Participants:
Scene Title | What Is Right |
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Synopsis | The couple discusses this particular topic over wine, old movies and secrets. |
Date | May 29, 2011 |
Brennan Home
When harve is sequestered in his man cave/office, he tends to not want to be dissturbed. Of late he's been down there or a few hours each night, mostly doing work, as opposed to just playing the console below. Surfacing to help put kid after kid to bed, leaving michelle to clean up dinner this night since it was just pizza and salad ordered in.
Eventually though, he's surfaced again from the depths of the basement, out of there for the night, footsteps heavy up the stairs to the main floor. Blue plaid PJ bottoms, socked feet, white t-shirt, he's hitting buttons on his PDA before that joins his wallet and keys on the side table in the hallway where mail and other necessary objects wait in the morning. it'll be picked up and brought up to the bedroom when they go - perils of their private practice, making themselves avaailable for emergency calls.
"mish" He calls out, a game of marco-polo involving his wife.
When he emerges this time, Michelle is basking in the quiet of post-bedtime with a glass of wine and an old, black and white movie. Both French, of course. There's a box of tissue sitting nearby, although she hasn't started sobbing yet, she's ready for it.
But hearing her name gets her attention away from the TV, and she calls out from the living room, "This way, my love." And she seems to have been expecting, or maybe just hoping, him to make his way up, as there's another glass that she's already pouring wine into by the time he joins her.
Some might call that high falutin, absoloutly high class, hoity toity. To Brennan, it's just an odd evening at home where soon enough, he's easing down beside her, lifting an arm so she can curl in and then lower it, taking the fresh glass from her.
"Three weeks, trip back to your parents. I found a plane. Not too much more than the cost to fly all of us like we did before" But she's an Atmokinetic and the TSA has new rules. New rules that make traveling for him and his family oversea's a lot more harder. He tilts his face down and towards, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
"Girls all still sleeping?"
And as that arm comes up, Michelle slides right in comfortably. His news does get a smile, and the kiss makes it wider, but there is a curious lift of an eyebrow as she looks up at him.
"Thankfully, yes. Henri was awake about an hour ago, but he is peaceful for the moment." Shifting a little, she turns toward him, that look deepening some. "You haven't spent all night downstairs making travel arrangements, have you?"
'I would be a very bad husband if I had. I was just making some notes, I have a housecall to Mrs. Peterson that I promised. Her husbands not mobile enough to come to the clinic" They still do housecalls, this family, a rare thing to do." he chafes her upper arm, looking away to take a sip and swirl of the wine, satisfied, swallows it.
"I'll have to check in on Devon soon, see how he's doing" And he's holding her a little tighter now. "Make more rounds with center employee's, see what else is happening. I let things get out of control, I'm not happy with myself" Which is his way of explaining why he's been letting her shoulder more of the burden of the children than he usually does.
"Let him know he's welcome for dinner again. The girls, I think, would like to see him again." Michelle brings a hand up to his face, still cool from the wine bottle, "Believe it or not, my love, it isn't your job to babysit. But I know how you love a challenge." He loves her, after all. "When you're settled again, we will have to do an expensive dinner in Paris." To make it up to her, all that extra burden. "What's happening in your center? You'll let me know if I can help, yes?"
"Still under repair. I wouldn't be surprised if it's not back up until fall or even then. The whole Island is…" Decimated, closed down. Staten Island is the new Roosevelt Island. Harve presses his face to her hand, tilting a kiss to her palm once, twice, three times with a white toothed smile. "I'll let him know he's welcome again for a meal. He's a good kid and has lost his family. We went through a good deal together in the dome" Towards the end. "I'm not happy what Dr. Blite has done, tried to drag him in, to do. I don't think she's telling the truth either. If the DoEA or the Institute needs a medical face to get up and talk about the flu, they call up me or their in house talking head. They do it through their usual channels. What she told me, and what she told Devon are two very different things"
"Do you think they will keep it running somewhere less… depressing instead?" Michelle hasn't seen Roosevelt herself, not outside of what ended up on the news when she watched for hints of her husband. When the children had gone to bed.
Although she smiles softly at the kisses, the expression doesn't get very far as he goes on. "She would not have to drag at all, if they had asked her to speak. But we all know they have a favorite for these things already. Who better than a handsome, young doctor, hmm?" She has her favorite, too, of course. "If she says two different stories, then it seems obvious. Besides being careless, she's up to something. But what do you think she was trying to set up?"
