Sid
Ogden Street South, located just a handful of blocks north of Wash Park, is not the best bar in Denver, but the regulars enjoy it. Drinks are cheap and flow like rivers into pitchers to be shared at tables surrounded by patrons both seated and standing. Most days of the week the small bar is packed depending on what sports event is being flashed across flat-panel monitors mounted high up on the walls. Friday and Saturday nights are a different story.
On Friday and Saturday the small raised dais in the corner finds itself used at last. People of all ages (over 21, of course, unless their fake ID has been particularly well made) and varying levels of inebriation grab up a mic and draw all eyes in the room as they attempt to drunkenly belt eternally popular CCR and Poison and Queen songs. Karaoke nights are the bar's main draw.
Sid said that she would be there late and she meant late. Sometime around 11:30 she sends Alex a text: Be there soon. It's nearing midnight when the tall redhead pushes her way through the crowd and to the bar, bringing with her an odd sensation of oncoming spring. As she goes, she keeps herself lifted to the balls of her feet, chin lifted and neck craning for any sign of a man she hasn't seen since winter. She is dressed in a fitted light purple t-shirt with the Star Wars logo emblazoned across her chest and tight fitting, dark-washed jeans tucked into a pair of knee-high black boots. A grey messenger bag hangs from her shoulder, the pouch nearly flat against her hip.
Alexander
Friday night at the karaoke bar. It wouldn’t rate particularly highly up Alexander’s list of Things To Be Doing, but it could be worse. Depending on who was singing at the time, anyway. Alex hadn’t had any trouble getting in. It’s been a while since he’d passed for under 21, and the stubble tended to add a few years on as well. He’d arrived... not early, but not as late as Sid does.
For maybe an hour and a half he’d sat at the bar, nursing his fourth bottle of whichever bottled beer the man behind the bar had fished out of the glass-fronted fridge. He’d been approached a couple of times, asked “Are you alone?” and “Want some company?” He’d spent a little time chatting with each of them, until each of them worked out that Alex wasn’t interested in anything more than the conversation and drifted back into the crowd.
He was just getting to the point of giving up on the evening when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He read the message then waved at the barman again. It wouldn’t hurt to wait a little longer, and the couple on stage weren’t doing a bad job of Bat Out Of Hell.
So there he is: leaning back against the bar with his elbows resting on it. A mostly full bottle of beer is held in his hand, and he’s watching the small stage. A red shirt left unbuttoned and with the sleeves rolled up, mostly covers a black vest top. Black combats hang over a pair of comfortable black boots. His own resonance, somewhat weaker than Sid’s, is of a moment caught in time more than caught in ice. That ice has thawed, at least for now. Maybe those random meetings of gazes last a little longer than they would otherwise, with the potential to become more meaningful.
Sid
Unless he seems restless or agitated at having been made to wait so long, Sid has no idea how long he's been there waiting for her. She offers him a slight nod of greeting, chin lowering before lifting again at an angle. There is something almost animal about the movement of her head, the way she cranes it, the way she takes in her surroundings, dark-eyes wary and alert. Like her long red hair, twisted into a loose knot at her nape, should give way to a shaggy red coat of fur. Like there should be a rack of antlers stretching out above her head, branching as far and wide as any tree. Like she belongs loose and free in an ancient forest lost to the sands of time.
Then she is there, leaning against the bar next to him, and she is just a woman, tall and too-thin, radiating warmth and life. The scents of cigarette smoke and cool night air mingle together on her clothing, skin, and hair. "Hey," she greets, now that she's close enough to be heard above the din.
The man behind the counter greets her like he recognizes her, and with the kind of smile bar owners hope all their servers wear: disarming and charming, the kind of smile that melts hearts and encourages just one more drink. "Are you going up tonight?" he asks. Sid looks back over her shoulder at the stage, then at Alex, then back to the bartender. Shrugging, she orders a bottle of beer before turning her back to the bar and taking a lean beside the one who feels a bit frozen. Static.
"How are you?" she asks, looking him over like she's looking for an open wound or a foreign object protruding from his shoulder. Not so much checking him out as she is assessing.
Alexander
There’s no agitation showing when he raises a hand in greeting as she approaches and he turns to look towards the movement. No snark in his voice as he returns the, “Hey!” No clipped statement about her being late or asking where she’d been because, basically, she’d said “late” and it really wasn’t any of his business what she’d been up to. The only reason that he’d started thinking of heading on was that she might have changed her mind about coming out and forgotten to say. No big deal. So he smiles along with the wave.
“I’m... alright! At the moment, anyway. Things change, you know?” He’s sure she does – she’s been at this for how much longer than he has..? He runs an eye over Sid, assessing her for himself. Trying to compare the figure leaning on the bar against the woman he’d met all those... god, it must be months ago now! Too long ago to compare.
“How about you?” When Sid’s beer arrives he holds up his bottle in a silent toast. To surviving.
And then, “You sing here?” There’s maybe a little surprise in his voice, even though he doesn’t know her well enough to know – or guess at – what she does for fun. Apart from drinking coffee with raspberry vodka with pink sprinkles.
Sid
She does know. She knows how fast the world can change, usually with the shutting of a door. Usually with loved ones on the other side of it. The past year has been a trial worse than most and it shows. Sid looked pale and haunted and too-thin in March and she looks pale and haunted and too-thin in August, but she looks a little better than she did laying on a hospital bed. There is color in her face - a smattering of freckles to darken her milk white skin - and smaller shadows beneath her dark eyes and her hair has some of its former luster back. It draws the eye. She draws the eye. There was a time when she wouldn't have made it through the door for fear of it but tonight she appears to weather it well. There are things she wants and wants to do and sometimes getting them and getting to them necessitate walking through fire. A sports-turned-karaoke bar isn't really akin to fire, but we digress.
Alex is alright and he looks alright, but he also understands that he might not always be. Sid, though she doesn't smile at his response, seems to relax at it. Relaxed enough not to tense up or move away when he looks her over in turn. Clinking the neck of her bottle to his, she says, "I'm..." bottle poised just inches from her lips as she pauses to consider her answer.
"Okay," is what she settles on, and takes a drink. She doesn't look terribly okay but she looks better at least, like she's getting there or trying to.
He asks if she sings here and she looks away to the stage, watching the man there sing some Bon Jovi. "Sometimes." Turning her head she gestures to him with her bottle. "What about you? Do you ever feel like embarrassing yourself for the enjoyment of strangers?"
Alexander
Alexander has had his share of closing doors, of loved ones left behind. That’s what brought him to Denver in the first place… but that’s another story. He maybe hasn’t had as many trials to face as Sid has, but he’s had enough to know that things can get bad. Although just how bad still remains to be seen. But being the nice young guy finding out that things – that reality - were never quite as he thought? That’s a doozie to be starting out on. If he knew her more, he’d be impressed at her ability to walk through those fires. And be asking how she manages it.
But he doesn’t. All he does know is that they’re both here with cheap, but drinkable, beers. And they’re both okay. Demons and skeletons safely wedged back into the wardrobe, even if there’s a chair holding the door shut.
His gaze? Shouldn’t be anything to worry about. There’s no lust, no expectation, there. Just consideration of how she seems to be bearing up. She’s not the same woman drinking gaudy flavoured coffee from those months ago, but she is looking a whole lot better than she did in hospital. He nods when she decides on “Okay.”
He smiles when she asks if he’s one for standing on stage and singing for a drunken crowd, shaking his head and looking down at the neck of his beer bottle. “I haven’t sung in a long time, in front of anybody else in even longer. It’ll take a lot stronger than this to get me up there,” he shakes the bottle as he finishes. Which, while not being a resounding yes, isn’t an outright no. “What do you tend to sing? I don’t even know what kind of music you like.” He glances at Sid before looking at the Bon Jovi-singing man.
Sid
Sid doesn't know what Alex knows about her. What he might have learned when he tracked her to the hospital, to the room she shared with another sleeper caught in a manufactured dream, what he may have heard from other mages, what he's picked up from the one other time she was conscious in his presence. But she can guess that the kind of music she likes is the tip of the iceberg of all the things he doesn't know about her. The way he asks it, though, gives her pause, has the bottle hesitating millimeters from her lips a beat before she takes a drink.
"I won't make you," she assures him. Go up on stage, that is, or much of anything else for that matter. Sid's is a quiet, steady presence that does not press or push at others.
Then she shrugs, leans her elbows back against the bar and watches the people bustling around them. Considering her answer to the question. "It depends," she says, tilting her head toward him so he can hear her better though her eyes stay out on the other patrons. "But usually I look for nineties alt rock songs. Our Lady Peace. Bush. Cranberries. Hole. Things like that." Shifting, angling her body toward him with a lifting of her far shoulder and a slight twisting of her waist, her gaze drops to the floor. It wasn't always so hard to confide even these little minor things. "I didn't start singing again until after the last thing. The dream. Before that, I hadn't done it for a long time, either."
Alexander
The two of them probably know roughly equal amounts about each other. That is: the little they could pick up from 20 minutes sat in an Irish bar somewhere else in the city and the random bits of gossip that worked their way through the Awakened grapevine. Nothing much more solid or significant than that. Alex had gone as far as tracking down where Sid was when she was sharing a dream. Others that he trusted had said that Sid was good people. And you didn’t really try digging the dirt on people who you wanted to get on with. Possibly work together with. Doing that, if they found out, tended to mean that they didn’t want to know you for very much longer. So even given access to information that most others in their little community – maybe with the exception of Grace – had access to, he hadn’t indulged his sense of curiosity. Some lines don’t get crossed.
Especially when the people involved can rewrite reality to their will.
I won’t make you. He looks back at the singer, making a reasonable job of It’s My Life although nobody’s going to be offering a recording contract any time soon. He shrugs, undecided. Maybe he will sing. Maybe he won’t. Maybe more alcohol will be involved first.
“Ahh, a rock chick then!” He salutes her again with his beer bottle. “Although I guess you didn’t really strike me as the kind to warble along to a Mariah Carey track. Cool choice, though.” He takes another sip from the bottle, holding it loosely in his hand and gesturing with it when he speaks. “My mother had some bizarre taste in music when I lived with her, but I finally managed to get over it with a bit of Floyd and went from there. I think she still has a couple of David Hasselhoff vinyls stashed away somewhere. I swear, Child Services should include copies of Looking for Freedom when they inspect places. That’s stuff's just cruel.”
He looks back at her again, watching her watch the crowd. “You missed it? The singing?”
Sid
"I don't have Mariah's range," she says, seriously. Mariah Carey has a five octave vocal range. Sid's range is smaller, lower, better suited to the bands she named and then some. So, Alex knows a little more about her, and something that no other mage in the city knows. Sid sings, and she doesn't have Mariah Carey's range.
"Otherwise I might."
There is a moment where he looks like he might be considering going up on stage, and still Sid does not push. It's just not her way. Her version of hedonism is to do the things that bring her pleasure, to revel in them when given the opportunity. That means not dragging the unwilling to go do those things. But perhaps she'll go up, herself. Later.
He mentions his mother and her taste in music, her possible collection of Hasselhoff vinyls, and something in her expression changes. Warms. Her lips part like she might offer an anecdote of her own, but the words, the stick in her throat. Tilting her head away, she clears her throat. Relaxes it. Breathes in deep the smells of the bar - fried finger foods and free flowing, cheap beers, perfumes and colognes - breathes it back out again as she forces her shoulders down and back.
Did she miss the singing? Without hesitation, Sid gives a slight nod that does nothing to express just how much she missed it. "I was in a band. A long time ago. We weren't very good," she admits, not quite smiling for the fond memories, "but, it was fun."
Alexander
There’s a sip of beer as he considers Sid’s choice of song and how her range affects that choice. “So it’s not a particular type of music you like to sing, then? It’s more the singing itself? Is there anything you wouldn’t sing, even if you had the range to cover it?” Because sometimes it’s easier to run through the things you don’t like than the things you do.
He goes back to watching the crowd, but not before catching Sid’s aborted attempt at her own story. He smiles as he asks, “What? You looked like you were about to say something.” There’s no pressure, though. If she doesn’t want to tell, that’s fine. But he’s happy to listen if she has anything she feels like telling. He won’t be doing any dragging tonight either. Barring bar fights and passed-out drunks.
“What happened? With the band, I mean. You guys drift apart?” School, college, work, family, creative differences; There are all sorts of reasons why bands break and go their separate ways. He’s expecting it’s one of those, though. “You play any instruments?”
There is the smell of things deep-fried, mixed in with other pleasant – and some not-so-pleasant – odours. “You want something to eat? Nachos or something?”
Sid
"It depends," she says again, but does not elaborate. He has fired off another question and she has to think about it before giving him a non-commital, "I haven't thought about it. Probably rap. I'm not young enough to mimic Faith No More, not anymore."
He asks her 'what,' mentions that she looked like she might say something and she gives a slight shake of her head. The flow of conversation continues.
Something about the way he asks after that old band causes her to shift where she stands, to shuffle her feet so that she's angled more toward him, to face him more directly than she does the crowd. Her increased tension begins to reveal itself in her short, quiet, "College."
She does not answer his next question, or the next, or the next. Instead she regards him with a steady and at once distant gaze. There is something about the way she looks at him that seems much older than her uears, and wary, yet infinitely patient. Something about the way she looks at him calls to mind a deer, but not the skittish doe prepared to bolt. She is the ancient stag standing at the forest's edge, watching, assessing, determining if there is a hunter near or not. Because this is all starting to feel like,
"Is this an interrogation?" she asks, more curious than suspicious, though there is some suspicion. Like her shadow it is always with her, sometimes ahead of her, leading the way. And sometimes, like now, it stretches out behind her, faded by a faint light and not quite blending into her surroundings.
