One day when Nicholas comes home from work he comes home to Yorick, gone. He knew this would happen; he knew it was happening today, for Penelope is not cruel-hearted, and would not return their guest to his rightful owner secretly or slyly, and besides: Nick was in on the group-text.
One day when Nicholas comes home from work he comes home to Penelope on a Skype call in her study, but as soon as the door opens and Nicholas is home she abandons her very rarely used computer and her brother Charles. Descends the stairs as if gravity didn't matter or were a thing which she had under her command and she tucks herself into the crook of his shoulder and breathes his name against his skin and also that there is left over Korean BBQ in the refrigerator or she will make him an omelette or go out and get him fresh strawberries or jalapeno-rhubarb pie
Nick
Nick knew that the rabbit was going back today: Pen told him before he went to work, and besides he was in on the group text. He is not wracked, though he is perhaps a little sad in a way he hasn't vocalized. The rabbit would sit with him or in his lap on many nights, and definitely did not want for affection while it stayed with them.
When he returns home and Pen tucks herself into the crook of his shoulder, his arms wrap around her: a reflex, almost, and he tucks his chin in against the side of her head. (He is not quite tall enough to tuck it in over the top, see: they are almost of a height.) "I'll eat the barbeque, but I wouldn't have any objections to pie or strawberries." He presses his mouth against her temple, breathes in. "Are you all right?"
Pen
There is a moment's grace between his question and her somber answer. "Yes."
She is sincere. She means that word, she means that answer. "But I was reminded of a sorrow today, so I feel the coolness of its shadow as if I were already cold."
"What would you rather have, pie or strawberries? I can go and get dessert now."
Nick
He presses his lips to her temple again, and even though she has said she is all right he does not draw away - even if he is hungry. Pen has this effect on him; once she is there he is often reluctant to part again, even if they eventually must. "Stay," he says.
"What was the sorrow?"
Pen
Pen doesn't draw away either - she is only hungry for Nicholas, who has been absent from her sight for too long as Pen measures such things. She loops an arm around Nick's neck, but only squeezes gently; the canny will note the restraint there, the effort not to flare-up fierce as flame to kindling and kiss instead of answer.
"Death, family, Heath," Pen says, and he cannot see her face; it is hidden. But in the next moment she breaks to slide her hands down Nick's arms find his hands lace their fingers and pull him toward the kitchen. "Do you know, sometimes I feel as though my heart were a tangle of thread and you hold the end of the thread, and maybe unknowing you are tugging on it, and I just want to follow it through the city until I find you?"
Flirt, flirt. Woo, woo.
Nick
Death, family, Heath. Anyone carefully flipping through the pages of the lives of Penelope Mercury Mars and Nicholas Hyde would note those themes, here: how they resurface, how they sometimes drive the two of them together or apart and back together again in ways subtle and not so. He cannot see her face: it is hidden. But perhaps he can imagine how it looks.
He follows her to the kitchen, and the rumbling of his stomach is entirely involuntary and provokes a somewhat abashed look as he is betrayed by his body. His body has often been traitorous: extra incentive for him to learn Life, perhaps. He laughs a moment later, this gentle thing, a little embarrassed. "It's never unknowing. I miss you, when I'm not home."
He breathes out a little sigh as they pass the threshold into the kitchen, and he reaches up to unbutton the top button on his collar and loosen his tie. "Did you eat already?"
Pen
This is not a house where the wife does all the cooking, but Pen likes to cook and her schedule can be more flexible (unless a particular hour or a particular setting of stars in the heavens are a necessary component, in which case Penelope can get quite tense about meals), so more often than not she has some-sort of dinner or dinner plan ready for Nicholas. She goes through phases, too, of being very careful, of cooking things that don't cost very much but provide numerous portions and can be frozen, and cooking things that are extravagant and expensive.
The audible growl of his stomach gets an arch look; eyebrows gone Nouveau smooth; mouth solemn in a way that isn't really, that is sly. The slyness softens; dissolves at his quiet laugh; his response.
She looses his hands in the kitchen and puts the Korean BBQ in all its boxed up glory on the counter. Three boxes, one only consisting of kimchi.
"I ate too recently to be very hungry. Dining room, living room, bedroom?"
Where do you want to eat?
Nick
"I'll eat in the dining room. We probably don't use it often enough," he says, and there is this rueful little smile, an acknowledgement of how often they eat on the couch or sometimes in bed. (Nick does not like to imagine what his mother would say to him if she knew about the latter. Fortunately she is in Arizona and so kept quite in the dark regarding this shameful little corner of his life.)
