Participants:
| Scene Title | The Sound of Distant Footsteps |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When Sable comes to stand vigil over an unconscious seer, she unexpectedly crosses paths with Colette, who reveals that not all wounds and scars are physical, and best left untouched. |
| Date | June 17, 2010 |
It's impossible for Sable to know whether or not she had an inkling of this. The way she interprets the world, as a seething oceanic mass of goings on, navigable only through the use of her simple instruments and the guidance of the stars, makes it difficult to know what is luck and what is fortune (two very different things, in Sable's opinion). The dog was her first hint. Too familiar in too vague a way not to mean something or other. And then to learn it was Tamara's dog. Tamara… another name too familiar yet too vague. Clouds obscured the clear night sky by which she guides herself.
Yet Sable ended up here anyways, either by luck or fortune, and this face… this face is familiar. It came to her in a vision, in the flurry of such images that radiated out across the city a mere week ago. A young woman wreathed in golden hair, lying unconscious, her eyes shivering beneath her lids. Caught in her own visions. What does a seer dream of? Are they processing memories of the day to come?
The yellow eyed girl sits, straddling a chair backwards, arms resting atop the back, chin resting atop her arms, uncanny gaze resting upon eyelids restless in rest. The corners of her mouth are tugged down in somber thought. She's quiet. The room she's in is quiet. Uncommon, both. But today is an uncommon day, and this vigil no common vigil.
The not distant flush of a toilet is perhaps the least fitting introduction to the notion that the clinic isn't actually devoid of life; Certainly Tamara counts, but not in her current state of inactivity. A thin and battered old door clunks open across the clinic, centered within the frame of an open doorway at Sable's right flank.
Stepping out of the bathroom, Colette is a familiar — if not bichromatic — silhouette in Sable's periphery, from the carnation red t-shirt contrasting brightly against matte black jeans and her dark boots. Toying with an errant lock of equally dark hair, she assumes she's alone, and on seeing Sable seated backwards on that chair in the very room Colette was about to head into, the young teen is given a startled halt, her shoulders jerking up and mismatched eyes going briefly saucer-wide.
"Sable?" Of all the people Colette expected to see in here, she's not one of them.
Sable's gaze swings around to the familiar voice speaking her name in such surprise, and a tiny smile pricks the corner of her mouth. She lifts a finger to her lips in a 'shush' gesture, then thumbs at Tamara. "She's dreamin'," she says, "Don't go wakin' her up or anythin'. Might be somethin' good." She leans backwards, hands gripping the top of the chair, forming a crooked triangle with arms, torso and backrest, gaze sliding back to Tamara.
"Whatcha see?" she asks, "Day we all saw somethin'. If y' don't mind me askin'." Sable's eyes shoot back to Colette. This last bit of politeness is maybe just a little uncharacteristic. Not nervous or deferential, like it might have been before, but actually sort of… unfamiliar. Like she doesn't want to assume too much. The amendment's temperature is just a little lower than average.
Teeth draw across Colette's bottom lip as she stares through the doorway, watching Sable in silence before wringing one hand in the other as she walks forward. Scuffing bootfalls carry Colette to the threshold, her shoulder coming to lean up against the frame as eyes track left and right, looking to see if there's anyone aside the sleeper and the visitor. Snorting out a sigh, Colette offers a bobbing nod of her head, then finally pushes off of the door frame and starts walking in to the dimly lit room Tamara's kept in.
"I'dunno…" is Colette's mumbled answer as she comes to stand at Sable's side, looking down at the brunette with furrowed brows. There's a palpably awkward silence afterward as Colette's attention turns out to Tamara, throat working up and down in a quiet but heavy swallow.
"Why're you in here?" It sounds more accusatory than Colette intended it to.
Fair play, considering Sable's own affect. Not prickly, perhaps, but by no means soft. Preoccupied. Pensive but unpeaceful. All the peace seems to have been cornered by the sleeper, and without knowledge of what those hidden eyes are actually seeing, even that is an uncertainty. She gives a small snort. Her answer is a unmistakable and purposeful echo of Colette's own.
"I'dunno either."
Sable is regarding Colette now, out of the corner of her eyes. Wary.
