[Emily Littleton] It's a rainy night in the Windy City. Fat drops fall from the overcast firmament. The same clouds cast back the orange-grey reflection of city lights, ghastly and sick-pale in lieu of the half-moon's light. It's not a fair trade; it does paint her pretty, this City, and the City needs all the help it can get. The rain falls down, runs in rivulets off windowpanes and parked cars, it sweeps away the top layer of black soot-grime and puddles it all in oily slicks on the streets. It puddles up on the walkways of Grant Park. It dampens everyone's pant hems. Slicks every last step.
Emily comes here to be apart but not away; to leave the sound of tires on pavement just beyond the edge of hearing, to let the cacophony of intermingled conversations simmer down to a murmur, to let her footfalls be the broadest cadence that drives her for a moment. Just for a moment. There are puddles on the path and indeed the hems of her dark pantlegs are wet and mussed. The spiral of her hair, pulled back at the nape of her neck, has birthed a crown of small ringlets. Haphazard things, wayward. She's carrying an umbrella, but just now there is not enough precipitation to warrant it so she swings it idly in one hand as she walks.
A street light flickers; inconstant; unreliable. Tree leaves rustle on the breeze. The promise of more rain bates every breath, every last moment is heavy with it. She pays this no mind, or perhaps it no longer bothers her.
She's a slight figure, tall but casting only a thin shadow along the pathway. She's also alone.
[Terence Wilson] This other figure too is tall, slight. Dressed completely in black save for a single item down the front, a tie in a very cool hue of navy blue. As always he's the cock of the walk, this brand new (to this particular spot, which to the individual in question is of very, very little consequence) mage in his brand new city seems content simply to play with his brand new toy.
Many parts of that are a lie.
Misinformation is disinformation-
or that's what they'd lie you to think.
The Coder's stride brings him directly into the path of something....something. That is very much like prayer, real honest to God down-on-one's-knees prayer. Free of ego, of complication or want [Disgusting]. And it won't stop. It's like prayers on tape [Brainwashing.] or even the creeping feeling brought on by footage of millions at the feet of men who inspire awe amongst those the propagandize themselves to.
Oh this is going to be fun.
"Got a light, love?" Walking stops. There's no visible evidence of a cigarette.
[Emily Littleton] And when we say she's tall we mean five-nine, barefoot and standing simply, but tonight there's a click behind each footstep, a heel to her low boots that raises her up to five-eleven. Nearly eye to eye with many of the men she knows. Nowhere near eye-to-eye with the Singer she's missing. And, yes, there's a quiet sense of Grace to her, but it's a low thrum, an accent more than a defining characteristic -- there's also a push, a drive, a relentlessness that is neither gentle nor contented.
But he is a riddle, this tall man, this straw man, this shadow on a dark and stormy night. He's a thing that bends, that breaks, that touches the brain just so. He is a conundrum, a thing that does fit. The thing that doesn't fit. Counter-intuitive (Insurgent).
He pushes; she pushes; their resonances run up against each other even before he's close enough to ask --
Got a light, love?
And the Singer says, "Sure. Just a moment..." and digs a hand into the pocket of the lightweight leather jacket she wears. It's still crisp at the collar, at the cuffs, not yet entirely broken in. It smells clean, yet. She doesn't smell of smoke; it doesn't wreathe her, no miasma crowning, no hallmarks of quiet disobedience.
Emily offers him a lighter that is not often used. "Here," she says. Her voice is a muddle of clipped consonants and far away vowels. It is neither here nor now. The clearest note is British, strong but not true. Touched through with many other notes, it gives him little cue of what she is, who she is, beyond this: Other.
Her eyes are dark, clear and sharp as they meet his. He cannot tell in this low light if they are brown or blue or black. Only dark. Intent (intense) and unyielding.
[Terence Wilson] And a Brit.
Oh this could not possibly get better.
"I meant," This man, hair shorn to the point where his bald scalp nearly shines, his odd bearing putting shoulders back and head high like some sort of idol chuckles. "I meant on the inside." His accent is Scottish, and quite lower class. Another striking difference from the rest of his outward appearance. His suit cost more than many might wish to spend on a season's wardrobe however he shows none of the other acessories that might come with money. No watch, no rings or especially shiny gemstoned cufflinks (nay. these are simple and black. Obsidian if one looks close enough at the sleeves.)
"Y'ken?"
That he's three or four inches taller than her says nothing of her rather impressive poise. When she does indeed stand near eye to eye with him, holding out the lighter he lazily lets one foot drift back slightly and repositions his weight a bit more evenly.
Either giving space or gaining it.
Does it matter?
Is there even such a thing?
"Another expat, man." This, to the most important man in the park in a fast almost indecipherable Glasgwegian.
That's himself. If you'd wondered.
[Emily Littleton] She palms the lighter and puts it away, as he's not asking after quite what she thought. Emily takes a moment, then, to study him a bit more carefully. There's nothing rude about it; she doesn't pry. If anything, a slow but warming smile spreads across her features.
"Yeah. I ken," she says, thoughtfully. There's a measured cadence there, but a softness to it, too. He repositions, but she stays where her footsteps had drawn up, stopped. She does not retreat or move forward into the space.
Giving space, gaining space, is there truly a difference between them?
Her attire is simple fare. Dark jeans, a cream colored sweater, that leather jacket. Emily shifts the umbrella from one hand to the other, placing it distal from their conversation (convocation).
"Quite a night for a walkabout," she observes idly, but that comment invites. It's an opening. A little line drawn so they might both step over it and into something broader, or shy away from it and go about their business as before.
"Are you from around here?" she asks, though his accent and hers speak to nothing of the sort. There's a slightly wry cant to her smile, keeping the question from being pointedly deadpanned. This, too, invites but does not demand. It's the sort of easy idle chat one makes with strangers in the park. She seems quite calm, for all that she stands in the presence of the most important man in the park.
[Israel Cohen] In another world and another time, Israel Cohen would likely be easily overlooked. She is not stunningly beautiful, nor hard on the eyes, as the saying goes. There is little in her mundane nature that would ever demand to be the centre of attention outside of intimate relations; by which we mean one-on-one relationships and small groups; intimate, we say, and we mean small, close, confidences and intricate dynamics. Had she never Awakened it is entirely possible she'd have lived the life of a bibliophile, studying archaic, esoteric lore; symbols; a quiet expert on the matter sought up by the small percentage of people in this world who have need of such knowledge; of verification. Once upon a time the most attention she ever drew was a passing glance that lingered just a moment and said: So small; so delicate built - a strong gust of wind might sweep her away and this is a Windy city.
But she did Awaken. Awakened and Blinded all of the same moment. And slowly; in increments and in sweeping tsunamis, the almost painfully shy, almost harmfully softhearted woman she was was forced along a path she wasn't sure she ever wanted.
The long white guide cane taps a path ahead of her: That draws attention now. It sets a rhythmic staccato to precede her, pronounced only because the night - the here and now - is relatively quiet in the shade of rain-dampened trees; green-wet smells in her nose and the relative rarity of night insect noises to lend a strange string ensemble to the greater symphony of the city that surrounds the edges of the expansive park.
And there is the feel of her, pronounced to the point where Sleepers truly begin to notice it. Anonimity dampened away [and no going back]. Up until quite recently this finespun breath of a woman was possessed of the greatest measure of Resonance in the city so far as it's Traditionalist and Mystic members went. Humming around her; the bittersweet ache of Sorrow; warmed only by a flickering-but-undying measure of Hope and the cohesion of Piercing steadiness to give focus. Purpose. Meaningful though it might be only to herself: that differences between drowning in lamentations felt too keenly and using it as a driving factor towards healing.
The white of the cane gleams first.
Then the light olive-kissed skin of face and lower arms, revealed from the pushed up sleeves of a form-complimenting cowl-necked jumper; dark coloured, hints of current wine in pacing, flickering lights. Trim and tailored black slacks and then the bright-blue sheen of a bag from a baby boutique not too far away. Heeled boots that push her height to all of the sweeping majesty of...
...5'2.
A good four inches there.
Her eyes are closed, but that is hardly relevant.
It's the sound of voices in quiet conversation - one male, one female - that tells her others occupy the path up ahead.
-------------
[[How perceptive are we tonight? Eh? Per+Aware.]]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
[Terence Wilson] "Yeah," He looks at the area about him quickly Bedlam's shoulders turn this way and that in sweeping arcs. [This is exactly where i'm from. Don't you see?] "I've also a right fat wife an' love a cheeseburger twice a day." Hands drop to pockets and a grin that's nothing short of downright evil spreads in a manner that manages affability.
Eye contact is never once broken. It's disconcerting to some, the way he does that, just keeps staring no matter if the subject might stop. Like he's looking for something or worse, perhaps he's found something and is simply making calculations as to it's exact nature.
Calculating you.
Whether the devil is something that happens to a person or whether it's something invited in doesn't matter. Only that it appreciates the air. "Let's walk love, we'll talk about what a wee brit girl is doing so far off her side of th'globe."
Maybe then, [taptap] it does [taptap] matter. Only the [taptap] not knowing [taptap] will get [taptap] you [taptap] into trouble.
Whoa.
I know you but you don't know me.
The look turns away from one and up to the other, the one on approach. [Interloper?] "That's no cripple." Forbid his tongue not, for it is free. And again a gaze does it's best to simply read unblinking a plethora of new information.
[Emily Littleton] He says he's from around here, when he's obviously not. It draws a bemused look across Emily's face -- and, by the by, she's anything but backing down from the unbroken stare; she doesn't even seem discomfited by it -- that curls her mouth a little more wryly in its place. This is a familiar expression, one she wears easily. It's broken in, see? Well worn. Natural. Unfeigned.
Seemingly unfeigned. Not that he'd know the difference.
But when he mentions his fat wife and two cheeseburgers her eyebrows loft in unspoken question, then settle shortly thereafter. Now her carriage shifts a little, still easy and unfettered, but perhaps it incidentally places a little more distance between then -- and hand's breadth, nothing more. It's hard to tell. A subtle thing. Not worth remarking upon. She how she shifts the point of her umbrella on the ground to cover, to distract? Sleight of hand? We prefer prestidigitation (sounds more impressive [pedantic]), but that's not it either.
He's exactly too far, now, to reach and touch her without meaning to. Without making an overt moment of it. It's a caution, subtly rendered, without any indication that it's even intentional, thoughtful, mindful (it's cleverly calculated, in truth).
"Perhaps you'll tell me, too, about your wife and cheeseburgers." A suggestion, a little slip that says I'll take you at your word when she is anything but that gullible (trusting). It's pared with a knowing smile that gives nothing away.
[taptap
Her gaze cuts away for a moment and down the path toward Israel. There is a flicker of recognition in her features and a smile that warms a bit toward something truer: respect, appreciation, fondness.
When she is close enough to know them by their presence alone, Emily's voice reaches out to the smaller woman with a pleasant: "Good evening."
She doesn't give away the other woman's name in her hellos. She hasn't yet offered up her own. It wouldn't be polite. Emily is nothing, tonight, if not polite.
[Israel Cohen] Her eyes are, yes, broken things. No, they don't look it in the slightest, but broken all the same. Did eyes act as two-way mirrors, then hers only function for the benefit of others: They served to reveal thoughts and emotions; surprise, arousal, frustration, compassion... any number of things any number of ways. But no visage of the outside world is given to her.
Her eyes are broken things.
The other senses, though: Like most independent, fully functioning persons of similar disability, she puts just that much more effort into paying attention to the cues given all the other four, compensating senses to make up for the lack of the one human beings depend on the most.
Which might help explain why her awareness is - sometimes - [when fate or fortune or providence or sheer coincidence should have it] downright uncanny.
...and there's nothing wrong with her ears either.
That's no cripple.
A blink; a quirk of her lips [was that up or down?]: A little taken aback, a little curious, a little wary, a little... a little of a lot of things. A cant of her head like a small sparrow; stopping her trek as the distance between them becomes negligible. But her ear tilts finally most towards the sound of Emily's voice [the sense, the feel, the knowledge of her presence and things that ring familiar in it] expression settling into softness; into resonating fondness.
"Hi there. A night for infectious wanderlust, is it?"
[Terence Wilson] "A laugh."
The infectious wanderlust of the mind. Not that it's a puzzle in how it's given. A question with a dissociated answer is sometimes just that. Or sometimes it's a sort of glass bead game played in the reverse, a little something in the way of insight to be had in the journey's reverse.
Sometimes it's just a laugh.
"Welcome to join us, miss..." Often times the punctuation of a person's speech does not translate precisely for transcription. The upward inflection followed by and omnidirectional vocalization toward multiple subjects is given neither to elipses nor to a question mark. It Is not properly codified in the language however it can be well understood by anyone in polite conversation.
It's a verbal hack. A piece of mundane programming executed intentionally to illicit a response, a particular one in fact.
Ping.
[Emily Littleton] It must be a relief for Israel to find the girl, at last, untouched by the journey into the underground, the death place, the place of madness, caul-walkers all of them, Minotaurs and Midas-touched. The wrongness of the Labyrinth no longer crawls along her resonance, no longer dances on her skin. It's been a long while, for all of them, but the Singer does carry an unseen hurt forward (not the sort the body might bear). There is no pain to shape her breath, no smells of sickness or medicine, no subtle cues for Israel the unseeing but ever acute to notice.
She is hale, she is whole enough. It is an improvement.
There's a little mirth to her voice when she answers the query. Easily. Languidly. Words that fall like water drops, rain drops, puddles of sound without a deepening intent: "Oh, you know me."
She can imagine the small gesture Emily makes with her hand, here. Dismissive but not curt. He doesn't have to imagine; he can see it plainly.
"Never could sit still for long."
There's a verbal hack that pings her social firewall and Emily looks over with a little surprise (feigned, but socially appropriate). "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name before."
Ping. (Returns: Polite smile. Parsing. Translation: Oh, no. You first, dear.)
The statement trends upward. It is, indeed, a question. It is also an indication to Israel that the third party is an unknown, however he resonates. Perhaps there is, too, a little resistance to being hacked -- socially or otherwise. Occupational hazard; geeks and their firewalls.
[Isabel Burrows] She's three bags deep into her shopping trip this evening when she decides that.. enough, is enough. Or rather, she'd spent enough money. The car, however - was left on the opposite side of the park, where she stopped this morning for a lovely scone and some tea.
The dark haired woman was dressed nicely for such a trip - heels, a knee length black skirt, a soft pink button up blouse, a strand of pearls and perfectly done hair (must use a lot of hairspray..). Steadly enough, the sound of her heels along the path heralded her arrival.
She spoke in a lightly accented voice into the phone she held up to her ear (she hated those headsets, it made it look like you were talking it yourself). The tone was easy, carefree. Something about a recent trip home.
There was nothing remarkably special about her.. save for the very, very subtle aura she radiated that indicated that yes, she might be a mabe. But don't ask her about it - she's sure to deny it.
[Israel Cohen] In the light [flicker-flicker though it does; washed-out yellow; a humming buzz. it's the sound that gives Israel indication; the light means nothing [but, ah, everything]] where seeing eyes can better make out small details; Emily has the prior knowledge of the woman to see that she seems.. thinner? Less well rested. Oh, not haggard, no. Not emaciated; not maudlin or in dire straights. But the fact that any such amount of prolonged strain [grief. uncertainty. the pondering of questions no amount of Disciple knowledge of Mind makes any easier, in the end] shows through in a woman quite skills in many forms of Healing... well, perhaps that says something in and of itself.
There are smiles, then. Quiet things; reserved but attentive things. Catching the by-play though she doesn't even remotely think of it in the same manner the unknown man and Emily do. But words are but Concepts and those - yes, those she understand very well. So there is a subtle interest; subtle not because of subterfuge, subtle because there is that whisper of fatigue. Senses sharp but processes heavy-laden with a tangle skein of all the other shambles still left to lay-hands to with slow [wincing] patience.
"Mmmm.... well, it's the light in motion that catches the most attention." To Emily. As to these greetings; these strategic little thrusts and parries; sly dances without mal intent. She has nothing to say there, recognizing the cues Emily gives and letting the other woman set the tenure: After all, it was the Singer [Orphan no longer. Not that Israel ever really thought of Emily as an Orphan, not at the core of her.] who initially attracted the attention of this new...
...moth.
But there's a fractional shift then; redistribution of weight; speaking of being able to handle herself in many ways, so at odds with how she looks; again the slightest turn of her head - ear leading the way - towards the direction a young woman walks, talking into a phone and the word she speaks next...
"Convergence." Hints of wry bemusement there; a maybe a code of her own for Emily's sake in case the other woman hasn't picked up on the thrum of Enlightened vitality in the man and even the next unknown [to Israel] factor making its way closer. "Maybe only the sleepers are asleep tonight."
[Emily Littleton] [Awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Terence Wilson] [Let me do that too.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Isabel Burrows] {Oh.. alright, I'll play too}
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Terence Wilson] Quantum entaglement.
That's how he'd described it before. Another of this city's Awakened populace suggested to him over a week ago the term confluence. The word rolls over and over and about in his head as yet one more joins the party. Well, not so much as she knows yet bu it's only a matter of space and what's space?
[spatial position minus the speed of light minus temporal position.]
That isn't the point.
"Bedlam," the Scot replies. "Lord Bedlam." Then no sooner than he's spoken a name, a nomme de plume, really; the blind woman speaks to the idea that's only just being reprocessed. "Quantum entanglement," comes the amused reply.
"Now the question is if we stop observing her, will she disappear?" Beat. "Because that would be a right dead shame. I don't want to be responsible for blinking someone else out of existence. We should go have a chat." As though just like that it's decided. One is easily more powerful than him, the other feels like the fourth bead of a rosary that loops again and again onto itself and this one just seems to try and lead them regardless.
Without knowing.
Or being known.
"Hey!" He waves to the Magus in black and pink.
The one with the phone.
And the heels.
Oh sod off. A man has a pulse, even if he's tryin' to change the whole world he's got a pulse, right?
[Emily Littleton] Ah, yes, Convergence. Quantum Entanglement. Confluence. Happenstance. Coincidence. Fate. Emily knew a lot about these things. She knew how the magi of Chicago came to cluster, in small groups, in coffee houses, in parks, in places like this, before great Falls, after tragedies, in revelry, in solidarity, sometimes just to quarrel, sometimes just because.
There's something Subtle making its way toward them and Emily looks up, loses a bit of that easy edge to her stance in the sudden flicker of Awareness as she scouts for a Will she knows and hasn't done enough to foster. This comes in the middle of introductions, so, she is a bit belated as she replies.
"Emily." No surname. Not just yet. "Pleased to meet you." No sir, no Lord. It's not a slight, just a slight show of distraction. She glances at him, out of the corner of her eye, as he calls Isabel over. Emily exhales a little; it is a tight sound: cautious.
A little lower and toward the Disciple alone: "It's good to see you." Warmth. Concern, just a touch of it. Nothing too prying, too pressing. Just a human touch to it, much like a hand rested gently on a shoulder -- except not quite, for Emily has taken note of how it unsettles her, to be touched without a warning. So, of a similar affection without the alarming quality, her words are an olive branch, an opening, a invitation.
She's glanced over to Israel when she speaks to her, it's habit, ingrained. She doesn't think the other woman requires eye contact, but it would be rude of Emily not to look her in the face. To speak to her squarely. The voice carries differently; Israel would know. Now, though, her attention is back on the Apprentice. It is a watchful thing. Not unkind or unwelcoming, just alert.
Someone had felt that way about her, once. Someone had been watchful when she was new. (That Someone [variable] had not been the same person, from day to day, but the watchfulness was a constant.)
If the pretty mage in pink joins them, Emily's smile warms to welcome her. She nods a bit, makes eye contact for a moment. It is clear to Bedlam that Emily knows her, recognizes her perhaps even more than Israel. Also does not offer up her name for her. Polite. Still. (Ever. [Always?])
[Isabel Burrows] 'Hey!' It caught her attention. Green eyes flicked from the path - to the man who called out to her. An unknown man.. who.. upon further inspection, was standing beside a woman she knew fairly well. Today there was warning. No magical alarm that urged her to go the other way. This encounter couldn't be avoided, apparently.
There was an urge to roll her eyes (why does she always run into these types?), but it was resisted as she shifted her attention back to her phone. "No, no - I had a lovely time. I promise I'll come home again next month and after the lease is up here, who knows, I might move back. I know, I miss you too. I gotta go mum, tell dad I said hi.." With that, the phone was clicked closed and dropped into the expensive bag on her arm.
A small sigh escaped passed lightly hued lips.. before she forced a small smile for the group - the one she gave Emily was a little warmer, but still cautious.
She stopped several feet back, shifting her weight onto one hip. "Can I help you?" A simple question to the man who called her over.
[Israel Cohen] Lord Bedlam he says. Another might look askance with incredulity. Or perhaps a smirking twist of the mouth. Or laughter, pure and strong. Ah, or utterly blase; complete unperturbed, unmoved. No; her response is to absorb; fluidly. A stream, this, calm; quiet but with motion beneath that caresses and encompasses that which is comes into contact with. Envelopes and, for one moment, understands or at least takes note, before flowing downstream... and taking that new knowledge with it until each drop of it; each infinitesimal hint of the terrain through which it has moved is brought to the greater ocean beneath.
Lord Bedlam is dynamic and moving. Quizzical, unexpected and exuberant.
This she notices; this she keeps: But without brute force impact or pitting of one Will against the other.
Flow.
"I'm Israel." And, "Blink out of existence? Surely you know better," hushed and, in her own way, amiably teasing. "Nothing ceases to exist. A hidden weave still forms its place in the Pattern. A stitch removed will only find its place along some new seam."
Then attention jumps; moves; flurry. Restless.
Emily [poised. reverent.] takes the time for an aside; for words that offer warmest touch where her hand does not [maybe, just maybe, she can tell why it's word and not touch and appreciate, if nothing else, the consideration]. So it's Israel bridges the gap briefly; who reaches out a hand after shifting the guide cane to the hand whose arm hold the boutique bag at the crook of elbow -- reaches out through darkness and damp night air and wet-grass smells and autumn leaves turning and city-bustle all-around-but-secluded. Find Emily's... edge of hand, yes, there, forearm. Presses softly. "It's good to see you, too."
A beat, then, before politeness should dictate stepping away from more personal discourse.
"Solomon," Barest something just before - or just during? or just after? - the name is hush-murmured. There - brief but potent - then gone again, not even a heartbeat in length. "Told me the good news. I'm so happy for you." Simple words; words others might speak tritely. But the guilelessness witch which she whispers them somehow gives them greater depth.
And,
"Do you know the woman?"
Isabel she means, surely, though Israel could speak more on her Resonance than she could other details beyond a good hypothesis of gender.
[Terence Wilson] "Probably not, but I'd say it's worth a try then." Something wry in the way that comes out. "We're all just on a walkabout an' I say to myself-," for his amused tone his face gives away relatively little while he stares at the girl with the bags.
[Another Brit.]
