Had they agreed on a Coffee Shop? Or a Diner? Or somewhere more discreet?
No she wouldn't want discreet. He would want something public. A calculated layer of chess being done in favour of ensuring comfort while also avoiding explosions. Or at least, stacking the deck for and against. Blood called to blood but there was no reason for it to be spilled.
Not today anyway.
First Impressions:
The Cafe was a night affair. Dorks, nerds, geeks and students filled the pews of the Caffeine temple, the Dark Roast gods hovering in the air, wafting in the jittery prayers that were biting nails, mid-term cram sessions and the inevitable refill demand. Priest-baristas loitered and lingered, allowing the elixir to do it's work. No benedictions or sermons need be done.
Everyone understood the Americano mantra.
Faux wood tabling, paneling under a burnt orange and crisp white signage. Neutral tones and suggestions of happiness crafted a welcoming atmosphere and the pricing did wonders for those looking for a cheap ride. Humility lived here as easily as the masses swept in and out of the door. Windows looked out over the city, street lamps dotting the sidewalk and the near empty side street just hugging a main artery a block away. Traffic sounds were minimal.
He sat in a window seat, looking out expectantly. His beard is trim, professional even. The sort you might catch on a Dad about to throw a football to an earnest son. Or grin while he chases a loving wife, playfully, through the household. Or is washing down the hood of his car on a sunday while offering a polite nod to a waving neighbour.
Martin Travers is a handsome man and an everyman. Salt and pepper hair sweeps back into rough waves attempting to be curls. His eyes carry lines around them, the work of concern, worry, praise and perhaps a touch of arrogance. He is easy with a smile and easier still with a laugh, the sort that throws your head back and makes you think of the gentlest bear hugs.
He's built. Boxer, gym-nut or ballet built. The white, crisp business shirt, open two buttons at the top, the sleeves rolled up around thick forearms does everything to present what's being offered. The tall jacket of cream brown, the colour of the coffee sitting in front of him, would fit well with it and the blue jeans he's sporting. His belt is a simple black with a gold fish-for-jesus buckle.
Blue eyes glance into the window every couple of minutes, followed by the phone beside the coffee. Then the window again. Then the phone.
Margot
The phone at which Martin kept expectantly glancing had gone off a little while ago. Heading into the city. Location? Expecting a pin drop, and probably receiving a manually typed in address instead. Margot wasn't late to arrive-- she seldom was, but the handsome middle-aged man in the window waited expectant as though she was overdue. No, she would accuse him, you're the one who's overdue. But that's just one of many, many slipping slopes toward an explosion that she was there to begin to address, and probably not the best foot to lead with.
She'd parked and come to stand outside the sidewalk, paused on the curb and looking at the door before going in. He'd spy her before she noticed or recognized him: she'd turned out petite, much like her mother but smaller, somehow. Dark-haired, a dense brunette mass that was cut at her shoulders and worn down tonight, under a natural-colored wool beanie. She wore a black jacket and gray jeans tucked into ankle-high black boots, a glitter of a stud in her nostril and her heavy brow knitted in a scowl of appraisal. She carried a small purse with a thin strap over one shoulder, tucked against her hip, and had fingers tucked casually within it as though she'd missed her pocket and settled there on accident (though hidden within fingers touched over small glass bottles and jars and a small folded knife, all that served as comfort and security totems in their own way).
Her slender shoulders and chest moved visibly with a big bracing breath, and then the bell above the door jangled to announce her entry. She glanced down and wiped the wet of the melted morning's snow from the bottoms of her boots, then looked about, searching the figures and quickly enough locating Martin among those present. She remembered his face, though the one in the couple of pictures she remembered back home was much younger with no lines around the eyes. She paused in the entryway, unsmiling and uncertain, before her boots squeaked off the entry runner that led to the ordering counter and carried her toward that window seat instead.
"Hi," she said to introduce herself. Simple, unapologetic in its hesitation, clearly starting with the ball in his court first. Okay Martin, where do you start?
Martin
There were probably a few dozen things running through Martin's head when he thought he would see her for the first time.
You are so beautiful. Just like your mother.
A nose stud? How...modern!
Please have a seat. Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee?
I'm just so happy to see you.
Please don't be mad.
I can explain everything
Margot enters and Martin climbs to his feet to 'receive' her, standing by his chair, one hand on the back, the other in his pocket for lack of anywhere else to be. He tries a vague smile that vanishes into a slightly glum line at her approach, before indicating the chair across from the table with a gentle nod.
"If you like." Then casually, not quickly, out toward the city street. "Or we can try and walk. I hear it helps alleviate tension." Which, spades. Lots and lots of spades, right now.
Margot
Margot's discomfort was palpable, but it's an understandable feeling to have in lieu of the unexpected reunion, in particular considering the up-til-then unexplained circumstancs surrounding his early departure from the family. Martin rose to receive her, much taller and broader than she (Luke carried a frame similar to that, though more lithe, never given the time or nutrition to fill out appropriately), and the distanced daughter came to stop standing near the table herself, paused before sitting.
"Ahh...," she vocalized as she turned her head to look out the window to the sidewalk beyond. "Nah," was the conclusion, with a shake of her head. "It's cold and wet out there. But, uh, I was gonna get a latte..."
Her thumb jerked over her shoulder toward the ordering counter, then she shrugged the purse strap from her shoulder so she could hang it over the back of a chair, proclaiming it as her own. She shrugged free from the jacket as well, revealing a forest green long-sleeved tee beneath, along with a black choker necklace that wrapped in three dark threads about her throat. The beanie stayed on her head, though she pushed the sleeves of her shirt up to her elbows to balance out adjusting to the much warmer temperatures inside the cafe.
If Martin had already gone to fulfil the order she'd expressed, she would sit and awkwardly fold her hands in her lap to await his return. If he didn't, then she'd quietly excuse herself with a small bob of her head before going to awkwardly stand in line and twist her fingers anxiously behind her back instead until she had her drink and could return herself.
