I won't fall

[Dylan Willis] The most ironic part of this entire affair is the fact that Dylan Willis had been attempting to get the Awakened populace of Chicago to band together, to form a singular unit, to function as though they all had a common goal and a purpose for existing, prior to his descent into madness. One could say that that has brought otherwise separate members of the Traditions together for said common goal, even if that common goal has been to locate and take down a shell of a man whose purpose for existing is all but impossible to suss out.



He's burning. That's all they really know for certain, is that the man who was once Willis is being punished, or thinks he's being punished. There is a chance that he had a run-in with Marla and Jackson, that these Dreamspeakers-gone-Nephandi had helped drive him over the edge and left him to fend for himself; there is a chance that there is some sense to be made out of something that really doesn't make all that much sense. He's been left looking for someone. He believes that if he can just get out of wherever he is then everything will be okay, he can right his wrongs and be with "her" again.



Nobody knows who this "her" is. All they know is that every time the Marauder is punched through the Gauntlet, for whatever reason, he leaves behind a Shallowing. It's luck that has had nothing crawling through the Shallowing after him, luck or the concerted efforts of the Static spirits on the other side.



Maybe they've been reading in the library, maybe they're trying to figure out what the best means of handling this mess would be. Maybe they've found a load of bad news, confirmation of what they already knew; he's not coming back. Dylan Willis died months ago in a fight with Nephandi and Hunters, and all that's left is this. Maybe they've found hope, maybe they've found a few errant pages here and there that have spoken of bringing a Marauder back towards the light of sanity, of providing them with a lucidity that enables them to, if not piece their lives back together, then to at least function without hurling off Vulgar effects every time they turn around.



Whatever the case may be, Kage R. Jakes is looking for the man who called her the fire-haired angel. Alone, without backup, she's looking for him.



It doesn't take long to find him.



From the safety of her home, she reached out across the Tellurian to find the one that Gregor calls the Inferno. It's still hot where he is, still miserably, punitively hot, and he's still alive. When she finds him, he's parked on his ass in an alleyway, knees bent and legs akimbo, staring at a cut in the palm of his hand. He looks worse than he did a month ago, is still wearing her brother-in-law's clothes and is covered in dirt and grime again; his sweater, once white, has gone dingy, and there are tears, blood-stained and old, in the fabric of his clothing, as though he had gone through a blender and barely survived being spat out on the other side.



He flexes his hand once, twice, blood weeping from the cut, and she can feel him Working. It's not wonder people are terrified of him. He's a walking time bomb, a cache of Paradox.



[Life 3: Heal Self.

Vulgar, no Witnesses. Base Diff: 7, -1 (spec. focus), -1 (taking time), -1 (quint).]

Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 4) [WP]



[Dylan Willis] [Paradox Accumulated: 3.]



[K. R. Jakes] Kage R. Jakes knows that the nameless 'crow mentioned her by her initials, the fragment of her name she ([in]cautious) gave him in the cemetery. She does not know what context he mentioned her in, that Emily recognized Kay Ar, fire-haired angel, as the woman who showed her what the raw threads of [shining, entangling, singing] quintessence could look [sound] like by a fallen tree in midwinter. If she knew, perhaps she'd be horrified; perhaps she'd have left off looking for the mage that was once, but is no longer, Dylan Willis for another day, another week. But there have already been so, so many days and too, too many weeks and not a week has gone by without someone coming uninvited to her door with questions. Is it any wonder she decided, finally, to look for him?



Is it any wonder that it wasn't difficult?



Kage can feel Dylan before she can see him, and for whatever it's worth, she does not consider turning back and going home before he realizes she's there. Now that she's done the thing, she's going to see it through, whatever that means [fearless (terrified)]. The Orphan pauses on the sidewalk the alley opens up to, her hands in the pockets of her pirate-flamboyant, silver-screen slick coat, and the wind tugs at her hair, knotting it, shying toward delicate tangles. She can feel him Working, and she wants to swallow, her pulse wants to race, her heart wants to skip a couple of beats, get somewhere else, somewhere safe. And then she presses her palm against the sooty (misfortune's) brickwork of the building that makes its left wall, and says, low-voiced,



"Hello? Do you remember me? What are you doing?"



[Dylan Willis] He starts, violently, when he sees her at the mouth of the alleyway. First he slams back against the wall of the supporting building, dropping his hands to scramble for purchase, and then he rockets himself to his feet, feverish brown eyes unseeing for a moment. All he knows is that he's been found, that he's not alone anymore, and it takes a moment of backpedaling and nearly falling on his ass stumbling into an abandoned lawn chair that he realizes who it is.



When she speaks, he's breathing heavily from his sudden startlement, but he doesn't appear as though he's preparing to strike out at her. Lips are parted, and no steam blows out into the air as he cycles breath in and out of his lungs; it's hot here, hot enough that when Kage presses a hand against the building's side it feels as though it's the end of August rather than the beginning of February.



The Nameless 'Crow's lips are so chapped that when he folds them in on themselves to wet them, they crack. All that is keeping him alive is magic, it looks like. He has the weathered, pale look of someone who isn't eating, but for whatever stubborn, stupid reason, he's still up and moving around. He's still trying to find his way out.



Does he remember her.

Nodnod.



What is he doing.



"Resting," he says, as though she's just asked him a question with an obvious answer. His fingers waggle at the ends of his hands, and he appears primed to take a step forward before he remembers upheld hands and a single, soft plea not to come any closer. A pause to swallow, to still his breathing, and then he says, "I thought they had you. She came in after me, they both did, I thought..."



[K. R. Jakes] Kage flinches when he slams his back into the wall. Too sudden and too violent that sound. Both things are promises, possibilities; threats. That's a sound a body makes when there is no care for the body. And when he gets to his feet, her pulse jumps and her shoulders tense, but Kage does not take a step backward onto the sidewalk. She doesn't try to leave. Instead, she lifts her chin a little (proud [arrogant?]), and presses her hand more firmly into the brick. The jagged edge of the corner will leave a mark, an impression of sharpness, a line, across her palm. The line will cut across her life line, her star line, her love line and her mount of Venus, red as Valentine's day pink. Instead of stepping back, she steps forward, deliberate and slow, careful, because she doesn't want to scare him (because she doesn't want him to scare her). The heat is impossible in January, and she wants to take her jacket off.



