Volunteerism

[Brady] The thing about living in a metropolitan area is this: it doesn't matter what part of the city you're in, what time of day it is, whether you're on foot or in a car. It doesn't matter whether you want to be around other people, whether you'd prefer solitude to commiseration, whether your fervent hope is to be left the fuck alone to contemplate the goings-on in your own life or not. There is always someone around. There is always a light on, always a presence lurking just around the corner, always someone bearing witness to the fact that you are just as miserable as every other fucking person in this godforsaken city.

There is a bus stop on the corner, down the street from one of the neighborhood's soup kitchens, nearby one of the neighborhood's halfway houses. This bus stop is not protected from the elements, from the fact that even after the deluge the city had yesterday there are still drops of water falling from the dreary sky and splattering over the unsuspecting concrete and glass below, and though the rain has stopped for now, everyone who is standing waiting for the next pickup is at the mercy of the weather.

Nico is one of those poor sodden bastards standing waiting for the bus to carry him the two miles from the neighborhood to his apartment complex. He's dressed far too nice for the neighborhood, even though his clothes look as though they came off a rack at Target, as though they were purchased with coupons and a 30% off discount. He looks like the sort of man whose salary is nothing to brag about, but then again, in this neighborhood, surrounded by minimum wage slaves and housecleaners, he could be doing a lot worse. He is not living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to support at least one child, to support a sick significant other or a parent or anyone other than himself.

So he doesn't wear his clothing like a badge, or a suit of armor. It's just there to cover him, to make him look presentable when he goes into the office. It does little to make him blend in: he is easily the best-dressed person at the bus stop, looks as though he shouldn't even be riding the bus, and yet here he is, waiting.

[Littleton] It's not his bus, but it's a bus, that comes sighing down the street and squeals to a stop at the failing overhang where Nico's waiting. Tires rub against the concrete curb, and the bus sags into a slouch once it has come to rest. Not because it's any sort of kneeling bus, no, but because this leg of this route is serviced by the aging, dying fleet that will someday leave them all stranded in an unsavory neighborhood.

The first person off the bus is a dark-haired young woman, who, like Nico, does not entirely belong in this stretch of bad-news neighborhood. She's Riley's friend, the one who named him Lady Gaga in that laughing lilt and proceeded to take a tumble. There's nothing laughing-bright about her this evening; dark circles under her red-shod eyes. She takes the last step down to the pavement a little harder than she needs to, but that's because her right ankle is still braced.

Emily hunches her shoulders and bows her head against the rain. There's a soup kitchen not far from here, there's a halfway house around the corner. This is the place where the misfits and social rejects congregate to lap up the well-intentioned assistance offered by the few humanitarians left in Generation Me. She shifts the strap of her messenger bag and glances up, just once, at the cloudy overhang.

She's dressed in jeans and a long sleeve tee. It's too hot for long sleeves, but working at the shelters often leaves marks she doesn't want anyone else to see. She'll push those sleeves up, during her shift, stretch out the fabric til it's loose on her forearms and hides nearly nothing, but it will still hide enough of whatever bad habits she dabbles in today.

This is not a neighborhood she should frequent alone, but it doesn't seem to phase her. Emily orients herself, and starts her way toward the kitchen. It brings her right past the bench of the bus stop. Right past Nico. Her footsteps slow with recognition... but don't entirely stop.

[Brady] [Awareness+Perception: Let's Get Embarrassing Ourselves Out Of The Way.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Littleton] ((Manip + Subter : Oh, you're looking at me like that. +1 dif for circumstances))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Littleton] She's functional, that's a start. Emily is presentably attired and wears a reasonable enough expression. If she were trying, just now, to evade any scrutiny it's highly plausible that she could explain away the apparent fatigue with a warm smile and an easy collection of words. If Nico thinks back, it's likely she's done this before, even to him, without raising any suspicions. So it's that much stranger that he gets this unguarded glimpse of what may (or may not) be tormenting her.

And tormented is a fair term. She's struggling. It's a soul-deep struggle, too. The sort that drives people to self-destructive behaviors (check) or to put themselves in harm's way unnecessarily (check). There's something keeping her up at night, keeping her pacing, keeping her unsteady and unsettled. He gets a look at it, twisting her, before Emily recognizes him and tries to pull it all down, away from the surface.

She offers him a little smile, which isn't as reassuring as it should be. Not just now.

[Brady] Something he'd learned when he moved from South Dakota to Minnesota, something he'd learned the first time he had to walk from his campus dormitory to some building located in the Real World, was that there is no way to enjoy some semblance of rest in a public place and not leave oneself open to all sorts of unsavory activity, to muggings and assaults and general unrest at the hands of the homeless and the starving and the drunk and the insane. He stopped letting his mind wander at bus stops and parks and grocery stores years ago because every single fucking time he did, something unforeseen happened.

