gone for now. [emily]

[Emily]

It is a Sunday evening, twilight, just after the sun has slunk down below the horizon. Darker yet than recent twilights, for it has been overcast and blustery all day. No Springtime warmth. Just the winds, returned, and the too-pale sunlight seeping through over-stretched clouds. Dappled, diffused. There are no colors to this twilight, just the dying day. Just the promise of another, soon to come, after an evening's rest. A little bit before At her apartment, Emily awoke to find herself flat on the living room floor. There is a tinkle of glass from the frame that found her elbow when she fell, and the puddle of dark hair that rises like a curtain as she lifts herself up. There is the cool breeze (nightfall) that stirs the thin curtains at her open window; the window is shut soon thereafter. There is an ache at her knee, at her elbow, at her side -- but these are ignored as she pushes through the doorway to her room, dares to brave the vertigo, and finds the room untouched but for the two feathers left in remembrance, in offering. And now... Her cheeks are flushed and it takes a moment after she comes to a stop for her breathing to return to normal. So she stands there, before his building, letting it come and go in quiet whuffs until it calms. Emily is wearing only her jeans, that long-sleeve tee she woke up in, and her lightweight jacket. No messenger bag. She has her keys, her phone, those feathers, and the cool stone beads she brought back with her from Manchester. There is a burning in her chest that won't quiet, doesn't still with the calming of her breath. It is white-hot and just beside her heart. It touches her eyes, elevates the brightness. (Rapture) It pushes, ever onward, ever forward. The cold seeps in, finding her where she stands on the street before his building. Her finger rises to push the buzzer on the box, then falls away. Her mouth purses, thoughtful. Again the finger dares, and again its pulled away. Above her head and a little down the way is Owen's apartment. He is there, unsuspecting, doing whatever he does on a Sunday evening. She is interrupting, again, without calling ahead, again. A frown. Emily steps away from the box and buzzer, casts a look up the side of the building, as if she might spy his window from here. But then what, Emily? What brought you here? What will you say? Who will you be? There is a flutter of wings and a tiny rush of wind. She looks back to the buzzer, suddenly unsure of herself.

[Owen]

She looks back to the buzzer, to the door, closed tight against the street as if to reinforce her sense of invasion -- she looks back to it and as she does -- and as if in answer to the questions buzzing around her head angrily -- the door latch abruptly releases and its swung open, the curtain drawn down the length of the glass obscuring exactly who it was that had opened it for the beat of a startled heart before the very figure she'd come to see without a conscious idea of why emerges, his head lowered. There was a basketball tucked under one arm, and as usual, there was a dark hood drawn over Owen Page's head. He was clearly on his way out, headed toward Lincoln Park to shoot hoops under the protective veil of twilight. He stills when he catches sight of Emily, half turned as if uncertain about whether or not to ring the buzzer. "Emily." Just her name, offered as both greeting and query.

[Emily]

Startled, yes, but not overly so. Emily is beginning to move away from the door at the sound of the latch, is already a half-step away when Owen becomes visible, uneclipsed, emerges. She is already half-frowning (See here, Fate, that wasn't quite fair), half-stilled by the coincidental timing. The hand in her pocket closes around the cold stone beads. Releases them. Draws back a little. She takes a step back. Ducks her head (apologetic). There is no shirking what she is tonight, where she has been this evening: it rides her skin, candesces in the gloaming. It is luminous and just beyond the realm of seeing. It has set her heart aflame, rekindled that ember of Faith nestled deep within her. It's brilliant (brilliance), in the brightness of her slightly too-wide eyes. Emily looks back up at him, looks through him for a moment, as if she is not quite grounded in the here and now. There is the flicker of a smile, warm and a little bemused. (Hey, there.) Her other hand dips into her other pocket. No Words. No explanations, just yet.

[Owen]

[Awareness + Perception, wazzat?]

