Skylar James Bale (socialiterocker) wrote in btvsal, @ 2009-02-03 21:53:00 |
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Current mood: | scared |
Holy Hell in a Hand Basket
Who: Skylar, Pat, and a surprise
When: Skylar and Pat's Place
When: Tuesday Afternoon
Skylar had torn through half of the house, but she still couldn't find her damn keys. She was positive that she had set them on the coffee table last night, but now they were nowhere to be found. "Pat! Are you sure that they aren't in the bedroom?" All she wanted to do was go to the store!
Pat came walking back down the stairs, looking as dumbfounded as she did. "I know I did! I left them right on my jeans. I'm at a loss for words here..." He rubbed his head, wondering if maybe he'd just gone and lost his damned mind.
"Am I getting stupid in my pregnancy?" Skylar asked, scratching her head. The doctor had confirmed her pregnancy, which only seemed to make Wesley fret over her more. He had kind of taken over as her unofficial Watcher lately, and didn't exactly need an excuse to hover over her more than he already was lately. "That's the third thing I've lost this week."
"Babe, you aren't getting stupid unless I'm right there with you. This is a little ridi..." he cut himself off and blinked. "Huh..." he walked over as something had clearly caught his eye. He reached under the dining room table and, sure enough, picked up the car keys Skylar had been looking for. "How the hell...?"
Skylar stared in disbelief a the keys that she was pretty sure had materialized out of thin air. "OK, I just totally looked under there. How on earth did they get there after I looked there?"
"Whatever..." he shook his head, laughing."I so don't have the patie..." he stopped himself with a hard swallow, sobering his look. "The... the time to deal with that... now."
Skylar walked over to him and hugged him. She knew that everything with Patience was hitting him all over again due to recent events. "Apparently, my keys have decided to grow legs and run around recently," she said to him, still holding him for the moment.
"I dunno, Sky. I'm dealing with vampires, and demons, and all this other stuff fine." He forced a smile, hugging her right back. "But keys with legs? I think I draw the line there."
"Well, it's either that, or a poltergeist, and I'm more comfortable with walking keys, personally." Skylar had seen that movie. While she was sure her home wasn't built on an old cemetery, you never really knew.
"Poltergeists lead to static-filled TVs, and that creepy almost-a-midget lady. No thanks." Pat leaned down to kiss her forehead. She was a lot shorter than him, but he loved it: while she was infinitely more powerful than him, it gave him that fantasy that he could still protect her. "Wesley doing alright? I noticed he;s become a lot more protective of you since... Narcissa. I mean, I get it: he loved her, and she was your Watcher."
"Well, he's back to living at home, so I have to guess that he's doing a little better," Skylar told him. "They won't give him a new Slayer because the Council thinks that he needs time to pull himself together." Probably smart, but it gave him nothing to do for the time being. Which caused him to be all 'mother hen' over her.
"I think the whole thing, if nothing else, showed us we have at least one thing in common: we both love you." Pat said, rubbing her back sweetly as he breathed in the scent of her hair.
"Then I'm a very lucky woman," Skylar said, looking up and smiling at him. Then she heard the sound of breaking glass in the kitchen. "What the hell was that?"
"Aw, for..." He bolted up, eyes narrowing. "I know you're a Slayer and everything, but you're also pregnant... so I'm gonna check it out first."
"I'm only a little pregnant," Skylar protested, walking in right behind him. On the kitchen floor was a dinner plate that, well, probably came out of the randomly open kitchen cabinet. "Is the house tilted?"
"Skylar..." he immediately began to worry. Normally, with everything he'd seen in his life, this might not be a big deal. But he was dealing with all the death, all the violence, and now with trying to protect his girlfriend and his unborn child. "No arguments... until we find out what the hell is going on, you're going to stay with Wesley."
"Why don't we both stay with Wesley?" Damn, was her house really haunted or something? Not exactly the most shocking thing to happen to her, but still aggravating beyond all possible belief. Of course, that might be the hormones talking there.
"If it gets worse, I will... but I need to find out what this is." He was probably over-worrying... but who could blame him right now? "Hopefully it's nothing, but if it's not? Baby, I already lost two people that meant the world to me... I don't wanna lose two more."
She sighed. She hated it when he got all resolute like this, because that meant that he would be stubborn and not do anything but what he thought was right. "Alright, but it's probably nothing, you know."
