Fate may change everything, but right now... (Jamie ST)

Grace
The original plan on Monday had been coffee and a bank heist. Grace's target wasn't money, but information (and really, is there a difference?) but it was still a heist. They never quite made it.

Not that night.

Coffee turned into talk, turned into them ordering more coffee just to talk. It was Grace who brought up the fact that they were stalling, and Mike who recognized why, and kissed her.

Theirs was a complicated dance, made more so by the fact that Grace never understood the steps. It makes it easier when your partner is as understanding as Mike can be.

Fuck that man.

They are both creatures who don't often stop to smell the roses on their path, so now it is with a bit of sheepishness that Grace is going out with him again -- to put their plan back in play. People have died while they were busy getting over themselves.

She's still not certain that this will go well, but she's got her laptop out in Mike's car at the bank parking lot, looking for some wi-fi that she might be able to crack into.

"Okay, I'm still not sure this will get us anywhere, but it's something to try, right?" she says, at her laptop instead of to his face. Determined, she is.

Michael
To be fair: people die every day. The body found in the park by the airport was not the only murder to occur in the time they were sequestered away for a while and it sure as shit won't be the last one. Denver is about as safe as any other city but cities by their nature are not safe. People don't move to cities because they want safety. They move to cities for the opportunities.

Mike does not own property. He neither rents an apartment nor has a mortgage. This much he told Grace the other night. He lives out of hotels. Nice hotels granted but they were still hotels. His job and his calling had him staying overnight in places far from what he considered home.

Neither of them are certain this will go well. If she can't find any information Mike is totally willing to go inside and pretend to be from the FDIC or the IRS or some other financial institution. Wearing a suit everywhere has its perks.

No one is paying attention to their car. It's a black sedan. It looks like it belongs there.

"Right," he says.

It's all you, Evans.

Grace
It takes her a while. She wasn't kidding when she told him that the last time. Still, it doesn't take an hour because Grace is a slouch at this. She's hacked into starships before, Mike. The bank near the airport should be easy. And it is.

They're a financial institution, so they care a bit more than your normal place about network security. But they're protecting their assets. They're not focused on protecting their email or the printers hooked into the network, or the tellers' desk machines. One of them downloaded a screensaver lately that had already left a back door wide open. From there, it's just a series of escalating privileges up as far as she needs them to go. It's always about finding the weakest link -- that chink in the wall, and using it to bring the whole thing down.

"I'm in," she says, after that hour of fast-typing interspersed with silent contemplation. "I'm going to try looking for a withdrawal within the timeframe we're interested in..."

Michael
Every time they follow the threads of fate that the Artist has left behind there's a chance that ze will feel the tugging from a distance. The inside of the car feels strange enough that any passersby will not have any interest in drawing near but that strangeness is a beacon to those who are cut from the same cloth.

The Artist is inverted. Like all Fallen ze seeks oblivion. It seems as if Mike is doing nothing but occupying space but if ze were to catch wind of what Grace is doing he knows she would not survive the encounter. She would die without ever seeing zir face.

Hacking into a starship is an impressive feat though. He doesn't doubt her technical prowess. He also doesn't understand most of what she's doing. So he lets her be and does not speak until she does.

She's in.

He had fallen asleep in the driver's seat. Her voice draws him back to consciousness with a sharp intake of breath. By now she has some idea of how poor his sleep is. Proximity to zir has made his dreams restless.

"Great!" he says. Bright even though he was passed out just a few seconds earlier. He sits up straighter and adjusts his tie. "Oh - a withdrawal that size, it may be helpful to look for withdrawals that are two thousand dollars each, or a written request for the full amount submitted a few days before."

Grace
"Ahh, good to know," she says, taps on the keys as she writes a query to their database. Filter out the small change, look for thousand-dollar increments, look through the notations...

"You were asleep weren't you? Sorry."

Naps are important. Especially for him. She knows.

Michael
Though he does not wave his hand to rid the space of the apology she can hear the gesture in his tone.

"Don't be," he says. "This is more important."

This is proving to be an easy task. A withdrawal for ten thousand dollars occurred the same day that the painting left the gallery. It's attached to an account that did not exist until an hour before the withdrawal occurred.

Grace
"Shit. Okay. Well, I think I have something. Ten-K on the day the painting sold, new account. Might be fake information they gave to set it up, but let's see what it says, shall we?"

