The Topic Will Keep - 11.9.2013 [Jack]

Nobody

[Une Mask of the Night?]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )


Molly Toombs

So far as the last several weeks have been, Molly's life has overall been what one would call mellow.  She hasn't had any strange acquaintances stopping her on the sidewalk, detouring her path and guiding her into trouble in quite some time.  She hasn't felt the seize of grave danger at her throat, she hasn't felt the need to protect that same throat, in well over a month.

Up until Halloween Night, anyways, all had been peaceful.  Halloween itself, though, had stirred up realizations and curiosities within the woman.  During the course of her adventures in trying to burn, then deciding not to burn a particular envelope that apparently held a story much deeper and stronger than she may ever realize, she came to learn that ghosts were a strong enough presence to touch her spine and steal her voice.  She also learned that her one friend in the world who knew what she knew and still had a pulse had a particular... association with these half-here mostly-gone 'Shades' (as he called them).  Having been surprised by what she was able to learn from small business bookstores about vampires the last time she went on a learning binge, she decided to go back to the same stores she had hit up last time, but now with a new subject to search for.

Dusk was falling earlier and earlier each day, and by the time Molly had reached her third bookstore on this journey the sky had gone bruised gray-purple all over, with only the faintest hint of orange on the western horizion, where the clouds were pink like strokes of wild paint in the sky.  The day had been downright pleasant, outstandingly so for how far into November it was, and Molly took advantage of it by leaving the heavy red peacoat at home and opting for a sweater and scarf instead.

Outside of the last store on her journey, a shop called Tattered Cover, Molly locked her bike up and removed her tote bag from the bicycle's basket, shouldering it instead.  Upon walking inside, the tinkling of a door bell announcing her arrival, Molly combed her wavy (dyed) dark hair out with her fingers and began her search for the 'Ghosts / Hauntings' section.


Nobody

The darkness came and when the darkness came so did the creatures who thrived on the dark who were fed by it who lived in a world that was nothing but shadow and moonlight and starlight and shadow a lot of shadow the dense shadow of underground and the slender shadow of the city. The darkness came and Jack who was never Jacky Boy who was not Jack-O and not Jack-a-nape and not Jack-of-knaves but the Jack who was nobody at all that Jack yes that very one the one whose face you'd be unlucky to see the one who you'd not see at all the Jack of Secrets the Jack of Cats and Rats and: Jack. He came with the dark after the last hint orange had burnt out in the west guttered out swallowed up came when the night was night, understand? That's when Jack who is nobody came to a little occult bookshop down a little dirty alley and a little creepy flight of stairs in Denver's little downtown where Molly Toombs has gone to read up on ghosts and the people who'd call them shades instead of haunts and haints and spectres.

Jack comes with the dark because he must because that's the spell see it keeps him there but he comes to the bookshop on a particular quest and the quest is a book and the book is for him and it is behind the counter with other customer holds. The Jack who enters the bookshop is This Jack:

A Jack of middling height and a perpetual squint, obvious glaucoma in his left eye, the pupil distended, the eyeballs yellow. This Jack is nothing much to look at, it's true. Pigeon-chested young man, mid-twenties maybe, or maybe older, maybe early-thirties, who's to say? Pigeon-chested, a little bit of scruff on his chin that he should probably just give up trying to cultivate because it's not going to work it's never going to work all the ability to grow hair has migrated to his eyebrows, which are extremely thick, Frieda Kahlo thick, an over-sized adam's apple, sallow cheeks, colouring pale like he never sees the sun and he's not eating well, hair sandy and slicked back but curling around the ears, clothing -- well. His jacket is worn-out corduroy complete has leather patches on the elbow and there's a pair of glasses in the breast pocket of his jacket and the bottom of his trousers and he's wearing a sweater under the jacket that is a really bad color for him. His clothes are ill-fitting all around, sloppy without being dirty except for where he stepped in a mud puddle or whatever it is that happened. His shoes are --

The picture is complete enough without talking about his shoes. A man's shoes should not be mocked. They're his soul. They carry him all around and once they go to pieces what's to happen hm what's to happen?

The young man who is sometimes called Jack lopes over to the front counter first and foremost. He is a loper, this Jack, all lankstery stride and this air of not quite knowing what to do with his length of limb, a hesitation to it like he's never known what to do with himself, like his body just gets in the way all the time. There he quietly gives a name, a name that is his name because he has claimed it!, and they give him a book in return. He holds it up and says he wants to look around, so he heads over to a corner that is out of the common way, away from the mirrors that'll tell the shopkeep thief thief thief!!!!, a particular corner that he knows which is

by sheerest chance, naturally

near the section on ghosts. There is a chair there. Comfy. Old. Worn-in. Settled. A pillow with an ugly little embroidered dog on it. There is a less comfortable wooden bench, like somebody'd found it outside and thought, hah! Perfect for a bookstore.

And maybe there's a Molly.


Molly Toombs

As a matter of fact, this little corner actually does house Molly.  She observed that the chair was well worn, but comfortable looking.  There were indents in the cushions where people of all shapes and sizes have settled to read.  The arms of the chair are worn down too, no doubt from more lithe people leaning back in a corner of the chair and kicking their legs over the arm.  Molly wasn't quite thin or petite enough to pull that off, though.  Instead she had checked to make sure there weren't stray springs hiding within cushion fluff waiting to attack her hindquarters, leaned down to sniff the furniture and make sure it didn't smell like old person (or young person) urine, and when satisfied that these qualifications were met (and they were), she'd settled down into the seat sitting upright instead of lounged about.

She appeared as a fairly average woman herself.  She's of average height, with a face that is plain featured, but not actually plain because it was covered in freckles.  Those freckles betrayed the fact that the dark dark brown that she wore her hair as wasn't her natural color, even though she tried to help the illusion by coloring her eyebrows with a pencil as well.  She was heavier than what movies and magazines suggested to be ideal, but if you asked her that curvy padded figure was her best feature.  She dressed it well, too, in a pair of light washed tight jeans, a pair of black boots that came up to her calf, and loose white blouse with large floral print over it.  She had a heavy black cable knit sweater laid over the back of the chair, and was sitting leaned back with her legs crossed at the knee, right over left.

She held a small hardback book in her hands, balanced just up from her knee, and was somewhere around the twenty page mark, apparently just reading her way through since the book couldn't be more than seventy pages long.  The hardcover was a robin's egg blue, with white text etched into it that simply said: "What and Who Lies Beyond".

From the way that she was pinched at the nose and how her eyebrows where knitted together, it's easy to assume that she's not finding this book very helpful-- that or she's struggling to understand (or believe) what information she's soaking up from the pages.

She's engrossed enough in the book that she doesn't bother to take time to observe those around her.  This isn't to say she doesn't notice the homely man, somewhere in her age group, who slips through to the section where she resides.  Her eyes (clear and true blue, not the emerald of the isles that her blood comes from) hopped up to him, simply to notice that he was there and not holding a gun or knife or something like that.  Her lips would pull to form a small, polite little smile, but they'd go neutral as soon as her eyes hit the page once more.


Nobody

This Face has a surprised smile. There are some people who have sly smiles or engaging smiles or smiles that are wide and young or knowing and old but This Face just has a surprised smile as if every time he smiles he doesn't know how it happened. Up hop Molly's eyes when he comes 'round, and he's a quiet chap, This Jack, All Jacks, yes, all Jacks are quiet because Nobody is quiet, quiet though he adjusts the angle of that glossy wooden bench gleaming under the bookstore's ambient light. See how scratched up the bench is, how much it belongs in a library? How weathered it is, how the brown fades here and there in streaks? He adjusts the angle of the wooden bench and Molly's eyes hop up and she forms that small polite little smile and This Face gives her that surprised smile of his own and he scruffs under his chin with a manner that is bemused, then he takes a seat on the bench and unwraps his special order book. It is a used book and it is in german and it is cloth-bound and water-stained, fox-spotted along the pages, and the look of it causes the remnants of Jack's smile to diminish into thoughtfulness, and for a time at least there are just two people reading in a corner. Jack handles the pages carefully, and This Face's fingertips are nicotine-stained and knobby, what people call pianist's fingers though they don't usually belong to pianists, and there's some hair on the back of his hands and his wrists as sparse as the hair on his chin.

