Kalen Holiday[How awake are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kalen Holiday[And how distracted by Resonance are we?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Alexander[Oh, that Resonance thing..]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )
Alexander[Meh, why not - Arete. Sensing Time. Diff 4, -1 taking time. Going for 1 succ for the effect, 1 for the scene]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
AlexanderThe day has been comfortably warm, clear skied, and mostly relaxed. The natives of the city have been taking the opportunity to make the most of it while it lasts, before the weather turns and it becomes much more preferable to be indoors than out. So early evening in Washington Park has been quite busy, with office workers swapping their formal shoes for trainers and pounding the walkways. Families had appeared, with an occasional picnic basket in tow, but they had headed home again as the sun started its descent towards the horizon and the air turned just a little bit cooler. A woman calls to her dog, trying to get it away from the edge of the lake where it was barking at a duck.
Near to the lake is a stone fireplace. A small fire has been built up in it, spreading warmth and light across the area surrounding it. Contrasting the warmth is a Frozen aura; it brings with it thoughts of the cold, but also of those moments in time that seem to last and last. That sensation seems to be coming from Alexander, who is sat facing the fire. He’s got a bottle of water in his hand that he’s absent-mindedly turning over and over in his hand. There’s a steady rhythm to it, counting away a few seconds with each turn. He’s watching the fire. There’s an opened case of beers nearby, with one bottle opened and started next to Alex.
A little while ago Kalen would have gotten a text message on his mobile. At Washington Park. Bring marshmallows.
Kalen HolidayKalen arrives, perhaps a little later than Alexander might have expected. Perhaps he doesn't keep marshmallows on hand. Perhaps he was...well...who knows where Kalen goes sometimes? The thing about Kalen, even in Denver, is that he vanishes. He just hasn't turned his phone off and let everyone in Denver think he's dead. The thought occurs to him, now and again, that he could still run,
But instead he comes to Washington Park, and he brings marshmallows. He's on his phone, juggling it and two cups of hot chocolate, a bag with marshmallows in it looped about one wrist. He's dressed for weather about ten degrees colder than most people would think he needs to be, but Kalen is cold in Denver in general, nevermind near Alexander.
He hangs up the phone as he gets close to Alexander, and there is all kinds of affection and warmth in his tone as he says goodbye. A fucking brilliant smile. And then Kalen slips the phone into his coat pocket, moves to carrying the hot chocolates one in each hand and smiles, offering one to Alexander as he gets close enough.
"Hey. How are you? I had to guess, so I got all the flavors. And then someone may have told me I was probably doing it wrong, and mentioned that I should get a bag of them. You know, unflavored ones. So...I have those too?"
AlexanderThe last time they met, Alexander had said that he needed to walk. And he had, for quite some time. He’d eventually made his way home before vanishing himself, at least for a little while. One of the things that appealed about the city when he was looking for somewhere – anywhere – to move to was the mountains. They had always been the ideal place to get away from everything for a little while. And so he had. A few days had been spent in the middle of nowhere, with a tent, some packaged food, some water, and some decent clothing. He’d walked out and, after those few days away, had walked back.
And he is back, and making his own attempts at being sociable again. Which is why there is the park and a campfire and a text message to a friend. Alexander feels the approach of the storm – maybe a little foretelling of what is to come later in the evening – and looks up at Kalen approaches with his load of goodies.
“Hey. I’m doing ok. How about you? And who was that? I don’t see you smile like that often.” Alexander gives his own smile. A little tired, maybe, but at least genuine and warm. He shrugs at the debate over the marshmallows. “You know me, I’m not much for traditions. Flavoured ones are cool too, as long as they toast.”
Kalen Holiday"Oh," Kalen smiles and glances a little away, and Alexander might expect to hear it is Danny. Some other lover. But, no. "That was my priest. I call him, sometimes. He says he will forgive me, if I spend Christmas here with all of you, but that I will come back for Easter Mass." There is emphasis, yes, but there is no trace of anything authoritarian in Kalen's half-impression. There is are still traces of some other place in his voice, in some ways some other person.
He sometimes misses the person he was while he was dead.
"We have all the marshmallows. I don't think you'll be disappointed." He sets the marshmallows down by Alexander. Glances over the fire and the beer. The corners of his mouth twitch. "I'm still not the best at this, but I think I can say with reasonable certainty that this is not a date."
AlexanderDanny wouldn’t have been Alexander’s first guess. Kharisma would have been up there. Possibly Sera? But the way Kalen speaks, that trace of something else in his voice. More likely someone elsewhere, away from the city.
“I didn’t know you had a priest. Does Pan know that you’re seeing other clergy?” A smile pulls at one side of Alexander’s mouth with the teasing. “Did you ever think about the Chorus instead of the Order?”
Alexander sets the offered chocolate on the ground and looks into the bag of marshmallows to get an idea of what Kalen had gone little nuts with this time. “Have you ever actually toasted one of these before? And no, not a date. I think we scared Alicia off deciding we weren’t each other’s type. And I have no interest in the contents of your underwear.”
Kalen Holiday"He's been my priest since he decided drag me into his church while I was probably dying and keep me until I definitely wasn't. Which was before Denver. After Flagstaff." He smiles a little. "And I adore Pan, but he isn't Catholic and also probably very glad my soul isn't his problem. I do sometimes go to his church, but only because my confessions are...well...complicated." Kalen. Confession. Really?
