(Nov) What's Your Advice?

Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Nightmares, yes]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )

Pan Echeverri­a
These days the priest comes into the kitchen around five o'clock in the evening to throw together dinner. Most days Shoshannah is in there helping him. Not because he is incapable of cooking or feeding himself but because she wants to. And he lets her. Otherwise he's only in the kitchen if he's making tea or coming in from outside.
Today he's managed to fill the kettle with water but he can't figure out how to turn on the burner on the range. The man is reasonably intelligent, a disciple of the Celestial Chorus, and he can't work an electric stove.
Maybe he should pray for guidance.

Grace
[Awareness+Perception!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kalen Holliday
[Awareness?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )

Grace
Grace has been out today, back to the apartment to study for finals. Perhaps it's just easier there, to try to mesh her two lives together, without the distraction. But, as usual, she comes back to the Chantry to sleep. Kalen, when he was still frantic, still reeling from his nightmare, got through to her. Sleep where it's safe. Don't let Thakinyan feed.
She doesn't knock, just lets herself in, and she knows that Pan's here (he is always here anymore) and Kalen's here (and that is a bit of comfort). Pan's not a bit of comfort. Pan grates on her a bit with his very essence and his titles, even though he's never actually done anything to merit her apprehension. But hey, give her time. Maybe she'll come around. Maybe.
But she'll always call him Pan. Never father.
She wanders into the living room, wearing jeans, sneakers, and a blue sweater. It's pilling. She doesn't care. It's clothing, you know? Serves its purpose.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen comes into the kitchen and heads toward where the coffeemaker is.  Coffee is his friend right now.  (Some people would say sleep should be his friend right now, but Kalen knows how wrong they are.)  He can sense Grace, so of course he puts on enough coffee for Grace to.  And Pan is there.  In the kitchen.  Like a judgey-judgey beacon of holy light.
"Pan.  Coffee?"  Regardless of the priest's answer, it isn't until he has coffee brewing that he actually turns his attention to Pan, leaning into the counter with one hip.
"You trying to do that with your mind?  It can be done.  But, perhaps best to let the stove do it for you.  You okay?"  Because Kalen lives in a special world where we append our gentle mockery with concern.  Because leading with concern is for...what?  Ecstastics?

Pan Echeverri­a
Pan. Coffee?
Nothing. The button-punching stops and the priest stands still a moment. Continues not to answer as Kalen tells him he can boil water with his mind but it's probably better to let the stove do it.
You okay?
The initiates can both read his resonance and feel assured in the knowledge that the man is not tainted. Has not been working unholy magic. Nothing is riding his bones.
So Kalen speaks and it's as if Pan wasn't even aware of his presence until he spoke and then he puts a hand up to his forehead like he's immediately aware of a crushing headache. Exhales hard and then gives the younger man a wan smile.
"Kalen." His voice is rough. He takes his hand off his forehead. "Hi. Lamento, sorry, I'm okay. I keep telling the girls, teach a man to fish, but..."
He hits the right button that time. The coil turns red and he sets the kettle atop it and turns from the stove.

Grace
She can hear them talking, and wanders over to the kitchen, because... being social. This is a thing. Sometimes nowadays, she has to force it, but still, there is the attempt.
So, she slinks in, just as Pan finds the right button (and isn't that just like an engineer, the second they arrive, everything works). "Hey. I smell coffee."

Kalen Holliday
"Yeah.  You look worse than I do, and I'm only like half a step up from animated corpse.  Sit down.  If I have to catch you the best that can end with is a sort of pathetic hilarity.  And that's if I'm being charitable about how graceful that'll be."
His expression softens, just a little.  "Seriously."  He waves at the table and chairs in the kitchen.  "Before you collapse.  You look like Hell."  It is, of course, only that last part that really sounds concerned, like he realizes on some level that he can't expect to order Pan to do things but can't quite manage the part where maybe he could ask.
"Of course you do, Kit.  When do I not have coffee?"

