Free radical and all.

Serafíne

Here is a park, in Denver, on a Sunday. The sun's out, glitters across the man-made lake. There are swans and they reflect beautifully in the calm waters. The grass is greening, the world is mudlicious, right. Some particularly brave souls are sun-bathing, all golden. Three separate ultimate frisbee games are in the process of being started, though their players and adherents are also generally nursing hangovers from this night last, so there is a fair amount of coffee-drinking and carb-loading in addition to muscle-limbering.

There is also, among them, a girl who bends reality. A young woman, a Disciple. The seconds start to slip together, or span apart, when you get too close. Striking, but with the look of someone still chasing last night's high, or perhaps last night's low. Seated on a parkbench, an umbrella - a black umbrella, naturally - open over her head, to shield her from the sun, or maybe from the rain.

Either, both. Whatever comes.

Coffee cup in hand.

She appears to be watching one of the nascent games, though she isn't attached to it.

Free radical and all. What a creature.

D. Gallowglass

Here is a park, in Denver, on a Sunday. The sun's out, glitters across the man-made lake, and Adam has come here before, a shadowless vampire of a young man, his skin too pale for the sun. He does not like it. He does not often go out in it: how wan he is. How wan and exhausted and cloaked in an air not just of Mystery but of shelter, of man-made care. He isn't very easy to describe, those who bother to notice him at all. But Serafíne's interactions with him have grown, and her perceptions are such that she's sharper than most people, things stay in her mind longer, sometimes, things that are cloaked by Mystery and Arcanum like the Hermetic without a shadow anyway.

He is cutting across the park on his way from one point to another. The points are not important and anyway he isn't telling. Serafíne's resonance touches the Sleepers, too, because it's getting stronger, a suggestion coupled with who she is just anyway just any day -- but that's nothing compared to what her resonance does to someone Sensitive. Adam.

He notices her and veers off path. There she is on a bench with a black umbrella. The last time he saw her was at a bar; Kalen was needing solidity, using Adam to lean against. Adam, he was giving it a few moments before - before whatever. Or maybe the last time he saw Serafíne it was some other time: time is porous; time is fluid; time is a slip. A slide.

This time, he's the one beelining. He says, "Hello, Sera," when he has come near. "Long night?"

Serafíne

This is how she sits, Sera, on that park bench. One leg is crossed, the foot tucked beneath the opposite thigh. The other is on the ground, still in its Absurd heel. The other Absurd heel is kicked off. It cuts a jagged line of darkness against the pourous, springsweet ground. Sera has one hand on the shaft of her umbrella and the other wrapped around a coffee cup. There is the scent of whiskey from it, though Adam is not close enough to capture it.

She gives him a look, a once-over, an over-once. There is something dragging about it, something lingering.

"Mmmm." She confirms, the hum of it in the back of her throat. And she looks it, doesn't she? Mascara smeared, lipstick washed away to no more than a stain. Nails painted a red-black so intense that even chipped and imperfect, her manicure looks full-of-sin, or made for it.

Without a thought, Sera offers Adam her umbrella. She expects that he will take it. Maybe she has seen him take it. She thinks, if she thinks at all, that a boy without a shadow might appreciate this one.

"Where's Ruse?"

D. Gallowglass

He isn't the kind of young man who just accepts things. Who accepts things at all if he doesn't want to. But Serafíne offers an umbrella and she is sitting in the sunlight where it lances through the barren finger-branches of a tree that's far too slender to ever offer much in the way of shade-cover leaf-canopy anyway, even in the most verdant season, the lushest of. Without a thought, Serafíne, but what are Willworkers if not metaphors, poems, thought-creatures constantly thinking themselves real? He accepts the umbrella but he doesn't stay standing, holding it over him like a(n appropriate) black cloud. He sits next to her. A space between, the umbrella a neat sword (valiant [relentless], flashing brightness-that-is-not-bright because Adam isn't necessarily bright it's all about connotations: what think thee of valiancy and relentlessness?) between them, and holds it so it covers them both.

"Sunday," he says. "So probably killing stuffed bunnies."

Serafíne

"Not mine, though." Sera is thinking about -

well, Sera does not know what she is thinking about. She does not think about what she is thinking about. She does not classify it. Adam takes the umbrella; he holds it over the both of them. This seems to be both a question and an answer to her. She glances at his profile and opens her now free hand. Here, Adam, is an Absurd tattoo to go with the Absurd shoes, sharkscissors. Isn't Sera like both those things; the teeth and the blades, see.

Aren't they all?

Sera offers him, too, a sip of her coffee, whiskey laced.

"Have you ever been in love?"

She's been up for twenty-six hours now. Some days, she never wants to go to sleep.

This has nothing to do with her dreams, those she does not remember.

D. Gallowglass

"As far as you know," Adam says, because his sense of humour is a mean sense of humour, a smirk hovering somewhere around his mouth. Today his beard has grown back but is neatly trimmed, a shadow for the shadowless creature. As far as you know: it's not Sera's bunny.

He demures when she offers him a sip of her whiskey-laced coffee, though whether that's because he doesn't like coffee, whiskey, or sharing germs with an Ecstatic who's coming down from or readying herself to go up let's leave a mystery. As much a mystery as he usually is to those who're asleep; a shape they can't quite place. Speaking of such a shape, there's the shape of something in his expression at that question of hers, something that doesn't quite want to be given a shape.

He shrugs. He's a gawky guy, Adam. Long neck, big head. A bit out of proportion, but potential and enough personal charisma to see him through, thick eyelashes even though he's always worn-out looking, a Nothing.

"I'd say so. Have you?" Beat; because she is an Ecstatic: "What do you mean by 'in love'?"

Serafíne

As far as you know and that smirk hovering around the edges of his mouth. There are smirks hidden away in hers, but they do not arise this morning. See: coming down from rising high, right? And more. Sera returns the smirk not with a smirk but with a flicker - not of hardness, but a sort of flintyness. Something solid, and strange. A lozenge of power in the back of her throat. A knot of something that is woven, neither dark nor bright. For the nonce, she does not rise to his bait. Nor does she sink with it.

Then away, a sip from her coffee. The morning (is it morning?) light all around them.

"I don't know what I mean by it," Sera says, quietly. Consideringly. Something in the back of her throat and her head cocked aslant so that her curling hair falls in long array down her left shoulder. The ultimate frisbee game is starting up, at last. The players take the field in elegant, orchestrated chaos.

"I was wondering what you'd say back. It's an absurd question, don't you think?"

The smallest of shrugs.

"I'm always a little bit in love. I wonder, why isn't everyone?"

D. Gallowglass

There is a certain poise to Adam. His expressions are poised; are measured out, not carefully, but they're far from reckless - they're far from thoughtless. He carries himself like someone who keeps things in reserve.

"Why do you think they're not?"

Serafíne

This quiet noise, from Sera as she comes-down. The edge of her smile is traced with a lingering sadness. Is that it? Is that what she feels? This catch beneath her sternum?

She shakes her head, something loose, something reckless about the gesture, for all that it remains small. Contained within a structure that may not be enough to contain her.

"I don't know. Do you think they really are?"

D. Gallowglass

"Do you never check?"

Serafíne

"Ha." Sera laughs, open-mouthed. Twice really, the sounds open in the back of her throat, even though they are voiceless. The shape of her breath rather than the vibration of her vocal chords. "Shall I?"

D. Gallowglass

"If you want to know whether your wondering is true outside of your head," Adam replies.

He studies her, and it isn't covert. It's direct; a direct young man, Adam, with that wild hair. "If you just want to wonder answerless, no."

"I don't think it's easy to find two people who agree on the definition of 'in love.'"

Serafíne

"I don't care about the fucking words," Sera returns, see. Sure, sure now. See the edge of her smile; which is itself a sort of echo. It has a blade and a memory and a promise. Sera is neither valiant nor relentless, but in her own way, she never lets go. Last night beneath her skin, the glancing blow of her gaze over his wan face. "Just the feeling.

"Maybe what I mean is why do they always forget. What about you. Are you still in love?"

D. Gallowglass

[>.> SUBTERFUGE.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )

D. Gallowglass

[2, Denver-style. *g*]

Serafíne

[Awarempathy!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

D. Gallowglass

He ignores her question at first to respond to the whole. Faintly mocking, then - "Who said anything about words. Definition is a concept. A concept is an idea. A feeling is an idea; perhaps an idea is a feeling." He's mocking, yes. But not directly of her, per se; or not meant cruelly. There is perhaps something distracting about it.

Because he was ignoring her question at first, but Serafíne sees the answer anyway in the cool certainty of the expression in his eyes, as surely as there's something beneath the surface of a lake and one needn't touch the lake to know, because the surface is flat, but there's always a presentiment of depth, right? Serafíne sees the answer in the certainty in his eyes; perhaps she intuits it from the way he shifts his grip on the umbrella, or the half-beat before he answers. Adam's still in love with something; of course he is. Unrelenting; like he'd know how to stop.

But the thought of it is just longing and distance and can't. He says, "And I don't know," why they always forget, with this air of trying to figure it out, of questing. "The romantic egoist would say 'so that they can remember,' but that's a load of crap probably. They forget because forgetting is a strong Word."

D. Gallowglass

ooc: make that Adam's still in love with something(someone); of course he is.

Serafíne

"I don't like definitions," oh, Sera. Smiling around his mockery; of her, of the absurdity of her ideas-without-definition but no, see. Listen, the ways she feels, instinctively between, right? Always spent, always spending. Always breaking, always broken. She quite nearly licks the words, Sera, look at her. They break on her palette like quail's eggs, but somehow she holds them whole. "either. Feeling just is.

"But I don't suppose everyone can just be."

Then she's rising, Sera. Uncurling her curled-up leg, toeing on her Absurd shoe and standing and reaching back to brace her open hand on the spine of the bench and leaning in to brush her dry lips over Adam's temple. Maybe she does not get that far, just the impression of a kiss, the murmur of her voice against his hair. "I hope she remembers. Someday, or soon. Whichever you prefer."

Inhales, see. Straightens.

"Keep the umbrella." A wry little toast with her booze-laced coffee. "You look like you could use a shadow of your own."

Then she's turning; maybe going. Probably gone.

The smack of plastic against flesh; someone catches a frisbee. Someone scores a goal. The game goes on.

D. Gallowglass

[HMM!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 1 )

Letting go.

Serafíne

Sera leaves Alexander behind and makes her way up the stairs. Holds on to the railing against the wall because right now it is the only stable thing in her world and the walls have a way of sluicing sideways when she turns her head. It is not unpleasant. She can feel all the possibilities inside her, the wall the shells of things crack open, the way the yolk slides rich in its matrix of protein.

Here we are here we are here we are.

But,

there we were too.

And Sera knows the house like the back of her hands, like the weight of her breasts, like the taste of oblivion, or blood in the back of her throat; and also, she could find Pan with nothing but that interior sense of his: light light light, impeccable, implacable light.

So she follows that feeling as much as anything more, as much as anything else. Dining room, kitchen. Finds him at the counter, perhaps reaching up to retrieve the various boxes of various teas the various denizens of this variant place have left them. Finds him, wraps her arms around him from behind and just holds on

for a long and quiet moment that feels - attenuated, drawn out, lingering - perhaps because it is all these things.

Her arms around his ribs, her brow against his spine, as in an aspect of prayer.

The moment passes. She lets him go.

She does not know where to put her hands.

