Participants:
| Scene Title | What Have You Done? |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Following sleepwalking, Eve sits down with Gillian and Jolene to discuss her dream. |
| Date | August 16, 2018 |
Gillian's House
Not more thirty minutes had passed since Eve’s waking from her vision, the spilled pills swept into a pile and placed back into the bottle that was set on the bedside table. The seer in question sits on the windowsill the last bits of a joint in her charcoal covered hands that shake every now and then. Cigarettes were more usual for the messy haired woman nowadays but thankfully she had reupped in the case of an emergency and she was feeling the need of the suppressant the previous night, she had felt the need even more.
The woman’s deep brown eyes haven’t left the wall opposite of the window and she gulps with a brief widening of her eyes, putting the last of the joint out, smoke trailing up in her face and wafting out of the window to the cold night outside.
The eyes of the face and that symbol stare back at her, almost as if they are in a staring contest with an unknown prize at the end. Eve squints and doesn’t blink as the shot of her shooting Chicken flashes in her mind and she looks at that face drawn on the wall in terror at her side a few pages of sketch paper flutter in the wind but she won't allow them to be turned over,
“What have I done?”
Seated on “Eve’s” bed, worry spread across her features, Lene doesn't have an answer for that. Her green eyes are focused down into her lap, hands wringing into the blanket between the crook of one bent leg, head slowly shaking in short movements from side to side. “You were screaming,” she finally says, looking to the black face on the wall, that charcoal monster staring up from the turquoise paint.
This is, was, Jolene’s room. From time to time is when she stays at home, but stubborn independence sees her apart from her mother more often than not. On the infrequent days her stay overlaps with Eve’s, she opts to stay on the couch downstairs, so Eve can have her space. For moments like this.
“Is that a dog?” Lene asks, unable to look away from the scrawling.
“Doesn’t look like a horse, at least,” Gillian comments from the door frame, dressed in a dark night robe. The dyed blond hair hangs at her shoulders, loose and long, having grown out a bit, but she got the roots touched up recently. She looks tired, but concerned, though thankfully more about the woman at the window seal than the charcoal on her walls which she’ll have to clean up at some point. After they take a photograph of it, most likely.
But for now she’ll focus her attention on Eve, waiting for her to calm down and gather herself, because she imagines this had been a dream of some kind, one she may or may not wish to talk about.
It is taking everything not to comment on smoking pot in the house, which she would have found a ridiculous thought ten years ago when everything had been very, very different.
The precog is conveniently not meeting Gillian’s eyes as she enters, the pot and the drawing on the wall pointing to her being the worst house guest at the moment and she feels herself pooling over negative thoughts. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” Repeating it softly to herself Eve leans forward and touches the eyes of the monstrous face before turning her head to look at Gillian with wide eyes, “The thing… idea.. Entity.. Golden Eyes. It’s haunting me,” she speaks softly and fast her eyes turning to Jolene and she winces as she looks upon her niece of sorts. “Oh no oh no, I’m sorry Chicken. I promise I won’t do it. Nothing in the world could make me do it.”
The sketch pages fall to the floor, feverishly black drawn over the page almost covering the whole thing but with two piercing gold eyes staring upwards at the three women. The next sketch shows.. A woman with flaming red hair and a woman.. Eve standing over her.. Jolene, a smoking gun in her hands. “Bang bang.. I heard it but I thought you locked me in the room. I couldn’t get to the shooter, I tried to climb out the window,” her hands shaking as tears fill Eve’s eyes as she speaks rapidly and begins to rock herself backwards and forward. “Those eyes were there, waiting for me. It.. knew my name and then.. The shooter was me. I shot Jolene and then I pointed the gun at myself and.. And… and… and… and…”
The seer’s voice cracks as she tries to continue but fails before she practically pshouts, “I wouldn’t I swear. I wouldn’t..” flinching at her own words as if she can still hear the gunshots and see Lene’s body on the floor.
