Out Of My Hands - 8.13.2014 [Nate]

Molly

It's late on a Wednesday night, or perhaps very very early on a Tuesday morning if you wanted to get incredibly technical about it.  Most people were settled in their homes by this point, if not in their beds and fast asleep.  The city wasn't very active this deep into the evening.

That was good.  It made it easier for Molly to haul the limp and forever-lifeless body of what used to be-- or still was?  probably still was, always was, in some way -- her friend Harald.  She got him up to her apartment using the elevator and tucked him away into her broom closet after clearing the floor out completely to make room for him.  Folded into the small space with knees up and back and shoulders to the wall.  Hideous face covered with coats from seasons that were still many weeks away.

Another animal joined the house too, and after a hissing match between Boots and Lucy the little orange female took to hiding under Molly's bed while Boots made post on the back of her couch to keep protective, watchful eyes over where his Master was locked away.  Florence got her nose scratched when she charged the new cat with too much energy and was now scoping Boots out warily from under the coffee table.

Molly went outside onto her balcony with her phone and a glass of water that she ultimately would forget to drink.  She stood leaned against the railing, looking over the street, and sent a text message:   Are you awake and can I call you?

The name 'Nate' blazed with the answer Yes on her screen soon thereafter.

And so, within the minute, his phone rang and Molly asked:

"Hey.  Are you somewhere that it's okay to talk?"


Nathan

He's used to waking up in the middle of the night not sure whether he's just fallen asleep or beaten the sun in rising whether the next thing he's going to hear is a mortar shell falling or a flurry of gunfire or a disembodied voice beside his ear whispering threats or promises or pleas or just his work cell ringing because something has blown up across town and he was the first one to respond and now the county medical examiner has to speak to him. He's used to it. One summer of going to bed and rising with the sun has not been enough time to break him of that habit.

The phone wakes him. Molly doesn't know if he is groggy or panicked when he answers. 30 seconds is enough time to read and process and respond. They have barely seen each other since their encounter in the library. Nate is afraid to see her. It's the fact that he loved her once or loves her still that he cares about her or cared about her once that she still has a pulse and that means the pulse can be stamped out and he knows if she came to him some night without a pulse but still possessing a voice that he would love and care for her still. He would not deny her anything.

Nathan is braver and stronger than he looks but when a woman who's no good for him texts him he answers. And she calls. And he answers that too.

Hard to tell if he's groggy. On the phone he always sounds as if he's just groused up out of sleep. That's the depression.

Is he somewhere that it's okay to talk.

"Yeah," he says. Deep breath and a shifting of tone. Maybe he's sitting up straighter. "I'm alone. What's going on?"

He can come get her. She knows he can come get her. He's done it before.


Molly

Nate sounded like warm and wrinkled bedsheets-- like he'd been asleep but opted to answer the phone for her anyways.  She presumed that was the situation, because she's done it to him before.

This time she doesn't need a ride, though.  Instead, Molly sighed into the receiver.  She was already leaned against the railing, but adjusted how she was standing so one arm hooked over the top of the railing and so her back stretched out some.  She sounded shaken and weary, but intact.

"This is going out on a limb, but...  I thought maybe you might have some insight."  It was situations like this where Molly kind of wished she had something to smoke.  Or perhaps something to chew on, to sip at as an excuse to pause and calm her nerves a little while she gathered her thoughts and words alike.  "In a.. uh... hypothetical situation where a vampire falls into a coma, how do you get them to wake up?"

It's one in the morning, Molly.  You couldn't have found a better way to present that?


Nathan

She can imagine that he's sprawled in bed still when he answers because he sounds as if he is and she's heard his voice when he's been sprawled in bed and his voice doesn't change much between sprawling in bed and talking to her in a sunlit bar in the afternoon wearing his reporter getup of cheap dress shoes and khakis and a button-down shirt with a tie he doesn't retie every morning but just loosens and loops over the doorknob.

Molly never met Shannon. Only heard of her. Shannon ripped on him one time for being twenty-five years old and not knowing how to tie a tie. He hadn't used the Marine Corps grunt excuse and she hadn't dug for it. She'd tied it for him and resisted the urge to kiss him and it was another six months before he got drunk enough to give into his gone-to-ember yearnings and now Shannon's dead and he struggles to tie his own tie in the morning but manages out of spite.

He doesn't take this call out of spite.

Insight. If he sighs it's quiet enough that the microphone doesn't catch it. He quit smoking months ago and vaporizers are quiet things. Hypothetical situations are not quiet things.

Three seconds pass before he finds his voice.

"I, uh..." Pause. "Why is the vampire in a coma?"

He's not saying something. Of course he isn't saying something. He knows something and both his parents are lawyers or were lawyers or served as judges his mother is a judge in Nebraska and his father teaches law at DU and he knows better than to lead the witness.


Molly

Nate and Molly have been in some stressful situations together before.  Molly knew what he sounded like breathless in the sheets, groggy and just waking up.  She also knew how he sounded when he was terrified and worried and calling out from the other side of a door.  They don't spend quite as much time together as what they used to, because Nate got in too deep and decided to wade back out toward the shore, and Molly respected his wish not to be dragged out into the riptide with her.

For the most part.  Except for moments like this.  When she needed help too badly not to call out to him for it.  Hadn't someone called him her White Knight once before?

He may be leading the witness, but Molly was willing to indulge it for now.  He's also heard her slow and deep breathing of rest in bed, heard her screams of terror when the world around her flipped on its side and threatened to fling her across a room.  What he hasn't heard before was how shaken she sounded.  Whatever it was that prompted the call, whatever she wasn't coming out and saying outright, it must have happened just recently.  She was still trying to rediscover calm.

"Severe blunt force trauma," was Molly's almost sterile answer.  It was the most honest thing that she could come up with.

"Does he need blood?"

She sounded like she really hoped not.


Nathan

And his problem is that he doesn't have a commanding officer anymore. No one telling him what to do when. Six years isn't an eternity in the armed forces but he had told her the day this all turned to shit that he worried about becoming a statistic. That he had been around enough other veterans who couldn't assimilate upon coming home that he worried sometimes.

His sister worries. His sister worries enough to reopen lines of communication with their father. Their father is Nathan's father but their father lost custodial rights to both of them when Hannah was four years old. She calls their stepfather 'Dad' and Nate doesn't call him anything. Their family is not dysfunctional in the strictest sense of the word but it isn't a family either. All he and his sister really have is each other.

Part of him knows Molly doesn't have many people she can call at one o'clock in the morning when what she knows about the world upends itself. Doesn't mean it's any easier when he's the one she calls but he has to be thankful it's a person and not a spirit.

Heavy sight she can hear. Nathan doesn't share her desire to learn about the unlit world that she does.
"He doesn't... uh... have a piece of wood. In his chest. Does he?"

So he knows that much.


Molly

There's a momentary pause.  It would be appropriate for sipping the water she brought out, but it's sitting on the wire table against her wall and has already been forgotten about.  If she smoked tobacco or grass then she'd take a pull while considering that Nathan at least learned enough to understand staking.  She sometimes wondered how much he picked up when he was trying to figure out ways to kill Flood.  Who she was also still on speaking terms with.  Molly had a lot of strange alliances, you see.

When she does answer, it's slow and forced steady.

"No, he wasn't staked.  But he is really fucked up."

Her voice broke on the word 'really', and it sounded like she was about to cry but had managed to wrangle that choked escaping sob back in for the time being.  Nate wasn't so dense as he may have come across from time to time-- there was worry in her voice and tamped-down urgency.  She was numb, but this information she was gathering was clearly intended to be put to immediate use.

