Cleaning the Dead

[Kage Jakes] Eventually,

there is a bedroom upstairs where they've set Li Daiyu's body. There's a lot of discomfort associated with what's left behind, after someone's gone: Passage (mystery). It shows, in the way people refer to the body, as if it has become uncomfortable, an alien word on a swollen tongue: the body, Li Daiyu, Li Daiyu's body, the dead person, it, she, what to call it?

Kage is done with what is actuall in her power to do. She has gone down to the Node, down to the Well-room, with Emily. She has given direction, and she has thoroughly -- very thoroughly -- looked over those who're dead and those who're unconscious, gathering information, holding it in her mind, waiting, there, to be put together into a picture that'll

well. Doesn't know what it'll do.

And it's when all of that's done that Kage goes upstairs, to a bedroom, where they've let Li Daiyu's body, and Daiyu's cabalmate is holding (her [what was once]), and has been for some time. If the door is shut, Kage knocks on it before she enters. If the door isn't, she knocks on the doorframe.

Says " - Ashley."

And we'll go from there.

[Ashley] Eventually,

there is a knock on the doorframe. James shut the door when he left Ashley alone in the bedroom and told her to take whatever time she needed. That they would handle everything. It took a weight off her shoulders: it was like someone had extended permission for her to grieve.

Li Daiyu is a mess. A shotgun blast nearly killed her when the battle started, and her front is blood, her chest is shredded to pieces. Her clothing is in tatters.

Ashley is not much better. Blood vessels on her hands are broken where the skin isn't torn, and the flesh of her knuckles is turning an ugly color: not quite the purple of a deep bruise, not quite the red of blood. A stain radiates out from her side where there is still a hole in her shirt, where there's a bullet. The curtain is closed, and the room is dark except for what manages to filter through.

Ashley has her head in the crook of Daiyu's shoulder, an arm thrown over the ruin in front of the Akashic. And that's how Kage is going to find her, cuddling a dead body like the act could bring breath back into it. Like it were an instrument, and she were a master, and this were the Ars Vitae, the Ars Spirituum.

She's not a master, and that's not what this is. When Kage enters her head turns a little, but doesn't lift. "Hi."

[Kage Jakes] Kage stops just inside the threshold. Because this is Kage, and Kage is a creature of poise, she manages not to look too dismayed; Ashley is likely too shellshocked, too injured, to read the pause as dismay. In the dim curtain-kept dusk of the bedroom, things are a soft bone-yellow: a chest of drawers, the bed's footboard; Ashley's cheek, Kage's white (although thoroughly besmirched, now) shirt.

Daiyu is ruined. Daiyu is dark and visceral mess, and her expression isn't a rictus of horror, is serene, because Daiyu was an Akashic Brotherhood, because Daiyu had last words, because Daiyu died well. Except: it doesn't look very well; it looks horrifying. Kage wasn't there, so she didn't see how the wound itself didn't stop Daiyu, how the Akashic Brother continued to be a thing of lethal elegance, how it so worried the two Nephandi who've been separated from the executed policemen, who're still alive (for now, alive), that they sucked the heat out've the air around her, froze her.

Kage takes stock. Her eyelashes flicker, but it's fine: she's cool, and levelheaded, and unlike the stereotype of redheads, Kage does not have a temper that flares out, is not (obviously) passionate. She runs her fingers through her hair, walks across the floor, finally, and sits on the bed next to Ashley. Scooches her over, closer to Daiyu's body, if necessary. Sits near the Hermetic's knees, and she's looking at Ashley's side, not at Ashley. Kage has never, ever been any good when it comes to medicine, to medical problems, to -- she's just never been good at it. She's never managed to learn how to touch Life, or even how to See it, although she's wanted to fora long time. She used to think that it was Him, keeping it from her out of spite, as a carrot to dangle, whenever she didn't do what He wanted. She doesn't think that anymore, precisely.

