Participants:
| Scene Title | Default To Love |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Sable and Adel meet up after the revealing dream. And when in doubt… |
| Date | April 17, 2011 |
Bronx: Port Morris: Pier
Responses over the phone had quite the delay— especially compounded with how short the responses were. 'OK.' being the primary response. Adel had been worried she'd be late— and it was a good worry too, because by the time the meeting comes around, it's already 30 minutes after the designated time.
Feet pound against the pier as Adel runs up it, looking around for signs of the person she's supposed to meet. Sweat has formed around her scalp where her hair is, and she looks more than a little winded—
Being on time was never something she was very good at with even the band sessions— though she was rarely this late.
Redness in her cheeks show exertion, and hide nervousness under it. And she's too exhausted to bounce in place like she might normally.
'OK' is a fair response to Sable's initiatory message. Sable's text - 'young lady we have to talk' - is still probably a joke, albeit a really weird and potentially awkward one. However, being without tone, it is possible to imagine all sorts of things roiling behind that humor. Jokes are sugar coatings for pills too bitter to state plainly, after all, relying always on content unspoken, expressing feelings that can't be directly claimed.
The unspoken content, remember, has to do with Sable somehow being Adel's mom kind of. One of them. It's complicated.
And don't worry, Sable has only been waiting ten minutes - she was about twenty minutes late herself. Perched at the end of the pier, back settled against one of the wooden supports that thrusts out of the murky, none-too-pleasant smelling water, the yellow eyed woman sits cross-legged, earphones resting on either side of her neck, music chattering and warbling up into her ears and faintly into the air around her. The patter patter of Adel's feet on the concrete draws her attention away from the the sound of the song, and by the time she's reached the thick boards spanning the water below, Sable has a smile hitched to her features.
It's not a simple smile. It can't be.
"Y'all run th' whole way 'r what? Fuckin' kill yerself you keep at that pace, gal," Sable says, "come on, take a seat," she juts her chin towards the wooden pile opposite her, before adding, "jus' watch y' don't sit on no rusty nails."
"I— I got lost," Adel says sheepishly as she moves closer, dropping down onto the edge of the pier without much worry about her clothes, or the fact that there could very well be rusty nails. There's a lot of things she stopped worrying about in her life so far.
"So— " she says between breaths that are already slowing some. Being seated is helping get her breath back, and letting her legs and feet rest. And this is when the nervousness begins to show— In the form of her feet swinging off the edge of the pier.
"We needed to talk." A statement, but also a nervous question. It sounds more nervous with how out of breathe she is, too.
This is different than before. Before, when Sable 'remembered' something timelost and timetwisted, it was a realization of a past that was hers, memories that belonged to her but had been hidden for years, kept under telepathic lock and key. This time - it's memories from a life never lived.
So question #1 is: "How old are y'all?"
"Twenty-one," Adel says with a laugh, that nearly turns into a cough, with how breathless she still is. "Or negative… oh I suck at math— negative eight? Or something. Anyway, twenty-one was the last birthday I had before we came back. Mom was good at keeping track of birthdays cause they were important to her." Dark eyes dart over as she adds, "Elaine-mom, not…" The rambling seems to have started and she grimaces a bit, pressing a hand to her forehead.
"Anyway, yeah, twenty-one. I didn't get to have a big cool drinking party, so I kinda considered Tess' party mine too." The grimace didn't help, so she adds on a quick, "Sorry, I talk too much sometimes…"
Sable's still smiling, though the fixity of her look, the steadiness of her visible temper, suggests it's not happiness she's feeling, not exactly. Sable has fondness and glee and gloating and triumph and a host of other specific shades of intensity that fit roughly under 'happiness'. This is not one of them, however. The feeling Sable is having has no name; it is definitively indeterminate. But she is smiling. A positive indeterminacy. A lesson held dear - default to love.
"Found out, few weeks back, jus' how old I am," Sable informs Adel. No comment on whether or not Adel talks to much; some small part of Sable doesn't mind letting Adel twist in the wind a little, after spending some time twisting in the wind herself, without knowing.
"I'm twenny, Starkey," that name has gained an additional weight of irony, "I used a fake ID at that there birthday party. Y'all have lived more years than me." Sable lowers her head, looking 'up' at Adel with an expression of frank appraisal. "Now what th' hell 'm I s'pposed t' make 'f that?"
"I'm older than Elaine too," Adel offers with a small shrug. "I won't call you mom, either— you never really liked that after I got old enough to understand you didn't. Course I did anyway sometimes to be a brat, but…" she trails off again, grimacing.