This is a new city, a new lease on life, and yet he trusts the denizens of this locale about as much as he trusted the people who inhabited Minneapolis. That is to say: not at all.

So when that decrepit old public transport vehicle wheezes up to the curb, he's watching the people as they shuffle off. He's watching the exhausted blue-collar workers and the drug addicts and the students as they move themselves from one place to the other, shuffling through their lives without opening themselves up to the whole of experience that lies in wait for them to simply notice.

He's watching when the brown-haired Orphan who he only knows as Emily gets off the bus and moves past him. Gray eyes wick up and down her form without real appreciation for what they find; this is an appraisal, an assessment, and whatever they see before their subject conjures up the energy necessary to tamp it down out of sight and safe isn't satisfactory. It raises more questions than answers them. It has him stepping away from the bench and approaching her.

"Emily," he calls. "Hey."

[Littleton] "Oh, hi, Nico," she says, each word separated slightly as if they were each prompted by their own unqiue train of thought. The smile warms a bit, turns up at the edges. Her hands tighten, slightly on the messenger bag's strap. "I didn't expect to see you here," she says, and the words are wrapped, as always, in that sense of anchorless Otherness.

She's steady, enough. Calm enough to show she doesn't suspect that he's noticed anything. It's a good front, a solid-enough one. He can imagine it has served her well in many places, coupled with the polite distance of her actions, adding in the somewhat reserved side she often shows. Most people wouldn't cross that delicately drawn divide, and Emily didn't often extend a hand to help them over.

The mill of humanity around this is of the least desirable sort. She has to know this, and yet she doesn't make overt overtures to keeping her bag safely beside her. She doesn't seem to care if they attract odd looks from the passersby; it's only if someone comes to close that she seems to sharpen, to be a little more alert. Even that is numbed, now. They two are a fixed point in a slowly moving stream of workers, addicts, students; of nobodies who take up space and breath air and waste lives. It flows around her without really touching her; she's disconnected.

[Brady] Were not for the fact that the two of them put off vibes that catch the attention of the average person wrapped up in his or her own thoughts and worries and lives, they might have been able to otherwise escape notice. As it is, Emily attracts the same amount of attention as a homely woman in a nun's habit would have; Nico might as well be wearing leather pants and a iridescent club shirt, might as well be doing a line off of his wrist watch for all the attention he draws. There is something about them that makes other people keep an eye on them. Otherness is a good word for it; they are beyond the pale, beyond the norm, and the whole of society can feel it.

Nico falls into step beside the smaller female, pushing his hands into the pockets of his khakis as though making himself comfortable, and for a moment, it's difficult to tell that he's picked up anything on her other than the fact that she is alone, that she is headed somewhere. She doesn't know what exactly he does for a living, doesn't know what he spent the last six years studying and learning and excising. She doesn't know that he spends ten hours a day with people who have gained a proficiency with lying to themselves, to everyone around them, that the truth is something that they can't even begin to grasp. She doesn't know that he, himself, had once been so fantastic at lying that he could have gotten away with murder were he the type to commit such a thing.

She doesn't know that he spent his entire adolescence lying to his parents, his teachers, his best friend. She doesn't know that if Owen fucking Page were to emerge out of an alleyway right now that he would be lying then, too, that he would have to obscure every last trace of interest and yearning and aching desire that had ever welled up in him, like he had had to do last week at the club when the Chorister had appeared in the club like some sort of harbinger of doom to remind him of what he never had, what he could never have.

That's neither here nor there. He's walking down the sidewalk with her, as though he's forgotten all about his bus, as though he's forgotten all about her referring to him as Lady Gaga the first time they saw each other.

"That makes two of us," he says. "Where ya heading?"

[Littleton] If Owen fucking Page were to step out of the shadows, here, now, then both Emily and Nico would be pressed into some fairly fantastic feats of redirection and evasion. Gratefully, perhaps, it's just the two of them for the moment. And there's no Riley to balast the watchfulness that either feels. Emily's is guarded, now, kept hidden away and carefully closeted. She may not have Nico's training or experience, but she's fairly adept at reading people. She's had to be.

What he's studied and perfected, she's had to live. Immersed in Otherness for longer than she can remember, the girl has learned to mirror, to reflect whatever is presented to her in a way that seems genuine enough to be accepted. Whatever Emily is, underneath all of that, is difficult to get at. It's why she's so tremendously uncomfortable when divergent sectors of her life converge in a particular moment. Like Nico, here, on her way to the kitchen. Though, truth be told, this is a small anxiety. If she understood the weave and warp of the tapestries better, and how they were all connected and through whom, she would have been more seriously upset.

