Girltalk

Kiara
October has given over to November by the point the Mercurial Elite and the Verbena next see each other. The hill the Chantry property out in Morrison sat at the base of covered in a deluge of reds and golds and yellows, the trees shedding layers of foliage as fall wore on beyond the the turn of the month. The air was crisp enough today to invite coats and scarves and when Kiara Woolfe arrives, her little hatchback bumping along the drive to pull in with a tender creak of brakes and a whirl of dust, she's dressed with the weather's invitation duly accepted.

A long scarf wound around her neck loosely and a cream colored trench coat cinched in at her waist.

-

All told, the invitation to meet here had been perfunctory at best. Kiara's voice betraying little of her thoughts as she'd informed Grace she had news. The implication of it involving Michael had been the unspoken aside and the Chantry had seemed the safest harbor in the current storm.

Although it would be a fair assessment to say there was no true safety to be had from a creature who could reach across space and destroy you when inspiration (and inclination) came upon it.

-

So, Kiara arrives, uncoiling the scarf from around her neck, calling a hello out to rooms apparently devoid of the current Cabal that lived and tended to its lands and trekking her way into the kitchen to unearth a wineglass and investigate whatever holdings Annie Pierce had in the way of wine.

Grace
When Kiara gets there, Grace is already out back, wrapped up in her red coat against the chill (Denver's expecting snow in the forecast at this time of year). She's also lying in the crisping grass, with her bare feet soaking in the Node, her shoes and socks carefully arranged beside her.

The Node and her don't mix very well. She's not the type to fling herself into a hot tub in the midst of company. But it's the only Node she's ever known. It'll perform its purpose. And she will perform hers.

She's expecting a call from Mike soon. And that's pretty much the only reason why Ginger hasn't been updated yet to tell everybody that The Artist has been vanquished. Well, that and her emotional insides feel like they've been pureed, and maybe taking a full-body dip in a hot tub wouldn't be such a bad idea. Relaxing is good.

But no. She's on her back, reading HackerNews on her phone, waiting.

[And do we feel the presence of a Kiara?]

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

Kiara
[Dice, don't be like that. I thought we were all cool these days. Do we feel Grace?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Kiara
Kiara has no idea yet that the entity she'd faced down inside her apartment has since been vanquished. To be fair to the brunette, once she'd helped patch Michael up and sent him on his way to renew his objective (hopefully without the interference of Alice's agenda) she'd scrubbed the blood off her hands, dropped her athame into a bowl of spring water to cleanse it of any and all negative energies and allowed herself to sleep for a good twelve hours.

She'd slept through the phone ringing twice. A blessing, since the message replayed later was a noise complaint. 421 did not appreciate the strange thumping and yells that they'd been privy to over the last several days.

When she'd finally roused herself to a level of acceptable coherence, Grace's number had been dialed and this meeting set up. What the Verbena had learned, from Michael himself, was that he'd slept without apparent incident. Nobody had been there to see the way Kiara had to lean her elbow on the window of her car and lift her fingers to her mouth at that news.

She hadn't become hysterical. Hadn't even shed a tear, but rather let herself digest the news and offer quiet relief at the news. And good luck - she'd wished him that, too.

She's mid-way through pouring a generous glass of a 2010 Merlot when she feels the sensation of something vast, something winged and shifting brushing against her senses. The door to the back patio slides open and for a minute, all the brunette does is crane her face to one side to observe the other female.

Her heels give away her presence in the most immediate sense; boots sinking neatly into the soft grass.

"Callisto likes it when we come out here." She announces her presence with, wine glass dangling from her fingertips. Kiara's mouth is, of course, colored by bright red lipstick; her complexion still hovers this side of too pale, though. Not even the brassy shade can entirely conceal the lingering effects of exhaustion.

She could purge herself of them, the fact she's clearly allowing herself to feel the way she does, may be something deliberate (something she's not inclined to push at present). She'd tested reality's limits well enough for a single week, perhaps. "I think she misses the company when there were more of us."

The Verbena weaves a slow path toward the Node.

Grace
Oh, shit. There's somebody else here.

Grace jumps a little when she hears Kiara's voice, because somebody was way too distracted to notice her presence. "Kiara! Hi. Umm.. Does she, really?"

She sits up and puts her phone into one of her shoes, so as not to lose it in the Node. That would suck.

"I'm not so much good company, I guess. I don't often say hi. Hi, Callisto!"

You know, just in case a giant polar bear is watching...

Kiara
Little curl of humor edging in there, into the Verbena's expression as Grace calls out a hello in case the Guardian was watching.

She doesn't articulate whether or not the greeting is acknowledged, but rather toes off her footwear and sinks down neatly beside Grace at the water's edge, resting the wineglass rather precariously on a piece of flat rock.

Kiara's toenails are painted the same shade of red as her mouth, a tiny silver ring fitted around the middle-most toe on her right foot. She draws her knees up and rests her elbows on top of them. "I think you have reason enough lately to be a little distracted." A beat, the tick of dark eyes over her face before Kiara's gaze peels away and a tiny line etches between her brows.

"So, listen. I don't really know how to say this in a way that isn't - " She half smiles, it's an articulation of uncertainty. "I saw Michael. That is - he called me. Asked if I'd be willing to try to reach out to Alice again. I said that I would."

Grace
"Mmm." is all Grace says in response to Kiara's remark about her distraction. Fucking Hell, the last few weeks have been interesting. Accursedly, blessedly interesting.

Kiara is met with a puzzled expression when she says she saw Mike. "Yeah, he told me," she says, little smile there. "You did good."

So yeah. Perhaps some catching up is in order. But, you know, Grace doesn't look like woah, doom and nastiness happened.

Kiara
Kiara's expression reads surprise. She parts her lips as if to offer a commentary on that and then draws them back together for a moment, frowning rather intently at the ground while Grace goes on. He'd told her, she did good. And there, a little flicker of something in those dark eyes, the way they cut to Grace's features, the way relief seems to haunt the edges of that smile.

It flutters and fidgets with stronger inclination at the edge of Kiara's mouth before it's hooked up at one corner, this crooked little expression of relief.

"Oh." It's all she manages for a moment, this tiny breath of pent up anticipation breathed out. She'd been anticipating having to describe what happened and perhaps some not so tiny part of her is relieved, is thankful she doesn't have to.

Tell Grace she remembers Michael reaching for her knife.

Tell her that she'd watched the Artist sink that blade into him with the deliberation of a predator nipping at the heel of its quarry to draw blood and weaken it.

"I thought maybe - but that's good. That you saw him." A beat, she draws her chin down to her knee, rests it there. "How is he?" Another pause, a longer read of Grace's expression. "How're you? Really?"

Grace
"Still a bit ticked off that he didn't bother to tell me anything until yesterday," she says, kicks a little at the hot water. "But yeah. I'm good."

And a little sad. And a little happy. And fuck emotions, right? They do everything at once.

"Apparently, a few days ago, he went with River and Ihsan -- I don't know if you know them? His students. Anyway, they went and took the fight to The Artist. They won."

And Grace, she panicked and set up for the coming fucking Apocalypse, because she didn't know jack. But let's not focus on that right now...

Kiara
The brunette is reaching for her wineglass, taking a slow, measured sip as Grace mentions two women. Michael's students, as it turned out. River, Kiara had met. Had played a game with in Washington Park, had warned to be careful within the city limits.

She'd met Farrah that night, too. It was, as fate would have it, the sole occasion Kiara Woolfe would ever have to - the next time she heard the young woman's name, it was via Ginger, via Grace, informing them she'd been murdered. There's a steadiness in Kiara's motions that doesn't betray whether or not the news that River had been Michael's student was new information to her or not.

She simply digests it as she turns the set her glass down.

Twists to set her feet into the spring alongside Grace's. Tiny ripples radiating out from the point where her toe teases the surface. "I think he did it to protect you. I asked him, after we were done. If he wanted me to tell you anything." There's a little cant of her chin. "His poker face could use some work."

Wry, that.

"I can't entirely say that I blame him for it. I'm not the world's best sharer when it comes to life and death with people that matter, either." She flicks Grace a brief, bemused look. "I was going to tell you, though. Despite that. I figured if it was me - if that had been - " She looks away, across the water. "Well, I'd have wanted to know. No matter what the outcome."

A beat, then. Softer.

"I'm glad they won. I guess that means their work here is done." She looks back at Grace.

Grace
Ohh. Kiara knows. Grace looks to her with this sheepish expression, and then flumps back down onto the grass.

"I know he did it to protect me. But who else might have paid the price for that decision? If he'd died, I never would have forgiven him," she says, and there's a bit of a joke there, and a bit of truth besides.

"Nobody did. Pay that price. It was okay, in the end."

But it might not have been. In fact... Likely not. Someone who would shutter out a willing ally, in a fight like that? What was he thinking? Not with his brain, that's for fucking sure.

Kiara
Grace casts her this look that Kiara cannot help but smile at, it's a genuine thing, that expression. A flash of sharp, white little teeth and broad enough to threaten a dimple into existence in one cheek. Kiara dips her chin and watches the other woman flop back down on the ground out of the corner of her eye, waiting for a beat before she leans back on a palm and turns to observe her.

"At the very least, you know someone who could have passed on your feelings if he had." It's dark humor to a degree, but the sort that must have been expected from a woman like Kiara Woolfe, who made pacts with spirits and walked on the other side of things, venturing out into the wilds of the Umbra. The perspective changed, one had to imagine, when you spent long enough peering across that divide.

Perspective and, perhaps, perception.

Death was not, after all, the end of all things. The epilogue to any story. Alice had been proof enough of that to the Verbena. Michael's Avatar suffering wounds that did not prevent it from returning, from finding another to help Awaken, to perpetuate the cycle anew.

Sometimes the price isn't negotiable." Kiara offers after a small beat of silence, then draws her legs out of the Node and nudges into Grace's side. "C'mon, let me pour you a glass of wine. I think we've both earned a little downtime.

I'm pretty sure Annie's hiding some whiskey in there somewhere, too."

Kiara
["Sometimes the price isn't negotiable." Ahem, it ate part of my punctuation.]

Grace
"Can you pull quint from a node when you're drunk?" Grace asks, lopsided smile on her face as the grass crunches near her ear. She rights herself, and picks up her shoes and socks and phone. Takes them with her on the way up.

"Also, it's good to know I could have yelled at him beyond the grave. I'll have to tell him so. Just saying, Mike, you dying will not stop me from berating you, so don't."

She huffs out a warm breath into the cold.

Downtime. Yes, there has been a little of that. Between Zombieland and last night, and now. With the looming threat of conflict maybe starting up again in earnest with the Technocracy and Nephandi breathing down their throats, they have to get some downtime in when they can. It's the only way to stay sane, right?

Kiara
There's laughter from Kiara that precedes them back into the house at that, she pads back into the kitchen and sets her glass down in favor of dropping down to open cupboards, shifting bottles and boxes aside and closing doors only to rise up and repeat the same process above her head until -

"Bingo."

- A note of triumph and the telltale noise of liquid moving within a heavy bottle as the Verbena rights the doors and turns, dark eyes gleaming as she held a bottle by the neck and set it down with pronounced emphasis. "Trust Annie Pierce to have decent stock. I knew I liked that woman for a reason." A curl of the brunette's mouth and she set another wine glass down.

"So, pick your poison. Merlot or good old Jack Daniels."

The pagan, it seemed, was content enough to keep hold of her wine, she sipped from it while Grace considered her options and moved to peer out the window, glancing back after a moment to add, with a brief little stir of humor. "The last time I was out here, I stepped across into the Umbra. It actually went pretty well until I tried to step back.

Right out there." She gestured toward the Node. "I think I've actually lost count of the times I've wound up lying on the ground lately."

Grace
Grace ponders for a moment. Should she get shitfaced, or should she get genteel shitfaced?

"Mmm. Merlot? I will join you in the whole... wine thing," she says, as she peeks into the kitchen from behind the wall, and then disappears again.

A voice from behind the wall responds to Kiara: "I've heard the storm is gone. That's.... interesting."



Kiara
There's a pause, Kiara's progress in pouring another glass halted (though Grace cannot perhaps see it). She sets the bottle down and collects both glasses by the stem, holding one out to Grace as she passes through into the dining area, still governed by the (sadly neglected) ornate table there. The Verbena's expression reads of the consideration in her tone.

"Yeah, it is." Gone. Interesting. "A little concerning, too. I mean - " Kiara glances over her shoulder, nodding in the general direction of the living room and making a beeline for the sofas pressed into a corner by one of the large windows that overlooked the hill (and gave a considerate view of the driveway in the case of sudden or unexpected arrivals). " - as dangerous as the storm was, it was also pretty damn good at keeping things in, too. Or, I suppose - " She climbs onto the corner sofa and settles, tucking her leg beneath her. "Out."

