Why Aren't I Dead?

Alexander

[Per+Awareness]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Dr. Keller

When Alexander wakes up, he's in a white room. His eyes are slow to blink open. There's a lingering heaviness in his eyelids and a dull throb of pain in his head. That pain spikes when the light hits his vision, stark and clinical-bright. It takes a moment to adjust before he can really take in his situation. A cursory inspection of his body will reveal that he is largely unharmed. There's a couple of sore places on his hip and shoulder - bruises from... what?

He can remember the room in the precinct. Agent Paul Weston - if that's even really his name. The struggle. Firing his gun.

He must have fallen.

The place where the dart his his calf is also sore, but it's not much worse than one might expect from a vaccination.

He still feels a little groggy. A little disconnected. But he has free range of movement again, and his mental capacities don't feel as though they're hindered. Once he's able to look around without squinting, the details of the room become clearer. He's lying on a cot that's been folded out from the wall. There's a simple white pillow under his head. His police clothes have been replaced with what looks like a beige prison uniform. His gun and holster are gone. So is his cell phone. His wallet. His keys. The room is small and plain and mostly empty. Across from him lies a sturdy-looking metal door, a white table that's been bolted into the floor and two fold-out chairs. There are no windows in the room, and no clock by which to determine what time of day it is.

Sitting in one of the chairs, on the opposite side of the table, is an austere-looking bald man in his early fifties. He isn't dressed in a suit the way that Weston was. Instead, he registers more like a college professor in slacks, a white button-down and a dark green sweater. He's reading through something on a clip-board, making notes with a red pen as he goes. When he sees Alexander looking at him, he sets the clipboard down, smiles and says "Good morning, Officer Brandt."

This man, who Alexander has never seen before, is not attempting to hide his nature the way that Weston was. (Perhaps he's determined there's no need.) So Alex will feel the strength of his resonance almost immediately. There's a potency to it that he hasn't felt with anyone before - not even Victoria. In fact, that is part of how it feels: Potent. Incisive (cutting, sharp, efficient.) With a lingering aftertaste of Reflection.

"When you're ready, would you care to have a seat?"

Alexander

The climb from unconsciousness, through that fuzzy middle ground between sleep and wakefulness, into consciousness is hard. The remnants of whatever drug had been running through Alexander’s body hadn’t quite cleared, so it’s not an immediate thing that he realises that things aren’t right. He reaches a hand up to his head before he even tries to open his eyes, rubbing it. God, it felt like the mother of all hangovers…

The bed, though. It wasn’t his bed. And why did that seem important right now? The hand that had been rubbing his head moves down and runs over the pillow and the surface of the cot. Nope, not familiar. The first attempt at opening his eyes elicits a brief groan as his body objects to the intensity of the light. He tries again, slower this time and with a hand providing a little protection from the light. One eye, then the other. Alexander blinks several times, clearing his vision until things come back into focus. He takes in the clothes, looking around to see if his uniform was in a pile somewhere nearby.

Yeah, my uniform. Memory was returning, including what had happened in the last few moments before he lost consciousness. Memories that trigger a physical response, his heart rate quickening and the adrenaline dumped into his blood stream firing up the age-old response fight or flight. The lack of windows and the state of the door make flight unlikely.

Good morning, Officer Brandt.

Alexander studies the man, as he is offered a seat. The man is powerful, that music is obvious. But one thing that Alexander has learned is that, essentially, they are all still flesh and blood. Alexander is also a man who doesn’t like to be messed around with. And, now that memory of... whenever the hell that was had returned, his patience is running at empty. So rather than taking a seat, the other response kicks in. Alexander charges the man, screaming, and takes a swing.

Dr. Keller

[Keller Initiative +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )

Alexander

[Init +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )

Dr. Keller

[Guards outside +5]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )

Dr. Keller

Order:

Keller - 17

Guards - 16

Alex - 12

Dr. Keller

[guards - 15, rather]

Alexander

[Split: Close with Keller. Punch Keller]

Dr. Keller

[Guards: Enter room with guns drawn]

Dr. Keller

[Keller rolls an effect: Mind 4 (STOP) - base diff 6 (Alex's WP) -2 (resonance: potent) -1 (personal instrument)]

Dice: 5 d10 TN3 (1, 4, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 4 )

Alexander

[I'd really rather not. WP]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Dr. Keller

[Alex manages to push through the mental command and keep going, but he loses his turn in the process]

Dr. Keller

It happens very quickly, but despite his calm air the man seated at the table does not react to Alexander's sudden assault with any visible surprise. Instead he looks at Alex and shouts, in a sharp, commanding tone: "Stop!"

And for a brief, agonizing moment, that command echoes in Alexander's head like a hammer, slowing his limbs and freezing his thoughts. He stops shouting. Stops moving. Part of him wants nothing more than to submit to that command.

But another part of him - a stronger part - knows that he's being manipulated and pushes through the impulse with every last ounce of Will. Then he finds his feet will move again and his voice returns to his lungs - less steady but still his own.

The delay gives the guards outside time to unlock the door and rush in, guns held at the ready. There are two of them, dressed in black combat uniforms: a man and a woman. Neither of them resonate the way the bald man does, but their guns are still quite capable of killing.

They don't shoot, though. Not yet. They're waiting for a signal.

Alexander

Alex knows that he’s dead. This has got to be Union, and from what the others have told him about people who attract their attention? He’s dead. Or, at least, will be soon. Or better off dead. Or…

He does the only thing that… it’s not thought that drives him, more hormone-driven instinct. The lizard part of his brain high on adrenaline elbowing conscious thought out of the way and driving him forward towards the fight. The man tells him to stop and, god, it would be so easy to just stop right there. But then the other part of his mind, the part that’s shadowed by his survival instincts take over, steps forward and pushes back against the urge. It’s not what he wants, he will not be forced into it. The battle is enough to slow him, though. There is no contact between him and this man.

Alexander glances round at the sounds by the door. It’s open. There are people there, and some part of him registers that they have weapons aimed at him. But it’s a way out and, right now, getting away is all that matters.

[Tackle one of the guards, hopefully out the door.]

Alexander

[Odds we tackle the man, evens the woman]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Dr. Keller

[Male guard shoots Alex in the knee (targeted shot)]

Dr. Keller

[Female guard tackles Alex]

Dr. Keller

[Keller tries this Mind magick stuff again. Will extend if he needs to. Mind 4, base diff 6 -2 -1]

Dice: 5 d10 TN3 (1, 4, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Dr. Keller

[He's going to extend next turn, so no effect yet this round.]

Dr. Keller

[Female guard tackles: Dex+Brawl, diff 7]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Dr. Keller

[Dex+Athletics not to fall]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Alexander

[C'mon dice roller! Dex+Ath to stay up]

Dice: 6 d10 TN10 (5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Dr. Keller

[Str+3 (successes)]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Alexander

[Soak?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Dr. Keller

[And Alex takes 1B]

Dr. Keller

[Male guard rolls to shoot: Dex+Firearms, diff 8 for small target]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Dr. Keller

[gah, that's 1 success]

Dr. Keller

[base damage 5 (Biggs X-5) +2 (targeted shot)]

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

Dr. Keller

[DICE THAT WAS TOO MANY SUCCESSES]

Dr. Keller

It isn't altogether uncommon, really. Guards get scared and use excessive force. It happens in the police department a lot more often than they'd like to admit. Perhaps at some point, after Alex wakes up later, he'll have a moment to find that vaguely reassuring: that the soldiers of the Technocratic Union are capable of making those kinds of human errors.

Then again, when those errors result in him getting his knee blown off, there probably isn't much there to be reassured by.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Alex rushes the guard standing in front of the open door, but before he can reach the man, the second guard cuts him off, slamming into him from the side with such force that it nearly knocks him over. He keeps his balance though, somehow. There are places where the impact bruised him but it isn't anything that'll slow him down.

The second guard is another story. He sees Alexander coming, aims his gun at Alex's knee and fires.

The blast does something. Alexander feels this sharp blossom of shredding agony, bright and hot and then strangely numb. He hits the floor and he can feel blood spurting and pooling around him.

He blacks out again. It's the second time in as many days.

Later, the guard who shot him gets reassigned.

---

Time passes. He doesn't know how much. But eventually he wakes up again. He isn't in the white room anymore. This time he's strapped down to a hospital bed inside a room with solid metal walls. There's an IV drip in his arm and a machine beeping quietly in the background. There's a blanket tucked over him, so he can't make out what the full extent of the damage was but he can still feel both of his legs. Can still (sort of) move them against the restrictive hold of the leather restraints. It doesn't even hurt. In fact, nothing hurts. He feels fine. Groggy and probably scared, but physically... okay.

He has no idea what day it is.

Looking around, there's a small alcove in the room with a sink and a toilet, but nothing else. The only furniture is his bed, which seems to have been wheeled in temporarily. It feels even more like a cell than the last room did.

In more ways than one. The air around him feels... almost too clean. Too... static. Like something is sucking all of the magick out of it. The sensation feels even more oppressive than the restraints on his body. Like he is... trapped, powerless, smothered.

The door opens and shuts, and the bald man from the white room approaches the side of the bed. He's wearing a grey sweater this time.

"Are you going to let me speak this time?"

Alexander

Not for the first time in however long he’s been here for, unconsciousness seemed like a blessing. A blessing that took away the pain of whatever the shot had done to his knee. A blessing that took away the terror that simply losing control and being held in this place invoked. A blessing that, unfortunately, wasn’t to last.

Consciousness returns, and it’s not a welcome thing. There is, at least, no pain. Alex experimentally moves his leg, as far at the restraints will let him. And then he pulls at them, fighting against them, trying to break free.

Apparently, Alexander isn’t the first person these people have held and he gets, precisely, nowhere.

The fight worked out of him, at least for the moment, he slumps back onto the bed and looks around the room. It’s even more oppressive than the white one had been, and he had the sinking feeling that he was going to be spending a lot of time here.