[Emily]

It's there, nestled between her heartbeats, threaded through the pattern of every breath she takes: the sense of Reverence, growing, striving: rekindled. Grace, in the moments when her eyes blink shut, in the peace swimming somewhere deep within those deep blue eyes. And though that Reverence is so often twined with the keening, comforting call of Home, tonight it is riddled through without another flavor. It is strong, stronger than her resonance has ever been near him, fluid and bright and Unrelenting. Pushing, ever onward and upward.

[Owen]

She can see the moment when the mental gears click for him and he grasps what has taken place, at least in part. He does not know the how or the why but he comprehends the what, and it flickers across the dark gaze watching her; it smooths out the furrowed brow and the young Chorister is nodding, briefly and pushing the hood back off his face; he's shifting the basketball around beneath his arm and reaching instead into the pocket of his slacks for the key to the door. "Come inside." It's all he says, but the manner he does say it, the way he doesn't hesitate to swing back around and unlock that door, to brace it open for her to pass by him, she'll see that he knows something, even if she is still too fresh from it, too near to the after-shocks of the Seeking, of the encounter with her Avatar to see it herself. He can read the traces from her being, the new power that is even now settling into the lines and forms of her pattern, reweaving it, strengthening it into something that is almost tangible. That was, for those aware, like these two. He doesn't speak as he leads her back upstairs; past the window on the first floor that always seems to be open no matter the temperature, past the elevator that never seems to be anything but in repair, right up to his door that seems to reach out and envelop her; comfort her, as if everything within in where some extension now of Owen himself, and a place where solace would be discovered. He lets them both in, closes the door and sets the ball down on a sofa; then, turning, crossing his arms over his chest and sitting on the arm of a chair he looks at her and asks, simply, quietly. "Tell me what happened."

[Emily]

There is Owen, emerging from under the dark hood he wears. Familiar. Dark eyes and careful countenance. The latter soothes, smooths at some unspoken understanding. Gentles. It calms the flutter at her breast, the stirring of her two new companions that are not quite settled, not quite known, not quiet. No. It smooths, soothes, the furrow in her own brow, and Emily finds herself nodding. Fingers close around the stone beads again, worrying at the sharp points of the maltese cross burried among them. She breathes in twilight, and breathes out grace. There is comfort in the way that he welcomes her in, holds the door for her and leads her past the familiar landmarks. The window that never closes (all that we let in), the elevator she has never known to work (that which we strive to improve), to the doorway of his apartment (which feels ever more like home [sanctuary]). She stops, there, just beyond the threshold. He wanders inside, sets down the basketball, finds a perch. Emily is still standing by the doorway. Just inside, for he'd wanted to close the door. She is going through the quiet ritual of setting her shoes aside, walking a little further in on stockinged feet. Her footfalls are so light (tentative), that it almost seemes like the wind might blow her away. Carry her off. Perhaps it already has. The Orphan (for now [Singer, soon to be]) looks around his apartment, seeing it again with new eyes. Looks to him, to his eyes, to the cant of his shoulders, his mouth (Tell me what happened), to the ball beside him, and then away. Down. Restless. Flighty. Her mouth works a little, presses into a thin line, the smile disappears. Then resurfaces, gently, before she tries to speak. Her dark hair falls down around her shoulders, having fallen free of the thin tie that bound it sometime in the intervening blocks between her home and his. She had ran here, that much she remembered. "I'm not alone now," she says, when she finally looks back to him. There is confusion in her tone, and longing to that expression (as if it might not be true [God, please, let it be true.]). There is also triumph, quiet and restrained just now. Emily pulls the pair of feathers from her pocket, moves close enough to hand them to Owen like something precious to be examined. Like something sacrosanct. He is watched, two, as he holds them, for these are dear things, guarded things, sacred things, even if she knows not what to make of them just yet.

