Breakdown

[Ashley] [Bampf! Vulgar, no witnesses. -1 for focus, -1 for practiced rote.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[Ashley] [Now -my- Paradox...]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Ashley] [Soak]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Ashley] One would expect rending space asunder to be accompanied by a sound: by thunder, by a pop, by a bang. Maybe by a puff of smoke or a shimmering image of a shape suddenly fading in. But that's not how this works.

There is no one there, and then there is someone there. Ashley steps out of empty space as though she'd just walked through a doorway, as though she could walk anywhere in the world just by closing her eyes (and that's because she can. Hunger is everywhere, Hunger is in all things, and no true divide exists for this physical world is illusory.) She just...appears in the chantry house. In the main room.

And she isn't bloodied the way the (hopefully) returning heroes will be, when they return victorious. But she is as tired as they will be. Her battle was one purely of Wills, but it's ground her down. She might represent the Mind with iron, but the Mind is one thing that doesn't grow sharper immediately after it's honed, after it's whetted; it needs a little time for that.

Ashley shakes away Paradox when it brushes its hand over her brow. Her breathing is already rapid, quick, fearful of what she's going to find when the others come here. She's afraid for them. She's been having nightmares, but no one knows that except Kage.

There's no one here yet. Ashley reaches up and rubs her chest as though she could quell the palpitations of her heart, as though she could keep it from bursting forth. Then she sits down in a chair and she waits.

[Emily Littleton] When Emily woke up this morning, there was no great sense of purpose and fulfillment at the thought of vanquishing a great evil from the city. No one, in Emily's estimate, contemplates walking into this sort of place while they have their morning tea and biscuits. No one she knows can imagine this sort of terribleness, straight out of awakening, eyes still heavy with morpheus and dreaming. Not even in her worst nightmares had she created a place like the Labyrinth.

Save that the Labyrinth drew from her nightmares, from the living dread days that she had walked, from the darkest oneiromancy her subconscious had ever designed.

One moment she was just beyond its margins, in the place where the Correspondence shroud ended and she was just able to break free.

The next...

... there was a heavy thump from upstairs. A sound that Ashley can easily hear. Emily landed, more or less in the room, and more or less as if she'd strode through a door. Tripped across the threshold, and whacked herself stupid on the door frame on the way down. The newly minted Initiate's hands were planted on the floor infront of her. Bruises once again blossomed across her arms and rib cage. The ground swam, came ever closer, her breathing came in shallow rasps.

She hurt.

Everything hurt.

It took a long moment for her to realize that she'd made it back as far as the Chantry, and then? Then she stopped holding herself up with her arms and just laid down for a moment. Only a moment. Because the floor was flat and solid, and presumably would stop spinning.

Only a moment.

Then she'd best move, before Atlas bampfed his way in and stepped atop her. Because that, that would hurt even more.

[Ashley] There's that thudding, that knocking, from upstairs. Ashley's head jerks up, alerted, not entirely unlike either of her companions that guard her apartment (the kitten less so, of course.) She's aware that the others will be Striding in here once they're out of the Labyrinth, but there's still a fluttering in her chest, as though a bird were trying to escape, as though a crow were beating its black wings against her ribcage. She doesn't know, you see.

But she gets up to see, and she gets up with the knowledge in the back of her mind that she may have to fight. Exhausted as she is, she is still prepared to fight, and the thought of losing never once crosses her mind.

A person loses when they begin to doubt. To lose the Will to fight is to have already lost.

She hesitates at the foot of the stairs, but it isn't from fear. Her fingers curl around the railing of the stairs while the other hand finds its way up to the chain that hangs around her neck, that binds her to the Awakened world. Her memories of upstairs: Daiyu's broken corpse, the Nephandus whose eyes burned into hers while blood bloomed out around the back of his head, while the sound of thunder filled her good ear.

That hesitance doesn't last long. Ashley sucks in a breath, steels her jaw, starts up the stairs.

And there she finds Emily. There's an exhale from her, sharp and hard, as though something struck her from behind, like the wind was knocked out of her. Her hand falls away from the chain around her neck and she steps over to the girl, hooks a hand beneath one of her arms to help her up and away from where she collapsed upon returning.

"Emily," she says, voice sharp and clear. "Are you all right?"