There's a beat when Kiara reaches to set her glass on the small coffee table. Sits back to regard Grace. Seems to deliberate on offering something the way her expression shifts a touch to something more guarded, uncertain. "I wanted to say, you know, after that day. When you brought Michael to me - I was sorry that I couldn't fix things then and there. I know it's - " Kiara makes this brief little motion, dismissive. A curl of her fingers against her leg.

" - but it mattered to you."

Grace
Oh, we're going to have to come out from behind the wall, is that it? Okay. Grace takes the glass of merlot, and follows Kiara into the living room. It also seems like her great plan to redirect the conversation toward the changes in the Umbra didn't work either.

Drat.

She goes and sits on a chair opposite the couch, curls her bare feet up into it.

That day. Well, no. That night. After that visit to Kiara, Mike fell asleep. He didn't tell anybody else why. He never blamed her for it, but then he wouldn't. It made her think, sometimes, that he might have left her out of everything from that point on because she... no, they had been weak.

Grace seems like she's having a staring contest with her wine glass.

"Well, yes. Maybe too much. It turned out okay, and all."

Kiara
There's a little twinge at the edge of Kiara's mouth as she watches Grace. The brunette's expression shedding its uncertainty in favor of a far more familiar, teasing light. She's quiet for a moment as Grace stares down into her wineglass as if it held all the answers for the situation.

"There's nothing wrong with that, you know," Kiara uncurls long enough to reclaim her glass and lift it to her lips, taking a generous sip. "Caring too much. The threat of imminent danger aside, it was nice, seeing you a little hot under the collar for someone." There's the tease, the curl of it into the Verbena's voice, the way her eyes seem to glint with it.

She takes another sip of wine, the earth witch, drops her eyes to the glass and gently rotates it, watching the crimson liquid cant into the motion. Feeling the pleasant warmth of it flood her system. "I know the feeling, though." She adds, after a little break, breathing in slowly and sitting up, tousling her hair back over her shoulder

"Being worried like that. Giving a damn about whether someone lives or dies." Kiara's expression softens. "I never considered myself particularly sentimental but sometimes you meet people and it's a little like - " she lifts her leg, presses her chin to her knee, balancing her weight there, curls in around it. The glass dangling precariously between her fingertips.

"- your axis shifts."

Grace
Oh, God, Kiara. No. Please no. Grace turns multiple shades of pink right about the time Kiara says that thing about being hot under the collar for someone. She's about to say that no, it's totally not like that, except that it is, and there's no way she could lie with that blush crawling up her face ruining everything.

Oh, wine. You have the answers for everything. She drinks from her glass.

"Really, huh? It's a thing that happens sometimes?" Grace nods her head, as if she understands, totally. She doesn't.

Kiara
There's a breath of laughter at that.

Kiara leaning her chin against her knee, she tilts her face there, presses her cheek against the sharp point of it for a moment. Drops it down in favor of cupping the glass between both her palms, scooting forward on the sofa until she's seated on the edge of it. "Well, yeah. I mean that's sort of the human condition. We orientate ourselves around others.

Look at all of us. Here in the city. We barely know each other, some of us but we come together, anyway." She doesn't talk of fates or alignments, doesn't speak of the way it reflected nature; natural selection and the process of evolution. The way things fell together, fell apart, the way seeds shaken loose of some kinds of flowers took to the air and germinated wherever they fell.

Grace's cheeks are flushed and Kiara's dark eyes make a study of her face, ticking over the evidence of her discomfort before they shift away, down to the glass held between her hands.

"So are you two going to see each other again, now there's no Nephandi rampaging around Denver?" An edging smile there. A subtle shift in the vein of conversation.

Grace
Kiara says it is the human condition. And it's true, Grace has oriented herself around others. Denver is home, and not just because it was the place she landed, but because of the people. But you know, she doesn't want to 'come together' with everyone in town either... There are just more kinds of human conditions than there are humans.

That wine glass rises to her lips again, when she's asked whether they're going to see each other again.

"Well, I mean. He has his whole... life to get to back to in L.A. I suppose? Yes? Someday-ish? Maybe I'll go on a vacation or something," she says, and then laughs a little at her wine, because that's of course the time when robots would attempt to take over Denver. She knows it.

Kiara
"Mm. You should."

This with a foot nudged out to touch the edge of the sofa Grace had settled herself in. "I took Ian out to Cherry Creek Park the other day for that exact reason. We went out there and camped overnight." It's the first time the Verbena has ever made mention of the Orphan they both knew in easy conversation, making the connection evident between the who and why of her earlier commentary.

The brunette either isn't conscious of the slip of his name, or the alcohol in her system has relaxed her enough that there's no need for the same level of subterfuge and hedging she's often employed when conversation verged into her own life. "I have this spot out there, by the water, this tiny little patch of beach that's hard to get to without some serious hiking.

Usually I go out there alone, but, - " There's the faintest trace of answering heat in the Verbena's face, now. A trace of pleasure that warms into the architecture of her features, the fine high slope of cheekbones, the long curve of her neck.

She drops her chin, twists the stem of the glass between her fingertips. "I think you should go for it. Besides," Kiara's eyes tick back. "He looks good in a suit."

Grace
Oh, Kiara. You are about this close to breaking Grace. She downs her wineglass, because there is not yet enough alcohol in her system for this shit, and looks at it sadly, like she wishes it were a magically refilling horn o' plenty or something. Those have to exist, right? Too many Mages like getting drunk for them not to exist.

She slips out of her chair and walks off to the kitchen on a mission, but not before replying to Kiara. "No, no no no. I had to break him of that habit."

Which would explain why the first time Mike showed up at her place, he wasn't in one. Getting him out of a suit, though...

Ugh! Focus on the wine, yes. Merlot. More of that.

"Really? Um... Ian?" she says, from the kitchen. "That's uh... nice."

Nice. Right.

This reminds her of the time Ian invited Kalen and herself to skinny dip in the Node -- uncomfortable, and full of disastrous mental imagery.

Kiara
Slipping into the kitchen does not spare the Mercurial Elite from the Verbena.

Kiara's eyes lift to track Grace's progress before she slides to her feet and traipses after her with lazy consideration. The pagan has shed her footwear at some point (in truth, she preferred the sensation of the ground beneath her bare feet, no surprise for the who and what Kiara Woolfe was) and her movements are quieter for it, her figure appearing to lounge in the doorway of the kitchen, a hip cocked into the frame.

Arm draped at her side, idly twirling the remnants of the glass around.

"Nice is one word for it." There's a coil of humor banked there in the Verbena's dark eyes as they settle on the other woman. The pagan's mouth framing a supple little quirk. "It wasn't exactly planned. Any of it, but then - how do you ever plan what life decides to throw into your path." She kicks off the door, Kiara and comes to set her glass on the bench, sweeping her hands over the surface.

"If you'd asked me six months ago where I'd be, Denver wasn't it." Softer, that. Then: "I'm glad I stuck around, though. Not just because of everything lately, but - " A little shrug, a hint of self deprecation: "I've always been better at running than staying to deal with the mess."

Grace
Well, yeah. Grace didn't exactly plan for any of that either. She's pouring herself another glass when Kiara comes by, saying she's good at running.

"Mmm. Well, you didn't run from Mike? I guess that's staying and dealing with the mess, eh?"

So, uh. Good job.

She drinks some more from her glass, and it's helping take the edge off of this conversation.

"Thanks. Again. For helping him."

Kiara
She thinks, not for the first time today, of the aftermath of it. The blood all over her (hers and Michael's), on her floor, the scattered remnants of a battle that had nearly cost her far more than just a dry-cleaning bill for an outfit and a ruined throw rug.

She'll likely never quite forget, whether she looks into them in person again or not, the way the Euthanatos' eyes bored into hers as he took hold of her knife and advanced on her, caged back only by the slipping tethers of her protective casting. Not that she held Michael accountable, of that, she'd been particularly clear, with him, afterwards.

Not that she'd blamed Alice, either. For not being capable of fighting back against that tide of seeping poison. The memories of it echo, slide across Kiara's pretty features and she lowers her face, just for a moment, in consideration of it. "No, I guess I didn't at that." Kiara lifts her eyes, meets Grace's and holds there for a long moment, some somber thread unraveling.

Thanks. Again. For helping him.

"I felt for her, in the end." A moment that stretches, Kiara's voice betraying a hint of remorse. "Crazy as it might sound, I really wanted to help her. Alice. What he did to her, the way he got into her head. It made me realize how easy it must be to push any of us there. Find the right pressure point, deliver enough trauma and we find ways to cope.

We have to. When he showed up, I was so angry." The Verbena's tongue skirts over the edge of her lower lip, wetting it. "She was just a girl. A scared, tormented girl who lost her mentor." A beat. "I understood that anger, you know?" There's a little smile, touches there and vanishes.

Kiara clears her throat, seems to shake herself loose of the webs of memory. "He's a good man. Michael. I was happy to do it. Happy for him."

Grace
Hmm. Yes. Except that Alice's way of coping was to string people up by their entrails. There's coping mechanisms, and then there's that.

"When... who showed up?"

Grace says Mike told her what happened. Perhaps he didn't tell her everything. He is a good man, but one of few words. It's gotten him in trouble.

Kiara
There's a pause, there. A quick gauging of Grace's expression. A tick of Kiara's dark eyes up and down her figure before they drop to her wineglass, her mouth tipping into a firmer line.

"The Artist. When I got through to Alice. We knew that was a potential risk. That he'd surface." There's a sense there, a careful selection of words, that reads Kiara and Michael had some discussion, some comprehension of the inherent dangers before they'd tried to connect for a second time. Kiara's palms slide over the counter again. Outside, the wind has picked up and rattles leaves across the lawn.

Drives them into the Node where they float, some sinking beneath the surface, too sodden to maintain any buoyancy.

"He showed up. Took control of her. I had to send her back. Drive out the spirit to sever the hold." She doesn't embellish beyond this, perhaps there's a shared desire to shield Grace from some details, after all. "He couldn't get through my circle. He tried, it was close. But I broke the hold before he could - " Kill me with my own tools. "Get any ideas."

Grace
Oh, shit. Grace's eyes open wide, and she takes another drink. When Mike lands and calls her, he'll likely have a tipsy Grace on the other end asking why he left a lot of things out of his story. As if she wouldn't find out.

"He what? You faced down The Artist?"

That thing nearly took Mike out. And Mike was... Not easy to kill.

"Fucking Hell, Kiara. I'm glad you made it."

Glad everybody did. Except Farrah.

Kiara
"I may have also told him to go back to Hell." It's a quip, a brief, dark moment of candor where the Verbena's dark eyes burn with remembered fever for it. The desire to drive the sensation of him out, the crawl of dark resonance like gasoline, burning into her. She lifts a thin shoulder as if to dis-guard it, but cannot quite shake the entirety of it out of her voice.

Out of the uncertain lilt to her smile, that quick flash of teeth.

Bravado, of course. The up tilt of her chin. The way she averts her eyes as if she shared some degree of the guilt the way Michael might well when Grace did eventually call him. "Considering I don't particularly believe in the existence of one, I think the threat fell pretty short, but - " She breathes out, sharply. "He's gone, though. That's all that matters.

No more missing people." She tips back the last of her wine. Sets the glass down.

"I should probably get going. While I'm still capable of driving." A curl of humor. Lighter, this time. She reaches out to touch Grace's arm. This brief touch, there and gone. "You know if you ever want to talk about stuff," her eyebrows lift theatrically, "I'm around. I keep my own stock of wine just for those occasions."

Grace
"I wish... I had been there to see that," she says, and she's being quite honest. Mike didn't let her in on anything, though.

Kiara invites her for more wine and talk, and Grace just says: "Okay. Sure." She's not being quite as honest now. An evening of drinking wine and talking to Kiara about the mushy feels maybe isn't at the top of her list of most comforting conversations ever. Embarrassing. But not terrible? Maybe?

"It was nice talking. I should uh... probably go soak my feet some more," she says, and gives Kiara a smile. "You want to come by the Office sometime, be my guest. You know, so that invitation goes both ways..."

Kiara
"You know, Kalen did invite me out to see this Office a long time ago." She moves around to stow Annie's liquor back into the cupboard where she'd found it, turning to lean against the counter for a moment, arms folded over her chest, a slight smile surfacing. "I should probably take you both up on the offer one of these days.

I'll think about it." She pushes off and heads for the living room to reclaim her shoes, turning once, en route to direct this brief little curl of amusement Grace's way. "Tell Michael I said hello and - " A flick of her wrist out. "Nicely done."