Jack is nothing if not observant of his surroundings, nothing if not fortunate in his observations, Lucky ol' Jack, and he finds himself looking up a time or two to study Molly frowning over What and Who Lies Beyond. He studies her with the air of someone who is never caught studying people unless he wants to be, and he doesn't want to be right now, which is to say he studies her covertly and James Bond somewhere sometime might be told to look up Nobody Jack in order to learn waht 'covert' means and he'd look up Nobody Jack but he'd find nothing because Jack is covert, get it? Covert.

Until, at least, he interrupts Molly's reading with a soft, "Pardon me, don't mean to intrude, but is there something wrong with your book? If you are looking for one about getting in contact with the dead, I believe Madeline Kendall is the current favourite."

He sounds almost apologetic, does Jack. Apologetic for the interruption, but there is something of the veneer to it because Jack is not retiring, and This Face does not pretend to be retiring. 


Molly Toombs

Having been a college student for four years, Molly knew how to politely and quietly co-inhabit a space with a complete stranger and mind your own business.  Usually headphones or earbuds would assist in the process, but over the past couple of months Molly has completely rejected the concept.  She didn't like not being able to hear if something was trying to sneak up on you or not.

So, for a time, she's very good about leaving this Nobody alone to read his book, although she does curiously inspect the cover of the thing that he unwraps with a plain, distracted curiosity written onto her face.  With that passed, she returns her attention to what she's doing.  Minutes slip by that she's not keeping track of because she wasn't scheduled to work tonight, and then a soft and apologetic voice rises from the unattractive man on the bench.  Molly's penciled in eyebrows hop up on her face, and her eyes lift from the page to look over to the young (ish) man.

He asked if there was something wrong with her book, and she glanced down at what she was reading, then made a face that suggested a put-on show of mild embarassment and realization both.  She'd just realized that her face was betraying what she was feeling while she continued to read, and was making an effort to play it off politely and sociably.

"Oh, no, aside from the fact that it's a bunch of hogwash."  She flipped through the pages, keeping her thumb on the one she'd stopped at to hold her place, and checked the publishing date.  With a bit of a sniff, she added:  "It came out when that Ghost Adventurers show got big, so I think it's a cash grab effort."

When she lifted her eyes and face to meet his again, it becomes clear that he's not the only one wearing a mask.  His, perhaps considerably more literal and elaborate than hers.  Molly's is one of polite manners and a low boil attempt at flirtatious charm.  Because if you bat your eyelashes at a man and turn your body oh just so that the curve between waist and ample hip is amplified up against the arm of the chair, questions about why you're seriously looking into ghosts and why one book may be hogwash but the rest could be anything but could be laid to the wayside.

"I must have been pulling one hell of a face, huh?"  The mask she wore smiled.  "Sorry if that was concerning."


Nobody

Molly calls the book hogwash and Jack regards her with interest and his lips curl faintly in answer. This isn't a surprised smile it's a touch of concentrated amusement which is different. The interest doesn't sharpen his eyes or put a gleam to them or anything of the sort. If anything, this particular Jack looks as if he often daydreams or is distracted or abstracted either by something he is paying attention to or perhaps just by something off in the distance (there is something out there [a vision a star]), but his gaze is still direct enough for courtesy's sake, meeting either Molly's cheekbones or her eyes and never straying much lower than that once they'd begun to interact. He was leaning against the corner of the bench, a bookworm's hunch to his thin (weak?) shoulders. One of his ears looks a little lopsided, not quite lined up with the other. It's subtle this lack of symmetry, this contribution to the fact that as nice as he seems and let's not beat around the bush this Jack does seem nice kind there's a low-level charisma to him but still clearly the guy's had a shit time in high school and he's got a face that only a mother would love and she probably loved her other kids better unless she was the kind to dote on the ugliest out of pity. He looks like he was pitied a lot. His voice though soft has something of assurance behind it, something of a honeyed cadence, of easy control, a good strong voice if he wasn't so quiet, maybe out of the bookstore:

"Ah, no, no. I can't claim I don't often interrupt people who are reading because I've done it before, but I was more curious than concerned. More selfish I suppose than good samaritan. What tells you," and here, he ducks his head (his neck is too long, his adam's apple quivers) to look at the cover of her book again, "that What and Who Lies Beyond is hogwash?"

"I don't mean to, er, well actually I do mean to pry, but it's just that it's a subject I'm interested in myself and you never know when a good recommendation or story will come your way."

"Oh, oh sorry, I'm Harold by the way but most people call me Jacky."

And now he has been Jacky instead of Jack and instead of Nobody.


Molly Toombs

There's a flutter-flash of something in Molly's eyes that she does a decent job of masking in the lines of her mouth and the posture of her shoulders.  She's a little taken aback by the question-- What makes you think it's hogwash?  She has to consider it for a second, and switches her posture so that she's leaned forward in her seat a little more than she had been.  An elbow finds the arm of the chair and she twists at the waist to her shoulders and face are a little more directed to the man and the bench that he leaned against.  He was a homely man, but Molly wasn't drop dead gorgeous herself either.  She didn't hold herself in too high of a regard to speak to people who aren't beautiful.  After all, the other more prominent men in her life balance between a dead man and someone with a busted up back who looks like he hasn't slept in weeks.

He gives a name, and that gives her time to ponder the question and take more time to answer it.  A hand reaches across the space between chair and bench when he provides a name-- apparently she's accustomed to shaking hands when meeting someone out of courteous reflex.  That's what grown ups do, after all, right?

"Molly," is the answer that she gives him.  He's careful to keep his eyes from going too low or staying on one part of her face or locking onto her eyes for too long.  She wouldn't have to suspect him of sneaking glances down her blouse, though, it's too high collared for such secret sharing.  "How do they get Jacky out of Harold?  I thought Jack was short for Jonathon."

He might catch that she answered his question with another question, that she was veering the conversation away from the book she was reading and why she was reading it for the moment.  Perhaps she was biding her time to come up with a suitable answer (lie), or maybe she was just air-headed enough a woman that she'd forgotten the question that led up to the introduction already.  He'd be inclined to doubt the latter option, though, because she seemed too bright and keen in how her face moved, how her words formed, and how her eyes focused for that.


Nobody

[Perception + Empathy. Miss Molly, Miss Molly, are you avoiding the question or just forgetting to answer or option C?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )


Nobody

Molly offers her hand and Jack who was raised properly by his mother god rest her soul and who often defaults to courtesy or chivalry especially around women Jack goes to take her hand though before he does he is possessed by a sneeze. The sneeze comes out as one of those big, barking sneezes that are almost more cough than sneeze, and it causes his shoulders to go up and his already squinting eyes to squint further, in preparation of another. He has covered his mouth and his nose in reaction and he pauses to do so again, has the grace to look perhaps abashed, to wipe his hand on his trousers or no the pocket of his jacket and he focuses his gaze on the nearest light as if that'll make him sneeze again you know there's another sneeze caught in there. And then it doesn't come out and his nostrils flare and he rubs his sinuses, and he still has the grace to look a touch abashed, though the abashed is distant now. He starts to offer her his hand again in an apologetic way, but doesn't push the handshake now, and she says her name is Molly, asks how they get Jacky from Harald, and while Nobody of Secrets of the Underground of the Dark Kingdom Nobody On A Quest sneezed and held a sneeze and listened Nobody also observed so he answers that question first. First because there is a second thing that happens after the first thing.