Tack tack tack. Her fingers swipe at the keys, and this is tense time, isn't it? The chase nears an end, at least for this bit of information. It's what they both were hoping for, that she was able to find something without leaving magick in her wake to trace. It's probably why Mike insists on going with her everywhere. Being on the trail of the Artist is dangerous.

Michael
The trail is dangerous and Grace has yet to learn whether that is owing to zir power grown with age or whether it's due to zir cunning. As much as his own history is tangled up in zirs Mike does not like to discuss zir more than is necessary to plan their next move. Almost as if ze can tell when ze is the topic of conversation.

Now is a moment for Grace to file away as one possibility or the other.

As she accesses the account and locates the information nothing happens. She may not even feel a sense of accomplishment. Whatever she thinks or feels is hers alone for a moment because Michael is not leaning to look at the screen.

The address is located on a block in center city Arvada, Colorado. It still exists but no one lives there right now. An electrical fire gutted it almost six weeks ago.

Grace
"It's definitely the Artist. The address listed is that place we burned," she says, keeps looking for more bits and pieces. Names, credit card numbers, other contact information. They're probably using an identity stolen from the dead, but identities are things that are used.

She also looks to see if this account has been touched since having bought a painting with it. Is there a pattern here to be utilized?

Mike may not be paying attention to what's on her screen, but if he's paying attention to her, he'll find her stone-faced, in a kind of trance that she only breaks out of to speak. And that, only because she thinks he would like to know.

Michael
Of course he's paying attention to her. He's just being a gentleman about it.

The name may not mean anything to her. It doesn't match up with the name on the registration of the green Ford Mustang that the fellow who was hanging around the two high school girls used but then again the car did not belong to the man who was driving it.

As far as she can tell this name was made up piecemeal. Same with the credit card number. The cellphone carries a local area code but there's no telling where it goes just by looking at it. They'd have to follow its thread through the Tapestry.

This is the only transaction for which the account has been used.

Grace
"I think I've gotten everything I can from here. The name used, and the credit card number look fake. Don't know about the phone number yet. This is also the only time they've used this this account."

That last bit is unfortunate. Guess it's a bit too much to hope for, that they might be showing up every other Friday to drop off a check, huh?

She looks over at him, to judge where his mind is at, since she's been talking and talking with no response. Not exactly an uncommon thing for her, but still.

Michael
His mind is somewhere in the future. For a man who has no training in the art of divination it means he's if not worrying then at least gauging his odds. His tradition is bolstered by gamblers and assassins. If he wanted to draw attention to both of them he could look upon the fates and find their way to zir.

They're going to have to be trickier than that. And the timing of their fling is also a bit unfortunate. Means he's even less inclined to put her into danger than he was before.

Oops.

A short spell of silence passes after she volunteers all of the intelligence she was able to gather from this hack. Then he looks over at her. If he is worried he's keeping that buttoned down with the rest of his emotions.

"How long would it take to cross-check the number through the phone companies?"

Grace
"About as long as this just took, if I don't want to use magick to make it go faster," she says. She doesn't want to draw any more attention to herself than she already has, though. So no magick if she doesn't have to.

"Why? You angling for another nap?" He gets a smirk of a smile out of her, but there's warmth behind it.

She turns her attentions back to the laptop then, to secure the info she has, and to cover her tracks. She wants the logs on those machines to show that nothing untoward happened. She doesn't want that phone number ringing somewhere, telling the Artist about a hacking attempt.

Michael
"Is it that obvious?"

That smirk is met with feigned disappointment. As if he had been attempting to keep a sense of stoicism about him. Been tried and found wanting. He's kidding. They're both capable of casting low-level effects that would mimic the effects of caffeine but even as powerful as he is Michael is slow to abandon the longest relationship he has ever had.

While she works on her computer he removes his smartphone from an inside jacket pocket and starts to pursue another project. It won't keep him occupied for an entire hour but it's long enough that if she runs into trouble extracting herself he can react quickly.

No one inside the building is any wiser to her intrusion. She absconds with the information and is free to carry on with it.

When he hears a break in her keystrokes:

"How would you feel about a change in scenery?"

Grace
"Where did you have in mind? You know, I don't actually have to be right outside a phone company to hack it," she says, again prodding him with a joke.

