Retro -- The Fallout

Pen
THE SETTING:

A green field somewhere in Washington Park, clover and the dream of green: green as green only is when man wishes green to exist; green as a fairy's glade, green as a hope of summer. The setting: flower garden nearby, and it's late evening - not dark yet. Darkness will descend during the second act of

TIDUS ANDRONICUS

OR

THE TEMPEST

OR

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING*.

THE TIME:

Right now the sun is sinking, thinking about setting, There is a stage built up in the park for tonight's play, beginning soon--twenty minutes from now.

People are still coming with their blankets, their picnic baskets, their transportable chairs.

THE CAST:

Penelope Mercury Mars has already staked out a corner of the grass and has spread a nubby blanket out, something in grays and blues which looks like the sea and is well-worn, worn-so-well that it is raveling, that the only hope it had to continue its existence was to become a picnic blanket. Picnic blanket, most hallowed of blanket jobs!



*VOTE FOR THE PLAY NOW. BY SHOUTING IT OUT, OOC.

Grace
Grace came with Kalen, bringing the necessary food and drink. She would also consider robots to be necessary, but apparently no -- they are not actually so. Shakespeare did not know of robots. A very sad fact that, with time machines, should be possible to rectify. Why has this not been done yet? Or perhaps it has.

Shakespeare must have had to beat down the time travelers with a special stick made just for future-people. He probably gave it a unique name that would, had he writ it down, have survived the ages.

Shakespeare did know of spirits and wizards though, that much is evident by the play on offer today in the park. It also shows his feelings towards all those time travelers, by making his wizard break and bury his staff and abandon magic altogether.

"Woostick. I think he would have called it that. Or a Magerybopper. You think? A stick for bopping sorcerers?"

That, by the way, comes out of nowhere. If anyone were to ever ask Grace Evans what she was thinking at any given time, it might just be something like that.

Nick
Nicholas Hyde arrives very-nearly-late, particularly for someone well-versed in the Art of Time.  He appears in a whirlwind of dark hair (unfortunately frizzed by humidity) and checkered blue dress shirt and grey tie, fresh from work, and there is a bottle-shaped object in his hand, covered in a brown paper bag.

He halts at the edge of the park, scanning over the gathered heads, and: fortunately Pen's is bright red enough to be spotted quickly.

So he beelines, and soon enough he is about to -

"Oh.  Hello, Grace," he says, lifting a hand in a wave as he approaches and notices the Elite there with his wife.

Elliott Chandler
Kalen Michael Holliday has been a lot of people.  He is, in the end, another person now.

They are about to watch the Tempest.  None of the people he has ever been have watched this play.  None of the people he has ever been understood how to just stop and watch something ridiculous for the sheer joy of it.  The people he has been, likewise, read things to help them survive.

He appears tonight with Grace, calm enough, in jeans and a plain pale gold tee-shirt.  They have enough food to feed a small army.  And coffee.  Two kinds of coffee because some people want dark roast and some people like those blonde coffees.  It is, at least, less complicated than when he brings hot chocolate with about a dozen kinds of gourmet marshmallows.  (But there are hazelnut marshmallows, for Grace to put in her coffee.  And some extra.)

Both Pen and Nick get a subdued, though not hesitant wave.  "Hey."

Pen
Here are Grace and Kalen. Pen lifts a chin by way of greeting once they're close enough for her to acknowledge: cool, welcoming - glad, see, in a way that is quite uncomplicated. She is glad about people. The air is full of possibility; of spirits, of the end of a day; it is sleepless. See how she chases it with the luminous slash of a smile and a raised hand, fingers curved just so. Hello! Come here? Yes no? There's this flick of a look toward Nick because it has been all day long, all long day long, and such engenders longing, and anyway: she is glad in an uncomplicated way to see people knows; she longs in an uncomplicated way for someone she does.

There's a bag of stuff on one corner of the blanket. That includes an environment conscious bug repellent, some fancy cheeses, grapes, bottles; it includes salt and vinegar chips and a baguette. Simplicity.

Grace
"Hello! You like your coffee dark or light roasted? I... think this one is light," she says, grabbing a green thermos out of her bag and shaking it next to her ear, as though she could hear the darkness thereof.

