You don't have to worry

[Emily] Monday afternoon, and the rain has been steadily pouring down, falling down, pressing so hard that the clouds blot out the sun and the blue of the firmament of the heavens has been eclipsed and everything, everything is rain-dark and grey-cast. It is the longest day of the year, but the sun's slow progress is eclipsed by an unyielding ceiling, and all afternoon it's been difficult to tell just what time it is. Shadows are diffuse. The day stretches on in this timeless forever. It's late now, leaning to evening, and one can only tell this because it grows darker all over.

The conundrum she faces is the state of her shoes. See, they're muddied and messy -- she wouldn't go visiting with muddy shoes, like this. It wouldn't be welcome. The hems of her jeans, see, those can be rolled up and her jacket took must of the mushroom-woods-tree dirt. She's sopping -- okay, that's another problem all together. All of these things, these things she has not considered as she walks the last block toward Owen's apartment building. But there's no turning back now.

If she'd gone home, and showered, and changed and let herself get lost in the quiet that is there. If she'd seen the place where Ashley sat, sat broken and wearied, heartsick and wounded; if she'd sat in the chair and held tight the prayer beads; if she'd, if she'd, she wouldn't have come here.

So it's barefoot, which is better than muddy-shoed, and it's rain-soaked and bedraggled that she stands on his street. And the puddles come up in the space between her toes, they tickle. Emily takes a small breath, closes her eyes (not quite sure why) and leans forward just enough that her outstretched finger depresses the button that will ring his flat.

Maybe he won't be home.

Ring, ring.

Maybe he won't be here.

Ring, ring.

Maybe. She lets go of it. Waits. It's not raining just now, so the puddles are still, and her clothes are not dripping, and the sun is almost breaking, low and amber-warm, through the clouds at the horizon.

[Owen Page] Well, the thing of it is, Owen doesn't really have that many places where he might be. There's his job at St James', there's the Chantry, which he has begun to visit much more frequently since he was granted access to the Node, and there's sometimes the park, where he stopped to shoot hoops and work tension out of his body. Right now, though, he's at home sitting on his threadbare sofa with a book open on his lap and the TV muted to show scenes from the World Cup blinking on and off screen amidst frenzied cheering from fans in the stands.

He'd told her once that he liked to see the TV, but not hear it, apparently that sentiment still held true.

When the buzzer sounds, the Chorister looks up from his book, frowning briefly, before kicking up his long legs and setting it aside. Owen hadn't been home so long that he'd changed yet from the clothes he wore to do work around the Church. His shirt was smeared with oil and dirt and his jeans were the oldest he owned, torn and re-patched at the knee.

His finger depressed the button: Hello?

[Emily] Oh, that's right. Somewhere in the world there was soccer -- not just soccer but football and not just football but World Cup -- to watch, and Emily was not busy borrowing someone's TV, or following the broadcasts online; she wasn't even sure who was playing, just that her home-teams (we'll claim them [but only for World Cup] only out of pity for the poor Continentals) had tied in their first match. Fitting it seems. There's a pitch out there somewhere, and she is oblivious. It's Monday, so maybe, they're still in their group rounds.

While she's waiting, Emily struggles with the thin elastic she has to pull back her hair. She twists it between her fingers and the water runs out of it, cool now from the AC in the car on the way over. It runs through her fingers, thin rivulets, rivers. She frowns and twists the wet mass into a knot at the nape of her neck. There's a curl she missed and it cuts down her throat, plastered to her skin like a dark welt. At her throat there is no glint of silver, no thin chain, an absence both to see and to feel. It bears noting, this nothing.

Hello?

"Ah... Owen?" she asks, but really who else could it be? And she kicks herself, a little, with her puddle-wet bare feet, for asking. So there's a pause, short and stitled, then: "It's Emily. I've a question, for you, if you don't mind."

Her voice is quite gentle, for as tired and worn-through as the Apprentice has become. It's polite, and somewhat seeking. As if this all might be handled by a quick chat, through the voicebox (No need to come down). It tells him little, this hesitance. This politeness. Unless he looks into it carefully. It tells him little, just now, because he cannot see her or the wax-weary lines to her face, or the shadows beneath her eyes, or their red rims.

