. .. IC Contact | Duplicity .. .

[konstant]

                                                                 

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[hippie_ninja]

[He needs this.]

Where are you?

[konstant]

In the Down. I can be at the elevators in ten minutes.

[hippie_ninja]

I'll meet you there.

And he is there, wrapped up against the cold, full of taut energy.

[konstant]

K is wearing a heavy coat but not his blade runner duty coat, and he's not particularly burrowed into it.

He takes one look at Jesus, though, and holds an arm out to him. That much, anyway, is easy.

[hippie_ninja]

He steps into that embrace immediately, without a word, and just buries his face against K's shoulder. For a moment he ignores the people around them and just has this: has K back.

It doesn't make losing Carver any easier, but it is one less grief to carry.

[konstant]

K is warm, and solid, and he tucks him in close and folds his coat around him.

After that it's his arm, and he holds on; he suspects he knows what this is about already. Vrenille called him, shell-shocked and fresh, and K has been waiting for Jesus. He'd wait much longer than this.

He waits now, too.

[hippie_ninja]

"My friend is gone," he says quietly, finally. "And it means he's dead. So I'm just...dealing with that."

As best he can. Muddling on, as best he can.

[konstant]

"Do you want to talk?" he asks.

"Or walk? Or both?" He runs his fingertips lightly over Jesus's shoulders, letting him decide.

[hippie_ninja]

"Let's walk," he says. Walking helps, being busy helps. He has nowhere to scavenge now, everywhere he might have stolen from reminds him of Carver so he just hasn't.

He takes K's hand and walks with him, holding onto him. "How are you?"

[konstant]

K is quick to settle their palms together even if his grip is light, his fingers gentle. He runs his thumb along the tendons of Jesus's, idle and comforting for them both.

"Settling," he decides on instead of any of the other things he could say. The snug leather collar with its tamper proof buckle is still sitting around his neck, always. "I don't know if I've regained everything or just... accepted that it's happening now, so it's easier."

[hippie_ninja]

"It took me a little while, too. To accept this." He tips his head against K's shoulder as they stand and wait for a traffic light to change. This feels good. So little feels good like this does.

"It was Carver who got me thinking differently. When I met him I suggested we work together to find a way home. He said he was happier here, where he wasn't starving. Where he wasn't going to be eaten alive if he went into the wrong house."

[konstant]

It does feel good, and K keeps running his thumb over Jesus's, over and over while he stands still and breathes for it, welcoming the weight.

"They're good reasons to make this place a new home." Not always, though, good enough for everyone. "Did he change your mind enough?"

[hippie_ninja]

"He helped. It was you and Vrenille and Rosita who really changed my mind though. I've never had people I loved before, not since I was little. Having that here...it's a hard thing to want to leave." So he made a little home for himself and he's letting himself enjoy it while he can.

[cryfrustration]

"Some," Vrenille says softly. But then again, "Not funerals exactly, but the aftermath. I know a little how he'd honour his own dead--his ghosts." It was always an uneasy haunting for Carver, the spirits of the dead who clustered near and gathered in his corners, full of the recriminations he had for himself but heard in the voices of the people he'd lost--in Pope's voice most of all.

Vrenille had dreamed what Tyrian magic could make of that. He'd told Carver that part: that revenants are people who carry echoes of the great and the terrible dead, that it was how he saw him. He still believes it could have been possible. It wasn't even about the magic--he believed it could be possible, someday, for Carver to find strength in a place that seemed like weakness, that seemed a liability. He never believed he needed to banish his ghosts, only find a way to be more at peace, less tormented by them.

"When someone important was gone he'd say he'd light a candle for them--it was a sorta honour, as I understood it, a respect to those he felt mattered, which wasn't everyone. I'll do that for him now. But the rest...I think that'll be up to Rosita. I'll...have to ask her and Jesus what they want."

And he needs to sort himself out, pull himself together so that he can be there for the two of them--for Jesus, because Rosita asked him to be there for Jesus, and doing that, he thinks, is the first thing he can offer her as well.

[konstant]

He breathes out, letting that statement settle on his shoulders, in his chest. Letting it warm where and what it will.

When the light turns, he waits for Jesus to straighten back up before he steps out.

"There was this woman in Los Angeles that told me, once, that people move on to their next lives when they've learned all they need to learn in this one," he says, slowly.

"She believed it was selfish to want to keep them here with us, when what they really needed was their next step."

[hippie_ninja]

"I think she's right," Jesus admits. "But I also think that if you had asked me when I first got here if I was ready to move on to my next step I would have said yes. But I would have been wrong. I've needed to be here, to learn all this. About...being with people. Having family. Loving people. I'm glad I got to learn this now."

[konstant]

"But you're still here," K points out, smiling, just a little.

"Learning. Loving."

[hippie_ninja]

"They're things I never would have got to do back home. There were no men to love, not the way I-" Love you. He doesn't want to crowd K though, with his emotions. Not when they're still relearning each other.

"And my best friend here, Rosita? She lived in another community. We never got to spend much time together back home. So I didn't have that part of my family either."

[konstant]

"I understand," he offers, soft. What a surprise it can be. What an indulgence it can feel like.

Their lives are different, have been so different, but he raises their joined hands: "This wouldn't have been possible, in Los Angeles."

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm so glad you aren't back there. And I'm sorry if you wish you were... I hope that whatever else we can say about this place, you would choose this city over that one." But maybe it's more of a lateral move for K than it is for Jesus.

[konstant]

"I suspect I'll never stop missing Los Angeles." Suspects, in fact, that he can't. That it's programmed into him to feel like he belongs there, that he needs to be there.

But he raises their hands a little further, and kisses the leading knuckle of Jesus's hand.

"But it doesn't mean I can't... be happy here."

[hippie_ninja]

Jesus smiles and tips his head against K's shoulder. "There are things you've talked about that I wish I could see," he admits. "Like your car. Er, spinner? And the lights. We've been running on solar power and candles for so long that coming here, I couldn't sleep for how bright it was at first."

[konstant]

"It's never dark in Los Angeles," he agrees, smiling.

"Unless you have blackout windows. It's never really light either. Just... neon."

He misses it. He misses it so much sometimes.

"The spinners are fun. Especially mine."

[hippie_ninja]

"Especially yours?" Jesus can't help but ask. What intrigues this man? "What spinner do you have that's so different from the others?

[konstant]

K has never had cause to consider with any kind of weight what death must be like - what it could be like. He was never a living thing back home, never had a soul to go on when he didn't. He'd either be destroyed beyond repair and that would be that, or he would be patched, salvaged, repaired and sent back out into the world as the next version of himself.

But others around him have, and he knows the various and sundry mourning rituals are as wide and varied as the belief systems they develop from; he knows that it is, more than anything, down to the individual.

So he nods to agree that he should do that, should light a candle, should honor this ghost of his dead. That he should speak to Rosita, to Jesus; K will need to check in with the latter as well.

But here and now, he steps in front of Vrenille and offers him his hand, palm up, fingers steady. "How can I help?"