Alex

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, but it looked like it soon would be.  It’s late afternoon and the light of day is already starting to wane, the clouds speeding overhead blocking much of the sunlight and making the day seem darker that it should be.  To the west, the division between mountain and sky is blurring as snow falls thickly.  The rain hasn’t yet arrived over Washington Park.  People are already beginning to make their way home, to escape the oncoming blizzard before it hits.  What few families and runners and other random people usually found in the city parks are starting to make their way home, or at least to somewhere warmer and more sheltered.

The park has been something of a magnet for the supernatural over the past year or so, but it hasn’t done too much to discourage many of those who are aware of such things from coming here.  Perhaps because it’s just as much a magnet for more positive meetings amongst the Awakened.  So it’s maybe not surprising to find Alexander here.  He’s away from his usual hangout, though.  Away from the lake where he’d met the Message twice.  Away from the basketball courts.  Away from the patch of trees where he’s played Hide and Seek not so long ago.

He’s there, though, near one of the stone circles that have been scattered around for people to light fires.  There’s a small fire flickering away, flames buffeted by the slowly building wind.  Alexander is dressed for the weather – heavy jacket, hiking trousers, walking boots.  He’s sat on a folded-up blanket, protecting him from the wet and the cold of the ground, and there’s a rucksack sat on the ground close by.  His attention is on the fire, arms outstretched as he absent-mindedly warms them near the flames.

Ian

Winter has arrived early this year. The wide open vistas of Washington Park lie still in the fading light, blanketed with layers of new-fallen snow. By the time Ian gets there it's cold enough to warrant proper winter attire. Cold enough, in fact, that most of the park's visitors have surrendered the fight to the elements and gone to warm up indoors. It's that relative emptiness that attracts Ian to the park tonight. When he arrives he leaves his car underneath the same streetlamp that he once damaged (on purpose, and for entirely selfish reasons.) That was nearly a year ago now, and the bulb has long-since been replaced.

He makes his way through the park along one of the winding paths, hands in the pocket of his coat as he watches the sky shift from blue to grey. Delicate flakes of snow descend around him in a lazy pattern, cast about by a drifting breeze. Elsewhere in the city, hoards of Black Friday shoppers are bustling their way through the city's packed malls and crowded parking lots, but here in the park those things seem a thousand miles away.

Eventually the orange glow of a small fire appears in his field of vision. Ian glances toward it and recognizes Alexander's shape in the snow. The other Orphan feels very much as though he belongs here - the crystalline, frozen quality of his resonance blends with the scent of ice in the air. Ian takes a moment to consider the picture from a distance before turning off the path.

He doesn't try to hide his steps today, so Alex will likely hear him approaching. His shoes crunch quietly in the snow as he approaches from the back. When he arrives, he comes to a stop beside the fire, glancing between it and Alexander. He's dressed in jeans, dark boots (heritage Redwings,) and a sheepskin-lined leather coat, with a pale grey cashmere slouch beanie hat. There are leather gloves on his hands too, but he pulls them off to crouch down and stretch his hands over the flames.

"All alone today?"

Grace

[Awareness!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Grace

She doesn't really want to get out of the car.

Inside the car, it's warm and dry. There's no snow on the inside. Things are as they should be. Outside, well... It is Winter in Denver, and this does not bode well.

However, as she was driving along this afternoon, trying to pick up some things while the roads were still somewhat okay to drive on, she found some... interesting sensations in the direction of Washington Park. Normally, that would be a concern, except that she has a sense for who they might belong to.

Is it enough to brave the outside? Well, she hasn't seen Alex in forever...

Shortly after Ian arrives, so does Grace, with a scarf wrapped about her head, and her red coat all buttoned up, her hands shoved in there like she'd rather layer as much as possible.

"Mmm, it doesn't look like it from here? Hi Ian. Alex. 'Sup?"

Alex

Ever since that eventful day nearly two years ago now – no longer New Last Thursday – there had been something of an affinity between Alexander and the winter climate of the city.  He had always been something of an outdoors person – much happier walking, running, hiking, climbing – than someone who vegetated in front of the TV.  But since he’d opened his eyes to the true nature of the world, since his Awakening had marked him with his resonance, it just seemed like he fit better.

So here he perches, alone and seemingly unbothered by either the solitude or the climate.   But, then, he was dressed for the weather and he’d cut off much of his link to the other Awakened in the city when he’d received an unexpected phone call.  That had been reinforced when that woman had shown up at his place of work, unexpected and unannounced.  And seemingly well informed about what he’d been looking into just a short time before.  It had seemed safer to stay away from the Chantry, the Warehouse…  To be as ordinary as he could.

Alexander looks up from the fire as he hears the sound of footsteps in the snow.  His had started to fade, covered by the light snowfall that held the promise of what was to come over the next few hours.  His attention shifts to Ian, weighing and judging his arrival in his mind, deciding whether to stay or go.  For the moment, he stays.  His reply catches on a breath, frozen on his tongue, as Grace arrives too.  This probably wasn’t the greatest of places to be if he wanted to stay away from the others, but then it had been weeks since he’d even set eyes on another Awakened.

“Given some of the crap that’s been going on recently, it seemed like a good idea.  How’ve you guys been?”

Ian

[Awareness]

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

Ian

[and alertness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Ian

It's been a while since Ian's seen most of the other Awakened himself. They do that sometimes: flow together, drift apart. Life is often like that. He doesn't feel Grace approaching the same way he felt Alex, but he picks up the sound of her steps in the snow and glances back over his shoulder to make note of her. The red of her jacket catches his focus for a moment before he turns back to the fire.

"Mm, you may not be wrong about that." He notes ambiguously to Alex. He tilts his head to regard Grace, a faint slip of a smile pulling at one side of his mouth. "That's a loaded question, these days." (Asking them how they've been.) "All things considered, they could be worse." He glances back at Alexander. "I've been trying to enjoy my last few days off before I go on tour for a month. You?"

There's a brief pause before he adds, "Mind if I commandeer some of your blanket?"

Grace

"Loadiest of questions," Grace says, sighs dramatically -- a bit too dramatic for her to really mean it. "Chasing after a Nephandus did wonderful things for my psyche, I'll have you know." But not so much that she seems especially bothered.

She gives a smile to Alex, a welcoming thing, even if she's not going to request to share his blanket. He really thinks being alone will save him from evil things? Is that it? My my...

"Everything's pretty calm now, though. Wonder how long that will last..."

Oh, enough time to have some good holidays, right? Right?

Alex

“Nothing loaded into the question, although I guess that doesn’t make it any simpler to answer sometimes.  Hope you’re enjoying the free time.”  Alex shifts unfolding the blanket some more.  There’s less protection from the ground – the snow would melt through before too much longer, but then the blizzard would most likely have arrived by then – but it does give enough space for three to sit without getting cold, wet asses.  “Where are you touring?”

Grace gives Alex a smile, but it’s barely returned.  Maybe it’s just the talk of the Fallen.  “Is she still out there?  Or has that whole thing been taken care of now?”

Ian

This kind of news tends to make the rounds in Awakened circles. Ian hasn't spoken to Grace in weeks (months?) but he's more aware of everything that occurred than Grace may realize he is. When Alex asks her if everything's been taken care of, he gives Grace the space to answer for herself, his expression quietly cryptic and withdrawn. Alex unfolds a section of the blanket and Ian sits down on it, draping his arms loosely over his knees. The cold air bites at his unprotected hands, but the heat from the fire is enough to keep the worst of it at bay. Alex is a solid, grounded presence beside him. It isn't altogether unwelcome, though the two of them would probably not call each other friends - not yet, at least.

"Maybe we'll get lucky and have a calm winter," he offers to Grace, though he knows the chances of that are unlikely.

To Alex he says, "We're hitting a bunch of cities. Vegas to start, then LA. After that, you'll have to consult my calendar."

Grace

"I put a message up on Ginger. Yeah, the situation's... about as taken care of as it can be."

Mike told her about how just killing The Artist wouldn't be enough. They'd show up again, someday. Reincarnated. The whole thing makes about as much sense to Grace as being reborn does, which is to say -- not much. But whatever. That particular thing will be quiet. For now.

"No more chimeras. No more serial murder sprees." The latter performed by a man who swept her off her feet when she didn't even know sweeping was possible. But she's not telling them about that.

Alex

“If I had anything to drink, I’d toast to a calmer winter.”  Alex snorts at the thought, though.  As if the world gives a damn that they wanted a bit of time to rest before the next end of the world.  “Sounds like whoever planned the tour doesn’t like being cold.  Is Hawaii in the itinerary too?”

Ah, Ginger.  The indispensable messaging service for the Awakened that, sadly, relies on them having some way of calling into it.  “That’s good to know.  I’ve not been on Ginger in a while.  My phone met an untimely end.”  Alex sighs, crossing his arms over his knees and resting his chin on them.  “I think the fans of dark suits and mirrored sunglasses were getting a little too close, so I thought it best to destroy it.  One of them came to talk to me, seemed to know a lot about my business.

“So, yeah.  It seemed best to avoid dragging any attention closer to you guys than I had to.  That’s why I haven’t been by the office in a while.”

Ian

No more serial murder sprees. For the moment, anyway. Ian watches Grace while she speaks, his eyes tracking the details of her face - the subtle shifts in her expression. Almost, he starts to say something, but then Alex asks if he's heading to Hawaii and mentions, a little too casually, that he had a run-in with a (supposed?) Technocrat.

Ian turns his head a bit suddenly, regarding Alexander with an expression of muted alarm. "Wait, what? That's not... they don't just stop by for chats, Alex. They either watch you, abduct you or kill you."

See, he can't really connect the dots. What he knows about the Technocracy versus what Alexander just told him. But either way, the news is more than a little alarming.

"What happened? What did they want to talk to you about?"

Grace

"Holy shit, Alex, what?" is Grace's reaction in a nutshell. All the sudden, that quiet time she was looking for just flew out the window.

And, she goes silent as a hand comes out of her coat pocket with her phone in it, and she begins to Work. If there are Technocrats after Alex, she'll want to be sure he isn't being watched right now. Or set to explode. Or any number of things.

[Corr 1: Any tracking devices in the area eh? Actually no, I know there shouldn't be, but that's the first thing to check...]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )

Alex

“A mutual friend warned me of some unwelcome guests trying to get friendly with the admin staff.”  He’s talking to the fire more than to the others.  “Not long after I let you guys know about the case I’d walked in on, I got a phone call from someone I didn’t know.  She knew my name and she knew the name of the guy involved in the case.  That was about the time that my phone met the shredder.

“Then the day after that, this woman just appears and asks for me.  Says she wants to help me, but wouldn't say how.  She wanted to get me alone.  I refused, she left, and I’ve not heard anything from her since.  But that’s why I’ve been so keen to be alone for a while and trying to be a good little Sleeper.”

Alex looks to Ian, then to Grace.  “I’m not even sure talking to you now is the greatest of ideas ever.   I should probably go, but you said I should let you guys know if I thought one was getting close.  I would have, if I’d had any way of contacting you that couldn’t be easily traced.”

Ian

Ian watches Grace pull out her phone. He has a rough inkling of what she might be doing, and it seems to relax him slightly. If there was anyone in Denver who could pick out some kind of high-tech spying device, it would be Grace. When she doesn't voice any immediate warnings, he turns his attention back to Alexander, listening while he explains the details of his encounter.

It isn't much to go on really. Ian's expression shifts into a pensive frown as he glances at the fire.

"Maybe she was trying to feel you out. See if you'd make a good recruit, or something." It isn't entirely out of the scope of possibility. Alex is, after all, unaffiliated. And new enough that he probably doesn't present much of a threat in their eyes. Still, the behavior feels odd. More like something a solo agent would do than someone working for a vast network.

He glances back at Alex, and there's a soft crease of tension between his eyebrows. "Or maybe she isn't what you think she is."

Grace

"Well, I don't think you're being tracked," Grace says, mumbles really, into her phone.

"You said she was asking about the Kozlowski case?" she asks, a little more loudly. But she's still messing with her phone.

Maybe it wasn't Alex they were looking for, but Mike. And... okay, yeah, that would look exceptionally bad wouldn't it? And Technocrats wouldn't be the ones to take 'It was one of my past lives' as an excuse.

"Also, do you mind if I scan your body for other nasty things?"

Alex

“I honestly don’t know what she is.  She didn’t say, but then she wouldn’t would she.  All I know is that she had my name, she had my number, she knows where I work, and she knows about a case I’d only just tripped over.”

Alexander’s attention shifts from the flames to Grace when she mentions the name.  “Yeah.  She knew the name, and that hadn’t been released to the press at the time.  That’s just one of the things that have been worrying me.”

He takes a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through his mouth.  “I should go.”  The decision seems to have been made already, as he pushes up from the blanket and grabs his bag.  “You probably don’t want to be around me for a while.  Enjoy the fire.  And enjoy Vegas.”  This last one, to Ian, with a vague, brief smile.

Ian

Two years ago, if there'd been even the slightest suggestion of a possibility that Alexander might have been a target for the Technocracy, Ian would have vanished. Maybe not from the city, but certainly from Alex's life. He's alive today because there are certain risks that he never allowed himself to take.

He doesn't vanish now, but there is a quiet sort of confirmation in the absence of any objection to Alexander's claim. He gets to his feet so that Alex can reclaim his blanket, watching the man quietly as he prepares to leave.

"Hey, be careful." He says it to Alex's back as the other man starts to walk away, and something about the tone makes it sound as though he might genuinely be worried - not just for the risk Alexander might pose to the rest of them, but more specifically for Alex's own safety.

When he's gone, Ian looks down at the fire, banked low and licking lazily at the ends of charcoal-logs. He gathers up a mound of snow with his boot and kicks it over the flames until they go out. Then he slips his gloves back on.

"How's Michael, by the way?"

