The grand ball

[Cruz]

Jensen didn't beleive him that Nox was going to get himself hurt. He didn't mean with the dancing. Nox was too athletic to let that happen, no, he would get himself injured because of his mouth, or his dance partner or some other reason most people tend to avoid. Or he'd blow himself up again.

But it was Jensen's question that made him turn, the man truly was an American. They never seemed to care about anything more than their own self interests which included their lovely little country. But Cruz tried not to let Jensen see the fault in his upbringing. He did answer carefully though.

"Scion Marvet is one of the most powerful me in the world. You like to drive a car? Chances are the steel in it came from one of his units. He is part of the executive community of the World Steel Association. He's a resident here in Moscow and circling the Sphere waiting for an opening. He's drawn to the power like a moth to the candle. He's a good man to have on your side, and an even more dangerous man to have against you."
Cruz smirked. "I wouldn't want to be Nox right now."


Cruz turned away from the dancing. Something would happen eventually, that much he was certain of. Nox attracted trouble, like a moth to a candle light. "Is there anyway to know how bad someone is hurt before you heal them?"
Cruz had a singular mind. He wanted to know this, and he wasn't sure he'd ever get the chance. This man was pretty much property of the CCD now. He'd be lucky if he'd see his home again.

[Jay Carpenter]

He glanced innocently at the door, "Showing off? Never."
His grin swung downward thereafter, illustrating the overly dramatic attire wrapping him head to toe. Of course he was showing off. Last time he saw her, he couldn't do much more than aimlessly fling knots of anger at the things to crush. His finesse was leaps and bounds beyond that now. Ascendancy was right. He was learning the control he wanted. "Subtlety isn't exactly the Ascendancy's primary strategy."
He smirked while she considered the acceptance of his arm.

Jay's grins mellowed as she lingered. Falling into something more blank like the emotions from seconds before were siphoned by their collective horde of ever-waiting demons. Why wouldn't she come? Their victory was awarded. Ascendancy gave him permission to leave. More, the arrangements would be made as soon as Jensen was found. Probably should send Danjou some kind of message regarding the departure. Probably while he was killing time on the plane. Midair was about as boring an existence as possible. Luckily, civilian planes were comfortable as any bed. Even the worst seat in coach was a thousand times better than rapid descent in a cargo plane packed in like sardines, shoulder-to-shoulder, in the back on metal benches.

Not only did Natalie keep her distance, her expression shifted like gears grinding to a halt. Jay swallowed, eyes wide, chest tightening. She just stared, expectant, studious. But cold. Dismissive. She hadn't wanted involved. He shouldn't have gone to her. The idea of going to Iowa disgusted her. Not that he blamed her. His little middle of the nowhere county he called home was about as opposite as Moscow as possible. Even the charm and history of Sierra Leone, bloody as it was, was absent in Iowa. Corn, unions, and hicks were the culture of the country. It was home, and he felt a connection to that landscape bred by generations of Carpenters pouring their sweat and blood into the soil, even as he yearned to escape that flat, green horizon. Escaped he had, only to find blood and regret the uniform of today. Only, he didn't regret leaving. He regretted the motives, ashamed of the excitement of the job offer with the Legion. He might have found work just as stable in Des Moines, maybe. The city was rife with unemployment and Jay's particular set of skills weren't in high demand. That was the story he told himself, anyway. If he was a mall cop, an armored truck guard, or a bank officer, all of it, any of it, he'd have shot himself by now. And what the hell good could he do for Cayli dead? Same could be said of literally walking into firefights in Freetown. But at least in Freetown he had a chance. Hell of a chance. He was a rifleman after all, a soldier, an operator. Now, a channeler. There were few men alive that could do what he did and walk away with a shred of morality in tact. He was a good man. A good man that needed to do something bigger than farming.

Or so the story he told himself went.

She spoke, breathless, like putting speech to thoughts made them all the more real. "I only lie to myself, Natalie,"
he responded in like kind.

