Participants:
| Scene Title | Color Blind |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Robyn is reminded about how much she means. |
| Date | November 5, 2018 |
???
The wail of a single guitar can be heard, drifting on the wind, the song familiar but she can't seem to place it right now. This wasted landscape is nothing real, more like a Dali painting gone horribly wrong. Broken and pebbled pavement disappears in four different directions, each road straight and each horizon something new. Three of the roads are familiar: The ruins of New York, the empty concert hall, and the blockade with the sign that says The Way Back Is Closed. Robyn has seen these is dreams before. But the fourth…
A twisted tree at the crossroad stretches in that direction, looking for the respite of light at the end of the unknown. It’s only light here in the black, white, grays, and muted colors of the gloom around her. A stream of bright sunshine yellow beams where there should be none.
This is new and different.
Through the wail of the guitar, there are the whispers….
Does it hurt
Are you alive
Tell me… tell me… tell me….
So familiar to her, that at first she doesn't even notice the difference. She just stands at the crossroads, staring off into the distance, paralyzed by indecision. It's always like this. So many roads to walk, so many possibilities - and yet, she never moves an inch. Darkened eyes simply scan the horizons, occasionally stare back at the sign presumably leading back the way she came. She is sad, that much is clear.
Until finally, her eyes drift to the tree, and the light sound of a voice drifts past her ears. She perks up a bit, brow furrowing. "H-Hello?" She calls out somewhat meekly, shivering. "Is someone there? Can you help me?”
In my eyes, indisposed, in disguises no one knows….
The whispers join the long notes of the guitar, combining to make a rather haunting melody, familiar to many nearly two and a half decades ago. They wrap around her like a heavy blanket, making movement in any direction almost impossible. As a force of their own, they turn her toward the unfamiliar stretch of road. The one where the light shines brightest. A tickle in her mind warns her, don't go toward the light.
Hides the face, lies the snake, the sun in my disgrace…
Weighted down as she is, she can only witness as her surroundings shift and the road never travelled shifts under her feet and begins moving her as though she is standing on a conveyor belt. She travels, watching the wasted landscape pass her by. Dead trees, dead flowers, dead grass, and dusty skeletons dressed in rotting clothes, ones she has worn during momentous occasions in her life.
Together, they are a montage of her biggest accomplishments and most disgraceful moments. Things that she is proud of and things she wished she could forget.
Does it hurt? Are you alive? Tell me… tell me… tell me….
"Wha-" She struggles again the invisible force, the trailing melody that seems to push her along. The words ping familiar, the next lines siting just on the tip of her tongue but refusing to bubble up from wherever they hide. She whimpers. She never before travelled one of these roads, never seen their possibilities - they scare her, more than anything, where they could lead.
As her life passes her by, dead and decaying, she trembles and tries to look away."I'm, alive! I'm alive!" She suddenly shouts as if that could make the display stop. Does it hurt? She doesn't answer. Deep down that depends on what might be hurting.
Tell me… tell me… tell me….
The whispers echo loudly in Robyn’s mind as she manages to tear herself off of the exposed skeletons lying wasted in the desert surrounding her. Then, the force moving her pivots and Robyn finds herself twisted around and looking back the way she came. The light is behind her, she can feel it, not just the heat but she can feel the particles of light as though they had mass. They’re drawn to her like iron filings to a magnet, attaching themselves to her skin. They hurt. Rather, they are hurting. Fleeing from whatever is behind Robyn by gluing themselves to her for sanctuary.
Black hole sun, won't you come and wash away the rain…
There’s a wavering of the light behind her and should Robyn look over her shoulder, she will see something wrapping itself around the light that remained. She will see skin encompassing the light and swallowing it whole. She will see herself being formed from the light. Eye sockets empty and mouth open, her doppelganger isn’t just made of light… it’s stealing it.
Do you want to live? Would the bullet have been a mercy?
The whispers repeat, moving inside of her head, and making their home there. Robyn’s skin begins to tingle and the light there screams, each particle sending a squeal of terror before ripping away from her. The skies overhead swirl into a nasty funnel of stormcloud, light, and music. The guitar growing louder before Robyn’s double ingests that too.
Black hole sun… black hole sun…
WIth the landscape around her so bleak, with an unimaginably familiar song boring it's way through her head, with the growing cacophony of light and sound - and it's subsequent passing - Robyn Quinn lowers her head as well as she can and offers the most honest answer she possibly could.
"Maybe."
It's choked out, in a meek and uncertain voice. "Maybe once," she adds with a waver in her voice. "But for now, I'm here, stuck in this… artificial nocturne." Lips thin, and all she wants to do is curls up and close her eyes. Instead, she's drawn to the lightborne visage of herself, and she swallows tightly. "That's not me anymore," she says in the same pitiful voice. To her, this is still just a dream - a nightmare? - a twisting of something familiar, as it always is.
There's a crack of thunder from up above and the figure jerks, as though someone has tugged its marionette strings. It wheels around and flies up into the air, hanging suspended from invisible threads at its elbows, lower back, and shoulders. The head lolls down and to the side, never taking its too bright gaze away from Robyn, blinding her with the light that's drawn from all places and into nothing.
