Indeterminate Cause Pt 2 [Mood]

Investigations take time, especially those where there is so little actual information to go on.  A number of bodies were found and recovered.  All were studied, autopsied, tested, and examined.  Blood, skin, residue, fibre, and hair samples all taken and analysed.  Again and again, the medical examiner’s office returned the same finding.

Cause of death: indeterminate.

Even the man who had been neatly sliced in half had already been dead when it had happened.  No cause of death, no weapon, no motive, no suspect.  No idea what had happened to all those people.

The mundane world, at least, has no idea.

Earth to earth

The mood is sombre, and the only sound is that of footsteps along the gravel path.  A small procession of people, dressed mostly in black, move towards a waiting priest.  Several seats have been laid out, for those who may need them.  The group is met by a waiting man, dressed in black with a white collar.  They assemble to watch, to listen, and to remember.

A gentle breeze causes the trees to sway, the clouds in the sky to drift along.  Otherwise there is little movement.  The single man is speaking, reading from a book held in his hands.  Or at least the book is held, and he recites without reading.  Some of the others are crying.  Some hold each other for comfort.  One or two try to keep their emotions under control, not wanting to give in and let their sorrow show. 

Ashes to ashes

The monologue is brief, unheard from a distance.  And it’s at a distance that Alexander is standing.  Matching the others, he’s also dressed in black.  He doesn’t really know the person that the others are saying their goodbyes to.  There was a name on a piece of ID, date of birth, address.  The photo on the driver’s licence showing her in her prime.  Before a spirit of corruption had ended her.

He stands, watching, unwatched.  He’s far enough away that the group’s focus, along with his tendency to blend into the background, leave him unnoticed.  He watches the family and the close friends, watches their reaction.  Watches as the coffin is slowly lowered into the ground.  Watches as each person takes their turn to throw a little soil, or the flower they had brought with them, into the grave.  Watches as they begin to drift off, to head elsewhere to celebrate her life and mourn their loss.  Watches as others come to remove the chairs and the other paraphernalia that is no longer needed, and watches as they walk away with the priest. 

It’s then that he approaches.  Others will be along shortly to begin the work of filling the grave, leaving its occupant to her eternal rest.  He takes a little of the soil himself, then throws in onto the coffin.  Something is pulled from his jacket pocket – a driver’s licence.  This, too, is thrown into the grave.

Alexander speaks quietly, not that there’s anyone around to hear.  It just feels right to do so.  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you.  I hope you find your rest, and that your family find some peace.” 

That done, he turns and walks away.  This isn’t the first of these funerals that he’s appeared at, and it won’t be the last.  Not until all the victims of the spirit have been interred.

Dust to dust

We must stop meeting like this [Email, Retro]

Serafíne
There is a boulder-strewn stream somewhere high in the mountains. Swift-flowing and shallow, shaded by everygreens, flush with snowmelt and higher now than it is any other time of the year. The sun is out, and the sun is bright, and the air is cool enough that there is a hint of a chill in the shadows, that dissipates entirely when one is draped on a sunwarmed rock, soaking up the solar radiation.
Sera is draped on a sunwarmed rock that projects over a quiet pool where a noisy waterfall churns over wall of tumbled rock and debris. She has a beach towel folded under her head for a pillow, hiking boots off, socks tucked into the empty boots. Mud smeared on the boots says she has been hiking and the drying bare footprints on the boulder says that she has been swimming too, or at least dipping her feet into the pool. Now, though, she has stripped out of her cut-offs down to her bikini bottoms and (we must be honest) out of her bikini top to ensure, you know, an even tan, and is laying back with sunglasses over her eyes and some mushroom tea humming through her veins and a canteen of water close at hand.

Alexander
[Per+Aware makes it easier to bump into people in interesting places]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )

Alexander
Either most of the Awakened in the city aren’t aware of some of Alexander’s favourite ways to spend time, or they just don’t share them. He loves taking the chance to just get away from everything now and again – just him, his gear, and the mountains. This isn’t a new thing, either. Seattle was never short of remote places to disappear to, sometimes for several days at a time. Today, though, is for a shorter stay. He’s hiking, so the pack he’s lugging on his back is relatively small. Relatively. For an area where the weather is so changeable, especially at short notice, it’s always a good idea to be prepared.
But the weather – at least for the moment – is fine. Which means the gaiters and other waterproof gear is stashed away. Instead, Alexander is working his way through the landscape in hiking trousers – legs unzipped, turning them into shorts – a black technical tshirt and a well-worn pair of blue-under-the-mud walking boots.
There’s something else in the air up here, though. Not the traffic fumes and other clogging pollution you get in the city, it’s too far out for that. But something that announces the presence of someone, someone who he recognises. That enthralling sense of viscerality and liminality pull him in a slightly different direction to that he started. It pulls him to the opposite side of the pool to where Sera is lounging. “We must stop meeting like this,” he calls, just before realising her dress – or lack thereof. He turns to look elsewhere. “Um, hope I’m not interrupting.”

Serafíne
(Does Sera know that Alexander is embarrassed by her lack of clothes? Awarempathy.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 4, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne
He has a glimpse of her bare feet and her knees, golden in the sun. Maybe the glint of her glasses from the angle on the rock. The toed-off hiking boots, little white flags of her socks stuffed into the muddy brown leather so from that first glimpse, well - he can easily and naturally assume that Sera is simply sunning herself.
Then she lifts herself up to her elbows, long blond hair swinging from a loose ponytail as she props herself up and looks across the reflecting pool at the police officer in his hiking gear. Sera is wholly unself-conscious about her demi-nudity and perfectly comfortable and she smiles back at Alexander and lifts up a hand and waves and the smile - well, from a distance, when one is uncomfortable as Alexander seems to be, what can he tell about the state of her smile, the complexities of it? - so the smile is simply a smile.
Then Alexander turns away and there's the shadow of movement in his periphery. A moment later,
"You can look now."
It's true. She's pulled a t-shirt over her head and is pulling her hair out from beneath the collar even as he turns. "What are you doing all the way out here?"

Alexander
The thought wasn’t that Sera might be occupying herself with someone else, more that... well, semi-naked women don’t usually appreciate random men turning up unexpectedly. But however little Sera is bothered by her near-nakedness, it certainly makes Alexander uncomfortable. He’s not a prude by any means, and it’s certainly nothing that – in general terms – he hasn’t seen before. And given Sera’s usual clothing, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen most of anyway. As fine as the line between her dress and decency tends to be, it is still a line and one that he’s comfortable is – generally – there.
Alexander looks up when she says that it’s safe, looking rather more comfortable than he did before. Embarassment quickly fading, he smiles back. “It’s my backyard. Well, kinda. I like getting out here and away from the city now and again.” He looks down and starts picking his way around the pool to where Sera’s sat. “How about you? I didn’t realise you were the outdoors type.”
He nods at her boots, grinning. “No heels today?”

Serafíne
No heels today? Alexander asks and Sera gives him the smallest of quirks. This little comma of a half-smile that curves beneath her sunglasses and has her gaze seemingly steady on his face. The sun gleaming across the curve of the lenses when she moves her head.
"Wouldn't that be insane?" she tosses back to him, still smiling, a mild note to the expression that he may not be able to place until he is closer but, oh. Lovely.
Then a little shrug. "I don't know what the outdoors type is. But weren't we camping when I found you?"
She lilts her head in a general direction opposite of the one from which he has come. "Renting a cabin not far from here. Spent some time there this time last year. And I don't know," a one-shouldered shrug, still just lounging there on the rock. "I felt like coming back."

Alexander
Alexander shrugs out of the rucksack and lays in on the ground before perching on a rock. He looks down at the pool, considering doing a little foot-dipping of his own.
“What isn’t insane these days?” he asks before shrugging. “Although that would be particularly insane, even if you can put a broken ankle back together again.” She had already demonstrated her ability to heal, so surely a little thing like a broken bone would be easy to fix? There’s a mental shrug; not something he really has to worry about. Not yet, at least.
“This is outdoors, I guess.” He gestures around them. “Away from buildings and roads and people and traffic. Escape, I suppose.” She nods in the vague direction of the cabin. “Are you on your own out here, then, or is Dan staying with you?” Dan seems the most likely candidate, given that he’s usually nearby – or at least easily contactable – when Sera needs him. “How is he, by the way? And.. Sorry, I’ve forgotten your friend’s name. The one who bakes.”

Serafíne
"He's around." Sera murmurs, of course he is. He's always around, somewhere on the fringes of her life, ensuring that she eats, sometimes, that she drinks, sometimes, something other than alcohol. There to hold her hand when her trip goes bad and her body when it is shaking. Or just to hold her. Then, "Dee," she supplies - the friend who bakes. "Naw. She's in Denver. Doesn't really know about this place.
"Or, us really. Magic, you know? I think she's starting to get it, but there are an awful lot of things I can't really share with her, just on that level. For her sake and ours."
The briefest pause, his reflection gleaming back at him from the lenses of her glasses.
Then, "Anyone ever tell you how we got the chantry?"