[Ashley] [Awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] The floor is right there. It is hard and level and good. It hurts like a sonovabitch against her side, where Emily cannot even quantify the internal bruising and bleeding that happen and which parts had been healed. She just knew that it hurt to exist.

Then Ashley hooked her hand under Emily's arm and pulled.

"Mother of --" Oh, oh, yes, the Singer-to-be was quiet alive "Fuckery." And apparently not self-censoring just now. "That hurts."

A sharp exhale. She blinked, several times, eyes wide in between, just a little glassy. Then a careful exhale. Lips pressed together. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. Smaller exhale. Centering. Yes.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay, Ash," she says, when the Hermetic has let go her arm. While she's very, very carefully righting herself. Trying to stand. Still a little unstable. "I'm..."

Wince.

"No, no I'm ... I will be fine. Just now though. Not quite so. Not so much. No."

The words tumble, uneasy, stilted. They come in little clusters, gasps, like swells out to sea. In groups, in groups of groups, at a somewhat-steady interval and then all-at-once, too, for a little variety.

Her dark jeans are spattered with things best not thought about. There's blood on her boots, on her boot heels, at the cuffs there. Dark and dried and splattered over again. There's a heavy soot-slick to her leather jacket. But it's not rent anywhere. There's no tear to her clothing.

Emily reeks of recent magic. Her own resonance sings, it's a veritable buzz around her, an Unrelenting Reverence. Perverted and twisted by the place she has been. The taint is overwhelming. Raw. Visceral. Wrong. It drowns out even the sorrow(hope)fulness of Israel's charm. She's filthy with it, resonance, even more than she is gory and disheveled.

[Ashley] Fuckery, Emily says, and the forcefulness of that curse relieves any doubts Ashley might have at the girl's state. There's a noise that could only be described as a giggle, something high pitched and stifled and propelling its way out of her throat more by force of nerves, by contained tension that just has to be released, than out of genuine mirth either at hearing Emily swear in that unrestrained way or out of sadism.

"You're okay," she repeats, and her eyes meet Emily's once, the intense blue of them harsh and unrelenting in how they take in the Singer-to-be's appearance. The blood, but she can see that there's no terrible wound anywhere on Emily's body, can see that the girl was injured but that she has managed to heal herself.

Initiate, indeed.

"What about the others?"

And that's all she has time to ask before that taint hits her, before she can feel the brush of tainted Will. It tastes like rot, like decay, only it's nowhere near so natural, nothing so pure as a simple breaking down. It hasn't soaked into Emily's pattern, but it's there and strong enough that Ashley can feel it.

The Hermetic stirs, once, shifts. Wishes she had the means to scrub the girl's resonance clean.

[Emily Littleton] [Subterfuge: I am totally more okay than I really am, and since you don't see bullet holes CLEARLY I AM FINE. -2 wound penalty. +1 ooooobviously lying about being okay]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 7 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Ashley] [You never say fuckery.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 10 (Failure at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] The blood is not Emily's. But it's best that Ashley thinks of it this way. For now. For Emily has been hurt, and she has healed herself, and she is still hurt -- but hale enough to let the Adept not worry about that just now. Well enough to, even at a distinct disadvantage, but on a show of almost collectedness.

That's before Ashley peers into her with that soul-scathing intensity. Emily, who is usually content to press back in silence, is hollowed out by it. There's no resilience there, no resistence. She's at the bottom of the barrel, for feats of Will. This from the Initiate who'd been growing steadily more willful all year.

There's also shock, lingering just behind whatever thin thread of Will got her home. The unraveling, it's coming. That moment where the weight of her experiences tallies up the scores and realizes just how close she was to losing everything in one moment, and how easy it would have been for that lash of energy to...

...

There's a wobble to her certainty, and Emily looks away.

"Atlas got out. The ..." It hits her. She doesn't even know the Hermetic's name. Something flicks across her memory (pressing a stone vial into his hand, telling him in no uncertain terms to drink [leaving the last of the charms with Atlas]). These choices that left her bruised and battered and bloody, but not them (hopefully not them).

"... Gritty? Ah, that guy. Guns. Moves real fast. Him. Other cabal. Yeah, he's fine too."

A beat here, she can't look over Ashley just now. At the Dean. At a friend.

"We lost the others as soon as we stepped in. Never found them again inside."

It's grim news. The Singer-to-be slumps as she speaks it. Sighs heavily. Winces at how much that hurts.

