Confessor

Nicholas
Barbara Phipps, 49, died last week of heart failure (long term complication of colon cancer, not caught early enough.)  Last week Nick sat next to her and the sucking sounds of her respirator while she shared pictures of herself two years before that, occasionally holding a hand made of tissue paper while she pointed and gestured with the other: she was a hundred pounds heavier then, skin leathered in that manner of people who have spent a lifetime in the sun, her husband's arms around her muffintop in half the photos. Nick took extra time; he knew it would be the last meeting.
This week, in their interdisciplinary floor meeting they reviewed her case, the doctor who signed off on her cause of death was not Andrés and yet Nicholas thinks of him anyway; of the last time he saw the man, which was at the chantry meeting.  He thinks too of Andrés volunteering, and how sure, and how quick.
So before lunch, Sepulvéda receives a text, and that evening, here they are.
Neither have been in the city for very long and so the choice of bar might as well have been as random as one of them picking a place that popped up near the hospital in Google.  Here it is: there is a string of lights outside but despite the gentling weather (perhaps March will come in like a lamb and go out like a lamb, this year) there is no one outside yet.
The Chakravanti is waiting for Andrés outside beneath one of the streetlights, his tall dark silhouette casting a long shadow over the sidewalk.  Nick is looking at his phone; Nick is still conscious of his surroundings.

Andrés
It's easy enough to ask Google where the hell a cheap place to get a drink without seeing breasts or a bar-brawl happens to be. One or the other concedes upon it and when the Etherite arrives he is walking down the sidewalk as if he has taken the bus or parked somewhere other than the lot.
Like as not the place shares a lot with another. This is a dark world they live in. Not every place has well-lit lots easy to access.
He is smoking a cigarette when he arrives. It is the hospice counselor's resonance that enlightens the medical examiner as to the identity of the shadow carved out of the streetlight.
"Nicholas!" he says just as he's about to breach the twenty-foot perimeter of their personal distance. Unlike last time he is wearing corduroys and an ugly sweater underneath a blazer. Glasses, sure, and a beard, but it doesn't look as if he received Nick's text while he was still elbows-deep in an examination. "Put your phone away, eh?"

Nicholas
Nicholas does indeed put his phone away; he is younger than Sepulvéda, but not so young that he cannot remember a time before smart phones (or a time before the digital, even.)  As he tucks it into the pocket of his dress pants he straightens up.  He is in a heavy dark grey peacoat, the sort of thick wool that would for most people provide too much warmth in this kind of weather.  Today's wind has left his hair particularly fluffy at the moment.
"Hello, Andrés," he says, as the Etherite draws near.  His voice is quieter and less effusive than the other man's, and it is therefore necessary to wait until Andrés draws within close personal distance.  "It's good to see you."
Nick never gives the impression of someone who speaks social niceties out of habit; perhaps he does, and yet he also seems to mean them.  He matches pace with the other man as they both start to walk inside - and just as well, the wind that has been blowing all day now has a dampness to it that suggests it may be about to rain.  "I saw a dead body earlier and thought of you," Nick says, and perhaps Andrés is becoming acquainted with the Chakravanti enough to know that even this gentle good humor he exudes can have something of an edge.  "I'm glad you were free."

Andrés
Their lot don't tend to bother with social niceties. If a body says they're glad to see another body it's the truth. Glad to see you haven't vanished since the last doomsday meeting we all had.
The Etherite for his part does not echo it but then folks don't tend to worry about the Chakravanti. They being steady as they tend to be. Their philosophy has a Zen-like quality to it that is easy to admire but difficult as hell to adopt.
He says he saw a dead body earlier and thought of Sepúlveda. The Etherite laughs. It's a sharp surprised-sounding laugh but he is not offended.
"You say the sweetest things!" he says as he grabs the door to the bar and hauls it open. Lets Nick go first. "Let me buy the first round."
It's a weeknight. It's early enough that they don't have to fight for the corner real estate. As with dinner with Nick's wife, Sepúlveda does not appear to fear ulterior motives here. Clearly he has not had much experience with social calls.

Nicholas
Sepulvéda laughs and Nick flicks the other man a look of wry amusement: pleased, always, when he guesses correctly as to whom gallows humor will and will not offend.
"If you insist," Nick says, because there is no counselor in the world who will cling to pride when a doctor offers to buy them drinks.  He steps in through the door, reaching up to unbutton his coat as he passes inside.  He seems to head for one of the corners almost instinctively; it is the middle of the week, after all, and the place will be uncrowded enough for there to be little concern about speaking frankly.
Nick slides into one of the seats and his coat comes the rest of the way off, where he drapes it haphazardly over the back of his chair.  Beneath it, he is dressed in somewhat more neutral colors than the last time they met: dark grey pants and a white shirt with a brown belt.  "How have you been?  Feeling okay after the meeting?"
The server is quick, because servers on Wednesday evenings are tip-hungry, and Nick asks for a beer.  He gives no indication of ulterior motives; his attention seems to be more focused on their surroundings at the moment than heavy and intent on whatever Andrés might say.

Andrés
Counselors have a better feel for emotions and motive and the bones of what are driving a person than do doctors. For the most part. In this instance, accusing a medical examiner of being out of touch not only with his own emotions but with the idea of emotions in general would not be the wildest accusation in the world.
His job is not to explain why a murder or a suicide occurred. It's to determine whether or not Nature had anything to do with the death. Death and Nature are bedfellows see but he doesn't give a shit what a person was thinking at the time the death occurred or what contributed to its occurrence.
"Of course," he says. As if he didn't volunteer to walk into a Technocrat stronghold and pass off one corpse as another.
Then comes the server. Then comes Sepúlveda asking for a tequila with a beer back. No salt, no lime.
Once they're alone again, buried under the music and the din such as it is:
"What about you?"

Nicholas
They're alone again, and Nick's beer is pale and golden, deceptive given its bitterness, and he is absently raking his fingers through his hair in an attempt to bring some order to the chaos.  It is not like pulling a rake through sand, leaving neat rows and half-moons in a garden, and more akin to hacking back jungle with a machete; it seems to make little difference, in the long run, and he lacks a mirror.
"Concerned for the greater implications," Nick says, and vague though this may be it is honest.
He has taken a sip from his beer at this point, his wandering-eye ruminations carrying his gaze around the bar, which is an unfamiliar setting.  Nick may be a more wary man than he often gives the impression of when he's daydreaming through day-to-day conversation.
One does not jump into these sorts of topics.  He knows that, if anyone.  "Have you shared what happened with Ned and Margot?"

Andrés
"Not yet."
It would be easier to discuss an impending divorce and how to broach the news to the kids than why he hasn't told his apprentices what the other traditionalists brought up at the meeting.
He tips the shot down his throat. Cursory study of the film on the inside of the glass before he sets it aside again. Though his own beer is a cheap thin pale lager, Tecate or Corona or whatever the hell they had ready to roll, he pours it into a glass just to give himself something to do. Sitting still has never been his forte.
"Don't know what to tell them. The boy, Ned, he wants absolutes. Yeah? You tell him, 'Hey, the universe, we think it will lose enough of its free energy, we call it the logarithmic scale of thermodynamics--'" Beer poured, he just holds onto it. Lets the tequila burn his esophagus and does nothing for it. Addressing the beer and not Nick. "'--eventually everything will cease to be, no big deal, you have all this time until then,' and he cannot accept what you tell him. You tell him, 'Hey, the Traditions and the Union, we had a war, it ended, but the Union wants to start the war anew, we don't know why,' and the questions, he has so many questions about why bother and what's the point and how do we worry about that when we could get eaten by little fungus-harvesting goblins in the middle of the night. And the girl, Margot..."
Now he drinks his beer.

Nicholas
Sepulvéda tells him about Ned, and Ned's questions, and Nick smiles as the Etherite describes how interactions with the boy have proceeded thus far.  Nick had a longer conversation with Ned at the dinner party, and while Andrés was not there, something in that smile suggests that he knows precisely what Andrés is talking about.
These concepts, besides, are interesting to him: but too many questions, and so little time, and Andrés so rarely pauses.  There's always time to return later, once the scaffolding has been laid.
"He's tackling the existential questions first.  Precocious kid," Nick says, and there is another sip of his beer that follows.  Nick, too, was a precocious kid.  "What about Margot?"

Andrés
Sepúlveda drinks as if he's parched and can derive no satiation from water. Maybe he can't. He sets the glass down after swallowing a quarter of it and looks at Nick rather than its contents now.
"She fights against her Avatar. Ned, from what he tells me, his wants him to solve The Puzzle." Nick can hear the capitalization in the phrase. It isn't his. Maybe not Ned's either but it's what Sepúlveda has extracted from their time together. "Margot, hers is..." A quick swallow. "Well, if Pen took her on, indoctrinated her, a year from now, it would not surprise me, but I think she's meant for bloodier Work than that." He scratches his beard. "I'm not at liberty to talk about her, eh, her past, you know, why she is the way she is." A sigh. "I intend to meet with, what's her name, Kiara. Not about her, about, you know, what we're to do, but..." Another swallow. "If she and Margot talk, I think this would be a help, for Margot, yeah?"
The man is unapologetic about how much he fucking talks without letting the other person interject. Punctuation comes in the form of alcohol consumption but that's not enough wriggle room for the average person.

Nicholas
Andrés talks a lot, and Nick, for his part, spends a considerable amount of time each day listening to other people talk and inserting himself into the conversation as little as possible.  When he does, it's to gently reflect, to tease something out, to frame another's words in a different way than might have occurred to them on their own.  This is comfortable for him.
Comfort and growth cannot occur together, or so they say, and yet.
"It seems like it would be helpful for her," Nick agrees.  He drinks; he sets his beer back into the circle of condensation that has already appeared.  There is, again, a touch of that dry humor when he says, "What will you do with yourself if you pass them off?  It seems like they're keeping you very busy."

Andrés
This question amuses him. He flashes a smile and reaches up under his glasses to rub at the corner of his eye. Seems to decide he doesn't need his glasses on if he's just talking to someone across the table from him and rakes them off his face. Attaches an ear to the breast pocket of his blazer.
"Ah, hell, man, I don't know. Sleep through the night?"

Nicholas
"Andrés," and this Naming of the other man is chiding, amused, a little knowing perhaps, "I have a hard time believing a full night's sleep is high on your list of values and priorities."  A beat.  "Tell me about the logarithmic scale of thermodynamics.  I haven't had many chances to talk about magic with a member of the Society before."
Nick doesn't drink with the sort of dissatisfaction or desperation that Sepulvéda does, and yet he seems to be keeping pace with him rather easily.  He's a shot of tequila behind, but nevermind that.

