You’re not exactly selling the new neighbours {Fade?]

Grace

[Awareness!?]

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

Grace

It's around noon when she shows up at the motel, runs into Doctor Madhouse, in his invisible van outside. Invisible, because he's totally naked and can't help it (so he says).

Whatever.

She's got her red coat on -- the one with LED strips sewn into the seams, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. It's a grim look on her face, when she knocks on the door, but the sight of Sepúlveda had her blushing, and the redness has yet to retreat out of her face, making her look an angry, blotchy mess. Somebody spilled red paint, or butchered the application of makeup? She never wears makeup.

"Hey, Alex? It's me. It's Grace," she says. It's hard to feel the presence of him. All she can sense is the lingering Work of Sera, and some other -- a river-feeling thing. None of it Alex.

Alexander

[Stuff inside. Diff 3, I think. ]

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 4) ( success x 1 )

Alexander

[Bah, and again]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 5) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

The motel is nothing special, surrounded by a great deal of nothing special. It’s somewhere to stay on the way to somewhere else, rather than being an actual desination. The place doesn’t even seem to have a name: the sign outside just reads MOTEL. A closed-down pool sits in the parking lot, waiting for better weather. A few soulless burger chains sit nearby, attracting some of the truck traffic that passes through.

The room feels mostly like Sera, although with a little something stoic and psychedelic mixed in. There’s something of the elements starting to creep in, too, but no arctic chill. There’s a knock at the door and a name called, a familiar voice. Or what would be a familiar voice, had it been heard. There’s no answer. Maybe he’s out? Asleep? Either way, there’s a window open letting the chill air of spring into the room. Music from some random, local rock radio station leaks out.

Grace

"Alex? You there?" she asks, knocks again -- louder.

Well, shit. What is she supposed to do now, with the... clothes and all?

That, and all these wrung out feelings.

She tries the door, hoping maybe it's unlocked. Maybe he doesn't feel like being behind a locked door after so long?

Alexander

Again, there’s no answer to the knock or to the call. The door, though, is unlocked and pushes open with a bit of a squeak. The gurney and body bag still sit abandoned in one corner of the room. One of the beds had obviously been slept in, blanket half-thrown off the side of it; a broken lamp sits on the little table next to it. The small kitchen has a couple of empty coffee cups sat in the sink and a well-brewed jug of coffee sat in the drip machine. Above the sound of the radio comes the sound of running water, filtering through a closed door. That feeling of some river comes flowing through the door, something without start or end. There’s no sound apart from the water and the radio, and whatever traffic noise drifts in from some nearby highway or trunk road.

Grace

She creeps into the room. This place is something, humming like it is. The noise of water from beyond a door makes her think, okay, maybe he's in the shower? But still, no sense of Alex. The door, she closes, lest some wandering passerby see a gurney and a bodybag inside the room and begin to wonder what the hell is going on in there.

Then, she lays the duffel bag on the bed, and looks around. Places like this sometimes have little notepads, don't they? She could always leave a note. Sorry to have missed you. Here's your clothes.

Alexander

The sound of running water comes to an end, and there’s a new sound coming from what it obviously the bathroom: the sound of humming. It’s not a familiar tune; certainly nothing from any kind of music chart from recent memory. There’s the sound of movement, now – the sound of a shower curtain drawing back, feet padding around on a tiled floor, a towel rail squeaking as something is pulled off it.

The door swings open, revealing an Alexander. He’s changed: there’s less of him than there had been two months ago. His hair is longer and grown out, although the scruff on his jaw has been shaved back to nothing recently. Other than some scabbed-over knuckles, he looks uninjured. And, other than a towel, he’s not wearing anything. The beige scrubs had been thrown under the slept-in bed.

“Whoa, fuck!” The surprise of someone else’s presence here hits him; the sense of recent working in the bathroom might give a hint as to where his attention had been. Alex startles, looking quickly for something to use as a weapon, when...

“...Grace?”

Grace

"Oh! Shit! Sorry, I..." she points at the duffel bag. "Clothes! For you!"

If she was still getting over the sight of Dr. Sepúlveda, this doesn't help. The pink already in her face turns to red.

"I'll uh..." a cough. She points to the door. "Yeah."

The weirdest, most uncomfortable smile ever crosses her face. "Hi."

And bye, also, because well... Obviously Alex needs to get dressed now. Can't have a conversation with him while he's holding up a towel... She trots off to the door, quickly quickly.

Alexander

Alex looks from a rapidly-reddening Grace to the duffel on the bed as she draws attention to it. “Ah, hell, I thought Kiara was coming along this evening with some clothes. I wasn’t expecting...” There’s a deeply indrawn breath, followed by a long sigh. Grace has turned towards the door, heading rapidly outwards, but he calls out before she gets a hand on the door handle. “Wait.”

The duffle is grabbed and taken back into the bathroom, the thin wooden door closing with a shove from his free hand. His voice comes through the door, “I’ve had too much damned time on my own.” There’s the sound of the bag being opened as he looks through what’s been brought for him to wear.

Grace

Too much damned time on his own, he says. That makes her pause, though she doesn't really turn back around until he's safely back in the bathroom.

"I... can understand that," she says, and goes for a chair by one of the beds.

The duffel bag has new clothes in it, everything from feet to head. Socks, shoes of three sizes (because she didn't know his), jeans (of a high-end, boutique kind, in a couple different colors) and a black sweater. All this topped by a knitted maroon beanie. Underneath everything else, there's a couple of t-shirts that seem Grace-inspired. On one, a bored-looking black cat is pawing a mug of coffee off a table, with the text "I do what I want" underneath. On another, the text "Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman, then always be Batman" dominates. Someone must have gotten sent the wrong size a time or two?

Alexander

There isn’t any more conversation while Alex is in the bathroom, although Grace might be able to hear the clothes being pulled out of the bag and looked through. A few minutes later, there’s some seconds of silence. Seconds with Alexander stood just on the other side of the bathroom door, forehead resting on it, before he heads out into the main part of the motel room. He isn’t sure how this conversation will go, any more than any of the others that are to come. Kalen, Sera, the others in the city. Would they treat him with suspicion about what he might be? Welcome him back? Only one way to find out... And, hell, it might help answer some of his own questions too.

The door opens and Alex walks back out of the bathroom, leaving the spare clothes folded and stacked on top of the duffle bag. He doesn’t move to sit, though. He starts the water in the sink, grabbing the two used – and probably only – cups to rinse them out. “You want a coffee? Or Sera has a ridiculous amount of booze stashed here.”

Stalling? Yep.

Grace

Sera's contribution makes the corners of Grace's mouth rise slightly. Why not? "Coffee with some booze in it?" she asks. Doesn't ask him how he is, because hey -- you just get broken out of prison, you're going to have feelings.

"Sera wants you to relax, I think." A pause. "Do you like the clothes? I didn't know what you'd go for, but the people at the store were helpful."

Again, not really discussing anything important.

Alexander

Alex sets the still-wet cups on the counter and pulls the jug out, giving it a sniff. The contents get thrown down the sink and the various cupboards are checked through until he finds a new filter. “I don’t know how much of this was for me, and how much is just for somewhere for Sera to run to. Or someone else to come to.“ He gestures vaguely at the walls, at the unknown resonance still lingering there.

Alex settles back to lean on the counter while coffee happens, with all of the gurgling and spitting that entails. He picked out a pair of blue jeans that are a little loose on him, along with the “I do what I want” tshirt. His feet are still bare, padding quietly on the floor of the room.

He absent-mindedly rubs his hands together, feeling the coarseness of his knuckles. “How are you, Grace?” The question is asked at the floor, or maybe his hands, but Alex does look over to her at the end.

Grace

The jeans are loose. She remembers a more solid Alex than this one, so when she tried to explain to the shopkeeper what size he was in gesture and comparison form, it came out wrong.

