Participants:
| Scene Title | Not So Honeyed Tongue |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Abigail ventures to the Bay House to gee her daughter upon her return and to hear the words straight from the horses mouth - so speak - but with both Bella and Deckard present, the honey mead doesn't sweeten any tongues. |
| Date | June 24, 2011 |
Bay house - Kitchen
Children and babies. That's what resides in Bay House these days. Adults, children and one baby at least. Be they happy, sad, angry or whatever set of emotions they might find themselves in, soon enough there's going to be one less, as Abigail has set forth to fetch Kasha back from where she's spent this week. Not hard to miss her in the place, that bow-legged walking and babbling, attempts to form words where possible, grasping onto anything to haul herself up and walk faster and better towards end destinations - like pots to bang on or catch up to the other kids in the house.
Thankfully relief is in sight and her so called 'Mother' is coming up from the back, in jeans and dress shirt a size too big, baseball cap hiding blonde and brown hair, boots. Hiking pack over her back and everyone back safe and sound from Norway, it's time to gather her things, get back to the Island and see how the other trip went when it comes to soliciting help from former Vanguard members. It also gives her the chance to talk to Bella, talk to Deckard, get answers that Ghost wasn't able or unwilling to give her.
There's beer in the fridge because Deckard put it there. And because Deckard put it there, he has no reservations about cracking a glass bottle of Miller Lite open and offering it to the thirteen-year-old boy who watches him do it.
Beer acquired, the kid whose name Deckard doesn't know scampers with it under a jacket that's at least a layer too warm for the weather. Out of the kitchen, through the living room and out the back door that Abby's coming in like a jack rabbit so that Flint can open the refrigerator again, select a second bottle and crack it open.
He's in jeans in a wife beater under a button-down that was darker brown than it is now, once upon a time, sleeves rolled and collar already damp where he's started to sweat against the summer heat. Back turned to the kitchen door, thoughts already turned to whether or not piecing a sandwich together is worth the effort.
At approximately 16:20 yesterday, Isabella Sheridan ran out of intoxicants. Self medication is a long and noble tradition within the sacrosanct medical profession, and while Bella is no ether fiend, she has lately relied upon her own little vice to dull the edge of exile, however self imposed. Up in smoke it went, and now that it's gone- what's a girl to do? Too cagey to ask if there is any wine (beer she leaves to Flint, who she too well knows is due his own self-med) in the house (an ironic lack in a prohibition boozehouse) and not quite far gone enough to be considering household inhalents, the last trickles of tox are well and truly gone by the time Abigail arrives, leaving her raw to a world she harbors increasing ill will towards.
Which is just ludicrous, a sentiment she voices at a volume perhaps not totally appropriate for set and setting - "Son of a bitch!" is already bad enough, but is soon followed by, "you can get drugs in prison for fuck's sake!" which rings a little too clearly down the hall in a tone of strident indignation that she busts out only when she believes the safe or the irrelevent alone are within earshot - or when she's in a fit of pique. Which last she's approaching, if only for lack of any other form of neurochemical arousal. We make our own fun.
Hence her descent from her room, black hardcover book in hand, wardrobe given over to the thoughtless comfort of tanktop and gym shorts - blue and pale pink respectively. She eyes Flint's brew with uncommon envy, sparing the scampering munchkin basically zero attention. About leaving his beers be…
"You are obviously too young to be drinking that," she lets the teenager know, like he wasn't already aware. She snaps her fingers, "give it here." At least it's not candy from a baby.
There is a teenager, running off - attempting to at least - with what she knows is alcohol. She can't have worked in a bar as long as she has without knowing things like that. But there's also swearing, language that should not be spoken around children of any age and she flattens herself against the archway to allow the kid to beat a hasty retreat with his illicit goods, should he so wish to. So long as it's not Lance, she's not going to put up a fuss. No way is her future son in law going to be drinking unless it's a special occasion.
But lo, there is red hair, and there is… Flint, at the fridge. "Afternoon" Southern tones well known to one, familiar to the other. She can't hear Kasha, likely taking a nap. "Just who I was looking for" It's a council member, this either bodes well, or bodes not so well. Conveniently, she's bearing alcohol. The upside to not having to go through customs is that you can bring back foreign alcohol in counts that number more than the one per person that duty free and the TSA allow. This means, in her hand, honest to go Mead. Sealed, labeled, glass jugged, foreign language on the front.
