Cabin In The Woods [Endgame. Attn: Many]

[mnemosyne]

[OOC: mood post preceding the end of the storyline next week. Anyone who is signed up is welcome to add on, but I don't expect it. I expect most of the rest of the decisions about What To Do will be OOC but this is for character stuff so. Also: anyone involved at this point should feel free to pop into scenes at the cabin with whomever is out there. I am assuming that Justin calls Sid and Sid calls Lena and maybe if Shoshannah participates in the Leah-stuff that she's there and back again. Anyone else gets pulled in via those avenues.

In short: participate or not as y'all like, it's all good.

PS - if I took liberties with Jim / Pan ALL APOLOGIES. ]

The priest is exhausted. He falls asleep heavily on the couch and the Cultists take each other outside to sit by the fire ring and smoke a bowl or two or three. Sera works her way through half a bag of sourdough pretzel nuggets and drinks half a gallon of water and Jim kindles a fire the proper way, the way he read in the book or imagined or re-imagined from some idealized external place, and they watch the sparks catch the rolled up paper and then the kindling and then the dry logs begin to smolder.

And the fire banishes the gathering darkness, if only for a time.

Truth: after the priest falls asleep exhausted on the couch and as they're heading outside to smoke in the fresh air with the gathering shadows of a dark night all around them where they won't give the abstinent chorister a contact high, Sera steals Pan's keys and carries them with her because he may not be a liar but he is a fucking idiot and she does not trust the big, bluff man not to wake up and decide: what the hell.

The Lord will provide.
Time to go.

So she sits there playing with the keys and they talk about some things or not much and maybe Sera tells Jim more of what happened the night before, just to have it outside her body; and probably he listens and does not judge, but when Leah wakes up from her nap or comes back from her hike and comes to join them they smoke less and talk less about what's next. And maybe more about things like the evening star or the movement of the moon around the earth and the certainty of oceans.

Also: Sera paints her goddamned nails. Half neon-yellow and half glittering-black.

Sera calls Dan and Dan is there three hours later and maybe he makes them breakfast or dinner. Skillet potatoes with cheese and peppers and onions and tofu sausage and thick slices of whole grain toast because he can see with a look at her skin that she's still hung over. He brings her a couple changes of clothing.

He also brings her two nine millimeter pistols.
These are things she does not show to Leah.

And after the sixteen year old girl with the tormenting and twisted avatar has gone to bed (and if her dreams are bad, Serafíne will sing her to sleep, in the darkness, stoned now but only a bit, the words the same ones she used that night in the motel when Leah just wanted out out out out out. They're someone else's words but Sera sings them as if they were her own and there's this way the fucking boundaries already loose from the drifting high sluice open like floodgates and, well. Pan helped her sleep easy this night last. Sera helps Leah sleep easy tonight.) -

After that, the night darkens and they talk more about what's next. Maybe Jim tells Sera what he told Pan earlier - that he is a pacifist, but will do what he can to aid them - and it's practically the first time Sera and Jim are Not The Same Thing, but that's cool too. Sera gives Jim a sidelong look and tells him, Well, I'm not, and the truth is he could see that in her and feel it in the air around her this whole time, right? She tells him she used to fence and if anyone ever tried to hurt him she would stab them in the eye.

---

Truth is by the time Justin calls the folks he know - Sid maybe or Shoshannah or leaves Pan a message at the church - their plans haven't progressed much. Because this started Wednesday-night / Thursday-afternoon and Justin calls Thursday night and Pan's probably still crashed out on the couch.

But speculating over the fire Jim reminds Sera or Sera reminds Jim that hey the Techs wanted to use Leah because they were hunting the others and there's that text from Sid about the cameras and they toss that thought back and forth. Makes Sera nervous because the Techs would also want Leah but they don't have to know about her right? Just a fucking map to the hideout.

Once or twice Sera brings out this other thought, turns it over in her hand like a smooth and polished stone from the bed of a mountain stream, running her thumb over it meditatively: like maybe she should go there and see Him. Just to scout things out or some fucking thing. He doesn't think she's any sort of a threat because she's fucking not and there's a thrashing bird of all a-panic at the idea in the center of her chest but also a kind of calm about it, which doesn't matter because both times, one and two, Pan or Jim shut the proposal down before it is fully born and if Sera expects the two of them to not be fucking idiots then she herself should probably also aspire to the same standards of behavior.