His shoulders sank as he scrubbed his hair and turned away. How to explain? She'd never forget that meeting her was for a job. Would she always see him as a job? An obligation? Is that why she was in the room? Solicitation and a sense of obligation?
"You know, nobody paid me to run into those tunnels to find you."
He said it harsher than he meant to. He hadn't meant to wound her, but the defensiveness cut to the heart of nastier wounds. Ones vulnerable to being split open again. Blood pooling at their feet, Jay grimaced. Dammit. I've screwed it up.

He turned back and went to her, blue eyes glistening with fervor that she understand. He wanted to grip her hands again, but the snap of her previous retraction was a fresh memory he wasn't keen to repeat any time soon.

He spoke from the heart, like the words rumbled deep from the chest, not the mouth, not the lips. His soul wanted to explain. But he was too human to convey the meaning.
"I don't think I wanted to be found, even if you had. Ascendancy was right, I need this,"
he touched his heart to the chain draping his chest. Fingertips grazed the clasp gifted by Ascendancy that secured the jacket closed.

Maybe the need was more honorable than the cynic within called it. But it was both, darkness and light at war. Maybe it was circumstance, maybe it was orchestrated. He found that he loved Africa. He loved being there, being the hero. Saving people. Saving her. There were a lot of ways to be that man. Why this way? That was the lie he told himself. He wasn't the hero.

He was the villain.

Every minute he delayed, Cayli was a minute closer to death. But he had to know. He couldn't leave the room without knowing. "What difference could you have made?"
It was a whisper, like he didn't want to know the answer.

Or worse. He feared the answer.

Feared it enough to want to run from the room.

But god help him. He didn't.

[Jensen James]

Cruz’s description was full of imagery. Jensen knew exactly what he meant. The same tycoons of industry populated Old Preston Hollow. From former presidents to celebrities, football players to hospital owners they fought over the right to purchase the rare properties that came up for sale. Jensen would know. He lived there.

His income, he was ashamed to say it now, was enormous back then. The path to hell was paved with minor stepping stones. At the time, no one thing seemed wrong. A book deal here. A cable channel there. Advertising rights. Speaking engagements. Even his regular salary was all supported by legal means. They lived the life that reflected their hard work. What was wrong with a nice pool for the boys to have fun in summer? The dining table that sat 16 made for wonderful parties in fellowship with friends. Their kitchen hosted Thanksgiving dinner for loved ones. Jensen had an extensive wardrobe and needed the proper closets to store all those suits. It was important to appear smartly dressed on camera. He had an office filled with the best technologies to communicate with staff. A BMW wasn’t that much more expensive than a Ford. The garage needed to be big enough for the two personal cars, their family vehicle, and Jensen’s bikes. Rent paid the cost for docking the boat at the marina.

Their expenses were justified. They lived the life to prove it.

Scion was no different than his neighbors and friends. Men like Scion lived all around the world. They just had different names.

He was pulled from the depths of his own self-inflicted perdition by Cruz’s question.
“Actually. You can. I can probably show that to you if you can find a willing volunteer.”

[Ascendancy]

The sentiment was easy to ascribe when Evelyn never found herself cradled in the arms of death.

Her heart was pure, he reminded himself, in that she wanted all to be the utopia of dreams. Someday their Utopian vision for the world would come to be. When the atharim were extinct and the planet ensconced by the umbrella of the Custody, her utopia would be real. Until then, threats remained. Jensen James was too precious a commodity to risk losing, but if he flew on the promise to return to Moscow promptly, the risk was low. The Regus of the Atharim was dead, a new man positioned in his place. One who would call a truce between themselves. The Vatican would provide some pressure, Nikolai was sure of it. Many long years had passed since he met with a sitting Pope. Their tiny city was the only patch of land that remained independent in Europe. Maybe it would be forever, their monarchy was unique.

Regardless, when she mentioned the treaty, Nik smiled. “Sure. That seems reasonable to add.”
The treaty wouldn’t last anyway. He had his own plans for organization of channeler skills in the Custody. Marcus was tasked with finding those skills and building the foundation upon which they were built.

Evelyn was lovely alongside him. Now they were free to speak alone, he glanced at her from aside, sharing a smile. “You look beautiful.”

Alric touched him on the shoulder, then. He wouldn’t interrupt unless there was something wrong.

When he looked up, he locked eyes on Ryker.

