Who: Nic and Vex Where: Their backyards on Ludlow St When: Monday evening, July 2nd
Somedays Nic wished he was more busy than he was. He found himself lost in the quiet moments, listening for voices that weren’t there, or waiting for the other shoe to drop. The next shoe. There were always more shoes. Just because the carnival was gone didn’t mean they were safe. That damn carnival. Normally, Nic could handle the weird, but it had messed with his head. And now Jules was in the hospital and the feeling that something big was about to happen was impossible to shake. It made him wish he was better at divination, but psychic magic had never been his strong suit. He’d gone outside to relax, tending to the flowers in the greenhouse before returning to the main house. He was crossing the yard when he spotted Vex and stopped, making his way over to the fence.
“Hey,” Nic called, lifting his hand in greeting. Of all the people to return from the portal world, Nic had found it easiest to reconnect with Vex. It helped that they’d had a relationship to begin with, and that his world might fucking fall apart if he didn’t manage to fix it. The incentive definitely helped. But Nic knew a large part of it was Vex. He hadn’t held a grudge, even though Nic thought he probably deserved it. It made things easy and strengthened their weird little circle. Nic would forever thank him for that. “What are you up to?”
Vex was definitely up to something so it was a very reasonable question. He had moved the patio furniture around, putting a chair in each corner of the yard and was now looping a string around them, marking off a large square in the grassy area. He looked up when Nic called and gave him a toothy grin. "I'm making a safe space," he said and since the weather was nice enough to do this outside, it made more sense than pulling all the furniture out of the living room. "It's a big yard, it'll give me plenty of space to roam while exploring visions. The string keeps me from trampling into flower beds and tripping over tree roots. Or at least that's the idea." He fidgeted with the string in his hands, tilting his head at Nic. "What are you up to?"
Nic was glad that Vex continued to explain further because in his experience a safe space was not made with patio furniture and string. It was either a warded area or a padded room, but now that he knew Vex intended to initiate one of his visions, it made more sense. “I was looking for a distraction and I think I found one,” he said with a little smile. This was the upside to staying where he was. Living next door to Lem and Vex was just about perfect. Lem had space if she wanted it, but he was there if she wanted him. And he enjoyed Vex’s company, as well as Carson’s, when he came around to visit. He doubted he’d have seen him if they hadn’t lived next door. It was all so convenient and he was reluctant to end that. “So how’s it work now? Is it still random? Or can you, like, pick a focus?”
"That's what I'm working on," Vex replied and started moving again to keep tying his string to the chairs. "I can initiate but I can't focus. I'm gonna try to do that, see if I can pick up anything from inside the current headquarters. My visions have always seemed focused on AIR or people very close to me. If there are kids in there it stands to reason I should be able to see them, right?" He stopped, peering at the yard around him before moving the current chair a bit closer to the flower bed with a hum of approval. "If I can't focus, maybe I can rapid fire until I land somewhere important." It would make sense to have Lem there with him, but he didn't want to constantly bombard her with this shit. She was off doing her own thing today and he might not even have the stamina for as many visions as he wanted to get into. If he did, she could join in later when he had - hopefully - gotten into the swing of things. "If you wanna come over and grab a beer then have at it, probably better to have someone around."
“Yeah, sure,” Nic said, happy to take him up on the offer of beer and company. “I’ll grab a drink while you finish getting set up.” He was curious to see what Vex could conjure, aware that something had changed since his return from the portal world. At first he’d worried about it and had watched to make sure there were no other side effects, like sucking Lem’s life force away. He wasn’t sure he could tear them apart again if he wanted to, and knew his relationship with Lem couldn’t take it a second time, but he’d had to be sure. Vex wasn’t the only one to return. But it had been over a month and all seemed well. This new ability of his seemed to be the only thing he’d brought back with him, and for that Nic was grateful. With a drink in hand, he returned to the yard and perched on one of the chairs Vex had used in the border. “You can see people you don’t know, right? But they’ve always been linked to you in some way?”
