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| Scene Title | Right Where We Left Off |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After a shocking event of the night before, an even more shocking… and revealing morning after occur between Yana and Moriarti. Ghosts are no longer ghosts, and the Queen of Webs undergoes a game of Russian Roulette, complete with the sound of wedding bells in the distant future. |
| Date | July 17 2011 |
Yana's Apartment
As gentle as on their wedding night, so many years before, Moriarti carried Yana into her bedroom. The chest was a touch broader, the arms slightly thicker, but the intent was the same, Gregori returning out from the darkness of memory, albiet with a different face.
Into the small hours of the morning they went, before sleep finally claimed them, their reunion interrupted by the needs of the body, Moriarti ever mindful of Yana's state, still healing from the gunshot wound.
Once she finally woke, tangled in rumpled bedding, Moriarti was not there with her. But the smells and sounds coming from the kitchen would be enough to draw her curiousity. And once she ventured out, she would find him there, clad in a pair of black pajama bottoms and nothing more, tied about the waist and flowing about his lean legs. Padding about the kitchen in bare feet, availing himself of her foodstocks and kitchen itself to cook up a breakfast.
Gregori was a competant enough chef, and Moriarti seems to be as well. It isn't gourmet, but it is made with his own two hands. Eggs and bacon, toast and bagels, and tea and coffee set out next to juice.
As is the theme of late, Yana's best laid plans are turning up with a few hitches in them. Major ones, yet not anything that she can't quite handle. The gunshot was the least of her worries. It might have been close to being her life, but the body heals, and new opportunities arise, which brought Yana the idea to procure a token, a show of stature, and a way into the organization that has placed her on a brand new board and playing field.
Normally two steps ahead, her foresight is often shown to be impeccable, though there are forces and situations that even she is unable to factor in, the biggest of which being the return of the past she left behind. The place where she buried her heart, surfacing in the most unlikely of vessels, and now.. a the burn from her injury isn't the only warmth that she is starting to feel in her chest. She wakes, much like she always does in her bed, to the sounds of breakfast cooking, like she always does, and at first she believes it was all just a dream.
However, the woman is hot as daft as to mark it off as such, considering the unmistakable scent of a man's cologne upon her sheets, and the once familiar feeling of the morning after. Impossible.. If it wasn't a dream then—
She is quick to rise to her feet, finding her sheer black robe and tossing it over her shoulders, stepping from her bedroom and into the area which contains the man cooking in her kitchen, that isn't the hired attendant. "So, it's true." she is calm, trying to muster forth that rigid behavior that she has acquired since the first time Gregori and she parted company. "For once in my life, I believe I have no words that I can offer. I'm just.. astonished."
Moriarti turns from the stove, saucepan in one hand, spatula in the other, flipping the panfull of eggs over. "Yes, it is true, although I never expected it to happen." he replies, maybe a little too cryptically. The pan is returned to the stove, sizzling away as the bare-chested man reaches to take a drink of coffee.
Lowering the mug, he motions for Yana to sit, "Sit, eat…" he offers, motioning to the spread laid out on her counter. "…since I'm sure you've a healthy appetite to go along with the questions that I've no doubt are forming in your mind." he says, outwardly far more calm than he truly is.
The pan is pulled from the heat once more, its contents flipped onto a plate, and then slipped into the sink to await his attentions after breakfast. "Probably the first being 'how' I bet…"
"Formed, to tell the truth. I'm always prepared, as you should well know. Even in the event of unforeseen circumstances." Yana makes notation to him, slipping the robe more onto her shoulder as it finds it's way to drape off. Those dark eyes of hers are collected, the wheels in her head are turning and churning out the possible answers and then questions derived from those answers, and so on and so on. All the while, she finds a seat at the table where indicated. Sitting straight, as proper as ever, and quite curious as to the question he proposed.
"How is on of the more prominent questions on the list, yes. It might be prudent to know that first before I proceed with the rest. And then possibly, we'll see just where things stand after that."
A slight murmur of 'touche' passes Moriarti's lips as Yana corrects him and finds a seat at the table. Moriarti continues to play self-appointed host, transferring the spread of food from the kitchen counter to the table, her place already set. A teapot is set on a small stand off to her left, steam escaping from the top.
And then Moriarti takes his place at the other end of the table, his own place set out infront of him. Leaning back, the man steeples his fingers as he regards his widow seated opposte him. With his secret out, more of Gregori's personality mingles with Moriarti's, surfacing like bubbles on a pond.
