(In)Humanity

Ned
Ned's arrival at Nick's office was quick. Abrupt. The sort of thing that usually came with a knock on the door to interrupt some pertinent work. Today though, Ned had arrived and Nick hadn't been around. The young orderly was dressed casually, as if he'd gotten off work or had yet to start his shift. Converse, black jeans and a gray t-shirt beneath a red and blue plaid short sleeve. His hair was gel'd, slicked back to affect some semblance of cool while his face carried a faraway sort of calm that suggested Ned was elsewhere than the world around him.

People seemed to pass him by, not offering much in the way of hellos or waves or even notice. If anything it was like Ned wasn't even present and only the cursory drift of carts, doctors and nurses around where he was standing up against the wall, ever seemed to make mention of Ned existing in the same world as they were.

His phone is pulled, the time checked and he's flicking his thumb across the screen to open Candy Crush. That damnable level 75 could be won yet.

Nick
Hospitals are busy places.  On certain floors that's of course the expectation: the emergency department, while not full of rushing gurneys and constant sirens the way TV depicts, still has humming equipment and wandering patients and purposeful staff.  The psych unit is much the same.  The hospice floor is the one people expect to be calmer; after all, the dying don't often do much more than sleep.

There's a smell there that is not found anywhere else, this mixture of decay and chemicals and urine and 409 and the animal tang, beneath it, of blood.  Ned knows it now.  Maybe he knows it now in a way he didn't before.

Regardless, Nicholas is not in his office when Ned comes by.  He's not always seen by patients in his office, see; sometimes he goes to their rooms when they aren't well enough to come to him, which is often, and sometimes he even ventures out into their homes when someone is fortunate enough to have billable insurance.  He is Not Here, but if Ned waits around long enough the Chakravanti will eventually come wandering back.  Maybe by then he's beaten level 75.

Nick's hair has been freshly cut, its coarse black curls swept back and somewhat weighed down with oil.  It makes him look older, a little; more professional, certainly.

His steps slow only slightly as he sees Ned there in front of his door waiting for him, but if the sight of the young man gives him pause it's a brief thing.  "Hello, Ned," he says, and there is a faint note of warmth that can be detected there.  "How are you?  Come on in," and he gestures Ned into his office ahead of him.

Ned
"....Hey Nick."

The warmth is not so much refused as it is left to push the chill of the hospital down. A lot of the orderly staff had this working theory that the AC was so active in the hospital as to lower the chance for bacteria increase, keeping things at a significantly cooler temperature than the outside summer heat might have demanded. Ned never gave into listening to those conversations.

He pushed into Nick's office when the door was opened, head forward and gaze locking on one of the chairs infront of the desk Nick called 'work'. Ned took a seat with a careful sort of settling and turned to glance back at the door and Nick upon entering to ensure the man closed the door behind him. Ned's lips were pressed between his teeth and then he was following Nick's movements around the desk to wherever the man called a seat.

When Nick is finally comfortable, perhaps halfway through or all the way through asking how Ned is doing, the young Mage leans back in his chair hands plucked from his pockets, the phone left in his lap and he stares Nick in the eye with a pinched sort of calm.

"About a week and a bit ago, I killed someone. Horribly broken, drug addict, tried to kill Margot and I and...I put a knife under his chin." He paused, to gauge Nick's immediate and momentary reaction...only to think better on it a second later and push through.

"...He wasn't himself. Had this thing coming out of his shoulder where his arm used to be. All teeth and muscle. Hit me in the chest-" Ned taps where the bulb of teeth and fury had struck him, just below where the heart sat "-broke some ribs. Punctured a lung. Margot and I fought him to a stand still and he started to unravel during the fight. Eventually tried to pull away and I put the knife under his chin and in as far as it would go."

Ned offers this with a steadiness that might suggest shock. Or at least, disassociation. He's regarding Nick or more accurately, the man's reactions, hands folded over the phone in his lap, a slender piece of gauze decorating one of his thumbs.

Nick
Nick does indeed close the door behind him.  There is no particular intent in the gesture; his eyes are distant and unfocused and somewhat directed toward the window behind Ned as he steps into the office, pulling the door closed behind him.  It's a reflex; he sees a lot of people discussing very personal things.