He hadn’t seen the man in ages. The years were unkind to him. The scars deeper than the skin. A great soldier, and a man Nikolai once called a friend. As much as he ever called anyone friend. At the very least, Ryker was trustworthy. Loyal and ruthless, he was a knife in the dark that felled many and advanced Nik’s needs.

He had Alric step back. When the Barrier Preator agent did, the two others in his shadow relaxed as well. As much as they ever did.

“Ryker,”
Nik called him forth and offered to shake the man’s hand.

“Evelyn, allow me to introduce to you a living hero of our time.”

[Natalie Grey]

"Then how did you know I'd missed--?"
The appointment with her father, abruptly cut from her tongue. It was the only reason anyone might have had to worry about where she was, and Alvis' presence confirmed the puppetry of a meddling parent. She'd assumed the rest. Jay couldn't have known where to find her; nor could he have known the trouble she'd brought down on her own head. He'd been hired to extract her from danger once. And he'd arrived alongside Jared. She'd only followed the logical progression.

"No. I didn't know that."
Her voice softened under the weight of truth, a bare murmur. "Jay, I never heard from you the whole time I was in France. Then you turn up when I'm..."
She trailed off, unwilling to articulate what had happened in the tunnels. Seeking solace at the bottom of a bottle seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but hindsight framed the utter stupidity, as it so often did. She had no friends in Moscow; had never set foot on its soil before that day. "What else was I supposed to think?"


He'd turned away. It was the point she expected he would walk away; she felt it like chill in her bones, an old and familiar melody. Offence corded him tight with frustration, and she found herself surprised at the strength of his reaction. She hadn't meant it as an accusation; it had been exoneration. Only now everything she'd thought she knew seemed slippery with misunderstanding. He wasn't the only one who chose to lie to himself, but Natalie was unwilling to confront that vulnerability in herself. Men weren't safe houses for hearts; she'd already learned that the hard way. Jay was no different, and yet every rational thought arming her with distance clouded into uncertainty with the smallest pressure.

He closed the distance. A glaze about the eye, restless of soul. She'd rattled something loose, unsure what or how. Ironic since she'd meant to reassure him with a shade of hopeful truth, but her words touched a nerve instead; one he struggled to explain, like he stared into the jaws of an abyss and she were a thousand miles away. Though he tried anyway. Measure by desperate measure. "He gave you a brotherhood,"
she said quietly. But a fire was banking in her gaze.

"Brandon told me he couldn't save the world alone. It was about the only thing he said that we agreed on -- because the man is completely obtuse. For him only the goal matters, not the means of achieving it. He and Danjou; they had no right doing what they did. Your life isn't something to be bartered for some greater good by men playing god. They only had to ask."


Her stubborn streak sank deep. She spoke ardently. With the same protectiveness that defended the broken boy who murdered his best friend for a war that wasn't his. The same defiance that brought her toe to toe with Lt. Falomi to buy time until Danjou dragged her away. And the same dogged determination that placed her on the embassy steps while Wallace-Johnson's army fuzzed the horizon, not even sure if the gift would answer to the call of desperation.

He was crumbling, and she didn't even know why. The cracks fissured. The weight of his sister. The other demons he chose not to share.

He didn't want to be found.

His words riddled doubt through the motivation that pushed her to find him. Like nothing she could have done meant anything at all and he knew it. Like he dared her to admit him a lost cause. She could have read futility and pulled away from it like a scald, but instead she only heard honesty. Even painful, she appreciated it for what it was. He offered her something bleak, but she rose to it like a challenge. Because even if he didn't believe it, he was worth fighting for.

He stood close, the whisper of his words like smoke. The broadness of him swarmed her vision; the black that marked him now. She ran her fingers against the pin at his chest in faint enquiry.

"What do you think I see when I look at you, Jay?"
Her touch found the chain that bound the pin, warm from the heat of him. "A soldier? You are one, of course, and it means you walk a hard road. You do ugly, necessary things, and they cling like shadows as dark as this new uniform. But we all have shadows."
He should recognise that characteristic bluntness by now. A sharp tongue armed for cruelty. But when her eyes upturned there was nothing cold in them. She accepted the darkness just as readily as she saw the light.

