Participants:
| Scene Title | A Beacon |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Eve tries to get a message across. |
| Date | January 1, 2020 |
Nathalie received a text the morning of the new year.
Hey Precious, need to speak with you desperately. It's about… the.. Will you meet me?
Come to the Lighthouse, tonight. You know the one, travel safe dearie!
A heart emoji comes afterwards but Eve is already throwing the phone down on the sofa of the Oracle Room before it can completely short out. The screen flickers and shuts off as she swiftly goes up the stairs and through the bar. A few of the patrons yelling out at the owner, some had even stayed through the evening of the New Years Bash.
"Back soon my lovelies," Her tone doesn't hold any of the usual umf.
6:15pm
New Years Day
The Lighthouse
There at the top floor, staring outside of the massive hole in the roof. Eve Mas stands with her back to the staircase. Clad in a soft green dress and barefoot, she sways to invisible music in her head. Pale arms wrapped around herself, she's been practicing while she waits for Nathalie to arrive.
Her whole body distorts and just poofs into a red cloud but she doesn't stay that way for long, the cloud of lightning and metal filaments contorts and extends until a form resembling Eve floats there, staring ahead still.
Lightning crackles from her feet and leaves scorch marks on the ground.
"This place doesn't need anymore damage," Nathalie says as she steps onto the top floor. She didn't text back— what Eve wants to talk about, Nat doesn't even want to think about— but they both knew she was coming. Neither of them needed to be a prophet to know it, either. In contrast to Eve's ethereal form and gentle dress and bare feet, Nat showed up in combat boots and a leather jacket with a weapon holstered under it.
Not because of Eve's invitation, or Eve herself, but because it makes her feel safer.
"What do you want, Eve?" she asks, point blank and emotionless. It's always gotten her through moments like this in the past.
Eve snaps back into corporeal form, red dust sprinkling off of her and she tilts her head. Eyes glowing crimson don't seem like they use to. Her shoulders hang. "I'm happy to see you're alive too." Her tone has way more bite than usual. The older woman looks Nat over more closely, she doesn't seem to be in danger.
"Come come, lean. Sit." Eve crouches on a pile of rubble, finding her footing before looking back at the conduit holder. "I met It. Not in a dream."
Eve's bottom lips trembles and she twists her hands in her lap, what her own history is doesn't really matter not when it comes to warning Leroux but the shock of it all has worn off and it's left Eve feeling ragged and tired. She could sleep for days.
"We're all alive. It didn't want us dead." It wanted them to see. Nathalie slides her hands into her coat pockets. She neither leans nor sits. "You don't look okay," she points out. "I have a ride, if I need to get you home." To a bed. That's where she'd like to be right now, asleep until all this passes, one way or another.
"What did it want?" she asks, letting out a sigh. She's not sure she wants to know. The entity's messages tend to be a little heavy handed. And traumatic. "Something cryptic and ominous?"
"I will live," Waving her hand, "Just had my reality broken. Nothing new." Except what she learned was totally new.
"It doesn't care about us," But the way Eve looks at Nathalie might say the younger woman is the exception to that, "Except for you." Well. "Maybe less cryptic. Still ominous. It wants to unite not us, the Evolved but the numerous timelines outside of our own. You have experienced these, yes? With the flashes people were getting from the aurora."
Other yous, Other places.
It's a guess but most everyone Eve knew had made a mention of something of that nature. "It didn't.. totally make sense. I guess there was once a time where there was only one River, no alternates…" But Eve has no way to prove that. "It blames a betrayal for the schism of its world, betrayal brought on by Adam." She's guessing there, Eve wanted to say that it could have been someone else that must have betrayed the Entity and divided the world into innumerable parts.
"Back in it's early days… it was a slave. Offered as a gift to a King once a war was settled. I- she… and three others. Four slaves. Four Gifted Ones." Eve has been trying to piece this all together herself and the wording can get fuzzy. "Those abilities that you wield and protect were never just sentient gifts leaping from one host to another, they were once people. Just like the Dragon was. I'm not sure how they changed… but," Eve shrugs her shoulders at that, "I'm not sure it matters much. But what does matter Precious, is that I believe It will be coming for you."
Nathalie tips her head back and lets out a sigh. Of all the conversations to find herself in.
"Of course it doesn't care about us, Eve. Who ever thought it did? It doesn't care about me, either. It cares about the Conduits and getting what it wants. And if you didn't notice, it was in my head just recently, so obviously, it can find me whenever it likes." Which might account for why she seems on edge. At least, partly account. "Why are you so eager to believe everything it tells you? Bad guys lie to get what they want. So do good guys, for that matter. It spins you a story and you eat it up and run around telling every person who will listen to you. What if you're playing into its hands?"