Fuck.

The same man as… earlier? Whenever the hell that had been. Anyway, the man was back. Alex’s head lifts at the sound of the door opening and closing, but it slumps back down again as soon as the man is recognised.

Are you going to let me speak this time?

Alexander sighs, but doesn’t turn to look at the man when he speaks. He does have a question, though.

“Why aren’t I dead?”

Dr. Keller

The man regards him quietly. Alex doesn't meet his gaze, so he doesn't make out the nuance of his expression (if there even is anything there to see.)

"Is there a reason you should be?" The man counters, his tone thoughtful. "I suspect by now you've worked out something of where you are, judging by your behavior. But whatever it is you think you know, I can assure you that you do not have the full picture." He pauses a beat, resting one hand on the rail at the edge of the bed.

"To answer your question: one, because you have information that will help us. And two, because we only kill when we have to. I have yet to determine how great of a threat you present. Though I am sure if you are especially determined, you may yet succeed at killing yourself. Personally I would prefer we come to a more equitable arrangement, but that really depends on you."

Alexander

Is there a reason you should be?

Alex snorts, but his position doesn’t change. Whatever there is making up the ceiling in his current room, it appears to be quite interesting. “You mean the people you take an interest in don’t mysteriously vanish, never to be seen again? Oh, no! Wait! That’s what’s happened to me. His voices gets louder, dripping with sarcasm by the end of the statement. Alex closes his eyes, but still listens.

He listens, and then sits up and strains against the restraints. Alex looks at the man, meeting his gaze at last, and continues shouting. “Threat?! You drug me, abduct me, fucking shoot me, and you think I’m the threat? And now you’re telling me this is all my fault! Let me guess, the waterboarding and thumbscrews or whatever else you twisted fucks have is going to be all for my own good, right? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Dr. Keller

The man lets him shout. Strapped to a bed and behind an enclosed perimeter of what feels like anti-magick, there isn't much that Alex can do, and of course his captors know that. One has to wonder if this man, with all his studied cool, is even capable of being flustered.

He certainly doesn't seem like it when Alex makes eye contact. Instead he watches Alex with an incisive gaze, as though he were an animal in a lab experiment.

"The man who brought you in believed you were protecting a Nephandus. Is there some alternate version of events where you would have come here and spoken with us willingly? Because given what I've seen of you so far, I don't really see that working out. More to the point... "

The man leans down over the bed - mindful of course of the amount of leeway with which Alex might be able to reach him. He doesn't get within biting or head-butting distance, but he does get close enough that if Alex keeps shouting, the force of it will ring in his eardrums.

Unsurprisingly, the restraints refuse to budge despite Alex's efforts. He'd need a lot more force than he's capable of expending physically to break them.

"... Your very existence is a threat. Not just to us, but to the scores of innocent people who live in this city and expect when they wake up in the morning that their reality will continue to operate as it should. That monsters will not leap out of the shadows to hunt them. That some old witch on a street corner will not have the power to destroy their lives on a whim. That scientific constants like time and gravity will not suddenly cease to function.

"So you can keep shouting, Alexander. And you can continue to be personally affronted that we value the safety and security of the many over the comfort of the few. But none of that will help you right now. And it will be, at best, a mild inconvenience to me. Or you can calm down and cooperate, and maybe you'll be able to go home."

Alexander

Alex listens. Of all the reactions this man might be expecting, it may be the least likely that he actually gets.

Laughter.

It’s desperate, but it’s definitely laughter. “Oh, you stupid fucking idiot. You have no idea, do you? Where were you when the Fallen murderer came to the city? Where were you when the mad Hermetic came to town with her little group of cannibals? Oh, that’s right! Nowhere! And if the other Awakened in the city hadn’t stopped them, they’d still be running around. Oh! And imagine! They managed to do it all without drugging, kidnapping, or generally being complete fucking dicks!” The laughter had stopped by the end and the shouting had started again.

Alex slumps back on the bed again, but keeps looking at the man. If there’s a sensation that the guy doesn’t like it, well… Whatever little victory he can win right now, he’ll go for. He speaks, but the anger has faded away for the moment. Now there’s more… resignation.

“I’m no threat, to you or anyone else. But then you’d know that if you actually bothered to find out! But, hey, the ends justify the means, right? What’s a few dead freaks, who might actually have done more good if you left them alone? And who cares about the people that get left behind when people disappear. It’s not like they matter, right?”

Alexander had already had doubts about his future. Doubts around what happens when the shades of grey get too indistinguishable, when you step into the black without realising how far you’ve gone. In the short time that this man has been explaining the Union’s position, it already sounds as if they’re the very personification of that fear.

Alexander sighs again, head straightening on the pillow. “You’re the fucking threat, and the saddest part is that you just don’t know it.”

Finally, quietly, he finishes speaking. “I won’t cooperate.”

Dr. Keller

The man (he still hasn't offered a name) takes in Alexander's response with an expression that is - frustratingly - unreadable. After a moment he straightens and steps away from the bed.

"As you wish."

He glances at the door and makes a gesture for someone to enter - though there isn't any window there. Likely the room is wired with hidden cameras. A moment later a handful of guards enter and take hold of Alexander's bed. Following them, a woman in a white medical coat strides in and checks the machine that Alexander seems to have been hooked up to. Without saying anything, she reaches over and moves to carefully disconnect the IV from his arm. If he struggles, he may end up bleeding a little, but either way they get him unhooked.

Then the guards start to roll his bed out of the room. It barely fits through the door. If Alex continues to shout, he is ignored.

They exit into a long white hallway and pass by a couple of unmarked doors secured by expensive-looking high-tech locks. At the end of the hall they pass through another door and enter another, similar hallway. Finally they turn and enter what looks to be the same white room he was in previously, complete with the bolted table and folding chairs - though the cot has since been folded back into the wall.

Why they felt they had to move him is unclear. But once they're situated the guards file out and shut the door, leaving Alexander alone with his interrogator.

The man stops at the side of the bed and regards Alex contemplatively. "For what it's worth, I would have preferred to do this differently."

Maybe Alex is looking at him at this point. If he is, then he'll see something move inside the man's eye - a shift and turn of the iris and then a stark pin-point of white light drowning out the pupil. If he doesn't look, then he won't have any further warning that something is about to happen.

(It doesn't matter either way. Eye contact helps, but it isn't necessary.)

Alexander

The shouting has ended. The struggling has ended. Whatever happens around Alex for the next few minutes happens without struggle or much of a response. There’s maybe a slight wince as the IV is disconnected, but that’s about it. It’s clear that, at least right now, his chances of escaping are circling somewhere around ‘zip, zero, zilch, do not pass Go, do not collect $200’. It’s, maybe, time to try to save some energy and try again later.

For what it’s worth, I would have preferred to do this differently.

Alex doesn’t look at the man, but continues to lie there with his eyes closed. He does have a quiet response, though. “Just remember, it’s your choice to do this. Not mine. Remember that when you’re kicking some puppies for fun later.”

Then, for what it’s worth, Alex tries to find that point of stillness in his mind. If he can’t do anything to resist physically, then all he can do it resist mentally. Not that he has much of an idea of exactly how, but there’s nothing quite like learning on the job. His breathing deepens and slows as whatever will happen will happen.

Alexander

[Ommmm! Or something. Int+Med]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 6) ( botch x 1 )

Dr. Keller

[Alex, for all his efforts, is unable to focus his mind. On the contrary, feelings of panic and hopelessness are beginning to seep in. He is captured. Powerless. And whatever fate awaits him, it will not be anything short of a nightmare. Perhaps a quick death would be preferable, given the alternatives.

-1 temporary WP]

Dr. Keller

[Keller activates Mind-reading and telepathy powers. Mind 3, base diff 6 -2 (incisive) -1 (unique instrument - psychic implant)]

Dice: 5 d10 TN3 (1, 3, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 ) [WP]

Dr. Keller

It feels almost inexorable, really. Alex tries to center himself. Tries to do what little he can to protect his mind. He has no knowledge of this Sphere. No real ability to shield his thoughts. Even if he did, what hope did he really have against someone as powerful as this Technocrat?

(The man hasn't confirmed that designation, but does he really need to? What else could he be?)

There is a moment perhaps, before the guards close the door and leave him alone with the man in this quiet room, when Alex thinks he may be able to handle this. But he is wrong - because he is human.

And then the Technocrat's Will washes over him again, pushing into his mind and his thoughts like an enveloping wave. There is an urge - hypnotic and almost irresistible - to look at him. To meet that white light in his eye and just hold there, staring. Like a deer in headlights, watching a car come barreling towards it.

And what does he look for, this man? One thing: Leah. The way he pushes is careful and precise. He doesn't churn through Alexander's thoughts carelessly, tossing the useless ones aside. He seeks something specific, and within a matter of moments, he finds it.

Finds her face, sees her eating dinner at the Chantry. Sees her dancing with a tan-skinned boy at a Christmas party. Alex sees it too - is powerless not to recall the memories as the man draws them. There's more that Keller looks at - Annie and Sasha. Their conversations.

He could look at so much more, but he doesn't. And when he's done, he draws back to the front of Alex's thoughts. Alex can feel something bridge their connection. This quiet note of tension and concern. (It is probably not what he expects to feel.)

Then the man's voice speaks in his head:

Listen to me carefully. We cannot let anyone see what I have just seen. If the Union finds this place, they will destroy it. You've ended up in the middle of an impossible situation, the details of which you do not realize and which I cannot explain quickly or easily. But know this, I am the only protection you have in this place. There are others... people who do not agree with the Union's draconian tactics. But we are always being watched. You haven't seen us because I have been doing everything in my power to keep my men away from you. I've seen more war in my lifetime than I hope you ever will.

