Participants:
| Scene Title | Charity In New York |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Delia finds herself on the receiving end of charity. |
| Date | January 24, 2011 |
Kincaid's Apartment
Much of the first night was not spent sleeping. The smell of coffee brewing filled the front rooms of the apartment, as Kincaid cleaned up everything, putting things into boxes that he had in the closet. It's not just Carrots that he needs to be concerned about some people finding in his apartment, after all. The worry hadn't even hit him until the younger, smarter, more cautious woman mentioned the possibility.
All the while he's checking his phone, waiting for a good time, and then leaving a message on the other side. He didn't think he'd get through, but that there was a way to leave a message had been a relief.
"Hello, sir, this is… we met over coffee… The message you asked me to pass along— it's safe with me right now. Call me back at this number when you get the chance."
closing his phone, he bites down on his lower lip again and winces. He needs to stop that habit until it heals, or it never will, and walks over to the bedroom door, knocking softly before opening, but avoiding looking in too much, in case the knock wasn't enough warning. "You awake? I may have gotten through to your dad. I left a message." A vague one, just in case.
A quick glance up in Kincaid's direction and Delia's tucking her iPad under the blanket to hide whatever it was she's doing. There's a little bit of a guilty expression on her face and the wane smile she gives the door is telltale of her squeemishness. She doesn't even know this guy. "Uhm… yeah, awake. I'm awake." There's a little tremble in her voice as she straightens blankets around her the best she can and sits up in bed while tugging on a sweatshirt.
"And dressed… you can come in if you want." Not knowing the propriety in these situations, she's a little nervous. That same wane smile is on her face when he actually comes in enough to look at her. Unfortunately, her unruly curls are still that… very unruly. "Y-you called Dad? What did he say?" Then it registers that Kincaid didn't actually talk to her father. "Oh.. left a message. That's— pretty usual."
She hasn't seen him in months. "Eileen said he's off doing something important." Which is a passive aggressive way of saying, he's doing something more important than visiting her.
While he was avoiding looking, Kincaid caught a brief glance of that iPad getting moved. "I'm sure whatever he's doing he thinks it will protect you and others in the end. Dads like to think they know what's best, without ever really thinking of how it makes people like us feel," he says with a small hint of a smile tugging on the corner of his mouth. A sad one.
The door opens more, allowing him in, and the sight of her still clothed and looking as if she hasn't even attempted sleep makes him glad he turned on some music when Ingrid stopped by and did most the talking in the hall.
"Even if you're dad doesn't get back to me, we're going to have to move you somewhere else, in case they decide to investigate the entire office." Conspiracy theory!!! "I've found another short term place, but if your dad calls back, I think you should probably go with him. He's your dad."
Her eyebrows knit together and her shoulders sink in defeat. Hanging her head, she just nods silently as her fingers try to find the iPad hidden under the covers. "If— if I go with him… It'll— I'm not well enough to live where he lives. I can't go up and down stairs and there's a lot of them there. It's cold and drafty and— " She swallows and gives her host a meek smile and nods.
"There's nowhere else, is there? When is Brad coming back? When can I go back to Brad's?" She looks up again at Kincaid and scrunches her nose. A grimace forms her lips and the worry in her eyes as they drop to her legs and follow the slim lines to their ends. "I was doing pretty good at Brad's place. There's a swimming pool and I could go every day. I was going to go to the gym next week to try weights… If Doctor Brennan says it's okay."
"You likely won't be able to go back to Brad's, what I told you was the best possible scenario, and I don't think it will go that well," Kincaid says with a grimace, looking rather guilty as he glances down toward his feet. There's no pool in this apartment building for her to use, and it won't be the easiest recovery in the world, though the mention of Doctor Brennan forces a frown back in place. One of worry.
"I'll see if I can come up with other options with my friends, something that'll be better for your recovery, but… you won't recover any better if certain people find you and…" The worst case scenario. He grimaces and leaves it off there, gripping the door frame with his scarred hand. "Doctor Brennan knew where you were?"
Nodding, the grimace disappears from her face and one corner of her lips lifts into something of a sheepish expression. "Yeah… Him and his wife were doing my physio therapy, helping me get better. Him mostly… I was going to their house a few times a week. I guess it's their kids playroom, really, but they have all the same things that Brad got me at the apartment." Meaning children's toys.
"Can I ask a question?" More confusion from 'Carrots' as she's now called. "I don't mean to be— I don't know— Sound ungrateful— But your friends? Why would they help me? It's safer for them if they don't. What if I called one of my friends to see about staying with them?" Not that she has many to call… if they even have phones.
