Brave Faces

Grace
[Awareness/Perception!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )

Elijah
nightmares!

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 6, 6) ( fail )

Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Grace
Grace rolls up to the Warehouse at about noon. She just hadn't felt up to the task of driving out yet, and whether that's mental or physical exhaustion is hard to tell. Probably a bit of both. She stayed the night with Patience, the body so used to sleep it wants to do more of that.

And the dream she had that night. It felt like a goodbye somehow. We are alive, it said. I am alive. It is so beautiful here.

And Grace, she is alive, and wavering on unsteady legs to the door of the warehouse, and curses at the weight of it when she gets there. Who decided that steel was a good door material? Wouldn't balsa have worked just fine?

Elijah
The night before, Elijah dreamed of water. He dreamed of Jenn and what she looked like from beneath the ice. He dreamed of the feeling his hands growing cold and the sharp press on his palms, but that day he felt hot. hot like the summer sun. Hot like a day that was stifling; cold like the feeling of winter bearing down on his chest. It was a contradiction. When he woke up, there was a little brown-haired woman staring at him. Jenn just kept smoothing his hair back, like she knew that he was somewhere far, far away in memory.

It wasn't the worst it's been; she'd seen him worse. but she'd definitely seen him better.

As such, Elijah called in sick to work that day and decided, instead, that he would spend the day studying, because he needed to be somewhere that wasn't his apartment. That wasn't covered in reflective surfaces and reminders. He rolled up at the warehouse at about the same time as Grace; it was finally the day that he wanted to roll himself out of bed and into the real world. He caught a look at someone down the way and-

"Oh holy fuck, it's Grace," he said with no small amount of surprise.

Grace
Grace turns to find Elijah, and for her he is no surprise. She had felt him -- or at least the tumult of him for quite some time. It fills the air with sudden twists and turns that strengthen as he approaches.

"Hey. It's me. Did you not get my message? Patience and I woke up, at least."

She turns again and scowls at the door, which she's let close again after he arrived. If he hadn't, she would probably just throw her weight into it and look ridiculous while trying to clamber inside. As is...

"Could you help me with the door? I've been asleep so long my muscles don't remember how to muscle."

Elijah
"I've been bad at checking messages this week," he admits, no small amount of sheepishness, "I… uh… am trying to get better about that."

His thoughts wandered to a few days before, and there was a sort of distance indicative of a mind wandering. he bridged the gap and very carefully took the door and gave it a good heft and the rather solid door yielded against his attentions. His attention turned back to Grace once the door was open he shot her a big, not-quite-so-bright grin. Elijah was tired, something that came through in the slowness of his motions. The fact that he wasn't vibrating like he normally was.

"Don't stress, doors are hard. I'm also available for stubborn pickle jars."

Grace
"Ha, ha," Grace says, in a low tone of sarcasm. "You can get the pickle jars, I'll handle the 'being in a coma'. We'll make a stellar team."

She's got a similar slow and drained feel about her. Where she's been, what she's seen -- it's been a trying few weeks.

She walks through the door, ungainly as hell. The little unevenness at the door frame catches her off guard. But it's good to be back in a place that feels like her, to wrap herself up in the mix of shifting storm and the subtler tumbling sensation that is Elijah. It feels like home.

"Kalen? Are you here?" she calls out. She knows the answer, really. But it's good to announce oneself, just in case, right?

Elijah
"That's fortunate, because I think I would be terrible at being in a coma so I would really, really rather not try it," he told her. He walked in along with her. He took a moment to inhale, take the feeling of the world around him and exhale because he needed something centering. he needed to try and get himself back in the swing of things. He had to keep his attention in the here and now instead of in the potential and the possibility.

"Are you going to tell him the wedding is off?" he couldn't help but grin.

Kalen Holliday
Kalen arrives shortly after they do.  His apprentice and his pseudo-apprentice have both seen much better days, but despite that Kalen has been elsewhere.  He hasn't mentioned where he's been or what he's been doing, although like both of them he has definitely also had better days.  But Grace is awake and Elijah is his apprentice so he steps out of his car and grabs a bakery box and a paper bag and he heads inside.

It does not take him long to catch up to them.

"Who isn't getting married now?"  He asks.  "I have food.  And cupcakes.  Contrary to what some people may think, there is a need to eat foods that are not cupcakes or waffles or cookies or donuts.  Coffee, however, is definitely an actual food group."

[Sorry.  That took longer than expected, but all the walls are drawn so I will be less like UGH WHYYYYYYYY.  :)]

Grace
Grace just gives him the most confused look. Wedding? What the hell is he going on... "Oh!" she exclaims, and then rolls her eyes.

