Nicholas Hyde
The question Nicholas Hyde's cabalmate posed to him the other night, about whether or not he had seen Margot recently, struck a pang of guilt in the Chakravanti when he realized precisely how long it had been. He has known of Margot, and what has happened to her since then: he has spoken with Ned on a few occasions. Andrés, not at all. (Another pang of guilt.)
So he contacted her to ask whether she would like to meet him at the park. Like many of the things Nick Hyde does, their meeting place seems to have been chosen with intention: it is quiet but not too remote, off the beaten path but still well within the bounds of civilization. It's a little grove by the river that winds its way close to downtown. There is wind in the river grasses, and the soft lapping sound of the water against the banks.
Nearby there's a small picnic table, where he has been sitting for a little while, long enough that he appears to have gotten settled in. When Margot arrives, he is writing in a small leather journal, leaned very close to the pages (possibly in order to block the wind, which is in force today.) There are two unopened bottles of ginger beer on the table, and a third which was emptied some time ago given the lack of condensation present on the outside of the bottle.
He looks up when he hears her approach, and waves to beckon her forward.
Margot
Whether phone call or text message, Margot was relatively soon to answer. Whether phone call or text, the answer was the same: certainly, Margot would be happy to meet Nick in the park. It had evolved into something of a go-to for them to meet, as it has been the last few times over the warm months before now. Time and date was worked out without much trouble (a college student on summer break? her schedule was pretty flexible), and soon enough the time came that Margot was approaching a picnic bench from the walking path along the edge of the small river creating a winding bank along the park's length.
She spied his wave and lifted a hand to gesture greeting in return. Margot appeared about the same as she had the last time he'd seen her, but more mellow than she had been. The typical frayed edge to her nerves and sense of calm seemed to have smoothed down some. She smiled an easy enough smile when she sat across the bench to join him.
"Hey. Is that..?," a gesture toward one of the ginger beers, and when confirmation was received she sounded relieved. "Thank you," and took a drink happily. August was a hot month, even near the mountains as Denver, Colorado was. Her brown hair was tied back in a ponytail to keep off her neck and face, and she was wearing denim shorts with a white T-shirt. Once adequately hydrated, Margot looked back up at Nick and settled in for discussion.
"How're things?"
Margot, expert at small talk and polite conversation.
Nicholas Hyde
Nick's eyes sweep over Margot's face and bearing as she swings into the seat across from him. The journal he folds closed and then sets on the bench beside him (and hopefully he'll be present-minded enough when he leaves to remember to bring it with him.) He observes the relative ease with which the smile springs to her face; he observes that her breaths are deeper, that her muscles are more relaxed. Those are things that the observant can notice.
"I brought it for you," he confirms when she gestures toward the ginger beer. She'll find it surprising, if she hasn't had one before: sweet, and the ginger flavor is powerful and warm and enough to make anyone forget that they are still beer and therefore slightly alcoholic. As she drinks Nick takes the top off of his with his shirt to protect his hand, and takes a drink.
It might be the first time she's seen Nick when he wasn't dressed for work. He is wearing a white shirt, loose and with the top button left open, his sleeves half-rolled. A leather thong is visible around his neck, and the shirt is thin enough that she could note several small pouches beneath it: bags of offerings. He has his shorts rolled up past the knee.
"Things are good," he says. "I've been studying a lot. Making preparations to go on a retreat, soon." A hippy retreat or Chakravanti business or how Nick conceptualizes a Seeking, who can say. "How have you been? I'm sorry I didn't check in with you sooner."
Margot
The bite of the beer part of the ginger soda was almost missed. When Margot detected it in the aftertaste she looked slightly surprised-- at the drink, not at Nick, let's be clear on that-- and took a second to look over the label. Nodded her head and took another, notably smaller sip. One hand rested on the table while the other settled atop one thigh.
He was going on a retreat. Her eyebrows raised with subdued curiosity, wondering precisely that (hippy retreat or Chakravanti business?), but she seemed inclined not to ask that particular question directly. She'd nodded along with his brief updates on how he'd been himself, and seemed altogether unperturbed by his inquiring after her as well. She didn't behave like she had something that was weighing down upon her (she wasn't that great at it, he knew), but no doubt due to the distraction of what she was about to state.
"I've been busy. Doing a lot of study and research. A lot of testing and feeling things out, too. It's easy to get carried away in the momentum."
