Participants:
| Scene Title | Icebreakers |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After all this time, Lucille and Emily finally break the ice. |
| Date | March 24, 2019 |
Rude as shit floor nurses.
Emily definitely should have been ejected and should count herself lucky she hasn't been, but she's having trouble seeing things from the other side right now. Right now, she's impeccably frustrated at being told off after leaving Devon's room, her footfalls heavy as she trudges past the closed cafeteria and heads for the vending machines at the far end of the eating area. Her jacket is slung over one arm, its fabric sweeping against her pantleg with a hiss each step, bag jostling by her side as it hangs on just barely on one shoulder.
It's been a long day, and she just wants to grab a cup of shitty vending machine coffee and sit in her usual nesting spot by the window until either she calms down or Julie is able to swing by and talk to her about everything that's going on.
Little does she know, neither of those things are going to happen.
Light blue eyes move up a tick from the pages of the book that lays splayed open in front of Lucille, one lone finger holding it open. Emily's entrance was distracting but the older woman doesn't outwardly speak as the blonde walks in clearly looking not okay. That's to be expected, Lucille immediately thinks it has all to do with Devon. He was dead and they had begun mourning but now… he wasn't.
Lucille was thrown.
Guilt for not finding him. Going over the rollercoaster ride that was Devon's "death" and resurface was enough to chill Lu to the bones and make her for a moment forget that the last time she saw Emily the young woman was in a wheelchair. Softly closing the book to reveal the cover bearing the title Activating Evolution, Lucille clears her throat. "Did you find a healer?" That guy Sasha does work here after all.. but Emily's case was..
Blue eyes squint.
Emily had been set on her path, moving only one phase at a time. She was stuck on the 'obtain coffee' phase of the plan, and having trouble with completing it. There was a coin jammed in the quarter slot, and a new dent in the face of the machine. (Damn it, Zachery.) She's gone through the discovery process and is about to slam the heel of her hand into the coin receptacle to see if it will jam the detritus loose when Lucille speaks up.
She'd never known the eldest Ryans daughter to be quiet enough to surprise her like that, but Emily admittedly knew very little of her to begin with. She turns, brow furrowing at the halfway familiar voice and stares for a long moment before recognition dawns. Before that's even happened, she asks, "Excuse me?" in a tone that's more like excuse you.
When she recognizes Lucille, her brow ticks up in idle surprise. Oh. It's her.
"Your legs," Finger tapping idly on the surface of the book she was reading, old stuff especially with all the new information on SLC-E abilities out there but there was something about going back to the basics, the original idea that attracted Lucille now. "They are functioning properly. Your condition wasn't an easy one." To fix. Just from knowing Emily's condition. She all but wants to ask: did my best friend heal you? But instead she shrugs her shoulder. "Good to see you on your feet."
There's no amount of mockery there, she is honest in that moment. Plus they are both here for the same reason.
"Have you spoken to him?" Pale hands go to reach for her own paper cup of tea, chamomile it can't be helped.
"My legs worked before," Emily replies defensively, her eyes narrowing at Lucille over whatever place she was coming from she felt comfortable saying anything like that. "I could get around just fi—" She turns away as she clips her snapped reply off short, leveling a simmering glare at one of the vending machines.
Taking in a steadying breath, she holds it in and looks back to Lucille, trying to answer the question she was posed. "Yes," Emily manages, evenly, "They just kicked me out. They're pretty adamant about not letting anybody back this evening." From the relation of this fact alone, she sounds like she disagrees. She considers the vending machine before her for a moment, considering whether she might see if she has any bills for it. "Rules and hours and bullshit." she mutters.
"Shit, at this point he could just get up and leave on his own." As indirect as it is, it could be an answer to the question of how is he doing. When Emily realizes as much, she glances back at Lucille, her tone quieting. She tries to blunt the edge on her voice. "He's doing okay," she adds mildly, attention turning down to her jacket to sift through her pockets for loose bills. "He's disoriented, but doing better than he was. He doesn't know how he got here. But he's him." Her voice thins. "It's really him."
Cold blue eyes almost instantly flare a hot gold shade as Lucille allows her biotic feelers to warp their way around Emily, the blonde would feel nothing but Lucille gets a read on her biological functions and her eyes widen a fraction. Though she had seen Berlin's work through her own healing and her father's, it was still just insane how much she could heal. The taller woman uncrosses her legs and plants them evenly on the cafeteria linoleum, no matter what hospital it's just too sterile for even Lucille's liking. "Congratulations on your healing."