"Sorry. Took me a while to figure out what you meant. I guess I'm still getting used to this whole 'real world' thing."

She takes a look around the place, and shuts her eyes. It doesn't feel any different than being in Bastion. Bastion was that good.

It's then that Kalen's voice comes in from behind. She turns, and it seems as if Grace can't contain her smile on one face. "Hey! You're alive! I mean, I knew, it's just... You know.

"We aren't getting married. But I do love you," she says, suddenly dropping some fake-seriousness. "For bringing cupcakes. Jesus Christ, I mean I haven't eaten anything in a month up till last night. I don't know how Luke kept me going, but it sure wasn't with cupcakes."

Elijah
He is fourteen different places, so the sound of Kalen's voice actually makes him jump, Elijah turned to the sound of the voice and it made him place that this was Kalen and Kalen had. He kept the grin on his face. Pleased. Tired, yes, but pleased none the less.

"Lies," he half-heartedly hissed, "cupcakes are totally a food group and completely acceptable as a staple for existence. It has grain, it has sugar, it has fruit sometimes, and I'm pretty sure chocolate counts as protein so cupcakes are really the perfect food."

Kalen Holliday
"Well.  I'll have to cancel the reservations and find some other use for a tuxedo and a ridiculous number of bottles of blackberry brandy."  Kalen smiles faintly and holds out the box toward Grace.  He remembers what it was like to wake up, so he keeps his hand under the box, but he lets her pick out a cupcake all on her own.

"Braver than I was, Kit.  I moved into the House for like a week.  Forced people to come see me.  Alexander read to me.  Not at the House.  When I was unconscious.  Well.  Unconscious here.  I...may have found it both ridiculous and endearing.  I also may have hugged him."

He glances at Elijah.  "Yes.  I know.  Spend months in some nightmarish alternate reality and I come back one of those people who hugs everyone."  Everyone?  Only a slight exaggeration really.....

Grace
She picks out a cupcake with red frosting, in the hopes of picking something fruity or... red. Red is a flavor, isn't it? She then takes her prize into the main room -- the one scattered with overstuffed couches in the corner. Grace has never been a good name for her, but today she's really showing it. The body has taken a toll.

"Maybe I'll move in here for a week. It wouldn't be bad," she says, sinking into the chosen couch.

"Nightmarish? Was it nightmarish for you?" she says, sadly. "I'm sorry. Sorry we couldn't get there sooner."

Elijah
"If you want to hole up here, I can bring you take out, it seems like the right thing to do," he offered to Grace.

The rest? The rest he didn't have much to say to. Normally, Elijah was a talkative creature, but at that juncture he seemed miles away and trying so damnably hard to be present instead of everywhere he could possibly not be. The young man took a perch at a table, and started setting out a rather familiar set of journals and inks because god dammit he was going to practice Enochian if it killed him and today seemed like as good as day as any.

Kalen Holliday
"Hey, Fae,"  Kalen says, coming up behind him and resting his hands on Elijah's shoulders.  "Hey."  Okay, he meant that to be slightly more expressive.  Like...with words.  Really.  It just only occurred that way in his head.

"Only sometimes," he says to Grace.  "And we got ourselves out, in any case."  He smiles.  "Although, I am glad to know we had backup."

Grace
"Elijah, you probably won't need to. But hey, it would be nice to give Kalen a break maybe. He's brought me enough takeout to last a lifetime or two," Grace says, and bites into her cupcake. This, Elijah, is what Kalen is famous for: bringing random food.

"It wasn't too bad for us. Until Lena died," she says, and the effect of sadness in her voice is blunted a bit by the fact that she's talking with her mouth full of cupcake.

"I mean, I saw her. And I thought she was really gone until a few hours ago, when I saw her message."

Elijah
Now, there were good intentions there, but Elijah was tense and very clearly not at his best at that juncture. No one in the room was, really, which was saying something, because dear gods this was going to become problematic. His attention finally focused on the feeling on his shoulders, hears a voice and just gets... hey.

"Yeah," which is the only appropriate reply, the only reply he can think of, but the apprentice stops. He turns and he smiles, or at least he tries to be reassuring because he needs to be reassuring because someone needs to be okay in the room and elijah wanted it to be him more than anything. He wanted to be the strong person here, but frankly he had a better shot at being Miss Universe.

