(Untitled)

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph wanders downstairs, making a bee-line for the bar and for coffee. The new addition to the decor gets a curious glance before she turns back to her caffeine

Comments

[i_spoiled_it]

Bar is great. Steph's smile could almost match his for delight. Although her delight is partly at seeing him smile.

She has a soft spot for kids. ... A soft spot the size of Uluru.

"How long've you lived here?" she asks curiously, once she's slurped enough to satisfy the immediate chocolate-NOW feeling.

[street_sparrow]

"...um." He gives that some thought. "About two years, I think. In the House of Arch."

[i_spoiled_it]

"Oh - that's the one over there somewhere, right?" She waves vaguely in the direction of the painting. She's heard of it, but never actually been there or seen the place. "Cool. ... Two years? Geeze, have you been Bound that long?"

Steph's hoping to hear an affirmative to that. Not because she wants someone to have been Bound for ever, but because the alternative is that he's dead, and kids shouldn't die. She knows.

[street_sparrow]

"...sort of", he offers after a moment. "'s complicated."

[i_spoiled_it]

"Complicated?" She gives him the Worrying Mother face. She's never had to use it on her actual daughter, mind, but small children who she's just met still get it fairly often. And big children. And occasionally adults. Steph has lots of Worrying Mother to spare.

[street_sparrow]

"I could go back to Paris", he says with a shrug. "Could now, anyway. But I don't."

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph tilts her head to one side curiously. "How come? And how come you couldn't before?"

[street_sparrow]

"'Cause Tom's here, and Door and Ingress and Meg and Mel and... people." He shrugs. "Was dead. Asandir fixed it."

[i_spoiled_it]

"Yeah, people are cool," Steph says, suddenly kind of ... distant. And rather still. "Mel's awesome. She's my sister. Uh ... did you say you were dead?"

[street_sparrow]

He nods. "Gendarmes got me, on the barricades. And I came here. And I got the wizardry, and I helped with Desh... with the fog monster thing. So Asandir fixed it for me."

[i_spoiled_it]

"But you can't - you can't do that, can you? I mean - you're - you aren't supposed to get another chance! It's - that's - you were really dead?"

[street_sparrow]

"Shot", he tells her, hand brushing the scar on his temple, then dropping to his heart. "And... sometimes, people do. He wanted to know what I'd do with my life if I got it back, and... I'd already sworn the Oath before that."

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph sits back, just kind of staring at him.

"You're alive again."

It's - hard to comprehend. You're not supposed to get another go. That's not - how it works. But ...

[street_sparrow]

"Yeah", he says simply. "And I could go back to Paris. But Meg can't, and I don't know if I could come back if I did. And this is my place now."

Mature, for an eleven-year-old, isn't he?

[i_spoiled_it]

"I ... excuse me," Steph says, and bolts, rather, for the lake door.

She needs some air. She needs to think.

... What a waste of a perfectly good half-finished hot chocolate.

[street_sparrow]

He blinks. (Bear in mind, he doesn't know she's dead.)

Then he picks up his hot chocolate and hers, and follows her rather more tentatively.