Participants:
| Scene Title | The Legacy of Edward Ray: Part I |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A truce, a vision, and a mission. |
| Date | January 25, 2011 |
The night is quiet and still.
Eh..
The night is quiet and still-ish.
Outside the castle, snow drifts peacefully atop the castle, fluttering onthe outskirts of Pollepel island. There's been a new arrival just recently. Having made his way to the island in the twilght, and intends to leave before dawn.
It is for these reasons that Amato Salucci's dreams of errant nuns or sophisticated sheep are disturbed. Mostly by a steel pointed boot poking against his ribs gently. Another poke. Pokepoke. And then the boot desists. "Wake up."
The dream takes a sudden turn for nightmares. The voice of the shadow that has infiltrated Amato's room is unmistakably Ethan Holden. But though the low growl fills Amato's ears, he has yet to lay hands on the man besides the gentle prodding to the Priest's ribs.
Allowing a few moments for Amato to gather himself and wake entirely. "You up?"
The man lying the the thin mattress doesn't move at first. His breathing changes, clearly indicating that he is, in fact, awake. But it takes him several seconds before he turns and sits up, the wool blanket sliding against his t-shirt. Another few seconds and he's blinked away the blur brought on by sleep, and his eyes have adjusted to the lack of light.
"Yeah," he half-grunts as he squints up at his unwanted visitor.
There are only two reasons for Ethan Holden to come into his room this late at night and wake him up from a dead sleep. He's not bleeding, so there goes Door Number One.
"What's happened."
It's not a question. It's a demand for an answer.
Ethan takes a step back, and begins to open door number two. "Eileen was attacked." Holden answers curtly. "Feng." Is the only explanation he'll give on how she was attacked. "I'm going on crusade Amato. I've realized my mistakes, and I've realized my complacency 'as been a curse. I'm lookin' t'wake up. I don't want this t'be a long discussion on 'oo 'as wronged 'oo. Or whot's wrong with which of us. I'm offering you a truce and an opportunity for us t'work together. We've done it in the past without killing each other and we can do it again for the right reasons." A beat. "I'm going t'clean up New York, with Eileen, and the others. A simple yes or no will do." Holden lays down matter-of-factly as he watches the slender man quietly.
What little color he has drains from Amato's face at the news, and adrenaline sharpens his senses even more than the presence of Ethan Holden does. Jensen Raith asked Amato almost the exact same question months ago. Swinging the blanket away, Amato turns and places his bare feet on the stone floor, folding his hands together as he looks up at Ethan.
He could continue the metaphor Raith used about protecting the sheep from the wolves, but to Ethan, that may not carry the same meaning that it did back then. So instead, Amato simply nods. "What do you need?"
"I need y'to go back t'the city. I need y't'elp me 'unt." If Raith asked Amato to protect the flock from the wolves, Ethan is going to unleash a larger wolf on the pack. "I break noses, kick down doors, you touch faces." A light laugh sounds out, a dry chuckle. "Th'old drill. You know it. Same thing we've always done. For a new purpose." A pause is given, as Holden reaches inside his coat.
"More immediately? A boy saved our girl. Won't tell us shit about 'im. Instead of makin' 'im talk, I thought I'd let you do th'talkin' for 'im. I scraped some skin and 'air off o 'im. Put your 'and out." Holden commands, holding his wallet out. After Amato complies, Ethan drops a small lock of hair and some flakes of skin that belong to Astor Loukas.
The old drill is something that Amato has been avoiding, save for cases such as this - cases where his effective family is concerned, or the new 'work' of protecting the flock. Rather than comment immediately on the prospect of skulking around New York City, he holds his hand out without question, taking a deep breath as he watches Ethan pull the sample from his wallet. Concentrating, he tries to look beyond the fringes of sin. An opening of the mind, in a way.
New people are always overwhelming.
At first, the world seems very big or maybe Astor's just very small— oh, no. No, this thing in the world is very big, the monastery, infinitely recognizable to the psychometrist. Stone. Two men preside nearby, low words, but nothing soft about their voices. One stands at his side and you refuse to look at him. The other is a priest, to be regarded with open curiosity, but it's too dark to make out his face; only that there are gangly shoulders under the robe, the edge of a bristly beard above it.
The image cuts out like someone threw a bucket of black paint over it.
Twisted metal, ruptured fencing. Blood spattering the earth. Eileen Ruskin's bloodless corpse can't make up its mind whether it's laying in a sprawl of smashed matchstick limbs on naked pavement or snow or snow-mottled pavement, her fingers snarled into illogical shapes. People keep crying— men, women, children, or maybe that's just the siren, silhouettes blurry as if maybe Astor's crying too, and things go runny at the edges, like it's a dream vivid enough to knit itself into continuously into the mesh of perceptible reality. Rare, but not impossible.
