Participants:
partway through the scene.
| Scene Title | What God Intended |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Cat and Abigail meet up with Delphine in the midtown ruins. What happens is as god intended. No more, no less. Beware you who eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge. |
| Date | June 22, 2009 |
Standing in the ruins of Midtown, it's hard to believe New York is still a living city.
There's life enough around the fringes — the stubborn, who refused to rebuild somewhere else; the hopeful, who believe the radiation is gone, or that they somehow won't be affected. Businesses, apartment complexes, taxis and bicycles and subways going to and fro — life goes on. Perhaps more quietly than in other parts of the city, shadowed by the reminder that even a city can die, but it does go on.
Then there is the waste. The empty core for which the living city is only a distant memory. Though a few major thoroughfares wind through the ruins, arteries linking the surviving halves, and the forms of some truly desperate souls can occasionally be glimpsed skulking in the shadows, the loudest noise here is of the wind whistling through the mangled remnants of buildings. Twisted cords of rebar reach out from shattered concrete; piles of masonry and warped metal huddle on the ground, broken and forlorn. Short stretches of road peek out from under rubble and dust only to disappear again shortly afterwards, dotted with the mangled and contorted forms of rusting cars, their windows long since shattered into glittering dust.
There are no bodies — not even pieces, not anymore. Just the bits and pieces of destroyed lives: ragged streamers fluttering from the handlebar which juts out of a pile of debris; a flowerbox turned on its side, coated by brick dust, dry sticks still clinging to the packed dirt inside; a lawn chair, its aluminum frame twisted but still recognizable, leaning against a flight of stairs climbing to nowhere.
At the center of this broken wasteland lies nothing at all. A hollow scooped out of the earth, just over half a mile across, coated in a thick layer of dust and ash. Nothing lives here. Not a bird; not a plant. Nothing stands here. Not one concrete block atop another. There is only a scar in the earth, cauterized by atomic fire. This is Death's ground.
It's a bright, sunshiney day, but Midtown, as ever, tends to suck the life out of things. Still, the morning light makes a valiant effort, out here on the fringes of the more dangerous ends of midtown. There's tattered strips of warning tape, long since broken through and neglected to get replaced, littering the city street empty of people but not empty of car parts, shattered and charred concrete, broken glass.
Around the time she had bid them to meet come and her— them being Helena's people, whoever it is they want her to fix— Delphine is sitting on the steps of a gutted building, just outside, with her head thrown back to face the sky, letting sunlight beat down on her. There's no Ferryman safe house out this way, but then, she never promised to stick to only their locations. She has places she can go, too.
And maybe this is a test. Just a little. If not for them… She turns her gaze downwards, looks at her own hand, and places it on the blackened step just next to her. In the glare of the morning light, it might be hard to tell the shimmer of light barely visible around her palm, but her focus is there as opposed to watching out for the approach of others.
She knows where to go, the meeting place agreed to when she contacted Delphine for this purpose. The location is approached, Cat dressed casually with a baseball hat covering her head and part of her features, a guitar case carried across one shoulder. Maybe it holds a musical instrument, maybe for this excursion it conceals weapons. She's done both at times. She also has Abby with her, for the purposes of restoration, and a certain message the blue-haired one left at the security desk. She intends to address that matter, but not so much here and now.
Stepping around the corner of one damaged building, dodging a pile of car parts, those steps come into view. "Thank you," she greets the woman who sits there and waits, "for coming out. This is Abby. Abby, Delphine."
Thank you Columbia for not having classes on Mondays. She can sleep in. Or she can tag along with Cat, nearly vibrating from what this run into the midtown ruins means. God will forgive her. God will give it back. She'll be whole and normal. The neon blue haired woman has stayed quiet beside cat as they picked their way inwards, taking care not to trip on debris as they go.