He gathers up the boxes in his hands, and: his stomach rumbles again. He is therefore very quick to make toward the dining room.
And here he seats himself with relief. It is not a house where the wife does all the cooking, but his gratitude at not being forced to choose between cooking at the end of the day or eating cold cereal is always evident. "Do you want to talk about what happened today?"
Pen
As his chair scrapes back, Pen follows Nick into the room, holding in her hand one chilled bottle of sparkling elderflower juice, the suggestion of frost scraped up and down the long glass neck like the opaque layer of snow atop a frozen lake. In the other hand, a bottle of plain sparkling water, a lemon tucked against the palm of her hand like a golden ball which very much wants to escape and find some froggish pool.
Pen phosphoresces in Nick's wake: sets the two liquids down with an air of ritual, disappears back into the kitchen, returns with two glasses, glass goblets. Her chair scrapes now, and she untwists the cap of the glass bottle and then the plastic.
Her chair is the one not right beside Nick's, or right across from Nick's, but at the corner: so they have both angles covered, so she can, if she wants, play with him beneath the table with an imperfect air of innocence, the position where they can both eat without having to turn to face the other. Right there: at your right hand, and mine.
"Margot asked me not to tell part of it, but," and it occurs to Pen that Margot wasn't very clear. That's not how you bargain with the sorcery; as Pen could tell you, to her sorrow. (If you ask her three times to help you understand.) "I'm sure you can draw conclusions. It seems -- " beat. "What do you think of Ned and Andres? I haven't spoken to Ned. Do you think I should spend more time with him?"
Nick knows Pen well enough to know Pen isn't asking whether Nick thinks she should try to be Ned's friend, necessarily; only that she wonders whether she should try to be witness.
To be more aware.
Nick
His wandering into the dining room is a true wandering: Nick stops partway when they pass a window, when something outside catches his attention. If she looks there with him she will see that he is looking at the nest of baby birds that is in the pine tree outside, that has been there for the past little while: the baby birds are no longer in it, and all that is there is a sole downy feather. Perhaps they have finally learned to fly; perhaps a hawk or scavenging fox or coyote ate them one by one.
He starts off again and as he reaches the table he sets all three boxes down, one atop the other, sets his fork down, and then sets them all aside each other before he opens them. He seats himself then, wiggling to pull his chair up closer to the table.
Pen of course sits there just at his right hand, and his right hand reaches for hers and folds over it even as his left is busy knocking the folded lids aside and breaking up the blocks of food within. It occurs to him that he would like to kiss her just now, but: the moment passes. He is hungry.
"Margot has told me a lot about her situation," he says, and he was not sworn to secrecy by Margot but being a counselor swears him to it in a way nonetheless. He spears food on his fork and brings it to his mouth, careful not to drop a grain of rice.
There is a low noise in his throat when Pen mentions Ned and Andrés. "I'm still worried about Andrés," he says. "I think he is well intended, but he's obsessive and...I don't think he reflects on himself very often. Ned...I wish he'd feel more and think less. I don't think Andrés has been good for him in that regard."
Pen
Pen pours clumsily; the cold bottle slips against her fingers; the lemon rolls, and lacking a sense of itself as anything but a fairy tale golden ball, misshapen by cruel reality, it rolls toward one of the Styrofoam containers. Counterpoint: the quick fall, the clear and luminous whisper, of elderflower juice with its sap-green suggestions into her glass; she gestures with the bottle's mouth toward the other, and if Nick looks assenting, pours for him as well. No drops spilled when she pours for him; only when she pours, less gracefully, for herself. Nick has taken her other hand; Penelope adjusts their grip so that she might run her thumb along the hills of his knuckles, the veined back of his hand.
"Oh, Nicholas," and here is wickedness: "You should have been a Catholic; what a priest you'd make." Beat; and then, "Margot said Ned killed somebody and that it seemed easy for him. That it was defense; that it needed to be done. But it was easy. I don't know him well enough: I find it concerning."
Pen's mouth quirks. "Sometimes Andres reminds me of some Order of Hermes mages I know; but mostly he just reminds me of himself. I'm less worried about him."
Nick
Nick does indeed look assenting when she begins to pour the elderflower juice. His eyes have turned toward it, watching the crystal green of it as it tumbles into the goblet, splashing up against the sides before it returns to the center. He sets down his fork so that he may pick up the lemon in his free hand and offer it back to her, though she will need a free hand to take it.
