911 [Attn: All y'all.]

[mnemosyne]

Literally - 911.

It is just after sunset and it is Tuesday and there are places still where the sky is bright, where the last rays of sunlight can be seen reflected against the upper slopes of some front-range mountain but it is dusk in Denver. Warm and shadowed and there are sirens.

There are always sirens.

Somewhere, someone's dying.

Tonight, by the sparest of frayed threads: it is not him.

--

There is an ambulance. He is in bad enough shape that there are lights and sirens when the rig peels away from Garfield Lake Park. Lena in the back with him and Sera - whose eyes are red, whose nose is running, who is crying so hard sometimes she starts hiccoughing - refuses treatment and cannot force herself to get into the ambulance, no matter how much she wants to go with them.

So, she watches it pull away, the lights that haunting red and white, the air smeared with the lights from the cop cars and they're asking her questions there's a dead fucking body in the bushes but she is so upset and so spent and covered in Pan's blood and she can hardly think with anything like a clear mind and she's so clearly a victim that the detectives must recognize that they will get nothing from her. Not tonight.

Still: they have questions. Questions they ask, again and again. She doesn't precisely remember the trail of blood and she doesn't precisely remember what happened next just movement in the bushes - and - and - and -

By then she's on a fucking park bench. Someone's talking to her; and someone else. There are cops in uniforms and cops out of uniforms and she has LSD in her fucking bag not just pot and clove cigarettes but they aren't searching her. She's hunched over, her spine all sharp, face in her hands and it gets rapidly to the point where she just shakes her head in response to every question the detective asks her. They tell her: she should go too. Get treated. Let someone look at that. and she can hardly begin to do anything except: refuse, refuse, refuse.

--

They finally leave her alone on the park bench. On, they are still all around. Spread out through the park, combing the grass, searching through the lake. Following the tracks in the grass, what the fuck ever, Sera doesn't care. They've left her alone and she has time to make calls.

To Jim. "Pan's in the hospital. St. Luke's. It's bad. Lena's there. These - things - I don't even," and just saying it aloud has her crying again. Not so hard this time, and her voice is so raw. " - you have to go. Okay? Fucking -- " she can hardly say anything more.

To Justin. "We got attacked by these things. Pan's in bad shape. They took him to St. Luke's."

To Hawksley. First silence. Then, "Come get me? I wanna go home."

--

And, much, much later. When the edge of that terrible rawness from screaming and crying and sobbing has eased from her voice: much, much later, Sera makes another call. To Rosa. Tells her that they were attacked by dogs. That Pan's in the hospital. Gives her the latest update from Lena, and asks her for Rafa's number. She'll call him too, Sera. She'll let him know.

[jamie]

Lena is the one to experience the joy and frustration of being absolutely nothing to an unconscious trauma patient in a busy emergency department.

They do not take him to St. Luke's because St. Luke's is not a regional trauma center and they can't tell from looking at him that he's an Anglican priest and might prefer an Episcopalian establishment. They might transfer him there if he survives surgery and awakens to voice an opinion ever but until then they take him to Denver Health Medical Center and pillage his wallet to find his driver's license and his insurance card and the American Red Cross donor card that states his blood type is O-negative.

He quickly becomes a pain in DG's ass and won't even regain consciousness to enjoy it. Not unless a miracle occurs.

And Lena has his name and where he works but she doesn't know his emergency contact or his next of kin and nobody working in the ED when he rolls in does either. That doesn't stop them from wheeling him behind a curtain and slicing off his clothes and attaching tubes and wires to him to keep him from bleeding to death. It just means they don't know about certain minor things like the fact that he wouldn't want CPR performed on him if his heart decided it had had enough or that he is a recovering addict who has been clean from heroin since before most of the city's Awakened were even thought of and would want Tramadol if he wakes up instead of Dilaudid.

These are all ifs. It isn't the wounds that make the staff nervous but the fact that he appears to be bleeding internally for no apparent goddamn reason and it's hard to stop something if you don't know the cause of it so they rustle up a trauma surgeon and wheel him upstairs. They leave Lena sitting in the family-only waiting room off the corridor where the ambulance crews dump their cargo. She wound up in there by virtue of the fact that she came in off the ambulance with the patient.