She then tipped her head to the side a little and flexed her brow with something akin to concern, guilt, and maybe even just the tiniest bit of offense (born of youthful pride) somewhere underneath.
"You don't need to feel obligated to check in on me, you know, so you don't need to apologize. I wasn't expecting you to."
Nicholas Hyde
"I know you weren't," Nick says, and he leans a little bit forward on his elbows, the bottle of ginger beer between his hands. It is said with the casual reassurance of someone who is familiar enough with youthful pride to anticipate its appearance. There are some people who understand young people well: Nicholas Hyde is one. "I just try to be better about staying in contact with friends than that, that's all."
And: maybe it is. It probably is.
"What sorts of things have you been testing out?" A beat. "I think right after you begin to start learning to do more advanced things is a really exciting time. There's nothing wrong with getting carried away in the momentum, for a little while."
Perhaps he'll arrive there soon himself. (He will. He doesn't know that yet: but a few weeks from now he will arrive bloody and exhausted at a new understanding.)
Margot
Contented with Nick's parry to her pride, Margot settled her shoulders and popped one elbow up onto the tabletop to lean and rest on. Her other hand stayed curled nearby her own cold glass bottle without grasping it to redden her palm with cold or hasten her drink to warm-- the summer weather did that job quickly enough on its own.
"Things to do with the spirits, mostly. I can sense them and speak with them and I've figured out summoning-- though I don't really like inviting them over onto This Side. I'm figuring out the Gauntlet and how to pull and push its threads-- I want to keep safe from the malicious spirits, so I can make the wall between us thicker. I want to learn wards, but I haven't quite got that trick down just yet...
"I've been working on Prime and Life too. I created some cockroaches the other day, and a hermit crab before that. He's living on my dresser, although I half-worry that Yorick's going to eat him one of these days when I leave them alone too long."
Fingernails, untrimmed and colored with dim, chipped purple polish, tapped on the side of the bottle thoughtfully. Her gaze dipped away from Nick's face, where it had been set for the conversation, and she mused a little more quietly. "Not just fixing and creating, though... I'm learning to unravel and wither, too."
Nicholas Hyde
"Everything in its time," is what Nick says when she says she's learning to grow, and to unravel and wither. It is likely that at this point Margot's command of some spheres matches his own, despite Nick's greater experience in doing so.
"Have you spoken with anything interesting so far?" And here, a smile: this is an area of interest of his. "Maybe we'll have an opportunity to Work together on those things, sooner or later."
He takes another swallow of his beer, rolling it over his tongue and breathing the warm fragrance through his nose. "I've been working on my understanding of Life too. Sooner or later I was planning to make Pen a labyrinth to walk through."
Margot
He wanted to know if she'd spoken with anything interesting, and she shook her head quickly. "A few birds, the water, not much else really." Nick was good at picking up on things, so he'd sense the hesitation and tiny note of fear in her voice on this subject. She was afraid of spirits. Or of their potential. She'd been at this for less than a year total, though, so could he really blame her?
Mirroring his movement, but delayed by a half second, Margot tipped her ginger beer up to her lips as well. Wiped her lower lip with her index knuckle and the pad of her thumb after setting the bottle back down.
"Kiara could help with that," she offered as a reflexive answer. "She's a Healer and Grower of Things, I understand." Then, after a moment of thought, she added: "I could do it too. I just don't think... I dunno, I just mean..." Her mouth set while she sought the words for what she was trying to explain. He would be patient with her, no doubt-- patient enough to allow half a dozen seconds for her to chew on the thought long enough for it to make sense.
"Fields sowed in blood don't bear the best fruits, I don't think. My magick is very bloody. It can be used to make things grow but that's not what it works best with, not what it was bestowed upon me for. Like how a knife can be used to open a can but that's not what it was made to do, and it'll grow dull if you keep misusing it that way."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick does read in her voice that minute hesitation, that fear laced beneath her words. He is not surprised; perhaps he even feels that fear is sometimes the greater part of wisdom. Spirits by definition are not human: it is wise to fear them in some part. "What did the water tell you?"
The beer he sets back down on the table, and he spins the bottle gently over the weathered grain of the wood. The mouth and neck glint in the sun, and his wedded band throws light: the sun will sink past the tree line before too long. It is beginning to grow darker earlier even if it is still summer.