But she's still not good with it. She can't look at someone and know what's wrong. She can't even look at someone and know what's wrong in a mundane sense. But - " - were you shot?" A beat. And, separate from the inquiry into Ashley's physical well-being -- or not: "How bad?"

[Ashley] Ashley has spent most of the past two hours, since she knelt next to Daiyu and heard the last words, in tears. She stopped a little when she was outside on the lawn because she'd temporarily emptied herself, screaming at the node inside, crying in front of the well. Because she had to, in order to do what Work she could and make the house slide from the eyes of passersby.

It's obvious. Amid the gore there's a wet patch against Daiyu's shirt. Ashley's voice is thick, her eyes and nose are swollen. Her breathing is unsteady, though that might just be a result of the wound.

When Kage looks at it, it doesn't look like the bullet grazed Ashley, skimmed off a bit of flesh in passing. She's wearing her orange and blue striped shirt - it's one of her favorites, recognizable even amid all the blood - and there's a hole, and through that hole Kage can see the place where the Hermetic's flesh parted. Where the bit of metal burrowed inside, and she can't see where the bullet is now.

"Yes," Ashley says, and there's a sniff, a gasp of air like she's some beached leviathan, like she's trying to control her breathing again. Then, "It hurts." That's not a whimper. It's almost dismissive. The wound, it's the least of Ashley's worries right now.

[Kage Jakes] And then, an awkward moment. Awkward isn't just the purview of people with crushes, of people who don't know how to walk as if they're comfortable with who they are, people who choose words that aren't quite suitable for the occasion. Awkward isn't just the purview of the loveable nerd, or the hopelessly unrequited. Awkward is here, too. Because there's a moment where nothing fits, and Kage feels like she should say a thing, but doesn't know what to say, doesn't know quite how she should push, doesn't know if she should even hug Ashley if there's a bullet lodged between her ribs. What if she hugged her, and somehow pushed the bullet through her lungs, and then Ashley died just because she was hugged, and then Kage was just there, sitting on a bloody bed next to a dead Akashic and a dead Hermetic, some guy's brains on her teeshirt, and it would be her fault, and a horrible, pointless way for Ashley to go, and, and, and.

No. That won't happen. Probably won't. Kage says: "Does it hurt too much for a hug? Because I'd like one." A short beat. And then, "And we should clean Daiyu up."

[Ashley] Other than Daiyu, this is the person she is closest to in the city. Closer to than her remaining cabalmate, closer to than her apprentice, than any of the Traditionalists she knows in the city. Kage is one of the two people in the city who actually know what the person lying dead next to them meant to her, how much, what they were to each other. Kage is, right now, the only person she would allow to stay here.

And Kage is the only person she would push herself up off the bed for, lean over for, allow to hug her, right now. It's probably a mark of just how upset Ashley is that she clings. Even after her mother died, her grief was mostly private. She didn't cry in front of anyone, didn't press her face against someone else's shoulder and have to blink back, feel her throat grow tight.

But that's what she's doing right now.

Kage says they should clean Daiyu up. Ashley just nods, wordlessly.

[Kage Jakes] This is the thing about those who have Awakened.

They are still human.

They have the opportunity to lose that humanity in ways regular Joes and plain Janes can dream about, but rarely attain. They're not like other creatures who exist in the margins of the world (now [abiding]). Essentially: they are human beings, and they're easily cut, and they're easily wounded, and they're ruled by their hearts (their heads [their wants and desires]). When Ashley sits up, Kage watches her as closely as she can, and she doesn't bother trying to be subtle about the way she is studying the Hermetic, she doesn't bother dwelling in that place of opacity, of smoke, of inscrutability which is Home. She watches her closely, in case anything obvious falls out. No, Ashley is not the unfortunate guy in the Operation game, and it's not likely that she can be lifted up and shaken, so the pieces'll fall out, but still: Kage watches, closely. Just in case.

