Virgil Hawkins (shock2ursystem) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-03-17 11:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, hazel levesque, virgil hawkins (static) |
Who: Virgil and Hazel
What: Virgil visits Hazel, gets a rundown on her powers
When: Recently
Where: Hazel's giant house
Rating/Warning: Low/none
Status: Complete
Virgil stood in front of Hazel’s house for a moment staring up at it. He’d seen houses like this before, but he’d never been inside one before. He probably should have expected it, given the fact that her father was some hot shot director. Once he was finished admiring the house from the outside, he rang the doorbell, a bag of junk food hanging off his arm.
When Hazel knew that people were coming over, she usually left the gate unlocked because it really didn’t seem like a time that she needed to watch out for robbers. Usually it was during the day and she had the dogs and her spatha to protect her, so what could they do? Okay, maybe the dogs weren’t all that scary, but she was pretty sure that the spatha would be and she was prepared.
Hearing the doorbell ring, Hazel got up. Today she’d been in a semi-humorous mood and so she was wearing a Viva la Pluto shirt with a picture of Pluto on it. She’d seen it at random while scrolling through the internet and decided that she needed it. With a dad like Pluto (or Hades, if you wanted to be Greek about it), she needed a little humor. She shushed Cerberus and Cesare as she opened the door and smiled at Virgil. “Hey. Come in. Quick. The dogs get a little antsy. Also I hope you don’t mind dogs because they will seriously be all over you at some point. It’s probably my fault for inviting people over to cuddle them all the time. Now they just expect it.”
“You kidding? I love dogs,” Virgil assured her, stepping quickly into the house. “What’s the point of having dogs if you don’t always have people to cuddle with them?” Virgil’d never had any pets growing up himself, but he’d always kind of wanted a dog. His parents had always told him that they couldn’t afford one, nor did anyone really have the time necessary to raise dogs. “Hey dawgs,” he said, letting them both sniff his hands before he pet them. “That’s a great shirt, bee-tea-dubs. Nothing better than a little cosmic humour.” Well, other than chemistry humour. Or electricity based puns.
Hazel’s smile grew. “Well, then you are in the right house. At least Panic and Pain are in a different room. They are Dad’s…side kicks, I guess?” She shrugged. They didn’t bother her, but they also weren’t the ones she was trying to spend all her time with. She liked having the dogs, though. “They are definitely cuddly, so you’ll be good.” She glanced down at the shirt before laughing. “I saw it and I thought it was funny. You know. Daughter of Pluto wearing a Viva la Pluto shirt?” It was also godly humor on her part. “So how’s life? Have you talked to our mutual friend?” Here she lightly nudged him, but she really did hope they’d spoken already.
Panic and Pain. Those sounded like the sidekicks of a supervillian if they were sidekicks at all, but Virgil wasn’t in a comic book, and he was sure that Hazel’s dad couldn’t be a bad guy. Hazel seemed fond of him, at least. Besides, it wasn’t like they could control what things were called in the dreams, even if they were sidekicks. “Yeah, Richie and I had a DMC,” he said, a pleased smile crossing his lips. “It was good. Real good.”
Hazel was pretty sure her dad wasn’t a bad guy. She knew he wasn’t the same dad that she dreamt about, but he wasn’t the same Hades that he dreamt about either. She knew that for a fact. He was good. Yes, his temper made his hair do the weird flame-y thing, but that wasn’t really something she worried about.
“A DMC?” She honestly didn’t know what that was supposed to mean. Apparently it was good, though. If his smile was anything to go by. Still, it didn’t make anything he’d just said to her any more clear than it had been a second ago.
Virgil had to remind himself that Hazel wasn’t really on the up and up when it came to slang. “A deep meaningful conversation,” he clarified. “It was good. We talked a bit about our feelings. For each other, I mean. And I guess all that’s left is to see how things go.” He hoped that their relationship wouldn’t change much now that everything was out in the open. Or rather, he hoped it changed in some ways, but not where it counted. He didn’t really know how this ‘dating the best friend you’ve ever had’ thing was going to go, but he hoped that it didn’t involve wiping out the friend part of it all. “Thanks for talking me into talking to him.”
