Participants:
| Scene Title | Unfinished Business |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Vanguard, in the guise of a vengeful water spirit, sends for Dr. Aleksandr Kozlow one last time. |
| Date | December 10, 2009 |
Ryazan, Russia — Outside Ryazan Ironworks
Flowers are a terrible way to memorialize someone. They wilt, they wither, they die — in the bitter Russian winter, no bouquet placed on Faina Mezentseva's memorial lasts more than a few hours before ice forms on the stems and frost is gathering on its rumpled petals. Sasha hasn't brought any today. He stands at the cross with his gloved hands in his pockets, the collar of his coat pulled up over his face, a woolen scarf tucked under his chin to protect his throat from the breeze that ripples through the trees outside the foundry. It's only a few hours after daybreak, which means the sky is still relatively clear if not pristine, and the spider webs in the branches that flank either side of the road are glistening with silver moisture, dewdrops like fat little pearls that wink cheerlessly whenever the light its them right.
The foundry itself is quiet. It could be that Zhukovsky has given his employees the day off, though this seems unlikely with what Team Charlie knows about the Russian work ethic.
Abigail stands to the side, enough space to be proper between her and Kozlow. Head bow'd as well and a prayer slipping away silent on her lips. To be expected by the Feeb who came with her and Kozlow and the Italian who rustles and rattles around in her head and taking up space there. Space she gladly make room for with regards to his incorporeal needs. Her gloved hands in her parka, off white cotton toque pulled down and scarf twined around her neck. Boots and jeans, the brunette is silent, leaving the vigilance up to the two others with her in their respective forms.
She's making good on the promise to take him so that he can ask Faina what to do. Consult the dead woman. Not so strange where she comes from. She did give most of the credit for her ability when she had it, straight up to god. She's also got one of the handguns in her messenger bag so that she's making good on her second promise to Caliban which was to bring it with her. Point and shoot, make sure the safety is off. It's frankly there to make others happy, with very little intention to use it. Whether the Ferryman can actually help him is a different matter, but she's going to try her best.
That's okay. Felix is there, Felix has a handgun, and Felix has the training, the experience, and the will to use it. Not that he longs to start putting bullets into his countrymen, but there's no use pretending he won't if it's necessary, either. He does not have his head bowed in silent prayer - he's watching the woods and the fence around them, keenly. He's in gray coat, wolf-fur hat, quite obviously playing bodyguard.
Ghost had long since become accustomed to the foibles of his ability: more specifically, the annoyance of riding in the head of someone with somewhat different interests than his own, and ergo, the tendency to look at what he might otherwise regard as the 'wrong thing.'
Fortunately, he'd also cultivated patience, appreciation for those with differing interests than his own, and his resulting hybrid-Teo wasn't about to start demanding Abigail crane her head this way or that and behave like a cartoon giraffe with ADHD and some horrific entangling accident coming right up. He is content to look at the snow, the study Kozlow's back, and watch her peripheral vision for hints of what the foundry and the healer would prefer not to betray.
It must take remarkable strength of will to bring flowers, never mind oneself, to the workplace of the man who killed the person you were going to marry. Just saying: I'd know. Teo plans to hold his peace after saying as much; he just feels like he has to say as much, before he discards the plaguing recollections of one Jesse Alexander Knight he used to know.
Eventually, Sasha removes one glove from his pocket and rubs his hand over the back of his neck where his hair meets his nape. There's not much for Felix to see except for a few crows perched in the pines, their glossy black feathers ruffled against the cold much like the fur trim on the hat he wears on his head. Back in New York, their presence might give him some cause from concern, but the only bird whisperer he knows is thousands of miles away in a different hemisphere. Sometimes corvids are just corvids.
"I will take what help you can offer me," he says, finally, angling a glance sidelong at the brunette standing beside him. "I do not know if that is what she would want, but it is what I want."
"Sometimes, it's better what the living want, as opposed to what the dead would want. But sometimes, the memory is just as good" Abigail looks over at Sasha, half listening to the man who's in her mind and what he has to say. She also lets her gaze linger around the woods and foundry around them as a concession to him. She knows his Paranoiatm and he has rubbed some of it off on her. Not as much as he's probably like. "I made a call last night. I haven't gotten an answer yet, but I'm hoping that they might know where to take you. If not, I have someone else I can ask the help of. The gentleman who was with me yesterday. He might. Either way, I'll do my best"
Abigail glances over her shoulder to Felix raised brow as if to ask how it's going before she looks back to the foundry. "You said it's not used for it's purpose anymore?" A critical eye for what's going on beyond the gate no matter how silent before she looks over to Kozlow again and making sure he's okay. Need me to do anything special? That's for her passenger.