Andrés
He's mid-glug when Nick uses the m-word. Committed to finishing what he started but capable of multi-tasking, he snaps the fingers of his off-hand as his ring-bearing hand is setting down the pint glass.
"Ah, ah, ah. No no no." He swallows again because he still had some errant fluid threatening to clog up the works. Gestures between the two of them with the finger-snapping hand. "We talk, we talk about Science. Or..." A turning gesture with his hand as he tries to find the right word. Snaps his fingers when he finds it. "Or work.. You leave that Magick shit outside."

Nicholas
Andrés begins to snap his fingers and the look Nick gives him at first is two parts openly bewildered and one part rueful, perhaps wondering he has somehow managed to be too intrusive, when -
We talk about Science.  And at this, the Chakravanti laughs, the clear rich sort of sound he makes when he's too surprised and perhaps even overwhelmed with a sort of generalized affection for other human beings and their human quirks to obfuscate it with layer upon layer of premeditation and intention.  "All right then, tell me about your Work."

Andrés
"Ah, hell, you wanna talk about my Work, physical cosmology and thermodynamic entropy aren't my fields."
Speaking of fields. This may be deflection. It may be tangentially related. They don't know enough about each other to know when they're deflecting or not but given how blunt he is about pretty much everything about his own life accusing Sepúlveda of deflecting tends to strike most people as premature. He would have to have feelings to try and protect them.
Plus he settles back in his chair instead of leaning over the table like he's at a fucking tribunal. Conversation. Back-and-forth. He's trying.
"Why'd you go into end-of-life counseling?"

Nicholas
There is a many-layered pause in which Nick gathers his thoughts after Sepulvéda asks him this question: there could be a longer answer to this, if Nick desired.  As with most things, there is always the longer answer - but then again, Andrés knows this.  He told Nick his wife is dead more or less in passing, this statement of fact without the particulars wound around it.
Nick is also not used to other people asking him questions.  Here is the subtext.  "The idea of balance is very important within my Tradition," he says, "and the Wheel - the cycle of life and death, to say it briefly - doesn't turn effectively when people don't die well.  There's no flow.  I didn't set out to do end-of-life counseling specifically, but I fell into it."
A beat.  "If people aren't ready to accept change, they hold on and it keeps them from moving into the life after this one.  They linger, their questions linger.  I help them resolve that."

Andrés
An empty glass on Sepúlveda's side of the table punctuates that thread of the conversation. Leaves two on his side. The server is not hovering around waiting for this sort of situation but they won't be unattended for long and when they are he asks for the same thing. Small as he is, if he's going to go to a bar, he's going to drink. Ask if Nick wants another one because what the hell. Balance. He makes more than he does and the drinks here are cheap as hell and he wants to keep asking questions.
Pin it on the fact that he's got two students who don't know what the hell they want to be when they go through their first Seeking. Maybe he's starting to consider the Euthanatos a friend and wants to get to know him. Sometimes it's better not to question an Etherite's motivation.
"So, how do you know, at the beginning of the workday, say someone new comes in, and they aren't ready to go, or you've had someone here for a time, and you all think they were ready to go, but in the end, deep down, no, they want to fight it at the last moment..." A beat. "You understand what I'm asking?"

Nicholas
Nick agrees to another beer, which prompts him to swallow the dregs of the ale that is left in his glass.  It leaves three there at the end of their table; three is an auspicious enough number.  (Though Nick hopes that the auspiciousness in this case isn't related to him going home drunk on a week night, calling Pen and asking her to pick him up at the bar.)
"I understand what you're asking," he says.  There is a wry set to his mouth, something not quite a smile, something that is for a moment in another place.  "It's never my role to decide for anyone, or to tell them how they should feel, and in this case it would be especially pointless.  If they're fighting it, there's a reason.  Sometimes that reason is that they have something unfinished, in which case we talk about how to finish it, or they're processing something, in which case we process it.  Sometimes they have to come to terms with the inevitable, and understand that accepting death is the only power we have over it."
Nick's beer arrives, and he drinks, and again it's without the desire to drown.  This is not a distressing topic to him; if anything, the opposite.  "I don't give the Good Death to my clients.   I just try to help make what they already want more clear to them."

Nicholas
reposting email for the sake of my sanity.

Andrés

Part of the reason the doctor had disappeared from the dinner party was of course an empty wine glass. Something had distracted him in the kitchen and he had not returned. There is a room in the basement he has told his students they do not belong in, and are to stay out of. It's best if no one ever sees what goes on in there.

The other part of the reason was to leave Ned alone with Nick, Nick being additional proof one can keep one's day job and still progress through Awakened life. Just because he Awakened an Orphan doesn't mean he's completely boned.

Nick may be if he tries to keep up with the Etherite. He listens intent until Nick explains the absence of the Good Death in his profession and then he tips his second shot of tequila down his throat and starts to pour his second beer.

"So - correct me if I'm wrong - your work and your Work remain separate, but your paradigm influenced your profession."

Nicholas

"My Work does not begin, or end, with the Good Death," Nick says, and while there is no palpable heat or temper to his voice it is firm.  This is a common perception of the Chakravanti, them as the Death Tradition.  This response was so instantaneous one could assume it was almost reflexive: sometimes self-protection becomes a reflexive thing.  Nick is somewhat recently out of an episode of Quiet, a thing he does not readily advertise.  "There is very little separation between my work and my Work, except as I am aware of the power imbalance between Sleepers and myself."

And this could be a dangerous statement, depending on who says it.  It's likely that there aren't very many people like Nick out there, who do what he does in the way that he does.  It's a large part of the reason he is so careful.

Nick has taken a swallow from his glass.  He is not expressly trying to keep up with Andrés (he has recognized this as a losing proposition), but he has stopped trying to moderate himself, or at least to the extent he ordinarily might have.  Nick often picks up on the emotions and habits of others around him; this is an empath's blessing and curse.  "It's more like my profession influenced my Work, in my case.  I Awakened shortly before I began my career.  I knew much more about counseling than I did Awakened life, at that point."

His glance flicks to Andrés then, something sidelong.  "What about you?  Do you make a separation?"

Andrés

A bit of firmness is to be expected when discussing the core of one's beliefs and if the response is reflexive the doctor does not take it as a personal affront. Hell: just about everything that comes out of Sepúlveda's mouth is reflexive. He doesn't think before he speaks. His is a Dynamic Avatar.

I am aware of the power imbalance between Sleepers and myself.

This interests him. He sits up straighter and something in his gaze - made keen by the brightness of his irises sure but by his intelligence also - sharpens. Sepúlveda is three drinks deep and often seems as if he is lost in thought but right now Nick has his undivided attention.

He must be a pain in the ass for an empath. All he is is habit. Lack of impulse control coupled with certainty. Pen has told Nick more about his past than the man himself has.

"I have to," he says, and tries to make a joke: "If I didn't, they'd arrest me."

That's not an answer. Not a particularly funny joke either considering what they discussed at the Chantry meeting. He takes a swig of beer to cleanse his palate and goes on.

"My professional interest is determining the cause of death or injury in a case where it is not apparent, at first. During my internship at Johns Hopkins, I was able to help, ah, investigate alternative means of performing tomography angiography on the dead, which is a credit to my paradigm, as I treated the dead body as a, ah, intersection between inanimate object and lifeform devoid of life. It would have taken much longer without this insight. There are a few other instances where this was the case, but I have not done the research necessary to become a, you know. Sherlock Holmes, so I suppose you could say they're separate to a degree."

Big pull off his beer. This is your chance, Nick.

Nicholas
If Andrés didn't draw a separation, they'd arrest him.  Nick makes a noise that for him, is strangely short; not irritated, but it's an acknowledgement that falls short of understanding (though perhaps understanding, too, is not the correct word.)

He listens, his expression earnest, as Andrés tells him about his professional interests and how that intersects with the personal.  In some ways it's a relief to hear another person talk about this, the way in which they've blended their Awakened life and their life among Sleepers.  It would have been helpful for Nick to have another Nick around when he'd been a Ned, perhaps.

"I see," he says.  "So you experienced that insight, and it sounds as though maybe you've tried to differentiate the two concepts?  Inhuman matter and what's left after we die?"  A beat.  "I'm not sure I see the difference. Tell me about that."

Andrés
"The body has a way of betraying itself, does it not?"

Now he leans forward again. One hand remains wrapped around his glass while the other forearm rests against the tabletop. It does not stop him from talking with his hands but it does stop him from waving it around.

"In the instance of a person who's died of pulmonary thromboembolism, yeah? Alone at home, they're found much later, the meat has begun to rot, and the autopsy comes back inconclusive, most times. A person who dies in hospital, you have a trail to follow, it isn't so difficult, but the person who dies without witness, and stays dead for long enough, milking the limbs and examining the lungs is not so clear an indicator of what killed them. But angiography used to be difficult without... a pulse, you know, something to move the agent along, you're familiar with the procedure."

He takes a swallow of beer.

"I'm getting off track. What was I saying." The difference between an inanimate object and what remains after death. "How familiar are you with Life? The Sphere, not..." He waves his empty hand around a bit before waving it off. "... not lowercase."

Nicholas
Andrés leans forward, and Nick leans forward too, the gesture almost instinctive.  The bar isn't loud, but there's a sort of hush that always comes over their kind when they're talking magick (or whatever Andrés wants to call it) in a public place, and such a thing is natural.  Besides: Nick is interested.

Medical terminology thrown around that he might not have known did he not work in a hospital.  Nick's eyes are steady, and his beer is continually half-raised to his mouth while he listens to the Etherite.  "I know the basics," he says, of the sphere the other man mentions.  Andrés has said quite a bit, and there is some insight there, but it's never as much what people believe as what they do with it.

Especially what they do with it.

Andrés
"Okay. I didn't want to assume, you know what happens when you assume. Someone makes a terrible pun."

Another swallow to wet his throat.

"Anyway, there are instances when the Life Sphere will certainly apply to a corpse, but only if you have the other Spheres to go along with it, you know, probability and distance and those, but those are not my purview. I find them interesting, sure, but my focus has always been on Matter. So..." Swallow. "Matter, we can divide into organic and inorganic, but organic does not necessarily mean living. Organic matter is made up of carbon, yeah? If one treats the remains as a life form no longer living, and the tissue in the body that is no longer part of the biological functions that would have supported life, I find it easier to determine the cause of death." A beat. "It also led to the introduction of a less viscous tracer to the procedure, which makes it easier to perform a CT scan on a corpse once it's been exsanguinated."

He drains his beer. It doesn't take long.

"If any of that makes sense."

Nicholas
"Somewhat.  I'm a counselor, not a doctor," Nick says, and there is this little smile, this humble acknowledgement of his shortcomings.  Still: Nick, in his speech and in the way his perception cuts like a blade, comes across as perhaps too clever to not understand the general sense of what is being communicated, even without the appropriate language.