“Jesus, Eve.” Jolene doesn't seem concerned for the context of the dream so much as she is for Eve. She moves from the bed with a shakiness of unsteady legs, then slowly makes her way over to Eve’s side and wraps her arms around the older woman’s shoulders in a gently hug. “Hey, hey. Hey, it's okay. You didn't hurt anybody, and I know you'd never hurt me.” A look goes to the pill bottle, then up to Gillian with worry, then over to Eve as she leans back enough to look at her.
“It's just a dream.” Lene’s brows screw up. “I mean a freaky, future-dream. But,” her expression shifts from worry to a grimace that looks so much like one of Peter’s expressions. “It'll be alright. I trust you.”
“Your dreams aren’t usually literal, Eve, you know that,” Gillian offers after a long moment, looking toward her daughter with concern. The young woman that Eve has always called Chicken for reasons she only half understands. “It’s likely that there’s something else at play here that we don’t know about.” Sometimes her dreams could feel literal, but often not. And she doubted that they would suddenly become so.
Hazel eyes scan the sketches, then return to the charcoal on the wall, the creature with the symbol on its forehead. It looks kind of familiar. The symbol certainly does. After all it had been on one of the first books associated with what became known as the Suresh Linkage Complex.
“We’ll figure it out. Whatever your dream was trying to warn you about.” But she didn’t think it meant that she would ever do that specific action. But that didn’t mean Jolene wasn’t in danger, either…
“Just a dream. You are right.” Both of them are but Eve doesn't sound totally convinced. “That symbol.. has been following me and so many of us for so long.” Eyeing the charcoal drawing, Eve’s rocking stops and she clings to Jolene’s form, nodding after their words and repeating. A new mantra for her to say to herself. Her dreams were metaphors, the rare times they were of an actual step by step of an event… this one felt symbolic as well.
“Chicken, please. I— We need you to be careful. Maybe it isn't me.. but it is you in that dream.” Eve’s eyes flick to Gillian and her promise to figure it out is echoed in the pale woman’s stare. She’d do anything to protect Gillian and Jolene.
“This is.. the golden eyes. It's a real thing Chicken,” looking over at Gillian, they couldn't hide it from her when she was under this roof right? “If you see anything having to do with someone with a pair of Golden Eyes. Call me and your mom. It's..” looking at Gillian for help, “It's very complicated and scary and end of the worldy.”
Eve’s neurotic worry has Lene slouching into a shrug and tilting her head to the side. “I'm fine,” is a lie at the best of times. “Eyes are just eyes. Sable has gold eyes.” As if to make a point about dreams and their interpretations. “I swear, I'll be fine. Really.” Dismissive of the concern as someone with her amount of tarnished pride can be, Lene slides off of the bed and crosses her arms over her chest tightly.
“I've seen that symbol for years, though.” Lene notes as if half-distracted. “I saw it at school,” she says with a look to Gillian, then Eve. She's about to say something else, then just crosses her room to her small writing desk and pulls a hardcover textbook out from a pile. EASTERN ASIAN MYTHOLOGY is written on the cover. She walks back to the bed, sitting on the corner, and flips through until she reaches a bookmarked chapter.
There, on the two-page introduction to the chapter on Japanese mythology is a detailed sumi-e painting of a man in samurai armor, brandishing a katana, while he is wrapped in the coils of an enormous bright red, serpentine dragon. The battle standard on the samurai’s back is the symbol, as Lene points out.
What she doesn't notice is that the dragon has gold eyes.
“See?” Jolene says, and as she moves her hand the chapter title is revealed: Kensei vs. the Dragon.
Now, Gillian would never say just a dream because that would mean they had nothing to worry about— no dream from Eve is ever just a dream. She just doesn’t think if it comes true it will happen exactly as she saw. She’s the one who sometimes sees people as animals, after all. She had been a firefly once, in one of those dreams. Either way it did not mean they should not have caution. It did not mean they shouldn’t watch out for threats, for dangers.
For Dragons apparently. The young woman is right, though. Some people do have golden eyes. Sometimes it means nothing. But when she looks at the dragon she can’t help but immediately look at the golden eyes looking back at them. “I’ve seen this legend before— wasn’t it in the Yamagato Gala, Eve?” She remembered looking at the display and hearing the back end of part of the description, but she’d never paid too much attention to it.