But things are changing. The balance of power is precarious. I don't know how much longer I can keep things under control. I don't expect you to trust me but if you want to survive this, you will have to be careful and you will have to be clever. If the others suspect what I've just told you, then I won't be able to protect you anymore. Do you understand?

Dr. Keller

[Edit: not to recall the memories as the man draws them out.]

Alexander

He’d wanted to find some way of getting his mind elsewhere. Oh, he knew that Mind magic existed but he’d never thought to try to learn anything about it. It had never really seemed all that important. Without that knowledge, the only thing he could think of was to find some peace but today? Assuming it was still the same day, it’s so hard to tell with the spells of unconsciousness and the lack of windows and… And the despair that creeps into mind shatters any hope of finding that stillness.

Alex feels the other man’s Will and tenses on the bed, curling up as much as the restraints allow. There’s a sliver of time where his own Will fights against it, but he can’t fight what he can’t see. And then the fight is over before it’s even started. Memories of Leah flash through his mind and the conscious part, the part that has now lost control over what memories this man digs up so quickly, batters uselessly against the force of the other man’s Will. Tries to scream that Leah isn’t Fallen. Tries to think of anything but that. Just as when Sera had tried to link her mind to his, but to show him her Wonder, his body tries to pull away and wordlessly shouts from the man.

That sensation that bridges the connection, that gives him pause. The pointless struggle wanes as he pays more attention to it. If the connection went both ways then maybe…

Listen to me carefully…

Those few words spark off a new wave of resistance, as futile as it is. As the mental voice continues, though, the words penetrate Alex’s panicked mind. His body still reacts, still pulls and twists, because this contact is still a violation. His mind still batters against the forces containing it, but the fight lessens as the voice continues.

Thoughts scream through Alex’s frantic mind. In between the cursing and insults, a few streams of consciousness flow. Can’t trust you. It’s a trick. A trap. Just kill me. But, at this precise moment in time, this seems like the only possibility he has to make it out of this as, more-or-less, the same person he arrived.

I understand.

Dr. Keller

It could be a trick. How would he even know? The Union is known for their underhanded tactics. For their cleverness and manipulation. It's what they do. It could be a trick. But there is nothing else for him to grab onto. No alternative hope beyond the possibility his friends might find him (and what kind of hope is that, really, considering the odds of what would happen to them if they did?)

Either the man is lying, or he is telling the truth.

Only time will tell.

I'm not going to kill you, Alexander. Not unless I have to.

And this time, when he says it, there's a sense of mercy in it.

Tomorrow I am going to come for you, and we are going to begin acting out reprogramming sessions. It will not be real, but it must look as though it is. I will have to be in your mind again. I'm sorry. But if the Union thinks you are beyond saving then they will have you killed. It's a stalling tactic, but right now it's the only hand we have to play.

If it's at all reassuring, you should know I had one of my associates wipe your phone before the man you know as Weston had a chance to do anything with it. As for the girl... I would like to believe you.

He doesn't say anything else to that, but there's a feeling of doubt that registers across the link. It doesn't feel as though he's rejecting the possibility, exactly. More that he is yet to come to a conclusion.

My name is Leon Keller. I'm going to release you now.

And then he does. And when he withdraws, it feels as though a weight has been lifted from Alexander's mind. As Keller moves away from the bed, the door opens and Agent Weston walks in.

"What did you find?"

"He saw her once, at a bar. That's all I found. He doesn't know where she is now."

Weston regards Keller with a careful expression. There are hints of frustration there, but if he finds the response suspicious, he doesn't say so. "Well, we know she's alive. That's something. I'll follow up on it."

Keller nods, and the two of them leave the room. Guards move in to wheel Alexander's bed back to the metal cell. Once inside, three of them point their weapons at him as another one - very carefully - undoes the restraints.

As it turns out, his leg works just fine. There is no evidence of the injury that nearly destroyed his knee. Whoever fixed it did a very good job. They didn't even leave a scar.

They let him keep the bed, but they take the restraint straps with them. There's also a small card table and a folding chair that was added to one corner of the room, along with a small stack of books (all Technocracy-approved, of course.) The other hospital equipment was already gone before they arrived.

When they're done, the guards leave, locking the door behind them.

Wrong answer, Alex

Alexander

[Per+Awareness]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Agent Weston

[A roll. For things. (going to extend once)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Agent Weston

[and again]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Agent Weston

[Oh right. Awareness too. Wee.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )

Agent Weston

It's a fairly typical day in the downtown precinct. District 6's central location ensures that there is usually a steady influx of work to be handled, between booking and reports. The time is around 4:00pm on a Thursday. All day the station has been a chaotic bustle of activity, but just now a welcome reprieve seems to be setting in. All around the station, officers and employees are sitting down to their desks to relax and finish up their paper work. If the lull continues, they may actually get to leave on time tonight.

There's a man standing back by the desk of one of the detectives. Tall, dark hair, a light beard. He's dressed in a generic-looking dark suit and holding a cup of Starbucks coffee in one hand. The detective - a heavy-set man in his fifties - laughs loudly at something the stranger says. Casual workplace humor, no doubt. Alex has never seen this man (the one in the suit) before, but that fact alone is hardly unusual. People come and go in police stations. Often those people are on some variety of official business.

Wherever he is - either returning from patrol or seated at his desk with a stack of reports - there's a moment where Alexander seems to attract the man's attention. Just this brief lift of sharp blue eyes that find him across the room and hold for a moment on his face. The gaze lasts a bit longer than is perhaps comfortable, then the man excuses himself from the detective's desk and begins to head in Alexander's direction.

Alexander

When people picture the police, the image that comes to mind is usually similar to whichever procedural TV show is doing the rounds. Unsurprisingly, the reality is somewhat different. Certain liberties are taken with how officers spend their time. Where people expect days to be filled with high speed chases and facing down armed criminals and generally being awesome. What they don’t see – and what a lot of recruits don’t realise until they land in a precinct – is just how much the department runs on paperwork. There are reports for everything. Want to get something or do something? Well, they have just the form for that.

It’s a small mountain of reports currently tying Alexander to his desk. Statements for what he’d seen and done on several arrests over the past few days – trying to clear the backlog before his Sergeant decided to have a quiet word – along with requisitioning a replacement shirt, and responding to a complaint regarding excessive force. (There hadn’t been excessive force when the guy had been arrested, it was just one of the frequent games people played to try to gum up the works of the legal proceedings with yet more paperwork.)

The laughter catches Alex’s attention for a moment and he turns to look. He sees the man laughing, but there’s nothing else there of any particular notice. The man obviously has some reason to be there, but it’s really nothing to do with him.

Next up in the stack of will-sapping tedium, refresher training on taser use. Alexander slips some headphones in, plugging them into the front of the PC, and starts the video. He rests his chin on his left hand, elbow on the desk, while hunting absent-mindedly for the coffee cup elsewhere on the desk with his right.

Agent Weston

"Officer Brandt, I presume?"

The greeting carries over the sound of Alexander's training video, muffled somewhat by his headphones. When Alex looks up (assuming he does,) he'll see the suited man standing slightly behind and to the right of his shoulder. Maybe he even felt the man coming - not in the sense of tingling nerves and extra-sensory awareness, but in the displacement of air at his back. The man smiles at him, looking official but relaxed. He takes a sip of his coffee.

One has to imagine that anyone drinking coffee at 4pm is either sleep-deprived, a caffeine addict, or ill-used to the Colorado winter. The man does not look especially tired, which leaves options two and three.

"I'm Agent Paul Weston with the FBI. It's good to meet you." He holds out his hand in greeting. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about a fugitive I think you may have encountered. Think I could steal you away for an interview?"

Alexander

Alexander’s right hand had found the coffee cup and was part way through lifting it to his mouth, when…

Officer Brandt, I presume?

He looks away from the screen, round and up at the man standing at his back. The coffee is set back on the desk and the headphones pulled away, spilling out a tinny, monotone voice talking about some equally monotone procedure.

There’s an introduction and a hand is offered. “Oh, hi.” Alexander extends his own hand, taking a firm grip of the Agent’s hand for the few moments it takes to shake. “I wasn’t expect anyone to drop by, but if I can help you out then sure. If anything, I should thank you for the break from the paperwork.” There's a brief smile, an assumption that this Agent would be equally burdened by the tedium of bureaucracy. He turns back to the PC for a moment, closing down the video and locking the workstation. He takes a moment to grab his own coffee mug and stands, turning to Agent Weston.

“There should be an interview room free downstairs.” Alex gestures with his free hand at the door to the office space, towards the stairwell.

Agent Weston

Agent Weston's hand is dry and warm, his greeting professional without being overly formal. There's nothing in his appearance or his demeanor to suggest anything suspicious. Likely it isn't the first time that Alex has had to answer questions from the FBI. They show up now and then, whenever a local case intersects with a federal investigation.

He cracks a wry grin when Alex mentions the paperwork. "In that case, I'm always happy to help."

Alex suggests one of the interview rooms downstairs. Agent Weston takes a sip of his own coffee and nods. He starts to gesture toward the stairwell, as though to indicate that Alex lead the way, but there's a pause - a hesitation as he glances around his immediate vicinity. "Of course I left my briefcase in the car. I'll just be a minute." He sets his coffee down and starts to head for the front desk. There's a rack on the wall behind it where his coat is hanging. "Oh, while we're walking, can you recommend a good hotel around here that isn't too pricey? The place I'm staying at has terrible mattresses. I've had a crick in my back all day."

There's an assumption embedded in the man's behavior, see? That Alex will follow him outside. That the two will continue to chat - to get to know each other in that superficial workplace way that people do. Nothing about it seems especially abnormal or suspicious, though certainly Alex can say no if he chooses. Can laugh and shake his head and say you're braving the cold on your own, buddy.

Either way, the man slides on his coat and steps up to the front door.

