Whatever I Thought I Wanted

[Emily Littleton] It is a cold night, as cold as any before in this January new.  The ground is a blanket of white and grey, touched here and there with less savory colours.  The sky is an unbroken shield of clouds between her and the firmament of the heavens.  Somewhere above, the stars twinkle, pinpoint brightnesses against the void of eternity: infinite possibilities inside such vast emptiness.

She hasn't told very many people that she's back in Chicago.  In truth, Emily has told more people this year of her homecoming that others.  The sense of duty, of being tied so heavily to the Chantry House and its clique has lifted with the collapse of her cabal.  She is, in many ways, freed from yet another tie that binds.  Emily comes closer and closer to her natural state: untethered, unbound, free to translate through this plane with little encumberance.  In other words, alone.

She is wearing a pewter-colored turtle-neck beneath her heavy winter coat.  It keeps the glint of silver at her throat shielded.  Her slacks are neat, recently pressed, and the heels of her boots click on the stairs as she enters Ashley's building.  It's well below freezing tonight, but the usual flock of graduate students and their friends are huddled in the shadow of the building, smoking their cigarettes, ruing the non-smoking clauses in their leases.

She bids them a Happy New Year.  Vanessa's friend actually smiles at them tonight as she passes.

She's carrying a small wooden box in one hand, and wearing her messenger bag's weight as usual.  She knocks on Ashley's door and waits; waiting is no longer such a burden to Emily.  There is a calmness that wreathes her now, a sense of detachment that has superceded the immediacy everything seemed to cling to hear at the tail end of last year.

When Ashley opens the door, and they exchange Happy New Years greetings, and Emily hands over that small box as a present from Far Away and Not Here, once this is over then she will crouch to remove her boots and -- of course -- pull a small stuffed Christmas Tree chew toy from her pocket for Zane... It already looks wrecked and toppled over, the better to nom on ceaselessly in the cold.  It doesn't jingle or squeak -- the better for Emily to survive Ashley's temper.  Luka gets a feathered toy to bat about the apartment's hardwood floors and argue with Zane over.

"It's good to see you," she tells Ashley, when she's finally made it through the front doors and into the apartment proper.  "I was starting to miss people, I'd been away so long -- certain people," she adds as a correction, with a knowingly little smile that Ashley can doubtless place.  Emily is saying that she missed the Hermetic, but not others.  Ashley is free to presume who the others might be.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley has spent this week recovering from last week.  Her holidays were emotionally charged, though likely in a different way than Emily's.  There were some unexpected arrivals on Christmas Day, and she went to China over New Year's.  There was that quiet late night vigil upon her return - comforting, but exhausting too.

Still, the weariness has finally eased its way out of her muscles, the darkness beneath her eyes has faded.  Maybe there's a kind of peace to be found in the fact that last year is over, that this is a new one and it can be made into something else.

Emily gets a half-smile from the Hermetic (Verbena-to-be) as she opens the door to let the Singer in.  There are indeed greetings exchanged, and Ashley too hands over a box.  Heavy, and noiseless in her hands: whatever is within has been thoroughly padded.

"Good to see you too," Ashley says, turning an amused glance toward Zane, who is staring at the Christmas tree with his ears erect, wagging his tail as though he expects it to get up and move.  He barks at it once.  "Thanks for not getting him something that's going to make more noise," she says, lifting a hand to rub at her good ear.

A glance toward the Singer girl, because Ashley doesn't know who certain people are and doesn't care to guess at it much.  Emily is here; that is what matters.  "Where'd you go over Christmas?" she asks, with a glance down at her box as she wanders over toward the couches and chairs.

[Emily Littleton] "Seattle first," Emily says, as she settles on the couch and brings the gift from Ashley to rest on her lap.  She keeps it there, positioned and sure, with one hand.  "Then to Marseilles to see my parents, on through Prague," she says with a little lift of her chin to indicate the box that Ashley is holding, "And then home to Manchester."

That her holidays encompassed four countries and time zones seems to mean nothing to Emily.  She has extra visa pages in her passpot; she considers O'Hare's international terminal as a sort of second living room. This time of year makes that disparity between the Singer (world citizen, no hometown) and everyone else she knows a little clearer.

"It was full but very, very good," she tells Ashley, with a quiet sort of incredulousness.  A sort of reverent awe and surprise.  Her trip could have gone far worse, and still been within the realm of expected outcomes.  That it resolved positively has buoyed her, somewhat.  Brightened her.  "I've started to tell Gregory about all of this.  And he didn't have me committed -- win, as Molly would say?"

The little box that Ashley's holding is not wrapped.  It's tied with a ochre colored ribbon, soft and smooth against her fingertips.  The box itself is highly polished, with neatly beveled edges and almost invisible seams.  There's no inlay or engraving. It's just a box.  Emily's very of just a... anything is usually of simple and high quality.

Inside is a cut-glass ornament.  A six pointed star with deep grooves and gold leaf.  It's a beautiful and delicate thing, but weighty.  It has gravitas.  It is not made for decorating a tree, but rather for hanging in a window to catch the light.  When hung like that, star seems to capture the ambient light and amplify it: it appears to burn with a lamplight of its own.  the There is a small, handwritten card tucked underneath it.

Even in the dark and lonely places, there is light.  Prague, 2010.
-Thank you for all you've done for me this year, for being a fixed point in the changing sky, a beacon and a friend.  Brightest wishes for the New Year.  May it bring a measure more joy than the last. ~E.L.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley is not a world citizen.  There are a lot of things she has in common with Thomas, really, though she doesn't speak of them and doesn't wear her background the way he wears his.  Her father has been called a lowlife by her Traditionmates in Boston, and she had the misfortune of hearing it once - because most people, even in the place she's from, don't know that he's her father in spite of the fact that she has his eyes and there's some echo of his mannerisms in her.  She's not from the kind of background in which that kind of travel is familiar.

So her eyebrows lift, once, when Emily mentions all the places to which she went over Christmas.  Reminded, again perhaps, of the disparity between Emily and herself.  It's not something Ashley could afford to do; she joked about the plane ticket to China costing a kidney and a piece of her soul when she mentioned it to Kage.  "You went to Prague?"  That, apparently, is the bit that is worth commenting on.

Though she does wonder about Seattle, and there was that question there, but - this first.

Emily's box contains rectangular objects that have been carefully wrapped in tissue paper.  When she pulls this away, they are revealed to be a series of black and white photographs of architecture in the city.  One of the house itself, but more of places around the city - the Cloud Gate, one of the ones on Northwestern's campus, random places around town.  They're quite good, shot from a perspective that seems to make them soar skyward, and carefully framed.

Having contacts in the art world has its benefits sometimes, apparently.  Ashley, though, carefully lifts the ornament out of the box, after she has run her fingertips over the box itself to take in its texture.  She doesn't hold the ornament up to the light yet, just quietly examines it, reads the card within.

The look she gives Emily has weight, something solemn and, for Ashley, oddly soft for a moment or two.  "Thank you," she says, before carefully returning it to the box.  Later, it'll find its home in a window, probably in her study.

[Emily Littleton] Emily can afford to do these things, because her father is a diplomat.  There are all sorts of discounts and frequent-flier fares when your employer is the Federal Government, and those are easy to extend to a college age daughter who has no real sense of a permanent residency.  She calls a travel agent to make her plans, doesn't think twice about cancelling and rebooking.  It is not a perspective shared by many -- Emily knows it's a privilege; she also knows its price.

Of course Ashley asks about Prague.  Emily's smile softens a bit, shades a little.  Like always, she is keeping something back for herself.  After more than a year of building a friendship, this should not read as a slight or an impoliteness anymore.  It is simply Emily, being Emily, the best way she knows how.

"I... felt I needed to.  And I was so close, anyway.  I spoke with one of the police officers who was on duty when they found me.  I got to say thank you, and to see the street corner where I was taken and put it all behind me.  Make it real, and not just memories and nightmares anymore.

"It's a beautiful city," she tells Ashley, with that same sense of surprise and discovery.  Prague had never been beautiful to Emily before.  This thing, this past hurt, now scabbed over, has let her see it with a renewed perspective again.

When Ashley opens her gift, Emily does the same.  With the Hermetic, she doesn't have to worry about wildly inappropriate presents, or things that echo just how little they know of each other.  Ashley is a friend, now, more than an acquaintance.  It's a good thing.  Emily lifts each frame up a little and studies the pictures, smiling openly.

