33 Apocalypse Ave., Sunday Morning

[bitten_notshy]

To go by the dance the day before, half of creation had come back to the island for the weekend. Jack decided to ignore the paranoid edge niggling at him about how that was just asking for the island to get into one of its nastier moods in favor of getting a nice breakfast together. Ronan was staying for the weekend, as was Emma (of course), and he

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[flowering_mind]

After leaving Hannibal's place, Ino didn't head straight back to to the hotel, though it was tempting because zombies were gross and gremlins were no better, but instead, made her second stop of the day.

She rang the doorbell and waited, keeping an eye out for anything that might try and bite her.

Ino had enough problems these days without being zombiefied for a while, thanks.

[bitten_notshy]

Jack peeked out the window before opening the door to let Ino in. (Or at least,he thoughtit was Ino -- he'd never known the girl well, and there definitely something that had changed about her eyes and bearing since he saw her last.)

"Ino, right?" he said. "Emma mentioned you might stop by. It's been a thousand years."

[flowering_mind]

Ino looked startled for a moment, and then laughed.

"I'm going to assume you don't mean literally, for the sake of all the timelines," she said lightly. "Though it's been a while. I'm Ino, and you're... Jack, right?"

[bitten_notshy]

"Not meant literally at all, I promise," Jack laughed, stepping out of the way to gesture her in. "I've been here on and off for six years. It just feels like a thousand."

[flowering_mind]

"Thanks," she said as she entered the house. "And, yeah, I totally get that."

Boy, did she ever.

"You've been here six years though? Did you just graduate and never leave?"

[bitten_notshy]

"I tried to leave!" Jack defended himself. "And then a werewolf bit me, and London turned out to be a very bad place to try to be a lone wolf, so I came back here. Seems to be where I am for now."

He shrugged lightly, as if it didn't still bother him a little. "That's me. What have you been up to? And help yourself to breakfast if you want it,of course."

[flowering_mind]

"I might grab something," she admitted, though she wasn't hungry. Everyone was trying to feed her today.

The fact that Jack was a werewolf barely registered on the scale of Fandom weird. Okay.

"There's worse places to be than here," she commiserated anyway. "And that's some pretty tough luck on your part, getting bit in the first place. I've been doing a lot of things. Mostly security and information gathering. That sort of stuff. Fell out of contact because the world I was on decided nothing was getting out."

[bitten_notshy]

"To be fair we were trying to kill the wolf at the time," Jack shrugged. "I might have bitten me too, if I were her."

He waved it off. "'Security and information gathering,'" he repeated. "Interesting line of work for a telepath, isn't it?"

[flowering_mind]

"I'd have bitten you in that case too," Ino agreed, and grinned. "It's even more interesting when you're pretty much the only telepath on that world."

Ino had a terrifying advantage on Gaia. It didn't seem to help her luck any, but she had it.

[bitten_notshy]

"How did you luck into that?" Jack had to ask. "I've never been the only of anything, no matter where I went."

[flowering_mind]

"Went to Zack's world when I left here," she said, shrugging a little as she picked up a muffin. "They've got magic there, but it's all stuff anyone can use with the right equipment. They don't really have anything with inborn skills, you know? So there's people that can use magic and summon gods with it, but I'm still the only one that can read minds. It's weird."

But nice. Ino liked being special that way.

[bitten_notshy]

"But it doesn't sound like a bad kind of weird," Jack allowed. "... at least, not as long as they're willing to let you be weird in peace."

[flowering_mind]

"I just don't tell people there," she admitted. "My boss knows, and his boss knows, and a few coworkers know but that's about it. We just pretend that I got the information through other means if something comes up that I have to report."

[bitten_notshy]

"Good," Jack said, a little laugh in his voice. "I wanted to believe you'd somehow found a place where it was safe to be the only one, but I'm not that much of an optimist."

[flowering_mind]

"Me neither."

Which was kinda sad, in some ways.

"It's fine, though," she said, shrugging lightly. "I'm good at secrets and if anyone I don't want to find out about it does, well, that's easy enough to take care of."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack raised an eyebrow. "What kind of taking care of? Or do I not want to know?"