Pepper is the sword-arm of crazy (pickledpepper) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2008-11-06 07:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1979-11] november, millicent bagnold (née macfusty), octavius pepper |
Who: Pepper and Mill
When: Wednesday mid-morning
Where: Mill's office
What: Pepper hasn't seen Mill in ages and clearly this needs to change
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete
Pepper felt... giddy. It was a strange feeling, weirdly exhilarating though he really thought he ought to be more terrified out of his wits. He'd just quit his job. The job that was pretty much the backbone of his life, his anchor, the thing that defined him more than almost anything else defined him, the thing all his plans revolved around... and now it was gone.
If he sat down, part of him suspected, he would give into that terror, so instead he kept moving, looking like he knew exactly where he was going even though for once in his life, he didn't have a clue. Until, quite suddenly, he twisted and changed direction, startling someone heading in the other direction, and made his way back to the lifts. There was somewhere he could go, somewhere that would be most entertaining in his current mood.
He knew he was getting close when secretaries started trying to stop him. "I'm expected," he lied, brushing past them determinedly even as a rather persistent one followed him down the corridor insisting that, "Sir! Sir, you can't be here!"
"Whatever," he told her, pushing past into Millicent's office with the stricken secretary still trailing after him. "I just got fired," he announced, dropping into the seat in front of her desk. "How's the Minister thing going?"
Mill looked up in some surprise as the door burst open, because that hadn't happened in a while. Hadn't happened, really, since she'd received this promotion and been removed from working with Pepper full-time. Even the most belligerent committee chairs didn't barge into the Minister's office. She thought maybe she'd missed it.
Assistant #2 (no, she still hadn't bothered learning names) was standing beside her, going over the revised safezone plans; he went for his wand, and she laid a hand on his arm without even really thinking. They had their uses, but she still backed her instincts to give her a quicker, more accurate summation of any scenario than theirs, and this was just Pepper.
Just. Hah. He looked... wild, heedless, more so than usual, but definitively Pepper. She'd missed him, these weeks she'd been doing her best to avoid even passing in the corridors.
Wait. Fired?
"Pepper stays," she said, to the office in general, to #2 by her side and #3 hovering in the doorway behind Pepper looking exasperated. "Everyone else out."
At least she'd made some headway with her staff; not so much as a word of protest as #2 gathered up the parchment and walked out of the office, though #3 did give her a pointed look as she closed the door.
And then, then Mill let herself actually look at him properly, full on. "The Minister thing is hectic," she said. "What happened?"
Of course she would go and focus on that. He leaned back in the chair, stretching his long legs out in front of him and attempting to control the urge to kick his boot against her desk, tapping out the rhythm of the adrenalin still whizzing around his bloodstream or whatever it was it was doing. "Technically it was more of a... you can't fire me, I quit. I was writing Crouch's stupid report on everything I've done and said in the last week, and I meant to write that I went to visit Emmeline on Thursday night to play cards, but it came out as 'You're an incomprehensible ass with no understanding of the human mind and all your policies suck.' Or.. something along those lines. I'm sure he would've fired me if I'd stayed to find out."
Honestly he couldn't quite remember exactly what he'd written, only that Crouch was sure to be steaming over it and possibly something about him turning the DMLE into a farce. Which was a pity. He should've made a copy of the memo so he could keep it for later, whether it was to frame it and hang it on the wall or to re-read it, wonder what the fuck he'd been thinking and possibly smother himself.
Mill had come around her desk as he started to regale her, any doubt about his hyped-up state thoroughly removed by the very style of his speech. Half-sitting on the front of her desk, she wrapped her fingers quite firmly around the edge. It was roughly what she'd suspected, just a dozen times worse. Those fucking, fucking idiots. Sure, desperate times called for discipline, but they also called for a little bit of flexibility so as not to squeeze out those most likely to be capable of getting the job done.
Mill didn't shake her head, sigh, say, Only you, Pepper. Nor did waste time even considering whether the memo could be retrieved before it was read, the damage undone.
She said, "Wish I could have seen a copy," with a wry little smile. "Or his face when he read it."
This couldn't be allowed to happen. It had happened. Fuck. "What now?" she asked, more quietly.