The teen hesitates: caught, but caught by Bella Sheridan, whose name he has heard discussed in certain tones for all that he has no knowledge of her individual exploits. A step back in the wrong direction is headed off by a dip of Flint's scruffy chin in the open doorway behind her, the bristled grizzle of his sideburns and chops wetted a seamy kind of silver in afternoon light filtered through the kitchen blinds.
No telepathy is necessary to translate the level of his glare, and thoroughly betrayed, the youth gives up the goods with a nasty look for them both before he breaks off on his way on to the dunes.
Beerless.
Flint watches him go, then sips his own beer and looks wordlessly to Bella's (pale pink) shorts like he wants to be appreciative but isn't sure he can manage it. Maybe if they were shorter? Tighter? Otherwise impractical?
If they were, he wouldn't notice Abigail until she speaks. As things are, he's zeroed hawkishly in on her with his beer half-lifted a beat or two before she opens her mouth, brow hooded and shoulders razored tense back from his collar. Looks like: aggression. Either nobody's informed him of her status within the council or he's having a harder time controlling himself.
Or, you know. Both.
At approximately 16:20 yesterday, Isabella Sheridan ran out of intoxicants. Self medication is a long and noble tradition within the sacrosanct medical profession, and while Bella is no ether fiend, she has lately relied upon her own little vice to dull the edge of exile, however self imposed. Up in smoke it went, and now that it's gone- what's a girl to do? Too cagey to ask if there is any wine (beer she leaves to Flint, who she too well knows is due his own self-med) in the house (an ironic lack in a prohibition boozehouse) and not quite far gone enough to be considering household inhalents, the last trickles of tox are well and truly gone by the time Abigail arrives, leaving her raw to a world she harbors increasing ill will towards.
Which is just ludicrous, a sentiment she voices at a volume perhaps not totally appropriate for set and setting - "Son of a bitch!" is already bad enough, but is soon followed by, "you can get drugs in prison for fuck's sake!" which rings a little too clearly down the hall in a tone of strident indignation that she busts out only when she believes the safe or the irrelevent alone are within earshot - or when she's in a fit of pique. Which last she's approaching, if only for lack of any other form of neurochemical arousal. We make our own fun.
Hence her descent from her room, black hardcover book in hand, wardrobe given over to the thoughtless comfort of tanktop and gym shorts - blue and pale pink respectively. She eyes Flint's brew with uncommon envy, sparing the scampering munchkin basically zero attention. About leaving his beers be…
"You are obviously too young to be drinking that," she lets the teenager know, like he wasn't already aware. She snaps her fingers, "give it here." At least it's not candy from a baby.
There is a teenager, running off - attempting to at least - with what she knows is alcohol. She can't have worked in a bar as long as she has without knowing things like that. But there's also swearing, language that should not be spoken around children of any age and she flattens herself against the archway to allow the kid to beat a hasty retreat with his illicit goods, should he so wish to. So long as it's not Lance, she's not going to put up a fuss. No way is her future son in law going to be drinking unless it's a special occasion.
But lo, there is red hair, and there is… Flint, at the fridge. "Afternoon" Southern tones well known to one, familiar to the other. She can't hear Kasha, likely taking a nap. "Just who I was looking for" It's a council member, this either bodes well, or bodes not so well. Conveniently, she's bearing alcohol. The upside to not having to go through customs is that you can bring back foreign alcohol in counts that number more than the one per person that duty free and the TSA allow. This means, in her hand, honest to go Mead. Sealed, labeled, glass jugged, foreign language on the front.
The teen hesitates: caught, but caught by Bella Sheridan, whose name he has heard discussed in certain tones for all that he has no knowledge of her individual exploits. A step back in the wrong direction is headed off by a dip of Flint's scruffy chin in the open doorway behind her, the bristled grizzle of his sideburns and chops wetted a seamy kind of silver in afternoon light filtered through the kitchen blinds.
No telepathy is necessary to translate the level of his glare, and thoroughly betrayed, the youth gives up the goods with a nasty look for them both before he breaks off on his way on to the dunes.
Beerless.