"I was waiting for a good time to see him alone." Lucille trusted the doctors and staff here but she wanted to run her own scanning of him. Worried, her Kid Brother. Luce's expression softens more and she nods, "I'm happy it's him." Not that she's sure who else he could be.
Gently using her foot to nudge the chair opposite of her out to Emily's hands. Lucille is silent. "I looked and searched. Almost burnt out my ability pushing it to the brink, just to find him." Golden orbs fade back to her natural blue gray, "He.." swallowing hard Lucille's grip on her book tightens. "He's special." To her, to Wolfhound. To Emily.
When she realizes the chair has been nudged out as an offering to sit, Emily stays where she is, gaze darting to the seat and then back to Lucille. Her expression hardens when the other woman speaks again, and she rests a hand on the seat's back. "He is," she concedes, the agreement terse.
But she sits, eyes warily meeting Lucille's. She'd not asked, nor wanted to know, but hearing how hard they'd searched for Devon evokes something like comfort… even if it's a wholly uncomfortable topic, especially given Devon's mysterious reappearance. "What is it you do, anyway?" Emily asks mildly, curious despite herself. "Your ability." She'd seen the unnatural flash of color in her irises a short time ago.
"Didn't they teach you thats rude to ask nowadays?" Lucille's mask of a face breaks and she smiles softly, gently. No teeth visible. The change of subject is welcome and she relaxes in her chair across from Emily.
It's always more fun showing than telling.
"Give me your hand," there Lucille's hand lays palm open and facing up, "And close your eyes." A test if Emily trusts Lucille. The older woman's hand flexes briefly and she offers, "I can show you."
Emily keeps her hand firmly in her lap, gaze skeptically on Lucille. She trusts her enough to talk with her, but not to go offering body parts — speaking civilly was a treat enough for Lucille. She merely watches the Wolfhound agent instead, adjusting her jacket on her arm with a slight shake of her head. "It's…" she sounds as polite as she can, brow ticking downward into a concerned knit. "Well, what if you do something like … I don't know … make people puke?"
For as little as she knows about Lucille, she remembers that she and Devon were pranksters-in-arms. She takes no risks here.
A laugh erupts from Lucille and she lets her head drop back as her hand withdraws. Eventually the older woman lifts it back to stare across the table back at Emily and she shrugs lightly. Suit yourself. "I would never do that to you. Devon wouldn't forgive me." She might make her blind though that was a different thing! That doesn't explain her ability.
"You don't have an ability then? Since we're doing show and tell." Without the show it would seem though. Lifting the styrofoam cup to her lips before continuing with an eyebrow raised, "Or did you manifest into a regenerator."
Emily squints for a moment, trying to figure out how much of Lucille's deflection is a joke. Her ability that messes with someone's body or was otherwise activated by touch must be able to do something like it, at least. Her nose twinges just short of a full wrinkle as she looks down at her jacket, silently deciding declining the hand was a good choice. Maybe the specifics were better off not knowing firsthand.
When it rolls back around to her and the question of her own ability, Emily's eyes shoot back up and her brow lifts. "No, I…" she starts awkwardly, trailing off with a decisive pause. "Julie thought I might've manifested, but she was wrong." She looks uncomfortable admitting as much, looking just slightly past Lucille. Before the silence carries on long enough for input, she shrugs and looks back to the other woman with an attempt at a smile. "Maybe it's not a thing that happens for everyone. Like a carrier thing — You have it but never actually…"
"I try not to worry about it," she reports dismissively, though at least for the moment, she definitely seems to be, slightly distracted as she wonders to herself.
"Your cousin was there the day I almost died." Lucille admits changing the subject from Emily's not having manifested seeing as she wants to not address it. "Bullet went right here," touching the place at her neck where her scar once was. "Julie couldn't swim… I guess. We were both just floating out there in the water." It's been such a long time since Lucille has even said these words aloud not because it was buried just because after you've sat with trauma for so long… it was just apart of her. That scar was just underneath her skin now.
"We were fleeing from Heller. Everything had went to shit. There was a reason I was always on the move but I knew my father needed family. I needed family." Lucille grows quiet for a moment staring out across the room not really there almost feeling the cold lapping of the water against her skin. She had been so cold, the coldest she ever felt.
"I'm happy for you. That your family survived."
All Emily can do is blink slowly. It's one thing right after another with Lucille, and Emily doesn't gawk and let her eyes wander to examine the scar, or otherwise contemplate the deeply personal thing that's being shared with her. She sits very uncomfortably, but keeps her silence. Like most times someone opens up to her, she didn't ask for it, and she doesn't exactly want it.