With that, the Verbena slips out of sight, leaving Grace to resume soaking her feet in the Node's rejuvenating depths.

_whiteout (Samir's Seeking)

Samir
Enough people have warned Samir about the winters here in Colorado that he has thought himself prepared. But he also thinks that folks in Colorado exaggerate. The weather has been just as lopsided as anywhere else in the world now that the climate is changing and he has been keeping track of the storm advisories.

Warnings about what it's going to be doing outside aren't just for conversation fodder. He lives outside now. The antiquated Airstream he calls home is insulated but keeping the temperature up enough that he won't freeze to death is going to require some serious maintenance. Which means he has a program running to keep the temperature inside the trailer warm enough that he die of hypothermia in his sleep.

It's not the greatest way to live but it's teaching him a lot about the difference between machines and humans. The computers will survive with frost on them. He won't.

Darker than hell and he's so far outside the city limits that he can't see the light pollution butting up against the clouded sky as he stands on the steps leading inside the trailer. Door shut behind him and watching the snow pile up on the ground and considering maybe this wasn't the smartest idea he's had recently. He can't tell the difference between cigarette smoke and his breath.

wind
The problem with blizzards isn't so much the snow as it is the wind that carries it. Hard gusts fling even small amounts of snow around so fast it's like looking at nature's version of television static. As the night has deepened, the snow is changing from a thick, slushy mess to something a little lighter, easier to throw around. There will be ice underneath big, soft drifts once all is said and done.

But all is not.

The wind picks up, and stabs at Samir's face. It feels malicious, almost. As if wind could have hatred toward somebody. He can't see the light pollution from where he's at, but it's turning brighter. The sky, not so much differently colored than the ground anymore. Are you sure you want to finish that cigarette, Sam?

Maybe he does. The cold hasn't quite the same grip as a nicotine habit.

Either way, the wind doesn't care. It makes the trailer tilt under the brunt of a gust that makes metal scrape against metal somewhere. A groaning noise arises from within, as if the trailer is audibly voicing its disapproval of the situation.

Samir
Standing out in wind like this gives a young man time to reevaluate his priorities. To really appreciate the way the wind can knock water right out of his eyes. It isn't cold enough to freeze the insides of his nostrils but he's heard cold can do that. If it ever got that cold in Vancouver he was too young to remember it.

So the wind picks up and it stabs at him and the priority he has to consider now is whether he wants to keep standing out here in a peacoat and ski cap watching the world bury him.

No. No he does not. That groaning noise confirms it.

He can always air this thing out in the springtime. He grabs the trailer door and gives it a tug half expecting the wind to try and tear it out of his hands.

wind
As soon as his hand grabs that trailer door, something changes. A buzzing sound from the trailer begins, like that of a fan with something stuck between the blades.

There is something in the trailer. Samir knows this not by any perceptive ability, no clues lead him to believe this (that buzzing noise could just be the wind vibrating an errant piece of plastic) and yet, there is something in the trailer. He knows, in the same way he knows that if he doesn't perform his rituals, something horrible will happen.

Just because there is no evidence of a thing, doesn't make it any less terrifying.

Samir
Every time something like this happens the thought occurs to him that he's about to lose his mind. When he botches an effect hard enough that reality forms a fucked-up bubble around him the moment that the bubble closes is one he can't remember later on.

Outside episodes of Quiet he does not suffer from auditory hallucinations or paranoia. When the condition he has not yet named gets a good hold of him he goes through a muscle memory of some behavior he never. Only with effort can he convince himself that this is a strange thing to think.

The whole point of being out here is to expand his consciousness and stop thinking things that are not true. Exposure therapy. Doesn't matter if the thought that something is in there makes the insides of his gloves go humid with the sweat burst out of his palms.

If he stays out here all night because there might be something in the trailer he's going to die of exposure.

Chances are about equal that there is nothing in there and he's just being a madman again or that there is something in there and it's going to bite his fucking face off soon as he steps in.

He grits his teeth and yanks open the door.

wind
The yanking of the door coincides with a gust of wind that tilts the trailer again, and... perhaps the strange premonition wasn't quite so off after all?

From inside, Samir hears a dull thud and the hiss of a "Shit!"

Strangely, it doesn't sound like a burglar. That 'shit' wasn't the invective of someone who's upset at having been caught. In fact, it's followed up by a mutter that Sam can't hear over the whistling of the wind.

Samir
Shit!

Well that's never happened before.

The curse startles Samir. He shouts and nearly leaps out of the trailer and back into the savagery that passes for weather out in the mountains. Then that mutter. Then that realization that there's someone in his trailer.

This is not a large trailer. Two people could live in it. Hypothetically. He wouldn't know.

"Ah..." Samir steps all the way inside and shuts the door. Okay now he can hear better. "Eh... Excuse me? Person I don't know?"

wind
Over in the corner, there's some movement, and an arm appears from behind a box.

"Uhh... Yes?" comes a wary voice from the floor.

Then, the owner of that voice stands up and brushes himself off. "I guess the storm's pretty bad, huh? You need a place to..."

The man's voice trails off about the same time he meets eyes with Samir, and the reason is pretty obvious. Standing in Samir's trailer, wearing the same clothes Samir was wearing when he stepped outside for a cigarette, is someone who looks exactly like him.

The other man looks as though he can't believe what he's seeing. "Who are you?"

Samir
That whoas him so hard Samir takes a step back and the door collides with his spine. Denial first. Denial is one of the earliest reflexes humans learn. There's no such thing as the unknowable. It's just that some of the unknowable things in the universe could shatter a man's mind like a plate made out of eggshell. There's got to be some sort of explanation for this.

Who are you?

He shows the other man his palms. Just because he isn't armed doesn't mean he doesn't have a weapon on him but it's a universal sign of bearing no ill will anyway.

"My name's--" His heart is trying to spoon his larynx. He swallows. Go away, heart. "My name's Samir Lakhani. I..." A beat. "... you... live here?"

wind
The other Samir raises his palms too. No ill will between either of them, really. Just stark disbelief.

Neither of them seem to know what the fuck is going on.

"Uhh... I'm sorry, what? I'm Samir Lakhani."

The other one's palm traces a path over his face, as if to slick away sweat, and his eyes dart away outside, like he'd rather be in the snow than deal with this right now.

Samir
"Ah..."

He doesn't want to pollute the air inside just in case this actually is the other guy's trailer and he'd just lost his damned mind before he walked through the door. If this is a hallucination it's the least threatening one he's had yet. Maybe he's starting to get over what happened in Los Angeles.

He actually can't remember what he was doing right before he walked through the door. For all he knows he's in a Mindscape. He doesn't want to be rude.

"This is... there's this British TV show where this girl wakes up one day and she runs into her clone, and it turns out there's..." He clears his throat and puts his hands into his pockets. "It's... actually kind of complicated. What's the last thing you remember?"

wind
"I... was thinking, maybe, you know, this wasn't the best idea ever? Trailer in a blizzard..." There's a nervous laugh from Other Samir. "And then, the trailer tipped and I went with it."

And you showed up, ruining this guy's whole night, man.

"And yeah, I know... Orphan Black," Other Samir says, and nods slowly, as if to a child. "I mean... You should probably, uh... Get out of my trailer?"

Not speaking with the voice of someone who's used to giving commands, really.

"I'm sorry. It's just, this is really freaking me out."

Samir
"Yeah, I know, I'm really freaked out too, but if..."

Yeah see trailer in a blizzard. Keyword: blizzard. That's not the angle he goes with.

"What if I step outside again, and the same thing happens, and there's three of us. I don't know about you, but I'm gonna freak right out."

wind
"I know, but..." the Other Samir straightens himself out, trying for some backbone. "Look, you just... stand more of a chance out there than in here. I freak out, and I don't know what I'll do..."

Threatening. But it's no empty threat. The other man clutches at his face, rubs his eyes, and breathes heavily like he's losing a battle at calming himself, and then points at the door.

"Please. JUST LEAVE!"

Samir
Later he will have to remind himself that just because Event B follows Event A doesn't mean Event A caused Event B. So he went through the trailer door without pacing it four times even though he knew something was inside doesn't mean going through the trailer door without pacing four times caused this exchange to happen.

That's if he remembers this later. He still isn't convinced he isn't in Quiet.

Excepting that if he were in Quiet he wouldn't have the presence of mind to ask the question in the first place.

Unless the very act of questioning is a sign of being in Quiet in which case--

Samir doesn't want to kick the other guy right into a panic attack. He takes a deep breath and focuses. He understands. Other guy is right. He can just put a super covert heat shield around himself and wander back to the road and hope his continuing to exist isn't going to bring about the Resonance Cascade or something.

"Leaving," he says. Pops open the trailer door again. "Leaving," he says. Shuts the door behind him.

wind
The emotions that cross the other man's face go from abject fear, to profound relief, once Samir states that he is leaving. It's as if now, once the problem walks out the door, it can be safely ignored. He can convince himself this never happened.

Only problem is, once the real Samir (is he real?) walks out the door and shuts it, he'll note that the road might be a bit difficult to find -- that is, if he didn't bring his phone with, with its almost-magical maps and GPS.

The snow has changed texture again. The air is colder, turning soft flakes into icy spikes that the piercing wind drives into exposed flesh with a stinging sensation. The sky and the ground are all but indistinguishable now, the same dull shade of whitish gloom.

The only landmarks to see are Samir himself and the trailer, which if he leaves behind will soon be swallowed up by blown snow.

Samir
The problem inherent in just walking away is that there are now two of them. Either one of them isn't real in which case holy shit he has a moral obligation to figure out which one of them it is to prevent the two of them creating a temporal paradox or a wave function collapse or fuck his life why didn't he pay more attention to physical sciences when he still had a tutor--

Or there are two of them. In which case there's an even bigger problem.

Having lost his damned mind is a substate of Condition A. He hasn't ruled it out yet.

Samir stands out in the snow and considers how face it turns to frozen needles. How the knit cap he wears over his head isn't designed for this weather and the peacoat is going to be soaked in a few minutes. How he thinks he knows how the other guy feels excepting that he never gets violent or starts to worry about losing control of himself.

Think about it though he does he can't bring himself to just leave the poor bastard out here. Maybe he'll calm down enough to talk this through like a couple of rational figments of each others' imagination.

He counts twenty-three gusts of wind before turning around and knocking as polite-but-firm as he can considering the wind wants to eat the sensation in his extremities.

wind
Samir hears a whisper in his ear, odd, since the wind threatens to drown out even his knocking on the door. "I know who you are."

"Stay away from my trailer!" comes a voice inside the trailer, definitely not a whisper. A yell, less angry than scared.

Meanwhile, the wind chips away at his warmth. The outside world hurts.

The other Samir may not be the one he knows himself to be, but there are parallels, aren't there? An isolated person, stuck in a highly controlled environment, refusing to let others in unless they are in danger too. And they don't get to stay.

Someone might get hurt.

Samir
The parallel isn't lost on him. It isn't in the forefront of his consciousness but having had a close friend accuse him of locking himself in a tower before he can now appreciate how shitty it is to try and help someone and to have that someone shove him out.

And then that whisper.

That doesn't startle him the way walking into what he thought was his trailer and seeing a double of himself had. He frowns and he focuses but he doesn't fly off the icing-over metal step.

He turns to see if he can make out the source of the voice. The statement has him frowning but it also has his attention. Samir steps down off the trailer step.

"Are you sure?"

If he can light a cigarette in this weather he can take his "deck" out of his jacket and get a visual of the area. The road isn't that far away but with the wind and the drifts he doesn't trust the route he would take in rainy weather.

wind
He pulls out his phone, tries to find the right direction to head in this storm. Something's wrong with the map though. There is no road anywhere near that he can recognize. There are roads, many of them, but they aren't laid out in straight lines, and they seem to go everywhere, like a tangle of tree-shapes.

There's that metallic, buzzing noise again. Seems as though the wind hits the trailer at just the right angle and speed, and some sort of harmonic resonance vibrates a weak spot. "Are you?"

"Why won't you go away!?" says the voice from within the trailer.

Samir
A combination of the readout on his handheld computer and the question hurled back at him and that weird noise where the wind hits the trailer begets this response:

"... the fuck?"

That vibration catches his attention but the anger and the fact that Other Samir knows he's still out here are enough to push him along. The worst thing he can think of other than freezing to death out there in a snowstorm is to not pick a road and stay here and get the shit kicked out of him by Other Samir.

He can't help himself.

Like he would if he were learning a new labyrinthine map Samir strikes off in a general righthand direction.

wind
The whisper in his ear laughs at his response, but doesn't say any more.

