numenviscera (numenviscera) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2021-11-19 15:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | #june 2018, miriam, miriam x vex, vex |
Who: Miriam and Vex
Where: Vex’s house on Ludlow
When: Monday afternoon, June 18
Monday had been a busy day for Miriam, who’d cleaned the whole house before noon. It was a distraction for an issue she didn’t know how to handle, so while the pain simmered in the back of her mind, she took her anger out on the dishes and the laundry. The house hadn’t even been all that dirty to begin with, but when she felt the itch to clean herself, she might as well give into it. She did the things a cleaning lady wouldn’t: she went through her closets and cabinets, pulling out the things that were no longer used, and boxed them up to take them to charity. Using her abilities made things even easier, especially moving boxes, and she relished in the fact that she could do that now. Why was she trying to hide it in her own home? She no longer saw the point.
With the house clean, her attention turned elsewhere, first to a bottle of wine, then onto the power she’d felt growing inside her, coming and going, sometimes so strong that it felt like a storm, others like a breath of fresh air. And for the first time in forever, Miriam wanted answers. No one could tell her what the other place had done to her, but there were people who knew about her past. Miriam took to the internet, then the library, and with those sources exhausted, she went to the one person she knew knew something she didn’t. Vex was easy to track down. Her heart pounded as she climbed out of her car and walked up to his house. She knocked on the door and waited. Today she would have answers. She’d waited long enough.
Vex was absolutely wrecked today. He'd gone on a bender early that morning, finished all the alcohol in the house and if he hadn't passed out after that, he would have driven out to get more. It had been a strange day and he was suffering the effects when he woke up with a raging hangover after a self indulgent nap - or more accurately, passing out on the couch. He was shuffling around in the kitchen in just boxers and a bathrobe, munching on some leftover cake from a couple of days ago. The chocolate and sugar was helping with the headache and so were the painkillers he'd washed down with some soda and thankfully he didn't want any more booze, just sugar. So much sugar. All the sugar in the house!
He almost didn't answer the door when he heard the knock, wishing Lem was here to take care of that shit, but maybe it was her, locked out or something - they didn't generally get many guests so that was the most likely scenario and he was too wrapped up in his own mess to pay any attention to where she might be. So he dragged himself to the front door, opening it up with a sleepy scowl. It took a moment to register who she was but as soon as he did he had a near knee jerk reaction. "Oh fuck no," he grunted and slammed the door in her face.
“Vex!” Miriam snapped, and her hands balled into fists as she fought every single instinct to blow the door right off its hinges. The only thing keeping her from doing so was the knowledge that it would even lessen the chances of him speaking with her and that was the goal. “I just want to talk. About AIR, and…” There was so much more, but it was AIR that was in her sights at the moment. She clenched her teeth and inhaled slowly through her nose, then exhaled just as slowly. So much of this felt beneath her, and yet so much of it was her own damn mess. She knocked again, insistent. “You offered me answers once,” she called out, trying not to care if the neighbors heard, even though that was impossible. It felt like she was waving around her dirty laundry on his front porch. “Please. I’ll buy you a new phone. Or two.” Just open the fucking door.
Vex groaned and let his head thud lightly against the door before he forced himself to open it. "I don't have answers for you," he grunted when he came face to face with her again. "I already told your husband that." Something about being primitive apes, if he recalled correctly. How could they possibly understand or know the answers to the complexity of their universe? "And I have a new phone. Please don't break it, I haven't backed it up in a week." He would have been fine with her yelling about everything she wanted to say out on the porch, he didn't really care about the neighbors, but he didn't always follow his impulses and he had approached her first.
“My husband tells me nothing,” Miriam said, and if she was seething beneath the surface, then it had nothing to do with Vex. She was just as guilty of hiding things from him as he was from her, but Miriam liked to think that her secrets were harmless. They were her own and they didn’t concern him. She could tell him, but it would change nothing. In fact, he would probably brush it aside. But his secrets had a tendency to upend her world. “I just want to know what you know. What you remember. Because I remember nothing. All my knowledge is from the papers and—and something is different now. I don’t know if it’s from AIR or over there.”
"Lady, I don't remember shit about that place either," Vex grumbled and while he could have some sympathy for her plea, he didn't trust her not to tell Anthony what she might learn here today and Anthony was not to be trusted. "They wiped our memories good before they let us go." He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her for a second. "What's different now?" Could she feel the others like he could? He'd thought it was just him, related to his visions somehow which had gotten far stronger lately.
