Dramatically Failing to Mesh

Garrett
Garrett lives in a bland, boring, utterly anonymous building in the Capitol Hill area of Denver, not terribly far from campus, or from Serafine's house for that matter, though it's the former that actually pertains to his life.  There's 24-hour security, a summer-only pool, a year-round hot tub, and the largest apartments therein have three bedrooms and two baths, though Garrett's apartment only has two bedrooms and a bath and a half.  And lord knows, that extra half comes in handy when the apartment is full of teenagers, or whatever.  His apartment, a thing that could be called a condo (along with the rest of the units in the building) as easily as anything else, is tastefully and and anonymously decorated, and still holds the random box in a place where it doesn't belong.  He and Jacob haven't been living here all that long, after all.

"You're going to behave, right?  It's just Eli and some girlfriend of his who needs someone to talk to.  She already knows you exist," the Hermetic says calmly, as if this sort of thing happens every day - and maybe it does.  Garrett is a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a sociologist, a social anthropologist, a teacher . . . he's so many things that mean he's there for people when they need him, whether they want it or not.

Jacob rolls his eyes, snorts.  "If you and Kalen aren't all ass-y and superior, and if you don't make it obvious how much you'd like to trade me for him, we'll be fine.  Is she cute?"

".....she's too old for you.  Flirting with her isn't behaving, so keep that in mind."

"Whatever, Dad."

"I'm making pancakes.  There's already bacon and sausage and I'm about to start the eggs.  Requests?"

"A Pop Tart?"

"........."

"Dad.  Lighten up."

This is what Kalen and Grace interrupt when they arrive and knock on Garrett's door - maybe they hear the charming professor request that someone start the coffee or maybe not.  But then there he is at the door, smiling his goofy smile and offering his hand to the Virtual Adept that he doesn't know nearly as well as he does the younger Hermetic in her company.  "Hey, Grace right?  I'm Garrett.  Come in, both of you.  Coffee will be ready in a few minutes, and the stuff for mimosas and bloodies is out if you're interested in that instead."

And so they're led into an open plan living/dining/kitchen area, where a handsome mixed kid of about sixteen is leaning against a counter, watching like a hawk (and emoting all over the place, so full of sullen disdain and teenaged superiority is he).

"That's Jacob, my son."

"'Sup.  Jake.  Or T."

There's another exaggerated roll of eyes, and Garrett's expressive face is clearly well accustomed to reforming itself into something silly, something ridiculous.  "How are you feeling, Grace?  I heard you were really sick for awhile."

Grace
When the door opens, Garrett catches his first glimpse of Grace since that Ascension Council meeting at the Chantry. She looks very much like a different person. Her skin is grayish, her clothes hang on her frame like she's lost weight, and she has the appearance of someone who really needs either a lot of sleep or a huge pot of coffee. Jacob will likely not want to flirt with her. Even when she's not recovering from serious illness, she's very plain. The kind of person one's eyes just slide off of. Easily forgotten.

She just stares at Garrett's outstretched hand when it's offered, and tries to be polite about that. "I'm sorry... I don't... Yes, I'm Grace."

"Coffee is fine. I don't want to drink anything that reminds me in any way of blood right now. I've had enough of that. Would probably vomit," she says, and what the hell is that about? The food smells divine. She spent a week and a half without food, and it's enough to rouse a hefty appetite. So she smells the air. 

She is a bit strange. And she never smiles. But she looks over to Jacob and gives him a little wave. In better times, she would have been smiling.

Garrett is perhaps a reminder of better times. He acts much like herself, when she still could act like herself. Already she's a bit resentful of that. When he says 'you were really sick for awhile' she doesn't answer him, just looks a bit confused, and instead turns to Kalen. "How much did you tell him? Anything?"

Because, you know, 'really sick' barely even begins to cover it.

Kalen
"He knows what was on Ginger," Kalen says. "And he knows about some of the hallucinations because I may have freaked out a little. He knows I talked to you about things, because I told him that I told you he would help. He knows Ginger exists. " 

His eyes flick back and forth between them. He isn't sure which of them to try and save. He settles on neither, Garrett almost certainly doesn't need saving. And Garrett, given the choice, will likely save Grace. So he moves past Garrett to find somewhere to sit. 

"Jake," he says as he passes him, relatively neutral, but Jake does get a smile.

"The coffee," he says, over his shoulder to Grace, "Is almost as good as mine."  His attention shifts to Garrett, and he gets a look that is half 'be gentle with her' and half 'how is there no coffee yet?' He doesn't look nearly as bad as Grace, but Garrett knows him. This is Kalen on almost no sleep.

Garrett
"I know about how sick you were, though applying my own extrapolations from that isn't particularly conducive to you speaking, as a general rule."  It's wry, amused.  "Occupational hazard, I suppose.  I could suggest you lie on the couch and then ask you how you feel about that, if you like, just to complete the stereotype."  Stereotypes and cliches become so due to the large grain of truth inherent, after all.  "Yes, I know about Ginger.  And, for your comfort, Jacob has been raised around mages and Chantries, though he's not yet Awakened.  If a label were applied, most would consider him a consor."