"What I see is the man who nursed an abandoned kitten in the middle of a warzone. The one who refused morphine because the boy who slashed his hamstring was in more pain. I see hands that sought to smooth away a hurt just because they happened to notice it."
Her hand curled over, exposing the palm and its gouged crescents. A rueful smile. "Even though it was already too late."
Her fingers closed slowly then, like maybe she reconsidered the self-exposure. There was more she could say, but it laid too much bare of a connection she mostly considered to be in her head. "I wish I could have spared you whatever happened to make you think this is the only way."


She hadn't meant to push him so hard, nor to rub salt in clearly tender wounds. She didn't know what had happened to him; the training he had endured on Brandon's whim of moulding guardians from men. It seemed plain he would not tell her. Nor was it the time to piece that damage back together, not when time was a commodity they could not buy back, and it was running out.

Instead she wrinkled her nose. Weariness crimped her eyes as she dispelled the tension, pulling back from the precipice of admitting too much. She ought to untangle her hand but found little inclination to move away. "That sounded far less saccharine in my head. I couldn't do anything. But I don't regret trying. I don't regret being here now."

[Jay Carpenter]

He didn’t understand the question. The moment her own logic strung the pieces together, Jay’s followed. Alvis must have had a reason to go to the bar searching Natalie’s last known location. He found the wallet, abandoned and called the last connection. He called Jay. What sent Alvis to that bar in the first place? Someone set him to hunt. The same someone that Natalie missed meeting. He felt his jaw tense, imagining what she went through. That sadistic bastard that he saw in the tunnel. His hands on her. His face near hers. His breath on her skin. The heat in his gut fanned the power in the back of his head to life, tempting him to take hold and burn the city down around them just on the chance that he found that bastard’s scorched skeleton in the ashes. Someday, he would find that man. It would not go well for him.

It wasn’t hard to imagine Danjou and Brandon sitting in the same room. This was the same man that sacrificed lives at the refinery for a delayed victory elsewhere. Brandon, well, no surprises there. Jay wasn’t that naïve. Yet, Danjou was also the one that marched into Jeddah to evacuate the city before terrorists overran the field. He was brilliant. They both were. Though he couldn’t explain it, he trusted Brandon. The relief that washed over him when the Ascendancy found him was illogical, but yet real. Jay wasn’t bartered, he was made an offer.

I said yes. He sold his soul willingly to the devil. Maybe it was a poor deal, but brotherhood, and all the rest, was worth the price. That’s what Natalie, for all her good faith, didn’t understand. Maybe he didn’t murder someone at the concert on a technicality of the definition, but he did murder someone in that lab. Not an evil son of a bitch like Alastair or that drug lord using a niece as a body-shield. They had it coming, at least the sins were equally damning. This was just a woman. Someone doing a job. Natalie would say it was an accident, but that accident was a direct action of his resistance. If he hadn’t been so damned stubborn, that woman would be alive. Beyond that, like that wasn’t enough, he had a chance to help Ascendancy build the world for the better. At least make one small patch of it tolerable. Trading one dictator for another sounded bad, but choosing the lesser of two evils was sometimes just being realistic. Besides, Brandon was hardly evil. In fact, he seemed the opposite of it.

He started to tune her out. She’d never understand. Nor did he want to make her.

Until she spoke of shadows.

His gazed roamed hers, seeking comprehension like the drowning sought air. And he was blown away by it. What struck him more than the accolades that followed had nothing to do with him. It was a comment, so small as to be nearly lost. We all have shadows.

He’d never stopped to consider what demons followed her. They swarmed him like a plague of black beasts, hovering and ready to devour. What shadows nipped at her heels? Did Alistair command that monstrous legion? Or was he only a single face in the black haze?

He rubbed the back of his neck, peering up cautiously over the curl of his brows.
“How’d you know about any of that?”
Then he shook his head. He didn’t want to know. She demonstrated the wounds to her palms, and his heart ached for her. Not because they were so intolerable, but because he didn’t know the significance of the previous gesture at the time.

The quiet that settled between them was far more peaceful than previously. He had no words. None but hopeful thoughts for that kitten, though he knew it was foolish. The thing was unlikely to survive without a caretaker. Though if ever a little buggar had a chance, it was that ferocious little beast.