[Owen]

Times like this when you don't speak but feel, but are with the space around you are the times when you notice so much more. Owen's apartment with its ordered clutter; the books overwhelming the basic shelves he'd put up for them, the dishes neatly stacked beside the sink, drying in a rack because he owned no dishwasher, the faint smell of something he'd cooked earlier, like burnt toast, like soup -- and she can notice him, really take in just how still he can get when he's focused, when he's listening. He barely seems to breathe, but she knows he must be because, there, the slight rise and fall of his arms, braced over his chest, the manner his eyes stay with her, no matter how she shifts, or moves, or looks away. When she comes closer to him he stays just as he is until she pulls the feathers from her pocket and offers them to him. He comes alive then, takes them carefully in his hands and runs the tips of his fingers over the soft downy sides. I'm not alone now, she says and he gives a throaty chuckle, a half-bemused sound. "No, I'd venture never again." There are things he should be saying to her now, words to impart that should calm her, center her after such an encounter has been had. And yet he doesn't seem in any rush to do that, rather he looks at the pair of feathers in his hand curiously, as if he was seeing some never before part of Emily Littleton [and in truth he really was]. "The first encounter I had, it was a man with a sword," he offers, empathizes with. His smile is crooked, but warm. "He comes around, now and then. He told me to seek out the other Awakened." He studies her face now, keenly. "He was right." A beat, he lifts a hand, idly, without intent, and tenders a dark curl behind one of her ears. "How do you feel?"

[Emily]

He is close to her now, close enough to push that tendril back behind her ear. Close enough to feel the ebb and flow of it, the rapture and the breathlessness, the wonder and triumph, the tremor (flutter) of adjusting to something too new, too fast. It is too much, and it is enough, and it flows off her unabated, unrelentingly. Owen sees her, some part of her he has never seen before, and it is unguarded and unchanging. Owen sees her, as so few ever have, sees into her past, touches the echo of someone she once was. Someone she might be(come) again. She was a child who breathed in Winter and breathed out Wonder. She was a child who heard the Song of Everything, long before she could know what it meant. Somewhere along the way she had lost this, had put it aside, had walled it off, had forsaken it. She is quiet, but she is not calm. It is too much, and it is all right at the surface, threatening to overwhelm, to consume (relentless). She swallows it back, closes her eyes, tries to draw it down (to have [to hold]). The feathers in his hand are not from the same bird. One is sleek, long and jet-black. The other is soft, white-brown and downy. She has given them to him to hold, to touch, but not to keep. They are Emily's; she has earned them. "He's found me, before," she says, the words come slowly. It's like trying to remember a dream, to phrase it words that sounded right in a waking realm. It was never the same. Emily lifted a hand to touch the black feather in Owen's hand. Then the lighter one. "But I didn't remember her." She left them, for now, in his keeping. Withdrew her hand again. Hesitant. How do you feel? Owen asked, and Emily looked back to his eyes. Querying. Trying to take the measure of his meaning. "Humbled," is the first thing she says, though it's followed my an unvoiced chuckle and a wry twist of her mouth. "And light-headed, still. Like I can still hear the wind, but just in my head..."

[Owen]

Trying to take the measure of this man's words is never a simple task because it always feels as if each question, not always so often occurring, have a myriad of interpretations. Emily takes her time, trying to work out from searching those midnight blue eyes exactly what he means when he asks after her feelings, she thinks there's more to what he's asking than there at first might appear to the distracted, or the ignorant, and she's not wrong. He means everything about her feelings at present -- the physical and the metaphysical. She replies that she feels humbled, and he nods fractionally as if he expected to hear something of the sort. He takes one of her palms, then, and carefully sets each feather back down in her palm, before closing her fingers over them, he doesn't let go of her small formed fist, though, but holds it in both his hands; probing her face with his eyes, with his own unrelenting intent. There is a reason why he feels so intense when his magic is unfolding around him; there's a reason why his nearness can set the sensation of bugs, crawling beneath the skin if he's not very, very careful. Controlled, always. "There are things that I need to tell you, to explain," a beat, he frowns, his gaze lowering to observe their joined hands, his larger over her smaller, paler. "Now that you've chosen. I think this was the sign you're more than ready to learn." He lets her hand go, and leans back, bracing himself with a hand either side of his body. "But not tonight, you'll need to recover your strength." Owen considers something, his lips quirking in thought, tongue tracing an incisor in his gum. "We'll go to the Church." He looks back at her, offers a brief, encouraging smile, the best he can offer. "Make things 'official'."