A warmer smile then, of the all's well variety. "There's a soup kitchen not far from here," she says, as if he might not already know. Most didn't, so this much comes easily. "I volunteer there some times."

She hadn't planned on walking with Nico, but he's talking to her and his feet are moving. Out of politeness, she's pulled along beside him. It separates them from the milleu around the bus stop.

[Brady] There is nothing about Nico that gives off the impression that he keeps any part of himself hidden. While he isn't exactly an effervescent attention-whore waving his arms and talking as loud as he can in the most projected lisp he can affect, neither does he keep to the shadows and avoid any and all questions having to do with his personal life. He hadn't shrunk away from being referred to as Lady Gaga, hadn't tried to get out of dancing on the floor with dozens of other stranger, hadn't seemed shy about grabbing Emily's elbow to keep her from crashing onto the ground and hurting herself further.

He has an open sort of face, has an all-American look that gives strangers the impression that they know all there is to know about him before he even opens his mouth. In some cases, this works to his advantage. In some cases, this makes people open up to him faster than they would other people, makes them share their secrets with him at a greater rate than they would if he didn't have that sort of gregarious, happy countenance that is so easy to superimpose one's own beliefs and struggles onto.

People who have had happy, untarnished upbringings find themselves believing that this is the case with young Mr. Brady, too; those who have had miserable, trying existences, they come to believe that he has to have, too. It's uncanny, but it's something that he came to accept years ago.

Emily gives him a smile that is at odds with what he picked off of the slightly-younger woman, and he returns it, closed-lipped and warm despite the neighborhood, despite their painfully brief period of having known each other. She's telling him she's heading to a soup kitchen, and he seems to know what she's referring to.

"I'll walk with you," he says. "It's getting dark."

And so, unless she tells him otherwise, unless she tries to shake him off, that's what they do: they walk together. And she may very well think she's off the hook, that the tired substance abuse counselor isn't going to question her further. She'd be wrong.

"Everything alright?"

[Littleton] She sets an easy gait, barely favoring the wrapped ankle. She could probably leave it unbraced, now, without danger but she's a cautious sort. In some respects. That caution is at odds with other drives and urges, though, and seems discordant to her mental state. (It's not that I want to get hurt...)

Nico is easy to talk to, affable and gregarious. He's the sort of young man that people open up to, confide in. It's quite a weight to bear, all of that disclosure, but it's also a blessing. It makes some things in life easier. And if he were less observant, he'd assume that's just what her coming expression was, easy-going and unfettered.

The girl smiles, perhaps wryly, with enough inward laughter to touch her dark blue eyes. She looks over at him then tips her chin up a bit more, rolls her eyes skyward in a self-effacing, gently dismissive shrug.

"Yeah," she said, but the informal syllable sounds odd in her accent and on her tongue. "I'm fine." That smile turns back to him, now, comfortable in its deception. "Just had a couple rough nights, that's all."

A pause, redirection. This comes more easily, and isn't a lie. It's just a way to side-step a conversation she'd clearly rather not be having. "We missed you at the park the other day," that much is genuine. No deception. She wears this like a second skin, like someone who's forgotten how to truly be forthright and direct, even with herself.

[Brady] If only it were that easy to redirect Nico.

This man is only twenty-three years old. In terms of what his clients have been through, this is nothing. This is one or two children, one or two addictions to different substances; this is being fired from one or two different jobs, losing one or both parents, being kicked out of one or two universities and having to start from scratch. This is not finishing a Master's degree and attaining a full-time job with full benefits and enough money to pay for a condominium on Avers Avenue, is not living out a homosexual lifestyle without a partner or children without a lingering substance abuse problem.

And yet. Yet, in terms of what his classmates have accomplished, what the kids he went to high school with have pulled off, twenty-three is still young enough to do anything. In terms of what the T.F. Riggs High School class of 2004 have pulled off, he has his whole fucking life ahead of him, and yet he knows what it is like to suffer.

Emily says she's fine, and Nico glances sidelong at her, looking at her longer than is absolutely necessary, one of his eyebrows raised as if to say Oh really? without the question leaving his lips. Without her having said that she doesn't want to talk about what had happened, he can't possibly know that this is a redirection, and yet he does not immediately chase her down for the answer to his unspoken question. He lets her get out the observation that she hadn't seen him at the cookout, and he smiles, glancing at the street ahead of them so that he doesn't run headlong into some poor pedestrian while he's got his attention on the Briton beside him.