Stepping away from Sable, Colette walks beside Tamara's bed, looking down at the sleeping blonde before finally sitting down on the side of the bed and leaning over to brush the back of her hand across the sleeping young woman's cheek, curling fingers delicately around an errant lock of blonde hair and brushing it back from her face. The look in Colette's eyes is a conflicting combination of longing and something more haunted, the twitch of her brows seeming to show that even she doesn't understand the emotional response that she feels being here.
"Do you know her?" sounds less antagonistic, more resigned, and when Colette's hand pulls away from Tamara's brow, she twists to look over her shoulder at Sable, her expression shifting to one of clear concern.
"Hell no," Sable says, who is not looking at Colette when Colette looks at her. They seem to be taking turns to keep watch over, or on, Tamara. "'cept, since comin' here, 'n' takin' note of the scatter bits 'n' pieces you might call my recollections, I figured out I know of her. But that ain't hardly the same thing, eh?"
A hand rises, another one joining it with pointed finger, to indicate a place where Sable bears no ring, but the other two girls do. "Now you. You know 'er all right, dontcha?"
Nodding her head in wordless recognition to Sable's question, Colette turns to look back down at Tamara, staring silently at the blonde before rising up from the bed with a creak of its spring and not even the faintest stirring of the slumbering sibyl. "I know her… probably better'n anyone else does," is said with an uneasiness, because it means there simply aren't many people that Colette can go to with questions about her. "I know more about her… and I still don't understand her."
Lifting up a hand to pinch fingers at the bridge of her nose, Colette's teeth press down into her lower lip and her head shakes from side to side, brows creased together and shoulders hunched forward. That she walks past Sable is because she's trying to keep her composure and hide the fact that she's getting emotional.
Fingers scrub at her eyes, and the noisy swallow she gives comes ahead of her turning enough to offer Sable a view of her profile. "I don't know her…" Colette backtracks on her earlier statement, "I thought I did, I…" her eyes close, head hangs and arms wrap around her waist. "I don't know."
Sable turns in her chair, cross her legs and arms, binding her limbs up tight as she regards Colette with a hard look. It's not full-on suspicion that marks the shorter girl's features, but there is certainly some want of trust. Her voice carries little in the way of sympathy, either.
"What you don't fuckin' know, hon," that abbreviation, usually delivered with the warmth and sweetness of its full self, punctuates Sable's words with a startling sharpness, "Is yer own fuckin' heart and mind. I can't speak t' you 'n' her, 'n' what y' do 'n' don't know 'bout her. Mystery or magic or whatever the fuck else she may seem t' you, the only sure thing that's confusin' you is you." She sniffs, "'course you thought t' settle as y' did. You wanna come home t' somethin' you think y' can understand. Who'd blame you? I know well 'nuff m'self what that's like. Who doesn't want a kiss on the fuckin' forehead? Makin' up for our misspent fuckin' childhoods."
Sable's arms and legs unloop, and she leans forward, elbows on knees, hunched, chin lifting as she peers at Colette, "So mebbe, what? You hate her a little bit? Only you can't feel that, heck no, couldn't possibly hate a golden angel such as she. So y' hate yerself a little bit instead, 'n' then someone comes 'n' kisses you on th' forehead, tells y' yer deservin' of love despite yerself. Only she's still here 'n'," quite suddenly, Sable grins, "So 'm I."
Colette's head turns away from Sable, eyes wrench shut and her jaw unsteadies. Lifting her hand up again, Colette braces her head against her fingers, thumb and forefingers spreading apart across her brow as she makes the tiniest sound in the back of her throat. The brunette turns more fully, walking away from Sable and moving into the doorway of the room, wrapping an arm around herself as she lingers there, indecisive on everything, including whether or not she wants to storm out.
"I saw her stab me," is Colette's croaked answer to a question long since asked. "She said she was sorry, a— and she stabbed me." That Colette's jaw can't stop quavering is what causes her voice to waver so much, makes her sound as emotional as someone who saw that might well be expected to.
"That's what I saw," seems to be the note that Colette's leaving on as she takes a few shuffling steps thorugh the doorway, then starts walking across the clinic floor towards the door out.