"These are lovely," she says.  "Thank you.  I've needed some good pictures of Chicago," she tells Ashley, who no doubt remembers Emily's timeline of photographs.  Chicago being notably almost absent therein.  "I think I'll put the Cloud Gate one in my office on campus, though.  Every time I pass it, I think of you and Wharil now."

She carefully puts the pictures back into their box, closes the lid, sets it beside her on the couch.

"How were your holidays?" she asks, giving Ashley and invitation to share as well.

[Ashley McGowen] Whatever softness had been in her expression fades to something more intent, when Emily tells her exactly what she'd been doing in Prague.  That she'd been looking at the street corner, speaking to an officer.  Facing her fears down.  Ashley doesn't say: it's about fucking time, woman, and also doesn't offer any condolences or encouragements, which are the two things one might reasonably expect from her in this moment.  She says, "Good.  It is a beautiful city."

She's been there; for her, the place carries very different memories.  The years she spent in Europe with Bran and Justine were probably the happiest ones in her life - or her Awakened life, at least.

"I'm glad you went," she says, after another moment has passed.  She sets her own box very carefully on her coffee table and glances back toward Zane, who has given up hoping that the stuffed Christmas tree will move and has instead taken to carrying it around the main room in his mouth, looking for a place to hide it.  He settles for stuffing it between the couch cushions.

"You're welcome," she says, when Emily opens up her own present.  Smiles, briefly, when Emily mentions the Cloud Gate.  She does indeed remember Emily's timeline; it might have been what gave her the idea.

Emily asks about Ashley's own holidays and the Hermetic sighs, running a hand back through her short hair.  "Good and bad," she says, honestly.  "I went to Boston with Kage.  Bran and Justine's mentor surprised us on Christmas.  He's not very happy with me right now.  And I went to China."  Her brows furrow a moment, but she doesn't seem inclined to linger on this long.  "It...I guess it was still pretty good for all that though."

She doesn't explain this last part, but maybe Emily can extrapolate; Ashley has a lot more people in her life this year than she did last year.

[Emily Littleton] Ashley doesn't chide her for handling her past on her own terms, as Emily imagines others might.  But whatever it was she'd entered the city to find, Emily had always known she'd have to find it on her own.  She'd had help arranging an interpretor, a guide, but she'd had to stand on that bridge and look down at the water's edge without her family, her friends, or her brother beside her.  She had to feel as much emptiness around her as she had then, so she could let go of it and not bind it up in other people's expectations.

Not one of them knows whether she cried that night, or drank until she was numb, or simply went to sleep in an unfamiliar city (like so many other nights passed).  The reconciliation and reparations are hers alone.  It's a lighter thing to carry this way.

She reaches down to scritch the top of Zane's head when he burries his disappontingly inert and silent toy into the couch cushions.  Emily glances over to Ashley when she mentions China.  It is impossible for the Singer to miss what the Hermetic implies, and yet the younger woman's expression does not cajole or push, does not ask without asking.  Emily has usually been good about allowing others their space and their own thoughts.

"I'm sure their mentor will get over whatever it is he's unhappy about," Emily tells Ashley, because Ashley doesn't seem the type to let someone else's opinion stand between her and her happiness for long.  And then: "That's a long flight... did you have trouble adjusting when you got home?"

She doesn't ask about what Ashley had been doing there, but she does make eye contact for a moment and offer her friend a warmer, more inviting smile.  A little softness: understanding without expectation.  If Ashley wanted to talk, the opening was there.  It was not a demand.

[Jarod Nightingale] [Awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 8 (Failure at target 6)

[Jarod Nightingale] [Well that was narratively convenient]

[Ashley McGowen] Emily went alone to Prague; Ashley went alone to Kunming, and it was much for the same reason.  She was left to go to the temple by herself without someone hanging over her shoulder, without someone listening to whatever words she wanted to whisper into the air.  She was left to explore a city she'd never been in and try to understand a part of someone she didn't get to know nearly as well as she wanted to.

She, too, reaches over to rub Zane beneath his jaw when he comes to hide the toy away for a later date.  Perhaps she's grateful that Emily doesn't push; there was a period where a lot of people did.  Emily wasn't one of them, but it's debatable whether Ashley would have felt comfortable speaking on it at the time.

"Their mentor can go fuck himself," Ashley says, with a roll of her eyes.  Not the sort to let someone else's opinion stand in the way of her happiness indeed.  A beat.  "I've been studying Life with the Verbena," she says, "and I told Bran about it, so I should've figured it'd get back to Hannibal.  Neither of them think much of the Tradition."

A lot of Hermetics don't, in fact, but Bran and Justine themselves have personal experience speaking against it.  Well, in their point of view.  Boston's Verbena and Cad Goddeau would probably beg to differ.

"I had less trouble adjusting than I thought I would," she says.  "I was tired, though."  There's a bit of a sigh released then.  "I don't know how much you've heard about the Asylum and the node, but we had a meeting on Wednesday."

[Emily Littleton] "Solomon doesn't seem to think much of them either," Emily says.  She doesn't call him Mr. Ward just now, for reasons that are not even clear to herself.  The Singer shrugs a little, reaches up to tuck some of her unbound hair behind her ear.  "I think it's wonderful, though, that you're studying with them.  I told Bran as much when he mentioned it, too."

Emily isn't searching for a reply when she drops this bit of information.  She's not failing anyone's confidences.  She's just leaving it there, as a clue to the interconnectedness of the people in their sphere of common acquaintances, because one of the suffocating things about December was how close they'd all come to living in one another's pockets, accidentally, and far too personally.

"If his mentor can't appreciate that you're broadening your horizons and challenging yourself to learn new things, then yes, fuck him," she agrees to the vulgar call of solidarity.  It isn't very Emily to swear about people she hasn't yet met, and perhaps she'll regret it if she ever does meet Hannibal, but for now he is a disapproving shadow on the periphery of Ashley's friendship.  Emily has no room for these things in her vision of the new year, and renewed hope and wellness for her friends.

"Mmm, no, not much.  Just what Israel told me before I left on holiday.  I know there's a node, and that there was trouble there at the end of last year."  Her expression tightens slightly, almost imperceptibly.  Meetings usually mean serious things afoot, largely because meetings are so damned inconvenient and frustrating that no one calls them without good cause.

"An Emissary meeting, or one of the Guardian's war councils?" she asks for clarification.  There's an implicit question to it: How can I help?

[Ashley McGowen] "I think people think better of it here than in most other places I've been," Ashley says, with a bit of a frown touching her brows.  "I mean, there's not a lot of Traditional division in Chicago.  I think we just don't have enough people for it to matter as much as it does in places like Boston."  It is, perhaps, an explanation for how the city's Orphans have managed to become respected and prominent.

Ashley grins once, then, something a little sharp and pointed.  "We're a savage city, apparently."  Which is, apparently, of some dark amusement on her part.

Ashley herself doesn't seem aware of how much Emily might have been living in her pocket; she has not been living in Emily's.  Whatever subtext there is here, the Hermetic is (perhaps blissfully) oblivious.  Sussing out these things has never been a forte of hers, and maybe the Singer will be grateful for that.

She sits back against the arm of her couch, leaning, listening to Emily tell her what Israel has mentioned.  "We had both," she says.  "War council and an emissary meeting.  Fortune favored you and you missed both."  This, even though Emily's cabal dissolved; maybe it still causes Emily some distress, too much to joke about it just yet, but Ashley is not always sensitive to these things.  It simply doesn't occur to her.

"The Technocracy has taken possession of the node.  We wanted to keep it out of their hands to deny them a foothold here.  Unfortunately it seems that the only way to do it is to destroy it.  Israel wanted you to go in with the two of us to overload it with Quintessence and destabilize it."

[Jarod Nightingale] It was snowing lightly outside.  On the sidewalk below Ashley's building, Jarod stood looking up at the sliver of moon in the night sky.  Tiny wisps of white caught in his hair and left a scattering of muted glitter on the soft black wool of his coat.  The world was beautiful tonight, even with its dirty sidewalks and clouds of smoke.  Even with the cars, and the billboards.  Even though the stars lay behind layers of smog and cloud and streetlight.  It was, after all... the same moon.  The same earth.  The same stretch of space in the sky that stretched out into infinity.  And here, around him... the same ever-constant movement of life.

Lately he'd been spending a lot of time looking up at the moon and wondering about the center of things.  As if he could pare away all of the details and decoration and just reach into the heart of what made the world... alive.  Real.

There was understanding looking down at him.  He just hadn't reached it yet.

