[First things first, Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 3, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace
Grace has set up at a desk in the library, with her (very shiny new impressive) laptop and several books scattered around the table.
If one were to look at the titles of these tomes (they're all a bit yellowing, all leather bound and gold leafed) they'd notice a pattern. 'Habits of the Umbrood', and 'Umbrood Encyclopedia T - U' etc.
It's just, when Kalen and Alyssa were having their conversation about the Thing, Grace was utterly lost. Grace doesn't like being lost. And if she's going to find out everything there is to find about Thakinyan's hunting routines, she's got to know what to look for.
See, this is her comfort. Wrapping knowledge around herself like a warm blanket, even if it's knowledge of this particular horror. Hell, especially this. It's like Sun Tzu says, 'know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a thousand battles without disaster'.
And, it gives her focus -- a goal. Something to strive for other than thinking about the nightmares and blood and death and dying. Though she doesn't smile much anymore, this is about as close to happy as she gets.
Today, she's wearing jeans and sneakers and a ratty black sweater that looks a bit like it has been sitting in a drawer for a year with its wrinkles (it has). The disease left its marks, but the physical ones are fading. Kalen keeps getting her out, and keeping her fed, though she still looks a bit thinner than normal, a bit paler. At least she's not the grey ghost of a girl anymore. Having blood is nice.
The snow falls, the roads have gone to shit, and it's probably going to keep her here all night, but it's no matter. There is still the internet. She can still work.
Serafine
Perception + awareness. Eventually.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1
Serafine
The library is a long, long way from the driveway, all the way down in the bowels of the chantry. Down a half-hidden stairwell, behind a heavy door protected by seals that may be magickal but are also: immediate and factual, the specialized security meant to protect all that knowledge within which Grace wishes to wrap herself.
Upstairs, outside, in the dark November night: snowfalls. The library is hushed, well insulated from the outside world. Grace doesn't hear the balding tires of the old white conversion van on the snow-slick gravel driveway. Doesn't know that Dan and Sera pulled up fifteen minutes ago, maybe thirty, cut the engine and sat there in the dark. The engine ticking, the snow melting at first on the windshield, and then - as the chill crept into the interior and the dissipated - starting to accumulate. Saying nothing.
He drove her out here in the middle of a snowstorm, because she wanted to come. Now she sits in the front seat and cannot quite bring herself to move. Dan is patient with her, watches her profile in the darkness while Sera watches the snow fall outside the windows of the van, her gaze flickering over the dark, glistening panes of the chantry's windows. The hushed scrawl of the cold dark world.
He lets her be. Says nothing until the interior and exterior temperature has nearly equalized, and the cold makes her shiver, shudder, really, the way she does sometimes - and then just a quiet -
"You don't - " have to he is going to say.
"I know." Sera inserts, gentle and assured. Glancing at him for the first time, favoring the consor who is always her friend, often her caretaker, regularly her trip-sitting, her songwriting partner, often her Collins and sometimes her lover with a terribly sad but rather bracing smile that feels churned up from somewhere he can hardly name.
They sit there then for at least another fifteen minutes, while snow fills the world.
--
She is pleased to find the kitchen empty. The kitchen and the patio, and the snow melting into the hotsprings. The lights off, the house dark. Dan follows her in. They leave footprints in the driveway and trail melting snow over the tiled kitchen floor. Sera never thinks to stamp off her boots. The warmth is as welcome as the quiet. Dan leans in thresholds, against frames, watching Sera while she drifts thoughtlessly through the familiar spaces, not bothing to turn on any lights that weren't already on before. Fingers drifting lightly over the knicknacks, the signs of other people's presence or their passing.
It is Grace's resonance that draws her downstairs. Nothing else and almost no one else would. Sera does not care about those books right now, does not give a fuck about them. That slip-sliding sensation, faint and familiar and unsteady beneath her skin. Makes her catch her breath and feel further, reach further than she might otherwise do.
So: sound interrupts Grace's studies. Someone descending the steps. The chirrup as the security system recognizes a familiar face, and opens a familiar door.
Grace
[Perception + Awareness too]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Grace is working feverishly on something on the laptop that looks like the earth seen from space. It rotates and there are what looks like digital pushpins dotted on the surface, lines and such. Vienna, Atlanta, Denver... perhaps other places. And then, when she switches modes, there's a text file instead -- almost un-human-readable. Inscrutable. Data. It's not exactly magic, but a mundane analogue of what she does? Yes, very close to that.
She may be deep in that zen of concentration, but she's not blind -- not anymore. No, her eyes are open. So she feels it when the warp of the world bends toward Sera in that peculiar way -- the way that grabs her by the gut and says look.
Grace would know that feeling anywhere, and she looks up, turns toward the door. Even before Sera opens it, she knows who's there, and... Oh my God, Sera. Sera's here.
It's a strange feeling, the one running through her now. Sera knows. And you want to be around people who know. There's a bond in the shared suffering that won't be easy to break. But there's also cracks and fractures. She's become abrasive to people, she can see it in how they react to her (one reaction in particular was fairly extreme, fairly painful to experience) and so she doesn't want to hurt or be hurt.
"Sera?" she asks. The world spins in the glow behind her head, heedless.
Serafine
So Grace is looking up when the security door opens; Grace's eyes and mind are opened, have been since longer than last Wednesday. Wednesday. If Sera thought about it she might marvel again though somehow that Sunday night in a bookstore seems very, very far away. Even for someone to whom the ordinary and all-too-linear course of time is more temporary accident than anything else.
"Hey," Sera's voice is quiet, a little bit hoarse. She looks okay. Whole, right? Skinny, yes - no longer so starkly skeletal, so hollow-eyed, so five-minutes-from-death. Her hair is washed and dyed and tumbles in thoughtless curls over her left shoulder. The dark buzz of her sidecut is recently shorn, too: from temple to the nape of her neck. "Grace."
Her expressive mouth hooks aslant, this lopsided and terribly sad smile just for the apprentice, which shines in her eyes.
Or maybe those are unshed tears.
There's too much to take in at once, though. To make judgments, to process. Sera's hands are sliding out from the front pockets of her skinny black jeans and something about her body language - the set of her shoulders or the twist of her torso or the way her arms are opening or the way she is crossing the library to Grace and her laptop and the spinning world behind her head - tells Grace immediately and implicitly that if she does not duck out of the way the Cultist is going to hug her.
Grace
Grace has let Sera get away with a lot. More than most. Tousled hair, even. And it's not that Grace is phobic of this kind of thing, it's just discomfiting. There's a numbness in her skin, a prickliness. She doesn't want to hurt, or be hurt.
But she understands hugging in an intellectual sense. Other people find it to be nice, the thing to do when comforting a friend. So. There is no ducking. Not this time. Not to Sera.
It might be a bit obvious that this girl does not hug people. It might be one of the most awkward hugs Sera's ever had. But Grace opens her arms stiffly, gives it a try anyway, and when they come together, pats Sera on the back, almost like a robot.
"Hey, how are you doing?"
Serafine
If there is something awkward, something terribly, remarkably awkward about the hug, Serafíne hardly seems to notice. They are close to the same height, Grace and Sera, at least when Sera is not wearing the heels she always seems to favor. And tonight: Sera is not wearing the heels she always seems to favor. Just jeans and Doc Martin's and a t-shirt beneath a leather coat lined in shearling, still damp from melting snow. Her hair is bright and cold and smells faintly of cigarettes and her skin has that bright-shock of chill that seems sometimes sharper inside than it does outside. Carrying just a bit of the wind still with her.
Grace understands hugging in an intellectual sense and opens her arms stiffly and pats Sera robotically on the back and Sera just
holds her,
arms opening and then wrapping closely around the apprentice, one of her long-fingered, callused hands finding its way into Grace's hair.
