Things left unsaid

[Emily] It's not a long walk back from the El platform to her flat. It's about as long as the walk from the El platform to her old flat, but with an entirely different trajectory. Though, after a month, Emily doesn't consider her flat new any more and there's a worn habit to the way she slips her key into the downstairs door -- this one locks; it keeps out more than the wind -- and takes the lift to the third floor. Most nights she takes the lift, but not tonight. Tonight Emily takes the stairs and counts off every one in the back of her head.

There's the click of her heels in the hallway that presages the scrape of a key in the lock. She turns the knob, eases the door open, and waits long enough to listen for what's going on inside before stepping into her own place. It's not yet a Home. It's still just that place she lives, that place her stuff settles. The door shuts and locks behind her and Emily hasn't taken two steps across the hardwood floor before she's out of her heels, stooping to sweep them up in one hand, moving toward the little closet to put them away, along with her jacket -- these are practiced movements. They'd be the same if Nico was here or if he were absent.

There's a softness to her. Some of the tension in her frame has slaked. Some of it is new. Emily is not as focused, not as driven. Still slightly inebriated, she's found a way to stand still. From the closet, she moves to the kitchen to get a glass of water. That gives her a view of the living area -- whether there's a fire in the hearth, whether Nico has taken up her offer to crash on the bed and not the couch, which may not be long enough to comfortably accommodate a six-foot human being but does quite nicely by Emily's five-foot-nine.

He's not been left alone in a cruel manner. There's food, there's silence, there's books to read -- but no TV -- and a terrace to stand on if he wants to commune with the rain. Sanctuary is one thing, but it loses its luster once it takes on the spectre of being constantly watched, fussed after, fish-bowl-ed. She goes out to give him space; she goes out to give herself room to breathe...

... and then Emily comes home again.

[Nico] The idea, something he had been inarguably committed to when Emily let him into the apartment with a paltry 21-inch duffel bag filled with a few changes of clothing to get him through the long stretch without his personal belongings, was to lie down on the couch with a heavy blanket and sleep for somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve hours; to try and outrun if not forget whatever it is he's gone through in the time since Owen went after him, let alone the time since he was gone. There had been minimal discussion with Em about where he had gone or what he had been doing, only the assurance that Owen was alright and that neither of them were seriously injured.

Of course, the bruising all over his body, the exhaustion in his eyes, the fact that he smells like his blood sugar is completely out of whack, does absolutely nothing to assuage whatever doubts or fears might be riding on her shoulders when she thinks of him. She had gone out on a Monday night, and Nico had stayed home with his cell phone and a book and his thoughts.

When the key scratches in the lock, he doesn't hear it. It's not because he's asleep, or because he's in the shower, or because he's sitting at the table in the dark zoned out and oblivious to the world around him. Emily wanders through the apartment without getting him into her line of sight, doesn't find him on the couch in any stage of zonked-out, doesn't find him safely in her bed with the lights out and his mind switched off. He's standing outside, fully clothed, bundled up against the chill wind coming off the lake, smoking a cigarette. He's made an ashtray out of a disposable cup filled with tap water. He's huddled against an exaggerated cold, or a bracing loneliness, or something else that defies designation: the arm that isn't commanding the cigarette is holding his torso as though to remind himself You're back, you're safe, you're not alone.

As though he can feel her through the glass, Nico turns his head when her form--her resonance--ventures into the living room. He lets go of himself, quickly, then lifts a hand to wave. The darkness affords him a shawl of secrecy for a few moments: she cannot see his eyes.

[Emily] Nico's wave is echoed by Emily. There's brighter lights in the kitchen, where she is, but the distance and the distortion of the glass make it harder to read her than if they were standing side by side. Not that Nico had ever had trouble reading Emily, however hard she'd tried to keep things from him. So there's the traverse of the water glass from the counter to her lips to read into, and the set of her shoulders; the casual and looser body posture that tells him, before he can read more off her than her resonance, what she's been up to.

Emily sets her glass on the tile counter. Braces her palms against the roll of counter's edge for a moment, and then begins the well-engrained motions of making tea. Moving throughout the kitchen keeps him from having a line-of-sight read on whatever worries she carries (whatever frustrations she's denying).

