you don't have to be okay. [samir, in progress]

 Samir
Not long after the impromptu bonfire in Wash Park a certain Verbena received a text message from a certain Virtual Adept. It was a gif of an owl doing whatever the fuck owls do with themselves all day. Eventually they got around to

So... do we need vodka to talk about what's up, or are you okay?

By the barest definition of 'okay' so are they all but that's not why he was asking. Strange moods all around the fire that night and hers was the one he couldn't crack. Sera's either but he and Sera do not have any sort of anything to do with each other anymore. Not unless other people call in aid and no one is going to call Sam to help with Sera. Grace and he are in constant communication with each other and River did not go home alone.

That is neither here nor there.

She wants to go to a taqueria. He has to travel into the city in order to accommodate her. He travels into the city to accommodate her. Winter be damned! Winter can't stop him! Winter ain't shit!

The place is just called Tacos Tequila Whiskey. That's where they converge. By the time he makes it from there to the train station Sam looks about half frozen but he thaws out quick enough.

They've sat. He's ordered a Loveland Mule and no food to go with it. Their server is a lovely woman who looks like she is a grandmother and she has just left the table to tend to their drinks when Sam frowns and takes in the weather on the other side of the table.

KiaraI'm fine. That had been the entirety of the text at first. What he receives back from the brunette in the textual version of shaking her arm free of a concerned hand laid to it. There was a distance to the response, a chill that no more suited Kiara Woolfe than her wariness had that night in the park.

A minute passes and then: I wouldn't say no to the vodka, though.

So: she does come. Has already settled at a table when he finds her, half frozen from the less than gentle caress of the city's current mood. She's wearing a long sleeved shirt, Kiara, it's two sizes too big for her and falls over one of her shoulders, baring whatever darker layers she's thrown on beneath. Accompanied with the piercings in her ears and the rings on the Verbena's fingers - the image she casts out is somewhere south of dramatic.

Her make up certainly adds to the allure of it; dark liner and bright red lipstick.

It may occur (had to others) that she puts it on like armor. The crimson shade, the bold eyeshadows. Project your idealized self long enough and the facade becomes more believable than anything that might have lain beneath it.

She orders whiskey in the end, not vodka.

Watches the tender far longer than she has a need to before her eyes tick back to find Samir regarding her beneath that wild abandonment of dark hair, the way it behaved, it was as reminiscent of a tangle of vines left to thrive as dark waves. It grew as thick and fast as such, too.

"So are you planning to wait for our drinks before you ask." She states, with a little wisp of a smile, a little glint in her eyes that is not all amusement (the vines had thorns). "Or cut straight to the interrogation."

Samir"What." Deadpan. "You said you were fine. Why would I ask again?"

If she detects a hint of sarcasm in the hacker's tone no one would accuse her of having an active imagination. Her makeup accomplishes the same thing that his long hair and fondness for dark clothes and cigarettes does. It projects an image. Most people don't try to fuck with brown-skinned dudes who dress like they're in a bad mood all the time.

KiaraHe gets a frown.

It finds companionship in the tiny line that appears between her eyebrows and she turns her face away from him with this abrupt motion that speaks of a fine tension - no, doesn't just speak of it. Broadcasts it. There's a way her chin lifts a little in reproach for it. The retort, whatever the hell she's finding so interesting that it requires fixed staring at out the window.

In truth she has no clear idea what Samir may or not already know about what's been going on of late.

Perhaps seeing him with River has convinced her of his awareness. Maybe there's a sense in her that River is the entire reason he's here tonight. She'd been as much a part of things (if not more, in every sense, in the worst sense) as the Verbena had. There hadn't been any hiding Kiara's interest in the other woman at the fireside, after all.

She'd stared at her several times with the clean focus of an individual trying to work out how far underneath the layers the scarring was.

Kiara's isn't so far down - she'd no better know how to hide her feelings for long than she would how to ignore a dying human on the side of the road. That being, it's inherent. There's a bubbling sort of anger for it, though. A volatility in the way she answers him while looking out into the wilderness of Denver tonight. "I don't know, isn't that what we do? Ask if people are fine and hope they remember their response. I'm fine, I'm good. Life is fucking peachy."

Her eyes shift back, then. Glimmering and dark. "I guess I am okay. If we're scoring by what constitutes it for most of us." Their drinks arrive and Kiara's eyes lower, her mouth remaining a tense little moue until she can curl her fingers around her glass. Some of the anger seems to seep out of her at the next: "How much has River told you about what happened to her."

SamirBelieve it or not Samir Lakhani does not have a ton of experience with women being mad at something he's said. Any gender to be quite frank. That would involve having at least a couple tons of experience interacting with folks when they're vulnerable and then calling them out and waiting while they communed with the window or the world outside the window.

They met at a goddamn art opening. He was selling drugs and she was there because that's where the night had taken her. He was nervous and prone to rambling and they got on the topic of the Umbra somehow. An exchange of information led to emails. That was so long ago.

Life is fucking peachy.

