Premonitions

Andrés Sepúlveda
[awareness for shits]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 4, 5) ( fail )

Andrés Sepúlveda
Almost three months in Denver and this is the first time Sepúlveda has texted Hyde while completely shit-faced. May be the first time Hyde is even aware of the fact that Sepúlveda gets shit-faced. He drinks, sure, but then he's a Disciple in Life. He can sober up faster than he can get drunk.

Two-almost-three days after Crow informs the lot of them that Alexander is as safe as he's going to get, the Chakravant gets a text message from the Etherite. It's obvious he's drunk. Autocorrect tries to pick up the slack for him but Autocorrect can only do so much. The gist of it is: lol fuck the Union we got him back what are you doing.

At four in the morning. On a school night.

Nick responds. Andy is blowing off work. They agree to meet up.

When Nick walks into the gastropub where Andy is blowing off work, he finds the Etherite sitting at a two-top table with a pint of tequila-and-orange-juice at his right hand. Scribbling in a thick grid-ruled notebook with his left. He isn't wearing his wedding band. He is wearing his glasses. He has two-almost-three days' worth of stubble on his face.

Nick is almost on top of him before Andrés realizes he's there.

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas has been making good use of his sick days recently.  He works full time, and the past several weeks have had him calling on spirits on the river downtown after midnight, and meeting other magi for ritual work, and now blowing off work with Andrés because the Etherite is shitfaced so soon after breaking into a Technocratic stronghold.  Nicholas works full time, and has been more diligent recently about his magickal studies as well.  Is this beginning to wear on him?

Well, no one will know.  But there is a reason many of them do not keep jobs once they have advanced to a certain point in Enlightenment.

He arrives at the gastropub, notices Andrés almost immediately and takes him in.  Two-three days' growth of stubble on his face, clearly drunk and not wearing his wedding band.

Nicholas Hyde sucks in a breath.  And then he wanders over to the Etherite where he's seated, and slides onto the stool next to him.  Nick's footsteps are soundless; he may indeed have already sat down before Andrés has noticed his presence at all.  "Andrés.  Breakfast of champions, I see," he says, with a meaningful glance toward the tequila and orange juice.  "Have you had anything to eat yet?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
This is one half of the team that went in to rescue a captured Orphan, ladies and gentlemen.

He does not startle. Does not appear to even have a startle reflex. Accepts the fact that someone has sat down right across from him without his noticing with complacence but there's a brief glimmer in his green eyes that suggests if it were anyone his temporal and occipital lobes could not agree he recognized, he would be a bit more hostile.

For someone who has been drinking since lord knows when, his gaze is both lucid and sharp. He is not drunk. Takes a moment to decelerate from scribbling in his notebook - Nick's grasp of the Time Sphere and calculus will determine how much of it he is able to decipher at a glance - to talking to another carbon-based life form.

"What?" No time to answer. His brain catches him up soon enough. "Eat? No. Are you hungry? Get something."

Nicholas Hyde
There is a lot that a thirty second once-over can tell an observant person.  See here: Nick has about the level of understanding of calculus that someone might expect from a man with a master's degree in counseling, but he does have an understanding of Time magick.  Enough to work out what is happening there on the notebook.  Enough to tell that Andrés, even as weathered as he looks today and reeking of alcohol though he is, is not drunk.

Nick turns his face away and glances toward the bartender, and then he orders a glass of orange juice and whatever scrambled type of skillet he can find on the menu.  He does not order a drink; it's 7:30 in the morning.

"It seems like you've been up a while.  Celebrating your triumphant return?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
[perc + empathy: bc i'm an asshole.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 4) ( botch x 1 )

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Celebrating?"

Andrés is bilingual. Grew up speaking both English and Spanish. No one will accuse him of fluency and he cannot translate between the two as someone who actually studied both languages could, but English is not his second tongue. He knows exactly what Nick is asking. His head is just taking its sweet time adjusting from seclusion to socialization.

He claps his notebook closed. Either Andrés is not picking up on the subtle hints of disapproval Nick brought to the table with him or he's completely misinterpreting them. Thanks a lot, busted-ass limbic system.

"What's the matter, Nicholas?"

Nicholas Hyde
[???]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Nicholas Hyde
There is a glass of orange juice in front of him now, which he takes a swallow from as Andrés questions his choice of words.  He is not looking at Andrés right at this moment; instead, back toward the wall, his gaze perhaps skimming over the bottles that line the back shelf.  Disapproval?  Perhaps.  Nicholas is a difficult man to read, and how much do any of them really know about him, those who aren't his wife?

The other man's question takes him aback (and here, there are many reasons), but any surprise he has he covers with rue, this furrowing of his brow.  "With me?"  And here some of the surprise perhaps leaks into his tone; it is unusual for anyone to ask him this.

"Nothing.  I'm just tired, I guess.  You caught me early and I think leading a double life is catching up to me a little bit this week."  Here, a smile, easy and friendly enough.  "I know you were successful, but how did things go in the lab?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
"They went."

The fact that Nicholas is exhibiting a normal human reaction to having to function this early in the fucking morning doesn't seem to be registering with Sepúlveda. Sepúlveda, who is working out a theory on time constriction and dilation in regards to technological capabilities while probably on day three of being awake. And coming very close to a breakthrough, if Nick's understanding of the madman's southpaw chickenscratch is accurate.

"What... what are you talking about? Double life? Are you..." He pushes the notebook away and folds his forearms across the table. Knits his fingers together. This is probably what his apprentices have to deal with on a regular basis. His off-target attempts to give a shit. "Oh, right. Look, man, you don't have kids, right? If you don't, don't have kids." A beat. His eyes aim at the wall. "You and Penelope are too smart for that." He looks back. "Look, the double life is overrated, and you're not getting graded on how good of a reality deviant you are. Pick your poison and stick with it, man, 'tired' shouldn't be in your vocabulary."

Oh right. This is the guy who allegedly told his traumatized 19-year-old apprentice to just turn off the part of her brain that governs emotion.

Nicholas Hyde
[wtf are you even talking about, Andrés]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Nicholas Hyde
Even for someone who is skilled at picking up on the subtle tells from other people and piecing them together, this is a confusing conversation.  When meeting with a familiar face, some of the context will always be taken from what has come before: and Andrés has never particularly expressed an interest in Nick's feelings or in giving him advice.  He is not drunk, either, which makes it more offputting.

Nick takes a moment to respond to the other man.  His hazel eyes have swept the Etherite's face, the way in which he has pushed the notebook away and the way in which his eyes are also directed back toward the wall.  "We don't have kids.  I prefer to keep working, though, for as long as I can.  I don't think there's much to be gained by withdrawing from the Sleeper world to pursue enlightenment."

This is the best response he can frame to all of this; he came into the conversation with an agenda, perhaps, and it would be easy for it to derail here.  Or maybe he didn't.  Nick is a difficult man to read: this has been said.  "Do you have kids?  I didn't realize."  A beat.  "It sounds like you miss them."

Andrés Sepúlveda
"There's no point missing them. One of them is dead, and the other one expressed her desire to never see or speak to me again before moving to Tokyo."

Blunt, but by now Nick may well expect that from the man. Ask an honest question, get an honest answer. He doesn't waver or look away as he gives Nick this information.

"That's all I'm trying to say, Nicholas. You can't half-ass two things. I've seen more people go into Quiet trying to half-ass like four things than I've seen whole-ass one thing. You want to keep counseling people at the end of their lives, it's a necessary profession. You're good at it."

Hearsay. Folks talk. Nick has like as not heard plenty of less-complimentary talk about the forensic pathologist.

He blows a breath out through his nose and retrieves his notebook. This is where Nick loses eye contact.

"The fuck do I know, right?"

Nicholas Hyde
One of them is dead and - 

Nick doesn't bat an eyelash.  This is something he is used to.  He has been at parties where, when he mentioned being a counselor, he was cornered by someone who needed to ask his advice on a personal situation.  It's happened more than once.

"I've been in Quiet twice, Andrés.  Both times having more than one thing to focus on in my life was helpful to me in coming out of it."  He takes another swallow from his glass.  This assertion that he's good at his job: it receives a small noise of acknowledgement, something that says he's heard it while also not really offering his thoughts on that particular topic.

"There are a lot of people who are good counselors, Andrés.  There are not many people who are Awakened.  I am, so it's my responsibility."  His fingertips come to rest on the rim of his glass, and he spins it thoughtfully.  "I think it would be natural to miss them, if you did."

Andrés Sepúlveda
He would think it would be natural.

Sepúlveda yawns for the same reason all mammals yawn: no apparent one. It gives him something to do besides answer right away, though the yawn is young and dies that way. Smothered by his palm and its dragging down his face.

"Grief," he says, and this is the closest to concession Nick will get out of him, "is the brain suffering dopamine withdrawal. It's all chemicals, Nicholas, and before you say 'Oh but Andrés that doesn't mean it isn't real,' my counterpoint is this: it doesn't matter. Missing someone, not missing someone, it doesn't change the fact they're gone.

He takes a good-sized belt off his alcohol-thinned juice. Leaves Nick room for a rebuttal.

Nicholas Hyde
There is something about what Andrés says that furrows the other man's brow, that causes him to not offer a rebuttal right away but rather to glance somewhere down and off to the side.  The wood grain in the table perhaps, the warp and weft left by age and abuse and too many swipes of a rag.

"We all grieve differently," he says, and perhaps this is an admission or perhaps it is a concession or perhaps it is a simple statement of fact.  He's often opaque, Nicholas.

The quiet that ensues, however brief, is not uncomfortable for Nick but it may be for the Etherite; frequently other people do not handle such things very well.  He allows it to pass nonetheless, and perhaps he is considering whether he ought to linger here or redirect the conversation.

Nick is also terrible at smalltalk; let us not forget that.

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Eh, I tried it once."

This, spoken straight ahead, like he would be talking to himself about something else if he were not talking to Nick about this. The original invitation for the intersection of their two points at the same place in time sublimated into something else.