Then she hugs Ashley, very carefully. Ashley's reaction eases some of the tension in Kage's shoulders (although she winces, as a shrill of pain aches through her muscles, an alarum, remember what you've done, what the world'll do to you) because she knows how to deal with a crying girl. She's a sister. She's been a sister for most of her life. Some of the gingerness fades, once it becomes obvious that nothing's going to fall out of Ashley, and she strokes the shorter woman's hair, and looks at Daiyu while Ashley cries and (ow) clings.

"Okay." A beat. And, quiet enough to go unheard, really - "I'm sorry, 'ley." Kage starts to withdraw, because there are things to do. But it's a gentle sort've withdraw.

[Ashley] Even right now there's a part of her, in the back of her mind, that is whispering for her to pull herself together. That's the Tytalan part of her, the part of her that Victoria Kurtz had a hand in pushing, in digging in and drawing out, pulling it forth and then stretching it and covering her so that it existed impossibly on her outside. It's not the part of her that says things will be okay someday because Ashley doesn't have an inner voice that tells her those things. It says: get up, you have shit to do, get up, have some dignity.

So when she lets Kage withdraw and lifts her arm to wipe her face, tries again to exert control - this time successfully - it isn't because she thinks things are going to be okay, someday. She doesn't. Ashley has absolutely no faith in the idea that things will be anything other than the sky is falling, better deal with it, maybe there'll be some satisfaction at the end, maybe there'll be another obstacle surmounted, conquered, dominated, and maybe you'll just lose another thing you didn't think you could bear to lose.

Handing life those kinds of ultimatums is a bad thing, she's found.

She finds her voice, and she stays sitting up there next to the body, and she says, "Bring some water. And she has some spare clothes at my apartment, or her keys are with the motorcycle."

[Kage Jakes] Bad things happen. That's all Kage had been able to say, after Dylan had died. And Ashley hadn't wanted to accept that. Ashley'd been stung, into wanting more. Bad things happen; it's something Kage believes (faithful [reverent]), because she has observed that it is True. Good things happen, too. This is something Kage believes, just as ardently. Has to believe. Wants to believe, and so it is. She isn't thinking about the good things right now. There's too much viscera.

But Kage understands how Ashley thinks. Kage has understood how Ashley thinks for a long time; before she ever started thinking of the diminutive Tytalan as a friend (in fact, she'd never thought she'd think of the Tytalan as a friend [and that was why]). She gets that Ashley isn't okay, isn't resolving herself against some spark of hope or anything like that. She knows that Ashley's driven to move forward, because of her Will, because of the urge to be indominitable, because there's just one challenge after another. She gets it.

Gets that it doesn't make for a happy life.

Gets that, too.

"Come to a bathroom," she says, and reaches out - once - before she stands, to brush Ashley's bangs out've her face. It's not a slow, tender gesture; it's just careful. "Wash your face, if you think moving won't make your side worse." Kage glances down at her knees, at her shoes, and then presses her fists into the bed and stands up. "I can grab stuff from your apartment." Pause. "Will you stay over at my place tonight?"

[Ashley] "Okay." Ashley is happy that Kage asked her this, and it shows on her face. She doesn't want to be alone. That's another mark of how upset she is, how raw, how little Will she has left at the moment.

Come to a bathroom, says Kage, and the Hermetic eases herself off of the bed. It's more difficult than it sounds: she has to push up with her hands, and her hands are brutalized, tender, badly bruised. The knuckles look like shreds of meat where she struck them, repeatedly, against the stone of the well. Against the vessel for the node, the consciousness, she swore she'd protect.

She still wants to protect Catherine, because Ashley swore a vow, and there's this, this thing about Ashley that a lot of people miss: she's honorable. She keeps her promises, she'd rather give up her ability to Work for a little while than break a promise. There's also that "...I wish I could convince myself that the node is worth this." That whatever is good, that the people of the city, that guarding her territory, that it's worth this. Lost innocence, a walk through Hell, a dead mother, a dead lover. It's a lot of blood to shed.

She walks toward the bathroom and she doesn't have to search around up and down the hall for it. Ashley knows the house quite well.