A moment is taken, short but considered. Wheels turn and whole books are written in consideration of a single sentence. A stitch removed will only find it's place along some new seam. One. Two. Wait for it. Wait. Wait for-
it.
I like this one, and we're going to pick up that thread in a moment but first?
"Terry, that's what I call myself; if you don't ask that girl something completely ridiculous in the next twenty two seconds y'might never see her again." Still feigning at least a modicum of seriousness he finally cracks and allows the corners of his mouth to lift up slightly, to let his eyes soften, letting the light behind shine out in just the way one wouldn't expect.
"So if you lived your whole life to this point in a cave, seeing nothing but shadows from firelight on the wall and I told you about all this out here in the world. That there were motor cars and shopping malls and buildings so big you couldn't see the tops..."
Beat.
Wait.
Wait for-
it.
"Would you believe me then?"
[Emily Littleton] Emily's hand closes on Israel's. It's a warm thing, solidarity. It does not crush; does not cling. She is not as uncertain as she once was. Not so wide-eyed and incredulous (but the wonder remains [the awe] grace).
"Thank you."
A little pause.
"I've a new place," she says, quietly, a bit to the side still. "You should come over for tea some time." This invitation is a rare thing. Emily has had only two other magi to her place since she moved, and Solomon knows the building after he gave her a ride home once.
Emily is quite solid. She will not wink out of existence just because Lord Bedlam believes it. Her Will and her Faith anchor her; she is a tangible work of Creation, of Wonder; she is not that easy to wish away.
"It's good to see you, Isa," she says, a little louder so that her voice will carry across the gathering. Emily, who is not prone to pet names or affections, tenders this woman's nickname in a well-worn and authoritative way. She has earned it, the familiarity. It answers Israel's question: Yes, she knows this woman. Yes, she will stand up for her, too, if needs be.
"Mister Bedlam --" Again, side-stepping the title here. "I fear that may be the wrong tack. Miss Burrows is not fond of Awakened speculation or allegory." This is said lightly. It may be a jest; maybe just a polite ribbing save that the girl is so somber-calm tonight. Collected; sure. Certain. But the curl of her words and of her smile are paired. A lightly dissuading statement may be the best interpretation.
In this simple statement, she warns Isabel about the company she's keeping. It informs Israel. It may spare Bedlam the wrath of one Apprentice's temper or her indignation.
[Isabel Burrows] A brow rose slightly. The man went on.. and on.. and on - about something she just didn't understand. Did she care to understand? No, not really. Thus, she didn't ask for claification.
"Hello Emily. It has been awhile since we've seen each other.." The way she said it was friendly, polite - and if she really meant the sentiament that it implied 'we should see each other more often.'
Emily's explaination of 'awakened speculation' just confirms her fears that this man who now rattles off at her - is indeed, one of those awakened that make her very sad to have joined the community. The question was - why couldn't she feel them herself? Not that she wanted to.. but there was nothing tonight. Quite odd. Perhaps her recent wish to just ingore it all was starting to come true.
[Israel Cohen] Curve of shapely lips [little pieces, taken apart, that make even relatively average seeming people have their moments - their highlights - of loveliness]; amicable, gracious amusement. Her hand, it should be noted, is markedly warm to the touch. Warm like they'd bathed in sunlight just seconds ago. Warm as a soothing compress; a hearth edge that beckons. This is new[er - new for Emily to note, at least] and noticeable. It gives credence to the idea that touch - that caring contact - can heal with all the wholeness of a mother's kiss. "I've a new place myself. We'll take it in turns, then. I'll bring the baklava to your place. You can bring the tea to mine. With recipes and canisters to mark the 'warming."
And, yes, This Lord Bedlam - this Terry - [those ears, we noted, are keen. her capacity for multiple layers of attentiveness as well, when she's on her mark] continues to spin and weave the energy of dynamic reasoning [which is to say there's a method to the madness] and it is absorbed again; marked and taken with some level of placid intrigue...
...but the hours is late and her mornings start quite early. There's a hesitation here -- not so long ago she'd be loathe to leave Emily alone with an unknown Magi. A firmness, a need to remind herself: Emily is no longer the new-eyed, sometimes overwhelmed, largely defenseless Apprentice she once was. Trust and respect play it's part.
"I need to be going..."
To the woman Emily called Isa: "I'm sorry to be so rude and run off," again, such words from most anyone else would seem little more than the lip service of etiquette and protocol. The small woman - obviously blind [her hazel gaze is settled, unfocused, somewhere to the right of Isabel's head - somehow slips real sincerity [soft regret] into her tone, delivered in a voice that's a finely breathy mezzo-soprano. "Maybe sometime Emily can reintroduce us? I'm Israel, by the way."
And, to the man, ear once more tilted towards him, "And maybe sometime we can talk more about the question of perceptions and reality some other time... the next convergence." Genial though small, her smile.
After all, they seem to happen all the time with their kind.
... then, after responses:
tap tap tap
precedes her path.
[Terence Wilson] "It's a name. It's not a title." A look is shot at Emily that is so sudden and fierce that it would strike a person dead if it were not gone so quickly in the way it says 'oh figure it out already'. "Fine, right. Ruin the fun man."
This only serves to turn his attention to Israel, another name as loaded as the one this man takes and for wholly different reasons. "The string can be cut. Then it's not a stitch anymore it's right garbage, isn't it?" Is what he's doing clear to the younger ones? It may or may not be, it's likely a non-integral factor. Something between.
Enlightenment is a road and not a staircase.
A wave with variable length.
Dynamism, and insurgence. The pushing aside of occupation in the ways they never expected. It would seem if this man allows Chicago to do with him what it wants he'll become it's tester. The one prodding for answers in the dark and searching for knowledge where there is nothing else to be found.
But one gets the impression he'd rather be the thorn in it's foot.
The parting question already given he offers Israel one more mystery. "I've got your number. I'll call sometime." Pleasant, that. Unexpectedly so. "I'd definitely like to have that talk."
30 September 2010
29 September 2010
The Winner Stands Alone
[Emily Littleton] Tucked away, just off the Mile, stands a small tea shop. It is an island apart from the hustle and bustle, the build up to holiday cheer, the back-to-school excitement, the midday rush, the nine-to-five shuffle, the work day commute, and all the other strangely cadenced dances that Chicagoans put themselves up to week in and week out. Ritualists, all of them are, and they don't even know it.
The girl at one of the tables in this shop is a ritualist herself, not that she would name herself such or even admit to it were it pointed out to her. There's a rigidity in adopting ritual, a trap to forming habits, a heaviness to staying in one place too long. It's the sort of trapping that erodes the soul without causing any notice. Ails the body. Deadens the eyes (windows to the soul). Weighs down a smile. She has stayed in this city since mid-April without reprieve. All Emily has left are the little rituals.
She's reading from a book, The Winner Stands Alone, a novel about passions, obsessions and desires, and how far away from oneself they can take a person. She's reading about a woman who would give anything for fame, a man who would destroy worlds to win back a lost love, the spirals and whirlwinds they whip up around them but she can't identify with them at all. Instead Emily's empathy is for the shop girl, who sits down beside a seemingly nice old man, chats about her wares and his life and is found, chapters later, dead and forgotten.
She's a transitory character; the sort that enters in one section and departs in another with little fanfare. Emily doesn't remember the girl's name just a few pages later, only that she haunts the man who suffocated her without leaving much of a mark.
She hasn't done much reading, see, since she Awakened. Not free reading; things to broaden her soul without a directed purpose toward the Awakened sector of the same. Not things that bring her back to an understanding of Humanity, or of her own humanity, or frame the losses and fears she's struggling with in another light.
It's freeing, in many ways, to sit in this place apart and read. To empathize with a character that is there and gone, and then float tetherless through the remainder of the text. There's less ritual to that than the carefully steeped pot of Jasmine Green at her table, to the way she breaks small bites off of her scone to lift to her lips so that she never has to bite into it. In her messenger bag are other books, things of directed learning that point to a particular subject or sphere, things that are more about Knowledge and less about Experience; less human: rote.
Her hair falls down, spilling over her shoulders and framing her face. It's been more than a month since she wore it this way; and today, today Emily is wearing a skirt instead of jeans, and a softer sweater rather than a tee. She's dabbling in being the Diplomat's Daughter again, and not in ways that make her tell off a hooligan on a Chinatown street corner. There's repose to this, purpose, a way of appearing to be calm and collected until she achieves that state for herself.
She's been at the table for some time without looking up and around her. It's in a corner near the window, but she's given up on watching people pass by. It was about this time of year, in a place not far from here, at a table near the window when all this madness in her life began. When Wharil walked through the door, dripping wet from the rain, and Adam and Jarod sauntered in (not together) not long after.
There is an echo here, but not one she's listening for. Emily doesn't hear it.
[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod read more frequently than many people probably suspected. Part of this was due to his work (not his career), which required hours of pouring over various foreign (but not foreign to him) texts. That wasn't the only reading that he did, though. He read books on philosophy and on history. He read articles and essays in academic journals. He even read fiction novels, on occasion. The bulk of the volumes in his study, though, were of poetry. There was a kind of honest to poetry. A clarity of purpose that appealed to him. Poets cut away at needless exposition. Their singular focus was on the heart of an experience - the feeling, and the meaning derived from it.
If only life were that easily broken down.
It was hardly surprising to find him in a tea shop. He visited them frequently - on the mile and elsewhere. Jarod had been to this one before, a few times. He'd never seen Emily here, but the fact that he did now, as he walked in through the door and paused to let his wandering gaze fix and hover on her position, was hardly a surprise. They had some similar tastes.
After a moment of consideration, he approached her table, pulled out an empty chair, and sat down. The warmth in the air outside had negated any need for a jacket, so he was dressed simply, in a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. (Dressed down more than she was, today.) His left wrist (the one that was free of tattoos) sported a simple bracelet - a braided bit of blue and black string. The kind of thing that a child might make.
As a form of greeting, he reached across the table and let the tips of his fingers crawl up onto the back of Emily's hand. Then he fixed her with a playfully pleading expression (something she probably thought she'd never see on him - when did people like Jarod ever beg for anything?) and asked, "May I steal your tea?"
He could have gotten his own, of course, but it wouldn't have been as cute.
[Emily Littleton] [Aware: +1dif, distraction]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Emily Littleton] They have a sort of awareness of each other that, at times, could seem preternatural even to other magi. Perhaps it's because his is one of the first resonances she learned to pick out in a crowd, or because of the closeness they used to keep. It's likely that Emily felt him enter the room well before he took a seat at her table. Perhaps the prose (not poetry [never poetry in public]) she was studying was so engrossing that she had to finish the line, this paragraph, this page, oh just another til this chapter is through before she looks up.
Perhaps the reticence (no, hesitance? [no, coquetry]) is part of the dance they both know well. One they used to dance together. One they might have still, had things been different.
His fingertips trail over the back of her hand and there are only two people who would attempt such tender hellos with Emily Littleton. One of them was not here, and one of them spoke softly of Winter.
She glances up from her book to investigate the touch, then trails the lazy blue gaze toward his pleading expression. Which quirks a small smile at ther corner of her mouth, wry but not displeased, in a place where studious attention had been moments before.
"Help yourself," she invites, shifting in her seat a little as she slips a thin metal bookmark between the pages before she folds the book closed and sets it on the table beside her. She catches sight of the thin bracelet, but doesn't remark on it just yet.
"I'm surprised you'll be seen with me," she chides, lightly. "After yesterday afternoon." A little raise of her brow, but that fades quickly as she collects her tea to sip from it once more before he steals it away for good.
[Jarod Nightingale] They'd left things off on a less-than-pleasant note yesterday. Perhaps that was why his demeanor was so consciously endearing when he'd greeted her. It was meant to soften and disarm. He could have been angry. In fact, he had been, a little, when he'd walked away from her that afternoon without so much as a word of goodbye - slipping icily away to leave her to fend for herself against the brash and grating Hollower. This was a habit of his, and one that Ashley could well attest to. When displeased, he flicked his proverbial tail and padded away.
But that was yesterday. And as far as he was concerned, it needn't be mentioned unless Emily herself wanted to talk about it.
Besides, there was tea. And as soon as Emily had her fill of what was left in the cup, he claimed it for his own, topping it off from the little pot on the table. There was a lingering smile of the cat-who-got-its-milk variety as he took a sip.
"I considered blacklisting you from all future appearances, but I suppose everyone deserves a second chance."
[Emily Littleton] There was a Chorister somewhere who would likely not approve of this. Little touches to the back of her hand, the endearing interplay, the word games, sharing a cup -- it was Fellowship, of a sort. It danced along a line that Emily didn't quite trust herself to keep.
Jarod had walked away before Emily had called that Hollower an ignorant little shite. He'd left before the same Hollower had told her, more or less, to get herself laid and get over herself. In hindsight, it was likely better he'd left when he did, icily or otherwise. Her temper was a bitter hotter than it ought to have been.
And there was tea, now, and apparent second chances.
"I appreciate your magnanimousness," she said, without tripping over the vocabulary word. These things, the play with language, was easy between them. It always had been. It was something she had missed.
"Still, I apologize for my part of it." Her part, and only her part. There's no overt change to her tone or demeanor that signifies it, but Emily refuses to take on even an ounce of Thomas's culpability for the same.
"Is today not an office day?" she asks, reaching back to a conversation a little before the street corner shouting match. Perhaps giving a subtle nod to his dressed down appearance. Though Jarod's dressing down still commanded a higher monetary investment than most of Emily's dressings up.
[Jarod Nightingale] He accepted the apology without criticism. Emily's anger hadn't been directed at him, in any case, so there wasn't any offense to be appeased. Though he did suspect that she and Thomas were not likely to become drinking buddies anytime soon.
She asked about his clothes, and he shook his head. "I'm having a day of willful irresponsibility."
Though, to be fair, what amounted to irresponsibility today would have made past versions of himself roll their eyes in disgust. Of course, there was still this - that flirtation that came far too easily to both of them. In truth, this was often how Jarod behaved with people he liked. As if he didn't really understand another way to have a relationship. (And maybe he didn't, or maybe he just liked it better this way.) One might argue that all it really amounted to was an extremely pleasurable way to keep people from getting to know him. Or (even less flatteringly) that it made him a bit of a tease.
Well, he'd have openly admitted to that last part.
"I am, of course, always looking for partners-in-crime, if you're interested."
[Emily Littleton] If this was all just a pleasant way to keep Emily from getting to know him, than Jarod had missed his mark months before. He was a little more human around her than most, a little more open. The flirtation (temptation) was a part of their friendship, had been a definite part of when they were more than mentor-and-student or just-friends.
There's a danger in revisiting that, just now. It's something she keeps quietly in mind; it's something she thinks of often in the quiet moments that find her while they are apart. Emily isn't quite sure what to make of it, or to make of his return. It puzzles her, confuses.
"Elevated from potential black-listee to prospective accomplice, am I?" The curl of her mouth suggests she's pleased at this turn of events. Emily leans back in her chair a little, pretends at relaxing. Thomas pointed out that she was wound a little tight; he wasn't wrong.
"I'll consider your offer," she says, and it's playful. Non-committal. Easy, but not effortless. Emily is out of practice at this game; she has more to lose than she did before. "What sort of willful irresponsibility do you have on the docket for today? I've a collection of discussion sections to lead, but no one shows -- my department mostly relies on email for communication, even the undergrads."
[Jarod Nightingale] [WP - Come on now, you said you'd respect her decision, remember?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] There was a moment there, during the brief stretch of silence that followed Emily's question (and oh - what a potentially dangerous and leading question it was), where the possibility of a thoroughly bold and inappropriate response seemed imminently plausible. (Well, inappropriate from Emily's point of view, at least.) It was, after all, exactly the kind of thing that Jarod would do.
He looked at her, took a sip of his (her) tea, licked his lips unobtrusively (in the way that people often did while eating or drinking), and finally said, with a completely straight face: "I was thinking of going to the Art Museum."
And that was all. The punchline, the flirtation, the innuendo, the temptation... it never materialized.
[Emily Littleton] [Aware as Empathy: The Art Museum... as mischief?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] [Subterfuge, because I'm being good, see?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] Contrary to the manner in which Jarod often acted, he was actually more than capable of controlling his behavior. Like all Awakened, he had Will, and just now... he'd used it. Emily could make what she would of that, whether the knowledge might instill relief or disappointment (or perhaps a bit of both.) By all accounts, he seemed entirely genuine in his suggestion. He thought they might go to the Art Museum. Chicago's Art Institute was huge, and pretty, and intellectually engaging in all kinds of ways. It was an easy way to distract oneself for an afternoon.
But Emily knew him well, and Jarod... could not be innocent if he tried. It simply wasn't in his DNA structure. So when she looked at him, she'd see the way that his eyes focused on her - the single-minded intensity (and the enlarged pupils) that came when gazing at something that one wanted. And of course, touching one's lips was always telling. Especially with him. Jarod always played with his mouth in some way when he was thinking about sex. (Oral fixation.)
to Emily Littleton
[Emily Littleton] [Subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] [Anti-subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] [+1]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Emily Littleton] [+1?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Emily Littleton] She realized it was a leading question about halfway into the silence that superseded it, in a moment where that bold and unrealized response was still a very real possibility; a probability, if one knew Jarod as well as she once had. But it doesn't come.
He mentions the Art Museum and she doesn't have a teacup to hold to, some little thing to smooth the pads of her fingertips over in idle distraction, some little tactile cue to draw her eyes away from the intensity in his, from his mouth. No ready excuse, likely alibi -- but she glances down, with an odd smile twisting her lips, instead of holding his gaze. There's no push, just now : politely demurring. Grace.
It's not something he's seen much of in her before. There was an echo, faintly, the first time he brought her home for tea. (A euphemism? [Might as well have been.]) Things have shifted between them, and not just because he's found his daughter or they've been apart.
He knows her well, and if he wants to he can read the tells of longing and desire that she holds back, keeps shuttered and cloistered behind the sweep of her lashes, the cant of her chin, the curl of her smile. He can see them lurking at the corner of her eyes when they find his again, calm blue fields flecked through with slate grey.
"The Museum would be nice," she acquiesces, agreeing to the more reasonable want that is present between them. There's a line drawn in the shape of that sentence; it's subtle but clear. It, too, is an act of Will. This waiting. The unknowing faith in something (someone) beyond herself. It's tremulous and terrifying; she guards it imperfectly, but keeps it all the same.
The girl at one of the tables in this shop is a ritualist herself, not that she would name herself such or even admit to it were it pointed out to her. There's a rigidity in adopting ritual, a trap to forming habits, a heaviness to staying in one place too long. It's the sort of trapping that erodes the soul without causing any notice. Ails the body. Deadens the eyes (windows to the soul). Weighs down a smile. She has stayed in this city since mid-April without reprieve. All Emily has left are the little rituals.
She's reading from a book, The Winner Stands Alone, a novel about passions, obsessions and desires, and how far away from oneself they can take a person. She's reading about a woman who would give anything for fame, a man who would destroy worlds to win back a lost love, the spirals and whirlwinds they whip up around them but she can't identify with them at all. Instead Emily's empathy is for the shop girl, who sits down beside a seemingly nice old man, chats about her wares and his life and is found, chapters later, dead and forgotten.
She's a transitory character; the sort that enters in one section and departs in another with little fanfare. Emily doesn't remember the girl's name just a few pages later, only that she haunts the man who suffocated her without leaving much of a mark.
She hasn't done much reading, see, since she Awakened. Not free reading; things to broaden her soul without a directed purpose toward the Awakened sector of the same. Not things that bring her back to an understanding of Humanity, or of her own humanity, or frame the losses and fears she's struggling with in another light.
It's freeing, in many ways, to sit in this place apart and read. To empathize with a character that is there and gone, and then float tetherless through the remainder of the text. There's less ritual to that than the carefully steeped pot of Jasmine Green at her table, to the way she breaks small bites off of her scone to lift to her lips so that she never has to bite into it. In her messenger bag are other books, things of directed learning that point to a particular subject or sphere, things that are more about Knowledge and less about Experience; less human: rote.
Her hair falls down, spilling over her shoulders and framing her face. It's been more than a month since she wore it this way; and today, today Emily is wearing a skirt instead of jeans, and a softer sweater rather than a tee. She's dabbling in being the Diplomat's Daughter again, and not in ways that make her tell off a hooligan on a Chinatown street corner. There's repose to this, purpose, a way of appearing to be calm and collected until she achieves that state for herself.
She's been at the table for some time without looking up and around her. It's in a corner near the window, but she's given up on watching people pass by. It was about this time of year, in a place not far from here, at a table near the window when all this madness in her life began. When Wharil walked through the door, dripping wet from the rain, and Adam and Jarod sauntered in (not together) not long after.
There is an echo here, but not one she's listening for. Emily doesn't hear it.
[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod read more frequently than many people probably suspected. Part of this was due to his work (not his career), which required hours of pouring over various foreign (but not foreign to him) texts. That wasn't the only reading that he did, though. He read books on philosophy and on history. He read articles and essays in academic journals. He even read fiction novels, on occasion. The bulk of the volumes in his study, though, were of poetry. There was a kind of honest to poetry. A clarity of purpose that appealed to him. Poets cut away at needless exposition. Their singular focus was on the heart of an experience - the feeling, and the meaning derived from it.
If only life were that easily broken down.
It was hardly surprising to find him in a tea shop. He visited them frequently - on the mile and elsewhere. Jarod had been to this one before, a few times. He'd never seen Emily here, but the fact that he did now, as he walked in through the door and paused to let his wandering gaze fix and hover on her position, was hardly a surprise. They had some similar tastes.
After a moment of consideration, he approached her table, pulled out an empty chair, and sat down. The warmth in the air outside had negated any need for a jacket, so he was dressed simply, in a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt. (Dressed down more than she was, today.) His left wrist (the one that was free of tattoos) sported a simple bracelet - a braided bit of blue and black string. The kind of thing that a child might make.
As a form of greeting, he reached across the table and let the tips of his fingers crawl up onto the back of Emily's hand. Then he fixed her with a playfully pleading expression (something she probably thought she'd never see on him - when did people like Jarod ever beg for anything?) and asked, "May I steal your tea?"
He could have gotten his own, of course, but it wouldn't have been as cute.
[Emily Littleton] [Aware: +1dif, distraction]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Emily Littleton] They have a sort of awareness of each other that, at times, could seem preternatural even to other magi. Perhaps it's because his is one of the first resonances she learned to pick out in a crowd, or because of the closeness they used to keep. It's likely that Emily felt him enter the room well before he took a seat at her table. Perhaps the prose (not poetry [never poetry in public]) she was studying was so engrossing that she had to finish the line, this paragraph, this page, oh just another til this chapter is through before she looks up.
Perhaps the reticence (no, hesitance? [no, coquetry]) is part of the dance they both know well. One they used to dance together. One they might have still, had things been different.
His fingertips trail over the back of her hand and there are only two people who would attempt such tender hellos with Emily Littleton. One of them was not here, and one of them spoke softly of Winter.