[Owen Page] I've a question for you if you don't mind.

He's frowning as he listens, and casts his attention over his shoulder to a backpack half filled on the table behind him, books neatly stacked beside it where he'd been sorting them, trying to decide which to take, which to leave. "Sure," he says a touch absently, as if he'd almost forgotten he stood at the door, finger housed above the button. "Come on up."

Bzzt.

The downstairs door unlocks and swings open for the Orphan, while upstairs Owen slid the chain off his door, and unlocked the deadbolt. He left it open a touch for her, and made his way back to the sofa, closing his book and hitting the remote to cut off the final moments of a match. He'd catch the highlights later on, anyway. So, when Emily reaches Owen's apartment it is to find him leaning against the edge of his table, arms folded, chin lowered in thought.

He was barefoot, and his only concession to her visit in terms of his appearance had been to shed his outer shirt covered in stains, so that now he was clad only in a white wife-beater, his arms bare in the late afternoon light. The pendent that he often wore around his neck was evident now, the silver glittered against his skin, the impression of the cross was visible where it lay beneath the fold of his shirt.

He looked up, when her footsteps heralded her.

Her appearance warranted the shifting of his weight, a glance cut to the weather outside. "You alright?"

[Emily] She's actually dried off quite a bit, this drowned rat of an Apprentice-to-be (maybe) of his. Which is saying something, because her jeans are still damp and seal-skin tight to her legs and her shirt has dark shadows where the wet is unyielding, like the dark stain that spreads out at the base of her neck where the water from her hair wicks outward. It chills the skin there, even on a balmy day like this. It pulls out the heat.

She does not seem well, for all that she offers him a small smile. This one does not have the energy to be wry or bemused. She's a far cry from when she left him, Saturday evening, all dressed up and pragmatically functional. She'd seen to his arm, seen to Nathan, brought Ashley home with her, helped out the Sleepers -- Emily had seemed, seemed to be managing. Coping. With everything they'd shared.

That was a day and a half ago now. Nearing two. He looks back to the weather, likely surmises she can't have gotten this wet, lost her shoes, and found mudpuddles to darken the hems of her jeans all in the handful of blocks between her flat and his. Owen is perceptive like that; he's smart, this one. She likes that about him, most days. Perhaps not now.

Emily stays just across the threshhold for a moment, looking into the quiet of his flat. A place that had once felt like Sanctuary, been a safe place to run to, felt a little like Home. Now there's hesitence in the way she lingers in his door way. In the fold of her arms over her middle, the tilt downward of her chin.

"I've been better," she says, and she tries to lift it up, elevate it to the comfortable lightness, the teasing between them. It falls flat. It's empty, hollowed out, resonant. It's not really an answer, but it's an opening.

Emily steps across the threshold. Steps into his flat. Looks around like she hadn't been here before, or she hadn't quite seen it all the times that she had. The door closes quietly behind her, barely clicks at the latch. She rubs one of her arms and watches him, intently. She's looking for something.

"Are you?"

[Owen Page] He's perceptive, this one. In most ways that it counts he's perceptive, Owen, but there are things he misses, sometimes. There are hallmarks that he ought to be more adept at catching, but that he misses. Perhaps its a learned thing, what is caught and studied and evaluated by his dark gaze, settled now on Emily as she stands in his doorway and all but fidgets in her discomfort. It makes his brows knit together for a minute.

He knows something is on her mind, she'd said as much through the intercom, he's simply not sure where to begin asking after it.

Are you?
He shrugs, and pushes off the table, straightening. Yet he doesn't approach her, or crowd her space. He leaves her that, and forces her to make the connection, make the next move. Rather, he turns his back to her for a moment and pads across into the tiny kitchenette that served for everything. They'd made dinner in it, once. That seemed an event from another life, from some distant past.

He fills the kettle up out of default, sets it to boil and then returns to his leaning perch, his lean frame somewhat dwarfing the rest of the table as he sets a palm either side of his body, framing it. "What is it, Em?" He asks [invites] finally. His eyes traverse the planes of her face, searching it.

