Participants:
Scene Title | Two Black Holes |
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Synopsis | They either swallow each other up, or dance. Warren returns to the workshop intending to leave, which causes his assistant to get very upset at him. |
Date | October 27, 2010 |
Once upon a time, the New York Public Library was one of the most important libraries in America. The system, of which this branch was the center, was among the foremost lending libraries /and/ research libraries in the world.
The bomb changed that, as it changed so much else.
By virtue of distance, the library building was not demolished entirely, like so many others north of it; however, the walls on its northern side have been badly damaged, and their stability is suspect. The interior is a shambles, tattered books strewn about the chambers and halls, many shelves pulled over. Some have even been pulled apart; piles of char in some corners suggest some of their pieces, as well as some of the books, have been used to fuel fires for people who sought shelter here in the past.
In the two years since the bomb, the library — despite being one of the icons of New York City — has been left to decay. The wind whistles through shattered windows, broken by either the blast-front or subsequent vandals, carrying dust and debris in with it. Rats, cats, and stray dogs often seek shelter within its walls, especially on cold nights. Between the fear of radiation and the lack of funds, recovery of the library is on indefinite hiatus; this place, too, has been forgotten.
Warren walks into the library early Wednesday morning. He was gone all of Tuesday without a word, which is a bit odd for him, who's been in there for so many hours a day working. Gillian could hear him shuffling things around, pinning blueprints across an empty table, then he starts writing a note. He looks like he's about to walk right back out, wearing his black suit, and appearing to be in a rush.
Without him, the work has been less and less productive. Gillian hasn't managed to learn anything new, and hasn't had his instruction to tell her what she does wrong when she did. The improvments of the last few days met a halt, as the most she could do was replicate what she remembered from before. No matter how much she's learned, she hasn't learned enough to do it on her own. So the sound of someone shuffling around brings her out of one of those makeshift enclosures, raising eyebrows at the black suit, and putting hands on her hips. "Just where do you think you're going? We have work to do, and we're not nearly ready yet." And the 8th is getting closer and closer.
"I wrote up blueprints, very easy to read ones. I'm leaving, disappearing, and I won't be back." Warren stops his writing, which he's barely done any of, then sighs. "Cardinal was right. Everything and everyone I love is just going to get hurt. No matter how sane I become, I'm always going to be me. I'm cursed. You don't need me, I'm leaving the address of a woman with my ability, she can take over from the blueprints."
ORDER: It is now your pose.
"If we don't stop that transmission I'm going to die on the eighth," Gillian says firmly, stepping closer to him, but with an oddly disappointed, if still understanding look on her face. "You came up with this, you've worked on this. I don't care who the woman is, or if she has the same power. This is yours and I trust you to do this and change what I saw in those Flashes. I don't trust anyone else to get it done. So if you walk out now…" She does understand. Better than he might think. "What the hell happened yesterday?"
"Elle, I didn't think she was coming back. It's all so complicated, my relationships always end up so tragically. I didn't think she'd come back, and I ended up sleeping with someone else, just once. And then she did come back, and again, and then I told her." Warren starts unbuttoning his white shirt, then opens the top half just enough to show off his new bandages. "She shocked me into unconsciousness, then left a note that said to never come near her again. I hurt her, I'm sane, and I still hurt her."
Buttoning his shirt again, he closes his eyes and leans on the table. "I'll stay, I'll do this, see it through. Then I'm leaving… I don't want to be around people anymore, I don't want to hurt them."
"Elle— the blonde electric girl?" Gillian says, thinking back to the times that she'd had the strange pleasure of meeting her. In Moab, when the girl nearly killed her and helped trigger the time-displacement that threw the whole place out of time, and again, when Gillian briefly had Peter's old ability, and shocked her back.. But they'd made a kind of truce. In a fashion. "She almost killed me once, but we got over it later," she says, frowning a bit for another reason. One that she keeps to herself. After all it's not her place to be jealous about it. "Walking out on this isn't going to do anyone any good. Even if you hurt her, you weren't trying to, but walking out is essentially saying you don't give enough of a shit to stay."
"I care, I really do, I'm just afraid. Every analytical sense in my mind says this will work, but that one human voice is afraid it won't. I'm afraid I'll fail, and then people will die. I'm afraid I won't be able to stop my gang, and more people will die. Every woman I love gets hurt, every friend suffers for trusting me." Warren starts walking over to their little hut, removing his jacket to toss it on to a table. "I disappear on November 8th, I don't have anything to stay for."
