fandomtownies | The Perk, Sunday Afternoon

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The Perk, Sunday Afternoon

There was a school trip this upcoming week, apparently; Pam had only learned of it when she found out Adrian wouldn't be coming in to work next week. She hadn't known just how much of this town was dedicated to that school until now, with the streets suddenly much quieter.

It suited her fine, honestly. She'd spent the past few weeks getting comfortable. A quiet island meant she had time to expand her horizons. Sometime into the afternoon, she walked to the Perk, her senses telling her of tiny things hatching under the stone, the breath of relief of a place that would be partially unburdened by the constant to and fro of human feet.

She sat at a table, her coffee in one hand, a phone in the other, and scrolled. Did you know more than three-quarters of the Chesapeake Bay's tidal waters were contaminated by chemicals to one extent or another? That there were chemical plants and industrial complexes along the Chesapeake Bay that dumped far more waste than they were allowed to? That the water was rife with PFAS and PCBs, and that nitrogen levels hadn't fallen in some time?

She had. But it was nice to get specifics.

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"Involves someone I don't have access to anymore."

One way to put what had happened with Mara.

"Dead?" Pam guessed. "Or missing?"

"One way ticket to a different universe."

So... Either? Both?

"And they left no instruction manual? Rude."

"Guess they had other priorities."

Oh, there was the heavy, heavy rasp again.

Sip.

"No alternatives?"

"Dying." Absolutely not going into the specifics with that one. "Sort of defeats the purpose."

"When I lost my ability to be fully in the Green, I found a creative solution," Ivy replied. She looked thoughtful. "Something else to replace it. I just... had to look out of the box."

She looked at Octavia over the rim of her cup and said, "I know advice from a pushy stranger isn't worth much. But you seem to care about nature. I can tell you fatalism doesn't offer great counsel, either."

"Aren't you the one who was calling me bold for assuming things?" Octavia replied.

She managed to reel back most of the biting kind of dry in her tone, but not all.

"Because you seem to think I'm you."

Other people probably found this woman intimidating, Pam reflected. She sipped her coffee, visibly undisturbed.

"No, I'm making what is called 'an educated guess'," she said. "And you're all prickled skin and injured anger."

She set her coffee down. Reached for her phone.

"What was it you said before?" Octavia replied, watching Pam's hands, her tone finally tempered back to just mild again. "Not enough data points."

A few threads of fungus slid across her thumb, curving around it. Pam shrugged. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe not."

She had a sense Octavia might be fooling herself, but she also had no skin in the game. She studied the website she'd opened up before Octavia came in. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about the industrial sites in this area, would you?"

"No," Octavia replied, a little dry again.

'Other than that there's probably too many' crossed her mind, but she wasn't quite that quick to change tracks these days.

"The bay is very polluted," Pam explained, sitting back with her phone. "I was thinking about making a house call."

"To who?"

What, sometimes single-syllable questions were valid.

"Some of the people responsible."

Was it ethical to rope someone else into her personal crusade?

Well. Octavia looked like she needed it.

Well, at least that was going to prompt a slightly longer question.

"And what's it to me?"

Pam shrugged. "Probably nothing," she said. She picked up her coffee. "I'm not trying to get you into any danger."

The way the snort slipped out surprised even Octavia herself.

"That's a new one."

"Oh, I mean it," Pam replied. "I know doing something proactive tends to improve my mood, but my idea of 'proactive' isn't exactly for everyone."

"I didn't mean you didn't mean it."

Was she going to explain it further than that? Probably not.

(Just something absurd about not trying to get her into danger. Like that was supposed to be a concern? And not something that just happened.

Or something Octavia was to other people.)

"How proactive are you talking?"

"Proactive like shutting the facility down," Pam said.

Lift cup. Sip.

(Without too many unnecessary deaths. She'd promised Janet as much, once upon a time.)

Edited 2024-10-22 15:55 (UTC)

Octavia gave a vague hum. Unreadable, but if anyone should be fine with that, in Octavia's opinion it should be the woman sitting across from her. She had her own poker face going on too, after all.

She watched the sip, and didn't immediately offer anything more.

Pam set the cup down. "I'm going to get another coffee," she said. "Do you want anything?"

Octavia looked down at the cup she'd taken about two sips from.

And then back up again. "A muffin."

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