Hypothetical, his ass.


Nathan

"Hey..."

He's not dense. Even on the phone he retains some semblance of perception and she can hear his tone softening and a focusing at once. His tone rarely changes. He can't remember the last time he saw Molly upset enough to have to fight back tears. Maybe the day he thrust Shannon's cat at her and told her not to contact him again but he doesn't remember that day very clearly.

"It's gonna be alright. I--where are you?"


Molly

While the sentiment of it is appreciated, Nate's reassurance still roused from Molly a dark chuckle.  He knows the sound;  it's a laugh without mirth, a laugh that happened only because the alternative was to scream or break into tears.  Molly did neither-- or perhaps she did cry?  He couldn't see if tears were making their way down her cheeks or not (they weren't), but when she answered her question her voice wasn't closed and stuffed like it tends to become when tears start to fall.

"I'm at home," she told him.  There was a smacking sound in the receiver-- it sounded like a lightweight door slapping closed.  Florence had let herself out on the balcony, had nudged the screen door open with her nose.  Nate would hear Molly's voice away from the mouthpiece of her phone, muffled in her coddling and comforting of the dog.

She didn't keep pressing him for information, but rather gave him the floor to speak instead.  Molly had figured he'd asked that question because there was a follow-up thought attached to it, so the stem of questions about blood and healing were swallowed down for now.


Nathan

And yet that doesn't answer the question he'd hoped she would answer without his having to come out and say it himself. Like so long as he doesn't ask the right questions he can maintain plausible deniability. Come over during the daylight hours and talk about this as if they're talking about a friend who's in the hospital and not a friend who is in a state of dreamless bloodless death until such a time as he comes up out of it.

That's the part that won't let Nate just hang up the phone. He knew enough to know he didn't want to know any more a year ago. What he wants doesn't matter.

"... so... where is he?"


Molly

There was a time that Molly and Nate saw one another frequently.  Even if it was just for something as simple as coffee, or maybe drinks at a bar or dinner at one of their apartments once or twice.  They could talk about things that had nothing to do with vampires, but with Molly the subject always came up.  She didn't know how to stay out of those murky waters, kept plunging back into them in search of-- what?  What treasure chest did she think existed in the reaches of those cold, shadowy waters?

It was difficult to say, but Nate had made it very clear that he was finished with the business of vampires.  He made a very clear point of it earlier this year.  They were back on speaking terms, at least, but Molly tried to respect his wishes and did her best to keep vampire shit out of his life.

What was making that difficult was the fact that 'vampire shit' was permeating every aspect of her life.  It was why she hadn't seen Devin or Michael in months, why she visited Nate less and less as well.

This situation, though?  It put her in a corner.  She had to call someone, and though it was unlikely that Nate would be able to help the alternative to calling him was much to risky, and not a step she wanted to take unless she absolutely had to.  Certainly not one she wanted to take in as emotional a state as she was in.  She couldn't expose herself battered and raw and distraught to any names on any business cards that she may hoard, but Nate?  Nate, at least, was safe.

So, she confessed in a quiet voice:

"Here.  I don't know what to do with him.  I couldn't just leave him...."

And judging the bell of pain ringing clear with her words, she really couldn't.


Nathan

"Jesus Christ, Molly..."

She can hear the groan of displeasure barely held back from his voice and the microphone on his cell does not pick up whatever it is he's doing next but she can tell from the cadence of his speech that he's out of bed now. Something rattles as he bumps into it.

"How the hell did you get him inside without--?" Don't answer that. He doesn't actually want to hear about the logistics of dragging a dead body from the scene of a crime up to her apartment's closet when she doesn't have a car. "I'm coming over."

That's not a topic open for discussion. She hears the minute click of a severed connection and when she glances at her phone's screen it confirms that the call ended.


Molly

He was coming over.

The line went dead, and Molly took the phone away from her ear to look down at the screen.  What the glowing square told her confirmed that Nathan had hung up without waiting for permission.  She slipped the phone into the back pocket of her jeans and sighed heavily.  For a time her eyes were cast out on the city view from her fourth-story balcony, but a whine from the large adolescent pup near her knees drew her attention back.  Molly murmured words of comfort to her companion and to-be-sentry, but her efforts to comfort the dog only opened the flood gates of misery in herself.

Figuring that she may as well let it out of her system before Nate arrived, Molly sunk down to her knees, wrapped her arms around Florence's muscly brown neck, and wept.

----------------------

Molly's apartment requires the front door to be unlocked, which is done through a buzzer and intercom system.  When he buzzed, the door clicked open without a verbal message to accompany within the standard amount of time it takes to walk across an apartment.  He can take the elevator or the stairs-- Molly's only ever guided him up the stairs but hey, he's a free man and he can do what he likes.  One way or another, by way of leg strength or by way of pulleys, he'd reach her door and have to knock to gain entry there as well.

When the door pulled open, he'd find Molly visible but out of the way to allow him space to walk inside.  She didn't smile to greet him.  She looked exhausted-- not because it was late and she wanted to lay her head to sleep, this was a different kind of exhaustion.  She was beginning to show bruises of poor rest under her eyes, and while that was normally covered with make-up the fact that she'd cried and scrubbed blood and dust from her face had washed all of that away.  There was a new tension to her, too, a lingering paranoia.  She seemed half ready for fight-or-flight at the drop of a hat.  No wonder she was tired.


"Come on in," she invited, and would close the door behind him once he'd stepped over the threshold.


Nathan

They haven't seen each other since the beginning of the summer. He's been busy and he's been hiding. His hair has bleached from too much sun exposure but his skin hasn't darkened at all. Bruises beneath his eyes from fitful sleep with his sister gone and Nathan looks anxious when she opens the door. Breathing heavy but not fast tension in his jaws holding himself like he's expecting a fight once he steps through the door.

It isn't a fight with Molly he's expecting. He doesn't know who's in there behind her. Dark brown eyes find her face and search it. He's wearing motorcycle boots and khakis and an olive green t-shirt. The first things he could find in the dark. Leather jacket since he rode his motorcycle and he's carrying his helmet in one hand.

Rare that she looks more tired than he does. It does nothing to take the edge out of him.

Her invitation has him looking over her shoulder listening harder and he takes a deep breath to prepare himself. When he looks back at her he has to make a concerted effort to relax. She didn't call him because she has the situation under control.

That breath comes back out in a sigh and he steps across the threshold and pulls her into an embrace. Arms around her shoulders and a hand at the back of her head. She can feel if not hear his heart beating in his chest. He's warm. His hands are warm and his trunk is warm and he's alive despite everything that's happened in their lives.


He doesn't swear or even speak for the rest of the embrace. It will end when she decides to end it.


Molly

The apartment that Nate stepped into looked intact, for the most part.  The floor showed no traces of blood or mishap (for Molly had scrubbed what blood that had dribbled from the broken, grotesque body once she'd come back in from off the balcony-- the smell was too strong, too alluring, and it had to be gone).  No figures loomed in the corners or in the open.  No furniture was overturned, no decorations ripped from the walls.

The only thing out of place that Nate would find in his scan of the open floorplan was a strange cat, not familiar, not at all a larger version of the one he'd handed off some time ago.  This one was distinctly male, and looked dusty-dirty from off the street, with a mean stare and scars cutting through his bristly fur.  He was on the back of the couch, just barely in view, and looked watchfully on at Molly and Nate in the foyer.