Pan Echeverría

The moment passes as all moments will one day pass and he is oblivious to the anger of the apprentice or the continued conversation between the Hermetic and the Virtual Adept. Is not oblivious to the approach of a drunk Cultist.

All he remembers about the Hydra incident came from Sera when she found him at Katiana's cabin in the middle of nowhere. How she came out of the city and into the green to make sure he was still alive and they were both still alive but they were both so wasted. Pan so of his own doing. His own pride is the only thing that can ever really knock him down.

He's standing at the stove thinking about that incident. What the women must have gone through. What any of them can or ought to do to help. Any of them - him. He both feels an obligation and could just as soon walk away from it.

As a child Rafael hated him. Railed against him. Made him prove he could be a father by refusing to let him. They're better now. Rafael's grown now. But Pan still thinks he's a bad father. Parents have the ability to go their entire lives believing themselves lacking contrary to all possible evidence and this parent believes in the Immaculate Conception and the resurrection of Christ. Doesn't take much to remind him he's a shit parent too.

Breasts and elbows and breath at his back and Pan lets go the lungful he didn't know he'd been holding in. "Hey," he says but doesn't interrupt her. Not until she lets him go. Then he turns around and puts her into a proper hug. Like she has to need one after that. If she's going to go take care of Grace after this.

The water won't boil for another five minutes.

At some point Alexander comes in pointed in his anger to say goodbye to Sera but not say a word to Pan. That's fine. Everything's always fine around here.

Leonhard

[[Hi there! Liz suggested I hopped the scene. Hope it's okay to barge in.]]

Pan Echeverría

[Tag says 'open,' bro! Get in here.]

Serafíne

Pan's thinking about that moment and Sera was not thinking about that moment and is still not thinking about that precise visit she made to a wasted man recovering from a stroke admist the green-green-green of a stranger's practice, all that verdance, the bright cleanliness of the herbs hung from the rafters and the living sense of a house that was full of the cycle Sera knows only by askance, and she was not thinking about any of it, she was thinking about lovely things and something about the stair down to the library made her think about Orpheus and Euridyce though the truth is that Sera never remembers their names, or at least not together. Just the taste of the myth in the back of her tongue.

So she was thinking of the poetry and the mystery of a descent to the underworld, and then there was Grace, screaming. And now she's here, and she's fine, with her brow against the rigid flexibility of a priest's spine, and she's fine when she lets him go, it is just her hands that seem wrong and superfluous to her body, and she's fine until he turns around and hugs her properly. This time she tucks her brow against his shoulder. His arms span all: the hot pink bustier, the flannel over it. Beneath he can feel the brief, hiccoughing hitch of her shoulders. The stubborn resistance to that need-to-cry too.

There are too many people.

This is not something she wishes to let loose tonight.

So, a surreal moment, a holding-on. Then a letting-go.

Sera dashing tears from her eyes. Lining them away with her thumb before they ruin her mascara, leaning back against the kitchen counter, slipping, now, out of her damned heels, as you do, in a place where the floor is warm and you are comfortable.

Sera gives Alexander a small, bleary smile as he storms through. Her nose is running a bit. Someone (Pan) hands her a tissue. She uses it. Pan makes tea. It's quiet.

She breathes, breathes, breathes.

That's okay too.

Serafíne

(Absolutely. Barge barge barge!)

Leonhard

It's not the Quintessence. It's not the Tass. It's not the Resonance. It is the beauty, the lure of it and the lessons to be had within it. The beauty. The Node. Beauty in itself, and not beautiful in any comparison to others, it lured him... and so the Jerbiton returns to it. Traipsing from his wide-bellied Ford, he is - as ever - bedecked in denim with the moleskin jacket, this one three-quarter length and flapping a little as he begins to circle The House's periphery... and then he is there. He crouches, pleasured by the sight, one forearm cupped at his knee as he glances. The other knee upon the ground, not so far from the waters. But he doesn't enter them, or strip as if about to. He doesn't draw from that most eloquent of wells, no, no Quintessence passes to him and none is bidden, though his eyes close for a moment. A long moment, during which a hand strokes at the ground. He beams. He rises. He opens his eyes and turns back towards the chantry, the beauty at his back but deep in his thoughts as he approaches the building from its rear.

[[Per+Awariness]]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Pan Echeverría

[per + aware: HARK A NEW PERSON]

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

Pan Echeverría

The entire Chantry felt like a searchlight for a while. Like something too bright to see through beating back against the sky like to blind anything that would try to look inside the walls at the people inside the place. But shields and wards don't last forever and neither do bans and Pan's light has been failing the place lately because he hasn't been by as much now that Thakinyan has lost his tethers and gone back into the Umbra for a time.

One day the demon will come back but Pan likes to think he'll be ready for it then. The spirit world isn't something he knows too much about but this side of things. The sliver of space between Heaven and Hell. He's pretty familiar with it.

And Leonhard can feel the source of that resonance in the kitchen stronger than usual because he's Working when the other man gets here. Magic meant to bring something out of nothing. Creation of a calm that wasn't there before. Just enchanting the water he's boiling for the tea he's making for the rest of them downstairs who are in need.

They haven't met yet. Pan can read every effect the other individual has thrown out into the aether lately before he even lands eyes on his face.

It's quiet when Leonhard walks through the back door.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen comes drifting slowly into the kitchen. Exhausted and perhaps only a few breaths away from unraveling. But there is Sera and she is...well, for the five seconds it will take to relay Grace's message, he can give her this.

He walks up to her, rests one hand lightly against her side, fingers curving along her ribs. All delicate bones, Sera. Like a bird. Like maybe she should eat. Like all of that light is devouring her from inside the bone.

And for a few seconds he's not even really there because his attention is on skeletons in the desert and drifting sand and the way light spins off of broken bottles and catches in the diamonds at someone's throat and he can't remember whose. If that moment has even happened yet. Brilliant and sparking and-

Sera.

"She needs you now," he says to her, very gently. As if the tone could somehow make up for the fact that she has to go do anything but stay here in the kitchen with Pan.

His attention slides to Pan then, and he hesitates. He isn't entirely sure what to do with Pan. Not because he's angry, at least there's no sign of that. Just...confusion and a little fluttering of wariness that doesn't really do more than struggle weakly and then sink back into nothingness. Even now, he trusts Pan too much to throw all that distance and all those masks and all those walls back into place.

Or maybe he's just too tired.

He settles for just watching Pan make tea until Pan says something. Does something. Or until the not knowing what the hell drives him mad and forces him to try something anyway.

Leonhard

The stressed air, the harried pulse of a fraught moment now passed... Perhaps that is what strikes the Jerbiton as he enters. There comes the new Resonance, the as-yet-unmet, yes, but also that of the more familiar, those he has met. He brings the door to a close behind himself, wondering wha... and there, a suggestion of Alexander? But Sera, too. But Kalen, too. But, somebody new, too, and Working...

"It's Leonhard. I, ah, just dropped by to... well, visit the Node. Just wanted to... you know... enjoy it," the accented voice offers, and quite pleasantly. "Not that I was just going to get a gawp and just run off, ah... Hello? Kalen?"

The voice carries smoothly from the dining room. Not so loudly as to be sharp, but loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. And it is towards the kitchen that he ambles, his hands finding homes in the back pockets of his jeans as he surveys the place. Signs of a group. Signs of some kind of convergence. None of his business, he muses, perhaps disinterested. Perhaps glibly. No, he muses this politely.

Pan Echeverría

[perc + alert: this is just to see if he notices kalen being weirder than usual he's not going anywhere near an empathy roll r.n.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Serafíne

Leonhard has met Serafíne often enough to know the echo of her resonance, tangled with the unrivaled blast of Pan's searchlight brilliance. Hers is darker and not precisely softer. Call it merely, less harsh. Less brilliant; less uncompromising. Tonight she is more wrenching and less enthralling, more between, see. Corridors and gates and doorways, the long dark slide-of-things between definitions.

Drunk, and something else too. Strange the way a night can spine on its axis and turn into something-entirely-else in the time it takes to draw in a breath. She's leaning back, the heels of her hands braced against the countertop, a solid four and a half-inches shorter than she was when she entered the place. By the time Kalen comes up, Sera's tears are mostly gone. There's just the remnant bleariness in her gaze, a bit of smearing of her mascara, a used tissue tossed thoughtlessly on the counter. Lovely and stark in her way, and - yes - spare beneath leather and fishnets, more angular than curving, always somehow consumed and consuming.

Maybe that's a cycle too.

Sera leans into the bit of contact. Closes her eyes and gathers the strands-of-herself that are all loosed. Makes them unloosed, see, twines them all around her being and nods when Kalen tells Sera that Grace needs her now. Okay. So she breaks the contact, swings into motion on her stocking clad feet. Musters a smile for Leonhard as he is headed toward the kitchen, and she away from it; favors him a swing of her head back toward the priest.

"Hey. Pan's in the kitchen." That's the new resonance. Light light light light light.

Sera's shoulders are rather firmly set. She is dressed as absurdly as she always is.

Drunk, too, though tonight she doesn't have a bottle in hand as she passes him by, and heads down to the library. Down down down.

This time she does not think about Orpheus seeking, and Euridyce locked away in the dark, full of death. No. This time, that myth tastes of blood and decay, cuts far too close to the bone.

Or perhaps she does think about it.

Doesn't Sera always cut too close to the bone?

Pan Echeverría

Sera comes and goes as Sera pleases and so long as she is not actively crying or screaming or trying to hit him with a full bottle of tequila Pan won't do a thing to try and sway her course. Not like it's three in the morning and she's let herself into the rectory because a Nephandus just tried to convince her to join them. Roused him out of bed so he's standing in the dark in basketball shorts carting around a baseball bat like he even needs a baseball bat to defend himself or anyone else.

That was a long time ago. A lot has happened since then. Pan still doesn't weigh what he weighed this summer. Probably won't get back to that size again but he's a large man anyway. Recovering. Addicts never call themselves completely recovered. Pan will be in the ground before he speaks of himself as anything other than constantly working.

Once you get yourself locked into thinking you're already going to Hell everything else in life gets a bit easier. There's some freedom in knowing you're fucked no matter what you do.

Anyway. Kalen looks at him. He hesitates. And he's answered by Pan lifting both his eyebrows as if to ask what's wrong. No more or less warmth in it than normal. There isn't much warmth in the magic he does.

The water hasn't started boiling yet. Pan rests his tailbone against the edge of the counter and plants his hands on either side of him and says amidst the voices in the other room, "You got something to say, Kalen, now's the time to say it."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen makes a soft huff at that comment from Pan, though he smiles too and there is warmth in that. "If I ever figure out which thing to say first, it will probably be the longest night of your life." That smile, on a slight delay, hits his eyes. It cannot really make him look less dead, but it's something.

"Or if I ever decide to come confess all my sins. That'll be a night too."

Maybe, maybe he would have followed that with something else, but instead he takes a slow breath and then calls back to Leonhard, "Kitchen."

But after that, after that he moves to settle against the counter beside Pan. He does not coil around him like Sera, but he still takes some comfort from proximity. If Pan isn't planning to start yelling, he's definitely in a mood to be near him.

Leonhard

"Oh, hey..." He begins to greet the Ecstatic, a point in mind but quickly sidelined when he sees she's busying herself to some matter or other. He swivels as he does so, panning and bringing his hands from his pockets. He thinks of checking something with her, but checks himself as quickly. Still, his expression declares that he is pleased to see her and unobtrusively aware that, perhaps, at least some of the harried air is breathing from her... "Pan? Oh, right. Thanks."

