After Naivete

Participants:

abby_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title After Naivete
Synopsis The janitor's angel realizes she may have made a terrible mistake.
Date November 7, 2008

Chelsea: Abby's Apartment


Welcome to the rathole. Well the locals call it that. Teo's been there before, escorting one of it's occupants back to her one room hovel. Abby's not at work, seems she's taken a few days off if Teo went looking for her, nor had she surfaced at the Phoenix HQ's. She's awake, if you want to call it that, puttering about her one room in comfortable clothes. Her usual time for being up. The little oven in the corner with it's fridge turned on and heating up water, stereo tuned to one of the various christian stations that can be heard through the door and the buildings thin walls.

The witching hour is a good time to be wandering around when you keep a busy schedule, coming down with a cold, and diabolically irritated with life in general. Not really. Still, Teo managed to skew his whole day off a fat few hours' margin by taking a nap after seeing Romero, and did indeed afterward notice that the team medic was conspicuously absent.

As such, he's undertaken to convince himself of the logic that the math of rest-to-walking ratio works out evenly in the end, no matter how irregular or broken up the pattern, and after twenty minutes' walking in the cold he can barely feel his face, never mind feelings, and his nose has kindly stopped welling up. He's pleased to report in to the apartment from which Switchfoot is singing with gusto. Knock-knock, says the door.

Snap. Snap. Snap annnnd clunk. The door creaks open, a night chain on and Abby's face peers through the maybe inch wide opening. "Teo?" Blue sleepy eyes blink at him. "Lost boys…" and the young woman waits patiently, ready to slam the door and lock it. Not that, you know, that would do anything.

His blue eyes blink down at her blue eyes through the gap between door and frame, oddly owlish in the bar of light that falls from the relative brightness inside her home. The hallway's a little dim and dingy: low-cost housing, after all. "Not to criticize unnecessarily, bella, but I think you're supposed to say 'Darfur,'" he motions at her, then jerks a thumb at himself. "And I'm supposed to say 'Lost Boys.'" He cocks his head, angles his face, down to peer closer. She looks a little thin, in a way that has nothing to do with a few off-days of eating. "Are you okay?"

The door's abruptly shut and the chain is unhooked, then the door opens again. "Sorry. Your right. I keep getting it wrong. Least now there's not a gun to my head, come in" The doors opened much wider and Abby, replete in flannel two piece pj's plain blue fuzzy slippers, and loose hair makes a welcoming motion for Teo to come in. "Making myself some tea, and reheating Chili from the diner. Want some? Lock the door behind you please?"

Clearly this indicates Teo's about to walk in on a skull-hacking sociopath. Fortunately, he has no Evolved abilities. Thus, it's with a certain bemused fearlessness that he steps in after the blonde Baptist, pausing only to shut the thing behind him. He locks it as deftly as she had opened it, pausing only briefly when the turn of one bolt catches on and clips against the splintered innards, but he gets it in proper. Turning, he watches her shuffle along. "You look— very Southern," he finishes, lamely. Means it as a compliment. Something about the flannel.

It's cute. He doesn't remove his own jacket just yet, despite the artificial heat her apartment provides. "And yeah, I'll take some chili if you have some to spare. Nite Owl's leftovers, or your own design?" He does, however, peel off his shoes, using his toes instead of bothering to lean down and unlace them. Soundlessly, his socked feet pick their way over to her window, peering out.

Clearly this indicates Teo's about to walk in on a skull-hacking sociopath. Fortunately, he has no Evolved abilities. Thus, it's with a certain bemused fearlessness that he steps in after the blonde Baptist, pausing only to shut the thing behind him. He locks it as deftly as she had opened it, pausing only briefly when the turn of one bolt catches on and clips against the splintered innards, but he gets it in proper. Turning, he watches her shuffle along. "You look— very Southern," he finishes, lamely. Means it as a compliment. Something about the flannel.