Pan Echeverria
Kalen could ask Sera how well it went when she tried to catch him when he collapsed. The man was about fifty pounds heavier then and his intestines were falling out of his abdomen and he was bleeding from a bite in his thigh. A blood vessel had just burst inside his skull.
It's no wonder all of them use the word 'alright' to describe things like headaches and insomnia. Headaches and insomnia are better than the things that tried and failed to kill them already.
But the Hermetic does not have to plead hard with the Chorister to get him to sit down. He gives another wan smile to the young man and starts to move towards the table and the chairs.
Grace he glances at but does not greet. It's like he can hear her disdain for his presence.

Grace
"Mmm. I would say when you're asleep, but I know you'd probably find a way," she says to Kalen, trying a bit of humor, though her face is a dull thing. She looks as worn as Kalen does.
Grace catches Pan's glance, and she gives him a little wave, again trying to be social.
"How you guys doing?" And it's a silly question. The three of them look like they've been to Hell and back. She knows what's going on, but there again... trying to act normal, be social, just be.

Kalen Holliday
"What were you doing?" Kalen asks Pan.  "Other than, I would assume, making tea?"
He does not try to immediately shoo Grace into a chair.  Grace has been eating when he brings her food and is doing things like trying to be nice to Pan, so she can determine for herself if she wants to just sit down and wait for Kalen to bring her coffee.  He does smile a little when she asks how they are, like he wasn't just exiling Pan from the arduous task of making tea.
"Peachy," he says to Grace, that smile widening into a grin.  He means it.  The grin.  God (and probably about anyone with eyes) knows he's not peachy.

Pan Echeverri­a
Grace catches Pan looking at her and gives him a wave. He returns the wave. No mockery in it but he does imitate the strength and duration like she's the one setting the parameters for this exchange.
Making tea appears to have been the long and short of what he was doing. Even big badass preachers who intimidate just about everyone in the world with whom they have contact despite the fact that they need a shave and a haircut need time to do something that has no goal orientation.
He just gives Kalen a shrug with a ghost of a smile that says without him having to say anything: Your assumption was correct.
Then Grace asks how they're doing. Kalen is peachy.
"Well," says Pan.

Grace
Grace rolls her eyes at the 'peachy' and the 'well' and maybe a bit at herself for asking such a question in the first place. She goes up to the cabinet where she knows the coffee mugs are, and selects one for herself. She's not going to just sit down and let Kalen do everything for her.
No, she goes and fills her mug, then doctors it with sugar (because who drinks coffee black) and goes to the fridge for cream or milk or whatever it is that they have.
While she busies herself with this, she breaches the lying liars' calm with some of the latest on their quarry. "So, Kalen and I found some stuff out from records at some asylums in Vienna and Atlanta. Turns out Thakky's gone by other names before. Pazuzu and Ira. I mean, the thing must have horror movie on the brain, because he likes The Exorcist too apparently. Fear, rage, and insanity are what it likes, so maybe if we Care Bear Stare at it... Hah. Still no indication that it's coming out of that circle any time soon."

Kalen Holliday
There is a little choking noise from Kalen when Grace uses 'Thakky' in an actual conversation.  And then she says Care Bear Stare and by the time to tea kettle whistles at them Kalen is laughing.  Because that is so completely the sane and rational response.
"Well," he says, dropping back easily into business again as he turns the stove off and pours water into a mug.  "He's been called other Names before, he may or may not have actually gone by them.  It may have been the interpretations of anyone he blessed with his delightful shared waking nightmares."
"Pan.  What kind of tea?"  His tone, all cool distance, changes not at all when he switches from Umbrood spirits that cause waking nightmares to what kind of tea Pan wants.  Because, really, everyone talks about those things like they talk about weather, right?

Pan Echeverri­a
He's sitting very still with his hands knit together and rested on the tabletop as he listens to the apprentice and the initiate discuss the state of things.
What kind of tea?
"The demon has so many mouths," he says, "it's no wonder it has so many names."
Well that's promising.