She fills the kettle. Sets it on the burner. Lights and adjusts it. Emily brings down a teapot, and thumbs through a collection of small containers to find one she feels is appropriate. She measures some tea leaves into the bottom of the ceramic pot, pulls down two mugs, puts the little container away. It's ritual, almost. She doesn't ask if Nico wants so; she assumes.

Now and then, her attention flicks his way. It doesn't linger overlong. She doesn't pry with unspoken questions, meaningful glances. Emily has been the party on the balcony, huddled against an imagined cold. She has carried the weight of well meaning but heavy concern.

When the tea has steeped, she'll pour it into two mugs and leave room for travel slippage. Only then will she head for the balcony, though Nico will have to open the door for her before Em can offer him a mug and join him in the briskness of an Autumn evening.

[Nico] It's cold. Being from South Dakota, one has to imagine that Nico is used to the weather, the wind, the relentless threat of snow even when autumn has just arrived. Yet Nico was not diagnosed with an endocrine disorder until he arrived in Chicago, which is even windier and rainier than South Dakota. He's having to adjust not only to a new climate but to the fact that his body doesn't quite know what to do with itself anymore. This isn't something that he truly discussed with anyone after he was released from the hospital. There was one person who he opened up to about the fact that he had to go in the first place, let alone the fact that he walked out with a life-altering diagnosis.

That person is gone now. His number doesn't work anymore. It's probably for the best.

At any rate, Nico ought to be scurrying back inside just as soon as he finishes his cigarette, working to help Emily put together a round of tea so that they can sit in the warmth of the apartment, maybe start a fire in the hearth, and talk. They need to talk. He needs to know what's happened around here in the months since he's been gone; she likely has questions, things she wants to know. Maybe she needs advice. That's what his purpose in life is; that's what he's paid for, and that's what grants him some semblance of fulfillment and happiness. Nico doesn't serve as a confidant for the Magi of Chicago because he lacks a sense of identity or because he's secretly a voyeur. He actually thinks it's what he was put on this earth to do, if he's willing to pretend for a few moments that he was put here and didn't simply have to unveil his own reason for existing.

Yet he stays out there longer than one cigarette. When he finishes the first one--or the one that Emily sees him working on--he lights another one. They're not short cigarettes. They're 100s. They take longer to smoke, contain more nicotine, stink worse. When Emily moves toward the door, Nico sees her, her body behind the glass and the reflection it casts upon the clear surface between them. He ashes his cigarette into the plastic cup and hauls the door open with one hand.

"You're a saint," he tells her, accepting one of the mugs from her. He holds the mug and the cigarette in one hand so he can close the door for her, then positions his body so that his back halts the wind from smacking Emily. A torrent of steam billows off the surface of the mug, so he doesn't take a sip yet. His hands are discolored even in the wan light. At least he's wearing shoes. "How was your night?"

[Emily] "Distracting," she says, musing the syllable across her tongue. There's more to it than that, but Emily does not disclose. There's a darkness that lingers at the corner of her mouth, a wickedness she hasn't quite lost between the club and her front door. It fades quickly, but lingers long enough to be noticed. It fades, like the tendrils of resonance from around her person, the press of grace that sweeps her up.

"Sometimes that's nice," she says, with a little shrug. The cold does them both well. He's wearing shoes; she's now barefoot. The wind pushes her curls around, tangles them in on one another, and Emily does nothing to stop it.

Emily's glance travels to the plastic cup, then back to Nico. "I'll get you a real ashtray, next time I'm out," she tells him. It's an aside, a small comment lost to the larger context. She is not a saint, but she's thoughtful.

The Singer sips at her tea. It smells of licorice and ginger. It's not some subtle, pale-hued green tonight. The sweetness of this might break through his nicotine tar; the bite of the ginger might wash something clean.

They need to talk. They ought to go inside, light a fire, roast the chill from their bones, commune like friends. She rakes her fingertips through her hair and looks past him for a moment, as if schooling together her thoughts, sharpening them, polishing them, and then letting them go again. What she says is not all that polished, not practiced; it's simply honest.