She paces as she talks, her head shaking the more Eve tries to explain.
"I already know it wants the Conduits. It took Eileen's."
"Don't you talk to me like that, I already have," Eve snaps and stares hard at Nathalie, "Every vision I used to overcome some obstacle, connect myself to someone or connect others. It all came from It. It's been playing every single one of us since day one!" Eve shouts and her eyes buzz. "Stories from It. I speak of evidence girl. There is an obelisk that was found in Iraq, it speaks of The Four. Lists those abilities that you hold now. Explicitly. The only story the Dragon spun is how it aims to heal this sick world." Throwing her hands up to the sky. Though what Nathalie says is also true. Maybe the Dragon was lying, maybe she was in fact once a seer.
She stops at the news that Eileen's has been taken, it's a victory for Eileen and Gabriel but a tragic loss for everyone else, "Then the It will come for your White." A pause, "That which you already know," a roll of Eve's eyes, teenagers. Though Leroux is much more than that.
"I don't know how to help keep you safe from It, we are both too tied to it. Yes, it watches everything." But there is one solution, possible. "I know you have reservations but you are the only one that can find out, for your own sake. Find the original conduits in your mind, the ones who ascended from human to their gifts. The ones who lived with It. Maybe they know a secret, something you can use." Something they can all use but especially Nathalie, the girl who saved her sister Gilly and niece Chicken.
"So you already have, but you've learned nothing," Nathalie yells back at Eve, heedless of the danger that Eve's new ability actually represents. "You're talking about myths, not evidence. The Four. The Warrior Twins. Conduits. Titles scared people gave to things they don't understand. Stories." She runs her hands through her hair, turning back to Eve after her suggestion. "Eve, you don't know what you're talking about. You want me to dive through centuries of minds because you think there's some ascended whatever waiting at the end? You have no idea how this works.
"I can't believe I'm listening to this."
She takes a moment to breathe, refocus, then turns to Eve again. "I need people who actually know. Real people. First hand accounts. I need Joy and Adam. If there's some… fucking obelisk— " That can't be a coincidence. Her experiment. Her past. " —then I need to see it, research it, find out what it's actually about. Not just hear a story and jump off a fucking bridge because you say I should."
Eve rears back as her hands curl, "God damn you fucking- ALL OF YOU! IT'S NOT MYTHS IF YOU'VE BEEN THERE!!" The older woman's body ignites within and she shuts her eyes, willing herself to stay together. Not now.
"Myths, we are living in a fucking myth come to life, WE were all considered the work of fantasy to the public before The Bomb! Comics and folklore. Don't talk down on it as if it has no basis in truth. You're god damn lucky you even have the option to receive first hand accounts!" She roars at the shorter woman and glares back at her.
"You want a firsthand account?! Fine we'll get you your damn story. Goddess knows I love a good one!" Eve claps her hands together, "Adam is East. I'm going there to stop him." Lightning crackles down her back, "And you're coming with,"
"You haven't been there, Eve! Neither have I! The memories I have aren't a play-by-play of their lives, they're random. And not to mention, I could get taken over by any one of them if I open myself up like that. And you're standing there telling me what my own ability is about!" Nathalie should probably worry about the lightning and Eve's growing anger. But she doesn't. She's too angry to. "Tell me more about how to use it, Eve. Go on. Suggest an experiment we could try."
She shakes her head, arms folding as she scoffs at Eve's plan. "Adam is East. That's super specific. Yeah, let's just go east. Great plan. I'm outta here," she says, waving off this whole conversation as she turns toward the stairs.
"I SURE IN THE FUCK DID GO TO ANCIENT JAPAN AND ENCOUNTER THE DRAGON IN THE FLESH, ITS HOW IT GOT ITS HOOKS IN ME IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!" How she lost the agency over her life before it even begun technically.
"You could lose yourself? YEA YOU COULD be killed too! You're telling me about what's real and I'm telling you about your ability guess we're both fucked!" Eve is rattled and she's been hurting since her encounter with the Dragon last night. "Experiment? You can't even speak of the possibility of trying, I just don't want you to fucking die! You deserve more than you've inherited!"
"If you would direct your anger and fear towards your actual enemies this would be going way smoother Leroux," Eve shakes and stares out the window. "God damn it can I fucking finish anything, who raised you. Yes he's East, in a fucking submarine, in the god damn ocean. I have the coordinates, everyone will be going. Goddess above give me strength and compassion."
