Who does that?

[Rene Vitalli] *It was cold and clear. Rene sat perched on the back of a bench. A black silhouette lit only by the dull glow of a parklamp, and the orange of a cigarette cherry. She'd been out. Thinking. Yes, she thought. Her face cast in bronzed relief a moment as her smoke flares, hand waving through a plume of smoke. Teeth flash white as she grimaces at her own shadow. Smoothing her hair.*

[Emily Littleton] Cold, clear nights were hard to come by in the deep heart of winter. It was neither snowing, nor was the sky pelting the world with frozen rain. Emily was out in the park, walking the paths with her hands in the pockets of her heavy wool jacket. The moon was out, and looked down on the park with its round full face.

Their paths crossed, as paths were wont to do, at the bench were Rene perched and Emily ambled by. She'd given the bench wide berth without meaning to, but Emily slowed a little as she recognized the eerily familiar woman. She stopped. And since she'd stopped, it seemed only polite to say, "Good evening."

But she didn't get near enough to touch. Near enough to grab. Near enough for those spiders to slither along her digits. No no, not this time. No.

[Rene Vitalli] *Someone approached, and Rene tensed, as coiled and prepared as an adder, expression just as devoid of emotion. Ashes crumble from her cigarette, unnoticed. Emily is stared at. Flat. Waiting. Every moment an eternity in which Dark almond eyes scour more layers from the young orphan's person. Finally the euthanatoi speaks, and a single word that soft child's voice is as shockingly unexpected as a gunshot.*

Yes?

[Emily Littleton] "Just... good evening," Emily said, dipping her head a bit and looking at the path between them. Nothing more. The Orphan, however scoured she was by Rene's gaze, doesn't seem overly phased. She is tense, because Rene is tense (intense), and because Rene had troubled her some nights before.

Time passes, and its passage can be counted in the space of heartbeats, breaths, in the degrees by which the moon sinks away from its zenith.

[Rene Vitalli] *Time passes. Seconds tick by. Turn into minutes. Minutes drag on. Rene's smoke burns between her lips. Ashes falling. Eyes unwavering. Waiting. Silent and Statuesque. Eerie as she sits staring at Emily. What did she want? What was required here? Rene didn't know, and so her wait continued. Eyes slowly narrowing as her irritation grew.*

[Emily Littleton] At first the silence is just silence. But as time progresses, it becomes something more purposeful. It becomes Silence, something to be maintained, respected, observed. Emily's chin lifts, and she meets Rene's eyes for a moment. There is no challenge there, only keen observence from her own side. In this light, her eyes are merely dark. Rene has not seen her in better lighting, so she cannot know they are a deep shade of blue not brown.

As the minutes pass, Emily shifts into a more comfortable (defensible) stance. Not because she knows to do it, but because the growing Quiet demands a grounded stand, a heels-dug-in standing. Something solid.

And it continued. Emily looked away, over Rene's shoulder instead of into her eyes. She fidgetted with her keys in her pocket. Finally, when the space between them has stretched so thin, so taut, and Emily cannot stand it anymore, she says, "Well... good to see you again."

Even though it is not. She looks back to Rene, smiles a little, and turns as if she's about to leave.

[Rene Vitalli] *AH, yes. She was leaving. This Rene had a response for. An appropriate one even. Her head dips slowly, and that little girl voice sounds again. Strange coming out of a woman who had the charm of a moray eel. *

Good Evening.

*Emily turns to leave, casts a small smile over her shoulder. Rene hadn't made a joke. Hadn't said anything that was pleasing. Had she? She so often confused social interaction. An eyebrow raises. It seems she's quite willing to sit still and menacing as a spider in its web - until a noise echoes in the distance. The barking of a stray dog. Rene snaps to her feet, hand diving inside her coat in the same instant.*

DOG.

[Emily Littleton] When the sound echoed in the distance, Emily's head turned and she canted it a little to one side as she tried to place the canine with respect to their position. There was nothing about the Orphan that belied the same concern. It was a city; stray pets happened.

