It's Not A Myth

Participants:

brennan_icon.gif skyler_icon.gif

Scene Title It's Not A Myth
Synopsis Skyler shows up at the Brennan household to thank Brennan for his help.
Date December 5, 2010

Brennan Household

For all that it's called a brownstone home in Southern Brooklyn, the outside is clay red and touched up enough to blend in with the neighbourhood and pots with flowers line the steps. Inside is a different story and is quite obviously the home of a family with the stuffed animals or children often seen pressing their faces to the bottom floor bay windows to peer past the glass and iron bars to the outside. Wrought iron decorative bars compose another layer of aesthetic security in front of the wooden front door.

Light peeks around drapes and blinds at night and give illumination to the renovated interior that's fit for the physicians family. Dark wood stairs give access to all three floors, Throw rugs over refinished original floors to help dampen the sound of children playing within the residence and it's painted cream walls. It's narrow and long and always seems to be comfortable regardless of whether the residents are home or not.

A formal livingroom, spacious kitchen and dining room that take up the back main floor, bedrooms and living room on the second and third floor leave for lots of space for the large family. Somewhere is an office, and the basement is a play area as well as storage. A postage stamp patch of grass in the yard that is big enough to hold the play structure built there and ivy scaling the walls and back of the house.


Skyler stands on Brennan's doorstep a moment. Glances back at the cab she took here, watching it recede into the distance. She thinks back to the conference between her and the good doctor on the lawn at Suresh, back before the riots and everything, and assesses what they talked about against her life as it's played out. It makes her smile a bit. She holds the bouquet of flowers a little higher and rings the doorbell.

The house - Brownstone - is specially rigged, so that just in case Marlena happens to look up into discreet corners of rooms there's a blinking light when the doorbell is rung. Perils of not being one of hearing. She however, is the first to see the light and in want of more independence of late, it's the eight year old who answers the door, brown hair back and up in a ponytail, cast iron screen door between herself and Skyler.

"Hi" She croaks out, looking over her shoulder to call out "Dad" the word slightly slurred. This prompts Brennan to emerge from way in the back down the hall, the kitchen one presumes by the dishtowel he's wiping his hands on. "Skyler. This is a surprise." He stomps his foot twice, seeming to get Marlena's attention again because she turns toward her father. An exchange of a flurry of hand signals that comprise ESL, she's opening the door for Skyler to come in. "Skyler, meet Marlena. You can talk normally, she can't hear you but she lipreads, and she'll try to talk back to you"

Sky looks different today than the last time the good doctor saw her. The hair is largely the same, though much better maintained. The eyes are smokey with makeup, and there's a subtle lipstick. The navy blue, three-quorter length sleeve suit suggests she's gainfully employed. The black Guns 'n Roses t-shirt underneath might suggest it's not a completely traditional company. A messenger bag for a purse. Black Oakley BatWolves cover her eyes, with silvered mirror lenses. And black leather gloves cover her hands. The black is continued in the ballet flats on her feet. It's a different ensemble, but it's a look Sky can - and does - rock.

She has time to quirk an eyebrow at Marlena's pronunciation and to say "Hi, I'm here to see…" before Marlena yells for her father, and Sky grins. The flurry of ASL explains the situation in full to Sky, as does Brennan's explanation, of course, and Sky nods. "Nice to meet you." she says, enunciating perhaps a little much in hopes of making her lips easier to read. "I'm Skyler." She smiles at Brennan. "You invited me to meet the family. I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Not at all. Michelle's not here right now, she's out getting some christmas shopping, left me with the girls all alone" There's a squeal the kitchen and a girly little five year old voice screaming for Dessy to stop touching her. "If you want to take off the jacket, you can come on back. We're just making cookies for their teachers. Kitchens rights through the back" Marlena's attention goes back and forth, though habitually, Brennan's hands carry on the conversation as well for the nine year old's benefit. "you're looking better" He calls over his shoulder, disappearing past the swinging door that presumably leads to the kitchen.