How is she? Well.

"Having fights with everybody," she says, smirks. "I don't know. Something about me and having opinions."

And, she's had to abandon the Office. And Ginger. And she can't be with the guy she loves. She's lacking in that usual playfulness today, despite the t-shirts. As happy as she is to see him back, she didn't really know how this meeting would go either. At least he wants to talk.

Alexander

Kiara had said something about people being mostly ok, and Grace had been one of those he’d wondered about. Grace, Kalen and Sera were the ones that he was (or, maybe, had been) closest to. But, then, the last time he and Grace had spoken hadn’t ended well, and there was the awkwardness of the party at the Chantry... “Who is everybody? I thought everybody pretty much got on ok?” An unspoken before, tagged on the end.

The filter gets towards the end of its cycle, but Alex doesn’t push off to fill the cups just yet. It needs a little more time to finish dripping first. “How bad is it really out there?”

Grace

"There's a bunch of new people in town," she says. "From New England, or somewhere up there. Where the Hermetics have declared war on the Technocracy again."

She lets that just rest for a bit, hanging in the air like a bad idea.

"Elijah found some amazing timing for telling me I treat him like shit, and getting pissed off at me because he didn't have a say in what plans were made for your retrieval -- because he wasn't at the meeting. He's called William now.

"To his credit, though, he wanted to send in an army after you. Better than some ideas people have had."

Like, for instance, just leaving him there to rot, because they were afraid.

"Right now, in Denver, there's no Mage armies patrolling the streets. Or Technocratic monsters either. It seems like they don't want a fight either."

Alexander

Now Alexander turns to the filter machine, although whether it’s because the coffee is ready, because it’s something to do, or some small way to break eye contact with Grace Is unclear. Maybe it’s all of the above. “Why did they come here? To get away from the war, or to bring it here? What did…” There’s the sound of coffee being poured, as that sentence fades to nothing. “How is Kalen?” Three small words, but a question with so many potential answers.

There’s a thunk and a hiss as the jug slides back onto its hotplate. “Well bad timing comes together just as often as we randomly bump into each other. But that doesn’t sound much like Elijah. I didn’t know him all that well, but he never seemed like the type to lead an army into battle. What happened to him?”

There’s more to say, but there’s something holding him back from giving voice to the words. “Whiskey?” Alex holds up a bottle, checking what he should pour into Grace’s coffee.

Grace

"I wish I knew what they were up to here, to be honest. Probably thinking that since Denver is a strategic target, somebody should be here to report back to the hivemind what goes on? Maybe they're here to take over the Chantry and turn this place into a pompous elitist Hermetic's idea of a paradise?"

She shifts in her chair, scratches her nose, because even she knows the look of utter disgust on her face isn't pretty. She really doesn't want to tell Alex what at least one of their ilk has said about his.

"One thing though, the ones who are here don't seem to be the type to run away from a war."

"Kalen is..." Not sleeping. Manic and beside himself. Kind of an exaggerated normal, if you know Kalen. "Well. He could be in a better mental state, but all of us could. He was very worried about you. I'm sure you knew that already," she says, huffs out a humorless laugh.

Alex asks about Elijah, and Grace responds tersely. What happened? "He joined the Order of Hermes." And apparently, that's all she needs to explain herself. "I'm being... too hard on him, I guess. He'd just found out about you, and freaked out. I lack any patience these days, though. Whiskey is a go. Very much some of that."

Alexander

[Per+Emp?]

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

Grace

[Grace isn't usually one to speak of the Order of Hermes in such a directly insulting manner, seeing as how she practically lives with a Hermetic who is decidedly not a pompous elitist. This might lead one to come to the conclusion that she has found at least one new person in Denver clinging to the worst stereotypes of Hermetic arrogance, and yes -- is quite disgusted by what she found.]

Alexander

“Hopefully they’re not of the same frame of mind as the guys who thought firing up a war between the vampires and the Union without telling us was a good idea.” There’s a weary sigh as Alex turns back to the mugs. He had only been intending to add the whiskey to Grace’s coffee, but now he adds a slug to both mugs. This was starting to look like one of those conversations. “Please say that there’s nobody else looking to poke sharp sticks either of those particular ant nests.”

That look of Grace’s is noticed and studied, but it’s obvious that the bad taste doesn’t originate from him. (Although give it a few minutes and it might originate from the coffee.) “That’s a look. What aren’t you telling me?”

The two cups are held with one hand, a finger looped through both handles, and the bottle of whiskey picked up and carried over to the bed with the other. The bottle is dropped onto the bed, freeing up a hand to pass one cup to Grace before Alex sits on the edge of the mattress.

“Yeah, I can’t imagine Kalen took it at all well. He knows that I’m out?” It’s almost a rhetorical question, but there are reasons behind it. “Kiara told me that Ginger is dead, I wasn’t sure how well the news had been passed around. If you see him before I do, tell him I’m fine.” Fine: the universal term for not good, but nothing I want to deal with right this second.

His eyebrows rise in surprise when he finds out about Elijah’s joining of the Order, the rest of his expression hidden behind the cup that he’s in the middle of taking a drink from. “I really should spend more time with the guy. Well, with everyone, really. I guess I’ve been a bit distant. I guess it’s understandable that he’d freak out if he hadn’t heard anything, though. Just… wow. William. That’ll take some getting used to.”

“I doubt the universe will care enough to provide, but hopefully things will stay quiet for long enough for you to find your patience again.”

Grace

"Like I said. I really wish I knew what all these new people in Denver were here to do," Grace says, reaches a hand out for the coffee.

He asks what that look was about, and she sighs. Grins a sardonic smile. "Like I said, I've been having fights with people. One of the new people in town is a Hermetic who's got a tree trunk shoved up her ass, and is very very proud of herself for being so proud. It doesn't bode well."

She smells the coffee. Smells the whiskey in it, leans her head back against the chair. Alex is 'fine'. He certainly seems to be doing well enough to get coffee and have a conversation, which is about eighty percent of normal human interaction. Fine is an okay place to be right now.

"Enough about me and my personal communication problems, Alex. Do you have any idea of what you'd like to do next? It's okay if you don't. I wouldn't blame you."

Alexander

“You’re not exactly selling the new neighbours. Although that does sound like the Order that Alyssa warned me about.” Alex shrugs, taking another sip of his coffee. It doesn’t bode well, but he’ll wait and make his own judgement if and when he encounters anyone who looks like they’re sitting on something uncomfortable.

He shifts up the bed, enough so that he can swing his legs up and rest back against the headrest. His fingers interlace around the cup, holding it safely on his lap. “I’m not sure.” Alex rests his head back against the wall, the ceiling with its vague nicotine stains suddenly seems to be an interesting place to look. “I think I want my life back. Assuming…” Assuming a lot, but nothing that gets immediately voiced. “Assuming that I can. I know some things need to change, though.”

Serafíne

That's when the front door of the motel room opens. Oh hey. Here's Sera.

She has a key and well, Dan has the key. They aren't sneaking up but the key and the lock and the conversation and her very, very distinctive resonance that is as soaked into the walls of this room as it is into her skin. The wards are her own, after all. So the place - at least inside - feels like her even in her absence. More: between than anything else. Liminal, that is it: some refusal of definition, as if one could choose simply to let go of labels and exist in a state of possible/flux.

"What do you think needs to change?" A flash of her dark eyes over Alex. She is: remarkably sober for a Sera.

Grace

Sera walks in. It's an event that has Grace glancing at the door, giving a salute to those entering with her coffee cup. Someone else being here is a good thing.

"He's changed," she says, smiles a bit of a genuine smile at Alex, even as he peruses the ceiling, looking for omens in the splotches of brown. "You've melted, man. Flowed downhill, too from the feel of it. I'm sure you're up to the task of changing things. That part's easy."