Nearby, one of the girls smoking by the door called out to him, and he glanced over.  It was cold tonight, and she was the last one remaining where others had briefly stood.  Jarod had been here before.  She recognized him (he was difficult to forget.)  "Hey, I'm going in, if you want me to grab the door for you..."

He did.  There was a smile offered in gratitude as he passed by her.  She offered him one back, and her eyes lingered on him as he disappeared up the stairs to the second floor.

This was a casual visit.  He hadn't called.  That was not wholly unusual for him.  Unlike Ashley and Emily, he was not adjusting to being home after a long and busy holiday.  For the first time in a long time, Christmas and the New Year had been relatively quiet affairs, and all the better for it.  There'd been the snow, and the Chicago skyline.  There'd been a large tree in his living room, decorated with tiny white lights and small, velvety red glass orbs.  There'd been clementine oranges and peppermint tea.  There'd been a literal mound of presents, all in sleek, simple, elegant wrapping.  There'd been piano music.  There'd been Dana and Ilana.

There had not been Dallas, or old family.  There had not been arguments, or drinking.  He'd tried that last year.  There'd been no catharsis.  (Perhaps he just wasn't ready to find it yet.  Perhaps catharsis simply wasn't available to people who were deeply and intrinsically broken.)  As it has been said...There was no there there.

Jarod knocked at Ashley's door.  He didn't know that anyone else was inside, but after a moment he heard the muffled murmur of female voices.  Whenever and whoever happened to answer, they'd find him standing there in a knee-length black coat and a soft black scarf, hands covered in thin leather gloves.

[Emily Littleton] Fortune favored you... Ashley says, and it is not too soon to joke about missing meetings or being freed from the political constraints of Chantry Council membership.

"It's about time..." the Singer says, as if Fate owed her a favor or three by now. There's a familiar curl to the corner of her mouth, wry and darkly amused.  It lingers for a moment, and then fades due to the seriousness of what's afoot.

Now her lips purse a little, thoughtfully, and Emily eyes lower to the coffee table while she thinks.  This is consideration, not hesitance.  There is no sudden stiffness or stringency; only a calm consideration. She's tempered, somewhat, in her time away from the general Chicago populace.

"I apologize if this has all be covered before but isn't that paramount to desecration?  Is destroying a sanctuary really the only option?"  Because, of course, Emily views the Node as something sacred.  It is an upwelling of starstuff; it is a stitched through place where this world meets the one that He intended; it is sacred.  "I'm sure there was yelling on this point already but humor me with the highlights of their reasoning, if you will?"

[Emily Littleton] [Awareness: C'mon Kahseeno, it's a new year, we can do this!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Ashley McGowen] [Awareness!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Emily Littleton] [Oh, you think you're funny, don't you diceroller? *le sigh*]

[Ashley McGowen] By the way Ashley's brows lower over her eyes, storm clouds threatening crystal waters, Emily can perhaps tell that Ashley does indeed see it as something akin to a desecration.  "I don't like the idea of destroying it at all," Ashley says, "but I was the only person at the meeting arguing against it.  If we leave it, they're going to use it, and we only have so much time.  I offered several other ideas."

Still frowning, Ashley reaches back and tugs at the hair at the back of her neck.  And it's around this point that something nudges against the base of her brainstem, the touch of a now-familiar Will as it enters the building and makes its approach.  The look she gives Emily is a quick one.  Gauging, perhaps, whether she should warn her about the Verbena's approach.

But Ashley is rather ignorant of everything that transpired toward the end of last year.  So far as she knows, they are friends with a little tension between them, and she sees no reason why Emily would be displeased to see Jarod; in fact, she might have already visited with him.  "I'm sure it could be saved," Ashley says.  "The problem is that the cost is too high."

The safety of Sleepers she might be willing to sacrifice.  The safety of most of the chantry members, she is not.

And that's when Jarod knocks, and Ashley gets up to go and answer the door.  "Hey," she says, offering him a brief smile.  She holds the door open so he can step in.  "Emily's here."

[Jarod Nightingale] [Subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]

[Emily Littleton] [Me too (specialized)]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Ashley McGowen] [Eh?  +2, I'm special.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Emily Littleton] "That's a shame," she says, when Ashley lays out the cost to benefit analysis of their predicament.  There's more to Emily's reply than that, though.  There's a sort of reluctant acceptance of this immediacy, this need to act now rather than later that leads to absolute judgements.  Destroy rather than preserve.  Attack rather than counsel.  There's a warlike mentality that underscores the city even when it sleeps -- perhaps Savage is the right word for Chicago, after all.

It is a long held habit that forces Emily to stand when Ashley moves across the room to open the door.  It's the sort of habit that she doesn't immediately recognize as incongruous with her friendships here.  So stand she does, and she lets her arms hang loosely at her sides, her shoulders are back -- she is a diplomat's daughter, indeed. 

She can't tell, at first, who has come to Ashley's door.  There's no familiar tickle at the back of her spine. She is numb to that side of the world tonight, frozen, incommunicado.  His resonance does not creep up her skin to announce itself, even Hunger is a muted presence immediately across the room.  She is cocooned in her separateness, but that will not last.

When Jarod enters there is, indeed, nothing amiss about Emily's expression.  It warms, more than is professional but not so much as to be overtly telling.  She is, for all intents and purposes, pleased to see him and this much is truth: there is warmth for him.  This much is hidden: it is a tangled, wounded thing that breathes out like icicles whenever she wants to breathe in; it pains, this fondness; it is a think she has not been able to make whole again, not yet.

"Happy New Year," she tells him, and there is Ashley's cue. They have not yet seen one another.  It's a week past 2010 and she's still greeting him this way.  "I didn't know you were coming, or I'd have brought your gift and Ilana's," she explains.  Emily clears the box from beside her on the couch, moves it to the coffee table that he might have more choice in how he joins them.  If he joins them.

And so they dance: at least this much is familiar.  What is said is often less clear that what remains unspoken.

[Jarod Nightingale] It's not exactly what he expected, but then... Emily had texted him to say that she was back in town.  So the look on his face when Ashley opened the door and he glanced over her shoulder to note the Singer's presence was not one of shock so much as subtle, polite surprise.  It had been... a long time since they'd seen each other.  A long time since they'd really spoken.  Life had intervened.  Since then, Jarod had left two notes in her mailbox - one on her birthday (unanswered, but that had been largely expected given the time of year and everything that had happened,) and one on Christmas.  He'd also left a gift for her in the woods (something beautiful that should not have been able to survive, but did, and would... for awhile.)  More of himself had been poured into that gift than anyone might suspect.  It was... a memorial.  He didn't know if she'd seen it yet.  Ultimately it didn't matter.  Its creation had been as much for himself as it had been for her.

Emily stood when he entered the room.  She smiled warmly.  What was hidden would remain hidden.  He didn't look for it today.  (Let buried things stay buried.)  His own smile was a little slower in coming, but no less warm for all that.  It lingered with his gaze when he looked at her, then slowly disappeared as he turned to unbutton his coat and unwrap the scarf from around his neck.  He was familiar with the layout of Ashley's apartment, and made his way over to the closet without any assistance.  There he pulled his hands free from his gloves and tucked them neatly into one of the pockets of his coat before he hung it and his scarf on a hanger and shut them away until they were needed again.  Underneath the coat he had on a burgundy sweater layered over a black collared shirt.

"Happy New Year to you as well.  Don't worry about the gifts.  Ilana can wait a few days.  She... had plenty of things to open over the holidays."  There was a wry touch of humor there, something a little self-deprecating as he turned his attention to Ashley.  "Sorry to interrupt.  I suppose I should have called first.  I was just driving back from Nick's place and figured I'd come pester you."

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley misses the subtext here, too, whatever undercurrents are drifting between the Verbena and the Singer.  Whatever awkwardness, whatever feelings they might be burying, whatever time has transformed and then shaped back again.  It's not unusual for Ashley to miss these things; their smiles say one thing, and it's their smiles that she sees and recognizes and understands.

She can tell that Emily hasn't seen him yet, which perhaps pleases her a little - that she was the first, or one of the first, that the Singer chose to see.  Evidently a few months are enough for Ashley to forget whatever resentment or irritation she might have had.  Say what one will about her, but she's not the sort to hold a grudge (and if she ever does, there's a hell of a good reason.)

She shakes her head at Jarod.  "It's okay," she says.  "You can drop by whenever you want.  We were just talking."  Which seems sincere.  "I was updating Emily a little on chantry stuff."

