to be better people. [alexander]

Kiara Woolfe
So, here is our scene: it's a motel room. The curtains are mostly drawn but for a gap where they don't quite meet in the middle, a chink where the light spills across the gap between two double beds. Alexander is laid out on one, the other has rumpled sheets as if it had been slept in but its occupants had long since left.

The room smelled faintly the way motels do, like old smoke and detergent and too much starch on the bed sheets. An old TV set in the corner, a fridge and kitchenette, a bathroom with the door half opened and towels on the floor. At some point in the last few hours, somebody had showered. The room clung to the stronger aroma of motel shampoos.

Those ridiculously small, cheap bottles.

What else is felt is: resonance. Serafine's lingers in the walls here and another, too. Fainter, traces of something stoic, psychedelic (Jim). Alexander's rescuers had no idea why Serafine chose this place, why she has a room paid up in cash here - perhaps Alexander does, perhaps he knew the Awakened that would come out here to the outskirts, with nothing but drive through chains and semi trailers in the parking lot.

-

It's late, middling to early, the light that trickles through the window is faint and pale gold. The sort dawn offers. Outside the snow has stopped falling for a moment but there's a crispness to the air; it's cold enough that the figure sleeping in a chair across the room has a blanket curled around her.

That Alexander's still form had been likewise covered.

There's a gurney pushed against a far wall; a black bag (a body bag?) folded over it. A medical kit on the table beside the sleeping woman in the chair.

And her: rejuvenation. Pulsing energy.

-

Wherever Alexander was now, it felt miles from a sterile room in a Union facility.

Alexander Brandt[WP, just because it might make a difference to what I'm writing.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alexander BrandtAlexander is slow to wake.  It’s not the first time in recent memory that he’s climbed out of a drug-induced unconsciousness, although this one was maybe deeper – harder to pull away from.  For all intents and purposes, he had been dead to anyone who saw him.  Oh, he had been warned that there were plans for his release.  But he had thought there would have been some kind of warning when it finally came down to it.  Some drug slipped into his cell for him to swallow, waiting for him to finally commit to whatever plan had been put together.  But those thoughts were a long way away, just at this moment.

He had been resting on his cot, meditating and daydreaming as his endless amounts of free had allowed him to do, searching for some kind of freedom.

Now, as consciousness approaches in fits and starts, it’s the sounds of the room that come to notice first.  The hum of the fridge, the banging of the pipes from the next room over.  Some vague rumbling, maybe a nearby highway and the flow of traffic along its asphalt surface.  They’re ordinary, mundane, run-of-the-mill sounds.  But they seem important.  Why are they important?

Alexander dips back into unconsciousness again for some amount of time.  How long?  Who the hell knows, he’s lost track of so much over the past months.  But it is a dip, and the curve back up into wakefulness bends a little higher.  This time, there’s more sensation.  There’s something familiar about the beige scrubs he still wears, but the feel of the mattress under him and the blanket over...

He finally tries opening his eyes.  The light is, thankfully, dim.  The light passing through the curtains, an occasional ray of light passing through the chink in the curtains from a nearby neon sign, it isn’t a shock.  Alexander lies motionless, just staring at the curtains.  Thought still feels a little disconnected from body, but it’s slowly coming together...

Memory comes slamming back, and it’s almost a physical thing.  The meeting at his station, his brief waking only to be shot down again...  the repeated counselling, the invasion of his mind... 

There’s a moment of panic when he thinks that this might all be some sort of game.  (Still might be!)  A moment which pushes him up from the bed, pushing the blanket back which bangs against a lamp on the bedside table and knocks it crashing to the floor.  A moment where he almost rushes for the door, breaking for freedom.  He isn’t completely lost to the panic, though.  The window, the crack in the curtains, is enough for right now.  Rather than the door, it’s the rest of the way to the window that Alexander rushes.  He stands there, pulling the curtains back to look out at the world.  Breath catches in his throat, and he doesn’t realise that he’s holding it.

Kiara WoolfeThe lamp crashing to the floor startles the woman in the chair to wakefulness. She'd been dozing, rather fitfully, for the last few hours. She doesn't make any sudden movements, the brunette, but rather watches with a half frozen sort of tension as the Orphan rushes to the window.

Drags the curtains back.

Sees: a Jack in the Box. Semi trailers and trucks and what must have passed for a swimming pool attached to the motel when the weather was warmer. Now, the tarp was covered in a fine layer of snow. The fence around it had a sign that declared it was closed for the winter. The world outside this room seemed: normal. Utterly unchanged. Cars speeding by and the low buzz of a TV in the next room over; footsteps banging overhead.