"It's short for jackpot. I was banned from a 7-11 because of those little scratch-and-win tickets? I'd always win and it got to the point where the manager suspected me of, well I don't rightly know how you'd rig those little scratch-and-win games, but whatever it is you could suspect of somebody on a lucky streak he suspected me." Jack smiles faintly (it looks surprised, because This Face--), somewhat reminiscently. "He once threatened to tan my hide. But there. At least it's not Harry."

There's some expectation when he finishes his story, like somebody waiting for their partner in a play to pick up the right lines and say the next ones, because she may be avoiding talking about the book and why she believes it's hogswash (for possible reasons he can just intuit, though doesn't quite understand), but there's no reason to make her uncomfortable by calling her on it, and he's far too curious now to just let it go. And so: It's her turn to answer the first conversation, or to continue trying to bury the lead.

He's curious to see which she'll do, too.


Molly Toombs

The explanation as to where the name 'Jacky' came from was listened to in the same polite kind of silence that most human beings will offer strangers that they're making friendly conversation with people do.  She's moved the book (deliberatly) idly in her lap so that it's closed over, her thumb still marking her spot.  The other hand is cupping her jaw and chin, elbow propped up on the arm of the chair, supporting her head and providing an air of interest.  Molly wasn't coming across as the sort that just wanted to read and not be bothered.  As a matter of fact, she provided a show that suggested quite the opposite.  Currently, body language and how she was letting herself be engaged with this homely stranger stated that she had all the time in the world to kill and didn't mind where it was invested at the end of the night.

But there's a glint of something beneath the surface, and this particular Jacky was able to pick up on it.  She's hiding something, or protecting something, or maybe even a little ashamed of that something whatever it may be.  Perhaps a personal piece of information, something about her history?  Or maybe she had a motivation-- a reason to be reading about ghosts, a purpose behind this.  Maybe it was more than just a class (she did look like she could be a college student, although she was resolutely in her twenties the round apple shape to her face could allow her to pass for twenty one or twenty two), but something that she was actually involved in.

This was all speculation, though, and the story was left off with a hanging note and expectant eyes, waiting for Molly to follow up.  Not with a story of her own name, but to answer the question that he'd asked.

Shit, she thought.  He's still waiting.

So she blinked her eyes and looked a little surprised, then laughed quietly (the sound wasn't true, wasn't pure, it was put on) and sat up a little more straight, removing her chin from her palm to do so.  "Oh, you asked a question!  I'm sorry."  There we go, pretend that you forgot.  That's less suspicious.

"Well, it's just talking about EKG meters and 'cold spots' and telling haunting stories.  There isn't any real...."  She taps the book lightly against her knee while she searches for the word before continuing on.  "Theory or science behind it.  Just a lot of parroting of what television shows and movies have been saying for a while now.  And if there's anything that I've learned it's not to believe what I've seen in the movies."

She smiled politely still, and looked down at the book for a long moment before removing her thumb from her page and letting the book close completely.  It gets set on a small round table on the other side of the chair for now.  Apparently she really has decided that the book isn't worth any more of her time that evening.


Nobody

He ignores the pretense (the false note [jarring]) in her apology because that is the courteous thing to do. Because he'd hate to be unsettled out of his own mask. He'd hate it for Molly's sake and he'd hate it for anybody else's sake, forced to see the true nature of his particular curse. And he'd hate it because to be so unsettled, he'd have to have been tricked or cozened, he'd have to have lost, he'd have to be upset: and he'd just hate that. There is a reason for the little courtesies of the world. There is a reason people say things that aren't necessarily true or do things that aren't really honest but those things when done are not actually a lie. They're just the way living people interact. They're just the way all creatures interact: constructing this fabulous world. And from Jack's perspective, the world is fabulous (the worlds are fabulous [the dark one and the bright, the twilight where they meet and mingle, and here in the bookstore in the corner they're in the smoke of the twilight, aren't they?]). This Jack reaches up to push at glasses that are still in his pocket. He seems to remember they're in his pocket just after and he puts his hand over that pocket over his heart which doesn't beat and that's part of the curse too that wretched silence that happy silence. The silence is how you know that you are enspelled and ensorcelled.

He wonders whether she realizes what she gives away with that line. If there's anything that I've learned it's not to believe what I've seen in the movies. But perhaps she gives away nothing, still: the Camarilla which is his Sect exists on presuppositions and easy explanations. The little untruths and the little dishonesties that are not actually dishonest or untrue somehow because they're safe because they're for the good of. Because. Because because. He wonders. He often wonders, wondering Jack who is Nothing, who is Nobody, whose true face was lost to the curse.

"Hmm," he replies, meditative, and looks for a moment as if he is going to -- not argue, but discuss. Maybe something to do with movies. However, Jack isn't up to any line of discussion that begins with him defending movie science, so he takes another tack. "They do circle one another, fact and fiction, and it can be difficult to pluck fact from fiction," he nods toward the shelves they are near, " -- or fact from hope. Most books written about the dead are written by those who either miss somebody or are afraid of being nobody, so most of the accounts will be biased. Are you interested in what comes after or are you interested in true ghost stories? What kind of science would satisfy you?"

He sounds like -- well -- what he said he was: somebody who is interested in the subject, and is, by conversing, trying to coax someone else who might be interested into a discussion.

Let's call it a lively discussion, too, because a vampire talking about ghosts is nothing if not potentially lively?

[Manip! + Subt. Coax, Coax? I haven't talked to anyone about this stuff in ages. :( + Specialty. Honeyed Words.] 
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )


Molly Toombs

If there's one thing that tends to hold true over and over for Molly, it's that she's a very clever young woman. This cleverness is possibly what has kept her alive since the week that vampires began to notice her, one after the other after the other.  Each time she encountered a new one she had to engage in an intellectual game of chess with them.  She had to mark her words, place them cautiously and deliberately and without showing a shred of wavering doubt in herself.  She had to be spirited with some, but keep herself distant and aloof and admirable with others.  She's been able to keep herself alive without needing to lift a finger to actually physically defend herself through all of the weirdness that she's coming to know, and that's because she's a Clever Thing.

One catch to that, though, is the need to flex her brain.  She doesn't have a vast connection of friends.  There's a healing journalist in his apartment, doped up on muscle relaxers and trying to heal before returning to work on Monday, then there's a police officer and a young lawyer that she counts as college friends.  These two she used to meet up with on a bi-weekly basis at the bar, but that has started to fall through because of the responsibilities of adult life-- I need to catch up on this case for the firm, the mrs. has to work tonight so I'm home with the kid, sorry Moll -- have started to squeeze that regular pleasure out of their schedules.  The nurses that she works with don't like her enough to engage in long thoughtful conversations with her, and Molly honestly doubts that most of them have that kind of capacity anyways.

So he engages with her further, challenging her assumption that the myth of television cannot hold any truth, and asks what it is that she's interested in learning about.  Her lips twist at the corners, a wry and somewhat pleased smile manifesting without being large enough to show teeth.  He can tell one thing at least-- the expression is honest, unlike pretty much anything else her face has shown him tonight.

"Oh sure, there might be some 'truth to the myth', but that doesn't mean that a myth won't be just plain falsehoods.  Like the myth of vampires for example...  Television and fiction books want you to believe that a crucifix would keep them at bay-- but then how would you account for vampires that didn't have Christian faith, or that are in cultures far removed from it, like in Bangladesh?"

He wanted specifically to know what sort of science she was interested in, why she was reading about ghosts and studying up on the afterlife.  She had to consider her answer for a moment, and she does so with pursed lips and a thoughtful furrow to her brow.  Her fingers drum on her knee for a moment or two before she finally coughs up an answer.