Grace

"No, wait, Alex! I..." Grace just breathes out her nose in a huff, because she's talking to the back of Alex's head. Well, at least she knows where he works, right? She can always stop by and... ask? At the police? For him? Yeah, okay so maybe that's not Grace's favorite thing to do ever. But like Hell is she going to let Alex handle this thing with a possible Technocrat contact all by himself.

Nor is she going to just let him isolate himself when there's likely no need. If they were after Mike? Mike's long gone. He's in L.A. and the trail of murders stopped.

Speaking of Michael, she hears the name. Ian's asking about him.

"Oh, uh. You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd think nothing ever got to him. More like, he doesn't let it show. He sounded good, last time I talked to him."

Ian

"Yeah, I get that."

Of course he does.

"Kiara told me you and he were sort of close." It isn't an insinuation - the truth is, she could have meant any number of things by that. Friends. Lovers. Colleagues. Ian starts to turn away from the fire pit, walking slowly through the snow. He settles his hands into his pockets, glancing at Grace as he does so. "How are you?"

Grace

Kiara. Ugh. Grace squints her eyes a bit in memory of that latest conversation with her. Of course she'd tell Ian. And is that where it's going to stop? Oh, no, it won't. Soon the whole city will know, and... and this is all crazy-talk going on in her traitorous brain. Who the fuck cares?

Ian starts off, away from her, but glances back. Asks her how she is doing.

"Talk about fucking loaded questions, Ian..."

"I'm good. Recovering from emotional rollercoasters of doom, but good."

Ian

It's the same question Alexander asked, and Grace fires back a very similar response to the one Ian initially gave. But he wasn't asking out of courtesy or small-talk. He was asking because he's worried. And maybe she'll hear that - the subtle lace of it in his voice.

Grace doesn't give him any more detailed answers than she gave earlier, though.

She doesn't try to walk with him either.

The sky is getting dark, drifting from afternoon to evening. As the light fades, more snow starts to fall. Ian stops walking and watches Grace for a long moment. It gives her the opportunity to open up more, if she chooses. But perhaps he isn't the person she'd like to open up to. So instead he nods and says "Alright. You've got my number, if you need anything."

He doesn't just mean practical things, but she may not interpret any other meaning.

"Have a good night."

And then he turns to make his way back to the trail.

Ian

It isn't long since Ian arrived home. He spent the day in the Rockies, free-climbing on a peak that he hadn't been to in nearly a year. At that elevation, the temperature dropped to below freezing and there'd been both ice and snow to contend with, along with the wind. One could argue that he'd been tempting fate a little. And... well, perhaps he had been. But the landscape was beautiful, and there's something to be said for the visceral thrill of conquering something so much greater than yourself with nothing but your own hands and stubborn will.

Standing atop that peak, staring at the cloud-blanketed sky while snow fell in tiny biting crystals against his skin, the world seemed both vast and small.

(I am not here to seek the crazy wisdom; if I am, I shall never find it. I am here to be here, like these rocks and sky and snow, like this hail that is falling down out of the sun.)

He cut his hand on the rock-face - a jagged scrape that now runs down the side of his palm. There was a thought towards healing it when he got home, but it isn't deep enough to need stitches and something about it feels like a reminder. He may yet fix it later. As of now it's been cleaned and bandaged with a strip of soft gauze.

He's tired, his muscles aching in a way that reminds him he's still human. Shortly after getting home, he took a hot shower and changed into a fresh set of clothes. Now he's sitting barefoot on the sofa with a cup of jin hou cha tea, watching a Wong Kar-Wai movie. This is a ritual he's been repeating for quite a few years now, on his birthday. When he got home, there was a present from Emma sitting in front of his door - a bottle of his favorite wine and a book she thought he might like. She also texted to remind him that he didn't have to be alone (implied but not stated: that he shouldn't be alone.)

There are certain times of the year when being alone becomes a habit.

Kiara

It isn't something she does a lot.

Showing up like this, unannounced. Without even so much as a text to ask if he was busy or, even more reasonably, home. She honestly had no idea if he would be but her aimless navigation of the city streets had wound her back to a block from Ian's apartment and somehow, relentlessly, her mind wouldn't let her rest from the idea of going there.

Being here.

There were a lot of things her mind wouldn't let her rest from lately and almost all of them stemmed from her own apartment. She could feel the lingering manifestations of it in her walls, bleeding from the floorboards - the residue of the Artist's presence; the blood that had been spilled because of him. Talking to Grace had proven to be unexpectedly unhelpful; her skin still carried that vague itch beneath it. As if it were pulled too tightly across her bones, constricting her.

The truth was: she didn't want to go home.

So, Ian's on the sofa and there's a ritual that is his on this day, a private reflection and then:

(Does he feel her? Like a conjuring perhaps to go along with Emma's words, you don't have to be alone and suddenly, the tingling, familiar sensation of vitality, life renewed nearby)

There's a knock at the door. It's not hurried or desperate but - precise. Not a wrong number, not a neighbor who had misplaced their keys. Standing there on his doorstep with her hands buried in the pockets of a zip up jacket, hood half drawn over her features is Kiara. Her dark hair loose and wild where it spilled out from beneath that hood and her expression, when she lifts her chin, troubled.

She looks pale, even as the edge of her mouth draws up in greeting.

Ian

[awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Ian

When he hears the knock, the first thought he has is Emma. There are not many people in Denver who know where he lives, and even fewer who would think to visit him today. He pauses the movie and glances at the door. Considers, briefly, not answering.

Because as much as he appreciates Emma, he doesn't really want to see her right now. And if it's almost anyone else, he wants to see them even less.

But it isn't Emma. He realizes that about ten seconds later, while he's debating whether or not to answer. He's sitting there with his tea mug warming the skin on his palms, his body quietly motionless, when he feels that whisper of life seeping in past his door. It surprises him enough that he tilts his head and lifts an ear as though in suspicion of his own senses.

Then he sets the tea down and gets up to answer the door. When it opens, there, indeed, is Kiara - standing in the hallway with her hood up and her hair a little wild. Ian takes in the sight of her (the expression in her eyes) and his brow creases with concern. "Hey. Is everything alright?" He steps aside to allow her in, closing the door once she's past the threshold.

[Empathy]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kiara

He's seen the glimpses of trauma lingering on her before. The physical signs of reality taking offense to something she's conjured (or attempted to). He's seen the traces of exhaustion etched into the circles beneath her eyes, too. It feels a little like a pattern, now. The way it stained Kiara, seemed to manifest as a physical drain on her inner vitality, that bright spark that was spun around the Verbena.

Something was very far from alright.

He can see it in the careful way she lets herself into his apartment and holds herself, hands in her pockets, only leaving to shake back her hood. As if she were tentative about the idea of touching him - or anything else. There's traces of that same antsy, uncertain energy that had been there the other night when he gave her his mother's necklace.

Kiara

It isn't Emma.

In most circumstances the surprise visitor at his door would probably have been cause for relief (or happiness). Which wasn't to say that she didn't seem pleased to see him, when he pulls open the door there is that little half smile that surfaces but it's brief and seems muted by whatever it is that's brought her to see him tonight.

"Hey."

She sweeps her hood down when he steps aside to let her in and the brunette's hands return to the pockets of her jacket, her dark eyes taking in the paused film on the screen, the steaming cup resting on the coffee table. "I didn't mean to interrupt your plans - " she seems upset, if distracted, even as she says as much, swinging back to face him; dark eyes briefly meeting his before they dart off, to the side.

To the floor.

Her heart-rate is elevated, beating with a sort of built up freneticism, as if she'd been talking herself into a fine frenzy all the way to his apartment. "I was just in the area and I thought maybe - but if this is a bad time, I can go. I just, um - " She steps closer to him and her hands finally emerge from her pockets, reaching to touch the edges of his clothing, to breathe in the clean scent of him.

"I missed you."

Ian

The bandage on his hand isn't the only evidence of injury. There are bruises, too: dark little rorschach marks here and there on his arms. They aren't especially dramatic-looking, but it's clear he was doing something physical earlier in the day - something that left him a little banged up. Whatever it was, it doesn't seem to be causing him any concern. He's dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt. His hair is getting a little long on top, falling loosely to one side of his forehead.

The apartment smells like tea. Ian smells (and looks) like he just took a shower.

She didn't mean to interrupt his plans. There's a tilt of his face at that, a softening to his expression that flirts with gentle amusement before falling back to concern. The agitation and anxiety in Kiara's voice is evident. The tension in her expression. The way her eyes dart here and there (hyper-vigilant.)

I missed you.

"You didn't interrupt anything." (Truth is, he could practically recite that movie from memory for all the times he's seen it.) "And it isn't a bad time." She's close to him now, hands reaching out to make contact, and he leans into it a little, lifting his arms to wrap them carefully around her shoulders. If there's any sign the contact is unwelcome - if she flinches or steps back - he'll lower them again. But if she allows it, he'll pull her closer, pressed in to his chest in a quiet embrace.

He exhales softly. "I missed you too."

It still surprises him sometimes. How much he means that.

"What's wrong?"

Despite mounting concern, he keeps his voice calm. Keeps his energy banked in this quiet, supportive way - though of course his thoughts aren't quite so peaceful. There are any number of very real, very dangerous circumstances that could be causing Kiara's distress. He tries not to let his imagination run wild with them before she's even had a chance to speak, but... some of the tension shows in his eyes.

Kiara

She'll be angrier in days to come.

Find it takes root inside her mind along with the dreams. Discover she's capable of feeling disgust with herself for not being near to okay with everything that's recently happened. Days, it's only been days and as of now the paranoia and the lingering fear is yet to give way fully to that anger and repressed, half buried truth.

That despite all she'd survived - she'd been altered. That glimpsing the depths of a Nephandus' intent and feeling the cold creep of its presence had been enough to harden her somewhere, deep inside. Hollow her spirit out until she became the same empty husk Michael's past incarnation had become. But right now everything still feels too raw, too fresh and tender to have deepened into anything but glimpses of clear distress.

He gathers her close and she's stiff for a moment before she bends into the embrace; before her fingers scrabble for a grip that's just this side of too tight to be sweet, too desperate to be romantic. Pressed against him, he can feel her heart, beating wildly through layers of clothing.

What's wrong?

She's still for long enough that the dread of it settles, thickens like syrup in the wake of it before she breathes out against him. "I need to tell you something. Something that I thought I'd be okay with and I think that I should be okay with because Grace sure seems to be and I just - " She pulls back, her hands sliding to his hands, taking stock with a sudden shift of focus, of the bandage. Her eyes dart back to his, there's concern and query in that.

She draws it against her chest, his hand. The bandage.

"Last week Michael came back to see me. The - he'd woken up in New Jersey and seemed to believe Alice, this past life of his that was manifesting, had taken him there. It was a lead, you know? It was something. So we decided to try and reach Alice again. To - help her come to terms with the fact she was dead." She lets go of his hand, then. Begins to move around his apartment as if remaining stationary while she recounted this was an impossible feat.

Her dark eyes are bright. "And I did it. I found a way to connect with her. To help her remember. So she could let go. But the Artist - the Nephandus. He noticed." Kiara's arms curl around her body and she rubs them as if she's suddenly, abruptly cold. A quiet tremor threaded through her voice. "I felt him, Ian. He took control of Michael's body and if I hadn't cast precautions before we started - I - " Kiara's mouth flattens, twists. She drops her chin.

"He had my knife." Quiet. There's a little pause before she adds, eyes closed. "He meant to kill me and when he couldn't, he stabbed Michael instead. All I can think about is those eyes staring at me. I can't stop seeing it."

Ian

His grip around her tightens when she presses into him - perhaps a little more than he intends to - a subtle blossoming of some irrational instinct to keep her close (protected.) He releases her when she pulls back, but not without some small, lingering reluctance.

Kiara thinks she should be okay, and Ian almost says something there, but there's a delicacy to these kinds of moments. Listening to someone unveil their fears. So he doesn't interrupt (doesn't do anything that might derail her.) When she notices the bandage he gives this faint, dismissive shake of his head - as though to imply that the injury was a matter of no consequence.

He lets her take his hand though, watching the way she cradles it against her chest.

Then Kiara tells the rest of her story. She lets go of his hand and begins to pace around his apartment. The space isn't much good for that kind of nervous energy, truthfully. The floor space is small and it's a little too easy to bump into things - to upset the order of the pictures and the furniture. But Ian just lets her move, listening with a dark, worried gaze as she speaks. As she heads further into the apartment, he follows her with silent steps.

"Did Michael survive?"

He's never met the Chakravanti, which makes him feel more theoretical than real at this point. In truth, his concern is as much for Kiara - on the impact his death might have on her - as it is for the man himself. Ian is standing by the bedroom at this point and he reaches forward to set his hand carefully on Kiara's arm, drawing down the length of her sleeve until his fingers reach her own. He doesn't grasp her hand so much as linger on it. "Take off your coat." He tips his head toward the bed. "Come sit with me?"

He releases her hand and climbs onto the bed, moving to sit with his back against the headboard.

Kiara

There's a way that she cups the side of her neck in the aftermath of all that, a certain stillness that becomes her that speaks of twined relief and the sudden settling realization of it being spoken - of it being out there, shared between them. As if any moment the phantom memory of the Artist would gather momentum and draw itself into some sentience again.

Would drag all the air from her lungs and slowly suffocate her.

She means to ask about the cuts and the bandage on his hand, it feels like a selfishness to allow it to go unvoiced but the dragging exhaustion (the heaviness) in her whole body lets it be - lets him touch her wrist beneath the sleeve of her jacket and ask her to remove it. Unzips it with a jerky motion that almost reads frustration at the realization there too, that it was still on her body.

That she'd neglected even to take it off before launching into a retelling of all that had happened.

"He's okay. We managed to patch him up and from what Grace told me, he and his students took care of the Artist. He's dead." There's a flatness to that last, as she crawls onto the bed in his wake; beneath her jacket there's a simple white v-neck shirt, twin chains glittering around her neck.