The booze has made her coffee a bit cooler, invites her to drink it, which she does. Chemical happiness. A poor substitute for the real thing. Alex, though, with his wanting his life back, that's something to be honestly happy about, isn't it?

Alexander

The door wasn’t even locked, unless Grace had flicked it off the latch while he had been changing. Alex turns to look at the door as it opens, just starting to free his hands from each other to push up from the bed and… And settles back again, when he sees that it’s Sera (and Dan?) coming in. The urge to get up fades as soon as it had arrived, although the thump of his heart in his chest from the surprise arrival will take a little longer to settle. There’s something of his own, changed, resonance hanging over the room in addition to Sera’s, and maybe something of Jim’s. Some remnant of recent Work lingering.

What do you think needs to change?

“Mostly, me.” Grace says that he’s changed, and he nods, shrugs, meeting her eyes as he does. “I guess I figured some stuff out. Like how pushing everyone away isn’t good for me.” He nudges the bottle of whiskey with a foot, pushing it towards the side of the bed closest to the door.

Serafíne

Here is Sera, and Dan of course, sliding in behind her, a solid, tattooed hand on the creature's narrow should. That impression one has of her: the sudden, dirty glamour of her presence. Golden curls and a battered leather jacket. Sunglasses even (especially) in the cheap no-tell motel room where she once spent three days hiding out from: everyone. Everywhere, ashes in the back of her throat.

This glance for Grace, as she speaks. The dark glasses, the dark eyes. The sense of: attention, of awareness, of consideration. Neat little kink of a smile responsive to Grace's own. Then Alex.

"Not an easy thing to learn," Sera, quiet. The supple, blooming grace of her smile beneath the gleam of the dark glasses. "I'm glad we have you back so you can figure it out, though."

--

Does she notice: his jumpiness? His awareness. She must. She sees so much. Feels so much. Has been through: so much that she must recognize that moment of startement, movement, surge. Perhaps feels some resonance answer to it, somewhere in her body. Somewhere beneath her ribs, in her viscera. Somewhere.

"We brought you some clothes and shit. Some cash. A new phone." Dan hefts a reuseable shopping bag and sets it down on the bed nearest Alexander. He inserts: "Have a few other errands to run but we can come back later, if you want company. Or not, if you don't."

They'll hang around for another few minutes, but soon enough Dan reminds Sera that it is time to go.

Grace

Grace nods at Alexander, agreeing with him rather wholeheartedly. It's something she'd wanted to chew him out for the last time they'd met. He'd tried to isolate himself in order to protect everyone else, when that doesn't even stand a chance of working. But he'd kicked her out before she could get to that point.

He'll want company. She'll want to call Kalen and tell him to get his ass here, because Alex is just done with solitary anything, and as far as she can tell, doesn't blame anyone for what happened. Except, maybe...

"You didn't do anything to cause this to happen, you know? That's all on the idiot who thought it would be a great idea to kidnap you. Having pushed people away doesn't make you responsible for what happened," she says, gulps some coffee.

"Kalen blames himself, I think. Keeps kicking himself for going on vacation. That is about as ridiculous an idea as you blaming yourself, you know?"

Alexander

Sera’s is a flying visit, but he does manage to give her – and Dan - a small smile and some thanks for bringing along some more bits and pieces for him. Money, which at least gives him some additional freedom to get out and around the city if – when – he chooses.

After they leave, though, he does ask Grace, “Is she ok? She seems…different.” Simply a case of two months away, making her seem that way? The pressure of his situation? Something else? Either way…

“I know. This was…” Again, there’s a pause where there should be words. Something held back. He shakes his head, a frustrated little movement. “I know. And it wasn’t your fault, either. I know we didn’t exactly part on the best of terms, but I get that it was a mistake. One that that woman didn’t do anything to clear up. Did you know she came to my place to…I’d say apologise, but she wasn’t in the least bit apologetic. To be honest, I don’t actually know why she even bothered. But, anyway, I believe the term is ‘shit happens’. Which is most definitely has, and will undoubtedly do again.”

There’s a snort and another shaking of the head, although this one comes with a shadow of a fond little smile. “Throw something at him for me, will you?”

Grace

Grace nods into her coffee, when he says that their last altercation had been due to a mistake. "I thought maybe... I didn't know how you'd react to my coming by, at first."

She drinks some more, lets it warm her. "I'm glad you aren't still pissed off about that."

"But um, what's different about Sera? "

Alexander

“We all screw up sometimes. I was pissed at the time, but I got over it. And, honestly, I do think it was more aimed at Ihsan than you. She was enjoying her little game way too much to care.” Alex shifts again, bending a knee and tucking one leg under the other. “Besides, I have other things to be pissed about.” Another drink of the coffee, a thought of whether it should be refilled with more coffee or more whiskey.

“She just seemed strangely sober. She isn’t on her purification thing at the moment, is she?”

Grace

"Well. You know Sera. If she were on something all the time, that would be too predictable," Grace says, drinks more coffee with a smile.

"I'm glad that you want to rebuild your life. Among choices, it is a good one. And you know I'll do everything in my power to help you with that."

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.

I think there's been a misunderstanding here

Alexander

[Before we start writing, Arete. Sensing stuff so TN4, -1 for taking time, aiming for 2 successes]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Alexander

[And Int+Med?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

Alexander

They say that the city boasts 300 days of sun a year. Many of those days may include sun at some point, but the climate has a tendency to the wildly variable. Today? Today is not one of those days. Today has been peaceful and calm. There hasn’t been much more than a breeze to slowly push what cloud there is over the city. Maybe, to those who pay attention to such things, the hovering calm had muted the wailing horns and sirens of traffic forcing its way along crowded roads.

So the sky is mostly blue, with a few high, wispy clouds overhead. And here, in the park, the grass is green and flourishing in the warmth of the sun. The water of the lake laps gently at its shore nearby. There’s the sound of activity carrying on the air from the sports pitched not so far away and an occasional, rhythmic pounding marks a jogger running through their laps.

And Alexander? Alexander is lying on that grass, by that lake, with eyes closed and breathing slow. He almost seems immobile – frozen – until you watch him long enough to see his chest rise and fall. Next to him is a small rucksack, a discarded tshirt, and a bottle of water. Boots and socks are paired up, sitting by the rucksack. He could be asleep? Only he isn’t, quite. It started out with wanting to feel the flow of the breeze around and over him, so that’s what he pushed his will against reality to do. Then the mix of the warmth, the calmness, and the hypnotic beauty of sensing the currents of air... It’s easy to wait for thought to slow and stop and freeze in its tracks and simply be.

Lavinia

It's a beautiful eighty-one degrees fahrenheit today, and she is out running. She has a pretty easy schedule, one that doesn't demand that she actually be doing much any given day. Lavinia was running, because running felt fantastic, because the air felt fantastic, and most importantly she had recently acquired tennis shoes and she needed to actually wear them in. She now had four pairs of shoes. It was starting to get to the point of ridiculous, she had decided. Since coming to Denver she has all but doubled the number of shoes she owned after coming to Denver.

The sky was blue, with some wispy clouds overhead. She had her hair pulled back in a high ponytail, curls bouncing when she moved, choice in clothing made it abundantly clear that Lavinia Cervantes had legs that went on forever and, whilst running, she was content to just be in the zone. That is, of course, until she saw a person. It's telling that the things that come to the tall blonde's mind when she saw a person laying in the grass that she wasn't entirely certain if they were alive or not. She missed a lot of the big cues, like the sound of someone breathing and it was just a little bright for her to possibly catch the rhythmic rise and fall of someone's chest.

Now, there were things that crossed her mind- if she was wrong and this wasn't a dead body, it was for the best that she not disturb said person because saying sorry, I thought you were a recently made corpse doesn't seem to set well with most people. If she woke the person up, they wouldn't be so forgiving.

