Undo It

Ashley McGowen] All told, it's not been a bad evening. She went out and had something strange, new and rather delicious for dinner at a Greek deli she hadn't known was there. She saw her new Hermetic colleague and had a chance to introduce him to two new magi. Nathan had some words to say in regard to the incident at the Happy Family that, all considered, were rather kind and made her feel as though her judgment in trying to protect Wharil was not entirely faulty. She met a Virtual Adept she didn't know (shit, was that guy flirting...? She's too out of touch to even know anymore) and updated the newcomers on the city's current situation.



And now Kage needs to talk about something. Ash is a bit concerned, really; Kage sounded tired on the phone, and there's that niggling sense that she wouldn't have asked to crash at Ashley's place if circumstances weren't semi-dire. Dylan showed up, maybe?



A young man in an argyle sweatervest and thick glasses holds the door to the brick walk-up open for her once she reaches it. Ash gives him a nod and makes her way upstairs, to where Zane (dropped off only a few hours ago) is waiting. Stomping some snow off her shoes, she heads inside and breathes.



[Ashley McGowen] [Perception + Awareness]



[K. R. Jakes] They say that the devil's knack is in the timing. They say that timing isn't everything. They say that timing is everything and, boy, if timing is and isn't everything, it sure is. Ashley has time to relax. Ashley has time to consider her day. Ashley has time, if she so desires, to wash her face, to think about a shower, to open a book and thumb the pages (what do Virtual Adepts know, anyway), to reconsider calling Kage again.



Then: knock, knock, knock on the door.



[K. R. Jakes] Hard knock, knock, knock. The door is just in the way.



[Ashley McGowen] She does indeed take a few moments to clean up, to change out of jeans that are wet around the ankles from melted snow and contemplate a shower to melt away the bite the wind left on her flesh. Ultimately she decides against that, though; she isn't sure how much time she has before Kage is going to get here.



So instead she adds a kettle to the stove, recalling that Kage too is a tea aficionado, or at least is appreciative of it, and feeds Zane. Letting the dog crunch for a few minutes at the food in his dish before tusseling with him in the living room to ensure that he is calm and sedate when company is over.



Then there's a knock at the door.



When Ashley answers there's an air about her that verges, dangerously, on good cheer. She almost smiles at Kage as she holds open the door to invite the redhead inside. "Hi, Kage."



[K. R. Jakes] The woman who stands outside Ashley's door does not (almost) smile. Not even automatically. Not even out of reflex or courtesy. No. The woman who stands outside Ashley's door has her hands in the pocket of her gray-as-fog coat. Her jaw is imperious; her chin is proud. Her throat is slender, and her skin is as pale as birchwood at night when the moon is halved, as pale and as shadowed. She looks almost carelessly poised, really, Kage does, because whatever else she is, whatever else happens, she carries herself with this. She is not looking at the door, when Ashley opens it; she is looking down the hall. Her lashes are clumped together, her eyes are red-rimmed, and -- okay. Kage R. Jakes is pale right now, but only right now. Her skin feels hot. When Ashley opens the door, she turned her head, looked at the other Mage, and she stepped acros the threshold.



Deliberate (devil). The perceptive -- or anyone who was concerned, and looking closely -- would notice that her breathing is a little rapid. That her eyes are dark, but they're burnished with something. The muscles in Kage's throat work, and she says, her hands still jammed into the pockets of her coat, "Hi, Ashley. Sorry about disturbing your night." That 'apology' is so completely drained of meaning as to be almost unnecessary.



It's as pale as she is. It could mean the interruption her phonecall earlier was. It could mean whatever's up that has her at Ashley's door, actually reaching out to another mage, at whatever the fuck clock in the morning.



"Do you want to sit down?"



[Ashley McGowen] Kage's eyes are rimmed with red, the lashes are thick with...the residue of tears, it looks like, and the good cheer fades like a magic act. It's there, and then it's not, and in its place is a wariness, a concern - though for herself or for Kage, even she is not sure. Transformation.