He brings his feet to a halt perhaps a foot or so into the kitchen. Not so far in as to be overly bold in a new meeting (the man has the deeds) and certainly not so far as to be rude, but certainly... he picks the point to stop with a measure of politesse... at a good point that nobody need be troubled to turn themselves too far to note his entry. An accuracy of presence but one also of smooth politeness. Still the new boy and not the Fellow...

"Salve, Kalen," he says as greeting to the Flambeau. Light, but warm. Everybody looks drained, or perturbed'; it's not the time to be demanding of attention, but he does nonetheless appear to have a fondness for the moment. The Flambeau, in particular, is regarded with something close to (at least akin to) fondness.

"Pan. Hello," he offers quite unguardedly, pleasantly to the Chorister a-Working. "I'm sorry that we've not met sooner but, ah... Did Adam pass along my regards? Well, I hope he did. It's really very good to meet you."

A glance to Kalen. He's interrupting. The Chorister has presence. (The Chorister has the deeds.) The Chorister is perhaps an Adept, probably close if not. The glance to Kalen is... referential, or seeking reference. He's interrupting, and he clearly wishes he wasn't but... Well... It's not as if he's trying to inject himself at length into whatever business is between the Flambeau and the Chorister. No sense in doing anything to embarrass the Flambeau by Tradition association. Of course, the fact that he does seem pleased to meet the Chorister is clear in his manner. (And he does warm to Kalen's presence, notably.) Yet, the timing is something that he seems to wish had been... different.

Serafíne

(You guys don't wait for me, since Sera's off tending to Grace. :) )

Pan Echeverría

If Pan were a smaller man perhaps his resonance would not be so harsh. If he were a younger man. If he had learned humility at an earlier age. Leonhard comes into the kitchen and he can hear the steam working inside the kettle on the stove as the water starts to get agitated enough to kick into a boil. Can see Kalen resting near the Chorister and can tell that he is a Chorister just by looking at him. Between the resonance and the all-black clothing. The presence.

6'2" and still. Staring at the newcomer working his way from the dining room to the kitchen. That stare abates quickly because Pan has a mind that works quickly. Adam. Oh right. Wariness gives way to welcoming. He pushes himself off the counter and Kalen at least because Kalen was watching him so closely can see how his manner sublimates from quiet processing to active engagement with another person.

"You must be the Tradition mate who's in town."

The man speaks with a faint Puerto Rican accent. One of those speak softly carry a big stick types must be. His voice is husky. He uses it a lot and he smokes and he doesn't sound like he ever shouts. Kalen trusts him and already knows instinctive that he doesn't ever want to hear him raise his voice or lose his temper.

Pan offers his hand to the other man.

"Francisco Echeverría, hi. I'm sorry, Adam didn't pass along your name."

Kalen Holliday

"Hey," Kalen says quietly to Leonhard. Settled against the countertop like he is shaves a few inches off his height and next to Pan, even a Pan who hasn't regained all the weight he lost, ghost-pale and exhausted with no fledgling Mages to protect from monsters or the fear of monsters...he might actually look fragile.

He lets the two men sort out their own introductions. There are nights he's orchestrated conversations, spun strands of connections between people to put futures he wants just that breath closer to being, but not tonight. Tonight he's content to...(what's the word he wants that isn't cower?)...he's content to do that at Pan's side and be quiet.

Leonhard

"That'd be me, yes," beams the Jerbiton, welcoming the handshake with a practised firmness of grasp but not an ounce more in his grip. Level-handed, almost mild but certainly welcoming. "Leonhard Frick. A pity... about Adam, I mean. He, ah, said he would, but... anyway, a pleasure."

Releasing the handshake at just the right time, he continues, a little joculary, "Yes, in town and so it would seem you're all stuck with me. I'm grateful for the access to... well... this place. The Node is... quite the salve, really. Beautiful. Uhm...

He pauses, glances to Kalen. Back to Francisco Echeverra. "I had thought, perhaps, of offering a little help at your, ah, church. Nothing especially eclesiastical, no, not my line precisely, but I'd be lying if I didn't think I might be able to offer something of use to any of your flock who might be of an... ah... uhm... You know, maybe another time, eh? There's me, jumping in with stuff that's been simmering up here." He taps his head, his manner still smooth but also regretful. He's interrupting. He wishes he wasn't. And Kalen looks spent, fragile.

"I'm interrupting. I'll, ah..." The hand that had tapped his head sprouts a thumb that points back out from whence he came. "Leave you gentlemen to it. Oh! Would it be okay to pop down to the library? Speaking of Adam The UnNaming, I've promised to help him with some studies of Time and... I was rather hoping that a copy of Hillito's Codex of Lost Lies might be in the mix, or something that references it. It'd be bloody useful."

Pan Echeverría

He doesn't always look it but in moments like this where he just stands still and lets the other person talk on as the other person wants to talk on Pan does have the aura of patience about him. Stands with his feet planted easy and his hands tucked into the pockets of his slacks. Kalen has his back so he cannot see his face but Leonhard can.

Even as he goes from one sentence to the next without pause and asks questions and makes offers he doesn't lose the other man's attention. And he has to be distracted. It's a big church and that jangling of Something Bad is still in the air even here but Pan's green eyes don't leave Leonhard's face as he speaks.

A flicker of a frown when he offers to help with the church and then a deeper negating frown at the notion that he's interrupted.

The kettle starts to give its warning keen. Seconds left before it starts to shriek.

"You got access?" he asks. Not accusatory. Friendly as his tone is there's an implication in it: if you got access you don't gotta ask.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen leans over to turn the stove off before the kettle can really set to shrieking, shifting his weight off the counter, onto his feet for a few seconds, and then partly on Pan as he leans into him while he reaches out for the stove knob. He slips back to where he was before once there is no danger of that sound attacking them.

And he listens. Help Pan's church non-ecclesiastically? What is Leonhard even talking about?

"You're fine to stay here. And...Sera and Grace could probably use a minute right now."

Leonhard

The Chorister's frown had been, in fairness, to be expected. But the offer, however cut short from explanation, had been delivered with a genuine respect. The Jerbiton thinks of another priest, if not a Chorister. He thinks of another time, but a similar endeavour to the benefit of others... and he even thinks of his parents. And he certainly does not press the offer, however genuine it remains. As he had said, another time, eh?

"Ah, no, no access as yet," he admits, going on to explain that he had been there before, courtesy of Shoshannah. "I didn't press for access. I'm still new, I suppose, and... Honestly, I'm not sure of the protocol here."

He looks again to Kalen. "You gave me the impression it was quite relaxed, Kalen, but I'm not fond of making a nuisance of myself. Like now. You look spent, Frere." The concern in his voice is the concern on his face is the concern on his mind. He's interrupting, but he returns to the topic, facing Kalen but the query clearly less exclusive in hoped-for audience: "Another time. I'd best leave you two be, sorry for barrelling in on you... but... Is it Grace I should talk to about access? Oh! Must talk to her about Ginger. Nearly had the chance last week. Waffling again, aren't I?"

He suddenly claps his hands together and raises them either side of a briefly-bowing head. "Greedy, aren't I? I'm sorry. Kalen. Father. I expect I can sort it later, can't I? Enjoy your, ah, less-interrupted conversation. I'm going to head back out to the Node. It's really... Very beautiful. I suppose I just can't get enough of just the sight of it. Would you be kind enough to let Grace know I'm trying to snag her help?"

He smiles. The Chorister and the Flambeau. He smiles.

Sid

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

Serafíne

The non-vulgar thing. Difficulty: 5 (-1 resonance) (-1 focus).

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 3) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Extending the non-vulgar thing. Difficulty +1 (extending) -1 (taking time)

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 2, 5) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Oh screw this extending the non-vulgar thing again, same dif, plus WP.

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Serafíne

Well. Thank you, universe. Now for the vulgar thing that probably will not work but that doesn't mean a certain cultist won't try it anyway. mind/life/time. Difficulty: 7. I am going to make that 8 because it is a new/novel interplay for her. -1 for liminal/enthralling resonance. -1 for taking time. she will drop a quint and spend WP. Final difficulty: 5

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Sid

The door opens down the hall of the second floor and a figure steps out, red hair mussed, one hand pressed up beneath a pair of black-rimmed glasses to dig the heel into her eyes. She was sleeping off the weariness of casting such a large effect as the one that now blankets the grounds around the Chantry when something woke her. Not Grace's screams, they didn't clearly pierce all the way up into the room claimed by the Verbena witch, but the commotion that followed perhaps. Or maybe her mind decided that a few hours was enough, now get up again.

Whatever the cause, she doesn't reach out with her senses to see who is in the house with her. She doesn't know where Sera is with Grace, or that Kalen and Pan and Leonhard are in the kitchen, at least not until she makes her way into there herself. Which she does, eventually, bare feet staggering a bit with weariness. She's in the living room when the sound of voices give her pause, make her freeze, hold her breath, is he in there? No. The voices she hears are familiar, two more than the third, but they aren't the one she knows in all its forms. Even so, Sid stops at the bar before making her way into the kitchen, finds herself the fullest bottle of bourbon she can find, and finally continues her journey toward the kitchen.

She is dressed in a t-shirt, dark rose and loose around her torso, and a pair of dark grey pajama pants with little grey skulls with crossbones all over it. And for those who are Aware to it, she feels like how it feels outside. Desperate, euphoric, empowered, verdant.

Sid spares a glance for the people in the kitchen before she makes her way to the cabinet with the mugs.

Serafíne

Extending. Difficulty +1. Dropping another quint to keep it as low as possible.

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Pan Echeverría

Sometimes Pan has trouble keeping up with conversations. This wasn't much of a problem before the summer. He isn't any slower now than he was before. But a slow sort of amusement comes across his features as Leonhard keeps talking with no place to interrupt. It isn't in Pan's nature to interrupt.

Not to say that he won't interrupt. But he doesn't tend to. He could stand here all day until Leonhard gives him the chance to respond. That cut-off kettle wail doesn't hit him the way it hits the younger Mages.

"Yes," he says. "I'll do that. But, ah. If you wanna borrow that book now, I'll go down and get it for you. See about getting you access after we get a better chance to talk."

Sid. Bourbon. Coffee mug.

"Sid, hi," he says. "You met Leonhard Frick?"

Serafíne

Another extension. Why not burn out the WP?

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

Leonhard

"Oh, no rush, really. Besides," Leonhard notes with a bob of his eyes to the kettle, "I think you're wanted there."

Almost excitedly, the Jerbiton greets the Verbena, "Sid, great to see you. Great. Tell me if I'm wrong but I'm guessing that was your Working outside. Beautiful work. Exquisite, I thought, when I saw it. Quite the compliment to the Node, too. Good to see you again. I'm just, ah, going back out there. Gentlemen, Sid."

Kalen Holliday

Leonhard's observation gets an amused little huff. Which buys time for Kalen to summon up enough energy to sound reassuring. Fledgling Mages and occasionally Disciples. "I always look like that. But if you want to go back to the Node, you can. You're not crashing into anything you shouldn't here though. Pan and I were just talking while he makes tea."

Kalen gives Sid a little wave. "Hey."

Pan Echeverría

Pan and I were just talking while he makes tea.

"Don't lie to the man."