His beer has not quite been drained yet, but perhaps he takes Sepulvéda finishing his as a sort of cue, and he finishes the glass in one long swallow and sets it next to the Etherite's.  It's likely that he doesn't have anything approaching Andrés' tolerance, either, making this an ill-devised plan.  "So," he says, and perhaps the other man can pick up on the shift in tone immediately, "if I can switch gears a bit..."

Nicholas has adjusted himself in his seat.  He hasn't eaten yet tonight, and the beer has hit his head with surprising alacrity.  "I'm curious about what you plan to do based on what was discussed in the meeting.  You volunteered quickly, I wondered if you had some specific expertise or experience when it comes to dealing with the Union."

Andrés
He flicks his eyebrows like to indicate yeah sure go ahead and switch gears. Folds both forearms over the table and knits his fingers together and frowns a bit as Nick mentions the meeting. Oh right. He volunteered to do something stupid. Thanks, Impulse Control.

"There was a, how do you call it, an amalgam of them in Miami--" Oh there's the server. Yeah sure another round would be fantastic. Sorry Nick. Once she's gone again: "We had to work together, in the public sector, once." He leans back. "Trust me, I'm no expert on the Technocracy, and I'm not about to run off and rejoin the Union, but I'm not afraid of them, either."

Nicholas
Andrés orders another round, and Nick has settled back in his chair.  The arm flung over the back gives him an appearance that is casual, perhaps deceptively so.  Rejoin, this catches his interest until he recalls what little he knows of the Society of Ether's history.  "No fear even given that they seem to have more or less declared war?"

It's not surprise in his tone, necessarily.  Perhaps there is something just the slightest bit expectant, there, if one were so inclined to look.

It's better that he not be distracted, anyway.  Nick is too easily drawn into the minutiae of conversation, sometimes loses the big picture.  He knows this is as much a problem in his mundane work as now.  ""So you'll be there, and what do you plan to do?"

Andrés
Let's ignore the second question for a moment. Andrés doesn't give him a chance to ask it and his player is too scatterbrained for simultaneously conversations.

In response to the lack of fear in the face of war:

"An unknown quantity of them has possibly declared war, now that their Supreme Leader long-confined to the Deep Umbra due to the Storm is rumored to no longer know confinement, and in the meantime, they've destroyed the previous Chantry, and the Verbena Grove, and taken an Orphan into custody because he refused to answer questions concerning a reformed widderslainte that's in our midst."

Down the hatch goes the tequila.

"No, I'm not afraid. If cooperating with them, for now, for a given value of 'cooperate,' prevents another war, or gets this Alex fellow back, then fuck it. What's the harm in cooperating for five minutes?"

Nicholas
Nick's question was leading, and conveniently Andrés is giving him answers already to the other questions he has not asked; this is all to the good.  In an ideal world this is how these things would always work.

He picks up the glass that has been set in front of him, and his eyes are on some dark corner of the room, some faded brick or crack in the wall.  It is often easy to wonder whether or not Nicholas is listening at all; there is perpetually something far away about him.  "I hadn't heard about the reformed widderslainte.  Is this someone I know?"

Careful, Nicholas.

Andrés
"Ah..."

There he goes not using his verbal filter again. The server cleared away their cacophony of glasses when last she passed through so when he taps the shot glass to the edge of the table just to give himself something to do it's a quiet tapping. More of a thump they feel rather than hear.

"This is just what I hear, you know how people talk, for all I know a wire crossed somewhere, but the girl this Agent Weston was asking after, she's with the Verbenae. The Cultist, Serafíne said her name at the meeting. It's escaping me at the moment. Supposedly she Awakened inverted."

Nicholas
Ah: there had been a name, during that entire conversation, that he did not know and which did not belong to anyone in the room.  Nick recalls this, and the recognition and insight that floods his eyes is visible, like the proverbial switching on of an inner light.  But "That's interesting," is all that he says.

His gaze remains fixed in some corner of the room, as though he could stare into the past; his hand has come up to his mouth and he tugs thoughtfully on his lower lip.  These things, they can't be changed.  His hand falls away and back to his lap.

"Regardless.  It sounds as though you thought your decision through and know the risks.  I was worried about you," he says, and when he says this his eyes return to their conversation, they meet Andrés' across the table.

Andrés
[perc + empathy: u ok bro. lol he has no empathy.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5) ( fail )

Andrés
[IN A MOVE NO ONE SAW COMING]

Nicholas
[Oh you sweet summer child.  Subterfuge.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Nicholas
Nick just spaces out a lot.

Andrés
So the hospice counselor who has been dealing with the dying and the families of the dying all day snarfed two beers on an empty stomach and is now spacing out and staring at the wall. Stranger things have happened. His wife used to listen to things he couldn't hear and have conversations with furniture and plants. The spirit world makes people do strange shit. So do memories and the feelings attached to them.

Sepúlveda doesn't do feelings. He's trying to seeing as his students have so many of them but whatever is causing Nick to space out flies so far over his head the astronauts on the ISS probably saw it.

As for the decision and thinking it through:

Oh yeah. He totally thought before he opened his mouth. Dr. Sepúlveda always thinks before he opens his mouth. Sure. Let's go with that. Whether he did or not that pronouncement slaps a bemused expression across the scientist's face.

"Fuck were you worried for?" he asks.

Nicholas
The spirit world does, indeed, make a lot of people do strange shit.  Many magi who deal with it regularly are evidence of the strange shit it does: they end up a little strange themselves.

Nick shrugs only one of his shoulders, the one attached to the arm that is draped around the back of his chair.  "A lot of people go a little loopy after an act of aggression.  I remember you saying that they'd attacked a grove, too, that sounded as though it was important to your wife.  I've just seen it happen before, is all."

His tone is casual: he doesn't seem to have meant anything by it.  Or, at least, not much.  "It's easy to get tunnel visioned."

Andrés
It would be easy to get defensive if he actually felt the need to defend himself. But there's not much there and the fact that his wife is dead isn't anything he keeps to himself to avoid talking about it. They don't call guys like him Mad Scientists because it sounds cute.

He just flicks his eyebrows again and quaffs his beer. He's slowing down a bit because he's starting to get drunk. He is not a large man but there's something to be said for tolerance and other pharmaceuticals.

"If you say so." A beat for comedic effect. "I'm a doctor, not a counselor."

Nicholas
Nick smiles at him, at that, and while Nick's expressions are often shifting and partially obscured, layered beneath his preoccupations and sometimes motivations he himself is only partially aware of on a conscious level, there is something genuinely appreciative in the expression now.  There is no wry tilt to his brows or mouth.  He likes Andrés, even.

"So tell me about the time that you worked with the amalgam.  It sounds like the kind of adventure I tend to imagine Etherites having."

Andrés
"... I already used 'I'm a doctor, not a blank,' didn't I. You want me to tell you a story now, Nicholas, eh? Fuck."

He rubs his eyebrow one two three times like to milk the memory out of it and he was not in Miami for very long so in invoking the memory he invokes a time in his life when Hinata was still alive but he can talk about Hinata's death so surely that means he can talk about the fact that she was alive once.

"Shit, now that I'm thinking about it, it may have been more than once. There was this one fucker with the Coast Guard who was in the morgue every other month I'm about ninety-nine percent sure was NWO, drank at the same bar all the government employees did. You want to talk about a lightweight, that man could not hold his alcohol."

If this sounds like a stall tactic it's because this is uncharted backstory territory and Jamie is sober.

Nicholas
NWO: a moderately unfamiliar term, though Nick can place it as something like the Technocracy's Traditions.  It's a strange thing, really; he, working in a hospital as he does, may well have run into Technocrats in the past and never have known it, and perhaps the reverse is also true.  He works with evidence based practice, he has found a means of merging the ancient and the modern, and and perhaps this is one reason why the thought of his wife's Tradition declaring war has shaken him.

Still, he is watching Andrés with a corner of his mouth upturned, and he is sipping while he listens to the other man speak.  "You made me wonder whether I've ever run into anyone, myself."  A beat.  "It's funny what we fight wars over."

Nick doesn't think it's that funny.  "I didn't mean to put you on the spot, Andrés.  I just like listening to other people talk."

Andrés
"No, no no no, I love the spot, the spot is great, it's just that, ah..."

The story in question involved working together, collaboration, setting aside their stupid differences for a minute so an actual hellsmouth and not just a metaphorical one didn't open up and swallow an entire city. Not happening to pass each other by and deciding to ignore each other because the Technocracy and the Traditions are no longer in Search and Destroy mode.

He muffles a burp with his fist and shifts in his seat.

"Permiso. It's just that there's not much to the story, I only know my side of it. Our paths crossed, the Union's and ours, when one of theirs turned up in the morgue with his skin missing. Not just some of it, you know, I'm talking the whole thing, and then one of Hinata's people, she turned up with her skin missing, and, ah, fast forward to it turns out it was an Infernalist. I wasn't there for the showdown, you know, we let them handle that, but, ah, the coven, you know. They were pissed, and I talked them out of going after the Infernalist because, you know, if the Union wants to go after an Infernalist, good for them, they got all sorts of shit we don't. So. Tell you the truth, I'm not afraid of mirrorshades, but if I knew I would go the rest of my life without getting yelled at by a Witch if I cut off one of my nuts, I'd do it."

Drink.

Nicholas
His laugh is a rumble, something from deep in his chest and his throat, as he drains the remainder of his glass.  Yes: Pen will definitely be picking him up from the bar.  He spares a look at his pocket where one can note the rectangular relief of his phone, a quick sheepish thing, the nature of which is somewhat at odds with the sound he just made.  He'll apologize later.

"I think I'd probably do some yelling too if a Traditionmate of mine showed up without their skin."  A beat.  "Hinata was your wife?"

Andrés
A cant of his head like to concede the point that yeah okay Tradition loyalty here's some other traditionalist telling you to stay out of it the Union is handling it sisters before misters he definitely deserved the lambasting he left out of that part of the story.

And then a question. He answers without hesitating.

"She was, yeah."

Nicholas
There is a beat in which Nick debates, and his internal debate is written across his face in a way he typically would not allow.  It's purposeful, that: sometimes topical shifts go down more easily if the other person can see them coming.  Finally, he settles.  "So, not that it has to be a topic of conversation," he says, with that attitude of feeling out murky water with a toe first, "but I feel I should be honest with you and tell you that Pen told me what happened."

There are times for keeping secrets, after all, and Nick likes those; but perhaps he was serious when he spoke earlier about his discomfiture with power imbalances.  Death, after all: it's the great equalizer.  His gaze is searching, and if Andrés seems to desire a shift of topic after he says this, well: Nick always has plenty of questions.

Andrés
[int + alert: what the fuck are you talking about. -1 bc alcohol causes bashing damage, double 10s bc of his twink specialty.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]

Andrés
"What happened?"

