Ian

It's already dark by the time Ian parks his car at Red Rocks. Out past the city, the sky is clear and bright with stars. Overhead, the blood moon has already entered its eclipse. It's still visible in the sky, but the light is muted - dim and coppery beneath the cloak of the earth's shadow. The hood of the audi is warm beneath Ian's back. He's lying with his arms folded under his head as he watches the sky, one foot sprawled over the edge of the car with the other bent at the knee. There's no one around right now. The amphitheater is closed for the night and the park's hours technically ended an hour after sundown, but if there happened to be any guards on patrol, they were nowhere in sight.

(This is because Ian already bribed the lone park ranger with a bottle of whiskey, a very appealing smile and a tiny push of mental influence.)

So by the time Kiara arrives, she'll find the lot nearly-empty and the park dark and deserted, apart from Ian and his car. When he hears the tell-tale hum of an engine approaching, he gives a long, slow stretch and slides down off the hood, running a hand over the back of his hair.

Kiara

Say what you would about Kiara Woolfe's tiny hatchback, it did have personality.

A tenacious capacity to endure the hardships an owner like the Verbena threw its way, too. It's been cleaned since the last occasion Ian had to glimpse it but the dust and mud is creeping back along the side panels; some coated to the rear window; dust collecting enough that her wipers have cut small pockets of visibility through it. It's a testament to how often the brunette must travel outside of the city limits that it so frequently appears to have returned from some gladiatorial bout in an rural mud pit.

By the time Kiara arrives, the sky has darkened enough that the stars are visible overhead, the moon already beginning to wan into its eclipse.

She parks two spots shy of Ian's (vastly superior) vehicle, pulling up in a small cloud of gravel and dust and appearing out of the confines of her car dressed for the location, if not high end fashion. Jeans, sneakers, a white cotton camisole beneath a fitted short sleeve shirt of muted, spring green. It cinches in around Kiara's narrow waist with the assistance of tiny buttons and her jewelry glints in the evening light (what little remains of it at present) as she pushes shut her car door with a hip, leaning back against it for a moment to observe the blood stained moon above.

"You know there's a prophecy that says the fourth blood moon was supposed to bring about the Apocalypse," Kiara's mouth, a familiar glossy red shade tonight, curves into a smile as her eyes dip to meet his, she watches him approach for a beat and then pushes off her car to meet him half way.

"I think that one came from the Christian camp." The pagan's dark eyes are luminous and bright; her mouth continuing its bent into a supple smile. "Unsurprisingly." She's left her hair out and it settles around her shoulders like a wild thing itself. Her expression shifts, then. The smile becomes a slightly more modest thing, a private little flex at each corner.

"Hi."

Ian

They're both dressed for the occasion, which in this case means something more approximate to hiking gear than formal-wear. Ian's pants are specifically intended for that purpose. They're light and durable, made of some kind of dark grey man-made fabric with pockets on the thighs. He's got the cuffs rolled up to mid-calf right now. Below that: expensive-looking athletic shoes. On top: a white t-shirt layered beneath a thin black hoodie. The overshirt is unzipped. He's on the verge of pulling it off but it's cold enough that they might be glad for it later. Kiara pulls up in her hatchback and Ian watches her in the dark. With the moon eclipsed and the city lights far away, it's harder than usual to make out details.

"I don't put much stock in prophecies." She can probably hear the dry amusement in his tone, even if she can't see the smile. Then there's that little hi, and Ian closes the distance between them. He stops when he comes up close, the warmth of his body pressing into her space. There's a little pause (a breath) and then his hands are in her hair and cupping her neck and he kisses her like maybe a part of him had been afraid he might not see her again. Or maybe he just really... wants to kiss her.

(Probably both.)

When he pulls away, he kisses her lower lip once more, softly. "Hi." His voice is low and intimate, and there's a flash of teeth when he smiles.

"I'm glad you're back. Should I grab a flashlight or do you think you can brave the dark?"

Kiara

He kisses her like he'd been concerned he wouldn't see her again and she couldn't blame him for that. Her message to him, before she'd left to trek into the Umbra with Elijah had been vague at best, unsettling at worst. She slides her arms around his shoulders in return and crosses them; lifting herself into his space for the duration of a heartbeat, two. Then opens her eyes into his smile; his teeth flashing in the settling darkness.

There's a flash of hers in return, her hands lingering where they slide over the slope of his back to settle; idly holding to the open flaps of his hoodie.

"I'm glad I am, too," she murmurs against his mouth and her eyes rove over the vague outline of his features she can make out, her fingers coming up briefly to slide over his jaw, tapering off over his neck before she finds one of his hands and takes it; her focus shifting back to the sky overhead; the sight of it seems to arrest her for a moment.

"I'm not afraid of the dark."

She's smiling, he can almost feel the shape and sense of it; the curling, rejuvenating edge to it (to Kiara). "I'd almost forgotten how beautiful it is out here." There's a pause, her thumb stroking the edge of his hand; sliding over a knuckle in a thoughtful, fleeting gesture.

"I wasn't sure how long we'd be gone. I'm glad we didn't miss this."

Ian

[Per+Alertness, +2 diff because it's daaark, -2 diff because acute senses]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )

Ian

It's a different sort of beauty than the kind found in the umbra. The constellations don't chase each other across the heavens. But the stars are still lovely, and there's something about the immediate realness that the physical plane allows - the grit and the imperfections. There in the sky is the moon. Not a shadow or a dream or a memory of the moon. The actual moon, orbiting in space around the earth. And there is Ian, real and solid and alive beside her.

There is room for wonder on both sides of the gauntlet. Tonight, they will marvel at things a bit less fantastic than dragons and dire wolves.

In the dark, Kiara's hand finds his. Ian lets the moment linger, reluctant to step away. She says she isn't afraid of the dark, and there's another smile at that.

I'm glad we didn't miss this.

"Me too." He lets his hand stay in hers, fingers loosely linked as he turns and begins to walk toward the trail. Even in the dark, his senses pick up enough that he can glean the path, and soon they're hiking up over sand and grass. Indistinct black masses rise up along the sides of the trail, and Ian reaches out to run a palm over the rough-hewn warmth of a rock formation. Occasionally he lets his eyes draw up to the veiled moon.

"What did you find while you were gone?"

Kiara

[Hey how quickly are you going to fall over your feet, Kiara?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7) ( fail )

Kiara

[Really quickly!]

Kiara

She's lost her strange, otherworldly aura now, Kiara.

Where she'd seemed illuminated from beneath her skin the last time Ian had seen her at the Chantry, she's lost that ripple effect of reality re-asserting itself against the pagan's will. Perhaps the fact she's returned now without any outward signs of trauma is a comfort in and of itself, given her recent track record.

Afraid of the dark she might not be, but capable of navigating her way along the trail quite as confidently as Ian, was another question altogether. She allows him to guide their path, one hand linked with his, the other held out to feel for nearby obstacles and, at least at one point to smooth her hand across the rocks, jutting out from the earth around them.

It's quieter out here, enough that they can hear their own breathing; the scuffle of their progress along the pathway. The distant cries of wildlife; the chirp and hum of a thousand tiny insects; unmolested by the frequent pedestrian traffic that finds them, even so far removed from the city streets. What did you find while you were gone, she makes a noise and there's the sound of a carefully drawn breath behind him.

"The Avatar Storm is gone, for one thing." There's a pause after she says that, as if she understood full well it was a revelation that needed some digestion. Kiara's eyes take in the moon above them. "I don't know when or if I was the last one to feel it, but - it was just gone when we crossed over."

A beat, Kiara's voice grows softer.

"We found the artifact Henry, Elijah's new mentor, was searching for. It was a crown, it belonged to one of my tradition's ancestors. The Aeduna. It was reputed to have great power, but - " There's an abrupt halt to Kiara's story as she missteps and trips over a low cluster of rocks; propelling her nearly headlong into Ian. She lets out a sudden breath of laughter and uses his body as a brace.

She straightens, sweeping the fall of her hair from her eyes. "Leah. Henry brought her with us. The Aeduna, the crown's former owner." Something like sympathy creeps into the brunette's voice. " - it was, it used to be, Leah. He didn't tell her that he suspected it, I don't think even Elijah knew." Kiara hesitates a moment, breathes out.

"I think he had good intentions for bringing her but I'm not sure she agrees. Or if she'll forgive him for that."

Ian

Ian could recognize this place by smell alone. The particular combination of sandstone, scrub and Colorado air. He's been down this trail often enough not to feel lost in the dark, even were his senses to fail. And perhaps he ought to think twice about hiking out into the wilderness during an eclipse without a light-source, but there's no sense of anxiety in him tonight. At least, not until Kiara tells him that the Avatar Storm is gone. His steps are light and sure-footed on the path, but there's a moment right after she says it when he slows to a near-stop, trailing fingers over a jutting outcrop of stone.

It ought to be good news. Surely the Council would celebrate it. There were those yet old enough to remember when traversing the Umbra wasn't such a dire risk. When the Council held sway over a host of Horizon Realms. Ian wasn't one of them. As long as he'd known of the Umbra's existence, he'd known of the Storm.

It ought to be good news. Instead, Ian's first thought is toward the Technocracy, and what this will mean if Atreyu's predictions are true. It makes the muscles settle in his shoulders. This heavy acceptance of things he cannot hope to change. "...Oh." The verbal response is soft and slow to materialize. A beat later his steps pick back up to normal pace, and Kiara continues to relay her story until...

Kiara's weight tumbles into his back, and Ian, caught by surprise, gives a sudden exhale of laughter to go along with her own. It cuts some of the tension from the air, and she can feel his muscles relax when she grasps onto him for support. This time he does stop moving, putting an arm out to help Kiara regain her balance.

"I'm... less surprised by that than I think I should be. Is this crown something we can use?"

Kiara

There is tension that underplays it all. The revelation about the Storm, about what they'd uncovered. Ian's response to discovering it was gone is not dissimilar to the Verbena's initial reaction once the surprise had worn off. She hadn't believed it was possible (or maybe she just didn't enjoy the possibilities that it opened up) on either side.

She hangs on to his arm for another moment, regaining her equilibrium.

"Could we? If we found the stones that were missing and reunited them with it, possibly. They were gone when we pulled it out of the cave, after ... " She lets it trail off, her thoughts, her impressions and he can feel it, not simply translated through her touch, still steady on his arm; curled around his shoulder and bicep, but in her voice. In the tiny falter, there. After what, then?

"I don't think we should, though. The Aeduna were powerful and anything they crafted would be equally so. We put that sort of capacity in anyone's hands and I think it could backfire on us. Leah wouldn't even look at it after everything, so I gave it to Henry to keep. Just touching it was enough to make me feel ... different." Kiara's touch falls away from him and she lifts her chin, looks up toward the sky. It's very dark, here. There is more of a sense of the Verbena and the heat of her near proximity than a clear vision of her.

Of dark eyes and a face expressive of lingering unease.

Of their discovery, of its potential. "The power of the Gods. Leah said a lot of people have died for it."

Ian

[Dex+Ath, +1 diff because it's dark]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

Ian

It's too dark to make out the details in Kiara's expression, but Ian casts his eyes toward her anyway. His senses fix on her for a moment, noting the change in her voice; the way her words trail off. He doesn't interrupt - lets her finish answering his question before he gives this muted, thoughtful sound. It's ambiguous enough to hint at a more complex response than the one he ultimately vocalizes.

"It's a risk to hold on to valuable things. Other people will try to take it." He finds her hand and lets his fingers curl around hers again, locking their palms together. There's a steadiness to the way he touches her that feels grounded and (perhaps) a little protective. "Normally I'd say keeping it isn't worth that risk."

