Participants:
Scene Title | A Hundred Times |
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Synopsis | is what Abigail has done, what Cash is doing for her when the much younger version of her mother comes knocking on her door in the dead of night. |
Date | April 22, 2011 |
Basement apartment, somewhere in New York
It's not often in these times that there's a knock on the door in the dead of night. Maybe before curfew had been leveled across New York and it's surrounding boroughs. Partiers who had too much to drink and mistaking one house for another or just doing it on an alcohol induced desire to prank.
These days it could still be that thing, but likely or not, it's a patrol, or someone desperate to get in doors and away from the patrol. Given who this place is inhabited by it could be a handful of people but in all likelihood, not the person who's persistently knocking on the door and pressing the doorbell that is Cash's given residence, the last one that Abigail knew about when she spent the few days with the woman that she now knows to be her future daughter. Her current daughter but all grown up.
She's dodged patrols since she left her soon to be non-existent home, admonitions of cheating and divorce fresh on her heels and knowing that she won't make it to Midtown or to a cheap hotel in time before she'll need to just stop. So here she is, at Cashes door as the clock is inching it's way to half past one, meat of her fist knocking on the door, with red rimmed eyes, hoping that she answers before someone calls the cops or the cops get to coming around and realize there's a wanted terrorist that they can haul in.
In the world that she grew up in, nocturnal visits weren't as uncommon as one might think. A sudden hand knocking on a door could mean 'get out, we've been found' as often as the knock that came one fateful night to tell her that her husband was dying.
The knock could mean multiple people who come from her own time— but it isn't. Either way, it doesn't take her long at all to pull the door open. A delay in answering could be the difference between life and death, in the world she grew up in.
Perhaps this is why she sleeps mostly clothed. Light pants, a camo shirt that shows off her shoulders, and that necklace that sits around her neck with two rings to rest between her breasts. In these clothes, she looks more muscular than she might have, with her tall and lanky body— but she's too active to be lacking in muscles. Much to active.
A hand is reached out to touch a coat at the door, but it moves away. It's as if she expected to need to run for it— until her steel blue eyes meet the unnaturally darkened eyes. "A— Abigail," she says softly, expression showing a bit of a stunned look, before the door opens wider. "Come in."
"Thank you" Some kindness at least this night. A glance over her shoulder, eyes brown beneath the brim of the cap, she's got her hand tight on the strap of her hiking pack, ensuring that no one can see her entering before she does. Slides across the threshold with little in the way of explanation for why but grateful at least to be inside. Heat radiates off of her, she's kept control so far, not stopped to just let it all go, but even her tight reign on her ability can't shut it down completely.
"I just, I just need to stay the night. I zig zagged, I don't think they'll track me here if he's really going to call Heller. I don't.. I don't think they'd have any dogs that can go up buildings. I don't think they could connect you to me, but I'm sorry if they will. I can go back out I just… I just need to sit at least, for a little bit. I'm really tired. Can I just sit?" Does she babble like this in the future? Is she still this way or had she matured more in the years that she had Kasha in her arms and the babbling disappeared when she's stressed or emotional. "Can I sit in your tub? Might be safer if I sit in your tub"
"Do not worry about anyone finding this place," Cash says even as she glances out the door before closing and locking it behind her. There's some flicking of lights in the small apartment, turning them off or dimming them, and a curtain falls in front of the window as well to hide the little light there is.
Most the light comes from the lamps above the small green shelf, providing fake sunlight for plants that need more than her apartment could offer, even with what windows it has. Her apartment is a basement room, after all.
Much like the room that she cleaned her husband's body.
"Of course you can sit in the tub," she adds, moving through to open the bathroom up, and giving access to what is actually more of a shower— but safety is important. And that light has no access to the outside. No windows to cover. Only a vent that she flicks on. "What happened?"
Her mother may have babbled, but Cash rarely uses more words than necessary.
Her pack id dropped to the ground, shedding jacket, hat, scarf, unnecessary clothing deposited in a heap so that she can squeeze past Cash and hunker down in the tub. A safety net of sorts, things get too hot, a rainfall of water can stop it all in it's tracks.