Miriam sighed, her disappointment plain on her face. It had been months since Vex approached her and the memory was hazy at best, but she’d been hoping he had more to tell her than what he’d said out on the street. At the time it had caught her off guard, he’d looked and sounded like he’d lost his mind, but now she knew better. Surviving that hellish dimension had given her a touch of perspective. “There’s this sense that I can feel the others now. Not what they’re doing, or exactly where they are, but if they’re near or far. Left or right. I felt when Officer Solomon left. And the wolf that’s not a wolf anymore. And sometimes when I get near certain people, there’s this rush of energy. It doesn’t have to be one of the others. So far they all happen to be witches.”
Vex hummed, studying her intensely as he thought about it. A rush of energy around mostly witches was new and not something he'd experienced but the rest of it sounded familiar enough. "You think you can feel their magic?" he asked and finally stepped back to let her in. He just hoped she wouldn't trash something he actually gave a shit about in the house, but so far she seemed to just want answers. He still wasn't sure he wanted to give them to her, but she had sparked his curiosity in turn.
“Possibly. I’m not sure what to do with it, if that’s it. It’s my understanding it takes a good deal of training to use it, that you’re not just born with it,” Miriam said, stepping inside the house. It was run down, as expected, but not as bad as she might have previously thought. Living in the other place had taught her the true meaning of living in filth. Vex’s house, while in need of a good cleaning, came nowhere close. “So you’re not feeling anything like that?” She wasn’t entirely sure he knew any witches, though it wouldn’t surprise her if he did. He was living right next door to two of them and he hadn’t even batted an eye at her speaking of them so plainly.
"Yeah, yeah I can feel everyone but... Hold on, hold on," Vex said, furrowing his brows and holding up a hand as if to stop her. "When you say you feel it, you mean you feel like you can use it?" It sure sounded like that's what she meant, if she didn't know what to do with it and mentioned training. "I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you here, it sounds a lot like you can do more than feel it."
“The magic? Maybe,” Miriam said, her brow creased in thought. “My husband and my son are both witches. I was never able to feel anything before. Now, when they’re near, there’s something there. Like, this power that’s just beneath the surface, but I don’t know how to use. Or maybe I am. They’re both air witches. I can’t tell if I’m moving things with magic or telekinesis.” She wasn’t going to deny what she could do at this point. He’d called her out on it months ago and she saw no reason to lie anymore.
"My visions are stronger after I got back," Vex said speculatively. "I didn't think much of it, I just thought I'd evolved. But now I can tell roughly where everyone is or if they're close by at least, like we're a fucking hive mind." He rubbed his face and then waved vaguely at Miriam to follow him before he headed into the house and made a beeline for the kitchen. He needed more chocolate and fast, his head still hurt and his stomach felt all raw after his binge that morning. "It's more likely than not that place changed us, but that means the others must have changed too."
Miriam followed him, scrunching up her nose when she saw the state of his kitchen. It wasn’t her house, but the desire to clean it was so strong that it made her antsy. When was the last time that floor had even seen a mop? “I’ll have to ask Brianna and see if she’s noticed anything different, as well,” she said. “When we first got back, I felt different, but it took a little bit longer before I began to feel everyone else. Maybe once everyone had returned? Do you know if everyone made it back?” She’d been so out of her element there that she’d stuck to Juniper and hadn’t ventured beyond it, which limited her knowledge of the others that had been stuck there. She remembered that Vex had been willing to wander, however, so it was possible he knew of more than she did.
"Can't you feel them?" Vex asked as he helped himself to some chocolate cake, cutting a big slice for himself before hopping up to sit on the counter. He gestured vaguely at the cake in some kind of semi-invitation, not wasting words on that. Miriam didn't look like a woman who'd accept cheap grocery store cake at a mad man's house, but Vex could be polite sometimes. In a way. "Two of them are dead, everyone else is back. The cop is on the road somewhere far from here, Carson's left town too. Everyone else is here, I think. I can't tell where exactly, just that they're close enough to be in town. One of them is... Not in town, but almost. I think." He wondered if he could see where, if he focused, but his mind felt too sluggish for that. "He was far away just a few hours ago. It's weird."
“I suppose so. It’s weird feeling people that I don’t know. I wasn’t sure what I’d feel if one of them died or didn’t return,” Miriam explained. She’d felt them return, one by one, but wasn’t positive she knew the total to begin with. The only time they’d all been together was when they’d first arrived. After that, there were groups that stuck together, many of them in Juniper, but she’d always known there were others that did their own thing, like Vex. She looked at the cake, intending to ignore it, but the sudden desire to partake gave her pause. She hadn’t been hungry a second ago, but now that there was chocolate icing available, even grocery store bought, it was hard to pass up. Unable to help herself, she nabbed a bit of icing from the edge with her finger and stuck it in her mouth. “I think I know which one you’re talking about. Archer? He’s not here right now.”
