Lydia had fallen asleep.. their talk over. Erin couldn't write.. she couldn't sleep... The night wasn't that old, and she had been tired, but the talk, the emotions it dragged up; they haunted her. Could she kill if she had to? Would she be okay with it? She wouldn't let Lydia die.. and part of her knew that if she killed Kat to stop it from happening Lydia may never forgive her. Or she may never recover from the change of being a killer. Erin hadn't noticed that she was changing until she was already dressed. A simple black tee pulled over a white skirt. Her colors, if she had any. She grabbed her purse, and was through the door before she could stop herself. Lydia would be fine... Kat not a threat now that they were going to have the meeting. The inn was silent, still. It was strange to see it empty. The light ominous in the silence of night. The front door clicking open and closed almost silently as she left. Feet moving before thoughts.

The streets were deserted. Erin knew it was stupid to be walking alone. But it was the only way to keep herself from hurting herself. Throwing things, or taking a too hot shower. She needed a distraction from her mind. The air was cold, it bit at her face. It was nice before the rain started... searing cold drops of wet slamming down on her. It was then she realized where she had gone. Gideon's. She stood outside his building, looking up at it in awe. Was it intentional, her trip this far? Had she meant to come all this way? With a long sigh she pulled open his building door. Whether or not she had meant it, she was here now.. the rain and her mood pushing her forward. She was at his door now. A light tapping before she got the nerve to actually knock. He wasn't there... how could he be there? It was a Friday..

Gideon had been lounging by his fireplace in little more than black cotton pajama pants. He was enjoying the heat of the false flames as he poured through some mindless book. The noise caused him to rise from the chair he's been slumped in and pace to the door, drawing it open slowly. His expression registering suprise at seeing Erin there. She was drenched; literally dripping on the floor in his hall. Her eyes were red and a little puffy, mascara, eye-shadow and lipstick smeared from rain and tears. Her bottom lip was slightly bloody from her chewing on it and her hands were clasped together in front of her, one squeezing the other. She was just empty.. a statue of a person. Gideon drew the door entirely open and stepped aside for her; she moved past him. Erin stopped about half way into the room and turned slowly to face him, still silent.

Gideon shut the door behind her her; he took a moment to look her over as she turned to face him, taking her all in. Silently, he put his arm around her and drew her with him into the enormous room that made up both living, dining and kitchen rooms of his suite. He settled her on a stool against the bar that partitioned the kitchen off from the general living area and stepped into the kitchen to fill up the kettle from the tap and set it upon the stove. He had no food in the place save the tea and biscuts she'd gifted him and both came in handy now as he set out two mugs and put teabags in both of them. He made no move to ask what she was doing there - instinct told him enough to know that she would speak when she was ready, and english sensibility told him to put the kettle on. The water set to boil, he strode to the fire place and picked up a soft cashmere throw. As he returned, he draped it over Erin's shoulders, his hands lingering on her arms as he bent to cloak her in it. She pulled it around herself; her body shuddering just a little as cold clothes touched her skin. Erin's fingers grasped the fabric, pulling it tightly over her shoulders. After a long moment spend watching the steam rise from the kettle, slowly twirling in its own dance, she opened her mouth then let it close again. Her hand went up to wipe mascara from her cheek.

"I couldn't be alone." Her voice was a raspy whisper. Perhaps the first time she had spoken in hours. The crying and screaming she had done on the way over there damaging its usual bell-like quality. Nothing else escaped her. She wasn't ready yet... not sure how she had gotten there and not hating that she had.

"Then you don't have to be." He replied simply, quietly. The steam rose from the kettle, rose and rose until it pushed with enough for that the kettle whistled sharply in protest. He stepped back behind the bar of the kitchen island to take it from the heat and pour generous amounts of the steaming water into both cups with their tea bags. He set one mug before Erin and kept the other one in his and as he stood by the stove, his free hand braced on the hard black marble of the countertop, every muscle of his body in perfect pale white contrast in the dim light. He watched Erin's face impassively as the steam coiled upwards from the mug in his hand like a ghost. "What's happened, pidgeon?" Erin watched her mug. She dipped her head to blow on it, steam rising into her face. A drop of water fell into the cup as she did and it caused her to hook a piece of hair behind her ear. She was thinking, bottom lip put back in her mouth, assaulted once again. She was enjoying the pain of it. The twinge and taste of copper. Before lifting her cup to her lips she closed her eyes for a few moments. If he hadn't known her better, it may have appeared she was sleeping. They opened again slowly. She took a sip and the mug placed back on the bar before she raised her eyes to look at him, resting on his pale blues.