"Alright. Come on, I'll walk you to the living room, you can call him." Pat honestly wanted to break shit right now... when would they catch any kind of peaceful break?
"OK," Skylar said, heading toward the living room, picking up the phone, and dialing Wesley's number. After talking to him for a few minutes, she hung up. "He said that we were *both* welcome over there as long as we needed. He also wants to help investigate." It wasn't like they were lacking in ghosts or anything that could haunt them.
"Ok. Stay RIGHT HERE." He motioned to the space right near the front door. "I'm gonna run upstairs to pack some bags. If you hear ANYTHING, you run straight to the car. Got it?"
Skylar nodded, moving toward the front door where he told her to be. "I'll be fine, Pat," she said, but didn't move from the spot anyway.
Showing an athleticism he didn't often get to show anymore, he sprinted up the stairs, towards the bedroom.
Waiting for him upstairs, sitting on the bed, or so it appeared, was the solid looking form of Iris, her arms crossed over her chest. She didn't look mad, but, maybe exasperated? "Boo," she said simply. She was still new at this whole haunting thing, so she hadn't had the time to think of good material.
Pat was a fairly big guy. 6'3", in pretty good shape, and with eyes that had seen more violence, evil, and demonic activity in 24 years than most people would see in 80. So, his response to this was probably obvious. Yeah. He screamed like a little girl. A comically high-pitched scream. "WHAT THE FUCK????"
Iris couldn't help but smirk just a little. "Did it really have to take ghost tricks to catch y'all's attention?" She was dressed in a black shirt and white blouse with a little red scarf around her neck, to cover the marks from the vampire bite. "So, how's life treating you?"
Pat stared at her for a moment, before finally calming down enough to give as proper response: ".....WHAT THE FUCK????"
By this point, Skylar had decided to say screw staying in one spot and rushed up the stairs faster than a pregnant girl probably should, only to stop dead in her tracks when she saw who was sitting on the bed. "Oh sweet Jesus," she said, crossing herself.
"If only," Iris said. "Nope, just little ole' me, guys. Were you expecting someone else?"
Ok, so Pat was officially past the swearing-repeatedly thing. But now he just pointed at her, turning as white as a... well, you know. Finally, he eked out a few real words. "Iris? Y-You're... I mean... how?"
Iris stood up and walked over closer to the two of them, in the process passing right through a bag on the floor like it wasn't even there. "Well, I'm dead, I died violently, and I apparently have unfinished business or something. I'm still not sure how this whole ghost thing works. It didn't exactly come with a book, you know?"
Skylar just stared at her as she talked. "I think I'm going to faint," she said, leaning against the wall.
Pat had one of those moments where logic overrides what's going on. "Well, even if it DID, it's not like you'd be able to hold it, so why complain? I mean..." then it hit him again and he shook his head. "Wait.. this can't... oh god... this is because you hate me."
"If I concentrate hard enough, I can move stuff. How do you think I kept moving your keys?" Iris asked him. She rolled her eyes. "Pat, I don't HATE you. Sure, I'm a little pissed. I mean, couldn't you have waited like, a month before getting her pregnant at least?" She pointed to Skylar, who was looking whiter by the minute.
Well, that little comment riled him up at least enough to get him past the shock and to the point where he felt fine semi-bickering with a ghost. "Well its not like it happened on purpose! It's not like I said, 'Hey, Skylar, you know what would REALLY make Iris roll in her grave? Let's make a friggin' BABY!"
"You think I asked to be half of a Demi Moore movie?" Iris shot right back. "Don't always get what you want, Pat. Isn't there even a song that says that?"
"Well yeah, but there's songs that talk about tigers and dragons too, and nobody's sitting here quoting Ronnie James Dio, Iris." Pat looked over to make sure Skylar hadn't fainted and fallen on her face. "Iris... you know I never meant to hurt you. You HAVE to know that."
"They're probably quoting it somewhere, and you know it," Iris reminded him. "You know, I KNOW that you didn't mean to hurt me...and yet I'm still here. It's kind of weird like that."
Skylar just looked at the two of them. This was too weird and bizarre, even for her life.
"If there's anything we can do to help you, Iris, we will." He wasn't about to mince words now, not when this might be his only chance to say all the things he never got to. "I don't know if you heard me at... at your... grave..." he hated even saying the word. "But I still love you, Iris. I always will. We married for the wrong reasons, and I think we both knew it... but I never wanted it to end like it did."
