Participants:
| Scene Title | Hate Yourself |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Caliban stops by Old Lucy's to let Abigail know he's leaving for Las Vegas on business for an indefinite period of time. |
| Date | April 19, 2010 |
Still closed. Snow, snow, SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.
Two cranky homeland agents in a carpet cleaning van who played chauffer because Abby didn't really want to drive in her state. Lest she end up tilted and slightly to the left like she did in Brooklyn. That cut has faded, just a small fading cut across her forehead that in a few more weeks will be nothing.
In the backroom, laying down with a freezable gel pack on her forehead, feet up and singing softly to herself while waiting for Caliban to show up. Odessa might be upstairs, Abby doesn't know, and there's a white medical mask resting on her abdomen in case she still needs it for when Robert shows up. The TV in the room is turned on too, watching the news while her one foot swings back and forth over the arm of the chair. She's coming down off her painkillers, weaning them out with some advil till she gets back to Francois's.
The sound of the door opening would normally be cause for alarm, but the sound of footsteps striking against the bar's floor have a familiar cadence and it belongs to the man she's waiting for rather than the one locked in the basement of the safehouse on Staten Island. Caliban emerges into the back room, dressed in an overcoat, gloves and a pair of long black slacks the shade — but not the same texture — as his polished leather loafers.
As far as his physical health is concerned, he looks much better than the last time he came to visit her here. His current mental state, on the other hand, is presently something of a mystery. "I wanted to tell you in person," he says, wasting no time as he steps inside and loosens his coat collar. "Mr. Linderman has some business in Nevada that he'd like me to take care of. I don't know how long it's going to take."
"You just want to get away from the snow and the cold" She pipes in seconds after her singing ends and she peers over her feet towards Caliban. Less red eyes, he sounds better. "You know how many people will be jealous of you? Lord, I'm Jealous of you" Abigail points out. Vegas isn't buried under feet and feet of snow. "21 will still be there when you get back" She assures him with a crooked smile. "I guess, I shouldn't say have fun, since you won't be there for fun likely Robert, so maybe, just make sure to rest? Squish those stress balls too"
Caliban's path carries him around Abigail's chair and brings him to a halt at her feet, blue eyes focused on the leg that had been swinging instead of her face. His gaze travels from her ankle all the way up her calf to her knee where it stops, then bounces abruptly up to the general vicinity of where it should be to study the lazy crook of her mouth.
His hand slips under her heel and cradles her foot in his palm for a moment before he curves his thumb along the inside of her sole through the material of her sock. "They're making me take a bus."
"Oooh, a bus." She screws up her nose at that. Bus's, not appealing. "Last time I took a bus, it was from Louisiana to here so I could heal people from midtown. Okay, Envy is quickly fading and turning into pity. Wait, unless that bus is one of the ones where there's couches and beds, bathroom, kitchen, then, then it's tolerable" Her foot stills, pulling the gelpack off her forehead and raising her brows at his hand cradling her foot. Her toes turn up and it prompts laughter. Laughter that's soon followed by a grimace. "Lord, no, no don't do that, I'm ticklish and it hurts. Please Robert"
Caliban tightens his grip on Abigail's foot and slides his hand up a few inches further, closing his fingers around her heel while maintaining a firm but gentle touch. His other hand finds the remote control as he leans over the chair and presses down on the button that controls the television's volume, but he's bringing it up rather than down. It's unlikely that the men stationed outside the bar could hear their voices from where they're standing guard, but for whatever reason he prefers to take no chances.
She makes an aborted move for the remote, letting him have it so he can change the volume, gaze flickering back and forth between his face and the hold on her ankle. "I have broken ribs Robert, it is not conducive to what I think you're thinking.. and you're getting over the flu and I cannot afford to get it. It's going to have to wait. It would do more bad than any good if I do any hanky panky of that sort" She can't roll onto her side and get up, lest she take her foot from out of his grip and she doesn't seem inclined to do such at this point in the evening.