"Yeah," she says, as Kage passes the threshold into the place where the world makes the most sense to the Hermetic. Somewhere safe and secure with boundaries to the outside world that are done up in runes and reinforced by raw strength of Will. "You look like you need to sit down too."



Sit Ashley does, sliding into the spot at the corner of the leather couch that she has taken up before. Tea forgotten, until the whistling at the stove becomes so insistent that neither of them can ignore it. She tucks her feet and ankles beneath her, keeping her right side directed toward the Orphan. "Is everything okay?"



[K. R. Jakes] "No," she says. "That's okay."



Kage isn't going to sit down yet. Kage is going to stand (slender [salt]) and Kage is going to study the room for a moment before she, instead, studies Ashley. Her eyelashes look as if they'd been gunked together by tears; her eyes are dry now, but of course, they don't look dry. Her blood heats up, her cheeks burn, and she doesn't even realize it, because she pales right after (just as quickly). She's totally out of touch.



And she says, again, "No."



She did follow Ashley over to the couch, even though she chooses to remain standing. She is standing still. "I went back to the white fence house," she says, and then her voice just stops in her throat. Whatever she was going to say, felled down dead. She tries again: "I went back after I dropped you off. I put the beads in a safe place, for now. Until we can," briefer pause. "I went back and I continued looking, and I found more."



Her voice is heating, as she speaks; her voice is becoming luminous with fury, contained [a cup full of brine]. "About what they were doing, and Ashley," a sudden halt. Deep, deep, deep breath -- she is, actually, tensing now, and her heart is beating very quickly, although neither of them is aware of that. "Some of it was about you. I'm saying that so you stay interested. You are interested, aren't you, anyway? I'd like to think you are. Because even if he was an asshole, it doesn't matter. This is just too much. I'm not saying this is your fuck up. This is beyond a fuck up. It isn't anybody's. It's everybody's. I just."



Pause. "Beginning, okay." What follows, then, is Kage telling Ashley about what she'd found out after Ashley left for rest and some re-stitching of her will. What follows, then, is Kage telling Ashley about the diary, about a woman who was killed, about two who were injured. Chris White. Alice McIntyre. All according to plan. She, very matter of factly (no, because Kage is too passionate, and it is showing right now), starts telling Ashley about this package, about A.M. and D.W. picking up some package and how they were to be dealt with later.



An outbreak of the walking dead in South Side? Yeah. They knew about it. They wrote about it. "And didn't they mourn that Dylan Willis didn't fall then? They spent words, they squandered them all over the place, with wishing -- "



[Ashley McGowen] Her eyes are red and her cheeks burn and she stands like a slender bastion against the horror she found at the white fence house, as though Will were enough to make this not true, as though sheer anger were enough to purge the Nephandi's leavings out of existence. Ashley rises back to her feet and stands facing the Orphan, gaze focused on her and, as she continues to talk, one hand raises (a salute to this Will) and rests on Kage's elbow.



Because she's watching all of this fall together like some twisted puzzle that perhaps they could have put together, if she had investigated as thoroughly as she'd planned. If she and Wharil had wondered more about the zombies in Bronzeville or if she and Jarod had followed up on that sacrifice they found in the derelict. About that package Marla wouldn't tell her or Dylan about.



She remembers blood filling her mouth and slick wet beneath her hands and the smell of red and the way people look when they're splayed open on a table with all of their secrets laid bare. She remembers the way flesh sounds when it's shredded. She remembers a chorus of screams, a harmony of anguish and the prison without a door.



The Hermetic bows her head, jaw tight. "...Okay. So this was...they did this to Dylan intentionally. And planned to deal with some of the other people they knew?" Me too. A.M.