Admittedly he had been drunk when he texted Nick. He will be drunk again soon enough. Right now his blood alcohol is high enough that he should not operate machinery but see: he is an alcoholic.

"You already heard that story though, eh?" A laugh, then, like he's just told a joke. "Ah, hell. It's a good one, but you don't need to hear it again. The fuck was I..." Frown. A glance over. If Nick will meet his gaze, it's there. "Nicholas, what the fuck were we talking about--" Before the word has finished: "Oh! Right. So, the cop, what's his name, Brandt, he's gonna be pretty fucked up. Yeah? I do dead people, not..." A vague swirling motion with his now-bare left hand. "Not all that. You ever met him before?"

Nicholas Hyde
It doesn't take a man as insightful as Nick to be able to notice all of these little things: the other man's straight-ahead stare, the missing wedding ring, this laugh he has here, losing his train of thought and the fact that Andrés is drinking heavily every single time Nick runs into him.  It doesn't take a man as insightful as Nick to put all of those things together, so needless to say he has, and did, some time ago.

"Decompensating" is the clinical term.  He cannot help it when it springs into his head now.

"I haven't.  Pen has," he says, and perhaps this addition is simply to explain how he knows-of-Brandt, who since Nicholas at least arrived in the city has been missing.  "I suspected he would be fucked up.  If they've used magick to condition him, though, I don't have the skill to unWork that."  He uses magick here despite the reaction it's elicited from Andrés in the past; he may have less patience today for adapting his speech.

Nick met his gaze, earlier.  He has looked away since, toward his glass of juice.  Maybe he too is thinking.

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Eh, from looking him over, I couldn't see as they made it that far."

Okay. You win this one, Hyde. He's either too tired or too distracted by whatever conundrum he's debating in his own head to argue the difference between Magick and Science with a Chakravat.

"His resonance changed, while they had him locked up. Not just from a Seeking, I'm talking total alteration of the original signature. That's... I can't figure out if it was self-initiated or not, but the implication could be staggering."

It might be too much to ask for him to not look at other people like test subjects for longer than five minutes.

At any rate:

"Maybe it's better, not having known him before."

Nicholas Hyde
Total alteration of the original signature.  Nick's expression does not shift while he absorbs this tidbit of information, but his eyes unfocus as his thoughts turn inward.  Staggering implications, indeed: though a Chakravat may have a different understanding of the implications involved than Andrés could or will.

After all, "When we die and are reborn we carry nothing of the resonance of our past lives.  Or, at least, I haven't heard of such a thing happening.  I see no reason why it would be impossible for a person who still lives to transcend some barrier, or..."

Nick takes a swallow of his juice.  "It will be difficult for people who knew him before, maybe even more than it will be for him.  Did you know him before he was taken?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
"Nah, I never met the guy before."

Worth mentioning that he doesn't argue with Nick over the implication he saw somewhere on the horizon, or attempt to elucidate what it is he meant. He is not an effective communicator.

When he chooses to accept an invitation to speak in public, which is not often, but when he does, his public is a group of people who subscribe to his methodology if not his specialty. He doesn't have to be well-spoken or charming to talk to a bunch of nerds, and it's hard to say the wrong thing when he's using jargon.

"The probability of me meeting him again, it's not so high. I just thought it important, you know, if you feel some calling to assist him in a professional capacity, that I tell you his resonance, while he was in captivity, changed. Whatever you do with that information is up to you."

Farewell, beverage. You were delicious.

He checks his bare right wrist like he doesn't know what time it is, like there's a watch there to begin with. Internal debate. Stay here or keep on trucking.

Nicholas Hyde
There are a few things Nick could say here or respond to, clarifications to be made and thoughts or beliefs he could voice.  It's rare for him to do these things, even around people he knows well; Pen is frequently the exception.

"Why is the probability of you meeting him again not high?  It's a small city, at least as far as people like us are concerned."

There is this sidelong glance toward the Etherite, then, as he drains the juice in his glass.  Perhaps it settles whatever internal debate Andrés has, one way or another.

Andrés Sepúlveda
[entropy/mind 1, time 2: computer, what are the odds, aka lol you asked. modifiers go here.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Andrés Sepúlveda
Before Nick wanders too far from the original question word, the Etherite sighs and shifts around a bit to remove from a pocket a blocky PDA-looking device that might have been a BlackBerry once before Sepúlveda disemboweled it and replaced its innards with a purple-and-black radar-looking screen.

"Hang on." He starts tapping parameters into the thing. "Taking into account our professions, our hours, my personality, and local traffic patterns, I'm going to go ahead and say--"

Bleep, bloop.

"Oh, hey, look at that." He shows him the calculation that has unfurled on the screen. "One in twelve-hundred, we'll run into each other in the next year. I thought I was just talking out of my ass."

Nicholas Hyde
It's really the first opportunity that Nick has had to see a more technologically inclined Mage at work.  They tend to keep to themselves at times, technomagi, or else they tend to stay apart from the more mystical Traditionalists.

There is this interested glance spared for the blocky object that Andrés tugs free from a pocket and brings up between the two of them.  And maybe Nick thinks that it doesn't look like much, or that Andrés is basically tapping nonsense into a machine and reading nonsense from it; maybe he also understands how his own magick would look to the Etherite if Andrés ever had a chance to witness it.

He nods at the data on the screen as though the output makes any sense to him whatsoever.  It does not.

"Well, thanks for passing the information along, at least," he says.  And then there is a pause, some internal debate, before, "Andrés, I'm worried about you.  Have you stopped drinking since you and Kiara went to get Alex?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
Back into his pocket goes the device. During that pause the bartender comes over and asks if he wants another one and that moment didn't present itself as an ideal place to take off, so he acquiesces, which brings us to Nick's next point.

Ask an honest question, get an honest answer.

"Nope," he says.

Nicholas Hyde
Nick's expression does not suggest any surprise, which is to say that he doesn't blink, doesn't give any indication that he didn't already know the answer before he asked.  "Did something happen?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
Oh, for Christ's sake, says the Etherite's sigh.

Asking if something happened implies that he wasn't always like this, and the phrasing of it, or the fact that he respects the Chakravat's professional opinion even if he uses the m-word in the course of their conversations, has Sepúlveda honestly considering the question even as he's rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger, occluding his eyes for a moment.

"Let me tell you a story," he says with some weariness once his hand has dropped and a fresh drink has appeared before him. He dances the straw around in its bath just to stir everything up. "If you want to know the something so bad."

Drink.

"Stop me if you've heard this one before: After our son died, Hinata, my wife, she was grieving and I am not the best at, eh... well, I suppose I was too, I was in a lot of pain, and her coven was the best place for her, at the time. We discussed this before she left, that she would take the girl with her. So they went, and... I suppose I had thought, since I spent so much time alone as it was..."

Fuck it.

"In hindsight," a shift in his tone, drifting back to facetious, "I should have relished it, the quiet, because now I can't even take a piss without one of my apprentices asking me a stupid question."

Nicholas Hyde
Nick has not heard this story, and he turns his head to regard the other man more fully as he begins with If you want to know the something so bad.  It's the beginning of a story that someone wants to tell and doesn't want to tell, at the same time, because human beings are contradictory creatures and anyone who believes two opposing desires cannot coexist is a fool.

The bartender sets Nick's food down in front of him, and a glass of water, and he turns his attention from Andrés to the plate set in front of him.  It gives the Etherite space to talk without feeling as though he is under scrutiny.  Nick reaches a few feet for a bottle of hot sauce, which unfortunately is only Tapatio and unsatisfactory for anyone who is more desirous of a merging of flesh and fire, so he adds a copious amount to the eggs and peppers while he listens.

"Apprentices are good for that," he says, his tone neutral, as he takes a bite of the eggs.  After he has chewed and swallowed, "What was it you thought, after Hinata and your daughter went?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
Apprentices are good for that.

"Mm hmm."

As for what it was he thought:

"Oh, who the hell knows. I thought a lot of things. But the drinking, Nicholas, is an effective means of coping with stupid people, who are everywhere, so until such a time as I come up with an aerosolized intelligence booster that I can set off in confined spaces--"

He lifts his glass. The story isn't finished yet. He might as well, since they've come this far.

"Anyway, while they were in Tokyo, I visited a couple times, but they weren't ready to come back to... see, this is what I was saying about the job, Nicholas, and the half-assing. Every time I went back to Miami, to work, they stayed." Drink. "Time, you know, does what time tends to do, and Naomi started having nightmares. She isn't Awakened, but she's... well, obviously, she's aware, her mother was a Witch." What the fuck was he saying. "Point is, Hinata thought the nightmares were premonitions, yeah? I told her no, no no no, she's a teenage girl with an active imagination, just go on with what you're doing, they'll go away. Hinata came back to the States anyway. Just to make sure."

He has about half his beverage left. He dances the straw around but doesn't drink it.

"And, ah, turns out they were."

Nicholas Hyde
Premonitions.  Time.  Nightmares.

If there is a fluttering of Nick's eyelashes here, some reaction to whatever those words elicit, it would be difficult to tell.  He is eating, shoveling another forkful of eggs into his mouth.  It can be exceedingly useful to have something to do with his hands while he listens to other people; it's a shame that his job so frequently does not allow him the opportunity.

Friends, though, or acquaintances, whichever - he's not sure which Andrés really falls into, just yet - well, it's a get out of jail free card here.

He sets his fork down beside the plate then so he can look over at Andrés, and if the Etherite turns his head their eyes will meet.  "I'm sorry, Andrés," is what he says first, and quietly.  He lets those words sit for a moment.  "If you had also believed them to be premonitions, do you think anything would have been different?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
So he meets the counselor's gaze. It's the least he can do after dropping that story on the bar between them, but what he had said earlier was not a line.

His grief broke him. He lost his fucking mind, and rather than walking into Death's embrace after all of that, he decided well, he would just have to keep on going without it.

