20 Jan 2012 @ 10pm
Friday night
Tower Bridge, London

"No, not the walkway," Nemo wiggled her finger in the air as if to erase the elevated pedestrian bridge that spanned the two towers. "On the roof. See the the crenelations between there? There's space to stand."[1]

Nemo and Virgil Carstairs stood on the pavement at the entrance to the grand London monument, Nemo pointing up and up and up to the nearest tower. The little battlements running along the edge of the tower's roof looked tiny from below, but really they were nearly as tall as the seventeen-year-old Nemo.

Last fall, she'd spent a few days trying to figure out how to Apparate up there. She hadn't known what the space looked like, and it was such a precise landing it would be a tricky move. But she'd done it on her birthday last November,[2] and it had meant more than a pretty view. It had been a place no one had ever been, or so it felt. But she'd had company join her in the form of a curious and strange old vampire who she'd see again. And tonight, she'd been restless as she'd been for weeks, so invited Virgil along.

"Here, we can Side-Along." She shrugged her accordion up onto her back more securely and held out her hand.

1.	Picture of the tower
2.	18 Nov 2011 - I am! And so are you

There was just about enough room for them to stand up there, he thought as he squinted up at the tower. It looked impressive even against the cloudy sky, and Virgil felt a rush of affection for this city all of a sudden. His city. He was a London boy but sometimes it took an outsider's perspective to remind him of the beauty. Built on the back of a great and awful empire.

            "Here, we can Side-Along," his friend offered.

Anticipating the cold and winds above, Virgil zipped up his bomber jacket before reaching out to take her hand. With a familiar pop! they suddenly found themselves high above the rooftops and eye-to-eye with a sparkling urban skyline. It truly was cold.

"You come up here all on your own, wanderer?" Virgil laughed a breathless laugh, feeling the tension in his head dissolving now that they had escaped the Friday night crowds below. "What a view. To think muggles made it," he smiled down at her and leaned against the battlement to steady himself. "They stood up here, no brooms or spells to stop a fall."

Were they afraid? Virgil looked down, his heart fluttering at the thought of a fall. They must have been.

When they appeared at the top of the tower, Nemo felt a rush of adrenaline and gasped in the cold air and bracing wind. She was as much startled by the cold as she was grateful she'd nailed the jump and didn't splinch them. She ought to have probably been more cautious but she'd just gone for it. Life slowed down when you hesitated and part of her wanted the next time Virgil saw her to seem brave and put together. Not traumatized by a vampire, not reckless, not barfing in his bathroom.

She'd stopped wanting to please people when she was, like, twelve, so this was a strange feeling.

Nemo was happy to hear Virgil's exhilaration.

"Yea, on my own," she answered. "It makes me feel completely myself, like all the chaos falls away. Not in it, above it, alone with my own soul. Feels like I left my body down there."

She looked over the battlement in the empty spot where they'd stood. She imagined their figures, which disappeared like smoke when a cyclist rode through.

"It is really amazing," she agreed. "Muggles have patience. Sometimes feel magic folk are always in a rush."

Nemo shrugged off her accordion case, wishing her violin was fixed.[1] She'd played up here last time. The wind stole any reverberation.

"Only been up here once before, actually," she said and laid back against the steep roof. Her whole field of vision was filled with the sky.

 

1.	Nemo fell on her case at Grimshaw's on 9 Dec 2011 - Wisp and Bone, Haunt and Home

             "Feels like I left my body down there."

He smiled a little, knowing exactly what she meant. Virgil actually had left his body; almost exactly one month ago[1] now, sending his mind and soul through the archway in the Death Chamber. This didn't feel like that, though. Up here he felt vividly alive and awake to the corporeal world. The minds of London buzzed across the city, indistinct.

"Only once?" he lowered himself to sit, legs dangling off the edge, and slung his backpack around. "I'm honoured you brought me this time then." Nemo was something else.

Virgil unzipped the bag and took out a silver thermos. He took off the cap, which doubled as a cup, and poured black coffee in. "It's peaceful up here. Much better than being underground in the Ministry all day..." the wizard offered the cup to her. "Coffee?"

1.	22nd Dec - Two Innocent Stars

Nemo made a pleased little hum in response to Virgil's saying it was an honor she brought him up. Perhaps it was, but he was now in a very strange club. It was difficult not to think of this place without thinking of the vampire and what happened to him. Complicated. But she didn't want trauma to take this place from her. She needed it to be cleansed with friendship and good feelings. Same with seeing Virgil again. 

"Coffee! Dude, you're awesome." Nemo sat up a little to take the cup. There was an advantage in acquiring a tolerance to black coffee, that is, more opportunities for coffee and the connections that came with it.

Lazarus and the vampires were on her mind, like a letter you didn't want to open or a song stuck in your head or a mistake you didn't want to admit.  She fell quiet for a moment and tucked her hair behind her ear to take a sip.

