Participants:
Scene Title | One Sweet Day |
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Synopsis | Mother and daughter united across the gulf of time and space. |
Date | May 29, 2021 |
Sorry I never told you
All I wanted to say
Now it's too late to hold you
'Cause you've flown away
So far away
Never had I imagined
Living without your smile
Feeling and knowing you hear me
It keeps me alive
Alive
And I know you're shining down on me from heaven
Like so many friends we've lost along the way
And I know eventually we'll be together
One sweet day
Air escapes Eve’s lungs in a single, sharp exhalation. An old, familiar song from her childhood echoing in the back of her mind.
It feels like she’s had the wind knocked out of her, but at the same time she feels weightless and tethered, like a balloon tied to a cement block. Eve’s eyes adjust to the light as if she’d just come out of a dark cave, but it isn’t an outdoor environment she finds herself in, but rather a warmly lit office.
There’s a picture window at her back that looks out over a New York City that Eve only has in the furthest fringes of her memory, one not scarred by the bomb, one not scarred by a civil war. The two leather armchairs that sit beside the window have a single coffee table between them, and Eve can see a pair of soda bottles set on them, though the labels are gibberish in the vague shape of Coke script.
Looking around, Eve finds the walls are bookshelves, with illegible spines of stories she’s never read, and stories she knows by heart. She can’t read the spines, but she can feel them, feel their intention. It’s her—her life, her loves, her losses—all spread out in front of her in the architecture of a therapist’s office.
But then, across from her, an empty chair suddenly becomes occupied.
Valerie Mas looks different than Eve remembers her. Older, tempered, calm. She still has that dash of seafoam green in her dark hair, still has that small, impish smile. But she wears a slim-fit suit these days where she used to wear jeans and a tanktop. Her smile is a tired one, worn down at the edges by time and troubles. But still: it’s her.
Valerie Mas' Dreamscape
Somewhere between the Bright and Prime Timelines
May 29th
Eve takes a look around the place, running a pale long finger along a few of the spines of those tomes, adjusting to it all. It was probably the most organized the inside of her mind had ever looked. Pristine where there was usually a hurricane, Eve was impressed but ultimately felt out of place in her mind.
"Hi momma." This has been the weird part, navigating this woman who was her mother but not at the same time. Not holding her to the same past mistakes that she shared with her dead mother. "Why not your head office?" That was pretty hard to do. Eve's tone is a familiar one, dejected and a little wounded. She's obviously still bothered by something. As she walks forward the dark haired woman's face becomes smoother, younger. She's almost reverting to the girl that her mother once yelled for throughout their apartment.
"Grandma Amelia never liked your hair but I always knew that no matter how unfun you got, it was a sign that you COULD have a bananas wild time."
The simple black dress she wears with spaghetti straps that fall down her shoulders, feet flicker from bare to clad in scuffed Doc Martens. Extremely dark makeup smudges itself around the corners of those crimson eyes, lips remain bare. Eve catches herself, just a feeling that she isn't being normal and looks sheepishly over at Valerie. "Seeing you makes my head funny, sorry." More woman than teen but still not forty, Eve finally sits.
She eyes the doors leading out of here. Eve's head wasn't always the best place to meet. Too much crazy, too much future.
Valerie smiles softly, idly threading a green lock of hair behind one ear. She looks at Eve with searching eyes, her brows coming together as she struggles to hold back something; emotional, powerful, profound. “Maybe your gramma was right,” she says with a breathy laugh tinged with emotions, “but green’ll always be my favorite color.” She admits with a tight smile.
Rubbing her hands on her knees, Valerie looks as tense as she sounds. In spite of the tension, she reaches across the small coffee table between them and offers her hands to her daughter. “This is my office, where I am. Across the divide of time. This…” she motions to the window with her head, “is my New York. I’m asleep here, in this chair, and I figure you’re asleep somewhere else too…”
Valerie’s smile grows a little. “Dreams always were where you felt most at home.”
