Participants:
| Scene Title | Our Truest Life |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Two dream weavers bring a warning and offer of support to Gillian Childs in the upcoming dangers. |
| Date | October 1, 2010 |
Redbird Security — Gillian's Apartment
"Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake."
- Henry David Thoreau
« — ood morning New York City!»
A morning DJ's voice explodes over the radio alarm clock beside Gillian Childs' bed. The sudden shout has her bolting up from sleep onto one arm, eyes wide and tangles of red hair sliding down one bare shoulder, other locks falling in front of her face. Sweat beads on her brow, the sensation of waking from a nightmare without the recollection of what it was.
«/It's seven o'clock and this is the WABC news radio! It's a crisp fifty-eight degrees outside this rainy Friday morning!//»
Tall windows in Gillian's bedroom let diffuse gray light from rainy skies spill in through water-streaked glass. Tall, concrete skyscrapers rise up from the crowded neighborhood of Battery Park City, the tops of some of the buildings lost in low-hanging clouds and morning fog. It's only now that Gillian realizes that she's breathing heavier, shoulders trembling and eyes watery. Not quite like she'd been crying, but close enough to count. The emotion is there, a frayed tether of something that once hung in her mind, now lost between her fingers.
«It's going to be rain, rain, rain and more rain today as this weekend's big storm rolls through. We'll have more on the weather with Artie in ten minutes, but first here's Mark Campbell with the news.»
The grating roar of the radio crackling beside Gillian pounds in her head, the slight throb of a stiff neck migrating into a headache. She'd slept poorly from the feel of things, but mercifully without the pain of a nightmare to wake up to, just the after-effects. Clarity of thought starts to fill in the spaces, the fog of waking clears, and it's just another day.
Rain, rain, rain… At least it isn't snow. The pain and the stiffness leaves her rubbing fingers over her neck as she slides out of the bed, bare feet touching the cool floor, and she stops there to try and consider. Her body seems to want to get up, or at least get into a warm shower, but part of her wonders if she got any sleep at all. So many nightmares to be had…
And seven o'clock is too early. A loud exhale of complaint sounds as she pushes up onto her feet, looking around for the bathrobe that she knows she should keep next to the bed, to cover up the underwear and bra that she sleeps in.
It's not there.
Feet heavily move across to the bathroom, where instead she reaches down and picks up a shirt off the floor, one that barely fits as she pulls it on over her red hair.
Why was she getting up this early? She can't quite recall.
From the bathroom, the noise of the alarm clock radio is still chattering through the apartment, volume loud enough that at this distance it sounds bearable. The sound of rain pattering on the windows can't be heard in the bathroom, just the buzz of the lightning at it clicks on, revealing Gillian's tired expression in the mirror.
It's not until halfway through the news broadcast that her heart sinks into her stomach.
«…orphanage known as the Lighthouse, located within the expanding Reclaimed Zone on Staten Island's southern shores. Authorities apprehended the orphanage's manager, Brian Fulk earlier this morning along with an undocumented number of Evolved children, some believed to be unregistered and being willfully kept from the government's eye.»
A chill runs down Gillian's spine as she hears her brother's name on the news broadcast, hears the sound of everything falling apart.
«According to sources within the Department of Homeland Security, Fulk was arrested in connection for association with the Company, having operated under the alias Brian Winters within the rogue organization.»
The lights in the bathroom flicker for a moment, the wiring in the apartment might need to be looked at.
«Authorities removed hundreds of illegal automatic weapons from the premesis, kept in the orphanage's basement, along with illegal drugs and drug paraphenalia. At least one dose of the Evolved targeted drug Refrain was found on site, leading to speculation that the children may have been exposed to the substance.»
Why didn't she wake up earlier? As soon as the news finally settles in, Gillian's moving around the room, feeling a weight in the pit of her stomach, and the sudden desire to find a phone. "God damnit— fuck," she curses and growls, unable to find anything that she feels that she needs. No phone to call people, no pants to put on and run out into the rain. Her hand finds a book, thick and hardback, Watership Down. Hailey's favorite book, that they'd been reading just before Denisa died, during the cold and harsh winter.
It's too late. Even if she called, it's too late.
Even if she found clothes to run out the door and across the river and onto Staten Island…
It's too late.
"There was supposed to be more time," she growls outloud, before throwing the book across the room, to bounce off of the wall next to the dressing mirror.
The wall shakes from the impact of the book, a dent in the sheetrock, the mirror vibrates and blurs Gillian's image.
