Bar -- Caritas -- Pikeman's Circle

        Warmth, light and noise are likely to be the first impressions of
someone entering Caritas. Passing through the old warehouse doors from the
street, it's necessary to take a step down and through metal detectors
before getting to the club proper. The bar runs along the right-hand wall,
glass shelves behind it bearing bottles in various bright colours. The
main space is mostly taken up by tables, placed far enough apart on the
wooden floor to allow some wandering around. The chairs are comfortably
padded, and there are a few booths to the left of the doors for the
benefit of those who would prefer privacy.
        For those who would not, there's always the stage. Curved slightly
and taking up a good quarter of the floor space on its own, the performing
space is only elevated by a couple of feet. Spotlights and footlights
direct plenty of attention to the current incumbent, and microphones are
provided on three different stands for varying heights. Turned to face the
stage is something which at first glance looks like a TV screen, but
coupled with the sound equipment off to one side can only mean one thing.
Karaoke.
        The usual clientele of Caritas is limited to those of...unusual
appearance, and those who don't mind them. Metahumans, demons, whatever
you'd like to call them, this is the place for masks and coats to be cast
aside. There's no need to hide how you look in here - there's bound to be
someone even stranger at the next table.

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                               Today's Weather:

The sort of bracing weather that makes the song "Winter Wonderland" a true
sentiment. Though the air is crisp, there is no wind, the snow is white
and fresh and the sky is blue. The sun dazzles off the white blanket in
the day and the artificial lights sparkle off it like a zillion diamonds
during the night.

******************************************************************************


Caritas *was* open earlier this evening, but it's barely past midnight and
the place is already closed. The doors aren't yet locked. Lorne is finding
his tolerance for amusingly drunken customers limited, the last few days.
The lights are dimmed, save the sparkling white Christmas lights,
patterned across the ceiling as alien stars. "You took your life, as
lovers often do; but I could have told you, Vincent, the world was never
meant for one as beautiful as you." Alone on stage, he sings softly.

The doors aren't locked - Kitty's not sure if she'd've behaved if they had
been, but she can reassure herself that they at least opened for her.
Backpack and jacket are left the far side of the metal detector, for once.
She's not making a habit of going unarmed right now. Quietly, she slips
further inside: not hiding, just not making much in the way of noise.
Because somebody's singing, and /that/ voice she doesn't want to
interrupt.

"Like the strangers that you've met, the ragged men in ragged clothes."
Lorne is singing with his eyes closed, as is his occasional habit, one
hand rested to the microphone, and he doesn't notice Kitty's arrival
immediately. "The silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on
the virgin snow." Suddenly these lyrics are becoming a little too
apposite. The Host breaks off, the backing track continuing without him,
and opens his eyes. And jumps visibly, the free hand grabbing
instinctively for the microphone stand. "...don't *do* that!" Holy tamale.

The Host isn't the only one who jumps; Kitty starts, back abruptly much
closer against a wall, hands lifted to show their emptiness. "Sorry!" She
relaxes a little after a moment; her head leans back to meet said wall.
Thump. "Sorry. Bad habit. Trying to break it. The, um." She gestures
feebly back the way she came. "Door was open. Sorry."

Stepping down off the stage, Lorne fans himself with one hand, then pats
his chest. A learned gesture, considering the location of his heart. "You
startled the living heck outta me, darlin. Ring the doorbell next time, if
you love me at all?" He seems - perfectly all right, actually. But he's
good at that. Kitty gets a smile. "Happy Hannukah."

"Doorbell. Right. Gotcha." If Kitty got much more sheepish, someone could
probably shear her and make a sweater. "I will. Promise. I - thanks." She
finally offers a smile back at him. "Happy New Year, early. Or any other
applicable holiday you feel like. Just ... wanted to make sure you were
doing okay."

"I'm all right, cookie. Takes more than that." Actually it takes exactly
as much as that, but Lorne isn't one to go complaining. He's a bad enough
liar that his smile slips just a little, and he covers by turning away to
head behind the bar. "Juice? Coke? Double vodka?"

"A Coke'd be great? No more real drinking for me for a while." Kitty
detaches from the wall, following toward the bar. "Not till this bout of
craziness is over. Well. Barring New Year's, which is traditional to the
point of being required." Conversational, rather than cheerful, but -
well, covering.