"I don't know what you thought. Or what you did. You were gone when I went back."



It doesn't occur to her that he doesn't approach because she asked him not to when he was still in her apartment. She watches him almost take a step and then decide not to, and she's standing in the cool shadow of the wall now. The shadow isn't cool enough [why are you doing this], and she bites the inside of her lip. Kage is looking at Dylan, looking at him steadily, carefully, and trying not to be horrified (trying not to breathe through her nose). It's hard not to be horrified, not to be sad, not to be heartbroken. And these are not good things to be, when you're also afraid, also determined [mission].



"I..." A moment. Loss for words. Fix this, somehow.

There's just no way.



[Dylan Willis] If he can tell that she was searching for him, that this wasn't just a chance meeting like their first and only meeting had been, it doesn't show on that face of his. He looks beaten by the wind, his skin still tanned in the middle of winter because he is almost never indoors, because whenever there is even the slightest bit of solar light he's out in it, his hair grown out and stringy, cornsilk-blond at the bequest of the sun. At some point in the last month he shaved his face, though where and how he managed to pull that off is hard to tell; maybe it's a lingering Paradox flaw, from back when Paradox still affected him, or maybe he's one of those guys who just doesn't have to shave his face with any great frequency. It's there, like a blond-and-white shadow, but it's as scraggly as a teenager's.



The wasted potential in this man's being is almost (almost?) heartbreaking. He could have been a lot of things to a lot of people, had been a lot of things to a lot of people. He had been a son, a friend, a lover, a teacher, a prophet of sorts. He could have been a leader. He could have been a father. Now he's nothing, a burnt-out shell that's too jumpy and too paranoid for anyone to grow close enough to to give him a hand.



Kage had reached out to him once, and it hadn't been enough. Perhaps it could have been if the demons hadn't come after him, but they had, and this is what they're left working with.



There's no way. Not the way they're going.



The Marauder is still breathing heavily, but his palm has stopped bleeding. His long-boned and strong fingers are coated in red, but for a change, it's easy to tell that it's his own. He probably cut himself climbing on or over something, sliced it on the mouth of a Dumpster or the edge of a fire escape. He isn't shivering even though he's only got on an Army jacket, a blank space torn where his name ought to be.



I...



"You Reached," he says. A pause to swallow, to vainly attempt to lubricate his throat. "You... you followed me here. Why?"



[K. R. Jakes] "Because," she says, still speaking quietly, still steady. "I'm worried."



And, of course, she is.


Kage doesn't know what really happened to Dylan. Kage knows that there was blood on his clothes that really wasn't his. Kage knows that he wasn't responsible for killing one of those people whose blood joined his (although probably not for lack of trying; probably not for luck). What Kage knows is this: before, he'd rambled, mad, about Them and They, about how They were looking for him, and she knew that right now, they really were looking for him. She knows that Carlan hadn't been telling everything when he spoke of 'the Marauder' and she knows that there is some evidence (circumstantial) that says Marla or Jackson had something to do with what he is now. Kage knows a lot about who Dylan Willis was, now, because people keep repeating the same phrases, because she (one day late) finally got the file from Adam Compton, because this Dylan guy's Etherite sidekick turned her counter into piecrust for grief. Kage knows all that, and it doesn't matter.



Dylan Willis is dead. That isn't Dylan.

He still has a heart.

He still has -



"Because I wanted to see you," for myself, is the unspoken. Kage reaches out. Literally. Her left hand. Palm up. She is beginning to flush just from being near him, blood heating, burnishing her skin, which is never very tanned, always pale unless she's flushing like a piece of metal kissed by flame [flake of fire], "I wanted to see if you were still trapped. Because," don't let frustration bleed, don't, don't, "This shouldn't be going on. Look. Are you thirsty?"



[Dylan Willis] Part of his being startled was the distance, or the lack thereof, between them. When she had appeared in the alleyway she had been nearly right over him, had been close enough that if he hadn't recognized her for being her that it's possible violence might have broken out. This man lives in a world where everyone is trying to get him, where everyone is trying to kill him, and that isn't necessarily an indication that he has become a paranoid schizophrenic; people are trying to get him, people are trying to kill him, and more than one attempt has been made on his life even since Kage found him, gave him food and a couch to sleep on, gave him clothes.



It wasn't enough. It was enough to stabilize him for a few days, a few weeks, while he got his strength back, but he wasn't interacting with anyone, wasn't gaining exposure to the ideologies and thoughts of someone who isn't as far removed from reality as he is. That's what the books, the few pages she might have found, have said is key: they need to be around the sane in order to calm their Quiet.



He is not calm, and quiet is not the best word to describe the state he's in, either.



Kay Are steps forward, and he does not retreat. She reaches out her hand, and he does not launch himself at her, does not push her back, does not try to get away from her. He lets that hand, so delicate and pale, come out to touch his ribs, and a shudder goes through him, as though he can feel the winter on her skin.



It must be very lonely, going through Hell without someone with him, sleeping alone, thinking that every brief and infrequent encounter he has with a Traditionalist is going to have him killed. He still isn't blinking, though his eyes briefly flutter closed when she touches him. It's a reminder, and he trusts her not to try and snap his neck or Rip his Body.



"There's not much water down here," he says, his voice sticking to his throat. A beat, and then he says, "I still haven't... haven't found a way out, I'm... I'm not saying there isn't a way out of here, I just haven't figured it out yet, but it's... it's dark, it's very dark, and the demons are... there's more of them than I thought there were. It's hard to stay away from them."



[K. R. Jakes] This shouldn't be going on.