There's a rustle of clothing and the brunette in the armchair sits forward. The blanket sliding off her shoulders, revealing scrubs not so different to the ones Alexander found himself still wearing - the last vestiges of the disguise Kiara had adopted to rescue the Orphan.

"Welcome back."

There are dark circles beneath the Verbena's eyes; her hair a wild tangle around her features. She looks: drained, the pagan. But alert. If she's some hallucination, if this all was some new trick to beguile him into believing what was happening: it felt very real.

Down to the stale coffee resting on the table beside Kiara. "You're okay, Alexander. We got you out. This place is safe. They can't find us here."

A beat: "How do you feel?"

Alexander Brandt[WP, same reasons]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Alexander BrandtThe window reveals that little corner of the world, with its ordinary burger joint and its ordinary trucks and ordinary trailers and its ordinary weather and it’s all perfectly ordinary and mundane.  The sky – god, the sky, the sight of the dawn above this shithole town somewhere on the outskirts of the city... If he hadn’t been holding his breath, still hasn’t realised that he has, it would have caught then.  Both hands resting on the glass, Alexander rests his forehead on the glass and just looks out.

Looks out, at least, until there’s a sound from behind him.  Something soft that, the movement of clothing and the slip of a blanket, but from Alexander’s reaction it would seem like something closer to a gunshot.  He turns, swinging round on the spot, to place the noise.  There’s someone there, a figure dressed in scrubs.  The same scrubs he’d seen after waking the second time, surrounded by guards with a medic disconnecting him from a fluid drip.  There’s tension in his frame, something wild and uncaged and ready to spring.  For Kiara, or for freedom.  Fight or flight.

Welcome back.

There’s some familiarity that halts him.  Some part of his unconscious or subconscious or some other part of him buried beyond his control.  This isn’t some faceless medic, some unknown person sent to repair or monitor or... There was a familiarity in the voice and the movement, in the resonance coming from her and, hell, even from the resonance woven into the walls of the room.  It was all familiar, and it did feel real.

So Alexander doesn’t charge her, doesn’t leap for the door.  There is an exhalation, heavy and sharp, as his body’s need to breathe finally wins out and as it starts to really register through the dregs of whatever substance had been running through his body.  The tension is still there, he’s still prepared, but there’s pause as his eyes dart from her face to the surroundings.  The gurney and the body bag...

“I know you.”  Consideration begins to slip into his eyes, pupils wide and eating in the light.  Alexander hadn’t had a massive amount of contact with Kiara, but there had been some.  “Horse.  Right?”  The tension slips a little more, although the movement of his shoulders gets a little more rapid.  There’s a break in the eye contact as Alexander looks around the room, checking the parts that he hadn’t noticed in the moments since waking, before meeting her gaze again.

“I...”  A simple question, asking how he feels.  Four simple words.  The answer, not as simple.  “...don’t know.”  There’s another break in the eye contact, a studied look down at his hands, which he bunches into fists to check the old scabs on the knuckles.

Kiara WoolfeI know you.

Kiara's dark eyes rove his features, there's a sort of captured tension to the way they do, her body poised there on the edge of the armchair.

Horse, right?

There's a flicker of some quiet release there; a loosening of tension around her mouth; drawn into furrows across her brow. "Right." A smile edges across the female's lips and she rises from the chair, turning to idly fold the blanket over the arm. The pagan's clothing is faintly rumpled and her hair is perhaps a little longer since the last occasion they'd had to meet.

He doesn't know how he feels. Kiara seems to have been expecting about as much, when she straightens and turns back to face him, her expression reads a clear amount of empathy (perhaps too, this was another reason it was her here, now, when he awoke and not her partner in crime for this rescue).

The healer had, among her virtues (depending on who you asked), a good dose of bedside manner.

He's examining the old wounds on his knuckles. Kiara's eyes drop to them, she makes some quiet noise, a hm of recognition. "Right. Your knuckles. We didn't heal them for you. We could have, but - I figured once we knew you were okay, it was better to let you sleep off the drugs in your system."

Softer. "They dosed you up pretty well." Tinged with anger, though. There's a tremor of it that twinges at the edges of Kiara's words. She pushes the fall of her hair over her face. Moves toward the tiny kitchenette and detaches a coffee pot, holds it under the sink and begins to fill it up. Continues to speak, too, as if her voice could fill up the voids in his memory, could coax his lingering uncertainty out and replace it with something rooted in memory; strengthened with familiarity.

"Are you hungry? Serafine set all of this up. There's coffee and - " Kiara sets the pot on, turns and leans into the sink for support. "A lot of alcohol, shockingly." A brief smile. A thread of something perhaps he can catch hold of.