Alexander

There had been one question niggling at the back of Alex’s mind: Which fugitive? There hadn’t exactly been a mundane resolution to whatever had happened to Kozlowski and he knew, via his friend in the ME’s office, that the FBI had taken an interest in that one. But he’d only encountered the victim. Nobody else exactly springs to mind, at least recently. No big deal, though – the question will be answered soon enough.

“I’ve heard good things about the Warwick, but it depends how pricey is too pricey.” There are other suggestions, as they walk talk about places to stay in the city. The Super8? The Ramada? Hell, even the Four Seasons if it’s the bureau picking up the tab. Agent Weston picks up his coat, but Alex doesn’t make any similar move. Alex doesn’t have any intention of going out in his shirtsleeves, but then Alex doesn’t really have any intention of stepping outside. There’s nothing going on causing him any concern, or even really pinging against the paranoia that he had been cultivating when he thought that there was a Union operative trying to stalk him. It’s simply that it doesn’t take long to fetch something from the trunk of a car, so he’s quite happy to wait just inside while the Agent retrieves his belongings.

So Alex stops a little way back from the front doors, far enough that the blasts of intensely cold air that sweep in whenever someone arrives or leaves doesn’t hit him too much. “I’ll wait for you here.” He picks a patch of wall to lean against, bending one knee and resting it on the wall, as he waits for Agent Weston to retrieve his briefcase.

Agent Weston

He doesn't push, Agent Weston. He listens to Alex's suggestions with casual consideration, nodding his head a few times as he files away the names to memory, and when Alex says he's going to wait, Weston gives a little wave and pushes his way out into the cold.

He isn't gone long. Maybe five minutes. When he returns, there's a light dusting of snow in his hair and on the shoulders of his long coat. A thin leather briefcase rests in his left hand. He blinks as he steps inside, giving this subtle full-body shiver. "Denver winters, man. I don't know how you guys put up with it. I'm from the West coast, myself."

He leaves his coat on this time, huddling into it as he snags his coffee off the desk. "Alright, this shouldn't take too long. I just need you to identify a photo and answer a few questions. Then I'll be on my way."

He walks with Alex to the stairwell, this time leading the way himself as they descend down the staircase. No one seems to pay them much mind as they go. Presumably Weston has already spoken to the Sergeant, because the man doesn't so much as glance up as they pass by his office.

They make their way down to a vacant room, and Weston closes the door as Alex grabs a seat. He shrugs out of his coat and rests it on the back of a chair, setting his briefcase on the table.

The room is stark and white, with simple furniture and no windows. There's a camera in one corner, but the record light isn't on.

Weston pulls a file out of his briefcase and sits down. He opens it up and passes a photo across to Alex.

"Have you seen this girl before?"

The photo is taken from a high school year book, grade 10. One of the girls is circled in red ink. She's younger than Alex will remember her. Gaunt and unsmiling. Lines of tension seem set into her jaw and around her eyes, like she'd rather be anywhere but having her picture taken. But the hair (long and dark) and the eyes (pale ash-grey) are the same. It is unmistakably Leah, the girl living with Annie and Sasha at the chantry.

[stealth]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Alexander

[Per+Alert for fun and profit]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

“Ahh, you get used to them eventually. And hey, at least you can put more layers on. I wouldn't be able to stand your summers. You can only take so many layers off before it becomes indecent.” So far, so companionable. The Agent seems friendly enough, and there’s at least a little light humour between them. There’s no second thought as they pass back through the station, recovering cups of coffee on the way. There is a question, though, once they get to the room. “I’ve been trying to work out what case this is to do with. The recent murders?”

Alex slips into a vacant seat, setting his coffee cup down and waiting patiently as the Agent strips off his coat and retrieves the file. Weston passes a photo to Alex and he sets it down on the table, taking a closer look.

The room is warm, away from the external doors and windows that would let cold air in. But there’s a suddenly stab of something icy in his chest. Fear. At least the man wasn’t Awake, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t working with others who were. But Leah… nobody had said anything about her being wanted by the authorities. But, then, would they? It wouldn’t be the first time people have held stuff back because of what the uniform. Although Sasha had a badge too, and…

And if he spent too much time staring at the picture, this Agent would start getting suspicious. He doesn’t answer immediately, when he does speak. Rather, he deflects it with a question of his own. “You’re looking for a 15 year old? What did she do to get the attention of the FBI?”

Agent Weston

Weston doesn't answer right away when Alexander asks which case he's looking into. There's a certain enigmatic quiet to him in that moment that Alex, as an officer, may well recognize. The FBI aren't always known for being especially forthright with local police. That fact in itself isn't really that unusual. But then they take their seats, and Weston passes over that photograph, and the friendly air between them evaporates.

There are questions Alex may well be asking himself right now. Pieces of this scenario that don't quite fit.

"She'd be nineteen now. This is the most recent picture we have of her. Three years ago, she murdered twelve people in Denver. Then she disappeared."

The names in the photograph have been blacked out (not that Alex needs them.) As he looks at the photo, Weston regards him with a steady, calm expression. He seems to be watching Alex very closely now, gauging his reaction the way an interrogator might.

"You'd be surprised what teenagers are capable of."

Alexander

Oh, there are indeed questions. Some, potentially, very dangerous questions. And the question of how the hell do I get out of this in one piece? A question that becomes incredibly relevant as Weston’s attitude changes, the friendly mask dropping away.

Alex looks down at the photo again, running a finger along the edge of the paper. “That’s before my time here, but I don’t remember seeing her on the wanted lists around the precincts.” He flips the photo over, checking the back for writing or marks. “It seems odd that the Bureau would be after her without asking us to at least keep an eye out for her. An oversight, I’m sure.”

He offers the photo back to Weston. “Can’t say I remember her in relation to any case that I’ve worked on.” It’s a technicality but, essentially, the truth.

Agent Weston

"The case went cold a while back. I've only been recently assigned to it. At one point it was falsely determined that she was dead. It's been a bit of a mess, if you want my honest opinion." Weston rolls his tongue over his canine and sucks a bit of air through his teeth. "Unprofessional and incompetent."

Whether or not this whole thing is an act, something about Weston's icy condescension in that moment feels wholly genuine. One has to wonder what happened to his predecessors. Whoever they are.

The clever wording of Alex's response doesn't escape him though. It takes a moment for Weston to react, but when Alex tries to hand him back the photo he shakes his head. "That isn't what I asked. Look again, Alex. Have you seen her?"

[Mind 2 / Entropy 1 - You lying to me, bro? (personal instrument - eye contact) diff 5 -1]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 6, 7) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Agent Weston

[Oh oh, I forgot! Base diff is the subject's WP now. So that should be diff 6 -1. Which... does not change the result. And thus renders this edit somewhat meaningless. But nonetheless, if I acknowledge it I will be less likely to forget in the future.]

Alexander

That sharp blade of fear has spread, and Alex can feel the beat of his heart along with its thumping in his ears. Had he really been so stupid to think that he could keep his head down and avoid the Union? Suddenly Sera’s idea of leaning to fix cards and disappearing to Hawaii didn’t seem so bad after all.

“Well. It’s good to hear that the infallible FBI screws things up just as much as us mere mortals.” Alex tosses the photo back onto the table without looking at it again. “But I don’t appreciate the attitude or the whole interrogation thing you have going on here.” He stands, pushing the chair back with his legs. “You’ve had my answer. I believe we’re done here.”

Agent Weston

[Weston won his stealth roll, so he gets one free action. Dex+Firearms (under the table!)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )

Agent Weston

[Wow, Weston, you barely made that one]

Agent Weston

It still isn't a real answer. Weston stares at Alex with a cool, piercingly focused gaze and there's a moment, just before Alex starts to push back the chair, when he might swear he can feel the man boring into his head. There are snippets to be found there. Clues and insinuations. But the thing Weston is looking for - unimpeachable certainty - isn't there. Not like this, anyway. Not with a quick surface check. Because technically speaking, Alex isn't lying. It irritates him enough that a little flicker of anger shows in his icy gaze.

Alex doesn't even get a warning. One moment he's getting to his feet and the next...

There's a tiny noise, like a pop of air. And then something sharp hits him hard in the calf. It isn't enough to do any real damage but...

What the hell was that? A needle? If he looks down, he'll see that it's some kind of dart. In about thirty seconds, he's going to be unconscious.

"Wrong answer, Alex."

Alexander

This Agent had seemed so nice, and now? Well, now he’s a threat that Alex has no real way of facing by himself. What had he been told? Try to get away? Good plan. Let’s go with that plan.

“What the..?” The question goes unfinished as Alex feels something sharp in his leg. He looks down and sees the dart but it seems to take an age for him to realise what has just happened. He looks up at Weston, the question written on his face. But not for long. He needs to get away. He needs to get somewhere more public. He needs to run.

Agent Weston

[Init! +7]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

Alexander

[Init +6]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

Agent Weston

[Agent Weston splits action 1: close distance to Alex, 2: clinch]

Alexander

[Declare: Run, screaming and shouting! (Would have done that anyway)]

Alexander

[Dex+Ath - Ruuuuun! And don't go falling flat on your face like an idiot ]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Agent Weston

[Alright, Weston catches up to Alex but Alex is running (and shouting for help.) Weston tries to grab him and almost certainly fails. Str+Brawl -2 dice from the split]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Agent Weston

[Indeed, Weston fails. Alex gets to the door and it is closed but not locked.]

Agent Weston

It's part of their lives, this danger. The way seemingly boring, mundane encounters can turn on a dime to something much more terrifying. If Alex was not completely certain of Weston's dubious character before, he absolutely is now. So he does pretty much the only thing he has left available to him - he runs. It isn't a totally stupid plan. They are, after all, inside his own precinct. If he yells loud enough, someone will hear him. There are other cops nearby. People are using other interrogation rooms. This is not going to go completely under the radar, even if the camera's been turned off.

He runs, and he shouts, but Weston is on his feet and coming after him. The two of them close quickly, but Alex manages to escape the man's reach and make it to the door.

