Participants:
Scene Title | Terugkeer |
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Synopsis | When Tibby's path takes her back to the Safe Zone, she takes the time to catch up with an old friend… |
Date | January 6, 2021 |
Isaac's Pad, Park Slope
The knock at the window is sharp, the face through the glass familiar. It's here on the fire escape that Tibby Naidu sits, waiting for her former coworker- no, friend. To answer. Clad in a pair of black short shorts, a long black blazer that trails behind her whenever she moves and soft soled black shoes. Wherever Tibby disappeared off to the last few months is anyone's guess but the girl's got an upgrade of some kind.
Her hair is white blonde still and pulled back into a high ponytail, she checks the pendant hanging around her neck. Nervously eyeing the tech but assured it would cloak her presence, if asked, it was just a malfunction. A glitch in the system.
Why was she here?
She didn't have many real friends and with what had happened on the news with Kaylee she felt the need to keep her distance with the woman being so in the public eye. Tibby's emerald green eyes scan the inside of the apartment, her HUD overlay surveying the place, accounting for the other windows and doors.
The Park Slope place is mostly quiet, these days, but it's not empty; most of the furnishings it had are still there. The couch. The bed. The battery lights. That old refrigerator from the 1950s.
It's just that Isaac isn't anymore. Most of the time, at least.
But every now and again, he drops back by — during daylight hours, of course. Wild things still do roam Park Slope, and in his current state he's better off not tempting them. He comes back to check the mail, as it were. To maintain at least a little presence here. And… maybe to ground himself, as well.
Isaac is doing one-handed pushups when the knock on the window comes. He pauses, the ratty old Black Sabbath shirt he's wearing for exercise hanging loose on his frame.
Two more. One… two. With that, the rep is complete; he lays facedown for a moment, then, in a surge of motion, kips up, landing in a squat. Still got it. A slow, fierce grin curls across his lips…
Then he remembers the knock, and that smile immediately curves into a frown. It's not terribly unusual for someone to pay him a visit… but most of them come to the door, not the window. He frowns. He moves carefully towards the kitchen, trying to get a line of sight on whoever it is in the window… then stops. "Tibby?" he asks.
He blinks… then moves towards the window to open it. Probably not gonna need the steak knife he's got laying on the counter.
She's not ashamed to have just been watching as he worked out but as he notices and calls her name a touch of red blooms on her cheeks and she waits for him to pad over and allow her a way to enter the apartment. Tibby slips in and hops down to the floor, the end of her white black crop top can be seen from the flaps of the sleek blazer opening for a moment. "Hi."
"I.." This was usually a song and dance that could exhaust Tibby and she was sure sometimes Faulkner. Her former inability to actually communicate, form the necessary connections to carry her thoughts past her base thoughts and emotions. Her time in the Middle East and then with her new employer had changed her, she knew herself again in a sense. Enough to forge a new path forward. "Wanted to check on you. Back in town." Obviously she's back in town since she's standing in his apartment.
"Last time I was here, I was all hectic, stuck in a dwaal, dealing with my father has been…" Tibby shrugs, "I apologize." For the way she reacted after they left the old woman who had placed a mental spell of a kind on her.
"How've you been?" She slides the bag off her shoulder and sets it on the counter. Pulling out a bottle of some dark liquor, probably whiskey and taking a swig and then offering it to Issac. The way she speaks isn't as stunted, her intent clearer. She's social nowadays. Maybe she finally wants to acknowledge her friends, the few she has.
Faulkner shakes his head, a hint of an amused smirk crossing his face. "You were mentally attacked, Tibby. You've got nothing to apologize for." He musters a grin. "And all's well that ends well, right?"
Her next question puts him on the ropes, though. How he's been is not the sort of thing he'd be generally inclined to slap a friend in the face with right off the bat; he'd learned that lesson, thanks. "I'm… alright," he says, which is a lie, and not one he can sell particularly convincingly. Faulkner shrugs, lips twisting into a grimace. "Life's been a bit hectic," he admits, which is truer.
The offered drink makes him grin ruefully, but he shakes his head. "Thank you, but no. But… how have you been? It's been awhile."
Tibby knew better.
"Liar." With a small smile, they knew each other well enough by now. Also maybe saying she was at fault, but maybe that was just a consequence of circumstance. "You're right tho, ended well enough." Nobody got stabbed at least.
Or shot.
"Went overseas, looking for my dad. Nothing. No trace. Most are scared to even mention him." Tibby sounds bitter but she takes another swig of the alcohol shrugging with one shoulder, more for her which was always a good thing. "Got a new job." She's almost reverted back to how closed off she seemed when they first met but the young woman stills herself. "Things are shitty, that's a constant though. Yea?" Another swig of the bottle and Tibby places it on the nearby table.
"Your turn. How hectic?"
Isaac chuckles when Tibby calls him a liar, giving her a faintly amused smirk; in a lot of ways it's the same way he used to act, too. There's something comforting about being able to fall back into those old roles.
But as comforting as it might be to pretend that everything's the same, it's an illusion; her question proves that. Isaac grimaces. "Well… I woke up in a plane crash with no memory of how I got there, on a plane that, as far as the government seems to know, does not exist," he says. "Also apparently I'm SLC-N now. Like, my ability isn't just gone, but I'm genetically non-Expressive. Somehow. Which has been an adjustment, because the thing about abilities is, you learn to use them. Rely on them. And when they're not there, it's like… like you've had a stroke or something. There's things you just can't do anymore, and some things you have to relearn from the ground up. Oh, and speaking of strokes! I had one of those a few months back, too! Apparently there's some kind of mass in my brain that modern science has yet to identify," he laughs.
