Participants:
| Scene Title | The World Is Broken |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Cardinal checks in on his favourite christian girl who finally snaps at the one person who doesn't deserve it. |
| Date | August 13, 2009 |
The Verb - Abigail and Leonard's Apartment.
Who needs therapy when you can slam pots and pans around and otherwise express yourself emotionally through baking and cooking? Who knows when Leonard will be home and that's never stopped the blond from making dinner regardless and having it ready to heat when her roommate or others slip in.
Between the news Caliban dropped in her lap that wasn't about the Triad, her shrink, her inability to focus in class today which had been noticed by her instructor, she was… it was not a good day to be Abigail Beauchamp. She'd come back from Louisiana for this? Victor was still on shift and couldn't make it yet, but had promised to come as soon as evolvedly possible.
"So," Cardinal observes mildly from where he's sprawled out on the couch, "I'm guessing that the trip wasn't as relaxing as you were hoping…"
Of course, he wasn't there a minute ago, but that's his way. An arm folded behind his head, booted feet up on the sofa's arm dangling over the edge so they don't get the red suede messy, just settled in as comfortably as can be.
There's a scream, a wooden spoon going flying in the direction of the now appeared Cardinal and quick as a flash, one wicked looking butchers knife has made it's way from the wooden block to her hand. Just in case, you know, it was someone bad.
But it's just cardinal and the Blond's heart can start again. "Oh sweet merciful lord. It's just you"
Oh shit, flying spoon!
Cardinal promptly tumbles off the couch and crashes onto the floor, showing remarkable reflexes and an incredible lack of grace. "Just me," he calls from the floor, "Please stop throwing things?"
"You shouldn't sneak up on me like that!" Mind you, he'd been in the other room. "Get up off the floor Richard, you're fine. you just scared me a little is all" See, even the butcher knife is getting put away back in it's spot. Deft fingers open the fridge to pilfer one of Leo's beers so she can pop the cap and offer it out to Cardinal as a sort of sorry for throwing a spoon at you.
"Hey, I don't know what you're throwing at me," Cardinal observes, pushing himself back up to his feet with a grunt, noting in amused tones, "It could've been a knife!" That said, he meanders along over towards the kitchen, reaching out for the beer with a brow's raise, "There someone I gotta punch?"
"No, no, there's , there's not. I just… Since coming back from Louisiana it's just.. things not going right. Not going right and then Finals and.. I can't go talk to a shrink cause mine.. Dr. Martinez got killed just before I came back" Abigail hands over the beer before collecting said spoon and heading back into the kitchen. "I got serial killers probably making a run for me, Mr. Claiban informed me that the Triad is trying to usurp Mr. Linderman's position as head of the not so nice people in the city and that he wants my help, Caliban that is, in helping take care of the innocents that will inevitably get hurt and to let people know what's going to happen."
The spoon finds it's way into the sink and she grabs another from a drawer. "My finals are like, next week, and I'm studying all I can Richard and I don't think I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna fail and Catherine is gonna wonder why she's even paying for my schooling" The latter is really an unfounded fear and good old abby self depreciating herself. "John Logan is working for Mr. Linderman now." there's such disappointment in her voice. "Mr. Caliban wanted me to hear it from him. That they're doing it so that the Triads don't get their hands on him. He's working for them. But apparently a condition is that he cannot hurt me, come near me, or kidnap other people and do what he did to me, to them"
"I know he is." A frown purses to Cardinal's lips as he twists off the cap of the beer, flipping it into the trash and bringing the bottle up to take a swallow thereof before stepping over. A hand slides up her shoulder, fingers squeezing there reassuringly, "School'll be fine… and Caliban's a lying prick, it sounds like, so what-the-fuck-ever. What's he want your help for?"
