Not Alone

Participants:

adel_icon.gif magnes_icon.gif

Scene Title Not Alone
Synopsis Magnes thought he was alone when he went to bed, but has a trespasser.
Date April 13, 2011

Magnes' Apartment


Usually when Magnes awakens in his room, he's alone.

Today it's different. There's someone floating near one of the walls, legs crossed in the middle of a sphere, with eyes intent on the posters that she can barely see in the low light of the room. There's no sign of forced entry, though persumably she had to do it to get in.

But Magnes isn't alone in his room, like he was when he went to sleep. And it's not any of his roomates. But instead a young woman who'd he'd just dreamed of as a baby of just one year of age.

A girl named Adel.

"Adel!" Magnes shoots up in bed, unlike in his dream with the Gold Lantern shirt, which at this point in time doesn't even exist, he's wearing Green Lantern and a pair of blue jeans. He has to untuck himself from the blanket due to the whole floating when sleeping issue. "You, I mean, you're." He moves a hand to rub the back of his neck, clearing his throat. "Do I need to beat any boys up?"

There's an anxious expression on her face as the young woman looks over, eyes wide. The sphere she's floating in turns a shade of pink for a moment, before it lowers down to allow her feet to touch the ground so it can vanish.

Adel didn't know if he'd throw something at her, so she didn't want to take any chances. No one wants to be hurt by their own dad.

"What? No. I'm twenty-one. I can beat up boys myself," is her immediate answer, hands on her hips in a display of stubborness. "I— you don't think I'm trying to trick you or a big liar or anything? I mean I'm not— but I knew you were probably— you're cool with it? "

Magnes slides out of bed and immediately walks over, reaching out to pull her over and wrap his arms around her. "I'm not sure how or why this is happening, but I'm sure you had a good reason. And if you didn't, well, you're my daughter, so if you don't screw up every other week then something is wrong."

"You know, they used to have a saying in my house— About how I was just being a Varlane," Adel says with a joyful laugh, all before she wraps her arms tightly around him and holds on. "I knew you'd be cool with it," she says with a laugh, closing her eyes and hugging onto him. Minus the sticky hands and cake covered fingers. But there's something else there under it all.

A hint of tears in her eyes. Tears she usually tries to hide.

"I really wanted to tell you earlier. Pretty much from that first day, when I auditioned."

"I always felt kind of protective of you, but I figured it's in my nature to protect everything around me." Magnes stares down, lightly patting her back. "I don't even know what to say. I mean, should't I be teaching you about Stephanie Brown, and teaching you to play a Wii?"

"I've played a little Wii, but not too much," Adel says with a cheerful look on her face as she pushes back, wiping her eyes off to get rid of the tears that were forming. They weren't sad tears— not this time. There were plenty of things to be sad about in the past, and this isn't one of them.

"I'd love if you taught me some, though! I mostly just watched Jay play— he's my boyfriend, but he's totally a nice guy, I promise. He's all proper and didn't even hit on me til I made the first move."

"Well… alright, but I still wanna check this guy out. According to the dreams, I don't get much of an opportunity for that kind of thing." Magnes takes a seat on the foot of his bed, patting the spot next to him. "So what is going on? Why are you here? And… how old do you get before I, you know, stop being there."

There's a scratching of her cheek in thought, a nervous gesture as she moves back a bit from the hugging. Adel looks at him for a moment as if trying to figure out how to word things. "You died a couple months after my first birthday, so I really didn't remember you. I mean— I knew about you, cause they made sure I did, but… told me stories about what you'd done and— sang songs about you. All that stuff. You were like… a super hero. And occassionally a cautionary tale. Cause of the … 'pulling a Varlane' thing," she laughs as if it's funny.

And to her it actually is.

"I have a daughter." Magnes falls back against the bed, allowing his arms to carelessly spread out to the sides. "What can I do? What should we do? You grew up without me, I feel like… we have to catch up or something, like I should take you places and spend as much time as we can together."

"Why do you think I joined the band!" Adel says with a smile, moving over to bounce down on the end of the bed, but twisting so that she can still look at him. Even if her legs are mostly off the bed. "I always wanted to play with all of you, the original Mad Muse. And I want to see things, and hang out with you— and hear things that only you can tell me. Cause sometimes the stories were farfetched. I mean you didn't really fly a giant crab robot down a mountain while it exploded, did you?"

"Well uh, actually, I flew the giant crab robot down the mountain after we fought a bunch of robot raptor bots. My eye was blinded, and Gillian augmented me so I could take full control of it. The mountain was actually the base of a bunch of anti-Evolved nazis, and the US government was about to bomb everything because I guess they thought we were dead. I used to have one of the raptors, I'm not sure where it is now." Magnes stands up and reaches for an ornate scabbard sitting in the corner of his room, then unsheathes it to reveal the damascus steel sword, very much like a cutlass. "I do have this sword, it came from a different part of the same mission, after we saved the world from flooding."

"Wow, really? That is so totally primal," Adel says with her voice obviously in awe, twisting around so that she's laying on the bed with her chin resting on her hands, elbows on the bed and feet kicked up into the air. Feet with— Chucks.

"I can't tell you a lot about the future— but the important parts you already know. I'm your daughter— I'm here. And I'd like to get to know you. And hopefully mom won't kick me out of the band, cause I'd love to keep playing."

"You can stay in the band." Magnes looks around the room, rubbing his chin with the sword in one hand, then just hands it to her. "Here, I want you to keep that, and…" He leaves the room, going into another room for a few minutes, then comes back with a hard lamented case with a comic inside a secondary case within it. "This is an Amazing Fantasy 15, the first appearance of Spider-Man. It was the first thing I bought with my world saving money. I want you to keep that too. Maybe it'll make you rich if you ever go back to your time." He leans in, kissing her forehead.

"I'll take the sword," Adel says, letting her hands drop long enough to take the sword and hold onto it, before she looks at the comic, "But you should keep the comic— I actually already had that, once. You should have it to leave to your kid— And that may be me now, but futures be a changing and it might be a boy next time!"

Magnes sits the comic on the dresser, then takes a seat next to her again, hunching over with elbows resting behind his knees. "If I don't end up having you, that's all the more reason to treat you as good as possible. This could be my only chance. Ask me anything, I'm an open book. I know you can't tell me a lot, so I'll tell you anything you want to know, or aren't clear on."

"Okay," Adel says, looking at the sword in her hand. "Let's start with this and work out way up! How'd you get the sword, what's it mean— all that stuff. I can keep a secret, too."

If she kept the secret of being from the future for this long, then she's sure that she can keep the secret of the sword a secret too…

And whatever other stories her dad will spend all night telling her.


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License