The bag has a dozen oversize flavored marshmallows, chocolate and hazelnut and raspberry and.... But he also did get a bag of normal marshmallows. Because Ramon is a good judge of when Kalen is over-complicating things. And is willing to take calls concerning whether or not Seth had a soul to light candles for. Because of course, what all other humans need is Kalen calling them because roasting marshmallows somehow provokes the need to know things about souls right now.
"Well, in fairness, I never considered the Order. I got dropped on their doorstep and took to them. And, you know, they kept me, which a a pretty new thing for me. I liked...the way we are more cohesive, in a lot of ways. There's a lot more politics, and I hate that part, yeah. But...there are good things. They're pretty much the only stable thing I've ever had.
"Given just slightly different circumstances I may have joined the Chorus. The Euthanatos. The Ecstatics. Probably not the Verbena, but possibly actually the VAs. I mean...I told you a little. I could have at least looked like what practically anyone wanted. I just took the cards I was given because the universe has a plan. And, mostly, I trust it."
SerafÃneI suppose before I attempt to join I should check to see if you guys are okay with me crashing? Because I an uncrash. Hah.
AlexanderGo for it!
SerafÃneAwareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 3, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
AlexanderThey’d had a conversation... how long ago, now? A few months and a couple of lifetimes? Kalen had explained a little of his history. About how the wicked witch of Flagstaff had a house land on them. Only it hadn’t been a witch, it had been Kalen. And there had been a name mentioned. “Ramon?” The man who had prayed and prayed and started putting him back together again.
Kalen? Confessing? There’s a quiet reflection in Alexander’s voice when he asks, “Do you find it helps? Confessing?” He’s fishing a couple of marshmallows out of the bag – plain ones to start – and the bag goes back down on the grass. There are some long sticks near the burning fire, just out of reach. Alexander leans forward from his cross-legged position – balancing on both knees – to grab a few before settling back and skewering the squidgy sweets with a couple of them.
“If the universe has a plan, why do you do what you do? How do you know its plan isn’t for the bad things to take over?” He hands one of the sticks to Kalen before holding his out closer to the flames.
SerafÃneThe only invitation Serafíne receives was the spark of her awareness - the supple threads of Kalen's storm and Alexander's edge-of-lake-in-winter that pulled her upright while texting in the back of a cab. She told the cabbie to stop at the edge of the darkened park and climbed out and paid and tipped him generously in cash from her little skull-studded clutch and waved and then,
well, then. Her resonance woven around her, out ahead of her, announcing her as much as the click click click of her heels on the paved path. It's harder to walk where the path branches off, becomes gravel and then just grass and her spiked heels sink into the soft turf.
But you know, a tall, slender shadow against the city's lights picking her way carefully over the lawn, heading their way.
Kalen Holiday"Ramon," Kalen confirms.
He settles onto the ground near Alexander. close both because Kalen's idea of space is a little bit unlike normal ad also because this is a quiet conversation. Not the kind to be overheard. "So, I sort of ended up coming to religion through the Order, as weird as that sounds. There are...reasons it isn't that I can't really talk much about save to say that it's...part of our Paradigm, a lot of us.
"So, I did confession then, but it seemed...strange. I always felt...kind of distant from religion. Until Ramon. But...that involved a lot of drifting in and out of consciousness to find him there, praying. And he's...Pan is sometimes like Wrath and Judgment. Bt what you feel when you stand near Ramon is...love. Impossible, unconditional, infinite love.
"Confession with him is...something. I still fly out there, sometimes. Because...he's just. I don't know. He makes you feel whole. And loved."
He looks up at the sense of Serafine but he doesn't seem worried. Of course not. Serafine can hang out and have discussions about things he doesn't tend to tell anyone and there are plenty of marshmallows.
AlexanderAlexander isn’t – currently – shying away from contact. Isn’t withdrawing. Isn’t shuffling away from Kalen to regain a little more space. On the other hand, he’s not snuggling up or trying to wrap an arm around the other man. The proximity is warming – for Alexander, at least – and companionable.
“I never got the whole religion thing. It always seemed to be a way for people for people to tell others what to do, regardless of whether they followed the rules or not. Like those preachers on the TV. Send me all your money to save your soul! You don’t see them suffering in fear of the afterlife.” He shrugs. “I guess I can see how that could be comforting, though. Ramon, anyway. Pan’s divine vengeance less so.”
Alexander pulls the stick back, checking the marshmallow, before turning it a little and holding it closer to the fire again. “How does it work? The confession, I mean.” He watches the fire again, with a smile forming as he feels Sera’s presence approaching.
SerafÃneThey could be on a date, couldn't they? Sitting like that, close, each to each, with a merry little fire dancing away in a fire pit, and yet Sera sways up - not quite her usual masculine gait because she has to take rather more mincing quite-little-steps to keep her heels from sinking into the grass. But she comes close anyway, like she belongs there, like she belongs everywhere, and lifts a hand.
"Hey. Room for one more?"
She's wearing a little black dress, this spidery knit piece so loosely put together that it shows more skin that it conceals. The wind makes it ripple against her body, engagingly, and she reaches up to tuck her long hair over one shoulder.
Kalen HolidayKalen laughs. "See...I've always found Pan's presence really calming. Apparently this is not the normal response."