Once the charge nurse realizes they have no legal obligation to keep Lena informed, they don't. Maybe she sees a gurney go rushing out of the trauma bay and into an elevator at some point, four fucking people steering it and a 220-pound patient and Lord knows how much medical equipment piled onto it. Someone at some point gives her a scrub top since the shirt she was wearing ended up being used as abdominal dressing and is now in a biohazard bag en route to the incinerator with the rest of the stuff Pan's blood drenched tonight.

The C shift medical secretary is overcaffeinated and sleep deprived but at least she doesn't ignore Lena. She tells her where he is when Lena asks and she is able to keep track of him that way. But Lena has to approach the reception desk herself and half the time the blue wheelie desk chair is bereft of staff.

---

Francisco Echeverría spends all of Tuesday night and most of Wednesday morning in the surgical unit upstairs and then they turn him over to the ICU. Only family is allowed in the room to see him until he regains consciousness and depending on who's on the floor at the time they won't even talk to non-family about his case.

When Sera pulls it together enough to get ahold of Rosa she learns - already knew - the priest's next of kin is a young man named Rafael Sánchez. Someone will get ahold of him but it isn't going to be Sera. Rosa doesn't give her this information. She intends to give it to the hospital staff her own self.

---

Fun fact: another person who technically has no legal obligation to remain informed will eventually find out what happens because the patient doesn't actually bleed to death and this person happens to be the nurse manager of the ICU and the mother of said next of kin.

Whichever of Denver's Awakened population is bold enough to go into the ICU of a major metropolitan hospital the morning after one of their Disciples was torn apart by undead dogs and Paradox to ask after man active during the Ascension War, now un-fucking-conscious and possibly plugged right into whatever matrix the Technocracy keeps an eye on, gets to meet Ana Sánchez.

Just what she always wanted. More Mages in her life.

[CourtCat]

Eventually, one imagines the word trickles down to everyone's favorite Dreamspeaker, the shivery cold ferryman. Quite probably, it's Justin who has the distinct (dis)pleasure of telling her that one of the two people she truly gives a shit about in this city is in ICU at some hospital at least a half an hour away from where she is - by car, which she doesn't have and doesn't know how to drive if she did. So she hears, and for a long moment she simply looks at the bearer of bad news, still as a statue or a painting or some similar work of art that might portray a girl-as-death's-handmaiden. For that moment, it might seem as if all the life and breath were sucked out of her, out of the room, maybe out of the whole house, and then, blessedly, she walks out. Not just up to her own room, the smallest and least windowed in the house

[we accept what we think we deserve]

but outside to her trusty, reliable bike, and eventually off the property. It's a relief when she's gone, she knows but doesn't care. If the Chantry is a half hour by car from the city, it's an hour to an hour and a half by bike, and then there's the matter of finding the hospital. However she ends up there, though - and it's quite possible that she won't remember when all is said and done - get there she does. And so it starts - the ghostly gorgeous white girl pacing in the waiting room of ICU, by the chairs at the bank of elevators, whatever. Ana will see her, no doubt, given that Shoshannah is all but impossible not to notice. Maybe it's the ripple of unease that goes through whatever other family members and friends are waiting for news of their loved ones, or maybe it's some other nurse grumbling about the scary girl who just glares and won't talk to anyone or go away, who is clearly at least as uncomfortable and uneasy as she's making everyone else, who stills like a listening animal whenever a doctor comes in to speak with a family, or when anyone comes near at all.

So it goes, until someone finally gets up the nerve to speak to her.

"I would like to see Francisco Echeverria, please. I'm his . . . daughter?"

She's a shitty liar, though, this girl. And while she's obviously interested in his well being, she's not family. Coffee happens with Ana, the mother of Padre's real son, and more spills out of the Dreamspeaker than she tells anyone, ever. It's far more than Ana wants to know, probably, but she's a nurse - it's part of her job to deal with distraught family, and blood or not so Shoshannah appears to be. In her perceptions, anyway.

+++++++++++++++++++

However coffee with Ana ends (I can protect him from ours that might hurt him, she'd offer if given the chance, until he can do it himself again.), be it with Shoshannah back in the waiting area or in Padre's room (given that she's most definitely not actual family, chances are good it's the former), there's a tall, thin, creepily beautiful young woman sitting curled in on herself, worrying at the covers on her wrists and mumbling something, and counting as she goes. I used to be Jewish, she'd said once, and half of what she says is in Hebrew.