So he drinks. There is nothing Nick can do about that. This isn't that kind of meeting.

An eventual nod to indicate he's heard Nick, that he accepts his sympathy, and Sepúlveda fields the next question.

"The premonitions were of what I did, Nicholas, or... what I was going to do. She... I suppose they both did, interpreted them to mean, some harm was to come to me, if someone did not intervene."

Now his drink is empty. He removes his wallet from his back pocket and tosses down three twenty-dollar bills.

"So... we didn't know what we didn't know, and I did what I did, and that is why I don't bother with missing anyone. Eh? Onward and upward, my friend."

Nicholas Hyde
This isn't that kind of meeting, and listen: Nick accepts this.  Mental health professionals, see, there are very strict ethical guidelines in place against practicing their craft with friends, or coworkers, or lovers, and for a reason; when it comes to power, the scales will always be tipped toward the person who is providing help.  There is no ethical way to act as a counselor to a friend.

So he's here as a friend alone.  He thinks.  Perhaps.  Or perhaps he is only a man who sees others a little too clearly for his own good.

That is why I don't bother with missing anyone -

There is a significant glance toward the empty tumbler on the counter top.  Andrés could miss it though; it's been established this very day that he is not always well equipped to read others.  "Onward and upward, to where?"

Andrés Sepúlveda
"I," he says, picking up the notebook in which he had been scribbling before Nick arrived, "am going to go fuck with Time."

As if some part of him sensed that Nick was worried about something inconsequential when what he really ought to be worried about is the fact that the guy was a genius with questionable ethics and a propensity for finding new and exciting ways to scare his students.

He claps a frigid hand on Nick's shoulder, clap clap, good talk buddy, then starts off on his way, his ability to walk a straight line belying how much booze he just knocked back.

"Later!"

Nicholas Hyde
It would be difficult to say precisely what it is Nick is worried about.  He doesn't really say, does he?

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself, Andrés," is all he says, and then there is this little incline of his head toward the other man as he gets up to leave with his notebook under his arm.  And he lifts a hand in this lazy thing that could be a wave or a salute or whatever else.

He watches the Etherite go, notes the steadiness of his step.  And then he resumes eating, and his thoughts too are for Time: more, or less, or perhaps only for a prayer to skillfully play the threads of Fate.

An Age of Myth And Wonder

mercury
By the time Nicholas comes home late St. Patrick's day evening, Penelope is lounging in the window seat (there is a window seat), an Art Deco desk lamp on a shelf nearby turned on to cast a warm golden glow on the room and a host of candles burning tea lights and votives a host as vast as heaven's all around, on book shelves on the tables near the window sill where there is space for a coaster or two and some knick knacks as long as one is careful with the curtains (the window seat can be closed off with a tapestry) and the pillows (because the window seat is comfortable), lining the walls, on sconces, even floating on the still stone basins of water which are to be found here and there and everywhere.

Penelope's hair is up, fastened in place by an Art Deco comb, and she is in a dark green velvet dressing gown, clasped at the waist with a gold cord; her slippers are velvet, too, and beaded, and she is drinking wine and reading a book and limned in candle-light and she is all these things for no reason other than she felt like it.

The green dressing gown is a favourite, but it was probably chosen because of St. Patrick's Day. If she went out earlier, she has been home long enough to set the place aglow and ablaze and to get quite comfortable in her reading.

Her boots are, it is regrettable to say, in the hallway just in front of the door and her coat is on the stairs, because she didn't put them away.

crow
By the time Nicholas comes home, Penelope has had a chance to settle in with her reading and lounge near the window seat, her profile lent a soft glow by the candlelight, her hair burnished and softened and: she looks Impressionistic, perhaps, there in the window as she reads with wine and book in hand.  Nick can see her through the window as he approaches the house.

He stops.  It is not cold today, though it will be very soon, and spears of green are shooting up through the newly turned earth in front of their house.  Soon they will be flowers, if the cold snap doesn't kill them off.

Nick stops, and he draws in a breath and holds it there in his chest, because he wants some of the mellow air scented with soil and new growth and Ardence to thaw some of what has hardened there, brittle and sharp-edged.  The last thing he wants is to breathe any of it onto Pen, or to be distant out of fear that he will; what he wants is balance.  What he wants, always, is to avoid old mistakes.

So finally he steps in the front door, and there is a shuffle as he steps on the heels of his shoes to wiggle his feet out of them.  Pen can hear the door open and shut, and perhaps the rustle of cloth as he discards his coat (hangs it on top of hers on the stairs, in truth) if her ears are particularly sharp today; she cannot hear Nick as he makes his way to her.  This is ordinary extraordinariness, at this point.  Maybe she doesn't look up until he's just there, at which point he eases himself into place beside her feet in front of the window.

Mark: he does not look angry, or upset, or much of anything.  This is probably how Pen can tell that he is.  That, and that instead of greeting her verbally he instead only rests his hand on her shin, runs it up to her knee and traces its shape.

mercury
Pen does only look up when Nicholas is standing just there; a sudden gesture, this rise of gray eyes from the page, and swift too. "Hello, Crow!"

He sits; his expression is nothing. Pen marks it; measures his face, the grace of his hand, the warmth of his palm; the cant of his eyebrows, the bow of his head; measures, and measures, and the filter-through of lake-light radiance gladness yay Nicholas is home goes diffuse and gloaming. She tilts her head back against the window seat's frame, chin canted so her throat's exposed and her gaze is slanted downward. Velvet is a heavy fabric; and soft. Should he have run his hand along her shin atop it, he can feel the slinkstery cold which true velvet hides; should he have run his hand along her shin beneath the robe, well, velvet is also warm and he is better able to feel her knee move when she decides to rest one leg over Nick's lap, bounding him into the window seat nook.

"What's wrong?"

crow
She rests her leg over his lap, binding him there beside her in the window.  There is always something grave about him in the half-light, some contrast in him that the flame seems to throw into sharp relief.  He had reached beneath the robe, and here as her muscles move he traces them.

"I just got back from talking with Margot," he says.  "She called me and wanted to meet me.  She was pretty upset."

He has had some time, on the drive home, to process what he would and so it is less fresh than it otherwise might have been.  This also means that he has had more time to contain it, and it is not unlike other times when she has seen him angry, though it is a diminished echo of those other times: after Liz, after going overseas, perhaps even after Alexandra.

And because it is an echo, however small, of those times, perhaps this is why he lets out a long sigh and promptly stretches out on the window seat beside her, his head next to her lap, his legs curled up against the wall (no room for them, see.)  "What are you reading?"

mercury
"Hild by Nicola Griffith," Pen says. "It is a fantasy book about the saint in my name, so I am curious about it. So far, it is very interesting. The prose is so supple, so liquid, the attention given to language so careful, so fascinating Hild's magick: that of observation. She is a king-maker. It's interesting," she says, again, and of course while Nicholas sighed long, stretched himself out on the window seat beside her (between her and the window, the way these things go), his legs curled up, Pen shifts too, letting the book lie open on her stomach, settling downward on her spine. She is careful of the candle-flame between Nicholas's back and the glass, not very careful of the neighbors who might spy them; having inched lower, leg now settled atop Nick's curled ones, a twist to her spine because she is half-turned toward Nicholas half still with back to the wall.

"Is she all right? What happened?"

crow
Nick listens as she tells him about her book, and shifts to lift himself up on an elbow even as she inches lower onto her spine.  He, too, is uncaring of neighbors; they live on the end of the street, they are the nice-but-weird couple in the neighborhood who other people probably gossip about, and sometimes it's fun to give other people something to gossip about.  "Tell me how it is when you've finished," he says, of the book.  He has made efforts to read more, though he has not made this explicit to her: he has done this because books like this were books he missed as a child, and because it is something to share with Pen.

Pen asks about Margot, and he sighs again, his eyes unfocusing and then when they refocus again it is somewhere above them, on the low hanging arch that makes up the top of the window.  "No.  Yes?"  Beat.  "I think she's going to be all right.  She's lived through some pretty terrible things, in a way that's stuck with her and - scarred her, I suppose, is the best way to put it.  I suspected, but wasn't sure."

He goes quiet again, and there is this twist of his mouth, there is ice water that sluices through his veins and his guts, and this is the sort of thing that has drowned him in the past.  "She told me Andrés told her to 'just fix it.'  With magic.  His nineteen year old apprentice.  And she believed that she should be able to do it."  He glances up at Pen then, draws in a breath because his hand is wide open, and there's this sharp gesture, and he says, "She came to me asking me how to fix it, that way.  Like she thought she's a machine that just needs a tune up.  It's..."

Exhale.

mercury
"I know Mages who have done that," Penelope says, after a beat. Her voice is a soft shadow; it invites Nicholas to make more comment. She sets the book aside; it drops to the floor, good thing Ari isn't around to see or hear, landing on its spine with a thump. The next street over, Ari is probably pausing in the middle of a beautifully executed line, a Master calligrapher's finest and most painstaking work, her eyes wide and troubled and a shiver gone down her spine: a book is in danger, a book has been mistreated...

And then Pen twists more, so she is curled a little toward Nicholas, two commas on a window seat.

crow
There is this split second of silence, because Nick has known mages who have done this too, or at least has heard tell.  People who have supposedly magicked such things away.  And his eyebrows are dark as a crow's wing, or the underside of a cloud, and they are hanging low at this moment.  And what he says is, "You can't.  Not in a way that's - you can't just cut away a part of you, like it was nothing.  And even if you could," this sharp snap, now, "she's an apprentice, and she's young.  She needs...the last thing she needs is to think there's something wrong with her, is to be told that.  And what if she tried?"

