Confessions, Part II

Participants:

milena_icon.gif warren_icon.gif

Scene Title Confessions, Part II
Synopsis Warren and Milli meet in the forest again, and Warren gets some things off his chest.
Date September 18, 2010

The Greenbelt, Staten Island


Warren's done a hell of a lot of examining of his new toys, and now he has a notebook, wearing his black suit with the unbuttoned jacket and flowing black tie over his white shirt. He's sitting on a rock closer to the outskirts of the Greenbelt, but he's still generally deep enough not to immediately be spotted from outside. He's sitting on a large rock under a pretty old tree, just scribbling extremely complex diagrams that even an average engineer would have trouble figuring out. "Still a little too complicated…" he mutters to himself, eyes currently in their silvery state.

The last time she left the reclaimed area, she wasn't being particularly careful. This time, Milena's actually taking a look around her as she goes, which doesn't really accomplish too much for her. After all, she can't talk to plants, only control them. Maybe there's a way, maybe, with time, she can use them to feel out her surroundings. After all, she must have some rudimentary communication with them if she can make them grow out of nothing.

Extending her garden by bringing in outside samples is one of her favourite hobbies when she's thinking. Sure, it's nearly fall, but who doesn't like a few pink tulips growing wild in the forest, huh? Oddly, she's not planting them, though, and instead is ripping apart the bits and pieces of one that remains mostly - for lack of a better term - deflowered - in her hand. Not exactly the most efficient way to make a garden, is it?

She tosses another piece to the side, before hearing the familiar voice nearby. "You've been here a lot lately," she says, tossing aside the flower-depleted stem. "I mean, by 'a lot' I meant that I've seen you here the two times I've wandered out this way lately, so…" She shrugs. "You catch that killer yet?" The manner she says that is fairly uncaring. Maybe she doesn't believe there's a killer?

This time, considering Warren is in a suit instead of covered in mud with a cloak, he's a bit more presentable. "I'm not hunting the killer right now, if I see him I'll smash his face into a tree. But right now I'm working." He turns the notebook to show her the incredibly complex diagram, complex in that it may as well be fifteen languages dumped into a jar and randomly spread out on paper. "You walk around at night a lot, Forest Goddess."

She slowly closes her eyes and opens them again, annoyed. "Milena. Really. If gods existed, then…" The 'forest goddess' trails off, waving her hand and dismissing the thought. No reason to delve into a pity party here in the forest.

Her eyes are drawn to the paper, and she honestly has no idea at all what she's looking at. Sometimes, Milena barely speaks English well enough, which means that something that's the equivalent of more than a dozen languages is close to incomprehensible. "Uh, well, I guess I could say the same about you. So…" She crouches down, allowing her fingers to press into the hardened ground. The maneuver is easy for her… No one can ever actually see what's going on, but she can feel it herself. They extend, feeling out the places where she dropped the bits of tulip. Each little bit has the genetic code necessary to create a whole new plant. "So, what's the deal with your eyes. Are you blind or something?"

It takes awhile for her to locate what she's looking for. Even then, it's not a communication so much as it is a feeling of proximity. "And what's that you're working on so hard?"

"Top secret, I work for the government." Warren answers with a little smile, turning the notebook back to himself so he can continue his wild scribbling. "I'm not blind, I can see you. And if you have goddess powers, and you look like a goddess, then you must be a goddess." It seems logical enough to himself, looking up at her with those silvery eyes, before the silver color gradually withdraws like liquid, revealing fairly normal blue eyes. "I'm a mechanical intuitive, I build things, very complicated things that a normal person can't. I can show you."

With a little smile of her own, Milena replies, "I work for the government, too. Or, with the government. I dunno if I'd say for." She looks back over her shoulder, where the dark, hazy form of the observatory looms in a clearing, devoid of all light save for the red blinking ones that keep airplanes from running into the taller structures.

If one can't beat someone who's insisting on calling her a goddess, than she might as well use her newfound status. "Then as a goddess, I command that you call me by my name. I have one, and I like it." With a definitive nod, she goes from a crouch to a sit, fingers still dug into the ground. "Right now, you have a captive audience. I really won't be able to go anywhere for awhile, so go for it." Her attention returns to Warren.

