October 15, 2023

"So let me get this straight." Jamie throws the door to their hotel room open a little too hard, though her voice is for once appropriately lowered—it's still somewhere between four and five in the morning and Campo dei Fiori's walls aren't that thick. She marches into the dark room. "You lost consciousness because some ghost seized upon you to, to ask for help dealing with some evil thing it called the doctor. A doctor who's supposedly out there killing people on Poveglia. And if that plague doctor mask vision you had was anything to go by, your ghost was talking about the creature that chased me through the woods."

"That about sums it up," Nathan says, closing the door after her. "Hey, what happened to turning on the lights?"

"I don't need lights, I need answers–" Jamie's spatial awareness fails her, for she slams straight into their desk chair. "Ow, fuck."

"You need lights," Nathan observes as he flicks the switch and illuminates their room. In all honesty, he'll be happy to turn the lights off again soon. His ghost encounter on Poveglia sapped all the energy out of him, left him sluggish and ready to sleep for days. He did his best not to overexert himself on the way back to Venice and their hotel, moving slowly and swapping stories with Jamie in as coherent a fashion they could manage, but he's still running on empty in every way.

"The question is, what's next? This is insane, but we can't just, I mean, we can't just forget this happened, ignore it and move on, can we? What the hell do we do now?" Although Jamie—now de-leaved and de-twigged—can't exactly be brimming with energy either, she paces the length of the room with a feral restlessness, operating on her last dregs of adrenaline with absolutely zero chill.

Nathan isn't exactly renowned for his own level of chill, but he's an expert at postponing all that can be reasonably postponed. They only just returned from the island, are tired and still processing everything without thinking straight, and both he and Jamie could use actual rest. The problem will still be there for solving a good few hours from now and they'll be staying in Venice for two whole weeks.

Plenty of time to get down to business.

"What we do now is sleep," Nathan announces as he flops down on his bed. In ideal circumstances, he'd shower before going to sleep, but he doesn't trust himself to keep standing upright for too long. He'll just take these dirty clothes off and call it a day. "We'll sit and talk about our next move properly when we're well-rested. I don't know about you, but I'm wrecked. Damn ghosts and magic did a number on me."

Jamie shoots him a worried look, wringing her hands together. "Yeah, I guess that's... Yeah. Fair enough. You should rest. Can I, um, can I get you anything?"

"You could sit down and try to relax," Nathan says. "Rest would be good for you, too. Your night was as intense as mine."

"That's different. You had something paranormal take a toll on you. I was just running around."

"Based on what you've told me, just running around doesn't quite do it justice," Nathan corrects. "I want to examine the footage you got today, but it can wait until later. Until after we've slept and have gotten that coffee appointment with your family and Gino's mom over with. Because I think your father wanted to have breakfast at, what, eight? before going there, so we have some three hours to rest up before that time."

Nathan's attempt at alleviating Jamie's agitation backfires. Her eyes widen so fast he realises she'd momentarily forgotten all about the morning's family obligation. "Coffee appointment," she forces out before stumbling to their shared bathroom with haste.

Nathan sighs and peels himself off his bed, following to figure out what the issue is. "What's wrong?"

"My face is what's wrong."

As if there could ever be anything wrong with Jamie's face. "Come again?"

"The scratches, Nate." Jamie narrows her eyes and scrutinises the parting gifts Poveglia's vegetation left on her skin in the bathroom mirror—a big scratch on her cheek, some smaller ones on her chin and forehead. Nothing too serious or painful, but too obvious to go unnoticed. "Damn it, this is going to lead to questions, unless... Yeah, that could work. Thank god for foundation and concealer."

Nathan leans against the doorway, grateful for the extra stability it affords him. "The hell are those?"

His genuine cluelessness gets a laugh out of Jamie. Some of the tension within her finally dissipates. Nathan loves to see it.

"For all intents and purposes, they're a type of magic," Jamie informs him when the laughter subsides, though the delightful grin on her face keeps its spirit alive.