Jeans, sneakers, layered long and short sleeved shirt and her messenger bag. She's obviously the younger of the pair and just as quiet. So exceited at what this all means that she's not paying close attention to the woman on the steps, her palm on the blackened steps, just looking from cat to the upturned faced woman. "Hello" After a moment, accent clear and crisp.
Hazel eyes swiftly turn to them, as if startled from a reverie, and offers a smile after a second. "Mornin'," she says, her own accent lilting and snipping off pieces of her words. There's a rustle of skirt as she gets to her feet, leaving behind the stairs— and what seems to be a hand print where her palm was resting, the black of the fire-blast taken away, grey granite in the shape of her palm and long fingers instead.
"'s good to meet you, Abby," she says, seemingly unperturbed by the blue hair as she nods to the woman, a hand up to fidget with the ends of her own wavy, brown hair that comes down in haphazard curls almost to her elbows. "You bring anythin'?" she adds, looking to Cat.
"I did," Cat replies. She pulls the bottle of Vicodin from a pocket, displaying it for Delphine's benefit, and stands aside for the two of them to accomplish their purpose here. Her mind wanders some, recalling the situation of her own repair and the sensation of it. Eyes move between the two, watching and waiting.
"Oh heavenly father" Cat's passing over Vicodin and Abigail's suddenly gone from excited and nervous to stock still, breath held after she spoke. Delphine's every movements watched with trepidation. Along with all this is the former healers heart, sinking low. No, no, this is unfair. She's supposed to warn her off of something else, to be the temptations of something else. A handsome guy! A red apple at the farmers market. Heck, maybe gypsy's!
Her hand comes up from where it rested on her messenger bag to stop Cat from moving away. "I can't"
The Irishwoman blinks, rapidly, at Abby's reaction, and even takes a step back for the woman's benefit, her sandals scraping against the road and hands coming up to fidget and wring together. "I'm sorry, there somethin' wrong?" she asks, and glances from the Vicodin, and back to Abigail. "Oh, no, it won't harm you none, I've been told it feels kind of nice. The drug's for me." Smile?
The eyes which had been moving between Abby and Delphine settle now on the one with the neon hair, quizzicality settling onto Cat's features. "You can't, Abby?" she asks, her voice calm. "What's wrong?" The mind goes to work, wondering over what could be the cause of the reluctance, and her voice addressing the drugs brought for the purpose. "What she does sometimes causes her distress, the Vicodin helps with that," she assures. "I've not turned into a drug dealer."
'No, no" A slender hand comes up, a soothing, placating motion with it towards Delphine. "No, not the pills, lord in Heaven if you need those, for whatever you do then I understand, heavens do I ever understand. I used to need enough caffeine enough to kill a horse after I healed people." No. Oh Lord why? Why? She wants to plead it out loud. What did I ever do to you to deserve this? If ever there was a sign that she wasn't meant to have it anymore, this was it. Tears start to rim the bright blue haired girl's eyes.
"If I let her Cat something bad will happen. Not something small, something big. I went to Pastor Sumter, I saw it. Adam and eve with the fruit of the tree of knowledge. They consumed it and were cast out of Eden. She, you" She looks to Delphine "You were offering me an apple and there was a snake around your wrist, going for it. You grew a beautiful tree from the soil beneath concrete, it grew so big and green and beautiful, but you plucked an apple from it's boughs and offered it to me" Abby looks back to Cat. "God.. God doesn't want me to have it back"
For the most part, Delphine seems confused, glancing towards Cat as if the more familiar woman is inclined to offer an explanation. She starts to shake her head at this notion of a vision, of Biblical ideas, her face becoming a little flushed that she would have anything to do with such analogies— and then, the blood in her face draining, instead, as Abby describes the way she grew of a tree. Her hands come up to nervously push back her hair, and when she might normally be saying something, she says nothing.
