Fine [Mood]

How many years since you found yourself

Staring at an endless sky?

Unaware of yourself

Who you are and where you're going...

The ice is still there, freezing, frozen.  Life goes on, passes by Alexander. People come, people go.  Some show concern that he’s a little quieter than he was, a little more distant.  A little colder.  They ask if he’s ok. 

I’m fine. 

They’ve made the effort and they’re let off the hook with the rather unenthusiastic answer.  Perhaps there’s an unvoiced sigh of relief.  But, really, would he be able to tell any of his colleagues what is really bothering him.  Or the little old lady in the flat next door?  The barista at his regular coffee stop?  At best, they wouldn’t understand.  At worst, those faceless men in black that he’d been warned about could come visiting. 

So he’s fine.

Alexander looks out and down.  The sky is blue and clear and endless from his vantage point.  There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of feet below.  Mountains leading to foothills leading to city leading to plains.  Not a cloud in the sky to spoil the view.  It’s breath-taking.  As is the cold wind at that height.  So much life going on down there.  People working and playing, loving, hurting, dying, being born.  Most in their own shared, sheltered view of the world.  Only seeing the surface, completely unaware of what’s going on below.  Or, on the rare occasion when they’re confronted with the unseen depths of the world, finding ways to rationalise and explain it away.

The deaths by the reservoir?  A popular theory is a serial killer, even though a cause of death couldn’t be really be found for the victims.  But there was that tip-off, wasn’t there?  That had to be the murderer, right?  Animal attacks?  Toxic fumes from chemical dumping nearby?  Conspiracy theories about experimentation in some black-ops lab buried away in the mountain somewhere?  If only they knew.

If they knew then something could be done about it.  But that’s just not going to happen.  So it’s down to those who do know to do something about it.

Those who can, or will, anyway.

He has doubts.  He has fears that he hasn’t talked to anyone about.  Will he hold back next time?  He doesn’t know.  Has no way of knowing until it happens. 

But he’s been afraid before, and it hasn’t stopped him.  He may have puked his guts up afterwards, but he didn’t freeze up. 

And it’s time now.

He shoves up and forwards, pushing himself off his perch.

And suddenly there’s nothing but him and the sky and the ground.  All the other thoughts he might have had stream away behind him.

Somewhere behind, a cord catches.  It pulls the parachute strapped to Alexander’s back out of its packaging.  With a breathtaking jerk his descent slows and gives him the opportunity to fly.

To be.

To feel again.  And there’s a biggest smile on Alexander’s face as he experiments with the controls on his parachute – turning, slowing before shooting off again at speed. 

He’s free.

...Only living

Only breathing

Losing all sense of time...

Why..?

Kalen Holliday

[Nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday

[And...MAGEDAR!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Alexander

[Moon Prism Power, Make Up!

Also, Per/Awareness]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is recovered enough that rather than spending most of his time upstairs, he is in the living room, sprawled out over the couch with a book on meditation. He's lost weight, sure, though he was this thin when Alexander first met him. He's lost most of what weight and muscle he'd started to gain back, and to anyone who knows what he looked like a few years ago and what he was capable of...he can't be pleased about the setbacks. Still, he already looks better than he did last Alexander saw him, largely by virtue of being conscious and having his hair back into its normal array of mussed spikes.

He doesn't have coffee right next to him, but there is the scent of coffee brewing in the kitchen, because of course there is. And, should Alexander poke into the kitchen, there are now glass jars of whole coffee beans and biscotti and shortbread cookies and whatever the hell else amused Kalen at the time. Vanilla infused sugar. Like a dozen kinds of honey, each neatly labeled. Who even needs that many kinds of honey? The world may never know. But they can find them all here.

What he does have next to him are post-it notes and a pen, which he has been using to make notes in the book he's holding, which is not a centuries old leather-bound affair, but a new glossy paperback book. So, apparently he does recognize the existence of books without at least 25 years of history.

Alexander

It’s been over a month since Alexander was last at the Chantry. A month since he pretty much withdrew from the local Awakened, asking to be left alone. He needed time to try to work things out for himself. Time back in mundane normality, away from the chaos that the ability to alter reality seems to drag along with it. Time away, still trying to work out where – if anywhere – he fit into things. Time to thaw out and start feeling again. At least, that was the hope.

Kalen will know that Alexander is coming to the Chantry. Probably the first warning is the feeling of being frozen, of stasis settling and holding things as they are. The second is the sound of a motorbike pulling up onto the driveway and fading away with a last roar of the engine. The front door doesn’t open as soon as Kalen might suspect, though. Alexander doesn’t head straight in, but walks around the outside of the house. He looks over the paddock, the gardens, and the plants and flowers flourishing under Sid’s weaving. He looks at the spot where he’d seen Callisto resting, wondering if she’s there now.