Martin
Martin doesn't leave the table. Not immediately. He looks as if he is battling the urge to offer to buy her the drink, while simultaneously not wanting to seem like he's attempting to purchase good will. In the end, it doesn't come down to what he wants from Margot but more likely what his manners will allow. He doesn't sit down, but instead nods, finally, at her. The smile returns, a bit stronger this time and he moves through the crowd of students with a careful ease.
Martin approaches the counter and orders her drink and stands there waiting for a moment. Only to blink and return back to the table with a pinched brow and a hand scratching at his beard.
"Did you take anything in that? Or on that?" A helpless smile trying not to be a grin. Fathering was hard.
Margot
Margot just stared up at Martin when he returned with his question, blinking once. She figured that would have been better asked before he'd gone off to order, but didn't say so and instead cleared her throat and tried a smile (the corners of her mouth turned up successfuly but the expression didn't come near to warming her eyes) as she accepted the drink and tried also at graciousness. "It's good plain, too. I'm not too picky. Thanks."
It was in the moments of quiet as they first came to sit together at the table that solid observances could be made, giving time to sipping drinks and trying to find comfort and confidence to say the first words, ask the first questions. Martin would find, from across the table, that she carried her mother's aesthetics far more than his own, though there were subtle traces of his own visage to be found here and there as would be expected. Her face was pixie-like with its pointed chin and large eyes, just like her mother's, but her eyes were set further apart and her brow and the line of her upper lip echoed his own, and her eyes were colored as though the blue of his own had pulled back the dark chocolate of Heidi's own to a fine middle-ground compromise of hazel.
Beyond that, something wholy individual to her, not inhereted through either side of the family tree-- that hanging, suspended, expectant resonance of hers, like a predator awaiting the strike, like the lines of an army stood on the field waiting for the break of dawn and beginning of the bloodshed. It had an effect on the sleepers about her-- the girl working the counter had looked at her with a touch of uncertainty when she'd first entered, and a table of chatterers not far off has since lowered their voices and grown tense in their town.
It was around the time that they rose to stand and leave and Margot had taken her fifth pull from the latte (neverminding that it was hot and strived to burn her tongue) that she set the cup on the table and kept her hands curled about it for warmth.
"So, uh, where did you come from?"
Martin
"Berlin. A bit of Moscow. All over Europe, really."
He had gone to retrieve some napkins and a few sugars and creamers for the table, adding one of each to his own still coffee which on observation had not been touched until now. He supped at it gently and they sat there for the first few sips, trying to sort out who to be and how to be it. Finally, Margot gets around to being the adult for the moment and asks the big question and Martin lights up with rolling memories in deep sky eyes.
"I travel. A lot. Choir business and all." He chuckles. "My faith keeps me busy. Here, there and everywhere. I recently came to America in order to suss out a potential problem with a stray that was threatening to become worse." He knocked on the table gently. "Mission accomplished." Another chuckle, though this one has his eyes dipping back into the top of his coffee, lips pursing around what comes next.
"I realize there isn't any specific way or means or pattern to follow by way of an apology for where I went or who I happen to be. Or even who I ended up as, really. Mostly, I feel as if there are plenty of things I could explain but doing so from my own perspective would seem like a cop out at best. So I think it best if we simply cut to the questions you really want to ask and I provide you the answers you might get something out of."
(Entropy 1 + Mind 2: Probable Calm (Where-in Martin settles his own thoughts and reactions to ensure a stable environment while also predicting the potential for backlash to both his answers and his expressions. Diff 5 -1 for Instruments)
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )
Margot
Posture straightened up in the uncomfortable wooden cafe chair as Martin took hold of the question that Margot had posed to try and crack the ice and ran with it. Segued from talk about travel through Europe to his Faith to recently addressing a situation with someone gone astray... That bit had Margot glancing back down to her latte briefly and taking a sip, covering whatever twisting her mouth might be doing to betray her familiarity with putting down strays from recent experience.
Then, the tone serioused up and Margot's eyes were upon Martin's face once more, only slightly distracted by catching familiarity in his features. He wanted her to start with the questions that were burning in her chest, to get that out of the way first so that he didn't fill the air with so many words trying to apologize for everything that he'd done or not done all at once. She blinked at him once, the expression owlish, then nodded and looked at the top of her coffee mug once more.
"Alright then..." Blunt fingernails, painted a deep forest green nearly matched to her shirt, tapped the ceramic side of the mug a few times before she took a breath, cleared her throat (apparently finding her resolve), then lifted her eyes to meet and his.
"How come you only bothered to come knocking when you learned I could weave magick? What about all the years before, why didn't you check in then?" Her gaze would hold his while she awaited his answer-- it was a single question among many, but one that sorted the direction that the rest of her line of questions would follow. The mug was lifted to cover her mouth and bring a sip of coffee to it as well while she listened.
Margot
[Was that some miracle-work? Perception 3 + Awareness 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Martin
How come...?
"Because while you slept, I couldn't hope to explain myself. Or my absence. Or anything about my life, really. Not to you. Not to Lucian. Not even to Heidi who I love dearly." Love. Present tense. The smile this time was brittle. Sharp and devoid of guile.
What about...?
"My work." He pauses. Perhaps he recognizes how that sounds. A father's work getting between him and his family. Still he presses on. "There i a deep sense of belonging when one of us awakens. A sense that you have a purpose beyond all other means. It can make everything else much more difficult to see clearly. I checked in with your Mother occasionally those first few years. Less as time went on and things got...worse out there-" A glance out the window, eyes buzzing thinly over some memory or other. "But I could have done more. Could and should have."
