It was just coming into evening as the old Grey Hound bus bumped its way into the station. All around, the city air was hot and muggy, telltale signs of a coming storm. The whole city seemed to glow orange and red as the sun settled towards the horizon.

Stepping off of the bus, Jake was but one of dozens of people that were swept towards the busy city streets, clutching at their belongings. He looked scruffier then most, dressed in a worn black t-shirt and cargo shorts and balancing an overstuffed camping pack upon his shoulder, but still better then your average New York homeless person. Despite the oncoming darkness, Jake kept his sunglasses on, gleaming in the half-light, and collected his belongings. He was a young man, at twenty-four years, with short brown hair and a thick scruff of facial hair and moved with an athletic grace. His arms and legs were wiry and strong, with little excess fat, and the callouses of his hands showed that he was used to hard labors, or perhaps, violence.

Edging away from the worst of the crowds, he made his way westward towards Central Park, glancing pensively down alleyways as he went, as if he was looking for something. Finally he stalled mid-step beside a pair of mottled brownstone apartments separated by a narrow alley barely wide enough for a compact car to weave in between. Turning, he seemed to almost test the air for a moment before stepping down the alleyway and weaving his way around the back of one of the apartments, casually dragging one hand along the rough stone of the wall. Finally, coming to an old steel drainage pipe running down the back of the building, he tested his grip and began climbing with practiced ease.

To outsiders, it would be eerie to see a human scale a structure with such relaxed grace, but none noticed his passage. Jake moved quickly up the pipe for three stories before shifting himself and after a bodily swing or two making the short leap to the metal frame of a fire escape, which he deftly climbed and hopped from the top of to reach the building's gutter. For a moment, the gutter wavered, quiet groans of metal complaining at the sudden weight, but Jake seemed confidant and pulled himself over the edge and onto the gravel roof of the building.

Overhead, the storm began to enclose the city. A rolling pall of thunder echoed across the sky as the first of the heavy droplets began to patter around Jake. Ignoring the rain, he walked towards the other end of the building, that which faced Central Park, and knelt at the edge. He gazed out silently through the alien senses that had taken two years of deep coma to develop. Before him, the city stretched forth like a river of light on a bed of concrete and glass, an infinite tapestry of meaning and form created by the city's millions upon millions of citizens. To him, each person was a knot of meaning, a gathering of threads and cables that spoke of their nature and character, and in their untold numbers, it was awe inspiring. This metropolis was beyond anything Jake had seen before, and it humbled him. He could almost taste the individual connections, thick with love, hate, faith and treason all at once.

“Look around you... These are your brothers and your sisters.” He intoned quietly to himself, the words coming unbidden to his lips.

This was the modern Mecca for mutants, he reflected, and somewhere out there were people like himself. People who might be able to understand him on some level, and that was comforting. He wondered, absently, if God could be found somewhere in that infinite flow. Smiling, he drank in the cool sensation of the rain pattering off his bare skin and the rich smell of the air. This was a good place for him. He could see that.

Ghost was flipping through the bills, counting the stack of cash again. The batch said she should have 832 dollars and 52 cents. Together with the credit card receipts and the cash from the register, she was short almost exactly 400 dollars. There was no way any of her employees were stealing from her, right? She just couldn't bring herself to believe that. Her staff was like family. No, they were better than family because they were still around. She was practically tearing her hair out when a small knock sounded on the door.

"Uhh Ms. Altair? Someone just climbed the fire escape."

"Is that a problem, Damen?"

"He looks blind and climbed like he wasn't... just thought you'd want to know who is on your roof."

Ghost blinked. Well that got her attention. Why the heck was Luke climbing on her rooftop tonight? Surely he wasn't bringing Wraith the vigilante to her peaceful store. As an investor, he should know better.

