[Closed - Caden, Coop, Les & Robert]

[seas_open]

Whatever is responsible for this, April doesn't notice when it happens.

She and Caden have been back in town for a few days now and she knows he'll need to go back again in the next little while, but she plans on staying here. Not because she hadn't enjoyed her time in California, but given how much she's banked on Coop's generosity when it comes to her job -- the first legitimate job she's ever had and currently her only source of income -- she really thinks it's a good idea she stay and actually work a little.

She's unpacked, she's settled back in her apartment, and she spends a few days just settling back into town. It's a strange thing to feel, settled in any way, but she does. And she isn't entirely sure what she thinks of it, whether she likes it or hates it, but she's allowing herself to exist in this state, to give it a chance instead of rebuffing it as soon as she feels something out of the ordinary.

Whenever she uses her powers in Siren Cove, she does it almost without thinking. There are times she uses them to get what she wants, times when she's irritated and makes someone do something for her, but none of it is truly harmful in any way. Though it seems someone disagrees.

She's in a coffee shop, she's in a hurry, and she needs to get to the front of the line quickly, so she taps the guy in front of her on the shoulder, gives him a smile and asks him in a gentle, melodic voice if he'd mind letting her go ahead of him. In response he only rolls his eyes and turns away from her.

For the rest of the day she tries it on everyone she meets. She asks people easy favours, she suggests things for them to do, and while some people help her just out of the kindness of their heart, most just ignore her suggestions, and that's never happened to her before. She has never met anyone immune to her powers.

By the end of the day she's so furious she's trembling and she stands near the boardwalk, unsure of what to do or where to go. She needs to see Caden, she needs to tell him something is wrong, but she needs to see her father, too. Maybe he'll be able to track down whoever is responsible for this.

Staring out at the ocean, her jaw clenched tight enough to hurt, April finds the only thing she wants to do is scream.

Comments

[seas_open]

Now that they're here, now that they're sitting down and she's presented with the actual opportunity to tell someone all that's happened, she finds she doesn't really know where to begin. She sinks down onto the bench beside him and concentrates on eating her ice cream for a moment as she tries to decide what might be the best place for her to begin. It honestly all starts with her childhood and she doesn't want to go that far back, she doesn't want to start telling Coop about what it was like growing up in a series of foster homes or that she learned to use her powers by making sure no one hurt her or the children she was with.

"I didn't know I was a siren," she says. "Not until I was in my teens. My parents... well, Robert fucked off and my mom was an addict, so my sister and I were taken away and I had no idea, but I knew I could do things. I could make people do things just by telling them to and when you grow up in foster care..." She trails off and shrugs. "There's a lot of reason to tell people what not to do, anyway. There was no one to really take care of me, no one to help me figure out how to go to college and when I realized what I was and that I could just make people give me their money, that seemed a hell of a lot easier than trying to find a legitimate job."

And it was. It is easy and she loves it. She doesn't feel guilty, she doesn't see any reason why she should.

"I don't target men with children," she says. "I don't target good men. The people I've taken money from have generally been assholes, but that also means they might be more inclined to take revenge." She pauses, then smiles faintly and looks over at Coop. "I'm still wanted to New York and Alabama."

[coopdetat]

Coop can't really relate to any of that, he's never known a life that hasn't involved two loving parents who've wanted absolutely nothing but the best for him. They'd helped him pay for school, they'd supported him in his move to France, and they'd taken him back in until he'd managed to get the clinic up and running when he'd return to Siren Cove with a heart in desperate need of repair. Occasionally, his mom still needles at him about when he's going to finally try to settle down again because he'd been so close once, and Coop often has to resist the urge to shout at her that the fact that he'd been so close then is exactly why he doesn't want to get that close ever again; but he always manages to resist because it's never coming from a hurtful place.

When he'd discovered his own powers, his parents had gently talked him through what it meant to be a witch, what it meant to be responsibilities that other people don't simply because he was powerful in ways they could never be. April hadn't had that, she hadn't had a support system that taught her using her powers to manipulate whenever she wanted would be a bad thing; but she'd learned it herself.

She only targets certain people, the kind of men who don't deserve all the fortune in their lives because they hadn't achieved it in an honorable way. Coop takes issue with that just by hearing it because he's a guy who does things because they're right, at least he tries to be, and he knows he's not perfect by any means but he takes comfort in knowing that he's April's friend. Not just another potential target.

"You did what you had to do," he says, his voice steadier than he thought it would be, and Coop firmly meets her gaze. "But you were alone then. You're not alone now, you have people who want to look out for you. People like me, because I give a shit about what happens to you. So if any of these guys are coming at you for revenge, if they're responsible for what's going on with your powers, then you can count me in on taking any goddamn one of them down. It doesn't matter to me what you've done in the past. Doesn't even matter what you might do in the future. All I know is that you're my friend. Nothing you've told me changes that."

[seas_open]

It isn't at all what April expects to hear and for a moment she just looks at Coop as if she's trying to read him. She doesn't think poorly of him and she doesn't think he's the kind of person who just abandons people when they do something he might not particularly like, but what she's just told him is rather huge. In some states she's still considered a wanted criminal, she's broken the law over and over again, she's amassed a good amount of money based solely on her lies and for some reason he's still sitting next to her, not only telling her he'll still be her friend but that he'll help her with whatever she needs to do in order to get her powers back.

April has no idea what she's ever done to deserve such loyalty, but for a second she can't quite believe it's being so freely given.

She's suspicious of it, but not because of anything Coop has or hasn't done. It happens because she's spent her life on her own, the only person she can trust or rely on, and while this isn't the first time he's offered something else, while he's not even the first person to offer such support, it still takes her off guard for a moment.