Her wickedness is met with something akin to dry amusement, saved from edging into the sardonic if only because there is no cynicism there. His listening ear is not a calculated thing, borne from grasping far and deep for power over other people; perhaps he would have made a good priest. Or a good Chorister, once upon a time. He takes his fork back up and heaps food onto it, chewing thoughtfully as his eyes find the back wall. "I could see Ned finding it easy to kill. He's...very detached from other people. Other things. I don't know if it's trauma, or if it's just what's in him."
He swallows. "Andrés has just as much potential to be damaging. He's not malicious or callous, but he can be careless. It's just easier to forgive."
Pen
Penelope pours seltzer into her cup after the elderflower juice, diluting it; she does the same to Nicholas's cup. Bubbles rise, seed-pearl flurries of them; they leave one element for another, water for air, then go diffuse; there's always the faintest hint, suggestion, of sulphur to carbonated beverages that let you taste it. She reaches out to take the lemon back from Nicholas; and then she stands. Lets Nick's hand slip from hers, or find her wrist; she moves to stand at his back, slip one arm around his shoulders, bend her bright head over: it's a lingering caress; full-bodied.
"Easier to forgive?" Pen says, skeptical, and also, "Just as much potential to be damaging? I don't know how relevant that is; how do we measure potential, Nickolai?"
"Margot was concerned about how easy it was for him. Ned. Perhaps it wasn't easy; or he is in shock. It's hard to see someone you respect and trust, you laugh with and lean on, kill someone for the first time."
Pen: leaves Nick, then. But only to go into the kitchen, retrieve a knife; come back, then cut the lemon into two halves right there on the kitchen table. She sets the knife aside; there it lies gleaming.
"She's curious about the spirit world. So is William. Did you know, he seems much more interested in what we can do for the dead-but-not-gone than some of the other shamanic goings on I hear about. It's interesting."
Nick
Nicholas releases her hand as she stands up, though he leans back into her as her arm folds around his shoulders and her head bends over him. He tilts his head back and it nestles into the crook of her shoulder. "Easier to overlook. I just want to be fair-minded."
Some could argue that he is too fair-minded, perhaps, though it is only: he evaluates others differently from Pen. Given the role and responsibilities of his Tradition, he must.
There are things he may need to prepare himself to do, one day.
He glances up at her when she mentions Margot again. "Was it difficult for you to see when I did it?" She leaves him then, and he lifts another forkful of meat and rice to his mouth and chews, his eyes vague and unfocused when they come to rest on the center of the table.
"Are there other shamanic goings-on, other than me?" And here, amusement. Then, "I liked William, but that wasn't a topic we touched on."
Pen
She squeezes one lemon half into her cup; lets some pulp escape the mangled globe, flee gold for the green liquid; her palm is wet; her fingers, too; she licks them; then reaches for Nick's thigh, and lifts up her cup; it flirts with her mouth by staying near, just so. And over the brim of her cup, her eyes are struck brighter by a sudden lance of good humor; it almost dispels solemnity; the somewhat-haunted look of one who has heard an echo where one didn't expect an echo to be found. Almost.
"I don't understand how. This is hyperbole, of course, but I feel as if nearly every Mage in Denver asks me if I have understanding of the Art of Spiritus; cosmology, certainly: I know the basics. But I refer them all to you. I think there must be something in it -- a longing for an easier way to find another world; one more full of wonder."
Meditative. And how neatly she avoided answering his other question.
But of course Pen will come back to it: she always comes back to questions like that. "I appreciate your fair-mindedness, Crow, but I disagree. That he is easier to overlook. I think he's easier to see. I might well be wrong," and that's generous, too. And easily admitted, without rancor or a shadow.
Pen doesn't like being wrong, and she fears it when it means somebody else will be hurt by it, but she does not fear being wrong for pride's sake. Usually.
Nick
The other half of the lemon finds its way into his hand and he squeezes it over his own cup, careless of pulp and pith alike: both find their way into his glass. Both are easy to drink around, should one desire, though there are people who enjoy even the pith (an acquired taste, like many things in life.) Nick does not drink from it yet: he is still eating.
"Almost no one asks me about it," he says, and there is humor in the subtle arc of his brows. Maybe Nick is aware that most people do not ask him anything; most people do not get the chance to ask him anything because he does not often grant it. There have only been a handful of such occasions in Denver so far, with anyone who wasn't Ari or Pen herself. "Most of them don't talk to me about magick."
