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Who does the Mirror talk to when shit goes bad? Well, Sigrun, first. And Johnnie. Those two got the screaming and cursing and 'fuckfuckfuckfuck'. Later, at least briefly, Sturm. Yes, I'm okay, no, no one's hurt me, no, I don't think they're chasing me.
They popped Nevertread, changed their face twice, passed through the Stable Trod, traced all over the city, changed their face again, went through Downtime, hit the Summer Hollow, changed their face more, and finally ended up sitting in front of the cabin that Direct Action keeps here for 'we need to crash at the Hollow' purposes. It's fucking hot out, so this ... person... is sitting in front of the cabin wearing cut-off skinny jeans turned into shorts and a tank top, already somewhat soaked with sweat. Their feet are bare, and there's a folded pile of charcoal leather and a pair of boots sitting next to them.
This person looks like Sigrun's brother, though. Porcelain-white with silver and sapphire cracks across their body, cut-short blonde hair, on the masc end of androgynous, with sapphire-and-silver eyes. They've got their hands loosely wrapped around the handle of a Hedgespun machete, chin resting on the butt of the handle, blade point dug into the ground. Staring off into the near distance.
Mearc's in the Hollow on Scrivener business. And like, he's been doing his own shifting in appearance, from the pixellation and pointy-toothed maw he's grown to the fact that his hair is swept out of his face with a larger floral hairclip at the back of his head and his nails are painted metallic purple. I mean, he's still wearing cargo shorts and a T-shirt, so it's not like he's gone all-in on something femme, but he seems to be having fun with it.
As he sees the unfamiliar fella at the DA cabin, he watches them for a moment or several, and then approaches. "Y'alright?" Because that seems more important at this exact moment than who this changeling is, exactly.
They stare for a half-second longer, moving on a subtle delay, before they lift their chin from the handle and roll their shoulders with a sort of liquid grace. "Hey, Mearcstapa," they greet; the voice is unfamiliar, too, and being able to see where Teagan's gaze goes, also weird. That sapphire-and-silver attention flickers over the changes to his appearance, and they offer, "It's a good look on you," before anything else. Everyone talks to the mirror, but the Mirror?
They make a vague dismissive gesture with one hand as if sweeping away dust; the flaring of said hand shows an old, deep scar horizontal across their palm. "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh?" Monotone for most of it, rising to a question mark at the very end. "What's up with you?"
It's the scar on the hand that keys him in definitively, before he nods. "Little high, little low. That's an interesting look on you. Blond is sure a thing. It's pretty, don't get me wrong, but my brain's trying to make it make sense for you and coming up with an error message."
His chuckle is warm, as he takes a seat on the ground off a little to one side, out of arm's reach of the machete.
There's a moment's silence, and Teagan blinks, twice. There's more error-message for Mearc -- the ability to see Teagan blink, since so often they don't actually have eyes. "Oh, right." As if they'd just forgotten they weren't wearing their usual face. "I was covering my ass. Mission went totally fucking sideways last night." Frustration leaks out in the Mirrorskin's voice as the silver-and-sapphire cracks in their skin widen, turning mirror-black instead of brilliant silver; their eyes tile themselves over with broken-mirror mosaic fragments, and the blonde of their hair washes through black.
They don't move through the process, save one last blink before their eyes disappear; Teagan turns their broken-mirror gaze toward Mearcstapa more fully, then, reflecting back fragments of him. "Better?"
"More familiar. Better is what's good for you, right now. What happened on the mission? Unless it's not something you're good to share." His voice is low and gentle, and he watches them quietly, his own freckles doing a rasterized ripple to mostly green, only a few glimmers of red pixels remaining.
Considering that for a moment, Teagan rolls their shoulders again. "I just forgot," they answer him, which may or may not be a good thing, forgetting which face you're wearing. A puffed breath, and they drop their chin back onto the handle of the machete, though their head is sort of tilted a little toward Mearcstapa; most people, this look would mean 'looking out of the corners of their eyes.' "I got clocked, I think. Not in a trans way, I mean, fucking look at me, but -- I'm pretty sure I got made, trying to follow up on some of the shit from Robin's phone." The scowl that crosses their face is pretty profound, though brief, a shadow passing across the mirror. "Something was going on, but like, I followed all the wrong clues, I picked up all the wrong shit."
"I'm supposed to be good at that. That's -- like -- " And then they stop, and make a noise, another 'ehhhh,' this one more annoyed than anything.
"You are good at that. But even being good doesn't mean you're never going to run into trouble. I had a job once--Wren and I both, a while back. Security assessment on a local something-or-other. We got in and out and wrote up the report on our findings, and then I decided to get cute and break back in to drop the report off on our client's desk. I got caught on the way back in, mangled my chance to talk my way out of it, and Wren basically had to come rescue me."
He grins, making it clear laughing at his misfortune is okay here.
"And if they managed to get you, they're probably working with more than just mundane capabilities, because you're one of the best around at what you do. So that gives us a possible data point to work with. You want to tell me more about the mission, or are you still trying to grapple with the emotional piece?"