--

So, calls go out. The people who answer them answer them. Sid is the hinge on which many of these axes turn. And the ones who answer the calls start to filter out to the cabin in the woods where a Disciple of the Cult of Ecstasy has been watching over a widderslainte girl and by then Sera is okay with that. Not opposed, as she might have been, to drawing others fucking into this.

Justin Sera has met once and Sid Sera has met several times and spent four days in a hotel room warded in by Jim's resonant energy and Shoshannah Sera has seen coming and going from the cabin and the motel and Lena Sera has never met and they will each have their own contexts for these moments but the Sera they meet is not the Sera they've met before. She is stark and a little withdrawn and not always nice and right now she doesn't want to get close to strangers and she doesn't flirt and she doesn't charm and she doesn't sing except to Leah and that is at night and quiet in the darkness of a room made darker by a young girl's twisted nightmare of a life.

But sometimes when she is off by herself at the edge of the firelight alone and staring into the dark march of trees and listening to the wind shake through the fine leaves of the aspens and the fingerling scrabble of small feet in the darkness, arms crossed and intent and alone, sometimes she is still coruscant.

[Joey]

Jim is a man like many other men. Even his quirks, even their many cogged assemblage of an engine that propels him through every day, doesn't take him far enough to make him unique from many other men. He gets between points, eats, breathes, cares, sleeps, sometimes cuts his finger while cooking and bleeds or burns his hand while around things that are hot and curses.

Sometimes when Jim's hand is touched by another it squeezes out of instinct. One of the things that still make us all infants in a way. An echo through the years.

There are the moments that make Jim not like other men, but they run few and far between at times. Leah has been made privy to them. Some might wonder what they do on those hikes. In the morning before breakfast. In the evenings before dinner. Every day she will allow it. Those who wonder aren't discouraged from accompanying the girl with the Avatar that kills and the man with the soul that yearns for ascension and enlightenment.

That same man with the soul that yearns to share ascension and enlightenment.

They sit. Never for too long. On stones that are flat, stones that look comfortable enough for it, or sometimes patches of ground that look the same. They sit and they find her mantra. They seek it and he assures her it will not be easy to find, but when she does find it, it will be impossible to lose. They search for balance. They try to find calm. They try to find understanding and forgiveness. They try to find all of these things in the mind, and he assures that all that can be is there, even if it hasn't been discovered yet. He speaks in freeing uncertainties and truths that cannot be bound into a moment's child or parent. And when she grows frustrated, which she will, he gets up and walks away, but before he is too far, turns around and looks to her.

“Aren't you coming?”

And if she is not, he returns to her. And if she does, they walk until they find a new spot to sit. A new spot to close their eyes.

He tells her stories. Of empty cups. Of thieves. Of men who carry women across streams. Of drops of water. Some might make her laugh. Some might make her angry or upset. Some she doesn't understand, and he admits that he doesn't either. Yet. And that is okay.

He tells her stories. They are about people who stood and died and still triumphed, of people who stood and lived but lost, and many combinations of these results. Of people who changed minds through both action and word. He reads and if she asks, lends her books. If she speaks, discusses them.

In these many ways he shows her magic, and how he does not make it, but becomes it.

And one afternoon they come upon a fallen tree that is rotten through. He falls silent and walks right up to it. Waves her closer. Shows her beneath that fallen tree.

All the life that has sprung up in its place. All the things that live from its death.

"Look how much these trees do, standing," pointing to its brethren that stand around it, animals living in them, offering shade, growing taller in the sun. "Look how much this tree does, fallen," he continues.

When she sleeps he often doesn't. He often spends late nights by the fire speaking of time and telling its secrets, saying he will not be there, but he will. He will watch and he will do what he can. All that he can. The last part is a promise.

And whatever trees fall, he will try to make a life for Leah, for himself, and for those that stand after.