He lifts his eyes up to her when she disagrees, and here there is a slight shake of his head. "You might well be right. It doesn't really matter, anyway. I'm cautious of them both. But I...there is a place for people who can kill easily, so long as they're reined in. The Chakravanti have made use of them before."
So long as they are reined in, and so long as they know that their ultimate role is to die: he does not say this.
Pen
[Let's actually see if she can restrain herself. A willpower roll.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Pen
She traces the subtle arc of his brows. He has an interesting face. She has always thought so. The shapes his expression takes: fascinates her, binds her close as a spell. Her hand slides up his thigh; rests lightly. And she takes a sip of her drink, but her gaze remains direct. For now: important thing, for nows. And Pen is so direct. That expression causes this one: faint quirk of her lips, behind the cup; a deepening of shadows in the eyes; a vibrant answer, see.
And then -- and then: a measure of silence. Her gaze cuts to the side: how lake-light will become mist and fog, come gloaming; be woven into something at once transparent and opaque. Impossible things. Her eyelashes are long; she is a woman who knows what she believes; who believes it, whole of her heart; who used to be quite rash.
She lofts her chin a little: a touch wry, or earnest, both somehow; and then arch at the end, tempting, beguiling, see: she says, "Oh, I am aware." Beat. "I am quite the expert, you know, on the Chakravanti, their habits and what they dream when nobody is watching."
Nick
Pen was reminded of a shadow tonight and where she didn't expect, and so this conversation they are having cannot quite help but brush up against those where they linger. She was reminded: of Death, and of Heath, and perhaps of all of those who became involved in one way or another. Nick cannot help but think of them too; he saw all of those people the night that she told him about Heath.
He thinks of Jonas far more often than he speaks of him, and perhaps Miles as well (though in truth perhaps Miles' fate ought to terrify him more, shouldn't it: his dogged loyalty to a doomed companion, that he still has so much humanity left to shed in the name of duty.)
There is a measure of silence, full only of quiet chewing. Nick finally reaches for his drink, once it is broken. "Is Margot okay? Will she be okay?"
Pen
"I think she will be okay," Pen says, her head canted: just so. Her gaze still direct; is she thinking of, or did she think of, Jonas and Miles just now, when she called herself expert? Claimed expertise with a lift of the corner of her mouth; just so? Perhaps. She thinks of Jonas often; she has told them both so, how much he means to her: in his way. Miles she thinks of too: usually when she is irritated with herself; when her mind wants to wander and rest on something shameful. It's strange the way the heart works. "But I don't know; I haven't got the knack of Time quite yet."
"It wasn't difficult to see you kill the first time, Nick. It was different, but not difficult. It was difficult when you killed Liz, or what was left of her. But I wanted to kill her, so."
Nick
He's mastered the skill of eating one-handed, Nicholas Hyde. His hand finds hers on his thigh and covers it while he spears a dumpling and some vegetables on his fork and brings them to his mouth. One can sometimes gauge how hungry he is by whether or not he has chosen to eat with chopsticks: they are much slower than forks.
There is a slow exhale when Pen mentions Liz: the Chorister often hangs over him still, a ghostly intrusive presence in his life. He does not forget, even when he is not thinking of her for a period of time. "I didn't want to kill her," he says.
A beat. "I don't...I'm not sure that feeling anything when you kill saves you. Wanting to do it, or not wanting to do it. I'm not sure it makes a difference in whether you acquire Jhor, or whether you Fall. Look at Jonas. Look at me. Look at Liz."
Pen
He didn't want to kill her. This isn't when Pen's gaze falls away, lake-light dripping from a sword. The repetition of a theme. That is when all her looks are eloquent, listening. Attentive, ardent. I don't. One of Nick's stop-starts. This isn't when her gaze falls, either, like shadow from an arm raised in warning or salutation or: does it matter, to the shadow falling, and what falls beneath it? He's not sure that feeling anything -- and this is when: her lower lip firms then softens; her chin sets and her gaze falls to rest on his hand over her hand on his thigh, the edge of their table. This, too, is listening. And ardent.
"I do look at Jonas - at you - and at Liz."
Nick
"I do too, but I'm less sure of what the difference is and where," he says. "Other than that it's there." He's not looking at her or at the way her mouth has gone soft or at her hand on his thigh with his hand over it. A piece of broccoli crunches gently in the pocket of his cheek; his eyes have found the wall opposite them.