Martin
Margot is invited into Martin's own presence and finds something almost anathema to her own: Calm. Bright, brilliant, natural calm. The sort you achieve in pharmaceutical commercials, overlooking meadows where it is sunny all the time and everyone is dressed in pastels and carrying smiles that mean Nirvana. Worry is a past tense concern and everything is simply brilliant. His resonance is an explanation into an of itself. It radiates off him in waves, pummeling the senses into a docile radiance.
Margot
[Poker Face! Appearance 2 + Subterfuge 2]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 10) ( success x 1 )
Margot
The names Martin spoke evoked something in Margot that she tried and failed to keep entirely from her face. Her mouth pressed into a thin line from her effort to keep lips from curling or words from tumbling out, and her eyes darted quickly away from his to stare unfocused at traffic passing the window. Her fingers squeezed around he mug, those curled in its handle white-knuckling for a moment with the squeeze before relaxing once more. She was tense, and there were combating reactions of protectiveness, offense, and guilt (the latter being the strongest of the three) happening under the surface that anyone with even minor experience with the human emotion would be able to pick up on.
She stayed quiet otherwise, and listened to him talk about his work and the calling that all of those who were Awakend could feel. Much like how they could feel one anothers' work and lingering impact on the world around them. She'd sensed the shift in reality and it felt like a warm blanket and comforting hush in the ear. She didn't feel particularly comforted, though, no matter how his resonance made golden the air around them, and answered quietly with her eyes still focused outside.
"Should have, certainly..." There was a moment, then, of quiet staring that looked a lot like decision making. Then, as though worried that he would ask a question himself and she'd be caught in something, she followed herself up in something of a rush. "I've been Awake for a couple years. Why did you wait?"
Martin
"Truthfully? I didn't know."
He frowns. Genuine again. A surge of something blunt, emotion rising upward that was designed, constructed and articulated through his features and Work until it presented the bunched brow, sad eyes and downturned mouth of repentance. Martin looks and feels the way he is meant to. It comes across as all that needs to be said in that moment. He continues anyway.
"I lost track of you, all of you, a few years back. My trek through Europe took several dark turns and I was hunting as well as healing during a brief scourge...Pardon...I was doing His work. That much is understandable. It was difficult at times and kept me from seeing or listening to the familiar signs I might normally seek out. It forced me cut ties to here. I did not think I had any right to any of those ties, by that point either." A sad little smile that lasts for the exact amount of time necessary.
"When I returned, it was to see to the problem I had mentioned. It was a difficult mission but one I was pleased with the results. She is doing much better now. Whole and hale." The smile this time is still sad, though the light of something honest and hopeful creases through it.
"Margot..."
He sucks in a breath, hands appear on the table between them. His eyes do not waver and he waits for her to meet them.
"I know about Luke. And Heidi." A pause. There is a faltering in the mask he presents, a tightness to his eyes that reveals those lines aren't just about joy. They are about grief as well.
Margot
Though she was still looking through the window to the world beyond, Margot was listening raptly as Martin explained his absence and disconnect with the family he'd created and then left behind. She was quiet and absorbing the details she could get from what he would share. He had twice now mentioned hunting or tracking something down in the name of his Lord, and a particularly bright neon tab marked that note in her mind for later. This was something she'd been contemplating in an aside when his grave tone and calling her name called her attention sharply back to the present moment and drew her eyes to his face once more.
I know, he said.
Her eyes went wide and the color washed from her face. She appeared to be caught in a fight-or-flight moment, waffling between the two and therefore stuck on the inevitable third option of freezing and doing nothing. She blinked once, swallowed, and squeezed her hands around her mug again. Accountability and guilt crashed like waves on her back and shoulders and words froze in her mind, leaving nothing to process to her tongue in turn.
"I...," she started with a stammer. Testing her voice and leaving it hanging in the air like that was the boot of a reminder the rest of her brain needed to kick something out, and along with her tumble of words came an embarassed and angry flush to her cheeks. "Well, it couldn't be helped, and sure can't be now." Certainly enough, her eyes began to sting soon thereafter and she furrowed her brow, angry at her own pentient to shed tears so quickly. That anger, and a quick swipe from a knuckle under either eye, kept them at bay (for now).
"Wait--... what problem-- who's whole and hale now?" There was a light hidden in the way the question lifted in tone near its end-- clearly, she was fishing to understand if he'd been referring to Heidi or not.
Martin
"A woman. One of us. She was having issues with doubt. Her sins had grown too significant for her will to remain whole. It fractured her. With my help, she put it back together again."
He did not smile this time. The explanation was quick, perfunctory and entirely not the point right at this moment.
"You woke as we all tend to. Intensely and with purpose. That purpose was put there by the Guidance and the Light. What most fail to understand is that it is not always pleasant or even bright. Sometimes it can be ugly and distasteful. Sometimes it can be unfair." He pauses. As if listening to his own tone. As if gauging the voice he might use for a 'patient'. His voice softens further and he leans across the table, hands lightly folded at the fingers, open enough to warrant taking if she wanted or needed them but not obvious in their presentation or offer either.
"Your Brother was sick. Your Mother...would not have understood. I wish I had known about it sooner. I might have done something for Lucian. Or tried too." A pause, a furrow to his brow cracking the vaneer of calm for a moment. "I'm...not adept in the Spiritual Arts." He swallows, sucks in a breath. A frail sliver of something washed away under years of discipline and empathetic connection. He stares at his daughter again. Reassurance in icy blue.
"What you went through. Are going through. It's why I left. When we welcome and bring those who sleep into our lives it...changes theirs. Makes them more sometimes but often...more often...it makes them less. Worse. But your awakening was not a fault or a flaw. It is a gift. A chance to provide and produce in this world for all those things and peoples who cannot possibly do so for themselves. It's what I learned after I left. It's how I learned to cope with leaving you all behind."
His smile returns. A thin thing. His hands open slightly larger, index to index, thumb over thumb.
