We thought we lost you... welcome back

[crashiscoming]

Chance Adams is sitting on a bench somewhere on the streets of Chicago, waiting for a goddamn bus to pick her up. She's pissed because summer school is sucking and she KNOWS this stuff already. She angrily throws down first the highlighters she's been using primarily to doodle in the margins, and then the textbook itself. And then a car drives by

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[knownallbyheart]

Hermione watches the girl throw down the highlighters and the book, then she winces as the car splashes water all over her. She can't think of too many things more personally miserable than being splashed like that, and it appears that the girl's day was already not doing so well.

She bites her lip, miserable at the thought of just how unpleasant a day it must be for her. Walking over, just a bit hesitant, she gives a small wave. "I beg your pardon. Can I help?"

She realizes it must seem a rather ridiculous question, and she attempts a small smile. "I'm rather good with books. I can have it dry for you in a jiffy."

[teenytinyteme]

Chance whirls on Hermione, surprised that anyone saw her. She hadn't really accounted for there being other people on the street, so to actually be approached by someone is confusing.

She's about to say something snarky before the words that Hermione said sink in. She figures it'd just be some jeering comment, not an offer to help. But she hears the words and realizes what exactly is being said, and so exhales heavily instead of saying what she was going to say. "It's. I mean. It's fine. It'll dry out tonight, the pages will just be a little wrinkly but that's okay 'cause after this semester I am NEVER taking a history again."

Yes, her pride won't let her get help from anyone about anything. It's kind of ridiculous.

[knownallbyheart]

Hermione nods once, accepting that. She certainly won't try to force the issue.

Still. The girl seems rather upset, and Hermione would like to help in some way... It's not as if she's not one to stick her nose a bit out at times. Ahem.

A part of it is also that it's another girl, having a rather rotten day. Hermione can remember being in a ladies room, crying her eyes out, all too well.

She listens to her and bites her lip. "Is it the subject or the instructor? At my school, the professor tended to put my classmates to sleep with his lectures." Not Hermione, of course, but nearly everyone else.

[teenytinyteme]

Chance sighs and looks at her feet. She knows the answer to that question, and the answer is (of course) secret option c.

"It's neither," she admits. "I mean. The teacher's kind of boring I guess, but like all teachers are kind of boring. And the class isn't like super hard. It's just stupid because I already took it and if a bunch of stuff hadn't happened--I got kidnapped last semester, and missed a big test that my teacher wouldn't let me make up, which I guess is fair 'cause I've also skipped out a couple of times, but I was kidnapped and. Stuff. And I'm already a year behind 'cause I skipped out on a year when I first came to Chicago and."

She realizes that she's babbling, and so she stops talking and digs her fingers into the edge of the bench again. "So I guess the answer to your question is that it's just me," she says finally.

[uponthewires]

Anne should be in ballet lessons. It's the second week that she's cut from classes and not been where she was supposed to be. Lies, even the whitest of them, are hard for her--and they're not.

It's her second attempt to get to the Tower. She's dropped off by a cab, and the first thing she sees once she steps outside the street is Scout. The blood is, surprisingly, not the first thing Anne notices.

It's the fact that she senses Scout as...as something like her. Demon.

Is this what she'll become? Is this all that will be left of her if she ever gives in?

Anne doesn't dare meet Scout's gaze. She also can't force herself to move away, unable to look anywhere except the blood. "What...what did you do?"

[crashiscoming]

Scout doesn't even look at Anne. She knows she's there, and she knows the words are aimed at her, but it takes her a long time to form a coherent response in her head, and even longer to get that response out of her body and into the air around her.

"Broke," she says simply. It's both an answer and it's not an answer. She broke, definitely--broke a long time ago, broke her promise to the coldblood when she promised not to kill. But that's probably not the answer Anne wanted. So Scout continues, still never making eye contact.

"Hunted," she nods. That's the right answer. Scout hunted and she killed and things were floating away--old voices, old words, old impulses. It's not because she gave in--being like this isn't in Scout's control any more than being a demon is in Anne's. It's just the way things have happened.

[uponthewires]

Scout never has to worry about meeting Anne's gaze.

Anne is so hellbent on never finding her Mark she never looks at anyone in the eye. Her gaze is trained firmly on the ground, and if she looks up, it's never high.

Just enough, but never high.

"You--it...can be fixed."

She shuffles her feet from one side to the other, wishing she was more assured of herself. "You c-can't just stay here."

[crashiscoming]

Scout laughs--hard. It's more of a bark than an actual laugh, and the grin on her face is equal parts amused and bitter. Who knew she was capable of expressing such complex emotion at once? Maybe she is healing.

"Fixed? Fixed? Fixed broke, yeah? Fixed broke everything, done fixing. Be, now. Be." She shakes her head. She's had this conversation before, with people who hate their Callings--but she's seen the way fixing goes. Fixing breaks more than it helps, generally, and she's the poster child. Was supposed to be the poster child, before everything went haywire.

She looks back at the street, eyes following a car. "Can," she corrects. "Have. Have to. Yeah?"

Yeah.