The differences in what people constitute a picnic is definitely on display here, as Grace then unlugs her bag of coffee and stuff all over Pen's blanket. There are multiple thermoses. And marshmallows. And udon noodle take-out. And dumplings of some unknown kind. Also, cupcakes, because Grace decided that sugar was necessary.

There is very little simplicity here, or even a theme beyond "Hey, this might be tasty." Chaos, definitely. Delishus chaos.

And, also, a bit of bluntness, as if Pen and Nick's blanket were already hers to plop down upon. After all, the food and drink are also already theirs.


Nick
Nicholas watches as Grace's bounty spills all over the blanket: dumplings and marshmallows and thermoses and take-out.  A very generous bounty, all told.  It takes him a half a heartbeat, but he smiles up at Grace after a moment and gestures to the expanse of blanket.

Then he hands the bottle-shaped object to Pen, and takes a moment to reach up and loosen his tie and undo the last button on his collar before he sits down and leans over to place a kiss on her cheek.

His gaze then returns up to Grace and the man with her.  "Who's this with you?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott seems a little more hesitant to just take over their blanket, although he does not seem at all concerned that Grace is putting their food out for people he barely knows.  Still, even if he has abandoned the Order, he is fond of Penelope Mercury Mars.  He settles; relaxed enough, yes, but at the very edges of the blanket.

For a second, even though he came with the food, even though he picked it out with Grace, he studies the food as though it seems as new to him as to anyone else.  He still expects something else.  Something more like what Penelope brought.  And wine.  Red wine and a different language.

Denver still seems surreal.  "We met once," he says quietly to Nick.  "Some time ago.  Though I was someone else then, I suppose."  Not that he actually offers anything other than that.  Apparently Nick asked Grace and will get his answers from Grace.

"Penelope," he says.  It is all the greeting that she gets, but there is a warmth to the tone and there is a little smile.  No.  It is almost all the greeting she gets, because now, now that they aren't bound by their Tradition and separated by it (though Pen may not yet have heard), Elliott reaches out across the expanse of nubbly blanket to offer Pen a hand.

Pen
"What a feast is here," Pen says, as Grace begins to unload thermoses and dumplings and cupcakes/as Nick bends down to hand Pen the bottle of (shh, it isn't alcohol, to be consumed publicly; it is in a brown paper bag, which everybody knows is just how people choose to drink juice sometimes in parks on warm summer evenings while the lightning bugs spark and the stars come out peer out slip away from the edges of the clouds which roil on the horizon to the west see and it will be a beautiful sunset once it comes for certain a sunset like a battle between Hell and Heaven a sunset of gold foil rims of luminous and bloody) wine. She sets the wine bottle down but her hand stays finds Nick's arm and then his thigh and then oh good a Nicholas shaped chair.

To Grace: "I like my coffee dark, but I'm not adverse to light. Would you two like to share our grapes, perhaps some wine? Have you two seen this troupe perform before? I hear they are very good, and that Prospero will be Prospera."

"I feel I haven't seen either of you in an age!"

Grace
Grace looks back and forth between the two men in disbelief. They don't know each other. "Kalen, you're so antisocial these days," she says, no disappointment or shaming there, just a statement.

Kalen will be as he is in the moment -- a whirl of changes around an essentially good man.

"This is Kalen. Or Elliot. It depends on what he wants to be called. My partner in crime and business, which is really one and the same when you think about it." It certainly is where Grace is concerned, in so many different ways.

Then, she goes to making a hole in the cupcake box. Managing that, she hands a lavender vanilla bean one over to Kalen, who clearly needs it.

"We are hoping to open a community center here at some point, because Denver needs more counselors before it goes and hurts itself again."

Pen explains how she likes her coffee dark, so Grace examines a red thermos and rolls it over. "This one's dark! There's a creamer tin in here somewhere, and hazelnut marshmallows..."

Nick
There is a furrowing of Nick's brows as Kalen says they have met before, and: it is hard to pin down faces sometimes, when one is continually meeting new people day in and day out.  Grace mentions Kalen, though, and then there is a light of recognition - ah! and Nick nods and extends a hand forward and up.

