Participants:
| Scene Title | Are You Okay? |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Eve checks up on a friend. |
| Date | January 18, 2020 |
Gillian's Elmhurst Brownstone
"I'veeeee been working," There is a lone candle lit in the room, Eve Mas dances around a room with a bamboo stick in her hand, waving it around like she's trying to cast a spell with a wand, "On the railllroad,"
Her quarry is a landline on a table near the kitchen area of her apartment.
Sticking her tongue out, Eve squints and slowly lowers the stick until it hits three buttons, a dial tone echoes out on speaker mode and the speed dial function begins the process of connecting the former seer with a certain best friend in SESA.
"Oh!" Eve almost forgot, her "wand" is used to poke at the stereo near the table, as the phone rings she tries desperately to get the ON button before Red answered and the whole thing was ruined!!
Ahhhhhhhh.
The sweet, delicious sounds of a noir horn section blares out of the speakers and Eve sighs in content. Dropping the bamboo stick as crimson lightning wreathes up the stick, burning it all the way to the top.
"Look…" Robyn Quinn pads across the carpet of a home not her own, bending down to look under a table. "If you don't want to eat now, then you don't eat until dinner. Come oooon…." With a heavy sigh, she turns around to see a cat, something which brings a smile to her face. "Oh thank God. Gillian's not allowed to get mad at me if you refuse to eat, but that's not a conversation I-"
As her phone starts ringing, her eyes widen. With her temporary burner phone, every song has the same ringtone, making it impossible to know who's calling in advance. Despite that, she rushes over to the table and snatches it up, not even hesitating before pressing the "answer" button.
"Hello?!" There's excitement in her voice, anticipation as she waits for a response.
Electric lights
Blow my mind
But I feel alright
"Hellllooooooo," a rather deep "masculine" voice sounds over the other end of the phone. There's some coughing heard and like someone is pounding on their chest. Must be flu season.
"Is this a Agent Robyn Quinn?"
Before the SESA Agent can answer, "Your cab and nanny will be there shortly. Show skin. Those were the instructions by my boss," Eve covers her mouth and stops herself from giggling and looks up towards the ceiling.
And never stop, it's how we ride
Comin' up until we die
The music is loud in the background but that doesn't cover the noise of a knock at her door at that precise moment.
You catch my eye
If you wanna fly
I'm so alive
There's silence on the other end of the line, before Eve can hear a deep breath being taken. "Uh huh." This has happened so many times before, but unlike some of those times Robyn is far too preoccupied with other thoughts to pin down the person calling her or how familiar this moment is. And thus-
"So. I don't know how you got this number," because Robyn hasn't given her temporary number out to too many people, "but I'm waiting for an important phone call. And I'm not home. And I don't know what your idea of nanny is, but I swear to God if one hand is laid on my boy, well…" A sardonic chuckle follows out, and Eve can't see the way Robyn casually examines her fingernails.
"Let's just say there won't be any hands laid afterwards." Yes, that is a very real threat. "So let's try this again. Hang up, or be straight."
"Oh for Christ's sake! Party pooper! Are you at Gilly's then?! You're supposed to tell me when you're crashing so I don't bring over Ghost or a GENTLEMAN OF THE NIGHT! ON PURPOSE!" Eve throws her hands in the air and marches towards the door.
"I'm clouding over in five Red!"
Yelling down to where her front door lays open, "Tell Poppy ABORT MISSION ABORT! IM GOING IN!"
And Eve just leaves the call connected as she instead leaps out of the window and poofs into a cloud. Slowly.
Slowly, inching towards the direction where Gillian lives.
Two Hours Later
The cloud formerly known as Eve settles down in the backyard with crackling and snaps as she begins to take her corporeal form again. "Red Robyn!" Shouting with her head thrown back, Eve marches up to the back door and goes for the spare key that she no longer just hides in her bra.