Which is about when he caught the fact that Grace just said Lena died. His eyes widen, and the only person who was not in a coma recently looks aghast because, as far as he knows, Lena died and came back from the dead. "How-how did that- how does that work? How did she die but not, you know, die?"

Because he's convinced that has to be some kind of magical thing.

Kalen Holliday
"C'mere, Fae.  It's okay.  She's okay.  Everything's okay."  He smiles and hugs Elijah.  "It's been a little crazy the last few weeks.  But it's okay.  Everyone's okay."

"I'm sorry you had to think that."  He doesn't crowd into Grace's space the way he does Elijah's.  Does not pull her close to him and murmur reassurances into her hair.  But he smiles.  Warm.  Reassuring.  Drained.

"I also brought you noodles.  For, you know, if you ever get tired of cupcakes."

Grace
"She died in our... shared dream. While we were asleep," Grace says. It's the easiest explanation. "I thought that meant that she would die in the real world, but apparently it just woke her up. Which is marvelous, really. I'm just getting used it is all."

It was something magical, Elijah. Something far beyond her own ken. She leans back on the couch, pulling her legs up into a weird curl on the seat. They just don't want to move right anymore, those legs. She uses her free hand to start rubbing at a calf, all sore from the effort of walking and standing.

"They had noodles on the space station we went to. I guess the AI thought I would like something familiar. I'd really like some noodles too," she says, and smiles back at Kalen. "So glad you're okay."

Elijah
{this is the part where I totally keep it together}

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Elijah
C'mere, Fae, he says, and it doesn't take long before Elijah's arms are around Kalen and he's wrapped himself up in the other man's personal space because Elijah very clearly lacks a sense of personal space all his own, so he feels the need to invade the space of others. He takes those reassurances, the ones he needs so regularly, and nods. Everything was okay. Kalen was okay, Sally would be okay, Grace and Lena and Patience were okay and everything was okay. He few a few hard,  force breaths before his breathing became normal again, "it'll all work out."

He could finally pull himself together enough to pull back and take in what it was Grace had said.

Kalen Holliday
"I'm glad you're back.  I've only had Elijah and the cats.  And you know...a lot of people.  But not you.  So it wan't the same."

He seems reluctant to let Elijah step away, but he does allow it.

Grace
She contemplates her cupcake rather seriously. Kalen's gifts of food and shelter, these gestures... He just wants so much to make sure everyone else is okay. Like the way he hugged Elijah. "Are you okay, Elijah? Really, apparently as far as these things go, it was... it turned out fine."

"We did it, Kalen. I've heard the news. All the people in the hospital woke up. We convinced her to let them go," she says, and smiles, though the smile is a bit sad.

"I dreamed about her last night, you know. It felt real. I think she was saying goodbye. She's not dying anymore, at least. That's good."

Elijah
""I... uh... it's been a really messed up week," he said, "there was a ghost and-anyway, I slept like shit but that's par for the course. It's been one of those months. Et voil ."

With a shrug, but he didn't take his hand off of Kalen's ribcage The contact was casual, yet comfortable. He tried to dodge the question, it would seem, but not out-and-out lie about it.

"You guys just woke up from comas, I kind of feel weird complaining about ghost problems."

Kalen Holliday
"I dreamed about her last night too," he says to Grace.  He smiles, just a little.  "She seemed happy.  I...was glad."

"Hey, I think that ghost bothered me more than the whole creepy alternate reality thing anyway.  She's dead here.  She still needs help."

Elijah
"She shows up in my reflection... not always, just... sometimes, we have to fix this, Kalen, we-" he inhaled sharply, and while he wanted to be nervous or offsettled, he makes a decision, and it is a conscious decision, a forced decision not to be, "We'll figure something out."

Which is funny, because it sounds almost like the royal we, like Elijah has concluded he is most assuredly going to fix this one way or another.

Grace
"Ghost? What ghost? Or I should say, which one?" Grace says, then finally decapitates her cupcake with relish, red icing making its way to the top of her lips and the corners of her mouth.

She cares not.

She just gives Kalen an icing'd smile. He'd had the same dream? Then it was real.

Then, it's time for Elijah to speak, and she just kind of licks the icing out the corners of her mouth, like maybe it's not so great to go on with red sugar decorating her face at this juncture. "Oh man, Eli. I'm sorry."

Kalen Holliday
Kalen smiles.  "We will figure it out.  Don't worry.  I'm not sure how much help I'll be, but somehow we will figure it out and we will put that ghost to rest."

See.  Look how they have learned their brave faces.  Kalen is so proud.  They will need those for later.  He knows how they will need those for later.