Molly herself looked a mess.  She was wearing a pair of dark jeans that were scuffed up in the knees like she'd taken a hard fall.  Her right shoulder and elbow were both scraped up with blood that had smeared from them still flaking off her skin here and there.  Her light and flowery blouse was dirty and smeared with something dark that one could only guess to be blood.

No major injury, though.  She was standing comfortably and breathing fine.

In seeing how his shoulders and chest moved with those deep and ready breaths, how he cautiously scoped out the apartment like he expected attack, she had started to assure him.  "He's comatose, likes  I said, you don't need to--"

Molly was interrupted by Nate's wrapping her up and pulling her against his chest.  She stiffened at first, resisting tears, but soon wrapped her arms around his middle, under the jacket, and tucked her face to his chest.  She didn't weep again, but did breathe and take solace in the comfort while it was offered.  Let him be a support while she let some of the burden of panic, post-psychosis, and betrayal slip for a moment.

Some twenty seconds or so passed before Molly finally pulled back, cleared her throat so it wouldn't be choked up still when she tried to speak, and closed the apartment door.

"Thank you," she said at first.  Then, "I'm sorry.  I've been trying to keep you out of this, but it was either you or one of Them, and..."  She trailed off, lips pressed thin together.  She looked at a loss, and had called for direction.  That's what she was hoping for when she waited for what Nate had to offer in advice.


Nathan

He doesn't tower over her but the six inches he has on Molly means he can rest his chin on her crown while she takes the offered comfort from him. Maybe the embrace is as much for his sake as it is for hers. Anyone watching them would see the expression on his face, the beleaguered bewilderment mingling with the love he still feels for her even after trying to walk away so long ago as it's been now. He rubs the space between her shoulder blades when the embrace's lifespan surpasses five seconds and just before they start to separate Nate tips his head to press his lips against her hair.

All this time the door was open but if something had come up from behind them Nate would have been between her and it. Once they're parted again he puts his hands into the pockets of his jacket like he's looking for something and lets his eyes rest uneasy on her again. Doe eyes never seem to blink and his mouth is set into an unhappy line. It deepens with the apology and a furrow digs itself between his brows. He shakes his head. Stop he says without speaking.


"Where is he?" he asks. A flick of his eyes towards where he knows the bedroom to be. He's already invited himself over to her place. It isn't a far stretch to assume he's going to want to see the state of the vampire before he gives her advice.


Molly

The hand rubbing her back, the lips and breath in her hair and the heartbeat in the warm chest under her cheek was all sanctuary for that twenty seconds.  Shelter in the arms of life, when she'd been wrapped up or pulled along by the arms of Death for so long now.  She loved Nate in a particular way.  He had never done this to her, but if their positions were switched and he'd called for help in the middle of the night she would have grabbed up what clothes she could find in the dark and come on over too.  But Nate?  He took care of himself well enough that those circumstances didn't rise.  She hadn't received texts with disgruntled hostage-held pictures of him in a long time now.

When they parted and his hands went to his jacket pockets, Molly's hands instead went to cup her elbows.  Like bracing her arms over her chest and ribs helped to keep the welling pressure and ache within her heart tamped down.

Where is he?, Nate had asked, and peered toward the bedroom door.  Molly shook her head some and nodded her head toward a different door that was basically in the same direction.  Either the bathroom or the broom closet.


"I don't know what to do with him," she repeated.  That was her crisis right now, wasn't it?  Or the one most easily addressed, the most tangible one at least.  "I need to wake him up.  It's the 'how' that I'm struggling with."


Nathan

"You can't."

Like he's talking to someone who's being completely unreasonable. If Nathan were a well man emotionally some heat would have come into his voice but he isn't and it doesn't. All she has is the light in his eyes. It sharpens the flatness in his voice. It's obvious to him but it isn't so obvious to her.

"Molly, you have to give him back to Them. When he wakes up, which..." Big shrug with his hands still in his pockets. Widening of his already-wide eyes. "... who even knows when that'll be..." His shoulders go back down but his eyes stay wide. "... he's gonna be starving. They have to eat, like, a lot, and if he's hurt and lying in a fuckin' closet until he wakes up on his own..."

That frown returns. This is giving him heartburn. He swallows thick and gives her a pleading look.

"It's not like if someone staked him. You know? You've got some control over that. There's nothing you can do to wake him up. Okay? Just... we gotta bring him somewhere else."


He's placing so much faith in that stack of business cards he saw. Nathan knows more than he'd like to know but he still doesn't know everything.


Molly

Lower lip tried to tremble again, and Molly reigned that in by catching it under her teeth.  For what might seem like the first time in, well, perhaps forever, she was actually listening to him.  He could tell in how she nodded her head slowly, faintly while he explained that Jack-- sweet Jacky, sweet Harald-- would wake and be the death of her when he did.  That he was basically a ticking time bomb because there was no way to force him awake and no way to know when he would awaken on his own.

She had to find someone to take him away, someplace for him to be.

Swallowing hard, Molly conspired.  "I thought maybe a storage unit, but I couldn't--"  She was about to say that she couldn't bear to just leave Harald locked up in some cramped cement cell like a prisoner and animal.  She was betrayed and burned and hurt and angry, but that blood-bound love-knot was tight in her stomach and would make her sick to think of doing something to risk this monstrous man's life.  "It's not safe," she expressed instead.


She worried her lower lip under a bicuspid just a bit, with wheels turning in her head though they wanted to jam up with ice and simultaneously run away in a panic.  "I didn't want to have to call one of Them, but this is out of my hands, isn't it."  A part of her knew he'd want to see what she was dealing with, but Molly made no move to go closer to the broom closet.  She hadn't even moved to sit in the living room because that would bring them closer, closer to the monster in the closet and the watchful ghoulish cat that kept guard over him.  So she stood in place, because she didn't want to show Nate the types of terrors she was associating with these days.


Nathan

She tells him that a storage unit wouldn't be safe and Nate scowls out of protest but doesn't interrupt until she's had time to come to the conclusion he could have told her the second he realized what had happened. Now that he's here and he can see the state his friend is in he can't claim to have a driving desire to see the creature that's landed her in this position.

With his hands still in his pockets and his stance wide and his shoulders tight Molly can tell he doesn't entirely trust that they're safe right now.

"It's been out of your hands since before you dragged him back here," he says. He takes his hands out of his pockets. "Molly, if you don't have anyone you can call, you don't know any of his allies, you don't trust any of your allies... you have to put him in a storage unit somewhere. You can't keep him here. Just... you work in a hospital. Right?"

He can't believe he's saying this. He's saying it as if he already has a contingency plan in place from one of his own shadowy allegiances. Long-suffering sigh cut short because this is no time for theatrics. He pushes his hair back from his brow and holds the lazy curls back. Releases them to go on:


"Go to the blood bank and lift some bags. We can put them in a cooler or something. And then we'll put them into the storage unit, with him, and... when he wakes up, they'll be there, and you won't. And it'll be fine."


Molly

Even as they were standing there discussing options, hovering in the open space of the front of her apartment between kitchen island and dining room table, gears were turning and scenarios were playing out.  Molly's eyes shifted from Nate's, landed on some point on the wall and went out of focus while she visualized the logical conclusions to different actions she may take.  The statistical chance that any ally she may call would take it upon themselves to come over too-- after all, that's precisely what Nate had done, wasn't it?  And then what?  Would they want to take Jacky and label him a prisoner of war?  She didn't know how he was aligned and because of that any person she called could be sealing his fate to a more permanent, lasting type of death than what he'd experienced god-knows-how-many years ago, and what he'd experienced tonight when the bus had broken his body badly enough to push bones through sallow skin.