"I may ask Kiara. She can be hard to pin down before too long." Though: Pen dislikes having strange mages at their home. He can't blame her for that either; as we have said sometimes caution is wisdom. "Are you focusing more on destruction, then, and less on growing things?"
Margot
"To go to sleep." Margot grinned a little, finding humor in the memory. She had settled down at the foot of her bed with a big mixing bowl full of water balanced carefully in her lap. She'd sprinkled salt around the edges of the bowl and focused hard, murmered quietly to coax consciousness forth from it. What she received was a gentle bubble of a spout that barely broke the surface from the center of the bowl and a deep warm voice that scolded her like an affectionate old caregiver.
Fingernails pulled gentle on the edges of her ginger beer label, feeling where the glue loosened from condensation. Did she want to focus on destruction? Her answer began with a small bobbing nod.
"Andraste's the Goddess of victorious war. You can argue that being able to feed your army is important to victory in war, of course, but I'm learning not to battle logic against what I feel from Her. I've been having an easier time when I just trust what feels natural." The hand peeling the label turned so her knuckles were against the grain of the wood and her palm was turned upward. Big hazel-colored eyes settled onto her palm and the fingers that curled gently over it. It wasn't bloodied, but there was always the sense that to touch that hand would be to bring your fingers back sticky and smelling like death.
"She doesn't call for me to sow the seeds and strengthen the weak. She wants me ready for the Fight, whatever and wherever that ends up being."
Nicholas Hyde
There is a nod here from Nick, something slow and almost meditative, as Margot says what she says. Her quip about the water drew a smile from him, though it didn't linger; Nick's smiles often do not. They are fleeting things more often than not.
"What do you think you'll end up wanting to fight?" he asks, rubbing his thumb over a clump of dirt that somehow ended up transplanted on the bottom of his bottle. There is dirt beneath his nails; he was perhaps doing some sort of magick before she found her way out here, or was beginning to. Preparing for ritual. Who knows, with their kind.
There is a beat, and another nod though she hasn't said anything yet. "I spoke with Ned recently. About what happened with Luke."
Margot
"It doesn't really matter what I want to fight," Margot said in a distant tone. She felt like the wisdom in the words she was speaking was not her own. She was borrowing it, learning how to hold and use it. "I'll get pointed in the right direction. I'll see it when it's time."
A beat. He picked at a clump of dirt on the bottom of his bottle and she pulled the label of her own a little further. She'd lifted it up for another sip, but paused when he brought up Ned and Luke. The lip of the bottle was meeting her own and held still there, eyes gone as distant as her voice did, unfocused past Nick's left arm. She was wrestling with the sickness and sorrow that the subject brought welling up within her, and after a few seconds she tipped her head and washed the bile back with a pair of deep swigs of the beer.
Margot set the bottle back down on the table and didn't look at Nick directly. Focused instead on the table space between them, on the label of the bottle while she resumed her gradual efforts to coax the paper away from glue away from glass without a tear.
He sensed that she would speak. He knew what he was getting into by bringing this up, knew that she would need time. After about half a minute she sighed and mustered her voice once again. It was small and soft and controlled.
"I've been told that the term is 'a Good Death'." Another pause, but this one was much smaller than any of the others thus far. She was quick to clarify that: "I don't blame Ned."
Nicholas Hyde
"That is the term the Chakravanti use," Nick says, though it is only after a moment. He had known Margot would need time; he after all has said that he has spoken with Ned already. He must know what the situation was like for her, mustn't he.
"I'm glad you didn't have to do it," Nick adds, and he is quick to add this as well; perhaps it is enough to say that he does not fault Ned for it either.
"How are you holding up, Margot? You seem all right." The 'but' is more of an implied thing, an unspoken word.
Margot
[Oh god damnit. WP!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )
Margot
The fingers that pulled the label tugged too quickly and caused it to tear. Margot's throat worked to swallow back a lump that swelled quickly enough she worried about how natural its origin could be for a microsecond. A familiar tightening occurred both above and under that lump and her stomach clenched, turned, tried to hide within itself.
I'm glad you didn't have to do it, he'd said, and she swallowed unsuccessfully, then helped the effort along with more ginger beer. That did enough to keep her from choking on the panic, but her nose felt like running and tears stung at her eyes.
