Participants:
Scene Title | Elusive Bones |
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Synopsis | Friends find common ground on the subject of old bones. |
Date | September 15, 2019 |
The sound of the door closing in the hallway of Raytech's offices is usual. The murmur of voices as people pass by doing their work. What's probably not usual unless Warren is in the building is the raging cackle that sounds from the CEO's Office.
"Or DOMINOS!" Chuckling to herself, while running her hands down the front of her gold dress. Feet bare, Eve's making an effort to use the normal exits and entrances. Though the itch and pain to disperse is high.
Instead she brushes a gather of bloodred sparks off of her shoulder, they sprinkle down to the ground. Fizzling out before she catch fire. The eyes that Eve uses to see now, glow with a low light the same color as the cloud she becomes or the lightning she emits.
The former seer whistles as she pads down the hallway. Maybe the stairs would be a good idea….
She'd been intending to poke her head in on her husband, surprise him with a coffee break. But the sight of Eve in the hallway of the CEO's office brings Elisabeth up short. "Whoa! Where the hell have you been?" she demands of the former precog. Eve may be mildly insane, but various incarnations of her have helped Elisabeth immeasurably over the years and she doesn't have the crankiness with the other woman that other people sometimes do. Not yet, at least.
Setting the cardboard carrying tray down on the floor, Liz moves to hug Eve — and then notes the sparks. "Oh.. oh shit." She forgot. "Okay, madam — airkisses or something. I'm not hugging you if I'm gonna get shocked." She grins. Her blue eyes take in Eve's state and she says quietly, "It's good to see you."
Eve barrels into Liz's arms anyway.
"Helloooooo my Living Breathing Siren! You're here!" Of course she's here, it's more a wonder that Eve is here! The hug is very brief and the tall woman leaps back to regard Liz with an inspecting gaze. "You smell of motherhood, new vows. Card told me. CONGRATS!" Clapping her hands with a wink, "You've got more to fight for now. But that doesn't mean anymore sacrificing your self shit, lady!" Wagging her finger in the direction of her friend.
The pale woman just stares at Liz. "You came a long way, child. Newfound family, Otter Eyes and the others. We haven't gotten to speak of your time, I'll need to ask about your journey. Perhaps over a meal? Gilly got me a crockpot, wonderful! My grandmother would have love-" Eve's expression grows dark at the mention of Gillian. "We live together now, she's my sister in everything but blood." Something Liz might remember the two women's relationship heading towards the last time she was here but it was fresh and new although deep at that time.
Times were dark but when weren't they?
"I just came by to sniff about at what Richard knows, share the nuggets I gleaned from adventures. Japan is a fascinating place, have you ever been?"
Eve's candid way of speaking hasn't changed and she's clearly not afraid to speak about these things in public.
Some things never change.
Well, okay then! Hugs it is! And Elisabeth is grateful for them. As they draw apart, the audiokinetic studies Eve closely. The years have not all been bad … the larger number of them were actually calm and almost pedestrian, aside from keeping their heads low and staying out of Arthur Petrelli's awareness. But the other years have left their mark too. Elisabeth's blue eyes are still shadowed by too many things no one should have to see.
And yet she smiles at Eve. "There will definitely be no more sacrificing of myself. You should have heard the riot act I got from Richard over that when I got home," she quips with a roll of her eyes. "I… wouldn't mind telling you if the journey." Liz pauses and the grins. "You made me into an anonymous rising star in music, you know. Well… one of you did. And no, I've never been to Japan. Though I understand you lot had one of those adventures that I'd scold about if I had any room to talk."
"Maybe we've sacrificed enough," Eve doesn't really believe that but news of music and stardom have Eve beaming and she nods. "Pop Star me! Lots of money, big change! Congrats on lots of things for you hmm?"
Of adventures that could get them yelled at by their loved ones, "I sacrificed myself, for all of you. To get through. It was necessary," Looking down at her hands that fizz with red sparks at times, studying them. "Do you remember your Passage through? What happened to me?" She had heard from Gillian, from others that were there.
But she always asks.
"I remember," Elisabeth says softly. It's yet another horror in her box of nightmares, tumbling through the portal and seeing some people spin out of control and disappear — some of whom have yet to be recovered, if that's even possible. Landing here to see the power lash out and seemingly kill Mateo and Lynette on both ends along with Elaine, Eve, and Richard, among others. That she herself hadn't overloaded completely and just shutdown was nothing more than sheer dogged determination to keep Evie safe in her arms, the last remnant of her friends, and to not leave her own daughter parentless.