"I know... a lot's happened." She leaves it at the vaguery. "And I also know this may sound a little forward, but I want you to consider it." There's a question there, in the way the end of the sentence lilts upward. Entreatingly. "Things at the House are a lot more strict than when you left. But I want to make sure you have access, right now. That you can get to the Node if you need it." Her lips purse, then thin. Emily, for all she is a diplomat's daughter, is not as good at this as she would like to be sometimes.

"I'd like you to join up with Chuck and me, even if it's just til you're settled again, or until Owen gets back." She makes a small, inarticulate gesture. "There's not a lot I can do, but you can stay at my flat and I can make sure you've got people at your back and you're shielded from some of that. If you want?"

A small pause.

"Of course we'd love for you to stay longer, but that's ultimately your choice."

She's rambling. Emily's still somewhat tipsy, but she knows she's rambling, so she lifts her tea again and sips from it. She glances down, then beyond him to the Lake View lights while he thinks. Emily moves to take the brunt of the wind full on, to lean against the metal railing of her balcony and feel the chill of it through her clothes. She's not good at this, any of it, but she wants to help.

[Nico] Emily doesn't simply answer his question and allow him to linger there, to ask why it is she wears that dark, wicked smile, why it is she had had that body-seeking spatial rote active when she stepped into the building and started upstairs. She jumps from topic to topic: her night was distracting, she'll buy him an ashtray the next time she's out, things have changed a great deal since he was here last. Her appraisal of her night receives a smile. He murmurs words of gratitude when she says she'll buy an ashtray for him, as though he isn't capable of doing it himself; as though he's going to be staying here longer than a few weeks, a few nights, until he gets himself pulled together and manages to contact someone who can help him get his things out of storage so he can get his life back together.

Not that he hasn't had his life together. It isn't as though he took off to South Dakota to go off on an alcohol and cocaine bender, to have unprotected sex with men he picked up at shady clubs across the river and drive fast and destroy property. What exactly Nico was doing there hasn't come to light yet, at least not to anyone but Owen, and yet the effect on his body, his mind, can be seen from a quarter of a mile away. In the darkness, his storm-colored eyes look pitch black and distant even though his posture, the tranquility on his face, suggest that she has his undivided attention. It could be a trick of the light, or he could be a better liar than he lets on.

His resonance suggests that he vies for attention with his magic. That isn't true. He just happens to do what's going to be most effective for whatever situation he finds himself in, and the situations he's found himself in tend to call for desperate measures, excessive shows of reality deviation that leave him stained. The Orphan, while outgoing and friendly and oh-so-unquestionably gay, is not an attention seeker; he prefers to fly under the radar.

After a few moments of listening, of thinking, Nico blows on the rapidly-cooling tea and takes a sip. It rinses the taste of smoke out of his mouth, makes him feel refreshed, lighter. It makes him toss the rest of his Camel into the murky inch of water, killing it with a sharp sizzle that leaves no smoke behind.

"'We'?" he asks, as though that's the only word he managed to hold onto out of the dozens that she gave him.

[Emily] She's leaning against the railing, forearms pressed against the cold bar of it even as she carries her tea. It rounds out her back a little, makes her shorter if not smaller. It's a stretch, or a laziness, or a languidness she doesn't feel like questioning just now. Emily doesn't glance his way whens he clarifies:

"Me. And Chuck. Owen, I suppose, if he comes back." There's a lot of if wrapped up in that but she leaves it between them and moves past it. Emily does not want to linger. Her hands are still, and her body is still, but that doesn't keep her mind from fidgeting. There is no sense of absolute quiet or peace to her, however hard she fights for it.

The city lights are a wash of pale color across her feature. Here and in some other suburbs they are a dull orange to reduce light pollution. It stains everything with a monochromatic palette. It leaves their shadows darker. Whatever shadows Emily carries, they are almost as deep as Nico's own. They're kept a little behind her, so she cannot name them, will not know them. But it's there, in the weariness she evidences when she doesn't think to guard against it. The tendrils of steam rise up from her mug. The night is quiet except for the city sounds.