She's surprised to see Abby balk at what's to happen here, taken aback to hear the tale of her vision from Joseph, but Cat is also curious. She's had the benefit of visions from him twice, and the first of them came to pass. Aria was saved from Niles by the details in it. The events were literal, not metaphorical as precognitive revelations can sometimes be. So it is that she wonders about the details of this one. Her eyes settle speculatively on Delphine in time to see the way her face pales, her hair being nervously pushed back, the silence. "Can you do things like that, Delphine?" she asks. "Set the ground right, make it do what it's supposed to, even in a blasted place like this?"
But then she turns toward Abby, asking "You said the vision was of Adam and Eve and she made a tree grow, offered an apple. But, you see, it's just three women here, and there's no tree pushing out of the ground. No man to make the sight complete and correct. Pastor Sumter's visions don't deal in metaphor, Abby. They work in snapshots."
"There was no Adam and Eve Cat. It was here, here in Midtown, in the ruins. It was Delphine" HER hand flings out to gesture to the other woman. "She was dressed like a hippy, and she was barefoot. She was pulling up chunks of the road and putting her palm on the soil and after there was glowing from her hand she stepped back and a beautiful tree grew cat. A tree Cat, that was worthy of being in the Garden of Eden. Surely you've done read the Bible. You can't be who you are and have skipped the good book. There was no one else, there was just Delphine and myself and she was giving me an apple from the tree. She had a snake wrapped around her wrist."
A few tears fall now, the young woman is devastated. "I can't, you have to understand, I believe in a higher faith, I believe with all my soul in the Lord Almighty and that he does things for a purpose, that he sends people when we need them most. Divine providence. I also believe in what Pastor Sumter gives in his visions. They're messages from god. If you even tried to fix what Tyler Case took away I don't know what might happen"
Cat gets a flickery glance, but Abby gains Delphine's attention, eyes narrowed, almost feline in her suspicion as she speaks, as if sensing some sort of trick as she winds a curl of hair around her finger. After a moment, she says, "When they were testin' the limits've my power— I was given all kinds of things. Bits and pieces from the ruins; they were testin' radiation levels, to see what I could do for it. I couldn't say what the results were, it isn't like they told me anythin' really, save for instructions. Do this, do that."
She glances over her shoulder, towards the long stretch of neo-ruins, then back towards the two women. "Maybe I should show you somethin'. But it ain't anything that I want chatted about round the watercooler, do you understand?"
Her eyes rest on Abby as she speaks. "I know the story," Cat replies in an even tone. "You spoke of it like there was a man with her, to represent Adam's presence. You didn't say it was like that scene," she softly states. She resists the urge to speak of it as an allegory, a metaphor, this is Abby and trying to make that point would be pointless. The Good Book, she muses inwardly, indeed. The one written by men, and written in a way calculated to support women being under the thumbs of men, while they work as the primary supporters of religion and get crapped on by it most. But these thoughts aren't voiced, this is neither time nor place. Her mental wheels turn, a response is being formed, but it stops as she hears Delphine speak of her experiences with Arthur Petrelli in the labs of Pinehearst and offer a demonstration. Maybe this is metaphor, after all, the vision Abby got. Maybe it was filled with metaphor because it was given to Abby.
"I won't spread it around wildly," Cat assures Delphine, as she watches to see what takes place in the demo. A thought is forming, growing in her mind like the tree coming from the concrete Abby spoke of.
If the vision was filled with metaphor, the snake could be Arthur.
Between Delphine and Cat, Abigail just falls silent, a sleeve wiping at her eyes as she nods to the kinky haired woman. "I won't" Tell that is. One arm wrapped around her waist, the other trying to dry her cheeks and soak up any others that slip. She's going to make a tree grow. Watch. She's bet … five dollars on it.
"Alright. Come with me."
Whatever it is she desires them to witness, it doesn't appear to be on this street. Delphine waves a hand, gestures for them to follow, and moves down the pavement, sandals making alternate sounds between slapping against the sole of her feet and scraping against the concrete with each step.