It's his turn to frown. No anger in it. He has thus far resisted the urge to start rotating things on the table but then their drinks arrive. The copper mug in which his drink arrived is way better for rotating than his silverware roll. If he starts rotating the damned thing it's going to become ritual. It's like trying to ignore an itch though. Like he can feel it in his palm.

His eyes are on her even though he's fucking with his just-arrived drink.

"I'm not sure. I mean, we've talked. All the shit that happened with the Fallen..." He pauses before saying something he can't unsay. Flicks his eyebrows. "... she's told me about that."

KiaraIt's reflexive, for most of them. The hesitation that comes before they say something unnatural. Something that didn't belong to this world of Thanksgiving decorations and half price sales reminders in windows that you passed by, they're sitting in this little place that sells tacos and there's a total of about five patrons and their waitress but it's so: uncomplicated.

It's another day for them. It's take out food and beer. It's a radio blaring low level banality from hosts counting down the top 40 whatever for tonight.

And then there's Samir and Kiara and she's looking furiously down at that glass in her hand as if something he's said has upset her. He looks perhaps, equally as unhappy. Their waitress is under the impression they're another young couple about to break up and spends an unnecessarily long time wiping down the bar closest to their table.

That's uncomplicated, too. And human. The desire to pay homage to the spillover of everyday, trivial life.

The waitress moves away when the brunette's eyes do from her whiskey and she's holding Samir's gaze for a long moment. Long enough that he can read quite a few things without even necessarily meaning to: one, Kiara was troubled by the word Fallen, two, there was no small amount of trauma somewhere in the woman and three, that complicated interplay of anger warring with regret was so present it may as well have pulled up its own chair and joined in their conversation.

"Yeah. That."

She lifts the glass to her lips and takes a generous sip of it. It burns, the way only whiskey can and Kiara makes this tiny sound in recognition; this little supple grimace. "I met him. He was in my apartment wrapped up in her former mentor's skin." She lets her eyes tick to Samir's face, reads his expression. "I helped him out, Michael, helped him deal with an issue," she doesn't like it, referring to Alice as an issue, but she doesn't elaborate in the moment.

"Long story short, the Artist as he was known, made a cameo appearance."

SamirMost of what he can claim to know about the situation has come either from Ginger or from Grace. The two are distinguishable to him because he knows Grace. How Grace disseminates information is different from how she talks. Then again Sam has a different way of talking when he's securing a transaction and making plans to drop off drugs to someone he met on the Silk Road. There's the professional and then there's the person.

He hasn't thought ahead to what he's going to do when he hits the number twenty-three. Depending on how long this conversation goes for he could do twenty-three sets of twenty-three. Just the thought makes him anxious.

What Kiara tells him now is new information. It startles him out of his own thoughts even if it doesn't stop him indulging his madness a bit. He's interested in what she has to say and he's concerned and she has as much of his attention as she could hope for knowing as she does how easy it is for him to fall into Quiet. How new his expanded power is. It has to be disorientating for him to be out in the world right now but he'd rather listen to Kiara talk than sit at home playing with himself so here they are.

"Shit, dude." This is the part where he would ask if this is another one of those stories she hasn't told anyone else but that isn't a question he needs to ask now. Thinking before you speak is an art form. It's obvious she survived the encounter. It's also obvious that Sam is surprised by this. "You were alone with it?"

KiaraShe hasn't asked him about it, yet. Had noticed it, the other night and he'd been aware that she'd felt it: the change in him. The stronger pulse to his presence. That piercing quality that sliced into her skin whenever Samir's eyes settled on her. It's not exactly comforting, the way he feels but neither could it be said part of the Verbena, not so long ago, had been either.

She'd brought with her the impression of degradation and decay, before her Seeking. Before it had shifted and enveloped her; translated itself into a stronger sense of the rebirth. The evolution of life after the fact, she felt like renewal, now. Administered it too, through her touch. She'd laid her palm against his skin not so many months ago and done exactly that.

Shit, dude.

Her mouth bends at some impression of mirth, it's a strained, sad little squiggle that turns up the edges. The Verbana's lovely features don't suit the tension behind it. It doesn't reach near her eyes, they remain dark and tinged with that same fierce gleam. "Not exactly. Michael's past life, the - I was speaking with Alice, who was tormented by the Artist in another life. Michael's other life." That's a lot to digest and the quiet, steady way she sets down each word reads an uncertainty for how the Mercurial Elite will process each.

If he was anything like Grace, it would take time - and a lot of convincing.

"She was there and I was trying to help her and I did something right because he took an interest." There's another sip of whiskey. "We'd been prepared for it, you know? Michael and I. We knew if we found a way to reach Alice and help her come to terms - he might weasel his way in.

I knew there was a risk and I was willing to take it but - " She lets out a shaky breath. "It was close. He had my knife in his hands. That isn't the worst part of it, though. The worst part is I'm so angry, Samir." She draws a hand to her face, aborts whatever the gesture had been like a nervous tic and drops it back to the table, her eyes moving to the window again. "That something like that could creep inside and do that sort of damage. That I felt it.

That I looked into its eyes and knew it planned to kill me. I just feel so - " She looks back, her cheeks faintly flushed. "Like I can't be okay after that because I know that feeling, now. The way that darkness feels. The way it looks.