"Yeah, I, ah... I'm a substance abuse counselor," he says. "One of the weekend residential counselors called out sick on Sunday, so I had to cover for her." A beat, and then, "Do you wanna talk about it? The rough couple of nights, I mean."

[Littleton] At twenty-two, she definitely has her whole life ahead of her. And, if you were to ask someone outside looking in, a fairly fabulous one behind her. If you blot out a few key moments, linger a little longer than necessarily on a couple panoramic photos, and gloss over a lot of niggling issues, Emily's childhood sounds like something out of a popular novel. A new country every few months! New adventures! Exciting places! Strange new faces!

But it's the things that are blotted out or glossed over that find her when she's all alone (or should be), and that drag down the corners of her smile. He's watching her, and she's watching the street beside them go by, keeping herself steady and even-keel. She probably hasn't slept since Sunday night, after the picnic.

He says he's a counselor. He asks if she wants to talk. Emily's reflexive answer is no, and not even no thank you. That gets swallowed back, because defensive never looks good. Because the first thing across her mind is usually the last thing that should slip past her tongue.

"Maybe," is what she says, instead, and it mildly surprises her that she cede even this much ground. The Orphan's smile twitches, faintly rueful, and then she shakes her head a little. "I don't know," she adds, with a little exhalation. A sigh. As if this all were so very futile.

"I'm sorry you got called away to work," she says, and again, that's genuine. It's not what he's getting at, of course, or what he might be digging for, but it's the conversation she can maintain. Needs to. Emily stops at the corner, but rather than looking both ways she turns to look over Nico. More carefully than she had before, with a little more press and scrutiny behind her tired eyes.

[Brady] Nico has no misconceptions about himself or his role as a counselor. He doesn't believe that he has some sort of magic wand that he can wave at a moment's notice to cure whatever ill presents itself to him; he does not believe that he has The Solution to whatever dilemma happens to come in front of his desk on any given day, does not believe that he has the gift to reach every single client, every single stranger, who he encounters on every single day.

This might not be the case if he were to have, say, not done the volunteer work that he did during his undergraduate years, or if he hadn't had the internships that he had during his graduate years, if he had not experienced the true hellishness of living as one of the Awakened in the years following the Ascension War, if he had not learned very early on that there are some people you just cannot fix. There are some people who are so damaged that they will never speak of what has happened to them, some people who have been through the depths of Hell and thus cannot possibly be empathized with.

All that is to say: he is not the typical twenty-something counselor who believes that he is touched by some higher power, who honestly thinks that he is going to save one hundred percent of the wretched and the addicted and the downtrodden that come into his office, or who he encounters on the street, and that he is going to be lauded as some sort of 21st century Jesus Christ. He doesn't believe that at all. He'd have to be fucking delusional if he thought he was going to cure every single person whose case file was placed on his desk.

Yet that doesn't mean that he can't tell the difference between someone wanting to talk about their issues and someone having issues and not being prepared to deal with them. Sometimes that difference is a nebulous one, is one that's hard to tease out from underlying issues. Emily says she's sorry he got called away to work, and he glances over at her, that same straight-line smile on his lips as before.

Only this time, she's more imploring, more scrutinizing. He notices.

"Well, it's part of the job, getting called away."

He reaches up to rub at the corner of his eye, as if clearing away some rheum that had gathered there, and then clears his throat.

"I know you don't know me from Adam, and it's totally okay if you don't want to talk? But if you do, I'm, you know, I'm right here."

[Littleton] ((So you think I can trust you? +1diff))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[Brady] [Lady Gaga doesn't seem as though he's attempting to get closer to her, or as though he wants nothing more than to get into her pants. He seems genuinely interested, as though there is little that would please him more than to be able to be of some help to her; and she gets the idea that he might be able to be of some help to her, even though at the moment he doesn't have any idea what is troubling her. He also seems tired yet energized, as though he's had a long day at work, but he's also young enough that an entire shift at work hasn't started to chip away at his resolve, or his desire to help people.]
to Littleton

[Littleton] (I've met Adam, he was cute too. [Don't do that, Little.] Why not? It's easier than answering.)

There's a war going on inside of her head, between the equally inappropriate urges to push him away by telling him everything, knowing that he'll turn away from her in shock and disbelief, and to push him away by telling him nothing. Either way, it's a step away from this comfortable enough conversation. It would complicate things at Riley's, which was her safe haven of sorts -- even Owen had relaxed enough to play board games there; the flat was truly magical.

