17 March 2005 ============================================================================== In the same untidy handwriting as the first note, and as before, left on the kitchen table on the Glass Walker side: "Jer burde jage den arbejdsdrengen oftere. Sig vil belaere sig at blive kraftig. Han neads hen til laere at." ============================================================================== It is currently 12:30 Pacific Time on Thu Mar 17 2005. Currently the moon is in the waxing Half Moon phase (47% full). Currently in Saint Claire, it is raining lightly. The temperature is 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the north at 9 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 30.02 and steady, and the relative humidity is 89 percent. The dewpoint is 43 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius.) Safehouse: GW Main Area Like the public safehouse, the foyer of the Glass Walker's private area is set off from the living room by a four-foot-high half-wall. The steps to the second floor disappear off to the left, mirroring the other set. There the similarities end - where the public area is painted unoriginal white, the walls of the Walker house are a dusty pastel teal above polished maple hardwood floors. A hallway leads back toward the kitchen, pausing at a computer room on the left outfitted with enough bells and whistles to satisfy a small LAN party. At the back of the house, through an arch, the kitchen is big enough to comfortably allow two active cooks and boasts a half-sized refrigerator and full pantry in addition to the usual stove/fridge/sink combination. A dining room, nearly as large as the kitchen, is set off by another half-wall like the one in the foyer. The furniture throughout the house is in better condition than next door, though only a few pieces are close to new. Stairs in the foyer lead up to the second floor, while a doorway tucked under the curve of the stairs heads down to the basement. A heavy door in the foyer with a monitor and intercom beside it goes back to the area set up for communal use by the Sept's Garou. From afar, Natalie picks up on the third ring; there's quite a lot of background noise - traffic, hammering, and the like. "Yeah? Kevin, that you?" Long distance to Natalie: Grey's voice is brisk and businesslike. "It's Thomas, actually. I did some digging on the notes that the boy's been writing. Thought I'd give you a heads up." Natalie pages: You're positive it's him, then?" There comes a muffled exchange - it sounds like she's saying something about 'just a minute'. Then back to the phone: "What've you got? Long distance to Natalie: Grey grunts. "I had a good guess. Though maybe it's only his body that's doing it. Listen to this. 'Blank' is a word that the online translator couldn't do anything with, nor the one Danish to English dictionary I was able to find. First note. 'You've taken something that wasn't yours. Blank were wrong to you. Useless blank come from blank.' Second note. 'You ought drive the the boy again. Themselves blank coated themselves to be energetic. He blank to blank that.'" He pauses, and there's a creak as he sits back in the computer chair. From afar, Natalie starts, "Dan--," and then quiets to listen to the translations. "Uh-/hunh/." She quiets again, to think. "And you think he's got... an extra friend in there we don't know about?" You paged Natalie with 'Could be. And friends like that can be very... possessive." His voice curdles; he has a low opinion of meddlesome Past Lives.'. Natalie pages: |"Well," Nat says slowly after a second, "He's ours now. I want you to take point on this one. Maybe a trip to wonderland would help? Do what you think you need, and keep me in the loop." Long distance to Natalie: Grey nods into the phone, not that she can see it. "Understood." From afar, Natalie adds, "Damn. I'll be back by three. Let me know what else you've found." Long distance to Natalie: Grey says, "Be seeing you," and hangs up. [...] It's not 3:00, or even 2:30 when Nat arrives home. It's 2:15. "Thomas?" she calls as the heavy door swings closed behind her, then up the stairs, "Kevin? Hello? Anybody?" As she speaks she's shimmying out of her leather bomber, the scents of gasoline and sawdust hanging heavy about the woman. "In here, Natalie," Thomas calls back, from downstairs in the computer room. He pushes his chair back and stretches, grimacing and rubbing his eyes. He's just not made for sitting in front of a monitor for hours. Natalie hangs up her coat on the pegs, then stoops to unlace her boots. "Great. Whatcha got for me? Any news?" A hesitation. "Is Kevin around?" The screen in front of Grey shows a page from whatever webbrowser Jeremy chose to install on the LAN computers. The site's a very bland-looking Danish-to-English online dictionary, and a notepad to the right of the keyboard contains notes in the halfmoon's thin, neat handwriting. "I think I've managed to make a /little/ more sense of it," he says, turning in the chair toward Natalie. "As