Participants:
| Scene Title | A Nice Thought |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Most of this conversation is, really. |
| Date | February 7th, 2019 |
Bay Ridge: Robyn and Dirk's Apartment
It's been so long since he's truly seen home, tasted the air, felt the very strings of the universe in his bones. It's all so different yet familiar as he floats high above the city, taking in all of the damage, the rebuilding.
Another war.
He's seen worse, much worse, but there's still the sinking feeling that he should have been here.
After spending time taking the city in, again, he looks down at a note he was given by SESA agents.
It's time to finally see Quinn.
When he dives down, it's straight in the direction of her apartment. He still knows this city like the back of his hand from above, despite all of the changes. And, following her apartment number, he floats right outside of her window and knocks on it a few times.
It's night, not many people are probably paying much attention, but outside her window he casts a broad figure. Where she previously knew the short-haired Magnes, had that particular image of him in her head for all these years, Robyn will see a much different version of him than before. His curly hair reaches his shoulders, full and thick. He wears a fresh, clean long black coat over a purple paisley button up shirt that stretches down to his thighs almost like a tunic, and overall just looks like a far more adult version of the bassist she used to know.
The way that he floats is steady, not the wobbly astronaut-like mess that she might remember. He's still as if he's standing on a solid surface.
It's a window that rarely gets opened, the living room window. The last time Robyn Quinn can remember anyone opening it, it was almost a year ago when Dirk was yelling at some unseen harasser before the two of them sat down to watch cheesy movies on Valentine's Day. Tired as she is - she hasn't slept much since Cassandra's body was fished out of the river - it takes her several knocks to register that there's even a sound at the window. The music emanating from the record player by the TV probably doesn't help.
With an annoyed grunt she closes the laptop she's working on and sets aside the tumbler of rum she holds in hand, rising to her feat and sighing. "Je le jure…" is mumbled, eyes turning to the TV as she straightens the button up blouse she wears. "Elaine, if you're locked out, you can just knock," she complains to no one in particular as she makes her way over to the window and pulling up the blinds.
She's too busy aggressively pulling up the window to notice someone there at first. "//Qu'Est-ce que c'est?!" she shouts as she pull up, hoping the French will deter any harassers down at street level.
Instead, she blinks, and her visible eye widens as she stares at the figure in front of her. For all Magnes looks different to her, taking several moments to recognise, she herself likely looks very different herself - hair short, posture straight, wearing very professional clothing, and more notably wearing an eyepatch that covers one eye and strides over a long scar from her lip up to just under her eye.
Swallowing, she stares at Magnes for a good long minute, silent. "Magnes?" croaks out after a moment. "Is this… you? Or am I having another… vision?"
"I'm home." Magnes assures, carefully walking up to the window in a way that seems like he's walking up invisible stairs, crouching down to try to climb in. "I… I needed to see you. I've…"
"You died so many times. I needed to see you, my Quinn…" he admits, tears already welling up in his eyes, looking like he's ready to entirely break down already.
Unlike Magnes, Robyn hasn't seen the other except in one recorded video many months. Swallowing again, she stares at him like she's staring down a ghost; in some ways she may be. Slowly, she backs away from the window to allow him to either climb in or phase in, depending on how real he may be.
As he climbs in - realness seemingly confirmed - she looks back over her shoulder towards the entrance. "I have a front door," is a quiet remark that almost seems chastising, but lacks any of the bite she might have had in the past when doing so. The mention of her dying is met with her hands curling into fists, a bit of tenseness visible in how she turns back to him.
"I know," she replies flatly, but the tone doesn't hold. "I just…" Voice wavering, her tilts her head. "Can't believe this actually happened. That you're actually here."
"I had to fight Kazimir and the Vanguard, Samson Grey pretending to be Arthur Petrelli, I died once but I came back, there was the robot war, the pirate battle… a lot happened." Magnes walks up to her, motioning his hand for the window to close behind him without breaking eye contact with her. "A lot of people died… I…" He stares at her as if he can barely believe she's there. "It's really you, the real you… I, I promised I'd bring you, her, with me, and…"
He closes his eyes, tightening his fists. "I ripped open the universe so many times to get here, to get Addie back, and Elaine, my Elaine, as soon as we get here, she…" He falls to his hands and knees, head hanging as everything just starts to quickly spill out. "I… I saved Elaine from the Virus world, we had a kid, we were together the entire time, we finally made it, and then, that thing, it… it killed her… I couldn't save her, I couldn't save you, so many people are gone. Isabelle, Ruiz, Lynette…"
"I need my friends, I need you, Quinn…" he practically pleads, the air around him slightly heavier, but not dangerously so.
