Participants:
| Scene Title | Before Things Get Worse |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Because they can/do. |
| Date | April 7, 2018 |
Gillian's Home
The day of the Gala is spent with a lot of preparation. Gillian has a dress laid out, her hair is up in curlers and she’s walking around the house making phone calls to make sure that everything will go as planned. It’s not her first Gala, but it’s the first one in a very long time. And the Galas of the past had been… interesting. She half considered getting a body guard, which Yamagato offered to concerned guests, but she decided against it, even with the banned weapons.
Yamagato security seemed good enough to avoid the situations of the past, so she was sure she wouldn’t have to worry. While she paces around waiting on a text back from someone, her doorbell rings and she walks over to answer it—
It doesn’t take her long to unlock the door and open it, looking at the woman in a wheelchair down below her steps. She used one of those long claw extender things to ring the doorbell. “What the hell happened, Eve?”
“Gabriel’s dad threw me down a well,” It's a quick reply and pretty honest. All the way honest. “Hello! Ow!” Eve bounces far too much in excitement at seeing her friend and her eyes squeeze up in pain as she takes a breath. “Broken leg, he's such a lazy bastard. I called him a Dragon, I should have called him a.. turtle. A lazy, slow TURTLE!”
The darker haired woman is waving her long claw thinge and realizes she might hit her friend so she stops, “Whoops sorry, Yea the last few days I've felt like the guy from Misery! Except nobody was holding me hostage in my bed, I was a hostage in the well though!”
This is all delivered with a wave of hands and Eve’s hand knocks against her big ass purse, it's dark purple and is muted compared to the all white jumpsuit she's wearing, for easy undressing later. Her dress is nowhere in sight so Gillian might gather that it's in the purse. Lots of things are.
“Gabriel’s… dad…” Gillian responds in that ‘Gabriel has a dad???’ kind of way. Well, actually she does remember him mentioning his dad at one point or another, but she had no idea that he was still around, or had— well— the kind of disposition that would throw women down wells and leave them with broken legs. It should not have surprised her, though. No, it should not have.
“I kept trying to call you, and everytime I dropped in you were out.” And one time she’d been outright missing and a teleporter had taken her across town to see that, indeed, her friend had disappeared. With Refrain. Which she had pocketed and taken with her. But she’ll leave that bit out. She hadn’t been calling to ask about the drugs, after all. “Try to avoid wells next time and people who would shove you down them, okay?” she says as she steps down to offer a hand up, more than willing to handle the weight of one leg to get her upstairs, so she can get her into a chair and fold up the wheelchair.
Chandra saunters by the door, sniffs the air, decides it’s far too cold, and saunters back into the house to find a warm spot to lay.
“You’ve been getting involved in dangerous things again, haven’t you?”
“He's quite a character, I don't want you near him until he's ready to be put down.” Eve rummages around in her bag but doesn't seem to be finding what she needs. Lipstick, a ball of red yarn, chopsticks, a dust buster and some weed are just a few of the things inside the purse.
Grabbing onto Gillian’s arm to get up the stairs she winces and grins through the pain. “Gilly I'm sorry I was trying to be good but he wanted a regenerator. I couldn't give him Claire’s name. So I gave him Adam and then he didn't want to go to China,” Eve stops and whispers as she walks into the house with Gillian's help and sitting down the first chance she gets. “I think Adam is still there Gilly.”
Not that she's in the condition to travel.
“Oh Gilly, so much stuff. I just filled in Teo and Ghost recently. I've been meaning to see you. There.. ah fuck! Well I time traveled!”
There she's said it. “And.. I met an old woman. Golden eyes. Realllll scary, but reallll nice. Adam killed me! He cut my head off in feudal Japan! And it was like wheeeee..” she trails off with a frown. “I'm alive now but things are getting.. weird Gilly.” As if they ever aren't.
Adam. “The guy you spent like, years looking for?” Gillian responds with a tilt of her head. In China of all places. Not exactly an easy place to get into even if they wanted to find this guy that her friend had been wanting to find since she was left for dead outside the Arcology. Sometimes Gillian’s not even sure she survived that trip, doesn’t remember how they made it out. She glances down into the purse, raising an eyebrow at some of her possessions before she gets her seated so she can close the door.
When she returns, she processes the rest. Time travel.
That’s something she’d done before, herself. “Is this when you disappeared doing refrain in the basement of your club?” In a locked room. “Your teleporter friend came to find me, tried to get me to help.” She leaves out that she stole the drugs.
“You really shouldn’t touch that stuff, Eve. I don’t know what they laced it with to allow you to time travel but shit.”
Yeah, she’s gonna blame the blue fairy. When it’s actually more at the root cause than that. She just can’t help but wonder what crazy things people can make drugs do these days— Refrain had seemed a miracle all on its own. Who knew what they could make now.
“The one and the same, I'm grateful that he saved my life all those years ago. But,” Eve gives a soft whisper, “But he didn't have to cut my head off!”