"It's what I hope to one day begin to teach you. You're a miracle. You do miracles. You can do so much for so many."
Margot
[Willpowerrrrr]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Margot
Martin is learning something about his daughter, and it is that when someone else is speaking she can apparently display the patience of a saint and hold her tongue every time until they are done speaking. That she will not only let them talk, but actually listens and hears the words they are saying. The almost hawkish quality that her big intense eyes combined with her bloody aura gave her made it seem like she was listening with the intent to do harm with that knowledge later-- like remembering when the mouse tends to wake and precisely which angle from which it pops its hole, so as to learn the blind spot for the perfect killing strike on another morn.
As Martin had pushed his hands toward the center of the table, Margot relaxed her grip on her mug. Did not reach across the table to join hands with him, certainly he wouldn't have expected that. Instead, she lifted the cooling latte to have a deep drink now that it was reaching the critical cooling point, and kept it up and cupped in her hand after her drink. She swirled the mug and glanced down at the contents. Her voice was surprisingly even-- no, steady when she spoke next.
"How did you know? I mean... when you Awoke, how did you know it was the Light that drove you, and what you were driven to do?"
Martin
"It spoke to me."
His hands withdraw. The first attempt at reconciliation was not received with the heartfelt warmth Martin might have wanted but then that was to be expected. No quick fixes. No easy emotional moments. This was not a hallmark commercial.
"I saw bright lights when I was about your age, actually. They came to me shortly after my parents divorce. I had lost my way and sought out a Church to ask the priests what possible reason could they have for not wanting to be together. None of them had answers beyond the benign but then I looked up and through the window. He spoke." A deep breath. The Calm radiates and returns.
"They were not so much words as impressions. Like when a loved one touches your cheek or brushes the back of your neck. I knew with almost instantaneous purpose that I had been given something. I wasn't sure what that something was and truthfully, it would take a few years of searching but it was there. Warm and certain unlike any other answer I had ever pursued. I still carry that feeling, even to this day."
Margot
Her face reflected emotion appropriately at the right parts in the story, to which she listened as attentively as she has to everything else before now. Her brow flexed a touch of empathy at the point about parents divorce, and then showed a furrow of thought when he spoke of the Church and His loving answer. She blushed just the tiniest bit at the mention of a loved one's touch and glanced back to her mug while the moment passed. When it did, she sighed and nodded to show understanding. Looked back out the window yet again when she started to speak herself, her voice still level and low and conversational and calm.
"She stalked me. Or, that's what it felt like at first, at least. She showed me things in my dreams, and finally started to speak with me in them instead. I realized she was always with me, deep down, and becoming a part of me. She Chose me, and her dominion is War, her purpose Victory." It was hard to tell if the certain devotion to her tone was intended to mirror him or not. Perhaps it wasn't intended or devotion at all, her tone was so matter-of-fact about the statement, speaking statements instead of passion.
It was at this point that her eyes finally came back to the interior of the cafe and to Martin's face, gauging his response as it showed there thus far, but not letting what she found change whether she continued or not.
"My miracles are a craft, the ability to do so pulled from the goddess Andraste. I think that she wants me do much for many, but not through your God, and probably not through the means you'd had in mind either."
Martin
(Appearance + Subterfuge: Oh well dear. That's...nice)
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Martin
Martin's expectant. The sort one gets when they begin to crack the veneer. He must be used to it by now because this is what he does. He breaks down walls and gets people to open up, expose themselves and eventually, be won over toward something greater. Something more. They call him the Cure. There are those in his tradition and more than likely, several others, who would know what that Title means. How it referred to a specific type of Choirister.
But that isn't this moment. Because the Light is meant to shine and the Dark is meant to be banished and he is meant to be rewarded with something uncomplicated. So he is expectant because this is that moment and his daughter begins to speak.
And the expectation slowly dies. Bit by micro-managed bit. It isn't obvious, not in his features but the way she talks about Her. The hints and the clues and the suggestions and finally that name. That name. It comes across his mental radar and there are flashes of potential inspiration that leap to mind. Histories and memories and texts read.
Martin leans back from the table, not with a troubled face but a carefully constructed scrutiny. There is a hint of judgment present as she speaks of being 'Chosen'. 'Not through your God' or 'Your means'. He listens. He does that for her. With her. One hand remains on the table and the fingers drum gently in place. An idle fidget. Then:
"Every path leads back to his grace and light. Even if that path is paved in shadow." It might as well be scripture.
"You've been through a lot. In a short time, at that. I can't imagine what things you've experienced or how they've shaped you..." A pause. A small breath and a smile. A trying smile.
"But I would like to try and understand."
Margot
"I have been," she agreed, nodding her head in agreement, but her eyes flashed a little warning across the table and the space between them that grew when he had leaned back. "But that doesn't mean I'm confused about what I'd just said." The firming of her tone went along with that small flash of something in her hazel eyes. To her credit, that backed off and softened some when she continued next. One elbow found the tabletop and helped her hand to support her head by pressing fingertips into her cheek and bone about her eye. The other hand pushed the mug a little toward the wall, away from her enough that the habitual urge to keep sipping though she knew it was unpalatably cool by now.
"Look; if I'm going to be generous with the benefit of the doubt here, I'm just going to cut to the chase and say that we clearly don't share the same... doctrines here. Our Work comes from different sources. It's better not to argue what is or isn't, especially not if you want to get anywhere with this reaching out."
The unstated part was if she were anything but generous, and what she would be presuming beyond the best of intentions from her own flesh and blood. There was the undeniable twinkle of suspicion that hadn't left her the entire time she'd been on the cafe premises. Who knows what kind of conspiracies she could have cooked up by now?
"...So... that said... What do you want to understand?"
Martin"Where your pain comes from." Martin offers it with a slow leaning back in his chair. There is scrutiny that comes, an arrival at a comfortable place in the conversation like he has had this before. A dozen or more times.
