Times That Try Woman's Soul

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vf_elisabeth_icon.gif

Scene Title Times That Try Woman's Soul
Synopsis Fear and despair are hideous bedfellows, especially for a woman trying so hard not to succumb.
Date December 9, 2011

Liz's Quarters


Falling asleep has become a nightmare in and of itself. Surrendering consciousness requires relaxation, a kind of trust in letting yourself rest, that you’re safe. She doesn’t feel safe. Ever. And as she drifts into the near-dreaming wasteland between awake and asleep, all around the periphery of her awareness are Bad Things <tm>. She can’t retreat into the safe space Hokuto helped her build — she’s not far enough asleep to reach that state. So all she gets is…

Blackness, stifling and terrifying.

Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white

Voices with no words, alternating between roaring and whispering.

Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe
And he keeps it, ah, out of sight

Pain. In her hands, her guts, her head.

Ya know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread

Silence.

Whispering footsteps.

The scrape of a shoe.

Terror.

The flicker of starlight-limned wings that shouldn’t even exist in this place.

Darkness, but a deeper kind. Almost to the safety of deeper dreams.

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you
It's strange what desire will make foolish people do

”Although…. I begin to feel that I should offer you a thimble and perhaps ask you where your real body is so I can sew you back onto it."

A laugh; hollow yet wry, fragile but darkly amused all in one. "This is all that I am," replies Cardinal, rolling back in that fluid wave of shadowy movement to perch again on the bed's foot, straightening to stand there, "Just a shadow, Lizzie. Nothing to sew me to…"

Elisabeth reaches out to touch the shadow, remembering the feel of the chill on her skin beneath where he touched her. Her expression is sad, the haunted blue eyes in the teen's face giving the impression of great age or experience. "Lately," she admits softly, "I think the darkness is all that's left of me, too."

I'd never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you
And I'd never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

In a dream, he can be touched, like this — cool but not cold, like a man who'd been standing outside for too long. At the contact, his head turns back to look to her, watching her silently and eyelessly for long moments, the wall's colours visible ever so faintly through his shadowy visage. Then his face is visible a little better, slowly, like a fade-in from a movie clip done with special effects, though it's younger than she knows him.

"There's no darkness in you, Liz," he finally says quietly, lucidly, a glint seen where his eyes might be. "Anger, fire, hurt, sorrow, maybe, but I doubt anything could put that light in your heart out. Don't think otherwise."

Nobody loves no one.

Hiro Nakamura’s voice whispers through her memories. "If it makes you feel any better, there is another place where I didn't cut his hand off. Where I found a way to do that differently, and we never had this conversation. There's another place where he killed me. You may think they're far away but they're not really."

When my ship gonna come and will I hold till it does?
What should I believe as darkness falls on me?

The woman struggling with the puzzle in the water looks up, blue eyes brilliant in the star-streaked night. There is a sense of music shimmering around her, a haunting melody that lingers just at the edges of awareness. "They keep slipping away," she laments sadly.

"There are too many of them and as soon as I think I have one, it shifts." Her voice is husky. "I don't know what to do. If I can just get enough of them, the picture will make sense. They won't die. I'll know how to stop it."

Can you hear me? Is someone there –
Am I losing my mind, am I losing my mind?

«Roosevelt Island bridge team — on the count of two, pull back another fifty feet at best speed. Split to the sides of the bridge as you do it, or you'll be caught in a wave of vertigo and be just as incapacitated as the rioters. … Once they're down, take them out.»

As the sound waves disrupt the inner ear at ranges outside that of human hearing, they begin to grow dizzy and disoriented. Some fall to the ground and begin vomiting while others simply keep coming. As the herd thins, giving the cops better chances on hitting what they're aiming for, the shields lower and the back ranks of officers also begin firing.

It's a bloodbath on the bridge.

Am I all alone, won't you rescue me?
Talking to myself, staring at the sea

Two pieces click, the image in those two pieces alone unclear, not enough of the picture to determine what it should be of. Mournfully she murmurs, "The monster is walking the shadows. He tells lies, and each lie is another piece of the puzzle. But he's tricky. He tells just enough truth to make me believe the lies. I have to be so careful."

Elisabeth's head comes around and those brilliant crystalline eyes fall on the red-haired woman floating on the other puzzle piece. "He hides in his lair, walking the shadows and sowing the seeds of destruction. We must tread very, very carefully. He's had a long time to put his plans into play. The more lies he tells, the more confusion there is."

What will morning bring?
Will I hear that old sea bird sing?

"Liz," Felix says, gravely. "It's time to pull out all the stops, I think. Blast 'em."

«Hit the goddamned deck, everyone between me and Suresh!»

There is a soft bass rumble, at hearing range instead of well below. Expanding her senses to feel the sound waves, building them, amplifying them, strengthening them, and shaping them into what she wants them to be.

Will her colors fill my eyes,
As she sails through clear blue sky?

"I don't think we can get there from here," the blonde murmurs, looking around. And then her head tilts. "Unless…. " She smiles a little. And reaches up toward her face. When she turns back around, there is a crystalline blue orb dangling from a silvery chain in her fingers that she holds out to the other dreamer.

The haunting song drifting just at the edge of hearing once more discordant in its tones. She watches with one bright blue eye. "That tie might… draw you there. But I cannot go. This is where I belong."

Can you hear me? Is someone there –
Am I losing my mind, am I losing my mind?

The sounds, subtle and yet very much audible, build to a crescendo and roll outward from her toward the remainder of the horde not affected by the taser. The street surface itself rattles about and cracks under the assault. Just past the point where Brennan and cops are standing, there is what amounts to a massive sonic BOOM!!! and there are suddenly bodies flying backward for tens and maybe even hundreds of feet.

Am I all alone, won't you rescue me?
Shapes in the darkness, staring at the sea

Bolting straight up in the bed, there is still — even after these weeks — the raw terror of not knowing where she is. It takes long moments to get oriented. And even when she does, Elisabeth doesn’t get out of the cot. There’s a certainty that if she does, something in the darkness will grab her. And in some ways, as she buries her face in her knees and wraps her arms around her legs, she wonders if she wouldn’t be better off if she just melted away into that darkness.


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