[did I sleep okay?]
Elijah PoirotDice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 4) ( fail )
Eleanor Yates[willpower]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Elijah PoirotEve was a temp. Eve occasionally did some work as a secretary when someone was sick or had the flu or was on maternity leave. she barely averaged five hours a week at the job, and who was she to know most of the people in the office. When she knocked on Eleanor's door, the tall and then brunette with the unfortunate choice in hipster glasses cleared her throat. She looked… shaken.
"There's some guy freaking out in the emergency stairwell."
---
Today, Elijah Poirot turned twenty.
He had taken he stairs to see Eleanor. Climbed and counted every last one and marked every step and the sound it made on the way up. He wasn't sure why he needed to see her by the fifteenth step. He wanted to turn around, wanted to make it another near month before they had more than a passing conversation about mermaids and by the time his foot hit the seventeenth step the young man sat down on the stairs and would not, could not drag himself to go any further and he tried, tried to place where he was.
When Elijah closed his eyes, the world went silent and black and suffocating.
There were things that lived in between their worlds. Things that chose that darkness between and lived there. Things that waited, that hungered in the void because it was in their nature to hunger. In their nature to devour all and leave nothing. To pick the bones clean and torment, torment, torment until there is nothing left of the psyche but a shell. Unless only shadows reign,
There were things that even these creatures feared. Things that were dead long before they came to the world above. Things that were beyond human comprehension and something cold and gentle and terrifying . Something that finally, finally whispered to him-
"Stop."
It was all Elijah could say in reply, all that would come from his lips again. And again. And again, stop. He opened his eyes and the world hadn't come back yet. He colored them, and there was no difference.
We open our scene with a young man cowered in a stairwell. Dressed decently enough from work.
Richard Levasseur[I WANT TO ROLL TOO. stam+ath: RUNNIN' UP THE STAIRS + specialty Tireless + ability aptitude :D :D :D]
Dice: 8 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 1, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1
Richard LevasseurFootsteps. Footsteps pounding up the stairwell! Ridiculously fast: thudthudthudthudthudthudTHUD, a few beats of quiet at the landing, then THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD. Floor by floor, closer and closer, until all of a sudden Richard rounds the bend looking all tall and tanned and apolloesque in a sleeveless jersey, in track shorts, in gym shoes. He pulls up short, startled. It takes him a beat, and then he recognizes --
"Elijah. Hey!" Happy surprise takes a quick turn into concern. "Hey. You okay?"
Eleanor Yates[awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Eleanor YatesEleanor likes Eve. Eve is competent but not self-important. In fact, she's a bit self-effacing, which can be grating at times when Eleanor is not having a good day. Eleanor, once a judicial clerk and once a criminal prosecutor and then and now a turner of the Wheel and safeguard against stagnation of souls, finds self-deprecation tiresome, even irritating. When she's having a very bad day indeed, she starts wanting to hit people and call them mice.
Today, however, is a very good day, and Eleanor has more of those than not. She is working at her desk in her office, which is reminiscent of a sea at calm, or a winter's dawn. She is humming to herself, a song from a movie made in 1939. Occasionally words make it out:
"Hmmhmm hmm-hmm, I'd be gentle,and awful sentimental,regarding love and art,I'd be friends with the hmm-hmm,and the --"
And the door is knocked upon, and Eleanor looks up, silenced, summoning Eve with a come in. And Eve, who does not know who to turn to but one of the only people still on the floor, says that there's a guy freaking out. Eleanor frowns. "A student?" and Eve doesn't know, and Eleanor rises, pushing in her chair to her desk and walking out with the temp, closing her office door behind her.
After a short walk, she opens the door to the stairwell and as the handle turns, she feels the sea pulled by moon and chopped by wind, roiling underneath, the waves rising into endless patterns with the sky, blue on blue on blue on blue on blue on blue on blue.