[Ashley] Emily brushes her wounds aside, manages to hold herself up with enough confidence that Ashley doesn't question it when she says she's okay, that she'll be fine. She doesn't notice the way that Emily's resolve shakes, quails. She's never been in a Labyrinth. She's read about them, she knows what they do to the mind and soul. But without that personal experience it's hard for her to know what, exactly, might be weighing on Emily.

She doesn't know the names of the Hermetics either; just knows they're Flambeau. And a part of her is a little relieved to hear they're all right, even if she doesn't know them. They're Traditionmates, and in a way she's close enough to honorary Flambeau that they're almost housemates.

When Emily tells her that they lost the others, her jaw works a moment. She worries about Israel.

There's this too, something dark and deeply buried, something she doesn't want to even acknowledge is in her thoughts: in a way she doesn't want to have been the only person to have lost something in this fight. She doesn't want the only person who dies to have been one of hers. It's bitterness, pure and sharp and just having thought it at all makes her want to squeeze her eyes shut, banish it and pretend that it never occurred.

After a hard swallow she just says, "Sit down, Emily. You need anything?"

[Emily Littleton] Ashley doesn't have to tell her twice to sit. Emily lowers herself, very carefully, to the ground. She slips her jacket off before she leans against the wall. Her shirt underneath is close-cut. It's sleeves are short enough to show the bruising on her arms, blue-black and sharp contrast all over again. (It wasn't so long ago that her last set of bruises had healed.) She gingerly leans up against the wall, now, rests her head against it.

Eyes shut. Breathing so carefully stilled. Ashley can see it, now. She breathes from her stomach, to try and not disturb her ribcage. It does not rise and fall like most people's do. People who sing -- opera, gospel, modes that require incredible control -- they breathe like this. Emily does not sing, in that manner.

"I..." Does she need anything? "... about ten ibuprofen?" A little laugh. That recants into a sharp hiss of an inhalation. Tails off into a weakly dismayed sound. An oh! An ouch.

No, on second inspection, the Initiate is not just fine. (Who were you fooling?) She had not quite come home hale.

[Ashley] [Wits?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Ashley] Ashley, too, lowers herself to the ground when Emily does. She sits close to the girl: not touching, not close enough that she risks bumping into Emily were she to lose her balance and sway (this happens, once in a while), but close enough to be companionable. Close enough that Emily could reach over and touch her, were she so inclined - even though she won't be.

Ashley can see the way Emily is breathing, now. She knew people at Julliard who would breathe that way; she's known plenty of professional singers in her lifetime. She's known opera singers. It takes her a moment to realize that it's because of pain, that it's because Emily is so bruised and shattered there around her chest.

There's a pause before the Hermetic reaches into the pocket of her jeans, draws out a simple white bottle, something small that rattles. Not much left in it now, but enough. "I have some oxycodone left. Ashton gave me some after I was shot," she says, and then extends the bottle toward Emily.

The drug she's just offered is stronger than intravenous morphine; it might do something to help Emily forget what she saw in the Labyrinth, dull the thought, though that isn't Ashley's intent. At least for a little while.

"I can get you water," she adds. Then, after a beat, "What happened, Em?"

[Emily Littleton] Ashley pushes the bottle toward Emily, and Emily just nods at first. Then reaches up to wrap her fingers around the little bottle. It's amber. White cap. Push down then turn. She knows the motion, well. She could do it in her sleep -- had, at one point in her life. She knows the drugs will numb the pain, but there'll still be that awful tension to breathing. The pressure of the swelling. The ache and the numbness don't will everything away.

For a long while she just looks at it, in her hand, how her fingers wrap around the bottle but don't totally obscure the label. It's another echo of so many years ago.

There's pain in the girl's eyes, and it's not just for the physical aches. So she closes them for a moment. Pushes down and turns the cap off the bottle. Takes one of the pills, swallows it dry, grimaces at the taste it leaves on her tongue.

She hands the bottle back to Ashley once she's closed it. Her hands are shaking by now. Just a tremor. Maybe it's fatigue.

The quiet between them grows. When Emily speaks again, her voice is low and quiet. It is shaken. Not at all sure, not at all certain. There's no sense of a schoolgirl at recitation here, nothing prim and proper. She presses her hands against the floor to help hold herself up, to take the pressure off her ribs a little.