She glances up from her book to investigate the touch, then trails the lazy blue gaze toward his pleading expression. Which quirks a small smile at ther corner of her mouth, wry but not displeased, in a place where studious attention had been moments before.
"Help yourself," she invites, shifting in her seat a little as she slips a thin metal bookmark between the pages before she folds the book closed and sets it on the table beside her. She catches sight of the thin bracelet, but doesn't remark on it just yet.
"I'm surprised you'll be seen with me," she chides, lightly. "After yesterday afternoon." A little raise of her brow, but that fades quickly as she collects her tea to sip from it once more before he steals it away for good.
[Jarod Nightingale] They'd left things off on a less-than-pleasant note yesterday. Perhaps that was why his demeanor was so consciously endearing when he'd greeted her. It was meant to soften and disarm. He could have been angry. In fact, he had been, a little, when he'd walked away from her that afternoon without so much as a word of goodbye - slipping icily away to leave her to fend for herself against the brash and grating Hollower. This was a habit of his, and one that Ashley could well attest to. When displeased, he flicked his proverbial tail and padded away.
But that was yesterday. And as far as he was concerned, it needn't be mentioned unless Emily herself wanted to talk about it.
Besides, there was tea. And as soon as Emily had her fill of what was left in the cup, he claimed it for his own, topping it off from the little pot on the table. There was a lingering smile of the cat-who-got-its-milk variety as he took a sip.
"I considered blacklisting you from all future appearances, but I suppose everyone deserves a second chance."
[Emily Littleton] There was a Chorister somewhere who would likely not approve of this. Little touches to the back of her hand, the endearing interplay, the word games, sharing a cup -- it was Fellowship, of a sort. It danced along a line that Emily didn't quite trust herself to keep.
Jarod had walked away before Emily had called that Hollower an ignorant little shite. He'd left before the same Hollower had told her, more or less, to get herself laid and get over herself. In hindsight, it was likely better he'd left when he did, icily or otherwise. Her temper was a bitter hotter than it ought to have been.
And there was tea, now, and apparent second chances.
"I appreciate your magnanimousness," she said, without tripping over the vocabulary word. These things, the play with language, was easy between them. It always had been. It was something she had missed.
"Still, I apologize for my part of it." Her part, and only her part. There's no overt change to her tone or demeanor that signifies it, but Emily refuses to take on even an ounce of Thomas's culpability for the same.
"Is today not an office day?" she asks, reaching back to a conversation a little before the street corner shouting match. Perhaps giving a subtle nod to his dressed down appearance. Though Jarod's dressing down still commanded a higher monetary investment than most of Emily's dressings up.
[Jarod Nightingale] He accepted the apology without criticism. Emily's anger hadn't been directed at him, in any case, so there wasn't any offense to be appeased. Though he did suspect that she and Thomas were not likely to become drinking buddies anytime soon.
She asked about his clothes, and he shook his head. "I'm having a day of willful irresponsibility."
Though, to be fair, what amounted to irresponsibility today would have made past versions of himself roll their eyes in disgust. Of course, there was still this - that flirtation that came far too easily to both of them. In truth, this was often how Jarod behaved with people he liked. As if he didn't really understand another way to have a relationship. (And maybe he didn't, or maybe he just liked it better this way.) One might argue that all it really amounted to was an extremely pleasurable way to keep people from getting to know him. Or (even less flatteringly) that it made him a bit of a tease.
Well, he'd have openly admitted to that last part.
"I am, of course, always looking for partners-in-crime, if you're interested."
[Emily Littleton] If this was all just a pleasant way to keep Emily from getting to know him, than Jarod had missed his mark months before. He was a little more human around her than most, a little more open. The flirtation (temptation) was a part of their friendship, had been a definite part of when they were more than mentor-and-student or just-friends.
There's a danger in revisiting that, just now. It's something she keeps quietly in mind; it's something she thinks of often in the quiet moments that find her while they are apart. Emily isn't quite sure what to make of it, or to make of his return. It puzzles her, confuses.
"Elevated from potential black-listee to prospective accomplice, am I?" The curl of her mouth suggests she's pleased at this turn of events. Emily leans back in her chair a little, pretends at relaxing. Thomas pointed out that she was wound a little tight; he wasn't wrong.
"I'll consider your offer," she says, and it's playful. Non-committal. Easy, but not effortless. Emily is out of practice at this game; she has more to lose than she did before. "What sort of willful irresponsibility do you have on the docket for today? I've a collection of discussion sections to lead, but no one shows -- my department mostly relies on email for communication, even the undergrads."
[Jarod Nightingale] [WP - Come on now, you said you'd respect her decision, remember?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] There was a moment there, during the brief stretch of silence that followed Emily's question (and oh - what a potentially dangerous and leading question it was), where the possibility of a thoroughly bold and inappropriate response seemed imminently plausible. (Well, inappropriate from Emily's point of view, at least.) It was, after all, exactly the kind of thing that Jarod would do.
He looked at her, took a sip of his (her) tea, licked his lips unobtrusively (in the way that people often did while eating or drinking), and finally said, with a completely straight face: "I was thinking of going to the Art Museum."
And that was all. The punchline, the flirtation, the innuendo, the temptation... it never materialized.
[Emily Littleton] [Aware as Empathy: The Art Museum... as mischief?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] [Subterfuge, because I'm being good, see?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] Contrary to the manner in which Jarod often acted, he was actually more than capable of controlling his behavior. Like all Awakened, he had Will, and just now... he'd used it. Emily could make what she would of that, whether the knowledge might instill relief or disappointment (or perhaps a bit of both.) By all accounts, he seemed entirely genuine in his suggestion. He thought they might go to the Art Museum. Chicago's Art Institute was huge, and pretty, and intellectually engaging in all kinds of ways. It was an easy way to distract oneself for an afternoon.
But Emily knew him well, and Jarod... could not be innocent if he tried. It simply wasn't in his DNA structure. So when she looked at him, she'd see the way that his eyes focused on her - the single-minded intensity (and the enlarged pupils) that came when gazing at something that one wanted. And of course, touching one's lips was always telling. Especially with him. Jarod always played with his mouth in some way when he was thinking about sex. (Oral fixation.)
to Emily Littleton
[Emily Littleton] [Subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] [Anti-subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] [+1]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Emily Littleton] [+1?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Emily Littleton] She realized it was a leading question about halfway into the silence that superseded it, in a moment where that bold and unrealized response was still a very real possibility; a probability, if one knew Jarod as well as she once had. But it doesn't come.
He mentions the Art Museum and she doesn't have a teacup to hold to, some little thing to smooth the pads of her fingertips over in idle distraction, some little tactile cue to draw her eyes away from the intensity in his, from his mouth. No ready excuse, likely alibi -- but she glances down, with an odd smile twisting her lips, instead of holding his gaze. There's no push, just now : politely demurring. Grace.
It's not something he's seen much of in her before. There was an echo, faintly, the first time he brought her home for tea. (A euphemism? [Might as well have been.]) Things have shifted between them, and not just because he's found his daughter or they've been apart.
He knows her well, and if he wants to he can read the tells of longing and desire that she holds back, keeps shuttered and cloistered behind the sweep of her lashes, the cant of her chin, the curl of her smile. He can see them lurking at the corner of her eyes when they find his again, calm blue fields flecked through with slate grey.
"The Museum would be nice," she acquiesces, agreeing to the more reasonable want that is present between them. There's a line drawn in the shape of that sentence; it's subtle but clear. It, too, is an act of Will. This waiting. The unknowing faith in something (someone) beyond herself. It's tremulous and terrifying; she guards it imperfectly, but keeps it all the same.
28 September 2010
The name game
[Thomas Taylor] Some kind of den of inequity opens, the old metal rusted at the sides creaking as it folds outwards then two (Giant really) Asian men throw another out onto the street. From within the darken doorway. It was old, wise and slightly agitated. “What did I tell you Thomas-san.” The body on the ground rolls over revealing the cockney wanderer.
“Cum on Chang, we do this bloody roller coaster ever lemon, I didn’t bloody cheat, yer just crap...no offense!” Thomas stands nursing a side, the floor hurt. Dressed in grey jeans, black T-shirt and them grimy converse he was a sight. Fingers reach into his pocket and pull out a smoke as he lights it. There is silence then there’s the audible click of his fingers as the muscle slowly retreats back inside the den of iniquity leaving Thomas on the streets. No one pays it any heed really
“Every bloody lemon Chang...” He brushes some of the dirt off of himself everyone noticed him get thrown out but nearly everyone carries on either not wanting to interfere or forgetting what actually happened. Was someone thrown onto the street, it could not have been him right; he was smaller (Bigger) fatter (Thinner). Reality liked to cover up for Thomas; he had a way of being forgotten it’s how he managed to do what he did...
And a lot of what he did was not exactly legal.
[Jarod Nightingale] There were places in Chicago where a potentially unlikely combination of people could be seen mixing in each other's company. Chinatown was one of those places. By some accounts, it wasn't the sort of place that one expected to see a wealthy model-slash-businessman. But beyond the usual gift shops and take-out joints (Chinatown staples across the country), there was a real, thriving culture. Being half Chinese, and having lived in China for a few years during the formative time of his Awakening (and having since gone back to work and to visit many, many times), there was a certain nostalgic familiarity to these streets, and the people who lived here.
In particular, there was one little tea shop, tucked away between a couple of seedier establishments in the less-family-friendly part of the neighborhood, that carried a variety of yellow tea which wasn't normally purchasable anywhere outside of the rural Chinese township that made it. You would never know that she shop was there, if you just walked by on the street. The door was tucked out of the way, and completely nondescript. No signs marked it. The only people who came here were locals, and those who were very much in-the-know.
When he exited the shop, Jarod was holding a small paper bag. His BMW was nowhere to be seen (not on this street - that would have been asking for trouble), but it was likely parked somewhere not too far away. Under different circumstances, he might have simply left to go on about his day (perhaps to get something to eat - it was lunchtime after all.) But then... there was Thomas.
Thrown out of a gambling joint, and not particularly happy about it, from the looks of things. Jarod watched the brit for a moment (quietly amused), then uttered a brief laugh and walked over. He was dressed more casually today than he had been on their first encounter: jeans and a black buttoned shirt. Of course, the jeans were notably newer and more expensive-looking than Thomas' were, and the shirt had the tailored look of a designer piece, with subtle satin accents. (Casual was a relative term.)
"Bad day?"
[Jarod Nightingale] [would never know that *the* shop was there]
[Thomas Taylor] Smoke exits the mans nose like dragons fire, the cigarette between his lips seemed to be consumed at an alarming rate he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out some notes, perhaps still small change to the likes of Jarod but for the cockney it was another month’s rent and perhaps some new clothes.
[]Bad Day[/i]
He did not know Jarods voice, not above the average passerby, and this was Chinatown so what if it was light above there were dark alleys everywhere. Not far a 14 year old was chasing the dragon, even younger were being sold to overpaid fat business men to ‘love them long time’. It was a dark and seedy place. It was not unknown for people to be mugged on the streets in daylight, so without looking he states in a menacing voice “Touch me oxford an I’ll kick the seven fuckin’ shades of shit outta ya...” His face is tightly drawn, muscle tense in his arms and body showing clear definition of a readiness, the money is quickly put into his back pocket as his body turns slowly to look to his side and blinks when he see’s Jarod.
“Oh...” His face relaxes, for a moment Jarod saw a darkness, the hooligan but now there was just the cockney. The cigarette gets loosened between his lips and relaxes. “Catman, ‘ows tricks? Soz ‘bout that, can’t be too careful aye?”
[Jarod Nightingale] [Life scan - cause I'm nosy like that - diff 4 -1(going slow)]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[Emily Littleton] There's something comfortable about Chinatown, with its dens of iniquity and tea houses and signage in a language she neither reads nor speaks. The odd foods, the dim sum places that are open every day for lunch, noodle bars and street vendors and people selling cheap (illegal) knock-offs along side lucky bamboo and orchids that would never survive the native climate here. Emily finds comfort in the newspapers strewn about the sidewalk with their pictograms instead of letters, in the muddle of languages that fester and spill out into the street -- because Chinatown is a name, but it's as much an Asian cultural conglomerate as anything that nods truly toward Chinese culture.
It's not home, but it's one of the closest places to it for her in the city. This white-bred, British-accented, lanky collegiate girl had no apparent claim to Asian heritage (perhaps if you squint her eyes may be slightly almond shaped or her cheek bones a little higher -- but no), no overt reason to consider it home.
There is a bakery, around the way, that makes and sells dà ntà . She has a fondness for the Asian version over the English custard tarts, and not just because they are served piping hot and without nutmeg. This is one of the things she finds when she's feeling a little blue, or homesick, or adrift (lonely).
She's carrying one gingerly, blowing across its surface until it's cool enough to eat, when she rounds the corner that will bring her past the gambling joint -- and while she's good enough at má jià ng to win a few hands, she knows better than to play against anyone more than a generation older than her. And never, ever for money.
Her footsteps slow a little when she spies Thomas and Jarod -- an unlikely pairing at best -- but then a vaguely impish smile graces her features and she wanders over to see what trouble the Cat and the Cockney could get into.
"Hey, Southie," she says, her voice just shy of good-natured derision. It's all for jest, though; see how her Manchester accent comes forward, see how she smiles wryly and bright-eyed.
"Hi, Jarod." Oh, there, something politer. Almost prim, yet warmer somehow.
[Jarod Nightingale] [Oh look, it's Emily...]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] Having lived in Chicago (on and off) for a couple of years now, and having frequented this part of town on a number of occasions, Jarod likely saw a completely different side of the neighborhood than Thomas did. If asked, he wouldn't have described it as dark or seedy, on the whole. He probably would have lamented the need for chintzy tourist traps, and complained that, like so much of the rest of the city, the place could do with a bit of landscaping and beautification. He also would have remembered family businesses run by friendly grandmothers and children playing in the streets. Tiny tea shops, authentic restaurants, and a small movie theater that played Wong Kar-Wai films every Sunday.
(Perception, clearly, was also in the eye of the beholder.)
Thomas growled a threat at him, and for his part, Jarod took it in stride. He stood still (outside of the younger man's bubble of personal space) and lofted an eyebrow. A little surprised, perhaps, that he'd be viewed as a threat. Then again, someone like Thomas probably had every reason to be suspicious of every single person that he met. "You're welcome to try," he mused, but the tone wasn't challenging.
He accepted the apology just as easily, rolling his shoulders in a light shrug. As if the matter was neither here nor there. He gazed at Thomas measuringly for a moment, and there was a slight motion in his jaw as he rolled the edge of his tongue between canines and bit down, tasting blood.
And then, a few moments later, he said, "Tricks are fantastic, kid." And he grinned languidly.
And this may have been due to the approach of someone rather more familiar to him than Thomas was. A belated glance to Emily, who he'd felt coming a mile away, and that grin broadened before it fell slowly away. "I'm starting to think you're following me." (Obviously a jest, considering that he'd been the one to run into her the last time around.)
[Thomas Taylor] Another voice as with cigarette hanging from his lips he turns his head again, muscle go on the defensive again, tighten control showing a definition the young man tried to keep hidden (No one expects to get there arse handed to them by a man barely an adult even the generation older) Then it’s her and he grins “North, you still a germans full?” He winks to the woman then looks to Jarod when she speaks noting the tone.
An eyebrow rises at the calling him a kid. But he takes it and just consumes it, when you nickname everyone you have to be able to take it. He pats his back pocket sure the money is safe and turns to Emiliy can join the circle.
“Catman, you may be a touch older, an ‘ave all that grace mate, but yer pedigree, am a Tom cat, you get in a barney with me an you’ll know ‘bout it squire.” He winks and smirks, a mocking jest “An tricks sud be robin for ya...jesus man do you ‘ave any clothes that wudn’t pay me rent for a few months.” He eyes the mans figure, but not in the way most would, yes he was a handsome man, you would have to be the Seer not to notice but he had such nice clothes. Thomas wanted nice clothes.
“So, from the intro am guessin’ you” He points at Jarod and then points at Emily “Know each other.” He takes a small step back as the socially aware do when you realise your fast becoming the third wheel. “Take it you were mates before Catman took a wander?” He looks between them
[Emily Littleton] "Oh, yes," she says to Jarod, when he accuses her of following him. "I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time than stalk you like a moon-struck teenager." Very serious, this. Deadpan, even. There's no hint that she's intimidated by him any longer; they've come a long way since that run-in at the Soup Kitchen. "I think, lovely, that you've me confused with Enid."
A little pause. Then the corner of her mouth twists, and Emily can't help but smirk a little. It's a playful thing between them. It reinforces Thomas's assumptions quite neatly.
He asks if she's still a Germans full and she grins, then shrugs a bit and casts an innocent look upward. (Who? Me? Never...)
"Are you two getting in a row?" she asks, looking between the two of them with mock suspicion just now, and the easily intimation that she might just move along were it so. Ease herself and the egg tart out of the potential fray (it's a precious commodity, see [no, I am not sharing]). "And Catman?"
Smirk.
"That has quite a ring to it." Emily runs her tongue over one of her eye teeth; it is not as sharp as Jarod's are, but it will serve for this particular bout of mischief.
[Jarod Nightingale] Thomas assumed that because he was rough-and-tumble and Jarod was... well... not, that a potential fight between them was fated to a certain outcome before it even began. And this assumption may have been accurate. Thomas almost certainly got into more fist-fights than Jarod did. He both looked and acted like he had a propensity to violence. The erstwhile Verbena just smiled again, somehow amused by the picture that Thomas painted. There was slight condescension in that, just as there had been in his nick-naming the Hollow One 'kid'. But then, Thomas had called him a treehugger on their last encounter, so perhaps they were even.
Emily, for her part, played along with him very well. It was an old dance, this, and a welcome one. Jarod couldn't help but laugh, and it was genuine laugh, this time - a beatific expression on him. It lit up his face with a vibrant glow. "If I remember correctly, Enid's response to me was hardly lovestruck. You, on the other hand... "
And here he leaned in and spoke quietly near the edge of Emily's ear. "...are welcome to follow me around, even if you do have better things to do."
It was a momentary interlude, before Jarod was once again contemplating the third party in their vicinity. And Thomas... was staring at him. Jarod didn't seem to mind the focus of the other man's eyes. One would imagine that he was used to that (that he was, in fact, designed for it - both by nature and by his own hand). He didn't interpret it as flirtatious (consider the source), but that didn't mean he couldn't respond that way.
"I'd offer to buy you some, but it would come with a price." A flash of Cheshire-cat smile, grinning and wry. (Secrets that one probably doesn't really want to learn.)
Back to Emily (who'd asked if they were getting into a row), "Well, not yet, anyway. Time will tell, of course."
[Jarod Nightingale] [Erstwhile? No, he's still a verbena. Unusual. Don't ask me how I just mixed those words up. It's clearly not my night.]
[Thomas Taylor] Enid.
He clicks his fingers sharply to get there attention, voice low “Guys, it’s Morgan now, not Enid, I’d ask you to ‘member it.” Said very seriously with very little humour. He was defensive over Le Fay with everything that had happened, they had become friends and Thomas could count his friends on one hand. “It makes ‘er upset, an if you keep it up you cud let it slip at the pete moment, an then you’ll ‘ave me on yer hat, so ‘member!” A moment where he locks eyes with each of them and you see a very wilful hollow one. Still it was news to him she stalked Jarod and yet again no surprise I mean he was very handsome.
A moments silence then another as his eyes close smoke blown from his nose and when they open again he and it has all changed, all smiles and cockney charm “Nah Catman just came over to me after I’ad a lil disagreement with me other players...” A cheeky grin offered to both.
“So take it you’ve stalked Catman as well, in fact bet he ‘as ‘ad ‘is way with more than a fair share of the awakened lasses eh Catman.” A wink to Jarod “You don’t ‘ave to tell names, but am thinkin’ few wud resist yer advances...an for the record mate I ain’t one of ‘im, so don’t get behind me for rent so I’ll do just clavin in me second german gear” He nods the cigarette taken from his lips as he drops it on the floor as he looks between them “So North, Cat take it you two ‘ave shagged?” He grins and clicks audibility at both of them.
[Emily Littleton] [ ... Do I mind my manners? ... Maybe?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] [... And our favorite dice pool?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] See Jarod? He was about to get quite the reply, just then. All smart-ass and self-assured and not at all playing-with-fire, no, but instead there's a sharpness that flickers across her features when Thomas snaps at her.
When the Chav gets pissant and pushy with the Diplomat's daughter. Her lips purse, momentarily, and she doesn't back down from the fixated stare he offers her. No, you see, in the months since Catman has left Emily has become Unrelenting in her own way.
"Beg your pardon," she says, oh and it's all clipped consonants now. Very polite. Prim. Dangerously so. Emily points one finger at Thomas, lazily, thoughtfully; it's not a loaded gesture just yet. "I know full well that her name has changed, along with plenty about her personality -- but let's not get into that just now, yes?"
Deadly, that tone. So controlled. So lightly playful and yet not. Emily weilds it like a sharp-tipped knife. It plays into the little smirk she wears. It all seems so very innocuous, and it is.
"But seeing as I was referring to the person she was, before Jarod left, at a time when you were not here -- and not in her presence, when I am quite careful to use the proper name -- it seemed more fitting."
He blows smoke out of his nose; her eyes do not cut away. If there's a challenge to be met here, it's not from the unusual Verbena but from the Singer girl who has little patience for this nonsense.
"Though if you'd like to go back in time and be the one that picks her and Austin up from the airport, bruised bloodied and tight-lipped about the cause, be my guest."
It's a little like pulling rank, this. And it diverts them, neatly, from her past relationship with Jarod. That's not even on the table. Emily's not really interested in discussing it. There's a lightness to her tone that plays at taking the sting out of her words. And then there's indifference, again, as she decides it's time to nibble at her cooling snack and wait on a reply.
[Jarod Nightingale] Say this for the Hollow One - for all his faults, he seemed to take most things fairly well in stride. Plenty of men would have hauled back and clocked Jarod for making a sexual insinuation like that. Plenty of men had. (Or, well, they'd tried.) Enid, though (or rather, Morgan)... was evidently someone who Thomas felt protective of. And though Jarod had no idea why the teenage hermetic had changed her name, ultimately it didn't really matter. In this, he gave a surprising concession by offering a faint nod of his head and saying, "Sorry."
(And surprisingly, the heavens did not open up and rain down pigs with wings.)
That was all before Thomas launched into a slew of questions and innuendos that would have made most people turn beet-red in horror. Jarod, of course, did none of these things. He did, however, make a calm correction. "Had my way?" An arched eyebrow. "I'd like to think that the end result was mutually beneficial, and mutually desired, in all cases." And as for the rest, well... he did not confirm or deny. Emily was likely to have a bit more to say about it all than he did.
And oh, she did. But she pulled the conversation back in a direction that was decidedly less playful, for all her delicate tone. And Jarod glanced at her measuringly for a moment, but kept his thoughts to himself.
