Participants:
Scene Title | Sweet Blue Nothings |
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Synopsis | In a desperate bid to understand, Eve Mas finds herself with more questions than answers. |
Date | August 30, 2019 |
The sound of shuffling pages fill the low lit room as well as a near constant snap and crackle of ligntning, candles burn all around it the place. Illuminating the many paintings hanging around the Oracle Room. The flashes of red lightning add an eerie effect to the paintings. The one of the 'Mothers' more dark and foreboding. "No no… not it." Eve Mas throws the sketchbook over her shoulder, hearing it land in a pile with the others that she has discarded. "Not there, maybe somewhere… scurry hurry. The rabbit hole fills." For most of the night the pale woman has been shut inside this woman, running through her old visions, journals, sketchbooks and paintings. Looking for anything that would help her. Help her friends and family, help the world.
A black thick sketchbook sits on top of a red and blue one of the same style. The year written in white marker is 2007. A flash of a memory of her time in an asylum that year. Just a few months, she had learned to behave soon after being admitted. Learned to pretend her dreams were normal and not plagued with death and things nobody should know. The former seer was a great pretender when she wanted to be and when the person she was pretending with didn't totally know her.
But who could really know the mind of someone so reactionary, so impulsive that she still surprises herself to this day.
A year ago, Eve would have been laying on the many velvet plush pillows and trying to force visions to aid the cause but now with her transformation she's stuck in the here and now even though her mind still tries to pull her to other places. It isn't the same, it's a pale imitation and one that eats at the woman's core but for what she sacrificed… she gained so much more she was beginning to think. To the side of her are two syringes filled with a blue glowing liquid. Her last resort she told herself but Eve knows she will take the plunge.
Pale arms are alight with crimson lightning and a fine red mist, it stops at her hands but travels up to her neck and curls around her shoulders. The pain, she's gotten so use to it. Her violent blood red eyes scan the front of the sketchbook before she flips it open.
The Oracle Room
Cat’s Cradle
Phoenix Heights, NYC Safe Zone
August 30th
4:29 pm
This particular trip down memory lane feels hollow. Institutionalization for psychosis that proved to be (partly) the responsibility of undiagnosed precognitive powers. The drugs they’d had her own back then muddied her consciousness, left her art uninspired and middling, but not least of all entirely mundane. Too many sketches of sunflowers in vases, a dog out a window, a round table with a coffee cup on it. Her visions fueled her creativity and the drugs — while they balanced her moods — stripped her of the frenetic energy she’d always associated with creating art.
Bitterness comes next, flipping through to the end of the book. Eve is left to wonder how her parents could have institutionalized her, knowing what they presumably knew about her, about the Evolved. The bomb cut all of those answers short, deprived her of a moment in time wherein she could learn anything about her parentage, about her past. Were her parents truly that cruel? It was hard to reconcile.
The Institute was different, even if she’d been dragged there against her will too. The results were different. The Institute didn’t medicate her to pacify her, whatever therapy she underwent made her feel functional and comfortable in her own skin. But her fleeting and fragmented memories of those times were ripped away by something — someone — else. Fleeting memories of looking at herself in a mirror while someone placed their hands on her head. Dark fingers, dreadlocks, the smell of clove cigarettes.
Nothing.
There are no true records left of Eve’s time at the Institute. No true explanation for why she was able to leave, not after the dust settled and it was clear that the Institute had been intending to keep its residents to repopulate a world changed by the ravages of whatever temporal nonsense Richard Cardinal’s future self envisioned. There’s so much left unanswered about that time. So much that may never be answered.
“Perhaps I can shed a little light on things, though,” is the thoughtfully-stated intrusion into Eve’s private sanctum. It causes sparks to dance around her hands and shoulders, swings her attention up to an old white-haired man in a suit standing by the door to the basement, still as locked and as closed as it ever was. He’s British, speaks with an accent that demands attention, but smiles like someone’s kind old grandfather.
“Eve,” the old man says as he takes a step closer, “you’ve grown up, haven’t you?”
