He did come home.
He came home and it was late and he wasn't sure if he should knock or if he should say something, because maybe Kalen was sleeping. Maybe he shouldn't be waking his mentor up on account of
Elijah came home, stood in the warehouse by a door to one of the empty rooms and he waited. He stared at his phone, something with the barest smudge of blood across the screen and he couldn't stop thinking about the feeling in his stomach or the ghosts that were there or the question of whether or not reincarnation fixed misdeeds, whether or not it really did cleanse the soul or if they'd just damned a corrupt woman to an eternity outside of the natural cycle.
He didn't know what to do, so handing in his own home, he called Kalen.
Ring ring.
Kalen Holliday
[Yeah, you would totally do that. Sometimes, Kalen, you don't suck.
Arete | D=3 | WP]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen was at the office. Elijah could probably sense that. And both the office and the warehouse have started to pick up traces of ozone and lightning. It clings more strongly to the little stuffed puppy Kalen left on Elijah's bed, though that gift Elijah may not notice yet. There is a little leather pouch on a ribbon around its neck, stuffed with lavender and a little rose quartz sphere.
Look. Kalen needed something to do.
He answers his phone almost immediately, in the manner of (not exactly theoretically speaking) someone who has been watching their phone. Of course he has. How could Kalen possibly be sleeping right now, Elijah?
"Hello."
Elijah
"Everyone made it back alive," it's the first thing he says. It's the first thing he can think of to say, but he doesn't sound okay. He doesn't sound tired, either, even though by all rights every inch of him is exhausted. He has feelings at that moment, an abundance of feelings. He starts to wander, he hasn't made it back to his room yet, even though he wants to. Even though he wants desperately to crawl in bed and go to sleep and wake up and all of this never, ever happened but… but he can't do that. Take the good and the bad. The horror is part of the wonder, inseparable.
He wanders.
He wanders and eventually in his wandering does start to make it to the office. His stomach turns, and it finally dawns on him whose blood is on his phone and Elijah could feel his stomach turn again.
"Sera made sure everyone we brought with us is okay… and… and everything's okay."
Everything isn't okay. It doesn't sound okay in the slightest.
Kalen Holliday
"I suppose by some definitions of everyone, yes," Kalen says softly. His tone is gentle enough, but distant. There was a time that might have been different, when Kalen would have been waiting to meet him instead of leaving him adorable stuffed animals.
"I'm glad you all are safe. Or, at least, safe from Victoria. I assume that is over now, one way or another."
Elijah
He eventually does end up at the office, knocks on the door and waits to see a familiar face because he needs someone right now. He takes gentle, even if it comes with distant because it's the voice he wanted it hear.
"I'm worried about what's going to happen to her," he admits. He waits.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen opens the door and regards Elijah seriously for a few seconds.
After that pause he asks quietly, "Serafine or Victoria?"
Elijah
"Both of them," he replies.
He's physically fine. A little pale, a little distant, a little shaky, but physically there's no sign of injury and no sign of anything other than emotional distress. He wears it openly, looks like he might get sick but he hangs up his phone and looks at the other man.
"Sera really extended herself making sure everyone was okay… and… it took a lot out of her. And I don't know what is going to happen to Victoria… I… I think she's supposed to come back, to move on and that's supposed to fix her, right? She died, so she gets to start over in the next life."
… right?
It sticks with him, he has a hard time saying that she died, that it was hard and harsh and he keeps thinking of the reality of what happened, about how her head left her neck and...
Kalen Holliday
"I don't know. I don't know what became of Lucia, either. In a general sense, you can start over, but the soul remains the soul. The weight of what it has done remains. It may be that it will balance out, before her final judgment. I have heard that the rituals that make the Nephandi can cause them to remain twisted and wrong, but the kinds of things that Victoria was doing? There are more kinds of corruption than just the Nephandi. There are many ways to fall.
"I don't know what the one she chose will mean for her."
Elijah
He's quiet. He's quiet for longer than he should probably stay quiet, just nods because there isn't a sense of closure and there isn't… he just stands there, like he'd just stood there before, no will left to burn through and everyone walked away unscathed
He opens his mouth, like he was going to say something,but words don't come out and, instead, Elijah looked at the ground. He exhaled.