Said Coke is collected and poured into a glass, without Lorne at any point
glancing at Kitty. He's pouring, see? It takes concentration. "Mm-hm. I
can't tell you how much I'm not looking forward to next Wednesday. On the
other hand, honey, it'll beat hands down some of the nights I've been
having." A slight pause, and as he slides the glass across the bar, he
*does* look up. "I'm sorry about Christmas."

And when he looks up, unsurprisingly, Kitty's watching him - eyes already
in the process, admittedly, of dropping to let her take the glass without
risking contact that might be unwelcome on his part, but she was watching.
"We missed you," she answers, straightforward. "But cripes - I can
understand why you might not want to be around people much right now." No,
not looking at him when says /that/.

"Correction, sweetpea, I didn't want to be around people much, a few days
ago. Right now I'm hovering between traumatized and fine, and I expect to
be back to perky by the time the weekend's over." Lorne leans his elbows
on the bar and picks absently at a stray thread on his jacket cuff.

"Well, that's a relief." Kitty curves a quick smile, one that vanishes
almost as soon as it's there. "I'd threaten to drop by and make sure, but
- this is probably all I'm gonna risk for a while. Don't want anything
else to happen. Particularly not /here/."

There's only a moment's pause, and no confusion. Liam and Lorne tend to
talk quite a bit. The Host sighs, and looks up to try and meet Kitty's
eyes. "Honey? I didn't notice you here the other night when I got my
visitors. If those things really wanted to go at me for information, they
could have done that. They were only interested in - well. They didn't try
anything constructive. And if they decide to come back, the fact that
you've dropped by won't make any difference."

Meeting Kitty's eyes isn't difficult, and she doesn't flinch away. "Yeah.
But your visitors were back chasing me a couple nights ago. At least maybe
we can keep the odds down, right? That's a plus." And that second
incident, on the night of the twenty-fourth, Liam doesn't yet know about,
come to think of it; the topic was off-limits on Christmas.

"They were?" That's a bad thing. Lorne doesn't frown, exactly, because
he's not equipped to. But he does look unhappy for a moment. "Is there
anything I can do?" Besides keep replaying the stupid lying visions over
and over every time I see somebody who was involved?

"Wish I knew," Kitty admits more quietly. "If you heard anything from
Claire - stick by that. She seems to know where we need to go. The biggest
thing is, don't give up. And I feel incredibly stupid telling /you/ that,
when you're probably the best person in the city at it." She crooks a
half-smile that lasts a little longer, then takes a swallow of Coke.
Precious caffeine.

"At least you realise I don't need telling." Give up, indeed. It's not
built into Lorne's character to do that, or he already would have. He
clasps his hands, and watches them, expression turned very serious.
"Claire told me we should help each other. She also said - " He pauses,
then speaks, and while he doesn't imitate Claire's voice, he catches the
cadence of her speech exactly. "'What comes to you, what you're falling
into...it isn't out of malice'. Which I found less than comforting, in all
honesty."

"Have to agree with you there." Kitty shakes her head, glancing up at
Lorne. "The question is, isn't out of malice on whose part? We know so
many bits and pieces... it's like trying to put together one of those
edgeless jigsaw puzzles. And we still don't have any idea where we have to
go, what we have to do."

The Host is still deeply involved in looking at his own hands. Examining
his fingernails, perhaps. "We're off the path." He professes to remember
nothing of what he said to Celliers, but it's not strictly true. "It's
what I do, isn't it? I return people to their paths. But this...honey,
they sang. And - I know the future is mutable, but this was real
Apocalyptic slouching toward Bethlehem seven seals hell. The city was
burning."

Kitty will do him the favor of presuming it's a chance phrase, an echo,
not awareness, because - well, because he said he didn't remember. "And
worse than burning. Yeah." She draws one of her own hands back to rub
uneasily at her side. "But there are ways around it. Ways out. We just
have to figure out the way to one of them." Vehemently not considering the
possibility of failure.

