Participants:
| Scene Title | Saved The World |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | This is what you get: your mom shot, arrested, and love notes from a homicidal stalker. |
| Date | February 1, 2010 |
Old Lucy's: Back Room
This backroom looks more like a living room than just a plain old back room. There are a few armchairs placed about the room and a black rug is in the middle of the room, on top of the rug is a big table with a few chairs around it as well. In a corner of the room is a flat screen TV on the wall.
Gunmetal clicks down heavy on top of the counter's worn veneer, through the canvas duffel bag he'd zipped it up in. The door locks automatically now, unless you put in a different keycode to keep it open, part of the security upgrades that Abigail had purchased off Elisabeth's old beau.
Well: one of Elisabeth's old beaus. Teo is bringing more guns home than usual, but there's only one in his hand, a pistol gripped with fervent strength despite that his hand is a mess of peeling skin and brittle scabs, healing from the influence of Kazimir's ability like— he hopes— other parts of him are, too.
He is scooping water out from underneath the faucet, drinking— practically gobbling clear, cold tapwater out of an ungloved hand. A day's growth of beard darkens his jaw and about as long without untroubled sleep stilts his pupils' dilation and contraction in their effort to catch light.
Which reminds him, after a few seconds, to turn the light on. He claps a rough palm onto the wall's switch, turns—
"Bang." Not only does a feminine voice ring into his ears, but the abrupt appearance of someone having been sitting not far behind him is enough to make anyone practically jump out of their skin.
A second later- it's no assassin, it's no stalker, it's no ninja- it's only Delilah, tips of her colorful clothes blotted out by a calf-length woolen coat and hood. The dark color blended her in just perfectly, though now in the light there is still a layer of droplets from snowflakes glistening on her shoulders. Her legs are crossed, flat-soled boots still damp from the outside. She can't have been waiting for him too long; but her smugness in the element of surprise is one of those that come with a certain amount of patience.
Teo's gun doesn't go off, wonderfully. He does, however, just short of jump out of his skin and end up spitting a curse through his teeth, his wrist wiped across his mouth in an audible scuff of abrasive contact. "Jesus fucking Christ, Delilah," he says, and other useless things like that. 'What do you think you were doing?' 'Couldn'tve waited upstairs with Abigail and a teapot?' 'Fucking weather.' 'Fucking A.' He stamps his feet and wipes his damp hand off on his pant leg, his gun one finally flicked back on safety with his thumb.
"Tanya died around here, you know," he concludes, unhelpfully chiding, exhaling an erratic puff of water vapor under his breath. Teo pops the button of his jacket collar with a dirt-rimmed thumb and ruffles his dirty-blond hair looser on his head. And, before she can say it— or perhaps just in time, "It's nice to see you to."
Maybe not the best idea to surprise a guy with a gun- Hey! She's seen Burn After Reading- but somehow Delilah just knew it wouldn't end with her brains on the wall. Not that she'll be doing it again, if she can manage.
The tap-tap of her boots hitting the floor precede her getting up from her seat, dusting her hands of invisible dust. A hand reaches up to tug her hood half-back, her tangle of red hair slipping out of one side where it had been bunched. "Yeah, it is. Been waiting for you." Well, duh. She was going to use his line, but- he used it first.
"My mom got shot." This is not a conventional answer to 'Been waiting for you,' not even by Teodoro's standards, but it's on the forefront of his thoughts and seems like the kind of thing a Sicilian should get out there before they continue the exchange of pleasantries. He's relaxed considerably by then, which is to say he's still tense, disoriented, quite possibly in a bad mood, but holstering his weapon and picking up his duffel bag between two hands. Levering it onto his shoulder.
There's still vanity enough in him that he sees necessary to wipe the slit-open side of his mouth with a sleeve, discreetly as he can, but not nearly as much vanity as he'd been plagued by last week. He has one arm in the state of beef jerky, sunburn skunk-striped up his nose and his mom got shot. Grudgingly, he's conceding that there other things in the world besides his half a Chelsea smile. He steps closer, lifting a newly-cleaned hand to pull gently through her hair. "How've you been?"
