Participants:
| Scene Title | For Everything |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Mateo finds Lynette in the garden after a disaster. |
| Date | December 26, 2018 |
The Garden of Forking Paths
With the negation gone, Lynette has lapsed back into rough sleep and a noise that never seems to fully leave her. But there is an up side. A silver lining.
She runs through the hedges, bare feet sinking into the dirt as she navigates her way through the maze. She knows it now, this particular path. The rest of it may still be a riddle to her, but she knows how to find her way to him.
"Mateo!" Her voice echoes through the passages, desperate and excited all at once. It's odd, to love a man so much that you love all of him, every him, but it's a kind of odd she is happy to live with. "Mateo!" When her steps slow, she doesn't quite stop moving, even if she has to wait for him, she can't manage to stand still.
The garden has changed since she has last been here. It's as if the walls are lower, the sky is swirling in a spiral of aurora that looks slightly like the vortex that has carried her as far as it has, only wrapped in colors that that never has. Pinks and blues and whites and… and there's a tinge of lightning in the air, as if the air itself held electricity.
And the hedges seemed lower. Thinner, as if tiny holes had been pushed through them, allowing her to see the other side of the paths as she moved. Somehow she knew that this ragged, almost broken path, was the one she needed.
She rounds one corner calling his name and suddenly there he is. Mateo doesn't even wait a moment before he's suddenly inches in front of her, hands going to her face and he's completely lost in the moment.
The moment that it's her and she's alive and she didn't drown.
And in that moment he seems to respond by suddenly kissing her as thoroughly as she's ever been kissed by the other two Mateos she's known.
With his hands on her face, Lynette can't help a relieved smile. She's not expecting the kiss that follows, but there's barely a beat before she leans into it. Her hands press against his chest as she draws the kiss out, her fingers curling into his shirt.
"I'm okay," she says, eventually, although she doesn't move back from him. "We're all alive." She lets out a sigh, eyes closing as she leans against him. That's not all she came here for, of course. There's a lot to plan, to explain, but at the moment she's happy to linger. Because it's him and it's her.
"Are you okay? Everyone over there?"
Honestly, Mateo hadn't been expecting the kiss, either. It had happened, though, and he wouldn't apologize even as he pulled back, looking at her for a moment as if to make sure she wasn't mad that he had done that. She did not seem upset, and she kissed him back, so apologies don't follow even as he settles back, hands remaining on her face as if checking to make sure what he sees is real.
"We're all fine. No one was badly injured." A little overloaded, perhaps, and the tears had been painful enough, but the relief was there. He leaves out that Richard's so called brother might be completely insane, but that's not really important.
"We heard that Des might have been able to save you…" he trails off, for a moment the walls of the garden, as holed as they might be, seem to vibrate a little, the leaves making a rustling sound. "Our mother told us." It sounded confused and foreign, but at least he managed to get it out. Maybe that was part of why the garden looked so ragged.
"Manuel is safe. He's currently with your father until we can get you all out of there. We need to set up a time to try again, hopefully this time without the Looking Glass." He didn't think they needed it, that maybe it would have worked without it. That maybe it had disrupted things too much.
The mention of her son makes her lip quiver as she fights off the impulse to cry. She can't help her eyes tearing up, though. That they found him, that he's with her father, that he's safe… "Thank you," she says, her voice raw. There's more she wants to say, things she wants to ask, but they can all wait. Or else she can't get through them and keep what composure she still has. Instead, she clears her throat and nods. "We need some time on this side. There are… complications," she says with a deep sigh, "but we're working on them as fast as we can."
She looks down at her feet, then over at the decaying hedges. "Yes, Odessa she— pulled us out of the room, out of the water. You're… mother? I, Odessa got a warning from herself, I think." Everything about this is confusing, but she does her best to keep a handle on all the moving parts.
"I don't think I can forgive her," she says. It has nothing to do with the planning, but it is something Lynette can't hold onto any longer. "What she took from me, what she did to him… and that she let me love her like my own sister— I don't know how to live with it."
"Her mother— I think she was also my mother, somehow. It's something to do with her ability— her mother." Mateo shakes his head, unsure on how any of that really works as he lets his hands drop away from her face to run over her arms. She feels like his Lynette in ways he never could have imagined.
And part of him just wants to kiss her again, but he suppresses it as he listens to what she's saying. At her words, he frowns a little more, pressing his lips together before he motions her toward a bench. When had there ever been a bench in the maze? It's solid, concrete and not too cold or damp, at least, and it's somewhere to sit, so he can put a hand around her.
Instead of trying to figure it out, he asks a quiet, "What did Odessa do?"
In the ,background there's the soft whisper, like an echo of something very far away. Repeating a single line of a song, over and over and over.