for Kevin, I think he's upstairs." Natalie pulls off her workboots and tosses them underneath her coat, then abandons the entry to join the Philodox in the computer room. "Oh yeah?" she says curiously, hooking her thumbs into her pockets. "Got some of the blanks filled in? What does it say?" From upstairs one can hear a pair of muffled voices, followed by what sounds like video game effects. There is rumbling. Booming. Blasting, soon followed by Kevin's voice. "What the fuck! No way in hell you fucking could have shot me from there!" There is a moment of silence, before another boom. "NO FUCKING WAY! YOU WERE INVERTED!" Obviously, someone is losing, pretty badly too. Then comes Jeremy's voice. "Dude, I've been playing this game since Beta Gold, don't trip. Halo is like my playground." Boom. "FUCK!" Grey picks up the notepad and looks at it. "Well, with a little creative interpretation, the two notes say, roughly, 'You've taken something that wasn't yours. This was wrong of you. Nothing good will come of this. You ought to hunt the boy more often.' And then something about him needing a better teacher. Possibly a male." He offers her the notepad. "Needing a better teacher," Nat replies flatly, taking the notes from him and skimming. "Huh. Well, Tu's his teacher. And last time I checked, he -is- male." She offers them back. "So you think this is a past life acting up? I mean, you're pretty damn sure?" Grey shrugs as he takes the pad back. "I'm not at all certain of that last. It's garbled. In any case, it certainly /sounds/ like a past life. Get, since they're the most likely to be speaking Danish." Tired eyes narrow at Natalie thoughtfully. "Didn't you say he'd attached himself to the Get, before joining us?" The noises of enthusiastic computer gaming, insterspersed by shouting and well-meant jocular abuse and insults, continue from upstairs a couple of minutes longer before coming to a climax with two people running down the stairs in swift succession, namely Jeremy with Kevin snapping (figuratively) at his heels as they burst into the living room. "Okay!" yelps the cub. "You kicked my ass in the game, but who's got the fangs offline?" Laughing, Jeremy launches himself off the last three steps, landing heavily upon his boots as chains dance about his pants. He is wearing a shirt that says: I am not a tourist, and a backwards Stark Inc hat over his head. He looks amused. "Dude, its just a game! Its not my fault you don't got geek skills yet." Natalie nods and starts to answer, only to be interrupted by the Geek Squad tumbling down the stairs. She throws them both an irritated glance before turning back to the older Walker. "So? Now what? You've had more experience with this sort of thing. I've just heard about it." Grey gives the ruckus a disinterested -- or perhaps just tired -- glance before turning back to Natalie. "Honestly? I don't know. The only time I've had a cub with a meddlesome past life was Cat, and since that ancestor was a Black Fury, she didn't want him to defect to her tribe. Though she was annoying in other ways." He grimaces briefly, remembering. "Ideally, we try to get the one in Kevin's head to take a step out and /talk/ to us. In Mother's Tongue rather than Danish, of course." Kevin gives the goth kin a grin. "If I'd not got rusty out at the farm for all those weeks with no 'puter, I'd have given you more of a run for your money. Wait till I'm back in practice." The youth is also wearing a t-shirt bearing a picture of a smiling, blissful Pontiff, clutching an oversized joint, with the slogan THE POPE SMOKES DOPE underneath. It may be recalled that Scratch used to sometimes wear this; seems he left it behind when he went. "Hey look," he says, nudging Jer in the ribs and pointing through to the computer room where the other two are to be seen. "Nat and Thomas're gaming too." He stifles an enormous yawn and stretches. "Dude, I can give you two years and you still won't beat my ass in Halo. Who do you think started the D3 clan?" Jeremy says with a bit of nerd pride. "Yes, the one that stretched from Unreal Tourn all the way to Halo 2 X Box Live. That'd be me. No normal dude could pull that off, it'd have to be in the family." As he glances over at Kevin's last statement, his eyes widen and he starts over, waving to Thomas, a grin forming over his face. ".. Thomas.. Hey.. " Insert idol worshipping here. "Does that work?" Nat asks, surprised, her back to the doorway of the room. "I mean, if we get him into Crinos... he doesn't know Mother's Tongue. At least, not that I know of. I haven't been teaching him. Maybe Tu has. But doesn't he... I don't know, need to be hypnotized or something?" Grey catches Jeremy's wave and gives the kinfolk an unsmiling nod of acknowledgement. "/He/ doesn't have to know Mother's Tongue," he tells Natalie. "But I've never heard of a past life that didn't." Kevin lets out a low whistle. "Okay, I show throat. You are the coolest." He performs a deep salaam to Jeremy, as seen in WAYNE'S WORLD. "We are not