He pauses, eyes slipping off into the distance as he thinks. "Oh, and I fell off a building and went blind for a little while, too. That was my fault though." He looks back to Tibby and gives a dryly amused smirk. "So… pretty hectic," Isaac says, affecting a nonchalant shrug.
Isaac sobers after a moment, though, regarding Tibby with a thoughtful expression. "Honestly you lucked out to catch me here. Between all the medical bullshit and not having my ability… this isn't really a great place for me anymore," he says unhappily. "I still come out here now and again to keep the place inhabited, but I'm not here all that often these days."
Issac's story of what he's been up to is fucking tragic and that's an understatement. At first her eyes widen a touch at the mention of losing his ability and then even more at a mass within his brain doing damage. Tibby finds herself moving forward and placing a hand on her friend's shoulder. "You've known unimaginable loss and pain," the young woman considers something before continuing, "My bibi always said: it shall dawn again tomorrow."
Silence envelopes them and the short woman sits on the floor, bottle in her hands and staring across at the floor. "It's the same with me ya know, the loss of my power. All I knew was cats, my feline friends… family, experiencing the world through them became second nature, maybe even first." Maybe it was a way to hide from the world and herself. As for the other things going on with him.
"I've changed a lot myself the last couple years. I had almost lost myself by the time we first met. Do you remember? Barely spoke, working through… traumas. Things I couldn't remember, things I wouldn't voice." Another sip of her bottle.
"Eventually you find yourself again, eventually. A new one but it's you. Just different, more or less the same."
Sincerity is probably the last thing Isaac was expecting; he blinks. Then he lowers his eyes and lets out a single chuckle. "Yeah," he says quietly. She's right, and he knows it… but the reminder doesn't hurt.
He settles down and sits across from her. "Yeah," he says again, this time with a wry smile. "I remember. You seemed… kinda closed off, back then. You seem like you're doing a lot better now, though… I'm sure you're right, and I'll find my footing too. Sooner or later," he says, offering Tibby a tired smile; it would be nice if that day were soon, but wishing for things doesn't do much good if there's nothing you can do to make it so. This is the hand he's got… and, being honest, it could be worse.
It occurs to him, though, that this is the most he's heard Tibby talk about herself at one go. Maybe the most he's heard Tibby talk about herself, period. He considers. "You know what? It's an occasion to celebrate a little, right? Catching up with an old friend and all… so how about passing me that bottle?" he says with a grin. "And maybe you can tell me about this new job you've got."
Mostly the liquor is doing its work in making Tibby chattier than usual but there is just a different air about her, she's not carrying the weight from before but she's carrying something else, maybe even heavier. A life without responsibility, is no life at all. Bibi would say that, the young woman misses the matriarch of her family in that moment but her words ring true still, across the ocean from Africa to these shores.
Tibby laughs softly and hands him the bottle, "Nada a drink doesn't fix, nada. How can you be upset if you can't remember what it is you were upset about, eh?" Another laugh before emerald green eyes are scoping out the very interesting window opposite of her. Flashes of the individual aspects of her work in her mind, "Consulting," Then with a roll of her eyes.
"Glorified errand girl," a slight dip of her head causing loose strands of white blonde hair to fall into her eyes. "At ya service. They call, I answer. I do, I'm paid. I'm free." A pause, "For the most part. Calls always come." Calls always would at this rate.
Another pause, another roll of her eyes with a shrug that follows, "I was off being a proper tsotsi, smuggling things overseas a few years back." Tibby swallows and rubs her temple roughly, why did she start spilling any beans. "Got caught, thrown in international prison. Got pulled out, working for them ever since." It sounds as off as it does on brand for someone like Tibby who rarely speaks of her own history if at all. "Not a bad arrangement."
Faulkner chuckles as he takes the bottle; a problem you can't remember isn't really a problem? Maybe not for a little while, at least. It always turns back up, though, usually with a hangover in tow.
He takes a drink, grimacing a bit as he feels the burn; Tibby is a firm believer in doing nothing by halves, it seems. Good for her. But in her story he finds something interesting. She's mentioned being in a cell before, once. "That was when they made you into the eleven million dollar woman?" he asks, tapping his temple gently; though the words might seem light-hearted, his tone is quiet and serious.
The pale blonde chuckles as he takes the bottle and she places her hands under her chin, looking out the window but she nods her head, tendrils of hair in her light eyes. "That was indeed when they made me into the eleven million dollar woman." Tibby's lip curls and she turns her head while snatching the bottle back to take a healthy swig.
For all the priceless tech installed inside of her, Tibby felt pretty worthless. More times than she could count.
But maybe not so worthless when she's with friends, with Faulkner.
"They started with my bones…." a grimace.
But maybe it's time she was more honest with her story.
They started with my bones would make an excellent opening for a horror story, but it's a bit off-putting to hear it as an opening to a true story. But this is also way beyond Tibby's usual threshold for sharing; if she's decided she's going to tell this story, he'll listen.
So… he does just that. He nods silently, listening as she speaks.
She almost doesn't continue, it is not her way to share like this. Another long drink from the bottle and Tibby swallows hard and eyes the label that's beginning to rub off from being passed between the two. "You're not supposed to feel it as it happens. Medicines," it's not like she was awake for it, but her memory is hazy surrounding that time but she remembers.
"The pain comes after you wake, a dullness until the pills wear off. Then it builds.." Tibby holds her arm out into the light and slowly turns it, closing and opening her fist. "I knew I was different from that moment. Able to take more hits, my eyes…" The young woman traces one of the white scars on the outside of her eye, "I knew I was on the way to being something else."
But just what Tibby is turning into she still isn't sure.