There may be not animating intelligence behind those avian brains. But he hates them nonetheless - one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told. Fel's distracted by their gaze, baring his teeth at them in unthinking threat - it's the perimeter he's worried about, only half-attending to the conversation going on beside him.
Not from here. I can go invade some privacy in a few seconds. It's hard to tell whether it's uncertainty tinging the voice in Abigail's head, or if that's merely the normal register of Teodoro's dwindled psychic prowess.
Not entirely unlike the ravens that have borrowed the Russians' attention, he sidles to and fro in the bough that constitutes Abby's mind, squints through her eyes at the next likeliest landing spot, flaring his wings once to check. Not much of a glider, really. It's odd, in retrospect, that he finds being here that much creepier than a graveyard. If I go and come back, it might take me a few minutes before you can hear me again. I'll have input but no output. But Felix should have you covered.
The morning is clear and cold, unremarkable in this place and season — but of a sudden, the atmosphere seems to grow teeth, bitter chill striking bone-deep no matter how many layers of clothing are worn.
"«Well, well, what have we here?»"
The voice comes from behind them, in the clear space where no one stood mere heartbeats ago; a woman of slightly above-average height, dressed in eminently impractical diaphanous white. Very little of the woman herself is visible save the upper half of her face, skin as pale as the fabric drawn across it, loose hair seeming somehow more so. Her eyes, wan though their color also is, have a distinctly reddish cast; it goes well with the dark, malevolent inflection of her words. She looks only at Sasha.
"«We have unfinished business, healer.»"
Go. I'll be here when you need to piggy back again. The birds are eye'd as well, thoughts of Eileen filtering. Thoughts of Pila as well. "I need to call Kat to see how Pila is" Not tow moments after saying that out loud, she shuts her mouth quickly. She said that out loud. Crap. Smart Abby.
She turns to look at Felix again before there's someone speaking Russian and Abigail spins around fully to regard the vision. Is she real? Can you get in her head? That should be a way to see if it's one of Zhukovsky's visions. "She's not real Dr. Kozlow" A glance around to see if there's anyone else visible before Abigail's striding forward, dipping down long enough to scoop up a handful of snow and throw it at the vision. Not real.
As Sasha turns, kicking up loose gravel and snow under his boots, he raises an arm in defense — not to shield himself, but to shield Abigail. Felix is the one with the pistol; all he can do is place his body between the brunette's and the thin wisp of a woman in white. His hand goes to her arm, too late, and seizes it by the wrist an instant after she lets loose the handful of snow. "Wait!"
Fel's got his conjuror's swiftness again, courtesy of Deckard and Francois, both of them together. Though it's not a bunch of flowers he produces, but rather that blocky, blued automatic pistol in his right hand. Bizarrely, with his left, he makes an awkward gesture, describing some variant of the sign of the cross. Of all the times for him to remember the covert religious instruction his grandmother gave him - he doesn't even seem to realize he's doing it. "Rusalka," he says, in a hiss.
The spectral bird in Abby's head packs himself down, a quaking of movement scissoring briefly through his pinions. Teo's attention shifts off Kozlow and onto the weird white— Rusalka, studying the immaculate details of her translucencies and her lithe figure through the panes of Abigail's eyes, Kozlow a protective silhouette blurred before him, Felix a wrinkle of hyperspeed movement in his peripheral. Back soon, he answers.
He'll try to be, anyway.
There's no comparable sensation to the feel of Teodoro's astral projection alighting one's mind. Not quite like doffing a hat or a glove, expelling a breath of spiced smoke nor quite like the sinewy knot of tension from a preoccupying thought finally assenting to unravel in the muscles of one's neck, but comparable to all three. One moment, Teo's there. The next, he's gone.
Splat.
The ball of snow makes a lovely splotch of blue-white on the woman's shoulder — for a grand total of two seconds. Then it deforms, leached of solidity to become a slightly gray patch of fabric — and soon, no different at all from the rest of her dress, liquid seemingly absorbed by the water spirit. She lifts her chin, eyes hooding momentarily in apparent contentment.
