How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sophia

Participants:

delia_icon.gif nick_icon.gif

Scene Title How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sophia
Synopsis Nick confides a little in Delia, giving her something to do in the cold winter months.
Date November 14, 2018

Elmhurst

The Ruskin-Ryans House


She probably knows, even in her sleep, that he’s awake. If the tossing and turning, or eventually, the slow rise and accompanying squeak of bed springs didn’t tell her subconsciously that he’s awake, Nick is absent from the dreamscape Delia falls into and lives in each time she drifts into sleep.

Nick knows it probably won’t be long before she comes to find him. He’s put on a cup of coffee, giving up on the hope of sleep for the night. A mug of it sits in front of him at the kitchen table, where he sits flipping through the files he’s brought with him, looking for connections where he’s looked a hundred times already. It would be enough to put anyone to sleep, if it wasn’t also what was keeping him awake.

Well, one of many things keeping him awake.

It’s a while before Delia makes her way into the kitchen. It’s November and baby it’s cold outside, too cold to be wasting bed heat by walking around a frigid house. A kettle is placed on the stove and the good tea is taken from the cupboards, not the stuff that was made by her own two hands. If she’s going to be up in the middle of the night instead of sleeping, she’s going to treat herself to something better than rose hips, lemongrass, or chamomile.

She takes a seat, kitty corner from where he is, and tilts her head to peer at all of the files she knows she’s not supposed to look at. When she spots a picture, she place two fingers on its corner and twists it to a better angle for viewing. “These can’t be better than being in bed,” she remarks, a slight smile on her face. She taps the picture lightly and glances at him, “New case? Is that why you’re so… well… work you.“

He smiles, his blue eyes still sleepy with want of slumber, and reaches to grip her hand across the corner of the table. His hair sticks up here and there from tossing and turning on the pillow. He glances down at the photograph she holds. A blown-up close-up of Sharrow, on the docks of a port in Portugal.

Quiet for a moment, he reaches for his mug, lifting it with his free hand and taking a sip. When he sets it down, he squeezes her hand once, before reaching to pull another one out from behind it. She will recognize the face, though it’s no doubt aged from his mind’s depiction of her in dream and memory. Sophia Ruskin.

“This is a Vanguard operative. What he’s doing with my mother, I don’t know.” His voice is too flat to be neutral, but not emotionless. “They boarded a ship headed to the US. If you see them — if she tries to manipulate you in any way, you need to know she can’t be trusted. She might be trying to get to me, to get to Eileen. I don’t know, Del. Just… don’t let her get to you, yeah?”

"How would she— " Delia stops herself, she's read Wolves of Valhalla. Whatever information Vanguard may have about Eileen shouldn't be a surprise, it would be more of a surprise if they didn't have any at all. She places both of her hands around Nick's and gives him a reassuring smile. "You don't need to worry," she murmurs before planting a kiss on his cheek, "she probably has no idea who the hell I am. You're a ghost." As far as the dreamwalker is concerned, Sophia Ruskin shouldn’t have an inkling as to who she or Benji are in relation to her family.

"Besides," she continues, "I take after my dad in more ways than just stubbornness and good looks. We have certain sets of skills." Wink.

“Sharrow,” Nick says quietly, one shoulder lifting in a shrug as he leans his head against hers and into that kiss. “Sophia wouldn’t be able to find me but Sharrow’s not stupid. If they come after you, I don’t know — tell them we broke up or something. That I’m an asshole.”

He manages a smile.

“That second part wouldn’t be a lie, anyway,” he adds, before pulling out another photo, one that’s faded, out of date. He taps it.

“This is my father,” Nick says quietly. There are fewer memories of him in Nick’s mind that Delia may have stumbled across in the form of dreams. The feelings there are less about fear and hate but confusion and abandonment. Loss. Resentment.

“I’m trying to find where he is now. I didn’t think there was a connection between him and Vanguard, but Epstein asked,” he explains, reaching up to shove his hand through his hair, then lean his temple into that hand, elbow planted on the table. “Fucking family. I probably should expect it, right? Jesus.”

"Oh shut your face," Delia remarks in response to the asshole comment. "You wouldn't be if you didn't want to be."

She takes the photo of the man and looks between it and her partner, rather obviously sussing out the physical similarities between the two. "When, and I guess where, was the last time you saw or heard from him?" When they're together, she focuses on the present. Past and future don't belong to the both of them, so as far as the dreamwalker is concerned, they're to be ignored.

A sharp glance is passed his way during the lament of family, she doesn't know firsthand what it's like but… "Nick, you're over thirty years old. It's time to just let it go and accept that's just the way it is. “Most families aren't like the one you grew up with. Your family isn't like the one you grew up with." She doesn’t consider Sophia and Gregory his family, is the sentiment behind the words. The Ryans family, they are his family now… and Eileen. She drops the picture and pushes it toward the rest of the pile. "I'm going to help you, whether you want it or not. I want to help you move past this and bury it once and for all. We’ll find him and keep her away from Eileen, together."

Her words make him smile, but it’s a weary one, one that’s tired and jaded and not as optimistic as she is. “Given the state — states — of my sibling, I’m not sure my family’s doing any better these days,” he says, though it’s a wry attempt at a joke.

Nick returns to the questions, though. “Home at the flat in London. I was ten, I think.” His words are matter-of-fact, as if he hadn’t been abandoned. As if it hadn’t been a defining moment in his childhood.

“Don’t put yourself in danger, Del,” he says, pushing everything back into the file folder and reaching for his coffee. “ mostly just want you to be know in case they come for you — not to trust any of them. I don’t know what they have to do with Vanguard. If Gregory has anything to do with them. But they don’t care about Eileen or me. No matter what they say.” He pauses for a moment, before adding, “Eileen’s not his. I don’t know if you knew that.”