Sharp exhale.  "It's just so irresponsible.  And then," and his hands are claws and he flings this gesture, almost almost not careful of the candle that is behind him, "he told her this in response to the fact that she froze up when he was being attacked by a Kha'vadi he pissed off doing gods know what.  She is his apprentice, and he's just not - "

And just as suddenly as it started, it stops, and the corner of his jaw is tight, and his eyes are only for the sky.

mercury
"Nickolai," Pen says, low in her throat. She must agree with him. Of course she agrees with him. Penelope always tries to face her demons, regardless of how difficult it is, how it makes her cower, waver, how it makes her heart a scared animal fleeing. But Penelope finds it important to be able to face these things; maybe Nick, by now, knows how often she is dismayed by her 'cowardice.'

He has flung a gesture; she finds his hand and twines her fingers with his, before bringing it to her belly and resting it there, then up between her ribs, touched and touching. She releases his hand and grips his shirt instead pressing her knuckles in. "He's just not what?"

crow
This intonation of his name draws his eyes, jolts him out of whatever fugue he might have otherwise settled into, and breathes into the hollow of him that the anger leaves behind.  There is another exhale as she takes his hand and rests it on her belly, slides it upward.  He tilts his head to the side so that it can rest against her, curls flattened against the forest shadow of her robe.  He leaves his hand where it is, thumb against her sternum and fingers following the line of her ribs.

There is another exhale, this one shorter and sharper.  "He's not thinking about her or her needs, except as they relate to his own, I don't think," he says finally.  "Either of them.  And it concerns me.  I don't want...they're both mistrustful, and I want them to have what they want, but I worry that I'm doing them a disservice.  I like Andrés, but..."  Pause.  "I don't think he's aware of the power he has over them."

mercury
"I think he is very cavalier. And that they are both very set in their opinions and prejudices," Pen says, and her voice is still a quiet shadow, and she does not sound judging though this is a judgment she has passed; she sounds musing. "But not everybody teaches lessons using kindness, or even care. Not everybody thinks the same thing is kind. I don't know, Crow."

crow
"I know the world is full of powerful people who haven't had the sense to tend their own wounds before they bleed them all over everything else," Nick says, and he does sound judging because he is still angry, because this is far more frank than he is ordinarily.  Perhaps later he will regret being so blunt; he will wonder whether he too has been unkind.  Whether that unkindness was worth it in the end.

"I don't..."  Sigh.  "I don't know either, Pen."

mercury
"I don't think he's very good at communicating. Perhaps he didn't mean she had to 'fix it,' like, snap, just turn it off, but was referring to a more gradual build-up of personal character, and finding your center with the aid of the Arts," Pen says, because she tries to be fair, and she is not the angry one right now, and because it might be true. "And maybe he's just unstable as Hell. I do worry about them, those three. He was really attacked by a Kha'avedi?"

crow
Nick sighs, because: Pen is fair, Pen is not the angry one right now, and all of that might be true.  He is in the process of deflating, though it will take some time for it to fully dissipate; he is like that.  "That's what Margot said.  I worry about them too.  I guess that's...that's really it.  I don't want...I just don't want to miss any warning signs. That's all."

mercury
He doesn't want to miss any warning signs. Pen doesn't respond immediately; maybe something catches in her throat; some sad thing, rising; her gaze is drawn off to the flickering of a flame's edge, over there; how it bleeds gold into the air, diffuse. Nicholas is dark treasure, all fairy tale ebony and crow shadow and stark beauty (she thinks him beautiful) there by the glass, and - well. Pen puts an arm around him, so she can cup his head (bury her fingers in his curls) with her hand.

"Vigilance," she says. And then, "It is wrong, to turn any part of yourself off. It is wrong to remove yourself, I believe, from ... I've always thought it wrong not to ... Not to try to move forward, or to feel with your heart what you are doing or having done."

crow
Pen doesn't answer him immediately; Nick does not seek an answer then, and in that time he only smooths his hand from her ribs and back down to her belly, watching the play of light and shadow over her robe.  His eyes fall shut as her fingers weave through his hair, though not for long, because she says Vigilance.

And he must be, mustn't he?  What's the point of memory, and memory that spans lifetimes, if not to learn from mistakes?

"I think she's going to try to move forward," he says then.  And then, "I wonder if I should try to find the Kha'vedi.  Margot didn't say what happened."

mercury
Pen makes a bright sound in the back of her throat; this thoughtful not-quite-hum. She does not, as she often does, massage little circles into Nicholas's scalp; seems content just to feel his curls between her fingers, the shape of him under them, and content (never satisfied) to regard him where he is curled. When she shifts nearer, some of the candles bow their heads; shadows go scudding around the room, and she would have turned off the lamp and given them only candle light if she knew Nicholas was so near coming home, that he would be so angry, so rightfully so.

"If somebody had died, she would have said." Pen smiles; it is almost a joke. The smile does not reach her eyes, only stays hopefully around her mouth. "But probably some spirit knows; they gossip, do they not? Maybe Crow will know."

Pause. "I think you might talk to Andrés, though. Nick-o-lay, Nick-o-lie, she did come to you. Poor Margot," but Pen does not seem surprised to hear that Margot had some kind of trauma, either; her grisly resonance lends itself to certain judgments, especially when contrasted against her demeanor.

crow
"You're probably right," Nick says, of the Kha'vadi.  His concern might have been present anyway, but he has also worked with that Tradition in the past; understands them to be poorly misunderstood.  And often territorial.

He might have said more, until Pen suggests that he speak with Andrés - and this is likely the best way to get all of his questions answered.  "I should probably talk to him," he agrees, and there is another exhale, though less rough at the edges than the others have been, without the same release of a pressure valve.  He lifts his head, shifting around so that he can raise himself up far enough to rest his chin on her shoulder.  "They're going to get Alexander tomorrow though.  It's probably not a good time to go digging."  A beat.  "Do you think the Order's going to continue to push there, after?"

mercury
"I don't know," Pen says. "If it is not useful in the greater scheme of things, I would say no. I find the lack of vision here, among the other Mages, to be very disheartening." This is not something she would say, Pen, who wears her heart on her sleeve, in her eyes, who is always whole-hearted: "We rescue Alexander; fine. Then what? What does it mean, that he was snatched? What should it mean, for the city? What does it mean that we have somebodies on the inside helping us? I don't think they care; I may be wrong."

crow
If she were to look over at him, she'd find him looking at her, sweeping the curve of her cheekbone and the movement of her lips as she speaks.  Maybe he agrees (of course he agrees.)  He runs his fingertips over the fabric of her robe, over the curve of her hip and then back up to rest once more over her stomach.  "What would your vision be?"

mercury
His chin is on her shoulder, his hand on her stomach. Perhaps just beneath the gold cord, the rope, which belts her robe which is the green of certain shadows, absinthe, lake waters, seas, precious stones. Penelope does look over at Nicholas, Nicholas looking at her, how Nicholas looks at her, where Nicholas looks at her.

"I don't know." Yes she does. This sharp exhale. He'll feel it. As the ribcage expands, the stomach moves; it's the flesh and bone and muscle and sinew equivalent of a storm at sea, how a billow will rise, then roll. "I only... I would see people who can be motivated by something other than terror, and the panic of scrabbling for survival, people who might do good without needing to see a clear victim in front of them. That's all."

crow
Her ribcage expands beneath his palm, swells upward and outward and then deflates again.  There's duality in breath, in the way something so simple as the inhale and the exhale becomes the Nothing and the Everything, sacred silence and holy chorus, the yin and yang.  That's what the Akashayana say, and some of the Chakravanti, and maybe even some of the Cultists who remember their old ways and from whence their Tradition sprung.

Here at the top, with her lungs full, she is all potential, and it is something that Nick finds beautiful about her, almost as beautiful as he will find its actualization.

He does not say that.  He says, almost playfully, "I could get behind that," but see: he could.  "How do you think we can motivate them?"  For they are a we now, and he is never entirely sure when it happened.

mercury
"I don't know, Nicholas," Pen says, and do note: she does not sound hopeless, saying it, for all it is the honest and clear truth. Pen does not know how to motivate people; she often does motivate people, but she does not know how to, in any calculable way; she can speak, she can write, she can be eloquent and often that is enough.

"How can we motivate one another?" This mischievous look, or perhaps not mischievous: coy, flirting with sly, even though her eyes are still clear and direct and her face is still honest. No, see, now she is letting her eyelashes drift low, as if her eyes would close - it is only languor. "What should we do that is good, without needing to see a clear victim in front of us? What can we do with the power we wield to make something better than it was?"

crow
The look Pen gives him is coy, and the look she gets in response is too provoked into thought by her question to reply in kind, not just yet.  It's a difficult subject for Nick to think about, one that he is even perhaps afraid of on some level: he has known so many people, see, who set out only to make the world better.  "I don't know, Pen," he says, and this true is the honest and clear truth, without hopelessness in it.  "But I...I think something that's important is to look at what we want to see and not what we think is lacking."

He scoots a little closer to her, abolishing any illusions of personal space, and his mouth has turned into her shoulder for a moment before he lifts it and says, "I like helping other people move forward, and understand new things.  But I have no idea what that looks like on...well, past what I'm doing now."

mercury
The illusion of personal space: dispelled. That takes a true wizard, or a prophet knight; somebody who can look beyond what is false (which is another way of saying what is temporary). The window seat is not so large; Pen lifts her legs so they are draped over Nicholas's hip, or his thighs, and curls her fingers up his forearm toward his elbow. This quiet hitch in her breathing; she does not imagine it will ever steady; it will always unspool. She is pensive in her languor, so self-contained it might be mistook for imperious, and the back of her head is still leaned against the wall of the window seat.

"When will you begin to teach me the Art of Time?"

crow
This pensive look: Nick has seen it before, and more often, since they arrived here in Denver.  And these other times he has not remarked upon it, if only because he was aware that it would have been a sort of hiding: Nick has needed to answer her questions about him, so that he could answer his own.  Now, his eyes linger on her face, even after she asks him about the Art of Time.