Her fingers worry at the fabric strap of her messenger bag, slide over the woven fabric, feeling at its knap beneath her fingerprints. She chews on the corner of her lip, as if he's presented her with some marvelous conundrum. One after the other, Emily rejects the snippets of replies as they cross her mind. What she's reading off of him doesn't make it any easier to answer; that genuine good will is nearly selfless.

"I had a counselor, once," she said, as if it were some sort of defense against his well-intentioned offer. "It never really helped. I sat in her office, but I wouldn't let her close the door. I felt trapped. I probably would have told her, in time, but we moved."

See, this is why I won't be telling you, now, on some half-lit street corner. See, this is why I don't need to, because you'll just leave or I will. See?

The girl's smile twitched, slightly. "It's been a long time, Nico. Years." She tells him this, as if the time displacement makes all of this ache and worry irrelevant. "I just have to make it another week or so, and it'll start getting better." She's told him a lot, just now, in trying to get back to telling him No thank you.

She doesn't actually say the words No, thank you. She doesn't take a step away. But at any moment she could, and she might. In a heartbeat, she could be too far away to touch, and that's part of what makes this exchange okay.

[Brady] She says she had a counselor once. She says she wouldn't let her close the door. She says she would have told her, but they moved.

In trying not to tell him anything at all, in struggling between the desire to let everything out in a deluge in order to scare the poor little twenty-something boy off and to simply outright push the poor little twenty-something away, she tells him far more than he might have been able to glean if he had asked her a more pointed question. There are a catalogued number of reasons why an adolescent girl might go to see a counselor, an even fewer number of reasons why she might be frightened, anxious, terrified of letting a relative stranger close a door, close her in. He doesn't try to latch onto what little she has given him and dig deeper to find the meaning within; a look of understanding comes across his youthful (open) face even if he doesn't understand a damned thing, and he pushes his hands into his pockets. It may very well be defensive, may be an attempt o make himself seem smaller. He's bigger than she is, both in height and weight, in terms of sheer mechanical power.

If he really wanted to, if he ever lost touch with himself--or was possessed--he might be capable of hurting her. This isn't on his mind, doesn't even enter it, but Emily has to be aware of this. He's male. Males are evolutionarily primed for mindless, stupid violence.

When she tells him that it's been years, he tears his gaze away from the distant horizon and flit across her face, darting between her forehead and her brows and the corners of her mouth to read the tension in her musculature and the slack, trying to see what may or may not be there.

There's an anniversary upon them. Something happened, not long enough ago, and it still attacks her to this day. He folds his lips into a brief straight line, and then looks away, briefly, as though he's afraid of crushing her with his gaze.

"Are you alright?" he asks.

[Brady] [Awareness+Perception: TELL ME THINGS]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Littleton] ((Manip + Subter: Don't talk to strangers!))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Littleton] It's just a street corner, on a drizzly day, and Nico's more than an arm's reach away from her just now. But Emily still glances up at the street name, as if confirming that she can read this one has some sort of significance. As if placing where they are lets her draw a divide between here and where she is not. It's a little thing, a cautious glance around, a simple, normal gesture with far less simple motivations underlying it.

He asks if she's alright. There's a little incredulous look, first (deflection), that torques the corners of her mouth and eyes in turn. It's the what, why would you ask? expression. But her teeth catch her lower lip for a moment, and she looks away before a broader smile blooms. She's tired, and now that he's looking for it it's even more clear that she hasn't been sleeping. But the smile widens, and it softens her features. It even lightens the weariness in her eyes, somewhat.

"Yeah... I'm fine," she says, a little bemused, a little worried that she'd worried him; as if this conversation had suddenly gotten very serious. Emily's fingers unravel from their grasp on her messenger bag. Her arms hang down to her sides; a more open body posture, now that it's clear she's under some scrutinty. She lies well. People like Nico know just how well. It's not enough to fool him, but it's enough to fool most people. "Thanks for asking, though."

It's a bold-faced lie. She knows it. He knows it.

She also knows exactly how far apart they're standing. Exactly how many steps she has to the curb. She's tracking the traffic patterns, so if she has to step off and run, if she has to scream for help in a neighborhood like this -- if she has to, she can get away. Even though Nico isn't threatening her, even as he seems smaller and only openly watchful. This much is habit; it's force of instinct. She's exhausted, she's put herself in a bad neighborhood at darkening time of day, and yet she's alert and ready. It doesn't line up.