[scorchtheground]

After a bit of car-watching, Scout might find a Hiroto sitting next to her. He was out wandering, feeling restless in this peace-loving city even though he'd just gone hunting a few days beforehand, and happened to see her sitting on the side of the road. He might be a bit jealous of the fact that she's got blood all over her and he doesn't, at this point.

But he's a bit more worried about the fact that it's blatantly blood, and she's just sitting there. And if he's going to have a sidekick, she has to keep herself safe. At least marginally safe. He never cared what trouble Akane got herself into as long as she cleaned up after herself when it was over.

So he plops down next to her, pulling a handkerchief out of his jeans pocket and offering it to her. "We clean up after," he explains.

[crashiscoming]

Scout tilts her head when she hears Hiroto's voice, but she doesn't look at him--not directly, anyway. She's still watching the cars--doo, doo, doo--feeling them in sync with her own heart beat.

She looks at him as he finishes his sentence, and quietly accepts the handkerchief. She understands. She never cleaned up after, but we do now. "Do," she says, wiping her hands on it. She turns to watch the cars drive past once she's done, the handkerchief balled up in one vaguely sticky hand. There's still some blood on her face, but she either doesn't know that or doesn't really care.

"Hunt?" she asks. That's a question aimed at his current state, not an offer, but he can take that any way he'd like to.

[scorchtheground]

He watches her wipe off the blood on her hands inexpertly, and then peers out at traffic with her, mostly trying to figure out what she's staring so intently at. Then again, he's learning that she doesn't necessarily seem to have to have something to stare at to stare intently. Sometimes he thinks that maybe she's staring at things only she can see.

Right after she asks, he reaches over, plucking the handkerchief from her hand and roughly wiping some of the blood off of her face. It's not all of it, and it mostly just ends up pushing the grime around instead of getting it off, but whatever.

"Can't hunt," he says with a bit of a growl in his voice. "Not a proper hunt." At least, not like at home. Here, he hunts monsters, the occasional angel in a backalley. It's like feeding off scraps. "You have been hunting."

[crashiscoming]

Scout grimaces at Hiroto wipes her face, like a little kid getting their face scrubbed by a parent. She doesn't stop watching the cars, her head not moving but her eyes following vehicles as they disappear around corners and out of sight.

"Hunt," she confirms for him. "Hunt said, sad, not to not to but no coldbloods no, yeah? Owe 'em nothing, still alive relive relieve alive." Half those words aren't even aimed at him, but she doesn't expect him to know that. "Promises promises here and there and nowhere all gone down the rabbit hole."

She looks up at him. "All gone," she mumbles, and then it's back to the street, cars zooming by, vroom vroom vroom.

[allmydiredreams]

Babel's on crutches, finally. Well, she could have been on crutches at any point, but didn't bother to find any -- she certainly can't afford to buy them from the hospital, but you'd be surprised what nifty things the Kashtta has tucked away here and there. Yes, she took those crutches. It's not like anyone was using them. At the moment

[stillaboyscout]

Vaughn starts at the flopping, because he was pretty damn engrossed in his reading. Also this building freaks him out a little bit, so surprise floppings are surprising.

But he hears her voice and relaxes, then glances up at her over his shoulder. "I don't know," he admits. "I'm having kind of a difficult time even getting the oatmeal into my mouth. But the book is very good." He shifts a little. "How're you?" he asks. "Is your leg any better?" He's missed her quite a bit, but he's going to let that go unsaid.

[averylongtime]

Not, perhaps, for the first time, Gladys is being stared at by a man who's mistaken her for someone else. It isn't an absolute look of recognition: the person Gladys reminds him of hasn't been near him in 30 years, but having watched her grow from a girl to an adult, Richard would like to think he'd recognize Eloise at any age.

But this woman can't be Eloise, no matter how much she may resemble her. Eloise was never at peace. He suspects she never could be at peace after 1977, a thought that makes his heart ache. Makes it ache enough to prompt him forward, towards Gladys, figuring that talking to the woman's much better than feeling sad over the past.

“It's a lovely view, isn't it?” he asks once he's stopped beside her, hands in his pockets, staring at the buildings with a faint (false) smile on his face.

[cookiesandhugs]

Of course Gladys knows nothing of this. She does know she's been mistaken for another person before, but it's Chicago. Lots of people look like lots of other people. It happens!

So all she can really do is turn to this nice man with an even bigger smile on her face than before, and nod vigorously. "It's times like these that you forget you're in Chicago," she says. "It's wonderful."

Not that she would rather be anywhere else but Chicago, but still. She likes having peaceful moments.

[averylongtime]

“What, you don't think cities can be beautiful?” he asks, bemused.

He's certain nothing he will see here will ever surpass the beauty of the island. He's been to enough places around the world to suspect nothing ever will. But when he looks at what Gladys is looking at, he doesn't think he's elsewhere. He's very much still in a city; it's just a city that's being beautiful at the moment.

[cookiesandhugs]

Gladys gives Richard a kind of sympathetic look. "Cities can be beautiful, yes," she says. "But when you live in Chicago, that beauty gets hard to find. Between everything going to shit and blowing things up and, well. Everything. It gets difficult sometimes. To see the beauty. But then you have moments like this--" she gestures to the sky. "And it all comes back to you."

Gladys loves the city, despite how broken it is, and to see that it still can be beautiful is heartwarming.