"I suppose you could say I'm studying the science of preparedness, Jacky."


Nobody

He is a good listener, Jack. Of course he is. His clan is a clan of listeners, of spies, of skulks, of shadows that shadow the shadows. He is somebody who is often invisible who can make it so that the herd avoids looking or walking where-ever he is without ever noticing that they do so. He is used to listening, but he was a good listener before he died, before the Hag got him and her Sister, before he went from one world to the other and found his quest. He is a good listener now, his attention evident without being fixated. There is no undercurrent of unseemly excitement and no arrogant knowingness. This Face's werewolf-thick eyebrows quiver upwards and his forehead crinkles thoughtfully. He doesn't interrupt her, but when she gives her answer as the science of preparedness, he chuckles (and it's a honeyed little sound, too, catches in his throat and on his adam's apple, the apple adam choked on), and it's a soft-fog sound. Then he earnestly answers what might well have been a hypothetical question. The question of the crucifix and the vampire.

So a temporary conversational-transition agreement - "It is safest to be prepared"

And then - "Against vampires, or, ah, well against anything, the power of the crucifix could come down to belief. The question is who's?" A quick smile (surprised that he can! as usual, that shape his smile makes), and a shift in position to get more comfortable, the bench being hard. The paper wrapped around his book crinkles. "If we're going to suppose the crucifix can work against vampires who were never Christian and don't have even the faintest attachment to a Christian god, then it would be the belief of the one holding the crucifix . . . or maybe the belief of earlier vampires? Maybe the belief of God or godly spirits? If God believes that the crucifix should hurt vampires, shouldn't it? Er," and he isn't sheepish, but he is aware of his audience.

"I hope I don't sound too out there. I just find it to be an interesting question. Unless we're going to claim that God does exist or that earlier vampires would still have influence over. . . " He makes a small gesture, like he can't quite pluck on a word, and his brow is furrowed with thought. "Then the answer would need to be the belief of the one holding the crucifix. But maybe that wouldn't often be enough. How many things does anybody really and truly believe in? Actively believe in?"

He sounds rather wistful on that end note.


Molly Toombs

For a conversation like this, Molly would be much delighted to have a mug of coffee in front of her.  She'd like to be curled up in the big comfortable chair, more directly facing this ugly-faced stranger with his bushy eyebrows and weak growth on his weak chin, with his awkwardly oversized adam's apple and his dirty colored eyes and perpetually surprised looks.  She'd like to curl her fingers around her mug and warm her face and smell the coffee -- that was the second purpose that the beverage served:  one-- to awaken and warm in the mornings, and two-- to serve as something to imbibe while having conversations that were as involved as this.

Instead she settles for just knitting her fingers together into a single, loose-formed fist and resting that in her lap.  She switches how her legs are crossed, moving the left overtop the right now, thus switching her hips so they're angled to help point her more to her right, more toward this Jacky fellow and the points that he brings.

"I hear the point you're making, but I think in order for the belief to have any sort of real and effective power then there'd actually need to be a force behind that belief.  That would mean that God has to be real, and quite frankly I'm not willing to stretch my brain to wrap around or accept that one."

That loose-knit single fist bounces in her lap a little, and the toe of her boot twitches and dances in the air.  Then she's following up her own argument with another thought, an asterisk if you will.

"Although you could argue that the simple power of human belief alone would be enough, and that it doesn't need anything to back it up.  Like...  A scalding sort of energy, y'know?  After all, they do tell stories about people bending spoons with their mind.  In theory, it could be like that-- the energy of human life and the faith in it could be the repelling force in and of itself.

"....But then you have to explain garlic."  The last is added with an almost wicked, challenging kind of grin.


Nobody

"Exactly," Jack says, still caught up with the first part of their conversation. Belief. Jack believes in things. Jack believes in things deeply enough to transfigure the world he is in and to give it a new name (as Adam named the grass and animals, see? He makes his own world by naming it). "But if God does exist, regardless of whether or not we may believe in him, the simple power of His belief might work the same-- I'm not distinguishing God and Man in this scenario by anything other than name--and oh!" A beat, and then he grins.

This face's grin does not share the surprised quality with its smile. It's a wide, sweet sort've grin, crinkly around the corners, crinkly all the way to his eyes, around which there are more crinkles. His teeth are a little crooked, echoes of stone henge, if only he'd had dentistry, and one of his front teeth is a bit faded while the bottom are a bit (too) yellow, but it's still a sweet grin.

"Ah well, hm. They used to use garlic to treat gangrene in the trenches and it's been used for infection. If the vampire believes wholly its state to be one of ill-health or unnatural life, then the garlic might have a repelling effect if it also believes in the restorative power of garlic. I want to say that I read somewhere people in medieval- " a pause. " -somewhere garlic was grown- would use it to draw out parasites. If a vampire believes itself a parasite, then it might flee garlic hanging in a window or at a door."

He raises his werewolf-thick eyebrows again, this time in a, so how did I do? fashion.


Molly Toombs

While dense hairy eyebrows lift in a 'how did I do?' manner, far more tame and colored in ones lifted in a way to answer:  Color me impressed.

A smile spreads on her face like soft butter, and she's quick to share her thoughts on his theory.

"So it all lays in the power of belief, then.  ....But with the garlic, we start to factor in what the vampire believes in.  To do that is to presume that vampires have any belief at all.  I mean, from what I read, they're.... forsaken, if you will.  They live on forever in their bodies because their soul's been taken away, right?  And when they die, it'll be a final death that takes them absolutely nowhere.

"This all suggests that they don't have a soul, and if we're going to talk about the power of belief we're going to have to say that this power stems from the soul and not from the brain.  Without a soul, how do you believe?  And if you don't have a soul to believe, then you can't believe in the healing or repelling powers of the garlic to be affected by it in the first place."

With that laid out, a little convoluted because she was speaking in time with her thoughts now rather than pondering and structuring her sentences first, Molly uncrossed her legs, put her boot bottoms to the floor, and stood up.  She didn't stretch or make a fuss about it, or begin the drawn out process of politely disengaging yourself because 'oh, look at the time'.  Instead, she is very forward in asking:

"This seems like a conversation better suited over drinks.  Would you let me buy you coffee?"


Nobody

[Pfffaw.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )


Molly Toombs

[No, come on now, really.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )


Nobody

[...Chat, come on man.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )


Molly Toombs

[Tip of the hat]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )



Nobody

[...!!!! CHAAAAAAAAAAAAA(zoom out of the apartment) (out of apartment out of continent) (out of continent out of world)AAAAAAAT! ]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )


Molly Toombs

[Agaaaaaaaain]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )


Nobody

Jack (This Face, Tonight's Mask, Harald who is called Jacky for jackpot and that's a clue because Jack is Jack of Luck the Jack of Good Fortune the Jack of Lucky Breaks even if taken from a distance it wouldn't seem so) nods a couple of times while Molly hypothesizes. They are the nods of somebody listening to poetry (poetry-listeners are always quiet) or the nod of somebody engaged in an intellectual discussion (it's how body language works [actively]). Jack opens his mouth to reply but is forestalled when Molly stands up.

And when she does, Jack does too, an echo of courtesy. Take the boy out of the midwest but never take the midwest out of the boy. He wipes his feet (three times five times seven times) before entering places too, assiduously polite and it's difficult not to be. Difficult to break the pattern especially when it is so many years settled into the sediment of who he is. But who he is changes: tonight he's Jacky.

Jacky seems pleased by the invitation. "To be honest, my stomach's a little unsettled tonight, but I'd be glad to continue this conversation elsewhere as long as you don't mind waiting for me to pay for my book first."