"Nothing happened... I just.. I don't know..." Her voice was barely a whisper. She was confused and upset and felt alone. She wasn't sure what to do, who to trust. Her feet had brought her here, and she still couldn't vocalize.. put it into words. "I'm afraid." The second she said it she knew she would have to say of what. He would ask... but she was making him ask. It was something that wasn't just going to come from her. She couldn't' admit it on her own yet. Gideon set his mug on the counter untouched, and leaned on the cold marble with both hands.

"What of, Erin? Did someone threaten you again? Has someone hurt you?" Erin shook her head. It was nothing like that, not even close. This was all her. All worry and fear and something not said. She had a feeling he may understand..

"Of myself." Erin's whisper was barely audible, an outlet of air that happened to hold words. She met his eyes and held his gaze. A small smile graced his lips at that and his frame relaxed somewhat as he gazed past her toward the midnight skyline of the bleak, small city, all asleep under the veil of darkness

"That is something to be afraid of." His words rang in her head. She agreed. It was always obvious that he saw her as something more dangerous than she saw herself. Out to hurt him, or spite him, having less than good intentions... she was finally agreeing with him.

"I'm afraid that...something inside me will snap.. and I'll loose myself. Or, hurt myself.. or someone else and..." Erin took a deep breath, a cigarette drawn out and lit automatically, without thinking or asking. A shaky hand raised the tea for another sip. It tasted like home and that hurt too. She flinched, barely, before putting it on the counter in front of her. "...I feel this darkness, and I dont' want it to take over..." Gideon's brow clouded for a moment. The taste of the dark gift he'd given her had been so small - and yet it could have effected her this way...but it shouldn't have. He came round the counter and sank down on the stool beside her, facing the opposite direction, his hands draped loosely in his lap

"We all....feel this way from time to time, Erin..." She nodded a small nod. These feelings were a ghost before this week, but they had grown. Had it been him or the brushes with death? It was hard to say. She lifted the tea once more, taking another sip.

"I may have to kill someone... and.. I don't know if I can." Erin shook her head violently. "No, I know I can... I don't know what will happen if I do." A door she had pondered, even pined to go through. But now... it was too tempting to be good. Gideon's brow darkened. When he'd met her she'd been shy, withdrawn and sweetly innocent with just the smallest bite of insousance to her. She'd changed dramatically since then, and not all for the better. He watched her unrelentingly, his icy gaze unmerciful

"We can all kill, Erin. It's in our power to do anything we choose to do. Of course you can kill whomever it is you choose. The real problem lies in the fact that if you do - then it changes you, forever. You'll never be yourself again." He wasn't saying anything new to her. Not yet. What was unclear was whether she wanted the change or to avoid it. Yes, a good person would say that she should shy away from the power and lure of death... but what was really good here? And what changes would make her stronger?

"I know that..." Erin's voice a very quiet whisper. Therein lied the problem. She fidgeted in her seat and ran a hand through her wet hair. "If I don't... I'll loose a best friend, a sister." She met his gaze, hers equally unrelenting. Why was she here?

"You will...or you are afraid you will? It seems a strange trade that, pidgeon." He commented quietly, holding her beautiful eyes with his own. She was sure she would. Sure this would come to a one or the other and somehow land on her shoulders. Perhaps it was vanity, perhaps cynicism. But there it was.

"If I have to kill this person, it's becuase she's going to kill Lyds.. you saw that.. " He was there when this all started, she remembered now. Her eyes willing him to remember.

"Why you, Erin? Why not Lydia herself? It is after all, her fight...if it is her life." He canted his head a bit. "You are always so eager to go leaping in to fight other people's battles for them when you run so quickly from your own." The truth stung. Burned. He was always right about her, could see into her. It was infuriating. It fueled the love/hate dichotomy he seemed to embody.

"She would rather die than kill her cousin." That was todays new bombshell. She shoudnlt' be telling him all this, he shouldn't know... but would he tell anyone? Probably not. And she just had to tell someone.. a friend.. Was he a friend? That was a thought for another time.

"Then she's made her choice. Do you think if that was the decision Lydia has reached that she would even look at you if you were the one who took her cousin's life?" Gideon leveled a sharp gaze at Erin. "If your friend would forfit her life for that of her own cousin and yet condone another takeing that same life that she would give the ultimate sacrafice for then she is not as pure a soul as she claims to be." She nodded slowly. He was making sense, but she still had a little fight in her. Erin could not live with herself if she let Lydia day. She would give up their relationship knowing that Lydia would live. She just watched him. Silent, unmoving, eyes boreing into his. Erin leaned forward, just a touch, letting her eyes fall closed. But it stopped there. And she was frozen in that pose. Half leaned in, eyes closed, like an unplugged mechanical doll.

