Participants:
| Scene Title | Shoveling |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Lucille has a lot on her mind, Hana has words of advice and manual labor to temper her mind. |
| Date | January 15, 2019 |
Outside The Bunker
Winter in Rochester means snow. Lots of snow. The latest front has finally given way to clear skies and sunshine, which unfortunately also means cold; the temperature will peak above freezing this afternoon, but only barely. It also means it's time to break out the snow shovels again, which is no small part of what's brought Hana outside this morning.
So it is that the major is bundled up against wintry chill, wielding a broad and shallow shovel as she clears space between the Bunker and its outbuildings. There are other people to do the shoveling, of course, the Bunker's groundskeeper first and foremost among them; but it's Hana's nature to do for herself, and there's only so long she can stand being stuck behind a desk, besides.
Even if she's the one that put herself there, this time around.
But however welcome the exertion and the excuse to be outdoors, all this snow is definitely not a thing Hana will miss when she departs in a week and change to traverse an ocean.
From behind Hana footfalls crunch in the snow announcing Lucille's presence not that she needed to announce anything to the Major, she was quite perceptive all her own.
"Major," The younger woman says while sticking her hands in her coat pockets. Lucille missed the beach, her travels internationally. Mostly when it was this cold and this much snow. Dressed for the winter, all dark gray shades and black boots. Lucille has been out and away, rarely home. The bruises from her fights in the Crucible more apparent. Since Operation Hercules and Devon..
She's had a lot to work out. "Quality time with the snow before you leave?" Lucille's smile is weak and almost forced but if anything her modeling days taught her how to put on a brave face. A fresh bruise on her neck is in full bloom purple and red blotches decorating her pale neck.
"Something like that," Hana replies, the nondescript flatness of her tone belying the words. Something, not so like.
The deliberate rhythm of her motions does not so much as pause with the younger woman's arrival: scoop, lift, pitch. Repeat. She does at least cast a glance Lucille's way, in the beat between one lift and the next scoop. Extrapolates, from the content of said glance, that this is not likely a simple, circumstantial encounter.
"There's another shovel up against the shop."
Making her way over to the shop in question leaving tracks in her wake Lucille spots the shovel and hefts it, walking back over to pick a spot not to far from Hana as she scoops and lifts.
She works in silence for a bit, only the steady sound of her breathing along with a fine fog that emits from between her lips. It had been just about a week or so since Hercules and Devon. They've had debriefings about it all, begun to mourn. Blue eyes are intent on the snow it gives her a focus, Lucille is not that much like the young woman who first came to Hana for help in her training and it shows but her face still shows tension. "I've been dreaming about Devon." The admission is swift though her tone is weighed heavy by the emotion of losing a teammate. "We lost so many in the war you would think…" she doesn't finish that because you wouldn't be human if you didn't feel something for Devon's passing.
"Work has been a good distraction." Wolfhound has, the Crucible.
The silence between them is like the snow they shovel: weighted, burdensome, but not without its grace. When Lucille breaks that silence, hesitant for all the abruptness of her speaking up, Hana pauses, glancing the younger woman's way. "I wouldn't," is a reply at least as abrupt, blunt in a forthright way without being repressive.
"Loss is never easy or peaceful. Not if you truly care." The major doesn't volunteer anything about her dreams — if she has them, who they feature — but her shovel stabs into the snow with rather more force than necessary. The subsequent pitch is more moderated; it does no good to fling snow somewhere she'll just have to shovel it from again.
"If you do find it getting easy?" Hana remarks, glancing pointedly toward Lucille. "That's the time to get out of this work."
Nodding her head along as she pitches a shovelful of snow off to the side. Her eyes meet Hana's and nods again. Lucille did truly care. "I use to think my emotions would ruin me in this work," Now in a steady pace of shoveling with the scrap of the tool sliding against the pavement beneath. "Not anymore." It was a delicate dance for Lucille, opening her herself up while not being ruled by her emotions. Maintaining that logic is necessary for the work.
"I was content to just, take orders and be pointed in the direction that I was needed. Something Avi said before the Casper operation… made me start to think." Another load tossed out of the way and Lucille switches spots, pivoting while keeping her face turned slightly towards the Major.
