2021-12-13 - Pizza and Talk, Time will Tell

15 Oak Avenue is a lovely old two story building in an American Federal style. Symmetrical facade, with six windows, complete with shutters. It looks like an elegant old lady, in need of a little love, but still sturdy and fit enough. Inside, the floors are wooden with a little scuffed polish and rugs thrown over it. Whoever lives here has not bought much furniture and it echoes a little. In the dining room, there is a table, set up as though someone is using it as an office. The kitchen has minimal contents, apart from an expensive coffee machine, and a variety of beans in pots.

Benedict shows up at the appointed hour, with a bottle of wine. The plan: drink wine, order pizza, do a lot of catching up. He's audible before he's visible, roaring the hellcat down the street. But soon enough he's parked and knocking on the door. It's that quick, fast, loud policeman's knock he's developed over the past few years.

She opens the door, apparently slumming it in leggings and a huge sweater. "Hey, am I being raided?" The mockery is light but she steps back to let him in, leading him into the barely furnished house. A sofa at least, and on the kitchen table, a large pizza. "Ordered it already." The same order as before, an assumption made about his choices. "It is mad that you are here, I mean... what are the odds?" She takes the lid off the pizza box and puts a few slices on it, a gesture indicating that the rest is his.

"Thanks." Benedict will just the box itself, since what's left is his. The wine is set down. He's also slumming it, jeans and a t-shirt. His badge and gun are on his belt, since he pretty much always carries off-duty. "Pretty crazy. Although for me it's the other way around. This is home. But what are the odds of you finding your way here?" Now its his turn to mock a little. "I didn't think a big tech coder like yourself would find anything interesting in Gray's Harbor."

"Glass or mug?" The question is amused but she brings glasses to the table, taking the wine and pouring two very full glasses. "Pin in a map. I needed to get away, after Tia... so I set up as a consultant, and I've got enough clients to live anywhere." She leads towards the sofa, curling herself up on the end of it, "I'm much in demand, I'll have you know. Even got work from here." The teasing is replied to, a little bragging in her voice. "I didn't think you wanted to come back. I mean, when you spoke bout family you were more the white sheep..."

"I'm sure you're very much in demand." Benedict smirks, accepting the glass. There's a sigh then. "It's complicated. The Addingtons...we've had a legacy of service. I tried to live up to that. And I figured I'd come back after I retired...there was no way I going to give up that job. But family is family, and I came back when I could. Christmas in particular. But a few years ago, it just got really bad. Every time I came home, it was harder to leave, And the older members of our family started dying, or shutting themselves away. So about two years ago, I came back for good."

She studies his face, taking a swig of her wine, "Always in demand, baby, always." Cocky, delivered with that style of hers, that edge. "Founding families, is it. So what is going on there? I mean, why are they dying?" Pizza. This girl can eat and she does, folding a slice in half and taking a large bite. She lifts a hand, brushing a napkin over her lips, her face thoughtful. "Staying put? Going to get married and have lots of little fat baby Addingtons?" Mocking. Definitely.

"Age, mostly, as far as I know." Benedict muses. "Cycle of things. Older generations moving on. But yes, we founded this place. Gray Harbor is /ours/. And we have to take care of it." He seems to really believe it. Really means it. "Staying put, yes. Get married and have lots of babies? Ha! I doubt it. Air Force sent me all the way around the world, and I never found a girl I cared to spend that long with. Closest it came was this one Welsh girl with bright red hair, when I was stationed out at Lakenheath. You ever heard the Welsh accent? Anyway, point is, I'm not likely to find her here, am I?"

"Aww sweet. Like some sort of family mission." Her grin is quick, a flash across her face, "If I can turn up here, why couldn't she? I mean, just arriving and proposing straight away to you, like a shot out of the blue. Or maybe you wake up married with children after a nap.... Seems like something that might happen in this place." Mocking, both him and the place.

"I'll stick to being single and avoid all of that stuff. None of it. Nope." She lifts the glass, toasting him, "To the single life, less complicated and much easier..."