As he walks, if he checks his progress on the map, Samir will find yet another strange thing: he isn't moving. Or, he is, and the 'roads' are moving with him. Every step he takes doesn't get him anywhere, except farther from the trailer, which can't be seen anymore through the curtains of snow. Even his footprints are quickly erased.

He is alone.

He is cold.

The only other thing here is the wind and the white.

Samir
"Great."

He wonders what will happen if he turns around and goes back to the junction that led him to this point. Wonders just as hard what will happen if he keeps walking. Probably nothing will change in either direction.

There's an app for that. He doesn't like using the app. Randomness has never set well with him. Look where a random choice has landed him. No-fucking-where. Samir applies an Entropy filter to the map in part for the sake of broadening his horizons and in part for the sake of keeping his thumbs moving. Live, you bastards.

"What," he asks a voice he doesn't expect to respond, "you don't have any more brilliant observations you wanna share with me before I freeze to death?"

wind
Samir doesn't quite understand how to deal with the "outside" very well. It's a confusing mess of paths he can't seem to actually take, no matter how he tries. When he does try, it leads no-fucking-where.

Inside, the only safe place he has carved away for himself, within tightly controlled walls, he still can't seem to deal. The safe place keeps getting rocked, the foundation shifts, he falls, he is afraid. Of what exactly? Or who?

The good thing is that all this is enough to make him angry.

It doesn't make him stop.

His attempts to apply some order to the chaos of this situation? Well, a dotted line. Footprints on the map. That which was wrestled away by the wind shows up. There's a problem again, though. Those footprints don't follow a road. Upon examination, it is a loop. He has walked in a tight circle.

When he asks the voice in his head a question, it responds: "You should find yourself."

Samir
Okay. That isn't working. He's going to have to try something different. That's fine. If he wanted to sit in the dark and do the same thing over and over until he died of boredom he'd still be in Los Angeles. Or that crappy apartment over the laundromat performing vulgar magick getting the universe to conform to what he wanted it to be like.

This isn't working. The screen shows him a bazillion options but using it to find a path isn't getting him anywhere.

You should find yourself.

He puts the deck back in a deep coat pocket and blows out a breath like the fog poured out of his lungs is a weather vane. The voice isn't wrong. That was the point of moving out into the middle of nowhere. It ought to have been easy to find himself with no one else around. The wind is all he's got to go by now.

"What am I, a set of car keys?"

wind
The whisper in his ear laughs again, but as before, there is no response to this latest identification.

At least, not in whispers.

"No. N..no. Where did... Car keys?"

The voice, Samir's voice, comes from behind him.

"You are me. I... I realized that. After you left. I couldn't let you go. I couldn't."

Should he turn around to face that voice, he'll find that Other Samir standing there. He's dressed the same, and the wind whips around his exterior as if it were a mirror, and yet...

This is no sane man. His eyes open too wide. His arms hug himself inside his coat, trying to keep warm or trying to conceal as much as possible. His gaze is unfocused and he shakes with something that isn't a shiver.

Samir
Now he's out in the middle of nowhere with himself and that's what he wanted. If he got away from the city he could make sense of the things that drove him mad. He might've thought about doing that before a huge blizzard came barreling through the plains states but he's not an oracle.

Of course he turns around. Maybe he ought to start running. If TV taught him anything it's that doppelgängers are nothing but trouble but this isn't a doppelgänger. It's the madness he came out here to make sense of.

Best day ever.

"Hey, man, I get it. I'd have been wigged too if I was minding my own business and then I turned around and saw me coming through the door."

Though he has no way of knowing without asking Samir wonders quick if this is what his friends saw when he was having one of his episodes. If they saw him as Other Samir. Quick because all he can see out here is white.

"... are you coming with me, or am I going with you?"

Or is he going to kick his ass and leave him here and return to Denver all doppelgänger-y and no one will be able to tell the difference. Better not put ideas in his head.

wind
"You were coming to... to get rid of me. Replace me with... whatever you are." says the Other one. He shakes his head. "Not going to happen. No. I won't let you."

Apparently, the Other Samir was thinking more Invasion of the Body Snatchers than Orphan Black? How does it feel to be considered the counterfeit?

"You won't stop, will you? Trying to get me to go away? No," he says, and shakes his head again. "No. I am coming with you, and... And you are going with me."

He steps closer, passing through more of the stinging snow. The two of them are alone in the white, alone with the wind.

"Don't you get it? I am you."

Samir
If it weren't for his intrusive thoughts Samir never would have learned how to immerse himself in research not as a distraction technique but as a way of expanding his mind so when the thoughts jangled around they didn't knock over everything else. That he engages in compulsive behaviors stems from the fact that he has a brain wired for mathematics. He isn't the most flexible person in the world but he can change. He has changed.

Other Samir is right to worry. Samir isn't going to claim he hasn't had days where he's doubted his own sanity. Maybe he ought to just throw concepts like 'sane' and 'insane' out of his vocabulary but that way lies Quiet. Getting mistaken for a mad scientist is one thing but actually going Mad. That's what he'd like to avoid.

"That's why I came out here," he says. Like he needs to put Other Samir's mind at ease. Maybe Other Samir gets the sense he's gotten through to him. Samir is Other Samir to Other Samir. "I don't want to get rid of you. I..." Heh. "... I've never taken the time to get to know you, but... I do get it, now."

wind
"What do you 'get'?"

A whispered question, as if a voice from inside didn't already know, right?

Samir
That he can't move forward until he accepts himself.

That he hasn't had a sense of direction because he hasn't ever had to go out on his own.

That's not what he thinks he gets. He's already accepted himself and gone out on his own. They wouldn't be here if he wasn't already changing. Change can consume a person though. Marauders tend to have Dynamic Essences.

"This is who I am," he says to the whispered question. To his double: "I don't try to get rid of you, you don't try to get rid of me."

wind
The Other Samir rears back when that whispered question reaches Samir's ears. He doesn't respond. Probably too used to hearing voices and trying not to pay them any mind.

But he does take up a position side by side with Samir, not touching or looking at him. It's likely that one day again soon, his Quiet side will take him by the hand and lead him off down into the darkness again, but it isn't. Not right now.

A truce has been called.

It's not one that the Other Samir is going to shake on. He hasn't been given license to take over. They've made a pact -- don't obliterate each other, but be aware of the other.

"This is who I am. I could never leave you alone. I... I tried to kick you out, but... I couldn't. Not strong enough. You drag me with you."

The wind is relentless in the unsheltered outdoors. It slams into them both, seeming to pierce not just their exposed skin, but their very being, changing them, and blowing them into the sky -- together. It feels, for a time, like riding the freezing wind. Like becoming something too immense and infinite to be contained inside a body -- until Samir wakes up, unlit cigarette in hand, on the floor of his trailer.

There's some evidence of what happened. The wind outside is pretty strong, and it shakes the place from time to time in its fury. Things have fallen off of shelves. Samir has fallen on the floor. His head hurts.

He also feels fuller, somehow. For a moment, too much to fit inside a small, human shell. Change can be like that. Power can be like that.

He's got the distinct sense that he has, indeed, made a pact with himself -- or at least that part of himself that regularly trips over to the side of Madness. There may be consequences to the promise he's made. But for right now? It seems like a good choice.

Grace sure knows how to pick them.

Michael
Grace sure knows how to pick them.

The night she felt the oath Michael swore to her dissolve like so much sugar in hot water she had no success contacting any of the people in the car with him. Besides the fact that he was driving he had also just survived an attack on his pattern. He was covered in blood and his two former students were in the car with him. Neither one of them was interested in answering their phones either and Mike at least has ways of countering things like mooing phones and GPS abnormalities.

She thinks something horrible has happened. That is an accurate concern. Something horrible did happen. And then Mike slept for two days.

When he awakens he calls Grace's phone. Doesn't apologize so much as attempt to explain what he was thinking. It's the same line he gave her the day he swore the oath in the first place. Didn't want anything to happen to her. He would like to come over and continue this discussion in person. Would she be amenable to this.

Whether or not she is he's here anyway.

Grace
She sounded guarded on the phone, at first. Like this might be Michael, and it might be a trap. What she saw when she peeked into his car was something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie, and nobody has seen fit to explain.

What happened?

When he finally does explain, well. Anger wells up inside. It makes sense for him to do a thing like that. Doesn't mean she likes it. Fucking Michael and his fucking sense of chivalry. How did anyone get the idea that Grace was a damsel?

She had locked herself up in a tower though -- prepared for a siege. Bullets were enchanted, wards were cast. The place, when Michael walks up, feels like her. It hums like she does. While he was incommunicado, sleeping, she never did. She was preparing to take him out. He might not be himself anymore.

On the phone, she doesn't tell him she adores him. She just says it's okay for him to come over, and then *Click*.

It'll be a wonder if her phone survives her first real relationship, won't it?

Thus it is, when Michael shows up, and she opens the door for him, her eyes are angry and exhausted and still searching him for signs that he is who he is.

"Hi. You said you wanted to talk? Finally?"

Michael
Neither one of them has any idea how romantic relationships are supposed to work. It's almost as if neither one of them has any experience with them because they are so committed to their chosen paths in life. So weird.

When he arrives at the office this time he is wearing a trench coat overtop his outfit. She can tell he isn't wearing a tie. He's carrying a small bouquet of blue hyacinths in one hand.

Of course she's angry. She worried about him for over a week and then it turns out he was here the entire time. He doesn't expect her to not be angry. He isn't looking too spectacular himself but he looks at least as if he's slept. That's what folks tend to do when a Nephandus tries to turn them into a black hole in front of their former students.

"Before I say anything else..."

He sighs before offering her the flowers.

"I'm sorry. I didn't..." This is more difficult than dealing with his students. No idea what to say here. "... I should have considered how my actions would have affected you. I considered the mission more important, and that isn't... well. You are important."

Paradoxes are fun.

Grace
She looks at the flowers. This is a part in the script. It is so written in the ritual of Western cultural pair bonding that the male will produce flowers for the female upon special occasions, or when he has massively screwed up. She knows that, because culture is the water in which humans swim, but it doesn't mean she understands.

He made the effort. It is something, right?

"One? Yes, you should have. Two? You considered the mission more important? Well, that tells me a lot about how you view my competence, doesn't it?"

She takes the flowers, though. And looks him in the eyes again. "Come on, get in here before a cat gets out."

Then, she turns to go upstairs with her flowers. Follow, or don't, Mike.

Michael
In his eyes she sees contrition but not a lot of hope riding on the fact that she's going to accept his apology. Their paths were divergent before they crossed. She can do everything that she needs to do through the computer but Mike has to go out into the world and talk to people and find out what they need. Though they have the same fires under them their focuses are different.

She doesn't have to drag him in. She takes the flowers from him. If her eyes are sharp she can see the fading impression of a burn on the palm of that hand.

He closes the door behind him.

Grace
When she gets about halfway up the stairs, she stops. Says, to the wall: "It is good, you know. To see you. Y'know, alive. And sane. I hadn't expected that."

There's still some anger there, but it's tempered with the actual relief of seeing him again. To have the horrible thing you prepared for not happen is... actually very nice. Yes. We're going to try holding on to that emotion.

As we stare at the wall.

And then head up the stairs again, toward the kitchen.

Michael
Well at least he hears some relief in her voice. He might have preferred to let her vent more of her anger since this is the last time they're going to see each other for an extended period of time. His business here is finished.

"You hadn't expected me to be sane?" he asks. Minute amusement in his tone. That was a legitimate concern.

Grace
She leans over the banister, and calls out to him, a flash of the blue hyacinths in her hand. "Well, no. The last thing I heard about anything was that Alice had taken control of you for several days and made you go to maybe New Jersey. I have a program with your name on it now, just looking for murders that match the type. I have some bullets Worked up with your name on them too, because no matter how much I love you, like Hell was I going to let you slice me up without a fight."

This is what you get, Mike, when you don't tell people important things. The ones who love you the most plan to kill you.

Then, she disappears back up the stairs again. She's going to take care of those flowers. Put them in a glass with water, because that's what you do. At least she didn't go throw them in the nearest trash can.

Michael
"Well..."

He considers following her up the stairs. Considers further the fact that she is angry with him. Considers further the fact that he does not know who else might be in the building and does not want to holler this conversation across the house.

So in the end he comes up after her.

"I appreciate that you took as many precautions as you did to keep yourself safe. And I'm glad it didn't come to that. If the Artist became aware of your involvement, or my..." He's thinking of Farrah right now. Clears his throat to banish whatever emotion welled up with the thought. "... attachment... to you... I don't know what would have happened."

Grace
There is, as yet, nobody else living here. Not right now. River's not moved in, obviously, and Samir doesn't have need to stay, and Kalen is off in Santiago preparing, in his own way, for war.

