Thresholds: The day is slowly approaching one. The skies over the city have been pretty overcast, although the air itself has remained warm. Recent rains have pushed the humidity up, and it’s starting to feel like a storm approaching. The sun continues its journey through the sky, heading from late afternoon into early evening. There’s definite promise in the air of something to come.
There is a ranch-style house out in Morrison with a blue motorbike parked on the driveway. The rest of the drive is clear at the moment and there aren’t any cars parked nearby on the kerbside either. It would be a good guess that the current occupant is on his own, but one can never tell – one resident of the house uses a pushbike and at least one visitor uses public transport to get out here. But, right now, that guess would be a good one.
Out the back of the house, a couple of chairs have been turned round a little so that they face out from the house. There’s a mirror lying on the table and a leather jacket has been slung over the back of one of the chairs. A pair of bike boots sit just inside the door. It’s quiet until the whistle from a kettle pierces the air. Alexander will be in the kitchen, then. In the kitchen with a teapot, a cup, and a box of tea. It’s certainly no tea ceremony he’s working through, but he is trying out different strengths of tea. Trying to pick up the different tastes and sensations, just as Kalen talked through.
[Do we have a hope in hell of meditating? +1 diff, because no dots]
Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (6, 10) ( success x 1 )
SerafÃneMaybe he feels from some living distance, maybe Alexander is far too focused on his meditation on the different strengths of tea to feel the disturbance in the force she carries with her. If he feels her, though - oh, she is distinctive, as so many of them become as their power grows. A peculiar mélange of sensations that are not precisely felt or uttered or known: except, this is what I am, this is how I work, this is what I know.
A white conversion van that has seen somewhat better days in the parking lot beside the blue motorbike now. This time last year that van had North Carolina plates. Now it is registered and licensed in Colorado. Sera isn't driving, and that is nearly always for the best. She slides out the passenger's door and heads right for the door to the kitchen. She knows Alexander is there. The motorbike: she recognizes that doesn't she, from the first time they met, when he Woke Up.
The kitchen door swings open and there she is: her hair up this evening, pulled back into a braid, a cropped band t-shirt drifting over a black satin bra, denim cut-offs and fishnets and combat boots.
She is about to say something (a greeting!) when she notices details. His stillness, his focus. The creature's crawling mouth curls around an unvoiced thought, then and Sera circles the kitchen watching Alexander curiously, forgetting that she meant to hold the door open for Dan who will now have to manage for himself.
Sera waits until there is a break; until Alexander pulls his focus from the task he has laid himself to accomplish. Then, with the edge of a half-grin, " - long fucking time, no see. You gonna freak out if I hug you?"
Alexander BrandtTime is one of those weird things in life. It gets neatly sliced into seconds, minutes, hours and so on. But being in the second, they’re not all the same length. They can be over in a flash or seem to last an eternity. But then this is truth that most people pay lip service to – time flies when you’re having fun. And Alex, here, is no holder of any greater truth than that.
Only it isn’t exactly fun that he finds himself experiencing. The slowly growing pile of used tea leaves in the bin suggests that, maybe, Alexander has been trying this for quite some time. Trying to clear his mind enough to meditate. Kalen said it works as a focus for some people, so here is his trying it out. But over and over again, there’s always something that pops into mind: something needs doing; something he’s forgotten; something that’s worrying him. Round and round his mind goes, sifting up thoughts when he’s trying to quieten it down.
Until? He gets it. He’s lost count of the number of cups he’s gotten through, but the liquid in the cup looks like tea more than water now. He closes his eyes, takes a sip and...
There’s someone in the room when he opens them again, and it catches him by surprise. The cup slips from his hand and hits the tabletop. It stays intact, but the liquid (Cool now? Odd.) spills. “Scheisse...”
But then he realises who’s there and he smiles. “Yeah, it has been a while. I disappeared for a bit, needed to work some stuff out. Nothing personal.” Then he grins. “I’ve not ripped reality to shreds so far today, so sure!” He turns to Sera and, this time, doesn’t grab her arms to stop her.