The Chakravat seats himself then behind his desk.  It's a casual posture, the one he adopts, leaned slightly back and slightly slouched with one leg stretched out in front of him.  It isn't affected: he is not playing at calm.  But he's aware of body language, and we know that.

Ned is backlit by the afternoon light filtering in through the window.  It's warmer in here than the rest of the floor; Nick is lucky enough to have a room with a window overlooking the city and the river, and there are a few plants that share space with him in the office.  They have unfurled their leaves to bask in the sunlight, and the slight earthiness of the potting soil (wet, the plants were recently watered) underlies the reek of the hospice floor in here.

Is Nick surprised, when Ned tells him he killed someone a week ago?  Maybe: he lifts a hand and rubs at his mouth a heartbeat after Ned finishes his first few sentences.  "There are times when the circumstances force us to kill," he says.

A beat.  "How is Margot doing?"

Ned
"She seems to be weathering it. First few days were difficult. She stayed at home and poured herself out onto her pillow. I imagine it's going to take her some time to get her head back on properly if fully..."

Ned seems to register Nick's 'matter of fact' interaction as a gauge for something. What that something is, isn't immediately known but Ned's eyes finally drop from Nick to his phone, checking the time again before stuffing the piece of tech back into his pocket with a negligent push from his thumb. His inhale is steadying, as if he'd been braced for something that was no longer necessary and the brittleness that was there, that he wasn't aware he was carrying seemed to shake free.

"I think it ultimately gave her an excuse to start looking at her existence...this existence we're now in as a firm reality. Not some harry potter attempt but a genuine 'no going back' sort of deal. Can't say whether that's a good or bad thing but..." Ned half shrugs. One shoulder shrugs.

"I'm glad you said that though. Sometimes it's necessary. Makes it not as..." And Ned struggles for a word, frowning at the lack of one that presents itself. A hand reaches up to scratch at his brow, gaze falling to the top of Nick's desk while he thinks.

Nick
As Ned tells him about Margot's reaction, Nick's eyes are level and unblinking and steady as the waters of some deep slow river.  Muddy that way too, their pale brown somehow darker in the light that filters through the window.  Ned tells him that, and Nick draws in a breath and glances down and to the side: as though Ned's words were at once a confirmation and a reassurance.

"I think sooner or later, we all hit that point.  Where you see the savagery in this kind of life that exists alongside the beauty and wonder that's there too," Nick says.  It is difficult to say whether he is speaking of Margot, or Ned, or both of them.

Nick has a keen awareness about him, always.  Maybe he's noticed that Ned feels different to him.

Whatever he is, he is patient, and as Ned trails off he only regards him quietly, curling one of his hands around the arm of his chair and then allowing it to relax moments later.  "How are you feeling?"

Ned
"...Was wondering when we'd get there."

He chuckles. It's not forced but it isn't genuine. Somewhere in the realm of 'distant honesty', like the sound didn't matter but made everything seem more normal. An excuse of mirth. Ned settles back into the chair to regard Nick, brow furrowing in that pinched and thoughtful sort of way. He seems ready to answer and then, that same tick of re-consideration has him opting instead for another avenue.

"I'd like you to tell me what I need to do to become part of the Euthanatos." Nick had used the name 'Chakravat' around Ned before so it wans't a mistake. More like...an affirmation of intent. As if Nick represented something in particular about the Tradition and this other name represented....something else.

Nick
[Huh.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )

Ned
(Perception 3 + Subterfuge 2: Don't be cagey now...)

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Nick
There is this pause that follows, after Ned speaks.  Nick looks at him for a moment: his hand has moved away from his mouth and now he is leaning his jaw on his knuckles instead.  He's thoughtful, see, as though he is considering what indeed Ned would have to do to become part of the Euthanatos.

When his hand falls away it drops back onto the armrest, and he swivels from one side to the other in the chair for a moment.  His curls are oiled enough today to remain stationary.  It's windy outside; maybe this was a calculated decision.

Then, "Ultimately, you need to die."  A beat.  "Do you understand why I asked you how you're feeling?"

Ned
"I understand your need to ask. I understand the quality of the question, maybe. Part of me wants to say because you want to sort out how stable I am."

Ned holds his hand up for Nick to gauge the shake in it, without breaking eye contact.