That's when she notices she isn't alone in the room.
"There is still time," is whispered over Gillian's shoulder by the woman in black standing behind her. Hokuto Ichihara is immediately recognizable, even if anachronistically dressed in traditional attire for her culture, were this a funeral, specifically one for her. A chalk white kimono folded left over right is the dress of the deceased in Japan, the black layer beneath gives an outline to the neck and sleeves, matching the inky shade of her long and thready hair, like strokes of a pen drawn in the air.
"But you must not be weighed down by your chains," Hokuto whispers with a cold, pale hand laid down on Gillian's shoulder, gold eyes focused on Gillian's reflection in the mirror, "in order to run ahead of the coming storm."
"You're not supposed to be here," Gillian says simply, before she drops down onto the floor, sitting on her ankles as she presses her hands against her forehead. Not looking at her own reflection, or the ghost in her room, she can't help but want to be alone right now, even as the words filter through a few extra times.
The most important ones would be the first ones.
Hands dropping, her dark eyes with green flecks look at the mirror, focusing up at the oddly golden eyes that she sees reflected there. "There's still time? But what can I do now? I— I can't go near the Lighthouse. Not anymore— not without them finding me. If they know I'm alive…" Glancing down, she looks at her wrists. For a moment she can almost see the chains the woman mentioned, but they're scars and a tattoo.
"Every time I think I've gotten rid of them, they come back…" In one form or another.
She's been experimenting with what she can do. From her little perch on top of the mirror, Delia's tiny body is hunched like a vulture's as she watches what her mentor is doing. She's not even the size of a sprite, though she looks like one in her little cotton dress with her fiery curls poofed out around her head. Even in dreams she can't get it to go right.
Getting up onto her feet, she balances on the frame in a little bit of a waver before launching herself out into the room. She flies through the air much like a squirrel, with her arms and legs spread just right to land in a belly flop on the floor. She's headed toward Hokuto but begins to grow at an alarming rate, until she and her cotton dress are their proper size.
She lands with a heavy thud, crouched on the floor.
Twisting her head up, she slowly comes to a stand, her form so much taller than both Hokuto's and Gillian's, it doesn't stop her from seeming smaller than the Asian woman. Perhaps it's the inexperience. "You have friends that can help you."
Arms folded withint he voluminous sleeves of her kimono, Hokuto arches one brow as she looks down to Gillian's faux-red locks, then over to her disciple with a nod of approval. "I came because there are people concerned about you, who wished for me to deliver to you both a warning and incentive." The radio has since gone quiet, the rain has stopped outside of the bedroom windows, hanging in the air like tiny glass beads. The play has been paused.
"You already know Delia," Hokuto implies with a motion of one hand out of her sleeve, thick black beads bound around her wrist clattering together as she gestures to the true redhead in the dream. "You may not be able to reach the Lighthouse physically, but you can reach it. If you need to speak to anyone there… I can serve as an intermediary, a bridge. Delia can be your guide, protecting you in their minds. She needs the exercise."
Gold eyes flick up to the redhead and Hokuto offers a smile of measured fondness to the young woman before looking back down to Gillian. "The children need a fallback position, just as much as anyone else will. You are in such a position to create one for them, and protect them before the world falls apart at the seams."
Pause may be useful, but so is rewind. And if the news on the radio had been real, that's what she'd want most— but it seems… "This is a dream," Gillian says quietly, getting the idea from all that is being said, from the way things stop and the way shapes and sizes change. The new woman splatted on her floor gets a long look. The woman from the bookstore, who bought her those books. The bible that she gifted to Joseph. The art books that she gave to Amato. And the ones she kept for herself…
Kindness of strangers.
Unlike Delia's red hair, Gillian's red hair is straight and slick, falling into her face, but not flting around every which way. In fact one could say her hair is near perfect, in the dream. Damp looking from sweat, but straight and untangled. "I don't know how I can find them someplace. I can't be me anymore. And if I take them, they can't be themselves anymore either. I don't know if living in hiding is something that they want… It's not what I wanted… But if that happens— if that's going to happen— they won't really have a choice, will they?" Even the ones they followed all the rules on.
"They're already living in hiding if they're not registered. What's the difference where they are?" Delia intones with a slight shrug of her shoulders. There's a hint of jealousy in her eyes as she spies Gillian's perfect hair and then concentrates on trying to mimic its perfection. Though she succeeds at first, the curls spring back coil by tight coil until they're all back, just as messy as before.