SerafÃneSera is not natively a patient thing. Still, and listen: she watches Alexander as he meditates. She does not disturb him. She can see the pile of used tea leaves and hear the tick of the cooling water in the kettle and sense the depth of his concentration so she does in fact open the door to let Dan, carrying some supplies in. The consor gives her a lifted-brow sort of look and then takes the booze and some other necessities of a running household (toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent and the like) to be stowed around the upscale home that is theirs, collectively, as much as anyone's.
--
By the time Alexander comes to again, Sera has gotten herself a beer from the fridge though, uncapped it and taken a swig or seventeen, and his permission is both explicit and implicit so she hops down from the counter on which she has parked herself and crosses the room and wraps her arms around his neck, and hugs him. Simple. Genuine.
Her hair smells of the coming rain and burnt sugar and her breath smells like chocolate stout and her skin smells like sandalwood, and she hugs, squeezes once, then pulls back, letting him go yes, but only after giving him a good, solid, up-close look eye to eye and all that jazz.
He says he disappeared for a bit and Sera shrugs.
"Hawksley and I went to France for a big chunk of the summer, too. It's good to see you. What were you doing with the tea leaves?"
Alexander BrandtAlexander returns the hug and his eyes close again, still riding on the sensations. Warm. Sugar. Rain. Sandalwood. How odd that he’d never really smelt them before. For his part, it’s mostly the odour of lemon shower gel and a faint smell of leather on his vest top. Simple.
He smiles again as they part and meet each other’s eyes. And maybe they’re not quite as carefree as they were those months ago in a newly opened Downtown nightclub.
He moves over to the counter to fetch something to mop up the spilled tea. “It’s good to see you too. Whereabouts in France did you go? And who is this Hawksley guy? I’ve heard his name a few times, but we don’t seem to have bumped into each other.” Which almost seems odd, given how often they pull others of their kind towards them.
“Oh, I asked Kalen about how he sees things, or maybe how he deals with what he sees. He said picked up a tea ceremony thing from Kharisma and he kinda told me how it works. So I thought I’d give it a try.” He shrugs before wiping the table down. “He did say I should probably find someone who can do it properly, though.” His voice pitches up a little towards the end, half-turning into a question. Alexander doesn’t really think it’s Sera’s thing, but you never know. Kharisma and Sera are the same tradition, and all that.
SerafÃneSera hops back up on the kitchen counter, beside her beer, legs swinging and heels banging a bit against the lower cabinets. Her eyes are a dark color that can be difficult to read in certain lights, and with a window behind her and that light - perhaps gray, watery, storm-laced as it is - casting in a kind of shadow, the tone is uncertain. Still, the measure of her attention is not.
"Paris," Sera says with a neat little half-shrug. "Most of the time. The last few weeks we were at this fucking chateau out in the countryside somewhere. With a goddamned moat and an island in the moat and all'a that shit." Her smile is a sudden flash, all teeth. "It was fucking amazing.
"And Hawksley," here Sera's smile turns into something altogether different. Her mouth closes around the idea-of-Hawksley and she hums in the back of her throat. She regularly tells people that Hawksley is amazing and that they will adore him. Sometimes she is correct. As often: she is wrong, at least about the mutual adoration, you understand. "He's a Hermetic. Ravenclaw - you know? Lives in fucking Hogwarts and knows Egyptian and Latin and all'a that shit.
"French, too. He's cool. He's always reading, so maybe he knows about tea ceremonies, but I sure fucking don't.
"You wanna know how I deal with what I fucking see?"
Alexander BrandtAlex’s attention is, for a short time, on the table as he sets the cup right and mops up the now-cold tea. He is listening, though. “It sounds nice. Not sure I’d really want to go there, though. Not Paris, anyway.” He shrugs. “Not that it’s likely on my pay cheque.” He looks up, part way through cleaning, to ask Sera, “Are you two a couple?” There’s nothing even remotely envious or jealous in his tone. He’s simply curious.