He shouldn't be where he is. He shouldn't still be walking. His heart should've stopped by now. He should be dead. Kage looked at him before and she saw what happened to the man who was Dylan and she saw that this creature was doomed. She saw what, essentially, he was, and she's had bad dreams (she always has bad dreams) about the way the air scorches around him and it shouldn't. It's winter. It should be cold. She doesn't drop her hand; rather, she presses her palm against him (gentle [careful]), her dark gaze watchful. 'Lest she suddenly -- who knows? She doesn't trust him. That hasn't changed at all. This: that all she trusts, is that he'll be dangerous to her.



There's more of them than I thought there were. This? Finds an echo of fellow-feeling in her mind. "There are a lot of them," she agrees, evenly. Hell: he brought most of them to her doorstep, even weeks after he left. Kage bites the inside of her lip, goes very still. Then: "If ... if it's dark ... Things aren't still burning?" A brief pause. "Will you come with me?"



Again?



[Dylan Willis] According to the Fate she'd read in his Pattern, according to the natural order of things, Dylan Willis is gone. He's gone, he's not coming back, and the natural conclusion, the conclusion that could hypothetically lend the quickest route towards closure, is that he's dead. That his spirit is dead. His spirit isn't dead, though, or at least his body isn't. Something is keeping his body up and moving, some stubbornness or inner will to stay the course, and in that, his spirit hasn't quite dissolved yet.



Yet this paranoid, violent creature isn't the man that everyone seems to remember, seems to have been waiting on to change the way things in Chicago were running. And he is paranoid; he is violent; not for no reason, it would seem, but to someone who simply knows Marauders to be Dangerous, there doesn't need to be a reason. His very existence is reason enough to extinguish his fire, and the longer he is allowed to continue on like this, the more holes he's going to make in the Gauntlet.



He hasn't made a hole in a while. That doesn't matter.



Her touch becomes a heavier thing, and she can feel the echo of his pulse as it ricochets through his ribs, the apex of his stubborn heart thumping against the heel of her hand. It's rapid, terrified, as though he's hearing noises coming out of the darkness.



For the second time, Kage asks him to come with her. He swallows dryness out of his throat. This close she can see that his lips have gone white with dehydration. His eyes are shadowed. The only thing the populace of Chicago have going for them is the fact that he hasn't embraced his Hell, that he isn't reveling in it. He's not thriving in his new reality.



His mind hasn't snapped that second time necessary to shift him from a victim to an aggressor. Not yet.



He gives a distracted nod, quick and trusting, and glances down at her hand as though he's surprised to see it's still there.



[K. R. Jakes] He trusts her, and she still doesn't know why (does not want to untangle that knot). They all seem to trust her and she doesn't seem to trust them and it doesn't matter one way or another. She doesn't go running in the opposite direction. She doesn't keep her head down anymore than it was already down (peekaboo, you found me, now I found you). Kage doesn't have any medical know-how; what she knows, she's picked up in passing, from documents on other subjects (the poison of the blowfish [this is how you give CPR]), from listening to Cary describe what he had to do with Margot, when that looked very bad. But you don't need a degree in medicine to know that when somebody's heart is hammering like Dylan's is, it's because he's frightened.



She takes her hand away from his ribs and runs it through her hair, instead. Her truck is not parked at all far away. "Okay," she says, evenly. "Then follow me. Don't disappear unless you're going to say something first, okay? Just follow, and I have some water in my truck."



Without turning her back to Dylan, she takes a step out of the alley, watchful, wary, is-he-going-to-follow, and then much like she did on Thanksgiving night, when she thought he was going to shoot her, when she had no idea what he is (her idea hasn't changed that much), she walks backward for a spell, over ice-slicked pavement, over winter-frozen concrete.



[Dylan Willis] Letting herself into the Mindscape that had swallowed the once-Orphan whole and alive had caused Ashley McGowen to trip headfirst into a darkness that threatens to consume her if her Avatar continues to nudge her in the direction that it is. What she had seen, what she had felt, was so terrifying, so traumatizing, that it had left a black mark on her soul. No such Jhor is tainting the Marauder, yet it's clear that wherever he is, whatever he thinks is going on around him, it has him so alert that he jumps at the slightest provocation.



That he trusts the red-haired Initiate who has reached out to him once is abundantly obvious. In the beginning he had been a twitching, sleep-deprived mess that had been seconds away from putting a bullet into her head, but something had happened over the month that he existed on her couch, eating her food and using her water. There were times when she could not find him in the apartment, but for an entire month, that is where he was. He had not been acting as though he would do anything other than follow her that day that the Hermetic and the Euthanatos managed to track him down. It had been a new year then.



The new year isn't going any better than the old one had, and if Kage had any idea why, exactly, the Marauder trusts her above all the others...



But she doesn't. She doesn't, and that's perhaps for the best.



Kage walks backwards as she had Thanksgiving night, and the nameless 'crow watches her for several seconds before taking a ground-eating stride forward and walking after her.



[K. R. Jakes] The day is gray and overcast. There is snow on the ground packed hard against the base of the buildings that frame the alley, shoved hard away from the stairs of one. There is frost rimming a windowsill, sketching out ice-stories and ice-tales on an abandoned bottle of beer, clouding up the silent (dim-day, gray-day) streetlamps. The ice is insidious, see. It reaches from the uneven and [not white (no purity)] haphazzard mounds that frame the sidewalk. That heap up against anything solid that's out of the way made by salt or some guy with a shovel or some city employee who just wanted to hurry on by. This is Cabrini Green: falling apart, breaking down, unwholesome and mostly uncared for.



Dylan has to worry about this Them that he keeps talking about. He has to worry about Technocrats, too, who want to (baby, just let the professionals) take care of him one way or another. Perhaps he has to worry about hunters, too; who knows? But there is another factor on streets like these: Humans who aren't awake. Humans who aren't special. Humans who are desperate and cold or desperate and hungry or desperate and angry. Humans who sometimes just want to take something out. Something smaller than they are. Maybe they've left him alone because of the tatter of his clothes, because of the blood, because of his physical presence, because of that indefinable sense of crazy [that eerie, supernatural 'heat' -- a man walking through Hell, you leave him alone. You let him go on his way, because you don't want to get in his way. His way's a bad way]. Maybe they haven't all left him alone. Maybe, somewhere, there are some people who are hurting bad, or who saw something they can't believe. Maybe they're gearing up to find it again.