Eve reaches back for Valerie's hand without hesitation and grins shyly, "I've been a fan of red myself lately." The alternate version of the woman's daughter looks to the side at the world outside, it really is quite beautiful. "The first night I met Gilly all those years ago we touched, so many visions in my head. Warnings and then, the center of the city, as a forest. So Green. So bountiful. I have dreamed of seeing this place again." That impish grin returns to her lips though as she eyes her mother. "I have a confession to make,"
Leaning in just so, "We've spoken! Your daughter and myself," Eve's grin is wide and crimson pupils twinkle in the sunlight that filters in from the window. "She's very bright, very famous! Sorry we had to keep it a secret. Too much at stake! Only our Gilly's know." Now that she's got that secret off of her chest Eve sits up a little straighter and looks Valerie up and down.
"Dreams were my constant friend momma." Sheepishly said, "I do think you have some secrets as well to share. I have questions momma," Eve's nerves have her form shrinking a little more and she's a teenager again with the worst raccoon eye makeup. "Will you answer?"
There’s a hint of amusement at Eve’s antics in Valerie’s eyes, quickly hidden by her lashes as she glances down to her lap. “I don’t really have a lot of secrets these days,” she admits with a thoughtful crease of her brows, “but I do have some answers for you. About the other me, about…” She tries to put it all together. “About your mom.” It’s hard for her to say it like that, to admit that the woman in front of her isn’t her daughter. Every instinct she has says otherwise.
“Mr. Gates was nice enough to make this connection for us,” Valerie continues, brows furrowed, “to give us this chance to connect and… and to talk. So if there’s something you want to know, anything I can do for you, I will. You’re my little chicken,” she says with a bright smile, holding back tears in her eyes, “and I always knew you’d grow up to be a hero.”
"Gates is nice, nicer than normal suits. Are you sure he wasn't a hippie when he was younger?" Eve just blushes and ignores the comment about her being a hero because all parents think that sort of thing right?
Dipping her head momentarily to match her mother's movement while threading strands of bushy raven hair behind her ear Eve smiles softly at the nickname she had passed onto a new generation. "Why did she lose me to the feds? What happened when you fought the Entity, do you remember it? The Mother and Father?" Pale hands clap over her mouth before Eve blurts out more questions.
"So many questions… momma… I manifested so young… younger than I even thought, did you have any idea?"
It felt right to start at the beginning but the question she really wanted to ask could wait. Since Eve was a child she had learned the delicate dance of extracting information from her parents who usually stonewalled her. It had been preparation for her adult life and she just didn't know it. She reaches for her mother's hands and squeezes.
“Oh well that’s—so the hard stuff.” Valerie says with a huff of a sigh and a nervous laugh. Threading a lock of hair behind one ear, she tilts her head to the side and frowns softly. “I… don’t remember anything about the events of 1984. Through my association with the OEI I’ve come to learn, second hand, what my role was. But I’ve never directly become aware of… really any of those memories. This includes my time at the Company. All of that was taken from yout father and I after, as far as I’m aware, we retired.”
Looking down at her lap, Valerie shakes her head. “I… didn’t know that I ever lost custody of you. I don’t—I don’t have any memory of that.” She says with a look up to Eve, her brows furrowed together in distress. “That’s—that happened?” There’s a hint of glassiness to her eyes, a pang of doubt, but also the dread of how real it sounds.
"Well I did ask if Gates was a hippie!" She snickers and looks away from Valerie a little embarrassed at her own forwardness.
"To have what is most sacred to us, our collective life experiences stolen away is an injustice that should not stand. I am sorry that happened to you." Eve looks sad as she realizes, it's she who knows more of her mother during that time. "I also have had memories ripped from me," She looks even sadder but shrugs her shoulders as if to say that it can't be helped. At least on her part. "From what I have seen there was an incident when I was a child, I was taken and this I think… was used to get you into service with the Company. That's when you met… dad. Eric Mas."
Eve's brow furrows, "On a gun range," A weak smile at Eve's love for firearms. "Your part, pfft." Waving her hands as she leans forward to stare into her mother's eyes. "You stopped Adam from disrupting the Ritual to displace the Entity. You held the line when everything was at stake. If I am a hero it is only because your blood runs through my veins." Her blood red eyes glitter more than usual thanks to the mist that collects in them. "Seeing you in those flashbacks made me even more proud to be your daughter."
Black hair hangs in Eve's face as she looks down, "There was something that happened after the memory theft, I was a teen. Rebellious little thing, I think you could help me with that, if you're able."