He looks toward the fire. Thinking. "So, you go to your priest. Sometimes in those boxes, but the boxes aren't the point. You go to your priest. You confess your sins, and sometimes your fears. And he will not tell you that your transgressions had no meaning, but he will remind you, at least if he is Ramon, that there are no sins for which there cannot be forgiveness. That God loves you.
"I think the and-then-you-drink-a-bottle-of-wine step is not actually how everyone experiences it, but...I can always take you to Chile." He smiles. "The wine is good. Granted, I have some of it. You could always confess your sins to me and we can drink a bottle of wine. But I'm in no way a mediator between people and God."
He reaches up, on the side he has space to do so without hitting Alexander, toward Serafine. "Hey. I think so." He looks over toward Alexander, because he isn't entirely sure. Serafine already hears his secrets. Hell, Serafine has practically taken confessions from him. But he doesn't know if that is true for Alexander.
AlexanderAlexander snorts. “Maybe we just caught each other on a bad day.” Like a day when Grace was living through a waking nightmare in the library? That probably wasn’t the best of days. And they hadn’t met each other since. Pan just hadn’t happened to be in any of the places where Alex had been, and Alex had no inclination to seek out the priest or any kind of confession or absolution in a house of God.
He’s thoughtful when Kalen explains how confessions – or, at least, their version of them – go. He pulls the stick back again and picks at a scorched edge of the marshmallow. “I don’t believe in God. So there isn’t much point in asking for forgiveness from him. Or her. However you see it.” He goes quiet, pulling a bit of soft marshmallow off and popping it into his mouth. “Swap the wine for something that doesn’t taste of vinegar, and maybe drink it before hand, and I might take you up on the offer.”
Kalen looks towards Alexander for confirmation. “Always. Beer, marshmallow, or both?” Sera gets the same warm, tired, smile that Kalen received not so long before. “You’re looking much better than you did before. And... thank you. For putting me back together. Again.”
SerafÃne"Marshmallow beer," Sera tells Alexander, and perhaps she means it, picking her way the last few steps to actually join them. This flash of her smile, made into a secretive thing by the dancing flame, as she chooses - and claims - some space on the ground, close to the flame. Close to her friends, too.
She looks exquisite tonight, and sounds, dare we say it, almost sober? Rather fine silvery-white lingerie peaking through the threads of that little black dress. Diamonds in her ears and diamonds at her neck and long legs absolutely, spectularly bare all the way down to her silver Alexander McQueen heels. They look like wings embracing her feet, absolutely at odds with her request for marshmallow beer and equally at odds with her appearance in the park, but what the fuck.
She had a whim and she wanted to follow it, so she did.
And she smiles at Kalen, and she flashes Alexander a rather brief, haloing smile when he thanks her for putting him back together. This neat little shrug, which is not shy but is - perhaps surprisingly - modest. "'Course. Full recovery right?" That's what she's asking him. She doesn't say anything about how she looked or how she felt that night.
Or how she's looked or how she's felt since.
"Did you ever believe it god?" This to Alexander, as she slides neatly into the conversation.
Kalen Holiday"I don't entirely see how you can see the things we see and not believe in some god," Kalen says. He smiles though, puzzled more than argumentative. "But we can just use bottles of whiskey. And less God. That works too."
"I didn't get the beer marshmallows," he tells Serafine, half-apologetically. "I wasn't sure how that'd go with the taste of being lit on fire."
AlexanderAlexander considers how marshmallow beer would taste, and it’s not really a pleasant thought. He passes over an unopened bottle, a stick and the bag of marshmallows for her to make her choice and arrange them in whatever strange combination takes her fancy. “Wait, there are beer marshmallows?” He really shouldn’t be surprised, Kalen does seem to have a knack for finding downright bizarre food.
He rubs his chest when she asks about the healing, wincing again at the memory of how it had felt when Victoria had shredded his body with his magic. Just after he had shot her, and just before... He clears his throat. “Yeah. All fixed. One day I’ll have to learn how to put myself back together again like that.” One more thing on the very long list of things to learn one day. “How have you been doing since?” And, to both of them, another question. “And do you know how the others who were there are doing?” Elijah, seeing his first death. Lucy, seeing the act of death rather than the aftermath. Ian, killing Victoria.
He shrugs again, picking up the so-far-untouched cup of hot chocolate and sipping at the warm liquid. “No. My mother wasn’t religious at all, so I wasn’t brought up into it. It never really made much sense to me when I was younger, and when I was older... If there’s this all-benevolent deity with the power over all creation, why does he let bad things happen to good people and bad people get away with whatever they want? It never seemed... right.”
He looks into the fire as he decides how to put what he wants to say next, but shakes his head. “Some of the things out there are powerful enough to be thought of as gods. But then, “ he glances up at Sera, “some of what we can do compared to what the unawakened can? Does that make us gods? And God? The old guy with the beard and booming voice? No. Not for me.”
SerafÃne"My mother believed in god so much she was pretty sure he would just fix me if she sent me very far away and gave me over to him." Sera remarks, her voice low - not rough though it is throaty - and musical, which is easy to forget except when she's like this. Quiet(ish). Reflective, bathed in firelight. Profile all sharp. She's staring at the flames and mostly doesn't catch Alexander's movement to pass her beer and marshmallows. Not surprising, she takes the former. She passes on the latter, though, for all that she claimed she wanted both. "I don't - "
a pause, not precisely arrested but suspended, " - well, I don't know that I believe in god, not precisely. But I believe in connection and I believe in people, good and bad. But I suppose that a theologian would tell you that god's first gift to us was free will. There is bad in the world because someone chose it. Choice. I guess that's something else I believe in."