Delilah's eyebrows vault up on her head as she watches him now, and it turns into a bit of a stare as he seems to reassert himself. Whatever messes that he has himself in physically, she pays little attention to- it is his other ones that get her attention. Dee manages to get something out a few moments before he lifts his clean hand to her hair. "Is she okay?" Would he be so calm about it if she wasn't, though?
"I've been good. I wanted to find you a couple of days after that trainwreck, but you'd gone already. I'm sorry about that whole afternoon." Lilah lifts a hand to run her palm down part of her jaw, a gesture of embarrassment. "It was stupid of me."
Yeah. Went to get beaten up by a seventy-year-old man and rescue another gangly old thing who doesn't even like him anymore, but Teodoro isn't about to volunteer such embarrassing details when he is in this sort of mood. No kind of mood. Slightly better mood, that she isn't ducking out from under his ruffling hand or angrily declaring her new-formed Refrain habit. That's another faint degree of tension released from his brow.
"Sorry I left so suddenly," he says, after a few conversationally awkward seconds. Awkward, but when he says it, it sounds as if he really does mean it. He's sorry he hadn't said good-bye. "And I was an asshole because I got mad. I'm glad you're okay." The words threaten to be trite in their simplicity, or so Teodoro thinks; he's slightly stiff around the corners saying them, his eyes pale in the dark, before he starts to stump past her, toward the stairs. "My mom's in critical condition. I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
She's okay, and not on drugs. That part's always the best part. He might have liked to know she flushed it, but that's for another time and another description. Delilah doesn't seem to be too concerned with him saying something stereotypical of the moment. It means what it means, and unless he wants to be verbose there are not very many other ways to say it. She gives him one of her usual small, yet completely warm smiles, just before he moves past her for the stairs. The girl follows him a moment, though hesitant once the floor starts going upward.
"Do you think you should try to visit her? I don't know much about visiting other countries, but- it's your mother." According to her younger experiences, that means they'd have to let him in! Everything is simple like that, sometimes. Not that it is accurate. At least it is fresh thinking- an airy breeze in a stuffy room.
"American fucking government had better've cleared my record," Teo mumbles in response. They're talking about the same thing, of course. The fact that Amadora Laudani's baby prince is a categorical terrorist, was wanted by the law, and genuinely surprised when no form of authorities came swooping down to take him away when he went to Russia to save the world. "I don't know. I guess. It's what you do when your mom's been shot, right?
"Go say hi. Figure out why. Kill the asshat who did it?" Round on his dad for having provided insufficient protection. It takes Teodoro a few clattering steps up the stairs to realize that the girl is hesitating at the foot of them. He pauses, the bag creaking on his shoulder. Looks back and down, his eyebrows gone lopsided with inquiry. In that moment, he remembers to ask: "How's Varlane?"
Well, it's not just his place up there. When he gives her a look, though, she steps after him again. "I'm pretty sure I know that you were off doing whatever everyone else was doing-" Everyone else being several people who had records, et cetera, cleared up. "So it should be okay. I'd visit if it were my mom, no matter how long it's been since I saw her."
Delilah ventures quite boldly with this, having still little clear idea of Teo's life before Midtown. No comment on hunting people down, but the glimmer in her eyes doesn't say she disagrees. "He's alright. I don't think anything phases him much anymore. That's kind of sad, but that's how it is."
Copper flashes between Teo's fingers where he extricates keys out of somewhere, and scrapes the cut metal into the lock. Pauses long enough to press the pad of his finger against the small electrical box on the right, giving the tiny blue monitor a moment to accept his biometrics before he pushes in with his hip. "You're right. I should book a ticket. 'Least I can do is sit with her for a couple days." His lips seal shut over his teeth, squaring his jaw with ginger distaste at the whole prospect.
He is Amadora's son, and he isn't Amadora's son. There are as many of the ghost's and the frinkle's memories that do not feel real to him as there are ones that do. And yet there's that same bile eating at the lining of his throat when he thinks about his dad, and an odd pang of instinct that he ought to pray for the soul of the dead priest. It would have been Father Francesco. Baptised Teo, once. Might have thought to reassess the state of his soul more recently, but he's no longer on God's green Earth to intermediate such judgment.