"Most of my friends are in enough trouble if the wrong people come along, I think most of them can handle a little more," Kincaid says quietly, glancing out of the room and into the rest of his apartment. "I haven't been packing things into boxes since we got here to hide them from you. If they decide to drop in on my apartment there's a lot of things I'm not going to want to explain."
She'd seen maps on his table, articles clipped up on a poster board, but it could have been research for the show. But if he's hiding it maybe it's not research for the show after all. Or research he doesn't want them knowing he's done.
"I'd feel better knowing the people who you're staying with, but if you know you can trust someone and have someone to call…" Though he looks hesitant himself, dark eyes showing emotion. "My— Your brother asked me to take care of you."
"Oh." Delia follows his gaze out the door and then shifts her attention back to the man himself. "You uhm… must like your job a lot to put up with the crippled sister of your boss." The short laugh that follows is more the kind used when acknowledging self depreciation. "Are you guys— uhm… You're friends of my dad's too? Like friends with his friends? Or something like that… I don't know." She doesn't know the proper covert term for Ferrymen, everything she's heard so far seems a little too— dumb.
"I could call Nicole, maybe see if I could stay with her. There's a couple of people that I could call— I think. I mean, they're all with the same people, you know?"
"Some of my friends are friends with his friends," Kincaid says, before he suddenly laughs, realizing that's a tongue-full of friends and finding it funny. He hasn't slept yet, so maybe that's part of the funny. "But they're recent friends, helped out in a bind when they needed it, kind of like you. It was during the riots, specifically," he says with a shrug, as if…
"I was lucky. I was in a safe place and didn't get forced into evacuating anywhere, and I was able to find a job after. I owe K and your brother a lot for helping me out." Even despite his leave of unexpected absence after Christmas Eve…
"Nicole may be difficult to, due to the publicity that anyone connected to Russo is going to receive over the next few months. His fiancee may be as carefully scrutinized as he is… Especially if she has anything to hide."
There's a pause. "Is Brennan with them too?"
Figuring they're talking about the same friends of friends, hard not to figure that out, Delia shakes her head. "No, he's not… He works at the Suresh Center and with the bogeyman. Who isn't actually a bogeyman, I guess, he can be nice. Doctor Brennan was going to ask him to teach me some things. Like knocking before going in— to someone's dreams." Pulling the iPad out from under the covers, she puts it on her lap to reveal what she's been doing almost all morning.
Pocket Frogs
"I just don't want to go anywhere that doesn't have power or that I can't bring my— my iPad. See I'm almost done all the collections and catching the flies helps my fingers. Plus there's so much more I can do with it. There's a brain game too… It's helping me a lot with talking." Though she won't be learning any more Spanish now that she's no longer with Rosa and Russo. "It's cold out there." The vague implication of where isn't revealed.
"Suresh Center… that's not at all a safe place for you," Kincaid says with a grimace, not liking that idea at all, and perhaps seeming to take on that overly protective stance. "I understand the idea of losing everything that you know is scary, but… It's going to happen eventually, Delia. The way things are going…" he trails off.
After a long moment, he finally makes a decision and nods. "How about this. If your dad calls me back, I'll tell him what you need to recover. Somewhere warm and comfortable, with electricity, and preferably ability to use your iPad. Until he can promise you that, you want to stay somewhere that has that. But you have to realize that you won't always be able to have the comforts you're used to."
"I know, it's just important right now." Delia admits in a rather low tone. "I was going to turn myself in, because I'm too weak to go back and I didn't want Brad to get into any trouble. Now there's the flu to worry about— " She stops and looks back at Kincaid, the expression on her face borders on fear. "I'm vaccinated against the one from last winter… but if I get it, I'm as good as dead. I'm scared of even catching a cold right now. That's why I don't want to go back there right away. I'd be sitting in the infirmary all day every day and I wouldn't be able to go anywhere. There's nothing that could help me get better."
The redhead glances down at the iPad and flips away the frogs to reveal a screen full of different apps that she's gathered to help herself in some fashion or another. "The iPad is just another piece of physio, it's small and handy and I can do a lot of things with it. It's not as important though, I could figure other things out to do if I didn't have it. You know?" Then she glances down at his hand and frowns a little. "Sort of like being addicted to an ability, except it's a little machine. I could do other things, but this is just faster and easier."
"It's funny, a friend of mine just told me today that he got me one of those. I still haven't picked it up yet," Kincaid says with a laugh, as if the timing itself is pretty funny, especially to him. Addictive little machines, for catching flies and learning languages.
And there's that disease. "I understand worrying about that. I intend to get vaccinated as soon as possible myself. Thank god for a registration card… but you definitely shouldn't turn yourself in if you have another option. Your brother won't disappear strictly because he's too well known— they won't tuck him away into a box somewhere. Instead they're more likely to give him a choice. Freedom with a leash. They may even have him as a public example of the negation drug they were just talking about on his own show…"
Conspiracy theories are fun, and he has a lot of them.