"Helllooooooooooooo," Calling out into the kitchen, "I've got a couple chickens back at Cat'ssssss," Said in a singsong voice, Robyn was aware of Eve's enthusiasm when it came to preparing one's own meal! "Wanna make dinne- ah rats you made some!"
"Upstairs!"
Robyn sits in a the parlor floor lounge, a book in hand and glasses on her face as she hears Eve enter. She halfway rises from her seat, before shaking her head and sitting back down. It's only once Eve has joined her in the lounge that she speaks up again, looking at her floor.
"Those better be plucked chickens this time," is all she offers at first as her eyes scan the page. "I'm not going through that again, Eve. Even I have a limit on the amount of chaos I can tolerate." A moment of silence, and she closes the book, setting it down in her lap.
"Are you out of your mind?" She looks over at the fart cloud of a woman, peering over the frames of her glasses. There's a deathly serious look on her face, one that could maybe make a less man worried about where this is going. "I have a kid now, Eve. One some people may still want. Please don't- just don't. You scared the hell out of me."
With that delivered, she leans back in the chair and smiles wide. "It's nice to see you. It's been too long." Rising up to her feet, she turns and sets the book - Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - down in the chair and makes her way over to Eve. Enveloping the woman in a tight hug, she places a peck on her cheek. Commet ça va, mon ami?"
Eve charges up the stairs! Whhheee!
"I'm always at least half out of my mind!" Silly Red! Eve snickers and comes in close to embrace Robyn just as tight. "Plus grosse qu'une baleine à Noël. Vous êtes très belle," Winkwink. The former seer rubs her belly as she backs away and looks over her shoulder, "About that chicken… don't you think it's a good idea for my young nephew to learn how to prepare his meals?"
This would probably need to happen without Robyn being around…
"But ok ok I'm sorry. No more pranks in person, you are a mama bear. Again. Oh Chicken will be so happy to meet her new sib-" Eve stops and looks off to the side. "I miss them… I miss you." She would hug her again but a crackle of lightning crawls up her arm. "Japan… kidnap-befriending seers… there's been a lot going on. I still feel useless," She huffs and throws her arms up. Looking for some alcohol nearby.
She definitely noticed that book.
"Flatterer. Careful, Eve. I may take that the wrong way some day." Robyn doesn't wink, but she does offer a smile. "Ah, yeah… I haven't had the chance to tell Jolene yet. I'm sure Gilly has, though." There's a sad twitch to her smile as she turns and makes her way back over to the chair she had been sitting in.
Eve's search for alcohol ends in spying a bottle of Green Spot resting on a towel on a near by surface. There's no glass or ice that's visible, however. "I miss them too, Eve. I miss Gilly so much. I miss brunch. I miss gossip." She lets out a sigh. "You've been a bit absent yourself, you know," she points out as she sits down and looks over at Eve, an eyebrow raised.
"It's good I have Matthew," she notes, reaching down and picking her glass up off the carpet and taking a long sip of the contents. The book is moved into her lap, and she stares on ahead. "I think the chicken can wait, for the moment. Besides, that's more preparation than anyone else in city puts into their food."
She swirls her glass a bit, looking back up at Eve. "You went to Japan, I went to Antarctica. This is not how I envisioned us globetrotting, Eve. I thought we'd do some huge tour together or… something."
Eve only sticks her tongue out in answer and when she finds the bottle she just takes it and takes a deep swallow, alcohol use to effect her sight in subtle ways but now she just feels the usual feelings. It's comforting. Barefeet dance across the floor and she ends in a spin and landing on the floor. It was safer for all the furnishings in the house if she just occupied the floor.
"Maybe you're right about the chicken…" She crumbles and takes another swig before placing the bottle between her pale outstretched legs. Eve missed wearing boots in that moment and her toes wiggle one at a time before becoming a wave of wiggles. Crimson lightning bounces off her head and evaporated into fine mist of similar shades above. "You have another child, look at you. Mommy again." Eve almost chinhands but instead she just grins widely.