Emily looked back to Rene when the woman intoned that single syllable with such emphasis. Her eyebrows raised a little, she rocked back in her stance and took a step away from the creepy woman reaching into her coat for something (car keys? [mace?]) and standing up suddenly.

"It's probably someone's pet. Just got lost, or frightened," Emily said in a level and calm tone. Because it wasn't worth getting excitable over.

[Rene Vitalli] Most likely.

*Rene doesn't seem excited. Rene seems downright bored. Her hands are moving with practiced efficiency however, as a silencer is screwed onto the barrel of her glock. Gun held low so as not to attract attention. Frantic barking has turned into something more ominous. Snarling and yipping as a medium sized canine flashes under a nearby parklight, barreling towards the two awakened mages with ill intent. A cursory glance around and the stunning black woman is training her gun at the dog with a look of vague disinterest.*

[Emily Littleton] Emily's eyes were trained to the gun now. In the full moonlight and within the circle of illumination of a few park lights, it was unmistakable to her at close quarters. Perhaps another passerby would not necessarily notice, if they were far enough away, if they were distracted by the canine hurtling towards them.

"Are you going to...?" Emily asked, her words hurried and her voice sharp with alarm and disapproval. She took a few steps away, putting herself out of the path that intersected by Rene and the dog. "It's just a dog," she said, firmly.

Emily's hands were out of her jacket, held out in front of her in a no-please-don't sort of gesture. Her expression was entirely worried, alarmed and uneasy. She kept looking between the dog and Rene and the gun, and taking small steps backward from the situation. If needs be, she wasn't above running away.

[Rene Vitalli] [shoots it]

[Rene Vitalli] [dmg]

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene fires, and the dog goes down. For a moment. The faint Fppt of the silencer preceding a high yelp as the canine hits the dirt a few short feet away. Blood splatters across the snow, steaming in the chill air, ugly brown in the moonlight. Its with a snarl the mutt rises to its feet once more. This was not normal dog behavior. Then again. The calm step up onto the bench and retraining of her gun was hardly normal human behavior either. Rene coiled and braced for impact.*

[Emily Littleton] "What the [/i]hell[/i] are you doing?" Emily asked. She was yelling now. Yelling over the yelp of the dog, yelling at Rene for shooting it. She kept backing away from them, because Emily wasn't about to turn her back on the dog or the terrifying woman with a gun. She should have obeyed her gut and kept moving when she recognized Rene.

"Seriously. What is wrong with you? It's a dog."

A dog that was pulling itself up off its feet for more. She kept backing away, kept her hands out in front of her, kept her voice elevated just in case someone (anyone) with a little more sanity was headed this way and could help.

(Goddamned beautiful people. This city is insane.)

[Jarod Nightingale] There is one thing that one never particularly wants to hear when they are taking a night-time stroll through the park, and that is the sound of a gunshot, followed by a familiar voice screaming. Unfortunately, tonight, that is precisely what Jarod heard when he meandered past the Art Institute, across the street, and around the giant fountain.

A gun. And Emily. Screaming at someone.

And since there was at least one marauder and who the hell knew what else wandering around the city at present, he didn't take any chances that her distress might be caused by something more commonplace. He just picked up the pace and ran until the figures of the two women and the dog came into view. As he drew up to them, he slowed to a halt next to Emily, and put his hand out as if to calm her.

"What the hell is going on?" this of course, was directed at Rene. And then, to Emily..."Are you okay?"

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene notes the man approaching. Notes Emily screaming. Much more commotion and decisions would have to be made. Another shot is fired into the dog as it wobbles on three legs, lunging at the bench to snap at the euthanatoi's long legs. She looks for all the world like a icy madwoman simply executing a dog, as Emily shrieks at her. She raises an eyebrow in question. dark eyes glittering with vague alien malice. *

[i shoot the dog again]

[Rene Vitalli] [damage]

[Emily Littleton] Emily doesn't shriek, thank you. She's far too British (nearly half) for anything so disdainful as shrieking. She does yell though, and disapprove, loudly. As loudly as possible.