This feeling of waves both rhythmic and chaotic, she knows, means that Richard and Elijah are nearby. The stairwell door closes behind her, quietly because she holds it as it swings to a click instead of a slam, and then she descends the concrete steps quietly, sliding a pale hand along the round railing, painted black. They are on a landing, and she turns the corner to that landing, bringing with her the feeling of the perfect, silent serenity of midnight in January, a full moon turning the untouched snow a faint shade of diamond blue. She brings with her the feeling of descending, descending, descending, when air is no more than a memory and the light is just a round brightness rippling and shattered by a surface that is now so far above your head, and that encroaching darkness. She brings with her the feeling of heartbreak. Bone-break. Sword-break. She brings the feeling of something that was whole,
not anymore.
Eleanor's presence, in some ways, can be peaceful. But not comforting.
--
"Elijah?" she says,
her voice more gentle than her presence.
Elijah Poirot[can I take Eleanor right now? WP, -1 (because seriously, double botch, oww)]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Elijah Poirotthere was sound.
that was the first thing that he noticed was that there was sound, all sorts of sound, different sounds and his stomach turned and he didn't want to open his eyes again and-and-and-
His heart was beating too fast and the color wouldn't come back to his cheeks and the world was spinning. Sinking. Sundering suffocating oh god, he could feel every inch of him dying and that brought elation because… because it meant Eleanor was there. The world was here but he knew, he knewthis couldn't be true. And it was hard to focus, so damned hard to focus.
When he looked at Richard, his eyes were a thousand yards away. He looked past Richard, past Eleanor, at something that wasn't there and he pinned in with a gaze that was at once too distant and too sharp to be anything other than delusional. Sound was what he held on to though, because the sound wasn't going to betray him and amidst the cacophony of who knew what else, he picked out some familiar voices.
"I... I can't make them stop. I can't fix this-" and he shut his eyes again.
Eleanor YatesElijah's pupils are the first thing she notices when she gets closer.
Eleanor comes down to the final step before the landing that Elijah's curled on, and she lowers herself -- with elegance, with effortless physical control -- to sitting there too, knees up. She is wearing gray slacks, somewhat high-waisted, somewhat wide-legged. Her blouse is sleeveless and bright, yellow flowers on white, a scarflike collar that flutters when she moves. She left her jacket back in her office, but it goes with the slacks. Eleanor crosses her arms over her knees, watching Elijah. Her hair is, as it almost always is, long and somewhat unruly at the ends, like she has forgotten all about it.
"Elijah," she says again, more firmly, watching him even though he can't see her. "Elijah, can you describe for me what you're experiencing right now?" Her eyes skip to Richard; they say: stay.
They may also say watch him.
Elijah's is not the first psychotic episode she's been witness to. And even the affable young man before her could lose control in ugly, ugly ways.
Richard Levasseur[shit! this wasn't refreshing!]
Richard LevasseurOf course Richard is staying. Attempts to make him go, in fact, would likely result in more declarations of His Place and how it is With Her. He defers, however, entirely and immediately and gratefully, to his acarya. He is standing just half a stride away from Elijah. He does not crouch down. He remains as he is, upright, watchful, keeping an ear out for interlopers.
"I found him like this," he says to Eleanor, low. "I just got here, myself."
Elijah PoirotWhat was he experiencing? Could he describe it-
He had to focus. He had to keep his mind together as best he could, he had to focus back on being in the moment no matter how horrifying and terrible that moment well may have been. He had to focus. his pupils were wide and dark, though one could still tell his eyes were green. they dilated uniformly, which seemed to rule out him having a concussion, mostly.
Elijah inhaled sharply. Tried to put words together.
'It's dark and there's nothing. there's Nothing. No light no sensation, nothing except-e-except there's something here. There has to be something, right? i-If there's nothing there then what the fucking fuck just touched me?" he inhaled sharp, his breathing shallow. There was a capital in his voice, as though Nothing were truly something that could be fathomed.
Eleanor YatesWhen Elijah describes what he's feeling, where he is when he knows he isn't but he is he is he is, Eleanor has the strangest feeling. It's pity, yes, but familiarity, too. She smiles a little, even. She sees Elijah struggling and does not encourage him, neither does she tell him it's okay. She doesn't want him to be having a psychotic episode, after all.