"I remember you from the meeting now.  Good to see you again," he says, apparently nonplussed as Pen seats herself on him; evidently he is so used to it that it gives him little pause.

Denver needs more counselors, Grace says, and there is another little furrow of his brows and Nick hmms and reaches for a few grapes.  "Were both of you expecting other people?"

Elliott Chandler
"I've been away a bit," he says to Penelope.  "But I've missed home.  And the people in it."

Elliott reaches for Nick's hand once his is free of Penelope's.  "Good to see you."  He smiles a little again, relaxed but for the first time a little unsure and his eyes travel from Nick to Pen, even if he is still, at least in theory, answering Nick's question about who he is.  "Probably Elliott, more than Kalen.  I've left the people I took that Name with.  Enough people know me by that that I expect it will stick with some of them."

"Denver," Elliott says, returning his attention actually to Nick, "Has a way of seeing to it that one encounters others.  We've simply learned never to assume that we will have a solitary picnic."

Pen
The clasp of hands, Pen to Kalen, was firm: gacious. Pen: she leans back against Nicholas and watches Grace's fingers whisper over the thermoses as if she were shaping the existence of dark roast as if she were a trasure-keeper, market-owner, and aren't there legends about Mercurial Elite Virtual Adepts and their caffinated rites in the deep dark hallowed hollow light of their monitors, rites which - fueled so, by coffee - might shed this world and blossom another? "Hazelnut marshmallows?" soft, this, and bright.

Then: "I recall you - " Kalen. A glance fixes him as the subject. " - saying something about community outreach among the sleepers."

And the conversation flows, as conversation will, and Penelope leans forward a touch to reach for thermos or pull out a cup so that Grace can pour some of the dark roast in (drink of shadows), and then:

The temperature does not drop in actuality, but Pen: she sharpens, come suddenly to attention: is as still, see, as ever anything ready to be pulled from a stone. She is studying Kalen. She studies him all through his commentary on the possibility of solitary picnics in Denve.

And then she says, "Why have you abandoned your Name?"

Grace
"We always expect other people. It's the way of things."

Grace just keeps right on going, after Pen's iciness shows up, offering a kettle-shaped ceramic device to her -- it is the creamer. A tube of marshmallows follows, their brown color indicative of something fancier than Jet-Puffed.

"He's decided to go be a priest of like, all the gods," Grace says, and she is so incorrect, and she knows it, and yet -- this is fun. "We've not got room for all the statues. He got me a Buddha one for my room, and I don't even have a room to put it in yet."

A conspiratorial smile at Kalen, there. Come, play this game with me. It won't be that bad, her eyes say. No matter what.


Nick
Nick settles an arm around Pen and reaches for the bottle of wine even as the others are preparing coffee - at night, in the summer, in the park.  Nick will take the wine, thank you.

"A priest of all the gods?" he asks, and here he turns his eyes up to the other man, and there's a sort of easy acceptance in them: curiosity and openness are often the same thing.  "So you're joining the Celestial Chorus, then?"

Elliott Chandler
Elliott does not, not really mind Penelope's sharpened attention.  He understands that this must, to her, seem as incomprehensible as it once seemed to him.

Grace tries to play, to seize the threat of an oncoming storm and to wrest from it something gentler and warmer.  There is a smile that flickers briefly, something that speaks more of fondness and indulgence than agreement.  Elliott though, allows Penelope to still see his eyes.  His expression.

Because this conversation is less about Nick, really.  Nick just got caught up in a moment between one Flambeau and one former Flambeau.  Grace struggles to pull away from the seriousness of the moment, but Elliott owes Penelope more than that.  They were family, once.  They might be, in another way, family again.

"For years," he says, very quietly, "Everything I did, everything I was called to do...there is a war whether I will it or not.  I will not try to pretend our world is otherwise.  But over and over and over again, the solutions I had were...."  His voice trails off, and it not only that they are surrounded by Sleepers.  Those Sleepers can almost certainly not hear him.  "They were what they were.  I do not regret what I have been.  Those things needed to be done.  But I was always too late, Penelope.  I was always too late and there was but one solution when I arrived.

