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Scene Title | As Raw As Ever |
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Synopsis | Abigail journeys back to the Island to bring Cash's gift to Huruma and set plans for the future. |
Date | April 22, 2011 |
Bannerman Castle - Huruma's place
Though Huruma does her level best to not keep the baby up terribly late, sometimes- she either does it on her own, or she wakes up in the middle of the night with a fuss that rouses Huruma from nearby sleep. Then again, sometimes she just wakes up in the middle of the night period, and crawls across the sprawl of bedding on Huruma's floor to deposit herself accordingly with the giant woman. You know how it goes.
Tonight, Kasha had crawled her way out of the section Huruma had made for her to sleep on, across the thin mattress, and burrowed her way under the woman's arms, waking her up in the process. But of course, being quite passive with the baby, Huruma didn't really see issue enough to do anything until Kasha was wriggling too much. It was only then that she gathered the almost-one year old up in a fleece blanket and carted her out for a walk amongst the corridors.
The ferry is just getting in, evidently; Huruma knows the signs enough to know it, so she does try to keep to the halls around the living quarters, sauntering along in unhemmed sweatpants and a white tank top that she uses as pajamas here. There is an unsaid rule about not sleeping in your birthday suit, she figures.
On that shipment back to the Island, a large gift in hands, is one well fed and showered Abigail. A day spent with the much older version of what's in Huruma's hands, Good Friday passed with family - so to speak - Abigail is heading back to her more temporally proper one. Hopefully with less crying, likely not. Already someone called her Mrs. Caliban and she had to go below deck to get control of herself. She didn't correct him, she doesn't know whether she'll get around to correcting people. Likely soon enough she will.
But with good being brought in, the dead of night when supplies are run in under the cover of darkness and less likely to be caught, Abigail is making her way down the halls. Intending to see if Huruma is awake and if not, head for her corner of the castle, she's a little surprised at seeing Huruma up and about with kasha. The emotional sinkhole of negativity that she is - nothing like this since the visit to Staten after being saved there - She startles at seeing Kasha awake in the dark womans arms and a weak little smile blossoms around the armful of potted and verge of blooming/blooming gladiolas in hand.
As of late, Huruma's been less likely to have her field outstretched as far as it goes; still, it is up enough that she can at least know if someone is coming around the corner. Just enough, she figures. It serves her well, even with Abby as she comes down the bend and starts down the hallway behind Huruma. The baby is drowsy, visible by her head peeking out of the blanket and onto Huruma's bare shoulder. Huruma is humming something, nothing Abby recognizes, though Kasha seems receptive to the tune.
Abby comes down the hall, the sound of feet and her mind flickering onto the radar causing Huruma to do a half-turn. The pot of flowers cause her to also blink hard a couple of times, as if this might be some sort of trick. But, even while Abby is a black pit of despair- it is still Abby, and for some reason she's brought back sword lilies.
"I hazard a guess that both your emotional state an'th'flowers are 'a long story'." Huruma's voice croaks a little at first, from non-use, settling familiarly into her throat soon enough.
"My emotional state is not something that you can fix" Which is code for don't try, at least not right now, and she's not going to talk about it. "THe flowers though… Trade me, I need to hold her" She needs to hold her, hold her daughter, see if the two smell the same, look for the traces of the elder in the toddler. "She couldn't sleep? I brought a portable crib for her, they're unloading it but it won't be up until tomorrow" Immense desire, aimed at the baby in Huruma's arms. "We need to talk though, but these, are a gift, for you, from our daughter" Our daughter.
"Nini? Eh, I- What, now?" Huruma is not awake enough for this crap, frankly, and most of what Abby infers goes soaring over her head. And that is a lofty place. Kasha pries open her eyelids to look at Abby, attention catching on the bright colors. "She's been sleeping with me. It was not so much not sleeping, as her wanting t'crawl around on me." The dark woman runs a tongue over her teeth and squints at the two girls before sidling over to offer the trade.
"Who gave you these, exactly?" Huruma asks tiredly, the flowers are taken without too much ceremony and Kasha delivered to Abby much more carefully, blankie and all.
"Well, she can crawl all over me" dropping her voice to a whisper out of respect for the multitude of others who are piled behind closed doors to sleep or open ones and for the little girl who is traded for the flowers planted in the tin bucket that she carted here for Huruma. "Her name is Deanna Cash, she worked at the Corinthian and she needs me to tell you something that I hadn't told you yet and wanted me to make sure that you get those." Abby gathers Kasha up, smiling at the little blonde haired tow headed girl, seeing it here, there, the eye's everything all together. Makes her bite down on her lower lip to keep her eyes from watering, planting a kiss on kasha's cheek. "So pretty you are"
She looks up to Huruma. 'lets go to your room, conversation better kept for closed doors"
The era where Huruma was in and around the Corinthian was not too long ago, but long enough for her to pause a moment to recall it. She seems to understand, leaning her chin down to put her nose along the edge of one of the spiny plants. Hm.