[Emily Littleton] She'd seen it.  Emily had followed the note where it led, out to a place deep in the woods, and she had knelt beside this memorial and cried.  Perhaps harder than she had since last Easter, when she crouched before another memorial, of another bright thing both cherished and lost, and let go of tears that were two years too late.  Like Prague, she had been alone in this.  Unlike Prague, though, the very existence of this marker, this gift, served to remind her that she need not have been.

There are reasons why she hasn't called, things that threaten to come welling up in her just now, but none of them matter just now.  They're pale and flimsy things, excuses more than reasons, that protect something uncertain and fleeting.  They do not belong here; they are inadequate, immature, incomplete, unconvincing.

So she stands, with her hands sliding into the pockets of her slacks, and her attention drifting from one friend to another, until she is content to let her subconscious sum this up as circumstance not a contrived and forced reconciliation.  She waits until he finds a place to sit, or doesn't.  And yes, she notices that he knows his way around her now as well as she does, perhaps better. 

She notices that Ashley tells him he can drop by whenever he wants.

Emily holds her tongue.

"Ashley doesn't let me get away with resigning from local politics," she tells Jarod, with a wry touch to her tone. A dark humor.  "She's as persistent as my father," she adds, gently teasing the Hermetic.  For all Emily disagrees with her father, she seems to hold him in relatively high esteem.  This is a rib, but not one without a hidden compliment to it.

[Jarod Nightingale] There'd been another interesting slip hidden within that greeting - Ashley was apparently familiar enough with Nick to know who he was (and who he was in relation to Jarod.)  Funny how such a large city could seem so small and interconnected, at times.

There was snow on his boots, so he took them off near the door before walking over to the couch.  In between two of the cushions, a lump marked the place where Zane had buried a stuffed toy.  Jarod... contemplated this.  (In a very Jarod-esque manner.)  Then he lifted up the corner of one of the cushions and carefully extracted the toy, being sure not to put his fingers anywhere that was marked by dog saliva.  After regarding the toy for a moment like it was an alien object, he tossed it back to the floor a reasonable distance away.  "Ashley, darling, your pets are taking over your apartment."

He sat down and made himself comfortable then, leaning back into the crook of an arm rest as he often did.  When Emily mentioned her political responsibilities, he smirked a bit, softly.  There might have been a joke there, somewhere... regarding how to ensure that the local chantry-head did not remind you of responsibilities, but if so he didn't make it.

[Ashley McGowen] Ashley follows Jarod back toward the couches and chairs, moves back toward the seat she usually takes at the one side, with her back against the armrest.  She often sits this way, faced out with her legs crossed, rather than facing forward the way most people typically would sit on a couch.  Ostensibly this is because it allows her to face everyone in the room at the same time and see them all out of her good eye - it does - but it's also because her feet...well, when she sits in the couch normally they don't quite touch the ground.  Ashley receives reminders that she's tiny often enough without giving other people additional notice.

She smirks when Jarod extracts the dog toy from the couch.  "Sorry," she says.  "Emily brought stuff over.  They're still kind of wound up."  The pets both received about as much as Ashley did this year, as a matter of fact, which was of no end of amusement to the Hermetic.

A look up toward the Singer, then.  "I bother Kage too," she says, as though this is justification.  "Anyway, if you want to avoid meetings for a while, I'm not going to brainwash you into going.  I'm just put out that I can't give bitch work to somebody.  Like keeping Molly in line."  A grin, then, because it's a joke; Ashley has expressed appreciation of Emily's presence at meetings often enough that hopefully the Singer knows that.  If not, well.

As though to give credence to Jarod's earlier comment, Luka prances by with the feather toy in his mouth.  Dropping it, he bats it once, chases it over toward Emily, and then trills up at her once or twice.  Apparently it's the people who have his attention now.  He rubs against her leg once, then spins, leaps toward the couch and winds around behind Jarod's shoulders.  Ashley eyes him once with a look of tired tolerance.

[Emily Littleton] Emily has gotten more patient with Ashley's cat since Molly presented the Singer with a small, feline tyrant of her own.  In An's defense, she was a discerning blue-eyed monster, bent only on the destruction of textiles that wandered to close to her rocking chair.  But she did have a habit of rubbing her white-furred patches against Emily's black slacks, like Luka was doing now.

She looses track of him somewhere in the acrobatic manuevers, until he re-emerges close to Jarod, daredevil kitty that he must be.  She watches with a quiet amusement, like the cat is little more than an idle distraction by now.

"Aha.  Molly."  Emily says this, with a quirk to her smile that is not outright complimentary to the Cultist, or at least to her politics.  "Now that I am not at all sorry to miss.  I have a hard enough time having a conversation with her, much less imagining her in a meeting.  But she's, how to say this? Mellowed? A little, since last summer. Just as many questions, all at once, without giving you time to answer half of them.  I bet that's fun."

This is Emily's assessment.  This is Emily's unapologetic glee at not being there the first time Molly inserted herself into their usually well mannered band of Emissaries and Council Members.  Aha, she says.  It's short of an ahahahahahaha that turns into a cackle somewhere in the recesses of her mind.

[Jarod Nightingale] There was a cat behind his shoulders.  More often than not, Jarod's attitude toward domestic animals ranged somewhere between resigned and downright haughty, but he'd been around both Zane and Luka enough now that they may have been starting to grow on him.  Either that, or he welcomed the distraction.  Whatever the source of his change in demeanor, when Luka came over to say hello, the Verbena glanced over his shoulder, contemplated, then reached up to lift the cat away and set him down on his lap.  Tonight there was no expensive suit to potentially destroy with fur and claws - jeans were less of a cause for concern, in that regard.  All the same, he did pluck open the buttons at his cuffs and roll up the sleeves of his shirt and sweater.  Then he set about petting the cat, rubbing fingertips behind its ears, around the sides of its cheeks and under its chin.  If Luka tolerated this, soon enough the petting would work its way into a full-on cat massage.

It was like watching the prince of cats come down from his mountain to spend time with the common people.

"Don't you have an apprentice?" Jarod pointed out when Ashley complained at having a lack of underlings to take on some of the less important and more tedious tasks.  Of course, they both knew that Morgan wasn't likely to be keen on this sort of thing, and that sending her to work diplomacy might not be the world's best idea in any case, so there was a knowing cast to his expression when he glanced at Ashley.  Then, after some more consideration, he turned his gaze back down to the purring cat in his lap.  "She didn't seem all that difficult when I talked to her.  A bit... silly."

One got the sense that he was being polite in using that description.

[Ashley McGowen] "I have a couple lint rollers," Ashley says, with a glance in Emily's direction, at the fur that's been left on her pants.  Ashley doesn't maintain a fastidiousness nearly to Jarod's degree, but has always had a sense of professionalism about her; that does not leave a place for being covered in animal hair.

Luka seems quite happy, for his part.  He's a shy animal but friendly enough once engaged, and he sets about milling in circles in Jarod's lap until he finds a place in which to curl up.  Curling turns into a sprawl within short order.  If he's only a distraction, he doesn't seem to mind.

"My apprentice isn't part of a cabal yet," Ashley adds, when mention is made of Morgan.  Yet, because she hopes Morgan eventually will be; Morgan is an initiate, though, and to some degree outside the circle of Ashley's influence at this point, left to her own devices beyond occasional tutoring and nudging.

"She's not difficult," Ashley says.  "I like her most of the time.  She just...yeah, she talks a lot.  It can be hard to follow at meetings."  A glance toward Emily, who doubtlessly commiserates.  "But she feeds me pretty much every time she sees me, so I guess there's something to be said for that."  More aware of her own resonance than people sometimes take her for, apparently.

[Emily Littleton] She's not difficult.

Emily's eyebrows almost raise in challenge, but she keeps that bit to herself. Alas. They are trying to be polite tonight after all.  She shifts herself into the corner of the couch, tucking one foot behind the other and adopting a sort of ready near-slouch, a comfortable posture that appears to be more open than it is.  She rests an arm along the back of the couch, so that she can tip her head into her hand and prop it up there.

"Saying Molly talks a lot is like saying I'm not particularly forthcoming, or that Ashley is sometimes direct," Emily adds on to the Dean's assessment, clarifying the extent to which Ashley's statement should be extrapolated.  "And it's not that I dislike her, per se, but she has a habit of taking whatever situation is happening and amplifying it."

This is polite.  This is carefully chosen and gentled.  Emily has sheathed her claws and is playing nicer, without giving much ground.

"Those meetings are in no need of amplification, if memory serves," a touch rueful this, tarnished but not corroded, these memories are once-bright in their own ways, sharp.  "When is Israel planning to go back to the Assylum?" she asks Ashley, returning to their previous conversation and simply enfolding Jarod in it by failing to exclude him.