Yet, Garrett says, and Jacob snorts and juts his chin up at Kalen by way of greeting.  His voice, too, is neutral, and the smile he gives is more reminiscent of his mother (who Kalen probably met a time or two but never knew as well as either Franklin boy).  For now, though goodness knows there have been times he's tried to fight with Kalen as if they really were siblings.  "Kalen.  There's enough there for a cup or two, get some for you and your girl.  Dad and I can wait."  The assumptions teenagers make, sometimes they amuse.

And there's Garrett again, closing the door and gesturing towards the island with enough stools that it can serve as a table even as he scoops up the V8 and puts it away out of deference to Grace's currently (understandably!) delicate constitution where such things are concerned.  "I've got half-stacks of plain and pumpkin spice pancakes ready to go, and more to come.  Bacon and sausage, too - the eggs will be ready momentarily."  He pulls food out of various keeping-it-warm spaces and sets it out - there are plates for each of them, including him.  The best thing about the open plan of this space is that he can prepare the aforementioned eggs and still converse with his guests.  He is, as he ever is, a stabilizing, secure influence - comfort personified, and the kind of person that one can't help but want to talk to.  Given his professional training and education, there are certainly worse confidants to have.  "And I'm pleased to see that you're getting better.  Kalen doesn't freak out that way about just anyone, in my experience."

=================
CourtCat @ 7:54AM
Charisma + Awarepathy - this is a safe space to let down your guard and talk, Empathy specialty
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 ) VALID
niko @ 7:56AM
Witnessed!

Grace
Garrett tries to be charming, and oh it works, it does. Grace had been... rather nonplussed about the idea of seeing a shrink. This wouldn't be the first time she's seen one. They were more ready to medicate than talk, distant, like they had to put a wall between themselves and patient. No matter the calming voice, their impatience could be measured by glances to the clock and 'notes' scribbled on paper that she never got to see. And then, her only 'disorder' was being an angry teenager.

So yeah, she has sympathy for Jacob. Not yet the son that Garrett wants to have, perhaps. Just as she was never her mother's daughter. But still, there's that 'your girl' and she raises a brow at him, and then Kalen, and then back to him again. "I'm nobody's girl."

She crosses over to the island and sits in front of a plate on the end (it would have to be one of the ends -- she doesn't want to sit between people). Pancakes get forked, then slathered with butter and syrup, and then comes the bacon and sausage. Breakfast meat doesn't really look like meat, and that's good too. Meat's almost as bad as blood right now, in the memory of how people are made of it. At least she's got a healthy appetite. She's going to need it. When she reaches across the bar for butter or syrup or what have you, her grey jacket rides up her arm to show healing wounds. Little half-moon gouges, fingernail-sized.

"Kalen was freaking out? Really?"

She remembers then, that this visit is not about Kalen. It's about talking. It's about the reason why she can't handle V8 anymore. At least there are pancakes in the way. She can take her time. She starts with facts. Facts are easier. Just go around the edges, talk about the circumstances.

"So. Yeah, um. I think what happened was, there were these people, some of them were former Technocrats, but they were Consors. They left. When they did, they took a virus with them. Because for one reason or other, they wanted to kill all of the Awakened. Whether that was some kind of inferiority complex, or vengeance or whatever, I don't know. Probably both.

"They were testing out this strain on us, probably trying to make it more virulent, or more easily transmissible. And after a few days, when our health had declined, they started rounding us up to try to keep an eye on their experiment. That's when they took Lena and Sera."

She starts stuffing her face full of pancake at that point, because that's still a hard memory to parse. They took her friends, but Callum hadn't taken her. She escaped his clutches, and why?

"The virus was called Hydra, because when a victim's immune system attacked it, it would split itself instead of being destroyed," she said, mouth almost full of pancake. "So the healthier you were, the faster this thing would take you out. It's why you couldn't just heal yourself. It would use that to become stronger. It was the scariest thing I've ever seen. And then it started infecting Sleepers.

"And it wasn't like the flu, where you just feel really shitty. It started with the bleeding, you know that. But then, it started going after your brain, and showing you in visions what it was going to eventually do," she said, taking another mouthful.

"I... I saw the end stages. One of the Hydra people managed to contract it, and he died. It was almost exactly like the hallucinations we'd been having," she says, and she's not going to describe that. Not while eating. But still, she seems to turn a little paler after that, because she's thinking of it.

"Can I have some milk?"

Kalen
Kalen smirks a little at Grace's response to Jake referring to her as Kalen's. "I don't think I have any claims on any girls right now." He doesn't seem particularly stressed about it, just pours some coffee. "Or boys."  It's true enough. Kharisma and Jack belong to each other, but not so much to him.

Kalen settles near Grace, so that at least one of the positions nearest her is someone she knows. He glances at the food, but definitely is more interested in the coffee right now. He seems surprised when she launches into that story. He has no idea what he expected her to talk about. Maybe Awakenings and paradigms. School. Not this.