Flint watches him go, then sips his own beer and looks wordlessly to Bella's (pale pink) shorts like he wants to be appreciative but isn't sure he can manage it. Maybe if they were shorter? Tighter? Otherwise impractical?
If they were, he wouldn't notice Abigail until she speaks. As things are, he's zeroed hawkishly in on her with his beer half-lifted a beat or two before she opens her mouth, brow hooded and shoulders razored tense back from his collar. Looks like: aggression. Either nobody's informed him of her status within the council or he's having a harder time controlling himself.
Or, you know. Both.
Dreadfully disinterested in objectification, Bella's gym shorts have - at best - a 'candid' sex appeal, the same way guys say that girls without makeup look sexy, which really just boils down to the ease of access it represents, if we're being totally straightforward; sans dancing shoes, the metaphorical mateship waltz is rendered unnecessary. She ain't flaunting nothin', as the styleless ponytail she's pulled her her ruddy hair into attests.
It bobs behind her, equine, as she claims her prize, and victory brings the first draught to her lips. Abby's words catch her mid gulp, but we are spared choke or spit-take because that's not the kind of surprise Bella feels. It's a chillier thing, a sudden but slow sinking that actually has much more to do with the words than with their speaker, at least at first. She doesn't care for being 'looked for'. She cares for it even less when visual examination lets Bella pull Abigail Beauchamp's dossier out of the oddly assembled archive of her memory. She's met this woman- once? Twice? But heard her spoken of many more times than that.
Her reservations are wholly personal, because upon recognition she begins to wonder about the plurality of that 'who' (which ought to be a 'whom', the PBS fundraiser bookbag bearing bitch within notes). For who(m) is she looking, just? The suspicion is not naked - it's quite well clothed, in fact, behind a bland linen veil of polite incomprehension.
A gentle sidestepping sidle brings Bella some paces closer to Flint, and in front, overlapping the line of sight between man and blonde. The words she speaks next might as well be those of another person entirely, for all that her present tone resembles he previous complaint (which is to say, it resembles it not at all).
"Can I help you?"
Like a shield, between Abigail and Flint. Be it to make it harder for the man to launch and go for the throat of the mixed brown/blonde at the door, to protect him from whatever it is that Abby might do or say. She didn't come expecting anything remotely in the neighbourhood of open arms and light airy talks with the two people that she was looking for. Odds are, that's never going to happen again.
"I think it's more, that you've come, or well you went to Francois, asking for help and we supplied it." Abby gestures to the room around them as much as she can when bearing nearly a gallon and a half of foreign alcohol, indicating the house that they're standing in. "Abigail. In case you might have forgotten. Member of the council, in charge of the medical side of things when it comes to organization. Megan's the actual head of medical. But Ghost came to me, with your request" She'll call it a request, instead of a demand.
The mead is thunked to the ground, kneeling down so that it won't break - Though it's surely far sturdier - and gives it a push, letting it slide across the floor and more closer to the pair of them, then to her. "Peace offering. Of my own, not of the Councils. I'd like to talk, if it's okay. I came to pick up Kasha too, but you know, kill two birds with one stone and all that" She pulls herself back up to standing, sinking hands into her back pockets, still waiting at the door as if they alone would be able to grant her permission to enter.
Swallowing a sudden rush of dryness out've his mouth is a process that requires some deliberate thought on Deckard's part. The same span of thought eventually splits itself towards the back door Abby came in through and the stairs that beckon to his bedroom, but there are two women in various states of being in his way.
He's left to stir uncomfortably in place, weight shifted slow on the ass end of a long breath that spends his unblinking stare aside and then eventually over his shoulder. Back into the kitchen.
The rest of him peels slowly after it an uneasy beat later, retreating out of direct line of sight. There is some bread in there. He should make sure it hasn't expired.
"A peace offering?" Bella echoes, "I wasn't aware we were at war." She steps forward, stooping to take the mead in hand, and for a moment she's double-fisting. She sets her beer aside, favoring the larger bottle with a two-handed heft. It's adding insult to the injury done to the teenager, but as it's unlikely that there are two individuals with x-ray vision in this house, he probably isn't able to appreciate Bella's temerity. She gives the label her judicious consideration (even though she can't read it) and then favors Abby with a pretty convincing smile.