He'll recognize one, he'd put it there only the other night.

She sits there, for just a minute, on her knees, looking across at him. Drags her fingers over the covers of his bed before she joins him, twisting to situate herself in the cradle his body formed. He can almost feel the tension in her slender frame when it settles down in front of him, the strength of it emanating from her. Kiara had always been very good at pushing down on her needs, when she had to.

Apparently, if her current levels of agitation were any indication - she'd done more than tamp down on them, she'd buried them deep and they were bubbling to the surface now in a wash of uncontrollable hysteria.

"I guess that means we won."

Ian

The cover is soft beneath her fingers when she slides them over the fabric. Ian's winter comforter is thick and deep navy blue with a slight sapphire sheen where the light hits the fabric. High thread count, like his sheets (those are silver-grey.) The bed smells clean - like fabric softener. The frame is heavy and mahogany-stained, the headboard solid behind Ian's back where he rests against it.

Kiara pulls off her jacket like she only just remembered she was wearing it. Drops it somewhere before climbing on the bed with him. Ian has to work to contain the impulse to reach out for her again - to not just grab her and pull her into his arms and hold her there until evening turns to morning and morning into evening again. It says something about her state of mind that she doesn't think to remove her shoes. It says even more about his that, at first, he doesn't even notice.

Michael is okay. Grace is okay. The Artist is dead.

I guess that means we won.

Ian frowns softly when Kiara says this, though relief is evident in his eyes. He shifts a little to make room when Kiara crawls forward to nestle herself against him. They've sat like this before. It brings back memories now - of putting his hands on her back; of watching an eclipse in the park; of countless other quiet, intimate moments. His chest feels warm against her back: firm muscles and strong ribs and the deep, steady drum of his heart. He presses his legs in against the outside of her hips and thighs and leans forward to rest his face against the side of her own. His hands find her shoulders and slide down the length of her arms, slowly. Get to her hands and overlaps them, curling them beneath his own, locking their fingers together.

"Life isn't a game where people win or lose. Things just happen. You survived. You're here. And you stopped other people from dying. That matters. But the way you feel right now... that matters too. Everything you went through. You don't have to just... be okay with it. You shouldn't. Because it wasn't okay." There's a pained note that rises in his voice at the end - something he can't quite manage to keep contained.

"I'm sorry I didn't... I should have been there."

Kiara

"No, it wouldn't have helped if you had been."

She admits softly, breathing out against the feeling of him, wrapped around her, legs and chest and fingers, twined together. She leans her head back against his shoulder heavily, turning her face into his neck, her nose brushing his skin. "Alice was ... very angry. She'd been targeting men every time she took control of Michael. I think if you'd been there - " She turns her face just slightly to sight their fingers, to move hers against his.

There's the sense of the brunette turning memory over in her mind, dislodging tendrils as if they were stones to be shifted and replaced; broken apart and reforged.

" - I wouldn't have been able to focus if I thought you were in danger. She - I had to send her back. To the Shadowlands. To the place where the dead belong."

He can feel the little shudder that runs through her at that. "It was the only way to break the hold the Fallen One had on Michael's body. She did horrible things, killed people but I wanted her to find peace. She deserved that much. At least, the girl she was, once. Before the Artist got to her did." A beat, she sighs. "I didn't want to do it that way but I had no choice."

Perhaps that is the crux of it, beneath all the buried emotion, the rubble of the emotional deluge: she'd had no choice, in the end. The Nephandus had been the one to force things. To strip the Verbena of any option but to seek to destroy that which sought to destroy her first. Blood for blood. There was something ancient and ferocious and fitting to it, in the most maudlin sense: the fury of a witch. The scorn of one. Still, there's nothing to the brunette in his arms right now that lends to the idea she was full of that much naked vengeance.

Glimmers, perhaps. Here and there. A certain gleam that surfaced in her eyes at moments, a hardness to her expression when roused to it but - only faint stirrings.

"What happened to your hand?" It feels sudden (is), the way she asks, after a moment, cradling it and opening his palm up to slide her fingers over the bandage.

Ian

[Oh let's just deal with this. Life 2, vulgar, diff 6 -1 (personal instrument) -1 (going slow)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Ian

[and he takes 1 dox, wee]

Ian

It wouldn't have helped if he'd been there. The news should offer some relief, but it doesn't. Instead there's just this useless feeling of impotence - that for all his strength and skill, there are still things he cannot protect her from. Burdens that he cannot take from her.

There's a moment when she speaks of the dead when Ian's brow creases - this expression of quiet thought (disagreement, maybe.) But then her body shudders against him and he exhales, squeezing her hands tightly enough that it makes his cut ache beneath the bandage.

"I'm sorry," he offers again, remorse evident in his voice. For a moment he starts to say more, but then... doesn't.

She asks about his hand.

"I cut it while I was climbing. You don't need to worry about it." After a moment of consideration, he retracts that hand carefully from her grasp, biting into the bandage to rip it free of his palm. He tosses the used gauze into the waste basket in the corner, leaning over briefly so he can reach across the bed to get his aim a bit closer. When he settles again, he flexes his hand. The wound cracks a little at the seam, reopening to allow a little well of fresh blood to surface. He brings it to his mouth and bites it. There's a brief flare of pain, and more blood.

That's all part of it though. The healing. He licks his tongue up the length of the cut slowly, tasting the familiar copper-salt tang and closing his eyes as he focuses. Feels his body. Listens to it. Tells it to mend.

And it does. Bruises fade. Flesh knits together. He catches the last traces of blood with his tongue as an afterthought.

(Like a cat, cleaning.)

He didn't need to do it, but he didn't like her worrying about him. Not right now. "I drove up to Longs Peak this morning. Only just got back an hour ago." He slides his arms around her again, this time wrapping them around her waist.

Kiara

That is, of course, the poetry of humanity: to live hard, to love long and to suffer at the hands of both. Living and loving. The exchange was not equal nor would it ever be fair. Nor would it, for either of them, be any less hard to bear the thought of because they could exert their will into the world and shape reality, curve it to suit their needs the way Ian does with his injury.

If anything, the magick made the feeling of helplessness worse.

Kiara had already learned that lesson once: that all the power nature had to offer would not necessarily spare the ones she loved from the hands of those who merely wanted to invert the world. There was no room for color in the monochrome spectrum of the Technocracy. There was barely room for shades of grey. She watches him closely, as he bites at his hand. She makes this little reflexive noise at that: the sight of the blood, the coppery smell of it.

In this, their beliefs were alike: that blood had the potency and strength to fuel magicks.

Some might have turned their faces at the brutality of it, biting down on the split flesh, the gore that was inherent to it but not the Verbena. Not the pagan, she watches as if hypnotized by the manner in which he instructs his body to heal. There's a very focused sort of way she stares at his hand after he's done. Her fingers smoothing along the mended skin with this slight furrow of her brows.

She twists slightly in his arms, then, turning far enough that she can bring their faces together. Far enough that she can kiss him and taste the lingering traces of his blood there on his lips, in his mouth. Kiara's fingers find the edge of his jaw as they often did when she kissed him; cupping it and tracing along the length of it.

Her thumb stroking across his skin.

There's this quiet sound of pleasure when she pulls back, just far enough to speak, her head turning to rest back against his shoulder. "I'm glad you're alright." A pause, then: "I don't think I can go back to my apartment tonight." Her fingers sweep over his arm. "Can I stay here?"

Ian

There's a sound that he makes when she kisses him - it feels a little like something coming undone. He kisses her back harder than he means to, pushing forward to claim her space, her heartbeat, the vital realness of her that was so close and yet so precariously easy to lose. His arms tighten around her form, grasping at the fabric of her shirt with his hands (digging a little into the muscle underneath.) There's a slight edge of desperation to it, the way his body betrays his feelings.

He doesn't want to put that on her though (his fear.) Not now. So when she pulls back, he does too. He takes a slow breath, releasing his grip on her in these slow, sliding increments until his arms hang loosely around her form. His hands refuse to be still though. They make these circular little motions - tracing patterns over her hip and her abdomen.

Can I stay here?

"Of course." He dips his head to kiss the edge of her jaw; lets his hands slide over the length of her thighs, mapping down from her knees until he finds her feet. Then he says, with this subtle note of humor, "After you take your shoes off."

There's dirt on his comforter where her feet were. He can see it now, but doesn't draw attention to it beyond that one remark.

"Give me just a second." It's reluctant, that. The way he finally allows himself to pull away. To walk the short distance into the living room to turn off the TV and grab his tea and his phone. In the interim, if Kiara glances at the kitchen, she might notice an expensive-looking bottle of pinot noir sitting on the bar, tied with a curling red silk ribbon. There's a book next to it, laid atop a folded piece of silver wrapping paper. He didn't think to hide them before letting her in.

Kiara

There's this little surge of amusement that surfaces at his comment about her footwear, her eyes drifting down to take stock of it; her sneakers against the high thread count of his comforter; the smears of dirt left in their wake where she'd climbed over the sheets. She pushes herself to the edge of his bed and is in the process of unlacing one sneaker as he moves to turn off the TV.

To reclaim his no doubt cooling tea left to stew when she knocked.

There's a tiny stirring of guilt again as she watches him, then drops her eyes to pull her trainer off, to repeat the motions with the second and set both to one side. It's as she straightens, sweeping back and twisting the heavy fall of her hair over one shoulder that she glimpses the bottle of wine on the bar with the ribbon around the neck. The first inclination the Verbena has, as she slides to her feet and pads across the room to investigate it, is that Ian had been given it as some sort of early holiday gift.

Or a belated Thanksgiving token.

She tips the bottle back and studies the label, then lightly lifts the cover of the book, her fingertips tracing over the edge of it. "What's the occasion?" She doesn't lift the book to glimpse the paper beneath, but there's curiosity in the way her eyes linger on both before shooting back to him.

It feels simpler, like this. Focusing on anything that isn't what her world has been (is) at present. Ian's apartment (his presence) is comforting; familiar. It doesn't remind her of dark, fathomless eyes staring out at her from within the bounds of magick-infused barriers; his walls don't echo with the phantoms of anguish and festering and twisted black, ancient rage.

She twists the bottle on the bar. "Somebody evidently thinks highly of you. This is a great year." A little tick of her eyes back over him, from beneath her lashes.

Ian

The book is a paperback copy of In Paradise by Peter Matthiessen. It has no accompanying note - neither in the book itself or the paper wrapping. The wine, however, has a little square card hung beneath the ribbon. Inside it says simply:

Happy Birthday

-Love, Emma

Beneath these words, elegantly scrawled in Emma's precise penmanship, is a tiny sketch of an orchid. Kiara misses the card at first, as she busies herself inspecting the book. That's when Ian wanders back and sees her looking at it. There's a particular quality to his expression when he stops still and hesitates - this faint register of guilt - that might give the impression she's just found something he didn't mean for her to see.

"Emma left those for me. It's... technically my birthday."

Technically.

He crosses back to the bedroom to plug his phone in, leaving it and his tea on the nightstand next to the bed. "I don't really celebrate it though. She only found out because she got it off my license."

Kiara

"Technically." Kiara echoes, with this neat little smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes.

Almost strained, most certainly, for a long moment while she stares across at him, one hand still curled around the bottle, stained with regret (and laced in there somewhere, this tiny stirring of anger). "I wish I'd known. I would have - " She breaks off, because would she have? Or rather, would she have not - spilled all the details to him about what had happened last week?

Overshadowed the day with news that she knew would upset him, would drive him to worry more than he already did about her safety.

About all of their safety. There's this little curl at the edge of her mouth as she twists the bottle once more and then leaves it be, crosses instead back toward him. Stops short of touching him and roves his expression carefully with her dark eyes, her hands at her sides. "Done something cliched like cook you dinner. And I probably wouldn't have shown up unannounced and dropped all my baggage at your feet."

Her mouth twists, eyes dropping away. (The guilt again).

She reaches out, tentatively and slides her fingers through his. Links their hands and draws herself in closer to his body, lifts her eyes up until they meet his and then lets them drop to his mouth. She studies it for a beat, the generous curve of it, the shape of it. Looks, for a long moment as if she means to kiss him there but instead her mouth very gently finds his cheekbone.

"Happy Birthday," it's a murmur as she squeezes down on their linked fingers. Then, close to his ear: "I love you." That, she imparts like it's its own gift. And perhaps, coming from the brunette, under the circumstances, it's exactly what it is.

Ian

He watches Kiara as she approaches, and his expression now is difficult to read. She says she wishes she'd known, that if she had she wouldn't have shown up like this. Wouldn't have dropped her baggage (as she puts it) at his feet, and that gets a pained look from him.

"Then I'm glad that you didn't." There's a punctuating certainty to his voice when he says it, as though the alternate possibility was untenable to him. "Though dinner does sound nice. Another day, maybe. When things are better."

She nearly kisses him, and his lips part just slightly as she looks at them (as though in anticipation.) But the kiss is deposited on his cheek instead, along with a murmured Happy Birthday. This much he expects, and he responds with a soft smile. What she says next though...

It renders him very still. He has to remember to breathe.

It shouldn't be as much a surprise as it is.

His eyes fall shut for a moment. When he opens them, he turns his face into hers and kisses her the way he thought she was going to kiss him, bringing his hands up first to cup her face, then to trace his thumbs down the sides of her throat.

"I love you," he repeats against her lips, delicate and whispered. He moves to the bed, pulls back the covers and slides them out of the way as he climbs onto the mattress. There's a pause as he crouches on his knees, contemplating what he wants to do.

"It's just a day. I don't want you to feel bad. This, right now. You. That's what I care about. I don't want you to pretend to be okay. I don't want you to be anything other than what you are." He moves aside to allow her space to rejoin him on the bed. "There's massage oil in the nightstand. Would it make you feel worse if I touched you?"