"Might be better than having a psychotic episode every time something bad happens. Calluses are a defensive mechanism, yeah?" His bag nudges aside the door, and the dim hall light spills into the unlit apartment.
Distractedly, he surveys the darkness; doesn't go immediately for the light, busy trying something else that— doesn't, ultimately, work. "He really likes you."
"I think she would like it more than if you didn't even try." So even if she is wary on seeing him- he went. That's the principle of it. Delilah hovers there at his side on the landing while he jingles keys and juggles keypads. Pretty good security up here!
"Yeah." Her initial answer is quite weak, and perhaps he can feel her movements, as she lifts a hand to rub at the lines of her still chilly face and nose. There's a bit of a pinkness on her cheeks, either from that flush of weather outside, or possibly for other, less temperature based reasons. "He really likes me, sure, but honestly- I don't see him as ever being more than a good friend. He sorta knows that."
Old Lucy's: Upstairs
Though one might remember when a certain fiery woman lived here… Now the living area above Old Lucy's has changed hands. The open living room and kitchen are homey, a commingling of two people's tastes. The leather couch sits kitty corner to a one of red suede and a bit smaller. A large bird cage for it's budgie inhabitant takes up it's own corner beside dark paneled walls. Bookshelves with literary pieces of a variety both academic and not take up another small section.
The kitchen is large, with a rolling wood and black marble island to give more counter space to work on. Pots and pans hang from the roof and track lighting keeps it not gloomy. A proper oak dining table has been set up with matching chairs instead of the 70's castoff that the residents have been known to own and a bowl of fresh fruit sits in the center.
Down a hall lay's multiple doors. A master bedroom occupied by the oldest resident and occasionally have a pervading smell of whiskey and smoke coming from it when the door is open. A second door with a cross above it, a third with no marking that is occupied by the third resident of the premises. Two other doors lead to a linen closet and bathroom - Decorated in a very strong pirate theme - respectively. A black cat with a red velvet collar and a little Swarovski charm dangling from it can be found meandering at will.
Does he? Teodoro's eyes blink back to clarity on the front of his head, and he starts to look back at her doubtfully before finally assenting to hit the light with a sideways hammering of his fist. Intellectually or does he know-know it? That sort of fourth grade sandbox verbiage and drama seems slightly out of place, here, so he doesn't forge ahead with that line of questioning. "Sounds like you have everything worked out. Reminds me of Liz.
"I don't know, somehow sex and romance and shit doesn't in and of itself ever seem to fuck up the women I know. I think the stereotypes have it completely backwards." Teo slips the bag strap over his head, one arm hooked in underneath the outline of a rifle, bearing its weight and whatever else he has stuffed into there. "Even Abby and Deckard. I swear."
She sort of knows that look. She used to get it from people too. The look of uncertainty on maturity. Dee listens though, finally making a halfway attempt at a laugh. "Well, none of this is stereotypical, compared to when the definition was made." Or perhaps Teo just has this corner of the world where normal things don't always apply. "And I know that look. He knows we're just friends, trust me. It's all working out well enough- maybe that's a good thing, as Liz seems well adjusted by general comparison." If he's going to parallel her to anyone- may as well be someone that has her ducks in a row. Her eyes are partially drawn to his literal baggage before moving back to his face.
"I made the offer with Magnes too, cause he found his parents basically dumped him- if you decide to go to Italy and need someone to go along- I'm here for you."
So many ducks corralled into a row, or so Teodoro honestly thinks, but of all the relationships he has fostered since the Bomb, his with Elisabeth often seems the most tenuous and for reasons he can't quite put his finger on. They fought badly. It's easier for him to speak well of her to strangers than it is for him to convince her he thinks so. Nothing like that's happened with Delilah yet, though.
Not in this timeline or the other, and he's glad of that, like he's touched by her sincerity. Not even the keloid-twisted injury up the side of his face disrupts his smile. "Grazie. I'll keep that in mind."