"Which is to say, I guess, that I'd appreciate your thoughts if you spent more time with Ned. It might make my heart rest easier."
Pen
"Perhaps I am too sure of myself," no Hermetic said ever, except for Penelope right now, and hopefully they won't hear about it: they might revoke her card. Is what ignorant Traditionalists might say, if they heard her. Or Tytalans. Ignorant Tytalans.
"Especially," a squeeze of his thigh, "given I live with someone who guises about like a trickster in a ragged cloak; especially considering how often you and Ari trick me." The ghost of a dimple; she isn't really smiling, though the pitch of her voice has risen to an easier level: almost teasing; at least a hook.
"Can you imagine me initiating anyone - no one specific, certainly no one in Denver - but anyone to the Order of Hermes?"
Nick
This conversation could move to a more somber place: it has gone there before, has pitched sharply down and taken the both of them with it. Perhaps it threatens to do so now; it is difficult for Nick to not become troubled when he speaks of Liz. Because he spoke truly: he did not want to kill her. He only recognized the necessity, and knew his responsibility.
Pen squeezes his thigh though, and the suggestion of her smile is enough to coax one out of him. He sets his fork down and leans as though he might kiss her, though he stops now: long enough to laugh once. "Of course I can imagine that," he says. "You could convince just about anyone to join the Order, I think."
Pen
He leans; she sways. Magnets have an effect on one another; forces of gravity. "I don't think so," Pen says, gently; but honestly, of course. "But regardless, I didn't ask whether you thought I could lure people into my Tradition; only if you could imagine me initiating anyone. What circumstances can you imagine me doing so, my love?" Her gaze cuts upward; to the side, slant-wise; finds his face. Her head is canted. She grimaces, suddenly. "I am supposed to begin thinking about taking students, actually, now that I've reached the degree of Adept. But ... Bran Summers didn't take students for an ice age after he attained Adepthood, and I think in this I may use him as a model."
Nick
His eyes don't cut over to her; not yet. "I could see plenty of people wanting to be initiated by you," he says, and now his eyes find hers, now they sweep her face and the noble line of her jaw and hair red as sunset: a threshold, see. "But I suppose I can't imagine many circumstances under which you would initiate someone."
His fingertips trace over the back of her hand, over the impression created by a small ridge of bone. "There were rumors about Bran. You'd be the subject of all sorts of rumors if we ever moved back to a larger city. Imagine all the scandal."
Pen
"There's no helping rumors; I don't have a care for them," Pen says, off-hand and with casual arrogance and, in this moment, a sense of being perfectly honest, even if it is not exactly a truthful or untruthful statement. "But no, this is wandering away from - " rue, here. "I would initiate someone if they were to be my student; or their teacher had asked me to take part in their initiation. I know it is different in other Traditions; they don't have quite the amount of book-work that we do, but..."
Nick
"I like the way the Order has a more formal apprenticeship," Nick says, and this, thoughtfully. "I guess it's probably worse if you get someone like Viktor, but it seems like you get to have a lot of guidance most of the time." Of course: no system is perfect. "What do you think you would look for in a student, if you took one?"
Pen
"House Tytalus is a cruel House, fond of Man versus stories," Penelope says, and her voice is cool; is the lake-light dripping. "I would look for their wants; why they wanted to choose the Order of Hermes, and House Flambeau; whether they would serve -- be well-served by, too -- the Tradition. I'd think about what they'd be without it; whether that was worse, or better; and whether I was ready to shoulder the burden of being the one to let them in, regardless of their path: if I saw something in them, shining, which would give me certainty even did they Fall after. That's what I'd look for."
Nick
He'd picked up his fork again and he is eating quickly, though he is listening too, glancing over at her from time to time as he chews. It gives him the furtive sort of look of a cat who is not supposed to be chewing on a houseplant and is nonetheless, unintentionally though: Nick perhaps does feel some residual guilt, always, when anything less than his full attention is on the person who is speaking.
He does set his fork down as she finishes speaking though, and turns to face her more fully. He is still near enough that she can keep her hand on his thigh and indeed, his hand holds it there. "You would be very careful, and selective. That's why it's hard for you to imagine."
Pen
Her hand drifts toward the outside of his thigh; up toward his hip bone. Doesn't drift enough to dislodge his hand; will attempt to find satisfaction where it is held, if he exerts any pressure at all.
"Wouldn't you look for the same things?"