With a sigh, she dismissed Damen and piled the whole mess of the drawer in the safe behind her glass desk. The drawer was from the mid shift. The drawer's tender had already gone home for the day and besides, she would tear the store apart looking for the stuff before she accused anyone of stealing. But that would have to wait until the store was closed. And despite the fact that the sun was going down, the store still had a few hours to go.

Another sigh and Ghost pulled her apron over her head and tossed it on the desk before going out of her office and up to the storage level. She clambered over boxes and pulled on the little used, metal roof access door. If she was leaving the store and taking to the sky, she still had to lock up the store first so she usually went out the back at night. A habit that had almost gotten her mugged once. Almost. She'd talked him out of it... kind of... after someone else had come to mug him.

"Luke, I'm coming up." She announced herself before pulling herself up through the metal opening. She wasn't very strong and so lifting with her arms like this, even if her body was light as air, too some grunting and groaning. "Why didn't you just call, you doof?" Ghost struggled her way up before actually using her eyes to see that ... he might not be Luke. Blink, blink. "Oh brother, you're not who I thought you were." She didn't even have the excuse of being in her incorporeal form where her vision was so much less.

Having not fully exited the opening, her arms finally gave out and she yipped on her way down onto the boxes below. Great. This day was turning out to be juuuuust peachy.

Jake flinched reflexively as the metal service door screeched open, and reflexively he shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and stood, turning towards the door. Slowly, he let a breath escape him as the rain intensified around him, filling the air with its muted roar. As the breach opened between the rooftop and the door, he felt a faint surge and connections poured through the opening and the shape of a woman feebly climbing the access ladder appeared as if through a cloud of mist before him.

“Luke, I'm coming up.” he heard faintly over the rain as fine threads of recognition splayed out from her ascending form and played across the rooftop, searching for something to connect to and complete themselves. Jake watched silently as she struggled up the ladder. What should he say? He was never good at making up excuses, and he sure as hell wasn't going to Awe his way out of this on his first day. No way karma would take well to that. Not knowing what else to do, me made himself look as unassuming as possible and raised his hands in a kind of mock surrender. He was just about to call out to her when she spoke again, unwittingly interrupting him.

“Why didn't you call, you doof?” she grunted, struggling partway through the entrance. Jake watched mutely as the tendrils of recognition whipped over to his own form and knotted themselves into his body and marked him as something alien, something other then her friend Luke. Jake smiled meekly as the woman blinked at him. She sounded kind of cute, he mused absently as the stunned moment passed.

“Oh brother, you're not who I thought you were.”

“Yeah, I'm-” Jake managed half-heartedly as her strength wavered and she toppled into the darkness of the service hatch. Jake blinked. Literally blinked, despite his blindness. Some things never changed after all, it seemed. Instinctively he jogged to the open service door and peered down inside as another rolling bellow of thunder and lightning echoed over the city. Below him, she lay in a tousled heap of cardboard boxes, threads of embarrassment and annoyance waving back and forth. He smiled despite himself. Cute. Definitely cute.

“Are you okay?” he called, bewildered, his mirrored sunglasses gleaming. So it wasn't his cleverest example of wordplay, but what else can you do?

Was she okay? She was doubting her friends, perhaps loosing money somewhere in the store or perhaps loosing employees. Either way was a loss she didn't care for. At least the man who was not Luke was polite. "Oh screw it." She wriggled to her feet and shoved a box out of the way of the falling drizzle before taking a sharp inhalation of breath.

On moment she was there, solid and real, the next she was only half herself, so decreased in weight and substance that she was able to call a breeze that buoyed her upward and out of the blasted box room. She made a movement like a kick with her foot, but really it was the wind that flung the metal door shut. The sound echoed between the close buildings and she instantly felt childish for doing it. "Sorry. It's been a long day."

Meeting someone new, normally she would have wanted to see their face and know their features. She would have played the polite hostess and been as kind as she could. Today, the raw ends of her nerves were showing.