That tenseness in Robyn only seems to escalate as Magnes begins to describe his travels and the things he's been through. Some of them feel a little too familiar to her, leading her to watch him carefully as he nearly seems to collapse to the ground. For the faintest moment, the one corner of her lips curls up in an almost sinister smile, a dark thought reaching the tip of her tongue - and then banished, leaving her wondering where it rose up from.
Her expression softens, though she continues to look puzzled as he goes on. Rather than tower over him, though - as rare a treat as that may be - she slowly lowers herself to one knee, and wraps her arms around him in a hug. It's a bit awkward, like it's not something she's to doing. She doesn't speak at first. "Slow down," she remarks after a moment. There's a lot to unpack here, and it's hard for her to catch it all, shifting a bit uncomfortably.
But she decides to start with two things that stick out to her - selfish as ever, it would seem. "All of me, any of me, is real," she opines in a muttered voice, that gives away into a low chuckle. "And no one calls me Quinn anymore, Magnes."
With that she leans back a bit, looking him in the eyes. "Wait. Did I hear you right?" she adds as she leans back a slight bit, brow knit together. Elaine? Addie? Even with her experiences with time travel, with the visions, her brain is blue screening for a moment as she stares at him.
"I don't know how much you'd agree if you met Baguette Quinn…" Magnes manages to say with some humor, through all the tears. He tries to sit up, crossing his legs on the floor, but reaches out to take her hand for some sense of comfort.
"Yeah… when we first crossed over, I met another Elaine in the bunker. She was a bit different, more like a librarian. She taught little kids and stuff. Getting my alternate universe ex pregnant within my first few weeks of being in another universe wasn't my best judgement, but we became very close very quickly, stuck together for the entire time I've been gone…" he wipes his eyes with his free hand, taking a deep breath.
"Something happened, in what we call the Bright world. That's the one where Rockstar Quinn was kind of a dick to me. Kazimir took control of Eileen's body and kidnapped Addie, our daughter. Addie's in this universe now, I still have to find her. But we held it together, we overcame ridiculous thing after ridiculous thing, and then the second we get back here…" He's gritting his teeth already.
He closes his eyes, tight, an image clearly entering his mind. "That… god thing, that Entity, the Void, whatever you want to call it, it took over Eve's body and turned a bunch of people into light, into nothingness, including Elaine… We stopped it, which means Eve is gone too, but…"
"I've never hurt this badly in my life, I… we were engaged, it's… god, it's not fair." He tries to breathe, but clearly struggles. "It should have been me."
"Rude," is a somewhat joking comment when Magnes names one of her alternates as Baguette Quinn. When Magnes reaches to take her hand she seems initially uncomfortable and a little resistant; ultimately she lets him take it while keep a loose grip. She lets out a heavy sigh, closing her eyes.
"Don't say that, Magnes. You've already been gone once." She leans back a bit, processing everything he's had to say bit by bit. "Rockstar Quinn," she murmurs to herself. "I know her." She turns her head slightly away, sucking in a breath. "Nevermind," she remarks before looking back to him. "Let me get this straight. You… met another Elaine, and had a kid?" Eileen and Kazimir are filed away for a moment.
"Yeah… she knew about all of you, I even told her about our Elaine here, before we did anything or got close at all. I wanted her to know that I wasn't trying to use her as some kind of replacement, so I didn't want to get close to her unless she knew about our Elaine." Magnes explains, then shakes his head. "I just… I need you to know that when I named our daughter, I was still the young and stupid person you remember, and I thought that if me and Elaine had a kid, it would automatically be Adel, and my Elaine, well, unlike the Elaine you know, she had a tendency to get really excited about the dumb and outrageous things I'd think."
"Sooo we named her Adel Raven Darrow-Diego Isabelle Robyn J. Varlane. We call her Addie." he explains, before revealing the sort of kicker to it all. "She turned out to be a pale redhead."
