Who doesn't want to be a god?

Elijah
[Am I getting drunk? Odds yes, evens no]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

Grace
So, technically, this counts as picking up cupcakes on her way back, but only because she never came back to the office last night. Whether she stayed at the Chantry or actually slept in her own bed for once remains a mystery.

But, if Elijah's paying attention, he'll hear the sound of her car pulling up in the driveway. If he's really paying attention, he'll feel her approach as a subtly shifting sharpness. But it wouldn't take a degree in noticing things to figure out what's up when she busts through the door of the warehouse carrying a big white box.

"Hey! Elijah! I bring gifts. Lots of teeny little gifts."

Elijah
What did Elijah do when he had nothing better to do? What did he do with his time now, especially since he didn't spend most of his Friday nights out and about and getting royally shitfaced with other people, Elijah spent his time doing copious amounts of research and getting shitfaced privately.

This was probably not the best of plans.

So, there he was, commandeering a table or spending time in his room and there was the sound of a car pulling up and there were people! He skittered out of his room and headed off to the sound of people, because Grace was a people, and Grace was a people bringing gifts. Which was better than drinking tequila and reading about the ancient Sumerians.

"Usually when I bring you teeny tiny gifts, there's a bribe involved, what am I doing?" he said incredulously.

Grace
Grace shrugs. "I don't know. What are you doing? Not every cupcake is a bribe. I just thought you might need a cupcake. Or five."

True statement. Maybe she learned it from Kalen? Whenever people are upset about the latest thing, you bring them food. And blankets.

"I'm not... I'm not saying you're too skinny. Or anything."

Elijah
he could use a cupcake… or five.

Elijah reached tentatively for the box, his hands deft and he carefully retrieved the nearest cupcake. He wasn't picky, but he did spent time admiring the cupcake for what it was. What was he doing?

"Getting drunk and reading about the Sumerians," Elijah replied to her question. She thought he could use cupcakes.

Lots… and lots. Of cupcakes.

"It's been a shit month," he said.

Grace
"Yeah, it has."

Grace takes her box and moves to the corner of the warehouse set up with a table, chairs, and a couch. From the outside, you would never expect such fine furniture to be here, but as Grace and Kalen are both creatures of disjointed natures, neither of them seem to care.

Well, Grace just doesn't care because furnishings are meant to preform a function, not look pretty. But Kalen has other ideas, as evidenced by the maps on the walls. All the personal homey touches come from him, because Grace would be quite happy in a bare-bones white room as long as it contained what she needed.

Like cupcakes.

"Maybe the cupcakes are because I still feel a bit bad for making your month that much shittier. I don't know."

Elijah
"You didn't do anything to make me make stupid decisions, Grace, I was the one who decided to not think about what he was doing before he actually did it," Elijah replied, as though he were just accepting of this fact by absolving Grace of her guilt because… well… Grace didn't do anything wrong. He licked the top of the cupcake, taking some of the icing along with him.

It was hard to be displeased or upset when someone was eating cupcakes, because cupcakes really did fix everything.

"I wasn't asking the right questions."

Grace
Grace opens the box on the table, perusing the choices. They're all the same. But still. Eventually she decides on one from the middle, and retreats to a chair with it.

"Yeah. And then I bitched you out in the most public of fashions. I just... I don't want you to get the idea that everybody hates you. They don't. I mean, they really don't."

Considering the sheer amount of flack Grace has racked up so far for the comment asking how he manages to think? Yeah. The Mages of Denver give about a thousand shits about Elijah. And they should.

She starts unwrapping her little cake, trying to keep her fingers out of the icing. It's something to do with the hands, something to focus on with the eyes. A good distraction.

Elijah
"Everyone doesn't hate me, people just don't trust me," he said matter-of-factly, though it wasn't so much matter of fact as it was strangely accepting of the fact that things… things were not good. He was displeased, yes, but it as like he was expecting the kick to come or the hit to come there or something to that effect.

"Can you really blame them? I don't trust me," he replied.

Grace
"Why not?" she says, and it's an idle question, posed like she's not really asking something that bad. She licks the cupcake wrapper for its stuck-on icing bits before setting it down on the side-table.