"Or is she hoping to do this remotely?  What do you need me to prepare?"  There's a steadfastness to her that had been notably absent since her fellow Singer left town last Summer.  She's regained it, somehow, and is holding tight to it just now.  Even in the face of the wanton destruction of another of His wonders.  She is Unrelenting; her vows to protect and to serve do not waver, even in the face of waning Wonder.

[Jarod Nightingale] [Cue Pleasant British Narrator (a la Stephen Fry): "As a matter of happenstance, it turns out that it was indeed a chair that Emily sat down in, and not the couch after all."]

[Jarod Nightingale] "This makes me rather glad I never attend meetings," the cat-prince commented dryly after talk of Molly and amplification.  He quieted though, when the conversation veered back into more serious territory.  He could be good at feigning indifference, but truthfully these kinds of events worried him as much as they did anyone else, and he wasn't going to make light of what was... not a terribly light situation.

They were planning to destroy a Node.  It... did not sit right with anyone.

Luka's status as casual distraction had just been promoted to stress reliever, but since the cat didn't seem to mind terribly - and in fact, appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the attention - Jarod continued his ministrations, working his fingertips in little circles around the cat's neck and shoulders, then down its back, then back up along its stomach.  And so on.  Slowly, meticulously, and with a kind of innate understanding of how touch affected a living body.  When the cat's purring grew into a steady vibration, he smiled a little.  Charmed, in spite of himself.

[Ashley McGowen] Of all the people at that meeting, Ashley is probably not the one other people would have pegged to take the idealistic approach: that nodes are sacred by default, that its destruction was unacceptable.  Other people were surprised when she did.  But few people can be said to know Ashley well, and even fewer can be said to understand what drives the Hermetic.  Last night she spoke with Nathan about it, told him that she didn't think that sort of destruction was ever worth it.  But sometimes, it's the only choice that makes sense, given very limited options.

It doesn't sit with her well either.  It's evident in her tone, in the way the delicate lines that sketch her jaw and hands and shoulders have tensed.  "You should be," she says to Jarod.

Then, to Emily, "We're unable to do it remotely.  They've set up a series of wards using the Ars Conjunctionis that are also warded against magical tampering.  I could bring those down, but not without taking a lot of time.  So we're going to take out a wall, which will let you, me and Israel through to destabilize the node.  Israel wants me to bring Kage, but...I doubt Kage is going to want in on something like this."  Perhaps a mark of how well she knows the Orphan.  Together they'd tried to find a way to restore a Marauder to sanity; Kage champions lost causes, and she knows this.

"If it helps, the node was...sleeping, I guess, for lack of a better word, for a long time and it's only partially there now.  It's highly unstable and its continued presence is probably going to cause problems for Sleepers at the very least."  The bitter edge to her smile suggests that this is not good enough for her, that it's barely consolation.

[Emily Littleton] Emily shakes her head.  She digs the fingerprint of her middle finger into her temple.  There is no hiding that she is likewise displeased.  Idealism and duty were not easy things to balance.  There is someone she would talk to about this, as a peer, but he's not here.  It's the first time she's felt that particular flavor of missing him; it's a notable transition; it's a thing she doesn't stop to wonder at just now.

"Working with Traditionalists to destroy an irreplacable thing of Wonder and Grace, simply because we're afraid of what it might do?  No, that does not sound like Kage.  She was against destroying the Chalice, this past summer, and that was more directly malicious.  You could ask her -- but I wouldn't expect her help."

Once Kage was Emily's rowan-haired Other, and their paths kissed in the wood, at the hollow marked by The Court.  Now the Court belongs to a broader kith, more hands to hold it, more feet to trod the paths.  Her path and Kage's greet one another less often, they kiss rarely, they've grown cold.  There are fewer meetings at the heart-box, secrets passed between fingertips like whispers, like sighs.  It is a deeply felt absence; she is diminshed for it.  Just as she is diminished when either Ashley or Jarod is gone over long.

Emily exhales and blinks her eyes open again.

"Do you have any of the charms I made left?" she asks.  "I don't have access like I used to, and I don't have any more Tass. I can't make more, but those should still be active.  Barely."  Time had passed more quickly than she'd anticipated.

She shifts again, brings her elbows to rest on her knees, leans forward like that, thoughtful, studying the shape of the box of photographs, of the kitten in Jarod's lap, chewing on something.  Seeking something.

"Damn," she says, and it's a low and whispered thing.  It's not veiled in another tongue.  Rueful.  "Tell me.  Is this Solomon's idea?  Is he pushing for this as much as the others?" It was the Templar's way, but it bothers Emily.  Almost as much as it bothers Ashley.  "I'm sure it's too late to dissuade anyone from this course, but I wish there was someone else within the Chorus to talk to about this.  It feels wrong, Ash.  This is the sort of thing we're supposed to fight to save isn't it?"

[Jarod Nightingale] He had nothing to contribute to this conversation, so he didn't.  Though this was not due to lack of interest, as evidenced by the way Jarod glanced up from the cat in his lap to watch the pair of them and listen with muted interest.  Of course, when the Chorus was mentioned, he glanced back down at the cat again, though that... might just as well have been completely meaningless.

They were making friends, him and the cat.  And so long as Jarod was being on good behavior, this was likely what he would continue doing.

[Ashley McGowen] "Solomon and Israel's," Ashley says, "but the others backed it, except Gregor.  I presented every fucking alternative that I could, but it was pretty much just me."  The iron in her voice isn't for Emily, and neither is the anger; fortunately, the Singer probably knows her well enough at this point to know that.  Perhaps she's a little frustrated, to hear of others' reservations that weren't voiced at the meeting after the fact.

In fact, that is almost certainly what it is.  "Fuck, I hate it too.  It's settling.  For safety.  But apparently there's nothing that can be summoned to guard it, they're sitting on it and they're going to sterilize and ruin it if we leave it in their hands, and trying to hold it would be suicide.  I could have argued with them for hours, but saving it....isn't pragmatic.  The argument is that destroying it makes me feel bad.  That doesn't fucking sway anyone."

There's a bitterness underlying all of this that runs deeper than this incident.  Recognition that preserving these things, fighting for them, has so far been a losing battle.

There's a look shot toward the cat in Jarod's lap, and Luka at this point has rolled onto his back and curled around with a sigh, seemingly quite content with the Verbena's ministrations.  Ashley, whose breaths are a little shallow at this point, pauses to attempt to right herself.  She eyes Jarod a moment, silent as he is, but does not attempt to tug some opinion out of him.

"There are two left," she says to Emily finally.  "I'll give them to you.  They're planning to move on Sunday."

[Emily Littleton] "Isn't pragmatic," she echoes.  There's a touch of sadness to it.  Emily all but recoils from that thought.  She's had thoughts like it before, very much like it; she's acted on them.  She knows what sort of sacrifice comes on their heels, and that it's never what she would have offered freely.  It's different, this year, to talk about these all or nothing discussions.  She's achieved a bit of perspective.  Enough to make her rub her palms together and interlace her fingers, shake her head a bit, frown softly.

"There's a lot we let burn in this city," she says, to no one in particular. She's thinking of a place that isn't here, now.  It looms at the edge of her memory.  She tips her face up a little, glances upward for just a moment and then back to Ashley.

"No," she says, of the charms.  "I'll take one and you the other.  I have no cabal to support, now.  Even if I did still, they wouldn't have come into something like this with me."  She's calling out Chuck's cowardice and indecision plainly.  Without apology.  Ashley will know it.  "Israel should be able to provide for herself, and for Solomon.  This small thing I can do for the two of us."

She has to bite back her reply to what Ashley says is her argument.  Emily has to keep herself from explaining that it's not about emotion, at all, not about making someone feel bad.  She has to stop herself from condemning the others for losing sight of the few sacred, hallowed things around them, evidence of Grace, just because they have lost any sense of what that means.  Because Emily is not so high, nor is she so mighty; she has fallen away from that Grace, she has been reborn into its awareness.

She swallows it down.

"Sunday?" She glances away and mentally calculates something.  The immediacy of this leaves her little time for thought or preparation.  Decisions have been made and Emily is anything but a compliant, willing, thoughtless soldier.  It bothers her, it rankles her visibly.  She glances to Jarod and Luka with a sort of wistful envy for a moment, and then nods.