Normally.

"I think you should be careful who you tell. Even if it isn't functional. But you probably know that already."

His steps are slow when he starts walking again, giving Kiara time to find her footing on the uneven ground. They're making their way toward a large rock formation further down the trail. Ian can make out little more than a vague impression, but he remembers the spot. He's been there before - perched up on the tallest boulder watching the sun set across the vast open sky. It is, in fact, one of his favorite places. By the time they get there, the shadow over the moon has inched a bit further to one side. It won't be long before the eclipse starts to recede. Ian puts a hand out to touch the rock, finding the handholds he knows are there. He drops Kiara's hand long enough to scale his way up the rock. She'll hear the telltale sound of shoes on sandstone, and a few moments later he's leaning down to offer her his hand.

"The view's great up here."

Kiara

[Dex + Ath, come on Ms Woolfe, impress me, I won't add a diff only because she's being actively helped up but, are you feeling dexterous tonight?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Kiara

She nearly slips on the way up the boulder, too.

Her sneakers can't find the friction they need as she grasps Ian's hand and he can hear the soft gasp she makes, the way her weight pulls at him, threatening to drag him down like an anchor heavily toward the ground for a beat before she's gripping at his arms and scrambling up the rest of the way to arrive beside him; breathing a little rougher than she should have been for the difficulty involved.

"I guess I'm a little more tired than I thought."

She sounds a little surprised at herself, though there is, contained in there, a thread of weariness. Whatever adventures she'd recently been on, they can't have been without a considerable amount of physical (and emotional) endurance being required. She doesn't linger in it, though, Kiara. The realization of how ingrained her exhaustion might actually have been whether she acknowledges it or not. She just slides her fingers over his wrist in the dark, links their hands together and leans into him to rest a head on his shoulder.

(She never has been afraid of invading his personal space.)

She lets the silence settle there, for a long time (or so it feels), watching the moon slide out of sight and begin its return. Breathes in the scents of the wild around them and revels, just a little, in the sensations of it. The heat of the man beside her; the places their bodies are connected; the sounds of the world around them. The city isn't so distant from them here that faint noises don't still reach them, penetrating even out into the great rock formations but they feel hazy, distant and half formed.

"Do you ever want to stay in a place forever?" She says finally, her cheek brushing his shoulder. "Just - never go back? Leave it all behind."

Ian

To his credit, he doesn't tease her about the less-than-agile ascent. Maybe on a different day. Maybe if the sun were out and they'd been racing and goading each other as they sometimes do. There's a different energy between them tonight. Ian keeps his balance when she slips, gripping her hand tightly so as not to drop her if she falls. Thankfully she doesn't, and though it takes a bit of effort, she eventually joins him on top of the rock formation. The breeze is cool as it gusts around them. Kiara leans into his space, resting her head on his shoulder, and Ian's free arm finds its way around her frame instinctively. There's another sound he makes there, soft and resonant in his chest.

Do you ever want to stay in a place forever?

He closes his eyes. She doesn't see the expression that paints itself across his face. (Doesn't know the memory she just touched.)

"Sometimes," he admits quietly.

He unwinds himself carefully, giving her hand a little tug to let her know he's sitting down. There's a soft scrape of his feet on the stone as he settles down to watch the sky. When she joins him, he pulls her back against his chest, his legs bent at the knee and resting along the outside of her own. Once she's settled, his hands slide loosely around her waist.

Above them, a delicate sliver of white light appears at the moon's outer edge. Against the veiled copper-red shadow of the eclipse, it seems almost impossibly bright.

"This won't happen again for another eighteen years." There's a moment of quiet appreciation in his voice. Reverence for the beauty and wonder of the world they live in - how vast it is, and how small they are within it.

Kiara

There's something finely-woven and infinitely fragile to this moment.

The way they settle on top of the boulder, nothing but moonlight to illuminate (and right now, barely at all) their movements, to gauge where they were in relation to the ground, to each other. Ian settles down on the stone and Kiara slips down with tentativeness to join him; her body easily situating itself in the cradle his bent legs form.

When he tugs her back against him, Kiara's head settles in the crook of his neck; this close he can smell the vaguely sweet scent of her shampoo; the cloying scent of whatever incense she'd last been burning; it clings to her clothing; feels embedded into her skin and hair. That combination of vanilla and sage and something else, sharper, like the pine needles that dotted the ground in the distance.

She makes a quiet noise of agreement when he notes there won't be another blood moon like this, combined with the way it hangs, large and ornate above them, for years to come. Runs her fingertips along his arms where they encircle her waist; her nails ghosting along his skin; tracing small, intricate patterns along his forearm; down to his wrist and returning.

"I'll be in my forties the next time this happens." There's a twinge of something wry in her voice. "That's slightly terrifying." A beat, she lifts one of her hands to find the edge of his jaw by touch, slides her thumb along the curve of it. "I can't imagine myself at that age. What I'd be like." She says it into the darkness and perhaps there's deliberation to that. That he can't see her expression, the vaguely haunted shadow to her eyes, the edge of her mouth.

(I can't imagine I'll still be here).

"We should come out here more often. I can show you the other side. The way I see it."

Ian

When Kiara settles her head against his neck, Ian closes his eyes and lets out a long exhale. She can feel it winding through his body, relaxing muscles one by one. His chest, even through their clothes, is warm against her back. It shouldn't still surprise him - how easily they fit together; how much her body feels like home when it's tucked into his own. There's a feeling that he can't entirely vocalize, and on another night it might have unsettled him, but tonight he just... lets it be.

They'll be in their forties the next time they see this. (If they see it.) Ian laughs softly at that. The inflection of his voice has an almost purring warmth to it. "You'll be beautiful and terrifying and vital and wise, and I'm sure I'll still be excruciatingly attracted to you." He dips his head to chase the movement of her thumb, catching it briefly with his lips. She says they ought to come out here more often, and he hums his agreement.

"The sunsets are nice."

One of his hands plays at the edge of her shirt, working up under the fabric to trail the tips of his fingers over the warmth of her skin.

"I can see across, when I choose to. But I can't touch it. I wouldn't mind seeing it through your eyes."

Kiara

"Mm," there's a low, teasing quality to her voice. "See, you had me right up until you reached wise, Ian Lai." She so rarely says his name like that, drawn out and in full, there's a strange level of intimacy to it. The way it sounds on her tongue, a foreign appreciation for the way Kiara lets it drag out and then offers a tiny hum of pleasure when he gently closes his mouth around her thumb.

He can feel the way her ribcage expands and contracts as she breathes, the way they're sitting, could feel the steady beat of her heart beneath her clothing if he attuned himself enough. The little flutter it gives when he touches her body beneath her clothing; a thousand tiny receptors firing all at once beneath her skin centered directly beneath where his fingers trail over her skin.

He calls her vital and that much seems appropriate; there's a sense of it even when she's still; the coil of it; her presence; that delicate pulsing quality to her, interlaced with the flush of new life. It's difficult to imagine Kiara Woolfe feeling anything other than rejuvenating, like wrapping your arms around a surging, crackling current of pure volatility; an impression of nature in red lips and dark, gleaming eyes. "I could teach you, how to reach out and feel it." Her fingers skim down and slide over his, where he's trailing them over her skin.

She turns her face into his neck and he can feel the tickle of her eyelashes when she dips them, her voice warm and low and intimate, speaking near his ear. "Out here, at the Chantry. It's beautiful. Everything is a little more honest, even how we see ourselves." He can feel her smile. "Besides, if I found a way to connect Samir to it, you shouldn't be a harder challenge than that.

I think he nearly ran away from my pagan sorcery." There's the barest laugh, there. A huff of amusement at the enduring perception her ilk have etched for themselves in history. The herbalists. The wise women. The witches and their nefarious schemes. "But, I could. Show you the way it feels to me."

Ian

There's a contrary inflection in his voice when he laughs at that - the way she says he had her until he said wise. (See, he thinks he's right on that count.) But he doesn't voice any further argument. The smile lingers on his lips after she says his name. It's the first time he's really heard her say it like that. Elijah used to say it often: Ian Lai. Like he needed two names to fit the size of his persona. It's different when Kiara says it. More intimate.

Everything between them is.

He keeps touching her, mapping the soft warmth of her stomach with these slow, circular motions. His body shifts a little on the stone, legs pressing in at her hips, and there's a soft exhale when he dips his head down to kiss the corner of her jaw. He has to unwind his other arm so he can push the hair back from her neck and shoulder. Then his mouth is there, kissing slowly along the curve of her throat. He lets the kisses linger for a long time, counting the beats of her pulse beneath his lips.

"I like your pagan sorcery." A beat, and he smiles softly against her neck. "I don't think I'll be much of a challenge."

Briefly, his eyes cast back to the moon. It's a little brighter now. Funny to think how it's up there, moving. How the Earth itself is spinning. How things get caught within each other's gravity.

"Wǒ xiǎng yǒngyuǎn liú zài zhèlǐ."

It's the first time he's spoken Mandarin around her. The first time he's used it at all, really, in months. It isn't something he normally does - slip into the wrong language. Not the way Elijah did that day with Henry.

He kisses her again, after he says it, and this time it's less sensual and more... like he needs it. The connection to her skin. Her body folded up against his own.

Kiara

It was funny the things darkness could do.

Cover and uncover truths, veil or unveil perceptions. Without the awareness that clear vision offers, all they have to translate tone and meaning and intent is their voices and their bodies - the latter had always been the easiest. It had also been the first real way they connected to each other - beyond easy flirtation and banter there was a conversation that happened when they let their bodies convey intention for them.

It was as easy (and terrifying) as breathing, in some respects.

But then - the pagan was a student of life, in more ways than one. Attuning herself to and listening with her body was instinctive for Kiara. Every part of her seems to sing when he kisses her jaw, the dove-soft skin beneath her chin, the slope of a shoulder. She makes soft, nearly interrogative noises when he stops his ministrations and her eyes open on the sky above them; the tiny pinpricks of light; the returning potency of the moon.

It soaks into the Verbena's skin, the strength of it. The governance and heraldry she puts in its presence, the constancy of its trajectory over the night sky.

When he speaks again its not words she understands and yet, there's a lashing sort of sincerity to them that pulls another noise from her throat. That turns her face when he kisses her skin again and drags their mouths into an unsure alignment. She kisses the corner of his mouth. Again. Her hand rising to cup the back of his neck, he can feel the cool press of her ring; the slide of fine bracelets down her wrist.

Her body is half twisted there in the cradle of his and her hand regretfully abandons his neck to slide down, under his shirt. A blind quest for the feel of his bare skin against her palms, perhaps.

"That's beautiful."  She seems to mean the sound of it, the way it falls from his lips. At least, if the way her hand slides back to his jaw is any indication it does. "Say something else?"

Ian

[Life 1, practiced]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 3) ( success x 1 )

Ian

[and again, apparently. +1 and -1 (resonance: primal)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 5, 10) ( success x 2 )

Ian

The words sound fluent, the way they slide off his tongue. Fluid and natural. It's harder to lose languages when you learn them at birth. Kiara kisses the corner of his mouth and he doesn't move immediately to deepen it. Just closes his eyes and goes still like he's etching the moment into his memory. Then he takes a breath and moves his lips over her own, grazing them slowly.

"Wǒ bù zhīdào gāi shuō xiē shénme. Guānyú nǐ de yīqiè dōu ràng wǒ jīngkǒng wànfēn. Wǒ pà wǒ huì shānghài nǐ. Wǒ pà nǐ huì shānghài wǒ. Wǒ pà wǒ huì shīqù nǐ."