He doesn't mean just what they've been doing. He's thinking of the live-wire tension she's been carrying in her muscles. Of the way sometimes, having someone lay their hands on you at the wrong time can make things worse instead of better.

Kiara

It's not an easy thing for her to say, Kiara.

In truth, it may be the first time in their shared history that she's been the first to say it in an exchange. It's a heady little moment and the brunette's expression when he turns his face and does kiss her, does cup her face and keep her close in the moment is proof of it. Her eyes sliding shut and she returns to gripping at him the way she had earlier.

Holding to him as if the mere act of it would will away the memories chasing after her.

It takes the brunette a minute to let him go, to relinquish her hold on his clothing long enough for him to move back to the bed and draw the covers back, to invite her back to join him. She does, after a moment. A moment where she bites at her lower lip and her eyes skim back to the bar - to the bottle of unopened wine with its red ribbon and tiny note.

There's a low exhale out and then: "I have no idea what I am right now." There's so much raw honesty there, as she climbs onto the mattress and smooths her palms down her knees that it's almost a little hard to digest. The haunted flicker in her eyes when they move to the nightstand, the hesitation in her (almost a kind of resistance) before she nods, just once, this barely perceptible motion with her chin and crawls forward to settle down on her stomach, folding her arms beneath her chin.

The burden of being the one others looked to for healing was it became harder to accept it for yourself. Any sort, even the seemingly mundane variety he was offering.

The live-tension hasn't fled, even after they'd stopped discussing it, after she'd changed the subject, the lingering stress of it is still there in her shoulders; weeks of distraction and uncertainty, bone deep fear. The human body had a means of communicating when it needed to, a manner of speaking even without its owner's permission through aches and bruises and spasms.

The Verbena's entire body speaks for her, now. Even the tiny breath she expels against the pillow as she turns her face.

Ian

[Life 1 (magick enhancing abilities, woo) diff 4 -1 (surpassed instrument)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 7, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Ian

[Int+Medicine -3 diff]

Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (3, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Ian

She doesn't know what she is right now. Ian gives a subdued nod, accepting her response without challenge. Sometimes a person can be many things. Or none of them.

Kiara makes herself comfortable on the bed. Ian gives her a moment to breathe before he kneels over her waist, knees pressed in at her sides as he leans over to open the drawer of the nightstand. The bottle of massage oil is new. He doesn't tell her that he bought it when she started coming over. That usually he doesn't think about keeping things like this in his apartment because he so seldom has cause to use them. In that same drawer, there is a half-empty box of condoms that is not new and which, in fact, he hasn't touched in months.

Not since she started being the only person he slept with. Which was never really a decision that he made so much as something that just... happened. Like so much about their relationship.

The bottle is small and frosted, and when he opens it the scent that permeates the air is a familiar one: jasmine and sandalwood. First, though - he sets it down and grasps the hem of Kiara's shirt, sliding it up and over her shoulders. She'll have to move a little to accommodate the removal, and when he's got it off he tosses it at the end of the bed. Next he undoes the clasps of her bra and slides the straps free, pulling it out from under her.

His hands make a slow exploration of her back, sliding softly over muscle and bone; mapping the patterns of her tension as he focuses. Opens his senses. Keys himself into her body the way they so often do. It's like a kind of muscle memory now, this awareness of her. Sometimes when he's alone (when she isn't there) he feels like a part of his own body is missing.

The oil goes on his hands first - so he can make sure it's warm. Then he presses down at the base of her spine, making a slow sweep up the length of her back. His thumbs glide over her skin where they push (carefully) against knotted muscle and sinew. He isn't a healer the way that she is. Doesn't have that kind of training. But this kind of touch is not unfamiliar to him. Especially not with her. And he is so terribly careful at first - the way he presses at the pain - drawing out the tension in measured increments. Gentle at first, feeling the way her body responds and then adapting to it. Once he's started to work through that initial sensitivity he pushes deeper, working at the knots with focused pressure until he feels them gradually unwind.

It isn't a cure. It isn't going to chase away Kiara's demons or make the world less heart-breaking. And he could, if he chose, help her in other ways. He could whisper something in her ear and banish her anxieties (for a time, at least.) But he doesn't offer that, for the same reason he didn't offer it to Elijah the last time he watched the Hermetic try to confront his fear of water.

Because people have to feel what they feel.

But he does what he can now to alleviate at least the physical pain. To tell her body with his hands all the things he wants to say: that she is safe here, with him. That she is loved.

When he's done, he leans forward and kisses the back of her neck, sliding his hands down to her hips.

"Okay?" he murmurs. And he doesn't mean are you okay in the deeper sense because he knows that the answer is too complicated for her to really articulate (and that it is also probably: no.) What he means is: are you okay right now? with this?

Kiara

It doesn't chase away her demons.

It won't prevent the brunette from waking up later on, in his bed, in his arms, with a sudden jolt of awareness. A half formed gasp wrung out of her throat, heart pulsing wildly in her chest as she came back from the depths of her dreams.

The gleam of a knife in the dark, the relentless pursuit of a tall figure across her apartment, black eyes boring straight into her as if they could sense her fear and feasted on it, grew stronger and quicker and gathered momentum as a result of it. He could stop them, if he chose to. Could delve into her mind and push the tendrils of lingering fear and anger aside. Wash them away for days or weeks or longer.

However long he chose.

But the subconscious had its uses. It was the healing process of the mind left to its own devices. The scab that formed after the wound. And these are not and most likely will not be the worst nightmares the Verbena ever has to face as a result of the lives they lead.

The decision not to run but to stay, but to fight. She does surrender to it, though. Lets her muscles loosen and her eyes slip closed against the pillow that smells so strongly of him and lets his fingers and the jasmine and sandalwood scented oil do their work. She's so quiet throughout that when he leans over to kiss her neck he may think her asleep, lulled into it by the surety of his touch but she stirs, stretches a little like an animal awoken from a nap and issues a tiny hm.

Turns her face a little and he can see the smile that ghosts across her mouth, the careful, almost testing way she breathes out slowly, letting her chest expand and retract before: "Yeah. Thank you." And he hadn't meant it in the deeper sense but she does, the way she carefully shifts a little, half rolls beneath him until she's looking up at him, her dark hair spilled across his pillows.

Her eyes say it, even as she doesn't: thank you for tonight, for being here.

Ian

Yeah. Thank you.

Ian mirrors Kiara's smile: subtle, ghosting. The warmth of it hits his eyes for a moment and bleeds into the sadness lingering there, until it all gets wound up together. He's balanced on his hands, biceps taught and fingers making divots in the sheet as he looks down at her. After a beat, he draws one hand down to touch the bare skin on her stomach, splaying his fingers to map the curve of her abdomen with his palm. Pressing just - a little. Until he gets to her ribs. The pads of his fingers skirt over the line of the lowest one before coming to rest at her side. There's still enough oil on his hand that the touch glides effortlessly.

Then he sits up, resting his weight on his heels so he won't press down too hard on her hips.

"Mhm." It's short, quiet. This low, hummed reply. He sets his hands on her again - this time slides them up with his thumbs making a path from the line of her jeans to the base of her sternum.

"You can always come here, you know." He's quiet for a moment. The motion of his hands comes to a rest sliding back toward the mid-line of her stomach. "My dance company's going on tour in December. Part of me doesn't want to go."

(Doesn't want to leave her, he means.)

Kiara

He can feel her breathing, like this.

Skirting his hands over her abdomen, the cage of her ribs when she inhales against his fingers movements, the sharp point of a hipbone. Naked from the waist up, there's nothing modest about the female that lounges beneath him; the tilt of her face against his pillow, the way her chin drops down slightly. Her fingers find his hands on her skin and she curls them around his wrists, just - leaves them there, feels the rhythm of his heart beating against the underside of one.

(You can always come here).

"I know."

It arrests her a little, what he says next. There's an abrupt stillness, a line forms between her brows. Dark eyes ticking up to find his; searching through his expression as if to gently dislodge the meaning that she senses laying dormant beneath the surface. "Part of me wishes you didn't have to." A little smile, it situates itself crookedly into the edge of her mouth then softens, dulls a little with: "But you need to. I'll be okay."

There's a little pause, her thumb finds and traces the line of his wrist, plots along the paper-fine skin beneath it. "Besides if you didn't go, I think Emma might actually kick your ass. She seems fully capable." There's an affection to the way that's offered, a curling warmth. A deliberate little reminder of the anchors in their lives.

The other side of the mirror.

"I'll be here." It's a promise that, in days to come, she'll have to break but - not here and not now. Here and now it feels like a soft promise, a quietly voiced determination: yes, I will be here because I say so. Because I must be.

Ian

He wants to tell her it's not true - that he doesn't need to go. There are different kinds of need, after all. In this case, no one will die for his absence. The world will keep going much as it had been. But the production will be gutted, and he will lose his job. He doesn't need to divine the future to know that. Neither does Kiara. There are those in Denver who could weather that kind of loss with relative ease. Ian is not among them.

Still, he would stay. If he thought Kiara was in danger. Something in the way he looks at her says as much without him really needing to say it. Which is probably why Kiara tells him to go (tells him that she'll be okay.) It doesn't do much to reassure him, but he doesn't argue with her.

She thinks Emma would kick his ass if he stayed. Ian huffs out a brief laugh. "There are a number of things Emma could kick my ass at. Chess. Poetry. Pointe, probably. I wouldn't be surprised if she was hiding a secret identity as an underground martial artist, but... even if she was, I think I might put up a good fight."

His expression sobers as he watches Kiara. She's touching the inside of his wrists, feeling his pulse beat muted and delicate beneath his skin. Her thumb traces over the place where his scar used to be. (He still hasn't told her that story. Another day, maybe. Not now.)

"If you need anything while I'm gone, call me. I don't care what time it is or how busy I am." There's a hesitant delay before he adds, "Or if you just want to talk. I'll be stuck on a bus half the time anyway."

He starts to move his hands again, sliding them upward at a deliberately slowed pace. "Do you want me to let you rest?"

Kiara

She's not good at needing people. It's a strange thing to be deficient in, the idea of possessing too much independence to the extent it makes reaching out harder. Makes the walls that are built over time and reinforced with experience that much trickier to traverse, to bring down.

It's probably why it took both of them as long as it did to admit what there was between them.

She's making attempts at getting better at it, though. Reaching for him. Allowing him to feel the depths of her behind those carefully constructed walls. Tonight is one of the better attempts she's made - the unexpected appearance on his doorstep, the open vulnerability written in her eyes when she recounted what had happened, the willingness to let him set his hands on her body and lull her tired muscles into some semblance of ease.

It's not a cure. it's no solution.

But it is solace. It is a balm laid over her wounds in a way that matters.

Do you want me to let you rest?

There's a flicker of some returning trepidation, there. The surfacing of that same troubled light that had been in her eyes when she'd met him at his door. She's hesitant to close her eyes for the monsters lurking inside her own mind; pooling there in her memories. "Will you stay while I do?" She slides her fingers along his arm and then twists, turning onto her side and coaxing him behind her; his arms around her body.

"Just - hold me for a while?" A beat, then, heavier, her voice seeping through with weariness: "It helps, knowing you're here."

Ian

He isn't much better at this than she is. There's a reason why his kind of healing often takes the form of touch, and it isn't only because he's good at it (touching people [fucking them.]) Somewhere along the way, something made him believe that the things he had to offer other people did not include emotional intimacy. They didn't include things like holding someone all night while they tried to wrestle with the nightmares brought on by trauma.

Maybe part of him still believes that. But when Kiara looks at him and asks him to stay, there isn't any hesitance in his response.

"Of course."

He shifts to allow her room to roll onto her side, letting her guide him to where she wants him to be. Before he settles in, he pulls his shirt off. Then he slides down to lie stretched out at her back. She coaxes his arms around her, though it isn't really necessary because he's already reaching - wrapping his upper arm around her rib cage until his hand lies flat against her heart. One of his legs tangles up with hers. His grip around her is tight enough to feel protective. Guarding. His chest is flat against her back and when she breathes he does too, matching their exhales in a steady rhythm. There's something calming about that - and maybe subtly influential (maybe she starts to match his breathing too.)

He only gets up once, after that. After Kiara's breathing has slowed and he can feel her pattern settled into a restless slumber, he uncoils himself long enough to shut off the lights, and when he climbs back into bed, he pulls the covers up over them both.

He has a hard time falling asleep. Even when he does, he's too keyed into her responses not to wake when her pulse starts to climb. And when that happens, he does something he hasn't done in a very long time...

He sings to her. Or rather, hums. Murmuring these half-coherent lullabies into her ear. Things she probably wouldn't recognize even if she woke up long enough to be cognizant of what he was doing.

It's not a cure. But it is solace. And he doesn't leave her side again until morning.

Ian

The invite Ian texts to Kiara the morning of the 2nd is deliberately vague on detail.

Feel like going out tonight? I have a place I want to show you.

When she replies, he texts her a time (8:00 pm) and an address on Santa Fe.

The location is... familiar. It's changed since the last time Kiara saw it. There's a new paint job on the front and the theme for tonight's show is different than it was last year: a fresh crop of local artists, each of whom contributed pieces based on the theme of rebirth. There's a poster outside the gallery door listing some of the more prominent artists on display, along with a print of one of the paintings: the stylized image of a Naiad bursting through a layer of ice to breach the surface of a lake. A warm glow emanates from inside, bright light illuminating the framed paintings. A section of them can be seen through the large windows overlooking the sidewalk.

There's a moderate-sized crowd inside. Smartly dressed couples come and go through the gallery door, brochures in hand as they debate things like motivation and symbolism. By the time Kiara arrives, it's past dark and a bit chilly out on the sidewalk, but the gallery has a bright, welcome atmosphere. Ian isn't anywhere to be seen, but there's a sense of him in the air. This little wisp of primal resonance that teases the hair on the back of her neck.

The theme of the show is a lucky accident, truth be told. Last year it was death. This year - renewal.