She had been able to keep from rambling too much with Elaine and Quinn and Magnes— but for some reason… Despite that, she's smiling too— Though on her side it seems more sheepish than genuinely cheerful.
"I don't really know what you're supposed to make of it," she finally offers, honestly.
Sable's lips twist, smile made strange as it tries to become a smirk and a grin both at once. "So y'all can be a brat?" she goads, "y'all have been cheerful 's anythin' all this goddamn time. Didn't even know y'all had it in y'."
The yellow eyed woman grabs her feet and leans forward, stretching her back, giving a huff of strain before drawing her spine straight again. "This here's yer chance t' come clean, gal. Y'all gonna make me ask y' every goddamn question? 'cause there are a hell 'f a lot I figure I'm due, eh?" Her eyes narrow in slightly mean mirth. "Or y'all gonna be bratty?"
"Yeah, I can be a brat— and I was famous for pulling Varlane's as we called them at home," Adel says with a quiet laugh, looking out towards the water for a moment as she's asked to come clean. "There's a lot I'm not sure I should tell you, but… Whenever I talked about my family before I was never outright lying— I just fudged over the details a little."
Well, more than a little. "Okay, I lied about growing up outside of Boston, I spent my whole life around here. But my ID said Boston."
She looks thoughtful for a moment, before she looks back over and smiles closer to the cheerfulness of before. Her voice isn't as labored with tired breath now, either. "What do you want to know about?"
"Whenall does it start bein' different?" is right off the bat, Sable leaning forward again, but this time to demonstrate her intentness, "what I seen-" and in saying this, she remembers to ask, "and why th' hell I'm seein' this stuff is somethin' y' gotta make clear t' me, too," but where was she, "what I seen ain't- it's different in all sorts 'f ways. Where y'all come from, that life- when'd it start bein' that, 'n' not," she gestures towards the spreading water, at North Brother Island hunched on the harbor's meniscus, "this."
"Things started being different around November 8th, I guess," Adel says with a finger scratching on the side of her face, as if she has an itch, or a zit to pick at. She doesn't really have either. "Even before that, in a few cases, but I don't know all the details. I didn't really pay attention much to the bigger pictures, and all— but I know for you guys things were different as soon as I joined the band, if not before then."
Brown eyes continue to scan the distance, as if she's afraid to look back over, or feeling guilty.
"I'm not the one showing you those things, but… I did want you to see them. Especially the last one. Cause I wanted all of you to know at the same time… Who I was and what you were to me. If you were going to find out eventually… I wanted you to know… me. The important stuff, at least."
"Whatall didja come here for?" is the next big question, pre-empting even the issue of just who is showing them these dream-memories. Sable wrinkles her nose the next moment. "That didn't sound too charitable. What I mean t' say is- well- jus' that, but jus' as a question. I ain't tellin' y' t' get lost 'r nothin'."
She gives a snort. "Hard 'nuff as it is t' find a drummer."
"I came for personal reasons— I wanted to be in the band while it was still actually a band," Adel says with a shrug of her shoulders. "I wanted to see you guys young, before everything happened— and give you guys the drummer you kept never finding. None of them ever stuck around long enough for you to drop a whole album."
Then she sits up with a grin to add, I've been teaching someone who can take over for me, though." That grin seems proud. As if that's the only thing about her trip that could really be called charitable. "I'm glad you're not telling me to get lost— cause that'd suck…"
Sable arches a brow. Never dropped an album? "Y'all unnerstand then, hon, that that history wasn't meant t' be," she quips. After a moment, however, Sable's expression makes a key shift towards minor. "That's mebbe cruel. Honest- I don't got th' least fuckin' clue how t' chart no course no more. Used t' be I figured I could forge what wasn't given 'r found. That I could like," she taps the side of her head, "make sense 'f all 'f it. Names 'n' moments 'n' a great weavin' through time."
The young woman shakes her head. "Sorry. Figure y'all got th' talkin' too much from me, eh?" It still feels strange to joke about it, but for Sable it's hard not to. Easier than taking it head on. Though why should she be afraid? What is she afraid of? Who she was, would become, didn't, still could?
"What's it like, huh?" Sable asks, "seein' us all as fuckin'- like- fool kids? Can y' see us like that? 'cause surely that's what we are." And one more nagging question, something Adel said. "Take over? What th' fucks that mean? Y'all goin' somewhere?"