"There are very few individuals like us. Any of us, really." An allowance to her earlier point about 'different doctrines and sources'. "To think that those who sleep might be in line with understanding their place in the world, existence, greater works is to ignore all the problems and woes this world goes through from minute to minute. Moment to moment. They have their methods of curing and immunizing but they are sleeper versions of our own abilities. Among our kind, there are...deeper levels we can get too. Further layers to which we can descend in order to explore our past Traumas and issues."
He chuckles and waves a hand out casually at the coffee shop, with it's twitching student population and bored baristas checking their phones while waiting on more customers or closing time.
"Most of the time, distraction serves the purpose of maintaining the self for them. We can do better. Our cause is higher and our goals, stronger. They demand a deeper sort of Cure for the Deeper regard demanded of us. After all, we walk into this life and these abilities with the same perspective and layer of self as each of them. We all start asleep and must learn on the run how to cope with finding the Light."
Martin sucks in a low breath, lets it out as if about to recite some mantra or other. He looks into his daughter's eyes, a gentle smile playing at his lips.
"I want to understand where you are from. More so, where you see yourself going and to help you better understand what you've become."
MargotHis very first line did not sit well with the little witch; her lips twisted into a disapproving scowl, but she sat upon whatever words may have bubbled like hot anger in her chest and instead heard him out. When he had concluded his explanation of what it is he wanted to know, context given somewhere in the middle, she nodded her head and looked down at the table. Found a couple of sugar packets to fiddle with, and so she let her eyes and fingers focus upon the repetition of folding down and smoothing out the creases in the edges of a couple of the packets.
"I'm from Portland," she began. "Maine, not Oregon. It doesn't lead in technology and hipster culture in my Portland-- instead it leads in fishing boats and heroin consumption. You remember the house; it's the same one, we never left. That house is where my 'pain' comes from. When Mom would only be home long enough to sleep before going back to work serving tables, and when Luke would vanish for days or weeks on end and come home only when his stash and friends ran out. It was a sad, defeated place to be.
"I see myself going back there... Sooner than later, and just long enough to fix what I've done. After that?" She shrugged, but the gesture was tight for her body had tensed with discomfort and anger at the discussion of her rather gray history. "Back here. Back to my studies, my practices, my honing. Getting ready for whatever conflict Andraste's tapped me for."
Martin"Except that sounds a lot like you're living for someone else. Again."
Martin's brows bounce up slightly at the last word. He doesn't remove his gaze, doesn't let it swing or fidget as she does. He's tempered in his regard. Patient and Calm.
"There is a need to establish who we are and what we do, right alongside how we do it. The How is the first thing we often latch onto, because of the newness of it. Discovering something brand new is like being a child again and realizing that walking is a thing. Speaking and writing and reading are things. How is the definition of wonder and awe."
He clears his throat, reaches for the cup of coffee on the table to pull a sip off of.
"What we're doing becomes far more terrifying after that. What if we're meant to save the world? Save the people? What if we're meant to save the planet and have to condemn the people because of it? What if some of us are meant to do the former and others, the latter? What if we're opting to find some way to space and the great trek between here and heaven? What if we're no more than the caretakers here on earth? Or it's guardians against Hell?" He pauses, his eyes have gone slightly unfocused, like perhaps he had scoured his own reasoning on all of these. Every last one of them.
"The thing about How new it all is, is that the reasons become just as important but are just as new and potential as well. You're not small anymore. You're not asleep. You have a reason and a duty and an honour, even, to grab hold and push and seek."
Martin's jaw clenches. Conviction.
"Which makes Who we are everything. All things. Without a path to follow, without someone to guide us along, we can fall into the easy trap that our own minds create for us. There are no therapists or safe spaces or comfort rooms out there for us to retreat into. No distractions to keep us occupied. Not without consequence. Not without the world itself saying 'Don't'. We are pioneers, explorers and risk takers and that comes with...Harm. Trauma. Ugly. These are our norms. We are meant to be in those positions and places because we are not them." He waves another hand at the coffee shop. One of the nearby students seems like they've overheard a bit of the conversation. He glances up from his computer screen with a distasteful flash over his face before re-dedicating himself to the task at hand.
"Your Mother and Lucian were unfortunate. Even avoidable but to do so might have meant you never discovering what you are and could very well be the keys to you figuring out Who you are meant to be." He quirks a half-smile, head tilting to the side slightly.
"This...Andraste. Is she gentle?"
MargotA harsh bark of a laugh bit the air at the question. "God, no." Margot wasn't concerned with the offended student that overheard Martin when he was giving his speech about Us compared to Them, Our responsibilities over Their Lives and Existences. She had been watching him while he spoke, by and large, though sometimes she would look back out the window when something caught the corner of her eye, or down at her fingers re-folding and un-folding the increasingly abused sugar packets. The whole time she was listening the corners of her mouth were tight, showing tension, but that helped to keep her lips closed and ears open instead.
"I think that you're giving us all of us greater credit than we're due. We're not Them," she agreed, gesturing with a flick of her hand once more toward the poor offended student with his laptop. "but that doesn't make us Important. I haven't seen much, but what I have seen tells me that we're awfully small compared to a lot of the other things out there. I mean... What's so special about Them that warrants shepherding? Why is that any of Our responsibiity? Why do we have to be here for a Purpose, can't we just be here to Exist like everyone else?" She fired off her own philosophical hypotheticals in return, but it was difficult to tell if she was genuinely so nihilistic or if she was simply using these points to parry in order to convey the overall message that there's simply no way of knowing for sure.
She didn't stop there, but shook her head and continued on.
"Honestly, I don't really see how the perception of me living for Andraste is much different from the one of you living for your Cause and your Light; I mean, that's why you left us, right? You were living for someone else."