"And that isn't Iraq, is it? For fuck's sake, Eve, what are you even talking about?" Nathalie turns back, because if she's getting yelled at, she's gonna earn it. "I'm not telling you what's real, I'm telling you that I'm not jumping into a risk without knowing what I'm getting into. Maybe you should learn to do that!" She would storm out— she's on the verge of it— but then the yelling becomes really confusing. "Why the fuck are you screaming at me, if you're trying to save me," she asks, but without the same fire behind it. "That doesn't make any sense."
She comes back over, although not close enough to catch the sparks. "It's getting hard for me to know who is the enemy and who isn't. I don't like it when people push me about the Conduits and what I should be doing with them. No one seems to trust that I might actually know what I'm doing. I know the limits. I'd appreciate it if someone would understand that. But— how the hell do you have the coordinates to Adam's submarine?"
"I just meant I've been to the past physically, I've seen pieces! I'm doing the best I can!" Eve has rapidly lost her fire as well, she's just simply been at a loss. "I don't know why I'm yelling when I just want you safe!" Eve doesn't want children in this moment, if caring for them can make you scream like a lunatic. She should already know this with Chicken and the other Lighthouse Kids. Eve is out of breath, chest rising and falling rapidly.
Nathalie is right though and while Eve would argue sometimes there was only time for risks. That would lead to more of an argument and that wasn't her aim in the first place, "Its harder for me too," Eve admits to the young woman, "I'm scared Nathalie, for you, for me, for all of us. This is not like when we fought Kazimir, this is not like Arthur, the time travelers, this… is so much more." Those times seemed impossible at one point too though.
"I respect your knowledge of your gifts but in order to overcome this, we all must dig deeper. Challenge what we know, dare to step outside of the crudely drawn box we've been shoved in." Eve's bitterness is for someone else in that moment but she quickly shakes her head to look again towards Leroux.
"I had visions for decades, I've been studying the old paintings checking to see if I missed anything. I painted it, five whole years ago." She's not telling Nathalie that the fucking Dragon implanted the knowledge in her head.
"I get that. I really do. I don't doubt the things you've experienced. I just need more. You're asking me to risk everything," Nathalie says, the last word coming on an exhale. "I'm scared, too. But we still need to be smart about how we approach things. I have to be. If I screw up, people get hurt. And that would be on me. My body. My choices."
Her worst nightmare is herself, after all. She's seen herself as a lonely demon, glimpses of another time. And she knows that's not the worst it could be.
"Okay. Next time lead with the coordinates. I appreciate the whole Eve aesthetic, but sometimes you gotta start with the facts." Her hand moves to her hip, her hand rubbing at her face. "I'm not going to any sub without backup, though. Are you willing to share your vision with Wolfhound? We can prep for how to infiltrate or attack or… whatever the fuck you do to a submarine."
She's tired. Already tired.
"Lead with the facts, hm." Eve mauls it over as if she has never been told that before. "Your body, your choice." As long as Nathalie ended up with a body that's alive still when this is all over, Eve can accept that.
To hear that Nathalie is willing to come along with the other Hounds makes her clasp her hands together. "Mmmm of course your Hound family can come. I insist actually, Cherry won't wanna miss it." Eve misses the redhead she hasn't come by Cat's in a bit.
"You tell me when to come by and I'll do it! I can explain and give the data. Joint operation," Heh, Eve's dream of them all working together to save their home is nearly realized. "Best behavior, full of facts," Her expression shifts and she grins at Nathalie. "You are a Eureka, a unique moment, the lightbulb that's shining so brightly. A Beacon,"
Dipping her head, "The next time you see me, I might not remember this Precious. It has me, deep. The only way to secure you and everyone's safety is if I forget some things." Eve doesn't want to do it but she's spoken with Kaylee and it might be the only way. "Just say to me, olly olly and I'll know we spoke of something of this nature." She might sound even crazier in that moment but Eve is serious.
"Just— come by before you forget everything," Nathalie says, her tone defeated. She doesn't want to be a lightbulb or a beacon, especially when it isn't even really about her. Just what she carries. "Or send a note or something. Avi will need to hear about it." The thought of her father sours her already poor mood and she pulls out her phone to look at the time.
"Look, I've got to be somewhere." Emily promised her a normal night. Even if it's now too late for that, Nat is still looking forward to it. Needs it, maybe. "I'll see you next time. If you still remember me."
It isn't the warmest of farewells, but it isn't yelling, so maybe there's been improvement since the beginning of this conversation. She slips out of the lighthouse, heading back toward the Safe Zone and maybe a warm meal.
And definitely some alcohol.