They were here one year ago, today. The circumstances then were... rather different, for Ian. Though he does spare a few moments of thought toward the woman he killed then - to the place he was in when he and Kiara first met. Sometimes time passes slowly. Sometimes it passes much faster than one would expect.

This is not the anniversary of the day they met. Ian does not precisely remember the date of that occurrence (had not thought to make note of it at the time.) But he does remember the date when Kiara first brought him back to her apartment. Because he remembers the show - how close it had been to Halloween. He remembers exactly how many days (9) it had been after the attack on the red house, and exactly how many days (10) before his birthday - almost equidistant between them.

He's hiding in the back of the gallery, wine glass in hand as he gazes at a painting of a gnarled and ruined tree, a burst of flowering ivy tumbling out from one of its crevices. He is not wearing the same suit he wore last year, because that suit got ruined when he had to heal Jo and Lavinia. He is, however, wearing an even nicer suit - tailored Prada in black with silk accents, a matching tie and a deep burgundy shirt. It looks very, very good on him.

[anticipatory stealth roll - because he is so going to try to sneak up on Kiara before she sees him]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Kiara

It's been an eventful month verging into another for the Verbena.

Between visits from Cultists who were removed from Time and encounters with past incarnations (all within the confines of her fourth floor apartment complex) by the time Ian texts her - the brunette is more than grateful for the distraction. There were, after all, Nephandi in their city. There was, always, an ongoing threat. They lived and breathed under the thumbprint of it.

The verging horror. The impending struggle.

She remembers this gallery - if not, at first sight, for the reasons he's brought her here there is a lingering remembrance of its formerly featured artists. It's an echo of earlier days. Her first months in Denver and there's a sense when the brunette steps inside and collects one of the brochures to flick through it - that she's beginning to piece together the why of tonight. The why of here.

She's not in black, Kiara Woolfe. Not this time.

Rather, the pagan is draped in shades of earthy brown and green, an emerald silk blouse with a line of tiny, complicated buttons affixing the sleeves and back she's paired with a long, flowing skirt that flowed around the female's ankles as she began a slow circuit of the gallery. Her dark hair has been swept up and knotted, strands left deliberately loose to frame her shoulders and neck.

There's a bold slash of dark red lipstick on her mouth and glimmering, gold eye-shadow with a smokey highlight to match her attire. The entire image she projects is one that invites consideration - but then that had often been said of her - that she encouraged the draw in; the focus. Toyed with it. In another lifetime, perhaps as a very different sort of woman - she may have made use of the way eyes slid to her figure.

Not in this one, though. At least, not tonight.

She does collect a glass of wine when a tray offers one her way. Does linger in the vague trickle of deja vu it brings as she finds herself standing before a wide canvas - something vibrantly alive dancing across it; painted in broad smears of a brush. The wilderness returning to life after the first thaw, the capture of deer feeding in fields of wild grass.

There's a degree of anticipation to the way Kiara turns her face toward a particular corner, her dark eyes tracing over couples, milling by the illuminated paintings. She takes a sip from the wine and lingers there - in her anticipation - feeling the slow stretch of it. The coil of it.

The sense of Ian teasing at the edges of her awareness.

She waits, the Verbena, with a tiny smile surfacing at the corner of her mouth as the crowd flows around her.

[Do we catch the sneaking? Per + Alert]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ian

[I probably should have rolled this before the stealth roll - Awareness]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )

Ian

The layout is different than it once was. Temporary walls have been moved, but the building itself is the same: the old hardwood floors, recently polished but still bearing the marks of age. One of the hosts - the gallery owner, is making rounds chatting with some of the guests. Kiara attracts attention the way she always does, drawing the eyes of people she passes by. Some of them make their glances fleeting - a moment of passive appreciation amidst an evening full of beautiful things. Others look longer, trying to gauge perhaps if the company of a stranger might be welcome.

There's a whisper of deja vu in the painting Kiara finds herself gazing at. The natural landscape - the field. It's different but... there's something about it that feels familiar.

Ian senses her before he sees her - feels the pulse of her rejuvenating presence when she steps in the door. It draws his focus away from the paintings, and he turns to throw a glance over his shoulder as though he could see through the wall that lies between them. He doesn't approach her immediately. Instead he takes a sip from his wine glass and moves - very slowly, as though he's still admiring the art - toward the front section of the gallery.

He's quiet, the way he moves. But the room is bright and he is too bold a presence to go easily unnoticed. (Like her, he attracts lingering gazes.) Perhaps she catches him moving in the corner of her eye. Perhaps it's just his resonance that gives him away: the prowling sensation of some wild feline stalking slowly behind her. He comes around the corner, approaching at her back. Maybe she turns around to catch him. Maybe she humors him and lets him fall in at her side without acknowledgement.

Either way, he stands next to her, looks at the painting and says, "What do you think of that one?"

Kiara

She's mirroring a posture she'd held the first time he approached her in this gallery.

A glass of wine held close to her neck, head tilted just so as if she were attempting to understand the reasoning behind the artist's use of color, the meaning to the way they'd painted the trees as if they were not merely there but writhing, vital points of focus. The ground a myriad of browns and reds and oranges, the speckled backs of the deer drawing the Verbena's attention, the gentle movement in the blades of grass.

She's actively engaged with the canvas in a manner she hadn't been, not the first time. So, there's a thread of real appreciation when she answers: "I rather like it," and then turns her eyes to study his profile for a moment, a subtle little gleam surfacing in her eyes, touching the corners of her mouth. "I've always been partial to the fields of grass." Around them, discussions were being waged much the way they had been the last time, the murmur of artist's intent, the consideration of mood and technique, the inconsequential chatter of an appreciative audience.

Only tonight they were the only two Awakened in attendance.

"You know it feels like another lifetime." She drifts over, the brunette, turns her back to the landscape to face him instead, to reach out with idle appreciation for his suit, skimming her fingers over the lines of his tie, the shirt beneath (the color attracted the pagan's focus, naturally). Kiara's fingers skirt over a lapel and latch there, gently tugging as that smile of hers curls up further.

"I remember that night."

Ian

His shirt had been teal that day. Today it's red. Deep red, like the color of wine (or blood.) There was something he said the first day they met - to that poor girl they never saw again - about the color red. What it meant to him: passion; life. How these things ought to be celebrated. Tonight he wears it beneath a layer of black, against his chest - and maybe there is something a little symbolic in that.

Kiara is wearing the colors of the Earth. There's something symbolic in that too. Ian's eyes skirt over the lines of her blouse; travel down the slope of her back like he's admiring the cut of it. His gaze pauses at the nape of her neck before she turns around to face him. They are more familiar with each other now. Kiara claims his space - runs her fingers over his suit - as though she was invited. And she is. His eyes say it even if his voice doesn't. There's an obvious intimacy in the way they touch each other.

She remembers that night (has worked out now why Ian invited her here.) He wanted to touch her the moment he saw her standing in front of that painting (then and now.) He glances down for a moment at her hands, smiling just softly - like he's trying to keep it contained - and grasps her right wrist. When he brings it to his mouth he kisses the underside, where her pulse thrums just beneath the surface of her skin.

Then he says, still smiling, "Feel like going somewhere?"

They already are somewhere. Did he really get them both dressed up just to ask her to leave with him?

(It's what he did that night, too. Albeit... with less premeditation.)

Kiara

She's always had a particular carelessness about space. Other people's, that being. She's made more than one individual in the city momentarily uncomfortable because of it, her presumption - that touching, even briefly, another person's arm or shoulder or hand, even situating herself close physically was an acceptable method of communicating her intent, was acceptable, all around.

It's an interesting tendency for a woman who could claim at least a moderate awareness of the way human interaction worked. The function of it, the way body language bled through when perhaps nothing else did. Kiara was a healer, she had to possess the intuitive sense for when she was pressing against a wound (physical or otherwise), had to know when she was overstepping.

Perhaps she does know it to an extent, certainly in the here and now. She does it to provoke with a particular directness, a flirtation in the way her fingers commit to memory the way his suit feels underneath her fingertips. When he drops his eyes to her touch and curls his hand around hers, drawing her wrist to his mouth she gives over to it. Issues a brief little noise of appreciation and steps in a hairsbreadth closer to him.

There are things she's yet to tell him - details of the last few days that cling to her, find traces every so often in the settling furrow of her brows where they draw together, in the pinch at the edge of her lips. The distraction, the acute awareness of their surroundings despite the lighter, easy chemistry between them she affords her gaze. Allowing her dark eyes to tick briefly over a shoulder, to linger on corners of the gallery as if expecting some presence to manifest in shadowy nooks.

There's nothing, of course.

She lingers close to him, tips her wineglass to her lips, sipping from it as her gaze traverses the gallery and then resettles on his face. "Sure," Kiara's eyes smile before it quite touches her lips, he can hear the curl of amusement in her voice.

"Unless you'd rather keep your options open. There's some enchanting people here tonight." Another sip of wine, an intimate little hook of her mouth as her eyes drop to his. "You never know where the evening might take you."

Ian

There's a ritual in this: in the repeating of words uttered impulsively so many months ago. What likely held little meaning to them at the time now feels much more resonant. Time and memory have a way of doing that.

Two days ago, they were standing beneath the night sky remembering the people they've lost. Perhaps it is as much because of that - and all of the other losses that surround them - that Ian chose to invite Kiara here tonight. To celebrate, in whatever reserved manner he is capable of celebrating such things, the time they've had together. This... inexplicable thing between them that has yet to break apart. If someone had asked Ian on that day whether he thought he would be back at this gallery a year later speaking these same words to the same woman, he'd have laughed. Perhaps Kiara would have too.

And yet, here they are.

Unless you'd rather keep your options open.

Ian's smile broadens momentarily. There's something of a dance to this, and he seems pleased she remembers the steps. He lifts his glass to finish the last of his wine. There's only about two mouthfuls left in the bottom and he drinks them down with measured deliberation - lets the taste of it linger for a moment on his tongue before he walks over and sets the empty glass down on a tray. When he returns, he leans in close and cups Kiara's face in his hands. The gesture this time is less reserved, less wryly flirtatious. And he looks at her in a way that is altogether different from how he looked at her that night. His eyes go a little raw and vulnerable and there is this surge of weight and meaning in his voice when he says:

"I already found the one I want."

There are people watching, but for a moment Ian forgets they're there. He kisses Kiara like he wants to tell her every fragile, desperate feeling beating inside his chest. The sensation of it is not so much aggressive as it is vital and ardent. Like he could brand the taste of her onto his lips.

When he pulls away he whispers, "My place this time. I have something I want to give you."

Kiara

She'll say as much to Grace Evans in a few days.

How unintended this dance of theirs was (continues to be). She knows the steps to it by instinct, if not experience. She'll tell her it wasn't planned but then - how much of life ever was, really? The Kiara Woolfe of then and the Ian Lai of then are not the versions that stand here tonight - their ghosts are tangible, though. The wisps of moments past, old phantom footsteps that do not so much guide them tonight as remind them.

The bookends of where they began.

(Neither of them were students of Time to know where they might end up).

The banter feels weighted, somehow. In ways it never was the first time, when she suggests what she does, when he responds with far less lighthearted flirtation. The expression on his face draws her smile away, softens and dampens it and there's the briefest flush of color that surfaces on the Verbena's cheeks in its wake, he can feel the warmth of it beneath his palms when he captures her face between them.

The long fan of her lashes where they meet her cheek before lifting, before those dark, dark eyes of hers lock with his and she's watching him as he leans in. Her eyes closing only as their mouths meet and one of Kiara's hands lift to curl into the lapel of his suit. Slide around to hold to his neck, the wine glass still poised in the other.

She breathes out into that kiss, makes this tiny, subvocal little sound and when he pulls away - she takes a moment. To open her eyes, to erase the brief line between her brows. It's an expression the brunette does not often wear - something open and honest and - in its way - overcome.

I have something I want to give you.

She slides her fingers down, traverses them over the supple fabric of his suit until she finds his hand; slips her fingers between his. "I'm all yours."

There's a quiet vulnerability to that, too, that was absent the first time they tried these steps. It shines out of the Verbena's eyes. Settles in and curls around her smile.

Ian

I'm all yours.

Those words from Kiara's lips have meaning they might not otherwise possess. For a moment Ian looks at her and this almost... fragile smile touches him. He lets her finish her wine (or abandon it, depending on what kind of hurry she's in,) before he ushers her out to his car.

The drive to his apartment goes quickly. Halfway there a light mist of rain starts to fall onto the windshield, beading up and trailing down the glass in pin-point streaks. City lights slide past as they move. The drifting scenery is underscored by a track from one of Ian's constantly-revolving playlists. Tonight it's something broody and new wave with a hard-hitting baseline.

When they get to the parking lot beneath his building, Ian comes around to Kiara's side of the car as she's getting out. He makes this move like he's about to kiss her, but instead he leans in and whispers, "You look beautiful tonight." Afterwards he takes her hand and leads her up the stairs to his floor.

Inside, the apartment smells like a subtle blend of jasmine and sandalwood. Ian slides out of his jacket and moves to hang it in the walk-in closet. When he reappears, he shuts the door and leans against it. There's a slight hesitation in the act that feels a little out of character for him.

"I know that we've never... really talked about this. What we are. And I don't mean to put a label on it really. I just... wanted to remember what happened last year. And... everything after." He looks at Kiara silently for a moment, then glances toward the kitchen. "I have more wine, if you want some. Or I could make some tea."

Kiara

The Verbena seems distracted on the drive. Perhaps not withdrawn per say but - drawn in, by the music spilling out of Ian's stereo as they slip through the Denver city streets. By the neon glow of lights and traffic and the muffled echoes of the world outside. She turns her face toward the passenger side window as rain streaks across the glass and chases a bead of it with a fingertip.

The silence does not hang heavy between them but then - it so rarely ever had.