Brow to brow, cheek to cheek.
This sudden, remarkable, almost-terrible sort of intimacy.
It hardly matters that Grace's game go at this particular social convention is stiff-armed and mechanical, that she doesn't know quiet where to put her hands, or what to do with her feet, or any of it.
It lasts a very long time.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, Grace becomes perhaps uncomfortably aware that Sera is shaking.
Shaking.
--
If Grace asks that question mid-embrace, Sera does not respond except with her body; with her arms, with her hand, a little squeeze on the back of Grace's head. Some wordless and rather meaningless assurance that does not mean so much I'm fine as it does, I'm here and so are you. Which is perhaps the best they can hope for at the moment.
There's a rhythm to this; a movement. That shuddering deep in Sera's frame is beginning to subside as the creature lifts her cheek against Grace's and turns her head closer, long enough to press her dry lips against Grace's temple for a heartbeat, for two, before finally letting her go.
"I'm okay." Sera returns, when at last she is unwinding her arms from around Grace's frame. It is a lie and they both know it; but it is the sort of lie one tells. " - not really, but better I guess." A glance over her shoulder then, at Dan, her shadow tonight who has appeared at the base of the stairs down to the library, as if for confirmation. "You?"
Grace
Sera is shaking, and Grace is numb, stiff, wide-eyed over the Ecstatic's shoulder, unsure of what to do. There are no rules of social engagement she can fall back on for this. What do normal people do?
She can feel the tears coming, the aching from inside threatening to burst out. It's a mourning for Sera, for herself too. Maybe this is what normal people do?
Then, there is a kiss to her forehead, and Grace is about at her maximum limit of physical contact. Sera doesn't just hug, she embraces. But this is Sera, and Sera needs to. When she's out of Grace's arms, Sera will see the tears that won't flow just yet in red-rimmed eyes.
It's a relief when its over. And yet, there is something about that, yes? You touch someone, and you know for certain that they're there.
"Me too," she responds. "Not really, but better."
"Maybe... maybe it'll keep getting better, right?" she says, with hope. There has to be some hope. "It's got to."
Serafine
Sera pulls away; catches the tears in Grace's red-rimmed eyes, the tattered edge of hope in her voice. It'll keep getting better, right?
'Course it will, Sera should say. Will say, maybe, and soon. Except right now, down here, half-underground 'course it will feels false and terrible and wrong on her tongue. Feels like the cliché that it is and Jesus Christ, right now Sera cannot stand them; does not want to dream them or inhabit them or hear them or utter them. Does not want to watch another human being - another awakened, magickal being - look at her and pity her maybe and utter a mouthful of rote, thoughtless words.
So instead she twists her mouth, holds out her hand, palm-up, for Grace's.
"C'mon," Sera says. "Let's go upstairs. I don't like it down here. It's too underground for me right now. We'll talk.
"Or whatever. Not-talk.
"I'm good with that, too."
Grace
Grace takes Sera's hand, follows her. But she uses the doorway as an excuse to drop it, falling in behind the others when they have to go up the stairs.
Sera doesn't answer the question. And Grace thinks she knows why. In her recent history there was a pancake breakfast, and an empty, grinning man telling her things like 'it'll get better, if you let it' and 'that which does not kill you makes you stronger' like a goddamn human motivational poster. Hang in there, baby. Perhaps in all that pain, in all that trauma, Garrett managed to lose his soul, his very ability to be anything more than a platitude. There's sympathy for him, and no small amount of horror for her, that someday she'll end up like that. Like the universe's happy-go-lucky reprogrammed Stepford Wife -- abused and used, but always pleasant, shiny, and congenial.
"I guess it doesn't, really. Have to get better," she says, not exactly morose, but just being truthful as she follows up the stairs. It could get worse. She's seen people who have been through worse, and Sera's one of them. Shoshannah is still infested with... something. The books she's been reading make no sense to her analytical, scientific mind, unless she views the Umbrood like a rogue mental Trojan Horse virus. That she understands on multiple levels. Thakinyan could do worse. "But still, we have to keep going."
Have to. Perhaps not exactly want to, not yet. There's that feeling like lying in a clinic, horribly aware and conscious, knowing that you're dying and there will be another hallucination in a few hours, and you wish every single time that if it's going to kill you, it just get on with it. Hydra beat the lesson into them that it will always get worse -- so much that when they were cured, that felt like the biggest lie. Lena didn't even try to believe it.
Grace knows that feeling so very well. Sera probably knows it better. But here's the thing, right? None of them ever stopped. None of them were allowed to, or allowed themselves to.
"Because, Fuck the Hydra, right? It doesn't get to win."
Serafine
Grace fills the silence while they're climbing the stairs. Sera gives her a glance over her spare shoulder, the edge of her cheekbone, the sharp cut of her compelling profile swimming against the shadows beyond. Lovely and markedly subdued, at least for a Sera, she stops mid-step and watches Grace with a quiet and deeply sad awareness that paints itself across her mouth and finds some gleaming, reflective darkness in her eyes.
In the end a twitch of that mouth that comes close to the shape of one of her smiles, with none of its usual edge and none of its magnetism that still feels somehow - full.
At the top of the stairs, Sera's waiting. Perhaps to Grace's relief, she is not holding out her hand this time, just standing aside so that she can look at Grace as she replies. The chantry is dark. Sera did not bother to turn on any lights, and therefore, neither did Dan. Still, there's enough light from outside - the moon on snow, or some fucking thing - reflected back into the interior, enough light from down below, in the slowly-closing door to the library, enough low, ambient light by design and of necessity in a shared house that the shadows are soft and multipartite instead of deep and menacing.
"It's hard to talk about, right?" A brief, slicing edge to her in the moonlight as she continues, "Without bullshit, anyway." Her voice is low, a little bit raw. This is Sera's first visit to the chantry since she was freed from the hospital room / prison cell where she was meant to die, slowly and terribly. "And there's so much bullshit in the world, and I fucking hate bullshit but it usually doesn't phase me, because there's only so much most people can contain.
"So we make up things, that sound neat and clean and linear, about love and hate beginnings and endings, boundaries and skin. Winning and losing. Good and evil. Pleasure and pain, and what it means to suffer, and how you have to heal and when, and why.
"I like it where things go fuzzy and the world starts to bend, you know?" The living room is not empty, but somehow the dampened shadows make it feel like there's an echo. Sera's voice sounds louder to her ears than it really is. Perhaps because this is more than she has said to anyone in a very long time. "But right now I just don't have room for it, all that noise, anywhere inside me."
For much of that speech, Sera's attention drifts to an invisible point somewhere far across the room. Near the end, though, it slice back to Grace. Settles there, with a kind of breathing delicacy. Sera is taken by a kind of urge in which she does not indulge: to kiss Grace, again, on the cheek and then the temple, deliberately rather than thoughtlessly, and it is the deliberation of it that forestalls the urge.
In the end a twitch of that mouth that comes close to the shape of one of her smiles, with none of its usual edge and none of its magnetism that still feels somehow - full.
At the top of the stairs, Sera's waiting. Perhaps to Grace's relief, she is not holding out her hand this time, just standing aside so that she can look at Grace as she replies. The chantry is dark. Sera did not bother to turn on any lights, and therefore, neither did Dan. Still, there's enough light from outside - the moon on snow, or some fucking thing - reflected back into the interior, enough light from down below, in the slowly-closing door to the library, enough low, ambient light by design and of necessity in a shared house that the shadows are soft and multipartite instead of deep and menacing.
"It's hard to talk about, right?" A brief, slicing edge to her in the moonlight as she continues, "Without bullshit, anyway." Her voice is low, a little bit raw. This is Sera's first visit to the chantry since she was freed from the hospital room / prison cell where she was meant to die, slowly and terribly. "And there's so much bullshit in the world, and I fucking hate bullshit but it usually doesn't phase me, because there's only so much most people can contain.