The rusalka moves forward, a suggestion of steps beneath flowing garments; hard to say if she actually walks, or if what carries her forward is the memory of walking. She raises her arms, long sleeves sliding back from hands extended towards Sasha; dripping hands, a diminishing thread of water trailing down from her angled palms.
"«Come to me, healer,»" the spirit pleads. "«Help me. Set me free. I will do the same for you.»"
Well. That's not right. "Kozlow… Is that what you saw?" Her hand on his arm, she's tugging him backwards, away from the draped vision. "Felix! How are you supposed to stop a Rusalka?" Since he called it that. "Or is that one of Zhukovsky's party tricks?!" How fast can ghosts run? Move? She'll find out, not letting go of Kozlow, fingers dug into his jacket and yanking back as much as she can.
Sasha does not put up much resistance against Abigail's pulling. His booted feet crackle in the loose gravel, bits of frozen rock crunched beneath his weight as he staggers backwards, kicking over Faina's cross and spraying flaccid petals across the snow. "«Your cross»," he chokes out in between haggard breaths that fog the air around his nose and mouth with water vapour. Whether it's one of Zhukovsky's tricks or not, his face has gone sheet white, one hand groping at the air for balance, the other still wound tightly around Abigail's wrist. Does he realize he's lapsed back into Russian in his terror? "«Use your cross!»"
"Go, Abigail, go," Felix urges. "And if you're wearing your cross, take it out." He has acquired one from somewhere - a crucifix, in fact, stylized and austere, of cast silver, hastily tugged out of the collar of his shirt. Perhaps a replacement for the medal that Teo now wears. His gaze darts here and there, as if in search of Zhukovsky….but nonetheless, he interposes himself between the healers and the apparent 'spirit'. "«Go, Doctor,»" he adds, with a calm that has to be feigned.
Snow static, and the picture pixellates into view slowly as Teo hangs onto the squeaking, twisting antennae by his psychic fingernails, his psychic legs dangling precariously off the edge of a roof that he isn't entirely sure exists. Where is he? Where— who— it takes him an instant's bump of self-congratulatory revelation before he realizes he actually made it; he jumped into a rusalka. He's in— the mind— body? —of a homicidal Russian mermaid.
Jesus.
Russian and English clutter through her hearing. Abigail's name comes up, staccatoed and interrupted, his girl's fear bright in the afternoon; he automatically looks to check if she's crying, but his view from within the rusalka is far too blurry and her attention riveted on Kozlow out of the three as if by iron nails. He huddles in her mind, stretches out, tentatively tries at the feel of her pleading hands, her small feet, uneasy, growing uneasier by the minute.
All the yelling, hissing Russian makes no sense to Abby. Cross was not one of the words that she's been dipping into the dictionary for. Teo's not returned, and whether that's good or not, she doesn't know. Much like with Francois, she can only take the absence to mean success, or he'd have jumped back. Abigail ducks her body down, the trapped hand scrabbling for her gloves and they're flung towards the Rusalka. "She's real Felix! Teo's not back!" In other words, somehow, she can be hurt?
"Behind me Dr. Kozlow" She's wishing she'd found out from Cat about Rusalka's. Something more than 'violent mermaid'. Barehand reaches around her neck and she yanks down on the delicate chain, the cross safe in her palm. The chain snaps and clasping the broken ends, she darts in front of Kozlow, swing the chain like some miniature whip back and forth, trying to keep the doctor directly at her back. "Lord on high you are a strange woman You come mess with me, You forget that healer you hear me! I'm one too" Her heart thuds away making a break away for her throat but she tries to keep at it, yelling at the thing.
There's a woman telling him to get behind her and a vengeful water spirit beckoning him into her embrace. The only person Sasha is listening to is Felix. It's his turn to do the dragging now, as he hooks one arm around Abigail's middle and hauls her back even as she's throwing her gloves at the rusalka, tearing the chain from her throat and wielding her cross against it. He is, at least, behind her. "«Run,»" he's saying in those harsh syllables that the woman he's directing them at cannot understand. "«It's not working, Abigail. Run. Run.»"