"You met her? So…" He doesn't finish the thought, he instead respects the nevermind, nodding. "I have to get Addie back. Eileen still has her but I've only just begun to be able to even function and talk to people, so I haven't figured out where Eileen is yet. And… I don't want to go alone, I'm afraid my emotions will get the best of me. I don't want to do anything I'll regret, especially not to Eileen. I already saw her die once, when we fought Kazimir…"
The way that his memories are, it's clear that he's met the same person multiple times, and has become somewhat accustomed to thinking in the context of multiple timelines. "But that was Munin." he quickly clarifies.
"Magnes…" Robyn speaks up just to trail off, releasing him and rising back up to her feet. "I'm not going to pretend that… I'm not rather weirded out by all of this," she admits as she scratches the back of her neck. "But… I guess we can circle back around to that." Now is not the time for a classic Magnes/Quinn argument. She's in no mood for it. "Wait- did you say she has my name in that?"
A hand is raised up, both to stop him from reply and to stop herself from continuing. "If by met her, you mean Eileen… no. But I know of her. I know she has Kazimir with her still, and that she's from… Arthur Petrelli's timeline." Her expression thins at those words. "I can try and find out where she's holed up, but Magnes?" Turning from him, she makes her way back towards her couch, to where her purse sits.
"You have to promise me that you won't go in there guns blazing. Do not even think about starting a fight. Even if for some reason you can't immediately get Addie back… step back and we'll figure something out. Because things are different now, and…" Reaching into her purse, she pulls out something, before turning to Magnes and holding it up - her SESA badge. "I don't want to have to arrest you if something goes wrong."
"I know that I can't just go in, normally I'm more… level headed. I've fought in wars, more than one depending on how you want to define a war. I helped liberate an entire planet. At this point I at least think I have mission protocol down." Magnes takes a deep breathe, and adds, "I've seen too many people die, many of them the same person, over and over. I can't lose my daughter, but I also know I'm not okay right now. I can't go alone, I need someone there to keep me grounded. I don't know what Eileen will say, what she'll do, and if she refuses to give her back, I need to be there with someone."
He stares at her badge, then into her eyes, clearly confused as he tries to make sense of things in his head. "If there's a world where I joined the Vanguard, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that you could become a cop."
"And when I said 'her', I meant the other you. I know that a lot of strange brain switching was going on. But I won't pry too much, I can tell some things are bothering you." Staring down at the floor, he can't help but look defeated again. "Life is so fragile, Quinn." He still hasn't quite figured out the name thing. "Just… how easily so many people can die, crumble to dust. I've been there for two nuclear explosions, or at least narrowly escaped right before they could go off. But even aside from big things like that, just, so many people who were alive, happy, breathing one minute, and then, just…"
Running fingers through his hair, all he can choke out is, "I just want my daughter back, I feel so hollow, I can't even be happy that I'm home. I have to get Addie back, it's the least I can do for Elaine. I have to keep my promise… I told her we'd get her back."
"This was all supposed to be happy reunions and finally starting our life again." he reaches up, grabbing seemingly nothing, but when he pulls, space bends under the force of his hand when he lifts himself up to his feet. When he releases it again, the bent space snaps back into place like rubber. "I love you Quinn."
"Cop undersells what I do, Magnes. I am a federal agent specialising in crimes both perpetrated by and against Evolved. That is why I worry." She lowers her badge, point made. She seems appeased by his response, though, turning and settling it back into her purse. "But… I'm glad you've thought that out. Should have given you more credit." She offers him a small smile, though it fades quickly.
One hand reaches to run at her opposite arm, and she looks of a bit. "All these places you talk about… a virus world, Arthur Petrelli's world, a war world, pirates and all that. I saw them all. I think." The last one she's uncertain about, but it would track with what she saw. "None of them were any good," she says quietly. "You say there was a timeline where you joined the Vanguard?" She looks up at him, uncertainty in her eyes. "So did I."
She leaves that there, only volunteering if Magnes asks, instead she sucks in a deep breath. "I fought in a war too, while you were gone. Lost my mum to it. Friends. More. So… I understand where you're coming from." She looks down, and than off to the side, fidgeting. "I'm glad you're back, Magnes. Please stop calling me that." A small smile creeps on to her face, though. "Or, you know. Don't, I guess."
