Participants:
| Scene Title | They're Coming Home |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Wendy and Peyton wind up sharing lunch with an uninvited guest. Her news at least is welcome. |
| Date | January 18, 2010 |
Solstice Condominiums: Wendy's Home
The afternoon for some people on a Monday is a dreaded day. They're back to work, the start of the week, things to get done that were piled up over the weekend. On this floor of the Solstice Condominiums, these two don't work. Well, the store isn't open on Mondays. Which means that there's Chinese take out everywhere in the living room of the place, the smell of paints heavy in the air from the direction of the studio off in the one corner of the house. Music blares a little more loud than it needs to be for just eating and talking.
"Little bitch, I think she stole from my family. Mind you, she kept me from getting run over by a taxi or so she claims." Chopsticks make jabbing motions in the air to highlight Wendy's point as she holds a container of noodles in her hand that she's eating from. "But I saw the tapes, and it was the same get up, and she was there one moment and then gone the other, I mean, really Pey, how many fucking speedsters are there?"
"I have no idea how many of anything there are. Apparently less than empaths, though, because that's the first time you've complained about there being more than one," Peyton says with some amusement. "Anyway, if she did save you, I'm glad. I didn't go to all that trouble to save your skinny ass from Danko just to have you get it smooshed by a taxi." She is picking the beef out to eat from a container of broccoli and beef, leaving the green vegetable in the container for Wendy to have for leftovers.
The music is just that little bit loud enough to mask Tamara's entrance; and then there's the unlocked door, which is just the icing on the cake in that regard. Head tilted to one side, she studies the two young women without quite seeing them, assessing possibility and probability, action and reaction. Step, step, pause, step; her approach is indirect, inconsistent, taking advantage of moments of distraction. But Tamara's only interested in sneaking so far.
"Enough," the seeress states simply, in response to how many. "Your door is loose. I'll fix it this time, but you need to, too, or stuff ran away." With that eloquent observation, Tamara closes the remaining feet between her and the table, picking up a cardboard box and chopsticks of her own without so much as a would you mind if I.
Wendy says, "My ass is not skinny." Wendy cranes her head around to stare at her ass in the low slung yoga pants.
"Okay. Maybe it is. But—" She leans forward, grabbing a piece of broccoli with her sticks. "I never got a name and there's shit all I can do to track her down. I mean, she's been to the store, and then to the company, and she knows where I live and surely, I mean she MUST have connected Wendy Hunter with Hunter Communications. If I'd known it was her I woulda tried to… stop her, or something."
Broccoli soon meets death at the altar of Wendy's mouth as she keeps talking, even while eating. Yes, she's been taught better. "She's this frightfully tiny thing, tinier than you I think." But then again, most everyone is tiny next to Wendy when she's in heels. "This white blonde hair that's so short. I mean, that kind of hairdo only works on certain people and I'll give her credit, it works for her. Just… why the hell'd she steal that— fuck me" When Tamara makes her way in and Wendy just stares. Not every day someone just walks into her place uninvited or without a key. Fish mouth occurs for a few moments, the artist trying to figure out what to say to Tamara and her announcement.
"Right… uhh… right…"
"I'm not that tiny. I'm not even short," Peyton points out. She's 5'8", which is taller than most! But Wendy seems to see her through perpetual big sister glasses and that means she's a midget or something in comparison to the gangly tall woman. When Tamara comes in, Peyton arches a brow and smirks at the fishy face Wendy gives in response. "Hey, Tamara. Um. Help yourself." She glances at Wendy, wondering if the two have made more of a friendship since the day they all ran into one another in the library, or if this is Tamara's first time here. "Are… do you have more business cards for us?"
Compared to the two of them, Tamara's the short one — though not by much. It's her demeanor that makes her height an overlooked attribute: peering contemplatively up at the two older women, offering them both an ingenuous smile. "You didn't need any," she assures Peyton, with perhaps more confidence in her words than the clairvoyant herself feels. Fishing a piece of orange chicken out of the box as deftly as though she'd been handling chopsticks all her life, Tamara nibbles on one end of it, while considering Wendy sidelong. Her expression is a silent prompt for the young woman to continue: you were saying?
