Bartender's Orders

Participants:

abby_icon.gif darren_icon.gif

Scene Title Bartender's Orders
Synopsis Abby comes to visit Darren where he's hiding out at her home, and he makes the decision to turn himself in.
Date April 21, 2010

Le Rivage


Darren has had an apartment to himself save for when Alexander makes it home. Then he's had to share. Feed the cat, refresh the birds water, that's all. Cable hooked up - Abigail couldn't live without her price is right and it's not like Hulu has it every day. Today though, Abigail's showing up, a phone call as a warning so he doesn't spaz out when the keys turn in the lock.

The taxi driver has long since taken off and the blonde is letting herself into the temporary housing slow as molasses and dressed for winter weather thanks to the stop the day before at Lucy's for clothes. It's been interesting at Francois's and while she's enjoying his hospitality - and the frenchman's help with her ribs, she's heading home for a few hours to give him a break from looking after her and the others in the brownstone. That and she's got stuff to do.

"Darren?" She hopes he's there, hasn't taken off. Maybe he's even out to get some food or stock up on groceries. Clunk goes her keys on the coffee table, shuffle stepping to the kitchen so she can check on the status of the fridge, eschewing the cupboards in favor of not bending or raising arms. "It's Abby" Her voice has that quality to it that he'd know for what it is, Drugged thickness that comes from painkillers and not anything liquid. "Checking in on you. Have to grab some papers"

When the refrigerator door closes, Darren's standing there behind the door's silhouette several feet away, back up against the drab colored wall and arms folded over his chest. Dark brows are furrowed on the doctor's forehead, and a single locke of blonde hair has spilled from behind his ear to fall in front of his face.

"Present," Darren notes a bit haggardly, the stink of whiskey rolling off his breath in an unfortunately coincidental manner. It's only then that Abigail notices the bottle on the counterspace beside the fridge, cap off and a few drops of alcohol beside it. Darren has a glass in his hand, at least he hasn't been drinking straight from the source, but it looks like he's gone through enough of the bottle to matter; He must have gone out and bought it himself.

"S'funny seeing you here…" Darren rolls the words off his tongue tiredly, dark circles around his eyes and reddened edges tells a story of emotional instability that Abby's all too familiar with in other people, "…I guess." He's had a lot to drink.

Why on earth she had whiskey there, likely came over in a box of stuff in case Flint came over. Before she found out he'd killed. It wasn't Alexander's. He startles her a bit with being there, enough to cause a grimace to cross her face and wrinkle her nose. Who wouldn't when you close the door and in it's place is a person. "It is my.. temporary lodgings. There was some numbers I needed to pick up and -"Whiskey.

Whiskey to abby is .. well, it's something and she's capping the bottle to push it against the back wall of the counter. "Friend has been taking care of me. I'm upwardly mobile today so I thought to check on you, update you on the whole turning yourself in thing. If you still want to. Are you okay? How are you holding up? I hope Scarlett hasn't been bothering you too badly"

"I had a cat once," Darren blurts out in total irrelevance to the conversation, "it got hit by a car when I was fifteen." Slowly, that glass of whiskey is lifted to his lips, tipped back and sipped from as he makes his way into the kitchen, around Abby with heavy, clunking footfalls. "I heard the screech of tires outside, and I thought someone got hurt— thought it was a car accident. I'd had that cat since I was six, I loved that— " his head shakes, a breath snorted out and fingers raked thorugh his hair as he turns back to look at Abby, resting his hip against the counter.

"All I ever wanted t'do with my life was help people. All I ever wanted t'do with my life was fix people that'd been hurt, you know? Some stupid— kid thing. Make all the badness go away…" he waves the half empty glass of whiskey around in the air. "Now, I dunno what's even going to happen t'me. Do you?"

"Your cat and I have something in common" is murmured, low enough to not disturb his inebriated rant, lift a hand to run through her own hair as well, turning on her heels so she can lean against the fridge. "You still love that cat, and just because there's an ability put into your mix doesn't mean that you can't still fix people, do what you've been doing before this all happened. It's just going to take a little bit of time to learn to control it at first so you can touch people and use your hands to do what you intended them to do and trained them to do. To go back to fixing people's hurts and making all that badness go away Darren."

What's going to happen to him? She reaches over carefully, lifting the whiskey bottle that she just put away and a finger slips over the edge of his cup to use it to drag him back towards the couch since there's no kitchen table. "You, Darren, will end up going to the Company. Matthew Parkman told me as much. Which, in a way, is a good thing"

"The… CIA?" Thre's something of a drunken pause to that connect-the-dots exercise from Darren. He's led easily enough over to the sofa, eyeing it tentatively before awkwardly settling himself down on it with a creak of the old springs inside. "I'm— I don' follow. What's anything I'm doing got to do with the CIA?" Squinting in his assessment of Abby, Darren leans forward and cradles his glass of whiskey between his knees, watching the blonde with an uncertain and askance look.

There's subtleties in Darren's expression outside of the obvious drunkenness, or perhaps because of it; little eddies of emotion that bubble up to the surface between his thoughts. He's scared, and perhaps rightfully so with all things considered.

"No. CIA doesn't want to deal with you. The company is a group of individuals who are part of the government. Call them… men in black, but instead of dealing with Aliens, they deal with Evolveds going way back. Before I was born, probably before you were born" She doesn't settle in like him, bending knee's, letting a palm support her weight and pillows behind her before sitting. He's seen those movements before and likely knows what ail's her if she hadn't already told him before.