"I'm done here. There's nothing left that can show I was in their system."

For all that he tried to keep her from becoming involved, she hopes that he's happy she did. Maybe the information she can bring is worth all the fear he has for her.

She knows he's trying to keep her safe. It's a bit heartwarming, isn't it?

Michael
And the prodding knocks a laugh out of him. With as much potential as existed for their coexistence to prove awkward after the night(s) they spent together Michael has not capitalized on it. When he left her Thursday night to tend to the text message he received he had kissed her goodbye. When he picked her up this morning he had given her a warm smile and a greeting to go with it but he had not presumed to kiss her hello.

Still. A warmth between them that had not been there days earlier. Maybe a bit of understanding. They are both wired the same way.

There's nothing left that can show she was ever there.

"Good," he says.

As for where he had in mind:

"I hear I-25 is nice this time of day."

It's also far more difficult to hit a moving target than one that's parked in a lot.

Grace
She nods, understanding where he's going with that. The closer they get, the more dangerous it's going to get. "You think we're that close?"

They are both wired the same way. Their minds turn in similar directions. That much was obvious from the start. As soon as Elijah mentioned that that painting had been hanging in a gallery somewhere, they both turned their attentions to it like baited hounds. As one.

"Let's go then. No time like the present."

She leans over and hesitates a little before sliding her hand over his and giving it a squeeze. I'm here, right now. And so are you. Fate may change everything, but right now...

Michael
Though he could go on at some length about why he believes they're drawing physically closer to the Artist he knows he doesn't have to. She asks what he thinks and Michael looks her in the eye. Like he's looking for some sign that she would or could turn back now.

In his eyes she sees that he does think that. That it's better for them to keep moving until they have a better idea of where and when to strike. For all he knows the Artist is having the same thought. Or the Artist thinks zirself to be beyond reproach. Ze has been tormenting him throughout reincarnations.

Let's go then.

He gives her a smile that is both tired and energized and turns his hand in hers to return the pressure. Brings the back of her hand to his lips like to seal the sentiment and then picks up his keys.

"That's the spirit," he says.

Maybe he thinks he's being funny. He has no training in either time or spirit magick.

They're only ten minutes out from the I-25 exit. He puts the car in drive and points it towards the Rockies.

Grace
That kiss on her hand, the slightest bit of physicality -- these are big things for Grace Evans. She's not one for casual displays of affection, so when she uses them, you know she means it. Michael's a similar beast. They may as well have just embraced and tried to play a game of 'capture-the-tongue'. She gives him a smile, and returns to her laptop again. Now that the mushy stuff is out of the way...

If he wants them to be on the move while she works, she's going to have to come up with a way to reliably connect her laptop to some internet source. Thankfully, Grace is a Mage. She pulls up her 'special' program, and sets it to life.

"I'm going to do something to keep myself a good connection. Like, give my laptop a mega-antenna. I'll need it, if we're moving."

[Forces 2 -- Mega Antenna -- Enhancing the electromagnetic spectrum sensitivity of her laptop, such that she can stay connected to weak signals while being driven around. Diff 5-1 (taking time) -1 (Keen Resonance)]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Michael
As she knows by now Michael devotes the bulk of his attention to whatever task he's given himself in that moment. Drinking a cup of coffee can be an isolated experience if not for the fact that he prefers to ask her questions about herself while he's drinking the coffee. Lying in bed after debauching each other consumed entire hours of their time. Neither of them are easily distracted but they are human underneath their tradition's quirks.

So as he drives it seems as if he is locked into that act itself. Her voice is a tether for him. It doesn't tug him like it did earlier when he was asleep but it's clear that his mental presence is partitioned. Driving is one of the most demanding and dangerous tasks a mind can tackle.

He has already warded the Altima so thoroughly that it would take heavy will to break through it. Nothing more he can do than keep moving but Mike does take his eyes off the road for a second to glimpse her profile and cuts a lopsided grin in answer.

"Thanks for the warning."

Like her resonance is so distracting.

The effect catches. A needle through the fabric. Grace can latch onto whatever network she needs for the rest of the drive.

Grace
And thus begins Grace's quest to figure out whether that phone number is real, whether it is used, where it has been used. She can tell a lot through hacking the phone lines. One silver lining to the fact that the government and phone companies like to collude with each other and share information on the people they serve is that that information is kept.