Hazel felt a little stupid for not getting that, but she wasn’t really sure how she was supposed to know all of the things. She understood the text speak. Most of it anyway. Not all of it. But that’s why she asked if she needed to. “I’m really happy for you two.” She lightly bumped him with her shoulder...even if she was pretty short in comparison. “You’re welcome. I thought you might need it. Especially with everything. I have to admit, that I did sort of talk to Richie about it, too. So I feel like the sneakiest matchmaker in history. But you guys were both so sad about it that I wanted to help you figure it out.”
The news about Richie talking to her came as a surprise, and Virgil couldn’t help but let out a burst of laughter. “No kidding,” he said. “Well, look at you pulling our strings from the shadows,” he joked, bumping her lightly in return. “In that case, we both totally owe you one.” It was good that Richie had found someone to confide in too. Virgil had been othered his entire life just by virtue of his skin colour, and he’d grown used to people making judgements about him before ever getting to know him. And he had a support network in his family - even Sharon, despite what a pain she was - that he knew Richie lacked. “You just gotta name your price, and we’re yours.”
Hazel found herself laughing a little as well. It wasn’t often that she got to help people out with relationships considering how little she really knew about them, but she also knew that sometimes you could reasonably guess what people needed to hear and then get them to realize things sort of on their own. Maybe with a little shove. Hazel had experienced a lot more prejudice in her dreams than outside of them, but she guessed that wasn’t really...something she wanted to think about too much. People didn’t really believe that she and Nico were siblings, but Hazel was decidedly unmoved by their assumptions.
The comment about having a price made her expression shutter and she looked down at the floor. She knew Virgil hadn’t meant to stumble into anything and he probably hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, but the dreams and real life always made Hazel a little weird about these things. “I don’t have a price. I’m just happy you’re my friends. That’s really all I need.” She was quiet for a moment. “You know...when you saw that gem that popped up by my feet? I...well…” A frown formed on her face. “I have it because my mom had a price. Or...well, she wanted something from my dad. My dream dad. All the riches of the Underworld. So that’s me. Well, sort of me. I can summon things from the ground. Metals, jewels. Things that are worth something. Riches, I guess. But see, that came with a price, too. By using them as currency we caused…I caused a lot of people to get hurt. Sometimes if my emotions get a little out of hand, like I get too anxious, it just happens. But I couldn’t let you keep it because...I couldn’t let you get hurt. So all I’ll ever want from you is to be your friend. And...I don’t know. I might have let that get away from me a little bit.”
Virgil’s face fell when he heard about Hazel’s powers. His own powers were so wonderful that he hadn’t put much thought into the fact that other people’s might not be as great. The whole thing sounded like a mess, and he moved to give Hazel’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Well, you are my friend,” he said. “And you’re always gonna be. By price, I just meant like, forcing Richie and I on a horseback ride or laser tag or something.” He gave her a bit of a lopsided smile at that, and before he gave her level look. “You know none of that’s your fault though. I mean, sometimes we get these powers, and sometimes people can get hurt ‘cause of them,” like Richie had, “but that’s the same with anything. We just gotta learn from our mistakes and make things better. Like you do.”
It didn’t save Hazel from the feeling of guilt. She knew it wasn’t all her fault, but her mother had blamed her and she should have been able to tell her no. “Oh. Well, I guess I could always ask for something like that.” She moved to lean against Virgil, glad to have him as a friend. “Having the powers isn’t, but not standing up to my mother was. I should have told her no. I should have kept her from using the jewels and everything. People died.” She frowned a little. “But then greed was my mother’s sin. I know it’s not mine.” She dared, for a moment, to steal a hug from Virgil. It was an acceptable sort of thing to steal from friends. “I can show you my powers, though. If you want to see them more. Only...don’t touch anything. I mean, I guess you can touch it, because I let Sammy keep a diamond in the dreams. Only it has to go back into the ground eventually.”
Virgil returned the hug, not letting go until Hazel pulled away. It was just common sense that when someone needed a hug, you hugged them back until they were all hugged out. “Standing up to your folks can be tough. Seems impossible sometimes,” Virgil assured her. He’d met plenty of kids back home who’d gotten mixed up in some shady business because their parents or their siblings had pressured them into it. They were good kids, they just had bad influences in their life.
When Hazel offered to show him the gems, he felt a brief pang of guilt. It didn’t seem entirely right that she was so open about her powers, while he was keeping his secret from her. He knew it was for the best. Virgil was absolutely going to use his powers to fight bad guys, and if anyone found out who he was, the people he loved would be in danger. Richie had already been kidnapped once in the dreams because Ebon had caught him chatting with Virgil while Virgil was in costume. “That’d be tight,” Virgil said, grinning widely. “Can you like, choose what you call, or do you not know what it is until it comes up?”