Then, a quieter smile. This darting glance at Kalen's profile before she finds Alexander again. "I'm okay." Which is both: true, and nowhere close to the whole story but - "Elijah's pretty wrecked, but I think he'll be alright. Eventually, poor kid. I saw Ian the other night. He seemed to be finding ways to work it out."
Kalen HolidayKalen reaches over, takes Alexander's hand from his chest, and then, provided Alexander doesn't try to take his hand back, moves it so that he can touch Alexander's fingertips to Serafine's throat. So that Alexander could feel her heartbeat. So that he's touching both of them, connected to both of them, if only for a few seconds. "It's over. You're alive. Everyone you went with, they are alive. We are here. Focus on that." He releases Alexander's hand without taking him away Serafine.
"Well," Kalen says quietly, as he settles back into where he was and spears a marshmallow. "If we're being precise, I believe that there was something that spoke the words that birthed the whole of creation. I don't think any religions manage more than an interpretation of that being, so they're all, in some sense, imperfect.
"But you have to approach the unknown, and even the Unknowable, somehow." Like whether the boy you failed to save in a Mindscape has a soul to light a candle for. He was real enough to roast marshmallows with and to spend a day with and to grieve for. It seemed real enough, when he shot him.
He takes a breath, and when he speaks again his voice is very soft. "Healing is...often time-consuming. But they will. We all do."
AlexanderKalen reaches for Alexander’s hand, and Alexander? Doesn’t pull away. He’s not withdrawn, or withdrawing, but is puzzled as Kalen pulls his hand towards Sera. Puzzled until it’s clear what Kalen intends, when he explains. Returns the favour of pulling Alexander away from his dark contemplation and back to the present. Where everybody – almost everybody – lived. He sighs, moving his hand to Sera’s shoulder a few moments after Kalen releases it to give it a gentle squeeze. Then gently nudges Kalen with his elbow as he pulls his arm back.
“Free will and choosing to do bad things, sometimes even for the right reasons, I get. We all make choices. But what about the things that don’t come from our choices? Things that only exist to hurt? Disease. Disasters. Or how about Thakky? Or whatever else there is floating around out there? The things that the Fallen worship? How did they come about from choice and free will?”
I believe in connection and I believe in people. Alexander joins the others in a few moments of quietness before raising his cup of warm chocolate in a toast, knocking it against the cup or bottle of the others if they return it. “To connection, and to people. And to healing.”
SerafÃneSera catches her breath when Kalen brings Alexander's hand to her throat. Lifts her chin, leaning back. There is something imperious about the gesture, something expectant, even elegant, the way in which she almost surrenders. It would never occur to her to deny someone access to her body when they genuinely wanted to touch it. This easy sensuality is absolutely threaded through her and so: her breath catches, and her chin rises, and she leans into the warmth of Alexander's hand, and he finds her heartbeat beneath his fingers, quick and vulnerable, finds her pulse driving - faster then, faster.
Because, quite frankly, she likes to be touched. Because being touched turns her on, and not in anything more than an existential way in just this moment but - her heart beats, and her heart beats faster, and the edge of her smile smears into something a little more dreamy until that contact is broken.
Sera's eyes are more on Kalen than Alexander in that moment, and they linger there, as Kalen remarks on how one approaches the unknown and the unknowable. He capitalizes both, she capitalizes neither, but there is a vibrant chord of sympathy inside her. Something that sing for the thought.
The unknown and the unknowable, they make her heart beat faster, too.
"We're not the only things in the universe with free will, you know. And disease - this time last year I was - "
Well, wait. She arrests herself, just stops. "Connection, people and healing." Picks up the beer in response to Alexander's toast, then, and gives himthe leading edge of a luminous smile. "I'll drink to that."
Kalen Holiday"How all of that came to be, I do not know. But...." He fixes Alexander with serious eyes, and gives him the most complete version of the truth he thinks he can. Some secrets of the Order he is more willing to surrender than others. And some things...well.
"I can see them, Alce. The echoes of the Words that made Creation. The rest of it...that I can't see. Perhaps, one day. But not now. Not yet." Not yet. He can not see those things, yet. But one day...he doesn't discount the possibility.
He does not comment on the disease thing. He did not, not really, know Serafine then. But he remembers going through that with Grace. Text messages. Aftermath.
But he does lift his hot chocolate to toast. "Indeed," he says.
AlexanderAlexander takes a drink of the chocolate, as the others take their drinks, then there’s another quiet pause. He agrees with choice. People choose what they do, for good or for bad. Or to stand against the good or the bad. And it spreads. One can inspire many, and the world can change. For the better, or for the worse, depends on the people and their choices and their actions. Does the intention matter more than the act? Or the ends justify the means? Is that how Victoria fell?
He catches himself brooding again and lies back on the cooling ground, still feeling the warmth thrown off by the fire. There are dark clouds in the sky but, at least for now, there are clear patches that let the early stars show as the day and the night meet.
“I don’t know everything came into being. Maybe it was always, already here? Something exploded and here we are? I dunno. One of those unknowns, or unknowables maybe? How do you see them? The words, I mean. Did your faith let you see them? Or did the words give you faith?”
He turns his head, resting on the grass, to look over at Sera. “What about you? Where do you think all this came from?”