Maybe it's a good thing Kage finally decided to look for her houseguest instead of just waiting for something to break. Maybe it's a good thing she watched Ashley break down the other night. Maybe it's a good thing that, try as she might, she can't actually tear herself away from events. Maybe it's just a thing, and it's not good or bad.



Where Dylan walks, snow begins to melt. He isn't touching it, so it doesn't hiss. He walks by a lamppost, and the frost that clung to it suddenly glistens (liquid [tears]). Kage opens the passenger door first, almost falls into her own damned truck, she's still walking backwards until she gets to it. Then she holds it open for Dylan. She doesn't realize she's clenching her jaw until after she circles around to the driver's side and gets in her own self, not slamming the door. The door, she shuts carefully. No loud noises. No sudden movements. It'll be okay, this is fine. And she does have a bottle of water, one of those massive larger-than-your-face, all-day's-worth-of-water things, wedged along with some books and magazines and sunglasses and playing cards, between the two seats. She hands it to Dylan without a word.



She catches a glimpse of her own eyes in the rearview mirror, and cocks a cynical eyebrow. What are you looking at. I have a plan.



[Dylan Willis] The first time he had gone with Kay Are, it had been as if he didn't have any other choice. At the time, he hadn't, unless he had wanted to keep wandering around the cemetery without any clue where he was or how to get out of there. He seems to have a better grasp of his surroundings, or at least doesn't seem to be under the impression that he's trapped, and while he seems a bit less crazed than he had the last time Kage found herself in the same location as him, that doesn't change the fact that it is still damnably warm around him.



There had not been much snow in the alleyway where he had been sitting, but once they reach the sidewalk and begin walking in earnest what snow there is begins to melt. Things become damp rather than frozen. It's not a subtle change, and Lord knows what Sleepers think when they pass him by on the sidewalk, if the Marauder even notices them.



He had not seemed to notice the tall blond model who had been pleading for him to at least look at him, or at least did a damned fine job of pretending as though he had not noticed Jacques. Kage has not seen him literally bumping into bystanders and continuing on with what he was doing as though they were not even there.



Kage has not seen him do a lot of things that has the rest of the Awakened populace scrambling to subdue him.



This time, he goes with her not as though this is the only way he has, but as though this is the way that he does not believe will cause harm to rain down on his head. Never mind that the last time he had gone with Kage, the demons had found him. They had been stronger than she was, physically and psychically, even if her spirit was formidable. He watches her open the door to the truck, and steps into it after a moment's contemplation.



When the Initiate clambers into the truck, the windows have begun to steam up. The condensation is creeping up the base of the Plexiglas, encroaching the available space like some sort of insidious growth. It blocks out the world for a moment. The nameless 'crow looks at the offered water with that same trepidation that had preceded his getting into the truck before taking it with his unstained right hand; when he drinks, there is really no comparison to be made that is apt enough. He drinks voraciously, stopping himself after several seconds so as not to make himself sick, and then he pours water onto his right hand to clear some of the oxidizing crimson away. The run-off splashes the thigh of his jeans, makes it darker, cleaner.



"Thanks," is the first thing he's said in several minutes.



[K. R. Jakes] Kage keeps an eye on the nameless 'crow when he finally accepts the water and begins to drink. At least he's not staring at her. At least he has other concerns, right now. Kage wonders whether he felt her looking for him before she even came to the alleyway, whether he's felt the Others looking for him, and banished their attempts; she wonders a lot. She also rolls her window down a crack, to let the winter back in, where it meets the circle of blistering (painful: a promise) heat that emanates around Dylan Willis and warms. She pulls the sleeve of her coat over her palm and wipes some of the condensation away from the front window.



Thanks, he says, sounding human. She closes her eyes for a second. When she opens them, she fits her key in the ignition and turns it. The truck purrs to life. "Do you mind if I ask you questions? I told you before: I won't do anything if you say it's not okay. But I don't want you to be unhappy."



[Dylan Willis] For a second, he sounds human. For a second, Kage has to close her eyes. When she opens them, the world around the Marauder is still summer-hot; the man beside her is still wrecked, is slugging back more water in an attempt to sooth his desiccated tissue, and when she moves, he watches her. It is not staring, but for a moment it seems as though his brain is not making sense of what it is she's doing.



He doesn't ask, though, and the moment passes without further comment. He's halved the water in that gigantic container, and already he seems to be perking up, his strength returning to him. His lips begin to lose their pallor, his skin stops resembling a sparse parchment roadmap of veins. Another shower is what he needs, another shower and a decent meal, but his thirst is slowly being quenched, and he almost seems calm, as though his heart rate is returning to normal and his senses are not being assaulted.



Then he stares out the window for several seconds, without pushing away the steam, sharply turning his head as though he's heard something. He twitches when he hears her voice, then slowly turns back towards her. It seems darker outside than it did a moment ago. That may just be the increased cloud cover overhead. It isn't necessarily him.



"What do you want to know?" he asks, slow, almost-but-not-quite suspicious.



[K. R. Jakes] The red-haired Orphan concentrates on the road (tries to). There is a lock of hair, slipped free from her ear, a coil against her cheek and almost in her eye. She blinks it away without taking her hands off the steering wheel. It just falls back across the same place, drawing a delicate shadow. She blows it away, and it is darker outside, and maybe that's just cloud cover, and maybe that's just the world serpent swallowing the Sun, and maybe that's just the way it goes. Maybe it's going to snow, soon. He didn't ask where she was taking him before, and she didn't tell him. She doesn't tell him where she's taking him now, but she seems to know where she's going now.



"What you've been doing," she says, quiet. "If you've been trying anything different. To get out, I mean. Since you left. Since those ... since they came by. Your clothes are ... all torn. You look as if somebody took a razor to you... or ... Is anything different?"



[Dylan Willis] Is anything different.