"I enjoyed picking the team to come along, leading even." The younger woman sounds a little taken aback to say it aloud. They didn't bag Casper but they did get his pennies, David Cardinal and Kyla Renatus. "When did you realize you were…" Lucille trails off and looks around the snowy campus, "Not just going to be taking orders? But giving them. That you might be suited for it." Lucille was used to team work from years of working with Wolfhound but feeling the need to call the shots, was never really in her nature.
There's a hint of curve to Hana's lips as Lucille continues speaking, but only on the side where it will go unseen. She continues shoveling without interruption while the younger woman speaks, letting her talk through her thoughts.
Afterwards, Hana stands her shovel upright in the snow, leaning on its handle, looking out across the white-smothered landscape that is ultimately hers.
"I was always opinionated," she says in that mild way that masks the profound degree of understatement in play. What opinions Hana Gitelman cleaves to are not opinion but conviction, the principles that are the bedrock of her identity and soul. "I followed orders in spite of myself, because I still believed in systems." In the Mossad, in the CIA, in the arms of the government as sword and shield of its people.
"The Company— " Bennet "— broke me from that mold. After that…" There is a breath that passes too soundlessly to be a sigh, briefly visible as a haze before her lips. "What I had to learn was to collaborate." Not vision and directive, but the willingness to be other than a lone lioness — to run in a pride. The Ferry never counted, not in that way.
"I'd say that didn't fully sink in until the war," she adds as an aside, taking up her shovel again. When her battlefield moved out of the shadows and onto the most overt of stages.
Pausing to hear Hana's words with a tilted head Lucille nods her head, hair raising on the back of her neck at the mention of the Company. They both had their own ties to the old entity. "Collaboration." Lucille echoes as she continues speaking in between shoveling the snow off to the side. Finding her rhythm again. "It has been… very nice working with Amarok so closely." They were the family within the family.
"I was alone a lot before the war. On the run… it got better once I joined a pack," Hana's pack.
"Thank you for creating this. Giving me a place to call home." Luce stops her shoveling and sticks it in the snow this time to look over at her former mentor and boss, "I'm not entirely sure who I would be without Wolfhound, the early days of the war…" were the roughest and she doesn't need to say that. It's clear Lucille is being very open, daring herself to be better than the last seven years. To connect more. She spent so much time only connecting with a punching page or someone's jaw.
Hana's motions pause just long enough for her to cast a glance Lucille's way. "It's not like I did it for you," she points out, in that particular shade of dryness that owes something to humor. Sometimes.
A response of you're welcome was never in the cards, not explicitly.
The scrape of aluminum on snow and the patter of white splatter resumes. "It almost sounds like you're fixing to leave. Saying goodbye," is commented in that same tone of voice, accompanied by a level look and an arched brow. Not a serious inquiry, and not even a particularly forceful deflection, though characteristic.
Such openness and baring of the soul is not exactly Hana's comfort zone.
There's a quirk of a smile at the dry humor, "Oh of course not." In a all too serious tone but that soft smile persists, of course Hana didn't but Lucille was still… "I know it does. But that's not it." She shovels alongside the Major, eyes forward on the snow.
"I was so walled off before Berlin healed me. Seven years." Shaking her head at the memory, "I took a lot for granted and now I want the people I care about to know that I do, that I appreciate them." Lucille's mouth slowly dips into a frown, "So in case anything happens to anyone, you know… and I know." Where they stand, that someone cares about them. The younger woman shrugs her shoulders, "I've obviously been in my feelings lately."
"Are you excited? To go overseas?" It had been so long since Lucille had left the country but it use to be one of her favorite things to do.
"Obviously," Hana concurs, in that same dust-dry tone. Not to say that feelings are a bad thing, but airing them is never the most comfortable of processes — and it's only one side of this conversation that came prepared to do so.
She spends the time to listen, though, mindless work posing no distraction whatsoever.
Lucille's change of subject earns her a sharp look from the major, edged slightly with what might be disbelief. "Excited?" she echoes. "It is a work trip." Okay, the first week might not be about work, but that's a totally separate arrangement, and no one's business but her own.
Silence ensues, as does the relocation of several more shovels-full of snow, a characteristic pause that could mean no further answer is forthcoming… or merely that time is needed for Hana to come around to sharing. It nearly always is.