It's an easy sort of a joke but a joke with a ring of truth to it. Pan had said a sentence and then Kalen pulled his esquivo trick and didn't do what he wanted him to do. A little pushback now and then isn't a bad thing but the whole day's been one big game of Pushback. That tea is going to make anyone who drinks it feel calm. Not happy necessarily. But at least relieved of a hum of anxiety.

"Pleasure to meet you, Mister Frick." A parting handshake if he wants it. "Take it easy."

Sid

You met Leonhard Frick?

Sid unscrews the cap on the bottle of Jim Beam, dark eyes shifting to take in the appearance of the Jerbiton, her face void of expression but otherwise looking tired. Looking rumpled.

"Yes. Shoshannah had him over for dinner."

Something in her face softens at the compliment to her Working, but she doesn't smile. The mug, something simple, with a plain glossy finish, gets filled nearly completely. Setting the bottle down, she turns to lean against that space of counter, both hands wrapped around the mug.

"Hey," she says over the mug's rim to Kalen before she takes a sip.

Leonhard

"Here's hoping." Leonhard smiles again, welcoming the second handshake and responding thusly to the 'Take It Easy' of the Chorister.

"And, yes, there was cake, too," he notes warmly to Sid as he excuses himself. His hands once again find homes in his back pockets as he heads back out to the Node.

Leonhard

[[Thanks for the fun play, folks. Going to loiter about on AIM but I think that's enough Leonhard IC for now. Cheers!]]

Kalen Holliday

"We were just talking," Kalen murmurs to Pan. It's too gentle to be a real protest. "And since apparently everyone with eyes thinks I look like Hell, I rather doubt the lines of our conversation are going to shock anyone. You think I'll stop talking to you because one of my Traditionmates who refers to me as family and one of my cabalmates are here? They're not interrupting. They're just also here." Uh-huh? And what alien creature that doesn't hide from people is possessing you tonight, Kalen?

He waves to Leonhard and then looks back to Pan.

Pan Echeverría

Now Pan lifts his eyebrows at the other man. Glances over to Sid not because he's aware that they have an audience but because she also looks like Hell and he might be starting to suspect that they both look like Hell for the same reason and didn't they go through this already when they were working out how to fight Thakinyan? That was when Pan stopped lying about his headaches and the fact that he had an inconvenient habit of going into absence seizures sometimes because that's what happens when a body insists on continuing to march on when its brain is still bruised.

Pan at least is fine now. He doesn't look abnormally tired and isn't acting like he's not himself. He looks about as tired as any other priest does during Lent. A lot of sacrifice going on in the forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. A lot of suffering coming out of his people's minds.

"Well," he says. Puts pours the boiled water into the teapot where the leaves are waiting to awaken. Lets it steep. "If you wanna actually use words that I can understand so we can talk about what's chapping your ass today and not just talk, I'm standing right here."

PTSD and Shit

Kalen Holliday

[Are you still crazily sleep deprived, Kalen?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 10) ( success x 1 )

Grace Evans

[Nightmares!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 5, 5, 5, 6) ( fail )

Grace Evans

It's a day like any other, really. Grace came to the Chantry to keep the books company, and fell asleep on one of the library couches, an old programming manual clutched to her chest, twitching as she does in her sleep most nights. It looks almost peaceful, if you don't know what's going on underneath.

Everything's fine. Everything's normal. Until it isn't.

She opens her eyes, blinks. Blinks again, and looks down at her hands, at her body, and then a piercing, terrifying scream emerges from within her.

Someone is in trouble. Chances are, at least Kalen and Pan have heard this sound before, coming from the random places in the Chantry where Grace has chosen to nap, and know the reason for it. They might just choose to ignore it, until she screams again -- wild, uncontrolled, terrified.

Patience Mason

The chantry at dusk seems a place of quiet solitude, of repose and consideration. The tiny house on the hillside would seem a spec from the air, insignificant and utterly benign if one did not know the truth that lay within.

Patience's arrival is heralded by the unexpected patter of feet upon the rooftop, for a second one might wonder if christmas had come early, but those sounds were to light for the heavy tread of one as weighty as saint nick, they were also to heavy to be any sort of raccoon be it individual or otherwise. No these footfalls resounded on the roof with directional intent, moving across the portion that was simply one story before the sound ended, and a thump as someone dropping to the patio stones might be heard.

The next moment Patience is walking through the front door, dressed in her riding leathers, with her hair piled high in the ever present victory rolls. She would take a few moments to look around, taking in the building she had only visited once before.

It was then that she might hear the scream...then that she might look for its source. A shame she'd never visited the library.

Pan Echeverría

Just the sound the priest wants to hear the second he walks through the front door: Grace screaming.

This is the first time he's been to the Chantry since Kalen summoned him after the collection of the dead Archmagus's bones and this time he didn't step into a door in one holy place and step out of a door in another holy place miles away. He drove. So he ends up walking in the door right behind Patience. Maybe they've already greeted each other.

Whatever he wanted to talk to whoever he saw first is going to have to wait. As soon as that scream hits his ears the priest steps around Patience and walks quickly. Does not run. But she can hear his footsteps picking up speed as they descend the stairs and slowing again as he lets himself in.

"Grace?" he calls. Not to try and locate her. He hears her just fucking fine.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is, as per usual when he's in the chantry, lounging across one of the living room couches with a book in his lap and a cup of coffee. There are shadows under his eyes dark enough that by contrast his pale green eyes seem colorless, as though color and energy both drained out of them. Still, judging by the coffee, he seems disinterested in forming any kind of truce with dreaming.

And the screaming from downstairs gives a good reason as to why.

He half-drops, half-tosses his book onto the table quickly enough at the first scream. He can let a lot of things go, Grace screaming is not even a little bit like one of them. He hits his feet quickly enough, sways a little, with an audible collision of teeth as his jaws snap shut.

His attention flicks, briefly to Pan and Patience. At least Pan can get to Grace. At least there is that.

Kalen doesn't try calling, Just heads toward the library much, much more slowly than he'd like.

Alexander Brandt

Alexander arrives in a slightly more traditional style to Patience, by bike. Anyone who may be listening would hear the purr of the engine as he pulls up alongside the vehicles already parked there. Today he has no particular reason to be there, he’s just curious to see who’s about. Maybe meet somebody new. So, helmet hooked over a handlebar and dressed in his own bike leathers, he heads towards the front door, flipping a dollar coin as he walks.

Faint, though it is, the scream still carries out of the house. Grabbing the coin from mid-air, he starts running into the house. Pushing the front door open, he skids to a halt at the sight of the two unfamiliar people. Kalen, though – Kalen he knows, and asks, “What’s going on?”

Grace Evans

When they arrive in the library, down the stairs, past the locked door, they will find her. Her book's been tossed aside, and she's shaking, grabbing herself in a hug, and staring at a point in space where nothing exists.

And the first person to open the door will get a warning. "Stay... stay there. Don't come near me."

Patience Mason

The older gentleman who followed Patience in was the one the Etherite followed now. A smile of reassurance was cast in Kalen's direction as Patience waved to him. "Appropriate social and temporal Salutations Kalen." It was probably the shortest sentence he had ever heard her utter, but then she was moving quickly, and perhaps that was her version of a quick hello.

She was moving then, moving behind Pan as they descended the staircase and if Pan proceeded in one direction to circumvent the table then Patience would proceed in the other, efficiently covering the most ground.

That is until Grace warns them not to come any closer, and Paige raises an inquisitive brow, her gaze sliding to the point in space that she was staring. "Grace, please quantify and assign appropriate clerical index markers to the ascribed frotean actuality." She said as she stuck her hand in one of the many leather pouch pockets at her waist before producing a slim tube that she held gently in her gloved hand.

"Establish a suitably extrapolated approximation of incumbent physical, noospherical and metaphysical endangerment based upon the Krelling doom scale, initiating a zero as a negative, to fifty four indicating temporal and relativistic planar collapse and nullification."

Pan Echeverría

Pan is the first one down the stairs. Biggest person in the house. Maybe not the strongest but he's tall and solid and about to round the corner towards the second half of his forties. Consciousness and power growing even as he stands here. Doesn't call himself an Adept yet but he's awful goddamn close to it.

He holds his hands palms-out so she can see he's not gonna hurt her and for now he listens. Lets Patience handle it. Which leads to his facial expression becoming a clear What the fuck?

Yes Grace. Please let everyone know there isn't an imminent planar collapse.

Kalen Holliday

All Patience gets in response to her greeting is, "Firefly."

"Grace," Kalen says to Alexander, as he follows Pan and Patience toward the stairs. "Probably not life-threatening unless we've been keeping cursed artifacts I don't know about in the library, but all the same." He does not wave Alexander ahead of him. Pan and Patience are already there.

Pan is there. If it can be okay, it will be.

Kalen wants to be there too, and, given another moment he will be.

Alexander Brandt

Alexander trails behind the others. The library is new territory to him. Partly because the only other time he was here, there were other things to work through. Partly, books. They have their uses but, well, they’re not so much his thing. So he slows, looking over the others at what’s going on in the room. Peering at the spot Grace seems to be staring at, trying to figure out what’s there. Wondering if there’s something going on that he just can’t see, yet – much like Sera and the rip in the Gauntlet he opened not so long ago. And wishing, again, that he knew more about what he was doing.

The new woman tells Grace... Something. Which gets a double-take. The words are English, but the sentences don’t seem to make all that much sense. Something to worry about later. Assuming that planar collapse doesn't wreck the rest of the day. To Grace, he calls gently, “Back away from it. Come to us.”

Grace Evans

There's a thing about viruses that most people don't know. Once you're infected with one, you are rarely entirely rid of it. Maybe the nightmares that Grace has continued to have since the incident indicated that everything was not, in fact, cleared out of her system.

Maybe Hydra lay waiting for her, after all this time.

It's the only thing that really makes sense, now that she can see it. She looks down at her hands, which she sees as crawling with ants, which burrow under her flesh, that sensation of writhing burrowing things inside of her, everywhere. Makes her want so desperately to just scratch them out, to rip at her skin and tear it off.

"They aren't real, they aren't real, they aren't real," she says, mantra-like. It's not a response to Patience. Not yet. She has to come to grips first, and then she might be able to speak.

Her breathing is labored, and she reaches up to wipe something away from her mouth, from her nose -- but the others won't see the blood that she feels, knows to be there.

"I am... I may be still infected with... a terrible plague. End of the world, Patience. Nullification of humanity, where does that land on the scale?"

The echoes of Hydra reach out to her. They are real.

She looks over to Alex, shakes her head violently. "No, stay away. It's meant to kill Awakened. Don't get near me. Don't you dare!"

[OOC: Just so everyone knows, the odd things that Grace is seeing, nobody else can. Her body is not actually covered with ants, she is not actually bleeding. It's all in her head. She looks normal, if a bit tired.]

Patience Mason

Patience, is an exemplar of her name as Grace goes through the throws of her nightmare, having manifested in the waking world. She was unawares of this plague, but then she was usually so disconnected from the other mages at large that she might well have missed the whole thing. She lets those sky blue eyes flicker to Pan, as if there might be some confirmation from the man before she turns her attention entirely back to Grace.

She speaks calmly, reassuringly infact, as a mentor might talk to a distraught pupil. "Nullification of the genus homo sapien sapien is idenitified and indexed as a level twenty two on the Krelling doom scale. While significant in scope to those bio-physically locked within the afformentioned genus, it is not..infact relativistically terminal." She reaches into another pouch in that moment and produces a pair of curious and bulky goggles which she sets upon her face, and with a flick of a button they begin to whir and occilate.