So, Lavinia started her approach. Slow and steady and cautious. There is a feeling that comes with her, and it is that feeling that signals her arrival more than anything. It is that feeling of something beyond walls, beyond definitions, something that would be and always had been. Something that was larger than the mortal frame carrying it. So, there she was, approaching Alexander to make certain he wasn't a dead body. Because that's a normal concern. Totally.

Kalen

[How distracted by Resonance are we today?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )

Kalen

Kalen adores Washington Park. It has been some time since he's seen one of the friends he met there, because, at this point he considers a spirit a friend without so much as the batting of an eyelash. He senses, for the first time in a long time, something angelic in the park. He remembers Lavinia, mostly from the art gallery.

He has a green tea smoothie, because he has just discovered the glory of green tea smoothies. Through perhaps slightly distressing circumstances, but it is hardly as though his tongue did not heal.

Healing, after all, is what they do. Sometimes more quickly than others, perhaps. But. As a rule.

He approaches Lavinia and Alexander, though, really, more Alexander. Lavinia may feel like an angel, but she is hardly the first being Kalen met who has had that kind of resonance. Certainly not the first with whom he has associated divinity. Alexander gets the most of his focus for now.

Alexander

[Int+Med still?]

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

Alexander

He can feel it. Oh, he can feel the way the breeze drifts over his body. But he can really feel it. The way that the warmth of the sun heats the ground, creating tiny thermals as the air warms and rises. The way that the air sinks as it passes over the lake. The occasional eddy as some nearby object or other blocks and redirects the flow. The swirling currents as he inhales and exhales.

Something tugs at the edge of his awareness – or maybe his Awareness – but it’s something subtle and far distant for now. Unimportant for the moment, really. Whatever happens, happens. Much like the hopelessness of trying to stop the wind in its tracks, or the flow of water downhill; It can be done, but at the moment it’s far too much effort to try.

There’s a slightly quickening of his breathing, but otherwise Alexander lies still on the grass and lets the flow of air and time and the universe wash over him.

In another world, maybe someone could make an Ecstatic out of him in the end.

Lavinia

She finally got close enough to recognize that the person in the grass wasn't probably in need of medical attention, but rather, said person in said grass was probably having a good moment just communing with nature and, therefore, should probably be left alone, but then there's movement and then there's people and she suddenly becomes aware of the fact that, oh, shit, I'm not alone and this is now awkward. She clears her throat, carefully starts to steer herself along her way. Wiggles her fingers and gives a little half audible "Hi," to whichever of the people- either Kalen (whose name she vaguely remembered) or Alexander (whose name she had no idea of, but she had been making sure he wasn't dead because nobody can be that sort of serene without pushing up daisies).

Abort mission, abort mission!

Serafíne

(Awareness.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Kalen

Kalen gives Lavinia a little nod. "Hey," he says quietly. And then he drops onto the blanket to sprawl beside Alexander, not touching him him but not far from it. It is, in some ways, a thing might more expect from a cat, the intent watching and the silence and the being only inches away.

No. We lie.

It is not quite like a cat. Because Kalen is not impatiently pawing at Alexander and meowing insistently for attention. At least not yet.

Alexander

[Awareness]

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

Alexander

[Dex+Ath]

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

Serafíne

"This is fucking good enough - " Rick is grumbling, though his grumble has a fond edge to it that excises the immediate meaning from the words and changes them incrementally into something ever-so-slightly else. He and Dan and Dee have the heaviest loads, Sera the lightest. A picnic blanket slung over one arm and a kale-pineapple smoothie in the other hand. The quartet tramp through the park to a small knoll with a view of the water and the soon-to-be setting sun: picnic basket and reuseable grocery bags and a pair of guitars and a giant tub of CheezBallz (TM) and there is other conversation, backwards and forwards and forwards and backwards, which we will not take long to relate as it is offscreen for most of the principals tonight. Low and laughing, familiar, sure.

They are an attractive quartet: Dee is a tall girl with deep dark hair and skin so fine and pale and clarified that strangers call it creamy. Summertime, in a mile-high city, she must be well-committed to sunscreen to keep it that way. Dee is wearing a knee-length, flouncy skirt in a fine dark navy with two rows of white brick-brack trimming the bottom hem. Dark hair piled and perfectly pin-curled atop her head. Rick and Dan have the requisite hipster-garb: skinny eans and band t-shirts, beards in varying lengths (short, dark - Rick; longer, blond - Dan) and Vans or in Dan's case schlubby Birkenstocks he picked up at Buffalo Exchange. Dan (or someone) has painted his toenails a lovely metallic teal.

When they arrive at the picnic site, he offloads his guitar case and leans it against a convenient tree, sets down: cooler and reuseable shopping bag and gives Sera a hand unfurling the picnic blanket.

Alexander

That something at the edge of being noticed, it turns out that there is more than one something. Sleepers had passed by completely unnoticed, lost as he was in... not exactly pulling the world apart and putting it back together, but figuring out how it lies. Where the edges are, the strong points and the weak ones. Maybe – with luck – where he might be able to push a little harder in the future to do more than simply sense. To change.

His breathing speeds a little more, not far from normal, when Lavinia approaches. She had been slow and unthreatening, her distance kept as she closed and watched for signs of life. Had that been the only presence, Alexander’s return to wakefulness and alertness might have been rather more gentle.

The second presence, though. The one that gets closer and closer and drops down and almost touches. Now that is rather more threatening. The resonance is new and unfamiliar and... powerful? A danger. A threat. It takes a little while for conscious thought to fire up, for the image of Kalen to register and be recognised. But even then, this doesn’t feel like Kalen. This isn’t the approaching storm. This is something else.

As the presence gets closer and lowers to the ground, Alexander rolls and kicks up. Instinct pushes his up and away from the newcomers, turning to face the threat. His breathing, calm and peaceful just a few moments before, is now faster and deeper. His bare feet dig into the soft, grassy ground. He’s up and ready to fight, turned a little and arms up ready to fend off what might physically come.

His gaze switches between Kalen and Lavinia. “Who the fuck are you?”

Kalen

Kalen tilts his head, then realizes what the fuck that is about.

"Mmmmmmmm...Grace said she thought I might be a clone. I'm relatively certain that is not true." There is a hint of a smile. "I suppose I should just be glad you didn't throw me onto the ground this time, Alce."

And he waits. Patient. Calm. If anything seems off other than the Resonance it's that calm. The lack of shadows under his eyes. Peace and Kalen were not so much things that got on.

Lavinia

She doesn't jump.

Things change very quickly and she doesn't take a step back, doesn't hesitate, doesn't seem like she is making a reach for anything because where the Hell would she keep it? She's not got a lot in the way of fabric on her personage. If she managed to hide a lethal weapon on her then she has very much created a pocket that exists outside of space and time and the last thing one has to worry about is the fact that she might be carrying a knife and more about the fact that she made a bag of fucking holding. There was no bag of holding, therefore, nothing to fear. We digress.

She takes in the tension, takes in the way that Alex rolls up, practiced and comfortable and ready for something Very Bad to happen and she puts her hands up, just enough to not be a threat. Just enough to indicate that she isn't going to snap and that this? This isn't a dangerous situation.

"Hey," she says, "just passing through, I'm Lavinia-" she then looks between the two males, "-I think there's been a misunderstanding here, let's just breathe and talk it out… okay?"

She wasn't going to walk away now, she was pretty sure that this guy could render the dude she met at the art gallery (Kalen, right? He looked like a Kalen) into a fine powder and she couldn't exactly walk away and let that happen, right? Of course right. Though she does try very hard not to wince when Kalen says something about maybe being a clone but probably not.