He doesn't interrupt her though. If she's going to do this with Garrett he is definitely not going to stop her.

Garrett
Jacob rolls his eyes (in very rare moments, he's more like his father than he cares to admit - when he makes expressions like that is among those moments) and doesn't bother to clarify, but does promptly get the milk when it's requested and pours not one glass but two.  If he'd been about to go for the V8 and changed his mind with Grace's words, it's certainly not indicated, and the Orphan finds a glass in front of her quickly enough.

For his part, Garrett is still making pancakes (it's an easy breakfast, for sure, but even with six on the griddle it tends towards the time consuming) as he's listening, but as the large cook top is an inlaid part of the island where they sit, he's conveniently placed to see everyone but Jacob, who hasn't deigned to join them where they sit, but is instead lounging in a corner of the counter behind his father, listening and watching to it all.

"This is the part where I ask if you want a listening ear, or someone to help minimize the impact of those memories, or someone to teach you how to compartmentalize them so they don't pop up unbidden.  The first is completely mundane - we sit, you talk, I listen, and it can be private or with other people around as you see fit.  I'll supply the safe space to work through the new monsters in your head.  The second, well, that's invasive.  But I don't poke at anything other than that which I'm given permission to with friends.  And the third is probably the most fun for both of us - it requires a willingness to teach on my part, which is never an issue, and a willingness to learn on yours.  I know you're not precisely a fan of the formality I assume in more 'official' capacities, so that's a thing to consider."

There's a pause, and a wry (so goofy!  So calming and stable and secure!) smile.  "And you don't have to decide right now, or it can be some combination of the three when you do.  In the meantime, I'm here for whatever you need."

Grace
She gives a "thanks" to Jacob for the milk, downs about half of it in one go. Craving it for the calcium perhaps.

"You've lost me," she says, eyes averted from that calming smile. "What do you mean by minimize the impact of my memories? What do you mean by invasive? I think I lean toward the third option, but not if you're going to throw words like 'official' at me. Official in what sense?"

Garrett's smiling face feels wrong somehow. Like he's trying to force a smile out of her. But she doesn't want that, doesn't want to smile or act normal. That would be an insult. Like she's not allowed to feel the way she does. Even after dying so many times by flaying or melting or being eaten alive, you're still not allowed to be a grumpy Gus. He's so very happy, she stabs at a sausage with a bit more force than really necessary. Eats it like it's done her wrong.

It's not something that she'd wish on her worst enemies, but a part of her wants him to have experienced that. To know what it's like to be vivisected, and wake up knowing you'll have to go through it again in a few hours. The panicked pleading to the universe to just kill her if it's going to anyway. It might go a ways toward wiping that smile off his face. But he still seems so safe to talk to, perhaps he might understand.

"I need you to take me seriously," she says at her plate. "I know you're just trying to make me feel comfortable, but I don't want to have comfort forced on me. Feels like I'm in the wrong for not being as gleeful as you."

Kalen
"Ah, Kit.  That is pretty much his serious face.  Unless things have gone even more horribly wrong.  We just haven't hit the level of horrible where Garrett stops smiling quite yet."  He sighs, totally for effect, and takes a sip of his coffee.  "I even tried telling him his face would freeze that way, but no luck.  He still does that ridiculous smiling thing all the time.

"And the rest of it is just Resonance.  Which makes him like the best person to hang out with when you're hung over."  Or when you can't sleep.  But that is not at all what Kalen says.  He's admitted to having nightmares once already.  He isn't interested in doing it again.

"He deals fine with me.  I'm not exactly a glorious ray of sunshine.  You don't have to be happy.  You don't have to do anything.  It'd be cool if you hung out and had breakfast, but we're not even going to try to make you do that if you don't want to."

He eyes the food.  Garrett is distracted with Grace, but if he doesn't take food in the near future he is going end up with food mystically appearing on his plate.  If, by mystically, one means Garrett putting it there for him.  Probably with a fork.  Garrett is a Judge and not a Knight, after all.  He puts a pancake and a couple slices of bacon on his plate.  And then promptly returns his attention to his coffee.

Garrett
"Grace."  He applies no endearment as he might with Kalen or Jacob, but he's only met Grace once before, briefly, and the impression hadn't been particularly positive (on either end, really, though Garrett is the kind who reserves judgment until he has more facts - funny, that), so it is what it is; his voice loves her name, though, and it sounds, on his tongue, like its meaning.  Grace, indeed.  "I lived through - fought in - the War."  It's a gentle admonishment, but admonishment nonetheless; Garrett is, after all, the Order's golden boy (or one of them, anyway).  Whatever anyone might think of him personally, there's a certain consideration that should be given his station, his experience.  Just because he doesn't remind people all the time doesn't mean it's not there.

And, for the record?  He's not smiling now.

