Participants:
| Scene Title | That Kind of Woman |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Abigail delivers Kazimir's cane to Eileen. |
| Date | June 20, 2010 |
Ripples spread through the reflection of gibbous moon in the surface of Central Park's reservoir and distort a deep purple sky studded with rhinestone stars. It's a humid summer night in New York City and the woman with the chalk skin and ink-black hair has a pocketful of smooth skipping stones perfect for lilypadding across the water while she waits at its edge. Eileen holds one such stone in the seat of her palm and curves her thumb along its rounded edge, feeling for any inconsistencies that might affect her next throw before bringing her arm back, wrist cocked, and lets the projectile fly.
Each hop produces a distinct sound that differentiates it from the one before and allows her to count the number of times it comes into contact with the water before running out of the momentum and sinking into the dark. This toss breaks her previous record of nine skips by two, but the only witness to her accomplishment is the barn owl perched in a nearby tree, and its heart-shaped face has soulful eyes turned in the direction of the dirt path at the Englishwoman's back.
Barn owls are beautiful, and if abigail could actually see it, she'd be standing still and transfixed by it. She's just that kind of girl. She's also the kind of woman to carry her tazer out right now, backpack over shoulder, polished wooden case that is long and slightly skinny, in her other hand and quickly approaching where Eileen and she had agreed to meet. It's dark, it's Central Park. This is not a place for women. But Abigail hasn't taken a negation pill, woe be to whomever tries to ambush the pink haired woman. Eileen is likely armed to the teeth as well.
"Eileen" Calling out to see if the other person responds, though she's familiar with the diminutive form of the dark haired woman to know that it really is her. "How many? Most I ever did was fifteen. I beat my Dah by three"
Eileen doesn't look like she's armed, but the navy coat she wears over lighter clothes with contrasting textures could easily conceal a leather shoulder holster and pistol, and when she turns to face the path the moonlight catches a sliver of gunmetal beneath the fabric's gently worn lip. On silent wings, the barn owl drifts down to affix itself to her shoulder and hook talons into the material of her coat, securing its perch with only a faint whisper of buff and silver feathers.
"Eleven tonight," she says. "The water's perfect for it. Give it a go?"
Oh the owl… temptation to reach out and touch it is great, but in the end, it's still a wild animal and it's friends, if you could call it that, with Eileen. SO her hands stay where they are, tucking tazer away into bag, the case placed gently on the ground. "Should we? You haven't taken all the good stones and used them already have you? Last time we did something like this, it was outside piccoli's and we were feeding the birds. Like a world away isn't it? Only.. now you're not with the vanguard, and you're helping do something really good for the Ferry and I'm not a healer anymore and just.. trying to get through the day"
She takes a good look at the other woman, seeing if there's hints here in the dark, of what was seen yesterday at the meeting. "Lets throw some rocks"
Eileen dips a hand into her pocket and comes out with three smaller stones stacked loosely in a cupped palm offered out to Abby. "Healer or no," she says, "you've as much to offer the Ferry as I do." In this light, even the healthiest, most robust person would appear ashen and wan under the moon's sallow glow, but there's a similarity between her face and the barn owl's that gives her presence an unnatural feel. A lit cigarette hanging from the corner of a dark mouth with lips curled around a small smile furthers the impression, draping her head and shoulders in a veil of smoke, and maybe if the blonde's hand were to brush hers, she and the owl might dissolve into more of the stuff, float away across the water like fog.
"You should know that you've been nominated for a seat on the council." Eileen presses the stones into Abby's hand, curling fingers around hers. She does not evaporate. "I wanted to say something earlier, but it wasn't the right time."
Abby's fingers curl around the stones and the other womans hands, holding firmly as Eileen divulges the word of nomination. Darker blue in this light, her other hand covers the delicate hand, encasing them between hers. "Your speaking seriously. Someone wants me on that council" The look on her face is one of sheer bafflement.
"Okay, nice joke Eileen. I'm not cut out for that sort of deal. I'm a behind the drapes, making sure everyones got their coffee and the pen cups are refilled kinda woman. Besides, you don't want me doing that sorta job right now. I'm going through some things, I got some… issues"
"It wasn't a joke." Eileen gives Abigail's fingers a slow, firm squeeze in an attempt to convey the sincerity that her quiet voice has difficulty finding the strength to summon. She releases the other woman's hand and presents her wrist as an alternate perch for the owl as she steps away, gravitating toward a wrought-iron bench erected in memorial of someone who's been dead longer than either one of them have been alive. When she sits down, she shifts the owl from her arm to the bench's high back and does not seem to mind it clipping her ear with one outstretched wing.
"If you don't feel comfortable serving on the council," she says, "there are other places where your skills are needed. Megan and Odessa are only two people, and even with Francois helping out from time to time, our network lacks operatives with real medical knowledge."
