Following the White Rabbit

[Ezekiel]

Ezekiel listened quietly, though the smile faded from his lips. The tirade was both boring and juvenile, the tantrum of a disappointed child, but it was informative too. Each insult plinked like coins upon the next, a store to be cashed in later, if the mood took him. Such a big chip on those shoulders. Such a starving ego to feed. Creating a scene right now, in front of this particular audience, would be a most delicious feast… but ultimately a short lived one. A poor waste of entertainment, and a bridge too hastily burned.

He accepted the coin when it was finally offered, rolling it over the knuckles of his rose covered hand. For all his sharp edges, Ezekiel shifted as effortlessly as desert sands. If he had perceived slights, or given them, they rippled into nothing as quickly as they arrived.

“Ah, hello friend,” he said. The grinning demon flashed its face. Then the grimace. Over and over, back and forth. “How did you end up there I wonder?” His gaze flicked back up to Cruz, a slit-eyed sly grin, but it was more mischievous than threatening. “And what “kind” is that? The rude kind? You are quite right about that.” He laughed, more of a short giggle, and flicked the coin up into the air. It glinted dully as it spun. Ezekiel caught it and slapped it down against the back of his hand, straight into the cavernous maw of the inked skull.

A peek down at the face revealed under his palm, a smirk for what he saw, and he pocketed it without comment.

“I don’t deal in money,” he said. It amused him that it was what Cruz had assumed he meant by reward. An arm swept as though encompassing their humbled surroundings, “and you are mistaken about worth and value. But your corpse is safe from me, and you are free to go, if you are content to do so.” He meandered a step backwards, then paused after a moment of idling.

“Although, if you ask me, it seems a crying shame to walk away now.”

[Cruz]

Cruz didn't much like this man. He rubbed him the wrong way. And the feeling was obviously mutual eve if he was suave and charming and had the lit of mischief about him. There was nothing this man could offer Cruz that he couldn't get for himself. He hadn't known what he was expecting the coin to offer. And since giving it up to it's owner he felt bare and naked without it. Like the world was stripped from his fingers. Maybe this was why Nox hunted? There was mystery in his life. Was this why Sage collected information? He was addicted to whatever he did. He constantly slipped into the confines of his mind leaving everyone to struggle in his wake.

But he shouldn't blame Sage for the state of unrest. He merely stated facts -- facts he dealt with -- facts don't lie. It's people who turn things and twist them and make them something they aren't. And that is what happened here. Words were minced and twisted and turned into whatever game this man was playing. Raffe looked uncomfortable though this was his kind of place, the situation had turned dour and Cruz noticed. He noticed people stayed away from their spectacle.

"A crying shame." Cruz said back. "I'm not sure you'd have anything to offer me for the return of such a small trinket. Seems more like a manipulation, a seemingly trivial favor for returning a trinket that turns into much more over time. A hook to draw the prey in. The coin is that little light at the end of the anglerfish in the middle of the deep vast ocean. I wonder what the jaws hold for me if I keep following the light?"

Cruz shook his head. "I think I'll take Raffe's advice." Cruz may not know Raffe. But Nox trusts him with secrets of his past and present and that is more than most can say. If he says they should go. They should go.

Cruz nodded his head to his wayward host. "I'm sorry for taking up your precious time."

[Sage]

They were leaving? Sage pouted. He hadn't even found anything fun. Except that Cruz defended Nox's honor and Raffe was uncomfortable. The tech in the church was limited, and Sage really found nothing of use -- old phones with little connectivity weren't great for tracking. Triangulation was better these days but that was far more work than Sage had time for. But this man was a bit harder to find than most. A lovely challenge.

He couldn't send any feeds to his friend, nor could he retrieve anything from him. Sage sighed as he followed Cruz's ire with being misled or drawn in. "You are hardly a minnow, Cruz -- wielding Granddady's big bad inheritance as some sort of shield. Let's pretend you are just a normal college student who happened upon a strange coin in Manifesto. Someplace you shouldn't have been but you got in cause you know someone who knows someone. Not far from the truth. Pretend you are out with Nox and being a normal kid for once in your life. God knows we both need that. Not that he's normal by any means but he lives a far better life than we do. Your college buds try to show you the way. They are sleezy, and only there cause you have money."

Sage smiled at Ezekiel. "Don't mind him. He's an odd one." He rolled his eyes at Cruz's words mimicked back at Ezekiel. "What kind of reward, might he get for returning your amazing little trinket. I couldn't find much on it -- except that it leads you down here -- to you obviously. Beautiful craftsmanship too. Almost like you came from pirates."