-

The whispered declaration as she climbs out of the car, the way he draws into her space has her watching him with this half-veiled little expression. Eyes hooded, mouth softening at the edges into a tiny, glancing smile as she slips her hand into his and allows herself to be led up the stairs to his apartment.

-

These hadn't been the steps last time. They were interpreting new choreography.

-

When he goes to hang his jacket up and reappears, he finds Kiara at the window, her back to him. Arms crossed over her chest, the beaded bag she'd adopted for the evening in one hand, the strap wound around her fingers several times. There was something to the posture of her, the brunette. The lovely line of her form that betrayed an edge of tension.

A thrumming awareness. She turned at the sound of his approach, though. Was smiling in that bright, bold manner of hers until his words sunk in and it faded a sliver, adopted a slightly more studious caliber as she observed him. The hesitation. The uncertainty. It seemed to have a sobering effect on Kiara. "No, we never really have."

A beat.

"I never figured it was something we wanted." He has wine. Or tea. Her chin dips, she's smiling, uncurling her bag and gently dropping it to the floor (the strap coiling there like a serpent). Stepping around it and picking a path across to him. Sets her fingers back against his tie and tugs at it, then smooths both hands down the length.

There was something vaguely soothing about the gesture. Her eyes tick up to meet his. "Tea sounds nice." She draws away after a moment and bends en route to the edge of his bed to slip first one, then the other heel off.

Ian

There are things he wanted to say. More than just this. More than merely remembering. But now that they're here, alone in his apartment, the words seem hopelessly elusive.

I never figured it was something we wanted.

He meets Kiara in the space between the kitchen and the bedroom. When she grasps his tie he goes quietly still, this hesitant little smile touching one corner of his mouth. She's preoccupied somewhat. It hasn't gone unnoticed. Ian watches her bend down to pull off her heels and lets his hands slide for a moment into his pockets.

"To be in a relationship, or to talk about being in one?" There's a touch of rueful self-awareness in his tone, but it fades when he asks, more seriously, "Are you alright?"

He offered to make tea, but he doesn't move to do so just yet. Instead he watches her like he's trying to gauge if she might need something.

[Empathy]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kiara

Alright was perhaps a relative term for Kiara.

For any of them, to be honest. Physically, she's fine. There's no sense of illness or potential injury the way there has been before but there is something on her mind. That much she isn't particularly trying to conceal. She simply hasn't raised whatever it is that's troubling her. It's present and clearly a concern enough that she's been aware of their surroundings, even here, even now in his apartment in a way she typically isn't when they're together.

Almost as if she's expecting somebody. And not, from the distraction she's projecting, a somebody she particularly wants to see. Whatever it is that's troubling her - it's not him. That much, he can sense. She's happy to be with him - she's just dealing with something.

Kiara

"Both?" She asks (suggests), looking across at him.

There's a touch of that same self awareness in her voice, too. A creeping little edge of humor that banks there and settles in and then smooths a touch when he asks if she's alright. Kiara's eyes drop to her skirt; the way the fabric was cut, it offered a glimpse of her calves as she walked; meant to project a certain degree of sensuality without being overstated.

The Verbena's fingers slide along the hem of it, drawing the material out where it had become trapped beneath her. Her hands moving then to brace her weight there on the mattress, each side of her body, fingers curled into the covers. "I'm fine. It's just - Grace came to see me. She brought the Euthanatos with her. Michael," she supplies, the name offered with a little contraction of Kiara's fine dark brows. "He's the one who's hunting down that Nephandus. There's a ... connection, between him and it." She casts Ian a tense little smile.

Breathes out sharply.

"A past life of his. I tried to help him. Tried to find out what the connection was and I - " Kiara's fingers lift to her temple, she rubs her fingers over it, drops them away in an aborted, frustrated little gesture. "I couldn't do it. I mean I couldn't fix it. There was just so much scar tissue and I could feel it there. In his pattern. The connection. This - diseased thing. I know if I just had more time I could have done it but they left and I'm just - " Kiara's eyes are bright. "People have been dying and I could have stopped it. I -"

- feel responsible.

She doesn't say it, but drops her eyes, frowning.

"I'm worried about Grace, too. How far in she's gotten with all of this. I think she cares about him. Michael."

Ian

There's a part of him that was expecting this. He remembers, of course, what Kiara told him at the lake. And he knows her well enough by now not to expect she might remain disengaged if there was a chance she could help. The news doesn't take him off guard, but it does sober him. He takes a slow breath, shoulders lowering on the exhale. When she finishes speaking, he walks over to the bed and sits down. His weight dips the mattress a little beside her, pressing their thighs together.

"You aren't responsible for the actions of other people." He could very well be speaking of any of them, when he says that. There's a quiet weight to his voice. He knows that being here with her could potentially put him in danger. That her wariness that evening is because she's half-expecting something to come find her. But if any part of that knowledge frightens him, it isn't to do with his own safety. His hand finds the small of her back, sliding slowly up the length of her spine. The fabric of her blouse feels thin and soft beneath his touch. When he reaches the nape of her neck he leans in and kisses her temple - soft and reverent.

"You tried to help. That's all anyone can do." His hand slides down again. There's a comforting rhythm to it, the way he maps the curve of her back beneath his palm. "I want to tell you to stay out of it, but it's not my right to say and I can't really imagine you giving up. You're too stubborn." There's a faint lift of a smile there, but it thins out a moment later when he says, "Just be careful. Please."

Kiara

There's this little cant of Kiara's mouth when he offers that he knows she's too stubborn to give up. This brief tugging of her lips and a little sideways glance that is as much distracted affection as recognition of the truth in it. They were both, in their own ways, incredibly stubborn individuals. She leans into him after a moment, into the comfort of his hand against her back, her head dropping to rest against his shoulder.

Closes her eyes there for a minute.

"Why doesn't it ever feel like enough." She murmurs without real desire for an answer (perhaps cognizant there wasn't any easy one). Her hand finds the one not stroking over her back and lifts it to her lips, presses a chase brush of her lips to his knuckles. Holds his hand in both of hers for a moment, keeping it (him) close to her.

"This wasn't what you had in mind for tonight." She recognizes after a beat and draws back, twists to face him. The silk blouse sliding easily beneath his fingertips, Kiara's hair is beginning to make its escape from the way she'd pinned it earlier; longer strands coming loose against the nape of her neck, curling against her cheeks.

She searches his face, the brunette, in that manner she tended to. As if she could trace out every tiny detail of his thoughts simply by making a long enough study. By mapping the planes of it. She did it while they were in bed together, too. Lay there curled on her side with her hands folded beneath her cheek, observing him with quiet consideration.

Unraveling layers.

"What did you want to give me?"

Ian

Why doesn't it ever feel like enough?

Ian leans his head to rest against hers. A warm gust of breath drifts over her hair when he exhales. "I don't know." There's an echo of shared sentiment in his voice - heavy and quietly regretful.

When Kiara makes that claim - that this wasn't what he had in mind for tonight - he doesn't answer immediately. Instead he meets her gaze with a softened expression, his eyes tracing over the lines of her face. "What I had in mind was to be with you. And you're here. I know we can't shut out the world. I wouldn't want to."

She's studying him the way he studies her, but his thoughts in that moment are complicated in a way even he has trouble unraveling. So he slides his hand from her back with some reluctance and stands. Moves to the kitchen to grab a couple of glass mugs out of the cabinet. There's an electric water heater on the counter - an expensive one with temperature ratings designed for tea - with an infuser situated underneath the spout. Given the amount of time Kiara's spent here, she probably already knows that one of his cabinets is filled with tins of loose-leaf tea. That he drinks black tea in the morning instead of coffee.

"What kind of tea do you like?" It's an easier question than the one she asked him. "I have mostly Chinese varieties. Emma frequently accuses me of having a bias against Indian tea, which is only about eighty percent true."

Kiara

[Do you notice anything, Ms Kiara? Let's Empathy him.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 4) ( fail )

Kiara

She watches him for a moment when he crosses toward the kitchen, her hands falling to settle on her lap, expression reading lingering curiosity. He asks about tea and there's this little quirk of Kiara's mouth as if she were surprised that he'd remembered making the offer in the first place. Maybe after the conversation they'd just had - things as simple as tea selection felt strangely surreal and difficult to decide on.

If she noticed the way he evaded answering her - she didn't call him on it. At least, not yet.

She slides to her feet and pads across to observe him instead, leaning her weight against the counter, her hip cocked out, fingers rubbing absently at her neck. "Surprise me." She instructs with a challenging little gleam in her eye that was achingly familiar, echoes of past interactions. Easy, flirtatious banter in Washington Park while she'd fished for her basketball and they'd been observed by other Awakened in the city.

"It makes me wonder, you know," she unpins her hair while he makes the tea, tousles her fingers through it and lets the heavy mass of it settle over one of her shoulders. It returns the Verbena's appearance to something a little better suited to her - a taste of something wild; touched by life. The smokey quality to her eyes, the dark red slash of her mouth.

Kiara Woolfe's attire really didn't need to project a sensuality. The creature herself managed it quite well with the cant of her head, the bold consideration of dark eyes.

"Where we'll be in another year. How many of us will still be here."

Ian

He lifts his eyebrows at the challenge, a glimmer of quiet amusement showing in his expression. "Alright."

Perhaps he already has something in mind, because he doesn't waste much time mulling over options. There's a brief pause when he opens the tea cabinet, eyes sliding over the labels on display before he finds the one he's looking for. It's a green variety - Bi Luo Chun, though the label is written in characters. The leaves are pale and soft and lightly rolled. He scoops a few teaspoons into the infuser, fills it with water and leaves it to steep for a couple of minutes.

Kiara wonders where they'll be in another year. Ian puts his hands behind him on the counter and watches her. Beside him, the tea leaves gradually begin to unfurl in the water.

"When I moved here, I didn't think I'd be here this long." He pauses for a moment, and there's a meaningful weight to the silence. "A lot of things have happened that I wasn't planning on. Or expecting. You in particular." He lifts away from the counter and crosses over to where Kiara is standing. "I don't want to try to predict the future."

It's a little sad, the way he says it. This subtle awareness of how the passage of time can often bring loss.

"But I'm glad you're... mm, no." He shakes his head and glances down. "That's not what I want to say." When he looks up he has to take a breath. His mouth opens and shuts silently, like he can't find the words he's looking for. (Or maybe like he's afraid to say them.)

"Before I met you, I think I forgot. What it felt like to be... happy? I think maybe I just kind of accepted that I couldn't feel that anymore. And then it took me so long to realize that's what was happening when I was with you. I think for a while I actively tried to avoid it. But now we're here and I honestly don't know how to tell you how much you fucking matter to me."

Whatever emotions he was keeping banked earlier, he doesn't seem able to hide them now. There's a shift in his voice when he says the word happy. It cracks a little - goes rough and slightly vulnerable. It happens again at the end, when he has to pause because his chest is so tight he suddenly can't find his breath.

His eyes do this thing where he sort of looks up (but not really at anything) when he tries to breath. Finally he manages a deep inhale. When he releases it, the light catches his eyes and Kiara can see that they're wet.

"I don't know where we'll be in a year. But even if you leave tonight and I never see you again, I'm not going to regret any of it."

Kiara

It was the second time in a matter of days that she'd stood and borne witness to the emotional tumult of another person in her life. Then, there had been little she could do to change what was or what could be. Serafine teetering on the knife-edge - desperate and lost and perhaps even a touch angry at being adrift and untethered from the rest of the world. Then, Kiara had set her hands on her friend's shoulders and poured energy into her.

Brushed healing fingertips over her temples and jaw, tried to remind (gift) the woman with the knowledge she was still there. Still part of something greater for her current loss. This time it's another kind of witnessing - she's part of this exchange in a way she hadn't been for Sera. She watches Ian so attentively as he struggles to articulate himself and there's something very still and focused about her as she does.

Not fear, not now.

(Not like there had been the night he confessed his feelings for her).

But something finite and fragile. A particular flicker that sparks and spreads in those dark eyes as they tick over his face; take in the brightness of them in the light.

"Hey." She moves suddenly, her hands take his face between them, cradle it there with surprising gentleness. She was not a woman who gave over to such gestures often, or openly. She touched him with the easy intimacy of a lover. "It's okay.

I'm right here."

She slides a hand down, finds his and draws it to her chest, over her heart. The beat of it steady beneath that thin layer of silk. Beneath blood and tissue and bone. "I'm not going anywhere." Kiara's eyes searched his intently. "No promises or predictions but you and I. For all the mess and insanity around us - I'm here for that.

No regrets." She echoes him and touches the edge of his mouth with her fingertips, offering a tiny suggestion of a smile. "Besides, I've barely begun to make your life interesting."

Ian

It isn't the same kind of tumult that Serafine experienced that night in Kiara's apartment. Ian's emotions now, as complicated and bittersweet as they are, have an echo of hope in them. This hesitant, unsteady acknowledgement of renewal. It's a thing he can't find the words to express - not properly. But everything they've been through until this point has already told this story. One year later and they are here.

It's such a different place than they were.

Ian's eyes are bright when Kiara takes his face in her hands. He's never cried in front of her before. Almost, a couple of times - but he always drew it back (for all the silly, clichéd reasons one might expect.) He sets one of his hands atop her own where it cups his jaw and turns his face to kiss the inside of her palm. When he does, he shuts his eyes and a drop of moisture traces a path down his cheek. It isn't especially dramatic, but it is honest - this quiet overflow of emotion. She takes his hand and places it over her heart...

(I'm right here.)

...and he steps in close to lean into her space: the warmth of her, the steady pulse of her heart and her resonance. She feels both soft and powerful beside him - silk and skin and tumbling hair and so very, impossibly real and alive. He laughs when she suggests she's only begun to make his life interesting, and there are more tears with that, falling from his eyes to land atop her shoulder. Then he presses his face against the side of her head and kisses her cheek for a long, silent moment.