"Do you always walk into places uninvited or just… ones that don't lock their doors after the delivery guy?" Wendy leans back this time and peers towards the door with more raised brow. She was getting sloppy about that. Very sloppy. She catches Peyton's glance and shrugs. "She showed up at the store, cutting books apart to help out a kid who's denying he's got an ability." She's taking Tamara in stride, inasmuch as she really can since she just invited herself in and is eating food. But then again, if she'd knocked, Wendy would have invited her in and offered food so maaaaybe. Yeah. "How's it hanging Tamara? Don't suppose you can see if the little blonde bint who took some schematics from my parent's business is gonna get her ass in jail, or where I could find her?"
Peyton looks amused but nods. "That Kendall kid, I remember. He has a power, then?" she asks, glancing from Wendy's face to Tamara's and back. "She knocked on my door, so not always. She probably knew you'd invite her in anyway or something," Peyton murmurs, trying to be diplomatic so that Wendy doesn't get angry at the teenager. "You want some broccoli?" she asks, offering the carton she holds, nose wrinkling slightly in distaste of the vegetable.
Tamara blinks at Wendy, then turns to consider the (now locked) door. Head tilted, her expression is quizzical. "There's a delivery guy?" she echoes, missing — or sidestepping — the actual point of Wendy's query entirely. Blonde brows draw together in a pensive frown, before Wendy's continuing remarks interpose themselves as a distraction. After a blink at the woman, Tamara's frown deepens to something less thoughtful; it's rather more akin to a wince. "Don't-know-what-you-mean," the prescient mutters, before popping the remainder of the chicken piece into her mouth; she trades Peyton for the broccoli with a touch of relief that doesn't have anything at all to do with the vegetable in question.
"Yeah, illusion. Draws stuff and it appears. Ichihara's was covered in butterflies for a while, downright gorgeous. Was amazed I even got him to admit that he had a gift, and then to use it. He seemed better about himself afterwards, seems like all he needed was a push and some positive reinforcement about how what he can do isn't the devils work or whatever. Tamara… why are you here?" It derails, as Wendy is often to do during a normal conversation anyways. The previous question and its answer and the way it's all so neatly skipped around just draws exasperation from Wendy. "Lemme guess, the sky is falling and you're here to warn us? Or just felt like Chinese?"
Tilting her head at the strange reaction from Tamara, Peyton exchanges a look with Wendy. "Is everything okay? Is it … Shush Wendy, don't joke. It could be something serious. Is everyone okay?" She means Cardinal, Claire, Cat, Liz, Magnes. All the people who are still missing. "You said they'd be here soon, and it's been like a month," she whispers.
Blue eyes look to Wendy, drop to the table in front of her — or maybe her own feet under the table — and scan briefly over the room. "Because I was here?" It makes sense to Tamara, and perhaps only to her. Dropping her chopsticks into the broccoli box and setting it down on the table, the girl shifts her attention to Peyton, nose wrinkling a bit. "Ghosts were hard to catch. Especially old ghosts; can't really hear them. But the mirror knows who you mean to say. The ship was here…" Her gaze slides into the distance beyond Peyton's shoulder. "…not today. Tomorrow?" A moment's pause, and Tamara nods once, decisively. "That feels right. Tomorrow for them."
Another eyeroll from Wendy but she sits eating her noodles quietly with the occasional slurp from her lips. She knows Peyton's worried about her friends, the ones who ran off somewhere so she quiets as is appropriate for the gravity of the inquiry. At least until Tamara relays that it might be tomorrow that they return. "See, they're fine, tomorrow, precogs are never wrong." Her chopsticks tap her container as if to emphasize that.
"Ghosts? What does that mean?" Peyton says plaintively, worried, then looks relieved at the fact they're going to be back tomorrow. "Oh, thank God," she says, leaning back on the cushions of the sofa. "Is there anything else?" she says, curiously, looking at the blonde teenager with some wonder. "And I think they can be wrong sometimes. If things change. Like the Ghost of Christmas Future in that Scrooge book," she tells Wendy.