Nate's suggestion was to use the storage unit, to provide blood there for him in a cooler for when he wakes up.  Molly still wasn't looking up at him, but her chin bobbed with a small, thoughtful nod as she processed the suggestion.

"...I'll need to check and make sure the bagged stuff will cut it," she said, and the tone sounded like she wasn't disagreeing with his idea so much as building off of it-- fleshing it out into a more concrete plan.  "If not, there'd be the risk of him breaking out and going berserk on whoever runs the storage unit, and that would bring questions back to me since the unit he'll break out of will be in my name."  A hand found its way to her mouth so she could tap a fingernail against her teeth.  Soon this turned into her sucking lightly at the edge of the fingernail.  It didn't occur to her that this was because of the vitae dried under her nails still, she was too distracted with planning to realize and be disgusted with herself for the behavior.

A few moments passed, her fingers splayed over her collar bone and the bottom of her throat instead, as though to protect it and smother anxiety within her both.  Blue eyes re-focused and met Nate's once more.


"Look, I know you don't want to be involved in this stuff so I'm sorry I called you-- I know you don't want to hear the apology, so that's the last time I'll say it.  But you don't need to stick around.  I'm glad you came, really, but I'm not going to ask you to help me move him."


Nathan

Those few moments don't pass in silence. He knows something or he thinks he knows something and he's agitated more by the thought of her being alone when something goes wrong than he is by having been called in the first place. If he didn't care about her he wouldn't be here right now. There's the risk of him going berserk and questions coming back on her.

"The bagged stuff is better than nothing," he says. "What other choice do you have?"

She knows he doesn't want to be involved in this stuff. That's the last time she's going to say she's sorry. Nate stares at her for the duration of her explanation and her dismissal like he's trying to decide if he ought to push the issue or not and in the end he doesn't end up insisting on helping. Awkwardness descended upon him where before had been concern and fear both and with it comes the slowness brought on by sleep deprivation and depression both.

"Alright," he says.


And then he turns around and starts to walk back towards the door.


Molly

"Nate."

He'd turned around and reached for the door.  Molly didn't reach out to stop him, not in the way that he'd reached out to her when he'd seen the state she was in by this debacle.  It was something she didn't want him involved in, and her reasons for that, she states, are because he told her he didn't want involvement in these types of affairs.  It could be that she was selfishly hoarding secrets.  It could also be that she was trying to protect him-- after all, her life was already too deeply wrapped up and submerged in the inky mire of Undead Men and Monsters Under Streets.  She was increasingly distant from her family, while Nate had been trying to build bridges back to his.

Perhaps she sent him away because she would rather that the dead man in her closet take her life instead of Nate's.  She'd rather see him live, let him see the sun and have the way out that he sought.

Whatever her reasons, she still felt wrong just letting him walk out the door on the note of 'Alright' and nothing else.  If he paused, turned, or in any other way heeded the call of his name, Molly smiled weak and shaky and small at him.


"Don't think I'm not thankful that you stopped by, okay?  I am.  Thank you."


Nathan


Nathan is not oblivious to the effect he has on the people around him and he is aware perhaps to this more than to anything else that he inspires a protective drive even in those who could claim easy that they hate him. From a distance he looks skittish and easily bested in a fight and up close he seems lethargic and uninterested in his own survival. Nothing that has happened in the last year has done anything to change anyone's opinion of him. His spine is stronger than the rest of him looks. But he has enough on his plate with the psychic power he'd ignored for most of his life. Vampires will kill him if he doesn't walk away.

He's already walked away from her once. It looks like he's doing it again now but Molly says his name and though he plucks his motorcycle helmet off the table where he'd left it he does stop. Faces the door for several seconds while he waits to gauge what the next word is going to be.

Don't.

He's looking back over his shoulder when she smiles at him and he turns more but not fully to face her. His question sounds like a non sequitur but it's not. This wouldn't have happened tonight if she had felt she had someone else to call. It's a slow realization but Nate is beginning to accept that Molly is never going to have a normal life. He introduced her to the most normal person he knows and trouble still found her. This was a choice she made tonight. This was a choice he made.


"You know if you call me, I'm going to answer it. Right?"


Molly

"I do."

The smile began as a small, weak thing-- a pilot light without much fuel to power it.  But it strengthened, if only a little, to hear Nate confirm what she professed to already know.  She had the rest of the night ahead of her, and dark hours were already becoming precious even though she had several of them left before dawn would begin to crest the eastern horizon.  She still had blood on her and her scraped skin hadn't been washed and tended to yet.  She still had a vampire in her closet and a ghouled cat on her couch.  There was much left to be addressed, but this was important enough to take extra time on, even if it was just a few minutes caught at the doorway.

"I'll try not to abuse that good fortune."  She paused, and then added:  "I'll text you to let you know how this shakes out, okay?  Go home and get some sleep."  Then, she added with a frown that tried to flavor humor into its edges but didn't do a good job of it-- "I'm probably going to have to call some folks that you won't want to shake hands with anyways."

He'd stopped with his motorcycle helmet under his arm, just a few feet away.  Molly closed the distance so that she could stretch up on her toes and put one hand on his cheek, and her lips to his other cheek.  The gesture is tender and bittersweet, a whispered acknowledgement that her goodbyes always had a stronger potential than average to be the last.


"Goodnight, Nate."

Spiegelung - 8.13.2014 [Jack] [ST'd by Joey]

Spiegelung

Don't Molly and Jack see one another (oh, there is irony) now and then? 

Don't they plan these things out, their discussions of things real and ephemeral, and those places where they intersect? A little club of two, one Jack, one wild card, checking their hands. Reshuffling the deck. Seeing what comes out.

Perhaps one of them has a cup of coffee, perhaps the other grabs a newspaper, but whatever the exactitudes of time and space that is the scene they find themselves inhabiting: together, in the night and more than set pieces, the entirety of this show until...

Within that dramatic structure, after such exposition, rising action must eventually take place. Must? Maybe not, but it does. They both feel it. Telltale. One heart might skip a beat, the other might feel its vitae come alive with the livewire current of the supernatural, and they both know that something is that should not be.


Molly

Of course Molly and Jack see each other now and then.  It was odd if a full month went by without them hanging out at least one time.  These days, since they'd been doing their research and actively planning the continued hunt of this missing reflection, they were likely seeing each other even more often than that.  Molly's focus in reading had shifted into the subject matter of alternate dimensions and other planes of existence.

Tonight, they'd met and walked a little, then stopped at a coffee shop that Molly had discovered and liked.  It was an odd-shaped building, like an 'L' with a long hallway lined with chairs down the side of the establishment.  Molly had selected the table in the back of that hallway, so they could talk comfortably without worry of being overheard.  Molly preferred to sit with her back to the wall.  She liked to be able to see if anyone was approaching-- we can thank this past year's experiences for that.

Molly was dressed in a light floral tank-top and dark jeans, with her hair left down to land on her shoulders when she leaned forward over the screen of her tablet.  She had it propped on the table and was navigating for something that she'd wanted to show Jack when an all-too(uncomfortably-so)-familiar sensation crawled over her skin and wriggled its way into her bones.  It was getting to the point where she could almost smell the energy fizzling in the air.

The red-haired nurse/occultist swallowed and stilled her fingers on the tablet's screen.  She jerked her chin up to look up the hallway, then to the wall to her right, before she looked across the table to where her homely companion sat, looking suspicious and surprised.

"Did you feel that?"


