Participants:
| Scene Title | We Have The Right To Exist Too |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | and if sending them back ends that, then neither is going to help it happen |
| Date | May 8, 2019 |
Abigail & Deckard's Brownstone
It's been a long day. Most days lately have been long. Too long, or way too short. Deckard makes his way home alone, opting to catch a bus rather than take a cab. It takes longer that way — gives him more time to cool off. That was the idea, at least.
He's still worn down when he finally lets himself in through the front door, jangling keys muffled into his palm lest they announce his presence for him before he's had a chance to stretch out and collect himself. The cut of his tweed coat is professional in a lazy professor kind of way, leather padded elbows and greyed out hair lending him dignity he doesn't deserve. Dark jeans have the opposite effect. A hazy glance around the place leaves him with no options more immediately appealing than the entrance way, so he lingers there for a few minutes, procrastinating.
No one else seems to be present other than Abigail with her Skeleton in the basement, if Deckard's doing that, working at getting laundry done. Laundry doesn't stop for Armageddon. Over and over she bends, shoving clothes from the washer into the dryer and pressing buttons, measuring out soaps, moving over to the long table and going through the motions of folding clothes. Kids, Hers, Deckard. She doesn't wash the ones for the guests. They get to do their own. So she's oblivious to Deckard coming home and his procrastination.
Deckard is. Doing that. His hand is splayed open, platinum ring brilliant white over more familiar bone. He's still not used to seeing it there. Abigail's skeleton is a ghostly apparition through the floor and wall and any earth between here and there, easily identified by movement and mannerism if not specific biological characteristics with this much interference.
He stands there for a good minute or two more, frowning over at empty picture frames, opening and closing the latch of his watch. When he finally drops his keys and paces into the place proper, it's to head for the basement door. Not like anyone is going to interrupt them down there.
The creak of the stairs give him away, the only thing as Abigail seems lost in some little mental world of her own. Cross at her neck, ring on her finger. A pink shirt with ruffles on the sleeves and hem is folded side to side, sleeves bent in then the bottom half folded up. Put into the basket marked "Natalie" on the floor. She's a bit anal really about the laundry, she has her system, and with so much clothing that the household goes through it's little wonder. "Flint?" Called up as he's coming down the stairs. "Was gonna order in for dinner. Chinese?"
"Sure." For a guy that used to subsist off of prison food, canned goods, or nothing at all, ordering in is more than fine. Deckard takes the stairs down at an easy clip, no longer stiff at the knees. No longer a lot of things. "Sounds fine." He's sober, so that's a plus, but physically incapable of keeping unhappiness out of the lines around his mouth. His shoulders are stiff, his increasingly scruffy head nearly hangdog.
The happiness couldn't have lasted too long. What with darkness around the corner. A pair of Joseph's pants are folded next, side seam to side sea. "Everyone's out for now. I doubt they'll be back for dinner but i'll order extra anyways, not like we can't have the leftovers" She always fills the air between them with words, it's as if she can't stand silence. "Natalie and Joseph miss you. Dad needs me to take them back in two days. I don't know what to do. Bring them back here or see if they can stay at Delilah's. Something. Gabriel said to not keep them near Elle. I go back to work on Monday anyways. I don't have anymore holiday to take"
"Elle's a sociopath." Potentially the wrong thing to pick to respond to, but definitely the easiest. The pair of steps he takes for the washing machine are slow. His heels drag a bit. "She could hurt them. Kill them. If she'd managed to find her own way back or decided to stay here, you and I might be piles of soot." Cheerful news! He tips his jaw down after unfolded laundry, but makes no effort to bend down and help. Odds are, he sucks at folding anyway.
"Then I'll have to ask Delilah. Or I'll have to ask Cat to take our Guests back because.." her children and Flint are her world and she'd kill in a heartbeat to protect either. "How was your day?" Generic everyday question. Some underwear, possibly Deckard, maybe joe's, nope, Joe's they're too small for Deckard.
"I went with Gabriel to see Chesterfield and Dean. They talked about things." 'Things.' A knotted clench at his jaw bites off elaboration before it has time to get unflattering, but the message is clear enough in refreshed tension and his sudden aversion to eye contact.
'And what did they have to say about impending doom" More laundry, but she stops after the last shirt to give Deckard her full attention.
Deckard doesn't answer immediately. Abigail presumably likes these people more than he does. She might have even cared about them, before some of them kicked it. His jaw lines still harder, glare persistently avoidant, brow hooded. Whatever they had to say, it bothered him.
She does, did. Of all who had died, Alexander was the one she was closest too and Isabelle. The rest. They were phoenix and they were friends, but nothing close. "That good huh"
"I don't think they care." It's hard to say. In part because he's trying not to get angry about a conversation that ended hours ago, and in part because…it's just…hard to say. He swallows, adam's apple slugging thick against the hazy bristle at his neck. "As long as they get back."
"And what's their plan then? Send them back and fuck the consequences? Send them back and sit and wait for ourselves to wink out of existence?" Now there's unhappiness, rigidity in her body. "They're here. They're alive. They cheated death and i'm sure that they can make productive lives. Look at this place. It's everything they were trying to achieve."
"Everything's ending here, one way or another. You saw the paintings." Deckard's voice gravels wet. Even unhappier now that he can see the affront that stiffens Abigail's spine and sets into her shoulders. "They're jumping ship. After that, I don't know. They want Gabriel to help them."
