(no subject)

[hebeimmortalized]

Sometimes, Jillie really hates this place. It feels cramped, and crowded, and claustrophobic. She's started going for runs, sometimes with Jack, sometimes alone. Either way, she feels like she's running from something. When she's alone, it's worse. It feels like something is pressing in around her, and she runs harder, but it doesn't stop.

Those are the times she panics. She can't fight off the wave and she stumbles to a stop. Jack's not here to breathe her through it. She's alone, and the war in her brain is loud and unrelenting. Everything is too close, too fast. Her breath is harsh in her throat, making her tongue feel heavy and thick in her mouth.

Her legs and fingers feel numb. She knows, rationally, somewhere buried in her mind, what's happening. She knows it's a panic attack and that she needs to start her breathing exercises. But that's all knowledge buried deep beneath the frenetic surface.

She drops to her knees and then her ass. Her fingers clutch hard at her thighs, trying to find any sensation that could be grounding. She'll have bruises later, but that's still deeper knowledge.

She doesn't know how long it takes. When it does finally pass, her throat hurts, and she realizes distantly that she's been screaming. There are a few people standing around, watching her to make sure she's okay. She's too exhausted to care whether they're judging her or not, so instead she just sort of waves them off.

The leg she's been sitting on is half asleep, and takes a moment for the pins and needles to back off once she's got proper blood flow back into it. Once she's standing, she pulls out her phone and texts Jack to let him know what happened.

Panic! At the Park. Ok just tired coming home now hate everything.

She stares at that text after it's sent, then sends, Not you tho.

Her leg is still pins and needles, but she just wants to go home. She limps the first few steps until the feeling goes away.

She really needs to stop going for runs by herself.

Comments

[arrowofthegod]

He's always had a good eye for faces. He sees her, sees Jillie, obviously out of breath and limping and there's a part of him that can't ignore someone in need, even if he suspects that she'd rather not be seen like this. He's used to the strength in women, between Jenny and Shari and Kim.

"Hi," he says. "Jillie." His hands are shoved deep into the pockets of the coat he bought from the thrift store she took him to.

[hebeimmortalized]

She stops and sighs. She hates this fucking city so much.

"Paul," she says. His name is easy to remember because the alternative is 'Pwyll' and that doesn't fly. Her voice is a little huskier than normal, from the scream she doesn't remember voicing.

She pushes her hair back from her face, and realizes it's sweaty, and she's sweaty, and for the second time in a week she's run into this ridiculously hot guy while looking like a slob.

"Um, hey."

[arrowofthegod]

"Are you okay?" he asks, his voice pitched low; he can hear the echoes in it, wonders if she can. He can feel the thunder in his blood, even standing here in the middle of a park that's a million worlds away from Fionavar. He tilts his head, somewhat drier than he had been the first time he'd met her. "Do you need me to walk you somewhere?"

[hebeimmortalized]

"I'm fine," she says, too quickly. She lifts her arm up, away from him, drawing it close as if he'd even reached for it, and fidgets with her hair again. God, he probably saw the whole fucking thing, her meltdown in the park, and he's being really nice and Jillie wants to bash her own face in with a rock.

[arrowofthegod]

"I don't doubt it," says Paul, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth for a moment before it's gone. "Honestly, you'd be doing me a favour. I have no idea where anything is."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Right, of course," she says. Because of course, now he wants to spend time with her while she looks like shit. Because this city fucking sucks. She forces a smile and takes a deep breath. "Where d'you need to go?"

[arrowofthegod]

"Nowhere in particular. Just trying to get the lay of the land." He glances over his shoulder. "If you'd rather I left you alone, I can, but you're one of only about three people I know by name."

[hebeimmortalized]

She closes her eyes for a few heartbeats, then sighs and shakes her head. "No, it's fine. I'm being bitchy." She waves him off, then takes a breath. "I'm awful at this, though. I get lost, like, eighty percent of the time." She just has a hard time with landmarks.

[arrowofthegod]

"I think the best way to learn somewhere new is to walk it, anyway," he says. "You can point out anything that's interesting."

[hebeimmortalized]

She nods. "Right," she says. "Okay. Well, I assume you know where your apartment is from here. This is the park. Fucking everything happens here." Sometimes it seems like an X Files hub, or something else nerdy. Jack probably has theories.

"Um, there's this killer mansion that has parties all the time, but it's . . ." She waves vaguely towards what she's pretty sure is west. "Over there, somewhere." She's tempted to pull out her phone, show him pictures of her dressed up for those parties, if only to prove that she's not always a slob.

[arrowofthegod]

"I am pretty sure I could find my way home from here," says Paul, tucking his hair back out of his face. "Mansion. Parties." That wouldn't even have been his scene before Rachel died; the feasts in Fionavar when he'd made it back from the Summer Tree had been dizzying.

[hebeimmortalized]

"Mm, this guy rents it out," she says. "It looks different every time I'm there. He's gotta be fucking loaded." She doesn't have her cigarettes, and she wishes she did. She fiddles with her hair again. "But they're pretty amazing, actually."

