callmeemily | Well, I needed to meet you one way or the other. Just... not like this. (Lara)

After running into Corrine, Raleigh just needed to be alone. Alone, because alone meant that she could get through the panic, through the emotional rollercoaster, that she wasn't going to lose it in front of the people that she cared about, and instead she'd just get through it.

It probably wasn't the healthiest of approaches, although she's not thinking about that right now.

It probably wasn't the best of ideas, either, because she'd gotten to the house (where she'd been several times, but she'd never really gotten the grand tour) and grabbed at the first door that's not the bathroom because people need the bathroom, and she found herself in, what some far-off part of her brain assumed, in Levi's bedroom.

It took twenty minutes for her to be able to get herself back in order. She knew she looked like hell, she looked like - well, somebody who'd spent the last fifteen minutes or so in tears, really. That's why she moved to slip out of Levi's room and to go to the bathroom, to wash her face - she prayed that no one would see her, but today? Not exactly Raleigh's lucky day.

There's a certain level of weirdness that comes from running into your friend's girlfriend when you're trying to sneak out of his (empty, thank god) bedroom, and that's exactly what happened, a lump rising in Raleigh's throat. Of course she knows Lara - they'd never spoken, but she knows her by sight, she's seen her with Levi, and from what she's been told... she was there, that night. Everyone from that night is here, and absurdly she remembers when Corrine invited her to dinner, with the five of them, and her heart just... sinks. "I was just-" She doesn' t know what else to say, her hand on the doorknob, and Lara's clearly seen her come from there.

".... I needed to be alone for a minute. I just- I grabbed a door, is all."

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Lara smiled. "It's fine." Of course Lara recognised her. The evidence of the rouge siren was still stark on her skin. She was clearly shaken and although she had pulled herself shakily together, the panic didn't seem to be far from the surface.

Turning to lead the way back to the kitchen, Lara reached out with her power and gently ran it over the girls aura, smoothing some of the rougher edges. She wouldn't normally do something like that without permission but she felt that with the damage one of her kind had done she didn't want to run the risk of fear colouring the girls opinion.

"Can I get you a drink?" She asked gently.

Lara says that it's fine, and Raleigh doesn't quite know what to say - it wasn't just fine, it was weird, she knows it, but she's thankful that Lara's letting it slide. She just sort of expected to get by her, to wash her face and take a minute and then get back to things and hope that no one would notice, but Lara makes her stop short and she doesn't notice that she's calmer, but she is.

"I... would love a drink," she says with a half-smile, and maybe this is a thing, getting drunk at Levi's house because all she sort of wants to do right now is have a drink, at at least Lara knows what'd happened so it wouldn't be like Bach who had just thought she was crazy or something.

"How have you been? I know we haven't ever actually talked or anything - I'm Raleigh, by the way. Lara, right?"

"I know who you are, Raleigh. And yes - it's Lara." Lara said with a smile and handed Raleigh a tumbler of whiskey. "And I think I should be asking you how you've been, rather than the other way around. I'm going to assume the answer to that is less good than you'd have hoped by now?"

"Yeah, I guess you would know," she sounds a little distracted as she says it, and she pulls in a breath. "There was a lot going on, I think- I think I got put into the ambulance before- I just-" The panic sort of surges forward again, but she forces it away, helped by Lara's 'smoothing', and she takes the tumbler gratefully.

"Thank you." She takes a big sip, her face twisting as it burns, but then she can actually answer. "I'm okay. No more crutches, everything's mostly back to normal." Mostly. She's living with Spencer, she's having panic attacks, she's having horrible nightmares if she forgets to drink the anise seed stuff that Joel makes and sleep on the pillow that's got it in it - but she can bake again, she's alive, she's recovering.

"Thank you," she says after a second. "For everything you did." What, exactly, she doesn't know - but she knows Lara, Levi, Hotchkins, and Les are the people who saved her life.

"You're welcome." Lara says easily, because Raleigh - no one - deserved what had happened to her. "We're not all like him. In fact he was only the second feral I've ever seen." She said, sipping her own drink.

Raleigh stops with the tumbler halfway back to her own mouth, and her brows furrow together.

"What?"

It's like what Lara said made no sense. Literally no sense, and Raleigh just kind of... stared at her. "You're- You're not like him?" Her brows rose in question, and she doesn't know why, but she sort of feels like her stomach's dropped out and she doesn't even know why. "What do you mean?" Like him. There's only one him in her mind in this second, but that there was a we that went with that....

She doesn't even know what to think.

Lara frowned. "The siren. The man that did the killing. The younger man. You did know he was a siren?"

It was clear from her face that no, she didn't know - and more than that (so much more than that), she didn't know that Lara was one, either.

Or what that even meant. She down a big swallow of the whiskey. "I- Uh. The old guy, he-- he was going to sacrifice me so he could like... live forever, or something, and the other guy helped him." Even with Lara's smoothing earlier, her hand holding the glass shook, and she had to put it down, spreading her hand flat on the table as she took a breath. "You're... like him?"

Lara moved around the counter to sit next to Raleigh. "No. I'm nothing like him. I promise. And the old man was just using the siren to kill for him... How he found him, I don't know, but we're nothing like him." She smiled. "He was a freak of nature and he's dead. I made sure of that."

Raleigh's not smiling - not at all, but she nods once. "I know he's dead. That they're both dead." She pauses. "He didn't- he didn't say anything. Ever. He just did what the old man told him-" The breath she sucked in was ragged. "I'm sorry, I'm-I'm still- Uhm-" She closes her eyes for a long second, forcing herself to take a deep breath. "Sorry, I'm fine now." She honestly was anything but.

"You and Les and Levi saved my life, so- Hey, guess if I run into anyone whose name starts with L, I'm good to go, right?" The joke - if you could even call it that - falls flat.

Lara reached out to steady Raleighs hand. "You're allowed to still be shaken. Corry is going through the same thing." She gave her an earnest look. "If you want to ask anything then my doors always open."

"I saw her. Corry, I mean, she invited me to do dinner with you guys, I just... I don't know- I don't know." She swallowed thickly. "Thank you. I'm just- I'm figuring it all out, you know?" She shrugged a shoulder, her brows furrowing. "It's- If you'd been ten minutes later-"

Her voice cracked on the last word. "You know what? We don't need to talk about this. Thank you, for everything. That's it. Just- You... You're- Thank you." Her mind's twisted up like she's a rat in a trap, her heat pounding in her chest.

"It's up to you." Lara said, smiling gently. "I'm here if you change your mind."

"I should- I should probably go," she says after just a second. "Can- I didn't run into Levi, can you tell him thank you? For inviting me, I mean, this was-"

A horrible idea. She never should have come here, is all she can think now.

"Really nice, it's a really good thing." She swallows thickly, and nods, to Lara and herself, before she pushes back the barstool. "Thank you. Again." Raleigh flashed yet another forced smile, and she finally just moved to get away the best she could manage. To go home, and be glad that Joel and Spencer were here, not... home. Not where they could see her just sort of... lose it.

Well, I needed to meet you one way or the other. Just... not like this. (Lara)

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