Ravenclaw. He glances up again at that, looking slightly confused. “Ravenclaw? Which one’s that?” The wet cloth gets dumped in the top of the cup and carried over to the sink. Alexander starts collecting the pot and other bits that he’s used, cleaning them away too. “I think it was more to do with the meditation than actually getting there. Working through the different sensations as a focus for getting there. At least I think that’s what he was talking about. It worked, either way.” Another shrug.
Again, with a smile, he continues. “I’d like to meet him some time. See how much Kalen really does buck the trend of Hermetics, if nothing else.” He thinks of the others he knows and... “Have you heard from Leonhard lately?”
He almost makes a joke about having a good idea how she copes until he turns and looks at her again. The booze and drugs seem to be tools more than crutches, after all. His voice is serious when he asks her, “How?”
SerafÃneAlexander is not sure he'd want to go to Paris, and Sera is breathing out, all-at-once, objecting to the idea that anyone would eschew that grand dame of cities, " - it is amazing. Seriously, it is everything everyone ever said about it, and then it is even better. It's a city that oughtta be immune to fucking paradox because I don't even see how you can be in a place like that during golden midsummer and not believe in magic. I mean she is grand, imposing, imperial, right? - "
A sharp breath out, then another needle-fine grin.
"And full of people - everywhere - enjoying the fuck out of everything she has to offer."
Then Alexander asks if they are a couple and Sera gives Alexander a glance that is both aware and something else. Deflective, perhaps. "We're friends." Sera supplies, with a degree of self-perception and a deep and abiding warmth, the intimacy of which suggests that they are also lovers. But Serafíne's moral sense is not remotely conventional and a couple, she breathes in around the idea, and breathes out around the idea, and does not like the phrase at all, even if -
"We're Hawksley and Sera."
--
No explanation for Ravenclaw yet. It'll keep, but really it is just Sera's little joke. Sera thinks of Hawksley's house these days as the small gods of the Hermetics because Dan was reading a Terry Pratchett book by the same name and wanted to write a song from the idea and that went nowhere, and Sera only reads poetry, no prose, so she didn't get it until she felt the hint of nostalgia in the back of her throat, until Dan reminded her about Etain in that old sandman comic. Until she thought about belief, and the failure of believe, and the world in which they live.
--
Well, Alexander's ideas are pretty good, yeah. Right? Sex and drugs and rock and roll. She gives him a little arch look when he almost makes that joke, all wry. But she moves past that, and smiles at him.
"I give myself time. I let myself feel. Grief. Disgust. Harrowing sorrow. Fucking exhaustion. Whatever. I let people in. The people who wanna come in. All that shit, man. And I remember all the awesome stuff I get to see, too. All the fucking amazing shit I get to feel, and do, and know, and live inside. Then there are the fucking everyday pleasures. I know a guy - Jim - he's all into yoga and this mindfulness meditation. Like where you remember to be in the moment, part of it, whole and also passing."
Alexander BrandtAlexander turns on the tap over the sink, letting the cold water run over his hand until he feels is grow warmer. The cup and the pot get washed, rinsed, sat on the drainer to dry out. “I guess there are just other places that appeal more. Berlin, Zurich, Vienna.” Sera sees a shoulder rise in a shrug while he faces the sink. “Assuming I ever make it to Europe, anyway. I’ve not really, seriously thought about trying to make it there.”
We’re Hawksley and Sera. He’s turning back from the sink when she gives him that glance and her reply. He gives the edge of the sink a quick wipe and leans back against it, elbows bent, hands resting lightly on the surface. “Complicated, then.” It’s more statement than question, but seems to fit. Fit both Sera, and Sera and Hawksley.
Alexander goes quiet when Sera runs through her ways of dealing with stuff, walks over to the table and sits back in the chair he was using earlier. Leans against the backrest, snorts in what might pass for amusement. “People keep talking about the wonderous stuff we get to see and I know it’s there. You were there for that.” He does smile, thinking back to The Message again. Still curious where he went, what it’s been doing... The smile fades. “But I look at those of us who have been around for longest and I really can’t help thinking if there’s enough of it to make the price worth paying.” He waves a hand in front of him. “I get the whole we do it because we’re the only ones who can thing. At least until...” Until the body-less funeral that Kalen suggested was their typical end. But he shrugs again. “How do you feel those things when all you seem to have inside is ice?”