"Oh well I've gone and done it again Red. Obsessed. Mad with the wanting to Know. To Solve. I haven't had juicy gossip in forever!" Eve blows a hard burst of air through her puckered lips and lays back on the cold floor. "There's a world where we did, surely." Of that much Eve was certain.
"But they have a different life, they don't need to fight anymore. We still do," Her expression grows dark but Eve kicks her feet up to wheel them in motion, "I wish we could rest. Little birds slumber in the trees. Benchmark in Mexico awaits… though. We would have to leave the tequila behind."
And that just would not do.
"But no no no, the birds squawk, immortal birds buzz in their faces, the oldest of the birds awakens from its long slumber and now everything's gone to shit!"
A beat passes.
"I'm gonna make some chicken later tonight." Robyn already said this but Eve feels the need to address this again for her best friend.
There's a long silence from Robyn as she stares into the middle distance, only breaking her gaze to reach to the other side of her chair and pick up a glass of whiskey. She takes a long sip of it, never looking over at Eve as she speaks.
"Eve," she starts, all sense of frivolity having fled her voice, "did you come here to talk string theory with me? Because you can ask Richard when they find him how well that tends to go." Another sip, and she rides up from her seat.
"Or maybe-" She turns with a quick but theatrical flourish, and somehow manages to avoid spilling any of her drink. "You want to hear my thoughts? Because I have stories! Lovely ones, really. It's amazing the capacity for evil you never know you have until…" Waving a hand back and forth, she Snickers. "Well."
She swallows, looking at Eve for a long moment. "Or not. You can stop Eve. We can always stop." As she turns, her eyes angle to a window, staring out into the afternoon sky. "I am. You can too."
"Bah strings, tangles, it's all there in the air!" Waving her hands around in the air and shaking her head at the same time. But then stories, Eve tilts her head. "Evil? None of my Reflections mentioned you as evil Red," There's a curious glance at the other woman before Eve scratches the back of her head.
We could just stop.
Eve had stopped before. Had wandered away. She wasn't sure it was up to her to do so again. "Sadly Red, I think we are on a course that has been speeding fast and though we step out of line with whatever the Fates have planned, we are still nudged to the path. "We have families to protect, staying out of it doesn't do that." Eve would be lying though if she said she had never thought of grabbing Gilly and Chicken and hightailing it to Mexico.
"You're wrong," Robyn states flatly, taking a sip of her whiskey. That theatrical flair vanishes as she turns back, closing the distance between her and Eve. "Your Reflections? Eve, stop. I know you've never been the most grounded in reality," says the woman talking about herself in multiple timelines, "but give it a go this time."
Another sip, and that smirk returns to her face. "Did you know," she says with a low chuckle, "that I'm one bad day from a full collapse? Because it's happened, elsewhere. The Vanguard, Arthur Petrelli. Hell, in what I've seen the only time I don't end up dead is when I sided with them. And well… we know how those stories end!"
Her glass is set down. "So quitting is the smartest option any of us have. Maybe not permanently. But sometimes you need to step back. Take stock." Her eyes haven't left Eve, her smirk fading again. "I have a son now. I have no intention of ending up dead. Not yet. So I'm looking into a transfer."
"I'm not," Both of these women are so stubborn, Eve holds Robyn's gaze as well and frowns at the news of Robyn being one step away from a full collapse, this Eve can relate too. "Oh Red…" Eve scoots forward and sits in front of her best friend and frowns, it was a curse to see the other sides, to know what could be if you were pushed in a slightly different direction. Eve knows this and has fallen victim to it before.
"In all worlds, you do what you must to survive. Because that's what you are Red, you are a true survivor. Matty… is lucky to have you as his mother. As were Chicken, as were Adel." A soft smile and nod, a transfer.
