[OPEN] your very own mental breakdown

[wordvomit]

Who: Ned the Pie Maker and YOU
Where: first-floor kitchen
When: FIRST DAY OF THE EVENT; June 27th
Rating: PG to PG-13
Summary: kjsbdjLKADHJFKMWHY
The Story:

Why?

[Ned awoke to the event feeling the same way he does every other day when he wakes up: normal, slightly sluggish, and needing a quiet jolt of caffeine to his system. The abnormality in the early morning rise came in the form of a bona-fide swarm of diminutive dogs - puppies, to be exact - all of whom looked exactly like miniature versions of Digby.

But it isn't the frequent in-kitchen canine collisions that have him so bent out of shape, like a pipe cleaner twisted too far to be returned to its original perfectly pointy and straight form. No, it is that Ned has retrieved his usual assortment of rotten fruit from a special cooler in the back, intending to bake them into today's batch of pies, and that his first touch to a particularly moldy strawberry has yielded...

...nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The power that has plagued him, consumed his life and dictated his actions for so long, is simply...gone. That cannot be, he thinks, reaching for a handful of blueberries and, for his troubles, receives nothing more than mildew and mush.]

No.

[The kiwis, the bananas, the cherries and apples. All of them, the same result. All of them varying unappetizing shades of brown, gray, and green.

Ned is not yet certain what frustrates him more, the fact that his terrifying Gift refuses to work in a place where no one knows him, or the fact that his terrifying Gift refuses to work and he isn't at home in The Pie Hole, with Chuck, pulling her into a kiss to celebrate his ability to touch her the way he never could.]

No, no no no...no, not here. Why- ...why?! Why now? Why not- wh-why not...

[Why not at home, where it really matters most?]

Comments

[thehobbsgirl]

[ Abigail accepts the second slice of pie with only a small nod of thanks. She is now looking at Ned in a different way. It's only just noticeable, but she becomes ever so slightly stiffer, less relaxed. It's not as if she's expecting Ned to accuse her of some heinous offense out of nowhere--it's reflexive. She's spent too much time with Jack Crawford picking at the seams of her life, too much time around Alana watching her for any weakness, not to be on the defensive.

The fact that it's a private investigator doesn't really make much of a difference: he's still someone whose job it is to see through people's secrets, to separate the innocent from the guilty. Part of her defensiveness gets re-routed as sarcasm; she raises her eyebrows, asking with some skepticism ]

Kind of a weird second job for a professional pastry-maker, isn't it?

[wordvomit]

[Ned, who can usually pick up on the subtle but awkward transitions between conversational topics, notices that he's said something off right away. A man well-versed in the nuances of body language strictly by default of being overly conscious of his own movements, Abigail's suddenly straightened spine gives her away.]

Uh. Yes?

[There's absolutely no denying that it isn't unusual. Pie Makers are supposed to spend every second of the day taking stock and rolling out the dough for the next morning and prepping, prepping, prepping. On more than one occasion Ned has left Olive and Digby behind to manage The Pie Hole themselves, which was perhaps not fair, but in Ned's defense solving crime provided a semi-steady, lucrative income alongside his small business.]

I mean, I'm not- I'm not like a professional investigator. [He can't infer the same way that Emerson Cod can.] I just sort of help the detective out sometimes. I-

[Quickly and effortlessly bring the dead back to life to expedite our investigations?]

-guess I'm observant. Or something.