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| Scene Title | Shotgun, Bitches In Back |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | An awkward car trip is endured for the sake of a life on the run. |
| Date | May 26, 2011 |
Some triangles of seasick green intersperse the streets that converge around the navy yard, isosceles of too-long grass and rampant weeds, their fecund war over the glut of spring resource fought under the indifferent branches of dogwood trees. The smell of the pale flowers is mostly overwhelmed by the oily smell of the bay, however, a heavy odor that clings to humid air, sullying vaporous droplets, a seeming distillation of the bruised humors that darken the sky with rain's promise.
Or rain's threat, if you're a woman and not a weed, and however adamant and irritating her survival may be, Bella thinks of herself rather as the former than the latter, and so a umbrella dangles from her wrist, swinging back against the handle poles of her roller board as she navigates the sidewalk cracks which are bursting open with a vibrant green that assures her that life and civilization need not be allied principles.
On foot is how she's insisted to go this last bit, as if stealth were more assured to pedestrians than cabgoers. Paranoia has peaked on this, the day of exodus, and two halves of a Xanax have taken turns entering her bloodstream via stomach lining and intestinal villa, keeping her if not cool than at least at a manageable simmer. If the pills make her tired, it's because she also hasn't slept well, nor eaten much, and the release of anxiety is the removal of much of her remaining motive force. But, brave soul, she soldiers on, wearing a coat too many and a hat too much, pockets full of things she could not bear to part with.
It's a generic swatch of public space, with metal cigarette disposals, broad open walkways, wooden benches. No one stays for very long, and Francois doesn't intend to either — his car is over there, a shiny black vehicle nosed patient up to the curb, the keys of which grinds with the others in metallic scrape. He sits at a configuration of wooden bench and pinic table upon the bricked ground with the weeds that wind out between the cracks, his back to the table portion so he can best leaning his elbows against his knees and slouch as he waits. Black is the dominant colour scheme, the colour of mourning and laziness, with only the latter applying today.
He has the demeanor of someone who would rather not have gone out today. The air is humid, near warm beneath the choking cloud cover, but he remains close to shivering beneath his coat. Eyes set forward on a gunmetal river that rolls the smell of water with every gust of wind off of it, he doesn't immediately notice anyone's approach, fingertips rubbing absently at the scars that seal off his ear and the piece missing from it.
Flint is breaking the law.
He usually is, but today he is doing it openly and without remorse in the form of a rifle strapped long and cold across his back to offset the unseemly roll of his duffel bag at his side. Which is not full of more guns, by the way.
He can accumulate those again later.
The day is grey and so is he, the waterstained brown of his leather jacket and the dark fade of his jeans rendered as colorless by the weather as the coarse bristle of his beard. The stark sheer of his hair makes him more brutish than he might be otherwise, brow reduced and overlong face emphasized through the belted stretch and clamp of his jaw.
The river's humid stench makes him uncomfortable. Hunches his shoulders and stiffens his spine. He realizes it as they draw closer, him half a step behind and beside. As is his habit. Nobody's said anything to him about the rifle.
Nothing said, and Bella has even suppressed the urge to look, to cast even a single glace towards the rifle. It's very conspicuousness makes her refuse to deign - insofar as it's a display, she will not indulge. And, in truth, there is something reassuring about the firearm in what she conceives of as her service, a perilous comfort - solace should things get really, really bad.
But so eyes ahead, and squinting they try to force the shape that will prove to be Francois into premature resolution. She need only wait, roller board rattling after like an ill mannered caboose as she draws closer, closer - until she's suddenly within the radius of social deceleration, brisk, emphatic steps shifting down tempo as she not only sees but sees herself as seeable and perhaps seen, demands suddenly made of her features, her gesture, her affect.
A glance is thrown back - at Flint rather than the gun, she'll insist - part confirmation and part resolution. When she turns back to the Frenchman, her pace has stepped up again, allowing her to cross the remaining distance with her purposefulness retained, her lips forming a hard line in defiance of diplomacy.
Bella comes to a stop, wheeling her suitcase to her side and setting her hand upon the crossbar handle like one might on the pommel of a sword, or a particularly intimidating walking stick. "Let's not waste any more time, hm?"
