in the arms of an angel, may you find some comfort here

[thehighestwing]

[[ooc: you can totally treat this as a party post. if you see someone you know and want to go up to them, threadhop at your leisure!]]Chicago, the break is not stopping. There have been a string of losses and they've been keenly felt throughout the city. There are ghosts on everyone's faces and soon enough they'll overpower them unless something is

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[nowinprint]

Dmitri had much the same idea as Rogue, though with a Chicao (somewhat-) Native Twist. To that end, she's gone and found one of the veteran baristas from The Coffee Shop to come out with a coffee cart or two, and the two of them trundle up to Phoebe's chair with grins, one bemused and one with that mostly-unshakeable Dmitri confidence. The barista unfurls a banner reading

PROMOTIONAL EVENT - TODAY ONLY!
FREE COFFEE
FREE HOT CHOCOLATE
FREE ITALIAN SODA

~THE COFFEE SHOP~

and Dmitri steps around her station to offer a hug.

"Good old Chicago," she says. Actually, it sounds a little fond.

[thehighestwing]

She might have been hopeful enough to expect a few people to show up. She did not expect The Coffee Shop to come to them coaxed by Chicago's very own offbeat journalist and resident AoK.

Phoebe hugs Dmitri giddily, staring at the coffee carts in utter fascination.

The coffee beckons others that are passing by, and soon enough there's a respectable line forming.

Phoebe turns to the woman, her mouth shaped into a perfect O.

"You are a goddess," she proclaims.

[nowinprint]

Dmitri hugs back. Even without her angelic strength, the girl's got a grip, and she breaks it out here.

Yes. The cling is something she needs, right now. A lot of good, old friends just vanished on her, and while goddamnit she is going to handle this like a Chicagoan, nothing says Chicagoans can't cling. Chicagoans get to cling all the harder.

When she does break away, she plants herself between the coffee cart and the chair, ready to hug. "Minor deity at best," she says, flashing Phoebe a grin. "Possibly a patron saint. Possibly the Patron Saint of Coffee Carts, Wanderer Solidarity, and Not Falling Off Ledges."

The barista glances up at that, shaking her head. "I keep wanting to say she's the weirdest person I've ever known, but I live in Chicago," she says.

[thehighestwing]

It's the damnedest thing, being held by a stranger and feeling the comfort nestle into her chest.

Phoebe kind of remembers what it was like to hug her mother. It's a distant memory, a fading lullaby, and she hates she can't remember as well.

Her eyes sting, but only for a moment. Then it's gone, and the moment becomes another one.

"Have you ever considered making that a t-shirt?" Phoebe asks, following Dimitri to the cart. "Because it'd look pretty nifty."

Phoebe looks over to the barista and grins. "I think you're just jealous."

[boombarista]

Barista Lisle laughs. "Honey, I work in an exploding coffee shop. I think I've got the right to be jealous of whatever I want."

"The T-shirt would have to change daily," Dmitri says. Lisle pours two cups of coffee, offering them over, and Dmitri takes one and takes a gulp with relish. Some might find it unwise to offer Dmitri and Phoebe caffeine. Lisle is apparently not one of those. "What about you? Planning on setting yourself up as Official Purveyor of Fine Chicago-Style Hugs?"

She will not mention others who might be implicated in those plans. She will not mention the Doctor. She'll just take another swallow of coffee, and hang on to their little attempt to cheer up the world.

They can do it, too, if only for a moment. Sometimes those moments are worth almost everything.

[thehighestwing]

Phoebe grimaces at the reminder it's the exploding coffee shop, the one she never likes walking into in case it decides to go boom while she's drinking a caramel machiatto. "... You're right. You win forever."

"... Knowing Chicago, a daily-changing t-shirt might actually be possible somehow."

Phoebe is not someone that drinks coffee very often, if at all. For obvious reasons. Today Phoebe is going to take a chance with it. She grins her thank you and turns to Dmitri. "I could try to! I have a lot of love in my heart! It's kinda like Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory. ANGST IS NOT HOW WE SHOULD ROLL. At least, not for very long."

She should put that on a t-shirt.

[nowinprint]

"Hells to the yeah." Dmitri nods. "That's what we have therapy for. And, you know, sunny days and free hugs and chocolate martinis and all the friends we have left."

Her tone falters a moment, then she raises up her glass.

"And moments of remembrance for the ones we lost," she says. "May they all have gone home if they wanted to."

Behind her, Lisle murmurs a quiet "Hear, hear" before she turns to help a customer.

[thehighestwing]

Phoebe raises her glass the moment Dmitri does, the quiet settling over her while the full weight of the realization does.

They all go sometimes, one by one, and never gently. There is an increasing amount of effort to remain standing and once that's accomplished, you half wonder why you're still standing in the first place.

"I like to think they did. Go home," Phoebe says, looping an arm around Dmitri's shoulders and half-hug her again.

She can totally say 'hey, kid back off' anytime now but until she does Phoebe's gonna...cling.