Alexander
The haze of four-and-some bottles of beer fuzzes the edges of Alexander’s awareness, but not so much that the start of Sid’s reaction goes unnoticed. Her turn, the edge of tension. His gaze moves back from watching the crowd, the surroundings, the changing singer on the stage to look at Sid when she turns. Is this an interrogation? He cocks his head to one side, taking another swig. Then he shrugs.
“Last I heard, musical tastes aren’t a matter of national security.” He smiles a little, trying to show that he is joking. Although given the past suspicions of some of the others in town... The feel of his resonance, that he wears a uniform in service of The Man. (Although he’d argue he’s more in the service of the people than mindless servitude to the powers that be.) He waves a hand, dismissing the attempt at humour.
“I’m just curious about you, that’s all. Most people, really. And, honestly?” He meets her gaze, eye to eye. “I want to try to have a conversation with someone in the club that doesn’t revolve around the world falling to crap around us, or how everything is wonderful if you can just learn to see it. I want to know that getting on with normal stuff is still A Thing.”
He shrugs again, turning to look at the bar so he can put his now-empty bottle on it. “If you don’t want to answer, don’t answer. I’m not going to force anything.”
Sid
"You never know when someone's opinion of ZZ Top marks them as a threat to the American Dream," she replies. If she were lighter, or capable of being lighter, her own attempt at humor might be more obvious.
She listens to him, though, what he wants, what he's hoping for in talking to her, and for a moment there is...not pity, not even sympathy, but empathy, understanding. Sid takes a sip of her beer, holds the bottle up to check the level of liquid against the light, then turns to set the bottle on the bar next to Alex's.
When she turns back she rests her elbow on the bar and laces her fingers together before her. "I..." she starts, eyes cast down because revealing even the simplest truths is easier when one isn't looking into a pair of nice young eyes, in a bar on Friday night or maybe it's Saturday morning by now, with a stranger stepping up to try We Own It.
Looking up, meeting those eyes regardless, Sid says, "I'm very private."
Alexander
It may not be a blatant attempt at humour, but it does get a smile nonetheless. He considers ordering another drink, but waits for the moment. At least until it’s a little clearer which way the conversation is headed.
I’m very private. He watches Sid as she breaks the eye contact while she… works up the courage? Decides what to say? How much to say? He can’t tell and, really, it doesn’t matter. Because… “I’m not trying to trick you or analyse you or figure out your deepest, darkest secrets. I just want to get to know you. You know, the old fashioned way.” No reading police files, no mind magic, no picking up bits and pieces through the various grapevines running through the city. No dealing with the various crises they seem to get so easily tangled up in.
Sid says what she says, but he holds up a hand – open, palm down – and makes a slow down, stop motion. He turns again, leans both elbows on the bar and look down into the empty bottle, smiles again. “Even if it’s just for tonight, can we leave all that… stuff alone?” He looks up at the barman, raises a hand to get his attention. As he moves over, he turns his head to look at Sid again and asks, “Tequila?”
Getting drunk together: the good, old fashioned way of getting to know people.
Sid
I'm very private, she says. I'm not trying to trick you, he says, and Sid shuts her teeth down around the words that would have followed, listening instead to the Orphan apprentice, a frown shadowing her face. I just want to get to know you. Sid's expression softens. There is sad sympathy in her warm and brown and ancient eyes. He doesn't know the curse that comes with getting too close to her.
"It'll be better for you if you don't," she says. The corner of her mouth lifts with a shadow of a smile. "Especially if you're trying to avoid conversations about the world falling apart." She pushes herself upright from the bar. "I'm going to sign up," she says. To sing, she means, or must given her apparent trajectory. "Do you want to come?"
Alexander
He cocks his head to the side when she says it's best that he doesn't try to get to know her. He's not quite sure if that's intended to protect him, or protect her. But they're both adults and have at least a passing idea of what their life seems to involve.
"Just for tonight. One night of being human before the world turns to shit again."
Do you want to come? He thinks for a moment, watching her waiting for reaction, before quickly ordering a couple of tequila shots to take with them. One for her, if she wants it. If not, it's extra courage.
"What the hell, why not?"
Sid
There will be no more talk of pasts or pains, not unless Alex is in a sharing mood. And he can keep his liquid courage for himself. When offered the second shot of tequila Sid shakes her head, but that glimmer of a smile returns if only for a moment. It is good to do fun things. It is good to do the things that bring one pleasure. Because the world turned to shit ages ago, long before either mage was even born. And somewhere out there it is falling apart, unraveling, devolving into chaos.
But for tonight, for a little while at least, things are quiet for Sid and Alexander. Relatively, anyway. Sid scans the computer screen for something that speaks to her, something that will help her express...something. She makes her pick and gives her name and then steps aside for Alexander, chewing her lower lip in thought while he searches for his own song. Her hand alights on his shoulder, just long enough to get his attention, long enough for him to feel the warmth of her palm through the fabric of his shirt. Then it's gone.
"Would it be less, ah. Would it make you less nervous if we tried a duet?"
=====
[for the future because i rolled already hah]
niko @ 10:44AM
[charisma+performance+WP]
Roll: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Samael @ 10:47AM
Witnessed!
niko @ 10:47AM
Danke!
Alexander
Alexander has learned many things. One of those things applies more and more often these days. That you need to escape, to get away from the job, the work, the saving of the world. Otherwise you burn out and that serves no purpose at all.
So no, tonight he doesn’t talk of pains, of troubled pasts, of new starts and new Awakenings. Tonight is for escape, with someone who might need that same kind of escape from time to time as well. Time to forget that the world is turning to shit, forget about doing what they could to set it to right. Time to set their world to rights with alcohol and music and singing semi-drunken songs with a semi-drunken audience.
He carries both shots over to the screen with Sid, peering at it as she skims through the list. Would it make you less nervous… He smiles as she offers, feeling the warmth of her brief touch, sipping at one of the shot glasses. He is nervous – this is something he’s never done before. But that fear, that’s something he knows he needs to face. And this? At least this doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of thing. So he shakes his head and starts flicking through the list once she’s done with it. “Probably, but what the hell. You only live once, right?”
Probably.
So he flicks through the list, a few songs catching his eye. He picks one, signs up.
vesta @ 8:17AM
[Cha+Per - Doh, a deer, a female deer...]
Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
vesta @ 8:17AM
What d'you know, he can carry a tune.
HDub @ 8:19AM
he can carry a tune pretty well, actually!
Sid
Sid's relief at that shake of the head is...well it's not terribly great or outright noticeable. It's not that she offered to do something she wouldn't want to follow through with. It's that as she asked she tried to recall what duets she'd seen on the list and they all came up romantic. I Got You Babe. Islands in the Stream. I've Had the Time of My Life. This is only the third time she's even been in a room with Alexander, and only the second such meeting where she's been conscious. She just doesn't want to sing a romantic song with someone she hardly knows.
He picks a song for himself, and then they have to wait. Not long, as it turns out, but long enough that idle conversation can happen. And it would happen, except that another regular to the bar sees Sid waiting over by the stage and drunkenly weaves through tables and chairs toward her. She's shorter than Sid and Alexander by a handful of inches, but even so Sid edges back a little when the woman leans toward her. "Yer singin'?" she asks, to which Sid nods. She doesn't look uncomfortable, at least not any more than she did before. She likes her space, clearly, and she doesn't like people breathing vapors into her face, obviously. But she doesn't look like she's preparing to vanish in a puff of smoke to get away. In fact, she appears to recognize the woman.
"Y'should sing that one again. Uhhhh...Love somethin'. Love...love...love..." she trails away, her attention landing on Alexander. "You 'er date?" she asks, and then more excitedly to Sid she asks in a stage whisper that has the Verbena wincing. In a stage whisper anyone in a three foot radius can hear clear as day despite the young woman on stage belting out an impassioned Rolling in the Deep, "Is he your date??"
Sid puts her hand to the woman's shoulder, her touch light yet firm. "Not exactly. Sue, why don't you go sit down? It's almost my turn and I have something in mind. But you can make a request after." She presses against Sue's shoulder, urging her to make her way back to her seat, which she does, but obviously with great reluctance. Sue keeps looking at Alex, which causes her to stumble into a chair. Only then does her fixation finally seem to break, her attention held up a moment with a glare for the unexpected obstacle. Sid watches her the whole way, faint concern showing in her eyes.
Alexander
Sid’s relief goes unnoticed – in part because it’s not so obvious, in part because Alexander is busy flicking through pages of songs. The choice to go solo is quite simple, though – he hasn’t done this before and he doesn’t want to ruin whatever Sid chooses to sing. This is her escape as much as his. But even if he had chosen to sing with her, he would have had the same issue with choice – trying to find a duet that doesn’t involve declaring undying love... So he picks and joins the short queue to perform.
Sue staggers up and leans into their space, making Alexander lean back a little too. He looks to Sid to see how she reacts, making sure that the two do actually know each other. They do seem to know each other, so he takes a step back to avoid leaning. Because even after a few beers, the waft of too-much of something-stronger isn’t nice. And because he likes his space too.
You ‘er date? His eyes roll, looking away and around the rest of the crowd – hoping that she loses interest quickly. Is he your date? “No!” he answers at the same time as Sid replies with her not exactly, turning back to face the pair. He doesn’t say anything more, but gives Sid a puzzled look. This isn’t a date. Sid manages to steer Sue away after a few moments and he watches her stagger and stumble away out of the corner of his vision. He’s aware of her attention and trying very hard not to show her any recognition of it.
“Friend of yours?” he asks, finishing off the remains of the first shot glass. Eyebrows raised with the unasked question – Not exactly?
Sid
Alex fervently denies the suggestion that he's Sid's date and Sid, quiet, watchful thing, darts a glance his way, fleeting and swift - just long enough to see a hint of Oh no before her attention is returned to the drunken Sue. Luckily, the woman was focused just enough on Sid that the fierceness of his refusal went unnoticed. Or maybe it didn't. Maybe that's why she watches him so long, though he tries not to acknowledge it.
Friend of yours?
Sid pulls her attention back. "No." And then, slightest hint of humor curling at the corners of her mouth, "Not exactly. Didn't anyone teach you how to divert the drunk?"
Alexander
He looks at her for a second before smiling and looking down at the floor. “Yeah, good point.” His gaze comes back up to Sid, Sue still in his peripheral vision. Just in case she comes back to clarify things or, worse, try to stake her own claim.
“I usually just ignore them until they get bored and wander off. Or arrest them. But that’s far too much paperwork and I’m already signed up here any everything.” The smile fades and he shrugs. “I don’t get out like this a lot. Usually it’s the guys I work with at the same old place, so we tend not to get bothered much.”
Sid
Sue has made her way to a table to the side, where she rejoins a cluster of people who vaguely resemble her. Children, maybe, or brothers and sisters, or...something. Out for a good time on a Friday night, only now, as has become custom, they must keep an eye on their wandering Sue.
Sid isn't watching them, though, she is watching Alex. "A dog doesn't get bored if you give it a bone to chew on," she says sagely, then tilts her head a little at an angle. Offers him that slight almost-smile. "Something to remember next time."
Like there's going to be a next time for them in a place that is not the same old place. And maybe there will be. Probably there will be. But first, the MC for the karaoke gets on stage and speaks into the microphone.
"Amelia, you're up!"
Sid's chin lifts and she glances back at the stage before turning back to Alex. "That's me," she says, and before he can react she is turning away and taking up the stage, herself. Somehow, when she gets up there and takes the mic in both of her hands, eyes closing behind those dark-rimmed glasses, she seems different. More vibrant, more alive, like she is in a place where she belongs.
The music starts and she moves with it, tapping her heel on every other main beat.
"Crash and burn
All the stars explode tonight
How'd you get so desperate?
How'd you stay alive?"
Of course. Hadn't she mentioned Hole in her list of preferred bands? As she sings, low and husky voice carrying easily throughout the bar, she puts her all into it. Every part of her, every cell, every fiber of her being pours into the song, clear through until the final verse.
"I can't be near you
The light just radiates
I can't be near you
The light just radiates"
She finishes to a modest round of applause, nods to the crowd, and unhurriedly makes her way off of the small stage, making space for Alex.
Alexander
Sue vanishes back into the crowd, and neither of them are really tracking her any more. She’s not important and, with any luck, her brood will keep her under control for the rest of the night. Alex smiles, nodding, when she offers the advice. “I’ll remember. Or bring handcuffs.”
Then it’s Sid’s turn and she’s up and away before he gets a chance to even wish her luck. Or is it breaking a leg when you’re performing? That always seemed like a strange thing to wish on someone. She’s away and the music starts and she comes alive. Or escapes everything that holds her back, pulls her down. Just for tonight? For the song? For the moment? It doesn’t really matter. She’s singing and she’s alive and, for those few minutes, the song is all that matters.
It’s not a song that he knows, but he nods along as she sings it well. Listening to the words, he wonders if there’s a reason why she picked the song. Hadn’t she said that it would be better if he didn’t try to get to know her? Better that she doesn’t get close in case her light burns? Or is the alcohol helping him jump to conclusions that aren’t really there?
Either way, the song is soon over and she steps down making way for him. The MC gestures for him to take his places and Alex? He looks nervous now, taking a breath, trying to swallow with a dry mouth. There’s still that last shot of tequila in his hand. He passes it to Sid, though, before stepping up and grabs the microphone in both hands, subconsciously trying to make himself smaller. The music starts and he turns to face the screen. He’s a little late starting with the lyrics, but her gets back into sync before the song turns into a wreck.