That's not to say it would be tenuous for someone similar; Delilah is happily oblivious to the intricacies of it all, and will most likely remain that way. To her, it was a compliment- of sorts. One of being well adjusted. He smiles at her offer, and it breaks Delilah's own into a grin.
"I suppose now you're in a good enough mood that I can tell you I was arrested a few days ago and not end up with a scolding. Please?" But she had to tell him, at some point. It would have come around anyway.
Light, followed by sounds - people talking - are enough to draw Abby from her bedroom where she'd been parked. Homework, decrypting cyrillic notes left by strangers and otherwise keeping her mind occupied on things not concerning death, blood or Deckard. She'd been home not long, maybe an hour at most, duffel bag by the door, jacket up and fairly fresh coffee in the pot when the brunette appear at the end of the hall, peering into the livingroom with her shotgun and dark circles under her eyes. Sure there's a massive security system, but it's only as good as the person who fails to pick it. Or a teleporter, phaser, you name it. "Teo?"
Teo doesn't drop the bag, but his fingers do this white-knuckled spasm thing that threatens to. He turns around so fast it's a minor miracle his shoe soles didn't skid right off the hardwood floor, and stares at her with his eyes as big as fists in his head. "You" Possibly, he missed out on her plea. "You excuse me?" Incredulity makes his already mobile features even more exaggerated. "You didn't fucking— what— nobody fucking—" His cheeks balloon briefly around a gusting sigh.
And then Teo stops, for a moment, arms full of black canvas and black composite, his jaw squaring into a scowl, almost a pout of consternation. He's about to say more, no doubt, to ask for details and the remnants on her record, except another female voice lights into the empty air behind him and turns him around. Oh. "Hey," he says, and the sanguine ease that had colored his tone when it was just him and Delilah is swapped out for something a little unsteadier, less certain. "I thought you weren't home. Are you all right?" He glances at her shotgun. Doesn't stare.
It might have worked for the humor if he did just fall flat. But Delilah can't help but badly suppress a laugh. She lifts a hand to wave past Teo at Abby, fingers poking from the sleeve of her coat. Hi!
"It's fine, Teo. It got handled. There was a group pitting arson over at Summer Meadows, and some Rage Empath made it a riot. I got arrested and registered, but I'm only a two. I'm not getting any bags pulled over my head, no black vans slowing down as I cross the street, no penitentiaries… It's fine, and I even met the Secretary of Evolved Affairs- and he wants to protect the place now. I don't know if it was him or dumb luck that got me a tier two- Though Magnes seems to think he knows why I did, but he hasn't said what that is yet. Point is, I'm fine, everyone else is fine, and they're prosecuting the arsonists and the empath. It's cool. Don't explode, I knew you'd react like this, but please, chill." It's cool! She seems very keen on making sure he knows that.
"You might need to hit him upside the head" Just Teo and Delilah means that Abby disappears and puts the shotgun away before re-appearing back at the hallway and eventually into the livingroom proper. "I got home early. Class. Was working in my room. Evening Dee, tier 2? Wow, well, at least now you won't need to worry about getting black holed since you got a card now" Just to make sure she doesn't spaz out and use it on others. "I say that you take him up on his offer, not often that someone with some bit of power is willing to help. Better late than never."
A piece of paper that was in her hand is passed over to Teo so that he can look at it. She knows he speaks Russian and maybe he can read it too. Her other options aren't one that she want's to deal with yet. "She's here and alive and not sunk somewhere Teo, means she is fine. Go have a fit over this note. It got left, by a Russian yesterday morning"
The bag of hardware sloughs to the ground, hard parts and dense canvas knocking and bumping audibly to a landing. Teo makes an irritable gesture of surrender out of his hands. Look, see? No need for blows upside the back of his head. He is here. Reaching out for the paper, ready to be of service for the purpose of whatever this is Abigail wants him to do with this note, so as long as the women are kind enough to ignore the flood of foul words and paranoid speculation visibly dammed up behind his lips and bottlenecking in his throat, everything is fine.