She heard footsteps behind her, but didn't look away from the Euthanatos and the dog long enough to see who it might be. When Jarod's voice reached her, she looked over just long enough to meet his eyes (I'm fine) and then looked away. Rene had a gun the dog was vicious. The Orphan stepped back again, putting herself half behind the Verbena, another step away from the fray.

Then Rene shot again, and Emily winced visibly. Her eyes pressed shut and her breath caught in her chest, as the gun went off again. This time she didn't yell. She did, very carefully, place her hand against Jarod's back. (I'm here [I'm safe]), let it linger for a moment, and then let it slip away.

The look she gave Rene was most foul, disdain. Resolved for truly horrible people, like those that might execute a lost pet in the park.

[Emily Littleton] ((edit: resolved = reserved))

[Jarod Nightingale] [Mind 1 on the dog - what's goin' down here?]

[Jarod Nightingale] [Cha+Empathy - hey, it's alright]

[Jarod Nightingale] "For fuck sake, if you're going to kill it, try to have better aim," Jarod's voice snapped icily in Rene's direction, but rather than let her continue to shoot the animal, he moved in... and stepped directly between them.

Not the safest thing to do, really, stepping in between a euthanatos with a gun and a snarling dog. But the dog... wasn't after him. And for all that one might not expect Jarod Nightingale to be... an animal person, exactly... he had a way of projecting an air that was surprisingly calm. Tranquil. Soothing.

He did this now, as he reached out to touch the dog, crooning something gently in the back of his throat. Maybe he'd get bit, or maybe the animal would recognize something in him that was familiar and friendly. Either way, the idea was to touch it just long enough to do what he needed to do.

[Life 3 - seizing up muscles - coincidental, diff 6 -1focus, -1going slow]

[Rene Vitalli] *The dog continues. Strangely violent, treating Rene like the very worst sort of predator, the shaggy canine seems convinced its do or die, gunshots no deterrant. What might usually be a docile animal, someone's "Lucky" or "Skipper" or "Rover" is now a wild eyed jaw snapping beast. The creature makes to sink its teeth into jarod's hand in defense, only to shudder and seize mid-snap. Rene's gun hasn't moved, as though she were actually considering shooting through the man if need be. The dog however, seems quite out of commission. The canine appraised with dull interest. *

[Emily Littleton] It was good that the other two were calm, because Emily? No. Not terribly calm. Her hands balled up into little fists, which she shoved in the pockets of her jacket. Her pallor was noticeably ashen now. Someone had just pulled a gun and shot at something in what was supposed to be a safer part of the city. Moreover, that someone was Rene. 'Nough said.

When the dog stood down, Emily was left to watch the following tableau: Someone who terrified her pointing a gun at someone she cared about all over a dog, which might bounce back and attack any one of them at a moment's notice.

"What the hell," she said, again, but quieter this time, "Were you thinking?" It's unclear who she means to direct the sentiment at. The dog, Rene, Jarod. All were equally likely targets. Emily fidgetted again, unable to move towards the scene and help and unable to get the hell out of there now that Jarod was involved. It made her antsy, which likely didn't help either elder mage's nerves.

[Jarod Nightingale] [Per+Awareness on Rene]

[Jarod Nightingale] He hadn't needed to make the contact for long. Just enough time to feel the creature's life pattern pulsing beneath his fingertips. After that brief touch, the dog lunged at Rene again, and blood splattered on Jarod's hand from the creature's matted fur.

But it didn't matter, because he'd just put the poor thing out of commission for the rest of the evening. That dog... was not going to move. Now it lay on the ground, panting heavily through its nose, and Jarod looked down at it with a mixture of pity and disgust. One got the sense that he hadn't been entirely of his own mind when he'd stopped the fight to begin with, and was even less so now... as he gazed down at the dog in silent contemplation.

His hand had blood on it. It made his fingers twitch slightly in discomfort.