Alexander
Alexander considers things for a moment before bending down and starting work on his boot laces. “Tell Dan I say hi. And Dee, too.” He smiles as he makes the request. The memory for names may be lacking from time to time, but those of the two of them keeping an eye on him after his less-than-pleasant Awakening are very much there.
The laces loose, Alexander levers one boot off and then the other. “So how does that work with Dan, then? I don’t feel the same kind of thing around him as you or the others. Is it like… The Hermetic thing of training people before they wake up?”
The boots come off, the socks follow, and Alexander turns to rest his feet in the pool. The water is cold, but pleasant. He shuffles a little to get comfortable on the rock, looking back at his reflection. But there’s no attempt to look through it, not here and not now. “Not really. I know we’re kinda borrowing the place from someone who’s out of town. Beyond that..?” He shrugs.

Serafíne
"Dan's known about us since before I met him," Sera tells Alexander, this quick flash of affection cresting the curve of her mouth. Absent and present, somehow, both at once. "I guess it's a bit like that Hermetic thing, but it's not the same. We're not that fucking formal, and he's just -
"We're just tight, you know? And he knows and he believes so I can do things around him and with him that ordinary people wouldn't understand or believe, which makes it harder and more dangerous. Consor's the word. Friends and lovers and allies who are alive to magic, but not precisely awake. Not the way we are.
"Pretty sure I couldn't get by without him. I'd probably forget to eat three weeks in a row and I'd never clean my goddamned room."
Sera's smiling then, though Alexander is now turned away from her, feet in the churning pool of water, dark with tannins from the pines dotting its course, and he cannot see the tinge of - call it melancholy - that lingers in the curve of her mouth.
"You wanna hear the story?"
Still, that hint of melancholy does manage to inflect her voice, when she asks him whether he wants to know more.

Alexander
[Aware-empathy, do we notice the change in tone?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander
Alexander turns on the rock, feet still in the water but moving so that he’s lying on his front and facing Sera on her rock. “How did you meet him? And how did you both figure out what the other was?” He laughs a little as she says she’d probably forget to eat. “I’m pretty sure the others around here would prod you now and again if he wasn’t. Although maybe not so much about putting your used laundry in the basket.”
He’s silent for a moment when Sera asks if he wants to know more. Part of him does, but he does pick up on the melancholy. He considers her face, striking in the light, considering. “Only if you want to tell it.” There are plenty of others to ask about what the history of the place was. If Sera doesn’t want to – or wants to talk about something else – then he’s leaving it all down to her. Given the help she’s given him in the past, he’s ready to give her all the time in the world.
Serafíne
This quick, supple little shrug. Quiet, in this too. "I went through some shit overseas. A friend of a friend got me back over here. Somehow Dan ended up with the job of looking in on me. Just, you know, this string of mutual acquaintances, right? So we always kinda knew."
Her frame rather darting beneath the somewhat oversized t-shirt she pulled over her head when Alexander stumbles upon her sunbathing nude or nearly so on the rock. Her hair is golden, catching the light, but she deliberately allows all the dark roots to show, and the soft fringe of her sidecut is never, never dyed.
"I don't mind sharing."
And she doesn't mind sharing. Some part of her wants to share; that has to be why she broached the subject. That is also the reason she's been out here so much over the past few weeks.
She leans back, Sera, braced on the palms of her hands, eyes closed, soaking up the sun. Then lowers her chin and meets Alexander's gaze and gives him this wry, lovely little smile.
There are already tears in her eyes but the dazzling contrast between sun and shadow makes them difficult to discern.
"The first mage I met in Denver was Pan. Felt him outside his Church and went in, you know? Couldn't see him - but I knew he was in the confessional, hearing confessions, and I hate churches so I went in and decided to fuck around with him and asked him to make out, among other things.
"Turned out he wasn't the kind of fucking dick I thought all priests were required by law or the goddamned pope to be.
"But neither of us knew this place was here.
"A few days later I had this dream, about a girl alone in a world that had distingrated into little more than ash. Everything was ruined. Everything was a ruin, and she was standing in the center of this radial circle of graves and there was a man there, fucking dark, right? But compelling in the way people like that can be, and he took her hand, and he led her away, and she looked at me in the dream, just crying, right?
"And she asked me for help.
"Her name was Leah. When we tracked her down, we brought her out here."

Alexander
“I guess I can see how you guys ended up so close.” From what he’d seen, it almost seems like Dan’s the older brother looking after his little sister. But then it’s not unlikely that their relationship extends to the physical as well as the mental, and then the comparison falls apart. Alexander is happy to know that he’s there and taking care of her, though.
Where Sera’s appearance may be a lot more planned than her easy-going nature suggests, Alexander’s is pretty much what it appears to be. A few days’ worth of stubble covers his jaw and his short, dark hair has been gelled and brushed back. His eyes are uncovered and interested as Sera begins the story she wants to share, while he stays quiet and lets her talk without interruption.
The mention of Pan, though, gets his mouth pulled a little tighter. He’s aware of how highly some of the others in the city regard the man, but he’s still somewhat dubious. But, then, is a fleeting encounter really enough to build an accurate opinion of a person? Probably not, but then first impressions do tend to colour opinions quite strongly. That he may not be a complete ass holds hope for the future…
There’s a pause in the story. “What happened to her? Or was that what was going to happen to her? I’m not sure how those visions and dreams work. Who was the man?”
“Where’s Leah now? I don’t remember anyone mentioning her name before.”
Serafíne
"I don't know how they work for other people," Sera supplies quietly, watching Alexander in the shadows. "For me - well, I've had them since I was a fucking kid. Long before I woke up. There were just things I would know. Things I'd see before they happened. Things I'd remember that I never should've known.
"All wrapped up in metaphor and who the fuck really understands metaphor, or maybe who the fuck really understands metaphor better than a four year old.
"When I had that dream, all I knew was that it was real, and it lingered, and it was important, and that we were all in danger, but she - especially - was. From the man in my dream.
"He was Fallen. Nephandi. Gave his soul over to god-knows-what in exchange for power, and was absolutely intent on bringing all of that suffering back into the world.
"Everyone said she was too. That she was born that way. They call it Widderslainte - someone stitched to an avatar that has already Fallen. Fuck if I know if it was true.
"But it turns out that a helluva lot of people knew about Leah. The Techs - you know about them, right? and our side, and of course the Fallen. They were hunting her.
"They had plans, see."

Alexander
Sera had told him before that her waking up had been a gradual thing, mixed in with load of other stuff. When your dreams are prophecies at four years old, really how much difference does it make finding out that you can change reality? “Did you tell anyone about your dreams? When you were young, I mean.” He listens to Sera’s reply, but part of his mind is elsewhere for a few moment – thinking back to a faceless man and a blood-lipped woman in white…
Alexander nods silently when Sera says the man was a Nephandi, and again when she asks if he knows about the Technocracy. He’d already had several little talks about the big scary things that it would be A Bad Thing to get involved with, and those two came at the start of all of those talks. “I thought you had to choose to become one of them? That you couldn’t be forced into it? So... was he trying to get her to make the same choice her avatar had?”
“What did the Techs want with her?” Other than asking about some of the details as Sera tells the story, he’s happy to just let her carry on talking.

Serafíne
Here is another small divertissement: Alexander's question about whether or not Sera ever <i>told anyone</i> about her dreams.  There is a certain irony in the whole of the conversation of which Sera alone is aware.  To-wit, no one called her Serafíne, then.  "Did I tell anyone?  Fuck if I know.  I was a kid, I probably didn't think it was weird.  I figured everyone else knew things the way I knew things.  Pretty sure all that freaked my folks out, though.  

"I think my mother thought - "  A brief pause.  A caesura, and the mild irony of her expression settles into something else, a little more distant, a little more strange.  Alexander has no idea how little Sera really knows about her own past.  How distant what she does remembers seems to her: through a glass, darkly and all that.

"Anyway: Leah.  The Techs kidnapped her before she woke up.  They were trying to use her to draw out the Fallen, maybe they wanted to experiment on her.  I'm not really sure.  What I know is that some of the members of the cabal that held the chantry before us found out about it and rescued her.  They took her to a warehouse in the city to try to keep her safe.  

"Shelby and Will.  Those were their names.  They rescued Leah on their own.  The rest of the cabal thought they should've just killed her, or left her in the Techs' hands.  

"That she was too dangerous, that everything was too dangerous.  That the most she deserved was a clean death. 

"I didn't know any of them.  Or any of this when it was happening, but a couple of days after that first dream I had, Jim and Sid and Mara and me met this guy Jake.  Shelby's boyfriend.  

"He was a consor like Dan, and he'd never been allowed to go to the chantry by the rest of the cabal, and all he knew was that Shelby had been missing for weeks. He was beside himself, you know? So we started looking for them, trying to find her for him.  

"Shelby's family owned this warehouse - so we figured it was as good a place to start as anywhere else.  