As if Nick totally changed the topic on him. But Sepúlveda is bright even if he isn't the most empathetic person in the room on the best night and the second he asks for clarification it hits him.

"Oh." He takes his eyeglasses from his breast pocket and unfolds them. It's like a test. If he can put his glasses on then he's golden. He puts his glasses on. Leans on his forearms. "What'd she tell you?"

Like they're talking about an episode of The Walking Dead that he hasn't seen yet and not, you know, the most traumatic thing that's ever happened to him in his entire life.

Nicholas
Nick has leaned his chin into the L-shape of his thumb and forefinger, and he is watching the other man's reaction.  Sepulvéda's question, the manner in which he seems interested and almost detached, does surprise Nick somewhat - but only a little.  He is, after all, a man who is continuously immersed day to day in other peoples' grief.

"She told me what was rumored, back when she knew you before.  That Hinata was killed and you attempted to bring her back, and that it didn't go well."  Nick's terms are more delicate than the ones Pen actually used, but, well.  These situations call for delicacy.

His eyes rake over the other man's face once more, gauging his comfort level with the discussion.  "I'm sorry to spring it on you that way, but I thought you should know that I knew."

Andrés
'Detached' is one way to put it.

Nick has sensory access to other people's life signs. The Etherite is a bit flushed from drink but he isn't soaked in it. His breathing is even and the clearest indication that this has caught him off-guard comes when he draws a deep okay so this is happening breath and reaches into his suit jacket for a pack of cigarettes. Leans back so his body language is more open than it was before. He glances away only to sight an ashtray at another table and leans over just enough to snag it and plunk it down in front of him.

As Nick is apologizing he's lighting up.

"Don't apologize," he says in a mumble before blowing out a plume of smoke. Settling in with a cigarette gives him something to look at instead of Nick. That may not be intentional. He isn't exactly Mr. Social Skills. "That's the way I remember it happening too, so I'm glad we're all on the same page."

Nicholas
Andrés leans back in his seat and his posture opens, and he is not as drunk as Nick would have been had he swallowed down everything Sepulvéda already has tonight.  He finds this to be a good sign, that Andrés is still in control of the choice to disclose or not disclose: he would not persist if he thought this were not the case.

Nicholas beckons the server over when she appears again, and after a friendly smile and brief exchange takes the next round this time.  "We can talk about it," he says, "or we can move on, if you prefer."  He has settled back in his chair once more, swung his legs back to fold beneath him under his seat, toes lightly braced against the wood bar at the bottom of the stool.

"Though a warning to the wise: I do start talking about the Umbra a lot when I get drunk."

Andrés
No more beer for him. He hasn't finished the last one he ordered. Tequila though! There's always room for tequila.

Anyway:

"Is that meant to infirm--" Hah. Try that again. "--inform my decision, or influence it? Because there's nothing to talk about, if you want to keep talking about, uh..." He ashes his cigarette. "What were we talking about?"

Don't be an asshole, Sepúlveda.

"Oh right! The Umbra!"

You tried.

Nicholas
Nick has also requested tequila; there are times when it's better to level the playing field.  He also takes his without lime or salt.  Andrés tells him that there is nothing to talk about, and Nick's eyebrows arch in this way, see, that -

Well, he doesn't believe that.  But he is also not going to dig.  "If you ever do want to return to the subject," he says, "we can."

And that's it.  And he downs his liquor with a flick of his wrist and lays his shot at the edge of the table, and there is this slight grimace - "It's been forever since I had tequila."  A pause, but it's the sort of pause that is heavy with words that have not yet materialized, and then, "So, out of curiosity, this reformed widderslainte.  Do you think that's a possible thing?"

Andrés
The fact that Nick takes it without lime or salt to cut the burn has Sepúlveda laughing at the grimace.

"Tequila!" he says. "From darkness, there is light!"

So they leave the topic of the dead wife and cycle back to the supposed reformed widderslainte.

"Possible? Sure. Anything is possible. Is it probable?" He tips his head to one side and takes off his glasses again. "It's probable she had a shitty Awakening, and took out some of their guys, and people don't always get the story straight. I don't know the girl. Listen--" Since they're talking about rumors and dark things and why not just get it over with. "--I loved her. More than..." He's no more a romantic than he is a storyteller. "... well. You know how it is."

He checks his bare right wrist as if he's checking the time. He does not wear a watch.

"You should go home to your wife before you end up under the table, güey."

Nicholas
Nick might have quipped about this, about the taste left in his mouth that is at once familiar and from long ago, but whatever he might have said: it would be too revealing, in that small way, and pointlessly so.  Instead his mouth just lifts, amused, as Andrés has a laugh at him.

He folds his arms, and once more his gaze drifts as Sepulvéda ruminates over probabilities and possibilities.  He makes a noise of assent: because this is indeed the probable thing.  He is not sure which thing is more preferable to believe, either.

Nick's expression when Andrés returns to topic, tells him to go home to his wife, is unreadable.  "I know how it is," he says, with gravity, and there's also this: he knows how it would be.  He exhales, so slowly that  it's possible to watch the way in which his chest deflates under his unsoiled white shirt, and he says, "I should go home."  Then, this sharp appraisal, "And I'll ask Pen to give you a ride too."

Andrés
"That's not necessary. I have a gadget for sobering up. Got it out of the Sky Line catalogue." A beat. "And I'm gonna stay a little longer anyway, I think the bartender's been checking me out."

He does however stand and hold out his hand to shake. And will stay until Pen comes to collect Nick. Maybe tosses fraternal abuse about his lack of ability to hang into the car after him.

They will see each other again.

To Friendship [incomplete]

mars
Timey wimey stuff; earlier in February, but after their dinner party; when does the dinner party happen? Timey, wimey, wimey stuff. Vague, vague, convenience.
Text: Hello Sepúlveda, Pen here.
Sepúlveda
Timey wimey stuff. One can hand-wave away a lot of particulars when one is dialing a Mad Scientist. They're scatterbrained. Says it right on the tin.
Takes him several minutes to respond. May be up to his elbows in viscera.
Pen! Acute accent over the u! Thank you. What is up?
mars
Text: Naturally. I spell things proprly
Text: Damn it.
Text: Care to get together today?
Sepúlveda
Yes I do care to. Where?
mars
[urgh, let's see. RIDDLE-MAKE. wits-for-cleverness + enigmas.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
mars
Text: Here's a riddle. If you get stuck, I'll give you a hint.
Text: [a very clever riddle denoting some fondue restaurant outside of Denver]
Sepúlveda
[oh for christ's sake woman]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 7, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Sepúlveda
[no fuck that. intelligence instead of wits.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 ) [Doubling Tens]
Sepúlveda
I won't get stuck.
Bold words from a man few would term as bold unless they knew him and then they would reframe the boldness as insanity. Pen already knows the rumors and they know them for true. The Scientist has respect for Death sure but something happened to him when Death shrugged and took his wife thinking he of all people would understand.
Resourceful. One could call him that. Inventive sure. Clever. Penelope lays down a riddle and he follows it...
mars
...To the Melting Pot in Littleton.
Penelope found the Melting Pot not because she likes fondue, but because she likes forges and metal and, yes, melting pots; it is an appealing name to an alchemist and a Matter mage, somebody who works with fire. The restaurant is often reviewed as an elegant and romantic place to go out: historical building, a lot of brickwork and Romanesque arches, even inside. Deep and spacious booths, given privacy by heavy curtains, this vague feeling in them of being in one's own private train car back in the days when travel by train was the utmost.
And when Sepúlveda arrives, she is already waiting for him in the lobby: this ardent, daring, resplendent creature -
(Awe and [Glory] Terror)
the modern-day Magus, rose-tinted sunglasses perched low on her nose, red red red hair braided in a coronet bangs falling over her straight slash of eyebrows, a leather journal in hand which she is writing in until she senses or sees Sepúlveda, and then an up-glance and a smile.