[Emily]

There were so many words she could have offered him: grateful, joyful, overwhelmed, the list continued onward, long after Emily's tongue had fallen silent. They were plain enough for the Chorister to see; he saw so much any how, any way. It was difficult to answer Owen, without feeling as if she had neglected half the question in the answering. And tonight was worse than usual, for Emily answered with the first thought that tumbled across her tongue rather than offering up anything more carefully selected, scrutinized. She wore her heart on her sleeve, unintentionally. Perhaps that's why she had sought him out; Owen was safe haven for these unguarded moments. He might press, pry, prod, but she never once thought he would manipulate or cajole her in these simple, honest places. She may be laid bare, but she was not embarrassed or ashamed. His hand covered hers and Emily's eyes closed. She was still, listening, but as unmoving as she could manage. The kinship between them, building, budding, growing; the want (need) to find someone, like family, to find Home in, home without expectations or conditions; it was too close. So she waited to open her eyes until he'd pulled away, a little. Until the moment when she wanted to name him (brother, warder, friend) as someone else, had passed. It was a small thing, and perhaps it passed unnoticed while he was lost in his own thoughts. Emily tucks the feathers back into her pocket. Just now it occurs to her that it was strange to stand in his living room, without her shoes but still wearing her coat. It is odd, and that could be remedied. She shrugs out of her jacket and, in the same series of movements, folds it over her arm to carry. There is a stiffness in her movements, a small tear at the elbow of her shirt and a darker spot there. These are secondary details, easily lost in the larger things afoot. Emily has not noticed them, not back at her apartment and not here in his. "I am ready, now," she echoes, and there is a surety underlying the words that wasn't there before. She had not been ready before, but she knows that she is now. It surprises even Emily, who answers his smile with one of her own. And she cannot help it, now, and so the jubilation wells up to warm that smile. Joyful. Elated. She's kept such a tight reign over it, but it eeks out to find him. She has found her way Home, she is ready to learn and to grow. And Owen has welcomed her in, regardless of the hour, and sometimes against his better judgment.

[Owen]

She is ready, now. "Yeah," the dark-haired boy echoes her with a touch of something wistful in his voice, it touches his eyes. "You are." Perhaps it's wonder, or even something near to happiness [ as much and as deep as Owen knows to experience and name the emotion within himself] that she should come instinctively to him and no other after such an experience, that the pull for safety, for sanctuary had been here, with him. Perhaps that reaffirms in a way that even her display of the feathers, the sense of her new resonance, cannot. She shrugs off her coat, and the Singer's eyes trace the stiffness of motion to her elbow, to the torn patch of shirt. It is not a life-threatening injury, and in the scheme of life-altering events unfolding, it is barely a blip on the radar, or should be, anyway. But Owen is perceptive to detail, and where as he cannot tend to the Orphan's feelings about her Seeking, or quell her sensations other than to bask in her joy, and her pleasure and offer her his warmth, his compassion and comprehension -- he can fix a physical harm. He can lay hands on her carefully, and nod, straightening as he did. "You hurt your arm, I'll get something for it." He could pad across to his bathroom and flick the light on, open the medicine cabinet and emerge with a packet of band-aids, with cotton pads and antiseptic cream. He has them on hand primarily because he's almost always coming home from work with cuts and bruises, with blistered feet and rough, aching hands. He tends to Emily's wound now because it makes him feel competent; it is something he can assist her with. "Roll your shirt sleeve back," he instructs, and carefully sets to cleaning the cut site.

[Emily]