V exhales a steady sigh and folds her hands in her lap. She shadows her eyes behind the dark fringe of her lashes, looking down to the floor for a moment. It’s a lot to consider, her role in a story she’d been told. But not knowing. Never knowing. She blinks a look back up to Eve and nods.
“You were a little shit,” V says with a crooked smile. “But I suppose that’s partly my fault.” Then, with a motion of her chin to Eve she asks. “How can I help, chicken?”
The impish grin thrown V's way is familiar from Eve's days as a teen and she tilts her head. "A man came to visit. You were yelling in the garage. It sounded like… he wanted to see me." The tall woman looks slightly nervous and folds her hands in her lap. "Do you remember anything about that?"
It's unspoken, who Eve thinks that was. "I know you don't remember much, both our brainpans are out the yin yang but if you remembered that, I think it's important."
Possibly just to Eve herself.
"Or maybe you can just tell me what you do remember in general. About my life. I have these memories… sleep walking as a child as if I was dreaming the future. But I thought I manifested in high school. It's all so confusing." Eve clutches the sides of her head and smacks the left side. "Doesn't make sense."
V looks down at her lap, silent in her concern. “I don’t…” her eyes track from side to side. “None of that sounds familiar.” She says thoughtfully, looking back up to her daughter across dimensions, and yet close enough she could reach out and touch her. “There’s a lot I don’t remember, Eve. A lot I—” She exhales a sigh through her nose.
“I’ve been told I was a Company agent, but I don’t actually have any memories of that. I know your father and I retired, and they must have wiped our memories when we did. But I only know the broadest strokes of why. About… the entity, all of that.” V shakes her head slowly as she grows quiet.
Outside, a few birds fly by the window. The city beyond seems alive, real. But Eve knows it isn’t. It’s an illusion, conjured by their combined subconsciousness. A dream. If a sweet one.
“All I remember was the work I did, covertly, for the CIA. But that was after my tenure with the Company.” This revelation hits Eve awkwardly. Her mother in the CIA? As the gears begin to turn, nothing lines up correctly. The Midtown blast, the divergence of the timelines. This version of her mother exists in a timeline that branched in 2009, after the Midtown explosion.
So how—
Suddenly, the dream feels more like a nightmare.
How is V alive in this timeline and not in Eve’s?
"I'm sorry momma what?" Eve looks puzzled and scratches the back of her neck. "You're way more of a Fed than I would have ever guessed." The older woman's daughter snickers and winks at V but the gravity of just how confusing this all was begins to hit her and Eve's head tilts. "What kind of work with the CIA?" A head tilt and an eyebrow as the former seer wraps her arms around her middle.
"Do you remember how you survived The Bomb?"
Maybe her mother had the answer to this one.
Maybe.
Valerie’s eyes dip down to her lap. She wrings her hands together. “I was a counter-terrorism analyst. Started that line of work in… 94? Maybe 95? I forget exactly. I mean—I didn’t start start at that level. It was office work at first, at Hyde Park. The CIA’s office in New York.” She runs a hand through her hair. “I worked there for about four years,” a period in time where Eve remembers something about her mother having a regular 9-to-5 job, except…
“I told you I got fired.” Valerie says with a nervous smile. “Truth is, I got found out. Or, I found myself out? One day I wiped a whole computer blank with a wave of my hand, on account of the magnetism.” As she says this, Valerie raises her hand and conjures a crackling green light around her fingers, dancing auroral hues. “It was the summer of 99, I didn’t understand what just happened, but a few people saw it.”
Valerie sighs, looking at her hand. “Next thing I know I got pulled into an office with a few men in suits, got told some things about myself and the world. You know, abilities.” She raises her brows with a smile. “Folks said I was special, important. Said that there were people who’d want to abduct me for what I was, maybe even kill me.”
It sounds like the Company, right down to the sales pitch, except…
“Fella by the name of Desmond Harper, he shows me he’s like me. Lets me see the world through his eyes. Wild stuff. They say that they’re part of a very small group within the government trying to regain control of things, stamp out the shadowy organizations that’re hurtin’ folks like us.” Valerie explains, wringing her hands together. “They say it’s genetic, that you were probably special too. That if I helped them, it’d be helping you too.”
