[Emily Littleton] Few places in Chicago evoked as much nostalgia and homesickness in Emily as Chinatown. While many saw it as a seedier neighborhood, she found the mix of foreign tongues and labels in languages she couldn't properly read to be comforting. It was one of the few places where every native-born son of the New World felt the same nascent unease in his surroundings that she had lived time and time again in distant cities, on distant shores. And while she couldn't read the handful of Asian languages that made their way on to signs and labels and newspapers in this part of the city, she could speak a few words in a few of them and she could nod and point and please-and-thank-you her way through most exchanges.
She felt unburdened here, in a way she couldn't quite explain. Perhaps that's why she walked with an air of confidence and ease, grasping a carrier bag from the Taiwanese market in one hand and her messenger bag slung across her body. Emily's dark hair was a warmer shade of brown and her eyes were dark, but not almond-shaped or slanted. She was pale. She did not belong her, with her pleasantly muddled accent (largely foreign [mainly British]).
To Awakened eyes, the girl belongs here even less. She is a bright beacon of energy, clear and mostly untinged, only barely canted toward the static margins. (Reverence [with a steady thrum of Home]).
She stands before a hole-in-the-wall establishment, reading a take-away menu off the window.
[Nathan Spriggs] People always spoke of how time can mend all wounds, but maybe it couldn't, maybe that was just bullshit by people who didn't know any better. Or maybe it was just that it'd only been barely two days since the Magnificent Mile shooting, where Nathan had been part of a nightmarish scene that resulted in the death of a man who had once been friends with the very people who'd killed him, he'd once been one of them, an Awakened. But no more, that thing at the Mile couldn't really be considered human anymore, but Nathan still felt a twinge of empathy, an emotion he wasn't used to so he didn't handle it well. In fact, he'd been drinking of nearly 24 hours straight since then, only now was he sober enough to make coherent speech and actually remember anything.
And that was because he'd just escaped from the hospital after being found, and treated, for severe alcohol poisoning. He figured he was fine enough to be back on the streets, still slightly inebriated and searching for another drink. The man in a dirty brown trenchcoat with matching pants stumbled across Chinatown, searching for his current place of residence, he was heading for Bronzeville but his sense of direction was so messed up he'd gotten lost.
[Emily Littleton] Odd, wasn't it, how Fate drew the very members of this community together at moments when they most wanted to be alone. Separate. Clear-headed and unfettered by alliances or responsibilities. The young woman in her wool winter coat and jeans, heavy soled boots and broad dark curls -- she, too, had once had an unsettling encounter on the Mile. Perhaps with the same madman. Perhaps not to similar ends. But there was no way of knowing these things, not yet, not when they were still strangers approaching the evening with very different trajectories and very different aims.
Emily looked up, away from the window, when the rumpled man in a dirty trenchcoat stumble-skulked his way down a patch of pavement near her. She shifted, bringing her body closer to the building, out of his way, in a simple movement that was at once polite (Didn't mean to get in your way) and uneasy (don't bother to linger).
It didn't keep her from holding up a hand when he stumbled, not far from her, and trying to help him right himself. "There," she said, and when she spoke her words were touched with far away places. "Are you quite alright?"
Emily knew better than to talk to strange men in stranger streets, but this area was well lit and just inside the window was a restaurant of people who (hopefully) would not look the other way if she pounded on the window or screamed bloody murder.
[Emily Littleton] (( Who are you? Per + Aware ))
[Nathan Spriggs] ((Lit candle in the middle of a dark room, was it?))
[Per + Aware]
[Nathan Spriggs] Annoyances, that was what people were. Most annoyances were at least smart enough to glare at him with disgust at a distance, never bothering to cross his path, but unfortunately, some of the damned human cockroaches saw it fit to actually try to communicate with him. If he wanted to speak to them, he would, couldn't they take a hint? Still, he didn't have the will to start a fight, so craning his head slowly but carefully in the woman's direction, Nathan squinted a bit, trying to make her out. He wasn't drunk enough to lose perception or speech, but he was feeling under the weather and tired so everything seemed a bit fuzzy.