She wasn't glancing about anyplace else now, but was holding her gaze steady on Martin's face and eyes. Hers hazel, his blue, the brows and where they sat wide on their faces similar but the rest quite different-- his resonated calm, while hers flashed with barely contained ire.
"Mom and Luke's tragedy didn't have to happen for me to Awaken-- it was always gonna happen. That was just shitty timing and even shittier consequence. And they were way more than unfortunate, they were my family." She seethed the words and they carried a message of possessiveness and separation-- her family, not his. She glared as though she wanted to say more, perhaps even to shout more, but rather than words a sharp scrape of chair legs pushing back from the table followed her up instead, announcing that she was about to rise and bring this conversation to a quick wrap.
Martin"They were."
Martin concedes. Or agrees. Or offers.
"But in the best scheme of things, the greatest reasons and paths to follow, they were also part of Them." He nods briefly toward the coffee house. "And the way of this world, the function of it. Those...older things. They are as different to us as we are to them. At least we remember what it was like to have Families. To love and be loved. Our responsibility lies in how we radicalize ourselves. I am not ever going to be Them. But your way of thinking, implies you're ready...perhaps even eager...to be like those older things."
Martin leans forward and there is something under the layer here. Beneath the Calm, his feet spreading and his eyes solid. From mercurial blue to the jagged ice of arctics and tundras.
"...And to be clear, yes. You have not seen enough. But you will and you'll discover that the preciousness, the comfort, the sheer unmitigated willingness of Them to believe, even when evidence suggests otherwise, can grind you into powder and dust a easily as it can elevate you to the heavens. That is worth it. That is all that will ever be."
He rises as well, eyes finally leaving her to seek out his jacket and his coffee and pluck both up in preparation to leave. This conversation was, no matter the methods or subject, at a close for now.
Margot"I don't understand...," she said with a scowl. The fact that he'd stood as well seemed to offer some kind of relief-- he wasn't going to try holding her hostage for the conversation or keep her put. The corner of her mind dedicated to conspiracies and paranoia whispered a reminder for her not to head straight home, but find somewhere else to fart around before returning to the house, just to be safe. Certainly it was silly and unhelpful, but the advice was whispered internally all the same. She rose to her feet as well and pulled her jacket from the back of her chair, then shrugged her arms into it one at a time.
"Why is their Belief, either toward the mundane or otherwise, so important? I mean... I know they're ignorant. They're Sleeping, that's the whole point. They never believe correctly anyways. Pretty much nobody can, 'correct' isn't a real thing." This is what happens when you're a Verbena mentored by an Etherite-- compromising zones in paradigms and vague common grounds. There are too many Paradigms and too many functioning Magick-Wielders with them for any one to be 'correct', or so she had concluded to give her brain a break in trying to make sense of how the universe surrounding and supporting the existance of Mages existed.
Martin"That is somewhat true. Correct is never a real thing, but the scope of correct. Accurate. Right. Is adjustable. Beyond your perceptions, beyond mine, beyond even the value of who you are or what you do. All those older things, those bigger, worse and majestic things have a scope of what is and isn't Correct that you and I would never understand. But the Correct at our level. The correct we adhere to is one that is manageable. Still difficult but...it works. For each of us. For many of us, even but we only really need the one of us to achieve that level."
Martin's jacket is on. His coffee is in hand. He looks as if he is about to go and meet the boys for a poker hand or two over cigars. His face betrays little. Nothing but that rugged jawline and icy blue eyes.
"Their version of the correct-" Once more, the nod toward the cafe, this time less dismissive and almost...reverent "-has no limits. No scope. Gather enough of them together and they can convince the Universe, God Almighty or the Fabric of Existence to turn you into a puddle of nothing for daring to make them believe otherwise. For even trying. Scope...is everything. It is why there are so many of them now and so many of us who want so desperately to make them believe. Because with that....we might actually shake hands with God."
He steps forward, closing the gap slightly. There is no initiation of a hug or touch. He's learned at least that, this is not going to be that easy.
"I love you. I loved all of you. Deeper than I think I will ever be able to explain to you. I didn't leave for anyone else. I left because I found something and wanted to find a way to share it with all of you. If that means I can only share it with just the one. Just you? Well...I'll find the time, space and spirit to call that exactly what it is. A miracle."
He nods, smiling again, then he simply steps around her and makes for the door.
MargotThe explanation offered sounded like it was coming from a platform above the mundane world-- the constant references to Them, and the fact that They were quantified into whether or not they believed, how that applied to the life of a Reality-Breaker, it felt like talking about products or materials or livestock as opposed to people with intellects and free wills and other things that make them Human. As though being a human wasn't enough to make them Human, as though being Human wasn't enough either. She contemplated that, how it rang similar to other things she's heard from other people, and zipped her coat up as she contemplated this.
The space between them closed when he stepped nearer toward her, but a combination of his experience with the interaction and her closed body language kept him from trying to place a hand on her shoulder, or pat the top of her head, or try to wrap arms about her for an embrace. They simply stood, her looking up at him from under heavy brows like she was still vaguely suspicious and untrusting. It was a hell of a contrast, that expression against the one he was sharing with her then: I love you.
Her upper lip tried to curl but she forced her mouth into a straight line instead. She didn't argue further, not just yet, but simply shook her head and said in a voice that sounded almost tired: "I kinda wish I'd had the chance to." To love in return, that is. But the comment was quiet, and said while he had already passed her to approach the door with that small impossible-to-read smile on his face. She had a hard time believing he was as genuinely pleased with this first meeting as he seemed, but no desire to go hound about it.
Instead, she watched him go up the sidewalk from the large window they'd been seated in front of, and once he was out of sight she ordered herself a cocoa for the road before leaving herself. Though the small voice before had been silly, it had been her own and a familiar one at that, so she abided by it and let it keep her company while she killed a few hours in a book shop and clothing store before finally headed home.