She wouldn't call herself alone, but she was fairly alone here. Just her and the cats.

He follows her up, and finds the second floor of the place, the kitchen into which she disappears with her flowers. It's a very nice kitchen. River's drooled over it -- wants to come and cook for her just because of all the equipment that Kalen has deemed necessary for two people who basically only ever use the microwave.

"I don't know what would have happened either. That's why I encrypted my location. And then, I felt you... I felt that Oath you swore to me breaking. And then, I looked, again, to try to find you, and you were covered in blood and you shut me out. What did you think I would make of that? I thought you might not be you anymore. I prepared to have to fight you and the Artist. I prepared to die. I always was.

"You could have fucking called me."

With that, she takes some shears from a drawer and snips through the hyacinth stem ends with rather more force than they deserved.

Michael
One of the best ways to avoid an argument is to not engage the other person in one to begin with. She is angry. It is a rightful sort of anger. She let herself fall for someone who is more like her than she cared to admit at first.

But Mike does not attempt further to defend himself or explain what was going through his head. He has already apologized. He unbuttons his trench coat and tucks his hands into its pockets. Watches her go at the flowers with curiosity in his gaze.

"Grace," he says, "my intent is to return to Los Angeles tomorrow morning. Ihsan's is to remain in town and work with River for the foreseeable future. I would like to call you when I arrive in Los Angeles." A beat. "You would not have wanted to hear from me the moment the terms of the oath no longer applied. The Artist nearly took me with zir."

Well that explains all the blood.

Grace
She takes a tall glass from a cabinet, puts some water in it by the sink. She's about to put the flowers in it, when he says that The Artist nearly took him. That that's why the Oath broke. It wasn't because their quest had finished. There's a pause there, and she grips on to the stems a little harder, before plunking them into the glass.

He plans on returning to L.A. tomorrow. Fuck.

"Tell me what happened? Please?"

There probably is a tasteful vase in the place. Kalen would know where something like that might be. Grace just has her tall glass of hyacinths when she turns around. It'll do, for now. The flowers won't wilt immediately. They'll be a reminder of him when he is no longer around to do so.

Michael
This isn't the time to start lying. He hasn't attempted to lie to her yet. He doesn't seem capable of lying but then Grace has seen what he looks like when he has been inhabited by another person's consciousness. How a darkness comes into his eyes.

He stays where he is as the conversation continues.

"Ihsan, River, and I went to a neutral location," he says. "Thanks to your work with the painting, we were able to lock in on zir. I opened a gate and..." How to word this. "... pulled zir through it. Upon zir arrival, ze..." How to word this. "... undid the quintessence in my pattern. Ihsan and River were both in possession of enchanted weapons. Ze was dead before I was aware of what had happened."

Grace
She walks over to the kitchen table, slides the hyacinths upon it, and listens.

That fucking fuck tried to delete Mike, is what he's saying.

"I need to buy them both a drink, I guess. Fuck." she takes in a deep breath. Lets it out.

"And Alice?" she says, as she turns to face him again. "I guess she won't be around again, if The Artist isn't..."

Michael
Deleting him would have been less painful. Really what she did was turn his quintessence into a black hole. It would have sucked in and destroyed everything else in the immediate area if he had not come back to his senses and stabilized and undo the undoing before it could spread.

She can't tell from looking at him that that was quite possibly the most afraid he has ever been in his life. Death doesn't frighten him. That wasn't just death. That was having his pattern corrupted. She doesn't need to hear about that.

"I hope so. Admittedly, I have minimal experience with spirits..."

Grace
She walks over to him, reaches up with a hand, a stuttering gesture. She places it on his chest, a strange way of reassuring herself that he's solid, he's here, he's alive.

"So you don't think, if you spent the night with me, she wouldn't take you back to New Jersey again?"

Subtlety isn't really Grace's strong point. But then, they don't really have a lot of time.

"I mean, you already have a ticket to L. A, that would be kind of rude of her."

Michael
Beneath her palm his heart beats slow and solid. She can feel its beat accelerate as the contact persists. No other outright signs of his pleasure in her company.

Thanatoic duty is to be done in the name of the cosmos and offered in sacrifice to the cosmos. The Chakravanti are to seek their own spiritual betterment. To strength their own bodies and wills and resist the temptations of desire. Eschew action that is created purely by their desires.

If one cares to argue that Grace tempted him and he failed to resist his desire then one could argue he has violated two rules of the Chodana in addition to killing two innocent people while in Denver.

Grace cracks a joke. Michael laughs.

"I don't think she will," he says.

Then he takes her face in his hands and kisses her full on the mouth. Subtlety isn't his strong point either.

Grace
Grace is all about violating rules. Even she kicks herself for what happened the last time they were together. Right now, though? He says, and she believes him, that it'll be fine.

She kind of has to believe him. To think that she can let this heavy burden down -- to be in the moment. And at the moment, he is kissing her.

That moment passes, as all do. Thanks for that, o Arrow of Time. She pulls back, slightly, so she can speak.

"This doesn't mean I'm not still mad. I'm just... so good to see you."

And then, her lips are occupied again.

Let's All Get Drunk and Watch Zombieland

Grace
The two of them will likely be aware of the drill by now. Two buildings, one of which is an office, the other of which is a warehouse. Heavy steel doors with intimidating locks, which Grace opens via fingerprint with a solid ka-chunk of machinery. And lo, the cats are nowhere to be seen. Must be off sleeping somewhere.

Beyond the portal, the place looks like a Hermetic's pad, like Grace had no input into this. It wasn't as if Kalen didn't try. She just has no input beyond a shrug and a 'whatever'.

In the back, on the first floor, down the hall -- is a room. This room has cushy couches and fluffy pillows and even cashmere blankets draped over their backs, should anyone want to sleep upon them. They're arranged around a gigantic flat-screen television.

It's to that room that Grace leads her assembled herd.

"The, you know, traditional living room-type thing. Tada."

River
River approaches everything in the warehouse like she's going to break it.

The couch probably cost more than some of the places she grew up in; she finds bathtubs comforting for a reason and that reason was that the bathroom was likely the only bit of privacy she got growing up. She looks around and realizes that her entire family has inhabited smaller places than this and now? Now they're doing pretty damned well for themselves with a restaurant at the border and a livable apartment above it.

The place she'd lived with Farrah was about the size of a post card and there were times that River thought it was spacious.

"... holy crap that TV costs more than my life."

Samir
This isn't the first time he's been here. Barring some sort of apocalypse scenario or his being transported Billy Pilgrim style to another planet or something this will probably not be the last time. Sam chain-smoked all the way over here and disappeared into a bathroom as soon as they got inside. After traveling across town and being on a train and in a bar and in a cab or someone else's car or something form of transportation of dubious cleanliness he really just wanted to wash his hands.

He is a hit at parties.

It gives the women a few minutes to themselves. Tada. Living room. TV costs more than her life. He's not there for that. His return is imminent though.

Grace
"The Hell it does," Grace says, and strides up to the thing. "Look, yeah, I know. Kalen has a thing for spending his money. I think it has something to do with his being homeless as a kid. He wants everybody to have the things he never got to have. Something like that."

She gets the remote, and... let's face it, Grace usually watches movies on her laptop. Still, she's a computer genius, it shouldn't be that difficult to connect to the streaming server she set up for this, right?

Right.

There are menus to peruse. There are speakers to turn on, hidden about the room. It'll take a few minutes.

River
"We didn't stay somewhere that we had a television until I was ten," she said, as though that was a statement of understanding, "I can imagine getting really excited to share things though."

She has meandered since then over to one of the couches, kicks her shoes off like she has been dying to do the entire evening. River's not one for wearing shoes, truth be told. Has never really been that much of a fan for various reasons, one of which being that she didn't like how disconnected she felt when she was wearing shoes.

"Elliott seems really nice, how did you two meet?"

Grace
"Randomly. I'd just Awakened, he was one of the first Mages I met in Denver. We started talking, and the next thing I know I'm explaining how I do magick to him, and..."

Soon after that, she got sick with Hydra. And Kalen was there for her.

"He's very nice. I hope you get to know him better. But his butt is in Santiago right now."

She meanders her way over to sit atop the couch's armrest while she fiddles with the remote, which at least now is showing some signs of progress. There's a list of movies on the screen now, at least. Most of the titles are obviously file handles, though.

Samir
They can hear Samir returning from the bathroom because he coughs the sort of cough that sounds like an overworked garbage disposal. It's wintertime in the Rockies and he smokes more weed and tobacco than is probably healthy. And he doesn't know shit about Life magick. He probably has bronchitis.

It's a good warning bell though.

"Where's the rest of him?" he asks as he walks in on the tail-end of that comment. He's caught up on Ginger. He knows Grace is talking about Kalen. He also thinks he's being funny.

River
"His Spanish is very good! I hope that he enjoys Chile? And comes back with stories," and all of his limbs, but that's more a concern about being a mage than her concerns about Chile. River has since plopped herself down on a couch, adjusting as best she can to avoid giving everyone a fantastic upskirt shot.

Her toenails are red and sparklie. She seems pretty happy with them, but she's also pretty happy to curl up on the couch and, well, seem comfortable.

She does toss Sam a look, brows knit together for a second, "you okay? That cough sounded pretty bad."

Grace
Grace rolls her eyes at Samir. What's the count on that tonight? Three? "The rest of him is in France. Only his butt wanted to go to Santiago. Shame, really. That could happen, though. What if you got a teleportation routine totally wrong, and your butt just ends up in Santiago. Pop! Disembodied ass!"

Yup, she went there. Okay, Zombieland is at the end, alphabetically, but she finds it at last, and clicks the thing to start it.

"I'll get the lights," she says, and runs off to hit the wall switch. In the dark, nobody can see your fantastic upskirt shot...

Samir
To the matter of the disembodied ass:

"It'd be kind of funny until you tried to sit down."

To the matter of whether he's okay:

"Yeah, I mean... the doctor says if I don't get laid tonight, I could have lung failure, but other than that..."

River
She inhales, gasps with surprise before she laughs again. It's not hard to make her blush, either that or she's feeling particularly warm and can't quite tell the difference between anxiety and flirtation.  But, she does laugh, runs a hand through her hair and straightens her skirt out again.

"Well, I'd hate to put you on the transplant list..."

Samir
Oh shit. That was just a stupid thing he said without thinking because he's nervous. He wasn't trying to flirt with her. Fuck. Why is she blushing. What is happening. Why isn't his brain done developing yet.

"Uh..."

Cough. Where's Grace. Turning off the lights. Great.

Grace
Grace is off getting the lights, and the other two have their couch. She's going to leave them to it, and go sit at an adjoining one while the movie starts up.

She never really was one for a crowded shared-seating situation anyway.

It would be nice if Mike were here, though. The thought strikes her, and she really didn't get enough Irish coffee, did she? Hmm.

The FBI warning comes up on the screen, and she gives it the finger as per custom. "Fuuuuck yoooou," she adds, ritual words for super serious rituals. We're going to skip ahead, past the trailers... Yeah, give her something else for the mind to focus on.

River
Oh thank everything, Grace is turning off the lights! She is reaching back to  the back of the couch and stealing one of the blankets that happened to be littering the place. Whatever view of the young Cuban American is soon shrouded by the fact that there are readily available warm, soft things to cover up with.

River clears her throat and seems pretty content to stay on her side of the couch.

"Does anyone actually read the warning?" she asked.

Grace
"Don't. It's all poison. There solely to try to make you as afraid as they are. You ever wonder why they're so afraid? Hahahaha haha."

Okay, Grace. Try not to go on a rant about how people are beginning to wake up to the unreality of money here. There's a zombie movie to watch...

And thus, we do get to the actual movie, and Grace stops fast forwarding through it.

River
[Because I can totally stomach fake blood that I know is fake in a movie, I swear!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )

River
River looks at Grace like she has no idea what she is talking about. Grace could be talking about physics and got the same reaction. She offers a mildly confused smile and a shrug. There is an actual movie to watch and, for her part, River has successfully managed to not talk through it.

There is something to be said, though, and it is this: she doesn't reach out and become the stereotypical wilting flower if things she sees are uncomfortable. Nope, River's reaction is to burrow deeper into the blanket so that, by the time they're actually legitimately running from zombies, she resembles a pile of sentient chenile blanket. Or a fraggle.

Samir
For a time Sam is content to sit on the couch next to River and not touch her or sneak closer to her or any of the other juvenile things boys tend to do during movies. Grace is standing right there first of all and second of all a paralyzed bassett hound has more game than he does.

After the protagonist finds himself beset by the reanimated corpse of the girl of his dreams Sam says, "Uh, I need weed if this is what it's going to be like for two hours. Who wants alcohol?"