Sepúlveda
"Fondue!"
This is how he greets her. They can feel each other perhaps before they see each other and so can everyone else in the room. She is a dazzling imposing wonderful woman fair skin and copper hair and he -
Well. She knows him. Has known of him for a time but knew his wife better than she knows him. Eloise and Andrés the same height she assured of herself and anxious in socialization but charming and humorous and witty. Effervescent. Easy to see why Andrés would love Eloise and not hard exactly to see the reverse but one would have to know Eloise to know why she would love Andrés.
He feels like the reality one has to face when buried under an avalanche. An icicle drawn up the length of the spine. The end that awaits us all. No reason for him to feel like this other than Sepúlveda is a brilliant scientist cursed with free will.
And here he is.
"That's what you meant by 'golden shower'!" He is teasing her. He does not greet her as he had when she was a guest in his home. Comes to stand in front of her and waits for her to stand and that is that. "What's the occasion? Who's buying? I'll buy. Where's Nicholas?"
mars
Fondue! "Indeed!"
He is teasing her, and Pen is duly teased; or at least incited into this sparking half-smile, something reserved but easy. Pen's reserve has always been the reserve of somebody who is self-assured, arrogance in check (at least, acceptably maintained). Pen joined a proud House, after all.
"He is at our table, that is very generous of you, and the occasion is warning or warning minus ning or, hmm, just a spreading - " fucking poets " - of information. Come on, this way."
And Pen leads Sepúlveda through the arches, down some stairs, twist and turn until a room which is empty and has some of those train car booths, and a certain dark-haired Euthanatos. As she shows him the way, a quick laugh.
"It is not perfect, but like a slant-rhyme, no? Golden shower, Danae, bronze pot, Danae to Pasiphae to cow to milk to cheese; voilá!"
crow
There are many places that people frequent in which Nick feels, perhaps, a bit like the proverbial square peg in a round hole.  His very presence has a weight to it, something quiet and still and perhaps vaguely melancholy, like the way moonlight casts across the floor at night or a hush settles over a crowd at a vigil.  In a hospital, he makes this work in his favor.  In many other places (here) he simply gives a sense of detachment from everyday life.
He is sitting in the train car booth, and he is staring at nothing specific.  There's a conversation happening a few booths over that is of slight interest to him, in the way that snapshots into the private lives of other people are interesting, and maybe he has an ear turned toward that.  There are times when he too looks something like a painting, some slant woodland creature glimpsed through the trees perhaps.
The other two draw near enough that he recognizes their voices, and it pulls his eyes back out of the ether (how appropriate) and toward their approach.  He raises a hand in a lazy wave to Andres, and the fact that they are smiling and laughing brings a smile to his face too.
He makes room for them in the booth.  "Hello, Andres."
Sepúlveda
"Zeus was a real cabrón, wasn't he?"
The two Disciples come into the chain restaurant do not feel as though they belong there either but belonging and not belonging isn't anything their kind tends to worry about. Not when they reach the point in their enlightenment when they can warp others' perception of reality. When they can reform matter and do so so subtly that the Sleepers don't even notice let alone question it.
Their resonances are noticeable. Nick will reach that point one day. In the meantime he hears their approach and he looks at them as they reach his booth and he waves. Sepúlveda lifts his eyebrows in receipt of the wave and holds out both his arms as if to say Hey what's up holy shit you're here too but he does not engage in exuberant displays of greeting as he had at the dinner party. This isn't his house. It's a fucking restaurant.
He's wearing scrubs underneath a woolen winter coat. His glasses were fogged from the cold outside but now they are not. His shoes are respectable Oxfords. As he shrugs out of the peacoat and hangs it up on the outside of their booth those in attendance can glimpse the wedding band still adorning his left ring finger.
"Nicholas, hello." Pen has enough time to decide if she's going to sit beside or across from Nick in the booth. Sepúlveda doesn't care. He will take up the other position. Rest his forearms on the table and knit his fingers together. Hold out his thumbs as he asks and return them to resting as he concludes the question. "What are we celebrating tonight, eh?"
Surely they have no ulterior motive.
mars
The booth is the kind with hooks for purses and coats on the outside, opera-house balcony style, just within the heavy red curtains. Rather than sitting, Penelope stays standing. Easy to stay standing, balance evenly distributed in a way that connotes an easy relationship with physical exertion and athletic grace, though in truth Pen is not nearly as athletic or as honed as she wants to be. That goes for every aspect of her life: there is so much, always, to catch up to; it has only gotten worse since she Sought and found herself coming up resplendence as well as ardent and daring. She worries about it when she allows herself to worry, occasionally goes sleepless because of it.
"Friendship," Pen says, due consideration and then a lingering; an almost pleased quality to the expression in her eyes, but not quite. Her enthusiasm sheathed right now, see. "I'm going to go get our waitress," and she slides a menu, heavy leather thing, towards Sepúlveda.
"You two chill; I'll be right back."
Pen is, yes, the kind of person who will not wait for the check to be brought, but will track down a waiter or waitress and tell them to bring the check now and then wait until it is placed in her hand.
mars
[ooc: why yes, that post did allow jess to delay deciding where her character prefers to sit, while at the same time excusing her for a round. mwahaha.]
Sepúlveda
[you piece of shit <3]
crow
Nick clearly recently arrived from work.  He stayed late today; perhaps he was only summoned by the suggestion that they meet the Etherite.  His shirt is purple, wine-dark; his watch is silver with the small gears within exposed and ticking along.  There's an elegance in the simplicity of it, though it perhaps gives some insight as to why he has been suspected as a Technocrat, repeatedly, by people he has met since arriving.
Pen says: they're celebrating friendship.  Nick's eyebrows, expressive as they can be, lift just slightly, and his eyes turn toward Pen to watch her as she goes to find the waitress.
"I'm glad you managed to find us," he says to Sepulveda, with a rueful sort of acknowledgement that indicates that he is quite familiar with his wife's penchant for riddles-for-directions.  "Have the apprentices been keeping you busy?"
They're good for that, apprentices.  Nick cannot imagine having even one, and he is perhaps privately amazed at the other man's ability to teach two of them.
Sepúlveda
Friendship.

The Etherite's eyebrows lift up. His eyes slide from Pen's face she still standing over to Nick who is across from him. As if they've both found themselves wandered into a conspiracy. One hand releases the other to accept the responsibility for the tome and he handles it with as much care as one would a book of spells except for he is a Scientist. He does not believe in spells.

Aside from the wedding band Sepúlveda does not wear jewelry. One would think he would at least wear a watch but he hasn't been late to anything yet. Sometimes one is better off not knowing how Etherites do the things they do.

"Ay, ay ay," he says to the matter of the apprentices. Takes a shock of hair near his temple and holds it up by the roots. It is no grayer than the rest of his hair. Most of the silver among the black is in his beard truth be told but when the light hits it a certain way. "One of them alone would make my hair fall out. The two of them together--" He releases his hair and opens the menu. Gives it a cursory glance. "It would be easier, Nicholas, if they had any interest in Science, but they came out of the box with their own ideas about how the world works, and they're committed to these ideas, so all I can do is try to keep them out of trouble long enough for them to find their own tribes." Who is he kidding. He's just going to get wine. He claps the menu shut and knits his fingers together again. "Busy. Yes. Like toddlers."

crow
They may in fact have wandered into a conspiracy of sorts; Nick's eyebrows had elevated briefly when Pen said it, and as Andrés' eyes catch his own they lift again: a sort of shrug using only his face.

As the other man grabs at his hair, Nick smiles; some of the turns of phrase Sepúlveda uses are familiar to him, if mostly from childhood.  "How did you end up deciding to take them both on, anyway?"

Nick had somehow finagled a glass of water from their waiter before Pen and Sepúlveda arrived at the restaurant; he has a sort of unassuming patience about him that waitstaff in particular find gratifying, and so they often gravitate.  "Neither of them seemed particularly science focused to me, though, you're right."

mercury
[Pen: totally still elsewhere. In case that needed to be said. Also, it is very unhealthsome to bake mercury. It is poisonous.]

Sepúlveda
"They walked into the morgue and Ned said to me that he had noticed me when I was in the hospital where Ned works and thought to, eh... seek me out."

He expels his excess energy by bouncing the heavy menu back and forth between his fingers.

"In an ideal scenario, I will find better-suited mentors for them, but... you know how kids are, like sponges, I tell them things, they soak it up, they make what they will from what it is they suck up... I have no idea what will happen. I have contacts, I think, in the traditions most suited to them, but beyond that I am a bit at a loss."

crow
Andrés tells him that Ned works in a hospital, and there is a way in which Nick's eyes catch and lock on his, even if only briefly.  Perhaps the train of thought is clear, since Andrés met Nick at an event for hospital employees.  "What sort of work does he do?"  Interesting, that.  It frequently does not occur to him (perhaps primarily because he is married to a Hermetic) that many other magi also have careers.  Then again, Ned is an apprentice still.

The pages of the menu are flapping, and the Chakravanti's gaze is momentarily drawn toward it instead.  Perhaps he considers placing a hand on it to still its rustling.  But no.  Nick can focus.

He can focus because Andrés is saying something potentially important, potentially difficult for him to work through right now.  "It seems as though you feel you benefit from having them around too, from what you've said.  Are you at a loss because you feel they want more than what you have to offer them?"

Sepúlveda
"No no, no no no. No. They are a complete pain in my ass."

He sounds sincere but he is also a poor liar. Fervent in intention but not in result. Anyone who knows him or who has known him can tell the difference between Dr. Sepúlveda actually annoyed and Dr. Sepúlveda pretending to be annoyed and the difference tends to do with the cc's of blood expended in the interim.

No blood tonight. So he is talking out of the source of his supposed pain.

"He is a, ah, orderly. At Denver General? Question mark?" He is banging doctors in different coverage systems apparently. "As I said, or he said, someone said, maybe no one said: he sensed my resonance as I happened to be in the hospital--" Wooing a cardiologist. Who Nick saw from across the room. Anyway: "--I did not his, and, ah. Yes. Here we all are."

crow
A complete pain in his ass, Andrés says, and Nick, who is sitting with his head angled slightly downward (toward the menu, still) glances up at him, and maybe Sepúlveda misses it, that flicker of a private smile.  Nick is generally a kind man, and a responsible one; this is perhaps fortunate for the people that are constantly around him.

"I'm sure you could find ways to keep them on their toes."

He listens as Andrés tells him more about Ned, and this isn't so unusual a way for them to meet; it was how he and Andrés first took note of each other themselves, after all.  "Interesting.  Maybe I'll have to find out what floor he works on and drop in on him.  I don't wander out of palliative care very often."

220 Bannock Street [unfinished]

Andrés

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
-- Ernest Hemingway

It is through Nicholas Hyde that the orchestration or the dinner they'd discussed at the holiday staff party occurs. So far as their mentor is concerned after all the stunts they've pulled insofar as appearing unannounced or calling in the middle of the night to introduce some fresh hell to his life neither Margot nor Ned have much say if the adults plan something and it's at a certain time and they already have something going on.

The date the adults settle on is one set far enough in the future the people in the equation can arrange their schedules accordingly but not so far enough away that it will interrupt Important Hermetic Business.

Symposium, said the text message he sent Margot and Ned. Two of my Colleagues are coming. Comb your hair and prepare to drink a lot. Address incoming.

As for location: this venture had been Sepúlveda's bright idea so he volunteers his home. A blue-gray two-story three-bedroom Victorian in the Baker neighborhood. With a single-story home and a low brick building on either side the thing looks hemmed in. A weary wrought-iron fence stands out front. A small yard containing a sidewalk and of all things a pear tree. The directions the medical examiner gave his guests involved parking out back.

There the yard is huge. A bit creepy at night what with the lack of lighting and winter killing everything that needs warmth and light to live. The dead grass crunches under their feet as they approach the house.

Once inside the floors are hardwood. The layout is brighter and more open than one might expect of a Mad Scientist. Utilitarian and sparse and clean. That they could expect from him. The appliances in the kitchen are stainless steel and gleam with newness. All of the bedrooms live up a flight of stairs. It is cold inside. Hard to tell if he doesn't have the heat on or if the place has already started to absorb his resonance.

He does not offer anyone a tour. He does offer wine.

Margot

More drinking?  I have to wake up for class in the morning, you know.

Margot had protested at first-- work and school were stressful enough for a girl on her own to balance without having to throw all of the rest of her baggage into the mix-- magical and familial alike.  But the date was set out far enough that she had to accommodate-- she kind of owed it to the Doc anyways.

She may have shown up on her own, driving a nondescript four-door sedan that was forgettable-- like her own little Arcane-mobile.  She may have had Ned in the passenger seat as well-- Margot was always game to play driver on their escapades.  She could empathize with reasons he may have for opting not to drive them himself.  On the day that they were meeting Margot arrived about ten minutes early (as was her custom, she liked to be timely to places [but ironically lacked any sense of Time itself]) and parked around back as the lot allowed.

When she arrived she was dressed more neatly than usual, having taken his comment about combing their hair to heart.  She'd come in a navy blue skirt that hemmed above the knee and a matching cardigan over a gray shirt.  Black nylons blended with black boots, and though the two inch heels built into them helped her appear a little taller that still only brought her up to 5'3". 

She didn't look old enough to drink, but carried a driver's license that said otherwise and carried the wine glass without acting too suspicious about it.  She was meeting strangers, but they were magic strangers, so they probably didn't give much of a shit about drinking age either.  She sipped and looked back to the front door for the fourth time since she was introduced to the kitchen space.

