Ned
The door thuds a few times. Not a rap, but a meaty fist. Followed quickly by a
"It's Ned."
To reassure her it wasn't the other person she might be expecting unpleasant things from at some point or another. Opening the door, Ned is dressed in a simple pair of black jeans and a black hoodie (becoming standard) hair a little damp from the sudden sprawl of rain coming down outside. It wasn't much and he wasn't soaked.
"Coffee?" He perks a brow, stepping into the apartment with an edging motion, like he were being careful about how many steps he's choosing to take at any given moment. An eye to the couch, then at the camera in the potted plant (which he can't see but knows is there) followed by a survey of the apartment that says he might be looking for signs of a difference.
Then finally around toward Margot, brow still perked.
Margot
He could almost hear the hesitation after the knock. It was good that he followed with his name, the last time knocking came without a voice she waffled on grabbing a knife for a half dozen seconds before sucking it up and opening the door anyways. Needless to say it hadn't been her brother then anymore than it had now. A moment later, the door opened wide enough to presume an invitation inside.
Margot wore a pair of jeans along with a long sleeved shirt of white and red horizontal stripes. She had her hair down, tucked back behind her ears, and gave the impression of somebody interrupted from worrying.
What else was new.
"I can brew some," she offered when he inquired about coffee while stepping inside, and stepped back after closing the door behind him to move to the little kitchen. Set about to the task, and noticed after a moment how carefully Ned was glancing about. She raised an eyebrow back at him, then shook her head. "No sign of him yet. Last update I got was two days ago in the Chicago area, nothing since."
She looked back down to the coffee pot and watched the water fill. Her face slipped back to a frown as she did. Chewing on some thought or worry but not speaking it just yet.
Ned
"Cough it up."
He isn't looking at her when he says it. He had been, a moment ago, scrutinizing her as the last object in the room to ensure no changes had been made (and thus, Luke had not arrived). It's when he notices the worry and concern. He doesn't say anything at first, merely turns and begins to check under the coffee table for the pieces they had stashed there and then on toward the bathroom.
It is halfway to the bathroom, that he says it, vanishing inside with the door still open to check in the cabinet for the knife left there.
Margot
She didn't look up after him when he shifted about the apartment to check the places that weapons had been secured. He'd find everything where he expected. At first Margot pursed her lips and didn't say anything, instead filled the quiet with the sound of pouring water into the coffeemaker and the glass pot clattering back into its place.
"Doc came by yesterday wanting to know what you were talking about when you brought up Luke." Was there accusation there? Absolutely. But it wasn't the real issue, and she glazed on over for the moment and continued on while scooping coffee into a filter cup.
"I told him I didn't want him involved because I was worried what he'd do to Luke. I was kind of... an asshole about it. He tried to leave in a hurry and I was even more of an asshole and now he's not answering his phone for me."
The 'brew' switch engaged on the machine, Margot stepped back from the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. Didn't turn around yet but frowned forward instead.
Ned
"...So you assumed at what the Doc was going to do to Luke and he got offended. That's a first....him getting offended, not you assuming things."
He says it. Corrects himself. Non-chalant about the entirety. He emerges form the bathroom as she is pouring, hands on his hips and eyes roving around trying to remember where the rest of it was.
"So now you're all worried he is mad at you for being an asshole and what? Keeping Luke from him? Trying to keep secrets? Throwing shade where shade need not be thrown?" The Doc being offended was somewhat new territory. At least, the silent treatment was. Usually he was upfront and obvious about telling them what he thought of their stupidity and Ned's empathy being what it is, could hardly decipher the specifics behind that sort of reaction beyond
"Maybe becoming Initiates, took away that privilege of ignorance we've been relying on. He's not gonna afford us the same level of 'facepalm' we've been comfortable with. Which means re-evaluating." A pause. He's standing in the 'doorway' of the kitchen now, regarding her evenly, hip leaning against the counter.
"You still worried about Luke?"
Ned
A finger held up toward her, when she goes to answer. Clarifying:
"Even after the level up?"
Margot
Her head turned to look at Ned past her shoulder. Appraised his comfortable stance in the apartment he'd helped to fortify. Something shifted in her expression but, well, Ned wouldn't be able to begin to guess at what now could he?