"Evolution, as several geneticists would say. As near as I can fathom, my Evolved ability is some form of ressurrection, although not in the classical Biblical sense." he begins, pausing to wet his lips with a drink of coffee, "…I died, there in the Hospital, with you clutching my hand, and then I woke up, in a sense, years later, as Thomas Moriarti. Some might say that what I was as Gregori, my soul, as it were, latched onto Thomas and blended with him."
Another pause here, as Moriarti leans forwards to pluck a piece of bacon from the plate, chewing and swallowing before he continues, "…I'm not Gregori, but I'm not Thomas, either. I have the memories of both men…" and then some, but that's not something to scare her with right now, "…up to that point when I woke up. And when I say I, I mean this new man, this amalgamation of the two."
If anything, Yana is a listener. She listens rather too closely to many things, in fact. And just as quickly as the words leave lips, she is already spinning them into the web that is her life in some way. There was always something a bit methodical about this process of hers. Meticulous and logical, lacking any hint of emotion, as such things disrupt the pattern in unforeseen ways. Though as she listens to Moriarti's explanation, she feels perhaps a small but very sharp pain in her chest. It isn't quite a knife, but it still hurts all the same. It sinks into the pit of her stomach before it is washed away by her more logical and better judgment.
Still, it was present, which poses her with a problem. One that she may or may not be able to deal with. "I see." she remarks, her eyes are upon her meal as she starts to cut it up into neat and nice squares, much like their former breakfast routine. Even eating was almost a formal event, proper and focused while topic were discussed. "So then, you've been through this before? Before you and I?"
While Yana listens to and digests this news, and starts in on her breakfast, Moriarti takes her silence as time to begin his own. Eggs well done, forked and scooped up onto slices of toast, with bacon and coffee. Not exactly Gregori's breakfast of choice, but there are little touches. Treating it with the same formality as he ever did, sitting across from Yana at a different table. No mess, no wasted motions. A touch of the napkin to the corners of his mouth, before it disappears back into his lap.
Her question is heard, and considered, as he finishes some of his breakfast. Washing it down with a sip of coffee, the familiar stranger nods as he watches her over its rim. "Yes." he admits, adding quickly, "..but it was before I ever met you, or worked at your father's hospital. Gregori Blite went to sleep one day, when he was seventeen, and woke up a changed man." The explanation is given simply, watching her reaction carefully.
It's not every day that you find out that your husband has a knack for coming back from the dead, after a fashion.
"On the level of a scientist, I find the prospect a bit.. fascinating." Yana admits next, summoning the resolve to push through anything that she might very well be feeling at the moment. She hasn't felt anything in such a long time. No kind of remorse, no sense of emotional pain or real joy. All that mattered to her is.. Well.. it isn't something that she is privy to make other understand, but… That is Yana Blite for you. "And in other ways, I suppose that I find it a bit disturbing. From what you're telling me, the man that I married was merely just a role that you played. Another costume in your collection, a skin of sorts. And it makes me wonder if the life that you led was apart of that skin or if you really invested yourself to feeling what you did." Half of her food is eaten, and judging from the way her napkin is set down to the left side of her plate, she is finished. This was also a sure sign that she had things that were likely of concern, interrupting her appetite.
"I can respect this fact, as it is a trait that I picked up from you some time ago. Since your… initial departure, I've had to adapt. Considering what I came to discover shortly after you had gone…"
Moriarti watches Yana from across the table as he methodically works at his breakfast. His own thoughts on the situation carefully hidden behind controlled features, his own mask to keep himself steady as he treads through uncharted waters with his ability, and its ramifications. He does, however, scowl slightly, at her description of this as a costume. "Before the revelation that Evolved abilities exist, I took this as a sign from God…" he replies, quietly. Gregori was never a religious man, but different lives, different beliefs. "…that I was being given another chance to live my life, and do something right with it…"
He sets his silverware down, a hand catching up the handle of his coffee mug, lifting it to his lips to take a drink, taking that moment to steady his calm. "And I have lived each life as it was my own. Not a farce or a lie…" well, beyond keeping this whole ability a secret "…I was the man you met at the Spring Gala, and the man whose hand you held on his death bed. Everything in between was the truth…" he says, speaking against the rim of the mug, but loud enough to be heard as he makes that confession as to the nature of his life.
Then those eyes lift from regarding the spread of food still laid out on the table, up and across, back to Yana, a brow arching slightly in a silent question, waiting for her to continue.