"Before I tell you, I need you to promise me something." This is just of entreating. "If..." It's if, it's if because even now Emily cannot (will not) believe he's actually coming back. "If Owen comes back, you'll make us talk about this. I, I don't care if you say something and then lock us in a room together. I ... I don't tell people things. I don't talk about things. After tonight, I'm not going to want to talk about this, [b]ever[/i]."

Quieter. "But I'm supposed to trust him."

Her brow furrows. She does trust him. He's just missing, just now. This is the only way she knows to make that right. If it were any other night; if she had a shred of self-censorship or control just now, she wouldn't be asking Ashley's help in this.

[Ashley] Emily is supposed to trust Owen. That's going to be hard when (if) Owen returns: it's hard to forgive that first betrayal, that first leaving and breach of trust. It's hard to believe it won't happen again. That you won't be left behind again and have to wonder whether things can just be picked back up ever again.

Ashley doesn't quite understand this. Bran and Justine never left her behind. Her mother did, but it was a different sort of leaving, a different sort of detachment, and it has left a different brand of scars.

But she does understand what Emily says when she says that she won't want to talk about this again when she's feeling better. After those hours after the chantry, after that first horrible night, she has not cried in front of anyone again, not broken down and sobbed for the lost and allowed herself to be comforted. That just isn't how these things go.

"I promise," is all she says to Emily. After a moment she watches Emily try to adjust herself and raise herself up so there's less pressure on her ribs, and she stands for a moment. Long enough to step into the bedroom, to the bed (don't look at it god don't look at it) take one of the pillows (don't think about it) and extend it toward Emily.

There's another hard exhale when she does, like she'd stopped breathing for a moment or two, before she takes a seat where she was once more.

[Emily Littleton] Ashley is, truth be told, full of some amazing ideas tonight. Drugs. Yes. Anti-ouch drugs were a capital idea. And then soft things. The pillow? Simply enlightened thinking on the Hermetic's part. Emily cannot fathom how she can think of such things when the entire world is painted in shades of thatreallyfuckinghurts and noshitwe'regonnahavethatnightmareagain?. She would have to tell Ashley that...

"You're... really smart."

Oh. That came out. Of her mouth. Hmm.

Emily accepted the pillow with gratitude, and (apparently) a heartfelt compliment. She eased it between the wall and her back. This incurred more wincing. More careful breathing. But then she could lean back, and without as much direct pain. Ashley was rather brilliant. Yes. Yes, that's clearly why Emily told her so.

But each little comfort that sneaks in -- arriving back at safety, the meds, a friend, a pillow, soon the relief from some of the pain -- in weakens her tightly kept resolve. That fight-or-flight survival instinct. She's quiet now, for longer than a moment, for long enough for her features to go slack with shock and ache and remembering. She's supposed to be telling Ashley what happened. Instead Emily is staring numbly at her hands.

The she sits forward a little. Eases the firarm out from behind her back where it had been safely tucked for transport. Lays it atop her jacket. It's heavy, to her. There's a deep relief in setting it down. Like a burden. Like a duty. Once it's down, and she's eased back against the pillow again, Emily barely moves.

"I fell in," she says, at long last. It's quiet. Almost whispered. "There was this blank picture; I think it's a trap. I fell right in... and I ... couldn't get out again."

There's something empty in what she's telling Ashley. It's incomplete. It's not enough to really understand, but it's resonating in some empty, hollowed out, hurt and still tormenting place in the younger girl.

[Ashley] [Hugs are a bad idea.]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Ashley] There is an apparently heartfelt compliment from Emily, and Ashley just passes an amused glance to the girl while she settles herself down again. "I know," she says. Because she does. Her intelligence is one thing the Hermetic has no reason to ever doubt. Beat. "But thank you."

She doesn't rush Emily. She has been in these situations enough, situations where the words for explaining were a long time in coming. Was in one just recently: she couldn't tell Kage how Daiyu died right away. She couldn't manage even a brief summary until she told Hu Jinhai two days later.

Her eyes follow the firearm until it's set on Emily's jacket. She doesn't eye it like a burden. She eyes it for what it is: an instrument of death, an object she doesn't so much fear as disdain. She would have made a poor Euthanatos.

When Emily begins speaking, says she fell in, Ashley's arm twitches. Lifts, because it's instinctive, putting an arm around the girl while she speaks. Except that Ashley doesn't do this very often, and she's always (always) afraid of being shaken off when she does, and she knows that Emily seems to dislike contact. So she just folds her arm across her lap instead.