Oh but not her, she was different, he could feel the power emanate from her, almost like a candle too close to the skin, a faint trace of Resonance there as well, but it paled in comparison and was impossible to distinguish due to the pure energy around her, pure Quintessence he could feel even in his drunken state. Why was it that the biggest annoyances of all always found themselves drawn to him? First time he'd met an Awakened in the city it'd have been in this very part of it, and he'd nearly gotten his life sucked out of him by an ancient old man who'd been around for centuries. The second time he'd met any other Awakened had been milder, they'd just showed up when he was meeting someone else and recognized him for what he was. The third time though, that'd been two days ago, at the very scene of the horrendous scene that had him drinking like there was no tomorrow and back to smoking.
"What the fuck does another one of our lot want with me?!" Nathan hissed, just loud enough for her to hear but no one else, "I've had enough, I want out. I don't want to end up like that guy - That thing at the Mile!"
[Emily Littleton] "Our lot?" Emily's voice lilted upward at the end, and it pulled up her eyebrows in astonishment. Then slowly, slowly they crept down as her eyes narrowed and she inspected him with a scathing scrunity. As much as he had hissed at her, Emily's shoulders had drawn up (raised hackles [proud defiance]) and her posture straightened.
"Pardon?" she asked, and the word was artfully intoned. It asked who the fuck do you think you are as well as why might you assume there is any 'we' in you and I in the same two syllables that also warned him away from stepping too near to her, or presuming too much. "I do not believe we are of a lot," she corrected him.
Emily stood apart, at least for now. She did not claim any others as her own, at least for now. The closest she had was the rowan-haired Other, with whom she kept Court in the clearing of fallen Kings. But this man was not of that Keeping. He was not an Other the way that she was, that Kage was. At least Emily did not yet believe him to be.
"What man on the Mile?" she asked, carefully now. Less warding-away, but still not come-hithering. She shifted the sack of groceries from one hand to another. Something tickled at the edge of her Awareness and Emily, who was bright enough but hampered by her newness, began to understand.
"Did he burn like Summer?" she asked, but it would only sound cryptic to those who had not met their resident madman. "Did the snow refuse to fall where he stood?" Deathly serious. Gravely somber. Emily kept this strange man at arm's length, even while her body went taut (anxious) and her voice thinned out to ask about another.
[Nathan Spriggs] Not one of our lot indeed, and yet she'd described the man at the Mile almost perfectly, that was exactly what it felt like. But Nathan didn't have the will to argue and fight, he just wanted to get out, to have nothing to do with these people. He'd seen enough, had enough, he wouldn't end up like that sobbing madman. "Your lot, our lot, we're all Awakened, are we not?! And don't think I don't know what you are, you're like a goddamn candle in the dark, even a blind man would see what you are through a crowd!" Nathan's voice wasn't quite the hiss it was before but it contained a healthy amount of loathing still.
He looked at her for one more moment, studying her expression and appearance before he spoke again, considering his words as carefully as he could in his current state. "I bet you're friends with Ashley, and Wharil and all those other bastards, who shot t-that thing, man, whatever, down without mercy. An act of mercy on him indeed! You all probably just wanted to wash your hands clean of whatever had turned him into a poor wretched thing like that, he wasn't even harming anyone, hell, that other one, I don't know his name, was reasoning with it - with him!"
[Emily Littleton] Nathan kept talking, and his voice was filled with as much vitriol and fervor as Emily imagined her own would be if she had ...
The girl's head bowed for a moment, but not in shame. There is a heaviness to what he is telling her, and it weighs down the corners of her eyes, it rounds her shoulders, bows her head, and causes her to let the weight of the bag in her hand slip just a bit. She sets it on the ground between them and folds her arms over her middle.
"From what I have heard," she says, and her voice is calmer than his, "The man's name was Dylan and once, quite some time ago, he was like the others here. A friend to some of them. But I was neither Awake then, nor aware of any of these people about whom you speak."
There was a pause here, a little space, something measured in the shape of heartbeats, the distance of small, exhaled breaths. Emily looked up to him, and her own expression was guarded (uneasy [pained]).
"I..." Here she faultered. Her mouth pursed and her eyes sought his for a moment, challenging wordlessly for him to speak the plain truth if he had been at all embellishing. "I am not friends, no, with either of them, but I know them. I may have, had things gone differently, trusted them. If what you say is true, then I ... I don't know about that now."