SerafÃneSera has tears in her eyes now. She doesn't know how they got there. They're just there. Gleaming with reflected firelight, not yet spilling over the dark frame of her lower lashes. While Alexander lies back on the cooling ground, Sera finds herself leaning forward into toward the warmth of the fire. Might have something to do with all the bare skin she's showing, but there's an incipient coil of a shiver somewhere at the base of her spine, ready to shake itself out.
Somewhat blind, she flashes Alexander a grin nonetheless. This quick expression tossed in his general direction right along with a sweet, narrow little shrug. "I don't know. I don't know that I care, either. What matters to me is now, you know? But now's like - " a quick, sharp sniff, " - now's like always, everywhen. Time's just another illusion. Kinda like history, and maybe we're all running backwards from the end to the beginning and we don't fucking know it."
Another quick shrug. "I dunno. I never claimed to be a genius."
Unlike present company Sera's library consists of three shelves of a four-shelve bookcase. Nothing but poetry.
Kalen Holiday"Seeing them. And Marcellus. I learned to love them from Ramon. I learned to read them, at least the first of them I could read, from Marcellus." There is still something in his voice that saddens when he mentions Marcellus, even as his tone warms a little.
He looks over to Serafine and there are not tears threatening in his eyes. Not yet. It happens now sometimes. Alexander probably missed the last time. There is firelight catching in Serafine's tears like tiny suns and Kalen both loves and hates that they are beautiful. Of course he does.
Sometimes he talks about remembering things that haven't happened yet. He understands that. But that isn't the part of what she says he responds to. Instead he reaches out, and unless she tries to stop him runs a finger along the line of her jaw and turns her face, very gently, toward him. He wants to be looking into her eyes, not at them.
"I could be with geniuses," he says. "But here we are."
AlexanderAlexander reaches out a hand and makes contact with Sera wherever he can reach – a knee, the back of her back. He knows that she finds comfort in contact, and he’s happy to offer it when he has something to offer. When he isn’t holding himself in and everybody else out.
“If now is like always, does that mean we’ll always be sat here by the fire, drinking beer and hot chocolate, and watching the stars come out? I can think of worse places and times to be.”
He nudges Kalen’s leg with a knee before letting it rest there. He’s comfortable with these two and in this place. He’d been dragged through into another world with them not so far away. Of all of the people in the city, they are the two he trusts the most. So here, and now, he doesn’t withdraw from the contact.
“I don’t wish that I could see what you see, but I understand how seeing them would change how you see the world. Seeing and believing and all that stuff.” He shrugs, shoulders rubbing and flattening grass. “I guess I’ve just seen enough of the other side to doubt that there’s anything benevolent watching over us. Occupational hazard, I suppose.”
He smiles at the sky. “If you guys need anything more than a high school diploma to be around I am so screwed.”
SerafÃneHer skin is warm from the fire, jawline all sharp. Sera does not try to stop Kalen, but instead lifts her face into his touch, her chin rises, her closed mouth curving in the smallest sort of smile, which is so lovely it verges on the painful. The tears don't spill. They stay in her eyes as she meets Kalen's gaze, holding the look he gives her with a sort of overt fearlessness.
Ask her to look right into your eyes, and she will. Just you watch.
Her smile tightens with a sort of gratitude, as she echoes, "Here we are."
Then she leans forward, right hand braced on the ground, and kisses Kalen, quite chastely, on the lips. Lifts her chin and she's already rising, shooting a glance past Kalen at Alexander as she gets one of those lethal heels beneath her, then the other.
"That's what that means, yeah," she tells Alexander, and oh she is away of the contact, how comfortable it means he is with her. "We'll always be here. We'll also always be everywhere else we'll ever be. One of those fucking mysteries, man. The unknowns and the unknowables.
"Thanks for sharing your fire with me. I gotta go."
And so she does. Standing, perhaps with assistance, picking her way back across the grass. Hard to hail a cab from the part at this hour, but somehow she'll manage it.
She's magick, Sera. That's how it works.
Kalen HolidayHis eyes close for a second when Serafine kisses him. Whatever he told Alexander, whatever things he has taken as true about gods and angels and men, there are all kinds of grace. He knows that too.
And then he watches her go for a long moment before he settles out over the ground beside Alexander. He is not a fan of the cold, but stable things, static things, they are rare in his life. And, for all Kalen is rarely static or stable, he rather likes having those things sometimes. It's how he joined the Order. How he let Marcellus sell him on church. And why, despite the cold he doesn't mind so much Alexander's Resonance.
He has yet to roast the marshmallow he speared. "Infinite possibility...it is not exactly gentle. Beautiful, yes. But also horrifying. We...more than many, get to sway that balance. But...benevolent guardian isn't exactly how I would describe whatever made the universe. I'm...actually terrible at being Catholic a lot of the time. But I'm good at wine and confession and listening to Ramon, so it works out."
AlexanderIt’s a strangely comforting thought that, no matter what else has happened or will happen, they will always be here. Whether that means that the memory of being here will remain, or that Sera’s view of Time means that more than a memory will linger, isn’t clear. But, still. It’s nice to know that there will always be a time of peace.
On the flip side, that also means that he will always be torn apart or aiming and shooting and...
Alexander looks up at the stars again, maybe looking for something that he’ll never find up there. “Did I do the right thing? With Victoria. Did Elijah tell you what happened?”