Oh, if Owen stays near to Emily for long enough, he will learn to name and know happiness. At first by seeing it in others and in time, slowly, without his even realizing it's happened, she will have helped it worm its way into his heart. For all that she has lost, Emily still loves with abandon; for all she has left behind, she holds fast to the few friendships she's forged. She will show him, in time, if he wants it; help him find his ways Home to it once more. But that is a wordless journey, and one that takes far more time than the still-short duration of their friendship. It is a thing to hope for but not chase after. You hurt your arm, he says, and Emily frowns a little, pulls her arm around her a bit tigher so that she can try to catch a glimpse of this offending elbow. The fingers of her other hand find the rend, find the altered texture of the darkened fabric around it. "I fell," she says, plainly. "A frame broke, but I didn't think I'd gotten cut." She sets her jacket down on the arm of the sofa while he is crossing to the bathroom, and then gently rolls her shirt-sleeve back like he has asked. Cool fingertips gently prod at the redness there, before she lets him see to her hurt. It is not a bad cut, rather a small thing that will heal over a handful of days. There is a bruising coming, under it, so she likely fell from standing or caught herself unluckily when she landed. Emily finally quiets, pulls back to some sense of calm under his ministrations. Perhaps it's the ritual of the thing, or that her elation has finally run itself out. Or maybe it's in observance of something else, something not between her and her Avatar, but between her and dark-haired Chorister placing a plaster on her elbow. When he releases her arm, Emilys fingertips run over the band-aid. Smooth it. Press a little, to see if it is still sore there -- it's a bad habit, she knows. "Thank you," she says, again it is more resonant and warm than it necessarily needs be. She's gently rolling her sleeve back down, now. Smiling in a less open, small way.

[Owen]

It's the feeling after the rush is gone, when the adrenaline finally abandons you and its all you can do not to collapse from sudden, unfathomable exhaustion. Emily had all but run to Owen's, so it is no wonder that as he administers to her elbow and she realizes for the first time, perhaps, that there was even a cut there that she begins to gather herself again. That she realizes all that has happened and recaptures her calmness. Owen balls up the used cotton pads and the paper from the plaster without a word, when she thanks him warmly, he cants a look at her, seems to study her overabundance of lingering elation and then looks away, smiling to himself, or at the situation, rather than at her. "You're welcome." He sets about mundane tasks then, trashing the garbage, switching bathroom lights off, pushing in a chair that had been left too far out. It's almost as if he was at a loose end with her there, uncertain where he should push next, what he should attempt to discuss with her, but at the same time, reluctant to break the silence, to interrupt the bonds that were being forged between them, even during nothing more than looks, than moments where he did something as small as bandage her elbow. Those moments were important, he knew that, knew without question that if they were to get anywhere as teacher and student, she would have to learn to read his silences, to comprehend what he could not say, or what he felt he should not. These nuances were becoming familiar to her, and the more they did, the more ease Owen found he could speak with, did not wish to censor himself from expressing his thoughts. "Your former teacher, what sort of a Mage was he?" It must seem a strange question, so distant from anything else they've discussed [or not discussed as the case often was], but he always had some reason behind his questions, there was always purpose to them, even if it seemed hard to guess at. He gives it to her, this once, gestures toward her elbow: "Did he teach you about Life, or many of the different spheres?"

[Emily]

His question evokes a noticeable shift in Emily, who draws her arms over her middle and bows her head for a moment. It is, most definitely, to keep some part of her reaction from him. It is also entirely reflexive. She sighs, slow and long-sufferingly, as if he has touched a deep and still-healing hurt. The fingers of one hand stray up to tease her locket from under her tee-shirt. Something he has only seen her do when frightened, unsettled. And now, when sad. Her hand releases the small trinket, before it has lingered long enough to stir its heartbeat, to add the sense of Home to the resonances around her. Her fingers thread through her hair, smooth through it, find the back of her neck for a moment, and then come back, full circle, to rest over the arm about her middle. She does not ask him to leave off, or shirk the question. It is a far fall from elation to heart-hurt, and it takes a moment to marshall her words. To answer what he is asking, without giving air to grievances not of him, not of now. (That was then. This is now.) "He was Verbena," she says, and she's carefully stripped away from her words whatever hurt she feels at the abandonment. She cannot keep it from her features, though, and there is the implication in them that he had been something more to her, or less of a mentor in many ways. "I learned to read Life patterns from him. About two months ago." Her teeth catch the corner of her lower lip, drag it inward for a moment. "Our..." but here she pauses, frowns. (Our what, Emily? What will you name it, now that it's over?) Friendship? Relationship? She is not sure what to say, and the pause stretches out longer than intended. "He was not just a teacher to me." This much she can admit, but only carefully. It is a confused and careful thing, trying to remember and reflect without changing a thing they had left unnamed for so long.

