Participants:
| Scene Title | At Loose Ends |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | What comes next? A lot of people have no idea. |
| Date | January 16, 2019 |
Secure Facility, Kansas City, MO
The facility is not small — it has to host a number of refugees. Although once a head count was done, there are those among the refugee group who didn't make it all the way here either. It's a tough realization. By the third day in the facility, everyone has begun to get the layout settled in their head and can get around easily enough to where they want to go. Briefings on the recent history of this world and therapy sessions and question sessions about the world people have come from are scattered throughout the days. There are a lot of people to get through.
Elisabeth is just coming from one of these things, looking vaguely annoyed. The dining hall is large, and there's always a spread of snacks and sandwich makings and such set out in there. Given the dearth of supplies in the last world, the food here is abundant, if simple and plain fare. The blonde helps herself to a cup of coffee — that is a luxury that has had to be replenished a lot around here. Carrying it back out to one of the sitting areas, she spots Silas there and heads over. "Mind if I join you?"
Silas is slouching in a chair with a coffee cup of his own, staring at an old TV they've got mounted in a corner; it looks like he's watching Blade Runner. As Elisabeth arrives, though, Silas perks up. "Hey! Elisabeth. Sure, by all means," he says, gesturing to a chair. "By the way, don't think I got a chance to say it before, but… welcome home."
"Heh," Liz replies as she plops down in the chair next to him. "Yeah… welcome home. Give us blood, spit, pee, tears, o yeah more blood. Say the alphabet backwards. Tell us all everything so we can shrink your head." Huffing out a soft laugh, she shakes her head just a little. "I'm not bitter or anything, but… damn."
Silas's grin widens as Lis talks, eyebrows rising; he chuckles a bit with her. "Well. Glad you're not bitter," he chuckles, eyes twinkling in good humor. "On the bright side, I do think I like this a whole lot better than the last place we were stayin'. Headshrinkers and all." He turns his attention back to his coffee cup, swirling the liquid inside the cup a bit; there are some questions he's been hoping to ask Elisabeth, but it's not something he really wants to dive into right off the bat. "How's Aurora holdin' up?"
"Yeah, it's a hell of a lot better than an igloo under the ocean," Elisabeth agrees, shooting him a grin at the tease. She takes a sip of her coffee, considering how best to answer. "Right now… she's doing okay. If she holds true to form, it'll take her about a week to settle in before the nightmares kick in." She glances at him, regret coloring her tone. "It wasn't even the first time that poor baby has seen people shot."
Silas nods slowly. "I tried to keep an eye on her in the Ark. After you'd, uh 'died'. 'Course, she already had someone on that; Kain seems to think the world of her," he says, giving Elisabeth a rueful grin.
He is silent for a moment, shifting his gaze to the television; he grimaces. "Still can't believe they had Ford star in this and not Hoffman. I mean, it's been forever since I've seen this, but it's just so different," he says, shaking his head.
He fidgets for a moment longer, then sighs. "Hey, I… realize you're probably pretty tired of playin' twenty questions, but… you mind if I ask you a few?"
She gives him a puzzled look before glancing at Bladerunner attempting to imagine Dustin Hoffman in it. It does. not. compute. Elisabeth shakes that off, and nods slightly, answering the first part first. "When we came through from Cassandra's world to the wasteland, we were under fire. She was with him, and I think she kind of bonded to him. The months in the Wasteland, it just got deeper." She shrugs a little. Taking another swallow of her coffee, she looks at him. "Fire away — ask me whatever you want. I'd rather tell you than them anyway."
Silas nods gratefully, smiling a bit at that. "How many times did you have to… er, jump across worlds? What were those worlds like? And the jumps… were they all…" he cuts off, pausing to take a drink of his coffee. "Were all the jumps like that one?" He visibly hesitates for a moment before asking his last question. "And… did you see anything?"