"Yeah, I've figured out who most of them are," Vex replied, popping open the beer he'd brought out for himself and taking a swig as he surveyed his work. "I saw most of the people we've teamed up with now but there are a few I've seen I still don't know. A kid with pills, a girl with a rifle, some guy at a computer. Maybe I can get a better look if I catch any of them again, now that I can move around in it, you know? I can see what's on the computer, look outside any window that's not covered, maybe catch a name off the mail. Anything at all." What he was really hoping for was seeing someone inside of AIR. Even a small peek into the facility might provide them with some clues on what they were up against and if he didn't just end up in a locked office, he might be able to roam around a little and look around. He was just glad it was a big yard he had even if he hadn't been super thrilled about it before. Mowing the lawn wasn't anyone's favorite pastime and he'd been neglecting it, the grass tall enough that it reached a bit above his ankles. He'd often thought about doing something different with all that space, getting a bunch of rocks, wild flowers, anything other than grass but now he was glad he hadn't gotten around to it.
“Can you see Jules? Or Ethan?” Nic considered them AIR kids at that point, even if they didn’t fit the mold. They hadn’t been tortured, at least as far as he could tell, or kept captive, but he was pretty sure they’d been experimented on. Whatever had happened to Jules was not the least bit normal and it still ate at Nic that he hadn’t been able to do anything to help. It felt like he’d failed on both sides of the equation, leaving the dreamers to fend for themselves and the sending the others into a fog world. They might have saved lives, but they’d broken a lot in the process. “They’re in the hospital. Wilkes apparently saved them himself. Wouldn’t surprise me if they go out to the facility sometimes.” It was unfortunate that they couldn’t just ask Jules, but if she knew even a hint of what they were up to, it would put their plan in danger. Even if she didn’t tell Wilkes, she’d probably tell Ethan, and then he’d probably raise a red flag.
Vex was about to drink when Nic broke the news and he paused for a couple of seconds, quirking a brow in question. "The hospital. Huh. Do you know what for?" This felt like something they should all know, they were trying to get information out of Ethan through Mal and Haisley and Jules Cooper was a potential threat to the group. It certainly seemed like pertinent information to have, especially if it was something that involved the new AIR director. Wilkes just wasn't the kind of doctor who gave people stitches and bandaged them up at the ER and both Jules and Ethan being admitted at the same time might mean this was AIR related. He didn't know if he could see them, but he could try. Just focus on the two institutions, Mercy and AIR.
“We have a contact at the hospital,” Nic reminded Vex. “I called up there last week, when Zan and Reagan had their little body swap thing going on. Asked him to let me know if anything weird happened. I was thinking more along the lines of another mirror maze type incident, but I’m still glad he let me know. He said it was a car accident, but said Wilkes showed up, and… Jules had something else going on. Something… wrong.” He didn’t understand enough to explain it and he wished Toby would have told him more, but knew that Toby was probably breaking the law just telling him Jules and Ethan had been admitted. There was more going on, more Vex probably needed to know, and if he could focus his vision on them, it might be beneficial.
"Well, we're about to ask Toby to break some HIPAA rules," Vex muttered. "See what he can find out." He doubted he'd see much of interest even if he managed to direct his visions to the hospital, it wasn't like he could go look at the paperwork and it wasn't even likely to be in there. Wilkes would no doubt cover it all up if he hadn't already. "How's your sister doing anyway?" he asked, only vaguely aware of all that madness that had been taking place. It was actually starting to feel par for the course for something weird to happen and the quiet weeks in Point Pleasant felt more suspicious than the ones that weren't. Where else would someone call a body swapping incident 'little'? "She all recovered from that mess?"
“It’s just a little law,” Nic said, his lips twisting with amusement. “Only his job on the line.” He was certain it was a big deal to Toby, but seeing as how they were planning to take down AIR completely, it felt small by comparison. Nic didn’t know much about their plan, but he doubted it was legal. “Zan’s okay,” he said, taking a sip of his beer. “She was pissed, but there doesn’t seem to be any lasting effects. And the whole thing was over in less than a day. It could have been worse. The carnival could have left before they fixed it.” He had no idea what they would have done if that was the case, other than try and track it down. Nic had no idea where it had moved on to next and he got the impression that there was no one to even ask. “She burned the mirror maze to the ground, but it was there when I went with Lem, so… it’s probably good that it’s gone.”