Grace
Grace looks over at Pan, like that's the weirdest answer to 'what kind of tea' ever. "True. I'm just glad it didn't get a hold on me at that theater, or it would have had a feast," she says. Hydra, making her die over and over again, while seeded with a thing that eats fear? It would have loved that.
"We also came up with the name of someone who seemed to try to do something about it before, in Atlanta. Leonard Holcomb. Although probably that dude was not one of us. He claimed to be from the Georgia Department of Mental Health, and then the victims disappeared after he took them. Probably 'disappeared' if you know what I mean. I don't know. Probably a cover-up."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen just drops a normal bag of tea into the mug for Pan and lets it steep while he fiddles with his coffee.
"Considering the people we know were involved the first time, it wouldn't be a stretch to guess it may have been the Technocracy on both occasions.  Which raises the question of what to do about those who've been affected by Thakinyan.  Considering the kind of resources it will likely take us just to send it flying, I'm not sure what we'll have left for its mundane victims.  We might have enough time to recover and still save them, so it's at least worth considering."
He picks up both his coffee and Pan's tea by the handles of the mugs in one hand and walks over to the table.  He sets down his coffee, then sets Pan's tea in front of him.  And, perhaps because Pan has been so responsive all evening, he squeezes Pan's shoulder.  "Tea.  Give it a minute.  Then drink it."  He's concerned enough now that there isn't anything even a little playful in that, and his hand stays resting on Pan's shoulder while he's talking.

Pan Echeverri­a
Kalen looked as if he was going to fall asleep on the couch looking at maps of Denver yesterday. It looks as if Pan is in a similar state of mental exhaustion. Like he's been pushing himself to learn this thing's Name and its intentions. If he can know it he can find a way to get it gone without being able to drive it out of its hosts.
If they could destroy it he would find that way but thus far nothing he's come up with has felt as proof of the possibility of destroying it.
Beneath the Hermetic's hand the Chorister's shoulder is still muscular but overtop the musculature is loose skin. He nods and drags a hand down his face and does nothing to shrug off the boy's hand.
"How far back do the Atlanta records go?"

Grace
Kalen's behaving toward Pan like he did toward her, that first day back from the hospital. And while she was going to just go on and deliver more information about Atlanta, that has her thinking, for the first time, "Pan, are you all right?"
She stops herself, because okay, of course Pan isn't all right. "I mean, besides what the zombie dogs did to you and whatnot."
She walks up to the table, sits down. Sips coffee like it's still too hot to gulp.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen stops with the hovering with a hand on Pan's shoulder and settles into a chair near him.  There is a flicker of a smile when Grace asks if Pan's alright, and then qualifies it.
"Honestly, Atlanta dates back to before everyone was keeping detailed, accessible online records.  There might be more if we actually sent someone to Atlanta who could get into the paper files, but they were probably mostly grabbed up by the people who did the quarantining.  I could always try to forge some paperwork to get my hands on the files."  And that offer, that offer, spoken like he's offering to go grab a carton of milk.
"But, it was 1975?  We could probably find people to question on that one.  Patient records they may have taken, but everyone connected to those patients...probably not."

Pan Echeverri­a
The zombie dog attack was the root cause of the backlash that nearly killed him. It landed him in the hospital for over a week and he checked himself out against medical advice. If he had not gone to the Verbena's house afterwards he would have died in a matter of days. Quickly decompensated and gone into respiratory arrest and that would have been that.
He's not alright by the strictest definition of the word. He has a headache and he's tired and Kalen walked in on him enjoying an absence seizure just a few minutes ago. So the qualification barring the zombie dog attack makes Pan smile.
But he doesn't answer. Kalen forges ahead with the matter of Atlanta. Which brings them to the matter of forgery.
"Can't hurt to check," he says. "If you do decide to look for people, be careful. If the Technocracy grabbed up them files, they could get tipped off if you dig too deep, huh?"

Grace
Kalen's talking about the paper records that she can't access, and Pan's giving her weird smiles and refusing to answer her.
She's got nothin', in the general parlance.
Grace blows on her coffee. Waits. And then, "I don't know if we have time for trips to Atlanta. It might be a wild goose chase there, anyway. None of what we've uncovered says anything about when it feeds, when it leaves that damn circle, or how to draw it out."