[Emily] Some day she would teach him how to make tea. This is what Emily thinks as he fills the kettle, and at least he fills the kettle rather than boiling some water in the microwave. Owen is halfway there already, and while there's miles to go she will not so much as wrinkle her nose at whatever he serves her. Lipton? That's fine, thanks. Some long forgotten, horribly dessicated loose leaf from a tin that may have come over with the Santa Maria? Lovely, cheers. It's Owen, and he's put the kettle on for her; Emily won't say anything disparaging at all. She won't even think it (and that's the real shocker).

She watches his back, his broad shoulders, the way that he moves through the small space. She watches, because what she has come to ask might sever things. Might make this the last time -- No, don't think on it. The Apprentice blinks, her eyes stinging all of a sudden. She draws in a small breath.

He calls her Em. It does not pass unnoticed.

Steady then. She rubs her palms together, spreads her hands slightly. She is not fidgeting, truly. Compared to other, more agitated times, she is almost calm. Calm but not centered.

And the quiet draws out, wells up, runs over. It is anxious and terrible. It overwhelms, draws tight the corners of her mouth and her eyes, pricks at them, until she steels herself, pulls in a quick breath and outs it, this terrible thing, this question of questions.

"Will the Chorus still have me?" There. Out. (Out, out.) It is heavy, it is raw voiced and seeking. Uncertain. Unsteady. "Will they still let me in after..." She can't say it, her teeth grind. Pitiful, Emily. Penitent, Emily. "After this weekend. Owen, I... I did something awful. I'll understand, if the answer is no. If I can't Sing with you, now. If you don't --"

No, that's too far. She pulls it back. She wishes it away. She didn't get far enough to distinguish the you (Owen) for the you (all of you Singers). She pulls that back, tremulous, and lets the rest stand.

"-- think I can join." She's not asking for an answer right-this-very-minute but just that he'd think about it. Talk to Solomon, Father Benedict, whomever it took. Pray about it, maybe, if God spoke to him that clearly. "I've been an Orphan for this long," she tells him, and it is not an ache, that. Just fact. "I can stay here, this way."

[Owen Page] Well, she gets to about I did something awful before he's on the move. Before he's moving toward her and shaking his head and there's a shadow of a smile [a smile? now?] there ghosting the corners of his lips. He's approaching her and if she's not rejecting it, he's taking her shoulders in his hands and bending his face to speak directly to her, to meet her eyes on a level playing field.

"Yes." He says emphatically, he says with quiet assurance. Then, a beat, some glimmer of pain flickering through his eyes, resting in the corners of his mouth, around his eyes. "Of course." He lets go of her shoulders here, one palm skimming down her arm, past the crook of her elbow to take hold of her hand, and guide her toward the sofa so he can sit beside her, his body half twisted so they are meeting dead on; face to face.

So there is no mistaking his meaning, or the nuance in his words.

"That's -- it isn't the way it works, Emily. Besides which," the crooked smile appears again, briefly, full of dry, decided amusement. "I'm pretty sure if it were, Solomon would have been out a few dozen shootings ago. You were trying to protect humanity, not destroy it. The Chorus, our very foundations lay with that idea." He takes a breath, wills himself to say what he needs to, the way he needs to.

"We strive to bring people to the One, but we don't reject people based on their past actions." He tilts his head. "If they did, do you ever think they'd have wanted me?"

[Emily] She doesn't stand as tall, now, as she did on Saturday. There are no heels to normalize their difference in heights. She'd been almost on eye-level then, all chin-up and composed. She'd carried herself like the diplomat's daughter, called on echoes of places and people she used to know. In the intervening days that had crumpled, fallen away, given way to this.

Owen starts moving before he really smiles, and the little slip of moonlight within her, that little piece Kage had loaned her to fill up all the emptiness, it sloshes around worriedly in the pit of her stomach. It touches her eyes, too wide now and damp-bright. By the time that he gets to her, she's curled in somewhat; she's ready, for the slap of something harder than his palms on her shoulders. He looks down, and Emily looks up. The four inches in difference could be miles.