Serafine. Her propensity for everything in abundance. Stocking this room up with what was needed by her estimations. "We weren't absolutely sure how long you'd be out but I wanted to be sure someone was here when you woke up. In case you had questions ... " Kiara's eyes tick back to him.

Alexander BrandtKiara begins to move around, to tidy a little, as Alexander studies his hands.  Nothing had changed, they had been slowly healing since... They had been slowly healing.  As the body does, repairing itself after damage.

We didn’t heal them for you. 

It was no small thing to twist the world to fix the body, he’d seen it often enough to know that it was possible.  But these wounds were small and already well on their way to healing.  He rubs his hands absent-mindedly as he turns back to the window.  The room is cool, given the weather outside and the cheap way the place had been put together, but he still opens the window.  Enough to let the cold air flow through and into the room, and it’s a moment that brings Alexander’s eyes closed again.  Another simple thing, another ordinary sensation, but one that he hadn’t felt in months.

They dosed you up pretty well.

There’s a pause, there.  They’re facing away from each other – him towards the window, her towards some part of the kitchen.  Alexander’s mouth opens, taking a breath as if to speak, but no words follow.  The breath turns into a sigh, and it seems that her words go unremarked.

They had both changed since their last encounter in the park.  Her hair had grown a little, and so had his.  The scruff around his jawline had grown a little – it hadn’t been shaved back too long ago – and his hair had grown out.  A fringe draped down, tucked back behind his ears where it would reach.  But, more noticeable, was how much less of his there was than before.  He had been fairly solid, could have been an imposing figure if he put his mind to it.  But he’d lost weight, that much was obvious under the scrubs.  Alexander turns at the question about whether he’s hungry, and he turns towards the little kitchen.  Resting back on the sill of the window – still content to feel the bracing cold breeze blow over his back – there’s another pause.  Another flash of wariness, but it’s something that subsides again quickly.  She attempts a little humour, but it doesn’t get a reaction from him.  Too soon, maybe.

“Yeah, I’m hungry.”  There’s a glance down at the floor, maybe something unvoiced, before a question does surface.  “How is... everyone?”

Kiara WoolfePerhaps it will seem strange to him, once he's had time to process everything that happened. To hear the story told from varying angles. The rescue. The risks taken. Perhaps the reality that Andrés and Kiara had offered to be the ones to go in and reclaim him. At least, as far as the latter went, there seemed no good reason why she'd have done it.

Put herself into a situation like that for a man she barely knew. Knew enough, maybe. Trusted not to be her enemy.

Maybe it will be enough to convince him that whatever side of whatever sort of war they might have been dragged into fighting, the brunette standing across from him is on the same side. Maybe it will, but - it's too soon for that. The edges are too raw, bruised and tender and sharp-pressed upon.

Her attempt at banter passes over him and she doesn't, for what it's worth, press the issue. Seem offended. Merely waits for a beat, studying him with those fathomless eyes of hers before they too pass away and she nods, once. Breathes out sharply.

Decisively. He was hungry. Appetite was a good sign.

She turns toward the refrigerator and pulls the door open, there's some rummaging around inside; the rustle of a plastic bag and then a small plastic container comes out. One of those take away sandwich kinds with pre-cut triangles of bread inside. There's a handful of candy bars in the Verbena's other hand and she sets it all down for a beat: opens the container and studies the neat little prepackaged triangles.

Turkey and rye and who knew what.

How is ... everyone?

All he can see when he asks is Kiara's back; the set of her shoulders, the line of her neck. Can sense the pause, though. Can likely see it, the way you can sometimes. The natural consideration of a complicated answer: "Everyone is okay. Mostly." She turns with the container in hand, carries it over to him. Some twist of humor when she says: "I can't vouch for the nutritional value in that."

Alexander works for the Department, he's likely seen worse.

"Worried about you, but - they're good. You can ask them yourself soon enough." She folds her hands into the pockets of the scrubs. Hooks her thumbs at the edges. "This motel room is warded, you can stay here as long as you like. If you need time to process everything. I sent word out last night that we had you."

She frowns down at the worn carpet. "We'll probably have to get everyone together, figure out what comes next. But - " She lifts her eyes, gestures at the sandwich. "You should eat. Regain your strength."

