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Pick Your Poison, Monday

Pam had had some wild dreams last night, psychedelic and painful fictions. It hadn't been dissimilar to her hallucinations back when she'd been dying of the lamia; she woke up sweating, searching her body for signs that she was dying again.

But there had been nothing. It was just a day. (A day after the day she'd done something very stupid in the laboratory with Octavia's sample, but-- still a day.) A day in her body, not a fully healthy body, but a functioning body none the less.

She made coffee after she came down the stairs, early in the morning. Unlocked and opened the door to the shop while it was still dark outside. There was something cosy about it. About settling back on the store sofa, sipping her coffee, watching the town wake up through the window.

Pick Your Poison was open.

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Once Yelena wrapped up what could barely pass for a news broadcast, she set off wandering around town, trying to shake the restless energy that had been nagging at her lately.

After completing a second lap around the island, she stopped by The Perk to grab a couple of coffees. Before she knew it, her feet had carried her to Joan's shop.

"Hello! I brought coffee," Yelena called out as she stepped inside. "And, hopefully, some lively conversation to go with it. Not that I can promise it will be lovely but the potential is there."

"Lively conversation, huh?" Pam asked, unfurling a touch from the couch on which she'd sprawled for the past half hour. (Unfurling, also, from her own drifting thoughts.) "I'm willing to let you give it your best shot."

Yelena frowned for a second. "Okay, I lied. I probably got nothing," she said offering the cup of coffee. "I was a cat for a week but that's barely a conversation starter around here."

"... I'm still new," Pam pointed out, taking the cup as she sat up. "It's a little of a conversation starter. A cat?"

"Oh! Then it might be slightly lively," Yelena chuckled. "Yes, it was at the fair thing a few weeks ago. I was chatting with Adrian at the kissing booth and suddenly I was a cat."

She shrugged. "I don't remember a lot of it? Mostly sleeping and apparently I was demanding a lot of fish."

"Sounds like a cat," Pam said. She sipped her coffee. "I was warned about that," she added, "And somehow it still comes as a surprise."

"Well then you should probably be also warned that when you come back you are usually naked," Yelena with a rueful smirk. "So hopefully whoever is looking after you will be prepared for that. If someone needs to look after you of course."

Pam made a faintly amused noise (and batted away a mental image). "I can safely say that would be the least of my worries if I turned into a cat," she said.

Could you even turn into a cat if you were half-plant?

"But I take it it was a shock for you."

"I heard a few things from doing radio," Yelena said with a casual shrug. "But it’s not like I had control over having a pile of clothes nearby to change into. It was fine, though. No big deal."

The last part was accompanied by a deliberate lack of eye contact and a conveniently timed, overly large sip of coffee.

If Pam were the type to push, this is where she would have pushed.

"Uh huh."

She sipped her coffee.

"Well, at least your clothes - and your thumbs - are back now."

"Oh my god, thumbs," Yelena said with a long appreciative sigh. "You have no idea how much you miss them when you don't have them. But at least now I think I'm finally over being a cat. At least I don't have the urge to continually eat sushi or knock random things off countertops."

"The potted plants of this island appreciate it," Pam snarked. "Certainly mine."

Not that Yelena had knocked any of them over, but it was the principle of the matter.

"Yes, I'm sure they are very grateful," Yelena snarked back. "So what have you been up to while I was covered in fur?"

Fighting industrialists on her version of the mainland and performing dubious experiments on samples from one of the locals (and herself). You know. The usual.

"Not much," Pam said, with an apologetic half-shrug. "I've gotten settled, the garden is almost winter-ready, and I haven't turned into anything exciting." She sipped her coffee. "We haven't even had any parties worth writing home about, as far as I can tell."

It was Monday again.

Here was Octavia, just as wary as she'd felt the week before, and just as unwilling to let it show past the mildness in her demeanor. Slipping in quietly through the door.

"Octavia," Pam greeted. She was sorting through some paperwork by the counter, but the entrance had caused her to look up.

Octavia nodded.

And then... dug into her pockets and set a few tiny bottles of rum out by the door. Might as well get that part over with.