Yes, he says. And then: Of course. But she seems skeptical. She pushes, queries; there's no real force behind it. (She's empty, just now. Hollowed. Slosh-full of moonbright.)

"But I did destroy it," she says, as he's turned toward her and telling her that maybe, just maybe, if her thesis held water, then a particular Knight, a particular Father might find himself booted out of the Choir faster than she, retroactively even (Don't let the door hit you). It seemed impossibly irreverent to think that way, but Emily's eyes only narrowed somewhat in disbelief.

"Not all of it," she says, for humanity is a broad term and she's focused on the specifics, "But I ended her life. And there's no two ways about it -- there's no ambiguity there. I didn't know her name, or anything about her, and stop to find out if she could be saved. I didn't ask, Owen; I didn't even think about it like that until it was over."

It's heavy, this, and she can't meet the amusement in his eyes. She looks down, to the space between them, the little gap created where he's turned toward her and she's turned toward him.

"I want to tell you this isn't me; but I can't now. It changes things," she says, softly. Still worried. "I'm not who I thought I was." Pause.

She'd heard it, his question. It filtered through, it caught on the edge of her awareness. It tugged, pulled, and Emily looked up again. She regarded him seriously, as if she was measuring, weighing, the whole of that oft-inscrutable countenance all over again.

"You've never told me," she says, carefully. This is not something to ask, but she's too far forward to turn back now. She's too worn thin to realize it's too much, it's too deep. "You've never said why it is that you ask me that. Why you think they wouldn't want you." What haunts you, she's asking, from that soul-deep and deceit-less place that Emily only inhabits when's full up or worn thin. There's no middle ground; all in or all out; like the tide.

[Owen Page] [WP: How well do I handle answering this?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Owen Page] "She couldn't be saved, Emily." He corrects her, his voice gentled, and full of sorrow for it. She can hear that much contained in its timbre, in the underlying huskiness. "She'd made her choice, and she would have killed you equally as fast, and without hesitation." He breathes out, and adds, quietly.

"Mourn for the loss of what she mighthave been, once. But don't mourn for what you shot that night, because it wasn't anything like the people who were in those cages, suffering."

While she's looking down and studying her lap, he's studying her the way he so often does with those midnight blue eyes of his and that steady expression that read neither disgust or heartache but rather some neutrality that was oddly comforting. There was rarely in Owen Page's face a sense of his true feeling, and rarer still but for the odd occasion he was pushed to it, any expression of anger. Perhaps she misses the surprise that darts over it when she asks after his question, perhaps she sees the way the shutters fall over his eyes; school his expression somewhat.

It is not rejection or a lack of desire to answer her, but some preparation on his side for the story he now must retell. A beat, Owen turned and leaned back against the sofa, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes staring out into the stillness of the afternoon in his tiny apartment. It takes several moments before he speaks, but she can witness that he's thinking about whatever it is she's venturing toward, whatever the memory is she's trying to loosen.

It's tentative, the voice, when it comes: "When I was eighteen, I was a real mess. I mean, you think you know bad kids, teenagers with problems but I was --", he pauses, looks down at his lap. "I did a lot of stupid stuff, got into drugs and alcohol in a bad way. I started to steal to get the cash to pay for it and one night, I was in the middle of taking my Mom's jewelery when my Dad walked in and caught me."

He shifts his weight, clears his throat.

"We fought, and I hit him." He smiles, it is nothing warm, but full of recalled bitterness. "I felt so vindicated, striking him. I remember that. Anyway, Maggie, my sister, tried to calm me down. I wouldn't listen, and I ran out. Got into the car and tried to drive away. But Maggie was --" Owen's head tilted back, he rested it against the sofa and closed his eyes.

"So persuasive. She got in the car with me, tried to talk me down."

There's a long stretch of silence.

Owen's voice is strained. "I don't remember where the truck came from, I just remember Maggie screaming and the crunch of metal, the next thing I'm waking up behind the wheel, my head is bleeding and Maggie isn't in her seat anymore. She's lying on the road, and the truck driver is calling for help and he's leaning over her. She was so still."