Kalen Holliday
"Well, Kit, we may have simply reached the stage at which we light it on fire or give up.  Given the choice, I vote we light it on fire.  Or, in this particular case, we light its tethers on fire.  Personally, I vote if we can't reach Lucia's cabal we start with her.  Joshua, for all I wouldn't underestimate him, hasn't gone fucking with anyone's minds directly that I know of.  I'm not sure he's even Awakened."
"It'll be alright.  We know about the tethers.  We know what at least two of them probably are, or, rather who.  The film might be a third.  Alyssa said not to expect more than five.  That may be all we need to destroy.  And if we do destroy those things, we may weaken it."
He sips at his coffee and sighs.  "I hope.  I've generally gone after things I could light on fire and dismember and there is a certain elegance in the simplicity of that."  He sets his mug down and pushes Pan's mug toward him and then reaches out, takes Pan's hands, and wraps them around the mug.  He doesn't tell him to drink again.  He will or he won't.  At least now maybe he'll remember the tea is there.

Pan Echeverri­a
Pan blinks several times when Kalen takes his hands but he doesn't fight him. Alright. Tea. It's warm. The warmth feels good on his hands. Kalen can feel how cold his hands are. Cold and meatless and bereft of the callouses he had had from working outside at the church with the people he led.
Okay. He'll drink it. Pan removes the bag from the mug by its tag and displays some amount of manual dexterity by squeezing the excess water out of the bag before finding a place on the table to set it down. He'll wipe up the stain later.
"Demons," he says, "thrive off of attention. The more of it the better." He takes a swallow of his tea and flinches from the heat of it. Takes another swallow and wraps his hands back around it. "If we can't cleanse them, yeah? Montanari and Keller. You're right. We're going to have to do something else to destroy the tethers."
That's two votes for fire.

Grace
It's as if this were a vote? As if Grace were going to go to that circle and attempt to set fire to people? She just shrugs. "It makes sense. If we can't cleanse them, there's no other way. But I don't know if it's my place to say what you guys do, I'm not going."
And Pan? The guy who still looks beaten half to death, he's going? Grace doesn't think that much in the way of words would keep him from doing what he wants to, but it is a thought. What could he do but go out there to die?

Kalen Holliday
"I can still shoot, Kit.  I can do that standing still.  Magic, same thing."  He smiles, gently this time.  "This isn't the kind of fight you retreat from, even if you could.  This is what I was born to do.
"You don't have to be there.  It's alright.  No one here is going to force you into some nightmare you aren't ready for.
"If Lucia's former cabalmates will come for her, maybe we can launch an attempt to exorcise Keller at the same time.  Coordinate.  But, I don't know that I can find them.  Maybe you can talk to Shoshannah.  See if she can send a spirit messenger out to find them."

Grace
"It's not a matter of me being ready for it or not. It's a matter of whether I would be of any use, or just in the way," Grace corrects, gulps some cooled coffee down. "If I thought I could do anything... It might be different."
After all, she'd prepared for an infiltration at the lab. Key cards, specialty programs, and a hacked radio transmitter (for opening doors, for bypassing security, for hacking into their computer systems and shutting down their cameras, whatever she could do). That had all turned out unnecessary, but still, she'd had a reason for going.
"That sounds a bit more fruitful, there. I'll ask Shoshannah. I know she wants so desperately to help."

Kalen Holliday
"Thank you," he says to Grace.
His eyes track back to Pan and he frowns, just slightly.  The man has made it clear he doesn't want anyone scanning him, which Kalen couldn't do if he wanted to.  Kalen knows what Sid said.  He knows how cold Pan's hands were.  There isn't anything to ask, really.  No one thinks Pan is really alright.  Not at the moment at least.  He starts, like he will stand up and then sighs and turns back to Grace.
"You remember, right after you were sick, I did that thing for you?  Would you...ah...?"  Would you go get Pan a blanket because it will take me like ten years to walk all the way to the living room and back Grace?  That would be awesome. If nothing else, it marks the first time he hasn't just stubbornly insisted on getting whatever he wanted for himself.  That's progress, right?

Grace
Grace looks at Kalen like he's speaking in a code she doesn't understand. Talk to Pan about the good things in life? Take him to see Garrett? Her eyes do a bit of a jaunt like she's trying to think of what the hell he's talking about.
She's about to ask Kalen if he means to have her buy Pan a laptop when he mimes 'blanket' to her, and it finally clicks. Right. That makes more sense.
She nods and gets up out of her chair, off to the living room, to pull the quilt off the back of the couch, and she returns shortly with it held out like she's going to throw it over Pan's shoulders, if he lets her.