"Will you leave the city?" There's a deeper frown, she doesn't want to be away from her. She can't remember the last time she didn't see Robyn on a semi regular basis. The thought of her leaving when Gillian is already gone, Eve keeps that pain to herself because it's selfish in nature.
"Who is gonna tell me no?" Blinking back tears and trying to chuckle it off before she bows her head. "You're like my sister,"
Robyn is quiet, turning away from Eve with a heavy sigh. "I'm looking at Kansas City," she remarks quietly. "A transfer," she repeats. "I keep being too busy to put in the request officially, but…" Robyn rolls her shoulders, rubbing her hand down her face. "Look, Eve, it is what it is. I just… I can't."
She stares at a bookshelf, before looking back to the chair she had been sitting in. Silently she pads over, bending down and pulling a book out from under the copy of Alice in Wonderland. "I can't sit here on the precipice anymore. I want my ability to be my shadow." She turns the book over in her hands. "I don't want to be my shadow."
Turning back to Eve, she holds out the book - The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9 - and looks at her expectantly. "One bad day," she reiterates. "I won't put Matthew through that. Not if I can help it."
"There is light within you, you have it for little Matthew." Eve frowns and nods as she leans forward to take the book. "Jung, the power of your unconscious. You've been reading him," Eve was familiar, from all the shrinks she had seen. From all the trying to understand herself. Self work, the move to Kansas City. Robyn was truly moving on.
"It's hard standing there on the edge, never knowing when you're gonna fall. Right over and never get back up but you're right. A mother can't do that, a mother must survive for their child. You… are a good mother Red." Placing the book in her lap and idly flipping the pages open. "I say after this is done I'll be done. I'll settle, there's a new generation out there. Ready to take charge of this world." No matter how broken they would receive it.
But Eve and Robyn both know better, Eve had a need to see these things through. To avert the catastrophes that she has witnessed. At this rate though it was more of a fleeting obligation to the role she once played as a seer. Perhaps she wasn't ready to let that go, it hadn't been that long anyway, not yet.
"Kansas, mmmm. You better have a room for me to visit. Maybe just an attic," There's a sad twinkle in her eye. "Do you remember that painting?" Of course Robyn did, there is only one that she would feel the need to bring up to Robyn, the one that was about the SESA agent herself. "Maybe you've been at a crossroads, waiting to make a choice and now you've got a nudge in the right direction. Mmm, onto better things. No death, no boom, no gloom. Just the light casting your shadow behind you."
"Jury's still out on that," Robyn offers with a small laugh. "Hasn't even been a year yet. But I have hope." Her lips quirk into a small smile, brief and sweet. "But that hope is why I need to do what I need to do." She watches as Eve flips through the book, studying her reaction. "I read some psychology when I was getting started in SESA, before I really understood what detective work was. But it helped."
And it's informed a lot of her world view as of late.
"Sure, Eve. I'll open a cafe, you can stay in the attic. Something properly bohemian. You know, until Cat or Claudia or Lazzaro figures out that's where you've been planning your mayhem." The turn to the subject of the painting, though, that darkens her expression further. "The one I hang in my office at home." A replica, of course. It had hung in the spare room of her old apartment with Dirk as well.
She takes a sip of her whiskey, almost reflexively.
"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just running out the clock by planning to move." Huffing out a breath, she moves to sit back down. "Either way, I'll be past it."
"Excellent," Clapping her hands together and then rubbing them as if is was some devious plan that she had been wanting to set in motion, newsflash it really wasn't but the option to still be close to Robyn makes her insanely happy. Ironic as she flips through a book on psychology. "Doctor Beans wouldn't read me psych books but he was really good at the ol inferring." Knocking alongside her temple with a wink, she didn't talk about her time(s) in the asylums or mental wards that often. Much of it something Eve never wanted to think about or relive.
Still Robyn was like a sister and she knew a fair bit about Eve's past by now anyway, the pale woman didn't feel the need to hide with her.