His eyes opened, and he stared at the ceiling. "I killed my sister. I killed her, and they still took me in." He turns, looks at her for a long moment. "That's how I know."

[Emily] ((Emily, sweetheart, regen your WP dice, please, babe. This one die thing is killing me.))
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily] Owen makes a space between them, he stretches it out when he turns away, he formalizes it as he folds his arms over his chest. She has an instinctual understanding of this pose, the way it takes him further from her, the way it pulls him back in time. She respects it, and pulls away from watching for whatever may flicker-play across his features. Owen speaks, and Emily listens, but she listens with her ears and with her heart and doesn't press him for more by peering intently at him.

She is empty, right now, and whatever he offers her sinks in deep, it's pulled down toward her belly where the remnants of Kage's seekings and findings still sit. While Emily does not push him, she is immanent, present. She is a weight beside him on the sofa, near enough to touch; he can hear her breathing, smell the dampness and green of the woods one her skin; she smells like rain, and like mud, of crushed green things, of tumor-white mushrooms, and deep below all of this, she still smells like Emily.

He speaks, and she listens. She bears Witness, which is heavier than just being there when he says the words aloud. Later she will be able to say I was there and I remember. She will carry his secrets down close to her skin. Emily can do this; she knows how to do this.

His eyes opened, and Owen started at the ceiling. He turns, and looks to her. And he'll find her, right where he left her. She's not up and across the room to leave, there's no reproach or recrimination in her expression. There's pain, echoed and accepted. There's concern (there are other words for that Emily [shh, now, too soon for those]).

Emily leans over and wraps her arms around him. She presses her cheek against his, so that hers is cool and almost clammy against the places where his has started to grow scratchy and coarse again with its shadow.

There are things that you say, in moments like these. My condolences. I'm sorry for your loss. Emily avoids them. They are impotent and not resonant. Instead she squeezes him tighter for a moment, and then begins to slip away. When she can find his eyes, she meets them.

"I would have liked to meet her," she says, and it carries the weight of her sympathy, of her Witnessing. But such things are heavy, and it can be too much to carry. She knows this, pulls back, pulls her hands into her own lap. Emily looks down, so he will not find her looking too closely. She can't help it just now; there's no filer. Whatever comes in, comes in, and whatever goes out, goes out.

[Owen Page] He is not himself when he speaks of these things. He is somehow less the man she's come to know and yet so much more. There are nuances, now, when he's speaking and when he isn't and she can begin to weave a fuller pattern from the glimpses of sorrow and regret she's witnessed in him time and again and yet not comprehended where it sprang from. It is never an easy revelation to digest, this secret that he has kept and does keep deep inside of himself.

Like a sinner repenting, he keeps it with him like a second heartbeat. Every second of every day there is the thud of killed her killed her killed her resonant inside of him, dwelling in the shadows beneath his eyes, the ones that flickered and danced through them on occasion. There in the lines that gather around his mouth.

Emily bears Witness to his pain, to the deepest of his reasons for reaching out to his faith once more, for his willingness, after the initial refusal to find some kind of peace among the other Singers. It would appeal, then. To the penitent man, the idea of forgiveness for the worst crimes; the quest for the music that only those truly in need and seeking it could really hear.

A kind of peace.
A kind of home.

When she takes him in her arms he is stiff at first, as if unsure of her motive, but he wilts into her and when she presses her cooler cheek against his she can sense his uncertainty, can feel the way his coarser cheek moves along her own as if he sought -- but, he doesn't. Not yet. Not now.

He allows the embrace, and he breathes out a little more raggedly for the length that she is so near and warm against him, but he makes no move to touch her, simply looks down at his hands, then eventually dares his gaze to meet her own again. His are stormy, and full of quelling, unstable emotion. I would have liked to meet her, she says and he has to laugh. He has to, though its a rough, hitched affair.