Serafíne

The blanket is old and worn, and plaid of course, fringed at the edges with a few strands of dried grass stuck in the nap of the flannel from the last time it was dragged outdoors for this particular purpose. Dan and Sera open it up until it covers an area of grass nearly as large as a queen-sized bed. Dan slips off his sandals to step onto the blanket and trample it down. Dee follows suit while Rick anchors one end of the blanket with the cooler and starts digging around for the bottle of Malbec and stemless red-wine glasses they brought with them for the party.

Sera is still at the edge: alert, aware, a vision in a little white sundress so fine as to be translucent, worn over crisp black lingerie. It is harder for her to slip off her combat boots, so Dee wades over to give her a hand. Takes the smoothie in her right and holds up her left while Sera balances and tries to make the laces come up almost by magic or - you know - fingertips. Some combination of the two.

Alexander

It’s not the first time that one of the Awakened in the city has surprised Alex. It’s not even the first time that Kalen has managed to do it, not so far and not so long ago from the here and now. At least this time hasn’t – yet – ended up with bruising, or worse.

Alexander takes a longer look at Lavinia when she tries to reassure him that she isn’t a threat. His gaze lingers for a moment longer before it returns to Kalen and stays there. She’s still in his peripheral vision – he’s not ignoring her – but she’s not seen at the threat right now.

Kalen – or the man who looks like Kalen, sounds like Kalen, but just feels so damned wrong for Kalen – is the one getting his the focus of his attention. He’s the unknown. Given the strange stuff that he’d seen, and the even stranger things he’d heard about, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that someone could look and sound like another person. He’d felt the change in Grace recently as she had ‘upgraded’, but that was a broadening and deepening of what was already there. This? This is different.

“No way are you Kalen. You might look and sound like him, but there’s no fucking way. So who. The fuck. Are you?”

Kalen

Kalen rolls his eyes. "Exactly who are are so very sure I am not. Which is an interesting enough situation, I admit."

He pulls out his phone and taps on a few keys. Then a few more.

"Check your messages sometime," he says, rising to his feet. "Get back to me. I'll be at home. Call and warn Grace if you must."

Lavinia

(skip me, please!)

Serafíne

(also no reason to wait for me since: my screen froze and I had no idea anyone had posted. and am not really interacting with folks!)

Alexander

Alexander’s eyes narrow a little,watchful and wary as “Kalen” stands and offers his words. There’s no attempt at explanation, but then standing in the middle of a wide-open public space possibly isn’t the best of places to discuss things that a certain group of well-dressed individuals with their towncars and mirrored glasses would just love to know about.

There are times when he wonders if he’s a little too paranoid about thing. And then there are times when he thinks he’s not paranoid enough. Having his friend possibly snagged by some kind of... B-movie baddie and cloned, or whatever? Or maybe this was a spiritual thing – it wouldn’t be the first time, and wouldn’t be the last time, that something from the other side of the Umbra had interfered with things in this world.

He pauses before replying, watching. This is going to be hard, but it’s worth a shot...

[Arete, sensing spirits. Base TN4, +3 for no focus, -1 for practiced. So very much spending the WP.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Lavinia

[Do I notice this? Per+aware]

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

Kalen

Kalen sighs. "Really. I commend your vigilance." Even if it doesn't exactly please him right this moment.

But then he turns to leave. He does not run. He does not seem terribly concerned Alexander will shoot him while he isn't looking. He heads away with the same easy pace he approached with. There are conversations that could be had and there are things he might try to say, but here, with an audience...no.

Serafíne

(going to go, actually. night folks!)

Lavinia

She looks confused. She looks unabashedly confused, actually. She hadn't ever really interacted with Kalen, save for the moment that they had exchanged numbers. Truth be told she mostly remembered hearing a circle jerk joke from a guy who was a foot shorter than she was and laughing hard enough that her ribs hurt. She looked back at Alex, hands still up, and she knows she should keep her mouth shut, but she blurts it out anyway.

"If you know how to look a little closer at people, like, the metal they're mode of, you might have a little more luck assuaging your concerns?"

No, this is not a teachable moment, Lavinia. Walk away.

Alexander

Alex watches Kalen turn and leave, forcing – really forcing this time – his will against the universe. It’s only that force of will that gives him the fleeting sense of the spirits. There’s the sense of crying coming from the lake, but that’s ignored. Kalen is the focus – his focus – and... It doesn’t feel like he’s been infested with a spirit. Not unless it’s very different to that man in the broken window, or the other in the forest or...

There’s a sighing growl deep in his throat as he watches and waits until the figure disappears, frustration at – once again – not knowing what the hell is going on. The tension drops a notch or two, the arms come down and he doesn’t seem quite so ready to leap into a fight. But he’s hardly what anyone would call relaxed now. In other, better circumstances he might be more approachable, more amenable to meeting up with another Awakened. These aren’t exactly better circumstances, though.

So he looks at Lavinia, considering her for some moments, considering his words. “You have no idea what just happened, do you. That isn’t the man he appears to be. I don’t know who or what he is, but that is not the Kalen I know.”

He stands, watchful. He doesn’t close, doesn’t offer a hand in greeting. Doesn’t even offer his name, although more from having other concerns .

Kalen

[Thank you for scenes!]

Lavinia

She doesn't come any closer, but she is watching him. The way that she's watching him has shifted. There is a tension in her shoulders, a readiness in her core, a balance in the way that she carries her weight. She's looking at Alex, ready and waiting, like she needs to know whether she needs to defend herself. She looks at him like she's sizing him up, that if push came to shove- could she take him?

Lavinia isn't sure. That seems to account for the tension.

"I don't have a standing relationship with… Kalen?" she asks herself more than anyone else, "Kalen. So I don't have a basis for comparison. He doesn't exhibit any of the things that I would look for when trying to determine whether or not someone is possessed or no longer in control of their faculties, though. But, again, I don't have a basis for comparison."

She doesn't ask his name, but she does continue with caution, "do you need some kind of assistance? Are you doing this on your own?"

A beat.

"I'm being really pushy, I'm sorry. you just seem really spooked and I need to know whether or not this is something I need to be concerned about."

Alexander

“I do. That doesn’t feel like Kalen, his resonance isn’t right and he’s too different. He’s just...” he shrugs, “wrong. Right now, I don’t trust him.” A phrase that won’t mean a lot to someone who doesn’t know him, but might give a clue about how wrong he really did feel.

He still isn’t relaxing, but the tension seems to be more down to the strange situation and that he doesn’t know Lavinia than any kind of hostility or expectation that there will be the need to fight. He takes a deep breath, trying to force his shoulders down to their usual position and to work the nerves from facing something unknown out of his body.

His head cocks to the side, a puzzled expression passing over his face as she asks if he needs help. “Do I look like I need assistance? And if I do, wouldn’t you expect me to ask the people I know for it?” He’s just not giving right now. But then he has just found that his friend might have been the victim of... something.

“I’m fine.” Liar. “But I think you should get back to your run, and be very careful if you meet him again.” Again, he stands and watches and waits. He isn’t threatening, but he’s not backing down and not relaxing any further. Not, at least, while Lavinia is here.

Alexander

[Man+Sub - Totes ok!]

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

Lavinia

[Are you really okay?]

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

Alexander

[Alex is shaken and he's trying not to show it, especially to a stranger. Her being a complete unknown isn't helping. He just doesn't want her here right now.]

Lavinia

"You do look like you need assistance," she tells him, nods like this is a matter of fact, "but you don't look like someone who is stupid, so… yeah, I don't know what I was-" she stumbles with that, shrugs because she doesn't quite know what to say, "anyway, didn't think you'd take it because that would be dumb. Anyway."

She takes a step back, reaches up to retighten her ponytail, which didn't really need it but we digress.

"Just… take care of yourself, okay?" She takes another step back, turns, and the tall blonde turns to get back on the road. And, with little ado, she turned slowly to go back on her run.