"So we make up things, that sound neat and clean and linear, about love and hate beginnings and endings, boundaries and skin. Winning and losing. Good and evil. Pleasure and pain, and what it means to suffer, and how you have to heal and when, and why.
"I like it where things go fuzzy and the world starts to bend, you know?" The living room is not empty, but somehow the dampened shadows make it feel like there's an echo. Sera's voice sounds louder to her ears than it really is. Perhaps because this is more than she has said to anyone in a very long time. "But right now I just don't have room for it, all that noise, anywhere inside me."
For much of that speech, Sera's attention drifts to an invisible point somewhere far across the room. Near the end, though, it slice back to Grace. Settles there, with a kind of breathing delicacy. Sera is taken by a kind of urge in which she does not indulge: to kiss Grace, again, on the cheek and then the temple, deliberately rather than thoughtlessly, and it is the deliberation of it that forestalls the urge.
"But yes. It will get better. Because you're human, and because you're magic.
"And because you've decided to let yourself hurt, and let yourself heal - In your own way. On your own terms. As part of your own argument with and interrogation of the fucking universe."
Grace
Sera says what she has to say is bullshit. No, she doesn't just say it, she slices through it. Like someone took her and ground her down to fine edge with which to cut. And it hurts. It lays her open, vulnerable. She's only partly aware that Dan is even there, Sera and her sharpness just fills everything.
In soft moonlight, it's hard to see how Grace's eyes shine with a gloss of tears by the time she reaches the top of the stairs. Which is good, really. She doesn't like crying, holds it in until she's alone.
"You're right. I mean... I guess I don't know what to say. It's just words can hurt so easily, and I don't want to hurt you. But I really really suck at doing without. I'm sorry."
Words, text, data, these are her element. And she's given up so much to that element -- touch, social graces, family. She wants to offer Sera a metaphor or a poem or a letter (and maybe she will eventually) even though Sera wants to kiss and touch and hold. It's just so much easier that way -- at a distance, and through a screen -- to be herself and so plainly gutted. Perhaps it would be best to bridge the gap between them, to be quiet and just hold Sera until she doesn't need to be held anymore. But that's not how Grace works.
"If you want to know the no bullshit version of how I'm doing, I'm always dying in my dreams now. Sometimes we all are, together, even though that wasn't the case. Maybe it's because I wanted so much for us to be together, and know where you were, I don't know. I keep asking myself why I wasn't taken, why Callum came to my place and didn't carry me off. But he took you and he took Lena. Why was I spared that? Why did I get to be surrounded by friends and people who cared about me, and you two..." she takes a breath. Another. "I worry about you and Lena and Sid all the time, because I want to know that you're all okay, and I know damn well that you're not.
"I'm getting out again, though. I'm trying to be around people again and not screw everything up. I'm going back to class, even though it seems so surreal and wrong. I'm trying to hold on to myself. I say they don't get to win, because... I want to be in control of who I end up becoming. They tried to take that control away from me, make me into something I don't like against my will. And I don't want to let that happen."
She says all that, but her words don't match how they're spoken. It's not the voice of someone who's confident and fully assured that the things she wants will end up coming true. Sera says Grace is human, and she has trouble believing that sometimes. Sera says Grace is magic, and that's not the right word, really. She knows now who she is in a crisis. She's that automaton that goes utterly rational. She's the kind to save or kill or let someone die based on the cold statistical analysis of a situation. How human is that? How magical?
She reaches up and rubs her eyes, makes it look like she's not wiping tears away, really. "Sera. There's something I've been meaning to say to you. That guy, when we were escaping. I shouldn't have tried to pull you off of him. I should have helped.
"But you were... so amazing," she says, and her voice cracks, and the tears come whether she wants them or not. "You were dying, and he had tried to kill you and you reached out to save him anyway. I..." don't know what to say. "You are magic."
Serafine
Grace's voice cracks, and tears come, and Sera reaches for her again.
"Oh, Grace," There is no thought in this, no deliberation, just a quiet, singing urge in her for the warmth of human contact. The leather jacket Sera wears creaks with the movement, opens up, too large for Sera's skinny frame, large enough to enclose the both of them. This time Sera's embrace is light, though - which means, easily broken. Grace can bury her face in Sera's shoulder or neck and cry and cry until the tears she has been stemming stop naturally, natively, or accept the gesture no more than briefly, and break away, and compose herself, or discompose herself, however she will.
If Grace accepts the contact, leans in to it, Sera dips her chin to murmur into Grace's ear, " - when I said bullshit, I didn't mean you. I didn't mean anyone, really. But you, not you. Never you.
"And that night, you were sick and scared and came for us anyway. And me, I'm not a saint, Grace. Okay? I get in trouble all the time. The first night I met Pan I asked him to make out in one of his confessionals, just to piss him off or see what he'd do. It's okay. It's all okay. It's not okay and that's okay, too."
"Oh, Grace," There is no thought in this, no deliberation, just a quiet, singing urge in her for the warmth of human contact. The leather jacket Sera wears creaks with the movement, opens up, too large for Sera's skinny frame, large enough to enclose the both of them. This time Sera's embrace is light, though - which means, easily broken. Grace can bury her face in Sera's shoulder or neck and cry and cry until the tears she has been stemming stop naturally, natively, or accept the gesture no more than briefly, and break away, and compose herself, or discompose herself, however she will.
If Grace accepts the contact, leans in to it, Sera dips her chin to murmur into Grace's ear, " - when I said bullshit, I didn't mean you. I didn't mean anyone, really. But you, not you. Never you.
"And that night, you were sick and scared and came for us anyway. And me, I'm not a saint, Grace. Okay? I get in trouble all the time. The first night I met Pan I asked him to make out in one of his confessionals, just to piss him off or see what he'd do. It's okay. It's all okay. It's not okay and that's okay, too."
Grace
Grace is inside someone else's leather jacket, smelling their smells, sharing their heat, and it's all so strange and alien, like a magnification of the odd feeling one gets when sitting in a chair that's been warmed by someone else's posterior. This is Sera trying to comfort her, she knows that, and this is doable, right? But she's crying, and she'll get tears or snot or something on Sera's shirt, and there's a split moment where Grace wonders if this really is the right thing to do. It's strange, the semi-rational things that float through her head, trying to navigate this social path that she has no rules for.
Until Sera says that she tried to make out with Pan in a confessional booth. Suddenly, the shaking of Grace's barely-controlled crying gets worse and worse. Her arms she keeps pinned to her side, but she does lean in and suddenly there are no more thoughts about what is right or wrong to do. There's a strange strangled sound, and at first it sounds like it could be a sob, but no... Grace is laughing.
Because she can imagine this. Sera sitting in that confessional with Pan, the interrogation lamp of God, and asking him to make out with her. It's the funniest fucking thing ever. It blows all her thought away in insane cackling glee that she just hasn't felt since the Hydra's sting.
"Sera. You did what?" she manages to say in between the tear-stained laughs into Sera's shoulder. And oh my word, Sera is magic, yes. "You are awesome. I love you."
Serafine
"Believe it or not," there is a whiskey rasp to Sera's voice, which lodges somewhere deep in her throat. It does not seem tear-stained, and Sera has no analogues for the swirl of impressions mixed with bits of social code and secondary considerations all tangled in Grace's mind. She just does things, feels things, embodies things, is. " - he said no."
This sad bemusement in her voice. That late spring evening, the scent of incense and beeswax in the air, the abuelitas kindling candles for the souls of the dead, and against the evening gloom, seems so very long ago, and so very far away. But in that moment, Sera can breathe in and inhale the mixture of bitter and sweet, the deep, quiet gloom. The broad shadows and soaring apices she associates with such spaces.