Already he can feel the effects of whatever drug he was dosed with seeping into his system. There's a liquid film over his vision and his limbs are growing heavy. Distant. Difficult to control.

He's going to pass out soon.

Alexander

It did seem like the only option at the time but, fuck… Thinking just seems to be getting so hard to do. He isn’t going to be able to get much further before he passes out, that much is obvious. So he screams and shouts as much as he can, and even doing that is getting harder to do as every part of his body seems to be getting more distant from his mind.

Alex gives up trying to get away, but just wants people to come. Or, at the very least, not disappear without a trace.

[Split the first: safety off
Split the second: pull the trigger, who cares if they shoot themselves in the foot right now]

Agent Weston

[Weston: Oh no you don't. Disarm - Dex + Martial Arts, diff 7, -1 die for being bare-handed]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Agent Weston

[Weston does not succeed at the disarm, but does bashing damage to Alex's hand. Str+2]

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

Alexander

[Soak?]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

Agent Weston

[And Alex's hand is totes okay.]

Alexander

[Bang?]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Agent Weston

[Does Alex shoot himself in the foot? Let's let the dice decide! Odds = himself, Evens = the floor]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

Agent Weston

[And he somehow manages not to injure himself. But he definitely makes a very loud noise.]

Agent Weston

Suffice to say, at that moment, Alexander Brandt is not quite processing the situation in a fully rational way. He's aware enough to realize, however, that Weston isn't going to be able to cover up a gun blast (at least - hopefully not.) He manages to get the safety off, but Weston very nearly rips the weapon out of its holster.

There's a struggle. Alex's head is swimming. It feels as though he's looking at himself from a distance.

The gun is still in the holster when he fires it off. There's a sound like a whiplash crack that echoes around the room and somehow - somehow he doesn't feel any accompanying pain from the blast (aside from his eardrums) but he can feel a shower of tile chips strike his ankle and then...

He falls over, limbs twisting at odd angles. He doesn't really feel the ground when he drops. The last thing he sees before he passes out is the fuzzy image of Weston kneeling down to yank the tranquilizer dart out of his leg.

----

This is what happens after Alex goes unconscious:

Officers come running into the room. Weston explains to them what happened: that he was asking after a case when Alex started acting strange. That Alex started talking to someone who wasn't there and shouting for help. Weston saw him reach for his weapon and tried to stop him from hurting himself but he managed to fire it. Then he passed out.

It is not, of course, the true story. But Weston is very, very believable. And he is a federal agent. Nobody questions his version of events.

They call an ambulance for Alex. Weston waits with them until it shows up. The paramedics load Alex into the back of the vehicle and drive off.

But he never makes it to the hospital.

Searching II [Mood]

The time?  Is somewhere between 2 and 5am, any more than that doesn’t really matter.  Hell, even that doesn’t really matter.

The place?  Downtown.  Where the main clubs turn the lights up and close the doors at 2am, other after-hours clubs step in to take over.  Omega is just such a club.  Three floors, three different DJs running at once, three completely different moods.  Want something modern?  Something from the 80’s?  Something less tied by time as the sound and the beat that runs through it?  Well, this is your lucky night.

The place?  Somewhere in the middle of the dancefloor, where the dance DJ is doing a pretty good job of riding the crowd.  It’s crowded, but then would it really be anything else as a Friday night slides into a Saturday morning?  It’s crowded, so there isn’t much space between people.  For the more academically-inclined, this could be a study in Brownian motion.  Body meets body, each has its movement reflected and deflected.  There’s no dancing around handbags.  The house lights are dark, but coloured lights and lasers and diffuse smoke are enough to see by.

Somewhere in that crowd is Alex.  Somewhere in that crowd is a man with black combats (red stripes scattered over the legs), with a t-shirt tucked into the back and a bottle of water sticking out of a pocket.  He dances, arms overhead with glow sticks, bare torso slicked with perspiration.  The room is warm, with the body heat of so many bodies being so active, so close together.  Warm enough for the odour of fresh sweat to mingle with deodorant and alcohol and dry ice and cigarette-smoke pulled in on other clothes and cleaning products and countless other scents.

The music track changes, but it’s pretty seamless.  There’s no dead air, no jarring transition from one track to another.  A cheer goes up, but is quickly drowned out by the rising volume and tempo from the music.

Alex notices, but it’s more of a subliminal thing than a conscious change that alters the flow of his movement.  The DJ may be riding the crowd tonight, but Alex is riding the music.  The music, the beat, the movement.  Maybe Sera was right and this is his ritual.  His way of finding the part of himself that has proven so elusive over the past years.  Maybe this is something he will consider later.

For now, though, all there is is the music and the dance, the crowd and the combination of sensations that settles his conscious, considering, questioning mind.  For now, it’s just him and the part of the universe that this opens up to him.

For now, there is still no sign of anything changing inside him.

But, for now, that doesn’t matter.

Searching [Mood]

You've got to start looking, though.

It’s mid-afternoon, but the light streaming in through the balcony door makes it seem later. Rather than the bright, clear light of day, this is the warmer, tired light that flows over the mountains as the sun makes its slow descent towards the horizon. The air outside is cold – so cold – but fresh and clear. Good mountain air. The air inside is cool, but much warmer than outside. Warm enough for Alexander to be perched on the sofa in shorts and a tshirt.

Perhaps it was time to start looking at certain things in a different way. His Awakening had just kinda happened. He hadn’t come up with any reason for why it happened when and where it had. He’d returned to the same stretch of road – the smashed mirror and the black rubber streak from the truck tyres were fairly reliable landmarks at the time – and hadn’t seen, or felt, anything different to the rest of the highway. The voices he’s heard had never returned. His dreams had never returned to that snowy version of Pike Place. It had just been one of those things. Maybe his Avatar – or the part of him that was his Avatar – had decided that it was just the right time, the right place.

He’d ask, but that particular entity had been rather... absent ever since.

Alexander had assumed that maybe the changes that he’d seen in the others – the Seekings – had just happened too. And so he had waited. And waited. And become more frustrated and constrained by his limitations. He could have done more if he had just been… Better? Stronger? Only he hadn’t been. He hadn’t been able to look back at the campsite, or at the murder scene. He hadn’t been able to hold onto the spirit of Kozlowski, hadn’t been able to do more than see him fade across the barrier between their worlds – the physical and the spirit. Hadn’t been able to get an answer to who did this to you?

So maybe it was time to actually Seek. Whatever the hell that meant to him. Sera had given some ideas and it was probably time – well past time – to try. And this is what bring him here, now.

The only real sound in the apartment is music coming from Alex’s phone. It’s been running through a playlist of dance music. The music has all been without lyrics, but it has all had a noticeable beat thumping through it. It’s the kind of music that he loses himself in during those nights out, when the music and the crowd take over and his conscious mind takes a back seat and just lets him be

He’d started out in something approximating the lotus position, one leg cross over the top of the other. That had become uncomfortable. So he’d shifted a little, perching on the edge of the couch with crossed legs. And he’d tried. He’d tried to meditate. He’d tried to lose himself in the music. He’d tried and tried and tried and… Nothing had happened. No epiphany, no moment of inspiration. Nothing that felt anything other than the couch under his ass and the cool air on his skin and the sound in his ears.

So he slumps back on the couch, kicking his legs out and resting them on the coffee table. The music plays on, but now he’s staring out of the window at the mountains.

This isn’t working.

Maybe because you feel it, and feeling is important

Alexander

Sunday night might seem like a strange night to spend out on the town to most normal people. When a person’s life is centred on the Monday to Friday/9-5 cycle, this would be well past the point that you’d be asleep. But there are those who don’t fit the normal pattern. Freaks and deviants? Well, that all depends on where you stand and how you define such things. Students, shift workers, the young, the old, the unemployed. Those who have stepped back from society and those who society has pushed away. For them, this is as much playtime as hitting the bar at 17:05 on a Friday.

It’s late. Late enough for the clubs that cater for the freaks and deviants to have closed their doors, forcing the revellers out into the streets. Some drift home, some drift to others’ homes to continue the likely-transient-possibly-lasting relationships that chance has brought together. Others drift away for food or coffee. Which brings Alex here, to this 24 hour diner somewhere not-so-far from the downtown club he’d spent the night in. He’s sat alone at a table by a window, looking out over the parking lot. A cup of filter coffee, poured from the jug a little before it turned from strong to burned, sits on the table in front of him, along with a plate with the remains of pancakes. A heavy coat has been dumped on the chair next to him, revealing a mostly-black t-shirt. Mostly, apart from some marks on the back that look like wings under UV lighting. Some bright blue combats, heavy (and warm) boots finish the look.

He sits and watches the occasional flake of snow fall from the sky, and watches the few people walking along the street outside. It will get busier soon, as the world comes back to life and people start making their ways to work.

Serafíne

Perception + Awareness

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

The bars close in Denver at 2:00 a.m. and weekend nights there's a outrush after; places like Tom's Diner get filled up and stay that way for most of the remaining hours between last call and dawn but Sunday night, god: slow everywhere unless there's a show at the Fillmore or the Ogden and even then, after: everyone rushes home. Work, and school, and everything that defines ordinary lives begins anew, at first light.

--

Here, though. The tired looking waitress and the line cook who is fast enough that he can handle both the dinner and the breakfast menus, the sharp blast of cold everytime the doors open. Another: now. This tightly knotted but diverse little group that is larger than it seems because a few of them are lingering outside while someone holds the door to take a last drag or three on dark-papered kretek cigarettes and perhaps a guttering little roach of a once-joint. They know the space and don't bother to wait to be seated (that sign is turned around anyway: PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF it says on the other side) but slip-stream through to a round booth in a deep corner not far from Alexander's singular table.

One detaches herself, though. Plants her hands flat on the table and shimmy-shimmies her way back out as soon as she's slid in and ambles over to Alexander's.