"There are very few individuals like us. Any of us, really." An allowance to her earlier point about 'different doctrines and sources'. "To think that those who sleep might be in line with understanding their place in the world, existence, greater works is to ignore all the problems and woes this world goes through from minute to minute. Moment to moment. They have their methods of curing and immunizing but they are sleeper versions of our own abilities. Among our kind, there are...deeper levels we can get too. Further layers to which we can descend in order to explore our past Traumas and issues."
He chuckles and waves a hand out casually at the coffee shop, with it's twitching student population and bored baristas checking their phones while waiting on more customers or closing time.
"Most of the time, distraction serves the purpose of maintaining the self for them. We can do better. Our cause is higher and our goals, stronger. They demand a deeper sort of Cure for the Deeper regard demanded of us. After all, we walk into this life and these abilities with the same perspective and layer of self as each of them. We all start asleep and must learn on the run how to cope with finding the Light."
Martin sucks in a low breath, lets it out as if about to recite some mantra or other. He looks into his daughter's eyes, a gentle smile playing at his lips.
"I want to understand where you are from. More so, where you see yourself going and to help you better understand what you've become."
MargotHis very first line did not sit well with the little witch; her lips twisted into a disapproving scowl, but she sat upon whatever words may have bubbled like hot anger in her chest and instead heard him out. When he had concluded his explanation of what it is he wanted to know, context given somewhere in the middle, she nodded her head and looked down at the table. Found a couple of sugar packets to fiddle with, and so she let her eyes and fingers focus upon the repetition of folding down and smoothing out the creases in the edges of a couple of the packets.
"I'm from Portland," she began. "Maine, not Oregon. It doesn't lead in technology and hipster culture in my Portland-- instead it leads in fishing boats and heroin consumption. You remember the house; it's the same one, we never left. That house is where my 'pain' comes from. When Mom would only be home long enough to sleep before going back to work serving tables, and when Luke would vanish for days or weeks on end and come home only when his stash and friends ran out. It was a sad, defeated place to be.
"I see myself going back there... Sooner than later, and just long enough to fix what I've done. After that?" She shrugged, but the gesture was tight for her body had tensed with discomfort and anger at the discussion of her rather gray history. "Back here. Back to my studies, my practices, my honing. Getting ready for whatever conflict Andraste's tapped me for."
Martin"Except that sounds a lot like you're living for someone else. Again."
Martin's brows bounce up slightly at the last word. He doesn't remove his gaze, doesn't let it swing or fidget as she does. He's tempered in his regard. Patient and Calm.
"There is a need to establish who we are and what we do, right alongside how we do it. The How is the first thing we often latch onto, because of the newness of it. Discovering something brand new is like being a child again and realizing that walking is a thing. Speaking and writing and reading are things. How is the definition of wonder and awe."
He clears his throat, reaches for the cup of coffee on the table to pull a sip off of.
"What we're doing becomes far more terrifying after that. What if we're meant to save the world? Save the people? What if we're meant to save the planet and have to condemn the people because of it? What if some of us are meant to do the former and others, the latter? What if we're opting to find some way to space and the great trek between here and heaven? What if we're no more than the caretakers here on earth? Or it's guardians against Hell?" He pauses, his eyes have gone slightly unfocused, like perhaps he had scoured his own reasoning on all of these. Every last one of them.
"The thing about How new it all is, is that the reasons become just as important but are just as new and potential as well. You're not small anymore. You're not asleep. You have a reason and a duty and an honour, even, to grab hold and push and seek."
Martin's jaw clenches. Conviction.
"Which makes Who we are everything. All things. Without a path to follow, without someone to guide us along, we can fall into the easy trap that our own minds create for us. There are no therapists or safe spaces or comfort rooms out there for us to retreat into. No distractions to keep us occupied. Not without consequence. Not without the world itself saying 'Don't'. We are pioneers, explorers and risk takers and that comes with...Harm. Trauma. Ugly. These are our norms. We are meant to be in those positions and places because we are not them." He waves another hand at the coffee shop. One of the nearby students seems like they've overheard a bit of the conversation. He glances up from his computer screen with a distasteful flash over his face before re-dedicating himself to the task at hand.
"Your Mother and Lucian were unfortunate. Even avoidable but to do so might have meant you never discovering what you are and could very well be the keys to you figuring out Who you are meant to be." He quirks a half-smile, head tilting to the side slightly.
"This...Andraste. Is she gentle?"
MargotA harsh bark of a laugh bit the air at the question. "God, no." Margot wasn't concerned with the offended student that overheard Martin when he was giving his speech about Us compared to Them, Our responsibilities over Their Lives and Existences. She had been watching him while he spoke, by and large, though sometimes she would look back out the window when something caught the corner of her eye, or down at her fingers re-folding and un-folding the increasingly abused sugar packets. The whole time she was listening the corners of her mouth were tight, showing tension, but that helped to keep her lips closed and ears open instead.
"I think that you're giving us all of us greater credit than we're due. We're not Them," she agreed, gesturing with a flick of her hand once more toward the poor offended student with his laptop. "but that doesn't make us Important. I haven't seen much, but what I have seen tells me that we're awfully small compared to a lot of the other things out there. I mean... What's so special about Them that warrants shepherding? Why is that any of Our responsibiity? Why do we have to be here for a Purpose, can't we just be here to Exist like everyone else?" She fired off her own philosophical hypotheticals in return, but it was difficult to tell if she was genuinely so nihilistic or if she was simply using these points to parry in order to convey the overall message that there's simply no way of knowing for sure.
She didn't stop there, but shook her head and continued on.
"Honestly, I don't really see how the perception of me living for Andraste is much different from the one of you living for your Cause and your Light; I mean, that's why you left us, right? You were living for someone else."