"There's a difference between 'difficulty,' and like... " Teagan makes another noise, the same noise over again. "Beating your head against a wall over and over, and then realizing that someone is watching you beat your head against the wall when the whole point was them never seeing you at all." They turn their head to look straight forward -- or directly forward, anyway, like anything Teagan does is straight? -- resting their chin on the machete handle still.
It would really suck if they slid their hands down from the handle; Baby's blade would cut right into their scars.
They pick their chin up off the machete's butt, and set the blade aside, carefully, on the folded-up leather longcoat that's another essential part of Teaganosity. "There's definitely something not-mundane, yeah. I picked up on that much." Silence. "Ehhhh."
"I can pick at this scab, or I can do something, I guess."
"Or you can do both. But...I remember someone once gave me the advice that emotions are just a thing, like weather. We can't control them, only what we do with them." He smiles slightly. "Either way, Teagan, I'm here to help if I can."(edited)
The Mirrorskin leans back on their hands, absently scuffing one of their feet against the grass. "That person sounds like an insufferable know-it-all twerp," Teagan drolls, ticking their head to the side just so. "Who even talks like that?" They pull in a breath.
"There's some sort of exchange -- money, goods, information, I don't know -- happening at K&M laundry up on Aramingo. There's at least two -- entities -- involved. One passing as a repair guy and the other, I have no idea. Couldn't ever see it. But it got close to me, and it set off Vigilance of Ares, so it was at me. I don't know if it was just intending to distract me, but if it meant to... "
"It succeeded." Their scowl returns, brief and violent.
"Hey, don't talk about my friend like that." The comment is soft and given with raised eyebrows. "Now...I don't know much about Vigilance of Ares. I've never been a Summer or had good reason to study your Contracts. Can you tell me what might set it off, specifically?"
There's the subtlest of flickers that crosses Teagan's face, and it's enough to put them on their back foot such that they don't cut on themself again. Guess who still gets surprised every time someone outside their motley says things like that in reference to them? Wait, what? Friends? Who has those?
"It's a hellaciously useful Contract. Honestly, Summer or no, if I could make everyone learn one fucking Contract, it would be Vigilance of Ares." Teagan stays leaned back on one hand, raising the other and ticking off on their fingers. "It makes you faster, when shit comes to blows, but what's really important is that you just know when there are traps, or ambushes, or someone's about to try to, I dunno, pop out of Light Shy and attack you."
They add, with a wry tilt of their head. "June uses it all the time around our house so I can't tacklehug her."
"You know. Both vampires and mages have something that works like Light-Shy. I've seen the vampire version; been under the influence of the mage version. So not seeing someone sadly doesn't narrow shit down much."
They puff out their cheeks. "I know. And I know that the attack on Lux used something other than our magic because of the fact that it had to be something other than our magic, because Iron." A beat, and they explain, "Glitch told me." Teagan scratches at their mirror-dark cheek with blunted nails. "Or it could be a fucking ghost, or it could be some shit of which we know not."
"Wren has Goblin's Eye, if you think that'd be useful; or she could point you to the merchant at the Market she bought it from. Doesn't help with feeling like we're a little fucked, though, huh?"
He rests an elbow on his knee, chin on his hands. "Lots of possibility space to work with. Did you get anything useful or interesting out of what you saw?"
"I've made it this far avoiding owing goblins shit. Though... " Teagan pauses, scratching their cheek again. "If I were a Chimera for a little bit... " there's a moment in which they just sort of stare off into the near distance, considering. "Shit, that ... I think that would work." Their pull their mouth off to one side, and then focus their attention back on Mearcstapa. "Sorry, uh. I was thinking."
Obviously, Teagan. "No, I felt profoundly fucked, and not in the way that I like, yesterday. And -- I'm not good with my ... mistakes screwing with my people." A puffed breath, and they have to really think about it, like they're slowly peeling layers off of yesterday's mess. "So... "
"There was at least one supernatural thing there. At least. Because I picked up on it, pretty clearly. And like... thinking about it, and how it moved, I think that whatever bumped into me -- it knocked into me in the doorway. I don't know if it was trying to distract me for sure, it might have been using my opening the door to get out unseen. It was not Light Shy, because anything that pings Vigilance will break Light Shy." On that matter, they speak with the authority of vast experience. "And then there's the 'repair guy.'"
"He's definitely involved. I've seen his face, so I can Pursue him. I've seen his truck, his uniform, could easily get his plates. And he's either good or lucky, because I fucking refuse to believe an amateur spotted me."
"If you need any help from the office of the Scrivener, running plates or anything, I am at your disposal. You know me, I'm eager to make myself useful." He offers a crooked little playful salute before his chin rests on his hand again.
A small twitch of the corners of their mouth. "Yeah, thanks. I -- " They pause. "I think that'll be necessary, at some point. Maybe. If he's already skittish, and I don't know if he's -- going to know if I Pursue him or not... "
"Keep me in the loop. I haven't been involved in the Patriarch Tree mess, so I've got time on my hands. Hell, maybe this is what I've been waiting for, something I can be good for."