worthy! We are not worthy!" He then turns to the two cliath and does it again, just because. For all that he still looks like he's about a week behind on sleep, he seems in exuberant mode today. Jeremy puffs up a bit and chuckles at Kevin. "My room mate Ebony who was in the UK at the time co founded it. We were pretty bad ass." He tilts his head to Nat and Thomas, then grows quiet to try and pick up whats going on. Natalie turns to look at cub and kin again, thoughtfully frowning. "Huh. Kevin, can you come in here for a minute? --Jeremy, aren't you supposed to be at work?" A quick glance at her watch, and back up at the kin. "Or did Jon give you the day off?" Natalie pages to the room: That's said confusedly, not accusingly. Kevin straightens up, gives Jer another dig in the ribs, and saunters over to the computer room. "What can I do for you today?" Grey receives Kevin's noisy self-abasement with a dour, humorless grimace, then leans back slightly in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "I got Tuesday and Thursday off this week because I am working weekends now." Jeremy explains with a grin, straightening his hat forward in the correct spot instead of sloppily backwards. He clears his throat some, sneaking another look to Thomas, then back to the others as he glides his hands into his pockets. Natalie ohs her understanding, then nods and turns back to Kevin. "Well... we think you've got another person living in your head, kiddo. A... a past life, actually. Thomas knows more about them than I do - you need to have better breeding than we do for them to show up." And if there's one thing the disgraced Philodox has, it's good breeding. "It's been leaving us notes in the middle of the night." "Nothing to do with breeding," Grey corrects. "It's merely that the Glass Walkers look forward instead of backwards. Thus, /our/ ancestors mind their own damned business." There's a silence lasting several seconds from the cub. His eyebrows drift millimetre by millimetre downwards into a frown; odds are he's turning this information over in his mind. Finally Kevin speaks. "I'd tell you to stop kidding me, but April Fool's Day isn't for a fortnight yet, and I've believed so many impossible things in the last few months... what's one more?" He gives a sharp, almost canine laugh. "That's what those notes in gobbledegook were about?" Jeremy tilts his head. "Its what I was talking to you about the other day.. the thing that you 'lost'. I thought you were whining cuz you misplaced the iPod I gave you." Natalie acknowledges Thomas' correction by opening one hand; her eyes, however, are on the cub, considering and thoughtful. Well, until Jeremy speaks. "--You know something about this? What have you got?" Grey turns mismatched eyes onto the gothkin and regards him steadily, eyebrows raised. Kevin shakes his head. "I did wonder what you were talking about, only we got onto another subject before I got round to asking you..." "Um.. well, a few days ago I found the first note and asked Kevin about it, because I know the rest of you guys plus Scratch doesn't speak Danish and so.. my computer has a buit in translator for about thirty two languages and I kinda put it together and asked him about it." Jeremy says with a rub of his neck. "I thought he was just fucking around." "Danish?" Kevin ejaculates. "I don't speak bloody Danish." "What have you got?" Nat repeats, more intently, while staring at the Kin. "You used to," Thomas tells the cub, quite seriously. "/Another/ you did, at least." Clearing his throat, Jeremy takes his PDA off his hip from a small leather holster and taps it on. He taps a few more times and says. "The first letter said.. You have taken something that is not yours, you should not have done so. No good will come of this. The second says.. you ought to shoot the boy more often. It will make him strong. He needs to learn this." "And youuu... didn't think to /tell/ anyone?" the Galliard boggles. "Hell, Jeremy." Another second's disbelieving staring at him and she turns back to Kevin. Lucky Kevin. "Hell. --All right, Thomas, now what?" "Well, I just found the second letter today to be honest." Jeremy rubs his neck again, sighing. "That and Danish is freaking hard to crack. I had to stay up till' three in the morning last night just to find the right accents for the lettering." Grey gives Jeremy a faintly disgruntled look, and while Natalie makes her boggling inquiry, he turns back to the computer and closes down the web-browser. "We try to provoke the Dane into coming out and talking to us. Hypnotism might work. Some kind of trance state." Kevin's face is a picture, especially when he hears the contents of the second note. "Gug," he says, his mouth suddenly dry. At Grey's words, he takes an unconscious step backwards. Natalie steps to one side, giving the scary-looking Philodox a physical as well as metaphorical clear shot at the boy. "Huh. Well, he's all yours. All I can think of is toking him up on the pot Scratch left behind. Or getting him