He wasn't originally planning on paying for it until he'd taken it back to his haven and determined whether or not he was going to keep it. How was he planning on doing that, one asks? Well Jack has a sleeve full of tricks and most of them are Look Away, Not Over Here, Who Is That? tricks. Forget Me tricks. Don't Know My Face tricks.


Molly Toombs

Some employee who was just finishing their closing chores before going home and leaving the shop owner to close the shop completely had caught a glimpse of Jacky and Molly, long enough to see the busty young woman stand and invite the awkward looking man out to coffee.  This employee, a teenage boy with intensely curly black hair, was confounded for a second.  He wondered if the ugly man had flashed a very expensive watch, because he couldn't imagine another reason why she'd be asking him out.

The curiosity passes when something as mundane as upset stomachs and paying for books is mentioned, and the employee passes on.  Molly's expression flashes moderately disappointed/concerned when she gets her answer, but the rebound comes easily enough.  "Oh, that's just fine.  We can work something out."

Almost last-thought, Molly picks up the book she was about to just leave on the table beside the chair and returns it to where she'd found it on the shelf.  While doing this, she checks the time on her cellphone and realizes that the store is close to closing.  So, when she returns to where the bench and chair occupy similar space (it was only a couple steps away, really), she keeps her phone in her hand and expresses instead:

"Well, it's about to close up here, and anything less than a bar or club is soon on its way as well.  ....Maybe we could meet up another time?"


Nobody

"I'd enjoy that," Jack says. He seems to be in earnest. He makes a half-awkward gesture toward his back pocket. Halts, all ungainly angles. Then moves for his other pocket instead and digs out a sad phone that he needs to upgrade by the look of it. He has a businesscard, does Jack. But it's for people he introduces himself to as Jack instead of Jacky or Hudson. Jacky and Hudson get scrawled numbers on the back of other men's business cards or they get directly input into the phone. "My number is," says/asks he, and when Molly opens her phone to input it, the number that he gives her as a local areacode. Then there's the uncertain do-I-put-your-number-in-now or do-you-call-me or is-this-a-brush-off (although to be honest, Jack doesn't seem to think it's a brush-off - his internal and rather eternal optimism comes out sometimes), and throughout it Jack adds, "Because I have definite ideas on the soul. At least, hm, as relates to the vampire myth. And the ghost myth too, uh, hey? Because what is a ghost? Is it a really strong memory or is it a soul, and if all it is is a soul…" He pauses, and smiles his surprised smile, "The topic will keep."

And Jack, he waits for Molly to leave the aisle first before following near but not too near, the way new aquaintances going the same way would walk. He bids her a farewell before splitting off to pay for the book. The counter is over here, the doors are over there, and he licks his thumb as he counts out bill folds, 

one two three four

nope, wait

one two three

smaller-four smaller-five

perfect.


Molly Toombs

The dance of how to obtain phone numbers would be awkward if Harald/Jacky were left to lead the way.  The good news is that Molly is assertive enough to direct this without so much awkward 'what do you do'.  He recites his phone number for her, and twenty seconds later his own phone will buzz or chime with a text that says, simply:

Molly

He'll again dodge shaking her hand, one way or another, when she forgets about him sneezing into his palm and looking apologetic while wiping it off and sticks her hand out on reflex for a parting gesture.  It's a subtle thing, because he looks uncomfortable and glances down at his hands, reminding her of that sneeze and those germs.  It's a good point, and it is flu and cold season, so she decides to just let the gesture be enough and let physical contact fall wayside for now.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure it'll last.  And spin into goodness knows what.  The last time I had this conversation I wound up talking about trolls."  She laughed, the sound honest if nothing more.

He'll go to pay for his book, and she'll walk ahead of him until they part ways near the front counter.  Molly will smile sincerely and wave to her newfound intellectual pal and decide to leave that night without bringing anything home.  She'd already procured four good books from the other stores she'd been to anyways, and they were safe in the tote bag that she carried around as though it were a purse.

While Nobody pays for a book about presumably Nothing inside, Molly unlocks her bike, saddles up, and rides home.

'Relate To' - 11.7.2013 [Nate]

Nate Marszalek

They would have let him go on Tuesday but he spiked a temperature after they took him off the antibiotics and the attending decided to keep him another night for observation. The temperature went down once they realized he was mildly dehydrated from not taking in enough fluids by mouth. Other than that and the outbursts during his physical therapy sessions Mr. Marszalek was an easy patient and they let him go today.

He leaves with a back brace and a prescription for Flexeril and Vicodin, a warning that combining the two will probably cause him to fall asleep and he shouldn't mix them.

If weren't for the fact that he had decided against contacting his family Nate would not have taken Molly up on her offer to accompany him home in the cab. As it was his reluctance to ride in a motor vehicle is beyond understandable but he has to get home somehow and he can't teleport.

Getting him downstairs doesn't take a great deal of effort. He has developed a friendly if antagonistic rapport with one of the older transporters who has been carting him back and forth from the diagnostic imaging floor all week and the man goads him into getting into the chair and shutting up about it. He doesn't want his young ass slipping in the hallway and suing him out of a job.

At the curb where the taxi waits Nate grimaces instead of vocalizing the strain of standing from a seated position but can't keep a guttural noise from escaping his throat when he settles in the backseat. He's sweating just from that amount of effort.

He'll be better by this time next week. He's already miles better than he was when they wheeled him in two weeks ago.

His apartment is a matter of miles from the hospital and when they get there he uses a credit card to tip the driver. It takes him a moment to brace himself enough to stand. Even though he could make it inside on his own if he absolutely had to something about Molly has been tense if not terse since she arrived to pick him up and if she tries to give him an arm or her entire shoulder for the walk inside Nate is smarter than he looks.

Until they're upstairs he isn't going to argue with her about anything.


Molly Toombs

Since Halloween night, poor Lucy hasn't been having a good time living with Molly.  Up until that night the kitten and Molly were getting along famously.  Molly liked having the little spaz run around the apartment chasing lights on walls and toys on the floor, just as much as she liked it when the little animal tuckered itself out and fell asleep on her chest, belly or lap depending on how she was lounging on her couch at those times.  When Molly brought that stupid envelope home, though, Lucy got tense and weird.  She'd stare at things that weren't there, charge into a room and stop suddenly, and then turn about and flee the same room with her fur standing up and her tail gone bottlebrush.

She was happy today when Molly deposited her back at Nate's apartment earlier in the morning.  On the day following the night that Molly duked it out with a pair of ghosts she'd returned to the apartment to clean up the water from the burst pipe and pick up books and (with some effort) push the couch back into place.  She'd called a plumber to tend to the pipes and paid the man, figuring Nate could hit her back later if his medical bills weren't crushing him.  Everything was in order (save for that black scorch mark above the stove) when she'd left the kitten to re-acclimate herself to her home and gone downstairs to return to the taxi driver she was paying today.

Molly was hanging out on the curb, waiting for Nate and the wheel chair that moved him from place to place.  The transporter probably helped him up out of the seat, and Molly greeted the man by first name with a friendly, if distracted wave.  She'd slide into the backseat along with Nate and didn't seem to have a whole hell of a lot to say on the ride over to the apartment building.  She sat with her head rested back against the headrest and watched their journey through the windshield.  Nate would notice that her round cheeks seemed only a little gaunt, and her eyelids didn't want to open all of the way.  She was tired, stressed, and drawn tight.  But from what Nate's seen of her so far she doesn't seem the sort to just lash out at people because she's in a bad mood, so she's pleasant to the taxi driver and attentive to her friend when it's time to get him out of the cab and into the apartment building.

He'll groan and take a little extra time to extract himself from the car, and Molly's there to offer an arm to steady him along the way.  When he accepts it, he finds the woman to be sturdy and steady, she doesn't struggle to support him if he leans any weight into her arm.  But then, she's a trauma nurse and far from waif-like.  This comes as no surprise.