[Brady] They both know that she's fucking lying. Of course she is. She has no reason not to, no reason to trust this fresh-faced young man with the business casual attire and the scruffy jaw and the feeling of Look At Me Look At Me that people get from him even when he is being quiet and understated, even when the last thing he wants is for people to look at him. She has only met him twice, has only heard of him outside of their meetings once. She knows that he lives upstairs from Riley, that he likes to throw loud parties and listen to Lady Gaga and invite over women who wear clacking high heels; she knows that he has relatively quick reflexes and a sense of chivalry that is seemingly at odds with the fact that he is clearly not attracted to or even interested in women; she doesn't know that he used to be best friends with her reluctant mentor, that the two of them grew up in the same small town together. She doesn't know that they both started out as Orphans, that he thinks that term is degrading and ridiculous.

There is a lot that they don't know about each other. They have no idea how much they have in common, or how similar their life experiences have been, whether they have anything in common or possess any similarities that they can draw on in their relations with each other. So far as they can tell, they are living in different worlds. At least, as different as the worlds of two Awakened individuals can be. She is treading the path of the reverent, heading in the direction that the Singers have paved; he is keeping company with the likes of Kage R. Jakes, content and serene in the fact that he has no dogma or agenda to follow, that he has come too far in his studies and his personal progression to ever follow a Tradition.

He asks her if she's alright, and that seems like a ridiculous question to someone who wasn't expecting it. Perhaps he hadn't meant right now, in this moment; perhaps it was just another way of letting her know that if she wanted to, if she could find it within her to do so, that she could talk to him. Right now, he can see that she's tired. He can see the way the weeks, the months, the years have drawn on her like water-logged weights around her shoulders. But he doesn't know what's causing it. He doesn't know whether it's something mundane or whether it's something magical, doesn't know if it's the difficulty of living in modern society with all the creeps and weirdos and psychopaths out there preying on young people or whether it's the difficulty of living in Awakened society, whether she's seen too many monsters and Fallen and maniacs to truly be able to sleep well at night.

Yet he sees the fact that she doesn't want to talk about it, that she isn't willing to spill whatever it is that is bothering her now or ever, and he seems to be able to respect that. For now, at least.

"I'm gonna walk with you until you get to the soup kitchen," he says. "If that's alright."

[Littleton] Nico lets it go. He's going to walk with her to the kitchen. There's no more questions, beyond whether she's okay with that or not. It's like the ground has dropped out from beneath their feet and the physics of that improbabilty just hasn't caught up with them yet. There's a fall coming, and it's going to be spectacular, and her stomach knows (and is doing somersaults), but gravity's taking it's sweet time...

Emily takes a little step back. It could be that she's just resettling her weight, taking some of it off the ankle that's still wrapped, still tender. It could be to get a better look at his features. It could be that's she ready to turn and run, that not knowing what to do in this sudden silence has made her skittish. There's confusion on her features, for a moment, but that doesn't really seem to inform the situation much.

"... The last person I told -- the first person I really talked to about it, you know, the only person I've told that I'm still scared, or sometimes I'm actually angry? -- up and left town a couple weeks later." Now that he's not asking, she seems compelled to tell him. Something. Because he let it go. He's willing to just walk.

She's watching him, carefully. As if every single word she puts into that slightly-wider gap between them was so fucking precious, so tentative, that a little tic or a dismissive lip curl or even a roll of his eyes would end this. This street corner confession. This whatever the hell it was between them.

She didn't know he kept company with the likes of Kage, the rowan-haired Other whose path through the woods kissed with Emily's own. She didn't know she might ought to think that the three of them might, on a summer or winter's night, meet up at the clearing where the Fallen Kings lie, to keep Court with the others who had started down these paths alone. Emily didn't know that Nico was an Orphan, would remain an Orphan. And this was good, in some ways, because it kept her from feeling like the world was collapsing inward; that every one and every thing that mattered was Awake, couched and experienced things through that filter.

"And Riley knows some of it," she says, because he'll doubtless figure that out one way or another. The Adpet watches her friend hawkishly, now, now that she knows, and that's part of why Emily's out here now -- but she'd never say; she'll never let Riley know.

He'll walk with her to the soup kitchen, Nico said. But Emily's feet seem glued to the pavement just now.

[Brady] Nico doesn't press the issue, and Emily... stops walking. Not only does she stop walking, but she takes a step back, as though she's trying to correct a balance issue, or as though she's going to turn on her rolled ankle and start racing down the street just as fast as she possibly can to get away from him. It takes him a few seconds to realize that she's stopped walking, and to stop himself, to turn on the sidewalk to face her, as though she's been glued in place and isn't actually planning on continuing down the avenue towards the soup kitchen.

