Pinkgothic played:

Dread and Francisco Ahlgren

Hands clasped against the back of the couch in an energetic motion. The soft >tock< of a stray droplet falling from a strand of moist hair onto the fabric of the couch - missing the dry towel draped around Francisco's shoulders to catch its siblings - punctured the silence as well as the near inaubible, subtle creak of the piece of furniture as he leant against it. His left hand's thumb rose, then brushed against the moist spot, as if he had a chance of willing the water back out.

Accepting the inevitability of the dark but temporary spot, the Archon raised his gaze back to the prize, unfettered by the brief distraction, expression rapidly flowering back into a glow. "You're considering citizenship?" His bright tone betrayed a childish glee moreso than even the grin he couldn't quite keep to normal bounds.

Ian looked up from his notebook, a scrawl of practise letters slowing to an awkward halt. "Rebecca is considering citizenship for me," he corrected, softly, his brief glance across at the visitor slowly dipping back down the pages.

The wording made Francisco falter. The glow evaporated. "...what do you mean?" he asked, voice one of parental concern, full of caution.

"I mean that I'm not pursuing the matter," Ian explained, not raising his gaze from the pages, a light tension crawling into his shoulders and holding them fast. "I would hardly make a good Arcan," he concludes, matter-of-factly, tone suggesting he'd rather avoid a discussion.

"...but Rebecca believes-" Francisco began, voice full of confidence for the full six syllables until it sank in what he was basing the espoused opinion on. Not that Rebecca was untrustworthy. He was even sure she was quite capable of correcting for subjective bias. But Gary's file on Ian largely had run on topics that were not observable, hadn't it? "I see." His tone was subdued as he interjected those two words as a new anchor point. It was a lie - he didn't see. As such, the next thing he did was shake his head slightly and forcibly haul himself out of the depths of his thought process. "Actually, I don't see," he remarked, discontent with how there was a slight waver to his voice that easily betrayed his unease of touching on unexplored territory. "Why would you not be a good Arcan?"

For a moment, Ian stared down at the paper with the indifference of a sculpture, tip of his pen hovering atop a blank space. In silence, his lips parted, his gaze still anchored down at the material, then closed around the vanishing tip of his tongue in a slow and silent motion. The pen was flipped, nudged into the fold of the booklet, and the pages closed. Silently, he nudged it aside, then twisted himself to look up and around at Francisco. "I am not deontologically inclined, Francisco," Ian responded minimalistically, bringing his elbows up onto the edge of the couch and folding his hands, the construct arching across the Archon's fingers.

The stare that the philosopher and politican threw back at the psychic was not so much blank as in slow transition, emotions at the moment undecided which unhappy path to grapple with. "I'm sure you could be clearer. The alternatives aren't necessarily incompatible with the Dark Arcadian creed," he found himself saying, rather automatically. But rather than wait for an explanation from Ian, he dug further: "Of course, you're thinking of something far more specific. 'The ends justify the means'. Forgive me my narrow philosophical view, but given your delicate context, I'm not so interested in the ends as the means you're employing." Inhale. Exhale. Dryly: "How many people have you killed?"

"...since we left Reykjavik, only one," Ian informed, honestly, glancing at Francisco, the light bewilderment in his demeanour the product of trying to read body language and a facial expression without touching the mind - quite possible, but still unusual.

The nails of Francisco's left hand nearly punctured the couch. However, if there was rage, it was invisible on the outside. Disappointment blanked his face into a chilling indifference. "All right," Francisco acknowledged the spoken words, wrestling with himself not to ask why as if that mattered. He was sure Ian thought he had a case - and he was equally sure he didn't want to give him the pedestal to espouse it. Calmly: "At what point did you feel that Arcan laws don't apply to you?"

"I am not Arcan. They do not," Ian pointed out.

That prompted a sharp hiss from his conversation partner. "You're a fugitive we've given shelter on good faith," he snarled, eyes narrowing. "You're a fugitive, further, whom I've pried from that prison they held you in because I felt I could vouch for you - 'your violence as a product of your imprisonment', do you remember that?" Despite a carefully constructed, cultured exterior, his rage was more than evident in his tone and the tension that kept him from acting on impulses he might later regret.

"You're not even interested in my motives?" Ian enquired, tone one of dejection as well as fascination, shrinking subtly as whatever inhuman creature lived inherit to his body tried to comprehend what he'd walked into.

"Fuck you, no." That was about as harsh in words as he would go, a starkly evident, jarring rock bottom of someone usually so reserved. "What else have you done?"