She moves around a corner of a broken-tooth building squats in crumbling brick and twisted metal, and there's a lamp post, as ordinary as any lampost save for the fact the metal is black and the head has been sheered off entirely, just a simple, jutting metal prong from the ground, the concrete broken up around it.
Abby may have to lose her five dollars, but perhaps not all of it. Between the cracks in the pavement, green leafed weeds seem to make tendrils that spill out in fine curls, and thicker still, a fatter vine has managed to shove its way up through the cracks, shifting aside some of the rock so it might curl up and around the lamppost, the leaves a vibrant kind of green - and there are even the dots of small flowers opening their petals towards the sun.
"They had me somethin' like this— I wanted to see… figure out what they would have me do," Delphine tells them, once she comes to a halt before the display. She lifts a hand to toy with one of the bigger flowers drooping from its fine stalk, as far up the lamppost as to be level with her shoulder. "I didn't push myself to do more'n that, it— it hurts more every time I use it. Never used to be that way, not until Pinehearst."
Her eyes widen at the sight of the flora brought to life here, and it sparks a flashback to a piece of prophetic art she once saw. Vegetation growing out of the Midtown Crater, turning it green and alive. The varieties of plants are seen in Cat's head, the black nightshade and the species she was unable to identify both. It causes the look of understanding to fill her eyes, of making an association. "Impressive," she breathes out. "Can you cause new species of plant life to emerge, Delphine? And…" To clarify. "It didn't hurt to do this before Pinehearst, or you couldn't do it before going there?"
Okay, she thinks, Arthur definitely is the snake. He seemed decent at first, the way he talked so positively of wanting to support them, advance their causes. Like dealing with the Devil. Tempting. Why does it hurt Delphine? Connection with the effort to overcome the radiation, to make the soil fertile again? Maybe that's why Arthur didn't take her ability away. Pain. But… why would a regenerator be worried about that at all?
"Chocolate Vine"
Abigail's seen this plant before. Her mother tends some around the trellis that covers their front porch. "It's called a chocolate vine. they look like wild roses, but they have no thorns" Abigail shuffles forward, kneeling down to look at the plant, reach out and touch it. The splash of green within the destruction of midtown. The sliver, fragment of beauty in the ravaged city center. "This.. this is a beautiful gift that you have Delphine. That it costs you so much makes every little bit that you do with it that much more sacred"
Abigail's slender fingers trace the petals of one of the budding flowers, as if she could coax it out all on her own. But she can't. It would need a few more days of growing. There's temptation to dig it out of the ground carefully and cart it back home to her place. Plant it in a trough and give it latticing so it can grow along one wall of her place.
Delphine backs away a little, watching Abby with the plant, fragranced like its name sake, before glancing to Cat. "No, it was my ability before," she clarifies. "And it always cost me somethin'. It put me in hospital once before, but that was— somethin' a trifle bigger than what I've done for you and yours, and this." A nod to the plant. "But I never used it as much as I did when I was in Pinehearst, and every time I did, it got a little bit worse. And— I'm not sure, I didn't choose what would grow, it just grew."
She smiles to Abby, a wan smile, tilts her head. "It'll probably die out here, if you were lookin' to take it away with you," she says, making a guess based on the way the blue-haired woman is crouched down to observe the plant.
Her eyes rest on the plant, taking in every feature of it, then shift to Delphine's face. Cat forms a slight smile, and a theory. "You put things back the way they should be, it seems. If you don't know what would grow, it just does, maybe what you're doing is causing things to grow in that spot that would've been there had humans never come to occupy the ground? If, for example, you went to a plowed over field where tomatoes were grown and used your gift, tomatos would grow there." That'd be interesting to see tested, but given the pain it causes Delphine she doesn't suggest doing so. The woman's had more than enough of that and them some.
"Maybe the pain is from using some small physical part of you to spark the plants, or the mental concentration of it. Perhaps both." The voice has a musing tone, just before she turns toward Abby. "Metaphor. I think Arthur is the snake, metaphorically. But she's gotten away from him, they don't by any means work together."
