Choices And Consequences

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Scene Title Choices and Consequences
Synopsis When Eve Mas realizes she's made a grave mistake, she discovers it may be too late to return to the welcoming embrace of the Institute.
Date January 30, 2011

Commonwealth Institute


It feels like it hasn't been that long since Eve Mas left the Commonwealth Institute behind…

2 Months, 7 Days, 8 Hours and 32 Minutes

Memory is an imperfect thing.

Seated in an office on the above-ground floors of the Institute's Cambridge Massachusetts facility, she can only faintly recall memories of the facility below here, glimpses both fleeting and comforting, imperfect memories of her time with Doctor Broome. Seated in his "official" office, a photograph on the desk details a young man in military dress with dark hair and light eyes, smiling charmingly out towards the camera. She doesn't remember Desmond Harper, though he'd remember her.

With Elisabeth down the hall in another office, presumably being afforded a meeting with who she came here to meet, that leaves Eve alone in Broome's office to await the old doctor's arrival for whatever it is that has brought her here, whatever it is she wanted to discuss with him.

Knowing Eve, it could be anything.

Eyes drift around the office and she studies the picture of Desmond Harper. She doesn't remember him, not at all. But the nagging feeling in the back of her head is trying to tell her that she remembers this place.

Eve walks around the room, her head turned up towards the ceiling now. Light grey eyes closed as she just stands there. Dressed in a long dark green dress that falls to her ankles and a pair of black boots, her coat is thrown on a nearby chair and she has her arms folded as she waits.

Whistling, she walks over to look down in her coat pocket and retrieves her bottle of pills. Okay, time to take them.

While Eve takes her medication, the sounds of heels clicking on a tile floor pass by the closed office door, the silhouette of a woman taking long strides passes beyond the frosted glass, muting her silhouette to smoother angles. Outside, flurries of snow drift in the air, and Cambridge looks like something out of a Thomas Kincaid painting, all snow and lights. The walls of the Commonwealth Institute as viewed from the office seem to blend in with the snow, all stark and white, angular and sharp to the snows more soft edges.

Closing the top to her pill bottle, Eve hears a heavier, more resolute stride of feet headed towards the office. The glass door hisses open, sliding inward along a wheeled rail to reveal the tall and dark silhouette of Simon Broome standing with hands folded behind his back, a cautious expression on his face.

"Eve," he greets with a tilt of his head forward into a nod, "you seem to be doing well, it's a relief that being back in New York hasn't been detrimental to your health…" Mental or otherwise goes unclarified as the tall, lanky old man walks into the room with the stride of someone far younger.

"What brings you here today? Aside from Miss Harrison's appointment?" One of Simon's brows lifts slowly, his head canting subtly to the side.

"Simon."

Eve says in relief and she basically charges the man and embraces him tight, albeit briefly. Taking a step back, she places her hands in front of her and a hint of a smile crosses her lips. Tilting her head at the side, she begins to circle around Simon. "I.." she looks confused for a moment before nodding her head. Firm in what she's gonna say. "I need my paintings back.. and I think.. I think I need to come back here." The last is said with a hanging of her head.

Strands of hair falling into her face, Eve tries to blink back the tears that are pooling at the corners of her eyes. Ruining the little bit of makeup she has on.

Shuddering, she lifts her head again to stare ahead at Simon. "It hasn't been.. things got worst Simon." She throws her hands up and walks back to her jar, shoving the bottle of pills deeply in her coat pocket. She turns to look at Simon. "Why did he take my paintings.. everyone since I was sixteen.." her shoulders shake and she lightly stomps her foot.

It would seem that Eve has been breaking at the cracks this entire time. "Nobody is there anymore. Peter is mad at me.." Gillian is.. she hasn't seen her best friend. "Richard is.. Richard is drowning and he doesn't even know it." She leans on the chair heavily and looks up at Simon with wide eyes. Mascara running down her cheeks.

Exhaling a steady sigh, Simon waves his hand in front of a black panel beside the glass door, and it begins to hiss shut on those same rolling hinges. Stepping into the office, Broome closes the distance between himself and Eve, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Time changes all things, especially people, Eve. I'm sorry that things turned out the way they did for you, but I can't say I'm all that surprised." Letting his hand fall away from her shoulder, Doctor Broome steps around the precognitive and begins walking towards one of the large floor-to-ceiling windows.

"Unfortunately, Eve… I'm not sure you can come back." There's a weariness in Simon's voice as he turns, slowly, offering Eve a profile view of his face, shadowed on the near side by the dim gray light of a cloudy morning. "At the very least, if you come back this time it will be for good. We don't have a revolving door on the Arcology, and coming back after having left… You'll need to stay with us indefinitely."