For the Conductor, a psalm by David. May the Lord answer you on the day of distress; may the Name of the God of Jacob fortify you. May He send your help from the Sanctuary, and support you from Zion. May He remember all your offerings, and always accept favorably your sacrifices. May He grant you your heart's desire, and fulfill your every counsel. We will rejoice in your deliverance, and raise our banners in the name of our God; may the Lord fulfill all your wishes. Now I know that the Lord has delivered His anointed one, answering him from His holy heavens with the mighty saving power of His right hand. Some [rely] upon chariots and some upon horses, but we [rely upon and] invoke the Name of the Lord our God. They bend and fall, but we rise and stand firm. Lord, deliver us; may the King answer us on the day we call.

====================

[For OOC reference, the Jewish cycle of psalms for the sick/injured/incapacitated is as follows: 20, 6, 9, 13, 16-18, 22-23, 28, 30-33, 37-39, 41, 49, 55-56, 69, 86, 88-91, 102-104, 107, 116, 118, 142-143, 148, and the stanzas of 119 that coincide with the letters of the target's Hebrew name (which Shoshannah'd translate from his actual name).]

[Howl]

Justin was in town when he got the call from Sera, and it didn't take him long to arrive at the park. The cops were still there when he pulled up in his car, taping off the area of the bushes where they'd found the body. Justin eyed them warily when he got out, but it didn't slow his progress.

The first thing he did when he reached Sera's side was put a hand out to touch her shoulder: slowly so that she'd see it coming and have time to indicate if she would rather not be touched. If she accepted it, he hugged her, long and quiet and with that same calm grounding that he always seemed to embody when comforting someone he cared about.

"I called a friend," he said. "She wasn't home and she doesn't have a cell, but I'll keep trying until I reach her. I think she can help. Better than I can, anyway."

"Here, hold still..."

He didn't ask why Sera wouldn't go to the hospital. A question for another time, maybe. But he had a bag with him that contained what looked like some kind of Verbena apothecary (pouches of herbs and jars of odd-smelling salves,) along with a standard first-aid kit. Justin looked at Sera's arm and touched her delicately near the wound, focusing his awareness on the state of her pattern. It told him things she may not have known (may not have been in a state to think about.) Like the fact that whatever had caused this bite had left a residue of poisonous bacteria that, if not properly treated, would cause infection.

It was a lucky thing he'd brought his medicinals.

So he set to work cleaning the wound, applying some strange mixture that felt cool and tingled slightly when it touched her skin. It seemed to numb the pain a little. He applied something else too - something that smelled sharp and clean - before retrieving stitching tools from the first-aid kit.

That part hurt, but not as bad as expected. (The salve helped.)

By the time she was fully bandaged, the bite would already be healing. Maybe Hawksley had arrived at that point, maybe not. Either way, Justin stepped away to call Katiana again (and again - no answer.) That was when it occurred to him that Shoshannah would want to know what had happened, so he dialed her next.

She needed a ride.

"Sera, where do you want me to take you?"

He asked this with a soft tone, waiting for her to give him some instruction. If the answer was: Hawksley's taking me home, then he'd nod and they'd part ways. If, on the other hand, she wished for him to take her somewhere, then he'd do so.

Whatever she needed.

Eventually he'd make his way back to the chantry for Shoshannah, but not before stopping off at Kat's place.

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

[Sera's bite will heal within a day, and he was able to stop the infection. As for Shoshannah, Justin will totally give her a ride to the hospital.]

Justin @ 9:49AM
[First thing: Healer's Sight]
Roll: 2 d10 TN3 (7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP] VALID

Justin @ 9:49AM
[Med roll difficulty reduced by 2]

Justin @ 9:50AM
[Int+Medicine]
Roll: 4 d10 TN4 (1, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP] VALID

CC Witness @ 9:51AM
witnessed!

[kai]

"Sera!"

Of course he sounds jubilant, jarring and bright and off-key like waking up past noon when you thought you were waking up before dawn and find the light searing your eyes, then breaking over you so new and glorious and unabashed that you hate it a little, and maybe feel a little guilty for hating it, or maybe you just feel grateful that the sun keeps coming up no matter what fucking thing happens to you.

