Margot
The exit from the mansion/fortress carved into the mountainside was a quiet one. Both had plenty to think about and William had the distinct impression (apparently) that he was in the dog house. So the drive was without conversation, filled either with music or little more than the hum of the road beneath them and whatever buzzing was between their own ears.
It was somewhere between From and To that Margot finally broke the silence. She'd announced without breaking her middle-distance stare out the passenger window: "I'm suddenly hungry."
William suggested Taco Bell.
Margot agreed with a reluctant wrinkle of the nose. The options on the sides of interstates were fairly limited anyways.
It was only after they'd ordered food and found somewhere to park, before they'd started to get comfortable (she'd follow his lead as to whether they were exiting the car or not), that she unbuckled and looked across the center console at him to say, very seriously:
"Okay, I feel like I have to make it clear that at no point did you have me bamboozled in my coming along to visit this Mister Nihm." Apparently that was what she was going to call him from here on out; it had that final tone to it. "I knew what we were going for and I knew the risk inherent. I don't know why you two were acting like I was any way unaware or deceived."
With that statement made (intentionally matter-of-fact with the heat of scalded pride smothered somewhere beneath) she picked up the soda she'd ordered and slurped solemnly while awaiting what he had to say in explanation of himself.
William
Fuck. Yes. Taco Bell.
There are few things that William likes more than shitty food. It's because he's young, he's male, and he's been high enough times to know that Taco Bell is pretty much the best thing in the world when you're trying to sooth some kind of wounded pride. He bought a lot of tacos. Well, three tacos (two hard, one soft) a bean burrito, and a tostada.
He's got a crunchy taco in hand, has pushed the seat back in the rental far enough that he can sit with one leg half propped on the steering wheel. Misusing space was a specialty of his, it would seem.
"You looked pretty wide eyed for parts of it, and I'm..." bite of taco while he was thinking of how he was going to say this, "I didn't tell you everything going in. I feel like I didn't, anyway. I just figured I hadn't told you everything or I was the wrong person to put your faith in on this thing because I wanted to go do this, I wanted to break in, I wanted to do any number of stupid things and you went along because you wanted to make sure I didn't and that's shitty of me."
"At least if seemed pretty shitty when you say it right."
Margot
"Will, that's just my face."
It was hard to tell if she was teasing in her response to his saying she looked wide-eyed. She was fixing him with a flat stare that did nothing to minimize the owlish appearance of her aforementionedly wide eyes. She didn't grin to tell that it was a joke but she didn't look offended either. Just scooted her seat back, rolled down her window partway to let the smell of fast food air out, and began to unwrap one of her crunchy tacos as well.
"I didn't know every single detail, like the details of the person you got the lead from, but I was pretty sure that you were just going to try to break in. I figured if you tried you would die, and I figured that going and talking to the guy and seeing his face and putting a human identity on the person you were thinking about burglarizing would help deter you." Crunch. Munch munch much, and around a mostly chewed mouth of food that she'd hidden from sight behind her hand she added:
"It ended with lessons instead of copies of books, but it sounds like that might be better."
William
"Oh, shit," he looked like he wasn't sure if he needed to laugh or apologize or both. Probably both.
She explains her logic, and he nods, "yeah, I gotta say it was a deterrent. Me. Nihm wasn't a giant dickwad so it kind of takes the fire out of trying to break into his house to read his stuff. Neith and I broke into the Aurora Public Library once and a theme park but the theme park wasn't because we were bored."
Waves a hand, realizing he probably shouldn't be telling Margot about his adventures as a delinquent. Quirks his mouth to the side, checks the rear view mirror and brushes his hair into some semblance of order. Ish. Order-ish
"Is it weird that I'm glad this didn't work like I'd planned?"
Margot
"Not weird at all."
Margot paused after that, taking the time to chew another noisy bite of taco. Bits of stray lettuce strip-shards were contained neatly in the wrapper tucked underneath-- that was just considerate, after all, plus she didn't want to miss any pieces and find them glued to her pants later. Soda washed the bite down and ice rattled in the wax-paper cup when returned to the cupholder. "I think that you knew full well there were some tremendously bad consequences in your future if you broke in-- you're an Entropy-mage, I mean, come on." She set him with a look to match the statement, but her brows flexed together with some kind of remorse, or maybe just confusion?
"Maybe it's the adventure. Part of your... dynamicism." Her mouth pinched thoughtfully, then relaxed. She lifted the taco to finish eating it, but first added:
"Anyway, no, not really weird. The danger in this situation's less obvious." Mouth opened to take a bite, she paused once more, and spoke almost into the taco-- "More sinister though, probably."
Crunch.
William
Taco Bell is a noisy place to eat food, let's be completely honest. William sat and continued chompiung along on food, doesn't seem to judge Margot's lettuce-spreading activities because he, too, seemed to be having trouble with it.
"Everything's more sinister on the second glance, though. I can't put a finger on him yet," he says, puts the taco wrapper down and goes to retrieve the burrito from its home so he can start on with eating the rest of the things he had managed to order.
"He knows exactly what he's talking about, though. I don't trust what he'll do with the knowledge he could get from us, but he doesn't seem megalomaniacal. I don't know exactly what he was lying about, but I know at some point he was definitely spinning a yarn."