"I've never seen anyone die before," he admits.
Kalen Holliday
It has been a long time since the first person Kalen saw die. He was not six, it was not Melody. He was unconscious for that. He did not see his sister drown. It was only a few years later, but it was a stranger. A stranger whose death he had no part in but for happening to be present.
He doesn't say anything. Instead he turns and heads back toward the library, pausing just long enough to grab two wine glasses and a bottle of wine on his way. The glasses chime when he picks them up, the clear ringing chime of crystal. The bottle is pulled not from the bar but from a wooden case in a lower cabinet. Amber glass. Label hand-written in Spanish.
He sets the glasses on the table. Opens the wine. Pours two glasses. Holds one out to Elijah.
"The man I know who knows the most about souls would tell you that whatever things Victoria has done, whatever you had to do to her, there is no sin for which there can be no absolution. Victoria, Lucia, you, me, all of us...we will be judged by a God whose love and whose mercy is Infinite.
"I see no reason not to believe him."
Elijah
There is silence. It sits with him, and he doesn't know whether or not things are going to be okay. He knows, cognitively, that things will eventually be fine. That he will be fine and that the shock of this evening will wear off into something that rings true like… like the sound of crystal chiming against itself. Something that rings clear, a memory to be had. Another first that he got to log away into a whole world of first things he has yet to experience.
Why would this be no less sacred? Why would this be no less memorable? He's spent twenty years close to death. Twenty years hearing stories and hearing people intone their own ends, seeing the aftermath but never actually witnessing the act. Never being present for the final end of it all. It was not peaceful. It was nothing more than climbing and clawing and fighting the whole way thought.
He didn't want to go peacefully, either, all things said.
He holds the glass, looks at the liquid inside and his hands aren't shaking, but his gaze is transfixed on the color and the texture. His reaction times are slowed, and when he looks at Kalen, he smiles. Tired, mournful, but smiling.
"You can have absolution if you want absolution?" a second, then, "so… things… things are going to work out."
He wants to believe that, it creeps into his once, that aching want to believe in something good. So, he does believe it.
Kalen Holliday
"Well there are some other parts of it like repentance and asking for forgiveness, but yes. It is possible for everyone." Kalen sits and picks up his own glass of wine,
"But yes, things will work out." And he sounds absolutely sure.
Elijah
He just holds it. It's not like him to not drink whatever is in front of him. It's not like him to to try and consume to forget, but at that juncture something told him that this wine was special. Still standing, the young man just took the time to be in the moment. Shaken and unsure, but in the moment none the less. He doesn't have to be sure, though. Kalen is sure. Kalen is sure and he can take that for what it is, that he knows some absolute truth that Elijah was still figuring out, but that truth was still there.
"If it counts for anything, you're the first person I came to tonight," another thing he could be unsure about.
Elijah does finally the a sip of wine.
Kalen Holliday
"Well," Kalen says after a moment, "I suppose that's something."
Elijah
He doesn't say anything after that. Instead, he just takes a seat somewhere and he takes drink of his wine. Another, more full bodied drink. There's the awkward silence, the stilted pauses, the moments when he is uncertain. He'll have to find that strength in himself, even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard.
Kalen Holliday
"She's dead, you've destroyed or at least taken anything that would let anyone else do the rituals, and this is over?" Kalen asks quietly.
Grace
[Awareness?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Elijah
"Yeah," he says, "we made sure that the place was clean and that whatever was there was taken care of. I think… I think we need to go back tomorrow… and make sure that we didn't miss anything."
Back to business, he could focus on that.
Kalen Holliday
And then, even more quietly. "Was there any sign the Hermetics who came might be alive?"
Grace
Grace was in her office down the hall when the others swept through it on the way to the library. The twisting raucous that is Elijah -- she felt it.
What she didn't pick up on was everything else.
There's been no epilogue posted to Ginger, and there was no hint that Elijah just returned from... Well, from that.