"Right now you are in a stairwell in the Ricketson Law Building at the University of Denver," she tells him, and does not touch him. "You're with me, Eleanor, and Richard is here too. And maybe you are also in a dark place of Nothingness, but that does not stop you from being in a stairwell, on the DU campus, with Richard and Eleanor. We are not touching you, but if it would help you to be touched by something and someone you know, I will hold your hand."
Her eyes move up to her apprentice, whom she smiles at a little. "Richard has been in some very dark places, some of them full of nothing, and has not been alone. I don't think it was the same as it is with you. But maybe Richard could tell you about that, and how he got out."
Elijah Poirot"I'm in a stairwell on campus with Eleanor and Richard," he repeats, as though this is important. As though he has to say it to make it real, as though he had to repeat it like some mantra to solidify in his mind that he was there and nowhere else. Elijah could feel his heart beating hard and fast, he could feel something agains this spine slowly slither its way upward and he could think.
"Can I hold your hand? Please?" with a quiet desperation, a need for contact, a need to feel something that was real and human and not distant and terrible. He repeated, again, to himself I'm in a stairwell on campus. because he needed to say it, because he needed to repeat it. Because his voice was shaking and his knees wanted to give out.
Maybe Richard could tell him how he got out? As though there was some escape.
"I-I'd like that," he said, desperate to hold on to something real.
Elijah Poirot(edit, scratch: and his knees wanted to give out)
Eleanor YatesMantras are common among -- well, all Awakened and plenty of sleepers. They hold a special place, however, for the Euthanatoi, the yogis and yoginis and the aesthetics and the sufis and the rest. Even the ones that Eleanor mentally refers to as the militant gun-bunny white boys of their tradition tend to have things they say to themselves, or to people they are about to kill, like rituals. Like prayers.
"Sure," she says, and offers her hand out to him. She puts it beneath his hand, in case he really can't see her, and says: "My hand is about half an inch beneath yours. If you hold it, I'll squeeze yours, and that's how you'll know it's me."
Which is what happens. If he takes her hand, holds it. She squeezes his, stronger than she looks, firm and steady.
Richard LevasseurElijah is lost in a dark place.
He's lost in a dark place even though he is also in this well-lit stairwell in this very modern, very eco-friendly building. He's alone in a dark place even though he is also surrounded by people who like him, who care about him, who want to see him find his way back to the light.
He is lost in a dark place, and Eleanor reaches out to him. Richard watches their hands link. He feels something inside, a stirring, a moving, moved. He does crouch down now. No -- he moves, he sits down, he sits on the step right beside Elijah, close enough that if Elijah were to lean over a little he'd feel Richard beside him, lean and lanky and relaxed, brotherly.
"I went to a very dark place full of Nothing," he says, "the night I became a Euthanatos. It was necessary, a part of the Tradition. A tradition in and of itself. I guess the thinking is you can't fully understand the Cycle if you don't experience it. Maybe it's also because you don't appreciate the light until you've seen the dark, or any number of other cliched saying.
"I found my way back," Richard continues, quieter, "by reaching all my senses out. All five of them plus one. I was searching for my Acarya, and she was very, very far away by then, almost as far as you are from us. Up until that moment I didn't think I'd be able to reach out so far. But I did, and I found her, and through her, I found my way back.
"Maybe you could look for her too. Or me. Or someone or something you care about, who can be your anchor and your beacon."
Elijah PoirotHe dropped his hand into hers, and it was a drop- a little off but there none the less. He reached for her, content to feel her hand in his, as though a real contact, a genuine anchor in the dark was what he had been searching for. Perhaps, perhaps this was it. Perhaps in this moment of terror- and it was terror, genuine soul-riding fear- he was content as he could be to hold someone's hand and remember that the world was something bright and that there was soothing here and he had a reason to not get lost and he had people and places and things and all those other elegant nouns to remember.