Another pause, just as solemn. Emily looks away from him, down the street, swallows hard. Fidgits with her hands, and then stuffs them in her pockets. "But he's dead then?" she asks, and there's an imposed hardness to her tone. "You're sure?"
[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan slumped back against the building wall, sliding slowly to the ground against it, he was remembering everything, he'd tried to forget these past few days. He'd tried, and tried, and in some ways he'd succeeded, but now he was faced with it again. If there was a God, he must hate Awakened beings, Nathan had thought that the man, his name apparently Dylan, was a crime against reality, but maybe they all were? He was just much more obvious about it, embraced the idea and become something else. "I'm sure," his voice lacked the hatred from before, it was empty and dead, but more than anything, scared, like a lost child about to tell someone how he'd got separated from his parents.
He closed his eyes, he'd been running the from the memory, but now he was embracing it momentarily. Maybe speaking about it would help, maybe he could lighten the load by telling someone else. "I... was shopping nearby, when it suddenly felt like a wave of energy scalded everything, it felt horrible and inhuman in some ways. But the Sleepers didn't seem to notice, I knew whatever had caused it was a danger. I headed there to see what it was," he paused here, his tone still the same as before, he was shaking slightly, as if afraid of remembering.
[Emily Littleton] She knew that feeling. When the thing you've been denying, running from, caught up with you and made you name it, own it, shape its nuances with the soft of your tongue, the thrum of your vocal chords. She knew the dry-mouthed anxiety of it, the closed-throat fear, the shaky hands and numbness. She knew. All too often, she'd had that same sensation here in this city. Just not tonight, not even this week.
"Come on. Let's go inside and grab something to eat while we talk. You look like you could use it, and I'm starving, and there's even a few things I can pronounce on the menu," there was a little wryness in her voice (some unexplained joke about pronunciation) at the very end. It was warming. Emily offered a hand to him to help him up again. She didn't sound cajoling. If anything, she sounded sympathetic. And it couldn't be good to relive all of this in the brutal cold of late Winter.
If he took the offered hand, she helped him to his feet. Emily was not strong, so it was little more than a compassionate gesture. She reclaimed her bag of groceries once the were both standing.
[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan didn't care anymore, normally he'd refuse, he didn't know her, why should he rely on her. But the moment he'd decided to tell her his story, tell her everything, he had already conceded, already decided to rely on her and trust her. He took her hand and followed her to the restaurant, the emptiness and terror he was feeling made the cold unnoticeable but his body had been feeling it for a while now.
[Emily Littleton] There was no following. They had been standing just beside the take-away menu, plastered to the window, so it was a short journey at best for Emily to open the door and let them both in out of the cold. In her best, most polite tone of voice Emily said a few words in carefully pronounced (poorly pitched) Chinese and motioned toward the booth at the furthest corner of the restaurant. There was a moment of confusion, and then a rush of words she didn't understand and a hasty apology (in English). The net gain of this cross-cultural exchange was that they ended up seated in the isolated booth, with a fresh pot of tea and a couple menus, and no one else near enough to over hear.
"I'm Emily," she said, as somewhat of an afterthought to getting settled at their table. "I hope you don't think I'm being too presumptuous it's just that... well, I've had a rough go of it here lately, too, and it's nice to be able to give something back to someone else in a similar place."
Whatever she was feeling, now, was carefully kept in check. And when the tea had steeped enough, she poured for him first and then for herself. These were practiced motions, so deeply engrained that she didn't seem to think about them in the slightest. Not the way one finger lightly rested on the lid of the teapot to steady it as she poured, or the deft way she manuevered her chopsticks as she got settled. If Nathan didn't want to order, Emily ordered for them both. Again in stilted Chinese and a lot of pointing at menu items.
This was not your Chinese-American establishment with Cashew Chicken and Orange-flavoured anything. She ordered vegetables with unfamiliar sounding names, tofu in some sort of spicy red sauce, steamed fish with grated ginger and garlic.