Cyrillic gives way to his reading nearly as easily as English. He used it recently enough that there's virtually no lag between looking and translating. Instead, what pause there is comes from the clash of disgust and disbelief that starts to darken Teo's features the instant he begins reading, his scabbed and dried-out thumb tracing over the letterforms. On first glance, even Delilah can tell it's brief enough that he doesn't really need to take a seat for proper study.
The beauty of your glowing body beckons me to touch, to taste, to love its graceful expanse from your forehead to toes, fingers to nose. How I hunger to know you so completely.
Temper comes too easily to Teodoro, lately. The question virtually forces itself out through his teeth: "Who?"
"I explained my control to them- I can only assume it was good enough." Delilah remarks to Abby, still smiling. She seems to perk at the paper being passed over, but actually trying to look at it is just out of range for her, unless she wants to be totally nosy. But it's obvious that she's curious.
She is watching his face as curiously as the paper, head tilting when Teo's expression darkens. Egh. This doesn't look good. "…What's it say?" It's not something gross, is it? Secret notes are either questionable, or scary! That's how sociopaths work on television!
"Tell me what it says first, and i'll tell you who I thought was on the security tape." Probably make Teo spaz regardless. SHe's hoping it says something along the lines of back from the dead, here to eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. There's amotion for Delilah to come with her as she heads into the kitchen to be a better host than she was with Magnes earlier in the day. "He came in, sat down, had some brandy and left Brenda says. I got him on tape thanks to Alec's system. Pretty good picture that I think, I know who it is. I can show you after Dee's gone. If you tell me what it says" Though, there's a flower on it, so.. it can't be all bad a note can it?
There's a fucking flower on it and that makes Teo feel embarrassingly Italian, in a chauvinistically chivalrous kind of way. He doesn't physically crumple up the paper in his hand, however tempting it is to do so. "Long, short, it's a come-on. Some lewd poetry about your body parts, appetites, getting to know you— 'completely.'"
Even this abridged and watered-down version riddles Teo's voice and expression with certain disgust, and he is about two inches from shaking the paper in Deliilah's direction and explicitly instructing her to avoid such unsavory figures and jails and things in the future.
He doesn't. "Cute joke from Ivanov?" he asks, handing the paper back with some odd mixture of reluctance and eagerness to be rid of the thing before he does something else unsavory with it. Teodoro reaches his other arm out to hang it around Delilah's neck, a sudden, wolfishly comradely impulse, despite that his features are still all over bad mood.
"It's one of those things, is i- oy, it says what?" Delilah is taking a step to follow Abby, but is literally drawn back by what Teo says is on the note. She gives the Italian man a squint of uncertainty, before smirking to herself. "That's kind of romantic in the worst way ever."
Hrp. There's suddenly a Teodoro doing what seems to her like posturing, as if the guy that wrote that note could possibly be infringing on all of his surrounding Females. Delilah smiles, regardless of his equally wolfish expression. Hopefully it doesn't last after she leans into him, reaching one hand up to honk at his nose, complete with goose-like sound effect. Lighten up!
One hand still on the coffee pot when Teo gives her the cliff notes of the … note. That sounds… well, if you knew who Kozlow was, that's either very creepy, endearing, flattering and more than a little possibly death threaty. The odds are that it's the latter. "Just, tell me word for word would you? So I know what I'm dealing with from this person. It's not Agent Ivanov. He's gay, and he has no thoughts of me in that fashion. He'd sooner slit his throat than make romantic overtures that don't include John Logan's head on a plate"
The pause finishes and she pulls the pot, with one hand while pulling down three mugs to start filling them. "It's a note, from someone we know. I'll give you the security tapes when you don't have your arm around Delilah and i'm not afraid you might accidentally hurt her" God. Kozlow sent her that. Sent her that and.. was in her bar and is very much alive. An involuntary shudder runs through her.
Teodoro Laudani knows a great many things about Felix Ivanov, and one of them is entire certainty of the fact that the Russian is not, in fact, gay. Not nearly as gay as Teo is himself, even, though the distinction is largely semantic insofar as they have and probably will again someday get it up for girls. He wishes it was Felix. Would have been a mildly amusing and completely uncharacteristic joke, if it were Felix.