"I've been through torture.  I lost my wife, Jacob's mother, who was also Awakened."  Here, Jacob snorts again and it's harsher this time, a non-verbal calling of bullshit.  "I lost my two best friends and their daughter, who might as well be a daughter to me, too.  I thought for a year I'd lost Kalen, who I consider as close to family as non-blood can be.  I've been in other realms, places to which even the sort of hell you were recently put through pales in comparison, and not always willingly.  I don't say these things to imply your trials were anything less than you consider them, because  they weren't - aren't.  I want you to understand that I have a readier empathy with what you've suffered than anyone ought, so you know that, though I smile and speak lightly, I also take you completely seriously."

There's quiet for a moment, and one could hear a pin drop during the stretch that seems interminable.  Even Jacob has no smart comment or sound to make.  At the meeting, Garrett had used formal words, given a full introduction, but it had nothing on his bearing and expression now - bearing and expression that smooth away when it's time to flip the current set of pancakes from the griddle to the plate and pour out more batter.

(He would put food on Kalen's plate if he didn't do it himself, yes.)

"Anyway.  By invasive, I mean that you would have to allow me into your mind, which given how little we know each other would be difficult for both of us.  There's a vulnerability there that I don't like to allow.  And by 'official', I didn't mean truly so.  But there's a difference between conversation and teaching."

Grace
Grace hates her name. Her given name, at least. Other names have more meaning to her, but that one... There is no grace in what and who she is. It's a misnomer. It's what her mother wanted her to be. She wants no grace, she only wants to break through the bullshit. And then, he does.

It may be that to Garrett he's being formal, putting himself in his rightful place. But Grace sees his words as a leveling. It's only fair, if he wants her to bare her soul that he do a little of the same. She doesn't even sense the tenseness in that moment, and relaxes... until she looks up at him in appreciation, and notes that bearing, that expression, that damn wall between himself and her. The appreciative glance fades, replaced by a flash of fear, and she stares back down into her pancakes.

"If I've insulted you, it wasn't my intent. I'm sorry."

And this would be the second extremely powerful Hermetic she's managed to irritate. Shit. It's like Trent 2.0. He lets her know that he can enter her mind, probably rearrange it. And the way he just looked at her, all cold and distant. She looks over to Kalen with an apologetic expression. She did tell him she was worried they might not get along. At all.

This whole thing was a bad idea.

She tries to hurry through the rest of her breakfast. Filling her mouth so she can't stick her foot in it perhaps? She doesn't seem to want to talk anymore.

Kalen
Kalen watches Garrett with a tiny, puzzled frown.  He always expects that the person he first met is still the same person he's dealing with and for Garrett...they are both ghosts of older, gentler selves with each other.  There was a time when Kalen was not so quick to retreat into some expressionless mask and there were times Garrett was less ready to try to remind young Mages of his rank and that past, those people, are really just memories now.

It doesn't make it easy.

And he tries anyway.

"Garrett," Kalen says gently.  "She doesn't know what we are.  She can't know who you are.  I'm not even sure she really knows what war you're talking about.  She hasn't even had a chance to really begin to understand what she is.  Almost all she's seen since she Awakened has been a parade of nightmares.  I didn't prepare her for this, for you, not really, and that's my fault."  

'Be angry with me,' his eyes plead, 'be angry with me and help her.'  

"All she's had so far is this cobbled together collection of things.  She never expected this.  Jake knows.  I thought, when I Awakened, I thought that whole new worlds had opened to me.  But that's not what everyone gets.  This is all new to her.  She doesn't know what to do.  

"Don't punish her for being scared.  She came here anyway.  Because I trust you."

Garrett
"I'm not punishing anyone for anything.  There's breakfast and drinks and conversation, and I've been fully debriefed on the facts of her situation now, which means with further testimony and evidence I could sit judge if someone wanted me to.  But I don't see that as being particularly helpful in this circumstance, so I'm a bit confused at what you, Grace, hope to accomplish here.  If you want my services as a psychiatrist or psychologist, you're welcome to them as our schedules permit, and I'll give you a card with the information you need to make an appointment.  If you want to learn more about the Order and our ways, I can teach you that though to be honest I don't think we'd be a particularly good fit for you given what little I know.  If you just want to learn some Ars Mentis - the proper name for the Mind sphere - we can handle that, too.  And if you simply want me to be friendly and listen to you talk, you can't take exception to me being myself any more than I can to you being yourself, or our continued association will prove strained at best for both of us, and not particularly helpful for you."

He shrugs, and continues not-smiling - which isn't completely foreign to Kalen, but the last time he saw this much of it was when they were both considerably younger than they are now, and circumstances were significantly more dire a good deal of the time.

"I don't want anything from you, as it stands right now.  You came to me - or rather Kalen brought you to me - for help.  I'm not auditioning or interviewing, and there's only so much I can do - ethically and morally, anyway - if you're not ready or willing to work with me.  So by all means, enjoy your food and Kalen's company, and tolerate Jacob's and mine civilly or at least politely for the duration of the meal that you obviously sorely need.  If you want, you can watch me make sure our mutual friend sleeps well tonight - which I will, don't even think about arguing," comes as an aside, "and go on your merry way.  It would be callous to say that I don't care, and far more accurate to say that I'm only invested at all because my boy, there, is concerned about you.  You're welcome to take whatever action or inaction you like."