Pink tulips suddenly sprout up all around them, adding a little colour to the area.

Warren reaches into his jacket, after sitting the notebook on to his lap, then pulls out what seems to be some sort of snowglobe-like object, full of mirrors and what seem to be bulbs and such buried inside. Under the globe area is a series of buttons and switches, and they seem to be segmented so the bottom section can be turned in around five ways. "Now, watch." He aims the globe deep into the forest, then switches it on, and suddenly she sees a series of lights, red, green, blue, yellow, all sorts of things, making wild geometric shapes once his eyes return to their silvery state. He's turning the metallic sections, rapidly pressing buttons, and yes, he's putting on a laser light show, in the forest, from a little snowglobe.

Milena has seen some amazing things when it comes to powers, so she's looking forward to what Warren will demonstrate. She doesn't expect something small like a snowglobe, though. She thought maybe he'd pull, say, a fully-functioning automobile out of his shirt or something crazy like that.

But she's still not disappointed. Pretty things are in short supply nowadays. The last time Milena saw a laser light show, she was hanging out with high school friends before the world turned crazy and people started hating each other for what they could do. "Hah…" she says. It's sort of an incredulous sound, somewhat childish, and also embarrassed. How could she let herself be amused by a simple (complex?) demonstration of lighting ability?

"How…" she pauses, waiting for her fingers to unroot. A minute passes before she's able to pull them out of the dirt, and, heading over to where Warren is busily twisting mirrors and buttons, she peers over his shoulder. "…Did you learn you could do that?"

"I don't remember. You've seen the stuff about the Company in the news? They raised me, and thought I was too much trouble. The way I hear the story, every memory of my entire life was scooped out of my head, and they let my psychosis before I was put on medication make up an entirely new life that's a complete figment of my imagination, aided by a propaganda video meant to solidify my memories." Warren explains this all very casually, pulling the globe back and pointing it at the ground, which makes the entire show look much smaller and a bit less impressive. "I don't think you'll believe that, but it's the truth. I only remember the last seven years of my entire life, and I've only known my real name for a few months."

Yeah… She's never really been able to trust people since Humanis First got their hands on her, and now that she's in the presense of a self-proclaimed psychotic, Milena can't help taking a step back. He could be lying, or he could be stalking her. Trying to kill her. Working for them. A spy, or… A complete innocent. Best to just nod her head and smile.

And ramble. "Nah, I'd believe it. I mean… Some of the stuff I've seen happen - what people do to each other?" She shakes her head. "Can't imagine not knowing my own name. It's my mom's name, y'know. I've always liked it. Kinda uncommon. Kinda weird."

She takes another step back, frowning, suddenly much less appreciative of the light show. It's shallow; some would accept the trauma of a man who seems to have been caught up in the tide of Evolved versus human, but she's just not ready to do that yet.

Warren slips the globe back into his jacket, then lays back against the large rock, staring up at the stares from what he can see under the tree. The notebook is laying on his stomach when he slips his hands behind his head. "I know who my father is now, and that's all that matters to me. From what I was told about my past, I'm glad I don't remember. I sometimes wish I was a god, like you, Milena. If I were a god I'd have my purpose written in stone."

He's acting so… sincere. Milena used to be able to trust people, and it was nice, to make friends and keep them and not wonder who in the world would next carve their mark into her hide. Just in case she needs to, she touches her hand to one of the nearby trees. She could defend herself…

…Even if Warren's given little reason for causing her to be on the defensive.

"Tsh. No one's a god." Gods don't get themselves hurt. Gods know peoples' motivations before they do. Gods aren't confused about the state of the world - they just know. The only reason Milli has any idea where she's going in life is because someone wearing the President's seal made a list for her of what she would have to do to continue to take home a paycheck. Uncomfortably, she tugs her sleeve down over her wrist again, wrapping her dirt-caked fingernails around the cloth before placing one hand back on the tree.

"If I was a god, I'd probably make sure people stopped getting hurt like they do. Like you did, I mean."

"I used to be a very bad person, before I started working for the government, well technically so, I'm an independent contractor." Warren rolls his now-blue eyes at the label, then continues. "I've been on medication, so a lot of what was wrong with me is under control. I have a lot of impulse control issues, I can be just plain crazy at times, but when you're given clarity in a crazy mind, you find yourself wondering what the point of it all is. You lose your insane purpose but keep minor delusions."