The assumption could be that he's going to raid the pantry but Grace at least knows he can just conjure things out of thin air. She's sat on his love seat.

River
A hand pops out of the mountain of blankets that has been sitting beside Samir for this time being. For her part, she'd been pretty happy to be a mountain of blankets with a sense of personal space. Occasionally she looked his way. More often than not, while she did enjoy the movie, River looked a little pale and like she might go revisit her lunch.

Which was nothing. Breakfast consisted of yogurt and a muffin from the continental breakfast in the hotel lobby.

"I think I want a rum and orange juice," a second, "Grace, do you have orange juice?"

Ha. Like orange juice doesn't magically appear places.

Grace
Grace flumps down on her couch and raises her hand, before realizing in the dark may not be the best of times to be noticed. "I do."

"OJ is in the kitchen, and that sounds wonderful. Get me some?"

There is a ridiculously soft blanket on this couch too, and she slings it over herself, rather oblivious to the fact that River is having issues dealing with a horror movie. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea? But she'd seemed so gung-ho about it...

Samir
Praise be to the gods of ball busting: Sam does not know enough about alcohol to make a joke about combining rum and orange juice. All he knows is that rum is what pirates drink and orange juice is what white people drink. He doesn't judge. He just gives a sloppy salute that they can't make out in the dark and rises from the couch.

"Aye aye, yo."

Coughing that junky cough as he goes. Winter is the worst season in the world why did he ever leave Los Angeles.

River
[Life 1: Is it rude to scan someone's pattern while they're leaving? +3 diff because she doesn't have any shit with her]

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

River
She does get up, though. Gets up and abandons her fortress of blankets and personal space and hiding the fact that she looked like she might just throw up- and it was away with her to the kitchen and to go be in appropriate lighting.

Then again, the retreat to the kitchen was a little awkward, and she does stand in an inopportune location. Looks a little like she zoned out staring at Samir while reality-

Does precisely fuck all.

She can feel herself sobering up already.

"Do you mind if I smoke with you?" she asks. Ready to continue on her kitchen mission if the answer is a negative.

Grace
Since she's the only person left in the room, and isn't leaving with the herd to go flee from the horror of Zombieland, Grace pauses the thing. It's polite, right?

And then, slumps over on her side on the couch, because the room is dark and it's warm and quiet. Might as well be naptime...

River
River wandered off to talk to Sam, only to find that her timing was off and she wasn't entirely certain as to where she was going in terms of the orientation of the kitchen. She calls back

"Graaaaaaaace, I don't know where the kitchen is."

Grace
"Yes you do!" she says, and drags herself up off the couch to traipse along after River, and lead her upstairs.

"It's upstairs, down the hall, to the left!" she yells up. "I'll show you."

Samir
"THE KITCHEN IS OVER HERE."

Don't get up Grace. You third wheel.

River
She has to stop for a second, heads in the sound of the voice and repeats.

"Upstairs, down the hall, to the left," and she's mouthing it as she heads up the stairs towards the sound of Samir's voice.

"I THINK I FOUND-" she rounds the corner and finds Samir. Stands awkwardly for a minute before she heads on in to the kitchen and makes a break for the fridge. She hasn't bothered to put her shoes back on.

"I can't move in here, this place is gigantic."

Samir
If her barefootedness holds up in the wild he might find it strange if not a bit endearing. He himself lives in the wild now technically and he still pulls on his boots before he makes the trip out to the pipe to take a shower in the morning. One day he will perfect the ritual that lets him start each new day fresh and free from germs but he'll be damned if that doesn't feel like cheating seeing as the whole point of moving out to the sticks was to--

Oh. River's here.

He found the orange juice and was hunting around for the rum when she came into the kitchen. Awkward standing met by awkward watching and then she's at the fridge.

"Yeah," he says with an uncomfortable laugh accompanying it. "I, ah... it's not so bad. I stayed here for a bit. It's better than sleeping under a bridge."

Listen to the voice of experience, over here.

Grace
Grace pops her head in after River. "Gigantic is so relative a term."

"See? You found the kitchen. Totally navigable."

She gives River a thumb's up, though her eyes flicker to Samir when he says staying here was better than sleeping under a bridge.

"That's what this place is for, really."

River
So, there they are, awkward and spending time around the fridge and she notices he has orange juice so she's... carefully... looking through the fridge and pretending like she's looking for something else instead of getting the orange juice that he very clearly already found.

"I think if I moved in I'd get a mini fridge," she says. She realizes, though, halfway through that she's being rude and her brows shift up and her ears are burning and- "I'll really think about it. It's very nice of you to offer."

Once that rum gets found she's more than ready to  work on that buzz again.

"If I can get over the fact that Denver isn't permanently seventy six degrees, then-" she loses her train of thought "-yeah, I'll think about it."

Samir
"Where are you from?" Sam asks. "San Diego?"

It's a rhetorical question. Only like five places in the United States are known for their consistent weather. For all he knows she was talking about Miami. Sam is a smart young man but the less he knows about his friends before he meets them the better.

River
"I was born in Florida? But we eventually settled out in San Diego... and... you're from LA?" she draws the conclusion because, well, Ihsan was kind enough to draw said conclusion for her and she was going with it.

"I've never actually been to LA," aaaaaand just judging by the way she makes that admission, River Vasquez has no intentions of ever going to LA.

Grace
"I have a mini fridge too. They're awesome. I don't have to leave my office for anything."

At least Grace loves her work that much, huh? Of course her 'work' is mostly interesting projects of her own choosing, and the occasional taking care of supernatural shit.

She's just apparently happy to have won River over, right? And she knows where the glassware is, so she heads to a cupboard and picks out three for them. Somebody else already has the OJ...

Let's All Get Drunk

River
Consider this bonding time.

Ever since she gave one of the patrons at the Diamond Cabaret a bloody nose, it's been a bit harder to bid on shifts with the other dancers. Nobody wants to be known as the strip club where you need a safe word to interact with the dancers, so River has found herself with decidedly more free time than she had originally anticipated. Which, of course, meant that she was spending time around the hotel room being what can only be described as a sad lump. She's even taken to watching the daytime programming on Telemundo. 
Enséñame a querer, she'd clarified if Ihsan asked what she was watching. Probably between little whimpery noises and pleas in Spanish for Adriana to get her life together and for anyone to straighten up and see exactly what Yadira was up to.

The show has been on the air since 1998. If something doesn't give, River's going to start torrenting episodes of daytime Venezuelan television (which will likely result in her breaking whatever electronic device she used to acquire said television episodes and ending up on a technocratic watch list because River Vasquez knows precisely nothing about computers.)

Today was different, though, and after she indignantly gave the business to some nameless television character, she got in the shower, cleaned upo, and put makeup on. Eyeliner, mascara, some eyeshadow, and a little blush because she needed to look like she had actually eaten something of value as of late. She's got on a denim skirt and a sweater. River even shaved her legs- this is a good sign.

"Do you want to go get a beer with me?" she asks Ihsan, as if she has finally mustered the oomf to go drink in public.

And thus, they go drink in public.

The bar is a relatively decent establishment. It isn't dirty, but its name doesn't really ring too many bells. It would probably only be known as that one place that has a deal with a microbrewery upstate (which could name any number of places in Colorado) but it is five o'clock and well drinks are three dollars and there she is perched on top of a mismatched bar stool holding a tall glass of some IPA the bartender recommended.

"Do you think working with a ballet company gives you a flexible schedule?"


Samir
Eleanor Roosevelt's brilliant advice was to do one thing every day that scares you.

That's brilliant advice for an individual with an anxiety disorder. Means they can justify never leaving the damned house. Trailer. Whatever. The brain has tricks for defeating itself. Samir would like to think he's smarter than his brain.

He had sent Grace a text message only after he loaded himself onto the train. Told her he was headed into the city and going to the dirtiest bar he could find. It was beer o'clock if she wanted to join him. He has only peripheral awareness of what is going on in her life courtesy of Ginger. Maybe his sixth sense concerning her emotional well-being is niggling at him.

And now he is wandering into the first bar he passes that strikes him as being The One. It isn't as dirty as he was hoping for. It isn't dirty at all.

So the tall dark handsome stranger steps out of the way of the door and with a sigh puts his back to the wall and sends Grace a text saying he failed miserably but when she was ready to come out here he was.

Ihsan
One afternoon, after days on end of filling the hotel room with Spanish drama, River asked Ihsan out for a beer.  On that day Ihsan couldn't be happier to oblige with a request.  She wasn't one to turn down a night out very often in the first place, but it was all the better that River was getting out into fresh air.  She didn't want to have to spend goodness-knows-how-long worrying about looking after someone-- she would have gone and started a family by now if that was on her agenda.

So Ihsan was sitting next to River on a bar stool that was a little shorter than the one her companion was seated at herself.  She had her down on her shoulders and wore a floppy-brimmed hat on her head.  Boots, tight black jeans, and a chunky gray sweater.  River had purchased a beer, and Ihsan opted for an Irish coffee instead.  She wasn't accustomed to chilly days, blamed it on the bones of her ancestors and their centuries of desert-dwelling.  So she sat with her legs crossed one knee over the other and held her coffee mug with both hands, cupped up near her face so she was breathing the warm vapors it emitted.

"No," was her answer with a matter-of-fact tone and shake of her head.  "Practice won't change on account of you.  Neither will classes that you'd teach in.  You'd be better off on shift work."

When a door opens in a bar it tends to bring light and sound and sometimes even cold or heat along with it.  Ihsan's eye had moved reflexively to the door when she heard and saw it opening past her left shoulder.  She'd looked back to River right away, mid conversation with her after all, but soon looked distractedly back to the disappointed looking man who hovered by the door instead of entering further.  Her brow heavied a little, thoughtful from shuffling through memory to try and place the familiarity in the stranger's(?) face.

"I never believed in deja vu," she said distractedly and nodded her head with one small chin-bob toward the door, indicating that River should glance as well.  "Even before I knew better, I did not."

River
She takes it in, really pays attention to what it is that Ihsan is saying because she makes a pretty good point- she'd be better off on shift work. Her mind drifts briefly to being a professional card player because heaven knew she had an edge on the blackjack table, but that took her thoughts one step further and River nodded and took a good, solid drink of her beer. Solid enough that it disappeared down the hatch and she had about half a glass left because reasons.

Ihsan points her attention to the door and she turns her head, then shoulders, and pays attention to the door like most people do when someone new walks in the door at a place like this. Her brain, however, fills in a big blank space instead of filling in someone Samir-shaped. It's what the universe does sometimes, paints over places in your consciousness because it knows to fill in a repeating pattern even if that isn't correct.

So, she almost misses him before she leaned a little over to Ihsan and said, "... I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking for."

Samir
[perc + awareness: WHAT UP MY PEOPLE]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )

Ihsan
[Oh right, we roll these things:  Perception 2 + Awareness 2]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Perc + Awareness: Doing this too!]

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

Samir
For those of you playing along at home: Samir and Ihsan were both in Cairo before the revolution of 2011. They both had powerful mentors in Los Angeles who knew other powerful mentors in Los Angeles. Sam had never been much of a partygoer but Kayf had dragged him plenty of places that Mike had also dragged Ihsan.

They know each other even if they haven't exactly added each other on Facebook. Enough to recognize each others' resonances anyway. He picks up on River's too even though he's never seen her before. The pinging on his internal radar has him looking up from his screen and stuffing the device back in his pocket.

Grace had a little red dot on him during his little Quiet episode recently. If she shows up five seconds after he texts her that isn't going to be the weirdest thing in the world.

For a second he looks as if he doesn't know what to do with himself. It's obvious Ihsan has seen him but she isn't looking at him right now. This wasn't in the manual. Keyboard mash keyboard mash.

He takes a deep breath and counts all the chairs in the place before walking up to the bar.

Grace
Samir is a lifesaver, really. Of course she'd be looking for any excuse to peel herself away from her ongoing efforts to track Mike down via mundane means. And by that, we mean, she's looking for suspicious murders in between here and the east coast. It's such a great way to spend an afternoon, isn't it?

She texts him back, asking for location (because she doesn't red-dot people after the need has passed) and presumably gets a response, because in walks Grace to the establishment that Samir found. Not dirty. Which, hey, that's good, right?

The place is humming already. Grace rolls her eyes at the caprice of the universe for doing this, but she looks around a bit, doesn't notice Samir at all (not a surprise there) but does find Ihsan and River. And so, she approaches. And oh, hey!  Look at him appearing out of the woodwork.

"Hey. I see you found some company," she says.

Ihsan
"A familiar face," Ihsan coached River, and following an after thought she looked her new friend in the face to clarify.  "I mean, perhaps not familiar to you.  But you know what I am saying."