Gideon's brows knit together as he wondered for a moment if she were drunk again - but in the end it didn't matter. He reached out a hand and cupped the side of her face, drawing her close until her head nestled against his bare shoulder, his skin as hard and chill as the marble around them, but skin no less. Fingertips caressed the curve of her cheek as he pressed a cursory kiss in the locks of her dark hair. He wouldn't stop her from doing what she set her mind to, but he wouldn't support her either. All he offered was his own strange comfort and comraderie. Part of him hated her still with a bitterness that ran deep as bone, but another part just as equally still burned for her and all the odd anger and jealousies she stirred so easily in him. Erin let out air, a small gasp. She needed the contact. She slid closer on the stool, arms reaching out for him. One found his face and the other his side. She was sober. Perhaps moreso than would have been advisable. Things seemed better where she was... she knew she would regret this in the morning. Would hate herself for caving, but at this moment he was the only one that understood her, that would take her seriously. A slow rub of her cheek against his shoulder, depositing tears there as a few more fell. He drew a slow, deep breath as she nestled close, and let his cheek rest against the soft nest of her hair, his cold eyes watching the lights flickering in the dark through the enormous windows. "Stay the night." It somewhere in the abyss between question and demand.

Erin just nodded. Staying in the warmth there. It didn't matter anymore... any of it. He could tell her to jump from the window at this point and she would. She needed to be told what to do, to be controlled. Her mind too scary to even begin to explore. Gideon slid one arm round her back and the other under the bend of her knees, lifting her easily as he rose, cradling her against himself. He moved for the bedroom that silent perfect tomb of darkness with its enormous, comfortable bed strewn with silken soft sheets and down comfortors. In the darkness he laid her down upon the pillows and sank down at the foot of the bed to draw her shoes off before the shift of the matress told her that he laid beside her and his arms gathered her in close as his body curled round her frame. He held her in the dark, loosely but carefully, offering her what she'd come for without question. His cool breath stirred the soft hairs behind her ear.

Erin was wet and cold.. and he was warm around her. She cooed, a strange sound for her. A push back into him, wanting to melt into flesh.. to dissapear. His breath made her shiver, both with anticipation and fear. Her knees came up so that she was a small ball tucked against him, fitting his body. She had lost weight, lost spirit.

"Thank you..." Erin's voice barely more than a whisper. He had taken her in, without question.. despite everything. Another little salvation. Gideon's smooth hands drew her damp shirt off of her, and returned once more to undo the zipper of her skirt, pushing it down off her hips and letting her wriggle free before the sweet warmth of a down comofrter was pulled up over her chilled body. He drew up his own legs until his body fitted hers perfectly, solid and strong. Lips brushed the nape of her neck for an instant before they were gone, and one arm draped evenly across her frame, long fingers splayed over her belly. Erin thought it was perfect. The moment, the night. Why couldnt' they work like this? Compliment each other and help each other. Why did it have to be so difficult? She let her breathing slow. A hand coming to cover the one on her stomach, the other coming up under her head as an extra pillow. So much in her head, so many questions. She ran through them before her mouth opened to speak.

"Tomorrow, will you pretend this never happened?" More whispering. She settled for an obvious. A poke at their game. That tomorrow, as she left him sleeping there, this moment would melt away, and the cold teasing would return.

"Tomorrow is it's own day." He replied with his usual half-teasing crypticness. No matter what he owned to and what he chose to ignore or pretend, at the end of the day Gideon knew the score in his own mind and soul. It never mattered what others knew or thought they knew - the truth was truth. What he gave her tonight couldn't be taken away, no matter what the morrow brought with it. A long hiss of air as she let out the breath she didn't know she was holding. She studied the wall in the dark. Imagining it there in front of her. The chasteness of these nights, two of them now, infuriating and refreshing at once. She wouldn't fight him anymore, just let him be what he was, and enjoy their strange friendship, if that's what it was. A small shift to rest her weight on him.

" I dont' want to fight anymore." Erin spoke at the wall. A statement. No questioning in it. Gideon shifted beside her, the fingers covering her stomach stroking softly for a moment as his breath washed down the bared skin of her neck as he whispered his reply.

"...Then don't." His breath... the whisper... another shiver went through her. A nod of her head. Slight as not to hurt him. Everything was so simple to him.. or it seemed on the outside. There was no choice but acceptance.


((This was adapted from real play with Gideon's player. All credit is dual. So, you know, give it where it's due. It takes place right after the Sisterly Love posts and that is November 3))