Though she wishes she had now, cause it’s not like they can easily go back and look at it now.
The oracle is use to people rationalizing the things she's scared or worried of but Eve has been traumatized by golden eyes so much now that she is weary, “That is right Sable does..” Jolene is right in that regard and then she's talking about school and Kensei.
“Adam Monroe.”
She says the name softly as she looks at the two page artwork and runs a shaky over the surface, “At the Yamagato gala Kam said that this was a parable. The dragon represents Adam’s being exiled from Japan.” A story Eve is wildly interested in but the real story. “I've met this man on numerous occasions Chicken, he's the man who brought me back to life after the… car crash and..” Eve’s brow furrows and she looks to Gillian with wide eyes, “Chicken.. you haven't seen him have you? Blonde.. English.. cheap ass?”
Using this opportunity to not think about the Yamagata Gala, Lene draws in a deep breath and exhales a sigh as she shakes her head. “I've never even heard the name before now. Not here, not there.” Not in the Wasteland.
“How’d he…” Leme pauses, rubbing fingers at her temple. “How'd he bring you back to life?” It's not a question easily asked, and Lene isn't even sure she'll like or understand the answer. “If you know?” It had dawned on her that maybe Eve didn't.
Never even heard of him? Gillian had, at least, multiple times, though she didn’t know much other than he was supposedly a cute British asshole who was to often be avoided at all costs. “I wonder where the story first came from, though, if it is a parable.” Usually parables and metaphors are made with a purpose, to frame something a certain way.
No one knows that better than Eve, really, considering her dreams and how they most often come in metaphors themselves. Even the one time Gillian had a dream that might have been a vision it had been chalk full of metaphors and weirdness.
“Never?” Adam was good at hiding, Eve could attest to that peering over at Gillian the pale woman looks up at the ceiling while staring unblinkingly, “His blood. It's like how your aunt Claire use to be. Regeneration.. blood can piece you back together. I woke up with a bag of his blood drained into me at a triage.” The memories of that night shaking her, “I was looking for you both. I couldn't leave without you but..” they know how the story goes, the three reunited on the island later.
“They mentioned his soulmate Yaeko that night too.. I think she knew how to make him behave.” though she wonders about what inspired this parable she's not close to that answer than the other two women sitting in the room with her. One thing she could say is, “Kam seems a little bias towards him, I think they were close.” Because the man she met… well he did save his life. “You know I'm not sure if I want to kill him? Even though he threatens.. all of the people without gifts. He saved my life for something and I still don't know why.”
“We could ask.” Lene chimes in somewhat out of conversational flow. “A-about the stories. The professor who teaches this class,” she closes the book, “works for the Yamagato Foundation as a historian. I'm willing to bet she knows more about this story in particular. She's at Brooklyn College a lot.”
But that is practicality, it has nothing to do with Eve’s more self-destructive habits. “You're just a precognitive, Eve. Let… let people who have real abilities worry about people like Adam.” The barb isn't meant for Eve, but for herself. Years ago, she'd be first in line to track someone like Adam Monroe down and shake him like a dog. But the Lene of years past isn't here anymore.
“He sounds dangerous,” is Lene’s understatement. “But where I came from? I'd never even heard his name before. Maybe he was out of the US, maybe he was dead. But he didn't work with the Institute or the DoEA.” Lene’s green eyes avert down to the floor, then the window. “If… if he was able to… to bring you back from the dead? Maybe that's not a thing you chase a second time.”
“It does sound like a dangerous thing to get involved in, Eve,” Gillian remarks, looking toward her after a moment, frowning. She also, at times, feels like she doesn’t have a real ability. She just helps others who do. Most the time. And the idea of something that dangerous again… well… she’s suddenly breathing a little different. Because she’s still not sure how she survived that day either.
“I understand wanting to know why,” after all, she chased after… certain people… for much the same reasons. Wanting to know why. “But maybe there is no why. And even if there was it might not be something you even want to know.”
