(no subject)

[pwyll_twiceborn]

There's a restaurant in Toronto with cheap good coffee and cheaper bad food; for this reason, it tends to be patronized almost exclusively by students.

The man who's sitting at a table with a cup of that cheap coffee, occasionally checking his watch and trying not to look impatient, is therefore almost certainly a student. (Though he hasn't got any books or notes with him, and there's something about him . . .)

Still. Almost definitely a student.

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[bannion_sight]

The door bangs open and a young woman hurries in, almost colliding with a departing patron in the process.

"Excuse me--"

She casts a quick look around the restaurant and moves to join him. As she nearly falls into a seat at his table, she says,

"Sorry! I really am sorry, Paul. I didn't mean to be so late. There was a case--"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"Don't worry about it it," Paul says - watch safely away by the time she walks over - and pushes a cup of coffee over.

"I thought you might want this."

[bannion_sight]

"Thanks," Kim says gratefully, and drinks. When she sets the cup down, she keeps one hand on it, warming chilled fingers.

"It's been one of those days."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

A silent nod, not without sympathy.

Paul doesn't know how it is for Kim, but he suspects that for her, as for him, "those days" stretch out longer and longer since they've been back.

[bannion_sight]

He wouldn't be wrong.

September now, and the chill in the air is as nothing to the chill in her heart in these first days of autumn. She moves through the empty spaces of what she'd once thought would fill her life, and as she does she knows that she's waiting.

They're all waiting, in their own way, for that which they haven't talked about, any of them. Jen hasn't even seen the other three since one dark day in July-- and neither Dave nor Kevin has pressed the point, with Jen or with her.

Neither has Paul, until now.

Looking at him, Kim Ford knows that she could try to keep it lighthearted, to pretend that there's nothing deeper here, to deny that there's another reason for this meeting besides a comfortable space between friends. He might even allow it.

But on her finger she wears a wild red stone, and within her she carries a twinned soul, and both of them are a weight that no one in this world can possibly understand-- save only the man who sits across from her and who has a hard purpose and power of his own, now.

Kim sighs.

"Okay."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

A purpose and a power of his own - at least, so he's been told.

But as the months go by, and nothing happens, nothing works, it's hard not to doubt; not to wonder what use their long wait could possibly serve, except to pull Jennifer further from them into her own darkness.

It's from this frustration that he speaks, barely hidden: "Kim - there must be something."

[bannion_sight]

"Don't you think I've tried?" she snaps. "Don't you think I know that?"

Her grip tightens on the coffee mug as she struggles for control over her uncertain temper.

"There's nothing I can do! I can't control this, any of this."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"At least you have a 'this' to control," Paul says, more than a hint of bitterness in his tone.

Her grip on the coffee mug brings the ring on her finger into prominent view; he can't help glancing at it.

"The rest of us -"

[bannion_sight]

"And you don't?"

Kim shuts her eyes and takes a deep, careful breath. Three seconds pass, then five, before she opens them again.

"It doesn't work like that," she says simply, wearily. "It's the Baelrath, the Warstone -- it's wild magic, Paul. It's not something I control. And I can't control my dreaming, either -- I can't choose what to dream, and I haven't seen yet what I have to see."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul's fists are clenched on the table; if he were standing, he'd be pacing.

"Yeah," he says, finally. "I know."

There's an apology in there somewhere, in his tone.

"I just - Five months."

Paul is, has always been, the kind of man who masters the problems he's set. All the problems he's set.

[bannion_sight]

"I know."

Helpless to do otherwise than to be herself, whoever that is now, Kim reaches out and places one hand gently over his.

"I know."

Weight of sorrow in the simple words, but nothing of tears, not in the face of this grief.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

It's kindly meant. Paul's never been a person easily touched, but he lets her hand rest there for a moment before rising, abruptly.

He looks around at all the students sitting at their tables - researching law, reading on economics, for Christ's sake - and says, "Let's get out of here. Walk. Outside - somewhere, I don't know."

[bannion_sight]

Kim nods and stands to join him, leaving the coffee behind.

He holds the door for her, and as she steps through she's already turning to suggest a direction or to say something inane, she'll never remember what -- but all other thought is driven from her mind as she sees the sudden flicker of the deep red stone on her finger. Just a flicker, nothing more than that, but it's the first sign of power the Baelrath has shown since their return, and her breath catches sharply as she reaches out to clutch his arm.

"Paul--"

And then there's no time for anything else, as a sudden low-pitched hum rises in intensity and the world shimmers around the two of them, pulling them into the deep cold of the void between the Weaver's worlds, pulling them across--

--but not to Fionavar.