Context

Who: Doc and Eris
Where: Babylon
When: Late

Returning to a lack of sleep was odd, even if Doc had only punctuated his sleepless nights with a few hours of indulgence. Perhaps it was a return to the town that was the odd factor, signs of life throwing him for a loop after a week of isolation. Or maybe it was Doc himself who was strange, or feeling that way after the day in town. He'd spent it largely quiet and withdrawn, musing on Kurt's departure, on the return of Big Iron, Kayos, Jocelyn, and more. Of course, no matter how long he felt like he could sit in silence and think, there were other matters to tend to. There was a promise to fulfill.

He'd slipped right into Babylon like he came here every day, glancing down the length of the bar and not spotting either Jocelyn or Grayson at work. Both were likely done, given the hour, and that was probably a good thing. In Jocelyn's case, he didn't want the talk they were bound to have to collide with his meeting with Eris, and in Grayson's? Well, Doc liked the werewolf, he didn't want to try and consider how things might shift if all the details of his involvement here were to come to light. So with a quiet word to the last barkeep he encountered to say that he was most likely expected? Doc ascended the stairs, moving to knock lightly on Eris' door.

Eris had been waiting, since Doc entered. Apparently, he wasn't stopping for a drink or anything. So, he was here. "Enter." she called, just loud enough to be heard. She wasn't behind her desk at this point, she was over on the couch, having a drink of wine. "Doc. How good to see you." she said. "How goes your life of bliss with Miss Sunshine?" she asked with a sugary tone, light amused curve to her lips clear.

"Do you just sit around and think these up?" Doc asked evenly, giving the barest nod of greeting, "Or maybe have a list of them in your desk? Wait, no, I hopped into an alternate world where one or all of us actually thought that's what was going to happen." He was a master of deadpan, no smile tugging at his lips as he said all of that. Or maybe he was already annoyed by the state of things and she wasn't helping. "Whatever it is, save your good ones for later. I promised souveniers, I'm delivering," he explained, one hand digging into his coat and lightly tossing over a thick roll of paper that had a definite weight in the middle.

"Aww. Sounds like I hit a nerve. Things already going south?" she asked lightly, catching what he tossed to her. She didn't open it up immediately, though, eyes still up on him. "Sit down, have a drink." she invited, motioning to the bottles against the back wall. If there was something interesting going on, she wanted to know about it. She'd thought the man was in for a rude awakening, and if that had even started happening, she wanted to hear.

"Lady, you don't even know where my nerves are," Doc assured her, waving a hand at the offer of a drink as he moved to sit. "If you must know, things are where they usually are in the first few weeks of dating your employee. My sunny disposition's more from my job." It was half of a lie; there was stress over things with Jocelyn, but just as much stress over events he knew were coming. And Eris definitely wasn't helping. "Why so curious? There a betting pool going around here?"

"No, no betting. If she's spread around her relationship with you that's her own business, I don't really entertain rumors." Eris replied. She'd heard things, but she didn't think there was a ton of anything going on. People had other things to do, really. "And sweetheart, I hardly think that your lack of bliss is just from dating an employee. It's that girl specifically." she said. "She knew you all of a couple of hours and was already deciding she was going to drop her entire life and dedicate it to you. If that isn't a whole bucket full of crazy you just dumped over yourself I don't know what is."

Sighing quietly, Doc settled into the chair with an arm on the rest, leaning into his curled hand thoughtfully. "It's a little wild to try and handle, yes," Doc admitted, "But more because I'm out of practice. Believe it or not, I'm not bragging when I say I used to have some kind of... draw, or talent maybe. For inspiring people, that is, getting them to believe in my course of action." He managed a fleeting smile for that, shaking his head to ward it off. "Hell, a few times? It was quicker, even. Survive the situation you're in and the next thing you know? You've got a new partner."

"It's one thing to inspire people." Eris said. "It's entirely another to start fucking the followers." she finished. "I mean, if that's what you want, that's another thing. Do you require some doe eyed girl to look at you like you're the second coming to get yourself off? You didn't seem it to me, but one never knows, I suppose. Either way, however, that's not a relationship with a very high survivability rating. It's an even higher step up from going for a broken girl with daddy issues."