"Jim and I looked back in time, and saw the whole thing.  Shelby and Will were watching over Leah when the rest of their cabal found them.  They were in the middle of an argument over <i>what to do</i> about Leah when the Techs showed up and a fucking battle ensued. God knows what would've happened otherwise, but Leah was shot in the battle, and the trauma of the whole thing woke her up.

"You know how crazy it was when you woke up?  The gauntlet all shredded, wild magic, all of it?  When Leah woke up, it was this blast of destruction. 

"Without even thinking about it or meaning to, she killed them all.  Turned them all into Ash. 

"Twelve people and a whole fucking warehouse, disintegrated.  

"And someone powerful covering it all up."  

Without quite thinking about it, or even interrupting the story, Sera has started to cry.  A few tears cresting her lashes to fall onto her cheeks

Alexander
Thinking about it, it probably was a bit of a silly question to ask.  But, then, different people have their first memories before then, others after.  And given Sera’s already demonstrated ability to sift back through time and see past events...  She pauses part way through a sentence.  “Thought what?”  He is curious to know more about this strange, mysterious woman.  But if she doesn’t want to carry on that particular chain of thought then he isn’t going to force it.
But the subject does change, back to Leah and the story of how the local Awakened were introduced to the Chantry.  He lies on his rock, head propped up on his hands listening to Sera.  Watching her.  She explains how Leah woke up so dramatically, similar in some ways to his own less-than-pleasant introduction to the Awakened world.  But where his stirring Avatar tore into the ephemeral, hers ripped into the physical.  Alexander looks down at the rock he’s lying on as the story unfolds, getting wrapped up again in his unresolved issues and missing the effect the story is having on Sera.
Quietly he asks, “How did you know her Avatar had already Fallen?  How was Leah after that?”  Partly asking to find out what happened to her.  Partly to find out what could be in store for him.  Of the other Awakenings he’s heard about so far, Leah’s certainly seems to be the closest experience to his. 

[Do we notice?  Aware-pathy] Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 4) ( fail )
Serafíne <i>Thought what?</i>

Alexander inquires, and the inquiry pulls Sera up for a moment.  Not short, precisely, but out of the current of her thoughts.  Out of the indefinable blend of concordance and strangeness that all such memories seem to have for her.  There is flick of a glance from her, all direct, and a supple hum of consideration that opens through her body.

"That I was better off far away than close by."

--

And her eyes linger there; on Alexander.  And she knows, she knows, she knows.  She can taste the uncertainty, the correspondences wrapped into the substance of the question.

"<i>I</i> didn't know that."  Quietly, Sera starts to explain.  "I didn't <i>believe</i> that.   In my dream, she asked <i>me</i> for help, and in my vision, I could see that she was just - scared, frightened.  Even that - that destruction she unleashed did not come about until one of the Techs had shot her.  Then she just exploded.

"Afterward she was wretched."

--

"Between the Techs and the Fallen, we knew we were in over our heads, so we laid low for a few days.  I went to find Pan again, to tell him what happened, and he agreed to find Leah for me.

"By the time Jim, Pan and I found her, she was on the roof of one of the hospital downtown, suicidal.  She couldn't live with what had happened.  With what she'd done.  With what she was doing.  It seemed like all she could do was destroy things, see. And she was tormented by these terrible dreams.

"I still believed in her, though.  Jim did, too.

"And I don't know that Pan believed in her, precisely, so much as he was willing to believe in our belief in her.

"The Fallen were there, too.  Ready to convince her that they could put an end to her suffering by helping her embrace her nature.  But somehow Pan and Jim and I managed to spark the smallest bit of hope in her, and she found it in herself to reach out and embrace that hope and turn away from them.

"There's more to it."  Intensely now, shifting her position closer to Alexander, her voice fixed with a deeply felt passion.  " - so much fucking more to it."  Still tears in her eyes and emotion clotting her voice.  The former she dash away, smiling around them, fully the way she does, the latter, well.  It just underscores her conviction.

"So much work, too.  She spent weeks out here with Jim.  Shoshannah would come out too, and Pan, and me.  But mostly, it was Jim, teaching her all this shit he knows.  All this philosophy.   They'd hike out here and he'd show her a fallen tree, and talk about how destruction is part of life and shit.  How one can't be without the other, that there's nothing inherently wrong with death.

"She had nightmares constantly.  <i>Constantly</i>.  I'd sing to her and Pan'd pray for her and we'd help her sleep.  And Jim was always here for her.  You really oughta talk to him, by the way, he's fucking amazing.

"And in the end, whatever they'd wanted her for, whatever it was in her that had so entranced them, she turned away from it.  Found a way to turn away from it.

"How is she now?"  This brief, wry twist inflects her expression.  "Probably fucked the hell up, but who isn't?  But she's alive.  She's not a living incarnation of death.  She changed the world, and maybe she changed her fucking self, with her Will.

"That's what we have.  Whatever it is that we have."

--

Here, another pause, which is wrapped in a cushioning awareness, an abiding empathy she cannot really shake.

"Why."  Quiet, that.  Quiet.  Gentle, even.  If he looks up he will find her eyes on him, shining, artless, damp.  "What are you afraid of?"

-- [I rolled a roll but lost my cut and paste of it!  Anyway: she got 5 successes on empathy for Alexander, so if you want to give any more insight into his mindset given that, feel free.]
Alexander
Oh, Alexander – how lucky you’ve been so far.  The Awakened world seems to bring so much misery and suffering with it, and you’ve only just scratched the surface of the nicer side of things.  If finding the remains of an Archmage who had become stranded for centuries in the Umbra is pleasant.  The Message, though – helping him had been, unquestioningly, a good thing.
Death.  Destruction.  Chaos.  Is that what he really has to look forward to? 
How does anyone manage to stay sane dealing with this stuff?
Sera continues the story of Leah.  How she had almost been born to continue down the path her Avatar had already been set on in a previous life.  Scared of what she was, or what she was to become. 
What are you afraid of?
Alexander doesn’t look up when Sera asks.  If anything, the rock becomes even more interesting while he tries to work out what to tell her.  Eventually he sighs.  “The future.”  He shifts position again, turning to sit cross-legged on his rock, wet feet leaving wet marks on the stone.  He still doesn’t meet Sera’s gaze, though.  “I don’t know if I can deal with what’s coming.”
And what is coming?  The search for a lost mage, a spirit of decay, and an enormous amount of not really knowing what he’s getting himself into.
But the more he’s learning about his new life, the more he’s scared of what else is to come.  And where it will all end.
“Where’s Leah now?” he asks, trying to get back onto the original subject.  To distract himself, and hopefully Sera, from paths he doesn’t want to go down. 
[...fade...]

You take care of yourself

Elijah

[how did I sleep?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (4, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander

Summer has arrived in the city, with clear skies and soaring temperatures. Although the potential for sudden downpours is always there, today the residents have been spared and have been making the most of the good weather. The streets are crowded with men and women of all ages baring skin in the eternal worship of the sun. Coffee shops and restaurants spread tables and chairs over the sidewalks to attract customers.

But now the sun is slowly working its way down towards the horizon and the light of the early sunset streams in through the window. Kalen’s pale form looks almost healthy in its golden glow. Strictly speaking, visiting hours had already ended. He should be alone to rest. But resting is all he – or, rather, his physical form – has been doing since that night in the club. Where his mind is, Alexander has no idea. He’s been mostly out of contact with everybody. Other than a short exchange of voicemails and post-it notes with Grace, he’s pretty much in the dark with what’s going on at the moment.

Oh, Alexander… He’s sat in the chair that he’s pulled up to the side of the bed. Comfortable, because it’s one of the small things that can be done for the friends and relatives who spend endless hours sitting at bedsides hoping for the best, and sometimes waiting for the worst. He’s in uniform – short-sleeved blue shirt, badge, blue trousers, belt, boots. There’s a book resting on the bed, folded open to mark the page. Alexander? He’s asleep, propped up on the railing at the side of the bed.

Elijah

If anyone asks, his name is Elijah Dane.

he's gotten pretty good at saying it, offering a hand and seeming confident with it. He fakes it well enough, conveniently forgets his ID and explains that it must be in his wallet or at the hotel room or anything else. Elijah has been lying through his teeth to be here. A consistent, constant act that he is neither proud nor ashamed of- it was what it was. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and sometimes you have to tell people what they want to hear in order to get what you need.

There had been some flirtation with a pretty nurse, something to the effect of seeing when her shift ends. He might see her when the shift is over, provided he doesn't end up crashing in Kalen's room. He'd come with Jenn a couple times, usually when Jenn was the one who was driving. So, that's your friend? she'd asked. Bit her lower lip and fidgeted.

Jenn only came with Elijah a couple times, and always waited outside. He knew hospitals made her uncomfortable. He'd only asked her to come twice. Now was not going to be the third. He came to the room, noting that there was a sleeping police officer and his first thought was to be tense. The blond man, in his jeans and his button up shirt and vest and pocket watch (because pocket watch) wondered if he needed to be honest about anything. If he could lie to a police officer and how this was going to go pretty badly.

The way he was draped over the bed was telling, though. He knew better than to lay a hand on sleeping people, but he came and did it anyway, put his hand on the man's shoulder and gave him a little nudge.