That's a lot of questions, some of which have longer answers than others. Elisabeth leans back in the chair, sorting them into easier and harder questions. "Well…. all together, including landing here, Magnes and I have jumped 5 times. Kain, Ling, Elaine, and Mateo have jumped 4 times." She stops, because suddenly there's a lump in her throat. Because Mateo didn't make it here. Lynette didn't make it here. "Evie's jumped 4 times. And uhm," she swallows hard. "Lance and his group only jumped the once, when we landed in your world."
She pulls in a breath and takes a moment. "None of the jumps were quite like that one." Her blue eyes study him and she nods slightly. "Yeah… I think I saw a what-if," she admits quietly. "I haven't asked anyone else, but… I suspect everyone did." There's a hesitation. "I don't know if any of us should mention that part. But… there are too many of us to really keep it a secret. I just…" With a grimace, she trails off. "I hope to fucking God no one ever does anything like it again," she finishes.
Silas nods. "Amen to that," he says quietly, raising his coffee cup to Elisabeth. "And yeah, I'm… not exactly planning to tell the headshrinkers about that part; they'd think I'm crazy," he says, lips curling up into an amused grin.
"I'm assuming you didn't have any lightning monsters jump you afterwards on the other legs of this trip, either," he says, his expression twisting into a grimace as he recalls all the death that had accompanied the… monster. Mateo and Lynette, gone; this world's Mad Eve, also gone, along with a number of their would-be greeting squad from SESA. He shakes his head.
"I sincerely doubt they'd think anything you said was crazy," Elisabeth murmurs, the undercurrent of her tone a little on the dark end. But shakes her head. "No… No monster." There is a flash of genuine pain at the thought of what happened to Eve — Eve, who always tried so hard to lead her to the right path. "You know… I don't even know where to start grieving for the people who got hurt in all this. I … just don't."
She blows out a slow breath and then looks up at him. "You asked me what the other worlds were like. In the first one we landed in, a virus had wiped out about 90 percent of the world's population. And the man who engineered it was working on executing any of the rest who were powered. Maybe any of the rest regardless of their status. The second one… was bright and shiny and looked like Eden." She huffs out a soft breath. "Spent five years there, the whole time knowing there was a snake in the garden. The were working on a way to manufacture powers so they could create a powered military. Succeeding, too." She looks down at her coffee. "The third world… maybe not so different from this one, but more exploded. A literal wasteland. Powered people had to be registered, had to have permission to have children, it was very Big Brother. Then there was your world. And now mine."
Silas nods slowly, listening as she talks. "Sounds like you've run across some monsters in your time. Walked through a few different circles of Hell," he says quietly. "But it sounds like in most of those places, you found good people, too. Even if too many of 'em didn't get to see the end of the road with you."
Silas takes another drink of his coffee, eying the TV contemplatively. "But some of 'em did. I did, too, come to that," he says, with a brief glance at Elisabeth and a roguish grin before he looks back to the TV, watching as Harrison Ford dangles over an abyss. "Namiko's gonna get a chance to run around on dry land and grow all the plants she wants. Me? I spent a lot of time, back where I came from, mourning all the people who'd died. Wondering why I was alive, when so many better people were gone. Wishing I'd died instead," he says quietly, before looking up to Elisabeth. "I won't make that mistake again. This is a second chance, and I decided that I'm going to use it well. To live."
He pauses a moment, before again giving that roguish grin. "Don't tell the headshrinkers I said any of that, though. They'll get all anxious and such."
Elisabeth chuckles quietly. "You should probably tell them exactly that, Silas. I have a notion you're probably the most well adjusted of the lot of us," she tells him wryly. She savors a sip of her coffee and comments, "It's been a long seven years. There've been good ones. We stayed in the second world for nearly 5 years before we could get things lined up right to get out of there. I … made friends. Built a career that wasn't cop or soldier." She slants him a glance and grins faintly. "Once upon a time, I headed up an Evo SWAT squad. The Frontline initiative." He asked her why she reacted the way she did, and he finally get that answer.