[Raffe]

It went sour quickly. Disappointment dropped like a stone in Raffe’s stomach; he felt responsible for bringing these two threads of his life together, and now the incendiary burn of their clash was his fault too. Maybe he should have feigned ignorance of the coin and let Cruz pursue it his own way. Maybe the mystery would have fizzled out. Maybe he would not have been so frustrated with what he found, if it was something he had found himself. He rubbed a hand over his face. It no longer felt hot, just clammy. A prickle of chill threaded deep in his veins, like a taunt. How did you know when the worst of the Sickness was over? It felt like a sleeping beast; quiet one moment, turning over disquietingly the next. He tried to remember how it had been after the cabaret, but his memories were too deeply infused with his recovery from Kasun’s attack. He couldn’t remember.

How did you know when it was too late? How did you know when it was going to kill you instead?

He swallowed, and dropped that thought somewhere dark. The arguing continued, but at least Cruz seemed inclined to leave now. Raffe was a useless liar. If he felt miserable with guilt, he also knew there hadn’t been another option. Wandering the tunnels with Sage hadn’t seemed like a good or safe idea either.

[Ezekiel]

“Have you finally finished making assumptions about me, Cruz?” Ezekiel’s tone was thick and sweet, but there was something bitter to the aftertaste. His hands were still in his pockets, his stance casual enough, but something in him darkened into stillness. For a moment he occupied himself with imaginings of how easy it would be to pull the maelstrom of his own power into grasp; to call upon the void of the heavens until the sky swirled dark again and the little prick really did have something to shit himself over. Yesterday's stormclouds were not yet so far away. If Cruz insisted on perceiving a harbinger of doom it only seemed fair to follow the story to a satisfying ending. For he did presume the way the man lashed out while keeping a whitened grip on his menace-laced power was born of fear. A quite lovely emotion, but not one Ezekiel ultimately savoured when he was the object of it.

“A shame you did not ask any of the questions you came here to ask,” he clarified of his earlier words. They could huddle from his presence if they wished, Ezekiel would not stop them leaving. Nor would he willingly elucidate on mysteries Cruz so readily disparaged in an effort to convince them to stay. He detested being disliked, but if it edged him into the most volatile of moods when it could not be remedied, he would not stoop to beg for the worship. They always came back anyway. Whether they wanted to or not.

He inclined his head in return, and watched the death throes of this first meeting. The coin had already been tossed and read. Cruz could walk away with his tumultuous pride, but Ezekiel would not be done with him until he decided the coin’s fickle destiny had been fulfilled.

The third stooge of this merry band suddenly reanimated like someone had remembered to switch him on from standby. He wittered at an extraordinary pace, and Ezekiel could not determine if he’d been oblivious up until now, or simply distracted. Though distracted with what he could not say. “All the best people are,” he assured with the nonchalance of forgiveness, though no apology had been offered nor forgiveness sought. Cruz had done little more than spit poison after all, and if Ezekiel considered it wholly unwarranted, he did not appear to have been mortally wounded by it. Not that a little fawning hurt.

He shifted a little, having caught sight of Raffe’s pale face in his peripheral. Fear had a unique cast, and it pushed the smallest smile to Ezekiel’s lips as he reached to steady the other man at the elbow. “Steady now,” he murmured. The concern was not feigned.

Ezekiel didn’t refute the compliments, but the coins weren’t worth anything in themselves; it was what he’d meant about worth and value before. They were merely tokens, of which they might be ascribed any number of meanings. The value was the crossroads they created. A little touch of the divine. "Depends on who finds them and what they want from me," he answered eventually. Since the coin was Cruz’s, the questions belonged to him. If he still wanted answers."Will some satisfaction cure your cat, Cruz, or do you still not trust me?"

[Sage]

Sage hoped the ire would change a little now, but Raffe looked haggard. And he turned his attention to Nox's boyfriend. Sage whispered, "Do you need to go home?" He smiled at Ezekiel and Cruz. "I think these two can be left alone to chat." Nox would kill him if Raffe died while he had him out and about.

[Cruz]

Cruz sighed with Sage's intervention he could have just left. "I never intended to insult you. I didn't come here with any expectations, or questions or even a plan. And no I don't trust you." Cruz threw up his hands. "I'd be an idiot to trust anyone I just met, but I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt."

Cruz shook his head. "Raffe doesn't look good. Mother was doting on him. You channeled?" Cruz said to Raffe. "Does Nox know? Why hasn't he helped you yet?" He couldn't know. Why wouldn't he help his boyfriend.