His hand stays over her heart, absorbing the beat of it like a lifeline.

"We can... if you want to. Put a label on it." There's something very soft and tentative to the way he says this, murmured against her ear as he turns his face. "I just... didn't want it to be..." (fake, manufactured.) He lifts his head and looks at her. His lips and the rim around his eyes are a little red. "I don't know. I just like thinking of you as you, and not... some preconceived idea. But we are... in a relationship. I know that. Whatever the specifics."

The timer for the tea goes off, beeping twice gently. Ian steps back and swipes a hand across his cheeks. He walks back to the counter and empties the contents of the infuser into the glass mugs that he procured earlier. One of them he hands carefully to Kiara. Its contents are a very delicate, pale green. The steam coming off the top carries a sweet, floral scent.

Kiara

There's so much to it.

The moment, the emotions tangled up there. He presses into her space and his lips find the turn of her cheek and she doesn't say anything - yet. Can't, perhaps, beneath the lashing swell of all of it. Can only open her dark eyes after a moment of them standing there, locked together with his hand pressed to her heart and study his face.

Take stock of the tears and the tentative way he suggests they can - they could - put a label on it.

She let's him pull away, after the timer goes off and returns to her a moment to breathe out slowly; to run the edge of her tongue over her lip, leaning her weight back against the counter and watching his back, watching him with a very fine line drawn between her brows. This complicated, nuanced little furrow there, a flicker that surfaces in her eyes as they tick away for a beat.

She doesn't know how to articulate her thoughts on what he's uncovered to her.

When he turns back, she's studying the floor with great intensity, but straightens and accepts the cup with this tiny little edge of a smile.

"Specifics don't matter to me, you know." She says finally, cultivating her words with soft precision. She gently turns the glass around in her palms, feeling the hot liquid seep into them, warming them. "I don't give a damn what any of them think of what we're doing. What we are. I have a - " She flexes one shoulder in this absent, loose little lift, her mouth twisting a touch. " - complicated relationship with relationships. It's not that I don't agree. What we're doing, but my parents were so - I don't want that to change things."

She searches his expression intently for a moment.

"I just know that - I want to be here. Whatever that means. Girlfriend. Number one on your speed dial." She lowers her eyes, lashes fanning over her cheeks in the moment. Tilts her face back, her smile a little crooked, a flash of white teeth. "Just Kiara."

Ian

Ian gives a quietly amused exhale when Kiara confesses her concerns. Her words are a ringing echo of his own anxieties, and the similarity of their shared experience provides a level of reassurance that Kiara may not have expected or intended. There are probably many people in Denver who would hope for a different kind of confession. But Ian is not those people.

He settles back against the island counter, grasping his cup between both hands. For a moment his eyes rest on the surface of the tea, watching the slow curl of steam rise into the air. Whatever he's thinking he doesn't say it aloud, but there is this soft, private smile that lingers there on his lips. Finally he takes a sip, presses his mouth together and meets Kiara's eyes.

"I don't want it to change things either. It just... felt to me like maybe we were getting to a point where not talking about it was another kind of dishonesty. And I don't want you to think that you aren't important to me." There's another issue - the so-called specifics they keep hedging around - but he doesn't seem any more inclined to get into that discussion than she is. Not tonight, anyway. Instead he leaves it there, leaning in to kiss the corner of her mouth.

"Whatever we are. However things change. I promise I will always see it clearly."

When he leans back, he looks at his tea again. "There's a poem by Adrienne Rich. Diving into the Wreck. I found it one year in college and just remember thinking... this is it. This woman wrote my life onto paper. Now I think of it and it reminds me of you. Of us.

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear."

It's a long poem for him to have memorized, but he speaks it as though he's known it a long time. As though the cadence and the syllables have become worn into his tongue. And perhaps they have.

"Let's sit down. You look like you could use some rest." He takes his tea in one hand and grazes the warm palm of his other hand over her back, directing them toward the living room.

There's a new painting there, hanging above the sofa. Splashes of black and red and white and grey. Something about it - the colors maybe; the beauty and the primal aggression - makes it feel very much like something that belongs in Ian's apartment.

Kiara

Kiara has a manner about her.

She always has had, the brunette. This stillness that possesses her when she's quite entirely focused on a thing (or a person). It's arresting, that totality - the lack of anything but her breathing and her intensity because she's such a force of nature otherwise. A creature that lived and thrived and existed in motion.

Smiling, laughing, running. That was, perhaps, the nature of her tradition. They were the sort that rolled and tumbled and relished every tiny nick and cut living dealt them. Kiara Woolfe would likely never be the sort of woman who would recoil from the sight of it - that chaos, that mess. The spillover that smiling and laughing and running incurred. She'd forever be reminiscent of warm Spring days; Summer ones, too; the sun on the back of your neck, freshly turned earth and the way the world smelled after the rain stopped. That first breath of crisper air.

So: she's very quiet and - almost - reverent as Ian recites the poem.

Cradling that tea against her stomach and letting her eyes settle on him, letting the picture swirl into focus around her through his words. There's a little beat where her eyes grow brighter and she has to blink them, look away, look down. This vulnerable little fold of her lips together into a line; the crease that appears between her eyebrows once more.

She's not easy to drive to tears, the brunette (has he ever seen her do it yet?) but there's a wash of the grief and complexity and understanding through her eyes as the words stem to a halt and when he brushes a hand over her back in the wake of it, steers them toward the sofa she still seems swept up in it, the cocoon of the poetry; the story it wove.

The painting does, in fact, draw her eye as they settle there and Kiara pulls the cup to her mouth, sips from it with careful deliberation and then, still drinking in the bold slashes; the intensity of each line. "I like it," she could so easily have meant both, the poetry and the canvas. Her eyes slip to his face and she cants her face to query it.

The painting. The colors. The abstract dance of them across the frame. "Where did you pick this up? It's very - you." This little shift at the edge of her mouth. A flex of tiny muscles.

Ian

He doesn't see the tears right away, because the poem - remembering it - takes all of his focus. But there is a moment when he looks up at the end where he catches the way her eyes shine. It softens his expression. Renders his touch more delicate and tender on her back. A moment ago he was the one to get choked up. Now he seems calmer. More reflective.

They make their way around to the sofa. A couple of ceramic coasters sit atop the glass coffee table, as though Ian had anticipated the need for them earlier. So much of his apartment is so carefully thought out. Cleaned, organized, placed exactly where he needs it. One could call it controlled. Sterile. Anal retentive. But it is also indicative of the degree of care he puts into the things that matter in his life. Even the smell of the place - jasmine and sandalwood. He chose that. Not... to impress Kiara or to influence some kind of mood, but because it reflected how he was feeling. And because he thinks about things like how a scent can attach itself to memory.

Kiara is not a part of his life that he has ever been able to plan for. But sometimes he tries anyway.

The tea tastes like it smells: delicate and sweet. Complex and subtle.

The poem - that part he hadn't planned. But it felt like the right thing, when he said it.

When they sit down, he sets his mug on the table. Kiara's eyes find the painting, but Ian doesn't follow her gaze. He's looking at her - at her eyes. He shifts on the sofa, tucks one knee beneath his leg and leans in to take Kiara's face in his hands. The way he touches her is so... gentle. Barely skirting the edges of her skin. He kisses her slowly, deliberately, retracing the curves of her lips and the taste of her mouth.

Like maybe he'd rather do that than answer her question. But then he pulls away and kisses, very carefully, the corner of each eye.

"Kalen gave it to me," he answers finally, drawing away. There's a moment perhaps where it takes him a beat to come back to himself. He reaches up to loosen his tie, sliding the knot a little away from his neck. "I try not to let people give me expensive things, but he'd already bought it and..." he trails off, glancing up at the image hanging on the wall. "I don't know. I had a hard time turning it away, for some reason."

Kiara

For all the mess that was Kiara's apartment - the spill of clothing on any and all surfaces, the lived in-ness of the space with its blooming plants in pots and tiny herb garden she'd placed on a windowsill to capture the morning sunlight; for all the frenetic activity to it - she likes the simplicity of Ian's apartment. The smooth lines; the placement of every last thing.

Not so much for a space she'd control herself so precisely but - as an extension of him.

She maps out the walls and the spaces sometimes with her fingertips, the Verbena, takes up handfuls of earth when she's in a new spot outdoors. It's a reflection of how Kiara charts her world, how she responds to the greater breadth of it universally. Through touch. Through the tactile sensation of it beneath her palms. She turns back to glimpse him watching her and when he leans in - she shifts the tea between her hands and lifts one freed to touch his arm.

He can feel the lingering warmth through her fingertips from the tea where she holds his wrist.

Can feel the way her cheeks shift with the surfacing of a smile as he places kisses at the corner of each eye; can taste the salt on her skin; breathe in the cloying sweetness of her perfume where she'd applied it, hours ago to her neck. She's still smiling in that slight, subdued way when he pulls back and loosens the tie; when he notes the painting was from Kalen.

Her focus ticks back to it, the smile fading into something notching shy of thoughtful. Considering. "Kalen bought this for you?" The way Kiara phrases it, the question, the manner she feeds it back to Ian, doesn't sound like anything she's seeking further confirmation on. She does lean over though, sets her tea down on one of those ceramic coasters and rises up to examine the canvas a little closer.

She's perched there on the edge of the sofa, studying it with those fine dark eyes of hers for a long time.

"He knows you better than I thought he did. To choose this one." Her eyes tick back to him, she settles down closer, their knees brushing.

"It's what I'd have picked, too."

Ian

There's a story there. Behind the painting. Behind Ian's history with Kalen. It isn't something he feels the need to hide, but perhaps there's some reluctance in speaking of it now. On a day when his thoughts are so heavily focused upon Kiara. It seems, in a way, a disservice to both of them.

But the painting is there, and the tangled mess of their lives are never so neat or controlled as Ian's living space. He watches Kiara lean forward to examine the canvas with this soft, enigmatic expression.

He knows you better than I thought he did.

There is a lot he could say to that.

"Better than I thought he did too, I think." There's a long pause, and he looks away briefly, rolling his lower lip between his teeth. "We went through a lot together, once upon a time. I'm not sure I really know how to define our relationship now. We don't see each other that often anymore, which is probably my fault. He wanted something from me that I couldn't give him and I pushed him away pretty hard. But he never seemed... angry. And now, I don't know. I guess we're friends again. I don't think we ever really stopped so much as... re-drew some lines."

There are things he's not saying. Less out of evasiveness than efficiency. It isn't an easy story to convey in summary. When his eyes tick back to Kiara's face, he reaches out to grasp her hand, caressing the fine bones of her fingers beneath his thumb.

"I stopped sleeping with him before I met you."

Did she even need that reassurance? Possibly not. But he gives it anyway.

Kiara

She does look away at some point while he speaks.

Less out of distress or clear jealousy at the confirmation (at least in part) of how close he'd been with Kalen not so long ago and more to assemble her thoughts - and disassemble his confessions - folding her knees up and curling her arms around them, her chin resting atop one as she listens. Tilts her face down and there's a frown etched there for a long time.

That same considering little look, sharp and honed now, that ghosts back to his face when he reaches out for her hand and she gives it over easily - watches him draw it between his fingers; trace over the bones of it; her knuckles - hands that had seen blood and decay, had offered surprising tenderness and fought for survival more than once.

It's utterly deceptive - how fragile they seemed like this and yet - so capable of more.

The balances and weights of their conversation tonight have shifted rapidly from moment to moment, never quite unbalanced but - their was a delicacy to this, too. The broaching of a subject, a relationship that she's known of, has held some vague peripheral consciousness of for quite some time. She's never had it articulated or spelled out before and in truth, perhaps, she'll never ask about again after tonight. After he offers it freely.

What Kalen had been to him, once. What he still was.

"I always had the impression he thought rather highly of you. Just - little moments. Things he said or - I don't know." He wanted something from me that I couldn't give him. She looks at the picture again, the lines of it, the bold black and red. Studies it and imposes the impression of Kalen over it, the ghostly phantom of the other Awakened scrutinizing the canvas the same way she did.

Seeing the essence of the man seated beside the same way she did in its lines. In the swirl and stab of the paint.

The frown seeps away, softens. "I guess Kalen and I have more in common than I thought." She leans over, after a beat, unwraps herself and leans into his space; her face very close to his for a beat before she kisses him.

Call it a reassurance of her own (for them both).

Ian

[Empathy, because aww]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Kiara

There's a twinge of compassion somewhere in her response.

A settling awareness in the way she looks at the picture on Ian's wall and then at him as he holds her hand. As she listens to what he says about his complicated history with the other man. The canvas on Ian's wall is one she'd have purchased as much because she sees so much of him in it - as because knowing it was something that would speak to him is an awareness that comes from a place of connection.

And love.

She realizes to an extent what it was that he couldn't offer Kalen and the way she crawls forward to kiss him - well, there's understanding to it. There's a lover's physical reminder that they're there, that they understand the way relationships work. The threads that bound them.

She's not in need of reassurance when it comes to Kalen.

Ian

In truth, there are things Kiara knows about him - has experienced with him - that she shares with quite a few people. They've never asked each other for sexual histories, but the nature of their early encounters suggests a certain familiarity with the protocols of casual sex. And they are both attractive people of a certain visceral, instinctive character. Easy assumptions can be made from that.

But it isn't the fact that he and Kalen have slept together that holds Kiara's attention; sets that quiet frown into her features. What she speaks of now... those are things of intimacy. Affection. Love.

Not all of these things were entirely unreciprocated. There's enough gentleness in Ian's tone to indicate that. Whatever he did or did not feel for Kalen, he stilled cared for him. Still does care for him.

But he's not here with Kalen tonight.

There's a flicker of concern when Ian watches the way Kiara's mouth pulls down - the pensive way she considers what he's just told her. Almost he starts to say something, but instead he just goes still.