And this was why Millicent was a good boss, because when he did things like quitting in a fit of pique or randomly torturing Death Eaters she didn't mess around with silly things like telling him off. Telling him off was pointless, because he hadn't yet figured out if there was any possible way to wrangle a time turner out of Aloysius (probably not). Nudging him into not making the same mistakes in the future, now that was actually worth doing... even if people had different opinions on exactly what the mistake in any given situation was.
"I was thinking of going to the Hog's Head for a drink, actually. And maybe poke the black market for a journal I'm allowed to ward in. And I suppose at some point I should go home and think about how it's really lucky Jo earns so much money."
That, at least, he'd already considered, due to his pay-freeze, so he wouldn't have to sit down and fiddle the numbers - plus he did have quite a bit saved up. He wouldn't be able to just sit around at home forever, though, he'd have to find something-- oh, fuck, this line of thought was going to lead to far too many harsh realities, and Mill would probably have enough of those on her own without him helping out. Couldn't he just enjoy this bizarre moment of reckless abandon for a while?
"You can't just--" Mill started, but didn't bother finishing, because sure, Pepper would be about as capable of sitting around and doing nothing, especially in the current climate, as Millicent herself, but both of them knew that already and there was little to be gained from vocalising it until one of them could suggest a concrete alternative. Clearly that wasn't going to be Pepper just yet. So she sat there for a moment, arms folded across her chest with her fingers drumming on one elbow as her brain moved like a Seeker who'd spotted the snitch.
How could they use this? How could this be turned to an advantage? Mill refused to believe it couldn't be.
She refused to let Pepper just slip through her fingers. He was far too useful. She could perhaps move fast, pull strings (what use being the fucking Minister otherwise), get him assigned to her department, but how could she--
Wait a minute.
"You can't just sit around," she said, more thoughtfully and completely, looking at Pepper again. "Are you planning on joining the vigilantes?"
It was decidedly unfair to just assume that he couldn't just sit around, Pepper thought, considering that he'd never had the chance to find out. Well-- alright, so he voluntarily worked excessively long hours at a job that didn't pay overtime, and when he took a day off he frequently wondered aloud what he was supposed to do with himself, so perhaps there was some logic to the argument. But still!
Though her question made him forget the vague inkling of psuedo-indignation in surprised amusement as his brain immediately tried to recall how long it had been since he'd demanded they let him in - late July, wasn't it, that Fabian had died? It was probably sort of awful that he couldn't remember, that the day wasn't seared into his memory, but there were other things about Fabian he'd rather remember than the day he'd died.
He forced himself to stop fidgeting, gazing back at Mill with a raised eyebrow. "I wasn't," he said, completely truthfully. "But it's probably an option."
There was something in that response, or the way he gave it, that a part of Millicent's brain insisted deserved greater attention, but she'd become used to being far too busy to pay attention to everything, and she was thinking hard now, pulling a rough plan together. "I think you should," she said simply. "If you think you might be interested."
If she were a different person, Mill might have moments, perhaps in the quiet, small hours when she was still working, wondering how she became the sort of person who used others as far as they could stand to be used. But she was Millicent Bagnold, and wondering serves no useful purpose.
It wasn't as though Pepper really minded being used, anyway; how many relationships of his weren't based on the concept in the first place, after all? At least with Millicent he knew full well what she was doing - and welcomed it, gladly taking direction from her. It hardly made him a doormat. She could push him, but he'd always push back, tooth and nail, mixing her suggestions with his own ideas and shoving at the boundaries whenever he came up against them.
This suggestion he considered shrewdly, mulling over implications, complications. Having the Minister on their side would be good, undoubtably. Would he tell anyone? Abe almost definitely. The others... maybe he'd see how this conversation went. "If they'd even trust me," he commented; that, after all, had been the major hurdle when he really was trying to get involved. "I'm Slytherin and I've been investigating them, and there's not much I can offer them without access to DMLE information."
Millicent lifted an eyebrow, one corner of her mouth quirking up with it. "Are you trying to talk me into asking you to spy on You-Know-Who's organisation instead?" Because she wouldn't, never that, not Pepper...
Oh, who was she kidding? She would, in a heartbeat, if she thought it had a snowflake's chance in hell of succeeding.
"You've got magnificent public cause for discontent," she pointed out, "and if they think MLE business is all you have to offer, they're clearly even stupider than I'd given them credit for. Much more difficult than getting them to trust you, of course, is going to be getting them to trust me." One hurdle at a time.