Sera doesn't say a goddamn thing, and on his end, Hawksley frowns, his brows tugging together and the corners of his mouth turning down and he takes his phone from his ear to look at it to make sure it wasn't a butt-dial, Call Ended, all that. He puts the phone back on his ear and listens very closely until he hears a breath in, a breath out, distant and shallow, and that frown deepens and that mouth of his flattens out.

Quieter then. The sun is just a molten line of gold on the horizon, then, or feels like it should be, when he quiets down. "Sera?"

--

Jim she tells: go. It is a plea, and it is also a demand.

Justin she tells: things but gives him no order, makes no request.

Hawskley she calls last, or at least third, and doesn't tell him a thing about what's going on, and she tells him: come.

And so he does.

--

There's a bit of back and forth while he's getting on his shoes and grabbing his keys and briefly taking the phone from his face because he's yelling COLLINS. WHERE'S MY WALLET? but mostly he's asking Sera where she is and ferreting the information out of her with surprising patience, considering the way he so robustly snaps and shouts at his-man-Collins.

It takes him fifteen minutes to get to her. Maybe a bit less, but time is fluid and all time is Now, so perhaps she hangs up the phone and there he is, that low dark raptor of a car landing not with a rustle of feathers but a purr of the engine. It cuts off. Hawksley gets out and

his stomach drops. Justin is there, and he is stitching something up on Sera. But say this for Hawksley, or for Hawksley's past, or just something in him: he doesn't freak out. He has that little frown on his face, a thoughtful-tight furrow to his brow. He shuts the door firmly. He walks from lot to bench with a stride that is neither hurried nor lax and then just. Well. Stands the hell back. Note this: out of the light, what light there is, until Justin has tied that quick and tidy knot. Then he walks over, and sits down on the bench to Sera's side, his keys dangling from one hand, his shoulder to her shoulder.

His face may as well be carved in stone, but not because he is hiding some otherwise overpowering emotion, and not because there is a lack of it. He has a stoicism and deliberation to him that Justin, at least, has never seen before, and may not be interested in seeing now.

Perhaps one of them tells him what the hell happened.

Perhaps they don't.

--

Hawksley gives Justin a nod, and it's greeting and goodbye and how-you-doin' and whatever else, but when he goes, his hand slips under Sera's, and his fingers lace with hers, and he walks back to the car. He hasn't said much, if anything. What would he say? Tell Pan and Lena I said 'sup. or I wonder if Shoshannah would explode if you tickled her. or Dude, field stitching? Who are you? Let's get dinner.

But he doesn't say any of that. He takes Sera's hand, he gets her in the car, which happens to be a 911, and -- because of her arm -- he reaches over and clips her safety belt into place. Normally he wouldn't. Not unless she were so drunk and high she can't make her hands work. Not unless she were, as she is now, covered in someone's blood and wounded and maaaybe a bit in shock. So tonight he does, and drives her home. Her home. It doesn't occur to him to take her anywhere else unless she changes her mind.

Dan and Dee are more than capable of dealing with some pretty fucked-up stuff. Dan is a consor. Dee is friends with derby dolls who would roll their eyes at Sera's wound and tell her about the time they saw their shin-bone poking through their skin and then brag about their scar. All the same, he gets out of the car with her and walks her to the door. He goes inside because he takes it for granted that he's welcome to hang out there whether he's with Sera or not (nevermind that someone like Hawksley takes it for granted that he's welcome to hang out just about anywhere). And he's useless when it comes to Taking Care Of People and some part of his mind assumes That's What Dan Is For, so he's likely not involved in any cleaning-off-of-blood or changing-of-clothes or any of that, but:

he goes upstairs with her unless he's told not to. There's a chair-shaped pile of clothes over there and he's pretty sure if he digs long enough he can excavate a chair-shaped chair, and he has a phone and that phone has games and the internet, and

Sera can tell him what the fuck when she's slept a bit.

[mnemosyne]

Under what circumstances has Sera ever indicated that she didn't want to be touched? She is touch. She requires it the way most people require ordinary things like sunlight and oxygen and vitamins A and B and C and D and E and all their iterations and subsets.

