Sid
[everyone be cool, it's cool, everything's fine, but how're we handling things? WP like but not for nightmares]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Grace Evans
[OHH YEAH Nightmares, yes]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Grace Evans
[Awareness+Perception?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Grace Evans
Let's
just say that this is just not something that Grace often does. Setting
a date, being a hostess... not Grace's bag. But, Sid is special and
welcome and damn if Grace hasn't wanted to really say thanks in a while.
Pizza hardly covers it, but what can?
It's veggie pizza because
Grace doesn't know how Sid's been handling meat, that substance so close
to the blood that they all cannot stand anymore. Sometimes, she looks
at some food item or another and just can't go there anymore. But veggie
pizza sounded safe. Also, breadsticks. And those cinnamon thingies. And
lots of cheese and pepper packets. Oh, and extra napkins. Because.
Grace
gave Sid directions to an apartment complex just across the street from
campus. It was chosen for its utility, perhaps over anything else. And
when Grace feels that strange mix of glee and fear rise up inside from
Sid's presence, she unlocks the locks on her door, not waiting for the
knock.
Inside, Grace's place looks clean and uncluttered. Very
uncluttered. There's no pictures on the walls, no rugs on the floor, and
it's a tiny thing -- a studio, with a little alcove for a bed, right?
Almost like a dorm room, but usually students decorate their rooms, try
to make them look homey. The only decoration that Sid would be able to
find is a small stuffed lion sitting on her desk. It resonates. Feels
like an electric sheen of rain in the midst of all that shifts.
Sid
Night
comes quickly in Denver in the winter months, the ridge of the
mountains to the west cut the dusk short by several hours. Tonight, as
dark grey clouds promising snow choked out the sky, night came a little
earlier still. When Sid's old truck pulls into the parking lot of
Grace's apartment complex the atmosphere is cold and stifling black.
There are no stars beyond the lights of streetlamps, not tonight.
Sometime
earlier Sid texted Grace to inquire about soda preferences. When she
climbs out of her truck she reaches back inside to pull out a bag with
two two-liter bottles weighing down the plastic. Grace senses her
before she gets to the door, that frantic desperate clawing feeling
combined and twined with a feeling of such great happiness, the
combination underscored now by something else, a quiet steady bolstering
of empowerment. Sid does not reach out with her senses, she's not sure
her mind could take anymore of that today.
At the door, she
raises her fists but hesitates a moment when she hears the twist and
turn of locks on the other side. Gently, she taps the knuckle of her
index finger against the door before trying the handle. "Hey," she
greets quietly through the opened door, and though no one changes
overnight - she's still pale, still tired looking, still too thin - she
looks brighter. If not for those things she would almost seem like
something close to her usual self, or who she was before the terror of
the virus came.
Stepping inside, she pauses to look around, down
first to see where she should remove her shoes. The place is sparsely
decorated, but Grace has seen Sid's room. She knows that the Orphan has
the same decorating scheme.
"How are you?"
Grace Evans
The
pizza spread is out on the kitchen counter, Grace's little dining room
table not big enough for two people and all those boxes. But it's close
by (as everything is close by in her tiny place) so the smell hits as
soon as the door is opened.
"Hey," she says back, in similar
monosyllabic communication. Grace is in jeans and a sweater and socks,
though she doesn't have a 'shoe removal spot' or anything. And it
doesn't dawn on her that that may be what Sid's looking for. Instead,
she takes the bag with the two-liters, and starts immediately back for
the kitchen
The 'how are you' is so much of a question. Sera said
it was hard to talk about without bullshit, and she was right. There's
the expected answers of 'fine', 'okay', 'good' and the like, but yeah...
they're not true. She pauses in unwrapping the sodas, like she's
thinking of the right thing to say.
"I am... trying. As for what I'm trying for, I couldn't say. Not going to say I'm better though, or fine, or good, 'cause that's not quite right."