"It not that I don't feel comfortable" The pink haired woman doesn't follow to the bench, letting the touch linger before she turns, selecting one of the three stones, running her thumb across the edge. "I just.. I don't think that I'm.. cut out for it. Ever since the beachfront, just.. things have been getting just more and more militant and I'm just.. I'm not that kind of woman. I carry a tazer because Robert wants me to and I refuse to carry a gun"
Abigail winds her hand back, positioning the rock just so and then whipping it forward.
Thwip, thwip, thwip…
Ten in all, many an hour spent doing this back home down south. "Not that it's not a natural evolution of things. More and more pressure and hurt, attacks on the group, Humanis First. It's understandable Eileen just…" She turns so that she's talking to Eileen face to face and not with her back to the woman and bird.
Eileen crosses her legs at the knee on the bench, revealing sleek nylon stockings that conform to the shape of her thighs and calves and end in a pair of simple black flats. The dress she's wearing is only a shade apart from the navy blue of her coat, but also impossible for Abby to attach a colour or name to. "No one's asking you to start thinking militantly, Abigail."
Although the expression on her face remains as placid as the water further out, untouched by the mellow undulations, the owl perched on the bench beside her rumples its feathers and gives a flick of its short, squarish tail that betrays some irritation. "Tend to the sick, decide who should and shouldn't have access to the network's store of negation drugs, make sure that our dependents receive a well-rounded education and the love and attention their parents aren't able to provide because they've been forcibly separated. You can tell me you're not this kind of woman, but you are."
"Are you saying that someone wants me in charge of the medical and education division?" It's still a bit much for the EMT to take in, stones tucked into her own pocket as she meanders over, slowly lifting a hand, letting the bird see it and gently aiming to run a finger down the back of it's head like she does with Pila. She's come to adore birds thanks to the blue and white bossy thing in her apartment.
"I am that kind of woman." She concedes quietly, voice adjusted for location and time of day. "You're right. I am. I'm just…"
"I'm taking negation drugs right now. I'm one of the people who's pulling from the stores. Cat's been filling it for me as I need it, and my shifts, I work every three days, then I have one off. I need to re-open the bar, it burned down to the ground, and I have all those girls leaning on me and I'm trying to find them jobs so that they're not left in the cold" Figurativly. She's pulling up excuse after excuse.
"If not in charge, then next in line." The owl tips its head to the side and makes a hoarse noise at the back of its throat that sounds like a hiss, but rather than lash out at Abby with its wings or snap up her fingers in its strangely-shaped break, it arches its back and squeezes oblique black eyes shut, though its posture offers her no insight into the meaning behind the display. Either the owl is enjoying the attention or merely tolerating it — only Eileen knows for sure, and she isn't telling Abby to stop.
"What is it that's keeping you in New York?" she asks instead. "If not this?"
"I don't know. Because I made a home here. Because.. I have a job here, friends like you, Francois, Peter, Melissa, because there's people who need help and the Lord knows that this place seems to be a place where people who need help come to. I'd go home, back to Louisiana but, I think that if I did, if I settled down and became a housewife, I'd go stir crazy. I don't think Robert would be happy back there either and I don't know if we'd be in the end, right for each other. Besides, there's people who depend on me and I can't let them down. In as much as I - Okay"
She can see the reason for the questioning, to a degree. "Because as much as people might need me here, I need them too, and to keep doing gods work even if it's no longer through healing from my hands in that way that I used to do" She gives the owl one last gentle stroke, not wanting to irritate the bird and afraid that she might. "I can't control my own ability right now Eileen, what makes you think that I can do this? Or whomever nominated me, thinks that I can do this"
"Kazimir never learned to control his ability," Eileen says, "and still he was able to do great, if terrible things. The rest of Gabriel's life is going to be a struggle to contain the part of him that wants to destroy everything he's fought to become." She lifts her chin, raises her eyes above Abigail's head and seeks out the light of the moon. "It's not been easy for you, either, I know, but these are obstacles that aren't impossible to overcome. Devote yourself to your work, be surrounded by those you love.
"And you're luckier than either of them, you know. There are very few people who love them back."
True
And truer still. It's at the mention of Kazimir that she looks over to the polished case that she left on the ground with her stuff. The bench creaks as she pulls up and away, gravel crunching beneath her feet in the din of the park as she leans down to pick it up, bring it over to the other woman and oh so carefully settle it in her lap before she sits back down again.