Pan Echeverri­a
As the two younger Mages talk Pan sits and drinks his tea and does not interject. If he has more to say the words will rear their heads later. They are circling the same idea now and he has already stated that he thinks having fewer people involved in confronting the demon is their best bet.
Four of the women were recently throttled by a virus. One of them was nearly possessed. Another of their allies nearly met the same fate. The strongest of them is wearing himself out pursuing answers that may not exist.
Time was he could ignore his fatigue as it careened towards exhaustion by praying for strength to keep carrying on. He still can. But then the two start talking in half sentences and gesturing to each other and the once-big priest frowns.
Busted. He doesn't get up though. He sits still while Grace gets up and leaves and comes back with the quilt. At the sight of it he laughs a quiet laugh.
"You didn't have to do that," he says. He isn't a horse. He can wrap the quilt around his own dumb shoulders. Pan holds out a hand to accept it from her and tries that again. "Thank you."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen smiles as he watches Pan and Grace.  It's the kind of expression you'd expect to see when people are hanging stockings or about to eat Thanksgiving turkey or toast at a wedding.  Something where people are together.  Open, unguarded.  Grace hasn't really seen him open like that when he isn't lost in trying to explain something fantastic.  It's a completely new thing for Pan.
It doesn't last long before that expression vanishes into distance and Kalen's hands tighten on his mug with enough force it's a good thing coffee mugs are heavy.  Because otherwise there might be glass shards to pick out of his hands.

Grace
Grace just hands Pan the quilt. Whatever he's comfortable with is okay by her. Hell, she understands more than most about boundaries and whatnot.
Afterwards, she slips back into her own chair.  Pan's quiet, except for his thank-you, to which he gets a twitchy "Welcome" in return.
And starts drinking coffee again like it's a lifeline. Kalen does his usual warmth-to-distance thing, which she's been around him enough to know is like a switch. On and off, caring and blank. His coping mechanism. Like her coping mechanism, if she wants to think about it.
He gets like that when he's worried about people.
Everyone is being so quiet. So she talks for them. "It's so weird, you know, trying to care about my finals, with this stuff going on."

Pan Echeverri­a
He's a priest. He has to be used to people telling him things about their personal lives. Confessional booths are built with a grille between the pastor and the strayed member of the flock. Makes it easier for the confessor to unload his sins that the pastor might serve as a faceless voice of God to absolve him.
This isn't his church and these people are not his flock but he wraps the quilt around his shoulders and takes in Kalen's shunted mien and Grace's admission. Someone told him that she was new. Like as-of-last-Wednesday new. He hasn't seen Sera since he came back to Denver.
His resonance is loud even in quiet moments like this. No warmth in it. Maybe the man has tried to be warm in the past and can only be bright. His voice is, at least. If nothing else about him is warm his voice is.
"You want my advice?"

Kalen Holliday
Kalen stays quiet and resumes drinking his coffee.  He could try to lie and say that Grace reminding him about something that isn't chasing monsters or Pan talking again like he's actually present isn't reassuring.  He might, if anyone asked him.  He's not really guarded enough not to watch them out of the corners of his his eyes.

Grace
"Sure. What's your advice?" she asks, and... yeah, she really means that. It's advice, not framed like it's an order. And even then, it's not being told what to do that she hates. Sometimes, people have good reasons for telling you what to do, and it's irrational not to listen. No, it's the idea that they would never listen to you back. Would expect you to follow their command, and never have it go the other direction. Like a father, maybe.
She has her experience too,  has her voice to share. But when it comes to bridging the gap between the two lives, mundane and wildly-not-so? None. There is a question there that's more than just 'should I sign up for class next semester?'