absolutely wasted on the JD. Unless...?" A thought strikes, she shoots one of the innocent computers a thoughtful look. "We could work up some sort of screen saver for him to stare at. Watch one of those for a while and your brain goes fuzzy." Jeremy perks up. "I got just the thing!" He says, then starts darting upstairs. "Be right back, you gotta check this out! I downloaded it! Its damn cool!" "Come back here, boy," Thomas growls over at Kevin. "Don't be such a goddamn coward." Kevin scowls and takes another step, this time forwards. "I am /not/ smoking marijuana for /anyone/," he says firmly. "Filthy bloody habit. I draw the line at /drugs/." From the emphasis he puts on the last words, seems he draws the line under it as well. And perhaps around it, with little stars for emphasis. "You'll do it if we tell you to," Nat growls back - and yes, it's most definitely a growl. "But we'll try the other way first. Come over here and sit." A nod toward the closest chair and then she takes a step back, ceding the lead to Grey. The kinfolk comes down after a few minutes, carrying his wide screened Titanium laptop. "I even got some weird hindu music on here." He flashes a quick grin. ".. Um.. Kota put it on there.. its her meditation grooves." Grey pushes to his feet, waving Jeremy over to where Kevin's being urged toward a computer chair. Kevin sits, with poor enough grace, the expression on his face a picture of foreboding. The cub took the prospect of being shot in the gut yesterday with less fear shown than this! But cowed by the dominance of Nat and Grey, he protests no further, for now. Sitting the laptop down in front of Kevin, the Gothkin leans over and turns on his iTunes. He selects Dakota's playlist and soon, soothing, but yet /real/ trippy music begins to play. He presses a few more buttons and the wide screen effect turns on. Lots of swirling colors begins to dance in front of the screen, turning and twisting, filling up the screen. Its definitely eye catching. "Here you go.. I say turn off the lights, relax your eyes and just stare into it, try and look past the colors and let your mind wander. Its what Dakota tells me to do." For what reasons, he won't go into. Natalie quietly heads over to flick off the lights. She pulls the door mostly closed as well, casting the room into gloom. Grey stands near the door, arms folded across his chest, watching Kevin somberly. Kevin obediently sits and gazes at the pretty swirly patterns. He looks very suspicious at first, all the more so when Nat clicks the switch and pulls the door to, leaving the screen as the only real light source. As minutes pass he seems to relax some, but nothing more spectacular than that appears to be occurring. Natalie nudges Grey and murmurs something. The colors on the screen go from blobs to spiral like patterns, then zig and zag. Once in awhile the screen will melt away, then reform again, this time in a new dance. The music definitely seems traditional, the typical stuff a Child of Gaia Theurge would listen to when doing her Yoga exercises. Its so soothing, relaxing. Flip, flip. The screen continues on, bright oranges and yellows, drifting into softer blues and greens. Natalie whispers "So... now what? One of us goes into Crinos? Or he has to shift up, or what?" Grey murmurs back. The Goth kin stands near the back in the darker parts of the room, watching curiously from afar. His hands are slid into his pockets and he doesn't exactly stare at the screen. You whisper "Play it by ear. If he speaks in Danish, or otherwise seems not himself, take whatever form works for speaking Mother's Tongue. And... as Elder, /you/ may want to do the talking. Just speak as you would to any Garou messing with your cub." to Natalie. "...Um, guys," Kevin eventually murmurs, "don't like to say this, but it's pretty hard to relax when you three are all looking at me and waiting for weird stuff to happen." Natalie's got her ear tilted up so Thomas can murmur into it; at Kevin's words she snorts and stuffs her hands into her pockets. "Stage fright," she says clearly. "Just ignore us, Kevin." Nevertheless she turns so she -isn't- staring at him, and goes back up onto sock-footed tippy toes to continue her sotto-voice conversation. Natalie whispers "Like Jamethon and Saul. I'll have to tell you the story sometime. All right, I can do that." A quick glance toward the boy and she adds, "I'm still relying on your for guidance. I have -no- idea what the hell I'm doing." Grey leans an elbow against the wall and actually slouches a bit to make it easier for the Elder to whisper secrets in his ear. By now the Kin has put a pair of head phones on and is listening to his iPod, the volume down low. He is staring off into space at the far wall, not glancing over at them. Kevin starts taking deep breaths, in, out, in, out, his hands dangling down between his legs idly as he tries to concentrate on the screen and tune out other sensory input. You whisper "The most difficult thing, in my experience, is that you can't