Participants:
| Scene Title | All'anima Mia |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Teo and Abigail talk over laundry, blue birds, broken hearts and lost souls. |
| Date | November 19, 2009 |
Old Lucy's - Upstairs
Ninjas, even those benignly intentioned or not quite as excellent at their inscrutable work as they otherwise ought to be thanks to a psychic blendering applied to their minds, are occasionally wont to be slightly creepy. There were words written in reverse on the driver's window of the SUV when she climbed in, closing up after one of her final classes in the burnished brightness of the afternoon. If the language hadn't intimated enough of a hint, the script was familiar, rounded vowels and looped ands harpened consonants, the same scratch that lends itself so easily to the signatures that so often take up half of Teo's page.
Nulla m'e occulto; tutto e si vicino
dove l'occhio o il pensiero mi conduce.
Triste ma sollegiato è il mio cammino;
e tutto in esso, fino l'ombra, e in luce.
The letters threw a blue lace of shadow on her arm as she drove. He doesn't get around to showing up until a little later in the day, on Manhattan, in Old Lucy's, at home and during business hours, as if he hadn't been lurking around Brooklyn or the skinny, smaller island wedged in between it and New York's urban heart all day with a Sharpie furtively clutched in hand. Without ceremony, as if he hadn't spent twenty minutes circling the block, watching who was watching.
He pushes through the door with an hour and a half left before the evening's really started. Hood flipped up, black jacket hanging in crude angles off his rangy frame, and the aquiline austerity of Teo's profile already bleached Nordically pale after the slightest disturbance of the day's exposure to the sun, he looks like some sort of angel of death. Smiling, though, and not the blanched rictus of teeth. "Brought you coffee," he says, proffering the cup with its smart plastic hat. "And I was hoping I could see Pila before we go."
It's taken her ten minutes to figure out what the words written on her windshield said and even then, she's gotten half the words wrong. The goat was lead where? Wait, that doesn't say goat. She had driven back from roosevelt island, peering at her window and cursing a certain Italian but not with the fullness of her heart. He had a reason, she's sure.
So she went through the intervening hours drawing up instructions for the care and feeding of the animals, getting her affairs in order for her upcoming trip. This includes a will that's been signed and waiting to be dumped into an envelope and brought to her lawyer.
She's parked in the middle of the floor, folding laundry and peering up from under pink strands of hair towards Teo and the outstretched offering of coffee. "Was going to take her to Kat's in the morning. She's gonna take care of her and if it doesn't work out, I have a back up" Speak of the blue devil, said female is making sure that Teo pays attention to her since he's deigned to visit.
Twitter twitter squeak squawwwrk. It's good to know that years of assiduous care make enough of an impression in a teeny weeny bird-brain that Pila hasn't utterly forgotten him in the intervening weeks of absence.
Teo leans back slightly on his feet, cranes his head around the hallway to see the bird cage hanging by the window. The tiny hen has her blue chest puffed out in demanding aggression against the bars of her cage, her boldly-barred wings turned haughtily on the mirror that has been her frequent companion, feathers imposingly fluffed above her brown button cere as her voice increases steadily in volume. Hey, you. Yeah, you. The asshole with the big nose—
"I'll bring her in here," he decides. The coffee is set neatly on the corner of the laundry machine, and then the Sicilian swerves out to do precisely that. "Did you figure something out with your professors?" he asks, louder, so she can hear.
Grabby hands are made for the hot liquid as a t-shirt is put to the side, all the cold weather stuff she'll need for the mother land has been washed a few times, softened what needed softening and the smell of the store is long gone. "Yeah. I'm forfeiting my tuition so far, but I just have to pay to retake what I'm going to miss, when the next session starts. It happens apparently, people needing to leave and come back later" For whatever reason.
Teo goes to fetch Pila and Abby lifts from her cross legged position so she can go for the cupboards above the laundry where the avian roommates seed and treats are kept. Teo can spoil Pile. "I uhh, I talked with some folks. Once we're there and you and the others know what you need, supply wise, I have someone who will see that we get it if it's within his capability. And there's not much not in his capabilities"
"What have I told you about getting to know people who know people?" Teo shoulders past the doorway with the bird's boxy mansion in his hands, his fingers braced carefully on the thin bars.