"Please," Bella says, back pedaling towards the kitchen, repurposing Flint's retreat as invitation, "join us." She moves after Flint extending the bottle in his direction - open and serve, if you would - her guileless blue gaze flicking back over her shoulder at Abby. "I'm sure this discussion will be roughly two hundred percent more pleasant if we're sharing a glass of-" she glances back at Flint and the bottle she's trying to hand off to him, "what is that exactly?"
"More of a peace offering for Fl-" She cuts herself off, scrunching her hands in her back pockets before moving further in, chasing both Bella and Flint inwards. "Deckard. But it's Honey Mead, from Norway. I just got back." Waited the night before showing up here because she didn't want to be dragging Kasha out in the middle of the night. "As to whether the discussion will be pleasant, is questionable. But…" But.
She comes to the table, opting to keep her back to a wall, settle her hands on the back of a chair and use it for support both physical and mental. "Teodoro, well, the one called Ghost. He brought your terms to the council, or at least to me and I'll be bringing it to the rest of the council. You'll be getting your letters of thanks. You should know that, even if I pen them myself. One from Francois may or may not be forthcoming, he's contracted the flu and we both know the survival rate of that. Not everyone can scrape through on the skin of their teeth through it like I did"
Abigail straightens, rolling her neck to the right as if trying to get rid of some stiffness there, get more comfortable. As if. "He told me the name of the woman, Yana Blite. I came to see if there was anything else that you needed, wanted. If there was anymore information that you might have on the woman"
They're coming for him.
Flint can feel it in the way their voices turn after him rather than anything specific that's said, the loaf of bread he's taken up like a crane claw discarded again without the label having been checked. Just the stiff of his back and his beer, dark glass and sweat on the label when they're close enough again that he has to slip them a look midway between surly and miserable just over his shoulder. The kind of look generally associated with spit in send-backs and shredded furniture.
Nevertheless, said look is gone by the time he's expected to relieve Bella of the mead, which he does. On his way to opening and pouring the stuff into a pair of uneven juice glasses without complaint in the near background. He sips from the one he eventually returns to hand off to Bella. Pragmatic, translucent green.
The one Abigail gets is an old My Little Pony McDonald's theme cup. So.
Take that.
By the time he's stoppered the booze and returned somewhat to conversational distance, he still has his own beer and gloomy attitude in tow, complete with one of those sideways you didn't tell me about __ looks for Bella while he drinks.
Bella gives the now second-hand glass a perfunctory sniff, tossing Flint a squinty look, mouth quirked, before taking a sip. It's sweet as anything, the alcohol almost entirely smothered in the rich flavor of honey. Much as Bella imagines herself as worldly, she's never had this before, nor anything like it in fact. The lift of her ginger brows conveys as much, and she favors Abby with a - "This is lovely" - before taking a perch on a stool, ankle hooking over ankle as she holds the glass lightly in her hand, for all the world like she's having an urbane house party.
"All right. I'll grant you that this won't necessarily be pleasant, topics considered. But I'd like to shoot for more than civil. I'd very much like for this to be cordial. Which, really, is probably more a feat for me than you." It's almost certain that Bella would be much, much less well behaved if Flint were not here. A whole set of responses run parallel to these, many times nastier. But Bella herself is not aware of the fact, so instead, credit goes to Abby. "I appreciate your hospitality. And the hospitality of the network as a whole. My- requests are in the interest of making it clear that I am not taking this hospitality for granted - I've tried to earn my place. I simply want the fact to be objectively established." Rather than leaving it up to the recollection and hearsay of people who may be moved to sympathy and revenge on behalf of certain adorably boyish men of the cloth.
Flint's look is caught, if barely, and Bella interprets it with relative accuracy. She reaches out to set her hand upon his upper arm, a palliative gesture that's some part apology, some part deferral. She'll explain later and it will all make sense, she wordlessly promises.
And some of the exposition can happen here and now: "I've just as much interest in stemming the tide of this disease as you and yours. Substantially greater interest, in fact, considering our respective genetics. I won't ask more than the recognition of my assistance - I don't need more. So please- tell me what you need. I'm here to be helpful."
Is she now?
"And I'd be satisfied were you to speak on my behalf, in M. Allegre's place."