"Who are we meeting, anyways?"

Ned

"...Stupid thing..."

The Tie he was fiddling with, hung in a brutal knot around his neck, loosened enough there was a spare few inches of space and slackness. Black, simple and thin, he'd opted for it over the light blue shirt plucked off a sales rack that screamed 'This is what adults look like, isn't it?'. Dark jeans with no holes (professional as far as he was concerned) and hair held into place, swooped back from his brow by an industrial strength gel. The long wool coat was the only thing about his appearance that would have suggested formal and that illusion would go when they arrived.

He'd taken Margot up on her offer to drive, hanging in the passenger seat with a careful sort of nervousness, one might attribute to the evening...or the driving. Or both. He's grateful for the ride but quick to get out of the vehicle and slip the door shut behind him. A glance up at the landscape of the house says all it needed to say. The Doc lived well.

The Wine glass offered when they enter the house is taken with a cursory nod and minor smile of appreciation though he is hesitant, even dismissive of taking a sip, letting it hang in his grip like some sort of purse or accessory. When Margot glanced behind them at the door, he did as well, a brief bout of paranoia making this entire meet and greet, somewhat charged with expectation. 

More Magic People his fellow apprentice had called them and it had brought up a frown in Ned. He doesn't say much. Hasn't said anything actually since they arrived, other than a vague 'Hey Doc' at the door. Distracted, for all intensive purposes. Waiting and content to let Margot take the questioning lead.

Andrés

Griping about class in the morning is answered by an emoji of a violin. Welcome to apprenticeship, Margot.

--

Ten minutes is a lot of time to someone who is versed in the Sphere. They have to wait another sixty seconds after arriving for Sepúlveda to finish whatever the hell it is he's doing inside to prepare his house for guests and when he throws open the door he takes in the state the apprentices are in and chases it with a deep breath.

He's wearing part of a suit. Charcoal paints and waistcoat with a gray shirt and a black tie. The sleeves of the button-down are not cuffed. His intent is to roll them up so they survive his attempts at cooking. His hair has not been combed by anything other than fingers. It appears as if it has been that way since he got out of bed. Whenever that was. He's wearing black-rimmed glasses. No watch. Wedding band on his left hand. They're familiar with his fashion sense by now.

"Damn, you two clean up," says the Etherite and lets them inside.

So: Wine. Offered and taken. They're early. In the kitchen Sepúlveda rolls up his sleeves and starts pulling bags of marinating meat and vegetables out of the refrigerator and piling them up on the counter.

Who are we meeting, anyways?

"His name--" He claps the refrigerator closed and starts to pour his own glass of wine. "--is Nicholas Hyde. He's a hospice counselor. We 'met' at work, for given values of 'met' and 'work,' about a month or so ago." Quick swallow of wine. "He belongs to the Chakravanti, which is a tradition of folks who deal with Fate and Death and so on and so forth. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to discuss his Work with you." Hard to gauge if he's being sarcastic or not. They are beginning to learn how dry is the Doc's sense of humor. "As for Pen--"

A beat. He sighs through his nose and takes a thick swallow of wine.

"Pen, if she is who I think she is, is a Hermetic of House Flambeau." Another thick swallow of wine. "We've met, before. Years ago." He sets down the wine. "She and Nicholas are married." His fingers wiggle as if trying to remember what they were doing, and then he remembers something that happened weeks ago and points between the two of them. "If you have any Hogwarts analogies percolating, get them out of your brainpans now."

Margot

"That sounds pretty dark," Margot mused aloud over the rim of her wine glass. Her summary of a Chakravanti was apt, if not very limited, but then who was she to talk? Her magic was strongest when rooted in blood and came from a Goddess who brought rivers of blood and had war drums for a pulse.

As for the second person they were meeting, his wife, Margot didn't know what any of her titles meant or what to make of the fact that she married a Death Dealer. She creased her brow a little at her mentor, their host for the evening, and scoffed a little

"Come on, not everything has to be a Harry Potter reference."

She set her wine glass down on the counter in the kitchen, someplace out of the way where it wasn't likely to be knocked over, and asked: "Can I help with something?"

And then, to follow after that: "What is a Hermetic? Or a Flahm-boh?"

She wasn't exactly taking notes as she probably preferred to be able to do when talking Traditions and Magicks and Paradigms and what-have-you, but her curiosity was something that was hard to extinguish. Where Ned was taking a stance of quiet anticipation, Margot, it seemed, opted to chirp questions to fill the quiet instead.

Ned

"....So Gandalf can marry Galadriel afterall sometimes..."

Ned murmurs it over the table on the heels of Margot's 'Not everything has to be a Harry Potter reference', proving her and the Doc's point simultaneously. He doesn't look apologetic about the joke, merely leans back in his chair, untouched glass of wine sitting on the table infront of him, contents dancing and swirling gently while Margot played at helpful and question.

"Hospice Worker, huh?" Ned's obviously had some interaction with them before, in some capacity though what he doesn't seem willing to expound on. He merely nods at the information, followed by a brief look of confusion at the Hermetic and House moniker. Unfamiliar words and the Doc hadn't explained anything about the tradition even in brief, like he had the Death and Fate Mr. Hyde.

"...And what do they Deal with?"

Andrés

"Who? House Flambeau?"

A deep frown in the Etherite's brow. Prominent because he has such prominent facial features and half of his face is occluded by a beard anyway.

"They set things on fire, Edward."

Duh?

Nick

220 Bannock Street: it has some of the echoes of the place they recently left. The scaled siding on the house, the single window in the center of the front peak peering out like a third eye, is reminiscent of New England in a manner that surprises Nick as he and Pen pull up in front of the house. His car is a small sedan, appropriately black (this makes it much much easier to clean and less likely to show salt stains in winter, but they don't have to know that), and he leaves it parked on the street a stride or two away from where the fence begins.

Perhaps he will meet the apprentices' expectations of a Chakravanti, based on what they have so recently heard. He is a tall, slender figure sketched dark against the grey backdrop of winter, in spite of his best efforts at color (a light grey tie and pale pink shirt, the top button left undone beneath the knot.) Nick's hair would be a lost cause even were he inclined toward neatness in any way; dark and thick, it spirals out of control and lends him a sort of ethereal, fey quality.

He has his jacket folded over his arm (the door isn't too far, one just never knows if the car might break down) and a bottle of Scotch in the other hand. It's good Scotch; this is polite.

There is a moment in which he fiddles with the gate, opens it, strides through after Pen, and walks up to the door to knock. This is a bizarre converging of his worlds, meeting a magus he met at work outside of work, for a Responsible Adult Dinner at his house (with his apprentices!) and Pen. He, while not normally a man given to anxiety, in fact spent some time waffling over whether or not a tie was appropriate, and this may be in fact part of the reason they are late. No one in the house knows that.

He knocks, and when invited, he enters.

Pen

Ladies and gentlemen! The mo-ment you've allll been waiting for. The Hermetic of House Flambeau. One of them, anyway. Denver has three right now. (Bright Day, Red Sun, Black Night? Baba Yaga's three horsemen?)

The Portrait:

Pen's hair is a deep and bloody red with that rich shadow-bright quality burnished things have and worn tonight in a loose tangle of curls and wavelets Maenad-wild the thick bangs swept (an Elegant Swoop of Rakishness) to the side. Between car and front door, she is wearing a coat. The coat's got sweep, too. It's got swoop. It's royal blue. Under the coat is some long raw silk silver jacket, the colour of a sword-light on gray dawning, fog gone to smoke from heath-fire day, fog in with sea-witchery dragging in its wake. The royal blue coat'll come off in the warmth but not the sword silver jacket, which is part of the dashing ensemble, and underneath which is a neckline that leaves a lot of breastbone naked and plunges right on down past where the jacket is fastened. A lot of naked breastbone is a perfect frame for a dramatic necklace. Metal rings on every finger.

Penelope Mars looks like a Pre-Raphaelite painting, right. Modernized. Updated. Archaicism, the Golden Age - given new shift. 

The Atmosphere:

Daring (not to be - but often is - confused with Recklessness. Daring is different. Bold, not careless.) is what Andrés Sepúlveda will remember from Years-Ago. Ardent (Passionate, Burning [Archaicism, again], A-Smouldering, Wholehearted [which connotes Heart]) and Resplendent have joined it. The notes of Pen's resonance balance one against the other.

The Action:

"Look, Nickelungenlied. The Tower." The 't' is capitalized. The nickname: worthy of a championship nicknamer. The tone of voice: alert, reflective. The comment: made when Nicholas is still parking the sedan, and Penelope is peering out the window at Supúlveda's home. She flashes Nick a glance and a half-smile when the car is fully parked, but remains with her elbow on the window-sill near the lock for a moment before dispelling languor to get on out. 

It hadn't taken her very long to get ready, and she'd spent much of Nick's agonizing over to Tie or Not to Tie reading a book and, whenever quiet fretting seemed to be reaching a boiling point, helpfully saying such things as He's with the Society of Ether, they're notorious for their disheveled mode of dress - I mean, Mad Science! Exclamation mark! One cannot care about ties when one is being an Exclamation Mark!! You should wear a lab coat, I can wear my robes and You look hot like that (with the tie) and You look hot like that (without the tie) and Why don't you try a cravat? …I AM being serious! 

Knock, knock.


If the invitation to enter comes in the form a hollered 'Its open!': Pen opens the door for Nicholas and follows him in after casting a glance over the street. Fishing-line kind of glance, a hook attached to it. What's hiding in the deeps, hm?

If the invitation to enter comes in the form of a certain Society of Ether man opening the door his ownself: well, she lets Nick speak first - shaping her own response to the Etherite's presence while Nick does so.

If the invitation to enter comes in the form of an apprentice: a smile like a spark goes flit-flying up through the eyes - reserved without being cold, a(n rather earnest) thoughtful cast to her eyes. "Hey. Where should we put the Scotch?"

All of these reactions are going to occur. The moment taken to shape a response to Sepúlveda's presence, let Nick sweep in to cover that - not hide it, just cover it. The smile like a spark, the where-should-we-put-the-Scotch, the Hello. But they're cards for now, shuffled at random.

Margot

Knock-knock-knock

Knuckles on the door announced the arrival of guests that Margot and Ned both seemed anxious (albeit in their own ways) to meet.  Margot glanced quick and brief to the other two in the kitchen before announcing "I've got it" and exiting one room and moving through others to reach the front door.

So, it wasn't a hollered 'come in' to invite the pair in, but rather the sound of the latch turning-twisting-clicking and the door pulling open from the inside.  It wasn't The Doc that answered the door, but what must have been one of his apprentices instead.

