nexus_crossings | Now you're just somebody that I used to know.

Adia wipes at her face when Reynard appears, a little embarrassed despite being glad to see her friend. Her emotions may be fitting for the season, but her heart has never been a Winter one, and she is ashamed at how easily it has cracked under pressure.

"It's all I could afford," she murmurs, before minding her manners. "Thank you." The ice cream, at least, is premium quality. Nice big chunks of cookie dough in there. She takes another bite while Reynard makes his ice chair. This would normally bring a smile of wonder to her face, but the wine and her mood have dulled her ability to take pleasure in anything.

She looks Reynard in the eyes and nods numbly. Something like gratitude appears on her face. "Okay."

When she accepts his offer his moustache rises as he smiles. He sets a hand on her shoulder and stands slowly. "We can take the ice cream, and the wine."

"Let's go somewhere a little quieter, shall we?" He suggests with slow, gentle words once she's up. For her consideration he faces her, one hand resting over his heart, and asks, "May I teleport us somewhere?"

His touch is comforting, and surprisingly not to cold. She never did figure out that Reynard blessed her. Although eating ice cream on a chilly day without a single incident of brain freeze should have clued her in.

She stands up after he does and gathers up her ice cream and wine -- the good bottle and the carton. She doesn't bother to close the hamster video. "Sure, that's fine." She assumes it won't be any different than when she uses her PINpoint.

'Teleport' is perhaps not the best term. He's not used to it, truth be told. It always feels like a newfangled sci-fi word, but it gets a sense across.

"Take a deep breath in and a slow breath out," he tells her and then demonstrates. On her exhale they are whisked away in a howling gust of a wind. For something that looks so violent from the outside, to Adia and Reynard it is little more than a breeze and a surreal floating sensation, accompanied by a dash of vertigo for the less travelled Adia. They appear in a wild landscape of brown grass at the foot of high mountains with snow blanketing the peaks and resting in patches in the valley below.

When they arrive Reynard pats Adia gently on the shoulder.

Adia breathes in and out as instructed, and --

Oh. This is not like her PINpoint.

Her stomach lurches, mild vertigo exacerbated by the wine, and it takes her several moments to re-orient herself. When she does, she can only stare in wonder at the snowy mountains towering over them. The sight is enough to make her forget her grief, if only for a moment.

"Is this your Earth?" she whispers. She clutches her ice cream and wine to her chest, barely registering Reynard's shoulder pat.

Ah, there she is again. Reynard can't help but smile at the awestruck young woman. He turns to take in the natural wonders around them and then nods at her. "Yes. This is my Earth."

Just as he likes it. Cold, Wintery, majestic, wild and solitary. He gestures to their surroundings with a, "Welcome." But he keeps a hand on her back in case the mixture of wine, spirit travel and being on a mythical world disagrees with her constitution. "It's just you and I for miles and miles. You can scream, shout, cry, sing, whatever you like!"

"It's beautiful," she breathes. She feels light-headed, but it has little to do with the wine. Reynard's hand on her back fortunately keeps her grounded as she stares at the mountains for what must be a solid minute.

Finally, Reynard's words seem to register. Carefully, she sets down the ice cream and boxed wine, then hands Reynard the bottle so he can open it for her. "I found Caspar," she tells him. The wonder in her eyes is gone.

It's a pity, but she can't be distracted forever. He accepts the bottle but stops to cringe in sympathy. It's not hard to tell how that meeting went. "I should have brought more wine."

"Tell me what happened," he instructs as he sets about opening the bottle.

"Or more ice cream," she jokes weakly. She bends down and retrieves it while Reynard works on the bottle. It's another distraction, far less effective than the mountains.

It's not difficult to tell Reynard what happened. He knows the backstory, all the key players. It's only a matter of where to begin. "There was another bombing, and one of my neighbors was a suspect. I was brought to the detention center for questioning."

She pauses briefly, something close to anger passing over her features. It's an injustice in and of itself that she was interrogated, and her outrage masks the fear, the deep-seated terror that she could have been tortured, or worse, and no one would ever have known.

"A... a Three. One of the female Cylons. She came in and started asking me all kinds of questions. I didn't know anything, but I-- I kept thinking about Will, you know? And my PINpoint. Maybe that made me look guilty, I don't know. She told me to tell her what I knew or... or there'd be consequences."

She shuts her eyes. Now there is only fear on her face. Her voice shakes from it. "I t-tried so hard to be brave, Reynard. I didn't tell her anything."

Reynard's lips pull thin and he gently takes the ice cream from her hands only to give her the wine. Wine is better for the shock and the pain, in his experience. It's with grave seriousness that he speaks. "You were brave, Adia. You were scared but you kept quiet. You survived. You are alive, Adia." He sets a hand on her shoulder again with a firm, encouraging grip. "You are alive."