"Robert" as if that alone might explain everything. "Am I a good mother, I mean, will I be a good mother?" She looks up at the blonde, blinking through rheumy eyes. "You're here, so obviously I do something right but… Can I do it alone?"
The expression on her face is blank, for the most part, but in a very controlled way. Now that Abby has seen Cash at her toughest moment, it's easy enough to see the strain in her eyes. That name that explains everything has meaning. "You were," she says in quiet tones, leaning against the doorframe. "You can." All short statements, followed by something longer, "But you were not alone— you always had the Ferry and those within it, and I believe that will be the case, no matter what happened tonight."
"Will you want for anything? Do you like growing up the way that you did?" Abby's arms are around her knees, huddled in the shower of this basement abode. "I had a dream while I was sick. I've been sick, I would have come sooner, I would have knocked on your door at a human hour but I got the flu and… I was…" Well lets not tell the future daughter that she was dying. "Was I there for you when you needed me?" This was not how Abby imagined approaching Cash, asking if she was the woman in the dream, how she got here. Why she was here. "Was he a dad to you at all?"
Again, no surprise crosses her face, but Cash moves away from the doorframe, stepping forward and kneeling in front of the shower basin, hand reaching out to touch the too warm shoulder. "I have always been satisfied with my the life I was given. My life with you— my life with…"
Her eyes shift downward, to the wedding rings, before she looks back up. "He was never my father. At my wedding, Brian gave me away— as he was the closest thing to a father I had."
Makes sense to her that Brian gave her away. Brian took care of her, in the Ferry Network seems to have been where she was raised, and Brian was Lances defacto father. She tilts her head, pressing her cheek against the hand that's settled on her shoulder, at the same time nodding, no matter how awkward that might be.
"I'll be a good mother. I'll be the best that you can ever ask for. I promise it. I probably don't seem like it right now but… but you won't want for anything. I promise. Huruma's got you right now at the Island. I can't give you a house with a big yard and a Dah, but I can give you a dog and lots of aunts and uncles and I can… I can make sure that Lance doesn't die. I know what to watch out for, I can make sure it won't happen and that you won't have to go through what I'm going through Kasha"
Surreal doesn't begin to cover how this feel, lifting both her hands to cup either side of Cash's face. "You'll have those rings on your finger Kasha and you won't have to wash his body off in that horrible room, do you hear me?"
The cupping of her face is met with eyes closing. There's emotion breaking through the shell on her expression, and she's trying to control it. Between her hands, she can feel the smallest nod, before the eyes open again. Cash has tears in her eyes— she wasn't able to fight off the emotions entirely.
"I hear you," is all she says, choosing to stick to the smallest words, as her hand on the shoulder moves to take one of the hands from her face, and squeeze it.
"I never wanted for anything more than the love of my family. Material things are not nearly as important."
She needs this. In the wake of Caliban's successful attempt to distance his wife and protect her by his lie, she's trying to find a port or a rock to hold onto in the storm. Kasha being that port. "He's been… he wants a divorce. He, he-" She can't even say it. "There's another woman. There's another woman who is better than me, who isn't a terrorist or some… some baby from the back woods of Louisiana and he's, he's filing for a divorce and gave me twenty minutes to leave before he'd call Heller"
While nothing else seemed to surprise Cash too much, there's a hint in her eyes that those words do. The surprise is most visible in the exhale that follows, as if she'd been holding her breath— even if she hadn't been.
"I see," she says quietly, sitting back on her heels on the bathroom floor to look in at the younger woman— who'd always been much older than her before.
"It is just a sign that he was not the one after all. Do not take it as a fault of yours— it is him that was at fault."
Hard not to. Not when you loved the person with all of your heart. She nods her head, wiping a sleeve across the top of her face, sniffling back moisture so she can drop her chin to her knees, look over at the other woman, look for the similarities between this woman, the one in her memory and the toddler who's asleep in a playpen back at the Island.
"How are you even here?" A questions many of the others have asked of their own offspring who have revealed themselves. "Why are you even here"
"How I am here is a principle you know enough about— Time travel," Cash explains in softened tones, keeping her voice light, even if she knows the woman in the tub's heart is breaking. "As for the why— you will learn in time, I assure you of that."