Justin finds her first on this splintering bench in Garfield Lake Park, its concrete base covered in graffiti. The whole park is tagged and there's a messiness to the place that reminds you of: where you are. There are cigarette butts on the ground at her feet, but they are not hers. She has forgotten that she smokes. By the time Justin arrives after that call Sera has stopped crying but his hand on her shoulder and the sudden assertion of his resonance charges that and changes that and she doesn't get up because how do her legs work but she does lean into his embrace, crying again, but not-quite-bawling.

Justin, Pan's blood has dried enough that it does not come off on you, but there is Sera-snot on your torso and shoulder. And also: salt-tears.

--

Her shoulders are hitch-hitching with each breath she takes and her gut-wrenching resonance is prominent enough that Justin and then Hawksley must feel it, taste it, perhaps even shiver from it when they come close. The lingering residue of her magic, because she spent herself and spent herself and spent herself until her Will was virtually exhausted.

So: see, she is maaaybe in shock and certainly spent and pliant as a ragdoll, word salading this story about dreams and moths and dogs-they-weren't-alive and also blood-rain, which is way more than the cops got out of her but finally and most prominently, Pan Pan Pan, because she wants to be where he is with such intensity and could not make herself climb into the ambulance and cannot now make herself even think about it, any of it, her desire to go, her failure to go, her want to be where he is.

Somewhere in here a correction from Lena, right? She said she'd keep Sera informed and so (we are assuming) she does. Texts the proper hospital so what happens then is this corrective text to everyone magickal in her phone:

Sry. He's in Denver Health Medical Center no t ST. Ls.

Which means: to Pan's damn pager and to Jim and to Grace and to Justin and to Sid and to Mara and to Hawksley and even to Táltos if she has his phone number, which she may not, because who knows if he even has a phone. Out of context for most. One of those weird mass-texts you might ignore without said context, except Justin and Jim and Hawksley have context.

The only reason Shoshannah does not get a text is that Shoshannah does not have a phone.

--

So Justin examines her and he has a first aid kit he's prepared for these things and boy scout she tells him with a sniff when he's unpacking something-she-doesn't-understand and then also Hawksley, that low dark car with brightness dusted through the dark paint and she is not remotely surprised by his steadiness, by his stoicism, by the way he holds himself and keeps himself out of Justin's light as Justin works, as Justin applies ungent to her skin with gentle hands and stitches her up see, all needle-and-thread, but Justin may be surprised, must be, if he takes the time to notice.

Hawksley sits beside her on the park bench and takes her hand and Sera laces her fingers into his and she does not so much tell Hawksley the story as babble enough about her worry and concern that the Hermetic has some context for the blood on her ribs and stomach and soaked into her cut-offs and crusting some over the dark leather of her Docs. That context comes in part from the cops spread out around the park and also animal control van and also the coroner's van and the body bag they load into it.

And that context involves flights of fancy about her dream-of-blood and things that sound more like a Very Bad Trip than anything real except he well knows how reality bends but mostly again: Pan. Nearly dead.

The ambulance.
The hospital.

That's his blood, not her own.

Justin asks her where she wants to go and Sera sniffs and lifts Hawksley's hand and it is an explanation. If the Verbena mentions Shoshannah Sera says I don't have her number! and cue - fresh tears. God knows where they come from. God knows how this can keep happening except that Serafíne feels everything and there is nothing left of her superego to rein the bright electric impulses of her scrubbed raw nerves.

--

At her house: Dan and Dee and of course Hawksley's welcome to wander in, with or without her. There's poor Rick at the kitchen table but Dan takes one look at her and swears shit beneath / over his breath and then takes charge and hurries Sera upstairs and Hawksley follows and digs through the chair-shaped pile of clothes to find a chair-shaped chair, beneath the wide windows in her room, with a glimmering view of the dark back garden, which is alternately overgrown and withering depending on the recent rainfall. That chair-shaped chair is a lovely chair, by the by, vintage brocade and remarkably comfortable. He has his phone and games and the internet and there are also a few books on her bookshelf, mostly poetry but also, perhaps surprisingly since she is not really a Book sort of girl, a handful that seem Rather More Interesting.