She then holds up that tube and red lasers begin to play over Grace, the books, the very room.

"Initiating cohesive reality data accumulation, please attempt to relegate internal processes as nominal as is noospherically possible Grace. Appropriate advisory, do not locate the source of the scan utilizing the incumbent optical nerves..such actualization may result in sterilization of the nerves."

[Arete 2 diff 4 WP]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (1, 10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Pan Echeverría

Now he turns towards the door just to keep the others from wandering any closer. So long as Grace is panicking and yelling at them not to come any closer there's no point agitating her. If Patience can't handle this that's why he's standing there like he is.

Younger Mages don't get stronger if they don't have to figure things out for themselves though. That's another reason he's standing there like he is instead of barreling over and fixing it himself.

"Let her Work," are the first words he says to Alexander. Doesn't give the younger man his name or explain who the hell he is or why he's performing an impression of a human barricade. Just assumes Alexander is going to listen.

Arrogant bastard.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen hits the base of the stairs and studies Patience with lazers and Pan standing there and Grace beyond them for a few seconds. He frowns a little, because it is Grace and he should therefore be right in the middle of it. But Pan. He trusts Pan.

And so he stops. He reaches out to put a hand on Alexander's arm to stop him if Pan's presence hasn't already done it. "Stop," he says quietly. "If he says to let Patience handle this, let her."

Alexander Brandt

Pan turns towards the door, tells Alexander to pretty much butt out. That gets A Look from Alexander, but he returns to peering past at what’s going on in the room. Grace is frantic wiping and scratching, Patience is... doing something, talking what sounds like nonsense. He could try pushing past Pan but one thing Alexander here knows is that there’s a lot he doesn’t know. So he stands his ground, looking round when Kalen lays a hand on his shoulder. There’s no flinch, no drawing away. But there is still a need to do something.

So he says, loudly enough for Grace to hear, “Tell us what you’re seeing.” Then, quieter to Kalen, “What did that virus do to her?”

Grace Evans

Grace shuts her eyes while the lasers scan the room, but when they open again, she finds that point in space again, and shakes her head at it. "No... no..."

She rises from the couch, stumbles over to the far end of the library, like she's running from something. Truth is, she wants to get as far away from the other Mages as possible. She's a Typhoid Mary, or so she thinks.

At the other side of the library, she strips off her jacket, that grey turtleneck she always wears. Just a tee shirt underneath. She slides down a bookshelf, to sit on the floor, putting her knees between herself and the others, trying to symbolically block them out.

Then, she starts scratching at her arms with unflinching viciousness. The relief is evident on her face, but soon enough, she'll start to draw blood at this rate. To rip her skin off, before the ants eat it away entirely.

"I'm seeing... It's not real. None of it is real. It can't be real."

Patience Mason

The slow and steady sweep of the lasers seem to find no focal point as Patience evenly guides her hand across the room, the silence of the lasers made up for by the whir and clicking of the goggles on her face as gears and servos move about, slotting lenses into place while retracting others. But then it stops, and Patience puts away the tiny tube, and pulls the goggles up till they rest high upon her forehead and she looks dolefully to the others as she stepped slowly into the room, gently approaching. She spoke firmly, calmly and entirely reassuring as she approached, hands out.

"Grace, no active virus of any effective endangerment is currently active within this geo-physical locality, nor within your bio-physical structure. Increased activity within neuro-chemical transmitter's and amplified stress within your reticular activating system posits the ninety seven point six four six percentile that you have actualized a negatively attributed rapid eye movement event. Your bio-phsyical, noospherical and metaphysical personage will remain nominal for the forcastable temporal juncture."

When she gets close enough her arms are held out, though she does not touch Grace as she says. "May I initiate a dermal extremity interlock with intention to release appropriate counter neuro chemical transmitters to relegate and pacify the negativity?" She inquires, her hands gesturing towards her....it looks like she wants to give the woman a hug.

[Cha+Leadership WP]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Pan Echeverría

"Alright."

This to the other two men. He completely turns away from Patience and Grace and makes a gesture with both hands. A very clear gesture: Out. Go. Move it.

Serafíne

Hey Sera. Focused as they are and have been on Grace there's no telling where she arrived or when and how. Well, there won't be a discussion on those points in this post. She's not there and then she is, see, stumbling a bit as she negotiates the stairs with the exagerated care of a drunk girl in heels negotiating stairs. Walks like a goddamned rock star see on the level ground, but the stairs, darling -

- half on one, half on the next, Sera, wearing a short black leather skirt, thigh-high fishnets ripped to shreds, heels, and a hot pink lace bustier with black lace cups beneath an unbuttoned flannel, the sleeves rolled up, bracelets stacked up her arms, blond curls all wild.

Steadily unsteady, sights the others (perhaps?) starting to climb back up and holds on to a railing. Her tongue is against her teeth as she searches through the resonance to feel and separate out the most familiar ones. She is so trashed.

Serafíne

(Perception + Awareness just for flavor/mah knowledged.)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1

Kalen Holliday

Pan gets more obedience from Kalen than...anyone still living. But at this Kalen shakes his head, crosses his arms, and settles back against the wall to wait. There is no glaring, no indication at all that the attempt to send him away upset him. Just this calm refusal to comply.

"Shhhhhhhhhh...." That is directed not at Pan, but at Alexander, quiet enough as to be barely audible. "They've got it." And he seems sure enough of that that it may seem strange he won't just go back upstairs.

Sera's entrance catches his attention, and so he follows that almost-command to Alexander with something even closer to an actual one. "Sera. Stairs. Please." Nevermind the please. That is not really a polite request.

Grace Evans

Grace shakes her head at Patience. "Stay away from me. Even if what you say is true, I don't --"

She doesn't make it through her sentence before her eyes focus on something beyond Patience's shoulder, and she screams again, her body going taut against the books at her back.

She screams like she's dying, like there is no controlling the horrible noise coming out of her throat.

And yes, in her mind, that's exactly what's happening.

Skin is melting off of her, bones are crumbling inside her. Viscera pours out into the carpeting, and blood. Oh the blood, it washes over everything, over Patience, and there's not even enough thought left in her to worry about that last one. The visions may not be real, but the pain -- oh it is real indeed.

Alexander Brandt

He’s getting angry now. Who the hell is this guy to shoo him away? If it wasn’t for Kalen, trying rather more successfully to keep Alexander back... But he does stay back. He doesn’t leave though, mouthing “Make me” at Pan. Kalen notices Sera, and tells Alexander to help her. A lasting look at Pan, followed by a glance towards Kalen and he turns to the stairs and holds out a hand for support.

Hand held by Sera, lending her support, he can only turn towards the door when there’s another scream. “Are you going to fucking do something?”, he yells at the others in the corridor. Mainly at Pan.

Patience Mason

Patience listens to Grace with an even, steady look completely accepting of Grace's desire to avoid contact. She might have done so infact, if it hadn't been for the sudden screams, the sudden tension and undeniable terror in Grace's features. She reacts then, stepping forward and hugging Grace firmly, it was against her wishes, and for that Patience would apologize, but she does it anyways.

Her arms wrap around the other woman, providing the smells of leather and oil, of that cool scent of high altitude air and a hint of raspberry. The feeling of leather and the sound of it, the physical contact might be enough to snap the terrified woman out of it. To bring a hint of reality to the terror.

This is at least the theory Patience is working on as she gently 'Shhhh's' Grace as she rubs her back, holding firm as she adds.

"Nominal, all active relativistic forces and theorum's are nominal, nominal Grace, there are no frotean elements in active engagement." Her voice soft and reassuring as she tries, oh she tries to calm the woman down.

[Cha+Lead]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Pan Echeverría

So much for that idea.

It looks for about half a minute as if Patience actually has the situation under control and is going to be able to calm down. That's where faith will get you sometimes. With Initiates and apprentices refusing to leave the room and the screaming getting louder.

He abandons that course of action to stride across the room. Doesn't rush over there with the intent to pull Patience off of her but the cadence of his boots hitting the floor is a clear enough indication that he's had it with the screaming.

"Patience," he says before he makes it over there, "move."

[do de do mind 2 time he's not letting the effect go this round]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 2, 6) ( success x 1 )

Serafíne

Sometimes there is one step and sometimes there are two floating at different levels and the room is pleasantly spinning as the world has forgotten the precision of its various axes and all of these things are just fine with Sera. Alexander can smell that smoke in her hair and see the glassiness in her eyes when he comes up to offer her a hand and she looks at him and looks at his hand and looks at him and she's smiling, wide, so out of synch with everything else going on, just happy and she says his name in her head three times before it makes it onto her tongue and then she says it not in her head but on her tongue, and then she does take his hand and another step, those heels, Jesus Christ, and then Grace screams like that and Sera's blitheness vanishes in the shadow of a heartbeat. Tightens her hand in Alexander's and bites her tongue until the blood sluices softly over her palette and pulls him closer as she leans on him to steady herself the rest of the way down the stairs.

"What's going on?"

(This is Sera's Watch the Weaving roll b/c she totally would.)

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (3, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday

His eyes track Alexander moving to help Sera and Pan moving to help Grace. Beyond the minimal motions required for observation, he remains still. Quiet.

He really was fine, and remains fine not barging into the room and getting into the middle of it. But of everyone there, with the new possible exception of Sera, if Grace wants to see anyone there after this...it's him.

"Pan's got it," is all he says softly to Sera. "Shhhhhhhh. It'll be alright. Just wait."

Alexander Brandt

At least the other man seems to be doing something now. What, he doesn’t know – one of the many things he doesn’t. Maybe it’s a flaw of Alexander’s, not wanting to stand by and watch while someone is obviously suffering. A need to help, to make things better. Even if he doesn’t really understand what’s going on, there’s still that urge to try. To do something. Make things better.

So he’s not sharing Kalen’s belief that things will be alright, right now. With Sera leaning on him, at least giving him some purpose here, he explains a little more. “Grace was screaming. Said something about about a virus, and how she didn’t want to infect us. Seems to be scared of something in there, but apparently nothing anyone else here can see.” He looks back to the door, trying to see what’s going on inside.

Grace Evans

After the little death is over, Grace slumps into Patience's arms. There's no more screaming, only shaky breaths. She doesn't return the hug.

It wouldn't be a hug that breaks Grace out of this. She doesn't like them. Doesn't like the sensation of touch. But Patience's voice, the strange words that she's never really had much trouble deciphering -- they do help to bring her back once the visions have cleared.

"It's not... That attack, I think it's over. For now, at least. Might be back. The last time I had this, they'd come in waves," Grace says, and her voice is worn through and gravelly with the screams.

She grabs Patience by the shoulders, then, trying to gently push her away. "Are you sure? Sure about that nominal?"

Pan is there, looking like the judgement of God that he is, looking like he's just about had it with her. And she returns him a bitter look. Just what she wanted in a time like this, right? To look up into the Light of Righteousness and be found wanting.

Patience Mason

Patience counts the seconds as she holds Grace close, utilizing her own body as a sensor as she seeks to evaluate and consider Grace's emotional and physical state. She counts down in her head as she watches the signs. Hoping they begin to recede.