"I mean, theoretically she could. That'd be ironic, though, since that's what messed the whole thing up in the first place..." Benedict takes a deep pull off the wine, terminating that story. "You're not wrong, about the nap thing. I have to admit, this place if anything has gotten weirder while I was gone. Did you see the newspaper, about the explosion in the park?" He returns the toast. "To the single life, indeed. Get 'em in, get 'em out, on to the next one. It's the way to live."

"Newspaper? You read newspapers now?" The sharp edge of mockery is back, her smile swift to come and go. "No, I didn't but go back to that. What messed the whole thing up in the first place?" She folds another piece of pizza, taking another massive bite and speaking around it, "I came here to get away from the weirdness but..." She shakes her head, the curls bouncing around her face. "Details."

"Well, everyone reads the Gazette. I mean it's not like I can just hop online and get local news, we don't have much of an internet presence." Benedict observes in the casual tone of one who has never considered how weird that is, and isn't about to start now. There's a sigh. "Knew I shouldn't have said anything." More wine. "Fine, I'll spill. I was getting ready to go to my next posting. And I..." He pauses, aware he's never going to live this down. "I proposed to her. It didn't go so well. Turns out she wasn't really into the idea of leaving the UK to take up the travelling life, and she definitely wasn't into the risk of having two men in dress uniforms knock on her door some day. Which, in her defence for getting involved with me, I don't think either of us expected it to ever get that serious until it suddenly was."

Her pizza pauses in midair and she stares at him blankly. "Run that past me again? You can't read the paper online..." The words are spoken slowly, spelling it out for him like he is an idiot. Which he might be... "Aww well... you can't blame her. I mean, waking up every morning to see ..." She waves a hand, indicating him, and giving a sorrowful shake of her head. "It would be too much for any girl." Mockery, definitely, and delivered with sisterly care.

"Well, when you put it like that..." Benedict shrugs. There's a wince then, over-exaggerated. "You wound me. But yeah, you kinda have a point. Anyway, things were never the same after that and pretty shortly afterwards I went on to my next posting. So she definitely dodged a bullet, is what I'm trying to say."

"You and me both!" The smile comes with an edge this time, the hurt from her own relationship past still very raw, very real. "To us, without anyone else, just freedom." She lifts the pizza instead of the glass, a mockery to this toast, a fierce grin on her lips "So, what is your family like here? I heard something about feuds and causing rips in reality...."

"To us." Benedict murmurs, lifting his own pizza in answer. For a moment his hurt is there in his eyes, answering hers. A scar, a souvenir from the UK, that never really healed. And then it's gone. Pushed away. "I don't know about all that. Rips in reality? I mean that's a little bit...fantasy, don't you think?" He sounds like he's trying to convince himself of that, very hard. "Feuds? Definitely. We've had our share of them. But most of them are good people. Just...different ideas about to achieve our goals. There's a long pause. "This is going to sound crazy, but...remember that explosion in the park I mentioned?"

She lowers the pizza slice, staring at him, for a long moment before she speaks, brushing their personal lives aside, "Don't you remember what I did to that man? The burnt meat smell of him?" Her harshly spoken reminder of the incident, where his racist comment had ended so terribly badly for him, with burns that will last for the rest of his life. "The explosion? Yeah?" She stuffs the pizza into her mouth, chewing as she waits for him to fill her in on the details.

"I mean, yes. I remember. I just..." Benedict shakes his head. "For a long time I didn't. Or I tried to convince myself I didn't. I don't know." There's some more wine. "I was there, Tanasha. I saw...things. Elves. What I'd swear was a dinosaur. Someone throwing lightning from their hands. And everyone just acting like it was the most normal thing in the world. So, yes, rips in reality. But I don't think my family was responsible for that one. None of them were even there." Except himself, a fact he conveniently ignores.