He had a purpose.
He'd come here with a purpose before the world went dark and he remembered what it was, with his hand in Eleanor's, holding on as though holding her hand would make a difference- because it did. He listened to Richard's voice. He hung onto stand the words and the wisdom. He searched for someone, he looked for an anchor.
He knew where his anchor was, at least sometimes.
"I wish Alicia were here."
Eleanor YatesMind-reader she is not. But Eleanor would tell him: the world is neither bright nor dark; it is both, and it is whatever is between bright and dark, and it is whatever is beyond bright and dark. And she's not a life coach, but she might also say: you can't get anywhere by running from anything. you have to run towards something.
She doesn't need to, though. Richard tells Elijah to search for a beacon. Someone or something he cares about. And the first thing he comes to is not the hand under his own or the brother at his side but a young woman Eleanor has only vaguely heard about on Ginger, the last time she checked it.
It's been on her mind to say something about that message, but now's not the time.
"Tell us about Alicia," she says, curious.
Elijah Poirot"She feels like chaos," he said, words tinged by fear yes but there is a fondness there, "when I first met her, we were both rolling and it was a trip because we're in the bathroom and I feel this person who feels like I do, or at least close. Her hair is soft… I remember kissing her and telling her that we needed to find more reasons for her to smile; I remember breaking a drawer at the Marriott and she does things and we keep a journal
"And she's so fucking sad, and I keep thinking I need to try and find some reason for her to smile because she cries. She cries and… and I've lost my shit like this twice with her and both times she'd been so fucking patient."
He laughs, because he knows why. he knows that she's accustomed to dealing with people whose mental state was questionable. she was gifted with the terrible fact that a fair portion of the men in her life were clearly unstable and yet she had yet to kick Elijah to the curb or sever ties. For good or ill, she was stuck with him.
"But she laughs sometimes, and her nose crinkles up and she stole my books in the Aurora public library and we do stupid shit together and I want to keep doing stupid shit with her. I want to find more reasons for her to smile."
Richard LevasseurThe look on Richard's face is amusement, and wryness, and perhaps just a touch of old-souled eye-rolling-ness. Charismatic as he is, numerous-friended as he is, Richard isn't much of a romantic. At least not in the modern sense. Apart from that one pleasant little fling at that one crazy little party in Vienna, Eleanor would be hard-pressed to think of another time she's seen her apprentice in the romantic company of a woman. Or a man, for that matter.
He doesn't mock Elijah, though, and wouldn't. He just grins a little, and rolls his eyes just a little tiny bit at Eleanor in goodnatured exasperation: a sort of kids today look, perhaps. Then he pushes his hair back off his brow, resettles himself a little more solidly on the steps.
"Well," he says, quite reasonably, "if you're going to try to make this Alicia smile, you're going to have to drag yourself out of that dark Nothing first, aren't you?"
Eleanor YatesEleanor does know a little bit of who Alicia is. Alicia's dad may or may not have rewritten time. Alicia's dad was taken by the Technocracy. Elijah has scary thoughts of what the Technocracy might have done with this man, the danger the Awakened are in, and the man's reasons for maybe-maybe-not-rewriting-time. Elijah has grand thoughts of rescue.
Eleanor knows a few other things, besides: that so much is uncertain, including how long ago all this happened. That the Technocracy was, for all its Big Bad status, just as hard-hit in the last decade and a half as the Traditions. Loss of funding, mass defection, the vanishing/death/what-have-you of their highest-ranking members. That the Technocrats are ultimately human, too, even the ones who are half robot. That That Alicia's father is at best dead and at worst has already been undone. That rescue is not a realistic option, even to make Alicia less pretty-fucked-up.
That Alicia will just have to cope, and that having a friend like Elijah may be equal parts helpful and detrimental in this area.
Eleanor knows you never get over some losses.
Eleanor knows plenty about coping, though.
Eleanor knows lots of things.
