hipsters @coolbar 2nite only!

Serafíne

Hole in the wall of holes in the wall. The entrance is from the middle of a long alley behind some shallow galleries and the space is strange and there's a red door and a purple light above it that is intuitively menacing but a strange scroll-worked sign above that says simply: cool bar. Then something like a bank big bank vault door and a long stairway down-down-down and: oh hello.

Bar and stage as likely to host impromptu walking productions of MacBeth written back into street slang as it is to have a band, but tonight there's a band. Not much notice. Folks who got the invitation late this afternoon only saw: pop-up show, @coolbar with a link to the location and a minute later come here are new stuff thanks, auto-correct.

Pen

Here is Pen - come through the ominous purple haze, come through the big bank vault door and the long stairway, the echoing stairway, the stairway which echoes (it does echo, echoes and contains, a tunnel) like some kind of nautilus, and: oh hello.

Here is Pen, who came because she wanted to hear the band and see the band members, in an artist's smock doubling as a tunic. The effect is airy and winsome John Williams Waterhouse, some Spring-witch, cobalt blue embroidery at the edges of the collar which is a split that goes down to her sternum the laces left loose like that, and her hips are banded by a belt of braided leather.

Here is Pen - but where is Dan; where is Sera? Pen sweeps the place with a glance, aspiring (the soldier) to alertness, and if she sees either of them: she beelines. Or she joins the small crowd at the bar, ordering a ginger rye from the bartender.

Serafíne

Bright and warm and windy the next morning. The snow mounded up so high yesterday now has a bright, granular crust and everything, everywhere is a paean to gravity, a lesson in watersheds. Easy to get out and back on the road home, even at the immoderately early hour of ten-or-so a.m. And she's curled up in the passenger's seat, knees drawn up, forehead against the glass, sunglasses yes, dark and huge, against the glare. He doesn't imagine she's slept. Doesn't imagine she's slept much, anyway. He knows how much acid she took two days ago. How long it takes to come down.

Well, hey! Dan and Dee and Rick are setting-up on the small stage and there's something easy and companionable about it all, some return-to-rhythm, something necessary and organic that passes between them as they go about the work in an unfamiliar space. Been forever since they 'played-out' after all. Sera is sitting on the stage while the others work. She wanted to wear her Easter dress again but it seemed that the skirt would be an impediment to the on-off she tends to do with her guitar, so she is back to one of her standards: a pair of tiny denim cut-offs and fishnets and filmy, lacy black bra beneath a ripped, worn, studded, shorn leather jacket.

Her legs are swinging, swinging, swinging and she sits while her friends work, and she has a beer and a shot and she's talking very companionably with an attractive young rather-earnest looking black guy sporting a pair of hipster glasses, worn jeans, and a distressed t-shirt which features a line drawing of an enormous sheep eating a tiny laser-eyed monster.

Sera waves and beams when she sees Pen making-a-beeline. Her hair is worn differently than it often is, and when she turns to say something to Tre about who-Pen-is it becomes obvious why: she is wearing a crown.

"Hey!" That smile. "You came!"

Silas

Silas' pants are too loose for a true hipster, but other than that? There is the stubble, the hair swept just so, the button down shirt (with sleeves rolled up to approximately the elbow, displaying tattoos on his arms) tucked into denim that moves well with him rather than constricting his movements, the bow tie that coordinates, contrasts, something. It doesn't match, no, where would be the fun in that?

He drinks his whiskey neat, at least tonight, and of course he's here for the band. Why else could he be? But there are things that mark him out as different [as primal, as Other], and there are things that Echo from him, literal representations of the Ars Vitae with which he is so familiar. His skin is warm to the touch on the occasion it's brushed - a sunlit glade full of riotous growth. There is no jewellery but for one thin gold band on his right ring finger, and a paler bit of skin of a similar width on the middle finger next to it.

Sitting with drink in hand, his back is to the bar; his eyes on the assembled are a vivid blue, clear and vibrant, and observant. He sees Pen enter, sees so much.

Serafíne

Awareness!

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]

Silas

Same!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Serafíne

Then, well. This moment when she lifts her chin and looks and looks and oh: everything in that moment is sharp, heightened, intimate, surreal. "Check that guy out." So she says to Pen, a lift of her chin toward Silas. "He feels like someone you'd know."

Pen

[?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Pen

Sera beams and it is Sera and it is that smile and Pen smiles back: a flash of a thing, burnished like a piece of silver, see, tarnished until suddenly: a rill of brightness, catching the day, and of course her entire expression is lit up by it and by Sera and by the prospect of music made by somebody fashioned and crafted by someones that she knows here on this particular night with snow a rim outside a créme brulee shell to be cracked get to the sweet within. "Of course!" - that rill of brightness in her voice, too: steadiness. "I feel as if I have been longing to hear you play, that it is exactly what I want to feel in my collar and my rib cage - Sera, I am very excited," and the flash of a smile and its left-over remnant pleasure becomes this curl of a grin. "Hello," to Tre. "I'm Pen."

And she might have said more, but there by the stage is Serafíne, observant, lifting her chin and Pen does check that guy out, turning so her back is to the stage and she can give that guy an assessing look (a weapon must be ready, always; she tries to be always ready).

"I don't, though. He seems as if he should have antlers, doesn't he?"

And if Silas meets Pen's eyes, she lofts her eyebrows and cants her head.

Pen

ooc: Er, make that the fancier and more Pen-like: "He seems as if he should wear a crown of antlers upon his brow, doesn't he?"

Grace

[Awareness!]

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

Grace

There's an invitation. Grace responds to that invitation, not so much because she enjoys going to bars for music, but because of the sender. Sera could make just about anything worth it.

The swirl of different in this place doesn't surprise much. She still blinks as she steps in the door, this be-winged thing, at everyone else's oddness. She wears her coat-of-many-colors -- red, with strips of LED lights sewn in. If it looks a little worn, perhaps it's just because she wears it everywhere in winter.

A bee-line, she travels, straight to Pen, head down, like she is trying to forget the rest of the crowd is here.

Silas

Eyes are met, yes, and a brow raised in return; questioning, perhaps, from the bit of the bar closest the stage. Silas is not terribly far from where Sera and Pen met, and so after acknowledging their presence (and feeling their Presence) he takes up his drink, signals the bartender for two drinks of the women's choice to be added to his tab, and makes his way to where they stand. Why not? There is music, and there is quarry here, even if he chooses not to hunt, and there are people of interest.

Silas is brazen, he is bald, and when he moves towards where Pen assesses and Sera prepares his gait is sure, and nigh predatory. It is not rushed but measured just right to give Sera chance to give answer before he's close enough to hail them.

"Hello," he says and his deep voice is familiar to Grace. There's a slight accent there, as the Other carries itself from impression to reality; it's English, maybe, if you listen to it sideways, but the kind of upper class English that one hears in places that commoners aren't often about. "I feel that you two may be people I should know. I'm called Silas."

Grace

Silas is Arianna's friend. So is Pen. It remains to be seen if Grace will be able to associate with either of them once it comes out that she'd much rather punch Arianna in the face than give her prejudices credit by being nice.

For now, though...

"You don't know Pen? Really?" Grace makes a 'huh' face. Lets them introduce themselves. "Hey, Pen."

Serafíne

"You know we're loud," Sera-to-Pen, "right?" And there is a moment there of introduction: Tre to Pen and Pen to Tre, perhaps. Sera tells Pen that Tre is, you know, cool, which is code enough for Tre to understand that Pen, like Sera, is magickal. And to Pen's comment about crowns and antlers, all Sera has to add is: "Don't look now, he's coming this way."

With a neat wink. They can be all archaic together.

And: a twirl of Sera's fingers at Grace as she is bee-lining and this glance at Tre that includes a neat little smirk and this particular NPC might well shake hands with Pen and even Silas and also: Grace if she gets here soon enough but he also has a feeling that it is time to take his leave. He's gonna go chat up the bartender/manager and work the crowd and he has enough easy, unselfconscious charm that he can really work a crowd.

"Serafíne. Hey. Everyone calls me Sera."

Nick

Here is Nick, who was likely gently persuaded into coming and ultimately came because he wanted to hear the band play. He is come separate from Pen, though he went back to the house to change before coming out because he couldn't stand to be in his work clothes any longer. He is wearing a collarless chambray shirt and a pair of dark brown khakis and boots: the effect is a simple one, contrasting neatly with Pen.

It will also let him blend in here, which is just as well. Nick has the sort of air about him that could be a buzzkill in a place like this.

Nick gathers his bearings for a moment after he has stepped in the door into the haze and red and purple lights. Pen is easy enough for him to see, and so is Sera, and there is Grace. He lifts a hand to all of them, and he stops at the bar first, because damned if he is going to be at a loud concert without a drink in hand.

Pen

They can all be archaic together, and here come to roost two bird-things (winged quake herald of change dark crow reverent portent) in the cool bar as well. The cool bar really is cool; look how many cool people have come to it (because of Sera - core of gravity; center of the circle). Silas has Pen's attention, as a stranger and a stranger who feels as he does, but when Grace cuts through the crowd she is welcomed with a warm look. She offers the man-who-should-wear-an-antlered-crown her hand. Her wrist is clasped in a metal bracelet; there are rings on every finger, including above the knuckle of her thumb, and she says -

"Silas. From Silvanus, I take it?" with easy good humor, and in the middle of the question this perplexed look for Grace, which winds past Grace to rest on Sera: the question continues. Why should Pen know Silas and not Sera, hmm?

Grace

She waves back at Sera, the twinkle of fingers, a quirk of a lip. But she doesn't understand the weird look Pen gives her. Some people are easier to read than others.

"Hey, Nick too. We're freaking flocking."

Silas

"Yes, actually. My mother is ever interested in the esoteric." Grace is there and she waves her fingers, so Silas gives a nod of his head; it could be a bow but that it isn't at all, and while he may sound like it, look like it, he isn't quite that archaic. Any hand offered is shaken, displaying his tattoo-sleeved right forearm - it is cloaked in symbols of Horned Gods and Hunts, lending still more credence to the thought that perhaps there ought to be horns on his person. As stated, he is warm to the touch in a way that might be considered feverish, were it not so vigorous a sign of life.

"It's a pleasure to meet you both. And to see you again, Grace - I hope all is well."

Serafíne

Grace says that we are freaking flocking and Sera favors the Virtual Adept (sorry: Grace, Sera has not adjusted to the name change.) with a neat liiittle smirk. Grace and her propensity for commenting on the coincidences of mages-coming-together. Well: no coincidence tonight. It's the first time Sera's band has played out in...

...months. Nine or more. She has a shot and a beer and when Siles orders another one of whatever the women are drinking to be put on his tab, hell, she gets another round. Of shots, not beer. Stranahan's Colorado whiskey: goes down a treat. She tosses it back like a pro. Eyes Silas' tattooes when he outstretches his hand to be shaken. Notes the warmth and goes, "Oh, your hands are warm!" And she remembers: others with warm hands. The passing wonder of it.