After the danger she'd seen recently, she felt better being insubstantial. For the most part it kept her safe from strangers and on rainy days it even kept her from getting wet. "Wouldn't you like to come in out of the rain, Mister...?" She left off the end of her sentence whether he filled in his name or not was up to him.

Jake quirked an eyebrow behind the mirrored surface of his glasses as the lithe woman struggled to her feet, coils of concern, suspicion, and frustration whipping around her viciously, but the why was beyond him. She muttered something he couldn't quite hear, and then changed in a manner that Jake couldn't possibly have predicted.

One moment, she was there, opaque as everything else, and then she... wasn't. It had taken a long time for Jake to understand that the place he peered into everyday had rules, and not ones that would would expect. Meanings and emotions passed down the corridors of perception. If a normal person can't see through a brick wall, then meaning must flow around it as well. No one cares about the insulation, so to speak.

When this woman changed before him, he saw the threads of meaning that normally encompassed her body slip inward and coil in a new and alien way. Previously unrecognizable connections arched outward like streamers upon the wind, grappling to things as far beyond his perceptions as his were beyond those or normal people.

Mouth agape, Jake stared for a moment and then jumped back two steps as the wind whipped around him sweeping droplets from his hair and slamming the door shut which an crash that rivaled the thunder above. The woman, who he hadn't quite seen clearly since her transformation, settled onto the root and seemed to hover there in his eyes, propped up by something...else.

“Wouldn't you like to come in out of the rain, Mister...?”

Jake blinked again. It was becoming a habit.

“Jake....Jake Townsend.... I.....I've never seen anything like that...It....It was....” He stuttered, struggling to come up with something, anything, to describe what he just saw. Beautiful lacked power. Wondrous sounded cheap. He had no words. He merely nodded weakly.

"Ordinary?" She finished off Jake's rambling sentence for him.

"Jake." She repeated the name so that she would not forget it and took another deep breath to calm herself. The awe in his voice made her question whether or not he was really a mutant as her employee had suggested. Maybe he just liked to wear sunglasses at night?

Ghost sighed again this time in a more resolute manner. "I'm sorry. What has become common place for me is still sometimes so far off the radar for most. I just forget." Ghost scratched her head. To herself, she felt solid enough. To anyone else, they'd go right through her. She really wasn't trying to surprise or scare anyone tonight. She just hadn't thought through all the implications. "Back down the escape or into the box room, it's your choice, but you should really come in. It wouldn't do for you to catch cold on my rooftop." And if that wasn't enough, she'd bribe him with a hot beverage. "I'll get you some coffee if you drink the stuff, tea if you don't."

Ghost reached down for the metal hatch and hesitated. It was heavy... she could toss around light weight things with her winds, but she hadn't really mustered the cradling technique that Zephyr had shown her. Heavy lifting was sort of out. She could slip through the cracks, but she also didn't want the poor guy's jaw to fall through the roof either. She backed up a bit and worked on becoming solid. It would take a few seconds, much longer than it had for her to change her body into air.

The molecules pulled inward condensing and coalescing until she was a woman once more. And that woman pulled open the hatch she'd kicked shut. Ghost motioned to the rickety ladder. "After you?" She was wearing pants since she was at work so she could go after him and close up the roof access with a padlock. If people were going to be climbing up there, she was going to have to start locking it.

Jake's mind was idling. It was confused and grasping, struggling to make sense of the implications before him. Around him he felt his own network of connections rile and groan as questioning threads arched the distance between their separated forms searching for something they couldn't understand. He needed to settle himself. He needed clarity, if only for a second, to focus himself. Reflexively, he shifted his thought pattern and pumped psychic power into the linkages between them and he felt a calming confidence come over him. It was a thing of understanding, an absolute confidence in one's knowledge of a situation, even if that knowledge didn't truly exist.