"You'd have liked her." Owen's hand pushes back through his hair, he rests his palm at its nape. "It was damnably hard not to like Maggie. She was," he smiles, a touch fondly, a touch wearied by the sadness. "Impetuous. Impulsive, but fun, y'know? Maggie entered a room and it was like the sun had just come out." He looks to his sofa, plucks at stray threads coming loose.

"I meant it, Emily. You don't have to worry that what you did means you're not wanted by the Chorus." His eyes shift to her, he adds: "Or by me."

[Emily] ((Empathy: I'm not bein' nosy; it's just what I do...))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Owen Page] There's an awful lot of conflicting feelings going on here. She can sense he's affected by what he's just told her, that much is very clear. There's definitely a kind of shame, and a fear that she knows too much about him now for him to pull back. He's afraid of how he feels about her, and about what seems to be happening between them.

The hesitation when they are close seems to be uncertainty.

He doesn't know if it's something she wants, or if he should be putting the walls back in place between them. There definitely seemed to be a moment there when they were close that he intended to kiss her, but stopped himself for some reason.
to Emily

[Emily] ((For serious, Em. When we get out of this scene, you're taking a nap. Or something.))
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily] ((And some more dice.))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Emily] Something he says, or how he says it, catches her by surprise. Maybe its just the juxaposition of the way they'd started off, the things she remembers of her first Owen encounters -- for they were foreign and a little odd, unique one might say to be polite -- and how they were together now. There's a fondness to her expression as her gaze skims over his features, searches and memorizes the shape of his eyes, the line of his nose, the curve of his mouth, his jaw, his throat.

This is a tender moment, and he's offered nothing short of full acceptance. Emily cannot fall back on her ways of keeping things separate, safe, all walled off and insular. There is something about Owen that draws her out; he's Intense where she is Unrelenting, and while neither of their resonances sings out just now that balance has been struck and noted.

Strange, then, that the one thing she had hoped to find in him is what she can most readily offer him now. Perhaps that is why they've found their way to one another.

Emily reaches over to take his hand. To curl her cooler, smaller hand around his. It's backwards, this, her hand enveloping his, and she's meant to stop at the gesture, but she does. She leans in again, and this time kisses his cheek gently. Does not linger. There are no words, not for a moment. Not for longer than she intends this quiet to go.

You said there were lines, she wants to say. She wants to ask after what it is that she's seen in his eyes. She wants to push, but she's afraid, too. And it is enough, this, this friendship they have. So instead, Emily says: "I'll check on the kettle."

[Owen Page] [So, what's going ooon?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 4)

[Emily] She's worn thin. He's been gone for most of June, but it's whittled her down to this slip of nothing. And that nothing was all that she summoned to her on Saturday, that she held her head high over, that she collected and covered and stretched just far enough to make it through the night. Since then she hasn't slept much; she has worried, she has frayed.

But this isn't what he's looking for, is it? She has a profound affection for him; some braver than Emily might call it Love. It's a kinship, a comfort. She is conflicted, but mostly thus: He had said, point blank, it was never an option. She is trying to respect that, to channel this something they're feeling into a bond, enduring, that is acceptable.

She wants, though. Emily wants to slide in beside him, to rest her head on his shoulder, to be comforted. To comfort. To weather these storms together. She is better at her worst, because she comes back to him and she can only come back to him so worn and so broken.

There is no censor on what he reads from her, and he can read her so easily today. Like most days. If Owen chooses to take nothing else away from this moment, he'll still be stuck with the realization that a woman like Emily Littleton loves him. In the best way that she knows how. And that she is half a second from lifting herself right off the couch, going to check on the kettle, and talking herself out of this every step of the way to the kitchen and back.
to Owen Page

[Owen Page] [WP: I have complete control of myself. I am not a randy teenage boy.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Owen Page] They have boundaries set in place between them for a reason.

Owen had not wanted this, he had not planned for it nor tried to sabotage their budding relationship in some underhanded attempt to lead them here, to this moment, where both are trembling on the edge of some precipice. Some almost, some could, some desire to tumble over the edge together and keep themselves warm. To find comfort.