When she kisses him, he lets the contact melt some of his tension away. His eyes slide shut when her mouth meets his, and he makes this low, gentle sound.

The thing that Kalen wanted - there is a reason why it never worked. Maybe it's the same reason why Kiara couldn't love the man she left behind in New York.

the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth

"Maybe," Ian murmurs. His lips seem loathe to leave hers, brushing against them in this lazy-sensual way before he kisses the corner of her mouth. "But not everything."

He leans back and looks at her a moment. Then he stands up and walks into the bedroom, opening a little drawer in his night stand. When he comes back, there's a black velvet jewelry box in his hand. He doesn't open it to display the contents - just holds onto it for a moment as he re-settles himself on the sofa cushions.

Then he looks up and offers it to Kiara. When she opens it, she'll find inside a simple pendant hanging from a white-gold chain: a trillion-cut grape garnet, its facets sparking deep wine-purple in the light.

"This... was sitting unappreciated in a box in my closet. My dad gave it to my mom on their last anniversary."

Kiara

[WP: Don't get weird, Woolfe.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

Kiara

There are facets of Kiara's life before Denver (even Before in another sense) that she's barely revealed to Ian - barely revealed to anyone, in actuality. Older, packed away versions of herself that she keeps carefully wound up and pressed down, bundled away, stored out of sight and sound and knowledge of the people she cares for presently.

There were reasons why the Kiara of then had not, could not, love the man she often fell into bed with. The demons she'd wrestled with then far more present and potent (and mundane) than the ones she finds herself confronting these days. Old, bone deep bruises that occasionally - she still managed to press down on and feel the distant ache of - past regrets, old mistakes that left their scars on her.

Body and perhaps more so, soul.

When he gets up and walks into his bedroom, opens a bedside drawer, at first she's lazily curious of it. Lounging back against his sofa and drawing her fingers through her loosened hair; feeling tiny snags where it had been bound too long. When she spies the box in his hand though, her motions still - her eyes ticking from it - to his face - and back. There's a slight jerkiness in the way she sits up, in the manner she turns her body toward him.

He offers her box and for a beat there's an almost humorous degree of caution to the way she accepts it (as if he'd just offered her a severed head or some obscure relic) and then a very decided care to the way she opens it. Her lips form a slight o of surprise and her dark eyes dart to meet his:

"Ian, this is - are you sure you want me to have this? It was your mother's." Well, almost. Kiara's fingers glide over the chain with a clear reverence. Her fingertips settling over the garnet, gently picking it up between them to stroke her thumb over the stone.

"It's beautiful," she murmurs, then a tiny furrow of consternation knits between her brows. "I don't ... have anything like this to give to you." Her fingers settle the chain back against the box.

Ian

It isn't the only piece of jewelry that Ian has tucked away. It isn't even the most valuable. There are reasons why he chose this one to give to her. Because it never really got a chance to be appreciated. Because the color suits Kiara's eyes. Because it was an anniversary gift, once.

But for all that, it was not an easy decision to make (not an easy gift to part with.) Kiara, of course, senses this. Ian can see it in her eyes when she opens the box. The dawning realization of the weight and meaning underlying the thing in her hands. Everything he has left of his mother is finite.

It's a lot of weight to carry, that kind of gift. And for a moment, Ian's expression shifts to look almost regretful. He reaches out and sets his hand on Kiara's knee, watching her closely. There's a pause before he responds.

"I'm sure." The resonance in his voice implies a careful certainty. "I didn't consider it lightly."

No, he wouldn't have. Not this.

"I got to hold on to most of her jewelry. This is just one piece of it. And I think... honestly. They'd be pleased that I gave it to you." There's a small part of him, the remnants of the person he was when his parents were still alive, that almost feels annoyed at that. Knowing how much he used to strain against the bonds of tradition. How much his family would likely tease him for giving in to it now.

"But I understand if you don't want to take it. And I won't be upset if you say no."

There's no hint of lurking insecurities when he says this. No suggestion that it might be a polite lie. It's too important a thing to take out of mere obligation. (And that isn't something he wants for either of them.)

His hand on her knee squeezes down gently, and he shifts to settle in closer to her. "If I wanted gifts, I would be here with someone else. You don't owe me anything." He reaches up and slides a lock of her hair behind her ear - slowly, reverently. "I love you." It's only the second time he's actually said those words out loud to her. It should get easier, but it never really does.

Especially now, in the light of his apartment, with his mother's necklace sitting open in Kiara's palm.

Kiara

She feels his hand settle on her knee. Hears his words while she continues to stare at the chain with a concentration that feels like - more. As if there's a struggle that the Verbena wages with herself before she says, haltingly: "My father used to buy my mother pearls. At first I thought it was romantic, some sign that beneath all his pragmatism he did actually care about her."

She looks up, the edge of her mouth giving over to a smile that was not borne of sentiment as much as clouded, ambiguous regrets. There was a twinge of complicated emotion that coiled around Kiara's voice whenever she spoke of her parents. There was no regret for their loss to her the way there was for Ian. The severing of them in her life had been a decisive exercise in survival. "It was blackmail. He'd buy her expensive things to secure her presence at events.

He never tried with me except for this one year. He set a box on the table and told me it was mine." She strokes her fingers over the necklace again. "Pearls. They were beautiful. I sat there and I stared at them while he walked away. I thought about just accepting them. I mean, why not, right?" She cuts a brief little shrug, this lean back into the sofa, her fingers playing over her mouth.

"And then I got so angry. I picked the box up and threw it at him. I remember so clearly the way it sailed over his head and hit the staircase, the sound of it. How satisfying it felt." She laughs, dropping her hand away, her mouth curled down. "And he just stopped, turned around and looked at me in this way. Like he'd known what I'd do but he'd wanted to see me prove him right."

She breathes out, dropping her chin.

She doesn't explain why she's telling him this, peeling back another ugly chapter of her childhood. Painting the image clearly of the volatile, angry girl she'd been before her mentor had found her that rainy night. That there was the potential in her, even then, to become the creature of change and rejuvenation she was tonight felt starkly plain, even drawn through her retellings.

It was easy to picture that Kiara, standing with her hands balled into fists, her chin lifted. Cheeks spotted with angry color as she bore the brunt of her father's disapproval.

"That was the last time anyone ever gave me something like this." She offers, turning her eyes on his face, searching it. When he tucks the hair back behind her ear, he can feel the warmth radiating from her cheeks, the flood of remembered agitation. When he says he loves her, he can feel the answering sense of it in the way her eyes seem to warm, softening as she slides her fingers around the chain and takes it out of the box.

Twists around so that she's half facing away from him, sweeps her hair from her neck in invitation for him to put it around her neck. "I love you, too." It should be easier to say it to his face, now, but somehow, it still felt safer to let the apartment glimpse her face, the naked vulnerability in it when she did.

Ian

It's what he said he wanted, this bearing of truths. However ugly they might sound. They've said it to each other, at various points. Though neither of them have ever been very good at being vulnerable.

Listening is easier. And he does listen - quietly and without interruption. Takes in the way Kiara's features shift as she relates the memory. The tonal inflections in her voice. There are changes in his expression as well - subtle and complicated as her own. Guilt. Regret. Anger. Disgust. These things lurk in the shadows of his dark eyes and the lines of his face without ever fully manifesting.

He watches as she takes the necklace out of the box and turns to invite him to help her fasten it. She answers him without meeting his eyes (I love you, too) and he doesn't draw attention to that. There are things they both have difficulty with. Things he understands.

It's why he knows what kind of gesture it is that she takes the necklace. Especially now.

"I'm sorry I reminded you of that." He reaches around to take the ends of the chain from her hands, fixing the clasp carefully behind her neck. When he's done, he kisses the nape just beneath her hairline. The contact lingers for a moment before he pulls away and lets her hair slide back.

He doesn't tell her all the things he feels when he sees that necklace on her skin. Probably couldn't articulate it if he tried.

"Your father doesn't deserve you." It's less than he wants to say, though probably more than he has a right to. He slides a hand over Kiara's shoulder and down her arm. "Tell me what you need, right now."

Kiara

There's a very complicated little expression on the Verbena's face that lingers when she turns back to face him, her fingers moving over the necklace where it lay against her skin, tracing the edges of it. Ian says her father doesn't deserve her and she wants to say so many things to that.

What does he deserve, then? What did she deserve instead?

Instead, after a minute, she offers (promises): "I'll look after it," with a final brush of her fingertips over the stone before she lets it settle there, in the hollow of her throat. Looks down at their knees, where they're touching, her mouth pulled down in this thoughtful little curl. When he slides a hand over her shoulder, down the crook of her arm she captures it as it descends, traps it between her own and keeps it there.

Studies it and then lifts her face, her dark lashes framing eyes equally as dark.

"Right now, what I need - " Her eyes rove over his face, linger there as she lifts his hand and sets it over her throat, the slope of her shoulder. He can feel the necklace there, pressed against her skin, slowly adopting her body heat. She guides his hand lower, settles it there over her breast; the soft curve of her body where she breathes in sharply. " - is for you to touch me. Make me remember."

She lets go of his hand in favor of leaning in and setting her hands on his body, of letting her eyes drop to his mouth and back, a tiny, teasing little gleam returning to her expression; settling there in the generous give to her mouth.

"That we're here. I want to feel you."

She curls her fingers into his clothing. "Please?"

Ian

People seldom get the things they deserve. Perhaps it isn't useful to think of life in those terms. Usually, Ian tries not to.

Does he deserve to be here right now? With her? With all the mistakes he's made? All the people he's hurt?

He asks what she needs, and there's no expectation in his voice. No hope that she might give him any particular answer. There's only the quiet steadiness of his presence, his focus fixed on her as though she were the only thing of consequence in the room. He hasn't forgotten what she told him earlier. If anything, it weighs on him now. The thought of what she's been through. Of what she may yet face if she tries again to help Grace and Michael.

He never thought they would end up here. He said to her earlier that he had no regrets, but looking at her now it occurs to him that he does. That he regrets every single moment when he took her presence in his life for granted. But who knows where they would be if he'd done any of it differently. Maybe the speed they moved at was exactly the speed they needed to.

He can feel her pulse when she sets his hand against her throat, and he lets his palm slide away slowly, trailing his fingers over the delicate chain of the necklace. The purple stone gleams deeply in the light, and for a moment Ian's attention is arrested there, staring at it with this impossibly complicated expression. Kiara drags his hand to her breast and he inhales at the same moment she does. Keeps his eyes on the garnet for a delayed beat before he raises them to meet hers. His thumb slides down over the curve of her breast, grazing the the outline of her nipple through her clothes.

Something inside of him breaks a little. At the juxtaposition of past and present. Perhaps he was wrong to think he could handle it. And yet... his heart does not stop. The world does not crack and fall to pieces.

Make me remember that we're here.

Her hands find him; map the solid, lithe curves of his body beneath the finely pressed and tailored fabrics of his suit. The look of it is so orderly on him. So formal. Quite a contrast to the primal drives they both know lurk within him. The tie still hangs, slightly loosened, around his neck. He left it on for a reason. She'd been playing with it earlier.

I want to feel you. Please?

Yes.

He doesn't say it but... he doesn't have to. Everything in his body says it for him. When he pushes forward and kisses her; sucks her lower lip into his mouth and grazes it with his teeth. When he makes this little hungry sound in his throat. He grips her breast tightly for a moment before scratching over it with his nails. Dips his head to taste her neck, lashing his tongue over the pulse-point between her collar bones.

His lips graze over the necklace. It slows him for a moment, and he leaves another, more delicate kiss at the top of her sternum.

Then he slides off the couch and kneels down between her legs. His hands find her ankles and move up the length of her calves, mapping over her knees with bated deliberation. His eyes are on hers the whole time - locked there silently, dark and... very much present. As his hands move, he hikes up the fabric of her skirt, leaning forward until his palms graze over the outside of her thighs and up to hook his fingers in the waistline of her underwear.

Slides them down slowly and kisses the inside of her thigh, just past the knee.

Gives her a moment to decide then - where she wants him. (Above her, beneath her, or right where he is.) His heart is beating fast. He doesn't often mind the fitted nature of his clothes but just in that moment... he notices it. How restrictive they are. How much the fabric of his shirt squeezes his chest when he breathes.

Kiara

There are ways that they connect to each other now that don't rely on this. That don't require their lips and hands to map out and navigate the space between them. Words that are still uncertain and new, that take courage and deliberation to lay out and cobble together but words none the less. Spoken affections and quiet declarations.

They have other means of saying the things their bodies can - have done - for quite some time but there is still a raw honesty in this means, too.

In placing their hands and mouths on each other's skin and tasting that need. Drinking in the things that words still fall short of. There's a language that exists inside the physicality of it: the way she watches him drop to his knees before her; the whisper of the material as her legs shift and part and he draws his hands over the length of her thighs. The way her head lilts to one side but her eyes don't leave his.

Never leave his.

There's no smile on Kiara's face now but a stark little expression of hunger.

A gleam that ignites in her dark eyes and provides the proof that try as she might to contain it: there was a baser, wilder core to the Verbena that spoke to the far more primal, animalistic part of him. That heard the snarl of the predator beneath his skin and answered in kind. He gives her a moment to decide, then. Where she wants him, how she wants to feel that connection.

To be reminded and she slides forward, dragging the blouse over her head with all its tiny, complicated buttons as she does; shucking it to one side and tilting her head so her hair fell in a riotous spill of dark waves over a shoulder. Sets her hands around his shoulders and pulls him in to kiss her. It's not the tenderness of earlier embraces but the rougher edge that she often brings to moments together.

She kisses him like she wants to drown in it, to brand the taste of him into her memory before she tugs him backward, stretching herself out across the span of the sofa and drawing him down over her; her legs curling around him. Claiming him.

Rakes her fingernails through his hair and down his back, pulling impatiently at layers.

There is one she leaves on, though. The necklace he'd given her, that she keeps, glittering and solid around her neck.