Alexander Brandt[Int+Med]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 6, 6, 6) ( success x 3 )

Alexander Brandt[Arete, Time 1, sensing Time.  Base diff 4, +2 because meditation is a new instrument for him.  -1 for Flowing resonance, as it fits with his paradigm?  So winging it.  But lookee, new dice!  WP, because.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (5, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Alexander BrandtThe world, with all of its boring mundanity seems somewhat surreal.  Unreal.  Not quite as remembered, maybe.  But it’s something that Alexander seems to cling to, right now.  The simple sensation of flowing air, of the cold – he’s shivering now, but he doesn’t make any move to close the window or grab a blanket to cover himself more – is important.  Not wonderful, although that might be debatable at another time, but certainly grounding.  Little anchors that hold him in place.  In this place.

Kiara works in the kitchen, putting coffee on to brew and fishing through the kitchen for something vaguely edible and nutritious.  Alexander has turned back to the window, looking out of it without really seeing much of anything.  He focuses on the sensation, the flow of air around him.  It’s a tool to clear the mind, as much as clearing the mind is a tool for something else.  There’s one way that Alexander has changed, and it’s one that might not have been noted too strongly by Kiara so far.  It didn’t seem to be any surprise, though – there had been no suspicion that he wasn’t who they (he?) thought that he was.  But that sensation of things being Frozen was no longer there.  No slivers of a moment hanging in the air.  No glacier in the mountains.

No, the glacier had melted.  As Alexander reaches for the first time in way too long, there’s a feeling of reality rearranging itself slightly as his Will pushes against it.  Somewhere alongside the pulsing, rejuvenating landscape of Kiara’s presence, there runs a river.  Something intrinsically elemental and moving and changing and Flowing and ultimately Boundless.  Without beginning.  Without end.  Alexander reaches out, no longer confined by the perfected work of the Union lining the walls and sucking any trace of dynamism and change out of the air.  He reaches out into the flow of Time and stands there, motionless, as he lets it wash over him.  He had been without a specific time for so long.  There had been some hints, towards the end, but now...  Now he knew exactly when he was.  Another anchor cast out.

Alexander stands there motionless, as Kiara gathers her words and begins to speak.  The Work, standing in that flow of Time, is almost overwhelming after so long.  The connection, right now, seemed so much stronger than it had before.  Not, exactly, as if he had more control over it.  More...  More like that very first day awake, when everything had seemed to have a little more colour to it, and a little more depth.

He is listening, though, and feels her approach.  She might notice the shivering, now, the hairs standing up on his bare arms to trap what heat they can there.  Alexander sounds almost distracted – he is distracted – but asks, “Mostly?”  He can imagine who wouldn’t be ok.  Kalen, probably.  Kalen, ready to tear the world apart.  And Grace?  The last time they had spoken, they hadn’t parted on the best of terms.  Now, at least, there was the chance to put that right.

Kiara holds the sandwich out, and a few moments after Alexander notices and turns.  There’s an attempt at a smile, something grateful, but it’s forced.  Something habitual, but not quite empty inside.  The plastic wrapper is taken and one of the triangles pulled out.  Half of it disappears into his mouth, and he turns again to look out of the window as he chews.

There’s a pause, between mouthfuls.  “What comes next?”  There’s another pause, mouth open ready to speak, but the thought is gone again.  Another comes.  “Do I just get on back to my life?”  The rest of the triangle hangs in air, held part way to Alexander’s mouth.

Kiara WoolfeThe Verbena's sensitivity to the energies, to the base elements that made up the Tapestry; wove magicks together has grown stronger over the last several months.

The pagan's affinity for Primal workings have left the traces of her presence as a far more potent thing. The sense of Kiara, the wash of her essence is palatable. They often said it, about those Awakened who trained in the use and manipulation of Quintessential energies - that they began to radiate that very sense of Otherness that separated them from the Sleepers around them.

It had already been there, about the earth witch. That particular sensation she brought with her into a room. The way she stirred the hackles of a neighborhood dog being walked. The turn of those dark eyes of hers toward you.

The curl of blood red lips.

Now, it simply felt a little clearer, she would need to work a little harder to mask herself from those who would be drawn to it (her). Alexander's presence has grown stronger, too. The sense and shape of his Working as it flows out and cascades over the motel room; the tendrils of his casting. The Verbena's head tilts just so.

The hairs on her arms rising.

She moves away, after a moment, fetches two cups of steaming coffee. Makes some brief apology about the lack of milk. She holds her cup between her palms and blows on it to cool the contents before she takes a tip; swallowing and glancing at the Orphan as he asks a question.

The question, really.

There's some flash of empathy, perhaps even pity, there before she replies. Eyes on her coffee, on the heat rising from it. "Do you think you'd be able to? Just - go back to everything. I may hate everything they stand for, but - the Union isn't dumb. They'll figure out what we did, the question is: what will they do about it?