Sighing, Valerie rubs one hand at her head. “I didn’t do much like, secret agenting. If that’s what you’re thinking. I technically was fired from my desk job, had to keep all of this from your father, help him run the garage, and on occasion do work for the feds. Spying, mostly. Funny enough, turns out I was spying on my old coworkers in the Company.” She says with a rueful laugh.
“Then, that day… when the bomb…” Valerie closes her eyes. “Someone I worked with, someone a few steps up the chain from Agent Harper came for me. Came for us. Man named Marcus Raith. He tried to save us but…” She sighs, running a hand through her hair again.
“Baby, this ain’t a pleasant story.” Valerie apologizes. “Marcus didn’t get to me in time. Me or your father.” Her eyes are still focused on her hand. On the wedding band. “I died.”
Looking up to Eve, Valerie smiles wearily. “In my world, the way I understand it, history zigged when yours zagged. I got… I got brought back to life by a horrible man, Arthur Petrelli. He had this ability, could rewind the course of time for somebody. Brought me back, wanted to know everything I did about Mr. Raith, Agent Harper, all of them. ‘Course I talked, man brought me back from the dead.”
“This was…” Valerie exhales a sigh through her nose. “Right around Christmas in 2011. Arthur told me I was living on borrowed time, that I’d have maybe ten years before I…” She swallows, audibly. “Revert. Closing in on anniversary ten right now.”
Which makes this all the harder for V. To reintroduce herself back into a version of her daughter’s life, only to be taken away again so quickly.
"You what."
Eve stops herself and continues to listen to V's story though her eyebrows raise considerably as her mother elaborates. "He did- they did what." Crimson eyes glitter as the tail end of that phrase her Eve's voice contorting into that of a vicious growl that persists, "Used you, used me. Used us. Got you killed. Brought you back! No-"
It sinks in like a stone, an uncomfortable truth that's hard to swallow, "One decade to elude the Reaper. One decade to love two daughters."
She sits silently, stewing. Working her jaw back and forth and staring up at the ceiling, through it if it were possible. "I heard how that reversion goes, Else the sister seer singer re-died the way she originally did…" Eve rubs the back of her head. "Odessa my cousin is no longer a Time Fairy," where were the other time fairies? Why was this happening now? Why was there no solution for this?
V's daughter doesn't cry, not yet at least. She does reach over and grip her mother's hand and squeezes hard. "I'm sorry." There is something that nags at her though about this Marcus Raith.
Valerie swallows hard and squeezes Eve’s hand back. Her smile is a weary one, crinkling the corners of her eyes in spite of the ache of regret she feels; For years lost, for burdening her daughter with this truth, for not being able to be there for her more than this moment. Valerie runs her thumb across Eve’s knuckles, her hand trembling in the embrace.
“I tried to do as much as I could with the time I have left.” Valerie’s smile begins to fade. “But… when I learned that I could—that Agent Gates could help you talk to me. I—I knew there was one more thing I had to cross off my bucket list before it was all said and done.”
Valerie shuts her eyes and leans forward in her seat, moving closer to her daughter-across-time. Tears well up in her eyes when they open again, and Valerie can’t help but smile in spite of them too. “My girl, going to save the world. Every world.” She exhales a fluttery, breathless laugh. “I always knew you were destined for something special, baby.”
The look is returned with a teary one from Eve who tilts her head, allowing midnight locks to sweep over her shoulder. "It's nice of him to help," she says weakly while gripping her mothers hand tightly and bowing her head. "Momma you sound silly, I came from you. I had no other choice but to do my best to be like you and-"
Another thing that still nags at Eve.
"Dad. My dad." Affirming that Eve supports V in the decision she made to raise her with Eric instead. "At least you got to see us, your daughters.. your grandchild. If only you could meet the sea witch version of us, she's a riot-
"I'm going to try my best to make you proud." There's a clicking noise she makes with her tongue and her crimson gaze falls on V's. "If only Grandpa Walter was here to help us see more of your true memories." It's not something the phantom could easily give up on. "I wish to know my blood father and you, I wish to know why he wasn't around. But I should be grateful to the Fates that us meeting was allowed." Eve cries a little harder and wraps her arms tightly around V's middle. "I'm sorry Momma. You are enough. This is enough. I couldn't have asked for a better mother…"
The curious nature within Eve pulled at her to dig for more secrets but she knew the well was tapped. That coupled with the impending death of her mother made for a devastating effect on the younger woman.