What may come as one, though is when they're upstairs and she's got the door closed behind them and she extracts That Damn Envelope out of her tote bag and places it on the kitchen counter.


"So," she announces to him only after they're away from everyone else and the walls are secure enough to keep their words private.  "I don't think that this should be burned after all."


Nate Marszalek

For the first time in a long time he takes the elevator instead of the stairs. Though his back has been a constant source of annoyance for him the last few years Nate has not been hindered by it. Full-time scholastic endeavors and working what is essentially a desk job have done more damage than that roadside bomb did. But he takes the elevator to the ninth floor without complaining today.

Once they're inside he shuffles out of the way of the door. With Molly half steering, half supporting him the entire way he has nothing to drop once they're inside. Whatever bag she packed for him is hers to drop on the floor or the couch or the kitchen island. He just stands still and silent a moment as he looks around the apartment he almost never saw again. No signs of life but for the presence of batted-about cat toys.

Lucy is still hiding. It's like she knows the envelope is here.
Molly doesn't think the envelope should be burned after all.

Stood in the entryway as he is Nate looks as if he's wandered in uninvited and isn't sure where to put his feet next. He breathes with some effort for this being the furthest he's managed to walk without Latrice or one of the nurses egging him on and it's clear from looking at him that his ribs hurt and his back hurts and his heart is beating faster despite the muscle relaxant.

When he realizes the implications of the envelope and he continuing to exist in the same space at the same time a look of remorse comes across his pale face and Nate brings a hand up to his forehead.


"Shit," he says. Slow and almost slurred. "I..." He lets go his forehead and walks towards the kitchen island. Uses it to support himself as he asks, "What happened?"


Molly Toombs

Molly had packed a bag for Nate, and she'd deposited it gently on the floor against the side of the kitchen counter.  It held his laptop, which she'd brought for him to entertain himself with at the hospital, and perhaps a few other odds or ends that he'd requested from home.  She only brought enough street clothes for him to walk out of there wearing.  She's chosen to stay on her feet, hovering in the kitchen with her hands on the countertop and the envelope between them.

She was dressed for the cool weather in a matching set of scarf and gloves to go over her red peacoat, but these were removed when she'd come inside, and the coat was draped wherever was out of the way and most appropriate.  Under that she had on a pair of dark wash jeans, brown sneakers, and a loose and soft sweater that is cream-and-navy stripes.  Her hair is down, but bobby-pins hold it out of her face.  Her expression is grim, and the posture she holds leaned against the counter speaks to the unease she's been living with for the past week now.

Despite this, she sees how he moves and grabs the kitchen island for support.  She looks at him with some mix of half-concern and disappointment before rolling her head to nod toward the living room.  "You should go sit."  She figures he'd want to for the story she was going to tell anyways.

One way or another Molly gets Nate over to the couch, and she'll take a seat beside him only after fixing them both a cup of something warm to drink-- coffee, cocoa, tea, whatever it was that he had and preferred.  She'd end up sitting leaned forward with her elbows hooked on her knees and her cup cradled between her palms.  She'd watch the steam while waiting for it to cool.


"I got up here and was given one hell of a time each time I tried to burn the thing.  First my lighter won't work.  Then your stove won't work.  Then it shoots fire to your ceiling and your goddamn pipes burst and the envelope goes flying across the room."  She shakes her head and looks at the black, blank television screen across from them instead.  "Then they told me that it was a 'traitor' or something that wanted it burned, and they didn't.  Said that only bad things would happen if I followed through."


Nate Marszalek

Most of Nate's clothes fall into the business casual category. He owns three pairs of shoes: a pair of Oxfords, a pair of motorcycle boots, and a pair of loafers. Four, if one considers flip flops to qualify as shoes. If he owns running shoes they're someplace Molly would not have thought to look while she was blindly throwing clothing into a bag. He only has one pair of jeans though he has more t-shirts than he knows what to do with. Like as not they serve as undershirts for the dozen or so button-down shirts that hang in his closet. At least half of his t-shirts are olive green. Stowaways from his time in the service. They come three to a pack at the commissary. The rest of them are cast-offs from various events he was dragged to. Charity marathons and community sports teams.

Apparently he played kickball one year while he was studying at Berkeley. The things you learn about a person when you have to rifle through their belongings.

He'd thrown on the jeans and the loafers and whatever t-shirt Molly had brought him and he had expressed looking forward to a shower only to have the doctor pop that bubble by reminding him to keep his stitches dry. It would help if he would stop walking around like he doesn't have stitches at all. All it takes is Molly looking at him like that and putting a hand on his back to get him to walk himself over to the couch and sit down. He grunts like an 80-year-old man and covers his eyes to laugh at himself as Molly fixes coffee for them.

Once she's settled and they're talking that look of strained remorse creeps back into his eyes. He doesn't touch the coffee even though it sits at his elbow and waits for him. His hair keeps flopping into his eyes. Sitting is an improvement at least. What little color he possesses comes back to his cheeks now that he's off his feet. It doesn't drain as he hears testimony as to what happened and yet:


"Molly... I am so sorry."


Molly Toombs

The apology is dusted away with a rolling shrug of the shoulder that was nearest to him.  "I don't think you could have known."  With this statement, she lets him off the leash.

Initially on Halloween night when she was sitting on her couch watching John Carpenter's 'The Thing' and still wearing her witch costume, she thought about laying hell down on Nate's ears.  After all, he was the one that sent her on this errand in his stead.  He was the one who could communicate with these ghosts, or 'shades' as he called them, so she presumed that the whole thing would have been much easier for him than it was for her.

At the end of the night she'd decided that there really wasn't any way for him to have known that she'd take a sofa to the ribs and nearly have her face burned off and have to flee his apartment with the envelope and her life clutched to her breast.  Going into the hospital room and raining her ire upon him would have done nothing but made him feel bad and then made her feel bad later because of acting like such a dick.  So, instead, she just lived with the cool creeping in her bones and continued her day to day life, waiting until Nate was out of the hospital and away from nurses and monitors and all of that to have this conversation.

When the coffee has cooled some, she took a sip.  Molly liked cream in her coffee today, so she borrowed some of the milk that she'd supplied in Nate's fridge before he'd come home.  Basic perishables had been replaced for him so that he wouldn't need to go brave the grocery store for something as basic as a bowl of cold cereal on his first day back.


"So...  I don't know what to do with it.  Maybe take it back where you found it?"


Nate Marszalek

Just because he had no way of knowing Nate is not prepared to let himself off of the hook. Nothing to be done for it and if they had done nothing else they could not have sorted out what the nature of the envelope's game was. It has to matter that he does not possess a mentality that would make backpedaling and pointless self-flagellation masquerade as appropriate conversation with a person who's pushed air into his lungs for him.

Yet Nate looks drained sitting here on the couch and they do not have to dwell on it to remind themselves why that could be. He missed Shannon's funeral for being in the ICU at the time and he is not in any state to return to work and his sister is coming to stay with him during Thanksgiving. She'll be back at the end of December when she's done with her final exams.

At least Molly does not still feel possessed. She doesn't look it and doesn't act it. A squeak sounds from the bedroom and Nate turns his head towards it.

"Yeah?" he calls. Here comes Lucy, hesitant but bold all the same, her mouth open wide in a silent shout. "Well come out here, you little shit. I'm not getting up."

The cat will do what the cat wants to do. In the meantime Nate clears his throat and picks up his coffee cup and takes a sip. Everything he does is with great purpose. As if it takes both energy and pain tolerance to lift his arms or shift positions.


"You might be right," he says. She also might be noticing by now that the young man hasn't blinked much since he got out of that wheelchair. Blame it on the medication. "I'll try that, next time I'm out that way." He puts down the cup and asks, "Did... wait, you heard them?"