[Howl]

The thing was, none of those days were easy on any of them. Jim showed Leah how to meditate. Serafine sang for her. Shoshannah talked to her about strength of spirit and survival, and about ordinary teenage things that didn't really matter in the grand scope but that somehow managed to bring out a more human side of Leah than the others usually saw. And all of these things - they helped. They worked like a tether on her mind, holding her to the here-and-now. And over those weeks, they got to know flashes of the girl she might have been, had her life and her luck been different. They found out that she loved to read; that she'd had a dog growing up, a lab-mix named Lucy that had died last year. They found out that she had two older brothers named Mason and Brent who she liked even though they gave her a lot of shit, and that she had a bad relationship with her father and step-mother - though the exact details were never really made clear. She didn't talk about her biological mother at all.

But those were the good moments. The lucid moments. The moments when she wasn't drowning in guilt or bristling with anger, or, worst of all, gazing at the world in a kind of bleak, frozen silence. She tried to meditate, the way that Jim showed her. Some days it almost seemed like she was getting it, but other days she would twitch compulsively or tear up plants with her hands or snarl in frustration. And sometimes she lost her temper. And sometimes things died. And it was never easy, with her. Nothing was ever easy.

But the day Jim showed her the dead tree - and the life that bloomed underneath it - something unexpected happened. She asked to be alone, and then she sat down in the leaves and closed her eyes and didn't move for an hour. And when she came back, she was calmer and grounded in a way they'd never seen before. And nothing else died that day. Or the day after.

It didn't last, of course. But it was something. And when a person is grasping for any sign of hope, moments like that could seem like miracles.

Once or twice, Annie came around to check on them. The tension between Leah and the Verbena Disciple was palpable, but less immediate than it had been when they'd met for the first time in the hotel room. Sometimes when Annie looked at Leah, you could see a twist of grief and regret cross the older woman's face, but mostly she let the girl be.

It was nearing the end of their stay (the afternoon before Pan had come to find her at the chantry) when Annie sat down next to Leah at the edge of the river that flowed past the cabin. No one ever found out what they talked about - if they talked at all - but something changed between the two of them after that. Leah stopped being afraid of her, and it seemed as though the Verbena had come to some sort of tentative peace with the circumstances they'd all found themselves in.

---------------------------

Then things started to happen.

First the incident with Pan and Brogan, then the calls from Justin. And it became all too clear that however this was going to end - it was going to end soon.

Sid offered Justin a place to stay - told him that he shouldn't be alone. And she was right, but he refused anyway, his voice distant and detached. It probably didn't do much to ease her worry.

The next day, he pulled up to the cabin in his black Subaru and exited the car with a grimly determined cast etched into his features. He greeted everyone politely enough, but it was clear from his body language and the hard edge of his voice that he knew full well the danger they were about to walk into.

When Annie arrived, the two of them regarded each other silently for a long moment, like a couple of lone wolves sizing each other up. Whatever they saw in each other, they must have decided that it was acceptable, because Annie smirked and gave him a little nod of approval, and Justin almost smiled. Then he saw Leah's face in the cabin window and went rigid with tension.

There was a moment there - five seconds, maybe ten - when it seemed that Justin might prove a genuine risk to the girl. His nostrils flared with a sharp intake of breath, and his right hand hovered over the handle of the knife that hung from his belt. But he caught himself, and he stopped - and then he released the air in his lungs with a long, slow exhale. Perhaps they expected him to say something - to ask what the hell they were all thinking, maybe. But he didn't. He just looked at Leah, and she looked back at him, and some unspoken communication passed between them. And after that, things were ok.

---------------------------

As the evening stretched into the cover of night, the atmosphere around the cabin grew cold with anticipation. They'd spoken about what was to come. What they were about to do. And they were all well aware of the danger they were in.

The truth was, they might all die that night.

About an hour before they were set to leave, Justin and Annie disappeared into the woods together. They were gone for a long time, and when they returned, their bodies hummed with live resonance - wild and unbreakable, vital and enduring. And their skin was painted with runes made of blood and woad. Justin pulled a black shirt made of woven kevlar from his car and slid it over his head. Then he attached a gun harness to his torso. Finally he pulled a sheathed katana from the trunk and strapped it to his back.

There was something off about the sword. Something wrong about it. Whispers of the dark and twisted creature that had once wielded it: feral, sadistic and hunting - like some shadowy and inescapable predator. But there was a knowing purpose to the way the younger Verbena donned the blade - as though his holding it had some meaning. Poetic justice, maybe. (Or closure.)

"Let's go."

[errin]

[because of a change of circumstances i had to rewrite my post, so i'm reposting it. i probably goofed some tenses but eh DEAL WITH IT.]