A wry smile crossed his lips. He wasn't sure if this would have any effect on her. It wasn't as if he had ever attempted to use the Awe on anyone but your every day conventional humans, but even if it didn't work, it served his personal needs. So he had promised himself not to use it. He was surprised! It's understandable. In truth, he was curious exactly what would happen with her. She WAS cute in that other form. Not that this one wasn't intriguing, just in a different way, like one appreciating art. No point blowing things being a slack-jawed fool.

“I'm sorry, you really caught me by surprise there.” He bent down and casually swung onto the ladder. Despite its unstable nature, he seemed to intuitively balance himself. “I've never seen another mutant before, and that was very impressive. You are a mutant right? I just want to be sure,” he said smoothly with a slight smile rich with curiosity and respect and then dropped down into the box room without waiting for a response. He landed with only a slight bend of the knees, easily avoiding the scattered boxes. Turning his face towards the hatch, he stared into the rain.

“And I'd love a cup of coffee, thanks!” he grinned welcomely.

Ghost nodded at Jake. His apology was accepted. If he could forgive her for acting like a three year old then she could forgive the gaping. She wasn't even sure if it had bothered her really, just that it had reminded her that she, herself, was abnormal. Funny how the little things can bring back the small insecurities.

Jake took to the ladder like a swanky man in tails would take to a broadway stage. He made unsteady steel look like it was made just for him to find his rhythm on his way down, made just for her to see this moment. Ghost shook her head to clear the thoughts and continued on with her polite word dance as she too took to the wrungs of the wriggly ladder. Ghost was graceful by nature, but also not a weight lifter. Going down was easier, but Jake made her look like she only had thumbs and left feet. Ladders just weren't her thing.

"Yes, I am gifted as I see you too are gifted. An employee of mine spotted you cat burglaring onto the roof and the glasses... one of our store's investors is also an especially talented man and is visually impaired, hence why I thought you might be a man named Luke. Apologies for my assumption." She was wrapping the polite mask back on tightly. Anything was better than punishing a man for a crime he obviously didn't commit. Ghost pulled the hatch shut before asking for Jake to hand her a padlock that had been laying unused atop one of the boxes. After locking the hatch, Ghost made her way down the rest of the way.

Just her short time out in the rain had guaranteed that she was now quite damp. Ghost ran her hands through her hair flinging water from the short locks before taking the lead. "Coffee it is then, but why anyone enjoys the stuff is beyond me." She made her way down the stairs, her head never bobbing. Once down the small back stair it was a sharp left and a short hall that comprised of two doors, Ghost's office and the staff room, a door that always remained open. Ghost's office door was closed for now.

She brushed out into the open area of the shop and went through the stacks and to the coffee bar. "One coffee, one tea, Aurum." Ghost yawned and looked over the store. There were patrons, but most everyone seemed to stay in doors on days with nasty weather. Those who were inside the store were huddled in comfortable chairs and nursing drinks. Everything seemed taken care of.

Aurum sat two tall mugs on the top of the bar, one with a much darker liquid in it than the other. "That'll be 4 dollars and 35 cents, ma'am."

That earned Aurum a grin. "I'll be sure to take it out of your pay check then."

Ghost tarried, waiting for Jake to add sugar or cream to his liking. She would probably have abandoned him after he received his coffee for her to go back to her conundrum, but he was quite interesting to her. She wasn't really sure what it was but she wanted to... look at him. It was almost embarrassing. She sipped her sugarless tea to hide the faint change in cheek color... not that he could see that, but it made her feel better.

Jake wandered along after the woman as she explained how she had discovered his presence. Cat burglaring. Nice. He liked that one. As he watched, more links of curiosity and embarrassment seemed to coil outward from the woman and enfold him. She was also beginning to stumble over her own words a little, although she quickly bit that tendency back. He was fairly sure the 'cat burglar' comment had been unintentional. He couldn't be absolutely sure, but it seemed his ability wasn't disrupted by the powers of others.

