows of energy, all the time. Energy that makes it possible to draw a breath, to think, to speak. Trying to mess with that energy could kill you, but it would definitely erode any spells. Besides, the ones on my coat only last a few months - stretched it to a year the last time I did it. A tattoo is permanent, but any spell would erode in days, if not hours." He shrugged. "Maybe I'm just not seeing the practical side to a permanent design on my body."
But the lesson had come up. "That's why you want the materials you work to be as pure as you can get them." He held up a hand to indicate his rings. "Pure silver. The more pure the base, the longer the enchantments can hold."
“Nertz.” She wrinkled her nose. That would have been a cool job for a wizard. Mystical tattoos. Oh well. “Permanent designs aren’t supposed to be practical, Harry. They’re supposed to enhance. Like a pretty border along a wall.” She said that absently as she thought all of that over.
“Different metals hold different properties. Different strength, hardness and all that.” She pushed an onion ring through some ketchup on the wrapper. “Different energies for different metals or you blow them up. You wouldn’t want to put something to do with fire through a metal with a lower melting temp.”
Harry nodded. "Excellent, grasshopper. Now, tell me why I would prefer to work on a hardwood bat instead of a softball bat for your experiment." He smiled just a bit and leaned back in his seat, eyeing the clock on the wall. Tests like these were always timed - since real life situations rarely gave you the benefit, Harry thought it was practical.
This was almost too easy since one of her sisters played softball and her dad coached the team. Her answer was given idly while she swooped an onion ring through a puddle of ketchup. “Too many components to muck around with the energies. Rubber. Metal. Weighted core, which makes for a great swing through, but all together it would probably explode now that I think about it.”
Harry nodded. He expected her to know that. "Right. A hollow bat probably isn't something you want to load up with kinetic energy. And for now, you're going to learn the hard way, etching and carving the runes yourself. If you can learn it the hard way, the not-as-hard way will be a cinch."
It was the way Harry had learned magic - without any tools to focus his power, without any shortcuts. It was how Justin had demanded he learn, and even now, when Harry had the proper tools for everything he needed, he practiced the "pure" form at least once a month. Tools were useful, but they were also a crutch. It was the same way he was teaching Molly. Only without the abuse.
She made a face at him, but couldn’t but agree with his methods. It definitely had its merits which was a conclusion she had come to while living on the streets. Lea had taken those methods and built on them. No, they hadn’t been fun or nearly as nice as Harry’s but they kept her alive and kept her on edge, on the top of her game. She hadn’t liked it but the benefits outweighed the discomfort in her opinion.
“Harry?” Her voice gained a bit of hesitancy to it and her eyes went to the onion ring she wasn’t eating. “I want to ask you a question, and I want the blunt truth. Can we do that?”
Harry heard the hesitance and paused a moment himself. He took a drink, then set down his food and nodded. "Okay. Blunt truth." And started to dread what she would ask.
She finally lifted her eyes to him. They’d had their soulgaze years ago so she was able to look him dead in the eyes unflinchingly. It was easy enough for him to see the fear and edge of crazy still lingering in her baby blues, but there was also an age there that went beyond her years. She has already seen too much.
“I’m never getting out from under that sword, am I?” She’d done more than a few acts during the months Harry had been dead that could skew any moral compass. She knew it, and didn’t regret them. She’d do them again since she’d saved lives. She wasn’t looking to use the same methods now, but that didn’t really matter when it came to the White Council.
Harry met her eyes just as evenly, and said, "You will. Not everyone will see it that way, though. In some ways, there's always going to be a Sword hanging over you. You're always going to be fighting against that side of yourself that wants to give in to the darker magics, to take the easy route, to make the world how you see fit. Always." A faint, bitter smile flickered across his face for an instant. "That much, I know from experience."
He reached over the table, and took one of her hands in his. "But I saw something in you, grasshopper. I saw what you can be. Who you are. And I know you're stronger than that. I know you'll make it out. You're already someone I can be proud of, but one day, you'll be someone you can be proud of."
He truly believed that. He could clearly remember that image of Molly, scarred but steady, wearing a Warden's cloak of her own. Strong and confident.
His belief in her and putting it into words like that made her smile and squeeze his hand gratefully. But her eyes lowered to their hands. She wasn’t so sure and that uncertainty made her afraid and sad. “I wish you could look now….after that time while you were…you know.” Molly didn’t like to think about that time. It had hurt a whole lot. “Things are different now. Inside. I know I’m not right. I scared a lot of people and I don’t regret it.”
Gently, Harry squeezed her hand. "I know, Molly. And I saw that too. But there's strength in you. Real strength. Courage." No child of the Carpenters could be anything less. Anyone raised in that solid foundation of love and strength could be frail. Molly might feel that way right now, but she wasn't broken. Far from it.