"That was stupid. You didn't need to shoot it. Or is that the only way you solve problems? Now there's a dog here with bullet wounds, my apprentice is freaked out, and I've got blood on my brand new fucking coat. Thank you. Thank you so much." His voice dripped with sarcasm as he bent down again and put his hand out to brush gently against the dog's head. For a moment, his eyes looked.... sad.

"Emily, can you help me with this? If we leave it here, it'll bleed out or freeze, whatever comes first."

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene kneels. Jarod was fussing over the dog like it was a lost relative or something meant to be equally heart breaking. His hand brushes across the dogs head. Rene's does the same. But Rene's holds a gun. "THHPT. The silencer makes a soft whip of the gunshot. The strange black woman raises to her feet and looks from Jarod to Emily in turn before holstering her gun.*

There. Goodnight.

[Emily Littleton] Emily, can you help me with this? She's already shrugging out of her coat by the time he finishes his request. Emily, unlike Jarod, has only one coat. She has, so far, been very fastidious about keeping it clean of anything's blood. And this is not the first time she has seen a Euthanatos kill something in a seemingly quiet section of Chicago -- but she would not connect Rene to that Tradition, or Rene to Ashton, or a dog to the Chantry, because she does not yet understand the implications of their connectedness.

She is moving toward them when Rene kneels. Emily slows a little, and then Rene shoots the dog in what Emily would imagine would be its temple. She stops, holding her jacket over one arm and staring at the (dead) dog in a mixture of disbelief and frustration. It had been over, quiet, stopped -- and the dog still ended up dead.

She looked up to Jarod with a pained and confused expression (Why?) and then over to Rene. The look Rene gets is... unpleasant. There's no good way to sum up the flurry of responses on the Orphan's face before she slams them all back behind a cold, angry front.

Emily does not offer her good nights this time. But she desperately wants Rene to leave. (Go. Away.). It is obvious that she's biting her tongue, now, holding something back, now, trying so hard not to yell again. But that is a losing battle, and Emily can only hold back for so long. Hopefully Rene would be gone before she broke.

[Jarod Nightingale] Fussing... was not an entirely accurate description. He had, in fact, behaved rather coldly, but for that brief expression of loss in his eyes. And the emotion had not been meant for this dog, in particular. No, it had been more of a.... ethical loss. As much like when a scientist had to stand in place and watch as the cure for cancer went up in smoke during a lab fire. A stray dog was hardly the cure for cancer, of course, but it had worth. As did the trees in the park where they now stood. As did Emily. As did Rene.

The only difference was, whether or not one chose to differentiate these life patterns as having any more or less meaning than another. Most people did. (Most people did.)

So Rene shot the dog, before anyone could stop her, and blood splattered in a spray of crimson across all of those gathered next to it. Surprisingly, Jarod did not snarl, this time. He didn't even look surprised. Instead, he raised himself slowly to his feet and fixed Rene with a long, frozen stare.

Euthanatos were not the only ones who could seem a bit... creepy.

"Wait," he asked quietly of the dark-skinned woman.

[Rene Vitalli] *So much emotion invested over a DOG. So much emotion period. She has all the sympathy of an arachnid as cold black eyes sweep from the Verbena to the Orphan. Confusing. Had they not seen the thing attack her? She's staring, a look that for all intents and purposes looked chill and murderous, regardless of what she was thinking. Visual Vivisection. She was a beautiful woman. Sharply sculpted, impossibly statuesque. Yet nothing about her personality was even remotely attractive. Rene's eyes meet Jarod's. And she waits with the eerie patience of a spider.*

[Emily Littleton] Emily stood off to the side, beyond the lifeless body of the dog and away from the two Disciples and their warring mentalities. She stood with her hands clasped before her and her jacket falling into the lowest part of her joined arms. Her head was bent, which kept her face occluded by shadows and wisps of dark curls. It kept her from focusing too much on either of them.

Beside them, the dog's body slowly bled. It was cold enough that it wouldn't bleed to quickly, and once its heart had stopped there was no force to push its blood from its veins. Just gravity, adhesion, cohesion -- slow forces, strong and inevitable. Resolute.