"I can't speak in his place, it's not my place to do such. I can, speak for the council. That is my place. You're not the first person to have been brought to the network who wasn't brought with the consensus of the whole, or even known by the whole and truth be told, I mean it in no disrespect, you are the last person that I would want to see in the network ever. After what you've done"
My Little Pony is glanced at, trying to decide whether she should take the cup, or not take the cup. She doesn't tend towards alcohol unless it's at night, over dinner or in a dire need to blotto out some bad event that's occurred and so far, none of the trifecta is in play.
Yet.
So the cup stays where it is, and her hands stay on the back of the chair. "But Teodoro has a way of… pleading cases to me and I trust Francois with my life." She looks over to the skulking evolved that is her own former something or other in the relationship department. "and I owe it to Deckard" Not Flint. Her middle finger strokes across the wood.
"That and I don't think anyone needs to go through what I did or Francois is. You'll get your recognition, in as much as it will likely, if it got into the wrong hands mean that you'd have colluded with terrorists. Monsieur Allegre's wil have to wait till he's better, I hope you understand, I'm not going to have him do this on his sick bed when his energies are better spent doing things like fighting this virus."
Which brings her to her point. "Dr. Yana Blite. How willing do you think she'll be, if approached, in helping curb this and end it or is she better off with a bullet in her head or being burned to a crisp?"
Willingly taken or not, My Little Pony mead is set down on the table within Abigail's reach.
Meanwhile, distracted, maybe, by the kind of sincerely organized conversational insincerity he hasn't heard much of since he and Bella dissolved their professional relationship into an unprofessional one, Flint has to tick his eyes up from the floor to focus when her hand finds its way to his arm. He looks to it before he measures out the rest of her. That is — all the parts responsible for not letting him hide alone in the kitchen.
The free hand he might've rested at her knee traces scar-ticked knuckles alongside it and dips uneasily back to his side instead, unsure of where to go. Why is this happening to him he has been very well behaved for weeks. Months, even.
"I've killed more people than she's hurt," is what he says when he finally says something, voice gravel-shot with disuse. "Most of us have. Nobody owes me anything, and if you aren't careful with that finger I'll snap it off."
He's probably referring to that middle one.
Gently, carefully, ever-so delicately, Bella sets her glass on the table and lifts her hand to her brow, where it massages the furrows that have formed there. Her eyes are closed as she dips into recollection. "About a year ago, your network kidnapped me and threatened me with torture if I did not comply with your demands. When I arrived in the warehouse where I was to be subjected to unimaginable suffering if I didn't do precisely as your people asked, I heard a man chatting genially about how he used a deli meat slicer on another human being."
A man, let the jury note, whom Abby employed in her dessert shop as a pastry chef.
"And this man, you'd see in the network before me? And this from a woman who is jumping to execution or incineration as the only viable alternative to cooperation?" A very grave gaze levels on Abigail. "How many people have you killed, Ms. Beauchamp? How many children have you orphaned, how many women have you widowed?"
Flint's intervention, threat of violence included, brings a look of fierce, bright-eyed gratitude to Bella's features. Her hand descends to his in the wake of the brush, slim fingers lacing with rough and curling in a adamant clasp as she returns her gaze to Abby, her mouth a tight, indignant line.
"I am not asking for your forgiveness or even your respect, but I do demand at least the tiniest fucking speck of perspective."
"Three"
She lists them off, each name with a weight of guilt attached like albatrosses. "Kazimir Volken, Carlisle Dreyfus and Robert Caliban"
She remembers them all, even if the last isn't quite dead yet. Who else at the hospital on Staten Island, she doesn't know. She looks down to her hand, middle finger pressed to the chair back, other fingers lifted like pinkies at high tea. They drop. Immediately. Joining their brethren in stillness and eventually behind her back, standing at some weird form of attention. "There are more than a few people, Dr. Sheridan, that I'd rather not see in the network and I've long since stopped calling myself a good Christian. And yes, you've killed more people likely than she's hurt. We've hashed over that before Deckard, over a spilt tea and broken porcelain."
She has to take a deep breath, inhale, make sure that temperature's internal don't rise to points of no return. Bite down on the inside of her lip, rub said lips together and blow it all out between her lips. Look away from the touch they're sharing at this moment and fight down some very bitter jealously.