And here, his hand slides from her stomach and down to her ribs, hooks around and under her as he pulls her the rest of the way to him.  "Just name the day.  Today.  Tomorrow."  A beat.  "Pen, do you know what we should do with the power we wield?  I would...I always get the sense that you do.  I want to know."

mercury
Heat. Pen - flushes, slow; either because there is no more space between herself and Nicholas - with Pen fit into him at neatly as a hook into an eye, with Pen no longer an imperious and languorous Glamour against the window seat's back, but instead this ardent-eyed and suddenly focused acolyte of shared space of the mysteries of slipping a hand beneath the hem of a shirt, of a leg held between knees, of neighborhood-scandalizing window seat behavior - or because she is embarrassed. The flush is followed by the cool, pallor gone radiant.

She thinks about her answer to Nicholas because she is thoughtful as a matter of course, and in thought exercise there is truth sometimes. She thinks about her answer to Nicholas because she wants to get at something important, and she is an almost painfully earnest idealist. That hasn't been tarnished (yet [but will it ever tarnish?]). She thinks and her breathing comes a little ragged, until she swoops the tea light between them and the window up pinching the flame out.

"I know what I believe should be done with the sort of power we wield," Pen says, slowly. "I don't really ever have any doubts about that. But Crow, I don't know what we should do, concrete, and here. I don't know how to be an Adept, away from all the structure I have been trained up in. I should hone myself; you should hone yourself. We should be sharp, and readied, but being ready isn't enough. We should temper that with little acts, at least. Acts that -- you're right, what we want to see in the world is important. The most important thing, perhaps."

crow
Pen wicks out the candlelight, plunging the area around the windowseat into shadow.  He does not believe she is embarrassed, and so the bloom of heat in her cheeks confuses him though he has the feeling that perhaps maybe they will get to the root of what's been bothering her, something she hasn't been saying.

They have after all been in Denver for over three months now, or at least: that is how long Nicholas has been here with her.

"Ready isn't enough," he agrees.  "I want to do more.  I just..."  And here he trails off, eyes her for a moment and takes in this painful earnestness.  "So what is it that you want to see?"

mercury
"A clear path to take," Pen says, with a rueful quirk of her lips. She is honest, but she is also swift of wit. "You want to help people move forward, right? I don't want to -- I mean, I do want people to move forward, but I want to make certain that people have the opportunity and space to move forward, to become something that is ... their best something, and I think people are dragged down from that.

"Perhaps you could use your skills to find such people in danger, before they're in danger; I'll take care of the danger, and then we together can aid those left afterward in finding their most canny choice," Pen says, and she is serious, but at the end of what she is saying, she nestles (fiercely) into (poor[?]) Nicholas, spilling hot wax over the window sill.

crow
"Opportunity and space is important," Nick agrees, because - well, isn't that in some ways a thing that both of them have felt a lack of?  And Pen nestles into him, and Nick does not especially seem as though he needs any sort of sympathy here: he is a happy recipient, though fortunately not of the hot wax that puddles behind him.

"I would like that," he says.  "I..."  A beat.  "Well, I probably ought to do more to try to help you with the danger, though."  And it is his turn to be rueful, because he has been told this over and over so often.  "I want to do even more than that though.  I want...I don't know.  A more Awake world.  A more alive one, where this...where we don't have to struggle to wonder.  I've been thinking about that."

mercury
He wants a more Awake world. A more alive one. Pen says, softly, "An age of myth and wonder; a golden age." He's been thinking about that. Pen: she makes this inquiring noise in her throat, pulls away or leans away to watch Nicholas's face. She doesn't make comment on Nicholas doing more to try and help with the danger.

crow
Pen pulls away long enough so she can watch his face, and for a moment until he realizes that she is watching him she'll find him gazing away somewhere over her shoulder, some distant place: perhaps one of the candle flames in the room beyond, or one of the water basins.  Nick, he's like this.  She knows that.

But when he senses, through some sixth sense or otherwise, that she is watching him he looks back at her too and he says, "Yes.  Something like that.  I think we're in a...sort of winter, right now.  It won't last forever."

mercury
"Mm. I might think that, if I could look ahead, as if Time were no matter," Pen says, with the spark of a smile; her lashes gone low, again, but perhaps he can no longer see her face; she tucks it under his arm having decided to completely reposition herself.

Pen likes to observe Nicholas when he is observing who knows what (perhaps nothing at all; perhaps his own thoughts, or phantasms, or the possibility of either) instead of her, when he is Nicholas unobserved. So when some sense alerts him to her regard and he schools his focus back to her, she is passing wistful.

crow
This spark of a smile, and Nick's eyes have this way of quickening when he is playful, of being at once occluded and bright.  Artists will often use shadow for the sole purpose to lend depth to a thing; Nick is like that.

"So when would you like me to teach you?" he asks.  She has tucked herself under his arm, and he has reached up behind her and into her hair.  His gaze has gone thoughtful, almost pensive.  "It will be good to teach you.  I don't practice it as often as I should."  Then again, in Nick's estimation, it of all Spheres perhaps deserves the most caution.  It makes sense that he would think this; he was taught by Jonas.

mercury
"Now," Pen says. Is she joking?

Of course she is not.

crow
Is Pen joking?  He knows her better than to think that, for a minute.  There is this humored intake of breath and exhale; Nick had on some level already prepared himself for this answer.  He knows his wife; it has been said.

"I think the trick of Time is understanding how it works, in and of itself," Nick says, with a slight smile, because he remembers how difficult it was for him to wrap his head around it at the beginning (which is the middle, which is the end.)  "How do you understand it to work now?"



mercury
Pen's hand has found its way beneath Nicholas's shirt: this we know. Now she circles the ridge of his rib cage with her thumb, just as water in a holy well will circle one stone for years and years and years 'til it is worn away. Isn't her wine glass nearby? Wasn't that in danger, too? Pen is not prompt to answer.

"Plus Quam Perfectum," she says, at last. "I imagine it to work ontologically under the same principle of Tutt. The time of utterance, or rather how language reacts around the time of utterance. It exists; we are all hung up by it, like the man in the Tarot. Or the Hermit. I know Time belongs to the Wheel of Fortune, so I suppose I imagine I understand it to work in a fashion almost like Ars Fortunae. I just know it orders experience. I don't know how it does so; I'd say the ordering was inherent."

crow
His eyes are half-lidded, and most of his thoughts are on what Pen is saying but occasionally this one pushing in at the edges, of how much he likes it when Pen touches him and maps each line and curve of the frame this life has molded his flesh around.  There is an exhale, and a settling, the way this older house that they've chosen settles into the earth and roots itself over time.

"It works as a wheel within in a Wheel," he says.  "And can be turned forward, and back.  And like any other circle, it's one whole: the past and the present and the future are not separate, and they all exist concurrently.  That's an easy thing to say and a more difficult thing to grasp.  When we perceive time, or manipulate it, we aren't moving forward or back so much as finding a different place in the cycle."

mercury
Pen had untucked her face from his arm around the time she answered his question about how she 'understands' Time to work right now. Which is, essentially, it works, and by working we communicate (and by working, maybe one day we rot).

"How do you think that way? When you want to find a different place in the cycle? What helps you grasp it, truly?"

crow
"It depends on what I'm trying to do with it," Nick says, and glances down at Pen as she untucks her face from his arm.  "I find it helpful to do things that ground me less in my body.  I fast, or I meditate, or if I'm looking into the past I look for things that call to it and focus on that.  The future is harder for that reason.  It gets murky."

A beat.  "Jonas uses the Tarot to read and structure what he saw, when he was looking ahead or past.  I can do that, but it wasn't especially helpful to me.  It may be to you, though."

mercury
"I can do things that ground me less in my body," Pen says, after a hesitation, and her thumb leaves his ribcage so she can measure the jut of his hipbone instead, then the cohesion of a belt loop. They're already close, right, as bee and rose, as gull and air, and one - only one - lock of hair has come unpinned from her tidy upsweep, and it cuts across her strong jaw and the pulse at her throat and it is like a line of blood.

What to address or ask first? Tarot. "I have used Tarot before, to read fortune in the moment. What... why do you think Tarot would be helpful to me? And why wasn't it, to you?"

crow
"The key for me is to find ways to bring myself out of the present, or to understand how it relates to - how it is - the past and the future.  How each time something occurs it has occurred in something like that way thousands of times before, and will again.  There are small cycles and large ones.  The sun rises and sets and we breathe in and out and each small thing is contained within something greater."

There is this pause, because Pen's presence is certainly not doing anything to ground Nick less, though just now it's all to the good.  He wants to be right where he is.  He considers the shape and texture of the velvet as it dips and folds together between her shoulderblades.

"I thought the Tarot might be easier for you because of the narrative, and the concepts.  I've just never used that kind of thing to Work.  Not that I couldn't, but it's less intuitive for me."  A beat.  "What things can you do to ground you less?"

mercury
"You, O Bright and Hallowed Fire," Pen says. "I will be a Moth," and she nibbles, neatly and suggestively and rather delicately on Nick's collar: a feint. A true answer, maybe, but also a feint.

"...But you are right," she says. "I do find Tarot attractive, because of the symbols, because of all that connotation and metaphor. Perhaps the narrative, too. I don't know that I need narrative; only a moment of origin - does that make sense? A center? I keep wanting to come back to the moment of speaking."

Pause; her voice gone quiet, a stillness in it. "I could hold vigil."

crow
This is a feint; unfortunately, it's the kind of feint that usually works on him even when he knows it's a feint.  He stirs momentarily at what she says; Nick has gotten more and more used to accepting the poetic terms she uses for him, even when traces of embarrassment still linger.  His breath catches: and it's her true answer, and he would've been content to let her feint away.  There's always more time (hope) to revisit a topic.

When she shifts back to Tarot, he lifts his head so that he can rest it in his palm, leaning on elbow.  "It makes sense," he says.  "Having a center in mind, or a specific point in time, helps.  Especially at first."