[Jarod Nightingale] Emily was upset. It was a perfectly human reaction, and for a brief moment Jarod allowed his gaze to settle upon her own. But there was something off about him right now. Something else looked out of his eyes. Something else moved beneath his skin. That something turned its attention back to Rene.

"Do you mind if I ask your reasoning..." his voice was still soft. Pleasant to the ears, but cold and lacking emotion. Not all that unlike her own, now. And when he took a few slow steps toward Rene, his body moved with a kind of ethereal grace and beauty all its own. The cat... staring down the spider. "Behind killing this dog?"

[Rene Vitalli] I do.

*A simple enough answer as annoyance began to take root. Jarod approaches and Rene's eyes slant narrow. Hands slipping inside her pockets ominously. She looks venomous. Dispassionate. Every inch the neutral predator preparing to attack a threat. In the depth of her coat pocket she wraps a lifeline around a slender finger. Turning to leave.*

[Emily Littleton] Emily knew first hand how little Jarod liked being evaded on questions. And she hadn't encountered this particular tone of voice, either. That, she imagined, made this game of cat and mouse all the more vicious. She did not look up at either of them, instead Emily crouched beside the dog, set her jacket beside her on the snowy path (away from the blood, away from the spatter) and seemed thoroughly engrossed in the matter of figuring out how to get the animal's body off of the path, away from where some other passerby might just happen on it. Especially a child, or anyone else who might find it in the warming morning sun.

(I'm not here. [Staying out of this one.])

[Jarod Nightingale] I do, she said simply. And Jarod cocked his head slightly to one side, as if he found this curious.

"Well then, I'll simply have to go with what clues I myself could infer, in that case. You killed the dog because the dog attacked you, and this was the most efficient solution to your problem. You saw no reason to keep the dog alive, even after I neutralized the threat, so you killed him to be done with the matter, perhaps. However.."

And here Jarod smiled, just slightly.

"It is, in fact, your presence here that caused the dog to attack. You were the source of the problem, not it. So... by that logic, one ought to dispose of you. Yes? It is the same argument."

A very... euthanatoi argument, at that. But Jarod was not euthanatos, and if he had been, he probably would have walked right past and never batted an eye at the entire incident. Point in fact, Rene was not the only one among them who had killed, before. But the rationale of a Verbena was a very different thing.

They were standing very close, at this point, and Jarod reached out, as if to shake the woman's hand. "I don't believe we've met, by the way. Jarod Nightingale."

[Rene Vitalli] *Rene is quite done with human interaction this evening. It had gone awry, as it always did. She would have to speak to Wharil about trying that mind meld again. Perhaps he'd bolstered his courage. Jarod's hand reaches out towards the slender line of Rene's back. She doesn't respond, instead choosing to stalk further into the park. Leaving them and their strange reactions and flawed logic behind. Arcane folding around her like a warm blanket.*

[Jarod Nightingale] [Well fine, I will totally do this without my focus then, bitch. Watch me botch it, too! Induce an asthma attack in Rene. Life 3, coincidental, diff 6 -1taking time, -1resonance, -1quintessence, +2 no focus]

[Jarod Nightingale] [Well damn, I guess... that didn't botch]

[Emily Littleton] Emily didn't look up to see Rene leave. She was confident that Jarod had that well in hand, and that if he didn't have it well in hand then she wasn't going to be much help in sorting it out. Once Rene's footsteps had grown indistinct, Emily exhaled and reached up with one hand to press her palm against the back of her neck.

Only once she was certain (or thought she was certain) that the eerie woman had retreated, did Emily look up and over at her mentor. Only to find him otherwise occupied...

[Jarod Nightingale] [Alright, in the interest of letting punkin go sleep.... nix that last roll. -1WP instead to overcome avatar.]