But that painting the symbolism, "It really puzzled me for a while. I kept my eye on you so much when I had my old gift. During the war, I was so scared you'd tip over the edge. Red you beat the odds or… formed your own path. You're doing it," Eve seems to admire that, not being beholden to some prophecy, not letting it drag her down. Moving past it. Something Eve has trouble with to this day for all her own flightiness.
"I think this was all worth it, everything we did." Everything Eve was gonna do, "You're going to get your happiness Red, I'm so… happy." Of course with Eve her moods move as fast as her mouth and Robyn is no stranger to this. Tears well up and she waves at them, "We've done so much just you and I.. Else… Grandpa Simon… just… I'm gonna miss not having you close."
"Both of those happened on the same day," Robyn replies in a sarcastically flat tone, referring to Else and "Grandpa Simon". "But there's sure been a lot else," she adds with a weak smile. She never ends up back in her chair, instead making her way next to Eve and sitting down on the arm of her chair.
Hopefully she didn't break the arm, Gillian would probably frown on that.
"You know how I feel about paths and fate." It's all bullshit. "We're always making our own paths, though… insight, be it into the future, into other times, into our other selves, can always inform where that path leads. For better or worse." She rests her arm on Eve's head, as if using her as - well, an armrest. "I probably did to be honest. Once Ygraine told me about my mom… I stopped caring. I dove head long into every fight I could, did everything people like Nicole told me to do."
She stares ahead for a long moment, before closing her eyes. "I think it took the trials and Cat asking me if I was interested in SESA to get me level again, and by that point I wanted nothing to do with most everything I'd known before. Except for you and Gillian. God, all the times I was in this house and didn't even make an effort to talk to Jolene…"
Robyn's body relaxes, letting her slump against Eve and slide a little bit down into the seat with her. "I may not like the stupid shit you get up to Eve, but I'll always treasure you. Even if I'm not showing it."
Eve closes her eyes and smiles as Robyn speaks and uses her as a armrest, she sits up straighter so she may be a firm perch and not a flimsy branch. She isn't the first of her friends to denounce fate and this isn't the first time she's said something of the like. They can agree on somethings regarding the future, "Seers, Precognition. W-they just offer a potential. A chance to avoid or rush into." The former seer smiles weakly and clasps Robyn's arm that's on her head. "But our free will that's what makes it count, that's what takes the steps."
Almost everything that she had encountered she had wanted, welcomed even into her life. The visions were always a stepping stone, not the cornerstone but for all her distancing herself from the 'Gift' she finds herself mournful still.
"Oh Red you're gonna make me cry!" Snickering and then pulling Robyn down to share the chair with her. "You're one of my best friends, badbass momma, The Everlasting Muse." Throwing her arm Robyn's shoulders with a laugh, "I treasure you always, I value your mind. Your love." Eve now she's her friends head as a rest for her own head.
"We've come this far, who would have thought it mmm?"
"The Mad Muse, thank you very much." Pausing for a moment after that, Robyn chuckles. "Though I guess that's not just me, is it?" A wistful sigh escapes her lips. "I miss that band.". We've come so far resonates in a way that brings a faint smile to her face, even as she sits a bit straighter. "Well, now we just need Gillian back, and we can get back to having brunch together like we used to. With the kids this time, though." Even though Jolene isn't a 'kid' by any stretch of the imagination, she easily gets lumped in with Jac and Matthew.
Pulling herself up out of the chair, she makes herself back over to the one she had been reading at. Leaning down, she pulls up the two books she had, as well as a cane that had been lying at the foot of the chair. "Gotta have all the good times we can until I'm gone."
Hopefully Gillian would be back before then. Hopefully everyone would be back before then.
"And then more when you all inevitably come to visit. But until then…" Taking the cane in hand, she taps the bottom of it against the floor once as she turns pointedly to look at Eve.
"What was that about a chicken dinner?"
"BAWK!"