"Oh, Archer's not in town either," Vex muttered as he focused again. "No, I mean Max. He was far away and then he was just... here. Like he teleported. Maybe he can teleport now. He's not in town though." He was going to have to buy more cake but he really didn't feel like leaving the house today, maybe he could order desserts from somewhere, just a shit load of ice cream or something. "I don't even like most of these people and I know you don't either. I know you don't like me, but you're still here for answers. I can respect that. You feeling like you know any more?" He finished his slice of cake and pulled over the rest of it to get some more, not caring if Miriam had already had her fingers in the icing.
“Teleportation would be quite a new skill to acquire,” Miriam said as she considered the possibility. It could be handy, but it could be dangerous. There was no telling who might see him when he disappeared or reappeared, and what if he made a mistake and teleported himself inside a wall? Or a solid object? It seemed potentially dangerous and she didn’t envy the learning curve that had to have come with it. “You seemed to have answers before. You knew things I didn’t. It was jarring. And there is nothing more frustrating than realizing someone knows something about you that you don’t know yourself,” she said, her mind hopping between AIR and the other place, her telekinesis and this new power that she’d yet to figure out. “I stuck to Juniper. The ones that stayed there are the ones I know best, but Brianna McCarthy is the only one I see socially. We are an odd group.” She paused, a question she’d been meaning to ask coming back to her. “You said there were others, when you mentioned AIR before. Were any of them trapped with us?”
"I just knew you were one of us," Vex told her. "I kept having visions of you throughout the years, I only have visions of people who are close to me or are connected to AIR. You're the only one connected to AIR who got stuck on the other side with me - that I know of. I've had a lot of visions throughout the years, of a lot of people, adults and children alike. I don't know half of them." He huffed softly. "That's why I took your picture that day, I wanted to ask the others if they knew you." He watched her, eyes narrowing for a second before he piled the rest of the cake onto his plate. "How 'bout you show me what you can do? Without breaking my phone this time."
“What others?” Miriam asked. “I’m not fond of the idea of people I don’t know knowing what I can do. It’s not something I share with a bunch of people. My husband didn’t even know until after the fog.” At the time, she’d regretted not telling him sooner, but now Miriam was back to playing her cards close to her chest. He’d been keeping so many secrets for so very long that she wasn’t sure how far she could trust him. She didn’t think he would ever hurt her, but Miriam knew better than to ever get in his way. The bond they’d had had diminished greatly over the years and now seemed fragile, held together by her desire for things to remain the same on the surface. He wouldn’t like her being there, sharing what she could do with someone she couldn’t trust, but Vex was providing her with something he hadn’t—answers. “So long as you don’t try to video me, your phone is safe,” she told him, and began to tidy up his kitchen using her powers: pushing in the chairs at the table, putting trash in the bin, moving dirty plates to the sink, and starting up the water. Household chores came easy to her. It was where she’d gotten most of her practice, and she mentally moved the objects with ease.
"My phone is going nowhere near you again," Vex muttered honestly and then watched in fascination as she began... tidying. That was an interesting use of her powers and he wasn't going to complain about it. The kitchen could use some sprucing up. "Guess you don't even need a maid," he said as he glanced over at the sink, feeling like he was watching a scene from Fantasia - except Miriam was no wizard's apprentice and she wasn't botching it. Things moved smoothly to where she wanted them and so far the sink wasn't overflowing. "That's fucking impressive," he added. "Is it tiring at all?"
Miriam had a cleaning lady that came once a week, but she didn’t bother to tell him that. Their house was big and she helped with all the things that Miriam would rather pay some one else to do. She watched her powers work around the kitchen, as she spoke, being careful not to spill anything or make them worse. The more she took on, the harder it was, but these were also rather trivial activities at the same time. “It depends,” she said. “Eventually my head may start to hurt, especially if I’m trying to do too much at once. But these sorts of things aren’t usually that bad. Bigger things take more of a toll. Like moving a car. The amount of force I would have to exert would give me a migraine.”
"You can move a car," Vex said and that was damn impressive. She could have squashed him that day at the marina instead of his phone so he supposed he got off lucky. "You can do things with your telekinesis that you can't do physically, that's... Migraine or not, that comes in handy. You don't remember anything about AIR? They obviously let you go so you must not have shown any signs of having this power while they had you." That seemed to be the deal, there were people who'd been let go and none of them remembered a thing about their time away - and then there were those who had escaped. Vex couldn't even count how many faces he'd seen in his visions, people he had yet to meet, people who might be dead now for all he knew.
