Participants:
| Scene Title | Half Solutions |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Eve and Des have a lot to catch up on. |
| Date | August 4, 2018 |
Staten Island Trade Commission
The afternoon sun shines in through the window of Desdemona’s room at the Staten Island Trade Commission, giving more than enough illumination for her to read her book by. She isn’t really reading it, though. She’s been over the same passage about a dozen times in the last half hour and it just doesn’t take. Her mind is elsewhere. Elsewhen.
With a sigh, she sets aside her copy of Notes from Underground. She looks up when she hears a noise at the window. One hand comes up in alarm and there’s no telling how long she’s held that moment in time to assess the situation and decide her course of action.
But the tapping at her window isn’t a raven or the prelude to an attack (probably), but Eve Mas standing on her fire escape. Des gets up from her bed and undoes the lock on the window before throwing it open with an incredulous look. “Eve! What are you doing here? How did you even—”
Precog. Right.
“You better come in before someone sees you and thinks you’re trouble.” Des can’t quite hide a smirk at that. “Well, the kind of trouble they should be worried about, at least.” Eve is always trouble.
The sight that is Eve Mas at the fire escape fidgets as she leans in the window with a wicked grin, “Oh hey there. Didn't see you there.” An obvious joke from the seer and then she's climbing into the room softly and slowly. Notably she's without her staff and climbing up the fire escape might have been especially easy for the pale woman a few months ago, it has tired her out.
Still more fun than using the door.
The precog dressed in dark greys and black colors, a long sweater jacket covering the ensemble. She drags a hand through her mane of midnight locks and tilts her head at Odessa. She twitches and looks over her shoulder at the window. “I have been upset with you. And unable to express myself… but I am here now.” The woman sounds serious though it's sometimes hard to take her so. There's a look of hurt that enters Eve’s eyes as she leans against the window sill.
“Tell me why Humanis. Why. We are gifts. All of us. You, me, Peter.. Mateo.. Lynette. Why would you work against us in that way back in the war… we are your people.”
The elation at having a visitor quickly drains from Des even as she helps the seer into her room. Her heart sinks and her expression grows serious, if not quite guilt-ridden. She can feel that without showing it.
With a heavy sigh, Des takes a seat on the bench at the end of her bed, leaving Eve to either stay at her perch at the window, but leaving enough space for her to join if she wants. “Before the war, my ability was taken from me. I couldn’t remember what it was like to be… I felt so helpless. I was a prisoner of the Institute and everything I understood about myself was gone.”
Fingers lace in the woman’s lap as her lower lip is drawn between her teeth and worried at for a moment. “And there was Michal Valentin, ready to teach me that my humanity gave me strength.” Tears well up in Odessa’s eyes, but remain unshed for now. “He told me everything I needed to hear. He gave me a purpose. I had admired him when I was a girl. He seemed…” There’s a faraway quality to her gaze as she tries to think of the correct word. “Competent isn’t a strong enough word for it. Capable. Strong. He was never weak to me, and I wanted that for myself. I wanted to be strong like him.”
Blue eyes track up again to where Eve stands, hoping to find some kind of understanding there. “So he taught me.”
The seer’s movements are slow but she comes to perch on the window sill with a tilt of her head at Odessa. The renowned member of PARIAH shifts her gaze to look at the wall, she knows the plight of feeling weak and unsure of yourself. Of losing your ability and trying to make sense of your place later. There is anger in her eyes but Eve’s gaze softens for a moment and she runs a hand through her hair again while looking up at the ceiling. “I was taught to be strong too, by a man with strong convictions.” Cameron, the first of her teachers if you could call him that.
“I understand..” the seer twitches but there's something more important than Humanis First or PARIAH. Eve reminds herself of that as she leans fully against the wall, not for not wanting to be near Odessa but just sheer laziness. Her mind stewing over Odessa’s reasons, back in those times before the war. Eve might not have believed but that need to look at the bigger picture nags at her incessantly and she must obey.
“That doesn't help your situation with the government though.” Eve’s pale finger traces invisible lines on her wrist as her index finger twitches. “I've seen your heart, it's in the right place. But… you must stop falling in with these..” the older woman shudders, “Evil people. It's going to be hard to convince them that there isn't justice that needs to be sought.” Eve’s never sounded more sane and put together. A fact that could be unnerving to witness. Politely folding her hands in her lap, “You've been holed up on this desolate island. Have you encountered Eileen?” A swift change in tone and though the seer doesn't look particularly upset with Odessa at the moment.
