Pryde and Wisdom's House - School House Road

        The front door opens into a large pale-green living room, in which
there is quite possibly more furniture than there was in Pryde and
Wisdom's entire last apartment. On the left-hand wall from the door, a
couch covered with a plain white sheet is grouped with an armchair and a
low table and a bookcase, all by a stone fireplace. Off to the right, more
bookcases flank a computer table that looks slightly forlorn with just
Kitty's laptop and a printer set up on it. The bookcases are mostly empty,
though a scattering of paperbacks and an entire shelf of battered
textbooks occupy one, and a few videotapes and a brass sextant keep
another from looking entirely abandoned. The pirate flag from their last
place is missing from the walls. Neither has the usual state of mild chaos
quite reasserted itself - the stack of newspapers on the low table is
orderly, and the ashtray at the far end of it is kept, if not empty, not
overflowing either.
        Directly opposite the door, a staircase spirals up to the second
floor; by it are a small hallway and the doorway into the brightly-lit
kitchen.


Kess has been taking far too much time off work lately, but really, that's
the least of her worries right now. It's another chilly morning - a
startled part of her brain realises that they've tipped into a new month
already - and Kess looks much like she has for the past week or so; clad
in armour that's looking increasingly well-worn and scuffed around the
edges, pale and tired, expression tending towards an uncharacteristic
blankness that suggests deep-seated weariness. Everything's all right, the
message said. Come over and talk. Well, she's here, and knocking on the
door, wondering if maybe they have more answers to help them now.
Hopefully.

"Just a second," is called from inside, but it's more like ten or fifteen
- then Kitty's at the door and tugging it open. She's on her feet, and she
doesn't look hurt at *all*: curls pulled back and tied loosely at the base
of her skull, silver star and bronze medallion bright against the charcoal
grey of her turtleneck, black jeans, sneakers. Normal. Well, except for
the faint, almost indistinguishable lines of her own body armour beneath
the darker grey of her shirt. She flashes a smile - heaven help her, she
looks /rested/. /Cheerful/. Calm and bright and almost /pleased/. "C'mon
in? There's hot chocolate already - are you okay? I got your message -"

Kess is a little surprised to see Kitty answering the door - and is even
more surprised to see her looking so /well/. There's a look in her eyes
that's almost grateful; it's so good to see her so well. The last time
Kess saw her, Kitty was unconscious and being fussed over by medical
personnel, in that hated hospital place. There's a glimmer of a smile, and
the birdgirl stamps her feet free of clinging snow before she steps
inside, moving to remove coat and boots. "I'm all right. I was just
worried about you." In case Kitty had freaked on seeing Liam again. Brown
eyes don't stray far from the other woman, concerned. "How're you doing?"
She /looks/ okay. But then, they were internal injuries.

"Fine." Kitty sees the door closed, and waits till the birdgirl is out of
snow gear before moving to hug. Hot chocolate is, as noted, already made -
there are three cups on the table, actually, which might lead one to
wonder who else is expected, plus the sugar bowl snagged from the kitchen.
"Well, fine /now/. The initial damage was pretty bad, but Liam was able to
heal enough to stabilize everything before he left, then you got me to the
hospital and they were able to deal with the hypothermia and blood loss
and blood in the wrong /places/, and while Liam was here last night he
cleaned up the rest. Right down to the bruises." Which would explain why
she doesn't look like someone took a baseball bat to her. "Which is a
relief. We don't need to be shy any more people than we have to for the
endgame."

Kess is just perhaps a little bit hesitant about the hug, a moment's
reluctance melting as she leans into the other woman, carefully, eyes
closing with relief. She tries to suppress a shiver at the list of
healings; it was bad, and that's frightening. But she's all right now, and
that's what matters. "Liam healed you?" Drawing back again, there's a
hopeful question in her eyes, before she moves for the table and the
promised chocolate. Three cups; is Pete here? "How was he, when you saw
him?" She's still so worried for the angel.