[Raffe]

Ezekiel’s hand at his elbow steered the ship of attention, and Raffe did not think it was unintentional. The man was a lot of things, but he was always there when he was needed. It was half the reason he was so well loved in the undercity. Raffe might have been grateful, except the power was the last thing he wanted to think about or discuss right now. Sage’s concern prompted half a smile. What he wanted was time to speed up a little so that the knot of anxiety in his gut could finally relax. He knew Nox was safe but he’d feel better when he actually saw him whole. The last message received had been about a debrief. The seconds felt like they waded through treacle since then.

“The worst is over, pretty sure.” Which he was. But it might have been hope speaking too. Shame he looked as terrible as he felt though, because if even Cruz put two and two together, then the remnants of Raffe’s second (at least) bout of Sickness was going to be the first thing Nox noticed. Not that he intended to give the other man a chance for noticing. At least not until later.

“It’s complicated,” he said to Cruz, whose genuine surprise suggested harnessing his own gift had come to him as easily as Raffe imagined most things in his life did. Discussing his own inadequacies made him deeply uncomfortable, and he shrugged without elaborating. No one here was likely to actually understand, though plenty of people tried to help.

Nox. Tan Li. Now Ezekiel.

“He tried to help me. It’s under control, I promise.”

[Ezekiel]

He watched them as their attentions shifted to the concern of Raffe’s pale face.

“You came to my home and accused me of manipulation, theft, and murder, only to claim you did not mean it,” he said to Cruz. Intention mattered little when such accusations were thrown about so carelessly, though somehow he doubted the capability for self-reflection. Words ought to matter more to someone who strode such lofty circles. Decadent pride and the folly of youth. Next time Cruz might so blithley end up offending the wrong person. A painful lesson to learn, probably. Or maybe it would be. Such decisions were the things of a careless moment, for Ekeziel.

After a moment he laughed a little. “Well okay, then. What a funny little apology.” A hand waved the whole thing away, but if he smiled it did not reach his eyes, and his expression remained sobre after. Benefit of the doubt was a poor inheritance.

Raffe protested, as he always did, even as time fell like grains of sand all around his head. He was sure the man could feel it slipping away. There was little Ezekiel appreciated more than the mantle of saviour, but usually the moment was only sweetest when all but the last flakes fell, so he let Raffe’s friends fawn. His lips flickered a smile, but it was Cruz he returned to.

“I’ll tell you why I think you came. Because you were curious. Excited, maybe. Everything you have has been handed to you, through no fault of your own – after all, who of us controls the manner of our birth? – and you wanted something that was yours alone.” He did not pause for affirmation or denial, perhaps because he did not care. Though he imagined it struck at something true, even if the man only reacted with another grim temper tantrum, or straight up dismissal. Ekeziel did not state it as an accusation, nor as a derogatory condemnation. The words were plain and simple. A truth as he saw it.

“But you took one look around you, and decided I have nothing to offer you. You burned the opportunity to dust.” Though he had not appeared to retrieve it from his pocket, the coin slipped bright between his fingers once more. Only this time, with a pull on the power, it hovered and twisted above his palm, and burned to ash.

“Go home, Cruz,” he said. “Go back to your suffocating life. And hope that next time opportunity knocks upon your door, you are not so quick to dismiss it.”

He would be back. If not, Ezekiel would ensure it.

[Cruz]

Cruz blinked as another menacing presence joined his. He stared as the coin burned and he wasn't sure what had gone wrong here. Maybe the two worlds weren't meant to clash? He'd thrown a few accusations, but no where had he intended murder or theft. Maybe the sarcasm hadn't come through or he was ill prepared for the ways of the lesser folks. He knew Nox and Sage too, who was more like him than he cared to admit, high on his lofty perch with Aidan, would have both frowned if they heard his thoughts. But there was little to do now.

He hadn't been wrong, At least not in the why. Cruz frowned as the ash floated to the ground and the bridge he hadn't been trying to build burnt with it. He shrugged. "Whatever."

Cruz looked around. This place was falling apart. The world he'd never know and he didn't really care. Maybe his suffocating life was better than he knew, but still he hadn't intended this to go down in such a way.

He frowned and looked at Sage fawning over Raffe like he was some lost kid. "I'm going home." He gave Raffe a smile. "You and Nox are welcome at my mother's any time. She insist I offer whenever I see Nox. I guess that extends to you too. Sage will take you home." He looked to Ezeikel. "If that's what you want. I'm going... for a walk. To sulk? He didn't really know but he didn't want to be around people either way.

And he left without so much as a wave of a hand or a word good-bye.