Pen is still waters after that, gleaming and with untold depths that he can only guess at.  "Vigil for whom?"

mercury
"Not that kind of vigil, necessarily. But a vigil for myself. for tomorrow; for myself yesterday and myself tomorrow. For whatever comes during the vigil, even if it is only the thinning flame of wakefulness. A vigil for the hope in your heart. Have you ever held that kind of vigil before?"

The comb holding her hair has become somewhat dislodged; the upsweep holds, but begins to lose its shape; become suggestive of Maenad wildness, of sorceries. When Nicholas lifts his head and sets it on his palm, Pen regards his palm his fingers his hand with a look of faint betrayal. Her finger had hooked hard on his belt loop; now it considers the articulation of his spine.

crow
Here: faint betrayal from Pen, and so he smiles and lets his head drop back down onto his arm again, leaving his eyes even with hers.  His hair tumbles out and across his arm in waves (and how appropriate, that Nick-before-Nick was Anointed By Dark Water.  Did she see him, in the future, and know that she would never Ascend?  Can even Masters see so far?)

"No," he says quietly.  "I haven't.  I...I think maybe I would like to, though.  With you."  He reaches for the stray lock of her hair that has worked free of the comb, reaching up to tuck it behind her ear.  "Tell me more about what you have in mind."

mercury
Pen's gaze follows the movement of his hand and arm when he lets it go long again, dropping his head back down; the faint hint of betrayal does not quite dissipate, the fragrance left behind when one candle is blown out in a vast church hall, whatever subtle witchery is done between wick and air and fire and nothing. Then Pen's gaze finds Nick's again and stays, and her mouth bows (this is faint, too), touch of the luminous to her. She hooks her knee over Nick's hip, and (hypocrite [?]) props herself up on her elbow. Traces the line of his arm-through-his-shirt with the backs of her fingers.

"In the past, when I have held vigil, it has been before or after something of great moment to my life. I held one when -- do you remember those three days in April, before we married one to the other, when I went off for a weekend? I was holding vigil. I held vigil before I went Seeking for the first time, too, and then again afterward. I ... well, I have found it helpful to be in a room with open windows." Pen casts her gaze toward the ceiling, thoughtfully.

"And candles lit, of course; and some water, but not much; and some food, but again, not very much, and only if it is a long vigil. Something simple like rice. Chalk to draw with. An object to contemplate, or hold."

"I don't know how it will help with me learning Time, but it does take me away from my body. Or it has in the past."

crow
The chantry that Miles Lockbourne established was there to act as something of a surrogate: many of the people there, for one reason or another, had come to it because they were estranged from family, or from people who might have meant something to them prior to Awakening.  Nick did not have only one acarya; he learned some things from Miles and some from Patricia and some from Jonas and some from Delilah, after his initiation.

Pen's vigils, they remind him of Miles and what he learned from Miles, and it tugs at a corner of his mouth, this pleased and thoughtful thing.  He has tilted himself just slightly so that he can look up at her, as she's lifted herself above him now.

"It may be helpful to you in learning to look into the past, too," he says.  "If you wanted to do that.  You're marking the end of a cycle, it sounds like.  An end and a new beginning."

mercury
Her throat works; a swallow, bare. She is thirsty suddenly, leaves the line of his spine alone, leaves the warmth of his skin alone too, She reaches over him for the wine glass, which has been holding vigil by the window, beside its own ghostly reflection. First the flame went out, and then the wine glass was alone. Pen holds it between them, and there is careless grace here. She could break it if she is not careful; the glass holds her breath; does the wine warm to it? "I don't want to look into the past," she says.

crow
Pen reaches over him for the wine glass, and this is almost abrupt, the way in which the warmth of her fingers leaves him.  She is holding the glass between them then as she swallows from it, and Nicholas watches her, watches how the glass mists as she breathes into it.  There is a part of him that has always known this about her, because it's all there between the lines and in the things she doesn't say, the people she doesn't see so much.

Look into the heart of someone who is so focused on the future, who sees it as some bright thing beckoning and calling, and almost invariably the past is something of a shadow.  This is a truth.

"You don't have to," he says, and smooths his hand over the swell of her ribcage.  The velvet is sleek, he can't feel the ridges beneath, but he still traces with his fingers the place where a few of her ribs ought to be.  There is a beat, a silent debate that he settles with, "Are you afraid that it would only make you want to change it?"

mercury
You don't have to.

(Pen sips from the [chalice] cup, holding Nicholas's gaze.)

Are you afraid

(She still holds his gaze, but offers him the cup)

that it would only make

(And this room smells of a candle just gone out; two of the tea lights in the hall have burned their wicks down to the quick are nothing now but a fragrance, a lilt of memory, that swallow-it-down smell;

her ribs expand. Her lips are parted, and wine-wet.)

you want to change it?

(She licks them.)

"No." Her gaze goes to the side, his shoulder or arm again, some point where reverie can spin out. "I just believe if I knew how to look into the past, I'd look at things it's better for me not to see like that. Like my gaze can roam anywhere and anywhen. I'd want to see how Lysander was when he fought Carolingas, back when he was only twenty. I'd want to see Jonas when he was just new. I'd want to, I mean those at least: they aren't mine, so maybe I wouldn't look. But ... Liz, I'd look for her. And my Dad, I'd try to follow him to see. And..."

"I just ... I know there would be no point, it would be indulgent, and it would hurt. But I think I would do it."

She's afraid she would do it.

crow
Pen is offering him the wine glass; for the moment he does not take it, because his gaze has gone diffuse and he is looking inward, perhaps.  "I think of all the magick we can learn, Time is the most dangerous," he says.  "At least for us, as individuals.  I think you're wise to be afraid."

Why he has been spared this temptation he does not know; perhaps at its core is mere Traditional difference, their teachings and beliefs.  He takes the wine glass from her, and he swallows.  "I don't look into the future, that way.  At least, not for myself or for anyone I know.  Not the long term.  I don't think I ever will."

mercury
"I would look into the future." Pen loosens the gold braid rope around her waist and takes the wine glass back from Nicholas, if he is done drinking. She swallows again, and says, "You could change that if you didn't like it, or it could warn you, or let you know how much time you have to complete a task."

Maybe here's where Penelope's understanding of Time is nascent: is not Nicholas's own. She does not have the same kind of sense of inevitability; she has a sense of inevitability, but it is not one that brooks inability by man to change what is to come if he wishes to.

"Why don't you look into the future? Because you don't want to be like -- others?"

crow
To what she says, her suggestion as to how it could be useful: he nods, because he could see the potential usefulness here.  Likely just as Pen could understand how under some circumstances it could be helpful to see into the past.  Still, is the Hope at the bottom of the box, curled into a corner like a sole bright golden thread, worth the fears and furies and horrors that stream out ahead of it?

Perhaps.

"I worry that I would be," he says.  The taste of the wine is heavy in his mouth, left a dry sensation on the back of his tongue.  "Everything eventually has to end.  I think it would be...terrible to see the end, and still know that no matter what you change you're only exchanging one end for another."  A beat.  "Jonas told me once that he sifted through multiple threads once, drew a few times, and in all of them his fate was ultimately the same.  I think he stopped after that."

mars
[BUT WAIT.]

mercury
Pen stays silent for a long time to stay silent in the middle of a conversation. While she is silent, her hand strays to Nicholas's waist, just by her knee on his hip which flexes to draw him nearer her at the midpoint of her silence. The loosened robe sweeps down over one shoulder, at the neck. A green shadow, an arcing curve. And she does not fix her gaze on some other point, just (lips parted, the moment before a Word is born) looks into Nicholas's eyes but is seeing something -- it wouldn't be fair to say 'else.' Absorbed by thought as she is, she is still looking consciously at Nicholas.

"I don't know what to say about Jonas. I want to say ... that the worst curse I ever heard of anybody being under was to be so skilled, so - so full of potential, so sighted when it comes to others but stricken with an inability to see in his own way anything but tarnish. But you know I don't believe his fate has to be," a pause; sometimes silence is more eloquent.

"And I..."

Intimate, see, as mist on a water, that's her voice right now. "I guess I just don't worry about that. Maybe I should? If you exchange one end for another, you know at least you have done it. You have done it. And all ends are the same, aren't they? We die."

"I don't mind swapping deaths around, as long as I try to do well beforehand. I don't think I will mind knowing what might happen. Ultimately. Because I already do? Only the details will be a surprise. But perhaps I would not look so far. I don't know how useful it would be."

"I don't know why I can't think about the past like that."

crow
Pen, she stays silent.  It is something that Nick never minds; he is comfortable with it, happy to be drawn in closer until he could not possibly be any closer than he is right now.  He wraps his arm around her waist, his fingertips tracing the curve of her spine.  What is difficult for him is to not look away, to hold her eyes (or more accurately, to allow them to hold him there, whatever she is seeing in them.)

Anything but tarnish.

And then look away he does, this quick sweep down and to the right, his lashes half-lowering, dark and feather-soft, over the sharp edges of his cheekbones.  Because: he does not fear death.  Nicholas does not need to say this.  It's the details.  But she knows that.

His eyes return to hers again as she stops talking, and his own are clear amber, enlivened as they are by the half light.  "I think the only thing I can truly say I regret is that I didn't see Liz more clearly.  She was suffering and I made all the wrong conclusions.  And I always think that maybe if I...well, that maybe she wouldn't have Fallen."

He draws in a breath, holds it there in his chest.  "I think, if I did look back into that one thing, if I ever saw all the little signs that I missed or..."  Beat.  Because sometimes silence is more eloquent.  "I think guilt and regret are like that."

mercury
Pen's gaze drops, uncertain, to Nicholas's chest and stays there.

When? Pen (daring?) does keep her gaze on his until after he finishes speaking.