There’s so much more she could say, but Eve seems to accept the explanation as good enough. Maybe just for now. Des nods her head solemnly. “I don’t know if there’s any convincing to be done.” There’s a little shrug at that. “I did terrible things. I saw terrible things on all sides, but the victors get to dictate what terrible things were considered necessary.” Her tone doesn’t imply that she’s trying to dodge responsibility, but that she sees some injustice all the same.
Then Eve guides the conversation down a different alley and Des’ brows hike up in surprise. “Yes, actually, I have.” And she needs to find her again. Maybe if she dangles Alister from the rooftop by his ankle, she’ll come circling like a vulture.
Eve’s change of subject a good mask for the hurt of Odessa turning on her own, the seer will eventually come back to it, she might only be able to hear it in pieces. Nonetheless she agrees, how she could easily be in Odessa’s shoes if Humanis and the government had won the war instead.
The seer’s own eyebrows raise and she nods along with Odessa, “She isn’t the same. Not the same as Sibyl, have you heard? Our Eileen is inside of Sibyl, something like the girl is a bottomless well for minds. Creepy.” Eve’s hands grip the sides of the window, telling the people she knew about Eileen… was proving interesting. Leaning forward, “Kaylee and some others want to save her.”
“I’m not sure which Eileen I would rather.. One harboring the Dark One in her veins.. The other.. A crabby old lady.” Eve is still feuding with a twelve year old.
Des’ face clouds with confusion. “Sibyl? But…” But she’d met Sibyl and the girl didn’t seem to want her dead like she’s certain Eileen - their Eileen - would. “That can’t be possible.” She shakes her head slowly, and while it’s incredible, she doesn’t completely discount the possibility. “Save her? She’s just a kid. If she’s in danger, someone should save her.”
Maybe that someone could be her, but she isn’t sure she’d be wanted in that kind of endeavor, if it’s true and the girl is Eileen.
“Yea it’s a doozy even with all I’ve witnessed.” Eve pulls out a pack of cigarettes, on her last three. Shaking two out she offers one to Odessa, a lighter follows from Eve’s bra and she quickly lights the thing before offering the lit flame to Odessa to light hers, “Apparently Eileen has been there the entire time and has taken over in a sense, she’s lost herself in Sibyl. Memories and whole selves mangled, Kaylee hopes to untie it.”
“Someone should,” Eve supposes she would help with the effort. Maybe.. “I’m just trying to make Gabriel happy.” she’s not sure if she’s succeeding, “In my own way, while I focus on other.. Things.” Things that threatened the world and other worlds at large. “We all need to be united anyway.”
Blue eyes snap up mid-inhale when Eve mentions Gabriel. There’s an instant worry, a fear, apprehensiveness. The shakiness of her exhale shows in the smoke from her cigarette. “You’re right about that.” She’s seen the sort of thing they’re up against. If Arthur Petrelli has his way, this world is in danger.
That’s to say nothing of the other influences that threaten their world.
“I need to find Eileen anyway. It might help me with my… justice problem.” That is to say, it’s implied it could keep her neck out of a noose. It’s a terrible notion. It might just seal the deal, but desperation is a strong motivator. It always has been with her.
“Why are you really here, Eve?”
“A solution you've found then? To being chased by Vincent and the rest?” Eve looks hungry as she leans in, blowing smoke behind her shoulder the brown eyed woman thinks next on what Odessa asks her, why is she here? The question Eve can answer, or not as she does but there's a wiggling of her nose and she shrugs, “You looked lonely. I thought if I heard your side of the story.. then maybe you wouldn't need to be lonely anymore.”
The seer’s expression is innocent in that moment and her eyes clear as she delicately ashes the cigarette out.
“I met with a woman I need to tell you… first things first though.” It seems Eve does have news but she wants to talk more about… “What do we need to do to Bird?” The nickname popping out.
“I don’t know,” Des admits with a shrug. “It could be a trap for me, but… I don’t have any evidence for that.” Or, unfortunately, to the contrary. At the mention that she looks lonely, she smiles sadly. Looks the part. “You’re right. So, what’s the verdict? Do I deserve to stay lonely? Or is the jury still out on that one too?”