Pan Echeverri­a
Neither of them know anything about his past. It isn't important. Not if they don't believe in understanding from where people have traveled and where they're heading. With the discord among their traditions few would argue that it is not important.
Pan can't bring himself to Work with them because they don't accept the same truth he does but he can still help them.
"I was in prison," he says. "Must've been nineteen, twenty years old when I saw the light. I'd beaten a friend to death because I thought my son's mother was cheating on me with him. I'd dropped out of high school, was working in an auto body shop, got addicted to heroin after the baby was born. Used speed a lot to stay awake. Judge gave me twenty years for it but I'd be eligible for parole after eight. A year in I tied a bed sheet 'round my neck and hung myself in the shower. An angel came to me, told me it wasn't my time, dragged me back."
This is going to be one of those stories.
"When I got out in 'ninety-five, I had a nine-year-old son didn't know his father. Parole officer I had to see. Had to go to Narcotics Anonymous as part of my parole. The woman who showed me the way, Sister Ruth. She was an adept of the Chorus, yeah? Met me my first night at NA. I thought she was full of it. I just done eight and a half years for killing a man. Twenty-seven-year-old Puerto Rican guy with tattoos and a murder conviction? Wasn't nobody gonna forgive me for what I did. What kind of miracles she thought I was gonna be doing?"
This is about the time most folks expect the come to Jesus part of the speech to come to the surface.
"I listened to what she had to tell me though. Didn't put nothing on hold for her or her miracles. War was still going on then. We needed bodies 'cause we was losing, but even then if you wanted to opt out, you could. And I did, sometimes. I had to stay clean. Had to get legitimate work. Had to learn how to be a father. I know it's hard, when you got a life outside of this. Just do what you can, when you can. And if your finals--what are you studying?"

Kalen Holliday
Pan is still present.  Very present, actually, which is a definite relief after having seen him being confused about the stove.  The way he'd reached up to his head.  There are stories Kalen could tell to explain why he panics about every time he emotionally engages with anyone.  Grace has heard them, not in vivid detail, but Grace knows why Kalen shies so violently away from letting people close to him.  They aren't the kind of thing that can help her understand how to balance her life.  All Kalen has for that is telling her that there are great things, beautiful things.
He isn't Catholic.  Not really.  But he believes in angels.  He knows people who have spoken to them.  And, you know, other gods and goddesses and spirits and demons.  Kalen answers to the Order and Pan answers to God, but the worlds they live in are similar enough he can still take some comfort in hearing about angels.  And be mostly unmoved by the news of murder convictions.
He lets Pan take this particular issue with Grace.  He seems to be having more success than the last person Kalen tried to get to help.
And he relaxes.  Slowly.  By degrees.  But Pan keeps talking and Kalen does keep calming down.  He doesn't watch them the same way again, but he calms.

Grace
Pan, well... he's had a life, huh? And still, the killing a man doesn't phase her (because didn't she just try to kill a man herself? Would have, if it wasn't for Sera's intervention?) and the suicide attempt doesn't phase her (because there was all of that wishing to die, knowing she'd do it in a heartbeat if Sid wasn't there providing the hope of a cure). She just listens. Until he asks that question.
And she's fairly certain by now that Pan is the sort of person who might know some of the words she's about to say, and not be able to tell what they mean. But still...
"Computer science. With a focus on simulations," she says, into her coffee.

Pan Echeverri­a
He spent the nineties either in prison or getting his land legs back after coming out of prison. By now he's heard the words 'computer science' and 'simulations' enough to not pull a confused face when he hears them. Grace's certainty holds fast.
"Yeah?" He pauses to see if she looks up from her cup. No lecture other than the one he's already locked into. "If that's where your passion is, you know, if it's important to you, stick to it. Study and get good grades on your finals. And ask folks for help when you need it. 'Cause see, old people don't know nothing about computers and the Inter-what's-it gonna be asking you for help a lot. Goes both ways."

Kalen Holliday
Pan gets a little flash of a grateful smile from Kalen.  Now that he's not being as worried, he looks more tired.  That could change if he got something to focus on, but for now, he's not chasing anything.  He can be drowsily sipping coffee.  That's fine.
And otherwise, he keeps staying out of it.  What is he going to say?  Kalen transitioned from having no real goal other than surviving into hunting monsters.  Beyond being a place where Garrett and Trent keep their offices, college is a complete mystery to him.