"I found out that your birthday wasn't too long after mine" A gesture to the case. "Belated, or very early. Either one. There's a letter inside for you and I was going to tell you to open it later for me, but.. You know that you're loved as well right? Raith, Ethan, even Gabriel. Teo loves you, implicitly, despite everyone's past. Even I love you. I walked into a room long ago to keep you from dying, all because we fed birds. But you knew that already"
She taps the case. "What's in there. Well, you'll see. I'll think about it Eileen. I turn into fire. I took a chance for a friend, took the formula that was brought back from some future that doesn't exist anymore. It didn't give me healing, gave me… holy fire. That's why I was asking after Gabriel. I was told to ask him for help with it. He's busy, I understand. I'm having some success on my own but… Not enough that I can go without the negation pills for work and I'm babbling. Please.." A gesture the case.
"SO I know whether I done messed up"
Eileen's takes another drag from her cigarette, then lowers it from her mouth, trailing smoke, to seek out the case's latches with the tips of her fingers. She smoothes her palm over the lid, hesitates when she feels her thumb catch metal. As she bows her head, the owl mirrors the motion but does not step down from the back of the bench to help her pop the case open.
It doesn't need to. "There are worse things to become," she cautions Abby, and there's something almost playful about the reprimand, soft as it is. "A defeatist, for instance." If she had anything more to say, she puts it on hold. Moonlight glances off a polished silver handle in the shape of a wolf's head, lips peeled back around a mouthful of snarling metal teeth, and reflects the image back into the owl's great black eyes.
Led by the smouldering point of her cigarette, a shaky hand bathed in red and orange glides down the length of the cane and then back up again to explore the shape of the wolf's muzzle. The last time she can remember being this close to it, Logan was bringing the weapon down on her with such ferocity that her memory of the event itself is fractured.
"How—?"
"Doctor Sheridan had it. I called her, asking to know if she knew where Flint was, of he was alive, meet up to pass her a letter to give to him. Teo'd given it to her, and Cardinal says that Teo had it for a while. Where he got it from there, I don't know. Best that I can figure, someone fished it out from the river maybe. I don't really know. She told me to toss it in the Hudson if I was so inclined, or to keep it, or give it back to Teo. But… when I told someone what I wanted to do with it, they told me it was a good idea. There's more, in the letter. The letter you should read when you're alone. Maybe, when you're feeling better and not death warmed over. But it is what you're thinking of. It's not a fake. It has been… authenticated so to speak"
She peers into the box, the moonlight reflecting. Not so scary a thing when it's not in the hands of a madman. "I hope.. that they weren't wrong? Because if they are, I can take it back, I can give it to Teo and I can find you something else. Maybe, a new pair of lungs somewhere"
Eileen mutely shakes her head at Abigail's offer and closes her fingers around the base of the handle, clutching it between hard white knuckles that stick out at angry angles even if the woman herself isn't. Of all the emotions holding her voice hostage, fury — righteous or otherwise — is not among them. "I don't have anything of his," is what she finally manages. "We lost it all."
Her mouth starts to form the first syllable of a thank you, but she stops herself before it can degenerate into a low croak and release the pressure she can feel building behind her eyes. She probably wouldn't say no to a new pair of lungs. "Did Francois tell you?"
Not about the cane.
"No."
The frenchman was not the source.
"Peter. It seems like he was right about it too" The former blonde smiles, leaning over to give a quick and light hug, careful of cigarette and bird, pressing cheek to cheek with the other woman oh so briefly before letting go. 'Enjoy it, and… I hope what's in the letter helps as much too and that you won't think me too forward or think badly of me for saying it" A gesture to the violet envelope tucked into the side. "It belongs with you. I hope that it manages to stay with you"
It goes without saying that Eileen does, too.
She spends a few more idle moments engrossed in the sensation of simple physical contact before she peels her fingers away from the cane, lets out the breath she'd been holding in the form of a thin, serrated hiss, then shuts the lid and fastens the latches. Only when they click into place does she rest her hands atop the case to still their trembling.
"Shall we go back to skipping rocks? Or do you need to sit for a bit? Get your strength?" She's satisfied with the handing over, can tell Peter that he was right in making sure Abby went through with it. "I can give you a ride somewhere too, instead of you walking. The SUV isn't far from here and…" And it goes without saying, she knows something's up with the other woman. "And if I go past curfew, I can always claim that I'm heading in for a shift"
"I think I'd like to sit," says Eileen, and that is all because all of a sudden, wherever it is that she's going feels impossibly far from here — but so does the reservoir and everything beyond the edge of the case she holds in her lap.
"No ones around. They can't see you." can't see what some might consider weakness. "Put your head on my shoulder Eileen and just rest, I won't tell. We can sit for a bit. Your friends will watch out for us" She adjusts her shoulder, soft hoodie over the curve of said shoulder in offering. "We'll go. When you're ready. Why don't.. you tell me what you miss most about him" A gesture to the case and whats within. "I.. I like hearing about the good things about him. There were… two sides to him. I'd like to know more about the man I sent to God"