Who: Maia Amell & Pam Swynford de Beaufort What: Clearing up some stuff When: 3/27 or so Where: Pam's place Rating/Warning: PG13, language, talk of gore/FTB sexytimes Status: Complete
It was all over.
The blood, guts, death, killing, hellfire and assorted mayhem had been put to bed. Pam hadn’t had a second to breathe before the mall down the street from her place had exploded, and she’d had to lay low or help out, depending on the day. Yeah, it wasn’t normally her thing to help out, but well, it was kind of personal when it was down the Goddamn street.
Now things were a little less nutty, it was a quiet afternoon, Maia was over, and they still hadn’t talked about anything.
Pam was reading, but not really focusing. She kept wanting to say something, but didn’t want to come off like a bitch or clingy or anything. But it was getting way past time to bring shit up.
So, eventually, she spoke. “Um. I’m thinking there’s still shit we have to iron out from this Warden stuff.”
Maia, frankly, was more in the mood to ‘talk’ if talking meant ‘have fantastic sex to remind us we’re not dead’ but she supposed talking was important. Real talking. She sighed and pulled her legs up underneath her. “You’re bloody right. I don’t really want to. Rain check?”
“No.” Pam had put it off long enough. She shook his head. “I’m sorry. I gotta at least say my piece. I’m not mad at you for what happened - that’d just be bullshit - but I can’t pretend it’s all okay.”
Maia bit her lip, then rolled her shoulders in a shrug. “Okay. Hit me with whatever you’ve got.”
“I’ve already waited to see if this would go away.” Pam raised an eyebrow. It sure looked like Maia didn’t give a shit about what she had to say, but she held her tongue for now. All she said instead was, “First, I’m shitty with kids. Second, it’s really fucked up that you have shitty dreams where you have to get knocked up or the whole world dies. And I’ll never understand what that’s like.” And that would probably irritate Maia after a while, if it didn’t already.
Maia scowled, but let Pam say her piece. "I didn't have to get knocked up to save the world, Pam. Jus' to save myself. It's an entirely selfish thing an' you're allowed to be pissed at me for it."
And it did irritate her. At least there were some people who understood the Warden thing now, but she still felt very alone with her mage powers. Sure, others were special snowflakes, but none of them understood the whole templar/mage dynamic and the maker and all that. And the only one who came close was her cousin.
“I could be pissed off at you, but I’d be fucking wrecked if you were dead right now.” Pam looked away. “Not sure why sometimes, but well.” She shrugged, biting her own lip. “It’s just fucked up. Sorry, I’m confused. I just don’t want to stick by you and then have you get sick of me because I’m not a special magic person.”
She definitely couldn’t understand how Pam could stand her. She played with her fingers in her lap. “I love you, Pam. You’re special in your own way. You don’t have to have magic for me to love you. You…” She frowned. “You have so little faith in me?”
“No ...” Pam sighed. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t casually, like, ruin me” - Maia had too much integrity - “but I don’t want to get into something where you’re going to wind up all distant because I can’t know whatever you’re dealing with.” It wasn’t that she distrusted Maia; it was more like distrusting time, because people got sick of people.
That didn’t make fucking sense out loud, though. She sighed. “I feel like you have a shitload more in common with people from your own dream world and it scares me really bad. There.” No more feelings, as far as she was concerned. Maia would either say she was right and break up with her, or try to convince her she was wrong, and she wasn’t really sure whether or not she could be convinced.
Maia created a little spark of spirit energy and made it do a weaving dance around her hand. “I could worry about the same thing. I can’t understand what being a vampire is like. Not really. And you could get sick of my shite real quick.” And what kind of parents are they going to be? A vampire and a woman that might be dead in ten years? Shite. She paled as she thought about it. Two vampires, then, because that was her only way out of the Calling….
“What?” Pam had been going to answer, but then she saw Maia lose just about all the color in her face. “You okay?” Part of the uncomfortableness was that the last pregnant woman she’d been around had been her own mother, and Mama had been a mean, capricious bitch about it.
“Uh. It’s nothing love. Just a silly thought.” She waved her hand dismissively, not wanting to worry Pamela. It wasn’t like she’d had any choice in being a Warden, like Pam hadn’t had any choice in being a blood sucker.
“If you say so.” Pam wasn’t gonna press it. “We don’t have to get into a big thing about all this. Just, I’m ...” Fuck. “A little freaked out,” she finally finished.
“What freaks you out the most?” Maia got to her feet and started to pace. “Is it the baby? The Taint? All of the above? Pam, I’m…” She reached up and tugged at her hair. “I’m...bugger. The only one pushing me away is you.”
“Having to get knocked up to save your own life is pretty fucked,” Pam said. “I mean ... what else is gonna come down the pike?” When Maia said she was pushing her away, though, she just sighed. “I don’t know. I’d be a shitty parent and frankly, I don’t think you can go without dick your whole life. I don’t even hold it fucking against you, really - you’re not a lesbian, and I knew that coming in. But that’s what freaks me out the most.” Those two things. She didn’t think Maia was a cheater. Not intentionally.
"I don't like labels, I just like sex and it never mattered much who it was with until you. But I have and I can do just one person." Maia's hands fidgeted. "It hurts that you'd think I'd dump you on your arse just like that. And really, Zev quelled any cravings I might have for a long time. love."
Pam smirked in spite of herself. “I did hear he’s fuckin’ huge. And I’m sorry.” She sighed again. “Really. I don’t want to get all feelings-y and shit on you. I’m scared.” She supposed she was trying to push away before she got pushed away. That probably meant she cared. “I’m pretty sure I love you.”
"Huge and knows how to use it. Known plenty of blokes that had the size an' still sucked." Maia walked over to Pam and tucked some hair behind her ear. "You mean a lot to me. I wish I could say just how much. I know all this will be hard..."
