Participants:
Scene Title | Already Famous |
---|---|
Synopsis | i’m already—i’m already—i’m already—i’m already— |
Date | July 8, 2021 |
In the pre-dawn hours, little sounds carry far. Elliot made none as he entered. As he showed a lacquered black coin to reception, the receptionist had merely handed him a key and returned, afraid, to a well loved novel. He hadn't smiled to put her at ease.
He hadn't made any noise as he greased the key with a pencil, or when he turned it in the lock and slowly opened the door. Hadn't made any sound when he checked for exits, likely weapon stashes, or when he pointed to a corner, half shadowed, for Gracie to stand. Hadn't made any sound when he confirmed the location of the target, or when he sat at the kitchen table and drew Elliot's silenced pistol to point it at the bathroom door.
The sounds of a man waking, rousing, rising carry through the door to the man holding a gun in a relaxed grip. He idly strums at cracks warped away from the veneered surface of a particle board table. He breathes evenly and quietly, calm and unmedicated. He's been here before; lying in wait in a father's home for a chance to take the father's life. It didn't bother him the first time. He doesn't know if it will bother him now.
It's complicated. He's changed since the last time he murdered a man, even accounting for the Epiphany. It's further complicated that the man he's here to kill—a man who murdered a child—is Wright’s father. More complicated yet, he's the father of an alternate timeline version of Wright. He feels her rage either way; doesn't begrudge her confusion. Understands why the alternate Elliot would even ask him to do something so personal.
A Hostel
New Chicago
3:00 AM
July 8th
The last complication is Gracie. She's the right height to stand in for Wright, but that's only part of why Elliot asked her to come along. This isn't just about making Gregory feel completely alone and betrayed when he dies, though it is about that. Elliot brought Gracie here to turn her.
Converse to Elliot, Gracie had made noise, her footfalls deliberate, meant to be noticed as she stepped through the door and toward the place Elliot pointed her to. She’d managed to borrow some clothes from Nadira, helping to make her silhouette a little less like her own and more like Wright’s. Long pants, a dark coat, a stocking cap worn over the curls bundled and pinned to her head so as not to give her away. Not immediately anyway.
She doubts her ability to do a very good impression of a woman she’s never met in person.
Her shoulders are tense, hands stuck in her pockets to keep them from trembling. She’s also deliberate in the way she doesn’t glance toward where Elliot lays in wait. Not for reassurance, not to look for signs of warning. But she’s not holding an ability now. She’s just a girl in over her head, as usual.
Bait hanging from a hook.
Gregory, for his part, could swear he heard something– but he's always hearing something. The sound of his rousing in the bathroom gave noise, until it didn't. He listened with intent for the sounds of life beyond the bathroom door, swears he heard something, swears he hears something. In the dim where he sits, he makes not a sound of his own as he swallows hard. There's no sound of the something terrible. Whoever made their way into his little hideaway, they– they probably weren't the type of thing that couldn't be killed with a bullet.
It gives him some relief. He checks the rifle's chamber again as quietly as he can, takes special care to deaden the sounds of his shifting as much as possible as he comes to his feet…
Then strides out the open bathroom door with the rifle drawn to his chest and face, his eyes crazed but focused, muzzle of the gun seeking first shape he finds, which is Elliot's in the kitchen. He has the trigger all but pulled with a seize of breath to steady himself before he realizes who his gun is pointed on.
And his expression breaks on recognizing who he sees, the intensity he holds the gun with failing.
His finger leaves the trigger and guard entirely, and the muzzle of the rifle sags down as he lets out an incredulous, broken laugh. "Ah, fuck," Gregory growls out with that bewildered chuckle. "It's been a while since you showed up." He considers Elliot for only a moment – finds in that glance something he finds to be amenable rather than of danger to him. "At least you're armed. Good. Good." He lowers his rifle entirely, sounding tired again. The entire time, he keeps his voice low, like to not be heard by something else listening. "That'll help if it comes."
The Gregory Tracy of this world has given up on keeping himself up with the same grooming as the other, the wisps of hair around his head unshorn and unkempt. He's dressed in a long black coat worn over dark layers, his boots still impossibly military. Maybe he found himself various pairs over the years. He blinks in a flutter, like he doesn't entirely believe his eyes– but Elliot's still there when it's done, and he doesn't question it further, only shakes his head. "–ere's my hat?" he mutters, and looks past Elliot to the armchair, where a black, wide-brimmed gambler is angled off the back of it.
Impossibly, he doesn't seem to notice Rue standing in the corner in plain eyesight in the corner beyond the chair. His eyes stay almost pointedly on the hat he means to collect, and he turns to retrieve it.
"You'll help me, won't you?" he asks in the same raspy low as the prior thought. "Or are you not that kind of phantom this time?"
Elliot isn't sure why he hesitates on pulling the trigger; he's relieved when Gregory lowers the gun. His own finger never leaves the trigger, the gun doesn't stop tracking his target.