Skyler follows Brennan and Marlena toward the sounds of mayhem in the kitchen, after closing the front door. She shrugs out of her jacket and after a moment's thought, her gloves, and leaves both on the sofa. A moments thought, and she lays her sunglasses there too. The people here, last of all, will care or even notice the occasional amber flicker in her eyes. She winces a little at the noise, so different from the usual sounds of her life, but smiles at the cookie making. "In these paranoid times, teachers will still eat cookies the kids bring in?

"They go to private schools. Costs a pretty penny, but there's smaller class sizes and more individualized education. you just can't bring in homemade things for the class. But the teachers never seem to mind if you bring it for them." The kitchen is well appointed, used, with a big island in the center and accounts for why the dining table is not a part of the kitchen. It's to make room for the family.

Five year olds in leggings and sweaters are too busy making flour handprints on each other, Marlena's swooping by to steal a gingerbread cookie and make a break for it, a wave of her hand to Skyler and she's gone. "Ignore her, she wanted to go with her mom, so she's a bit moody. She's a little shy around strangers too buuuut" Brennan's hands come down on those of the two girls, identical twins in all but the sweaters. "Purple sweater is Dessandra, Blue sweater is Genevieve. Girls, we have a guest" Which means Genevieve is suddenly having an attack of the shy's and Dessy is clambering off the chair she's on and in dire danger of giving Skyler a flour handprint if the other woman isn't careful.

Skyler chuckles softly and waves at the girls. "Well hi there." She says. "I'm Skyler." Note to self. Do not wear the fancy clothes into the domain of twin five year olds again. Sky finds herself silently grateful nothing she's wearing (save the jacket in the other room) is dry-clean only. "And thanks." she says to some previous thing Brennan apparently said. Sky sometimes finds herself buffering conversations, even though she shouldn't. "I'm gainfully employed these days. And I seem to have taken up with an old boyfriend, too. Or something resembling that. I won't say life's perfect, but it's moving, and I'm earning my keep."

"Bet with winter approaching it's going to be a boon" Brennan gestures to an apron hanging off the back of the door, protection from white flour as Dessandra halts just shy of touching her and just claps her hands, peers up and overmsiles to Skyler before going back to her chair where the two are doing something with gingerbread and massacring it. "You still need a place to stay or are you good on that front? because the offer still stands as it is"

Skyler nods. "I'm good for the moment. My new job came with a room. As did the boyfriend, more or less. He offered, anyway." Sky pulls on the apron and moves toward the counter and, unless anyone stops her, will soon be making a mess out of the gingerbread with the little girls. "I wanted to thank you for everything you did for me." She nods toward the table next to the sofa where the flowers got put down. "I brought you and your family some flowers. I just. Listening to you it all seemed so possible, so when I got the early warning about Suresh, I took the leap of faith. So far so good.

"What seemed possible?" There goes Genevieve, attention drawn to the flowers and now she's hopping off, off to go get them while Dessandra oh so slyly slips into place beside Skyler and nudges over the cookie cutter she wants the woman to use. "You left at a good time though. SOme people were hurt, some structural damage but everyone came out okay. They got people to the upper levels in time" Brennan points out.

Skyler looks around her and gestures with the cookie cutter. "All this. Living like a normal human being." She smiles and punches out a few cookies with Dessandra. "Now you do some, sweetie." She lifts the little girl up so she can reach, grunting with the effort. Note to self. Get in shape. Lifting a squirming 5 year old shouldn't be this hard. "Getting a job. A room. A boyfriend, or at least the more obvious benefits of one. I'm glad nobody got seriously hurt. I heard that White Rabbit warning thing. But by that time I was already in a car with someone." All true. By the time the calling program reached her, she was out of the building and on the road.