"Hey," he half-whispered.

Alexander

At least two of the local mages had discovered that it’s not the best of ideas to surprise Alexander with a hand – or a hug – from behind. Neither had ended up with more than a bit of bruising, though. So how does Elijah fare? Surprisingly well…

The newcomer gently tries to wake the sleeping policeman, with a bit of a shake and a gentle greeting. Which of the two had the desired effect is unclear, but the results are quickly apparent. No slow crawl into wakefulness, Alexander’s eyes flick open. He stands quickly, knocking the chair back onto the floor with a bang. A hand sweeps up, knocking Elijah’s away, and he takes a step back. Conscious thought follows instinct before things go any further.

“Hi,” he greets the vaguely familiar man. A yawn escapes before Alexander can suppress it. “Sorry. Have we met?” He crouches to get the chair back up on its feet, keeping his attention on Elijah as he does.

ix-is-lurking

[You don't mind spies?]

Alexander

[Not at all!]

Elijah

His reaction is immediate. Alexander stands, pushes his hand away and Elijah took a step back immediately. There was a tension, a knot in his stomach and he waited. He waited like he knew something was going to happen, like he was gauging how far he could get in the event that things went south. Not far, Elijah decided.

He looked at the man, and he tried to place him. He was familiar. Familiar ish, at the very least. The young man peered carefully at Alexander before nodding, "I think so? Kind of? I'm Elijah. It's… kind of a small world. How do you two know each other?"

Elijah was looking for something here. He was looking for a name, he was looking for the name that Alexander decides to use when he is referring to Kalen. Would he call him Eliot? Would he call him Kalen? The answer was telling enough. The young blond reached up to rake his hair back out of his face.

Alexander

[Per+Aware, now that we're paying attention]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

Elijah

[Second verse, same as the first!]

Elijah

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Elijah

Elijah Poirot had a feeling about him. Something small and budding that was clawing its way forward, a feeling of being not in the eye of the hurricane, but the storm itself. That feeling of unrest, the feeling of tension and dissatisfaction. The feeling right before a riot breaks out in the streets. Something that wasn't chaos, but its close cousin.

Elijah

(I don't know if Passive Observation counts as a specialty, but! If it does!)

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

Alexander

Alexander has a feeling of being frozen. Picture standing on a mountain top in the perfectly still air. No wind, no snow, no movement. It's cold, but more than that. Frozen in ice? In time? In a moment? If Elijah remembers it from their previous encounter, he might find the feeling is a little stronger this time around.

Alexander

Elijah…

The name is familiar, as is the face. It takes a couple of moments for recognition to arrive, and it passes across Alexander’s face as it does. “From the park, right? With Lucy, Kalen and the others.” Would that be the answer that Elijah was looking for? The seat is set right, but Alexander doesn’t sit himself back down on it. Instead he picks up the book from the bed, sliding a slip of paper inside before closing it and putting it down on a table.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here. At least I haven’t bumped into anyone else visiting Elliot.” Because that’s the name that Kalen is known to the hospital by. And Alexander isn’t quite sure how far to trust the relative stranger. He rubs the corner of his left eye, picking out a little dried rheum. “Alexander, by the way.”

“We just bumped into each other a little while back. Along with a couple of others and a scarecrow.” Because that’s a normal thing to happen.

Elijah

Kalen. Not Elliot, Kalen. Elijah visibly relaxes, exhaling a long, drawn out breath. More than his lungs should have held since given the fact that Elijah had just recently smoked half a pack of cigarettes by himself not a few days before.

"Yeah, I was the guy that lost his cell phone," he replied, still high off relief and the dawning recognition that he has seen this man before. "And he told me about the thing with the people and the messenger and the storm. Didn't you do some translating for him with that?"

Because he could handle vague, because he could maneuver through vagueness. There was a cautiousness there, an awareness of each other and the feeling each of them gave off. Elijah shrugged, "he said that you're, uh, kinda new to all this crap too."

Alexander

Elijah relaxes, but Alexander is still cautious. Untrusting, maybe? But then the two have only met the once, and a brief and passing contact at that. The other still has the same kind of feeling as the other mages, the same resonance that becomes as much a part of them as their hair colour. A hint at the path that each of them has taken to the current moment. Even so, Alexander still stays on his feet. “You’ve definitely got the advantage over me,” he says in reply. “I’ve not heard much about you from the others. But then I’ve not really been sociable recently.”

Alexander snorts as Elijah says that he’s been told that he’s still pretty new. He doesn’t sit, but he does lean back against the table and looks at Kalen. He sighs heavily, tiredly, before he answers. “Not as new as I used to be.” That’s said quietly, with a whole heap of baggage behind it. “I don’t think that lasts long for us.”

Elijah

[awarepathy- because that baggage is delicious.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Alexander

Alexander is tired, mentally much more than physically. Whatever it is that's bothering Alexander is something that's been there for a while now and isn't getting any better. There's a melancholy there for things that have been done, and some fear for what is still to come.

Elijah

It's been a bad time," he replies, and it's the truth, too. There's a disconnect with Elijah, because he is relaxed but he feels like civil disobedience. Like turbulence. Like passion- and there he is all calm and relaxed but it's there under the surface. It would always be there, a part of him and not apart from him like he'd wanted for so long. "but if you wanna know anything, you can ask me if it helps."

An offer, an olive branch for some slight not yet committed. Alexander was tense, but more importantly, the man seemed tired. Elijah hooked his thumbs through his belt loops and waited for a moment.

"What all do you know about this? Do you want the run down on the situation?"

Alexander

Alexander pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing again. Elijah is sure to be dragging around his own history and issues and problems. And given better circumstances, Alexander would probably be the one to be offering help and support. But right now? He doesn’t really care. There’s enough left in him to avoid intentionally scaring Elijah away, or making things worse. “Thanks, but I think the person I need to talk to most is me. But I’m not sure we’re really on speaking terms at the moment.”

Silence descends on the room for a few moments.

“About all I know is…” He looks up at the open door to the room, nodding towards it. Hinting that this probably isn’t really the conversation to be having where anyone walking past could overhear, or walk in unannounced. Once the door has been closer – either by Elijah taking the hint, or Alexander if he doesn’t – he continues what he was about to say. “All I know is that something happened in a nightclub and something happened to the minds of 60-odd people including him,” he nods towards the sleeping man in the hospital bed, “and a couple more of us. I got a message about a member of some order-or-other getting involved in some way. Beyond that,” he shrugs, “Im pretty much in the dark.”

Elijah

"Do you know Grace or Lena?"

Alexander

"Yeah, I know them. I was kinda hoping Grace would be here this evening, but she hasn't been returning her messages. Why do you ask?"

Elijah

Elijah Poirot is certified crazy. Literally. Less than a year ago, he (the generally nonviolent and harmless young mage) threw a chair and broke television right before breaking an orderly's nose. The fact that he is the one who is going to be the emotionally stable one in this room is a thought that is bordering on disturbing. The statement the person I need to talk to most is me. But I’m not sure we’re really on speaking terms at the moment shouldn't have made Elijah grin, but it does, something brief and something flickering.

Alexander began his leading statement and the young man was already making his way tot he door to shut it. he lingers there for a second, hand on the handle and his thoughts wandering as they are prone to doing. He wonders, but he doesn't wander. The door is shut with the resounding click all hospital doors shut with, and soon enough he is present once again.

"Grace gave me the run down of what was going on when we were both here. She and Lena and Patience- I don't know if you know Patience, but she talks like an instruction manual- were going to go and investigate what caused all of this. Grace is trying to straighten things out,

"Apparently, what's happened is that AI has gone rogue, things went haywire, and people's consciousnesses have been removed from their bodies," he said this much, and it's met with a look of confusion. Elijah shakes his head and continues, "Grace and company are going in as kind of a mental extraction team. Someone's watching them to make sure nothing goes bad when they go do whatever it is that they do. They're… uh… having an out-of-body rescue mission."

A beat.

"It's weird. I know it's weird and it sounds crazy, but… yeah."

Alexander

In many ways, Alexander isn’t all that different from everyone else. Put a person in different situations and they will react in different ways. Face a crisis of some sort and it becomes easier to react on an almost instinctual level. Once the crisis is over and normality – or what passes for normality these days – reasserts itself and there is a different person standing in the wreckage. When those crises seem to be more and more common..? How do you know which one is really you.

Alexander nods silently when Elijah describes Patience, smiling a little at the way he puts the woman’s strange way of speaking. Sighs again as he comes to the end of the explanation.

“No, that just about counts for sane these days. And once again we step in because there’s nobody else to do it.” That last part is quiet, almost as if Alexander is talking to himself. His attention returns to Elijah, though. “I don’t know how much you’ve learned so far, but we’re made up of three parts: the body, the spirit, and the mind. Take one away and the others eventually stop working.” He watches the other man, looking for the reaction when he mentions the spirit. Not so long ago he would have been the one questioning whether spirits existed. Now, he’s absolutely sure.