The first thing she does is look through normal, open, perfectly legal channels. The first query she asks is what carrier this number is from. Is it valid? Is it Sprint? VOIP?

And as she does this, she goes as focused as Michael.

Michael
And this is where Grace might start to hear alarm bells going off in her head as she puts out feelers.

Every single provider she tries comes up empty. While it is valid and she can find traces of its having connected with numbers that Verizon and AT&T and other smaller providers carry she cannot find a physical entity that could claim responsibility for the number.

Grace
"My, my, they're being incredibly cautious again. They've somehow erased the phone number from existence, while continuing to use it. It's valid, it's being used, I can't tell what's providing the number though. Like that's been scrubbed out of every database."

There is a bit of frustration in her voice. Grace doesn't like it when obstacles get in her way.

"I'm going to check the numbers it's connected to, see if I can't find out who they've been calling. Maybe we'll get lucky and find a landlord."

Michael
[wits + subt: bc sometimes NPCs don't have all the answers and the dice gods are fickle?]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 5 )

Michael
'Cautious' isn't a word Mike would use to describe the Artist. Thorough maybe. Arrogant definitely. But see: they haven't discussed what Mike thinks of the individual who has singled him out as a source of self-perpetuating amusement.

A frown creases Mike's brow as she tells him what she's found. Nothing. Not only nothing but the suspicion that the phone number somehow does and does not exist at the same time. Without a provider the number cannot exist and yet it's there and the implication in her speech is that it is connected to other numbers.

They are well north of the airport by now. Not quite to Wyoming but they're getting further away from the city. And that distance reminds him that he's talking to a representative of the tradition representing Correspondence on the Council of Nine.

When he poses his answer to this line of inquiry as a question he shows his hand as someone who has taken on apprentices in the past.

"Is it possible ze is using Correspondence or Mind to circumvent physical telecommunications network?"

Grace
"Yeah. I do that all the time," Grace responds. "I don't leave a number behind when I'm doing it, though. If I'm talking to the representative of the vampires in Denver, the last thing I want to do is show up on their call log. This is kind of like, the way the Artist does things when they want people to call them back, maybe?"

Meaning, they do this on the regular. This is their normal way of communication via phone. Always directly connect to the recipient of the call.

She keeps going. Starts checking the list of numbers she's got that have connected to the Artist's in the past six weeks. Who are these unfortunate people?

Michael
[doo de doo]

Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (4, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Michael
[a thing for a thing]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

Michael
[a soak for a thing]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5) ( fail )

Michael
[i'm almost afraid to roll this roll]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )

Michael
"It's my understanding that ze has been alive for at least forty years, in this incarnation, and ze Awakened inverted. Technology may move too fast for zir, especially if ze's trying to stay off the radar."

They are in agreement. This must be the Artist's normal mode of communication. It gives Mike no comfort to express understanding of the Fallen's plight. His only intent is to express that Grace has the right idea.

All he can do while she is cross-checking the numbers ze has been in contact with is keep the car moving at the appropriate speed and not collide with another vehicle.

Then something happens. They can discuss theories as to what may have happened later when they're off the freeway and Michael's nose has stopped bleeding but in the moments following Grace locking onto a phone number that belongs to a landline with a 505 area code it doesn't seem as if that is a very real possibility.

The entire ordeal lasts maybe two minutes and Mike continues to breathe steady and focus on what he is doing. Given that Grace does the same thing with her assigned task no indication that anything is amiss reveals itself until he grunts as if weathering a physical impact and nearly swerves into the passing lane. His knuckles are white against the steering wheel but he does not swerve. His nose begins to bleed then. He is not stunned but he is hurt.

Okay. That's an unfortunate turn of events.

Michael puts on his turn indicator. As fate should have it they are near an exit that will dump them into a rest area. He takes it. Difficult to breathe through one's nose when one's nose is bleeding so he has to breathe through his mouth.

Grace
Grace continues, oblivious to what's going on until the noise Mike makes pulls her out of her hyper-focus and onto the horrifying fact that they've been found out. The attack came while he was driving. If it had been any more severe... Well, she doesn't want to think about that.