"Arthur's world wasn't so bad. Me, Elaine, Addie, Elisabeth, Aurora, Isabelle… we were all like a big family for years. But that world was a lie, I ended up having to break out of a secret prison, we kind of had to expose a mass conspiracy to the entire world. That utopia was terrifying in that it was all under the thumb of Samson Grey. Arthur Petrelli was dead, Gabriel's father was pretending to be him. We killed him, just barely." Magnes pauses, in that sort of, well, Magnes way, where he just realized what he said. "Okay that world was awful."
"This world is much better than all of them. No massive flood, at least less robots, and the robots are certainly not massive flying robots that capture people. The Virus world may have been the worst, considering that there was a constant threat of getting a life threatening Virus or suddenly killed by Kazimir, whichever." he shakes his head at the whole idea of that.
"The Flood world was surprisingly not awful, but it really depends on how you see it. Veronica Sawyer was basically a whale protecting pirate queen. But I don't know what's going on now, because Kazimir decided to come back and finish trying to wipe the world out, again." He rolls his eyes. "Kazimir seems like this inevitable evil that keeps returning. He would be the single greatest threat to this world aside from that… thing that killed Elaine…"
"But yes, to go back to the awfulness of alternate selves, a version of me joined the Vanguard. The Kazimir that was in Peter's body once named me Magni. He names you when you've… earned it somehow, when he thinks you're special. In the Virus world, he named that Magnes Hermod." He runs a hand over his face, something returning to the forefront of his mind. "He shot himself in front of me. I don't think he could handle the existential crisis of realizing he was a clone. I didn't handle it so well either."
He shrugs. "That's a whole other story entirely. Though it's late, so we have time."
Robyn cants her head to the side a bit, watching Magnes as he talks. "You're barely back, and here we are, talking about the shit we get into." She hufs out a breath. "I guess some things never change."
She turns from him, motioning for him to follow her as she makes her way over to her couch. The laptop is set down on the coffee table, her tumbler of rum taken back into hand as she sits. Holding the glass up to Magnes, she motions to the bottle. "Rum, Flor de Cana 12 year if you'd like some. I have cognac as well, and whiskey." Still, as she takes a sip from the tumbler she doesn't seem particularly relaxed.
"If he… named me, I never saw what it was. I simply know I was sent out to-" Pausing, she swallows. "…clear out the Lighthouse, and kill Elizabeth Harrison." She purses her lips, shifting as she fidgets uncomfortably. "I saw myself as a rockstar. I proposed to 'Lainy. We got married. I started working for Arthur Petrelli, and at some point, I started murdering… honestly I couldn't tell if it was for him, or if was just for kicks. And, it felt good. I… think it caught up with me, though. I saw myself being questioned by a federal agent." She lets out a heavy sigh. "I resisted. I don't think it ended well."
Eyes close, and she takes another long sip of her drink, before reeling back a bit from how strong it is. Her face scrunches a bit, coughing as she continues on. "I saw myself thrown up against a wall and shot dead for being me, and I saw myself… drown, I think." She rolls her shoulders. "I can still hear them, it feels like sometimes. Haven't told 'Lainey about most of it, yet. I know she's worried."
Shaking her head, she looks over to Magnes. "This world hasn't been much better. After… we thought you were gone, the Ferry fell apart. Sort of. I was on the team that went into Cambridge. I…" Fingers curl in as she considers her words very carefully. "…Lost my ability in there. I can't see colour anymore. And then in the aftermath, I made the mistake of challenging Eileen Ruskin herself, and…" With her free hand, she motions to the scar. "Was my own idiot fault, but that's… another reason I don't want you going into this half cocked."
"You know, you're not these other versions of yourself." Magnes says as he sort of picks up on a tone, taking the rum to give it a sip. He coughs a bit, since it's been a while since he had actual alcohol. He certainly wasn't going to drink that shit they had in Flood. "I… the you who was killed in Wasteland, I promised her I'd take her out of that world, that I'd save her. She told me she wanted to come with me. That I couldn't save her, it haunts me. She's one of many people I couldn't save… but she was one of the worst losses for me, the one closest to truly being you."