"It wasn't enough.  I can't be what I was.  Not anymore.  And what use, your people, for someone who has only horror left for war."  He shakes his head.  "Fuck, Penelope.  There may be circumstances that force my hand, but given the choice...I would never again do the things that I have been forced to do.

"I don't belong there anymore, with you.  You know that.  I think you've always known that."

His attention slides from Penelope to Nick.  "Not of any, I'm afraid.  I just have a very inclusive sculpture garden.  Though you're right, about that second thing."

Grace
Grace fake-pouts at Kalen, because he's decided to be serious and not play along with her. Even about being a priest of all the gods. Inclusive sculpture garden? Pah. The hat one has to wear to be a priest of the All-Fathers has to be enormous and grand(iose). It would be awesome. To make fun of.

"There goes my plans to get you a Pope-headdress for Halloween..."

She obtains herself the thermos of other coffee, the blonde, as though Grace ever had a preference when it came to caffeine. She minds the taste of course, they are all lovely.

"You want a dumpling?" she says, to Pen. Dumplings make things better. Don't they?

Pen

When Pen feels Nick's muscles move, she reaches for the wine bottle and snags it before he. The paper bag crinkles and she sets it between her knees, investigates the bottle's neck and mouth,  ah, a cork and the bottle opener tucked away in the bag with grapes, too far for her to reach easily.

Never let it be said that Penelope is not a poised woman; she is poised, just now, and the thing about poise: one cannot tell whether it is because one is on a narrow edge, or a wide avenue; it is only poise; it might be the same anywhere, and ever. Her eyes are such a grey -- Prospero might've conjured such a color for his seaspray-laced cloak or Sycorax (Circe) might've looked into the scrying cup with eyes that witching; that gloam-drunk; that clear. She swiped the wine bottle but she is listening to Kalen Holliday Who Isn't Any Longer explain his weariness.

Her eyes stay on him as she leans forward to snag the bag; get the corkscrew, unfold it: a shining bit of metal. She hands them both to Nicholas, demurs with a courteous shake of her head when Grace asks her if she'd like a dumpling. She would not like a dumpling, just as she does not want the creamer; she does not take it when it is handed to her, unless Grace looks a though she's going to drop it other; then she takes it and sets it down.

"Why do you think I've always known that, Elliot? What could you mean?" It is easy for her to change names for someone; as long as they claim the name, it can be theirs.

She is poised, sure; that does not preclude passion. It tints her voice; it's there in the cant of her head - the flash of her throat when she glances at the stage, conscious alertness, then brings her eyes back; it's in the very slow circling of her fingertips along Nick's knee. She might not even realize she is doing that - she'd abhor what might be regarded as a superfluous movement right now. 

"Do you believe I hold something in my heart for 'war' other than horror?" 

Beat. "This conversation may not be comfortable for our companions." 

Grace

Oh, the ice descends upon this place, now that both Kalen and Pen have ignored her unspoken pleas to keep this whole thing lighthearted. She's been heavy too long. Going to collapse into a black hole at this rate. One must be determined to avoid that kind of thing. It can suck you in, despair. Looking at abysses and all that.

Grace smirks at Pen when she starts declining to accept gifts. Somebody is getting a never-ending delivery of hazelnut marshmallows to their house. More than one could possibly consume in a day, every day. She'll make it hard to cancel, just for fuck's sake. Don't like hospitality? That's too bad. She's going to hospitality the fuck out you. And just try to complain about being buried in a mountain of marshmallows. Oh, that will be fun.

She pulls out her phone, starts typing. "Hey, Nick? Where do you guys live? I want to send you something. Very important, can't discuss this sort of thing in public, you know."

Well. There will be marshmallows. And a note, which won't arrive via shipment. Wrap a lie in a truth, yes? She does have important things to share. And it looks like she and Elliot won't be welcome on the blanket here for too much longer.

Nick

Pen's demeanor changes, and Nicholas is quiet as it does.  He allows Pen to take the bottle of wine (still paper-wrapped) from his hands, and then moments later to hand it back to him with the corkscrew, and he does this all wordlessly.  There is a deftness in his fingers as he flips the wings on the corkscrew up and works the screw into the cork with a few quick spins of his hand, and then he pulls it free with a pop.