The boy was harder to forgive. But what was he going to do? Let a kid suffer when he could tolerate all the more? It sucked. He didn’t want to relive it, but there were worse horrors. Besides, Vanders eventually healed him and the morphine would have gone to waste. “You should really ask Jensen for Healing. I can speak from experience. It’s kind of nice.”
He tried to grin, but it was weak. He recalled Natalie’s refusal the night they found her. The stubbornness was unlikely to have softened with the passage of time. She was stronger than most soldiers, hell, all of them. More stubborn, too.

Her final comment stole a short laugh, rattling loose some of the tension in his chest. “What a real sap.”
An impish grin touched his lips.

He hovered on the moment, drinking in the closeness while she lingered near. The pressure of her fingers against his chest, perched on the edge of action. He’d have to be dead to not be tempted, and he was very much alive. For the moment anyway.

Images flooded his mind. His last date was before he took the job with the Legion, and it had been a long year since then. Before that, he dated when he was home until breaking it off. She was cute, and Jay liked her, liked her enough to be terrified by the possibility of a future together. But already Natalie knew more about him than all the other girls put together. Yet she didn’t run away as fast as she could. Maybe it would be best if she did, but the ice in her gaze had melted, even if the words cutting her tongue retained the razor’s edge. The challenge of meeting that edge with like kind, like sparring swords, was enough of a thrill to make him keep trying. Even when she won. Especially when she won.

Problem was, if something started now between them, he wouldn’t be able to let it go again. His heart was pounding. Surely she felt it, hand laid against his chest.

He knew his limits. And this was it. Except…

To hell with limits.

He kissed her. Despite his best judgement not to. God help him. But he didn’t care. All the momentum of the past year came to a halt in those few seconds. His heart came to a stop with it.

[Natalie Grey]

He asked then banished the question. She didn't want to tell him anyway, nor to follow that knotted thread back to other topics. Her registration. Promises to her family. Her damn father. If she'd been wrong about Evelyn, she'd have courted the potential dissolution of a budding alliance between nations. All because she searched for something lost. But she was hardly going to tell him that either. He had enough pieces for a picture if he truly wished to know what she'd done. He wouldn't hear it from her though.

Her words bounced off like rain on parched earth; he absorbed little, refused to acknowledge that man she saw. She hadn't sought to flatter him though. Honestly, she would have been disappointed if it'd lit something like pride in his expression. His reaction was so infuriatingly him that her lips curved instead, a flicker of amusement beginning to bring more life back to her gaze. She let him brush it off. But she'd sit with cupped hands protecting that small flame of his soul until her own last breath.

Natalie was content with the silence that followed. It wasn't quite peace, but it was something quiet; something that felt momentarily like a balance restored. In that simple, precious moment, she realised how much she'd needed the respite. Moscow drained her. The deals she made for small victories, the tangled politics, the integrity of a name she could never live up to. Nor, more importantly, wanted to. Not to mention the unresolved issue of her father, banished to dozens of ignored phonecalls on a wallet abandoned in her apartment.

She'd told Jay offhandedly how much she missed Africa, but it wasn't so much the place itself as the freedom she had discovered there. The people. It ached her chest so hard it felt like grief, which she supposed was not so far from the truth. She couldn't go back; there was nothing to go back to. But though Africa's horrors still stole into her dreams, when she slept at all, its memories also offered kinder ghosts. She fell into the moment without realising the shift in herself. How new light sparked on the roguish edge of his grin.

"I'm not the one who--"
but the tease about the little orange kitten curled asleep in the hollow of his throat softened into nothing when he leaned closer. Everything blurred to a single moment, and though he caught her off guard she didn't wait for capture; breathless, she moved to meet his kiss. He tasted like the ocean. Like darkness and starlight, and the impulsive rush of falling. She'd had every intention of being smarter than this, but the recklessness of the plunge was in her blood. Or maybe it was only that now she didn't fall alone.