He wonders if this is what Wright’s father looked like when they dug him out of a bunker to give him the opportunity to rat on his war criminal friends. They weren't there for that one, unfortunately. And this Gregory is clearly broken by life. By Bastian.
“I'll help,” he says softly, wondering how much dream logic he can use on this shadow of Wright’s father.
this room just keeps getting smaller
keep me five foot three and no taller
but i'm feeling larger than life
while i'm forced to fall back in line
“We need to get to the remnant government,” he continues quietly, as though someone is listening. “Can you get us to them? I think we'll be safe there.” His eyes soak up all of Gregory's movements, alert in case he needs to end this early to protect Gracie.
When the door opened initially, Gracie had tensed further, shoulders tight and hunching together toward each other, toward her ears, as though that might create some density that would protect her from fists, or that rifle.
It can't. It won't.
She breathes out slowly. Does Tracy not see her? She's not a small woman. She's not entirely shrouded. That's kind of the point.
As she listens, she wonders, does he not think she's real? If he's so plagued by phantoms, maybe he thinks his daughter is one.
Her hands are shoved deeper into her pockets, her shoulders up with purpose this time, like bracing against a cold wind. Or a particularly distasteful task. Does she continue to keep her back to them as if to send a signal of disdain for whatever they're planning?
In the end, Gracie finds herself turning her head just enough to see Elliot out of the corner of her eye, the movement made slowly enough so as not to cause her collar to rustle as she does it and give her away. This would be so much easier if she were in the network.
Neither of them want that.
Gregory takes hold of his hat, crushes it down atop his head. Sees or feels Gracie turn in his periphery to look back at Elliot, and so does he as a result. He seems a little more centered now, thoughtful, and shakes his head once.
"That's a long time to be in the open to get there," he says a little more slowly. "And a bad place to lead it, even if it doesn't find us on the way. Those french fries don't know what it means to fight it."
He hesitates, looks out the broken window through which moonlight bathes them all. Takes a sidestep when he realizes it touches him, too, and steps back into the safety of shadows. "I don't know," Gregory reconsiders, suspicion and unease coming over him. "Night is better for travel; maybe we can… make it a good distance before sunrise. But it's still not safe there, if we go back to…
"Does it matter?" He suddenly cuts himself off to ask and he looks off at nothing, shoulders hunching. "If you found me here, the Minotaur is probably on your heels. We should go. We should go. Even if this is just a dream, we should…"
There's some frustration now. Is this a dream? Is it real? Why would Elliot be here if it weren't a dream, though.
"We'll just go," Gregory decides. "And we'll see where the night takes us. You, me, and bumblebee."
Elliot doesn't take his eyes off of his target to catch Gracie's, it's too important to track the man with the gun. He shudders at the mention of the Minotaur, and takes a moment to process what it could mean that Gregory has one. The minotaur inside the Palace might be the dislocated consciousness of Bastian; this world's Bastian couldn't have pulled the same trick without a stable mindscape to inhabit, could he? How fucked up is Gregory's mind?
by the room and the place and the people
by a man in a house with a steeple
don't like the sentence i'm given
by the court of public opinion
When Gregory refers to Gracie—successfully mistaking her for Wright—as Bumblebee, Elliot’s eye twitches in annoyance. “I haven't seen the minotaur in years,” Elliot says, a half truth. It isn't correctly considered a visual experience, especially now that it's red. “You think it could really do that much damage to them? How many people are there? Where are they even hiding?”
All Gracie does in response to Gregory’s notice, the nickname she realizes is leveled at her — must be Wright’s — is make a soft, but gruff scoffing sound and turn her own face away from his notice to look out the window.
Hazel eyes close and she wills herself not to shudder. She can’t sense where Gregory is, and that makes him all the more a danger to her. Letting out a deep breath slowly, inaudibly, her shoulders relax as she metaphorically places her trust in Elliot’s palms and closes his fingers around it.
They have a rapport. She made sure of that the moment she laid eyes on him and knew who he was, where he was from. Above and beyond that, even if the truth she’s given him has shattered whatever trust he may have in her, she has use to him this way. He will protect her because it benefits him if nothing else.
That’s a circumstance she’s familiar with. Fingers come up and scrub at her right eye reflexively, a phantom sensation. Gracie nods imperceptibly when her fingers come away clean.
Gregory is in the process of getting the last of his things together, slinging a mostly-empty bag by the armchair's side over his shoulder. It's a durable, army green ruck, giving off the sounds of what sounds like two cans clinking together at its bottom, along with the ruffling of papers also shoved in its capacity. When Elliot presses again, he realizes that the two of them are on different pages.
He glances back to "Wright", then to Elliot once more. Bag over shoulder, he adjusts his rifle in front of him, holding it by its stock and grip with both hands.