"I don't know. It's not the DoEA runs it. The ReGenesis Foundation does. Then Melissa Pierce is trying to set up some little thing similar which will… I don't know. Devon was dropping that and mentioning that she was interested in contacting us about it. I told him that he should talk to you, that I can't lay a finger on it, that it's a conflict of interest, not to mention Mish she called me a Nazi to my face after I had helped her and tried to help her further." He rubs his free hand up and down her upper arm, looking off over at the television and the black and white movie, glossing over the flowing French.
Yana though. Odessa. "Something to do with a vaccine, maybe not. She's lying about her ability. I know that, she already said that it was weakeness detection by way of viruses, and she's a magnificent employee when it comes to them. Devon, Graeme, they think she can do more intimate things regarding them, confessed as much. I don't know mish, but I do know, that I did a very … dangerous and dirty thing when she was here the other day and I think I made her very afraid of me. Which I want."
"He is much better off talking to me about it than she would be. Someone who would say such things hardly seems like the sort of person to run a support group in the first place. Not to mention, she said this to someone very important to me." Michelle runs her finger along his jaw as he looks over to the TV, and she shifts toward him, as if there were room to get closer.
"You're getting yourself into trouble again." It's not a question, just a simple statement laced with odd nuances of amusement and pride and worry, and maybe a hint of disapproval, or a hint that there may be disapproval in the near future, depending. "What is it you did to make her afraid?"
That thing, that he never told his wife that he did in the Dome. The secret that had remained between Luis, Julie, himself and a regenerator who he never saw again. But he's not going to keep a secret from Michelle not when it's become relevant and he relays the story of Luis, Julie, Claire and the malaria, what Luis was going to do to Claire and his last second decision. THis in turn leads to explaining to Michelle what happened in the basement, and what he threatened to do to Yana.
"Not that I can follow through sometimes, the threat, is just enough"
Needless to say, the story comes as a bit of a shock, especially since this is the first she heard of it. But at the same time, his wife isn't one unfamiliar with rough situations. It doesn't save him from the displeasured look, though. "I think, sometimes, you like danger a little too much, my love," she says, letting out a heavy sigh with her last word.
"So now she is afraid. What is it you hope to accomplish, now that she is?" Those last words of his make her lift her eyebrows for a moment before she brings both hands to his face. "I know." It's a very simple statement, but there is a definite vote of confidence in it.
"That she'll think twice about what she is doing. That she'll stick her nose to the grindstone and actually put that ability of hers, if it is what the others think it might be, to use and actually help people like she was telling them she would. Tired of the grand standing Mish and the eccentricities. Tired of the people who are in it for themselves and not for the good of the human race." He leans forward, letting his face rest in her hand. "Day after day, the more I see, the more I wonder if any of it can be changed, from the inside or the outside" Her hands move when he shakes his head.
"It's in the DoEA's hands now anyways. I have to worry about Dr. Price as well. Whether she's being truthful or not. Some days, Mish, I wish we could pack the whole family up and just move to the Congo's. At least we knew who the dangerous parties were. Knew how to deal with them"
"You never did like grand standing," Michelle points out, but she leans in to give him a gentle kiss. "You're a good man, Doctor Brennan," she says, a finger tapping the tip of his nose, "And you can make a difference. You do make a difference. Because in the grand standing and the eccentricities and selfishness, you always do what you think is the right thing to do. And that is one of the reasons I fell in love with you all those years ago." Just one of them, though.
"So, maybe someday we'll pack up and move to the Congo or to Central America or wherever, but you know you're needed here, that is why you only wish it some days."
"France. We'll move to France" It's not like it wouldn't be a logical choice. "But you're right, for now, we're needed here. You don't think the DoEA won't be dragging your pretty face up on the television now instead of me, after the whole interview session on The Advocate? Better than I could do Mish. Much prettier than me. You had Dirk eating out of your hand"
"Well, I do love France," Michelle says, before his words make her chuckle. "I think he is the type that likes to eat out of hands, no? I think I like working in the office a little better than being in the limelight. For one, I think my children are easier to handle than yours." His being the likes of Yana and Luis and so forth. "But I do hope Doctor Price isn't falling into all this. The girls like her so."
"Me too" Brennan murmurs into her hair, holding her tight, the two of them entwined on the couch. "How about, for the rest of the movie, we just sit here and enjoy it and then you, and I, can go upstairs and retire early to bed, enjoy our bedroom hmmm?" He's tired, but can get energy, and there's still a near full bottle of wine to consume.
"Mmm, there now, see? You always have the best ideas." Michelle leans over for that wine, to give herself a refill, and sneaks in one other kiss before they settle in for the movie.