Abigail frowns, blonde brows furrowing delicately across her brow. A vacant nod offered up to Delphine and her suggestion to unearth the plant and take it home with her. She doesn't have anything to carry it back in unless she goes hunting in adjacent buildings and hope there's a tin or something to hold it. "Arthur is not the snake" It's spoken like Abigail firmly believes that.
"Arthur is not the snake. Does it always work Delphine. What you do? What if you do, what you do, to me, and something goes wrong. The apple is temptation, the gift. The snake the price." Abigail start digging her nails into the cracks of pavement that the greenery springs up from to try and pull back on it, expose the hidden ground beneath to the sun and get an idea of how deep it's roots have gone.
"It's your vision, isn't it?" Delphine says, her head tilting to the side. "All I can tell you is that I'm not the snake. Maybe Arthur isn't either. But gifts are a double-edged fuckin' sword. Yeah, mine's pretty, and I've been chased for the last two years for it. Most blessings are curses too, simply by virtue of havin' 'em." She speaks bitterly, and quietly, the sum of her own experiences defining the edge of her tone.
She blows out a sigh. "I don't quite know what my power's meant to be for. Some things I can fix, some things I can't. I couldn't heal a man's broken wrist when he fell down the stairs, but I can steal away burn scars when he fought in the fight ring on Staten Island. Pinehearst and Arthur seem to have figured it out, anyway. Maybe you want to ask them." A smile twists her mouth. "And if you do, get back t'me on it."
"I'll not be asking Pinehearst anything," Cat replies sourly. "My last encounter with Arthur didn't go so well. I was supposed to meet Father, but it was Arthur using his shape. He ripped my ability out and tried to kill me. If I get anything from them, it'll be from their files after he's defeated." She's thinking killed, but says defeated. Abby's around, she won't talk of killing around her. Not even of a man like that. "Arthur may or may not be the snake, but he certainly is a snake."
Abby is addressed. "Nothing out of order will happen if she repairs you, Abby. I can attest to that. She set me right after what Arthur did. I've not grown a tail, or a third breast, or antlers springing from my forehead. And I'm not possessed either. But it's your choice, Abby. I don't believe Delphine will repair you against your will. Just, please consider the vision is perhaps a warning she may need to be freed from some influence in the future, a thing we can prevent. If you choose not to be repaired," she adds, "please tell Mr. Deckard you declined. He won't let himself be repaired before you are."
But then there's an acknowledgment of Delphine's words. "It's true," she somberly adds. "Even a perfect memory has aspects of curse. Some memories I wish weren't so sharp and easily brought to the surface to relive again and again."
And, being pragmatic, she asks "Do you have time for me to bring someone else to you, Delphine?"
"Logan got you too. They said I wasn't the first one they'd taken to heal their fighters. Mr. Muldoon, he liked to stockpile healers didn't he. Glad to see that you escaped from him. I'm only sorry that you ended up with Pinehearst afterward" Abigail murmurs. She didn't think Delphine was the snake. The snake could be a great many things. "It was never a curse. What I did, do, have done. It was never a curse. To some it might be" Abigail looks up and over at Cat. She knew that already. That Flint wouldn't let himself be fixed until she was fixed. Irrevocably tied to the man who likely wishes he wasn't. To someone so polarly opposite. "But it was never to me" There's a glance over to Delphine and then a nod.
At the name Logan, and then the name Muldoon, Delphine scowls in obvious distaste. "Men like that I'd have line up so I can kick 'em in the balls in turn," she mutters, watching the interaction between the two women for a moment, back straightening when Abby seems to give her consent. "Alright, then. And aye, I can see another for today if you like," Delphine tells Cat, before stepping close to Abigail. The breeze picks at the three women's hair, the flowers on the vine, as she extends out a hand towards the blue haired woman.
