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It was extremely weird how hurried Tate seemed.

Well, normally, she was pretty patient--recommending book after book, movie after movie. "No, you wouldn't like that one, it's horribly gory". Tate loved to talk about her anime, her video games, she just liked to talk to Ladon. He listened, and it was glorious and lovely and something that she missed.

"I'm really sorry to be rushing," she said as they walked down the stairs. "I've just got someplace to be." A date. This she did not tell him, keeping her cards close to her chest, but it was obvious--in the hunch of her shoulders, in the fine gold powder over her eyes, the glittery lip gloss--that she was going somewhere, somewhere that she didn't want to tell him about, and. "Hi Uncle Ivan!" The relief in her voice was palpable as she stared at her uncle, standing in the hallway. Dr. Konstantin stared up at the pair, one eyebrow lifted in the same fashion Tate had displayed after snatching something with a skeleton lady on the front from his hands.

They really looked too much alike to just be uncle and niece.

She smiled over her shoulder at Ladon. "Do you have a ride home," she asked, clearly fussing over it.

"I'll take him," said Ivan, "I've wanted a word for a bit, anyway."

Tate directed her warm expression to her uncle. "Do you mind, Ladon?"

"Thanks so much, Ladon," said Tate, patting him on the shoulder; she hovered for a few minutes, between her uncle and her Best Male Friend Who Wasn't Her Boyfriend. Should she tell him? Should she just leave it be? She should get going or she'd be late. Being late to one's first official date with one's boyfriend was not a good policy to start, and so finally she waved goodbye to Ladon and hurried out the door, pausing only to put on a pair of high heels

Her internal debate need not have happened, because the moment they heard the engine start, Ivan was sighing. "She had a date," he explained. "Do you want something to eat before you go back? I imagine you wanted to talk."

Without waiting for an answer--he shared a domineering personality with his niece--he wandered into the kitchen. When--if--Ladon followed, he would find the older man pulling various cooking ingredients down from the cabinets--flour, eggs, oil--what was he making?

"Pasta," explained Ivan. "Learned it in college, it's healthier than what you buy in those boxes."

Placidly, he sat down at the island in the middle of the kitchen, ingredients spread out around him. "President's Day, if I remember correctly," said the older man. From the breast pocket of his shirt, he pulled out a pair of glasses; like Tate, he was farsighted, but not enough to require his spectacles at all times. Adjusting them, he looked down at the label of the flour. "Would you kindly get me two more eggs out of the refrigerator?"

He cracked the two eggs he had into a large bowl, added flour and started to mix it. Making pasta was apparently not a neat endeavor, as there was already flour streaked up his arms. "Would you like to help?" It seemed the teenager had already been conscripted, as Ivan was holding out the flour like he expected Ladon to take it.

"I believe it's a friend from her junior year mathematics class," he said, "Zachary Esther, I seem to recall?" He shook his head. The name would probably be familiar to Ladon; at the time, it had been a huge scandal. He'd gotten sent to Hillworth for sexual harassment. Tate would have said, hotly, that he'd meant nothing bad by it, but Ladon didn't know that--and apparently, neither did Ivan, because his frown was not thoughtful but instead unhappy.

The outburst seemed to please Ivan; he cracked the two eggs, added them to the dough in the bottom of his mixing bowl. A cup of flour had been set aside from the bag Ladon now held, and it was spread across the countertop carefully. "Yes," he said, "one of the sixty percent of Hillworth attendees who deserve to be there. Tati seems to have an idea that what happened to him was her fault." He shook his head and dipped his floury hands back in the bowl. Tati--that was a new nickname. Probably one that would get Ladon hit if he used it, considering how Ivan had waited until after she had left to use it.

"As her mother reminds me, I have no legal say in what she does," said Ivan. Was that... resentment? And what did he mean by legal say? It was like he'd put especial emphasis on it. "Believe me, I would adore to tell her she's forbidden to see him ever again."

He sighed and looked at Ladon; one thing Tate had gotten from her mother was her height. Ivan actually happened to be kind of short for his gender, around five foot eight. "Can I give you an allegory, Ladon? A purely hypothetical story that may or may not be something that Tati truly thinks, but is my--admittedly experienced--opinion of what she thinks?"

Ivan split the dough into two halves once it was mixed. He put one ball in front of Ladon, and started to knead the other one. "Put your hands in the flour first," said the doctor, "or it will stick." For a long moment, he was quiet as he worked the pasta dough, assembling his thoughts.

"When Tati was thirteen, she had a fight with her friend Giselle," he said, finally. "A big fight; they were screaming at each other over something. They didn't speak for weeks. But two days after the fight, she started disappearing every day after school. It turned out she was dating a senior at Meadowview. He was later arrested, for what I don't know, except after that Tati didn't want to talk to anyone but Giselle..."

He shook his head, pulled a rolling pin out of a drawer and started to roll his half of the dough flat. "Whatever it was, she wanted me out of it, so out of it I stayed; but this isn't the first time she's reacted to trouble in another relationship by going to make a new one."

With a sigh, he said, "I wish she would tell me what was wrong, instead of finding the worst possible--" Here, he cut himself off, picked up a knife and started to cut the flattened dough into wide ribbons.

Ivan sighed as he laid the sliced up pasta noodles on a tray, took the dough from the younger man and rolled it flat, sliced it up, and then added it as well.

With a shake of his head, he got down a large pot from the cabinet over the stove and filled it with hot water. He put it on the stove, lid on, and preheated the oven. "Pass me the salt, please, Ladon." Then, waiting, he leaned against the counter. Was he avoiding the question? Why would he want to avoid it?

"She's very like me," he said finally. "Which is only appropriate." This he left unexplained. "You two fought, and the next day she went to ask out a boy. Look at it this way; if you didn't matter to her, she wouldn't be out dating Zachary Esther." He rubbed one hand along his jaw and grimaced; he put the tray of pasta in the oven. It seemed like Ladon was blaming himself for it, and... well, that wasn't why Ivan had wanted to talk to the boy at all.

"It's very roundabout," admitted Ivan. "It confuses me at times, as well. What did you fight about?"

"Girls are very mysterious creatures," said Ivan, who was looking at Ladon a little bit strangely. It wasn't a bad type of strange, or like he was looking down his nose at Ladon, he was just... looking. "They like to seem mysterious, and that makes them hard to work with sometimes. They do things for no good reason, sometimes. It's not your fault."

Still, he was quiet as he pulled the pasta out and dumped it into the pot of boiling water. "Do you want sauce, Ladon," he asked, looking into the fridge; he was leaning on the door, evidently somewhat tired. Ivan didn't look like the type to worry; the lines of his face were more like laugh lines than frown lines. However, how could you not worry about your niece if she was out in the company of a stalker?

He sighed, patted Ladon's shoulder. "It's not your fault," he repeated, hoping that was the right thing to say.

He strained the pasta, put it into two bowls and set the pot of sauce on the island. "Tate doesn't like people," he said after a moment, handing Ladon a fork. He ladled the spaghetti sauce into his bowl and stirred it, studiously staring into it. His hand jerked when Ladon asked when he'd started dating; he adjusted his glasses, frowned at one particular noodle.

"At fourteen," he said slowly, "I had a few serious relationships. I was married once, it didn't last. Now I prefer to use what time I have to keep an eye on my da-- niece. On Tate."

He set into eating his pasta in relative silence.

"Don't take me as an example," he said to Ladon, "I'm not the best at life and living, as you can tell."