Pila is going around in crazy circles on her perches inside, trying to keep an eye on everything that's going on, flipping her tail before it knocks into her wooden rests and trilling into reluctant delight. Mercurial little creature. She fires only one tiny piano-striped feather off into the crisp folds of new laundry, settling against her cage door when Teo settles onto the floor. He cranes his head to watch Abigail putter around for stuff. He doesn't notice the stray feather. "I asked Raith and Holden about what they knew about Russia's Vanguard cells.
"They had a few names. Grigori Zhukovsky— illusionist. Some other old man, powerful characters with vague descriptions; helpful as fucking nothing. Anya Orlova, young woman who can lock your body up right where it's standing or something like that. And a girl named Yvette."
"My people, that know people, usually involve in them oweing me" Or vice versa. "Agent Ivanov has given me the number of some of his trustworthy cousins, if we need to head somewhere and hunker down" The fallen feather is picked up, put to the side for later use in something that she's been collecting the better moltings for.
"It's Robert Caliban. I called him to find out more about James Muldoon since he's apparently in Moscow. He is not a Linderman employee but he did ask that a bullet doesn't find his way into his head if we come across him while we're there" The white dome of the lid is violated, tab popped up and pushed back so she can inhaled deeply, the aroma of the beans.
"Other than getting vanguard names, what have you been up to and thank you, by the way, for the scribblings on my windshield. You coulda got me killed on the way home Teo. Or the lord above, get me fined for obstructive view. I expect it to be gone and scribbled across my mirror" A gesture to the bathroom kitty corner to them "As opposed to what I need to drive"
Oh. :< Err. Heh heh. Up to his wrist in birdcage, and a tiny palpitating body o' fluff caught up in his fingers, now, Teo has the decency to look ashamed in the midst of carrying on like a child about something else entirely. Oh, right. Road safety.
Heh. "Non problema," he reassures her promptly. He fields a tiny pip of seed with the fingertips of his other hand, finagles it up to meet Pila at a delicate trajectory once he's moved her, carefully, out of her cage. She has to duck her thumb-sized head, but passes harmlessly above it, leaving her curved bill available for eating instead of scolding.
Ivanov's friends, Linderman's friends' friends. Making friends through people who don't honestly abide by any respectable definition of the term. It's awful, that that's already more than Teo could have hoped for, venturing into Moscow on little more than Tamara's word. "I lost Eileen.
"Then her new leader, then Holden, though on the bright side: I probably just lost them to the mission. I lost Danko in the same stroke. I lost Gabriel, I think, because he thinks I'm a douchebag for losing everyone else, but we'll be okay. Done some work on safehouses. Jes— Leonard's leaving. I'm sure you've heard." He tips a crooked smile out of his mouth on an oblique profile.
"Yeah, I heard. He said he was going to go and go on a walkabout, whatever that means" She knows what it means but she sips at coffee and sets about to folding more clothing, shaking out a purple velvet men's blazer, insides nice and satiny. Something a certain pimp owns. Something that's been confiscated for her own use and will actually fit her. Payment for the whiskey.
But she listens to him now as he talks about waht he's lost in the people area, blonde browns ratcheting down, down, down with each tick of the mental fingers. "You lost them, if probably not accurate Teo. You didn't loose them like you would a five year old at the mall. They're grown adults, and-" There's a wrinkle of nose, trying to put words into logical sounding sentances.
"Teodoro, you are not the keeper of these people, their mothers or their babysitters. They're friends and enemies and you are very much human and you can't do everything at once. You lost me once, but you found me. I am sure, that you will find them or find out where they are. You're really skilled in that you know"
Offhand, without really thinking about it or pausing to consider the disturbance of memory that the garment causes in him, Teo mentions: "That is one creepy-looking blazer, woman." Offhand.
His physical hand is actually duly occupied with Pila, who is sidling onto the cuff of his jacket sleeve, her tiny, tidily blunted claws nipping tiny dimples into the skin of his wrist as she goes. "I'm not trying to be condescending, so… I… fuckin' hope I don't come off that way. It's just very confusing and fu— troubling to consider how things could have gone differently, with all the abductions. I am responsible for some things. I don't mean Leonard, or his walkabout, but like…" Oh, the week she went missing, and the week that went past before he remembered he was supposed to have called. Such pandemonium. "But grazie," he finishes, awkwardly, as far as his people-finding skills go. Or cleaning up after himself. "Can't do anything but try, eh?