"I haven't done a job in a long time," she says. "Not since I came here." She doesn't think she needs to defend what she does, but she wants him to know that anyway. "I don't know what I'll do in the future, but I do know that I like working for you."

She pauses, then smiles a little and she doesn't know what to say to make him understand that what he's said means a lot to her. She's never been good at anything like this, expressing herself when it's genuine, making people understand when she cares. Finally she says, "At least I didn't give you a fake name."

[coopdetat]

"Can't blame you," he answers, shrugging a shoulder as he leans against the bench and casually drapes an arm over the back with an exaggerated stretch. "I'm pretty fucking fantastic, if you hadn't already noticed, I think I'd like working for me, too."

Coop's turned to teasing to ease any tension, to squash any sense of discomfort or uncertainty or even suspicion April might have toward him now that he knows more of the truth about her past. She doesn't need to give him the gory details if she doesn't want to, and he'll never ask for them because they're her stories to tell and her choice of whether she wants to talk about them or not; but what he says remains true, she's his friend, and Coop would do anything for the people he cares about.

"And hell, I don't know for sure that you didn't. You could be like, I don't know. Mable Cross. June Chandler. Avril Lavgine. What do I know? Going to need some receipts here, my friend, I probably should have demanded a social security card before hiring you."

[seas_open]

"You could just ask my father," she points out with an amused grin. "He's the one who named me, after all." She has her mother's last name, but she's certain it's Robert who picked her first name. It's not the sort of thing she's ever asked him, she only has a feeling, but given her mother's issues, she's pretty sure the woman's interest in her daughter had begun and ended with the night she'd been conceived.

Usually she doesn't want anyone she knows to converse with her father, but somehow she has a feeling Coop is one of the few people who could really hold his own under Robert's scrutiny. He and April are only friends, which would make it a little easier she expects, but she also just doesn't imagine Coop would care much one way or the other what Robert thinks of him. Which is how it should be. She doesn't care what Robert thinks of her most of the time and she's his daughter.

"Though with his reputation, he'd probably just lie about it anyway," she says with a smirk. "I do have a birth certificate somewhere." Not somewhere, she knows exactly where it is. Everything April needs to exist and disappear at any time is always kept in her bag. Her identification -- both real and fake -- and everything else she would need is always on hand for a quick escape if one is ever needed.

[coopdetat]

"Think I'll pass," Coop says with a smirk. "I'm great with parents, moms love me. The dads never seem, too, though." It's not often that he actually meets the parents of any of the people he's sleeping with, but it's a small town and there have been some partners who'd been less accepting of the fact that he hadn't been interested in starting a real relationship than others. He gets it, sex means different things to different people, and that's why he's as honest as he is before falling into bed with someone. If people think he's an asshole for that, he figures that's understandable, simply because it's not like everyone has the same view as he does.

There's a flicker in his expression then as he thinks of what Raleigh had said to him, of how she'd talked to him like he'd done something wrong by not wanting to risk their friendship for what could have led to a fuck, and Coop knows she's not herself right now but the words still sting. They still make him wonder if there's a part of what she's said that's actually right.

But that's not where his head should be at right now. It needs to be here, with April, with a friend in need even if she might never outright ask for help.

"Do you think your dad could help with this, though?" he asks, straightening up against the bench before leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees."I mean, he could probably find out who did this, right? If he's able to figure that out, we can really start to make a plan to get your powers back. Because we are getting them back."

[seas_open]

He sounds so sure of it that April can't help but believe him. She may not be entirely convinced Robert can help her, not because he isn't capable but because she doesn't want to owe him anything, but there are others. Coop sounds determined and she knows Les isn't going to just stand by and let something like this happen to her. It's perhaps a little petty, but she feels good about that, knowing Les will help her regardless of her strained relationship with his girlfriend.

And knowing Coop will help, too, means a lot. She looks over at him and shrugs deeply. "With my father, you never really know what he might be willing to do," she says. "He claims he cares and wants to help, but I can't help but think if that were true, I wouldn't have spent my childhood in foster care. I don't trust his help. It feels like it comes with strings attached."

Maybe she's wrong, maybe these are just her issues at play, the lack of trust she has for most people coming back to bite her. But if there's anyone to blame for that, she thinks it might well be Robert. April doesn't like to think of her life like that, as something broken that can be blamed on the bad behaviour of her parents, but there are times when it feels fitting.

[coopdetat]

What she says about her dad isn't unfair, and Coop is sure he'd have a hell of a hard time trusting a guy who would do that to him, too. He wonders if maybe there's a way to turn the tables, find enough leverage to make Robert help, but he realizes that he doesn't even know where to start with doing something like that. He's not a conman, he's never lied to someone for material gain--except for that one time he'd tricked a friend in elementary school into giving him a Star Wars toy, but he'd ended up being forced to give it back--and this isn't the kind of world he's ever been interested in being a part of.

And yet, he's willing to be part of it now. For a friend, for someone he's come to care more deeply about than maybe he'd even realized, Coop really does want to do what needs to be done to make sure April's okay. In a way, he thinks that should be a frightening realization, to understand what lengths he'd go to for someone important to him, but it turns out that it isn't. If anything, it only makes him understand himself better. The kind of man he is, the kind of man he's always intended to be, this is all just a part of that.

"Well, maybe you'll have to figure out a way to con the conman," he says, "and maybe it won't be easy, but that's what people like me and Les and Caden are for, we'll have your back." He shouldn't speak for the others, he knows that, but Coop has to imagine that they'd never walk away from April. He's learning more and more that it's an insanely difficult thing to do.