The words blood father have V’s expression twisting. She freezes, tension evident in her jawline. Eve sees her mothers eyes track from side to side slowly, a faint tremor in her jaw of shock and then dissonance. It hits Eve all at once. V doesn’t know.
“I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter,” V says, pushing down the fear and uncertainty. She could have asked, could have pressed about a life that was ripped from her mind. But with how little time she has left, did she want to spend it chasing dead ghosts, or spend it here with the one person in the world who matters most.
“I love you, Eve.”
V knew her choice before it was even made.
Reckoning with how her mother was likely never getting her memories back was no easy task. Hadn't Eve known that or suspected this was the case anyway? Continuing her embrace with V eventually the younger woman's head tilts up and that feral curiosity with more than a dash of mischief enters her blood red eyes, taking in her mothers appearance. Savoring it.
V knows that look.
"Now show me this fancy gift of yours momma. I got to see you stick The Plague with it, what else can you do hmmm?"
It was as if nothing had changed in their time apart. Eve was still the rambunctious daughter with burning curiosity and wide eyes, looking up to her mother.
Looking up to her hero.
There's a glimmer of something in the back of her mind. The beginnings of an idea that starts first as a simple seed but as the roots fan out, spreading through the former seer's brain it takes hold:
What if Eve could save her? That song echoes in the back of her mind again, makes her heart clench in her chest.
Darling I never showed you
Assumed you'd always be there
I, I took your presence for granted
But I always cared
And I miss the love we shared
V raises one eyebrow, not completely sure what her daughter means by the Plague. Regardless, she knows what Eve wants to see. Releasing Eve’s hand, Valerie lifts her palm up and her fingers are wreathed in dancing bands of auroral light. A hum emite from her, soft and soothing, something Eve remembers from a dream of a dream of her mother when she was a baby. Something before the redaction, something no one ever took from her.
And I know you're shining down on me from heaven
Like so many friends we've lost along the way
And I know eventually we'll be together
One sweet day
V smiles, and even though it is a mindscape, her ability behaves as she believes it should. A ring on Eve’s finger twists gently of its own accord, slides off, and floats weightlessly through the air until it is drawn inexorably to V’s finger and sticks to it.
Although the sun will never shine the same
I'll always look to a brighter day
Yeah, Lord I know when I lay me down to sleep
You will always listen as I pray
“I’m a lot of fun at parties,” V says with a gentle smile, “provided nobody has any unexpected piercings or fillings,” she adds with a laugh.
And I know you're shining down on me from heaven
Like so many friends we've lost along the way
And I know eventually we'll be together
One sweet day
V's audience is captivated. There's a piece of Eve that feels that memory and yearns for it in this space. She had always knew deep down she guesses that they were the same, gifted. "Wow… if you had used that on my roomies in college." Eve snickers and looks in delight at the ring that sticks to her mother's hand, utterly impressed.
And I know you're shining down on me from heaven
"I wasn't as flashy as I am now," a sheepish grin lights up Eve's face. "Just my eyes would go, milky white, it's like having the whole moon take them over." Sometimes she missed her original gift, the near constant insights into the future. It's maybe why she felt even more blessed to receive her latest ability. Lifting her own pale hand to show her mother as it glows from within and simply poofs from existence. Tiny crimson lights dance in the hazy tendrils of the same hue that vaguely drift in the direction of V. Not because there was energy to drain but because that's how the power worked in the real world.
Like so many friends we've lost along the way
The look of apology is sincere even though the danger isn't real. "Everytime I died, my gift changed until we have what I am now. I have been a seer, a roiling cloud of destruction and chaos and now…"
And I know eventually we'll be together
"Something that hungers, that suppresses but can still /see, glimpses. Echoes from What Has Not Yet Been." Eve shrugs lightly and leans in closer to inspect her mother's hand. "We have that in common, we change. Adapt. Become something new."
One sweet day
"Thank you for that."
Sorry I never told you
Valerie takes her daughter’s hand again and squeezes it. “No, Eve,” she says with a teary-eyed smile. “Thank you for giving me two chances to see my baby girl one last time…”
All I wanted to say
“…and say goodbye.”