"How about you?" It's a loaded question. It's a simple question. It's a perfectly innocent question. It is a question that refers specifically to the implication of clusterfuck that she left hanging over their heads with Tamara and Cat in the room earlier in the week, but leaves room for further evasion, if she cares for it.
"Isn't it? Fucker is not getting it back" She reaches for a hanger, slipping it onto it. "John Logan brought a bleeding Robert Caliban over last night. Left his blazer. I think it's… Dior?" She peers at the tag. "Nope, Dolce and Gabanna. I sent a note over today to thank him for it. If he wants it back so badly he can come break into my apartment" She just confessed to Teo that she had absconded with the pimps jacket. "I like it. I think it'll look better on me anyways"
And yet, he asks that question and the wicked smile that had been on her face somewhat melts away. "It's uh, it's, I'm I mean, I'm, okay" There's a shrug of shoulders. "Liz took me shopping for clothing and a proper jacket for winter in moscow, and you know, school stuff got sorted and just. You know"
And she can't quite lift her eyes off the creamy white cardigan with it's applique of roses and leave on the upper right side.
"He hit me"
Disbelief. Skepticism. Anger. Sadness. Anger again. It's like the cycles of grief temporally compressed between the thick walls of Teo's skull. His eyes close and open more times than he strictly needs to, and finish with the lids creased, squeezed shut, a burning situation setting up residence in the membranes. There are too many emotions trying to make themselves known on his characteristically mobile features for his characteristically mobile features to know what to do with themselves, exactly.
Neurotic grief takes up a tic in his cheek, and he winds up scoring a callused thumb up and down the edge of his face as if the sandpaper texture of his worn digits could erode the symptom away. Pila fires her wings briefly, whickers a paper pinwheel noise into the air, before landing neatly on his head. Not even that silly farce really puts a dent in the gravitas of the moment, though. Maybe if she pooped in his eye, but even then.
"Was he mad at you or something else?"
"HE was shaking a dying man all over the place and yelling at him. I was trying to make him let go. Probably mad at me" She doesn't even look up to Pila's antics. She refolds the cardigan, unhappy with a crease and so she does it again, fingers and hands working in harmony to make precise folds. It's not that there is something wrong with the way it's folded but it's that her brain is stuck in some sort of loop with regards to it, repeating the same gesture over and over.
"Hid the mark with some make up, except liz came into the bathroom a couple days ago and Leo was with her. So…" You can't hide this stuff from cops. "I told him to heal Francois and get the fuck out of the room and he did. But it still remain, that.. he hit me"
Even with her face down, there's the shimmer of wet, the shine that crosses over her eyes. Of anyone who might understand, who she could talk freely with and feel safe that they won't run off and try to beat the ever living christ - or Francois - out of Deckard, would be Teo. He of all people would understand that quite possibly, it was because of the inhabitant that's been running and ruining his life somewhat that brought about the swing of the hand across his girlfriends face.
"I dont' know what to do. I guess i'm glad that Tamara's giving me this ticket. I can run away for a bit and figure out what to do, you know, after the threat of nuclear war has passed."
In case the class wasn't actually aware of this, Teo thinks that it is a good idea to announce: "That was pretty fucking out of line." Maybe not out of line like nuclear holocausts or viral apocalypses are, but still horrific. It's kind of weird about how she'll duck into Moscow and hunting genocidal terrorists to seek shelter from domestic violence, but life is kind of weird lately, having a small parrot sitting on your head notwithstanding. That's normal, like laundry is normal.
The flowers on the last garment are pretty, where Abby left it folded up tidy and proper, before she ran into trouble with this cardigan situation. Lily of the valley. Stuff. It's kind of gay that he knows that. The urge to smack his head into the nearest piece of furniture is visibly stifled in a sway that stilts a warning cry out of Pila up above. Teodoro is silent for what feels like awhile, staring at the origami mess Abby made out of the jacket.
"Ghost can't go home anymore," he says, after a moment. Scowls, suddenly, scrolling pale eyes up to where Pila's tail is striping silkily down his forehead, her small feet on a march through the nested fluff of his hair. "That isn't an excuse, I mean.