Considering what just happened, the prudent thing to do is to take a quick screenshot and rip the wifi card out of her laptop. And Grace is a careful thing, so she does this. She doesn't immediately panic and lose all sense. Not immediately.

"What happened?" Fuck. Okay. She was prepared for this too, right? She digs around in her laptop bag, because if you're going up against a scary thing, the other prudent thing to do is to carry around your first-aid kit.

"Do you need healing?"

Michael
A flick of his eyes in the rearview to make sure no one is riding his rear bumper as he decelerates and then:

"Now that you mention it..."

This is another reason why we wears dark blue suits: they don't exactly conceal bloodstains but the color serves as camouflage. Black is better but black makes him look like a federal agent and he never wants to look like a federal agent.

As he pulls off the highway and steers towards the rest stop Mike appears calm. May well be calm considering the amount of nerve it takes to keep control of the rental after receiving a mental attack. He's in pain but he's not crippled with it.

Once they're parked around the south side of the rest stop and the keys are out of the ignition Mike blows out a breath as if he had been holding it this entire time and pinches his nostrils shut with his left hand. His right lies on its partnered thigh.

"Either you found something," he says and he is still calm as he closes his eyes and focuses on what he's doing, "or the altitude is beginning to get to me."

[life 2: heal yourself, fool.]

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 4, 6) ( success x 2 )

Grace
She pulls a thin tube with a cap on it out of her bag. Something rattles inside. She's shaking with the adrenaline of what just happened, her body preparing itself for it happening again.

"I found a number they'd called. 505 area code. That's outside Colorado," she says, trying to will herself to calmness, and since she is no slouch in the will department, this succeeds somewhat.

"Do you think it'll happen again?"

She's prepared with that tube in her hand, in case it does.

Michael
Covered in blood and gone to pale from minor sleep deprivation isn't the best look anyone has ever sported in this city. Mike does not seem to realize how much blood came out of his body until it has stopped and the pain has gone with the damage done. Until he has a moment to glance down and see the red spilled over his clothing and his hand.

His tradition deals in blood. Fear of blood tends to lead down an unclean path. He looks over at her knowing full well that the Mercurial Elites do not tend to deal in blood though he is not sheepish or uncertain as to how to proceed. He needs to clean himself up before they do anything else.

"It may." His eyes haven't changed in spite of the gore staining his jaws and mouth. He seeks hers out and then he flinches out a smile and holds up his unstained right index finger to indicate that she ought to hold that thought. "I have to get something out of the trunk."

He hits a button on the electronic wristwatch he wears on his left wrist before he gets out of the car. No point drawing attention to himself. Self-absorbed as is the average Sleeper he doesn't think anyone will notice a man in a suit with blood staining his face but he isn't prepared to take chances.

Just before he shuts the door Mike frowns and asks, "How far outside Colorado?"

Michael
[oh right dice]

Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 5, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Grace
There was a time when Grace was terrified of blood. Seeing him like he is still isn't comforting. But it doesn't cause her to have a flashback and end up curled up under the dashboard screaming in remembered pain. There's getting over a thing for you. Still, she's gone pretty white herself. The smile helps. Shows her he's okay. She tries to smile back.

He asks her a question, and it's a good thing. A respite from having to focus on the fact that he was just attacked.

Grace doesn't have every area code memorized. She's also just pulled the wifi card out of her laptop, severing its connection to everything. One option remains, and she pulls her phone out of her jeans pocket, and asks the internet for a list of area codes.

"North-western New Mexico," she says, when he returns. "Not far. Includes Albuquerque and Santa Fe."

Michael
He would be remiss in his duties as a Wheel-Turner if he didn't have a change of clothes and a first aid kit in the trunk of his rental car. Which he does. Grace is granted a few minutes of solitude when he pops the trunks and obliterates their view of each other. She knows his return is imminent when the slamming of the door shakes the sedan's frame and his shadow cuts across the driver's side of the car.

When he climbs behind the wheel again Mike has ditched the suit jacket and the dress shirt and the tie he had had on. Most of the blood landed on his chest anyway. The light-blue button-down with the dobby dot pattern on it is less imposing than the getup he had had on a moment earlier. Makes him look younger somehow. Closer to his age perhaps. He has banished the blood from his face. He smells faintly of lemon now. Thanks, Wet Wipes.