Miriam stopped cleaning and tidying after a minute more, pleased that she was leaving the place a touch cleaner than she found it. She liked making use of her powers where she could, finding that the more she used them, the better she was with them. Unfortunately, there were very few people she could use them around, unless she was extremely careful. “I have no memory of AIR. Two years of my childhood are a complete blank. The only signs that something traumatic might have happened were the scars. All of them have faded except for the worst,” Miriam said, pulling her hair back to show a faded white scar on her temple. “The doctors think I was electrocuted, so it’s probably better I don’t remember. I didn’t figure out my powers until a year later. I started moving pencils, cups, little things. I knew better than to tell anyone.”
"I didn't get my visions until I was twenty-five," Vex said with a little nod, leaning a little closer to see the scar. He didn't have his glasses on but he also didn't feel like jumping down to get close enough to see it well so he mostly took her word for it. "I didn't remember anything about AIR so I just thought I'd lost my fucking mind. Thought that for a long time too, just fucking crazy for a decade until I met my conduit. She saw the same things I saw and then the things I saw turned out to be true. How many kids do you think they've taken? Here and everywhere else? The place we went to burned down a long time ago. Did you know that?"
“I don’t know. People go missing in Point Pleasant all the time. I don’t think it could’ve all been AIR. I only learned about the fire after you approached me. I didn’t even know the name AIR before that,” Miriam explained. She’d done quite a bit of research after the fact, but there’d been no evidence of child kidnappings in the papers. Whatever unsavory things AIR had been up to, they’d been covered up by the fire. If she didn’t know better, she’d think AIR had done it to hide the evidence. Now she wondered how they’d done everything they did—not only drawing out her powers, but removing themselves from her memory. Who had the power to do such a thing? A witch? She hoped not, though she knew it was probably possible. “They’re gone now, aren’t they? The facility closed down after that.”
"Maybe," Vex said, not sure just how much information to divulge but AIR rebuilding was a matter of public record so there was really no point in lying about that, he just wasn't ready to share his own interest in the whole thing. "The building has been restored. I don't know if it's the same facility or something new but I'm keeping my eye on it. So far nothing suspicious has caught my attention, it might be a legit thing now." There was the lie, big and fat and juicy because he obviously knew that wasn't true and was about ready to go to war over it. Miriam wasn't someone he was eager to trust though, especially not given who she was married to.
If AIR was back, operating under the same name, then Miriam was reluctant to believe that anything had changed. She didn’t have any proof, but a feeling in her gut said to stay away from them and keep her secrets hidden. She knew she could probably find out more if she asked Anthony about them, but after yesterday she wasn’t keen to go running to him for anything. “Be careful,” she said. “I don’t know anything about them, but—“ Miriam gasped as the world around her blurred and she reached around, trying to find something to steady herself. The next thing she knew, she was looking at Sera, sitting on her bed in her dorm room, talking on her cell phone. “Sera, honey?” she said, moving towards her daughter, only to run into something solid that she hadn’t quite seen until it was there—the kitchen counter. Vex’s kitchen counter. Except it kept going out of focus, blocking the path between her and her daughter, who couldn’t possibly be in Vex’s kitchen. Sera seemed unphased, unaware that her mother was there, watching her. “Sera? Vex? Can you see this? Can you see my daughter?” she asked, fear starting to creep in. She was used to moving things, and almost used to the feeling of magic around her, but this was completely different and somewhat terrifying.
Vex was no stranger to people acting absolutely batshit insane. He'd been locked up with some colorful characters and he'd seen people react to delusions on multiple occasions. That didn't mean he was expecting Miriam to do just that and he watched with a cocked brow as he tried to suss out if she was pulling a prank or losing her marbles. "I only see you," he said as he reached out to stop her from walking into the counter again. "Has that happened before? You seeing things?" It didn't escape his attention that this sounded a lot like his own visions but that didn't make much sense. Maybe she was fucking with him, but her distress seemed pretty real to him.
“No,” Miriam said, trying not to panic. It was like she was there, in Sera’s dorm room, but not. She could see her daughter’s dirty laundry on the floor, but also the tile of Vex’s kitchen. There was a window just to the right of her headboard, but also Vex’s kitchen cabinets. It was like Sera’s world was laid over Vex’s. Her daughter continued to talk on the phone, oblivious to Miriam, though she did her best to wave her arms and get her attention. “Sera. Look at me. Sera!” she huffed in frustration. And then almost as soon as it started, it stopped. Miriam’s heart raced as she turned to face Vex, finding it much easier to see him without the worlds combined. “You didn’t see that? It was like… she was right here, but—but in her room, at school.”