"But he changed the past and couldn't go back home again. Coincidentally, he was a douchebag but even he— I think, even he had people who miss him, back in that future. Who don't know what happened. Think he's dead, wouldn't know why, and… and all that shit. I think that might be why Flint hit you. Not what was inside him, but him. He's stuck with me instead of the Teo he knew, and he sees that in sharper focus than anyone else. He sees a lot of things more sharply than most of us do. He sees the risk you ran, what almost happened, and he sees that you… don't."
Teo's mouth flattens into a thin line, his brow onto a thicker one. He produces a Kleenex out of his breast pocket, belatedly. It's ripped on the corner from haste.
"He wasn't totally a dou-" She's refusing to say the word, even as the kleenex is taken from his calloused fingers with her own so that she can fold it and dab at her eyes. "I don't understand what you mean Teo. Saw what almost happened? That we went back in time with Hiro and plucked up Francois before the vanguard could come crashing through the woods? Teo he didn't even know that, I didn't even tell him any of that just that Francois was in the room and needed healing and that-"
She wipes again at her eyes, folding the knleenex into a small rectangle again. "That if he had any small thread of love for me that he'd heal him."
Hitting chicks is pretty totally douchey, in Teo's perspective of things. Which isn't to say he hasn't done it before, but those weren't his finest moments. It could be funny that she almost says that word because she's Abigail, but his mind's a few degrees too far off-center to sustain that thought.
He offers a hand to take away the soppy square of tissue that's left from drying her eyes. The trash can is closer to his side of the laundry room. "He'dve done it if it was just any man, I think," he hazards to guess, awkwardly. "A Ferry operative. Francois is different, I think.
"I don't know what he knew— but his experiences with time-travelers haven't been very good, 's all. Mine've taught me that the ones that go back in the past to change something have a solid chance of never coming back. I should go talk to him," he recognizes, an irritable scowl scratching sharp lines into his forehead before it smooths with a nervy pulse of thought after a beat, retroactively pawing through the more chronologically sensible progression of emotion. That—
She went back in time with Hiro to pluck up Francois before the Vanguard could crashing through the woods. That seems somewhat dangerous, even outside the weird mechanics of temporal physics. "Did he do it?" Teo asks instead, trying to flatten piecemeal scraps of thought into something continuous.
"Yeah. he did. After he hit me" Abigail surrender the wet fibers to the other man, fingers reaching up to ruffle the topmost feathers belonging to the queen who is crowning Teo's head.
"He did, after I told him to a second time and then get the fuck out" Abigail reaches for the cardigan, abandoning Pila to remain in the Italian's hair and do her thing. "He hit me Teo and I don't know whether I should accept a sorry, or even accept a man who would do that, to me. If they I'll hit you once, they'll do it again. It only takes that one time"
There's always going to be that foolishly bright little picture in Teo's head about what love's supposed to look like, and it does cause problems, but for once the perceived flaw in a relationship is very, very tangibly there, not just some ridiculous inconsistency with fairytale perfection. It's terribly sad. Teo thinks so, and he has developed a fairly strong stomach for tragedy over the past few decades he's managed to aggregate in his lifetimes.
His face falls a little. He finally picks himself up onto a bent knee and a grip shuffled along the edge of the laundry machine, sidling over to sit next to the girl. His onion mass of autumn clothes emanates metabolic warmth, but he doesn't seem bothered by the fact the heat's on, too. "I don't know. Where Ghost came from, you two talked to each other about shit. I mean, Deckard was still pretty fucking quiet, but you talked. And I've always thought the guy he wants to be is the guy that the woman you're gonna be is supposed to be with, which is…" His brow furrows. "Grammatically complicated but only really confusing because he's Flint Deckard and you're Abigail Beauchamp and no one saw that coming.
"I'm probably the least reliable source in the world to tell you when something's too broken to be fixed." Pila shrugs her wings up and pulls her chin down into her cerulean breastfathers, watching Abigail's hands move over the cardigan placidly.
They talked about love once. But it wasn't Teo who she talked about it with, but the fleeting inhabitant who's now grafted here and there to the various cortex's of his mind like attempted breeding of more resilient flora at scientific farms. "Is he too broken?" She lends her head to his shoulder, resting temple against collarbone. "I'm broken and he's.. he's fixing me. But he's.."
