She bounces a little bit happily in his arms (and very much doesn't think of other much much much more comfy places to sleep because that's for a later time) and then sighs and bites her lip and makes a decision and then makes it for real and them makes it no really for real and sits up, pulling gently out of his arms with incredible regret. "That's ok," she says, turning around to give him a soft quick kiss, "I still enjoy it anyways". "And we should maybe try snuggling elsewhere next time," she very explicitly doesn't say no matter how many times she thinks of soft sheets and down comforters and the feeling of the entire length of his body pressed against hers and she should stop that. (No really stop that!) "I should probably get going amyways," she says, her ears turning bright red and burning for absolutely no reason at all. 

He laughs, and kisses her forehead, and snugs his arm around her shoulders one more time before letting go. "Mm, yeah. I'll drive you home?"

Jenna was totally expecting to have to walk the short walk across campus to get back to her apartment. But she has no reason to complain about this because this means more time with Sean! Though maybe she shouldn't be leaned against him as he drives. Probably. That'd be a bad idea and they could crash on the two minute journey and then there probably wouldn't be any death but her mother would find out and she might be too woozy on painkillers to stand her ground and they'd have to break up and that would be terrible. Actually that probably wouldn't happen but she still lingers for a moment and sits up anyways, pushing the silly thoughts out of her head and making sure to buckle her seatbelt and grinning brightly at him as she pushes the silly daydream (or is it nightdream? eveningdream?) out of her head. "Sure!" she says, very much resisting the urge to bounce up and down in her seat about how cute he is. And he is very cute. (And very hot for that matter. And he picked her up!!)

He leans over and kisses her cheek and puts on his seatbelt and drives.

Jenna is not going to stare at him adoringly as he drives, that is very much what she is not going to do. Even if it's fun to thinking about him picking her up, again. And imagining where else he could pick her up and take her to (even if there was no taking, this time). And imagining how soft and comfy she would feel in his sheets and on his soft bed and entiwning her body with his and kissing him close and feeling his warmth and his strength and his calm cool collected hotness and shivering even though she's safe and warm under and next to him and pressing her body closer and.

And the drive is not very long, only a couple of minutes and she really wants for it to be longer because she was supposed to be doing something other than starting at him adoringly and fantasizing about things that she should not be fantasizing about. How are they here already? And maybe she should stop staring. She does not in fact want to stop staring but maybe she should anyways. She's not actually stopping, just staring and grinning at him happily and feeling her ears start to light on fire. Oops. Why is his smile and face so pretty and cute and wonderful?

...and here they are. He stops the car and leans over and kisses her.

Jenna flushes again, and wraps an arm around him and kisses back, kissing him long because she wanted to kiss him a lot and not to hide her blush even though hiding her blush is silly and he seems to find it cute which is very sweet and wonderful but she's very much not doing it to hide her blushing, kissing him is just really really good. (Though, well, kissing him is really really good. So very good. Hot and sweet and delightful and maybe she shouldn't lean into this feeling so hard or else they're going to end up making out here in the car again and would that be such a bad outcome?)

Jenna slowly pulls herself away from the kiss, happy and bouncy and flushed and regretful and firm with herself and giggly and very happy and she really needs to get going. Or should. Or something. Even if she'd rather kiss Sean some more. "I had a very nice time!" she says, hardly trusting herself to say more, even though she's going to be an actress and should be able to say whatever she wants to say without worried about her face lighting on fire for goodness sake. "A very very nice time. I, um. I should go! But please text me, and we can do something like this again. Soon." She leans over and gives him a quick kiss and then opens the door before she loses her resolve. It may have been a close thing. "See you again, soon!" she says, as she opens the door, staring at him as she starts to back out of the car.

He waves.

"I had a great time too! Maybe we can hang out again this weekend!"

And then, just as she's standing up, he leans over and adds, "You're so cute when you blush."

Well that's not going to help her blush any less! Not help at all!! Which she supposes is probably what he's going for if he means what he says which of course he does because he doesn't really have any reason at all to lie or anything like that but still it doesn't keep her from blushing and turning her face away into the darkness even though he wants to see it. She bets he finds that cute too! And that doesn't help at all at all at all at all and it's unfair just how much and how easily he can do this to her but she forgives him because he has such a cute face and delightful smile and she really likes it when he gets like this.