He pulls his mouth away and looks at her. In the shard of light seeping down from the dark sky, he can make out the shape of her eyes. The way they shine. He's listening to her heartbeat now. The motion of his hand stalls when it wraps around her hip. Kiara has her hand under his shirt too, and the skin there feels almost hot to the touch.

"Nǐ zhīdào nǐ shì duōme piàoliang ma? Wǒ..."

The words trail off there, and his pulse ticks up into an almost frantic register. Maybe she'll feel it, the way his body tenses; the way his lips part to allow these shallow, quick breaths.

He doesn't say it that way. In this language she doesn't know. Won't let himself be that much of a coward.

The next breath is long and deep. He leans in to press his lips against hers and doesn't quite pull away when he says, "I love you."

Kiara

[Quick WP check.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Kiara

She doesn't expect it, is the thing.

There they are in the darkness, lit only by moonlight and surrounded by the wilderness and she doesn't expect him to say that. She's listening, with her hand under his clothing and her face tipped back toward his; near enough that she can feel the way his breath ghosts against her cheek and there's a certain way she's looking at him, her eyes dark and glinting and only half visible that maybe she wouldn't, if it were stark daylight.

If it didn't feel like a half suspended dream, in the moment.

He's feeling the heat of her; the steady rhythm of her heart beneath her skin and maybe he draws the courage from that, too. The way she feels wound around him, present and vital and so utterly alive in his arms, wrapped up with him. She's fought a dragon and stepped across worlds in the last few days and yet - when he takes that long dragging breath in and leans down to kiss her and says -

I love you

- there's a significant chance she's never been quite so terrified. He can sense it, too. The sudden tension that runs through her. The way her entire body seems to wage a war with itself in tandem with the complicated flicker of emotions that run through her eyes, that curl her mouth into a half formed expression of surprise and - so it feels, uncharacteristic shyness.

"Ian - " It sounds so much like she's about to deny it, to push him away and curl her arms around herself as if to protect herself from the reality of his words. To keep that offering as distant and removed from herself as she could, because the alternative was - too big, too precious a thing to be set to her to keep. Kiara Woolfe was not the keeper of hearts.

But there's a hesitation, then. He can feel it, the rapid pace of her pulse, the way she struggles for a long moment to untangle her thoughts. How many times had she told him (warned him) she had a talent for breaking things that mattered to her.

Especially when they did.

"I don't - I mean I do, but - " There's a small noise, a half formed, shaky exhale. "God, I can't even do this right. I love you, too." Her eyes are wide, almost frantic in the dark. "I'm a little terrified of that." There's still a tension (possibly more so, now) in Kiara that suggests she's fighting back the urge to run.

Ian

He can remember the exact moment when he last said those words to another person. There's an almost heartbreaking clarity to it, the memory. Even after nearly ten years. The smell of Naomi's hair drifting into a curtain around his face, her dark eyes gazing down, wide and velvet-soft. Sounds of neighboring kids playing field hockey in the road. Afternoon sun slanting in through the blinds to leave streaks of light on the wall. He said: can I stay here forever? And she said...

...stay as long as you want.

The stutter-drum pulse of his heart (I love you.)

The searing press of her lips, branding her answer into his skin (I love you, I love you, I love you...)

He was having sex when his parents died. When his sister's tiny body was crushed beneath the wheels of a truck. Turns out sometimes forever doesn't last very long at all.

But the thing is, for a few impossible heartbeats when he kisses Kiara and says those words, he doesn't think about anything but her. Doesn't exist in any time but the one they're in. He isn't expecting her to say it back. Even as he says it, he thinks he knows how this is going to end. That he just took one step too far and broke something. He thinks she's going to leave, and for a moment she almost does. Ian, she says, and his heartbeat slows as this odd sort of calm comes over him. Already he can feel the world resettling into familiar lines.

I don't...

His arms fall away, dropping back to rest his hands on the stone. He can feel the violent pulse of fear and anxiety in her pattern and knows it's because of him. There is a moment of regret in that - flicker-soft and bruised. But then the tone changes, and she says something else. Awkward and hesitant. Ian tilts his head and looks at her.

In the sky, the visible section of the moon glows bright like a lantern.

"You don't have to..." he starts to say. "I don't expect anything. I just... wanted to tell you."

Kiara still looks as though she might run, and Ian doesn't try to contain that impulse. Doesn't lock his arms around her and pull her to him the way he did moments ago. Instead he waits quietly, watching her with this complicated, slightly vulnerable expression.

"I'm sorry if I fucked things up."

Kiara

I'm sorry if I fucked things up.

"You didn't." She stresses, and then with a shaky little exhale: "You haven't. I think they've always been that way."

She reaches for him, then. It's not a frantic, frenetic gesture the way it might have been given the way her heart is racing beneath her chest and fear still has its talons set deep into her. She gives him (herself) that much control, demands her hands not shake when she reaches out to touch him on the wrist; to curl her fingers there (be my anchor, keep me here). "Sometimes when we're together I want to keep going. I want to - " she breaks off, momentarily lost for how to articulate her thoughts. There's vulnerability on her face, too. An almost sweet sort of uncertainty, the way her mouth shapes her frustration, her eyes focusing beyond him, outwards, upwards.

Kiara looks at the moon, at the sliver of it that's returning into sight. She seems to take some measure of comfort from it. From the place where she's touching Ian. Feeling the steady reminder of his presence. Of its presence, high above them. "I think about you, when we're not together. When I was in the Umbra with Elijah. I wanted you with me. Not just because I trust you, but if I was going to walk into something blind, I'd want you there. I wanted to tell you that, before I left but I couldn't find the words."

She drops her face, then. Dark strands of hair fall across her cheeks, in the darkness, they spill like black ink over her features, half concealing her expression from him.

"I'm not sure how to do this. I've never wanted to try to. I'm still half convinced we should just walk away from whatever this is, but - " She stops, scoots a little closer to him until their knees brush and she puts her hands out to touch his shoulders, his jaw. They flutter with uncharacteristic uncertainty before landing, like startled birds. Her pulse leaping like some wild thing at the base of her neck, against her ribs.  "I don't want to stop feeling the way I do when I'm with you."

She leans into his space but doesn't breach it further to kiss him. "I'm selfish and I'm scared I'm going to hurt you, but I wanted you to know. That I do." Her eyes dip, she lifts a shoulder in some supple, subtle gesture. A helpless shrug of surrender. "I need you."

Ian

It's... more than he's expecting. And for a moment he's almost painfully conscious of the fact that what she's just said ought to make him recoil. Need is not a word he's ever been any good at hearing. That he can sit there now and listen to her say it and not feel that same sense of nauseating panic...

He doesn't know what to do with it. What it even means.

For a few long seconds, he actually forgets to breath. Kiara touches his wrist, his shoulders, his jaw, seeking the kind of connection they've always found so natural (even when they were strangers,) and when she leans close he almost bridges the gap to kiss her. There's a tiny, fractional movement of his neck before he stops - hesitates. Because she's still talking and he wants to hear...

Oh.

Another beat of silence and he takes this sudden, deep breath, sending a jolt of oxygen into his blood. "How do you do that?"

The next moment his lips are on hers and his hands are in her hair and he's kissing her like she's the air he needs to breath. There's a moment when everything slows, when his lips brush hers and he says, "I'm here. I'm always here." Then he pulls her into his lap and holds her with his arms wrapped tightly around her back. Her knees are pressed in at his hips and she can feel his rib-cage expand every time he inhales. The pulse point at the base of his neck is drumming hard, but not quite so frantic as it was a moment ago.

"I am so..." he gives this quiet breath of laughter. "I couldn't walk away from you if I tried, I think."

He kisses her again, at the edge of her lower lip, then softly underneath her chin. Something about the way he does it feels just a little bit like surrender.

Kiara

[Life 1, doo de doo, we're just doing a thing.]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kiara

There's so much power in words, which may, in some ways, be why they both struggle so powerfully at making use of them. Kiara doesn't tell him that part of her response, that instinctive panic to being told he loves her is the bone deep realization that it's the first time since her mentor died she's heard the words from anybody and felt sure they were true.

The only other person the Verbena has ever heard them from had left (her) the city.

It cut deeper than perhaps Kiara had even noted to him, that her best friend had found the capacity to leave her behind when so much of who they were was tangled up in one another. The worse pain perhaps that there was no real severing of that connection - an absence could only be a true one when there was something torn away, pulled out of orbit, when there was silence to be felt.

Sadie's absence was a perpetual wound, raw and real and endured because there was no other option. The tension pulled taut but never released.

How do you do that?

And he's pulling her into his lap and into his arms and Kiara's mouth is bruising on his. In the wake of what she said how could it be anything but, really? How could she not curl her hands up, under, his clothing with impatient, desperate movements and press her meaning right into his skin with her palms. There's a quiet breath of laughter and Kiara buries her face in the curve of his neck in response.

Puts her lips right over that pulse at the base of his neck and he can feel that, too.

The warmth of it; the way her hands seem to be feeding a surge of energy right into his bones; she breathes out and pulls back, lifts her face enough to meet his eyes; her mouth curled up at the edges; she's kissed him hard enough to cut it at the corner, this tiny mark of her momentary savagery and it's there again, as the moon reveals herself above them and in turn; offers a gradual revelation of their bodies; of their expressions; just how very much the Verbena is a child of nature.

Her hair a dark, tangled web around her face; her eyes gleaming and full of things she can't quite fathom into words. The sense of her will, too, the way her pattern pulses and surges against his with revitalizing energy. She pulls back, settling on her knees in his arms and slides a hand around to find his chest; everywhere she traces her fingers leaving a brandish; a tingling, electric current.

There's nothing in him that needs that energy, but he can feel it, Kiara's touch, sliding under his skin.

"Yeah." She says and then leans in to press her mouth to his. It tastes faintly copper-tinged. At another time, for a different reason, there might have been something ritualistic to that; the exchange of blood. The swearing of some kind of loyalty. "I know. I can feel it." She makes a low noise in her throat, her arms winding around his neck; pushing him over.

She'd told him once, not so long ago, that he could get lost in her, go as deep as he liked.

She tangles herself up with him now and returns the favor.

Kiara

Wednesday evening had settled in warm over Morrison.

Aside from her response to Ian's video message on Tuesday, there hadn't been a great many sightings of the Verbena known as Kiara Woolfe, not since a certain hacker come drug dealer had required her to heal him and subsequently been delivered into the capable hands of one Grace Evans. All said, it wasn't exactly the first time Ian and Kiara had gone days, even a month or so without seeing the other around the city limits. The brunette was, above all else, a capricious and independent soul.

Still, her response had been, in her way, an invitation for him to come and find her.

She's in the meditation pool, as it turns out.

Hardly hiding but there is something to the sight of her that arrests attention. Not simply the fact she's soaking in the water with her head resting back against the side of the pool; arms stretched out to lightly anchor herself in place and her dark hair tied into a messy knot to keep it dry, nor the fact she was wearing a white bikini top that laced around behind her neck but - she was glowing.

It was subtle at best but the illumination was easier to see in the gathering dusk. Kiara's skin had an illumination to it that, coupled with the way her energy felt; offered the oddest sensation that her pattern was visually breathing in tandem with her.

There's a glass of untouched wine resting on one of the stones beside her arm but other than the occasional ripple as her legs moved beneath the surface, the pagan was otherwise entirely motionless; her eyes closed; expression peaceful; attuned. There were insects singing in the grass and somewhere; a lone bird saluted the last hints of daylight as it faded and stars appeared; twinkling into substance above.