"I hope you brought your earplugs," Sera says this mostly to Grace, in a way that is teasing-serious, and reaches out to ruffle Grace's hair. Whom Dan pauses in his work doling out cords and setting up drums and amps and whatnot to greet with a grin framed by his blond beard.

Nick

When Nick appears behind all of them, it's without emitting a sound; a more forceful presence than his would be likely to startle other people. Lucky he's not like that.

"Hello everyone," he says, and when he finally settles on a place to enter the little circle of Willworkers here it's next to Pen. He has a whiskey and soda in hand. Dan, where he is setting up amps and doling out cards, gets a wave.

Nicholas, curly-headed and solemn, offers a moment's quiet regard for the other man present: he had not arrived in time to catch his name. "Hello. I'm Nick."

Grace

Grace shrugs at Silas. He can hope all is well all he wants. She isn't going to explain why it isn't right now. But she leans into Sera's ruffling fingers, pulls out -- yes -- a pair of earplugs connected to each other by a wire from her coat pocket. Smirks.

"They are loud," she explains. Gives Nick a wave.

There's goodness to this. Coming together, waving at people, the meeting, the parting. Grace, for her part, is simply present. If her eyes go darting to some light fixture or other rather than a person, it's just the way she is.

Silas

"Silas," he says for Nick's benefit, offering a hand as well; there are Manners to this one, and they are deeper and stronger than just a handshake might seem. And Grace's shrug is taken in stride - already he's come to realize that Grace tends towards the terse, at least with him, and that her reactions are not always what he would consider apropos. Or polite. Still, he reserves obvious judgement, and attempts to include her as much as the others, until it seems she'd rather be left alone.

"I've not been in Denver long, though if you are the Nick and Pen of whom I've heard, we have a friend in common." He's not as secretive as his Housemate in some ways - in this way. He doesn't much mind the assembled knowing who he knows.

Pen

Pen's gray as gloaming eyes gleam when Silas blames his name on his mother's love of esoterica, but she does not discuss it (or the fact that she believes likely his mother was inspired by the mien of him, the clear and present godhood in his shadow; what will Margot make of this one?). Only seems friendly enough, inquisitive but questions will keep.

She executes a small double take when Grace actually pulls out earplugs; her eyes gone wide. She measures their proximity to the stage (the scant few inches, since Sera was and perhaps is sitting still on the edge of the stage, her band busy about her), then finds the speakers.

"Should we move if we hope to preserve our eardrums then?"

There is a Nicholas; Pen reaches for and takes his drink because she has yet to order one of her own and she wants to drink something.

Pen is sharp enough to: "Oh, you are Ari's childhood friend. Sera, have you met Ari yet?"

Grace

[Manip + Subt = Ari? Oh no, I have no probs with her.]

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

Grace

Never let it be said that Grace has manners. Perish the thought. It's a rare day she remembers to thank people for gifts, and has a tendency to look at people oddly when they thank her -- because property is a bit distasteful when it comes right down to it. What are manners, except for the customs and rituals of tribes who've never claimed her?

"Well, we can," she says, to Pen. "I'm just not a huge fan of loud music, myself."

She tries not to let it show on her face the distaste in her when Ari's name is brought up. She licks her lip, snakelike, tilts her gaze to the side. Not paying attention anymore.

Nick

[Oh? Perception + Empathy.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Silas

[You think so, do you. How droll. Per+Emp]

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

Serafíne

"Tre always has extras," Sera assures Pen: of earplugs. If she is intent on preserving her hearing. "Dee too." Because hearing loss is a problem for musicians. Or at least: musicians who are not disciples of life.

They are indeed very close to the stage. Sera is still sitting there, letting her legs swing and swing and swing. She is excited, wired. Perhaps she is on some-small-thing other than alcohol, in addition to alcohol, but the darkness in cool bar is deep enough that there will be no good view of her pupils.

Gives Nick a quick, chasing grin. Shakes her head no to Pen: she has never heard of Ari and she takes no part in the examination of Grace who is trying-not-to-let-things show. That shake jostles a few of the curls pinned up amidst the glories of her crown but the whole of the mass is well-secured.

Then Dan is there with a hand on her shoulder because everything's set up and they need five minutes to go over the set list, don't they? In the past they've always done covers, or covers of their own shit that Sera-and-Dan have sold to other artists, stitched together by Sera's irrepressible and slowly raveling charm. Tonight though -

"We'll be out in a few! So glad you guys came - "

Nick

His drink is commandeered; Nick allows this with hardly a sideways glance. This is the way of things. It frees up his hand to shake Silas's, and there is this glimmer of recognition there as the man says his name that Nick doesn't bother to hide. "Ari's mentioned you," he says.

His hand falls back to his side, and Nicholas is an insightful man and it's not difficult to notice the way in which Grace's gaze slants sidelong, how there is this slight wrinkling of her nose. Nick marks it; for now, he says nothing. His hazel eyes are for Sera, who is swing swing swinging her legs, and there is this crinkle of amusement at the corners of his eyes. "I didn't realize you were in the band, Sera. Thanks for inviting us."

Pen

Nick didn't realize she was in the band; that brings out Pen's dimples, for whatever reason, a mischievous glint.

Then: "I am glad too! Break the bone and chase the echoes down," Pen says, earnest and whole-hearted and here a quick flash of a smile again that winds up not being quick at all; flash bomb, the way it just dazzles (lake-light, shield-light) for a moment but there's the blinding blot after effect. That lingers; in the place of this metaphor, it becomes diffuse. Dan gets a tilt of her chin, a pleased hello acknowledgment; then courtesy: "I am for the bar."

It is an invitation, sure, because there are people now crowding in, and their area is a coveted one; funny how a crowd will eddy, will whorl like a river against a stone-strewn shore.

She hands back to Nicholas his drink; it has been considerably depelted. "It is good to meet you, Silvanus." Pause; "I meant to say Silas," and she sounds perplexed: because she did. (When one is marked, such things often happen. Especially if one is speaking to someone myth-seeped as Penelope.) "In some other venue, I shall want most dearly to ask you questions!"

And she is for the bar, so.

Silas

Silas marks the same shift in expression that Nick does, and he too lets it lie; he is the new addition, after all, and Arianna is more than capable of fighting her own battles when they're worth fighting. And sometimes when they aren't. More interesting is that Pen has labeled him a childhood friend, and that Nick's eyes sparkle recognition at his name. The way he sips his drink, finishing it, is casual, as are his posture and eyes.

"Yes, she and I know each other of old. If you'll pardon me - I promised my roommates I would remind them to be here for the show. Break legs, Sera."

He says this with sincerity, in the way of far older performance arts than this - and with pleasantries traded, he makes his way for the door - where he'll be able to make his call in more favorable conditions.

Serafíne

This is a ridiculously small venue and those invitations went out to maybe one out of five people on Sera's normal invite-people-to-shit contact list (which is of course, managed by Dan-not-Sera) and the other magi may well have five-ten-fifteen minutes or more of conversation before the quartet come out of - er - the back office and the hallway down to the bathrooms with their instruments and plug in to check a few levels and channels and whatnot but they already tried out the space on Monday when the bar was closed and figured (most) of that shit out. Dan and Sera with guitars, Dee with her bass, Rick on the drums. And this is new work and it is collective work, brawny and rhythm-section forward. Great big and (yes) loud as promised though the wave of noise has been modulated for the space, you see. It is also: loud as in, full, driving. The wall of instrumental sound and Sera's and sometimes Sera-and-Dee's or even Sera-and-Dee-and-Dan's voices a melodic cloud above it, floating through a river of noise.

(Er: thank you all for coming! I gotta sleep!)

Grace

Grace huffs at Nick. Didn't realize Sera was in the band? Wait until the first time she does literal magic with that voice of hers. It is something.

Pen departs for the bar, and Silas departs for his roomates. "Want to follow Pen?" she asks Nick. "It's about to get loud right here. Might be better at the bar, eh?

She hefts her weight back and forth, clearly ready to move if he is. Clearly ready to wait with him if he isn't.

Easter eggs.

Serafíne

The text invitation: Easter party / brunch / whatever! Bring yrself and maybe someone else.

That was a mass text. Sure, Sera changed phones and numbers after texting Alexander's phone repeatedly while he was imprisoned by the technocracy but she then proceeded to redownload all of her old contacts and reinstall them and text everyone her new number. Or well: Dan built up the contacts again, patiently, excising only: Ginger and Alexander and any other number he knew had been ditched as a number-of-possible-interest. Haven't been as many mass texts lately but there is what the housemates have taken to calling The Project and then for a certain Cultist and a certain Consor there was also: the other project.

And other reasons, besides.

--

Four or five days ago Denver had a blizzard and the blizzard brought a foot or more of snow and also the god Horus back down to earth. Thursday was bright and warm and everything just started: melting. Okay: there was so much snow that great melting monstrous mounds of it linger in parking lots and pedestrian malls where contractors piled it up with heavy equipment but: the streets and sidewalks are all clear, as is much of the grass. Hummocks of snow linger in the deep shadows of north-facing slopes, on the south side of streets, in the no-longer-recognizing slumps that used to be snowpersons.

There are several used-to-be-snowpersons in the yard at 719 Corona Street.

There are also: plastic eggs "hidden" in the bare branches of the trees, amidst the wild tangle of viny forsythia that is flowering despite the lingering snow. Open doors and people on the front porch and people in the house: open windows nevermind the chill, and a blazing fire and warm bodies against which one can jostle and be jostled. The most amazing spread of largely pot-luck dishes in the warm white kitchen, on the island and counters, and an array of beverage options, alcoholic and otherwise. From grapefruit-rosemary-vodka martinis to peach sangria to spiked lavender lemonade to a deeply wicked spicy bloody mary.

The back yard: more people, tramping through the mud. Fire in the firepit, all kinds of smoke in the air. Sera out there, too. In muddy Doc Marten's and a frothy black confection of a floral Dolce-and-Gabbana frock by way of an Easter dress.

William

Sometimes, you have to wear a suit to things and get an uber.

He got the uber namely because he knew he wasn't going to be driving home and riding a motorcycle when it was cold was kind of shitty. Jenn had moved out, so he didn't have free access to her car anymore. She's a Big Deal now. Lives in Los Angeles and sells paintings and is the personal assistant to a fairly well regarded Euthanatos. It was a good move.

But still: no car. He'd spent the money he was going to use for a car (because his parents told him to get a goddamned car) on a bed that was nothing short of a masterpiece that was very beautiful and ethereal and was very conspicuous when one decided to fuck like they going away to war the next day and this may be the only opportunity they have to make their way to the English literature majors at DU.

He's gotten a lot of compliments about that bed. It's sturdy, but not quiet. Not loud, but certainly not quiet.

He hadn't gotten a new phone number, instead ported the old one and continued to maintain two phones because he couldn't bring himself to tell his parents that he probably was never coming back to Louisiana. Set up call forwarding to one cell phone and bang, no worries there. He's been a busy one, William. His instagram account and FourSquare put him across the United States for good chunks of February and January. One occasional stint in Antarctica, but that was GPS spoofing. He took some picture with a girl wearing the kind of headphones that serious gamers wear sitting in an apartment with vertical blinds and a half-shaded view of a pretty city skyline.