"I'm..," she said thickly without managing to finish. She was what? What did she have to say to that? She just kept seeing the moment of Luke's death play on loop before her eyes-- how the knife slipped so easily under his jaw that it may as well have been soft butter, how the light dimmed out of Luke's eyes when they were locked on hers with trickles of blood making their way back toward his ears for how his head had tipped back. How Ned's face was set expressionless and unflinching, without even a hint of remorse.
Her hands both lifted to hastily scrape knuckles under her eyes and swipe tears away. She didn't weep openly, but did sniff and brush tears as they tried to form to fall. They were there in her voice, too, thick and wet.
"I'm holding. What else should I do? Nothing else to do, so I hold and I keep forward and just... just try not to look back."
Nicholas Hyde
The tension is there for him to read: she rips the label, she struggles to swallow, her voice grows thick around the lump in her throat. Nicholas knows these signs. He has watched many people before her try (and fail) to hold back tears, just as she does right now.
Nick watches her there a moment, and a muscle in his cheek flexes: perhaps some remorse for having brought this back this way just as she is struggling to move forward.
Better him than someone or something else, one could say. Perhaps.
For a moment Nick says nothing. He does not offer platitudes about time and healing. Instead his nail scrapes at the label on his own bottle of ginger beer, which he takes a swallow from. "I had to kill a friend of mine once. She was my old cabalmate, and she Fell. I think it would have been easier if she'd been like a villain in a superhero movie, but she wasn't."
A beat. "If you want, you can tell me about it."
Margot
"Luke wasn't Awoken," she informed him with a shadow cast over her thick voice. She glanced up at Nick with a small frown. Anger hadn't blossomed. This was a different sort of defense-- the defense of fact, of getting the story straight. Also, no doubt, a need to set her pain apart from Nick's own in his memory of the loss of a cabalmate.
"He was Fallen, but more in the way that he became a tool. Not a villian." A pause, a thought, before she concluded. "Plus he was my brother. And it's just... just that there's not many Travers left." The words were spoken heavily, but her throat wasn't quite as tight as it had been right out the gate. She gave her eyes another quick swipe with the heel of a hand, then sighed and settled both hands around the dark glass bottle.
"You already talked to Ned. I don't know what you need to know. I mean...--," her hands spread out in front of her, palms up, gesture a small embodiment of a lost shrug. They found their way back around the bottle again quickly enough. "Ned told you what happened, no doubt. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. We burned everything, there's nothing left to do to fend off questions. I'm not going to frame Ned up as a monster for what he did, it wouldn't be easier and it wouldn't be right. I've just got... got to move on. Let Luke rest."
Nicholas Hyde
Luke wasn't Awoken, she tells him, and to this Nick only nods. He is an insightful man: perhaps he recognizes the defense for what it is, recognizes the need to stand apart even in pain that is so characteristic of youth.
"I'm not asking because there's anything I think I need to know," he says. "Or because I wanted you to frame Ned as a monster. I was asking because I was concerned about you and I can only imagine what you must be going through right now." His voice is gentle, but not overly so; Nick knows, at this point, what Margot responds to and what she doesn't.
"Is there anything I can do to help you with moving on?" And here, his eyes sweep her face.
Margot
The sound Margot made here was a harsh one. It wanted to be a laugh, dismissive and grown up. It sounded like something she was mimicking from the throat of Sepúlveda. There was no humor, though, and her throat dried the noise and choked it out. It wound up being more of a sad and sardonic croak than anything.
"Nick, I think...," As she often did, Margot began a thought and stopped it right away; a communicative habit that anyone familiar with her ought to be accustomed to by now. She had looked up at his face, watched his darker eyes sweep the broad plane of her pale face, then looked back down while her fingers toyed around the bottle's mouth and belly. Her eyes were down while she continued.
"There's an injust amount of trauma after Awakening. My eyes opened not just to wonders, but to horrors as well. That we have someone like you, who cares and has experience with helping people through this? I think that's invaluable. Especially for me, really.
"I don't think that I can get help moving on, though. I mean, I don't know what anyone could do to help move on from that. I... I think that I have to just swallow the terror of what happened to Luke and see what responsibility I did have there, and also what responsibility I didn't have. And just... take the lesson and live on and work all the harder and faster to make sure that nothing can creep in on my Mom too."
Nicholas Hyde
She makes this noise, this croak, this half-a-laugh and it is one he has heard before. He heard it before Andrés, and he has heard it from Andrés: he will hear it again after Margot and from other people. Everyone deals with pain a little differently, but Nick's expression is always the same when he recognizes it for what it is.