"I should go brush up on a few things.  I'm out of practice, thanks to the holidays," she tells them.  "I'll touch base before Sunday, with both of you," she says, and there's a look to Jarod that says more than words might have.  That she does want to talk to him; that there is welcome enough to extend that.

"I just --" Emily exhales as she stands, and it comes out in a rush of  sigh.  And no, she doesn't finish that thought as she collects her things.  Whatever stillness she'd brought in with her tonight is swept away, brushed clean from her.  Emily has things to do, and quandries to settle, and miles to go before she sleeps.  (We are always on the anvil [Sometimes I wish You didn't think my shoulders were so broad]).

"Someday it won't be like this, Ash.  I'm going to hope for that," is her parting for the Hermetic, just before the door closes behind her.

[Jarod Nightingale] They glanced at him with wistful envy, Jarod with his feline companion, the picture of zen-like calm.  Luka did not know of things like Nodes and Technocrats and wars.  He did not know what it meant to make terrible delicate decisions.

Perhaps Jarod didn't either.  Perhaps not getting involved was his difficult decision.  One had to make choices, in life, about what things they were willing to sacrifice... and what things they were not.  This was the kind of choice that was so haunting Ashley and Emily now.

They didn't ask him for an opinion.  He didn't offer one.  They might not have been comforted by it, in any case.

Emily needed to go.  She promised to touch base.  Jarod looked up from his furry lap-warmer and smiled a little in response.  The kind of polite thing that one would offer to any acquaintance who'd made assurances to keep in touch.  And perhaps she meant it.  Perhaps so did he.  "Bon soir, mon amie," he offered by way of goodbye.  The use of French was a little reminiscent.  (Nostalgia, maybe.)

She'd said that she hoped things would be different some day.  He didn't tell her that hoping for change was a useless venture, though perhaps he should have.  Perhaps he should have told her that change only happened when people made that change for themselves.  But... he didn't do that either.

And then she was gone.

A few moments after the door shut, something seemed to drain out of him.  Not tension, exactly, for he hadn't seemed tense at all earlier.  Maybe he was simply tired.  He looked tired.  He also looked... sad.  He'd ceased petting the cat, and now he picked Luka up gently and set him down closer to Ashley so that he could stand up and deal with the fur that had been left on his jeans and hands.  Initially this was an ordinary sort of reaction (what everyone did after an extended petting session with a shedding mammal), but soon compulsion set in and he snatched the lint roller off the table and brought it with him into the bathroom, whereupon he very neatly and carefully cleaned off every single bit of fur that was stuck to his clothing.  It took awhile to get the ones that had attached themselves to his sweater, and since the fabric wasn't of the variety that stood up well to having sticky things applied to it, he got them all by hand.  One by one.

And then he washed his hands.  Thoroughly.  And by the time he finally came back, Ashley might notice a few red streaks on the skin of his arms and hands from where he'd unconsciously dug his nails in.  But he was fairly quick to unroll the sleeves of his shirts and button them back into place at his wrists, so perhaps not.  Before he sat down, he used the lint-roller on the couch cushion, though it looked to be reasonably free of cat hairs.  It was just a quick swipe though, and then he set the thing back down on the coffee table and set himself back down on the sofa.  He looked less relaxed now, though.  He sat a little too stiffly, as if he felt uncomfortable.

"I think I came on a bad night," he offered quietly.

[Ashley McGowen] [Empathy?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 8)

[Jarod Nightingale] If ever there was a moment for Ashley to have a flash of insight into Jarod's emotions, now was... either perfect or terrible timing, depending on one's perspective.  This man who was nearly always so good at masking his thoughts (who was frequently a source of mystery and confusion to her) had let his guard slip a little, just now, as if it had been costing him a great deal of energy to keep it up in the first place and now he couldn't quite keep it together.

The first thing she'd notice is that he was, indeed, uncomfortable.  His fastidious nature had always been fairly obvious, but he'd never exhibited genuine anxiety about it before now - at least, not in front of her.  And given the fact that she'd been with him at times when he'd had various bodily fluids on his skin, this sudden onset of obsessive compulsion (if indeed that's what it was) could be construed as stemming less from the cat than from an unrelated emotional source.  Cleanliness was, in a way, about control - the need to control oneself and one's environment.

He was upset.  More specifically, Emily had made him upset.  He'd done a good job of masking it earlier (perhaps even from himself) but it was evident enough now.  But this was not anger or anything else quite so dramatic.  It was an old wound.  It was an ache, but it went deep.  Something tinged with loss and bitterness and very immediate sense of being alone.  It was not, however, confusion or longing.  There were no illusions here.  Whatever he'd felt for Emily once, things had changed.

[Ashley McGowen] Some day things won't be like this, Emily assures her.  Ashley has a similar outlook on hoping for change.  One Wills the world to change, and that is the only way it comes about.  It's a few people, too few, trying to force change in a dark world, trying to jar the world out of stasis.

So when Emily says she's going to hope for it, Ashley says, "I'm going to Will it so," and it's a challenge, almost.  There is a part of Ashley that senses that, someday, this is probably how she will die.  She doesn't have the sense of duty that Emily or Daiyu or Justine or Bran have (had), but she has passion, and sometimes that's good enough.

"Good night, Em."  And then the Singer is gone, and she and the Verbena are left in a disturbed quiet.  When Jarod sets Luka down and begins to roll the fur off of his clothing, Ashley reaches over to rub his head and stroke his shoulders.  She doesn't pick him up and hug him as she might during some situations where she might want the reassurance; there's a brooding silence that's settled over her.

When Jarod gets up to begin picking the hair away, there's a concerned, curious glance that follows him, but she doesn't get up to go after him.  She waits.  And when he returns, she doesn't miss the furrows that are there before he rolls his sleeves down; she doesn't miss that he's spotless now.  She doesn't miss how tense he seems.  It's an unusually perceptive moment for Ashley, in regard to how he's feeling.  Maybe it's because the tells are all there, if she looks, and she's started to become aware of the messages others' bodies can give (particularly his.)

When he settles back down, Ashley edges closer to him.  Hesitates, because she's not sure whether touching would help just now, but eventually brings her hand up to his shoulder, lets it slide around to the back of his neck.  She listens to what he says, and there's a moment where her brows furrow at him in the manner of someone trying to understand, trying to think of a response: just trying.  There's anger there, faint, veiled, because it makes her unhappy that something is hurting him.  Sadness there, too.  Understanding and, as much as she can have it, empathy (she dealt with this too, at a point in her life).  "Tell me?"

She tries, very hard, not to make it a demand, to indicate in her tone that there is an option there.  It's not easy; it's there only because insight has forced her to consider something she might not ordinarily consider.

If he seems all right with the touch, her fingers trail up through the hair at the back of his neck, sliding through it in a manner that's attempting to soothe.  It's uncertain at first, given that he's still tense, but he doesn't seem not to want it, so, for the time being, it's there.

[Jarod Nightingale] It's a difficult thing, admitting to human weakness and showing vulnerability.  Even most ordinary people had trouble with it, and most ordinary people were not Jarod Nightingale, this being of icy-cool perfection.  So it could be disturbing when cracks began to show in the surface, as if suddenly the universe just seemed that much less stable.  As if the rules didn't apply any more.  Emily had reacted with something close to shock, once, when she'd seen similar vulnerability (though in her case, the degree had certainly been greater.)

Ashley... touched him.  His muscles tensed when he felt her hand, but he didn't push her away.  When her fingers touched the back of his neck though, an instinctual response broke through his control for a moment and caused him to jump a little as he sucked in a breath, his head tilting away from her.  But he seemed angry that he'd done it, and managed to relax himself a moment later.  And if she felt some concern and started to draw her hand away, he'd murmur: "No... don't."

He took a breath and closed his eyes when her fingers slid through his hair.  He hadn't meant to imply anything personal when he'd made the statement that he shouldn't have come tonight, and the fact that she'd thought to interpret it that way bothered him a little.  Naturally, he tried to smooth it over.  "I just meant... because you have so much going on.  It was selfish of me to interrupt."  (And it was highly uncharacteristic of him to apologize for being selfish.)

[Ashley McGowen] Her hand does, indeed, start to lift away when he tilts his head away from her, but when he tells her not to pull away, she lets her hand stay where it is.  Still, she doesn't push the contact much further than that, doesn't move in to lean against him, perhaps out of some instinctive sense that what she's doing right now is plenty; better not to give him too much to deal with.  So she continues to stroke his hair and eventually it turns into slow circling of his scalp and the back of his neck - not digging in, but enough to ease tension out.