The Police Station, your apartment. They probably aren't safe right now." Kiara's eyes find his. "Ginger's gone. Grace confirmed it. She's covering what needs to be covered, but - anything we had linked to it, has to go.

I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers. We got you out. That was what mattered. Whatever happens next, whatever we have to do. We'll figure it out. For now - " The Verbena breathes out sharply, sets her coffee cup down behind her. "I think you should stay here. At least until I can contact the others. Bring them here.

We can decide what needs to be done." The Verbana reaches out, tentatively, to set a hand on Alexander's arm. Wordless comfort, perhaps, if allowed.

Alexander BrandtAlexander’s push against reality went a little further than he’d hoped.  It was intended to be a momentary thing, something grounding.  The effect lingers, though, the feeling of tide and flow and change clinging on for a while longer.  It’s a reassuring presence in the background.  Like some sort of supernatural comfort blanket.

Coffee is brought over, with a comment about the lack of milk.  It’s something that is waved off, unimportant.  Even if he had been a stranger to black coffee, this isn’t important.  It isn’t a problem.  The plastic packet with its single remaining triangle of industrially-produced sandwich is set on the sill, freeing his hands up to take the cup from Kiara when it’s offered.  The steam rises, curling in the cold draft, and it’s something Alexander watches before taking a sip from it.  It’s something else, something simple, that grabs his attention.

Another pause, as steam rises and time flows and the life of the city continues outside the small motel room.  It’s time to think, to arrange words into something resembling order; time to find something to say that won’t catch.  His reply to the question:  “Maybe.”  There’s doubt in his voice, but there isn’t an automatic rejection of the possibility.  Maybe it was something he could regain: that ordinary part of his life, that something that grounded him.  As to what they will do?  There’s silence there.  A second, two, three and then simply: a shrug.

Kiara tells him that his place, his work, aren’t likely to be safe.  Another shrug.  Ginger is no more, and that gets a curious look.  But, again, nothing more.  There’s nothing more to be said.

Alexander shows some doubt when Kiara says that he should stay here.  There’s a flash of something feral, there; a flash of something that doesn’t – won’t be – caged.  One set of walls won’t be swapped for another; one jailer for another.  This isn’t an instruction, though – something with threat and force behind it – but just a suggestion.  He gives a brief nod as Kiara suggests bringing others here.  It’s probably safer, for the moment.  At least until certain things are a little clearer in his mind.  Certain, large questions that have yet to be asked, let alone answered.  He does make a request, though.  Clothes.  Something he can wear, maybe so these fucking things can be burned.

There’s a touch at his arm, and it draws out another intake of breath.  How long since a touch had been anything other than...  The breath is shuddering, stuttering, as it draws in.  His cup of coffee is clumsily set on the sill, knocking the plastic container and making it fall on its side.  And then?

And then Alexander turns and wraps his arms around her and, eyes closed and clinging onto her as if she were the last person alive, he remembers a fragment of a conversation.

We need other people to be better people.

Kiara Woolfe[Just cuz! Life 2, Coincidental. Base Diff 5, -1 (Resonance), -1 Quint.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 4, 7) ( success x 2 )

Kiara WoolfeThere were questions that still needed answers.

Questions for Alexander that he'd have to find answers for, search his memory for about the facility he'd been taken to; the interrogations and conditioning they'd subjected him to. There would be questions he needed answers for, too. From them. Questions that, right now, the Verbena who stands across from him with her warm dark eyes and gentle touches cannot answer for him.

There were, after all, reassurances that weren't hers to give.

No matter how badly she wishes she could.

Kiara Woolfe was a healer, by calling as much as trade. Fixing and mending what was broken was what she did and she did it, often, without any pretension of gratitude being returned her way. Didn't always expect or necessarily need it. She believed, the pagan, wholeheartedly in the righteousness of the Cycle. In what was natural and needed and balanced in the universe. Life was not made to be lived without risk, without bruising and tearing.

Humanity would never be a creature without flaw. That was the infinite value and heartbreak of them.

And they were, at their core: not so removed from humanity, these Awakened, that they did not break and bend just as surely.

Alexander wraps his arms around her and there is a moment of surprise; a quiet expression; a small, startled noise that rises in the brunette's throat before her arms curl around the Orphan. Before she slides her palms over his back and there's a flood of soothing energy, after a beat. Kiara's touch seeping beneath the scrubs he wears; infusing his bones and muscles and skin with a tingling; spreading warmth.

Soon enough, the chill he'd felt is forgotten.

"It's okay." She murmurs into his shoulder. And, at least in the moment, it's easier to believe it may be. "It's going to be okay."