The picture of rejuvenation at work, perhaps.

Ian

[Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Ian

Earlier in the evening, Annie, Sasha and Leah took the SUV and headed into the city. Perhaps Kiara saw them go. If she did, she might note the change in the youngest of the two Verbena - the blond hair and the new face she'd crafted with her magick. Leah never explained why she needed a different face (a different name) to go into the city. Likely there was a story there. Many of them had such stories.

Kiara has the place to herself for a time, before the distant sound of an engine draws near along the winding driveway.

Ian's footsteps are quiet as he approaches over the freshly mowed grass. The heels of his boots leave little indentations in the green. By the time he reaches the pool, he's already thinking he'd rather be barefoot, but he hesitates when he notices the change in Kiara's skin - the way it gives off that gentle glow in the moonlight. Crouching down at her side, he reaches out to trace the backs of his knuckles over the slope of her shoulder. The gesture is slightly tentative and wholly curious.

"What happened?"

Kiara

[Awareness]

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

Kiara

Aisling had been talented with it. The crafting of disguises, of glamours to change aspects of herself to suit her endeavors. She'd explained the necessity only once to her before she'd headed into the city to visit the same hospital she'd encountered Kiara and Sadie at; had spoken of the dangers of being known to the wrong people; of the ways her work put her on the front line for detection.

It had always been worth it, to Aisling Callahan. Save one, keep one less from the ministrations of the Technocracy.

She was in the kitchen when the others departed, uncorking a bottle of wine and pouring out a generous glass. If she notes Leah's disguise (she does) she's careful not to comment on it with more than a brief, tugging smile. Recognition of her skills, perhaps. She feels Ian when he approaches, opens her eyes when the insects quieten. He's crouching down beside her, lightly stroking her skin which feels the same as ever, if slightly cooler for the time she's spent in the water.

The glow that suffices it, whatever it is, doesn't seem contagious; his knuckles don't come away with a residue of it; it simply - is - beneath Kiara's skin. Her dark eyes observe his curiosity for a beat and then she shifts; the water lapping at the side of the pool as she turns to face him. Ian, adept as he is at the way the human body worked; at the indications of muscular tension, can likely see the way she does so with care.

"I crossed over. To the other side. To the Umbra." She settles her arms on the side of the pool; her eyelashes are spiked with water; droplets sliding along the slope of her shoulders, she's smiling as she offers this news, though it's tinged with a sort of weary awareness of the cost. "I'd been trying to for so long and suddenly I just - " She rubs her cheek against her arm. "- I saw what it was like and when I came back," she lets her eyes drop to her body.

"This happened." Her eyes tick back to his face, a thin shoulder lifts slightly. "I wasn't careful enough."

Ian

There will always be things that Ian cannot control. Dangers he's unable to protect people from. Life is dangerous. Especially for them. It is possible, however, that as much as he fully understands this fact, he will never stop feeling that familiar knot of anxiety wind around his sternum whenever he's reminded of it.

The way he sits there, crouched on the lip of the stones with coiled muscles and sharply focused eyes... he looks like a wild animal. Like he might at any moment spring into action.

He doesn't, though.

"Sometimes it doesn't matter how careful we are."

(Another legacy of the Technocracy.)

He lets his eyes fall away from her face to tug at the zippers on the sides of his boots. It's a natural impulse, being near the node (wanting to feel less encumbered.) He sits down, pulling his feet free. His shirt comes off next. Fall weather is creeping in, but the air tonight is warm enough yet to feel comfortable on his skin. He doesn't try to join Kiara just yet. Instead he rolls the edges of his jeans midway up his calves and slides forward to dip his feet into the water.

It isn't as enjoyable as it should be. There's too much on his mind. But the resonance in the air makes his muscles uncoil a little.

"It's been... an interesting week for both of us, I think. Are you alright?"

Kiara

She's been meditating near the stone steps that lead down into the pool so its no great task for Kiara to set her feet down on the base of the Node to free her arms in order to attend to her as of yet ignored glass of wine. She takes a careful sip of it, watching as Ian sheds some of the layers he'd arrived in.

Swallowing as he asks if she's alright, Kiara's brows draw together as she sets the glass back down; drifts a little closer until she's situated in the cradle his body forms, his feet in the water.

"Physically, I've felt better but it's nothing. In the scheme of things, it's - " She floats out a little into the water, her expression thoughtful, momentarily somber. " - I don't regret that I did it. What I saw, it was beautiful but also - " Kiara's lips twist, her expression becoming some complicated reaction to her experiences. Sorrow and uncertainty, exhilaration and some suggestion of unease. "The Avatar Storm. I felt it. I passed right through it and it was like standing in the middle of a battlefield. All that rage and directionless anger just existing there." The combination of the water's reflection and Kiara's temporary aura casts the Verbena with a strange, ethereal glow and she appears as otherworldly in the moment as the place she describes.

She shifts closer to him, then. Sets her hands lightly on his knees just above where his jeans have been pushed up, out of the way of the water. "I've never felt anything like that. Like it would tear me apart." She searches his expression, reads the tension there, feels the hint of it in his voice.

"Are you alright? What have I missed?"

Ian

It is now the third time in only so many days that Ian has been given reason to think about the Umbra. One might call that a sign, if one were to believe in such things. It's a place that he himself has only ever glimpsed the surface of. For a long time, it seemed likely he might never be able to do even that on his own. (And what had Sabine said to him? You are closer to all the mystery and wonder and power of spirits than they are. If that was true, then he'd been a very poor student.)

It is not, though, that it held no meaning for him. Perhaps more that he did not wish to see it.

His eyes shift a little when he looks down  at Kiara in the pool. Something shadowed with exhaustion and cracked at these tiny, broken edges. He's been holding a lot of tension in his chest. Perhaps she'll notice that too, with the way his torso does not quite relax the way it should.

"Someone told me recently that the Storm is dying down. That people are starting to cross over more. I wish I could have gone with you." He goes quiet, watching the way the water shimmers against the ethereal glow of her skin. She puts her hand on his knee and he leans forward, tracing fingertips through her damp hair. "First of all, you missed me acting like an idiot in a karaoke bar. But I think I sent you evidence of that."

He knows he did (he wasn't that drunk.)

"I found out some things about the attack in Reynold's Park. The one you and Alexander were looking into. But that's... less immediate, I think." His hand drops back to his side as he glances away, focusing on the stand of quaking aspen at the edge of the woods. Their slender trunks creak and sway gently in the breeze. "I also met someone I didn't think I'd see again. This kid named Atreyu. He's the one who told me about the Storm."

Ian exhales slowly, bringing his eyes back to meet Kiara's. "He said that the Technocrats have re-established contact with their old leadership, whatever that means. I think he called it Control. He thinks we could be in for another war. Maybe worse, this time. If the old powers get what they want."

Kiara

"Next time," she asserts with a little wry bent to her mouth, her eyes steady on his face, the smile growing as he traces fingers through her hair where tendrils have grown damp from leaning against the side of the pool and cling to the nape of her neck; her temples. She voices agreement about the evidence of his evening at the karaoke bar ("I did that once with Elijah, took pity on the poor guy when his parents were in town, I wasn't nearly drunk enough for some of the vocal slaughter I endured that night") and then stills, her dark eyes growing focused, even as they narrow on the rippling water surrounding her.

A frown appears.

A schism of tension gathering between Kiara's shoulder blades; spilling over into the fine quality of those eyes as they cut back to his face, he can see the fear warring with anger in them. "So they can finish destroying what little they didn't last time, I guess." She clenches her jaw and draws back to cross her arms over her chest; the stance is defensive. Though the anger seems wholly focused on the subject, more than the messenger.

"Did he say anything about them here. Numbers, or - " She breathes in sharply, drops her hands to her sides; they cause tiny ripples to roll over the surface of the water. "How long we have until - " She doesn't finish the thought but there's no need, really. It's written all over the Verbena's face.

Ian

Ian has never lost anyone he truly cared about to the Technocracy. Not the way that Kiara has. But he knows what it feels like to have a memory rip through his body the way it probably does for her whenever she hears someone mention the Union. And it hurts him to see it now, to know that he's the one who opened the door.

He also knows there is likely to come a day when he can no longer say that the Technocracy hasn't taken something that mattered from him. The immediacy of that possibility is all the more real now.

"He said there's a lab in the city, but it's mostly scientists. He also seems to think they aren't interested in starting a fight with us. Given we haven't ever run into them... that could be true." His voice drops. "I'm not sure how long. I don't think he is either. He was talking about all these politics within the Union. Dissidents versus extremists. He seems to think there's a chance the new leadership won't want to go back to the way things used to be. That there might be some kind of internal war. He and his cabal are trying to make sure the right side wins." There's this faintly bitter laugh, at that. "As if there's really a fucking right side, with them."

But if what Atreyu says is true, then they have to look at it that way, don't they? The lesser of two evils.

Ian watches Kiara in the pool - the anger and the tension in her frame, the way she holds herself like she might lash out at the next person to cross into her path. There's an instinct. It doesn't really form in his mind so much as unspool through his body - this sudden, almost visceral need to be closer to her. He's still got his jeans on, but he doesn't stop to think about it. He just shifts forward and drops into the water. His breath comes a little quickly when he feels the Node's embrace wash over him, but mostly his attention is on Kiara. His hands come out to touch her arms, to pull her close if she'll let him. There's a hum of tension in his muscles... this deep, subtle vibration that seems to want to explode into something but doesn't quite manifest.

He might be putting himself into the orbit of her rage, but whatever she's feeling, he isn't afraid of it. And maybe that's part of what he's offering in that moment - an anchor or an outlet. Maybe he needs that too.

"What I said that day after the show... I'll do whatever I have to do to keep this place safe. To keep you safe."

Kiara

Some part of Kiara must process that she has no room for clear, unbiased opinion on this subject. Indeed, in another mood, at another time she might have responded differently. May still find within her the germ of sympathy for those caught up in the war. The scientists and doctors who had no true idea who (or what) they so tirelessly toiled for. There was, somewhere, laced up and tangled inside the mechanisms of war and ambition, real victims.

As real and perhaps more undeserving than her former coven had been. Than her mentor, who knowingly engaged, had to have been. Not many members of the human race understood the full extent to which they were cogs in a larger, merciless machine.

"Is that the company line they're going with, now?" She asks, her voice quietly furious. There's a sting of bitterness to it, a hot spark of anger prevalent in her eyes, even as Ian hops down into the water half clothed and moves toward her. She doesn't stop him, but equally so she doesn't reach out for him, either. Her chin lifts; spots of bright color darkening in her cheeks. "We're not so bad, we just want to control the world in a nicer way. Stay out of our way and we won't slaughter you all like the cowards we are."

Thrown against the ebb and stutter-glow of that aura to her skin tonight, the Verbena looks every inch the creature of nature she claims allegiance and kinship, too, especially with the way her voice vibrates with carefully nuanced fury.

She doesn't fight it when he pulls her close but her agitation has her slower to respond, to let go of the tension in her frame. He can feel it as she tries to; the slow breath she takes; the gradual give to her body; the way she allows herself to sink against him; just a little. Her lips close enough to his shoulder he can feel it when she offers quietly: "There's no keeping safe from them."

She draws back enough to skate fingers along his jaw. "They'll bring their war right to us." Kiara's mouth gives at a brief, sharp little smile. "Part of me hopes they do. If only so I can tell them where they can put their ideas of enlightenment."