By the time the sound of footsteps is close and constant enough for Francois to hear, he can likely deduce that it's who he's come out to meet. The clip of two sets of shoes, their purpose and destination. Still, he's going to let one of them talk first — particularly because the rising, ever-present and increasingly metallic tasting tickle is climbing up his throat and digging its claws in when he coughs into cupped palms around when Bella is slowing. It goes on long enough to be wasting time, even, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing anyone wants to do an excessive amount, and by the time it's subsided, Francois is pushing himself off table seat. Off-season sickness makes his paleness stand out, darkens the shadows around otherwise clear eyes.
He tracks a look from Bella's pointy face, to what he can see of Flint's weaponry of choice, and doesn't give this any comment, just a singular beat of a pause. Okay. Why not?
"We wouldn't want that," he tells the lady, his sarcasm mild and voice scratched. "You seem ready." He tilts his head towards where his car sits alone at the edge of the road, and presses on the discreet little gadget on his keychain that makes his car chirp and unlock, lights flashing.
The stone golem bulk of Flint Deckard at Bella's heel slows after she does, at home in shitty weather as he looks like he should be. Like an old garbage tin or a damp newspaper, he blends into the grey and the humidity that defines New York's skyline behind him. Natural camouflage.
Francois' coughing is assessed with a sideways slant of a glance past Bella, chilly blue bit too bright against the sky. Narrowly curious to the point of suspicion in the place of friendlier interest or. Worry.
Which is probably why his flat, "You're sick." sounds more like an accusation than an exclamation of concern.
Also why he hasn't so much as twitched in the direction of the car despite an increasingly conspicuous chip churp and flash at his back.
Flint's diagnosis a clear impingment on Bella's professional mileu - is taken in generous stride, in part due to Bella's limitless magnaminity and the rest because she too is worried, though not about Francois so much. No, not he - from the sound of that cough, he's got at least a few days in which to either get better, or… not, and she's hoping she only needs him today.
Surprise, surprise, it's Isabella Sheridan that Isabella Sheridan is worried about. There will be time enough in which to consider that, for all that he's transgressed her already trampled territorial limits, and for all that he is a stinking lying contract breaker, Francois is (as far as she's concerned) saving her life, and then she may feel gratitude, and with gratitude, affinity, and with affinity, empathy, and so on and so on until she does in fact hope he will recover and live long and Gallicly. For the moment, however, she's more concerned that Francois is risking her life by not wearing a mask.
But wait! Bella reaches into one of her bulging coat pockets and extracts a badly flattened cardboard box, its corners ripped. She lets go of her luggage long enough to pluck a procedure mask from out of the box, and promptly offers it to Francois.
"If you don't mind," is delivered with a hard-eyed, small-smiled expectation of compliance.
Maybe if he didn't have a short lived but moderately successful career as a real doctor in a real hospital, in the age of industrial sanitation and understanding, Francois would balk more when the item is presented. For now, it's regarded for a second as if Bella had a snake coiled around her wrist, pride all a-bristle after he'd thrown a look to Deckard that was meant to read mind your own business in misdirected resentment. That there is a small red blot of discolouration making warped the shape of black ringing iris doesn't.
Help.
In the end, it's pride, too, that has him snag out a hand to take the offered item in lazy swipe. It would be worse to argue and then comply, and he knows better. "You came prepared," he comments, turning black-clad back to the pair of them and moving for the Lincoln without offering to help with the luggage. At least he has a valid excuse. "And yes, but I am managing. Thank you for asking."
Deckard is quiet for the exchange of papery mask and unfriendly eye contact, long, hatchet-hewn angles and pale stare present at a rocky remove. There's a minute shutter about his focus after red in the midst of so much muddy grey — uneasy tension nearly manifested into a reach or a stay only to peter out into a shift of his pack's weight on his shoulder.
He turns to follow Francois. He also says, "Shotgun," right hand raked across his eyes in a self-conscious, restless stir of tendon over bone and scruff. "Bitches in back."
Nastiness exchanged for sarcasm - this is shaping up to be a hell of a trip, and they aren't even in the car yet! Bella feels a giddy whirl in her now-Xanax-less stomach as she revs up for a return volley. Something really callous, correcting him perhaps - 'Actually, I didn't ask-' But better reason prevails over simple pettiness - a figure she recalls, something about a 90 percent fatality rate, places the interaction rather more into perspective.
Plus Flint manages to distract her when he places- who in the wherenow? A new target for sharpness just deferred presents itself, and really she'd be blameless considering the provocation. But Flint's uneasy bearing, a impressionist angling of his familiar architecture, give her pause yet again. Maybe- maybe today is a day to lay off the axe grinding and dart throwing; to eschew weapons generally. After all, Deckard seems to have that covered.