"what I did before, when I could heal Richard. Come and try to help. Not with them or the Triad just.. help the people who get caught in between. And tell people, people who will be on the streets, that I know, that it's.. It's gonna be bad Richard. he's talking like.. blood running the streets, just washed in it. As for Caliban being a lying prick. He's never lied to me Richard. Never. But there's a first time for everything. He could have kept his mouth shut and not told me, but he did. And why would he put the boundry that Logan had to stay away from me" But Caliban also never put a limit, or a boundary on her. "I could tell the cops"
"Oh, really?" Cardinal's brows lift a little, "So Logan's safely leashed, and won't be hurting anyone?" A lean forward slightly, his gaze meeting hers over the edge of the shades, "Why don't you tell that to Niki, given that Logan broke her fucking arm the other day, on Linderman's orders."
Niki's arm got broken, by John Logan. Dinner tonight is probably not going to be finished any time soon and a minute of silence after those words are spoken to her, Abigail's not in front of Cardinal. Around the man she goes, squeezing past him in the kitchen and out into the living room. "Oh god, i'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it. Fuck" Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Abigail's feet carry her to the front door, snatching up purse and denim jacket, slipping her feet into some sporty flats, looking ready to be heading out the door.
Wait, what? "What?" Cardinal turns around as she slips past him and into the living room, his brow furrowed— he doesn't know what's going on, but he knows it's not good, so even as she's getting her shoes on he's beating her to the door, hand smacking against it to keep it closed. "What the hell's going on, Abby?"
"I told on her Richard. I called Caliban when Jessica was going beserk" Her slender fingers form a ball and she doesn't look like she's going to punch anyone. "She was going to kill Linderman and I didn't want her to die. She got hurt because of me Richard"
At that, Cardinal jerks his head back a bit in surprise— and then he shakes his head tightly, "Well, fuck, you can't tell her that. No telling what the fuck she can do. She's fine, she's already healed up and everything, wasn't even that bad a break— but you see what I fucking mean? You can't trust Linderman's people, he's a goddamn sleazeball! Seriously, you don't think the cops that outed you from the registry in the first place weren't working for him?"
"The cop that outed me from the registry is dead and was working for Muldoon" Who had ties to Kain Zarek, and Kain Zarek works for Linderman. Everything boils down to Linderman in this city. You can't go two feet without something Linderman, it's that incestuous. "She'll snap my neck is what she'll do Richard, if it's Jessica. If it's Niki…" Niki will.. she doesn't care what Jessica would do" Richards hand still on the door, she turns around, snatching her keys off the hanging holder and heads for her room. Still dressed for going out. "I'm a black fucking widow for people, and bad guys love to just take advantage of me because i'm too damned nice and Christian. I thought hey, I can't heal anymore, maybe my life would calm. I could actually manage time for a boyfriend, I wouldn't have to keep secrets from people//. But it's not like that. Not at all."
"Yeah, and who do you fucking think Muldoon worked for, down the line?" The door's held firm, and Cardinal pushes away from it to head after her, towards the room she's stalking towards with his head shaking, "So stop letting them! I mean, Jesus, you want a calm life? Just tell them you're out, and stop letting yourself get pulled back in, Abigail— "
"How can I do that Richard if things keep finding me?! If trouble find me. I don't go out looking for this. I didn't move to this city thinking that I would end being a protected witness to Homeland for what happened on the bridge, or that.. or that god would suddenly decide that he needed someone else to carry on the good fight and give my gift to flint. I came to do good, I came ot help and to heal and.. lately, all it seems is that I'm hurting people, or getting them killed. God, Richard, I sent the ferrywoman to her death and I was in Louisiana. I told them to send someone to the alley of Old Lucy's to help someone and she got a bullet and dead, because of me. How christian of me is that? I can't function without little white pills, my nightmares are getting better and life was getting better and then,,, it just.. it sucks me all back in and I can't run from it. It found me even in Louisiana Richard.
Ah, hell, he'd told the old man not to tell her that part. Apparently, he got to him a little late. Richard stops at the door of her room, one hand resting on the molding, his head falling forward slightly with eyes closed. "Sometimes," he says quietly, "People get hurt. You can't blame yourself for that, Abby."