Adia accepts the exchange without a fuss. She drinks straight from the bottle because Reynard didn't give her a glass and she's already had enough wine to not care about propriety.

"I'm alive," she repeats after swallowing. She puts her free hand on Reynard's as if it's the only thing keeping her from falling apart. "I'm alive but I almost wasn't. Three wouldn't let up. She pressed and pressed. If Caspar hadn't --"

Right. Caspar. She opens her eyes and looks up at Reynard. The fear fades, replaced with something more like despair. "He came into the room. I don't know how I knew it was him, I just did. He asked Three to step outside, and when he came back, he told me that I was free to leave."

Her grip on the bottle turns bone white. "He walked me to the exit. The place is like a maze, it took forever to get there. But he wouldn't look at me, not once. I knew it was him, but I... I didn't know what to say. I had to be sure, you know? So I-- I asked him if he knew Caspar Millen. If he had... if he had resurrected."

Tears prick the corners of her eyes. "He told me not to ask questions and p-pushed me away. Right into the ground. Like I was garbage."

She takes another sip of wine, but this time she chokes on it, barely keeps herself from spitting it out as she begins to sob suddenly. "What did I do wrong, Reynard?" She demands, tears overflowing. "What did I say wrong? Why does he hate me?"

It has been a long time since Reynard had to console a woman as distressed as Adia is right now. He's quick to set down the ice cream when he sees her eyes start to water and he pulls her into a hug as she begins voicing the questions circling her mind. Cold, strong hands hold her close and he strokes her head. "You've done nothing wrong, Adia. You've done nothing wrong at all."

Adia cries into his shoulder, her sobs muffled by the fabric of his clothes. One hand clings to his middle, the other -- still holding the wine bottle -- hangs limply by her side.

Like the cold, it takes a while for the soothing nature of his touch and his kind words to sink into her bones, to ease her tears. She sniffles and turns her head so that the cool air can dry her face, her cheek still pressed against him. "I was warned many times that his model was full of nothing but contempt," she whispers. "But it was Caspar. I thought maybe he'd be different..."

Comforting a friend when her mournful sobs add another layer to an already exquisite song around him feels… unusual, conflicting. The warm, encouraging words he knows he should share simply don't come to him, nor do such sentiments feel important. Instead he sighs, continuing to stroke her hair and hold her close. "Oh, my dear… Hope and love are two of the cruelest things in existence. Together they make for a terrible adversary."

Around them the wind whips and whirls, calming and then howling, as turbulent as how Adia must feel and as harsh as what she's being put through. Reynard has to appreciate the beauty of it, though he does so quietly. So many things have happened to Adia, and she is under so much stress. It's good for her to finally have a chance to let it out.

She shuts her eyes and lets the tempestuous wind carry away her tears, Her friend must be responsible, and it so perfectly matches her mood that she can't help but tear up a little all over again. If he thinks that hope and love are terrible adversaries, then maybe it's okay that her heart has cracked under their dual assault. The sympathetic stirring of the wind means more than any meaningless encouragement.

Eventually she stops crying, but she doesn't try to wriggle free of Reynard's embrace, still finding comfort in it. "Ex-boyfriends shouldn't be allowed to come back from the dead just to reject you all over again," she mutters. "I can't even blame that on the Nexus."

He is happy to continue to hold her. The wind and the cold don't bother him, nor do mortal aches and pains. If he needed to he could stay like this all Winter. Somehow he doesn't think Adia would last quite so long.

"It is a unique form of hell you're walking through," Reynard agrees. "But you're still walking, Adia. There is so much strength to you. You'll get through this, my dear, I promise you, and you'll move on to greener pastures. But for now; Cry, rant and rave. Do whatever you need to do to help yourself."

No, she would not. As often as Reynard tells her how strong she is, right now she feels so weak. She leans her weight into him and sighs heavily, wishing she could simply shut her eyes and forget everything.

"Maybe... sitting down. Sitting down right now would be nice."

Every motion is slow and steady as he pulls away from her to hold her hand and support the arm still gripping the bottle so that she can sit down easily without fear of falling over. It's cold, but the ground is dry and there are large rocks she could choose to use as a seat instead.

"Love and I don't tend to get along," Reynard tells Adia as he supports her to where ever she decides to sit. "It's often fast, feverish and stops suddenly come Wintertime. But we don't choose when we fall in love, or with who, do we?"

He settles down next to her in an oddly gentle way. "There was a woman... Oh it must have been a hundred years ago, but..." A wistful smile pulls at his lips. "She was beautiful, bold and smart. It was us against the world, and we loved it. We loved each other, I'd thought."