Sid
There
is no designated shoe removal spot, but there is a clear enough spot to
one side or the other that'll do. Sid relinquishes her hold on the bag
and toes off her Vaans. She removes a small plastic baggie from her
messenger bag before she lifts the thing over her head to be lowered
gently atop her shoes. Then goes her hooded sweatshirt. She's dressed
in a black t-shirt with blocks of the periodic table spelling out across
her large chest Ge32 N7 I53 U92 S16
over a rust colored long sleeved shirt, and jeans, all of which are
just a little too large on her. Her hair is down and a little
disheveled, particularly around her shoulders.
Hooking her thumbs
into the pockets of her jeans, Sid makes her way over to the kitchen,
looking to see if there's anything she can do to assist. Reaching up to
tuck her hair behind her ears, she listens to Grace. She could try to
bullshit, and honestly if she's going to try to bullshit anyone she's
sharing airspace with a good person to try it with. Sid would know, of
course she would know. They were in it together, weren't they? It's
affected them all differently, but it has definitely affected them all.
And besides, Sid overheard Grace talking about quitting school, which
could be for different reasons. Still. She certainly wouldn't be the
one to call Grace on it.
She nods. "Cups?" she asks, turning away to reach for a cabinet door. "Is there something you want to try for?"
Grace Evans
"Yeah,
that's cups," she responds at the prodding, and Sid will find some
plastic cups and plates up there in the cabinet she reaches for. It's
not luck really, because there's only two cabinets to choose from.
"Kalen
asked me the same question," she says, "I want everything. I want to
fix it. Just, you know, fix it all. Save the world. Turn everything
back," she gives Sid a little sideways smile, like she's being a little
silly.
Sid
Grace may feel like she's being a
little silly, but what she says has Sid, who is just turning away from
the cabinet with two cups in one hand and two plates in the other,
stop. She gives her this look that's thoughtful as well as a little
surprised.
Then she's moving again, separating the plates between
her fingers and holding one out. Her mouth twitches, one corner
shifting into an almost smile.
"Me, too."
Grace Evans
"We
don't go for small goals," Grace responds, taking a plate and a cup,
and going after the pizza box. She gets herself a couple slices, and a
couple breadsticks, because eating is important, even if it's junky
pizza. She slides her pizza on the small 'dining room' table that's
really just a table off to the side of the kitchen. There is no real
dining room.
Then comes the soda (Pepsi) which she rarely drinks, but if you're going to go unhealthy food, go all the way right?
"We
don't have to talk about all that if you don't want to. Could talk
about the stupid finals week coming up, or... snow. Or, I don't know."
Grace flounders a bit, like wow, what to say? "But... yeah. Where would I
be without you? Wait. No. Don't answer that. It's not good. Um...
Thanks. Proper thanks. Infecting the virus with a virophage? That was
brilliant."
Sid
Sid tilts her head to the side,
her eyes lifting upward. "It's not..." She shrugs a shoulder and goes
to set her plate down so that she can pour soda (Code Red) into a cup.
The effort is made only a little awkward by the small baggie she still
holds in the curled fingers of her right hand. "For me at least, it's
not really a goal, it just. It feels like it's important." She
shakes her head, which still feels like it's swimming as she rights the
bottle and twists the cap back on. For pizza she only slides a slice
onto her plate, no breadsticks, not yet. Though that may change soon.
She
goes to join Grace at the table, setting down her plate and cup before
pulling out a chair. She's quiet while Grace flounders, looking up at
the woman while she tries to find something to say. There was a time
when Sid was much, much better at this social thing. She's been sort of
getting there, almost. At least she doesn't completely lock down when a
stranger veers a little too close. But she lets Grace go, and ends up
frowning at her while she verbally stumbles a little on her way to an
expression of gratitude.
Sid's expression relaxes, but she still
doesn't quite manage a smile. "Thanks," she says to the compliment, and
quickly follows up with, "You're welcome. I don't think I could have
done it without Jim's help." Grace was pretty out of it toward the end
there, but she may have felt the way the Ecstatic's resonance flooded
the lab where Sid had worked. He gave her the boost she needed for a
final push toward that virophage.
She sets that plastic bag on the
table next to her plate. Inside is a chocolate brownie too small for
its container. Outside is a now-crinkled sticker for one of the city's
medical marijuana dispensaries. "And it was lucky UCD had a sample."