As soon as he gets close enough and drops his jacket on the inside of the tent, Gillian's no longer holding her hands on her hips, and instead is looking at him with a new kind of anger. "And everyone I love and care about ends up leaving me. And dying. And trying to kill me. Or getting me killed. Guess you are all the same." With that said, she's stepping closer to him again and swinging a fist at him. It's not the strongest punch in the world, but it definitely will pack a good blow right to the face if it connects.
Warren looks back at her just in time to get a fist to the cheek, raising a hand to rub his face and turn his head back to her. "What's… I don't understand." He's quiet for a moment, then reaches out to try and gently take her wrists. "Are you talking about me?"
"Not just you," Gillian says, fighting against his hold, but it isn't very strong. It's a weak struggle, made weaker by the tears coming to her eyes. "My parents— Gabriel, Peter— fuck, even Cardinal would never choose me over Elisabeth and I can't really blame him, I can't go back to the Lighthouse— I can't even go by my real name without fear that I'll get taken off the street again and used in some experiment… and you— " It's a bunch of things she'd been holding in for days, keeping to herself. Ever since she got back. So many things she couldn't deal with, so she threw herself into other work. Something to give back what she can't have for herself. "I was starting to like you and I thought you liked me and you're just going to walk out and leave." Now the struggle becomes more fierce and she tries to pull away, voice raising to a raspy yell. "Just go!"
"I'm not going anywhere, I won't hurt you too." Warren tries to pull her closer so he can wrap his arms around her, trying to offer some comfort. "I didn't know, I really didn't. I won't leave if you don't want me to, I'm just so… worried about hurting someone, worried about doing what everyone does to you over and over."
"You weren't leaving to protect me. You were leaving to protect yourself," Gillian rasps hoarsly against his chest, before she struggles and pulls back, rubbing her eyes. "I can't do this anymore. You can finish this on your own. You never needed me to do any of this," she says, shoulders shaking as she walks over to grab her bag. As she seems to know he'll follow after her, she looks back at him. "You need to keep away from me. I can't control my ability well when I get upset."
"Don't leave, Gillian." Warren doesn't follow her, he instead places a hand against the hut, staring down at his boots. "Please? I just want to talk, stay and talk, and if either of us want to leave in the morning, we'll do it with a clear head."
"I'm not in love with you," Gillian says, as she hugs her bag against her chest. It's a very self-proctecting and self-affection gesture. But she's not storming out the rest of the way. Distancing herself, staying on her side of the small hut. But not walking out. "I do like you— and you happen to me my type… But it doesn't matter. I don't want to go through this again. You're going to leave eventually anyway— Even if you just turn back into who you were before. Memory loss also seems to be a trend with the men in my life."
"I'm not leaving you, I won't turn into who I was before, I'm making sure of that. I can't say if we'll be together over night, considering just a day ago I had a breakup that basically put me in the hospital, but I'm giving you the choice, right here, right now." Warren points his finger on top of the hut, peering at her very seriously. "You stay, and I will make every effort in my entire body to make sure I never leave you in any way."
"Making an effort is more than most people seem to do," Gillian says quietly, as she sinks down to the floor and continues hugging her shield of a bag, cause that's what it seems to amount to right now. "But I'm not planning to be some rebound girl, or someone you're staying with out of pity, either…"
"If I needed a rebound girl, I know a perfectly good one without all the emotional attachment. But that's not what I'm looking for, that's what got me into this mess." Warren bends down to untie his boots, getting ready to slip into the hut. "I just want someone to talk to, to feel like a person, like everything's normal and alright."
"Normal's stupid and boring— and usually not worth trying to find, cause it's not nearly as interesting," Gillian says, pressing her face down against her bag for a moment, red dyed hair falling over her forehead and obscuring her face, even as she tries to look up. "You'll probably leave eventually, or I will. That's just the way the world works… but it means something that you want to try."
"I think the same about you. That you'll leave, or I'll screw it up. It always goes that way with me. The women I want die, or run off to England and get married and pregnant to the detective they've become telepathically linked with." Warren slides into the hut once he has his boots off, then crosses his legs, sighing. "Come over here."