Jack

Jack is a busy Jack but never too busy for Molly, his investigator, his investigatrix, his untrustworthy and un/reliable trick-up-the-ol'-sleeve, because how is one to use that trick-up-the-ol'-sleeve if one doesn't slip it there? Doesn't practice with it? Doesn't let the trick explicate the con? And what is Jack busy doing? He talks about unburying old stories and mythologies. He speculates, when he is with Molly, Molly who has made her hair that unlucky flag of red, they used to say redheads have no souls, remember, remember? 

He speculates when he is with Molly and perhaps more of his personal view of the world bleeds into his words and stains the hypotheticals. There are worlds which overlap one another. Which rest inside one another like matryoshka dolls except they are not truly separated for all they are separate. This business of alternate worlds: he hopes that she never knows that Harald isn't part of her day-bound kingdom, but he also hopes she won't wander further into the kingdom of darkness and night and look at her. Molly wanders. The point is: Jack is a busy Jack but never too busy for Molly and sometimes when they don't talk occult occurences and troubles they talk dog training, Florence, Game of Thrones, why not? His lack of fashion?

So they're at a coffee shop and Jack has a book he's writing in, wearing his Harald-face, pigeon-chested, weak-chinned, Werewolf-eyebrowed young man without much fortune, clothes that don't quite fit, lanksterness, a C, a bookworm, dark blonde hair on the backs of his hands which are broad or are they blunt and he's writing with a pen not a pencil when that trickle of strangeness plays a song in his veins and in his marrow, and all Jacks come to attention when the dark kingdom sings its warnings and its heraldings, and so it is that he has straightened (as much as a pigeon-chested youth can) and is looking around like the man left behind once all the pigeons are scared away when Molly asks her question.


"Er, yes," he says. Molly knows that 'Harald' is not, shall we say, as cautious as she might wish (oh, the irony). That he likes to go towards the danger, so to speak, investigate dark places, etc. etc. "I do. Something's up, er, afoot."


Spiegelung

A place of strange construction and architecture is a place for conversations such as theirs (tucked away) and for occurrences such as this (obscured around said corner). A shadow stretches strangely from around that corner, negative space caught within ambient light, though only its caster is alive and not the shadow itself (no summoner or shadow puppeteer the likes of which they are both familiar with, not here, not in this story). It is a sliver of a shadow, misshaped in its borders and unaccustomed to sneaking well, but it skulks nonetheless and it is only their detection of the esoteric and unknown that draws their attention to it. Someone listening to them, someone watching, someone eavesdropping.

They are suddenly looking around, Jack straightened and Molly's chin lifted from the secrets she has unearthed to share, and the sliver is shaved away to nothingness as it notices. Withdraws. Retreats hastily.

Movement elsewhere, though, and concurrent. It becomes obvious from whence the shadow had been cast, the face of a pastry chest, the large curved glass showing off confections and reflecting the quaint little salvaged sconces that illuminate the coffee shop from its walls. A shadow cast from within that reflection, and something peeking at them from not behind or beyond, but inside that thin sheet of glass. Existing within the angles of refraction and reflection, of light bending and catching something not there, and retreating at their noticing what should not be possible.

Within him Jack can feel the twisted cursed thing buck. Something that has eluded him, sudden motion, taunting all coupled with the insult of being spied upon, whatever it does to the Man within, the Beast is a terrible reflection as it always is. For Molly? One might guess her curiosity is again piqued, when she notices that same movement, and for her it is familiar to what she'd seen in her own apartment and perhaps even described to Jack. All before confronting a monster in her apartment's water closet.


Again it bolts, shy, timid, and from outside whether Jack knew his trusty feline minion was patrolling or not (cats so often do as they like) Jack can here Boots whine and yowl loudly, decibels likely high as the ghoul's hackles are raised. 


Molly

When you spent as much time up to your hips in supernatural business (or so submerged you'd become one with it, in Jack's case), you became attune to when it introduced itself into the otherwise mundane world around you.  Molly and Jack both took notice when that vibration of Something's not quite right pulsed through the coffee shop.

There.  Molly saw it first, this was the whole reason she preferred sitting with her back to the wall.  There was a shadow stretching curiously into the air, where it shouldn't be really.  She focused in on it and nodded to indicate to Jack what she was seeing, where to look.

As he no doubt twisted to get a look himself, Molly turned off the tablet and closed the cover of the case it was protected by.  She lost the shadow, found the reflection, and she went sharp and tense-- ready, reactive.  "He's here," she said to her companion, and hastily proceeded to tuck the tablet into her messenger bag.

The reflection vanished again, tucked away, ducked away, shy of being seen like this (or so Molly assumed).  She started up to her feet and slung the bag strap over her shoulder, but paused to see how Harald would take the lead.  This was his quest, after all, but on the hunt for the unknown Molly was like a foxhound quivering for the horn to sound.


"Shouldn't we follow?"  she asked, and glanced away only for a moment when she heard that terrible yowling start up.  Probably the reflection-- that was how her pets had acted when it appeared on her balcony.


Jack

Not until one's lost one's reflection does one realize how (in modern nights) difficult it is to go somewhere there is no sign of one's loss. The windows know and silverware knows and the just-mopped floor knows and the napkin cannisters know. The lightbulbs know and, here, the refurbished-salvaged sconces know, and the lenses of reading glasses know, the cellphone cameras know, so of course does rainwater and anything that has polish. But the dreamy world of mirrors and reflection is a world that distorts as often as it shows the truth: smearing one shape into a slick of brown, say, bending, folding away, concealing. Jacks know that the mirror world is untrustworthy. Jacks know that mirrors are untrustworthy because the eye is untrustworthy because the truth is malleable (except for the truth of the quest, of course of course, but even that has lead him to this dark place that the him he was once upon a time would never have wanted to go - or would he - ?).

Jacks also know how to slip into the invisible gloom that is ever-present but invisible. Jacks know, this Jack knows, how to be so stealthsome that they are never seen, not even once, not by anything, 'lest that Anything has fearsome powers of perception and augury, could foretell who knows what mad hunches: Jack is not often spied upon. He was sweet-tempered once upon a time and in truth he is still sweet-tempered, for what he is. But even the sweetest tempers curdle, don't they? Curdle under the force of the curse, 'lest effort is imparted, and in the shock of realization and revelation -- something, Jack, some Thing you were not so canny to notice right away! Some Thing, some Thing from Over There Perhaps, was Watching You Two -- his fingers grip the table and his hairy knuckles tauten, red lines.

Then movement. He braces himself against the table; begins to stand. Outside, Boots yowls. Boots: monster, destroyer of rats, 'lest they be in a certain swarm and even then what Jack doesn't know won't hurt him -

Or will it? Jack doesn't know doesn't know doesn't know so much he wants to know needs to know must know and he doesn't know whether to follow the sliver of diminishing shade right up against reflection or call it an echo and whip around to follow (a lick of anticipation, of anger sublimating into curiousity and fear and amazement) a reflection he hasn't seen for years.

And when he sees it, he flinches with surprise.

"Perhaps not, but let us do so regardless," Jack called Jacky called Harald says to Molly, whose voice gives him a needle-compass sliver of focus, coupled with a grin that is not unfamiliar to her. Hideous; ugly. A face only a mother could love, but eh: isn't there some charm in Jack's readiness for adventure? Sure.

Let us do so regardless: "Did you see which way?"

And off they go, chasing a reflection after being startled by a shadow while a cat growls and spits and howls and will indeed be getting quite a lecture later on if Jack has anything to say about it.