The seer looks down at her hands, “Uh.. yea.. I went to get some blue with my friend Dorothy. You'd love her.” She isn't sure that Gillian would but she can hope. “Dorothy can move time, I think the Refrain gave her an upgrade and off we went to feudal Japan! I was beheaded in seconds upon arriving but!” The seer looks excited as she holds up one pale finger. Pale gray eyes unfocus as she remembers that day, that time.
“There was a woman that I've begun dreaming about.. she was there. Gilly.. she put me back together again. Sent us on our way back here.” The oracle bites her lip, “Adam was there, he was in full samurai gear. He didn't give me much of a chance, I guess I was screaming rather loudly. He might have gotten spooked.”
Having died now twice and both times it being connected to Adam makes her feel weird. “It's like a cosmic joke, Adam and Eve. Intertwined through history.”
“If you were time travelling, he technically saved your life after cutting off your head.” Possibly long after, Gillian’s not exactly sure how any of that works. But if Dorothy can move time… “I might want to meet her someday.” If she hasn’t already, at least. She might have, for all she knew— cause she knows Eve tends to use nicknames. Like that Otter guy she keeps mentioning.
“What’s the woman look like? Cause that sounds… powerful.”
Put her back together, sending them on their way. All of it. More powerful than even Adam.
“I guess you're right but he doesn't have to keep running from me! I've just been wanting to thank him!!” What started out as a simple wanting to thank the man that saved her life has become an insane quest for answers. Unsure of his reasons. “You think he remembers that? Way back then? Fuzzy bits I'm sure, maybe he remembers.. but that woman..” Eve's expression goes vacant.
“She was wearing a kimono, her eyes burned the hottest gold I've ever seen. She is everything.. not constrained by time and space or law and order..”
On reflecting on that woman.. Eve feels fear but the type of fear when you're staring down at the drop from a cliff. The view is brain breaking, it's all too big. The scope of her. “She wants to come here.”
The situation makes very little sense to Gillian, but she trusts that, in some form or another, Eve knows what she’s talking about. “You know, people who aren’t constrained by time, space or all that other stuff— they tend to be dangerous.” And as someone who has been dangerous to a lot of people in her life due to her ability, she knows that all too well.
“You should be careful when she’s involved, whoever she is.” That she wants to come here— well…
“Let me grab my dress. We can get changed in the downstairs bedroom.” The guest room she always reserved for Jolene, so she didn’t have to try to get up and down the stairs. “I have a feeling there’s a lot more you need to tell me before we go out to the Gala. About Gabriel’s dad, about your dreams… Everything.”
With that, she starts to make her way upstairs to get her dress, then retrurns not long after with it.
“Maybe she's trapped.” Is offered quietly but Eve bites her lower lip as she muses on that. “Dangerous.. but not all that mean, I don't know if.. maybe when you live so long you just get numb.. to emotions. To anything making you feel human.” It sounds like a scary fate and not one that Eve wants to follow.
Gillian goes and comes back and Eve is playing with the ends of her hair, speaking of the things she's seen, the gold eyed woman, Adam.. this Dorothy who plays with time, her time with Gabriel who she insists doesn't want people to know he's alive and swears her to secrecy, to Samson and the well.
It's when they get to the well bit that Eve snarls, “That little bitch Sibyl helped him. A fellow Sister Seer, throwing herself in with a dragon. Stupid filthy brat.” Eve grips the sides of where she is sitting.
That’s a lot of information.
A lot of information. Gillian listens patiently, absorbs as much as she can, even if the whole thing sounds— well— like more than she can take in in a single conversation. As she describes Samson, she frowns, worried wrinkles on her forehead until… Sibyl. “Sibyl.” She interupts before she gets too far in the rant that she can already see forming. Suddenly Gillian starts to describe, well Sibyl. Sister Seer. “About thirteen?” she ends with, hesitating.
And waiting for a response. Cause that bit might have smacked into something.
“What..” Eve’s head turns towards Gillian and she blinks with a bit of a grit of her teeth. “You know her. Sneaky little..” she raises her hands and makes a strangling motion before flinging them out into the air. “I don't.. I don't believe she's thirteen she's old as dirt. Old crone looking sort of thing.” And that's how Eve feels about that.
“She worked with Hamson to send me tumbling down the rabbit hole. I jumped into her mind first a while ago which is not the nicest thing to do I guess but I came to say I was sorry. She went and made this Kill Bill.” There’s a feeling of dread in the bottom of her stomach. This Samson/Sibyl issue was already out of hand and Eve wasn't sure she could take much more in her current position.
“How..?”
“I think it’s more likely that she had a rough childhood and grew up way too fast,” Gillian responds instead to the idea that Sibyl is ‘old as dirt’. “We had an encounter. She helped a mutual friend of ours get into a body. Until you just told me Gabriel was alive, I thought Tavisha was all that was left of him.” She explains quietly, as she pulls her dress on, twisting her hands around to latch it in the back.
“Sibyl brought him to me, Tavisha. He was trapped in a bird, one that’d been wounded.” She’d thought it might have been a coincidence, but now— she’s starting to doubt it. “She’d been raised by an ex-Ferryman. One who I personally think is a complete asshole.” He’d shot her multiple time with tranq darts, after all. She might have forgiven him a little because he helped get the Lighthouse Kids to safety, but she still didn’t like him. “Avi— the one with the Aviators?” In case she remembered him from Pollepel.