[Owen]

There's a tiny flinch around his eyes when she says the tradition, as if maybe Owen's preconceptions of them just suffered a battering. Of course he knew of them, but the teachings that he'd heard had not always flattered the Life Mages; they sought an enlightenment through means of their bodies, through a far more carnal interpretation of what it meant to achieve completion; to find their own version of the One. It did not make it wrong, simply ... very different from what Owen's beliefs, and backgrounds would dictate. "The Verbena are ... gifted," he hesitates over the word, watching her for her reactions carefully. "In that sphere. I don't know it myself," a beat, he shifts his weight, returns to lean a hip against the edge of the sofa. He listens to her fumbling over a way to describe her former mentor, describe what their relationship had been. "The Singers focus is Prime, that's what I'll teach you about first, then maybe some Mind." A pause, he reaches out and rubs her arm; using the physical touch to reinforce his words. "Emily, I don't -," He lets out a breath, frustrated at losing sight of what he wanted to say. "I'm not, like that. I won't ever try to force you to... I mean, some Mentor-Apprentice relationships, they're... like that. Intimate." Horrifically, Owen's skin en-flames a degree. "It doesn't make it wrong, sex can sometimes help with very particular kinds of magic but it's not something I --" He laughs, amused at his level of embarrassment discussing this with her, or trying to, in stilted sentences. "What I'm trying to say is, when I ask about ... him, it's not to hurt you. It's to help me, help you."

[Emily]

He reaches out to touch her and Emily has to make a conscious effort not to pull away. It is a moment of friction between them, like that night at the Good Will store. She pulls back, just a little, deepens the space between them. It is grounding. "Owen," she says, somewhere in the middle of his faultering sentences. It is a steadying thing, a staying thing. There is still some sadness in her voice, she cannot help it. "He never forced me. It wasn't something I consciously chose, or really thought about -- it wasn't something I would have understood, yet, if I had. But it was too much, too much to put into one person. "Lover, mentor -- they are both intimate friendships, though very different. You can't get that close to another person over matters of the heart or of the soul, without taking a piece of you with them when you part." There's a small smile, now, and it is also an apology. "Even if you wanted that, even if we wanted that; I can't. I can't invest all of that in one person, again, now, so soon. I would be afraid, every day, that you were going to walk out the door--or that I would--and I wouldn't let myself trust you." So many words, delicate and simple, laid out before him. Plainly and without deception now. Perhaps to soothe the embarrassment he feels, or because she feels the need to explain herself. Or possible just because she trusts him, even with this.

[Owen]

"I agree." He says, and leans back, gifting her back her space. He sits down fully on the edge of the sofa, and rubs the palm of one hand against his brow, shielding his eyes from her. "It wouldn't work, anyway. This," he raises his head, his dark eyes full of a self deprecating hatred she's never seen in him before; a fervent belief tattooed into the very fiber of his core. "Only works because we know where we stand with one another. As long as I'm teaching you, that boundary will always exist." He stands, towering over her, looking over her with perhaps some tiny flinch of regret drawn somewhere there in the depths of his midnight blue gaze, in the slash of his lips. Quieter, firmer: "It should exist." The flush of blood has run its course, now, and abandoned his cheeks, leaving the skin stark, and pale. The beginnings of a five o'clock shadow are beginning to darken the edges of his jaw. Time ticks on somewhere on the wall. He turns his back on her, and walks away to the kitchenette. The taps run, a glass is filled with water. The apartment breathes again.

[Emily]

((Per + Aware))

[Owen]

to Emily, feather There's a great deal more pain in this man than she was originally aware of. Whatever his past is, whatever it is that he holds in from her, and the world at large -- it's big, and it's one of the key reasons why he's in the city to begin with. The self-loathing is crippling, it's enough to make you want to flinch away from ever seeing that light in his eyes again, that utter assurance that whatever else he offers her, intimacy, physical, close intimacy will not be one, and he firmly believes that it's for her own good, too. But; mingled in there is also a splash of genuine regret about it, because he's attracted to her, and more than this, feels a genuine connection with her that has been rare in his relatively young life. He mourns, briefly, the what might but can never be's when he looks at her. And he's turning his back, breaking the moment out of self preservation, more than anything else.