Animals like this.  It's a fair bet that in most cases so do people, and she seems to have a sensitivity, at least, for how to touch him now that she is.

At what he says there's a wry glance in his direction, and then she says, "You're allowed to be selfish."  Selfishness isn't a bad thing, as far as she is concerned.  Beneficial, even: it's something that everyone does.  "If you were an inconvenience, I would have said so."

There's a pause because she isn't sure how hard to push, just now.  Whether to offer anything.  What needs to be done.  So Ashley tries for the direct approach, which she is most comfortable with.  "Something's bothering you.  If you want to talk, I want to listen."  She's not always the most comforting person; she's even aware of it.  Her tone at least sounds open, though.  Quiet.

[Jarod] [Empathy - is this real life?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 6, 7, 8 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Ashley] It does, indeed, appear to be real life.  Ashley wasn't particularly sensitive the last time Jarod spoke with her about this particular topic, and she's displaying an unusual sort of sensitivity now.  He can tell that she's experienced unusual insight, and that she is responding to it, and that perhaps sometimes the reason she can be unsympathetic is because there are a lot of times when she just doesn't get it.  It doesn't occur to her, but it has today.

It's entirely possible that before, she didn't realize how he felt, or the depth of what he felt.  Things have changed since then; she has insights now that she didn't have in October.

Of course, she also cares.  That's most of what's motivating her right now.  She's upset that he's hurt, and she's feeling protective.  She's feeling a little inadequate too, unsure of what to do to help and aware that these are emotions she handles poorly.  Either way: this is not a lie.
to Jarod

[Jarod] There was perhaps some ironic humor to be found in hearing someone tell him that he was allowed to be selfish.  Jarod spent a great deal of his time and energy being exactly that.  In fact, this was frequently one of his least appealing qualities.  He probably wasn't the sort of person who you'd want to end up in a fight with.  He wasn't heroic.  (He wasn't a knight-in-training like Emily.)  He didn't feel an obligation to help or save others, and even if he did it was sublimated behind the much more immediate instinct of self-preservation.  But of course... that didn't mean that he didn't still care about people.  More and more lately, that was becoming apparent.

There was a slightly rueful expression on his face when he glanced at her.  "I know that.  Doesn't mean I can't also be considerate on rare occasions."

But Ashley wasn't bothered by the distraction, and Jarod wasn't the sort of person who needed reassurance, so he accepted her response as easily as she'd given it.  Her fingers ran through his hair and began to massage his scalp, and though he didn't exhibit much of a reaction at first... within a few moments some (though not all) of the tension eased out of his neck and he had to fight not to close his eyes and lean into her touch.  In fact, he did... a little, and his eyes slid shut for a moment before opening again.  This contrasted a bit with the brief flicker of defensive anger that surfaced when she told him that he could talk to her, should he want to.

"Why?  It won't make anything different."  His eyebrows drew together in an almost... suspicious expression, and he looked at Ashley fully now and fixed her with a measuring gaze - perhaps trying to determine if this wasn't simply some sort of trick to garner ammunition to use against him in their next fight.  By all accounts though, she did seem to genuinely care.  He... didn't quite know how to react to that.  It seemed unsettling, somehow.  Like the laws of the universe were shifting.

The anger drained away.  "I don't really know what I wanted.  I wasn't expecting to see her.  It caught me off guard."

Even admitting that much was difficult.  Jarod spoke about his feelings the way that most people spoke about trauma - slowly, in bits and pieces, and with the strained, muffled tone of someone whose throat was constricted.  He hesitated a moment, then nudged Ashley to indicate that she move further down the couch.  When he had room to move, he lay down with his head in her lap, almost exactly like he'd done the night they'd had that conversation about Christmas presents.  He was on his back, but his eyes didn't meet hers.  Instead, they gazed up at the ceiling.

"It's not what you think, you know.  Me and Emily.  It's not what anyone thought.  I wasn't... I didn't want to hurt her.  I... care about her."  His eyes met Ashley's then.  Almost challenging her, perhaps, to insist that he did not.  Then, he looked away again.  "Anyway, it doesn't matter now.  Whatever I may have thought I wanted... I wasn't ever going to get it.  So I let it go."  (So he let her go.)

[Ashley] He speaks of this the same way she told him about Daiyu, or the same way she told Israel about her Jhor.  The same way she talks about music on the rare occasion she feels that she wants to.  It confuses her, not because she doesn't believe that this is painful for him but because she's trying to wrap her mind around precisely why it is.  There's a lot she doesn't know here.

When Jarod indicates that she move back, she does so, and when his head sinks into her lap she lets one hand continue kneading at the back of his neck.  The other settles on his chest, meant to be a reassuring weight.  She doesn't force his eyes to meet hers, doesn't grab and hold them; she watches her hand instead, or the rise and fall of his stomach as he breathes, or the opposite wall.

She doesn't insist that he didn't care.  Actually, she doesn't seem to doubt at all.

Insight doesn't mean she knows what to say right now, though.  Ashley's blue eyes wander, a little lost.  "I'm sorry," she says.  "I didn't know."  She doesn't apologize for the park, but maybe she means to.  There's some inarticulate ache she doesn't know how to express, or necessarily want to.

Ashley searches for something to tell him, but she is not a caregiver of any kind.  She's not a fount of sympathy or wisdom, or the kind of person who knows what to say to other people, and there aren't very many people that she'd even think about attempting this for.  Hell, she's still trying to find meaning in her own losses.  So there's a silence in which her eyes rove, and she wants and doesn't find.  Finally she just lets out a soft sigh, leans down around him, curling an arm around his head and shoulder and letting the side of her head come to rest against his chest.  It's encompassing, an embrace, touch a social animal instinctively does to offer solace.

It's really all she knows.

[Jarod] Ashley said she was sorry.  That she hadn't known.  And of course, she still had only the murkiest of understandings, because he'd hardly told her anything at all.  Only what he'd needed to offer in order to explain his behavior.  It wasn't deliberate obfuscation on his part so much as an inability to articulate what he was feeling.  One got the sense that he just didn't have the vocabulary for this kind of open vulnerability.  He and Ashley were... rather alike in this way.

"Why would you have?" he responded gently.  And though he could have chosen to be angry with her for making assumptions (as he had in the past,) tonight he didn't really seem to have the heart for it.  Not for someone who had no real reason to care (who had more than enough of her own problems) and yet somehow... did.  Despite feeling awkward.  Despite not knowing what to say.  She didn't recoil from him, and she didn't try to offer advice.  She was just there.  And she cared.  And that was more than most people managed.

And in its own way... that almost made it hurt more, but he didn't tell her that.  He just took a deep breath and relaxed the muscles in his chest when she folded down to rest her head there.  His fingers found their way into her hair, running through the soft strands.

"Hey..." he spoke this after some time had passed, and pushed her gently with his hand so that she'd sit up again.  He wanted to look at her, and as soon as he was able to, he fixed his eyes on hers.  "It's alright, really.  I dealt with it."

He didn't actually say anything else, but he let his gaze linger on her for awhile.  Finally he took the hem of his sweater and pulled it over his head, shifting to arch his back and stretch out his arms as he removed the outer layer.  He set it down on the coffee table, then un-tucked the edge of his other shirt from his jeans, making himself more comfortable.

Then he reached up again and touched the side of her face, bringing her down so that he could kiss her.

[Ashley] Why would she have known?  Ashley has the sense that there are plenty of people who would have, who could have watched the interaction and used some innate understanding of people or some experience with how they work, and could have figured it all out.  And much more thoroughly than she has now, even after she's been told.

There are, occasionally, times when she is aware of just how much she doesn't get.  Of some kind of disconnect between herself and others.  There are a lot of times when she doesn't really care, either, and more times when she uses it as an excuse to do what she wants.  There are times when it hurts, though, that realization.  Times when she's angry that so many people see it as invasive to fall back on magic, to simply Will up how they feel and expose them.  (She could do it anyway.  For whatever reason, she doesn't.)

But she doesn't answer him because really, it's not the kind of question that was looking for an answer anyway.  His fingers run through her hair and she, too, relaxes for as long as they linger that way.  It's the good ear she's allowed to rest against him - something she'd only really feel comfortable doing in her own apartment, with her sanctum twenty feet away - and she listens for a while, and when his voice reaches her she hears it through his chest more than from the air.

When she sits back up and he speaks again, there's something searching in how she looks back at him.  "All right," she says, and it's not a skeptical sort of tone, doesn't pull outward to invite doubt.  It's just accepting, in its way; she's taking his word for it, because this is how she often hears people unless she has reason to do otherwise.

