Kalen
[How tired are we?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Kalen
Kalen,
despite the fact that most of the books in the library are blank, has
taken to spending most of his time inside the chantry there. First he
searched through books for some common theme, but when he finally found
the herbalism book he'd opened, skimmed the table of contents for, and
skipped to the section on mandrake root blank save for the title, the
table of contents, and the section on mandrake he'd stopped searching.
He
left the piles of books be for now. He'd grabbed books with titles
first, before he found that some had no content and sorted those into
new piles. The book piles are neatly stacked, arranged on tables in
careful rows, arranged by subject, stacked largest to smallest as the
piles rise like miniature pyramids. When Thakinyan was around, he'd
been surrounded by notes and information, maps and newspaper clippings
and the map Grace had made him that did all kinds of things in three
dimensions and various configurations.
Today he has stacked books.
They tell him something important, but that something is not really
what he wants to know. He's lost when he doesn't have something to
fight with. Or at least a fight to prepare for. So he's stayed mostly
clear of Ian and Sid. He knows what he is. He knows what he'll do.
He
is completely at a loss for what to do to save them. And that
terrifies him. Which is rather like cornering in the sense that he
wants to lash out at something. Anything. Currently his annoyance is
directed at the vanishing text, visible only in the slight crease
between his eyebrows and the way he sits upright rather than sprawled
over the couch. He's been staring at the open book long enough he
isn't even looking at it at all anymore, but there is too much tension
in his shoulders to call that stillness and lack of precise focus
meditative.
Ian
It was a few nights ago now that
Ian had been forced to hunt down a wounded and terrified horse through
the Morrison wilderness after dark. It was hardly the safest set of
circumstances, and truth be told he very well might have gotten himself
killed doing it. But somehow he couldn't bring himself to just let her
go.
Ian hadn't owned a pet since he was a kid (not that he would
ever think to call the mare a 'pet.') That suddenly he was willing to go
to considerable effort on behalf of this creature seemed slightly
ridiculous to him, but he did it anyway. He'd felt the horse's pain and
terror when Kalen's stray bullet lodged itself in her shoulder. She'd
been hurt before. Bitten once or twice by walkers during the rougher
moments of their travel. But she'd never been shot.
He'd been
angry that night. Angrier than Kalen had probably ever seen him, if
Kalen had been of a mind to pay much attention to his moods at all after
the fight he'd had with Sid. Ian didn't talk to Kalen for a while,
after that. Less out of deliberate cruelty and more because he just
couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't end up driving the wedge
deeper.
There was this sense, over the next couple of days, that
Ian was really only half there. That a part of him already had one foot
out the door, and he was just waiting around to make up his mind about
what he really wanted.
Maybe they all felt that way. Maybe they were just here, together, because they couldn't think of anything better to do.
And
they still had nothing close to resembling an answer - to where they
were; to how the world came to be like this; to whether any of it was
even real.
The truth is, at this point, Ian wasn't even sure if Kalen
was real. But the Hermetic seemed real enough when Ian descended the
stairs into the dim library and found Kalen there, organizing books by
candle-light with an expression that spoke of nagging tension.
Ian
didn't interrupt immediately. Instead he walked slowly past the
shelves, letting his eyes roam over the blank bindings, and came to a
stop behind where Kalen sat. The flames from the candles cast flickering
shadows along the walls. It made the library seem much more cave-like
than it ever had under fluorescent lighting.
"Find anything useful?" he asked quietly.
Kalen
[Quiet is not necessarily gentle and even that is not necessarily warm. Why are you really here? - Awarepathy]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Ian
[Subterfuge]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 2
Kalen
There
are other people who have done this to Kalen, crept up on him to stand
behind him in other libraries. In other places. And those people he
trusted and he knew (or at least thought he did) and none of them ever
stabbed him. Of course, none of them felt like a great hunting cat,
sleek and breathtaking and predatory.