It would have been a lie to say that Pepper had never considered spying on the Death Eaters - it had been a very superficial consideration though, the arguments against it too strong. He'd been too separated in school, too antagonistic, too disrespectful of the people that held all the strings. He did not fancy impossible tasks, as a rule. "It'd probably be easier to ease that in later... I'd probably need to visibly have contact with you before then so it wouldn't come out of no where. They seem pretty independently minded,
especially the Gryffindors, I doubt they'd appreciate me springing anything on them."
That, at least, was true; he still got dizzy navigating the sociopolitical minefields of the Order, trying to figure out who was on who's good and bad sides and what they'd react badly to and how to present any given idea. Getting put on probation over giving them information might have helped his case some, he thought, but it was so hard to tell.
Mention of the prickly tendencies of Gryffindors got the usual, reflex sigh out of Mill (as performed twice a year when looking at the list of new hitwizard recruits) but it was distracted. "A position in my office could probably be arranged," she noted, "if I move fast."
She'd dodged him for more than a month after a bit of ridiculous gossip, and now she was going to rescue him from dismissal and install him in her personal staff. One of these days, when the war was over, Millicent was going to laugh for weeks.
"I'll probably need to move today." Much as she'd like to give him more time to think about it. This wasn't something she wanted him stepping into lightly, and because of that she also added, "And if you're working for me personally, Pepper, then you're working with me." She met his gaze steadily, needing to know he understood. "There are things I've let you get away with because you are - were," her mouth twisted, "a fucking good hitwizard, but there are no procedures for what needs to be done anymore."
Aw, fuck, he wasn't even going to get to enjoy hanging around at home being fired? But then, part of him had probably expected that, or why else would he have come here? Deep down he knew Millicent would never let him go, not without a fight. That was the thing about mentor/mentee relationships, they tended to be sort of mutual. Probably that was why it didn't even occur to him that he would say no to this. There was no reason to it, absolutely no advantage in turning down this possibility.
"And here I was looking forward to reading the policy folio on liaising with vigilantes," he teased, though his tone was level and serious, the joke only in the words. "I'm adaptable. As long as you don't make me report on my every fucking action." Okay, it was possible he was still pissed, but that likely wasn't changing any time soon.
"I'm not going to make you do anything," Mill promised, with a faint smile. "But if we fuck up in this it may be harder to wave aside without some advance preparation."
She leaned back on the desk, her smile growing a little bitter. "I'm going to take a hit for this, Pepper. Transferring my almost-fired supposed toyboy into my staff? The hats-and-handbags mafia are going
to crucify me. Not that I give a fuck if it's worth it. I'd dance the cancan on Narcissa Malfoy's lawn if it'd help get me You-Know-Who's head in a bucket." A deprecating snort, and she continued, on a roll now, "Not that it would. For that, I need information and I need communication and I need co-ordination. I don't need to know everything you do or say or think, but I do need to trust that you're giving me everything I need. If I can't rely on that, we might as well not even bother. I'll find another way, or do it without the damned freedom fighters, and you can go home and commune with your lizard."
Pepper had not actually thought about how it would look, sordid gossip lost under the rush of everything that had happened in the last... what, fifteen minutes? Half an hour at most. He'd assumed he'd always be a hitwizard, aimed to one day take over from Higgs, and now he was out of the department with Crouch swearing he'd never work there again and discussing working as the Minister's liaison with vigilantes in a civil war that was becoming increasingly desperate. "That would be a sight," he commented with a roguish smirk, half because it was just expected from him, and half because, well, it would be.
Turning serious again, he nodded in acknowledgement. "I told you about Wilkes, didn't I? That could've landed me in Azkaban. My lizard can do without me."
"Azkaban's the least of my worries," Mill said lightly, standing up from her spot on the edge of her desk and circling back behind it. Just like she didn't wonder, and she didn't worry, she also most certainly didn't have nightmares about dying under Greyback's claws, finding her husband's body, hearing her daughter scream...
But it was a near thing.
She shifted papers to the side, pulled down a blank page of Ministerial parchment. "Go and get drunk," she said, even as she tapped her quill on the side of the inkwell. "Keep your head down. I'll be in touch."