It's morning. Pete's here, but he's not *here*, if that makes sense.
Instead, Kitty moves to lean over the edge of the couch and coax an
improbably lavender dragon out - his forepaws are dextrous enough to
handle a mug, even if seeing something with /that/ snout trying to drink
from one is fairly amusing. Lapping like a cat works better if you don't
have a forked tongue. "Both times," she agrees as she settles down on one
end of the couch. "He was in /rotten/ shape the first time - he was
ripping himself up the whole time, the same way he did me. Breaking parts
of himself and healing them again. I can't even imagine that." Because
memory is kind and blocking out exactly what it felt like, fuzzing the
impression nicely. "The second time, when he was here last night - he
looked /tired/, but he wasn't having nearly as much trouble with control,
not that I could see, anyway. Worried. Guilty, a lot. Have you seen Lorne?
How's he? How're /you/ dealing with all this?"

Kess blinks at the dragon, then looks faintly amused as she spoons sugar
into her chocolate. Rather a lot of sugar; she's feeling the need for the
energy at the moment. The description of what Liam was doing to himself -
and Kitty - sends a shiver through her again. Poor angel. "I saw Lorne
last night; he was... he's tired. And scared, I think. Worried, like we
all are." She sighs, watching the swirls the spoon makes of the surface of
her drink. "He'll be okay. I- I tried to fix Liam, with the ring. It
helped, but... he's not better yet." So she's relieved that she did some
good, and the past two days have been harrowing, but the fact that she
could /do/ something useful has left her more settled than strung out.

Kitty nods a little at Kess's description of Lorne's condition - then
ducks her head to let Lockheed settle on the back of the couch behind her.
Batwings are better for maneuverability than feathered ones, just worse
for long-term flight. "I'm gonna try to drop in and see him for a couple
minutes, yeah. Liam mentioned. About the ring. He /did/ say it helped. I -
thanks. He needed that, a lot - I think getting the hand up might've
helped him to stay in control." Since all he has to do is fight the
blackness, now, not fight the blackness *and* keep healing himself. Ngh.
Kitty concentrates on getting a swallow of hot chocolate. "Yeah. We've got
to figure out how to settle things. He, um - mentioned your name, and said
something about a girl...?"

Settle things. Also known as killing those bastard angels and rebuilding a
prison. Kess sighs and shifts, settling with a shoulder against the couch,
wings draped loosely behind her, and she strips off her gloves to curl
hands around her mug. "Yeah. It was her that did it - infected Liam
with... whatever it is that's hurting him now. The blackness. She
thought-- she thought he was one of /them/. She was so scared, Kitty. They
must've--" She looks up then, to meet Kitty's gaze, and there's a haunted
look deep in brown eyes. That poor kid, the things they must have done to
her.

"It's not an infection. It's a perspective." Kitty shifts to sit sideways,
one leg curled under her, and look at Kess. That calm is still present, a
patience that's almost expectant, somehow, but neither hurried nor
demanding. Not something that's usual for her at all. "Fear and despair
and any number of things. The difference between the black angels and the
white is whether they see - and sometimes, whether *we* see - fear or joy
in things. That's why they need to outnumber their victims. They're
/afraid/. That's why they want the heart of the angel: because their own
hearts've been broken."

The haunted look slips beneath the surface again, as thoughtfulness moves
across Kess' expressive face, tugging a frown onto her brow. "Truth," she
murmurs, mostly to herself. Then, stronger, for Kitty; "That's what the
girl said to me, before she disappeared. She said, I have to see the
truth, and to make /her/ see it. Not, not the girl, but some other woman.
I talked to Jack, and he said that 'she' might be Sera - she's linked with
Truth somehow?" It made a kind of sense in her head. By seeing the truth,
they can fix what's wrong?

It's getting easier to talk about this every time she tries. Still
awkward, but possible. "Last spring," Kitty says, "when you were watching
over us in the hospital - the dream we were all in. We all represented -
things. Pete and I got the obvious ones, Jack was Strength, Seishi was
Control - Sera was Truth. Truth might mean Sera again. Or it might mean
the girl. I'm not sure." Apparently Kitty thinks it makes a kind of sense,
too. "This girl, whoever she is - she's got to be important. And I think
you're the only one who's seen her who can really talk to people right
now."