William came with deviled eggs and cupcakes. And a bottle of vodka that was neither top shelf nor bottom shelf- distinctly in-the-middle shelf.

And peeps.

He's outside and off to the firepit, with his nice pants and button down vest and an eskew tie and a shirt that looks like he actually pressed it. He's still wearing about half a dozen bracelets on one wrist (some red and woven with gold, some navy, some leather with metal. They actually have purposes thank you very much) but the necklace that was tied on too tight has finally fallen off, and the little sun charm has yet to be added to the pile.

"Have I told anyone recently how fucking fantastic this place smells all the time?"

Serafíne

Sera does not instagram or four-square or facebook so she doesn't know where William has been or has pretended to be unless he has texted her and told her, and even then she might not remember. She does text though, and take loads of selfies and know many, many, people, and something about the way she collects things and sometimes people is very much like a physical tumblr but whatever. She hardly knows how to use those things. She understands texting and selfies but often has trouble remembering how to work her iPhone. That is 50% substance related and 50% she doesn't give a fuck about technology related.

She prefers: people.

And Will encounters some people he knows in the house: Dan or Dee maybe in the kitchen to accept deviled eggs and peeps and vodka and Emily Honey Bunches of Chokes and her wife (what! yes: they eloped) Jenny and, you know, others. People from up the street or down the street or around the corner or around the world. Sera opens her arms and greets Will with a great big rising-to-her-tip-toes hug. Her nose finds his ear.

"That's because you haven't been here when you needed to hold my hair up while I puked my guts out. Doesn't smell fantastic then.

"Want a marshmallow?"

William

Emily got married?! ("Whaaaat? Do you guys need a toaster? Registry or something- I wanna get you plates-" and general congratulatory excitements) And then it's out to the outdoors, where Sera stands on her toes and he beams like sunlight and feels like he always dopes- like the storm and the sailors on the ships tossed on it. Hands go around her waist and he does come down to make the height difference a little more bearable. Seven inches-ish. Maybe six on a bad day and eight on a good day.

Pulls back and laughs, "I feel like that is the next level of our friendship. I think you're usually the one doing the hair holding."

Possibly. William has puked at her house all of twice, once early on when one could hardly notice because he's so damned quiet about the whole thing. Rinses his mouth out with something high proof and goes about his night like this is normal. It was a big party, you don't want to miss it.

"I would love a marshmallow," he tells her, "I brought peeps, but those aren't regular marshmallows. Peeps are Peeps."

Serafíne

Well: well well well.

Will says that Peeps aren't marshmallows, Peeps are Peeps, but when Sera said marshmallow, Sera meant Peep. Will wasn't the only one to bring Peeps to this party. Sera and Co have a neat little set of fondue forks that Sera and Emily found for $2.99 at a thrift store because the fondue pot was cracked or broken or thrown-away or sold-separately and the handles are kinda long and they are keeping them staged on a little wrought-iron table near the firepit so anyone who wants can make a Peeps-flavored-Smores (or graham sandwich, or whatever) while getting high.

Sera picks out a bright-blue-bunny Peep and skewers it mercilessly and hands it back to Will, triumphal. Tucks her right arm through his left and rises up again to her tip-toes to kiss him all chaste on the cheek, even as she gathers her skirt up so it: doesn't catch on fire.

"Haven't seen you in forever. Glad you came. And that you're alright. Anyone fill you in on what's been going on?"

William

Poor Peep. Poor, poor Peep. He looks on with mock-mourning as she stabs the poor little blue bunny mercilessly. "Sera, you animal!" he says in his most southern, most high pitched and most assuredly damsel-tied-to-the-railroad-tracks voice.

And immediately the peep goes into the fire without a second thought. Just at the edge, like he's trying to coax some confession out of the peep and he's a Grand Inquisitor wanting to yell repent! Repeeeeent! As though the peep was very clearly consorting with the devil or an enemy of the Great Peep Church.

"Grace told me what was going on," he says, "the Denver chapter of the pointie hat society had a meeting beforehand and I went oh, okay, we need to go make friends with people... which turned out not too bad, actually, but I came back and shit hit the fan. Grace was pretty peeved that I wasn't here

"But I heard that Alexander's physically fine from her a few days after she'd told me."

Serafíne

Will screeches that Sera is. an. animal! and in that voice and of course everyone in the yard turns to look. The two strangers sitting the wrong-way in the rainbow hammock smoking a bowl and the hippie-girl barefoot in the mud making giant bubbles and the trio of professors from the neighborhood (adjuncts, the lot of them) standing as close to the house as possible because 52 degrees is pretty damn warm after a blizzard and pretty damn chilly any other time smoking some allegedly Cuban cigars.

Sera laughs; she is: plainly, uncontrovertably happy in that moment. Were she more forward-thinking she would be getting a graham cracker ready for him, but no. He will have to navigate blue molten bunny-goo very much on his own.

--

Neat little frown when he talks about the pointy hat society. She doesn't get it? Doesn't know what he's alluding to? Doesn't know to connect it to an early morning visit from Pen or anything else that came after.

But - "I don't - " another neat frown. This quick little pause as her eyes dart out over her friends, the smoke rising, rising, golden head cocked just then as if she were listening to something. "I don't try to speak for Grace, but I don't think she'd be mad at you for not being here? That sounds kinda like a misunderstanding?"

William

He's got a head on him, but doesn't think to get a marshmallow, either. Soon enough it's molten and gooey and he does what everyone does when they have a bloated delicious marshmallow cooked to perfection but in immediate danger- he turns it until he can grab a graham cracker and slop the peep onto it.

Laughs along with her. Happy to be where he is.

---

She says it was probably a misunderstanding.

"It was? I mean, I made it a point for us to get together later because we've had this weird dynamic going on for awhile, and I get why she was angry- she had some pretty big shit blow up in her face and she had a lot of pressure on her," he continues on, "when she came over and we talked she was super tense and was basically ready for me to write her off."

He purses his lips. Takes a bite of marshmallow and cracker and takes a second to chew so he can figure out what he's going to say. Decides not to say anything.

Serafíne

Sera has her golden head down as she listens. She must be freezing in that dress, which is basically a spring-themed negligee over black lingerie. She was wearing a crown earlier; had it planted high among her curls, but this is the sort of party where everyone can have everything and friends and strangers and everyone (or well: not everyone but some everyones) wanted to touch it, feel it, marvel at it, try it on and Sera, very very strangely, found that today of all days: that was something she didn't want to share.

The loose imprints of the earlier hairstyle are there now. Strange little kinks, unnaturally angled curls to match the natural mass of them. That listening aspect she sometimes wears, and feels: so very intimate, and so very animal.

"And were you?" Quiet, neatly probing. "Writing her off?"

William

"No," he tells her, says all nice and quiet, "she's been on my ass when I mess up, but she doesn't mean to come off abbrasive and I haven't figured out how to read her yet."

A second, "she's said some pretty shitty things before, but I don't think she ever means to hurt people. Grace is just very... with me or against me."

"No, I wouldn't write her off."

Serafíne

Sera is still tucked up against Will. That one neat arm. They haven't seen each other much in recent months. Just the once much earlier this winter. Before that: it was November. The week before Thanksgiving. The day she came home after a long, terrifying, ridiculously lonely walkabout. She was: so very thin then. She'd been fasting off and on all summer, and then Thailand, and then: that exile, and it's not likely she remembers with any regularity to eat even when her friends and lovers are around to sometimes see that she does.

She's gained back much of what she lost, though, and she looks just as lovely now - replete - as she looked when she was harrowed and hollowed. More perhaps. Especially in that see-through dress with its tumble of appliques and the exquisite French lingerie she has paired with it, beneath.

"Tell me the last time Grace was 'on your ass,'" slanting, banked little look, shaded by her lashes. "for messing up."

William

"Back when that stuff happened with the weird body shifting Nephandus? The first time Sam went into Quiet?" he is quiet about it, doesn't broadcast because, for all people knew, he could just be throwing things around in some foreign language. She's tucked in all nice and close and things are warm. He remembers when she was so thin, remembers when she felt and looked like she was wasting away not because of a lack of food but because of a lack of nourishment- a time away from the people who fed her soul.

"Anyway, I'd asked Jenn to do those paintings so people would know what we were looking for and when shit hit the fan with that there was a standard dressing down. Before that I got a talking to about wanting to investigate the whole weird monster in the park that tried to eat us thing and the subsequent investigation and the pretty continuous drop it, it's over when we found out later that it definitely wasn't over."

He stops. Exhales. Looks guilty for a minute before offering her some marshmallow peep goodness.

Serafíne

So, here's another thing Sera doesn't really know about. To-wit: the weird body-shifting Nephandus? No one has ever told her that story. Tied the pieces together for her. She has these fragments of it but again: no means of connecting them to the whole, outside of dreams or visions and thank god she doesn't have too many dreams or visions like that.

But she does: remember the certainty that something had been taken-care-of and other pieces of that. She also: hears something in Will's language and intonation that has her no longer looking down, but: at-the-fire.

And she is: careful. Careful.

"Remember the last time we talked?"

This - liminal - pause.

The hitch of her smile. If he glances at her from the right angle at just that moment, he can see that there is something about her today that is - oh - aching. Well beneath the surface.

"You blamed yourself for an awful lot of things that weren't really your fault. Remember?"

William

There are so many questions he would like to ask her sometime, but is certain he wouldn't get an answer. Not a verbal one, because Sera isn't words she is actions and those actions are Words in and of themselves. Doesn't need to say much because she says enough already to people who have eyes and hearts and know how to listen and really grasp what she said.

"I'm probably filtering our interactions through that," he says, ike it's a conceit, like he realizes something and doesn't quite know how to acknowledge it. She's looking at the fire, and he looks back at it for just a moment. The fruits of the tree of life are flames.

"Yeah, I remember."

Serafíne

Neat little nod of her head. Like she's agreeing with the music of the spheres, the notes of the universe, the rhythm of a joint being passed around a fire. Smiles a little, too. This banked glance she gives him, slanting neat and up to graze his profile.

He gets it. What she's trying to say to him. Which: pleases her.

"That's what I was thinking. Maybe you guys should talk again sometime? You know: without your filter. Grace, man. She's got enough filters of her own."

Said with a wholly affectionate curve of her mouth.

wonders. wants.

Hawksley

The plan was to get to Denver far earlier. Even with a chartered jet, though, a sudden and overpowering blizzard will put a cramp in anyone's plans for the day. By the time Hawksley and Collins and their snow-chain-wearing Uber Black get to the house, nearly a foot and a half of snow has fallen, it is dark, and what little melted on the roads in the hour or so before sunset is already freezing into slick ice.

He is in a foul mood. Circling in that goddamn jet, sitting in that goddamn jet, eating everything that was on that goddamn jet. Collins has been snapped at more than a few times, even when he wisely had their driver stop somewhere to pick up takeout so they could eat upon arrival at the house. Nevermind that plenty of people had their flights cancelled or turned back to their orginating locations. Or that if they were stuck, they were stuck with hundreds of other passengers, crammed in and unable to move. Nevermind that if they were hungry, they had peanuts. Or no drivers, even if they got to Denver successfully.