"I will always remember," she tells her friend in that same quiet tone. She's not simply speaking of what this Eve here did, either.
They stand there, remembering different parts of the same journey. Formerly on wayward roads but now the patchwork stones aligned together so that they may walk forward together.
"Now a reckoning walks among us, so many lines, merging together. Pieces of history matter. I've been on a hunt. For almost a decade." Eve rubs her arms and smiles softly towards Liz.
"I'm so close! I can feel it!"
Though she may not be close at all, maybe it's all in her head but the culmination of events that have led Eve to this very moment root her determination, her certainty. "Miles ahead to go still, lots of things to sniff around at first. Knowledge, from myths and even the science ones," Eve has learned it's time to try to trust some people with a science background. Her cousin is one after all. "Needs to come together. Effective solutions are near."
"Are they?" Elisabeth isn't so sure. Too many bots and pieces to the jigsaw puzzle. "The whole picture of it is still blurry as hell," she sighs. "Nebulous big bad entities are even worse than time-traveling insane versions of people you know." Her shoulders rise and fall in a slow shrug, and the blonde shakes her head. "Were you and Richard actually sharing tidbits?"
Her tone is a bit amused, perhaps because she knows Richard's reticence when it comes to Eve. "We've picked up a few… but if he's right about the idea that just knowing more is making it stronger, I have to wonder if we're making things even worse." Rolling her eyes, she observes drily. "As if the bad we know about already isn't bad enough."
"Faith, is not something I have lost." Gripping Liz's shoulder before moving off to the side.
"We were, no fighting! Even though I spooked him!" Eve snickers and runs a hand through her wild mane, "I've been on the hunt, as I said. Lots of tidbits to be gleaned if you look hard enough. The origin. That's the goal. Know your past, solidify your future. Where and how this all started. I have the where in Japan, the how-" Eve looks to the side. "Is coming." Tae's knowledge strikes a chord of nerves in Eve's belly. "But there are many other pieces to that puzzle, I followed one but Adam ripped it right from my fingertips. Straight from the government's too." Shaking her head in disgust at herself mostly for not getting even more from Adrienne.
"Now she's off in the wind, being forced to work on god knows what. A solution, that's what Adam says he wants. To save us, apparently he's the only one that can." Eve's tone matches Liz's dry one in that moment.
The roll of blue eyes says it all. "Of course he is." Dry as the Sahara Desert. Because we all know how well that idea ever works out for anyone. Tipping her head, though, Elisabeth's gaze sharpens on Eve. "Wait… so you've got the 'how' it all started for certain? We're all working under the assumption of Japan, and the 'when' but the how is eluding us too. I am, however, really wondering if part of the fucking experiments Adam's running involve the goddamn bones." There is a helluva a lot of Science that can be done with bones.
"Working with a misguided seer, he communes with the past in a way that's more unique than the other seers who use their sight." Misguided was one way to put it and Eve's expression shows there's some tension there with whoever this seer is. Eve also doesn't mention that the mentioned man is kidnapped across international waters.
"The bones, the ones that Adrienne found. I spoke with her." Eve's eyes turn to Liz and she cracks her knuckles to dispel idle energy.
"The bones of the First. They have power. Surely. Answers, maybe the real secret. Adrienne was onto something, tracing our lineage. Our bloodline." The secret of how the Dragon came to be not just how It and Adam met. "If everything of importance is out west, then surely so are the bones. We have to find them, before It does. Could you imagine, being separated from your body. Barely a fleeting memory…" What if the Dragon wants to return home in a sense?
"Because that idea isn't creepy as fuck," Elisabeth retorts. "I swear to God, Adam's pulling a Zeke on this and it's chapping my ass." She sighs. "Keeping secrets and the right hand not knowing what the left is doing is never a good plan. I wish that man would just fucking talk with us," she grimaces.
"He's grown tired of it apparently. But not to worry my dear, saving the world is what our rather large family does." There would always be consequences that didn't mean you just stopped. Liz knew this too.
"Bones, homes." All the same to Eve, she waves her hand and claps Liz on the shoulder, "We will find them hmm? Together, separate, through speaking. All of it!" Wheee.
"Tell me! How is life back, what have you done?"