He was hardly the kind of person who was afraid of conflict. If anything, Jarod was usually the one pressing buttons in such a deliberate fashion. But there was more going on here than what was being said, and he didn't even need to look at Emily, or listen to the careful tone in her voice to know that. So he reached out and touched her arm gently. "I'm a bit hungry. Want to get lunch?"
The request wasn't meant to exclude Thomas so much as reprieve him.
[Thomas Taylor] If she wanted a verbal spar she came to the right Southie because Thomas’ lips curl at the corner. “A rose by any other name pet, yer still talkin’ ‘bout the same person, an consderin’ Catman already made that slip up.” He holds a hand to Jarod “An it ain’t yer fault squire, as she said you were ‘ere tis all you knew...no need to say sorry you weren’t in the loop” He looks back to Emiliy another cigarette placed in his lips as he pauses a moment to light it, taking a deep relaxing drag “Enid, Le Fay, Morgan yer referin’ to the same person, an Enid ‘as left the buildin’, gone vanished, if she didn’t want it to be that way I’d ‘ave laid off pretty as you please. Yer talkin’ ‘bout Le Fay in name, an the pete one at that” Another drag another blowing of smoke. Not a knife, Thomas expresses it like a club, blantant, powerful, so full of passion and will, a consuming force.
He just smirks shaking his head “North ain’t ‘avin’ a pissin’ contest with ya ‘bout this, robin for you for bein’ there an elpin’, am sure she appreciates it, am sure she owes ya for it, but we both know I cannot go back in lemon so why say it. You say it so you can get one up on me, be all high an soddin’ mighty. But slips ‘appen, I mentioned it cos wen Catman called ‘er it the other nite she kinda freak ‘bout it, you don’t like ‘ow I brought it up, you got the issue get a bloody tissue an cry me a river while yer at it”
She pulls rank and he shrugs a shoulder “You cannot go from bein’ all chamrin’ an tauntin’ to pullin’ this yankin’ chain North, don’t suit ya, an am not sure if all the rest of ‘em roll over an say sorry but not gonna ‘appen so take yer dummy an throw it the other way luv Tommy ain’t bitin’.” He takes the cigarette from his lips and looks between them and in almost the same breath “So I take that as a yes to you two’s shaggin’, you can tell you know, all pretty as you please back of the bus...”
He looks to Jarod “Nah mate am robin, but thanks for the offer, is it just me or is it the brass monkey’s out ‘ere suddenly...”
[Emily Littleton] "What she probably wants," Emily says, with not a little bit of insight into this, "Is for Enid and Morgan to be two separate people, so she can leave one of them in her past. The girl I met, who could still go home to Thanskgiving with her Papa after working at the Soup Kitchen, is not the same young woman who is now Ashley's apprentice."
There's a note of finality to that, and a firmity behind it that Thomas likely won't understand. That's fine by Emily; it isn't really for him. The apples of her cheeks are pinked now, frustated, and her eyes remain sharp.
There's more here, it's just on the tip of her tongue. It's almost as if Emily's been looking for someone to fight with for awhile and Thomas just happened to give her the opening. Or perhaps he'd pushed a particularly sore button, just now, with the way he spoke to them or the topic they're dancing around.
He asked again if they were involved and Emily gave him an incredulous look. Whether that was for the topic, or his manners, was Tom's to sort out. But there was Jarod's hand on her arm, and she looked down at the small touch and frowned slightly.
"Mm." A small sound, still agitated. "No. Thank you. I think I'll find my way back to campus." As they all part ways, she cuts a glance to Thomas, and there's still an edge of agitation in it, but not quite the push that was there before.
[Thomas Taylor] He moves into Emily’s space, he does not flinch under her unrelenting gaze, the wandering nature cannot be stopped “I tell you wat then pet, you keep usin’ the name the coats are lookin’ for, an –if- they catch you, we can say I told ya so, an wen the rescue committee turns up, I’ll quote a speech ya gave Info, ‘bout personally responsibility and all that crap. Am not defendin’ Info ,she was a tit an a fool, but yer just walkin’ in similar shoes you arrogant singer. If it was just yer neck I wud not give a flyin’ fuck, but’s its others. So ‘ow ‘bout usin’ yer loaf an not talkin’ ‘bout names that are being hunted” He then steps away and blows smoke out, he was anger there was a passionate rage, blue eyes darkned and a hollowness came to his cheeks that would look attractive if not marred by words.
“But since you obviously ain’t spoke to Le Fay ‘bout usin’ that name, ‘ow ‘bout we both say you talk to ‘er before sayin’ it ‘again...” He puts a hand between them and gestures with his finger “You need to get sumthin’ off yer chest pet, might as well be Tommy, I can consume anthin’ you got to give, I’ll take it all an grin pet.” Perhaps he picked up she had more on her mind. Could unrelenting be consumed, could consumption be stopped by unrelenting. No consumption was Unrelenting. Smoke wander away from both of them.
[Emily Littleton] [WP: ... Don't channel Owen.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] "Oh for fuck's sake," she exclaims when he gets into her space, which is not something Emily takes well at all. There's an edge to her, like she's considering slapping the Chav right here and right now in the middle of Chinatown. It's an anger that burns hotly, and is all too familiar. It's a thing she's tried, for quite some time to put down.
"Step off, you ignorant little shit. I used the name I did because I don't know if anyone's had a chance to tell Jarod that her name has changed and you of all people, Mr. Keep it on the Down Low and Mind the Hunted, are the only one that has drawn attention to it, quarreling on a street corner like school children. The whole fecking block knows they're one and the same now. I didn't want to have the conversation in plain daylight, thank you very much. Some of us, regardless of what you think, have an ear for discretion."
She exhales, heavily, but it doesn't carry the dramatics of smoke blown out through her nose.
"If we're through here," she says, lilting that upward even though it wasn't a question as much as it was a dismissal. "I'll kindly take my leave."
[Thomas Taylor] His lips purse as he gives her a kiss in the air, smirking, that rage fading. “Pet, you got issues, get the tissues an talk to Le Fay, say for that ‘ave a robin day an get sum fuckin’ Duracell an ‘ave a wank, your worn more tight than a nun knickers!”
He blows her a kiss and turns walking away raising a hand and offering her the single finger as he did.
“Cum on Chang, we do this bloody roller coaster ever lemon, I didn’t bloody cheat, yer just crap...no offense!” Thomas stands nursing a side, the floor hurt. Dressed in grey jeans, black T-shirt and them grimy converse he was a sight. Fingers reach into his pocket and pull out a smoke as he lights it. There is silence then there’s the audible click of his fingers as the muscle slowly retreats back inside the den of iniquity leaving Thomas on the streets. No one pays it any heed really
“Every bloody lemon Chang...” He brushes some of the dirt off of himself everyone noticed him get thrown out but nearly everyone carries on either not wanting to interfere or forgetting what actually happened. Was someone thrown onto the street, it could not have been him right; he was smaller (Bigger) fatter (Thinner). Reality liked to cover up for Thomas; he had a way of being forgotten it’s how he managed to do what he did...
And a lot of what he did was not exactly legal.
[Jarod Nightingale] There were places in Chicago where a potentially unlikely combination of people could be seen mixing in each other's company. Chinatown was one of those places. By some accounts, it wasn't the sort of place that one expected to see a wealthy model-slash-businessman. But beyond the usual gift shops and take-out joints (Chinatown staples across the country), there was a real, thriving culture. Being half Chinese, and having lived in China for a few years during the formative time of his Awakening (and having since gone back to work and to visit many, many times), there was a certain nostalgic familiarity to these streets, and the people who lived here.
In particular, there was one little tea shop, tucked away between a couple of seedier establishments in the less-family-friendly part of the neighborhood, that carried a variety of yellow tea which wasn't normally purchasable anywhere outside of the rural Chinese township that made it. You would never know that she shop was there, if you just walked by on the street. The door was tucked out of the way, and completely nondescript. No signs marked it. The only people who came here were locals, and those who were very much in-the-know.
When he exited the shop, Jarod was holding a small paper bag. His BMW was nowhere to be seen (not on this street - that would have been asking for trouble), but it was likely parked somewhere not too far away. Under different circumstances, he might have simply left to go on about his day (perhaps to get something to eat - it was lunchtime after all.) But then... there was Thomas.
Thrown out of a gambling joint, and not particularly happy about it, from the looks of things. Jarod watched the brit for a moment (quietly amused), then uttered a brief laugh and walked over. He was dressed more casually today than he had been on their first encounter: jeans and a black buttoned shirt. Of course, the jeans were notably newer and more expensive-looking than Thomas' were, and the shirt had the tailored look of a designer piece, with subtle satin accents. (Casual was a relative term.)
"Bad day?"
[Jarod Nightingale] [would never know that *the* shop was there]
[Thomas Taylor] Smoke exits the mans nose like dragons fire, the cigarette between his lips seemed to be consumed at an alarming rate he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out some notes, perhaps still small change to the likes of Jarod but for the cockney it was another month’s rent and perhaps some new clothes.
[]Bad Day[/i]
He did not know Jarods voice, not above the average passerby, and this was Chinatown so what if it was light above there were dark alleys everywhere. Not far a 14 year old was chasing the dragon, even younger were being sold to overpaid fat business men to ‘love them long time’. It was a dark and seedy place. It was not unknown for people to be mugged on the streets in daylight, so without looking he states in a menacing voice “Touch me oxford an I’ll kick the seven fuckin’ shades of shit outta ya...” His face is tightly drawn, muscle tense in his arms and body showing clear definition of a readiness, the money is quickly put into his back pocket as his body turns slowly to look to his side and blinks when he see’s Jarod.
“Oh...” His face relaxes, for a moment Jarod saw a darkness, the hooligan but now there was just the cockney. The cigarette gets loosened between his lips and relaxes. “Catman, ‘ows tricks? Soz ‘bout that, can’t be too careful aye?”
[Jarod Nightingale] [Life scan - cause I'm nosy like that - diff 4 -1(going slow)]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 4, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[Emily Littleton] There's something comfortable about Chinatown, with its dens of iniquity and tea houses and signage in a language she neither reads nor speaks. The odd foods, the dim sum places that are open every day for lunch, noodle bars and street vendors and people selling cheap (illegal) knock-offs along side lucky bamboo and orchids that would never survive the native climate here. Emily finds comfort in the newspapers strewn about the sidewalk with their pictograms instead of letters, in the muddle of languages that fester and spill out into the street -- because Chinatown is a name, but it's as much an Asian cultural conglomerate as anything that nods truly toward Chinese culture.
It's not home, but it's one of the closest places to it for her in the city. This white-bred, British-accented, lanky collegiate girl had no apparent claim to Asian heritage (perhaps if you squint her eyes may be slightly almond shaped or her cheek bones a little higher -- but no), no overt reason to consider it home.
There is a bakery, around the way, that makes and sells dà ntà . She has a fondness for the Asian version over the English custard tarts, and not just because they are served piping hot and without nutmeg. This is one of the things she finds when she's feeling a little blue, or homesick, or adrift (lonely).
She's carrying one gingerly, blowing across its surface until it's cool enough to eat, when she rounds the corner that will bring her past the gambling joint -- and while she's good enough at má jià ng to win a few hands, she knows better than to play against anyone more than a generation older than her. And never, ever for money.
Her footsteps slow a little when she spies Thomas and Jarod -- an unlikely pairing at best -- but then a vaguely impish smile graces her features and she wanders over to see what trouble the Cat and the Cockney could get into.
"Hey, Southie," she says, her voice just shy of good-natured derision. It's all for jest, though; see how her Manchester accent comes forward, see how she smiles wryly and bright-eyed.
"Hi, Jarod." Oh, there, something politer. Almost prim, yet warmer somehow.
[Jarod Nightingale] [Oh look, it's Emily...]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] Having lived in Chicago (on and off) for a couple of years now, and having frequented this part of town on a number of occasions, Jarod likely saw a completely different side of the neighborhood than Thomas did. If asked, he wouldn't have described it as dark or seedy, on the whole. He probably would have lamented the need for chintzy tourist traps, and complained that, like so much of the rest of the city, the place could do with a bit of landscaping and beautification. He also would have remembered family businesses run by friendly grandmothers and children playing in the streets. Tiny tea shops, authentic restaurants, and a small movie theater that played Wong Kar-Wai films every Sunday.
(Perception, clearly, was also in the eye of the beholder.)
Thomas growled a threat at him, and for his part, Jarod took it in stride. He stood still (outside of the younger man's bubble of personal space) and lofted an eyebrow. A little surprised, perhaps, that he'd be viewed as a threat. Then again, someone like Thomas probably had every reason to be suspicious of every single person that he met. "You're welcome to try," he mused, but the tone wasn't challenging.
He accepted the apology just as easily, rolling his shoulders in a light shrug. As if the matter was neither here nor there. He gazed at Thomas measuringly for a moment, and there was a slight motion in his jaw as he rolled the edge of his tongue between canines and bit down, tasting blood.
And then, a few moments later, he said, "Tricks are fantastic, kid." And he grinned languidly.
And this may have been due to the approach of someone rather more familiar to him than Thomas was. A belated glance to Emily, who he'd felt coming a mile away, and that grin broadened before it fell slowly away. "I'm starting to think you're following me." (Obviously a jest, considering that he'd been the one to run into her the last time around.)
[Thomas Taylor] Another voice as with cigarette hanging from his lips he turns his head again, muscle go on the defensive again, tighten control showing a definition the young man tried to keep hidden (No one expects to get there arse handed to them by a man barely an adult even the generation older) Then it’s her and he grins “North, you still a germans full?” He winks to the woman then looks to Jarod when she speaks noting the tone.
An eyebrow rises at the calling him a kid. But he takes it and just consumes it, when you nickname everyone you have to be able to take it. He pats his back pocket sure the money is safe and turns to Emiliy can join the circle.
“Catman, you may be a touch older, an ‘ave all that grace mate, but yer pedigree, am a Tom cat, you get in a barney with me an you’ll know ‘bout it squire.” He winks and smirks, a mocking jest “An tricks sud be robin for ya...jesus man do you ‘ave any clothes that wudn’t pay me rent for a few months.” He eyes the mans figure, but not in the way most would, yes he was a handsome man, you would have to be the Seer not to notice but he had such nice clothes. Thomas wanted nice clothes.
“So, from the intro am guessin’ you” He points at Jarod and then points at Emily “Know each other.” He takes a small step back as the socially aware do when you realise your fast becoming the third wheel. “Take it you were mates before Catman took a wander?” He looks between them
[Emily Littleton] "Oh, yes," she says to Jarod, when he accuses her of following him. "I have absolutely nothing better to do with my time than stalk you like a moon-struck teenager." Very serious, this. Deadpan, even. There's no hint that she's intimidated by him any longer; they've come a long way since that run-in at the Soup Kitchen. "I think, lovely, that you've me confused with Enid."
A little pause. Then the corner of her mouth twists, and Emily can't help but smirk a little. It's a playful thing between them. It reinforces Thomas's assumptions quite neatly.
He asks if she's still a Germans full and she grins, then shrugs a bit and casts an innocent look upward. (Who? Me? Never...)
"Are you two getting in a row?" she asks, looking between the two of them with mock suspicion just now, and the easily intimation that she might just move along were it so. Ease herself and the egg tart out of the potential fray (it's a precious commodity, see [no, I am not sharing]). "And Catman?"
Smirk.
"That has quite a ring to it." Emily runs her tongue over one of her eye teeth; it is not as sharp as Jarod's are, but it will serve for this particular bout of mischief.
[Jarod Nightingale] Thomas assumed that because he was rough-and-tumble and Jarod was... well... not, that a potential fight between them was fated to a certain outcome before it even began. And this assumption may have been accurate. Thomas almost certainly got into more fist-fights than Jarod did. He both looked and acted like he had a propensity to violence. The erstwhile Verbena just smiled again, somehow amused by the picture that Thomas painted. There was slight condescension in that, just as there had been in his nick-naming the Hollow One 'kid'. But then, Thomas had called him a treehugger on their last encounter, so perhaps they were even.
Emily, for her part, played along with him very well. It was an old dance, this, and a welcome one. Jarod couldn't help but laugh, and it was genuine laugh, this time - a beatific expression on him. It lit up his face with a vibrant glow. "If I remember correctly, Enid's response to me was hardly lovestruck. You, on the other hand... "
And here he leaned in and spoke quietly near the edge of Emily's ear. "...are welcome to follow me around, even if you do have better things to do."
It was a momentary interlude, before Jarod was once again contemplating the third party in their vicinity. And Thomas... was staring at him. Jarod didn't seem to mind the focus of the other man's eyes. One would imagine that he was used to that (that he was, in fact, designed for it - both by nature and by his own hand). He didn't interpret it as flirtatious (consider the source), but that didn't mean he couldn't respond that way.
"I'd offer to buy you some, but it would come with a price." A flash of Cheshire-cat smile, grinning and wry. (Secrets that one probably doesn't really want to learn.)
Back to Emily (who'd asked if they were getting into a row), "Well, not yet, anyway. Time will tell, of course."
[Jarod Nightingale] [Erstwhile? No, he's still a verbena. Unusual. Don't ask me how I just mixed those words up. It's clearly not my night.]
[Thomas Taylor] Enid.
He clicks his fingers sharply to get there attention, voice low “Guys, it’s Morgan now, not Enid, I’d ask you to ‘member it.” Said very seriously with very little humour. He was defensive over Le Fay with everything that had happened, they had become friends and Thomas could count his friends on one hand. “It makes ‘er upset, an if you keep it up you cud let it slip at the pete moment, an then you’ll ‘ave me on yer hat, so ‘member!” A moment where he locks eyes with each of them and you see a very wilful hollow one. Still it was news to him she stalked Jarod and yet again no surprise I mean he was very handsome.
A moments silence then another as his eyes close smoke blown from his nose and when they open again he and it has all changed, all smiles and cockney charm “Nah Catman just came over to me after I’ad a lil disagreement with me other players...” A cheeky grin offered to both.
“So take it you’ve stalked Catman as well, in fact bet he ‘as ‘ad ‘is way with more than a fair share of the awakened lasses eh Catman.” A wink to Jarod “You don’t ‘ave to tell names, but am thinkin’ few wud resist yer advances...an for the record mate I ain’t one of ‘im, so don’t get behind me for rent so I’ll do just clavin in me second german gear” He nods the cigarette taken from his lips as he drops it on the floor as he looks between them “So North, Cat take it you two ‘ave shagged?” He grins and clicks audibility at both of them.
[Emily Littleton] [ ... Do I mind my manners? ... Maybe?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] [... And our favorite dice pool?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] See Jarod? He was about to get quite the reply, just then. All smart-ass and self-assured and not at all playing-with-fire, no, but instead there's a sharpness that flickers across her features when Thomas snaps at her.
When the Chav gets pissant and pushy with the Diplomat's daughter. Her lips purse, momentarily, and she doesn't back down from the fixated stare he offers her. No, you see, in the months since Catman has left Emily has become Unrelenting in her own way.
"Beg your pardon," she says, oh and it's all clipped consonants now. Very polite. Prim. Dangerously so. Emily points one finger at Thomas, lazily, thoughtfully; it's not a loaded gesture just yet. "I know full well that her name has changed, along with plenty about her personality -- but let's not get into that just now, yes?"
Deadly, that tone. So controlled. So lightly playful and yet not. Emily weilds it like a sharp-tipped knife. It plays into the little smirk she wears. It all seems so very innocuous, and it is.
"But seeing as I was referring to the person she was, before Jarod left, at a time when you were not here -- and not in her presence, when I am quite careful to use the proper name -- it seemed more fitting."
He blows smoke out of his nose; her eyes do not cut away. If there's a challenge to be met here, it's not from the unusual Verbena but from the Singer girl who has little patience for this nonsense.
"Though if you'd like to go back in time and be the one that picks her and Austin up from the airport, bruised bloodied and tight-lipped about the cause, be my guest."
It's a little like pulling rank, this. And it diverts them, neatly, from her past relationship with Jarod. That's not even on the table. Emily's not really interested in discussing it. There's a lightness to her tone that plays at taking the sting out of her words. And then there's indifference, again, as she decides it's time to nibble at her cooling snack and wait on a reply.
[Jarod Nightingale] Say this for the Hollow One - for all his faults, he seemed to take most things fairly well in stride. Plenty of men would have hauled back and clocked Jarod for making a sexual insinuation like that. Plenty of men had. (Or, well, they'd tried.) Enid, though (or rather, Morgan)... was evidently someone who Thomas felt protective of. And though Jarod had no idea why the teenage hermetic had changed her name, ultimately it didn't really matter. In this, he gave a surprising concession by offering a faint nod of his head and saying, "Sorry."
(And surprisingly, the heavens did not open up and rain down pigs with wings.)
That was all before Thomas launched into a slew of questions and innuendos that would have made most people turn beet-red in horror. Jarod, of course, did none of these things. He did, however, make a calm correction. "Had my way?" An arched eyebrow. "I'd like to think that the end result was mutually beneficial, and mutually desired, in all cases." And as for the rest, well... he did not confirm or deny. Emily was likely to have a bit more to say about it all than he did.
And oh, she did. But she pulled the conversation back in a direction that was decidedly less playful, for all her delicate tone. And Jarod glanced at her measuringly for a moment, but kept his thoughts to himself.
He was hardly the kind of person who was afraid of conflict. If anything, Jarod was usually the one pressing buttons in such a deliberate fashion. But there was more going on here than what was being said, and he didn't even need to look at Emily, or listen to the careful tone in her voice to know that. So he reached out and touched her arm gently. "I'm a bit hungry. Want to get lunch?"
The request wasn't meant to exclude Thomas so much as reprieve him.
[Thomas Taylor] If she wanted a verbal spar she came to the right Southie because Thomas’ lips curl at the corner. “A rose by any other name pet, yer still talkin’ ‘bout the same person, an consderin’ Catman already made that slip up.” He holds a hand to Jarod “An it ain’t yer fault squire, as she said you were ‘ere tis all you knew...no need to say sorry you weren’t in the loop” He looks back to Emiliy another cigarette placed in his lips as he pauses a moment to light it, taking a deep relaxing drag “Enid, Le Fay, Morgan yer referin’ to the same person, an Enid ‘as left the buildin’, gone vanished, if she didn’t want it to be that way I’d ‘ave laid off pretty as you please. Yer talkin’ ‘bout Le Fay in name, an the pete one at that” Another drag another blowing of smoke. Not a knife, Thomas expresses it like a club, blantant, powerful, so full of passion and will, a consuming force.
He just smirks shaking his head “North ain’t ‘avin’ a pissin’ contest with ya ‘bout this, robin for you for bein’ there an elpin’, am sure she appreciates it, am sure she owes ya for it, but we both know I cannot go back in lemon so why say it. You say it so you can get one up on me, be all high an soddin’ mighty. But slips ‘appen, I mentioned it cos wen Catman called ‘er it the other nite she kinda freak ‘bout it, you don’t like ‘ow I brought it up, you got the issue get a bloody tissue an cry me a river while yer at it”
She pulls rank and he shrugs a shoulder “You cannot go from bein’ all chamrin’ an tauntin’ to pullin’ this yankin’ chain North, don’t suit ya, an am not sure if all the rest of ‘em roll over an say sorry but not gonna ‘appen so take yer dummy an throw it the other way luv Tommy ain’t bitin’.” He takes the cigarette from his lips and looks between them and in almost the same breath “So I take that as a yes to you two’s shaggin’, you can tell you know, all pretty as you please back of the bus...”