It isn't that Hawksley is unaware that other people suffer more greatly than he does. It isn't that he lacks all compassion entirely. It's that right now, he is hungry. He is tired. He is impatient, and angry, and other people's shitty lives are not his fucking problem.

The driver pulls up right to the door for them. It is paid from Collins's expense account, not that of D. Livingston. They keep his name off of many things. Most of his belongings will be coming later, driving cross-country, but the driver and Collins and Hawksley grab a few suitcases and bags from the back of the SUV. The driver is given a trip for this, and then he departs. Collins opens the front door with his keys and holds it for Hawksley, who tromps in, neglecting to stomp snow from his boots. He is dressed in a warm woolen coat and a heavy scarf, and his hair is untouched by snow since it stopped falling before he was even allowed to land.

It is dark inside, but not cold; when Hawksley lived here they had Nest installed. They turned it on from the airport and it is a comfortable seventy inside already. Hawksley breathes in deeply, scanning the house with those piercing eyes of his. Drops one suitcase in the entryway, then a messenger bag atop that, taking off leather gloves. Collins, behind him, turns on a light, flooding the foyer. Much of the furniture was left behind, covered with drop-cloths. Linens were stored in cedar-lined closets and so forth. Things like dishes and cookware were put away but left here. More expensive art and sculpture, silver, crystal -- these were all put in storage. Books and anything magical in nature, anything Hawksley would use, was brought with them to New England.

And Sera had keys, and was told she could come and go as she pleased. If anything had happened here he needed to know, he'd know.

"Let's eat," Hawksley says, after settling himself back in this place, reaching up to shed his coat. Collins has already hung his own up, and dutifully trades Hawksley a bag of takeout -- Thai -- for his coat, to hang that up as well. Hawksley opens the bag and peers in, sniffing, looking for the styrofoam package marked Pad Thai - 5.

Serafíne

Awareness?

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]

Hawksley

[*throws up hands*]

Serafíne

All of this is a little bit hallucinatory. Collins takes Hawksley's coat and Collins turns on the lights and there is the foyer, quite as it was left and Collins has the pad thai and Hawksley is settling himself back into the space. The shrouded furniture, the deeper shadows beyond the front hall. The swimming gray light that seeps in through the curtains, which are still mostly drawn. This house is old enough and huge enough that there is sometimes noise even when it is otherwise empty - something somewhere settling, or rattling - and now there is a storm outside, and they full of noise themselves. Stomping the snow from boots, peeling off layers, shaking off the irritation of the many, many, affronts and delays of the day so there is no reason, no reason at all for either Hawksley or Collins to hear the soft slap of bare feet on parquet floors, but -

- there she is. Sera: one hand on the frame of the archway that leads deeper into the grand public spaces of the mansion. Her hair is loose, her eyes a little too dark and remarkably wide and her mouth is seamed and she has a puzzled, fraught little expression incised with especial neat-ness between her straight blond brows.

She is looking at them as if they are very strange things indeed. Or: no.

Fuck that. She isn't looking at them at all.

All she sees is him but she sees him as she saw him once, some years ago, outlined against the sky, surrounded by strangers, and she doesn't really understand whether he's an hallucination or a real thing in front of her because drugs and dreams and absence: you know?

So she just stares.

And kinda forgets to breathe.

Hawksley

You'd think he'd check to see if they were alone. You'd think maybe with things in the world like Technocrats and Nephandi and so forth that he'd be constantly aware, paranoid, have everything on fucking lockdown all the fucking time like so many other mages who like to talk about The War, the sorts of mages who fling themselves dramatically into oncoming danger To Protect The Ones They Love on, like, a weekly basis.

Hawksley has never. Likely will never. Hawksley doesn't seem to be afraid of anything, and yes, to a fault. It is not his only flaw, but it is perhaps his least immediately annoying one.

So: he doesn't know that Sera is here when Collins floods the foyer with light. Maybe she came here before the blizzard began or just after it ended, before the sun set. Maybe she's been here all this time and noticed when the heat kicked on, activated by some far-away app on some far-away phone. (He has the Galaxy 7 now, because that is the newest, and Collins always gets him the newest and transfers all his contacts and apps and everything so that Hawksley barely notices he has a new phone. This is how it's been for years.)

But: he does know that Sera is here now when he lowers the plastic bag in his hands, rustling as he takes out the styrofoam with the Pad Thai in it, hands the bag back to Collins. Collins also has Pad Thai, but it is not a level 5 spicy. It is, despite the man's rather European features and tastes, actually far hotter than Hawksley's serving. And Hawksley just knows the motherfucker is still going to add hot sauce to it like he always fucking does.

He is looking up, and Sera is standing there, and his reaction is to wrinkle his brow a bit, eyebrows tugging together. He's still wearing that big scarf wrapped -- draped -- around his neck and shoulders, even though his coat was hung up. He hasn't even bothered taking off his boots. He didn't even kick the snow off, because he doesn't think to do these things. These tidy, respectful things.

Hawksley glances over at Collins, who is also looking at Sera now. Confirming that Collins also sees her, Hawksley turns his head back, blinking once. That little wrinkle remains between his eyebrows. And she stares. And he watches her, and after maybe four or five protracted seconds of silence he lifts his eyebrows instead, looks at her like um, hello? and says, like a goddamn asshole:

"You just gonna stand there?"

Serafíne

He says, you just gonna stand there, like a goddamned asshole and it is that: his voice and maybe the squeak of the styrofoam that cause her to blink. Once, really: and she closes her eyes on Horus and she opens her eyes on Hawksley.

"Fuck you." Ragged breath out, the edge of a laugh, maybe it's a laugh, maybe it's something else. The quick slash of her smile. Hard to know how to take it but she's already in motion then. In motion? She's running, actually, and she's quicker than you'd think a girl like that could be.

Hawksley may or may not be able to read the body language: but that is a headlong run. The creature is clearly about to hug the fuck outta him: styrofoam container of pad thai or no.

Hawksley

Fuck you she says and he grins, smirks really, and then, um

she's coming over. Running, actually. Which surprises him, somewhat. She runs, barefoot, and he has about a second to pass his Pad Thai to Collins, who caught Sera's running before Hawksley did and is ready to take it. So this is how it goes: Hawksley has dinner, then Hawksley has nothing, and then Hawksley has Sera. Make whatever metaphors of this that you want to. He catches her -- of course he fucking catches her, he's not one hundred percent asshole after all.

He is hugged. He is hugging, tightly.

For a while.

They stop hugging at some point. Collins has exited the foyer with dinner; on cat's feet he left them be and is somewhere else, plating the Pad Thai and saving some for Sera too in case she wants it. Hawksley is setting Sera on her feet again, but not quite letting her go as quickly. Takes a look at her. Thinks of pushing her hair out of her face but does not.

"You living here?" he asks, curious.

Serafíne

Sera hugs him for just as long as she can, contained and sharp and she still has that warm-sleep-smell about her and something else, some combination of smoke and Darjeeling and whiskey and sandalwood or maybe patchouli that is: Sera in the wintertime. Snow a bit: because it is snowing. Because she might adore winter but unlike sungods she usually likes winter just fine too. The magick of it, you know? The descending hush, the stillness, the snow angels. Well: she smells of all of those things and also of magick which he may or may not smell. Can't help it.

She loves magick, too.

--

So: she hugs him and they stop hugging and it is silly. He is has given away his coat but he is scarf and she is much, much closer to bare and now she is on her bare feet again, look how the world has returned to her. He thinks about pushing her hair out of her face. It's grown or something? He can't really see the side-fringe, mostly because she's parting it on the other side, so that the bulk of the curls fall to the right not the left.

Is she living here?

"Nah." She tells him, and if he has not let her go, she does break away here. Returns herself to her/self quite the way he returned the world to her when he put her back down on her feet. Doesn't go far though and she's also watching him; watching his face, attentively, searchingly. "Came - sometime last night? Dan said something about the weather but I said fuck the weather." And she's about to go on and say something else, but there's a moment of arrest.

Then: a neat shake of her head, this return of lilting inquiry, and an embedded awareness, concern.

"Hawksley. Is everything okay? What are you doing here?"

Hawksley

Does he smell her, when he hugs her?

He has never not done so. Hawksley has enough care and refinement and defense mechanisms to do so subtly, inhaling deeply rather than sniffing at her like a dog, but that doesn't change what he is at his core. Of everyone, Sera has always sensed that core, understood it clearly from the start. This does not make him special; she is like that with everyone. She cannot help what she knows, and what she understands. What she loves. Even if she could, he doubts that she would stop herself.

Under coat and scarf there is a black cashmere sweater -- charcoal, really -- and a faint hint of a blue shirt beneath that. His jeans are dark and his boots waterproof. Snow is melting off his feet and the puddle extends to her toes. His arm is around her waist. He has not broken that contact.

"Fuck the weather," he agrees, though more adamantly, more angrily, because he just spent far too much time locked in a flying machine that he couldn't get out of.

His eyebrows flick upward again as she asks. He thinks a moment, frowns, and nods. "Everything's okay," he confirms, and his arm slips away from her waist, but only so that his hand can come to rest on the small of her back. "Come on. I'm starving. I'll explain."

Serafíne

Sera is still Coming Down from something, though she is far enough away from the acute effects that only traces of the drug linger in her system. The very last threads of last night's high. Strangely firing synapses; bright little bursts of movement, awareness, sensation, a kind of strange ache in the very back of her head, and these fragmentary hallucinations at the periphery of her senses which dovetail very precisely with her revelatory awareness of him. Of the space around him and the shadows between and last time she saw him and the deep, abiding hush of the world after a storm. Of his hand on her spine.

Her eyes are on his profile as he first considers, and then answers, her question. And he is so radiant and alien and human and present in her layered vision and she is so attentive, and he's okay, and he's starving, and says "Okay," but something about the moment has her leaning forward to plant a kiss at approximately the midpoint of his collarbone before she turns to walk with him deeper into the house.

Sera reaches for Hawksley's hand as they walk. Her left, his right, if he'll give it. And if he does, then she will have the persistent sense that she is someone is grasping both of her hands and pulling her quite insistently up into the sky. She's quiet as they walk, though she does tell him that Dan's here, which he must have assumed. How else does Sera get anywhere? It's Dan or Uber or her own two feet because she knows herself quite well enough and also knows that she doesn't want to murder anyone by driving-while-Sera.

Hawksley

So familiar is he with Sera being on something -- a drug, a bottle of whiskey, an orgasm -- that he has always found her occasional sobriety to be unsettling and unnatural, skin-crawlingly so, as though someone else's opinions have taken over her limbs and made her parrot out bullshit about discipline or blah-blah-blah. This, these coming-down moments, are far more comfortable.