"Anything more than that and the answer is no. I don't understand."

A pause, his hand falling back into his lap, both now sliding up to settle on either knee, face taking on a frank sort of delivery.

"I was in a car crash when I awakened. Have I told you this already?" A bit of confusion. A frank sort of memory recall that he ultimately dismisses because the story, repeated or not, is relevant to the moment. "Three different eye witnesses said that the Car was more intact than I was. I don't remember much of the crash itself." A pause, tongue clucking. "I was drunk behind the wheel."

He leaned back against the chair, inhaling slowly again.

"I remember waking up and seeing colours. My avatar. I remember babbling at the Doctors about them while they tried to calm me down. I also remember the struggle and my body rejecting several of their attempts to sedate me...which explains why the Alcohol wasn't present in my blood stream when I woke up. Burned right out with whatever I'd done during awakening to put myself back together."

Another pause. This one longer. A thumb rose, plucking on the inside of his mouth at some errant piece of food. Then, abruptly-

"I'm pretty sure I died. If I had access to Mind, I get the feeling going through the memories of that moment would be less than ideal and full of DMT flashes of my life. I died once already." Blinking. "That good enough or do I need something more profound?"

Nick
Ned's confusion is met with another look and a shake of Nick's head.  He's still watching the younger man, see, and it's never easy to tell what he's thinking; there's just an air of quiet reflection.  Maybe of empathy, too: Ned is talking about trauma, regardless of his delivery.

"The initiation is ritualized death.  I was drowned, and if I chose to initiate you I would drown you.  I died too - arguably before my Awakening, or my Awakening happened early.  I'm not sure which.  But the purpose of the ritual is to reach understanding."

He hasn't broken eye contact.  Ordinarily he might, if only so his gaze might wander elsewhere, but Ned has a stare about him, doesn't he?  And Nick meets it.

"I asked you how you're feeling because you're a cerebral person, and talking about it is challenging for you.  But if you're initiated - especially if you're initiated - it's going to be important for you to understand how you feel."

Ned
"Ahhhh. Well then..."

Ned seems to shake off what was, a moment ago. His elbows settle on his knees, which spread just enough to support his weight. His head leans forward and tilts to one side and his attention focuses, a little sharper then before. He catches his upper lip between his teeth, trying to parse away the words that don't fit this particular moment. His eyes flick back up to the ever watchful Nick, lip snapping free of his teeth.

"I feel like this should be a lot worse than it is. Like I should have more of a reaction to the death. Not as intensely as Margot but at least something that wasn't just..."So this happened today". Part of that is me wondering if I lost it somewhere along the way, but that would more suggest you, the Doc and Margot are all a fever dream and I'm imagining all this Willworker stuff. Which, if I've gone that far off the bend? I might as well stay here 'cause you don't come back from that level of clinical."

His cheeks puff out. Absorbing what he's saying as he says it. Something in his expression said that last eventuality was a load of hogwash.

"There's another part of me I've been staring at for the last week, a seciton in my head. I've Life scanned it, Matter scanned it and Forces scanned it and just recently, Entropy scanned it or a combination of several other things and it doesn't show up. I think I need Mind?" Unsure, briefly then pressing onward. "I feels like concern but isn't big enough or....substantial enough to warrant a sensation of grief or upset or displeasure. Mostly just a vague sense of restlessness like there's something to get on with. What that something is though...." He claps, shrugs then leans back onto his knees.

"Makes me think I'm missing the necessary terminology, training or...process." Another pause. Another puff of cheeks.

"Are you qualified enough to be drowning people?"

Nick
Whatever he thinks about what Ned says, perhaps he needs to parse through it.  Enough so that when he replies it's to the easiest question to answer: whether he's qualified.  "No," he says.  "I haven't attained that rank, and I don't have enough skill with Life to help you if your drowning were to go badly.  I would call in some of the other Chakravanti I know."

Here he draws in a breath, lets it swell in his chest and holds it there before letting it out in a measured exhale.  He has broken eye contact at last; his eyes have fallen somewhere across the top of his desk.

"That's not a promise to initiate you.  We're going to need to spend more time together."

Here he lifts his gaze again, and it finds Ned's once more: and his eyes are still muddy, and there is a stitch there just between his brows.  "What do you know about Quiet, Ned?"