"This weekend would be great!" she says, and then half-rushes half-regretfully-pulls-away-slowly because she can't quite make up her mind moves away in one of those manners or both or swapping quickly between them out of spiraling spinning confusion getting to her door and giving him one last longing look from the distance lit by the orangey light above the door to the building before turning and rushing inside to bounce up and down in the thankfully empty elevator about what a good date she just had. It was a really good date! She had a really good time! And she cannot wait for more and she should probably try and relax and get some sleep and not keep her roommate up too late babbling about it like last time. Probably. Maybe only a little, she didn't seem to mind that much but it's important to not do things people don't like but she really enjoyed her date with Sean and he's cute and wonderful and she can't wait for the next one!

Fuck she's cute.

Right, okay. Time to... well, time to park at his apartment building and sleep in his car, actually, given what he said to Valerie.

He has some trouble getting to sleep. His feelings about Jenna are... complicated. He wants her to be happy and have nice things, he wants that so much, and he has no idea how to accomplish it—or, well, he knows how to give that to the Jenna who is made of lies, and he maybe has half a clue how to give it to the one in the middle, and he's not sure anything can help the one who knows the full truth. And that's... that's kind of shit, actually. He wants to be able to offer her better choices than the ones she's got, and he can't.

But eventually he manages to sleep, and then to wake up again and get to class, and get through class and do schoolwork and generally behave like a responsible student.

Class is pretty normal at this point! Or at least, maybe he's starting to get used to it. Interesting things are taught in his Architecture class -- though he is assigned his first small project, due in a week. And calculus is, well... some of the things he sees that are new might actually make sense to him. Thankfully, there's not going to be a quiz on Monday. This time. There is more homework, though. There is, always, more homework.

In the middle of the afternoon, likely while Sean is doing homework, the "Dani wants Sean's attention" indicator lights up like a beacon. A very annoyed and frustrated and slightly despairing beacon.

...

He hesitates for a moment, torn between texting and using the mental communication power, but, well, he did install that mental communication power for a reason. And any conversation he has with Dani that starts like this is probably going to veer into subjects he'd rather not discuss over text.

what's up?

Dani is frustrated. And annoyed. And pissed off. And really really annoyed. The computer has been very helpful, at least for the first day or so. It's given her a place to actually type up her notes and plans, including the ones she doesn't want Sean to see, even if he is in fact acting somewhat more trustworthy. And it's right now the only record of herself, which is a lot more important ever since she's had her memory already wiped the once. And in theory could get it wiped at any point in the present. She does manage to have a couple of paranoid thoughts about how the computer could have a keylogger or something to that effect on it, one that even re-installing the operating system would get around, but she's reasonably certain the precautions she's taken are more than sufficient. And even given all the ways he's been a monster in the past (and to a lesser degree, still is, she's not sure what to do about Valerie, still), tapping her computer really doesn't seem like his modus operandi. And he could just read her mind without telling her. Still, nothing wrong with taking precautions. 

But in any case: even though the computer's been a help in that regard, and been a much better platform for her to do research from -- and indeed, she's noticed some interesting patterns that she's not really sure what to do with yet -- she still hasn't managed to answer what is, for her, the most important question. Who the heck was she? She isn't making that much progress figuring that out, collating the data this way and that, looking through each one individually -- nothing reminds her of her. Nothing sounds like it could or should be her. Even with the small number of details she's managed to determine based on her knowledge and predilections, none of them are sufficient evidence for her to pick out anyone as someone she could have been. And so finally, in desperation, she gives in and decides to ask Sean, even if the question has almost no chance of succeeding. 

When she gets his question she sends back over the link, doing her best to keep any and all emotion out of it. Look, can you just get over here when you can, please? I have some things I'd like you to look at. And there's some other interesting things I should tell you about, too. Because, to be honest, there are. It's probably important that he be aware of the things she's noticed. She's not sure why the government hasn't done anything about what she's noticed -- but regardless Sean should be made aware. 

Yeah, sure. Five minutes, he says, and turns the car in that direction.

Six minutes later he's knocking on the door of his apartment.

Dani isn't crying, she's not really the sort of person who cries, she's found. But she's bristling all over with worry and fear and annoyance and the very edge of despair. She hasn't been able to manage to figure out who she might have been, and her frustration is showing itself all over her face. And in her hand, for that matter, she hasn't stopped clicking her pen and wanting to throw it across the room for the last 40 minutes or so. She's still doing it in spurts now, it's hard not to. "Thank you," she says. "Look, it's a bit of a long shot, but I have a bunch of pictures of missing persons from the city for you to look through. Having an actual computer, finally, made it a lot easier to add filters to searches. And I found out some interesting things, but. Look, just in case there's any facial feature or detail you can remember of what I looked like when you found me that happens to correspond to any of these people here. I haven't noticed anything but I wasn't there, you might. Can you take a look, please? Just in case." She motions towards where the laptop is sitting on a table in the room, in front of the couch. 

