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[gidge]

PICK YOUR POISON
PIC PROMPTS / TFLN / RANDOM SCENARIO
HAN SOLO velocities	BETTY MCRAE bombsheller	RIVER TAM subsulcus	RIVER TAM (AU) comprehender
SIMON TAM vest	BRIA THAREN exulted	NADINE CROSS bridaled	GU JUN-PYO toddler
available on special request: veronica sawyer, benjamin linus, imani, maria deluca, mushu, poseidon, niccolò machiavelli, malik al-sayf, chloe

Comments

[mophie]

She's not the only one noticing a non-answer of an answer. And in Billy's experience, what's not a yes is a no; and if she's not going to help him, there's no point to hanging around here. The longer he stays, the more likely she's going to send him back somewhere he doesn't want to go, probably. So he reaches out to pull that notebook back, put it back into his backpack; and at the same time, packs away that brief hope he'd shown her just as quickly.

"Okay, fine. Sorry for wasting your time."

[steerclear]

The kid reaches for the notebook, but Jessica has it up in the air above her head before he's got a chance to actually do anything.

Playing keep-away with the child that broke into your apartment to hire you to find his long lost mother is a totally reasonable and good thing to do. Probably. Maybe.

"You oughta be sorry for breaking into my apartment, but I'll let that slide if you explain what the hell happened. I can't do shit if I don't know what it is I'm actually looking for."

No, she doesn't fully realize she just cursed in front of the child.

[mophie]

"Hey -- "

But she's both stronger and taller than he is, so he hops on one foot impotently to get his notebook back with no luck.

Which would make him a lot angrier normally, except for what she says. The child doesn't fully realize she cursed in front of him either tbh, because he's too busy with the everything else.

"Seriously?"

As in: seriously, she's asking, seriously, she might take the case?

[steerclear]

How does she get herself into this shit? Why is this her life?

Once he stops hopping, Jess lowers the notebook down a bit rather than making herself stand there with one arm up toward the ceiling like an idiot. Hard to have a serious conversation like that.

"I'm considering it." Then, after a beat. "Pro-bono, so I can write it off on my taxes, but you still need an adult to sign the contract."

She hopes he's serious enough about this to let her connect him back to an actual adult that ought to be responsible for him.

[mophie]

"Not an issue," he assures her, like he's not demonstrably willing to lie to find his mother.

But there's no helping the smile that spreads across his face at her acquiescence (such as it is)...though he does a kind of repressed bounce on his feet just once, not out of excitement but squashing down the urge to try again at swiping back his still-out-of-reach notebook.

"So what do you need to know?"

About what happened, he means.

[steerclear]

God, what is going on with this kid?

He bounces and smiles, and Jess just frowns a little. None of this story so far is gonna be particularly pleasant, she knows it.

"The usual, but we can start with how you got separated."

It's a carefully chosen word, separated.

[mophie]

Look, it's been a very long time since anyone's willingly agreed to help him with this. This being the only way he's willing to let anyone help him at all; and usually he has to take what he can and try his best.

So he tells her.

About the Winter Carnival in Philadelphia, his mom taking him, the balloon darts game, how she won him a compass.

(He takes a little compass keychain out of his pocket as he talks, shows her quickly and then fiddles with it as he continues with the story.)

Then he talks about dropping it, letting go of her hand to find it, and then getting lost in the crowd. He'd found his way to the cops monitoring the fairgrounds, who'd put out an alert for a lost child, and...

...that's pretty much the whole story.