He looks back at Kalen, voice quiet when he asks, “How long have they been away for? Did they have any idea how long they were expecting it to take?” He’s sounding more concerned than he has since they started talking. Completely clueless of anything he can possibly do to help, but the familiar need to do something is starting to return.

Elijah

There are things that phase Elijah.

Mention of one's spirit is, most assuredly, not one of them.

He inhales, and he knew that he had something to do here. He had things to say, and he had to be present, instead of in the future or in the past (because we are all so content to live in the past, linger on what happens, live, something tells him, live because tomorrow you die. For once, that statement meant something, meant more because he had a friend who may not ever come back- live because others can not.)

"They don't know how long it's going to take, Grace's only been gone for… a week? Maybe a week, I heard from them last shortly after all of this happened," Elijah knew, at that juncture, that asking Alexander to come to grips with the idea of his friends not coming back was… probably not ideal. "I don't know if the break down of the connection between your self and the rest of the world is a science I really get, but I know someone's watching after Grace and everyone. The people from the club… it's been since the beginning of June."

His brows knit together, "hey, they're in good hands, things are going to pull through."

One way or another.

Alexander

The edges of Alexander’s lips are touched by a smile at Elijah’s reaction – or lack of reaction – to the mention of spirit. The history of why Elijah is so accepting of the concept of the spirit will have to be a conversation for another time though.

Elijah thinks it best to avoid the possibility that Kalen, Grace, Lena and the others who have either had their minds stolen or who are attempting to save the others might not survive. Alexander already knows that’s a possibility. Either they will or they won’t return. There’s nothing of fate in that belief – fate removes the potential for choice, for free will. Chance will play a part, the rest is down to them.

“Is there anything that Grace and the others need doing while they’re away? Their bodies are being looked after, but is there anything that needs taking care of in their day-to-day lives?” He doesn’t know enough about Patience or Lena to guess, and Grace works with Kalen so there shouldn’t be much in the way of loose ends there.

Elijah

"They had some time to wrap things up for themselves. I don't know if they do or not. I… uh… just kind of met her," he said. He shook his head, "I don't know what it is that Patience does, but I know that Lena met us here and she seemed like she was on the war path. I'll tell them you were looking to help, though, when they come out. Or you can."

When, not if. As though this were an absolute and would happen because he said so.

Alexander

“I’ll certainly talk to them when I see them again. But do tell them I asked after them, in case it takes a while for me to bump into them again.”

He seems to consider something for a few seconds before pulling out a card and offering it to Elijah. “Yell if you, or they, need anything. I’m not on that information sharing thing, so someone will have to call me if anything changes. Just… if you haven’t spoken to Grace much, you might not have had much in the way of MIB lectures. Be careful what you say over the phone, email, messengers and the like. It’s not just terrorists that are being watched for.”

That meeting with Grace and Eleanor could have gone so much better, but circumstances were what they were. He hadn’t been – still isn’t, really – in the right frame of mind for it to go any other way. But he’s certainly appreciating the value of it more now.

“I should probably go. I’ve got some things of my own to take care of.”

Elijah

"You take care of yourself," he said, a tone that was a little softer than he realized, but concerned none the less.

Elijah paused.

"Hey, you wanna have lunch sometime?"

Alexander

You take care of yourself

Alexander was starting to move towards the door when Elijah says it, and it catches him for a second. It was starting to feel like some of the more experienced mages were of the school of ‘suck it up, it just gets worse’ when it came to dealing with… stuff. So it’s equally soft that Alexander replies, “You too.” Because it does get worse.

He pauses again, one hand on the door handle, as the offer of lunch comes. “I’m not the best of company at the moment. But sometime, sure.” With that, he opens the door and slips out of the room, letting the door click closed behind him.

I know you like books [Mood]

Back in room 203.  Everything mostly the same from the previous visit.  Kalen has been moved slightly – bed sores are not good things, the blanket a washed-out green rather than the well-washed white it was before, the blinds pulled up to let what little light remains of the day into the room, the TV left on as quiet background noise set to a different channel.  The water jug next to the bed remains untouched.  Kalen’s eyes remain closed, although his breathing stays at the slow, deep rate that it has been for the past… days?  Weeks now? 

The same chair is pulled up to the side of the bed and Alexander settles down in it.  Where Sid was given a plant, Kalen is given something else.  Time, and the contents of a book.  It’s pulled out of a messenger bag that has been set on the floor next to the chair and appears to be new, judging by the lack of creasing along the spine.

“I don’t know what I can do to help you.  But I know you like books, so…”  the sentence trails off as he flicks through the first few pages of contents, imprints, titles, getting to the actual text.  He starts reading, on the off-chance that there’s anything of Kalen in his body to hear.

“One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it:-- it was the black kitten’s fault entirely…” 

And so, Alice travels through the looking-glass.

I appreciate you trying [Mood]

In another room, elsewhere in the hospital, Sid lies sleeping.  Her body, at least.  Dim light shines in through the window as the city is pelted with a summer storm thrown off the mountains, and a dull drumming on the window panes is the only sound in the room.  Although Alexander doesn’t really know Sid, he’s still come to visit her.  This time there’s a small gift – a small potted cactus sitting on the window sill.  Something that shouldn’t cause any concerns about the ‘no flowers’ rule being broken.  Something a little different that – hopefully – she’ll like when – hopefully – she wakes up again.

Getting here had taken a little more work than Kalen had.

*-*-*-*-*

Alexander had tried tracking her down after his second visit to see Kalen.  Although he’d only ever been introduced to Sid by that single name, the note from Grace gave a couple of other possibilities.  Sid or Amelia Weston.  The receptionist at the front desk had tried to help, but there’s only so much that can be done when you don’t have the right name for someone.

He was stood on the opposite side of the reception desk to the middle-aged woman dealing with enquiries and pointing people in various directions on that particular morning.  Her blonde-and-gray hair were held back in a tight bun, make up scrupulously applied.  Experience dealing with members of the public not getting the answer they want, meant that he was getting nowhere fast.

“I’m sure she’s here.  A friend asked me to check in on her and she definitely said this hospital.  Can you check again?  She’d either be listed under Sid or Amelia Weston.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there is nobody here with that surname, and I can’t just go fishing for everybody with those first names.  Have you tried the other hospitals in the area?”  She looked up at Alexander, knitting her fingers together and resting them on the desk in front of the keyboard.

“She came in at the same time as the other caught in… whatever it was that happened in that club.”  Alexander sighs, resigned to where the conversation is inevitably headed – nowhere.

“I’m sorry, sir.  But we didn’t take all of the casualties that night.  Our ED just wouldn’t have been able to handle them all.  All I can think is that she ended up somewhere else.  If you’ll excuse me…” She turned away, pressing a button on the quietly ringing phone next to her keyboard.  “University of Colorado Hospital…”  

Before he turned from the desk, Alexander said quietly, “I appreciate you trying, thank you.”  The receptionist looked up, gave a quick nod, and then returned her attention to her PC.

*-*-*-*-*

There is more than one way to skin a cat, though.


The mystery of so many people going comatose at the same time is something that is going to get looked into.  The police, and possibly other more sinister organisations, are going to take an interest in the circumstances.  The police, in particular, looking for evidence of drug-related activity that could have turned bad.  A dangerous new drug on the street?  A new dealer, mixing something already known with something different?

For those with the means of access, getting a peek at various reports isn’t too difficult.  But the investigation into blood results, forensic screening, toxicological and biochemical examinations of the various – known – substances in the club aren’t where Alexander look.  He was looking for something much, much simpler.  A list of casualties and where they had been taken.  A simple list, put together on the night when it had all happened as person after person was assessed by EMTs and paramedics, checked for ID, then transported to one of the receiving hospitals.

It’s a simple matter of deduction from there:
The number of Amelia’s – none.
The number of Sid’s – two.
The number of Sid’s taken to UCH – one.  White.  Female.  About the right age.

One Sid Rhodes.

*-*-*-*-*

And so here he is.  Potted cactus on the windowsill. Chair pulled up to the bedside again.  Quietly watching, just for a little while.  Then he leaves to visit Kalen again.  There’s a little something for him too.


vesta @ 3:26PM
[Int+Inv]
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

I don't know if I can be what you want me to be [Mood]

There are many ways of opening doors, especially those that would normally be barred.  Keys, picks, stealth.  Knowing the right person, the right handshake, the right words.  The right bluff.  Or the right uniform.  It’s well after normal visiting hours when Alexander walks into the hospital.  It’s not hard to find the right room and the guarding nurse at the main desk is perhaps a little easier to get around for someone in uniform than random people walking in off the street.  It’s part of the unspoken deal between some of the public services – I’ll keep you safe, you put me back together again after.

“Room 306.  I’d say try not to wake him, but...”  The nurse shrugs, shakes her head sadly and then points the way down the corridor.

He finds Kalen asleep, unrousable, in a hospital bed.   The room lights are low and the monitoring equipment at the head end of the bed throws a little extra light into the room, making Kalen look paler than he really is.  The plastic tube from a drip disappears under the sheet.  The equipment is silent in its watch over its charge.