"You're your mother's daughter, Molly. Your father's child. The Ragged Lady. Yes, I'm starting to see how she fits in. And it's part of you."
He shifted a bit closer, lowering his head to hers and softening his voice. "You don't have to regret it. Sometimes, you'll need that part of yourself. You'll need to call upon it to make the hard choices, to do the things no one else can." Like Harry himself had done with Cassius. With Father Vincent. With Corpsetaker, the first time.
"You did it with Corpsetaker, and you saved Butters. No one else could have engaged that bitch like that. You bought Morty the time to recover. Don't sell yourself short, grasshopper. I shouldn't have been afraid of the Ragged Lady either. She's still my apprentice."
That melted her entirely and the tears fell before she was even aware of it. There was a small smile on her face even as her shoulders shook a few times. It took a few moments before she could pull it together and swipe her fingers under her eyes. She missed her family which is probably obvious by the fact that she never mentions them. But she also liked the Ragged Lady. That part of kept her alive in Chicago, but kept her protected from the scary parts of her memories now.
“I thought you hated her.” She gently bumped her head against Harry’s. “That kind of tore me up inside.”
Harry shook his head, frowning. "Maybe I thought I did. I was... worried about her. But my own subconscious tends to wear a lot of black and is kind of a dick, so who am I to judge how people should see themselves?" He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly. "I won't ever hate you, Molly. No part of you."
She leaned into the hug, her smile lifting even more and she wrapped an arm around him in return. “You are a dick.” She chuckled and gave him a squeeze. “But most of the time you’re the good kind of dick so that’s okay.”
She pulled back enough to smile up at him. Relief and hope were small sparks in her eyes, but they were there. “Thanks, boss.”
Harry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well. I try." He patted her on the shoulder a bit before sitting back in his seat. "So, shall we go see to this troll of yours?"
“Mine and Jo’s.” Molly reached out to grab her soda as she got up from the table. “She was tracking it first when I came along. I wouldn’t have been able to manage what I had if she hadn’t helped keep it on the run and distracted.”
Once upon a time Molly had friends. She’d been pretty close to them too. She wouldn’t have tried to help them if she hadn’t cared about them. When she became Harry’s apprentice her free time had slowly dwindled to the point where she didn’t have much time to hang out with friends. When she had they had noticed that she was different. They didn’t know what it was, but they picked up on it and things had deteriorated. Everybody else in her world was older than she was, so she hadn’t fit in there either. Then came Chichén-Itzá and the Red Court. Friendships were right out after that. Now Molly seemed to have made a friend in Jo. She kind of liked it.
Harry nodded. "Jo's a good hunter. So is Dean." He finished off his food and Coke, and reached for his duster. "Dean's brother just showed up, too. Sam. Looks like our list of allies is growing a bit."
He wasn't certain if that comforted him, or worried him. Maybe some of both. They didn't know what the Hellmouth could dish out at them - probably everything? - but the more allies there were, the more enemies they had in potential. Then again, it also gave them more minds to work out who these enemies were and what the weaknesses would be.
A double-edged sword. But in any case, Harry was glad to have more people with him than against. Keeping good will with the few vampires he'd run into - Godric and Spike for example - was probably worthwhile.
“I met him around Thanksgiving while I was wandering around not knowing where I was or what was going on.” That was chirped out as Molly shrugged back into her coat and headed for the door as if it were casual conversation. “He seems nice. Kind of like me in a way. Really tall. Taller than you I think. Nothing like Dean.”
It didn’t surprise her that more people were flocking to York for either side of things. It made sense in a Risk game kind of way. You wanted to build up your little brightly colored pieces until you had enough to head to head against your enemy and hope you had more pieces than they did.
Harry shook his head. "Nah. I've still got a few inches on him." Not many, but Sam had reached Harry's eyes. It was still an impressive enough height. Harry did a double-take and went back over what she had just said. "Wait - what do you mean, not knowing where you where or what was going on?" He grabbed his staff and lunged out the door after her, reaching for her shoulder. That was something that didn't belong in such casual conversation. "What happened?"
She stopped as soon as he touched her and looked up at her teacher in mild surprise. This wasn’t anything new to her. Disturbing and scary, but not new. His obvious upset about it made her fidget her fingers together as she shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t like the holidays. They make my head hurt, and the nightmares are worse. I kind of get…lost, I guess. Like in the woods after that vampire attacked us only for a few days instead of hours. It happens.” She really didn’t want to see the expression that was going to come crashing down on his face. She was sure it was going to. “I ran into Sam when I was trying to find my way to Murphy’s place at the end of it. Things were starting to come back.”