Participants:
| Scene Title | Or Lack Thereof |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Elisabeth and Graeme meet to discuss a favour, and life. (Six degrees of separation, again? Or not.) |
| Date | April 26, 2011 |
She doesn't want to let the two men who have actual lives out there get sucked so far in…. but they seem to want in. Harboring fugitives is pretty much a fulltime gig. Elisabeth sent a text of time and place, and she's standing in Central Park by a coffee cart that she's just purchased an iced coffee from. It's freakin' 82 degrees out today — ridiculous when just a few days ago it was only 50. But spring is zipping on by quickly, it seems. She doesn't have enough clothes to really make it work well, but thank goodness for secondhand stores and the Salvation Army. Elisabeth's still got her long hair down — Ygraine says it gives her a whole different set of body language, and that's what Elisabeth needs anytime she's out in public. She's wearing a pair of lightweight tan capri pants and a spaghetti-strapped tanktop that exposes the dark, haunted angel on the back of her shoulder right shoulder. She's got ink! And it does catch some eyes, but her hair tends to cover most of it.
Wandering along the path near the cart sipping from the straw, Elisabeth's blue eyes are wary on her surroundings.
Graeme comes walking at a rather fast pace down the path from ahead of Elisabeth, with Odin at his side loping along happily. Jeans and a teeshirt, but it would seem Graeme'd been at work in the morning, because they're nice jeans and it's a nice teeshirt. There's a smile on his face as he spots Liz, slowing his pace down well before he reaches her, and if anything, Odin's excitement is visible, unlike the relief that Graeme hides at seeing Elisabeth. The Great Dane remembers Liz, and although the leash doesn't give him too much space to stray from Graeme's side, he does end up butting his head into the woman's hip with a low bark of greeting before Graeme matches his pace to hers, walking besides her. "Hey."
The blonde get butted by a massive dog that might be more accurately called a horse. And she reaches down to rub the canine's ears with a grin. "Hey guys," she greets casually enough as he falls in next to her. "How you holding up?" The query is deceptively simple, it could mean any number of things, but she sincerely wants to know how he's doing.
His head tilts to one side as he considers the question. It's not one Graeme can easily answer, but the answer after a moment does come. "Well enough, I suppose. The shoulder's doing a lot better, I've picked up a job as security at a club, that's going well enough since I'm not getting days from the schools. Haven't heard anything from my sister, though she promised to email me at some point when she'd managed to settle wherever she ended up. You?" There's a pause, and a shrug, and then Graeme adds a qualifying statement. "Though I'm still trying to decide how disturbed I should be that my boss and boyfriend both leveled rather vague threats about killing each other, before they'd been in the same place ten minutes."
Elisabeth listens to the recitation, her brow quirking upward at that last questioningly. "Seriously? What the fuck?" Aric is seriously starting to worry her. "What's going on, Graeme?"
"Nightclub I'm working at," Graeme says, "the owner, she apparently had a dream. With Aric. And he had it, too." He sighs as he walks, pausing to bend and pet Odin, half leaning on the dog for a moment. "He came in, and pushed off being carded, which got her attention, so I introduced them. And then something she thought set him off about just jumping right into conversation about it, neither the time nor the place." He shakes his head slightly. "And she doesn't happen to like telepaths. And then they made some more threats, then he left." It's as specific an explanation as Graeme can actually manage, at the moment.
And people wonder why Richard used to get a headache. "Do the two of you even have the concept of "low profile?" I mean… good fucking Christ, Graeme!" Elisabeth is frustrated and runs her hand into her long hair, holding the length at the base of her neck incredulously. "Why is he fucking reading people in public again?"
Graeme's brows furrow. "Hey. I tried to stop the conversation from going in that direction, so. And it didn't last that long." He turns, pausing again to fix his gaze on Liz. "And I'm pretty sure I got the message over to him when I got home that it was a distinctly bad idea what he did. But he's got this idea that Mel's a bad person, or that she's troubled, or something, I don't know. And I don't know why he is, damn it." The drawl covers some of the frustration in his voice, but not all of it.
The hand that's not holding the leash comes up to push at his eyebrows. "From what Mel told me of the dream, or something, Aric's the leader of Messiah in that future. I can understand that whatever it was, wasn't about to make either of them at ease with each other, but yeah. Pretty much. I tried to stress discretion." There's another pause. "And thankfully, Melissa is all for deescalating things. She just doesn't like telepaths, doesn't like people using the ability on her, and I can't frankly blame her."
Elisabeth frowns. The name Melissa is vaguely familiar but she can't place it. Could be any number of them, but she knows Messiah — "Did she talk about the dream at all?" she asks him curiously. "And yeah… I know Aric was supposedly the head of Messiah and the fuckin' enemy that future." She grimaces. "It's the justification Zeke gave when he fucking well tried to kill him." She shakes her head. "Never even occurred to his stupid ass that by hurting Aric like this, it might drive him to become the violent bastard that he was then." She sighs heavily. Time has inertia. "I need to see Aric, I think."
"She didn't talk about it much, aside from that she'd had two other dreams as well, and that she'd rather see things change for the better, and not see things going down the road that the dreams portray," Graeme says. "I wasn't going to ask her to if she didn't want to, but, apparently the dreams are bad." There's a faint grimace on his own face. "I didn't keep on the thread of conversation too long, after I got home Thursday," he admits. "I got him to see I was pissed off, we agreed about not hiding things from each other, and I kinda cut the conversation short and we went to sleep. Well, I woke up after a bit, but."
He shrugs once more. "I'm settling for being lucky I still have a job after that, and being thankful that from what I can tell, Melissa's a good person, on the right side of things overall, and interested in making sure I don't find myself in a situation where I'd have to make a difficult choice because of her or Aric."