A voice tinged with apologetic unease began: "I'm not sure it's prudent to-"

"What else have you done?" Francisco snapped, not letting the psychic wind his way out of that line of thinking, and his right hand finally escaped the deathgrip of his will and grasp Ian's shirt at the collar, twisting in the fabric.

"...I do not believe nightmares fall even under your jurisdiction," Ian floundered, voice soft and deferent despite the content, his hands having unfolded and instead slid to clasp loosely against the shallow wall between them.

"What nightmares are you inflicting on people?" Was there a point to changing the wording of his question? He was still asking the same thing.

"...cathartic ones - sometimes. Ethical simulations most of the time. Very enlightening for all involvees," Ian explained, quietly, clearly still perturbed by the vehemence of the other man's rebuttal, unable to fully form an emotional response of his own. "I- I can show you?"

Francisco's jaw set, right hand having released its prey. Through clenched teeth: "How?"

"I can connect," Ian hesitantly offered, raising his right hand to brush the tip of index and middle finger against Francisco's forehead, the unexpected touch making the Archon reflexively twitch back. "With your mind, I can share memories."

Something rebelled in Francisco's gut, certain it wanted no details. The rational fibre running through his mindscape, however worn thin from the emotive discussion right now, meanwhile was concerned that it might be the only way to forgo the feeble limits of his imagination, running wild with undoubted inaccuries as it currently was. "...fine," he said, perhaps a bit too curtly and venomously even for his own current taste.

Physical contact was, of course, not necessary. Neither was a drawn out indulgance in details. Instead, as Ian's hand dropped back down onto the top of the back of the couch, he delivered a purely functional, short, sharp burst of images to Francisco.

The result was immediate, both in a sharp intake of breath and a lash of one hand striking against Ian's face in a backhand. The responsible fingers curled into a tense fist, shoulders curving, a look of horror cast down at the ground hollowly. "S-sorry." The voice was Francisco's, shivering with an attempt at self-restraint. "That was uncalled for," he forced himself to say, then finally dragging a glare up at Ian's face.

"...it's not real, Francisco," Ian pointed out, cautiously, not bringing up either hand to soothe the stinging skin. "It's all in their imaginations. All in their dreams."

"You-" Francisco began, narrowing his eyes anew. "You're not authorised," he said, voice full of resentment and bitterness. "No one ever gave you the right to do that to people," he said. "No one could give you that right, because no one has that right, themselves."

"But don't you see how that caters to the lowest common denominator?" Ian asked, sincerely, with an innocence that didn't befit him.

"I don't care," Francisco spat in response, patience worn to a meagre stump, no longer caring to engage the ridiculous rhethoric on any level. "It stops. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with you now. You killed someone. You've done unspeakable things to others. And yet, you've only got one life I could conceivably take." Composure battled itself back into his posture. "...it stops. It stops, or I deport you back to Europe, I swear."

"...but you can't prove anything?" Ian queried, still genuinely perplexed.

That prompted a venomous chuckle from Francisco. "I don't have to," he commented, dryly. "You've admitted to these crimes."

"...oh," Ian voiced, quietly sinking down into a sit on his heels on the seat of the couch.

"Yes, 'oh'," Francisco echoed. "As a matter of fact, I don't tolerate your perversion of intellectualism." A pause. "If I wasn't biased I'd take care of your case myself. As it is, it'll have to wait."

The process of Arcan law he could understand - it was a system he had quite a respect for, but he struggled to picture anyone but Francisco as capable of assessing the situation. "...but you are neither victim nor on my side?" Ian offered, trying to be helpful in an almost comically neutral way.

A derisive chuckle wound itself out of Francisco. "No, not a victim of yours," he confirmed, tone deeply sarcastic despite the sincerity of the statement. "But I have life experience that makes distance to the subject difficult indeed." Said, he straightens, detaching from the couch, eyes closed, posture one of uncompromising confidence, bitterness encapsulated in a simple expression of distaste. Slowly, he thaws back out of it, prying his eyes back open and swerving his gaze across at Ian. "I'm sorry for striking you," he said, honestly, but at the same time with a punishing coldness. "I'd like you to know one thing, though: We are no longer friends."

Still confused first and foremost, Ian continued to watch Francisco's transformation back into that professional exterior that was capable of so much love and scorn, and was subject of so much of his admiration. The words dug into his gut, violently severing an anchor he'd established for himself like a prematurely torn umbilical cord. He found it hard to breath, hanging from the thread of social contact that was Rebecca Walsh.

He said nothing.

"Consider yourself human sometime," Francisco offered as advice, tone one of scathing indifference, his emotions well and truly nudged past a point of no return. "Who knows - you might like it."

And with that, he turned away, intent on finding Rebecca to talk her out of her charity toward this misguided man.