Absolutely not. He's going to regret this, because he always, always, always does. But nor can he help himself - like he told Cat last night, it's like loosing a grayhound after the track's plastic rabbit. He's still got a gun in one hand, that silver crucifix in the other, as he speeds after her, throwing up a roostertail of snow. It's like Van Helsing crossed with the Roadrunner. The hand with the cross reaches for her, as if she might be physically real enough to grab. "It has to be Zhukovsky. Run, you fools."
For a protracted moment, Teo is occupied haranguing himself for being clumsy and hopeless with the ghost's ability, confounded by the fact that the Rusalka's hands, feet, face, skin, the scent of conifers and smoke — fail entirely to register in his borrowed senses.
He bangs a disembodied fist on the metaphorical radio and screws wires tighter, deeper into sockets. His visuals improve, hearing smoothes, but tries at her skin and feels nothing. Really. Maybe if he'd practiced more. It's handy to be able to track what a person's limbs are doing, even when you can't affect the world with them, anyway, and it's wildly apparent that, obviously, the Rusalka has limbs; it's not like they can't all see them— right—
Oh.
By the time Teo gets around to suspecting the nature of the fish trap he's swum into, Felix is squirreling around with his characteristic speedster mania, Kozlow has his hands all over Abigail, Abby's screaming for him, and it's time— he thinks— to bail before whatever this thing he's inside decides to do so too and draws him beyond the grasp of his teammates.
Parkour looks far less impressive when you're a disembodied psychic entity doing it. Seemingly unseen and hopefully unnoticed, he jumps.
A second cross, this time lifted in proximity to her prey; it couldn't be nearer unless Sasha were holding it himself.
This time, the rusalka shrieks.
The roostertail, dramatic as it is, becomes lost in a veritable flurry of snow, tiny grains of ice cast up as if by a blizzard, stinging bits of cold that somehow find their way into the small spaces where garments don't protect quite well enough. Wind whips through the clearing, keenly chill, its whistling howl a distant and stretched cousin of the rusalka's angry cry.
Snow thickens the air until the foundry's walls disappear from sight, along with everything else in the clearing. Whether anyone can see their own upheld hands — debatable. The rusalka herself seems gone, sent packing by the invocation of not one but two holy symbols…
…but not quietly, and not alone.
He's like a snake, who's tongue tickles in your ear. Your greatest fears and all that, plucked from your mind. Violent mermaids and the way the two men are reacting, could count as just that. There's a wheeze and squeak as Kozlow's arm is slung around her middle and he pulls her back, feet scrabbling against the snow while he rattles off in Russian. He said her name, she recognizes that he said her name. But that's all. But sometimes actions speak louder than words.
She stops whipping the necklace around when the Rusalka shrieks and snow and wind picks up in her stead cutting off everything from sight. If Kozlow's arm wasn't around her waist, she probably couldn't see him even. That doesn't stop the brunette from following Felix's yelled demands and obeying Kozlow's unintelligible ones as she follows instead of resisting, in the direction they were heading. Blind as bats, there's a forest around them, fence, there's water somewhere. But she'll run, her arm snaking around Kozlow's, the other holding fast to her dainty delicate gold cross.
"Running" She yells to Kozlow - even though he's right there - nary a look back. A vain hope that Teo's managed to jump to her or Felix if he's needed to before everything's gone haywire. "Keep going!"
"No, stop!" Fel calls, at the top of his lungs. "Don't go blundering off into the woods." He, himself comes to a skidding halt, end up sliding on his side like a basebally player trying to make it home. No, not his greatest fear, thank god. "«Stop.»" He adds, for Kozlow's benefit. "«Stop. Don't go running off. We could get lost and fucking freeze a block from shelter. Keep calling. Help me find you.»" Back to English, "Abby, keep talking. We need to find each other."
A violent wrenching motion separates Sasha from Abigail, coupled with the sound of his body connecting with the earth, the breath whooshing from his lungs as fingers scrabble over gravel and some unseen force yanks him back, past Felix, into the blizzard feet-first by his legs. English, Russian, a horrible amalgamation of the two — he's screaming in some language, his voice too raw with terror to decipher the words or even note the points at which one ends and the next begins.