He may have noticed, by now, that her list of compatriots is shorter than it ought to be. No Riley. No Alex. Owen is an if and a maybe. Emily's world has pared down since Nico left. That leanness hides in the hollows of her cheeks. She blows it out over the surface of her tea before she drinks again.

[Nico] [STARTING THE POST TIMER GO GO GO]

[Nico] The entire time he's been in Chicago, Nico Brady's list of compatriots has been almost abysmally short. There have been the people who have confided in him, which consisted of not even a full handful; then there were the people who saw him naked; then there were the people he opened up to. The three spheres never overlapped at one time. Sure, there were occasions when a person who confided in also happened to be someone who he shared aspects of his life with, but those were not people with whom he had gone home, or who he had taken back to his place. If he did sleep with someone, one of them ended up hiding something regardless of how well they got along, whether there was genuine chemistry and a desire to get to know each other.

Not one of those groups of people ever presented themselves as potential cabalmates. He was only around for about a month, but in that month he made allies, he made friends, he made connections with people who he genuinely cared for and enjoyed spending time with... yet never once did he express any sort of interest in joining a cabal. That's probably to be expected. Orphans, as a general rule, prefer to exist on the outskirts. They'll align themselves with the more accepting Traditionalists, help out when they're called on, but for a group that's so diverse and fractured they are the most stubborn of all the Awakened groups. If one somehow manages to get an experienced Orphan into a cabal then that is worth gloating about for the rest of the Orphan's life.

Then again, Chicago has a somewhat shadowed history. An Orphan Disciple who was not in a cabal, who tried to band the Traditionalists together to provide a sense of community and safety anyway and found resistance everywhere he turned, wound up going insane. It's colored--nay, caused--the current political climate, the hierarchy and the protection of the Chantry, thus accomplishing in death what he couldn't do in life.

That said: this Orphan spoke to one person in that month about why he wasn't in a Tradition. Extrapolated from that is why he won't join a cabal, yet here's Emily, trying to convince him that he's wanted in a cabal. That if he wants access to the Node, he has to be in one.

Nico drinks more of his tea, his brow pinching into a frown as he thinks. Twice, now, she's said "if" Owen comes back. His eyes trace over the shadows on her face. Earlier he'd said that Owen was okay. That was the extent of his acknowledgment that Owen was even still alive. He didn't say where he was, if they had been in touch. Maybe he ought to, ought to let her know whether she is waiting for a man or a ghost, but he doesn't.

He doesn't.

"A cabal is..." He sighs, forces himself to keep his eyes on her face. "I appreciate the offer, Emily. I'd be lying if I said I was in any state to make any major decisions tonight, though. Or... until I've got my head back on straight, really. Staying here will help, I think. I, ah... I really don't want to be alone right now."

[Emily] She's not trying to convince him. If anything, Emily is pointedly not bending her innate talents to that end. She could, if she wanted to, but she had no particular inclination this evening. There's a pragmatism to her offer, underscored in how she'd laid it out. She'd like him to consider it. Even if only until he got on his feet. Because things were (unnecessarily) complicated right now, and she wanted him to be sheltered from that.

While Emily was never truly an Orphan, she has a fair amount of respect for them. She does not see them as a threat, or a marginal class, or anything but Magi who walk their own paths. In her mind, there is nothing wrong with that. At times, she wonders why she stepped away from that and into the Chorus -- but she never wonders for long. For the first time in her life, Emily has something that resonates of belonging, of Home, that isn't a bauble or Wonder. That is solid and real, if still intangible.

So she nods, when he says he doesn't want to make any decisions. Just once. And then once more. Before she dips her head a little and sips at her tea again.

"Okay," she says. Okay, that he doesn't want to sign up right now. Okay that he wants to stay. Okay that he doesn't want to be alone. She closes her eyes against some memory that flicks across her mind, shutters it away from him just now, leaves the ghost of it in how she exhales slowly, surely, and stands up straighter again.