"I think there's an injust amount of trauma in life," Nick says, but of course he might say this: he sees the pain of Sleepers as often as he does people who are Awakened.
He also was not deaf to hearing the desperate-determination in: make sure that nothing can creep in on my Mom. Nicholas can extrapolate, and he could inquire more, could point out that all life ends: but it is not the time. Not the place. "It sounds like you're dealing with it in a very thoughtful way," he says. "Not that I would expect any differently. I just want you to remember that you do have people who care about you, who can help you if you start to feel overwhelmed by this. Or if you change your mind about wanting to talk about it, or want help protecting your mom."
Margot
A weak smile returned the percieved compliment-- she was dealing with things thoughtfully, he said. Any acknowledgement of the smart but plain girl's intelligence used to be like a gem in an otherwise largely lonesome routine, back when she was in school and living in a dumpy house with an absent brother and always-working mother. Margot took a drink of the ginger beer, now having to hold the bottle horizontal and tip her head to get a solid swig.
"My mom's... She's not in immediate danger, I don't think. I just worry that...," she frowned, and this time it was a more scholarly kind of a scowl. Something in the equation that didn't quite add up, or an unanswered question in the text of a book.
"Spirits got a hold of Luke. Fear and Anger, and they took him over and started to use him. Physically break through into this world through him. I don't know how to gauge if they could do that to Mom too. She's just... a shell right now..."
Nicholas Hyde
Nick's eyebrows draw together at what she says. He works often within the spirit world and so of course he understands possession: of course he knows that this can happen to people. He might even understand, in his own way, something of what allows this to happen to the Mind and Spirit of a human being.
"It could happen," Nick says, though his tone gentles the bluntness of the words. "But it would be unusual for spirits to seek out the other members of a family that way. Generally when that sort of possession happens, it's a matter of convenience to the spirits. A lot of spirits that embody emotion tend to spend their time in the moment."
Perhaps that will lead Margot to other suppositions; perhaps it has already led Nick there. He holds the neck of his bottle between his thumb and forefinger and spins it in its ring of condensation on the picnic table. "Have you noticed any spirits hanging around her, when you've visited her?"
Margot
"I...."
She ducked her head and whispered quiet as a graveyard.
"I haven't gone back."
And she wore shame draped like the veil that one would wear there, too.
Nicholas Hyde
Nick's eyes raise now, and they meet hers across the table. This is a space for graveyards, for whispered secrets and shameful silences: this is in him, this is something he exudes. "Of course you wouldn't have, after what you saw," he says, and tone can be a subtle thing can't it, and his contains perhaps a little self-reproach for the assumption rather than reserving it for her and her guilt.
His eyes drift away, back to the mouth of his bottle, which he raises to his lips a moment later so he can take another swallow. Bubbles drift up toward the bottom of the bottle, which then lowers. "When you do go back," he says, "try looking to see what's hanging around. If there's something bigger going on, you'll be able to find some signs of it."
Margot
Margot nodded slowly. The best way to move away from the 'what ifs' and 'should haves' was to make a plan for the future. She took another drink to wash the bitter taste of confession from her tongue.
"Just based on what I know now, I think that I kept her body alive but... either her soul is lost or it's buried and her Mind needs to be unlocked instead. I just don't know, but I feel like I could bring her back. There's just a missing piece, an incomplete magic. I'm almost ready to go back, I think. I was going to travel with Doc... He might be able to help."
She sighed quietly and took another drink. Her eyes were dry now, though still a bit pink from earlier. Fingertips tapped against the bottle and she looked up to Nick. Smiled a small, sad, but more relaxed smile at him. "I guess a year is about enough time for dust to settle before returning to a blast site, huh?"
Nicholas Hyde
"Be careful," Nick says, when she tells him of her plans. His face is difficult to read; it is reflective, it is thoughtful, and there is still some element of consternation there within it. Something that could be drawn from the little point that appeared between his brows.
"I think whatever amount of time you need is enough time," he says, and this is accompanied by a little shrug, some bit of nonchalance accentuated by the glance he gives her through a tangle of dark eyelashes. After which he drains the remainder of his bottle and then he tucks it away into his leather bag (he recycles, evidently.)
"Do you need a ride home, Margot? I can't ever remember if you have a car," he says, even though he seems to remember just about everything else. Or maybe it's only that the evening is growing darker.
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