"Of course I am. The situation isn't better. It doesn't feel quite so overwhelming or impossible, if that's what you mean, but no ending is going to be a good ending here." She turned, at last, and leaned into the counter as well-- her back against it as opposed to hip, though, so she wouldn't quite mirror.
"I think I gave him the impression that I don't trust him in my business and I think maybe that hurt? I think you're right about us not being Apprentices, though. Except more in terms of our relationship with him. Maybe he thinks if he's not going to be Mentor to Apprentices anymore then we don't need him and there's no reason for him to be around in that case? Or maybe I was just a dick and said some dickish things and he's repaying the cold shoulder I gave him earlier this year."
She shook her head and sighed. It was a lot of speculation into someone's feelings when she wasn't confident in her understanding of where that someone was coming from a lot of the time anyways.
Ned
"You're missing the point."
Ned offers it without much prep or muster of subtlety. His arms fold over his chest and he breathes loudly through his nostrils for a moment, eyeballing the roof.
"We're not apprentices anymore. Pardon-" He clears his throat. "We aren't human. Humans can't heal like we're eventually going to do. Inevitably, going to do. You want to do all this superhero stuff and these intense witchcraft things and you've...still got this presence in your head hunkering down and calling out 'foul' when the people around you are expecting you to catch up with those facts."
His head tilts forward slightly, brows knitting together.
"This isn't high school. It's not about us. You don't know what the Doc thinks or reasons at this point because it's all different than it was before. Don't assume. Stop assuming. Stop reasoning at the Doc. Stop reasoning at everything around you, because the Reason you are relying on...the logicyou are relying on, doesn't apply anymore. It didn't when we were apprentices, but neither of us was capable of much more than some cursory effects."
Ned pinches a thumb into his left eye, scrubbing out a touch of exhaustion while glancing at the coffee pot still boiling.
"It's not comforting. It's not fair. It's not easy. None of it. At some point though, if you actually want to do all those things you keep claiming to be eager for, you're gonna have to come to stop reasoning what other Mages are or how they do things...because none of us are human anymore. Those rules don't apply. More and more, as we go deeper and deeper."
He up nods at the coffee pop, pushing himself off the counter and heading into the living room.
"I came by to tell you, we're not really approaching this properly." A pause, slipping onto the couch with a grunt and the spread of arms.
"This Luke thing, that is."
Margot
The witch's expression was serious while Ned spoke. She heard him out, all the way through, even though at a point he nodded at the coffee and moved to claim space on her couch. That earned a flex of a frown on her forehead, but she retrieved a pair of mismatched mugs from the cupboard and poured all the same.
"We're humans," she told him, disagreeing as she set a mug down on the table in front of him (safe to assume she'd figured out how he took his coffee by now). "We're just not Sleeping, so we're not just humans. Still, though, at our core, our anatomy and wiring's all the same. The Doc can conjure tequila and make you feel the worst pain of your life on demand, but I still don't want to risk running him off."
She came to settle down on the sofa beside him, turned so her back was against the arm and her feet were tucked up onto the cushion in front of her. Knees were propped into the air and she rested the bottom of her own mug (cream, no sugar) upon them.
"How should we approach Luke, then?"
Ned
"That's an over-simplification. You have a body. Anatomy. Functioning vessel. That makes you Alive. That doesn't make you human..." He re-corrects, turning to glance over his shoulder at her from the couch, frowning. "Your thinking and reasoning and self are completely different now. The things we have access to, the capabilities we're allowed. Consequences to be sure, but the impossible is no longer a concept. No longer a barrier. You saw what that lady did to the Doc's wrists. Like a pair of handcuffs. Like pouring a cup of coffee."
He's staring at her openly now, brows still knitted, arms splayed across the back of the couch while she sets the mug down on the table. It goes ignored.
"Everything we were and are and could be, is suddenly laid out on the table in front of us and there's a choice there. The things we believe in are the things that define us. Can define what we can do. It doesn't make us monsters or demons or angels but....you can't tell me we're human anymore. That's naive. Denial. Not the same as belief."
He leans forward to pick up his coffee, blowing over the steaming top.
"We need to hunt him down. Before he gets comfortable. Before he starts getting at ease in his new goal and method. No more defense."
Margot
"Can't we be both?"