“But we freed Tavisha from the man who was holding him, an avian telepath. One who worked out of Staten Island. Used birds to spy on people. Probably worse, considering what I know about Staten Island now. Did you know they were involved in human trafficking out there? Like kidnapping people off the street.
“Tavi? Wow! That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long while. Glad he’s got his own land to squat in.” Eve remembers meeting the clone long ago on Staten Island. “He and Gabriel are so different! Now they won’t look the same.” That’s a good thing because, “Teo and Ghost are identical, it’s confusing.” Never when they bone though, actually.. No no never when they bone.
“A rough childhood is well and good until I’m being thrown down a well because of someone’s daddy issues. Don’t we all have them?” Eve waves a hand, Gabriel got her to feel sorry for Hamson and that was bad enough. “I tried to say sorry, she didn’t want that. What..” Her expression gets curious, “Is she.. I let off a full canister of negation gas to catch that wretched Dragon and she was caught in the middle but she was fine. Weakened but still had her gift in her grasp, Gilly I’ve never seen anything like it. An indigo child.”
“I know about her fake father Druncle,” Eve rubs her forehead. “They are very important to each other. I was delving into her past with Delia before she ended up with some sort of shadow over her mind. Herpes if you will.” Eve knows trouble because she is trouble. “Taking people off the streets? Cowards. How long.. That island will never be clean.”
“There are ways to avoid negation,” Gillian offers, but she doesn’t even know how the girl’s ability worked, just that she seemed to know things. “I’m sorry that she did what she did, though. I’ve actually been trying to find the girl for some time. And I know other people who are too. Who knows what trouble she’s gotten into— children are impressionable.”
For all they know she’s been pulled into the Staten Island human trafficking ring. It could be a lot of things going on. She can’t help but want to protect the kid, though.
She reminds her of the Lighthouse Kids. She could have been one.
“I don’t know how long the kidnappings have happened. I hadn’t heard of them. Missing people, yes, but not…” It made her second guess all the missing people reports she’d ever heard, suddenly. “What I do know is that they shot, negated and kidnapped Hailey. She escaped by chance and made it back to my place.” Shot and negated. “And then someone tried to grab a girl who seemed to turn invisible off the street. Lene tried to help her— and almost got taken herself.”
Taken. Or worse.
“But no. That island will never be clean.”
“Choices are choices still.” It's a harsh statement from the woman but one she understands to be true. Life didn't care if you were fifty or five. Eve was beginning to feel the same, more so than before. “I want to help her. It's our duty to each other, the sister seers.” A duty that Eve takes seriously but one that is hard to uphold. They were all crazy or stubborn or up to no good.
“Chicken?!” Eve’s time becomes enraged but she looks proud also. “I told her, just like her father. A hero.” Good for her and good for the kidnappers because if they would have gotten Lene then Aunt Eve and Lene’s mother would have ripped the world apart to find her.. and the kidnappers.
“Maybe we should have went to an island somewhere, lived with the monkeys.”
She wants to help her, the sister seer. That causes Gillian to nod, relieves that— well— even if she’s mad that she still wants to help her. “Maybe try not kicking a hornet’s nest every so often, yourself. I know you’re a hero and you want to help people— I know it— but you’ve already ended up with a broken leg. You don’t want to end up with worse.”
Like Peter. Like Eileen. Like Lene. Like Doyle. Like all those they had lost over the years. And those they didn’t lose, but who lost little pieces of themself along the way. Like her.
And possibly even like Eve, as she is starting to fear the woman has lost more than she could have imagined in this hunt for Adam and— whatever else it is she sees in her dreams.
“But let’s get you dressed and we’ll enjoy the Gala tonight, okay?” She can’t really ask donuts or coffee. So she’ll just go with her dear friend instead.
“I.. I will try to keep my lid on and not popping off.” It’s a delicate promise and Eve isn’t sure she can totally keep it. But she can try, for Gilly. For herself too but Eve has always run willy nilly into situations that she shouldn’t. Gillian knows this and Eve wants to stop giving her heart attacks, she’s had enough of those to last a lifetime twice over. Eve’s hunt for Adam though is something that she has been doing for so long now, she’s not sure how to stop herself.
The action of getting dressed gets wild grin from the lady, “I’ve bathed, I had the sassy bartender do it, he was disgusted but I told him my boobs wouldn’t bite.” It’s true this isn’t Teeth people. “Let’s go tear up the red carpet Gilly! Do you have statements? I have statements, this Cynthia Rhodes has quite the inappropriate question.”
And she goes on and on about the gala, Cynthia Rhodes and her filthy mind, donuts are inquired about (Eve sniffed out a glazed donut left in the kitchen) and finally they are off to the event of the season. There’s smiles, laughs, vaping and it’s almost like nothing is wrong at all. No seers thrown down wells today, just girlfriend time and a fancy soiree.
How bad could things possibly get?