“I know you didn’t realise
That the city was gone.
You thought there would be advertisments
To give you something to go on.”
The screen is a distraction from the crowd, from their attention. He can feel Sid behind him, watching him, but her presence is more reassuring than daunting.
“So we search the sky
For any flashing signs
We’ve gone too far beyond
The border, it’s just you and I.”
Euphoric, empowered. He feels it and it builds with his confidence. He’s staying reasonably on key, in time, and honestly? He’s starting to enjoy himself.
“And if this is the end
It’s the best place I’ve ever been
It feels so good to just
Get lost sometimes.”
He glances round at Sid, a smile back on his face as the chorus starts. He’s still following the lyrics on the screen, but is looking a lot more relaxed than he did at the start. The chorus starts and he’s starting to bounce along on his feet, enjoying his time on the stage.
“Only the horses!”
The song lasts minutes, but time being time it seems to be over in moments. It’s enough, though. For now. The song comes to an end and he passes the mic back to a reasonable amount of applause and steps back to Sid.
“That was fun!” He sounds surprised.
Sid
When Sid leaves the stage she makes her way back over to the bar, to place where she can watch Alex without standing right up front like a groupie. She accepted long ago that she can never truly be an anonymous face in the crowd - not unless she changes her hair or uses magic to hide the beauty of her features and figure, or to hide a powerful collection of resonance that will forever mark her as Other. But maybe Alex will be less nervous if someone he knows isn't right up in front of him, watching him intently.
Or maybe he'd be less nervous for the moral support. Sid is not a mind reader, hence why she chooses a place of visibility but at a distance. From there she watches him as he stumbles at first. She doesn't recognize the song, but the intro sounds fast. That will either be daunting, or he'll be so focused on keeping up that he'll forget to be nervous. Seems he goes the latter route. Sid nods in time to the music, a small but pleased smile playing on her lips. She warned him not to get close to her, but she invited him out here, to this place that is her escape. She's invited him to make it his, as well, at least for tonight.
Up on the stage there are no terrors. There are no ghostly figures chasing in the darkness, there are no demons, no Nephandi to be concerned about. In here, no one is worried about the rash of disappearances in the city, of fit and healthy people vanishing into the ether. In here there is only the heat and noise of the crowd, the smell of the alcohol, the feeling of release. Alex looks like he's releasing himself a little more, a little more, bouncing to the beat as he sings the chorus.
And Sid smiles warmth and encouragement. When he finishes, Sid is clapping one-hand against the inside of her left wrist, careful not to slosh the shot she's been entrusted with. When she offers it back to him the glass is warm from being held in her fingers.
"You looked like you were enjoying yourself," she comments, amusement dancing in her ancient dark eyes. "It's a little like riding a roller coaster, isn't it?" She nods to the stage. "Do you want to go again?"
Alexander
“I was.” He smiles broadly as he accepts the shot glass back, feeling the warmth that Sid’s hands have imparted on it. But rather than drinking it, he leaves it on a nearby table. Maybe it’ll be picked up and drunk by someone, or cleared away by the staff. But he doesn’t feel like he needs it any more. He’s had enough to relax and there’s no real need for any more alcohol-imparted courage. He shakes his head when she asks if Alexander wants to go again, though. “I think I’m good for now, but if you want to sign up again then go for it.”
Maybe he’ll try again later in the evening, but more likely it’ll be another night before he takes the stage again. Doing something too much can lead to it becoming old and stale, and he doesn’t want that to happen.
Earlier in the night, Alexander had made a request. To leave all of that alone, even if it’s just for these few hours that they’re sharing here. The world may very well be spinning down the drain, filled with Nephandi, vampires, murderous spirits, Union-created disease, insane AIs... They – the Awakened – may be the ones that stand in their way, but they all need their own lives too; A way to get away from it all. And right here and right now, and for as much of the night as it takes one or both of them to drift away home, they are simply two ordinary people enjoying each other’s company.
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
Showing posts with label email. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 October 2014
Wednesday, 1 October 2014
Do you like blackberries?
Kalen
Kalen drives them all back, not to the house he has in the city, but to the Library. All of them are drained, one of them is hurt, and Grace is possibly still watching the little red dot that is their new vampire acquaintance crawling over her screen. Kalen is going over the things he knows about vampires, but the things he knows about vampires are mostly how to kill them.
Unless they start a conversation while he's driving, he's content to be quiet while he drives. If they're paying close attention to him, they might notice the amount of attention he pays to the mirrors. There is more than one way to track someone. Did they figure out which car was theirs? He needs to talk to Grace about creating a bug-detecting device. About automatic sweeps at the gate. Can she enchant his car? Give him a little indicator light?
For now, he lets those things go. There are probably no bugs on the car. There is probably no danger here. Not the kind that he needs to prepare for immediately, anyway.
If the others are quiet while he drives, he'll focus on the few things they need to do once they reach the Library. Show Alexander where there is a ridiculously well stocked first-aid kit (which is, perhaps, more like the first-aid and ammunition closet). Start water boiling for the coffee. Grind coffee. He won't dissuade them from following him into the kitchen, but if they want to collapse in the library where there are couches...who is he to judge? He'd rather like to collapse in there too.
Just not yet.
He may have talked about tea rituals with Alexander, but there is a certain practiced calm about this that wasn't evident in watching him prepare tea. He reaches for the knobs to cabinets without looking for them, touches buttons on the grinder after a little swipe of his fingers over it, pulls out the container of coffee he wants without needing to check the label. He'll pull out the things Grace likes, or perhaps she will, she's been in a kitchen with him often enough by now that he barely has to look at her either. He knows the things she wants and where they are. Alexander, if he comes into the kitchen, gets slightly more attention, but only because Kalen doesn't know where to expect him to be or to go.
Grace
hat Grace does on the road back to the library is sleep. Being a passenger in someone else's car always has a tendency to knock her right out even on a good night, and this has not been a good night. When she walked out of the club, she looked exhausted. Her head hurt when she had to put it through its paces tonight. So Grace slumps her way into the back seat and promptly uses all that space to get comfortable enough to nap.
It's not that she thinks she's perfectly safe, having just walked out of a vampire den. No, she just trusts Kalen to be able to get away from any danger. That's how he Awakened, after all, right?
When they stop, she does mumble out, "sss mmpr?" It's something that her hazy half-dream insists is very important. But no, Grace, it is not vampires they're stopping for. It's coffee and couches and books, in a place that is not a coffee shop with its resultant other people.
Upon dragging herself into the building, she does make a beeline toward the kitchen, but it's not coffee she's after. She goes straight for the freezer, and digs around way in the back until she finds her prize: a year-old bag of frozen peas. Strangely enough, nobody has yet thought to themselves in the middle of the night that a bag of peas would make the finest snack ever. Who would have thought? The icy peas have had plenty of time to stick to each other, so it comes out as a rather firm block, until Grace hauls off and slams the bag against the corner of the freezer.
This isn't normal Grace behavior. She's not normally so violent with vegetables.
She takes a kitchen towel and wraps the bag with it, then goes off to find Alex.
Alexander
Alexander, for his part, is pretty quiet on the drive back to the library. The only real noise inside the car, beyond the sound of the engine and the tyres on the road, is whatever radio station the radio turns onto. Some local station, automated system playing 80's tracks through the small hours of Monday morning. Initially Alex rests his head on the passenger door frame, looking at the wing mirror. Not, this time, to peer through the Gauntlet. Like Kalen, he's just keeping an eye on what's behind them. Eventually the light night traffic dies away and he dozes off.
He rouses again when Kalen parks up and the sound of the engine dies away. Following the others into the building, he grabs the first aid kit and heads into the bathroom. He pulls off his tshirt and hangs it over the top of the door before prodding and cleaning the injuries he already knew about and started checking for others. Rinsing his mouth out leaves a little watery blood in the sink, but no teeth. He rinses his face in clean, cold water and spends a little time staring at himself in the mirror. Then closes his eyes and rests his forehead against it.
He hears the movement of Grace approaching with cold vegetables and pushes himself from the mirror, finding a towel to dry off before replacing the tshirt. He takes the offered bag with thanks before heading towards the library proper. For the couches rather than the books.
He sits on an arms and topples backwards, lying flat on the cushions with his legs hanging over the arm. He holds the bag against his jaw, with a sharp inhalation when it makes contact with the painful area.
Kalen
Kalen brings the coffee, still in a French press brewing, and sets it on the table. Then vanishes to return with a box with sugar of various kinds and honey and some flavored syrups. And then mugs. And then cream. Because Kalen is incapable of drinking black coffee. Or coffee that didn't cost at least twenty dollars a pound and wasn't fresh ground. Except that Alexander saw him drinking straight black coffee that had definitely been sitting too long on a warmer.
Now that all that is brought out, he settles onto the arm of the couch that Alexander's legs aren't draped over. He runs a hand through his hair. "I don't have pie. Or cupcakes. I was getting those when Elijah was here more. I should...get some frozen ones or something. Ah." His eyes flick to Grace, and he smiles, faded by exhaustion a bit, but a real smile. His attention returns to Alexander, and there is, very faintly, a trace of an amused purr. "Do you like blackberries?" The corners of his mouth twitch a little. "And have I ever told you about how I met Grace? I think it may have been more awkward than when you and I met."
"Or...how I Awakened? It occurs to me that both of those things are relevant right now. One of them more conversationally and less like business than the other."
Grace
Alex might notice that she's been paying a great deal of extra attention to her cell phone, but the why of that remains to be seen. She's concerning herself with a map of Denver, if he's really perceptive, but that's unlikely, considering. She walks into the library after him, her face buried in that phone, and without looking up, asks him, "How's the damage? Peas help?"
When Kalen arrives with coffee, Grace has planted herself in a chair and already taken off her shoes so she can curl up into an impossible shape upon it. Coffee will help at least stave off the hour of passing out, but she looks even more dead than the vampire had.
Thinking of which, a number of questions came to mind about that one. Whenever Kalen used to tell her about vampires, she honestly didn't make the connection between that and something real. It's like the difference between hearing about a rhinoceros and actually going to the zoo. The man looked like a man, spoke like a man, seemed to have a conscience. Not a mindless monster, then. Perhaps a more devious one.
She smiles back at him, similarly dimmed by what they'd put themselves through. Then, sniffs a little huff of laughter at the ceiling when he speaks of the awkwardness of their first meeting. Strange, she didn't think it was awkward at all.
Alexander
Peas help? He glances over at the chair Grace has settled into. "It helps numb it a bit, so yeah. And it's not so bad. I've had worse." He'd shrug if he was in a better position to. "That guy had a mean swing, though. And I don't think he even noticed the hits I was getting on him." He looks towards the door when Kalen arrives. "Is that normal for them?"
He watches as the coffee is set down on the table. And the syrups. And the other coffee - related paraphernalia. "Was that a really stupid thing to do, by the way? Taking a swing at a vampire?" Not that he'd have done much differently right now. Not after seeing the state of the spirits that were loitering in the club. That Alicia had been another Mage had been purely coincidental in his reaction.
He'd have to ask Alyssa what would happen to them...
“You have drupes?” He tilts his head back to look up at Kalen and pokes his tongue out. "You told me about the vampire thing. Rock beats scissors and truck beats vampire. But no, you never told me how you guys met up.
Kalen
Kalen's attention shifts between the two of them. He remembers when he wasn't sure they could be in the same place. And look at them now. There was a time he thought he and Sid would be something else too. Strange how sharing the kinds of things Mages inevitably share shift relationships in ways that are difficult to predict. Perhaps, with enough magic, you could try, but the variables....
"I've got pretty limited vampire experience. I know not all of them look like monsters, but I'm not entirely sure the one we met tonight even is a monster. He's definitely dangerous. He isn't exactly our friend. But for now, I think we should leave him be." He glances at Grace. "Watch. I don't think he was lying about what he said. And if he really isn't off killing people...we have bigger problems.
"There is considerable variation in reports about what vampires can and can't do. But hurting them...generally involves significant force. Fire is good. Beheading is good. Enchanted weapons are good." There is a flicker of a smile. "Beheading with enchanted weapons that are also on fire is excellent.
"The older they are the more frightening they are, in general, but knowing how old they are at a glance...the ones that live that long either learn to disappear or learn to blend in, I think. We may just have to assume they are all incredibly dangerous." He pours a mug of coffee for each of them.
"The day I met Grace, in addition to establishing that she liked blackberries, I asked her to come by my totally not creepy murder warehouse to learn to shoot. I think, judging by the whole people standing in the mouth of the alley situation, we may need to consider doing some more training. And maybe, all things we learned tonight considered, put up some general vampire survival tips on Ginger.
"And, in not entirely unrelated news, we may want to think about finding people who can't stop something from affecting their minds someone to partner up with to learn. I'd rather not...." There is a faint shudder and he takes a sip of coffee. Black. Undoctored. He sets the mug back down gently so that he can pour cream in.
"You remember Thakky," he says to Grace. His eyes track back to Alexander. "We had an evil spirit problem, before you got here. It was...unpleasant. But it was able to do some pretty unpleasant tricks. It would probably be for the best if everyone learned at least the basics for avoiding those."
Grace
"Yeah. I saw what he was doing to Alicia, and Elijah and I worked together to stop it. Then, I went and shielded myself just in case he decided to make us all fall into blithering lust with him," Grace says with a shudder.
She goes for the blue mug, not exactly taking much care with it or the french press carafe. She's just too drained to give a shit. But at least she doesn't forget the cream and brown sugar rock candy stirrer. Kalen and Grace have a stock of these. They're essentially lollipops. Some people have yet to figure out what growing up is supposed to entail, and let's hope they never do.