It's with a resigned sigh that Delia continues her thought to the other redhead. "They'll know you, that's the most important part, they'll have someone that they know they can trust. How many of them do you have to move?" She did listen to the radio when the news was being played, but she's not quite sure of all the details.
One of Hokuto's brows rise slowly as she listens to Delia, her own words stolen from her lips by the younger dreamwalker. There's a smile that grows with that, one born of pride. Tipping her head down into a slow, solemn nod, Hokuto arches one brow and considers Gillian thoughtfully. "She speaks the truth. You are not without your resources, not without your skills. You are still you, even if not in name…"
But at that notion, Hokuto furrows her brows and looks askance to the windows where rain has halted in mid-air. "Names have never defined who you are before," she admits in a hushed tone of voice, "you need not let that change now."
"Most of them are registered," Gillian says quietly, knowing that if they hadn't been there would have been a lot of troubles before this point, between various things that had happened in the past few years. "Damnit— all that money I tried to set aside for them, it's going to be gone." The money she had gotten for helping save the world, and in the end it hadn't mattered. She wasn't protected from being locked up by the Institute, she doesn't get that money to keep in a trust fund for the kids— it's all going to disappear. And she can't even take it out to put towards buying a new home for them.
"I'll need a place they can hide, but one where they can… meet other kids and not hide forever… Somewhere where they can have a little freedom…" Just a little.
"There's about a dozen. I know a place they can hide temporarily, if there's warning— but that's only if there's warning… I don't know when we'd have to pull them out of there…"
"Why not get everything ready now?" The amateur dreamwalker asks, glancing between Gillian and Hokuto with a somewhat wary expression on her face. "When dad told me that we might have to go into hiding, I started packing everything that was the most important to me. Pictures, some of the clothes that I wanted to keep, things like that. By the time we had to go, I had six boxes hidden in the bookstore basement."
It's not nearly a quarter of everything she would have liked to keep, but it was everything most important to save. "I still don't have it all yet, but it's safe. If you get a place ready for them now, you know you'll have it waiting when you need to move them. It'd be pretty simple to just get them dressed, let them take one toy, and have everything else waiting by the time they get there."
"You'll have warning," Hokuto explains with some certainty, "I can't say how much, but… some."Golden eyes track to the mirror, and in that reflective surface, the world begins to change and contort, twist and twirl until a wholly different reality is shown. There's a well-appointed office, light spilling in thorugh tall windows, and an elderly woman familiar to Gillian standing by a book case, holding a photograph in her hands.
What Angela Petrelli has to do with any of this is uncertain.
"I dreamed too big," Angela says in the mirror to thin air. "I want to end small." She places the tips of her fingers on the back of the hand at her arm. "My son was involved with a woman named Gillian Childs, who used to work at the Lighthouse on Staten Island. You won't be able to convince Fulk to abandon it, but there are others.
"When the time comes to take action, I won't be in any position to help them, and neither will Daniel. I'll need you to speak for me and help Miss Childs make whatever arrangements are needed before the world finishes falling apart."
"I know her," Hokuto's voice admits with a hesitance and guilt laced within, heard through the mirror but not seen. "I'll— make sure it happens."//
"You have people who care about you," Hokuto intones as the vision fades from the mirror, one dark brow lifted as she assesses Gillian. "Start now, so that you are ready when the time comes."
"It wouldn't be the first time they've lost almost everything— pulled out in the middle of the night in the arms of someone who has to run a half dozen different places at once," Gillian says quietly, thinking back to the attack on the Lighthouse by Arthur Petrelli, the once husband of the woman in the picture. When he'd killed Brian. If she hadn't been there to get the kids out— would he have taken their abilities as well? Would he have left them for dead while the house burnt from the localized nuclear explosion he made?
"I'd been working on it months ago, after… after Linderman said that I would need to," she explains quietly. But her efforts had been stalled by a certain group, with negation gas and coffins and vans. "First the Garden, then I'll need somewhere else, somewhere more permenant." Or as permenant as it can get, under the conditions.
It may not be a full decision, but it's a start. "I'll have to make sure Doyle and Brian know… They're potentially in trouble too."
Delia brightens a little and nods toward Gillian, "I can help with Mister Doyle, if you need it. I'm supposed to go there to see all the kids anyway." Looking down at herself and then back to Gillian, a sheepish smile grows on her face, "Not like this… for real. Maybe we can go together. And… my dad's getting good at building and stuff, I could ask him to help with the handy helper things." Because there's got to be something to keep the old man busy, it's not like he's got much going on right now.