"Yeah, that carnival wasn't natural," Vex said with a little chuckle. Maybe it should have horrified him but for some reason it was just delightful. He and Lem had both felt it and yet they'd kept going back, hoping to see more. It was like a supernatural holiday from the supernatural mundane. He also knew this body swap thing probably had happened to the worst people possible, someone else might have had a good time with it, but Reagan and Zania just didn't mix in that way. "I'm gonna miss that place." He closed his eyes, tried to find that tingle that was getting so familiar to him now and kind of wished he could broadcast whatever it was he might see. The more people who could see it the better, just in case he didn't recognize the place or missed an important clue. "I'm focusing on the hospital," he told Nic. "For now. Jules Cooper." He'd seen her before so that might help.
Vex and Lem might miss the carnival, but Nic was glad to see it go. It had fucked with his head in a way he didn’t appreciate or enjoy, and it was enough to keep him from wanting to visit the place again, no matter what the pull. It might not all be as fucked up as the mirror maze, but he could feel the darkness permeating the entire park now that he’d experienced it first hand. It reminded him of Point Pleasant—with a mind of it’s own, determined to wreck havoc when they were least expecting it. He was glad it was gone. “There might not be a lot to see, but… could be a nice test, since you know where she is.” And it would give him a chance to focus on a specific person. If he could see Jules, then maybe he could see Ethan, or even Wilkes.
Vex tried to focus on Jules Cooper, on this new Dr. Wilkes, on this boy Ethan he knew little to nothing about. That wasn't how his visions worked though, not yet at least, and focusing on a person didn't alter anything around him in any way. It wasn't until he stopped thinking about them and focused on the familiar feeling that something started happening. If he had to describe it, he might have picked a sound. A high pitched but quiet hum somewhere deep in his chest. He focused on it and he thought he could feel his surroundings vibrate before the vision came to life. It was neither Jules nor Ethan this time, just a girl he usually referred to as 'the girl with the rifle'. This time there was no rifle in sight. She was sitting on a bed, hunched over and writing what seemed to be a birthday card when Vex got a closer look. It wasn't a big space but it wasn't like furniture got in Vex's way so he moved through the desk in her corner and past the flowers that were hanging all over her room. "Are you Amelia Lucas?" he asked quietly but he knew he was just talking to himself. The only person who had heard him so far was Mal and he had gifts of his own. "How are you connected to us?" He leaned in close enough to read what she was writing, her hand writing a little clumsy but neat. All she'd written so far was 'happy birthday' and seemed to be stuck there, gnawing lightly on her lip as she stared at the small card.
"Well," Vex said, straightening up again and looking at Nic through the haze of flowers and posters. "It's not Jules."
Nic watched Vex, wishing he could tell the moment he stepped into a vision. As an outsider, it looked like he was wandering the yard, talking to himself. Looking down at something that no one else could see but him. He could easily see how someone would think Vex was crazy. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought so himself. He waited, listening closely, picking up on only half of Vex’s mutterings. He suspected that Vex would have more to say if it was Jules he was seeing and was proven right when the vision was over. “It was worth a try,” he said. “Why’d you think it was Amelia Lucas? Is she alive?” He didn’t recall new of them ever finding her, but a missing child was a bigger new story than a found one.
"It's a long story," Vex said dismissively and he was a little frustrated that he couldn't seem to guide his visions to where he wanted them to go. "I need to figure this out, there's a beacon of sorts and I need to hone in on it, but I can't seem to choose where I go. Maybe the vibrations are different, maybe I can manipulate them but it doesn't translate to any language I know. Aroma therapy. Objects. Cognitive bread crumbs." He'd fallen into only speaking part of his thoughts, they were just coming too fast for him to really translate and on an intellectual level he didn't even really understand where he was going with this, leaving it up to instinct. "Do we have something?" he asked Nic, peering over at him as the vision started fading around him. It took him a second to realize he hadn't clarified what he meant but he sussed it out from the puzzled look on Nic's face. "Belonging to Jules?"