The hunch of Caliban's shoulders is reminiscent of a large cat gearing up to bounce from behind a veil of tall grass, and although the expression on his face cannot be mistaken for anything other than predatory, there's nothing sexual about the way he's looking at her now. Hanky panky probably isn't what's on his mind.
"You're going to tell me where Abigail Beauchamp is," he says in a low, gravelly voice, "or I'm going to break every bone in your body, starting with your toes." And to punctuate his statement, he gives her ankle a sharp twist with enough force to dislocate it. "Zhukovsky, right? The man with the illusions? Your boss?"
There's no air in the world to refute him, to state that no, she is Abigail Beauchamp because there's a pop and excruciating pain that isn't muted by her painkillers and not two seconds later there's an ear shattering scream that spills out of her mouth. He was right to turn the volume up as much as he did, because Abigail has lungs on her. Fear and panic floods into her eyes gone wide and spilling tears before she's scrabbling back, turning on the couch as much as she can to grab a hold of the arm of the sofa behind herself and try to haul herself bodily away from Caliban and what is turning out to be interrogation and not whatever it was that she had thought it would be.
The dull roar of the television dampens the scream, and the two agents outside continue — at least for now — to remain oblivious to what's happening behind the bar's brick walls. Caliban roughly tears Abigail off the furniture, one arm looped around her midsection just below her ribs, the other at her throat to smother the sounds she's making by restricting the flow of oxygen to those powerful lungs of hers.
"I'm bigger you," he's snarling against her neck, a flash of teeth briefly visible in her peripheral vision, "stronger than you. The more you struggle, the more you're going to be hurt. Tell me where the girl is."
Another scream is cut off midway with the manhandling and she kicks, in as much as it sends cutting agony up her one leg to do so and fingers scrabble at hand around throat, fingernails trying to scratch at him. "Robert…" Oh god, he was going to kill her, thinking she was someone else, and someone else had her. How the hell was she to prove who she was to him?
"Stop" She chokes out, tears streaming down her face and dripping onto his arm. "Hate yourself" She sucks in for air, not to scream but for the sake of sucking in air and keeping oxygen reaching her lungs. If she passes out, he'll kill her or god knows what else.
"Believe me, I do." The smell of Caliban's cologne and aftershave washes over Abigail's face and floods into her nostrils, drowning her in cigar smoke, stale whiskey and something like sandalwood, but the arm around her neck isn't just compressing her windpipe — it's affecting her capacity for coherent thought as well. Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be capable of identifying the individual notes of his cologne.
Abigail's nails leave raw red marks across the back of his hand between his glove and the sleeve of his coat where they fail to break the skin and vibrant smears of blood where they do. "Is she dead? Did you kill her?"
Abby says, "I'm her" She pleads, snotty nosed bleating it out for all that she can and trying to swallow. Good foot used, go up on her toe in the hopes that it might give her leverage to rock her head back into Caliban's, thump the back of her head into his nose in a desperate attempt to get loose before she can pass out, fingers still scratching at his arms for all she's worth. He's right. He's bigger and stronger and has years of fighting at his hand and she's got lessons in the park with Xiulan and a taser. Taser that is nowhere near where she can grab it.
"ODESSA!" Hoping against hope that her last scream will be heard by the upstairs resident.
Just call her Mighty Mouse, because here she comes to save the day~
Stopping time when she can't actually see what she's stopping has always been a dodgy process, but it's one that's always been made easier when Odessa knows the area she wants to freeze like the back of her hand, and there's a lack of excessive variables - id est people. Abby and Caliban have been frozen in place for a good couple minutes by the time Doctor Knutson is racing down the stairs with her fuzzy yellow robe suitably cinched, purple marabou-powder-puffed heels clacking noisily on the floor for no one else to hear. Her chest is heaving when she throws open the door and can finally see what all the commotion is about.
"Oh," is all Odessa can think to utter as her hand flutters to her chest to push her heart back into place. "All right then, let's just…" With the wave of her taped up hand, she's setting Abby back into motion. "Can you breathe," she asks, "or should I freeze you back up until I can pry his fingers off you?"