"I heard you, Pat," Iris said softly, looking down for a moment. "Well, it ended in pretty much the worse way possible. No...the real worst would have been if one of us killed the other, but you know what I mean." It seemed that the universe wanted to take 'till death do you part' a little more literally than she would have liked. "I sincerely think that the universe is screwing with us."
"The universe is screwing with us???" Pat seemed to be having a mini-Chevy-Chase-Freakout, ala Christmas Vacation. "Let's see! A black gangsta vampire murdered my fiancee, then he murdered my wife, now I'm finally finding some peace and MY EX-WIFE'S GHOST IS BACK!" He gave her a comically exasperated look. "The universe is screwing with us? YA THINK???"
Iris's eyes seemed to glow red for a split second. "Oh, you think you have it so tough, Pat? I'm DEAD! D-E-A-D dead! God fucking forbid that I want a little peace! But no, I'm stuck here, in limbo, with nothing better to do than haunt my husband, who has already moved on by impregnating the woman that, by the way, he was seeing before I shed my mortal coil. Somehow, I think I really got the raw end of the deal here!" With that final sentence, the mirror over the dresser shattered. She looked over at it, surprised. "Huh...didn't know I could do that." Apparently, her Christmas Vacation freak outs included telekinetically shattering mirrors still.
Skylar screamed when the mirror shattered. "OK, I'm going to go now. You two...work this out or something, alright?" With that, she headed back downstairs.
"R-Right on. Um... good plan." Pat said to Skylar, because really, what else COULD he say? "I'm sorry, Iris. You don't know how sorry. When you died... after everything that happened, without me getting to tell you how I really felt, about everything... the fact that that woman that just walked downstairs never left my side is the only reason I didn't put a bullet in my head those first couple days."
"OK...apparently death did not fix the spaz in me," Iris said after Skylar went downstairs. She took a deep and unneeded breath to try and keep herself calm. "I know about all of that, Pat. I watched it. Ninety percent of the time, I'm OK. I think that it's the other ten percent of the time that's keeping me around right now. I'm glad that Skylar was around for you. I meant what I said to Wesley that night. I want you to have what we didn't quite have. Still...I'm only human, you know?"
"I know, I know." Pat leaned against the wall, and as he looked at her, he felt that pang of guilt, of wondering what was wrong with him, that he couldn't make it work with such a beautiful, intelligent woman.
"Well, I should probably let you get back to Skylar," Iris said, looking around the room. "Tell her that I'm sorry about the mirror. Can't quite promise it won't happen again, though. I'm still getting the hang of ghost powers with telekinesis on top of it." She disappeared after saying that, but her presence didn't fully leave the house, so she wasn't completely gone.
Before he could say goodbye, she was gone. But somehow, he knew she wasn't gone for good anyway. He winced though, as he suddenly wondered just WHAT she was able to see while in the house.
"Jesus... H... Christ." Pat came walking down the stairs looking like he'd seen a ghost. Which.... har har, he had. "Skylar? I don't... I don't know what to say. She, she apologized."
"For which part? The breaking of a thousand dollar mirror, or for almost giving us a heart attack?" Skylar asked. She didn't want to be a bitch, especially since Iris *could* be listening, but damnit, this was too much.
"For the mirror in particular... but I know her well enough to know she meant for all of it." And leave it to Pat to come up with this next part. "Of course, if you REALLY want to have the last laugh there, I think I can help arrange that..."
"I should probably sweep up the glass," Skylar said, standing up. "You know, that's pretty much the last thing on my mind right now, if I'm reading you right." They would have to at *least* leave and get a hotel room.
He laughed there, he couldn't help it. "Ok, ok... I was just thinking, if she wants to hang around here, then she's gonna have to see shit she REALLY does not wanna see."
Skylar swatted him on the shoulder. "I doubt that she exactly wants to hang around here. I think she's stuck." Still, if she was choosing to do so, he probably had a point.
"Fine... if you want to get a hotel, it's cool. But I've been planning on this all day, and I'm not letting stuff like this ruin our sex lives."
"Oh, just stuff like this, huh?" She was smiling now, though, so things were a lot better. "Alright then. We'll rent a hotel and crash with Wesley later, because he won't leave us alone until we get there at some point."