Nic didn’t really understand what Vex was going on about, but that wasn’t unusual. Things tended to get weird when he started talking about his visions, but at least this time there was no mention of some god messing about. He waited, listening, but also understanding that he was probably more of a sounding board than anything else. “I don’t have anything of Jules’s, but I could probably get something if you needed it,” Nic said, thinking of the connection between Jules and Phee. He knew they weren’t friends, but he was pretty sure they knew each other. “It might be easier to try someone else, though if you need something from them, like, right this instant, the list could be pretty short.”
"Yeah, short notice," Vex sighed and strolled back to the middle of the yard, his hands on his hips as he peered up at the sky. "How to direct this. I can feel the humming but I don't know if it's different frequencies for different people. Direction..." He turned his back to Nic this time, wondering if maybe facing another way would lead to a different vision but that didn't really make sense. There wasn't much in this direction and none of the people he expected to see were anywhere down that way. Still, his internal compass might work with different rules, he really had no idea how any of this worked. All he could do now was find the wave and ride it and he had to remind himself that this was more than he'd been able to do before to keep from being frustrated. It might be slow progress, but it was progress. "Let's look into getting an item from someone, see if it helps," he said as he picked up on that wave again and let it take him.
“What about Lem? Or Zan?” Nic asked. “They’re not associated with AIR, but we’ve got stuff of theirs sitting around. And we know where they are.” Or where they should be, which was close enough. Nic just wasn’t sure what the parameters were for this little experiment. If Vex could only see people who had been experimented on by AIR, then it was a small group for sure. But that seemed rather arbitrary, since Vex hadn’t known most of them prior to his visions about them. It made him wonder about fate and spiritual connections between people, things that they’d probably never get concrete answers on. The more they learned, the more questions they’d have. “What about Carson? Maybe he left a ball last time he was here?”
"You know, I've never had a vision of Lem," Vex said and maybe it was because they were usually together when he had his visions, but he'd never had one about her before they'd met either. "Or you." Maybe he had, maybe it was one of the visions that mixed into the background, or maybe it was one of the visions lost to the years of medication. "That's probably a good thing," he decided and as he turned around he came face to face with the Pegasus in a way that had him craning his neck to look up at it. There was fire in its eyes and one of its ears was torn, blood dripping from its mouth. It wasn't the pegasus that was bleeding, Vex could tell that right away. The blood was coming from a dead bird it had in its mouth and as soon as Vex saw it, the pegasus dropped it and let it fall to the ground. It stopped mid-air and slowly spun there for Vex to observe the trauma to its chest, the broken wings. It felt like a warning. He thought he could hear Nic say something but it was so far away at the moment. Vex just stood still and stared at the bird until it started fading away and his pegasus turned with a shake of its mane. That seemed to snap him out of it and he looked over at Nic, his expression a bit blank. "You ever feel like your brain is too damn human to comprehend what the cosmics are handing you?"
While it was maybe a good thing that Vex hadn’t had a vision about Lem or himself, Nic still found it perplexing. He would have thought he’d be more likely to have visions about the people closest to him, not ones he didn’t even know. It made him want to understand the link, especially now that Vex knew how to trigger them. “Have you ever had a vision about someone that wasn’t associated with AIR? That you can confirm, I mean.” There was no way for him to know on the ones he couldn’t identify, but he knew Vex had come in contact with a lot of the people in his visions over time. Whatever Vex was looking at seemed to distract him for a moment longer before he turned to Nic, still looking a bit like he was trapped in the vision. “Something like that,” he agreed. “It often feels like there are forces in the universe too big to understand. Too chaotic. And they like Point Pleasant, whatever they are.”
Vex had completely missed the question but Nic's answer to his own seemed to satisfy him and he nodded slowly, his expression somber. "They keep telling me things. Sometimes I understand too late, sometimes not at all." He felt a little sad after seeing the Pegasus; that dead bird couldn't mean anything but bad news and he itched to make sure Lem was okay so he pulled out his phone to text her. Someone is going to die, he thought, but he didn't want to say it out loud. It was very dramatic and he might be wrong so it seemed pointless to make Nic fret too. "We are like fleas on a bear that's rearing up to fight another bear."