Can't ignore her, the way she deforms the world. The way she makes it seem: brighter, sharper, stranger, wilder. She is wearing: a battered leather jacket over a man's collared, b,utton-down shirt beneath a slightly-oversized plaid cardigan. The lower hem of the cardigan hits her at the hip. The shirt is slightly longer, the scallops of the shirttails cover hit her at the upper thigh at the longest point. She is still wearing that shirt as a dress, apparently. The only thing she wears beneath are thigh-high black tights held up by (visible) lace garters with neat little black-and-white buttons on the bands. Stars march up the back of her legs where the seams of nylons were meant to lay, back when tights were nylons and nylons had seams.

"The hell are you doing out so late?" she asks with a twist of her mouth and a certain rapt scrutiny as she folds herself into the seat opposite.

Alexander

[Awareness too?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

One thing about this time of year: it sometimes feels that it and Alexander were made for each other. Or, maybe, close steps along a single process. The cold, to freezing, to Frozen. His resonance, so out of place during the hot summer months, seems to blend into the background during the winter. It might not be as noticeable to someone less perceptive than Sera, but then that’s something she always seems to be: perceptive. Possibly not in quite the same way as other people, depending on what combination of chemicals is running through her veins and neurons, but she always seems to have a depth of awareness that others lack.

Her presence is announced before the door opens. Or, rather, a presence is announced. The resonance that he picks up on is familiar in some ways, different in others. It’s different enough that he doesn’t assume who it surrounds. So he turns when the door opens, quickly dropping the air temperature in the diner by a couple of degrees as the cold night air races in. It’s a natural enough response, this seeing who’s arriving. It takes a few moments to narrow down its source, but then it’s obvious. Sera. It doesn’t seem like he’s been noticed, as she follows the flow of the group and settles down next to a table. Alexander had gotten used to the way that she comes and goes, with the ebb and flow of time and tide. So if she comes over, she comes over. If she doesn’t, then there will be other times and other places where they will meet.

So Alexander turns back and returns to looking out of the window. At least until he feels the movement behind him, hears the padded footsteps on the hard, tiled floor. She settles into the chair on the other side of the table, and he smiles as she does so.

The hell are you doing out so late? “Late? Isn’t it early yet? I’m pretty sure it’s early. Anyway, right now? Drinking coffee and thinking about pie. Earlier? Getting lost in flashing lights and thumping music. I seem to have lost my glowstick, though.” The coffee, rather closer to cold than hot now, is finished off. Alexander looks over to the counter, hoping to catch the notice of the waitress to get a refill. She’s already moved over to the group, scribbling down orders on her small pad of paper, so he leaves it for the moment. “How about you? Good night?”

Serafíne

Late? Early? Sera favors Alexander with a neat little smirk as he takes her question and rephrases and reframes it to mean exactly the same thing and there's something about the arch-and-challenge of her quite-strangely-direct-gaze that suggests she is either not as high as one might suspect she would be: at this hour, on this sort of night; or, conversely, much, much more fucked up. And she doesn't say anything specific as he allows that he is drinking coffee and thinking about pie, just seams her lovely mouth with that arch little note at the corner.

"Wait, fuck. You had a glowstick? Were you dancing or just - " a drunken little spiral of her right hand, then. Elbow on the table, the dull gleam of the bronze ring she always wears on her index finger, the indecipherable scrawl of her tattooes dark sigils against her skin. " - monitoring the crowd for infractions against law-and-order?"

Alexander

There may be the argument that it’s late and early, that everything, everywhere, everywhen are one. But those conversations need a great deal more privacy, and potentially a great deal more alcohol.

The comment about monitoring the crowd for infractions gets an amused huff. “Oh, my uniform is most definitely in the wardrobe tonight. Or, if you want to get technical, lying in a heap by washing machine. No, I was enjoying a night free of…” There are so many ways to end that sentence, but again there are others not so far away that might think strangely of a lot of them. “…drama.”

Alexander sets the cup back on the table and looks again at Sera, cocking his head to the side a little. “You’ve changed. And I’m pretty sure it’s not a new haircut. It suits you.”

Serafíne

"I went seeking." So she tells him, straight-out. That odd steadiness still evident in her animal-bright eyes. "First time I fucked it the fuck up - " and there is a wry twist of her mouth that almost, but not quite, works itself into a grimace. Layers of nuance in a soft, bruised beat of her eyes. This note, this marking-time, the raw directness of that look cut in two by the beating of her heart as she looks at him and then: away.

And then: back again. Deep breath in, deep breath out, the whole world opening, opening, opening. " - and it sucked. Second time, though - "

Quick twist of her shoulders: that's all except for the sense of rightness about her. The surety, the strange solidity that is sometimes, somehow, the bedrock of bliss. A moment where she is very far away and then another: an orienting, a refocusing.

On Alexander.

"So your nights without drama. You get lost in the crowd and then you go out for coffee and pie and then you go home: alone?"

Alexander

The grimace, the look away: it’s noticed, how could it be anything but noticed? Alexander meets her eyes, rests a warm hand on hers on the table. “Are you ok? I mean, you know… You seem great now, and all. But are you?” Are you fine? Or more than fine?

“I was wondering how that whole thing worked. I didn’t know it was the kind of thing you could go looking for. I thought it just kinda… happened.“ He shrugs. None of this stuff seemed to have much of a guidebook – except maybe for the Hermetics, which probably involved new and interesting places to put your magic wand – but he can’t help wondering, again: when will it be my turn?

But back to the night. “I dunno, lost in the crowd? Become part of it? Feel the music and the crowd and the light and live in that moment?” He gives another lop-sided shrug. “Something like that.”

Alone? “For now. I’m not sure my life is one I’d want to drag anyone else into right now, you know? The line of work isn’t exactly safe.”

Serafíne

"I'm brilliant," Sera tosses back when Alexander asks if she is, you know, okay? And somehow it is all-at-once fitting (how she feels, now. that sense of potential-to-flame, of incandescence) and a truth, whole and entire, as much as it is a kind of prevarication. "After the first time around I was wrapped the fuck up in paradox. Sleepers couldn't see me, not even Dan, for like, a month or - "

"Sucked, man." Neat little twist of her narrow shoulders, a perfectly dismissive shrug. "I'm cool, now, though." And she is. That's true. She suffered. She: came through.

--

"You know. I've never known whether its boys, for you, or girls. Or both. Or neither?

"I mean. If you were free. If your life was one you wanted to drag someone into?"

Inquisitive cant of her golden head.

Alexander

“So many things do, these days.” Alexander breaks the contact, moving his hand away to pick up his empty cup. “I’d drink to brilliant, but I appear to be sadly lacking in anything to actually drink.” He breaks eye contact again, looking again to the counter. This time he manages to catch the waitress’s eye and raises the empty cup. She flicks him a smile and a nod.

He turns back to Sera, setting the cup back at the edge of the table – easier for it to be topped up, rather than forcing the waitress to stretch over the table. “Oh, women. Men don’t do anything for me in the bedroom department. Although I’m still not sure I’d want to, you know? Not right now, anyway. One day. If the right woman came along.”

“How about you? Anyone special in your life at the moment?”

Serafíne

"Mmm." One of those noises one slips into conversation, not precisely meaningless but still somehow a placeholder, but in her mouth-and-throat the placeholder is warm and strangely attentive. Alexander shoots that look at the waitress and she answers his unspoken question and our Sera follows that glance after a half-second of drunken hangtime. She is favoring the world tonight with a compressed but thoughtful smile, rubbing the meat of her thumb over the smooth band of her bronze ring while she breathes in and breathes out and, you know, is.

"There are - " curve of her striking little mouth as her dark eyes dance back to him, around him, over him, both sharp-and-seeking and strange-and-tender at once. She is feeling - delicate tonight. Like the world is made of glass and living on her tongue. " - that shit's pretty complicated, with me. You know? I'm not exactly conventional, when it comes to love or sex. Or how they recombine.

"You know that." Steady-on, the way her eyes linger, fixed and warm and fucked-up and sure, on his. "Right?"

Let the waitress come over with the coffee pot and the refill he wants. Wouldn't phase Sera, not one bit.

"I mean, surely I told you that the first time I met Pan, I asked him to make out."

Alexander

“I know you’re not exactly traditional when it comes to that whole thing.“ His hands gesture some indistinct, indefinable concept. “But beyond that, I don’t really know how it works for you. Although I never really thought it was much of my business, either.” He maintains the eye contact but there’s another shrug as he leaves the subject hanging, leaving it to her as to whether to share or not to share.

It’s perhaps fortunate that Alex doesn’t have a full cup at that precise moment, especially one that he’s taking a drink from. Because Sera would quite possibly have been showered in coffee at the same time he choked on it. But they are saved that particular indignity, and his jaw figuratively hits the table. Seconds tick past as he tries to combine the image he has of the priest, as limited as it is, with his image of Sera. “Um, no. I didn’t know. How did that go down?” Fire and brimstone?

Serafíne

Per + Empathy

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

Alexander

[Alexander doesn't seem particularly uncomfortable talking about what he knows about Sera's attitude to relationships, although he really doesn't know much more than it's not a one-man-one-woman view. He just doesn't want to pry into something that, honestly, doesn't impact on him. If she's comfortable talking about it more, he probably isn't going to find an excuse to leave.]

Serafíne

"He was pretty fucking unmoved, you know? And he asked me if I wanted to confess my sins and be shriven and forgiven and I was all: fuck no, but something about the whole of it made made me think of a shadow that felt, back then, pretty dark and immoveable, and there was this inchoate moment where I had the sense that something was collapsing underfoot and he was cool about that, too.

"Invited me back to his office.

"Offered me tea, maybe. Six weeks later, we went together to hunt one of the Fallen. So. I guess it went well?"