"I know you're not. Asking for either. But you have the latter. I didn't know what you had done for the network. I knew that Teodoro had something to do with you, you gave me the cane after all. I'm not.. I'm not here to hash out who's done who wrong, and I'm sorry if it seems to have gone there. I came here to ask, before I do bring this all to the council, before I, with the others, decide to get you out of Kid Central and put you some place more adult, what you wanted, with regards, to Yana Blite. Does she deserve a bullet in the head, or do you think, do you really think, that we can get her to help, get her to do something about what she's done"
Soot and smoke blown readily enough through his teeth, Flint can't quite muster the guff he needs to consent with deliberate hand holding in front of Abigail. While sober. Mostly. He stops short of twisting out of Bella's grip, but avoids returning it, bony fingers caught unevenly at half a curl that doesn't do much to clear him of the ungainly turn the conversation has taken overall.
If they're making lists now, that is. Because he doesn't know the names of a lot of his.
But he does watch to see that The Finger is put away, some raw chafing of his own laid open bitterly enough to accelerate the flex and splay of his ribs under his shirt. Unrelatedly he doesn't know who Yana Blite is but she sounds like a real bitch.
That latent line of discourse has risen to the surface. Bella more than makes up for Flint's lack of grip, her fingers curling uncomfortably tight, nails doing skin no kindness. She'd like to sound imperious or aloof, but in truth, she mostly sounds upset. Upset and mean-spirited. "If you want anyone's cooperation, you need to know how to approach them. Evidently you have difficulty with this principle, judging by how this interview is going. I was being perfectly agreeable. I was going to give you everything you came here for.
"But now you've pissed me off, Ms. Beauchamp," so there goes aloofness, "for the record, I don't give a shit about what I'm sure is your terrible, soul crushing guilt, nor your disillusionment, nor your vague quasi-contrition and purported respect. I care about the continued survival of the human race, or at least the half a percent of it that I find tolerable, and it is for them that I will cooperate." Which, again for the record, makes her the better person in her mind. The only mind that truly matters.
"As for Elvira Blite," who is most certainly a bitch in Bella's ever-so-humble opinion, and as she will intimate given the slightest opportunity, "killing her will accomplish the opposite of what you desire, if what you desire is an end to this plague. What you need is her cooperation. From what I know of her, however, this won't be simple to come by."
"So-" Bella's tone clipped, which is maybe a slight improvement - it's at least more business-like, "I hope you have some relatively powerful telepaths at your disposal. Because that would make cooperation a great deal easier to accomplish. Once you've managed that- a bullet seems like the ideal remedy. But only after you've gotten her to undo the damage she's done, as I believe only she can."
Dogs do this thing, tuck the tail, lower the head, ears go back. Submission, guilt, fear. If Abigail had all those as a body part, they would certainly be tucked, lowered and laid back. Bella has that way about her of making Abigail feel inferior in many respects, be it using words that she likely needs a dictionary for, or the tone taken with the EMT.
"I'm sorry. That wasn't my intent. I'll have someone else from the council come. Dr. Chesterfield likely" The two should get along just fine. But Abigail, is backing up, chair let go, a few steps taking towards the door with the intention to just take off till she remembers the other reason that she's here. Kasha, before she goes off to spell Eileen and teodoro for a while. So it's her, edging to the door, not even looking directly at them anymore. "I'll make sure you get your requested letters. should go see my daughter" Get out of here, out of sight, out of mind, let Bella cool down before some poor kid bears the brunt of her anger, or Flint does. "I'm sorry" Again. She'd put it on repeat if she thought that Bella would really believe that she was.
Flint makes an attempt to muffle in with a nudge somewhere around, 'vague quasi-contrition,' but is easily swept past and does not try again. He hollows out his jaw and resigns himself to half moons nail-bit into the hand that isn't holding a beer awkwardly away from his side instead, grip finally flexed into a squeeze to draw her closer against him once Abigail's edging away towards safety.
Near unconscious physical distraction more than a concentrated, finger-snappy effort to get her attention. Drawing her up off her stool. How about this brown shirt? It's pretty nice. And he's under it, smelling like tobacco and sweat, bridge-cable tense through the long slope of his jaw.
Yeah.
They're going to be here forever.