Then Dame Carolina Slew The Dragon

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Scene Title Then Dame Carolina Slew The Dragon
Synopsis "But if this were a story— I mean, I know stories, they're all I know—"
Date October 20, 2009

Staten Island — A Safehouse


There are no leaves on the tree anymore, which is too bad: it was the last one that had the strength to carry any for miles across Staten Island. Weather has a way of strickening the treeline naked, reducing the shrubbery down to matted insect-limb fibers, splattering the sidewalks with grit, ruining what was left of the grass with mud. Night rain in knives, shattering in white sparks across striped asphalt and rioting drumrolls across the roof.

McRae is on the porch. The safehouse has one, of course, a huge smooth-boarded affair with industrial-strength bannisters built to withstand all of the abuse a family of twelve could shed against it. Ironically, that's more or less what the house actually does provide shelter for, but there is conspicuously only the one man here tonight, his titanic height hewn down to a thinker's hunch on the bench, feet set apart, bald dome hung down heavy above the cheap fabric of his shirt. There's mud rimming his boots: he only got in a few hours ago.

The puppeteer hasn't been out here before. It's not because nobody's told him not to, and in fact nobody has even told him explicitly that he's not allowed to leave. Perhaps he's in hiding more than he likes to admit, buried away in the safely of a building where he can pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist. A few hand-made puppets out of socks and buttons and odds and ends are tucked away carefully beside the sagging cot on which he slumbers, and he's been entertaining the kids with elaborate and imaginative - if occasionally dark - puppet shows now and then.

It's the only time anyone sees him smiling.

The storm door to the safehouse creaks open on its hinges, and Eric Doyle steps slowly out onto the porch, fingers falling away to let the door swing shut by its own accord with a soft hiss of compressing air. He's wearing fluffy slippers, dirty and torn, upon which he shuffles over to the edge of the porch to look out into the world. His eyes close, and he draws in a slow breath, exhaling it just as slowly. "I heard someone talking about Carolina," he says quietly, turning his head just a bit to look over his shoulder, brows lifting and eyelids with them, asking in stark tones, "Is it true?"

Despite that McRae doesn't turn his head or his body any visible measure in the dull light from the kitchen, there's a tangible shift of his attention. Turning back, slanted over his shoulder, finding Eric Doyle by the wall as promptly, unmistakably as sun fastens to a stone. "Yes," he answers. Though they've never really spoken, the older man's voice isn't entirely unfamiliar, gravel-edged but not quite baritone, damp from something that isn't mere humidity. "You're— Doyle, aren't you?

"From the last time she almost died." That doesn't quite make sense in the context of the conversation. Last time she— nearly died, when she's dead now, but if he's a little addled, he might have the right to be, all things considered. God knows what the boys are using to assist their own rituals. "Have a seat?" His hand is large and pale in the dark, vericose wiring flexing across metacarpals as he gestures his invitation.

"Damn it." A rasp of breath from Doyle's lips, almost too quiet to hear; anger, although it's hard to tell where it's directed. Maybe he doesn't know, either. Still, it's a firefly's flash in the night, before the question brings his head back over and he exhales a humorless chuckle, chin bobbing in a nod. "Yeah. Yeah, that's me…"

He turns away from the rail of the porch, shuffling slowly along over towards the bench and the offered seat, turning away to slump himself down to sit heavily, wood creaking a bit beneath his girth. One hand comes up, fingers scratching at the curve of his chin. Then he looks over, a brow lifting, "You?"

David McRae already has a seat. He doesn't really think that's what the puppetmaster was asking about, though. "Me?" He spins a quizzical glance sidelong, but the quizzicality is not altogether sincere, wry, fractionally held back, as one would regard the question that McRae thinks was the question Doyle really meant to ask. 'Are you okay?' "I was at Moab Federal Penitentiary with both of you. I knew her for a few months longer. Lovely girl, very— very good manners," he says, with what sounds like more difficulty. "Very good manners.

"After the escape, God brought her comfort because she let Him. I can only imagine that this continues to be true." At some point between 'both of you' and 'comfort,' McRae's eyes had started weaving off through the darkness again, losing track of his mark. "I should have known it couldn't last."

A single syllable, that starts with derision and ends with a wistful regret as Eric lets his attention drift back out over the lawn. Not thoughtful, but watchful, large eyes noting every subtle shadow as if worried that at any moment, men would rise up to attack the building. He folds his hands together, fingers curling into one another. Then he chuckles, looking over with a broken sort of half-smile, "I don't think that God cares about any of us, really. I think if he were really up there, he would've made a world that was less… fucked, than this one."