Molly Toombs

Lucy comes out and squeaks then silent-cries at Nate.

You left me and didn't feed me and I was all alone at night and now that you're here I want to climb your pant leg but I'm not gonna because I'm supposed to be mad at you.

Cats are such assholes.

Molly watches Lucy for a moment, trailing after the cat while she doesn't come as Nate suggested she do, but instead goes off and does her own thing.  Then Nate slowly reaches out and sips his coffee, and says he'll give that a try the next time he's out in the area.  Then a though occurs to him, and he asks for clarification.  Molly had stated that the ghost told her not to burn the envelope, but in order for that to happen she'd need to hear them too, right?

Her answer is preceded by a humorless chuckle, and Molly shifts how she's been sitting.  Her elbows were beginning to dig into her knees unpleasantly, so she leaned back into the couch instead with her heels planted on the floor and the cup of coffee resting in her hands and lap all at once, cradled and protected from spills when she isn't drinking from it.


"Well, yeah, in different ways.  One of them decided to--" and she lifts a hand to tick each occurrence off with a finger to match-- "shoot fire at me, douse me with water, throw books and your couch at me, and nearly tore the ceiling down upon me.  The other one sank into my bones and tried to take me over-- I heard her--" she assumes it's a her, "--because she spoke with my voice and mouth."


Nate Marszalek

He and Lucy live together. It doesn't hurt his feelings when the kitten decides she doesn't feel like coming out and gracing them with her presence. He scoffs as lightly as a man with three broken ribs can scoff and turns away from the corridor where she'd come and gone in as much time.

Fine, his silence says, you want to pretend to be mad at me I'm going to pretend not to see you ignoring me.

Nothing like what she described has ever happened to him before but Molly can tell Nate imagines it. A slow ice-water horror creeps up his spine and gets into his head and his eyes widen but he does not leech color and he does not apologize again. He'd already said it once and she wasn't hurt. When she gets to the part where the other one spoke through her his nostrils flare with the sharpness of his inhalation.

"Jesus Christ," he says when he breathes out again.

He looks over at the envelope sitting innocuous on the island and reaches up to drag his hand down his face. He wears the expression most addicts wear right before they declare themselves to need their substance but he neither makes that declaration nor reaches for anything. Molly is sat on the same couch that nearly killed her and little more than a cushion separates them.

Distance is a thing greater than space though. For as long as they've known each other something has kept them from meeting each other in the middle. With the coffee set on the table again Nate rests his thick-veined hands in his lap and tries to find a way to plant his feet so his back doesn't bark at him. He does not normally fidget like this. When he looks back at her he doesn't know what to say.


"So you had a good Halloween, then."


Molly Toombs

It's easy to picture how terrified Molly must have been through the episode that she's explaining to him.  Nate will remember how she had grabbed and held onto his arm to press the fear out from her chest while they were scoping out the apartment above her own.  All she'd experienced there was cool air and a smacking door and the cutting of lights.  That had been amplified tenfold when she came here to destroy a mysteriously gifted envelope.  It would be easy to imagine that she may have cried or had some other similar sort of breakdown in the midst of the chaos, when books were whipping toward her head and she had to dive to avoid being smashed by a large piece of furniture but managed to catch a glancing blow anyways.

When she felt that cold magnetism seep into her bones and start to move her like a puppet.

If any of this had been the case it doesn't show here in this conversation, though.  Molly is a willful person, and has a way about her that seems very 'in control' of herself, if not the situations around her.  When she couldn't be in control of what happened around her she would just do her best to look cool and calm and hope that it made her seem less like a victim.  So, whatever reaction the possession and violent activity had caused in her, it certainly wasn't going to show now.  Not even just to peek through curtains.

Nate is uncomfortable, uncertain.  He isn't sure what to make of the story or, more than that, how he's supposed to react to it.  Should he make light?  Should he be reassuring?  Should he praise her for going through it, thank her for agreeing in the first place?  Should he close that constant gap of distance between them to try and comfort, on the off chance that she was masking a lot more stress than what the simple tightness of her eyes and tone displayed?

He has no idea, so he makes a comment about how it was a good Halloween instead.  This draws a small laugh that surprises Molly and prompts her to look over at the man on the couch beside her.  With his back brace stiff under (or over) his clothes, with his eyes somewhat glazed and slow-blinking from the muscle relaxers that he was on.

"I suppose so.  Scarier and more convincing than any haunted house I've ever been to, and I didn't even have to pay a nickle for it."

She pauses, sips at her coffee some more, and then works to steer the conversation once more.  She was pretty good at that, and seemed to do it more often than Nate, which she found a little amusing somewhere deep down because he was supposed to be the journalist, right?  Shouldn't he be good at driving conversations where he wanted them?


"No wonder you look exhausted most of the time-- no offense, pal, but you do.  I mean, how frequently does shit like this happen?"


Nate Marszalek

No offense is met and Nate takes none. He has a perfectly good mirror in his bathroom and the restrooms at the Denver Post are lined with them and half the women he talks to in social situations feel the need to ask him what he does for a living and then follow it up by asking if being a crime reporter means he doesn't get much sleep. He would have to never look in a mirror or talk to a woman to not know that he has bags big enough to carry groceries home beneath his eyes.

Molly has to think by now that he does never look in a mirror or talk to a woman. His social skills leave something to be desired. He has a decent sense of humor and he's filled with enough life experience and worldliness that he can tell stories when he chooses to tell stories.

Mostly he asks questions of people who already realize they're being interviewed but his technique is minimalist. She can attest to this. What few questions he had asked the day they'd met for coffee had resulted in her spilling everything she knew. What dulls his senses now and slows the questions and keeps him on his side of the couch is the fact that he's drugged and a little over two weeks gone from his own brush with death.

Were not for the fact that he knows her to experience fear just the same as any hot-blooded person with no previous experience with the paranormal Nate might have thought her to possess nerves of steel. She's an ER nurse, after all. Nothing much rattles her and seeing blood and innards and people on the verge of death has prepared her for the fleetingness of life and the finality of death.

They both appear to have well-intentioned misconceptions about each other.

"I've never had one try to hijack my voice box," he says. "They just don't ever stop talking. It gets to be like anything else after a while. You get used to it. That, though..."

His eyes flick away from her to find the small aged thing atop the island and then find her face again. Nate chews his lower lip and puts his left arm up on the back of the couch like to affect an air of nonchalance.

"The envelope must be what triggered it."


Nothing to worry about. It won't happen again. Hah, hah.


Molly Toombs

The reassurance and experience that Nate has to offer her is that a.)  he hasn't experienced what she did that night, because no one's every tried to hijack his voice to talk through him before, and b.) you'll get used to it.  Molly's glance toward him is quick, and her eyebrows hop up on her freckled face to show something akin to skepticism, but there's enough friendly humor there, filtering through the thought and worry that he can read on her, to soften it.  It's a quick really, now? look, but it doesn't cut him.

His next assessment, that the envelope triggered it, is met with a small shake of her head.  Another somewhat longer drink of her coffee (because it's growing a little cool and nothing's as disappointing as room temperature coffee) she replies.

"Well, clearly."

Wow, nice, Molly.

"I don't think that I've... I don't know, picked up on what you have.  I doubt it rubbed off on me, it doesn't seem like a contagious thing that you could give anyways."  There's a pause here, like she's trying to decide whether or not she wants to say what she was planning next.  Being who she is, though, she naturally decides to go ahead and say it.  She just needed a second to restructure it the way she wanted in her mind.


"I don't think it will only be this envelope, though.  Nate, I don't know what you have to say on this matter but I do intend to stay around you and be in touch.  Be friends, but more than that, be allies.  I've got no one else to relate with on surreal and supernatural shit like this, except the things that don't breathe or have heartbeats anymore.  With that, I don't think this envelope story here is gonna be the last chapter in your book on ghosts.  I'm pretty sure that there will be a lot more to come on that front for the both of us."