[arrowofthegod]

"I'll have to hope another one happens soon, then," he says. "I knew someone in Fionavar who threw parties with the best of them. He almost made a sport of it."

[hebeimmortalized]

"I know I'm going to regret asking this," she says, "but what's Fionavar?"

[arrowofthegod]

"First among worlds," says Paul, with the tone of someone reciting what he's been told. "The weaver sat at his loom and what he made first is Fionavar. What happens there is echoed in all of the others." He shrugs. "Or so they say." He smiles. "I was born in Toronto."

[hebeimmortalized]

She takes a deep breath, sort of quickly. "Yep," she says. "I regret asking." She forces a smile. "Okay, Toronto I can do. How'd you like it there?"

[arrowofthegod]

Paul's realising that Jillie prefers if he keeps thinks simple. So he won't try and explain Fionavar to her, won't tell her anything about Loren Silvercloak or the Godwood.

"I like it as much as anyone likes the place where they grew up," he says. "I was studying. I'd have probably stayed after I graduated."

[hebeimmortalized]

"School is better," she says. School is better than Toronto because she's been to school, but she hasn't been to Toronto and she definitely hasn't been to the first among fucking worlds. "I can do school. What were you studying?"

[arrowofthegod]

"School. University of Toronto. I was majoring in History. Junior year." He glances across at her. "Mostly military history."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Sounds . . . actually, really interesting," she says. She sounds surprised. "What's that, like, the evo— ev—" Fuck. She feels her face flush, breathes sharply through her nose and enunciates, "Ev-o-lu-tion of the military in general, or the way specific armies worked in history, or?"

[arrowofthegod]

"Mostly twentieth century, so....Great War, second world war. Mostly Canadian actions." He smiles. "The way war works, I suppose."

And then he'd ended up in a country on the verge of war. But he won't tell Jillie that, right now.

[hebeimmortalized]

"So, not the literal military, but military shit," she says. "Even cooler." She smiles. She looks around, to see where they are, and points out a cafe. "There are cats in there," she says. "Like, actual, real, live cats. You just drink your coffee and there are cats everywhere." It's kind of badass.

[arrowofthegod]

"That sounds..." Paul's not sure what he thinks about that many cats in one place. He doesn't dislike cats, not actively, he just...hasn't spent a lot of time around them. "Coffee. Sounds good."

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie can't help it: she grins up at him. "Not a cat guy, huh? Me neither. My brother's boyfriend has one, but we're . . . tolerant of each other? More than anything."

[arrowofthegod]

"Just not overly familiar with cats," he says, smiling. "Your brother's boyfriend? Your brother is here."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Yeah, he was here first," she says. "He actually came from, like, way before he should have, though. He doesn't remember anything that I remember. It's fucked up."

[arrowofthegod]

"It....sounds it. But still, it must be a comfort to have him." Paul thinks, with an ache, of Kevin and Kim, Jenny...even Dave Martinyuk.

[hebeimmortalized]

"It is," she says. "It really, really is." She nods at the cafe. "Want to go in, grab some coffee?"

[arrowofthegod]

"With all of the cats?" asks Paul, one eyebrow raised quizzically before he nods, the smallest smile on his lips. "Come on. I'm feeling adventurous."

[hebeimmortalized]

She smiles back, sort of wanting to see his grin, now, and leads the way over to Un Chat Gris.

[arrowofthegod]

Paul falls into step with her, ducking into the cafe. It's warm - for the cats' comfort, he supposes - so he immediately shrugs out of his coat.

"What would you like?" he asks. "I'm buying."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Oh, no, no, you don't— you don't need to do that," she says. She reaches, haltingly, for his arm before stopping and hugging herself instead. "That's nice, but. Really."

[arrowofthegod]

He notices that touch, notice how she calls it off before she does it. He shakes his head.

"No," he says. "No obligation. But I'd like to, all the same."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Okay," she says reluctantly. She nods, hugging herself a bit tighter before she exhales. "Coffee's on you, then. I'll have a Chai."

[arrowofthegod]

He orders Jillie a chai, a filter coffee for himself. He glances around. "Are you hungry? I think I'm going to get cake."

[hebeimmortalized]

"I'll go for a coffee cake," she says. If he's gonna buy, she's gonna enjoy it.

There's a nice little nook with some cats sprawled out on the cushions, but Jillie walks over and gently nudges one aside so they can sit once they've gotten their orders.

[arrowofthegod]

Paul orders coffee cake for Jillie and, after a moment's thought, the same for himself. Once everything's ready and assembled on a tray, he carries it over to her and sets it down.

"Voila."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Awesome," she declares. She takes her Chai and her cake and gently pushes her palm against the face of a nosy cat who wants in on the goodness of her beverage. The cat pushes back and purrs loudly, undeterred, and Jillie rolls her eyes.

"If you were a dog, you'd would just back off and lay down," she points out to it.

[arrowofthegod]

"Dogs do make more sense," he says and thinks, with a pang, of the dog in the wood, the one that had protected him from Galadan, faithful and proud and old beyond reckoning. He takes a sip of his coffee.