He looks to Jarod “Nah mate am robin, but thanks for the offer, is it just me or is it the brass monkey’s out ‘ere suddenly...”
[Emily Littleton] "What she probably wants," Emily says, with not a little bit of insight into this, "Is for Enid and Morgan to be two separate people, so she can leave one of them in her past. The girl I met, who could still go home to Thanskgiving with her Papa after working at the Soup Kitchen, is not the same young woman who is now Ashley's apprentice."
There's a note of finality to that, and a firmity behind it that Thomas likely won't understand. That's fine by Emily; it isn't really for him. The apples of her cheeks are pinked now, frustated, and her eyes remain sharp.
There's more here, it's just on the tip of her tongue. It's almost as if Emily's been looking for someone to fight with for awhile and Thomas just happened to give her the opening. Or perhaps he'd pushed a particularly sore button, just now, with the way he spoke to them or the topic they're dancing around.
He asked again if they were involved and Emily gave him an incredulous look. Whether that was for the topic, or his manners, was Tom's to sort out. But there was Jarod's hand on her arm, and she looked down at the small touch and frowned slightly.
"Mm." A small sound, still agitated. "No. Thank you. I think I'll find my way back to campus." As they all part ways, she cuts a glance to Thomas, and there's still an edge of agitation in it, but not quite the push that was there before.
[Thomas Taylor] He moves into Emily’s space, he does not flinch under her unrelenting gaze, the wandering nature cannot be stopped “I tell you wat then pet, you keep usin’ the name the coats are lookin’ for, an –if- they catch you, we can say I told ya so, an wen the rescue committee turns up, I’ll quote a speech ya gave Info, ‘bout personally responsibility and all that crap. Am not defendin’ Info ,she was a tit an a fool, but yer just walkin’ in similar shoes you arrogant singer. If it was just yer neck I wud not give a flyin’ fuck, but’s its others. So ‘ow ‘bout usin’ yer loaf an not talkin’ ‘bout names that are being hunted” He then steps away and blows smoke out, he was anger there was a passionate rage, blue eyes darkned and a hollowness came to his cheeks that would look attractive if not marred by words.
“But since you obviously ain’t spoke to Le Fay ‘bout usin’ that name, ‘ow ‘bout we both say you talk to ‘er before sayin’ it ‘again...” He puts a hand between them and gestures with his finger “You need to get sumthin’ off yer chest pet, might as well be Tommy, I can consume anthin’ you got to give, I’ll take it all an grin pet.” Perhaps he picked up she had more on her mind. Could unrelenting be consumed, could consumption be stopped by unrelenting. No consumption was Unrelenting. Smoke wander away from both of them.
[Emily Littleton] [WP: ... Don't channel Owen.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Emily Littleton] "Oh for fuck's sake," she exclaims when he gets into her space, which is not something Emily takes well at all. There's an edge to her, like she's considering slapping the Chav right here and right now in the middle of Chinatown. It's an anger that burns hotly, and is all too familiar. It's a thing she's tried, for quite some time to put down.
"Step off, you ignorant little shit. I used the name I did because I don't know if anyone's had a chance to tell Jarod that her name has changed and you of all people, Mr. Keep it on the Down Low and Mind the Hunted, are the only one that has drawn attention to it, quarreling on a street corner like school children. The whole fecking block knows they're one and the same now. I didn't want to have the conversation in plain daylight, thank you very much. Some of us, regardless of what you think, have an ear for discretion."
She exhales, heavily, but it doesn't carry the dramatics of smoke blown out through her nose.
"If we're through here," she says, lilting that upward even though it wasn't a question as much as it was a dismissal. "I'll kindly take my leave."
[Thomas Taylor] His lips purse as he gives her a kiss in the air, smirking, that rage fading. “Pet, you got issues, get the tissues an talk to Le Fay, say for that ‘ave a robin day an get sum fuckin’ Duracell an ‘ave a wank, your worn more tight than a nun knickers!”
He blows her a kiss and turns walking away raising a hand and offering her the single finger as he did.
27 September 2010
Hung, Drawn and Quartered
[Emily] Emily is fluent in goodbye, with all of its nuances, with all of its finality. She knows the things you don't do, and the things you must. She knows how to bite back tears until it's over. To find a brave face. To weather the sea-change. To solider on. She knows, too, that leaving is the easier role. To pack up and head off for new adventures is easier than being the person left behind. For much of her life, she's been the one going away. This year, it's all been catching up with her in a rush.
Jarod left.
Owen left.
Declan left.
Charlie left.
Daiyu died.
James left.
Alex and Riley left, together, to go happily toward warmer climes.
There are more, but she's not really in the mood to find and name them. Emily has witnessed so many goodbyes that she's starting to go numb (a lie). They've been so tightly packed that she can't tell where one ends and the next begins. The sea of friendship is running to low tide and she's stuck on some damned rock and unable to break free.
She's got a year long lease on a new apartment. She's the Emissary for a dwindling cabal. She has a Catechumenate to finish, and graduate school to begin. It's all so very heavy. The things in her apartment no longer fit into the backseat and trunk of her car. She owns a bedframe, of all the ridiculous symbols of permenance. But build as she might, she can't make the things that feel like Home stay.
She can't keep them from leaving.
And she can't keep them from promising, in stupid, subtle ways, that they might come back. She's thinking of a postcard on a kitchen table elsewhere in Lake View when she calls Ashley and explains she's thinking of going out for a pint. She doesn't say, outright, that she's planning to get pissed. She's not planning on. She's just not planning against it either.
This place on the Mile is Ashley's haunt, and Emily doesn't ask after a dresscode or atmosphere. She takes what she knows of the Hermetic, throws in a nod to the weather, and shows up in a light-weight leather jacket, a thin sweater and jeans. The sweater's an aubergine color, deep enough to bring the blue forward in her eyes as much out of contrast as anything else. She's hale enough now to let her messenger bag's strap hang across her torso again. She doesn't favor any side as she moves. She looks a little tired -- what graduate student doesn't look tired, mid-term -- and hungry -- again, she's just beginning her years-long quest for free food that is not pizza.
"Hey, Ashley," is all the greeting she tosses the Hermetic as she slips the messenger bag's strap over head head with one hand as she slides into a booth, or a chair, or onto a barstool (wherever they may be sitting). It's practiced. Easy. She's a little pulled back, once more. A little more together. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long."
[Ashley] Ashley has not been as haunted by the sea of leavings, even though there were others too: Ashton. Gregor. Rene. Nico. Carter. These are things she shrugs off, even though she was closer to them than the more recently departed. People go, people are impermanent. She doesn't really get attached to them, most of the time. She believes in a life of conflict, believes that life will frequently drive her into conflict with those around her - how could she?
Daiyu's death is the first time that she's been left behind, in a sense. Like Emily she's always been the one to leave. She left her mother. She left her father for Julliard. She left new friends and a new girlfriend at Julliard after Awakening. People came and went during three years in Europe. She left Bran, even if it hurt her to do it; she left Boston. Even if it hurt her to do it. But that wasn't the way this went, and today marks a month, and today is also important for another reason: she woke up ten years ago.
Needless to say, she's not handling it well.
But everyone else might think that the Hermetic has gotten herself together, by now. Or at least, most of them might think it. She seems happier. Last Tuesday she was out drinking with a lot of them. They've spied her grinning and laughing and doing her work.
"Hi, Em," she says. There's already a glass of stout in front of her on the tabletop. There's a dark booth in the back, and some aspects of this place would speak of English pubs to Emily: it's been decorated to look like one. Dark wood, heavy and pitted in some places. When she sees the Chorister, Ashley shuts the notebook she was writing in, a slim volume bound in plain brown leather.
She waves off Emily's apology and takes a sip from her glass of beer. Emily guessed right. Ashley's in a fitted black buttondown, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a pair of jeans. Her own messenger bag has been shuffled off toward the back of the booth. "Want to split something? I'm kind of hungry and Janine gives me a discount."
[Emily] Ashley was good at seeming like she had her shit together. It was something Emily admired in the Hermetic; it was occasionally something she borrowed on. Tonight, though, the Chorister was not calling on the Chantry Dean but rather a friend. There are things that happen that require observances. There are observances that ought not be undertaken alone. And then there's just being right irritated at the turn things have taken and needing a pint and some time in a place of low expectations to recoup.
"I'd love some chips," she says, as her messenger bag gets pushed toward the back of the booth as well. And by chips she means -- "Ah, pub fries? Fuckery. It's been such a long day, I'm mixing my Englishes."
There's a little self-effacing roll of her eyes as she settles herself, pushes the clump of dark curls over her shoulder. Her hair has gotten too long. The ponytail no longer keeps her locks sufficiently corraled. They tangle on one another at any hint of moisture (hello Mid-western Weather) and drive her to frustration.
"And a red," she tells whatever server comes by. When they inevitably ask after her ID, she fishes it out of her bag with a little annoyance. It's a cultural thing, this being carded as a college student, and while she appreciates the motivation behind it she also finds it rather annoying.
At least she has an Illinois ID these days. It hastens the process.
[Ashley] Ashley, too, took a while to get rid of her Massachusetts ID. It's not as important; she doesn't drive, and having an ID on her is for drinking and for on the rare occasion someone requires it. Not for the hospital. She avoids hospitals and doctor's offices. It's useful to have the process hastened: she might be turning twenty-nine in a few weeks, but she barely looks old enough to drink.
"I knew what you meant," Ashley says. The Hermetic handles Brit-isms well; when it comes to Emily and Thomas she almost doesn't have to think at all when it comes to translating what they're asking for. She deals equally well with Atlas; hers is simply a mind that works easily past alternate vocabulary. "I'll get a sandwich, you can have my chips."
She's used to striking these sorts of bargains at restaurants. It reminds her of another more distant time, getting food with Bran and Justine: they stopped keeping track of who owed who what. The pragmatism drops, once in a while. With certain people.
"Everything okay?" she asks, once Emily has ordered her drink and once she's ordered her sandwich - a vegetable panini of some sort. "You sounded over the phone like you kind of wanted to get drunk." Which is one hint. The use of 'fuckery' is another; Ashley can count the number of times she's heard Emily really swear on one hand.
[Emily] Ashley asks if Emily's okay, and the girl waits until she has her pint to answer. (Point of protocol [no, Little, that's just habit]). She belatedly asks for a glass of water, as well. Possibly because Ashley pointed out that she wants to get drunk, and partly because Emily really utterly despises being hung over.
"Ah, well, it's Monday, isn't it?" is her first reply. This offer with a lift of her pint and a loft of an eyebrow and the weight of an expressive charisma that has grown in her time in the city. It's not just something enigmatic and foreign, now. There's a warmth, and with that warmth there's a communicative diminished note whenever she was less than usual.
"I've a ton of work to do for my regular classes, and I need to have a prospective to my advisor for my graduate research, and Mr. Ward seems intent to fill any remaining waking hour I have with Enlightened studies. I tried running again -- not so much a good. And Riley's left; she took Alex with her."
Ah, there, there's something that might lend Emily the necessary impetus for drinking and swearing. She pulls now, from her drink. Sets it down precisely in the ring it wore against the table before she'd hefted it.
"I got a postcard."
The way that sentence stands on its own makes it resonant. So does the faintly distant and displeased (hurt [coping]) expression that covers her features for a moment.
"Other than that, you know, thing's are good." Deadpan. The deadpan gives way to a wry smile that edges up one side of her face more than the other. "How about you? I may have sounded like I'd like to get pissed, but you've a head start on me already..."
[Ashley] "She emailed me," Ashley says - so the Hermetic did, at least, know that Riley was gone. She'd suspected that Alex would go with her, but she hadn't known for certain, and when told this she just shakes her head and reaches for her beer. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Maybe people are starting to figure out that this city's a death trap."
Ashley takes a long sip from her glass, considering all of Emily's work; graduate school, after all, is a large adjustment. She remembers making it last year, and she remembers trying to do it while she was working a job at the firm at the same time. (After that, she'd taken on Enid.)
"Well, your apprenticeship won't last for too long," she offers. Emily's an Initiate, after all. Ashley can't imagine that her Catechumenate will take very long. There's a moment where she pauses before asking, "What are you going to do about your cabal?" Chuck: she knows Chuck is still around, but she sees him only rarely, and last she'd heard he was with Molly. Wondering, perhaps, if they intend to recruit the Cultist, or if he intends to leave to go elsewhere with Molly.
When Emily mentions that Ashley has a head start, the Hermetic just shrugs. Reaches up to run her fingers through her hair, ostensibly to straighten it or to smooth down some of the runaway tufts. It doesn't work that well. "Drinking to some unhappy anniversaries," is the answer.
[Emily] When Ashley says why she's drinking, Emily's expression softens somewhat. It's a moment of empathy; this is to be clearly distinguished from pity. Emily never offers the Hermetic pity (it's pointless). She nods, slowly, and lifts her pint again.
"May they pass quickly and grow duller with time."
There's weight to that, as Emily knows all about uhappy anniversaries. She doesn't insert hers into the moment, but she does pull a bit more soundly off her beer than before. Drink a little deeper, wash the thoughts back down her throat where they belong.
"I think Chuck and I are going to hang together, just now. But it's more symbolic than anything. He doesn't even want access to the House, from what I can tell. Never goes. Doesn't want anything to do with the politics. Would rather stay 'ranged DPS' whenever anything comes up on the radar." It's not criticism of the Vdept. Emily is aware that they are not similarly committed to the community. She's considering her commitment to the same very carefully just now.
"Besides, if we disbanded, you'd kick me out of all the lovely meetings. Can't have that, now, can we?" A smirk. It's not warm or wry enough to be quite teasing.
[Ashley] Ashley would have thought, by now, that she would have stopped mourning the day of her Awakening and what it meant. She has not: the passage of a decade has driven it home that she probably never will. It's less sharp, of course. That's really what she can hope for.
She doesn't speak further on it, though, and tries not to dwell on it overlong. When Emily lifts her glass so does she, and she takes another long swallow of stout.
"Ranged DPS?" Ashley asks, a little mystified. Then again, a lot of Chuck's slang (and Riley's, and Molly's) has gone over her head. She's not a gamer, has next to no familiarity with the culture or the lingo. Then she shakes her head and shrugs; it isn't too important. "That has to wear, though. Not having a cabal mate to support you."
Sometimes it rankles, when she sees how close the Guardians are. She hardly sees Wharil, and having Gregor back is something she's had to put off now, even though he's in the city. Daiyu is gone.
"I'd be grateful for a reason to keep out of meetings, personally," Ashley says with a wry smile. She reaches up and rubs at the corner of her jaw after a moment, as though there were tension in the muscle at the hinge. "But good. You're helpful to have there."
[Emily] "In games, they're the guys that stand in the back, behind the big burly guys, and throw rocks or spells or arrows from a seemingly safe distance." She shrugs a bit. She didn't expect Ashley to know gamer parlance. Emily's hardly had time to play since she Awakened. She was probably behind the times by a bit herself. "They can do a lot to help, but if you so much as sucker punch them they're pretty much done."
It fits the geek boy better than she'd imagined, at first blush. Emily's expression shows that, for a moment, and then she's waving it off with one hand and looking over at the kitchen to see when that sandwich and chips might be coming their way. It's just a sidelong glance, nothing that lingers.
"Eh. It's a bit like it's always been," she answers, with a shrug. "They're good friends, but Chuck and Riley never really got into the thick of things. Alex might have; Alex was going to be a nice addition." But... she shrugs again, runs her fingertips around the mouth of her pint glass.
"I do more with you and Kage, and Solomon and Israel than I've ever done with my cabal. It was a good thought, you know, but it just didn't pan out the way I'd hoped it would."
[Ashley] "Alex could have gotten to be pretty capable, with some time and direction," Ashley says, finishing off the glass of beer. When Emily's gaze wanders toward the back, so does Ashley's; she wants another stout. Given the fact that she hasn't been eating as much as she should, it might be the only thing that's kept her weight from sinking to the levels it was much earlier in the year. "He got his act together after Daiyu left her note."
After Wharil and Ashton started to turn an eye to the boy and see to it that he became more than a killer. Ashley had thought it good for the two disciples, too: it kept Ashton from distancing herself, it gave Wharil a project.
When Emily mentions having more interaction with the other four magi then her cabal, Ashley's lower lip draws in a little. Her mouth forms a thin line, and she reaches for her glass, brushes her fingertips over the smooth outer surface before she remembers it's empty. "Yeah," she says. "Wharil used to do more, but I've hardly seen him since...March or so. Only when I hunt him down. I guess I thought it'd be more like my old cabal."
She still misses Bran and Justine, but she misses the idea of them more: the closeness and unity of it. Then again, she supposes, it's a thing possible to rose-tint. She and Bran were growing distant and fighting often two years before they eventually broke away from each other. "Daiyu did a lot," she says.
[Emily] "It sounds like you all were quite close," she says, of the Boston cabal. What little she's heard of it has been all good and while Emily is wary of rose-tinting, she doesn't think Ashley is particularly prone to it.
"I'm sorry things haven't worked out for you like that, here." She takes another long pull off her beer and it's nearing the dregs already. With the schedule Emily keeps and the long lines of her frame, she's toeing the same dangerous line that Ashley is tonight: Not enough food, plenty of alcohol, course set for Bad Idea central.
"It was nice to see you happy, for a bit," she says. This is most likely in regard to Daiyu, but Emily turns away from explaining her remark to flag down a passing server. "I've got this round," she tells the Hermetic, before they both order their refills and settle back into the black quiet around their table.
[Ashley] "We were," Ashley says, of her old cabal. "I met Justine a couple of weeks after I started going to the chantry in Boston, and she introduced me to Bran. So I've known both of them for most of the time I've been Awake, minus a couple of months."
A beat. "I mean, things weren't always great. But I never had to track them down in a seedy hotel where there's a guy watching a BDSM video in front of all the guests." A vague gesture; apparently she's still a little irritated with Wharil. "Speaking of, you don't seem the type, but don't recommend the Travelodge near the Park to anybody. Ever."
Ashley blatantly ignores the comment about her being happy. She's not going to start again here, now, while she's drinking. So she just accepts the glass when it arrives, and the plate when it arrives shortly thereafter. She scoots it toward the middle of the table, turning it so Emily can access the fries, and picks up one of the sandwich slices.
"It was good for me. I've sort of regretted the fact that a lot of the apprentices here haven't really gotten the same thing. But there were a ton of Hermetics in Boston, so I guess it was easier."
[Emily] [WP: Emily. That's not a nice reaction. Don't share with the class.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Jarod] [Awareness - how quick am I on the uptake tonight?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod] [>.< .... +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Botch x 1 at target 7)
[Jarod] [...*dies*]
[Ashley] [But am I fast on the uptake?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Emily] "Travelodge?" she asks. The word is awkward on her tongue. She is not feigning unfamiliarity with it. It tastes like... like... low budget family holidays, or road trips, or, oh wait, she can place that now: motels where the doors open to the parking lot.
Her nose wrinkles, faintly, just before Emily kills the beer to drive the taste of that word off her tongue.
"I..." She starts, and then she stops. When she starts to speak again, there's a finger pointed at Ashley in a vaguely accusatory way. "I'll have you no I make no such recommendations." A little frown. Really, what did Ashley think of her taste? Emily exhales, a little haughtily. She can't help it, her Embassy brat roots are showing.
"Besides, there's absolutely no point in my recommending a hotel where I don't get points for it. And Travelodge," she sneers the word as surely as she does Hot Dogs, "Has a crap loyalty programme."
There's a pause, and then she can't help herself so she asks.
"Who on Earth sent you there? I wouldn't send Molly there." Emily couldn't stand the Cultist, most days. All talk of Apprenticeships and Boston was lost, for a moment, in getting to the bottom of this nightmare-ish travel experience of Ashley's.
[Ashley] The Hermetic's hands raise, palms up in front of her as though to deflect a blow, when that accusing finger is pointed in her direction. "It wasn't my idea," she says.
"Wharil was hiding in one," she says, with a shake of her head. "He panicked about somebody coming after the Euthanatos here, back in July, and decided it was a good place to hide." Ashley, daughter of a fisherman and a secretary, has no class-based reasons to sneer at the place. Her distaste seems to have been borne of experience.
"I stayed in a few youth hostels when I was in Europe, though, and they weren't much better," she reflects. In fact, she thinks many of them might have been a good deal worse, but at the age of twenty-two she cared less. Less, apparently, than the twenty-two year old sharing the booth with her.
"But yeah. Wharil was there for...about a month. Shit. Two months," she says, her eyebrows tilting as she thinks further on it. Ashley takes a bite of her sandwich.
[Emily] Emily had her reasons to feel the way she did about accomodations. And there was someone lingering just at the margins of this scene who could attest that her college quarters had not always been that much better than the Travelodge in question. She has memories of hotels that served as homes for months on end and when she thinks on that, she would never wish the worst of them on anyone.
The transience gives her some odd perspectives; the circumstance surrounding her impermanence even more. And Emily, the seemingly average college student across the board from her, could have picked up her phone and remedied Wharil's predicament if she'd only known.
"I wish I'd known. We could have at least gotten him a week at a Hilton," she says, with a shake of her head. The pints come back and Emily's already sipping from hers, even before she reaches across to nab one of the fries.
"Living in hotels? It's kind of fun for the first week or so. Novel. Then it gets old fast. There were months where the whole of our kitchen was a microwave, two-cup coffee maker and the bathroom sink."
"He's not still doing that," she asks, her brow furrowing as she considers it. Considers strongly offering the Euthanatos some other shelter. Reins in the idea of offering any part of her flat -- a space that is still predominantly her own.
"It's been a shite summer for everyone, hasn't it?" she asks, darkly, when the mention of July triggers other memories. And then the darkness softens, somewhat, at a fleeting memory and Emily ducks her head a bit to see about dressing the fries with salt and brown vinegar.
[Ashley] There's salt and malt vinegar to be had: Emily can find a bottle of it on the table next to the napkin holder and ketchup. By now more people are beginning to filter into the pub, which seems to get an odd amount of traffic for a Monday night. Many of them are graduate students; perhaps that offers some explanation for their numbers.
Ashley is sharp on the lookout tonight. Justin knows that she comes here, and she's been avoiding Justin of late: he keeps trying to convince her that she should see a therapist. It's bad enough living next to the man without him hunting her down in her (all too frequent) haunts.
"I've never lived in one," she tells Emily. "It doesn't sound too exciting to me. I like having one place to go back to." Particularly, she likes having a library; anyone would only need to set foot in Ashley's apartment to know that she likes having a Home, and likes to feel comfortable there.