Nate Marszalek

And Nate doesn't do so much as flinch at her response to his assessment of the state of things. He does take his arm off the back of the couch like putting it up there in the first place was what led to the tone of the conversation going from exploratory to -

He can't gauge the tone of her voice. She can read the openness and the confusion and the worry in his eyes. Like Molly he is capable of concealing his emotions and his motivation when the task calls for it but right now he's exhausted and he's bruised. Sitting up is taking enough energy as it is.

All that is keeping him from announcing that he wants to go lie down is the fact that it's obvious Molly wants to talk about this and has things she wants to say. If he goes to lie down that precludes their having a discussion. It would be far too much effort to ask her to come lie down with him. 26 years old and Nate is more comfortable in the company of his laptop than a woman with a heartbeat and some semblance of hope for a future where they have each others' backs.

When she reaches the end of her appeal to him Nate lets out a strained breath and a frown appears between his brows.

"Molly," he says and his teeth flash in what amounts to fear-laughter. "It... I've never had anyone around to 'relate to'--" He uses air quotes there. "--about the fact I can't hear myself think sometimes because a dead person wants to talk my ear off. The only 'relating' anybody would've done would be to relate my ass into the psych ward. It's..."

It's not easy to admit to being lonely after finding a lifestyle that enables him to function despite his misappropriated gift and at least pretend he can function in spite of it. And it could be a gift. But to borrow Molly's parallel he has treated it like a disease instead of something to unwrap and he addresses his next sentence to her wrists, her coffee cup, instead of her.

"I don't know what you're asking me to do, here."


Words thrown out, Nate looks back up at her face.


Molly Toombs

Both are decent at reading one another, because they are good at reading people in general.  They're both pretty good at masking things from one another, again not because they knew what spins to give their lies or feathers to adorn their masks with specifically for each other, but simply because they've practiced it before with so many others before.

That might be a part of what makes this exchange feel so raw, for Molly at least.  She can be callous at times, and not completely realize (or sometimes even care) that what she has to say will impact someone in any way beyond simple enlightenment.  So when she sees his face change expressions to something that's strained and almost cornered, she feels a twinge of immediate regret in her chest.  He looks down at her hands instead of holding her eyes when he says, plain and bald, that he doesn't know what she's asking of him.

When he looks back up at her face, Molly looks like she's smothering some strong sentiment or another, because her eyes are wide but refusing to be wet, and her nostrils are a mite flared from the deep pull of breath she was bringing through them.  Then that passes, and her lips press together to make a thin line out of her mouth.  Fingers loop through the small handle on her mug with her right hand, balancing the mug on top of her leg.  The left hand settled palm-up onto the couch cushion that sat between them.  It's pretty clear what that hand asks for.


"I don't want you to actually do anything.  Just... Maybe offer some kind of reassurance or road sign or something?  I can't tell half of the time if I'm a bother to you or if you actually want me to keep coming around."


Nate Marszalek

He does not reach out and snatch up her hand right away. As Molly talks she may think that means he is going to let it lie there ignored and that he will tell her as a matter of fact she is a massive bother. That's why he never asked her on another date after the coffeehouse meeting. Not the fact that vampires formed the centerpiece of their first date or that the second time they spent time together was not a date at all but an excursion into a haunted apartment.

His eyes flick to her hand but he focuses more on her face and the light in her eyes and the fact that she looks stung and laid bare and more scared than he's seen her in months.

And maybe Nate is thinking of how he came up with some bullshit excuse to leave her apartment after they got back downstairs again. How he'd talked her down as fast and rote as he could and then once he was sure she could get to sleep and make it to work the next morning he'd pulled on his jacket and left. Maybe he's thinking about how he let her walk out of here without thanking her for warning him of Mr. Flood's agitation over his snooping or telling her the hell with work, stay a little longer.

It isn't a stretch to suppose he thinks of things like this. He doesn't. He made his decisions and he lives with the ones that came before these ones. He has to live with the fact that if he and Shannon had come back five minutes later they would have missed that tractor trailer and Shannon would still be alive. But Nate extricated himself from a grieving sister's embrace and they got back on the road.

Now is all anyone ever really has. Molly can't tell half the time what he wants. This revelation has Nate sighing another hard breath out his throat and he doesn't go for her hand but he doesn't shun her either.

He steels himself to move from one cushion to the next. The movement does not wrack him with pain but he does flinch at the movement and its impact on his lower back. She can read the Velcro fixtures on the back brace through the loose fit of his t-shirt and she knows the Velcro rubs the stitches on his navel where they went in to operate on his vertebrae. Though he's uncomfortable Nate tries something novel.

He uses his words.

"Right now I'm going to put my arm around you," he says, "and then, ah..."

Nate does not look like much on the outside. He's slow and young and pale and speaks in a tired drawl. But he does what he says he's going to do. She already knows that lurching physique of his is solid and he's stronger both in body and in spirit than anyone gives him credit for. When he puts his arm around her he tugs her in against his side.


"If you don't have to be back, if you could stay, for a bit." He tries putting his hand on her shoulder instead of awkwardly gripping her upper arm. He sighs again. "Don't ever think I don't want you to come around. Alright? That's not true."


Molly Toombs

He's right, Molly does look scared and bare.  This is different, though, from what he saw of her fear while chasing ghosts with him.  It's even different from when she sat pale and trembling in the passenger seat of Flood's own personal piece of automotive history.  It's not fear of the immediate, or what had just gone by, but rather it's fear of what's to come.  More precisely, it was what happened when you looked into the yawning maw of your future and have no guardrail to help walk you through it.  It was how you look when you reach for that guardrail but find that your hand had missed.

Nate reads this, though, because as has been established they're both good at that.  He scoots over so he's sitting on the middle cushion of the couch instead of the far left one, and Molly's hand moves out of his way, lifts like she's bracing the air around him, refraining from either stopping or helping the motion.  She planned to coach him on better protecting his bare skin from the brace later-- wear something to pad it, because it's rigid and will rub you raw-- have you ever had crutches?  There's a reason people wrap towels around the pads after several days, and you'll be wanting to do the same thing with that stupid brace before long.

For now, though, she gives him her attention and waits for his move.  He settles in beside her and explains, simply, that he's going to put an arm around her and that she's welcome to stay for a little while if she wants to.  Her mouth goes from that thin line to a small, oddly grateful smile that only just pulled her lips upward, but did succeed in stopping them from pressing together so tight with worry and caution and uncertainty.  He looped his arm around her, hand settled on her shoulder, and tugged her in against his side.  Molly accepted this with no protesting or blatant rejoicing either.  She simply turned her torso when he pulled, so she would better fit under his arm and into his side, so her shoulder would go behind him rather than into his ribs and armpit.  This has her sitting a little lower, so that she may rest her head against his shoulder.

The coffee mug was still balanced on her leg with her right hand, otherwise she may have found something more involved to do with that one too.

"That's good," she answers.  "I didn't want to have to find someone else who just happens to know the things we do."

She'll stay with him for a bit longer, but not much.  Perhaps another thirty minutes or so.  For a time she'll stay where they are on the couch and just enjoy the simple comfort of warm human affection for a while.  Then she'll switch the topic to his work-- when he was going back and the like.  Before parting she would advise him what she was planning to about that brace, and educate him about the wonders of plastic cling wrap since she's sure that he wants a shower like a man in the desert sun wants shade.


She takes some of his offer to stay, but does not trespass upon or take advantage of it.  She knows he wants to rest, between the discomfort and the medicine that was a given.  So she'd see her way out and leave his keys on the counter for him when she went.