--
Richard is a little bit amused, but Eleanor doesn't know if Richard checks Ginger with any regularity; she talks to him about things she thinks they -- or he -- should get involved in, but that is a rare thing. She has glanced at Richard, feeling his eyes on her, and sees that tiny eyeroll, and just gives the smallest, single shake of her head. There is the smallest, single line between her brows. Her eyes come back to Elijah.
She's still holding his hand.
"Elijah," because she keeps saying his name, "all you have to do is walk. Where you are right now, Alicia isn't. She is some time in the future, though we do not know when. And she is somewhere other than here, though we do not know where. So if you stay here, in this moment that is dark and terrifying to you, the only way to be near her to is to bring her into that."
It's the most brutal thing she's said today,
in that very gentle voice.
Eleanor squeezes his hand. "Or you can go to her, wherever and whenever that is. All you have to do is walk. We'll stand up, and walk up a few stairs, and go through door. We'll walk through some hallways and go through another door. When we get to my office you can sit down again. We can call Alicia, if you like. Or we can get my things and go for a walk, or a drive. Get some food, perhaps." She pauses, thoughtful. "Your body is in a stairwell, and your mind has gone wandering. You must pull your mind back to your body. We'll go upstairs. And I want you to focus on your breathing, and the feeling of each footstep touching the ground, and how your clothes feel on your body, and how your ears tingle, ever so slightly, with every sound you hear."
She begins to rise, without removing her hand. "Stand up, Elijah," she says, in that gentle way she has, though it is no longer as soft. It is not sharp; it is firm. It is ground to stand on. And no matter what her resonance feels like, cold and still and broken and a little like dying, there is a strength in her voice that can be trusted. "We're going to walk up the stairs now."
Elijah PoirotHe couldn't stay here.
Whenever here was. Wherever here was, Elijah did not wish to stay there. He couldn't live in that space where it was dark and cold and Elijah knew that whatever resided there was not something he could stand to become. There was the need to move forward, because he remembered being told again and again that stasis was not an option. Not for him. Not now. He listened to Eleanor and Richard, took in every blessed word and held onto it like gospel.
So if you stay here, in this moment that is dark and terrifying to you, the only way to be near her to is to bring her into that.
Elijah shook his head, as though this option were unacceptable. All he had to do was walk. All he had to do was get up, to stand up, to walk out. It was the only thing he had to do and sitting still was a thought that was so comfortable, because who knew what resided outside of that dark, terrible place. But stasis was not an option. He could bring her to him, which was unacceptable, or he could go to her.
All he has to do is walk.
All he has to do is stand up and walk and it's all he wants to do because he doesn't want this. He doesn't want now to be dark and he doesn't want here to be desolate, so he has to go somewhere, anywhere that wasn't this here and this now and when he stood he gripped the hand rail to the stairs like he might lose his balance without it, like he didn't want it to fly away, like there was a real and solid chance that it may crumble beneath his fingertips.
"I'm in a stairwell at DU with Eleanor and Richard," he insists, he repeats, because that's where he is. That's where he has to be. That is here. That is now, not some far off place, not some parallel something.
"And we're going upstairs," he started his way up the stairs with that, on faith that he knew where they were and tentative like he didn't trust it. Like he knew something was going to happen, and when he opened his eyes the world wasn't black, but it was certainly bleak. Certainly rotting. Certainly gray, but it wasn't black and it wasn't intolerable and it wasn't anything he hadn't seen before, but it was a step away from that abyss he knew so damnably well.
Richard LevasseurThey rise together, all three of them. They walk together -- Eleanor beside Elijah, Richard a step behind and a stair below. He's like a blind man, Richard thinks. The way he gropes for the handrail. The way he clings to it, infirm, as he takes the steps.
"We're going upstairs," Richard echoes. His hand rests for a moment on Elijah's shoulder. Gives it a squeeze. Then it drops away. He follows.
Eleanor YatesWhen Richard was lost in the darkness, in a nothing that was not really nothing, he searched for his acarya, and soon there was her voice. Soon there was her hand, taking his. Soon there was light, and even if there were things in the shadowlands that might harm him, at least he was not alone.