Ian

There's no keeping safe from them.

It's a fact they both know all too well. A fact that any of the Awakened understand. One cannot live in the world that they do without being constantly aware of the threat that the Technocracy poses. Even if one is lucky enough not to encounter them, there are stories everywhere. Faceless, looming threats lurking just out of sight.

Standing in that house with Kalen and Grace, listening to Atreyu talk about helping the Technocrats like it was a fucking tactical decision (like they could all just forget what the Union was and what it had done,) Ian had wanted to scream.

Kiara doesn't need to explain why she's so angry. She can see the mirror of it in Ian's eyes when he looks at her. But there are other things, too. It's why he said what he did.

"I know."

His arms fold around her, and he can feel the live-wire tension in her body. The weight of his arms is light enough not to make her feel trapped, but when his hands find her back they grip into the muscle there, and there is this tiny shudder in his chest.

"Don't hope that. People will die."

His voice catches a little, and if she looks at his eyes she'll see the brimming swell of emotion there. The chasm of anger and hurt and fear that's threatening to break through. She doesn't even know the rest of the story - the things Atreyu reminded him of (that horrible fucking place where they met) and the secrets Sabine gave him. She doesn't know that he might be about to lose the only connection he has left to his father.

(But he's not thinking about that, see?)

"I can't..."

(lose you too.)

He doesn't finish it though. His voice gets all knotted up in his throat and he knows if he keeps talking he's going to start to cry. So he just stops and pulls her against him tightly (forgetting for a moment that he was trying to be careful) and presses his head against hers.

Kiara

She doesn't know what it was like to stand there with two people you considered friends and participate in a discussion about the War and the Technocracy and helping the Union as if it was even on the table for some of them. As if they could put to one side grudges and loss and (in some cases) centuries of tutored mistrust and betrayal and work side by side with such people. She doesn't know what it was like where Ian had been, where he, Kalen and Sid had met Atreyu the first time.

She doesn't know a great many pieces of the puzzle but what she does know, what she can feel is anger.

What she does understand is the way it felt to stand in a clearing with dirt tricking through her fingers and Annie Pierce's despair washing over her. To see what remained of the Union's last attempts at control of what wasn't theirs. She remembers Serafine's expression when she said there was a gap in Time. That what had been ripped out and bleached clean wasn't just life. Nothingness. It was what always remained in the wake of them, that was what Kiara knew.

People will die.

Her eyes are overbright and the gleaming smile around her generous mouth dulls and fades; she becomes somber. "I know they will." And when he pulls her closer, she makes a quiet noise that could as much be a tiny reaction to the fact she's still oddly tender; her limbs heavier not simply for the fact they're standing in the middle of a pool but that she'd been dosed with Paradox a day earlier as much as the way Ian's voice catches; Kiara's arms come around him and press against his back; her fingers gripping at his shoulders in a sudden, spasmodic way.

If he looks, pressed this close, he can see the way the illumination under the Verbena's skin reflects against his own.

"I couldn't do that. Work with them. If that's what's on the table. If that's what - " She draws back enough to pull in a ragged breath; to search through the complicated mix of emotions in his eyes, her own full of dark threads of anger and pain and, no shortage of concern. That, coupled with the way she strokes her hands over him, shoulder to neck and down his back in an absent gesture of comfort. Touch had always been their easiest conduit for things that couldn't easily be articulated.

"It's not in me."

She sounds almost regretful, the brunette, for the fact it isn't. "Not after what they did in New York. God, not after what they did here." Her expression turns suddenly fierce and she slides her arms around his neck, buoyed by the water its simple enough to press their bodies together and she curls herself around him; presses her face into his neck to murmur: "They've taken enough people from me."

(They can't have you, too).

Ian

When Kiara makes that noise, Ian lets his grip relax almost instantly. There's an answering sound in his chest that feels worried; apologetic. Probably more than he needs to be, but he so rarely forgets to be careful and just then his emotions are more exposed than either of them are used to. He doesn't let her go, but he stops pressing - lets his grasp ease back to what it was. Kiara's hands are on his shoulders and she's gripping him too. Her skin against his is luminous and oddly beautiful. Like she brought some of the Spirit Wilds back with her.

She tells him that she could never work with the Technocrats, and Ian doesn't offer any resistance to this claim. Doesn't try to convince her why she should. He'd known - of course he'd known - that she wasn't a creature built for that kind of compromise. That the Union had taken too much from her. That asking her to set that aside was cruel at best, impossible at worst.

It's not in me.

They've taken enough people from me.

"I know," he says again. "I won't ask you to." There's a long beat as he looks down into her eyes, then he kisses her on the forehead, the temple, and finally her lips. It is... soft... slow. The core of his body is still shivering a little, despite the warmth of the spring and the summer air. Like his body can't quite hold what it's feeling.

There's something else he hasn't told her, and it would be so easy not to. Almost, he doesn't. There's evident reluctance in his voice when he says it, like he's a little scared of what she might do with the information. But he does tell her, because he owes it to her to give her all the pieces. And because he doesn't want to lie to her. Ever.

"The Hermetics want to fight them. Here. They sent someone to scope things out. But even if they win, it won't matter. The Union will just show up again with a bigger army, and where the fuck does that even end?"

Kiara

She can feel it when he presses his lips to her brow, her temple, feels the hesitation drawing in as he kisses her completely and she pushes into the embrace; slides a hand around his rib-cage; down over a shoulder and for a beat; ignores the subtle ache it sends lancing through her muscles to keep him against her for a moment.

But - the way he shivers and the sense that there's more. More to know, more he feels he needs to tell her tempers her enough to loosen her hold and allow him to voice it - reluctantly. The Hermetics wanted to fight. They sent someone to scope things out.

If they win -

There's a sharp breath of laughter from the Verbena. It's disbelieving, dubious. Her eyebrows rising in tandem as he goes on. When he finishes, Kiara is shaking her head, her hands having fallen away from him; they slide through the water at her sides, the tension returning to her shoulders, the set of her jaw. For all that she was a healer, that she had the capacity for great empathy and consideration there was the other side to the Verbena, too. There had to be, in some respects - how could a creature so tied to the earth not have darker aspects - nature was, after all, so utterly mutable.

He'd tasted a little of that side of her when they'd met - that corrosive, devouring edge. The sensation of it had fled from Kiara but, that capacity for it, lingered in the flashing warning in her eyes at moments; the harder twist to her mouth; her narrowing expression. "The Hermetics want to start a war. Of course they do and never mind, I'm guessing, what the rest of us think."

Kiara's anger wanes a little as if it sustaining it were exhausting her (and perhaps, to a degree, it is, given everything). She lifts her fingers to her face; brushes aside strands of wet hair and leaves a smattering of droplets on her cheek; they slide down; gathering along her jaw; the dip of her collarbones.

"Where does Kalen stand on this?" A beat, she searches his expression. "Will he side with them?" The tone she uses seems to question whether he'll be given a choice.

Ian

Her anger is, in its way, reassuring. She lets her arms go and so does he, though perhaps with more reluctance. His hands slide to her shoulders; down the length of her arms, until his palms spread out along the surface of the water.

"Kalen's going to try to convince them to stand down. Atreyu's helping him. They have a sound argument, but... I don't know." He sighs, and the gust of his breath shakes a little. "Hermetics and their fucking pride." There's a beat before he adds, "Kalen might lose his position over this."

Might lose more than that. But Ian may never fully understand the draw the Order held for Kalen. The hopes and dreams he'll be giving up if he leaves it. The family.

"I'll tell you when I know more. We're trying to keep this off of Ginger. Just... to be safe."

If Kiara is exhausted, so is he. Emotionally, at least. She can see it when he exhales, the way he tries to let some of it go. Let the warm, rejuvenating caress of the water and of Kiara's presence sink a little deeper into his skin. He's still not really thinking about the fact that, in a moment, he'll have to get out and dry his jeans off. Mostly he just looks... tired, worn.

"Do you think Annie and Sasha will care if I sleep here tonight?"

Kiara

It occurs to Kiara, not for the first time, that this is the Tradition Elijah has ambitions to join - has joined, for all she knows and there's a sliver of ice that situates itself in her chest at the idea of that. At the idea of what so much ambition and pride would do to a person like Elijah - for all his striving, hopeful desire to learn and better himself - there was a coldness to the Order that Kiara had never quite been able to shake off.

(But then, how many opinions had she allowed herself to form based on her mentor's re-tellings? She's not immune to the fact she carries a bias when it comes to some, she'd barely withheld her dismay the first time Lavinia mentioned the Chorus).

"I don't envy them." Still - "But I do trust Kalen to try." She draws her lower lip between her teeth, then. Looks away, up into the reaches of the darkened sky above them. It wasn't a night free of cloud cover but the stars could be glimpsed; winking in and out of sight; a subtle breeze picked through the trees and where it brushed the Verbena's skin; it left the tiny hairs on end. Sent tiny ripples across the surface of the water.

"Mabon is coming soon." She speaks without looking at him, but can feel him listening, feel his attention. "The Equinox. The day and night are equal and the Sun God dies and returns to the arms of the Goddess." There's a little smile the bends the edge of the Verbena's mouth, a slim shoulder lifts. "Sadie and I used to collect all the leaves that fell from the trees around New York."

Do you think Annie and Sasha will care if I sleep here tonight?

She moves toward him, looks down at where the water ripples and distorts their bodies below the surface (her own still faintly illumined, more evident now in the gathering dark) and takes his hand, lacing their fingers together. Lifts her face and, leaning in to press her mouth to his once; almost chastely for her, squeezes his fingers.

"They went into the city earlier, but - I don't think so." She tugs him toward the steps, moving backwards with care. "I might keep you awake, though." She casts him a fleeting, brief smile, her eyes dropping to where their fingers are entwined and the flicker-glow beneath her skin. "Unintentionally."

Ian

The kiss is simple. This moment of connection as their hands intertwine and their bodies touch beneath the water. Ian leans into it just a little.

"Mm, it is almost that time of year, isn't it?" He lifts their conjoined hands and loosens them a little; slides his fingers between her own, feeling the shape of her knuckles, the length of the bones in her hand. "I like Fall."

He hopes, but does not say, that they actually be able to enjoy some of it this year.

There is that fleeting smile, and for the first time in a good few minutes, Ian answers it. "Unintentionally, she says. And dashes all of my hopes." His tone is gently teasing and only slightly disappointed. There is still too much evidence of tension and frayed nerves for the statement to carry any weight. He nuzzles against her cheek briefly, makes this sound in his throat that feels a little tight and almost-pained, but it's gone a moment later. Then she's leading him back to the steps, and he follows her out onto the grass, dripping.

It's then that he glances down and notes the discomforting way his jeans plaster themselves to his legs with a little curl of annoyance. Even that is fleeting and half-hearted. "Hope they don't mind me using their dryer, too."

(They won't.)

"Hey." When he looks up, his eyes are soft and searching. "I'm sorry for all of this. I'm sorry I can't..."

What, make the world a different place? He lets it go, exhaling through his nose.

"I haven't really done this with anyone in a long time."

Kiara

There's a towel folded on the edge of the pool near Kiara's wine glass; she uses it to wipe some of the moisture from her body and, canting a little smile of bemusement his way as his jeans drip onto the grass, gently lobs it in his direction so he can exchange his sodden clothing for it (not so much for his modesty but Kiara has no idea how welcome a half-naked man would be to the others).