When she folds back down to kiss him she lingers, still cradling his head against her arm, and her other hand slides up beneath his shirt to come to rest on his chest again, but against his skin this time.  One could argue that she's letting him avoid the subject, that she doesn't really have that good a grasp on what actually happened or the implications that ran deep beneath his words to the heart of truth.  One could also argue that she doesn't really need to, right now.

[Jarod] She accepted his response, returned the kiss, and slid her hand beneath his shirt to touch his chest.  One could argue that this wasn't the way to get someone to talk about something.  One could argue that this was a distraction.  Except that it wasn't, really.  Or at least... it wasn't only a distraction.  It was also finding warmth.  It was also letting go.  And one could argue... that he'd laid himself out like this beneath her because he'd wanted her to touch him.

His response to these things was less assertive than usual.  He kissed Ashley slowly, lingering on the taste of her lips.  But when her hand came to rest near his heart she'd find an unsteady rhythm beneath, and he arched up to meet her touch.

Tonight he didn't whisper seductively vulgar words into her ear.  He didn't have some vision in his head of what was about to happen.  No goal for him to pursue with single-minded flirtation.  He wasn't actually thinking much at all, right now.  It was almost welcome, not be thinking.  (To let go.)  When he broke the kiss he breathed out softly and tilted his head back, eyes closed.

[Ashley] There's something yielding about him at the moment; he's not trying to direct, and there's none of the push and pull that happens with the two of them more often than not.  At worst it could be called combative, and at best it's usually a wary offer or trade.  There's occasionally been a partial letting go, usually out of contrition on someone's part, but not this.

Ashley doesn't really stop to process it, or to wonder, or to question.  He wants to be touched and, conveniently, she wants to touch him.  He tilts his head back, and when he does she leans down to kiss his throat, the movement slow and almost tender.  She can't quite maintain that for long, though, because it's her; as she draws closer to the hollow of his throat there's heat, and her teeth skim his skin, possessive almost.

Her hand rests over his heart for what seems like a long time.  It hasn't escaped her that the beat against her hand is a little erratic, a little too quick.  When her mouth finds his once more she's gentle again, mindful of that, and her hand leaves his chest long enough to unfasten a few of the buttons on his shirt.

She pulls back after a moment, barely, almost speaking against his lips.  "Is a late night okay?"  Dana, she imagines, has probably gone back to Dallas by now.  Maybe.

[Jarod] Dana had gone back to Dallas.  This was, in part, why he'd come over here tonight.  He'd grown used to having her in his home; to the sounds of her guitar; to the way that she seemed to make everything around her more solid and stable simply by virtue of her presence.  Perhaps some of that was his own biased perception of her, based partly on the role she'd played in his life when he was younger, but even Ilana had found her to be a calming presence.

And now she was gone.  Back in Dallas.  Back in Oaklawn.  It was better that way, though.  She was... safer.

When Ashley kissed his neck, he let out another quiet breath.  This was soon enough joined by a short, clipped sound that hummed against her mouth when he felt teeth at the base of his throat.

She asked if a late night was okay.  He didn't speak, but nodded, letting his lips brush against hers as he did so.  (Ilana was spending the night at Logan's, as she often did on Friday evenings.)

This yielding, it was a tentative state, and one that occurred in him only very rarely.  Perhaps that accounted for the erratic heart beat (...perhaps it was more the result of thinly veiled emotions.)  He could have grabbed hold of her then - pulled her against him like perhaps he might want to.  But... he didn't.  Instead he stretched his arms above his head and folded them loosely against the sofa's arm-rest.  This may not have been a part that he was used to playing (at least, not for a long, long time) but there was no awkwardness about the way embodied it.  It was not submissive, per se (he never really was,) but it was... surrender, of a sorts.  Though he would not explain why, or to what.  And Ashley probably would not ask.

[Ashley] Ashley does not ask.  Even if she could find words to do so, she assumes that this is much like what she offered him a few weeks ago; she wasn't much more used to it than he is.  When his arms fold over the arm of the couch, she glances down at him for a moment and then takes hold of the hem of both of her shirts, lifting them off, and then slides down so she can lie next to him, raising herself on one elbow while she frees the rest of his shirt's buttons and slides a hand over his ribs.

There's a kiss placed against his collarbone, and then she lifts her head long enough to glance over him.  For as vocal as she is sometimes, she's generally not much of a talker, not really given to whispering in someone's ear, vulgar or not, the way he is.  Still, there's some instinctive sense of what he wants - she's having a perceptive day - and so she speaks the first thing on her mind, very quietly.  "You look beautiful, like that."

The words are raw and honest, and she regrets them a second after she says them, because of course he does.  She leans down to wrap an arm around him and place a kiss at the corner of his jaw.

[Jarod] One would think that someone like Jarod heard words like that with an absurd kind of frequency, and it was true that he had been told that he was beautiful more times that he could ever count or keep track of.  People had been saying it to him since he was a kid, but it was usually either empty or antagonistic (yes, people could throw compliments angrily - though Jarod wasn't so privileged or naive as to insult the people around him by complaining about it [this was what you called a good problem.])  For most, he was something to be looked at and admired, like a statue.  (Or... to be used.  Taken.  But no, that was a long time ago, and he did not - would not - think of it now.)  These compliments happened less often than Ashley might suspect, though.  Most of the people who mattered tended to assume that he was sick of hearing it (or didn't need to hear it - his ego was rather unbearable already,) or they settled into the easy role of passivity, since he himself was such a forceful presence.

Ashley didn't know that, of course.  What she did know was that she was looking at someone who, despite all efforts to the contrary, was capable of being hurt (and of feeling unwanted - though this probably seemed completely oppositional to logic,) and that people in his position (even beautiful, rich, powerful people) often just needed someone to come by and remind them that they were, in fact, worth something.  Jarod probably would have been just fine, had Ashley not done any of this.  She could have ignored him completely, and he'd have gone home and worked through his stress and moved on.  Or she could have not told him that he looked beautiful, and he'd have still enjoyed being with her.  But she hadn't ignored him, and she had told him that he looked beautiful.

And maybe he didn't need her reassurance, but it struck him anyway, and because he had his guard down, it cut more deeply than it otherwise might have.  He met her gaze (his eyes were dark) and his breath caught in his throat for a half-second.  Any other night he would have smiled confidently.  Tonight a faint flush dusted his skin, and his smile was a little less self-assured, but... more genuine.

She broke eye contact.  Curled her arm around him and kissed his jaw.

"So do you," he whispered.  And briefly, he let one of his hands travel over to stroke his thumb down the curve of her throat.  It descended lower, finding a breast and grazing the backs of his knuckles over the nipple through the fabric of her bra.  Then he touched her arm, trailing his fingertips across it slowly until he reached her hand.  This he took hold of, gently, and dragged down his chest, to his stomach, where it came to rest at the sensitive skin just above the waistline of his pants.

Then his hand fell away, leaving hers to its own devices.

[Ashley] [What?  I'd never use Mind magic on my pets...]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 7 (Failure at target 3)

[Ashley] [Damn.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 5 at target 4) [WP]

[Ashley] This probably wasn't the outcome she'd expected this evening - or the outcome she had expected here, period.  Ashley isn't the sort to linger on these things, though, and she's not particularly inclined to think about it now in particular.  It hadn't been a casual compliment; she is glad that Jarod does not take it as such.

Her hand stops at the waistline of his pants, and she's working the button free when she suddenly remembers: the dog.  Who is hovering nearby.  Probably watching.  Her singlemindedness only extends so far.

The chain about her throat is the one item of clothing she has that is never removed.  She reaches up toward it now, toward the iron link, and hopefully Jarod doesn't think the evening is about to take a one-eighty.  It doesn't; her thoughts are jumbled and it takes her longer to focus than usual, but it's meant for the dog and cat.  Who quite calmly pad off toward her study as though the idea has just occurred to them on their own, and settle down to sleep.

And should he catch her eye during this little episode, the most he'll get from her is a self-conscious smirk.

His clothes are set aside on the coffee table - less risk of him finding any hair on them tomorrow morning.  She takes her time with him out of a sense of how rare this is, maps his skin even though she's growing familiar with it by now, and the slow approach isn't out of any sort of hesitation.  She focuses on him at first.  It's much later that she tenses and cries out against his shoulder.  Later still when she settles in against him and asks him if he'll stay, if he wasn't already planning on it.

There aren't any more thoughts of the node, or of its destruction, or of loss and danger and death: just a quiet that stretches into a still winter morning.

8:17 PM