“Maybe I should take lessons from Jim, huh?”
SerafÃne"I don't know," the creature returns, quiet you understand, thoughtful now, with a supple threading of her narrow shoulders and a steady regard that feels quite the way she feels: instinctive, physical, immediate, intent, and somehow on-the-verge. All that contained inside her, and captured by the curve of a small smile that feels also: very very private. Some secret she holds to her skin because there is no other way to wear it. "It seems pretty simple to me."
Sera is still sitting on the counter, and she takes a sip of her beer, watching Alexander as he returns to his seat and cants her head, her gaze half-shadowed by her dark lashes. Sometimes she can read stranger's moods with little more than an indrawn breath, her senses are so close to the surface. She is: so aware, so immediate, so vibrant, right?
"Alexander, we can do amazing stuff every day. Hawksley can turn off gravity. I can talk to you telepathetically. Elijah and I found a kid who had been attacked by a complete weirdo and he was dying and I healed him, but fuck, you don't have to be me to do that shit.
"You can look and see the primal energy of the fucking universe! You can - maybe - find where everything is fracturing and fraying and starting to peel apart, or fucking listen to every heartbeat of every living thing close to you just by closing your eyes and exerting your goddamned will.
"I know the way you feel shapes the way you do magic, but you can do and feel so much - so much more than everyone and everything else. Have you played around with what's opened up for you? Do you know what you can do? Do you want me to show you what I do?"
Alexander Brandt[Because I need to know if he fluffs it or not for what I'm writing - Sensing entropy - TN4, -1 for the node]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (2) ( fail )
Alexander BrandtHe crosses his hands on the table and rests his chin on top of them. “I don’t have a fucking clue about most of it. I can see Callisto out there.” There’s another brief, warm smile. “Although she doesn’t seem to have noticed me so much. Otherwise I don’t really know what to do with the other things I can feel. I can’t... turn off gravity, or heal, or shield. And, honestly, I still have no idea about how all this works. I just know that if I look at a mirror, or whatever, and want something to happen then – sometimes – it does.”
He sits back up against the back of the chair and fishes around in a pocket for a coin. If Sera’s paying attention, she might notice that it’s a two dollar coin with the head of Ulysses Grant on it – the same one as the last time he was sat here, trying to work stuff out. He sets it spinning on the table.
There’s the feeling of something happening, some Work being done. But it becomes unsteady, unstable, cracking and fracturing and dissipating into the ether as Alexander loses grap of what he’s trying to do, to see.
Alexander slaps a hand on the coin, stopping it from spinning, and rests his forehead back on the table with a dull thud. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I can get flashes of things that might happen, that things might break, but they are just flashes. I can’t see enough for them to be any use. Or I could probably get a job as a speaking clock somewhere?”
SerafÃneWhat does Sera feel?
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 1, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 3
SerafÃneSo she looks. (Prime 1. Dif 4 -1 for a specialty focus.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
SerafÃneSera's posture straightens, alert. Her palms are flat on the edge of the counter now, the beer bottle left at her side. Fingers curled beneath it. She is watching Alexander as he avers that he cannot do anything that she mentioned and he doesn't know what to do with the other pieces he has learned. And as she senses the supple thread of his Work rising around the spinning of the coin, she bites her inner cheek. No way for Alexander to see that, the brief contraction of her pupils from the sharpness of the pain that both pulls in her focus and allows her to free herself from the ordinary restrictions of reality.
To see.
Blood sluices with her saliva.
"Do it again," Sera tells him, and there is - oh, iron in her tone. She is slithering down from the counter, booted feet slapping against the linoleum and that intensity is matched by the light in her eyes. "Do it again, make it happen. It' s hard. You're barely awake, sometimes you have to reach out and grab reality and shape it. Bend it. Break it if you have to.