“Then maybe we should get off the bear,” Nic said with a little smile. “Not that that’s easy. Not when it feels like we’re right where we’re supposed to be.” The draw to stay in Point Pleasant was as strong for him as it was for everyone else who lived there. He felt it every time he left, and the longer he was gone, the more he wished to return. He used to think it had something to do with the source of his magic, that there was a crack in the foundation there that fed him like few other places did, but he knew it applied to everyone, not just witches. Some were able to get away and put down roots solid enough to keep from returning, but it seemed a difficult thing—hard enough that he thought maybe Point Pleasant had rejected them, not the other way around. “What did you see?” he asked softly.
Vex didn't think he could get off the bear, maybe the planet was the bear or maybe even the galaxy. He'd been away from Point Pleasant for a long time and he'd always had his visions, always felt connected to everything that was happening and now that he knew it was all true it was hard to stay away and just play a passive bystander. "The Pegasus brought me a dead bird," he said in answer to Nic's question. "It doesn't always come this close. I probably could have touched it." And he wondered if he had reached out and tried, would he have felt something? He never tried, never even thought to reach out in the moment and maybe there was a reason for that.
“The pegasus?” Nic asked, though he was sure he’d regret it. There was no way Vex’s answer was going to make sense to him. It was bizarre how sometimes Vex saw things that existed in the real world, while others seemed more like true hallucinations, not the least bit rooted in reality. The pegasus sounded like it might be a reoccurring character, but he couldn’t even begin to decipher what it might mean for it to deliver a dead bird. If it had been a cat, that would have been much more simple. “Have you ever been able to figure out what these things mean? Just curious.”
"Nope," Vex said with a wry chuckle. "Fleas on a bear, remember? Or lice on a mad scientist, who can tell. Either way we're insignificant and we don't speak their language." Most of his visions weren't really visions at all, they were simply things that were happening elsewhere, things that his subconscious deemed worthy of his attention. He didn't even understand all of them either, the only ones that really made sense to him were the ones telling him to stop AIR and then Sarah's death which had brought him and Lem to the right place. "I just try to follow the best I can. Doesn't always take me to good places but I think there's an end goal here." He might not understand any of this until his dying day but he felt sure that while his brain shut down, he'd have a revelation, a last moment of peace and understanding. "I need another drink," he decided and started to head to the border of the arena he'd created. "You want something?"
Nic wondered if the visions would continue after the end goal was reached, whatever that might be. it was another one of those questions they’d probably never have the answer to, but he hoped that wouldn’t be the case. He had the feeling Vex would be beside himself to lose them entirely. They weren’t like magic, but they’d been around so long they made him who he was. “Another beer’d be great,” he said, giving his empty can a little shake. He wasn’t going anywhere for the night, so he might as well settle in and enjoy the evening. They might not get any answers, but sometimes it was the journey that mattered, not the destination.
Vex breathed a bit easier when his phone buzzed with a text from Lem who was fine. He'd be more at ease when she was actually home but his visions weren't really prophetic that he knew of so if she was fine now, his vision wasn't about her. At least he needed to believe that for now. "Lem's on her way back," he told Nic as they headed inside and if the lovebirds didn't have plans, maybe he'd get Lem to sit with him as he tried for another vision. She was his conduit and would only make him stronger. But maybe he was done for the night, the Pegasus had left a somewhat bad taste in his mouth, a faint sense of dread that was hard to shake without a few shots of whiskey.
Nic and Lem rarely had official plans. They showed up at each other’s place almost every day, switching from one bed to the other. Sometimes he wondered where she went when she wasn’t home, but that was none of his business. He wasn’t her keeper and she always shared when he was curious. “She’ll probably be more help than I am,” Nic said as he followed Vex inside. “I could try scrying, but I don’t even know what to ask.” It would’ve been easier if a person had been involved, but a pegasus? Nic had the feeling he’d get nothing but gibberish. A psychic would have a better chance and even then it sounded convoluted.
"It'll all be revealed," Vex replied and he had a feeling that even if he understood, there wasn't anything he could do about it. His role had always been to observe or to clean up the mess afterwards and whatever bad thing was happening had probably happened already. For now there wasn't really anything he could do so having another cold one with Nic and then trying out more visions with Lem was about as much as he could plan to do for now.