Nick
Rather than continuing to rest on her hand as it moves, Nick's lifts and crosses the narrow divide between them so it can come to rest on her knee. He traces the knob of bone, his gaze coming to rest somewhere around her midline (no, not there: somewhere inward.) "I'm not sure. I...well, I think I'd look for their ability to listen, and learn, and be intentional and thoughtful. I'd want to know whether they could bear the responsibility of being Chakravanti without it breaking them or making them too cynical."
A beat. "But I have a hard time imagining myself initiating anyone, either."
Pen
"What if I decided I wished to follow two Traditions, and asked you?" Penelope asks. She is tracing something against his outer thigh; a charm or enchantment, perhaps, to beguile him into: something. Her knee is cool to the touch.
Nick
That coaxes a laugh out of him, and he lifts his eyes to hers then. They are crinkled at the edges, all gentle amusement. "Would you want two Traditions? It strikes me as being like two huge families who don't really get along being stuck at a reunion together."
He brushes his thumb over her kneecap, and now his eyes track its trajectory. "If you ever were to decide that, I would be there when you were initiated. But I'm not sure I could teach you everything I would need to teach you, myself."
Pen
"I might, one day," Penelope says, smiling (almost smiling; it's just there, see it? Limning her mouth; suggesting corners, suggestive corners). "You mean you wouldn't teach me yourself; you'd pawn me off on one of your associates? Is it because I haven't learned to measure out Time yet, though I pay you such close mind?"
Nick
"I think Lysander would disapprove," Nick says, and if she didn't know him so well she might think his expression has grown solemn. (But there, see, how the corners of his mouth waver and he cannot quite banish the humor there in his eyes.) "I think any struggle you have with Time is more likely to do with my failings as a teacher than your ability as a student. It would be the same with the Chakravanti."
Pen
"No!" Passionate disavowal: "It only takes a while for me to grasp a new Art; it is nothing against your teaching at all. Do you really believe you'd fail me as a teacher of the Chakravanti way? Why?"
She saw the humor; she leaned closer to catch the glint of it in his eyes. But it is not enough for her to chase this most serious question down.
Nick
The passion there in her voice takes him aback, but only just: his eyebrows loft and form two twin arches before they lower again. "A lot of the truths the Chakravanti teach would be difficult to teach someone you love." There is a beat, and: Nick hesitates, but only because this is a serious question, and they had been joking moments ago. "I think we...on some level most of us are prepared to have to kill each other one day. That's not something I want to prepare myself to do with you."
Pen
She listens.
She always listens to Nicholas; even back before they were lovers, she listened to him; worked over his words, as if she could feel them in the palm of her hand; listened, with an ardor.
So she listens, and whatever she's drawing takes her fingers from the outer side of Nicholas's thigh down to his knee and then up the inner and then: she straightens, smooths her hand (a fine pressure; a close one) down his leg entirely: leaves him at his knee. She straightens; reaches across herself for her cup of sparkling water.
The sparkle is dim, now.
And even somebody who knows Pen well might be hard put to guess why, precisely, she paled; then flushed; then paled again, dramatically and completely.
"Perhaps it would be more difficult; perhaps not. You won't know until you try it. Are you done eating?"
Nick
Whatever Pen is drawing on the side of his thigh, she stops; her hand is a firm pressure on him before she removes it and takes up her glass of water. Even somebody who knows Pen well could be hard put to guess at her shifting expression, and Nicholas is indeed hard put to do so. He can guess, he can intuit: but in the end, that's all it is, isn't it?
"I'm done," he says, with a sidelong glance toward the abandoned cartons. He managed to do some damage, at least.
He reaches for his own glass and swallows from it before asking, "Did I upset you?"
Pen
Pen gathers up the cartoons, minimizing when possible. Two are emptied, one remains for a midday snack. The metal gray of the fork in her hand is not the metal gray of a sword, or a knife. The clink of cutlery is not the clink of metal on a battlefield: tackle-bits and bridles, spurs and blades in their sheaths.
It's Nick's fork, and to give herself time to think she digs the fork into a clump of rice and forks it into her mouth. Sucks on the fork, turning it so the prongs point into her tongue. The moment passes, see the half-moon dark of her eyelashes against her cheekbones, how she stretches one leg out, the heel beside between Nick's feet. The moment passes, and she touches his shin with her calf; she cuts a gesture with the fork.