They are moving. She is pausing, and kissing his collarbone. Or rather: the layered fabric above his collarbone. All the same, he takes a breath at the contact,

and then they move on. Their hands fall together and she's the one who reached for him but in his memory it will be simply that their hands fell and found each other and connected like magnets. She says Dan is here, and he wasn't really thinking about Sera came to be here but sure, it's nice to know. He doesn't ask about Dan. He has no idea that Dan is angry. It is debatable whether Hawksley would give a fuck about the opinion a Sleeper has of him, even if that Sleeper is a Consort, a friend, what-have-you. He doesn't really comment on Dan being here, at all.

In the kitchen, the Pad Thai has been unwrapped and plated. Collins is nowhere to be seen, but there are two plates, and a bottle of white wine poured into two glasses already, and a single light above the stove is turned on, the room still dim but for the moonlight bouncing off freshly-fallen snow and into the windows.

Hawksley unwinds his scarf and tosses it across a barstool, pulling up another one and sitting down. He digs in immediately, and only after he has slaked the immediate pangs of his hunger does he finally get into what is going on.

Which is to say, he says:

"So. I'm moving back. The truck is on its way with everything else."

Serafíne

Sera perches on another one of the barstools. Legs dangling in way that is very much her own; that edge of abandon, which can be read as childlike, or something entirely else. Only lets go of his hand because he needs to take off that scarf and eat and kitchen! means that they've arrived, and she takes in the perfectly present absence of Collins with a brief but thoughtful wonder that would never enter Hawksley's mind in the first place, let alone occupy it along with the wonder of the moonlight and the surreality of Hawksley's sudden appearance in the midst of a blizzard, after so long an absence.

Hawksley eats. Sera... doesn't really, but hey there's wine and that sounds like a very civilized way to handle an acid hangover. She watches the moonlight on snow and the light grazing through the white wine and she watches Hawksley eat with such unabashed tenderness that it hurts when she thinks about it.

So, she doesn't. Think about it.

He tells her that he's moving back. She's quiet, but by now her eyes are fixed on him.

A beat. And then, "Is that a good thing?"

(He said: everything's okay, and she believes him. But - )

Serafíne

Per + Empathy

Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]

Hawksley

He eats like a man in his twenties, and drinks like it, too. Pours himself more wine and refills her glass when he does so. Eats the milder Pad Thai because he cannot handle the gut-immolating shit that Collins eats. She asks if that's a good think and he blinks, eyebrows drawing together, looking over at her.

Hawksley

Perception + Empathy

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

Hawksley

[Hawksley is hungry, and thirsty, and tired from traveling and still annoyed by the blizzard and its effects on his traveling. He's not unhappy to see Sera, but he wasn't really expecting this right off the bat. He's wary that she's going to pry and sort of (unfairly) gearing up to be irritated with her if she seems to be going that direction. He wants to just be here, and be with her, and not Get Into Anything.]

Serafíne

[It is strange to see Sera so oddly: restrained, but she is balanced on a strange fulcrum: she is so very happy to see him. Some part of her is ridiculously happy that he is back. Another part of her is quite: wary. But it feels strange and selfish to her to be that happy when she knows some of the circumstances that sent him away, and nothing of their resolution. So, she's asking him again: if this is good for him, and if he's okay.]

Hawksley

He looks at her for a moment like that, half-frowning, and then it smooths. His features ease. He nods. "Yes," Hawksley says, and firmly. He lays down his fork.

"My mother is... fine," he tells her. It's a hard word to say about a woman who has lost her mind, lost son, husband, everything. What he means is to reassure Sera that his mother has not died, she has not banished him. "The fuckhead's lawyers finally settled, and she's going to be very well taken care of. But... I'm no real help to her," he adds, more quietly. "Now that all that is over and done with, this is where I want to be."

Serafíne

Sera listens, and she watches him, and that strange and tender carefulness implicit. Closes her eyes near the end and nods.

"I missed you." Like, duh. He probably figured that out when she flung herself across the entrance hall at him, nevermind her bare feet and the melting snow on the marbled floors, the bite of chill in the air. "Missed seeing your head buried in some boring old-ass book, too. When's the truck supposed to show up with your library?"

Hawksley

His nostrils flare slightly as he breathes in. Exhales more slowly. "Soon," is all he says of the stupid truck. Watches her for a bit, and then he sighs, and smiles. "I am so tired," he confesses. "My eyes are burning."

Serafíne

"Finish your dinner." she tells him. There is another quick skim of her mouth over the mouth of her wineglass. She drinks the wine as quickly as he pours it. Of course she does. Not quite a smile, but - " - then come to bed."

Hawksley

"So bossy," he chastises her, teasingly, as though a moment a go he wasn't just whining about needing to sleep. He kicks her barstool, lightly, with the toe of his boot. "'Come to bed', she says, in my own goddamn house."

Serafíne

"About your own goddamned bed, too." Sera rolls her eyes; quite neatly. The world around her spins, just so and she rather likes that though she does close her eyes to bring her back to herself. Opens them again and he's still there, in the flesh with a mouth full of pad thai.

Sera pours out the rest of the wine. Empties the bottle into his glass and her own. If it isn't enough to make him tipsy, too, half-a-bottle is at least enough to ensure a decent night's sleep after the long day of traveling and travel-delays he has had. She tells him that she's just thinking about his own health and welfare: if he falls off the barstool from exhaustion, he'll sleep on the kitchen floor. She'd never be able to drag his muscle-y self up the stars. And she does say: stars, then corrects herself stairs. While he eats, she tells him that she's having an Easter party, and well: of course. It'll start some time and maybe it'll end. She has new dress! that is black and see-through and looks like a flower-shoppe exploded and she wanted the party to be in the garden, but: Denver, and: winter.

Dan will come down at some point. He's not just hiding away, and anyway, he wants gatorade or tea or food or whatever. Wants to tell Sera that he texted Tre and asked him to go check on the roof and make sure the tarps are holding. Sera doesn't really know what Dan is talking about but she smiles at him. Dan says hey man, or something like it, to Hawksley, while he gets a drink or forages. He's not really all that happy about the strange series of events tonight, but he doesn't make a show of it. Maybe a glance from Sera to Hawksley and back again but when a Sleeper - an aware Sleeper -
is in the room with them: where else would he look?

---

After dinner: bed. Sleep. Well, sleep for Hawksley. Sera has only just woken from a long, fitful, dreaming-LSD-in-her-system nap and curls up to cuddle, and be close to him, and drift for a while.

And wonder, the whole time, whether any of this is real.

She doesn't trust her head. And her heart: wants what it wants.

Which is very good reason not to trust it, too.

Hawksley

Hawksley does finish his dinner. He doesn't drink a half-bottle, just two glasses, because otherwise he'll wake in the middle of the night, fitful and dry and with a pounding head. He is listening while she talks, though he is eating through it. Stars and stairs. Easter party. New dress. He does chime in: "It will be warm. It's Denver," which is the same argument but for a different point: tomorrow they will wake to a blazing sun, a warm breeze, melting the blizzard away with shocking speed.

When Dan comes down Hawksley does glance at him, and doesn't know (or care) what Dan is talking about. He gives Dan a nod, but otherwise ignores him. His house has over a dozen rooms; he doesn't ask where Dan is sleeping. He doesn't ask where Sera is sleeping; he just assumes she has a made-up bed somewhere, and he'll sleep there, regardless of whether it is the master suite or not.

--

They go upstairs. Hawksley undresses and washes up, water on his face and toothpaste in his mouth. He doesn't usually bother with pajamas but he does tonight, a loose pair of pajama pants that are a nod to the weather, or something. He hits the bed hard, looking at the ceiling, exhaling. Neither of them have questioned whether she will be in bed with him; both of them assumed he would go to bed, to whatever bed she is occupying, and perhaps he'll pretend in his mind that it's because that's the one with sheets on it but a call to Collins and he could fix that.

Doesn't.

His arm to one side pillows her head. His eyes, watching the ceiling fall closed. His breath soon steadies. He sleeps; she drifts. Wonders.

Wants.

To the wall and back again.

amaranth

They disperse, each to their chosen task. Within a handful of days, a week, perhaps a fraction more, they return with thoughts, ideas, answers. A location; not simply a magickally protected void in the city map, but a target - a certain wing, underground. A number: for both subject and study. Knowledge of something else (a change) of which they were unaware. The ward number; the room number. A date certain when routines will be disrupted enough to ensure that strangers.

An ally whom neither Kiara nor Andres have met or will meet, but who has provided the with security badges, names and clearance; transfer orders for a certain subject. Parking passes for the underground garage. They are informed that the subject will be sedated, as any would for a land-transfer. They must make arrangements to remove him without drawing undue scrutiny. This is a highly classified project, so few have access to the wing. Once the subject is removed, the records will be scrubbed. Agent Weston has already received his own transfer orders.

To Novosibirsk.

This is what they have; and little more.

amaranth

(Note: dice are in emails!)

amaranth

The staff of the laboratory, hospital wings, and offices of Amaranthine Labs at the Colorado School of Public Health were officially notified that all were expected to report for their regular shifts (day or night) on a certain day (Tuesday, March 15, 2016) or night mid-week (Wednesday, March 16, 2016) when operations deemed the disruption to normal routines and potential impingement on the ordinary life of the public to be at its lowest point. No one, of course, was given the exact time of the drill, nor the precise nature of the emergency that would be simulated on that date. The memorandums were terse but perfectly clear. The directive came from levels within the organization high enough questioning the order might have drawn the wrong sort of attention: so there was grumbling, but nothing beyond a few sarcastic jokes over whatever passed for a water cooler among their kind.

--

Kiara and Andres have a much tighter target. That is, if the information in the packet left in a waterproof envelope taped to the interior of the toilets in the lady's room at Zook's Coffee and Ice Cream (which: what the fuck?) can be trusted. Inside: a very small gadget. Three identification badges, another small gadget with a hook-hanger that clearly suggests the shape and form of a parking pass hung from a rearview mirror. Instructions (written, not drawn) regarding lab access. Date-and-time suggestions that mirror the dates of the emergency drills of which Grace learned (seemingly) independently. A set of transfer orders for Subject 88123-123 to Facility HK97-321, that is also marked HIGHLY CLASSIFIED.

The information is conveyed to Kiara and Andres with enough time for the pair to make arrangements. The former to alter her appearance; so secure for the pair of them appropriate(ly untraceable) garments that will allow them to slip into the stream of completely ordinary people, the latter to create (as if by DO NOT CALL IT MAGICK GODDAMNIT) an at least temporarily serviceable facsimile of an ambulance in which they can travel. The badges are left in a safety deposit box, shielded by correspondence and other wards that the warders remove only at the last possible minute before Kiara and Andres leave for their mission.

There is a point certain beyond which none of them have been able to scry successfully. A certain border of US 40 and some cross street, where the rather service-ably modern(ish) bulk of the UC Denver School of Public Health's CU Anschutz Medical Campus occupies 2-3-4+ (??) blocks. Dominated by a big semi-circular brick building with the bulk and presence of a mid-20th century lunatic asylum / fallout shelter, onto which have been grafted newer and shinier and more modern wings, all glass and steel. Night and the campus is largely dark. A few lights in what passes for the patient wings of the specialized facilities, elsewhere office suites all lit up as janitorial staff clean up from today to get ready for tomorrow.

