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.