aterat | Spare the Sympathy

Who; Illyana + OTA!
What; November open log, feel free to pick a day or if you'd like a different topic I can make something else too!
Where; Outside the red building (or inside if you'd like), cemetery/outside the cemetery, or the market. Or
When; Anytime during November, feel free to pick a day
Warnings;None so far

A. Red Building Cooking Disaster

It wasn't that Illyana had never cooked before. No, that was not the case at all. There had been plenty of times where she had been on her own in the demonic wilds left to fend for herself. The meals she made there weren't exactly things someone would call glamourous, in fact a lot of people would probably be vaguely creeped out by what she'd made. Tentacle skewers probably weren't a normal meal for normal people. Normal was something she'd never been though. It was different here though and not just because there weren't tentacles to easily find to skewer. That didn't mean she couldn't learn some new things though, and that was exactly what she was trying.

Trying was the key word here. In Limbo she'd studied nonstop to learn as much about magic as she could. There was no shortage of books either and even now she often returned to the library to learn more. Spellbooks seemed easy compared to this shit though and she found herself...well...struggling to say the least. The kind of struggling that involved accidentally setting the bacon on fire. Actual fire. Which she reacted to by teleporting out of the kitchen with a slurry of Russian curses.

And that was the scene anyone walking by the red building would see. A blonde woman wearing an oversized sweater holding a frying pan on fire while cursing in Russian. It was definitely...a scene.

B. I'll Cast a Spell On You

Was a cemetery really a place someone should just hang out? No. Was it a place Illyana went to occasionally to hang out? Yes. It seemed like about as good of a place as any for some evening spell practice. There was a low chance of running into anyone, or at least that's what she told herself. Who would willingly walk by the cemetery as night was coming? Spooky creepy places should be free of pests that might show up to interrupt.

Or at least one would think they would be. Unfortunately for Illyana she had constant pests that appeared here and there to question what she was doing. Imps. It was always the imps that seemed to congregate around her even as she tried to set up for a spell.

"What are you doing?" one of them said while jumping around her leg, picking up the athame she had laid down on a cloth.

"Shoo," she waved a hand. "Put that down and return to Limbo right now."

It bashfully put it down and then held it's head sadly. "We could help! Get you things! Get you things!" Another chanted.

"No. Remember the last time you helped?" she asked sharply as she light another candle that smelled of sulfur and perhaps...primrose? It was primrose, but a subtle scent of it. Truth was what she was after and that happened to be a perfect flower for that. Or so she'd read once upon a time.

She sighed as the imps continued to get louder and more rambunctious as she tried to prepare for what she wanted to do. This was going to be a long evening, wasn't it?

C. A New Frying Pan

The market was the destination of the day. Mostly to replace the frying pan she'd kind of just eventually chucked into a portal into Limbo. It'd seemed like a solid solution to her problem at the time. But then she'd run into the problem of not having a frying pan. Which meant a trip to the market, which inevitably lead to a few imps dancing around after her. She'd fully embraced dressing for winter and even had the hood pulled up to hide her scowl.

"Why do you all keep following me?" she muttered under her breath with frustration as one jumped up onto a market stall and picked up a frying pan to show her and then it just started to walk off with it, much to the dismay of the clerk. She quickly pulled out a few coins to pay for the pan.

"You have my apologies," she said quickly as she ran after the imp shouting a slew of demonic curses towards it. Maybe shouting in a demonic tongue wasn't the best mood, but she'd lost her temper now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A mixture of confusion and sadness crosses her face and she looks down. "Perhaps it is. I haven't made new friends in a very long time."

"Well...I do, Illyana." He takes a breath, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket, looking down, himself. "And usually, that's a horrid idea, seeing as I barely have control of my abilities on a good day when I can focus, so trying to...have a normal relationship's usually a terrible plan."

He took a step closer to her, nearly reaching out to touch her, but falling short, keeping his hands firmly in his pockets, instead.

"But maybe it's not."

A quality entered her voice that was strangely childlike and it seemed like all of her defenses just fell away. Had she been less taken aback by how forward he was being she may have recovered her defenses and gone back to the mask she usually wore. Perhaps him bringing up his abilities had been the final thing that had swayed her. He wasn't a mutant but he was oddly similar and she could relate to struggling with control.

"My experience with any type of relationship is limited." Even her friend group was exceedingly small and filled with people who teetered on the edge of loving her and wondering when she was going to teleport away and not come back with 0 explanation. "Mutants do not get normal."

"Well, then, that makes two of us." It occurred to him, as they stood there that way, that this may be the first time he's seen Illyana as he is, not as she pretends to be. He understood the masks she wore, to protect herself from her friends, from her duties, from the things she'd had to do and the things she'd had done to her.

"And...I don't think...whatever I am does either." His voice was smaller, quiet. "Lord knows my mum didn't."

She was silent for a few seconds and put a hand to her chest. When she finally said something she didn't look at him. "When I was taken to Limbo I was just six years old. I only spoke English because of the Professor's telepathy," there was bitterness in her chuckle. "But there I learned demonic tongues that few others will ever hear. I met alternate versions of my ...closest friend and another teammate. Cat and Ororo. They raised me and taught me much of what I know about combat and white magic." And truth be told she had loved them dearly.

"Belasco would not stand for that though." Now she knew why, she understood why and it caused her stomach to twist and turn. "He could not stand the idea of me loving something above him." That was what she believed it had truly come down to and eventually had had admitted as much. Of course he'd needed her soul and he'd wanted an apprentice that would be just like him. "He turned Cat into a literal cat and in order to save Storm I killed her. In the end I killed Storm too. There had been no other choice." She tilted her head to the side and still didn't look up at him. "Each of the New Mutants has been tortured and transformed due to my actions. Some were to my own machinations. I am not meant to get close to people."

"No." His voice was dark, colored by his own inability to be close to people growing up simply because touching them was overwhelming. He didn't understand, couldn't, not fully, but he knew one thing for certain. She was wrong about what she deserved. Most people were.

He moved around her, willing her to look at him, though it was probably asking too much. "No, Illyana. What you deserved was to be a little girl, and you had that taken from you, and so much more. What you deserve is to be wanted and loved, just like everyone else. I know he made you do things you regret, probably horrible things, but he's a sodding demon, Illyana. That's what they do, and making you think that's all you were worth is just...one more way he controlled you."

"I..." she looked both shocked and slightly afraid for a second and then the portal began to form at her feet. "Perhaps you're not wrong about him. But he was human before he became a demon. Just like me." And with that she left, with a look that betrayed just how overwhelmed and afraid she actually felt.

Spare the Sympathy

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