[log] take what you need while there's time
[23:12] * Candice is, as per usual, thirtysomething in jeans, boots, and tank top, locs tied half-back. She is going to make herself coffee, kthx.
[23:14] * NHardaway enters the bar like he's punchdrunk tired, from the outer nexus. He's not quite ready to be surrounded by everything out there, although on second thought a bar named Stigmata may not be the step up he's looking for.
[23:17] * Candice glances over her shoulder...and does a doubletake. Maybe a Martel, probably one actually, but she won't make any assumptions. "Hello."
[23:21] NHardaway: "Er." Eloquent! "Hello, there - I don't suppose you'd be able to tell me...where I am? In a nice, broad sense."
[23:22] Candice: "The bar is called Stigmata," she says, leaning on the bar countertop with a faintly puzzled look--she's getting a curious vibe here. Not dead, not dead like she knows it, but different somehow. "In the Nexus--the multiverse."
[23:24] NHardaway: "It's very large," he observes, as if in all seriousness.
[23:24] * NHardaway refocuses on her, with a small smile for her puzzled look.
[23:25] Candice: "And continually growing," she says, wry, "I'm sorry, you look sort of familiar. I'm Candice."
[23:27] * NHardaway refrains from something, offering her his hand. "Nick. Thank you - I seem to be a bit lost."
[23:30] * Candice shakes his hand, but she's...a little concerned, now. "Sometimes the Nexus just takes people for a little while. Usually they can get back after a short time." Unless...
[23:32] * NHardaway doesn't stop smiling, per se. "'Takes people'?" He's very relaxed. ...maybe.
[23:33] Candice: "It's a multidimensional meeting place," she explains, "all realities coincide. I'm not saying it's safe, but it's not inherently malicious, either. More of a chaotic place."
[23:36] NHardaway: "More like a child with toys," Nick suggests, gazing around the bar.
[23:37] Candice: "A bit. Less sentient. The only situations I've heard of where people can't get back is if they're dead." Might as well be direct.
[23:38] * NHardaway glances back at her, tilting his head to one side. "As dead as they're getting, anyway."
[23:40] Candice: "There do seem to be levels," she says, agreeably.
[23:41] NHardaway: "You can tell, can't you."
[23:45] Candice: "Yes. It's a knack of mine. I'm sorry--this must be awfully disorienting."
[23:52] NHardaway: "You really have no idea," he says, pleasantly polite, and moves casually around the bar in search of a drink.
[23:53] Candice: "Try me." She tilts her head, watching him curiously. Definitely older than Martel, shorter hair, ...vastly less homicidal-seeming.
[23:55] * NHardaway was forty-three when he died; if he hadn't, he'd be fifty now. "That's a thirsty conversation," he says, examining the winerack.
[23:57] Candice: ...some things, she notes, mentally, are multiversal. "Probably! I don't mean to pry, sorry about that."
[23:58] NHardaway: "You're very considerate, Candice." Some things aren't; Nick picks out a dry white. "I suppose it's no good asking what year it is."
[00:02] Candice: "Doubtful. The default year is 2008 for a lot of people, but it does vary."
[00:03] NHardaway: "2008." He sounds ... surprised, and a little resigned underneath it. "I suppose it would have to."
[00:05] Candice: "What year is it for you?" She does not say 'was'.
[00:06] NHardaway: "2001." Nick takes his glass (and the bottle) back around the bar to sit down.
[00:14] Candice: "I know someone else in your shoes," she notes, carefully, "so to speak. His world was more Medieval in nature."
[00:15] NHardaway: "Rose Red is a world unto herself," Nick comments, apropos of nothing, and smiles at her briefly. "Do you? What are his shoes like?"
[00:18] Candice: "Dead and resurrected by the Nexus. But he's doing better for himself now, I think. 'Rose Red'?"
[00:19] NHardaway: "A house to hurt. I'm sorry, I've had a very long weekend." Very, very, very long.
[00:20] Candice: "I get that impression. Anything I can do?" She perches on a bar stool, leaning down to fix the straps on her boots.
[00:24] * NHardaway examines his wine glass, and looks back up at her, wry and rueful. "Tell me about yourself."
[00:29] * Candice looks faintly startled by this. "In need of a distraction?"
[00:29] NHardaway: "I could sing, but I'd really prefer to be talked to." :D? :D?
[00:33] * Candice laughs, at that. "All right. I'm not sure where to start, though, really, or what to say."
[00:34] * NHardaway is pleased by laughter. "Tell me about this knack of yours," he suggests.
[00:39] Candice: "Oh. That. I've--got what you might call an affinity for the dead," she says, with a bland little smile, "And the people in between. The actual dead, the people whose bodies aren't really in use any more, I can talk to and exert some influence over."
[00:40] * NHardaway probably shouldn't have asked that if he wanted distraction, from the look that passes over his face for a drawn out moment. "You're a psychic," he says, and it's not a question so much as an afirmation of something he'd already known.
[00:46] Candice: "...that does seem to be the term." She observes him cautiously. "You seem acquainted with the type."
[00:47] NHardaway: "Oh, I am."