"Can I tell you something? Maybe it'll be question."  She didn't want to tear off a scab, wake up something that maybe Virgil had put away. Without a conscious decision, she opened the windows of her mind a crack. Something inside wanted someone to see her worry, without her having to say anything.

He swung his legs, alternately glancing at the view below and then back up at his friend. Nemo was interesting to be around. She was, he knew, the kind of person lots of teenagers their age wanted to be. Unattached, wandering, taking risks. Cute as a button. But they never wanted the other aspects of her life - the ones she never talked about.

            "Can I tell you something? Maybe it'll be question." 

Virgil thought that she was very brave. He let her thoughts shine across, running a light and invisible hand through them. Her mind was full of all sorts of things; at its forefront, however, was the something that Nemo wanted to say without actually saying.

"You're worried about the vampires," he wrapped his long fingers around the thermos, warming them. "About Lazarus. What's the matter? Why are they worrying you?" Virgil looked up at her searchingly.

His neck prickled above the collar of his jacket and he felt the pin pricks that he sometimes forgot to hide these days. Terrence Hooker's bite marks. Yes, that worried him too, in a distant way. Hooker wasn't going to come after him. Virgil was sure  that the vampire was done with them after the deal they had made over cards.

Nemo's expression softened away from the tense wince. The way he'd put it - she presumed it was more than a guess - made her fell silly and young.

"Yeah. But not really worried. It's not like I think I'm going to turn a corner and one of them'll be there and attack me. I just don't understand why I did what I did. And am I going to do it again, something dangerous? Hurt somebody else?"

She'd gotten them both into such serious trouble. And with Grimshaw's and Kurby Bagnold, she felt like she was constantly holding back doing it again. Even coming here with only a passport, leaving the US. It could have been so bad and she'd left a mess behind her.

Nemo shivvered her shoulders, trying to clear her head. Rattle up the brain and settle the stones. Feeling things, overrated.

His heart did a nervous little jump at Nemo's wince and he blushed, sheepish. That was clumsily done. Yavin would have said it was clumsily done. Not that Yavin was right about everything. Fuck Yavin. At least tonight, fuck him. Virgil reached out to pat the spot next to him, silently asking for Nemo to join him in sitting down between the battlements.

"Why do any of us do dangerous things?" he answered her questions with his own, shrugging. "Sometimes... I don't know know, Nemo. It's like something inside of us really hurts, and we just want to keep pushing. Pushing limits, pushing ourselves. Finding the wall."

Virgil lifted the thermos to drink his coffee, barely tasting the mellow bitterness of it. "You don't want to hurt anybody. I don't either," he looked out across London again and felt himself smiling. Look at that city. And how many people could really look at it, the way he could right now?

"Do you want to see something beautiful?"  he asked Nemo without looking away. "It might cheer you up."

Virgil's suggestion made sense somewhere inside, and Nemo touched gently on her memories of growing up and feeling out of place. She was bluster and blithe confidence and taking her life in her own hands, but things still hurt. She still hadn't written back to her mother. Maybe Virgil was right.

She didn't say anything in response, just slid down the roof to sit next to the older boy. Her smile was genuine.

"Bring it on, dude," Nemo replied pulling her knees up. When she'd first met Virgil, he'd been hard to read. He'd seemed like everything was always this sleepy, happy right-in-the-world. Unaffected. But as she got to know him, she learned to notice the changes in his affect. Something was bothering him, but first, something beautiful.

He sensed the calm inside of her, finding Nemo's center. "Bring it on, dude."

Virgil smiled brightly at the witch - that's the Nemo he knew and adored. She was always ready for something new. Even if it was dangerous or silly. He put down his thermos and fussily reached for her hand, taking it into both of his. "Close your eyes. You have to listen, too." And then he closed his own, which felt just a touch risky when they were sat this high up.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, all was quiet and stagnant at first. He wanted to show her something special: something he didn't show to most people. Nemo was different from most people. Frowning, he opened his consciousness to the skyline of London city: just a crack at first. A rush of noise spilled into him, like crowds and crowds of people all talking at once.

"Every mind is like a star." Virgil announced grandly, voice getting lost in the wind. Hundreds - and then thousands - of pinpricks of light appeared in his mind's eye, in Nemo's. "And every star has a song."

The tumult of sound rose higher, so high that the thinking voices became abruptly thin. Like a flute, or the sharp glide of a violin string, each overlapping the other. A maddening cacophony. Virgil squeezed his friend's hand tightly. The stars receded until there were only a few dozen around them.

Stars beneath them (Friday night throngs) and a scattering above them (a muggle aeroplane). The noise was sweeter, musical. He released her hand after a moment, opening his eyes and closing his mind again. Tightly. "There." Virgil smiled, calmer than before.

Nemo shut her eyes and let Virgil take her hand - glad that he did because it felt somehow that the only reason the tower stood so solidly below them was because they expected it to be there. Virgil's hands the tether, Nemo waited for the beauty.