So okay, she opens the backseat door, thumb depressing the button to telescope the handle back into the bag, then lifting and heaving it in, setting her feet to push it across the seats until there's room for her as well. She pauses, tugging another mask free of the box, and slipping it over her own face, an operation of some seconds as she must sweep her hair back into a more amenable arrangement.
The moment she's inside, Bella puts on her seatbelt, a habit deep as instinct.
It's a nice car. Big and American and black and leather. It's been bled in and abused, too, but cleaned and maintained, and no one's even shot at it yet, which is more than one can say for many vehicles owned by this cluster of social circle spread thin over New York City. Despite leading the way, Francois is last to enter, going slow and lazy but also taking the moment to sweep a look around the noon-lit setting, but he only sees empty streets save for a few pedestrian stragglers and some cars he doesn't think he has to worry about. He swallows against the urge to cough, and opens the door.
Slipping into drivers seat, calls of shotgun and bitches both flying over his head and ignored, Francois takes the time to tie his mask in place. "We're going to Jamaica Bay," he tells them. "Not far from here. It is a temporary measure, for you, but secure. If they like you, you can ask for better accommodations."
Flint sees to the luggage.
The vehicle sinks back on its haunches under the added weight of it, shocks rocked, jostled and see-sawed until he slams the trunk with a solid whud and tracks back around the passenger side door. In before Francois, despite extra time taken to steady the lay of rifle down alongside the center console, barrel flush with his boot.
He fastens his seatbelt, too, with a dull, zombiesque monotony that resonates of a suburban childhood somewhere somewhen. Click.
Leather seats. He feels them before he can catch himself. Fortunately he did not slip enough to look impressed at any point, and is left to sneak an awkward look sideways at Maskois instead. And then back at Bella. And her mask.
Within a few sluggish heartbeats, he is playing dimly with the door locking mechanism and then reaching to mash the console lighter into action instead of looking at anyone. Road trip!!
There is a perceptible change in Bella's posture when Francois starts to talk destinations and accommodations. In her imagining, she had to browbeat each detail out of Francois, a frustrating sort of furious fantasy and one that she is happy to let go of in favor of unsolicited information. It is, she supposes, on Francois keeping his word - letter perfect, even - something she generously attributes to a (justly!) guilty conscience. Generous to him in the attribution, generous to herself in that she imagines she could evoke such moral feeling.
That doesn't mean she's not going to ask questions. The belt strains against her torso, and she is force to play a brief session of tug-of-war with the safety mechanism before it will let her lean forward, arm sliding over the back of the passenger side seat, hand coming to rest on Flint's shoulder as her head peeks around the other side of the headrest, pale gaze directed at the driver.
"Whom are these 'they' I need to ingratiate myself with?" is muddled between euphemism and formality, at least one code too many, so Bella makes her concern a little clearer: "this isn't some sort of- trial period, is it?"
"Not exactly."
Francois talks, and drives, and turns his head to grate a cough into shoulder, away from either Bella or Deckard, never mind mask, never mind genetics either. He doesn't crash the car when he does so, either. His shoulders roll to ease their ache, eyes hooding bleary, but he seems alert enough when he continues; "Like I told you, the network was pared down after some raids last year. We only have a few places left, and these are protected fiercely. They are irreplacable. This place is less like that, and I will anger less people by bringing you there. Once they get used to you, perhaps they will open up more. Perhaps not.
"It is not any less secure, just." He glances at Deckard, and lapses quiet there. It's not an underground sprawl of train tunnels. It's not a remote island in the north rivers. It's just a house. "It is called the Bay House. A woman named Meredith will receive you." He adds, wry; "Pray you do not get any kind of trial, because you will probably be found guilty."
Tick. The lighter pops out, ready. Halfway through reaching into his coat after a smoke, Flint sizes Francois up sideways again and hesitates. Tock. He reaches deliberately to push the lighter back in again instead. This is not awkward at all. Especially with all the coughing.
Stringy muscle knotted taut at the back of his jaw, he doesn't shift again until the lighter pops back out and he dips his scruffy chin after Bella's hand at his shoulder, whiskey breath warm on her knuckles. Behaving.
Mostly.
It takes several seconds for him to rehear the name, 'Meredith,' in his skull, and when he finally does, he is hard-pressed to place her as the same one he had dinner and drinks with that time they broke into Bella's studio office. "Torture's only cool if you do it to people they don't like," he clarifies for Bella at a mutter, dash console popped open with a jab of his knee. Map get.
Desperation has carved out a neat corner of Bella's mind, a psychic wound (to risk grand metaphor) that her aggressive brand of active personal optimism cannot leave undressed. Window dressing, maybe, for a bleak vista, but still the idea of living in a house out in the bay doesn't sound so heinous. Not after months of Chelsea, at least. An Meredith sounds an either reasonable, pliant or impressionable name - Bella flatters herself by imagining the good will she will foster, given time and opportunity.
Francois's re-reading of the world 'trial' tips over the painted scenery of this cheap redemption play.
So fuck diplomacy, at least while she can still afford to. "Something about the greater good, I think is the party line-" this to Flint, shoulder squeezed in gratitude for his offense as defense, but the, "right?" that follows after is for Francois. Bella turns to him for confirmation, the one-who-ought-to-know. It's a not a question that looks for an answer in words, but instead a reaction - a rise really.
The lines at Francois' eyes go deeper in their shadows — which indicates either a smile or renewed tension, hard to tell with that rectangle of thin paper drawn across the lower of his face. He would like to say something cutting. But he's tired, and harassed. Plagued.
"Oui," he says instead, swift and rough behind his mask. He isn't smiling, probably. "They— we— steal things, injure enemies, occasionally kill them, and worst of all, make mistakes. Perhaps you needn't worry — you will both be in good company." The borough is becoming sparser the souther they get, could be tagged with a dubious 'rural' descriptor, with the river flat and grey and the islands dotting out from it lurking abandoned out in the water. It's a place of ramshackle buildings, kempt roads and tall, tall grass where it's allowed to grow. The kind of place one can disappear into if they have to.
There's a structure up ahead, red bricked, grey roofed.
The map is half unfolded, acordion-like, turned over and unfolded more of the way to no real end. Idle hands have gotten Flint in trouble before and this is a small space he is sharing with someone for who he is occasionally overwhelmed by a burning rush of desire to slam face first into the steering wheel.
So the map flops around haplessly and he turns his eyes out bloodless grey on a river he likes less the more he sees of it, reflection inscrutable.
"Who else knows you're sick?"
"Everyone makes mistakes," has the obvious truth of cliche, but Bella gives it a bitter tinge of the personal as she shifts back into her seat, leaning into the forgiving leather, arms folded before her as her hips wiggle back into the heterogenous nest of her laden coat(s). A few moments later and her eyes slide out to that same unsightly sweep of water. A few stray droplets strike her window, streaking with what seems like gelatinous slowness, vanguard of the greater forces of precipitation. Getting things wet without her consent. Her body tilts until her forehead touches the window. "When this grey world crumbles like a cake-", breathed low, fogs the glass for less than an instant.
Her aimlessly steady gaze is diverted when Flint speaks up. 'Who' infers specific individuals, ones Flint has in mind. Bella is by no means above taking a sort of vulture's view on gossip, an opportunistic ear. She lapses into quiet, perching in the perceptual eaves.
There's a glance in rear view mirror after Bella, Francois choosing to watch her for a few seconds as opposed to the road, or gaunt Deckard asking a question that twinges unusual guilt a little sharper than anything related to the people he shares a car with. Detaches his attention from the redhead once more. Blood is becoming a constant taste at the back of his throat, so it's not as though he can forget, and yet his answer is, "Not many." His fingernails set along the seam of stearing wheel, red-flecked eyes forward after a flicker of a glance towards the map in Flint's hands.
They've been here before, come to that. From driver to map holder, except the sky had been a blazing blue, unlike this apologetic, heavy humid grey, spitting rain. They don't know I'm engaged either, doesn't sound like an intelligent thing to quip, all things considered, even if it's what next occurs to him. Goes silent instead, jaw locked tense again.
It isn't really Deckard's business. He's wearing the mask like Bella asked. He's halfass fulfilling his side of their deal. They aren't friends. Francois' answer is short and evasive.
So he doesn't press further than that, privacy allowed in the ensuing vacuum. As much as there can be in a car that contains three people. There is water to look at. Window buttons to push.
