Participants:
and and 
| Scene Title | Musical Accompaniment |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | "How could you hit him?" Ghost demands, bringing his profile up next to the other one's. He pins their heads together, despite the flailing. "His beautiful face?" |
| Date | May 30, 2011 |
Chinatown — An Apartment
By the time the ghost gets to the grimey studio, the baby Teo is rubbing his fist and the hybrid is nursing a black eye seated on a table that's seen no other purpose for the past three months. Ghost clicks his tongue and seizes the smallest one by the chin, ducking the swing. "How could you hit him?" Ghost demands, bringing his profile up next to the other one's. He pins their heads together, despite the flailing. "His beautiful face."
The merged hybrid has one hand clamped fastidiously over one eye so he has to turn his entire head to glare. "Go to Hell."
Punchline administered, the baby Teo's flailing is too much to bother with— Ghost lets go of him, allows the younger one to shove a gap in between them. The ghost swings his duffel bag onto the table next to the hybrid and doesn't have to ask.
"Francois is sick and he isn't bringing him to the fucking hospital," the baby shrieks. "He just left him at the fucking brownstone."
Merge-Teo's face closes up like a fist, which is impressive considering it's half-covered. Suddenly, he switches to Italian. "«He didn't want to go to the hospital. He has a ten percent chance of surviving this. If things don't go well,»" his voice is beginning to sound slightly strange, tight, pinched. "«I want him to be where he wants to be, and with who he wants to be. Not a dozen strangers in white coats posted around a bed that's basically a giant computer. He hates computers.»"
"«You'll kill him talking like that!»" Little Teo kicks the chair. Ghost's only chair, in this place, then starts marching up to stick his nose in the hybrid's face. Automatically, Ghost finds himself putting an arm out, blocking them. The little one hisses: "«Shut the fuck up.»"
"I brought presents," the ghost says. In English. "Since the lo mein last time put you both on the toilet for hours. Don't you love these get togethers?"
He hits the hybrid in the chest with a matte black clothing box, then squeezes a book against the little one's belly until his hands finally snap shut around it grumpily. The hybrid stares down disconsolately, probably playing a dreary percussion-heavy instrumental inside his own head while he considers killing himself. The baby one looks at the book. It's a cook book of Russian recipes. Immediately he colors, ears first then across his cheeks and nose, glancing away.
The hybrid straightens. "I don't need your fucking presents. I need— I need. I need you to give me some fucking future-knowledge on how to fix this." He puts the box aside and grabs the ghost's arm beseechingly, and the older man finds himself leaning away from the clone, frowning. "You lived with Hana Gitelman for ten years. You ate, slept, and breathed high-clearance military intelligence and I know you stored shit up like a fucking. Squirrel. Not just probabilities and stupid unfinished vendettas but— hard facts. You have to know something that can help him."
"Sure," the ghost says, shrugging a shoulder. "You need to get a hookup for parenteral nutrition, just in case— that shit doesn't keep well so it'll need to happen when you want. Maybe this one can bat his pretty eyes at some of the nurses who used to take care of his lice and ringworm back when he did charity work for the housing proj-es, eh?" He claps a palm over the baby Teo's neck, and is rewarded with a flinch and then a punch in his arm. "NSAIDs like Ibuprofen actually help with not only fever but killing the cough spasms too, funny side-effect, so you should stock up on those, and mineral water, and every kind of juice under the sun, and get them into him when it's time to sleep. Get a baby monitor and when he starts turning critical you're going to have to tell someone— you will need the help. White women are less conspicuous. Abby. 'Leen, Delil—"
The wall rams his back with surprising force. Ghost can do a complicated thing with his hands that will break a man's arm in two places, and it occurs to him to try it now, with an elbow digging into his collarbones, but he doesn't. He doesn't say anything, unsure if his voice would come out even, and over the past few years he has become increasingly unwilling to be soft with people.
The hybrid yells, "Tell me! Tell me you fucking bastard or I swear on Lucrezia—"
"Soup," Ghost suggests. "The kid can tell you some good soups. And spinach, though you'll need iron pills and probably plasma for the blood eve—"
It's been a long few years since headbutts were the staple of the ghost's combat style, a relic of his hooliganism and brawling years rather than anything he learned from Hana, who continued to wear her hair to her waist, unbraided, long after the Mossad corps had stopped glancing at it askance. It doesn't feel that different to getting kicked or punched in the face; he just doesn't brace for it instinctively which turns out to be a problem unless you are a big fan of nauseating neon patterns lurching in your eyes. It doesn't help the back of his head grinds into the wall, too. Familiar, white-out pain.
The baby's turn to pull them apart. "Stop it," he says. "Stop this. That's enough!"
The ghost holds his face, pinches at his nose, listens to his ears ringing and ringing and ringing. The hybrid yanks back with brusque force, twists sharply on a boot heel, and storms out of the door into the faded smog palette of the dusk, leaving the coat box on the table. Ghost says, "You forgot the box," without really expecting the clone to turn back, and of course, he doesn't. "Always good to get that out of his system," he adds, in what probably doesn't sound like a serious tone of voice.
He's bad at that these days, too.
There's a toneless thump of the little one going out too, maybe to follow him, or just to leave. He is pushing the book into his jacket pocket and glancing at the box, but he doesn't ask about it. He does ask, "You okay?"
Ghost knows he doesn't mean about the blow he took to the head, but the one he hadn't. He shrugs. His nose throbs.
"Grazie," the baby says, lifting the book hesitantly. Then, "We should do our part."
That makes the ghost sneer a little, knife his eyes away. "These are the kinds of debts you never finish paying off because you built them up to martyr your Catholic pathologies inside your fucking head."
Darkening at the brow, the younger Teo turns away, and for the door again. "What?" he demands, a little prissily. "A life for a fucking life?"
Ghost shakes his head and pulls out his phone. "There is something." The numbers glow up under his face, highlighting the aquiline edge of his nose and the familiar corners of his jaw. Bloodied and battered, they look more and more alike, and it's impossible to deny that both he and the Sicilian walking out the door are made possible for the one who'd just left. Much as with cats, it looks like he'd planned on this all along. Unnervingly, the younger Teo can't for the life of him tell if he had.