"I thought he was going to be an asshole. He turned out to be a badass."
Grace goes from thinking to not-thinking, just laughing and crying all at once, and if Sera understood the transition that just occured, oh she might pleased at Grace's ability, in that moment, to simply be. But she is not reading minds tonight, just body language, the warmth and inflection of breath drawn in and exhaled in a laughing, teary rush, warm against her shoulder.
Grace lets go, laughing rather than crying.
Either is just fine with Sera.
"Grace, if nightmares are bothering you. I can ease them for a night or two." Still quiet; but never tentative, for all that Sera has performed very little magic in the aftermath of her imprisonment. It is too painful. It requires too much; she does not program data, she opens herself up to the universe, lets everything, everything, in. "So you can get some sleep. I did that for Leah, sometimes."
This sad bemusement in her voice. That late spring evening, the scent of incense and beeswax in the air, the abuelitas kindling candles for the souls of the dead, and against the evening gloom, seems so very long ago, and so very far away. But in that moment, Sera can breathe in and inhale the mixture of bitter and sweet, the deep, quiet gloom. The broad shadows and soaring apices she associates with such spaces.
"I thought he was going to be an asshole. He turned out to be a badass."
Grace goes from thinking to not-thinking, just laughing and crying all at once, and if Sera understood the transition that just occured, oh she might pleased at Grace's ability, in that moment, to simply be. But she is not reading minds tonight, just body language, the warmth and inflection of breath drawn in and exhaled in a laughing, teary rush, warm against her shoulder.
Grace lets go, laughing rather than crying.
Either is just fine with Sera.
"Grace, if nightmares are bothering you. I can ease them for a night or two." Still quiet; but never tentative, for all that Sera has performed very little magic in the aftermath of her imprisonment. It is too painful. It requires too much; she does not program data, she opens herself up to the universe, lets everything, everything, in. "So you can get some sleep. I did that for Leah, sometimes."
Grace
Sera says that Pan said no, and it doesn't help. Grace laughs harder. Because. Tears are still soaking into Sera's shoulder, and perhaps she can feel the wetness. But Grace can't stop, can't make herself stop, until the complicated mix of everything comes together. He wasn't an asshole, he turned out to be a badass, and then he left. Slowly, the crying/laughing comes under a kind of control. There is a sense that perhaps she is pushing Sera with her own ordeal, laying burdens on the burdened. So she falls away, out of that soft embrace, out of Sera's jacket. Her face is lined with silver in the reflected snowlight, a mix of amused mourning, until she grabs her sleeve and wipes it away. There's no pretending anymore that she's not leaking fluids.
"It's not right, though. I should be taking care of you," she says, meaning that she knows Sera had worse. It's just not in her to take from the needy. There must be a balance. A leveling. "I know how it can drain you sometimes," how you can risk the universe's ire, too. "I can't take your nightmares away, or anything. But if you want to talk... Or anything. Cry with me or something, I don't care."
Serafine
If Sera understood that somewhere in her head, Grace was balancing and weighing and measuring their suffering, adjudicating Sera's more terrible than her own, she might object. No, she would object. Pain is pain and sorrow is sorrow and joy is joy, individual and fathomless and entire.
Oh, but she does not know the complicated calculus by which Grace measures such things and her eyes are warm and quick on Grace's face, as the other woman reaches up to wipe away the tears tracking down her cheeks.
"No," a hook to her half-smile, as Grace declares that she should be taking care of Sera. The gentlest sort of correction, that is no correction at all. Just a quiet current of humor. "That's what Dan's for. And I'd actually like to, if you'd let me.
"Giving you the chance to rest more easily," a lilting glance, away then. Over her shoulder and almost unerringly at Dan, meeting his eyes in the gloom. He returns her glance with an utter directness that feels physical and tender, perhaps even longing, to see Sera again, somehow whole. " - might actually help me sleep better, too."
Sera looks back at Grace then; finds Grace's gleaming eyes with that same directness. Admits, quiet -
"I would like to talk, though. If you'd like to listen."
- and is surprised by the truth her words. The way they glide beneath her skin.
Oh, but she does not know the complicated calculus by which Grace measures such things and her eyes are warm and quick on Grace's face, as the other woman reaches up to wipe away the tears tracking down her cheeks.
"No," a hook to her half-smile, as Grace declares that she should be taking care of Sera. The gentlest sort of correction, that is no correction at all. Just a quiet current of humor. "That's what Dan's for. And I'd actually like to, if you'd let me.
"Giving you the chance to rest more easily," a lilting glance, away then. Over her shoulder and almost unerringly at Dan, meeting his eyes in the gloom. He returns her glance with an utter directness that feels physical and tender, perhaps even longing, to see Sera again, somehow whole. " - might actually help me sleep better, too."
Sera looks back at Grace then; finds Grace's gleaming eyes with that same directness. Admits, quiet -
"I would like to talk, though. If you'd like to listen."
- and is surprised by the truth her words. The way they glide beneath her skin.
Grace
So, Sera wants to help. And she says it would be mutually beneficial, so... Grace gives a nod, "Okay, then. You know how to get me to say yes, don't you." The last time someone requested access into her mind, it didn't go so well. But just talking to Garrett was mutually destructive. A mental interface might have blown up both of their heads or something. Boom.
"What would it be like?" She has to ask, because she doesn't know. Would she just not dream at all, or would Sera have to pluck out the nightmare's contents for her, or send her different ones?
Sera says she would like to talk. About that. And well, Grace has done her talking, done her bit of unloading. "I would love to listen. You can talk. I can do that for you, oh yes." And there is the barest of hopeful smiles. Because just saying it, saying all those things that she hated, to someone who knew... Well, it didn't take everything away exactly, but it hurts more to keep inside.
Serafine
"I'd sing." That's Sera's answer to Grace's question. In the interim, Sera has found her way back to the couch and settled once again into one of its deep corners. She bends down to unlace and then toe off her boots, but her dark, gleaming eyes barely leave Grace's profile as she unthreads the laces and nudges off the beaten up black leather boots.
There's a wry warmth to Sera's half-smile. "You'd find it soothing, calming, in a way that should keep the fear and the stress, the terror of those memories at bay and sleep more peaceful. I can't make them go away, I'm not going to try to change them. Just let your mind rest, peacefully.
"So you can rest, peacefully. Works like a lullaby, except magic. It's one of those things that fits into the world most people understand, and can explain away. It's easier to Work like that; not so much resistance to our magic."
By then, Sera has shed her boots and curled her legs beneath her body. Gestures for Grace to join her, wherever she will.
"I'm not sure how much I've told you about myself. Did I ever tell you where I went to school?"
There's a wry warmth to Sera's half-smile. "You'd find it soothing, calming, in a way that should keep the fear and the stress, the terror of those memories at bay and sleep more peaceful. I can't make them go away, I'm not going to try to change them. Just let your mind rest, peacefully.
"So you can rest, peacefully. Works like a lullaby, except magic. It's one of those things that fits into the world most people understand, and can explain away. It's easier to Work like that; not so much resistance to our magic."
By then, Sera has shed her boots and curled her legs beneath her body. Gestures for Grace to join her, wherever she will.
"I'm not sure how much I've told you about myself. Did I ever tell you where I went to school?"
Grace
"I've never heard you sing before. My fault, for never getting out to hear it," Grace says, while she wanders over to the couch, and it's sad, you know? That she never went to see Sera perform before now, at the couch-in-the-Chantry venue.
"And no, you've never said much about yourself." It's not like Grace can fault her for that. There's no one in Denver who knows even the slightest bit about who she was before she got there. She just... hasn't felt the need to discuss that much.