Kess shakes her head slowly, fingers restlessly stirring her drink. "No,
the girl called said; 'you have to show her'. She wasn't talking about
herself. And, she was... she was blind." The frown plucks at her features
again. "I thought-- the thing about 'new eyes'. We thought it was Katie,
but... maybe new eyes for her?" She brushes past the thing that happened
last spring; so, /that/ is where the Sera-Truth thing came from. Good to
know. She was just the eyes, in that.

"Maybe." Kitty studies her mug for a moment before taking a swallow. "The
day before - I've lost track of how many days it's been. The day before I
ran into Liam on the rooftop? I spent most of it cooped up in a cave with
one of the angels." The sad thing is that she's starting to treat saying
things like that as routine. "It kept going on about sight. Asking if we
could see. Telling us we should try to see the joy in things, the beauty,
to hold on to love instead of fear. 'See, with eyes like the sky. It isn't
rose-coloured glasses, just twilight eyes.'"

Kess tenses at that, and knuckles whiten around the mug as she looks up at
Kitty sharply. "You were trapped with one of those things?" Oh, god no.
Not you too. "What did it do?" Her insides have gone all cold, and the
surface of her hot chocolate trembles in time with her. What did it do to
you? And Liam wants her to forgive them. See beauty and joy? She sees a
lot of things, and they're among that number, but it's seldom that simple.

"It didn't do anything." Kitty glances sidelong toward Kess. "It answered
questions, and it whimpered a lot, and kind of oozed a little bit - it'd
managed to burn itself pretty badly at some point. There were two of us
and one of it, and there was some kind of magic on it. I don't think all
of the cooperation was the magic, though."

Kess' gaze drops again, and she nods tightly at that. Didn't do anything,
good. Somehow, not minding that the thing was hurt. "They're sensitive to
sonics," she says nonsequentially. Something she had meant to tell Kitty,
one way or another, but can't remember if she got around to leaving that
message. She's been avoiding the issue when she can. "Did it tell you
anything else?" Let's talk about the information, yes. Please? Hot
chocolate is so fascinating to watch, apparently.

Kitty reaches out and touches Kess's arm gently. Yeah. She's been avoiding
mentioning that she had a gun in her lap the whole time Liam was over, so
she can't really argue. Chronological order. "It said they're trying to
get free. I don't know if that was in general or if that was just it
trying to get loose of the cave. It said they're *not* trying to bring the
Tower down... but again, I don't know if that meant all of them, or just
it in the cave. It said - I don't know if it was talking about us or about
the white angels - 'What are we but facets of the same thing? Two sides of
a coin?' It said - they failed; 'no one will see, and the light /leaves/
you.' It said that the heart of the angel was for the people who'd had
their own broken. It said that to help Sera, all we had to do was see -
but never to tell Ray what was going on, and never to tell - somebody
else. 'Her might-have-been.' I'm not sure who that meant." But she has a
guess. Kitty swallows. "That if we could see things the right way - that
meant life."

Kess doesn't react much to the touch - unusual for her - though a soft
sigh does escape her lips. She listens carefully, cataloguing the facts,
trying to make some kind of sense of them. "They all want to get free, I
think. So did the girl. They-- they begged me to set them free." Let's not
mention when, or how, they did that. "And, the black and the white ones...
they /are/ the same things - it's just perspective, like you said." Which
is really hard to wrap her head around, but she's trying. Oddly, Liam and
his battle help with that. She shrugs at the 'might have been' - she
doesn't know who that could be. "Truth," is all she notes. They have to
see the truth, see life and joy, and that'll fix things. It sounds
absurdly simple, doesn't it?

Not just see it themselves, but show it to someone else. Much harder,
really. "What did the girl look like?" Kitty asks, thoughtful in return.
"Did she give you any kind of name? Or anything?"

"Dark hair, about so high, tiny thing." Kess indicates the height with a
hand. She adds another couple of minor details, then shakes her head. "No
name. She screamed a lot. Wanted to be set free, let go. They've all said
that, the angels too - to let them go." A frown threatens her expression
again. "Do you think we're somehow holding them back?" That thought
disturbs her.

"I don't know. Liam - when he wasn't exactly himself - he said we caused
it, somehow. Not us particularly, maybe, but /all/ of us, people in
general. 'Ungrateful, or unforgiving, or lost.'" Kitty half-glances away
again. Hey. Cooling chocolate. Huh. "Afraid of the world. I don't know if
we're actually holding them back, so much as not ... /helping/ them the
way they want. They're -" Her expression shifts for a moment. "They're
/desperate/, more than anything else, you know that? Or they seem to be.
They can't seem to imagine any way of getting what they want besides
taking it."