"Thakky was... hmm," she says, leaning back in the chair with her coffee and actually looking toward Alex. "You remember the riot at the Mayan Theater? Four people died? I was there. Thakky was the evil spirit behind a monster crawling out of the screen to drive the crowd of theatergoers into a spontaneous mosh pit. And it really didn't stop there of course."
She will never stop calling Thakinyan 'Thakky'. It's a point of issue: what do you do with a spirit who thrives on fear and madness? Give it a cutesy name. It'll hate that.
"So yeah, mental shielding is a wonderful thing to have. I'm not sure how many people could learn it from me, though. Seems like there's a huge gap between myself and others sometimes." Grace pauses, considers. Her eyes wander a bit. "When it comes to, you know, ideas about how their magic works."
Grace blows on her coffee, spreading the steam, slightly decreasing the entropy of the coffee-cup system. Slightly increasing it for the room. Always increasing, however, toward the end of all events.
"When I scanned the vampire, he looked like... Like he was storing entropy. Most of the time, entropy always increases in a system, and it was increasing for the vampire too, just it wasn't affecting the vampire himself. It was just built up like stress on a fault line. No actual movement, but you could see the eventual earthquake just waiting. Kinda creepy. But now I know what to look for."
Alexander
Everyone makes ripples as they live their lives. Those ripples interact and amplify and cancel. The outcome isn’t anything definite. Mages? They seem to be more as they live. The highs are higher, the lows are lower, and the chaotic interactions are so much more unpredictable as a result. Not so long ago, Alexander had been ready to have – looking to have – a blazing row with Grace. More because she was a convenient target for the anger, fear, frustration and countless other emotions that he had been struggling to deal with. But that encounter could have left them pushed ever further apart.
Nothing is fixed by fate.
He stays lying on the couch while Kalen sorts out the coffee. There’s a cup on the table waiting, he’ll grab it in a minute. For now, he’s comfortable. “Do you have any idea how many of them there might be? Are they common?” He takes a breath as a thought come to him, turning to swing his legs off the couch and sit upright. “I thought the whole vampire thing was spread through biting? Why were there so many drained spirits in the club if they turn into vampires?”
He reaches for the coffee, leaving it black and unsweetened, before sitting back on the couch and crossing his legs under him. He nods then takes a sip from the mug. “A little more help would have been nice. But I think it would have been risky for to do much tonight. They’d probably have had as much chance of hitting me as that guy. So, yeah, lessons. Lessons are good.”
Alexander looks between Kalen and Grace as they explain the whole Umbral Nasty thing in the cinema. You remember? He shakes his head. “That was before I got here, I’ve not heard anything much about it other than bits and pieces from you guys.” You guys – the Awakened. “I… would definitely be interested in learning to shield myself, though.” He looks down into his coffee, feeling little bad about that night with Sera, but wanting more to stop anyone getting into his head like that again.
He nods when Grace explains the concentration of Entropy, cringing inside. He was just getting comfortable with the idea of poking into the spirit world again. Looking into chaos and probability and possibilities tending towards decay and death and destruction? That is very much less comfortable.
Kalen
"Drained spirits?" Kalen asks softly. "Just a bite is not sufficient. Sometimes when they feed they merely kill. Often, I should think, otherwise they'd be like unchecked rabbits. It is hardly as though they have many predators."
"I'm less disappointed in the outcome this evening, everyone is still breathing after all, as concerned for what may have happened if circumstances had been a bit different." He smiles. "And you and Elijah did a good thing there. It was hardly a disaster when considering the whole of the cosmos. It just illuminated some ways in which we could better prepare."
"I taught Elijah the basics of Mind magic, though I'm hardly to be classified an expert. I learned by reading, honestly. Reading and practice. But that is not necessarily ideal. Sera and Alyssa would be better teachers than I am. Still, in some ways pairing the proper students and proper teachers is more important than the sheer vastness of knowledge."
With more space on the couch he slides onto the actual couch instead of the arm, and curls into the corner with his coffee. "For tonight though. Coffee. And I'll answer what questions I can. Tomorrow, research. Into vampires and into specifics about these vampires. Even I can see the wisdom in fighting no more battles tonight. Or even preparing for them."
Grace
No more battles tonight, the Flambeau says. And the incongruity of that makes her smile, just a little.
"All I know about vampires I learned from watching random bits and pieces of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I'm probably in great need of questiony-answery time. What gets me is that he looked so normal. Like some regular guy. He probably does normal better than we do."
To add to the list of people who do human better than you, Grace? The inhuman entropy-sink. Great.
"So, I guess then the big question I have is what do I do about this?" she says, and holds up her phone, displaying the map with the little blinking red dot.
"I can try to figure out where he goes, figure out his patterns, perhaps? Or just drop it. I mean he did try to attack Alicia, but okay, you say you trust him that he didn't intend to kill her. I don't know though. I mean, going and fucking with someone's head like that is harm enough. He wanted to get her alone for some reason, and it can't have been good."
Alexander
"Yeah," He shifts again, turning to Kalen a little more, "they looked like they were completely drained of everything. I'm no expert, but some of the spirits I've seen before were at least active. These guys just looked like they were just biding their time until whatever happens to them happens." He shrugs. Although he may be able to see more of the spirit world than Kalen or Grace, he's by no means any kind of expert. "Hell, I don't even know what happens to them after."
Not yet, anyway.
There may be more questions to come but, for now, Alexander is tired. He sinks back against the back of the couch and listens to the talk of students and teachers. Alyssa sounds like the best option, given how Sera's last attempt to use Mind magic went.
"Track him, I guess. We can try getting more information about the club and its owners. I'll have a dig and see if I can find anything about crime in the area."
Kalen
"I don't know that much about spirits. A little. If they're...kind of catatonic and there...we might have to try to help them later. Once we clear the place. It's not likely we can get close and call them. Well." He looks at Grace. "Maybe some people could. But I don't know if we have anyone who can get close and call them with magic. And...physically close...I don't think is safe."
Alexander sinks back against the couch and Kalen smiles a little, and then after the note about looking into the club reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. "That's what mornings are for."
He glances back to Grace, like, 'Is there more now?' But he is also tired, not quite so much as they are, perhaps. But, definitely tired.
Grace
It can wait, Kalen's tired glance seems to say.
And truth be told, it can. Even though Grace tends to long to chase down everything in her life straight to the finish line. She shrugs and puts the phone down on the table.
"Well, in the morning, you can let me know what you want to do with this guy," she says, to no one in particular, but probably to Kalen. "I've got a pretty strong tether going straight to him. It'll last for as long as I can keep it going, but the longer we sit on it, the more of a chance it stands of being broken. Or discovered. I don't know if vampires can do what plant-zombie-spirit things can, but I don't particularly want to find out."
She regards the room with closed eyes and a strange cant to her head like she's going to fall asleep right there, but she lifts the mug up to her mouth instead. It's comforting, the normalcy. After such a night, just sitting back in a safe place with coffee -- in her chair? It's less home than it is territory. Every inch is a memorized one, and every presence a known entity. So she lets that sink in, in order to find balance.
Alexander
“The morning is good,” Alexander says as he wiggles down in the couch a little and stretches his legs out in front of him, eyes closing. He’s certainly in no rush to go find any other supernatural nasties to get into a fist fight with tonight. Or, probably, tomorrow. As Kalen had said, they were all breathing. He was probably the worst off physically, and that was all stuff that would heal given a few days. Alicia and Elijah? That would take a lot more time and patching up, but wasn’t anything he could do anything about or – at the moment – really knew anything about anyway.
So the bag of peas slides down and lands on the arm of the couch, the hand with the coffee cup wedging against the same arm keeping the cup upright, as he falls asleep.
Things can definitely wait until the morning.
[Fade?]
Kalen drives them all back, not to the house he has in the city, but to the Library. All of them are drained, one of them is hurt, and Grace is possibly still watching the little red dot that is their new vampire acquaintance crawling over her screen. Kalen is going over the things he knows about vampires, but the things he knows about vampires are mostly how to kill them.
Unless they start a conversation while he's driving, he's content to be quiet while he drives. If they're paying close attention to him, they might notice the amount of attention he pays to the mirrors. There is more than one way to track someone. Did they figure out which car was theirs? He needs to talk to Grace about creating a bug-detecting device. About automatic sweeps at the gate. Can she enchant his car? Give him a little indicator light?
For now, he lets those things go. There are probably no bugs on the car. There is probably no danger here. Not the kind that he needs to prepare for immediately, anyway.
If the others are quiet while he drives, he'll focus on the few things they need to do once they reach the Library. Show Alexander where there is a ridiculously well stocked first-aid kit (which is, perhaps, more like the first-aid and ammunition closet). Start water boiling for the coffee. Grind coffee. He won't dissuade them from following him into the kitchen, but if they want to collapse in the library where there are couches...who is he to judge? He'd rather like to collapse in there too.
Just not yet.
He may have talked about tea rituals with Alexander, but there is a certain practiced calm about this that wasn't evident in watching him prepare tea. He reaches for the knobs to cabinets without looking for them, touches buttons on the grinder after a little swipe of his fingers over it, pulls out the container of coffee he wants without needing to check the label. He'll pull out the things Grace likes, or perhaps she will, she's been in a kitchen with him often enough by now that he barely has to look at her either. He knows the things she wants and where they are. Alexander, if he comes into the kitchen, gets slightly more attention, but only because Kalen doesn't know where to expect him to be or to go.
Grace
hat Grace does on the road back to the library is sleep. Being a passenger in someone else's car always has a tendency to knock her right out even on a good night, and this has not been a good night. When she walked out of the club, she looked exhausted. Her head hurt when she had to put it through its paces tonight. So Grace slumps her way into the back seat and promptly uses all that space to get comfortable enough to nap.
It's not that she thinks she's perfectly safe, having just walked out of a vampire den. No, she just trusts Kalen to be able to get away from any danger. That's how he Awakened, after all, right?
When they stop, she does mumble out, "sss mmpr?" It's something that her hazy half-dream insists is very important. But no, Grace, it is not vampires they're stopping for. It's coffee and couches and books, in a place that is not a coffee shop with its resultant other people.
Upon dragging herself into the building, she does make a beeline toward the kitchen, but it's not coffee she's after. She goes straight for the freezer, and digs around way in the back until she finds her prize: a year-old bag of frozen peas. Strangely enough, nobody has yet thought to themselves in the middle of the night that a bag of peas would make the finest snack ever. Who would have thought? The icy peas have had plenty of time to stick to each other, so it comes out as a rather firm block, until Grace hauls off and slams the bag against the corner of the freezer.
This isn't normal Grace behavior. She's not normally so violent with vegetables.
She takes a kitchen towel and wraps the bag with it, then goes off to find Alex.
Alexander
Alexander, for his part, is pretty quiet on the drive back to the library. The only real noise inside the car, beyond the sound of the engine and the tyres on the road, is whatever radio station the radio turns onto. Some local station, automated system playing 80's tracks through the small hours of Monday morning. Initially Alex rests his head on the passenger door frame, looking at the wing mirror. Not, this time, to peer through the Gauntlet. Like Kalen, he's just keeping an eye on what's behind them. Eventually the light night traffic dies away and he dozes off.
He rouses again when Kalen parks up and the sound of the engine dies away. Following the others into the building, he grabs the first aid kit and heads into the bathroom. He pulls off his tshirt and hangs it over the top of the door before prodding and cleaning the injuries he already knew about and started checking for others. Rinsing his mouth out leaves a little watery blood in the sink, but no teeth. He rinses his face in clean, cold water and spends a little time staring at himself in the mirror. Then closes his eyes and rests his forehead against it.
He hears the movement of Grace approaching with cold vegetables and pushes himself from the mirror, finding a towel to dry off before replacing the tshirt. He takes the offered bag with thanks before heading towards the library proper. For the couches rather than the books.
He sits on an arms and topples backwards, lying flat on the cushions with his legs hanging over the arm. He holds the bag against his jaw, with a sharp inhalation when it makes contact with the painful area.
Kalen
Kalen brings the coffee, still in a French press brewing, and sets it on the table. Then vanishes to return with a box with sugar of various kinds and honey and some flavored syrups. And then mugs. And then cream. Because Kalen is incapable of drinking black coffee. Or coffee that didn't cost at least twenty dollars a pound and wasn't fresh ground. Except that Alexander saw him drinking straight black coffee that had definitely been sitting too long on a warmer.
Now that all that is brought out, he settles onto the arm of the couch that Alexander's legs aren't draped over. He runs a hand through his hair. "I don't have pie. Or cupcakes. I was getting those when Elijah was here more. I should...get some frozen ones or something. Ah." His eyes flick to Grace, and he smiles, faded by exhaustion a bit, but a real smile. His attention returns to Alexander, and there is, very faintly, a trace of an amused purr. "Do you like blackberries?" The corners of his mouth twitch a little. "And have I ever told you about how I met Grace? I think it may have been more awkward than when you and I met."
"Or...how I Awakened? It occurs to me that both of those things are relevant right now. One of them more conversationally and less like business than the other."
Grace
Alex might notice that she's been paying a great deal of extra attention to her cell phone, but the why of that remains to be seen. She's concerning herself with a map of Denver, if he's really perceptive, but that's unlikely, considering. She walks into the library after him, her face buried in that phone, and without looking up, asks him, "How's the damage? Peas help?"
When Kalen arrives with coffee, Grace has planted herself in a chair and already taken off her shoes so she can curl up into an impossible shape upon it. Coffee will help at least stave off the hour of passing out, but she looks even more dead than the vampire had.
