33 Apocalypse Avenue, Tuesday Midday

[bitten_notshy]

Jack had gone to check the board listing off the missing early that morning, and wished he hadn't. Dinah was gone now too -- her and George and Nina and an unfathomable list of others. It seemed impossible that the person who had explained the situation to him had been swallowed by it mere days later.

It made him realize he had others to check on back at home.

Cautiously, he pulled out his phone and dialed his roommate back in London. (It was a sad state of affairs when he'd be happy to talk with Kevin about his latest workout routine or who said what on which chat show the night before, but there it was.) No response, not even a beep, just dead expectant air.

He tried his adviser at college then. His friend Alistair. The Detective Inspector's Office within the London Police. The pizza shop down the road from his flat. It didn't matter; none of those calls were getting anywhere, and (when he checked it) his emails from home had gone suspiciously silent.

And then he gave up, closed his eyes, and rested his head on Ronan's kitchen table. They'd get through this. He knew that. He was just running very low on hope, and he'd never expected to be the last of his world.

[OOC: Open for phone calls or those staying there!]

Comments

[icecoldfrost]

Once Emma had gotten into the house yesterday, she'd taken an hour-long shower and then tumbled right into bed to sleep like the dead. It had been a very mentally and physically exhausting trip.

When she finally woke around midday, it was down to the kitchen to see about feeding her caffeine addiction, possibly with a side-helping of pie. Emma was rather sure she'd seen pie in the fridge at some point.

Jack got a mild mental nudge as she walked in, but Emma made a beeline for the coffee pot. Sorry, people, she's not quite verbal yet.

[bitten_notshy]

"Hi," Jack said, barely raising his head from his elbow. "I have a call I need you to make when you can talk again."

He tried his hardest to smile at Emma as he said it -- he was legitimately glad to see she'd gotten in safely -- but the effort was beyond him.

[icecoldfrost]

"Mmmm," she replied noncommittally, and raised an eyebrow at him while she pulled down a second cup in case he needed some too. Verbalization wasn't exactly on her agenda for today, but she had a sinking suspicion that this was going to be Something Necessary.

This time the brush was a bit lighter in touch and inquisitive in nature; and offer to talk about it - what ever it was - if he needed to, while she scrounged up breakfast. Lunch? Brunch-ish dinner.

[bitten_notshy]

Jack sighed, still barely lifting his head. "Either my phone's gone funny or my world is gone. I want someone else to try a call so I'm certain it's not just me."

[icecoldfrost]

Shit.

<<Phone's charging,>> she answered, casting him a concerned look as the coffee started to drip. Finally. <<Ran out of juice just before I got here, but I'll try once I get some liquid in me.>> Hopefully all the damage to it from Mexico was cosmetic and not mechanical.

[bitten_notshy]

"Okay."

And for a moment it looked as though that was all Jack was going to say. Then, eventually:

<<It hurts so damn much. All of it. Did you hear about Dinah, too?>>

[icecoldfrost]

<<No.>> Emma shook her head. <<Nothing's really disappearing at home, unless you count Christie, and I can't prove anything there. Same with the food carts and some of the street people I know; no one counts the transient population.>>

....it wasn't hers to share that Alex's siblings were missing, but she was becoming more and more convinced that it was connected to everything else. <<We don't have buildings or countries just...gone. Not like everyone else.>>

Not yet, anyway.

[bitten_notshy]

Jack turned his head enough to stare at her, narrowed his eyes.

"Then you're just the bloody lucky one, aren't you? Take heart: Maybe it'll pick off the other Frosts first."

He didn't mean it. He knew he didn't mean it. He'd had a hot streak of anger running through him since Sebastien went, and Emma was the most convenient victim.

[icecoldfrost]

The mug was out of her hands and hurling at his head before the last words were cold on his lips.

"Shut. Up." She hissed, voice still a bit strained from all the arguing and negotiating she'd done over the last week just to get this far. "You do not get to speak to me like that, and you do not get to say such things about my family. Not even you."

"I have been dropped on the moon and back, shot at, and lost in Mexico. I am still trying to wrap my mind around everything that's been going on everywhere because it is just too fucking big to process on my own in a few hours. I can't even begin to comprehend it because I'm still in fucking shock from from seeing that board in the first place."

She didn't care if he meant it or not; Emma was not going to stand there and be an easy target for his rage. He was just lucky she hadn't poured the coffee yet.

[bitten_notshy]

Jack managed to duck an instant before the mug would have crashed into his skull, and swore a blue streak before he could say anything else.

"That could have seriously hurt me, do you realize?" he asked angrily. "I may have deserved the rest of it, fine, but say it without trying to give me another concussion."

A beat. "Did the bullet hit you?"

[icecoldfrost]

"'May have' deserved it? We're staying with a wizard medic," Emma snapped back. "You'd live."

Assuming she stopped with one mug and didn't go for the second one.

"Not anything that made me go 'I just got shot,' but I stopped by the clinic on my way in so Ronan could check and make sure I didn't have any wounds that were worse than they looked."

[bitten_notshy]

"Ronan's already giving us a place to stay. It shouldn't be his problem if we can't go ten minutes without inflicting violence on each other," Jack bitched back at her, though his ire was lessening. "I'm ... glad you didn't get shot. Much."

Why did he want to laugh at the sheer absurdity of having to say that?

[icecoldfrost]

"If you can't go ten minutes with inciting violence by being an ass, I'll find somewhere else to stay," she retorted. "Yes, thank you, I'm very glad I didn't get shot much either."