She's diverting, but only a little. A very small part of it's habit,
but mostly Sid believes credit should go where credit is due. Luck was
very much in her favor, in all of their favor, when she was working for
that cure.
Grace Evans
"It is important," she says, returning to her plate and taking a seat.
She
listens as Sid diverts attention away from herself, and yeah, that's a
familiar thing. Sometimes though, you just have to take a compliment.
"I.. think I remember Jim being there, sometimes. What did he do?" she asks, and stuffs her face with a breadstick.
Sid
Sid
reaches into the baggie and breaks off a piece of brownie before
holding the bag up to Grace. "Would you like some? It's good for
anxiety and-" don't say anger don't say anger, anger so white hot it
scares her, ruins her sleep, makes her more anxious, "-appetite. Mine's
been..." she trails, finishing the statement with a shake of her head.
No dice, she means, gone, diminished. Which explains why it's been a
month and she's still too thin and too shadowed.
"He..." she
pauses, thinking back to that time. "He shared his mind with me. And
some of his strength. And took on my symptoms so I could concentrate."
Grace Evans
Oh, magic brownies. Well, probably not magic
magic brownies, but yeah. "Sure," she says, but it comes out like
'fhur' because her mouth is still stuffed with that breadstick. Appetite
is not her problem, or at least, she's used to stuffing food into her
so that Kalen won't complain. It's the reason why she doesn't look
nearly as thinned out as Sid.
Anxiety, though. There is some of that.
Sid
continues, going on about Jim, and her eyes widen. He took her symptoms
on? On purpose? In the waning days, when she was dying and the world
turned into Hell, Jim went there for her.
"Wow."
Chew, chew, chew.
"Still, though, I mean, he propped you up. You still did it. I guess I owe him some thanks too, huh."
Sid
Jim
would probably think that what he did was the least that he could do
for Sid. When the choices are Watch Sid Waste Away as the Light Goes
Out of Her and Remove The Burden of Death So She Can Work, for the
Ecstatic it wasn't much of a choice. There was no question of what he
would do.
Whatever may lie in the future for the Orphan and the Cultist, Sid will be forever grateful to him.
She
slides the plastic bag closer to Grace, though that's what, a few
inches? The table is small and the apartment is small, close,
intimate. It's the first time these two have had a few moments to
themselves to talk about anything. It may not be a thing that Grace
does often or easily, but it's not something Sid would have thought of
herself. She's grateful to the almost Virtual Adept, as well, and is
more than willing to share with her what things are at her disposal to
ease some of the strain of the last few months.
Grace guesses she
owes Jim some thanks, too, and Sid nods. "He..." she pauses, and now
her smile's is almost a proper smile. "He's pretty great." Finally,
she takes a bite of her own pizza slice. The magic brownies are hardly
instantaneous, but she might as well get started, even though the little
knot of her stomach clenches a little tighter at the thought of
something being put inside of it.
Grace Evans
There's
a thin smile, and she says, "I guess so," in wonder. The people they
know, capable of so much, and so willing to give it. It's like a slice
of the 'good stuff' that Kalen keeps telling her is out there,
somewhere, the beauty to counter the darkness.
"I never really run
into him. I need to get him Gingered," she says, and reaches into the
plastic bag to take a piece of brownie.
Chocolate, she would bet,
is one of those foods that one can eat when one isn't in the mood for
food. It's not food, really, it's edible delight. It's a wonder it
hasn't been banned by the backward just like the weed inside the
brownie, especially since all the commercials for chocolate include
orgasmic women. Seems like they'd crack down on that shit hard.
Anyway, the sweet is savored, you could say. Maybe not in orgasmic bliss, surrounded by brown silk, but Sid's here. Be polite.
Sid
Sid's
expression turns wry. "I don't think that's going to happen," she says
to Grace's need to get him Gingered. "He has a phone, but, he gets
distracted from it."
Which hasn't been much of a factor to Sid.
Jim has a special ringtone to let him know when she calls or texts, and
so she never has much trouble getting hold of him. When she needs him
he comes to her, and so she tries not to abuse his need to make sure
that she's okay.
"He was at the Chantry with me earlier. He's...trying, I think. To be around more again."