Nathan makes a mental note that apparently not even supernaturally-induced fatigue can quench the desire to kiss the living daylights out of another person. It's the type of paranormal fun-fact observation he thinks would suit Witchcraft Wednesday well. If only the prospect of sharing the thought with Jamie wasn't much more terrifying than anything he encountered on Poveglia.

"I'm going to suggest something controversial," he says, banishing his increasingly more improper thoughts in favor of dealing with his and Jamie's immediate challenges. "Imagine a scenario in which we excuse ourselves. In which we tell your family we're sorry, but the night left us too tired and indisposed to join them at Gino's mother's place. We could sincerely apologize for it and offer to treat the whole group to coffee sometime later in the vacation to make up for our absence. What do you think of that idea?"

Jamie shakes her head fast. "No. Out of the question. I can't do that. Going to Poveglia behind everyone's backs was bad enough and so was lying that we'd be out all night partying with that appointment coming up. It was already pushing the limits of what my family deems acceptable behaviour. If I skip out on the coffee now, it looks like I'm not, you know, trying my best." She runs a hand through her hair. "But that's what I said I would do. I said I'd make an effort to behave and turn this trip into a success. I meant that. I want to get this right, so cancelling isn't on the table."

There's sense in that, and if it's what Jamie wants, it's what Jamie wants, period. Nathan would still rather take sleep over coffee, but he can admire her dedication to making the family trip work even now. He has his own thoughts on the extent to which her family even deserves such dedication, but none of that is his call to make.

"Fair enough," he says. "We'll get coffee, then. Forget I brought it up."

"No, it's a good thing you mentioned it." Jamie subjects him to her concern-fuelled critical scrutiny. "I can't get out of the appointment, but I think you can. And you should. You look like just standing there talking to me is taking a lot out of you and I can tell you'd rather stay here. So I can just say to my family that you weren't doing well and I let you sleep, and they'll accept that, because..."

Her voice trails off and she averts her eyes, more than a little frustrated about something. Nathan may still be a little out of it, but not so much so that he can't fill in the blanks here and understand why she didn't finish her sentence. There just aren't many nice ways to phrase what she was about to say. If there are, Jamie struggles to find them.

So Nathan decides to end her suffering and spit the essence of it out himself.

"Because they couldn't care less about me and whether I'm there or not," he states point-blank. Why sugarcoat what they both know to be true?

Stella never said it outright, but Nathan remembers how she's been looking at him from the start with so much disdain and suspicion in her eyes. Like he's nothing but a hairball the cat choked up, one she'd like to throw in the trash more than anything. Jamie's parents may be a little milder, but their mildness stems from indifference. Though amicable, the amount of interest they've shown in him has been minimal. So minimal that Nathan doesn't hesitate to believe they either dislike him or don't at all expect him to stick around for a long time.

(And he doesn't care—shouldn't care—about these people's opinion on him, because it doesn't matter, and he shouldn't care about skipping the coffee appointment reflecting badly on him, because that doesn't matter, either. He really would rather hang back at the hotel. But there is a part of him that cares, as much as he would like to deny it, and that part of him emerges from this situation battered and bruised.

Is it truly that impossible to just become good enough?)

"I guess you could... put it like that, yeah. Not how I would've wanted to say it, but..." Jamie moves past him and out of the bathroom with a slight grimace. "I just need you to know that how they feel isn't personal. Their attitude to you isn't your fault."

Nathan would've dug deeper into that assertion if he had the energy for it, but the mere act of talking alone is already quite intensive. He lets it slide for now, abandoning the bathroom doorpost's support and zeroing in on his beckoning bed. "They'll think what they want to think," he still manages to say, though he's starting to slur his words like a drunken man. "Fine. I'll stay. You go to the appointment alone. But..." He hesitates. "Are you sure you'll manage?"

"Don't I always?" Jamie's spirits seem to have been somewhat lifted. She rummages through one of her bags with renewed vigour and determination, almost feverish. A smile tugs at her lips when she turns to look at him. "No worries, Nate. I have a backup plan."