As he walked, he allowed his senses to wash over the area before him, plucking at strands of sophistication and comfort, although he noted a somewhat angered connection to her office as the pair strolled past. Business problems, he wondered distantly, but the place itself had an air of efficiency, comfort, and style that rang of smooth efficiency. It seemed like a pretty swanky place. Maybe things were just harder in the big city.

As the pair settled onto their stools at the coffee bar, Jake turned his attention to the barista, and studied the links between him and his boss. He really should get her name... There were a lot of bonds there, enough that it would take him some time to sort them all out, but for the moment he couldn't be bothered. Just as he had enfolded the woman in his power, he began pouring his psychic energy into the narrow strands that tied him and the barista, making himself appear as more then the typical customer.

Jake chuckled at Aurum's jovial comment and the woman's cool retort as he slid the coffee towards himself. In truth, he wasn't a great fan of coffee either. It wasn't the flavor; he had favored bitter drinks all of his life. It was the way he reacted to stimulants. Violently. If he wasn't careful, he would be careening around this establishment like a drunk man.

Focusing on the woman, he wondered how exactly to play this out. It was obvious that she was used to encountering mutants, but were they common to this establishment? How would these people react if he simply brokered the subject to her openly? Best to glaze over that fact and let her bring it out if she felt it was safe to do so.

“Are there a lot of people like Luke and I around?” Jake allowed the curiosity to flow heavily from himself, hoping to elicit more of a response then the woman intended, and stressed the words Luke and I indicating the mutant condition. “Oh, and I haven't caught your name yet!” he said with a warm chuckle, turning himself to face in her direction, a sign of trust and interest.

Aurum looked between Ghost and the new arrival with a big grin that Ghost didn't particularly care to see on the man's face. "Ghost, you sly thing, you."[/color] It was hardly more than a whisper but he was gone grinning wider and wider as he found places that needed to be cleaned farther and farther away from the two at the bar.

Ghost's eyebrows met in the middle of her face to shake hands and comment on the weather. She was still feeling shy around Aurum since he had seen her with her guts spilled out. A tea warmed hand touched her stomach and suddenly there wasn't enough warmth even in the tea to keep chills from her spine. Aurum had always played nice, been flirtatious and had even tried to protect her... he had rallied the other employees of the store to come save her. She owed him a lot.

Lucky for Ghost there was a very distracting man sitting nearby. She cradled her tea between her hands as if it were the last safe refuge on earth. She didn't even flinch when he roundaboutly asked about mutants. "Don't worry, you shouldn't have to fear retribution here. This is the Full Circle, neutral territory for mutants and humans alike." She sipped her tea casually. Yes, this was a simple enough topic and far away from dark and looming thoughts. "Aurum is human, the business manager is human... I think the store's employees are split 60/40 mutant to human. A lot of the mutants employed here live at Xavier's School for the Gifted, but not all of them." No matter how long she was back in the states, she still hesitated before saying Xavier's name. It was just so unusual she had to get it right in her precise way of speaking.

"New York in general is frothing at the mouth with x-gene activity, you'll meet many with that in common." She sipped her tea. She didn't mind speaking of these things, but typically she was a bit more reserved and used her words more efficiently. This Jake guy was just easy to talk to and easy to eyeball. "Vega Altair. It is nice to meet you, Jake Townsend." She offered her hand out of routine. Typically her fingers were icy and dry, but they were tea warmed now.

Vega Altair was the name she offered and it was her official name for owning this business and going to school. Aurum had called her Ghost, her most commonly known name among mutants and friends. Very few people actually learned her true name these days. There was just something very private about giving out a name that could lead to unwanted people.

Caylee wove between Ghosts' legs. Until they had found out that the cat was a girl, Ghost had thought it was her cat-master Calley. Sometimes, she still wasn't sure it wasn't him pretending. He was sneaky like that.