Agony flares to leave neon spots behind his eyes, and then he's watching a crutch limps by; the edge of the ankle between the hem of trousers and the simple black shoe glints metal. He is pretending not to watch if they fall. He doesn't watch television, but there are flowers. "I don't want you to see me like this." Astor has a nice voice. Smoothe, dark. Inert as machined obsidian, even when it's refined by shame. And a laugh; his voice is, absurdly, younger when he asks: "This is Edward Ray's legacy, isn't it?"
—and then there's a sudden blur, too fast, a jam-packed jumble of nonsense behind Amato's eyes of a falling bus screaming crow countdown on a screen twenty feet tall thirty balloons as big as water towers floating slowly over the ruins why is there a rabbit scuttling across McDonalds' gutter? past the hobo in the powder blue suit and there's a flower growing out of a skull shaped like Ryans' and a girl with short black hair is picking through a ruin that has a giant S of sheared-off signage while a blond girl Amato doesn't know screams No no no and a brunette, in a voice like an axe falling, Yes, twenty bodybags or twenty hundred, labelled in a smear of sans-serif.
The images sprawl over Amato's eyes like a blindfold made out of light.
With a shuddering recoil, Amato turns his hand, letting the hair and flakes of skin fall from his palm and float the floor. He brings it to his eyes, rubbing the heel against the lids as he holds them tightly shut. Though he knows Ethan is standing there waiting for some sort of insight into the man that saved his daughter, Amato is silent, shrinking back and bracing himself against the mattress with the hand not helping to clear the spots from in front of his eyes.
Ethan arches his brow, taking a step forward. A gloved hand reaches out to take Amato by the shoulder. Not in an aggressive gesture, he's going to support the other man. On one knee, he blinks hard at the other man. "Whot?" He asks simply.
"I'm not sure," Amato says in the uneasy tone of one still trying to get their bearings when all they have is a map in an unintelligible language. "The brothers at Mt. Moriah may now," he finally says, "But…it was odd. I saw her-" but he cuts himself off with a shake of his head, moving his hand away to brace himself with it, turning slightly red-rimmed eyes on Ethan.
"He mentioned Edward Ray." One doesn't exist long within the ranks of the Ferry, official or no, without hearing whispers of that name, even if they've been turned and twisted by legend. "I don't like him, Ethan. It wasn't right. It…torse." Blinking again, Amato narrows his eyes. "Whoever he is, something is not right."
Dropping his hand from Amato's shoulder. "Moriah? Like in Jerusalem?" Ethan asks, knitting his brows together. The man peers at the smaller man intently. "Saw who, Amato?" Holden watches the man pensively, rolling back onto his heels. Edward Ray. Bringing one hand to scrub at his chin, he pulls his lips back, baring his teeth for a moment.
"Whot should I do? Kill 'im?"
"He saved Eileen. He saw her - I saw her," and he pauses to swallow, pushing the word through his lips. "Dead. If you kill him, we won't ever know why he saved her. Or even how. There is a monastery north of the city - that Mount Moriah. He was there. The brothers - Brother Joseph might know him." Potentially.
Shaking his head again, Amato sits up a bit straighter, his brows knitting with further thought, and to help stave off a niggling headache brought on by the strange images. "The images didn't make sense. They've never not made sense before. Even the most horrible still had a measure of logic to them." But from his tone of voice, Amato's frustration could be aimed at himself just as easily as the owner of the dark lock of hair resting on the stone floor.
Ethan pauses, looking down at the ground. "But she aint dead.. I.." He pauses. Could she be? He left the night before.. "I cut th'air and she was there alive. Could.. Could it 'ave 'appened since then?" Ethan seems suddenly alarmed, straightening to his feet. "'e could be a plant from Feng." He snarls, looking like he might bolt out of the door immediately. "I shouldn't 'ave left."
But then when Amato is saying how the images don't make sense he gives pause. "She can't be dead. Gabriel and Jensen are with 'er. Why.. What th'fuck does that mean, Salucci?"
"I can only see what's happened," Amato reminds the other man. He folds his arms across his chest, nervously rubbing his arms as he thinks, his eyes scanning the floor as if the stones might just provide an answer. "It…was almost a dream. Things that couldn't be real. Not unless…"
Suddenly, Amato snaps his head up to look at Ethan, his eyes slightly wider. "Is he here?" But the question is forgotten as another pushes itself in front of it. "She's alright… Ethan, if I saw from her side, it might make more sense."
"We're going back to the mainland, Amato." Holden commands stiffly. "They're both there." The man straightens up fully as he takes a few solid steps back towards the door. "Can y'be ready in twenty minutes?"
"I only need ten."