His silence could be mistaken for trepidation or fear: his wife is a passionate woman, and Nicholas is an insightful man, and the current of tension passing between her and Elliot could not go unmissed.

Grace says his name and this draws his eyes up and away from what he is doing, and then there is a little furrow of his brows.  "We don't give out our home address, but I can give you the P.O. Box," he says, his voice tinged with apology.  "What is it?"

Elliot

Penelope's attention sharpens.  It is impossible not to note the shift in the energy, but Elliott seems unconcerned.  Truthfully, he has not faced many beings he would consider more dangerous than Penelope.  Nor, truthfully, more graceful.  Iris was, perhaps, both of those things and he stayed his ground then.  His lack of fear then and his lack of fear now are similar things - to him, neither Iris or Penelope are enemies.

There are, aren't there, reasons he is leaving the Flambeau?

"If I thought you had any love of war," Elliott says softly, barely audible over the crowd, "I would not have offered you advice when you arrived in my city, I would have found the leverage to run you out.  I certainly would not be here now.

"I meant only that I thought you saw what I was just coming to understand then, which is that at some point I was going to hesitate a second too long and someone was going to get hurt.  Perhaps worse.  And that changed, in some respects, everything.  Not because I loved what I did once and did no longer, but because I was no longer capable.

"That my place is between people and things that would make them suffer has not changed.  But the ways in which I can protect them have changed.  Enough that in some ways, our path are divided.  

"Though I do hope not in all of them." 

Pen

There is a spark of reaction: a shooting star is the same thing as a falling star, and both smoulder in the wizard's cup. Her eyebrows perk: eloquent. He'd have found the leverage. She listens. She listens earnestly and with a whisper of tension in her shoulders and the End-of-Afternoon gold is gathered up, growing long in this twilight. Grace and Nick are having their own conversations: sort of. 

Pen. Simply: "I don't know what to say to you." 

Her gaze wicks away as water wicks from a stone. It lingers on the sward where the play is to be performed as she sets her thoughts in order (tries to). Her voice is confessional quiet but intense: of course it is intense (vibrant). "I'm not insightful as some other people are. I wish I was. I don't know how to say the right thing." Now her gaze flicks back to Elliott. "There's probably a right thing to say to you, but Ash and Oak wither if I know it. I should probably say nothing. But I can't say nothing. What should I say?"

"I don't believe you see the Order clearly. And how could you see yourself clearly in the Order if you don't see it clearly? You're speaking as if there's only one way to be. As if the only thing to do is fight and toil in gruesome scenes and watch your conscience chiseled away as you follow orders like tock follows tick and there's only one set of orders; but there's more than one House and more than one way to be. What is our Will for if not the freedom to choose and make what we would. I just -

"Tonight I want to watch the Tempest with Nicholas. I don't want to watch it with someone who I know, freshly know, feels such contempt for one of the more important things in my life. Elliott, I'm sure our paths will cross again. But right now you two should find your own blanket. I'm sorry, Grace. Thank you for the marshmallows and the coffee."

Grace

People are mostly incomprehensible. Kalen... Elliot didn't say the things that Pen's accusing him of. Contempt? Grace is still quite dedicated to bringing the fight to wherever it needs to be, and he holds no contempt for her, only love. Always that. Grace had expected this reaction from some people. Pen? Well.

Suppose that answers that question.

Not allowed to know where they live, not allowed in their general area even. For the present, at least. Until Pen cools down, if she cools down. On second thought, sending her marshmallows might be misconstrued as appeasement.

Grace sighs, looks around at the scattered array of food and drink, starts re-packing her favorites up into her bag.

"We can't both survive, and put these walls up between us."

She looks to Kalen, gives a sad smile. It'll be okay.

"I am going to be sending you both the details of what you should actually be getting worked up about." She lowers her voice. "Apprentices have been getting disappeared from Colorado Springs. The locals think it might be our most favorite enemies."

Sending it to your P.O. box. Because that's apparently safer. Yes.

"He doesn't hold contempt for you or what you believe in, Pen. Otherwise, he'd have contempt for me too. One thing I am not about to do is stop fighting."