Elijah
Why doesn't he trust himself? Elijah doesn't have to think too hard about this, "because I've already proven precisely how freaking amazing I am at making decisions when I think I'm doing the right thing. There are fifteen year olds that make better decisions than I do, Grace, if I could be trusted to make the right calls then freaking Eleanor wouldn't think I need a different mentor and I wouldn't have had to fucking move here and I wouldn't be talking to fucking technocrats and-"

He stops himself. Like he'd pushed on a bruise.

"Anyway, I've more than proven that my judgment is questionable, and intent doesn't really matter."

Grace
"You know why I don't trust myself? Because I don't know how to be human sometimes. Because when things go lopsided, I have a tendency to calculate. I've killed people without thinking about it much before or after, just because in the moment, their deaths gave me better odds."

She takes a bite out of her cupcake. Closes her eyes.

"I think... I think that Kalen doesn't trust himself because he thinks he's not going to be there in time to save the ones he loves. And he loves just about everybody, so."

"I think we all have some level of self-doubt. If we didn't, there'd be nothing to grow out of. We'd be perfect already. Kinda boring, that."

Elijah
What was self-doubt? She says something and elijah lets himself show precisely how inexperienced he is because at that moment he stopped. He faltered, he looked at her, and while Grace doesn't understand how to be human, Elijah courts death but had never actually experienced it. Not from anything outside of a first person perspective.

"Perfection isn't attainable, but it is an admirable goal."

Grace
"Oh yes. But it's the path that really counts. All the bumpy bits too. I mean, growth is beautiful in its own way, but being perfect is like being static -- stuck. The path to perfection never ends, even if some like to try to cut it in two and say that it ends."

She breathes in lets it go again, opening her eyes to the room again, to frosting. Frosting.

She licks it off the top all catlike, and manages to get some stuck on her upper lip.

Elijah
"You want tequila?" he asked, may as well ask because he had been drinking before there were cupcakes. He took a bite of cupcake, managing to keep himself relatively clean. Relatively comfortably at that, The cupcakes made him think of-

There was silence for a moment and-

"The path is supposed to be the fun part, and if you think you're perfect then… well, that just shows a lack of self understanding," he said, "I… I'm just ready to quit feeling like shit, but I'm not, does that make sense?"

Grace
Grace shrugs. "Yeah, I get that."

She bites more cupcake before speaking. "I mean, not exactly, because only you know you. But I've had that notion before like I just... needed to feel better like right now."

All of that? Said with her mouth full.

"So, let me understand. You're mixing tequila with the study of ancient Sumeria?"

Elijah
"It's kind of a shitty feeling, I can't tell if I'm feeling this or if I'm holding onto it, and if any of this really just riding it and being in the moment because as shitty as this is it's fucking amazing that something can make a person feel like this," he said.

So... wait. Was he really mixing tequila with ancient Sumeria

"Humanities is an interesting enough topic, but if it's anything like French you actually do retain it all better when you're drinking. There's a linguistic theory that-" he stops himself "-I'm trying to dope myself into finding the ancient Sumerians interesting. I preferred basically everyone else in the region to the Sumerians."

Grace
"You don't find them interesting? Gilgamesh and Enkidu? The descent of Inanna into the underworld? I mean, that one involves a goddess performing a striptease, Elijah. Pheh. Not interesting..."

Obviously Grace has opinions about the relative interest of ancient cultures. And how.

She also has yet to get that icing off her lip.

"Try to see it as riding it and being in the moment, I guess. If you try, it might actually come true."

Elijah
[WP: DO NOT TOUCH GRACE, SHE DOES NOT LIKE THAT]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Elijah
he watched. He watched and he observed and that icing was… still… there. Elijah cocked his head to the side and he almost reached out to- nope this is Grace we are talking about. Elijah cleared his throat, "you… uh… are adorned. And I really, really didn't enjoy them. Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands- they are taking all of the interestingness out of this and beating us to death with it and saying oh, hey, we have poetic devices, this is important, blehblehblehhh and the joy of it is- augh."

He huffed. Yes, huffed.

Grace
[int + academics = Does Grace know the specific part of the Epic of Gilgamesh that Elijah is talking about???]

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 3, 4, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[int+computer = Well, maybe we can find out more about that quote... Just because I want to break out the big dice.]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Grace
"Huh. I never thought it was that bad," Grace says, and wipes her lip off. Licks her hand too, because sugar is nice. Then she abandons the cupcake and pulls out her phone. Life, which you look for, you will never find. But Google finds everything.