Thinking of which, a number of questions came to mind about that one. Whenever Kalen used to tell her about vampires, she honestly didn't make the connection between that and something real. It's like the difference between hearing about a rhinoceros and actually going to the zoo. The man looked like a man, spoke like a man, seemed to have a conscience. Not a mindless monster, then. Perhaps a more devious one.
She smiles back at him, similarly dimmed by what they'd put themselves through. Then, sniffs a little huff of laughter at the ceiling when he speaks of the awkwardness of their first meeting. Strange, she didn't think it was awkward at all.
Alexander
Peas help? He glances over at the chair Grace has settled into. "It helps numb it a bit, so yeah. And it's not so bad. I've had worse." He'd shrug if he was in a better position to. "That guy had a mean swing, though. And I don't think he even noticed the hits I was getting on him." He looks towards the door when Kalen arrives. "Is that normal for them?"
He watches as the coffee is set down on the table. And the syrups. And the other coffee - related paraphernalia. "Was that a really stupid thing to do, by the way? Taking a swing at a vampire?" Not that he'd have done much differently right now. Not after seeing the state of the spirits that were loitering in the club. That Alicia had been another Mage had been purely coincidental in his reaction.
He'd have to ask Alyssa what would happen to them...
“You have drupes?” He tilts his head back to look up at Kalen and pokes his tongue out. "You told me about the vampire thing. Rock beats scissors and truck beats vampire. But no, you never told me how you guys met up.
Kalen
Kalen's attention shifts between the two of them. He remembers when he wasn't sure they could be in the same place. And look at them now. There was a time he thought he and Sid would be something else too. Strange how sharing the kinds of things Mages inevitably share shift relationships in ways that are difficult to predict. Perhaps, with enough magic, you could try, but the variables....
"I've got pretty limited vampire experience. I know not all of them look like monsters, but I'm not entirely sure the one we met tonight even is a monster. He's definitely dangerous. He isn't exactly our friend. But for now, I think we should leave him be." He glances at Grace. "Watch. I don't think he was lying about what he said. And if he really isn't off killing people...we have bigger problems.
"There is considerable variation in reports about what vampires can and can't do. But hurting them...generally involves significant force. Fire is good. Beheading is good. Enchanted weapons are good." There is a flicker of a smile. "Beheading with enchanted weapons that are also on fire is excellent.
"The older they are the more frightening they are, in general, but knowing how old they are at a glance...the ones that live that long either learn to disappear or learn to blend in, I think. We may just have to assume they are all incredibly dangerous." He pours a mug of coffee for each of them.
"The day I met Grace, in addition to establishing that she liked blackberries, I asked her to come by my totally not creepy murder warehouse to learn to shoot. I think, judging by the whole people standing in the mouth of the alley situation, we may need to consider doing some more training. And maybe, all things we learned tonight considered, put up some general vampire survival tips on Ginger.
"And, in not entirely unrelated news, we may want to think about finding people who can't stop something from affecting their minds someone to partner up with to learn. I'd rather not...." There is a faint shudder and he takes a sip of coffee. Black. Undoctored. He sets the mug back down gently so that he can pour cream in.
"You remember Thakky," he says to Grace. His eyes track back to Alexander. "We had an evil spirit problem, before you got here. It was...unpleasant. But it was able to do some pretty unpleasant tricks. It would probably be for the best if everyone learned at least the basics for avoiding those."
Grace
"Yeah. I saw what he was doing to Alicia, and Elijah and I worked together to stop it. Then, I went and shielded myself just in case he decided to make us all fall into blithering lust with him," Grace says with a shudder.
She goes for the blue mug, not exactly taking much care with it or the french press carafe. She's just too drained to give a shit. But at least she doesn't forget the cream and brown sugar rock candy stirrer. Kalen and Grace have a stock of these. They're essentially lollipops. Some people have yet to figure out what growing up is supposed to entail, and let's hope they never do.
"Thakky was... hmm," she says, leaning back in the chair with her coffee and actually looking toward Alex. "You remember the riot at the Mayan Theater? Four people died? I was there. Thakky was the evil spirit behind a monster crawling out of the screen to drive the crowd of theatergoers into a spontaneous mosh pit. And it really didn't stop there of course."
She will never stop calling Thakinyan 'Thakky'. It's a point of issue: what do you do with a spirit who thrives on fear and madness? Give it a cutesy name. It'll hate that.
"So yeah, mental shielding is a wonderful thing to have. I'm not sure how many people could learn it from me, though. Seems like there's a huge gap between myself and others sometimes." Grace pauses, considers. Her eyes wander a bit. "When it comes to, you know, ideas about how their magic works."
Grace blows on her coffee, spreading the steam, slightly decreasing the entropy of the coffee-cup system. Slightly increasing it for the room. Always increasing, however, toward the end of all events.
"When I scanned the vampire, he looked like... Like he was storing entropy. Most of the time, entropy always increases in a system, and it was increasing for the vampire too, just it wasn't affecting the vampire himself. It was just built up like stress on a fault line. No actual movement, but you could see the eventual earthquake just waiting. Kinda creepy. But now I know what to look for."
Alexander
Everyone makes ripples as they live their lives. Those ripples interact and amplify and cancel. The outcome isn’t anything definite. Mages? They seem to be more as they live. The highs are higher, the lows are lower, and the chaotic interactions are so much more unpredictable as a result. Not so long ago, Alexander had been ready to have – looking to have – a blazing row with Grace. More because she was a convenient target for the anger, fear, frustration and countless other emotions that he had been struggling to deal with. But that encounter could have left them pushed ever further apart.
Nothing is fixed by fate.
He stays lying on the couch while Kalen sorts out the coffee. There’s a cup on the table waiting, he’ll grab it in a minute. For now, he’s comfortable. “Do you have any idea how many of them there might be? Are they common?” He takes a breath as a thought come to him, turning to swing his legs off the couch and sit upright. “I thought the whole vampire thing was spread through biting? Why were there so many drained spirits in the club if they turn into vampires?”
He reaches for the coffee, leaving it black and unsweetened, before sitting back on the couch and crossing his legs under him. He nods then takes a sip from the mug. “A little more help would have been nice. But I think it would have been risky for to do much tonight. They’d probably have had as much chance of hitting me as that guy. So, yeah, lessons. Lessons are good.”
Alexander looks between Kalen and Grace as they explain the whole Umbral Nasty thing in the cinema. You remember? He shakes his head. “That was before I got here, I’ve not heard anything much about it other than bits and pieces from you guys.” You guys – the Awakened. “I… would definitely be interested in learning to shield myself, though.” He looks down into his coffee, feeling little bad about that night with Sera, but wanting more to stop anyone getting into his head like that again.
He nods when Grace explains the concentration of Entropy, cringing inside. He was just getting comfortable with the idea of poking into the spirit world again. Looking into chaos and probability and possibilities tending towards decay and death and destruction? That is very much less comfortable.
Kalen
"Drained spirits?" Kalen asks softly. "Just a bite is not sufficient. Sometimes when they feed they merely kill. Often, I should think, otherwise they'd be like unchecked rabbits. It is hardly as though they have many predators."
"I'm less disappointed in the outcome this evening, everyone is still breathing after all, as concerned for what may have happened if circumstances had been a bit different." He smiles. "And you and Elijah did a good thing there. It was hardly a disaster when considering the whole of the cosmos. It just illuminated some ways in which we could better prepare."
"I taught Elijah the basics of Mind magic, though I'm hardly to be classified an expert. I learned by reading, honestly. Reading and practice. But that is not necessarily ideal. Sera and Alyssa would be better teachers than I am. Still, in some ways pairing the proper students and proper teachers is more important than the sheer vastness of knowledge."
With more space on the couch he slides onto the actual couch instead of the arm, and curls into the corner with his coffee. "For tonight though. Coffee. And I'll answer what questions I can. Tomorrow, research. Into vampires and into specifics about these vampires. Even I can see the wisdom in fighting no more battles tonight. Or even preparing for them."
Grace
No more battles tonight, the Flambeau says. And the incongruity of that makes her smile, just a little.
"All I know about vampires I learned from watching random bits and pieces of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I'm probably in great need of questiony-answery time. What gets me is that he looked so normal. Like some regular guy. He probably does normal better than we do."
To add to the list of people who do human better than you, Grace? The inhuman entropy-sink. Great.
"So, I guess then the big question I have is what do I do about this?" she says, and holds up her phone, displaying the map with the little blinking red dot.
"I can try to figure out where he goes, figure out his patterns, perhaps? Or just drop it. I mean he did try to attack Alicia, but okay, you say you trust him that he didn't intend to kill her. I don't know though. I mean, going and fucking with someone's head like that is harm enough. He wanted to get her alone for some reason, and it can't have been good."
Alexander
"Yeah," He shifts again, turning to Kalen a little more, "they looked like they were completely drained of everything. I'm no expert, but some of the spirits I've seen before were at least active. These guys just looked like they were just biding their time until whatever happens to them happens." He shrugs. Although he may be able to see more of the spirit world than Kalen or Grace, he's by no means any kind of expert. "Hell, I don't even know what happens to them after."
Not yet, anyway.
There may be more questions to come but, for now, Alexander is tired. He sinks back against the back of the couch and listens to the talk of students and teachers. Alyssa sounds like the best option, given how Sera's last attempt to use Mind magic went.
"Track him, I guess. We can try getting more information about the club and its owners. I'll have a dig and see if I can find anything about crime in the area."
Kalen
"I don't know that much about spirits. A little. If they're...kind of catatonic and there...we might have to try to help them later. Once we clear the place. It's not likely we can get close and call them. Well." He looks at Grace. "Maybe some people could. But I don't know if we have anyone who can get close and call them with magic. And...physically close...I don't think is safe."
Alexander sinks back against the couch and Kalen smiles a little, and then after the note about looking into the club reaches out to squeeze his shoulder. "That's what mornings are for."
He glances back to Grace, like, 'Is there more now?' But he is also tired, not quite so much as they are, perhaps. But, definitely tired.
Grace
It can wait, Kalen's tired glance seems to say.
And truth be told, it can. Even though Grace tends to long to chase down everything in her life straight to the finish line. She shrugs and puts the phone down on the table.
"Well, in the morning, you can let me know what you want to do with this guy," she says, to no one in particular, but probably to Kalen. "I've got a pretty strong tether going straight to him. It'll last for as long as I can keep it going, but the longer we sit on it, the more of a chance it stands of being broken. Or discovered. I don't know if vampires can do what plant-zombie-spirit things can, but I don't particularly want to find out."
She regards the room with closed eyes and a strange cant to her head like she's going to fall asleep right there, but she lifts the mug up to her mouth instead. It's comforting, the normalcy. After such a night, just sitting back in a safe place with coffee -- in her chair? It's less home than it is territory. Every inch is a memorized one, and every presence a known entity. So she lets that sink in, in order to find balance.
Alexander
“The morning is good,” Alexander says as he wiggles down in the couch a little and stretches his legs out in front of him, eyes closing. He’s certainly in no rush to go find any other supernatural nasties to get into a fist fight with tonight. Or, probably, tomorrow. As Kalen had said, they were all breathing. He was probably the worst off physically, and that was all stuff that would heal given a few days. Alicia and Elijah? That would take a lot more time and patching up, but wasn’t anything he could do anything about or – at the moment – really knew anything about anyway.
So the bag of peas slides down and lands on the arm of the couch, the hand with the coffee cup wedging against the same arm keeping the cup upright, as he falls asleep.
Things can definitely wait until the morning.
[Fade?]
Wednesday, 18 June 2014
We must stop meeting like this [Email, Retro]
SerafÃne
There is a boulder-strewn stream somewhere high in the mountains. Swift-flowing and shallow, shaded by everygreens, flush with snowmelt and higher now than it is any other time of the year. The sun is out, and the sun is bright, and the air is cool enough that there is a hint of a chill in the shadows, that dissipates entirely when one is draped on a sunwarmed rock, soaking up the solar radiation.
Sera is draped on a sunwarmed rock that projects over a quiet pool where a noisy waterfall churns over wall of tumbled rock and debris. She has a beach towel folded under her head for a pillow, hiking boots off, socks tucked into the empty boots. Mud smeared on the boots says she has been hiking and the drying bare footprints on the boulder says that she has been swimming too, or at least dipping her feet into the pool. Now, though, she has stripped out of her cut-offs down to her bikini bottoms and (we must be honest) out of her bikini top to ensure, you know, an even tan, and is laying back with sunglasses over her eyes and some mushroom tea humming through her veins and a canteen of water close at hand.
Alexander
[Per+Aware makes it easier to bump into people in interesting places]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Alexander
Either most of the Awakened in the city aren’t aware of some of Alexander’s favourite ways to spend time, or they just don’t share them. He loves taking the chance to just get away from everything now and again – just him, his gear, and the mountains. This isn’t a new thing, either. Seattle was never short of remote places to disappear to, sometimes for several days at a time. Today, though, is for a shorter stay. He’s hiking, so the pack he’s lugging on his back is relatively small. Relatively. For an area where the weather is so changeable, especially at short notice, it’s always a good idea to be prepared.
But the weather – at least for the moment – is fine. Which means the gaiters and other waterproof gear is stashed away. Instead, Alexander is working his way through the landscape in hiking trousers – legs unzipped, turning them into shorts – a black technical tshirt and a well-worn pair of blue-under-the-mud walking boots.
There’s something else in the air up here, though. Not the traffic fumes and other clogging pollution you get in the city, it’s too far out for that. But something that announces the presence of someone, someone who he recognises. That enthralling sense of viscerality and liminality pull him in a slightly different direction to that he started. It pulls him to the opposite side of the pool to where Sera is lounging. “We must stop meeting like this,” he calls, just before realising her dress – or lack thereof. He turns to look elsewhere. “Um, hope I’m not interrupting.”