God, the Devil.. notions which she tends to find rather still these days, considering man has made his mark in neatly ranking among such powers. The very notion in itself is something she finds.. amusing. So she doesn't offer anything to him in that regard. Moreover, she looks a bit relieved that he came to realize that God had nothing to do with it. "Well.." she had been practicing this, for some time now. In the even that something of this nature would happen. If Gregori somehow mysteriously woke up from that hospital bed, and miraculously fought back the disease that had taken his mind and body. It was a very impossible thing, but Yana has never been so foolish as to not expect the impossible.
"As it would seem, your death was in vain. Or rather.. it shouldn't have happened. Shortly after you had gone, my ability developed in a much different way than it had been previously. I would like to attribute your death to being the very thing that sparked me psychologically to advance in that direction, because.." she lifts her gaze to look across the table at him, "As it turns out, I developed the power to actually have saved your life. Through force of will, and knowledge that I had gained through study and practice, I could exact control over the virion particles, and force them to.. destruct, rather than to replicate. Thereby stopping the process, and curing what was impossible to cure before."
Upon rising to her feet, Yana carries herself over to the window of her penthouse apartment, gazing out into the view of the city, her arms reaching and wrapping around her slender torso, the thin strap of her sink nightgown falls down one side of her shoulder, to make it bare. "Christopher himself.. His loyalty to me comes from a purging of HIV from his system. Without a single trace.. gone, just like that. The pain in knowing that I wasn't given the chance to save you in this manner hardened my heart to everything else around me. I no longer cared about anything else in a world that unfairly took you away from me, and then gave me the very means by which I could have saved your life…"
Her back to Moriarti, facing the skyline, she doesn't see him watch her path through the penthouse; although a glimpse might be seen in reflection, the outline of his head as it moves, following her steps. He listens silently, before rising from his chair. The clink of the coffee mug settling down on the table the only sign of movement as he pads across the penthouse on bare feet.
Moriarti comes up behind her, his hands coming to rest on her bare shoulders, a step to the side to look at her reflection in the broad window. "Life is not fair. I know that from my memories. Especially when it comes to death…" he says, his mind casting back to that first death, so many years before, body racked by the effects of tuberculosis. "Perhaps this has been a test.." or an experiment "…our loss, only to have this happen, once your abilities manifested…"
Yana's skin is not as cold as it probably should be. Quite the opposite to be exact, as the woman is quite warm, quite soft to the touch. It is just simply that no one has done so for quite a long time. No on has tried, no one has dared to. While many have found her beautiful, none have gotten close enough to warrant the ability to touch her without there being tension. Though as Moriarti touches her shoulders, she does not shy away, squirm or so much as go stiff at contact being made that she didn't invite. "At what cost?" she asks, trying not to sound too distant. There is a shift of weight, a distribution that brings her to lean back into his chest. "I died with you, that very night. Or rather.. the part of me that had the capacity to care for another. I've been so lost without you. And I'm afraid I would never have been found if you had never returned."
On her feet she spins until she has turned to face him, gazing the span of his height to find his eyes. "You were the color to my world, and you were unfairly taken away from me. For that, I find that I have been rather selfish. And at first, when you told me just now, about who you are? I wasn't sure what it was I wanted. But now, Gregori… Thomas, I don't want to go on any longer without you. Please, don't leave me again.." Gently she thrusts herself against the front of him, placing her face against his chest to listen to his heartbeat, her hands resting to hold at his forearms, keeping her close. This may not be the most logical road for her to take, pursuing this path. It could certainly cause problems in her adamant and ruthless ways, though it is a risk that she has no real choice but to take at this point.
Probably lucky for Moriarti that Yana has decided to go the illogical, warm-blooded route, than any other. Especially once those long-fingered hands settle on her shoulders, a rough touch that isn't quite familiar, even if he acts in a familiar fashion. Those hands slipping from her shoulders as she shuffles and leans back against his chest, forearms resting across her collarbone, his cheek against her head. Listening as she speaks.
As she turns, his arms go out slightly, enough for Yana to move unimpeded and lean into him. As her cheek presses to his bare chest, she can feel his heart beating a bit faster. His forearms tensing slightly under her touch, as his hands rest lightly at her sides, kept close by her grip.
"I won't, my sokrovishche…" he answers, tilting his head forwards to press his lips against the top of her head. "This is certainly different, but perhaps it was a test of some fashion, and our finding each other again has been your reward.." he murmurs into her hair, quite philosophically.
"But I cannot stay here all the time. I still need to go to work, after all…" he makes a light joke, even if he doesn't move to disengage Yana's grip on his arms. "..but I will endeavor not to die again."