No, it's not you anymore.
The whispers in her head agree.
You're alive… not this husk.
This shell.
Down at her feet, Robyn feels the ground shift ever so slightly and between her toes a sprout pushes through, trying to reach up for her. A tiny daisy, a weed, turns its head up to the light and relaxes as though sighing with relief.
A gasp rings out at Robyn watches her doppleganger lift upwards with such a dramatic, thunderous report.As it stares at her, she stares at it, fingers curling in into fists. It's only when she feels that shifting that she reflexively steps back, almost stumbling as she looks down at the ground, down at the small daisy that has revealed itself.
She bends down to it, smiling at it for just a moment. "Maybe," she repeats. "It doesn't always feel like it." Fingers wrap around the stem of the daisy, and she attempts to pluck it - not out of malice, but out of a desire to keep something that stands out against the darkness around her, mingling with the burning gaze of herself close.
"Why do you care?" she asks back to the voice, still looking at the daisy as though it were the source of the whispers. Other thoughts, mixtures of doubt, dismissal, and platitude blend into her mind - but none of them actually spoken or echoed aloud.
It doesn’t pull easily and when it finally tears away from the earth, it’s with the same pain as would happen if Robyn had torn a firstful of hair from her own scalp.
Because…
The whispers pause, stuck on the last consonant of that word. The body jerks again and is pulled like a rag doll toward a skeletal tree and hung there, as though crucified. The light dies around them and the scenery grows dim, like night falling with a full moon. A foul moon that bathes everything in hues of blue and grey. The pale white of the doppelganger's skin turns a sickly shade, a shade reserved for the dead and rotting.
The daisy shines in Robyn’s fingers.
You're important.
Is it the daisy that's talking? Robyn seems to think so, from the way she looks at it. The accelerating decay around her draws her eye around the blank space around her, and she shiver. An uneasy look washes over her face, and she moves to her knees.
"Why?" Fingers curl in and out. "I used to want to be legendary. Now… I dunno."
She looks up at the sky, and smiles.
"I'm glad you think so, though."
You just are…
The whispers are telling, a little niggle in the back of Robyn's brain. She knows who but she can't quite place it, not right now. They're not coming from the daisy, the sparse little thing that only grows fuller due to her touch. Sapping what life there was from the doppelganger, causing it to decay to dust while the flower flourishes.
You never did lose your muchness… you just forgot.
You need to remember…
In the distance, a speck moves on the horizon. A black dot against the greys and blues of the earth and sky. it grows as it comes closer and faint details grow more prominent. A swath of red hair, an old white sundress that's been frayed and torn at the hem for far too long. Scarred skin that sparkles just sometimes when the light hits mirror fragments just right.
"Someone thinks you're important enough to want you dead," Delia says as she comes closer, her bare feet crunching through the dust and gravel at a steady pace. "They said the bullet would be a mercy."
"What…" Robyn stares at the horizon as the speck comes ever closer, until the unforgettable form of Delia takes full shape in front of her. Her eyes wide, still holding the daisy in hand as she stares at her.
"D-Delia? I don't…" She listens to what the other woman has to say, before looking back down at the flower in her hand. Seeing Delia, remembering the other woman, is enough to give her an idea, now, of what's happening. She takes a deep breath, even though in her dreams she may not need to.
She can't remember the last time she really talked to Delia Ryans, so the long road is what she chooses. "I've worked for SESA, ever since the war," she tells the other woman in a quiet voice. "I'm sure there's a few people who want me dead." Not to mention the war itself, or the fact that she is actively investigating Institute assets at the moment. It wouldn't surprise her to have someone looking to put her down, even if she doesn't know who or why.
Her brow furrows. "I'm not important," she repeats, seemingly resigned to this fact. "Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure," Delia says, an edge of sympathy in her voice. She leans heavily on one leg in a lopsided akimbo, her sharp elbows looking as ashy as the earth around them. "I mean, someone thinks you're important enough to drive me insane with all of this."
She's passing the message along, no charge.
"At some point for you, a bullet would have been a mercy… At some point for me, my sister gets her throat slit and my dad gets shot." Both Lucille and Benjamin have enough reason for people to what them dead too. To Delia, they're all mixed up into one. "I want to figure this out before that happens."
The clouds in the sky above them swirl around and around in a slow tumble, gathering momentum. When the wind picks up, so does Delia. No longer tethered to the ground, she flips and spins in the wind like a lost feather. She reaches out, hooking one hand around Robyn’s bicep and pulling her into the air as well.
The flower slips and drifts to the dirt, wilting to a dry husk and exploding into a puff of dust upon landing. Its life ending when contact with Robyn was lost.
Reflexively, Robyn reaches for the flower as it slips away, but can't catch it before it falls out of her reach. She is silent, before looking back at Delia. Her expression is inexplicably sad as she looks up to her, but she nods.
"Thank you, Delia."
With a choking cough, Robyn suddenly juts awake in bed. Pushing herself upwards, she stares out at the window, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. She purses her lips. She'll have to talk to Lucille whenever she's back at the Bunker…
…and keep an eye out behind her at all times.