exactly throat the ancestor if it proves to be stubborn." to Natalie. You sense Natalie snorts quietly and nods, lapsing into silence. Natalie nods and lapses into silence, dropping back down to flat feet. Grey's jaw tightens as he stifles a yawn. After about the tenth song, Jeremy glances over towards Kevin and the computer and lets out a soft breath. Kevin eventually shakes his head and straightens back up. "Pleasant, but I'm still me," he delivers his verdict. "...Damn," comes Nat's voice; a second later and the harsh overhead lights bring everyone blinking back to wakefulness. Yay fluorescent bulbs. "Well, -that- didn't work. Now what?" This last is aimed squarely at the Philodox. Grey grimaces, squinting painfully at the sudden stab of light. "Ngh. Means we find another way, that's all. Or wait until the Dane comes out on its own." Jeremy blinks his eyes for a few moments as the light comes on, then heads over and plucks the laptop up, closing the lid. "Sorry guys. I shoulda tried some viking heavy metal instead. I got a lot of that." Kevin blinks as the lights come back on and his eyes focus. "Danish writing," he says thoughtfully. "That weird guy Gunnar couldn't possibly have been involved somehow? I mean, sorry to be a sceptic, but that sounds less outre to me than some weird ancestral memory taking me over..." "Gunnar couldn't have gotten through the door." Nat sounds utterly convinced of that. "And even if he could have, he wouldn't have. No, I think tomorrow we'll try something a little more... deliberate than watching funky lights." Grey rubs his eyes again tiredly. "Anything else you need from me this afternoon, Natalie?" Natalie's still scowling at the ineffective computer as though this is its fault. "--Not that I know of, no. Thank you." Kevin looks dispirited. "I don't like the sound of that," he sighs to Natalie. "Is there really and truly no other way? I... just... think drugs are... y'know... nasty. I don't even /drink/, never mind anything stronger..." Grey nods to the Elder and, after giving Kevin a sour look at his continued protests, stalks out and upstairs. "You'll be fine," Nat says, doing her best to sound reassuring. "Neither one of us will let anything happen to you." She tosses Grey a glance, then paces across the room to rejoin Kevin. "Grey'll tell you what a stubborn possessive bitch I am. You're -my- cub, not the cub of some long-dead yahoo who doesn't know his place. We'll do some research today, and know what we're getting into. Worst comes to worst, and we'll just knock you out. No harm, no foul. Besides... remember how fast you heal? That goes the same for erm, illicit substances. I burned through about six martinis in less than fifteen minutes once. If the drugs aren't working, you can just shift and it'll be gone." [Later that night] His attention is drawn by a noisy, stumbling chaos by the door, the clatter of a helmet dropped to the floor, and the loud sliding of the locks. After an unwilling crash (of the sleep variety) this afternoon, Grey's groggily and regretfully awake. Dressed in sweats and t-shirt, he's sitting in the darkened living room with a cup of coffee when the noise occurs, though he reacts slowly enough, only just exiting the living room as the door's unlocked. Rina sways, and leans against the wall by the door. She drops her keys and looks toward the faint sounds, eyes too bright and too bleary at the same time. "Ja-- mm. Thomeas." A laugh escapes. "I still gotta get used to that." Grey eyes her with a slight, wary frown, not quite approaching. "You all right?" "Mmmmhm." She narrows her eyes at him. "Are you wearing any green?" A faint, crooked smile comes to her lips, edged with weariness and the ever-present grief. Grey's brow furrows. "Green?" He glances down at himself -- dark grey sweatpants and sweatjacket, untucked white t-shirt, socks -- then back at her. "Uh-oh," she says soberly, eyeing him. "That's a problem." The light finally dawns, and Grey's mouth pulls into a little grimace. "That's right. It's the seventeenth, isn't it." Rina nods, brows raised. "Yeah. I've been out getting Irish." She crosses to him fast, feinting several times before darting in for the pinch. The last wisps of sleepiness abruptly vanish from the Philodox as she makes her attack. She's quick, but he is, too, intercepting the pinch with a reflexive snarl that doesn't sound especially playful. Her wrist is trapped in his hand, squeezed. "Ha--" It's barely more than a sharp breath out. Her reflexes are slower than they should be, of course. She goes still, knees buckling slightly. Grey scowls. "Don't /do/ that." He steers her toward the couch, treating her with a delicacy that belies the bloodthirsty animal growling under his skin. "I was-- only gonna pinch you," she answers, breathless, trying to pull away once or twice, twisting in his grip but cooperating otherwise. Grey doesn't push her down onto the couch, but it's clearly his intension that she sit down on it before he lets her go. "If I'd been more