"But you… there's nothing to stop them from making you disappear."
"I saw the episode last night," Delia says quietly as she looks down to her iPad again. "I won't be able to see him again for a long time, will I?" There's a certain sadness in her voice, as though she's lost nearly everything she has in one bit of an hour. "After I just found him… We were getting to know each other."
Averting her eyes to the window, she chews on her lip for a while before addressing the assistant producer again. "Why would they put me in a box? I can't do anything— Nothing dangerous to normal people. I can't even control people who've taken refrain very well." She made one little girl scream and made a woman slap herself, but that's about it. "Mostly, I can just find them."
"And you know some people who they'd very much like to find, your father included," Kincaid says, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, and finally reaching to touch her hand with his scarred palm. "My power is harmless too, but I didn't get these scars because I thought women would find them attractive." There's a pause, then he lifts his hand up again and tugs down the collar of his shirt enough to show another set of scars along his chest and shoulders.
Then he turns away, to show another set on the back of his neck, usually hidden by the high collared shirts he wears. Right along the cervical spine. These look like surgery scars.
A medical student may not be able to think of surgery that would cause for that, or be done so crudely. It's as if a first procedure was done cleaner, right against his spine, and a second one was done more roughly in the same place.
Once he's sure she's seen them, he lets his hand drop back down toward her upper arm, and looks back at her. "All I can do is control my own nervous system. Take away my own pain. I used to be able to heighten my senses to extreme levels, but… now it takes most my ability just to keep from being in pain all the time. I'm just lucky the people who would be looking for me don't know I'm here— don't know the name I'm using, or what I've registered under. Here I'm safe… but I do know what they're capable of."
Delia's eyes roam the expanse of scars and her eyebrows furrow as she searches her memory for what kind of proceedure would be the cause of such extensive scarring. There's none that she can recall off the top of her head. "Experiments? Who was experimenting on you? What kind of— " She stops herself more with a choke of words than voluntary.
"What kind of monster could do that to another person?" The question is asked a little quieter than the outrage that was halted. "Was it the Institute? The people looking for my dad?" Her lips quirk downward at their outer edges and she studies Kincaid for a while, almost empathizing with the pain. But she can't to that extent.
"It's a long story, and like I said— they don't know I'm here," Kincaid says subconsciously touching the scar against his spine for a moment, before letting it lower again. It's not the one he's touching her arm with, at least. "This didn't even happen in New York, it was mostly in Chicago," he explains, as if that makes it better.
"Not exactly the people after your dad. There's as many people out there, more even, who would use and abuse us for what we are as there are those who would help. I consider myself one of the helpers, even if I don't have a lot of resources myself. I do have friends, though— and those friends have friends, and we'll find some way to help you. I can promise that."
The screen on Delia's iPad flickers for an instant and she glances down at it. "Scrabble game," she explains, "Good for words." Letting loose a small sigh, she presses her lips together in a tight line and keeps staring at the black screen after the message has long faded away. "When I can walk again, I'll go back to help. I just think that I'd be more of a burden right now. They don't have much where my dad lives… and I can't do anything useful. At least, at least with Brad, I sort of felt like I was giving something back…" She lifts a wry smile up to Kincaid. "Even if it was just being a pain in the ass little sister, you know?"
Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, the redhead licks her lips and catches the lower one between her teeth to chew on it nervously. "I don't have any money or anything I can give your friends— for letting me leech off of them. Just, when you talk to them, tell them thanks in advance. I know it's hard having me around."
Oddly enough, Kincaid smiles at what she says, and even leans forward to kiss her on the top of her red head, of all things. "I wish I had a pain in the ass little sister." It's said with a lopsided smile, and even a hint of a laugh as he stands up and away from her as he rises, stepping back a bit toward the door.
"My friends don't require money or assistance— so you don't have to worry about doing anything for us in return. Everyone needs someone to count on sometimes, and right now— you need it. Two years ago, I needed it. And most my friends at some time or another needed it. When you feel better I know you'll do what you can for those who need it to."
The kiss to the top of her head is accepted as though Brad himself was the one giving it. The little grimace on her face to hide the grin as she looks down at her iPad. "Just— Tell them thanks anyway. I appreciate it, a lot. I'll help out however I can. Like— I don't know— I can— Do dishes if they don't mind some broken ones and they keep them all in the lower cupboards. Maybe when my hands get better I can do stitches if they get hurt or help out that way. I still think we should glue your lip, since you keep biting it open."
As Kincaid makes his exit, the redhead stares after him and furrows her eyebrows in confusion. This is New York City, selfless charity is still a new concept.