"You are a normal human being. Same goes for the little girl in your hands who might someday know what it is that her genetics says she has. Game for Genevieve" Who comes bouncing back in her oversized apron with the flowers clutched between her hands. "First step is to consider yourself normal. In as much as anyone is normal. Am I truly normal? I spent six years living in tents and cabins in the middle of some of the worst possible places that you can imagine and under constant threat of being shot or contracting some terribly horrible disease. What normal person goes and does that" He points out. "You lived on the street, repairing small pieces of technology for what would amount to change, and you found that you enjoyed that. Normal is what normal is. There's varying definitions. If you mean, that one can have a cohesive familial unit and not be succumbing to the pitfalls of divorce…"

Skyler nods and listens to the good Doctor. She learns a lot this way. She sets Dessandra down. "Can you give the cutter to your sister so she can cut some cookies too?" Sky gestures to the girls and the house and domestic bliss in general. "By normal human being, I mean this, basically. House, spouse, kids, steady work. I didn't think it was possible once I realized what I could do. So many people want a piece of you for their own purposes. That's what I figured, and to some extent I've been right. My original thinking was that at best you'd have the life of a rock star or a high dollar contractor in the computer world. No privacy, no anonymity. And that was the best that could happen. I didn't figure, back then, that there'd be so many of us. And even now. Really, how many Evolved live this life like you do? I imagine you've had police encounters you wouldn't wish on your daughters, and you're about as lawful-good as I can imaigne.

"I've been arrested a time or tow, mostly sort of a catch a bunch of people in a net and weed out the ones who weren't doing back. This city seems to attract an inordinate amount of evolved individuals, sure. But there's still such a small percentage of people who do have the SLC-Expressive gene"

Genevieve is passed the cookie cutter from her sister who listens and obeys, even as she takes up another and passes it over to Skyler, making sure that the guest isn't without. "There have been incidents though, that I wouldn't wish on my girls that have happened, because of people with abilities and used them for ill." he won't talk about them while the girls are in the room though. Best not to drag up bad memories.

"I think the odds of being happy, of finding someone who will enjoy you, for you, are pretty much the same whether you are expressive or not. Are we perfect? Oh god, no. Michelle and I fight and squabble, we have our days. You can have that too, just takes time, the right person."

Brennan shovels some cookies onto the sheets so they can be slid into the oven. "Where are you working?"

Skyler scoops up Genevieve so she can cut some cookies out too. She remembers being short. "Like I said, you make it sound so easy. You just do it. It comes naturally to you." Sky smiles at the little girl she's holding. "Good job." She says. "You've done this before." She looks over at Brennan. "Shalegate. I can't talk about the work I'm doing, but it's more or less legal and it pays well." Sky shrugs. "And it comes with a free room, like I said. "If you're at loose ends with Suresh being locked down, let me know. I can't think of a company doctor I'd rather have."

"And what job could you possibly have for a general practitioner?" Pointedly asked with a grin. "Even if my job at the Suresh Center were to dry up, I have a flourishing private practice that I could return to full time. I'm curious now though" Brennan sets the timer, returning to rolling out more of the chilled dough, glad that the girls are behaving for Skyler. He'll look up Shalegate later. "Did you need any help. What with being employed and habitating in a place with a solid roof over your head. What are you doing for the holidays?"

Skyler shrugs. "Like I said, company doctor. It's a company dedicated to fixing the city of New York. Giving the Evolved a public face doing something other than causing trouble, I guess. Do I need help?" Sky sets the girl she's hold down and cuts a few more cookies herself. "Do I need help? I don't know. My issues haven't really gone away. I'm working with my ability enough now that I'm getting over my paranoia about using it. Which is a mixed blessing, because as I get more comfortable with it again, It's easier to misuse it. I haven't broken the law recently. Yet. Technically."

"Well, keep on not breaking the law, long as you can and if your company needs a doctor, you just let me know, to fix the public. There are two physicians in this house and we do dedicate some of our spare time to doing volunteer work" He's not about to say no, but he is about to tell the girls to go find their sister and let her help them take a bath. Michelle and the nanny will be back soon, hopefully. 'Anything to keep you on your feet and not end up back in prospect park or worse"


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License