"Yeah." The word is half-whispered agreement with that last part, and Kess
puts the chocolate aside suddenly, untouched. She gets to her feet and
moves off, to the nearest window to look out; all this talk of those
things is making her really not want to be indoors. Being able to look at
the sky helps. Her wings don't quite fold to her back, held close to her
body and giving little agitated flips of feather-ends. "Have to forgive
them." She's talking mostly to herself, expression bleak and striving for
blankness again. She's not sure she can do that.

The curtain's drawn back easily enough, and there's the sky, bright and
blue and sunny. No little flurry of snow just now. Light glares off the
snow, cars pass steadily on the road outside. "Nobody ever said," Kitty
says quietly, "fixing this was gonna be /easy/." The look in Lindsey's
eyes. Not going to talk about that, either. And if it is Sera's dream, if
she did all of this, somehow - is it easier or harder to forgive her? Or
should it be either? Echo of a voice in her head: 'I told you, little one.
Told you. They'd never love all of you.'

Kess' gaze is lifted past the glare of sunlight on metal and glass, aimed
up into the clear expanse above, searching as if it was possible to see
the streams of air with their varying currents. "The bad stuff is never
easy to fix," she says with a heavy, knowing note. If only she knew how
much like Lindsey's the look in her eyes is now. A hand placed on the
glass takes some comfort from the simple coolness. "Do we know how to fix
the Tower yet? Will seeing the truth be enough?" Or is that just for the
angels? How soon will this be /over/?

"We know how to get to the Tower. And we know not to let Jack go alone.
The rest - the rest we'll manage." Kitty glances down at her hands, then
back to Kess again, silent for several seconds. Never easy to fix. "I
think that'll need a little more than seeing. I mean - with Jack, it
/isn't/ just perspective that's the problem. There's part of him that's
missing. Need to fix that. But that'll be all right. The Tower I think we
can do."

Kess blinks at that, then turns a perplexed frown to Kitty, half-turning
away from the window. Her hand remains splayed on the glass. "They took
something from Jack?" No-one told her that part, and he seemed all right
when she spoke to him. Or not desperately deficient, anyway.

Kitty grimaces faintly, flopping back against the arm of the couch - but
oddly, her tone's almost brighter. See, this part doesn't have anything to
do with the angels. "No, no - see, he was clinically dead for a while in
the fall, and not all of him actually came back. He's functional, but he's
pretty miserable, and he doesn't like to talk about it."

Yes, even the bad things in the past are easier to talk about than the
present. "Oh. Well, let me know if I can help with that." Kess shrugs
lightly, helplessly, not really understanding the problem, but she'll be
there to lend a hand anyway. It's what she does, and she's slowly becoming
resigned to not understanding things fully. The birdgirl's gaze drops
again, thoughtful and so weary. She has no idea where to go now, what to
do.

Kitty doesn't really understand it either, but - well, she's used to
working with things she doesn't understand. Call it a variable and see how
you can manipulate it. "Pretty good chance you can," Kitty admits quietly.
"I mean - he needs me to /get/ there, but you'd probably be more help to
him going than I would." Because she's been told they need, essentially,
heroes, and there's no way Kitty is using that label for herself. "Have
you been managing to sleep at all lately?"

Kess' jaw tightens at that as her expression flickers wryly, the hand not
using the window as an anchor lifting to run through her hair. The striped
locks just fall back where they were again, slightly less mussed. "Not
really. How do you mean, I'll be more help to him going? To the Tower, you
mean?" That confuses her... unless she needs to fly him across the Beam or
something?

"According to one of the only sources we've got," Kitty replies, "he'll
need people with him. People - I feel like such an idiot saying this this
way - people 'of honor and glory, who fight against injustice, who stand
above those who move through life with only malice and self-centered
shame.'" Kitty shrugs easily, leaning back to reach up and put a hand on
Lockheed's back, between his wings. "You and Seishi - and even Liam,
usually - fit that description a lot better than people like me."