Sid
There was a time when a particular resonance, along with its particular owner, were found in the Chantry every weekend like clockwork.  Sometime around five in the evening every Friday a familiar old truck would rumble up the drive, and sometime late Sunday night it would leave.  That presence has been felt a lot less over the last few months, but it's starting to pick up again.  Slowly slowly, Sid has made her way back to the Chantry house.  She has braved running into its occasional visitors, particularly she's risked running into those who shared with her the experience of surviving a deadly virus.  She's even survived chasing a Chorister out onto the back patio.
It being Sunday evening means it's time for her to shuffle out the door.  They hear her first, hear the rustle of cloth, of denim rubbed together with each step, of the vinyl of her bookbag shifting on her shoulder.  Then they see her, a tall pale shadow of her former self, though a shadow that is starting to fade.  Slowly slowly, Sid has begun to relax.  It helps that she sleeps better in the Chantry than almost anywhere else.  Her room has a lock to which she and only one other have a key, and it smells like green growing things and wet earth.  Plus, there are wards that seem to do well enough at keeping this place protected.  She is safe here.  She can relax.
Which is all to say that she looks at least a little better than she had on Friday.  It'll be some while yet before she's filled out again, but her color is better.  As she steps through the door, she looks up at the others gathered there, dark eyes traveling quickly between the trio.

Grace
Pan talks about it as her passion, and really... it is. It's her whole worldview, what led her to the Awakening of her gifts. But then, she went and blew right on past the mundane simulations, and into something else entirely. She's like a toddler who'd just learned multivariable calculus, and people are still trying to teach her how to count.
Sure, there are still things to learn in her classes. That's really the only reason why she's still waging that internal war of stay or go. It's all she'd ever thought she'd do before, is go academia, and just keep learning.
She does look up at Pan like he must be making a joke at her, with that 'inter-what's-it' comment. She gives him a smirk. "Yeah, it does. Go both ways. And it's the inter-blogo-spheres."
She downs coffee, looks around the room. "I've been kind of thinking about dropping out. Like, if this stuff is going to keep happening to me, there's no point, right? But I guess. If you can do it with all that happening around you..." she nods. "I'll keep trying. Still, it's really fucking surreal to have a professor try to impress upon you the dire importance of making it to the test on time, when... well... It just rings a little silly."

Pan Echeverri­a
Were not for the fact that he's listening so intently to what Grace says when Grace picks up her half of the mantle of conversation the priest would have greeted Sid sooner. They'd butted heads a few days ago but they're both grown-ass adults. Even if they did not agree with each other they had sorted each other out enough that they can exist together without treating silences like minefields.
But he is listening. And when she says the professor's priorities ring silly he smiles.
"Yeah," he says. "I'd imagine it would. But do keep trying. You had a big setback with that illness. It's gonna get easier."
There we go. Advice hour over.
"Sid. Hello. Kalen made coffee."

Kalen Holliday
"If you can go back and have a life that isn't just this, Kit, I'd recommend it.  It was...never really an option for me.  It's different for you.  You had one before."  As opposed to what?  Being made from clay?  Stepping from Zeus' head fully formed?
Sid?  It' probably good Pan said something before Kalen had no idea she was there and got all startled about it.  Instead he picks his head back up, glances around until he finds Sid, and waves a little.  There is a smile to accompany that wave, but it is more tired than warm.
"In a coffeemaker, so it's passable coffee.  It wasn't the moment to be paying attention."  He'll let Sid assume that was because he was tired.  Pan isn't staring at a stove in confusion now.  And Sid probably knows more about how he is than Kalen does anyway.

Sid
Kalen and Grace saw when Sid followed Pan out onto the patio to hash something out.  However it had worked itself out, for good or for bad or for a neutral understanding of each other, Sid does not shy away from eye contact with the padre.  Which she makes with a slight dip of her chin of silent greeting.
She looks from him to Grace and then to Kalen.  The corners of her mouth lift a little at his tired wave.  "I'm sure it's fine," she assures him as she sets her bags down just inside the doorway, bookbag first, then messenger bag.  The Orphan is dressed simply in a zipped up grey hoody, slightly too large jeans, and black-and-white Vaans.  Slipping her hands into the pockets of her hoody, she steps further into the room a pace.
The look she has for Grace, who is talking about school, who is talking about maybe quitting, is thoughtful but mostly understanding.  "Or it won't," she says.  "Sometimes the paths we were on before we Awakened have to be let go."  Her mouth curves a little more as her expression shifts to something distant yet fond.  The shift lasts only a moment before she looks up again, at Grace, and she shrugs.  "There are lots of roads to choose from.  Maybe there's one better suited to who you are now."