Dan is Taking Care of Her. The pair disappear into the bathroom. Dee wants to help, is hovering a bit, but there's Sera's resonance and how exhausted she is and how very little will she has left to her so mostly Dan is all, I got this, and Dee wants to be useful, she's awesome, she's concerned, all the color is drained from her skin which is like-milk. She brings Hawksley a bottle of beer or a bottle of Scotch or a bottle of water and sits on the bed looking worried but not, you know, panicked or distressed and grabs some clothes when Dan needs them and disappears into the bathroom to help get Sera into them and assures herself that Sera is indeed more-or-less fine. She's injured and sore but her wounds are dressed, are stitched and stitched well. All that blood was someone else's.

So Dee lets herself out and then Sera gets it together enough to check her phone again, hoping for another update from Justin or Lena. And Sera gets it together enough to call Rosa and ask for Rafa's number. Starts crying again, quietly this time, after Rosa refuses to give it to her (but I have to talk to him you don't understand) and this is how Hawksley learns that Pan has a son and Pan's son is named Rafael and is also Awake and is a Euthanatos.

There's no bending Rosa and no updates at this hour and nothing more to be done except: let her sleep.

So, darlings, they let her sleep.

[kai]

Dee is clearly not used to people who Take Care Of Things. Dee's anxiety and hovering and worry-not-panic strikes Hawksley as terribly odd, but all the same, when she sits on the bed and he's sitting on the chair with a glass of scotch and the bottle nearby and a heavy ice cube melting in the amber, Hawksley takes a moment and goes over, settling a broad and long-fingered hand on her dark hair and scritching at her scalp while he sips languidly, far-too-calmly, from his glass.

Still, he doesn't say a damn thing about it. Not she'll be fine or don't worry or anything that might be construed as an attempt to be helpful. One must do what is most helpful for the circumstance, mustn't one? Of course. And at the moment, words are far, far from the most helpful thing. He scritches her hair and sips his scotch as though nothing at all is wrong in the world, which for him may be annoyingly true. He goes back to the chair.

He sips, and he thumbs through his phone but settles on nothing. He looks up when Sera comes back in and watches her while she calls Rosa and every time he sees her cry he imagines his heart getting held to the ropes and pummeled, but he doesn't go over and envelope her and nuzzle her and urge her to stop, stop, please just stop crying. He listens, and overhears that the priest has a kid, but that kid is grown, and that kid is Awake, and that kid does some of the dirtiest, hardest work there is to do in the world.

Which Hawksley was not expecting. But decides not to be surprised by. Singers and Wheel-Turners, he thinks, glancing at his phone again. Maybe a rigid sense of duty (and hey: maybe a tendency to be judgey-judgey) runs in the blood.

Sera collapses into sleep. Hawksley drinks just the one glass, and the truth is that as soon as Dan has left and Dee has left and Sera has passed out, he turns off his phone and puts the glass aside and leans back in the chair, cheek on his fist. He is a tall man, but even taking that into account, he takes up more space than necessary with his legs wide and his body relaxed. His eyes are aimed at her but he's not watching her, not really. He's just frowning at the air, and he does what he does on many such long nights and simply thinks.

Later on, however later that is, Sera will find him sleeping in her chair with its lovely brocade, his face still on his fist, his elbow on the arm of the chair.

[Syllogy]

It is quiet at the farm house. The sort of still, hot summer quiet that hangs heavily over everything. Suffocating. Katiana needs a house pet to break up the stillness, or a wind chime, or some other purposeful agent of benign chaos. Something to offset the insistence of the (let's call it mid-century modern [antique]) heavy touch tone phone on her kitchen counter. To make it seem less plaintive, less singularly disruptive. For the uninitiated or painfully young, this is sort of apparatus which requires a thin line connecting its base and the wall, and a fixed-curl coil connecting its base and its handset: a thing that leaves no mystery in its allusion to functional interconnectedness.

Unbeknownst to the Verbena, that phone has been ringing intermittently for hours, sounding out whenever Justin had both pause and presence of mind to call her. When he finally reaches her, it must seem like quite the surprise.

"Hello." No sense of urgency. No recognition -- far be it for Katiana to have invested in technology new enough to display caller ID. Even call waiting was rather unnecessary in her unplugged lifestyle. Her tone does warm when she recognizes Justin's voice, then muddles with concern as he inevitably explains.