When she reaches the bathroom, she reaches out and turns the knob on the sink, and the first thing she does is start to try to wipe blood from her face. She doesn't look into the mirror. She already knows how she looks: like a shell of a human being, like some ghost risen off a battlefield and given flesh, like one of the thousands of faces she saw twisting beneath knives in Dylan's red halls.

[Kage Jakes] The Orphan (initiate [once]) isn't known for her devotion to the Node. In fact, there are very few who know that she, briefly, for a handful of days, spent a lot of time in the library, in and out of every room of this house, looking for secrets; finding them, too. The Orphan has only stood beside the Node twice, now. Three times, if she includes Ashley's memory: that buoyant, soaring sense of well-being; Music, and Love. Kage's skepticism when it comes to the Node borders on irrational (rational [my doubts]). Kage folds her arms over her chest, and says, "Beauty's worth something when it's Truth."

That's how Ashley'll leave Kage, standing, arms folded, in the room where Daiyu is dead. Once Ashley is gone, Kage opens the curtains a little, allows sunlight back into the room, and looks at the yard from this vantage point, if the yard is visible from this vantage point. If not, she cranes to see, opens the window a crack, to let air come in and see what's going on. Summer-air, fresh and sweet and clear, and she takes a deep lungful of that.

She might say something to the body, privately. If she weren't so drained, she might try to look across, into the otherside, there's so much blood it should be simple, it should almost be automatic, easy to fall that way, but she doesn't expect there's much to see.

There are people Kage wants right now. People Kage wants to curl up beside. And it's not going to happen. It's okay: she's not really just a freelance research specialist or investigator or whatever it is she has on the new business cards. She's a Disciple without a Tradition, and she's difficult to frighten. She's fine.

She presses her fingertips into her temples, trying to figure where cloths to wipe the blood from Daiyu might be, where a basin big enough, where the fresh sheets, where. And she goes to get those things, bring them back into the room, leaving the window open ajar. Some of these things are in the bathroom, and maybe Ashley'll still be there, when Kage gets to that part.

[Ashley] The world makes ghosts of us. When they were still relatively new to each other, Daiyu put a hand on Ashley's arm after Ashley said that Edom killed her mother, and those were her words. They've never struck Ashley truer than right now, watching water cloudy with red (some hers, a lot Daiyu's) swirl down the drain.

A lot of the blood has dried, and it takes her a while to scrub it away. Some of it flakes, flutters onto the countertop, smears once it gets wet, flakes onto the floor. A lot of it has matted her hair, so after a moment's hesitance she warms the water, tests it against her palm and then sticks her head under the faucet.

There are people who can detach themselves, whose emotions run cold sometimes and who can just stop feeling for a little while, when things are too much to bear. Ashley isn't one of those people. She's always hungry, and like Kage she's passionate (and it's outward, maybe she should have been the redhead), and she feels. Things haven't dulled. She's just trying not to think about them long enough to keep those tears at bay again.

She looks down at her shirt, one of her favorites, and pokes a finger through the hole, because now it's just a rag and so is the orange undershirt.

When Kage comes into the bathroom, Ashley's hair is wet, hanging back in her eyes, and her face is red both from the heat of the water and from being scrubbed, and from tears. But it's clean. It's Ashley, not some picture snapped at a refugee camp or out of a war zone. She says, "I want to help you."

[Kage Jakes] "I said we... should clean," Kage says, an echo of Kage from just a few minutes ago. Which is to say, I figured you would. She kneels, in order to open the cabinet with -- towels, whether cloth or paper, and she says: "Do you know who we should contact? Does she have family, who'll want to see her buried? A mentor, who'll want to perform certain rites? I don't know anything about the traditions of the Akashic Brotherhood."

"I don't know really know what's right here."

And while she's down, kneeling on the ground, she subtly (not really [no]) eyes Ashley's side, trying to gauge whether she's still bleeding. Ashley bleeding out because someone with the ability to do some quick medical work didn't get here in time and Kage didn't insist on dragging her to the ER is also a horrible, and stupid, way for Ashley to go.