Kalen HollidayKalen just looks at him for a few seconds, all the intensity in his eyes a rather sharp contrast to the careless way he is sprawled over the ground.
"No," he says finally, very quietly. "Elijah didn't tell me. I think he might have told Grace. She was with him that night more than I was."
He takes a breath. Considers. "Do you want me to tell you a story? It's a slightly similar story, really. Another lost Hermetic, more terrible choices. How I got to know Sid. All kinds of things I don't normally talk about."
AlexanderHe hadn’t really intended to ask. But Kalen brings up confession again, and the idea that he will always be shooting Victoria regardless of anything else that happened before or will happen in the future... Perhaps this was just the right time for Alexander to confess.
He turns his head to look away from the cold, distant stars and look towards Kalen. He asks, quietly, “Do you want to know?” He asks because people don’t always want to know the details. Sometimes it’s just enough to know that bad things happened.
Alexander rolls onto his side, guarding the cup of chocolate with one hand, to better see his friend. “If you want to tell it, I’ll always listen.”
Kalen Holliday"If you want to tell me. But...I've been through enough things to know that some stories aren't the best stories to ask for. You wait for them. And sometimes, you never hear them, and that's okay too. People, most of them at least, will figure out how to tell you the things they need to tell you if you let them."
He sighs, and it is, usually the kind of sigh that happens right before he looks somewhere else, but he doesn't this time. "So, about a year ago, there was this cursed film. It was an extradimensional prison for this Umbrood spirit Thakinyan. He wanted to come here, into this world, to feed on the fear and madness he would spread.
"And there was one of us helping him. She wasn't really of the Order, Lucia, but her father was. He tried to contain Thakinyan, but the Order...the Order can be a little wary of spirit magic. They destroyed him, blamed him for everything that happened after they basically betrayed him to the Technocracy. Unsurprisingly, Lucia was angry.
"So she hunted down the thing her father bound to set it loose on the world. I first met her when she invaded my dreams, and Sid's, to threaten to torture everyone we loved to death if we tried to stop her. Which is how I started talking to Sid again. This isn't the first time she's hated me, you know.
"So, obviously we couldn't not stop her. Letting a creature that feeds on fear and madness loose on the world was just...not an option. But, I wanted to save her. The Order...it had been wrong. Wrong to betray her father and wrong to hide what it had done and with that knowledge that would help us. A friend unburied it for me, and I didn't hide it after that. Between that and telling you all about Victoria, I suspect they're all mad at me.
"It doesn't matter. I'd do it again. I probably will. There are things that should not be hidden and people that don't deserve protection. Justice is far more important than pride. It certainly won't make it easier here for me. I think I get less respect than you Orphans in Denver, for being from the Order. Giving this city insight into more of our failings will hardly help that.
"But I wanted...even if we had to kill her, I did not want her to die bound to that thing. I wanted her soul free of it, if nothing else. I didn't want a choice she made because we failed her and her father to destroy lives she had yet to live. She was doing terrible things, but the girl who started down that path...she was hurt and angry and lost.
"I tracked down information about her old cabalmates, I tried to find some way to get her free of that thing. But in the end, I was the only vocal advocate of saving her and I had no way to do it. Sid, Pan, Eleanor and I went to where she, and another possessed victim, and that spirit were. We had to kill them both in the process of driving that thing back.
"I...I was the only Hermetic. I was the one thing that they hated most. It summoned these shadow tentacles, with one of its puppets. Tried to devour my soul and drag it into that place. I know what its presence tastes like, I know how cold and how horrible and how terrifying that place is. And I am very afraid that we may have sent those two souls off bound to that.
"But, really, our other option was to let them live and have the world. It was worse, as options go.
"Sometimes there isn't a choice that seems right, Alce. Sometimes...sometimes when you are cornered there are decisions that you make where nothing seems fair. Where you want to do more, but there are not really those chances.
"You stopped her. Victoria. And maybe, in a better world you could have saved her. Perhaps even in this one." He reaches over to squeeze one of Alexander's hands. "But I think, if you thought she could be saved, you would have tried to save her. You are one of the few people I've met you gets purity of purpose. Who values justice even when it isn't easy.
"It is one of the things I most admire about you. And right now, even if you aren't sure about it, I am. If you thought she could be saved, you would have saved her. Whatever you saw that led you to make the choices you did, I trust you. You did the right thing, Alce. You saved a lot of people, but we were all too late for some of her victims and for her. And that's hard. I do know.
"You still did the right thing."
AlexanderAlexander rolls back as the story is told, but not to look at the stars this time. Dark clouds continue to skim over the park, and his eyes close as he listens. He really should have known that there would be others who would understand. Others who might not have stood in exactly the same shoes, but who know that sometimes there just aren’t any choices where everybody walks away happy. Or even where everybody, anybody, walks away.
Kalen reaches for his hand and Alexander doesn’t withdraw. Not this time. He grips it and doesn’t let go, not unless Kalen pulls away. He takes a shuddering breath and starts his own story.
“She knew we were coming before we even got there. There were a couple of bears... things that she sent out to try to stop us. Corrupted things. We were all getting ready to face them when Sera... She told me to go. She told me that Victoria was headed to her last prisoner. She told me that bullets would hurt her. I ran into the house with Elijah and Lucy. She stayed with Ian and Jae-shin to fight the bears.”