No tic reveals itself in his body; no sneer writes itself into the pleasant curve of his lips, no quirk jerks his eyebrow skyward as if to ask her What the fuck. A little frown creases his brow, and his gaze is soft, as though to be anything but would bruise her, but there is no derision, no judgment, no apathy, even, in the way he looks at her. There is concern, and there is as much caring as can exist between two people who barely fucking know each other. It's the caring that comes from a person who was born to help other people, who has eked out a comfortable existence for himself being The Shoulder, The Ear, The Whatever that anyone needs from him.

In a way, it's selfish, the way that he extends himself to people, complete strangers even, who need something from him, who just need someone to talk to. If that were how he was with everyone, though, he would have burnt out years ago. He would be a jaded counselor before he even received his accreditation. He would be so goddamn tired of being approached by people on the bus or the subway or in line at the grocery store that he would just stop giving a shit about what is bothering the people around him. His compassion and his empathy are reserved for people who he is in some way connected to. Emily may not yet realize that he is Awake, but Nico had picked up on her resonance the night that they met at the club. He has deduced that if she is not a Celestial Chorister then she is at least studying to become one. And yet that does not color his interactions with her. It has not stained his opinion of her.

Despite the fact that he was perfectly willing to just drop it and move on with their evening, Emily picks it back up. Offers it to him without telling him what it is; she just tells him that it has driven away someone who she cared about, that Riley knows some of it.

He doesn't urge her to keep walking even though it's getting dark. He doesn't reach out to grab her to get her moving again, and he doesn't close the physical distance between them. Nico keeps his hands in his pockets, and he draws a breath to clear out his lungs before he speaks.

"I can't promise that I'm not going to disappear in a few weeks," he says. "I can't even promise that I'll understand what you've gone through, even if... you know, even if I've gone through something similar. What I can promise is that if you want to talk about it, it'll stay with me. And if you don't want to talk about it at all, I'll respect that."

All of this is said with a confidence that is tempered by a strange sort of humbleness, as though he's damned well aware of his limitations and the fences between them. There is no timidity in the way he addresses her, but there's a respect, a distance, that one could easily imagine him using with a patient who absolutely does not want to be there. She's not a patient, though. He is not being paid to talk to her right now. There is no legitimate reason, other than the goodness of his fucking heart, that he is standing here talking to her right now.

[Littleton] It's almost a relief, finding him like this. Finding someone who is not entirely a stranger but also who holds no personal motivation for asking. Nico is not her best friend, not her lover, not her cabalmate, not her mentor -- he's asking because he's Nico, and she's hurting. Because he cares. Or because he's bored. Or because he is punishing himself by being out in the rain and taking on the weight of other people's troubles.

He's asking because of something within himself that has nothing to do with what he expects of her, or who he wants her to be to him. He promises her nothing beyond an ear, and respect. If it were another night, and were these not her demons coming back to haunt her, Emily would have smiled softly at that. The part of her that could step out of this moment smiled inwardly; recognized his offer for what it was: Nico would bear Witness so she did not have to go forward alone.

All he gets in response to his offer, at first, is a silent nod. The girl is thinking through something, considering his words carefully, and that is an answer in and of itself. The noncommittal drizzle fell down around them, and the sounds of tires against the wet street, the chug-chink of cars stepping into potholes as they rolled by, the snippets of other conversations in various accents and street slang -- it all continued around them. The city didn't stop, wait with bated breath on this revelation. It was the same dirty, dingy night it had been before he'd started walking beside her. The only two people in the world that this touched were Nico and Emily; beyond that, it was entirely immemorable and anonymous.

"It was almost seven years ago," she says, almost flatly. Her tone doesn't lend the words any undue weight. They're lifeless, despite the anger or fear she'd admitted to still holding close. "Almost to the day," she adds, as if for completeness. He was right; this is an anniversary of sorts. This is the first time she's said seven years, instead of six. This is the first time in many years it has hit her this hard, driven her this far.

"I was taken, abducted," she corrects herself, shaping the more formal word carefully with her tongue. "From a street corner in the wrong part of town -- A man dragged me into the alley, wrestled me through the door and took me down into a basement."

This is the first time she's really used any words that imply force. Usually she says I was taken or I went missing. Today Nico is offered more context: dragged and wrestled.

"He and his... friends?" she lilts the word awkwardly, as if she isn't sure how to place the relationship between these people, "Treated me unkindly." Pause, rephrase, shrug. She doesn't meet Nico's eyes now, on this questionable street in a questionable part of town, with the rain weighing down their hair and getting in their eyes and making everyone, everything miserable.

"I was beaten." Helping verb, creating distance. "And worse." No details here, none needed. "And when they were through, three days later I'm told, they left me on the bank of the river where I was found."