She flicks off her tennis shoes to match Sera, after taking a seat on the opposite end of the couch. No, she's not going to just plant herself in the midst of Sera, even though she can understand that the other woman would probably not disapprove. It's more, there are rules she follows, and number one is to treat others as she would like to be treated. Sometimes, that fails miserably, when people would much rather be treated the way they want to be treated, but still.
In the shadow of the couch, that far away, it's not as easy to see that Grace is still in the process of mourning. No, her stupid body won't stop with the tears, and please just stop already, she wants to say. If only there was a magic 'stop crying' routine. That would be nice. She wants to move on, but circumstances won't let that happen. And the image of Pan saying 'no' flits through her brain still, like a disgruntled stoplight on the road to sin.
Serafine
Grace is still crying; Sera hardly acknowledges it now. Hardly seems to notice, certain does not comment on the stupid tears that are still just streaming down her face, thanks to her stupid body and its stupid expression of its visceral emotions. She just lets Grace cry, as if that were the most natural thing in the world to do.
Maybe it is the most natural thing in the world to do. There must be some reason that Grace cannot stop herself, cannot forestall those tears.
"I went to this Catholic school," Sera is saying. "All girls, way out in the middle of fucking nowhere in Ireland. The Kylemore Castle school, run by Benedictine nuns. I mean, it was out there. This neo-Gothic Victorian castle-house on a lake, in the shadow of this windswept, rocky hill, out past Galway in the Connemara. So goddamned far from anything or anyone.
"Got kicked out when I was thirteen. I'm not sure if stealing the communion wine or making out with Katie O'Connor in the sacristy was the final infraction that tipped the scales away from my folks' continued support of the abbey or what, but they were fucking done with me.
"So were my parents. I thought, at least I was going home, right? But I guess getting a little drunk or high or trying to figure out if the girl you like really does have freckles everywhere is - "
A brief pause; Sera offers a wry grimace that does not feel as far away as her voice.
"They sent me to this shitty psych hospital outside of Dublin. Rehab, right? I snuck out of there first chance I got, hitched a ride to Dublin city. The manager of this pub let me call my folks, collect, international. God knows what time it was in the states - my brother's nanny answered - but they told me to go to the Merrion. Someone'd come for me.
"I thought, to get me on a plane, home, right? Turns out, it was the same guy who'd come for me at school. Sitting in the Abbess' office while Father Leary tried not to look like he was looking up my skirt, fucker.
"Took me back.
"Now I was a flight risk. Locked ward and all that shit. I was in and out of so many of those shitty places, reform schools, the odd military fucking academy.
"So being locked up like that," Sera breathes out, sharply. Looks away from Grace, off into the middle distance. The snow falling, silent through the darkly reflective glass.
A little shrug.
" - that was a special kind of hell."
Maybe it is the most natural thing in the world to do. There must be some reason that Grace cannot stop herself, cannot forestall those tears.
"I went to this Catholic school," Sera is saying. "All girls, way out in the middle of fucking nowhere in Ireland. The Kylemore Castle school, run by Benedictine nuns. I mean, it was out there. This neo-Gothic Victorian castle-house on a lake, in the shadow of this windswept, rocky hill, out past Galway in the Connemara. So goddamned far from anything or anyone.
"Got kicked out when I was thirteen. I'm not sure if stealing the communion wine or making out with Katie O'Connor in the sacristy was the final infraction that tipped the scales away from my folks' continued support of the abbey or what, but they were fucking done with me.
"So were my parents. I thought, at least I was going home, right? But I guess getting a little drunk or high or trying to figure out if the girl you like really does have freckles everywhere is - "
A brief pause; Sera offers a wry grimace that does not feel as far away as her voice.
"They sent me to this shitty psych hospital outside of Dublin. Rehab, right? I snuck out of there first chance I got, hitched a ride to Dublin city. The manager of this pub let me call my folks, collect, international. God knows what time it was in the states - my brother's nanny answered - but they told me to go to the Merrion. Someone'd come for me.
"I thought, to get me on a plane, home, right? Turns out, it was the same guy who'd come for me at school. Sitting in the Abbess' office while Father Leary tried not to look like he was looking up my skirt, fucker.
"Took me back.
"Now I was a flight risk. Locked ward and all that shit. I was in and out of so many of those shitty places, reform schools, the odd military fucking academy.
"So being locked up like that," Sera breathes out, sharply. Looks away from Grace, off into the middle distance. The snow falling, silent through the darkly reflective glass.
A little shrug.
" - that was a special kind of hell."
Grace
Grace knows about the pain of not being the child your parents want. How it changes you. Sera took a different road from her, a different way to deal with it, but that doesn't mean Grace can't understand. She curls her legs up onto the couch, making a nest out of her body. It's not openness like Sera. It's Grace, ungraceful, being herself and not her name. Your parents give you your name.
This is Sera's story, so she listens, unmoving, until the other woman stops for a time. And then, Grace, no expert at being a comforting presence, fearful she'll get it wrong or something, just tries what she knows she would like. To be told that her feelings are indeed serious, are indeed okay to have. "All those institutions. I could never see you in one," she shakes her head. "I would ask how they thought it would help, but yeah. I can't imagine." Her voice is still wavering there, but stronger, a bit angrier. "So you were dealing with that, and the virus on top of it. The virus alone was bad enough."
From her description, Sera comes from a rich family, a powerful family, to have had the money to torture her so completely. It's a reminder that things could have been worse. Her mom could have had the ability to do more than a few psychiatrist visits.
"Now I know why you didn't want to stay at the clinic," she says.
And Hydra. How they took her, locked her up. Wonder if Sera's parents know they have something in common with fucking bioterrorists? "They tried to control you. They were afraid of you. So they tried to lock you in a cage, to put you in your place. Bastards." And it's not entirely clear who she means by 'they'. Maybe all of them. Everywhere. All those who would put anyone in their place.
Serafine
Sera's eyes are dark but reflective in the dim living room. They linger, half-focused on some darkened point in the middle distance, then slip back to Grace where the apprentice is curled on the opposite side of the couch. So far apart. So distinct.
Grace remarks that she understands, now, why Sera had to leave Luke Morgan's clinic, the minute she was both conscious enough to do so and capable of at least walking out to the old Jeep parked in the patient parking lot. Sera gives Grace this rather sad, rather wry little half-smile, which contains within it a remarkable degree of self-awareness for someone like Sera.
There is also something just a bit removed about Sera, as she tells that story, as if she stood a degree or three away from the events she describes. Maybe she does; perhaps she has made her peace with that history. Perhaps it is something else, entirely.
Grace goes on, condemning them, whoever they are, passionately and thoroughly. And Sera is still half-smiling, watching Grace with that peculiar perspicacity that may well be the birthright of a seer. Or perhaps is just part of Sera's particular brand of grace.
There are several feet of empty space between them on the couch. Sera would prefer less, but no matter. Her voice carries. And, like the supple, framing curve of her mouth, her voice has a deep, wry twist to it, beneath a current of complex emotions she has not wholly defined or processed, and perhaps never will.
And listen: Sera does not echo Grace's words or tone, does not utter a confirmatory amen beneath the breath of that heartfelt condemnation Grace offers. She just absorbs it, this light in her eyes, all these microfractures in her soul. Which she is starting to believe are not flaws, but -
"You sound like you have some experience with that."
Grace remarks that she understands, now, why Sera had to leave Luke Morgan's clinic, the minute she was both conscious enough to do so and capable of at least walking out to the old Jeep parked in the patient parking lot. Sera gives Grace this rather sad, rather wry little half-smile, which contains within it a remarkable degree of self-awareness for someone like Sera.
There is also something just a bit removed about Sera, as she tells that story, as if she stood a degree or three away from the events she describes. Maybe she does; perhaps she has made her peace with that history. Perhaps it is something else, entirely.