"I wasn't there to see you in Virus, but Kazimir came down on all of us. It's not your fault, I've been affected by Kazimir so many times, I know how he is, what it feels like. Hermod, he led Abby, Abby to her death, all to please Kazimir. Learning that really fucked me up, and Kazimir himself is who told me that, to get under my skin when we were trying to stop him." He reaches over to place a gentle hand on her shoulder, before carefully removing it.
He needs more rum, so he takes another, longer sip this time. "I'm surprised to learn that about Rockstar Quinn. I didn't get to talk to her much, she wanted nothing to do with me and was kind of a dick." he admits, shaking his head. "She didn't seem like you much at all. But… what probably happened in the end is what we did. We exposed Pinehearst, the government cracked down on everyone who did dirty work for them. But, again, she isn't you. The me in that world was a drunk, for years. He gave into what our father told him, withdrew from everyone. Eileen and Gabriel rehabilitated him, ironically the Eileen who would eventually kidnap Addie. And then he became a detective. I met him, we high fived over having hot girlfriends."
"Roux, Baguette Quinn, she hated that, I don't think she liked me very much. All she wanted was to find her mother, she didn't know what happened to her in the Flood. I… I suspected she died in the Ark, because she didn't come with us. But I was hoping that maybe she escaped… I offered to take her with us, but I don't think she was interested. I think Don had her, like a lot of people, brainwashed. The Ark was practically a cult, Don was insane, driven insane by the thing that killed Elaine…"
His face sinks again, just saying her name causes him to deflate. "The reactor, which I suspect was an actual person, was having a meltdown as we left. Anyone who couldn't escape in the sub, or with us, would be trapped down there. And Don himself was still alive when we left, Ruia saved him. He could control water, so for all I know he flooded everything out of insanity, I don't know, but… I just wish I could have saved her."
Trying to smile, he says, "It was as if you were the most French person I'd ever met, it was very strange. But that world had a divergent point from the 1960s. The version of me there was over fifty years old. That's the world where the original me survived, so I was technically never born… created, whatever." he says as he alludes to the clone strangeness from earlier again.
He listens to her, staring at her scar, then focuses on her eyes. "I guess my question is, did your ability allow you to see color, or is your ability reacting to some sort of traumatic event, and is reacting in a way that you aren't used to thinking about? The old man me, he taught me a lot about my ability, about how having a misunderstanding of it can cripple you."
Reaching over to sit the glass in the air, he reaches in front of her, gripping space. He pulls it, which causes all of the light in front of her to distort, until he releases it again, allowing it to snap back into place. "Abilities are a strange thing, especially when you realize that some abilities are only our perception of what they are."
"Roux… she didn't control light, she controlled shadows. That was her understanding of her ability. You understood it as controlling light, she understood it as controlling shadows, so she most likely learned to manipulate shadows by creating a vacuum absent of photons, or something like that. I'm a theoretical physicist by the way." he decides to throw out there.
"Chances are, I'd guess you still test positive for having an ability." is the last thing he says on that, reaching out to take his glass again.
"Don't worry about my ability," is a quick dismissal of the subject. The less Robyn feels she has to reveal at the moment, the better - outside of the incident at Richard's meeting in the fall she's gone to great lengths to avoid revealing that she has regained… something of her ability. She takes a deep breath, staring at the floor for a long moment before responding.
The touch to her shoulder causes her to reflexively pull away, tensing up a bit. Pursing her lips, she takes in everything he has to say with consideration, paying attention to each detail. "The Arc?" she repeats, furrowing her brow and looking over at him. "Like… the Arcology?" Her frown deepens, eye moving back down to the floor. "In Cambridge. That's where…"
She takes a deep breath, shaking her head. "Roux…" she muses openly, a small smile crossing her face. "It's nice to think mum was still out there somewhere." She drifts off after a moment, before leaning back on the couch, taking a long sip of her drink. "HAve you been to see Elaine yet?"
"Yeah, the Arcology. We were underwater. There was a massacre, and no matter how many times people say Don planned it all along, I still triggered it, it was still my fault… I didn't realize how insane he was, I thought, at most, maybe I'd get shot, but it felt like a last resort, I wanted to get myself arrested." Magnes shakes his head, holding a hand up. "Sorry, it's just, all of this is still fresh, most of this happened in the last two months. I've barely had time to process any of that, let alone being in a new world. Or, I guess an old world…"
"I haven't seen her." he admits with a hitch in his voice, wrapping arms around his abdomen. "I can't, not yet. I can't… see her face. Knowing that she's Elaine, but not…" His Elaine, he can't bring himself to say it, because the Elaine of this world means something too. "It'll hurt too much to see her right now, I have to get my daughter back first."