The walk down memory lane left the woman frustrated and eyes rolling toward the ceiling. Eve's fingertips a flutter as she hastily lights a half smoked joint with just the sparks that dance at the end of her digits.
Closing her eyes and bowing her head in thought, the former seer feels resigned to the lack of new insights from old paintings. It all makes her think of her parents, miss them: too much sent them. Her mother had been special, gifted like she was. Why… did she do that to her daughter. They had to have known…
The approach of the old man has the pale woman yelling and leaping into the air. "Oh oh! Don't just scare me like that!" The joint falls to the ground and the woman momentarily forgets it while she stares at the man with wide blood red eyes. Grown up? "Why… I should say so!" Reaching slowly to pick up the joint from the floor with quick fingers, the possibilities of who this man is whirling in her head. Maybe he's a teleporter. Maybe he can walk through- "Did you walk through the wall!?" Eve asks excitedly and leans forward though her expression twists in confusion soon after this first question.
"Did you know me when I was a little bud, barely grown? Wild, free…" as if she wasn't the same now. There's a openly aggressive look thrown towards her old sketchbook. "Nothing much in my brain when it comes as balanced."
There's a huff of air.
“We saw one-another on occasion,” the old phantom says with a mild amusement at Eve’s lack of surprise. “Your parents and I worked together, once upon a time, at the Company. My son used to baby-sit you, actually.” Renautas continues his slow approach, looking around the oracle room thoughtfully. “And it turns out you know my granddaughter and great-grandson, Delilah and Walter.” The old man levels a look at Eve, smiling fondly.
“My name is Walter as well,” he says with a familiar smile, “Walter Renautas. I’ve come here for your help, Eve. I believe we… have a dragon to hunt?” He isn’t entirely sure on the metaphor, but he’s heard enough between moments to feel it’s an apt enough analogy.
Eve was no stranger to voices in her head or strange apparitions in the world around her. Whether precognitive or not, at first Eve feels as if it's just one of her 'head ghost', a new one! Except it isn't because, it mentions a dragon.
Blinking the woman sits back and puffs on her joint, "Lilah's daddy.. oh Wally! He's such a good little guy. Have you met him?" Eve leans forward, infinitely curious. "Where have you been Grandpa Walter!" The pale woman blows smoke from her nose, eyes alight. "You knew my parents, they.. worked.. with… sneaky sneaky. Always sneaky." hm..
"So they would be upset about the raid on Level 5. Mmmmm." Eve was still somehow being a nut around something regarding her parents. Oof. The woman's shoulders sag and she leans forward even more. Eyes wide with fear and also.. excitement.
"Yes, there is a Dragon. A thing of wonder and terror, the end and the beginning. Something old, it's here now. I use to see," waving her hands at the paintings around her. "Not anymore, now I shift and fly!" Eve snickers and covers her mouth with one hand, the joint smokes slowly in her other hand. "How can I help you! I was looking for help, maybe… we can help each other!"
There's a pause, "A trade though, I help you… you tell me about my family. My brain… is…" If Eve can handle the truth is beyond the point now, she's been exposed to so much already. "Deal?" Extending her hand with a wide grin, white teeth gleaming and when she opens her mouth a fraction a brilliant red light shines from within her.
Walter Renautas is quiet among Eve’s rantings that ebb and flow like a moon-spun tide. He smiles at her, genuine and patient, then takes a step forward and passes through a chair in the room as if he weren't really here. “As it just so happens, Eve,” Renautas says with an arch of one brow, “what you want and what I want are one and the same.”
The Nite Owl Diner
Brooklyn, NY
5:14 pm
June 18th
1981
“So I said to him, you want a kiss?”
A young woman of dark hair streaked defiantly with shades of iridescent green sits at the back left corner booth in a nostalgic diner. Horizontal shafts or evening sunlight paint her pale cheeks, catch that color in her hair and make it shine like a house fly's exoskeleton. She's animated the way cartoon characters are, all rising brows and big expressions.
Across from her is a less than interested man, sunglasses popped up on his head and a pack of cigarettes between them. She's gesturing wildly with some French fries she hasn't finished yet and he's on his fifth cup of coffee. “So what'd you do then?” The man with the sunglasses asks, leaning forward as resting his elbows on the diner table.