Margot appeared as a very petite young lady, perhaps five feet even at best (but taller tonight with those heels!  not by much but you take what you can get), with a young face and wide, inquisitive eyes.  She had nut-brown hair that was curled and styled and hovered neatly in between her jaw and shoulder lines.  A small silver hoop was pierced through her right nostril, and her outfit was appropriate for interviews, church sermons, and things of that nature.

She'd started with a smile and greeting soon as the door was open.  "Hello!"


Whatever manners she'd learned through childhood when it came to opening doors and letting guests in were forgotten in the initial impression of the pair.  Maybe it was because she'd forgotten exactly what their names were (was planning on using Mr. and Mrs. Hyde but that sounds too proper, but she didn't quite know if first name basis was kosher or not, oh social woes!).  More truthfully, though, it was the impression that the pair of them made.  Specifically, the impression that Pen made.  Margot was staring at her, impressed, when she stepped back and pulled the door open along with her to invite them both in.

Where should the scotch go?  Margot blinked and nodded her head toward the interior of the house.  "Ahhh, The Doc and Ned are in the kitchen.  Scotch probably goes there."

Then: "Uhh, can I take your coats?"

Andrés

Were he not possessing some semblance of attention to Time he might not have given half a damn about what he was wearing when he had guests over but then again there is always the art and appeal of defying expectations. The kids have already seen him disheveled once recently. If he wanted to come to the door in a cardigan and old-man slippers he would have.

Or maybe he just forgot what day it was and had to wear a suit anyway. Scientists are always trying to impress each other after all. Industry secret.

The layout of the house is not such that one who is stood in the kitchen can see what is happening at the front door. One has to walk past the stairwell and through the dining room in order to reach the kitchen. But they can hear each other as echoes. The low hum of an impression of voices.

Pen's voice he recognizes.

To Ned he says, as an aside, "That is who I thought it was. Speaking to a war mage may actually do your friend some good."

With that he goes back to reassembling the bags of foodstuff dragged out of the refrigerator. Dinner isn't going to cook itself.

Or will it.

Ned

"...Uhhh...War-mage? Is that a thing?"

Ned offers, quieting to a conspiratorial whisper when Margot engages the pair at the door, so as not to be overheard. He wasn't sure if it would be polite or disrespectful or...well this is new territory afterall. There are probably rules or rituals or pentagrams that need drawing to ensure the right amount of Autma was being foreshadowed or some such-

"...Also, do I have to tell them anything about myself? Rather is it required?" Oh Mentor, my Mentor.

Nick

It is not Sepulveda who answers the door, but rather a small young woman, who is easily surmised to be one of the apprentices the Doctor mentioned would be present. Margot is staring; specifically, Margot is staring at Pen. Nick takes this in with some amusement. He is used to Pen being the one that people stare at, to being the yin to her yang, so to speak - he is content to be so, even.

She offers to take his coat, so he extends his arm to her slightly so that she can take it from him. "Thank you." He doesn't yet move into the kitchen to bring the Scotch to the owner of the house, and instead spends a few seconds (perhaps it seems like longer than that, to the apprentice) studying Margot.

Perhaps he senses that she has little frame of reference for how this interaction should go. Perhaps he is also aware of how people from his Tradition are generally perceived, and this is why his voice is kind. "I'm Nick," he says, and swaps the bottle of Scotch to his other hand so he can offer her a handshake. He leaves space for Pen to introduce herself as well. Then, "Dr. Sepulveda mentioned his apprentices would be here, but he didn't mention your name."

Margot

Margot was in the act of accepting Nick's coat when he gave a kindly introduction for himself and specifically handed off Scotch into a different hand so he could get a handshake from her.  She hastily nabbed up Pen's coat as well (were it offered) before draping them both over her left arm and returning the gesture by seizing Nick's hand to shake.  Her own hand was small, like the rest of her, with a warm palm and firm grip (like somebody who thought you were supposed to have a firm grip if you were going to be impressive yourself).

"I'm Margot," she said.  "It's nice to meet you both."

She looked harmless, small and young and wide-eyed as she was, and that was what made the impact of her resonance all the stranger.  It left the impression of something cloying left to rot in a cellar, bloodied walls and carnage left over after great violence.  Like the ER without the morphine, Ned once described it.  You never would have guessed upon first sight that her Magick was so closely tied to war and violence.

Andrés

The two of them are going to slice a permanent frown between their mentor's brows at the rate they're going. His hair and beard are already going gray in places. It would be easy enough to blame the silver on Margot's adventures last month but let's be real here it isn't as if he's the youngest person in the room.

While Margot takes coats and directs the Scotch to the appropriate place Sepúlveda waves Ned out of the way of the cabinet in front of which he's currently standing and digs around for serving dishes. They are metal and rigged with conduits and don't look like serving dishes he or anyone else could buy at a store.

"The only thing I require from you," he says as he upends the meat into one dish and the vegetable-type matter into another, "is that you chill. You're having dinner, man, not defending your dissertation in front of a committee."

The stove has likewise been rigged although its rigging is subtler than the serving dishes. The food is totally ready to go he just doesn't want to have to pay attention to time and temperature. So the stove transmutes the matter inside of it to its optimum state of doneness and calls it a day.

"Come on." The machine beeps and he ignores it. Puts a hand on Ned's elbow and steers him out of the kitchen. "Let's go 'mingle.'"

---
Sepúlveda @ 2:25PM
[forces/matter 2: BETTER COOKING THROUGH SCIENCE. base diff 5, -1 diff for practiced rote. thanks oven you're the real MVP here.]
Roll: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Sepúlveda @ 2:25PM
[extending it for shits and giggles]
Roll: 3 d10 TN5 (7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Denver @ 2:26PM
Speak "Dedicated Dicing Den" and enter, can i get a.

Sepúlveda @ 2:26PM
[I would get a witness but I'm too lazy to lie about this shit]

Sepúlveda @ 2:26PM
[Oh hey look at that]

can i get a @ 2:26PM
WITNESS!

Pen

I'm Nick.

As Pen is slipping the silver buttons through the button-holes on her royal blue coat, Nicholas is kind and Margot is polite. Margot's resonance feels like an abattoir, a battle-field. Pen's eyes are the color of a lake reflected on a sword or a sword reflected in a lake: they are yes quite thoughtful, but the spark's still in them: ready warmth, even if it is reserved. Some Traditions and some Traditionalists are very casual, and Pen goes by 'Pen' just one syllable out of the many, but her sense of propriety in context of this casual affair between mages means that in the space Nick gives her to introduce herself what she says is not 'Pen' but: 

"Penelope Sylvia Mercury Mars, bani Flambeau ordo Hermes." 

And she says it with dash, baby, (a swashbuckler's quiet smile), with fucking grace, as if it is the most natural follow-up to Nick that could ever there be, as inhale is to exhale.

"I hope you'll call me Pen."

Pen relinquishes her coat when Margot reaches for it. Expressive nod of thanks rather than words because after all Nicholas is speaking. 

I'm Margot. It's nice to meet you both.

The kitchen boys are possibly deciding to come out and mingle now, and Pen flashes a half-smile which seems to echo Margo's sentiment. Nice to meet you. "Have you been Andres's apprentice long, Margot?"

Nick

Pen offers her full name to complement his single syllable, all grace and poise. Nick: he's from a Tradition notorious for magi who steep themselves in Death so often that they forget that for most people, death is fucking scary, and he's from a profession where many of his clients couldn't recall his last name if they tried. He has not forgotten, and there is little he does without intention: he chooses what he chooses because it makes him approachable.

Margot says she's pleased to meet them, and there is something bloody, visceral, about the wide-eyed girl who has just greeted them and taken their coats. Awakening: it leaves its marks on people. He knows very little about either, and yet something in him is not surprised that she has found Sepulveda. He absorbs this, looks between Pen and Margot as Pen asks Margot about herself, and sidesteps to peer around into the kitchen.

Perhaps he catches Sepulveda's eye as he and Ned are coming out to 'mingle,' at which point he waves and extends the bottle of Scotch toward him. It's casual, without ceremony and without expectation. "Housewarming," he says, and then, "Good to see you, Andres," warm: as if they are old friends.

Ned

Ned frowns. Per usual, when the Doc tells him to 'chill' and then takes his arm and swerves him boldly into the company of their present...well, company. He seems a bit bewildered (probably because the Doc, mentor, teacher and ancient Disciple that he is, just used a word like 'chill') when they finally emerge into the landscape of 'sociable' and it leaves Ned with little to do but clutch his glass of wine and take turns bouncing eyes from Pen to Nick, without really focusing on either.

If he's approached with eyes, feet or words, he offers a nod of confirmation and a lip-pressed smile that is at once courteous as well as awkward. A hand rises to ensure his hair is still somewhat tamed every so often (habit).

For the most part though, Ned is not much of a mingler. A timorous sip of wine and a hand in his jeans pockets. That was Ned. Yep.

Andrés

"Nicholas!"

He isn't drunk but as effusive as he is and as abusive as he has been towards alcohol in the past with... well... everyone present to varying degrees no one would blame anyone if they thought he was. Then again he is a short-statured Mexican-American from the Society of Ether. 'Drunk' may not enter into the equation.

Either way he greets the Chakravat warm though they've only met once before. Grips him by both elbows and kisses him on both cheeks as is customary in his culture and asks how he is. Genuine question for the cursory nature of it and then he turns to Pen.

Pen and the Doc are equally powerful. His resonance creates a sense of dread. Hers is one of awe.

When Sepúlveda has finished greeting Nicholas he turns to Pen and nothing changes in his demeanor or disposition. Same greeting. Gripping of the elbows room left for her to do the same a kiss to each cheek and when he pulls back again he says, "Hello, Penelope."

That done he releases Pen and turns to his apprentices.

"Penelope, Nicholas, meet Margot and Ned. My interns." Though his green eyes are full of good humor he doesn't hold the kids' gazes like to let them in on the joke. Maybe it isn't a joke. The fuck else is he supposed to call them. "Margot, Ned, Nicholas Hyde bani Chakravanti and Penelope Mars, Hermes bani Flambeau."

Oh hey. Scotch. He hoists it now that it's in his possession.

"Shall we?"

Back into the kitchen. It's large enough for everyone to mingle without worrying about being in the way.

"Forgive me, Penelope and Nicholas, but I am not on the Facebook, I did not realize you two had wed until recently. Congratulations are in order, yes?"

Margot

Perhaps later in the evening Margot would look back on this moment of First Impressions and kick herself for being so curious about Penelope without showing such same awe for Nick.  It wasn't anybody's fault, really, it was just consequence of who they were, and What they were.  Swashbuckler was well-described, she ensnared attention and held onto it well.  Plus Margot, though polite, was not necessarily the most socially graceful person.  She seemed bashful and smart but not the most confident-- almost like she was an Apprentice or something.