They do, at least in their way and when Grace seeks release Patience gives it to her, spreading her arms wide on that initial push without even a hint of displeasure. Infact its the opposite she is smiling pleased to see that Grace is returning to herself. She nods to Grace's question and with that same tone indicates. "Probability states that your nominal actualization at this temporal juncture remains stable with a ninety eight point one one three likelihood." She stands then, offering Grace a hand should she want it, but not expecting.

She then looks at Pan, stepping to the side should he chose to continue his activities but she assures him, just as she assures everyone in the hallway. "The negatively aligned neuro-chemical transmitters are no longer applying a primary influence upon Grace's active noosphere. Further intervention is concurrently unnecessary."

Serafíne

Sera flashes a glance at Kalen all glassy and open-eyed, all weavering, but there that other sort of alertness there, beneath the familiar skin of drunk-girl that she wears familiarly. This is Sera's magic; how she finds it and how she skims her way into it. How she starts to peel back the layers-of-things adn there's something, well, not precisely sacred about Sera-the-lush, but perhaps powerful.

Yes, powerful.

She glances at Pan; of course she does. Shares Kalen's faith in the man - of course she does. To whom did she run after the Nephandus Adept came calling at her show?

"Hydra." Sera explains to Alexander. Just the word, just the thought, sobers her a bit. For the moment she isn't crowding in. "We were infected with a virus that made us sick, made us bleed, and made us hallucinate our own deaths. She's had nightmares ever since."

Pan Echeverría

If Grace had not stopped screaming there isn't a lot of doubt in the air that Pan would have pulled the Etherite off of her. He has that tension written into his shoulders. Didn't want to get involved in the first place because he knows the effect he has on the young woman. It's the same effect he has on everyone. Some people find comfort in the awe and others recoil from its strike.

But she does stop screaming. And Pan stops at Patience's side. Takes a step back. That bitter look Grace shoots at him does not go unnoticed but it doesn't bury itself in his flesh either. He hadn't had it with her. But Grace is not a mind reader and he is not projecting much for anyone else to go off of either.

Whatever effect he was going to force on her unravels. No backlash comes in its wake. It wasn't going to cause reality to rattle. Further intervention is concurrently unnecessary.

"Alright," he says. Quieter than he'd told her to move a moment ago. He looks at Grace not out of judgment or pity but brief assessment. The light down here doesn't do him any favors. He looks old. He is getting old. He's going to turn 46 in a few days. He drags his hand down his bearded face and takes another step back. "I'm gonna go make tea, then."

And out he goes. Up the stairs. Passes by Alexander and Kalen and Sera without saying another word. He coughs a smoker's cough at the top of the stairs and his footfalls lose their volume once he's reached the dining room.

Kalen Holliday

He lets Pan go. There is a slight frown as he tries to figure out way too many variables he doesn't entirely understand at once. Pan. Grace. Alexander. He sighs and leans a little bit to look into the library.

"Hey, Kit. You want me to come in or you want to just chill with Patience?" Look at that. Choices. Grace can have them.

Alexander Brandt

“Were infected. So she doesn’t have it any more, right? Was that.. a bad dream, then?” He’s asking Sera just as the screaming, thankfully, stops. There’s a hope that things are getting better. Or, at the least, not getting any worse. Pan stalks away upstairs without a word; Alexander watches him go, just as silently. He looks at Kalen, not understanding how this man could just let his friend – who is obviously cares about – suffer without trying to do anything to help.

To Grace, he calls, “You ok, Grace?” He’s still tense, still angry. It carries in his voice, but it’s not directed at her.

Grace Evans

Patience says everything is fine, in her own way. Fine. Okay. Great. For a few seconds, Grace just breathes, holds on to that feeling of air in her lungs (not blood).

There is still fear in her eyes though. Still, she shakes a little. It could all happen again. Usually, they could get some respite in between the waves of misery and death, but the waves were inexorable. They'd roll in like tides of blood, each one a little stronger than the last.

Sometimes, the lucid periods were the hardest to deal with, because then you had to come to terms with knowing what was coming next.

"You can come in. I think I'm not..." she puts a hand up to her nose, looks at her fingers after. "I'm not bleeding."

She doesn't take Patience's hand. Instead, she wraps one of hers around her mouth, shuts her eyes, and rocks slowly back and forth. Trying to stay calm.

Grace Evans

There's no real way to respond to Alexander. She's not okay. Not dead, but very much not okay.

Grace Evans

lol. I just realized: all of my characters are getting hugs for strange reasons. I need to play Ruby. Someone will hug her. It would be hilarious.

Serafíne

"You know how people come back from war all fucked up? PTSD and shit. How your now gets all soaked in your then?" Sera, low-voiced, drunk right now and really almost - sober. This spare light in her eyes, this framing half-smile that pulls back into her body, that she inhales.

"Let her know that I'll help her sleep tonight." Sera tells Kalen. She's never entered the library. She's not line of sight with Grace and hasn't been and she does not follow Kalen in. Does not crowd around. "If she wants me to."

Then Sera go of Alexander's hand, then, and turns around, and walks up the stairs.

Grace Evans

[Oh man, OOC chat fail. Sorry about that post]

Patience Mason

Grace's response is not idea, but it suits the moment, one is not totally fine after such an episode so she simply nods as she takes a few more steps back to give Grace the air she requires.

Infact she moves off, heading upstairs, and as she does she pauses to state.

"I require utilization of this physical structures lavatory, I shall re actualize your personages momentarily."

At that she's off up the stairs, heading to..well..the washroom.

[At that i gotta bounce out sadly folks, need to sleep :/]

Canoodling.

Serafíne

OH HI CHANTRY IS SOMEONE I KNOW HERE? (Per + Awareness)

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Serafíne

Somewhere between unpacking the booze and fixing herself an honest-to-god drink rather than just grabbing the bottle and tipping it back like the certified lush she actually is, that's when Sera senses his presence. She's upstairs in the kitchen, not half-way down the winding, isolated drive. She's upstairs in the kitchen and then she's so goddamned pleased that she's grabbing both the drink and the bottle of whiskey she used to make the drink and she considers making another drink and holds that thought for a solid, gleaming moment in her head then makes another goddamned drink so:

despite her rather immediate desire to see Hawksley, it is a solid five minutes before our Serafíne is descending the stairs to the library, a bottle of Stranahan's in one hand, two Mamie Taylor's in the other, no hand for the railing on the staircase which is dangerous given the goddamned heels she's sporting, and a ridiculous amount of rigamarole with all the security system because she keeps trying to give it a handprint-with-bottle rather than straight-up palm print and she doesn't understad why the doors no opening and then it does.

Oooh. Library.

Hello library.

Hello library inhabitants.

Hawksley

[Hawksley's resonance:

http://youtu.be/DGIgXP9SvB8]

Hawksley

He slept here the other night. Fell asleep in the back of the library, and no one else was there but Kalen was upstairs, Alyssa was upstairs, Grace had been there at least once. He fell asleep with strangers here and there, fearless because he is the beloved of the gods: he is a god, himself. Maybe I'm a king, and no one can harm him.

He didn't sleep here last night. He came out here late tonight, and he is downstairs drinking wine because today's weather has him feeling like chilled white wine instead of whiskey or tequila or the like. He is waiting for summer, and summer flashes her skirt at him over and over before slapping his face with winter again.

That's how she finds him, later on, hand on the reader or some-such, coming inside. This library really isn't that much more incredible than his. It certainly has a less welcoming atmosphere, though a broader variety. Which only means that the pieces of it that are applicable to him are not that much more impressive than his own collection. Just different. Different can be good. So that's where she finds him, near the back, sitting at a desk, or sitting back from it, feet propped up, drinking white wine and eating from a charcuterie plate that Collins sent with him, and he is reading and hearing the doors whisper open without looking up or saying a word.

Til she totters back to where he is, and he looks up and over his glass and at her and smiles.

Puts his finger to his lips, his other fingers grasping the rim of his wine glass. Watches her as he sips.

Serafíne

They spent Carnival in Rio. Sera was topless, essentially, from the they hit Brazilian airspace to the point where they returned to the states. So it seems nigh unnatural now to see her wearing clothing. Even the minimal, ridiculous things she choses to wear. The leather skirt that doesn't even cover her ass; the seamed stockings, the garters. The see-through lace bra beneath - what is that? an unbuttoned button-down flannel shirt, the tail of which is three to five inches longer than her actual skirt? - but they're not in Brazil right now and it isn't Carnival and the world isn't wrapped up in a last hurray, an orgy of celebration before the starving season.

He puts his finger to his lips. Shhh right? They're in a goddamned library. That makes her laugh and she laughs with a golden glow about her and she laughs aloud and then she tries to swallow her laughter and Be Silent but silence and Sera go together like sardines and peanut butter so really her Silence is fucking loud. It is constructed of whiskey and leather and laughter.

She feels magickal. She feels sublime.

She gleams at him and slips past him and parks her ass on his desk where his feet are propped and manages, more or less, to set down her drink and her other drink and also her bottle bottle without spilling.

Well, without spilling much.

Kicks off a high heel and settles a bare foot on his thigh.

"I brought you a drink!" Sera announces, too-loud. Shhh. Glances at his glass of chilled white wine. "You already have a drink. Now you have - " and she actually counts them out on her fingers, see? one. two. Announces the results of her scientific survey of the number of drinks he has available to him as if she had just discovered a new continent or some fucking thing. "Two!"

"Hi.

"Hihihihi."

Serafíne

stop!

Hawksley

They took the jet. They lived in a floating house. Hawksley was naked or nearly so most of the time. Hawksley wore a bronze torque while she wore those draping strands of sparkles, picked her up against a wall, swore in another language and growl-groaned against her neck when he came.

She shopped. He slept. He wasn't studying, he wasn't doing much other than dancing and drinking and getting barbecue from hole-in-the-wall joints with her. He swam and he drank and danced more and they did some drugs and invited themselves to parties at the Copacabana and then they came back here, where it is not really summer yet and everything, for a day or two, seemed colorless and silent to him, though not for Sera:

Sera is always high, one way or another, and does not experience crashes in quite the same way as others.

Hawksley is back to studying. He's dressed simply, finely, the way he often is, and she is dressed like a wet dream crossed with a Nirvana video. She is laughing noisily in the library, which contradicts his shushing finger, but he doesn't scold her. He watches her, sipping and holding his spot in his book as she saunters over and puts herself on the edge of the table. Kicks off her shoe and plants her foot on his thigh. Hawskley looks at that foot, not at the liquor she brought.

"Did you," he says, and sets his wineglass down, wrapping that somewhat cool hand around her ankle. His eyes flick back up to her face.

"Are you seriously so drunk you can't count to two?"

Serafíne

They were ridiculous and golden and they got tan everywhere. Drank caipirinhas until their eyes crossed and god the boobs. Not just hers. It was Carnival. The fucking feathers.

--

"No."

He can see something coy and fleeting in her face; something that is both strangely and beautifully aware. This self-possessed admission.

She smiles around the words and around the whiskey and around the moment. Drops her eyes to his hand, cool against her ankle. Then lifts them again to meet his gaze.

"I'm so drunk that I like counting to two. While you watch me. I said hi to you five times.

"Wanna say it a thousand times more."

She could peel back time and do that. Some strange part of her is inclined just to that.

Hawksley

Hawksley's hand is still wrapped around her ankle, fingers cool but warming quickly, because he's him. Because he's touching her. Because alcohol.