Hey, she's reaching to collect her glass and straightens as he looks across at her. In the moonlight, she's a picture of something a little ethereal, her skin with its strange, unearthly gleam and her dark eyes and hair; the latter she's unbound from the knot she'd kept it in so it tumbles, in a half wild mass down her bare shoulders. She's a slender woman, the Verbena, but there's strength enough in her; a sort of resilient endurance; the mark of her Tradition, some might say.

The earth witches had outlasted many attempts to eradicate their like from the Earth, after all.

I'm sorry for all of this.

"There's not exactly a rulebook for this, you know." She counters gently, coming to stand by him. She reaches out with the hand that isn't holding the glass to touch his chest; ghosting her fingers over his skin until they find the reassuring rhythm of his heart beneath. "Any of it. We're all just trying to survive. Don't be sorry." Kiara's mouth softens, opens up into an expression that flashes white teeth and a gleam of that competitive, confident nature of hers as she lets her fingers slide down his arm.

"Just be here. That's enough."

She starts past him; trailing her fingers down his skin. "Come on, let's sneak you into my room."

Atreyu

Wherever it is Atreyu is currently staying, he doesn't offer it up as a meeting place. When he speaks with Grace on the phone, he's honest about the reasons: the decision isn't only up to him, and the cabal has certain protocols. So he asks if there's a safe space they can meet - somewhere private (somewhere unlikely to be spied on.) And at some point the decision is made to meet at Kalen's new property.

Ian arrives before Atreyu, parking his car in the driveway. He gets out and takes a moment to look around before ringing the doorbell. Whoever answers will find him standing on the porch in casual (though fashionable - as always) clothes. He leans a hand against the frame and glances inside before stepping past the threshold. Kalen and Grace get a simple greeting. He seems... not exactly tense, but withdrawn.

A few minutes later, Atreyu's motorbike winds up the road. He comes to a stop near the back of Ian's car and kills the engine. He isn't wearing a helmet, but he does have a leather jacket on over his t-shirt. When he gets off the bike, he runs a hand through his hair and walks up to the door.

Inside the house, the bell rings.

Kalen Holliday

Once again Kalen is hosting meetings.  It seems he bought the place for hosting them just in time.  The person he bought this to host has yet to see this place, but that may be for the best, considering.  There is, should they both live through the next few months, time.

The decorations on the main floor walls are mostly framed pages from antique books, maps and botanical and zoological sketches.  In the living room, over the fireplace mantle, there is a map of the stars that is outdated and inaccurate, but beautiful.  Kalen brings them through the foyer into the sunroom.  The two walls of windows look out over the small expanse of yard to where a row of evergreen trees that will one day provide more privacy is growing.  Above, through the skylights, are the stars bright enough to compete with Denver lights.

He's dragged another loveseat into the room again.  He's contemplated turning the billiards room downstairs into a proper meeting space, except he has plans for that room.  Plans that are not hosting critical meetings.  Plans that have nothing to do with saving any world but his.

His greeting to Ian is also subdued.  Kalen is, in at least some sense, glad that Ian is here.  But he doubts that Ian can forget much more than he can, if anything.  Neither one of them is exactly happy to be here.

And that shows when Kalen comes to greet Atreyu at the door.  Atreyu whom he is relatively certain he last saw in another form.  And that gets tangled up with Sid gets tangled up with-

There is no time for that, Holliday.

He opens the door.

"Come in."

Grace

Grace has had an interesting week, full of ups and downs, mostly spent at the Office, monitoring her 'patient'. More like having a very odd houseguest, but whatever. Samir's recovery -- an up. And it is behind her. When Atreyu got back with her and said he was tied up, it was a relief -- when interesting times happen, they tend to happen all over, don't they?

Today, she's going to have a visit with the man who wasn't so much born as created. A living relic of a departed universe. Of the three, Grace is probably the only one who is actually excited to see him again. The others, well...

They saw a different Atreyu.

When she arrives, she gives Ian a smile, and doesn't seem too bothered by his distance. If he wants to be, he can be. For her part, she's upbeat, asking Kalen about the house, because she's never been here -- and yet treats it as though it were thoroughly hers, just a property she hasn't been to yet.

She likes that there are skylights.

When Atreyu arrives at last, she's inspecting those skylights, trying to figure out what star it is she's seeing through the glass -- so, she's standing under it, looking straight up, in her jeans and black t-shirt with a red fox design printed on it. If she's going to be called Kit, might as well take it all the way, right?

But she hears the noise, comes slinking through the rooms to greet him with a smile.

Atreyu

The last time Kalen and Ian saw Atreyu, he was not a he. Nor was he an adult. The metamorphosis must be more than a little strange for them. Grace, at least, has had time to adjust to the concept that there was always more than one Atreyu (and each of them connected to the others.) The last version of him that she saw is the same man who now stands on Kalen's doorstep, but he is also the dragonrider, the soldier, and the thirteen year old girl who rode a horse alone through the apocalypse.

The facial resemblance is there. Under normal logic, one would assume that he was Trey's elder brother. He's taller, and about six years older, than the person that Kalen and Ian will remember. The question is, how much does he remember of them?

There's a moment of silence when Kalen answers the door. A moment when Atreyu just looks at him with dark, quiet eyes. When he seems for a moment to lose track of time and place. "Kalen," he says finally. "Thanks." He steps inside and looks around. By then, Ian has wandered back to the hallway. He's standing back a little, arms folded across his chest with one shoulder up against the wall. Atreyu catches him in his gaze and stops. There's a long pause before he breaks the awkward silence with a quiet laugh.

"I think this is a new kind of weird."

Ian acknowledges that with a tentative hint of a smile, and an exhale that might almost be amusement.

Grace gets a more relaxed greeting from Atreyu, who grins when he spots her. "Thanks for having me. All of you." His attention shifts between the three of them. "It's good to see you again. I'm glad you two are okay."

Kalen Holliday

 Okay.

Kalen isn't sure what exactly to think of that statement.  He isn't entirely sure that he's okay.  But then, he is sure that he is much closer to who he should be, and that is in part due to the nightmarish place where he and some incarnation of Atreyu met.  Perhaps he's not okay and also better than okay. It makes sense, at least enough that he nods at Atreyu.

"You too.  It seemed like...."  I had seemed to him that that starlight being and all her worlds might die.  And, whatever hell they'd been through, Kalen couldn't help but regard her with wonder.  And Trey had stayed, hadn't she?  Had waited for them at the end of the world.

"I wasn't sure what would happen to you.  I didn't expect to see you again."  There is enough abatement of his wariness, just enough, that it possible to read something like concern in his tone.  Maybe not exactly affection.  But Kalen definitely hadn't wanted anything terrible to happen to them.  He does like knowing Atreyu is okay.

Grace

"Haha, finally we are the ones to out-weird you? That's a change," Grace says, laughs at her own joke.

Weirder than the dude himself? Grace takes it as a compliment, puffs up a bit.

"You should show them the video. It's pretty amazing, you know?"

Atreyu

"At the time, I don't think I expected to see anyone again."

There's an obvious implication there. At the very end, with the world coming apart around them, Trey believed that she was going to die. That the starlight shooting through her body was a kind of death. In a way, she did die. Just as other versions of Atreyu died when their worlds came apart. But those deaths were not true deaths. More like rebirths.

Grace suggests that Atreyu show Ian and Kalen the video he showed her at the zoo. He gives a slow nod, pulling a small messenger bag around to his side so that he can fish out his tablet. "She's right. You two should see it too. If you think you're up for it."

"What is it?" Ian asks.

"It's footage that I stole from the Technocracy. Of Bastion. At least, the part of Bastion that lived here. The people who designed it hid the hardware in a trench in the Pacific Ocean. That's why it took the Union so long to find it."

Ian's expression goes dark. For a moment, a little crease of tension starts to form between his eyebrows, but he exhales and lets it go. "Yeah, okay."

Atreyu glances to Kalen for further confirmation. In either case, he follows whoever decides to lead him back into the sitting room (the one with the skylights.) When he gets there, he sets his things down and shrugs out of his jacket, making himself comfortable on one of the loveseats. It takes a moment for him to turn on the tablet and navigate to the clip in question. While he does this, Ian hovers behind him - still standing. He glances at the empty space beside Atreyu on the loveseat, but leaves it for Kalen should he decide he wants to sit.

"What happened to you, exactly?" This comes from Ian, and from the way he says it, it sounds as though he had to fight to say it aloud. "Are you really the same person we met?"

Atreyu turns to look over his shoulder. There's a moment where he has to think about his answer - to collect the right words, maybe. "I used to be a lot of people. Now I'm just one. The person you met is part of me. It's... hard to explain what happened, exactly. But we were at the end of the world and somehow I... Woke Up. When I did that, all of the parts of me came together, and we severed our connection with the AI. So when she left, she let me go and sent me here."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen glances at Ian, hovering behind the couch.  Lets his eyes linger on Atreyu while he explains that he was a lot of people, but he is one person now.  He stays still after that for a few seconds, expression very carefully shuttered.

He takes a deep breath and remembers the scent of old books and voice that tastes like amber.  "We have all been many people," Kalen murmurs.  "And we are, still, all of them."  And it is not precisely for Ian or for Atreyu.  Even so, he settles onto the loveseat beside Atreyu, lets Ian stay there behind them.  It seems, in this moment, like safest place in the room he can really have.

"You don't sound so different, really."  He takes a careful breath and struggles to frame his thoughts about Bastion.  His heart tries to race, quick like butterfly wings.

Can he even look at it?

In some ways, that hardly matters.  What choice does he have?

"Show us," he says softly.  And there might be a touch of something breathless there, in that tone.  But his eyes drift to the tablet in Atreyu's hands and stay there.  Steady.

Grace

She pays attention to what Atreyu says, because it is an real question with her -- how is it, being him? Like a lot of people merged into one, apparently. She doesn't quite suppress a "Wow" after his speech. She's heard it before, but still -- wow.

"He's the same person I met, Ian. He was Spartacus, and a dragonrider, and a guy on a space station. Different people, but at the end, he looked... well, like he looks."

And she's talking about him while he's in the room, but that doesn't really matter. To her.

All in all, this has got to be the tensest fucking video-watching she's ever been witness to, and she looks between Ian and Kalen with that glimmer of a smile that says: 'I know something you don't know'.

Atreyu

There is a palpable tension in the room. So many mixed emotions. After what Ian and Kalen went through in that place, once can hardly blame them. But whatever Ian is feeling, he keeps it to himself. Probably couldn't explain it even if he tried. He seems to take Atreyu's answer though. There's a barely perceptible softening of his expression when he nods. Grace fills in a few more details. Then the room goes quiet with bated expectation.

This is what they see when Atreyu plays the video:

At first, the only thing they see is the ocean. Deep blue water, stretching out forever into the horizon. And the sky, muted with the blue-grey light of dawn. The picture moves a bit, rocking gently - as though filmed by hand from someone standing on a boat. Voices can be heard in the background.

"I don't see anything."

"It was there. Wait."

Suddenly an arc of electricity spiderwebs across the surface of the water. When it does, the video gives off an eerie feedback hum.

"Shit. Something's happening. What's the read-out say?"

Everyone gets very quiet for a second. Then someone says: "Fuck. We need to get back, now."

The boat starts moving, sending a trail of broken waves in its wake. Whoever's holding the camera keeps it steady though. Keeps it pointed at the water. On the surface, the current of energy arcs again, bigger this time. It builds into a bright, crackling electrical storm. In the background, people start shouting. The ocean grows choppier, more violent. The boat rocks as a wave hits the side. In the distance the electrical storm grows and grows, arcing out across the water and up into the sky. Then the screen flashes with a brilliant explosion of light. There's a lot of feedback before the audio track goes dead. The last image on the screen before the video cuts out is... well. It could be a trick. But it looks like a being made of light rising out of the water. There's a moment, a flicker of recognition when her face forms in the sky, then the light shoots up into the atmosphere and disappears.