Specifically, one that he knows is not pleased with him.
He
shifts the book to one hand, holding it open to the same page, and
offers it to Ian without looking back at him. "You remember," he says
softly. "The first night I brought you here. You weren't terribly fond
of me that night either." There is nothing barbed in the tone. He
adores Ian. Even right now when he isn't sure he wants to talk to him.
And, however angry Ian might have been, Ian hasn't hurt him. Sid has.
"I
grabbed for any book close enough to read, and I am not at all really
an herbalist, but mandrake root descriptions are always interesting.
Other than far enough into the table of contents, that's all I read
about. By the time I finished that section, you were elsewhere and
Grace and Patience were totally into what they were doing so I went and
found a different book. Everything I didn't read is just blank."
He
waves at one table of book pyramids. "I haven't read all of those,
that have text. But every book I have read from is there."
Ian
The
truth is, Ian wasn't entirely surprised by this news. He took the book
and walked around to Kalen's side, laying it out on the table beneath
the glowing candlelight. One only had to flip through a few pages to
understand what Kalen was talking about.
Maybe it wasn't a matter of real or not real. Maybe the better question was: whose reality is it?
(Was this all some terrible nightmare they'd conjured up for themselves?)
After
a few moments, Ian closed the book. "I wanted to be left alone. It
wasn't about you." He pushed the candle out of the way, careful to avoid
the stacks of nearby books, and sat down on the table. It creaked
slightly beneath his weight, but the furniture down here was heavy and
well-constructed. Likely this table had endured worse in its lifetime.
"What's going on with you and Sid?"
Kalen
Kalen
starts to relax, starts to shift into something more like a relaxed
position, but then Ian brings up Sid and he goes very, very still.
"Of
course it wasn't about me," he says. "I think I'd be rather
disappointed if I wanted to be the reason you did things." There is,
even while his guard is up, a hint of fondness to the tone. But then he
sighs, and that spark of warmth drains away.
"Sid and I...I'm not
entirely sure. We were not friends once. Very decidedly so. Then
Lucia Montanari invaded our dreams to tell us she was going to kill
everyone we cared for if we didn't let her finish summoning an Umbrood
spirit that was just going to destroy the world anyway. I'm rather
baffled by the logic to that one. I suppose she was mad.
"Anyway,
we drove it back. I asked her to join a cabal. There were moments
when we were close. I thought we were friends, until you asked her."
Ian
The
truth was, Ian was probably the last person in Denver who had any right
whatsoever to comment on the manner in which other people kept their
friends. But for all they knew, the three of them might very well be the last living people in Denver at the moment.
So Ian looked at Kalen and said, "Maybe you should have asked her sooner."
His tone was quiet. Grounded. Not gentle, but not pointed either.
Kalen
"Or
remembered that in the end, all I have left is me? It might be true,
but I became rather fond of people once I explored the option of doing
so beyond the abstract. I think that may have been my mistake,
actually."
Kalen sighs. "I had-" But whatever story he starts to
tell, he stops. "For several reasons, I had decided to try having
faith in people. I do believe that experiment was, at best, only of
marginal success. Granted, I am trapped in some nightmare world with
people I have no idea what to do with and no idea how to save, so I may
be overly cynical at the moment. If we ever get out of here, I may
reconsider."
Ian
Ian flexed his jaw and brought a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose.
"I just meant that you shouldn't make assumptions about where you stand with people."
Maybe
if Ian were a better friend himself, he might be able to offer more
useful advice. But he didn't know Sid, and he had no real sense of
background with which to make a fair judgment.
"You know we might
die here." He offered this flatly, his voice cold and detached. He
didn't say anything else. Didn't make an attempt to tie that statement
in to his previous one, though it felt as though that may have been his
intention. Instead he just let that hang in the air.
"I think I need a reason to stay."
Had it only been a week ago that the two of them had been crying in each other's arms? It seemed longer, somehow.