“I didn’t,” she gets up from her chair and answers the kettle that’s beginning to squeal on the stove. She doesn’t offer him any tea, he’s already got the strong coffee and it’s probably just his first cup of the night. “As for the danger, I already do it for a job.” She brings her cup back to the table and swirls the bag around languidly with a spoon watching the liquid turn from a pale gold to a deep amber. “You have no idea how much work goes into protecting that garden from the savage beasts who try to raid it. Especially now, even though there’s nothing growing there’s scavengers out there digging up frozen plots trying to find stray potatoes and carrots.”

The first sip of hot liquid crawls down her throat while she lets that morsel settle in. “Poking through a few heads at night looking for Sharrow, Sophia, and Gregory won’t be dangerous. I know how to be subtle.”

Nick reaches for her free hand, interlacing fingers with hers, then stroking the back with his thumb. A hint of a smile upturns his mouth. “Stray potatoes and carrots. I’m going to have nightmares of them now. Like that shaggy carrot thing in the Loony Toons cartoons or something,” he murmurs.

He reaches up to touch one of her curls, tucking it behind her ear. “Only when it’s safe,” he says quietly. “Don’t spend too much time in their heads, though. I don’t think they’d be happy places.” His expression flickers, a little — perhaps afraid of what she might see in the minds of either of his parents, regarding him.

“One more thing,” he adds. “Don’t be you.” The ghost of a smile returns, and his blue gaze finds hers to study. “By that I mean — don’t be sympathetic, yeah? Don’t find the reasons to forgive them, like you did with me. I just need the facts. Where they are. What they’re doing. When. How. I don’t need to forgive them. I just need to know what they’re up to.”

“I’d better not be the shaggy carrot,” Delia threatens with a matching wisp of a smile. She squeezes her fingers together, lightly, tightening the hold of hands for a moment. "But as long as you're here, I'll make sure you get more or less of them, depending on how well you fold laundry."

With her free hand, she takes another sip of her tea, breathing a long sigh after swallowing. "Don't be me, like it's such a bad thing," she wrinkles her nose a little, teasingly, before putting the cup down again. "I'm looking for them and looking for a reason they're here. That's it, got it." There's another pause, this void filled with the rapid clink of fingernail against porcelaine as she thinks. "Nick, I've been wanting to ask… without this turning into another fight… Eileen's been gone for years. How much of her is left in the girl?"

“Oh, so you admit to it,” Nick says teasingly, regarding correlation between laundry and nightmares.

When she takes the comment not to be her as an insult, even jokingly, his hand goes to touch her face. He might have been about to correct her, tell her how wonderful she is, but then the topic of his sister — his sisters — is brought up, and he sighs, leaning back with a creak of chair wood.

“Enough,” is his short answer, before it rings too blunt in his ears, and he softens a little. “She’s still there. Enough to recognize me, to know things, to feel that Gabriel was still alive. Enough that the other one feels threatened by her. I don’t know.” He looks at her a little warily, guard back up.

"As long as there's enough," Delia sighs, still looking into her cup. It's plain to see that there is no fight about the topic inside of her. Reaching in, she pulls the bag out of the hot water with her fingernails and tosses it gently on her saucer. "I've been thinking about visiting, for a while now. Maybe one of them, maybe both. Before Benji does it on her own."

Taking a deep breath inward, she forces a smile and breathes out a small huff of a laugh. "I was hoping that I could remind Eileen who Benji was before it happened. So she doesn't get … so she doesn't get defensive."

“Is she around?” Nick says quietly. “I haven’t seen her since back west.” So many months ago, now, and even as he says it, he looks down, unhappy with himself and that information.

“Her traveling companion,” is that what we’re calling Calvin, “and I don’t get along very well, as you know.” There’s an understatement, if there ever was one. “If you see her, tell her not to be a stranger, yeah?”

He reaches to take her hand. “I think there’s enough she’d remember — at least in the girl. Just be careful, yeah? I won’t tell you not to and I won’t tell Benj not to. But be careful. I don’t know how the other one will take to it — she doesn’t know you, as far as I know. I don’t know what I was, over there, where she’s from. She wasn’t…”

He rubs his eyes, with his free hand. The caffeine isn’t doing much to give him any energy. “She wasn’t afraid of me, like she was here.”

"The last time I saw her was when she and Calvin came back for family dinner. And I keep telling her she has a room here, but…" Delia shrugs and takes another sip of her tea. She smiles at Nick's sleepy display. "..you just can't go home again, right?

"Listen, you need some sleep, come on." Pushing herself up, she holds a hand out to Nick to pull him up beside her. "Maybe she doesn't have a reason to be afraid of you, maybe where she's from, things happened the way they really should have." She doesn't want to guess, she just wants to hope. "I want to see her though, I don't think she's going back to where she's from and if she stays… she'll be family."

Nick huffs a little laugh at the comment about home. “It’s not like you’re an empty nester,” he says with a fond mile for Delia, and their strange backwards life. Benji’s older than both of them, in years alive, if not by the calendar.

He puts a hand in hers and lets her pull him up, coming up close so he stands nose-to-nose with her, brushing his lips against hers, then pressing his forehead against hers. He nods, his up-down motion making hers rise and fall as well. “She’s family. She’s pissed at me right now, but that’s more normal than the rest of it, really. Just… be careful. She’s not… “ Trustworthy isn’t the right word. She never lied to him. “She’s dangerous. I think all Eileens are.”

There’s a small, wry smile, as he steps back, letting her lead him back to bed by the hand. “Just knock first, you know? She won’t take to anything like an intrusion lightly. But if she cares about me, she probably cares about you. Hopefully I didn’t burn that bridge entirely.”

But the burning of bridges is something Ruskins are good at.


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