Grace Evans
"Well,
give him my number. Tell him if he ever feels the need to be connected,
he can find me," she says, and deflates a little. It's important,
connection. Especially through data. Something about the universe,
something about the connectedness of all things wants us to follow suit,
to be made in its image. If anything, Grace is a servant of that will.
"That's good," she says, to the 'being around more' bit. Both for Sid and the others, likely...
Pizza
comes after brownie, and she looks up at Sid with her full mouth and
squints a little, like she's trying to say 'bite, chew, eat, go on'. It
tends to work when Kalen does it, at least.
Sid
It
is good that Jim is trying to be around more. They don't have many
they can turn to right now who have such a great understanding of how to
bend reality to their will. Some of them are getting closer to that
next step, Sid included, but she's not there yet, and besides. Better
understanding doesn't immediately lead to better knowledge of the
spheres of magic.
The corner of her mouth quirks upward a little
when Grace makes that face at her. She's trying to eat, honest, but
it's hard when her body is simply so disinterested, at least for now.
When the brownie bite hits her stomach it starts a chain reaction
throughout her body. She gets looser, a litel more relaxed, starting in
her belly and working its way out to her limbs. She takes a drink of
soda.
"It's only been a couple days, but." She lifts the slice of
pizza toward her mouth again. "Have you thought about your shorter
term goals? Are you going to drop out?" This conversation is a little
easier for her than, say, talk of what happened Sunday night, or the
dream she and Kalen shared, or that lion over there that feels a little
like a storm itself. Sid takes a bite of her pizza, sets the slice
down, and dutifully chews.
Grace Evans
Grace
sniffs. "I don't know yet. Maybe, if I get my grades back, and I don't
bomb too badly," she says, chewing pizza at the same time. "I just don't
know what I'd do if not for... learn. You know."
She takes a sip
of Pepsi, and yeah, the 'anxiolytics' are starting to kick in on her end
too. It's a subtle thing, the dropping of shoulders, and relaxation in
general, that threatens to seep into her more thoroughly. The pizza does
seem a bit more appetizing now.
"I always just thought this was
my path. Never really considered others. I mean, yeah, there's the
writing, but.. I'm not even sure I want to make it all commercial, even.
Only sold it the once because this publisher asked me to."
Sid
Sid
merely nods, but that simple motion, that little down and up before
centering of her head, contains more understanding than she could put
into words. There is a smile, slight and subdued, for that humblebrag.
"That's cool."
She shrugs her shoulder, not dismissively, but more Ah, well.
"Learning to learn isn't bad, though. If it's things you like. Or
things you don't know. It could help, you know. With...magic. And how
you understand it."
Grace Evans
"Learning to
learn?" Grace asks, a little eyebrow-raise there. As if after all these
years, she hadn't figured out how to learn. "That's like, intelligence.
You know how to learn, you can learn yourself anything."
"How do you understand it?" she asks, pizza halfway to her mouth.
"I
mean, I sort of see this code, you know? Like, math-y symbol-y code.
Like the world is made of data inside this big computer, and I'm all
inside, looking at it. Looking at myself." And yeah, the brownie has a
kick, no? They're going to go philosophy while high, and there's not
even an Ecstatic around. Pity.
Sid
Sid nods once,
and then again to the notion that one can learn themselves anything.
She knows that, it's how she got as far as she's gotten with her
willworking, but it took a long, long time. "You haven't learned
anything from other Mages?" she asks. She remembers Gadfly, though she
hasn't heard from him since he called Lena "symmetrical." That was ages
ago. Her expression turns thoughtful. "It's harder on your own."
She
takes another bite of her pizza and it is becoming more appealing.
It's becoming the most delicious thing Sid's had all day, and Sid had
all natural ginger ale earlier. She does not eat with much more gusto
(that slice gets set back down after her bite), but it no longer looks
like she's forcing it through that hole called her mouth.
Grace
asks how she understands it, and Sid realizes she means her paradigm.
It's not a conversation she's had very often, mostly with Luke,
sometimes with Jim. She has to think about it.
And in this
moment, with the pot brownie making its way into her brain and making
her much more comfortable talking at length, and that mind still
swimming with the lesson earlier, it all sort of starts to blend
together.
