Colorful Futures

Participants:

delilah_icon.gif gillian2_icon.gif

Scene Title Colorful Futures
Synopsis During one of her daily visits to the Lighthouse, Delilah gets taken down to the basement to see a stash. Only it's not the most obvious stash she's being taken to see.
Date August 24, 2009

The Lighthouse - Basement

Here there be weapons!


Getting ready for the grand reopening has meant a lot of extra work here and there. Cleaning, dusting, arranging, making sure everything is in order for guests as well as the children. Sure, the man who can be in many places at once does far more than his share, but the last few days especially Gillian's been doing a lot of extra work, rarely leaving the Lighthouse at all except for trips out to get more things. She steps down first, turning on the light and leading the way, glancing back at the young woman who should be a few steps behind her.

Of all the brief visits, this would be the time that she'd just been looking around in the basement, coming across some older canvases that escaped various destructions. Or even notice by most, it would seem. "It's just down here. I actually helped stash these here… before I even met you. Before I knew Brian was my brother, even." She hasn't even explained what 'these' are yet, or why it's important to motion the redhead downstairs.

At first sight, this basement is not somewhere the kids would be allowed to go, which might be why she adds, "Close and lock the door behind you." Already in sight on the way down the stairs… weapons. Many, many weapons. Of many kinds. Guns, ammo, everything. She wasn't talking about weapon stashes, was she?

Delilah does as she is told, all the way down to the basement and making extra carefully to lock the door behind her. Weapon stashes aren't quite as surprising anymore, but this magnitude of one in an orphanage? The younger girl looks immediately wary, but it goes away when she remembers that this was Brian- he's not stupid enough to let kids get in here. She hopes.

"I didn't know you were such a hawk, Gillian. I didn't peg you as card-carrying NRA…" Delilah makes a half-effort at a joke, smiling as she follows Gillian to the floor. One hand tugs down the hem of her skirt, the other hovering, unsure.

"Oh, oh," Gillian says, looking around at the most obvious 'stash' in the basement and laughing a little. "Those are Brian's. My stash is— not quite so obvious." Moving through the weapon stacks and gun cases and ammo… she moves around the back to find something covered with a sheet. Of the few people aware of these paintings, she'd been the only one there when they were made. Pulling the sheet off, it's obvious what they are fairly quickly.

"It's kind of a long story, but… these were painted by someone who can see the future." She shifts through one and pulls it out, holding it up. It's a painting of her, by all appearances, colored, but something about the coloring is wrong. She is gray. "This was painted before I switched abilities. First ability I absorbed was metal form, so this— kinda warned me about that…" She sets that one down, hesitates to look at a painting of a man wrapped in red lightning. "Some of what was painted that night came true already, some hasn't. Or I don't think it has." As she gets to a canvas of a Chinese looking man, she hesitates again. Some maybe never will?

"That one in the lightning- was that Case?" Delilah has not said another word since they've trekked over to the paintings under the sheet, watching with genuine awe and curiosity as Gillian unveils them. She even crouches down slightly to see the ones that have been set aside better. "People who see the future kind of creep me the fuck out. Do I know this artist, or is it one of your friends?" Her hands pull the Lightning Man canvas a bit closer to examine it.

Pulling back one more painting, Gillian must see the one she wanted. Briefly there's a flash of red hair. She doesn't uncover it all the way, in fact lets the canvases rest against each other again as she turns. "The lightning was about one of the Cases, yeah… but— you met him briefly. He was at the Garden. He's the guy who adopted Bai-Chan. The one who was all 'He stays here!' at Brian that day… He uh— he's— Gabriel." There's obvious tension in her forehead, her lips pressing together and turning slightly white. History there. "If you'd rather not see a painting it— it's okay. It kind of— fucked up. But I'm pretty sure it's about you…" There's hesitation, that has nothing to do with her personal history.

Delilah is too busy admiring the art of things to see the little flash of redhead behind the back of the next canvas. Eventually, she does stand up straight again, just as Gillian's stress plays out in the knotting of her forehead. "Oh, eyebrows guy." Well, yes, Delilah, but he has a name…

The next part, however, is puzzling. "About me? I'm not dead, am I?" That's her immediate and strained question- if someone paints the future, why not find out?

Eyebrows guy. For a brief moment, Gillian smiles again, though all the stress. The smile fades at the inevitable first question. "No, no you're not dead. I luckily haven't seen a painting of anyone dying. I actually thought for a moment the painting of me turning iron was me dying— I mean imagine what would happen if I accidentally augmented someone who could turn objects into iron? I'd probably die almost instantly."

In a way turning into living metal was a relief. Though she did end up dying a few times…

"It's— It's about your ability, I think. I don't know what happened to you before you joined up with Phoenix, if you did anything really dangerous, but you seemed really worried when we met. Maybe this already happened…" There's a hesitation, and then she pulls out the painting.