She stares at him, the food and wine paused in midair, her eyes widening. Then she swallows and speaks slowly "You were there." The point is made softly, almost gently, "I haven't seen anything like that yet, just the aftermath of some stuff. And my stuff..." She shakes her head, taking a swig of her wine, adding hurriedly, "This is insane, you know that."

Benedict runs a hand through his hair. "Completely insane." He agrees. "But I can't convince myself that's not what I saw. And I feel...different somehow. Unsettled." There's a pause as he searches for how best to describe it. "The way it feels when all the pressure and electricity is built up and the storms about to break, you know? And you're outside and you can just feel it."

"Unsettled." She repeats the word softly and shakes her head slowly, her face thoughtful, "The storm is coming, Ben, and I just... don't know what it is. I feel like I missed something, like I should have seen it, but missed it." Her voice is softer, almost gentle. "God." She rises abruptly, taking her empty pizza box lid to the kitchen, and bringing back the wine.

"God." Benedict echoes thoughtfully. "Now there's something I don't know that we've ever talked about." Apparently tonight is the night for wine and deep conversations. "Do you believe? And if so, what's...He, She, It...what's that like for you?"

She plops back onto the sofa, curling her legs up beneath her, and pouring a large refill into her own glass. She offers it to him, raising her eyebrows, "God? No. Either they'd be too cruel and not care, or doing it deliberately to people and I can't..." She shakes her head, pulling a face. "We have now and when it is over, it is game over." She uses her hand to flash, like a neon sign of a Game Over sign at the end of a video game.

"Game over." Benedict echoes thoughtfully, watching the hand gesture. "Yeah, I can see that point of view." He doesn't necessarily sound like he shares it, but neither does he sound critical or judgmental of her point of view. The offered wine is taken, and his own refill poured. "Hopefully we don't find out for a long time yet, eh?"

"Not unless we run into a dragon..." Her voice is soft and she lifts her glass taking a swig before she comments softly, "Weird things happen here all the time. I mean we're all missing weeks of our life, and it is really odd. Like, even coming back and I went through all my emails like I've been living my life but it was on autopilot." She shakes her head, a swift movement, her hair bobbing. She adds slowly, "There is something weird about that..."

"If I run into a dragon, I hope I'm in a fighter jet at the time. I could take a dragon in the air." Benedict declares with a grin, before it fades. "Yeah, me too. There's something very weird about that. Just....all that time, literally passing in the blink of an eye." There's a pause. "The other thing that's weird about all this stuff is I swear I didn't use to notice, or remember it, this well. It was just something in the background."

"Ravn said there was one but they killed it or something... and then it looks like it might be back." Her grin is brief but she shakes her head, a quick movement, "I've a house I apparently bought but I can't find the paperwork fully, and an email that I use for someone is empty where ..." She shakes her head again, "The emails I exchange with Tia are missing. I don't know if I decided to delete them or something but I don't know."

"I didn't realize you were still talking to her." Benedict says of Tia. "That's weird that all your emails would be gone, though. And the missing house paperwork. It almost sounds like an imperfect autopilot, or a close approximation of autopilot."

"Kinda. Business only." She tilts her head back, drinking the wine, emptying the glass. "I don't share personal things or just anything. Just closing it down." She empties the bottle into her glass, giving him an unrepentant grin. "I'll keep looking at it and see...."

"Probably for the best." Benedict murmurs, in the tone of one who has no interest in forgiving and forgetting. He sips more of his wine, nodding thoughtfully. "We may never know. But maybe you'll figure something out. You at least need to get the paperwork for your house squared away."

She twists, uncurling her legs to nudge his pizza box out of the way to rest her feet in his lap. "I need to get it sorted, it makes me twitch." And he knows it would. Order is important. "I don't want to talk to her ever." The words are softly spoken, the pain too soon, too raw still. "I don't know. Never again, hey? Single forever." She lifts her glass in a toast.

"That's the plan." Benedict agrees with an answering toast. "I learned my lesson. I'm sorry you have to talk to her at all."

She shakes her head, and shoots him a broad grin, "Enough of her. To the future! "