See, this never feels as good as you think it's going to feel. Sable is conversant on the subject of self-hatred because she's dabbled in it pretty extensively, and she's had a couple refreshers lately. And here's another. That retreating back, it kills her. What kills her further (death twice over) is having to pull a full 180, to pull herself to her feet, to reach out and take Colette's shoulder, pulling her back. "Hey."
"Fuckin'… hold on just a second there," Sable tries to say without mumbling, "That was a shitty conversation starter, arright? Admitted. But don't run off on me. I mean, not 't least 'til I make this a fair goddamn exchange, eh?" Contrition is delivered with no small effort, but it is delivered all the same. Sable hopes this isn't another letter too late, but she ought to be used to it. Ought to.
"Fuck off," comes with a slap of Sable's hand off of Colette's shoulder as the teen wheels around, her eyes reddened around the edges, making those dark circles around them seem even more prominent. "Just— just don't." For all her effort to try and hide the hurt she keeps bottled up inside, it spills out like an overfilled cup in that red-faced and tear-streaked countenance aimed at Sable.
Colette stares for a moment, silent, seething, and takes a step back and away from the yellow-eyed girl. "You— have no fucking idea what you're talking about, you don't know her!" There's a whip of Colette's hand, pointing into the room where Tamara lays on the bed, heedlessly shouting without much concern. "You don't know me! You don't know how fucking hard I tried!" Though she doesn't seem to explain tried about what.
"Fuck off," is quieter this time, equally venomous and emotional, and with no psychic vampires to blame for the outburst as she turns towards the door again.
Sable's hand jumps back like a magnet from an opposing pole, lifting in a palm-spread gesture of 'okay okay!' Her mouth is tugged down at the corners again, and she receives the opening short with no more than a crease of her brows. But then the silence comes, and then the silence breaks. Her hands drop, and forms tight fists at her sides. With each 'no' and each 'don't', Sable's expression becomes blacker and blacker.
"'n' wouldn't that be fuckin' easy!" is the retort that boils over, up and out of her, "'n' this door'd close 'n' you'd see none of this again, eh? Only you have fuckin' seen it. 'n' now this shit finally makes a little fuckin' sense. 'cause I saw 'er too. She spoke yer name t' me. So none of us is outta this. It's all comin'."
There is an awful gleam in Sable's eyes, the back-cutting edge of the double-bladed craziness that makes her what she is. "It ain't what I know now, but what I've yet t' learn. But I'll learn it, that y' c'n count on. Lord knows, I've learned enough already!"
Sable's words are echoed in an all-together wordless manner, but certainly not quiet. The slam of Doctor Price's clinic door being flung shut as pantomime of Sable's speech about closing doors, if not entirely intentionally so. Stubborn as she is, emotional as she is, Colette's stomping footfalls clomping noisily up the stairs to the lobby aren't entirey unexpected.
From the sounds of things in the clinic, the silence and the distant noise of footsteps, there's a sign that approaching Colette about some topics may require a more delicate touch. For all that she tries to present herself as strong, independant and — as of late — confident, there's a soft underbelly to the girl that she can't quite defend.
Maybe she needs a thicker skin, maybe everything Sable said was too spot-on the money, probably a combination of the two.
Sable sends a gaze that would, had her eyes different properties, just sear that door. Her teeth grind and her fingernails bite too hard into the heels of her hands. She begins to make a low hissing noise, and turns around, with every intention to do damage to something, anything, many things, in this room. Kick over chairs, smash glass, rend whatever paper may be unfortunate enough to lie around. Her gut instinct is to produce sheer havoc, empty out everything inside of her in a furious outpouring.
But the first thing she sees is Tamara.
Instantly the bottom drops out of Sable's mood. The anger just… drops out of her, leaving a hardly preferable feeling of emptiness. She moves over to the chair, and slumps down on it, arms folding once more over the back, forehead coming to rest where chin was first. She takes a long, deep inhale, and lets it out a slow breath. Her yellow eyes peek up, almost instantly ringed with fatigue, and find their original object.
"Awful sorry 'bout that, hon," Sable tells the sleeping seeress, voice a little rough around the edges, "Shoulda left you outta it."