But the time isn't now.
"Have you told Huruma yet?" she asks, switching the topics a little.
"I haven't. Just that I was going to get you, bring you back. I was planning on it, even before I met you, before November. I just… I wasn't in a right place and then I was worried about how to raise a baby, in the network. Never knowing if there would be formula for you, diapers, blanket, shoes. I have money but… that money will need to last me as long as I can make it last and there's never ever going to be enough because… You know how I am" Generous to a fault, and will give it to the Ferry for whatever imminent and dire needs that will bring about the needs for cash.
Time travel. Self explanatory. Of course that's how they came to be here, but the why will come later she's assured and she takes, it face value. "She loves you. She was the one that found you. All alone in a box and your mother was dying. She tried to take care of you, but it's Huruma. She thinks she failed at motherhood twice, she couldn't do it a third time" Abigail inhales a shuddery breath, closing her eyes work at regulating her breathing, which in turn will hopefully regulate the exothermic inclinations she has at the moment. "That's how you came to me. You're her's just as much though"
"I know," Cash says with a small smile, nodding as she moves to stand up. "I met her— in this time. She was visiting Delia Ryans at the Corinthian where I worked at the Rose Garden— I have a gift for you to take back to her, for when you tell her. I would like her to know."
Her words remain to the point and calm, "And I also want her to know that I love her. That I admire what she did for me. Even giving me my name— though Lance gave me the one I use here." A nickname, of sorts. "Kasha was too rare to use without grabbing attention."
"It means box. She named you box" The horror of horrors, Abigail to this day, still can't believe that Huruma would do that. Not that they knew what Kasha's real name was anyways. "Cash is good. Deanna… I like Deanna. Do you ever get to see your grandfather and your grandmother?" She's really asking, in a roundabout way, if she'll ever see her own parents again, show them the baby that will be their own defacto granddaughter.
"I'll tell her, I'll give her what you want me to." Breath in through her nose, out through her mouth, breath juddering a bit. "You've grown up beautifully. Stone mimic. I'm surprised but… I guess the Lord works in strange ways, at least I'll be able to help you. How old will you be?"
There's many questions. Cash moves to stand while they are asked of her, and she doesn't quite answer them in order. "I was eighteen. I do not know if the time of manifestation will change with the changes that have been made to the timeline, but I imagine my ability will remain the same."
More words than she might have wanted to say, but they distract from questions she's not answering adequately. "I never met them, but I never left New York." Not the answer that she may have wanted, but it doesn't mean Abby herself didn't… "You always told me about them, and you'd chosen Deanna to be my middle name, after your father." Even if she never had official adoption papers.
"They'd love you. Stoic, like my Dah. Level headed in things when I was always not. Your grandmother is the gardener. She has your green thumb" But these are things, that Cash already knows. Doesn't need to hear over again and Abigail is standing too now. Levering herself up, enough control to trust herself out of the shower and not risk burning down the place.
"Kasha Deanna Beauchamp" She doesn't say Caliban. Doesn't mean her voice doesn't want to form the C instead of the B. She steps out of the tub, trying to smooth her rumpled clothes, inject some decorum and self respect back into herself after having just quite literally been a mess in her to be daughters bathroom. "I'm sorry. I'll probably cry a hundred times before the morning comes"
"And I will be here to hold you until the morning comes," Cash says with a soft smile, leaning in to re-crumple those clothes with a rather strong hug. Though not as strong as one that a heart of stone could manage. "You have always been there for me, and will continue to be there for the baby that will become me. You were the one who held me on the nights when I need a shoulder to cry on. And tonight I will be the one to hold you."
"I promise not to burn you to a crisp" Or try not to. She holds still at the hug, taking a moment to cautiously wrap her arms around the other woman, lay her head on her shoulder and squeeze her back. "No wonder you liked having me for Christmas"
"And I'll like having you here for Good Friday too," Cash says, arms still around her as she leads her toward the bed, where they can sit and hold each other why the younger of the two cries.
It is a situation that Cash is accustomed to.
Though usually she was the younger.