"Ahh. Well, it does continue a bit, doesn't it?

"Gilgamesh, fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let days be full of joy, dance and make music day and night... Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of spring the winter garment of repentance fling. The bird of time has but a little way to flutter and the bird is on the wing."

The first part of that was Gilgamesh. The second part something memorized. She devours more cupcake again, filling her belly. "Does it ever make you wonder why people keep saying that, over and over again in various places and times and all?"

Elijah
"Fill your belly? Or day and night?"

Grace
"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. You know. The same thing pops up everywhere. Myself, I'm more of a 'do do do, for tomorrow we die' kind of person, but you know. If you're into that sort of thing," she says, and shrugs. Maybe she just doesn't care.

"It's just a remarkably persistent idea, living."

Elijah
"I hear that every morning," he says, but it sounds like a confession, "I... you were right, I don't dream anymore, it's not that it's stopped, it's just... it doesn't bother me anymore but... yeah, anyway. LIve, live you bastard for tomorrow you die. Live, live child for tomorrow it begins again. It's... at first, it really scared me, you know? I thought... I thought that-anyway. Being alive and living are difficult concepts, because living is a much less passive thing than it seems."

[per+aware, does Grace care?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )

Grace
It's never too difficult to determine the various moods of Grace Evans. She doesn't really try to hide much. Usually. Elijah should have picked up by now that she is not the kind of person who would buy cupcakes for you if she didn't care. The whole night has been an act of caring.

"You hear it every morning? Like, what? Your Avatar?"

Elijah
Grace Evans doesn't do this stuff for just anyone. She did this stuff for people she cared about and, at that juncture, it was enough to make him smile. Something genuine, something that reaches his eyes and lingers there for a moment that was a long, long time coming. Cupcakes really did fix a lot of things. Elijah finished off his cupcake and went in for tiny cake numero dos.

"Yeah, it's... I'm gonna guess it's my avatar, because it sounds like the Voice-" a capitalization in his tone, something important, "before the dreams stopped, it told me I'd faltered before... I guess it's all just been a big lesson?"

Grace
"Mine doesn't really talk to me. Not like that. I mean, it's... it's given me visions a couple of times, but it doesn't wake me up every morning. Just sometimes."

She slides the phone back onto the table, maybe a bit self-conscious of how it must seem to Elijah, that she enjoys carrying on even important conversation with it in hand.

"So it wants you to live. And you're right, it isn't passive, living. Giving up is easy. Living is hard. But it's like that path toward being a better person, yeah? It's the hard lessons that keep us going. If we didn't have somewhere to go... it wouldn't be worth it to walk. We might as well have never started. Like Siduri says, only the gods already have life. They don't need to live. Death is given to us, so that we will strive to live."

Grace picks up the heel of her cupcake and shoves the rest in her mouth. And yeah, she's going to continue her spiel with a mouth full of cake.

"If you believe in that sort of thing. It would be nice to be a god though. To make my own universe with its own rules, and not have to die. Something else to strive for, I guess."

Grace grins, almost like she's kidding. But she's seen another universe -- rebuilt it from its broken parts. The dreams of Mages are so rarely small.

Elijah
"It would be horrible to be a god, I think, to have the entirety of a universe looking at you for answers when, really, all you wanted to do was to make something cool," he continued on listening, but was content to eat cupcakes and dig in to cupcake numero dos and enjoy the fact that there was frosting and deliciousness and something to muse over.

"And I wouldn't say giving up is necessarily easier. If you have the choice between living and existing, or living and dying, that's a big deal. Death is hard. Death isn't even really the end of things."

Grace
Elijah says it would be horrible to be a god, and Grace tilts her head. He doesn't want the responsibility. Well, sucks to be him. Maybe this is why he gets those regular admonishments. Go. Live. Don't just exist.

"I wish I could just believe you on that. Once I had someone tell me that upon Awakening, she remembered all of her past lives, even their deaths. I told her it must be a bit comforting, having that assurance that, you know, death wasn't the end.

"She said I didn't understand what dying felt like. If I did, I wouldn't say that. She was kind of right. Even if we do recycle, I wouldn't like to remember it. I've had way more than enough of that."