But.
She clears her throat at the comment that her family survived. "Not everyone did," Emily inputs quietly. Her aunt, her cousin, they mattered — they were family. Even for as little as she still knows of them, their loss matters. It shapes those she loves. That in turn shapes her.
Gaze shifting off for a moment, it returns to Lucille only long enough to say, "But thank you." A spoken formality, rather than anything strongly felt. Her grip shifts on her jacket, adjusting how it lays on her arm. She forces the beginning of a chuckle out, feeling obligated to say something in return — she can't tell if Lucille is slightly bitter or if she wholly means what she said.
"I'm glad you made it through that, too," sounds sincere enough, but her mouth is pressing into a smile then: "Even if you are a pain in the ass to talk with." In a roundabout way, she likely wouldn't have initially met Devon without Lucille having first made a bad impression on her.
"No, they didn't." Lucille watched more than her share of deaths during the war. Emily's acceptance of Lucille's spill is noted by a polite nod, the blonde woman getting honest feelings from Luce. But just as soon as that door opens Emily's smile and wit makes it shudder on its hinges and Lucille laughs for a moment, maybe it's opened more. "You have literally no idea how painful it can get." Draining the rest of her tea she places the cup back in the table not today trying to read the tea leaves, it was a thing she watched abroad. Never got the hang of it.
"Are you in school or something?" Lucille doesn't know much about her. For Devon's sake she continues to reach out.
"Tell me you're running, rolling in the grass. It has to be liberating being in control of your own body again. That's how it was for me at least." Personal central, a slow smile crosses her lips, praised be Berlin.
Emily really has no idea how bad it could get, and she takes the tongue-in-cheek comment as a reminder of just how much she doesn't. 'Painful' is a good indicator that lets her know what she's missed out on by passing on show and tell, though.
If she had actually obtained a cup of coffee, now would be the point she hid her face in her cup and taken a long drink. Oh, boy. She's not even sure there's a response back to Lucille's rejoinder.
Instead, her gaze refocuses in after the question. "Yes," Emily answers directly for once. "I'm taking courses at Brooklyn College." But as for the other half to the request, she only looks puzzled. Irritated some, in the background, by the use of the word 'again'— but puzzled.
"Did you have a condition, previously?" she asks, trying to reserve judgement.
"That bullet left me unable to use my ability without error. It was constantly active, touching people… was not a good idea." It was a rough time but something she came to live with and it shows in her eyes, "Seven years. Until last year, I got hit over the head by a healer." Lucille shrugs her shoulders and smiles sending another silent thank you to her best friend, "Second chances. We owe it to ourselves to make the most of them." Not many people got them, Devon had when Lu had given up.
"I got used to it. It was my normal, it became all I knew. Being surrounded by people but not really feeling like I'm there just because an option wasn't there." To touch, to fall into a friend and laugh. Lucille has grown to live such a careful life.. "The first night we met at the gala? That was maybe a few days after my scar completely vanished. That was my first night out as well.. me."
A beat.
"Lots of alcohol was consumed."
Another beat.
There's a soft whisper of nylon as Emily shifts the jacket on her arm again, one hand lifting from under the table… and resting on top it, halfway between herself and Lucille.
"If you do something weird like making me puke," she advises, attempting humor despite her overt wariness, "I'm going to puke on you first, and slap you when I'm done."
Her fingertips rub together for a moment before she lets her arm lay on the table, palm up. Emily keeps her gaze turned down on it, even if she's generally facing Lucille. "It was sort of the same with me," comes from her as abruptly as it does softly. "—a surprise, that is. I hadn't expected it to happen, at least not then." She pauses, and then admits mildly, "I hadn't expected it to work the way it did. I thought sure, I might get some improvement, but…"
Her lips purse together for a moment before her shoulders tip upward in a small shrug. "… well, here we are." she says, still not looking up. "It was one of those now or never situations, and I went with it." Not without almost fucking it up, first, but Lucille didn't need to know that.
Blue eyes track to the hand that Emily now offers on the table. There's a laugh at the puke threat and she holds up her hands in mock surrender. "Devon would end me." She reinstates.
Listening to Emily's confession on how it feels to be delivered from her condition as Lucille was delivered from hers. Nodding along with her story, "Mine was more of a surprise. Over the course of a month. When I realized what was happening I freaked out, I didn't know if I had manifested some healing myself." The thoughts that Lucille played with during that time, "I was grateful but confused. When I finally learned who had done it." Shaking her head with a soft smile, "I just went with it." Echoing Emily's thoughts as she places her hand on top of the blondes gently, "Close your eyes." Trust me. Is implied by the look she gives the younger woman.
