Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Jeremiah! Hi!!"

Leila went in for the hug immediately. They were on hug basis now. Right?

That was about the quickest Jeremiah had ever seen the blood drain from Leila's face. And they'd started their professional relationship looking at corpses and really, really gross houses.

"You mean I hugged a--" ********, that gave her the creeps. Undead were alright in her book considering Aleksy was one, but undead who pretended to be other people was a whole different kind of unfamiliar. The bad kind. So she allowed Jeremiah his space, holding her hands up in front of of her and taking a deep breath to ground herself. Never mind that touching him was suddenly as impossible as grabbing minnows out of a bait bucket. "Well, that's the worst news I've gotten all week. Go ahead and come in."

The living room and sofas were easy to find, and one of them was occupied by Eve, Julian and a contentedly sleepy Clover getting head scritches from the former Fitzpatrick. Eve offered a wave and pointed to a not-quite-empty and still good pot of tea on the coffee table. When Julian noticed their visitor, however, he had a very brief deer-in-headlights moment before diverting his attention back to hemming a new pair of pants.

It was almost saccharinely domestic.

A little bit of the color came back to Leila's features at the shoulder squeeze. Not a lot, but enough for her to get her composure back most of the way.

"Good to see you again, Chief," Eve greeted with the usual enthusiasm. "The dining set isn't the only thing your double got to spruce up the place. Check in the bathroom when you have a minute, it's just around the corner past the kitchen." She'd overheard, did her best to partition aside her feelings on the topic and proceeded as normal - a wordless nod had been given at the once-again correct pinning of Julian as her nephew.

Julian was terrifyingly confused, albeit little less so when mention of doubles came up. So there were magical doubles of people too for some reason. And the Jeremiah he'd met before was one of them.

That meant...

that meant he had a do-over.

"Nice to meet you," he offered, not a second of contemplation too soon. "If I'm following this right."

"Julian Fitzpatrick." Absolute failure was the title on the back of his mind as an end to his introduction, but he elected not to speak that aloud. Eve had already endured enough of his self-aggrandizing, and imposing it on a guest he barely knew would be in awful taste. Regardless, he was immeasurably grateful to God in Heaven (whom he generally didn't acknowledge on principle) that the real Jeremiah Mercer wasn't so much of a ******** tease. No, not that kind.

Okay, maybe a little bit that kind.

Oh, but Jeremiah looked so concerned about whatever horrors his fetch had wracked while off in what was probably Noble Hell, if Thorne's experience had been any indication. "Tell you what, Mercer." Leila's tone was facetiously professional here - which was about the level of affection their friendship generally afforded, especially after the cruel revelation they weren't on hug basis after all. "We'll return it if you really don't like it being around the house. Or burn it. Your pick."

Eve poured herself another cup of tea. "It's not about the quality, it's the associations it has," she explained.

"You should have seen the jello mold," Julian added.

That was all the gifts covered, it seemed like. Leila stood back for a moment to think on anything else that had happened since the last time they'd seen the real Jeremiah that might stick out at him. The changes in the weather around both layers of Ashdown were glaringly obvious... she was kind of waiting for him to notice the incubating eggs on the dining table at the far side of the room so she wouldn't seem too desperately eager to bring them up... so really, there wasn't-- wait.

"Mercer, holy s**t. This might've happened after you came back, but. Kuroda stopped by, and some other weird s**t happened, but the important thing is Julian pointed out-"

"Shadow the Hedgehog," Julian interjected.

Leila drew a fist up over her grinning face, her jaw clenched in an admirable, but barely successful attempt at restraint. "Lady's been playing this game, and. He sounds just like him."