Alexander

As with Kalen turning to leave, Alex stays quiet and watches. There isn’t really anything he feels the need to add. She’s turning to leave and, at the moment, that’s really all he wants. Another time, another place, another disaster and he might have been amused at her awkwardness, thanked her for her concern. But this isn’t any of those things and he just stands and watches as she retreats.

Only then does he take a deep, sighing breath and really, physically, relax. He steps into his boots, scooping the bottle and other pieces of clothing into the pack before that gets slung over a shoulder. He makes his way out of the park, in a different direction that the others had taken.

He's a Verbena I used to know

Ian

The ambient temperature in Denver was just slightly above freezing. Cold enough to still feel like winter (or at least, the end of it,) but warm enough that the mass of dark clouds overhead was just as likely to mean rain as snow. When Ian arrived at Washington Park earlier in the evening, the air was still dry. But the threat of precipitation loomed over the city like a blanket. He was running, like he often did on this particular trail. It was becoming a habit.

The path took him on a loop around the park before he cut inward toward the lake, loping past a handful of slower runners on his way toward the gazebo (where the girl with the odd resonance had been two days earlier.) That, of course, was then the rain hit. Slow at first. Delicate pin-prick droplets that left specks of wetness on the ground. Soon it built into a light rain. When a drop of it managed to hit the back of his neck and crawl icily down his spine, he exhaled irritably and jogged into the cover of the open gazebo. Once there, he stopped to catch his breath, hands on his hips as he looked out at the darkened sky.

Light rain tended to come in sporadic shifts. Possibly, if he waited a few minutes, it might let up.

(Possibly he'd be running back to his car in the freezing rain.)

Alexander

[Because he's been trying stuff out, and because he had time to kill... Sensing heat, Arete 1. TN 4, -1 for taking time, 2 succs to last.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Alexander

[Extending,

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (4) ( success x 1 )

Alexander

There were a lot of reasons why people were in the park, and a lot of them tended to be shared. To exercise, running along the trails through the park. To meet, the occasional couple walking closely together through the early evening light. To walk the dog. Or just to pass through.

One figure, sat near the lake, is waiting for a friend. There are no plans to meet, no exchange of text messages or voicemails or phone calls. It’s just that this is the spot where they had met twice before, and it seemed like the most likely place for it to happen again. It had been months since that last time with no signs of a certain scarecrow appearing again. But, then, there hadn’t been any warning before. So he comes and he watches and he waits for his friend.

As he waits, he plays with a lighter. It flicks open, lights, close. Flicks open, lights closes. At one point, Alexander stops to feel the heat radiating off the flame before the same cycle restarts. Only afterwards he’s looking at more than just the lake. His vision glows with the sensation of heat – or the lack of it. So he sees the slight cooling in the air just before the rain starts and it suddenly seems like a good time to find cover. The single drops multiply into rain and he runs to the nearby gazebo. He’s not as prepared for weather today as usual – rain hadn’t been on the forecast – and so a little cover while the rain (hopefully) blows itself out seems to be a good idea. There was that gazebo not so far away.

So head ducked down, he runs under cover. And then he notices that he’s not alone. “Oh! Ian. Hi.” Awkward? Quite possibly.

Ian

[Awareness]

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

Ian

How long had it been since the last time they'd seen each other? Not since that night when Ian had played Kiara on the basketball court. He hadn't spoken to Alex then - nothing beyond a brief greeting. The truth is, they'd seldom spoken to each other at all. At least not about anything that wasn't some immediate threat that they were in the process of eliminating. They'd played soccer once. There hadn't been a lot of conversation then either.

But that was probably just as well, as far as Alexander was concerned. They hadn't exactly started things off on the right foot.

Ian hadn't really expected to see him. But then, it was a public park. And with the rain, there were bound to be other people heading for shelter. He didn't notice Alex's resonance right away. At first it was just this quiet note of winter lingering in the background. But when he caught the sound of approaching footsteps, he glanced over his shoulder toward the sensation and matched it with Alex's face. It took slightly longer for Alex to notice that he wasn't alone. Ian's mouth twitched with amusement at the sudden greeting.

"Hey."

He'd clearly been out for a run, judging by his clothes. Drawstring sweats and a sleek black windbreaker. His hair was a bit damp from the rain. Absently he ran a hand through it, pushing the wet strands off his forehead.

"Enjoying the weather?"

Alexander

[Awareness too]

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

Serafíne

AWARENESS!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 6 )

Alexander

Alexander glances around the gazebo quickly, seeing if there was anyone else unexpected there, before returning his gaze to Ian. Their first meeting hadn’t been the best on record – Alexander coming away with an impression that he was being being played with in some kind of game that only Ian knew the rules to. But then there had been other times that they had encountered each other. Almost half of which involved fighting and shooting and, oh yes, someone getting decapitated.

It’s the little things that can make it hard to relate to someone, although the tide of chance had been remarkably reluctant in bringing the two of them together anyway. Who knows, maybe if they had gotten off on a better foot, maybe managed to be sociable a little more than the time stargazing outside the Chantry with Sera, maybe maybe maybe.

But that wasn’t the case, and Alexander still doesn’t quite get the other man. And so he steps back to lean against one of the rails running around the edge of the gazebo and crosses his arms across his chest. Maybe he’s cold? Or maybe it’s out of some unconscious statement of the barrier between them. But, then, our Alex isn’t all that metaphorical.

“It was better dryer. Cold I can handle. Wet when you’re not expecting it is just nasty. How about you? You don’t really look like you were expecting it either.”

He looks out into the darkening park, towards its closest edge, and nods in that direction. “Shame the sky isn’t clearer. The three of us could have looked tried to find those nuns on a carousel again.”

Ian

Ian made a low sound of agreement, following Alex's gaze across the landscape of the park. "I was hoping it'd be cold enough for snow."

Alex's posture was distant and protective. Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the company. Either way, Ian let his eyes settle on him again, seemingly thoughtful for a moment. His own posture felt more relaxed, shoulders moving with the steady rise and fall of deep breaths. His pulse was still coming down from the run, beating a quick rhythm within his veins. He wet his lips as he settled next to Alex, leaning back against the railing with his palms propped up on either side. There was enough space left between them so as not to make Alex feel intruded upon.

He did smile though, tentatively, when Alex mentioned the night they'd spent stargazing.

"You left out the orgy." After a beat he asked, "How've you been?"

(Did he actually care, or was he just making conversation?)

Serafíne

The three of us?

Yeah, Sera's out there. She's not jogging in the park and she's not looking for the sending of a long-dead Archmage of the Celestial Chorus and she's not actually dashing to get in out of the rain and they can feel her: Alexander vaguely and Ian a little more sharply though neither can feel her as well as she can feel them. They are burning bright on the periphery of her senses, distinct enough that she shivers when her attention slips toward Alexander's chilly resonance, that the muscles flanking her spine tense when her heightened awareness slides to the sense of Ian in the air - bracing against the sensation of something - well, at the edge of the predatory.

--

See, ,there she is. Cresting this little knoll, which curves gently against the horizon, framing the view of the boathouse from the gazebo. The spare frame engulfed by a too-large leather jacket, cigarette a signal-flare in the gathering gloom, face turned up toward the sky as that light rain - that drove them both to seek shelter - continues to fall.

She's not really beelining in their direction, thought she is sort of wandering that way.

Alexander

“Maybe it will be, once the sun finishes setting.” Ahh, the weather. The nice, safe conversation topic used the whole world over when it’s not really clear what else should be discussed. Next up, so, any holidays planned this year?

Alex snorts, amused, when Ian reminds him about the missing orgy. “How could I have forgotten about the orgy? It would be a whole other constellation without that.” He looks Ian over, taking in the running gear and the slightly heavy breathing, and turns, still leaning on the railing but looking out – and up at the clouds and falling rain– instead of in. “I don’t think we’re going to be seeing any of that tonight though.”