"It's darker," he says, wiping his left hand off on his pant leg and looking down into the water bottle before taking another belt off of it. He has to stop to get his breath back before he says, "But it's not... everything isn't burning. I can feel them, though, they're still Reaching, they're just not... they're not coming after me like they did last time, or... or... or if they are they're just taking their time about it, but it's getting harder to stay away from them, they've almost caught me a few times. It's easier to hide in the dark, though."



[K. R. Jakes] The water is almost all gone. He drank it so quickly that Kage has to wonder whether or not he'll breathe out steam when he speaks. If his body has turned into a furnace, if water won't even keep him going, if he even feels any salve from the (it was cold) liquid. Or if it's just not even a consideration for him. His nerve-endings aren't dead, they aren't, he doesn't behave as if they are, and yet. He just doesn't make sense. Not what he says, because however incoherent, fragmentary, however oversimplified his descriptions of the place he's in, he says enough that Kage gets a picture, thinks she understands as well as she can understand. She has no urge to enter his mindscape and look around. She has absolutely no desire to be where he is.



"I'm sorry," she says, and it isn't the first time she's said it, and she is frowning. "What ... If it's darker, what do you see? Right now, I mean? Do you ... do you think that you've ... What do you want me to do right now?"



[Dylan Willis] The truck's engine does not make a great deal of noise, she may notice after a while; the tires are not singing as they sluice over the snow covering the roadways. Other cars don't whoosh as they pass her on the left. The wet brakes don't squeal when she pushes down on the left-hand pedal. It's as dark as the sky just before dawn, just before the sun breaks over the lake and spills its light into the atmosphere.



It's going to start snowing. Or raining. Or hailing. That's a reasonable enough explanation.



What doesn't offer up a reasonable enough explanation is the fact that if she listens hard enough, she can almost hear what sounds like water slapping against the side of a boat.



"'Do you think that you've' what?" he probes.



[K. R. Jakes] The hush of a river against the bottom of a boat is an incongruous sound.



Kage, for a moment, is perplexed, and then tense (tension sings up her spine, reaches into the back of her skull, ties more knots, closes more doors). Her jaw hurts, and she loosens it deliberately; still, for a second, her fingers tighten on the steering wheel. It's winter, and in winter, a driver must be wary, but listen and understand where and what surfaces he or she drives over, the better to react if one hits a sudden patch of ice and goes hydroplaning out of control and into disaster. This doesn't fit. This is like the voices in the cemetery, the gibbering she could hear (briefly) around the mad mage, which didn't quite quit when she was in the car. They aren't far, at least, from where Kage is planning on taking Dylan for now, while she comes up with a still yet more cunning plan.



She doesn't pull over, yet, but she swallows, and she'd close her eyes again if she wasn't watching the street. If she wasn't, briefly, glancing sidelong at the nameless 'crow, her expression touched by something approaching musing. He never answers that question right away. "I don't know how to say what I was going to ask."



Brief pause. "Do you think that you have time to eat something. Do you," briefer pause, just ask it, "think that you've seen anything that might give you hope. What do you want me to do right now?"



[Dylan Willis] She keeps asking him that. The last time, he never answered her.



The other drivers directly in front of and behind her are squinting through the darkness, attempting to find familiarity in the world around them. The world is not completely disappearing beyond the darkness, but it has come out of nowhere, and the vast majority of them are finding that it didn't happen until they came upon the truck with the red-haired driver.



None of them make the connection, though.



Question after question comes his way, about what he thinks, about what he wants her to do, and he just stares at her for several seconds, dark eyes unblinking. She doesn't know that this man had been extraordinarily quick-witted before he lost his mind, that he had had a dry sense of humor and an ease in conversation that hid his insecurities about his education and his intelligence. She doesn't know that he had a natural charisma to supplement good looks that have been completely trashed by his trials. All she knows is what she has in front of her: a lost Visionary being tormented by his own psyche or, in clinical terms, a paranoid schizophrenic.



"Does it matter what I want?" he asks, and before she has time to answer: "It doesn't matter what I want, I'm just..."



He's getting agitated. This had happened when she asked him for his name.



"I'm just... I'm not going to get out of here as long as those demons are around, unless I can get by them, and the only way I can get by them is by Stepping, but the other side is even worse than this one, I can't..."



He huffs out a breath, then takes another swallow of water.



"They didn't send you, but there's a reason you're here. I don't know what... I don't know what it is, but I can't ask anything of you."



[K. R. Jakes] Kage is flushed. Because being near Dylan is like straying too near a fire and allowing it to burnish you; allowing it to boil your blood. Kage is frowning, because she can't help it, and because outside it's gotten even darker. Dark enough that she switches on her headlights and there isn't any fog, and it's daytime, and there is a storm outside, waiting up above the city, but it's not dark because of the storm -- not this dark. The Orphan glances out her window, almost misses the turn into a sleazy looking motel. It tries to be less than sleazy: it's got nice shingle-roof, nice faux flowers in the lobby, the cursive that proclaims Vacancy is almost elegant. There are two cars in the parking lot besides Kage's.



He is getting agitated and she doesn't want him to be agitated. But she doesn't want him to be a marauder, either, does she? She doesn't want him to be stuck on the Otherside while some spirit leeches away his vitality, again and again, forever, for eternity, holds him in place, gives him another version of Hell. She doesn't want to be the one to shoot him in the head so that it sticks. You need to step off this path. You're going in circles. This isn't good.



She takes a deep breath and hesitates, her hand on the door's handle. She heard water, and she knows -- knows, doesn't she? That there's no water. Still. She can imagine opening the door, and something dark, cold, black rushing across the pavement. Stop it, Kage: focus.



She opens the door, hops down to the ground, but stays facing Dylan. Her hands on the driver's seat. No seat-belt, apparently: that was bad. "Can you see me well? In the dark? What do you see? You don't have to answer. I'm going to get you a room and then some pancakes. Unless you'd rather have waffles. Or chicken." Calm and cool, that was Kage. Mundane questions are easy.



[Dylan Willis] The universe doesn't appear to care overmuch about what Kage wants. The Marauder gets agitated; he is what he is and doesn't appear to have the means necessary to extract himself from the path he's on; the Euthanatoi are going ahead with their plan to entrap him on the other side either until they can come up with a way to free him from his Hell or until they can find a way to kill him. Kage may not have to be the one to deal the killing blow, but she's running out of time if she thinks she's going to be able to save him.