There’s an empty chair to one side, which Alexander moves over to the side of the bed.  He sits on it, then crosses his arms on the bed rails and rests his chin on them.  “What have you gotten yourself into now?”

He stays there, quietly watching the comatose man.  Eventually Alexander starts to feel sleepy, feels the drag of his eyelids downwards.  He stands, returns the chair to its original spot, then moves to the door.  He pauses under the frame and looks back at Kalen’s still form.  Says quietly, “I don’t know if I can be what you want me to be.”

A few more heartbeats pass and he leaves quietly.

But this...is not about making you feel welcome

Grace 
[[Timing-wise on this, since email scenes typically go on for quite a while (my last was 2 weeks) I am going to say this happens in the future -- possibly by only a few days from now. At the very least, Grace will give Alex a couple days of rest from the getting hugged by a spiky guy, eh?]]

Let's go have a sit-down with the police officer and the law professor about your hijacked phone sex line. That sounds like the most pleasant day ever, right? But still, it's a thing that needs to happen. Whatever his occupation, Alex is apparently decent folk, and Grace does try not to judge people by the labels (or in this case, badges) they wear.

Ian told her how they saved Sky. Ian, Alyssa, and Alex. He's so new, and already going at it, guns blazing. He wants to help. He should have Ginger. Assuming he even wants it.

Talking to him alone would be hard enough, but Eleanor wanted to come play with him too. She wants to help explain to him the necessity of breaking the law as a Mage. Sometimes, it is simply the only way. Eleanor who feels like being held under an icy lake and who teaches law. And is she going to tell Alex that, hey, if you think computer crimes are bad, have I told you how much I murder? Judge Dredd is like, her spirit animal. She just might.

Grace isn't exactly going to say no to Eleanor. Could anyone say no to a woman like that? So she played the game of Schedule a Meeting Between Eleanor and Alex. They are to meet at the Chantry today, in about fifteen goddamn minutes. Grace doesn't have any fingernails left. In the waiting, she's chewed them all off.

When they arrive, they'll find her in the living room with her phone and her laptop set up on a coffee table. Grace is sitting on the L-shaped couch, staring out the patio window.

Eleanor
Despite the stereotypes that surround her Tradition, Eleanor does not share a pessimistic view of this meeting.  A newly Awakened mage on the police force is, as she has seen before, a remarkably useful person to know.  Then again, she doesn't share Grace's more revolutionary sensibilities or drives, either.  She has not been given much information on Alex, nor has she asked for it.  She has not, as she could have, dug into his past, looked up his files, pulled opinions from his superiors.  She will meet him knowing the following: that he is a cop, that he is newly Awakened, that his name is Alex.

Eleanor did not come to play.  Eleanor came because Grace asked what people thought, and Eleanor offered to help, and Grace apparently thought that would be helpful.  It wasn't a matter of telling Eleanor -- who Grace is frightened of for some reason -- 'no'.  It was a matter of wanting the assistance or not.

So maybe they're here with very different ideas of why.  It wouldn't be the first time.  None of the Awakened in Denver know Eleanor very well except, perhaps, for her giant of an apprentice.  Fielding the assumptions of other Traditionalists may as well be filed under 'Being A Euthanatos 101'.

A car stops outside, and soon enough the door opens, and Eleanor walks in.  She made it in between rainstorms but has her umbrella just in case, hanging it on the coatrack before walking further into the house.  She knows this place; she spent time here before Grace Awakened, before Alex Awakened, before Sera came and before Shoshannah moved in, before many, many people died who used to call this their home.  It was never her home, and she never called those people her friends.  But she knew where the mugs were kept, back then.  Where the tea was stored.

She doesn't go to make tea.  She enters the living room, finding Grace waiting, looking nervous.

"I didn't see another car outside," she mentions, by way of greeting.  "Is Alex here yet?"

The answer is no, at least for now, so one way or another, she ends up asking: "Would you like some tea?"

Alexander 
So Alexander had received a voicemail message – there was something Grace needed to talk to him about up at the Chantry.  He’d been lying on the couch when the phone has started ringing and he’d let it ring out.  He wasn’t really in the mood to be sociable and, if it was anything important, the caller would leave a voicemail.  30 seconds later, the phone buzzed with a text message: “1 voicemail received.”  He listened and, sometime later in the day, sent a text message onto Grace.  “I’ll be there.” 

And so those paying attention in the house might pick up on a certain Frozen resonance approaching – a little stronger than normal, adding to Eleanor’s Wintry feel and the remnants of the colder seasons.  Around the same time, the faint sounds of a motorbike engine approaches the house – the noise strengthening along with the resonance.  The engine sound dies out with a final roar a minute before the front door opens a third time.

Grace may well notice that Alexander seems a little subdued, but this is the first time he and Eleanor have met.  This might be taken for his normal state, depending on her ability to read others.  But either way, he walks into the living room.  He pauses for a moment at the top of the steps down into the living room, taking in the newcomer, before stepping down them and moving to stand behind one of the chairs in that corner of the room.  “Grace,” he says to the woman he knows.  “Hi,” to the not-so-newcomer.


Grace 
Think of being held under an icy lake, and lo the icy lake doth appear. Eleanor.

"No, not here yet. It's early though," Grace says, and at least she turns around to address the other woman as she does. "I just... Kalen says that Alex told him it would be a good idea to keep anything horribly illegal from him. But he's going to find out sooner or later that drugs aren't the only illegal thing we do here. It has me worried. Where do his loyalties lie? With the cops he knows, or with us -- the new guys in his life, eh?"

She shuts her eyes as winter solidifies a bit more along with the sound of his motorcycle arriving. "He should at least know about Ginger, even if he doesn't want it. That means knowing about me," she says, and looks toward the doorway to the foyer. "No tea, thanks. He's almost here."

Sure enough, the rider of motorcycles arrives, layering ice on ice. It's almost stifling, and Grace wants to fidget in response. 

"Hey, Alex. This is Eleanor," she says, when he walks in.

Eleanor
To some extent, though the weather has been growing more and more balmy in between thunderstorms, entering the chantry is like sinking beneath the surface of a lake that ices over as you descend.  Cracks appear in the ice but even if it breaks, there won't be breath for you.  It's not malevolent, none of it is, though the essence of being shattered to pieces is painful and the sensation of drowning is frightening.  There is, however, a serenity to the unseasonable resonance that surrounds the slim woman with the long blonde hair.  A stillness.  A patience.

As she's offering Grace tea, as Grace is saying he's almost there, Eleanor hears the bike.  She glances over her shoulder, then moves into the living room instead of going to boil water, taking a seat in an armchair and crossing her legs.  She's dressed in slim dark pants and low-heeled boots, a simple white blouse with a cowl neckline and a light blazer with three-quarter sleeves.  Her hair is, as it almost always is, unbound.  Grace says what she has to say, but Eleanor doesn't answer.  She just gives the other woman a small nod.

Though it would be polite, she does not rise when Alex enters.  She's introduced, and since Alex is standing behind a chair instead of walking over, there's no hand-shaking involved.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Alex," Eleanor says, and despite a certain aloofness in her manner, her tone does not lack sincerity.  She does not ask him to have a seat.  He would take one if he wanted to.  Her head tips to the side a bit.  She has pale eyes, unsurprisingly, but there's a vibrancy and warmth and intelligence to them that belies the unsettling nature of her presence.  Alex, even if his senses aren't as attuned as hers, or Grace's, can feel that she is powerful.  Even if he doesn't know what that means, or what shape that power takes, even if his senses pick up on something in her spine or mind and not just her magical prowess.  Physically, she certainly doesn't look imposing.

"I'm sure we all have other matters to attend to in our lives, so I'll lay the cards on the table: you're a police officer, but you're also an Awakened mage.  Grace tells me that Kalen told her that you told Kalen --" and for a moment there's a wryness to that, the game of telephone involved, "-- it would be a good idea to keep you in the dark about things that are horribly illegal.

"I think that's a very unwise course to take, given that you don't know what you're asking to remain ignorant of.  The things we face sometimes require a response that is horribly illegal, and I don't think you, an Awakened mage and grown man, should be kept in the dark even if you want to be."

Alexander 
The feeling of drowning, of being torn apart, had indeed taken some moment to get acclimatised to.  Indeed, that is why there had been such a gap between the bike dying and the door opening.  Alexander had taken a deep breath before walking in – partly in preparation to face people, partly from the feeling that it could be the last deep breath he’d be taking. 

So he stands behind the chair, dressed in his bike gear.  The helmet is still held in one hand and unusually, based on previous visits, his boots are still on.  He had taken the time to wipe them at the door to make sure that he didn’t drag too much dirt into the house.  Eleanor says it’s a pleasure to meet him.  He isn’t yet sure how to take this new woman.  Her aura is uncomfortable, sure, but then some of the others he’s experienced haven’t exactly been pleasant.  “Nice to meet you too, but I’d prefer Alexander.”  This he says to Eleanor – he’d already offered the shortened version to Grace, but that’s something he reserves for when he gets to know people a little better.  His tone is a little flat, a little subdued.  He does mean what he says about meeting her, but, well...

