mouthy_merc | 29 Chimera Court, Saturday Morning

"Oh! Okay!" Rikku pulled the door open and peer around. "Hiya! Um. Is it ... okay if I ... can I come in? For brunch? Or just ... to talk? I don't have to have brunch. If you're, you know. Busy. Or whatever?"

Slightly more flaily than usual: yes.

(OOC: SORRY. RL ate me. Burp!)

Edited 2008-04-05 23:34 (UTC)

Deadpool poked at a waffle before setting it on the table with a nod. "Talk and eat, lil' one."

"Thanks," she said, falling into a seat. Oooooh, waffles! She reached for the butter. "Do you usually make brunch? This all smells really good. I get bored when I cook and start adding things that don't go together. It's usually fun, though."

Rikku fidgeted. "Um. So. How ... have you been?"

"Well, the waffle maker begs to be used and Arashi refuses to touch the cereal so..." Deadpool shrugged, pouring more batter into the machine. "I'm good. Only got attacked by two kids, which was nice."

"You cook for him?" She beamed. "That's so sweet! I meant to come by and pester you when I was little and somehow I got derailed. Probably the short attention span? I don't seem to be very smart when I'm little."

"I don't think any of us are," Deadpool informed her sagely. "I called a student a pervert."

A beat.

"Though she might have been, you never know these days."

"What was she doing?" Rikku asked. "Was she hitting on you? That's totally sexual harassment and you can get her detention for that, I bet."

She chewed her lower lip and fussed a little, spreading butter over her waffles. "Can I ... ask you something kinda weird?"

"Taking pictures for blackmail, I think..."

Deadpool cocked his head to the side, watching her closely. "As long as it has nothing to do with anything French, go for it."

"No French," she promised, cutting up the waffle carefully. Okay. Right. "So ... has anyone ever ... I mean. You do mercenary stuff, or you did before teaching, right? Did anyone ever ... just, they ... found out some of it, and ... they weren't okay with it?

Deadpool blinked a few times at her slowly.

"Yes."

She looked up, eyes worried. "Did it get fixed? I mean. Is that something you can ... talk out, or is it pretty much a deal-breaker, 'cause ... it's just gonna be hanging there and you can't take some things back, but ... it's got nothing to do with them. So it shouldn't bug them. Uh. I really ... shouldn't be asking any of this, should I? I'm sorry. I just ..."

"She-- we-- never worked out." Gosh was that waffle maker interesting. "It all depends on what happened and if it's gonna get changed in the future."

Took him years after Terry to get to what she had wanted.

"I don't think he can quit," she said softly. "I think it's bad, and it got worse, and ..."

She swallowed hard. "I'm -- I'm sorry. I invited myself for brunch and asked really rude questions and ... minions are not supposed to make your day suck. It's a rule."

Yeah, it so totally was, but...

Damn responsibility.

"Does he wanna?"

"Quit?" she asked, looking over. "I ... don't know. I think it's all he has, but they make him do really bad things and he drinks until he pretends he's okay with it. And some of the things he's done ... I knew he was a mercenary, I knew some of it was dirty, and I figured some of it was really bad, because of how he looks when he doesn't talk about it. And then he told me some of it, and 'really bad', that's not even close. And ... I left."

Deadpool smell something burning. Oh. His hand.

Owie.

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"Is that awful?" she said. "I --"

She smelled something burning, too, and then a second later was out of her seat and next to the waffle maker. "Oh! OH! Are you -- did -- I'm sorry, I --"

Ah, all healed up now.

Deadpool looked over at her, not really expressing anything through the mask this time. "Hmm?"

"Your ... that's ..." Rikku flailed. "Don't do that! You just lost waffle-maker privileges. Go sit down."

"I'm fine, eat your waffle!" Deadpool told her, poking at the new skin.

"I did not come for traumatizing brunch time!" Rikku yelled, pointing at the chair. "Sit! I can make waffles without losing any skin!"

...when did he start listening to teenagers?

Deadpool took a seat, crossing his arms over his chest. "Didja get the answer you needed?"

"No," she grumbled, pouring batter into the waffle-maker. "I want to know what I should do. If it makes me a terrible person that I took off like that. If it should bug me, what he did and what that means. If I'm gonna be able to get over it sooner or later. And maybe nobody knows that, and I just stomped in here and ruined your brunch for nothing."

Deadpool sighed, leaning back against the chair. "You act how you act, kid. People really can't change what they've done, but they can try to be better about that kind of shit."

And then flopped forward against the table. "This is why Arashi an' me never talk about our pasts."