Was she trying to push his buttons? Probably, but Doc would give a little leeway for the chance that Eris was just speaking her mind as bluntly as possible. "One? They're not followers, none of them. They're the people who can get the job done, I just needed to find them. And two, and this is just me? Because I know how different each of us can be," Doc mused, tapping out his cigarettes and tucking one in his lips, "But i've seen some shit. I don't doubt that you have too, it's part of who we are and how we master our gifts. But I hit a point where I understood a lot of the world outside, why it is the way it is. And I realized I didn't know dick about the people in it. So I'm learning, making mistakes, trying to fix them. And I don't know if I'm going to ruin her life or not, but it's better to try than to hide. We're a lonely breed, Eris, maybe that's why there's so few of us left."

"You just said that you inspire people to follow your causes. That's followers, whether you want to put that blunt a label on it or not." Eris said first, taking a sip of her wine. "I'm sure it offends your sensibilities and all, but that's just what it is. You've got some higher calling, or whatever it is you want to refer to it as, and you sign people up for the job. That's either employees or followers, and since I doubt they're getting paid and filling out tax information, we're looking at the latter." She paused a moment longer, watching him for a moment. "I think there are few of us left because no one understands anything anymore. The world is a confusing place." she said. "And lonely or not...let me ask you something, and it isn't even something that I require an answer to, it's just something that you should think about yourself." she said. "When you start out a relationship with the girl in question in a position of total hero worship, automatically beneath you with the status of working for you...where exactly do you think that has room to go?"

Doc smiled faintly, lighting up unbidden as he considered that. "Either way," he answered, "I think it's a tough trek to go upwards, but it's possible. I know when I was young, I looked at my teacher and saw a man who had no limits. And I get that it's a very different situation, I wasn't sleeping with him, but the principle is the same. Jocelyn has potential, Eris, she has lineage and training in her favor. She's got a need to prove herself, even if she doesn't directly say so. And no insult intended, but I don't think you would've blinked at the thought of doing nothing with it and just letting her spend her years servicing your clients."

He took a deep drag, exhaling slowly before going on. "Now, the odds are better that she's going to end up hating me, that I won't be able to be what she wants. Even if I've told her my work comes first, I can see she has a hard time accepting it. But even in the worst scenario? She learns that everyone is fallible. For any hope I have for the world and the people in it, that's what matters to me. The hard lessons, the ones that never stop hurting. They'll either break her or make her stronger, and that's key to me."

"Adding sex into the mix always changes everything." Eris said. "Tell yourself that the principal stands all you want, they are different things. I get what you're saying, but you're fooling yourself. And even if your point about it being possible is right? It's always going to have stemmed from that. And whether or not Jocelyn has potential, which she does, that doesn't mean she's a stable enough person to reach it. In fact she's proven herself to be fairly spectacularly unstable, which in my experience only breeds tragedy. And you don't really want to go breeding tragedy with a girl as good with black magic as she is." She also paused, drinking more wine. "And if you think that the worst scenario is she learns...then we're back to me thinking you're painfully naive." she told him, setting her glass down. "If they break her, that girl could have one of the biggest meltdowns this town has seen. And maybe you're not concerned about what she could do to you...but you might want to consider what she'd do to everyone else. The people around her, the people you care about. You've certainly heard the saying. Hell hath no fury..."

"Heard it? I've seen it in action," Doc mused, smirking for a moment. "But by now, I've set the stage. All I can do is risk the damage or stay the course and hope to correct it. Tragedy happens with or without me, there's no naivety in that. There is room for regrets, and I'm sure I'll have them in time, maybe I'll even need to put a stop to her." Which was a somber thought, but Doc had been forced to confront it in the past. He couldn't flinch from it now. "You got to ask me one, my turn," he warned thoughtfully, "Don't you get tired of this? The cynical filter on everything? I mean, I get it, you run a house of hedonism. You're bound to see plenty of the darker side. But... what you are, what you can do. Do you even remember how good it can feel? Or do you just stay in here and forget?"