There is actually a dead body in this painting, at the bottom. But it's not red haired, not even a woman. A shadowy villain, or so we hope, sprawls on the ground and choking on his own saliva if the froth detailed at the edges of his mouth have anything to say about it, an arm flung out as if desperately reaching for help that isn't there. A woman stands over him, her hair a bright, fiery red, lank, her face covered, her dress colourful if blood spattered. Her hands drip with something, and she doesn't appear to be mourning this man. Her surroundings are dark, concrete, a door has opened and someone stands there, huddled, but the shadows obscure them. It's a room with a familiar view. Staten Island's coast. A Ferryman safehouse.

There is something to be said about being more innocent than your peers- Delilah's eyes are drawn to the dead man first, head cocking nearly sideways to look at him. Her hands find each other on their own, wringing in front of her. Her mouth remains open, paused in having tried to say something seconds before Gillian showed her the painting. Brown eyes keep scanning the bottom, but eventually roam upwards on the canvas; even before she finishes looking at the whole dress, she knows it is her. She had that very same dress out to wear to the re-opening of The Lighthouse. It'll still be worn, though not without a bit of precaution.

The painting's hands are the last straw of the bunch- dripping with something all too familiar. The girl lets out a small noise, air escaping her lungs in a tiny puff of air. Though it sounds primarily defeated, the look on her face is more of hesitance.

The painting gets put down in the front when the noise is made. Gillian grimaces, unaware of the dress that she'd been planning to wear, but very aware of what effect this had on her. "I'm sorry," she apologises, moving closer and reaching to touch the girl's arms. "I'm sure whatever it is— the bastard's going to deserve it, or did deserve it or… you… Gabriel recognized you when he saw you. I didn't. I wasn't really paying that close attention to all the paintings, and I didn't know you, but he told me you should be warned about it…" So it's his fault! Well, not really. "I was trying to find something down here and came across them and remembered…" There's a pause… "Do you need to sit down?" There's weapons, but… There's also stairs.

It is quite absurd, that the next thing Dee thinks of even as Gillian reaches out- it's so hard to get blood out of bright colors. The actual touch seems to bring her out of the staring contest with some bizarro version of herself, eyes shifting to look down at the augmentor. "Oh, no, I'm okay. It's not happened yet, I don't know him either. But that's a safehouse, I've been there." She speaks with shocking quietness- for her, anyway. She says nothing of the dress, though. "He's not bleeding, but there's blood on he- me. Blood on me." So what is it? Hers? Someone else's?

"These paintings are actually pretty… literal. As far as I can tell," Gillian says, turning around to look at the painting, the blood on her clothes. Her dress doesn't look torn. Someone else is probably very likely. "There have been a lot of bad things going on lately," she adds, remembering a message that came down the vine of missing and injured in a Humanis First attack. There's also White on Staten Island, threatening to sink it. There's…

"You'll be okay."

Delilah closes her eyes, lips pulling into a frown. On second thought- the girl has a seat right there on the floor, crouching down and away from Gillian before simply falling back onto her skirt. "I knew I'd have to do these kinds of things, and I just thought I was over the first one…" Exasperated and at the same time unwanting of a great many things, Delilah buries her face in her hands, knees half bent up. "…but it's still killing, in the end. I know there are always reasons, and some people deserve to die, but that doesn't mean I want to do that part. I will if I have to, but…" When Delilah hits a pothole, she really hits a pothole.

As she sits down on the floor, Gillian settles down next to her, moving in right next to her to wrap an arm over her shoulder. "It's never easy— I know I killed a couple guys in the attack on Pinehearst, my clones that were with the lobby group. Two of them did, and I— hell those guys were probably just doing a fucking job is the worst part." Everyone else was cutting them down. Some of the things in the lobby were barely human anymore, but many of them were. The first batch, the gunmen. The ones they massacured even before Arthur clones and escaped experiments made it there.

"I know you'll do what you have to, and that you won't… revel in it. Just— protect yourself and others. And maybe it's a good thing that what happened on the roof still bothers you… Fuck, you shouldn't have to go through any of this."

"I think if it didn't bother me, there'd be something wrong with that." On some level, it will always bug Dee. Can't just forget, right? "You're right, I shouldn't have to. None of us should. That's just how messed up everything is." Even though she's the bigger of the two, Delilah leans slightly into Gillian's arm; what goes around comes around- especially when it comes to comfort. "And I know this one is coming- what if I can't avoid it and the painting is literal? I'll have known I was going to kill him. It feels like someone made a choice for me."

"Maybe that'll make it easier," Gillian says softly, frowning at the painting as if wondering quietly which is the truth. "Easier to know that maybe it was fate and there's no way around it— but you're right. Even with all that it should still bother you." Cause when it doesn't, how would that make them any better than the people who deserve things like that? "There's a couple pies for tomorrow already upstairs. I don't think it'll hurt too much if we snag a piece before the party, though."

Pie makes everything a little less… Horrifying.


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