Where Eleanor’s presence brings thoughts of frozen depths, Alexander’s is of frozen heights.  It is of a perfectly still moment standing on a mountaintop; no wind, no cloud, no snow.  No movement at all, just a frozen moment of time.  And maybe that frozen feeling doesn’t just extend outwards right now.

Eleanor cuts straight to the point of why they had come together here, now.  That there were illegal things that he wasn’t going to be able to be kept in the dark from.  Alexander looks at her for a few moments, his dark eyes meeting her pale ones, before turning away from the two seated Mages.  He’s quiet as he takes slow steps over to a side table, carefully setting the helmet down so that it wouldn’t roll off.  There’s a deep sigh as he stays facing away from the others. 

“I can see that was incredibly naive of me.  To think that I could just close my eyes to some of the... unpleasantness that people had already told me was required from time to time.”  Alexander turns and sits on the backrest of one the couches on the other side of the room.  “It seemed safer,” this last word spoken almost as if it was something dirty. 

He looks down at the floor as he continues speaking, although it’s difficult to tell whether there’s something he’s trying to hold back or something he couldn’t force it out if he wanted to.  “I’ve seen a man cut in two with a sword before I could shoot him myself.  I’ve helped to kill something that had once been human.” 

He had, honestly, believed that he would be able to keep the two sides of his life – the mundane and the magical – completely separate.  Draw a neat little line that neither side would cross.  See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.  That illusion had been blown apart when they met something that the mundane authorities would have no hope of dealing with.  And when he’d made a certain phone call, triggering a massive investigation into what people were thinking was as mundane as a serial killer.

His head comes back up again; he looks back into Eleanor’s eyes, voice hoarse as he finishes.  “So please, tell me about horribly illegal.”  

Grace 
Oh, Alex. Grace had heard a few things about the rescue of Sky, but no specifics. It makes sense that they'd have had to cut through some of the infested things to succeed. "Alex, those people were already dead. I know, I saw them. Sky was keeping himself alive with magic, and he was slowly failing, okay?"

She meets Alex's eyes, and hers (which tend to dart around) are focused and full of sad understanding. She's been there. "So, last week, Ian brought one of Sky's quilts to Alyssa's apartment, and I used it to trace him to the lake. I saw all those people grown over with roots and moss, and they didn't have their minds anymore. Those people... you put them out of their misery. You did a good thing."

But still, you know, one of the more easy dilemmas one might have to face, morally. Alex might not think so right now, but the universe is being surprisingly kind to him, all things considered.

"You want to know about horribly illegal, well, I get intel. Sometimes I get it by hacking into Austrian servers and accessing people's email and company records. I don't ever do it without a reason, though. That time, I was tracing the trail of a demonically possessed roll of film from Austria to Denver that we know had killed 4 people."

So, there's that. That's somewhat safe of an admission -- there's no extant proof of it.

"But you know, if you were to go and tell on me, if you were to bring me in? I wouldn't get a few years behind bars. I've already been on the radar of certain Mages who fancy themselves the Authorities of Reality. They dress in black suits and love their three-letter agencies, you know? Somebody in the FBI or CIA would be hauling me off for classified anti-terror reasons, and nobody would see me again. My old mentor got caught, and you know, as much as it hurts, I hope they just killed him. It's way low on the scale of horrible things they could have done."

So, Alex, your mundane life was never completely separate. You just didn't know.

And that's the risk she's taking in telling you this. Fates worse than death. So much worse.


Eleanor
[Almost forgot this!]

Eleanor @ 4:51PM

[Willpower (for flaw)]

Roll: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Alex agrees, which garners a ghost of a smile across Eleanor's lips.  It doesn't last, because he's not exactly bouncing.  He mentions watching someone -- or something -- cut in half with a sword.  He mentions killing.  Eleanor, for whatever reason, does not show much reaction.  There's a faint furrow to her brow, and perhaps it's sympathy -- it is, but Alexander may not be able to read it as such -- because there's a genuine ache there.  There is a reason, she would tell him if he could stomach hearing it now, why she does what she does, why so many Euthanatoi do what they do.  It is, in some measure, to prevent others from bearing that burden.

He asks -- please -- to be told of what may be horribly illegal.  Eleanor meets his eyes, has in fact been looking at him even when he could not look at anyone else, but it is Grace that speaks first, Grace who shows a new facet of herself that Eleanor wasn't previously aware of -- given that they've met only a handful of times.

those people were already dead

he was slowly failing

didn't have their minds anymore

out of their misery

a good thing

By that point, Eleanor is watching Grace, her hands folded over her lap, her eyes thoughtful.  Grace, as she confesses hacking for intelligence -- and with damn good reason.  Grace, as she puts herself on the line with things she's done, and what she has learned about the consequences of what she's done.  The real consequences.  The black cars that would slide along the curb at wherever she was being held and remove her from police custody.  Death is better than what might happen.

Eleanor turns back to Alexander when Grace is done.

She gives no confession of her own; Alexander is not of her Tradition.  As far as she understands it, Alexander is not of any Tradition at this point.  He is new.  Instead, she says this: "To clarify: there are also Awakened Traditionalists in government, other branches of law enforcement, and even institutions such as the FBI, CIA, MI-5, the Royal Canadian Mounties, Mossad, and so on.  Just as there are Awakened in universities and hospitals and co-ops and law firms and the Olympics and kindergarten classrooms.  But there are Technocrats and Nephandi and a thousand other things in all those places, too.  Everything is connected."

She says this like a truth so profound it hardly needs to be spoken aloud to be understood and accepted; she says it like an article of faith.

"Given what we're all dealing with, at any given time, keeping the lines of communication clear -- and secure -- is of vital necessity.  For example, if you should come across something that seems a bit... off... in your line of work, you could check in with the rest of us, find out what we know, if anything.  Get help, if you need it.  Give us a warning, if we need it. You would need to know that such a line of communication was capable of reaching a wide array of the Awakened at once without being accessible to those who would seek to harm or eradicate us.

"And wouldn't it be interesting and helpful," she says, maintaining those swift cuts to the chase, "if such a system was already in place, even if its operation wasn't strictly legal?"

Alexander
Those people were already dead.

The words should have been come comfort, something to help ease his conscience.  And maybe with a little more time they will.  But that night is still a little too fresh, the events too far removed from normal to shrug them off so easily.  He doesn’t doubt that what they had done that night was a good thing.  A man was saved after all.  But what happened along the way..? 

Grace speaks and Alexander listens, but it’s still Eleanor that he looks at.  Of the two women, she somehow seems the more sympathetic to what he’s going through.  There are no platitudes, no attempts to make him feel better.  Maybe just recognition that the hell he’s putting himself through at the moment is something that he needs to work himself out of.  That he’s still working out what it is that’s really bothering him about that night.  But, well... He’s not there yet. 

It certainly isn’t the letter of the law, though.

But, see, there’s a change in Alexander as the two women talk.  They explain the risks, the cautions, the justifications.  That there are just so many risks, especially in even talking to him about the system that they’re all but telling him exists.  His voice is quiet, carefully controlled.  What was trying to get out is back in its leash.  For now, anyway.

“I know there are dangers out there.  You’ve been drumming it into me, Grace, along with everyone else.”  His gaze swaps over to her as he says her name, and it’s not the usual relaxed gaze.  “Since all this started, I’ve been worrying about who’s going to work it out.  Worried about the Union or Nephandi or who the hell knows who else figuring out what I am and making me disappear too, because I’m so much closer to them.” 

The quiet voice?  It’s getting louder.  Not shouting and it’s still controlled, but give it time.  “You know damned well that I didn’t have a fucking clue about any of this before I came to this city.  Hell, have you even asked Sera what was going on when she found me?  Did you bother to find out that I was so fucking scared of what was going on, that I’d gone insane, that I was a step away from killing myself?  And you still thought I was Union?!”

There’s a moment, a deep breath, and the volume goes down again.  His gaze falls to the floor, meeting neither of the others’ gazes.  He’s obviously unhappy but, well...    “Tell me one thing.  Given that there are bad guys everywhere, do you treat everyone new with the same level of suspicion?  Or am I the only one to have this special talk?”

[ Do we pick up on Eleanor’s reaction?  Per/Awareness

vesta @ 1:51PM: BTW, can get a quick witness? *flutters eyelashes*

Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Samael @ 1:52PM: Witnessed]

Eleanor
A switch flips in Alexander.  Maybe it's a dimmer switch.  Something grows gradually in him, burning outward, and Eleanor watches it happen.  Hears the change in his voice, the restraint.  She tips her head as he -- to put it bluntly -- loses his temper a bit.  He starts swearing, though not quite yelling yet.

She flicks a glance at Grace, then says: "Alexander, I can tell you this much: this is the first conversation like this I've had.  I obviously can't speak for Grace, or for the experiences she'd had that might make her cautious.  But before you lash out at her, try to remember what she's already told you about the position she's in by discussing illegal activities, which is rather vulnerable.  Particularly," Eleanor says, her voice as calm as ever but touching on cool upon hitting that word, "since you asked to remain ignorant of such things.