Vex stared at her with narrowed eyes and with what she'd told him about magic, there was only one conclusion he could come to. "I think you're mimicking my gift," he said. "Just like you pick up on magic around witches. That's how my visions work, I see people like 3D projections right in front of me." He huffed and nodded slowly. "That's interesting. Who else do you know who's like us? You should test this with someone else, figure out just how much you can do." Could she summon it too, like he could now? Or was she stuck with the way his gift had presented itself at first, seemingly random.
“That’s… very disorienting,” Miriam said, feeling an unexpected touch of compassion for Vex. If she’d gone through something like that on a regular basis, she’d think she was crazy too. And so would everyone else. It made her appreciate her own abilities so much more, except for this new one she hadn’t quite worked out. Feeling magic was one thing, but seeing visions was another. “I’m not sure I like that, but… I suppose I need to figure it out. Quickly. Brianna’s the only one I’m close to. I don’t know if she’s taken on a new ability, but I can ask. But it makes me wonder if it’s just us, or if it’s anyone with an ability. I can feel my husband’s magic, and my son’s.” What could she do with it? How close did she have to be? She had a hundred questions and no one there to answer her.
"Might be time to experiment," Vex murmured and he honestly felt a little jealous. It'd be easy for him to test this out, he had connections with people with all sorts of abilities but he wasn't ready to introduce any of them to Miriam. "Do you know anyone like us?" he asked, hopping down from the counter to go find something else to munch on now that they were all out of cake. It took some rummaging around but he found some old ice cream in the bottom of the freezer that still looked good. "Someone you can test this with?"
Miriam racked her mind, but the number of people she knew with other abilities were limited. She was surrounded by witches, but when it came to everything else, people tended to be tight lipped. She didn’t blame them. She was as well. “No,” she said. “If Ty Solomon came back to town, I could maybe approach him. It would not surprise me if my husband knew of some people who I could test it on, but I would rather not involve him.” She knew Vex had met her husband, so she doubted he would have any issue with that. Or would at least understand. After yesterday’s reveal, she didn’t feel up to sharing anything with him, especially something that potentially gave her a power that he didn’t have. Anthony controlled everything, and for a long time she’d been fine with that, but at the moment she felt like a pawn instead of a queen and she was done.
That was promising, if it was true, and Vex studied her for a moment as he got comfortable again, perching on the counter. "You think Ty Solomon has abilities?" he asked and he'd been strictly thinking about the AIR crew, but if she was right and everyone had come back from the other side with something special, then that gave her plenty of names of her own to pick from. That was good, because Vex wasn't quite ready to pull her into the AIR circle. He'd been more than ready to spill all the secrets to her when he first approached her, but things had changed now, they had plans that were already in action and there were too many lives at stake. "He might be a good one to talk to first, he seemed very... social."
“I don’t think he had any abilities before, but he spent time in the same place as we did, and if we came back with extra abilities, then it stands to reason that he might as well,” Miriam said. She was just guessing, and she could be completely wrong, but it seemed like a good place to start. The hard part would be proving her own ability, if she could indeed mimic other people’s abilities, if Ty wasn’t there in Point Pleasant. She could experiment with Brianna though, in terms of magic, and try to feel out the people around her and see if anything else seemed to come out of nowhere. She doubted anything would jump out to her quite as bluntly as Vex’s visions had, but it was worth a try. “I could probably stop by the station. Chief Barrett might be willing to give me his number. Will you let me know if you hear of anyone else coming up with new powers? I can give you my number, so you don’t have to hunt me down on the street next time.”
Vex started pulling out his phone, hesitating for a second halfway there for show. "Don't break it," he muttered with no real need for a reply. "I won't take your picture." He opened up the contact list instead and simply named the new one MIR. Like the space station he thought and that kinda fit, Miriam was complicated after all. He let Miriam tell him the number. "I'm always here if you need to reach me," he said as he put his phone away. "It's probably best you don't have my number, unless you can memorize it. We don't need your husband questioning whose number that is."
Miriam rolled her eyes, though she knew she deserved his ire. Cell phones were expensive, even for her. “You can find my picture in the paper if you need it. Society section.” A large part of why she’d reacted so violently the first time they met had to do with how he’d caught her off guard, coupled with how crazy he’d sounded and looked. Now she knew better. He’d told her the truth, even though she wasn’t prepared to hear it. Well, mostly. Some of what he’d said was still nonsense, but she’d thought better about bringing those parts up. “He shouldn’t be snooping in my phone, but you’re probably right. I know where to find you if I need you.”
Vex still remembered vividly the demons who had come crawling out of the woodwork when Anthony D'Onofrio came calling. Now he knew he was a witch but it felt like he was more than that and either way he was definitely dangerous. He was glad Miriam didn't get defensive about that, that they were on the same page there too. It was promising. "People too often do what they shouldn't do," he murmured. "That's why we have cops." Though he knew better than most that cops all too often did what they shouldn't as well and that included him. "Hey, can you try to force a vision? I've been able to do that lately. If you focus, maybe you can too. Think of someone, your husband for example. Try to see him."