“Yeah. It took dying for me to really change things. Well...I guess it took Gaea. But...that’s not important.” She didn’t really want to think about Gaea. She hoped the woman would never bother her again in this world. At least she had her dad to deal with it if something happened. She would help, obviously, but she would prefer to just not have to deal with it at all. That would be easier.
Hazel didn’t really consider herself as the sort of person that would fight crime or anything like that. She couldn’t really say that she didn’t try to save the world because she’d done that by dying. Other people might have let it go to their heads, but Hazel still couldn’t consider herself as much of a hero. Not really. She hadn’t done anything outside of the dreams. Maybe she wasn’t really heroic unless put in a situation where she had to be heroic. She didn’t really suspect anything about Virgil or the fact that he had powers. “I can usually sense what’s there, but I can’t summon something that doesn’t already exist in the ground. I can also navigate in tunnels and sense those. It’s kind of a really strange sort of thing. And I have a sword! Well, it’s a spatha, but it’s pretty amazing.” She motioned for him to follow her and walked outside. “I can show you the other stuff later. The tunnels thing isn’t really useful unless you have to go underground, though.”
Dying. And the worst thing Virgil had had to deal with in his dreams was a black eye. Sure, he’d been knocked around a couple of times other than that, but nothing had ever really caused him much in the way of lasting pain. It didn’t seem fair to him that a sweet girl like Hazel had to go through so much crap.
“A sword?” Virgil asked, intrigued. “That’s pretty sharp,” he said, winking with the pun. “Anyway, all those sound pretty cool. If I ever decide to go spelunking, then I’ll know who to call,” he grinned. He’d never gone yet - the idea of all those cave creepy crawlies kind of wigged him out - but it could happen. He followed her outside, getting more excited about seeing Hazel’s powers at work. He hadn’t really known what was happening the last time, but this time he could actually watch.
Nico had taken her from the Underworld, though, so she’d gotten to live again. Of course, being 13 at the time didn’t really help things all that much. She was too young to really be taken seriously and no one took her desire to be a cavalry soldier seriously either. Unwieldy as it may have been, however, she was still able to fight with a spatha on the ground.
“Very funny,” she said, rolling her eyes. There was the smallest hint of a smile as she shook her head at Virgil. Puns. Would she ever escape them? Likely not. “Yeah. I’d probably be pretty good for that. You’d never get lost.” She hadn’t done a lot of spelunking herself, but she wasn’t against the idea. She was a daughter of Pluto after all. Underground was sort of her thing. “Just don’t try to take me on any boats. Unless you like vomit.” She, however, was not a fan of it, but her upchuck reflexes were sensitive to boat-shaped things.
Once she was out in the yard, she stopped on the grass. Her eyes closed and she focused her mind on the ground and the precious metals and jewels that were there. It was kind of weird to be able to tell what was there without being able to see it with her eyes, but she could just sense it. She knew what it was. About twenty feet down was a clump of silver. To her left about ten feet down, a small ruby. There were things all over the yard, something she wondered about often. Was it because of her dad? Was it because of her? Was it just something that happened? Perhaps it was, but perhaps it wasn’t. All the same, she pulled up those two things, opening her eyes and looking down at the ground. “I keep hoping somehow I’ll find Imperial gold or something, but I never do.” She turned to look at Virgil. “There’s a sapphire under your feet about...seven feet down.”
Why anyone would want to escape puns was something Virgil would never understand.
“No thanks,” Virgil said, screwing up his face at the thought if Hazel throwing up. “Though, truth be told, I ain’t a big fan of boats either, so I think you're safe on that count.” He used to not mind it, but if he was charged up water shorted him out and it wasn't something he would call pleasant.
“Imperial gold? That different than regular gold?” Virgil asked, filled with questions even as he watched in awe as the silver, and then the ruby, emerged from the ground. “Woah,” he breathed, then turned his gaze to Hazel. “So, if I dug this stuff up on my own, would it still be cursed?” he asked, partially teasing.
Hazel smiled. “I think we’ll be okay, then. Avoiding boats is the only thing I know how to do. Except I went on one to learn some sword fighting. I was still queasy. It was not ideal. I had to focus on anything other than the slight rocking of the boat. It wasn’t even moving, really, but it was terrible.”