No doubt, this earned her a particular look from her companion, so Margot just grinned weakly, the expression small and brief, and shook her head. It's just jokes, Ned, just jokes. "Look, I'm not backing down from what I am. I'm not hesitating, it's sleeves up all in, alright? Your doubt's getting a little insulting here."
A break to mutually blow steam from coffee mugs. Margot took a sip from hers while Ned proposed a hunting trip. That sip almost went right back into the cup but didn't.
"What? And do what, exactly? Bust in to whatever hotel room he's holed away in and break his resolve for revenge or brain him in the bathtub if he won't?"
Ned
"If you want to feel insulted, that's up to you. I'm being honest. How I feel and how it feels being this. Everything around me feels...less than it was and the stuff we're exploring and being exposed to that we only ever saw in movies and make believe is suddenly becoming more and more real. I'm planning for crazy shit in my off and on hours and coming to the realization that a lot of the things in my life are...superfluous to existing. Jobs, school, socializing." He snorts and looks off into the air of the apartment for a moment.
"What exactly do I talk about with the normals? The Weather was shitty before, it's unbearably simple now." A pause, sipping again. "Unless I'm summoning lightning or something...eventually." Another sip.
"You got to be both for the entirety of your apprenticeship. You spent it being scared. Being unsure and uncertain. Being lost in your past and the trauma of that. That was understandable. We were new. We were...Still thinking human. That no longer applies though. You and I are not those people anymore. There are some ghosts still hanging around. Jobs, school. Brothers. Trauma but the further we go into this Initiate thing? The less relevant those things are going to be..."
He eyeballs her over the coffee mug.
"The more trouble you're going to get in with others, who can't be bothered talking to you about your high school crushes, traumatic family experiences and obvious denial hang-ups when there are more important things to spend your worry about."
Another sip.
"Luke needs to be dealt with. You need to confront him and figure out what to do with him. Whether we knock him out, cart him off and find someone who can re-grow his arm and then get rid of his memories or flat out bury him, I don't know. Eventually I will make the choice with or without you, but sitting here worrying...as much as I know you love doing it...is giving him control and I don't know about you, but a Sleeper having control over me. I got tired of that when I wasn't Awake."
Margot
[Willpower]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Margot
Like calcification in high speed, Margot's expression hardened the more that Ned talked. He sipped his coffee quick and conversational throughout, but Margot took one more slow sip after the initial taste and then no more. Around the end, where he pointed out how much she enjoyed worrying, Margot shook her head and closed her eyes and leaned to set her coffee on the table.
"Look." She started, but didn't continue from that point. Apparently she found the words that she had planned next failing. Her temper was like tar in the hinge of her jaw, making it want to clench and clam up. But she'd already seen one Cabalmate walk through that door angry with her and ignoring her attempts to reach out again. She wasn't going to let her temper and Ned's goading cause it to happen a second time.
"I'll deal with Luke. We, I know you're coming with. We'll break the time away from work and drive out and by the time we get there I'll have to have decided on how to handle him." She pushed into more upright a sit and put her knees down, so her legs were now folded aside and feet dangled above the hardwood instead.
"I get it, too. The potential is insane, and we can actually reach it now. There's bigger things than school and salaries and the weak worries of mortal man. Do you want to hear that you're right? Because you sure as hell aren't wrong, Ned. I know that one can't exist with the other. You don't have to bully the Apprentice out of me. You can stop being--..." She cut herself off and frowned hard, twisted her fingers into a knot in her lap.
"...So say I quit school and you quit work. Then what?"
Ned
"...I'm not your Brother. The Doc's not your father. Andraste certainly isn't your Mother. Though it might feel that way sometimes. Reaching for some sort of comfortable familiarity. Stop trying to fit the Doc into the role you want him to fit in. Making up reasons why he would act a certain way or not. Trust him or don't but stop making decisions for him if you want him in your life."
Ned's attention remains with his coffee, which is three quarters gone and cool enough to gulp in small doses. Which he does finishing that line. If Margot's behaviour, reactions and interaction are of any concern or immediate push on Ned's mentality or personality it doesn't show. Moreover, it seems to go unnoticed and/or weathered comfortably. Planned, expected or simply waiting for a response. He looks not at ease, but patient.