Ned
"....The Doc hates it." Before that has a chance to settle in as a possible nod to the actuality of 'Quiet' though-

"-S'why he never stops talking unless he's knee-deep in an experiment."

Ned leans back into his chair, scrubbing a hand across his chin. More Chakravanti meant more mages in his future. More workers, with higher understanding. There was an unease that translated into a vague frown on his face, considering the potential for that...and the problem.

"How many others?"

Nick
"One or two of them.  Both of them were present at my initiation."  Perhaps he noticed the frown; perhaps he is drawing parallels between things that Ned has said earlier and what he knows, or thinks he knows, about the younger man.  "I think it's important for you to meet others anyway, before you really decide if this is something that you want."

There's gravity there in his tone.  Though don't most Traditions think that theirs is selective, that it is demanding of what it requests from its initiates?

"Quiet can take a few forms, depending on the kind of magick you're using and your own disposition.  The kind that comes from death magick - and I mean that in a broader sense, the kind to do with endings or with nothingness or destruction or however you want to think of it - we call Jhor.  Most of us who are part of the Tradition tend to enter it at least once, sometime between initiation and death."  He folds his hands.  Regards them for a moment, and is still thoughtful.

"Being Chakravanti is a responsibility.  We don't do it for power, or to find meaning, or because it gives us joy.  People find those things, sometimes, but they aren't the reason we exist as a Tradition."

Ned
"....Responsibility."

Ned mouths the word once or twice, chuckling in a way that is more genuine than...well anything had been for the last week and a half. He leans back, with a regard for Nick that is both telling of a truth and suggesting there's more.

"I was wondering when someone would mention that word. Everyone I've talked to so far has said 'Ascension' this and 'Enlightenment' that. Vague little flowers I'm meant to pluck and sniff and allow to exist within me. Something I'll 'eventually' get to but for now, remains elusive." He's shaking his head. What few people, the Doc, Penelope, Margot, Grace...each has had a variation on that. Each time he's asked after a purpose. It's been something grand. Something unique and touched with that hint of suggested 'Destiny'.

"Responsibility is being the first one to chase down Crack addicts before they can take a swing at a Nurse. Or picking up spare shifts so Jose can see his kids on the weekends, since I've got nothing better to do. Shit, blood, piss and worse, up to my elbows and I kept coming back because...." And he loses the smile. Abruptly. Staring at...or through Nick for a second. Blinking.

"...Because it felt better than doing nothing at all and I didn't have the sort of things most others thought they needed, weighing me down." He re-focuses, jaw clenched slightly around that bit of a morsel. Something unpleasant veering that he chomps down on.

"So now I'm awakened. This life is promising something but...nothing I can grab or hold or clutch or point me at and you're telling me, being this Tradition is about a Responsibility?"

A half-grin. Head tilting.

"Call the others and tell me what you and I need to talk about to get this done."

A pause. Abruptness, again-

"You think I'm in Quiet- Sorry...in Jhor?" It sounds weird coming out of his mouth. He forms it on his lips and tongue a few more times, mostly to himself just to try and get used to it.

Nick
"So you want to join the Chakravanti because you believe it is going to give you purpose?  You feel purposeless right now, without what we have to offer you?"

His voice is soft, and there is something searching in his eyes as they sweep over Ned's face.  He takes in what he sees there: the half-grin, the start-stop abruptness of Ned's words.  When his jaw clenches.  The way he has to speak around the words as though he is trying to swallow a stone.

And here he hesitates: blunt speech is not a strength of Nick's, but there are times when it is necessary, when personal comfort does not matter.  The Chakravanti know that better than most.  "I don't know whether you're in Quiet or not.  I'd need magick to tell me for sure.  But regardless of whether you are or not, detachment from death and tunnel vision are the two fastest ways I know to make a Jhor episode worse.  That is my biggest concern for you, in thinking about whether to initiate you or not."

Ned
"Purposeless? No, Nick."

Ned's attention focuses in return, narrowing to something sharp.

"The Doc told us that there's someone in Colorado springs taking out Initiates. New workers fresh to the life. Five so far, apparently. A few months ago an apprentice was snatched up by the Technocracy and some of them-..." A pause. "Some of us went in to retrieve him. The Doc had a visitor that tied his hands, literally his hands behind a pipe, at the wrist. Your wife mentioned War and I'd be lying if I said I didn't hear bells and battle standards when she talked."