He knows that Kalen’s inside, the feeling of a storm laying low over the house is hard to miss. Is that why Alexander is so slow heading in? Or did he just want to have a look around, see how things have changed now that the season has rolled into summer? Who knows? Eventually the sound of the dining room door opening and closing carries through to the living room. Alexander appears at the top of the steps leading down into the room and leans on the wall. “Hi,” is all he says. There is an attempt at a smile though.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen tucks the post-its into the book to mark his place and then sets the book down. The fact that Alexander lingered outside, the way he doesn't come down the stairs, that there needs to be an attempt at a smile...Kalen is observant enough. These things are not lost on him.

He arches back over the arm of the couch to regard Alexander and he does smile, even though there is just the slightest hint of a puzzled frown. "Hey, Alce."

And then he rolls and sits up, not the most graceful of movements perhaps, but he moves well enough, considering. "You going to come join me, or are you really into the stairway?" The words don't match the tone, which is warm and a bit concerned. Kalen cannot understand what might be wrong, only that maybe something is. He rests his elbows on the back of the couch, and then his chin on his hands, watching Alexander.

Alexander

The smile becomes a little less forced as Kalen turns and Alexander gets a better look at him. Part of the reservation had been at how Kalen was going to be, now that his mind and his body have been reacquainted. Beyond the sketchy details of what had, in general terms, happened to Kalen, Sid and Ian that night and it the weeks beyond, Alexander had no idea what they had gone through. Sid and Kalen had vanished from the hospital around the same time, but this is the first time he’s seen, or even spoken to, any of them.

“You’re looking well. Much better than you were, definitely. You want some of that coffee you have brewing first?” Alexander asks, pointing a thumb back towards the kitchen. If Kalen does, Alexander will return after a few minutes with two mugs of coffee with whatever Kalen asked to be added. Otherwise it’s just the one mug of black coffee.

Setting the mugs on the table, Alexander disentangles something from a pocket and places it on the table next to Kalen. It’s a slightly dog-eared book with a slip of paper acting as a bookmark. “I don’t know if you were aware of anything that was going on here while you were away, but we didn’t manage to finish the book.”

Kalen Holliday

"Yeah. That'd be great." Kalen seems still puzzled, because this situation, is alien to him. People bringing him things and people worrying about him are not things he is particularly accustomed to. He can understand, to some degree these things; but in his experience they are things he does for other people.

He murmurs a thank you for the coffee but his attention is quickly captured by the book. I don’t know if you were aware of anything that was going on here while you were away, but we didn’t manage to finish the book. Blink. Kalen's attention skips back to a few moments before. You’re looking well. Much better than you were, definitely.

It takes him a moment to process. He sets his coffee down gently on the table and turns back to Alexander with an expression gone unreadable less for lack of any emotion and more because there are too many of fighting out which of them might be expressed more fully.

His voice though, is perfectly level. Calm. "Would you set your coffee down a second?" He asks, as though this request is only the most sensible, expected response in the world to this situation.

Alexander

Alexander watches Kalen as he sits in one of the chairs facing the couch. He’s trying to decipher his reaction. Or maybe what exactly it is that’s got him acting the way he is. The act of fetching coffee? Alexander doesn’t put any more meaning behind that than it’s the polite thing to do, although there may be others who he wouldn’t do the same for. Although it’s more likely that the coffee would be left to stew by itself in the kitchen instead.

Alexander is blowing gently over the rim of the mug, trying to cool the just-too-hot coffee a little before taking a sip. “Why…?” he asks warily, as he puts the mug back on the table. He can’t help but look over his shoulder, just in case some big nasty has crept into the room without his noticing. It’s not like that’s particularly rare when the Awakened start to get together.

Kalen Holliday

And for the second time in two days, Kalen manages to forget about things like dignity and personal space hosts of carefully crafted responses to just fling his arms around someone. It isn't that he never touches people, but there is nothing considered or measured or deliberate about this.

"Of-course-I-don't-remember-I-was-in-this-alternate-reality-I-can't-believe-you-even-came." It's all one rush of words, more into Alexander's shoulder than anything, but he's not whispering or anything, so it should be decipherable. "I don't understand why you would even do that. Because we're friends? I'm really bad at friends. I mean, I thought Sid and I were friends but we weren't and I think she hates me now and Alyssa threw things at me but probably doesn't hate me. Well, she might, but she likes me too, and she says we're friends-"

He stops talking long enough to take a breath and then there is a tiny, shaky laugh. "I should let you answer, shouldn't I?"

Alexander

There’s a moment of stunned silence and stillness as Kalen tackles Alexander back into the chair and wraps his arms around him. But then he wraps his own arms around Kalen, rubbing whatever parts of his back and shoulders their tangled position lets him get to. While Alexander tends to turn away from physical contact when he’s working through a bad place, he’s not against offering it to friends when they need it.