After circling the campus once Andres (the technician to Kiara's supervising physician, and therefore, we assume, the driver) finds the secured entrance to Amaranthine Labs, marked not by the company's name, but by a subtly embossed insignia on the parking gate. Which opens, perfectly naturally, thanks to something embedded in the parking pass, transmitting their clearance to the security guard sitting in an observational kiosk behind bullet proof glass. Once they are in the underground parking garage, a voice asserts itself in the ambulance. The source appears to be the parking pass. The speaker: the guard in the kiosk.

"Park in Bay 2. Door A. Be prepared for security check and ready to present clearance and orders."

Presuming they follow instructions, they are met just inside the swinging double-doors of ambulance bay 2 by a pair of alert young security personnel. One has a handheld device ready to scan their ID passes. The other has... what looks to be an ordinary clipboard. He looks stoic but she gives them a brief, perfunctory but professional smile. "Orders here," she is holding out the clipboard expectantly and there is something about it that makes it clear she wants them to affix their orders to the device (??), while Carl scans their security badges. "Carl'll check your clearance. The usual drill."

Kiara

She's made minor adjustments to her own Pattern before, the Verbena. The occasional wave over her hair to invoke a particular style; the reduction of blemishes; the eradication of a virus building in her system; the modulation of her breathing; the dismissal of a particularly woeful hangover. She'd gifted herself with gills, not so long ago now to dive beneath the waters in Hawaii and rescue a long forgotten artifact.

But - this is another level.

The woman who meets up with Andrés to rescue Alexandr Brant is not the brunette he last saw, rather, she is a platinum blonde creature with pale eyes and a slightly rounder face than the Kiara he knows is beneath the glamour somewhere. Her cheekbones are not as sharp; her nose wider and her hair swept up into a severe knot. She's wearing the clothing of a medical professional and when they climb into the (I-can't-believe-it's-not-magickal) vehicle the Etherite has conjured, she puts a pair of half-rim glasses on.

Her only other hint of jewellery is a watch on a slender silver band.

It is an impressive disguise, if nothing else.

-

"Nice ride, Doc." She compliments when she slides in.

At least she still sounds like herself.

-

Perhaps they talk en route to Amaranthine Labs. Maybe Andrés puts the radio on and they listen to the banality of FM radio. Perhaps they ride in (near) silence, each lost in their individual considerations on where they could have been spending their evening. Kiara's thoughts, as they glide through city streets are mostly shapeless things; her fingers folded in her lap over the transfer orders.

If she is tense, the disguise face of Kiara does not betray it. Streetlights reflect off her glasses.

When they turn into the parking bay there is time for a brief look at her companion's newly clean-shaven features.

Time for a under-breath here goes nothing before the pagan schools her stranger's features into a stoic mask that reads polite, if detached, acceptance of the routine at hand.

--

The usual drill.

The blonde that slides out of the ambulance looks as if she's done this procedure before. She offers over the papers with a crisp authority and returns the female's smile with one of her own. "Evening." She greets, and presents her badge to Carl while her associate does the same.

She smooths an imaginary wrinkle out of her clothing.

Routine. Nothing but paperwork. The words drum in the Verbena's head loud enough to drown out the doubts.

Andrés

When Andrés picks up Kiara it is in a vehicle that had been, two days earlier, a shitty white Ford van. It's now close enough to a Union ambulance that they can drive on in without too much difficulty.

"Thanks," he says. "... Doc."

Getting in isn't the part that concerns the Etherite. It's getting back out.

He's sober for once or at least as sober as Kiara has seen him. He'd shaved his face and popped in a pair of contact lenses and combed his hair. Same fellow as was at the Chantry meeting but he looks like a medical technician now instead of a doctor.

Normally he wears a wedding band. Today he doesn't. Make of that what you will.

On the way over he chatters on about something he read in the paper the other day. Something benign. Nothing concerning what they're about to do. Just two people going to transfer a reality deviant to his new facility. Doo de doo.

Once they're there he does his level best not to appear nervous if he even is nervous. To look at him he's not. If he just expects something to go tits up he won't be surprised when it happens. They both look like they're supposed to be here at least.

Deep breath:

"Daring rescue time, motherfuckers."

And Andrés follows Kiara's lead.

Kiara

[Ugh, one sec. FIXING.]

Andrés

[TOO LATE YOU FUCKED IT UP]

amaranth

The young woman takes a moment to fuss over the placement of the orders on her clipboard, frowns over them, then fusses again. Meanwhile, the young man reaches for their badges and scans them with a device no larger than an iPhone. Something flashes over the screen when he scans Kiara's that pulls his already dour mouth slightly further down at the right corner. Then there is Andres. Another something-of-a-flash. He steps back and shows the device to the young woman, who whistles, low, glances up at both of them, and then: straightens her spine.

"Sorry this is taking so long. The frequency dampeners down here always seem to interfere with the - " a sudden, supple, electronic glow that seems immanent rather than sourced. "Oh. There it goes." She lifts her chin and gives the other officer a subtle nod. He holsters his own device and retreats back to the guard station while she offers them the now-glowing blue clipboard and a stylus. "Just need you to initial here, here, and here," she says, indicating three separate locations to Kiara. She repeats the instructions to Andres. "And then a thumbprint - " another indication, "here and we'll get your clearance set up so you can access the restricted area."

The other officer has returned by then, with two small bugs he offers to them. Their function isn't immediately clear, but neither officer seems to think it a mystery and neither offers instruction. It is Andres who notices first that both officers have similar insignia affixed to lapel or collar.

"Fair warning, we are slated for an emergency drill sometime this evening. You clearance gives you priority and if you require additional assistance the override code for team members is Control Alpha Eight Niner. Control channel's always monitored, but most of us hang out on Denver's Finest."

After all of that, she hands back the orders and gives them fairly clear instructions to the secured lift that will take them to the restricted wing of the facility. "Give us five minutes to get your clearance set up."

--

It takes them no more than two minutes to follow the empty, antiseptic hallway past a junction with another equally empty hallway to its terminus at an elevator bank with four separate lifts. Three of the four have standard up/down buttons. The fourth though -

- cameras, everywhere. Five minutes to get their clearance set up? It is a long five minutes.

--

Eventually: the small control panel leading to the secured lift comes alive at Kiara's touch. Her: thumbprint, matched to the signature from the device attached to the lapel of her scrubs. The lift arrives; the doors whir open, smooth and silent. The interior smells faintly of vanilla. Two strangers are already inside, apparently having come from the schools of public health, above. They are in the midst of a conversation -

"That's what I'm saying, if you just try to impose that shit from above, it never works. You've got to speak their language. You've got to get in there - "

- and glance up, somewhat startled, give those strange-frozen smiles one gives to strangers, then resume the conversation in quieter tones.

" - and make it make sense from within. It can't be this top-down structure. What we ended up doing to teach the infection control protocol was to find community leaders - not the political leaders but the social leaders - and teach it from the inside out. Every projection I've done says we got the outbreaks under control from 40 to 65% faster, and saved hundreds, maybe thousands. You really need to read Ementalier's paper on the topic. Evidence for these best practices - "

The elevator opens again. Not their floor. Both of the other occupants exit, with one backward glance, the conversation fading between them. Between them? Amongst them, at least if Sepulveda's assessment of the 'bugs' is correct. They are identification badges, transmitters, and communication devices. Whether he can operate one correctly - another story entirely.

--

Another fifteen seconds, that supple hum, and the doors open again. The restricted labs.

--

There is another security checkpoint immediately beyond the elevator bay. Down here, the secured lift is the only lift that serves the floor. Three corridors branch off beyond the security kiosk behind locked and closed doors. Here, the guards scan their identification cards again and buzz them through one of the sets of double doors, this time with much less chatter. Directions, and the day's security codes, and no more.

This is what Andres fucks up: unhappy with the slow-response of a Technocratic Device to the day's security codes or perhaps convinced that he has input the information incorrectly, he repeats the code. Nothing, nothing. Then again: this time, the screen flashes once a bilious green. Andres feels something like a small shock, really no more than the brief bite of static electricity, but Kiara takes note that the door is, in fact, now open. The first try was all that was necessary. With so many of these Technocratic things: it works, or it doesn't. The circuit is open, or closed. There is no gray area.

--

They come to the cell in which Alexander is being kept. One guard outside is playing Crossy Road on a tablet. He also requests their orders. Fits them to the device. Glances up at them with a bit of apprehension (he is thinking of Agent Weston. He is trying to remember to forget the subject behind the door. He has already received orders for a transfer to Miami, an assignment he much prefers to Novosibirsk.) then back down. "Subject received a titrated dose of the Orpheum cocktail thirty-four minutes ago. We calculate a minimum of four hours, seventeen minutes before the first signs of life return. Subject may be combative on emergence from hibernation. Within the facility, subject's identity is highly classified. You are to reveal it to no one. Got a body bag and a gurney inside for you and far as anyone here knows, you're retrieving a radioactive corpse.

"What you do when you get back to your own rig, well. That's your business, not mine."

Kiara

He's playing Crossy Road on a tablet.

It's funny that this, of all the things the Verbena's taken in throughout this rescue mission thus far, feels the most like some dirty, unclear line being stepped over; being seen for what it is as she does. The Technocracy, the Union ... the Enemy, as she knows them; that bone deep, grief driven hatred of them jangled down to its root. It changes from black and white to murky grey.

The evidence of humanity, of such banal, normal activities here - its distressing. It's bizarre as hell and if anything were going to disrupt their plans (other than that damn door) it's the sight of it right there, at the door to Alexander's room.

(She wants to scream and throw his damn tablet across the room).

--

The bugs.

The sterile hallways and elevator banks and all those cameras.
The way down feels (is) a sort of torment all its own. Kiara can feel a trickle of sweat between her shoulder-blades, beneath her scrubs. Her palm itches as they stand behind two strangers calmly (professionally) discussing tactics for changing the status quo. Seeding belief among the masses from within. Kiara will remember their voices; the fixed smile she'd returned; forced her facial muscles to shape; the eerie normalcy of it all long after tonight is over.

(Assuming she doesn't wind up inside one of these nice numbered rooms).

--

"Understood." Her voice sounds tinny and far away, when she does speak, casts one of the first glances she's allowed herself Andrés' way. There's a body bag and a gurney inside. They're going to reclaim Alexander as if he were nothing more than a corpse.
She nods assent. They're here, there's no going back now.
He's playing Crossy Road on a tablet.

It's funny that this, of all the things the Verbena's taken in throughout this rescue mission thus far, feels the most like some dirty, unclear line being stepped over; being seen for what it is as she does. The Technocracy, the Union ... the Enemy, as she knows them; that bone deep, grief driven hatred of them jangled down to its root. It changes from black and white to murky grey.

The evidence of humanity, of such banal, normal activities here - its distressing. It's bizarre as hell and if anything were going to disrupt their plans (other than that damn door) it's the sight of it right there, at the door to Alexander's room.