He'd looked away; when he'd looked back he'd seen her still, just looking at him in that way she has. He doesn't know how she looks at him when he isn't looking at her; he has maybe felt it, sometimes, the certainty that her gaze is on him, turned to find it but when their eyes meet hers react to the meeting, to the share of the gaze; when he is looking away, it's another kind of look.

crow
Her gaze has come to rest somewhere around his chest, to the loosened top button of the light blue striped shirt he wore to work today.  His gaze when she does is this tender thing, wonder just overshadowed by affection and desire and just now touched with uncertainty.   Whatever opaque layering might be laid over it under most circumstances fallen away because that is Nick when no one is looking at him.  Of course: she is looking away and she does not see him.

He doesn't say anything, not for a few moments: gives her space to see if she simply needs to gather her thoughts.

Her eyes are still there, and his hand slides up her back and over her shoulder, over the dip in her neck where her robe has fallen away, and he traces his thumb over her cheekbone.  "Is it something else?"

mercury
So her gaze flicks up to meet his again, and stay. Pen is a Romantic at heart. Always has been, ever since she was digging holes to Hades to bury her hand-bound books of poetry in. Her eyes are almost dark, reflect Nicholas and the night beyond the window; there is candle light in her hair.

"I just miss people sometimes." Pause.

Sudden movement; she catches his hand; turns her mouth to his palm and lines her fingers up with his so they are cupped they are cradled.

"I wish I had been better for you. I wish to be better."

She smiles; turns the edge of the smile once more into his hand, which she still has hold of, so. "Teach me more about Time. Shall we hold a vigil soon?"

"Shall you help me be unrestrained and loosed from my body?"

Sug-gest-ive.

crow
She misses people sometimes, she says, and the smile that appears there is more in his eyebrows and eyes, soft at the edges: wistful.

Pen has not allowed him to trap himself there, and as she smiles he cannot help leaning in and kissing her cheek, just at the corner of her mouth, just where the skin begins to lift.  "Soon," he agrees.

Her next question chases away whatever wistfulness might have remained in his smile, and the second kiss is deeper, is ardent.  His glance over his shoulder to the window, and then around to the curtains that hang there at the edges, is an afterthought.  He reaches over to yank them into place, and they fall in quiet folds over the chilled panes of glass and against his back: a momentary distraction, but one it's probably better that he took the time for.

They've scandalized their poor neighbors enough for one night.

Because I don't believe people are broken

Margot Travers
At the beginning of the week, Nicholas Hyde found a voicemail on his cellphone.  Margot's quick-spoken voice sounded hushed and hurried, like she was trying to avoid being overheard by making this brief.

"Hey, Nick, it's Margot.  I'm, uh... This is awkward, but you said you were a counselor?  Well, the Doc..  That is to say, I was wondering if maybe we could talk?  I have insurance through the university, I don't want to be presumptive of your time or anything."  A pause just long enough to be awkward, maybe long enough for Margot to smack herself in the forehead before she finished up.  "Please let me know.  Thanks."

Nick got back to her, agreed to meet her and suggested Washington Park as a nice open space.  Thursday'd work out best.

They met at a landmark that was easy to find, a bright patch of flowers well manicured and cared for in beautiful, colorful patterns with walkways between them.  Margot was lurking near a patch of lavender, apparently counting bees and robins.  The temperature was chillier today than it had been recently, so she was dressed in a brown jacket and gray beanie cap.  Jeans and brown sneakers, she seemed almost like she was purposefully dressed in the blandest colors possible.  Urban camoflauge, an reremarkable blending in that had nothing to do with supernatural flair.

Nicholas Hyde
Nicholas is versed in the Art of Time magick, and so perhaps a part of him one way or another always knew this day would come.  An Awakened member of the community has called him: You said you were a counselor?

Truth be told, Nick is surprised it has taken this long.  But they're a willful lot, magi.  It isn't a surprise that the call has come from an apprentice.

He had agreed to meet Margot, assuring her all the while that she was not a burden and was not being presumptive of his time.  Today will find him meeting her in the park where she lingers by a patch of flowers, their soft violet hues a contrast to the budding growth of young Spring.  Soon it will snow, and it will kill off some of the flowers that have just begun to break through the soil.  So it goes.

Nick is wearing a puffy green jacket today (the color is coincidental; he has been avoiding the drunken throngs of people throughout downtown) and a pair of brown corduroys.  His hair is beginning to grow wild, dark crown of curls as it is, and he has not as yet made any recent attempt to tame it with shears.  He has his hands in the pocket of his jacket as he sights her and wanders up.  His feet make no sound, would not even if he were not treading through soft grass, and so he is careful that his voice foretells his coming before he is anywhere near her.  "Hello, Margot."

Margot Travers
Soft footsteps and a greeting before proximity spoke of Nick's practice with cases like Margot's.  She'd straightened up a little (as opposed to startling, like she'd done last time), and turned her head to look for and toward him.  It helped that she was expecting him this time, too.  When her eyes found his face she smiled.  The expression was genuine, she liked Nick, his presence was a welcome one.

"Hey, Nick.  Thanks for meeting me."

Her hands stayed in her pockets, but she turned her shoulders so she was more faced toward the other Mage.  Eyes cast over the hue of his jacket, then she grinned a lopsided grin and pulled her jacket zipper down, tugged a lapel out.  Her shirt underneath was shamrock green.

"Going out tonight, have to make sure nobody has an excuse to come pinching.  How are you?"

Nicholas Hyde
"Glad that I'm not covering for the emergency department this weekend."  There is a touch of wry in his tone here, though he doesn't necessarily expect her to laugh: this is the sort of gallows hospital humor that sometimes follows people outside of work, when they do the sort of work he does.

He, too, has smiled upon greeting.  Nick is the sort of man who finds it easy to reflect the emotions of those around him, who perhaps even takes them on to some extent.  It can't be entirely avoided.  Regardless: he does seem happy to see Margot as well, and there's this little tilt to his brows that indicates some concern even before they've begun to speak.  Her voice message, after all, was a little worrying.

"Do you want to go sit somewhere?  Might as well enjoy the ground while it's dry."  A rare enough thing during this time of the year.

Margot Travers
"Sure, or we can walk-and-talk like this is a political drama."  She wasn't quite perceptive enough yet to readily recognize the small tilt of concern to his brown, and so held her grin up just a little while longer before turning and beginning to walk.  Regardless, they'd need to go elsewhere, so she began walking, figuring he would be doing so as well.

With the initial bit of friendly greeting out of the way, and with a few moments to pass for Margot's hoisted grin to slip away as well, the girl's expression fell solemn instead.  She was thinking of how to approach what they were there to talk about, and thinking over the content itself was distressing enough without really knowing how to present it.

So she started with a story.

"When we were having this talk, Doc and Ned and I, Doc told me that I should just learn how to 'fix it'.  That I'm a witch and it'll be easy.  I think that he might have forgotten quite what being on my level is like, having been able to change things as much as he does for as long as he has.  I think that would take... ah... quite some time."

Nicholas Hyde
Margot indicates that she would prefer to walk, and so Nick easily falls into step beside her, and without question.  There is a certain part of his demeanor that seems tailored to put her at ease, which she might notice if she were perceptive enough yet.  He walks along with his hands still in his pockets, his gaze on the trail ahead.

He doesn't prompt her, yet, as she seems to mull over just what it is she wants to talk to him about.  There is this look he gives her out of the corner of his eye occasionally where he notes that her smile has faded, that there are little tells that indicate some distress - what can he see?  And if she had gone quiet much longer he might indeed have laid out some sort of launching pad for her.

Instead he listens.  His left hand wiggles occasionally inside its pocket as he spins his wedding ring around his finger with the ball of his thumb, though this ceases once she has finished.

"What does he think you should be able to fix?"

Margot Travers
As they walked, they passed a bench.  Nick let her lead, and Margot chose to keep on walking.  She went at a comfortable pace, slow to him perhaps on account of her stature and shorter legs.  Took her time and kept her eyes on the path ahead.

She also took her time answering Nick's question.  Not so much that he may feel like he'd have to prompt her or switch gears, though.

"Last week Doc called Ned and I over because he was hearing this knocking sound-- it was following him around the house.  I can sense Spirits, and he cannot, so he wanted me to see if I could feel what was happening.  I sensed another Mage.  Turns out he'd pissed off a Dreamspeaker and she came through the Gauntlet to get the jump on him in his lab

When I heard her screaming at him and him yelling back, it panicked me.  Badly.  Ned had to.. get me back upstairs.  Help me breathe and calm down and had to leave me there to go help Doc."

Her chin tucked into her jacket when a breeze picked up, and she chuckled a low little chuckle.  "Turns out Ned was not well equipped to de-escalate the situation.  This Shaman had the upper hand and Ned was antagonizing her.  Turns out he's almost as bad with people as Doc is.  Doc got hurt.  Things could'a gone badly.  I..  I pulled it together and got the situation calmed down and everything worked out and we're all okay but...

"But I can't jam up like that.  Not with everything that we have to be on the look out for, not with everything that we meddle with."

Nicholas Hyde
There are a lot of questions to ask here.  Nick has so many questions.  He swallows all of them for the time being, piles them up inside him and sorts through them to find out which will be the most helpful here.  After all: Margot has come to him with a problem.

He is not the sort of man who will overlook that to pry information from her, to use her vulnerability to gather power.  He could be, but he's not.

There is a silence that passes between them after Margot finishes, and in that silence Nick's eyes have wandered on ahead, have roved from the bench to a little spray of daisies that they pass.  His hand leaves his pockets long enough to catch the petals of one of them, and he runs his finger over the little plant before releasing it and letting it spring back into place unharmed.  Then his hand returns to his pocket.

"That sounds like a lot of responsibility that you're taking on for what happened.  It also sounds like, as an apprentice, with a lot of this very new to you, you had a very normal reaction.  Andrés told you that you freezing up is something that needs to be fixed?"

Margot Travers
"No, it's not just freezing up as in not knowing what to do.  It was..."

Margot watched Nick touch the flowers that they passed without causing them injury, frowned and kept eyes on the daisies while they sprang and bounced back into place.  Looked forward again and tried again to better describe.

