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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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?”

Lucifer leaned back to let Duke pass, but he squinted. "That feels like a trap."

Octavia crossed her arms, although really what she was doing was tucking her hands away. Like maybe they shouldn't be trusted.

"A trap?"

Oh boy did Duke understand that feeling.

“I was the trap,” he pointed out. “This is . . . the trap’s aftermath.”

"'It can't be worse'," Lucifer muttered. "It feels like a trap, still. One last mess waiting to bite us all in the arse."

"Mostly me," Octavia muttered, only half out loud. The next part was clearer, louder. "Do we have any other option than just waiting to see what it is?"

"Well I could kill you and absorb your trouble," Duke said dryly. "But personally, I'd rather avoid doing that."

"Yes, let's keep the murder to a minimum," Lucifer said, harried. "The 'minimum' being 'hoping she wound up in the middle of a volcano'."

The look Octavia darted Duke's way at that particular dry quip was... not great.

But she didn't say anything about it. Instead, she said, softly, "I need air." And turned to head back up on deck. It wasn't untrue, either: she could really use a moment to try and regroup.

Maybe pack a few things away.

They were all running too tense.

Duke watched her go without trying to follow.

"This . . . really never stops sucking, does it."

"It had better or I may have to murder everyone and then myself," Lucifer muttered to the ceiling.

Burying all of those issues was not working as well as it had just last week.

"There was a second there," Duke said. "Just -- a tiny second. Where everything seemed like it was going to be okay."

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