[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan simply sat there, motionless and unresponsive, he didn't have the willpower to even tell her his name, not right now. The only words bursting to come out were the continuation of his tale, he wanted it over with and done, the quicker it was over the better. As he sat down, the difference in temperature finally became noticeable, he realized just how very cold he was and started shivering for a moment, he started sliding his hands back and fort on his pants to heat them with the friction. By the time the food was served and he finally opened his mouth to speak again, words of gratitude, all that came out was more of his story.
"I went down a few streets, they were right there in the middle of the street. There was a woman on the floor, hurt, her name was Alice as I found out later, and next to her was the man, the one you called Dylan, he was just... I don't know, crouching, but he was sobbing hysterically. As if he realized whatever he'd done to her was wrong and he was sorry," he paused again, taking a quick bite of some tofu before he resumed again, his newly surfaced hunger was battling his desire to get this over with.
"Then another man showed up, I don't know his name, but Dylan recognized him for what he was, he spoke to him, seemed angry, I was too far to hear what they were saying, hidden in the crowd." another pause, another bite of food, this time he took his time eating.
[Emily Littleton] Emily, for all of her coldness, for all of her aloofness, understood suffering. She knew that you didn't just feed a cold, you comforted a worried and wearied soul with food and shelter and things that made them feel safe and hale. She couldn't do much more for him than a warm meal, and some place dry to sit for awhile, but Emily could listen. And listen she did.
At some moment, she excused herself to go wash her hands. Emily left her messenger bag and groceries sitting at the table, but her phone was in her pocket. When she stepped into the ladies room, she sent a quick text message along with washing her hands. (The best lies held a measure of truth to them.)
When she came back, Emily served herself and kept listening. "So Alice and Ashley and Wharil were there, and this other man..." Emily didn't hazard a guess as to who that may be. "And Dylan was... remorseful? That... That changes things, somewhat. I suppose." Her voice softened, trailed off.
Emily's hand rested on her chopsticks for a moment as she contemplated that thought. It didn't go down easily. Instead her hand moved over them and picked up her teacup. Emily took a long sip and then set it down again. She hadn't yet touched her food.
"A friend of mine may join us... we were supposed to have dinner together," Emily said, when the pause in Nathan's story had drawn out long enough for her to interject without interrupting. Hopefully the other mage would be too distracted to catch the half-truth for what it was.
[Emily Littleton] (( A little white .... Manip + Subterfuge ))
[Nathan Spriggs] [Somethin' ain't right. Manip + Sub right back]
[Nathan Spriggs] He noticed something was slightly off but he just waved it away, problems were for other people right now, he didn't care about anything, he just wanted to be left alone and it didn't sound like whatever lie would hurt him. Nathan slid back in his seat, leaving the scalding hot food to get a bit colder, he'd jumped from one extreme to another. First he'd been freezing, and now he'd burnt his tongue and was seating a bit, though that was mostly from nerves. "Then, shortly after I arrived came her, came Ashley, she went to Dylan as well alongside the other man. She tried to reason with him too, I think, tried to talk to him. She failed, though, something was wrong with her. Something was wrong with us all. It felt like the day had gotten darker, something terrible and terrifying, I can't even describe it really," he trailed off, his head leaning back as he looked at the ceiling, maybe he was studying it while he thought or so Emily might think, but he was trying to forget the feeling.
It hadn't been that noticeable then, the terror of it all, but now that he looked at it in retrospect, he should've been terrified, he should have escaped. And now came the bad part, he remembered it all clearly, he probably would for the rest of his miserable little life.
"The man, the one talking to Dylan attempted something, I think it might have been magic, I'm not sure. I was still hidden in the crowds, ready to attack Dylan if he made a sudden move or attacked anyone, I thought I was doing good. I never really considered the consequences if I did it. And then-" he cut off, as though the memory was too painful for him to speak, he just wanted to forget. His hand scampering around the table for a sign of alcohol or maybe a cigarette, the comforting embrace of nicotine would help.
[Emily Littleton] She didn't smoke, so she didn't recognize that particular gesture. There was tea, which was often enough for her. And Chinese restaurants were not often known for their alcohol. There wasn't much here that would be strong enough to shake off whatever it was he was feeling. Perhaps that's why she'd chosen this place. It was safe enough, from her perspective. Unlikely to escalate.