Elijah
"And what if it is the end? I mean, the real honest-to-goodness end. I know that ghosts are real, either that or I'm psychotic. These two things might not be mutually exclusive, but still..." he paused, and had to muse over what it was that Grace said. What she said, what she meant. Elijah was a contemplative creature from time to time, and this was one of those times, "wouldn't people kind of fall into the conservation of matter category? LIke, if people have souls and souls are made of something?"

Grace
"Data," she says, rather final and succinct. Everything is data. Everything. "I don't know, really, what souls are. Part of me wants to think it's like what remains after you delete a file. The data's still there, it just isn't referenced anymore. Until something else comes by and writes over it, it sticks around. That's how you can still scrape a hard drive of its contents well after someone decided to go on a delete-spree."

She eyes the cupcakes again. They're looking a bit... necessary. Okay, death and cupcakes go together so well, don't they? She leans over, opens the box, picks another orangey-browny cupcake, and then inspects it like she's looking for defects.

"That's ah, a little morbid though. Truth be told, I haven't the faintest actual idea."

Elijah
He's unphased.

Death and cupcakes went together marvelously. And here he was, bright and young and engaged in the concept, someone who believes, whole-heartedly, that there is something beyond. That there is something that lingers, and he might not think it's data, but he's interested in whatever it is that Grace thinks. He continues munching along happily, taking something lemon and sugarry and tasting quintessence on his tongue- something he could blame Kalen for.

"It's okay if you don't have a real idea, I think the nature of the soul and whether or not it's really real is a complex question. a lot of people think there's an afterlife, a lot of people statistically believe that reincarnation is a thing, and even more people think it just ends. If it just ends, is it really important to be a good person? If it doesn't just end, are people good just out of fear of punishment in the afterlife? It's one of those things."

Grace
"I think, anybody who's only a good person out of fear of some punishment after death? They aren't a good person at all," Grace says, and takes a big bite out of her cupcake.

"You do good because it makes sense here and now. And let me tell you, if I am getting any punishment in this life, I have to wonder what the hell kind of ass-backwards shit I got up to to deserve it. We don't get what we deserve. It's kind of a relief that."

Elijah
"Now, is a good deed with bad intentions still a good deed, though? Do our intentions actuallly matter because, for the most part, I'm starting to notice that the intention doesn't matter as much as the act and if I intended on being a dick and if something good came out of it, then I still pretty much netted a good action which doesn't necessarily make me a good person, just a person who does good things. I guess it comes down to the idea of what a good person is- is a good person the sum of their deeds or their deeds and their intentions?"

He paused, "I'm not sure if our intentions matter."

Grace
"I think intent matters," Grace says, licks her lips to get any frosting off. "I also think it doesn't magically make things any better. If you intend to do good, you're more likely to do good. And if you end up not, then it's a lesson for next time.

"But it's not so simple as that. Good and bad, deeds and intentions. What is a good deed, how would you define it? We all have our own ideas. I mean, hell, even the Technocrats think they're doing the right thing, and they're little shitbags."

Elijah
"What if the concept of good is just a social construct to mean beneficial to people versus not beneficial. We think that doing things that seem altruistic are good, right? And actions that are self-serving, or harmful, are bad. So, if you intend on curing polio and you actually end up making a super virus, you did a bad thing even if your intentions were altruistic. The end result was still pretty shitty and, therefore, not a good thing. you can't rely on intention for second chances. Sometimes, you don't get those."

Grace
"Hmm. Are we talking about this in a general sense, or in the sense of your latest... you know... imperfectly executed plans? Because you didn't make a super virus.

"And, I'd say, in the case of the super virus, if you intended to make it and succeeded, you'd go about trying to spread it. If you did not intend to do that, you'd go about trying to cure it. That's why intent matters. Because sure, the thing that was done was bad, but it's what you do with that that counts."

Grace curls her feet up into the chair, to get comfortable in ways that only Grace Evans could ever find comfortable.

"So, in your case, if you intended to call down the Technocracy on your ass, you'd continue in that fashion and we'd all be in big trouble. But you're not. You're right, you don't get to throw up your hands and be like 'but I didn't intend to do anything wrong, so it's all better now', because no. It doesn't actually work that way. But you do get to learn and grow and not do that next time."

Elijah
"You know, I did all of this shit, and I mean all of this because the idea of losing Alicia or something happening to her or her having a major breakdown over all the stuff that happened to her scares the ever loving shit out of me? And that I didn't want to lose having her in my life?" he says it like the idea is pushing on a bruise, prodding at a wound that hadn't healed. That he didn't know how to start bandaging.