Eventually, she decides it's time to stop being antisocial and join the others, but when she appears in the doorway, all smiles, it's apparent that for once, the information hound knows nothing.
"Hi Elijah," she says, and her face falls upon seeing and actually processing the two.
"What happened?"
Elijah
"There were some people I didn't recognize from the papers, so… I think… I don't think they made it," he told Kalen, "how many people came? I'm very sorry."
Apologetic, yes, mournful, certainly. But there was something tender about that, gentle as though he wasn't sure if these were friends of Kalen's. If these were people he would have wanted to see again, if they were more than tradition mates but Elijah was certain that… well… that they were no more.
But, then there is Grace, and he files, though mournful, because Elijah is capable of smiling. He is capable of being present, with a wine glass in hand and some silence. It took a moment. He starts from the beginning.
"Sera, Ian, and Jae-Shinn- he's an Aksashic friend of Ian's, came with me and Alexander to deal with whatever was at the house. Lucy met us there with the spirits of the departed. We intervened and stopped whatever was going to happen, rescued a hostage and… Victoria's dead, but whomever we brought with us came out alive."
Not okay, he doesn't make that assumption.
Kalen Holliday
"I don't know," he says in response to Elijah's question. "But none of them have contacted me." He rises, with a little nod to Grace. "I'm going to go inform the Order. They'll want to know." [And Ix has a cold and sucks at awake, and so will let you two play. Thank you for scenes.]
Grace
Oh. It was that bad. And that good. Why did Elijah go?
Why did you go trying to stop a bunch of mad biologists when you were still a freshly awakened student, Grace?
The memory of that comes to her, all of those realizations hitting her one after another.
"Oh, Elijah."
With that, she crosses the room, tension-tight. People (who are not her) like hugs during times like this, don't they? Yes. They do. Sometimes, it's not about doing unto others what you would have done to you.
She spreads her arms suddenly, like she's just realized that a hug is going to require doing something with her arms.
Elijah
He hugs Grace.
He isn't even thinking about the fact that Grace is not a hugging person, or the fact that Grace does not hug or doesn't really do physical contact, but he hugs her anyway, wine glass in hand and he closes his eyes and he just revels in the fact that there is someone close and warm and he doesn't even care that there is the feeling of something honed and keen and stuck in his lungs. Almost painful. A little awkward, but very Grace.
"It's not okay right now," he said, "but… it'll be okay sometime."
Grace
"Yes. It will be," she says, soft so as not to hurt his ears. They're so close. Since when are ears so close?
She breathes in a breath of him, deals with the strangeness of the smell. It's just an odor. Pretend it's oranges.
Someone else's warmth, someone else's scent, someone else's body. It's not exactly hated, but not exactly comfortable either, is it?
"But you don't have to be okay right now. You don't have to ever. You just feel what you need to."
Her arms wrap around all loose. She's trying to let him have his space if he needs it. He probably doesn't. But hey. She taps lightly on his spine with a fist. It's something like a pat. There there, it's not okay.
Elijah
[OMG don't start crying]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
Elijah
To his credit, he didn't throw top all evening. He found he didn't have anything in his stomach, now, except for a little bit of wine but that was either here nor there. He inhaled the smell of Grace, which wa probably something that he could just revel in for the time being and the fact that GRace was there and she was present and she was giving him permission to not be okay. inhaled a harsh, shuddering breath. There were indications that the human body made when they were coming up on tears, but he didn't give way to them. Not yet, anyways.
"It's… of god, it was horrible," he admits. He admits like he should be ashamed of that.
Grace
Memories of watching Eric die -- the way he melted from the inside -- well up. The way he screamed. Oh, God the screams. She takes a sharp hiss of a breath.
"I know," Grace says. Creaks it out, because while Hydra doesn't haunt her dreams anymore, it's always going to be her first time.
She doesn't ask for details. She just knows.
Elijah
She know. Something tells him that she knows, and Elijah, knowing that he can't hold onto Grace like he'd wanted to, finally does let go and he finished off his wine. It was something special, something that had a nice flavor on his tongue, that lingered there.