"They're the ones best able to deal with your ability, teach you what it is and how to use it constructively if you want to, or how to not use it if you don't want to" Or shove you where the sun doesn't shine if you don't do either. "I know a few of them, good ones, and I can be there all the way if you want. I've worked with them too on occasion. Agent Parkman isn't one to play with me and lie to me. We go back" She wriggles her fingers to indicate how she knows him. "How I know some of the Company agents too. They're not exactly super above board but… It's the frank alternative to sitting in jail and not being allowed to work with people and be a doctor still" She points out.

His glass is taken from him, whiskey topped up and then passed back over to him. "I'll be with you Darren. The memory manipulator? He works for them. He's called the Hatian, and he can help you forget the people that you had to hurt"

There's dumb confusion on Darren's face, a dry, parches swallow despite his drinking. "Since before…" this is what happens when an ordinary person is told that the world they've known is a lie. Blue eyes sweep from side to side, then look up to Abby as a ragged laugh bubbles out from Darren, one hand sweeping acros the back of his neck as he looks over at her. "You're— saying the government knew about people— people like us and… and they never told anyone about it? They— they never thought— 'hey, maybe someone might need help' and just— they kept it a fucking secret?"

It doesn't take much for Abby to feel the distrust and frustration boiling up in Darren, all that misplaced anger about his own condition and the situation surrounding it. "You're— Why would they want to help me? Why would they give a shit about me and not put me in some prison somewhere? I'm a murderer Abby, I killed three people!"

"Yes Darren. They have. Because up until a few years ago, everyone thought about themselves the way you did, only they felt incredibly alone, afraid and they were afraid that what happens these days, with Humanis First, and what happened to me, and others, would happen to them. Why would they want to help you? So that you don't accidentally or are pressured into adding a fourth to that count. because sometimes Darren, someone who's killed with an ability, isn't necessarily evil and doesn't deserve to be locked up in a hole and never see the light of day"

She passes over the whiskey glass. 'They didn't bring me in, lock me away or sink me into a hole and I killed someone. Agent Parkman brought me in, questioned me, and I was turned loose to carry on my life since it was.." Well, there was a bunch of things involved in that. "You're drunk, and not drunk enough Darren" She gestures to the cup. 'If you can still count how many people perished. You need to drink more. I'm a bartender, Bartender's orders"

Again, Darren is absolutely perplexed as he stares up at Abby, brows creasing together and a look of consternation and uncertainty tracing across his face. Rolling his tongue over the inside of his cheek, Darren considers the blonde paramedic, then his glass, raising it slowly to his lips before taking a sip, all the while not ever truly taking his eyes off of the blonde. When the glass is lowered, Darren's voice is more hushed than it was before, and his eyes wander to Abby's hands before going back up to her eyes. "One more question…" the surgeon requests with a wobbling pause.

"Exactly…" Darren's jaw shifts to the side, blue eyes looking Abby up and down again as he takes another sip from his glass of whiskey. "Exactly how are you not married yet?"

"Because I am a southern baptist who believed that she was touched by god, not evolved or posessing an ability that jumped from individual to individual. My spare time was spent sleeping, taking away good surgeon's jobs" She's making light of his mean comment to her at their second meeting. "And didn't have the time to deal with someone elses needs in addition to my own. Work, heal, pray, sleep. That is why" She's not about to take some whiskey, not and survive for Francois to waggle his finger at her. "Complicated. But I do have this big real fake engagement ring. Long story there too. I just… Many people in this city, don't go for the girl who places her fate and complicit faith in god" She shifts in her seat. "Plus…I'm pretty broken. I mean, surely you have seen the medicines in the bathroom."

"Listen, Darren, it suck, it really does, but it boils down to this. You can go to the cops, profess that you've killed three women, go to jail, go to prison and who knows what will happen. They do have ways to suppress abilities. The Company knows of ways to do it. Or they at least know where to go to get it. As much as I never really want to be in the same building as them not on my own terms, in your situation, they're the lesser of two evils and the only ones with the resources to help you, oh sweet heavens, I must be high, because i'm advocating going straight to the company" Or maybe she's being sensible. "Keep drinking. besides, I might be in your shoes before long"

"Suppress me…" Darren breathes out the words quietly, blue eyes focused down at his lap and fingers curling around the rim of the glass. There's a smile he has, awkward and nervous. "Maybe they could cure me too…" he admits with a shake of his head, a rueful laugh and a tip of the glass up as he guzzles down the last of the whiskey in it, then eyes the bottle. Watching Abby quietly, Darren nods his head once and offers the paramedic a thoughtful, if not somewhat drunken smile.

"Call them," Darren decides with a sullen look in his eyes, "these— Company guys, whoever they are. Call them an' let 'em know I'm willin' to come in and… and just tell them that I want to be normal again." Managing something of an awkward smile, maybe Darren hasn't quite yet realized that the call's already gone out. Abby spoke with Matthew Parkman, and there's only a few links in that chain from him down to the Company. He may agree with it, but his fate's already been decided.

'There's no cure for being evolved. You could beg to be infected with H5N10 and hope that you A) survived it and B) that the cessation of ability was permanent, but I'd be leery and very sad if you did that Darren. World would have a forty percent chance of loosing what I think, is a very good doctor. Even now." Here comes the Whiskey glass, topping it up again.

"But, who knows, it's the Company. Stranger things have happened. there may even come a day when you will want to use your gift. Think of that. Oh the possibilities. I mean, hey, now you can say, that in truth, you have a magnetic personality"

Snorting out a laugh so loud and fitful that he almost spills his drink, Darren reaches up and covers his mouth with one hand, and Abby's managed to make him do the one thing he hasn't honestly done since she left him here: smile. "Abigail," Darren states as he lifts his glass up into a toast, "that was the worst joke I've ever heard, and I thank you for that."

A toast, to baptists and booze and bartender's orders.


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