(She wants to scream and throw his damn tablet across the room).

--

The bugs.

The sterile hallways and elevator banks and all those cameras.

The way down feels (is) a sort of torment all its own. Kiara can feel a trickle of sweat between her shoulder-blades, beneath her scrubs. Her palm itches as they stand behind two strangers calmly (professionally) discussing tactics for changing the status quo. Seeding belief among the masses from within. Kiara will remember their voices; the fixed smile she'd returned; forced her facial muscles to shape; the eerie normalcy of it all long after tonight is over.

(Assuming she doesn't wind up inside one of these nice numbered rooms).

--

"Understood." Her voice sounds tinny and far away, when she does speak, casts one of the first glances she's allowed herself Andrés' way. There's a body bag and a gurney inside. They're going to reclaim Alexander as if he were nothing more than a corpse.

She nods assent. They're here, there's no going back now.

Kiara

[Seriously, I don't even know.]

Andrés

The moment the keypad zaps Andres for hitting its buttons too many times would be the moment a certain Mercurial Elite would point to as evidence that she was right about his personality and its suitability for this sort of operation. It doesn't impede their progress. It just confirms for Kiara something she may have already been beginning to suspect.

After shaking out his hand, they move on.

This place does not cause the visceral response in the Etherite that it does in the Verbena but then again the Society of Ether used to belong to the Technocratic Union back when it was still called the Order of Reason, when they were still called Electrodyne Engineers. If they're caught, that won't matter.

Once they arrive at the cell, he adopts an at-ease stance with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped loose behind his back. His propensity is to fidget.

A radioactive corpse.

His eyes flick up to Kiara's face to catch the glance she gives him. On camera it looks as if he's waiting for permission to proceed with his job. Deferring to rank.

amaranth

Kiara nods assent. Andres glances at Kiara as if for permission, deferring to rank. The tablet glows the same electric/electronic glow. This time, the guard does not request thumbprints and initials in triplicate. He makes three quick notations, cocks his head as if he is listening to a far-off voice (hint: he is), finishes the third notation with a flourish and returns the set of orders to Kiara.

And then, there's this awkward moment. An interruption, an interregnum. Kiara waiting and Andres waiting and the guard... waiting too. Looking at them somewhat expectantly, until finally he just says: "Uhm, I don't have clearance to open that door." Brief pause. "I think you do - " and beneath that suggestion, (and this is modestly transparent on his face), he is frowning at them and is entertaining the brief and mildly heretical question: what if they don't?

One or the other of them figures it out: a thumbprint and a thumbprint and a hydraulic sigh and the door whooshes open and they see inside the small cell in which Alexander has been held for the past... weeks. Yes, weeks. He is still and unmoving on the cot, scabs on his knuckles, dressed in a loose set of scrubs. Thinner than he had been.

The promised gurney and body bag are indeed just parked just within the cell.

Kiara

The last real occasion Kiara Woolfe had to come in contact with a body had been her mentor's. She's seen variations of gore, since. Smoldering and dismembered things in a park. The pitiless black of a Nephandus' eye. Stitched pieces of her associates back together and scrubbed more blood off her hands than perhaps any young woman should have need to before they were even thirty.

The gore and blood and physicality of it doesn't connect for her any longer: not in the moment. Not when that awful hesitation passes between Andrés and her and the guard and the door glides open to reveal Alexander on that cot.

Maybe she will berate herself later for the slip up with the Guard but as soon as they figure it out, the brunette-now-blonde is in the room and supervising the dead man's shuffle of the Orphan into the body-bag. She doesn't think about who it is, it is, in the moment, rather imperative that this woman in scrubs with a sombre, severe expression and cool, measuring eyes moves in and smoothly assists in securing the body into the bag.

The zip slides over Alexander's face and there is a reprieve in that.

"Subject secure." She works to inject a certain amount of tedium into her voice. It seems easier to play along, in this skin. "Let's go."

She sweeps back out the door. Best to leave your sentiment in that cell until this is over, Woolfe.

amaranth

Alexander is larger than both of them and he is: absolutely dead weight. They have a modest struggle to make the transfer from cot to body bag to gurney. The guard outside the door might have guessed they would, given their relative size compared to the subject in question. Or perhaps he had not made such a guess. It is not uncommon for members of the order with clearance high enough to be involved in a secretive operation to have some sort of strength enhancement, mechanical, medical, pharmaceutical, or otherwise.

The room itself has a strange feeling to it. A sort of humming absence that makes it feel even colder and more clinical than the corridors outside. That must be the Primium on the walls. So it isn't just the body that seems dead, but the air itself. Neither of them attempts a flare of life magick to determine whether or not it really is a living person in deep hibernation or an actual corpse they are retrieving. Wouldn't be wise to risk it now that they're inside. If this has all been a warning of some sort, an elaborate and macabre hoax, intended to return to them a body, they will know that soon enough.

So they hope.

"It's done." The guard mutters into as they wheel the body back out. Ridiculously, the gurney has one slightly squeaky, slightly bum wheel and the error in it seems all the more absurd in the sterile hallway. There are, further down the hallway, other doors, closed and locked.

There are no other guards.

--

It is a long way back the way they came. The first security check; the second. Three strangers gathered at the secure elevator bay, two with Starbucks cups in hand, chatting quietly. "I'm just trying to figure out whether to start a new generation or not. I need at least an hour and a half to get through it. You'd think they could give us a ballpark or something for the drill. I'm supposed to give a talk on my results in three weeks we're trying to get out ahead of the summer weather, I mean, the last thing this country needs is a new epidemic of birth defects and - "

Two thumbprints. One body in a bag on a squeaky-wheeled gurney. Two of the strangers listening to the chatty researcher flick their eyes over the body bag, glance up at Andres, Kiara as they are wheeling it into the elevator, then glance away again.

Everything in reverse, right back to the ambulance bay and the security kiosk. One last check with the same pair of guards they saw coming in: the glowing clipboard, the presentation of the orders. The initialing of documents. The guard waits expectantly for the bugs and badges to be returned.

Kiara

Somehow, it's worse on the way out. The glimpse of an end to their little staged rescue mission makes every sterile corner and squeak of the gurney's wheel seem harder to bear. Sound abrasive and distorted to the Verbena's ears; makes her want to flinch behind her glasses. To her credit however, she resists. Maybe to the extent she bites down on the inside of her cheek, tastes the blood in her mouth.

Finds the tactility in the pain and the sensation of it comforting.

--

They stop by the elevator bay, two glance their way and the Verbena meets the eyes of one. Offers a brief, curt nod and follows the gurney bearing her associate into the elevator, papers tucked under her arm.

--

She half expected there to be music playing as they glide upwards. Soft, background noise as obscure and jarring as the fact they were wheeling a comatose Orphan in a body-bag out of a facility on a gurney with a squeaky wheel.

The inside of Kiara's cheek throbs as they greet the same guards they'd encountered climbing out of the faux-ambulance. She passes across the documents without hesitation, initial here. Sign there. Bugs and badges unclipped and handed over. Manages a have a good evening to the female security guard with what could have passed for professional courtesy.

All that remained: getting Alexander in, and getting out.

Andrés

This is the part of the operation that would have the Etherite convinced they were fucked if he were letting himself access what's left of his limbic system.

It isn't as if it has gone entirely smoothly thus far but the fact that they got in and got Alexander loaded onto a stretcher and are in the home stretch ought to bring a sense of relief to them. It does not. Until they are out of this dead spot of a building, and are certain Alexander is not bugged in some fashion, Andres is not going to relax.

Even if he does look bored out of his skull. Like this is just another day at the grind for him. Schlepping a corpse from one building to the other. He makes eye contact with one of the fellows who glances back at them and gives him a What are ya gonna do shrug before looking ahead again.

That squeaky wheel is proof enough that the Technocrats are just as flawed as anyone else but every time it makes a noise Andres wonders if they aren't about to find out someone in the course of this operation decided this was a fortuitous opportunity to betray the fuck out of both of them.

At the last checkpoint before they get back in the ambulance and drive off. Andres removes his bug and his badge with all the enthusiasm he's displayed thus far. Signs whatever he has to sign. Lets Kiara answer whatever questions they have to answer.

His hands are steady as he, when he has some sign to go ahead and do so, opens the back doors of the rig and starts to load the gurney into it.

amaranth

"Okay then," the female security, "I think that's everything." She is handing off the site-specific security pieces to her co-worker, glancing at the insignia on her clipboard/tablet. Quick flick of her eyes at the body bag. Neat little shadow then, in that particular moment, across her brow. She glances back at them, on some cusp between apprehensive and aware and hushed, really the way one is in the presence of death. "You guys have a safe - " she is saying as they are loading the body into the rig. This is a parking garage, all concrete, and her voice has a depthless echo in the solidly grounded space.

Her partner, though. Listening. Mutters something to her, not in her ear but in her proximity and she glances back to Kiara and Andres with a wave. Quick and supple.

"That's our drill. Better get on the road before we're on lockdown. Be safe."

--

They get back into the rig and: drive. The ambulance: rises, rises, rises out of the underground garage. Past the final guard. And: up, up up.

Kiara

They drive and the ambulance rises.

They slide out of the underground garage and into the night and somehow, the glint of starlight and streetlight and the resurfacing feels like a layer of suppression being peeled away. But - it does not quite give over to relief, not yet.

Not while they were still within the limits of the facility.

Kiara's seatbelt clicks into place and for a tense few seconds all she can muster is to stare into the rearview as the entry to the garage grows smaller and smaller behind them, her fingers curled around the edge of the belt. She can't keep her eyes from the mirror long, but her cheek continues to ache and her shoulders feel tight with a thrumming tension.

Breathe, Woolfe.

She does, a hiss escaping through her lips. A look shot across to Andrés. "Nothing yet." Alexander won't stir for another hour, maybe two, if her timing figures out. The question was - where on earth in the city was safe to take him.

Andrés

A bit of shuffling around. They did not come up with a comprehensive plan as to how they were going to handle the extraction let alone who would sit where when but Andrés loads the gurney into the back of the rig more or less on his own and he clambers into the back and hauls the doors shut behind him more or less by himself.

If Kiara climbs into the driver's side that's all the better. If she gets in on the passenger's side he's in the back already unloading his equipment to prepare to examine the Orpheum-infused body and ensure he is just infused and not expired. Beyond that: if the body is bugged he wants to be able to tell the body is bugged. He doesn't trust the Verbena to locate a bug. Call it intuition or experience. Matter tends to be a Sphere far from the average Witch's experience.

At any rate:

Nothing yet.

"No shit," he says without malice. He has the body bag unzipped now and is introducing his stethoscope to the cop's neck. "Drive fast, drive far. This place is giving me heartburn."

amaranth

Nothing.

One block. Two. Three and they are starting to feel safe. Four and the city unfolds around them, in all its unutterable chaos. Four and five and now they are skimming past Sand Creek Park, where Kiara and Nicholas summoned a murder, the interstate above them like a ribbon of uncertain light.