"Do it again. Use your will."
Alexander Brandt[Sensing Entropy again. Same diff.
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Alexander BrandtThere’s a muffled, amused snort from the table. “Well, what’s the worst that can happen, eh? I doubt I’ll be ripping a hole in the umbra or stopping time again anyway.” He looks up, resting his chin on the table instead of his forehead and reaches over to the coin. Holds it between thumb and forefinger on each hand and takes a breath. Concentrates on what he was trying to make happen with that first spin.
No, this time it isn’t what he’s trying to make happen. It’s what he damned well will happen. So Alexander sits up in the chair again, staring at the coin as he sets it spinning again.
That feeling gathers again, the promise of something happening. Something subtle changing in the room. In Alex. Until it starts to fray again, cracks working through the effect as it begins to shatter, almost shatters, almost has reality ready to slap back at the arrogant young apprentice who dares to force himself on the universe. But, this time, Alex fights back. This is something he wants to happen, and the universe can damned well fuck off and allow it to happen. There’s a moment – a frozen moment with a coin wobbling on its edge – before the effect comes back together and Alexander grunts as it does.
And he Sees. Faint lightning radiates off whatever he looks at as he catches glimpses, flashes in the storm, of what might be.
SerafÃneSera - smiling, lovely Sera - makes an noise in the back of her throat, pleased, indulged even, though she is never precisely satiated and there is an edge to her smile and an edge to the gleam of her dark eyes and a pleasure to be found in that edge. She is sort of sidling towards him, watching the strands of his effect come together and fray apart, like heat lightning against the horizon and her senses are heightened enough and her awareness of the essential energy of the universe is sharp enough that that she always feels the exact moment when Alexander brings his will to bear.
Somehow, she has crossed the space between them. While he was working, while he was willing, while he was concentrating.
"If you want it to be stronger, you can do it again. Hold the energy inside you, wrap it up like a ball of lightning, feel it behind your breastbone, release it when you know it'll be enough to see you through." A ragged breath out. He is so lucky that she is almost sober. "Ritual helps for some. A structure, like a skeleton, that gives you a vessel through which you sense things or shape things, see?"
And she's standing in front of him them, surreal as she is, slight as she is, compelling as she is, holding her hands out to Alexander, palms up. The tattoos she has are absurd. She doesn't remember getting them. That hardly matters.
"Take my hands."
Alexander BrandtHe looks from the ball of lightning surrounding the cup on the drainer (filled, empty, cracked, chipped, smashed, dust, repaired...) to the storm around the chair (broken, bent, burned, shattered, ash, filled with people he doesn’t recognise...) and looks up at the flickers of possibility skittering across the ceiling (white, black, smoke-streaked, wooden, broken, holed...) He closes his eyes to black it all out for a moment when Sera asks for his hands.
So he opens his eyes and looks at her. (As she is now, covered in blood, happy, shot, bruised, broken, well, stabbed, old, harrowed, dead...) “Oh, jesus!” He closes his eyes again, quickly, and pushes the effect away and lets it dissolve again into the world. “I think I know why Kalen has trouble sleeping if that’s what he sees at night.” He slowly opens his eyes again, expecting the visions to be lingering. His shoulders sink after they hunched up in reaction to seeing her... Seeing her.
He shakes his head and reaches out to take her hands.
SerafÃneMind 3. Difficulty 8. -1 (close to the node) -1 (resonance) -1 (focus)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (3, 6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
SerafÃneAnd extending. Spending quint to keep the difficulty at 5.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
SerafÃne(That's enough, Sera you badass.)
SerafÃneHe places his hands in her own, outstretched. She has slender hands, and rather long, fine fingers, but they are not soft, no: instead she has all her tattoos and also the hints of musician's callouses, different on each hand. Sera folds her fingers around Alexander's hands and then there is a pressure, a tug, a pull and even though she is now standing, well, rather close, it is also clear that she wants him -
to rise,
- and she is humming in the back of her throat, no, she is singing something, it is a tangible thread, it is both a sensation and a prayer for the same, and he cannot quite hear the words although perhaps him can feel them (I wish I had the voice of everything / To sing the animals to sing the earth / To sing the stars into the universe) the way you feel the sunlight against your skin.