"Blank picture?" she asks, brows furrowing. Because it isn't enough to really understand. "Did the shield not work?"

[Emily Littleton] Hugs hurt, just now, but they're not an otherwise bad idea. Emily is getting more used to the tactile nature of her American friends. It's pretty reassuring at times, too. Just now, before the drugs have taken hold in her system, before she's found the Will to push away the last of the internal damage, they would hurt a little.

She shook her head a bit. "No. Not against that. I ... it was empty. Not blank, wrong word. It was like looking into nothing in an already dark room. That's all I saw at first..."

Her voice falls away. There's a tightness, now, to her expression. Pinched. Pained.

"It was Prague." The city name is still heavily canted toward the European pronounciation. Shortened like the crisp German Prag she's mostly heard. She doesn't know the city name in Czech. Can't remember the current name of the country, save that's it some variant of Czech. "I was there, again. Watching."

Emily exhaled. She reached up to press the heel of one hand against her forehead, to iron flat the furrows in her brow through pressure alone.

"Then worse."

There's no other explanation offered as to what, precisely, she'd seen. Emily doesn't immediately tell Ashley about the dark, underground room. The dampness. The fear. About how snapping out of the picture brought her back to underground, darkness, dampness and fear.

"Until Atlas shook me free." The girl swallows hard. "I mean... and that? God, that was just the beginning. That's how it all started."

Incredulous. Tired. Shaken. Her breathing is rough, now. The corners of her eyes are damp. Emily lets her hands fall back to her lap. They are idle. Idle and still. She is still, but she is not reposed, not calm, not restful.

[Ashley] Ashley has been to Prague. For her, the name evokes far different memories: she was there with Bran and Justine during their initiate years, during the years that were for exploring and for studying, during years that were sometimes hard and poor and cold but that she remembers fondly for all that. Her grandparents emigrated when it was still Czechoslovakia. Vanessa never met them.

Still, Emily says Prague, and even though the word has wistful undertones for the Hermetic, something nostalgic and bygone, she recognizes what it means for the other woman. She remembers that conversation at the beginning of the summer over a pitcher of beer. She remembers Riley (I forgot how young you are, Em) and she remembers an offer that went unfulfilled.

There's a pause in which Ashley bites the inside of her cheek, her lower lip, in which the sharp edge of a canine presses just a little too hard into her skin. Not enough to rip, but enough to ache.

"Did you remember?" she asks, after a moment. "Did it make you remember what happened in Prague?"

And she will regret, after a moment, not having pressed Emily harder, not pursuing her and forcing her to confront it. It's what her mentor would have done. Victoria Kurtz was executed, but she wasn't always wrong.

[Emily Littleton] Emily is young. Which means that seven years ago, when all of that happened, she was even younger. Young enough that Emily lies when she alludes to it, says she was sixteen. Rounds up. It's somehow easier for people to hear than knowing she was fifteen. Somehow that one year difference means a lot to most of the people she's known.

"More than remember," she says. Her voice is raw, but mostly because she is hurt and worn through. Emily reaches up to touch her ribs with her fingertips. Gently. Offers a weak smile, unconvincing. "It felt real. It felt like now. I knew it wasn't, but that was slipping by the time I got out."

A little whuff. It could have been a chuckle. It could have been a half-swallowed sob. Her features were impassive, save for the pain lined in them. She doesn't give Ashley a lot to work off of. Emily pulls her grief down deep, she always has. Not just with Ashley; with Owen too; with Jarod before him; with Gregory before that. It doesn't linger on the surface, instead it leaves her hollow (hole).

[Ashley] It's not a chuckle. Ashley knows it is not a chuckle. She can imagine (remember the worst time of your life. Live it.)

She can imagine waking up in a dim room with her tongue a strip of leather stuck to her teeth, with something covering her left eye (no, she just can't see), with her head bound. That there's this odd salty metallic smell, overwhelming and vaguely animal, and she's never smelled blood in that quantity before and she doesn't know what it is. Feeling her hands and the tape that covered a needle on the back of the left. She can imagine the first person she saw who just looked at her shocked that she was awake at all, and that the words that came from her mouth were wrong, slurred and jumbled and not what she thought she was saying.