Everything left behind: everything, everything, everything.

amaranth

?

Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( botch x 1 )

Andrés

[matter/prime 2: you good, bro? -1 diff for taking his time.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 9) ( success x 1 )

Andrés

[come on, doc.]

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

amaranth

There is residual magick there diffuse throughout his body. There does not appear to be a focus area like an implant. Easy deduction: the Orpheum has a magickal component and he can sense the prime in that.

Kiara

Drive fast, drive far.

The Verbena's foot depresses the accelerator. She speeds up, but within limits. There would be no justice in coming so far and bringing Alexander back if all of it ended with the police pulling them over for speeding. Still, she zigs and zags where she can, sliding between cards and weaving through the traffic - outside, lights flash overhead and the city unfurls around them.

She has no clear direction, the pagan, but to keep the momentum up. But to take them as far from those sterile rooms and inane conversations about disease and outbreak and changing things from within as she can. Soon enough, though, there does seem to be a route sliding into place. There is a sense of purpose to the route Kiara takes, turning here. Diverting there.

Across the city limits and out again, toward the outskirts.

A tick of her eyes into the rearview where the Doctor was pressing a stethoscope to Alexander's neck. Her jaw tense. "How bad is it?" His state. Whatever they'd done to him. The Verbena's eyes return to the road and she focuses on it; her eyes have changed color, from pale blue to their regular brown. Her glamour was slowly wearing off. "I'm taking us outside the city if we need to - " she trails off, frowning.

Need to, what? Destroy what they'd created? Pull bugs and who knew what out of Alexander's body? The choices, apparently, were endless.

Kiara

[edit: cards and also - cars.]

Andrés

"It's not bad."

No emphasis on any of the words. She can hear the frown in his voice but cannot tell at what it is directed. Others might refer to what is draped over the Orphan as magick but he has other words for it. If it's keeping him subdued he's content to leave it where it is. Suffuse as it is he would have to circulate the man's blood if he was hoping to remove any tracers from his blood that might be there. He does not trust that there are no tracers in his blood but how the fuck would he know there aren't any. He isn't versed in the study of Correspondence. At all.

"... I don't think it's bad. Keep driving."

He scrubs his hands down his face. This is the part of the journey that begs the question: Now what?

"Did the collective think this far?"

If the answer is 'no' she knows what his answer is going to be. She had better hope the answer isn't 'no.'

amaranth

Alexander isn't breathing. Not that Andres can see on site. Thus far, he has confirmed that Alexander's 'corpse' does not seem to contain a bugged implant. There is still the matter of the parking pass hung from the rearview mirror of the ambulance.

Except there is not. The pass proper begins to... disintegrate when they are four blocks out from the UC Schools of Public Health. A self-destruct mechanism. Apparently: their allies (Allies?) are not interested in allowing the Traditionalists an opportunity to reverse engineer their tech.

Around them a chilly, snow-laden March night. The flat city unfolding, golden on the plains. The teeth of the mountains. With the go-ahead, Kiara heads toward an anonymous, cheap motel on the outskirts of Denver proper.

After fifteen - twenty minutes, Andres feels a ... bit of an itch. Near his left ear, on his neck. Within approximately twenty-five seconds, his entire shirt has... fallen to pieces, to nothing. Disintegrated, just like the parking pass. And his pants are starting to...

Kiara

It's not bad.

Then:

... I don't think it's bad.

Kiara curses.

Under breath and quiet, as she tugs her hair out of the confines of the updo she'd secured it into for the extraction. Her features have begun to change, too. It's a strange sensation, like subtle knives sliding around beneath her skin; her cheekbones shifting, her chin sharpening. The cursing doesn't seem directed at Andrés, rather her agitation has a more focused recipient.

It would be enough to make a Chorister blush, that whispered recitation of disgust. It may have been enough to convince a frightened villager they'd been hexed, in another time.

"Hang in there, Alexander." She instructs. "There's a motel up ahead. Sera paid in cash, warded the hell out of the room. We can hold up there at least long enough to figure out what the hell they've put in him." Kiara's fingers grip the wheel.

"And get it out. After that - " She doesn't say we'll figure it out. She doesn't add that it all hinges on whether or not the man who currently didn't appear to be breathing made through this (relatively) unharmed. There would be time for formulating their next move, time for blame and disbelief and inter-tradition politics.

For now: she drove.

Andrés

Don't blame his lack of shame regarding nudity on his ethnicity.

His grandparents on both sides were prudes. If his father were around more he might have a better bead on how his father felt about the matter. His mother was a nurse. She didn't give a shit about busting in on him or his younger sisters when they were growing up but if she forgot to lock the bathroom door while she was in there he'd get holy hell slapped out of him. Usually with a sandal. He was well into his twenties before he could abide the sight of a sandal.

Anyway.

Someone within the Amaranth Laboratories rigged the keypads to tag an offending party with fiber-consuming nanites and being as he had been the last person to get zapped by a keypad it isn't exactly a shock that he's the one whose clothing starts to dissolve.

"We know what the hell they've put in him," he says. "Santo Cristo, you're acting like they're from Neptune."

This, as his clothing is dissolving.

"You, ah. Might not wanna look back here until you toss my jacket back."

amaranth

The motel is a motel. That's what its sign says: MOTEL. It is lost amid a chaos of other similar structures: old, low, concrete. There is an outdoor pool in the parking lot, now covered with snow. A half-dozen semis and a set of small soccer goals pushed up onto the walkway between rooms. A Jack in the Box and Frisch's Big Boy and Carl's, Jr. and on and on in the parking lot.

The room is on the first floor. Sera gave Kiara the key, When they get there, if and when they get inside, they might feel another resonance, different from Sera's, lingering in the walls. Stoic and psychedelic, among other things. It is no accident that she picked this place.

For now, though, a half-full parking lot. Snow drifting between the tractor-trailers. The world muffled, shifted, changed. The wind sharp, bright and cold. The stars up there. Andres with his clothing disintegrating in the back of the rig.

amaranth

HOW MANY DAYS IS ANDRES NAKED?

Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Andrés

[I just want to recognize that this is the best dice roll title I've had in my three years of Mage'ing on this site.]

Kiara

[Awareness, etc. Cuz!]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kiara

"Doc, I attend sky clad festivals. Nothing you've got going on back there is going to offend my sensibilities." This, with raised eyebrows into the rear-view mirror.

She does reach over and toss his jacket back to him, though. If she catches sight of anything, she has the grace not to comment on it, though all things considered, it's probably not the top of the pagan's list of pressing concerns, glimpsing Andrés naked.

They pull into the motel and the Verbena is careful to park as close to the room number on the key Sera had given her as possible. The engine ticking as the brunette leans forward over the wheel; her eyes roving the drifting snow and covered pool and winking lights of the fast food chains.

"Hang on."

She instructs and they're moving again, shifting. She reverses them into the spot and kills the ignition.

There's a precious moment now to breathe. "I'll get the motel door."

Andrés

It may well not be her sensibilities he's afraid of offending. May be he doesn't give a shit about anything he may offend. He wants his jacket because there's a cold front blowing through. Doesn't matter. Whatever prankster nanite has implanted itself in his skin will consume it in a few moments.

She tosses it back. He holds it over his crotch and midline. It does not last long. That is all the catalyst he needs to consider what Spheres and what strains of fabric this shit is honing in on.

In the meantime Kiara brings them to a place that once warded the people of this city against a member of the Fallen. It will ward them against the Static.

He holds the jacket over himself until it gives out or until Kiara comes back to undo the doors. Whichever comes first. Worst people to see naked in the back of an ambulance. He is shorter than the average female among their constituency but Kiara can read all of the muscles in his upper body and some in his lower limbs. That which is not covered by the disintegrating jacket. This is a problem. If he were trying to seduce her this is not the path he would take.

I'll get the motel door.

"Great!" he says. As if he isn't about to be nude in another thirteen seconds.

amaranth

The parking lot is still except for them. It is the middle of the night; a handful of lights are on. The low-hum of the highway. Inside, the room is still, quiet. The low-throb of Sera's resonance, felt from within rather than without. No indication to Kiara or Andres why she chose this room. Only Sera and Dan know that she has paid the rent on it for ... nearly three years.

She does have the money to spare.

She always hopes, doesn't she? that Jim might come back. Might need it again: a place to crash. A place into which to disappear. A bathroom. An old CRT television and a microwave and a fridge. Which is: stocked a bit, heavy on the booze, light on the food. Because.

Now they need it. inside, two double beds. A place to put Alexander's body. Enough time for Kiara to engage in enough life magick to confirm that he is: alive, absolutely, and not a corpse. Then there is the awkward interregnum, waiting.

They can amuse themselves however they want.

Andrés

Maybe the jacket she tosses back to him lasts the extent of the ride. Maybe it doesn't. His concern is not so much for his dead-turned client but for the driver. The driver is concerned with the road ahead. She knows where she's going.

Alright. Jacket over his crotch so long as it lasts. So long as it lasts. If it does not last her clothes are intact. She can go in and get the key and the pass and let them in and they can both struggle the corpse-that-is-not-a-corpse into their room.

Blame it on whatever you want. His heritage or his age or his tradition. His prime physical condition or the fact that despite his deplorable social ability he is still a disgustingly attractive man. His junk is covered when they wheel Alexander into the warded room. Either by his discarded jacket or some other bit of clothing. The body bag.

Once the door is closed though the adrenaline kicks in. Andrés grabs Kiara by both jaws and kisses her square on the mouth.

Nothing in it that she does not want to be there. He is a once-doubled creature halved by virtue of his other half dying after all.

And adrenaline. Let's not forget adrenaline.

Andrés

[JAMIE IS GOING HOME SHE LOVES YOU BOTH <3]

Kiara

Kiara Woolfe wasn't shy about many things. If the brunette had an inclination to seduce the good Doctor, the chances were fairly strong that he'd know about it. She'd had a reputation in New York and it hadn't particularly occurred to the Verbena to mind. That had not, overly much, changed since she set foot in Denver with her wild hair and blood red lips.

It would have been a stranger thing, perhaps, to meet a self professed witch who had inhibitions about embracing all facets of life. Nudity, sex, heartbreak and death.

Andrés was married to one of Kiara's kind, after all: he knows full well what to expect from a Verbena.

-

Kiara pulls the doors open on the back of the van; her disguise has disintegrated likewise; though she still wears the glasses she'd procured. Her hair is a violent tangle around her face and her expression, when she sights him attempting to shield himself from the frigid temperature, ventures somewhere south of drastically amused.

Her eyes glint.

"Let's get him inside."

-

There is no manner that it isn't awkward, piling Alexander's dead weight into the room, carefully laying him on the mattress. Kiara sheds layers and pushes her sleeves up. Leans over Alexander's body and carefully flits her hands over him; touches his face with a surprising degree of tenderness.

Surveys and declares him whole (enough) and safe enough that she can finally (desperately), put her mind into some semblance of ease.

Turns around and is -

promptly kissed.

-

The door is closed. Alexander spared. And adrenaline was a hell of a thing.