okteiviakom | The Cape Rouge, Later Friday Afternoon

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The Cape Rouge, Later Friday Afternoon

Octavia had urged Lucifer to fly Duke back to the boat. Something about safety, and security, and a defendable spot that was closed off and sort of separate from the rest of the island --

So in one word: control. Which Octavia was grasping for, had been grasping for from just about the second she'd laid eyes on Mara at Selkie Peak. Something she'd thought she'd had, with the portal idea, only to immediately find out how wrong she'd been.

Making Lucifer get Duke home as soon as possible had been another flaily attempt at it.

Of course, as Octavia had come to realize very soon after, it meant she'd had to let both of them out of her sight. She didn't know if Duke had come to yet. Didn't know anything, except that this was the fastest she'd ever crossed the island, trying to race an angel back to port.

Her heart was thumping like thunder in her ears and her lungs ached when she burst onto, then into the Cape Rouge.

And yet: "Lucifer! Is he still out?"

[ooc: For the two modded with permission! Follows this. Note to squirrels: That Octavia and Lucifer got Duke back to the boat is fine for broadcast, everything else NFB pls and thank you!]

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Duke had started to rouse as they'd arrived on the boat, and had insisted on being put down on the couch in the galley, rather than the bedroom. He was rubbing his eyes, trying to reorient himself and take stock as Octavia came in. He raised his hand and wobbled it in a wave to make sure she could see him past Lucifer and his inevitable fussing.

"Yeah. I'm, uh." He rubbed his face again. "Did that really just happen? Or did someone slip me a mickey at the park?"

"It happened," Lucifer said grimly. (He looked a touch pale.) "Duke, drink your bloody water."

"Duke!"

Octavia rushed over to them, her next breath a gasp both for seeing Duke back to consciousness and for how she'd been exerting herself.

"Hey." Duke reached for her, rather than the water. Sorry, Luce, but it could wait another moment or so. "I'm okay. I'm -- kind of ridiculously okay, actually." He gave Lucifer a worried look. "Like. Pre-troubles okay. What actually happened?"

"You exploded," said Lucifer, who rubbed his face with the hand that wasn't holding the water.

Why did he feel more agitated than he had before?

"Into a thousand troubles."

Octavia grasped at Duke's hand. Tightly.

She didn't have anything to add to Lucifer's explanation (didn't remember that she should have), so instead she was still stuck on looking Duke over for... Anything. Any off sign at all.

Well. He went rather suddenly pale at Lucifer's explanation. But otherwise, he looked as fine as he claimed. His wide eyes were brown and warm as they were supposed to be.

"I." He swallowed sharply. "They didn't -- Fandom isn't --"

He'd manage to finish a sentence again someday. Maybe.

"No," Lucifer said.

He shoved the glass at Duke again. Considering Octavia's current position, it was a complicated maneuver. "I believe I caught all of them."

Octavia let Duke's hand go and gestured towards the water. He really needed to drink it.

She probably should have, too.

"You . . . caught them," Duke echoed. He took the glass and had a cautious sip.

Like he was worried he was going to explode again.

"How?"

"I'm an angel, darling," Lucifer said, something in him relaxing as Duke took the water. "They just... evaporate right off of me."

With her hands free again, Octavia... looked down at them.

A little black ball absorbing into her palm --

"Almost all of them," she muttered faintly.

Duke was almost relaxing. Taking another, larger sip of the water.

Which he spit back into the glass.

"What do you mean almost?"

"Octavia?"

Lucifer hadn't abandoned hypervigilance yet, so his eyes snapped up to look at her.

"One escaped," Octavia said, slowly, as she looked up at them. "But I caught it. There weren't any others."

It was easy enough to tell by how slowly she spoke that she was processing it as she was saying it, not even a second earlier.

"You . . . caught it." Duke set his glass aside and leaned forward. "And then what happened?"

"... Can you feel anything?" Lucifer asked, looking at Octavia with alarm. "Did you do anything?"

He hadn't caught all of them.

This was his fault.

Octavia's gaze was drawn back to her hand. "I didn't even remember until just now."

That had to mean it was fine. Right?

They could play the blame game later. When Duke processed the fact that he'd fallen for Mara's tricks enough to let her get her hands all over him and turn him into a trouble bomb in the first place.

"Okay." Duke said. He nodded, eyes darting back and forth at nothing as he thought quickly. "Okay. You -- caught it. And it disappeared. And -- and Mara said she loaded me with enough to trouble the whole town, so if one got out and you caught it and it disappeared, that means."

He stopped abruptly, swallowing.

It wasn't hard to work out what that meant.

"Fuck."

What?

Someone had to say it.

"It doesn't have to mean that," Octavia tried, weakly.

But there was a particular kind of toneless rasp in her voice that said she agreed.

“Right. Maybe you caught, what, a blank? Some trouble-shrapnel?” Duke leaned back again, rubbing his hands down his face. “Fuck. Okay. At least we have, like. Experience.”

"Plenty of experience," Lucifer said, though he sounded less reassuring and more frustrated and scrambling, "Especially recently, in the field of disarming them."

"There might be nothing to disarm."

Even Octavia didn't really believe that. She just didn't like how things had shifted, how uneven the ground felt when they were supposed to be able to catch their collective breath.

“Yeah, Haven’s never that nice,” Duke said. He got up to start pacing. He really did feel better, more like himself than he had in he didn’t know how long. “But . . . whatever it is, we’ll deal when we find out. It can’t be worse than the shit we’ve already been through. Right?”

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