SerafÃne
(Does Sera know that Alexander is embarrassed by her lack of clothes? Awarempathy.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 4, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafÃne
He has a glimpse of her bare feet and her knees, golden in the sun. Maybe the glint of her glasses from the angle on the rock. The toed-off hiking boots, little white flags of her socks stuffed into the muddy brown leather so from that first glimpse, well - he can easily and naturally assume that Sera is simply sunning herself.
Then she lifts herself up to her elbows, long blond hair swinging from a loose ponytail as she props herself up and looks across the reflecting pool at the police officer in his hiking gear. Sera is wholly unself-conscious about her demi-nudity and perfectly comfortable and she smiles back at Alexander and lifts up a hand and waves and the smile - well, from a distance, when one is uncomfortable as Alexander seems to be, what can he tell about the state of her smile, the complexities of it? - so the smile is simply a smile.
Then Alexander turns away and there's the shadow of movement in his periphery. A moment later,
"You can look now."
It's true. She's pulled a t-shirt over her head and is pulling her hair out from beneath the collar even as he turns. "What are you doing all the way out here?"
Alexander
The thought wasn’t that Sera might be occupying herself with someone else, more that... well, semi-naked women don’t usually appreciate random men turning up unexpectedly. But however little Sera is bothered by her near-nakedness, it certainly makes Alexander uncomfortable. He’s not a prude by any means, and it’s certainly nothing that – in general terms – he hasn’t seen before. And given Sera’s usual clothing, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen most of anyway. As fine as the line between her dress and decency tends to be, it is still a line and one that he’s comfortable is – generally – there.
Alexander looks up when she says that it’s safe, looking rather more comfortable than he did before. Embarassment quickly fading, he smiles back. “It’s my backyard. Well, kinda. I like getting out here and away from the city now and again.” He looks down and starts picking his way around the pool to where Sera’s sat. “How about you? I didn’t realise you were the outdoors type.”
He nods at her boots, grinning. “No heels today?”
SerafÃne
No heels today? Alexander asks and Sera gives him the smallest of quirks. This little comma of a half-smile that curves beneath her sunglasses and has her gaze seemingly steady on his face. The sun gleaming across the curve of the lenses when she moves her head.
"Wouldn't that be insane?" she tosses back to him, still smiling, a mild note to the expression that he may not be able to place until he is closer but, oh. Lovely.
Then a little shrug. "I don't know what the outdoors type is. But weren't we camping when I found you?"
She lilts her head in a general direction opposite of the one from which he has come. "Renting a cabin not far from here. Spent some time there this time last year. And I don't know," a one-shouldered shrug, still just lounging there on the rock. "I felt like coming back."
Alexander
Alexander shrugs out of the rucksack and lays in on the ground before perching on a rock. He looks down at the pool, considering doing a little foot-dipping of his own.
“What isn’t insane these days?” he asks before shrugging. “Although that would be particularly insane, even if you can put a broken ankle back together again.” She had already demonstrated her ability to heal, so surely a little thing like a broken bone would be easy to fix? There’s a mental shrug; not something he really has to worry about. Not yet, at least.
“This is outdoors, I guess.” He gestures around them. “Away from buildings and roads and people and traffic. Escape, I suppose.” She nods in the vague direction of the cabin. “Are you on your own out here, then, or is Dan staying with you?” Dan seems the most likely candidate, given that he’s usually nearby – or at least easily contactable – when Sera needs him. “How is he, by the way? And.. Sorry, I’ve forgotten your friend’s name. The one who bakes.”
SerafÃne
"He's around." Sera murmurs, of course he is. He's always around, somewhere on the fringes of her life, ensuring that she eats, sometimes, that she drinks, sometimes, something other than alcohol. There to hold her hand when her trip goes bad and her body when it is shaking. Or just to hold her. Then, "Dee," she supplies - the friend who bakes. "Naw. She's in Denver. Doesn't really know about this place.
"Or, us really. Magic, you know? I think she's starting to get it, but there are an awful lot of things I can't really share with her, just on that level. For her sake and ours."
The briefest pause, his reflection gleaming back at him from the lenses of her glasses.
Then, "Anyone ever tell you how we got the chantry?"
Alexander
Alexander considers things for a moment before bending down and starting work on his boot laces. “Tell Dan I say hi. And Dee, too.” He smiles as he makes the request. The memory for names may be lacking from time to time, but those of the two of them keeping an eye on him after his less-than-pleasant Awakening are very much there.
The laces loose, Alexander levers one boot off and then the other. “So how does that work with Dan, then? I don’t feel the same kind of thing around him as you or the others. Is it like… The Hermetic thing of training people before they wake up?”
The boots come off, the socks follow, and Alexander turns to rest his feet in the pool. The water is cold, but pleasant. He shuffles a little to get comfortable on the rock, looking back at his reflection. But there’s no attempt to look through it, not here and not now. “Not really. I know we’re kinda borrowing the place from someone who’s out of town. Beyond that..?” He shrugs.
SerafÃne
"Dan's known about us since before I met him," Sera tells Alexander, this quick flash of affection cresting the curve of her mouth. Absent and present, somehow, both at once. "I guess it's a bit like that Hermetic thing, but it's not the same. We're not that fucking formal, and he's just -
"We're just tight, you know? And he knows and he believes so I can do things around him and with him that ordinary people wouldn't understand or believe, which makes it harder and more dangerous. Consor's the word. Friends and lovers and allies who are alive to magic, but not precisely awake. Not the way we are.
"Pretty sure I couldn't get by without him. I'd probably forget to eat three weeks in a row and I'd never clean my goddamned room."
Sera's smiling then, though Alexander is now turned away from her, feet in the churning pool of water, dark with tannins from the pines dotting its course, and he cannot see the tinge of - call it melancholy - that lingers in the curve of her mouth.
"You wanna hear the story?"
Still, that hint of melancholy does manage to inflect her voice, when she asks him whether he wants to know more.
Alexander
[Aware-empathy, do we notice the change in tone?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Alexander
Alexander turns on the rock, feet still in the water but moving so that he’s lying on his front and facing Sera on her rock. “How did you meet him? And how did you both figure out what the other was?” He laughs a little as she says she’d probably forget to eat. “I’m pretty sure the others around here would prod you now and again if he wasn’t. Although maybe not so much about putting your used laundry in the basket.”
He’s silent for a moment when Sera asks if he wants to know more. Part of him does, but he does pick up on the melancholy. He considers her face, striking in the light, considering. “Only if you want to tell it.” There are plenty of others to ask about what the history of the place was. If Sera doesn’t want to – or wants to talk about something else – then he’s leaving it all down to her. Given the help she’s given him in the past, he’s ready to give her all the time in the world.
SerafÃne
This quick, supple little shrug. Quiet, in this too. "I went through some shit overseas. A friend of a friend got me back over here. Somehow Dan ended up with the job of looking in on me. Just, you know, this string of mutual acquaintances, right? So we always kinda knew."
Her frame rather darting beneath the somewhat oversized t-shirt she pulled over her head when Alexander stumbles upon her sunbathing nude or nearly so on the rock. Her hair is golden, catching the light, but she deliberately allows all the dark roots to show, and the soft fringe of her sidecut is never, never dyed.
"I don't mind sharing."
And she doesn't mind sharing. Some part of her wants to share; that has to be why she broached the subject. That is also the reason she's been out here so much over the past few weeks.
She leans back, Sera, braced on the palms of her hands, eyes closed, soaking up the sun. Then lowers her chin and meets Alexander's gaze and gives him this wry, lovely little smile.
There are already tears in her eyes but the dazzling contrast between sun and shadow makes them difficult to discern.
"The first mage I met in Denver was Pan. Felt him outside his Church and went in, you know? Couldn't see him - but I knew he was in the confessional, hearing confessions, and I hate churches so I went in and decided to fuck around with him and asked him to make out, among other things.
"Turned out he wasn't the kind of fucking dick I thought all priests were required by law or the goddamned pope to be.
"But neither of us knew this place was here.
"A few days later I had this dream, about a girl alone in a world that had distingrated into little more than ash. Everything was ruined. Everything was a ruin, and she was standing in the center of this radial circle of graves and there was a man there, fucking dark, right? But compelling in the way people like that can be, and he took her hand, and he led her away, and she looked at me in the dream, just crying, right?
"And she asked me for help.
"Her name was Leah. When we tracked her down, we brought her out here."
Alexander
“I guess I can see how you guys ended up so close.” From what he’d seen, it almost seems like Dan’s the older brother looking after his little sister. But then it’s not unlikely that their relationship extends to the physical as well as the mental, and then the comparison falls apart. Alexander is happy to know that he’s there and taking care of her, though.
Where Sera’s appearance may be a lot more planned than her easy-going nature suggests, Alexander’s is pretty much what it appears to be. A few days’ worth of stubble covers his jaw and his short, dark hair has been gelled and brushed back. His eyes are uncovered and interested as Sera begins the story she wants to share, while he stays quiet and lets her talk without interruption.
The mention of Pan, though, gets his mouth pulled a little tighter. He’s aware of how highly some of the others in the city regard the man, but he’s still somewhat dubious. But, then, is a fleeting encounter really enough to build an accurate opinion of a person? Probably not, but then first impressions do tend to colour opinions quite strongly. That he may not be a complete ass holds hope for the future…
There’s a pause in the story. “What happened to her? Or was that what was going to happen to her? I’m not sure how those visions and dreams work. Who was the man?”
“Where’s Leah now? I don’t remember anyone mentioning her name before.”
SerafÃne
"I don't know how they work for other people," Sera supplies quietly, watching Alexander in the shadows. "For me - well, I've had them since I was a fucking kid. Long before I woke up. There were just things I would know. Things I'd see before they happened. Things I'd remember that I never should've known.
"All wrapped up in metaphor and who the fuck really understands metaphor, or maybe who the fuck really understands metaphor better than a four year old.
"When I had that dream, all I knew was that it was real, and it lingered, and it was important, and that we were all in danger, but she - especially - was. From the man in my dream.
"He was Fallen. Nephandi. Gave his soul over to god-knows-what in exchange for power, and was absolutely intent on bringing all of that suffering back into the world.
"Everyone said she was too. That she was born that way. They call it Widderslainte - someone stitched to an avatar that has already Fallen. Fuck if I know if it was true.
"But it turns out that a helluva lot of people knew about Leah. The Techs - you know about them, right? and our side, and of course the Fallen. They were hunting her.
"They had plans, see."
Alexander
Sera had told him before that her waking up had been a gradual thing, mixed in with load of other stuff. When your dreams are prophecies at four years old, really how much difference does it make finding out that you can change reality? “Did you tell anyone about your dreams? When you were young, I mean.” He listens to Sera’s reply, but part of his mind is elsewhere for a few moment – thinking back to a faceless man and a blood-lipped woman in white…
Alexander nods silently when Sera says the man was a Nephandi, and again when she asks if he knows about the Technocracy. He’d already had several little talks about the big scary things that it would be A Bad Thing to get involved with, and those two came at the start of all of those talks. “I thought you had to choose to become one of them? That you couldn’t be forced into it? So... was he trying to get her to make the same choice her avatar had?”
“What did the Techs want with her?” Other than asking about some of the details as Sera tells the story, he’s happy to just let her carry on talking.
SerafÃne
Here is another small divertissement: Alexander's question about whether or not Sera ever <i>told anyone</i> about her dreams. There is a certain irony in the whole of the conversation of which Sera alone is aware. To-wit, no one called her Serafíne, then. "Did I tell anyone? Fuck if I know. I was a kid, I probably didn't think it was weird. I figured everyone else knew things the way I knew things. Pretty sure all that freaked my folks out, though.
"I think my mother thought - " A brief pause. A caesura, and the mild irony of her expression settles into something else, a little more distant, a little more strange. Alexander has no idea how little Sera really knows about her own past. How distant what she does remembers seems to her: through a glass, darkly and all that.
"Anyway: Leah. The Techs kidnapped her before she woke up. They were trying to use her to draw out the Fallen, maybe they wanted to experiment on her. I'm not really sure. What I know is that some of the members of the cabal that held the chantry before us found out about it and rescued her. They took her to a warehouse in the city to try to keep her safe.
"Shelby and Will. Those were their names. They rescued Leah on their own. The rest of the cabal thought they should've just killed her, or left her in the Techs' hands.
"That she was too dangerous, that everything was too dangerous. That the most she deserved was a clean death.
"I didn't know any of them. Or any of this when it was happening, but a couple of days after that first dream I had, Jim and Sid and Mara and me met this guy Jake. Shelby's boyfriend.
"He was a consor like Dan, and he'd never been allowed to go to the chantry by the rest of the cabal, and all he knew was that Shelby had been missing for weeks. He was beside himself, you know? So we started looking for them, trying to find her for him.
"Shelby's family owned this warehouse - so we figured it was as good a place to start as anywhere else.
"Jim and I looked back in time, and saw the whole thing. Shelby and Will were watching over Leah when the rest of their cabal found them. They were in the middle of an argument over <i>what to do</i> about Leah when the Techs showed up and a fucking battle ensued. God knows what would've happened otherwise, but Leah was shot in the battle, and the trauma of the whole thing woke her up.
"You know how crazy it was when you woke up? The gauntlet all shredded, wild magic, all of it? When Leah woke up, it was this blast of destruction.
"Without even thinking about it or meaning to, she killed them all. Turned them all into Ash.
"Twelve people and a whole fucking warehouse, disintegrated.