All of this is said simply, without overmuch inflection, without raising her voice or tears forming at the corners of her eyes. For the most part, her features are impassive and her gaze is focused on a single something away from his face. Over his shoulder, or at the place where the wall behind him meets the pavement.

She swallows, now, and her fingers reach back up to wrap around the strap of her messenger bag. There's a quiet that settles in, as if to say and that is that or and now you know. She waits on whatever it is he will say, but if that quiet stretches on too long, she'll have cause to remember that he's Riley's upstairs neighbor; that he isn't necessarily leaving town; that he might look at her with the same open worry, or misplaced protectiveness that the Adept did, whenever Emily's wanderings took her too far from the straight and narrow.

[Brady] [Subterfuge+Manipulation: For Shits And Giggles.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Littleton] ((Per+Aware: What could possibly go wrong with throwing these dice?))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Brady] He never knows, with the conviction and ferocity that you just know how to respond to certain revelations and confessions, what to say when a woman tells him, however roundabout or directly, that she has been the victim of violence, that she has been beaten by her drug dealer or raped by her boyfriend. He never knows, the same way he knows how to respond to his male patients, to his male friends, what he's supposed to say to help, to make it better. Perhaps what he does know is that there is no way on earth to help, to make it better.

Sometimes he tries to imagine what he would have wanted someone to say to him five-almost-six years ago when it was him. Sometimes he tries to remember what Ms. Brenneman did say to him, tries to take himself back to the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere and the humming of her '86 Buick LeSabre as it idled in the middle of the two-lane road surrounded on either side by empty, aimless fields, as his own blood ran down the back of his throat and he wondered if he would ever be able to get his legs under him again.

So many years later, he can't even fucking remember what she'd said to him, what she did to get him off the ground and into the backseat. Maybe she'd told him that he was okay, even though he wasn't; that he was safe, even though he couldn't believe that. Maybe she'd tried to explain how it was that he was suddenly twenty miles away from where he'd started out even though moments before he'd been physically incapable of fucking moving.

Sometimes, depending on how recently the violence has occurred, he will tell women that: you're okay; you're safe; he's not going to hurt you again. Sometimes it's true. Sometimes it's a fucking lie and he knows it, and she knows it, and so he doesn't say it. Nico is young, painfully so compared to his colleagues, but he has a wealth of life experience that makes up for the fact that he's just barely old enough to drink.

Emily says she was on a street corner, in the wrong part of town; Nico doesn't pointedly look around, as if to illustrate that they are, right now, on a street corner in the wrong part of town. His eyes remain on her, alternating between her eyes and her chin, while hers are fixed anywhere but on his.

They don't know each other now, didn't know each other seven years ago almost to the day ago. He does not feel the furious outrage that comes from finding out that something horrible has befallen someone who he fervently believed he should have been around to protect; what he feels, he keeps to himself. What he does know is that seven years can either be a long time ago for a woman who received immediate, adequate assistance, or it can be as good as seven hours ago to a woman who tried to carry on as though nothing had happened.

"Did they ever catch the guys?" he asks, quietly but not cautiously, not fearfully. He can probably guess what the answer is, but she's already said this much; assumption is a few shades shy of sin these days.

[Littleton] The men who had hurt Emily would, statistically speaking, never cross her path again. They'd never hurt her again, not those same three, but another stranger standing in for their memory might -- it might be why she is out here, in the wrong part of town, standing on the street and talking to a stranger. But Nico is nothing like them, and he speakes to her in a language they shared. She knows his name, knows where he lives. She knows the name of this street and how to find her way home. This is nothing, nothing like Prague had been.

She tells him, and he doesn't reach out to hug her. He doesn't said I wish I'd been there. He doesn't assume she needs to be coddled, or look to her with sadness or sympathy. He doesn't weigh her down with whatever it is he's thinking, whether it's that she's a boldfaced liar, or a wretched whore; that she deserved it, that she was wronged, that she ought to have known better; doesn't say poor Emily, poor little Emily.

He doesn't speak her name softly, with pathos and regret.

It's a fucking relief to just get asked a pragmatic question. To be able to hold her head up and answer it plainly. She'd never had this conversation, like this, before. Never imagined it as anything but a great sucking black hole of borrowed emotion.

"No," she says. It's just a no. There's no hiding behind it, no evasion. "It wouldn't have mattered. I couldn't have ID'd them, and I don't understand enough Czech to have figured out their names." There's a bit of anger in that, her inability to help herself, but it fades, is shrugged off.

"It happened in Prague," she tells him, belatedly, explaining the comment over the language barrier away. "My father sent me back to England to stay with my godfather. I don't know much about how the investigation went, if there was one at all."

[Brady] [Pause again!]