She is pulling him upright. She is drawing him in.
And he can feel the power in her, building inside of her, wrapping itself through her skin, around her mind, holding itself in abeyance beneath her breastbone, beneath her skin. She is still singing - is he rising? - and her eyes are closed now, and her voice is low, husky, fine, and she is magic, you understand.
Made of it.
Made for it,
calling him to stand with her, to keep holding her hands.
Inviting him,
in.
Alexander BrandtHer fingers slide over the hard, rough skin of Alexander’s hands as she changes her grip. These aren’t the soft, moisturised, manicured hands that several of the other Mages have. These are weathered and battered and scraped. A hard exterior for...
He feels the pull of her hands and of her will. He can’t tell what it is that she’s doing, only that it’s there and it’s powerful. Pulling. Calling. Drawing. He does rise, watching her, singing her song below the level of really hearing the words. Feeling them, rather. He stands, slowly.
He stands, but doesn’t close the distance between them. Whether that was her intention or not, he doesn’t know. He just remembers another voice. The voice that Sera couldn’t hear. So enticing, so appealing, so... hungry and desperate. Come closer. The voice that would have pushed him towards what probably would have been a very lonely end.
He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t push forwards towards Sera and her effect either. He stands frozen on the threshold between the two.
He looks at her closed eyes, like the newly-Awakened rabbit in her full-beam headlights, and whispers. “I’m scared.”
SerafÃneOf what. Sera's voice is in his mind. Her mouth is not moving, but she has opened her eyes and tipped her chin back so that she can look up at him. The edge of her mouth curved in a close-lipped, rather mournful little. Of this?
Don't be. Such conviction. So much light in her; and so much shadow all of it in equal gradiant measure. Come with me. I won't let anything happen to you.
SerafÃne(CHARISMA PLUS EXPRESSION: she means that.)
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 2
Alexander BrandtSera’s voice is in his mind, and it’s so close. So intimate. To hear her thoughts, feel the conviction in what she tells him. To be that close to someone?
It’s glorious.
And it’s terrifying.
Alexander pulls his hands from hers, steps back, pulls away. “I can’t, not like that.” Something catches in his throat and he turns away. “I just... please, just don’t.” He walks towards the window overlooking the land to the back of the building and watches the storm clouds starting to pass overhead without, really, seeing them.
SerafÃneParadox.
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
SerafÃneStamina
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 1 )
SerafÃneAlexander refuses the connection. The truth is he cannot resist it: he doesn't know how: how to protect himself from such instrusions, how to begin to sense their shape or shadow in the world, how to do anything except terrify himself with his own perceptions of decay on the edge of a spinning coin, and she could stay there as long as she wanted, she could fold herself into his consciousness, and skim through his drifting thoughts, she could tread, heavily or lightly, through every one of his dreams, she could wrap him in an illusory world, ecstatic or terrifying. She could hurt him.
All he do to refuse the connection is to say no,
but he can say no,
and no is something that Sera respects. It is both a withdrawal and a recoiling and there is the withdrawal of that open mind, that impossible connection, and within that withdrawl is a sense of snap-back, and that rejection, that refusal of the world and Sera is pulling in a single sharpened breath and her magic lives in her body, you understand, immediate and raw, physical, visceral and she feels Alexander's refusal as much as anything else. Pulls back into herself with a physical sob that she tries to hold back, to swallow, to absorb, squares her shoulders against the raw sensation of his refusal, and the impending back-blow of reality.
The song ends as abruptly as the Willwork unravels and - wait for it, wait for it - there it is, the brief burst of pain that spreads, dull and throbbing, from the bridge of her nose across the span of her sinuses. The thin trickle of blood from her left nostril.
She is shaking a little bit, Sera. She'd have to be.
All or nothing, that is how she Works.