"So they'll save themselves" Abby murmurs. "Is Gabriel going to help them?" Laundry has for sure now, been put to the backburner as Abby turns away from it and heads towards flint and the stairs.
"He wants to. And he doesn't want to. I…dunno." Head still ducked in grudging deference to the increasingly grim state of things, Deckard stays where he is, lingering in the shadow of the stairwell. "I was distracted."
"It's not as if Anything you or I can do will stop them regardless" Abigail answers back. No chastisement for not paying attention. "DO we know when?"
Silence stretches in reply. He's holding back again, chilly eyes turned back on her while sketch calculation grinds dark in the skull behind them. "We could tell Arthur Petrelli what they're doing. We could — do something. I don't know. It's just," he leaves off for a beat, bristled chin dipped nearly to his chest, "if it won't actually change anything…"
"Things happen for a reason" That's Abigail's answer, even as she reaches out, offering her hand to Deckard. "There's a reason they were sent here, a reason why they dodged death. Going back… Going back…" In ten years, Abigail's changed. Deckard knows this. Some small amount of selfishness has creeped into her. It started with the children. "We can go to Arthur Petrelli, I'll walk in there beside you"
"We would be keeping them here to die with us." Deckard takes the offered hand automatically, long bones and knotted veins wrapped slack around her fingers. "Potentially ending everything."
"Or sending them back might, or sending them back without wiping their memories. the permutations flint are endless, but.." Blue eyes look up at him. "We'll find out What Gabriel is going to do and then from there we can.. go to Arthur Petrelli maybe. I'll do whatever is right, what ever… saves us from not existing anymore"
"What saves us from not existing may not be what's right." Still frowning to himself, Deckard firms his grip on her hand. A tug there is meant to draw her closer into him. Easily resisted, or not. He managed to make it all the way down into the basement without acquiring any kind of whiskey stink, but there's no telling how long that'll last. "I don't know. I don't understand why this is happening."
The tug is easily followed through, Abigail moving in to rest her cheek on his chest. "We have a right to exist Flint. They're no more important than you or me. We built our lives, and they built theirs. Theirs ended so soon after everything, but they're here, and they have a chance to keep living. Whos ays throwing them back will even fix it. Fuck what's right. I don't want to die Flint. Not at the hands of Phoenix. Not after everything we've done for them, with them, I don't want to loose this"
Some stored tension eases out of Deckard's chest at contact, sifting softly through her hair after a slow sigh while she speaks and he listens. He's quiet again for a little while — hardly surprising — contact limited to the lean of her against him and the other way around. "Okay." Back to the dreaded okay again. The lambent rings of his eyes skim absently over the unfolded laundry at her back.
"We stopped a man before, and killed him Flint, because he was going to kill the world. Their actions, could do the same again, only we have no Edward Ray to tell us which is the more successful percentage. That's our children who live in those rooms above and I'm not going to let them die through the selfishness of 8 people. The world deserves more, we all deserve more"
"I think they already have, is the problem." Ever the optimist, Deckard doesn't argue exactly. "Edward would fuck us over if he thought he needed to." Nothing on the subject of what he deserves. He just stands there like a rail.
"And their willing to fuck us over too Flint, all for want of changing something they don't like" If only they knew exactly, what their actions would do. That's a lot of swear words she's been using and against him, she trembles. "I wish they'd never showed up"
"They've already convinced themselves that going back is the only thing standing between us and certain doom." Rough voice fallen to a mutter at her ear, Deckard lifts his head a little at the tremble, left hand lifting into an uneasy brace at the small of her back. "There are other factors. Other people involved." None of them are terribly reassuring. "I know."
"Then we don't help them. If they're meant to find a way back, then.. they'll find a way a way back, but till then, we don't help them." She's so angry, worried, filled with fear. "It's my life"
"I know," Deckard repeats, marginally more miserably, brows pulling into a knit while he winds his arm the rest of the way around her. "I'm sorry."
He didn't expect this. A reaction. He shouldn't have said anything. It's been harder to focus, lately. Harder to see these kinds of things coming.
"I…" Christ, what to say? His mouth opens and closes, frustrated by his own inability to fumble up something that sounds like the right thing. "Ten years," is what he winds up saying eventually. Seems like longer than it sounds. "We should order dinner."
"We should" Abigail answers. "We should. I have laundry to do. I need to take the car in tomorrow get the wheels aligned.' so many little seemingly insignificant things now. When in truth she wants to grab Flint, go to some far corner of the world, grab the children and just.. exist without seeing hide or hair of people from the past. "How much longer do we have?"
"No idea." An hour, a day, a century. A ghost of a grimace pulls at the corner of his mouth when he tips his face down enough to look her over at close range, shadows drawn long against the basement lamp. "Hopefully at least forty-five minutes or we'll have sentenced some poor kid to death delivering Chinese."
There's a laugh. Last 45 minutes of your life and.. your death by delivering chinese food. But it's not enough to keep the smile on her face. She still doesn't let go of him, content to just stand there, her weight slightly pressed against his, listening to his heart thudding away.
The laugh gets a faint smile out of him in turn, also short-lived. For all that he suggested they stop doing whatever it is they're doing and go on about their evening and dinner, when she doesn't move, neither does he.
Abigail's still not moving. She's anchored against him, quiet, listening to just the creak of the walls and floors above them of the old brownstone. If she's going to die, she wants to die like this. Well no, not quite like this. She's rather it were in their backyard, watching the kids play, but that's likely not to happen, so she'll let him for once, decide, when they'll stop doing what it is that they're doing.