Alexander’s eyes have opened again, looking up at the stars but without really seeing them. It’s another time, another place, he sees as he remembers that night and talks about it for the first time.
“That basement... The smell... It was pitch black at first, but you could smell it. The blood and the death and everything she’d... The screaming – the guy had been screaming to start with – went quiet. Elijah, I think, found some light. Lucy too. There was another victim. She was already dead. Her heart was missing. She’d been painted with something, though. Blood, but symbols written all over her with it. Hell, there was blood all over. So much blood...”
Alexander coughs, trying to clear something from his throat that just won’t shift. “Victoria... She had a blade at the throat of the last guy alive in there. I remember Elijah trying to talk to her. I think he wanted to try to talk her back from where she was. Help her back from the addiction. She said she did it all because she could. Because she wanted to. She told us... told me to stay back or she’d kill him.”
He starts to shiver. Maybe from the cold, maybe from the memory of what comes next. His voice is quiet and that sense of ice is back in it, even with the rest of the wall holding him inside himself finally cracking and falling away. “I shot her. I didn’t even give her a chance to listen to Elijah or back down. I just knew the guy was dead either way. I knew she was so much stronger than we were. I...” He takes another deep, shuddering breath, holding it before letting go. “I didn’t even think. I fired. I didn’t hit her, but she focussed on me and the guy got away from her. I think she had one of those shields going, because I didn’t hit her. Not that time. But the next, and the next...” His arm comes up, hand in front of him making the motion of the gunfire and the recoil as he says each next. “So much blood. She hurt me. Oh, the pain...” His hand comes back to his chest, rubbing the same spot at before. “I would have shot again. And again. I don’t know if I could have stopped it before either of us was dead. It was so cold...
“It didn’t matter in the end. Ian... Victoria died. And then her spirit... The spirits of the others, the ones that we knew about. They tore her apart. I don’t know if there was anything left of her in the end.”
His vision comes back to the present, back to the park, and he looks over to Kalen again. “I keep thinking there had to be a better way. If Sera hadn’t been caught up by the bears. If we’d been stronger. If...” he shrugs and falls silent.
Kalen Holliday[Forces 2/Life 2 | Because we don't let our cabalmates shiver like that | D=5 | WP | Maybe extending...?]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Kalen HollidayAlexander grips his hand and Kalen doesn't pull away. It's Kalen. So long as he trusts you, he'd rather have contact than not have it. It helps him focus. It keeps him mostly where he is. One moment and one place.
This time, Kalen doesn't take Alexander's hand away from his chest. He knows how scars are. Even the ones that magic healed and smoothed over. He waits for Alexander to finish talking, and then he rolls so he can rest his hand over Alexander's chest, over Alexander's hand if it is still there.
And then he starts to murmur words in a language Alex may have heard from him, or possibly from Alyssa. It isn't a human language. It's the language Kalen uses for magic, the language he has greeted The Message with. It is the language Creation is written in. Angelic. Pure. Holy. And he cannot, exactly, tell Alexander that. Some secrets he keeps, at least in the strictest sense. It is possible that Alexander might guess with what he does already know.
It isn't exactly for Alexander. It is in the sense that the Working is for Alexander, but right now Kalen is off in a communion with Angelic languages and divinity place. The only reason he's even aware of Alexander is that whatever he's doing includes Alexander.
[And, extending, but I'll let you post while Kalen is all with the speaking Enochian.]
AlexanderFor all of the confidence and the surety that Alexander throws himself into certain situations – standing between The Message and Sera, standing with Ian and Alyssa against the corrupted spirit, facing down Victoria – he very much has his own doubts and fears. And he’s finally letting one of them really surface. That he just isn’t good enough to do what needs to be done. The entire group that went in that day came out alive, but what about Victoria? What about the group of Hermetics that died before? What about the victims? If he was just better... Maybe more of them could have walked away too.
Alexander doesn’t pull away from the contact on his hand, but there’s a moment where it looks like he might push away Kalen’s hand as he reaches for the other hand resting on his chest. The resistance to the contact flickers and fades and the contact is made. There are other fears, some of them even conflicting with each other, but for the moment they are faced and put to one side.
So he lies there and listens to the words and feels the contact. Feels that he’s not alone. And, finally, he cries.
Kalen Holliday[And...extensions, now D=6 | WP]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Kalen HollidayThere are things the Flambeau are known for. Commanding elements. Calling fire and lightning to destroy their enemies. Striking out with raw power when they must. And Kalen...Kalen's training is for the mastery of Spheres that grant him those powers, or will. Kalen's training could make him terrifying.
Alexander, and Denver, don't really see that side of it often. Because Kalen uses Forces and Life magic to protect people from zombie bites with words of protection lain over their skin instead of to tear people apart. Uses Prime magics to unMake spells instead of sear with holy light. Uses Time and Entropy magics to find the most auspicious paths.
Because magic, at least for Kalen, is more for moments like this than for killing. Warmth begins to radiate outward from his hand, spilling from skin and into Alexander. And when his eyes open there is a second when they are perfectly, infinitely calm.
That doesn't change when he registers that Alexander is crying. "I know. I'm right here. It's going to be okay, Alce. For all of the terrible things the world can be, it won't be that way forever. Not because I don't think fate or gods will refuse to permit that, but because I do. However long it takes, however many lifetimes I need, I will not let the world be like this forever. It's going to be okay. I promise." You should not be able to say things like that with the kind of perfect assurance Kalen has, but apparently he missed that lesson in how one does human. He is absolutely certain that the world will be saved. And, judging by his tone, he is equally certain the price will be high. It just doesn't seem to sway him at all.