"I've never seen the allure of traveling for its own sake," she remarks at last. "I go where I need to to get things done." Of course, Israel has the unique status of being her birthplace, her home of twenty-six years — still considerably longer than what she's lived outside its boundaries.
"There hasn't been anything for me in Israel for a long time," Hana adds, acknowledging that history. No family left, not there. She's never been good with friends. And a personal glass ceiling entirely distinct from the usual form. One likely long since shattered by Wireless' reputation, but the historical baggage lingers.
"So no, excited is not the word I'd use," she adds, breaking incipient reverie and resuming the shoveling action that she hadn't even noticed stalled somewhere along the way.
Lucile shrugs her shoulders with a small laugh, "Traveling made me appreciate home once, Also hate it. That was before…" well all of this. The war, the reconstruction. Now? There were places she wouldn't be able to live free there. Lucille was grateful they had won the war, that people with abilities were treated better. It was worth it wasn't it?
Nodding her head as Hana's directness on the state of returning to where she was born. "That must be tough," Lucille thinks about if there was nothing here for her in the States what she would do. She's stalled the shoveling as well, looking out to the world around them. Emotions in her eyes. Lucille's been in a funny place.
"When I found out Berlin… well is who she is," Lucille looks off to the side, "I immediately felt scared for her. Not for us." Not for people around them but for the young woman shouldered with the responsibility of carrying two ancient entities. "Did you have many experiences with the conduits?"
Quiet falls over them again as Lucille reflects, contemplates, considers. The leap in subject that ensues is not one Hana could have predicted by any means, drawing her attention in a momentary glance. Berlin has, so far as she's aware, no connection to Israel. Though there is something to be said for association between the conduits and travel.
"No," Hana replies. "I have had essentially nothing to do with the conduits." Both then and now, really, as her contact with the Vanguard was indirect and Berlin seems inclined to keep such business between herself and the Eileen that exists now. "Why do you ask?"
"Been trying to find out as much as I could about them, not just what the books talk about, or rumors." There's another moment of silence between the two, Lucille had often found herself thinking of the conduits and the capabilities, the danger her friend could be in. Lately since she's learned the truth. "Ah, even busy hands isn't taking me out of my head today." A scoff though Hana's dismissals of her connection to the conduits when she held that cane during her recovery puzzles Lucille. Though you really can't be responsible for the gifts given to you, can you?
"I should head in, get some training done." Maybe that will quiet her mind, it typically does.
The want to tire herself out so that she couldn't think is strong. Harbor too long, she gets lost just as her gaze seems lost in the sea of white around them. "Lots on my mind I guess, thanks for listening to word vomit." A small smile crosses her lips.
The scoff is met with a sharp look, an edged but rhetorical version of what's that supposed to mean? Her own answer was simple truth: Involvement with either conduit was the province of other people, however much certain aspects of that might have chafed at the time.
The cane, in her hands, is just that: a cane.
Lucille's intention to withdraw indoors is met with a simple nod. "Comes with the job," Hana remarks, turning her own attention back to the job at hand. A dismissive statement, perhaps, but only on the surface. Only if one overlooks the fact that in her paradigm, actions count far more than words — even when said action is minimal, and itself essentially composed of words.
"Put the shovel back where you found it, before you go."
Rubbing the back of her neck, she's feeling all over the place. Looking down and missing Hana's sharp look she nods her head roughly, "It is." Luce's hand hefts the shovel and she lifts her head. "Thanks for hearing me and my rambles out." Hana was always there, it was comforting to know she was though Lucille didn't always lean on her in that way. For now in this moment especially she's grateful for her advice. It had gotten easier to forgive her father for his lack of being around because of his work with the Company. A place that Hana also worked, the connection was small or large depending on how you looked at it but having a relationship with someone connected to that part of her father's past that wasn't ripped with animosity and old hostilities.. It had somehow dulled the ache there. Noah too.
Shaking her head and turning her back to head towards the shed. God. Her mind was everywhere today. Lucille begins to step away and turns her head a bit, "See you." With a weak smile.
The crunch of her boots are all the noise that's emitted from the younger woman, coupled with the shoveling being done by Hana. Lucille's head raises and she not for the first time since the two have met, has her head in the clouds.