His hand slides up after a while, smoothing over her calf, and he leans forward, resting his forehead on her shin. Breathing in a scent, her scent, the scent of books that is so strangely muffled in this environment, perfectly climate controlled and perfect and impenetrable and static, static, static. Unchanging, unassailable. Truth be told, Hawksley sort of fucking hates this shitty library.

But he's still here. Because power.

--

He licks her shin. Runs the tip of his tongue up from the front of her ankle all the way to her knee, and then his hand is on top of her thigh, and he lays his head down, closing his eyes. "You counted the hellos, too, then," he mentions, smoothing his palm over her skin a few times, back and forth, up and down.

"Touch my hair," he says, without preamble or politeness.

Serafíne

He's still here. Because power. The doors are closed and the walls are sealed and it feels so fucking underground and it is so fucking underground. Climate controlled. Down here, there's no place to see or feel the sky. He still feels like he's soaring.

They are canoodling in the chantry library. She wants to tell him that that is what they are doing as he's bending head his forward to her leg, which is more or less bare. She likes the word canoodling the same way she likes the word Liechtenstein! Both curl on her tongue quite strangely, but then he's licking her shin and she stops breathing for a moment, her dilated pupils sharpening, her breath captured in brief, bright bursts. Curling toes dig into the meat of his thigh and she was going to ask him what he was reading because library and book but she has forgotten the meat and measure of the potential question.

All she remembers is him.

Well, not quite all.

"Did you hear about Alexander?" Sera is asking him, as he bends his head to her thigh. She is more than a bit breathless and there's a something in ehr voice that she explains a moment later, right? " - new last Thursday."

Which is a fucking metaphor. He'll remember when Grace was new-last-Wednesday.

But his head is on her thigh and he wants her to touch his hair; tells her to touch his hair and it makes her breath catch sharp because sometimes everything he does makes her breath catch sharp and of course she plunges her hands into his hair, left and right. thumbs tracing a heavy caress along his jaw, his cheek, his mouth.

"Do you know how much I want you?"

Hawksley

Sera wants to use the word 'canoodling', just like she wants to say 'hello' a thousand times, or count to two on her fingers because she can, she feels like it, why not? She doesn't. He is licking her leg, stroking her thigh, and she is doing what he wants, which is putting her fingers in his hair, which is surprisingly thick for all its fairness. She massages his thigh with her bared toes, and he smiles into her skin.

Neither of them do, or have, spoken of that other night in front of the bookstore, or anything said, because perhaps it doesn't matter. If it doesn't matter, though, then they are wonderful liars. Neither of them is a very good liar.

"Nope," he says, when she asks about Alexander instead of anything else. Maybe he remembers when Grace was new-last-Wednesday, but that was nearly a year ago. Sera was fasting from alcohol and from this sort of touch back then. Why should he bother remembering that? And maybe by now it's not last-Thursday, it's several Thursdays-ago, but Sera is a time mage. Sera is a Seer. Hawksley never even asks her what time it is; he has Collins and an expensive watch for knowing When he is.

"New to town or new to his brain explodi--" he is asking, but she is asking him another question about him, which is a far preferable topic to neonate Awakened, who are really interesting to him at first and then super boring, which isn't to say that Grace he finds boring, just that he isn't particularly interested in New Mages just because they're New Mages. Also because he's a prick.

He grins, kissing the cap of her knee. "Yes," he tells her, because this is the truth, and he doesn't dare lie.

Serafíne

Sera makes a noise that is mostly a hum and lives in the back of her throat and would be speculative or perhaps even not-speculative but some other word she cannot remember just now, because her brain is looped around the idea of two and the precise moment in time when the world shifts and something is new; and the way she can bury her fingers in his hair, and the way the fine golden strands slide like silk over her fingers.

They are terrible liars.

He kisses the cap of her knee, and grins. She bends drunkenly forward, running a tender thumb over his temple. Feels his pulse there, and something else and wants to bite him there, to feel her teeth against his skin and so close to the seat of his consciousness that she could almost inhalte, but elevation is a treacherous thing when one is falling-down-count-to-two-for-the-fun-of-it-drunk.

She would fall off the table if she tried.

She is probably going to fall off the table.

It was last-Thursday or several-Thursdays or all-Thursdays-are-the-same-Thursdays. These things start to run together when she is both drunk and magic at the same time, all the seconds tangled up with each errant beat of her heart, when she is imagining that she exists only where he touches her.

He knows how much she wants him.

"Good," returns Sera, all bleary-slurring, toes inch-inch-inching their way up his thigh. "If you didn't I'd have to show you.

"And we're in a libraryyyy. Shhhhh."

You know, as if Sera herself were anywhere close to remembering her inside-voice.

Hawksley

"God, you're so drunk," he half-laughs at her, as she bends over him, stroking his temple and swaying on the table. He's steadying her, so there's that, but frankly, if she falls off the table he might just let her.

That is a lie.

He grins up at her, chin on her shin now. "Yeah, I know what you do in libraries," he teases her.

Serafíne

"I'm going to kiss you."

Sera is so very drunk, and she says those words like a promise or a prophecy or something that belongs in the no-man's-land between the two.

"All two of you. Seventeen times. That's what I do in libraries."

And maybe he steadies her and she somehow manages to defy the many ways in which the world spins away from her as she does so, wraps his hand in the flannel framing her hips or - fuck it - maybe she falls and he catches her, or maybe she just falls. Any which way it hardly matters.

She is going to kiss him.

All two of him seventeen times.

Hawksley

That is when Hawksley smiles, not grinning but more gently, softening, though it's difficult to see softness in those angular, predatory features of his. Yes, he does steady her a bit, reaching up and laying his hands on her arms, holding her as she tumbles down off the table and onto his lap, which he facilitates partly so she doesn't fall to the ground and partly because, well: Sera on lap. But that is where he reaches up and touches her face, pushing her hair back and looking at her up close.

Both of him. Holds her and looks at her and does not kiss her, nor permit her to kiss him. He is not smiling now, but not frowning. He is not grinning and not laughing but he is not upset, his cheeks aren't flushed. He isn't... wanting. Not so forcefully, powerfully, entirely as she wants, and this is the only way she ever wants.

"Let's go to a window seat," he tells her, quietly because Library, and because she's up close. "I would much rather you sit with me there, both of me, and tell me what's going through your mind. As it comes. While you're... drunk off your ass."

Serafíne

Sera inhales, arrested as he puts his hands on her face, glassy eyes rising to meet his. And it is a moment of arrest, sudden and entire. She does not and perhaps she cannot move for the span of several heartbeats, and then she's in motion again, rather like a cat denied a lap when he does not kiss her and does not allow her to kiss him, she just keeps pushing her forehead against the barrier he has created, until divested or diverted.

He diverts her; the warm vibration of his voice that she can feel somehow in her ribs and her throat and what he says to her stops her again, he can feel the shape of the moment, when she stops trying kiss him and just - looks at him. A kind of wonder in her she can hardly remember the shape of.

--

A windowseat, quietly. Library. That sounds lovely.

Sera sort of slides backwards off his lap and she's holding one of his hands somehow, how did that get there, which may be the singular point keeping her upright and then only because of the counterbalancing weight from him, as he stands too.

"Do you know why I like to bite your pulse?"

Hawksley

She has that look, that drunk-person going no no no no no, need to be serious, PRETEND TO BE SOBER and staring deerlike, unblinking, breath held before one remembers to breathe. It makes him smile at her. She presses her forehead to his and this, this he allows, rolling their brows together, wrapping his arms around her to hug her, hold her, though he has denied her her wanting, and god, what an asshole,

how could she love him.

But what he suggests, he knows she will also want, and Want, and love. It's dim outside, and will darken. The wind will batter the glass and her fingertips will leave ghostly impressions all around her hands, her heat fogging the chill. She is lopsided when she moves, though, and he holds her up while she either finds her discarded shoe or discards the other one. He has risen with her, for her, since he can tell better than she can what she's going for. One glass of wine, not even all of it, and she's three or thirteen sheets to the wind.

"Because you're an animal," he answers blithely, like this is the obvious answer, "and you want to hold my life between your teeth without ever sinking those teeth down and snuffing it out. I imagine that would be rather ecstatic."

The use of the word is not teasing.

A FINALE POST GOES HERE

How People Speak with Flowers in Victorian England

Serafíne

Bet you didn't know that Denver has more live music venues than fucking LA. Well, so it does, and on a certain Thursday night in late March - spring spring spring, how can you feel anything right now except spring - a four-piece band without a goddamned name is playing a pop-up show at Whiskey River, which does not actually feature whiskey any more than any ordinary hipster-oriented bar might, and does not contain a river.

It does have a bar and a bit of an outdoor spill-over patio area where smokers and Smokers can retreat mid-show to indulge in their chosen vice and a lanky sort of architecture and a close, warm feel. And it is more or less constructed in the space left behind by an old movie theater turned porn theater in the 1970s turned strip club in the early 90s, turned legit dive bar circa 1999, turned "We have 23 microbrews on tap" style dive circa 2005.

The bar is cramped, yeah, but there's a marquee out front all lighted up in neon and the stage is pretty goddamned awesome, a good 2.5 or even three feet off the ground, higher than it is in most of the tertiary sort of places unknowns get to play. Sera sent out a mass text - of course she did, of course she would - without much warning, spur of the moment, as these things always seem to be with her. And here she is, and here they are, and the bar is maybe three-quarters full - it's Thursday right? not the weekend, but far enough along that some of us want to start our weekend, and the stage is bathed in the sort of sweeping lights that make you look like a goddamned rock star even if you don't already look like a goddamned rock star and Sera,

well, she looks like a goddamned rock star. Feels like one too. Three other people on stage and some of them are good and some of them are really fucking great but when she's up there, how can you take your eyes off her?

Gallowglass

[Awaare?]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kalen Holliday

[Nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Gallowglass

Mr. Gallowglass is not very good at being social. That is a lie: of course it is. Gallowglass can be social. There are indeed cities and chantries where Gallowglass is thought to be quiet and a good listener (trust in me [confidant]), if, of course, arrogant - unrelentingly. But everybody knows his Tradition so they forgive him that (or they don't forgive him that - he doesn't know and he doesn't care because he is arrogant and this is a cycle). He is good at knowing people and intuiting what they feel or think or want to do. He often understands them even if he doesn't like them or is the sort of bookish sleep-deprived young man with vampire-pale skin and shadow-haunted eyes, a gawk with a too-long neck, thin shoulders, a hunch, then that thatch of uncombed Sandman-wild dark hair, you know, which could be in style but probably isn't. He's just got stubble tonight like maybe he shaved the other day and the beard is taking a day to get back to its former brisk villainous glory. Scruff. That's what he is and what he's got: scruff, scruffyness, dishevelledment. Fortunately people at bars do not care. Fortunately also Gallowglass does not care.

Most people don't really keep him in their minds when they look at him. Most people don't look at him all that much. Going to a bar to pick up a date: Probably not Adam's scene. Probably not something he's even good at.

He doesn't look awkward, just: okay. He is here. He is here with Kalen Holliday, for whom he opens the door like the nice guy he isn't, asking what he hadn't asked on the drive over (the chilling, perilous, holy fucking shit Adam do not kill us drive over: guess who has road rage? Guess who has bad road rage when it comes to parking downtown? Somebody's car came this close to being keyed), "Have you heard Serafíne's band before?"

Where is what's-her-name?