[Kage Jakes] [ooc: there should be an ellipses between know and really know! pretend it's there.]

[Ashley] "Her family is back in China," she says, "in Kunming. No mentor." Most of Daiyu's old cabal mates, the ones back in China, any mentor she had: they're all dead. Daiyu lost them in the Ascension War. That much, Ashley knows, even if she never tried to ask about the War at length. She sensed how painful it was, the way Daiyu sensed how painful the topic of music was for Ashley.

"She was brought up Buddhist and held to a lot of the philosophies, but she didn't really Believe," Ashley says. "So...someone who can do Buddhist last rites, all the same. I don't know her family, though, or anyone who would. My father could probably at least help with the rites or tell us what to do."

Kage is eying Ashley's side, and the blood seems to have slowed to a trickle. Still wet, the wound, but it's no longer a steady flow. What is worrisome: it's low, a gut wound, and the likelihood of it having plowed through an organ or two is high. Kage is eying Ashley's side, and after a moment Ashley notices. "Emily called Ashton," she says. "I can't go to a hospital. I have some...some really strange medical records. I try not to risk it."

[Kage Jakes] [Hmm. Wits + Streetwise to remember a shady emergency room where they won't ask no questions about a bullet wound as long as cash is involved?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Ashley] There's another pause before she says, "Hu Jinhai. I didn't get a chance to meet him, but he's a really old friend of hers, he works at the...at the White Lotus Studio, so I can..." And she trails off, swallows hard. Doesn't want to think about going back to the studio, but what has to be done has to be done.

[Kage Jakes] That word (haunts [a chord]). Again. Belief. Kage doesn't know much about the Akashic Brotherhood at all, but she does know Daiyu didn't identify herself as particularly traditionbound. Not in the stuffy, stagnant way of so many old Tradtions. She said she did things a little differently. Kage considers this, and then thinks about Sam, who she'd meant to put in touch with Daiyu, and she doesn't realize that she's sighing.

"If Ashes doesn't show soon, there's a place I can take you for a bullet wound. Money'd be a help, though. They've got good tacos." A beat. "Is there gauze, or something? Just - put pressure on the wound, so your cup doesn't runneth over. Gauze, a -- big bandaid, or something." Kage is laden-down with stuff, now, and she steps backwards, bumping her shoulder against the side of the door. Wince.

She seems to be waiting for Ashley to leave the bathroom first. "I know where the White Lotus Studio is," she says. And then, "And arranging Buddhist rites should be fairly simple. There's a pretty large community down in Chinatown."

[Ashley] Daiyu wasn't particularly traditionbound: it was one of the things that attracted Daiyu and Ashley to each other. They were primal souls from cerebral Traditions, knew their philosophies, knew their beliefs (which complemented, weren't the same but complemented) but knew the rest, too. They knew without having to speak. But Ashley knows that she would still want Hermetic tradition to be observed when she dies, so she can only assume the same of the Akashic.

"I'll talk to Hu Jinhai and find out where her family is, and see if he knows where she'd have wanted to go back to, in China," Ashley says. "It's...I should do this, for her." Even though Kage knows where the studio is.

She finds gauze in one of the drawers. Finds medical tape, too. She has things similarly laid out in her bathroom at home (remembers helping Daiyu with a wound after they came out of the Umbra) and presses the gauze there, tight, tapes it. Keeps a hand pressed to the wound, and walks out of the bathroom ahead of Kage.

[Kage Jakes] It's, Ashley says, and ineloquence grabs her throat; she changes her sentence. I should do this, a beat, for her, and Kage half-smiles. Not a real smile, really: the ghost of a smile, the shadow cast by a fall of moonlight; it's weary, and there are lines around her mouth when she smiles, and these lines're sketched out now. Her eyes are black, and she says, "Yes, but I can give you a ride."