The shift of her skirts felt like the ripple of waves as her hand shifted to find the space inside his collar, seeking the heat of skin. Musician's fingers curved against the nape of his neck, a caress that sparked a shiver of desire down the length of her arm. Her lips betrayed all the impossible things she wouldn't tell him with words. How much she'd missed him, when she had no right to miss him at all. The palpable relief at finding him alive. The threads of an impossible connection, too strong to be denied, too unbelievable to be real. That banked brushfire rose to an intensity a kiss was never going to sate.

Until a bolt of pain almost toppled the balance she'd pushed onto tiptoe. Her breath caught in surprise against his mouth.

"Ah. Foot. Shit."


Not five minutes ago he'd suggested she accept the offer of healing, and he'd not even known about the wound on her foot. Another thing she hadn't planned to share. Natalie winced back the pain until the throbbing subsided, her head pressed against his shoulder. He was still so close and her heart was still pounding against his. She wanted him. Temptation wasn't the word. But rational thought had time to penetrate now; they ought to be looking for Jensen. An ear-pierce dangled abandoned, too. How long until his absence was noted?

"Free advice. Exploded alleyways should not be traversed in bare feet."
The sting lessened, but she could feel the warmth of fresh blood inside her shoe. Great. He probably wouldn't thank her for bringing up that night again either. The memory was painful for her for entirely different reasons, but she wasn't the sort to pull punches, even with herself. She smirked, pale gaze upturned to capture his. Her palm flattened against his chest as she tested her weight, finding it more or less tolerable. And for a moment she seriously considered tugging him back into that room anyway; a thrill she wouldn't have hesitated from but for one thing.

Jay's sister's face hovered, small and pale, and her memory flashed the desperation of his phonecall on the balcony. She wouldn't allow him the space for regret. And knowing he might have cause to look back and regret being with her was a scar she didn't think could ever heal. Not for either of them.

Composure began to settle, but a wicked gleam lingered; the heat wasn't so easily swept away, just contained. Breath still seemed too large for her lungs, skin flushed, the gold of her hair framing her like a halo, dishevelled by roaming fingertips. She brushed her thumb against the swell of his lip, where the blush from her lipstick had marked him.

[Oriena]

"Making a statement. One it'd be rude to ignore, no?"


She saw a challenge; one that rushed her blood hot. But the night was still young, and she wanted to see the other players before she decided on the game. The need for change was itching her skin. Boredom burned a hole through her brain.

Less than a week ago Kasun tried to tear out Raffe's throat; the same night she met Mikhail and left him in the hole watching her drink. The club had been closed since, at Carmen's insistence. Blood was such a fuck to clean out. And it had spooked the other employees, how quickly and savagely dogboy turned. That being the bigger problem, of course, but not one Ori cared enough to sort out.

She downed her champagne and abandoned the delicate glass. A riptide grin met Jaxen's mischievous smirk. She snaked a hand through his hair, lips close to his ear. "The dancing girl in green; the blonde who was talking with your father; the Congresswoman of course, public knowledge already; and the woman with Marcus DuBois and no sense of rhythm."
Knowledge was never free, but sometimes it could be offered for other reasons. Her lips curved a sharp smile around the whisper. She leaned back, mayhem a bright gleam in her eyes. Clearly she was enjoying herself, or planning to.

"Time to circulate amongst the lambs."
A wink. "Bring me back something nice?"


[[Danika has been using saidar unknowingly, right? If Ori wouldn't know she was a channeler, scratch her from the list]]

[Jay Carpenter]

His heart raced with relief when she melted into him. She was easy to cradle and light as a feather. He kissed her gently as handling snow. Not out of some perception of her delicacy, although he was mindful of the fragile gauze of her dress as he pulled closer. The warmth of her seeped through the barricade of the uniform like a grave-robber pulling the falsely buried from their coffin. Sparked alive. The rush pushed for more, harder, deeper. But he held the temptation back. His touch slow. His lips exploratory while hunger was chained. Certainly not out of a sense of honor. Hell knew just how dishonorable his imagination could be. This was deliberate. To exaggerate anticipation. To delay escalation. To stretch the seconds to infinity just to float away in them.