"Yes. I'm sorry. It's only, sometimes I wonder whether you think other -- well not other. My. Not my." Pen places the fork in one of the cartons; the weight of it cants toward the other. She circles the goblet glass with her thumb and forefinger, dragging it across the table, nearer her. It leaves behind one ring, two ring, three ring: the rings dissolve one into the other.
"I don't... want you to prepare yourself to kill me. I don't wish you to be in that position I don't wish it Nicholas nor will it and so it won't be. But I'd be a liar if I told you that I didn't think about what I would do, should anything happen to our cabal mates as happened to Liz. Is being aware of a possible danger 'preparing' yourself?"
See how the gray of her eyes can be moon-dark rather than lake-dark sometimes; all witch-shadow and lake-light? Uncertain light: imploring, even: searching.
Nick
"Whether I think other what?" There are times when, if one put all three of the Hyde siblings aside one another they would look especially alike at certain points: they all acquire a certain sharpness, see, something keen-edged, when their interest has been piqued just so. It wants answers, and it wants.
Nick reaches again for his water glass but does not drink from it, as Pen speaks further. He spins it gently, watches the glimmer of water around the edge of the glass, puddled there on the table.
"It's not preparing yourself," he says finally. "I...prepare myself for things that are likely, not for remote possibilities." A beat. "I've thought, too, about what I would do if something like what happened to Liz happened to anyone else. If I would act differently. But I don't know what else either of us could have done."
Pen
Pen looks stern; she does not mean to. She looks stern because she is grave, and gravity touches the bones of her face just so; the dramatic pallor, made more stage-craft against the bright cap of her hair; there's a suggestion of sweetness: just out of reach - the highest fruit, well-guarded. The suggestion of sweetness might be there, a hint, a subtle nuance in her looks -- but it is absent from her voice, which is low.
"'Things that are likely, not remote possibilities,'" she says, Echo who spoke Narcissus' words back at him: as he wasted away, as he thinned away like wax; his wick burned too bright; the flame would not blow out. "That's not how ... I think about it, about what if."
"And I know, my love; I don't know what else we could have done either; nothing, then. It's done. But that's why..."
Pen trails away. Stands. Gathers the cartons and brings them into the kitchen. Two of them get dumped into the recycling; one gets put into the refrigerator. This is the sound of it opening; this is the sound of it shutting. Of water running.
"It's a different conversation," she says, raising her voice; bracing herself on the kitchen counter, like so: water still running. White water. She twists the knob to off. "Liz is. I just..."
"I'm sorry."
Nick
There are, occasionally, times when Nicholas cannot guess at what is beneath the lake-light, when there are depths that shift too many times and too deeply for him to understand for a certainty what is going on. These times are rare, but they happen. He sees her gravity: he sees her unease; he sees that while she looks stern there is something beneath that. It does not tell him everything.
"How do you think about it?" he asks now. And perhaps there are nuances here, perhaps they are talking past one another: Nick's brow and the way it bends suggests that he wonders this. "I only...a lot of us, the Chakravanti, we die when other Chakravanti kill us. That's all I meant."
He does not rise from his chair, though he twists at the hip so that he can face her, or at least hear her more readily. There is a rasp of the legs of his chair against the floorboards. "What are you sorry for?" His tone suggests that there is nothing she should be sorry for: it seeks.
Pen
That's all I meant.
"I know that's what you meant. What I mean is - " a pause. Her back was still to Nick; now she turns; she is leaning against the counter. Her arms are not crossed; her palms are on the counter's edge, her fingers (graceful, deft) curled around; framed, so. There's a stitch between her eyebrows: chiseled; sharp; glass-cut, fine.
"I don't put so fine a boundary on possibility, but perhaps because I am not careful enough or wise enough. I don't think to myself: the Chakravanti fling themselves into curses; their philosophy is a moth against fire, always; they are responsible and the burden of that responsibility drags them through Jhor more often than a Tytalan, or a Verbena, or a Singer in the Chorus, so it is more likely that a Chakravanti I know will - I should keep my eye on them. I don't: do you understand me? I don't think it more likely, I don't -- I suppose if pressed I might express a lack of surprise at learning that another member of House Tytalus has flirted with a demon; but I would be surprised. Even though House Tytalus is a house where the heroes are Viktor. I'm not being clear; I know that. It's only I don't feel -- or I do feel. I feel that -- when our friend Fell, I did not afterward think it wasn't likely another one of us might. I thought it was the same amount of likely, but I made sure to look at it, so if. If."
"And I'm sorry, because it is preparation to me: being aware. It's the first step. And I'm sorry I had such a visceral reaction; and I feel as if I am failing you, somehow - I don't know how."