Grace
"Hey, Sid. We're just talking about fear demons and finals. You know, normal every-day conversation. And coffee, now," so you know, no blood hydras, just demons, as though that were better.
And when Sid talks about changing paths, well... "Maybe. I could always try to fall back on my writing," she says, giggles a bit in an odd way about that one. "Yeah, probably not. Not easy making a living on words."
'Cause really, college is all she knows. All she ever wanted to know. She has talents, but the one people would pay her big for she would have to go underground, in the dark web, trading zero days for millions, so that one company or country can screw over another. Yeah... no. Or she could get a corporate job, working for The Man, which is a similar no.
It was so much simpler before.

Pan Echeverri­a
Now that everyone is in a better mood than they were when they first walked in the room and Kalen isn't quite as concerned about Pan as he was and Sid is giving Grace the perspective of one who has been in her position and understands her struggle almost perfectly: a fixed point in time has arrived.
Pan stands up and folds up the quilt. Drapes it over the back of the chair. Leaves the dregs of his drink in his cup.
"Thank you for the tea," he says. "We'll talk about them tether points more later, yeah?"

Kalen Holliday
Kalen nods to Pan.  "Yeah.  I...."  His voice trails off and he frowns.  It takes him a second to figure out what he's even saying.  "I'll let you know if I figure out anything else.  You're staying here, right?"
Yes...Kalen is so very awake.  Totally.  Wide.  Awake.
He glances between Grace and Sid but doesn't interject.  They both know more about college than he does.  Hell, Pan might know more about college than he does.  And he's about half asleep.

Sid
Normal everyday conversation to Sid, at least among these people and their other Awakened compatriots, is definitely doom and danger and terrible things.  It's...becoming more commonplace for Sid, and thus less jarring as the months tick by.  Her understanding of magic, of Spheres, and of this side of Awakening grows exponentially by the day, and as it does she moves further and further from a life of Before.
Sid wanders over closer to Kalen, something she absolutely would not have done a month ago, even if a month ago she hadn't been holed up in someone's clinic racing against time to fight an unknown virus.  When she's standing beside him, she rests her hand gently on his shoulder.  Immediately, heat sinks in through however many layers the Hermetic may be wearing.  Whether he looks up at her or not, Sid looks at him with an expression of concern, but she doesn't ask.  She probably looks just as weary, or at least as though she's recovering from his level of weariness.
Turning her head, she looks at Grace, her mouth quirking.  "You could."  Write, she means.  She's offered the suggestion of other roads, but what those roads actually are and where they'll lead are all up to Grace.
Only then does she slide her hand from Kalen's shoulder, turning as she does to track the movements of the Chorister.

Grace
Grace gives Kalen the squinty-eyed look. "You should hit the couch. I mean it. You look like you're about to drop."
Pan gets up to leave, and... well... Grace would be lying if she said it wouldn't make her feel a bit more comfortable to have that harsh light somewhere else. But at least he seems to have good advice and isn't Jesusing all over her. Maybe it's one of those things right? The ripples they leave on the world are sometimes uncomfortable ones. Like Alyssa and the blood-on-the-tongue feeling that always makes her want to leave. Not like Alyssa can help it. "Thanks for the advice, Pan."
"I could," she says to Sid, "But I also have to eat sometimes. And rent doesn't grow on short stories. I don't know. I'll give it some thought. It's not like Kalen's going to stop bringing me take out and forcing it down my throat. I don't think I've actually paid for a meal in a while..." She gives Kalen a little smirk, as if to say, 'I'm totally joking, by the way'.

Kalen Holliday
"It isn't as though I couldn't do that indefinitely, but you might get bored.  Unless I also got you a mad science computer lab or something."  Kalen sounds amused.  "And point taken.  I'll go take a nap."  He rises, takes his mug and Pan's mug to the dishwasher (or the sink, or whatever they do with dishes), then swipes the quilt on his way out of the kitchen.
"Good night, both of you.  It was good to see you."

Pan Echeverri­a
[and a pause on the sid/pan brotp no autocorrect i do not mean "broth" fuck off]

Kalen Holliday
[Arg.  Add:]  Kalen drops his head back and gives Sid a quick smile when she rests a hand on his shoulder.  He doesn't move until she moves her hand off of him.