How’ve you been? Now there’s a dangerous question. The answer starts, “I’ve been fine,” and is followed by a pause. Maybe a moment to consider whether to stick with that safe, stock phrase that lets the questioner gloss over things? He glances back to Ian, turning his head to do so. “I wasn’t. Now I’m ok. You?” His gaze returns to the park, looking to where a faint red glow – of the cigarette, or of Sera’s body heat – slowly comes into view.

“How’s Sky?”

Ian

I don’t think we’re going to be seeing any of that tonight though.

"Oh, speak for yourself." There was a wry lift to his tone, a cant of his head as he regarded Alex. And maybe he was being serious (it was Ian, after all - who the hell knew what he got up to on Friday evenings,) or maybe he was just playing to the obvious joke. He could feel the visceral pull of Sera's resonance moving steadily closer at his back, but he didn't turn to watch her approach. Waited instead for her to either pass them by or join them beneath the sheltering roof of the gazebo. For a moment the rain picked up, pattering more insistently against the wooden boards above their heads. It wasn't long before it lightened up again.

Alex answered his question with short, honest words. When he turned the question around by asking about Sky, Ian looked at him with what might have been surprise. He didn't immediately respond.

"I wouldn't know. Haven't seen him in a while."

(After all that? Interesting.)

"I'm doing fine though. Except when I'm not. I think that's true for all of us." After a beat he added, "Haven't had anyone try to kill me recently."

(Implied but not spoken: I haven't had to kill anyone either.)

Serafíne

I can intuit things about emotional states in this very gazebo!

Awareness-as-empathy?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )

Ian

[We shall see (subterfuge)]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

The rain is light enough that it never endangers her cigarette. The odd droplet hits the dark blue paper and the splashback is enough to make the cherry hiss sometimes, but never comes close to putting it out. Makes her smile, the sound, this smile that is somehow both contained and outflung, open-armed, tinged with -

- well, what the fuck would they know what it is tinged with, two dozen yards away in the gloomy, cloud-banked twilight.

--

By the time Sera reaches the gazebo, her face is wet. The scattered spatter of raindrops streaks down her sharply drawn features. The high cheekbones, angular nose, the fine jaw - even her elfin ears. And smiling like she's remembering someone or something she loves. Her hair is a damp, tangled mass of curls that she has pulled away from her face, twisted over her left shoulder. She's allowed some of the shaved fringe to grow in a bit - so the usual fine dark fringe has a bit more texture, the beginnings of a bit of a pincurl, which makes her look softer even though she isn't - ever - soft.

Sleeves of her leather jacket are pushed a bit up her forearms, revealing the leading edge of the tattoo on her right forearm - the angular crow's skull - and all the dark ink on her hands.

She smells (more than) a little bit like pot. Beneath the leather jacket, a damp white t-shirt clings to her torso - this hint of a black lace bra so clear beneath. She's paired that with a crushed red velvet micromini thigh-high lace stockings, seamed up the back, garters and combat boots, as you do.

Gives Alexander a little finger-wave and Ian a much more contained smile.

Doesn't interrupt. Does put out the cigarette before she joins them beneath the shelter of the gazebo.

She smells so fragrantly of cloves.

Alexander

The awkwardness that Alexander’s been feeling is still there, but it does seem to be less than it was a few minutes ago. So far he’s not feeling like something to be toyed with by the man with the air of the feline around him.

Alexander smiles and gives another amused snort, looking over to Ian again as he does. “Oh? You’re off to the planetarium later?” He knows what Ian was suggesting – and it wasn’t stargazing – but he tries to keep the joke going a little longer anyway.

The moments stretch out before Ian answers the question about Sky. Alex studies his face but can’t read anything more into the words than their own, simple meaning. “Oh. Ok.” The reaction – after the effort than Ian had gone through to find Sky, and to free him – was indeed interesting. “I got the impression you guys were close?” Their precise relationship had never been discussed – it hadn’t really been any of Alex’s business at the time anyway.

I think that’s true for all of us. Alex nods, looking back into the rain again. Then his smile fades as Ian adds on the part about nobody trying to kill him. There’s a moment followed by a breath. “I have. It wasn’t personal though. Just some bastard who thought he should have some peace to beat up his wife objecting to being interrupted.” There’s another snort, without the amusement behind it this time. “He’s learning the error of his ways.”

He turns, leaning back on the railing again, as Sera arrives. She gets a smile, warm if restrained. “Hey. We were wondering if we’d get to see nuns having orgies again tonight.”

Ian

"Closeness is a fluctuating state," Ian replied, somewhat cryptically. "He was just a guy I slept with a few times. I didn't want him to die, and I'm glad he didn't. But we have different lives." It was an honest, if overly simplistic explanation. Probably more than he would have given Alex (or Sera) a few months ago.

Had anyone ever mentioned to Ian that Alex was a cop? Surely someone did, at some point. Maybe he saw something. Recognized the gun that Alex carried. Maybe not. Alex himself had never mentioned it. As he related his story, Ian watched him - taking in the way that he spoke. The details of the circumstances. He made a soft sound in his throat. Ambiguous enough that it could have meant a lot of things.

"Lucky you were there."

(Lucky that the man didn't succeed.)

And there was Sera. Softer and quieter than Ian often saw her. His gaze turned to survey her for a while, returning her contained smile with one of his own. "Rain suits you."

And then, to Alex, "I'm pretty sure that's the title of at least one porn film."

Serafíne

Sera isn't precisely keyed in to the memory Alexander and Ian had been riffing on - the night stargazing, her one-off comment about nuns and orgies. Maybe she was high then. Maybe she's high now. Maybe she's always high,

always fucked up,

always celebrating something, somehow, somewhere, somewhen.

And she's wandered into the middle of a conversation to which she was not wholly privy, the details are lost in her current haze and that's okay. She's lets the cold drizzle and its dampening noise swallow them. The air feels close and strange.

"If someone's still a nun in this day and age she probably takes her vows pretty fucking serious. Or she had the world's shittiest home life." This near little shrug, strung through with the tension she forces into her shoulders to keep herself from shivering. "I could probably find you something, though. An approximation, at least. If all you wanna do is watch."

Then Ian tells her that rain suits her and she flashes him another glance. This one is rather more seeking than the last, and just as easily deflected. Sera smiles, to herself this time, and closes her eyes.

He's right. The rain does suit her. Paints a damp, gilded light over her sharp angles, folds her back into her skin. "I'm just stoned," she counters, or perhaps demures. Which is also true. She is just stoned. "I have another joint if you want some."

Alexander

“Tides.” Alex pushes himself up so that he’s say on the railing rather than leaning against it, leaning forwards so that his elbows are resting on his knees, before continuing his own rather cryptic statement. “We’re pushed together, then we’re drawn apart until we’re push together again.” He shrugs. “I’m glad he’s ok though. If you do happen to bump into him, tell him I said hi.”

Lucky you were there. Alex shrugs. “The neighbour called. Turns out the noise was drowning out America’s Next Top Model and they wanted it stopping. I get there with my partner, no answer at the door and the fight still going on. One broken door, one broken arm and a fair bit of bruising later and suddenly trying to assault officers doesn’t seem like such a great idea.” There’s another shrug and he meets Ian’s gaze. “Shit happens.”

But then he’s cringing at the thought of a porn movie about… “That has got to be the biggest turn-off ever. Or clowns. Are nun clowns a thing? Drifting around silently in their big shoes and red noses, just waiting to pounce on the sinners?”

He smiles, laughing quietly and looking at Sera after her offer of a joint. “You think I need a joint if I’m coming up with ideas like this?“

Ian

"Sure, if you're offering."

He probably shouldn't be smoking anything so soon after running. When his body was humming with endorphins and his lungs still pulled in breath at a slightly elevated rate. But it was Friday, and he didn't have anywhere to be except here. In a fucking gazebo at twilight in February with two people whose feelings about him were ambivalent at best.