"I'm sorry - " This, once she has caught a shaky breath. "I didn't - I'm gonna, I'm gonna go."
Alexander BrandtHe doesn’t know how to resist. Doesn’t know that she could pick and probe and dig out what made him try to pull back from what Sera was doing. He assumes that the hands are the bridge between them, that pulling away will break the connection and keep himself safe.
That first reaction, the fear of being so damned close to someone... That was instinct, as much as landing Sera on her ass in the middle of a crowded market was. It was a defence, only not against the physical. The wounds that that reaction is protecting are deeper and harder to see. She could so easily dig them out if she wanted to...
But then if she did, and Alexander ever found out, then he’d never trust her again. And, right now, he needs people he can trust to help him figure this stuff out. Help him see the wonder when all he can see is the darkness.
He winces when he feels reality backslap Sera for her Work, but he doesn’t turn back to look at her. Doesn’t turn at her sob. And it’s not because he doesn’t care. He just hurts.
I'm sorry - I didn't - I'm gonna, I'm gonna go. He did feel her conviction when she said I won't let anything happen to you. Knows that she didn’t want – even expect – his reaction. He really does want to feel the wonder she promised, but...
He takes a shuddering breath and half-turns his head to her. “Wait. Thank you. For trying.” His gaze returns to the window, watching the trails of raindrops that are starting to appear on the glass. And quieter, which she may or may not hear as she does or doesn’t move to leave, “Don’t give up on me. Please.”
SerafÃneDan's been around, downstairs at the bar. Restocking the bathrooms, checking the date the filter was last changed in the furnace. All the goddamned ordinary things that have to happen in an ordinary house to make it run, and he knows Sera, knows Sera the way he knows his own heart, the knows the shape of a guitar in his hand, the way he knows Plato, the way he knows everything. He sure-as-hell knows the feel of her magic in the air. Staring out the window as he is, Alexander won't see Dan enter, but Dan is not a fucking ninja. He's a tall, lanky guy and he has a wallet chain, he makes noise, he makes noise as he enters the kitchen and he goes to Sera, of course he does, and he goes to Sera and he kisses her on the crown of her head and wraps a long, loose arm around her shoulders and murmurs,
"Head back," quietly into her ear when he sees the bit of blood trickling down her face, feels the reflected ache of both the powerful spell quickly drawn back and the connection, well, refused, that leaves her so raw, and she doesn't mind feeling raw, you have to feel raw, too, but that doesn't mean she can reassure Alexander, now. That doesn't mean she can trust her voice to work the way voices work.
And Dan has no idea what the fuck just happened, he just walked into the room and there's Alexander staring out the window and Sera looking a little bit wounded and a little bit bloodied and a little bit like she started bleeding light through her skin and then reversed course and was naturally singed in the process. "She won't give up on you," Dan has a baritone, it is rich, rumbly in his chest because he was up too early this morning or too late last night, "and I don't know what you're going through, and I sure as hell am not gonna judge, but you gotta do some of the work too. Cool?
"I'm gonna take her home. You gonna be okay?"
Alexander BrandtCool? Alexander doesn’t turn back to Dan, wouldn’t trust himself not to fall apart if he did and really saw the effect what just happened had on Sera. So he nods.
You gonna be ok? He takes a deep breath, less shuddering than the last, and nods again. “I’ll be... fine.”
And he won’t turn as Dan and Sera head home, not until he feels her resonance fade into the storm outside. But, eventually, he turns and leaves the house himself. Heads out and rides through the rain, too fast to be strictly safe. And he rides, and miles and of road pass under him.
And he’s alone again.
Which could be the most frightening part of all.
SerafÃneDan watches Alexander, mouth still, a little bit pursed. He isn't as insightful as Serafíne herself but Sera is a little too raw to allow herself to feel the edge of Alexander's despair. Not just now.
So there is a moment like hang time and then Dan nods, you see, "Alright," his chin moves against the crown of Sera's head, beard getting tangled with her curls. "Text later, man. Let us know you're okay."
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