“Well he said yes, of course,” the young woman says, encircling her face with the wave of one hand, “and when he leaned in I grabbed him by the hair,” her brows go up, tone husky, “and smashed his stupid face right into the brick fucking wall.”
“Jesus Christ,” the man across from her mutters, rubbing a hand over his face. “Vee,” he says through his teeth, “I can't keep covering your ass like this.”
Valerie, proud and uncaring, drapes her arms across the back of the bench seat and gently kicks the man across from her in the shin with one booted foot. “C’mon Officer,” she says with a lopsided smile, “I know you like covering my ass.” She can barely get those last words out without breaking out in a fit of laughter.
“Look,” her dinner date says, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and throwing a crumpled wad of bills on the table, “there's dinner, consider your little assault and battery bullshit covered, and we’re done. I don't owe you another damn thing.” As he starts to stand up, Valerie’s ‘dinner date’ clips his NYPD badge to his belt.
Suddenly looking serious, Valerie swings her legs out from the booth and intercepts him, rising up to stand in his face. “Aaron,” she holds up her hands in a placating gesture, “c’mon, I'm only kidding.”
“Officer Smith,” Aaron corrects her, “and the guy you put in the hospital didn't think so.” Valerie rolls her eyes and scrubs the heel of her pale against her forehead, stepping in front of Aaron again as he tries to get around her. “We’re done,” he reiterates, but Valerie doesn't let up.
“That… is certainly your mother, a firebrand.” Walter says from across the diner, one brow raised as he and Eve stand sight-unseen by the other patrons in the middle of the diner. “But this is perhaps a bit too far back for my needs.”
Eve was not prepared for the trip that ensues.
Her eyes grow wide and she whirls around the familiar diner in an unfamiliar time. When Eve spots her mother she sucks in her breath and rushes forward, "Momma!" She hadn't had this feeling since she was a child, the elation of running towards your mother, towards a warm embrace.
But Eve encounters not a warm embrace but instead a ghost, her hand passing through her mother. Valerie Mas doesn't take notice of her full grown daughter standing next to her, neither does the officer. Wheeling around to face Walter with an embarrassed expression on her face, "Ah ohhhh, a memory! You… travel through the memories of time?" She's stunned now as she wanders back to the older man. How interesting! How unique! She could see where Little Walter got his time mojo from.
"Heh my momma was a tough lady, she had lots of unf in her." Wiggling her fingers with a snort, "Very tough, heavy is the hand, ya ya ya. Boy was she pretty…." Eve is almost content to sit here looking at her mother but Walter is saying this isn't the right time, too far. Nodding her head with a grim expression.
"Okay Grandpa Walter, onto the next." Standing firmly by his stand almost attempting to link arms but the man was wading through tables so that didn't seem like the right move, instead her crimson eyes flint back to her mother's form and she wiggles pale fingers in that direction, "Bye mom!"
Walter considers the exchange, looking from Eve and back to her mother. Where a moment ago he was eager to move to the next memory of time as Eve would put it, he now hesitates. This moment isn't valuable to him, but perhaps it would be valuable to Eve.
“We’re done.” Aaron reiterates. “You can't keep hanging— ”
“All that coke over your head?” Valerie interjects with her brows raised and a smile spread ear to ear.
“Shhhhhut up,” Aaron hisses, pushing Valerie back into the booth and sliding in after her. “Shut up. Shut.” He looks over his shoulder and then back to Valerie. “If you ever want to get fucking custody of your kid back you're gonna’ cut this extra shit.”
Valerie’s eyes widen and her gaze flicks avoidant down to the booth table. Aaron continues, unrelenting. “I cannot keep covering for your fucking escapades. I— I owed you for keeping your mouth shut about that mistake. But that isn't a life-long get out of fucking jail free card, Valerie.”
When Aaron says her name so sharply, Valerie looks back up with betrayal and frustration in her eyes. But also guilt. “I know,” she mumbles, followed by a more audible, “I know,” after. Aaron exhales a sigh, rising up from the booth and looking to the diner entrance, then back to Valerie.