Jake smiled warmly as Aurum made his way farther down the bar in an effort to give the pair of them a little more privacy. His ears had barely caught the comment, but the connections it had spawned were clear enough. The linkages stemming from Aurum were good intentioned, interested, and wry in nature, while Ghost's were heavily tinged with worry and concern. Something had been given, and something had been received, but what was impossible to tell. Whatever had happened between the pair of them, it was something complex.

She looks so delicate and vulnerable right now, he considered as she stared into the brewed depths of her orange pekoe and gathered her strength. As she began to speak, he could tell her words were two-sided. On the surface they were practiced and even, a speech given many times he imagined, to many people like himself. Beneath however, something else brewed, her mind focused elsewhere, but the darkened tangle of strands were too difficult to understand as the writhed before him. Something resonated heavily within her as the name Xavier spilled from her lips. That name, of course, was familiar. It was one of the reasons that he had traveled all of the way here. What concerned her so about him?

“New York in general is frothing at the mouth with x-gene activity, you'll meet many with that in common.” she intoned skillfully, and punctuated it with the delicate sipping of her tea. It gave the whole explanation a sense of casual detachment which Jake didn't believe was really there. As the cup came down, he could feel the connections of comfort and something more...primal, brush against him faintly.

Inside of Jake's mind, he had made a decision - one that would normally be questionable to his morality, but one that also escaped him in the throws of the Awe. It was difficult not to utilize its calm and assured sense of control in situations like these. He reset himself slowly, turning even more in her direction to face her as she mentioned her name and extended her hand.

“Vega Altair. It is nice to meet you, Jake Townsend.” She stated simply, offering a false name. Names carried a weight when they were relied upon. Like Ghost, this one was an old friend of hers, but lacked the unyielding weight of a true name; that didn't bother him in the slightest. His focus fell elsewhere. She had offered her hand in a casual gesture of personal connection, but the meaning of physical contact had a power all of its own, especially given those other connections that entwined the pair of him. As their skin touched, those new connections flared to life with the full force of the Awe behind them.

Jake felt a tinge and a shiver run through him as he studied her hand. It felt so small and cool within his, and he held his breath as he shook it delicately and let it fall free. Somewhere, in the depths of his mind, something began to churn uneasily, and a dull throb echoed through his skull. The Limit is coming, his mind whispered. This state was not forever, and time was slipping by. Smiling, he tilted his head slightly as if was truly regarding her with his mortal eyes.

“It's very nice to meet you too, Vega.”

Jake settled himself, stealing a sip of coffee in the moment of silence after his retort. It was time to distance himself from that connection. If it could be pursued, she would approach him, the more calculating part of his mind offered to the whole.

“Are you... one of Xavier's students? Can you tell me anything about the other mutants in New York?” The extended question was a signal of hesitance and mild embarrassment, a sign that he too had detected something there that he did not expect. His alien senses watched coldly as the dull throb of the Awe's Limit made itself known one more in the back of his mind.

She wished that she could see his eyes. With the glasses in the way it was like a painting unfinished, a sonnet with a flimsy end rhyme.

When Jake took Ghost's hand, she could have sworn that she felt the world shift around herself. It wasn't a physical stomach lurch, but it was close. Something important had just happened. And she'd missed it. Ghost didn't believe in love at first sight, but everything she'd read that referred to the phenomenon sounded like this.

She couldn't keep her eyes away for more than a moment and when they had touched... it was an electric thrill so light that she almost wanted to try it again to see if she'd imagined it all to begin with. Instead, Ghost scratched at the back of her head, ruffling the moistened locks of hair in a familiar movement that kept her hands occupied. It also kind of helped her shake off the illusionary heeby-jeeby.

Ghost nudged Caylee with her foot running the toe of her shoe along the jawline of the feline as the animal demanded. Maybe if she was able to pretend that nothing happened, then nothing had happened after all. Jake seemed to be totally fine. She nodded back at Jake's polite answer to her pleasantries and had to clear her throat before continuing her answer session.