"The question is how much damage is she going to do before you decide in your utmost wisdom that she needs to be stopped." Eris said. "Something tells me you're the kind of man who would let it go on far too long, then regret it later. And we're talking the kind of regrets that haunt you. Mistakes that can't ever really be put right, and all from a situation that you created in the first place." she mused, even if her tone wasn't pointed at the moment. "Also, dear, surely you realize that people don't actually learn from things. Most people come out of something they consider a bad relationship bitter and jaded, never seeing what they might have done to cause the downfall. it changes in their mind, they make the other person the bad guy and that's how people live with themselves. So honestly? She isn't going to learn anything, no matter how it turns out. All it's really going to do in the end is break her and make her even more jaded than she was to begin with." She picked up her wine glass again to consider his question. "First of all, you don't get it. My place of business has hardly been the educator on humanity's darker side, and I find it surprising that you would even consider that. This?" she said, making a vague guesture to the room. "This is nothing. This is the tame, mild stuff. This is just people drowning feelings in physicality, because they can't deal with them. Or rubbing at psychological wounds because they just can't stop picking at it, and I can provide them with just the right tools to stab themselves as deeply as they wish to. This is lonely people who can't connect with others taking it out on someone because they're getting paid to do it." She swirled the wine in her glass. "As for recalling how good it can feel...you're assuming that being able to do what you can I are capable of felt good to me. That for some reason, my experience is the same as your own, that I would have gotten the same things out of it as you have. As a personal observation, sweetie--you do that far too much. Seems you make wild assumptions on everyone's behalf, and while I'm sure a good lot of the time you're correct...I'm willing to bet there are a few vastly important cases where you aren't. And you won't know it til it's far too late, because you...you think you're better than that. You're a bit puffed up on your own power, even if you aren't arch about it. It's still there, quite clearly, if you're not being viewed through sparkly doe eyes. Maybe you've just spent your time with a few too many people who view you as some epic hero...it's gone to your head."

Quiet for a long moment, Doc weighed what she'd said. There was substance there, but there were doubts too, tripfalls he couldn't let himself hit. Right or wrong, there had to be belief in him and what he was doing. "Personal observation of my own? It's not power, with me. It's hope, it's faith, and even if I let things I've seen go to my head? It's humility. You said it yourself, that there'd be no chance of a lesson learned, just damage done. And that is arrogant like I haven't seen in decades, Eris. Thinking you can know anyone's core like that when your only insight on them is a contract?"

He didn't finish, instead sucking down his last drag of his cigarette, tapping the ash into his palm, and snuffing the embers with a thought and a curl of will. "I think if there was never an awe or wonder in you about the scope of your power, then we're different creatures entirely. But whatever you've seen? No matter how right you might be about the depth of sorrow and ugliness people can reach? I'm not wrong. You're not either, mind you. But believing you have things right in some cases doesn't mean that I'm going to stop knowing there's peace in chaos, that anyone can have something good in the storm. Good and bad are abstracts, we've all got both, I just get the impression that the two of us focus on different sides."