Lips press together, inwards, wetted by pink tongue before it disappears back from when it came and she stares off at the hallway walls. "he's depressed, and medication apparently isn't helping. I love him Teo. In a strange way, I love him. Enough that I would move in front of a gun if it meant that he'd get to live, even if he didn't have that gift anymore. But he hit me. For no good reason. Not to save my life, or to keep me from doing something stupid."
"I don't want to leave him. But I should"
There's a fledgling wince at that phrase— no good reason. The existence of those syllables complicates the situation a dozen times over. Teo doesn't really like thinking about what constitutes a good reason to hit Abigail Beauchamp in the face. He brings Pila down in a hand before proping his cheek up on the top of her head, not quite as offended by the pink as some of their acquaintances. Their acquaintance, singular, not plural. "I think he hit you because he thought you already had.
"Done something stupid. Somewhere between conducting dashing rescues from homicidal terrorists in the past and leveraging his love for you to get him to heal somebody he's angry at. If I'dve done something like that," Teo pauses to consider, unaware of the tittering going on behind the Fourth Wall. Coincidentally, he kind of had, once upon a time~ The shift of muscle in his cheek tugs against her scalp tangibly when he crooks a smile. "I think he'dve kicked my ass."
A beat. Teodoro squints, reconsidering. "Maybe not. I think he's only ever really come after me when it was about you."
She could throw up, the turmoil that thinking about this, that worrying, pondering, stressing over the subject of flint and one slap across the face can create makes her sick to her stomach. "Doesn't excuse it" It doesn't. Not in her eyes, not in a thousand other eyes.
"We're wrong for each other, in all the ways that we are right. I love him, from the word Okay, to the way he looks at me when he thinks I'm not looking. The smile he gives me when we're alone and there's no one else and we're just existing and not fighting the world for our little corner. I loved him when I smashed his face in with a flowerpot, I just didn't know it." A fat teardrop falls again, landing on her sleeve, arms resting carelessly, haphazardly in her lap.
"But at what point Teo, is love not enough. How many times can I just… turn a cheek. Ignore that he's… his way of showing it is to… push away. Or that he doesn't know how to"
"I don't know," Teo says, for what feels like the seventhieth time. One of those things that you don't get better at after more practice. Still sounds as lame at the seventieth as it had at the sixth. A cold pall settles over his heart. It's worse, not better, that this is about more than a single blow to the head. The metaphorical camel has been losing the feeling in its hind feet for a long while now. "I think you should talk to him about it, though. Before you leave again.
"This pushing away thing— you're above it. And you'd feel better knowing you tried." Twisting his wrist, Teo manages to stretch the cuff of his sleeve around his thumb, managing to produce a rim of fabric he can skim fretfully at the wet incline of Abigail's cheek. Pila bops closer to her folded knee, craning her striped head to and fro. "Mi dispiace."
She'd feel better if she tried. Maybe. Maybe she'd feel better letting him stew while she prances about in Moscow flitting between inevitable gunfire and bottles of vodka being ordered for the bar. She lets him wipe her cheek while she carefully plucks up the bird, coaxing it to her finger so she can ruminate, think. Deny. Rebuff.
"I don't have time. We leave in two days"
Pila obliges to walk across Abby's fingers, flipping her closed tailfeathers to the right, before swiveling them to the left, lifting her tiny frame each time to avoid banging her about. Unlike her human counterparts, her life and body are manageably diminutive, small enough that she seems to have no difficulty keeping track of where everything is at an given time, and how to avoid unwanted and uncomfortable collisions.
Teo flicks an empty seed husk off the side of his hand. It takes two tries, since the moisture off Abby's cheeks is making it stick a little. "We could die out there. He could die while we're gone." It's ludicrous that there's a substantial probability of either eventuality, but such are their lives. Teodoro persists, tentative but determined. "He lashed out because he loves you, and healed Francois because he loves you. That can't mean nothing. That—that means a lot."
"Leo'd kill me. Liz would too" She points out, the whole talking to him, possibly forgiving him. She tracks the birds path across her hand, turning her fingers this way,t hat, make it a little more complicated and a game for the avian family member. The joint custody that the two of them have with regards to this particular living creature.