Leaning back against the wall, Elisabeth considers the question. "It's… strange and wonderful and not what I was expecting," she admits to Eve with a small smile. Absently toying with the wedding ring that is barely two weeks old, she blows out a small breath. "Mostly I've just been… trying to get Aurora settled and into school, helping her not be afraid that we're going to leave again. Trying to… reconnect with my own friends. Learn my mother." That's been an adventure… hard to do. She's not the woman Elisabeth knew. "Started working for the PD again. I thought it'd be a good… anchor to the here and now, you know? Home is the only place I've been a cop." There's a faint grimace. "Not entirely sure how long it will last. Pretty sure I'm not very much good at it anymore. But I'm going to give it my best shot. "
"You're a protector, it's in your bones." A quip that has Eve smiling more herself, searching Liz's words before nodding. "Return to normal life, how do you do it they ask, one day at a time. Your anchor will catch and settle, don't you worry."
Rubbing the inside of her arm and giving a bright too wide smile, "I've died a few times since we hung out! All different! Very exciting." Eve means it from the way her body glows, "I'm having a hard time remembering what I do when I'm dead but I'm hoping it's something fun!"
"Did you meet any other yous? I got to talk to mine," as Liz knows already, "So fascinating, our teeth were all basically the same." Hm what an interesting tidbit, Eve finds.
A brow quirks upward and Elisabeth nods slightly. "I met Zeke's Elisabeth," she replies pensively. "I hope someday she forgives him." The worst part of meeting that particular version of herself was seeing the rage and loss, seeing what she could have become. "The one in Bright… I stayed away from." It didn't save her, but Elisabeth had tried. "The one in Virus died at Washingron Irving, back in '08. And well… I'm the one originally from the last world." She shrugs a bit.
"It was definitely strange." That's an understatement.
"So alike yet so different, amirite?" Eve smiles easily and tilts her head as she drums her fingertips along the wall they stand beside. "Did you feel like you had found something you didn't know you were missing? On the last, Flooded World?"
Leaning back with her hands at the small of her back, "I met Otter Eyes during the war. He was so upset but I knew he was important, special. I made a promise. I would see the other him to safety just like with you and the Pizza Boy, you both and the others helped him along the way. Thank you," It was as if a sense of duty felt complete when it comes to shepherding the travelers.
"Sometimes I miss it, the knowing." There's a distant look in Eve's eyes but she seems to shake it off a few moments later, "But nothing stays the same. It's all supposed to change," Even her, this… Eve was accepting.
"Well… I found my mother." The tone holds a touch of melancholy. "I knew I was missing her. She died in Midtown. But … it's been incredibly hard for her to be here." She grimaces slightly, looking down. "It's really hard for both of them. I wonder sometimes…" if her parents were going to be okay. Shaking her head a little, Elisabeth says, "I didn't really find something missing so much as… realize how very lucky I was. I landed here and it … made all the difference." Robert Frost's poem has a little extra oomph in those conditions.
Shaking it off, she says, "I can't imagine how things must look from your perspective. I am just really glad you weren't killed." Elisabeth rolls her eyes a bit. "Let's hope what came with us doesn't wind up killing us all." She doesn't want that on her conscience.
"Your mother… your family reunited. That is… excellent Liz." The reason she wanted to endorse The Travelers in the first place. Reconnecting. Speaking of parents make Eve miss hers, "I found out my father isn't my father. My… mother she lost me, taken away by CPS." Shaking her head, "It's all very confusing."
That's to say the least.
Then Eve is frowning and nodding, "I met it once, way back. It has a plan for us. Just what it is…? Whose to say. They both do, Adam and the Dragon. They have plans for us and we've been mice running the wheel," If only she had her visions.
Grimacing, Elisabeth nods. "I know, Eve," she replies softly. "And we're all worried. If we move too slow, we risk not being able to stop it. But we also have to really look at what we're doing. There's no point in stopping it if there's no one left by the time it's over because we kept throwing ourselves against the brick wall. Just… try to keep doing what you're doing. Finding information. Sharing it. We are always stronger we when we stand together." She sighs. "If you get a lead on the bones, call me? I feel like they are … important. And since you've spoken to Adrienne," or so Eve mentioned, "you might have better luck finding them."
She impulsively reaches out and hugs the former seer tight. "Let me know if you need me, okay? I'll be here, I promise." When she draws back, she holds Eve by the shoulders and then nods slightly. "And thank you." For a lot of things along the way.