Retro: About Love.

Grace



It's Wednesday night when Grace calls Kalen up while he's on vacation, and may want to stay vacationing and not worrying about what's going on back home. Well, he can deal with it. It's late in Denver, but Chile's four hours behind, so as long as he's not suffering the extreme jet lag anymore, he should be awake.

Grace can't sleep. It's been one of those nights.

When he picks up, the first sound he'll be greeted with is a slurp. Grace is attempting to use his own tactic of hot tea to relax, although she is not ceremonial about it. If a little tea is good, surely a lot of tea is better, right? She's not meditating on the essence of tea, she's just hoping the heat and phytochemicals do their work for her.

"Hey. Can't sleep. Is now a good time to talk?"



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Kalen



Quite some distance away Kalen glances at his phone and then back to the man sitting on the couch with him. He mouths the word Grace, despite the fact that he has not yet picked up the phone.

Ramon nods. Kalen curls up into the corner of the couch and taps the phone. "Hey," he says. "Of course, Kit. Anytime." And he means that, for all that what little time he gets with Ramon is precious to him. And Ramon is still there, squeezing Kalen's shoulder as he steps off for a minute.

"What's going on?"



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Grace


"Well. Things," she says, cryptically. "Have you checked your messages lately?" she asks. She means to ask, in a secretive way, whether he has read the message she posted to Ginger yet. The one about Farrah Esmail.


She doesn't remember the woman very well. She was River's friend, but beyond that, there was no long conversation or budding friendship between her and Grace. Still. It's disturbing. All of it is disturbing. All of the murders, all those lives, gone just to wear Michael down in his fight. Like The Artist doesn't want him to have anything left to live for.


"I didn't exactly tell everybody everything." There's a pause on the other line, the noise of a slurp again. "'Cause, you know, privacy and all."


She'll wait to hear from him whether he knows the basics.



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Kalen

"Yes," Kalen says quietly. "I've checked my messages. I saw." There is something in his tone, the way that the steadiness in his tone is just a little too uniform, that indicates he must have met Farrah.

There is a slight pause, a murmur in Spanish to Ramon as he offers Kalen a glass of wine and then settles onto the couch again. Close at hand.

"I am starting to think it was a mistake to leave. There is more to this?" Ramon does not seem to respond, to offer any reassurances. But then, Kalen is speaking in English.




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Grace


"Well, yeah," she says, and there's another pause, like she's drumming up the courage to say the thing. "I haven't told anybody yet, because it's nobody's business. But uh. Hmm. I guess it really started when I told Michael I wasn't going to follow his orders to stay out of his investigation. He stood up and swore an oath of protection on me, and we just... Started," she says.


We just started.



"I've been deeply involved in the hunt for this... creature. And then, I became deeply involved with Mike. Like... I think I'm falling in love with him involved."


And then, she waits out the inevitable pause while Kalen stops to digest that. Of all the things he expected Grace to do, that was probably far down on the list. She knows that.


Kalen's about the only person she feels comfortable with coming out and saying this to, but even then, it's pretty damn uncomfortable. It's so sad, the way she talks about loving this man. Despite the joy involved, there's just so much else. Fear for him. Upset for him. He's had to clean up the body of his former pupil tonight. It hurts when someone you love is hurting, even if it's a shadow of their pain.



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Kalen


And they just started.


Kalen takes a breath and then a sip of wine. Listens until Grace pauses. Overly surprised...perhaps not. And this is Kalen, to whom love is often a complex, messy, edged and weighted thing; and yet, to whom, love is always indescribably beautiful. Even with a Catholic priest. Even when he knows that he will not be loved the way that he loves. And even, though he does not speak about it to Grace, even, sometimes, with a vampire.


Grace is in love with a man who is, at least at present, compromised by a Nephandus. Perhaps they will be able to pull back those tendrils and extricate his soul and his fate from that of the Fallen creature that would claim him. Perhaps there will be no salvation that is not death. Perhaps there will be only death. Or even some darker fate.


Grace will have assessed the situation. She will not need him to tell her all of the ways that this might end. That might have been what he would have done when they met, when Kalen was still so much more what the Order demanded than what he wanted to be. But now....


"The first thing, is congratulations. I am so very glad that you found someone you can share yourself with in such a fashion. I know that you may not be certain how long you have, and with good reason, but however long we have it never seems to be long enough."


Kalen raises the wineglass in his hand to his lips, but barely does more than taste the wine. "The second thing is that, however this, whatever may happen, you are not alone. If we save him from this thing, if we can't, if he stays when it's over or he leaves, whatever that may force him to do...you do not, ever, have to be alone.


"And, third, whatever monstrous things that he may be forced to do or to become, I understand what it means to love someone that most of our friends in Denver would consider a monster. I know what is like to see both the true spirit of a person and the curse entwined with it. Even if we must hunt him in the end, even it goes horribly wrong, I understand.


"You will never have been wrong to love him. However it ends. Love is only grace."



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Grace



There is a reason why Grace called him. He always knows the right thing to say. And he knows her well enough to get at the heart of the issue.

There are times when Grace doesn't trust herself when it comes to being human. Many things other people do are unfathomable to her, and always have been. She's had to learn the behaviors that come naturally to most. Even before she Awakened she always had this sense of being alien. So what does it say about her that the first, and perhaps only, person who she could see herself in a relationship with is a serial killer?

It's not his fault. It is The Artist, she thinks. And perhaps if she didn't love him, she wouldn't be so inclined to view him as innocent. She knows her own biases.