When Elijah is lost in the darkness, it comes from inside his own mind. Eleanor has wondered if in fact his mind is touched by the shadowlands themselves, because she has heard of such things, of hauntings and mediums, and she has met those who can cross over and speak to the dead at will. She has heard of those -- both Awakened and not -- who hear the dead against their will, too. Pity them.
She rises to her feet, slender and stronger than she looks, if her grip means anything. She draws Elijah with her, providing some leverage for him as he gets to his feet, stability as he repeats what she's said to him, grounds himself in where he is, whom he is with, what they are doing. Eleanor smiles when he says we're.
Her hand remains in his, and she leads the way, a step or two ahead of him, her arm behind her to hold him, and Richard the great and Richard the enormous guarding their backs. His place, he has said, is with Eleanor. And Eleanor has decided, for this moment, that her place is to guide Elijah. So she guides. And Richard guards.
There is the creak of a heavy door opening. Eleanor holds the stairwell door open, and makes eye contact with Richard so he can reach out one of those long arms and grab hold of it in kind. There is the change in footing as they move from concrete to carpeting. CFL lights, the feeling of other people nearby, walking and talking and moving and whathaveyou. A phone ringing somewhere.
"Where are you now?" she asks Elijah quietly, walking down the hallway towards her office. He has been down this path before. He knows where it leads. That cool room, those blues.
Elijah PoirotWhere was he now?"The hall by your office," he said, he was intent. There was a phone ringing, and when his eyes were open he looked around with a quiet bit of concern, a little bit of trepidation because there was the moment when paranoia set in and he stopped. He stopped in the hall and inhaled deep and long and he needed to recenter himself because he needed to be somewhere and he didn't need to be thinking about whether or not he was really dead and this was just a journey and he hadn't passed on and he was stuck, oh god what if he was stuck here forever and-
Exhale.
"We're going to your office, and then we're going to sit down… and… and we might call Alicia, but I don't-I don't think I want to call her," oh god, but he did. He did want to, but he didn't want to risk being wrong. Except, Eleanor was there. Eleanor and Richard and they were both alive and vital and he just had to follow along with them and things would be fine (even if he were dead, things would be fine, Elijah knew how this worked, knew he would have issues to resolve, this wasn't impossible, but this wasn't the where and when he wanted to be at. No, Elijah wanted to be in Eleanor's office with the cool, soft blues and the warm desk lighting like something off of Pinterest.)
"What I'm seeing… and what is there… are two different things… and that can be fixed," he insists, with the same insistence that he had before with Kalen, when he was so certain and so protective of the idea of not being crazy.
Richard LevasseurWhy is he like this, Richard wants to ask. Richard, who doesn't have the reserves of knowledge, the funds of comprehension, that Eleanor does. Richard, who doesn't know about people whose minds were in and of themselves a gateway to the shadows, whose very beings were conduits for the beyond.
He doesn't know why Elijah is behaving like this. He doesn't know if Elijah was poisoned, or injured, or attacked; he doesn't know if Elijah is
(as Elijah once feared, himself)
insane.
He keeps silent, though. He holds his questions to himself. He follows, and now they're up the stairs, and now they're through the door, and now they're in the hall where not so long ago Richard met Elijah for the first time. There is here office. There is that cool, spartan room; the cold deep blue of her magic steeped into every surface.
Eleanor Yates"The hall outside my office," she says, affirming. He hesitates, stopping, and Eleanor stops for a moment too, but she doesn't wait long. She tugs on his hand, saying quietly: "Come on," and they keep moving. He isn't going to just stop in the hallway and freeze up, not on her watch.
So they walk, and he talks. He tells them that he maybe doesn't want to call Alicia? And Eleanor listens as he says that what is real and what he's seeing are different, but this is fixable. "Perhaps it isn't something to be fixed," she says thoughtfully, as they walk down the hall, to her door, which she opens with her free hand, as she opened the stairwell door. "Like many things that are painful, perhaps it is just something to learn how to deal with. But that takes a great deal of practice, and it can be tiring."