Grace
"I know some things about the War. Gadfly told me, shared the history. I haven't heard from him in over a month now, I don't know if he's dead, or if he's going to send me a text in the next 10 minutes like nothing ever happened. He's kind of... like that. Or maybe Mister Goodson caught up with him, and he's undergoing worse than I can imagine right now. He taught me some Ars Mentis. I was going to repay him by teaching him some art of life, what little I know. That's how he and I worked. We exchanged. We did for each other," she says, her voice gone quite cold, robotic. She's just drained. Her mentor is gone, her friends driven to ends she can't fathom through weeks of torture, and she's not entirely certain she's completely sane either. How to be a civil and polite madwoman, really?

"I am not myself. I am some... thing else. This... this girl who went from worrying about midterms to worrying about the end of the world. I've been targeted three times now, by various people out to kill me, or kill the world, all because of what I am. I Awakened in July. This is ridiculous. I don't know how any of you stand it. I don't know how any of you are sane," she says, and that robot voice shakes along with her hands, which run up the arms of her jacket. "I haven't slept well since the virus, because every time I fall asleep, in my dreams there's one of them making a Y incision in my chest and pulling my skin off. And you want me to be civil and polite and I can't tell how I haven't been. I'm just too tired, Garrett."

She puts down her fork, unwilling to take more food, since she's not feeling at all welcome anymore. She hugs herself under the grey jacket she wears, leans up against the wall, looks at the ceiling. That robotic voice returns when she speaks again, like she's been granted some control. "You don't want anything from me, really? I thought you wanted me to set you up with Ginger? Do you have any questions? You've seen it, you know at least what Kalen's told you. I understand if you don't think it's safe or just don't want it."

Kalen
Kalen picks up one hand like he would reach out to Grace, but then he sets it back down on the table.  He opens his mouth, closes it, and then gives Garrett a completely pleading look that begs him to fix it.  Somehow.  Because Kalen doesn't know what to do with someone who had a real life.  A life that wasn't about hiding and running and surviving for as long as she can remember.

Not like this anyway.

And he can't.  Even.  Tell.  Her.  The.  Nightmares.  Will.  Stop.

His never have.

Garrett
"Access to Ginger would be convenient, but I didn't ask for it.  I do things for people, not for favors.  You see, Kalen asked me to help you, and so I allowed him to bring you - an unknown wild card - into the home where I live with my son, who has a plethora of mundane defenses of his own, but none magical."  Yet, he'd said earlier.  "Not because I expect this to get me anything, but because he asked me to.  Because, as I said, my friend is worried about his friend, and maybe I can do something to alleviate that worry."

Garrett shrugs, and yes, of course there's cool distance - but it's at war with who and what Garrett naturally is.  He doesn't like it any more than Grace does.

"Look, I'm not mad at you or anything.  I'm not going to punish you or whatever.  Even if you were my Tradition, I'm really not that kind of asshole - though Jacob would probably say otherwise.  I don't want you to bare your soul or whatever to me, or rather I don't want you to have to.  However, regardless of the route we take, if we do at all, you have to be willing to trust me a little bit, and you have to want to work with me.  We don't have to like each other or the situation, but we have to be able to set that aside for a common goal.  Otherwise, it's a waste of time, both yours and mine. So please, by all means, feel welcome as the friend of a friend, even if we don't choose to continue beyond this point."

=========================

CourtCat @ 6:33PM
[Char + Awarepathy, specialties Gregarious and Empathy]
Roll: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1 VALID
Umbralwind @ 6:33PM
Woot! Witnessed someone... Pwning someone else with Awarepathy!
Denver @ 6:36PM
Speak "OOC Room" and enter, Samael.
CourtCat @ 6:37PM
[And, for good measure, Char + Expression, Gregarious specialty]
Roll: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1 VALID
CourtCat @ 6:39PM
.....shee-it, this scene could be titled "In Which Garret Gets All of CC's Characters' Suxx For November".
Denver @ 6:39PM
Noel, welcome to OOC Room
Noel @ 6:40PM
lol CC


Grace
In a very rare gesture for Grace, she reaches out and touches Kalen's hand, looks at him with dead eyes. "It's okay."

Those eyes then shift to Garrett, giving him actual eye contact for once. "We just keep hurting each other with every other word we say, I guess. I'm... not ready for social calls yet." Damn is that the understatement of the year. 

"I do appreciate your offer. And your trust. There's no chance I could do anything to you or your son, but you don't know that. Well, I could hack his Facebook and tell all of his friends embarrassing baby stories. But aside from that..." She still doesn't smile, doesn't inflect her voice. But at least she's getting some control back. And a little humor.

"Ginger isn't really a favor for you. It's a favor for everyone. It's my duty. Someday you may know something that will save a life, and if you don't have Ginger, you'll have to rely on sources that are less safe. Or not, I don't know. Maybe you have your ways, and I'm just being ignorant. But either way, I'd be glad to set you up with it, even if we don't continue beyond this point."