The bench is strange, and a reminder that he is the only thing here that's real, but she's grateful for a place to sit. And for his hand around her. "She killed my husband," she says, softly. The music is louder for a moment as she speaks, making her shake her head as if she might clear it away. "My first husband. I… found the memory here. His case was never solved— I never knew who or why. But she did it. She was so cold." Her hands lift, wiping at her face even though there's nothing to brush away.
"Javi loves her. Evie loves her. We have so few people left who are family, I can't take that away from them. But it makes me feel sick. Like I might faint." Something she has been trying to work through. Only practice at controlling her emotions has kept her together since she found out. "He thought he deserved it. He didn't. He was a good man. You're all good men."
Good men.
No, part of Mateo very much wanted to disagree with her, to tell her that if the other hims even had half the past he did, that they were not 'good'. That they had all done terrible things. That maybe even his very power was a terrible thing. The woman who had kidnapped her son had certainly thought so. But it was hard to really argue with the woman who looked at him like that. Maybe all hims.
"I think you made us better. Made us want to be better." Her and Jose and Sylvia and probably the other him's children as well. They all had made him want to be a better person, do better, use his ability better. Be more than a weapon.
Even Des, honestly. "I won't ask you to forgive her, or forget it." No, he can't. It wasn't his Des, but… Just like he never asked his Lynette to forgive the woman who tried to kill him. Even if at first he thought he understood. Now he no longer did, honestly. His ability was dangerous, but the barriers between worlds were cracking with or without his ability.
Lynette lays her hand against his cheek, her thumb rubbing against his skin. Now she knows him better than she ever had before. She's seen what his life was like. And what it is now. Him, she has no problem forgiving.
"Thank you," she says to his words, "maybe one day I'll be able to. But it's difficult to let go when someone hurts you. Any of you. So, not today."
Her hand moves, pushing her hair back before she looks back over at him. "I'm sorry. That wasn't at all what we're meant to be discussing here." No, they were supposed to be making plans. "A couple weeks? I know the timing is delicate, but we need time. We have to overthrow a tyrant," she says with a smile. There's no mirth in it, but a sort of wry acceptance of what her life has come to.
In all the world, in all worlds probably, she's one of the few he didn't mind knowing everything about him. The good and the bad. Mateo had accepted that, had the moment she found out about the wolf that devours the moon. "I wish I could share this with all of you," he adds after a moment, touching her hand on his cheek lightly.
But he didn't think he could. What had happened had made it possible and he doubted such a thing could be repeated short of getting that red haired woman to tear down his barriers, or asking Kaylee to do it. Something he wasn't quite prepared to do after that other red haired girl had shown him what she had. And not only because it had left him with a horrible headache the whole next day.
While it would have been nice to just be able to wake up and do the portal, he didn't blame her for needing time. "We need some time too, to get everything together." He just hoped he could talk Richard into not trying to rebuild that thing. But they needed to find another place. He didn't think the rooftop was good anymore. "How about fifteen days? Do you think that will be long enough."
"I wish I could reciprocate. Being able to wander through your love's mind this way— see every possibility— it's been such a gift." There was a time when Lynette thought that knowing someone so thoroughly would mean that you couldn't love them anymore, but with him, it's only made her love him more. "Of course, if you could share it, you'd just end up with endless Lynettes all wanting to stay," she says, her smile turning crooked. "Could get crowded."
She takes a moment, thinking over the plans they have in place, all the things that will probably go wrong. But— "Fifteen days from today. It'll work." It'll have to work.
That made him laugh a little. Endless Lynettes all wanting to stay. "Sounds like heaven," Mateo responds, a wry twist to his lips. He couldn't think of anyone who would disagree with that. There was a lot to do, and but he still didn't want to wake up immediately. "Fifteen days, then."
It was longer than he wanted, but too little time all at once. He would need to find Richard, he would need to contact people. He would need to figure out how to do what they did.
And he hoped things didn't turn out like before.
With a regretful sound, he starts to pull back, as if by he's realizing that the longer he tries to hold on, the less time they will have to get ready. Even if he doesn't want to let go. "We'll bring you home to your son, and as many of the others as we can."
Lynette gives his first words a sidelong look, but there is a telltale smile on her lips as well. "I'll take that as a compliment," she says— dry, but amused. For her, those fifteen days would be difficult. Not just because it means longer without her son, but because they have to remain in hiding until they can try again.
Him pulling back brings her back to the moment. She understands, there's a lot to do, but she looks regretful all the same. "Thank you," she says, her voice softer, "for taking care of him, for helping us…" She steps forward, pulling him into a hug before they have to go back to their own worlds. "…for everything."