startled," he begins angrily, and then stops. "Nevermind." He starts across the room to the armchair he was sitting in when she arrived. "I'm sorry," she says with some difficulty, sitting stiffly on the edge of the couch. "Guess I shouldbn't've come here." There's a roughness to the words, a savage, unrestrained quality. She propels herself up from the couch almost immediately, weaving back to the door. Grey, still on his feet, turns back again. One hand comes up to rake back through unkempt black hair. "Do you remember the time you came over to the Dominion, and the moon was fat and I was hung over?" He pads after her, not coming within arm's reach. "I almost lost it, then, at you. I came /close/." His voice has a harsh, stern, urgent quality to it. "I said I'm sorry!" She turns on him, furious tears in her eyes. "And you deserved it, then, anyway." Wild-eyed and ragged, she looks desperate, on the edge of running. Grey stops short, his face tight. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, unsteadily. "I know. But I still..." He rakes back his hair again, turning it even more unkempt. The rage is still there, but he sounds defeated. "Nevermind." "No," she says sharply. "Whatever you got to say, go ahead. Let it out. Don't fuckin' back off from it." Grey pushes his hands into his pockets and stares sullenly down at her for a moment before dragging the words out. "I still almost lost control. Tonight, that morning, so many other times when I've been... been selfish." He looks away from her, away and down. "Selfish..." She shakes her head. "I don't get it. What's that s'posed to mean?" Grey grimaces. "Because I wanted your company, I ignored the risk to your life. And that needs to stop." His gaze turns back to her, his expression stubborn. Rina's expression falls, and she takes a breath, stepping back to lean against the door. "No," she says quietly, her eyes still wet. She stares at him like a wounded creature, shaking her head slowly. Grey continues to force himself to look at her, to keep talking. "Just when the moon's fat. If anything happened to you, if /I/ happened to you..." "You--" She closes her eyes, turns her face away; her knees buckle slightly. "Fine," she says, quiet and numb. "I'll stay away from you. Whatever you want. Whatever you need." A swallow tightens her throat, and she looks down at the floor. "Just-- you hafta promise me something." Grey keeps his gaze on her. The memory'll be punishment enough. "What?" Rina wets her lips, and looks up at him, determined. "Would you-- if you need anyone to talk to, would you --call me? No matter what time it is, no matter what--" Grey exhales a heavy, relieved breath and nods. "...I promise." Wariness comes to her eyes, that wild quality edging back. "And if I call you, you hafta pick up if you can. I won't -- I won't bother you unless I need you--" Grey nods again, more quickly this time. "Yes, of course. I'm not going to /abandon/ you, I just... would hate to see you hurt." And now, finally, he drops his eyes, just for a moment, and when he looks back at her it's sidelong and rather tentative. Rina swallows. "I'm scared," she murmurs, looking down. "It's-- it's worse, now. Everything." Grey's mouth stretches into a pained grimace. He doesn't have anything to say to that, and instead just stands there looking tired and and tense and useless. Rina searches the floor with unhinged eyes. "If-- if you're gonna be here..." Another nervous swallow. "I really need you to be here. To come back." "I'll be here," Grey says quietly. "I'm not going anywhere." Nodding stiffly, she looks over to him. "Yeah. I just... as soon as you can manage being real, at least-- at least with me... I'd like that." The tears are still in her eyes, shimmering faintly in the dark. The Philodox nods again, and though his eyes are perfectly dry, he doesn't look any happier than the kinswoman does. "I will. I promise." "I don't know what's real anymore," she whispers. Her brow furrows as she looks away. "I-- I should go. He gets worried..." Grey's brow furrows. "He--" Then he gives up, broad shoulders sagging. "Drive safe." His voice is hollow. Rina turns to him, a hand reaching out cautiously for one of his. "Could I just-- would it bother you too much, I mean?" Her lips pressed together, she looks up into his face, drawing close enough for an embrace. Grey's body tightens up, but he allows the embrace. It's like hugging a tiger that's ready to pounce, too taut, quivering slightly. He is, perhaps to her surprise, holding his breath. Rina stays for the space of a breath, and then lets him go. She touches his hand, after. "I'll talk to you -- after." A swallow, and she steps away and crouches to get her helmet. She doesn't look back as she unlocks the door and steps out, but her head is bowed. Grey takes in a breath and lets it out. Then again. Nice and deliberate. Once she's gone, he rubs a hand tiredly over his face, and after putting his coffee mug away, he retrats back upstairs to /try/ to get some more sleep.