"I'm uh-a little old to be a student there." She smiled and her eyes flicked down to the last swirl of tea in her cup. It was an honest mistake. "They only run K through 12 grades, but I do live there. In the girl's hall, actually. And they helped me get set up at NYU. I've been taking classes there, though it's getting hard since I took over the reigns of the Full Circle. In fact, I didn't take a single summer course like I meant to since I needed to catch up from my gap year and the time I spent in the camps...." She blinked. Yeah. That was a lot more information than she'd meant to say. She never told people where she lived right off the bat anymore. She'd met too many scary ones. The fact that Jake made her so very comfortable was actually starting to make her uncomfortable, but it didn't stop the flow of words coming out of her mouth in the least.

"The mutants of New York typically have two persuasions. Human friendly and human hating. The Sanctuary is a homeless shelter for ousted mutants. They used to keep humans, but who knows if they ever left alive. I stayed there once, but most of the people I've met who actually live there are scary. They kill cops on TV and in the future they released an airborne virus that killed millions and even endangered mutant lives. But see, they don't care about the human part. They didn't even seem to care that they were killing quite a few of their own.

The Mansion, on the other hand, is where the X-men meet and train. The teachers there are really trying to bring those gifted kids up right. I am a full fledged X-man and we try to find non-violent ways to end violent things by preserving life and property, kinda like firemen. Not everyone at the Mansion is of the non-violent persuasion and some of them have even killed before, but even if they implanted memories of gun training in my head at TATMAH, I don't think I could ever kill anyone."

Eyes wide and round and wet, she clamped her mouth shut and then clamped one free hand over her mouth. What was she doing!? Spilling her guts to a complete stranger? (Not literally this time, at least, though possibly just as dangerous.) She hadn't ever talked about her dream about the future with anyone. It was sort of assumed since they all went after the Haywire virus that everyone had dreamt something similar. She'd also never talked to anyone besides Sam about the origin of the tattoo on her back and the reason why she came back from an X-mission with a bit of extra gun-safety knowledge. She'd been bottling things up for so long that once he uncorked the top it all came spilling out.

Her muscles were taught like a spring. She could run, yeah, but where could she hide that would be far enough away and still on this earth?

Vega's reaction was startling, even for Jake. For years, he had maintained a controlled distance from those around him, kept his own council, and strove to control himself, but sometimes...he failed. Jake could feel her eyes upon him. He could feel the brackish connections of fear lash outward uncontrollably from her as she clamped that cool and slender hand over her mouth. Disgust surged through Jake. Disgust at his own actions and intentions. Jake's mind reeled for a moment in internal conflict as his sense of self tried to drag itself away from the addictive quality of the Awe.

That manipulative component regarded the woman with a cold and observant air. It had tasted blood in that torrent of words, an opportunity to bite deep and pick her apart, mind and soul. We could make this woman love us, it intoned cruelly. With time and practice and care she could be ours. An extension of our will. A thing to be claimed and used.

This was not what he wanted. He didn't want to treat someone like that. She seemed like a good person. She had taken him in, even if it was only for coffee. She deserved more then that. She was... beautiful. He couldn't LIVE with himself if he did that. For a moment, Jake felt bile rising in his throat along with the anger he felt for himself. Relentlessly he dragged himself out of the Awe's insidious influence and shoved that vile and dark thing into the back of his mind and took hold of himself. It was time to fix this. He hoped he could fix this.

Bitterly, Jake carefully reduced the power coursing through those strands of meaning that had come to entwine the pair of them. As he watched, those heavy cables of light and power dwindled but he knew they would never fade completely. No one ever forgets the touch of the Awe. It would, however, give her choice over how she handled the situation. He would have to explain it to her eventually. She would know something was different, but probably not what.