[00:48] Candice: "And how's that?" Persistence is something to be wielded carefully around people in Nick's position, but it is one of her characteristics.
[00:48] * NHardaway taps his temple and smiles again, sipping wine.
[00:50] Candice: "You, too. The same, or...?" She's briefly caught between curiosity and uncertainty--she doesn't know many other bonafide psychics. (Even the Atreides twins didn't make ghosts do things.)
[00:51] NHardaway: "This and that. I'm a little different from you."
[00:53] Candice: "What do you do, then?"
[00:53] * NHardaway considers her, over his glass, like he's deciding how much to say.
[00:56] * Candice will probably push, given an unsatisfactory answer. She's like that.
[00:57] NHardaway: "Mostly, I read minds."
[00:57] Candice: "That must get incredibly annoying around some people."
[00:58] * NHardaway snorts into his glass, laughing a little. "Sometimes it does."
[01:04] Candice: "Is it selective? Can you turn it off, I mean? Mine...isn't."
[01:05] NHardaway: "I can't turn it off precisely," Nick's careful, "but I can control it - selectively like you said. I'm not reading your mind right now, but I'll know if you lie to me." He's so pleasant about this!
[01:08] Candice: "I'll try not to lie, then." 'Try.'
[01:09] * NHardaway grins briefly. "I'll keep track for you, how's that?"
[01:11] * Candice smiles back. "Go right ahead." She reaches across the bar to retrieve her coffee mug. "Where does it come from, do you know?"
[01:11] NHardaway: "Everyone is a little bit psychic," he says, in a tone of voice not unlike the one used by people saying 'everyone is a little bit bisexual'. "Some moreso than others - like you and I - and some more and more again. Where does it come from? Where does anything come from?"
[01:12] Candice: "Santeria, in my case," she murmurs, and then hides her expression behind taking a drink.
[01:14] NHardaway: "You are what you are." Nick is remarkably zen for a man who died seven years ago under fairly horrific circumstances.
[01:15] * Candice is noticing that. "There's one facet of the Nexus I should probably tell you about."
[01:15] NHardaway: "Please."
[01:16] Candice: "Alternates. Different versions of the same person. Or, sometimes, people who are very different but have the same face, like doppelgangers."
[01:18] * NHardaway 's expression is the very definition of 'o rly', because that sounds like it's going somewhere interesting, and- Nick's eyebrows go up. Maybe he should mind his own business. "That's fascinating."
[01:19] Candice: "--hey--fresh out of the afterlife or not, I can and will toss hot coffee in your lap," she protests (and no, she totally wouldn't actually do that), annnnd hey, for once she's blushing and Martel isn't here to see it!
[01:22] NHardaway: "Now you're lying to me," Nick says, sipping his wine with an expression that wouldn't look entirely out of place on Martel's face, actually. That's unintentional, just for the record, despite what he just saw. "I'm sorry," he apologizes.
[01:23] Candice: "You are not that sorry," she mutters, rueful.
[01:24] NHardaway: "I am polite, though."
[01:25] Candice: "You're lucky Martel isn't here. Or Maria, I think she'd throw images at you on purpose." She would, yes.
[01:29] * NHardaway grins again. "They sound like terribly interesting people."
[01:31] Candice: "Much more so than me. I'm sure they'll be along any minute to entertain you. -- or eventually, anyway." She does not know if she should mention the immortality or not.
[01:32] * NHardaway could probably use knowing about that, but he's obligingly not poking his nose in her mind again. (Right now.) "I think you'll find you're a very interesting woman, Candice." ...he's like this all the time. For the record.
[01:34] Candice: "Well, thanks for the thought," she says, wry. "Martel--the individual I referred to earlier who was in a similar situation to you--is a mercenary. I might be wrong, but I'm going to go ahead and assume you aren't one."
[01:35] NHardaway: "I'm a psychiatrist," he supplies. ...enjoy that.
[01:36] Candice: "Of course you are." She laughs. He's probably heard that before.
[01:41] * NHardaway grins at her again, not-quite-boyishly. "I get that a lot."
[01:41] * NHardaway doesn't, actually, but he has on occasion.
[01:43] Candice: "You must be very good at it."
[01:43] NHardaway: "Well, I certainly try."
[03:47] * Candice just smiles, and sets her coffee down, going into the back room to retrieve her supplies for the day.
[03:49] * NHardaway uses the time while she's in the back room to...drain his glass, uh, and also poke around the bar a little. If and when she comes back he'll be ... queueing up a little Glenn Miller on the jukebox.
[03:51] * Candice comes back with a big messenger bag that appears to be full of interesting items slung over her shoulder. "I keep my supplies for my work here," she explains, "some of them, anyway. It's mostly abandoned. I guess the nexus takes care of upkeep."
[03:52] NHardaway: "What is it you do?" ...with all of that. The fun thing about Nick is that he could find these things out for himself, but he always seems really interested in hearing the answer anyway.
[03:58] Candice: "Demon-hunting and exorcism tend to be my forte," she says, after a careful pause, "usually only the highest upper echelons--the things that aren't physical, that you can't punch into submission."
[03:59] * NHardaway regards her unblinking for a second. "How upper, would you say, is 'upper'?"