Waiting for her to catch-up, as it were.
"I quit work, and my money flow is gone. Which is important until I figure out how to provide money or pull money to pay rent or move to someplace where Rent isn't necessary. All technically possible at this point but not without the Doc which is an open possibility I've yet to tap. You quit school and...you're no longer wasting so much time on studying and tests you could easily cheat to know the answers to and accumulate at your leisure without ever touching a campus again."
A shrug. The futility in those statements is very real, enough that Ned is finding it difficult not to chuckle toward the end.
"I'm not bullying, by the way." He corrects again. "I am being honest with you, as someone who has had to talk you down more than once from allowing your one armed brother to represent such a threat and problem in your life and by extension, the others in your life. It might seem inhuman to go treating him with anything other than concern and worry and dread after everything that has happened, but it will get you to your end result of solving him that much quicker rather than you sitting here continuing to worry and you know...not make a decision until you see him."
A pause. A loud exhale through one corner of his lips.
"But if that's what you want to do? Fine. All the more reason to go hunting. So you make your choice and we can actually move onto being Initiates and everything that entails."
Margot
I'm not your Brother, the Doc's not your father...
"No, you're--," but as was a habit of hers, Margot cut herself off. This time it was also because she'd started to interrupt, so she bit down on the protest and looked at the beds of her thumbnails instead. When the sounds left in the air were of the settling old building around them and the rainy world outside, Margot held her silence for a full minute longer. Making up her mind. Wrangling this indecision that was causing such trouble. Trying desparately to find the off switch on her own defensive temper and start to unwind what tension she had worked herself into over the past... well, pretty much since she Awoke to begin with.
Finally, with Ned's patience much tested in that great pause, Margot sighed and swallowed. Unknotted her fingers from themselves and smoothed her hands on the tops of her thighs and looked up from the middle distance she'd been staring into to find Ned's face again. Because this was serious. A decision, a pledge even.
"We'll find him, and I'll give him an ultimatum-- he disappears from my radar forever in every way, either voluntarily on his own or permanently by us." Her eyes shone momentarily with realization, and she corrected herself. "No, by me."
"By the time we come back maybe Doc'll be more talkative, and we can talk about arrangements and the State of Things. If Doc's not on board? We figure something else out. You said it-- we put in the work and we can just make whatever we would need to take away from the... human routines. ....it's weird using the word 'human' without it being self-inclusive. That'll take some mroe getting used to."
Ned
"Take as much time as you need to. Might be part of your own personal enlightenment, really. Half of me is stoked I no longer have to pretend. The other half of me is trying to keep hold of the idea that most humans? Don't really know how to be human either. Empathy, compassion, mercy blah blah blah." He shrugs his way through it, a milestone of emotion bypassed in favour of 'later'. He gulps the last of his coffee and offers a nod to her.
"Once you get yourself sorted for classes, decide when you want to go. We'll narrow the scope, prep tools and options and take a drive if it's necessary. Once we find him, you can talk, we'll decide and after that...see where it all falls. One thing at a time."
He's standing, cup left on the coffee table, eyes down at her, brow still oddly knitted together.
"Just because I'm not your brother doesn't mean I don't care. It's just....we're in this now. You're in this. Enlightenment and Awakening and being able to do all the stuff you want to do. It's on your own most of the time. Luckily you get to choose who you spend the rest of the time with. So do I." A pause. "So does the Doc."
He's making for his shoes and the door then.
"Drop me a line when you're ready. I'll tell work I'm going on vacation."
Margot
"I can be ready to leave by Thursday-- I've got a last final to take that morning but then I'm free afterward." Margot stayed on the couch while Ned rose. His mug was empty and left on the table, and Margot just now leaned to reach for her own still-full drink and bring it back to her on the couch. Curled her hands around it for the warmth and looked up at Ned in a way almost forlorn (growing up and being an Initiate is hard) but resolute all the same.
"I know. I care too, obviously. Nobody'd be bothering to put up with one another were that not the case." A small smile broke through to wave a touch of humor from the gallows-seriousness of the subjects they discussed up to that point. Weren't they planning a time to go East and possibly (probably) execute her brother?
"Pack for the weekend when we go. Bring some Tools, too. It'll be a hell of a test in these new Initiated shoes."
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