She smiled. “It’s different. It can’t hurt mortals. Sort of like Celestial bronze. But only the Greeks use that.” She shrugged. “It’s just...I’ll show you. My spatha is Imperial gold. It probably doesn’t look different, but…” She shrugged slightly. It didn’t really matter, did it? “I don’t think so? I don’t know. I’ve never had someone dig up things I found, but then they’re down there pretty far, so you might not be able to get to them.”
Virgil had been on a couple of boats on Detroit Lake, though he’d never experienced any sea-sickness. He also knew that being on a boat in a placid lake was a completely different experience than being tossed around on the open ocean though. “Must’ve been some training,” he whistled. “Bet you could sword fight in an earthquake after that.”
“Can’t hurt mortals?” Virgil gave a bit of a confused blink. He’d heard of weapons that couldn’t hurt gods, but he’d never heard of ones that couldn’t hurt mortals. Though, he supposed it made sense in a fair, balanced kind of way. “But yeah, I’d love to see your sword. I always thought swords were kind of dope.” In a seeing them kind of way, at least. Virgil didn’t think he’d ever use one - if he had to fight he prefered to do it in a way that wouldn’t cause lasting damage.
“I really hope I don’t have to sword fight during an earthquake. Killian was just helping me get a little more used to how to use it. Practice makes perfect or something?” And she’d practiced a lot to get her abilities under control and stop herself from making things happen just by being anxious about it. Considering it was difficult to be around people in general with things popping up just because of anxiety, it seemed like a pretty important thing to learn how to control.
“Nope. Can’t hurt them.” But that was how things were. She didn’t really question it or mind it. “But then the mist sort of keeps mortals from knowing what’s going on the majority of the time. They’ll believe anything but what’s really happening is actually happening. I guess that’s not strictly mortals, though. Some of them can see through the mist. I think that’s how demigods happen, actually.”
“It sure does,” Virgil said. He hadn’t been great with his powers when he first got them, but he used them for things as mundane as making sandwiches when he was at home or with Richie, and he liked to think he was practically a pro these days. “You’ll have to show me your moves, homegirl.”
“Bow chicka bow wow,” Virgil teased. “And here all this time I thought it was the Gods coming to the mortals. Disguising themselves as swans or bulls or whatever.”
Hazel stared at him for a moment before shaking her head. “I’ll show you sometime. Unless you meant now. I’d have to actually get my spatha, though.” Not that it was actually that far. She usually took it with her everywhere, but not when company was coming over or she was out in public.
“No. They disguise themselves as mortals. Dad does kind of wear a suit that looks like it has souls woven into it, though. It probably does have souls woven into it. Knowing dad.” She pointed at her Viva la Pluto shirt. “Hence my shirt jokes. I’m hip now.” She laughed a little. “Okay, I’m not really hip. But Pluto jokes for the daughter of Pluto?”
Virgil made a face, trying not to think of what it meant to have souls woven into a suit. Or what it meant that the Roman pantheon seemed to be real. He was a Christian, and while he didn’t always go to church every Sunday, he still believed that when he died, he soul would go to Heaven and not be woven into the suit of some Hollywood director.
So long as he didn’t think too hard about it, it wouldn’t be too weird. He did have to laugh at the extra meaning of Hazel’s shirt. “You’re totally hip,” he assured her. “And that’s hilarious. I dig it.” If his dad was Pluto, he’d probably do the same.
Hazel had never been that overly religious, but that might have had something to do with where she’d grown up and with who her mother was. But with the dreams, she was more aware of mythological things and the fact that the Greek and Roman gods might exist. She didn’t really consider what it meant outside of that, though. She was pretty sure that she’d seen someone talking about Egyptian mythology, so maybe it didn’t really matter. She didn’t know.
She smiled at the compliment. “Thanks. I stumbled on it accidentally when someone was making posters with Viva La Pluto and then I told them it was cool and they told me there were t-shirts. Now I get to be extra hilarious. I’m debating getting Nico and Bianca matching shirts, but I don’t think Bianca would get it. Unless she started dreaming or something like that. But as far as I know, she’s not dreaming. “ She shrugged slightly. “But I still think it’d be hilarious. Maybe I’ll even get Dad one. The family tee.” She laughed after a moment. “I didn’t mean to make that a possible pun, but it sort of happened.” She let the amusement settle for a moment before motioning toward the house. “Come on. I’ll show you my spatha and you can be properly jealous of how awesome I am. Oh. And the armor.”