Simon's brows furrow together and his lips downturn into a steady frown.

"It was to be expected. But not like this, something else changed them all. It's moving in the shadows." Eve sniffs and then she's rubbing her face on her bare arms before she steps up to stand next to Simon, peering out the window. Shaking her head, Eve places a hand on the glass and looks down, as if she's trying to look through the floor. "She's there too." She says softly and closes her eyes, obviously saddened by something else.

Taking a moment, she walks over to her coat and pulls something out, a piece of paper. A photograph of something, there Simon would find a painting of Eve's. New, showing the area of Queens and Roosevelt island, some parts of which are shield by a light blue haze or gleam. A forcefield. "If they never see it, they'll never know it's there." She whispers as she hands it over to Simon and looks out at the window. Placing her hand again up on the glass, she traces the patterns of a few symbols there. One that she repeats seems to be that of a helix of some kind.

"He knows why I'm upset. He knows what he did, we're friends he says. Trust me." Said bitterly and she shakes her head again, grabbing the sides of her head and leaning against the glass. Soon her pills will kick it, right? Hopefully before Eve has an episode. Hopefully.

The strain in Eve's voice has Simon stopping Eve's hand, curling long, weathered fingers around hers to close her more delicate digits like a cage around the picture of the Dome. "We're looking into it," Simon explains in a hushed tone of voice. "It wasn't our doing, but we have a few leads to go on. Richard doesn't know exactly who is responsible for it, or what, but we're going to find out. I assure you." Squeezing his hand gently around Eve's, Simon breathes in deeply and then exhales a slow and steady sigh through his nose.

Hesitating for a moment, Simon seems torn about something, and not words spoken but the kind left unsaid. Dark eyes narrow, his lips press together tightly and his throat works up and down in a dry swallow. Reinforcing his slacking grip on Eve's hand, Simon adds another one to it, brows furrowed and dark eyes meeting Eve's far lighter ones.

"Tell me what he did."

"I know." Is her sad response to Broome's assurances to her that the Institute didn't cause the Dome. She looks up at Simon with a tortured expression and she takes comfort in his holding her hands. "He lied to me! He isn't my friend.. he wouldn't have taken all my paintings if he was. He could have come to ask me if he could look at them. He doesn't need to steal them. Like a shadow rat, scavenging for food. Drowning he is." Was she talking about this timeline's Richard earlier.. or the one from the forgotten future? Steal.. because that's what he did. But that's not all she's upset about.

"He took me away and let it all go on without me. But he tries to hide things from me of all people. In a sea of memories." She stares up at Simon. "You've had doubts." She echoes simply and studies the taller man. "Shadows of what ifs, the methods are all wrong." She shrugs her shoulder lightly and bites her lip.

The oracle looks away, out the window. "If he won't let me come back.. I want my paintings back.. All of them." She looks sad that it's come to this. Lower lip quivering as she says all of this to Simon.

"You left your paintings here with us, Eve, willingly at that. As a part of your agreement with us. Your paintings are valuable, Eve, and the secrets they hold could be dangerous if they got outside of these walls." Furrowing his brows, Simon lets his hands come away from Eve's, a sympathetic but firm expression lingering on the old man's wrinkled countenance.

"I don't want to tell you openly that you can come back, because I had hope you might be able to acclimate better to life outside of the Institute. Even if we bring you back in, even if you stay with us indefinitely… there's no way for us to return the memories to you that you've lost." No way that wouldn't involve experimental usage of Delphine's ability, and that is too dangerous to consider.

"The choice, ultimately, is yours though…" Simon admits in a weary, soft voice.

"Are you saying that the new paintings aren't as dangerous? Or will you just come looking for them?" Eve has planned for that already though. "I need them back Simon. It's important." Her head dips as she stares at the floor and scoffs it a bit with the toe of her boot. Then she's smiling softly and staring up at Broome.

"Going to be fine, the light shines over the horizon, right?" Eve pats Simon's hands gently and goes to take her coat from the chair. Slowly beginning to put it on, the oracle shakes her hair from beneath the collar and she looks at the older man. "If he really cared, he wouldn't have hurt me this way." A simple observation, truth.

A light smile crosses Eve's lips as she walks up to Simon and leans forward and up to place a soft kiss on his cheek. "You've always been good to me." Wiping her eyes dry, it seems the meds are working in her system. Causing her to be more calm, an almost serene expression on her face. "Don't let him drag you down under the waters with him." she whispers into his ear.

Backing away slowly, she tilts her head at him, raven dark tendrils of hair falling into her face. "And tell him," she says as she nears the door. "That I'll be getting my things one way or another, he'll figure this already." A soft smile, and another look at the older man.

Check.


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