Robyn lets out a sigh,rubbing a hand at her face. "You can't just… show up to see her with a daughter in tow, Magnes. You need to talk to her first." Falling silent, she ruminates on the many things her old friend has had to say in this conversation - all of it should be implausible, and yet, here they are. She learned a long time ago to believe the unbelievable, probably about the same time her and Magnes went travelling through time.
"Look…" When she looks back up, she doesn't seem to be staring at anything into particular. Just the space between thoughts and words. "I'll do anything I can to help you, within the boundaries of my limitations and the law. But as a friend?" Looking back at him does clear the unease from her face. "That's my recommendation. I'll come with you, if I need to. Elaine and I are just starting to really talk again, so I can always stand to see her."
"I'll try. The idea of seeing her, it's almost like looking at a picture of her, but… not." Magnes reaches into his coat, and much like Elisabeth, he kept photos protected by plastic himself, the only thing he really managed to keep
Opening up the bag sealed in multiple layers, he digs through the photos until he finds just a seemingly random one. He holds it over to Robyn, and it's him, his hair much shorter, an Elaine, a bit thinner than the one Robyn knew, with different hair, all sort of posing as a normal family. "We stayed in that world that was essentially ruled by Pinehearst for years. Tamara, Collette and some others helped us all settle when we got there, they were expecting us. Before it got rough, we were just kind of peacefully living as a family while I tried to find a way back here."
"That's kind of how I became a physicist." he explains, as if that might not have made sense before. "But… if you think I should see her, I can try, I just need some time, I need to see my daughter, to know she's okay. If I don't, I don't think I can handle seeing Elaine right now."
When Magnes pulls out the pictures, Robyn looks at them for just a moment before looking away. "I'll leave it up to you," she says in a low voice, eye half lidded. "It's just my recommendation, like I said." Shifting in her seat, she brings her hands to rest in her lap. "Just…do me a favour? Give me time to adjust too." A glance is given to him, and then down to his pictures. "You're talking about my ex-fiance. It's… a little hard for me to grasp." Or, at least someone who looks like her, even if it isn't truly her.
A swift change of the subject is in order from there, as she cranes her head back and looks up at the ceiling. "You're a physicist. I'm a federal agent. I guess you really can't predict where life will take you." A small chuckle escapes her lips at that. "Sorry, Eve. Maybe it's finally time I take down the painting."
Magnes visibly cringes a bit, gripping his shirt when she mentions Eve, but he doesn't say anything, he just takes a breath. "I'm sorry. I guess I've gotten used to meeting alternates and thinking of them as different people. But it does take a toll. Watching the same people die over and over again. You'd think it would make someone think of life as this disposable thing, but instead it just makes you realize how fragile life is, how lucky every single person on Earth is every day."
He puts the pictures back into their plastic, slipping them into his coat. He always keeps them clinging tightly to him, bound by his own gravity rather than trusting Earth to take care of something so precious to him. "I'm glad you're here, Qui— Robyn. I thought about you every day."
Moving to stand up, he stretches, then starts to head to the window. "I'll see you soon. I'll let you know when I have a phone."
"Or not grasp, but- swallow, I guess," Robyn continues as she clarifies herself. When Magnes actually corrects himself on her name, she looks over at him and grins. "You know, I owe you some money," she remarks blithely as he starts to head back to the window. "Since you're not actually dead and all."
A small smirk crosses her lips. "Maybe once I get the studio up and running."
"Don't worry about that. I'm gonna ask Kimiko Nakamura for a job at Yamagato. Do you think they'd pass up on a physicist who can manipulate dark matter?" Magnes asks, before he opens the window and holds up a hand in parting. "One day we'll get the band back together, so get ready for that."
That's all he leaves her with when he jumps from the window, then just flies up into the air.
His habit of not using the door hasn't really changed.
Rising to her feet, Robyn watches as he jumps from the window with a frown. Rolling her eyes, she moves to pull it back down before it gets too cold. "No, we won't," she asserts to no one in particular, before smiling. "But it's a nice thought, Magnes."