And the video stops.

"That was her," Atreyu says. "She got out."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen watches the electricity arcing over the water and building into a storm.  Until that starlight creature climbs up out of the ocean.

It isn't until Atreyu is confirming it was her that he realises he stopped breathing somewhere along the way watching that and should probably start again.

"What does that mean for her," he asks, still soft.  Still quiet.  He has not, at least not yet, seen reason to panic.  He likes the starlight being.  He was not afraid of her.  "For...anything that's left?  Is there anything left without her?"

Grace

"She is out there, somewhere. Not all of her stars went out, in the end. I think that's hopeful, yes? And Atreyu, he's left. I still -- that's just really," she says, dissolves into giggles. "I mean, it's really awesome. She must have manifested him, Awake, with the Wolf-thing. Can you imagine?"

Yes, Grace just thinks this is the bees knees, or whatever. She has not yet seen reason to panic, more reason to be in awe and insatiably curious.

"Atreyu... you said you had some information for us? About the 'Crats?"

Atreyu

Grace's reaction to all of this is fascination and delight. Kalen.. seems a little awe-struck. Ian is quiet too, but for different reasons. There's a hard cut to the muscles in his jaw. A slight flare in his nostrils. Anger or tension or both, maybe. Almost, he walks out and leaves them to their conversation. But then Grace reminds them of the other reason why they're here, and Ian inhales slowly, shifts his weight and waits for whatever Atreyu has to say.

As for Kalen's questions, there are no easy answers. Atreyu sets his tablet down and turns to regard Kalen. "I'm not sure we'll ever really know the answer to that question, but I want to believe that it's all still there. Wherever she is. I mean... it's my home. Even if I never see it again. But I think... in a way, all of it sort of... was her. So if she's out there, then... it must still be with her in some way."

(Like a story.)

He casts his gaze toward Grace, takes a breath, and collects his thoughts.

"After I left Denver, I started looking into the Technocracy. I wanted to find a way to try to make amends for what happened to Maddoc and his friends. For what happened to Bastion. Everything. But... the things that I found weren't exactly what I expected. Some of it was... horrible. And then, other things were just... normal. I mean, they're people. Some of their labs and companies actually do good things. The one in Denver. Amaranthine, it's called. They're making advances in health and medicine. Important advances that impact everyday people. But it's all mixed up with who they are as an organization. All the terrible things they've done to get the power and the resources that they have.

"Anyway, I didn't find all this out on my own. I have friends. They have an interest in the Union, and some of them have been watching them for a long time. When the Storm hit, years ago, and everyone got cut off from the Horizon realms? That wasn't just the Traditions. It happened to the Technocracy too. And I think it changed them. They lost their leaders and had to find a new direction. But the Storm is dying down, and the old command is re-establishing contact. That's... not a good thing. For anyone. It means things could get bad again. The way they were during the war."

He leans forward on his elbows, meeting Grace's eyes, then Kalen's, then Ian's. "I'm not saying the Technocracy now is... good. In some places it's still really bad. But it could get a whole lot worse, and my friends and I are trying to stop that from happening. That's what we're doing here in Denver. Gathering information. Training. Preparing, really."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen just stares at Atreyu for a few seconds.

"Fuck," he says quietly.  He runs a hand through his hair.

"You...you have no idea either how perfect or how entirely fucked up your timing is."  Kalen sighs heavily.  "What are you preparing for?"  He doesn't sound anxious.  He doesn't sound terrified.  Only resigned and very, very tired.

Grace

"So, you're saying they could be worse. Worse than creating apocalypse plagues for funzies, worse than fucking up Bastion... I mean, yeah, of course. I've heard about the War. That shit is terrible. As if we didn't have shit walking the streets with four arms and shark faces already, for fuck's sake," Grace says, obviously a bit riled up at the idea of the Technocracy bringing back the old stories she's heard.

"What are your plans on stopping that from happening? Do you have one?"

Atreyu

Grace and Kalen ask the obvious questions. To which Ian, now staring at Atreyu with a kind of dark intensity, says, "How much of a risk are we at from the Union in Denver right now? And how much worse do you think it's likely to get?"

It's a lot for one person to try to answer. Atreyu looks at Ian first.

"Right now? Not much, actually. I mean, I'd steer clear of them, obviously. But that's part of the reason we came here. Their focus is on their science, not on hunting mages. It isn't in their interest to start conflict with us here. Amaranthine Labs is an important resource and the Union doesn't want to make it a target. But that could very easily change if the Union decides to reinstate the pogroms. Which... might happen, in a worst case scenario. That means none of us will be safe anywhere. So.. I guess, if you want any reassurance. You could be in worse places than Denver."

He looks between Grace and Kalen next. "What we want is to stop a war. But I think the only way to do that is to help save the Technocratic Union from itself. There are dissident movements. Lots of people in the Technocracy don't agree with the old policies. I don't know if it's possible for us to work together, but... some of us are going to try. If for no other reason than to stop the worse of two evils from gaining power."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen looks between them and there is fairly little difference between this expression and his expression when he and Ian were watching nothingness devour the world.  This, now, is darker.

And then Kalen laughs and there is no joy at all in the sound.

"Except that at least one person in Denver wants to kick that war off again with a vengeance."  He smiles, and there is, at least in this, some amusement for all it is dark and edged.  "But I did want to stop him.  I was hoping to do it quietly, but...if what you say is true I'll lay that card on the table before I finish checking on whether it can be handled quietly.

"It seems only fair."  He runs a hand through his hair.  Takes a deep breath.  And chooses the side he'd almost convinced himself not to take quite so dramatically.  "Orrin wants to set the Technocracy and the vampires at each other's throats and then wipe anyone left standing off the map.  I'm hoping his travelling companion is less zealous, because I am not fond of the idea of turning Denver into a battleground.  I know what that is.  I know what that costs.

"If you have anything, anything, I can bring with me to bargain with, now would be the time to tell me.  I would prefer peace to war."  He sighs.  "Though I expect the only peace I'm likely to get soon is if I'm basically executed for treason.  You can put that lovely Jefferson quote on my tombstone.  I have always loved it."

Grace

Grace has heard about the Hermetic bigwigs being in town. She didn't know about this. Honestly, it would be the kind of plan she might make up, if the vampires and the Technocrats weren't off busy doing things that weren't dangerous to Denver or -- you know -- the world. She loves a good game of Let's You and Him Fight.

But then, the cost of a war in Denver? Even if they were to be able to hide from it, the Sleeping population would be sitting ducks.

She reaches out and actually touches Kalen -- a hand on his shoulder. Suggestion of solidarity. As much as she hates vampires and Technocrats, she rather likes the normal people who would be collateral damage.

"You're not going to get executed for treason. Not if I can help it," she says, and there is a threat buried there somewhere, under all that trying to be calm. "We've all been through a lot, and we'll get through this as well."

"Charges of treason only happen to those who lose. We won't," she says, and she seems rather confident of that. "Orrin's plan, however? That sounds doomed to failure. He'll set the two things we need to win the fight against each other. If anyone's the traitor, it's the one with the shit plan that gets everybody killed, yeah?"

Atreyu

There's a beat of silence after Kalen speaks, before Grace reaches out to offer reassurance, where the dawning weight of comprehension grows heavy in the room. Atreyu goes dead still for a moment, then puts a hand to his mouth and closes his eyes.

"This is my fault," he says, letting the hand drop. When he opens his eyes, he looks at Kalen - something dark and weighted hanging in his gaze. "I warned them about what was coming. I thought I owed it to them, after Maddoc's death. The situation between the Order and the Technocrats on the East Coast is already strained. I thought it was likely the Boston chantry would be among the first targets. But if they're attacking here... it must be part of something bigger. We have to stop him. If the Order picks a fight with the Technocracy, the Technocrats will only get more reactionary."

Behind them, Ian lets out a long exhale. "This is all completely fucked."

Atreyu glances back. "War usually is."

It takes a moment for Ian to come around to the front of the sofa. When he does, he kneels down in front of Kalen, looking up at him with dark, clear eyes. "If this guy tries to hurt you, or any of us, then I will hurt him."

He says this without knowing what kind of man Orrin is, or how powerful. And it could be an empty threat - something meant to calm and reassure. But Ian has never once said anything intended for empty reassurance.

He looks at Atreyu. "I think trusting the Technocracy in any capacity is a bad idea. You have more faith in their humanity than I do."

"Do you have a better plan, Ian?"

"No. And I don't want a war anymore than you do. But it sounds like either way, there's going to be a fight. I just think you should be careful."

"We will be." Atreyu gives a sigh, like he's about to do something he thinks he might regret. "Kalen, tell Orrin that the resistance is bigger than he thinks. And if he agrees to stand down, we can offer him protection."

We, he says. But who exactly does he mean?

Kalen Holliday

Grace reaches out to touch him and Kalen's eyes slide briefly toward her. The corners of his mouth lift upward, very briefly and very slightly. He is not, at least not entirely, surprised that she touched him. Nor that her first thoughts run towards protecting him. He knows Grace. He trusts her.

But, as is his usual custom, he does not in the company of other people spend much time conversing with Grace. He does not, in the end, need to say much to Grace.

And then, slowly and a bit more cautiously than Grace reached out for him he reaches out to squeeze Atreyu's forearm, just above the wrist. He'll pull back, if it seems as though that contact is unwelcome.

"This is not something you've done. Perhaps you were part of it, but Orrin wants it. He has seen enough of the war before now that he doesn't see a way to end it beyond the total annihilation of one side or the other. If not this, if not here, there would be another battleground." Kalen sighs. "There is always another battleground."

And then Ian is there, in front of him, and he gets Kalen's full attention even before he speaks. If this guy tries to hurt you or any of us, I will hurt him.  And for a few seconds, while Kalen looks back into Ian's eyes and tries to remember how to breathe for entirely different reasons there is no war. There are no other people watching.

Kalen forces his attention back to war and to the broader context of this moment. Pulls his focus away from Ian's eyes without looking away from them. His pale eyes are a little too wide, but the reason that he has to swallow before he can speak has nothing to do with fear. Nothing to do with how extraordinarily tired Kalen is of war.

"Orrin has no interest in hurting any of you," he says quietly. "He wants exactly what I want. He wants a safer world for you. We are alike enough in that. Neither of us will shrink away from the fights we see as necessary. If Orrin does harm me, it will be because he knows this is the way to save the world. To save all of us.

"I know it isn't." He lets his attention fall back into Ian's eyes. "I'm not entirely certain which one of us is wrong." And there, not sure whether he is taking exactly those actions which will save everything he loves or destroy it, Kalen sounds more horrified than he has all night.

Grace

Grace takes her hand back. If anyone knows how rare (and thus how special) her physical contact with other humans is -- it's Kalen.

Ian makes his own version of an emotional gesture, and it has Grace giving Kalen a warm smirk. If anyone touches you, Kalen, they will bring Hell upon them in the form of a posse of Mages rather unconcerned about pissing off the Order.

"Either way, there is going to be a fight. Just, one plan is completely ignoring one of the sides," Grace says, "Doesn't sound like a great plan to me. I don't know if allying with Techs is going to bear any fruit either. But I know I don't want to see Orrin do anything stupid."