"And someone powerful covering it all up."
Without quite thinking about it, or even interrupting the story, Sera has started to cry. A few tears cresting her lashes to fall onto her cheeks
Alexander
Thinking about it, it probably was a bit of a silly question to ask. But, then, different people have their first memories before then, others after. And given Sera’s already demonstrated ability to sift back through time and see past events... She pauses part way through a sentence. “Thought what?” He is curious to know more about this strange, mysterious woman. But if she doesn’t want to carry on that particular chain of thought then he isn’t going to force it.
But the subject does change, back to Leah and the story of how the local Awakened were introduced to the Chantry. He lies on his rock, head propped up on his hands listening to Sera. Watching her. She explains how Leah woke up so dramatically, similar in some ways to his own less-than-pleasant introduction to the Awakened world. But where his stirring Avatar tore into the ephemeral, hers ripped into the physical. Alexander looks down at the rock he’s lying on as the story unfolds, getting wrapped up again in his unresolved issues and missing the effect the story is having on Sera.
Quietly he asks, “How did you know her Avatar had already Fallen? How was Leah after that?” Partly asking to find out what happened to her. Partly to find out what could be in store for him. Of the other Awakenings he’s heard about so far, Leah’s certainly seems to be the closest experience to his.
[Do we notice? Aware-pathy] Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 4) ( fail )
SerafÃne <i>Thought what?</i>
Alexander inquires, and the inquiry pulls Sera up for a moment. Not short, precisely, but out of the current of her thoughts. Out of the indefinable blend of concordance and strangeness that all such memories seem to have for her. There is flick of a glance from her, all direct, and a supple hum of consideration that opens through her body.
"That I was better off far away than close by."
--
And her eyes linger there; on Alexander. And she knows, she knows, she knows. She can taste the uncertainty, the correspondences wrapped into the substance of the question.
"<i>I</i> didn't know that." Quietly, Sera starts to explain. "I didn't <i>believe</i> that. In my dream, she asked <i>me</i> for help, and in my vision, I could see that she was just - scared, frightened. Even that - that destruction she unleashed did not come about until one of the Techs had shot her. Then she just exploded.
"Afterward she was wretched."
--
"Between the Techs and the Fallen, we knew we were in over our heads, so we laid low for a few days. I went to find Pan again, to tell him what happened, and he agreed to find Leah for me.
"By the time Jim, Pan and I found her, she was on the roof of one of the hospital downtown, suicidal. She couldn't live with what had happened. With what she'd done. With what she was doing. It seemed like all she could do was destroy things, see. And she was tormented by these terrible dreams.
"I still believed in her, though. Jim did, too.
"And I don't know that Pan believed in her, precisely, so much as he was willing to believe in our belief in her.
"The Fallen were there, too. Ready to convince her that they could put an end to her suffering by helping her embrace her nature. But somehow Pan and Jim and I managed to spark the smallest bit of hope in her, and she found it in herself to reach out and embrace that hope and turn away from them.
"There's more to it." Intensely now, shifting her position closer to Alexander, her voice fixed with a deeply felt passion. " - so much fucking more to it." Still tears in her eyes and emotion clotting her voice. The former she dash away, smiling around them, fully the way she does, the latter, well. It just underscores her conviction.
"So much work, too. She spent weeks out here with Jim. Shoshannah would come out too, and Pan, and me. But mostly, it was Jim, teaching her all this shit he knows. All this philosophy. They'd hike out here and he'd show her a fallen tree, and talk about how destruction is part of life and shit. How one can't be without the other, that there's nothing inherently wrong with death.
"She had nightmares constantly. <i>Constantly</i>. I'd sing to her and Pan'd pray for her and we'd help her sleep. And Jim was always here for her. You really oughta talk to him, by the way, he's fucking amazing.
"And in the end, whatever they'd wanted her for, whatever it was in her that had so entranced them, she turned away from it. Found a way to turn away from it.
"How is she now?" This brief, wry twist inflects her expression. "Probably fucked the hell up, but who isn't? But she's alive. She's not a living incarnation of death. She changed the world, and maybe she changed her fucking self, with her Will.
"That's what we have. Whatever it is that we have."
--
Here, another pause, which is wrapped in a cushioning awareness, an abiding empathy she cannot really shake.
"Why." Quiet, that. Quiet. Gentle, even. If he looks up he will find her eyes on him, shining, artless, damp. "What are you afraid of?"
-- [I rolled a roll but lost my cut and paste of it! Anyway: she got 5 successes on empathy for Alexander, so if you want to give any more insight into his mindset given that, feel free.]
Alexander
Oh, Alexander – how lucky you’ve been so far. The Awakened world seems to bring so much misery and suffering with it, and you’ve only just scratched the surface of the nicer side of things. If finding the remains of an Archmage who had become stranded for centuries in the Umbra is pleasant. The Message, though – helping him had been, unquestioningly, a good thing.
Death. Destruction. Chaos. Is that what he really has to look forward to?
How does anyone manage to stay sane dealing with this stuff?
Sera continues the story of Leah. How she had almost been born to continue down the path her Avatar had already been set on in a previous life. Scared of what she was, or what she was to become.
What are you afraid of?
Alexander doesn’t look up when Sera asks. If anything, the rock becomes even more interesting while he tries to work out what to tell her. Eventually he sighs. “The future.” He shifts position again, turning to sit cross-legged on his rock, wet feet leaving wet marks on the stone. He still doesn’t meet Sera’s gaze, though. “I don’t know if I can deal with what’s coming.”
And what is coming? The search for a lost mage, a spirit of decay, and an enormous amount of not really knowing what he’s getting himself into.
But the more he’s learning about his new life, the more he’s scared of what else is to come. And where it will all end.
“Where’s Leah now?” he asks, trying to get back onto the original subject. To distract himself, and hopefully Sera, from paths he doesn’t want to go down.
[...fade...]
There is a boulder-strewn stream somewhere high in the mountains. Swift-flowing and shallow, shaded by everygreens, flush with snowmelt and higher now than it is any other time of the year. The sun is out, and the sun is bright, and the air is cool enough that there is a hint of a chill in the shadows, that dissipates entirely when one is draped on a sunwarmed rock, soaking up the solar radiation.
Sera is draped on a sunwarmed rock that projects over a quiet pool where a noisy waterfall churns over wall of tumbled rock and debris. She has a beach towel folded under her head for a pillow, hiking boots off, socks tucked into the empty boots. Mud smeared on the boots says she has been hiking and the drying bare footprints on the boulder says that she has been swimming too, or at least dipping her feet into the pool. Now, though, she has stripped out of her cut-offs down to her bikini bottoms and (we must be honest) out of her bikini top to ensure, you know, an even tan, and is laying back with sunglasses over her eyes and some mushroom tea humming through her veins and a canteen of water close at hand.
Alexander
[Per+Aware makes it easier to bump into people in interesting places]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
Alexander
Either most of the Awakened in the city aren’t aware of some of Alexander’s favourite ways to spend time, or they just don’t share them. He loves taking the chance to just get away from everything now and again – just him, his gear, and the mountains. This isn’t a new thing, either. Seattle was never short of remote places to disappear to, sometimes for several days at a time. Today, though, is for a shorter stay. He’s hiking, so the pack he’s lugging on his back is relatively small. Relatively. For an area where the weather is so changeable, especially at short notice, it’s always a good idea to be prepared.
But the weather – at least for the moment – is fine. Which means the gaiters and other waterproof gear is stashed away. Instead, Alexander is working his way through the landscape in hiking trousers – legs unzipped, turning them into shorts – a black technical tshirt and a well-worn pair of blue-under-the-mud walking boots.
There’s something else in the air up here, though. Not the traffic fumes and other clogging pollution you get in the city, it’s too far out for that. But something that announces the presence of someone, someone who he recognises. That enthralling sense of viscerality and liminality pull him in a slightly different direction to that he started. It pulls him to the opposite side of the pool to where Sera is lounging. “We must stop meeting like this,” he calls, just before realising her dress – or lack thereof. He turns to look elsewhere. “Um, hope I’m not interrupting.”
SerafÃne
(Does Sera know that Alexander is embarrassed by her lack of clothes? Awarempathy.)
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 4, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
SerafÃne
He has a glimpse of her bare feet and her knees, golden in the sun. Maybe the glint of her glasses from the angle on the rock. The toed-off hiking boots, little white flags of her socks stuffed into the muddy brown leather so from that first glimpse, well - he can easily and naturally assume that Sera is simply sunning herself.
Then she lifts herself up to her elbows, long blond hair swinging from a loose ponytail as she props herself up and looks across the reflecting pool at the police officer in his hiking gear. Sera is wholly unself-conscious about her demi-nudity and perfectly comfortable and she smiles back at Alexander and lifts up a hand and waves and the smile - well, from a distance, when one is uncomfortable as Alexander seems to be, what can he tell about the state of her smile, the complexities of it? - so the smile is simply a smile.
Then Alexander turns away and there's the shadow of movement in his periphery. A moment later,
"You can look now."
It's true. She's pulled a t-shirt over her head and is pulling her hair out from beneath the collar even as he turns. "What are you doing all the way out here?"
Alexander
The thought wasn’t that Sera might be occupying herself with someone else, more that... well, semi-naked women don’t usually appreciate random men turning up unexpectedly. But however little Sera is bothered by her near-nakedness, it certainly makes Alexander uncomfortable. He’s not a prude by any means, and it’s certainly nothing that – in general terms – he hasn’t seen before. And given Sera’s usual clothing, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen most of anyway. As fine as the line between her dress and decency tends to be, it is still a line and one that he’s comfortable is – generally – there.
Alexander looks up when she says that it’s safe, looking rather more comfortable than he did before. Embarassment quickly fading, he smiles back. “It’s my backyard. Well, kinda. I like getting out here and away from the city now and again.” He looks down and starts picking his way around the pool to where Sera’s sat. “How about you? I didn’t realise you were the outdoors type.”
He nods at her boots, grinning. “No heels today?”
SerafÃne
No heels today? Alexander asks and Sera gives him the smallest of quirks. This little comma of a half-smile that curves beneath her sunglasses and has her gaze seemingly steady on his face. The sun gleaming across the curve of the lenses when she moves her head.
"Wouldn't that be insane?" she tosses back to him, still smiling, a mild note to the expression that he may not be able to place until he is closer but, oh. Lovely.
Then a little shrug. "I don't know what the outdoors type is. But weren't we camping when I found you?"
She lilts her head in a general direction opposite of the one from which he has come. "Renting a cabin not far from here. Spent some time there this time last year. And I don't know," a one-shouldered shrug, still just lounging there on the rock. "I felt like coming back."
Alexander
Alexander shrugs out of the rucksack and lays in on the ground before perching on a rock. He looks down at the pool, considering doing a little foot-dipping of his own.
“What isn’t insane these days?” he asks before shrugging. “Although that would be particularly insane, even if you can put a broken ankle back together again.” She had already demonstrated her ability to heal, so surely a little thing like a broken bone would be easy to fix? There’s a mental shrug; not something he really has to worry about. Not yet, at least.
“This is outdoors, I guess.” He gestures around them. “Away from buildings and roads and people and traffic. Escape, I suppose.” She nods in the vague direction of the cabin. “Are you on your own out here, then, or is Dan staying with you?” Dan seems the most likely candidate, given that he’s usually nearby – or at least easily contactable – when Sera needs him. “How is he, by the way? And.. Sorry, I’ve forgotten your friend’s name. The one who bakes.”
SerafÃne
"He's around." Sera murmurs, of course he is. He's always around, somewhere on the fringes of her life, ensuring that she eats, sometimes, that she drinks, sometimes, something other than alcohol. There to hold her hand when her trip goes bad and her body when it is shaking. Or just to hold her. Then, "Dee," she supplies - the friend who bakes. "Naw. She's in Denver. Doesn't really know about this place.
"Or, us really. Magic, you know? I think she's starting to get it, but there are an awful lot of things I can't really share with her, just on that level. For her sake and ours."
The briefest pause, his reflection gleaming back at him from the lenses of her glasses.
Then, "Anyone ever tell you how we got the chantry?"
Alexander
Alexander considers things for a moment before bending down and starting work on his boot laces. “Tell Dan I say hi. And Dee, too.” He smiles as he makes the request. The memory for names may be lacking from time to time, but those of the two of them keeping an eye on him after his less-than-pleasant Awakening are very much there.
The laces loose, Alexander levers one boot off and then the other. “So how does that work with Dan, then? I don’t feel the same kind of thing around him as you or the others. Is it like… The Hermetic thing of training people before they wake up?”
The boots come off, the socks follow, and Alexander turns to rest his feet in the pool. The water is cold, but pleasant. He shuffles a little to get comfortable on the rock, looking back at his reflection. But there’s no attempt to look through it, not here and not now. “Not really. I know we’re kinda borrowing the place from someone who’s out of town. Beyond that..?” He shrugs.
SerafÃne
"Dan's known about us since before I met him," Sera tells Alexander, this quick flash of affection cresting the curve of her mouth. Absent and present, somehow, both at once. "I guess it's a bit like that Hermetic thing, but it's not the same. We're not that fucking formal, and he's just -
"We're just tight, you know? And he knows and he believes so I can do things around him and with him that ordinary people wouldn't understand or believe, which makes it harder and more dangerous. Consor's the word. Friends and lovers and allies who are alive to magic, but not precisely awake. Not the way we are.
"Pretty sure I couldn't get by without him. I'd probably forget to eat three weeks in a row and I'd never clean my goddamned room."
Sera's smiling then, though Alexander is now turned away from her, feet in the churning pool of water, dark with tannins from the pines dotting its course, and he cannot see the tinge of - call it melancholy - that lingers in the curve of her mouth.