"It's not cruel to me at all, if that's what you're worried about," Adel says with a wave of her hand. "I said the same thing to mom— to Elaine. Just cause it's not going to be your future doesn't mean my past is any different. I've lived it, I'm a big kid. I know that things are not gonna be the same as they were and it doesn't upset me none."
Her legs continue to kick out, and she smiles over, more cheerful and less sheepish. Perhaps mutual rambling helps.
"I'm not planning to go anywhere… But no one knows what'll happen." Especially now? "Just consider my trip through time me messing with destiny to make sure the band gets it's full album and global fame!"
Perhaps Adel makes the comment about destiny off-handedly. And perhaps at a different moment, on some other harmonically thrumming string of time, Sable takes it as so. But on this strand, the yellow eyes turn towards the eastward water and she lapses into one of her occasional but recognizable contemplative silences. Receding into the wilds of her own mind.
She emerges with a certain resoluteness to the line of her mouth. "Gotta rally our troops is what we gotta do," Sable says, shifting her legs, planting her feet, and dragging herself up into a stand. The pile behind her steadies her hand. "You don't talk that talk 'round me, young lady, not 'nless y'all ready t' walk a walk in kind, dig?"
"Oh, I'm not just ready to walk it, I'm ready to fly it," Adel says with a grin, leaning a little to the side to bump shoulders with the shorter young woman next to her. She may be shorter than both her bio-parents, but at least this one she's taller than, as well as a year older.
"But I'm not going to cheat and teach you songs you haven't written yet. Those songs'll be all other-you's, and yours'll be all you-you's." There's a pause, eyes drift upwards for a moment, then a nod. It's as if she was making sure she said all that right.
Sable gives Adel a sidelong look after the shoulder bump, aloofly skeptical; by no means is she going to stop acting like she's cooler, older, and more authoritative than their undyingly chipper drummer. "'Course yer not gonna cheat. Surely we did not raise y' t' take th' easy way," she flashes a hard, bright grin, displayed defiant to the horizon, "they'll be your-your songs too, hon, don't f'rget. All 'f that life y' led- thatall's addin' up t' now 'n' what we're gonna do."
Yellow eyes cut back to Adel, angling up as they must, considering the delicacy of her profile. She wrinkles her nose, and shakes her head. "'N' thank Christ I didn't never even think 'bout makin' a pass at y'." Muttered. Low.
"Oh that would have been awkward— dad kinda did, a few times, and that was so weird, but I think you would have been even worse!" Adel exclaims with a laugh.
Despite the stoic skepticism that the other woman gives off, there's a rather abrupt movement from the drummer. She's reaching out with an arm— and then the other, to insnare the smaller woman in a sideways hug.
In some ways this may be her being a brat again.
Sable snorts - "No lie," a slanted smirk, "I got way better game than him."
It is so strange. That hug is for her and not for her. Sable's brain whirls again, imagining the weight of affection, the years of care that inform the embrace. Things that aren't hers to receive. Things she's hasn't deserved.
When in doubt, default to love.
An arm rises to loop in a hug complimentary. Reward for still having the defiance necessary for brattiness. If Sable were to leave a legacy, that would be her preference.
Hugs can be for anyone involved— including the one giving the hug.
Adel closes her eyes for a moment, leaning into the smaller framed woman, breath slow and steady now, unlike when she arrived. It's almost as if she's waiting for something… something that has no clear indication, before her arms drop and she looks back out over the pier. Love is a good thing to default back to.
The smile is still cheerful, but seems softer when she looks back. "So why here?" is abruptly asked. "I know you wanted answers, but… I was wondering about it the whole way— of all the places we could meet up, why here?"
Sable's hands return to her pockets when the hug ends. For a span of time there is actually some quiet. Things to think about. Or, rather, time taken to not worry, at least for the younger(?) of the two. The exact reason for Adel's own lapse into silence, Sable can't guess at. What goes on her mind?
"Put my first love t' rest here," Sable says, nodding not at the water but at the pier itself, "made some real fuckin' choices 'bout my life," she gives a shrug, "we make our own fate, eh? I dig. I'm makin' mine int' a legend.
"Y'all ready f'r this t' be yer destiny?" The question is serious. It remains so. "Y'all ready t' rock?"
"I hear you," Adel says, looking as if she may be interested, as a friend, in hearing the story— there's some things mothers and even aunt types just don't tell their 'children'. It's not a tale she's prying on, though, because the future— that is something to look forward to more.
With a grin.
With a deft movement, she's back on her feet on the edge of the pier, avoiding the dangerous snags that might have cut into her flesh. By luck more than carefulness. "I'm ready."