[K. R. Jakes] She laughs, the kind of laugh one does when one isn't really laughing. Short and soft: a tangle of fog, of ashes, of water-weeds on a river, loosening; it's a husk, contains a ghost. Her eyes are large, see, and she blinks once, eyelashes sweeping across her cheekbones, blinks twice, as if she can't quite believe it. She's not crying, though. There are no tears. "Yes. That blackhearted bitch wrote about herself, Dylan Willis, that blackhearted bastard, getting into it fisticuff-like but slick, dangerous, fucked, all together. She wrote every day, I mean, I know you saw, you felt those black-roaded beads, but ..."



The Orphan doesn't even realize that she is pressing her fingertips into her temples. She doesn't grab her head in a frenzy, doesn't pull her hair, she finally pulls her hands out of her pockets and presses her fingertips into her temples, hard. Ashley may see, on her palm, where her fingernails dug in, red crescent moons surrounded by white skin, shading slowly to normal. Kage is unhappy, see. Very, very unhappy. And she raises an eyebrow at Ashley, precise and unconsciously elegant. It isn't a class thing. It's just the shape she makes.



"But okay. Every day they wrote something. Except for a few days between November 2nd and November 4th. November 5th they wrote one line: We've finally broken him." Very brief pause, and then, even if Ashley says something, she's continuing: "But you know what? They didn't stop. They just kept doing more and more and they'd planned to have everybody Fall. He was just a distraction they were going to use while they Corrupted, while they counted hearts off into their -- they just wanted to."



[Ashley McGowen] Kage isn't crying, and neither is Ashley. The Hermetic withdraws her hand from the other woman's arm and they come up to her chest, folding across it so that her hands grip either side and her body is enfolded between her arms. Hugging herself, as though she can contain that vulnerability, and by containing it she can make it go away. They broke him.



Ashley does not say anything. Because she has been accused of being cold, of being callous, of being indifferent to the suffering of others, and in most cases that is true. But -wanting- to do what Jackson and Marla did is entirely out of her purview, and aside from that - Dylan's suffering is her suffering, and it's taken shape and form and life in her own mind.



"I saw what they did to break him when I joined Minds with him," Ashley says, after a moment. "It would have broken anyone."



And then a deep breath in, and it seems to swell her confidence, her conviction, as much as it swells her lungs. "They're dead. And what happened to Dylan is everyone's fault. This...doesn't change anything, but I wish it did. We're just going to have to fix it."



[K. R. Jakes] "No," she says, or agrees, and now she is raking her fingers through her hair, holding it in a knot at the top of her head. It doesn't want to be held; it falls apart. Her eyes look very large, haunted, and now maybe the fact that she is very tired is bleeding through. Her voice doesn't get wild, even when it shades [tarnishes (corrodes)] up with intensity, even when it sharpens (brightens) into something that couldn't be a weapon but could be a compass. "This doesn't change anything because it was already there, but if it was done to him, we know it was done to him, there is a way to bring the man you all keep talking about back. Maybe the way isn't easy. Of course it isn't easy; but it's there. He doesn't have to -- this just. I thought about it all day, I thought about it in the shower, about -- look. It can't happen by going into that place he's standing, that doesn't make sense, because that's the trap, and it doesn't open from the inside, unless maybe you're fully there. I don't know. I realize that I'm rambling a little, because I just want to -- "



"I just want to undo it. Or stop it. So that he knows, so that the thing he is now knows he's going good. He's not in a circle anymore. He's going out. Because what I was saying before, he has a heart, you know?" Hard tone. Diamond would chip, baby: "And they may be dead, but who knows if they're completely gone. They've left fingerprints. Not on the white fence house -- but who knows where else? The streets."



[Ashley McGowen] "I know," Ashley says, her tone raw as she listens to Kage ramble and protest. Her eyelids drift shut, because between the intensity of the woman before her and the intensity of memory and the steady, relentless bombardment of her own thoughts, it is almost too much. This was the mistake the first time: there may be a way to help Dylan, but going inside is not the way to do it.



"I don't really know if there's anything of him left, though, Kage. Or if it's all been destroyed by what he saw. He lost his damned Name." There is a special stress on that last syllable, and perhaps Kage knows: to change one's Word, one's Name, is to change their soul. He has been given a new one, something Else now encompasses everything that was Dylan Willis.