"Are you real?" Gregory asks with growing suspicion. Whatever haunts him, it's never asked him about that, it'd appear. His brow starts to furrow. "And what interest you have in that, anyway?"
“I don't know,” Elliot says, as though only just realizing he should ponder his own reality. “I haven't been stuttering, so maybe not.”
He's not very confident that he will be able to get anything out of the old man. He won't push it. The rustling of papers in the duffel are a possible Plan B in that regard. It's important information, but it isn't why he came here. He shouldn't draw this out.
i got a lust for life
won’t settle for this nineteen fifties housewife type
i know you thought i might
like you choosing what i wear and what i like
“I need you to put the gun down,” he says. “You're scaring Wright.”
"She should be," Gregory challenges aggressively in return. "We're not safe." He starts to turn to her, but it clearly stutters and stops, a frown deepening. He holds onto the gun more tightly, even if it's not done aggressively. It's an object to channel whatever he's undergoing. His eyes dart back to Elliot, narrowing. "I'll keep her safe. Can you say the same?"
Gracie’s eyes widen and it’s all she can do to keep from turning an accusing glare to Elliot for drawing attention to her. She drops her shoulders, dips her chin in toward her chest and tilts her head, telegraphing her frustration with the situation. If she’s too deliberate about facing away from him, he’s going to start questioning her identity beyond whether or not his entire reality is… What she and Elliot want it to appear to be.
If she could have had more of a crash course in mimicking Wright…
She has to get out of here. With the careful blocking of someone who spent a lot of time on a stage, Gracie pivots in a way that carries her away from Gregory on a trajectory that feels natural, but keeps her obscured from him. He’s questioning the nature of his reality, but he expects Wright to be who he thinks she is, even if he thinks she’s not real. The mind is fantastic at filling in blanks when it thinks it already knows what it’s seeing.
Although her shoulders are hunched up again, she keeps her stride purposeful. "Wright" knows exactly where she’s going and she’s tired of waiting.
And that movement makes Gregory abandon his suspicion, his readiness with his weapon straightaways. He doesn't gasp, but he tenses to turn and look after her. "Bee, no," he tries to warn her, but off she goes. One hand releases the rifle entirely, leaving him only to hold it by its stock. Turned as he is, his expression is harder to see due to his hat and the shadow from it, but his voice carries enough distress anyway for them both to guess what it might look like. "If you're not careful, it'll–"
And his feet begin to move, to scramble to follow after.
With the sudden pivot, Elliot has to react quickly and through a rage. How fucking difficult is it to say ‘Wright?’ From the time Gregory and Barb showed their faces at the group home looking for someone to mold into a terrible composite of themselves, Gregory clearly never liked her name. He’d never say it explicitly, he’d just never say it. Janelle only provoked hostility, Wright loves her name, even though it isn’t a girl’s name,” Gregory complains. “Hell, it isn’t even a first name.” At least that wasn’t as infantilizing as Bumblebee.
The only thing that was ever important to Gregory, in Elliot’s recollection, was obedience and legacy. The daughter they couldn’t have, who turned into the woman they can’t even tolerate. He wonders briefly if the local Wright is as shamefully not heterosexual. It doesn’t matter. His Gregory stole a child, this Gregory murdered one. He keeps that close to heart as he acts; Gregory is looking away from him now, and the gun has never lost its target.
i got a lust for life
but i was raised right
raised ladylike
taught to know my place
and i'll bake the best cake that you've ever seen
but fuck the top tier
i'm
the
Figurine
“God damn it, Dad,” Elliot says, firing three rounds from the silenced pistol into the old man’s ribcage. He stands from his chair at the kitchen table, so like where he’d sat the day Bastian’s father died.
As Gregory turns away from Gracie, he doesn’t seem surprised that the rifle becomes too heavy, that his body does. That he drops painfully to his knees and coughs blood onto himself and the floor. He looks up at the specter of Elliot. No, he thinks, not a specter. He understands now, until he doesn’t.
“My name,” Elliot says, leveling the pistol to the dying man’s forehead, “is Wright.” He doesn’t let his father comprehend this new confusion, pulling the trigger and letting him carry the secret to hell on a bullet.
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
To Gracie’s credit, she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t jump or whirl around, she just stops. Her back to what she can imagine is unfolding behind her, her eyes are wide and scanning left and right as though she might still see it playing out anyway. She waits until she’s sure it’s Gregory crumpling and not Elliot.
…Or not?
Taking her hands out of her pockets, she turns slowly finally, not looking down for the body — or what will be one shortly — but to the one who brought her here. “What,” and she cannot stress this enough, “the fuck?”
“It’s exhausting pretending to be someone you’re not,” the man whose name is Wright says, a bit of uptalk seeming to turn the statement into a question.
“Don’t you agree, Rue?”
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name
gonna take my place
get to know my face
i'm already famous
better scream my name