Molly

Perhaps some patrons cast their eyes up when the two in the back corner suddenly stood.  Molly had found her feet as though she'd been startled or shocked from under the table.  Soon as all her belongings were dumped back in the bag, soon as that bag was secured and tucked near the round of one broad hip, she was ready to go.

This was something Jack and Molly had in common, one of several threads that tied them together-- her sense of Adventure.  She didn't know how Jack came into this world of the Supernatural and Things Beyond Mortality-- it could have been involuntarily, by simple sake of circumstance.  Whatever it may be, the fact was neither of them turned away from what they saw and knew.  They may as well be standing leaned into the headwinds of dark and shadow (and reflection, refraction).  So, when he stated they probably shouldn't pursue but suggested that they did in the same sentence, Molly saw no flaw in the logic and questioned no motive.

The beauty of coffee shops was that you were paid up as soon as you stepped away from the counter.  There was no tab for them to pay off, no lines for them to wait in impatiently before they could be on their way.  The door swung open with a clang-clang of an old brassy bell, and Molly stepped briskly out onto the sidewalk first.

She didn't know where to go, not right away, so she slowed soon as she was out in front of the shop (forgetting in the moment Jacky's aversion to large pane windows).  Her head turned slowly from left to right as she scoped the streets before them.  The last time the Reflection had come, it had come to lure.  She imagined it may do the same this time around as well.


Molly

[Perception 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )


Jack

[Oh oh. Also Perceptive (perhaps) and Alert? + Hidden Things, if that's a thing.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )


Spiegelung

The glass door is propped open to waft that roasted bean smell out and customers on in, only a recovered and refurbished wooden screen door in Molly and Jack's way. It had served to send the sounds of Boots' disturbance echoing down the corridor to them, and now cracks the tinkling of bells to announce their departure. No horns to sound the hunt, but good enough.

The cat that yowls (and is still yowling, purr-growling, snarling and snapping) outside the cafe stands on the wrought iron bench in front of the establishment.

Despite his frenzied attentions Boots balances perfectly on the top tier, a ballet dancer on a tightrope of wood, pacing back and forth and looking up the front window pane for a moment. Over to glass door. Over to the street, and yes, across a puddle, and leaps down to the curb winding its way around newspaper stands, telephone poles, lamp posts and assorted obstacles as it pursues its quarry down the sidewalk.

It draws Molly's attention enough to spot what needs spotting: A broad back deflated on one side, a slight hunch that doesn't keep it from standing upright, clad in a trench coat wet with rain, and a deformed head atop it that is visible as such even from the rear. Like the villain in some film noir it retreats into the dark urban wilderness.

Jack gets a clearer look. Jack sees a familiar sight, one he has not seen since nights long-past, and about to slip from his grasp yet again.

Boots is dutifully in tow to run it aground.

Its image flicks and flits: across the front of the florist next door to the dry cleaner with its lone florescent light waiting for the last customers, across to a Chinese restaurant, and on down the block toward the corner's turn.


Molly

[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2:  The Chase!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )


Jack

[Jack be nimble, Jack be quick?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )


Jack

[At least there ain't no candlesticks.]


Molly

[Wits 4 (Cool-Headed?) + Empathy 2: So that cat looks pretty familiar.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )


Spiegelung

Molly picks up on a confluence of events and reactions, from Jack biting his proverbial tongue at the cat screeching and tearing his way down the sidewalk, to that cat's sheer and utter purposefulness. Hadn't her own animals balked at the image projecting itself from its otherworld to her own? This one seems to have a goal in mind instead as it goes after the thing on the otherside of those windowpanes. And that pattern of fur and scars on a weathered veteran of a feline is familiar, the growls echoing in her mind from the present back to a past encounter with the strange and unnerving, stacking to write an odd story on the back of her neck in raised hairs and sweat.


Molly

Out in front of the shop there is a cat.  A cat of war-scars and grizzled fur.  A cat of the streets, a tough tom.  He was easily spotted, for he still spat and hissed and focused intently on something that she didn't see at first-- up, above, in the window.  Molly's eyes followed up after the cat's initially, spied the strange misshapen back against a trench coat, a head that wasn't shaped the way it was supposed to.  All of this distorted and stretched by the nature of reflections themselves.

It was off, darting to a puddle, and the cat gave another rumbling start of a growl, drawing Molly's attention again.  From cat to Jack-- lingering on his homely and so familiar face for a second before the feline took off running, the reflection flitting and flashing forward within her range of notice and perception as well.

When deja vu is realized and morphs into an actual memory, there's an instant of glory.  It's like a gulp of clean air after coming up from the water, like a burst of sunlight to help you see into the dark of a cave.  She remembered a battle in a backyard, a pit dug into the earth and Something Strange within it.  Kali had been there, some others she didn't quite recognize as well.  This cat, though, this cat had absolutely been there as well.  Hadn't it appeared over or through the fence slots, hissing and screeching and driving her back and away from what she had seen?  It had purpose then (keep her away, keep the prying eyes from seeing), and it had a purpose now (chase, herd, pursue the reflection!).

This recognition and moment of 'Aha!' was put on pause when the cat and reflection whiped around a corner.  Afraid to lose them, Molly's flat shoe soles squeaked on the pavement to announce her pursuit.  She bounced while she bounded, but Molly was healthy and under soft padding there was health and vitality, and this carried her quick (enough) around the block as well.


Jack

Boots is hunting the reflection too. Good Boots. Prince of Cats. King. Best Cat. Better than a dog, Cat. The Cat. Jack's Cat. Good Boots, Good. Jacky called Harald has a hat tonight. Didn't we mention he had a hat? A beat-up old fedora of a thing, something a hipster discarded in contempt and disgust. It was never good enough to be fashionable, something meant to be abandoned and lost (perhaps at a laundromat). It's perfect for holding onto after smashing onto one's head, left hand clamped down firmly a-top it, knobby knuckles and long fingers and hirsute wrist a-working, before Jack takes off at an acceptable pace, pigeon-chest suffering itself to fall into an easy rhythm. Molly half-looks back from the cat to Jack, an epiphanic moment, and Jack raises his eyebrows at her, flicker of a smile that makes him look astonished but only a flicker because

The Chase

Is Motherfucking

On.

Jack's a bit quicker tonight to see, but Molly's a bit fleeter of foot, and Jack pounds the pavement behind her, one hand still holding his hat in place. It's a shame to lose a hat to a pursuit.

He looks quite ridiculous, lanky gawky C-shaped thing that he is, tongue tucked at the corner of This Face's mouth because that is how This Face hurries. With all due intentness.

He's trying not to run blind, is Jack. Don't run into an open mouth, Jack. That's one of the first rules Jacks learn, that and how to be so quiet, that and how to disappear although the truth one learns after learning how to disappear is that one doesn't disappear, one is still oneself no matter how much vanishing one vanishes into. But not running into an open mouth: that's an important rule. So he's trying not to run blind, puzzling at reflections and puddles and windows that The Reflection ran through, as if there might be a left-behind trail, a sign, a distortion, some prophecy of intent-

Around a corner.


Molly

[Wits 4 (Cool Headed)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )


Jack

[WITS.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )


Spiegelung

[ Cunning. ]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4) ( fail )


Spiegelung

[ Almost forgot Boots. ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5) ( fail )


Spiegelung

Molly is nimbler and hot on the bristle brush length of Boots' tail. They form a strange trio making their way briskly down the sidewalk after their eavesdropper. A caravan of seekers following a hideous star only they know to look for.