"Maybe you're right, though. I just...have no idea what to do to help him if I couldn't guide him out. Maybe we can bring him back. Subdue him."



[K. R. Jakes] She knows. She saw, after all. She said as much back when Wharil and Ashley came to her apartment, thinking they were going to find someone they'd thought would be a leader either trapped by something or selfishly shacked up in someone's apartment. She said as much when the half hour was up, and she gives Ashley a perplexed look. "I know," finally, because Hermetics, they never listen, do they? "But I don't see why something unnamed can't be named again. It's only," a brief pause.



"It's only I know that he's dangerous, and I hope that Wharil, Ashton and that other name they keep mentioning, I do hope that they're looking for him, that they take him out of where he is. I just hope that there's something else before that happens... so I'm going to go."



Kage is not unaware that Ashley is raw, that Ashley is scraped thin by the news. She isn't even uncaring about it, because that isn't how Kage is. She's listening to it, and she's musing, and she's holding her hair away from her face, and she's letting her hand drop, and she's flicking up her collar. Ashley cannot feel how ardor still lingers in the air around Kage, a map, a compass, a star. Cannot feel the wither [.winter - ] inherent in it. But it's there, strong magick used recently.



"But I wanted to tell you what I found. And that the book is gone, and so is the knife, the black-road beads."



[Ashley McGowen] Can something that's lost its name be named again? Yes, perhaps. She doesn't know why that wouldn't be feasible. But he still wouldn't be the same, and it would take stronger magics than any of them here possess. The alternative? Call in allies. Maybe that could be done.



So all she does to Kage is nod.



And then, after a moment, "How did you dispose of what you found?"



[K. R. Jakes] The Orphan studies Ashley for a moment (no power lust, Ashley? no regret? no desire to sift through Qlippothic ritual and understand it? become stronger through understanding of the Corruption?). For maybe longer than a moment. Then she exhales, slowly, and tells her. The bare bones, just enough; no details, no flourishes. Kage, as usual.



[Ashley McGowen] Ashley's expression is unreadable. But Kage knows, and Kage has the right of the Hermetic in front of her. It isn't that Ashley has any desire to Fall, it isn't that Ashley doesn't believe she wouldn't be tempted by Qlippothic energies. But she genuinely believes it is possible for -someone- to study them, understand them, without this happening - and so overcome them, render them powerless someday. Perhaps it could be her.



(It won't be.)



She listens to what Kage tells her, accepting that the Orphan destroyed those objects, any link she might have had, and she is not upset. There will be other chances to sate her curiosity. She just gives Kage a nod. Then, quiet: "Are you okay leaving? You can still crash here if you need to."



[K. R. Jakes] "I'm okay," she says, pressing her palm against her forehead. Dropping her hand, completely; red hair tumbles, down, down. She needs to cut her hair soon. It's getting too long. "I'm calm," she says, and she is calmed, if not calm. The Orphan offers Ashley a rueful smile, and it doesn't quite touch her (haunted [those rituals (headache)]) eyes, because truthfully, she is drained. And still ardor, ardent, beloveding, dynamic, still: just still. But it is a good thing that Marla and Jackson are already dead. Kage is a promise, see. "But maybe I'd like to lie down on your couch for an hour before I go on my way."



[Ashley McGowen] "All right," Ashley says, gesturing Kage toward the couch. And the look that lurks behind her eyes also says that it's lucky Jackson and Marla are dead. That Ashley has been shaken by the news, that a part of her that was ripped to pieces on the first of this year has been rent again. That since that first of the year she has been changed irrevocably.



Kage lies down and, because Ashley somewhat suspects that lying down for an hour will turn to sleeping, is told that there's a blanket draped over the back. And the Hermetic takes her chair, thumbs over the pages of the book on the coffee table (stupid Virtual Adept...and the evening had been going well.)



And they are swallowed by the apartment's hungry silence.



[K. R. Jakes] [roll credits!]