Margot
"I think he knows who this Ines person is. Or maybe doesn't know who she is exactly but has a good idea. Or he knows of who may of sent her."
She frowned, crumpled up an empty taco wrapper to tuck into the plastic bag of shared food, then fetched out another to begin unwrapping meticulously. That thoughtful furrow to her brow remained while she dissected suspicion and possibility.
"I think he expects to get something in return for imparting his knowledge upon us-- not dog walks and grocery fetching, obviously, but... like, something to do with what he teaches us. So he helps us understand Spirit even better, for example, and then he puts us to work summoning something terrible that'll tear our Avatars away as payment for coming to our beck and call."
Crunch. A person has probably never looked quite so serious while consuming fast food. After taking a dozen or so seconds to chew, swallow, rinse, she concluded with the air of somebody who had already made a decision, as opposed to asking for an opinion on whether it was a good idea.
"I'm telling Ned and the Doc."
William
"I'm not summoning shit," he replies right before taking a bite of burrito. Chews and looks up at the roof of the car like he's contemplating what may go next, "if that's what we're working on it would definitely be a test and if we summoned it at all we would deserve to have our avatars torn to bits. You don't compromise your Will and you don't fuck with something that's bigger than you."
Frank. Matter of fact. Surprisingly calm at that juncture.
"If someone has you call upon a force that they can't call on their own, then they very clearly can't control it or negotiate with it. Besides, the Order's pretty strict with what you can and can't consort with, I'll send myself off to the next life before screwing over the awakened world with a spiritual monstrosity... or die trying to put it back."
"But that's a worst case scenario. I really sincerely doubt that that would be what happens... I guess telling your people might not be too bad. Neith is going back home soon, and I don't really have anyone to tell."
Margot
The crunching and munching stopped for a moment. The last thing William had said pulled Margot's attention direct across the center console toward him. She frowned, as per usual, but now with a cast of sympathy. Empathy? She'd been scared as hell and alone not a year ago, and though William certainly knew a lot more now than she did then she still hated the 'alone' part quite tremendously.
"How come you don't have a cabal?" She sounded genuinely curious of this. "I figured that it was more of a traditional thing, and the Order strikes me as being very traditional in that way..."
William
"Before Pen and Arianna got here and before Neith came back, all freshly-minted Bonisagus, there was really only one other Hermetic in the city. He was my mentor for a little while, and things went sour, and now we don't talk. So... a good ol' Hermetic meet-and-team-up thing is really off the table for us."
He has to think about this. Why doesn't he have a cabal? Why doesn't he have someone or someones (plural) that he runs around with and who has his back. He is a social creature but in that silence of the moment the alone part of things seems to really sink in. He shrugs, wraps up the rest of the burrito for later in favor of maybe eating whatever was left in there.
"I guess I don't really mesh with people? Not in a you can count on me to have your back way. Whether it's perception or reality doesn't matter, the result is the same. On the flip side, I'm not thoroughly despised by anyone so I can Work with people without a problem. I just don't have the tight... knit... goals... thing."
Margot
The sympathetic tone was hard to iron out. Sympathy and pity could be easily confused for one another, and Margot knew as well as anyone that pity was one of the worst things to feel. Sometimes sympathy could be just as bad. People don't always like to feel bad for themselves. But still, her face just kept so easily to that frown (it was so familiar an expression), and even Will could tell that she found what he was saying to be a little bit tragic, in its own way.
"Well....," she said at first, drawing it out as she finished her thought and decided what to say. "Do you like being alone?"
As soon as she finished asking the question she clamped her mouth closed and blushed, deciding right away it wasn't the best choice of words at all. Hastily, she went with something else.
"I mean--!", she tried to cover quickly. "Well, Doc is a Scientist and I'm not, but he's still my mentor? And Ned isn't going to end up in the same Tradition that I do, I'm pretty sure. We still work together, though. It doesn't all have to be the same paradigm or Tradition."
William
Does he like being alone?
Now, that was a question, wasn't it? If he didn't enjoy it, he wouldn't tolerate it, would he? The sympathetic tone was easy to iron out, easier still to be construed as pity but he's got an ear for things. Quirks his mouth to the side and looks in the rear view mirror.
"Actually, I hate being alone," picks up the burrito again to take a bite, "this is pretty nice, though. Even if we're just hanging out and have a similar purpose for now, I like it."
Margot
Margot's face was still learning to hide emotion. Okay, in her defense, she could tell a lie and stick to it when she was committed to the cause, but the thought to do so seldom occurred to her. What good would it do for her to pretend not to be effected by Will's status of lonesome. In the passenger seat, while he confessed to hating being alone, her brow stitched together even further and her desire to continue eating ebbed. What little remained of her meal was wrapped and tucked back away in its plastic sack. She looked down to watch her fingers while tying a neat knot with the sack's handles, securing the smell of Taco Bell within.
"Pretty nice...," she repeated, sounding skeptical (but not mean-spirited), and offered a small huff of a chuckle. "I suppose, if you nevermind the potentially dangerous implications of the situation we just walked into. But we did walk away in one piece today, at least."
She settled back into her seat and took up her cup of soda to sip from instead. After a pull from the straw she announced. "There are definitely worse people to be caught under the thumb of an old wizard with than you." Thanks, Margot.
"Let's get out of here."
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