It's cute. He doesn't remove his own jacket just yet, despite the artificial heat her apartment provides. "And yeah, I'll take some chili if you have some to spare. Nite Owl's leftovers, or your own design?" He does, however, peel off his shoes, using his toes instead of bothering to lean down and unlace them. Soundlessly, his socked feet pick their way over to her window, peering out. "You didn't answer my question," he remembers, belated.

"Wh… oh. Yes. Fine. Tired is all. Too many people being plopped at my feet and in need of healing" Abby's zombieishly making her way to the stove fridge, taking out a large container of presumably chili. Or you know, maybe the mashed up remains of the previous Phoenix agent who might have visited and she hacked them to bit and stuck them away to eat later. No. Not really. Just Chili. "Beginning to appreciate my parents and their guarding of my gifts. choosing who and when, how long. Never got this tired. Even during Katrina. Why. I look horrible?" She looks over her shoulder at Teo, quizzically then back to the chili, spooning it into a pot to heat up. "Don't look so hot yourself Teo."

Cue the look of consternation. "I always look hot," Teo objects, his eyes refocusing from the dim glitter of the city beyond the pane to look at his face reflected. He looks fine! Awesome. Wonderful. His nose isn't leaking again, is it? He pinches it shut with his nose to make sure and discovers that he's all good on that front.

"Nyeh." It's not the most articulate noise he's ever made, and he's a typical second-language English-speaker in that, at times, his English is a little too 'textbook' right, but it turns his previous assertion into a self-effacing joke. He turns around and shuffles over to her kitchen area.

"I will help you while you tell me who 'too many people' are," he volunteers, though he's sanitary enough to washes his hands first. "Thought it was just that 'Trent' ragazzo. Did Colette get to you about the other one already?"

"No. Alex and his shock." Abby moves to make space at the stove if he likes, kettle heating up and two huge mugs brought down from their open shelf, tea bag produced from a tin can tucked away somewhere and each cup gets it's own. "After Trent. Trent came to the Diner, apologize for Colette, give his two cents. But then there was Alexander again. left a message to get to his place. He had someone who needed to be healed" Her movements are slow, like someone on two second delay to process stuff. "Make yourself at home, Teo. Take your jacket off."

Given the room had finally approached something hospitable to Teo's Mediterranean sensibilities, he does shuck off the jacket. He's wearing a sweater underneath. Possibly two. He listens. Bracing short fingernails against the edge of the lid, Teo gets the tupperware full of chili open with a pop and plastic rattle. Accepting a fork out of the nearest available culinary drawer, he proceeds to dig the meat and bean mix out, thumb braced against the stainless steel handle.

He gives himself a reasonable serving— equivalent a snack; her, the chunky mass of a meal order at the Nite Owl. Craning his head over to see what kind of tea she's boiling, he asks: "Who?"

"That.. that I don't know. He spoke like.. three words of English… kept calling me an angel" She pauses in the preparations to stare at the wall in thought. "Al was …" She looks at Teo, shock sliding across her face. "Al wasn't there when I got there… but… but that guy way, right where Al said he'd be. Teo.. I think I just did a really stupid thing…."

It's about now that Teo loses interest in the tea, now inert in her motionless hands. He looks at her face. Feels the sentiment knotting uncomfortably in his throat showing on her face, even before it registers on his own in his mouth thinned to a line. Abruptly, he sniffs.

Less to do with congestion this time. He drops his eyes to the chili, jabbing holes in, loosening the lumps. "Maybe. Or maybe Alexander did a really stupid thing. Should've known better than to leave you with some stranger, the way you get after healing. And even that notwithstanding—" he silences himself with a slight scowl, realizing that that doesn't help. He's considering the logistics, his brow furrowed in thought rather than annoyance.

She could have been followed. God knows where the man came from. And Teo's fucked around pretending he doesn't speak English— Chinese— or any given local language enough times to wonder at the plausibility of that charade. "Do you know if the man ran off the moment you left?"