Eddies of snow swirl around Felix and Abigail, flakes like coarse grains of sand that sting at their eyes, clump in their lashes, the fine hairs in their noses and rub red and raw what little skin they have exposed. The wind builds, and over its roar Abigail can only faintly make out Felix's instructions. His voice is suddenly very small, and very far away.
Kozlow is gone. She may be, too, if she doesn't find the man calling out to her through the storm.
Where is Teo?
"Kozlow!" Abigail screams it out as he's suddenly gone, disappearing into the white as sure as everything else has and all they're left with is his screaming. Down she lunges to the ground, hands clawing at the earth instead of the man she's reaching for. To no avail and Felix is so far away and hard to hear through the layers, the sounds of the unnatural snow roaring.
"FELIX!"
Abigail yells out, hands rising to wrap her scarf around her face, pull her toque down more till just her eyes are visible before she's yanking her hands into her sleeves. Down she hunkers, curling into a ball with only her feet touching the ground, rest of herself hunched in. stay put, don't move. Moving will get you more lost make it harder for people to find you. She remembers the camping trips with her dad, not so long ago for her as it might be others. "TEO! FELIX!" She yells through the muffling and protection of her scarf, eyes shut tight against the snow, cold and everything else.
Fel's bellowing back to them - it's only a few moments before he comes blindly on Abby, nearly kicking her. He seizes her shoulder, draws her to him. "Where's Kozlow?" he demands, even as he puts an arm around her ribs - he's put away the gun already, as something more likely to put a hole in friend than foe in this blindness.
The wind subsides first, then the snow, settling back onto the floor of the clearing and in the branches of the trees. The crows that had been perched in them are gone, but the spider webs still glisten wet in the early morning glow, untouched by whatever supernatural force had been tugging at their hair and clothes just moments ago — if anything was ever there at all.
Something must have been, because there is no sign of Sasha when the air clears, only a pair of tire tracks adjacent to where their rental car is still parked and leaning to one side, its front and rear left tires slashed.
There's a wrinkle and squirm in the corner of Felix's mind, then, a tangible presence requesting ingress— and far less subtle than the insinuation of the snowstorm had been. This one has shape, a staticky tingle of friction, discombobulated and blurred by rapid-fired cognitions in half-formed syllables. Teo, as he shakes the picture of the quiescent foundry street into sharper focus, strains to filter the shape of Abby's slim frame in Felix's arms and the hoarse reverberations of their cries through the Russian's ears.
"I don't know! Something took him from me! I lost him!" Abigail lets him haul her upwards, still hunching her shoulders in on herself and letting him manhandle her. Only the blue of her eyes visible from between the cream colored scarf stretched over the bridge of her nose. From the relative safety of his arms she peers out, gaze going frantically around here, there, up, down, behind them as she twists. "TEO!" She calls out, as if he could actually hear her.
"TEODORO!" Oh god, she lost him. "Teo didn't come back" The car too. Two tires ruined. Only one spare.
God, that feels so -weird-. Teo will catch, amidst the discomfort of someone hastily rearranging their mental furniture to accomodate his presence, half-formed thoughts - wryly goodhumored….,,<…-ering how many times i was in him, this is only fair i guess…> "Stop yelling, Abby. Teo's with me," he notes to her, arm still around her. He takes in the car with a hiss of frustration. "Shit. We walk. There's no equivalent of Triple A out here." He looks around, for any evident trace of Kozlow. Teo. No one else you can jump to - you don't sense any other minds out there, besides me and Abby?
"We'll freeze" She's already cold as hell from what just happened and exposed flesh raw and her hands are ice cold. There's palpable relief at the news that Teo's parked in Felix's brain and a hush "Thank the lord" slips from her lips. She looks towards the foundry, clenching her jaw tight, teeth pressed against teeth. "I can lock myself in the car and you can run" He's speedy gonzales, he can get help, get a tow truck faster. "I can lock myself in the car and hunker in the back seat Felix. Teo can stay with me"
Parked, clinging. There's a wet rat scrabbling its claws in the crevices of Felix's brain, a most bedraggled Casper peering owlishly through his eyes, flat up inside eardrums and nested firmly in the clusters of his nerves. All strictly metaphorical, of course. In this form, Teo lacks anything like physical components, and when he overhears that errant thought, he is incapable of delivering the abrupt glance that it deserves.