"And no. He's not still doing that. He'd taken care of the problem when I went to tell him about Daiyu last month," Ashley says. She hasn't seen Wharil since, or heard from him. There's another long sip from her glass. And then, to be fair, she adds, "The summer had its good points."
[Jarod] The last time he was here, it had been an accident of coincidence. Forces at large in the universe had converged to cause a necessary diversion in the evening's plans, and he'd taken the first promising door that he'd seen. That door happened to belong to the Hung Drawn and Quartered, which, all told, was probably one of the better pubs in the city. It was clean, relaxing, and unpretentious. More importantly, it had a nice drink selection. Good scotch wasn't always easy to come by, and having picked up a taste for the stuff while living in the UK, Jarod tended to frequent the places that he knew would have a reliably good selection.
Ilana was at home, with the sitter (with Nick.) Probably getting ready for bed right about now. Occasionally he missed those moments with her, when he stayed late at work. There were certain things about becoming a parent that tended to catch one by surprise, and one of those things was how much you missed the silly little routines when you weren't around for them.
He needed a drink, though, after the day he'd had. Office work didn't sit well with him. It instilled a strong sense of being caged (trapped) - like a big cat pacing around in an enclosure at the zoo.
It was colder tonight than it had been lately. Something much more like proper autumn weather. He didn't have an umbrella with him tonight, but otherwise he was dressed in similar attire - an expensive business suit, black with a white shirt and dark green tie. (This one was Armani, not Prada.) At first, when he walked in, he didn't seem to notice the two women in the booth. (And unlike last time, it wasn't because he was pretending.) He sat down on one of the stools at the bar and gestured with his hand to get the bartender's attention. When the woman walked over, he smiled and talked to her for a couple of moments. The usual idle pleasantry - how's the evening been, how're classes, you're pretty when you smile. He ordered Aberlour A’bunadh, neat, because he liked it better when it wasn't watered down.
And then the woman leaned in a bit and whispered conspiratorially that he might want to turn around and check out the booth in the back. The same one he'd found Ashley and a handful of others in not too long ago. A glance over his shoulder, and... why, yes. He did want to check out the booth in the back.
So he stood up, picked up his drink, and walked over.
[Emily] [Aware? Who me? I am most definitely aware of my pint. But that guy picking up the bartender? Do I notice him? Better yet, do I recognize him by resonance alone? +1 booze on an empty stomach]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7)
[Emily] People say that drinking numbs your senses, somewhat. Makes you a little less aware of the world around you. People say it lowers inhibitions, contributes to bad decision making. People say a lot of stuff, but tonight? Oh, no, tonight drinking makes Emily all the more aware of the world around her, especially a particularly familiar slide of Winter and Sensuality that skims across her skin.
She sits a little straighter, for a moment. It's not at all dissimilar to the way a prey animal reacts when they scent a predator, save that Emily's reaction is not to bolt or hide or shift her way toward the edge of the booth to make a hasty escape. No! Remember that boozahol contributes to poor decision making, even if it's perception numbing powers were up for debate after the evening.
It make look a little precognisant when she slides further into the booth to make a seat beside her for the Verbena, before he even turns to check their table out. She slides her beer, and her water (untouched [tsk tsk]) with her. This position makes it easier for her to grab fries off Ashley's plate, after all.
Summer had its good points, Ashley said. Emily begrudgingly agrees.
"Hey, stranger." This for Jarod when he approaches. By now the chip on her shoulder has softened, somewhat, and the sting of the Apprentices' hasty retreat from the city is numbed a little. There's familiarity between her and the Verbena, that's easy for Ashley to see, but the extent of that former friendship (or current) is hard to judge. "Would you like to join us?"
She glances, belatedly, to Ashley for an okay.
[Ashley] Ashley is so familiar with scenting out resonance at this point in her life that it would take a particularly hard night to dull her senses entirely. It's second nature, sizing up other Willworkers, the feel of them, whether they could hold their own against her if she were to challenge them. It's subconscious.
She isn't as attuned to Jarod's presence as Emily is - she, after all, is not quite as familiar with the man - but after he's been at the bar for a moment or two, her gaze slides in his direction. Maybe it's that notice of him that makes the bartender gesture him back toward Ashley; Janine and company know that she's prominent in the city, and she's here a lot. By now they assume that Awakened individuals who walk into the Hung Drawn and Quartered are here to meet with her.
Besides, it's good business. They've noticed that a lot of the city's Awakened members are moderate to heavy drinkers.
"Hey, Jarod," she says. There's a glance, quick, from Emily to the Verbena and then back again, as Ashley sizes up the amount of awkward that is likely to occur here tonight. But it's too late to make any kind of graceful escape. The Hermetic edges a little farther back into the booth. "Go ahead and sit."
Beat. "A couple of Emily's cabalmates left, so..." A shrug. An explanation for the drinking. As if Ashley needed one.
[Jarod] For what it was worth, there was nothing at all awkward about the way that Jarod greeted either Emily or Ashley. Perhaps, at another time, this particular combination of forces might have been less comfortable (or perhaps not - Jarod was probably the kind of person who was used to getting into potentially awkward situations like having a drink with two women he'd slept with), but if so, that wasn't the case now. Frankly, Emily and Ashley were probably the two magi who he preferred to run into like this, if given the choice. One, because she was important to him (she was a friend, and he didn't have many friends - not real ones.) The other, because she was someone who he had a certain amount of respect for. (Not that he was likely to say so.)
Emily had anticipated his arrival (evidently more tuned in to him than he had been to her, but they all have their off days) and shifted to leave an open place for him on the bench beside her. When he approached their table, she looked up at him and said: Hey, stranger. Would you like to join us? He just... smiled. And this was an entirely different smile than he'd given the bartender. It spoke of wry familiarity and even a little affection. He slid in beside the once-apprentice as if he belonged there, and offered a greeting to Ashley. "Evening."
A couple of Emily's cabalmates left, so...
He glanced again at Emily, was quiet for a moment, then just... nodded. (I'm sorry.) This wasn't a situation he had any experience with (cabals in general were something he'd managed to avoid - and intentionally so), but he knew it wasn't easy to be left behind.
"Good excuse as any to grab a drink, I suppose." Though in truth, they hardly needed one.
[Emily] [Subterfuge: What? No. People leaving does not make me sad. +1 diff for having Ashley along, spilling my secrets.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Failure at target 7)
[Emily] And that, right there, is why Emily didn't tell other people things as a general rule. Ashley oh-so-easily throws it out there that some of her friends have moved and Jarod gets to cast her the apologetic look and Emily, who likes to play these things close to breast, to bring them out when she's good and ready, just looks down at her beer for a moment to escape the weight of that unspoken apology.
"Yeah, well, people go when they need to," she says, perhaps not as easily as she wanted to. It's not as effortless to shrug off tonight, in present company. Maybe because of the relationship she'd had with the man sitting beside her, and how that had come to an end. "There's just been a lot of it lately."
Emily nabbed another fry and nibbled on that before she could keep talking. Or turn about with a remark on Ashley's motivations for imbibing this evening. Her woes were excuse enough, Jarod had said.
She starts to ask after Ilana, gets the question just to the tip of her tongue and then bites it back. Buries it with a swallow of ale. Turns her attention to the dark wood of the table.
"How's your Monday been?" she asks him, instead. Emily doesn't particularily want to go abck to talking about Travelodges or grim anniversaries or missing friends or defunct cabals. Surely Jarod has something more to offer than that, or at least something more distracting to offer.
[Ashley] [Uh oh. Was I not supposed to say that? +1 for tipsy, +2.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 9)
[Ashley] Ashley is honest to a fault, it's been said. Repeatedly, by many people. Without regard for sensitivity or for whether or not something she says is something one would want other people to know. In her mind, people should be able to deal with the truth as it is. Still, that doesn't mean that, on the rare occasion the realization dawns, she doesn't feel a little bad about it.
Emily looks down at the table and Ashley grimaces and raises a hand to the back of her neck, roughing a hand through the short hair there. It's surprising that she noticed at all: Emily's facial expression is ambivalent, there's no real show of emotion there that is easy for her to gauge. What she understands is less based in empathy with Emily and more in an understanding that she made a misstep.
Still, there are no apologies. She's sorry, but in passing; she doesn't apologize for truth even if it's a small thing.
Ashley takes a bite of her sandwich and glances over Jarod's suit. He was working somewhere, apparently. She takes a moment to chew and swallow and take a sip of stout before she says, "I read about your project."
[Jarod] Distraction. He could be good at that. Jarod had embodied distraction on more than one occasion in the past, for both of these women. Being around him was a little like taking a vacation. He was his own world, for better or worse. (Just don't venture past the tourist-friendly zone.)
Emily didn't seem inclined to discuss her problems, and Jarod didn't inquire, either because he didn't see the need, or because he didn't think that she'd want him to. Her response (people go when they need to) was very much something that he would have said. All at once pragmatic and dismissive. He followed suit, and moved on.
"Truthfully? It's been mind-numbingly boring." He sighed a little, a twinge of something that looked vaguely like disgust showing in his expression. (Boring was not a word that he liked to apply to his life, in any capacity.) "And I will not torture the two of you with a rendition of the day's events." He glanced at Ashley when she mentioned the business, raised his glass, and said, "To saving the world, one solar cell at a time." Then he took a drink, savoring the familiar woody taste on his tongue for a moment before swallowing. This particular scotch had a bit of a spiced note to it, and a sherry aftertaste. It reminded him of fall in London.
"Anyway, the evening seems to be taking a more pleasant turn. Just precisely what the doctor ordered."
After setting his drink down, he reached up and loosened the tie at his neck, slipping the knot free and unbuttoning the top two buttons on his shirt.
[Emily] Emily stares at the table, Ashley has a rare flash of empathy and grimaces (as close to an apology as she gets) and it is high time for that topic to die, to get buried under a cascade of pub fries or drowned in a few more pints. Jarod, thankfully, leaves off of it and the conversation turns away.
"Half my lab wants me to try and get them internships with your firm," Emily says, idly. She's steadily working her way through Ashley's fries, but hasn't touched her water yet -- against her own better judgement and advice. There's a wry smirk to her comment, but not a lot of weight behind it.
She's gotten quieter since he joined them, a little more reclusive with her body language. Emily's limbs are all angles tonight, arms folded lazily on the table, shifting only to lift her pint or a bit of food toward her face. There's no pain in her carriage, now, and that's a pleasant improvement. There's just a lot of not caring, even in present company, about her posture or how she's perceived. Ashley's seen this once before, but far more pronounced. In June.
Jarod found her in a club once, lazily chatting up her own glass of gin. She's flirting with the same bad ideas tonight, but his presence has (perhaps ironically) made it less likely she'll follow through.
[Ashley] Ashley has not yet given up on bad ideas, perhaps evidenced by the fact that she's already finished another glass. She has a tendency to drink while someone else is talking, to fill up pauses in conversation when she herself is, to give herself a moment to think before she speaks: Emily's seen this on many an occasion, but with the Chorister it's usually been with cups of tea. (Food goes in the mouth, foot stays out of it.)
She finishes one of the halves of her sandwich. It smells spicy, whatever it is: looks like it's filled with tofu and some kind of sauce and vegetables. It's the sort of thing one would only find in this sort of neighborhood.
There's a smirk when Jarod says that his day has been boring - commiserating, maybe. "I'm kind of glad I escaped the office," she says, which she would not have done had it not been for the Jhor episode on the first of the year. She suspects she'll be going back, though.
It's the way to fight the War on her terms, and whether she's a member of his cabal or not, whether they're still together or not, she's been quite influenced by Bran Summers' vision. Remains so.
Jarod, to her, hadn't seemed like the type to get into that kind of business, and the slightly raised eyebrows say so. Then again, he makes a regular habit of confusing her.
[Jarod] He laughed a little at Emily's confession, and gave a light shake of his head. "The pay really isn't what I'd like it to be right now. We're barely breaking even. But if the trend continues, that'll change. There's a lot of competition for the internships, from what I hear. I can give you the number for the woman who does most of the hiring, if you want to pass it along."
He fished his iPhone out of the inside pocket of his suit-jacket and searched through his address book until he found what he was looking for. A moment later, Emily's own phone would receive a text with the aforementioned name and number of the head of HR. When he put his phone away, he glanced up at Ashley.
"I used to think I'd escaped it too," he mused with an expression that was subtly wistful and a little ironic. "I don't really need to be there, but I don't like to invest that much money into something that I don't have a direct hand in." In truth, he had a habit of micromanaging. It irritated his partners on occasion, but his PR skills came in handy, so they mostly let him have his way.
[Emily] Emily hadn't really expected Jarod to act on this idle comment. She lofted an eyebrow and studied him out of the corner of her eye when he pulled for an iPhone and sent her a text. Curious, she pulled her own phone out of the messenger bag beside her, verified the info and nodded.
Huh.
Name and number.
"I'll refer them to your website," Emily says, gently pushing a few things out of the HR directors voicemail box with that suggestion. Most hiring managers and departments prefered email submissions, especially in technical fields. Getting the geeks to talk pretty on the phone could be painful. "Unless someone's really worth her time."
They're talking about being office-bound and she says, easily, with the frivolity and surety of youth (and a certain amount of wry self-besmirchment), "Oh, well, I'm going to graduate and be fantastic, and land a job at Google and wear jeans to work every day and spend ten percent of my time on personal projects..."
Nope. She couldn't keep that line up long enough to finish it. She's smirking now, and offers them a little wink. The suits, the office, the particular social dance therein. In truth, Emily doesn't worry about its eventual ingress into her life. Though she'll hate the meetings when she gets there.
"If you hate the office, though, I can help you set up teleconferencing from you flat. Then you can oversee without having to step on-site." It's a bit like being the glowing eye of Sauron, but Emily does not embarass herself by saying so. Instead she drinks down her pint, and belatedly starts in on her water.
[Ashley] "I just hope I never have to copywrite again," Ashley says, with a sort of grim expression that suggests that the environment was as soul-sucking as it sounds. One might have difficulty imagining her in a corporate environment, with as introverted and awkward as she can be at times. "I mean, having control of a project is different from being marketing's bitch, I would figure."
Then again, given that she can be aggressive too, perhaps it wasn't that bad a fit.
She doesn't start in on water, but asks the waitress for another glass when the woman returns. She checks in often: she's quite used to having Ashley as a customer.
The Hermetic picks up the other half of her sandwich, chewing quietly while she listens to the talk of HR, of Emily's offer to set Jarod up so that he can work remotely from his flat. She looks thoughtfully at the Verbena, after a moment. She doesn't think it's something he got into for profit, by any means.
[Jarod] There were reasons why Jarod held ambivalent feelings about offices and business meetings, and not all of them were so cut-and-dry as a simple hatred for tedium. The corporate world would always be inescapably tied, in his subconscious, with some very deep-running childhood neurosis. It was money and power. It was also the abuse of power.
Ashley had described him on occasion as a social darwinist, which was only partially correct. Believing in something didn't necessarily mean that he agreed with it.
Emily suggested teleconferencing, and he took a drink before responding. "I actually do that, most days. But I like to go in a few times a week, if I can manage." This confession was a little telling. It spoke to his level of dedication. That this company was not just another way to make money. (After all, an investor need not do anything but write a big check and then sit back and wait for a return.)
Ashley mentioned copywriting, and Jarod made a face. (Another one of those cat-about-to-jump-in-a-puddle-of-cold-mud expressions.) "I used to want to be an actor, when I was a teenager. It never would have worked, though. Paparazzi would have driven me batshit."
(Yet another thing he had ambivalent feelings about - fame.)
[Emily] She nods a bit, and goes back to drinking. And if Emily drinks a bit more this round than others, perhaps that's to cover up the quiet on her end of the conversation. She doesn't have any employment history to speak of, not as anything more than a contractor here or there, or an undergraduate member of her lab. She doesn't even have summer jobs to reminisce about (I'll never go back to food service...). She does have a pint, and she's almost done with it. That's the end of her second, and paired with a mere handful of chips it's not enough to counterbalance given her small form.
There's a light flush to her cheeks, and a slightly loose shape to her smile -- when she smiles. She's not quite smiling now. Emily sets the empty pint down and leans her head into one upturned hand and just listens to them. She's learned how to fade into the background over many years of being seen but not heard as a child. She borrows on that now, being unintrusive, being present without being more than that.
The problem with this quiet is that it's necessarily solitary. In a room full of people, at a table with friends, it was entirely possible to feel alone and adrift on that loneliness. Not feeling the loneliness was why she'd gone out in the first place, but it wasn't working the way she'd hoped.
When the server wanders by next, Emily will place her fingertips atop her pint glass (no mas [not just now]) and give herself time to consider how much she wants to go over that edge tonight.
[Ashley] When the server returns he has Ashley's glass and the Hermetic takes it, taking a long swallow. The sandwich is gone and there are just fries on the plate, but she doesn't touch them: she'd offered them to Emily, didn't particularly want to eat them. It's unusual not to see her devouring everything in sight. There are days when she just doesn't feel like it.
She's less tightly wound while she sits there with the two of them, though it has nothing to do with their presence. She's leaned the sharp points of her shoulderblades back into the booth now. Alcohol forces upon her body what she doesn't manage in day-to-day living: a sense of relaxation, a sort of ease in the muscles of her shoulders and back.
Ashley grins when Jarod mentions being an actor, and if it's a touch hesitant, a touch slow to appear, it's because she doesn't mention what she wanted to do, when she was a teenager. And had to think about it, and decide not to voice it. "I could see it," she says.
"I never really figured I'd go into writing. It was just easy to get a job in marketing with my degree, and there were ways to work against the Technocracy in that kind of environment, so I took it," she says with a shrug. "But I went to college kind of late."
[Jarod] "Very pragmatic of you," he said, with a smile that suggested a subtle kind of approval.
But Emily wasn't talking, and he'd noticed that. Had this been another time, he might have done something coy and flirtatious to try and draw her out of her shell. There was reservation in this respect, though. Tonight, he glanced at her, and contemplated silently for a moment. He finished off the last of his scotch a bit earlier than he'd planned, and set the empty tumbler on the table. He put a hand on the small of Emily's back, tracing there gently with his thumb. (A subtle gesture, but an intimate one. Meant to be relaxing.)
"I was never terribly responsible. I'm still not terribly responsible, truthfully."
[Emily] [... ohlooksomedice, +1 tipsy]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Failure at target 7)
[Jarod] [Ohlookmoredice...]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Emily] Jarod puts his hand on Emily's back, and she doesn't pull away. She's waiting for someone, but that doesn't seem to keep her from accepting that comfort, just now, however intimate it is. It doesn't keep her from glancing over and letting that look linger thoughtfully for a moment before she turns her attention back to the table, and Ashley's fries.
"My dad wants me to go into Embassy work when I graduate," Emily says, idly. It may be the first time she's mentioned her father (the one she was born to) in conversation. There'd been once, at Chuck's, when she'd answered the phone in surprise and stepped out on the patio in the dead of Winter.
"And my mom wants me to do something in humanitarian work. I told her I'm the wrong kind of engineer for building homes in Africa, but that doesn't seem to matter..." She shrugs a bit, and Jarod can feel the tension in her frame all the way down to where his hand rests. She's been drinking, but she hasn't relaxed. She hasn't found a way to unwind, really, since they'd all come out of the Labyrinth.
Oh, look, yet another thing she's not talking about.
"I'm pretty sure learning that we're fighting the forces of evil with our super-powered friends would disappoint them both." This is said lightly, wryly, with just enough mirth to lighten the corners of her eyes a little.
[Emily] They know each other well. In some ways, they know each other too well for this. His hand smooths over the soft fabric of her sweater, making small movements with his thumb. It's intimate, and not something she shies away from. It helps, slowly, to ease away the tension she carries. The readiness that is misplaced, has become a taut singing thing against her bones. He can feel her breathe out, just so, carefully meted to not give anything away to the Hermetic sitting across the table.
There's longing in that. A need she hasn't sated. Schooled and kept back, pushed aside, denied. Its in the way her eyes close, just before she looks over at him, and it's in the something she can't pull back enough to keep him from seeing it if their eyes met.
If she wasn't waiting...
If things had gone differently...
Then she's talking about her family, and future employment, and anything but the closeness they've kept.
to Jarod
[Ashley] Jarod puts his hand on Emily's back, and Emily's glancing look lingers, and Ashley's eyebrows raise. She doesn't know what Emily's thinking; she doesn't have to. They spoke on the phone shortly after Emily got the news. The flicker of anger she suppresses isn't jealousy.
Still, she isn't the sort to make a scene and honest as she is, isn't the sort to interfere with a friend's own decisions, not when it's not going to affect her, really; let them fuck up as they will. She just observes, and she minds, and quietly alters her own responses accordingly.
Ashley takes a sip from her glass, chooses to let her focus sway back toward the conversation. "I'm sure they wouldn't be disappointed, if you could tell them," she tells Emily. She knows, after all, that Gregory talked about an Order of knights, even if they weren't Choristers.
"My dad was pissed that I didn't join the Akashic Brotherhood," she says, with a shrug. Or, perhaps, pissed that she turned down the Akashic Brotherhood for the Order of Hermes; Ashley has never really been sure. Jim Novotny is not an easy man to talk to. "I don't think he cares much about my mundane career."
[Jarod] [Oh-ho, do I notice that flicker of anger?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Jarod] [Hmm...subterfuge?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Jarod] There was little that was missed in the nuances of this exchange. The stress present in the muscles of Emily's back, and the subtle longing in her breath. To his credit, he didn't try to push the issue, but neither did he pull back and refrain from touching her. His hand remained where it was. No more, no less. And he behaved as if there wasn't any underlying subtext. It stood to reason, though, (and Ashley herself had proof of this) that Jarod was one of those people who tended to speak more with actions (and with touch) than he did with words.
He laughed a little, quietly, when Emily got to that last bit. "You know, I have a hard time imagining you being considered a disappointment." (Though his perception of this matter was, admittedly, skewed.) "Besides, what parent wouldn't love to know that they'd birthed a super-hero?"
They could have turned this into a competition of one-upmanship, between the three of them, of precisely how many ways they'd disappointed their parents. Jarod, though... he didn't contribute much. (Though he certainly could have.) Instead he just shrugged, a little dismissively, and said, "I haven't given half a shit about my family's approval since I was a kid. It isn't their business." What he didn't say, but implied slightly in his tone, was that their opinions didn't deserve that kind of respect. (At least, not his parents.)
But speaking of disapproval...
Just as he hadn't missed the way that his touch had affected Emily, neither did he miss the look that Ashley gave the both of them. He looked at the Hermetic for a long, silent moment. Then he slowly let his hand fall away from Emily's back... and stood up.
"I don't give half a shit about anyone's approval."
And that could have been spoken with a sharper tone, but he let it fall matter-of-factly. (Do with it what you will.) A glance back to Emily, and a soft smile that might have been a little apologetic. "I should go. It's late."
And, assuming he wasn't stopped, he'd turn and make his way out - adjusting his shirt and tie as he did so.