For a moment, that light Cat will recognize, white and pure, shimmers across Delphine's hand, a tendril of smokey essence reaching out, almost brushing against Abby's cheek, the small fairylight spiraling around it— before that light seems to seep into Abby's hairline, siphon through her sky-blue locks and letting it turn the angelic blonde she was once known for.
Delphine starts and blinks once, twice, watching the light die away once it meets the ends of Abby's hair and completes the change, and shakes her head, confused. "There's nothing wrong with you, love," she murmurs.
"Thanks, Delphine," Cat replies, her eyes focusing on the white light as it comes out and fixes Abby's hair. Much better, she thinks to herself when the blue is gone. While she agrees about Logan and Muldoon, and might have scowled with the mention of them, or laughed at the idea of testicle kicking them, there isn't time. Focus settles on Abby, her head tilts and she seems puzzled, then turns back toward Delphine. "She still has her ability?"
It's so pretty. How can she call it a curse when… the very act of it produces something beautiful. But then, she can understand, the curse is the price you pay in the end for the blessing, miracle, ability dispensing. Whatever you want to call it. There's a moment of hope, it's so very close and then… there was nothing wrong with you, love. There was nothing wrong with her. Just her hair.
"Dear God, Deliver me to my passion. Deliver me to my brilliance. Deliver me to my intelligence. Deliver me to my depth. Deliver me to my nobility. Deliver me to my beauty. Deliver me to my power to heal. Deliver me to You. Amen"
The worlds tumble from her mouth, reciprocating the touch that Delphine administered to her only to the woman's hand instead of cheek. Pushing outwards, waiting, hoping that she's wrong. That she's very wrong. Inwardly begging to feel that click, the flip of the switch that tells her God is listening and hearing her, will answer her.
But nothing comes.
Delphine allows her hand to be taken, saying nothing at first in reply to Cat as she watches Abby's efforts, her expression serene if rueful, before the prayer finally comes to a halt, and like many prayers spoken, goes unanswered. "She hasn't got one," Delphine corrects Cat, drawing her hand away. "Case took somethin' away that wasn't there to begin with. Or shouldn't have been. I don't know - but she's fixed now. Just as God intended." Maybe a poor choice of words.
"You're saying she doesn't have the genetic code for it, and never did, Delphine?" Cat asks, puzzled. That just doesn't add up at all. If she doesn't have SLC, and never did, then there'd have been nothing for Tyler to strip away because it didn't work like every other Evolved person's ability. And if Abby had perhaps been among the infants given the serum by Primatech years before, like she herself allegedly was, then Delphine would've been able to restore her. Unless… Father lied? She also never got a sample of his DNA to test the claim she was the child of a couple who died in a lab fire, after all. The ability she has may be naturally come by. She may not be the daughter of dead researchers who was slipped into the life of Mason and Jennifer Chesterfield's own deceased offspring.
With these thoughts her brows are furrowed, the wheels seeming to visibly turn behind her eyes, as she asks a loaded question. "When you repaired me, Delphine, did you sense any signs of my stolen ability having come through genetic modification, a serum; or was it inherited from my parents?"
'She's saying Catherine Chesterfield, that God gave it to me, for as long as he needed it to be in my hands and now it's in the hands of another" Abigails voice is tight, looking from Delphine to Cat.
"That I wasn't the same as the rest of you." Divine touch. God's conduit. Different.
She had been god's special ray of sunshine.
"Can you not just accept that there's something you can't and won't be allowed to know Catherine? That maybe that gift from Joseph wasn't arthur as a snake and Delphine needing to be free'd from him. That maybe it was Delphine's gift that I was being told to avoid. Don't eat from the tree of knowledge" Abigail lips press tight for a moment, looking angry.