That little gesture repeats, and they answer, "That is, as the kids say, a mood. I've been feeling fucking useless for months. I've been backing up the people actually doing shit, but... "
"I'm sorry that you've been feeling that way. Is there anything I can do to help with that?" He tilts his head to one side slightly, watching them thoughtfully as he does.
They scratch their cheek again; Teagan has a lot of little idle animations, apparently. When you have to create a visual that people will remember, you cultivate these things. "I dunno," they admit. "It's a little professional feeling like maybe I am the least useful member of Direct Action and a little of this weird sad-bad-old-man feeling watching my partners acquire new partners or get pursued." The Mirrorskin makes a sort of gesture like they're holding an invisible ball between their scarred palms, like they're trying to approximate a thing whose exact size they know not.
Mearc's freckles take on a redder tone at that, and he pauses before giving them words. "Jealousy? That happens sometimes, you know. There's this sort of myth built up that polyamory means all the compersion all the time, but. Feelings don't actually work that way. It's okay to be a little weird on all that--especially given how long all these partners have been yours, your core, your life. Like, complicated feelings make a lot of sense, especially when you're sealing with a sense of insecurity in other areas."
The Mirrorskin's forehead wrinkles up, and they look off thoughtfully across the Freehold hollow, as if they're trying to remember a person they knew a very long time ago but haven't spoken to in years and years. "Oh, I know it's okay, we've had to walk through that with the incorporation of people into the polycule, and also, sometimes, the motley," Teagan answers. It's just, apparently, quite a foreign feeling for the Mirrorskin themself. I mean, sure, France exists, and it's okay that some people are French, I've told people it's okay to be French many times, but I don't know that country. Don't even have a passport. A vague shrug, and they tug on their tank top absently, pulling it away from their stomach. "I just don't live there."
"...you're kinda there now a bit, though, it seems like." This is said as gently as possible.
"Kinda. I think it's more -- " And then Teagan pauses, turning their broken-mirror eyes toward him: pixellated pieces of his own face reflect back to him. "In one case, it's a little 'I'm sorry, who?' because I didn't even know the person, so I didn't see it coming, and in another, it's a little, 'wait, that person was threatened by me before and now they seem to be into my girlfriend, so that's a little weird.' It's easy to be taken off-guard by things when you either don't see them coming or didn't anticipate them. And then you pile in the professional shit and you're left with a sort of 'well, these guys are stuck with me, but no one else wants or needs me.' It's not jealousy, exactly. It's just an uncertain place to stand."
"I mean, I don't want you romantically or sexually, but I'd like to spend more time working with you, because you're one of the most thoughtful and careful people in the Freehold and how you approach situations makes me feel comfortable with the idea of working alongside you, a lot more than a lot of people in town. For whatever that's worth. I like you. I like talking with you. I like bouncing ideas off you. And I haven't reached out because I've been making this--apparently a little pig-headed--assumption that you don't need time with me because you've got this great big motley for spending time with."
There's a pause, and he looks almost guilty. "Also, just so you do see this coming, I might end up flirting properly with Sigrun at some point. I've been giving her a lot of space for other reasons, but. There's an explicit declaration of intent on that so you're not blindsided if it happens someday when I get the courage to something."
Turning to look off toward the main Freehold grounds again, Teagan lets out a big sigh. "Thank you for an illustration exact of why Teagan feels like the Old Man of their motley." They push themselves up to their feet, scooping up their stuff. "I knew that, but thank you for telling me."
"...sorry." Mearc doesn't stand yet, giving Teagan what seems like an uncertain look, his freckles going bright green. "I...didn't want to leave you in the same sense of being blindsided or anything. I'm not sure it'll go anywhere, honestly."
"It will, if you start it. And maybe if you don't. I'm not really okay with 'you can't touch Lux until, oh gosh, I guess I'm okay with Direct Action now because I want to chase Sigrun,' by the way. That's shitty. That's really shitty. And I turned Lux down, repeatedly, because every time they hit on me they weren't in a good emotional place and I didn't want to be part of destabilizing them. So it's not like I even was pursuing them, but ... wow." Teagan pulls in a deep breath through their nose, chest puffing up. "I cannot even express how incredibly unfair that feels to me right now."
"So maybe you should examine that before you get anywhere near my family in a romantic or sexual way, Mearcstapa. Holy shit. I'm actually angry with you, and not just in an 'I'm Summer and that's my default response' way." They hook Baby on to their waist, and step into their boots, zipping up the sides. "I have to go before I say things I'll regret."
"I have examined it. And talked to Lux about it. Because I'm secure in my family now. Okay? I wasn't then, I was afraid and not comfortable and jealous, and that wasn't good, but. Shit, Teagan..."
He huffs, and stands as well. "Fine, do what you've gotta do."
The Mirrorskin's jaw sets, and they sling their heavy leather coat around their shoulders. A moment's impassive staring: the Mirror's careful blankness falls over them like a fog bank rolling in. Distance, and then nothing, because Teagans are like squid, and when distressed, they disappear.
Mearc blinks a few times, then shoulders his bag, shaking his head. "Well, alright then."
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