"For me, it's...it's all connected. We're all
connected, and we're connected with everything else." She lowers her
arm, her left arm, pulls up its sleeve to reveal the tattoo there, the
two rings with its seven dots, and the words of Carl Sagan, WE ARE MADE
OF STARSTUFF. Sid's mouth curls into a smile as she runs her fingertips
over the black markings. "The universe is in us, and we are in the
universe. It's a living connection, like...a heartbeat. Or a drum."
Grace Evans
At
the question of whether she learns anything from other Mages, Grace
sets her pizza down, stops for a bit and licks her lips. She's not going
to answer yet, because Sid's still going, and that 'connection' bit
strikes a chord enough to get her to smile somewhat distantly. "Yeah. I
get that. Everything is one. The data is... not laid out like you'd
expect, and it's all interconnected, just... we can't usually see that
as being the case.
"I used to talk to Gadfly a lot about how it
all works. I think something happened to him," she says. "I know he was
being hunted. So."
She swallows, and it's like... this is just another piece on the shit pile, right?
"Either that, or when he comes back, he's going to get an earful about why he's been out of contact."
Sid
What
Sid does next would have come as a complete surprise when other
Awakened started climbing out of the woodwork around her in April. It
surprised Jim when she did it outside a cabin in the wilderness, on a
night full of stars when Pan showed up covered in his own blood and Sera
went to clean more of the stuff out of his car and everything seemed so
dire and terrible and like nothing would ever be okay again.
Sid
sets down her slice of pizza, and she picks up a napkin to wipe off her
fingers. The folded piece of thin paper gets crumpled up in one hand.
The other reaches out to rest across the back of Grace's arm. Sid's
hands are warm in a way unlike most others. Her extremities are full of
a warm primordial energy, a capacity for growth that is not terribly
common. That said, the heat of them is not overwhelming. It's gentle
and calm, like stones left to heat before a comfortable fire.
"I
hope he's okay," she says. She does not say she's sure he's fine,
because Sid is not prone to telling bald faced lies, but this she can
say.
Grace Evans
Grace always gets a bit
uncomfortable when touched, even when she can see it coming. It's partly
that she just likes her space, wants to be kept separate, but there's
another bit to it too. A tingling in her skin, like the start of
numbness, or something.
She just sits there, trying not to look
uncomfortable and failing. She knows people touch each other, knows
why, in a sense. They do it to comfort. And to say 'no, don't' just
feels wrong.
"I do too. I keep thinking he's just going to come
back someday, text me a continuation of our conversation like nothing
happened. He's kind of spacey, you know? Like, he doesn't really follow
the same track of time as the rest of us," she does a sharp little
half-grin at that. "I hope for that, so I can yell at him real good, and
nobody gets hurt."
Sid
For what it's worth, Sid
does not let her touch linger on Grace's arm. It lasts a moment, that
contact, but when she sees that obvious discomfort she lifts her hand
quickly up. Grace can still feel the warmth of Sid's palm lightly
against her skin a moment longer before she pulls that hand back to
herself, back into her own space.
She tries to offer Grace an
encouraging sort of look, but on Sid, who went too many years without
filling the role of comforter, it still looks concerned. She nods,
because she understands. What it's like to know someone who seems just
outside their timestream, and what it's like to not want to be touched
although she makes no assumptions as to the why. It's the way she's
been around Sid, the way Lena has been, too. Sometimes there is a
catalyst to that behavior, dark and ominous and obvious. Sometimes it's
less noticeable, even to the person.
"So, finals," she says,
straightening up, fingers reaching for a pizza slice that is now only
crust. Sid frowns at her plate, and then rises to get herself another
slice and one of those breadsticks, and a few of those cheese packets.
And
so it goes. They talk about less important things to the lives they
live as Awakened. There is no mention of Lucia Montanari. Sid does not
tell Grace about the dream she had about her and their other friends.
They tread lightly and they eat pizza. When eventually it's time for
Sid to leave, she gathers her things and offers Grace a small wave, more
wiggling of her fingers by way of goodbye as she thanks her for the
pizza. Maybe she takes what's left of the Code Red with her, but the
Pepsi is for Grace. It's the least she can do for her friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment