Some Day

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abby5_icon.gif deckard3_icon.gif

Scene Title Some Day
Synopsis Some day, they'll be the man and woman they were in a distant future. This day, they're not. Abigail chooses to walk away, but leaves the door open for when they both have their lives in order.
Date January 28, 2010

Mexico


The moon's half out tonight and so are the scorpions, white backs advancing at a six-legged skitter across blue sand a ways off from the burned down pop and crackle of the fire pit. Laid out long in the open back of his stolen el camino, Deckard hazards to prod at one that's made it up onto the edge of the raised truck bed with a stick. The arthropod hesitates uncertaintly, twitches back a few steps, and tries to go the other way, but he heads it off and pokes again and again and again until finally the tail flicks forward faster than his eyes can follow. The sting glances harmlessly off papery bark. The pincers are more dogged — they grip on and wrestle into better position for a second sting, and a third.

Eventually he gets bored enough to flick both stick and angry scorpion off sideways somewhere he can't see, booted feet shifted somewhat in their hang out into open air while he scratches at his chest and twists his head around to squint after his beer.

Things have been quiet in Mexico.

Potentially too quiet. He hasn't made any move to pack up or mentioned New York any more than he's tried to pick fights with anyone or anything bigger than the aforementiond scorpion. Occasionally he vanishes without explanation and comes back hours or a day later to pick at leftovers or read spanish books or go to bed alone.
"Oh sweet holy lord" breaks that silence finally, followed by a scream as one can guess where the scorpion bearing stick has landed. Either on her or near her. One hopes, not on her.

There's been little people present for Flint to pick fights with. Abigails method of dealing with her grief has been to go out and set up can and bottles to shoot with her shotgun - with a run into the city to buy more ammunition - instead of hiding in a bottle or hiding in her tent. Food has been plenty, non-canned as much as possible thanks to a cooler and some ice. She hadn't gotten around to telling him about the messages that have been shoveled through her phone or the calls she's received. Wireless found, comatose for lack of a better definition. The list of the dead, Danko's seen - at her bar no less. She's getting restless and time is wasting. Raquelle's been gone from his girls and his refusal to go is making her eye her watch and it's days with concern. School starts soon as well and she can't miss that again.

"Get it off, oh sweet merciful lord please get it off, getitoffgetifoffgetitoff"

Deckard's brows knit at the curse right around the time he wraps a hand around the silver crimp of his latest can of beer. After a dry pulse of dread and several 'get it offs,' he sits himself abruptly upright, long-faced and wide-eyed with dumb alarm for what must have happened.

Despite the sudden rush of adrenaline, he looks good. He's pretty clean. His hair has grown out of its severe buzz and his semi-neat state of unshaven but not unhygienic scruff suits him. He appears comfortably rangy overall — a little hollow around the face, but not starving by any means, and in decent shape.

Meanwhile, there is a scorpion on Abigail and he put it there.

The beer is dropped with a foamy sizzle and fizz when it tumps over after his awkward scuff out of the trunk and onto his feet, one so far asleep that it nearly falls out from undearneath him on his way to tripping over to — raise his hands in well intentioned but not terribly helpful bafflement over where it is and what he should do about it.

The scorpion clings to fabric at her hip, a choice for it to either let go and drop or grasp and get climbing. Abgiail's stock still, hands up in a position that one would associate with police and a gun. Exiting her building and tent to grab some hot water from the pot over the fire was turning out to be an adventure inadvertently. Pyjama's, bathrobe and her hiking boots the protection from the small terror. "Flint Deckard you will get this thing OFF OF ME RIGHT NOW" Not so much anger as panic. Scorpions are not known for being cuddly things that you cart around in your purse and your friends coo over it. Unless they're some sort of mentally insane strange emo goth something or other.

As content as he was to poke at it with a stick a few minutes ago, Flint is kind of acting like he has no idea how to handle this situation despite having once had a little sister who would shriek and flail at spiders in the bath tub or moths he put in her hair.

"Hold still," commanded at first with a wince that falls short of reassuring when the scorpion skitters closer to her arm, he reaches, pulls back and reaches again to hook a thumb carefully under the open hang of her robe so that he can sort of — lift the part with the scorpion enough to where its stinger won't definitely impact skin on the opposite side should it get more pissed off than it already is. His eyes are hard and his expression oddly intent. It is possible this scorpion is worse than some of the others creeping around the desert out here.

The fact that it's pretty dark doesn't help, but there's enough moon he can mostly track it as he flips the opposite lapel off her shoulder and lifts the scorpion side still further away. "Shrug out of the sleeves."

"I am holding still" She points out, but drops the nalgene bottle so that she can shrug out as he instructs. It thunks to the ground and rolls odd as she carefully rotates her shoulders one after the other so that they slip out of the jersey fabric. "What are you doing throwing scorpions around. Is that how you pass the time when you're getting drunk in the back of the car? Throw poisonous creatures and see where they land" Little by little she moves, going up on toes to let the shoulders fall and then first, pull the nearest arm out of her shoulder as quickly and carefully as possible. "Is that poisonous? Don't let it sting me"

"Ahh," says Deckard, "yeah. A little." A glance to her face to check after any imminent promise of further panic is evidence of the fact that he is lying. Not about it being poisonous, either. Even so, he helps guiiide the robe on off until the last few inches of it are managed with a stiff flick of his wrist that turns the remaining sleeves in contact inside out. Quick, like a tablecloth trick, he whip snaps it clear off to the side and the arachnid goes sailing harmlessly off into the dark.

Relief huffed out in a nasal sigh, he passes the hawkish sheen of his glare down across her head to toe and tosses the robe back into her arms. Scorpionless.

"Brilliant" Mind you, if she'd stayed in her tent instead of desiring hot tea to heat up her sleeping bag through the night and provide a lukewarm drink in the morning then this never would have happened. "Good to see that you're back" It's terse, truthful and she automatically clasps her hands around her robe when he tosses it back before starting to inspect it and the ground around her for any other errant anthropoids he might have tossed without looking.

"Raquelle and I are going. Making one last run into town for you and then I'm calling Elias and we'll leave you alone. I'll buy a phone for you in town in case you need to get in touch with people. Make a list of any foods you want or supplies and I'll see if they have it in town"

Oh. Despite the inevitability and obviousness of this development — that she would eventually leave him to his own devices again to return to life as a human being — Flint looks blankly caught off guard for the few seconds it takes him to blink and recover. Recognizing perhaps that he's easier read up close like this in the vivid contrast of silvery moonlight against black shadow hewn in under his brow, he glances down and steps into a retreat back towards his temporary (and now damp) bed in the el camino.

"I don't want a phone," is probably the least supportive or understanding thing he can say in a long list of viable automatic options, but he doesn't cringe or stoop like he realizes as much.

"Well, I didn't want you to hit me, and I didn't want to have Ethan beat the crap out of me, and I didn't want Tyler Case to take away god's gift. We don't always get what we want Flint and a map with an X is a piss poor way of letting people know how to find you if they need healing" He apologized for it, she knows that, and with a bend of knee to scoop up the nalgene bottle, she retreats to the fire. "Wireless went missing. They found her but she's in a coma and they don't know if she'll come out of it. They could probably use you up there. I got the message just today"

A dishtowel is folded in half and the water pulled from the fire and tipped at an angle enough to let out a stream of steaming water flow through the wide neck of the clear blue bottle. "Cardinal is dead. He took a 100 tonne nuke with him when he turned into shadow. Francois, Gabriel, Kazimir and a few others that I don't know the names of died as well. Liz told me about a week ago. They had a service for them the other day" Whether he'll care or not, she doesn't know. But it might help to explain why she's been absent and moody. Moodier. Why she's more apt to make love to her shotgun and pull it's trigger than his.

Deckard stops in his tracks when she mentions the whole spousal abuse thing again, wiry muscle belted taut through the backs of his shoulders and down his arms with a look he tips down sideways after a scrubby tag of grass struggling up through the sand ahead. The glare that scrapes back at her over his shoulder before he continues on to sweep his spilled beer can out've the car bed is hard to make out without benefit of an unholy glow to mark angle or intent.

"You know where I am," seems like it's probably an answer to the thing about the map. Otherwise, there's no outwardly evident reaction to her listing of the dead. He slows briefly in the process of sweeping warm, sandy beer out after the can and then continues at pace without a word.

Abby of old would have accepted what he said as an answer to everything, walked off and gone about her way. Some people. But Abby then, Abigail Beauchamp from the south, fresh from the family farm has long since gone through various things that instill little by little, various things like a spine. The cap on the bottle is secured, put up out of harms way from being knocked over or danced about by scaly hurtful things and she heads towards the car.

"The pale rider. That was the last card. I pulled the pale rider, inverted"

Exasperation is audible in the warm flush of Deckard's breath out through his sinuses at that reprisal. Sweeping mud and beer out with his hand isn't actually doing much to dry things up enough for him to lie down in there again. Resigned both to her mysticism and dusting his hands roughly off across each other, he stands up straighter at the sound of her approach and hooks his arm down to swing the the tailgate up and locked with a solid whunk. Displaced dust billows from the impact like smoke on its way to seeking out cloth and skin to settle on in the moonlight.

"You talked to her," makes all the sense in the world to him, if not immediately to anyone else without more elaboration. "You told her about your situation, and mine. About the ability, about your dreams. People die around us, Abigail." His voice is coarse, flat affect less a comfort than it is brusquely condescending. "You don't have to be a psychic to know that."

"I never did. I went in to get a birthday present for my mother, it was the first time I met her."

He can tell if she lies. She's open of those that does it horribly. "It came out after, about my ability, but I never told her about you and me. She figured that out on her own afterward. The pale rider inverted. Normally it's change and transformation, it's not a bad card. It's a stupid card, just a card, every single one that she turned over that I dealt out. They're just a parlor game. But how much of it rang true for you? What she drew for you? You know what the pale rider inverted is?"

She doesn't wait for him to even turn around or look at her as she comes within arms reach. Revelations six eight And I looked, and behold a pale horse. and his name that sat on him was Death. Death and stagnation, a failure to let go of the past, and let go of fear. It wasn't about Richard, or Francois, not about people dying. It's in the end just a card and you take meaning from what it is as one will"

The robe is peeled from off her shoulders and put back on to give her another barrier between her clothes and the cool air. "It's -" Abigail looks away, up at the sky then back to flint through the dim light shed off by the fire. "It's this Flint. It's three weeks in Mexico. It's you riding in on Chopazo from the dark that night, it me not accepting that there's things I can't stop in the world, refusing to give up to you what I had even though I stopped having it a long time ago. It's accepting that… you can't be someone other than Flint Deckard. You'll always stay in the background, you'll always lurk the same as I'll always do stupid things like go into the past and save a dying man or run off to Russia because a pre-cog gave me a plane ticket. Or teleport to Mexico because my heart said that that's where I needed to go"

She folds her arms across her chest to trap body heat and look down at her feet. "It's us Flint. That card is us. That card means that right now, is not the time for us. We're not ready. It's too soon"

Sleeves rolled and buttondown open at a flag and flutter over the cleaner undershirt beneath, Deckard keeps his bony hands braced over the tailgate's rusty lip and attention faced forward over the hood when Abby stops nearby. He smells ok. Kind of like spilled beer and overdue laundry and musty horse sweat. "I don't remember what she drew for me," is sort of a lie in turn. Mostly what he remembers is that she said it'd turn out bad no matter what he did, and that so often seems like the case that he hadn't paid much attention.

Christ, the car is dirty. Even in the dark he can see grit black on his palm when lifts the right one and turns it over at the wrist, listening without paying excessive amounts of attention. For all that he has an entire desert to escape to, he feels (and looks) oddly cornered where he stands. He doesn't manage to move two feet while she goes on, nevermind two miles.

This is one of those Serious Emotional conversations or something. Despite all power diverted to aft shields, he can feel the tell-tale ring of it knocking on his hull.

It's a while before he turns the few degrees necessary to look at her, the line of his scruffy jaw hard set without irritation or malice. Somewhere within the simplified cast of misery or guilt or reluctance (or all of the above) recognition of the truth is blocked out in austere shadow. After a few beats spent studying her face, he opts to follow her line of sight down into the dirt. Both of his hands fall back to his sides.

"We were happy in the future. You were still quiet, but we talked. We were together, we both had our things together. But that's ten years from now. Ten years in a future that doesn't exist anymore. Right now, we're not." Abigail digs her hands into the pocket of her. "Right now each time we talk, I talk too much and you don't talk at all, and we fight. It was like this before the safe house. It started with Felix. You love me. Or you would have left this town when I started fixing your building." She flexes her toes inside her boot, rippling them up and down till she moves forward to close the gap between them, lifts her arm and her hand slides under his chin to lift his face gently.

"I love you Flint Deckard. Whether I'm doing the stupid things, or the smart things. When I'm throwing flower pots, and accusing you of grave robbing. When you're rifling through my things or we're in bed with your legs tangled up in each others. I love you enough, that I'm going to walk away. I'll love you even if you don't stop me. Some day, when you're ready, maybe when I'm older and I'm not wanting more than you can offer, more than you're comfortable to offer. When I'm not saying "give me more" when you're saying "I just want this" and pretending that you didn't say it."

She smiles over at him, one corner of her mouth higher than the other. "I was selfish in dragging Raquelle down here, and invading your privacy. I've been selfish a great deal Flint and I'm sorry. I've been selfish a long long time and you called me out on it back then. I give it up. I give the gift up to you, I'm making good on my pact with the Lord above. I'm going back to New York, I'm going to finish school and become an EMT, and I'll see what life has in store for me. Whether it's you still, down the line, when we're both better suited for each other, or…"

Adam's apple lifted sandpapery and slow against the sit of her hand under his chin, Flint turns into the touch with an automatic brush that confesses relieved affection where roughly every other hard angle and edge about his person seeks to deny it.

But he doesn't kiss her. He doesn't even reach for her to wager touch for touch, preferring instead to keep his hands at his sides and his shoulders faintly slumped while she informs him that she's going to walk away and he makes no move to stop her.

Ten years into a future that is no longer possible, they were married. In the here and now, he says: "Okay."

Her thumb traces over scruff when he says it, can feel the words form, the hated word. Flint's word. Up on her toes to bump her forehead against his nose once, then twice. "I'll be in New York. You'll know where to find me. There's still a room with your name on it, and a bar stool with your ass print and free drinks. My home is, and always will be, open to you and there will always be food for your stomach and I will be a call away if you need me to come save you."

She rolls her forehead side to side of his nose before letting go of his jaw and opting to slide her arms between his and his chest. "Come to bed? Forget the fire and your beer and come to bed? One last night before we both go back to being alone"

Flint slants out a smile. Maybe. Sort of. There's a pull at the corner of his mouth that's mostly a lift at least, more tangible than visible amidst indistinct bands of shadow and the pass of her thumb.

Tension doesn't start to steel back in until she angles to wrap herself around him, but he eases off the brake when she asks after the same thing his faltering attention span was suddenly having to struggle with not thinking about. So basically it's ok for him to feel funny in his pants. And to kiss her, once his arms have finally rustled around to match her embrace.

Honestly. Like he'd say /no./


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