Her fingers trapped the cords of his neck. The forcefulness of her grasp anchored something previously questionable in him, and as though permission for more was granted, that chained intensity escaped. His chest tightened as much as everything else. The whole world became her. The scent of her skin fuzzed his mind. The golden hair against his cheek sparked chills down his neck. The sliver of her chin swarmed his view. The curl of a collarbone. The lines of her neck. The crest of a shoulder.

For the darkness within herself that he may have the smallest chance of chasing away. For the light to his darkness. From twining his fingers through hers to grasping that golden silk hair, he drew close enough to never want to leave yet ached that she wasn't close enough. He smiled behind the press of her lips and wanted so badly for the pull of her hands to lead him somewhere. She lifted close; the weight of her balance shifting to him.

Instead, she fell away. The sudden space flashed the emptiness cold. A gasp of pain stabbed him into tension. Wincing with her, catching her weight. His mind raced for explanation. Had he gone too far? Hurt her?

His questions were met with silence. The kind that internalized pain, pushed it into a box, until something tolerable emerged. He knew what that was like. He just waited. Heart slowing to normalcy, though the rush of the past few minutes coursed warmth in his veins he wasn’t sure would ever dissipate.

Guilt crept like shadows. Concern curled his brows low, but he was familiar with those looks. It haunted the face of his mother when he showed up on the doorstep with nothing but an old coat, discharge papers and an empty bottle of tequila.

He helped Natalie find her weight again. “Could be worse. Could be the knee,”
he smirked when her exploratory gaze caught his. He wanted to be trapped by it again, but the strings were loose now. They were both sprung, duty creeping around the periphery like shadows.

The touch of her thumb swelled his nearly calmed chest with desire again. It pushed the breath from his lungs.

He traced the hair from her face, gently as that first kiss, and tucked it behind an ear. ”You know, when I imagined taking a girl home for the first time, it wasn’t like this.”
He could have laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Hey mom and dad. Here’s an English Princess that the ruler of half the world required escort me in and out of the United States so that I can return to do his evil bidding before the Pentagon stopped me. Oh, and her family rules part of the country you despise. But she’s great. That was going to go over really well.

Cayli would find Natalie breathtakingly beautiful though, like an actual princess. When she was well again, maybe he could take her on a trip, show her some of the world she always longed to explore. After Africa, anyway. Assuming I make it back. No. He mentally slammed that option as impossible. He’d make it back. For Cayli, there was no other option. He’d go back for her.

A deep breath anchored him. Or maybe it was Natalie’s pale gaze lighting the passages home.

He steadied himself, brushed a hand through his own hair and ripped the band aid. “Any other time, I would, uh..”
he trailed off, a nervous swallow ending the sentence while flashes of moonlight on dark shoulders caught his imagination.

Clearing his throat, he glanced over one shoulder. Guess it was time to find Jensen and catch the first plane out of the country.

He stepped off slightly, adjusted the coat back to the hug of a shroud and tugged the sleeves into place. ”How do I look?”
His smirk grew, knowing the answer, but wanting to hear it from her anyway. The roguish grin beckoned, and this time he offered his arm again for completely practical reasons like helping her not to limp back to the ball, and not at all to keep the crest of her shoulder close, the lay of her hair brushing near. Or to graze the bends of her fingers with his.

It was the gentlemanly thing to do. But he really hoped she’d accept or else he was going to look like an idiot.

[Emily Shale]

(((OOC: My apologies for my failure to respond))

The other woman, introduced as Danika, had clearly had plenty to drink. Emily couldn't help but feel a sense of familiarity around the woman, and it was something that she quite place her finger on.

The Consul introduced them, and Jared was the first to answer back. "Lieutenant Jared Vanders,"
Jared said, offering his hand to both in turn.

"Emily Shale,"
Emily responded, following suit. [color]"I think we would be honored to join you, Consul DuBois."[/color] She said, looking to Jared for approval.

He nodded. "I'll get a glass of water for Miss Zyed."


Jared first pulled out a chair and let Emily sit down before politely dismissing himself to get a glass of water for Danika. "So are you both enjoying the party?"


((OOC - sorry it's short especially after waiting for so long. The familiarity that Emily is feeling is the kinship between two female channelers. Jared will be wandering for a bit to get water. I'm not going to post him individually, but if you would like to run into him, feel free to say so and I'll respond accordingly))