Eve leans in and Odessa subtly shifts back, a hand resting on the bench to balance her while the other comes up to her cig. “I don’t want to do anything to her. I just need her for a meeting. That’s all.”
“I think in the grand scheme of things…” Eve leans out and touches Odessa’s knee gently, “I just had to know, why. I’m friends.. With people who have done terrible things. I have done terrible things but I just want you to remember. Our terrible things are only acceptable if we are doing it for the greater good. And maybe we dance between the gray lines before us, but we dance as one with purpose.. Help the weak.” The pale woman smiles gently. “I killed a man in cold blood, multiple. I’ve lied, I trick, I nudge. Sometimes it feels like I’m not even doing it.” A omission that Eve has never admitted to anyone else. The whispers of her own voice are quiet now though. They have been all day.
“Gabriel is who he is, you are who you are. I am who I am. I am.. Not mad” Not any longer, she looks Odessa directly in the eyes and doesn’t remove her hand from the woman’s knee, “Lonely no more.” And then the seer is coming over to embrace Odessa in a tight embrace, smelling her hair deeply, “Never lonely,” she promises into the other dark haired woman. Odessa can feel the gun on Eve’s person but that’s not for her, it’s for safety.
“Maybe I can get you a meeting with her? If it would help,” Eve’s not sure how exactly but.. She has an inkling. There’s a dilemma in her head and the woman goes through the twists in her head as she hugs the woman, is it possible that everyone could get what they want in this situation?
One could dream.
Des tenses when Eve’s hand finds her knee, and worse when she’s pulled into a hug. Once she realizes she isn’t about to have a snubnose lovingly pressed to the back of her head and the trigger pulled, she eases and returns the affection she surely does not deserve.
“I didn’t have any allies to speak of before the war began. I’d cut that rope bridge down myself with my own jealousy. I had nowhere else to turn. I didn’t know where else to go… I was scared.” Odessa sighs. “I never felt like I belonged there, but I belonged with him. I don’t think I would have survived the war on my own. You’ve read the papers, haven’t you? The war is just the cherry on the sundae of things they want to try me for.”
Her lip trembles as she considers her position. “I don’t see how a simple meeting can save me, but maybe it can’t make things worse than they already are. But I feel like giving up, Eve.”
The paler woman notices the stiffening and doesn’t move to allow Odessa to get comfortable being supported by someone. Eve is silent as Odessa speaks and she nods her head along, there are worse things. The older woman had been living in the Ark at the same time as Odessa, it’s a wonder if they ever crossed paths. With Eve’s memories what they are.. “I wish I had known you in there, I could tell them you weren’t a monster.” Even if she had been at the time, being lost and alone made you do stupid things, things you would regret. For all their gifts they are still human at the core.
“We no longer belong with these men. The ones that twist our minds and take what they want and leave us in the dust.” For all her talk and thinking of being human and of one tribe, the pull and power of the masculine energy was one that the seer was all too willing to reject. “They use us and leave a wrecked battlefield in their wake. No more.” Her eyes find Odessa’s and she places her forehead on the former blonde’s. “If you find yourself slipping, just whisper to me.”
Odessa’s emotion is taken in by Eve and she echoes that with a frown and watering of her eyes, “Ah Des look at us, we went back to feudal Japan and survived, got back here. You can get through anything my dear.” She means it. “You can find the most satisfying solutions in the most simple ways,” a small smile and the woman taps Odessa’s chin. “I don’t deal too much in the past anyway, I’m much more suited focusing on the future.” A further statement to let Odessa know where Eve stands. “All of these things Odessa, just pieces of the big confusing as fuck puzzle but we gotta check in on ourselves.. Which is why I’ve been staying at the Benchmark recently.”
“I betrayed them from the inside.” A small smile spreads across Odessa’s face, like she knows she isn’t supposed to be so proud of that, but she is. “I helped make them pay for the awful things they did to people.” Even if she did it with the help of Humanis First. Her heart was in the right place even if the bombs came from the wrong people.