But to her daughter, she seems to agree with her suggestion, “Meeting a historian would be a good idea, though. We could even go under the guise of seeing if she’ll give a talk at one of the libraries.” It wouldn’t hurt to try, at least.
The pale woman reflects on her families words, words of wisdom, words that are said in fear of her safety, words said to encourage… Eve hears them all but she feels that spark inside her, the one that just won’t go out. She will see this through, she must. Making this silent vow to herself feels like a betrayal to her Gilly and Chicken but her doe brown eyes only show the fear that Eve has also felt since waking up. “Maybe so, maybe I need a rest.” Maybe she did not. “It's hard sometimes to not become fixated on things. Forgive me Gilly, Chicken.” She tries to smile but another tear drops despite that.
Shaking her head and throwing her hands out, “No no no, I cannot go with you to the college and it's not because I got kicked out for smoking weed on campus…” honest, “That was Columbia.” And Eve wasn't attending she just thought the campus looked like a pretty place to get stoned.
“I have.. some er.. unique relations with the woman who heads it — Kam. If she heard that I was snooping around she might get nervous and yank me into their sovereign city and I don't think me resting is gonna happen if they…” Eve looks from the left to the right, “Are probing me!” Eve tries to look over her shoulder and down to her ass.
“You two go and Aunt Eve will be hiding in the shadows.”
Lene gives Gillian a flat look and then comes to sit by Eve’s side at the window. “Eve,” she says softly, resting one hand on Eve’s shoulder. “Brooklyn College is independently run, it's outside of Yamagato Park. I mean — I’d love to study at the Felowship building but…”
There's a gentle, patient smile. “Baby steps, okay?” She looks at Gillian again, then back to Eve. “Come with us, maybe… maybe don't bring any drugs, and try not to get too excited? It'd be nice to have you there, though.”
“Can you even get into the park after the new regulations they passed?” With SLC-Es being forced to wear bands depicting what kind of ability they had. Gillian knew she had to wear one the few times she visited (because she likes a sushi bar every so often), and with her daughter’s… special situation she wasn’t sure how they would have handled that. Not that it matters for this conversation, based on how she shakes her head as soon as she asks the question.
“You can come with us, Eve, but if you don’t feel comfortable you don’t have to. I don’t think anyone’s going to be probing you, though.” She’s pretty sure that kind of treatment ended when the Institute fell. And if it hadn’t— well— there’d be problems.
“Rules, they do love their rules at Yama.” The pale woman knew that for a fact.
Eve almost snorts at the notion of not bringing drugs to COLLEGE, maybe no weed. No no, Chicken wanted an outing with her mother and aunt. Eve felt the need to oblige, Jolene was an independent woman. “Okay but if things get dicey we need a safe word.. Like copperpoo.” Looking utterly serious the seer embraces Jolene tightly while reaching for Gillian’s hand. “Thank you.. For always being there for me. I know.. I’m not easy to deal with.” A moment of absolute honesty as she peers at Gillian and her daughter, “My best friend.. sister.. My niece from another river, I’m lucky.” And boy had she come to realize it.
Shaking her head and smiling warmly, Lene rests against Eve. Not just because it feels like the right thing to do, but because she's exhausted, her limbs are aching, and this night has been too much for her. “Try to remember that,” Lene suggests to the point of how much this means to Eve, “when you're about to do something reckless?”
But to soften the blow of that gentle chastisement, she offers another suggestion instead. “Uh, as for a safe word how about like… something simpler.” She cracks a faint smile. “Like, banana?”
“Let’s stick with bananas,” Gillian responded with a laugh, glad that unlike some people, Lene can handle the ball of crazy that happens to be one of her oldest friends, softening the chastisement with a friendly suggestion. A lot of people couldn’t, and that she had learned to live with.
“You do need to try to be careful, though, Eve. We don’t want what happened last time to happen again.” Going blind, being one of them, being in a wheelchair another. And now— now she had to be careful cause her dream hinted to the possibility that there could be a danger to Jolene.
Or possibly someone else.
Dreams could be difficult to interpret.