According to the pages, there is no returning him to what he was. There is only degrees of sanity, and they are just as unpredictable and changeable as the Marauder himself.



Out of the truck she goes, cautiously, as though she's expecting a river to have introduced itself to the world around her. There is no river, there is no water. There is just a pavement, and the first few flecks of falling snow drifting down out of the sky.



Rather than getting out of the truck on his side, he climbs across the truck's bench seat and lets himself out on the driver's side. He, too, had not buckled his seatbelt. In his world, there probably is no seatbelt.



"I can see you," he says, before his boots connect with the pavement.



[K. R. Jakes] Kage puts space between herself and the truck and the nameless 'crow. Not a lot of space. Just enough that she can feel winter against her skin again. Just enough that, when Dylan comes crawling out, if he lost his balance for any reason, there's no reason he would come pinwheeling at her, grab her, touch her. He hasn't even once touched her, and she knows this, and she also knows that the violence she has actually seen [felt (sizzle)] him enact was, while not precisely provoked, not precisely unprovoked either. Maybe she shouldn't be as afraid of him as she is. The leading flake of snow touches her hair, then gets lost in the red when she shakes her head; the second flake touches her collar, then melts. When he's out, she raises her eyebrows at him, as if to say, You still behind me?



And she turns, keeping him in her line of sight, toward the lobby, and that is also where she walks, a quick step up from the asphalt to the kerb, unsnapping her wallet as she goes. Inside, there is an old man with white hair and dark skin, watching something on his ancient computer.



"I'm going inside," she tells Dylan, and, "You can come, or you can stay here." And she holds the door open for him, in case he wants to come. If he doesn't, she'll let the door close after a second (glass, she can stll see out; but can he see in?), and if he does, she'll smile wanly at the man and pay for a room. And some m&ms.




[Dylan Willis] He doesn't close the truck's door. It's as though it isn't even there, isn't even a consideration; he leaves it wide open, the dome light glowing behind him in the unnatural darkness, and wide open it remains unless Kage notices his failure to close up her vehicle and does it for him.



It is with great wariness that he looks around the parking lot, brown eyes searching the landscape as if in search of Them, as though to make sure there is nothing lurking in the shadows, nothing hiding behind whatever it is that there is inside of his head: with this heat, with his ramblings, one can imagine rocks and black trees, can imagine an industrial wasteland where demons are allowed to run free, tormenting those they find. He stands looking around, nostrils flared with the heaviness of his respirations, and then:



I'm going inside.



His head snaps towards her, but his gaze is not as sharp as his movements. He seems calm(er) compared to how he was in the alleyway a few moments ago, calm(er) despite the fact that he is clearly in a state of hypervigilance, calm (enough) to walk forward and join her inside the lobby of the motel where the old man is watching something on a screen.



The nameless 'crow does not look at him. He looks around them, his hands briefly finding each other in the darkness and wringing themselves together, as Kage initiates the transaction. The glass behind them fogs up, the air in the lobby becomes far warmer than it had been when it was just the old man. It catches the old man's attention. He doesn't connect it to the muttering homeless guy standing on the other side of his counter.



They're both doing a fine job of convincing themselves the other man doesn't exist.



[K. R. Jakes] The truck's door doesn't stay open; she does notice and shut it after him. Lock up tight. Be safe. The door is not allowed to slam; no thunderclap, no protest-from-the-air, no gasp. She has no desire to startle the dangerous [creature (man)] thing that she has looked for, found and brought to this place. Kage pockets her id, her credit card and her wallet, and when she turns to regard the nameless 'crow something inscrutable touches her eyes. They're very tarnished up with something, today, after all; very much a color that can't quite be pinpointed, although liars would say there was no tension in her shoulders, liars would say that she was easy in the marauder's company. Now that she knew what he was, now that she knew who he was, now that she knew too fucking much -- well; it's a little different. But only a little.



The old man hands Kage a keycard and she doesn't pocket this. This, she taps against her palm like a playing card, turning back only briefly to take it. She also doesn't touch the nameless 'crow, again; she doesn't skirt around him, but she can't bring herself to risk blistering her palm. Hopefully, he'll follow; hopefully, when she holds the door open, he'll understand, and she'll take him across the threshold [again], and hopefully she'll hear nothing except her own heart and the question [no. Not question (furious lady).] she wants him to answer and she doesn't quite want to ask.



Kage has always felt bad for the madman she ran into in the cemetery; it's different now afterall. Key-card to key-hole, and, begin like thus: "Is this okay? Are you okay following me? Would you like more water?" And the little safety light (it's not a lock, but it speaks of locked things) goes from red to green and she opens the door, steps over the threshold, and keeps the door open with her foot.



[Dylan Willis] Whatever the Marauder needs, it isn't sympathy. Sympathy is little more than an agreement to share in suffering; the last person who deliberately shared in the suffering of the man who used to answer to 'Dylan' found herself irreparably damaged, found her soul weighed down with the heavy grime of a taint that typically comes to magical murderers and the Euthanatos. She is still struggling to keep going despite its heavy and rapid accumulation, and all she had done was let herself inside the madman's Mindscape for a few minutes.



A few minutes had been all it has taken. Thus far, Kage has not tried to share anything but hospitality with this man, this man for whom hygiene has taken a very real backseat to simply surviving, and yet he looks at her like some sort of savior, like some sort of angel, like the woman who is going to help him off this path and onto another one.



He has no idea that tomorrow he will be thrust off the path he's on, forcibly removed from his searching. The man had been a modern-day shaman when he was still Dylan, had been a spiritualist and a healer, a self-taught Orphan who had visions of cabals forming and the Chantry remaining protected even in the event of its caretakers falling. And they had Fallen, and they were dead set on taking every other Awakened spirit in the Chicago area with them.