Shaking his head, Lorne says softly, "I can't see. I can't see a way out.
There must be one, darlin, because in my admittedly limited experience?
There always is. But - " He lifts one hand to rub at the corner of his eye
with a thumb, a gesture of weariness and misery. "I find the idea that
they could come back in here and do that again rather upsetting."

"So we look," Kitty says, "for a way to keep them out. And we give them as
much as we can to keep them busy while we're looking." She runs a
fingertip over the side of her glass, drawing absent little patterns of
lines and angles in the condensation. "I wish I could show you what Claire
showed me."

"You probably could," Lorne points out, but without any real sense that
he's going to ask her to. He shivers, though it's too warm in here, if
anything. "Kitten, you know how I was hoping to stay out of all this? I
guess I'm in it now."

"Yeah, but I was thinking without including the part that's probably a
repeat of what you've already seen." Somehow, this time round, 'kitten'
neither embarrasses Kitty nor amuses nor invites melancholy - nor
startlement. Just a little more determination. Not again. "Wish you didn't
have to be."

"No more than I am, sweetness." Lorne sighs, and briefly holds his head in
his hands, effectively hiding his face. Even just thinking about it all is
distressing. "They thought it was so funny," he adds, quietly.

"Bastards." Kitty stares at the bubbles rising in the cola. Float, float,
pop. Float, float... "How many of them were there?" she asks suddenly.

"Uhm." It actually takes a moment, but Lorne drops his hands and gives
Kitty a puzzled look. "Five, I think. Why?"

It takes an instant to push back the memory of being surrounded by them
herself, but Kitty manages a grim little smile. "When they first showed
up, by the cathedral, some of them went after a guy - I don't know who it
was, but he was carrying a gun. He shot two of them." She takes a breath.
"Sounds like they might not have come back."

"Or they just didn't think they needed more than five people to torment
one pacifist. But I hope you're right, sweetheart. I hope you're right."
Lorne wishes he had a drink. Then he remembers that, by a happy chance, he
owns a bar, and he pours himself a double shot of vodka on the grounds
that a Seabreeze would be too much trouble. "Do me a favour, and don't
stop coming by? I'm pretty much stuck in here, except for dire
emergencies, and I don't want to be left wondering."

"They like outnumbering," Kitty mutters. "When it was three on three, they
took off rather than cause trouble." Ooh, vodka. No, no, one
twenty-four-hour hangover in three days is enough. Coke. Which she drinks
more of, because it's a good way to cover hesitation. She doesn't want to
bring more trouble here - but what's she going to do, tell him it's for
his own good? Hah. "Okay. And if something happens and I can't, I'll make
sure Pete or Liam or somebody lets you know what's going on."

The double vodka goes down, to get into Lorne's bloodstream and do
absolutely jack. It's hard being a demon sometimes. He eyes Kitty for a
moment, scarlet gaze sharp as ever. "Do me *another* favour. Protect me
only to the extent that I remain informed."

Tolerance from, er, hell, yeah. Kitty gives him a momentary helpless look.
"I can't inform you any more than I /am/ informed. Things are going to get
pretty bad out there in the next month or so."

"No kidding." Lorne leans on the bar again, empty glass set aside, and
tilts his head up to look at the simulated stars. "I'd be out there with
you if I could, cupcake."

Kitty says wryly, "I'll have to settle for body armor and having the phone
numbers of every medical type we know programmed into autodial. Frankly,
/I'd/ rather be in /here/ with /you/."

That gets a smile. "That's only because you haven't tried to amuse
yourself for three hours adjusting the TV antenna. Unless you have, in
which case I pity you, because that, darlin? Would just be sad."

"No," Kitty admits, "no, not the TV antenna." Well, not since she got to
Beacon Harbor, anyway. The couple of years before that, or maybe when she
was seventeen... "Does eight hours trying to break into the University
physics department fileservers count? With a hangover?"

"Depends if you were just doing it for kicks or if you had an actual
reason to want to read papers about the Heisenberg constant and the rate
of entropic decay." Lorne grins at Kitty. "I watch a *lot* of television."
It's edumacational.

"What if the answer's 'both?'" Kitty grins back at him. "I mean - a
/couple/ of us entertain ourselves with something other than Jerry
Springer... well, now that our boyfriends have snagged the TV so that we
have to put up with smoke if we want to watch anything, anyway."