Kept du Jour, a story of Boom!Post-Apoc for @Inventrix & @cluudle

[aldersprig]

After
Separation Anxiety (LJ) Boom!/RP timeline/ Cynara
Parting Advice, and Mother Bears (LJ) and
Mother-Son Bonding (LJ). in the Boom!/RP timeline. I believe this is part three of four four of five.

---

In a crew with my Keeper this year... Cya's smile didn't falter. "I don't mind at all. Hop in, Pan. I'm Cynara du'Red Doomsday, Yoshi's mother."

The boy - if he wasn't a relative of Leofric's, she'd eat her hat - looked a little startled, but he got into the back seat of the car, letting Yoshi load his luggage. Double mistake, but then again, most kids hadn't been raised by Boom.

"Doomsday?" he asked, as she got back into the driver's seat, Yoshi riding shotgun. "Yoshi, man, you didn't tell me your mom was in Boom."

"No-one asked." Her son still had that dead tone that she remembered far too well from other Kept, other years. She wasn't entirely certain this Pan would survive the drive home.

Well, her crew being what it was, she was very good at hiding bodies.

Once they were on the long, straight stretch of highway headed home, she muttered a quick Working under cover of a well-timed coughing fit from Yoshi. The boy in her back seat wasn't going anywhere now. "Talk to me," she murmured to her son, gentling it just enough to not be a command.

Yoshi squirmed. "It... I know what everyone was talking around?" He offered uncomfortably. "And some of the stuff your Kept du jour have... well, like the one guy, with the nightmares?"

Cya tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Njörðr's time at Addergoole had been... well, nightmare-inducing. "I'm sorry we couldn't tell you," she said softly, instead of all the things she wanted to say.

"Well," he squirmed uncomfortably. "I knew about Keeping. I mean, with your Kept du jour... Somehow Tethys caught me anyway." He held up both hands, presumably to keep Cya from Finding the bitch right now and ripping out her guts. "Mom... She wasn't. I mean. I've heard stories. She wasn't like, like Jordy's Keeper. I mean, no scars. And she already had her two."

Slowly, Cya unpeeled one hand from the wheel and offered it to her son. "There's more than one way to be a horrendous Keeper, hon. Ask your Uncle Leo, sometime, maybe."

Panlong, in the back seat, had latched on to one part of their conversation. "Kept du jour?"

"Oh, yeah," Yoshi grinned, with feigned casualness. "Every year, Mom picks up a new Addergoole grad and Keeps them for a year. Last year was a bunny."

"New..." Pan moved for the car door, only to realize that he couldn't. He paled slowly. "I'm fucked, aren't I?"

"Look at it this way," Yoshi said, with cheerful malice that suggested he was quoting something, "it's only for a year."

Comments

[lilfluff]

Heh. Pan, how good are you at negotiations? "Um, Will you promise not to kill me or make me wish I was dead if I don't fight it?"

[aldersprig]

*giggle* He might get a laugh out of them for that.

[lilfluff]

Now as long as that's an amused laugh, and not a grim laugh, that could be a good start. I'm getting the feeling Pan's crime is more, "Friend/crewmate of the keeper," so he should hopefully not be at too much risk. As long as he can avoid doing anything stupid (hmm, one wonders if he's previously spent time as kept or if he managed to dodge that).

[aldersprig]

Do you want to know how the story went in my head? I know most of Panlong's backstory :-)

[(Anonymous)]

I DO~

~Trix, too lazy to log in

[aldersprig]

Panlong was Tethys' Kept the year before (or the year before that), due to Shenanigans Unnamed. She's the mother of at least one of his children. He's never quite been able to get out from under her thumb; she liked having him around, and when he wasn't her Kept, he found they had a good relationship. Like Cya & Cabal, but darker.

[lilfluff]

In that case at least he has experience being kept. As long as he didn't do anything too crazy he will at least have room and board for the next year.

And considering no one else arrived to pick him up, then even if he did do things he's regretting now he will at least have room and board for the next year. :)

[aldersprig]

*grin* yes. He ... well. It'll be interesting

[lilfluff]

Yes please!

[aldersprig]

See comment directly above. :-D

[inventrix]

*wicked cackling* Pan, you are in for a loooooooooong year.

Favorite line: "Well, her crew being what it was, she was very good at hiding bodies."

(Asking Leo about his Keeper sounds like a recipe for disaster everywhere~)

[aldersprig]

I thought you'd like that.

(And it does, but I don't think Leo would hurt Yoshi for it)

[anke]

[not entirely serious nitpick]"Du jour" means "of the day"; you're looking for "de l'année"[/not entirely serious nitpick] ;)


"she already had her two" - so are those kids required to bear or father two children before they graduate?

[inventrix]

Every single person who attends Addergoole is required to provide genetic material for the creation of two new future students. *nods solemnly*

(In other words... yep.)

[aldersprig]

Yep, what she said.

[anke]

And do I assume correctly that dropping out is not an option?

[aldersprig]

Correct. It's one of the very nasty twists of the Addergoole story and the fae apoc setting: you can make a promise that binds your children, unto the (I think it's 9th but it might be 6th) generation.

[aldersprig]

*I* know du jour is "of the day. *They* probably do, too. It's their in joke.

[clare_dragonfly]

Huh... so do most Addergoole students know about Boom, or does his knowing have something to do with being related to Leo, or something else?

A bunny? One of Ayla's relatives? :D

Hee hee, Yoshi rocks.

[aldersprig]

In my head-canon, Boom is one of the few crews that left a mark. Rozen, the Thorne Girls... There are people that are known forever after.

Ankara is actually sh'Agatha by Bowen, which explains why he's so fucked up.

[clare_dragonfly]

Oh dear, poor Ankara.

[aldersprig]

I am fairly certain he was fostered for most of his childhood. But still!

[clare_dragonfly]

Yeah, those aren't nice-person genetics. (Well, I guess Bowen might have been nice without Aggie's influence. Hard to tell.)