[04:02] Candice: "The last place I went at was capable of taking over an entire state," she recalls, a little too forcedly even, "it was stopped at a town."
[04:04] * NHardaway makes a sort of hand gesture, thumb and forefinger pinched with his fingers more spread, like he's going to say something and then changes his mind. "That's very impressive," he settles on.
[04:05] Candice: "Not really," she says, incredibly wry all over again, "Wound up on bedrest for a month with more of a reputation than I'd like. I had help, that's all. You mentioned a house, before." Oh, she is a perceptive thing.
[04:06] NHardaway: "Rose Red. It is - it was, perhaps - in Seattle."
[04:10] Candice: "I'm going to hazard there was something kinda strange about this house."
[04:11] NHardaway: "You might say that," Nick agrees.
[04:12] Candice: "How so?" Candice asks, frowning.
[04:16] * NHardaway considers her; how to answer, whether to answer, if he's ready to answer that question... "The house is a living, feeling, hating thing. Ellen Rimbauer designed it to hurt the way she'd been hurt so badly."
[04:45] Candice: "Ellen Rimbauer...and she's what has possession of it now?" She presses her lips together. Not her world. She can't go there.
[04:46] NHardaway: "It's not over until she says it's over," Nick says, somewhere between wry and something else. "And for Ellen - I don't think it'll ever be done."
[04:48] * Candice thinks about saying something, but shakes her head, apologetic. "I'm prying again."
[04:49] NHardaway: "You are, but that's all right. The place treats men and women differently - men, we die." ...so. There's that.
[04:58] Candice: "I'm guessing this lady had a misandrist streak. What happens to women?"
[04:58] NHardaway: "They disappear."
[04:59] Candice: "Food for the house," she thinks, absently, which...Candice, you have been doing this too fucking long, girl.
[05:01] NHardaway: "Exactly," Nick agrees - he could almost sound proud that she got it so quickly, maybe. "It prefers its own blood, of course." Nice how he's standing around discussing the thing that viciously murdered him. ...this man's coping mechanisms are fascinating.
[05:02] Candice: "I've encountered something similar," she admits.
[05:03] NHardaway: "Did it grow?" Are his problems with the nexus becoming clear or what, here.
[05:05] Candice: "No, but it was self-maintained. I was a child, in high school--we had a party in this ostensibly abandoned house. Most of my classmates were trapped. My friends and I had to deal with one of the residents, so to speak, and by dawn we got loose...when John and I went back the next day--"
[05:05] * Candice pauses. "The house had been under renovation. When we went back, it was whole again."
[05:05] NHardaway: "You went back." He sounds stuck between 'admiring' and 'bitch are you high'.
[05:07] Candice: "I wanted to take care of it," she says, awkward, and shrugs, "John and I nearly destroyed the damn thing. Fifteen and seventeen years old. I couldn't even drive yet. It was stupid of us." ...note: she still does the same thing now as a job.
[05:07] NHardaway: "You could have-" He pauses, and gives her a rueful look. "Well. Well done, you."
[05:11] Candice: ...yeah, awkward. "I got lucky. I--look, do you have anywhere to stay? Can I help, maybe?"
[05:11] * NHardaway pauses, thinks, grimaces. "I'd be very grateful, actually."
[05:12] Candice: "Somewhere off-nexus, I assume." Because, uh, obvious.
[05:13] NHardaway: "I do like the walls to stay where I left them."
[05:13] * NHardaway has issues. Hi.
[05:17] Candice: "I'd invite you back to the castle but--Martel's so put out with the Nexus right now--"
[05:18] * NHardaway 's interest is piqued, but she notices, so. "I wouldn't want to bother him." Probably.
[05:23] Candice: "--actually. I've got a hotel paid for for a week--don't ask, it was given to me--in Wyoming. Nexus-accessible."
[05:26] * NHardaway really, really, really, really wants to ask - but on the other hand he also doesn't want to spend a night in the nexus. Man's gotta have priorities. "Well, I'll definitely owe you one."
[05:26] NHardaway: Or a few.
[05:28] * Candice waves a hand. "It's fine. Really. If an annoying cowboy shows up, you can tell him I'm still engaged."
[05:29] NHardaway: "Cowboy," Nick echoes, like there's a weird private joke in it, and smiles. "I'll keep that in mind." ...so to speak why does he talk.
[05:54] * Candice goes to find a pen and paper so she can write down the address--and how to get there and back via Nexus.
[05:58] * NHardaway observes this with seemingly mild interest. "I will have to find some way to repay you," he decides.
[06:02] * Candice raises her eyebrows. "If you want," she says, shrugging, "but it's not necessary." She offers him the paper.
[06:05] * NHardaway takes it to look over and pocket, with a faint smile of gratitude. "It does seem like the thing to do. Thank you, Candice."
[06:06] Candice: "I have to get some work done, but I've got my pinpoint--my phone--number on there, so gimme a holler if you need anything, huh?" She half-smiles. "Good luck, Nick. See you around."
[06:07] NHardaway: "Thank you," he repeats, "And congratulations on your engagement! Goodbye."
[06:07] * Candice goes!