Shaking her head at Peyton's plaintive query, Tamara deflects it; she's not going to try to explain that one. And doesn't need to, as the young woman moves on to the next part of her answer. The question of anything else earns Peyton a sidelong, exasperated glance; obviously the seeress doesn't care much for that question. "Everything else," she responds, dryly. "But we were here all month talking about that." Taking up box and chopsticks again, Tamara goes back to chewing on broccoli.
"You must be a barrel of laughs at a party," Wendy murmurs under her breath. "Guess you better get ready for a welcome home party Peyton, for your little strange— " Read terrorist/vigilante. "— Friends." A plastic container of won ton soup is pushed over towards Tamara. "Who's gonna win the Super Bowl?"
"Wendy, you don't even… if they failed, we wouldn't even have a Super Bowl, do you not GET that?" Peyton says with some exasperation. The trio all rolling their eyes at one another, it seems. "If they're coming back, it means they fixed it, right?" This is directed at Tamara. "We're okay?" She doesn't go into details; she's not supposed to know these things.
Giving Peyton a quizzical look, Tamara is quiet for a few moments as she weighs that question. "There was a Super Bowl," she tells Peyton, since that seems to be answer enough. They're coming back and the game will happen; the world hasn't ended. Setting the box back down, Tamara bypasses the bowl of soup and steps over to stand beside Wendy. Gaze dark, the seeress whispers something into her ear; then she casts a brief smile at Peyton, and heads in the direction of the door.
"Hey, if they're coming back tomorrow, then OBVIOUSLY they succeeded in… what, saving the world? Saving the humpback whales or whatever it is that they're doing?" She doesn't approve of the tactics of Phoenix and whomever else is affiliated with them. Hell, she'd called in the cops last time she'd seen Helena.
Tamara's whispering her ear though, and whatever the young woman says brings a grin to her face. "Well. I'll just do that then."
Peyton scowls at the two whispering, looking more like the petulant teenager than the teenager in the room. "It's rude to whisper," she tells Tamara, her goodwill and patience apparently running out for the day. "I don't expect you to understand, and you should be kinder to my friends, because Cardinal helped me save you."
Ruder still, perhaps, to leave without saying goodbye; but Tamara unlocks the door and does just that, returning the conversation's entirety to Peyton and Wendy.
She remembers very well that Cardinal saved her. She can't help but not remember whenever she looks in her mirror and see's her thigh, see's her ear or reaches for something with her hand. That without Peyton and in turn Cardinal, she might be just a random corpse buried in Midtown or left on some floor of a hollowed up building for her bones to bleach and rats and god knows what else to … Now Wendy's mood takes a dive.
"I don't forget Peyton. That you even think I'd forget…" Brown eyes flicker to Tamara as she takes her leave, closing the door behind her and then back to her noodles. The carton's closed, chopsticks tossed into one of the brown delivery bags. "I got a Refrain meeting to attend."
Peyton looks sheepish. She didn't mean to make Wendy feel that bad. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. I'm just worried about them, even if Tamara says they're fine. I mean… I don't know her well enough to know that she's right about everything yet, you know? She was right about Mack, I guess." She stands and gives a wave, pulling her coat on. "Thanks for dinner. I'll see you later."
"Precogs, Peyton, tends to be a strange bunch. They see the future, some see possible futures, outcomes. Some can see them all, others can only see one path at a time depending on what a person chooses. If she says they're coming back, they're coming back and I'd set the home fires burning and put a candle in the window for them." Her ire perhaps misdirected, or her ego bruised a bit. She waves off Peyton as she starts to pick up some. The housekeepers gonna be back soon and can deal with most of it. "Go. I need to find my car keys."
Peyton nods. "Should have asked her where they were," she quips, heading to the door. "Wait. What did she tell you?" she asks curiously, one hand on the door knob, as she glances back to Wendy.
"That you needed to go buy some new shoes for when your foot is out of the black thing," Wendy throws at her verbally.