Silas looks quite amused at her calling him the best adjusted of them. "Well, we're all in trouble then." He blinks as she reveals that she'd been on a SWAT team; not just on a SWAT team, but heading one. "You know… I think I can see that," he says, nodding. Then he frowns as something occurs to him. "Is that what you're going to go back to, you think?"
"No." Elisabeth doesn't even really have to think about that. "No, I'm … tired of living my whole life fighting. That's all I've done for the past ten years… from the day they blew up the high school I was in to the day we got here… I feel like I've done nothing but fight. Or be prepared to fight. I'm … very tired. And I can already see the damage that this has done to Aurora. God willing, good therapists now while she's small will ease all of it." At some point, she's sure Aunt Kaylee will help too. "I'd like her to have a chance at something more than war."
Silas nods. "Fair enough. What are you gonna do, then? Once they let us out of here."
Blowing out a slow breath, Elisabeth shakes her head. "I honestly have no fucking clue," she confesses. When she looks at him, it's with a sort of abashed expression. "So much of my focus has been getting my daughter home to her father…. now that I've accomplished it, I … have to figure out what goals to even have. Maybe I'll go back to teaching. I just do not really know."
She turns the question around on him. "What's something you always wanted to do? Do you think you'll go for it here?" After all, he said he wanted to really live.
Silas grins. "Fair enough." At her question, he looks contemplative. "I dunno. I spent a lot of time before Antarctica blew up doing unlicensed electrical and plumbing work, but I don't think I really want to do that for a living. Maybe I'll open my own restaurant? Or maybe go do private investigations or something." For a moment, a darker expression flickers over his face. "I'm… kinda curious about what the Silas that's from these parts might have been getting up to. If he's still alive."
"Mmm. It's pretty normal to wonder about it," Elisabeth agrees. "But… think of the upheaval, too. If he spots you. Or you're mistaken for him." She shrugs a little. "I've been where you are. I lived in the same city with her… and her father. My father. And I couldn't… turn to him when I needed him. I highly recommend that if you have the option to not be near them, you take it. It was very lonely." She looks into her coffee cup, quiet for a long moment. She's given him more insight into her Self than she's given anyone in a long while. "You asked me what I'm going to do now that I'm here?" She looks up at him and says softly, "I'm going home."
That's what I'm worried about, Silas thinks, remembering again that vision he'd had… but Elisabeth's talk about her father and her other self bring up a whole other can of worms. He seems to slouch a little more, his gaze falling to the bottom of his coffee cup; at last, he closes his eyes and nods.
"Going home, huh," he echoes quietly; when he looks back to her, there's a pained smile on his face. "That was the whole point of this, wasn't it? Why you kept going…" he nods slowly. "I… hadn't even thought about that, honestly. Where I came from… all my family died in the Flood, or… immediately thereafter." He closes his eyes, and for a moment he can see the blood again. He clears his throat to try and dislodge the sudden lump there.
"But… I'm not sure I can just ignore what Hometown Silas has been doing here. I'm a little worried that… if I don't find it, it might find me…"
He takes another swig of his coffee, and discovers that his cup is empty, which is probably perfect timing since Rutger Hauer is just finishing up his Tears in Rain speech and he's probably already way overshared for this evening anyway. "Well, I'd better get moving; I've got another headshrinking session coming up soon," he says with a roll of his eyes and a grin. "On the bright side, supposedly they're gonna be getting some actual food in before long, so I'll be able to cook a meal or two. Hit me up sometime if you get tired of coldcuts," he offers with a grin.
"Anyway. I'm off; catch ya later!"
She watches him pull himself together to leave, and Elisabeth puts out a hand to his forearm just to hold him for a moment. Very seriously, she meets his eyes. "If you need anything… I don't abandon my people. If you don't know where else to look for me, Silas, go to RayTech. He'll know where to find me or he'll help you get whatever you need. Okay?" She's not sure what has him worried the way he is… but to her, it's clear as daylight. And she refuses to let him deal with it along. She lets him go, though, because he looks so uncomfortable. "Goodnight, Silas," she murmurs thoughtfully.