She sighs quietly and lets her forehead rest against Eve’s. While she would argue that she doesn’t get taken in by men, part of he realizes she is co-dependent by nature. She’s been taken in by women too. “Richard wanted me to see someone,” Des says softly. “Get my head on straight. But that all went out the window once my secret identity got revealed. Can’t talk to anyone now. I’d just get turned in.” And she knows Benchmark is being watched. They expect her to try and go back.
“We did survive that shit, didn’t we? And I survived a year in another world…” Des frowns. “You said you met with someone?”
A wicked smile crosses Eve’s lips and she nods her approval, that’s as good a start as any to atone for her previous actions everything counted, ashing the cigarette again before taking a long pull, “Maybe once this is settled,” not a prophetic saying but just a belief. There is an end to this. There always was. “And then you can deal with those pesky bad memories and history.” Eve tilts her head and cracks another smile, “Oh yes we did, by the skin of our teeth.” The memory still fresh in her mind, Eve isn’t sure she’ll ever forget it.
Returning to Kam has Eve’s shoulders back and she chooses to shift her gaze and head to the window and the view over her shoulder, “I met a woman, who knows more than she originally let on.. About things we have experienced.” Shuddering at the dream she had, “The golden eyes.. The Entity.. It’s not what we thought.” Whatever did they think it was in the first place? “It’s not.. A person.. It’s an idea. It spreads the more we talk about it and with the more people we do,” That addressed Eve looks finally back at Odessa and her eyes are wide with fear, “There was something done in the past to stop it, apparently it can’t be killed.” Tapping her cigarette she taps her foot in time with the motion.
“A woman Kam from Yamagato knows who you are, she might know more.”
Odessa listens silently, nodding her head as Eve goes, absorbing it all and trying to reconcile it with what she’s seen. “An idea…” Des repeats, looking off into the middle distance as if there are answers there.
Her head lifts and she fixes Eve with a quizzical look. “You talked to someone from Yamagato Industries about me? How the hell do they know anything about me?” She isn’t sure she wants them to know anything, but if they already do, and there are answers to be found…
“What did this Kam say?”
“Oh no, I said I had a friend was taken over by the Entity when she was a girl and she knew it was you. She said your name without me even hinting. She said it always starts with you,” That puzzling statement left to hang heavy in the air between the women, “That’s all though, she’s not happy that it’s back. She doesn’t or didn’t believe it was that bad, she was wrong.” A shrug of Eve’s shoulder, spilled milk. Now they had to do something about it. “She has more answers,” Answers she would seek, “Said that she’d.. Be seeing me soon enough if this was as bad as I claimed.”
It was but Eve was still use to people treating her like she was just a loon.
“I have leads I’m following on the Immortal. There are some government friendlies along with,” and she gives Odessa a look. “We might turn up something soon.” The Refrain Facility was one thing, there were other things Eve was looking for. That was just the first stepping stone, she itches her palm. She needed to meet with the others.
“Shit.” Des lets out a deep breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.
It always starts with you.
“So— So what does that mean? I—” Des lowers her gaze to the floor and lets out a muttered, “Fuck.” One hand rakes through her dark hair, wincing as she nearly catches her stitches with a nail. “I’m going to have to try to sneak into Yamagato Park, aren’t I?” Which sounds like the worst idea of the century, even to her own ears.
Eve’s ears perk up, did someone say sneak? Eve smiles but then it falters as she remembers, “Ah ah they are pretty good at security. I..” Eve rubs her chin as she thinks, there are a list of ways they can do this. Odessa being able to stop time might work but if they have a negator or something of the like… “She seemed cagey so showing up and not asking for a meet is the best idea.” Oiiiiiiii.
“What about a distraction?”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that,” Des mumbles absently regarding the security. She’s read a little bit about Yamagato. Particularly about the Park not being U.S. territory and considering what that might mean for her.
“I could probably sneak through, but if they use any kind of negation, it’s a no-go. I can’t risk being—” But a distraction… “Okay, I’ll bite. What sort of distraction did you have in mind?”
Brown eyes fade to a faraway place as Eve goes through her list of shenanigans and the Eve of old emerges with a deadly grin, “No not the chickens, poor things get spooked to death..” Counting her fingers.. “Fart machine is so 2017.. There was that excellent fake baby poop shit I threw on that one guard’s face..” None of this work for Eve and she seems to give up before her eyes light up and she leans in too close to Odessa their eyes level with each other,
“How do you feel about monkeys?”