It doesn't take long before that for the climate in her kitchen to shift from oppressive stillness to purposeful action. Katiana moves decisively, gathers exactly and only the tools that she needs. Their conversation is undoubtedly short, almost perfunctory. Katiana's support is unquestioningly complete.

[Howl, I'm leaving this sort of open so you can decide to have Justin swing by Kat's or Kat meet him elsewhere. Hopefully we'll connect for a scene soon. Sorry about the late reply -- we drove down from SF yesterday and I'm still sort of (completely) exhausted.]

[Samael]

Of all the Awakened in the city, Lena might be one of the least likely to ride with Pan in an ambulance to the hospital. This isn't due to any kind of remote enmity or even personality clash, necessarily; she has simply remained a bit on the outside of the community of Tradition members and Orphans in Denver, either by choice or by circumstance. She floats in and out, one foot on either side of the involvement line.

But sometimes fate throws her in with them, and such happened last night. It was probably to Pan's benefit, as she is familiar enough with hospitals and with calling 911 that she could do it, allowing Serafine to try and hold the good Father together until help arrived. And when Sera was panicked and unable to ride along with, she volunteered without a second thought. She had her own wounds that needed to be checked out after all, albeit minor and in no way a priority compared to Pan's.

She promised Sera that she would keep her updated, and she does. As we've covered, Lena is familiar with medical facilities both as a visitor and as a patient. And she knows exactly how many rights (zero) she has as a non-family member. She doesn't try to bullshit them and say that she is, because that would be silly. So she provides the information they ask, answering honestly at times when she doesn't know. She asks from time to time, but she doesn't push. The people on staff have enough to deal with. So she remains a presence just reminding them that she's there, and any tidbit she gleans is passed along to Sera via text.

She doesn't sleep throughout the night; she's never been able to sleep in hospitals. She doesn't have a fear of them, per se, but rather a healthy respect. There's a good chance she'll die in one, and thus...well, it's just not a place you want to sleep if that's the case. So she stays there, she goes outside to smoke from time to time, she passes along information. She listens to her iPod. The latter relaxes her the most.

When Shoshanna comes in, she smiles to the woman. She tells Shoshanna everything she knows about it, if the Dreamspeaker is willing to listen. She doesn't try argue when she tries to suggest that she's Pan's daughter, though she doubts it will succeed. She doesn't. And now there are two Awakened waiting there.

Lena makes an effort to distract the Dreamspeaker with some small talk, to put her at ease. The problem with doing so is that she doesn't know Shoshanna; they haven't spent a moment's time together since that incident a good two months back when they were in a young girl's mind. It's not understatement to say they didn't exactly bond at that moment, so any attempt to do so is awkward. Still though, she tries. She asks how Shoshanna's been, tries to follow up from that. If the other isn't interested though, she lets it go easily.

Day comes. The two women are still there, and Shoshanna clearly wants to handle things. She knows Pan better. Lena's just the person who happened to be there. So she waits in the lobby, peeks in on Pan while Ana and the other mage are having coffee, but mostly waits. And when Shoshanna's back, she asks if there's anything she should say to update Serafine and the others.

[errin]

The first tidbit that hits Sid's phone is

Sry. He's in Denver Health Medical Center no t ST. Ls.

Monday night means she's in her own home doing her own thing instead of sitting in the chantry's library reading everything she touches. It means she's not there for Shoshannah when she inevitably gets the news. It means she has no means for context for that text, nor should she. Sid and Pan are not close, she'd be flabbergasted if he even remembered her name. Or maybe she wouldn't. There was the time spent in a cabin a few months back. That sort of thing tends to leave imprints. Point is, Sid and Pan only have the tenuous bonds of being Awakened and the fact the Venn diagram of People Sid Gives a Fuck About and People Pan Gives a Fuck About has a tiny overlap.

When she gets that text from Sera her mind makes a leap and her heart rate ramps up considerably. But, no, she tells herself. No no. She's not worrying about that one anymore, not like that. That story ended on the side of the side of the freeway.

Still, one doesn't stop caring about someone that easily. So, Sera gets back:

Who?

Then she has to wait to find out. Waiting is always the worst.