The want is alive between them for that moment when she takes his hand and leans in to kiss his cheek. She can no doubt feel the heat that comes off his skin in waves as she does that. He's blushing, that too, he does. The moment holds and holds like taffy but inevitably, it begins to slacken, and melt and fall away beneath the ticking seconds. Owen doesn't speak for a while, rather, he nods mutely and lets her go and check on the kettle if that is what she wishes to do to escape this sudden build up of emotion in the room.

He had never noticed how small and enclosed his apartment was until right now.

It abruptly feels too intimate, too cramped, too close. He can still smell her on his skin where she embraced him and that realization alone is enough to have him up off the sofa and headed to the cluttered table in the midst of his apartment, picking up his backpack and unzipping it, digging through the books piled within with surprising levels of focus and dedication to the task.

"I'd been planning to come by your place," he begins, and takes out a neat stack of books. Rests a palm flat over the cover of the top-most; its dog-eared and well-thumbed through numerous times. He's taken his retreat from all that almost happened back behind the walls. His face reading that he's now trying to play the Mentor, rather than the frightened boy, confronted with a slew of feelings.

"Figured we should start somewhere with your education." A beat, he glances at her sidelong, measuring. "You feel ready?"

[Emily]   
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
((Manip + Subter))

Witnessed by Gaki

[Emily] There are boundaries between them, and Emily reaches over them. Not out of wickedness or any need to entreat.  She crosses over, going one way, to lay a kiss on his cheek, and crosses over, coming back again, as he holds firm that line.  Owen does not waver; Emily does not question this.

Time does not have an opportunity to grow heavy, to grow languid and thick, to push at the taffy-ties that bind them together.  There is want, here, but there is also need, and the Need is for Fellowship, for a sense of belonging, for friendship and sanctuary.  It is heavier, this, than a Want to be anything more than they are.

Emily rises, and this late afternoon there is no heartbeat of Home in the wake of her absence.  No puddles of Belonging to muddle the moment.  Owen is left as he is, with no magical entanglements.  She moves like she's driven, but driven and weary, weary and heartsick and thoughtful (and lost).  It's all wrapped up around her, with nothing to dispell it.  She's given him something: a Touch, a Kiss.  Now she's giving him space.

[I don't know yet who we will be to each other, she'd said to him then, fresh out of Seeking, when these lines were drawn.  She'd stood near his doorway.  He'd been the one with his back turned, shoulders hunched, hands braced on the counter -- he'd turned away.
This, she'd said, and motioned between them.  She'd called it an echo, a reminder of something.  That something ... is the closest thing to family that I really have left.
And she'd had the strength to continue it then, to tell him, unwaveringly, as she started to leave, If you think, for a moment, that it's any less precious --]

She stands in his kitchen with her back turned toward him, and the spiral of her hair is heavy, weighs itself down.  It will spill into freedom by the time that they're parting ways.  Everywhere she goes, today, she finds echoes.  In Kage, in Owen, in the small rock on his windowsill that she'd brought back from Manchester.  She holds her fingertips over the spout of the kettle, with the whistle removed, so she can feel for the steam.  It's hot but not scalding, and it pulls in her focus, pushes away the weariness.

She turns the burner off beneath the kettle, but does not busy herself with the ritual of tea-making.  Somehow, between the couch and the kitchen, she has lost sight of her objective.  Owen is realizing just how small a space he occupies, how tight and intimate those quarters are, and Emily is struck by the insurmountable distance between her and the table where she used to sit and listen to the two men she calls family -- called family.  There is just one left, now.  Owen is not him.  He is not Owen.

But Owen is here and he's offering her something.  That something is a little like Fellowship, like Family.  It is a place to Belong, a Home she would not have to wear around her throat.

You feel ready?

She turns, arms folded across her middle, to see him very much the Mentor now.  One hand on the neat stack of books, his expression schooled and even.  She echoes: comportment, collectedness, calm.  Hears court-Kage in her head, hears her answer.  (Would you go back? [I would go forward, just to know, that I'd do something differently.])

"Yes," she says.  And then: "Of course."  It's the pattern he'd offered her earlier.  (All echoes [reflections].)