Pam stretched up. "I have some news," she said, "If not a permanent solution. Yet."

Octavia straightened up and gave another tiny nod.

"What is it?"

"I isolated your plant-killing compound," Pam said brusquely. "I'm working on a way to neutralize it. I can probably get you something soon, but it would be temporary and topical - not anything I can mass produce or that will resolve your problem permanently."

"I wouldn't expect either of those things," Octavia replied, mild yet unable to keep something from creeping into her expression. Hope? Something softer, anyway. "Temporary's better than nothing."

"It is," Pam agreed. She rubbed idly at her elbow. "I can probably make you a salve. Something you can use to cover your skin, that will allow you to touch plant cells until you've fully absorbed it."

Something like... compassion? Sympathy? A mix of both, flickered across her features. "Like I said, it's not a permanent solution," she said, "But you'll at least be able to go out into the woods for an hour or so each time without killing anything."

How many weeks had it been, now? Since Octavia had been able to go into the preserve? Just thinking about having a chance to go back, even for a few moments, felt like an ache.

A little bit of salvation.

"How can --" she started, but ended up having to clear her throat. No reason. "How can you make something like that?"

(If she could. Nothing was certain and Octavia knew that. Even if the hope inside her didn't seem to.)

To be disconnected from the Green was a pain so deep, there were no words for it. Pam knew that. That was why she was doing this, after all.

(And her weakness for gorgeous women who loved the Earth.)

"I have a healing factor," she said, after a moment of consideration. She rolled up her sleeve. There, on her lower arm, there was a rash-- a gray circle, with a black spot at its heart, slowly diminishing cell by cell. "My body figured out a counter measure," she continued, clinically. "I just need to distill it from my blood."

And see, Octavia could emote more obviously: her eyes were widening now, something in her expression going slack with surprise as she stared at the rash.

"You -- tried it on yourself?"

"Just a small dosage," Pam said. There was a hint of wryness in there. "I'm not suicidal."

(Anymore.)

"Why would you do that?" Octavia asked anyway.

Helpless not to.

"There was a time I could have brought a city to its knees through the plants that had their roots below the concrete," Pam said. She pulled her sleeve down abruptly. "I know what it's like to lose your connection to the Green. If I can do something to fix that for someone else, someone who cares, I will."

Octavia thought - and not nearly for the first time - about what she'd seen at the chemical plant, about the way Ivy's body had... sprouted. Talons, hair like flames, and just so much life, the kind that vegetation taking back a broken planet carried with it. Brutal.

Don't ask what Octavia found herself yearning for. She wouldn't have been able to say.

She nodded, one of those tiny movements. "Well." Mostly a breath. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet."

Pam reached up to tug on her ponytail. It didn't feel tight enough, all of a sudden. "I'll probably have enough in a few days," she said. "You'll still want to cover up as much as you can when you use it. So you only have to apply it to your face and hands."

It'd last longer. There was only so much Pam could bleed, after all.

Octavia had her reasons to be grateful just for Pam trying in the first place. Especially in such a... personal kind of way.

She nodded.

"Trust me," she said, a little bit of rasp making its way back into her voice, "I know about limited resources and how to manage them."

"Radioactive future, right," Pam said.

She looked back down at her arm, covered as it was now.

"Could you do me a favor?"

Octavia's head tilted just a little.

"What is it?"

"Make the most of it," Pam said, quieter.

Octavia blinked.

No, not like that, not out of surprise. More like there was something suddenly in her eyes. Her voice... also caught a little, even with how low and raspy it was. "Don't have to tell me twice."

She got a little nod.

"That's all I've got," Pam said, finally. "Unless you wanted the complicated science babble, but I don't think you're the type."

"I'm not," Octavia admitted, a little quieter than before. "Only ever understood the parts that I needed to."

"Then you don't need the details," Pam said wryly. "Probably better that way."

"For me or for you?"

Octavia was aware 'both' and 'in general' were also options. She was asking anyway.

"Both."

And there she had it.

Octavia took it. And nodded, one of those tiny movements again.

"Then I won't ask."

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Pick Your Poison, Monday

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