"I've--," she started, but then The Doc arrived with Ned being hauled along by the elbow, holding onto his wine glass in a way that made her think of holding an umbrella (for shelter?).  Greetings were enthused and full of kissed cheeks, and Margot was glad that she and Ned had dodged that particular greeting whenever they came through his front door.

As they were ushered back to the kitchen, Margot fell into step beside Ned.  It was there, not far from her fellow Apprentice's elbow, that she remained.  She didn't look nearly as uncomfortable as him, necessarily, but was watchful and curious and, for the time being, sipped her wine in observant quiet.

She could only imagine what initiated Mages spoke about at dinner parties, and was about to find out.

Nick

Sepulveda is probably not aware of how irrevocably he just associated himself with maternal family gatherings in Nick's mind. He can almost hear Anna hiss "Incoming!" in his ear the moment Sepulveda grabs him by the elbows, and his return of the greeting, his hands clapping on the back of the other man's arms, is purely reflexive. When Andres pulls away and asks how he is, Nick says, "I'm good," and his expression is for an instant the one of a mildly shellshocked teenager at Christmas. If he knew how rare it was to unbalance Nick, Sepulveda might even treasure the moment.

He recovers quickly. "We've just met Margot," he says, and "Hello, Ned." There is a smile for Ned, some rueful and apologetic acknowledgement perhaps of his discomfort, before he begins to move after Andres into the kitchen.

He smiles at the Etherite's next question, regarding their marriage. "For a little while now," he says. "Pen tells me you knew each other from a while back." A glance back to Pen, inviting her to elaborate. Nick, it should be noted, also slows his pace if necessary to keep Margot and Ned either beside or slightly in front of him - not excluding them from the conversation, even if they aren't its direct subjects.

Ned

Ned offers a quick, lip-pressed smile and a nod toward Nick, the wine glass indeed clutched like some barricade against awkwardness, an object to fuss over or plink with fingertips, accompanying the carefully constructed reply to the man's greeting.

"Hello."

Perhaps Ned was being careful to avoid the stringent layer of potential jokes or humour that had occurred to him wrapped around calling someone 'Mr. Hyde'. Regardless, it is left off the greeting and 'Nick' was much to familiar a taste in the mouth for Ned to warrant it's use. His attention lifted toward Penelope for a moment, offering a nod and a similar greeting.

"Hello."

Before the entire party is underway and they are retreating toward the kitchen with it's plentiful other objects of distraction from awkwardness (Chairs! And Cutlery!) that will occupy Ned's hands. Margot falls in line with him and he glances at her as well, a more familiar, maybe even apologetic half-smile delivered as they trail the Disciples.

Pen

Pen studied Margot for a longer beat (delaying tactic because she needs must marshall her reaction to Sepúlveda and she still does not know what it will be tonight though he is come down the hallway), but Nicholas's I'm good had the corner of her mouth hooking up. Turns out her reaction to Sepúlveda is sheathed (Inquisitive, and a touch careful), but the vibrant hint of a smile in her eyes is sincere and she clasps (Companionship [Soldier]) his upper left arm with her right hand.

During the introductions, Penelope's attention rests on Ned -- he's the newest and the quietest and so curiosity like a cat beelining for the person who likes cats least wants to spend time with him. The Hello gets an incline of her head and Nick (not to mention Andrés) also gets a " - but I go by Pen for short."

And they all shall troop into the kitchen, and Scotch will light the way. Or the Mage will who feels like an oncoming fate, wintering, ominous or auspicious and who's to say which way the coin will fall when it's no longer in movement. 

Effusive, huh.

--

Are there seats in the kitchen, or an island devoid of cooking goods? Are there any unusual in appearance apparatus? Penelope composes herself against the island or takes a seat or considers an unusual in appearance apparatus with skeptical interest.

Forgive me, Penelope and Nicholas, but, and her heart gives a little leap and her eyebrows echo the sentiment. (Congratulations are) Pen glances at Nicholas, touching her left earlobe with the thumb and index finger of her left hand. The black crystal earring she is wearing sparks, dim radiance. The back of her thumb brushes against the side of her neck, the pulse-point, and she adjusts so is holding her earlobe between middle finger and index, and her thumb swipes upward.(in order, yes?) She'd leave him alone and palely loitering on a fairy hill and come back. She'd palely loiter herself, and his resonance'd be what was left. Hand drops back to her side. For a while now, and hard on the heels of that comment, "Thank you."

Fuck. Doesn't feel like the exact moment to express condolences over the loss of his wife. Pen can wait. Like a kid playing double-dutch waiting for the moment to jump in, except it's social games. Nick's glance back comes after she's done gazing at him with intent and wonder (though god help anybody who describes her so).

"And I was just asking Margot how long she'd been your apprentice, but I'm sorry you prefer the term 'intern'?" She sounds as if she's testing the word 'intern'; perhaps because in Pen's mind 'intern' is a direct analog to 'consor,' unpaid hopefuls who help with the grunt-work but don't get to do any work themselves. "How do you three know one another?"

Andrés

One day he will have to indulge his students with stories about the symposiums his mentor brought him to when he was their age. Thereabouts.

Pen knows how he is at parties. About the same as he is in any other social situation except for he can drink and smoke and curse which are all things he tends to try to avoid doing in polite company. For a given value of 'polite.'

Pen tells Nick they knew each other from a while back.

"Yeah," Sepúlveda says and frowns as he tries to remember specifics. "When was that? The early aughts? I think the shrub was still president. Those were dark days, eh?"

To the kitchen.

---

If the members of the congregation wish to sit they're going to have to go into the dining room. Its spacious layout and modern design don't seem to speak to his tastes at all. He had had another in mind when he bought this fucking place and she will never see it. The dining table is blocky and dark-stained and can seat six.

That's one way to avoid having to talk about the dead. Talk about the living. Brilliant, Doctor.

So she was asking Margot. He bounces on the balls of his feet while he adjusts to standing still and takes a quick swallow of wine as she's asking how they know each other and maybe the kids think they're going to get away with not talking he talking as much as he tends to talk but:

"Ah, shit, that's... no, I don't know about 'prefer,' but that's a funny story. Actually." He scratches his beard with his free hand then pockets it and uses the index finger of the hand holding his wine glass to point back-and-forth between the apprentices. Eyebrows aloft. "You two wanna tell it, or should I?"

Margot
A wine glass waggled between the two of them and a perk of eyebrows invited the apprentices to tell the story of how they met their mentor.  You two wanna tell it or should I?
After a quick glance between Ned and the Doc, Margot spoke up to bite the bullet of attention for her anxious friend.
"Well Ned and I are both pretty new to this.  We just figured out how to sense the resonances of others like us.  I was at work and Ned came in to my shop and--"  She paused because she hadn't yet thought of a way to describe the impact of Ned's resonance without it sounding painfully shmaltzy.  Everything boiled down to some approximation of having your breath taken away.
"Well, you know."  She waved a hand to get through that part and continued on.  "We hadn't really met many Others before so we exchanged numbers.  Few days later Ned calls me saying he'd found somebody else, and we went to the hospital and found The Doc."
She stopped there for a short length of time, like that was the end of the story and it should be as simple as that.  Soon blushed just a little and wrapped it up more appropriately.
"He figured out pretty easily that we're new and offered to show us the ropes while we get things sorted."

N. Hyde
Nick wanders along with the rest of them into the dining room.  The word wanders is especially appropriate here; the Chakravanti gives the impression of someone who might just linger by himself or flit along to anywhere in the house were it not for the saving grace of herd mentality.  He is paying attention to the conversation, yes, but also to little details in the environment: whatever Sepulveda has chosen to hang up on his walls, whether doors to other rooms in the house are closed, objects of interest that may happen to be lying about.
The dining room seems to have been designed to suit modern tastes.  He does not yet know Sepúlveda well, and it does not clash with any preconceived expectations he has; it just is.
Nick takes one of the seats.  A glass of wine somehow appeared in one of his hands; he looks at it as though he doesn't really remember having picked it up (he doesn't.)  It is more clear that he is focused on what Margot is saying, now.  We hadn't met many Others before - 
Yes.  He remembers that.  But he waits until she finishes, gently swirling his wine in its glass and taking the first sip from it before he says anything.
"You must both have a lot of questions, still."

Margot
The room felt oddly still, and perhaps this was nudged along by the overall resonance banging around in the room together (Pen a different kind of force altogether, though).  But, in truth, everybody else was quiet and looking at her and waiting for her to talk.  She'd already agreed to step up to the plate and serve as the mouthpiece for The Apprentices, so there was no backing down now.
The little witch's eyes turned to Nick and she pressed her lips into an ironic twist of a grin.
"So many that I haven't even narrowed down all the groups of questions that I'm wanting to ask yet.  I'm not a philosophy student, but all I ever think or worry or work for now has to do with the Meaning of Existance, so to speak.  That question's so absurdly huge that I'm still breaking it down into smaller questions to start."

N. Hyde
Nick, now that he is seated, typifies a sort of casual languor, one leg stretched out in front of him under the table.  He is slouched slightly to the side, resting his chin on his thumb; two fingers curve around in front of his mouth as he listens, muddling whatever expression might have been there.  Her ironic grin seems to have pulled at the corners of his eyes and mouth though, a mirroring of sorts.
His hand falls slightly to the side as he straightens himself just slightly to reply.  "I don't think that's uncommon, early on.  So have your smaller questions gotten answered?  Not," he is still amused, if sympathetic, "to put you on the spot.  I just find it interesting how early experiences differ so greatly."
He has set his wine glass back on the table.  There is a brief glance toward the other three, mainly to ensure that they haven't been lost, and that Ned hasn't grown too uncomfortable with the topic.

P. Mercury
"I believe both Nicholas and I took time to find our Traditions," Pen says, and she doesn't look at Nicholas when she says that. The Hermetic's attention, once everybody's arrayed themselves around the table, is rather firmly on those she's come to visit (Visitation), which does not exclude Ned or Andrés. Thoughtfully responsive, see, and it seems like this is going to be the kind of dinner party where everybody listens and is engaged in the same topic.
"I know I, at least, had no one at all in the beginning; and after the beginning there was no one I would listen to."
Then an up-tilt of her chin, like: back to you, Margot (or Ned, who her glance snags on on its way to Andrés), tell us about the small questions.

Sepúlveda
Not to put you on the spot.
Sepúlveda grits his teeth to keep his knee-jerk reaction from leaving his mouth. Amusement in it. Takes a glug of wine to further stopper his speech. Then Pen is speaking of hers and Nicholas's.
"Iona found me," he says. "Before I had enrolled in the university. Based on my, eh... extracurriculars. Slipped me the Kitab al-Alacir." A beat. He isn't telling them plenty. "I am trying to answer their smaller questions, but, eh..."
Wine. Shit. He needs a refill. Time to disappear.