All he knows is that right now, he is being shown a hint of kindness by a woman who is terrified of him. She shepherds him over the threshold to leave the lobby, the old man looking after them but the madman oblivious to his presence, and then they pace down the cement walkway leading between rooms. The Marauder's hands are at his sides again, his eyes searching as they walk, and when the motel room door beeps and slides open, he seems to relax.



Kay Are has never brought him anyplace unsafe. She has guided him before. And now she asks if he's okay following her.



He steps over the threshold without hesitation, and then he turns and looks right at her.



"Are you leaving?"



[K. R. Jakes] The motel room is not the sort of motel room one would want their family to stay in. Dylan likely does not notice this. He likely does not notice that if there was a Bible in the chest of drawers by the bed (magic fingers) it is either chained to the drawer or stolen (or damaged). He likely does not notice that the ceiling is low, that there are a couple of faded stains on the wallpaper, that there is a chip in the lamp, and the television is old, but the dvdplayer is far too (stolen) new to really fit. There is a bathroom with toilet paper (very cheap) and generic bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a generic paddy of soap that will leave as much traces [brine] as it might wash away.



He likely sees something very different. Of course he does; she read the damned books. This is the last time they'll speak, although Kage doesn't know it yet. Tomorrow, she'll get a phonecall at night from Ashley, who will sound far, far more upset than Kage will sound, who will come close to crying. And soon after that, she'll listen to some magelet she has never before seen or heard of mention how Dylan was shot down in cold blood and how it shouldn't've been that way, and soon after that, Ashton will cling to her and tell her about Michael Willis and Marcelle, and in a rare moment of clarity, a dazzling moment of intuition, she'll see straight through Ashton and understand why.



What will not be happening is Kage, explaining what she thinks and feels about the situation, beyond a sentence, Bad things happen.



That's tomorrow, though, and the weeks after tomorrow. This is today, and yesterday she found out what happened to the man everybody's calling Dylan Willis, and she swallows, and looks the nameless 'crow in the eyes, and she says, "What you want matters."



[Dylan Willis] What he wants matters.



She keeps telling him this. She keeps asking him questions, asking him if what she's doing is okay, as though the idea had entered into his head that he had nothing in the way of choice left anymore.



According to the journals that the Orphan found in Marla Hollingsworth's nightstand yesterday, he had had no choice in what had happened to him. This had been orchestrated. She doesn't know exactly what they did to him, doesn't know whether they simply happened to help him accumulate enough Paradox that he blew himself into the Deep Umbra or whether they physically tortured him until his mind snapped or whether they made him see something that he couldn't handle. She knows that he was a person once, that he was important to a lot of people, though it will be weeks before she understands what he was to one of the Euthanatoi in particular.



Nobody knows that the 'she' he is looking for is his child, that if he can find out what happened to her then he'll be free from this place. All they know is that he is very, very dangerous. If he ever accepts his fate, if he ever embraces the Hell that he's been forced into, then this city will fall into darkness the likes of which they cannot even imagine.



Dylan Willis has become something absolutely terrifying. He has become a lesson. Right now, he is a Marauder, and that Marauder is staring at K.R. with eyes that aren't as wide as they are outside, with his chest rising and falling quieter, calmer.



"I want you to stay," he says.



[K. R. Jakes] "Okay," she says, after a hesitation, and after another hesitation, she slides sideways, lets the door shut. Idiot girl. She does not sit on the bed. She leans against the desk. There is a desk; it's cheap as anything is ever, and it's two steps away from the [too close (no comfort)] hall with a door to the bathroom. She folds her arms across her chest, then remembers m&ms, opens the bag, holds out her left hand in a c'mon-put-your-hand-out-and-I'll-give-you-some way. "I'll stay for a while."



She expects him to voraciously swoop down on them, staring at her, as he did with the pumpkin bread, as he's done with left over turkey and sandwiches and soup and everything else she's fed him [am I my brother's keeper]. She'd like to get him into the shower. She'd like his clothing not to dissolve when he takes it off. She'd honestly like to be anywhere else. She'd like to have found some way to Bring Dylan Willis Back, to Undo what the fuck has happened to him, but that hasn't happened. Yet.



[Dylan Willis] Though his build is still brutal in its power, he's gotten quite lean since the last time Kage saw him. This is not saying much, considering he was fairly hungry-looking when Kage found him; but he'd put on weight from eating just about everything that appeared in Kage's kitchen, and now it's gone again, fed to the inferno that is his metabolism, and he's been reduced to a sinewy but not skinny tree who moves slowly yet regards the world with quick eyes.



The door closes, and he almost slumps with relief. He reaches up to rest a hand against the wall, feeling it with his rough palm, using his strength to hold himself up, and then K.R. is offering him M&Ms. He eyes the bag for several seconds, and then he's moving forward, accepting however much of the chocolate pieces she'd care to dump into his hand before he's depositing them in his mouth, chewing quickly, the dye from the candy shells melted onto his flesh as he steps back and begins exploring.



She said she'd stay for a while. He doesn't know how long that is. All he seems to know is that he's safe, is that they've reached some sort of oasis where he can get himself put back together, and he starts stripping out of his clothes. They smell like asphalt and blood and grime, like time, like life carrying on without him; he tosses his Army jacket, devoid of a name, onto the bed, and the torn sweater he'd been wearing is turned inside-out over his head and tossed down beside it. Shirtless, dried blood stuck where lacerations used to exist, the nameless 'crow strides into the bathroom and resumes his preparations to shower in there.



He's talking, but it's not to her. His words are mumbled and muttered to himself, loud enough to be heard but too low to be distinguished. One boot, then the other, hits the floor, and a moment later, the water comes on. Even in Hell he knows how to operate a shower.



[K. R. Jakes] Her brother in law will not be getting his clothes back. He will, hopefully, never question too closely what his little sister-in-law wanted with them; it will become a point of contention in one or two arguments with his wife, perhaps, something along the lines of your batshit family, but that isn't for a while yet. Kage pours a lot of m&ms into Dylan's hands, and it's not much as far as last meals go, but it's better than literal garbage. He strides into the bathroom and she doesn't follow him.