[nowinprint]

Dmitri loops her arm around Phoebe. "Pity they can't come back and tell us," Dmitri says, after the toast. "Seems like Chicago's sense of humour. Everyone tries to go back where they've came from, and when they finally manage it, by blind luck rather than all the effort and searching for a way, what do all their friends stuck here do? Cry for them." Dmitri pulls a face. It's a pretty good one. "You're not funny, Chicago."

She nods to emphasize that point.

"But, you know, on the offchance that some of 'em come back - and sometimes they do, yanno, in varying states of happy-slash-arghwai-to-be-here - we hold down the fort." She glances down. Younger angel, she's sure of it, with the cold skin and the general... presence. Allow Dmitri to share with you the benefit of her vast experience, Phoebe. "And stick one to the Windy City. It don't win on our watch."

[thehighestwing]

"Nah, it's not funny. It's like one of those comedians that keep bringing in the punchline and no one in the audience is laughing." Phoebe thinks of Jo then, for some reason. Jo, a vengeance angel, an abused girl, she didn't have much of a chance if you looked at her. She didn't make it. She's never going to come back. She still got the sort of Christmas she deserved. She lived long enough to see there were people to love her.

"That's what I'm thinkin'. You gotta stay tough for all the people that couldn't. Not just for those that come back but... for those that have yet to get here at all." Phoebe wrinkles her nose, as if really thinking about this. "Wanderers will always be here to wander. If we don't hold the fort, what would they fall into?"

It's a scary thought, one she doesn't really want to contemplate. She's young, but she's persistent and unless she's dragged to her death kicking and screaming she's going to stay put.

[nowinprint]

Dmitri puts her foot down. "Exactly, воробей. Chicago is as strong as the soul of her people. We make it through all right, and the city will. And so long as there be breath in my body, wanderers aren't going to fall through into a dystopia." She pulls a face. "Concept was pretty much done through by the time golden age sci-fi was twenty years in the ground, anyway."

She snorts.

"As a certified Green Rift Traveller Extraordinaire - you notice everyone had a weird day, beginning of this year? - I can say that we're not the worst off we could be, and there's marked possibility that we can really improve. See; there's a way to frame it all as promising."

[thehighestwing]

Phoebe likes it when Dmitri pulls a face. She might be pulling a face of her own, mostly because Dmitri lost her somewhere after sci-fi.

It sounds smart though, so Phoebe will readily agree! It's the last part that stays with her.

"As long as we keep reminding each other and everyone else that it can be promising? I really think it'll be okay. Not magically but... those of us that are left have survived plagues and all sorts of other crap. We've got a fuckton of determination. If that won't do it, what will?"

[nowinprint]

"In the immortal words of Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 'Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; All things give way before it soon or late.'" Dmitri raises her glass. Also her voice. "To Chicago, land of never letting the bastards get you down!"

The guy who just got his coffee actually raises his glass before seeming to think about it. Dmitri has that effect on people.

[doyoulikecake]

Kaden had still been hanging around, talking to Phoebe and doing a bit of reading whilst perched on the arm of the chair. No, he's not participating in the festivities, but he can set himself up like a moral support friend and watch the interactions. He likes those, even if they're really more Molly's forte than his. This way he can fish for people who might be interesting, or...something.

Or he could read his homework and drain his coffee cup without falling asleep. You know, whichever.

So when Dmitri and the barista show up with the coffee cart, he looks up, grins, and snaps his book shut. The millisecond it takes him to get from his position on the arm of the chair to the coffee cart belies his coffee addiction just a little bit. "Thank god," he says, getting a cup and downing a quarter of it in one gulp. Then he glances over to Dmi. "I wouldn't exactly call it good, at this point," he adds. "Maybe working back up to neutral from bad."

[nowinprint]

"You take an absolutist view of the quality of the place, I see," Dmitri serves back. Sure, she's never met this guy before in her life, but like that's ever stopped her from anything. "Sometimes it's nice to look relativistically. Makes for better morale sometimes, at least."

She leans back on the handle of the coffee cart, balancing carefully so as not to send it rolling away.

"That, or a nice spot of rhetorical selection bias in your analysis," she says. "Rigorous statistical interpretation is for the working essayist. I'm on lunch."

[doyoulikecake]

Kaden snorts. Whoever this is, he likes her already. Which may or may not be a good thing, considering. "Not so much absolutest as objective," he protests with a shrug and another sip-gulp of coffee. "Sure, from a relative standpoint, it's doing great, but I've always preferred solid facts over morale. Things one could put on a graph." He surveys the hugfest before them again. "Not to say I don't love the place, just that I have a very real view of it." No, in terms of population, he likes Chicago much better than he liked any part of California. In terms of the city and the schools and all that, not so much, but that's not the point, here.

"And I never go on lunch," he adds, gesturing with the coffee cup and smiling. "Just coffee breaks. Speaking of, this is excellent coffee, and you're brilliant for bringing it out here."