So no. She doesn't have to think, really, about whether or not that's a chuckle or a half-swallowed sob. Her arm lifts again, and then, tentative, settles around Emily's shoulders. She scoots so that Emily could lean in, but doesn't draw her over: mindful, at least, of the fact that the pills might not have kicked in yet.

"It's, um. It's okay," she says. "You know now, right?"

[Emily Littleton] They could bond over this, someday, see. Emily remembers waking up in a hospital. She remembers the IV pressed into her hand, how its pressure skimmed along the tendons when she shook herself away. She remembers the hurt, even that sedated; she remembers how it feels to fly with broken ribs. To want to hug someone tightly (coming home to Gregory) but only being able to stand numbly while they wrapped their arms around her. To tap her hands on the back of his shoulders. There, there.

Staring out the window at night, for hours, because she didn't dare to sleep.

"Yeah." The word is heavy on her tongue. She leans into Ashley's embrace a little. Very cautiously. Leans her head against the other woman's. "I know."

For a long while, there wasn't much more to say. She just rested, like that. Feeling her own heartbeat, feeling Ashley's breathing through the subtle shifts in her posture. Feeling the wall behind her and the floor beneath her growing harder, less comfortable. Emily didn't want to move; didn't want to try getting up with the painkillers in her system and how loose her control was over her physical frame just now.

"I got lucky, Ash," she says. They're probably not talking about Prague anymore. "We ran into one of them. He had two..." she thinks, fails to come up for a decent word for the drones, falls back on "Constructs? With him. They went after Atlas and the guy from the other cabal, but the Nephandus... he went after me."

This is lucky?

"I pushed back. Still hurt like hell, but it could have been so, so much worse. I've seen Owen work like that. Kage, too." A beat. She opens her eyes, but looks straight ahead. Ashley can probably hear Emily's voice echo a bit in her own skull, with the way their heads rest next to one another. "It's awful."

Awe-full, too.

[Ashley] It's cautious, and Ashley is still while she lets Emily adjust. And when she's leaned in Ashley curves the arm she has around her shoulders back, lets her hand rest against the side of Emily's head, fingers curled in her hair. Not holding it there. Just bracing, in its way.

It's unsure, the way in which she does this. Guided primarily by instinct, by some base-of-the-brain knowledge a social animal has of how to offer solace rather than something she consciously does. Done because it's something she just wants to do rather than something she thinks about. She doesn't know what she can say to help, but there's this.

There's Strength, and there's Life, and sometimes others will benefit from hers. That is the path she laid out before Jormungandr.

She isn't looking at Emily. She's hearing the echoes of Emily's voice in her good ear, loud and resonant. "Magic can be," she agrees, after a second, because she is honest. "It just helps me not to think about it until it's over. It's not like...going away inside, but there's part of you that just knows what to do."

There's a part of Ashley that revels in Willworking, even in its more destructive aspects. It stopped bothering her a long time ago.

After a moment she adds, "A lot of people couldn't handle being in a Labyrinth. They'd want to Fall, or they'd give in. You didn't."

[Emily Littleton] A particular Verbena used to tell Emily that she was stronger than she thought. It was his go-to argument, whenever she came to him overwhelmed and distraught. She'd spent the winter and early spring telling him how wrong he was. Now, perhaps, she was beginning to see his point.

"People change," she tells Ashley, with a wistful note underlying everything else in her muddled tone just now. It's tied up with all sorts of misgivings, old hurts; with the medication starting to work in her system, to leech the pain away and loosen her tongue that much more.

"I've wanted to know, for so long, if it happened again -- what happened in Prague? -- I've wanted to know it'd be different, this time. That I wouldn't --" and here Emily leaves Ashley's rather able mind to fill in the blanks. She exhales, heavily, and doesn't wince directly afterward this time. She's getting used to the ache again.

"It's good to know. That I can change. That it's different this time."

There's pain to this, but there's also a measure of open relief. Tears glisten at the edge of her eyes, now. Ashley is not looking into her, with that piercing blue stare, not just now. Maybe it would take the Hermetic awhile to notice.

[Ashley] Ashley's rather able mind does indeed fill in the blanks. She's never had amnesia, really, never blocked an entire event from her memory. There's a period she can't remember, this time when she blinked on the pavement outside and asked if this was real, and the paramedic said yes honey and then she can't remember after that, but that was brain damage. It's different, to make oneself forget.