“Even the police can be manipulated,” Miriam said quietly. For some it was money, and for others it was power. She thought the police force in Point Pleasant had good people running it, but they were weak to the dangers that often took over the town. It was a shame Ty had left, since he was more aware than most of them. “Will he know that I can see him?” she asked, even though she wasn’t all that sure she could do it. “It might be better if I try with my son.” She was sure Caius would tell her if he sensed something weird and it wouldn’t make things worse between her and her husband. She didn’t think he would take her spying on him kindly, even if it was just an experiment. Miriam tried to focus, thinking of Caius and trying to imagine what he was up to today. It felt silly, but after a couple of seconds the world around her shifted and he was there, sitting at his desk. “I can see him,” she whispered, almost afraid that she would hear him if she spoke too loud.
It was so surreal to have someone in the room have a vision that Vex could not see. They'd always been central to him and only Lem could see what he saw. He felt weirdly left out and frustrated, like Miriam was stealing something from him, but that wasn't a feeling he wanted to indgule so he didn't. "If this is my gift, then no. He can't see or feel you. Maybe if he was telepathic..." He thought of Mal and the way he'd reacted to the intrusion but Mal was a powerful psychic and he was the only one who'd ever reacted to Vex's farsight. "You can try saying his name, see if he looks up."
As far as she knew, Caius wasn’t telepathic, but she said his name anyways, just to be sure. Sera hadn’t responded, so she probably should have known better, but there was still a lot about being a witch that Miriam didn’t know. And why should she, when she wasn’t one herself. It felt like such a disservice, after being surrounded by them her whole life. Now she could possibly share their powers by proximity, she had a real reason to learn. Miriam pulled back from the vision, blinking hard. “Thank you,” she said. “For letting me experiment a little. I’m almost certain that was not something I could do before I walked in your house. And I doubt I’ll be able to do it once I leave.” Which was good, Miriam thought. She might not mind if she could control it, but that first time had been spontaneous and she definitely wasn’t a fan.
"You should still try doing it when you're not here," Vex suggested. "See if it lingers or if you need to be close to me for it to work. Me or whoever you're mimicking." He would have to experiment too when she was gone, because of the worst case scenario he'd just thought of where she was taking it from him and not just mirroring it. He didn't feel like anything was being taken away though so it wasn't a real concern yet. If that turned out to be the case he'd have to contact her and make her stop - hell, he'd kill her if he had to. The last thing they needed was one person soaking up everyone's gifts.
“Good idea,” Miriam nodded, though she already thought there was probably a high chance it would fade when she left him. At least, that’s what she’s noticed with the magic she felt around witches. When it came to Vex’s ability, she thought she’d rather not have it, though she could see how some people could make a good deal of money with the ability to spy on people whenever they wanted. “Have you always been able to trigger them?” She’d gotten the impression he couldn’t control them before, much like that first one she’d gotten, taking her by surprise.
"No, that part is new," Vex replied. "I'm starting to think it was a parting gift from the other side." He'd been so sure he was chosen, that everything that had happened during and after the fog had been a blessing - but then he had endured those months on the other side and lost his faith. It was coming back to him now, greatness often came from suffering and with his visions getting stronger and more controllable it was hard to think this hadn't been a divine plan all along. "I wonder if it's one way," he added and he couldn't help but try to focus, see if her powers were bleeding out from her just as his were bleeding into her. He focused on something small, a fork sitting on the kitchen sink, but no matter how much he tried to move it with his mind, it didn't budge.
“It makes me wonder if we all got gifts. We deserve a lot more for surviving, but I’ll take it,” Miriam said. It would be nice if something came out of being stuck in that God-awful place. She liked to think herself a strong woman, but she’d been without her powers there, stripped of her greatest defense, and it had made her feel weak. Weak and scared. She still had nightmares, but she refused to let that fear bleed into her daily life now that things had returned to normal. Normal was a funny word. It was practically meaningless when comparing one person’s life to another. Was this normal now, trusting almost-strangers because of a shared experience? Having visions just because she was near someone else who had them? Miriam didn’t know. She doubted anyone would consider her life normal anymore. “I take it you haven’t suddenly acquired telekinesis.”
"Doesn't seem like it," Vex said and if it wasn't just beginner's difficulties then it was a little unfair. If Miriam could share her powers as well as borrow others, she'd be an incredibly powerful addition to their little team - if he decided to trust her. "Tell me, when did you discover you had this? How long did it take to be good at it? As far as I can tell, the people who took us didn't just let kids go unless they thought they were duds. Anyone else they kept and groomed to be used for fuck knows what."