"The only thing they had to do was to not eat from the tree, and they did. They bit and they saw that they were naked and god knew that they had eaten from the tree because they were ashamed of their nakedness. His visions Cat, they're personal. The more you open yourself UP to them, the more they make sense to the one who saw it" Down the now blonde sink, digging into her messenger bag and pulling out stuff. her wallet, her keys, a textbook, a few energy bars. The latter are offered up to Delphine.
"Sometimes it's not fucking science. It's Divine. It shouldn't be questioned, just accepted. It's gone. What I was, what I could do. it's gone Cat. Delphine tried. She fixed what wasn't right. My hair"
Delphine remains quiet during Abby's words, a hand up to her temple in gentle massage of the headache unfurling there for reasons not to do with argument, and watches this clash between what can be explained away with all the logic and science in the world, the data collected in Cat's head, versus the pure belief of the mysterious residing in the blonde woman out of the three. Delphine comes from a place of not wanting to know and so stands awkward for a moment, and takes the energy bars mostly because they're offered to her.
"I'm sorry," she states when there's time to do so, fingers picking at the wrapping, splitting it. "Cat, I— just know when things are wrong, and I put 'em back like they were meant to be. I don't know any more than that."
She nibbles on the corner of the bar, takes a bite. "Can't explain everything," she offers, a little helplessly.
Left with her own mystery, at least for the time it takes to think and recall some things, Cat does just that. Tyler Case was accosted by Brian Winters and Veronica Sawyer before Primatech darkholed the poor man and stole all his memories, left him just the shell that now calls himself John Doe. Brian's ability was channeled briefly into Agent Sawyer in that encounter, but it was unstable. The replicants she made swiftly broke down just like the victims of experimental serum who suffered what Father termed biological rejection. She, in effect, had no ability and being given one by Tyler failed to take. It may have been that she had something about her which made her reject the ability while other non-Evolved persons wouldn't, or it may be that something similar would happen in all such cases and this is the only one she knows about. The evidence supports her theory about Abby, however.
She glances calmly at Abby. There's no argument, no debate over the topic. "I'll explain the reasons behind the theory another time," she offers, "if you'll listen. If not, I'll never mention it again." Her thoughts are traveling to bringing someone else out to be repaired.
Whether she'll listen or not, that's something for another day. For now, Abigail's digging fingers into the soil around the coffee vine. Teasing the plant gently from it's home, taking the soil with her. Irradiated or no, it can be taken care of when she's home. Fresh soil, food, find an ideal spot for it. She's not leaving it out here. It quickly comes free though, roots trailing out of the handfuls of soil that is trapped between her curved palm and she eases it into the messenger bag. Secure, it's time to unwind the vine from the pole, taking care not to snap delicate stems or loose budding flowers.
"I'll take care of it Delphine. I'll have my momma tell me what it needs, and I know someone who can work miracles with flowers. It'll live" SHe looks over towards the other woman. "Thank you greatly for your time and your gift. It didn't do what I had hoped it would do, but I am grateful none the less that you did it. I'll keep you in my prayers and hope that god see's fit to protect you and keep you safe"
Delphine moves to help untangle the vine with Abigail, plucking its clinging body free of charred metal and passing it over to Abby to do with as she wishes. "Thank you," she says, a trifle warmer than she's spoken before. "I like the hair, by the way. Never done that before." She glances to Cat, offers her a smile. "I'll head back for your peoples safehouses, there's one not far from here. You won't find it difficult in contactin' me. Least not for the day."
Silent now, she watches Abby with the plant, planning to visit her at a later time, perhaps the next morning. Cat has this, and that message she was sent, to go over.
"Friend did it. Glad I won't have to wait till she comes back to fix it" Tattoo though, yeah, that might be still there. She draped and winds the vine around one strap, near where it meets and connects with the bag. "We should go, case we get visitor's. I'll need to get the plant in real soil again soon." The once again blonde wraps one arm around Delphine before she peels away from helping with the plant, squeezing the woman then lets go. Her lapse into silence meaning that she's ready to take off.