[Rene Vitalli] [perfect. thank you! *fades rene out*]

[Jarod Nightingale] There were two minds in Jarod's body right now, and one of them glared at Rene's back with the deadly intent of a hunting predator. Luckily for everyone involved... that mind wasn't the one the prevailed, in the end. For a brief instant, the air around him seemed to crackle with resonance (and there was something about this particular energy that felt less like Jarod himself and more like some kind of primal retribution)... but then, his own consciousness came snarling to the forefront.

No.

Not with Emily here.

A shame. A pity. The point had not been adequately made. And the predator hissed irritably and stalked back into her cave, long tail flicking back and forth.

Jarod blinked and shook his head a bit, then looked back at where Emily stood trying to deal with the dog's body. Jarod himself was still splattered with its blood, and he reached up to wipe a drop off of his cheek, absently.

"Hey... I'm sorry about all that. Are you okay?"

[Emily Littleton] His resonance crackled in the small space in which this scene has unfolded, unfurling against Emily's senses with a strange taste and timbre. Her expression was clouded, concerned and uneven but not immediately readable. Regardless of the anticipatory feeling (that presages something [but what?]), nothing else happened. Rene walked away, and Jarod stayed. The dog remained dead, incapable of springing back to life or back in time to rethink its assault on the terrifying Euthanatos woman.

No, she was not okay. Physically, Emily was a little messy and a little shaken but otherwise well. All things considered, she was better than could be expected, but that did not make her okay.

"I'm fine," Emily said softly, evenly. Her tone was level, but only because she willed it to be so. Her brow furrowed in frustration as she looked down at the dog, but Emily didn't communicate whatever it was she was thinking at that moment. Guarded.

"You?" The question went both ways. Emily looked over at him, barely lifted an eyebrow in inquiry, and asked after his well-being. Because it mattered, at least to her.

She had nothing in her pockets to help them clean up. Nothing to offer this time to wipe the blood from his face. Emily was unaware of whether she, too, was dappled with canine blood. That hadn't filtered in, yet. She was still barely coming down from the flight or fight high of the encounter. She pressed her hands together to hide the fact that they were, again, shaking lightly.

[Jarod Nightingale] There was a long moment when Jarod simply looked at her, but there was no longer that frozen anger in his eyes. Whatever had taken him over for those last few moments... it was gone now. Maybe Emily had noticed the change. There were some small clues. His coldness, after Rene had shot the dog, and the slight change in his speech patterns. He'd gone from swearing and irritable to... cool and calculating in the matter of seconds.

Then again, Emily was probably used to Jarod's mood swings by now. So maybe she wouldn't make note of this one in particular.

Whatever he saw when he looked at her, he didn't question her response. Instead, he closed the distance between them and reached out to run the back of his knuckles over Emily's cheek. Maybe he'd wanted to do more, but he had fresh blood on him, and that hardly made for a comforting embrace.

"I'm alright. Just... pissed off, really. I'm sorry you had to see that. It was unnecessary."

[Emily Littleton] Emily had seen his exchange at the kitchen, the way he snapped at Enid, and now this. The moodswing itself didn't upset her. The implied threat against Rene, well, under different circumstances it might have upset her. Tonight, though, Emily was willing to write it off to a distressing situation.

She was taut with anxiety and alertness, and when he touched her that would communicate far more clearly than she wanted it to. Emily was trying to pull back, but she wasn't able to. She didn't lean into the touch, but her eyes closed for a moment and she... exhaled.

"I... please... no," Emily struggled to put the right words together. Stopped. Frowned a little. "Don't apologize. This... isn't the first time I've run into her. Remember when I first came back from Taipei?"

She asked him a question, but didn't wait for much of an answer. Emily had not been entirely well the first time they saw each other after she'd come home. "Right before I saw you, I ran into Rene in the pub. She grabbed me. It," Emily's mouth pursed angrily. "I didn't appreciate it much. Needless to say, my opinion is unchanged after tonight."

She bristled at the memory, at the dog's corpse lying at their feet, at the Euthanatos woman who was no longer her. Emily ran her fingertips through her hair, lightly, pressed her hand against the back of her neck again.