Emily had begun to eat, slowly and carefully. She was as practiced with chopsticks as most Americans were with forks and knives. She didn't have to chase her meal around her plate, and she'd picked up certain Oriental mannerisms, like holding her rice bowl when she ate and turning her chopsticks around to use their blunt ends to serve from the communal plate. These were, again, effortlessly affected motions. They seemed genuinely part of who she was, and were not whatever possible (possibly not) lie that had set him slightly ill at ease.
"And then it was over," she offered, without letting her voice trend upwards into a question this time. "All at once and with horrific finality? And the only thing left to do was clean up the aftermath before too many people noticed?" To carry the body (bodies) away, like refuse, to be discarded, to be forgotten.
Her voice was flat but harried. She spoke from a cold experience. But Emily did not look like she was much past twenty, and her experience with bodies and mortality should be limited at best. So it was his guess where she might have picked up that particular coldness to her eyes and voice, that (pained) resignation.
[Nathan Spriggs] Nathan stopped for a moment, her description of the events hurt him, it was a twisted thing, he didn't like the events, he hated them, but he had to do Dylan's death justice. Had to explain how, the gory details, every little thing. He remembered it, analyzed it, he'd explain it as best he could. "And then it happened. The first shot was silenced, I don't know quite where it came from except inside the crowd, no one really noticed as it missed Dylan, but I saw the hole it left on the department store's wall. The second wasn't silenced, I think it came from Wharil in the crowd, he was carrying a gun, but it didn't have a silencer," he paused, took a moment to let the atmosphere build, he was sobering up now, back to his usual self enough that when he wasn't consumed by self-loathing or self-pity at the moment, not while the story ran anyway.
"It didn't miss this time, it hit him in the arm, shredded it and ripped it apart. But the most terrible, the last shot came just moments after, someone, I don't know who, the first shot was a woman though now that I think about it, an Euthanatos I think, she was with Wharil though she'd shot from a different place," another cut for suspense, and food, mostly food. His hunger seemed to be growing exponentially as he hit the climax.
[Emily Littleton] As Nathan's appetite waxed, Emily's waned. He grew hungrier and hungrier and she set her rice bowl down. Set her chopsticks aside, neatly leaned against her plate to keep them from dirtying the table. She folded her hands in her lap and listened without offering anything else into the relative isolation of the table.
A waitress came into line of sight, but Emily waved her away so he could keep talking and eating at his own pace. Her stomach had become uneasy, unsettled, and she sipped at her water but ate nothing more as he described the trio of gunshots. Emily winced, visibly, at each one -- almost as if she'd been there to hear them (feel them) herself. His story was bringing older stories to the surface, and they left her a little too raw, a little too uncomfortable to take this all in stride.
"Horrible...." she said softly. Her brow was furrowed, gently, now. Her eyes, dark blue and clouded with grey, were sadder. Every gory detail he felt the need to express was written into her memory with painstaking clarity, and Emily did not need them (did not want them) to understand. "I'm... sorry you had to see that," she said.
She was sorry, too, that it had to happen at all. But that wasn't what Emily said to him, in this small restaurant, tucked away into a mostly forgotten corner of Chinatown. She showed sympathy for him, but not over compassion for the others.
[Nathan Spriggs] "I... haven't even begun describing the last one. It was the most horrifying, someone in the crowd, I don't know who as I said, they... fired a shotgun. It was horrible, a massive gaping hole in his chest suddenly opened up, blood fell all over the place. The crowd had been in shock from the second shot but suddenly there was chaos, as he fell, dying, everyone stampeded. I fought through the crowd to the man and Ashley, they were covered in blood, they'd been standing right there, next to him when it'd all happened," his voice trembled, he was losing his cool again, that specific memory had been the worse of the lot, it wasn't just the wound or the sight, it was their treatment of it all, and his eyes. Those eyes as his life faded away, he couldn't even begin to describe them and so he wouldn't.