Around that corner is another row of storefronts, apartment lobbies, and ground floor windows for the reflection to glide across, but it does not. Down one, two, it doubles back to hop across to the windshield of a truck parked in a loading zone, intent on getting away. There is the eerily silent appearance of shadowy footsteps into the street across the sheen of rained upon asphalt.

Jack knows to look. Jack sees, though they've rounded the corner, because he is looking for the open mouth of a trap or the dropping of a shoe. Molly's pursuit is controlled and she also knows- some memory instilled by a caring parent or kindergarten teacher- not to leap out into the street without looking both ways.

Boots is on a mission and would not think twice to sacrifice another of its nine lives for his master. In the lead, the unnaturally intelligent feline might have been able to warn them, but does not see what is coming.

Molly knows they are already within the beast's gullet. She has seen it rear up and swallow the city whole. Around that corner comes a city bus. The footsteps stop, as if noticing they no longer have their own shadows in the form of their pursuers, and take an instant to recalibrate. And then? Disappear only for the creature to again appear across the side window of the bus, slamming balled fists upon glass, ever silent trapped on the other side.

Boots was not the intended target. Molly was not truly either. Boots darts out into the street after what looks like (but is surely not) its master and instead of becoming a puddle of bone and furry entrails beneath a wheel, its loyalty saves it.

The terrified driver veers the bus away from the phantasmal gargoyle clinging to its side and toward the patch of sidewalk where Jack and Molly are stopped.


Molly

[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2: DIVE DIVE]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )


Jack

[Jack: O_O -1 BP to stamina. Also: Save the cheerleader halpful push! With WP, because ack.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 ) [WP]


Jack

Boots goes streaking across the street, an unwary cat, and Jack hisses out a not-quite-word of warning, a sound which becomes quite sharp. The bus is veering now, and it is happening very quickly: how it pulls up and away from the grotesque reflection (reflect on the nature of the beast, huh? It's like the reliquary every Nosferatu needs must have to remember), coming straight for Molly and Jack.

Jack has been hit by a car before. Jack has not been hit by a bus before. Once upon a time, there was a Jack. He could fall from very tall heights and be barely bruised. He has not tried this with a bus. He doesn't know, not really, what the Curse will do to protect him, but he has a certain Quixotic faith in his own destiny. It is not fatalism; fatalists don't try to make things happen. It isn't a philosophy he thinks of now, but it is internalized, this certain belief that he is lucky but sometimes one has to make one's own luck and sometimes one just has to sit down and play with cheaters and even cheaters can be outplayed. By Jacks. By nobodies.

(Soldiers, you know. Once, always. In some respects.)

He doesn't have time (probably) to jump away. He has time to push Molly towards safety (perhaps), and that's what he does, with precision if you please, with surety, taking the hand which was holding his hat away (and the hat knocks askew and at a ridiculously rakish angle in response to the jarring motion; Jacks are not graceful) in order to do the deed. His eyes are already crinkling, physiological response, bracing for impact. Eyes crinkling like half-moons tension whispering through his cold dead muscles along with a jolt of blood-fueled hardiness, and don't his eyes just gleam with concern.

Boots DID get away, didn't he?


Molly

More windows and storefronts wrapped around the wall of buildings when Molly turned the corner with a squeak of rubber soles.  She was glad she'd opted for jeans and flats today-- even for 'friend dates' with a werewolf-ugly young man, it wasn't uncommon for Molly to dress in skirts and heels.  Wedges or stilettos would have made keeping up well enough to keep eyes on the thing fleeing them difficult.  But she's there near the curb to watch as the hunched-and-twisted once-Jack stopped and skipped to a parked vehicle instead of continuing up the street.

Molly stopped and twisted around to watch where it went, glanced left and right rather than bolting out into the street because she'd seen too many auto-peds roll through her doors to let that mistake happen.

Then, all at once, there was a wall of metal and glass and headlights coming their way.  The phantasm reflection bared its monstrous visage to the bus driver, threatening and flailing from where it was trapped in glass, and the massive vehicle banked hard enough that the suspensions cried out loudly.

Ever quick-on-the-uptake, Molly did not take pause even for a moment to allow the shock to make its natural progression through her system.  Survival instinct still whirling some of its gears, despite all the poor decisions she's made before, she had no desire to die under the front grill of a bus.  So Molly leaped aside, propelled by strong legs and the aiding hand of a friend-- a hand that caught her shoulder and arm at just the right angle to make the most use of tossing Molly's weight ahead and getting her moving faster.

The extra momentum sent Molly in an actual dive, and she landed on her side on the sidewalk pavement.  The impact shook her bones and probably scraped an elbow, but that was the least of her concern.  She was more wrapped up in the fact she didn't feel Jack beside her, and opened-adjusted-focused eyes just in time to see the bus overwhelm and plow him over.

"HARALD!"


Spiegelung

Jack steels himself physically for what is coming and then turns to throw Molly out of the way of the bus. She seems to have the same idea in mind and leaps along, the helpful push from Jack propelling her out of the way as well. The brakes on the bus go screech, whine, groan, but its broad metal front still slams squarely into the space that Jack occupies.

Squarely into Jack.

A hair to the right. Say if he had tried to save himself instead of Molly? A drop less of blood burnt in offering to Caine and his own hide to harden it. A brick wall instead of a pane glass shopfront window, the kind he might usually avoid, behind him to shatter as it breaks and breaks his fall. All these things might have left Jack's body broken beyond saving, but it only knocks him into the comatose dreaming of torpor instead.

Molly lands on her side, though the momentum leaves her rolling. Forward onto her knees, the palms of her hands skid onto the biting sidewalk, until she stops on her elbow in a bit of a heap, bruised and bleeding.

Alive.

Only the living bleed like that.

A different Jack, yet familiar in his hideous appearance, is what lands inside that health food store into a display of coconut oil jars, bags of exfoliating shavings, bottled nectar from the tropical palm. He has become the monster that his reflection had revealed itself as. The mask of Harald falls away. Boots is first on the scene, licking his face, vitae barely trickling from where that telltale tusk has punctured through his melting wax puddle of a cheek. Where broken bones protrude there is no gushing blood. No spurting arteries.

This must be how the undead bleed, because there is vitae on the air. A scent that is now familiar to Molly wells up from where those wounds are. Something inside, that augury that now gives her awareness a sharpened contrast and direction, tells Molly that while Jack is bents and broken, he is not gone.


Molly

Blood screamed in Molly's ears.  Thumped and hammered and she wasn't sure at first if it was this loud because of what Abraham's blood had done to her, or if it was because fear for her friend and grief struck such awful chords in her soul (on a level woven and bound deeper, tied down with knots).  She felt that her palms and right elbow had been torn up, that she was bleeding from where her denim and sidewalk had both scraped and torn at her knee when she landed.

She was bruised and bleeding, but hardly in the state that Jacky was.  When the bus had come to a screeching and screaming halt that matched what was happening in her ears already, Molly scrambled to her feet and clambored through the shattered glass store front, one hand braced on the hot and still bus to carry her across.

When she came upon the fallen body in the store, crumpled between two aisles on the tile floor, what Molly found caused pause and startled horror.  A hand flew to and grasped against her sternum and the other went over her mouth.  "Oh my god," she muttered, and her mind processed both that the monster she'd seen in her mirror was now solid on the ground in front of her, and that it was also battered and damaged and bleeding, but not fatally damaged and dying.

The cat had come and was licking blood from a wound in his face, and Molly's new sensitivity to smell let the scent of vitae carry into her nostrils.  A supernatural cord rang in her, like rusty and taut (uncomfortable) wires that trembled and wobbled and jangled and sent off sparks of want.