He turns his head from the stars so he can stare at her, letting out a long sigh. "I don't know why I'm telling you these things. I'm starting to feel like my less confident half, but I don't have a friend in the world and I've begun to contemplate where to go from here, now that I have stability." Relatively speaking, since she's caught him in a particularly sane moment.

This is where she should put her hand around Warren's shoulder and tell him that everything will be okay, that she can be his friend and they can work on the whole… insanity… thing. This is where a normal person would trust him because there's so much distrust in the world that one person just giving someone else a chance may be all the world needs to start to truly heal.

"I'm… sorry." She thinks of leaving it at that, but she doesn't want this guy to get the idea that she can empathize. It's shallow. It's mean. "But… I can't be your friend. I can't be that… I'm sorry." It's just too much to know, and far too soon. Knowing all this before she knows the man? It's unsettling.

"Oh, don't worry, I wasn't asking. You're on an entirely different plane, so I'm just getting things off of my chest." Warren sits up again, crossing his legs on the rock, still staring at her. "I wouldn't even think that a goddess would have time to be friends with a mortal such as myself, who hasn't even served under her. And you have trees to grow, and big foots to kill."

"So, what, this is some sort of confession?" Milena asks. Does this guy actually believe that she's a goddess? She'd been thinking that maybe he was taking politeness just a bit too far, but now she's starting to think that he's really serious. "Yeah. Yeah, it's okay. I'm glad you told me." More for herself than for him, she selfishly thinks, but that's all right. They're both getting something out of it. Warren's getting things out in the open, and Milena has advanced warning that a psycho is loose in the greenbelt. "Look, you don't have to be alone, though. You're putting your… Life, I guess you could call it. You're putting that all back together, right? There's other people out there who can help. More than the medication, I'm sure." Who really wants to be alone?

"Not a confession, I don't have any regrets, I don't really care about anything I've done. I just have to control myself around most people, and I hate it." Warren raises a hand to motion toward her. "But you're a goddess, I can open up, be myself, say things that would scare normal people. I'm putting my life back together, but that means being more… normal. I can't consider these people my friends if I have to hide who I am, so I feel better when I can just relax. I come here to get away from the city, the city's full of lies and deceit."

This is kind of making Milena feel worse, and more selfish, as the minutes go by. She won't be herself in front of people. She won't tell the average Joe what happened to her. Then again, she didn't have all her memories stolen from her, and she doesn't think people are gods.

Words of wisdom come flittering back to her. If someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES.

She chuckles quietly to herself. Maybe she should propagate the lie. Maybe he'd be less likely to kill her if he snapped. Or maybe more likely if he decided one day she was lying. Better to be honest? "Yeah, well. The wilderness is full of bad guys. So you gotta take your pick."

"I'm not afraid of bad guys, I am the bad guy. I'm the big bad mad engineer who can figure out how to destroy anything with enough time to build. What I fear are lies, when the people around me spy and keep tabs on me for other people." Warren starts to frown now, turning his gaze away from her to stare into his lap. "I've had so many people like that in my life, and I've decided that I'll never be able to trust anyone, people are too afraid of me. I'm like… is there' an allegory animal for this?" he apparently can't think of any stories off the top of his head, so he turns his gaze to her for one.

"You want to scare people, then you're doing a good job," Milena says, her voice catching a little as she takes another step away from him. This conversation is making her get that feeling she had when she was a kid and went into the basement. Danger! Even if it's not clear or present. It still makes the adrenaline pump through her veins, and makes her want to run.

Trust, allegory, something about animals, that all goes over her head. She's lying to him by omission or something… Most people wouldn't count that, but maybe he would.

Run. Get out of there.

He's the bad guy. He's stalking a killer.

No. Wait.

"Oh my god. You are the killer." Whether or not that's true, she turns and flees, knowing full well that predators just love it when their prey runs away.

"The killer attacked the Earth Goddess, she's the one who told me about him." Warren casually points out as she begins to run. Oddly enough, he's had enough people run away from him that it doesn't startle or surprise him in the least. "If it were me, I wouldn't have attacked a woman." At least not without a good reason, such as a hostage!


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