"Apparently handsome mariachi players are hazardous to your health, so I didn't bring him back with me."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack stared at her for another moment, then stood. "I don't have the energy for this. I'll be in my room, staying out of your way for now."

As if it wasn't his fault to start with.

[icecoldfrost]

Seriously? "As if it isn't your fault to start with," she said, throwing up her hands. "What, Jack, off to take your anger about Sebastien out on someone else who won't fight back?"

[bitten_notshy]

"I was going to try to translate a few reports of mysterious disappearances in medieval times from the German, but now that you mention it, that sounds like an excellent idea," Jack answered, without missing a beat.

He paused in the doorway. "And thank you. For saying his name. Though I'm angry about the rest of it being gone, too."

[icecoldfrost]

"If I could say his name three times and click my heels and bring him back, I would," Emma replied, some of the anger leeching out of her voice but still hurt. "I'm not happy about any of this either, you idiot. They're my classmates too, if not my world."

[bitten_notshy]

"I know they're your classmates too," Jack said, more quietly. "And I didn't think you were happy. Your world's still mostly there, but that's chance, is all. It might have been mine."

But it wasn't.

[icecoldfrost]

"That's just it, isn't it," she pointed out. "It started slow for everyone else, too, small things you couldn't prove to anyone else. How much longer does my world have, then? Because I know I'm right, even if no one there believes me. So, what, then? It's okay because it's still there now?"

Jack, better than almost anyone else, most likely knew how well Emma dealt with being helpless.

[bitten_notshy]

"My world had more than a full month from the first thing I noticed to -- whatever this is today," Jack said. "But no, it's not okay. Nothing will make it okay until we fix it. And we will. I promise."

[icecoldfrost]

Coffee. There was coffee. The entire reason she'd left the comforting cocoon of her blankets in the first place. Emma grabbed the second mug and filled it, ignoring the now-broken one she'd flung at Jack. "Don't make promises you may not be able to keep, Mr. Priest," she said coolly.

"Do you have any idea how delicate, how complex the human mind is? Everything is interconnected; to try and remove all the memories of, say, Sebastien from people's minds without damaging other memories that person touches, to make it smooth with no gaps or holes or sense of loss, takes power. Takes detail and finesse, and whatever it is has managed to do this with billions of people and places simultaneously."

"I can do it to one person at a time, maybe even a half-dozen. But removing entire continents and history from the collective subconscious memory of a planet would take a god." Perhaps the collective power of those telepaths held captive that Jono had mentioned could manage it, but Emma refused to even consider such an option.

"We will do what we can, and more, because we are who we are and we do not let people just take what is ours without a fight. But make me no promises and tell me no lies."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack silently went to get a broom and dustpan to clean up the shattered mug.

No promises, no lies: He respected it, but he wasn't sure what else he had to offer.

Better to do some housework.

At some length, he finally managed: "You're right, of course. I've been reading enough the last few days to know you're right about all of it. But saying we'll do what we can sounds like we've given up already."

[icecoldfrost]

"Don't be maudlin, darling." Exhausted, emotionally and physically drained, and it didn't matter; she shot him an arch look over her shoulder that was pure Emma - fearless, superior, stubborn, and utterly confident in her own abilites. "I fully intend to take back what's mine, on my terms."

"We're going to figure out how to change the rules, and then game is ours."

[bitten_notshy]

"Mmmm." Jack didn't see how that was different from what he'd said to start with, other than that she'd done better at avoiding cliches, but it hardly seemed worth having another argument. He was sure in Emma's head it was absolutely different.

Maybe it was in some way he couldn't puzzle out just now.

He dumped the mug remnants into the dustbin.

"When you look like that, I'm not sure a God would stand a chance against you."

When all else failed, flattery was generally the safest route with Emma; besides, it was true.

[icecoldfrost]

"I heard that last bit," she informed him crankily as she sat down. "So you think you can charm your way into my good graces by extolling my virtues?"

...not that she was opposed to that, mind you.

[bitten_notshy]

"If the main alternative is biting each other's heads off until Ronan kicks us both out -- yes, very much so," Jack said sunnily.

It was a fake sunniness, but he was good at that.

"Does it really bother you?"

[icecoldfrost]

"Only if you don't manage to live up to your own expectations," Emma quipped back. "Seeing you sulk is always a mood killer."

[bitten_notshy]

"I can't promise not to sulk, but I can promise it won't be because I'm not living up to my own expectations," Jack said softly. "Mostly because I'm not sure what my expectations of myself just now should be."

[icecoldfrost]

Emma sighed and rubbed at her eyes with one hand. "Jack, you aren't going to solve the crisis overnight," she said gently. "You're brilliant, darling, and trained by a detective with centuries of experience, but that doesn't make you responsible for fixing everything."

[bitten_notshy]

"No, but it does mean if there's some -- intelligence behind this, I should be in a good spot to ferret it out," Jack said. "The trouble is that I can't see any. It's just cruel."

[icecoldfrost]

"Random, too," she pointed out. "Or at least it seems that way to me."

[bitten_notshy]

"If we could see the whole pattern, it might not seem random," Jack said. "We're guessing based on a handful of puzzle pieces, and we don't even know how large the jigsaw is."

[icecoldfrost]

"It's probably one of those three-dimensional puzzles where all the pieces are varying shades of blue or something," Emma replied helpfully. "Which makes it difficult, but not impossible."