But he's right, he's always right. Teodoro knows her heart better than anyone else, and how to jerry rig twine and tape and bubblegum and super glue to get it back to how it should be enough that mother nature will take over the rest of the healing, and father time as well. "He won't come" Even as she's take free hand to point to the phone that's nearby.
You have been applauded.
The phone is subject to a speculative squint from across the room. Teo flails a hand in its general direction, but. It is too far away. "I'll make him come," he says.
A quaver-beat.
"—here," he finishes, after a fractioned lift of a brow.
Unfortunately, the fact that he got his brain recently abbreviated means he isn't aware his chances of success in this department are not only spectacularly slim, but somewhat reduce hers. Maybe. He can't ruminate on what he can't remember, though, so he's left with canary-haired optimism, immune to denial, ignoring rebuff. The idea doesn't scratch or snag, but alternatives come to mind as ridiculously facilely. "Or you could ask Wireless for the coords on his cellphone's GPS chip. She'll probably do it even if you don't formally state it's business. That's half of my house calls, right there, and only a little bit awful, innit?"
"I don't like bothering her. It always feels trivial. Like, I shouldn't be bothering her" Aloof, unattainable technological Israelie princess. "maybe… you could… ask her where it is… Where he is…."
"I don't like bothering her. It always feels trivial. Like, I shouldn't be bothering her" Aloof, unattainable technological Israelie princess. "maybe… you could… ask her where it is… Where he is…." Abigail wheedles, quietly begs.
Teo hesitates. He doesn't know what would be worse: if she took Deckard back because they wanted it despite everything, or if she doesn't, because they don't, or what-they-want has become too mobidly complex a thing to give a result as simple and compact as two. It's one thing to know what's right, and what the moral compass in Abigail's heart is pointing at; quite another to march her off to face the worst it could bring.
On the other hand, they're Moscow-bound, and he as yet has no tangible plans to sabotage her boarding that aircraft. A man can only stand so much hypocrisy! Or so you'd hope. After a moment, Teodoro rustles his hand into his lapel, gets his phone out. The MIDI file bleats in arpeggios of tonal register as he texts out the request, and Wireless' answer isn't long coming.
Killing Minea hadn't changed anything, but he's come to realize that getting between Hana and Pratt hadn't changed much, either. He hadn't really come to grips with where he stood with the technopath's other priorities. It's an uncomfortable revelation, that the dubious honor of being invited along to those ceremonial assassinations had meant that much, and so little. He doesn't know if she would have come as close to killing her Teo, but he knows she would have left him behind.
"Bayview Auto Wreckers. Junkyard— seems like he hasn't moved in awhile. Might be asleep, or working on some IED projects."
Staten Island" It was either that or midtown and far as she knows, there's nothing "bay" About midtown. Unless you want to attribute the ferocity with which it was decimated to a Michael Bay film. Not likely.
"Can you get me there safely tonight? I mean, if things don't go good, I can just stay at the garden, but.." It's Staten, and it's not like she'd be going to a known place, just a place with a known occupant.
Staten Island. Teo merely shifts his eyes up to meet hers by way of confirmation on that point. Si, though, "Si," again when she asks about whether they can go. He reaches over to take the bird out of her hands, pressing a long forefinger to the budgie's chest, Pila tips backward a fraction of an inch before instinct takes over, driving her to scramble her tiny toes up onto the higher perch, crouching for the swift ride back into her cage. Enough exercise for today.
For the smallest of three, anyway. Teo offers the girl a hand. His left, which is unusual given his handedness, but he doesn't explain. "I hope it goes good," he adds, sheepishly, the words awkward with their own weight.
"We'll see" Is all Teo's going to get. Someone has hope and for once, it just doesn't seem to be Abigail as she abandon's laundry in favor of seeking out Flint. Maybe.
Maybe she'll just write him a letter.
Who knows.
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Dell'inesausta tua miseria godi. O forse avventurato è chi s'inganna? Magnanima sei pure, anima nostra; A me la mia miseria è un chiaro giorno Nulla m'è occulto; tutto è sì vicino e tutto in esso, fino l'ombra, è in luce. |
You delight in your unending misery. Or is the self-deceived the lucky one? Still, my soul, you are magnaminous; To me my misery is a bright summer Nothing is obscure to me; it's all right there, and everything on it, even shadow, is in light. |
Umberto Saba,
All'anima Mia (To My Soul)