"Yeah, of course," he says immediately.

He goes over and sits down to take a look.

There's some kind of government website on the screen, with a bunch of filters available to be set -- including the city and time period, gender and other features. A few of these are filled out already, Dani makes a couple of adjustments, including one for display style to make them show up as just pictures, and then presses the search button, displaying portraits of various women, with a few details beneath each picture. She then steps back to watch, anxiously awaiting, hoping for some kind of luck. Some kind of breakthrough. She doesn't want to keep living like this, not having any past to connect to or anything about where she's from. She clicks her pen a few times before she realizes it might be distracting and stops, watching him scroll. And then she starts clicking the pen again. 

Most of them, Sean might notice, are girls in their mid-to-late teens or early twenties. If he's paying really close attention he might notice that the dates are often grouped close together, but he's more likely looking at the pictures. None of them look like what Dani used to look like, though some might give him a couple seconds worth to pause and stare. 

The very last one on the list is a stoic portrait of someone who might look rather familiar, however. 

...

For a long moment he just. Stares.

Then he looks at the name.

It's Irene Kimbal. Reported missing on Tuesday, a few days ago. 

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—

He takes a deep breath. "That's Irene," he says quietly. "That's—the girl I—wanted to keep and couldn't—that's her."

Dani, a little confused, and somewhat frustrated because he went all the way through everyone and didn't find her at all, and so the tiny amount of hope she'd had feels dashed... well, she reaches forward and takes the touchpad and clicks on the portrait to see more details. There's some filled out police statements and such, and she scans them quickly. 

"I'm, sorry," she says slowly. She isn't, exactly, she doesn't want him to do things to more people even if he is trying to reform, but even so taking away the option is better than the opposite. But it's the right thing to say. It flickers in her mind for a second that it could have been him to make her disappear, but there's no reason for him to react this way if so. She clicks the pen a couple of times and continues. "It couldn't be me, this is after you found me. It also looks like there was actually some confusion in the reporting, it looks like, she wasn't actually reported missing until yesterday, it looks like both parents thought she was with the other one. But she wasn't in a group with the others, the date's on its own, so she's probably not a part of whatever that thing is. She likely just ran away on her own, she's probably fine." And now he's going to ask, and she's going to explain what she's found to him, and now's as good a time as any. 

"I don't—that's not—even if she did run away, if I could've kept her then I could've helped—and I don't think she did, I don't think—"

He shakes his head and looks up at her. "'With the others'? Which others?"

Dani sighs and switches to Excel, and changes sheets a couple of times until she finds the chart she's looking for. "Look," she says. "The number of disappeared women in this town between the ages of 14 and 30 is much higher than anywhere else. Almost triple, I have other charts that show that if you want to look -- and it's the only age group that's like this, the rest of the groups are relatively consistent, and while women are much higher, the rate of missing persons for men is the same. This chart shows the pattern of disappearances." It's mostly rather flat, showing 0 or occasionally 1 or 2 every day -- and it every three to four weeks or so it spikes up to 4 or 5 a day for a couple days in a row before flattening out again. The last spike was just after the start of the year at college, a higher spike than usual, and there hasn't been one since. "Someone keeps kidnapping girls every few weeks, and almost none of the girls in that group are ever found, compared to the rest." She points at the legend. Different color dots represent how long the people went missing -- half of the dots are blue, or green, in the flat parts -- but almost all of the dots in the spikes are red. "The obvious conclusion is that every couple of weeks, someone takes an entire new crop of girls from this city. And it goes back years. "She scrolls through the graph to a date almost three years ago. "And for some reason no one in the government has noticed and done anything about it, which leads me to believe magic might be involved." 

"Well. Fuck."

Dani sighs. "Yeah. That was more or less my reaction as it slowly dawned on me." She's pretty relieved that he seems unhappy about this. He does keep surprising her, all the time, with how, well, good he tends to be -- there's still some part of her in the back of her head that has him labeled as "monster". But treating him that way hasn't helped things at all. And he is acting more appropriately, lately. "I don't know what to do about this except tell the FBI, except that the FBI should already have found this out and be investigating it, which means telling the FBI is probably dangerous, if he's suppressing it somehow. I can't see how though, it's exceedingly obvious. They're not even putting in the slightest effort to be subtle."

She sighs, remembering what she'd asked him here for in the first place, and clicks the pen a few more times. "I know it was a long shot, but none of the others looked anything like me? Please?" None of what she knew about herself really fit any of them, but who knew at this point what was fabricated and what wasn't. She could in theory be any of them. If only she has some kind of past to connect to. Any kind.