She was not disappointed. Other than the light touches she'd suspected before, all of Nemo's thoughts and nightmares had always been her own. This was like the planetarium multiplied by Fantasia in a sea of orchestras tuning; it took her breath away. She couldn't see or hear just one of the star-minds so she let it all come; Virgil's voice was a dependable anchor. The loudness and fullness receded leaving a much nearer scope of a couple hundred brilliant little songs - so many but really very few compared to the thousands and thousands that filled the air just a moment before.

And too quickly it was over. She'd have to accept it would be glance.

Nemo let her eyes open, the London night coming back brighter and louder than it had seemed before.  She tucked her hair behind her ears and folded her legs. What was she to do with all of that?

"That was beautiful," she said.  She reached for the coffee and spun the cap. "Where did you even come from, star boy?"

             "Where did you even come from, star boy?"

He laughed, leaning in to bump shoulders with her and point out one of the few actual stars in the London sky. "Second star to the right and straight on till morning, Wendy Darling." The young boy who never grew up - never grown up enough for anyone in this world anyway. Not for Yavin, or Cepheus, or even for Nemo. He'd been useless to her at Hooker's pub in Camden. Just another neck for the vampires to bite and another person for her to worry about.

"Thanks for letting me show off." Virgil smiled at his favourite wanderer as he looked back at the skyline. "It's too much. But it's so beautiful, I can't hate it. Maybe that's just life."

As often as he fell into melancholy episodes, as often as he walked right into danger.... he couldn't help looking for beauty everywhere. "You're not alone, you know," his gaze trailed along the rooftops cut out against the sky, each one different in age and aesthetic. "When it comes to doing dangerous things. If you ever feel like that again, I'm here. I'll come."

That's what friends were for, wasn't it?

Nemo appreciated the friendly bump and it reminded her of how they'd comforted each other that night, nothing self-conscious, but something needed she'd never had. She'd heard that before, that she was not alone, but it never really felt believable. She was always on the move, she supported herself, a solo artist, always doing exactly what she felt. Everyone around her had a different life from hers and she trust anyone would let her truly be that way without judgement. Maybe Virgil, but something still made her hesitate.

But what he said next! She turned to him nearly square, and stared at him wide-eyed. "Don't you dare!" she laughed. "Don't tempt me, man! Like, everyone is telling me to sit down, calm down, stay away, don't do anything stupid."

Nemo scoffed in confused and rubbed her face in her hands, unhappy with the surge of emotion that brought up. She came up for air, still smiling, still aghast.

"I don't know that you get what you said. It's all I think about. I'm trying to not, make friends, I'm going to play for Stardust, I got a real job, and Kurby and Abby. Ffffuu..."

She groaned and laid back. "C'mon dude."

              "I'm trying to not.... play for Stardust.... real job.... Kurby and Abby. Ffffuu.."

He laughed, more surprised than amused, twisting slightly to look down at Nemo as she fell back on the battlement floor. "Sorry!" he poked her tummy and reached for the thermos, careful not to spill it. "We're two halfwits stuck up the same tree, I'm not certain how much help I'll be talking you down."

Every time he recovered from doing something reckless, he told himself he would never do it again. But then he did, because life was boring if he didn't. Salazar forbid he play it safe: what was the point of playing it safe if he could help other people by not? Virgil had helped Abby, didn't he? And followed Nemo to Hooker's, or else she would have been all alone. Helped Fauna with scrying. Helped Yavin with work.

Something tingled at the back of his head and he bit his lip, suppressing the sensation. He had to help Nemo now in a way that wasn't reckless.

"How about this?" he poured her another cup of coffee, wrinkle in his brow. "Next time you want to dance with the reaper or whatever, owl me. We can try to stop each other."

Nemo squeaked and pulled her knees up when Virgil poked her tummy. She giggled and gave him a gentle kick back. They really were a couple of ninnies who both went running full tilt at the nearest entrancing intriguing shiny objects, be it vampire covens or screaming tailor shops or whatever spooky secrets occupied star-mind Virgil.

"Fine, but the vice-versa, too. No slinking off towards self-destruction without me."

Right now, it was Grimshaw's that called to her. Every once in awhile she thought she heard that crying voice, in that way that you could sometimes hear your name being called but no one was there. It wasn't obvious why she was staying away, other than, perhaps, some loyalty to the strange Kurby Bagnold, werewolf hunter if he could be called only that anymore. 

She sat up and took the coffee. Sitting still up in the tower was chilling, although their little nook provided some shelter. From insider her pocket, her phone buzzed.

"One sec.."

Nemo flipped it open, and the little blue screen lit up her face. She rapidly clicked out a message, then snapped the phone shut.

"Trying to situate a new crash," she explained, unperturbed. Her sublet was coming back from summer abroad. Finding someplace new (and nearly free) required a lot of sniffing and texting around, but her network was widening slowly but surely. Phone put away, Nemo turned her full attention back to Virgil and their starry night.

"How are your people?" Virgil had a lot of them. Family, friends, co-workers, lovers. To Nemo he seemed to fit in anywhere he went.