Regrettably, it isn't Felix, and it offends Teo's eyes to have to look at the note again, but grudgingly, he shakes the paper flat and does so. He reads it in a tone of voice better suited to a broken power-tool, ground out, low, only a pause here o there to rework the grammar from Russian back into English. When he's done, the paper's creased up in the flat of his hand and tossed down onto the coffee table, underhand. His great Italian nose, recently honked, wrinkles once before smoothing straight again with an irritable huff of air.
The worst of the scabs on his mouth have healed, by now, leaving only the curling distortion of his severed cheek and a little peeling from the lack of humidity to marr the clarity of his frown.
Delilah's hand sits down on the shoulder of his nearest to her, as he reads aloud the note to Abby. As it turns out, it's a bit bizarre with some context. If it was just a random note, it would be pretty romantic, like she thought for a few moments before. Now it just seems like Abby has a disturbed Russian Magnes on her hands- or something like that. There is a small frown on Dee's face when he finishes, not as severe as his, but still skeptical. Only because she doesn't know the whole story.
The redhead lifts her hand again to the far side of Teo's neck, giving him something between a reassuring pat and a notion for a job well done, having not accidentally popped her head off. That'll do, Teo, That'll do. "Should I go so you guys can figure it out…? Or should I stay as a visiting distraction?" She implies that she'll be good for either.
Oh now. Come on Kozlow. Surely he can't have been that impressed by someone stupid enough to fall for him and his woe is me, vanguard killed my ballet dancer sugarmuffin. The note is snatched up after their cups are put down, tucked away into a pocket so that he can pour over it later. Figure out what exactly it does mean. Maybe go find a safehouse and hunker down there instead of the bar.
"I'll tell you in the morning. I got class work to do so that I can get ahead of class. I have a feeling that life isn't going to settle down anytime soon and I need to.. find a new bartender" To replace the one who's resting on a slab in the city morgue and waiting to be claimed by family. She's pretty sure some lawsuit will come from it, the woman's family trying to lay blame on the business for not keeping the alley safe enough.
Her own cup is picked up then, an air kiss dropped lightly on his unscarr'd cheek, followed by another for Delilah. "Go easy on him, stay. He needs some loving and attention. He's gonna get his ass kicked by me later for something. I just don't want to deal with it right now" She wants to deal with getting rid of the dark circles under her eyes and her homework.
Of all the arguments not to go back to Italy—
—well, this would be the only halfway decent one, probably. "I don't like it when people bother the good things in my life," he says, suddenly, his voice a little flat, half apologetic, somewhat explanatory. Teo pulls up a grin, finally, too late to be a response to the honking but perhaps acknowledging its spirit, if belatedly. "I don't have very many of them. A'right. I can make some hot chocolate or something. There should be some halfway decent TV on, this hour." He glances at Delilah, for whom the offer is, though it's Abigail's instruction he's obeying, really.
Hooking the dropped duffel with his foot, he lifts it up high enough to grab with his hand, starts to drag it to one of the rooms to dump away. "Before I get to spend an hour in front of closed-circuit TV," Teo amends, blankly.
Delilah nods to Abby, smiling back to Teo when he finally lets himself do the same before moving off to dump his cache of duffel bag and et cetera. She stays there with Abby for a moment, a brief wash of something awkward coming over her as she clasps her hands in front of her. Soon enough the redhead comes back to earth, gesturing at her long coat. "Can I hang this up somewhere?" Laaame. "I'm sorry if I did come at a weird time, I really was just waiting down there for him to apologize about something else-"
If Abigail had heard about his mother, she'd be calling Elias and Teo'd have no excuse NOT to go to Italy to see to his hurt mother. Family is everything really. "Teo, too many people have bothered with me, that it's become the gold standard. I'm getting used to it" Which is a handful of words that one should probably never heard from anyone. getting used to bad shit happening. "Sure, go hang it up by the door, make yourself at home Dee." She offers a smile for the other woman before she's off, disappearing into the hall and soon after, her own door closes softly behind her.