"No. no, hugged me, called me angel and then laid back. I grabbed by stuff, went off to find Al. The place.. Teo, is a dump. If he lives there…" Abby frowns at the tea cups. "Couldn't find him, but, I figured he'd show up there, or back at you know where so I came here. Been pretty much asleep till an hour ago" Blue eyes look over at his. 'Russian. He sounded Russian. And was shocked at what I could do. I scared him, Teo. I had to tell him to let me go or I wouldn't fix him the rest of the way." Abby's eyes flicker to her door, worriedly.

Honestly, Teo has no idea what sort of living conditions his favorite redhead keeps. There are countless little things that are 'off' about Jesse Alexander Knight, but the Sicilian isn't one to look too closely at them— less they warrant the favor returned. In general, he leaves the Phoenix and PARIAH operatives to their personal business. A little distance is healthy. Too much might well get them all caught or killed, Teo gathers. "I haven't seen him, but sometimes I just don't. It's probably nothing.

"Alex can take care of himself. What did it look like?" he asks. Tries to make the question a little less abrupt by slowing the movements that go with it: he picks up the food, pops open the microwave. Unhurried as you like. "I mean, if you saw it. How was the Russian hurt?"

Abby breathes deep, closing her eyes and pulling herself back to the hovel. "Abandoned. Worse than this. I was tripping over stuff to get to where he was. The Russian. The Russian I think, had been gored with a big stick, like the handle of a broom or something like that. I had to pick slivers out as I went, big, small. He was holding Al's sweater against his stomach. Don't know how Al came by him, just that he left word at the diner that it was very important. Would have needed a hospital, probably surgery and likely infection" Abby's starting to look a little green at the thought of it all and that's when the kettle starts to shrill, the reminder that she needs to take it off the element. "I didn't tell him my name. He didn't tell me his. Shit…" pause. "fuck. That was spectacular of me. I could have just healed… someone not good Teo. Hel's going to have my head" Abby tops off each mug slowly. "So stupid. Walking around half awake and.. I do something that stupid"

"Al would've taken him to the hospital if he could," Teo says, as much to himself as to the woman. The microwave grumbles, rotating the chili through waves of cooking heat, a monotonous noise; the kettle makes him look up abruptly and he reaches toward it without thinking, turning off the heat. In that moment, he finally notices Abby's appallingly queasy complexion. "Hey, ragazza.

"Don't beat yourself up to hard." Impulse prompts him to reach out toward her, slip a long arm around the svelte huddle of her shoulders under their flannel seams and rumpled blonde bedhead— if she'll tolerate that much, anyway. "What you did was righteous. I trust Alex too. And I'dve trusted him on the phone. He was probably just having a rough night.

"It sounds like there was a lot going on. And fuck, I'm not one to let a man die, sinner or no, without a better conviction than 'no name volunteered.' You did what you had to do. It's just clean-up, now. And figuring out what the fuck to do next time the situation comes up again." It's bound to. A beat's pause; he blinks. Goes red at the gills. "It's an appropriate time to swear," he argues against an invisible critic, quiet in his playfulness.

Abby's not about to chastise. She just said the same word two seconds earlier. "Be easier if there wasn't clean up. I'll be fine" No objection to the platonic affection. "I'll be fine. Another day of sleep, stuffing my face, and I'll be right as rain. Told tom I have family stuff come up." She smiles for a moment, looking over. "I'll still take my lecture from Hel, or whoever. I deserve it. I should have turned away. It could have been a trap. Could have been a great many things" and then she's starting to get over it. "Customer gave me a big tip today. I mean.. big" She gestures to another tin can that contains a single bill in it. the kind that has three numbers on it. Not just 2 or 1. "That's a bright point?"

Teo shifts a quizzical eyebrow, perhaps disbelieving: "Someone like Al from Phoenix asks you to heal a man riddled with wooden splinters, and you turn away without a thought, I don't know. Bringing back-up and asking about sit-rep first, all right, but that other thing would be pretty cold."