She was a smart girl.  Molly put pieces together quickly, and the hand over her mouth was soon joined by the second.  Fingertips pressed together tight over lips to hold them still, keep them from trembling.  She glanced hastily over her shoulder to the sound of the people who were on the bus that crashed, then hurried to Jack's side to feel him along his chest and shoulders, making sure she wasn't about to jostle broken bones, then shake and push him urgently.

"Harald," she said again, pain striking the same rust-wire tones in her voice as she crouched there on one knee trying to jostle awake a Dead Man.

"You asshole, wake up!"


Spiegelung

When nothing comes from out of Jack's jagged cut mouth, twisted mandible still, other sounds need to cut through the rushing pulse of blood and the still-tinkling bits of glass being dislodged by the bus shuddering under a labored engine.

Those sounds are other people. People who are or will soon bear witness to what the bus hit. The groan of the bus driver as he raises his head comes first. The sound of feet echoing through the hull of the public transport toward the back door. One lady screaming and a man trying to quiet her down, asking if she is okay, in a thick North African accent. The interior of the health nut store is lit by one headlamp of the bus. The other has a wall of shelving toppled over and spilling out over it.

Any moment now people will be surveying the damage. The sounds of cars stopping and people getting out on the street comes next.

"Call the police, I'm going to see if everyone's alright," said yards and yards away, but clear as a whisper in her ear.


Spiegelung

Boots laps, licks, until Molly gets close. He looks up at her, hackles raised, like he might again give her that signature Tom-snarl, but instead his tail drops.

Boots looks up at her with an intelligent eye, and even the lazy and slightly milky one seems aware of something, then pads around Jack. Grabs onto the shoulder of his shirt, fabric between needlepoint teeth, and tugs as if in a futile attempt to drag Jack away from this place where eyes and ears and sirens may soon bear down upon.

A tug. Another. And then a rather telling glance up at Molly. Expectant.

And if her hands were to come for him rather than his domitor, that snarl and hiss would finally come, and those teeth might even show themselves effective at at least one task.


Molly

There's no response from Jack, and the voices made it clear that people were getting off the bus, and that others were coming to see the spectacle from off the street.  They had very little time before people would discover them in the aisles, behind a mess of inventory that had been strewn about from the collision.

From what she knew about Vampires, he probably needed blood to heal himself up.  The cat, perhaps?  It had been tugging intently at Jack's shirt, she presumed it was some kind of attached to him, a servant or familiar or something like that.  Molly had reached out for it, but the animal was smart and sensed the intention in those fingertips.  All it took was a pinning of ears and baring of needle teeth and Molly got the point.  She withdrew her hand and looked at the hideous face.  Grimaced, reached out, and pulled his misshapen cheek from the tusk.

Resisted the urge to lick her fingertips.  Balked at the fact that she had the urge in the first place.
There wouldn't be time to supply blood even if she thought she could handle having that happen a second time in thirty days.  With her voice crackling under the stress, Molly whispered harshly to Boots:  "Oh, fine then!"  She had a feeling the cat would understand her exasperation-- it seemed smart enough anyways.  She moved to Jack's head and shoulders and gingerly (at first) grabbed under his armpits and tried to haul him up and start dragging him away.  It took her about seven feet of dragging to realize that this wasn't going to get them very far very quickly at all.

So, swallowing hard and bitter, Molly reached deep for a strength passed through blood consumed, adjusted her grip on the monstrous visage, and made way for the back of the shop.

[Spending 1 BP for Potence]


Jack

The bus the crowd the broken glass:
yet in the panic none think to ask
What of yon brave and dapper hat?
The fedora perched so jauntily 'pon yon Jack?
Did any note how high it flew and far?
Before dropping to ground, as like a star
pushed from the Heavens by uncaring god?
None did. Poor fedora. There it lies:
abandoned yet again, loosed of all ties.


Spiegelung

The sack of rotten and ugly potatoes budges once she is carrying him right, arms hooked under his, heels dragging on the linoleum floor of the shop, but her muscles quickly begin to fatigue. It isn't until she gives up some of that different ugliness worming its way through her veins that she can really move him with any haste.

It puts some necessary and immediate distance between them and the ripped open storefront.

The back of the shop leads out to an alleyway it shares with the rest of the block. Thankfully it is uninhabited. A parked white van behind (by the smell of its dumpster and kitchen exhaust fan) the Chinese restaurant. A smart car with decals for cupcake shop. A few more dumpsters. A circle of overturned milk crates and empty beer bottles where workers must take their breaks.

Boots follows. Boot waits behind, but is not lagging, instead watching to make sure none are following before slipping through the last few inches of the closing back door of the health food store. It clicks soundly shut behind them. Boots looks around. Boots is thinking, but looks anxious, first to Jack who gives no solace or answer, and then up to Molly again.

Is Molly a thief? Of bodies? Of automobiles? Would she toss a Jack in a dumpster? Would she risk one of the many doors lining that alley? Or carry him out onto one of the parallel sidewalks to risk being sighted with a monster's apparent corpse?


Molly

The alley offered shelter, but Molly knew that was much too temporary.  Boots hovered there as well, anxious to see what Molly did with his master.  Molly didn't go far, because after finding shelter in the inky shadows against the side of a dumpster she deposited Jack on the ground, propped him leaned back against the stone wall.  Crouched down in front of him with her knees out and spine curved forward.

Once more fingers pressed over her mouth, now as she considered her options.  She should deposit him in a dumpster and just let what happens happen.  Really, wasn't that fair for him pulling the wool so far over her eyes?  For letting her love him, letting him into her home and mind?

But no.  If he survived, he would know where to come for her as revenge for simply abandoning him.  But would Harald seek revenge?  Was Harald even his name?  Probably not.

Beyond that, more than it even, she couldn't just leave him there.  She couldn't even get her knees to flex so she could get up and start walking away.  She knew that her heart would suffer too much to just abandon him someplace to be found, to be harmed.  She didn't know what it would take to wake him-- may have to pull that information from someone when she had time.  But one thing was for certain-- she had to find a safe place for him.

By now tears were rolling over round and freckled cheeks, down over fingertips as well.  A confusing, supernaturally-charged surge of betrayal and pain and worry and disgust and adoration had her nearly sick to her stomach, but Molly found resolve.  After taking a minute's break to process and plan, Molly leaned forward again to gather the monster up, this time dragging one of his arms over her shoulders and hefting her hip and flank into his.

Supporting him this way was slightly less suspicious than just dragging him by his armpits.  Perhaps it could hide attention enough for her to hurry the monster to where she'd parked her car-- back through the alley and toward the small parking lot for patrons of the coffee shop.


Spiegelung

Around the corner where a bus is buried headfirst into a storefront, in a compartmentalized city such as Denver and late on a week night such as this, might as well be a world away. The coffee shop is calm. It had been calm since the two weirdos in the back had gone running out after some cat. People around the corner are milling about, and perhaps an onlooker or two had wandered over from around the corner to inspect the carnage, but the parking lot is accessible enough and Molly is smart about how she carries Jack out and over to her car from the alleyway.

In he goes. In the trunk? In the passenger seat? In. In any case that is where he ends up, staining her interior with vitae, and where he resides. Boots that leaps in alongside to cast sideways glances at Molly while she drives them away.

How long since Boots has tasted cat food? Isn't whatever Boots eats cat food? Met a dog he liked? These are the questions Boots seems to be pondering as he sniffs at the stray hairs and fibers, the scents and sniffs, all inside Molly's car.