“I think I’d been home for about a year before I started noticing things. It was only little things at first, like pencils, cups. I practiced a lot on doors, since no one really questions when they shut by themselves. It took some tweaking. At first I was kind of weak, but then I had to learn not to slam them,” Miriam said with a little smile. She’d eventually found out that she was a lot stronger mentally than physically. There were things she could move with her mind that she could’ve even budge with her hands. “It might take practice? Just like, I can feel the magic around my husband, but I can’t do much with it. He’s had a lifetime of training and there was never any reason for him to share it with me.” And there still wasn’t, at least not for his benefit.
To truly know if Miriam could share her gifts as well as take others' Vex thought he might have to spend a lot of time with her. A few minutes here in the kitchen weren't going to cut it, not when all he really wanted to do was eat more or get wasted again. He put the now empty ice cream container aside and tried to focus on what they were talking about. "Might take time, you live with a witch, you could try to tap into that magic you feel. You ever awake when he's asleep?" It might be easier that way, no pressure or prying eyes, just the freedom to explore.
“Sometimes,” Miriam said. She didn’t want to get into the fact that they weren’t sleeping in the same bed at the moment, or how she’d rather him not in the house at all. She didn’t know how to repair the damage done between them, but also felt that it shouldn’t be solely her responsibility. If Anthony put some work into it, she’d be more open to repairing things, but at the moment she was feeling cold. “I would rather my husband not know about this at the moment, but I could talk to my son. He might be able to give me some simple things to try. While Anthony’s sleeping.” She liked the idea of being able to practice on her own, but knew that could be hard when she needed a witch nearby. Talking to Caius would be the first step, then she could go from there.
"Are they the only witches you know?" Vex asked and he had no idea what kind of a relationship the D'Onofrios had with each other but sons tended to spill secrets to their parents - as long as they weren't their own. "Not asking for names but if you know someone else I'd keep it out of the family for now." Mostly because of who was in that particular family. He didn't know how or why but Anthony D'Onofrio felt like a threat and every creature sent by his god seemed to agree. Vex had lost his faith briefly on the other side, but even then he knew better than to ignore the signs he was sent.
“Yes, I know another,” Miriam said, deciding to keep it vague. “I’ll see if she can help me out.” She’d assumed that Vex knew Brianna McCarthy was a witch, but now realized that she had no reason to jump to that conclusion. She’d not had magic in the other realm, just like Miriam had been lacking her telekinesis, and she couldn’t imagine that Vex knew Brianna prior to that event. She knew Vex probably wanted to avoid bringing Anthony into the equation, and for that he didn’t need to worry. She had no intention of telling him any of this. Caius, on the other hand, was a different story. She’d take his advice under consideration, but she trusted her son far more than her husband.
Vex had to wonder just how many witches there were in Point Pleasant, and how many of them were the real deal. He'd met plenty of people who called themselves witches but it was more of a religion than any actual magic so the title didn't quite hold. So far all he knew was that the real witches didn't publically call themselves that and he could respect that. Did he knew Miriam's friend, he wondered, or know of her? "If she's trustworthy then yeah, it might be safer to start with a friend." He tried one more time to focus on some small object near by but even Miriam had needed a lot of practice and it had taken her a long time before she even discovered her gift so it didn't really tell him anything when he failed yet again.
Miriam could almost see that Vex was trying to move something with his mind and she held back a smile. Even if it was something she could share while around other people, she was kind of glad that it wasn’t that simple. Otherwise, she’d have to worry about giving her powers to anyone she passed by and them accidentally using them. As incredible as it could be to share her powers with people around her, it could also be a disaster. “I should be going,” she said. “I’ll let you know if anything changes. This may take me a bit to figure out.” She wanted to experiment a little, find other people with abilities and see if she could mimic them. She knew they wouldn’t all come to her like Vex’s vision had. Telekinesis took practice and she assumed others would be the same way, but she had to try.
"Yeah, none of this comes easy," Vex agreed and while he was a little jealous of her newfound abilities, he didn't envy her of what might come with this random new gift. "Do you think there's more people out there right now, doing what they did to us?" he asked casually and he was glad he didn't remember exactly what had been done to him, but at the same time he knew enough from the others and his visions to know none of it was good. Would he have been more fucked up if he remembered? Or did the trauma still linger in him even without those memories? He didn't know, he only knew he was on a mission to destroy AIR and Miriam was beginning to look like she could be very useful to the cause. It was just a shame about her husband.