Kalen
"If
I asked you, would you tell me?" Kalen sighs again, but then he
smiles, very faintly. "I've never been sure I want to know."
"I
came to terms with my death a long time ago. Other people, not so much.
It's all I dream about since Flagstaff." He looks at Ian and for at
least a few seconds he drops all that distance. As shattered as he is
right now, as delicate as his features are, as much weight as he has
lost - he looks fragile. "I thought...I thought you wouldn't die for
me. I thought I finally wouldn't have to walk away from wherever you
died, because...."
Because he never expected Ian to care enough to
do anything like come rescue him from zombies. Kalen Holliday:
heart-broken by the implications of someone not just leaving him to die.
"I
was going to tell you to leave. After that first night. I was going
to tell you that everyone-" He swallows. "I was going to tell you that
practically everyone I have ever loved has died. Until Denver, almost
everyone I really even knew. But this may be the one time that isn't
any less true if you aren't with me, and I wanted you to stay.
"I
still do. Please stay." He says this as though only moments before he
hadn't said he didn't expect he was the reason Ian did anything. Kalen
Holliday: also totally not hung up on consistency, apparently.
Ian
[How empathetic are we tonight?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Kalen
Kalen is, as he sometimes gets, close by. Present and immediate.
And
shattered, yes. And terrified...both because he is horrified by the
thought of having to shoot either Ian or Sid and because he just
actually told Ian he wanted him to stay. He's not sure Ian won't take
that as a reason to leave, but he did it anyway.
It wasn't
something he was planning on. But then, most of the things he does that
could qualify as worth doing are things he doesn't really think about.
He just does them. This one, he isn't so sure will work out. He meant
what he said about not thinking he was a reason Ian really did
anything. Apparently he's extended that faith in people experiment
despite his earlier comment about at best marginal success.
Ian
It was a lot to put on Ian in that moment. All these confessions.
And Ian... did not respond quickly or easily.
He
looked tired. There was an edge of exhaustion about him that wasn't
only the result of their continued daily exertions. Perhaps
frustratingly, when he finally did respond, it wasn't to answer any of
the questions left hanging in the air. Instead, he offered a new one.
"I wonder if that's why we're here?"
It
sounded more rhetorical than anything. A question asked just as much to
the dark shadows creeping along the floor as to Kalen. Ian glanced down
at his left hand - at the exposed underside of his wrist - and flexed
his fingers experimentally. As though to remind himself that he was
still alive and whole and in control of his own body.
"I used to have a scar here. Before I Woke Up. I tried to kill myself with a box cutter when I was seventeen."
He looked up again, meeting Kalen's eyes.
"I'm not as strong as you think I am."
Kalen
"You
are breathtaking. With scars or without them." He smiles a little,
hesitant, because this is not ground he's used to. "Pretty much any way
you could take that.
"You're strong enough. And I'm here. I'm
kind of a mess right now, but I'm here. I'll be here. I'm not going
anywhere." There is a flash of something more like a real smile,
lightning-quick and a little apologetic and hopeful. "And I know. I've
met you. There is a chance you believe that now, but you might not
believe that all the time, and I really think the most terrifying thing
ever to care about anything at all. I don't think it will be easy at
all. I will be here anyway."
Ian
They could be so different, these two. Kalen told Ian that he was breathtaking, and for a moment it almost seemed as though the sentiment made its way past Ian's defenses. Enough at least that Ian offered this small, sad smile. But it didn't so much lift his spirits as it did turn his thoughts inward. Kalen offered reassurances. He offered hope. But these things could never really come from outside one's own heart.
Please stay, Kalen had said.
And Ian didn't give him an answer. But he didn't leave. Instead he touched Kalen's hand, running his thumb softly over the top of Kalen's knuckles. The weight of the touch was gentle, but reassuring in its own right. Contact and closeness - as much as Ian was able to offer in that moment. Then he cleared his throat softly and slid off the table.
"I'll help you with the books."