The descent into silence lists into numbness - Flint is a good model for Bella, a study in willful unheeding. The faint flutter of anxiety doesn't quite leave the fair corners of her heart, but as she closes her eyes and lets herself be driven, no longer moving by being moved. She feels the road beneath them at a remove, so too the sound of thickening rain. She waits for gear shifts, estimating speed, falling into the granularity of data, hiding fear behind a wave of minutia too minor to evoke anxiety. She hopes there will be a bed for her when she arrives. Or any surface soft enough to cushion a fall.
Silence suits Francois fine. He even lets himself relax a little, sneaking a look to his passengers out the corner of his eye and a glimpse in the rear view mirror, before setting his focus on the road winding for the Bay House. The terrain doesn't change under the wheels when it nears its place of destination, grinding to an arbitrary halt at walking distance. They don't get too many cars out here, which is why at the sound of this one's arrival, someone is already outside.
Meredith seems, at a glance, like a promising prospect for Bella's initiation into runaway life. She wears a floral peasant top in the humid weather, billowing a little in the wind that comes in off the river and hanging loose over her blue jeans and flats. Her blonde hair is left loose and her hands are gently placed on her hips. But there is a steely, automatically suspicious expression to ferrety features, all sternness and hard lines of someone who's been a terrorist runaway herself for too long to be immediately, unquestionably welcoming, or as warm as her particularly ability might imply. She doesn't make to greet them, more guardian than host. The door behind her is open, and there's a shape in it, a small and shy silhouette.
There are children here. Someone is letting Bella near children.
Said someone isn't getting out of the car, conscious more of his sickness now that he has a mask on his face, despite the fact that the house is mostly full of Evolved. "Be nice," he advises. Both of them.
Flint always looks older than when anyone's seen him last. More grey. Harder in the face. But relaxed in a dimly vacant kind of way for that: the tension in his shoulders entails an unconscious, human amount of unvoiced anxiety for the list of unknown variables they're transitioning into.
They're there.
Recognition is slow to dawn at first. Then faster as Flint's eyes tick down from face to ass and legs. And back up again. He's hit on her before. Confident enough on the subject to sigh deflated-like to himself, he lingers an uncomfortable beat longer than he should before looking Francois over enough to offer a muted and possibly physical painful, "Thanks," from the bottom of his lungs, if not his heart.
He doesn't wait to hear if there is a you're welcome, but reaches to toggle the door handle so that he can unfold himself out into the drizzle and wind.
Concern over decorum Bella trumps with the necessity of finishing this; she figures releasing Francois from his responsibility is the best show of gratitude she can provide. She tugs her bag out with her into the gentle back and forth slap of the rain, pausing only briefly to spy the house and the woman through the window. She sees Meredith, innocuously blonde, but refuses to engage in a physiogamous judgment. Some people have the faces they deserve, or wear themselves openly, but you can't be too careful with these Ferry psychos.
The umbrella she brought with her snaps open, navy blue contours shielding her head and shoulders. It's something of a juggling act, tugging her coat out as well and draping it over her bag while retaining her umbrella, but she manages with a modicum of grace intact. She wheels around, passing the trunk, leaving the hauling to Flint while she approaches Meredith. She doesn't offer her hand, since both are occupied, but instead dips her head. "Thank you for your hospitality," she says, without detectible falseness, "especially on such short notice."
The slight shape in the door draws Bella's gaze, and she takes a moment to see the child before - not smiling - she gives him a level gaze, addressing him directly. "Do you like to read?" is a question that lacks the coddling inflection of patronage.
There's a hmph from Meredith, judgment reserved for something more substantive than social niceties, and she flickers a look to Flint. There is recognition, and it does something to break the ice — even if she's not prepared to smile right away. She turns, and leads the way inside, her hand catching against then little boy's head in friendly push to urge him deeper within and clear the corridor.
Bella's question gets wide eyed interest, before he's shooed, and the shadows of the house welcome them in, to the sound of the small footsteps of orphans.
If there is a you're welcome imminent, Francois doesn't get a chance to display it — Flint is out and mask obscures any hesitant syllables, most of his expression. Once they're out, the thing is peeled and pulled off, another series of choking coughs muffled into the back of his hands before the black Lincoln pulls out of the drive. If he can make it all the way home before giving into rising nausea, it'll be a miracle, but whether or not this is the case, he does make it all the way out of sight, until the Bay House is disappeared out rear view mirror, not so long after the figures in front of it have disappeared into it turn.