She's pensive. She's distrustful. But she says, at last: "What do you mean, offer Orrin protection, Atreyu? Protection from what?"

Atreyu

Protection from what?

"From the Technocracy, if it comes to that." Atreyu doesn't object to the contact when Kalen touches him. His demeanor overall seems calmer - less volatile - then the girl Kalen met in the apocalypse. "I don't know how much that offer will be worth to him. The Order, from what I can glean, doesn't seem terribly receptive to outside assistance. Even less when it comes from people they view as enemies." Atreyu looks from Grace to Kalen, his expression drawn and serious. "You're honestly the only one I've met who seems willing to listen to me."

"What do you mean, 'people they view as enemies?'" Ian folds his arms across his chest as he stands. There's a pause as a flicker of suspicion passes across his eyes. "Are you already working with the Technocrats?"

"Yes and no. The people I work with, we're calling ourselves the Enlightened Union. Some of us are Traditionalists. Others are people who left the Technocracy and had to go into hiding. The woman leading us - she used to be a pretty high ranking member in the Union before they labeled her a heretic and tried to have her killed. Now she's with the Celestial Chorus. We have to be careful who we trust. There are a lot of people on both sides who would try to destroy us if they could."

Kalen Holliday

Kalen stays still for a few seconds, waiting for an answer that no one gives him. Maybe they don't know any more than he does what they should do here.

There are no maps for this. No precedent.

No. Kalen doubts that last is true. It would be more accurate, he suspects, that there is no surviving memory of any earlier attempts. That is the kind of thing that gets scoured clean; but not, at least not in his estimation, a thing that would never have been tried.

"I wouldn't count my attention as a victory," he says quietly to Atreyu. "My relationship with the Order is...questionable. Particularly now that I have encountered this new wedge to drive us apart." He sighs. "And as to the rest...I thought once that this place was something else. A reason to hope that the beginnings of a better world were already here, we had only to see them.

"I have no such illusions anymore." There is a little amused huff of breath. "Not that I have let a more measured estimation of what I really have here temper my affection, apparently. Still, I don't know how much help I can be." He sighs, and leans back into the couch.

"And, as evidenced, however our goals may fall into line that doesn't mean we agree on on our methods. God knows that's why most of us here don't trust me. It's why I won't just let Orrin do this. And it is why, as tempting as I find it to see only the best in you as I've seen only the best in a number of other things, I don't know how much I will help you."

There is not though, as he focuses on Atreyu, any indication that he intends to refuse to help. No.  Absent anyone to give him an answer, the one Kalen found is unfolding lotus blossoms and the world he knows can transcend its darkness and the sound of infinite love threaded through prayers.

And so, when he smiles a little and asks, "Can I meet them? Your other friends....." there is not so much wariness or suspicion in his eyes as hope.

Grace

Kalen isn't your ordinary Hermetic, Atreyu. When he says that Kalen is the only one who's deigned to listen to him, Grace smirks at him. When she met Kalen, Grace didn't know what an Order of Hermes was and didn't much care either. Just here was a person willing to treat her as an equal, even if they most decidedly weren't (in the raw power department). That level of humility? Fairly rare in Hermetic circles. A pity, that. Pride goeth, and doeth stupid shit, like pretending you're perfectly fine on your own, when you could really use the help.

Grace crosses her arms, frowns.

"I'm with Kalen, in that I find Orrin's plan ridiculous. I also only really know of the Technocracy by the horror stories I've heard -- and experienced. You think you can provide protection from them? And how, through your group of people led by someone the Techs have already tried to hunt down? That sounds... less than promising, really. How are you in any position to provide protection? I don't really ask that for Orrin's sake, because from all I've heard -- I doubt the man would request protection from anything. But still...

"I don't know if an alliance is going to be possible until a crisis makes it clear to both sides why it is needed. For them, they'd have to understand what it is we'd even offer. For us, we'd have to understand that they're not going to immediately lock us up and start performing experiments on our asses that make Dr. Mengele look like Patch Adams -- or at least that the risk of that is worth it. Right now, Denver is being normal Denver, if you take Orrin's horrible plan out of the picture, and nobody knew about that.

"Sure, okay, lay out some feelers, see what allies are interested, but we have to plan on them not being there, honestly. Or at the very least, if we're not working with them, make sure we're not working at cross purposes. I'm not against, say, making sure some information makes it into the right hands at the right time -- even if they would rather see my head on a platter -- but I don't know about sitting down to have some quality facetime."

She sighs and looks at Kalen, who seems to have been attempting to bear the entire burden of the impending doom on his shoulders along with everything else. Pride comes in many forms, eh? But part of her knows that kicking her friend and telling him that he just isn't that important, and thus not responsible for everyone else in the world being dicks probably won't help.

Atreyu

"The Order's plan is short-sighted." This from Ian, who glances at Grace in a moment of pensive consideration. "Even in a best case scenario, what happens afterward? The Technocracy isn't going to just walk away."

"It's desperate," Atreyu adds. "It means they think war is inevitable." Grace offers up a couple of references that Atreyu doesn't quite catch (it's easy to forget, sometimes, that he isn't actually from this world,) but the gist of her point remains clear. "I agree with you. I don't think there's any chance of real cooperation without a clear and immediate threat. It's why we haven't tried to make contact with the Denver lab yet. But I can tell you that the dissidents and even the moderates within the Technocracy are scared of what's coming. They already have deep-rooted corruption within their ranks, and Control wants to put extremists back into power. Best case scenario, they lose the progress they've made over the last decade. Worst case scenario, they open the doors for the Nephandi and hand them the keys to the kingdom." The weight of his voice falls heavily on that last line. "It's why so many of them have left. And remember, our Tradition, the Mercurial Elite, was once a part of the Technocracy. There's another group, the Void Engineers, who're thinking of doing the same. I think a lot of them recognize that they are at risk. We already have a small army. If we can get the Void Engineers on our side, we'll have the numbers to protect Denver and Boston."

But he's only addressed half of the picture.

"I wanted to tell you this because I thought you deserved to know. I'm not going to ask you for anything you aren't willing to give. What we're trying to do... we're putting ourselves at risk in order to help an organization that doesn't deserve our sympathy. But at the risk of sounding idealistic, we're doing it because we want to try to start to build a better world. I don't have any illusions that it will be easy. I think it's just as likely we may all wind up dead, or worse. But I have to believe it's possible to change the course of where we're heading. I'm here because I believed that."

And maybe Grace will remember then, what Atreyu said once, standing on the deck of a space station with the last pieces of the universe falling apart around them. (Re-write the story. [We are all connected.]) But they are not in the same world now.

Atreyu looks at Kalen. "I want you to meet them. All of you. But they aren't going to let me bring you to see them unless I know for sure that you're with us. If not in action then at least in spirit. Because having any connection with us at all will put you at risk, and the more you know about us, the more it puts us at risk. I think you should think about it, and when we're all ready, I can set up a meeting. We can talk more about strategy then."

Kalen Holliday

"Well," Kalen says, "It will be difficult building a better world if we destroy it. And, however much reason we have to dislike the Technocracy...I'm not sure that playing this out to another near-cataclysmic event is exactly a better plan than trying to find some way to stop this.

"Orrin is still determining if this attack is feasible. I will try speaking with the Hermetics visiting, Richard may prove more reasonable than Orrin, but it may not be that they will determine this is the way to proceed. I...."

Kalen frowns.  "Orrin wants this. Not a war, I don't think. But a victory and an end to this conflict. I'm just not sure how willing he'll be to consider negotiation. He might consider withdrawing his attention from here, and if that were to happen we'd be...largely without much oversight by the Order again.

"I don't know yet what we'll do. Or what I'll do, in the end. But in the spirit of the thing, unless you've hidden some crucial detail, I should be with you."

Grace

"If what Atreyu says is right, our main goal is to take on the Technocratic leadership that's coming back. And that, however we can. If we can't get the 'good' Technocrats to work with us, we can't, and we keep on going. I would actually like Orrin's plan a lot more if it weren't for that other little major threat. See if he likes the idea of setting up a fight between the Technocracy and the Technocracy better, eh?"

Whatever, as long as they're fighting Technocrats, right? Long ago, somebody told Grace that the Ascension War was over, and the Technocracy won, and the only thing any of them could hope for was to reach Ascension before the world ended -- so long, and thanks for all the fish. She's always thought that was a bunch of bullshit, really.

Because they are on top now, does not mean they will be forever. All empires fall. Hell, the earth could be wiped out by cosmic rays tomorrow, and yet the universe would continue -- their cycles repeated again and again, the universe ever creeping towards understanding itself. Existence isn't meaningful because it lasts.

Grace snaps out of it, because she realizes she's staring at the ceiling now, and things still need to be communicated.

"Do you want me to share this around? Or are you concerned about the safety of your group if I do?"

Atreyu

Ian doesn't offer Atreyu any kind of reassurance. Not the way that Kalen does. There's a brief moment when their eyes meet and some subtle, silent exchange happens between them. Atreyu seems to accept the non-response for what it is. He lets it go, turning his attention to the other two.

"Is Hermetic oversight something you need here?" The question is directed to Kalen, but the tone of it feels hypothetical. Perhaps he isn't so much looking for an answer as he is asking Kalen to decide what he wants. "I'd be willing to meet with Orrin, if he's open to discussion. I think we should at least try to reason with him before we do anything more drastic. Grace is right..." he tips his head toward her in acknowledgement. "We may be able to redirect his focus if we can convince him that our plans have more tactical merit."

Grace asks if Atreyu wants her to share the information he'd just given them.

"I think it's important that everyone here knows what's coming. Be careful how you do it, though. Even the most secure networks can be cracked with enough effort. Don't leave anything for the Technocracy to find."

"There's also less chance of a stampede if we talk to people one on one," Ian points out.

To that, Atreyu just nods. After a pause he gets to his feet. "Grace, you have my number. I'll give it to you two as well." He indicates Kalen and Ian with a tip of his head. "Talk to the Hermetics, then we can decide how to proceed. In the meantime, I'll talk to my group and see if I can convince them to meet with you. I'd really like to show you what we've been building."

Kalen Holliday

"Not here," Kalen says quietly. "And I have no plans to leave here. So no." And that answer, for all there is an undercurrent of something heavy in it and for all that it would have been inconceivable that he would have answered that way not even so long ago, comes with no hesitation.

"I think more personal discussions are better for this too." Kalen glances over to Atreyu. "I'll let you know, all of you, once I talk to them what happens." Even, apparently, if that is just to be a warning of more enemies rather than less. Kalen doesn't have much hope concerning the Order, not, at least, in the near future.

Grace

"Okay. Will talk to people then," Grace says, not even seeming upset by the fact that she can't use Ginger. Some things are more important to hide behind a sneakernet than others. "Just, you know, the weakest link in any network is always going to be the people interfacing with it. That doesn't go away if I tell them personally."

She does give Kalen a quick look when he responds that Denver doesn't need Hermetic oversight. It's telling, that. He's always been one for distributed networks, from the beginning. Perhaps now, he sees why. The nodes at the top can be really fucking wrong. Such hierarchical networks are efficient at distribution, but if there's shit at the top, they're also efficient at distributing shit. Also, they're not very good at routing around damage or corrupted nodes. It's just basic computer science.

She follows that look with a smile, like hey -- the world has not ended yet, and then returns to admiring the ceiling.

"I would really like to see what you're building," she says, to the ceiling, though given the context, she probably means to say it to Atreyu.

There were skylights back in the other room. Are there more, she wonders? Now this meeting seems to be ending, she might as well look around Kalen's house again (whether he wants her to or not).