Grace goes on, condemning them, whoever they are, passionately and thoroughly. And Sera is still half-smiling, watching Grace with that peculiar perspicacity that may well be the birthright of a seer. Or perhaps is just part of Sera's particular brand of grace.
There are several feet of empty space between them on the couch. Sera would prefer less, but no matter. Her voice carries. And, like the supple, framing curve of her mouth, her voice has a deep, wry twist to it, beneath a current of complex emotions she has not wholly defined or processed, and perhaps never will.
And listen: Sera does not echo Grace's words or tone, does not utter a confirmatory amen beneath the breath of that heartfelt condemnation Grace offers. She just absorbs it, this light in her eyes, all these microfractures in her soul. Which she is starting to believe are not flaws, but -
"You sound like you have some experience with that."
Grace
"Not as much as you," Grace says, spitting the words out quick. "I was never sent to private school after mental institution or anything. My parents didn't have the funds for that." She sighs, shifts on the couch a bit, as if to get comfortable (as if she isn't comfortable now). "But they did try to make me into something I wasn't."
"I had public school, and trips to the psychiatrist, trying to get to the bottom of my crazy. Only, to mother's great shock, I wasn't crazy. She just wanted me to fit this image, she wanted me to be her kind of perfect. And a socially-inept hacker girl wasn't. She wanted beauty and grace and at least the image of a perfect family life, and I was this scowling, thinking thing.
"It's like that everywhere. The 'Archs and the 'Crats that think they know what's best for you, and just end up hurting you. They try to put you in a mold that you won't fit and never would, so then they just start cutting pieces off of who you are so you'll fit."
Grace goes tangential, big picture, making her personal struggle into the world's struggle so easily. And when she shifts into the whole world, there is this fervor that takes over. She's not so uncomfortable anymore. "I don't think it's possible to be human in this age and not have some experience with that."
"I had a Father Leary too. Huh. Bet he was leery," she says, with a bit of a dark laugh. "One of mom's co-workers was this guy, and you know, all the women wanted him. But me, I was like, twelve and he was in his thirties, so no. It was at this work party, and mom had put me in a dress, because girls wear dresses, right? And he ran his hands up my legs, and told me if I didn't start shaving, then no boys would like me." She goes hard there, a little echo of Sera's own distant degrees of separation between herself and events described.
"So I went home that night, and I took dad's clippers, and I shaved. My head. So that Mr. Fuckface wouldn't want to put his hand up my skirt anymore. And I'll leave you to guess how livid that made mom. 'Cause I had seduced a guy who she wanted, and I had gone and done that to my hair, so she couldn't pretend to be normal anymore.
"So, there I was, the bald middle-schooler in girly clothes, mad all the time, and wow did that ever help my social skills grow, huh?"
She sighs, looks at Sera's brightness in the moonlight, while Grace tries to cover herself in shadow. They both had some experience with 'that'. And they went in separate directions. But still, not too far apart.
"We're supposed to be talking about you, though... Just, you know. I've been there. In a way. Not the same way, no."
Serafine
"I get who the 'Crats are." This indelible softness in Serafíne's eyes; which is hard to mark and hard to measure when she is seated so far away; when it is dark; when it is snowing; when the world is turning around them both. A curve of inquiry to her mouth, which is quick-moving, and easy and generous, expressive as fucking hell. " - but I'm not sure who the 'Archs might be?"
That is interjected, somewhere right in there. As Grace is overcome with that fervor, that passion, just the smallest request for clarification.
Then Grace moves on; and Sera cants her blonde head against the spine of the couch, pulls her knees up until she can rest her chin on the bony prominence and just, listens. Without interjection or judgment, without assurance or reassurance. She just listens, makes this noise when Grace finishes that description of her middle-school-self with that rhetorical exclamation/inquiry. That noise expands into something slower and steady, a long, slow exhalation as Grace just - sighs.
Still, the steady intensity of Sera's unwavering gaze.
"I like things better that aren't just - " a pause, a quietly pursed mouth. " - one way." That slides into a delicately ironic curl, then settles into something other and indistinct. Sera curls a shoulder as Grace reminds her that they were talking about Sera and not Grace, but what else is there to say?
About that.
About then.
"I don't really wanna see people right now. Most people, you know? It's not even that I'm scared or anything, I just. I have energy right now for me. And maybe for people who get that."
Sera glances away, out toward the window. It is the first time she has removed her attention from Grace in quite some time.
"Hawksley comes over. I went to see Pan. I haven't done anything, since. No real magic. It's just - I have to feel safe, letting go. You know? I have to be open to everything. And right now - "
Here, a pause. Sera darts a glance back at Grace; finds her. Lifts her chin in lilting inquiry, and asks, quiet-like. "When's the last time you called your mom?"
That is interjected, somewhere right in there. As Grace is overcome with that fervor, that passion, just the smallest request for clarification.
Then Grace moves on; and Sera cants her blonde head against the spine of the couch, pulls her knees up until she can rest her chin on the bony prominence and just, listens. Without interjection or judgment, without assurance or reassurance. She just listens, makes this noise when Grace finishes that description of her middle-school-self with that rhetorical exclamation/inquiry. That noise expands into something slower and steady, a long, slow exhalation as Grace just - sighs.
Still, the steady intensity of Sera's unwavering gaze.
"I like things better that aren't just - " a pause, a quietly pursed mouth. " - one way." That slides into a delicately ironic curl, then settles into something other and indistinct. Sera curls a shoulder as Grace reminds her that they were talking about Sera and not Grace, but what else is there to say?
About that.
About then.
"I don't really wanna see people right now. Most people, you know? It's not even that I'm scared or anything, I just. I have energy right now for me. And maybe for people who get that."
Sera glances away, out toward the window. It is the first time she has removed her attention from Grace in quite some time.
"Hawksley comes over. I went to see Pan. I haven't done anything, since. No real magic. It's just - I have to feel safe, letting go. You know? I have to be open to everything. And right now - "
Here, a pause. Sera darts a glance back at Grace; finds her. Lifts her chin in lilting inquiry, and asks, quiet-like. "When's the last time you called your mom?"
Grace
"I don't mean just Technocrats. Bureaucrats, theocrats, plutocrats. Archs are patriarchs, oligarchs... rulers," she says, just spinning this list of words out, with the suffixes of governance and power. Something there is that doesn't love an -arch. The shift of ground beneath your feet, toppling walls and arches both. And yet, she erects walls of her own around herself. Walls which Sera managed to breach with touch and words.
"What do you mean, you like things that aren't just one way?" Grace asks, because if Sera's going to seek clarification, well...
And then, it's back to Sera. Grace's eyes still fill with tears, though she gives no outward indication of that. But while Sera explains how she's not Sera anymore, can't even do magic... Grace wipes at her face. She knows. All the pain fucking takes who you are away. It takes that sense of safety and throws it out the window. "You're afraid if you open up, you'll open up to that again?"
Sera turns to look at her, responds with a seeming non sequitur about her mom. But it's not, really. It's all about opening up to pain.
"I don't. Call her. I think it's probably been years," Grace says, loses eye contact. Oh, she's a terrible daughter, some might say. But then, "I don't want to hurt her. Anymore. But I'm not going to give her an easy way to hurt me either. Best for us both if I just stay away."
Serafine
"Or maybe I'm afraid that if I let myself dissolve into Lakashim, I won't want to come back to this body anymore. This place and time. This me."
A hook to her smile. Sera's first instinct was to tell Grace: I don't know. A certain Hermetic is training Sera out of such refusals of knowledge; out of such hedging. Reminding her to seek, rather than merely be. A certain Hermetic and a certain apprentice. Strange, where we find our lessons.
"Or maybe that's just too much right now. It's so easy for me to escape like that. Maybe it's a melange of all those things, wrapped up into that wordless place inside us, where feelings go."
