001. open post // quiet little burials.

[mordechai]

Take a prompt, take your time, post whenever you like.

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[kinesthesia]

[ Quiet at that, taking another swig of her beer.

Silence has long since become a comfortable way to pass the time with Alistair after all. ]

[mordechai]

[Taking a swig on his end too.]

How are you?

[He rarely bothers asking. If he does, it's because he actually wants to know, and actually gives enough of a fuck about you to ask in the first place.]

[kinesthesia]

Same as usual.

[ She's stretching her neck from one side to the other when she answers. ]

Get up, teach at Balamb, help at Haven, bug my husband, bug my son, whine about daughter not coming home. [ There's a fond look in her eyes as she looks down at that beer. ] I'm good.

It's been... interesting. [ Scrunching her nose a little at that. Because yeah, things have kind of picked up as of last month. ]

[mordechai]

[Barking out a laugh at that statement, and topping it with a rueful shake of his head.]

That's the catch word of the year, from the looks of it.

[And they're not quite at the halfway point of 2063 yet...]

[kinesthesia]

[ Here's a soft "mm-hm" from this one. ]

It's good to have you around more, Alistair.

[ It kind of goes without saying that she hopes you won't just up and disappear on them again... but you go where you choose to, when you choose to. ]

[mordechai]

Got more of a reason to be around now.

[And less excuses, but that goes without saying too. He knows, for a fact, that he needs to stop running away. Doing that the last time did more damage than he had originally anticipated.]

[kinesthesia]

There is that.

[ She is pleased. She's gonna light herself a cigarette now, so there goes her pack on the ground beside her, and then lighter and tin. ]

Any word on your erstwhile protege -- or rather, former protege.

[ Brows furrowing as she takes that as a reminder for herself. Kaz is under Paolo now, last she heard. ]

[mordechai]

Heard on SERAPH that he and Paolo are doing fine. That's all that matters to me.

[You know Alistair. Once something's Going, he doesn't check on it until somebody tells him to, or until he notices that something Isn't Right.]

[kinesthesia]

[ And that's all the answer she needs from your end, because let's face it, this is you. ]

Kaz is sweet kid. [ You'll note that she's saying that with much fondness, even as she's flipping the cap of her bottle. ]

[mordechai]

Too sweet. He'll need to stop being soft soon.

[Soft gets you killed in their business. There's a difference between warm, compassionate and all those other words and 'soft'.

You're familiar with his definition, Cisco. You filled it out, once upon a time.]

[kinesthesia]

[ That, she did. But a body learns, eventually. You have to, if you're going to keep on sticking by the hunt.

Her last conversation with Kaz had been an interesting one. She can still see the look on the kid's face when she'd handed him that bottlecap necklace. ]

He'll learn. [ Lifting that bottle again for a sip just as her eyes follow the path of something small moving in the distant dark. ] The ones who get it always do.

[ And she has a feeling Kaz gets it. Or he will, soon enough. Some people just needed the right kind of nudge out the door, after all. ]

[mordechai]

Not always, but I suppose they usually do.

[Maybe he is grousing, but he'd like to think that he's being realistic.]