As though this gives her an idea, as they're stepping inside. "Richard, I think we should order some sandwiches or something. Not Jimmy John's," she adds firmly, like this is a moral issue -- which, if they ask, it turns out to be. "Maybe something from the shop over in the library lobby. They have some vegetarian wraps. Elijah, what's your preference? Turkey, roast beef, maybe rabbit food like me?"
They close the door.
Elijah PoirotMaybe it isn't something that needs to be fixed.
"What do you mean?" he asks, but then she clarifies. It takes practice, this can be dealt with, it just takes practice, and it could be tiring. It was going to be exhausting, that much was certain. He seemed to mull this over and then nod an affirmation that, yes, he was following along and yes, he could understand.
"Something with avocados? It doesn't matter what it is so long as there are avocados," he says, because as it turns out the man really was a fan of… well… anything. He was young and while he wasn't likely to hit a growth spurt again, Elijah did need to fill out. He was a thin sort of thong, and he was a six foot ball of litheness at best.
The door clicks shut, and he finally releases Eleanor's hand once he is somewhere that he can take a seat. He knits his fingers together in front of him, feels smaller than he is. He gets lost so easily, it's strange to feel anchored at that juncture.
Richard Levasseur"I'll go get some," Richard says at once, stopping at the door, letting it shut before him. Through the sturdy wood-and-glass they can hear his footsteps, his long stride receding.
Eleanor Yates"Avocados are amazing," Eleanor agrees. She lets go of Elijah only when he does, and smiles over at Richard just before he heads out. She thanks him with her eyes for now; she'll thank him verbally when he returns. She didn't mean for him to run and grab the food himself, but she wonders if he feels extraneous, or if Elijah's state disturbs him.
Her apprentice is not cold. He has shown her a great deal of compassion. But then, she thinks, she is different.
Her eyes come back to Elijah. "How are you feeling now? You don't have to sit, you know. You aren't required to be still." She certainly isn't. She's walking around, behind her desk, picking up the jacket that goes with her slacks and sliding it on, sweeping her hair out from the neckline and letting it waft over her back. The goal is not to stay here, letting Elijah process through a psychotic break. The goal is to get him stable enough to move on. She is not, after all, a professor of psychology.
Elijah Poirot"I'm not crazy," he insists, looks at Eleanor as directly as he can and his words are almost defensive, protective. Rehearsed, because he's said them so many, many times and there are so many, many times that he doesn't believe them.
Elijah Poirot might be crazy, might have literally lost touch with reality in ways that he didn't even know were possible. It was a possibility he knew he did not want to face as a reality.
"And I don't mind being still, not right now," he replies, "I… I used to want things to be quiet. Still and quiet. But it can't stay like that, when things get like this all I want is sound and noise and-"
Elijah stops, "thanks… for you and Richard and everything."
Eleanor YatesHis sudden insistence that he's not crazy when she asks him how he's feeling makes Eleanor pause, lifting her eyebrows slightly. He's vehement, direct, pointed. Defensive. She is motionless for a moment, and then he goes on. Being still good. But not good. It wavers. And thank you.
Eleanor continues moving then, stepping closer and reaching into her bag. She is in want of lip balm, which is in a tiny tub and smells of shea butter. She dips a finger, spreads it over her lips. In the back of her mind she wants to ask him -- well. What the hell. Why did he say that.
"It doesn't matter what you are," she says, after she's had a moment. She re-caps the lip balm, putting it back in her bag. She makes eye contact. "As long as you find a way to deal with it. Don't get stuck on a binary of yes or no, good or bad, sane or crazy." She closes the clasp on her purse. "And you're welcome."
Elijah Poirot[keep your shit together, kid]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 5, 5) ( fail )
Elijah PoirotThere were a number of things that were associated with traditional masculinity. the Greeks once believed that crying was not a sign of weakness, because when the hero wept it meant that they actually gave a damn. This was not that sort of crying. This was not that sort of emotion.