"Then, Wharil walked up to him, he got down besides him and stabbed him in the heart with a knife, speaking to him as he did, I can't remember what he said. I wasn't paying attention. And then... Once it was all over, we had to run, Wharil and another woman, the one I mentioned, they took his body to get rid of it, I don't know where or how. Ashley recovered enough to speak and told me to help Alice, the other man had left. We escaped, went to Ashley's apartment and left Alice there, she really banged up, Dylan did something to her so every little thing hurt her... Then I left, and now, two days later here I am. Is his fate what's waiting all of us? Are we gonna end up like that? All fucked up and killed by the people we trusted?" Nathan choked for a moment, he couldn't go on, the thoughts he'd been keeping in for these few days were spilling out. He had to go, he had to leave. He realized something in this short moment of clarity, he didn't have time to waste. There was still something he could do, had to do.
[Emily Littleton] Emily had gotten progressively quieter and paler throughout the conversation, but now there is no hiding behind her teacup or the quiet offer of dinner and a shoulder to cry on. Now Emily is faced with a question that none of them want to answer, and it is very likely that the stability of this man's coming days might hinge in some small way upon her reply. It is a grave thing, his question, and it pains her and brings to the surface worries she'd best left at the periperhy of her thoughts.
"Honestly?" she asked, not that she was ever entirely honest with strangers. "I do not know. I have to hope that there is something deeper, some greater meaning to why we Awaken than to be each other's Warders and Executioners when the madness comes to claim us. I have to hope that we do not all fall away from the things that make us human, make us hopeful." Emily's voice is calm and low, but it is the voice of someone who has know Faith, who has lost it, and who deeply hopes she will one day find that grace again.
"I would hate to think that all of the struggle to become something, to learn, to grow, to change... that all of it is so we can slink below the horizon in some misguided blaze of glory and destruction." Emily shrugged a little and looked sadly into her rice bowl. "But I do not know, so I cannot tell you that what I hope for will come to pass or that you or I will be any different in the end."
There is a pause, and the Orphan blinks back something, holds her tongue for a moment. There was no Reverence in any of this. No Grace. No room for Faith. This Awakened world was not what she would have expected, if a younger Emily had looked forward and imagined the englightened desires, aims and actions of her very soul. There is a sadness in that, too, as keenly felt as the sadness for one of their (your [our?]) passing.
"I suppose that's not very helpful," she said at last. "But Fate and I are not quite on speaking terms yet. And whatever She had planned for me, her reasoning and motives have been anything but transparent. I hope there is better for you ahead, as well, but given the last month or so... I would not count upon it."
[Nathan Spriggs] He listened, listened and analyzed, a grave nod here, another one there. Nathan knew that neither she, nor he, nor anyone else knew what laid waiting for them from here on. All they could do was hope, wait and hope. Maybe they wouldn't die tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week, or the next month, or the next year, maybe not for ten more years, twenty, thirty. But eventually it would happen, the question was how, and why. Would it be an act of supposed mercy like the mercy Ashley had spoken of? Or would it be a mistake brought about by their own folly, because of what they knew as 'Paradox', he'd seen that happen too. Seen how ugly it was, but they had no way of knowing.
"I... have to go. There's something that needs doing and I'm the only one who can do it," he spoke with a cold, dead voice still, but a hint of purpose now existed in it. He'd found something to cling on to, desperate as it was, he had to take care of it before he fell back into the spiral of decadence. Because undoubtedly he would, it was the only thing that kept the memory at bay and he wasn't yet strong enough to take it on, to wrestle with it and emerge sure of himself, victorious.
[Emily Littleton] "Okay then," she said, nodding when he said he had to go. Emily didn't keep him, and if he wanted to excuse himself and make a break for the doorway then she wouldn't stop him. She did exhale a little, letting go of some of the tension she'd been holding on to for the last half hour. She had been feeling better when he found her, and now Emily was feeling thin and worn down yet again. She was too young, too new, to bear these burdens on her slight shoulders.
She found a waitress, paid for their meal without asking him to cover his half, gathered up the leftovers to take away with her shopping bag from earlier in the evening. If Nathan stayed, then she gestured for him to lead their way out of the restaurant. She didn't ask him his name, or how to get ahold of him. Emily did not offer her last name or her contact information. This had not been that sort of encounter, not that sort of dinner date.
As they stood, once again, in the cold Chicago night, she wished him adieu and better days. And then Emily made her way back to wherever she had parked her car, checked her phone for messages from the friend who had not shown, and headed out for points unspecified.
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