"And," an elegant sort of shrug. Sera's voice is rich and quiet in the darkness. "I mean, I don't think anyone's just a 'crat or an 'arch. Everybody's naked underneath their clothes. We all love people and hurt them, we get hurt. Can't have one without the other. We fuck up and we fuck shit up and we find ourselves in places we never thought we'd be, standing in room we know that suddenly feels strange and dislocated, not quite sure how we got there.
"Your mom, she wanted you to be a certain way, maybe because she thought that was the only way to happiness, or redemption, or whatever. I mean, I don't know her from anyone, and there are fucking sociopaths out there, you know? But most people aren't. Most of us fuck things up for other reasons. So I figure, underneath all of that shit, and some of the reason for all that shit, is that she was scared for you.
"She didn't let you Be because she didn't know how to let you Be, or she thought that there was something wrong she needed to fix. So she fucked up and kept fucking up with you, and had no idea how to come back from it, and probably had no idea that she needed to walk it back, because she was all stuck inside her skin, and most people never leave their own skins. Never realize that they're fucking infinite. Or can be, sometimes.
"If they just let go.
"Which is a long and convoluted way of saying, you nearly died, Grace. You should probably call your mom.
"And it'll probably hurt, but that's okay. Because you're not doing it to hurt. You can't love people without pain, Grace. And you've gotta love people.
"Just call her up. Say, Hi Mom. I was just thinking about you. And I wanted you to know, I'm okay. I hope you're okay, too."
A hook to her smile. Sera's first instinct was to tell Grace: I don't know. A certain Hermetic is training Sera out of such refusals of knowledge; out of such hedging. Reminding her to seek, rather than merely be. A certain Hermetic and a certain apprentice. Strange, where we find our lessons.
"Or maybe that's just too much right now. It's so easy for me to escape like that. Maybe it's a melange of all those things, wrapped up into that wordless place inside us, where feelings go."
"And," an elegant sort of shrug. Sera's voice is rich and quiet in the darkness. "I mean, I don't think anyone's just a 'crat or an 'arch. Everybody's naked underneath their clothes. We all love people and hurt them, we get hurt. Can't have one without the other. We fuck up and we fuck shit up and we find ourselves in places we never thought we'd be, standing in room we know that suddenly feels strange and dislocated, not quite sure how we got there.
"Your mom, she wanted you to be a certain way, maybe because she thought that was the only way to happiness, or redemption, or whatever. I mean, I don't know her from anyone, and there are fucking sociopaths out there, you know? But most people aren't. Most of us fuck things up for other reasons. So I figure, underneath all of that shit, and some of the reason for all that shit, is that she was scared for you.
"She didn't let you Be because she didn't know how to let you Be, or she thought that there was something wrong she needed to fix. So she fucked up and kept fucking up with you, and had no idea how to come back from it, and probably had no idea that she needed to walk it back, because she was all stuck inside her skin, and most people never leave their own skins. Never realize that they're fucking infinite. Or can be, sometimes.
"If they just let go.
"Which is a long and convoluted way of saying, you nearly died, Grace. You should probably call your mom.
"And it'll probably hurt, but that's okay. Because you're not doing it to hurt. You can't love people without pain, Grace. And you've gotta love people.
"Just call her up. Say, Hi Mom. I was just thinking about you. And I wanted you to know, I'm okay. I hope you're okay, too."
Grace
Sera explains her fears, that she won't come back again if she reaches out and touches oneness again. Maybe it's too much of a thrill, to escape herself for those moments, to abandon pain and just go off for a while, or forever. It's a way of saying she doesn't want to kill herself, no, just doesn't want to be Sera anymore. At least, not this Sera. "So, you don't want to be the person you are now? I get that. I don't like feeling like this either.
"Maybe... it's a kind of a, hate the sin, try to love the sinner kind of deal, with me and all the 'arches of the world. I know everybody's naked underneath their clothes, but so many want to put on a suit and wear it like skin. Like that's who they are. It's not, and you know that and I know that, but somehow it feels right to them. Like us, wearing our trauma around like skin," Grace looks away. Why do they do this? Why does anybody do this? Because it feels right. Comfortable. Even if it doesn't feel good the distance, depression, the escapism, it's all still there for comfort's sake. Taking off the emperor's clothes just doesn't feel safe. "You're not what they did to you, Sera. Neither am I."
Sera's speech about calling her mom has Grace staring off in the distance. You've gotta love people, she says, and... Grace has never been too sure about that one. Of course Sera would say that, Sera whose love seems to extend even to the people who are trying to kill her. "Maybe. I just don't know if it would help me to contact her. Don't know if it would help her either. I'm not convinced."
But, she doesn't know, does she? Maybe she's changed, or maybe Grace has. Well, obviously Grace has. She leans her head back into the couch, stares at the ceiling, like she's thinking.
Serafine
Sera doesn't say much else, just then. Does not really answer Grace, except with that quiet and lingering smile with which she favors the apprentice, as Grace leans back and looks up at the ceiling. This quiet settles between them, which is companionable and unbroken for quite some time.
Later - and it is dark and quiet and it is hard to say how much later, though Grace knows at least that she has not yet sunk into her nightmare-riddled sleep because there is not that familiar taste of bile in the back of her throat - Sera rises from her corner of the couch and the leather cushion, released from her weight, sighs as it insufflates.
"Are you sleeping here?" Sera asks Grace quietly.
Later - and it is dark and quiet and it is hard to say how much later, though Grace knows at least that she has not yet sunk into her nightmare-riddled sleep because there is not that familiar taste of bile in the back of her throat - Sera rises from her corner of the couch and the leather cushion, released from her weight, sighs as it insufflates.
"Are you sleeping here?" Sera asks Grace quietly.
Grace
Sera's quiet gives Grace time to think about the good times and bad times growing up. There were good times, of course. It wasn't all pain and anger. But is that how it works? You balance the good against the bad, try to weigh and measure love and hurt? Take the derivative of compassion, and try to derive an equation for how a phone call will end up? There's a reason why she hasn't called her mom in years, and it has everything to do with the screaming matches they get into when she does. Could she take that right now, if it were to happen?
Soon, thinking on a couch in a dark room leads to that kind of half-sleep half-waking state where stranger thoughts begin to intrude, thoughts that seem perfectly normal on first glance, but then... She imagines calling her mom in her mind, but mom's coughing on the other end, unable to speak. It's not a dream yet, just a thought, but one that scares her awake again, just as Sera's voice interrupts.
"Yeah. Kalen says it's safer for me here. Everyone who had contact with the thing from the movie needs to be careful, I guess." She doesn't elaborate as to exactly why.
Serafine
"Right here?" Sera needles, half-needles as she uncurls her body from the couch and rises to her feet. It is still dark. The snow still falls outside. There will be months of cold and weeks of snow and darkness to come but this is the first genuine accumulating snow of the year, piling up outside, visible, quiet, dampening through the windows looking out onto the front patio, and the quiet, opening sweep of the high plains surrounding the chantry. Paddocks and fields and meadows, open rolling space, great spires of the Rockies shadowed against the sky.
Sera is quiet in motion and rather light on her feet, with an easy physical confidence that belongs to her innately, and lives in her even now, when she is stripped of so many other things that make Sera a Sera.
A quiet stretch. The elegant arch of her spine, opening, her arms lifted to the ceiling and then she's in that dreaming motion again, circling the couch to Grace's half to slip her hands through Grace's hair, with thoughtless affection.
"I'll get you a blanket."
--
So she does. Get Grace a blanket from someplace, upstairs maybe because the steps creak beneath her weight, slight as it is, because in a quiet house in the winter, all hushed, the furnace humming, the steps have to creak.