It could have been romantic, in a slightly different set of circumstances. Instead it was cold and wet and a bit awkward. But that was alright. Sometimes cold and wet and a bit awkward wasn't the worst thing.

"You know I was on that once. Not as a contestant. Just... in the background. But I remember them shooting while I was doing a thing in Shanghai."

Apparently Alex found nuns to be about the opposite of attractive, and Ian glanced at him with a laugh. "I'd totally fuck a nun. If she was hot. Hell, I'd probably do it for the story alone."

(Of course he would.)

Serafíne

Sera gives Ian this lovely, vague smile when he accepts, if she's offering. Of course, she's offering, she's always offering, she has a bag slung beneath her leather jacket and over her t-shirt and slings that around and digs inside and pulls out a pack of Kreteks and finds within the kreteks a single joint, tightly and expertly rolled. Taps it out and offers Ian both: the joint and her lighter unearthed not from the little bag, but from the right pocket of her leather jacket.

Glances back at Alex as he cringes over the thought of a porn movie about... and gives him a neat little shrug. Sera doesn't really watch porn. It's way to impersonal.

Then Ian announces that he would fuck a nun. If she was hot. Or just for the story, and Sera gives him a sharper glance, sidelong. "That's a shitty thing to say. Is it true?"

Glances back at Alex, then. "Who's Sky?" Quietly, and still unexpected.

Alexander

Alex doesn’t make any move when the joint comes out and if it does happen to head in his direction he’ll just pass it on.

“A thing? A dancing thing?” He’s not really expecting much detail, even if there is an answer. It’s something to ask, something to talk about. Something to… if not draw them together, maybe not keep them apart.

Ian talks about sleeping with a nun for the story. Sera’s not sounding happy about it, and Alex? He stays quiet and looks back down at the floor of the gazebo. He agrees with Sera, but isn’t quite sure whether Ian is cracking a tasteless joke or not. The guy is pretty hard to read, after all. So he lets it slide and doesn’t comment.

Who’s Sky? Alex takes a breath and looks up at Ian, wondering who should answer. He can, at least, start the story. The short version, at least. He looks down at the ground again as he starts. “You remember the thing with the spirit down at the reservoir last year? Sky was caught up in the whole thing. We – and Alyssa – got him out.”

Alex looks back up at Sera – not even glancing at Ian now – as the last part goes unsaid. The first time I saw Ian behead someone.

Ian

"I've done worse things," he offered in reply to Sera, though to his credit, he didn't sound especially proud of it. He took the joint and the lighter from her hand, putting the latter to his lips. There was a low gust of wind that swept past, and he used his hands to shelter the small flame of the lighter. When he was done he handed it back to her, pulling in a slow, shallow drag of smoke. It'd been awhile since the last time he'd gotten even remotely high, and for a moment the taste of it distracted him.

"I probably wouldn't tell, if I did," he admitted. "At least, not like that." He didn't know if that was the part Sera was objecting to, but it was the part he personally found the most distasteful (the idea of violating someone's privacy.) "But would I sleep with a nun if she offered? Yes. Theoretically."

He let Alex relate the beginning of the story about Sky, going quiet for a while. He took another drag off the joint and offered it to first Alex (who passed,) then Sera, if she wanted it.

"He's a Verbena I used to know. Someone we helped once."

Ian

[Edit: putting the former to his lips. (Really, I know english.)]

Serafíne

"I don't remember that," Sera tells Alexander quietly, and it's true. She doesn't remember the thing with the spirit down a tthe reservoir last year. Maybe she wasn't involved. Maybe she was never told the story. Strange how the things that are absolutely central to our lives can be so peripheral to those we are close to or at least tied in to. She's watching Alexander when he looks back up at her, something significant beneath the weight of his gaze that she cannot quiet absorb, which makes her want to go and kiss him on the temple and murmur to him that yes, yes, he'll be okay, except that she does remember his reaction to her touch so she swallows down that impulse. It is just a momentary tension in her left temple: the urge and its erasure, or at least its burial.

Ian takes a drag of the joint and offers it to Alexander and then to Sera. By now she's leaning back agains the railing, one hand wrapped around its frame, head tipped back so she can see the leading edge of the twilight sky and she takes a hit from the joint and hands it back. Neither of them understand why she thinks that Ian was pretty awful just now, but that's okay. Sera hardly understands. It was just a reaction she had: visceral, gut-formed.

"What's worse?" she asks Ian. Some things, a person just needs to know.

Ian

"It was a modeling gig. The thing in Shanghai. I used to be a model."

Alexander

The joint moves and Alex just passes it between the other two, if it makes the movement easier. Drugs aren’t his thing – even this – so it’s all theirs.

At least, not like that. Alex watches Ian again at that point in his reply. Whether the privacy violation or the thought that the woman would be used simply for the amusement value of the story is worse isn’t quite clear in Alex’s mind, but does it really matter. In Sera’s words, both are particularly shitty things to do to a person. But then it seems that Ian may well have just been telling a particularly tasteless joke.

Alex meets Sera’s gaze for a few seconds. He’s not a particularly hard person to read most of the time. There was a time that he wasn’t ok. But then everything he’d been holding in had exploded when Grace and Eleanor had tried introducing him to the existence of Ginger. And didn’t that go well. But now? He is alright about what happened. “Not everyone survived.” He shrugged, water under the bridge. They had their peace now.

His gaze moves from Sera back to Ian again. “Thank you, by the way. For the advice.”

Next time, don’t hesitate. He hadn’t.

Ian

Ian's eyes cut to Alex when he thanked him for the advice. His eyes had a distant expression. Remembering, maybe. (Or maybe it was just the pot.) And then he made this soft sound, and for a moment he almost looked... pensive? Sad?

"It's a shitty lesson to have to learn. I didn't want you to die. I don't want any of us to die."

When his attention traveled back to Sera, his mouth quirked into a slight grin. There was an edge to it that didn't feel entirely humorous, though perhaps that was a holdover from the other parts of their conversation.

"Would you like a list? Because I think that would take all night." After a moment he slid down to sit with his back against the gazebo wall.

"I cheated on my first girlfriend with my foster sister. That's a pretty shitty one."

Serafíne

"Alexander," Sera murmurs, voice quiet, her body language still and contained but away. There is a rhythm to the way she smokes the joint, the puff, puff pass is familiar and meaningful if one impbues it with meaning, like communion. Believe giving gravity to the ordinary.

The thought passes through her stoned head like a zipper and makes her smile. Her eyes close and threads her fine fingers through the slats of the railing framing the gazebo, leaning back and back and back until the rain hits her face aain. Long coils of damp blonde hair spill backwards.

When Ian offers her a list she straightens - stands upright, the end the elegant curl of her arched spine - and looks at him, this damp and quiet flicker of her eyes, dark in the rainsoft evening.

"When did you decide monogamy wasn't for you?"

Alexander

“We didn’t.” It seems a little strange to Alex being the one telling someone else the equivalent of it’ll be ok, but it was true. If he’d hesitated, maybe Victoria would have been able to hurt or kill her hostage, or any of the others who had been there to stop her. Much like the unknown Hermetics who had made their attempt not so long before theirs. “We’re all alive.” Had they known each other better – had Alex known whether Ian would appreciate touch or not – Alex might have moved to make contact.

But they don’t, and he doesn’t, so it ends with the words.

Something there may have been more of, except for a buzzing coming from one of his pockets as his phone springs into life. Mouth open, just on the brink of speaking again, it closes again as he pulls the phone out and checks the screen. “Excuse me, I need to take this.” With that, he steps out of the gazebo – resting a hand on Sera’s shoulder for a moment in passing – and finds cover behind one of the supports of the gazebo, under the overhanging roof, where he would keep relatively dry.

[And fades into the dark, as it’s early and I think I need to sleep.]