There is Serafíne. He could've just looked at the stage, probably: could've just had his gaze drawn there naturally, but even before he opened the bar's door, he was feeling that gut-instinct place-between be enrapt be enthralled lick that is associated with the Ecstatic.

Kalen Holliday

[How distracted are you by Resonance tonight, Kalen?]

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

Kalen Holliday

He's breathing in Serafine's Resonance before they're inside. Before there is that wash of music when the door opens and the sound feels like something he could fall into and float in. Heavy and rich and washed in something that begs yo to keep falling closer, deeper. There the soft fluting sounds. Here the rhythmic base of the sound like the spine of it, anchoring it and holding it and-

And Kit has the door open and is probably already impatient and how long was he there? A few heartbeats? Eternity? There are mathmatical reasons to accept that some infinities are larger than others and each of these people he's passing carry their own and each place they intersect the others near them have...and...and...and....

Serafine. Whose presence is spilling off of her and over everything. A whole bar full of possibility and all of it enthralled together in one shimmering moment with her. It is a kind of communion, even if they don't understand it. A blessing.

He can taste tequila, and it is memory from things that have happened and will happen and he doesn't even try to untangle any of those moments. That is for some other time. Instead he orders two shots of ridiculously expensive tequila and slides one of them toward Adam.

Gallowglass

[I sip this right? We're gonna stamina tequila. I don't even know the drinking rules but it's gonna happen.]

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

Gallowglass

[Adam: o/]

Serafíne

(Performancing? + charisma)

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Serafíne

also how good is Dan?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

(Okay: Dan gives a masterclass in guitar. Sera may be too wasted to keep up.)

Serafíne

The show unwinds. Did you know that Sera plays the guitar? Sera plays the guitar, she plays the guitar sometimes, and sometimes the guitar is slung over her back, the strap bisecting her breasts, the fretboard tangled in the sweatdamp mass of her hair. A bottle of something either in hand or maybe, sometimes, when she bothers to play, when she deigns to play, when she remembers that there's a fucking guitar on her back, against her spine, on the floor beside the mikestand.

But only for a minute or three or seven or who even remembers to count them when she's in the middle of the stage, right? Urging and breathless and sweaty and urgent. They mix covers and originals and sometimes its hard to tell the difference because the covers are obscure and the originals you might've actually heard someone else play once, somewhere, even if when she does them it feels like no one else ever really could. They segue from the Beatles to the Breeders and back again, play Springsteen (I'm on Fire) and Johnny Cash and the Raincoats and Cool as Kim Deal and PJ Harvey and if you're a critic, if you can shake off the tangled impression of her presence, the lick of her resonance, the spectacle of her digressions and recursions, all of it, somewhere beneath it all is the persistent sense that Jesus Christ these guys are awesome. Because Jesus Christ that guy is.

And Sera's wearing a short pink dress and her usual fishnets and half-way through decides she's so goddamned sweaty that she stops singing mid-song and just... you know. Starts to strip off her dress. Sera manages it just half-way and just sort of hums her way through the rest of the Violent Femmes song they're doing. Which is fine: the crowd hums and sings too. That's what Violent Femmes songs are meant to do.

Near the end everything quiets down and girl (pale skinned, dark-haired, all rockabilly) on bass steps back, stops playing, and it's just the guitar and the feedback loop, the shoegazy noise that Dan creates, crouching down and fiddling with his Macbook before he straightens and they launch into a mesmerizing, breathless cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain's psychocandy.

The drone at the end goes on and on and on.

Kalen and Kit can drink and drink and drink. Oh drink Kit, drink.

By the time the set's over, she'll have sensed them both, surely. And while the rest of the band start cleaning up their kit, well. Sera's excused from all that work. So, she jumps down from the stage and starts pushing her way through the crowd. Beeline. Guess where the fuck she's headed.

Gallowglass

Look at Kalen. All dreamy, all willing to be enthralled. Gallowglass is not very demonstrative, but the corners of his mouth tense with the possibility of a smile. He scratches the underside of his chin, does not quite eddy in Kit's dreamy wake even though he is not the kind of young man who often goes to bars. He heads straight for the bar, and perhaps he gets there before Kalen or perhaps not. Do you know how hard it is for Adam to get a bartender's attention? Not that hard: he could just drop the cowel, drop the Mystery, and even Mysterious somebody'll notice him and just forget. He could take somebody's drink and they'd be annoyed and angry but if their attention was distracted for a minunte --

But Adam wouldn't take somebody else's drink unless he was going to poison it. He is not a poisoner. So he's happy enough for Kalen to order whatever the fuck he orders. Tequila? Adam would not know expensive tequila from cheap tequila (or thinks he would not [delicate WASP stomach]). He doesn't down it right away.

Because he's listening to the band. Adam claps and 'woos' after Johnny fucking Cash, but looks sober his eyes hooded during any Beatles songs, seems content during PJ Harvey covers, and it's when Dan's guitar work is particularly amazing, amazing enough that Adam is watching the consor's fingers, attentive, sharp, that he throws back the shot, nudges Kalen, a gleam that touches on mischief in his eyes but might be poised toward conspiracy instead, "Cheers, Kal," and

and

and

holy shit. He's totally fine. The burn is good; his head does not swim; his eyes barely water at all, so he grins - pleased. Pleased enough that he's not even paying attention when the band starts packing up and Serafine beelines in their direction because he is ordering another two shots of the same thank you very much one for him and one for his buddy. Yes.

Kalen Holliday

Kalen, who tolerates only a handful of people using diminutives on him, grins back in response to Adam's look, raises his shot glass, and downs the tequila. There are schools of thought that you should savor such a thing. Linger. Hoard.

But Kalen has touched the face of eternity. He knows that life is forever twisting back into new forms but forms are fleeting and moments are fleeting and there is only this. Right now. This moment. This instant. Only this.

Sometimes he forgets and gives in to nightmares and shadows but tonight he remembers and the world is so dizzyingly beautiful that he can taste transcendence. It is a little like blackberries and sweet champagne and the scent of lotus blossoms and blood and earth threading through underneath it.

And this why he called Gallowglass. Relentless and sure and unyielding. Solid.

He accepts another shot, but he rests his head on Gallowglass' shoulder while they wait for it. His skin is warm but the echoes of armor in Kalen's mind are cold. Both things are equally real. He closes his eyes and breathes out softly.

Perfect.

Serafíne

Kalen?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

Serafíne

Adam?

Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 ) Re-rolls: 1

Gallowglass

[Okay brah. Is shit up with you? PERC AWARE + SPESHULTEE. Watch this botch. *suspicion*]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1

Serafíne

"Hi." Sera can beeline through the crowd with the best of them. She was made to beeline through crowds, in heels, half-dressed, sweat gleaming on her skin. She was made for crowds and here she is, see, slicing through one that is starting to both come-down and break up, or at least, break itself back into the factions from which it was manufactured when they took the stage. No longer a crowd but a noisey animal, un-segmented, opened up, conversations picking up and lingering and changed all around, opening, opening.

And Sera, "Hiiiiii." with an arm around Adam's waist and another around Kalen's, this little squeeze that somehow encompasses them both as a couple, right? Then lets them go and swings 'round them pair of them like a whip. Bottle in hand and she sets it on the bar.

Only half-empty but that is a fifth of Stranahan's, so.

Slow down, Sera.

She's still half-humming beneath her breath, skimming on fumes and the energy of the crowd.

Gallowglass

He doesn't push Kalen away and say anything like: c'mon man. Doesn't flush or blush or get all what the fuck. Maybe a little what the fuck for a moment. What the fuck isn't the right word to use. The Flambeau called him to come see Serafíne play at a bar and Adam didn't think anything of it except perhaps brooding thoughts on Serafíne and his desk and Ruse and that scene at the bookstore. He does give the other Hermetic something of a keen look: what are you doing; his expression is occulted, considering. He says, "Man, you are going to chase the girls away. Oh, here's one."

His accent is stronger than usual: hear it? That muddle of time spent abroad.

"Hi Serafíne. Dan is very good." This is Adam's greeting: sea-eyed, exhausted, weary-as-fuck. A beat later, he's regretting the missed opportunity to say: hey, girl, with a grin. Because Adam is a jerk. He is arrogant and he is mean and he doesn't actually think Serafíne minds.

And a beat later, he's regretting it again, blinking once and then twice, drawing himself up just a little, because Kalen's head on his shoulder and Serafíne's arm around his waist: it's way too much for Adam, who is rather aloof, composed, self-contained. "Erm, you were all right too."

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

Kalen Holliday

Kalen is stressed. Not about the bar. He's perfectly, blissfully at peace with the bar and the tequila and his head resting on Adam's shoulder (and if he were paying attention to it, with the assumption Sera just made). But there is stress, and it's evident in the way Kalen leans into Adam but doesn't really relax, the nightmares and the way he always seems to have a lingering sense of foreboding. The only person Sera has really seen him relax around, like tension easing, really coming off some part of him being on guard, is Pan. And her, the nights he's let her sing him to sleep, though that kind of surrender hasn't come outside of magic for her. Trust, yes. Calm yes. But not needing to keep tabs on the world on some level...no. He's not actively upset, he's just on a stress level that's set at a ridiculously high point as a baseline right now.

Kalen Holliday

"Serafine?" Kalen murmurs, without opening his eyes, as if to confirm that Gallowglass is referring to Serafine and her larger than life presence as if she could ever be wholly encompassed by a word like girl. "I doubt she'd be scared off. Try not to break her poor heart like you break Kharisma's with your ridiculous standards and rules and customs and limitations and whatever else." He makes a soft sighing sound that might have been a laugh under other circumstances. "But if you really like her...."

He opens his eyes and they are pale and luminous and mischievous and suddenly he is grinning, even if he doesn't pick up his head.. "Hey, Sera. You want to learn all about how people spoke with flowers in Victorian England? And by with I mean using them in a complicated secret language of signals between lovers, not actually communing with the flowers themselves."

Serafíne

"I know." Sera hums around the thought of Dan's brilliance; god, she's still feeling that in her bones, between her teeth, beneath her pulse, in the way her heart pounds, and the I know is for Dan being very good and if she were the sort to take offense at damning with faint praise well, she might do so right after that but no. Her hand slides across Adam's waist and she lets him go. She's smiling, inhaling, the way one does when the world has gone star-mad and cross-eyed, amazed by the way her body moves as she sliiiides up to the bar and loops an arm around her bottle and rests her cheek on her fist and her elbow on the wood. "He's a fucking genius, isn't he?"

The sort of genius even someone like Adam might appreciate. Serious on stage, a virtuouso, really, intent and aware of the rest of the players. Especially aware of Sera, in all her sloppy glory, particularly when she starts to fall apart, to lose the thread of the line, ready to come in where needed, to keep the band going so that she can fall to pieces without anyone else coming to harm. While the rhythm section keeps the beat and the -

Sera blinks, lazily, from Kalen to Adam. Blinks back again. Considers asking Adam where Ruse is and does not really understand that she hasn't asked the question aloud because her dark blue eyes have snagged on Kalen and linger there. Linger, linger -

then Kalen's moving, mischievous, asking her if she wants to learn the secret language of secret lovers and of fucking course she does, says everything about her, but -

"Hold that thought." She tells Kalen, unfurling, unsteady, aware. "I gotta pee."

And so she ducks away, leaving behind her bottle like a flag claiming new territory, sliding expertly through the crowd. Girl's gotta pee.