"I got confused.  It felt like when I Awakened, and I thought that I was with my mother and brother again.  I hid under a blanket and did breathing exercises before I could even bring myself to get back to the staircase.  He said that he's seen it before, that it gets worse.  Post traumatic stress disorder, I've done some reading, I think that's what he's talking about."

She looked at her sneakers and watched them consume the dirt path beneath them, mouth pursed closed and tight.  Because she knew that next came the part where she explained what happened to her family.

Nicholas Hyde
There is, perhaps, a part of Nicholas that had known this about her, or suspected, long before she told him.  He is not a mind reader, but he excels at picking up on contextual clues and piecing them together; he's a clever man.  This has been observed about him before.  So in this sidelong look he gives Margot, there is no surprise.

She's done some reading, and this is no surprise either.  In spite of the topic, there is this little half smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth as they walk together.  It is perhaps a little fond, this thoughtful thing.  It is gone by the time she finishes speaking, though, by the time the muscles around her mouth tighten.

"So it brought a lot of things back for you, it sounds like.  What sorts of things are you understanding about yourself from what you're reading?  I'd like to make sure we're on the same page."

Margot Travers
The bookish quality that little Margot Travers had about her seemed to be endearing her to any number of potential mentor figures.  When Doc first sat her and Ned down for a serious explanation of what they were in for she'd produced a pencil and notebook, and the Doc had to put forth a concentrated effort to avoid looking too pleased with her.  The fact that she'd gone to the trouble of researching the subject herself, as opposed to tip-toeing around and waiting for somebody else to tell her what it was and what exactly to do with it, caused Nick to smile despite the weight of the subject at hand.

What did she understand from that reading?  For the first time since they started walking-and-talking she looked directly at him, apparently confused by the question and seeking clarification.

After a moment she tried, though, sounding cautious like she wasn't certain if she was answering right.  "That... I'm at risk around stuff that reminds me of what happened.  And hearing the Doc fighting with that Shaman lady, the shouting and all must've brought me back.  And it can keep compounding and complicating if I keep denying it and avoiding it."

She moved a hand from her pocket to tuck loose hair out of her face and back under her wool cap again.  "I also think that I need to finish some unfinished business.  Maybe closing the final chapter on that story will help."

Nicholas Hyde
Margot appears to be seeking clarification, and to what she says he only nods.  He keeps even with her as they walk, even though his legs are longer and he likely has to slow his pace to accommodate her.  "It sounds like you have a good understanding of what's going on then.  Do you want to talk about what happened, before?"

Another sidelong glance to her.  "You don't have to, if you don't want to."

Margot Travers
[Well, Margot, how willing are you to talk?]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Margot Travers
A sidelong look was met with a look in kind-- Nick'd find wide hazel eyes staring right back at him.  Perhaps evaluating his visage and determing if it was trustworthy enough to lay this on the line with.

Well, she'd come this far.  And this was what she was here for.  And if you never stepped off the ledge you'd never learn to swim again.

So Margot took a breath, looked forward, curled her hands into fists in her pockets, and started.

"I grew up in Portland, Maine, with my mom and my brother.  And my brother sucks, like, a lot.  He's been into meth and heroin and shit since he was like 14 or 15 years old.  And this one night last summer..."  There.  It was starting already.  She felt a swelling in her throat and a skip in her heart and breath.  She paused, took a breath, and pressed on.  "Luke hadn't been home for two and a half months and then came back in a huff.  Tearing up his room, wanting to know where mom was, accusing her of taking something."  She snorted with angry disdain.  "He thought she found some stash of drugs he was holding and when she came home from work he got into a fight with her about it.  He was high as fuck on something and it was intense so I went outside to call the cops and... and he.. and she..."

She stopped walking now and was staring forward-down.  Tears stung her eyes and she took a breath again but pushed on, even if it did all come out as a rush, because this was difficult and she felt like something were gripping her heart and squeezing it tight and it made her want to leap and kick and bound away like a terrified red rabbit but she could do no such thing.  Disciples of Warrior Goddesses didn't run away from scary shit in their past.  They faced it.

"I heard a scream and when I came back in Luke was choking her and he smashed her head on the counter and she died I saw the life leave her and everything came down and in and exploded and now Luke only has one arm and I brought mom's body back to life but it's just her body and it's in some fucking institute upstate and I just fucking ran away from them."

Nicholas Hyde
People bare their souls to Nick on a regular basis.  He knows things about other people that their mothers don't know, that their spouses don't know, that they've never spoken of to another human being.  This is the first time Margot has told anyone this, or at least he suspects this intuitively in how the words tumble out of her.

He has turned his head in full toward her, and he is still walking but only to keep pace with her.  He would've stopped otherwise, and he slows his own pace gradually because he would prefer to be facing her right now.  The first thing he says is, "Is it okay if I touch you?"  And when she gives assent, he reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder, curving it over the blade, this solid firm bracing pressure.  In front of her, so she can see it and anticipate it.

He will let a silence pass again as he gathers his thoughts, because this never gets easier, being with other people in the thousand small ways that they die.  He squeezes her shoulder once.

"What happened to you and your mother is terrible."  Her brother, too, but: everything in its time.  His tone communicates what his words cannot possibly, the weight of all of it.  "Margot, you know that none of that was your fault, right?  Not any of that, and not staying upstairs while Andrés was fighting with that shaman."

Margot Travers
The hand on her shoulder was accepted, and though the very nature of human touch while soul-bearing made her want to weep Margot swallowed her tears, steeled her resolved, and took another breath.

"I know that."  Because she did.  She knew it and she meant it.  She looked up at Nicholas and, miraculously, those owl-like eyes hadn't spilled tears just yet (though it wasn't a far cry from happening).

"But there's an apprentice that was kidnapped and tormented by the Technocracy in this city.  Me and my friend, we're apprentices too.  And there's Mauraders and Nephandi and Monsters and Ghosts and any other number of things that go bump, things that are bound to happen doing what we do.  What happens if I'm in a situation where if I shut down and start seeing my mom--"  That stung.  She pumped the brakes, tried again.

"I don't want to make myself anymore vulnerable than I already am by the nature of being me right now."

Nicholas Hyde
Nick's hazel eyes meet hers, and there are a lot of people who would have trouble maintaining eye contact like he does while someone else is obviously so close to crying.  He does not look away, though he does pull in a long breath that swells his chest; and then release.

"It's brave of you to tell me this, and I know you're going to keep being brave.  If you shut down and start seeing your mom, we'll figure it out."  And if he too is afraid of Marauders and Nephandi and Monsters and Ghosts, well, she wouldn't know.  She can't know yet that those things only become more terrifying as the stakes get higher.  Nicholas is being The Adult today.

There is another little squeeze of her shoulder, and though his eyes had wandered for a moment, here they find hers again.  "Margot," and here there is a slight smile, something wistful, "I know you're a smart woman, so tell me honestly - when you look at Andrés, do you think he 'fixed it'?  Do you think this is something that you can magick away?"

Margot Travers
The question that Nick posed had Margot looking thoughtfully at him.  It solemned her up some, and maybe that was intentional.  Speaking of the current, the here and now.  The people that were not her Mother and Brother, but rather her Mentor and Fellow.

When she replied, her answer seemed well thought out, deliberately phrased.  "I don't believe that the advice the Doc gave me is any advice that he has taken for himself.  But then, I don't know what the Doc would be fixing for himself like I would be trying to fix me."  Then her words loosened some, because she was speaking less about the Doc (revealing fewer details about him, for they were his details and not hers).

"That said, I think Magick utilized by the right person could 'magick it away', but I don't think that the Doc or I are the right people."  She paused, and cast a glance back up to Nick.  Considered him for a moment, then cleared her throat and rolled her shoulder under his hand to request that it be moved.  Turned to start walking again.  "I don't think that's exactly your style either.  Seems contrary to what you do for a living."

Nicholas Hyde
Margot suggests that this sort of use of the Art of Mind is contrary to what he does for a living, and Nick draws in a breath, and as he considers his eyes fall somewhere down and to the right.  Toward the flowers, perhaps, though - no, if she follows his gaze she'll find it directed nowhere specific.  "I don't believe in fixing people because I don't believe people are broken.  This is...grief is normal, and natural.  It's our refusal to accept pain as a part of life and death that makes us suffer."

A beat.  He has bitten the inside of his cheek, thoughtful.  His hand had fallen away after her shoulder rolled beneath it, and now he is walking with her again.  "I understand what you're saying to me.  And I think figuring out how to not shut down in bad situations is a good idea.  If you wanted to learn the Art of Mind yourself, learning to shape yourself that way would be a good way to start.  Magi that I know who are advanced in that Art say they began by figuring out what they could change."

His hands have been tucked back into his pockets.  His footfalls next to her are still without sound.  "I think it would also be helpful for you to keep talking with someone, and because I don't have the appropriate distance from the situation it would be unethical for it to be me.  I know Sleepwalkers who do what I do and would understand the aspects related to magick, though."

Margot Travers
"I don't know..."  There was a clear tone of uncertainty when it came to the Mind sphere.  For reasons that she herself didn't quite get (something about it not really meshing with her paradigm, no doubt) she didn't really feel like she would be reaching into the minds of people around her or steeling her own, much like how she didn't see herself messing around in the river of Time.

But for talking with people, she nodded in agreement.  That one seemed like much more of a no brainer.

"..wait, there are Sleepers who know about Magick?"

And the conversation may take a turn from there.  Margot would be very curious to know about consors and Sleepwalkers who aided Mages and things of that nature.  When their visit and walk around the park came to a close she would thank him sincerely and a couple of times over while they were saying goodbye.  Probably got a name and phone number out of him for somebody else to begin visiting too.

Tragically, when Margot Travers and Nicholas Hyde parted ways, the young Apprentice had given no warning of her plans for misadventure for the evening (tracing shooting victims and interfering in drug wars of the city's underbelly).  Perhaps he could have been a voice of reason and stopped her.