She can't see the tears that are pricking the corners of Emily's eyes, the moisture welling up but not spilling over. But there are other tells: a voice changes, when a person is about to cry, when suffering forms a lump in the throat. It gets harder to breathe.

There's a reflexive curl of her fingers: stroking Emily's hair, almost, but not quite. "You're a lot stronger now than you were then," she says. "You're an adult now. You're a Willworker." Emily is going to be a Knight, she thinks: she recalls Emily telling her something to this effect. Doesn't say, since she can't fully remember.

"You can tell me what happened," beat, "if you need to tell someone."

[Emily Littleton] Ashley says that Emily can tell her. Like it's just so easy. And Emily thinks, if I tell her, then she will leave. Because Jarod had left, just a couple weeks later -- which she rationally knows was over something entirely different. And her friendship with Riley shifted, hard. And it's the thing (no, it isn't) that broke then tenuous trust between her and Chuck. Ashley says she can tell, and Emily can't keep from crying at that thought. She can't will it away.

And she can't stop the words from coming either.

"I ... was young," she tells the Hermetic. And she talks about her past self with that same note of derision that Riley had used for Emily-in-June. She was young; meaning clueless, and guileless and useless. "I went into the city, and got lost, and I thought this man wanted to know the time..."

She shakes her head a bit. It shifts her curls in Ashley's fingertips, puts a bit of torsion on the Hermetic's head. She moves, they both feel it. There's a limpness to her body now. The memory is heavy; it weighs her down.

"I was taken, off the street. Middle of the afternoon. No one saw anything, no one said anything. I was gone for three days." It sounds like an eternity. There's no emotion in her voice, really, beyond what the tears do naturally. It sounds a little choked. A little stuffed. But she doesn't have the will to be angry; and she's been through such a disorienting evening that it's hard to be fearful. It's just an ache, this old bruise that still hurts when she pushes on it.

"They beat me. I think there were three of them. They yelled, and asked questions, and hit me. I sat tied to a chair for awhile. It's blurry, after they broke my ribs. I know I was unconscious at times. But I remember how it smelled, and the little window of the basement room that was too dirty to really see out. I could draw you a picture, pace it out.

"I was just a plaything. Something to hit. Something to hurt. Something to touch." That word, that has some venom behind it, even now. It's more than she's told anyone, ever. And she doesn't follow that thought up, but they're both bright enough to know where it goes.

"When it hurt too much, I stopped fighting. I thought they'd stop hurting me if I didn't struggle, and then I was just... I stopped caring. I stopped wanting to get out."

She'd told Owen as much before; that God had refused to take her home when she'd begged, when she'd prayed to be let go. That He had to have a reason, because she was still here, she still had work to do.

"I've always wanted to know that, if it happened again, I wouldn't give up. I wouldn't stop caring."

[Ashley] Ashley doesn't interrupt her. Just listens in silence, and when Emily tenses and her head digs down into Ashley's shoulder, the Hermetic responds by turning her head so that it's a bit less uncomfortable for her, lets her cheek rest against Emily's curls. Holds her head with her hand: protective, almost, the way you'd shield someone from a blow, the way you'd shield a child from a hard wind or falling debris.

There's little she can say to all of this. There's nothing she could say that would make it better, save the Words that would ease the ache, make things recede. But she won't do that; it would be condescending, it would be saying that Emily isn't strong enough to handle this on her own. It would weaken her, and Ashley, like Jarod, thinks that Emily is much stronger than she thinks she is.

She doesn't even say she's sorry, even though she is. Even though listening to this story ignites a rage in her heart and makes her want to hunt down these men and put Names and faces to deeds. She could hear the same story from a woman on the street and she wouldn't care. Might be passingly sad: that's just the world, it's a sorry place. With Emily that anger is a palpable thing.

But she doesn't say any of that. She lets Emily tell her story, and she edges a bit closer and curls in so she can wrap the other arm around Emily too. And all she says is, "And do you still care?"

Emily almost said as much, earlier. Ashley wants her to say it again; she wants Emily to hear those words from her own mouth.

[Emily Littleton] It hurts, to be held, but that's a physical thing. It's relatively unimportant just now. After this night, and these memories. A little soreness is something she can handle; she'd had worse before. Emily likely hasn't given Ashley a true indication of how hurt she is, yet. And any stumbling about, now, would get chalked up to the medication and fatigue. It's a little blessing, maybe. Like this:

"I'm here."