"If you need any kind of help, I'm at Gun Hill… I don't have a job except running the clinic, so I'm pretty much available at a moment's notice." Delia's hands move as though she's looking to jam them into her pockets, but she has none.
"Wherever you need to go, in dreams, I will be the bridge for you… it's the least I can do after what I put you through." Hokuto's eyes lid partway, golden iruses looking like half crescents beneath the ragged fringe of her lashes. "I can bring you and Delia together to help you cross distances, but she has not yet learned enough to travel far on her own." There's a furrow of the dreamwalker's brows as she looks to her student, gold eyes narrowed briedly before she turns away.
"How you do what you do is up to you entirely… but what help I can offer," Hokuto closes her eyes and shakes her head, "it is yours. Without question." Guilt, it seems, is a running trend of many of Gillian Childs' aquaintances.
Guilt is a common trait in her life, in herself and in the people that she meets. No one's guilt free. "You didn't do worse than I've done to myself," Gillian says with a shake of her head, realizing that— what exactly did the woman do to her? It doesn't really come to the forefront of her mind. Dreams should be a clue, but it's a small one.
"Thanks— I— " There's some hesitation, as if a memory has come to her, a flicker of light in the corner of her eye, as the door out of her bedroom suddenly looks like the door to the Ichihara Bookstore. Instead of noticing the complexities of her own mind, she looks toward Delia, focusing on her. "If you work at Gun Hill… I'm going on a trip soon, and… if I don't come back, if you can't find me in a week or so— can you make sure that Doyle does this without me? Gets them somewhere safe in the Ferry." A gamble is a gamble because of risk, but some gambles are worth attempting despite it.
Nodding quickly, Delia gives Gillian a little smile and then jumps up into the air, suddenly shrinking to pocket sized again. She lands on Hokuto's shoulder, using a few stands of her black hair as a hold to keep steady in case of movement.
I'll make sure to tell him, the voice echoes in Gillian's mind. I'll help him as much as I can. They're kids, after all, they can't be that hard to move, right?
The sprite sized redhead gives a bright smile to the impossibly redheaded and perfectly coifed woman with no pants. If there's one thing Hokuto is good for, it's a ride places. Since she offered to be a bridge, her young student is taking the opportunity to walk on her. At least her shoulder.
Gold eyes afford Delia an askance look, momentarily amused by her ability to shift and contort herself in dreams while maintaining her sense of self; it's an important lesson that she doesn't feel she'll need to go over with Delia in great detail. The young girl is a fast, fast learner. "I have faith," Hokuto explains with one brow lifted, "that if presented with a situation that will risk your life, or a situation that will save the children…"
Hokuto's eyes shut and the dream begins to distort, become blurred around its edges and indistinct, "you will make the right choice."
«— ood morning New York City!»
A morning DJ's voice explodes over the radio alarm clock beside Gillian Childs' bed. The sudden shout has her bolting up from sleep onto one arm, eyes wide and tangles of red hair sliding down one bare shoulder, other locks falling in front of her face. Sweat beads on her brow, the sensation of waking from a nightmare without the recollection of what it was.
«/It's seven o'clock and this is the WABC news radio! It's a crisp fifty-eight degrees outside this rainy Friday morning!//»
Tall windows in Gillian's bedroom let diffuse gray light from rainy skies spill in through water-streaked glass. Tlal, concrete skyscrapers rise up from the crowded neighborhood of Battery Park City, the tops of some of the buildings lost in low-hanging clouds and morning fog. It's only now that Gillian realizes that she's breathing heavier, shoulders trembling and eyes watery. Not quite like she'd been crying, but close enough to count. The emotion is there, a frayed tether of something that once hung in her mind, now lost between her fingers.
«It's going to be rain, rain, rain and more rain today as this weekend's big storm rolls through. We'll have more on the weather with Artie in ten minutes, but first here's Mark Campbell with the news.»
The grating roar of the radio crackling beside Gillian pounds in her head, the slight throb of a stiff neck migrating into a headache. She'd slept poorly from the feel of things, but mercifully without the pain of a nightmare to wake up to, just the after-effects. Clarity of thought starts to fill in the spaces, the fog of waking clears, and it's just another day.
«President Nathan Petrelli is bound for Japan today to begin peace talks between the Japanese government and the nation of China under pressure from the United Nations to assist in keeping the eastern Asian conflict from growing out of control…»
Just another day.