She picks her fork back up again, spears pancake. They are very good. Comforting, perhaps. 

Kalen
Kalen blinks when Grace touches him.  He seems unsure what to think, less because he doesn't approve of contact and more because he's not entirely sure what to make of why Grace is touching him.

He glances between the two of them and sighs. "Compared to about half of the meetings with other Magi I've been present for in Denver, this is, alarmingly enough, going fairly smoothly. Perhaps all of our meetings just need more pancakes. I found this amazing place that makes organic maple syrup, I can have it shipped in. We can consider whether inclusivity overwhelms the fact that turkey bacon is an abomination...."

Garrett
"Yeah, I've gotta say this is going at least as well as any other meeting of the minds I've had with our people since arriving in Denver.  It only seems like it isn't because it's lasting longer."  Garrett offers a wry half smile, amused even if he shouldn't be.  "I understand that you're justifiably depressed, at a minimum.  All I can do to help that is listen, unless you want pharmaceuticals - but I don't hand those out without proper assessment, so there would be you talking and me listening, anyway.  And if you'd like help expanding your knowledge of Ars Mentis, that would be you listening and me talking, which is fine too.  Or if you just want to be around semi-normalcy, you're welcome any time.  Other  than that . . ."

He shrugs.

"I've said a lot, and you've said relatively little.  I know you're here because of Kalen, but I'm having a hard time getting a bead on where you want to go from here - or rather, it seems to me like you don't have much interest in any of it, at least with me.  So . . . I don't know.  I guess we stick with you're a friend of a friend and you've been through a lot, so if you decide you want something from me, you can let me know." 

Grace
She just nods at first, and her eyes go flitting around the room as she eats, shifting here and there like her resonance suggests must be a common thing. And then, after some thought and pancake, she finally responds, "I don't think this is going to work. We can't talk to each other. How we could share minds, I couldn't begin to guess, but in my imagination, it goes badly.

"I did say that okay, right? It didn't come out like, 'fuck you and everything you stand for' did it?" she says, and spears a bacon slice with her fork.

She lifts the bacon up, but then stops... stares at it as it drips syrup back on the plate for a few seconds. There's a sigh, and she puts it back. Must not be so appetizing. Looks like dripping skin.

"Anyway, I've not heard from you whether you're going to accept my offer either. I can't stay forever. I've got so much that needs done today. I'm going back to class, so I have to go to all my profs and show everybody my stupid 'I was in the hospital' note so I won't get kicked out and beg them to let me make up midterms and let me keep my job. And I'm not ready for this, but I've got to do it anyway, and hope I can talk to them without pissing them off like you, and... shit..."

She's rambling again, each topic expanding in unconscious exposition. Just, whatever comes to mind. And when she realizes she's unfiltered, she stops, and drinks the last of the milk. "How did you make it through college with all of this going on? Is it... possible?"

Kalen
Kalen opens his mouth to say that maybe Garrett can help with that, but then just sighs and stays quiet.  At least they stopped fighting.  Or whatever they doing.  Dramatically failing to mesh.

He refills his coffee mug.  He fiddles with cream and sugar for a minute.  Then he drizzles little syrup patterns over his pancakes, more because it's something to do than because he's terribly interested in eating.

Garrett
Poor Grace.
Poor Kalen.
Poor Garrett, too.
They'll all get over it, some quicker than others.

"I think, actually, that's the first thing you've said to me that didn't come off as 'fuck you and everything you stand for'.  I was starting to get a complex," he answers with wry, dry amusement.  Perhaps his lack of gravity is a defense mechanism of sorts, but Garrett's the mental health professional here.  And as such (and as the generally comfortable sort of presence he is), he remains congenial and pleasant through it all, except for that one moment that had, perhaps, been the undoing of Kalen's hopes for this situation.  "But yes, I'll accept your offer with thanks, and will extend one of my own in return - if ever you change your mind about our inability to talk, I'll be here.  As a listening ear, or a shoulder to cry on, or a teacher, or whatever."

Now that things have settled, Jacob relaxes into his snarky self and snorts in response to this.  Clearly, the boy doesn't think his dad is there for him, though just about anyone else who knows the two of them would be able to say that Garrett adores his son.  That?  Is neither here nor there.

"College?  That was an interesting time.    I was lucky in that I started at least a semester ahead because of AP classes, and that I was found by my mentors when I was just in the early stages of Awakening.  I was selected and guided through what could well have been a very trying time otherwise by  two people I liked and respected even before I had the basics grasped.  We were together for years, the three of us - and eventually our families."

Until they weren't any more, of course, and this turn of conversation has Jacob slamming his dishes into the dishwasher and storming off down to his room for some reason or another.  Garrett's eyes trail after the boy, unreadable even though his accustomed gregariousness, and it takes a moment for them to return to Grace.