Alexander sighs as Kalen offloads at least some of what he’s been holding in. I should let you answer, shouldn’t I? “Depends if there’s any more I there to come out.” He waits a few moment, giving Kalen time in case there is more to come.

He speaks quietly. “Yeah, it’s because we’re friends. I didn’t know what else I could do for you, other than be there. Sometimes that’s all you can do, and sometimes that’s enough. You’re not all that bad at the friends thing, you know. Especially us clueless newbies. Did you know Elijah was visiting you too? Maybe some of the others as well, but he was the only one I bumped into. So you can’t be doing too badly.”

There’s another pause before he asks, “What happened with Sid?”

Kalen Holliday

"No. I'm just doing the thing where I forget it's better to think about my words before they happen."

And maybe that would have been the end of that moment. Maybe Kalen would have just gone back to where his coffee is waiting for him and moved past that moment like it wasn't anything. It very clearly was, and yet....

Kalen has been a Mage for a full decade. He's been training with the Order of Hermes for eight years. He has seen all kinds of mystical horrors and death and he's nearly died on no few occasions - and put him in a situation where all he has to do is fight something and he's fine. But all that experience came at the cost of experience that might have let him navigate this.

Alexander asks about Sid and there is the kind of shudder most people would reserve for situations that don't earn so much as a blink from Kalen. "Ian asked if we were friends and she said no-" Not, precisely, true. "And then we tried to fight zombies and I shot Ian's horse and I thought they were both going to die. Sid and Ian. I wasn't worried about the horse. It wasn't real. Well. It kind of was, I think. But...it was okay anyway, later.

"And then we were both kind of in our space in the chantry except the chantry was ruined and then Trey came and then I had another vision and I told Sid we should talk when Ian got back but she and Trey left.

"And then we went to find them but only found Trey and we tried to save her but there were so many zombies and we did save her but one bit me which I thought would be more of a problem but then the world was swallowed by this storm of nothingness, but that has really nothing to do with Sid."

Alexander

It is, perhaps, fortunate that Kalen can’t see Alexander’s expression as the jumbled explanation of what had happened – at least the parts related to Sid – come out. He’s almost squinting, trying to keep track of who did what to who, who said what, and what happened to the horse. And zombies? He shakes his head, not really any more the wiser.

“Slow down. You might need to back up a bit. What actually happened while you… were away?” Maybe a little context would help. Maybe. “Did anything happen between you guys after you told us about the cabal? I know she went away for a while, but I had no idea she was even back in town until Grace said she’d be hit by the same Big Weird that you had.”

Kalen Holliday

Kalen sighs. He stays still for a few seconds, then takes a deep breath and lets go of Alexander. He doesn't go back to the couch though, he curls up on the floor against the side of Alexander's chair like the thought of being those whole four extra feet away is just too much. "I invited her to the library I'm building, it's finally a thing now. You should come, I only started inviting people a few days before this started. That's not the point though.

"She came and then I told her I wanted to talk about something but she was leaving so I told her it could wait and she got upset at me for not telling her it happened sooner. And about you.

"Are you okay?" How he throws that into a story is anyone's guess, but he sees to mean the question.

"I didn't see her after that until Ian and I went dancing and she was at the club. And then-" He takes a deep breath and then explains about trying save Seth from zombies, about the horror of realizing that this child had been bitten, about roasting marshmallows and telling him stories until finally there was the point that he'd shot Seth in the head like you do. About running into Ian and then into Sid and then trying to find some clue in the ruins of the chantry. About Sid leaving and Ian staying and about both of them leaving to find Sid and Trey. About the last desperate fight with the zombies and then the way the world was swallowed by nothingness. And finally about the star-creature and waking up.

It's all filtered through the eyes of someone who can come to an intuitive understanding of zombies, to whom walking much of the distance between Florida and Colorado was not at all overwhelming, only logical. He'd crafted a plan for pulling people out and starting new lives, and that was all easy enough. But put him in a room with a person he doesn't know what to do with and he's overwhelmed. Spooked. It isn't as apparent with anyone else in Denver as it is with Sid, though there are hints of it here and there. It is so glaringly obvious when he's with Sid, or talking about her. All confusion and longing and, lurking under that, pain.

Alexander

Alexander lets Kalen go when he moves to get up, maybe giving a little physical support as he disentangles himself. He leans over to pick up his coffee mug as Kalen settles on the floor next to the chair. “I thought the library was already a thing? Or were you just getting the buildings sorted out? But yeah, I’ll visit.” The tone I that last part about as excited as if he’d just been told that they were off to visit a museum of lunchboxes. “I should finally get around to working through the Archmagus’s diary too.” That had a lot more excitement – at least he’d be doing something there.