[Emily]

There is quiet, for a long while. Emily lets him walk away from her, lets him take the self-loathing and the ache to the other side of the room. She watches as he draws lines of never and can't be in the sand, then fortifies them, reinforces them until they are like walls of concrete in his heart. These things do not take long; the well-practiced can throw them up in seconds. Owen is very well practiced. Emily is, too. There are walls to keep him in, safe, and walls to keep her out, safe too. She knows, very well. So the Orphan waits, until he has filled his glass, until he has had a moment, until the silence between them is stretched thin, thin enough to be a thing not-felt, not-heard, not sliding down their skins. "Do you?" she asks, her voice seeking (pushing) but gentle. Unyielding, but not unkind. "Do you know where you stand with me, Owen?" The words have a ways to go, they have to leave her lips and travel all the way to the kitchenette. They are cautious, but not tremulous. Her arms have fallen away from her middle; she watches him with something far less comfortable to bear than compassion, with understanding. "Do you know who you are to me?" she asks, unrelenting (she'd worn that in on her skin). "Who and what you could be to me, as just a friend, without taking on any heavier mantle?" He couldn't possibly know, her voice says. Couldn't possibly understand, with so much hatred in the way. "Owen," she says his name again, beseechingly, "I don't know yet who we will be to each other, but you remind me of someone very dear to me. This," she gestures between them, indicating their interaction without needing to name or label it, "Calls back to that friendship. And he is the closest thing to family that I really have left." Emily steps forward and picks her jacket up off of the couch. She slips it on, gently over her angry elbow, and looks as if she is getting ready to leave. "If you think, for a moment, that it's any less precious to me than --" Emily stops, closes her eyes for a moment, then changes course. "Friends. Family," the word doesn't sound quite the same when she says it, but it means a deep kinship nonetheless. "Those are things I know how to hold fast to. Lovers, not so much." There were a few paces between her and the door, where she'd have to stop to slip on her shoes. She was not hurrying out, but the incessant ticking of the clock on the wall made it sound like her time to go. She wasn't sure, after all, that she wanted to see or hear his reaction. She wasn't sure that she'd be able to weather it, just now, with any measure of grace.

[Owen]

She can see the muscles in his back tense, see the way the shoulders hunch inward [protection, rejection] at her words, as they beat against the self-imposed distance [and he'd built those walls so solid for so long] he'd worked to put between them just now. He does not want to turn around and look at her, but he can glimpse her reflection in the glass in front of the sink and its this that he looks at, brow deeply furrowed, eyes black and storm-cloudy with his anger, with his own sense of placement in the world, and more especially, in relation to her. Owen. The way she says his name has his lips tightening, has his grip turning skin-over-knuckles white around that glass so much so that a little more pressure was going to shatter it in his hand and then where would they be? He carefully, so, so carefully sets it down beside himself and braces his weight against the cabinets; she can hear the oxygen passing his lips, being expelled through his nose after a minute. His body is rigid, and unforgiving, his face, hidden from her is twisted in torment. He will not turn around, not tonight. "I know who I am," he does finally get out, his voice low and brittle; harsh. "That's enough." A beat. He fights his way to a less hostile tone. "You better get home, Emily."

[Emily]

He will not turn around, tonight, and it is likely for the better that he cannot see her face, now, and she cannot see his. Emily slips on her shoes and there is a quiet sound as she opens his door to let herself out. It closes behind her, without so much as a Good night, Owen, though such a thing undoubtedly crossed her mind, reached all the way to the tip of her tongue before it was bitten back and thought the better of. And she's gone. Not for good, but for now. (And gone for now feels a lot like gone for good.) In a few moments, the door downstairs with its full-length curtain will open, and be carefully shut behind her. Then its just a matter of blocks before Emily finds her way home, or somewhere else, for the rest of the evening.