"Quite a pair of people, aren't we," Gillian says, letting out a sigh, and checking the knot in the back of her head as she tries to get it in check, despite the rage and frustration and general heartache toward what's happened to her in the past. Once she's sure it's not going anywhere, she moves over closer. "Well, chances are I will die. I seem to die or almost die a lot. Just so you know."
"Same with me, really, but apparently I can survive point blank range grenade explosions, so I don't think I'm going anywhere. And I'm not exactly a defenseless little engineer." Warren reaches out, trying to pull her close and keep his arms around her, the comfort as much for her as it is for him. "Fighting me is a lot like fighting Batman, with all his gadgets. I always have a lot of things hidden on me. But you know, maybe our curses will cancel eachother out. We seem like blackholes of bad luck."
"I wonder if two blackholes cancel each other out, or if they make each other doubly worse," Gillian says quietly, closing her eyes as she leans against him. The emotional outburst seems to have worn her out a bit, but she's not pulling away right now, at least. "But you gotta admit, I hope, that life would have been less interesting if we were normal."
"From what I understand it, when two blackholes get together, they dance for a while, then become one." Warren didn't mean for it to sound that romantic, but, well… "I don't want you to be a rebound, alright? Let's stick to emotional support for now."
"And stopping what's happening on the eighth," Gillian adds, still keeping close to him, despite the possible conotations of his words. After all, it seems he had another girl on the side anyway. "This job needs you way more than me, but I'll stick with it as long as I can." If she can. She does have a lot riding on it too.
"I swear, I'll teach you everything I can, even after the eighth, you'll be an engineer eventually." Warren releases her to lay back, sliding his arms behind his head. "Just a heads up, but warn me if you decide to try and be my rebound in the middle of the night. I have gadgets hidden under my clothes."
ORDER: It is now your pose.
"If I decide you'd be my rebound," Gillian says with a laugh, before she shakes her head. "I think friend and teacher is what I need right now. Besides, I got Cardinal to scratch that itch if I need it." There's something about that that could be seeing if he's jealous, but as she said— he wouldn't choose her when he loves Elisabeth as much as he does. With him— that's the most she'll ever get. Or so she's convinced.
"Oh." Warren answers as his mood shifts to obvious instant silent jealousy. Cardinal of all people. "Well, then, good." And suddenly the tent is a lot quieter, with him staring up at the ceiling.
"Hey, you have random girl scratching your itch," Gillian teases after a few moments of the silence. Yes, she can feel jealousy in that lack of words. "Women have physical needs to, you know, and while you could build me a machine to handle most of them, nothing quite beats the real thing."
"I had a girl scratch my itch, once, and look where it got me? Shocked, in the hospital, then both telling a girl I don't want her to be my rebound while wanting to sleep with her at the same time, because the idea of her with the guy I hate second most in this world, drives me nuts." Warren moves his hands from behind him, then covers his face with his arms. Make the bad thoughts go away!'
"We may not have met again if it wasn't for Cardinal, you know," Gillian says, pulling back a little as he both admits he wants to sleep with her, but also admiting to hating the man second most in the world— oddly it can seem like the feeling between the two might be mutual. "Well don't kill him or anything— like I said, we're not really together."
"A lot of things wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for Cardinal. It's his audacity and the ego to do some of the things he does that makes me dislike him." Warren reaches over to poke her in the side of the head. "I don't know why you're scooting over. You act as if I've had priestly thoughts every night we've slept here, the only difference now is that I said something."''
"Well I'm definitely not a nun either," Gillian says, before drops her protective bag and stands up, moving to the door, "I'm still not happy at you for planning to leave with just a note, either, no matter your reasons. But I do understand them…" Even if they still upset her. At least she's not punching him anymore! But he's not getting laid anytime soon by her either. "But we have a lot of work to do and less time to do it in, so come on and help me."
"Just let me rest for an hour, I couldn't sleep very well in the hospital. And… thanks for being here." Warren smiles, then rolls over on to his side, closing his eyes. "This really helped me a lot."
"Get some rest and I'll make sure the work station is cleaned up— I'm not a very neat person when left to my own devises," Gillian admits with a smile back toward him, before she disappears. Though she doesn't leave the Library, and the bag being left behind might be the only indication he has that that's the case—
Until he comes out an hour later, and finds her still there, with a newly cleaned up and arranges work station.