"This is her project.  She is responsible for its security, which we all rely on.  I for one appreciate and respect her caution with it, regardless of how her suspicion or wariness might offend you."  She pauses for a moment, then gets a bit blunt:  "I want you to feel welcome.  I want you to learn how to navigate Awakened life with, preferably, more wonder than terror.  I want to offer you some measure of comfort, if I can, for what you've already been through.  But this conversation, this one right now, is not about making you feel welcome.  It's about Grace managing our communication system's security."

Then very blunt, even if her voice is quiet as she says it: "Alexander, maybe you owe Grace an apology."

Grace 
Grace tkes the anger with a surprising measure of stoicism. The man's been through some shit in recent days. It's enough to make anyone on edge and just this close to snapping. She's been there too. And she's about to respond, when Eleanor does instead. The Euthanatos takes her side, and with utter conviction -- perhaps a bit too much. Grace pays attention to Eleanor, but doesn't truly address her. This is about Alex, and it's Alex who she watches.

"I didn't ask Sera or Kalen what was going on with you and how you were handling things because none of that is any of my business. If you had wanted to confide in me your difficulties before now, you would have. I respect your privacy too much to go about that sort of thing," Grace says, a bit remote -- a bit distant. Strange how some people want you to violate their rights, huh? "But I do not think you're Union. I've been on the receiving end of those kinds of accusations myself, and I know how it sucks.

"I also think you are a cop. As such you have a duty to report the crimes that you see, and I am a criminal. What if during all that fear and ignorance in the beginning you decided that the best course of action was to try like hell to keep on going with your normal life? To find some stability in the chaos by just sticking to the rules? How am I to know how seriously you take your job, and hey -- maybe that's the reason why you didn't want to know these things? Because you knew you'd have to turn someone in?

"I think you're new, and I think you asked Kalen to keep things from you because you didn't want to have to have to face certain things yet. Having to face just being what you are was enough. So I let you stay in the dark, and you're right that it was a bad decision to keep you there for so long," Grace says, not really matching his anger or sounding sad. It is what it is. "In fact, the whole reason why we're having this conversation now is that I realized I should have had it with you sooner. Before you went all-in on a rescue mission, you should have had all the tools I could give you, and you didn't. I'm sorry. I was afraid."

"For the record, I am very careful who I let know. I don't just sit down with someone on day one and explain everything I do. I don't let anyone know about our secret communication network until after they've had a chance to at least be told about the Chantry and the Node and have met people and obtain some level of trust and it still gives me the fucking heebies sometimes when I have to do it for someone who's completely fresh. Because what if they're a mole? What if they were sent here on a mission and are just very good actors? Yeah, I fear that. But I didn't fear it especially so in your case."

Alexander 
Sorry this has take a little while to come through, I’ve had a few sleep issues which seems to stop the little flashy cursor from being overly inspirational.]

Alexander sits there, on the back on the couch, for some time.  The only movement is the slow rise and fall of his chest and shoulders as he breathes.  He doesn’t look back up at the women as they oh-so-calmy and oh-so-reasonably justify what has and hasn’t been done.  The anger, as quick as it had been to start building, has quickly cooled.  There is to be no blazing row here, now. 

Maybe there’s a little disappointment there, if the others are inclined to pick up on it.  But whether they do or they don’t, they’ll see Alexander’s shoulders slump a little.  His head shakes slowly and his lips move, but no sound comes out.  He seems to mouth the same thing a couple of times before both movements stop. 

“I don’t care,” he says so quietly that the others might struggle to hear.  “Just leave me alone.”  With that, he picks up the helmet from the table and heads towards the front door.  He doesn’t make eye contact with either woman on the way.

Grace 
It's easier to deal with Alex's anger than it is to deal with his abrupt departure. Grace, you should know by now that your talking with people skills suck.

Alex might hear her whisper, "Shit," under her breath, followed by a sigh when he turns his back. But she's not going to bound after him or otherwise try to coerce him into staying. She would just fuck it up even more.

"Hey, Alex, if you want to talk to somebody, Kalen is fantastic. He helped me out so much," Grace says, loud at his back. She doesn't really care about the faux pas of making the offer on Kalen's behalf. She knows how much Kalen cares for Alex. He'd want to help. He'd be good at helping. 

"You would think, with all I've been through, I'd be better at this by now, Eleanor," Grace mumbles, obviously defeated.

She thinks back to Lena, and then even further -- to a mother she doesn't speak to anymore. So many people in her life hurt or gone because she couldn't be human enough. Whenever someone is hurting, she's seemingly fantastic at shoving the knife in and twisting a bit more. Much like her resonance, really. Perhaps it's just her lot in life to never be a comforting presence or a rock to cling to in the hard times.


Eleanor
Eleanor does not know him.  There was a clue in his tone when he told her to call him Alexander but did not correct Grace when she called him Alex: she does not know him, and he was not -- at this point -- inviting her to know him better.  She does not inherently pick up on any emotions but the obvious when he settles down, and she does not look deeper than the emotions he wears obviously.  Or rather: even if she does, it's not her place to push for clarity.

She waits, patiently, while he mutters or mouths to himself.  She does not ask him to speak up.  She watches him, hands folded, after telling him that he should probably apologize to Grace.  He does not.  He tells them he doesn't care, and says leave me alone, grabbing his helmet and getting up.  Which leaves her at an awkward impasse: she has no reason to be all the way out here in the boondocks without this conversation with him, and plenty to do other than sit out here in the boondocks, but she can't very well respect his demand to be left alone while she's getting her keys and heading out the door a step behind him.  She exhales a brief sigh, but does not stop him, or speak to him as he thumps his way out.

Her head turns and she looks at Grace, as Grace calls after Alexander that Kalen is fantastic and helpful.  Most likely, the door shuts shortly behind Alexander, unless he is the sort to turn and come back after that.  Her head tips as she regards the Virtual Adept, who she also does not know very well, or know much about, or what she has been through, or why it should make her better at 'this' -- whatever Grace means by 'this'.

Eleanor just gives a quiet, small shrug.  "It is what it is," she says.  She could as easily say: you are as you are.  he is as he is.  They would be otherwise, in this moment and at this time, if they were meant to be, or if they could.  "He will adapt," she goes on, putting her hands on the arm of the chair and quietly levering herself up to her feet.  She does not add what will happen, what can and does and -- in her mind -- should happen if he does not adapt, cannot adapt.  "So will you," she adds, and from her expression and tone it sounds as though she means this as a comfort: she heard that tone of defeat in Grace's voice.  Eleanor has sympathy for that feeling.  She just doesn't believe it is the truth.

She nods toward the hall.  "I'm going to head back to town.  Do you need anything before I go?"

Alexander 
The only sound from Alexander as he heads towards the door is the fall of his solid boots on the floor.  He’s not heading out in a rage, the footfalls are the same as when he arrived.  Had the soles of the boots been softer, they might not have been all that noticeable.

Hey, Alex

Alexander pauses for a moment at the top of the steps leading into the foyer, his free hand resting on the door frame.  He stays there for a breath... two... three... after she suggests talking to Kalen.  But then he’s moving again and the front door opens and closes again quietly.

He walks quietly back to his bike, swinging one leg over to straddle it.  He sits there, frozen for a few more breaths.  “Shit,” he mutters under his breath now, mirroring Grace’s curse shortly before.  A glove gets pulled off and a mobile pulled out of a pocket.  He taps something into it before replacing it, the glove and, finally, the helmet.

As the others hear the bike return to life and Alexander’s resonance – which Grace might notice had been a little stronger during this encounter than in previous ones – fades into oblivion.  Grace’s phone makes its presence known to its owner.  There’s a message waiting.

Sorry.

Grace 
"You mean, aside from a sentient robot companion? No, I'm okay," Grace says, trying to cover the awkwardness of Alex's departure with a bit of humor, but the defeat laces itself in her tone of voice.

She looks up at the ceiling, blank whiteness a comfort. "I think I'll stay here a while. Visit the books. They must miss me by now."

It's then that the phone in her laptop bag goes off, and Alexander's bike roars to life. Parting gift or coincidence? She pulls it out and reads, then turns her eyes to Eleanor's direction. "He says 'sorry'."

Grace then fires back a message of her own, in silence.

-- Don't be. 

-- Take all the time you need.

-- It's not easy, I know. It sucks pretty much. Someday, if you want to, when you want to, you can come to me and we can talk more on that subject.

It's not easy when you life changes so abruptly, so horrifically. When you think that everything is so normal for so long, and suddenly it isn't. No, you're cleaning up after someone else's huge and deadly mistake. You're watching people die in front of you. And everyone you know just keeps saying life will continue to be like this, so you'd better get used to it. They'll tell you that you shouldn't take this so hard, after all, there are worse things out there. Who are you to be so broken?

Looking back on it, the only thing Grace ever wanted after going through that change was permission to feel. To be able to ruin someone's day entirely and not have them take it personally, or require her to act a certain way for their own comfort. Tall order, really.