It's not difficult to see where this story is going, given the topic of the day, but Reynard's sigh surely cements any suspicions. "She'd gone missing for a few days. I was frantic, looking for her anywhere I could think of. When I did finally find her..." A spluttering laugh slips out and he shakes his head. "It wasn't a place I'd have thought to look. She was... wearing beautiful clothes and wearing expensive jewellery, but it was her. On the arm of a toff." His nose wrinkles up a little despite himself. Lifting his brow, he looks to Adia as he explains, "I was definitely not a rich man. I got by as I always did, through hard work and wit. Smart woman, she found a way into the life she wanted. I waited until she had stepped out alone to ask her what had happened, but... She wouldn't answer me, and when I didn't leave she screamed, called me a robber, an attacker. I was more prepared to the beating I received than I was for her reaction."

She decides to sit on the ground, not trusting herself to balance on a rock, no matter how large. Between the wine and the cold resistance blessing, she's comfortable. Any chill that sneaks past her wool coat is a reminder of the world around her and keeps her from losing herself in her thoughts entirely.

Which is good, because it means Reynard's story has her full attention. She knows it won't end well, but the rejection that he speaks of brings fresh tears to her eyes -- tears of sympathy. "Oh, Reynard... that's awful, I'm so sorry." Never mind that he had a hundred years to get over it, or that he probably would have left her at some point when Winter's siren song was too powerful to ignore. She offers him the bottle and puts her hand on his arm in a gesture of commiseration. "She threw away something really special when she left you."

Adia's heartfelt reaction is met with a smile and he puts his hand on hers before taking a swig of the wine and offering it back to her. "It's alright. She wasn't the first and she won't be the last. I could say it's balance, 'karma'. I've been as cruel to women as they have been to me, but I am learning and living. It's all I can do."

He looks at her earnestly. "Our scars make us who we are, Adia. It will hurt and it's natural and good to feel the sadness and anger of what he did to you. You will learn from it and it will be a part of you. The pain will dull, but all scars ache. What's done is done, but you have your whole life ahead of you when you're ready to look forward again."

She sniffs back her tears and takes the offered bottle. "You deserve someone. If you want someone." She takes a sip of the wine and swallows. He's right, it's better than the boxed stuff. "Maybe I shouldn't have said anything to him... I was far less likely to get an answer than you." She lets out a small unhappy laugh. "What did I think was going to happen, anyway? That he'd smile at me like he used to? Tell me that he missed me?"

Reynard's advice is a hard pill to swallow, even if he's right. "What if I don't want the lesson it's teaching me?" she asks softly, her gaze drifting away. "I want to move on, but I don't want to have to hate him..."

As gently as he can, he lightly brushes her cheek with a thumb to wipe away a tear. "I don't think I've come across a being, human or not, who didn't lie about how they felt."

"If you don't hate him, then don't hate him," Reynard tells her gently with a slight shake of his head. "You can be sad, disappointed, remorseful, but you don't have to hate him. Find a different lesson in this."

Edited (typo) 2017-03-09 23:00 (UTC)

His touch, as always, is comforting, even if his words only spark confusion in her sad, dark eyes. Who is Reynard referring to? Herself, in hoping for an outcome that was never in the cards? Or Caspar, for denying his memories of her, if not his feelings?

She pulls back, ostensibly to take another sip of wine, but also to muddle through her thoughts. She knows Reynard's heart is in the right place, but if there's a lesson to be learned here, she can't find it.

"Everyone else hates him," she says flatly. "I mean, they hated him already, but when I told Maggie what happened, I thought she going to march over to the detention center and strangle him with her bare hands." The mental image does bring a brief smile to her face before her expression drops again. "I haven't seen Will yet... he's laying low after the most recent bombing. I'm sure he'd have a few choice words about Caspar." She looks down, flushing slightly in shame. "Probably about me, too."

He notices the motion, despite its silent excuse, and he lets his hand drop, giving her back her space. It's a little difficult not to withdraw entirely at the small dismissal. Becoming cold, alien and undoubtedly cruel seems eternally close, so easy to slip into. Practice and experience has gotten him to where he is now today, sitting beside a friend in Winter.

"You aren't everyone else, Adia. You're you. If you try to do what everyone else does just to fit in... it's just a lie. By all means, lie if you want to, lie if that is part of you, but know that it's a lie. Only you can know how you feel. Only you can know what you want. And only you can know what's right for you."

Almost like a sixth sense, she feels Reynard's slight shift in mood. It nags at her, pulls her away from her ruminations. She touches her cheek, where he had wiped away a tear, and looks around her, really looks at the staggering view.

"You answered me," she says to him, apropos of nothing. "When I asked you to tell me the truth. You didn't ignore me or push me away." She offers him the bottle of wine again and sighs. "Do you think you can take me again here sometime? When I'm not... when I'm feeling better."

No, she isn't everyone else. It's not in her heart to hate Caspar. She'll just have to learn to live with the pain.

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