His hands folded together, brows knitting into a cluster of...something.

"This life has enough purpose in it to choke you, me and this entire city. What I need is information. What I need is knowledge and the means to use it to make sure that sort of thing is safe. For the people I care about the idiots among them who still think 'Enlightenment' is something they can wait for. Responsibility isn't purpose...it's a means of following what you know is already right. Otherwise, it's just a hobby."

"As far as I can tell, we're not human anymore. You, me, Margot, the Doc, Penelope. None of us. That's not to say we don't have feelings or the pressure of humanity weighing inside of us but it's foolish to think things like Money, Shame, Horror or Giving up are..." Ned pulls a face. It isn't quite disgust but there's a genuine layer of something unpleasant in it.

"I'm done pretending that a job is necessary to define this. That there are goods, bads and laws to obey. I don't want chaos. I don't want hatred. I don't want the Dark Side or whatever people are calling it. I want answers so I don't have to keep scrounging around in the dark on my own, coming to half-assed conclusions about how to do this whole new lifestyle and Inhuman interaction properly."

He sucks in a breath. Slightly shaky, a bit perturbed perhaps that the emotion present was as intense as it was. No screaming or flipping desks or tantrums, but the honesty came through like a sledgehammer and he glanced down at his hands. Watched them shake a bit and turned them over into fists.

"....It was her Brother." Still eyeing his hands, waiting for it to subside. "Margot's. He was threatening her over the voicemail. For what she did to him. For getting him put in jail and taking his arm. He was coming here and she was scared."

Nick
"I know who it was," Nick says.

He is not quite impassive while he listens to Ned: it is like casting stones into a lake, how there will be ripples where it is struck while the rest remains undisturbed.  He will occasionally flex his fingers or shift his legs or feet, and otherwise: he is still.

For a moment he says nothing.  He has caught the inside of his lower lip between his teeth, and he is not looking at Ned but somewhere past him, out the window.  When he refocuses his attention it's palpable, is the point: Ned can tell when he leaves and when he returns.  "What if I - or the Chakravanti - can't give you the answers you want?  What then?"

Ned
"Then I think you're not high enough on the Enlightenment scale, you, them or anyone else for me to give up as easily on the answers I will want. People are still going to die. Bodies are still going to decay. Hospitals will still be here..."

Ned's hands have settled. The revelation that Nick knows is in turn not much of a revelation. Ned simply nods to it and the pair share a distant glance away from one another. Lost in their own moment. When he returns, so does Ned, bouncing back into this reality with those words. Then these-

"I do know that when I went to deal with him, with Luke that I didn't even know about the answer that I did find. I knew she wasn't going to be able to do it. Lack of ability. She couldn't even hold a knife properly or swing a bat without breaking her wrists but...well more than that." He pauses, inhaling again. "I thought if I braced myself I'd be able to live with it. Deal with the guilty and the shame and the potential for her hating me. If I was strong enough I could manage it and martyr that moment for the rest of my life."

His pause this time is internal. Going over the events and the moment.

"....When it happened, I figured out...I had planned for the wrong event. Planned for still reacting like humans do. Like every life is precious and deserves to be saved or preserved or defined in the brightest way and that you're scum for deciding otherwise." He stares at Nick again, elbows to knees. "Sometimes the circumstances force us to kill."

"Do you feel that way when you take a life that needs taking? Needs...taking?" Re-emphasizing as if to ensure the proper word was defined between them.

Nick
He has fallen to listen again because Ned is telling him: what it was like for Margot.  That in the end, Ned swallowed his very human feelings and tried to brace himself to kill Margot's brother.  There is something there, some sort of gentle regard that he cannot quite suppress; Nick empathizes with others so readily that he cannot help it.

When Ned reaches his conclusion though, there is a sharp shake of his head.  "Every life is precious.  Every death is precious.  Valuing life doesn't mean that we must force it to endure past its time.  Sometimes it's better that we return things to the Wheel so they can start over again with a blank slate."

And there's a thoughtfulness again in how he regards Ned, here.  He lifts his hand so he can rest his chin on his knuckles once more.