The answer Odessa gets is a choking Abby, her own fingers trying to pry in at Calibans now that he's frozen. All the noise in the world ceased with just the use of Odessa's ability. Tears rolling down her eyes, snot dripping from her nose and panic welling all over her. "'dessa." Thank god for having the woman still upstairs and not run off to Roosevelt or anywhere else.
Calibans fingers give way and the younger blonde wrenches herself away from Robert, tumbling to the floor with a scream comingling with a sob. She's putting distance between herself and Robert, going for the space between the couch and the wall, something between her and Robert that's physical for when Odessa drops her ability.
Odessa watches Abby break free of the man's grasp with something that's very close to detachment, save for a brief flicker in her eyes. Only when the other blonde has put herself behind the couch does she finally let on about what's on her mind.
"Do you want me to kill him?" Dark blue eyes flit over, Odessa is completely serious. "I'll take him out back and do it if you're worried about the mess. Nobody will notice extra trash in the dumpster."
"No. No. Don't kill him. Robert" That guy she was seeing. You know, the Linderman one. "Let him go, just let him go" She's cramming herself into the corner, dragging her bag to her so that she can fish for the taser that he made her carry, hands slick with his blood from her number she's done on his hands. Hard to see through the sheen of tears and instead of fishing in the end, abby dumps it all out on her lap fumbling with the black and yellow weapon, holding it close while she cowers and shakes, aiming it in roughly, his direction.
Odessa would be lying if she said that she wasn't disappointed that she doesn't get to kill the cocksucker standing in the backroom with his arm still vaguely embracing the space where Abby once was in a death squeeze. But whatever the lady wants, she supposes. "Careful with that thing. Don't put your eye out." Once she's sure Abby isn't going to just fire her taser out of sheer need to lash out, she waves her hand again and releases Caliban from the hold of her ability.
To Caliban, Abigail is crushed against his chest one moment; the next, his arms are empty and his hands are groping nothing except air. The quiet rage on his face slips, loses its hold and is replaced by a bewildered look with eyes that flash first in Odessa's direction and then Abigail huddled behind the couch with a taser clutched in delicate hands streaked with his blood.
He takes one step back and then another, and it's obvious that he doesn't have his pistol on him because he isn't going for the holster he normally wears strapped across his shoulder under his coat. Odessa's is a face that he doesn't recognize.
Abigails body sucks in oxygen fast as it can to compensate for the lack of it minutes before. Could she actually hit him with the taser right now? With the way it rocks back and forth in her hands, likely not. She doesn't take her eyes off Caliban to look at Odessa, leaving them solely on the Linderman Rep standing in her back room. One hand comes off the gun,s treaks of red distorting the yellow on the gun so she can wipe her nose with her sleeve then back on the gun.
"You need to go Robert. You need to leave, go to Vegas, do what you have to do. I'm Abigail and I don't, I don't know what gave you that idea at all that I wasn't. You.. you need to… " Without his hands around her neck, there's a little bit of spine still left in her. "Go, you.. you just.. go" Red is blossoming on her neck and it hurts to swallow and likely, bruises will be springing up in it's wake to mar her skin.
"Go!"
Odessa decides that she doesn't even want to give Caliban a chance to tuck his tail between his legs or attempt something like an apology. With a roll of her eyes, a look of disgust, and a wave of her hand, he's frozen in place again. "Come on," she tells Abby, "let's go. Upstairs. We'll get you cleaned up, and he can slink out once we're safely behind all those security thingies that I don't understand." Because this guy doesn't look nearly as resourceful as Feng Daiyu or anything, so she feels reasonably safe in the assumption that Caliban won't go trying to break down the door. "March."
Odessa says move, and somewhere in her mind, Abigail does just that. Taser is dropped right where she is and while she can't just get up and march like Odessa demands for her to do, she can at least make it to Odessa and get help to march up the steps, close the door and lock it behind them and eventually up to the main apartment, that door closed and all the security measures put into place. Not even a backward glance for the frozen Linderman Rep in the process of having backed up.