"When I'm the one getting them hurt Richard. It is" She's heading for the window, wrestling with getting it open, her escape route it seems is the fire escape since Richard blocked the front door. "Logan broke something in me on that Island. he did something and I don't know what. But nothing has gone right since then. Nobody has been the same since then. Everyone keeps telling me that it'll be fine, that I'll get over what happened there. That I'll deal with loosing my ability. I'm no less a person. They think they know and that it'll all be fine. But I can't help be realize that I am less a person without it. I'm jealous, and i'm angry and I'm a whole host of things, that I never was before. I never would have called Caliban to warn him about Jessica before that happened."
one leg swings out over the window sill and she ducks her head under the glass. "No wonder I want to screw Flint like silly. No wonder i'm leading Victor on and fooling myself that I can be with him and be normal. That's not ever gonna happen. I can't have what I had in the fishing boat with my Dah. I can't make things go back to what they were" She's babbling again, really. Her version of snapping.
It's into the bedroom Cardinal goes, then, clearing the bed in a jump— well, almost, one foot catching so he ends up hopping along to the window, reaching out to grab for her arm, "Oh you are not fucking doing this, babe. Get the hell back in here, what are you even talking about…?"
"I'm going to go and rent a car and just drive" Abigail tries to yank her arm away from him. "Maybe if I drive far enough, and without my god damned cellphone, no one can find me. If I drive fast enough, nothing can find me Richard. No Caliban, no people needing healing, no people getting hurt, no phoenix, no anything. I won't need to be ashamed that I own a bar two steps up from a strip club or that I'm getting people hurt through good intentions. I'm not this person that i'm turning into Richard."
Of course, Cardinal's not going to haul her around, so after the yank he releases her. "Then who," he asks sharply, "Are you? And why aren't you being her? I don't think 'a coward' is the answer, so running the fuck away's not gonna solve a lot."
Did he just call her a coward? Her arm out of his grasp, the other leg swings out through the window and she shimmies out a bit before she stands. "Id on't know Richard!" She yells at him, the sound reverberates through the alley from on high. "If I had the answer then I wouldn't be doing this! I don't know everything! I don't have magical answers to everything. I can't… fix my life as easy as I fixed others with just a touch! I can't fix what's broken! Somethings broken!"
"The world is broken!" Cardinal's response is a barked few words of his own, glaring back at her, "You think I like dealing with this shit? Fuck no. I don't fucking sleep at night, I've got blood all over my goddamn hands from the people I've killed and hurt, and I've got the lives of thousands of god-damn people on my shoulders and I don't know if I can do anything about it! But oh, you're lusting after Flint and you own a bar with some hot chicks working there. Obviously you're the one becoming a bad person." A roll of his eyes, "Get some perspective."
When it boils down to it though, really, it would be like comparing apples to oranges. Cardinal to Abigail. Self professed not a good man, to self professed good christian girl. her hands come up to the window and with a push and levering of her weight onto it, bring the window down to close it and put the barrier between the two of them. She needs to find a car rental place that's open and get out of town before curfew comes into effect. The slam of the window is the answer to Richard and the paths of salt water trailing down her cheeks speak volumes to some as she starts the process of getting down three flights of welded iron grating to get to the ground.
"Selfish little girl," Cardinal mutters under his breath, reaching into his jacket and pulling out his cell phone; snapping it open, his thumb taps over the keypad, bringing it up to his head and frowning at the closed window.
Somewhere else, Flint Deckard's phone rings.
After a few minutes, it's picked up, but before the first syllable's out of the man's lips on the other end of the line, Cardinal states firmly, "Abigail's having some sort of fucking emotional breakdown. Fix it."
Then he hangs up.
"Fucking people," he mutters, heading for the door, "I swear to God, it's like herding fucking cats. Only they're emo poet cats that like cutting themselves, and they're all being hunted by big angry drooling dogs…"