[Emily] [Aware as Empathy: The hell just happened... Ashley? +1 dif, tipsy]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Ashley] Ashley does seem to be a bit disapproving. It's hard for Emily to put her finger on, precisely, but she knows that Ashley is both very loyal and places a lot of importance on keeping promises, either to oneself or others.
to Emily
[Emily] Jarod can't imagine her being a disappointment, because Jarod hasn't heard her brother figure tell the One Time, In Vienna story about royalty and underage drinking. Or because he wasn't around at 3am in several different cities while she acted out her post-Prague angst and hostility. She had disappointed plenty of people in her time; coming to Chicago was supposed to have meant she'd put that era of her life behind her.
By the expression Ashley was wearing, she was failing miserably at putting that behind her. There was something going on between the other two magi that Emily had only caught the tail end of, but that tail end was enough to draw her brows together worriedly and pull her arms away from the table as Jarod stood up to leave.
She said nothing to keep him there; did nothing to keep him from walking away. (This lapse in judgment goes only so far tonight.)
"Mmm, me too, probably," she says, somewhere in the middle of her goodbye to Jarod and her quizzical look at Ashley (no doubt met with the unverbalized equivalent of "You know what, Emily"). The Singer takes the time to dig out her wallet, and leave her part of the bill for food and drinks. She's got money enough for that, and a decent tip.
"Class in the morning and all that." Her voice is quieter, faintly sad (frustrated) despite the smile she's wearing. It's a mismatch, but maybe one the others won't pick up on too keenly just now.
[Ashley] It's not so unusual a thing, really. Ashley expects to be disappointed by people, and it's hard not to find affirmation when it's what one looks for in the first place.
They all have their childhood neuroses, after all.
Jarod's stare is met in kind. It's not cold: there's no way Ashley could manage detachment if she tried. This is the kind of stare animals give each other when challenged, when one's made a breach. But for all that she doesn't seem precisely angry at him, or didn't until his parting shot, and then her jaw tightens, the muscles bunching there at the hinge. She doesn't stop him when he gets up to go.
Or Emily, for that matter. Awkward was achieved - and they were doing so well. "Good night, Emily," she says.
And it's only after the Chorister leaves too that she sighs, and anger fades and uncertainty sets in, and she remembers what she was out here drinking for in the first place. So she shuffles Emily's money off to the side to pay for the bill later, when she leaves. Then she slides her notebook out, sets it back on the table, and leans over it again to write.
It's late. She doesn't have class in the morning.
Jarod left.
Owen left.
Declan left.
Charlie left.
Daiyu died.
James left.
Alex and Riley left, together, to go happily toward warmer climes.
There are more, but she's not really in the mood to find and name them. Emily has witnessed so many goodbyes that she's starting to go numb (a lie). They've been so tightly packed that she can't tell where one ends and the next begins. The sea of friendship is running to low tide and she's stuck on some damned rock and unable to break free.
She's got a year long lease on a new apartment. She's the Emissary for a dwindling cabal. She has a Catechumenate to finish, and graduate school to begin. It's all so very heavy. The things in her apartment no longer fit into the backseat and trunk of her car. She owns a bedframe, of all the ridiculous symbols of permenance. But build as she might, she can't make the things that feel like Home stay.
She can't keep them from leaving.
And she can't keep them from promising, in stupid, subtle ways, that they might come back. She's thinking of a postcard on a kitchen table elsewhere in Lake View when she calls Ashley and explains she's thinking of going out for a pint. She doesn't say, outright, that she's planning to get pissed. She's not planning on. She's just not planning against it either.
This place on the Mile is Ashley's haunt, and Emily doesn't ask after a dresscode or atmosphere. She takes what she knows of the Hermetic, throws in a nod to the weather, and shows up in a light-weight leather jacket, a thin sweater and jeans. The sweater's an aubergine color, deep enough to bring the blue forward in her eyes as much out of contrast as anything else. She's hale enough now to let her messenger bag's strap hang across her torso again. She doesn't favor any side as she moves. She looks a little tired -- what graduate student doesn't look tired, mid-term -- and hungry -- again, she's just beginning her years-long quest for free food that is not pizza.
"Hey, Ashley," is all the greeting she tosses the Hermetic as she slips the messenger bag's strap over head head with one hand as she slides into a booth, or a chair, or onto a barstool (wherever they may be sitting). It's practiced. Easy. She's a little pulled back, once more. A little more together. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long."
[Ashley] Ashley has not been as haunted by the sea of leavings, even though there were others too: Ashton. Gregor. Rene. Nico. Carter. These are things she shrugs off, even though she was closer to them than the more recently departed. People go, people are impermanent. She doesn't really get attached to them, most of the time. She believes in a life of conflict, believes that life will frequently drive her into conflict with those around her - how could she?
Daiyu's death is the first time that she's been left behind, in a sense. Like Emily she's always been the one to leave. She left her mother. She left her father for Julliard. She left new friends and a new girlfriend at Julliard after Awakening. People came and went during three years in Europe. She left Bran, even if it hurt her to do it; she left Boston. Even if it hurt her to do it. But that wasn't the way this went, and today marks a month, and today is also important for another reason: she woke up ten years ago.
Needless to say, she's not handling it well.
But everyone else might think that the Hermetic has gotten herself together, by now. Or at least, most of them might think it. She seems happier. Last Tuesday she was out drinking with a lot of them. They've spied her grinning and laughing and doing her work.
"Hi, Em," she says. There's already a glass of stout in front of her on the tabletop. There's a dark booth in the back, and some aspects of this place would speak of English pubs to Emily: it's been decorated to look like one. Dark wood, heavy and pitted in some places. When she sees the Chorister, Ashley shuts the notebook she was writing in, a slim volume bound in plain brown leather.
She waves off Emily's apology and takes a sip from her glass of beer. Emily guessed right. Ashley's in a fitted black buttondown, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a pair of jeans. Her own messenger bag has been shuffled off toward the back of the booth. "Want to split something? I'm kind of hungry and Janine gives me a discount."
[Emily] Ashley was good at seeming like she had her shit together. It was something Emily admired in the Hermetic; it was occasionally something she borrowed on. Tonight, though, the Chorister was not calling on the Chantry Dean but rather a friend. There are things that happen that require observances. There are observances that ought not be undertaken alone. And then there's just being right irritated at the turn things have taken and needing a pint and some time in a place of low expectations to recoup.
"I'd love some chips," she says, as her messenger bag gets pushed toward the back of the booth as well. And by chips she means -- "Ah, pub fries? Fuckery. It's been such a long day, I'm mixing my Englishes."
There's a little self-effacing roll of her eyes as she settles herself, pushes the clump of dark curls over her shoulder. Her hair has gotten too long. The ponytail no longer keeps her locks sufficiently corraled. They tangle on one another at any hint of moisture (hello Mid-western Weather) and drive her to frustration.
"And a red," she tells whatever server comes by. When they inevitably ask after her ID, she fishes it out of her bag with a little annoyance. It's a cultural thing, this being carded as a college student, and while she appreciates the motivation behind it she also finds it rather annoying.
At least she has an Illinois ID these days. It hastens the process.
[Ashley] Ashley, too, took a while to get rid of her Massachusetts ID. It's not as important; she doesn't drive, and having an ID on her is for drinking and for on the rare occasion someone requires it. Not for the hospital. She avoids hospitals and doctor's offices. It's useful to have the process hastened: she might be turning twenty-nine in a few weeks, but she barely looks old enough to drink.
"I knew what you meant," Ashley says. The Hermetic handles Brit-isms well; when it comes to Emily and Thomas she almost doesn't have to think at all when it comes to translating what they're asking for. She deals equally well with Atlas; hers is simply a mind that works easily past alternate vocabulary. "I'll get a sandwich, you can have my chips."
She's used to striking these sorts of bargains at restaurants. It reminds her of another more distant time, getting food with Bran and Justine: they stopped keeping track of who owed who what. The pragmatism drops, once in a while. With certain people.
"Everything okay?" she asks, once Emily has ordered her drink and once she's ordered her sandwich - a vegetable panini of some sort. "You sounded over the phone like you kind of wanted to get drunk." Which is one hint. The use of 'fuckery' is another; Ashley can count the number of times she's heard Emily really swear on one hand.
[Emily] Ashley asks if Emily's okay, and the girl waits until she has her pint to answer. (Point of protocol [no, Little, that's just habit]). She belatedly asks for a glass of water, as well. Possibly because Ashley pointed out that she wants to get drunk, and partly because Emily really utterly despises being hung over.
"Ah, well, it's Monday, isn't it?" is her first reply. This offer with a lift of her pint and a loft of an eyebrow and the weight of an expressive charisma that has grown in her time in the city. It's not just something enigmatic and foreign, now. There's a warmth, and with that warmth there's a communicative diminished note whenever she was less than usual.
"I've a ton of work to do for my regular classes, and I need to have a prospective to my advisor for my graduate research, and Mr. Ward seems intent to fill any remaining waking hour I have with Enlightened studies. I tried running again -- not so much a good. And Riley's left; she took Alex with her."
Ah, there, there's something that might lend Emily the necessary impetus for drinking and swearing. She pulls now, from her drink. Sets it down precisely in the ring it wore against the table before she'd hefted it.
"I got a postcard."
The way that sentence stands on its own makes it resonant. So does the faintly distant and displeased (hurt [coping]) expression that covers her features for a moment.
"Other than that, you know, thing's are good." Deadpan. The deadpan gives way to a wry smile that edges up one side of her face more than the other. "How about you? I may have sounded like I'd like to get pissed, but you've a head start on me already..."
[Ashley] "She emailed me," Ashley says - so the Hermetic did, at least, know that Riley was gone. She'd suspected that Alex would go with her, but she hadn't known for certain, and when told this she just shakes her head and reaches for her beer. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Maybe people are starting to figure out that this city's a death trap."
Ashley takes a long sip from her glass, considering all of Emily's work; graduate school, after all, is a large adjustment. She remembers making it last year, and she remembers trying to do it while she was working a job at the firm at the same time. (After that, she'd taken on Enid.)
"Well, your apprenticeship won't last for too long," she offers. Emily's an Initiate, after all. Ashley can't imagine that her Catechumenate will take very long. There's a moment where she pauses before asking, "What are you going to do about your cabal?" Chuck: she knows Chuck is still around, but she sees him only rarely, and last she'd heard he was with Molly. Wondering, perhaps, if they intend to recruit the Cultist, or if he intends to leave to go elsewhere with Molly.
When Emily mentions that Ashley has a head start, the Hermetic just shrugs. Reaches up to run her fingers through her hair, ostensibly to straighten it or to smooth down some of the runaway tufts. It doesn't work that well. "Drinking to some unhappy anniversaries," is the answer.
[Emily] When Ashley says why she's drinking, Emily's expression softens somewhat. It's a moment of empathy; this is to be clearly distinguished from pity. Emily never offers the Hermetic pity (it's pointless). She nods, slowly, and lifts her pint again.
"May they pass quickly and grow duller with time."
There's weight to that, as Emily knows all about uhappy anniversaries. She doesn't insert hers into the moment, but she does pull a bit more soundly off her beer than before. Drink a little deeper, wash the thoughts back down her throat where they belong.
"I think Chuck and I are going to hang together, just now. But it's more symbolic than anything. He doesn't even want access to the House, from what I can tell. Never goes. Doesn't want anything to do with the politics. Would rather stay 'ranged DPS' whenever anything comes up on the radar." It's not criticism of the Vdept. Emily is aware that they are not similarly committed to the community. She's considering her commitment to the same very carefully just now.
"Besides, if we disbanded, you'd kick me out of all the lovely meetings. Can't have that, now, can we?" A smirk. It's not warm or wry enough to be quite teasing.
[Ashley] Ashley would have thought, by now, that she would have stopped mourning the day of her Awakening and what it meant. She has not: the passage of a decade has driven it home that she probably never will. It's less sharp, of course. That's really what she can hope for.
She doesn't speak further on it, though, and tries not to dwell on it overlong. When Emily lifts her glass so does she, and she takes another long swallow of stout.
"Ranged DPS?" Ashley asks, a little mystified. Then again, a lot of Chuck's slang (and Riley's, and Molly's) has gone over her head. She's not a gamer, has next to no familiarity with the culture or the lingo. Then she shakes her head and shrugs; it isn't too important. "That has to wear, though. Not having a cabal mate to support you."
Sometimes it rankles, when she sees how close the Guardians are. She hardly sees Wharil, and having Gregor back is something she's had to put off now, even though he's in the city. Daiyu is gone.
"I'd be grateful for a reason to keep out of meetings, personally," Ashley says with a wry smile. She reaches up and rubs at the corner of her jaw after a moment, as though there were tension in the muscle at the hinge. "But good. You're helpful to have there."
[Emily] "In games, they're the guys that stand in the back, behind the big burly guys, and throw rocks or spells or arrows from a seemingly safe distance." She shrugs a bit. She didn't expect Ashley to know gamer parlance. Emily's hardly had time to play since she Awakened. She was probably behind the times by a bit herself. "They can do a lot to help, but if you so much as sucker punch them they're pretty much done."
It fits the geek boy better than she'd imagined, at first blush. Emily's expression shows that, for a moment, and then she's waving it off with one hand and looking over at the kitchen to see when that sandwich and chips might be coming their way. It's just a sidelong glance, nothing that lingers.
"Eh. It's a bit like it's always been," she answers, with a shrug. "They're good friends, but Chuck and Riley never really got into the thick of things. Alex might have; Alex was going to be a nice addition." But... she shrugs again, runs her fingertips around the mouth of her pint glass.
"I do more with you and Kage, and Solomon and Israel than I've ever done with my cabal. It was a good thought, you know, but it just didn't pan out the way I'd hoped it would."
[Ashley] "Alex could have gotten to be pretty capable, with some time and direction," Ashley says, finishing off the glass of beer. When Emily's gaze wanders toward the back, so does Ashley's; she wants another stout. Given the fact that she hasn't been eating as much as she should, it might be the only thing that's kept her weight from sinking to the levels it was much earlier in the year. "He got his act together after Daiyu left her note."
After Wharil and Ashton started to turn an eye to the boy and see to it that he became more than a killer. Ashley had thought it good for the two disciples, too: it kept Ashton from distancing herself, it gave Wharil a project.
When Emily mentions having more interaction with the other four magi then her cabal, Ashley's lower lip draws in a little. Her mouth forms a thin line, and she reaches for her glass, brushes her fingertips over the smooth outer surface before she remembers it's empty. "Yeah," she says. "Wharil used to do more, but I've hardly seen him since...March or so. Only when I hunt him down. I guess I thought it'd be more like my old cabal."
She still misses Bran and Justine, but she misses the idea of them more: the closeness and unity of it. Then again, she supposes, it's a thing possible to rose-tint. She and Bran were growing distant and fighting often two years before they eventually broke away from each other. "Daiyu did a lot," she says.
[Emily] "It sounds like you all were quite close," she says, of the Boston cabal. What little she's heard of it has been all good and while Emily is wary of rose-tinting, she doesn't think Ashley is particularly prone to it.
"I'm sorry things haven't worked out for you like that, here." She takes another long pull off her beer and it's nearing the dregs already. With the schedule Emily keeps and the long lines of her frame, she's toeing the same dangerous line that Ashley is tonight: Not enough food, plenty of alcohol, course set for Bad Idea central.
"It was nice to see you happy, for a bit," she says. This is most likely in regard to Daiyu, but Emily turns away from explaining her remark to flag down a passing server. "I've got this round," she tells the Hermetic, before they both order their refills and settle back into the black quiet around their table.
[Ashley] "We were," Ashley says, of her old cabal. "I met Justine a couple of weeks after I started going to the chantry in Boston, and she introduced me to Bran. So I've known both of them for most of the time I've been Awake, minus a couple of months."
A beat. "I mean, things weren't always great. But I never had to track them down in a seedy hotel where there's a guy watching a BDSM video in front of all the guests." A vague gesture; apparently she's still a little irritated with Wharil. "Speaking of, you don't seem the type, but don't recommend the Travelodge near the Park to anybody. Ever."
Ashley blatantly ignores the comment about her being happy. She's not going to start again here, now, while she's drinking. So she just accepts the glass when it arrives, and the plate when it arrives shortly thereafter. She scoots it toward the middle of the table, turning it so Emily can access the fries, and picks up one of the sandwich slices.
"It was good for me. I've sort of regretted the fact that a lot of the apprentices here haven't really gotten the same thing. But there were a ton of Hermetics in Boston, so I guess it was easier."
[Emily] [WP: Emily. That's not a nice reaction. Don't share with the class.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Jarod] [Awareness - how quick am I on the uptake tonight?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 9 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod] [>.< .... +1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 (Botch x 1 at target 7)
[Jarod] [...*dies*]
[Ashley] [But am I fast on the uptake?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[Emily] "Travelodge?" she asks. The word is awkward on her tongue. She is not feigning unfamiliarity with it. It tastes like... like... low budget family holidays, or road trips, or, oh wait, she can place that now: motels where the doors open to the parking lot.
Her nose wrinkles, faintly, just before Emily kills the beer to drive the taste of that word off her tongue.
"I..." She starts, and then she stops. When she starts to speak again, there's a finger pointed at Ashley in a vaguely accusatory way. "I'll have you no I make no such recommendations." A little frown. Really, what did Ashley think of her taste? Emily exhales, a little haughtily. She can't help it, her Embassy brat roots are showing.
"Besides, there's absolutely no point in my recommending a hotel where I don't get points for it. And Travelodge," she sneers the word as surely as she does Hot Dogs, "Has a crap loyalty programme."
There's a pause, and then she can't help herself so she asks.
"Who on Earth sent you there? I wouldn't send Molly there." Emily couldn't stand the Cultist, most days. All talk of Apprenticeships and Boston was lost, for a moment, in getting to the bottom of this nightmare-ish travel experience of Ashley's.
[Ashley] The Hermetic's hands raise, palms up in front of her as though to deflect a blow, when that accusing finger is pointed in her direction. "It wasn't my idea," she says.
"Wharil was hiding in one," she says, with a shake of her head. "He panicked about somebody coming after the Euthanatos here, back in July, and decided it was a good place to hide." Ashley, daughter of a fisherman and a secretary, has no class-based reasons to sneer at the place. Her distaste seems to have been borne of experience.
"I stayed in a few youth hostels when I was in Europe, though, and they weren't much better," she reflects. In fact, she thinks many of them might have been a good deal worse, but at the age of twenty-two she cared less. Less, apparently, than the twenty-two year old sharing the booth with her.
"But yeah. Wharil was there for...about a month. Shit. Two months," she says, her eyebrows tilting as she thinks further on it. Ashley takes a bite of her sandwich.
[Emily] Emily had her reasons to feel the way she did about accomodations. And there was someone lingering just at the margins of this scene who could attest that her college quarters had not always been that much better than the Travelodge in question. She has memories of hotels that served as homes for months on end and when she thinks on that, she would never wish the worst of them on anyone.
The transience gives her some odd perspectives; the circumstance surrounding her impermanence even more. And Emily, the seemingly average college student across the board from her, could have picked up her phone and remedied Wharil's predicament if she'd only known.
"I wish I'd known. We could have at least gotten him a week at a Hilton," she says, with a shake of her head. The pints come back and Emily's already sipping from hers, even before she reaches across to nab one of the fries.
"Living in hotels? It's kind of fun for the first week or so. Novel. Then it gets old fast. There were months where the whole of our kitchen was a microwave, two-cup coffee maker and the bathroom sink."
"He's not still doing that," she asks, her brow furrowing as she considers it. Considers strongly offering the Euthanatos some other shelter. Reins in the idea of offering any part of her flat -- a space that is still predominantly her own.
"It's been a shite summer for everyone, hasn't it?" she asks, darkly, when the mention of July triggers other memories. And then the darkness softens, somewhat, at a fleeting memory and Emily ducks her head a bit to see about dressing the fries with salt and brown vinegar.
[Ashley] There's salt and malt vinegar to be had: Emily can find a bottle of it on the table next to the napkin holder and ketchup. By now more people are beginning to filter into the pub, which seems to get an odd amount of traffic for a Monday night. Many of them are graduate students; perhaps that offers some explanation for their numbers.
Ashley is sharp on the lookout tonight. Justin knows that she comes here, and she's been avoiding Justin of late: he keeps trying to convince her that she should see a therapist. It's bad enough living next to the man without him hunting her down in her (all too frequent) haunts.
"I've never lived in one," she tells Emily. "It doesn't sound too exciting to me. I like having one place to go back to." Particularly, she likes having a library; anyone would only need to set foot in Ashley's apartment to know that she likes having a Home, and likes to feel comfortable there.
"And no. He's not still doing that. He'd taken care of the problem when I went to tell him about Daiyu last month," Ashley says. She hasn't seen Wharil since, or heard from him. There's another long sip from her glass. And then, to be fair, she adds, "The summer had its good points."
[Jarod] The last time he was here, it had been an accident of coincidence. Forces at large in the universe had converged to cause a necessary diversion in the evening's plans, and he'd taken the first promising door that he'd seen. That door happened to belong to the Hung Drawn and Quartered, which, all told, was probably one of the better pubs in the city. It was clean, relaxing, and unpretentious. More importantly, it had a nice drink selection. Good scotch wasn't always easy to come by, and having picked up a taste for the stuff while living in the UK, Jarod tended to frequent the places that he knew would have a reliably good selection.
Ilana was at home, with the sitter (with Nick.) Probably getting ready for bed right about now. Occasionally he missed those moments with her, when he stayed late at work. There were certain things about becoming a parent that tended to catch one by surprise, and one of those things was how much you missed the silly little routines when you weren't around for them.
He needed a drink, though, after the day he'd had. Office work didn't sit well with him. It instilled a strong sense of being caged (trapped) - like a big cat pacing around in an enclosure at the zoo.
It was colder tonight than it had been lately. Something much more like proper autumn weather. He didn't have an umbrella with him tonight, but otherwise he was dressed in similar attire - an expensive business suit, black with a white shirt and dark green tie. (This one was Armani, not Prada.) At first, when he walked in, he didn't seem to notice the two women in the booth. (And unlike last time, it wasn't because he was pretending.) He sat down on one of the stools at the bar and gestured with his hand to get the bartender's attention. When the woman walked over, he smiled and talked to her for a couple of moments. The usual idle pleasantry - how's the evening been, how're classes, you're pretty when you smile. He ordered Aberlour A’bunadh, neat, because he liked it better when it wasn't watered down.
And then the woman leaned in a bit and whispered conspiratorially that he might want to turn around and check out the booth in the back. The same one he'd found Ashley and a handful of others in not too long ago. A glance over his shoulder, and... why, yes. He did want to check out the booth in the back.
So he stood up, picked up his drink, and walked over.
[Emily] [Aware? Who me? I am most definitely aware of my pint. But that guy picking up the bartender? Do I notice him? Better yet, do I recognize him by resonance alone? +1 booze on an empty stomach]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7)
[Emily] People say that drinking numbs your senses, somewhat. Makes you a little less aware of the world around you. People say it lowers inhibitions, contributes to bad decision making. People say a lot of stuff, but tonight? Oh, no, tonight drinking makes Emily all the more aware of the world around her, especially a particularly familiar slide of Winter and Sensuality that skims across her skin.