A day, maybe two passes by in a fog. Sid gets a text from Serafíne, and something shifts inside her. She feels...she doesn't know what she feels. But she wants to see the woman, to spend a little time in the company of a woman she...someone who is important. So she takes a shower and she gets dressed and she gets into her truck and she drives. She meets Sera at a place that is not her house, but they walk there, and when they get there and they talk. Sera brushes up against that torn open wound, changes direction immediately. Sid relaxes, at least as much as she can, which still isn't a lot.

She fills Sid in. On the chantry, on the nephandi. On Leah.

At some point Sera tells her she needs a ride. And Sid needs Sera, so Sid drives Sera to a cabin in the woods. There they find Jim and Pan, the latter splattered with his own blood. Sid hangs back, awkward, uncertain, scared, but unwilling to leave. They came in Sera's Jeep, so Sid stubbornly remains until she knows if Sera needs a ride back to town, or she'll be taking the Jeep away by herself.

When she finds herself alone with the Disciple Cultist, she doesn't flee like she had on their first meeting. They sit by a fire and they talk about grim things, and it draws a little life out of her. Promises are made, demands demanded. They walk inside, hands linked.

=========

She gets that call from Justin. She tells him to come to her, that they, none of them, should be alone. He refuses. The silence between them is a long one, and ends only with, "Okay." She will not press him, but she worries about him, even as the calls go out to the others on her contact list. She fills them in the way one might expect, expressing the most information in the fewest words imaginable. When she's done she tells each of them the same thing.

"I'm going to the cabin. None of us should be alone."

A strange turn for the woman who has spent the better part of the last few weeks hiding from all of them, keeping out from underfoot. But that was different. Separate meant less attention drawn, but the attention has already been drawn. They need to stick together now.

=========

The next day she arrives at the cabin a little after Justin. The first thing she does is wander through the house looking for the others. Sera she finds standing on the edges, away from the others. Sid stands beside her for only a moment, slips her hand into the other woman's. Her own is warm like fire-warmed hearth stones. It's the only comfort Sid has to give to others. She gives Sera's hand a squeeze, and then she's gone.

Justin she finds and watches from across a distance. He is tense, grim. She frowns, but she gives him space. It's enough that he's here, now, that he's in one piece physically.

Jim she finds on the grounds, walking with Leah. When she sees him, head bent to speak to the girl she stops, and she watches him from a distance, too. Content that he is well, she leaves him be, and heads back to the house.

There she takes up a post in a chair, somewhere that her back isn't unguarded. From her vantage she can see most of the comings and goings through the house. Sometimes, when she realizes she hasn't seen someone in a fair while, she goes off in search of them until she finds them. She is very quiet, speaking rarely, and only when spoken to first. Maybe it's this place, and what lies on the immediate horizon, that has smothered her voice.

Night falls, and they set up their sleeping places where they can find them. Sid has a sleeping bag (borrowed from Frank), which she lays out on the floor in front of the couch where Jim sleeps. When she's settled in her place, she lifts up her arm, the one with the tattoo, her worldview summed up in five words, two circles, and seven dots, and she waits quietly for him to take her hand. If the Ecstatic doesn't, she finds his herself. And she falls asleep that way, warm fingers wrapped his, until her arm goes slack and she's forced to let go.

==========

The moring comes, and everyone is preparing. Sid watches them. She watches Justin and Annie when they disappear. She looks in on Jim, on Sera. On Lena and Shoshannah and Pan.

Then Justin is back, and everyone is as ready as they'll ever be. Sid finds those who are leaving, those she knows best, anyway.

Sera she finds first, Sera who has been withdrawn and quieter all this time. Sid has left her alone for the most part, only come near when she wanted to know where she was, then left as quietly as she'd appeared. Now, though, before they set off, she stops the Ecstatic. Sid refuses to say goodbye, and she refuses to make promises for after. Whatever Sera says, she accepts with a nod. And if she says nothing, well that's okay, too.


Sid approaches Justin next, as he arms and armors himself. Her dark eyes move over his figure, taking in the markings, the Kevlar, the katana. Her hand comes up like she might want to touch him, but before she reaches out her hand curls into a fist, and lowers again. She remembers that day in the park. She won't try that again. She watches him, though, the young man who has always been gentle with her, and considerate of her...quirks...from the start. There are no words for him, either, only a nod. He says, "Let's go," and Sid turns and walks away.