"You think the only insight I have into a girl who's been living here for months is a contract?" Eris asked mildly. She shook her head. "You really do view yourself as far above, don't you? The truth is, you know nothing about me. You don't know where I've come from, where I've been, how I work, or what kinds of tabs I keep on people. Do you really believe I could even sustain a place like this--abilities aside, of course--if I didn't know human nature well? If I didn't put in the effort to take care of the people under my own roof? I do, you know. I take very good care of people." And that was the truth. It was one of the main things that people found out, and found out fast, working for Eris. She took care of her employees, and she gave people chances. Like that little pushover of an ascended demon. Or any number of other people who were breezing through and needed a place to work or stay. She might not collect people in the same manner Doc did, but that didn't mean she didn't have her own people she provided for. "I think wonder and awe aren't mutually exclusive or synonomous with 'good'." Eris continued. "And if you've got anything left you can learn, it should be that. Take something broad--belief in god. Faiths even believing in the same one, following the same traditions have a vastly different reaction. Some feel loved, cared for by the deity, like they're being tended to and looked after. Others see the same things and feel watched and paranoid, just waiting for the wrath to come down when they put a foot wrong. The same thing, but different feelings attached. love versus fear. So, you can't really say that just because I haven't had the same 'oh how good this feels' reaction as you that we're different creatures. Or that it's wrong of me to not have. And I know people are capable of surprising you. That there is capacity for learning and thought, but I think you've got to look at the personalities you're dealing with, and make an educated assessment. Otherwise you're just setting them and yourself up for more pain, and possibly worse. But if that's what you call faith...be my guest. We're all entitled to our own opinions." she said. She drank a little more wine before she set her glass down. "By the way 'no you're arrogant' was fairly chidlish of you." she added in an offhand manner, pausing to open her gift finally.

"You make enough assumptions about me based on part of the picture that it was warranted," Doc said flatly, tucking his smokes away, "And frankly, that's fine. We're not friends or even colleagues, we have a business arrangement. Others like us who I do consider friends don't see eye to eye with me, that's the one similarity we all have. None of us is alike. So what I feel blessed for, of anything in my life, is the dynamism of what we're capable of. You take no joy from its' existence, I do, it's just a difference in us. Like you said, it's different threads of belief. But I'm not here to debate, enjoy the gift." He started to rise, nodding curtly to Eris. "As we agreed, I'll send word if there's anything worth sharing happening in town." Standing tall, Doc made no move to leave immediately, intent on her initial reaction as she untied the roll of paper. Once the twine came free, the paper curled back loosely, revealing a blank page wrapped around a wide, flat spearhead that was aged and worn but still looked sharp, and between the blank page and an outer layer sat a third bit of parchment, yellowed with age, cracked at the edges, and covered in flowing penmanship.

He knew the words there, had actually been read them several times in his childhood. 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting, too. If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or see the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it. And which is more, you'll be a man, my son.' I always loved Kipling, Doc mused.

"...you think they're assumptions? Honey, you really are a little on the slow side, aren't you." Eris tsked, shaking her head. "What I do is read between the lines. You say more than you think you do. You give yourself away. You just don't happen to like it, and then get all sullen about it." she said, looking her gift over. "Perhaps it's time you spent more time with people who aren't just going to verbally service you. Seems to have erroded your ability to maintain any kind of rappor with anyone who doesn't." she said. She read the words and there was a light little smile on her lips as she did so. Looking up, she let her gaze settle on his. "Thank you for the gift." she said. She always enjoyed seeing what people would give. She had a place in this office for what he'd given her, on her desk. She'd display both, the spearhead and the snatch of poetry. "I like it."

"If I got sullen or couldn't deal with you, we wouldn't meet," Doc clarified, "I'm making a point to leave room in my life for surprises, try it if you haven't. It's interesting." Tugging his coat shut slightly over his pistol, Doc gave a slight nod at her approval, moving around his chair and resting a hand on the back. "I thought you would, you strike me as the sort who doesn't need context to enjoy a gift. Take care, Eris," he said, ready to leave but giving her a patient look in case there was more that they needed to touch on.

"You as well." Eris said, waving at him slightly, a girlish gesture done on purpose with a wiggle of her fingers. "You have a good night." Then she looked back to her gift, turning it over in her hands as a show that he'd been dismissed.

He moved for the door without another word, thoughtful as he slipped out and started downstairs. The context was what Doc took away from it all, the glimpse of where time led people, but he had a hunch that Eris would glean her own insights from both gifts. She doubtlessly had methods of determining where the spearhead had come from, after all. And if he thought about it long enough? That had been his goal, an unspoken chance to do what she said he should do; letting her reach her own conclusion instead of throwing his own experience out as if it was the only logical close. She's got a point, Doc thought as he moved downstairs, But so do I. Different points. Different people. Good enough, old man.