The Irish coffee cup was moved up in front of her face, so she could perch her lips on the rim and take a sip.  Eyes as dark as the coffee was prior to tampering found Samir approaching the bar and followed him as she did.  It was much like unexpectedly bumping into somebody that you'd gone to high school with; in that equation, there is always one party who didn't want to be seen and the other who wanted nothing more than to shout out recognition and catch up on old times.

"Hey, didn't you live in Los Angeles?"

Guess which person Ihsan was.

She inquisitively stared, open and waiting for her answer, and it was at that point that Grace entered the bar, found Samir and the other two Awakened within his proximity, and approached.  Ihsan looked over to Grace and offered an upward nod of her head and a brief smile.

"Grace.  How are you getting along?"

River
[I notice resonance, because it's a thing]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

Samir
When Deer Met Headlights.

Though he was neither born in Egypt nor could boast any Egyptian blood in his lineage Sam was a citizen of the world. Between his multilingualism and his ambiguous ethnicity he grew used to people mistaking him for someone else or thinking that they shared a heritage or what have you years ago.

In this instance though yes as a matter of fact he did live in Los Angeles and he is drawing a breath and opening his mouth to answer when Grace appears.

His eyes tick between Ihsan and Grace and then he cuts River a lopsided nervous grin. Does not offer his hand to shake. Both of his hands are stuffed hard into the pockets of his leather jacket. Like in L.A. he wears his hair tied into a knot at the nape of his neck. He hasn't shaved his damned face in several days. He only thought he was going to be seeing Grace and no offense Grace but he doesn't feel the need to impress you.

"Hi," he says. "Sam. Nice to meet you."

River
"Ohhhh," she says, like this is supposed to make things make sense. And on her senses she gets this amazing cocktail of piercing keen forceful rippling winged something that River concludes makes her beer taste funky. So, she finishes it and carefully pushes it aside in favor of ordering a water.

She's going to be drinking a lot. She's not a freshman, River Vasquez knows how to drink and minimize the level of damage she's going to do to herself in the morning. She knows what she's doing, and there she is taking in people and Grace gets a legitimate smile (though, despite her radiant nature, isn't necessarily beaming. Don't make references about clouds and rain, Ms. Vasquez, it's tacky)

There was somewhere that she didn't know and there were introductions. She notices the lack of hand being offered, so she doesn't broach the gap with her own. Despite her profession, River has a very well developed sense of personal space.

"I'm River," she says with a smile, "what are you drinking?"

Because Ms. Temporarily Short on Funds is more than willing to buy a cute guy a beer because why the fuck not?

Grace
Grace gives Ihsan this weary look, and just responds by hopping up on the stool next to her and saying: "I need some tequila? Something."

River too. Everybody, really. Let's all get plastered.

Well, okay, River looks like she's doing all right, with her beaming nature and outward smiles. But still.

"Sam's my friend, he's cool," she says, trying to bridge the gap between groups of people who don't know each other yet. So, you know, he's a known entity. And so are they. We're all cool here.

Samir
[manip + subt: lol the name river totally doesn't mean anything to me]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (7, 7) ( success x 2 )

Ihsan
Grace's answer got a dark chuckle out of Ihsan, something that sounded like it could have been a rumble in the throat of a lioness.  Grace had moved to the stool beside her, so Ihsan patted it welcomingly before it was mounted.  She soon went back to cradling her drink with both hands.

"Oh!  Sam, that's right.  Sorry, it's been a little while.  I'd kind of forgotten what your name was."  Perhaps that wasn't the kind of polite lying that she should have presented, but you get to know Ihsan for more than five minutes and the realization that beating around the bush wasn't her forte.

"I recommend the coffee.  It's good."

Samir
Ihsan had kind of forgotten what his name was. He looks back over at her and smiles the sort of smile that only serves to broadcast how uncomfortable he is when he isn't holed up in his cave. It would be a nice smile if he meant it.

"That's alright. I get that a lot."

What are you drinking?

"Not tequila," he says. Since this was such a hit the last time he said he tries it again: "Last time I drank tequila I woke up in a pyramid."

Now that he's the only one not sitting he has committed himself to standing up. So he goes to stand by the girl who's offering to booze him up. It has nothing to do with the fact that he kind of knows her most recent damage courtesy of Ginger. Nope. Nothing at all.

I recommend the coffee. It's good.

"I will do the coffee."

River
[Manip+sub: this is me being completely normal and eeeeverything is fine]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

River
She seems to be doing okay, or as good as one can expect for someone whose best friend died a fairly gruesome death pretty recently. Ihsan knows better, but Ihsan has had to live with her as of late. She's had to suffer through the Spanish soap operas, she's had to coax her out of the bathtub because River decided to make her little fortress of solitude in the only bathroom they had and you can't really be a hermit in a one bathroom situation.

But she's there, and the fact that she's enjoying herself isn't fake. So, there's that. She flags down the bartender with a wave and a smile and a look that says she's pretty accustomed to flagging down bar tenders.

"Can I get an irish coffee and-" she turns briefly to look at Grace and "- do you drink bourbon?"

A quick offer. Two if the answer is yes, one if the answer is no.

Samir
[perc+empathy: you're so full of shit]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [Doubling Tens]

Grace
"Yeah," she responds to River. "Irish coffee doesn't sound terrible, actually. Better than tequila."

Tequila always reminds her of Thursdays with Elijah. Not bad memories, just there was this one time where she had too much, and yeah that wasn't fun.

Maybe she's still got that bottle stashed behind the robot arm in the Danger Room...

Samir
River is not completely normal and nothing is fine: film at 11.

For a few seconds that the camera and anyone else looking at them picks up Samir looks River dead in the eye. It might look like flirtation. With his resonance flavored as it is having his attention on her might not be the most comfortable thing in the world but he is an attractive young man and once you get past the jabbing sensation there's no malice in him. Something in her speaks to something in him and he takes a deep breath but doesn't say anything else.

He really wants to straighten out the pile of coasters to his left but that's a slippery slope. He keeps his hands in his pockets.

"Tequila is Spanish for 'you fucked up,'" he says.

River
There has been one time in the entirety River's life where she has not been able to keep someone's gaze, and she'd like to keep it at one time. So, Samir looks her dead in the eye and it might look like flirtation but she isn't sure what it is. She smiles at him anyway because there isn't any malice in him no matter how awkwardly uncomfortable his resonance might feel. She doesn't have an approximation for what the feeling is like, save for the fact that it's just, well, piercing. About like getting her ears pierced, she presumes, which was something she hadn't actually done until she was past the age where she could drink normally. The nerves are worse than the brunt of it.

She does get two coffees, one bourbon, and then tosses Grace a look with her eyebrows up and a laugh that comes shortly after her surprise manages to get pushed away.

"What terrible world did you live in that said tequila shots are okay," she said, taking a sip of her water before continuing, "do you have crazy spring break stories nobodies ever heard about?"

Grace
"That must be why Elijah likes it so much," Grace says, in response to Samir's quip.

And also, well, she fucked up. She did. And now it's time to drown the sorrows, right?

"My spring breaks were full of marathons of various turn-based strategy games, okay? No."

She only really started doing anything like this because it's what you do when you're a mage and you can see what you were never meant to as a human.

Samir
He doesn't mean to but he laughs when Grace takes a jab at Elijah. It's a quick Oh shit I shouldn't laugh laugh and then it's over. Spring break doesn't mean anything to him. He never went to college. Or high school. Or.

A tone sounds in Ihsan's pockets and she pulls out her phone to quick-read a text before excusing herself. She and Sam agree to catch up later which means he's going to have to hunt her down which seeing as how he's a Mercurial Elite that isn't the biggest deal in the world. It'll take him all of two minutes.

Then she's gone. Sam clears his throat before sitting on the now-vacant stool between River and Grace.

"So, uh," this to Grace. "Spill it."

She did say she needed something. Italicized. Though he doesn't come out and ask his tone asks What's wrong? Might as well take the heat off River for a minute or two.

River
Ihsan gets a little wave goodbye- they'll catch up. It's not like they aren't inhabiting the same space; River would text if she needed anything. (And briefly wonders if she has Ihsan's number correctly in her phone. Knows she has it written down on an actual paper address book in her obnoxiously large purse, so she doesn't worry too much.)

She's content to sit and listen to people, and Samir is saying spill it and her brows raise and she looks at Grace. Cocks her head to the side a little like a puppy would when encountering a command it hasn't learned yet.The look, you see, is concerned. Concerned for someone she barely knows, yes, but she is a bit concerned and that concern is pointed in Grace's direction.

Grace
"Spill what? I don't have my coffee yet," she says, and it's a dull, dry joke. She gives Sam this look, trying to figure out if he really wants to know.

"Just, you know. Stuff. Mike fell asleep, woke up in New Jersey, and called me to let me know he hadn't... done anything too crazy while he was out. I worry about him, though."

And she worries, every day, about the continued silence of The Artist. How long is that going to last?

Samir
"You worry about him?"

Sam sounds baffled by this statement. It isn't as if he and Grace talk about their feelings when they talk. They talk about news items that have shown up on Twitter or argue the philosophy of mathematics or go back and forth on the most efficient application of a program given the spheres involved.

Shit. They've known each other what five months now and other than his propensity for slipping into Quiet Grace doesn't know that Samir is straight-up mentally ill. She had to find out from Elijah that he's a fucking drug dealer.

"We're talking about the scary white guy who knows the priest, right?"

River
Ah, look, bourbon. You're awful tasty-

Ugh, wait, no, you're just awful. Thanks to her contact at work, River's slowly turning into a bourbon-snob, but whatever the case it gets a hearty drink anyway because it's there and she concludes it'll get the job done. She takes a second, inhales, and reminds herself to be a compassionate person.

It takes about two seconds too long, though.

"Worrying is terrible," she says, "because it lacks the ability to actually be acted upon. It just is- and it's even worse because having people tell you not to worry is even worse than actually worrying."

Grace
Grace gives her own coffee a glare, and goes for it, after Samir wonders aloud why she should ever worry about a guy as scary as Mike. Well, that's because he's both scary and losing contact with himself, Sam.

"Maybe that was a poor choice of words. I'm not so much worried about his physical safety as much as I am worried about everyone else's should he go to sleep and stay there."

There are other things to worry about when it comes to Mike.

"And River? Are you... warded? I have concerns."

Especially after Farrah, but she's not going to bring it up directly.

River
There's this moment where it crosses River's features that she's thinking about how to avoid this topic gracefully, but that... doesn't quite seem to happen. She seems thoughtful, waves a dismissive hand and with the everything is fine for right now that she had managed to project and hold onto (barely, River finally comes up with a response.

"I'm staying in his old hotel room with Ihsan, I doubt security's a problem right now?" she said this almost like a question, "but I plan on moving out once work picks up. Things will work out."

Let it be said that River Vasquez did not ask for help.

River
(close that tag!)

Grace
"You could stay with me?" she suggests, because of course she is going to. "Kalen made that place as a safe spot for people to crash in if they needed it. I took him up on the offer a long time ago."

And, well, now she has an office with a sleeping couch and its own kitchen, because Kalen knows her that well.

"And it's got that kitchen," she adds, as if to wave a lure in front of River's face.

River
"What's the rent on a place like that?" she's trepidation, that much is clear. She's not even making a show to hide that, the way she looks at Grace sidelong and is trying to tell herself to slow down on her drink but she's trying super hard to not drain the thing and call it a day.

"I'd really rather just get a leg up on security in my own place," she said, "if I move in with you, that's too much."

Samir
Just keep your head down, Samir. Drink your coffee. It has whiskey and Bailey's in it. Whiskey and Bailey's are delicious. Just ignore the fact that you're lactose intolerant and you don't know whether the whipped cream came out of a can from a factory or whether the bartenders make the stuff with little cartridges of carbon dioxide. Don't act like you're sandwiched between two women who are having a Serious Conversation. There you go.

Grace
Grace snorts into her coffee. "Nothing. The rent is nothing."

As if they'd charge.

"I can understand. I have my own place too, for all I never go back to it. But you know. It's there, if you ever need it."

She can understand some fear on River's part. The first time Kalen invited her over, she suggested going with a friend, because the dude might be a serial killer in disguise or something. And at that thought, Grace frowns into her cup and drinks some more.

River
There are about seven different things that are going through River's head at that juncture, and one of them being that she's pretty sure that this is all going to go very, very badly and she's going to wake up and she's going to owe Grace something. It's a look that she shares with old people who are afraid of credit cards and people who have very narrowly avoided losing their knee caps to the mafia.

She then squares her attention on Grace, raises her glass, and grins. It's playful, for all of her nerves.