And if she can she finds Jim, and he gets words. Just a few. "Don't make me open it."

Then she goes inside.

[Howl]

[Just a quick ooc note: the coming scenes are all going down Saturday night. Just for clarification.]

[Samael]

Lena's time in Denver has been a quiet one so far. The young woman expected that moving to a new city would be a new start, and it was. What she didn't expect was that she would get so wrapped up in her mundane life that she would almost completely forget about her Awakened existence once or twice. And that's not to say that she ignores her more enlightened ways; she still meditates daily and she has met Sid twice now. She even spoke with the incredibly shy girl about some things, albeit in a sidelong way, about the city. But as she busies herself in putting her name within the club scene to good use in terms of getting regular work, keeps up with her medical regiment, gets to know the city and otherwise immerses herself in the day-to-day living, she doesn't feel the burning need to connect with those who have a deeper understanding of reality. It's always there just behind her eyes, but she allows herself to forget about it for a while.

All of that changes, of course, when she receives a phone call from Sid. At first she's glad to get the call and greets the other woman warmly as she tosses something to eat in the microwave. It's Indian from the previous night, for the record...some chicken curry from a lovely little place she found off the beaten track. Then that word pops up from Sid; it's a word that sends chills down the back of any sane Awakened.

Nephandi.

Lena drops her food to the floor as her fingers go numb. Sid says that people are meeting at a cabin and before Lena even considers the implications, she's offering her help. Not that considering would change her mind; it is simply that the DJ offers without consideration of what the specifics might be. She gets the location and says that she'll be there as quickly as she can. She hangs up and sets to getting the things that she will need, her phone setting the directions that will take her to the cabin. She lays out the items that she is taking with her on the bed. Her iPhone, stocked with music and headphones attached. Her Macbook. A dimebag of pot and some uppers. Several twenty-four ounces of Rockstar energy drinks. (Yes, those are a necessity. Trust her.) Her meditation mat. Several pill bottles. Some incense. It's all stuffed into a backpack (which is first emptied of flyers, left in a pile on the bed) and slung over a jacketed shoulder as she walks out the door, locking it behind her.

The curry will be in very sad shape on the floor by the time she gets back to it.

------------------

It is not long after that she arrives at the cabin, riding up on her motorcycle. She approaches slowly, making no pains to hide her arrival. She imagines that things will be tense, and only Sid knows her (that she knows of). If Sid is elsewhere, she'll probably have to introduce herself; for all they know she could be one of them. She is unarmed, and she goes through whatever she needs to do in order to prove that. When she gets inside she introduces herself warmly and politely to each: Lena Reilly, Joybringer of the Cult of Ecstasy. From New York originally, recently relocated. She even provides the name of her mentor, Allen Carter...a talent scout for one of the big record labels.

Whether she is greeted warmly or coldly, with welcoming arms or suspicion, she handles it the same way: with grace and politeness. She is the newcomer here and respect is hers to earn, not the other way around. Sid is greeted with a warm smile and thanks for letting her know. She is glad to help, however she can. She is probably not the best choice for combat but she can guard, protect. She is happy to do that.

She gets more details on the situation. She learns what she can about Leah, and while her brow furrows when she hears the term widderslainte she never once suggests hostile toward her, nor does she act that way. It's just not her way. She does her best to get involved and even though she's the outsider among this group that knows each other--there is time to get to know them better later--she never acts like it bothers her.

She doesn't sleep much, and when she does she is happy to snooze on the couch for a few hours. When she's on her own she meditates, or listens to music. If she needs to unwind she busts out the Macbook, pops her headphones on and works on new remixes. It calms her to feel the Lakashim pounding in digitized form through her ears. But those times are rare, and more regularly she is watching, learning, considering. Doing any tasks that need to be done. She isn't a great cook, but she does what she can to make sure no one ignores their own needs. Keeping one's health up is a necessity at any time, and times like these in general.

[errin]

[OOC Note: Sid would at the very least make it clear that Leah is Good People when she gets to the cabin, somehow, some way.]

[CourtCat]

[OOC note and placeholder while I write an actual post: Shoshannah would too. And would be growly at anyone who treated her as anything but.]