"It's different for everyone.  I was fortunate to be taught by well-thought-of people, and to prove myself fairly early on.  There have been times I wasn't so lucky, but they came later.  I can't truly say I regret any of them, though, because they've helped strengthen me, to make me who I am.  I'd imagine you'll come to see it so with time, too."

Grace
Grace pauses in the midst of raising that last bit of pancake to be eaten. Really? Every other thing she's said has been a giant 'fuck you' to Garrett? Well, okay then. That only solidifies her growing realization that this is not going to work. She's looking at Garrett with her dead, tired eyes like she's trying very hard to figure him out when Jacob runs off in a fit of teenaged pique. She follows the boy with an expression that could mean anything with how blank it is, but when he's gone, her gaze hangs there in the air. It's like looking into a mirror, that. She doesn't know what Garrett did to deserve that reaction, and maybe he doesn't deserve it. But when she would act like that toward her own parents, it was deserved, she thinks. Knows.

Garrett just keeps right on going, telling her how fortunate he was, about his college days and Awakening, those stories and platitudes, and Grace almost wishes for Angry Garrett again, if he weren't quite so frightening. No, this is slightly better than that, even though she feels like there's the embodiment of Chicken Soup for the Soul, in all it's soullessness, standing in front of her making eggs and trying to patch over her gunshot wounds with bandaids. Christ, he's talking about his AP classes. She's talking about how to deal with the surreal nature of figuring out how many credit hours to take when the world keeps ending. How do you go back to your life when it's over?

'College? That was an interesting time. I saw myself and the universe in complete oneness. I met great new people, and proceeded to share so much with them. Like some of the worst possible ways to die, over and over again until we were all rendered near catatonic.' There's a reason why interesting times are a curse. She doesn't like what this has made her into. This isn't her. She doesn't feel stronger, but fractured.

She sighs, still staring off at the place where Jacob disappeared, and tries to remind herself what Kalen said: it's just who he is. It's even how he feels to her sixth sense. Perhaps he can't help it. Poor bastard.

"Well, um... Perhaps," she manages to say after that little 'what does not kill you makes you stronger' speech. "I'm going to need your phone."

Garrett
It's not angry Garrett, no - it's confused, curious, prodding Garrett.  There are good things about being as empathic as he is, and bad ones too.

"I really am not entirely sure what you want from me," he says as he gives her his phone - something new, shiny and high tech, with a good camera and speakers, perhaps different than one might have expected.  "I could tell you about the rumors that I killed my wife and how true they are, and that I did so not only because her House turned during the War but also because somewhere in the process she lost her mind and our son's life was at risk.  I could tell you what it's like to find yourself in the shifting quicksand of a Marauder's sphere of influence, or what it was like to be under Technocratic torture, or how it felt to know that genetic samples were taken in an attempt to further their research."

His voice is quiet, low, (pitched so as not to carry down the hall to his son) and all semblance of his usual - true - goofball self is stripped away, leaving something dead and false in its place.

"I could tell you about Paradox backlashes and only barely escaping the summonings that were result or Nephandic ritual.  I could tell you that my mundane life - my 'real' life - suffered terribly from all of it, and that would be true, but I choose not to dwell.  I choose to change as things effect me, but to be, at my core, a happy and content person.  I know trauma, Grace.  I know PTSD.  I've suffered it, and I've moved on.  To quote a slogan I've heard bandied about a lot, it gets better - with the addendum of 'if you let it'."

He falls quiet again and even Kalen, who's been there at least tangentially through a good deal of what Garrett's mentioned, has never seen the Disciple like this - has never seen Garrett show how broken he's been, let alone how he puts himself back together when it all hits.

"Your wounds aren't any greater than anyone else's, and certainly aren't any greater than mine.  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to trust you with my phone and go sit over there, quietly.  Stay as long as you'd like."

But first, the eggs are plated - a small-to-medium scoop for each of them, and extras on a serving plate - and drinks are refilled.  Because even hurt, confused, and at least a little pissed off Garrett's nothing if not a good host.

Kalen
"By which he means we're all wounded, Kit," Kalen says gently. "Garrett and I, we were so lucky.  We both found people with considerable experience that we became very close to early on.  I found out that monsters were real when one tried to kill but people had already tried to kill me so...the world didn't get any darker, just...more complicated.  And once I started to learn magic, Kit, it was amazing for me."

"It got so much darker later, but...my first real conception of all of this was of something incredible, something beautiful.  I know it gets scary and overwhelming.  I do.  But, I have other things to balance all of that.  You will, Kit.  We may approach it a bit differently, but we live in the same world.  Terrible things happen in it, but that's not all.  You know...statistics?  Averages?  Like if you flip a coin three times you might get heads every time, but thirty times will bring you closer to average, right?  Closer to fifteen.  A hundred times closer to fifty.  A thousand times closer to five hundred.  You just are starting with darker parts of this.  There is so much more than that."  