Who had done it? Emily's expression is deadpan as she makes a small leap in logic to assume who the who was in that statement. Her expression is mild until Lucille lays her hand down on hers, brow twitching at the request. With a look of sour skepticism for the additional sign of trust required, Emily cants her head slightly to the side before reluctantly closing her eyes as asked.
Tilting her head she thinks of the least scary aspect she can show Emily before settling on what she already figured would be the best hence the asking of her to close her eyes. Her iris swirls into the hot amber color it glows when her ability is in active use, reaching out through the physical connection they currently have Lucille's biotic senses searching and wrapping around Emily's corneas rendering her a total darkness blind.
"Open your eyes, slowly." A tic of her gaze to Emily's face again, "Don't panic."
Don't panic, she says, but it doesn't stop Emily from sucking in a breath of shock and flinching once she realises her eyes are open again and she still can't see.
She goes very still, unmoving, unspeaking. It's just for a second. Emily tries to rationalize to herself, to stop from panicking. There's too long a moment before she manages, voice somehow cool and collected, "That's something else." She exhales. "So, you can do multiple things?" she asks aloud. Dissecting it makes it easier to handle, but she closes her eyes again just in case. "What is it," Emily murmurs. "Nervous system manipulation or something? Can you just shut it off, or do things to different levels, or?"
For all of Emily's outward appearance of calm and collected Lucille feels the quickening of that heartbeat and she allows a ghost of a smile while Emily's eyesight is blocked. Lifting her hand off of Emily's the woman's sight rushes back to full clarity for when she opens her eyes again. Lucille's smile and those gold glowing eyes staring back at her. "It's biological," her gift and looks down at her hands. "As long as physical contact is happening." Lucille isn't one to be open and honest about her ability and this instance proves no different.
"I can do a few things." Placing her back on her side of the table Lucille shrugs her shoulders, "It's helpful with work. Got a lot of use in the triage hospitals during the war." Before she was on the frontlines and even after.
There they are. Demonstration completed with no drama, Emily wasn't acting like she was totally freaked. Luce hopes Dev is proud. "Are you going to sleep here? I wouldn't blame you." If was… once upon a time Tahir then she would.
Still sitting with her eyes closed, even as ambient light begins to filter back through her eyelids, Emily listens, brow twitching into a small furrow of interest as Lucille shares about her ability's specifics. In triage hospitals? she wonders. It's hardly a moment before she makes the connection, but takes another few before it sinks in. "Wow," she murmurs, head tilting to her lap. Eyes fluttering back open, Emily considers the question once it's asked. "I'm…"
Not sure, apparently.
"I'm just a few minutes down the road. If they're not even letting anyone see him, it doesn't make sense to sleep in a lobby. I know he's fine now." But still, she's not certain. Her head lifts a tick, glancing at Lucille out of the corner of her eye, minding that gold in her irises. "I — assume my dad's on his way. I'll figure it out after he gets here, I guess." She has a feeling he'd reject the offer to come sleep on their old, worn couch. She has an even stronger feeling Julie would be unhappy about it, were it to come to pass.
Emily shakes her head, righting her posture and fixing her gaze on Lucille more intently. "What about you?" she asks with a sudden softness, tipping her head at her.
Watching Emily still Lucille nods her head, "Should say hello to him before I leave," Lucille had been staying in the Safe Zone more regularly since Hercules. More to work out at the Crucible than at the training room at The Bunker. That nod shifts to a shake of her head though sending strands of blondish auburn hair flying in the air as the taller woman stands. "I'm staying at a hotel nearby, very close."
All the Hounds were close, descending upon the Safe Zone as their friend heals.
There's a moment of consideration as Lucille peers down at the younger woman with a soft expression echoing the softness in Emily's voice. "Let's get a drink sometime soon, it was good running into you." Thanks for letting me steal your spot.
Emily comes to her feet gracefully, even with her arms still occupied by her jacket. She remembers the last time she'd seen Lucille, how irritated she'd become at her that she'd practically launched from her wheelchair… and almost exactly from this spot, too. The disorienting memory is lain aside in favor of the new reality — one with less spitefully-traded barbs.
"Good seeing you too," Emily says with a nod, turning from the table. She spares one last look for the vending machine with its jammed coin slot before heading back down the hall with lighter steps than before, the heels of her boots clicking on the tile once her feet find them again.
Maybe the mellowing experience will make her less combative to the next 'no' that she runs into tonight.
But probably not.