“I’m shit with kids. I mean it. I don’t know what they want or like, anything.” She’d be more likely to shake a kid to stop crying than to try absolutely everything. Well. Not really. But still. “And I swear to God, if being knocked up messes with you, I may run. The last pregnant woman I was around turned into a raging cunt who threatened to beat on me for shit I didn’t even do.” Maia wasn’t the same as Mama, but Pam wasn’t the kind to put up with shit unless she’d had the fun of being bad first.
"I've never been pregnant before so I don't bloody know what'll happen!" And with a baby that wasn't quite normal, on top of that. "It might get all exorcist or the like."
“Well, if you take it all out on me, I’m gone.” Pam had to be honest. “I don’t think you will. But if you do, I won’t put up with it.” Her voice wobbled just barely, and it pissed her off. “Honestly, I’d rather deal with exorcist crap than everyday bitching. I really would.” Her life wasn’t normal anyway.
Maia actually looked a little miffed, for a second or two. Then she sighed and resumed tugging at her hair. “This really gets your goat, doesn’t it.”
“I’ve had too many people treat me like shit. And I don’t ... fuck. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s that everyone I trusted before to not treat me like shit, did.” Pam sighed, looking away. “I understand if you’re pissed. I’m pissed. I don’t like all this touchy-feely crap. But I feel it.”
This is why Maia tried to avoid this kind of thing. She somehow managed to screw things up even if half of it wasn’t even anyone’s fault. She took a few steadying breaths. She didn't want to start yelling at Pam over what was clearly a very irrational fear. Irrational fears were the worst kind, because there was no way to really fight them. She couldn't shoot a fireball at fear.
"Tell me what you want me to do to reassure you."
Pam ran both hands over her face. “Just ... bear with me, I guess? If I didn’t love you, I’d have got the fuck out after the giant dragon thing. But I don’t deal well with grumpy, and I really don’t do well with kids, and I’m scared I’m gonna fail you.” There it was. That got down to it, she had to admit. It wasn’t even about being hurt. It was about not being good enough.
Maia thought it was a miracle that Pam had stayed after the Archdemon. She'd half-expected the woman to shut her out after all of that. But she'd stayed, and for that Maia was grateful. "We're both going into something completely new. It's not wrong to be scared."
That actually helped, to hear that. "Kids piss me off most of the time," Pam admitted. "But like ... I don't know. I can't eat it. I know that." She was joking, though maybe it wasn't funny. "I guess I can go stalking more if I get mad?"
“Try not to leave any bodies around,” Maia joked. She pushed Pam down against the couch and straddled her. “I can’t promise I won’t fuck everything up. But I can promise I’ll never take it out on you.”
“Don’t go back on that.” Pam looked up at her. If Maia could ever be serious about one thing, it needed to be that. Because she was gone if she had to be.
But until then, she could try and be happy. Even though she was scared shitless.
“I wanted to ask you about something else,” she said, resting her hands on Maia’s waist. “But it’s not bad, more just like ... what happened when you cut yourself and then did magic with it? I was curious.” She’d gotten the idea the others were pissed, but hell, it looked kinda handy to Pam.
"Oh...that..." Maia suddenly found the wall behind Pam to be a very fascinating thing. She wasn't sure how to explain it, or how to explain why Sebastian and Marian had reacted the way they did. "There are certain schools of magic that are taboo. Blood magic is the big one, and for very good reasons."
She shifted her gaze back to Pam. "Historically, Blood Magic has led to ...well all sorts of bad things. The Magisters of Tevinter sacrificed hundreds of slaves to rip open the barrier between worlds. So that's one of the reasons it's forbidden. The other reason is it makes it easier to be corrupted by demons. Blood is power. When you don't have enough Lyrium, or your reserves are low and you're desperate and pursued by people who want to kill you...well you dig into your blood, or someone else's blood, and you do that enough times or you're desperate enough, then you become an abomination. Literally. But Wardens aren’t bound by the same rules. Everything is allowed if it means stopping a Blight. Even if it means damning yourself.”
“Christ.” Pam blinked. “Guess I didn’t plumb the depths of the fucked-upness of your world.” But she didn’t let go of Maia. “So it’s more like an oh-shit button, right? Unless you actually want to kill yourself or something.” She meant ‘you’ generally, not Maia herself. Maia wasn’t suicidal - hell, she’d gone through the whole Zevran thing in order to live. “I’m not judging on that shit, I just wondered. If it was the difference between life and death, I don’t care about it.”
"Some mages really get into it. If you're careful it's not a problem but no one is ever really careful. I did something terrible just to learn the knowledge, because I needed to know it, just in case. That was the first time I've ever put it to use."
Pam nodded. “Well, not killing yourself or turning into a weird abomination would generally be good.” Beyond that, feh, what was there to say. “I just wondered.”
'I damned a little boy for knowledge' didn't sound like a good way to continue the conversation so Maia was willing to drop the subject. "We probably don't need to worry."
“I’ll trust you.” On that. On pretty much anything except fucking around behind her back, really. And that wasn’t so much on Maia. Shit, even in her dreams Eric didn’t love her like she loved him.
She smiled a little. “Okay, enough touchy-feely shit for now.”
There were precious few people in the world that Maia would go monogamous for, and even fewer that would make her stray at this point, but she didn't say any of that out loud, because it meant it was still a possibility and she couldn't do that to Pam. "Lets do other touchy feely things..."
She’d said her piece, so now it was okay. At least for the next little while. “That so works for me. Hey,” Pam said, smirking, “isn’t it true that knocked up chicks are horny all the time?”
“All the time, and twice on Sundays,” Maia promised, then leaned in to prove it.