She means: I'm not hurrying to walk a Caul. She hasn't Fallen. She didn't stop fighting her way out of the Labyrinth. She did not give up and let that Unholy Stroke unmake her, as it undoubtedly would have. She's here; she cares infinitely more than she did before.

It's the triumph to this struggle. Finding her Faith again was the triumph in all of Edom. She's regaining little bits of herself, piece by piece, slowing making herself whole once more after all of these trials. (We are always on the anvil, by trials God is shaping us for higher things.)

"I still care," she echoes, repeats the sentiment in a way that directly answers Ashley's question. It's hushed and raw and resonant, but it's an answer. Soon enough, there would be a quiet certainty behind it again.

[Ashley] Emily believes that they are always on an anvil; Ashley believes that conflict shapes a Will into something perfect, that in the struggle to overcome a person becomes something infinite, that people enlighten through suffering. It isn't that different a belief, not really (save faith, save that one Believes and the other does not, save that one believes in becoming a whole and the other believes in watching all of the imperfect bits sloughed away.) She knows.

She is nowhere near as raw as Emily. She's just tired and heartsick and worried, and this isn't the kind of life that satisfies the sort of person Ashley is no matter how much she tries to shroud it. No matter how much philosophy and pragmatism she wraps it in. She will reach the end of the day, the end of this struggle and it will still feel a little empty, because the Nephandi destroyed something beautiful and this won't bring it back.

Still, she takes some small reassurance in those words. She takes what warmth she can from the embrace, from knowing that soon a resolve will follow. She takes what victory she can from strengthening that spark of Will in another, from blowing on it and watching it grow.

She says, "Good. That's what I thought."

She waits for a few moments, waits to make sure Emily isn't going to start crying again, that she's gotten what she needed from the embrace, from the talking. Holds her a while longer. And then she says, "The bed's behind you. I'm staying in the house tonight. If you need to, you can call for me."

[Emily Littleton] [Go to bed, you say? Simple as that? dex + ath, -2 dice (ouch), -1 dif (practiced!)]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 5, 8 (Success x 2 at target 5)

[Emily Littleton] It's awkward for Emily, this closeness. There will be a worry, now, that Ashley will leave too. It will last for awhile. It's been there for awhile already, to be fair, but it will be keener now that she's said some of these things aloud.

Emily manages to pick herself up from the floor. It's a delicate affair. She's unsteady, still, and there's the medicine in her system making it fluctuate and function in strange ways. She can get herself to the edge of the bed. Slowly unzip and slip off her boots. She's able to stretch herself out in something approximating a comfortable position (she has a lot of practice). Ashley does not need to help her; this may be a bit of a blessing.

Before they part ways, Emily finds a moment to catch the Adept's eyes. She smiles, faintly, and tells her, "Thank you." In comes from an impossibly candid place, a genuine tone that's so stripped down and bare it hardly feels like Emily's at all. But there's warmth there, if faintly so.

There's hope, and Faith, and a quiet strength there, even now. Ashley's fanned that, many have protected it. One day, Emily might grow up to be a steady flame, a lamplight in the darkness, a bright point to light someone's way home. For now she is rent but mending, incompletely broken, stronger than she thinks.

"I appreciate it."

[Ashley] There's a watchfulness as Emily pulls herself up off the floor, wobbles and makes her way back to the bed. While she unzips her boots and stretches out on the bed, until she's there and comfortable. Ashley remains seated on the floor, glances once at the wet patch on her shirt.

When it's clear Emily isn't going to fall over and hurt herself, Ashley rises and picks up the pillow she'd brought over and places it with the others on the bed. There are blankets on the bed, sheets really, since it's still summer. Ashley tugs them from beneath Emily and throws them over the Singer-to-be. Doesn't tuck them in, just makes sure that they aren't covering her face, that they're low enough that she isn't going to overheat.

"I know," Ashley says, when Emily catches her eyes, when Emily thanks her. "It'll be okay." All of this: it's in the past now, and she's stronger for it, regardless of how hard the few days to come might be. Ashley knows this with the same unshakable certainty she has with herself and her own Will.

"Good night, Emily." And then there's a sort of vigil, something to make sure that Emily is indeed slipping away into sleep, before Ashley makes her way out of the room. Flicks the switch, leaves the door open just a crack behind her, and leaves Emily an ember in darkness.