The smile on McRae's face is more of a tic or a flaw in the weathered grain of his skin than a deliberate expression. Ah, the smile says, neither quite bitter nor surprised. A non-believer, are you? "It's a hard thing to believe in," he agrees, presently. The words lack the color and choreography that had ingrained them months ago, when he'd held vigil in the boat graveyard. No luscious rhetoric about gates, guardians, duties, principles. It's merely hard to believe in. "I have always believed that this world is the one we're meant to prove ourselves in, and the one that comes after is the one we deserve." A quaver-beat's pause. "For better or for worse." There's a thump of shoe against planed wood grain, and McRae leans back slightly, settles his shoulders against the wall. "On the other hand, I'm sure that's exactly the train of thought that took Carolina to Phoenix."

The smile on McRae's face is more of a tic or a flaw in the weathered grain of his skin than a deliberate expression. Ah, the smile says, neither quite bitter nor surprised. A non-believer, are you? "It's a hard thing to believe in," he agrees, presently. The words lack the color and choreography that had ingrained them months ago, when he'd held vigil in the boat graveyard. No luscious rhetoric about gates, guardians, duties, principles. It's merely hard to believe in. "I have always believed that this world is the one we're meant to prove ourselves in, and the one that comes after is the one we deserve." A quaver-beat's pause.

Not that that's tacitly comforting, if you really think about it. "For better or for worse." There's a thump of shoe against planed wood grain, and McRae leans back slightly, settles his shoulders against the wall. "On the other hand, I'm sure that's exactly the train of thought that took Carolina to Phoenix."

"I never had a chance to prove myself." Eric's words are quiet, wistful, as he stares off into the distance with wide eyes, "They just move me from one hole to another. Level Five. Moab. My un— " Whatever he was going to say is cut off, his lips drawn in as he puffs his cheeks out briefly. It's not entirely true, of course. Eric never would have been there if it wasn't for what he'd done with his power. But then, he's never been willing to take responsibility for his actions. As he talks, he rummages around in his shirt's pockets with his hand, "I'm just a puppet. Kind've ironic, you know? Heh, heh."

A small, crudely-fashioned marionette is fished out of those pockets, strings wound deftly about fingers before he lifts them up, making the little faceless thing dance about in the air, watching in with a sad, small smile on his lips, "I'm the puppetmaster, and the puppet."

Something about the weather tonight, or the nearness of death: cruelly ironic nonsense is the only thing that makes sense. Doyle has no way of knowing it, but this is the longest conversation McRae's had tonight. Not because he's invested any particularly novel ideas in it, said anything different or had anything new to say, but because he hasn't had to hurdle the urge to get up and physically remove himself from earshot.

"And I," he says. Fades to silence for an acheing moment. "And I could undo the seasons in spite of the Earth's orbit, the sun, and climate patterns, and bring the rain to famine farmland with a thought and a few hours, but lack the ability to give even one little girl my health."

As it happens, it's the longest conversation that Doyle's had in days, himself, not including his puppet shows as conversations. He keeps to himself. Mostly because he inevitably says something stupid. "Kind've funny," he chuckles mirthlessly, watching as the strings become tangled, as hectic little jerks of motion tug the limbs of the marionette in spasmic movements as if it were desperately trying to untangle itself, "The only healer I know's the biggest bastard I've ever met. And I've known a few."

"Flint Deckard?" is McRae's guess, but then, it's the guess that a fair proportion of the Ferry would have made. The former grave-robber's archetype precedes him. "I don't know what happened. They tried to get him to come. He didn't pick up the phone. That's what they told me when I asked." Blue eyes hood slightly, lines gravening themselves deep at the sides of his face, a grimace or miniscule musculature tension that almost cracks apart over the pressure of something else.

Breathe in, breathe out. He refocuses on the marionettes bouncing and jiggling on the gossamer delicacy of their strings. Doyle's hands are bizarrely deft above them, for a man of his measurements and purported indifference to physical graces. "I hear the men who did it are dead, but that didn't help after the Fed Pen, and it doesn't make things right now."

"Adam Monroe." It's surprising, indeed, how deft those fingers; their movements quick, graceful, as if nature had lent him a gift there in his hands while making the rest of him big-boned, heavy, slow and awkward. He lacks beauty to even the most generous of eyes, but the way his fingers can move is beautiful, taken alone, a poetry and dance that's somehow brought together with the rest of him by the rising panic of the marionette as it bounces upon spider-thin thread and is tangled up like a spider's web. Faster and faster it whirls, dancing, thrashing, until at last a string pulls the head to one side at an unnatural angle—

—and the whole of the crude automaton is gathered up swiftly and suddenly in one ham fist, limbs dangling from his fingers.