“I'll talk to my friend at social services,” Aaron says quietly, pulling his sunglasses down.
"Aw come on mom, party pooper." But Eve is equally excited to see her mother at work, using what leverage she needs to-
Eve's eyes widen more and she leans over to Walter, "They… took me away? I don't remember… fuzzy… why?" She's sad, there was a time when she was ripped away from her mother it seems. Hanging on their every word the pale woman's eyes never leave the two dining together.
Renautas angles a look at Eve, then down to the floor in silence. Whys are always harder.
An Office Building
Somewhere in Manhattan
July 16th
1981
“Thank you for waiting, Ms.—”
“Valerie works fine. Vee is preferred.” The last thing Valeria wanted to do today was sit in a stuffy beige-tinted office in a Manhattan highrise waiting to talk to a social worker. But here she is, sweating through her tanktop because the air-conditioning isn’t working, watching some balding man in a suit jacket he’s undoubtedly also sweating through make her wait for an hour in his office while he talks to his coworkers. “Can we maybe,” Valerie makes circular motions with her hands, “move this along?” She doesn’t look like she’s slept well.
Sighing deeply, the social worker she’s been assigned to raises his brows and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, you know how these things are. We’re understaffed right now and, I’ll be frank, your case hasn’t been a priority for us.” Valerie’s upper lip curls in distaste.
“It’s a fucking matter of importance to me,” her eyes dart down to the nameplate on his desk, “Robert.”
“Bob will do,” he corrects her.
“Ah, yes, this…” Walter Renautas looks away from the deception ongoing, angling a look over to where Eve’s ephemeral form haunts history with him. “Still further yet to go, unless there’s something you want to see here?”
"That's Big Bad Bob, Crazy Ellie's daddy." Peeking around Walter's shoulder with a rise of her eyebrows. Inching forward she studies her surroundings, mostly just her mother though. This was such a rare occasion, she might never get to look on Valerie's face again. "She worked with you… and the Company. Maybe this is her interview!" Eve claps her hands together, "Let's stay for one second, please?" Eve tip toes around her ghost of times past and looks more closely at Valerie and Bob, eyes skimming over the desk.
"What were you doing momma?"
Renautas watches Eve for a moment, then turns his attention to the scene playing out before them. He seems familiar, at least in part, with the events but nonetheless allows Eve to bear witness to them.
“So, Valerie,” Bob folds his hands in front of himself on his desk. “I guess I'm just struggling with what to do with your case. Now, the police report on your daughter’s injury says that you told them the…” he lifts up at document from his desk to read from it, “that she was crawling on the kitchen floor when you accidentally dropped a tray of silverware on her?” Bob looks up from the document, brows raised.
Valerie looks to the side, arms crossed over her chest and teeth pressed to her bottom lip. “That's what I said.” Her terse response elicits a sigh from Bob, who looks back down at the police report.
“Now, the precipitating event to your daughter being taken away from you was the drug charge. Either one of these alone isn't good, but together it clearly outlines a level of reckless endangerment. Furthermore, you've taken none of the outlined steps,” he motions to another document, “to prove you've been improving yourself and your environment. Have you talked to a psychiat— ”
“I'm not crazy!” Valerie shouts, slamming her hands on the arms of the chair. Bob immediately grows quiet, glancing up to the flickering fluorescent light overhead. Valerie realizes how her outburst looks and slouches back down into her chair.
“Valerie, when Mr. Smith recommended you to me as a personal favor I accepted because I could tell that he honestly believes you want to be a better mother for your daughter.” Bob says as he sets down the police report and folds his hands over it. “Now, where is Eve’s father in all of this? The birth records don't have a father’s name on them.”
Valerie grow more reticent, slouching further in her seat and resting her cheek against her palm, eyes partly closed. “I made some bad choices,” Valerie finally says after a few long moments of silence. “I honestly don't even know his name and you can judge me all the fuck you want. It was a fucking mistake.”
Bob exhales a sigh through his nose. “Would you say that to your daughter?” That question has Valerie’s eyes snap back at Bob.