"You can stay as long as you like," she tells him, kindly but not with any overwrought warmth. "Not a lot people know I've moved -- Ashley, Kage, Solomon. I don't even remember if I told Chuck." That causes her to screw up her features for a moment, struggle to remember. No, surely she told Chuck. Maybe she told Chuck. Shit... had she told Chuck? Nevermind.

"So no one should really bother you here. No one really just drops by," a little pause, while she double-checks the accuracy of that claim, and then adds: "Except maybe Ashley."

Don't read this as her being cold -- Emily is profoundly concerned about him. But there is an uncertainty to moments like this. She is not trained at what to say, or how to school her expression, or what not to empathize with openly. She has only learned from her own experience, and so she offers simple things. Tangible things. Pragmatic things. Tools to rebuild his certainty with since she cannot help him herself. There is an unspoken openness to it: If he has need, he need but ask.

[Nico] Nico is the last person to accuse another human being of being cold. It isn't that he himself is cold; on the contrary, he's been accused of devoting more energy to other people's hardships and troubles than he ever affords himself, even if he manages to do so without allowing himself to wallow in others' pain. When he does extend an offer of help, in whatever capacity, it's rarely with the intent to involve himself more than clinically. He tries to remain detached when others are suffering, as though he cannot truly help if he allows himself to feel what the other person is feeling.

He understands cold. He also understands that the majority of people on this planet are not psychologists, or counselors. That may very well be why he rarely opens up about his own problems, or emotions, or whatever it is that's bothering him. He doesn't expect other people to know how to help him. In that way, he sets himself up for the very thing he doesn't want to happen: he remains alone.

"How's Ashley doing?" he asks, wrapping both hands around his cooling mug of tea and leaning against the railing to look out over the terrace.

[Emily] It's such a simple question. How's Ashley. The most telling response is not in how Emily answers, but in how long it takes her to get there. The girl does not look over to meet his eyes, but there's an obvious shift in her expression. This time it is not a flicker, nothing fleeting however hard she tries to pull it back.

Emily doesn't even bother sipping from her tea to disguise her emotional cues. Maybe it's clearer, in that sliver of moonlight cast between clouds, or in the orange illumination of the street lamps, or in the shadows of silence that fall between them, just how hollowed out she'd become. But that's not for Nico; Emily doesn't offer him a weak smile, either. She simply accepts that he knows, and that there's no lying to him just now.

"I worry about her."

There is evasion in that answer, because it doesn't answer Nico's question directly. It's still a side-step, even if somewhat less overt than her usual ones.

"It's been a long summer," she says. Curls one arm across her middle, without thinking that it's a subconscious cue for comfort. "It's been a damned long summer, and she's taken then brunt of it."

[Nico] Details aren't important... not unless they're coming from the source, from the person who can most honestly answer how Ashley McGowen is doing. When he left she had just lost her mother, and was struggling to reclaim her joie de vivre after shrugging off the veil of Jhor that had threatened to drag her down. He has no idea what she's been through in the last three months, but given the fact that Emily tells him it's been a damned long summer, that says more than he's entitled to know secondhand.

A soft snort leaves his sinuses, and he runs his thumb along the rim of the mug.

"I'll call her in the morning. Girlfriend owes me a beer."

[Emily] The cold was starting to get to her. Emily's frame was significantly slighter than Nico's and she wasn't dressed to be outside and unmoving for so long. Her other arm crossed her middle, leaving the warm of her mug against her arm. It didn't do much to counteract the chill, but it pretended.

The mention of a beer owed makes her think of something else. It makes her smile, and that's both genuine and warmer, for a moment.

"A few of us go out on Tuesday nights," she says, heedless of the fact that she's outing their coping mechanism to a substance abuse counselor. Nico isn't her counselor; he's not Ashley's; he's just a friend. Or a friend of a friend if one wanted to be pedantic. "You should come with..."

It's a suggestion and an invitation but, like the cabal invite, she doesn't seem overly invested in his reply. Despite Thomas's best efforts, even Emily wasn't a regular with the Tuesday Night Regulars. Ashley was.