I think that's the worst part. Not the blood or the death, but - the fact that I remember that."

Samir
See: Sam doesn't remember much about the week and change he spent in Quiet. He had to put forth a supreme amount of effort to just be present for an hour or so and he had made the effort that day he ran into Grace and she called in reinforcements. Part of his brain remembers the weight of Kiara's palm on his chest. Most of it does not. If prompted he could dredge it up.

He and Grace have a lot in common. In this instance Kiara does not have to grab hold of his arm and twist it behind his back to convince him that past lives are a thing. Blame it on his grandparents. They're Hindu. Reincarnation is a thing in Hinduism.

Of course he may want to get into it in greater detail at a later date. The cause of Kiara's most recent near-brush with death is only important in that it happened and not because it's a catalyst for the furthering of his enlightenment.

He's looking right at her as she confesses this to him. Even if he doesn't understand he can empathize. And Kiara can see the empathy in his gaze if she is able to look that far outside herself. She's talking to a man who looked a chimera forged out of two young women right in the face before she - they? not it. - tried to bite off his fucking head.

"You don't have to be okay right now," he says. "That's a shitty thing to have to remember."

KiaraSad little manifestation of their lives, that.

The fact that what the Verbena is re-telling is just the most recent in a string of near-death experiences she's had. Probably won't be the last. More than likely won't be the worst thing she ever has to look at, insanity and mayhem squatting inside a man's body like some malevolent possession. Kiara hadn't been there when the chimera attacked - but she'd seen the aftermath of it. Smelled it, the smoldering ruin on the ground.

The blood, the quiet panic in Elijah's voice.

She'd helped dismember what remained of two corpses and weighted half down in the lake and yet - somehow, it hadn't felt as troubling as this most recent encounter had. Didn't wake her up at night in a cold sweat with nausea rolling her stomach around. Didn't make her want to call a man she barely knew just to be sure he was still himself.

It was hard to tell, of course, what would scare the mind. Where someone's limits were. The line in the sand.

She's looking right at Samir and he can see her digesting what he says, see her eyes taking in the response he's having to her story. The Verbena picks up her whiskey and throws it back, not a sip but the entire contents left in it. It burns her throat and the brunette makes this half disgusted noise before she sets it down; turns the glass in her fingers. "I think I know that, but then I'm around everyone and we're singing campfire songs and talking about trivial things a few feet from where some really messed up shit went down and all I want to do is scream."

She sniffs and presses her fingers beneath her eyes. "So that's been my month." She casts this little wisp of a smile his way. "Beat that." Her sense of humor, subdued as it's seemed tonight, has not apparently, been lost. It's a good sign.

Samir"I'm not even going to try. My month's been pretty baller."

It tends to ease other people's anxieties over self-disclosing if the self-disclosure is reciprocal. Like revealing scars. You show me yours I'll show you mine. She has already seen him in the hour of one of his own and recent darknesses.

Goes without saying that the man whose body became a vessel for this madness had called just to let Kiara know he had slept the night after their session and he was able to account for all of his hours. That he called her after returning to Los Angeles not having known about her conversation with Grace to check on her. That he will check on her again. The death mage is not worried about himself.

Sam had no desire to have anything to do with the investigation or the resolution of a loose end they had no way of knowing existed. He was of no use anyway. He can't do what Kiara can do.

And yet he knows madness. He knows what it is to be in a group of people and want to scream.

He's still rotating his drink instead of actually drinking it. A deep breath like he has to steel himself: "But... ah... I do have... I mean, the Internet says I have, I haven't been to a doctor or anything, but the Internet says I have, ah, ob--" It doesn't sound as if he's ever said this out loud. He addresses the copper mug he's rotating instead of looking at Kiara. "... obsessive-compulsive. You know. Disorder. So. That's been my life. It'll..." He forces himself to look back across the table at her. "I mean, knowing something and actually being the thing are different. But you can be around people and sing the campfire songs without screaming, so... silver lining?"

KiaraIt's possible when she asked she hadn't counted on the actual bearing of his scars.

It's possible - but, the way the Verbena's dark eyes tick over his face and the way her mouth bends at the edge into this tiny, encouraging smile suggest she's not adverse or unhappy for the development. Rather - her expression reads her interest and, to no small degree, her understanding.

Of what it means. She tips her chin down after a moment, her hands sliding out to rest either side of her glass as if she had some inclination toward taking his hands in her own, toward asking for them but - she doesn't, at least - not now.

She also doesn't say several of the things she's aware she could: I'd noticed something, I'm sorry, that must be hard. For a long pause, Kiara just studies his face and then lowers her eyes to watch the way he rotates that mug around the table. "I guess that is a silver lining." Then: "If I ever set it off - make you feel -" she spreads her hands out in this supplicating gesture across the table. "You can tell me.

I have a tendency to get into people's space sometimes." A little tick of her eyes up to his, searchingly. "I don't always pay attention." She leans back, then. Rakes her fingers through that fall of dark hair.

"You feel different." A quiet addition, that. Kiara's expression intrigued, she's studying him the way she had that night over the campfire.