Something supple about her expression: almost serene, strangely fierce. And that tenderness that sharpens and deepens into a complex amalgam of love. We usually break it down into pieces, don't we? Romantic, fraternal, platonic. Distinguishing in from the merely: loving. She doesn't. It all just simmers there: her surest strength, her most vulnerable weakness, that muscular heart.

"You asked me about seeking earlier. No one's told you about it?"

Alexander

As Sera talks, Alex shifts position a little. He keeps the eye contact, keep listening, but rests his elbows on the table to rest his chin on the back of his interlaced fingers. What she says, though, doesn’t really fit in with his image of Pan. An opinionated, arrogant man who assumed that he knew best. But it wasn’t just Sera who seemed to have had a lot of time for the man. Kalen did too, as did Grace.

“I never really got to know him. Not that we had the greatest of first encounters. I don’t think I ever told you quite how close I was to taking a swing at him when he tried to stop me helping Grace in the library.” Another shrug, just as the waitress swings past the table with the jug of filter coffee. “That probably wouldn’t have ended well.”

He waits until she’s refilled the cup and drifted away again, moving on to collect plates of food to deliver to another table, before continuing. “That shadow, what was it? The Fallen?”

No one’s told you about it?

There’s a glance away, at the others in the diner. Nobody close by, nobody seemingly paying any attention to them. Certainly no more than Sera normally attracts, and it would be her getting the attention at that particular table. People have a habit of not noticing him, sometimes, especially when there’s someone as noticeable as she.

“Bits and pieces. I know it’s something to do with getting closer to your avatar, or something like that anyway. It seems like most people feel a little different after having one, although Kalen changed a whole lot more. And wasn’t that just hilarious when he tried sneaking up on me afterwards.” There’s a smile, but not much humour behind it. It hadn’t been a great time, thinking that something else had taken on Kalen’s image. “But nobody’s really said how or why it happens. I just assumed it was like waking up: it just happens when it happens.”

Serafíne

He asks about that shadow, what was it and Sera with her too-dark eyes and slightly-engorged pupils just watches him, the supple sway to the way she holds her head, not precisely still but with some sort of intimation of stillness, some facsimile, as if all the rest of the world were moving around her. Oh, hey. It is.

This quick, tight little smile. Complex, nostalgic, sorrowful. All these things in turn, braided with a dark thread that gleams gold when it is turned to the light: a compassion so specific and acute, somehow so recent, it pains her. She doesn't mind that pain, Sera. Lives within it as surely and as thoroughly and as entirely as she lives within her pleasures, and that is all there, in the space of a few breaths, in the quick-curve of her neat little mouth. But: she doesn't answer that particular question.

"Becoming closer to your avatar is sort of a - " her arms spread on the table. She cants her head and watches the distorted reflection of her body move in the dull-shine on the diner's formica table. " - dryly academic way of putting it.

"But think about the world, right? Seeking. It's not usually something that just happens to you. It's something you go looking-for. Are you getting frustrated with your limitations? Ready to take the next step?"

Alexander

Alexander watches Sera as the rest of the diner continues its motion around them. Steam swirls up from the cup at the edge of the table, drifting with the eddies of hot and cold air that move through the diner. He watches the smile come and go, waiting for the answer to the question that doesn’t find a voice. There’s so much about this woman that Alexander really doesn’t know, but it doesn’t actually matter as much as the things that he does know. She was there when he woke up. She helped him to find his feet. She tried to show him the endless wonder that she sees in the world, even though he pulled away from the contact: too much, too close. She shares what she chooses to, in much the same way that she is where and when she chooses to be.

He frees a hand, though, and rests it on hers again for a moment. Perhaps the contact is surprising, given the way that he’s withdrawn from contact in the past. But, then, circumstances were different. Contact itself isn’t something he is against, something to be avoided. He’s consciously aware of how physical contact can be comfort, and it is something he offers. Even if it’s not something he accepts, withdrawing from it when he’s the one struggling to cope.

Alex snorts when Sera says it’s a dryly academic way of putting it. “Yeah, that’s probably why it doesn’t really make all that much sense, you know? It’s not like I can take it out for dinner and date to get to know it a little better. Is it? Hell, I’m still not entirely sure who, or what, it is.” He pauses, then, breathing. Sighing. He looks down at the table, seeing the same distorted reflection in the table. Little detail, but patterns of light and shade as they block out the light from the ceiling lamps.

“Frustrated? Yeah, you could say that.” Frustration that he wasn’t good enough to hold back Kozlowski from crossing over to search for the black, endless river that they all, eventually, sleep in. Frustration that he couldn’t imitate what he had seen Sera and Kalen do when the Message had pulled them into another world, looking back to see what had flowed through time before their arrival.

Serafíne

Sera has these rather deft, rather small hands - thoroughly framed with ink. Tattoos on the sides of her fingers, wedged around her hand, circling her wrist. Words, mostly, though in stylized fonts so ornate or narrowly fitted onto the smallest sort of canvas they are near-to-unreadable. Dates maybe. Other scraps of script that must have had meaning to her, once.

Maybe they still do.

Alexander rests his hand on top of hers and she glances up at him, quick and keen and (yes) wry. Turns her hand over beneath his so her own is palm-up. The most absurd tattoo there: scissors with the blades on her middle and index finger, the handles on her palm, turning into a shark that corkscrews toward her inner wrist. These are not soft hands. She's a musician and has the callouses to prove it. The ring on her right index finger hums with someone else's resonance: sundrenched. soaring. Makes the room feel warmer, almost immediately. Maybe that's how she can bear the forward-march of winter in that absurd wardrobe of hers.

"Alexander. Your Avatar isn't some - vaguely indifferent god dwelling in some other-realm, you know? I mean, I suppose it could be if that's what you believe. It's part of you. It is you; some fragment of you, the same way you are some fragment of the universe, the first movement, whatever the fuck you wanna call it. However you see it."

A sharp breath in. Her head all aslant, something about the cast of the light in the room or perhaps the cast of the soul in her body makes her seem: brighter. Burning. Haloed. Maybe it's a trick of perception, the specificity of that awareness. She is smiling though, privately, aware of her self, of the breath in her lungs, of the fine, imperfect absurdity of the moment.

"I don't know how you do magick. If it's mystical or sensory or some strange, bastardized, fucked-up science-y shit, or god or the devil or a sparrow that lives in your throat and pecks the secrets of the universe onto the skin of your tongue. But you can take it out on a fucking date, if you want to.

"You can meditate. You can dream. You can learn to wake up inside your dreams and consciously move them. Some people run, or play music, or study esoteric lore and etch sigils from long-dead languages into their skin, or hike or fuck or whatever to find their way there. Through.

"I mean, it's easier if you find someone whose beliefs match yours. Or hell, a Tradition, a whole load of someones. Because they give you a skeleton, a scaffolding overwhich you can lay your skin. Through whose teachings you can find your way back to yourself. Right now, you're building the frame from the inside out, you know? That's fine, that's cool. You've got to start looking, though."

Alexander

Sera talks, Alexander looks down at her hand as he listens. He lifts his hand to study the tattoos on her, following the pattern of the scissors up and around her wrist. His fingers hover over the ring, feeling the ghost of someone else there. His hand rests down on hers again, although with care not to touch the ring. That feeling, that soaring radiance, isn’t familiar to him. Maybe another who had passed on from the city, someone before his time?

“When you put it like that, it almost sounds like we’re bordering on schizophrenic. I’m told that people see their avatars in different ways. I’d ask if that was down to how we believe it should be, but I didn’t even know the things existed until after you scraped me off the road that afternoon, so I tend to think they appear in a particular way that’s specific to them. Even assuming that something from that screwed up day was mine making its presence known. I’m still not entirely sure, you know? I remember the dreams, I remember the nightmare that came after. And I’m not sure of it makes much more sense than it did then.”

Alex looks up from the table, dark eyes searching for and meeting Sera’s again. “I’ve tried talking to people about how they see the world working, but none of it really sounds right to me. I thought for a while that I’d have something more in common with Sasha, but it turns out the whole belief in fate thing is a bit of a sticking point. So all I really can do is work this out as I go along. Talking to you and Kalen does help, though. I don’t think I say this often enough to you guys: thank you.”

His hand leaves Sera’s and reaches into a pocket, pulling out a Zippo lighter. He flicks it open, sparking the flame into life with a thumb, before standing the lighter on the table. The hand waves over the flame, feeling the heat rising off it.

“I guess I’m just feeling my way through it. A lot of it so far has been… I’d say sensual, but I’m not sure that’s quite the right way of putting it. I’m not saying any magic words, I’m not praying to anything divine. It’s more that certain things sensations seem to have more depth to them than they used to. Like the first day, when everything seemed so much clearer, so much brighter.

“I think of all the people that I’ve talked to about this stuff, you’re possibly the one who gets that most.”

Serafíne

Dark eyes dart down as he fixes on the pattern of the sharkscissors. They weren't inked on her at the same time, but seem so unnaturally natural together that no one who guesses ever gets it right.

"Sometimes people think we're schizophrenic. Sometimes we do go mad. Or maybe some of those folks we think of as mad are just seeing and hearing entirely real, entirely different worlds. I mean, all the definitions are pretty shit, as far as I'm concerned. Where's the wonder, hmm?

"And it's fine for you to think about your Avatar however you want. Separate, mysterious, unapproachable. I didn't - " a brief, sharp breath out, " - really reach down and acknowledge and accede that she was me and I was her, all along until my last seeking. I really went seeking then. Before that, she kinda - " wry again, "pushed me into the seeking. And after, I was scared that she was going to - take me over, somehow. Swallow me whole. Steal the part of me that was me and turn me into her.

"It's kinda like a hero's journey, you know? A quest. An odyssey, maybe, or a descent to the underworld to steal the queen of summer back and banish barren winter. You can prepare yourself for it, though. You can court it, if you want. If you're ready." And god, she's passionate about this.

"When do you feel most yourself?"