"Thanks, Grace," he says, quiet.
Grace
He lets go, and she backs up, puts her hands behind her back because she's still so conscious of having hands and not knowing what to do with them.
She nods in response to his thanks.
"Well, this place is safe," she says. "Big thick doors, you know. And we'll bring you food and whatever you need. If you want to stay away from people for a while. I know I did. Maybe you don't. And that's okay too...
"I'm rambling. I'm sorry."
Elijah
Sometimes, it's difficult to know what one should do with their hands. Elijah has an easy way out. He has something to do with his hands because he, lucky bird, has a wine glass to contend with. Grace rambles and, for his part, he is content to listen. Content to take it all in and absorb the rambling for what it was and take comfort in the cadence of another person's voice. He needs people. He desperately needs people. He has a stuffed puppy waiting for him in his room, but he doesn't know that yet.
"Don't be sorry, you didn't do anything wrong," he said, he even smiled and it curls at the edges and there is something pleasant about it, "I think… I think I might not want to be around people for awhile… but I think I need to be around people. Reminders of life and living and… ya know?"
Grace
Grace looks down at the floor. "Yeah. I know. I had to be coerced a bit, myself. But I know."
Yeah. It was Kalen who did that for her, all that food gathering and making her be sociable again. He didn't lead her out of the darkness. She did that herself. But there is such a thing as clearing away a path.
"If you need anything... I'll... We'll help. Just don't be afraid to ask."
Elijah
He nods again, and puts his wineglass down on a table. Gives him something to do with his hands. He inhales something long and deep. He doesn't want to be around people, he needs to be around people. he likes being around people. he actually enjoys human interaction, he just… needed…. something. he didn't know what he needed. Elijah ran a hand through his hair.
"I'm gonna go take a shower. I'd invite you, but I think you'd appreciate me not inviting you to take a shower way more than you would actually appreciate being in awkward human space while taking part in methodical cleansing ritual."
Grace
Usually such words would provoke something. A raised brow? A shocked expression? But she knows how it is, right? People under such stresses say strange things.
Like: 'I'd invite you to shower with me'.
"If you want, I could sit outside. That way you'd know someone was there?"
Elijah
"I'll holler at you when I get out," he said, "I… uh… figure I should eat something that isn't wine."
He's quiet for a little while. It's odd, to have these pauses, these moments of silence, of being shaken, of feeling like all of this wasn't really real, because it wasn't really real to him yet. He was still in denial, it'll hit him later, probably when the water's run cold and he realizes he has to get the blood off of his phone.
A beat.
"I recognize, on a cognitive level, that I need to eat something… because I haven't eaten anything all day…. but I don't want to think about meat or pork or people," and his stomach turns, and he remembers that parts of those people were missing and he knew good and well what happened to them.
Grace
"Yeah. I've been there. You don't want any food that might be remotely... that might bring up memories. How about a salad? I know how to make them safe. Nothing meat or... reminiscent," Grace says, tripping over words that themselves might bring up memories.
For Grace, the wine would have been a trigger.
It looks too much like blood.
So you know, that salad will absolutely not have tomatoes. Or Catalina dressing.
Elijah
"I think I am involuntarily becoming a vegetarian," he said, lamented, almost grinned too. He straightened out the front of his shirt, instinctively reached for his phone- because he's young and those of his generation can't seem to leave their damned phones alone for more than a few moments before he immediately pulled his hand back and shook his head.
"It's probably for the best. I'm… uh… I don't think I am going to be too keen on eating anything with a semi human consciousness for awhile."
Or at all. Or ever.
"Or soup. Pho is pretty-" nope, pho has beef in it and his stomach turned at the mention.
Grace
Grace nods. "I've never been back to Starbucks. But that's not much of a sacrifice for me, really."
"Listen, you go take that shower. And then you can have a salad. You might not even really notice it, but it'll feel just a little sliver of a bit better to be clean and not hungry."
The cleanliness, well... it's symbolic. She knows about the methodical cleansing too. You want to feel clean on the inside, so you clean on the outside, trying.
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