The sound he makes is overwhelmed, terribly overwhelmed. Eleanor was not a mind reader, and even if she was she seemed the type who would at least knock on the door before inviting herself in. No, Elijah was young. He was young and there were things he did not yet understand how to handle, no matter how man years of constant bombardment he had to try and prepare himself. It was not unlike the day he met Kalen, sobbed on his couch and insisted the same thing. I'm not crazy.
He's a man at the end of the rope, unsure if he has room to fall or what would happen if he did.
"I don't know how to deal," he said. The sound wasn't helpless, wasn't hopeless, but there was quiet despair.He curled inward, tried to keep Eleanor's gaze because she happened to be the most real thing in the room.
Eleanor YatesWell.
That was unexpected.
She blinks as Elijah breaks down in tears. She frowns a little, her eyebrows tugging together, as he weeps. As he admits he doesn't know how to deal. She knows the sound of despair, though, recognizes that tone. That is why she frowns like that. It isn't displeasure. It's understanding.
Eleanor rounds her desk, walking over to Elijah. She is not particularly warm, but she is not dispassionate, not cold, not distant. She puts her hand on his shoulder, so if he bows his head he will still know she's there.
"Then you get someone to teach you," she tells him quietly, "and then you practice." Like anything else. Like so many things. Her hand moves over his back, lightly, gently, up and down. "But you don't," Eleanor adds, because she is not soft no matter how gentle she is, "waste your energy punishing yourself for needing the help in the first place."
Richard LevasseurThere is, at this moment, a rap on the door. It is quiet, but it is not timid; it is an announcement and not a request. A second later the handle turns and the door opens and Eleanor's tall, ocean-eyed apprentice comes in. He has a rolled-up paper bag in hand. It contains sandwiches. Eggplant-portobello-parmesan for Eleanor. And for himself and Elijah: turkey, roastbeef, the staples. Also some organic baked chips. Also some bottled juices.
He goes about laying the fare out on the table. He is quiet about this, but pragmatic and brisk. When he's done, Elijah has had some time to cry, and some time to stop crying. Richard glances over the slope of his shoulder:
"Turkey or beef?"
A simple, practical question, that. A small rung in the ladder back to normalcy.
Elijah PoirotEventually, he does calm down. It takes a little while, and eventually he does stop crying, comes back to himself long enough that he knows the basics. Where he is (Eleanor's office) who he is with (Eleanor and Richard) and the general date (you're twenty today.)
"Turkey sounds good," was his final reply. Clear, concise, and very very present.
Eleanor Yates"Come in," she says quietly, because she can see through the frosted glass a shadow of height, an intimation of her apprentice. She does not ask Elijah if he is okay with Richard coming back in, which is perhaps notable, but only if Elijah notes it.
Richard enters bearing sandwiches and Izze and chips. Given that she was expecting something in the vein of 'greens plus maybe cheese?' on bread, she's delighted. "You know you didn't have to go," she says, "we could have gotten delivery," but no matter. He's back again, and laying food out on a low table near the chairs in her office.
Her hand is still moving over Elijah's back, slowly and steadily. Elijah speaks of a preference for something: turkey. With sliced avocado. He is in himself. And Eleanor spies juices. "Oh, grapefruit!" she says, of the Izze she likes.
--
She ends up shedding her jacket again. The chair behind the desk is brought around so they all have a place to sit by the low table, over chips and sandwiches and fruit sodas. It's likely that she and Richard carry the conversation while Elijah finds his way back to himself; they discuss some of his other courses, and his thoughts on them as they relate to a broader understanding of the universe than most of his professors are prepared to accept. She keeps commenting on how good her sandwich is, like it surprises her every time, even though this is what she always gets at that place.
It's all very normal, other than mentions of the Wheel, or the universe, or invoking the names of spheres. They have sandwiches. They eat chips. And Elijah is quiet for a while, and that's okay. When it's time, they leave together.
Perhaps he calls Alicia.
Eleanor Yates[the end! thank you guys for the scene!]
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