"Most of my work focuses more on helping other people accept death as part of life, so that they can pass on more readily.  When I have returned life to the Wheel, I've done it with the understanding that the pain is temporary and they'll be born again.  I've killed out of mercy on battlefields and I've killed out of self-defense and I've killed to help maintain balance in the Wheel.  I've killed so that others don't have to soil their hands.  But the Wheel isn't just death.  That's why it's a Wheel.  Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Ned
"Every death is precious."

Ned agrees. Overlaps it onto Nick's own phrasing, but doesn't say more than that. Nick continues, working through a list of his own defined by the various ways and methods in which the common denominator, has come about. Ned nods along with each, seeing inside his own head every moment described could be found.

"I understand that the two sides of it aren't different. That sparing a life in suffering isn't a mercy and that in this existence...There are those who've gone so far beyond that the best way to help them is to ensure the suffering's done." There's a bloom of something in his eyes just then. A moment of clarity.

Scalpel in the tumor. The restlessness settles. He inhales again.

"The wheel you're talking about...it's a puzzle. Pieces fitting into various sections and segments. Angles and shapes and colours-" He scrubs at his face, blinking through the moment "-Except sometimes you have to take the puzzle apart. Re-do it and get a fresh perspective...."

"...I don't know if he was Blank where I sent him..." A frown. A genuine one now. Clenched jaw and working fingers. "...Is there a way to tell?"

Nick
Nick has glanced away again: this time because that little point between his brows has deepened, has pulled them together and down into furrows, the muscles at the corners of his eyes tight.  Pained, or perhaps he is simply troubled by something in what Ned has said to him.

Still, he exhales and he looks up in time to see that moment of clarity, in time to reflect something that stops short of approval but might be pleased nonetheless. "That's another way to think of it.  But it wasn't the whole of what I was trying to get across.  Do you know why the Wheel is conceptualized that way, as a cycle or a circle?"

He exhales again; this is audible where the inhale was not.  The frown, see, he can meet Ned's eyes here and say: "No.  Not now that he's dead.  A blank slate might have been a poor metaphor, though.  People remember, from one life to the next.  But most of the time they'll start over without conscious memory of what came before, and they'll have another chance."

Ned
"....Wheels turn, without a beginning or an end. Continuous and progressive. Life to death and back again. I studied a bit of buddhism..."

There's something in the way Ned's concern has suddenly grown. The description he'd given of Luke had been...rudimentary. A visual explanation at best. There had been something intensely wrong there, something viciously unpleasant. It pushes his fingertips together and his attention firmly. Thoughts roiling over into the other encounters with the dead. How this new existence of theirs is...thoroughly unsimple.

"The puzzle's no different though. You don't solve it. You fit the pieces into place. Everyone's taking part in fitting their own pieces and if you're lucky you have sections that can help others achieve the colour, the angle and the shape they need....and if you're really lucky, you get the chance to take the pieces apart, so someone else or others get a chance to put theirs back together properly. The wheel is easy. Simple. Direct...Very human."

And we all know Ned's current thoughts on being human these days. He stands abruptly. Not sharply, but with something like purpose, eyeing Nick behind his desk.

"I put in my two weeks notice a while ago. Last shift is on Friday. Wanted to say thanks. For your time and the talks. I appreciate you listening and at least considering my request. I need to do some....re-evaluating." A pause, something like reassurance in his next words. "We'll talk again soon."

Nick
"You're welcome," Nick says, and though his foot pushes his rolling chair back a little farther away from his desk he does not move to stand up.  Doing so would feel overly formal: this is his office, and as Ned said they will see each other again soon.

He reaches over to pick up a pad of paper from the corner of his desk and writes down a phone number, and then tearing it away extends it in Ned's direction.  "That's my cell phone.  I don't remember if I gave it to you before or not.  So that you can contact me outside of work."

So that perhaps they can meet somewhere outside of Nick's office.

"Keep thinking about it.  If books are helpful to you, one of my past mentors probably would have a few good recommendations and I can ask him."  Though he can't imagine what Jonas Allard would make of Ned: he truly cannot, and Nick is a perceptive man and knows Jonas well.

He reaches over to turn the knob on his door to let Ned out.  "Give me a call when you're ready to talk more."

He, too, has a lot to consider.