"Let's get drunk together before we decide we're going to be room mates," she said, "I'm surprised Ihsan hasn't packed up yet."

Samir
Oh right. Phone. Phone will save you from the Serious Conversation sandwich. Let's see what's going on on Reddit.

Grace
Grace raises her cup to River in agreement to the getting drunk together part, and upends her glass. It saves her from having to emote too much about that last part. Ihsan should be packing up, because Mike is gone.

River may be hesitant, might worry about owing Grace in the end. But Grace just doesn't think in terms of owing. She'd have to believe in fair trades and there being a concept of worth that made any damn sense.

"Yes. Let's get drunk. Second that."

River
And thus, Grace upends her glass and it becomes socially acceptable for River to finish her second alcoholic beverage in under an hour. She swallowes, closes her eyes tight and is content to try and drink that down about as quickly as she can without having to really notice the fact that if she exhales she can taste rubbing alcohol.

"Sam, I apologize in advance for whatever awkward things I say during the process of getting toasted."

Samir
"What?"

He doesn't even look up from his phone. It's like he comes preprogrammed to not listen when his homegirls are talking across him.

River
"Preemptively apologizing for making a pass at you," she said. Drink down, and back to her water.

Samir
"Oh. Okay. Cool."

Dot dot dot.

River
She clears her throat, looks at the bartender and then back at Grace. She's slowly starting to tend a nice little graveyard of drinks. She wraps both hands around her water glass. Looks back at Grace and-

"So... what do people do in Denver for fun that isn't hiking?"

There we go, smooth transition.

Grace
"You guys are going to third wheel me," Grace says, smiles, slides her empty glass around. "I don't care. I have bourbon."

Ha, ha, ha. Yes. More bourbon is going to be necessary to deal with this shit.

The rational, good-decision-making side of her says that if The Artist does attack, it would be preferable not to be drunk at the time. Then she wonders if she could scrub her blood of oxygen if it came to that, and decides no... Not with that amount of control, unlikely. She'd end up exsanguinating herself or something.

Oh, the things you think about, right?

"Laser tag."

River
"I think you have a secret laser tag addiction, Grace," she said, looked at her like she was completely serious which... she could pull off for all of two seconds, "and I want you to know that there are people who can help with that. They have meetings."

Samir
"Grace sucks at laser tag," Sam says. Still without looking up from his phone. He's gone from Reddit to answering an email.

Grace
"Ohh yeah?" she says, makes like she's going to shove Samir off the barstool, but it's just a feint, a joke. "Fuck you, man. It was just that once," she says, laughing.

Well, well. She can still laugh.

"I know about the meetings. They're at my laser tag arena. I hold them, River. I don't see the problem."

River
"Ohhhh, ladies and gentlemen we have a grudge match- the laser tag battle of the century- Grace versus Sam. Two men enter, one man leaves-" a la that one movie with Thunderdome in it.  "We need to make this happen. Is pay-per-view still a thing?"

Samir
With the feint and the invective Sam decides to pocket his phone and be present. That's what the Internet says the first step to recovery is. Mindfulness and shit. So she laughs. He laughs too. It's a bit uncomfortable but he's trying. Damn it.

So okay. Phone in pocket. Fingers knit between his knees. He looks back over at River for what may be the first time since he sat down. Hard to gauge his eye color with dim ambient lighting. Whatever they are they look dark as the wood making up the bar indoors.

Okay. So River is funny. He's only had about a quarter of his Irish coffee so Sam is in a decent position to judge. He's not drinking to get drunk. He's barely drinking.

"What the fuck is Pay Per View?" he asks.

Grace
"That's what we had before the internet gave us BitTorrent. Nasty bug though, in that you had to actually fucking pay."

Ahh, Mercurial Elites and the yo-ho-ho philosophy, right?

"I will say though, that I am not averse to putting a bunch of spikes on my coat and wearing a skull helmet or whatever is sufficiently Mad Max enough to qualify for this grudge match."

Samir
A wince at the idea of actually paying for entertainment. How bourgeois.

She will say though.

"I was just gonna smoke a bunch of weed and kick your ass again, but if you want to make a cosplay out of it you go right ahead."

River
"So let me get this straight: you two smoke up, go eternal grudgematch in a laser tag arena... and I have somehow written myself out of this scenario why?" dismissive wave. "I call dibs on playing the winner."

Grace
"I will send you both to Valhalla shiny and chrome!"

Hey, even if River or Samir hasn't seen the latest movie yet, they'd have had to have lived under rocks not to get that reference. It's everywhere.

"Well. Okay. Probably not. But a girl's gotta brag."

Samir
"WITNESS ME."

Pounding his cooling Irish coffee is way more badass when he does it after quoting a movie only two other people in the bar have seen. Especially when he puts his fists up about temple-height and says it in a deadpan despite saying it in a loud voice first.

Yes River. This is the one you want to hit on when you're sufficiently anesthetized.

River
She doesn't laugh like a dignified belle. She's not the type of person who laughs like she's some sweet and demure thing. She doesn't laugh like it's the tinkling of bells it's the blaring of trumpets with too much bravado. She's downed two alcoholic beverages in less than an hour and here she is witnessing a moment of utter glory.

So, River laughs, puts her head on the bar and her cheeks are bright ink like she can't tell if she's supposed to be amused or embarrassed and settles on being both. Covers her mouth because she's trying not to encourage them but-

Yeah. River Vasquez can really pick 'em.

Grace
"Ohh, man. This was a good idea. If only to hear him yell 'witness me' in a bar."

Very few people ever witness Samir. It's a part of what makes this so funny. People's eyes have a tendency to slide off of Samir Lakhani. His friends tend to forget he's there, if he's not making sure their attention is grabbed.

It's also what makes him so great at laser tag. Cheater.

But then, they all cheat. It's part of the fun.

"I'm going to have to break into Kalen's shiny silver eyeshadow for this cosplay, I can see. He'll understand. It's for a good cause."

Samir
If only yo hear him yell 'witness me' in a bar.

"No one will ever believe you." A beat. He winces and slides the empty glass away. "Jesus, I've never regretted anything so fast in my life."

River
She is still giggling, cheeks bright red and the word that most accurately describes River's reaction is tittering.

"Did you just Bill Murray us?"

Samir
"You Bill Murray'd yourself."

River
So, she has to sit there for a minute, because sound has left her laughter and, instead, has become a little gasp and a shake of her shoulders. Her face hurts. It's been a little while since she's laughed hard enough that her face hurts.

"Dang it," is all she could get out. She might be pretty verbally useless for a little bit.

Grace
"They will too believe me. I don't lie, about important things. And what could possibly be more important?"

Her eyes scan across the boundary between wall and ceiling as she talks.

There are important things, but she doesn't want to think about them.

"I mean, look. You broke River."

Samir
He does look. River is laughing like that's the funniest fucking thing that's ever happened to her. Given what has happened to her and what has been documented to have happened to her he takes it as either a point of pride that he's able to provoke that response out of her or a point of concern that that is the response she had.

Then he looks back at Grace. Flicks his eyebrows.

"I don't know what to tell you," he says. "I have that effect on women." He drops the act. "No I don't. I don't talk to women."

Oh good. His drink is empty. Sam drags the nearest ashtray over to him and wipes the hand that touched it on the thigh of his jeans and reaches into his jacket to find his cigarettes and lighter.

River
[WP: Seriously, River, get your shit together you're not that drunk (+1 diff: you have no idea how funny she finds Bill Murray)]

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (4, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace
"Oh, whatever. You talk to me all the time."

Well, of course, he meant that in a different way, right? Or maybe he just sees Grace as un-woman. It could happen.

River
She finally straightens up after she has managed to catch her breath and her stomach tells her that she needs to stop laughing because this is a lot of abuse that it isn't willing to take. She straightens out her sweater and smooths off her denim skirt and exhales a long and measured breath. Puffs her cheeks out because she needs to stretch and her cheeks are still pink but at least she isn't lightheaded.

River exhales. Long and with a little bit of a high-to-low quiet siren pitch.

"Iiiiii am okay."

Samir
If Grace needs it spelled out that Sam has the same relationship with her that he would have with a sister or a cousin or some other female blood relation he isn't going to draw her a picture but he can't lie worth a damn and the way that he ignores her for as long as it takes to light a cigarette and blow out the first drag ought to tell her as much.

"Yeah, but you don't fucking count."

He looks back over to her to see if this is how ball-busting works. He's been getting lots of practice in with Elijah but Elijah is. You know. Elijah. Also he and Elijah bonded over the fact that Elijah wanted to suck his dick as a self-soothing mechanism and Samir not only turned him down but made him a fucking sofa so he could play Civilization V and shut the fuck up about his emotional turmoil over torching a house full of what they thought were vampires.

River pulls herself together. Sam looks back over at her.

"Uh..." He clears his throat. "Remind me not to quote Bill Murray around you ever again."

Grace
"Geez, I should go hand my extra X chromosome over then. It's been nothing but trouble," she says, rolls her eyes at him, but note -- still smiling.

Everything may be falling apart. But River is okay. She's laughing, so she must still be there. Grace is laughing, so she must still be there.

Yeah. This was a good idea.

River
"It's probably for the best," like it's a sad truth, "when I saw Zombieland I was completely useless for the next hour. I'm not proud of that."

She shakes her head slow and sad, but there's the tiniest bit of a grin on her face. Shoots Grace a look at raises her water glass before taking another drink.

Samir
By the transitive property: Samir has good ideas.

Winning.

He considers what River has to say about his not quoting Bill Murray. Then he takes a drag off his cigarette instead of saying something inappropriate. Blows the smoke out his nose like he's performing an imitation of a dragon and glances back over at Grace.

"Wait, if you have an extra X chromosome, doesn't that mean you have Down's syndrome?"

Grace
"No, no. That's a totally different trisomy," Grace says. "And anyway, I meant... If I'm not a woman, then I have an extra X... The joke isn't the same if I have to explain it, dude."

She gives him a fake-glare and shakes her head.

"Zombieland was great. Cardio!"

Samir
Yep. They have a brother-sister relationship in the works. Sam cuts her a shit-eating grin when she tells him he's ruined her joke and takes a huge drag off his cigarette. That fake-glare is icing for him.

"I never..." He clears his throat. "I never saw Zombieland."

Grace
"Never? What? We are fixing that, Sam."

She might not say the same to Kalen, who experienced a zombie apocalypse for real. But Samir? Chances are he's never actually been forced to witness the collapse of human civilization under a zombie plague. He should be fine.

And it's hilarious.

River
River exclaims the Spanish equivalent of you've got to be shitting me (because the player doesn't know what that is and is being mildly lazy and refuses to use Google Translate to say such an important thing). and she looks between the two of them.

"It's incredibly quotable. And there is Bill Murray, which is a selling point for a very select number of people." she nods.

"Decidedly better than Anchorman."

Samir
He glances over at River like he needs backup in this fight. Unfortunately he speaks Spanish. So her exclamation does not fall on deaf ears. And then she talks shit about Anchorman.

"That is a bold statement," he says. Unblinking like she just insulted his mother or his favorite brand of snack food. It also appears as if he's about half a second away from laughing and ruining the effect. When he looks back to Grace: "How long is this movie? Fallout 4 comes out on Tuesday so we're gonna have to do it, like, now if you expect me to watch it before never."

River
That is a bold statement.
She just gives Samir the most sage of nods, like this was a matter of utmost philosophical importance... and like she cant' think of anythign to say without laughing out loud so she's really trying to keep her stoic face on and it's not quite working.

"Please tell me the warehouse has a theatre, Grace. It has to."


Grace
"It's a movie. A couple hours. You won't miss your Fallout launch, I swear," she says, rolls her eyes at him.

"It's about this guy, who treats the zombie apocalypse like a video game. Woody Harrelson is in it, and obsessed with Twinkies. Fucking owns."

River makes her statement about the warehouse, and Grace raises a brow at her. "Of course."

Does that mean you don't think Grace is about to kidnap you anymore, River? Hah.

Samir
Just smoke your cigarette, Samir. You're not going back to your lonely-ass trailer out in the middle of nowhere tonight.

River
"So... maybe... we can play laser tag and watch a movie and get drunk in a place that isn't going to cost half as much?" bats her eyelashes like if she's charming enough this will sound like a good idea.

Grace
"I like you, River. You have excellent ideas," Grace says, slips off of her barstool.

No, Samir. You are not going back to your lonely-ass trailer tonight. And no, River, you are not sleeping in a hotel bathtub tonight, where you have to share with Ihsan.

And maybe Grace will stay sober long enough to Ward the fuck out of you...

Yes. That would be a good idea too, says the rational part of her brain.