“I hope not,” Miriam said. “I may not remember it, but I have the scars.” They weren’t just physical ones, but mental too. She was terrified of water, of the possibility of being drowned, and couldn’t even handle a bath. It was something her parents noticed when she returned, since she’d apparently loved swimming before then. She hadn’t swam since before she disappeared. “So many people go missing around here, it’s hard to tell who might be behind it. I’ve started trying to pay attention to the children. Not that adults are okay, but… I guess I have a weak spot for kids. I’d have torn this place down if they took one of mine.” She said it with a little smile, but she was dead serious. They could mess with her, but she would not take someone messing with her kids, even now that they were grown.
"I was a detective in Baltimore," Vex muttered. "Trust me when I say everyone hates the cases that involve kids. Everyone gets a little soft, even the assholes who hate kids. I haven't seen any small ones in a long time, but I think there's more out there. Teenagers, adults, locked up or affected by their time at AIR." He tapped his temple to indicate that he meant through visions. "If I could pinpoint where they were, I'd do something about it. Now that my visions are stronger maybe I can walk around, look around, try to get more clues. I just need to practice." He was telling her too much, but she'd hit a soft spot and she seemed genuine. Vex believed in rolling with the punches anyway, if telling her this was a bad idea, he'd deal with the consequences.
It chilled Miriam to think of the others who might be out there, locked up and tortured, just because they were special. It was why she’d kept so quiet about her abilities, and why she’d encouraged her son to keep his secret as well. Witches could sense out other witches, but that wasn’t true of psychics. “How do you think they found us?” she asked him. “Do you think they knew? Or just grabbed children and tried to torture them until something snapped?” Neither option was appealing, though the last seemed worse, even if it made her targeted. It meant anyone was vulnerable. “I hope they’re gone. I hope that fire took every last one of them out. I know that’s awful, but I’d feel safer that way. It’s be one less thing to worry about. But it sounds like that might be a fool’s hope. If it’s not them, it’s someone else.”
"Yeah," Vex drawled unhappily. "There's always someone out there hurting little kids, for fun or for science. We just gotta do what we can to keep it from happening." That wasn't always possible, usually they just had to clean up the mess after but this time Vex thought might be different, they could stop future kids from getting hurt if they just shut down AIR. He couldn't say he really knew what their means or motivations were, he didn't remember anything from his time there. It was time stolen from him and erased from his memory in the most impressive way, like he'd just fallen asleep and woken up a year later.
While the conversation had never been light, it had taken a darker turn and Miriam wasn’t sure where to go from there. She’d gotten what she’d come for, or the best she supposed she was going to get, and now her instinct was telling her to go home and have a drink. And maybe shop online. It was a weird impulse, but she supposed she was looking for a distraction, something that would make her happier than thinking about kids being kidnapped and tortured. “If there’s anything I can do…” she started, but wasn’t sure what she was offering. It wasn’t like Vex was in the business of stopping people like that. “I should get going,” she sighed. “Thank you for—for answering my questions. I appreciate your honesty.”
Vex nodded and while he wasn't ready to tell her a damn thing, he would for sure keep her in mind now, talk to the others about her and consider her involvement for the future. The only real obstacle was her husband and Vex wasn't all that sure that Miriam was keeping secrets from him like she said she was. She certainly didn't seem like the stuck up and angry lady he'd met at the Boathouse but then a lot had happened to both of them since then and they'd both been through the same hell. "You're welcome back here whenever," he told her as he let her lead the way back out of the kitchen. "I'm curious to know what you'll find out about what you can do."
Miriam doubted she’d make dropping by Vex’s house a thing, but she definitely wasn’t as opposed to talking to him as she had been all those months ago. Time played a big part in that, as well as shared trauma and the knowledge that he’d been honest with her, even if she wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say. She was now. If her life was to be upended, she might as well tackle the whole kit and caboodle. “I am as well,” she told him as she stepped out the door. “I’m hoping it will prove to be useful, but we’ll just have to wait and see.” It would take a little experimentation on her part, but at least that would be interesting. Miriam was in need of a distraction at the moment and this was just the kind of thing she could throw herself into.
Vex hummed and rested against the doorframe once Miriam was outside, crossing his arms loosely against his stomach. "Fare thee well, Miriam D'Onofrio," he said stoically. "Go forth and experiment." He would too, maybe he'd try to look in on her around dinner time, see just how terse - or not - her relationship with her husband was. He was curious about her now and while he didn't think she was here to spy on him for her husband, he couldn't fully rule it out either. He could safely say he liked her a lot more than he had the first time they met, funny how people started looking differently when his opinion of them changed, like they were coming out into the light and revealing more of themselves. He hoped she was presenting herself and not an illusion but only time would tell.