“So when did she actually get back, then? Or was that before she went away? When did she think you should have told her about… whatever it was.”

Are you okay? There’s a pause, just a fraction of a second. “Yeah. I’m fine.” Whether or not Kalen sees through that, Alexander is more than happy to keep the conversation on the track it was already on. Because dealing with other people’s stuff is so much easier than sorting your own out.

Alexander sits quietly, mug clasped between his hands as Kalen tells the story. His eyes close and his head rests back on the chair back when he tells the part about shooting Seth. His mind wanders a little back to his own recent history, wondering… No, he would have hesitated. Unquestioningly. But he’s still paying attention to the words, still following the story.

“Have you talked to her since you guys woke up? Maybe you’ll both be in a better place to figure out what’s going on without the constant threat of death?”

[Man+Sub - what, nothing wrong here!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )

Kalen Holliday

[Per+Awareness - No, I really want to know!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

Kalen Holliday

Kalen laughs a little at the response about the library. "Well, if you work on it with me, I can help you decipher some of what makes less sense because magic. But, not, you know...the language part. I can probably do partly garbled English to mysticism though."

He sighs. Sid. More Sid questions. But they matter. Technically Sid might still be in their cabal. Technically his cabal might rather have Sid than him. "She got back not long before we all vanished. I ran into her once, and then invited her to the library, and then when we were dancing."

His eyes flick upward as Alexander responds to that question. Linger a second. But Kalen knows more about pulling people's responses apart for meaning than he does putting people back together, so he doesn't say anything. He just nods, reaches up to squeeze Alexander's arm once, briefly. "If you ever want to talk," he says softly. And then he lets that go.

"I haven't talked to her. I doubt she wants to talk to me. Alyssa said something about talking to her. We want to all get together. Alyssa gave me looks like I can't turn it into some crazy thing, so I promised her something not crazy like coffee and donuts instead of you know...seven course catering and a pinata or something." He smiles a little. "I told her I would even accept Dunkin Donuts coffee. See how I am embracing this new simplicity idea?"

Coffee. He rises and gets his coffee, then settles back on the corner of the couch closest to Alexander.

Alexander

“Sure. Let me know when you’re feeling up to it and we can give it a try.” If Kalen’s already filling books with notes on post-it notes (why not just write in the book?), he may well already be feeling up to it. But best not to push things too fast.

There’s that same effort at a smile as when Alexander first arrived, as Kalen makes the offer of someone to talk to. But how can you tell someone that you might not be able to be what they want you to be? He looks down at Kalen as the other man looks up, but doesn’t say anything more.

Alexander sighs. “She’s partly angry at you about me? That’s… why isn’t she angry at me for not telling her what was going on? Not that I had a clue she was around. And Alyssa had a lot more to do with… what was going on than I did. That’s going to be an interesting talk between the two of them…

“The cabal should get together, though. There’s nicer than Dunkin’, though. There’s a great little stand up near Central Park. Or pick a mountain and set up a camp fire. Have marshmallows. Although maybe having sharp pointy sticks around would be a bad idea.”

Kalen Holliday

Kalen only flinches a little at the mention of marshmallows. "Alyssa specifically said coffee before wilderness excursion, but I would totally go for the whole campfire thing. Smores. I hear those are awesome." He smiles and runs a hand through his hair. "But this little stand sounds like a good plan. Do you know the name of it?

"If nothing else I guess we can meet you somewhere and all go together. It sounds good.

"And actually, I'm spending time with Elijah at the library, so if you can come by there I can answer your questions and his questions. Plus he loves languages and books, so seeing the translation process will likely be something he loves. But I'll try to keep him off you so you can work."

Alexander

One of Alexander’s eyebrows rises at the flinch. What on earth could be wrong with marshmallows? But then he smiles at Alyssa’s instruction about no excursions until after coffee. “Set up a campfire in the paddock and have smores and coffee, everybody’s happy. I doubt Callisto will mind, as long as we don’t start a wildfire back there. Or start throwing prime at each other.

“I can’t remember the name offhand, but will take a look next time I walk past it.”

“Elijah said something about having lunch sometime. I guess I could bring sandwiches or something. Would food keep him distracted?”

Alexander looks down into the cooling and barely-touched coffee. He takes a swig – it’s turned a little too cool to really be drinkable. He holds the mug up towards Kalen. “Want a fresh one?”

Kalen Holliday

"Oh. Yeah. We could maybe build a real firepit or something." Kalen smiles. Look at him perk up about building a firepit. Like he can carry rocks right now. "Should we ask her first? Callisto?"

"Elijah loves food. Especially sugar food, so sandwhiches would be great. He might need someone to remind him to eat things that aren't cupcakes."

"And...." He's so confused by the offer. But then he nods, and offers his mug to Alexander.

Alexander

[And fade to black. Time for bed now...]