Choking back the bile as subtly as he could, he gently reached up and slipped off his silvered shades and placed them onto the coffee bar's surface and looked at her as well as he could through his smoky-white eyes. Through his natural senses, he could just make out the faintest outlines of her form staring at him wide-eyed, but he couldn't see those intense orbs. He could barely make out the rough shape of her hair. He blinked, some tears building up in his eyes. Jake didn't open his eyes very often and even the half-muted light of store was enough to disturb them. At least, he hoped it was the light. Gently, he moved his hand to place it on her shoulder in a gesture of....apology.

“I'm sorry....Are you alright?” he said quietly, hoping she wouldn't come to hate him.

She was stretched thin, a rubber band taught and straining. Ghost just didn't know what to do, she was fighting the primal urge to just run and run and run. But running was what had put her in this position in the first place. She'd known that she couldn't keep stuffing it all down forever, she just hadn't realized that she would say everything all at once to a complete stranger.

He seemed to realize the sensitive nature of what she had said and he slowly removed his sun glasses. It was what she had imagined him doing, had hoped he would do. And somehow it wasn't what she wanted now as she looked into the milky color of his eyes. She always felt so... guilty. Like her ability to see was her fault some how.

And foolish. She was feeling very foolish. A hand rested on her shoulder and Ghost jumped as if it had just suddenly appeared there and she had missed its slow and gentle approach. He asked if she was okay and Ghost nodded, the wetness spilling over her lower lids from the motion. "I don't-- I mean-- I didn't mean to burden you. If you'll excuse me..."

She settled her mostly empty cup on the bar and slipped the short distance required to put her feet on the ground. Yes, the ground. She didn't seem to have any problem looking at the carpeted floor rather than his face now. The movement put her closer for just a moment, but her discomfort was short. She turned with a watery smile and slipped back the way she came. Her office door slipped open and she popped into the quiet recess not bothering to close the door behind her. What did privacy matter? She'd told him everything but her social security number.

Was she running away? Maybe. But she would try to talk to someone now... obviously she'd had too much happen in too short a while for her to not talk it out with someone. Ghost went straight to the safe behind the desk and after turning the dial around to the right numbers, she pulled out the offensive cash drawer. She could count it again. That didn't hurt anything and it didn't take all that much brain power either.

Jake watched painfully as Vega made her excuses and slipped away. Inside, he felt all twisted and disjointed. How had he let things get so out of control? How could he have been such an idiot? He could feel the pain beginning to well up within him, tears he had controlled for a long time beginning to run down over his cheeks. Somewhere inside of his mind, something wished for privacy, and he did nothing to contest that wish as his outward connections withered and died. He didn't want Aurum seeing him like this, or anyone else for that matter. Wordlessly, he faded into the background, ignored by everyone around him.

Jake Townsend stayed there for a long time, quiet and lost within himself. Ghost had seemed so troubled, and he had done nothing but churn up the worst of whatever memories that had tortured her, that was clear. He should leave, he knew, but at the same time it felt like a penance to stay and be reminded of his crimes, and so he watched the play of the people all around him. He watched as Aurum made small talk with the singles and couples seated along the bar, cleaning meticulously around Jake's chilled coffee cup.

An hour and a half later, Aurum began shuffling out the last of the customers and he and one of the waitresses begin overturning chairs and placing them on top of the tables while continuing their playful banter until the pair of them left as well and silence fell over the establishment. A final sigh of indignation slipped from Jake as he pulled himself to his feet. He muscles ached from sitting too long, but he simply ignored them.

Turning, he walked over to the office and leaned against the door frame. He looked at Vega as she poured so diligently over her paperwork, and then he began to explain himself from within the shrouding effect of his power, utterly ignored by the world at large. He told her about his multi-year coma and about the agonizing encounter with his sister. He told her about the people he had seen as he had wandered the country and the joy and agony he had learned there. He told her how much of a monster he was and how truly sorry he was for hurting her, even if she never realized what he had done.

Eventually, he ran out of words, and simply watched.