"Do you think he'd be upset?" she asked, flipping down the lid. "I guess the real question is, you know. If you guys are happy together, why does stuff before him matter, right? Except it always feels like it does. Your head messes with you."

She frowned. "It seriously doesn't help that he worked for the government."

Deadpool scratched the side of his head. "Why? I took plenty of jobs from the government."

Ah, Civil War. Fun times all around.

Aaaaaaaaand now Rikku was glad the lid was flipped down, or she might have accidentally set her hand on the damned thing.

"You did not!"

"Rikku, what part of mercenary don't you get? You work for the person who pays best..."

"Yes! A person!" There was flailing. "A person who wants you to steal something or beat someone up or whatever! Not a government! Here, go oppress those people! Burn some houses down and then arrest the people inside, and blame them for it! That's not the same thing at all!"

He stared more.

"Well, I tried to avoid oppressing people..." Deadpool shook his head. "You know what? I really don't have to explain my past to you. It was years before you were born. Mostly."

Rikku covered her eyes with her hand. "Does everybody kill people for the government? Is there some kind of a secret club no one told me about?"

"Welcome to the real world. People suck. Want a waffle?"

Rikku shook her head. "No. I don't. You're not supposed to ... kill people for the government. You're Deadpool. That's just wrong."

"What am I supposed to do?" Deadpool asked. "And I actually haven't killed anyone in about three years."

Nate didn't count.

"The government is bad," she frowned. "I mean, people can be bad. You can get some crazy guy running around shooting everybody else. But you really need a system to work up the big evil. The crazy guy gets arrested, or someone shoots him. To take out entire cities and get a thousand years of pointless death going? That, you need the government for. And a spiffy-sounding religion makes it go twice as far. Don't ask questions, or we'll kick you out and then you'll be screwed. And by the way, we need more money."

Deadpool blinked at her.

"Okay then. Good to know."

"I'm serious," she said, remembering to open the waffle-maker. Oh, hey, they weren't burnt. That counted as a win. "They're a bunch of power-hungry bastards and they're evil. They did horrible things to us. You're not supposed to be one of them."

She was going to go live in a bunker. In an undisclosed location. So that when the entire rest of the world joined the Yay, Government! club, they wouldn't know where to find her, dammit.

"Lil' minion... not every government is like that."

"Maybe they just cover it up better," Rikku said softly. "They bombed my city into the ground. They arrested Yunie for treason, and ordered all of us to be executed. And then when they needed us, they told everyone that had never happened, it was a filthy lie spread by the filthy Al Bhed. You know, the ones living on an airship because their city's gone."

Deadpool sighed, rubbing his forehead.

"Very tragic, yes. And very Civil War of you, but... kiddo... that doesn't mean shit in the real world. Especially in my job. Genocide is kind of a reoccuring theme in history, you see."

A beat.

"And I can't believe I'm defending the little shithead, but... you really don't have any right to judge him. If ya want me to say it's okay, I really can't. All the crap in the past isn't who people are now necessarily. You just keep-- walking forward."

"It's hard to just ignore it when they're your people," she said, looking over with a frown. "I'm ... not judging him, either. Am I? I didn't ... think i was. I mean. He had ... I think maybe his life was bad, really bad, before it, and I don't think he had anything else. I don't think he's evil. I just ... don't know if I can handle ... being with him, and not thinking he's them. The people that did that to us."

Deep breath. "Maybe that is. I don't mean to. I don't hate him. I just ... don't know what to do."

Just ask Nate about that bit, really.

Fun times.

Deadpool shrugged. "Figure it out. No one can tell you what to do here, Rikku. The government made me the way I am now. Do I have issues with them?" He paused to think it over. "A little. But a job is a job if they're willing to pay an ungodly amount."

Or weren't doing something he specifically disapproved of.

She nodded. "You really think ... the government here isn't like that, though? I mean. They ... did bad things to you."

For which she would slice them into tiny pieces, if she ever knew who to slice.

Another shrug. "Shit happens, kid. Sitting around and brooding about it is just boring."

Booze was much more fun!

"Doesn't make it okay." Rikku shook her head. Oooh, hey, more waffles were done. "I don't know. I feel like yelling at him and throwing things and I know how stupid and unfair that is. So I don't. But I don't know what I should do. And I'm sorry to be all. Um. Ruining your brunch and we can totally switch to more minionly thing now."

No, she really couldn't.

"Then go do that then. Maybe it'll help."

"Do you think?" Rikku asked. "It's ... gotta be better than not saying anything. Right?"

29 Chimera Court, Saturday Morning

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