"I have seen things, Kit...I wish I could just walk away from here and jump on a plane and take you to some of the places I've been so you can look at them, really look at them, the fantastic symmetry of their underlying truths or their complete lack of symmetry that is just so incredibly surreal and magnificent."  His eyes are practically glowing, like they did when he was first explaining magic to her before, though their color is drowned out by the circles under his eyes to the point they seem like they're almost clear as glass.

"I know I could tell you until I turn blue and it won't matter.  I do.  But you'll see these things, you'll see the things that we save and the potential that world has and you'll understand.  It will take time, and I can't tell you how much time, not yet anyway, but you'll see how it all falls together into some immense cosmic - it's not even a picture because it's more complicated and deeper and...." 

"Even if I have to call it forth for you, Kit, you will.  Failing anything else, one day, I'll be able to do that.  And if you haven't seen by then, I will.  I swear to you.  It will get better."

Grace
She looks over the phone as Garrett slips into a new persona. Again accusative, as though she'd said something that cut him. But all she'd said was one vague "perhaps" and a request to see his phone.

He tells her how he killed his wife, about a Marauder (which is a word she does not know) about Technocratic torture. And the phone in her hand just starts to shake. He talks about Paradox backlash and Nephandic ritual (another topic she is unaware of) and about his PTSD.

All she really gets out of that is that it's going to get worse. She doesn't even know the names of the things that are out to do worse than kill her. This is just the beginning, and how dare she even come to him and suggest that what she's been through was worth more than a bandaid and a 'cheer up'. There really is no hope. Life from here on out is just one horror after another. And this, right here, the calm in between terrible things? It's like lying in that clinic room, waiting for the next hallucination to hit. It's almost worse when you're coherent, when you have the space to think, because then you are so very aware of what's going to happen next. He says she can choose in spite of all this to be content, so it's her own damn fault she is the way she is, and she slips the phone up onto the table (she's about to drop it in her shaking).

He tells her that her wounds aren't any greater than his, and she needs to grab on to the bar, to something, because the world's turning wrong, and she doesn't know why he's doing this, what she did to deserve this attack. Like he's trying to teach her a lesson, but what? "I...I... Nn..."

I never said that. Never said that.

Oh shit, he's reading my mind.

They just keep reaching into each other and ripping at each other's wounds, hers so fresh, his so many. And it's not like she can just stop reacting to him, she's tried not to let it become that obvious. No, they can't fix this by just not talking to each other, they can't even be in the same room. "I didn't... n... mean..."

I didn't mean to hurt you.

Perhaps in a society of people who can read minds, one must learn new social graces. And she was never one for social graces. Grace is beyond hurt, beyond confused, and she hopes that Garrett is reading her mind, because she can't seem to speak.

It's Kalen who comes to the proverbial rescue. She's pushing the eggs out of the way in some frantic gesture, trying to clear off space for her laptop (and managing to look crazed in the process, all shaky hands and sudden movement) when he grabs her attention at last. He's told her this before, even before all the pain and death came into her life. That there are so many beautiful things to see and understand. She's just been remarkably unlucky to have had the introduction she's had. 

It's rare for him to emote so. When he does, you know he means it. He would call down the heavens for her, just to show her that the world is not so bad after all. "Kalen... I..." am a complete fucking mess and can't talk. She just nods.
The two other mages, they had their mentors to help them through the transition early on. And while she's not going to join his Order, and she's not going to do anything so disastrous as calling herself his apprentice, perhaps Kalen is a mentor of a sort. A guide through the hell that her life has recently been dropped into.

She just needs to get through this one thing, and then... No going back to class today. She's going to go home. Just this one thing, and then home, and it'll be quiet again. And really? She faced down a guy who tried to kill her through torture and guns and proceeded to yell at him to explain exactly how stupid he was and why. Who's Garrett but a guy who's making her breakfast and saying a bunch of mean things? He's not going to hurt her. Well, no more than she lets him. It's just... it was supposed to be safe here. She was supposed to be able to say anything, feel anything. Well, that's not going to happen again, is it?

She closes up over that hole inside. Chooses to go... well, not to happy. Not content. Just hard and dull and blank. She just can't afford the vulnerability. And she can't afford to break down before Garrett's phone has been updated, or she might have to come back. Her hands still shake, but she's at least capable by the time she starts to work on the phone, and definitely more in her element. It doesn't take long, and the process is a bit steadying. At least with her face in a monitor doing 'computer things' nobody will interrupt her, or tell her what a horrible person she is in the interim.

"I'm done," she announces, in a solid, but dully robotic voice. The data cable gets disconnected, and she leaves the phone where it sits on the bar. She stores her temporary rig in her laptop bag, and then gets up on legs that only halfway work, and walks straight to the door.

"Thanks for the... pancakes. I'm sorry about the... " she pauses. Sorry about your life. Sorry about your wife, and your son, and how shitty everything is. Sorry about whatever the fuck it was that she did to make all that worse. "You know. Everything."

But, she has to get out. Has to. She doesn't wait for a response. By the time she's said that last word, she's got the door open and is heading out. And besides, she wouldn't hear what anyone has to say at this point. She's gone in more than one sense.