Kalen says though, that it was never wrong to love him. And she holds her breath because she really doesn't want to cry.

"Thanks," she says, after a long pause, followed by that slurping sound.

"I know I'm not alone. I am so lucky there. I just never thought this would happen, and now it is. And yeah..."

Yeah. Couldn't pile more meaning into that solitary word, could she?

"What if I can't do what I need to do when it comes to him? Worse, what if I can?"

She can see herself coldly taking Mike out, in her more morbid ruminations. If The Artist took him over, if he attacked her. What would she do? A part of her already knows. It would depend on the circumstances, on whether hurting him would lead to greater or lesser success, and not much else. Why? Why so calculating?

"I don't know how you handle it, being in relationships with people. I can barely handle the one."


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Kalen



Kalen draws in a breath when Grace not only asks what if she cannot do what she must, but what if she can. And Grace cannot see his expression, nor can she see Ramon reach out to rest a hand on his shoulder.

"You will do what you must. You are too strong not to." There is a pause, because Grace is not the only one in this conversation trying not to cry. "It is, in some horrific irony, easier to do for love. When you look at someone and see only a corrupted mockery of what they were, when you know death is the last gift you can offer...you won't care what it costs you.

"You will do it. You won't even see a choice. That moment...that moment will not be as hard as you think."

The moments after.... Grace saw Kalen after all the horrors of that zombie mindscape. Certainly, killing a boy before he turned was not the only thing that weighed on him.

Perhaps he dreads what he might one day do to Wesley. For Wesley. If he thinks of that, if he recalls the few days where he thought that he might have to do that before they connected those dead women to something else, he does not say.

But then, how could he? Really? Grace might forgive him that. But what would become of her if it were found out? Kalen has no illusions about what that might cost him. What it might cost anyone who knows about it.

"I lived alone for a very long time," Kalen says quietly. "I realized, in the end, that however difficult and painful love can be it is always worth it. Love is...it is all the light I have ever found in this world.

"And perhaps its only hope of redemption or peace."



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Grace



It's easier to do for love. When you know death is the last gift you can offer, you won't care what it costs you. Damnit, Kalen, this cup of tea isn't enough to hold all of these feelings, is it? She sips at it again, like it might, if she tries.

"I will. Do what I must, I think. If it becomes necessary. Kiara thinks she can help, though. And it's a good thing too, because I don't think we can take on the Artist without him. He's... powerful. Both of them are."

Again, she's speaking in strategic terms. He might be saved, yet. Which is good. They need him to fight. What's wrong with her?

"Also, it's a good thing, because I love him. And I don't want to see him tortured anymore."

Yes. There is also that. Drop the strategy for a few moments and drink tea and try to remember your own humanity, Grace.

"It hurts when he's hurting. And I want to fix everything, but I can't," she says, chuffs a little dark laugh into her tea. "I guess I'm doing the same thing to you right now, huh?"



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Kalen

"I am sorry I am not there to help you. Kiara...she seems wonderful. I trust her. I'm not sure she knows that. Or that I trust a lot less of Denver than I used to."

Kalen takes a sip of wine. "Even if this cost me something that was difficult for me to give you, which it doesn't, I wouldn't be sorry. So you definitely shouldn't be."

Grace has seen a few versions of Kalen Holliday. She has seen him after injuries robbed him of the easy physicality that had once been a huge part of how he dealt with the world. She has seen him adapt and refocus his attention, shifting from the Order and war to the various Magi of Denver and their protection and education. Grace has watched him learn to trust, and learn not to trust, and learn to trust again. And in all of those versions of Kalen Holliday there were certainly glimpses of this one. Pressed aside, pressed to the edges of his consciousness and awareness so that he could try to become whatever he thought he needed to be. And now....

Now he is not pushing aside experience or memory. Not for his friends, not for his lovers, not for the Order. Grace is getting to watch him approach transcending boundaries - his boundaries, the Order's boundaries, the Traditions' boundaries. And perhaps, like Icarus, he will fly too close to the sun and he will plummet back to the earth.

Bones shattered. Dreams shattered. Blood-soaked feathers.

He seems now, not to fear that. Not anymore. And the loss of that fear seems, in so many ways, to have freed him to be more like the person he was, before, only in precious fragments of seconds. Little slices of eternity.

Whatever this might have cost him once, whatever losing Farrah might have cost him once, it seems to cost nothing so terrible now.




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Grace


Grace has seen a few versions of Kalen Holliday. Somehow, she doesn't quite see the difference between them. Nothing reminds her of this conversation more than the time he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders (in lieu of a hug that he knew would be terrible) and sat with her, soothing her blood-scarred mind. He is, to her, as he has always been: someone who gives a shit. That has been the core about which all the rest of him shifts.


The day he lets her know something is troubling him, now that will be a change. And on that day, she will tell him that she already knew, like, months ago. And it'll all be fine.


"Kiara's good. I trust her too. What she does doesn't make any freaking sense, but it works," she says, her voice trying to return to something more stable. Perhaps now that she's gone and shown him her vulnerable spots, it's time to cover over them again.


"I trust you, too. I mean, you've always been there for me, and I can't... Well, you know. Thanks. I'm not sorry I called you. This is what you do, is listen to me go on."


It's probably one of those things that needn't be said to be understood, like Kalen's endless doubts about people, or his fears for the future (that Grace knows plenty about without him having spoken the words). It's obvious she trusts him, right? He's the one who gets late-night phone calls about... Well... About that.