She wasn't glancing about anyplace else now, but was holding her gaze steady on Martin's face and eyes. Hers hazel, his blue, the brows and where they sat wide on their faces similar but the rest quite different-- his resonated calm, while hers flashed with barely contained ire.
"Mom and Luke's tragedy didn't have to happen for me to Awaken-- it was always gonna happen. That was just shitty timing and even shittier consequence. And they were way more than unfortunate, they were my family." She seethed the words and they carried a message of possessiveness and separation-- her family, not his. She glared as though she wanted to say more, perhaps even to shout more, but rather than words a sharp scrape of chair legs pushing back from the table followed her up instead, announcing that she was about to rise and bring this conversation to a quick wrap.
Martin"They were."
Martin concedes. Or agrees. Or offers.
"But in the best scheme of things, the greatest reasons and paths to follow, they were also part of Them." He nods briefly toward the coffee house. "And the way of this world, the function of it. Those...older things. They are as different to us as we are to them. At least we remember what it was like to have Families. To love and be loved. Our responsibility lies in how we radicalize ourselves. I am not ever going to be Them. But your way of thinking, implies you're ready...perhaps even eager...to be like those older things."
Martin leans forward and there is something under the layer here. Beneath the Calm, his feet spreading and his eyes solid. From mercurial blue to the jagged ice of arctics and tundras.
"...And to be clear, yes. You have not seen enough. But you will and you'll discover that the preciousness, the comfort, the sheer unmitigated willingness of Them to believe, even when evidence suggests otherwise, can grind you into powder and dust a easily as it can elevate you to the heavens. That is worth it. That is all that will ever be."
He rises as well, eyes finally leaving her to seek out his jacket and his coffee and pluck both up in preparation to leave. This conversation was, no matter the methods or subject, at a close for now.
Margot"I don't understand...," she said with a scowl. The fact that he'd stood as well seemed to offer some kind of relief-- he wasn't going to try holding her hostage for the conversation or keep her put. The corner of her mind dedicated to conspiracies and paranoia whispered a reminder for her not to head straight home, but find somewhere else to fart around before returning to the house, just to be safe. Certainly it was silly and unhelpful, but the advice was whispered internally all the same. She rose to her feet as well and pulled her jacket from the back of her chair, then shrugged her arms into it one at a time.
"Why is their Belief, either toward the mundane or otherwise, so important? I mean... I know they're ignorant. They're Sleeping, that's the whole point. They never believe correctly anyways. Pretty much nobody can, 'correct' isn't a real thing." This is what happens when you're a Verbena mentored by an Etherite-- compromising zones in paradigms and vague common grounds. There are too many Paradigms and too many functioning Magick-Wielders with them for any one to be 'correct', or so she had concluded to give her brain a break in trying to make sense of how the universe surrounding and supporting the existance of Mages existed.
Martin"That is somewhat true. Correct is never a real thing, but the scope of correct. Accurate. Right. Is adjustable. Beyond your perceptions, beyond mine, beyond even the value of who you are or what you do. All those older things, those bigger, worse and majestic things have a scope of what is and isn't Correct that you and I would never understand. But the Correct at our level. The correct we adhere to is one that is manageable. Still difficult but...it works. For each of us. For many of us, even but we only really need the one of us to achieve that level."
Martin's jacket is on. His coffee is in hand. He looks as if he is about to go and meet the boys for a poker hand or two over cigars. His face betrays little. Nothing but that rugged jawline and icy blue eyes.
"Their version of the correct-" Once more, the nod toward the cafe, this time less dismissive and almost...reverent "-has no limits. No scope. Gather enough of them together and they can convince the Universe, God Almighty or the Fabric of Existence to turn you into a puddle of nothing for daring to make them believe otherwise. For even trying. Scope...is everything. It is why there are so many of them now and so many of us who want so desperately to make them believe. Because with that....we might actually shake hands with God."
He steps forward, closing the gap slightly. There is no initiation of a hug or touch. He's learned at least that, this is not going to be that easy.
"I love you. I loved all of you. Deeper than I think I will ever be able to explain to you. I didn't leave for anyone else. I left because I found something and wanted to find a way to share it with all of you. If that means I can only share it with just the one. Just you? Well...I'll find the time, space and spirit to call that exactly what it is. A miracle."
He nods, smiling again, then he simply steps around her and makes for the door.
MargotThe explanation offered sounded like it was coming from a platform above the mundane world-- the constant references to Them, and the fact that They were quantified into whether or not they believed, how that applied to the life of a Reality-Breaker, it felt like talking about products or materials or livestock as opposed to people with intellects and free wills and other things that make them Human. As though being a human wasn't enough to make them Human, as though being Human wasn't enough either. She contemplated that, how it rang similar to other things she's heard from other people, and zipped her coat up as she contemplated this.
The space between them closed when he stepped nearer toward her, but a combination of his experience with the interaction and her closed body language kept him from trying to place a hand on her shoulder, or pat the top of her head, or try to wrap arms about her for an embrace. They simply stood, her looking up at him from under heavy brows like she was still vaguely suspicious and untrusting. It was a hell of a contrast, that expression against the one he was sharing with her then: I love you.
Her upper lip tried to curl but she forced her mouth into a straight line instead. She didn't argue further, not just yet, but simply shook her head and said in a voice that sounded almost tired: "I kinda wish I'd had the chance to." To love in return, that is. But the comment was quiet, and said while he had already passed her to approach the door with that small impossible-to-read smile on his face. She had a hard time believing he was as genuinely pleased with this first meeting as he seemed, but no desire to go hound about it.
Instead, she watched him go up the sidewalk from the large window they'd been seated in front of, and once he was out of sight she ordered herself a cocoa for the road before leaving herself. Though the small voice before had been silly, it had been her own and a familiar one at that, so she abided by it and let it keep her company while she killed a few hours in a book shop and clothing store before finally headed home.