"My intention didn't matter, still doesn't matter, because even though the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her? I did that. It was the first thing I did. I betrayed the trust that she put in me and I can't get that back... and instead of telling her... I waited. Because I was a fucking coward and I didn't know how to tell her and I was waiting to find a way. she told me I should have just asked, because she would have told me what I could say... but I didn't. And whatever was there? Isn't. Not anymore, at least."

A beat passed.

"I miss my friend, Grace."

Grace
"I know," she says, and her eyes wander off of her cupcake, to appraise Elijah.

He's so sad. Like a puppy.

"So now you know why you shouldn't do that sort of thing in the future, right? I'm not saying you can fix what happened between you guys, but someday somewhere, somebody is going to put their trust in you. And you're not going to abuse it because of what happened here. You take a level in growing up. And you fix yourself. That's all you can ever do."

Elijah
"I don't think I want people to trust me like that anymore, Grace."

Grace
"That's really not up to you," Grace says, and shrugs. "Which is why it's so important to grow and move on, and to borrow a term from your Avatar: live."

Elijah
The rest of a cupcake goes right down the hatch at the young man straightened himself out, "so, you don't do tequila? I'm going to have to restructure how I do things, I don't know if Kalen will get shitfaced with me and drinking alone blows, G."

Grace
"Huh? Oh. Right. Tequila. Sure, I'll have some," Grace says, as Elijah dodges... well, he just dodges.

Someone is intent upon staying a child. Someone is intent on keeping responsibility as far away from him as possible. Someone does not want to be a god.

All of that would be more possible if this someone weren't a Mage.

Grace gets up to go fetch a shotglass and get to this whole 'getting shitfaced' thing, because man does she need to after all this. She isn't going to push this issue, because unlike Elijah's Avatar, she is not the pushy type. And he is not hers to fix. But still, it is concerning. What do you do when you and your very connection to the Universe are so diametrically opposed?

Well. Maybe give him time to think. Give him time to process. Maybe, eventually...

She pops her head back in the doorway, shotglass in hand. "You got the salt and limes?"

Elijah
Someone does not want to be a god.

Someone does not have a choice in that matter. Not anymore, at least.

he headed back to his room, and sure enough he did retrieve a decent bottle of tequile, and salt, and limes. And oranges and cinnamon because why not? Because if someone was going to do shots, he was going to do them in an unexpected way, or at least a way that he was excited about.

"Of course I have salt and limes!" because he came prepared, this one. "Thanks for partaking in friday night rituals with me, by the way."

Grace
"Tequila is your Friday night ritual? Mine is usually writing code until I pass out and trying to keep a cat from eating my plant," Grace says. "So, you know, maybe it could use some shaking up a little. I don't want to write code while drunk though. Gets in the way."

And thus, she explains the reason behind the relative lack of Grace drunkenness. It gets in the way of hacking. There is one who cannot possibly understand why Elijah does not want to go go go.

"Should I call you 'E'?" She asks, and sounds serious.

Elijah
"You can call me whatever you want to call me. Kalen picked out a name, and I'm not entirely certain as to his reasoning behind said name? But he explained it once."

He paused, "normally, my friday night involves going out, getting drunk, and dancing with someone. Or going to a house party. Or waking up with someone whose name I only sort of remember. Friday and Saturday usually sort of blend together."

A second passed. "Or sometimes Thursday and Friday. I don't work on Fridays, I told my boss it was a religious thing."

Grace
Grace snorts. There's something deeply hilarious about skivving off work by telling your boss it's against your religion. Playing one boss against the other, only in Elijah's case, the religion is himself. "Great way to find your slack."

Yeah, he does tend to do a good job at that.

She shares with him the ritual of getting shitfaced on a Friday. She won't dance with him or wake up with him later, but that's to be expected from the one who always keeps her distance. Even if she thinks distance is an illusion -- something our brains made up. Something we could overcome with the right perspective...

But there are different kinds of closeness. Has she ever told anyone else how she killed a man? How the one thing that really bothers her is that they killed Lena the day before, and she wasn't even thinking about that at the time? No fires of vengeance, only cool calculation.

He says that he doesn't want anyone to trust him like that again. And it's so not up to him. Not up to him at all.