"Yes, I remember her, I think. She'd asked me what my favorite flower was." Which, apparently, she remembered, and for some reason sent with Abby. An awful lot of trouble to go through, isn't it? Makes her want to know how Abby knew her too. Small world. "It's back near the front there, near Benjamin and Griffin." Huruma gives Abby another stare before moving back down the hall. There is a purpose to her being clumped with them- with the heavy hitters at the fore of the quarter areas, anything hostile will essentially need to go through them first. A precaution, even if unintentional, gives everyone else some more peace.
Abigail doesn't talk until they get to the room, taking the time to juggle her pack and Kasha, tilt the baby so that she can slope her against her upper arm and smile down at the baby. In the midst of all that despair and guilt, depression, there's that light that clearly, comes at the sight and touch, the feel of the baby in her arms.
When they get there, she's carefully getting the pack off, kicking off boots and clearly deciding to spend the night here where Kasha and Huruma are. "The dreams, the ones that show us things, from the future, from a future. I had one. It was while I was in the infirmary." ABigail's shedding clothing so that she can get down to getting Kasha back to sleep instead of crawling around. THis consists of dancing, to some unheard tune, swaying the nigh unto toddler to try and get her to lower her lids a little.
"Kasha grew up, a beautiful young woman with dark hair, and grey blue eyes and her nose so strong like it is" The nose that Abby runs her finger down. "And she married Lance. But lance was killed during a patrol, and I was called to take care of Kasha, take care of my daughter while she washed the blood and dirt off her husband" Sorrow, as palpable now as it was in the dream. "And I held her and told her it would never stop hurting. She turned into stone, because it was easier to deal with it" Abigail looks over at Huruma.
"He calls her Cash, because Kasha is too unusual a name. Kasha Deanna Beauchamp, but you know her, and I knew her as Deanna Cash, the woman who worked in the rose garden in the Corinthian. She asked me to tell you, that she loves you, loves what you did for her and that she loves her name that you gave her"
Huruma's quarters is an awful lot like camping out, and she allows Abby to essentially do what she pleases with what is on hand; the flowers are put on the lone wooden box turned on its head for a table. The tall woman puts herself down against one wall, long arms perching on her knees. She settles in and listens, her ability monitoring both Abigail and the child, and her eyes hooded enough to never betray a reaction during.
Things seem to make a lot more sense, at the end. Even the dreams, aside from the bittersweet fact that she knows she dies before Kasha is an adult. That the girl didn't know her for those fresher years, her presence likely to be relegated to childhood. Huruma puts her knees down, mouth turning down at the edges, arms unsure of if they want to cross or fold in her lap. Her brow is knit, slightly upwards rather than an angry downwards. Did she tell Abby about her own?
"Benjamin, Megan and I had a dream that I was dying. I don'know if you knew. But if your words are true, she was not able t'know me long." Huruma rubs a palm over her forehead, kneading a moment at her eyes, as they roam to look at the flowers, longing. "What you are telling me puts things into better perspective." Even down to that weird veneration she had gotten from Cash at the Corinthian Garden. The L-word makes a great many things more weighted.
"I figured, that something happened to you. That she wasn't able to tell you all this in her own time" In her own way. The gift of the flowers. Kasha reigns supreme, half reclined in Abby's arms, cradling her head on her upper arm, Kasha's shoulder tucked under Abby's arm, and hand clutching at her layers of shirt, plucking up a soother and easing it into Kasha's mouth.
"She says that things have changed enough, some things may not happen. Hiro Nakamura once told me that by simply knowing the future, we can change it. Or we steer it right on it's same path, it's a very fickle, very malleable thing"
Which means, when Abby looks over to Huruma, there's determination in her face. "I'm not going to let my daughter go through what I'm going through, with her husband Huruma. And you are going to know this little girl and watch her get married to Lance, even if it kills me. What we've seen, what we've witnessed, it's for a reason, I'm sure of it, so that we change it, so we can save the ones we love from going through that again. Joseph dying, Tania marrying Logan, Kasha burying her husband, burying you and anything else that others have seen"
It is something to be said, when Abigail is able to take the words out of Huruma's mouth before she is even ready with them in her head. She does not have anything else to say. One arm lifts out to bend and pluck one of the gladiolus buds that are open to the room, and she puts the cream and pink bloom to the undercurve of her nose, pupils dilated in the thoughtful expression on the rest of her face.