"You wanna hear the story?"
Still, that hint of melancholy does manage to inflect her voice, when she asks him whether he wants to know more.
Alexander
[Aware-empathy, do we notice the change in tone?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Alexander
Alexander turns on the rock, feet still in the water but moving so that he’s lying on his front and facing Sera on her rock. “How did you meet him? And how did you both figure out what the other was?” He laughs a little as she says she’d probably forget to eat. “I’m pretty sure the others around here would prod you now and again if he wasn’t. Although maybe not so much about putting your used laundry in the basket.”
He’s silent for a moment when Sera asks if he wants to know more. Part of him does, but he does pick up on the melancholy. He considers her face, striking in the light, considering. “Only if you want to tell it.” There are plenty of others to ask about what the history of the place was. If Sera doesn’t want to – or wants to talk about something else – then he’s leaving it all down to her. Given the help she’s given him in the past, he’s ready to give her all the time in the world.
SerafÃne
This quick, supple little shrug. Quiet, in this too. "I went through some shit overseas. A friend of a friend got me back over here. Somehow Dan ended up with the job of looking in on me. Just, you know, this string of mutual acquaintances, right? So we always kinda knew."
Her frame rather darting beneath the somewhat oversized t-shirt she pulled over her head when Alexander stumbles upon her sunbathing nude or nearly so on the rock. Her hair is golden, catching the light, but she deliberately allows all the dark roots to show, and the soft fringe of her sidecut is never, never dyed.
"I don't mind sharing."
And she doesn't mind sharing. Some part of her wants to share; that has to be why she broached the subject. That is also the reason she's been out here so much over the past few weeks.
She leans back, Sera, braced on the palms of her hands, eyes closed, soaking up the sun. Then lowers her chin and meets Alexander's gaze and gives him this wry, lovely little smile.
There are already tears in her eyes but the dazzling contrast between sun and shadow makes them difficult to discern.
"The first mage I met in Denver was Pan. Felt him outside his Church and went in, you know? Couldn't see him - but I knew he was in the confessional, hearing confessions, and I hate churches so I went in and decided to fuck around with him and asked him to make out, among other things.
"Turned out he wasn't the kind of fucking dick I thought all priests were required by law or the goddamned pope to be.
"But neither of us knew this place was here.
"A few days later I had this dream, about a girl alone in a world that had distingrated into little more than ash. Everything was ruined. Everything was a ruin, and she was standing in the center of this radial circle of graves and there was a man there, fucking dark, right? But compelling in the way people like that can be, and he took her hand, and he led her away, and she looked at me in the dream, just crying, right?
"And she asked me for help.
"Her name was Leah. When we tracked her down, we brought her out here."
Alexander
“I guess I can see how you guys ended up so close.” From what he’d seen, it almost seems like Dan’s the older brother looking after his little sister. But then it’s not unlikely that their relationship extends to the physical as well as the mental, and then the comparison falls apart. Alexander is happy to know that he’s there and taking care of her, though.
Where Sera’s appearance may be a lot more planned than her easy-going nature suggests, Alexander’s is pretty much what it appears to be. A few days’ worth of stubble covers his jaw and his short, dark hair has been gelled and brushed back. His eyes are uncovered and interested as Sera begins the story she wants to share, while he stays quiet and lets her talk without interruption.
The mention of Pan, though, gets his mouth pulled a little tighter. He’s aware of how highly some of the others in the city regard the man, but he’s still somewhat dubious. But, then, is a fleeting encounter really enough to build an accurate opinion of a person? Probably not, but then first impressions do tend to colour opinions quite strongly. That he may not be a complete ass holds hope for the future…
There’s a pause in the story. “What happened to her? Or was that what was going to happen to her? I’m not sure how those visions and dreams work. Who was the man?”
“Where’s Leah now? I don’t remember anyone mentioning her name before.”
SerafÃne
"I don't know how they work for other people," Sera supplies quietly, watching Alexander in the shadows. "For me - well, I've had them since I was a fucking kid. Long before I woke up. There were just things I would know. Things I'd see before they happened. Things I'd remember that I never should've known.
"All wrapped up in metaphor and who the fuck really understands metaphor, or maybe who the fuck really understands metaphor better than a four year old.
"When I had that dream, all I knew was that it was real, and it lingered, and it was important, and that we were all in danger, but she - especially - was. From the man in my dream.
"He was Fallen. Nephandi. Gave his soul over to god-knows-what in exchange for power, and was absolutely intent on bringing all of that suffering back into the world.
"Everyone said she was too. That she was born that way. They call it Widderslainte - someone stitched to an avatar that has already Fallen. Fuck if I know if it was true.
"But it turns out that a helluva lot of people knew about Leah. The Techs - you know about them, right? and our side, and of course the Fallen. They were hunting her.
"They had plans, see."
Alexander
Sera had told him before that her waking up had been a gradual thing, mixed in with load of other stuff. When your dreams are prophecies at four years old, really how much difference does it make finding out that you can change reality? “Did you tell anyone about your dreams? When you were young, I mean.” He listens to Sera’s reply, but part of his mind is elsewhere for a few moment – thinking back to a faceless man and a blood-lipped woman in white…
Alexander nods silently when Sera says the man was a Nephandi, and again when she asks if he knows about the Technocracy. He’d already had several little talks about the big scary things that it would be A Bad Thing to get involved with, and those two came at the start of all of those talks. “I thought you had to choose to become one of them? That you couldn’t be forced into it? So... was he trying to get her to make the same choice her avatar had?”
“What did the Techs want with her?” Other than asking about some of the details as Sera tells the story, he’s happy to just let her carry on talking.
SerafÃne
Here is another small divertissement: Alexander's question about whether or not Sera ever <i>told anyone</i> about her dreams. There is a certain irony in the whole of the conversation of which Sera alone is aware. To-wit, no one called her Serafíne, then. "Did I tell anyone? Fuck if I know. I was a kid, I probably didn't think it was weird. I figured everyone else knew things the way I knew things. Pretty sure all that freaked my folks out, though.
"I think my mother thought - " A brief pause. A caesura, and the mild irony of her expression settles into something else, a little more distant, a little more strange. Alexander has no idea how little Sera really knows about her own past. How distant what she does remembers seems to her: through a glass, darkly and all that.
"Anyway: Leah. The Techs kidnapped her before she woke up. They were trying to use her to draw out the Fallen, maybe they wanted to experiment on her. I'm not really sure. What I know is that some of the members of the cabal that held the chantry before us found out about it and rescued her. They took her to a warehouse in the city to try to keep her safe.
"Shelby and Will. Those were their names. They rescued Leah on their own. The rest of the cabal thought they should've just killed her, or left her in the Techs' hands.
"That she was too dangerous, that everything was too dangerous. That the most she deserved was a clean death.
"I didn't know any of them. Or any of this when it was happening, but a couple of days after that first dream I had, Jim and Sid and Mara and me met this guy Jake. Shelby's boyfriend.
"He was a consor like Dan, and he'd never been allowed to go to the chantry by the rest of the cabal, and all he knew was that Shelby had been missing for weeks. He was beside himself, you know? So we started looking for them, trying to find her for him.
"Shelby's family owned this warehouse - so we figured it was as good a place to start as anywhere else.
"Jim and I looked back in time, and saw the whole thing. Shelby and Will were watching over Leah when the rest of their cabal found them. They were in the middle of an argument over <i>what to do</i> about Leah when the Techs showed up and a fucking battle ensued. God knows what would've happened otherwise, but Leah was shot in the battle, and the trauma of the whole thing woke her up.
"You know how crazy it was when you woke up? The gauntlet all shredded, wild magic, all of it? When Leah woke up, it was this blast of destruction.
"Without even thinking about it or meaning to, she killed them all. Turned them all into Ash.
"Twelve people and a whole fucking warehouse, disintegrated.
"And someone powerful covering it all up."
Without quite thinking about it, or even interrupting the story, Sera has started to cry. A few tears cresting her lashes to fall onto her cheeks
Alexander
Thinking about it, it probably was a bit of a silly question to ask. But, then, different people have their first memories before then, others after. And given Sera’s already demonstrated ability to sift back through time and see past events... She pauses part way through a sentence. “Thought what?” He is curious to know more about this strange, mysterious woman. But if she doesn’t want to carry on that particular chain of thought then he isn’t going to force it.
But the subject does change, back to Leah and the story of how the local Awakened were introduced to the Chantry. He lies on his rock, head propped up on his hands listening to Sera. Watching her. She explains how Leah woke up so dramatically, similar in some ways to his own less-than-pleasant introduction to the Awakened world. But where his stirring Avatar tore into the ephemeral, hers ripped into the physical. Alexander looks down at the rock he’s lying on as the story unfolds, getting wrapped up again in his unresolved issues and missing the effect the story is having on Sera.
Quietly he asks, “How did you know her Avatar had already Fallen? How was Leah after that?” Partly asking to find out what happened to her. Partly to find out what could be in store for him. Of the other Awakenings he’s heard about so far, Leah’s certainly seems to be the closest experience to his.
[Do we notice? Aware-pathy] Roll: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 4) ( fail )
SerafÃne <i>Thought what?</i>
Alexander inquires, and the inquiry pulls Sera up for a moment. Not short, precisely, but out of the current of her thoughts. Out of the indefinable blend of concordance and strangeness that all such memories seem to have for her. There is flick of a glance from her, all direct, and a supple hum of consideration that opens through her body.
"That I was better off far away than close by."
--
And her eyes linger there; on Alexander. And she knows, she knows, she knows. She can taste the uncertainty, the correspondences wrapped into the substance of the question.
"<i>I</i> didn't know that." Quietly, Sera starts to explain. "I didn't <i>believe</i> that. In my dream, she asked <i>me</i> for help, and in my vision, I could see that she was just - scared, frightened. Even that - that destruction she unleashed did not come about until one of the Techs had shot her. Then she just exploded.
"Afterward she was wretched."
--
"Between the Techs and the Fallen, we knew we were in over our heads, so we laid low for a few days. I went to find Pan again, to tell him what happened, and he agreed to find Leah for me.
"By the time Jim, Pan and I found her, she was on the roof of one of the hospital downtown, suicidal. She couldn't live with what had happened. With what she'd done. With what she was doing. It seemed like all she could do was destroy things, see. And she was tormented by these terrible dreams.
"I still believed in her, though. Jim did, too.
"And I don't know that Pan believed in her, precisely, so much as he was willing to believe in our belief in her.
"The Fallen were there, too. Ready to convince her that they could put an end to her suffering by helping her embrace her nature. But somehow Pan and Jim and I managed to spark the smallest bit of hope in her, and she found it in herself to reach out and embrace that hope and turn away from them.
"There's more to it." Intensely now, shifting her position closer to Alexander, her voice fixed with a deeply felt passion. " - so much fucking more to it." Still tears in her eyes and emotion clotting her voice. The former she dash away, smiling around them, fully the way she does, the latter, well. It just underscores her conviction.
"So much work, too. She spent weeks out here with Jim. Shoshannah would come out too, and Pan, and me. But mostly, it was Jim, teaching her all this shit he knows. All this philosophy. They'd hike out here and he'd show her a fallen tree, and talk about how destruction is part of life and shit. How one can't be without the other, that there's nothing inherently wrong with death.
"She had nightmares constantly. <i>Constantly</i>. I'd sing to her and Pan'd pray for her and we'd help her sleep. And Jim was always here for her. You really oughta talk to him, by the way, he's fucking amazing.
"And in the end, whatever they'd wanted her for, whatever it was in her that had so entranced them, she turned away from it. Found a way to turn away from it.
"How is she now?" This brief, wry twist inflects her expression. "Probably fucked the hell up, but who isn't? But she's alive. She's not a living incarnation of death. She changed the world, and maybe she changed her fucking self, with her Will.
"That's what we have. Whatever it is that we have."
--
Here, another pause, which is wrapped in a cushioning awareness, an abiding empathy she cannot really shake.
"Why." Quiet, that. Quiet. Gentle, even. If he looks up he will find her eyes on him, shining, artless, damp. "What are you afraid of?"
-- [I rolled a roll but lost my cut and paste of it! Anyway: she got 5 successes on empathy for Alexander, so if you want to give any more insight into his mindset given that, feel free.]
Alexander
Oh, Alexander – how lucky you’ve been so far. The Awakened world seems to bring so much misery and suffering with it, and you’ve only just scratched the surface of the nicer side of things. If finding the remains of an Archmage who had become stranded for centuries in the Umbra is pleasant. The Message, though – helping him had been, unquestioningly, a good thing.
Death. Destruction. Chaos. Is that what he really has to look forward to?
How does anyone manage to stay sane dealing with this stuff?
Sera continues the story of Leah. How she had almost been born to continue down the path her Avatar had already been set on in a previous life. Scared of what she was, or what she was to become.
What are you afraid of?
Alexander doesn’t look up when Sera asks. If anything, the rock becomes even more interesting while he tries to work out what to tell her. Eventually he sighs. “The future.” He shifts position again, turning to sit cross-legged on his rock, wet feet leaving wet marks on the stone. He still doesn’t meet Sera’s gaze, though. “I don’t know if I can deal with what’s coming.”
And what is coming? The search for a lost mage, a spirit of decay, and an enormous amount of not really knowing what he’s getting himself into.
But the more he’s learning about his new life, the more he’s scared of what else is to come. And where it will all end.
“Where’s Leah now?” he asks, trying to get back onto the original subject. To distract himself, and hopefully Sera, from paths he doesn’t want to go down.
[...fade...]
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