This would be a perfect time to open the door to the bathroom and blow his brains out (gunshot [two] and prayer [Life mages are difficult]). Kage doesn't try, though, and when he finishes the shower, comes back out, Kage is still there, but now her coat is off, and she spread it over the bed, and she is lying down, the back of her left hand on her forehead, her right hand on her stomach, her legs crossed [demure] at the ankles, and her red hair a loose tumblespill. She was staring blankly at the ceiling, jaw tight, and listening to the rush of water from the shower, and thinking.



When the water stopped, she'd held her breath; when she heard him come on out, she turned her head to look at him, and after a second, she sat up.



[Dylan Willis] He takes a very long shower.



There is steam, of course, from the cold water of the shower hitting the warm air around him, but it is not the sort of steam that would result from skin-reddening hot water in a room temperature room. It does not billow out of the bathroom to hover around the threshold before disappearing, and he does not shut the door after he's stripped himself down to his bare (filthy) flesh and gotten in. Perhaps he isn't aware of the fact that K.R. is moving around, or he doesn't think she'll be looking in the bathroom--or whatever this is to him--after him.



When he's done, when he comes back out, he's got a white towel wrapped around his waist. His hair, which has grown long and shaggy in the last three months, is slicked back, leaving his widow's peak without anything to hide behind. His scraggly beard has been washed and trimmed, but not completely shaved. He's so clean compared to how he was before that he practically gleams, and he leaves wet, size 12 imprints in the carpet as he walks from the bathroom to the bed.



Sitting himself down on the edge of the bed, he's well within arm's reach of K.R. once she's sitting up. This close she can smell the shampoo and soap he'd used. It will fade with time.



"I shouldn't have asked you to stay," he says. It's a little less dark now, a little less hot. If he doesn't seem lucid, then at least he doesn't seem as though he's bleeding out all over reality, either. His speech is still rapid fire, fumbling over itself. "If... if they... it's the same as before, it hasn't changed, if they find you with me I don't know what... what they'll do to you, they could... they could make you fall, and you won't get back up."



[K. R. Jakes] "You didn't ask me to stay," she replies. He's within arm's reach; she does not recoil, but she doesn't relax, either. It is the same as before, in many respects. "You told me what you wanted; I wanted you to get it. So I stayed."



If they find you, he says, they could make you fall, he says, and you won't get back up, and Kage is still essentially furious [crusader (cavalier)] with knowing too damned much and she has to take a quick shallow breath and push it out [ardent, lady] as it were pretty hard to do. "I won't fall," she says, "And I don't think they're going to find you with me. I think they're gone. They are gone. The ones who put you here. And even if they aren't, they won't make me fall."



She knows Marla and Jackson are dead, but she also doesn't precisely think Magi just decide to Fall all on their own, and she believes, she will tell Ashley when Ashley calls her to tell her that Dylan Willis is dead (he's already --), that nothing is over, there's still shit to do, there's still whoever else M & J corrupted or whoever corrupted M & J and the possibility of fallout and a thousand things.



"You don't deserve to be in this place. You know that: right?"



[Dylan Willis] He listens. For whatever else he believes to be going on around them, for however safe he believes them to be, his focus is solely on the red-haired young woman--she isn't all that younger than him: she has his records, she knows he was born in 1979 right here in this city; she knows more about him than anyone else currently living in this city--as she speaks.



She won't fall, she says, and he takes a deep breath, slow and steady, as if to help digest what she's telling him. The ones who put him here are gone. That doesn't evoke any sort of a reaction in him, be it gratitude or relief or hopelessness. So far as he can tell, the demons are acting under the orders of the Ones: they don't need to be physically present in order for them to carry out their orders. Nothing's changed.



And then: you don't deserve to be in this place.



The Marauder takes another deep breath, sharp, his brow twitching. He's got his weight held up on one hand, fingers splayed against the cheap mattress top, musculature popping from beneath the skin of his arm.



"If I didn't deserve to be in this place," he says, "then I wouldn't be down here."



[K. R. Jakes] "Why do you think that you deserve to be here? What did you do? Will you -- can you? -- tell me?" And, as usual, she adds, "You can say no. It's," not at all, "fine."



[Dylan Willis] "I don't--"



He flinches, as though a powerful headache has just struck him, and his eyes drop from where they were observing K.R. to watch the fibers of his towel. That's not true. He does know. He may not remember, but he knows.



When he looks back up, he seems almost frantic. He doesn't say 'no,' though. If he doesn't react to the presence of Sleepers, if he reacts to the sight of Tradition Mages with paranoia and antagonism, one has to imagine he isn't afforded much opportunity to speak to anyone other than himself.



"Her mother died because of me," he says. "That's all I know. I know that I'm down here, and she's not, and if I can just get out of here then maybe... maybe I can see her, I can meet her, I hadn't met her when she died but she's... she's not gone, but I'm down here because I was trying to find her and it all just..."



His eyes widen briefly, as if the magnitude of the situation is too much to wrap his head around, and then he clears his throat. He's parched again.



"They put me here."



[K. R. Jakes] [orlly?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)



[K. R. Jakes] The Orphan listens closely to the nameless 'crow and watches him still more closely. He flinches; she almost does as well. Against all reason, she leans closer, and Kage has expressive eyes, for all they're so often difficult to read, for all they're so often surface water [lovely (catch radiance, hide shadows)], and they're expressive now of something married to upset. Her jaw is tight again and when Dylan has finished explaining, at least in part, just what it is he's looking for (there were no records of any children), she does something that she doesn't think is particularly wise. She's prepared, insofar as preparation is the same thing as ready to accept the consequences of, to hurt herself right now. What she does is scoot over, across the bed, and she puts her hand over Dylan's hand, and if he doesn't backpedal away or jerk himself upright within half a second, she resettles her hand, pulls herself up on her knees, and gives him a hug. Presses her forehead against his, for a second [don't burn me, please don't burn me].



And then she'll tell him to sleep, and she won't shoot him in the head.

And then she'll wake up, tell him she's leaving.

And she will leave.

Hit the books

one more time

or get her gun

call someone.



But she won't be seeing him again.