He gives Abby one squeeze before letting go. It's a friendly squeeze. It's also one that compresses her ribs and makes it hard to breathe for a moment, playful in its bear-like overzealousness; he's facetious like that. He snags the kettle off the stove and fills their cups, glances over to the tin only after he's lifted the nozzle out of melting-his-hand-off trajectory.

His eyebrow goes up. "You realize this sounds unnecessarily interesting. You say you just got out of bed an hour ago, got a hundred dollar tip, and— don't hit me," he raises a hand, defensive. And then his mouth quirks, Puckish. "If you don't mind the one more question. Did he speak any Russian you could recognize? Pamogitye mnye? Pazhalasta? Peristaats?"

"No, no, tip was from when I was leaving work" Though she looks properly mortified at the joke. Right. Her. Do that. "No. Do I look like I've met many Russians. I didn't even know there's more than one version of Russian to speak. He sounded like Sergei, sort of. Really bad English, what little of it he could speak" In the corner is a small two person table, two folding chairs. She moves away from the counter to sit there, opting to let Teo be the gentleman. "I wasn't thinking. I'm not.. used to having to watch my back and.. worry about others" Down Abby sinks onto a chair, drawing her knees up and resting her chin on her knee's. Watch Teo.

Teo is being uneventful. "Congratulations on the tip, ragazza. Is it going to your piggy-bank or to Christmas gifts?" He puts the teabags into the cups and parks a spoon in each, carries them to Abby and sets them both down. Lopes back to the microwave to open that up, poke the chili around their bowls to expose the unheated portions, before shutting it again. "There are lots of dialects and things," he says, hastily. "That wasn't what I meant.

"I was giving examples of what a panicky Russian with fuck-all knowledge of English might've said. 'Help me,' 'please,' or 'stop.' It's not insane that he didn't say any of those things, but maybe a little weird." He drops himself into the seat beside her, crooks a grin at her face. A little one. It's not a laughing matter, not exactly. "Do you know where all your stuff from last night is?"

"Christmas gifts. Maybe some new jeans." The answer to what she's going to use her 100 dollars for. "Help, please. uhh, he said Hurt… medium. English." Abby twirls the spoon in her deposited mug then picks it up. "I think maybe he understood a little what I said. He stopped holding me tight when I told him he was hurting me. His hand still on my shoulders." At the request though, for where her stuff is, abby flushes bright red. Unfolding herself from the seat she shuffles over to a laundry bag, the kind you toss over shoulder and head to a laundrymat with. "Here. Blood on it, so I stuffed it away. Was going to do laundry tomorrow" She's plucking out the stuff on top, minus unmentionables. no way is a man seeing her unmentionables. They're already folded neatly and she brings them over. Handprints like red paint, where she touched her own clothes, smears where he hugged her on the front of a soft green shirt, jacket. Commensurate with having spent a small amount of time huddled over a man and wrist deep in open flesh.

He takes the clothes, unmindful of the stains and the smears — or of the caution that Abby took to prevent him from seeing her underthings or the shade of tomato he face goes when she thinks about it. Blue eyes glance over the stained garments briefly, turning the hems to and fro. Across the small room, the microwave dings fruition. Blood. Fancy, but useless without a comparison sample and an entire fucking laboratory— or the like, Teo's aware. He's quiet while he does this, all. Then, "I'm gonna want your purse before I head out, if that's okay.

"And we should stop talking the moment you get it out here. Just in case somebody's listening," he requests. His gaze shifts to her face, visibly weary, but darkened by the realization he might well be freaking her the fuck out. "It's probably nothing. Seriously." He isn't even sure his paranoia would be so close to the fore if a Federal Communications Consul hadn't barged in on him at four AM the other morning. "Stare bene.

"I'm sure everything will be fine. Chili?" he folds up her clothes in adroit movements. "What are you getting Maw and Paw?"


This scene may be either unfinished or faded, and parts of it retconned or adjusted in light of players' OOC plans. Discussions continue!


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