She sits a little straighter, for a moment. It's not at all dissimilar to the way a prey animal reacts when they scent a predator, save that Emily's reaction is not to bolt or hide or shift her way toward the edge of the booth to make a hasty escape. No! Remember that boozahol contributes to poor decision making, even if it's perception numbing powers were up for debate after the evening.
It make look a little precognisant when she slides further into the booth to make a seat beside her for the Verbena, before he even turns to check their table out. She slides her beer, and her water (untouched [tsk tsk]) with her. This position makes it easier for her to grab fries off Ashley's plate, after all.
Summer had its good points, Ashley said. Emily begrudgingly agrees.
"Hey, stranger." This for Jarod when he approaches. By now the chip on her shoulder has softened, somewhat, and the sting of the Apprentices' hasty retreat from the city is numbed a little. There's familiarity between her and the Verbena, that's easy for Ashley to see, but the extent of that former friendship (or current) is hard to judge. "Would you like to join us?"
She glances, belatedly, to Ashley for an okay.
[Ashley] Ashley is so familiar with scenting out resonance at this point in her life that it would take a particularly hard night to dull her senses entirely. It's second nature, sizing up other Willworkers, the feel of them, whether they could hold their own against her if she were to challenge them. It's subconscious.
She isn't as attuned to Jarod's presence as Emily is - she, after all, is not quite as familiar with the man - but after he's been at the bar for a moment or two, her gaze slides in his direction. Maybe it's that notice of him that makes the bartender gesture him back toward Ashley; Janine and company know that she's prominent in the city, and she's here a lot. By now they assume that Awakened individuals who walk into the Hung Drawn and Quartered are here to meet with her.
Besides, it's good business. They've noticed that a lot of the city's Awakened members are moderate to heavy drinkers.
"Hey, Jarod," she says. There's a glance, quick, from Emily to the Verbena and then back again, as Ashley sizes up the amount of awkward that is likely to occur here tonight. But it's too late to make any kind of graceful escape. The Hermetic edges a little farther back into the booth. "Go ahead and sit."
Beat. "A couple of Emily's cabalmates left, so..." A shrug. An explanation for the drinking. As if Ashley needed one.
[Jarod] For what it was worth, there was nothing at all awkward about the way that Jarod greeted either Emily or Ashley. Perhaps, at another time, this particular combination of forces might have been less comfortable (or perhaps not - Jarod was probably the kind of person who was used to getting into potentially awkward situations like having a drink with two women he'd slept with), but if so, that wasn't the case now. Frankly, Emily and Ashley were probably the two magi who he preferred to run into like this, if given the choice. One, because she was important to him (she was a friend, and he didn't have many friends - not real ones.) The other, because she was someone who he had a certain amount of respect for. (Not that he was likely to say so.)
Emily had anticipated his arrival (evidently more tuned in to him than he had been to her, but they all have their off days) and shifted to leave an open place for him on the bench beside her. When he approached their table, she looked up at him and said: Hey, stranger. Would you like to join us? He just... smiled. And this was an entirely different smile than he'd given the bartender. It spoke of wry familiarity and even a little affection. He slid in beside the once-apprentice as if he belonged there, and offered a greeting to Ashley. "Evening."
A couple of Emily's cabalmates left, so...
He glanced again at Emily, was quiet for a moment, then just... nodded. (I'm sorry.) This wasn't a situation he had any experience with (cabals in general were something he'd managed to avoid - and intentionally so), but he knew it wasn't easy to be left behind.
"Good excuse as any to grab a drink, I suppose." Though in truth, they hardly needed one.
[Emily] [Subterfuge: What? No. People leaving does not make me sad. +1 diff for having Ashley along, spilling my secrets.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 7, 9 (Failure at target 7)
[Emily] And that, right there, is why Emily didn't tell other people things as a general rule. Ashley oh-so-easily throws it out there that some of her friends have moved and Jarod gets to cast her the apologetic look and Emily, who likes to play these things close to breast, to bring them out when she's good and ready, just looks down at her beer for a moment to escape the weight of that unspoken apology.
"Yeah, well, people go when they need to," she says, perhaps not as easily as she wanted to. It's not as effortless to shrug off tonight, in present company. Maybe because of the relationship she'd had with the man sitting beside her, and how that had come to an end. "There's just been a lot of it lately."
Emily nabbed another fry and nibbled on that before she could keep talking. Or turn about with a remark on Ashley's motivations for imbibing this evening. Her woes were excuse enough, Jarod had said.
She starts to ask after Ilana, gets the question just to the tip of her tongue and then bites it back. Buries it with a swallow of ale. Turns her attention to the dark wood of the table.
"How's your Monday been?" she asks him, instead. Emily doesn't particularily want to go abck to talking about Travelodges or grim anniversaries or missing friends or defunct cabals. Surely Jarod has something more to offer than that, or at least something more distracting to offer.
[Ashley] [Uh oh. Was I not supposed to say that? +1 for tipsy, +2.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 9)
[Ashley] Ashley is honest to a fault, it's been said. Repeatedly, by many people. Without regard for sensitivity or for whether or not something she says is something one would want other people to know. In her mind, people should be able to deal with the truth as it is. Still, that doesn't mean that, on the rare occasion the realization dawns, she doesn't feel a little bad about it.
Emily looks down at the table and Ashley grimaces and raises a hand to the back of her neck, roughing a hand through the short hair there. It's surprising that she noticed at all: Emily's facial expression is ambivalent, there's no real show of emotion there that is easy for her to gauge. What she understands is less based in empathy with Emily and more in an understanding that she made a misstep.
Still, there are no apologies. She's sorry, but in passing; she doesn't apologize for truth even if it's a small thing.
Ashley takes a bite of her sandwich and glances over Jarod's suit. He was working somewhere, apparently. She takes a moment to chew and swallow and take a sip of stout before she says, "I read about your project."
[Jarod] Distraction. He could be good at that. Jarod had embodied distraction on more than one occasion in the past, for both of these women. Being around him was a little like taking a vacation. He was his own world, for better or worse. (Just don't venture past the tourist-friendly zone.)
Emily didn't seem inclined to discuss her problems, and Jarod didn't inquire, either because he didn't see the need, or because he didn't think that she'd want him to. Her response (people go when they need to) was very much something that he would have said. All at once pragmatic and dismissive. He followed suit, and moved on.
"Truthfully? It's been mind-numbingly boring." He sighed a little, a twinge of something that looked vaguely like disgust showing in his expression. (Boring was not a word that he liked to apply to his life, in any capacity.) "And I will not torture the two of you with a rendition of the day's events." He glanced at Ashley when she mentioned the business, raised his glass, and said, "To saving the world, one solar cell at a time." Then he took a drink, savoring the familiar woody taste on his tongue for a moment before swallowing. This particular scotch had a bit of a spiced note to it, and a sherry aftertaste. It reminded him of fall in London.
"Anyway, the evening seems to be taking a more pleasant turn. Just precisely what the doctor ordered."
After setting his drink down, he reached up and loosened the tie at his neck, slipping the knot free and unbuttoning the top two buttons on his shirt.
[Emily] Emily stares at the table, Ashley has a rare flash of empathy and grimaces (as close to an apology as she gets) and it is high time for that topic to die, to get buried under a cascade of pub fries or drowned in a few more pints. Jarod, thankfully, leaves off of it and the conversation turns away.
"Half my lab wants me to try and get them internships with your firm," Emily says, idly. She's steadily working her way through Ashley's fries, but hasn't touched her water yet -- against her own better judgement and advice. There's a wry smirk to her comment, but not a lot of weight behind it.
She's gotten quieter since he joined them, a little more reclusive with her body language. Emily's limbs are all angles tonight, arms folded lazily on the table, shifting only to lift her pint or a bit of food toward her face. There's no pain in her carriage, now, and that's a pleasant improvement. There's just a lot of not caring, even in present company, about her posture or how she's perceived. Ashley's seen this once before, but far more pronounced. In June.
Jarod found her in a club once, lazily chatting up her own glass of gin. She's flirting with the same bad ideas tonight, but his presence has (perhaps ironically) made it less likely she'll follow through.
[Ashley] Ashley has not yet given up on bad ideas, perhaps evidenced by the fact that she's already finished another glass. She has a tendency to drink while someone else is talking, to fill up pauses in conversation when she herself is, to give herself a moment to think before she speaks: Emily's seen this on many an occasion, but with the Chorister it's usually been with cups of tea. (Food goes in the mouth, foot stays out of it.)
She finishes one of the halves of her sandwich. It smells spicy, whatever it is: looks like it's filled with tofu and some kind of sauce and vegetables. It's the sort of thing one would only find in this sort of neighborhood.
There's a smirk when Jarod says that his day has been boring - commiserating, maybe. "I'm kind of glad I escaped the office," she says, which she would not have done had it not been for the Jhor episode on the first of the year. She suspects she'll be going back, though.
It's the way to fight the War on her terms, and whether she's a member of his cabal or not, whether they're still together or not, she's been quite influenced by Bran Summers' vision. Remains so.
Jarod, to her, hadn't seemed like the type to get into that kind of business, and the slightly raised eyebrows say so. Then again, he makes a regular habit of confusing her.
[Jarod] He laughed a little at Emily's confession, and gave a light shake of his head. "The pay really isn't what I'd like it to be right now. We're barely breaking even. But if the trend continues, that'll change. There's a lot of competition for the internships, from what I hear. I can give you the number for the woman who does most of the hiring, if you want to pass it along."
He fished his iPhone out of the inside pocket of his suit-jacket and searched through his address book until he found what he was looking for. A moment later, Emily's own phone would receive a text with the aforementioned name and number of the head of HR. When he put his phone away, he glanced up at Ashley.
"I used to think I'd escaped it too," he mused with an expression that was subtly wistful and a little ironic. "I don't really need to be there, but I don't like to invest that much money into something that I don't have a direct hand in." In truth, he had a habit of micromanaging. It irritated his partners on occasion, but his PR skills came in handy, so they mostly let him have his way.
[Emily] Emily hadn't really expected Jarod to act on this idle comment. She lofted an eyebrow and studied him out of the corner of her eye when he pulled for an iPhone and sent her a text. Curious, she pulled her own phone out of the messenger bag beside her, verified the info and nodded.
Huh.
Name and number.
"I'll refer them to your website," Emily says, gently pushing a few things out of the HR directors voicemail box with that suggestion. Most hiring managers and departments prefered email submissions, especially in technical fields. Getting the geeks to talk pretty on the phone could be painful. "Unless someone's really worth her time."
They're talking about being office-bound and she says, easily, with the frivolity and surety of youth (and a certain amount of wry self-besmirchment), "Oh, well, I'm going to graduate and be fantastic, and land a job at Google and wear jeans to work every day and spend ten percent of my time on personal projects..."
Nope. She couldn't keep that line up long enough to finish it. She's smirking now, and offers them a little wink. The suits, the office, the particular social dance therein. In truth, Emily doesn't worry about its eventual ingress into her life. Though she'll hate the meetings when she gets there.
"If you hate the office, though, I can help you set up teleconferencing from you flat. Then you can oversee without having to step on-site." It's a bit like being the glowing eye of Sauron, but Emily does not embarass herself by saying so. Instead she drinks down her pint, and belatedly starts in on her water.
[Ashley] "I just hope I never have to copywrite again," Ashley says, with a sort of grim expression that suggests that the environment was as soul-sucking as it sounds. One might have difficulty imagining her in a corporate environment, with as introverted and awkward as she can be at times. "I mean, having control of a project is different from being marketing's bitch, I would figure."
Then again, given that she can be aggressive too, perhaps it wasn't that bad a fit.
She doesn't start in on water, but asks the waitress for another glass when the woman returns. She checks in often: she's quite used to having Ashley as a customer.
The Hermetic picks up the other half of her sandwich, chewing quietly while she listens to the talk of HR, of Emily's offer to set Jarod up so that he can work remotely from his flat. She looks thoughtfully at the Verbena, after a moment. She doesn't think it's something he got into for profit, by any means.
[Jarod] There were reasons why Jarod held ambivalent feelings about offices and business meetings, and not all of them were so cut-and-dry as a simple hatred for tedium. The corporate world would always be inescapably tied, in his subconscious, with some very deep-running childhood neurosis. It was money and power. It was also the abuse of power.
Ashley had described him on occasion as a social darwinist, which was only partially correct. Believing in something didn't necessarily mean that he agreed with it.
Emily suggested teleconferencing, and he took a drink before responding. "I actually do that, most days. But I like to go in a few times a week, if I can manage." This confession was a little telling. It spoke to his level of dedication. That this company was not just another way to make money. (After all, an investor need not do anything but write a big check and then sit back and wait for a return.)
Ashley mentioned copywriting, and Jarod made a face. (Another one of those cat-about-to-jump-in-a-puddle-of-cold-mud expressions.) "I used to want to be an actor, when I was a teenager. It never would have worked, though. Paparazzi would have driven me batshit."
(Yet another thing he had ambivalent feelings about - fame.)
[Emily] She nods a bit, and goes back to drinking. And if Emily drinks a bit more this round than others, perhaps that's to cover up the quiet on her end of the conversation. She doesn't have any employment history to speak of, not as anything more than a contractor here or there, or an undergraduate member of her lab. She doesn't even have summer jobs to reminisce about (I'll never go back to food service...). She does have a pint, and she's almost done with it. That's the end of her second, and paired with a mere handful of chips it's not enough to counterbalance given her small form.
There's a light flush to her cheeks, and a slightly loose shape to her smile -- when she smiles. She's not quite smiling now. Emily sets the empty pint down and leans her head into one upturned hand and just listens to them. She's learned how to fade into the background over many years of being seen but not heard as a child. She borrows on that now, being unintrusive, being present without being more than that.
The problem with this quiet is that it's necessarily solitary. In a room full of people, at a table with friends, it was entirely possible to feel alone and adrift on that loneliness. Not feeling the loneliness was why she'd gone out in the first place, but it wasn't working the way she'd hoped.
When the server wanders by next, Emily will place her fingertips atop her pint glass (no mas [not just now]) and give herself time to consider how much she wants to go over that edge tonight.
[Ashley] When the server returns he has Ashley's glass and the Hermetic takes it, taking a long swallow. The sandwich is gone and there are just fries on the plate, but she doesn't touch them: she'd offered them to Emily, didn't particularly want to eat them. It's unusual not to see her devouring everything in sight. There are days when she just doesn't feel like it.
She's less tightly wound while she sits there with the two of them, though it has nothing to do with their presence. She's leaned the sharp points of her shoulderblades back into the booth now. Alcohol forces upon her body what she doesn't manage in day-to-day living: a sense of relaxation, a sort of ease in the muscles of her shoulders and back.
Ashley grins when Jarod mentions being an actor, and if it's a touch hesitant, a touch slow to appear, it's because she doesn't mention what she wanted to do, when she was a teenager. And had to think about it, and decide not to voice it. "I could see it," she says.
"I never really figured I'd go into writing. It was just easy to get a job in marketing with my degree, and there were ways to work against the Technocracy in that kind of environment, so I took it," she says with a shrug. "But I went to college kind of late."
[Jarod] "Very pragmatic of you," he said, with a smile that suggested a subtle kind of approval.
But Emily wasn't talking, and he'd noticed that. Had this been another time, he might have done something coy and flirtatious to try and draw her out of her shell. There was reservation in this respect, though. Tonight, he glanced at her, and contemplated silently for a moment. He finished off the last of his scotch a bit earlier than he'd planned, and set the empty tumbler on the table. He put a hand on the small of Emily's back, tracing there gently with his thumb. (A subtle gesture, but an intimate one. Meant to be relaxing.)
"I was never terribly responsible. I'm still not terribly responsible, truthfully."
[Emily] [... ohlooksomedice, +1 tipsy]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Failure at target 7)
[Jarod] [Ohlookmoredice...]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 5)
[Emily] Jarod puts his hand on Emily's back, and she doesn't pull away. She's waiting for someone, but that doesn't seem to keep her from accepting that comfort, just now, however intimate it is. It doesn't keep her from glancing over and letting that look linger thoughtfully for a moment before she turns her attention back to the table, and Ashley's fries.
"My dad wants me to go into Embassy work when I graduate," Emily says, idly. It may be the first time she's mentioned her father (the one she was born to) in conversation. There'd been once, at Chuck's, when she'd answered the phone in surprise and stepped out on the patio in the dead of Winter.
"And my mom wants me to do something in humanitarian work. I told her I'm the wrong kind of engineer for building homes in Africa, but that doesn't seem to matter..." She shrugs a bit, and Jarod can feel the tension in her frame all the way down to where his hand rests. She's been drinking, but she hasn't relaxed. She hasn't found a way to unwind, really, since they'd all come out of the Labyrinth.
Oh, look, yet another thing she's not talking about.
"I'm pretty sure learning that we're fighting the forces of evil with our super-powered friends would disappoint them both." This is said lightly, wryly, with just enough mirth to lighten the corners of her eyes a little.
[Emily] They know each other well. In some ways, they know each other too well for this. His hand smooths over the soft fabric of her sweater, making small movements with his thumb. It's intimate, and not something she shies away from. It helps, slowly, to ease away the tension she carries. The readiness that is misplaced, has become a taut singing thing against her bones. He can feel her breathe out, just so, carefully meted to not give anything away to the Hermetic sitting across the table.
There's longing in that. A need she hasn't sated. Schooled and kept back, pushed aside, denied. Its in the way her eyes close, just before she looks over at him, and it's in the something she can't pull back enough to keep him from seeing it if their eyes met.
If she wasn't waiting...
If things had gone differently...
Then she's talking about her family, and future employment, and anything but the closeness they've kept.
to Jarod
[Ashley] Jarod puts his hand on Emily's back, and Emily's glancing look lingers, and Ashley's eyebrows raise. She doesn't know what Emily's thinking; she doesn't have to. They spoke on the phone shortly after Emily got the news. The flicker of anger she suppresses isn't jealousy.
Still, she isn't the sort to make a scene and honest as she is, isn't the sort to interfere with a friend's own decisions, not when it's not going to affect her, really; let them fuck up as they will. She just observes, and she minds, and quietly alters her own responses accordingly.
Ashley takes a sip from her glass, chooses to let her focus sway back toward the conversation. "I'm sure they wouldn't be disappointed, if you could tell them," she tells Emily. She knows, after all, that Gregory talked about an Order of knights, even if they weren't Choristers.
"My dad was pissed that I didn't join the Akashic Brotherhood," she says, with a shrug. Or, perhaps, pissed that she turned down the Akashic Brotherhood for the Order of Hermes; Ashley has never really been sure. Jim Novotny is not an easy man to talk to. "I don't think he cares much about my mundane career."
[Jarod] [Oh-ho, do I notice that flicker of anger?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Jarod] [Hmm...subterfuge?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Jarod] There was little that was missed in the nuances of this exchange. The stress present in the muscles of Emily's back, and the subtle longing in her breath. To his credit, he didn't try to push the issue, but neither did he pull back and refrain from touching her. His hand remained where it was. No more, no less. And he behaved as if there wasn't any underlying subtext. It stood to reason, though, (and Ashley herself had proof of this) that Jarod was one of those people who tended to speak more with actions (and with touch) than he did with words.
He laughed a little, quietly, when Emily got to that last bit. "You know, I have a hard time imagining you being considered a disappointment." (Though his perception of this matter was, admittedly, skewed.) "Besides, what parent wouldn't love to know that they'd birthed a super-hero?"
They could have turned this into a competition of one-upmanship, between the three of them, of precisely how many ways they'd disappointed their parents. Jarod, though... he didn't contribute much. (Though he certainly could have.) Instead he just shrugged, a little dismissively, and said, "I haven't given half a shit about my family's approval since I was a kid. It isn't their business." What he didn't say, but implied slightly in his tone, was that their opinions didn't deserve that kind of respect. (At least, not his parents.)
But speaking of disapproval...
Just as he hadn't missed the way that his touch had affected Emily, neither did he miss the look that Ashley gave the both of them. He looked at the Hermetic for a long, silent moment. Then he slowly let his hand fall away from Emily's back... and stood up.
"I don't give half a shit about anyone's approval."
And that could have been spoken with a sharper tone, but he let it fall matter-of-factly. (Do with it what you will.) A glance back to Emily, and a soft smile that might have been a little apologetic. "I should go. It's late."
And, assuming he wasn't stopped, he'd turn and make his way out - adjusting his shirt and tie as he did so.
[Emily] [Aware as Empathy: The hell just happened... Ashley? +1 dif, tipsy]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Ashley] Ashley does seem to be a bit disapproving. It's hard for Emily to put her finger on, precisely, but she knows that Ashley is both very loyal and places a lot of importance on keeping promises, either to oneself or others.
to Emily
[Emily] Jarod can't imagine her being a disappointment, because Jarod hasn't heard her brother figure tell the One Time, In Vienna story about royalty and underage drinking. Or because he wasn't around at 3am in several different cities while she acted out her post-Prague angst and hostility. She had disappointed plenty of people in her time; coming to Chicago was supposed to have meant she'd put that era of her life behind her.
By the expression Ashley was wearing, she was failing miserably at putting that behind her. There was something going on between the other two magi that Emily had only caught the tail end of, but that tail end was enough to draw her brows together worriedly and pull her arms away from the table as Jarod stood up to leave.
She said nothing to keep him there; did nothing to keep him from walking away. (This lapse in judgment goes only so far tonight.)
"Mmm, me too, probably," she says, somewhere in the middle of her goodbye to Jarod and her quizzical look at Ashley (no doubt met with the unverbalized equivalent of "You know what, Emily"). The Singer takes the time to dig out her wallet, and leave her part of the bill for food and drinks. She's got money enough for that, and a decent tip.
"Class in the morning and all that." Her voice is quieter, faintly sad (frustrated) despite the smile she's wearing. It's a mismatch, but maybe one the others won't pick up on too keenly just now.
[Ashley] It's not so unusual a thing, really. Ashley expects to be disappointed by people, and it's hard not to find affirmation when it's what one looks for in the first place.
They all have their childhood neuroses, after all.
Jarod's stare is met in kind. It's not cold: there's no way Ashley could manage detachment if she tried. This is the kind of stare animals give each other when challenged, when one's made a breach. But for all that she doesn't seem precisely angry at him, or didn't until his parting shot, and then her jaw tightens, the muscles bunching there at the hinge. She doesn't stop him when he gets up to go.
Or Emily, for that matter. Awkward was achieved - and they were doing so well. "Good night, Emily," she says.
And it's only after the Chorister leaves too that she sighs, and anger fades and uncertainty sets in, and she remembers what she was out here drinking for in the first place. So she shuffles Emily's money off to the side to pay for the bill later, when she leaves. Then she slides her notebook out, sets it back on the table, and leans over it again to write.
It's late. She doesn't have class in the morning.
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