“Fuck you no. I chose to keep her. Because I can be— I can be a good mom! I'm not a complete fucking disaster! But I can't be a mother if she's not around!” Valerie shouts, sitting forward in her chair, tears welling in her eyes. Bob leans back, eyes wide. But it isn't because Valerie is being aggressive. It's because the metal-framed paintings on the wall are rattling. The pen on his desk is sliding toward her.
Valerie sucks I a sharp breath, clasps her hands together and then takes her fingers through her hair. “I'm not crazy,” she reiterates in a sharp whisper, and Bob’s look of shock and confusion turns to sudden understanding. The pieces come together and it's like a switch is flipped in him. He forgets the paperwork, the interview, he's up and out of his chair and coming to Valerie’s side.
“Valerie,” Bob says as he takes a knee beside her chair, “you're alright. You're ok. I don't think you're crazy.” She looks at him, eyes wide and fearful.
“Maybe I am?” Valerie croaks. “When I get mad I see things that can't be happening and nobody ever believes me I didn't mean to hurt Eve I just I just I just— ”
“Sssh,” Bob whispers, taking one of her hands in his and at the same time pulling a pen out of his pocket. “Valerie…” he draws her eyes to him with the tip of the pen. “What if I told you…” Bob says, and the pen transforms to solid gold in fro t of her eyes.
“We’re all a little crazy?”
Primetech Paper
The Bronx, NYC
February 8th
1982
“We’re all a little crazy.”
Valerie took to those words like a fish to water. Standing in the middle of a target shooting range deep below the streets of Manhattan, she cocks a brow and cracks a smile to the tall man in a beige suit standing beside her.
“I'm not sure that's a good motto,” Arthur Petrelli opines as he crosses his arms over his chest and looks at the leather-jacket wearing punk in front of him. He turns his attention down to the row of knives sitting on the shelf beside her. “Why don't you show me how your control training is going first, Vee.”
Standing outside the firing lane, Water Renautas and Eve Mas watch a new tableau, a new moment in history.
While Eve saw that her mother was evolved in the memories procured by Cassandra it is still fascinating to witness her mother using it, or her lack of control. It's something Eve knows of, her journey to controlling her visions and now her newfound gift has been rife with hiccups. Seeing Valerie exhibit similar things comforts the wild woman. "She had no control, they said she was crazy." Shaking her head from side to side, "They always say you're crazy when you're seeing what they can't momma," Offering too late advice to the spectre of her mother.
"She hurt me, but she loves me see! I knew it. She just needed me back, she just needed…" What there is to say about her father is puzzling, perhaps more puzzling then the visceral view of her mother's life. "She loved Papa I thought, they fought. Screaming, momma had a temper." As it was clearly shown, "But dad never really backed down. He's a Mas, we're built that way." The last bit said matter of factly to Walter. Her dad's mom use to say things like that. At this rate she's whispering more to herself as Bob displays his gift for Valerie and begins to tell her of the Evolved of the world.
As the world shifts, Eve feels a pull in her navel. More nerves, anticipation as to what they will find.
"My momma and Peter's daddy… ooh boy." Leaning forward, Eve pats at her pale, bare knees. "This must be her training days, before she met Adam. Look at her stance," Midnight hair hangs in her face, blocking one blood red eye. Her form has been in a constant ebb and flow of potential overload due to the emotions of falling down this rabbit hole, still Eve clings to her corporeal form and grits through the pain. This, she can muster. It's in her blood. It's almost a chant, a mantra repeated over and over in her head. It joins the multitude of voices that have always resided in Eve's head.
She's eager to see her mother in action, she's even taking notes in her head.
While Walter seems disinterested in the social connections on display, it is rather Eve’s attachment to these that he seems to gravitate toward. Silently observing, Renautas lingers in the back of the shooting range with one hand tucked into the pocket of his suit jacket. Meanwhile, Vee raises one hand creating a faint green nimbus of light in a ring when viewed at just the right angle.