Kage thinks it's too soon. It has to be too soon. Too soon to ask Ashley to talk about Daiyu. Kage knows that there are stages of grief, and Kage knows that there's the possibility of stagnation; Kage knows death, for all she'd like not to sometimes, and she knows life in the aftermath of it. But it's just happened. She says, as they walk down the hall, back to the room: "I locked -- warded? -- the two black-hearted fell-down fuckers in. Em helped. And uh, I couldn't get the house. The shine wasn't cooperating."

"'ley -- what happened? You don't have to tell me while we're tending Daiyu's body, but I want to know."

[Ashley] I can give you a ride, says Kage, and those words are simple. The offer is simple. Ashley's throat still tightens with emotion, all of a sudden. Carefully, because Kage is carrying things and Ashley doesn't want her to drop them, and carefully, because Ashley has a bullet lodged in her ribs, she hugs Kage, and it's brief but it's tight, her head presses against the small of the Orphan's back for a few seconds. "Kage? I don't want anything to happen to you, either," she says.

They aren't demonstrative people, either of them, and chances are she won't say anything like it again. She releases Kage and walks back into the bedroom, prepares herself to see Daiyu there again, blinks hard once and stops there in front of the bed. When Kage says that she warded the Nephandi, she nods. "I'll talk to them." It's the first hint of temper she's shown.

It vanishes, because Kage says she wants to know what happened, and Ashley says, "I'll tell you, but...not right now." Right now, it would make her relive it, right now it is all too new. Kage is right.

[Kage Jakes] [>.>]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 9 (Failure at target 6)

[Kage Jakes] [
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 8 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Kage Jakes] Ashley presses her head against Kage's back, between her shoulderblades. Kage has long-since gathered her hair back into a loose pony-tail, something she can still comb her fingers through, something that mostly stays out of her eyes, out of her face, something that can be undone and ungathered if she needs to, and it kinks up where Ashley's forehead presses, split-ends sparking. Kage pauses, when Ashley hugs her tightly.

Ashley doesn't see Kage's expression. Doesn't see how Kage's dark, dark eyes go liquid and luminous, far, far too expressive, far, far too big for her face. Ashley doesn't see the corners of her mouth tighten, or how her lips part after, the quick-cut glance to the side, and doesn't get much hint, either, because Kage controls herself. Blinks, and hugs the towels closely to her chest [like a teddy bear, or a stuffed mouse, or...]. Smirks, but it's the ghost of a ghost -- the Echo of an echo. Swallows, says - " - I'm not going anywhere with a lot of anything right now."

A beat. And: "I'm glad you're alive, 'ley."

And Ashley releases Kage, and that's good. Kage resettles the towels, paper and un-, and follows Ashley into the room. There's more light, now; it cuts away the gloom, at least the aura of it. Kage dumps the things she brought into a chair, and then she starts by taking off the shoes. To not right now, Kage only nods. She might have insisted, if she hadn't spoken to Molly earlier today; if she didn't know some of what was going on, and only then because she thinks Ashley can take it. Then again, she might not have.

Kage knows all about when not to say a thing, and how useful that is. Helpful, too.

She's a sister. She cares about people.

[Ashley] Ashley doesn't see how that liquid pools in Kage's eyes, there at the corners, there at the rims, but doesn't spill. She doesn't see how Kage's lips part as though she has to catch her breath. She doesn't see any of that, and to Ashley, it doesn't matter. It's not people that matter to Ashley, it's persons, and when a person matters it's heedless and headlong: she doesn't give a thought to whether it's returned. She doesn't worry about what the other person feels, or what she is to them. It's just there, and it burns, and it's relentless, her affection. It doesn't let go easily.

Kage has towels in arm, and Ashley reaches up and takes one of them. While Kage goes to fill the basin she places a hand against the side of Daiyu's face, begins wiping it clean with the towel: cradling her head as though the body were living. It's not purposeful, that tenderness. Just instinctive. Most of Ashley's good qualities are.

[Kage Jakes] [...faaaaade.]