--
Grace does not elaborate on exactly why she has to stay here, and Sera, for her part, does not ask. Oh, maybe her eyes stick-and-linger on Grace when she offers up the explanation, a half-seen shadow behind them, but no more than that. Back downstairs, Sera settles the blanket over Grace, bends over - the long coils of her bottle-blond hair slipping over her shoulder - to quite literally tuck Grace in. Smiling down at her, this quiet, painful little half-smile. And if Grace imagines that she is about to be kissed,
well, she is not entirely wrong. There is a brief moment of luminous tension before Sera brushes her dry lips over Grace's temple, a hand braced on the back of the couch, her spare frame arched above. Then Sera's hand replaces her mouth, and she's rising, Rising and twisting to sink to the floor beside the couch. Leaning back against the frame of the furniture, close enough that she can sense as much as hear the rhythm of Grace's breathing.
From that rhythm, she takes her cue.
This is not the way Sera sings when she's on stage; laughing, drunk, every goddamned eye in the place affixed on her, riveted because where the hell else would you look when she's drunk and fucked up and golden and laughing and sliding beneath your skin. There's no warm up and her voice is a bit rough with cold, the chill in the air and the dry heat from the forced air furnace and the rust that comes from disuse, inactivity, misremembrance, but even so, even so, even so -
- she is impossible to ignore. Grace can feel, can sense the half-worn weave of Sera's magic beginning to coalesce, entirely alien compared to Grace's ones and zeros, her equations and calculations. That hardly matters when sleep looms and there's Sera's voice to fall into, Sera's voice ready to catch her, Sera's voice lulling her into the rocking movement of a quiet ocean reflecting a full, bright moon.
black sky and black sea, lighten up
When we can't breathe
all dreams escape fire, over worlds
fly but won't tire
Somewhere in there, Sera's hand snakes back to find Grace's hand, to lace her fingers loosely between Grace's. Perhaps the apprentice is already halfway to sleep.
Sera just keeps singing.
all calendars pass, days die off
and hope cannot last
but if love was like stone, then yours was mine
through to my bones.
but how can we give back to those
with whom we can't live
when will the flame break
and spare the good people it takes
Souls escape fire, they rise higher
Gentle moon, find us soon
Weaving a spell of restful calm all around Grace, unspooling and unspooling and unspooling it, until Grace is sleeping, dreamless and sweet, for the first night in many, many weeks.
[Reference:
mnemosyne @ 7:44PM
witness a roll for meeee. Which is: Mind 2. Difficulty 5. -1 (resonance appropriate) -1 (taking time)
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 2) ( success x 1 ) [WP] VALID
Umbralwind @ 7:44PM
Witnessed!
mnemosyne @ 7:44PM
Annnd, extending. Difficulty +1 (extending) -1 specialty focus.
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 4) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID
mnemosyne @ 7:45PM
Extending again
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 5) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID
mnemosyne @ 7:45PM
ack, did not mean to have WP on the last roll.]
Sera is quiet in motion and rather light on her feet, with an easy physical confidence that belongs to her innately, and lives in her even now, when she is stripped of so many other things that make Sera a Sera.
A quiet stretch. The elegant arch of her spine, opening, her arms lifted to the ceiling and then she's in that dreaming motion again, circling the couch to Grace's half to slip her hands through Grace's hair, with thoughtless affection.
"I'll get you a blanket."
--
So she does. Get Grace a blanket from someplace, upstairs maybe because the steps creak beneath her weight, slight as it is, because in a quiet house in the winter, all hushed, the furnace humming, the steps have to creak.
--
Grace does not elaborate on exactly why she has to stay here, and Sera, for her part, does not ask. Oh, maybe her eyes stick-and-linger on Grace when she offers up the explanation, a half-seen shadow behind them, but no more than that. Back downstairs, Sera settles the blanket over Grace, bends over - the long coils of her bottle-blond hair slipping over her shoulder - to quite literally tuck Grace in. Smiling down at her, this quiet, painful little half-smile. And if Grace imagines that she is about to be kissed,
well, she is not entirely wrong. There is a brief moment of luminous tension before Sera brushes her dry lips over Grace's temple, a hand braced on the back of the couch, her spare frame arched above. Then Sera's hand replaces her mouth, and she's rising, Rising and twisting to sink to the floor beside the couch. Leaning back against the frame of the furniture, close enough that she can sense as much as hear the rhythm of Grace's breathing.
From that rhythm, she takes her cue.
This is not the way Sera sings when she's on stage; laughing, drunk, every goddamned eye in the place affixed on her, riveted because where the hell else would you look when she's drunk and fucked up and golden and laughing and sliding beneath your skin. There's no warm up and her voice is a bit rough with cold, the chill in the air and the dry heat from the forced air furnace and the rust that comes from disuse, inactivity, misremembrance, but even so, even so, even so -
- she is impossible to ignore. Grace can feel, can sense the half-worn weave of Sera's magic beginning to coalesce, entirely alien compared to Grace's ones and zeros, her equations and calculations. That hardly matters when sleep looms and there's Sera's voice to fall into, Sera's voice ready to catch her, Sera's voice lulling her into the rocking movement of a quiet ocean reflecting a full, bright moon.
black sky and black sea, lighten up
When we can't breathe
all dreams escape fire, over worlds
fly but won't tire
Somewhere in there, Sera's hand snakes back to find Grace's hand, to lace her fingers loosely between Grace's. Perhaps the apprentice is already halfway to sleep.
Sera just keeps singing.
all calendars pass, days die off
and hope cannot last
but if love was like stone, then yours was mine
through to my bones.
but how can we give back to those
with whom we can't live
when will the flame break
and spare the good people it takes
Souls escape fire, they rise higher
Gentle moon, find us soon
Weaving a spell of restful calm all around Grace, unspooling and unspooling and unspooling it, until Grace is sleeping, dreamless and sweet, for the first night in many, many weeks.
[Reference:
mnemosyne @ 7:44PM
witness a roll for meeee. Which is: Mind 2. Difficulty 5. -1 (resonance appropriate) -1 (taking time)
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 2) ( success x 1 ) [WP] VALID
Umbralwind @ 7:44PM
Witnessed!
mnemosyne @ 7:44PM
Annnd, extending. Difficulty +1 (extending) -1 specialty focus.
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (3, 4) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID
mnemosyne @ 7:45PM
Extending again
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (4, 5) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID
mnemosyne @ 7:45PM
ack, did not mean to have WP on the last roll.]
Grace
"Here is a good place to be," Grace says in response to the needling. She's been sleeping on couches in the Chantry, and will be sleeping on them in the future. Almost like the designers of this place knew that this would be a thing that Mages do, their couches seem to be chosen for comfortable sleep. But also, right here, with Sera, is a good place to be.
She almost says 'no, I'll get myself one, don't bother' when Sera goes off to get a blanket, but she gets the idea that Sera wants to do this for her. Part of her healing perhaps, learning that she can sing again, help others again without losing herself. So Grace lets this caring happen. She reacts to neither the ruffling of hair or the kiss to her forehead, except that when Sera leans over, she reaches up and pats her on the back with a flat hand, all awkward. But it's something. She lets that hand squirrel away under the blanket again when Sera shifts to the floor, hand to her forehead like a blessing.
And then, begins to sing.
Grace has never been the target of another's magic before. The sensation of Sera wraps around her even closer than a kiss, and for a second, her eyes open in curiosity, staring at the other woman like she's the only thing in the world. This must just be what it is to have one's mind touched, and because her senses are keen, because she knows what consciousness means on a fundamental level, Grace can feel the threads of Sera running here and there (or is it everywhere at once? Does it matter?) making this more than a lullaby.
Sera's hand fits into hers, and she's barely even aware. There is a fleeting thought to grab her laptop and document this, and she smiles at herself as she stuffs the errant musing away. Then, there are no thoughts left.
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