Alexander

[Arete, forces: sensing heat. Coincidental, so diff 4.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Alexander

“Oh, I can definitely believe that there are some people locked up and drugged up who are seeing things that other people are blind to.” Alex waves continues to hold his hand over the flame, looking down into its brightness as there’s a bending of reality as he pushes. “I guess I was lucky that I had you guys around when I woke up. I dread to think how hard it would have been to get some kind of control over this without it.” His vision deepens, colours becoming more distinct. More vivid, where things were hotter; duller where the cold air of the night sucked away heat. “Maybe some people just don’t believe in wonder. I can certainly understand how that can happen.” His fingers move, dancing between eddies of warm air that rise from the flame.

“It sounds like there’s no right answer to much of this. Just answers for the right now.”

When do you feel most yourself?

It takes a while before he answers that one. His brow furrows a little, showing the silence as time taken to thing rather than an attempt to avoid the question. He does answer, though, although he’s quieter than he was before. “I think I’m most sure of myself when I know what I’m doing is right. I don’t mean legal, I mean really, truly, right. Trying to give the Message his identity back. Standing up to Victoria. Trying to give peace to the families of people who have been dragged into the less wondrous side of what we do. It’s like the doubts and the questions disappear, so all there is is… me.”

Serafíne

"Someone told me once," the twist of her mouth in that moment is so briefly and deeply evocative: of love, and pain, and all the accretions between, "that I should find something that made me feel - a certain way, right? And do it, again and again, until it came true. That that's ritual: right? Intention, repetition. Focus.

"I was feeling - " her eyes close. Her throat does, too, but only just, "filthy and he said I should find something that made me feel clean, and do it until it became real.

"He was right. It worked. You could engage in ritual of your own, you know. To push yourself toward that threshold, yeah? To court it. To call to whatever it is in you that animates you and your magick. And you need to listen, too.

"Sometimes they push you and you fall down a rabbit hole, like Alice, right? Sometimes they just beckon, and it's all up to you. You have to go look. You have to seek. Make sense?"

Alexander

There’s another silence, there. A weight hanging over Alex, or holding him back. Something that doesn’t make it as easy as it could be. But, then, maybe that’s part of the odyssey. He doesn’t meet her gaze, now. No, there’s the flame and the swirling currents of air flowing above it. Her presence is felt, but beyond their table? The clattering of cutlery on crockery, the sounds drifting out from the kitchen, the other conversations carrying on around them? They drift from notice. He asks a question, although it’s maybe a little unclear who he’s asking it of. Sera? Himself? The universe, maybe?

“What happens if doing that turns you into something you don’t want to be? What happens if trying to do the right thing turns you into the monster?”

He takes a breath, letting out a slow, deep sigh. “I imagine Victoria started out thinking that she was doing the right thing. But look how she ended up. The road to hell, and all that.

“Who the hell gave me the right to decide what’s right?”

Serafíne

"Everyone has the right to decide what's right. Fucking everyone. I mean, a helluva lot of them get it wrong, or don't care, or are all me first, or God, or Leviticus, or whatever. But everyone makes a choice for themselves. Right? Maybe with consultation, maybe because you read some rules in one book or another. Maybe because you feel it, and feeling is important.

"And I don't think, not for one goddamned minute, that Victoria thought she was doing the right thing. She was murdering people and eating them because she decided that they were lesser and she wanted power and didn't give a fuck how she got it. All you have to do is figure out your rules and maybe test them against other systems. You know: like no cannabalism, or do unto others as you would have them do until you, or don't be a fucking asshole.

"Alot of people get to be powerful assholes. Trying, actively trying, to do the right thing will not turn you into a monster. Especially if in the course of trying to do the right thing you periodically stop yourself and ask: am I being a cannibal? Am I fucking people over for Reason or God or because it makes me feel righteous or because I'm more concerned with saving my own ass, or my own image, or whatver? Am I helping someone? Am I taking their needs and wants into consideration? Am I treating them with love, as enlightened beings who have the right to make their own choices and their own mistakes, at least up to the point where those choices and mistakes do not cause other people harm?

"I mean, magick's hard, but that bit - all those fucking bits. I'm pretty sure you have them all down, man."

Alexander

“For all their flaws, I don’t think the Order generally take on murdering, flesh-eating psychopaths. No, I’m pretty sure she started out as human as the rest of us. Along comes some way of getting an advantage over the bad guys, and then it’s one little step after another little step until? Until she had to be stopped, because all those little steps had made her into something else.” He waves his hand with a little more energy, a little closer to the lighter. The flame flickers and dances in the moving air.

“A while back you asked me what I’m scared of. I never gave you an answer.” Finally he looks back up from the flame, meeting her eyes again. “Now I have. Right now, it’s not so hard to tell right from wrong. But, hell, if seeing more of the world than before has done one thing, it’s that there are so many shades of gray. Is it right that people are preyed on because the group of bad guys who are doing it are less bad than the ones they replaced? Is it right that there are people trying to engineer a turf war with no regard to the people caught in the crossfire? The definition of right is just as fluid as the rest of reality, and cares about as much about who it grins into the ground. How do you know when the gray you're stepping into is too close to the black when the shades are almost indistinguishable?”

Serafíne

"None of that is unique to what we are, Alex." The creature returns, earnest and passionate at the self-same time. "Not a goddamned piece of it. Right? It's part and parcel of all human history. It's - " a short, sharp breath out. " - hell, I'm not a fucking professor, but you shouldn't be afraid that you might someday do the wrong thing. Error is written into the process. It's inscribed in our skin. There's no - "

A supple twist of some blooming something threads her brows.

"Philosophers and ethicists and poets and preachers have been wrestling questions about absolute and relative morality for thousands of years. There is no -

"There are people who - "

An indrawn breath; this abrupt cessation has her snapping a look away from him, toward the windows. The dark and quiet streets beyond.

"Even at the end. You still have a choice. Everyone does. And it's not all monsters and shadow-wars, you know? You get to see the world. Touch the building blocks of reality. Live with awareness and intention in a way that most people never will. Remember that, okay?"

Alexander

There’s a faint smile, tinged with a wistful melancholy. “If only it was that easy. It’s not like the monsters and the wars care who they drag into gray with them. It just seems so damned hard when there’s always something end of the world coming along. I do try, but…” He shrugs, but there’s a catch in the movement. A catch followed by a slight turn, so that he can turn his coat over on the seat next to him, so that he can unzip a pocket and briefly check the contents. There’s a brief glow in the pocket before a couple of chemical glowsticks – one green and one blue the type you snap to light up - are pulled out. He turns back, offers them to Sera.

“Sometimes it’s easier to find… if not wonder, then at least peace, in the mundane. I suppose that’s another time where I feel most myself. When I find a way to drown out the thoughts and the doubts and just, well. Be.”

“I doubt I’d be the first to find some forgotten part of myself on a dance floor, right?”

Serafíne

Something about her in that moment - the strange, elegant incision of her profile against the impressionistic darkness, the supple thread of her mouth. The way she holds herself so-still in a manner that seems - perhaps strikingly, for a Sera - so very far away.

Singular.

Aching.

But she closes her dark eyes, swallows around the knot in her throat, finds herself wanting in ways both nameless and attainable, on the other side. Gives herself over to it, too, the way she so often does. Even as he checks his pocket and reaches for the glow sticks. She's turned back to him by then, gives him a rough, wry twist of her mouth. Opens her hand for one and runs the meat of her thumb along its edge.

"Maybe it's not mundane for you, then. Maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe that shit's your ritual, you know? Movement, exertion, exhaustion. Losing yourself, fuck if I know."

Alexander

He releases one clear plastic tube as Sera pulls it away, twisting the remaining one around in his fingers. “The hell if I know. But, I dunno. Maybe it’s like what you were saying about people putting themselves in the way. What if that’s what I’m doing, and the part of me that I know about is stopping me from finding that other part that I haven’t worked out? Does that even make sense? Like… the wood and the trees thing?”

Alex shakes his head, not really sure it makes any more sense to himself that it may – or may not – make to her. He sets the glowstick down on the table, picking up the still-lit zippo and holding it between them. The flame continues to flicker and dances in the air currents circulating through the diner, pushed into motion again every time the door opens and cold air spills into the enclosed space. The flame is watched for a few seconds more before he snaps the lighter closed.

“Does this shit get any easier?”

Serafíne

"Nothing worth doing is ever really easy, Alex. You know that, right?" Quick little smirk. Less raw than her earlier expression but still somehow hunted, haunted. Withheld. "I mean, it's a cliche but there's truth to it. But if you want a smooth life, hell. Learn some probability tricks and move to the Carribean and make yourself quietly rich and live on the beach and watch the sun set every day. The challenges get harder.

"The rest of it, though. All this back-and-forth in your head? It will get easier.

"If you let it."

Sera twists in the booth then, looks back at the crowd she came in with. They're getting up again now, having consumed some solid, greasy food, they're ready to leave.

"We're going to an after-hours club, if you wanna come."

Alexander

“Yeah, I know. It would just be nice if reality could give people a break every once in a while, you know? But then that would need reality to actually care.” There is a moment of reflection when Sera suggests disappearing to a beach somewhere and twisting reality to live comfortably. It does sound nice, living without much of a care other than watching the sun set every day. But? “As tempting as that sounds, I think I’d get bored. After all, where’s the challenge in it?” A smile, a genuine smile, returns to his face. “I’ll keep in mind for retirement, though.”

Unvoiced: assuming I survive that long.

Sera twists and offers an opening for the night to continue. It had been winding down, when he had come here. He’d come for food and for coffee and to kill time before the next train to head out west. But now?

Alex rolls his shoulders, working at a knot somewhere between his shoulder blades, before picking up the so-far-untouched cup of coffee waiting at the edge of the table. “I’d like that.” The cup is quickly drained and a few notes – covering the pancakes and coffee, along with a decent tip – are left by it on the table.