Elisabeth pauses and then asks, "Graeme, what bar? And what's Melissa's last name?" Because the dreams have been, so far as she knows right now, limited to people in the Ferry whose children are prancing about New York dressed in nothing but some old armor…. no wait, wrong movie. But anyway!
The question is received with a tilt of his head to one side, but Graeme answers it, nonetheless. "Pierce. Melissa Pierce. Tartarus."
After answering, there's a pause. "She'd offered me help, should I need it, before I'd gotten picked up by DHS. And then offered me a job." Then Graeme shrugs.
And there it is. Elisabeth looks up at the sky. "Well, that explains a lot," she says on a sigh. "She was part of Messiah for a time." Shaking her head, she looks at Graeme. "Do me a favor… I'm not entirely sure where her loyalties are at this moment, but … I figure that in the end, we're on the same side." If she's dreaming too, is one of her own children floating around here somewhere? If none of the kids Ryans knows about are the same kids she does, there are nearly a dozen running loose in the time stream. "Let her know that Cardinal's gone underground but give her my burn number. If she wants to talk or anything, I'm… putting some things in motion." She shakes her head. "You and Aric are the only ones that I have who are on the up-and-up right now, Graeme, and I need you to stay that way as long as you can, okay? If only because … I'd rather not turn to petty theft to survive." She grimaces.
Graeme nods. "I'm pretty sure she's on the same damn side, overall," Graeme says. "After all, she hasn't gone and turned about and told the DHS that I know a hell of a lot more than I told them, and she's aware of that." There's a smile, and Graeme pulls the woman he's walking next to into a quick hug. "And I will." On to more practical matters. "If there's anything you guys need, let me know, along the lines of what I gave Jaiden, last week?" There's a hint in his voice, a question that's not quite said. Because he'd asked Jaiden to pass on a request, too.
She's surprised by the hug but returns it tightly, burying her face in his shoulder for a minute. There are a great many things weighing on the blonde these days. When Elisabeth raises her head to look at him as he steps back, she tilts her head slightly. "What'd you give Jaiden?" she asks. "I'm sorry — we've been running a bit ragged lately. I'm … sort of dealing with personal shit." Like meeting her adult son from the future who tried to kill Cardinal. It's a lot!
there's a half a smile, and Graeme squeezes her shoulder for a moment before letting go. "It's alright. Chocolate, coffee, some sodas, games and cards and such, necessities. Anything I figured you guys could use, while I was out at one of the small strip malls over by the school I've been picking up the most days at. If you guys run out of any of it, I can get more pretty easily, bring it to whoever can meet me most easily." There's a nod. "And um, there's a favour I'd wanted to ask. I need to get in touch with someone." Graeme pauses. "Ben Ryans?" There's another pause. "He's Keira's uncle, or something. And she asked me to, if I could find him, talk to him."
Elisabeth is quiet as he asks his favor, and she looks…. completely wierded out. "Fuck me to tears," she mutters. Six degrees of separation (or lack thereof) biting her in the goddamn ass again. "Keira's uncle is Ben Ryans?" she demands. "Seriously?" Elisabeth drops her cup, now empty of the iced coffee, into a trash can as they walk and just facepalms. She sighs heavily. "Yes, I can get word to him. What do you want me to tell him?"
"Yes," Graeme says, reaching over to rest his free hand gently on her shoulder. "I just … there are things that he deserves to know." Graeme falls silent. "So I'd like to talk to him. Let him know she skipped town." There's another silent pause. "And why." Once more, silence, perhaps to ignore the tones of guilt that had crept into his voice. "So, just, I … need to talk to him."
She sighs heavily. "Graeme…. Do you know who Ben Ryans is?" Elisabeth asks.
Once again, Graeme nods. "Well aware. Which means he deserves to know even more," he retorts. "Otherwise, it'd be far, far easier for me to just honour Keira's request not to tell him why, or any of that, but he damn well ought to know." The steel of determination has pushed the guilt and hurt out of the teacher's voice, but perhaps all three are truly there at once.
Elisabeth nods slowly and sighs. "All right. I'll let him know, but I can't promise you anything. He's… in the same boat I am, frankly. Can't be out and about that much. And in point of fact, I'm not sure it's…. even something that's going to blip on his radar right now," she says with a grimace.
"It's not time sensitive. It can wait for whenever," Graeme says. "But if it's all the same, I'd like to meet with him. I can get to wherever would work best, or what. And … there's a damn good chance he might be my uncle, too." After that, Graeme falls quiet. There's a hint of the same stubborn line to his jaw, facial features that suggest it might actually be true, facial features that prompted Keira to question that they were only half-siblings to begin with. The silence is followed by a soft sigh, and Graeme absently pets Odin. Reassuring the dog that he's okay. "Just … whether he deserves to find out about Keira's affiliations and her leaving, he deserves to find out the first from me."
There's a blink. And Elisabeth is brought up short by that thought. Christ. "Yeah… okay," she says quietly. Shaking her head she murmurs, "Man…. and I thought my life was kinda fucked up." She grins a little. Ryans has future kids, future grandkids, his own kids right now, and now possibly Graeme as a nephew. Which…. is a good thing, but Keira might not be. Geez.
There's a quiet chuckle from Graeme. "Thanks," he murmurs. "I appreciate it." That said, there's another hug for the woman. "It's good to see you," he says.
Elisabeth holds him tightly. To anyone in the else in the park, they might appear a couple bidding one another farewell as she whispers in his ear, "Go carefully, Graeme. You're…. going to learn a lot of things about me soon that …" She sighs softly. "Have faith in me if you can, okay? It's… almost time to start making noise." She kisses his cheek, and then pivots on a heel and heads out of the park, away from him.