Nick
Here is Nick when she turns to him: his arm laid across the table, his fingers curled almost into a fist, his brow furrowed the way it will when eyebrows lift in thought (surprise, even) even as they lower. Maybe something occurs to him here and now.
He did little today to tame his hair before he left for work (tired from this weekend's past adventure in the hills with Ari, perhaps) and his curls as he tilts his head back to regard her are tousled, framing his head like a dark sun. "You aren't failing me," he says, and there is some sweetness there, a smile: he believes it.
He is silent then for a moment, mulling and gathering his thoughts. "I think you...you think the best of people. I admire that about you." It is a thing he too achieves in some contexts, but now: well, his Tradition could well be the one that gave fatalism its name. "I don't...I don't think that we brush against Jhor more often because of a failing in us. I think it's a risk we take when working with death magick. That's how I look at it. And we risk it more often, and so the responsibility for our Traditionmates at the end, that's...that's just what it is."
A beat. "I believe in being aware. I also think there are some things that happen to us, that are more likely to happen to us, that will happen to us, regardless, and knowing that is the next step of preparation."
Pen
"It just seems narrow," Pen says. "I believe Jhor ... Hmm." Pen frowns down at her toes; she is a tall woman, and her legs are long. Her closest (most intimate) experience with it is of Nicholas returning to her, Jhor-riddled, under a shadow. She has not experienced Jhor first-hand; she tends toward other manifestations of Quiet. "That will happen, regardless?"
Nick
"Death and loss are both things that are certain," he says. "Even if we don't always know the manner of it. I don't mean that...I don't think that dying that way, that Jhor is inescapable, but..." Nick glances down at his lap, perhaps at his thigh where the imprint of her aborted symbol can still be felt somewhere, and he exhales. "I just don't like the thought of being responsible in that way for you. I'm not sure I could do it."
His fingers curl back into his palm; gentle hills of skin and bone rise and fall again as his hand becomes a fist and then relaxes. "I know I could. Or would. Do whatever I need to do, that is. But I don't like thinking about it."
Pen
"I don't like the thought of anyone else being responsible in that way for you," Penelope says, after a moment. After a long moment. She means it and she doesn't mean it. Both statements would be true. "But I don't believe you'll need -- I don't think you're going to become a walking shroud, this time around; I love you, you see, and I believe you."
"And never fear; I'd fall on my sword." Faint smile; almost: beguiling. "If ever there was a need."
Her gaze flicked up from her toes at some point; touched on Nicholas, instead. She shifted her weight from one hip to the other; her muscles tensed as if she were going to push away from the counter, but she didn't. Doesn't, yet.
Nick
Pen does not need to push herself away from the counter. Nick moves to his feet, and it is quick and one smooth motion but there is no power behind it, no urgency. He crosses the room to the threshold, the door, and stops to lean on the frame. His muscles are tensed as though he would continue walking, would cross the distance to her: but he doesn't, yet.
"Hopefully there will never be a need," he says. And then, "I think you're right, though. About me. I don't think that's going to happen this time around."
It could: of course it could. But it hasn't yet.
Pen
Her muscles tense again; she does push away from the counter. Doesn't need to, because Nick's come so much nearer; does, anyway. Needs to in order to reach the same door frame; economical. No flourishes. Needs to in order to tweak one of his curls, pinch his chin, tap his collar. There's a sense of ozone in the air; of potential frisson; some left-over tension. Pen has enough personality that, when she is passionately disturbed by something, unsettled, the air itself can reflect it; can shiver with it. Nick, too, though he's described as wan: this is their home.
"I have a need," Penelope says, solemnly. "The riddle is: what is it?"
Nick
Nick obligingly tilts his head toward her so that she can tug at a curl, wind it around her finger and then let it unspool or spring back into place. He reaches for her and a hand lights on her side, his thumb brushes over the curve of her hip. He is smiling: not solemn in the slightest, now. "Do I get a hint?"
Pen
"No."
Nick
Little creases appear at the corners of his eyes, and he straightens away from the doorframe but only so he can circle an arm around her, first one and then the other. For the moment he is content with this, leaning into her with her leaned into him: though the leftover tension lingers in them both, and so he teases. "Not this, then? I suppose I'll have to guess."
She might answer; she might not, she might respond to his teasing in kind. He kisses her next, and one thing will lead to another, because some things are indeed certain -
and onward, into the evening.
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