Her attention moves to the knives sitting in a row, and one by one they begin to lift up from the shelf. Arthur watches her intently, and Vee turns around, directing a hand toward the target on the far end of the shooting range. The knives fly out simultaneously, slashing through the paper target and striking the padded concrete wall behind it with audible thumps. Arthur nods slowly, tapping a button to call back the target on a mechanized chain bracketed to the ceiling.
The target is hauled noisily to their lane, then comes to a stop showing two out of five holes in the paper. Arthur frowns, slowly shaking his head. “Well,” he admits with a rise of his shoulders, “it’s something. I suppose you’re more like a shotgun than a pistol.”
“She sure is a firecracker,” comes from a new voice, one that draws Renautas’ attention to it. The young man standing in the doorway of the shooting range is maybe twenty, with a head full of wavy brown hair that comes down to his chin, soft blue eyes and a sarcastic smile. Valerie sets eyes on him with one brow raised, then affects a smile that’s halfway a sneer.
“Call me firecracker one more time and— ”
“Valerie,” Arthur interjects, firmly, placing a hand on her shoulder as he motions with his other to the black-suited young man. “This is one of our junior agents, Eric Mas. Eric, Valerie is one of our newest trainees.”
Eric’s smile softens a little, his hands held up in feigned surrender. “No offense, darlin’, none at all.” Valerie nearly murders him for the darling, at least with her eyes, but Arthur’s hand on her shoulder tightens its grip. “S’nice t’meet you. Good t’see it isn’t always gonna be olds here, right Art?”
Arthur’s expression flattens when Eric calls him Art and releases his hand from Valerie’s shoulder the way someone might loose a leash on an attack dog. She doesn’t, though. Attack. “Where’s Rebecca?” Arthur asks Eric.
“Archives, she told me to make myself useful and stay out of her hair,” Eric notes with a roll of his shoulders. “So here I am, making myself useful.” Arthur and Valerie share a look with one another. He most certainly is not. With a shake of her head and a rake of her fingers through her hair, Valerie offers a quick look to Arthur, then back to Eric.
“Are those fillings I feel, Eric?” Valerie asks with a playful narrowing of her eyes. Eric glances to the knives in the far wall, then slowly slinks backwards toward the door out of the shooting range. Arthur, in spite of himself, can’t help but laugh.
Eve, though, finds no humor in any of this. Because one thing is immediately clear to her. Valerie has already had a child, but this is her first time meeting Eric. The implications are staggering.
For Eve, her whole world stops.
The arrival of the man known as Eric Mas is tinged with bitter sweetness. At first, Eve feels her chest swell with pride. Witnessing the first meeting of her parents but as she hears more of the conversation and the circumstances start to sink in more her eyes widen and her mouth drops.
Falling backwards and through Walter the dark haired woman ends up on the floor, panting and shaking her head. "I was already born. Momma already lost me. Dad… dad… da-" Her mouth snaps shut and she looks up with tears in her eyes.
"He's not my daddy."
The weight of it all leaves her stuck on her back on the floor. "Eve Mas, my name is Eve Mas. My name is… my name is.. Eve. My name is…" Suddenly she snaps forward with wide red eyes directed towards her tour guide, "Have to see more Grandpa Walter, this makes no sense! Are you sure this is real… not doctored.. changed?" She wants to not believe it. "Do you know… who my real father is?" It feels like a betrayal to Eric, even uttering the words.
“Ms. Mas,” Renautas says with a struggle in his voice. The barrage of questions, but more likely Eve’s tempestuous emotional state, causes fluctuations in the visions of the past. As her heart swells with confusion and uncertainty, Renautas loses his anchor to the past in that tumult. The past images fall away like a shredded projector backdrop, bending and warping as it falls away into nothingness. Renautas, too, seems to flicker in distortion as he struggles to maintain his link to the historic moment around Eve.
Eve catches a look of confusion in his eyes before he disappears like a candle blown out in the night.
Renautas’ absence leaves Eve trembling. Arcs of red energy snap and crackle off of her arms and shoulders, flicker with laser-light intensity behind her pupils. The Oracle Room is all that remains around her, that syringe of blue, the haze of smoke in the air.
The absence of certainty, replaced by the terror of the unknown.