AlexanderKalen’s touch is comforting, and amazingly warming. There’s an awareness of something – some effect – coming together, but it’s nothing that he recognises or understands. Or, honestly, cares about. Certain things could push Alexander away – as Sera had discovered when she’d tried to show him her Wonder – but this? Not so much.
Alexander’s shivering lessens, but is still here as he lets go of some of the things that he’s kept tied up and pushed away and tries to ignore. The pains and the losses that he’s experienced over less than a year, since he came to the city. The loss of what he had in Seattle. The absolute change in reality that he’d forced on the world and on himself. The knowledge that, most likely, how he’s choosing to stand in this new life is going to kill him.
He lies for a while without speaking. Just letting things go, letting the tears flow. The contact with Kalen – the contact and the warmth, so much warmer than the slowly dying campfire – is enough comfort for him, for now. It’s enough to know that he’s not alone.
After some time, it slowly ends. There’s a last shuddering breath in and the tears have ended. The ice inside is still there – there’s so much more inside – but it’s enough for now. Enough to be human again. And so his voice is quiet, but warmer than it had been, when he replies to Kalen’s statement that it will all be ok. “I’ll be there with you. I’m not as sure that we’ll be able to stop it all, but I’ll stand right beside you in those dark places.” And it will be hard, and there will be prices to pay. But Kalen won’t be there alone to pay them.
Kalen Holliday"I know," Kalen says softly. "I've always known. Even when you didn't." He squeezes Alexander's hands and then releases his grip on the hand on Alexander's chest. The other he lets Alexander release when he wants.
"Hey," he says, with a sudden smile that is somehow balanced on a razor edge between something warm and something deeply sorrowful. "At least I finally have a better memory to go with marshmallow roasting." The smile edges toward somewhere warmer, away from the edge of whatever abyss Kalen was dancing with for a second. "Which reminds me. Christmas trees. We need one for the Office. I will require assistance. Because I've never picked out a tree. I might do it wrong." At least he seems to be mostly joking about picking out Christmas trees wrong.
Alexander“I’m still not sure that I did the right thing, but at least I’m sure it could have gone much, much worse than it had. I just...” He squeezes Kalen’s remaining and finally releases it. “Doesn’t matter.” He sits up, looking at the barely-flickering campfire and wondering if he should throw some of the spare sticks in to keep it going. “You’re much better at the being human thing than you think you are, you know.”
Alexander nudges Kalen’s shoulder when he talks about the better memories. “We’ll make better ones, hey? You, me, Sera, Alyssa, and whoever else wants to join.” A better memory, a better time to be in, for all of eternity.
“I don’t think you can do picking a tree wrong. Unless you pick a dead one, or it’s too big to fit. But... yeah, whenever you want to.”
Kalen Holliday"Shhhhhhhhh...stop saying that. I always wanted to be a cat when I grew up. I'm still trying very hard." But he smiles at that, and then a bit wider at the nudge. He sits up off the ground a bit slowly.
"It sounds good. I kinda like this fire thing. It's warm. And outside. And not wet." There is a little shudder, because he can remember being wet and cold. Because the ground was cold and the air is cold and Alexander tastes like a blizzard.
"I think after Thanksgiving." Kalen's smile brightens. "Danny wants to do like communal Thanksgiving and Christmas, Do you know I'm going to have to decorate three trees this year. One at the Office and one at the House and one at Danny's. But two of those you should totally help with.
"Maybe Kharisma can make us cookies to decorate. Or Danny. So there are things to do that aren't tree decorating. If we convince everyone to come we won't all fit on the tree at once."
Alexander“We should definitely do the fire thing more.” He’s about to suggest bringing other things to cook on the fire, but the thought of meat is still a little off-putting. “Doesn’t the House have a real fire inside?
“Cookies can’t be that hard to make, can they? I’m all up for Kharisma-cookies, but we could give that a try too. And I am definitely up for decorating.” His own smile has been surfacing now. Where before he’d always been trying to hang on to doing normal things to cling on to his old life, maybe now they’re there to share better times with other people. Alexander has no plans to walk away from his mundane life – it all still means too much for him – but maybe he can find a better balance between the two. Magic is a tool, and one he does need to get better and stronger at using if he wants to carry on this existence. And, luckily, Denver doesn’t have anything particularly against Orphans and their trying to learn.
“What do you say we find somewhere for a bigger fire, and find that bottle of whiskey? You said alcohol comes after confession, after all.”
Kalen HollidayAlexander will decorate and Alexander likes this cookie idea and Alexander wants to go somewhere with a fire and whiskey and Kalen grins. "I did say that, didn't. The House does have a real fire. And I might need coffee. A little.
"I hear there are books, full of cookie instructions. I guess we could...you know...practice. We probably won't summon any demons."
He rises, a little stiffly, with marshmallows and hot chocolate. "You need help with anything here?"
Alexander“Demons? From cookies? We’d better use lots of icing to hold them in then.” Alexander stands too, stretching and twisting his back with a couple of clicks as the bones in his spine realign themselves. The bottle of water he’d been rolling around in his hands earlier is opened and poured over the remains of the fire, finally extinguishing it.
“No, I think we’re good here.”