"Who shoots a dog?" she asked him, obviously upset still. "Who does that?" Emily was still looking down at the animal, unable to reconcile what it had happened with her internal sense of right and wrong. (What is wrong with this city?)

[Jarod Nightingale] "Someone who evidently thinks more of their own misguided logic than they have a right to." But that was still his avatar speaking, her voice echoing within his memory. "Someone who doesn't give a shit," he added, in his own words.

Sometimes, Jarod didn't seem to give a shit either. It was all perspective, really. He glanced over at the dog for a long moment, and his lip curled back in disgust. "Fucking waste. And I don't even like dogs."

Then he looked down at the blood on his clothes, and his jaw flexed visibly as teeth came down to grind against each other. "Fucking bitch owes me about three hundred bucks if I can't get this out." (And ah, there was the Jarod we all know and love.) He may have missed a moment of Emily's own anxiety, in that distraction, but when he glanced up at her again, his expression softened. "She's a Euthanatos. Like Wharil. They're... like that. Well, not all of them. But some. We should... get out of here. If I don't take a shower soon, I'll go nuts, and I'm sure you could use something warm and distracting as well."

He might have meant a number of things, by that. In this case, though, it was probably something along the lines of a hot shower and/or tea and/or snuggling under some blankets.

[Emily Littleton] Jarod's avatar and Jarod himself spoke in startling similar sentiments, so Emily did no pick up on the insinuation that he was of two minds at the moment. They were both tense, both angry, and Jarod's show of emotion was... strange enough to Emily that it caused her to rein in her own frustrations as tightly as possible. It was likely unwell for the world if they both were to give in to their bad moods in the same moment.

Fuck, she said, mostly unvoiced and just under her breath. He was close enough to hear it, though, and hear the full force of her vexation behind it.

"We can't just leave it here," Emily said. Well, she supposed they might be able to, but it seemed somehow wrong to her. "Someone will find it in the morning..." and that didn't seem a palatable idea to Emily.

"If you want to go I'll... I'll figure this out, and meet you later?" Emily wasn't really sure what to do with a dog's body that wouldn't involve the humane society, or some sort of municipal paperwork. She wasn't even sure what the American social body for the disposal of pet-sized animals was called. So her offer was misguided, at best.

Emily finally looked down at herself, taking stock of the blood spatter on her decidedly less expensive clothing. Then she looked up at Jarod again, somewhat displeased but otherwise deadpan. "Or perhaps not. I suppose it would not go well to speak to any authority looking like this..."

It was a right fine mess. A right fine mess.

[Jarod Nightingale] "It's dead, Emily. Nothing much we can do now. At some point a cop will drive by and notice all the blood in the snow, and someone will come by to take care of it."

He didn't seem to entirely understand her desire to make some kind of amends to the body of a dead animal, which may have seemed strange, considering how he'd reacted to its death in the first place. But it was dead, now. A dead body was just a dead body, and in time weather would erode it and scavengers would pick it clean, and then it would decompose and return to the earth, as everything did.

Taking care of the dead... that was a human thing.

After a moment, though, he sighed. "I'll call the police myself, if you want. Once we're home. But I'm not sticking around, so... if you're coming?" And there was a slight lilt to his voice. Something that said he preferred that outcome to not.

[Emily Littleton] It was a human thing and Emily, for her part, was still very human. Somewhere in there was a gentle soul that had not yet been as entirely eroded by the ills of the world as one might expect. It bothered her, leaving the dog here as a smear in the snow and a prelude to some member of Chicago's Finest's unhappy morning.

Nevertheless she stooped to pick up her coat, but did not shrug into it again. She carried it away from her, so it wouldn't get anything else on her.

"Yeah," she said, a little grimly, and with another sidelong glance at the dog (I'm sorry [you say that a lot these days]). "I'm coming."

And then she turned away from it, prepared to leave it behind them. Emily looked over at him again and a bit of something warmer, less agitated, less angry (agitated) peeked out though her eyes. She wasn't mad at him, after all.