Auspex versus lying is a contested roll (VtR pg120). Kacey, making no attempt to hide the truth, automatically forfeits the roll and Martha easily tells that she's being as truthful as she knows.
Unless they're packed just right, objects rarely go back into the container they came from as easily as they came out. Such is the case with Francesco Giovanni and his own entrails. Emma is forced to pile the ropes of guts, among other things, haphazardly into the well of his abdominal cavity on the sliding drawer, and adjust things accordingly several times to the pile adequately clears the locker's interior ceiling. It's as though even in Torpor he refuses to cooperate.
Fortunately, it's not nearly as messy as it would have been with a mortal man so freshly disemboweled. Vitae doesn't really pour or splatter as readily as living blood does. And even then, Francesco appears to have spent his reserves almost completely. What greasy slime that has already been delivered to the floor and the front of Martha's gymslip and shoes seems to be about the lot of it. The guts are drying rapidly.
Had she been scanning Kacey's aura for color rather than simply lie-detecting, she might have discovered-- unsurprisingly-- orange. But it doesn't take a proficient wielder of Auspex to discern that the woman is afraid.
Stupid as it may be, she felt less naked with no clothes on than wearing her new scrubs. It's like wearing a stranger's clothes, even if these clothes aren't meant for any specific stranger. It only really serves to underline how vulnerable she is. But y'know, it makes everyone else feel more at ease, and it's not like she can just walk out of here in the buff.
Kacey freezes when the Herald hugs her. To be fair, the woman is trying to overcome millennia of conditioning (lower case) and custom that have all been poured into one impressionable young Kindred in preparation for her Requiem. Vampires don't hug. Unless they're about to have sex, or drink blood. Or both. True, she'd just cuddled with Emma on the floor for a minute, but they'd been naked.
There are clothes between her and this all-important figure of the Sacramento Hierarchy, so Kacey half-expects the fangs.
When they don't come, she allows herself to return the gesture only after a glance to David and Emma. Almost as if permission. But once she does, she holds the other little woman as tightly as she dare.
"Thank you," she nearly whispers. Without any preamble she continues along a different thought. "I think my whole Coterie is dead, except for Martin. He went to one of your Elysia, but I don't even know which one."
Of course, a message through her phone should be able to change that, but that's not the point. Her position feels truly destitute. And it's only the permission of sharing another person's weight and embrace that's caused her to stop and think about just how destitute.
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