After a while of watching Abby and the baby, Huruma does speak, lungs inhaling a hearty breath and letting it out with her smooth voice. Her hand remains twirling the flower bud on her lap. "You should sleep too."
"I should" Which is what Kasha is doing through this all, eyelids dropping down… down… down.. till they flutter closed even though abby still sways the nigh unto one year old. "I'm afraid to" Not because of what dreams she thinks might invade. If they come, they come and it's more to help Kaylee with, to pool it all and make heads and tails of it all.
She doesn't speak right away, reveling in the smell of Kasha - nothing like that of her older self while she was held through the previous night by her - looking back over to Huruma. "He's divorced me"
The source of everything black in the woman. "He's left me, for another woman, 'not a doe eye'd darling child from Butte La Rose" her head wobbles upwards as she says it, a soft lilt to it, anger and hurt and things still fresh. Then she reigns it in, keeps the heat tamped like she's been doing. There will be time to burn it off later. "Who he can touch, and he can hold, and he can make love with and can take around his world and show off instead of saddled with a terrorist that he married… for whatever reason that he married me, who isn't in hiding"
Huruma listens to this too, despite her state of relaxation against the wall, and the distraction of Kasha vs. Cash in her head. "I see." Maybe she actually does- in her mind's eye- the girl's despair is so palpable that Huruma did remark on it first thing. "If he could not treasure you, he did not deserve you."
"You are too good of a woman for men like that- especially ones as foolish." She will maintain this for ages to come, as well. It was no secret that she was so-so about Robert Caliban, and that was just while Abby was dating him. "I know you loved him, Abigail, but sometimes love does not love us wholly in return." This is a topic that Huruma is not terribly experienced with, though it is obvious that she is trying her best without resorting to what Abigail told her not to do.
"No. I'm not meant for a man like that" She whispers, forefinger stroking along Kasha's cheek, her straight hair capping her head. "I am a doe eyed girl from Louisiana, who had no business falling in love with a man from the city and from so different place than me Huruma" She shakes her head, hauling back in on a sniffle, even as she's starting to move over to Huruma, sink down so carefully and slowly with the little sleeping princess, share her warmth with Huruma, share that baby smell.
"I love him still. I told her, in the dream, when she lost Lance and asked for them to get me, that it hurts, that it will never stop hurting" She shakes her head before leaning against Huruma, closing her eyes. "Never again Huruma. If I fall head over heels for someone, say his name. Remind me what happens, what love has cost me. I don't want to go through this again and I won't" Her daughter may have the literal heart of stone and figurative after the loss of Lance, but Abigail's going to start sharing that too in common.
When Abby comes over, Huruma loops her arm around those slim shoulders, eyes watching the lantern flicker against the wall. Even living in these conditions, her frame and the weight of her arm is still the same- some things never change.
"If I feel I need to protect you from such a thing, I will." Huruma, however, appreciates leaving herself some semantic loopholes for later dates. Just in case she does find someone, and Huruma sees it in him that he is a faithful and valiant enough person for her- she does not want to be stuck behind an old promise to not let Abby be with someone. Emotions are complex, that much she is an expert on. And she knows that Abby's are as raw as ever.
"You only… worry about doing what you need to, miss mom."
Huruma is not Robert. Not Cash, not her mother, her father, not Francois nor Teodoro. Somewhere, parked with a family is Rhett who will seek out his mistress in the morning when she comes to find him. But Huruma is a friend, the woman who is going to help her raise this baby, along with everyone else in the Family Ferry.
'We'll be worrying a lot"
We, not I. "Lets sleep. I'm going to need your help to do it" She'll seek out someone in the medical end of things, see if there's anything chemical wise to help her sleep from this night onwards, just a little help. But tonight, she's going to rely on Huruma, the scent of the baby between them and the flicker of the lamp.
"We're mothers"
"I'd prefer t'be called 'godmother', but, whatever floats your boat." Huruma peers down at them, running her palm over Abby's blunt brown hair, letting her have a measure of calm to seep through her head into her bones. "Whatever th'case may be- barring me screwing this one over, I think she is in good hands." The dark woman reaches across the floored bedding to drag one of the rogue down pillows nearer, dropping it back down where it belongs.
Now, where were they before Kasha woke up and started playing gopher? Ah, that's right, sleeping.