Though Grace is not curled up under the dashboard Mike does fix her with a scrutinizing look before deciding not to apologize. Nothing to be done for it. He didn't come to Denver just to see the sights and no one ever said tracking a Nephandus would be easy work anyway. If Grace wanted to sit this one out she would have.

"We can't be sure of the significance of that phone number without further investigation," he says. Serious as anything else he's said thus far. "And I can't promise what just happened won't happen again, if we keep going."

If Grace is starting to think this sounds like an opt-out clause she would not be wrong. She would also not be wrong in thinking he does not think she's going to take it.

Grace
She gives him a shaky smile when she looks up from her phone to see his new outfit. Nods at him when he says that phone number requires further digging.

"You can't promise it won't happen again if we stop either," she says, licks her lips. "In fact, I'm pretty sure it will, won't it?"

Someone's made up her mind on this one. His dreams suggest that he's already got a mental link to the Artist anyway. It's like he's being tortured, worn out, made to suffer before the eventual fall. Like he's being played with.

"You know, it's a good thing you lost the tie. I can take you a bit more seriously now." Ahh, humor. The only way to deal.

Michael
If he believed his fate was to Fall he never would have let himself get this close to Grace let alone anyone else. He wouldn't have taken on apprentices or brought an associate of his to Denver with him. It's one thing to lead a life of quiet despair if that despair will lead to humble victory but their kind are incapable of living their lives in isolation. Not fully.

They need a connection to other minds that their own might thrive. They need to share information. Space. Breath sometimes. The Mercurial Elite knows what the Euthanatos looks like breathless and infatuated. What it is to have another person look at her as if she is the only thing that matters in that moment.

Her attempt at a joke makes him laugh his own shaky laugh. What happened just now could have been a lot worse. He could have lost consciousness or crashed the car. He could have died if the Artist really wanted to kill him.

The Artist does not want to kill him. That's too easy. But now ze knows that he isn't alone. That revelation has some of the starch gone out of him.

"Now you tell me," he says. A softness in his gaze and a wistfulness in his smile that would have been physical contact in a more physical being. Instead he reaches for his keys and blows out a quick breath. Nothing to do but keep moving forward. "What would you say to a drink and time to consider our next move?"

Grace
"I'd say we don't have a lot of time now, so let's try not to let this drink take two days again," she says, but her eyes reflect the softness in his. "Also, you had wards up, and might want to refresh them first?"

Ever the pragmatist, Grace. Does she understand romance at all?

She realizes now that she's had a death grip on her 'healing potion' this entire time, and shuffles it back in her laptop bag. Lets out a sigh.

"I like you out of your suit too. Suits are ridiculous, you know? I like playing with your hair until you look like a Burner," she says, looks out the window like it's the landscape she's falling in love with. "I wish we could let this drink take two days again."

Okay, so maybe she understands a little.

Michael
"Maybe after this is over."

Doesn't say it was foolish to have done so in the first place. Even if he had not vowed to protect her and gone with her to pursue the Fallen that girl would be missing now. Correlation does not equal causation. They can argue whether they are or are not culpable for their lack of forward momentum later. She's already argued with him about whether his involvement is a black mark on his soul for what has happened to people he has cared about.

Michael does not believe he is directly responsible for the Artist's growing power but he does believe himself to be responsible for stopping it. If he cannot do it in this life he cannot trust he will have another life in which to do it.

"In the meantime, I beg to differ." He starts the engine. "Suits are not ridiculous."

And so the conversation shifts not away but over and they drive back to the city without further incident.

Grace
After this is over, Michael spends his life hopping from one hotel room to another. She won't be going with him. Even if they wildly succeed, a parting must take place. But then, she is a Mercurial Elite, to whom location is just an array of numbers. Maybe they'll make it. Maybe not. She's never really had to worry about things like that before.

It's easier than worrying that he's going to die soon. Easier than worrying about herself. When it comes down to it, who's in more danger here? The Artist wants to torture him, and what better way than getting at the very heart of his fears? Her.

She takes a breath, reminds herself that she is Mage, and she belongs here. To be afraid is okay. To let it own you is not. Fear is the mind-killer, and all that.

She argues with him about the ridiculousness of suits, lets the fear pass through her. It might not be okay, they might not survive this, but she has the right now, and that's all that really matters.