"She defended me," he says quietly, staring at the broken puppet, "Not many people've ever done that. Why…" A lost, confused note to his voice as he looks to McRae, "…why would she do that?"

Desultory chuckle, like an exhalation shattered out and served up piecemeal, welded together in the same segment of time, no real mirth or voice in it. McRae has difficulty putting his thoughts into words again, so he holds off for a few storm-slaked seconds, studying the way that the doll's tiny hands pendulum from the cradled grasp that holds them.

Not the way you'd hold a child, of course, but it occurs to McRae fleetingly that if you did, the could wouldn't be hurt by it. "The way I heard it?" The old man leans his elbows on his knees, plays the handle of an abruptly-visible knife between rough-squared palms. "She defended you because Jerry was wrong.

"She nominated me for her spiritual leadership, but she was the one who would go— out there," he hefts the blade, points its triangled tip out into the darkness, "and set things right. While I stay here. I suppose being old is a good excuse. He was wrong, you know," McRae adds, glancing at the other man, arching a brow that signals sincerity.

"Was he?" The dolly's regarded by Eric's tired, thoughtful eyes as well, the pad of his thumb brushing over the wood, crudely carved and crudely painted. Supplies are limited out here, after all. He caresses it like he would a lover's cheek, and then he exhales a breath in a slow spill from his lips, shaking his head to dismiss some thought. The marionette is untangled with deft motions, folded up, and tucked away.

Then the heavyset puppeteer rises slowly to his feet with a grunt of breath, muttering as he brushes dust from his backside, "Maybe. I don't know, I don't know… I don't know anything anymore." A wan smile is offered over, "I'm sorry about Carolina, for what it's worth. I liked her."

It's on the tip of McRae's tongue to ask the other man for advice— or at least, what would you do if you were me? A glance up, half-formed salutation, is enough to make him decide otherwise, though. It seems painfully apparent what Doyle would do. What Doyle has always done. You lose someone, you find a replacement: something to remind you, something that also happens to be beautiful, with art to it, but smaller by far than the original in many ways.

But still they will dance. "She killed her father," he says, instead. "She killed her father in self-defense. That is what landed her at Moab Federal Penitentiary. I tell you because she had asked me if she should. She couldn't tell me why, though.

"I suspect… she didn't want you to live here worried you didn't fit in among the blessed. She didn't want you to think that you were the only one in this house," with its children, its porch with its absurd magnitude, its cookies and black kitchen matron, "afraid that there would be somebody waiting for you in Hell because of what you did to them. It's an unfortunate symptom of Christianity," McRae adds, after a moment, wry, bleak with the conspiracy of stone angels chiseled to smile. "Believing in Hell."

The sudden revelation of Carolina's sin brings Doyle's head up, regarding the other man with brows raised a little and gaze unreadable as he speaks… and he straightens, his head shaking ever so slightly. "I know I don't fit in," he says quietly, "I've done much worse things than that, by… most people's standards. I'm not a— a believer, either. But if I can make some of the kids smile, at least I'm helping somewhere."

He stops, then, before turning to the door, and offers a sad smile to McRae, "At least we've got that in common, though. Believing in Hell. We just disagree about if we're there yet or not."

"You're helping." The reassurance sounds paltry thin to McRae, who has for some time— or at least for the few minutes' duration of this conversation— been rather wallowing in the fact he hasn't been helping more, on some bigger, more proactive, macrocosmic scale. Or at least insofar as that there was nothing he could do for his young charge.

There was a time in fairly recent history that he might have followed that up with a canny and neatly articulated explanation of Heaven, its promises, the relief it will bring, but tonight it already seems like a lot to offer: "Good night. Get some rest." Toward that end, the least the atmokinetic can do is to keep the thunder away.

At the farewell, Eric takes a step towards the door… and then he stops. Something in him, the storyteller that he is and could have been perhaps, compels him to halt with one hand on the latch, his head turning to regard the tired old man seated upon the bench holding the storm at pay.

"You know," Doyle says, his voice filled with that half-uncertain chuckling he so often does, "If this were a story— I mean, I know stories, it's all I know— this is usually the part where the seemingly-meaningless sacrifice by the brave young hero or heroine spurs the older, retired one back into action for one last battle to win the day, where everyone follows behind him to live up to their sacrifice. But, I guess…."

The door creaks open under his hand, and he adds, "…they're just stories, after all. They never happen for real." Through the door, then, the tiny black eyes glued to the front of his fuzzy slippers bouncing about madly as he vanishes into the house.


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