Instead, he stows himself in with all the ferocity that comes of genuine fear. Ghost had taken to astral projection like a fish to water, and this conferred not only a certain degree of finesse but also comfort at his state of total disembodiment; the hybrid is a little more concerned by the possibility of permanent separation from his own form, and being in Rusalka, her mind without flesh, had disturbed him in ways he's almost embarrassed to admit to.
When he answers Felix, his voice is smaller even than its usual stunted frequency. I don't know. I think I jumped into Zhukovsky just now, or… or— or a part of his mind. I don't think it'd be too useful or safe, if I tried again and got something similar.
But I can, if you think it's a good idea, he allows, quietly.
"No," he says, simply. "We don't separate." He reaches into his coat, pulls out the satellite phone. "I'll call the Spektors, Chesterfield, find someone to come get us. But you're right. We can wai-" God, Teo's talking to him, and Felix's expression goes disconcerted and uncomfortable. It's unpleasantly intimate, like having the Sicilian whispering in Felix's ear, or having him lay his hand along his bared back. No. Don't try. You're safe here. Did you get any idea of what they intended for Sasha? He knows. They're going to kill him, and it sets off those instincts to pursue. But this is something that requires endurance, not speed, when there's no tracks to trace. "Wait here," he finishes, handing her the phone.
Wait here. Felix Ivanov is spouting one set of orders then the other over and over and it makes Abigail's head spin. The strange look he's having she knows, Teo's jabbering away in someone's head and she's been there. The phone is taken, no argument brooked as to whatever Felix is planning. Just a nod, face pooled within the loops of scarf as she lopes off to the car, digging for the keys. There's an idle thought that she's lost her cross in all of this, somewhere under snow, a dainty gold chain with it's symbol rests. Come spring someone will be lucky. If there is a spring. "I'll lock myself in the car" Not let anyone in. She can get warm in there too.
In his brief search for silver lining, it does occur to Teo that the lack of resistance he'd met while jumping into homicidal mermaids is promising somehow. Not for Kozlow, though. Your guess is as good as mine. His life or—
Or his ability. He'd lay money on either one. I don't know. I really don't: but there was something wrong in the rusalka.
You know: apart from that she didn't physically exist.
Either way, the incontrovertible fact is that Kozlow's gone. The car's been visited by violence, rubber ragged and turned out like surprised flesh, exacted by what would appear to have been the same mortal hands that took the doctor away. I think Zhukovsky is still watching, though. He could be standing right here with his arm around Kozlow's throat, and we'd never know. I've never seen illusions like these, not even… Teo doesn't finish that thought, drifts into queasy thought.
"We'll both wait here. All three of us," Felix amends, quietly. "Speed won't be enough to carry me into town. We wander out into this, especially with an illusionist to fool us, or a weather call to summon another storm, we're dead. Call it in," he notes to Abby, with a jerk of his chin, even as he settles beside her in the back seat, close by her. Yeah. I've never seen anything like it. Listen, can you speak with my mouth if you have to, if I yield conscious control?
She can't hear the conversation going on in the Russian's head, but she can nod to what she can hear. The car's interior is cold, doesn't take much at this temp to cool the car after it's been heated. "We have the car, they'd need to borrow the Spektor's" The call is coming second, the first thing she's doing once the front door is closed behind her and she's in the drivers seat is to start the car, key in the ignition to turn the engine and in turn, get it heated so that the heater can be turned on. "Blankets in the trunk, you can pop the seat to get to the trunk."
Then it's time to use the phone, only she's not calling back to the Spektor's. She's calling Caliban. Spektor's may be using their own vehicle, Caliban she knows has his own rental and can swing by and pick up the others, or come alone. Or do something. Regardless, his numbers are punched into the sat phone and she waits.
Teo studies Abigail for a long moment, trying to determine through Felix's eyes then the additional interpolation of his glasses lenses whether or not she's yet turning blue from the cold. The Russian's question snaps him back, with a click of weird irritation. No. What kind of rapist ability do you think I have? Scoffing. Way out in the Bright Future, those with Body Possession and those with Astral Projection might regard one another with a certain disdain, the Red Sox and the Yankees.
If you put your hand on Abby's shoulder, I can go in her and check she's… really Abigail, for one thing. Otherwise — —okay. Even when he's standing on the wrong side of Felix's face, Teo can tell when the older man is uncomfortable. I think we should move tonight.