[Nico] This particular substance abuse counselor is a hypocrite. He spends hours upon hours every day teaching grown-ass men and women how to take care of themselves, how not to turn to alcohol or marijuana or heroin to cope with their lives' stressors, how to eat right and exercise and go to their trusted friends and family to ask for help when they can't cope on their own, yet he did not seek help for feeling rundown until he literally passed out after an afternoon of congress with a near stranger.

He is not the first person one ought to look to for modeling of appropriate behavior or coping, and yet, that's what he's paid to do.

Yet: he is not paid to help the Magi of Chicago find their way. He does not do it because that is what keeps his electricity on or provides for his now exorbitant amounts of medical treatment. Friendship is a tricky thing, difficult to tease out motivation for continuing, yet at the same time it isn't. Human beings are social creatures. They're pack animals. They want to love and be loved, just the same as anyone else, and even if he is a counselor by profession, he has a life outside of it. He's still young enough that he has trouble telling when he is being someone's friend and when he is operating as a pro bono counselor.

Emily invites him out, and a tired smile creeps across his lips.

"I will," he says. A beat, a swallow to get the sudden lump out of his throat, and he adds, "Thank you." He's not blind, or so wrapped up in his own exhaustion that he can't see her body reacting to the cold. The Orphan straightens, reaches out a hand to touch her shoulder; it's like a bird's wing beneath his hand, which isn't any too solid or warm itself. "Let's get inside."

[Emily] Nico is paid to help people. Emily has no such vocation. She is struggling with a reaffirmed avocation that asks more of her than she is rightfully ready to give. Her recent vows were as much about inspiration as protection, nurturing as defending. She's largely at a loss for how to foster those relationships. She'd been learning, slowly, but that was before the great egress of the summer.

Owen is not the only one Emily has lost this year. She numbly doesn't think about it. If they got started on the litany of leavings, Emily wouldn't be able to pull herself back from that emptiness just now. She glances over when she feels his hand on her shoulder, chill even with the cold of the night around them.

"Alright."

There's a beat before she steps away from the railing, before she acts on that suggestion, before Emily turns away from whatever distant thing in the darkness has captivated her attention throughout their chat thus far. When she does turn her attention to him, it's a bit more focused now.

"Have you eaten anything?" she asks. "Do you want me to warm something up?"

Had Nico gone exploring the kitchen, he would have found some leftovers for quick re-heating, fresh fruits and vegetables, hardly anything in boxes or cans. There's half a loaf of home-baked bread. There's some pumpkin muffins. Soups in the freezer, not in cans on her shelf. It's a sparsely filled fridge, just now, since she'd spent the bulk of her kitchen time cooking for the Sentries making rounds at the house, but there's enough to eat for a few days.

[Nico] There is plenty in the kitchen for Nico to tear into if he gets hungry... if the thought to eat when he's feeling groggy or irritable has even entered into his head. Going twenty-three years without having anything more exciting than a winter cold or a torn ACL hasn't prepared him for dealing with an illness that he's going to have for the rest of his life. The man has gone through life pouring copious amounts of sugar in his coffee and drinking without caring for the consequences the next morning, eating unbalanced meals if he didn't skip them altogether. A few months of acknowledging that he has diabetes isn't enough to make up for that huge block of time of being healthy and irresponsible.

Human beings can adapt to just about anything if they absolutely have to but by god are they stubborn as hell when it comes to actually changing when they don't want to.

Nico watches her for a few seconds, then smiles again and steps forward to grab the door.

"You," he says, "made tea. I'll forage."

Whether Emily decides to stay up and have a meal with him or brush her teeth and go to bed, he holds the door open for her. Whatever conversation they have in the intervening moments before a brief verbal tussle regarding which of them is taking the couch. On a normal night, under normal circumstances, Nico would not have to argue overly hard about taking the couch. He's hurt, though, and she has class in the morning, and and and. There's one of those maybe-maybe not jokes about how the bed's big enough for a woman and a gay man with lingering Pattern damage.

And then there's the silence of sleep. Whether she's next to him or on the couch or across the city, Nico isn't alone. So he sleeps.

[Nico] [HOLY SHIT WE ONE DAYED A SCENE]