A reward… or it is perhaps something to make her trip up. She has been so careful, so meticulous until now. Logic and reason go out the window when love is involved. This was one of her reasons for destroying Gregori the first time. And in one felled swoop, she's disarmed her most powerful instrument of destruction against him. Allowing, or sending a virus to attack him this time would certainly tip off the more sinister aspect of her ability. The fact that he survived makes her have to cut her losses for what they are. This is one time that Yana isn't able to cover all of her bases. She'll chalk it up as her one and only error. Besides.. if she is going to be attached to someone, it might as well be Thomas. In the interim, he fits her image, and her plans, and the possible implications of his ability are interesting.
"I know you can't. Not without people asking a bunch of questions. So really, the only other option we have from here, in order to bypass all of the more annoying speculation, and skip to the real stuff is to get married.. Again. Only.. for the first time so to speak. It'd be sudden enough to shock people, and it'll be a while before people in the circles I run in start asking questions."
Whether or not Moriarti was thinking about those unasked future questions, one couldn't say, with his cheek against Yana's hair and his eyes closed. Perhaps he was just joking about the fact that he does have to go into the office relatively soon. A light chuckle quivers in his chest, felt more than heard, at her comment of skipping to the real stuff and marriage.
"I meant that I needed to get dressed…" he murmurs quietly into her hair, "…but we could do that as well." But then he lifts his head from hers, his touch on her hips holding her there as he takes a step back. "…but I don't want you to feel forced into this, Yana.." he says, as if she did not just admit her continued feelings for him. "…I've lived each life on its own, before now…" he admits, which explains why he did not try to seek her out. "… we can still go slow, and let speculation be damned, or even in a completely different path… this doesn't have to be the only option…" he says, trying to be the gentleman even if inwardly he agrees with her assessment.
"Forced?" Yana turns her head upward to look at him. In reality, she kind of is. Though not by him. "What was forced was the fact that we never got complete our cycle as naturally as intended. The way I see it, we're rather picking back up where we started. A kick to the face of fate that decided to separate us in the first place. I don't think that you could have ever understood just how much of my world you really were." Nor did she, really, until he was gone. "I was never the same again. And I don't think that— I doubt that either of us will be making the same mistakes that we might have made the first time around." Her brows raises, which marks the first expressive look she has put on in quite a while. One might have to question as to if it hurt her face to do that.
"The only thing I'll need to get used to, is the change of name. I've fashioned myself to be Dr. Blite, but.. Dr. Moriarti does have a nice ring to it." she smiles. Actually, it has a more ominous sound to it than Dr. Blite to be honest.
Moriarti's features are a careful study in concern, that sturdy jawline with its light dusting of shadow. "Forgive me, Yana…" he replies at the start. "…this is new territory for me, returning to what I knew…" he says carefully. "…and I just wanted to be sure."
His lips do twitch upwards just a hint as she speaks of mistakes. "..yes, I will remember to pack bug spray the next time I go camping…" he jests, tilting his head to kiss her raised brow. But then he is disentangling himself in earnest, his hands slipping down to grip hers. His mind already working towards what he'll need to do on his way to work. The jewelers to visit and the like. "…but now I've really got to go get ready to go, the skuttlebutt is that there's something coming up on the horizon, and I should probably be at the office."
It is likely a good thing that there aren't observers, or people who have been watching Yana through some type of surveillance. The.. transformation that she seems to have gone through in a period of a few days would be rather.. shocking if they could see her at this very moment. As he pulls away from her, she steps to follow and move where he guides her by her hands. Her head shifts to one side, and she settles her eyes upon him rather soundly, marked with that tone that would be well suited for her to use in the evening, wearing just what she is wearing now, standing in the doorframe with a sultry look on her face. Only.. it's morning, and rather than the doorframe, he finds her against him instead. "Not so fast." she smirks, "You haven't had dessert just yet. I know it's early, and we just had breakfast but…" her eyes lower to the pair of bed pants he wears, fingers leaving his sides and dropping to untie the string there. "I think there's room for just a little helping before you go?" She obviously has the intent to make his morning.
A shocking transformation and then some, as Moriarti comes to a halt in the middle of the sitting area. Next to the couch where all was revealed not many hours previously. His brow arches as she speaks of breakfast this early in the morning, and then her meaning becomes clear as her delicate nails capture the dangling ties to tug the bow apart, the flannel bottoms starting to hang a bit looser over his hips, revealing the well-muscled slope of his abdomen.
"I think I can make the time…" he replies, a smile blossoming on his face. As her fingers work at his belt, Moriarti's fingertips slide up her bare arms, up to the straps of her gown falling about her upper arms. Fingernails hooking beneath the thin straps of material to let them drop further, as he leans inwards. Intent on pressing his lips to her own, and lowering her to the carpet for some desert…