Why Don't You Tell Me My Future

Participants:

ff_des_icon.gif bf_lynette_icon4.gif bf_odessa_icon4.gif vf_ruiz_icon4.gif

Scene Title Why Don't You Tell Me My Future
Synopsis A glimpse into the life that was, or could have been.
Date December 1, 2018

The Featherweight


Aboard the Featherweight, Destiny paces nervously through the cabin. For roughly the twenty-fifth time this evening, she checks her reflection in a broken compact mirror she keeps in a music box. When she hears footsteps approaching, she slaps the lid shut and pushes the wooden case to the back wall of the shelf on which it’s nestled.

Odessa exchanges a nervous glance with her brother and his wife as she steps up onto the deck of the ship. “Hello?” she calls ahead, squinting in the dark in an attempt to bring the silhouette backlit within the cabin into focus.

The door bursts open and Destiny all but stumbles out into the night to greet her guests. Both blondes stop in their tracks and stare at one another in a mixture of awe and complete shock.

“Whoa…” Destiny, almost nose-to-nose with Odessa, breathes out a note of wonder. “Jimmy told me you were—” She is properly identical to the other woman, apart from her shorter hair and the fact that she’s apparently nearly two decades younger. She thrusts out her hand, which her double takes somewhat numbly.

“Destiny Ruiz!” The teenager greets with a great big grin. “Man, I’m gonna be pretty when I’m old!”

Not too far off is the only bystander to this mysterious event. Ruiz never got to properly meet any of his other selves, not yet. He’d been dead in one of the worlds, the first world they travelled to, and— things had been complicated in the next one. And he’s pretty sure there hasn’t been a Mateo Ruiz in this world for many years. Hopefully he was still alive somewhere, trying to get back. Or otherwise happy.

But he doubted it.

“I’m still not entirely sure how she’s so young, but yes— I agree.” She’ll be good looking when she gets more years under her belt. Though he’s not sure what will happen with that whole… being possibly raised by the man she married in another world. That part was weird. “I think we were actually raised together, here— “ Wait. “I’m not supposed to be super young too, right? I mean I kind of am anyway, I’m ten, but that’s cause Iwas born on Leap Year.” Forty, ten, same difference. It technically made her older than him in every world cause he has had so few birthdays.

"Obviously, time shenanigans," Lynette offers, her smile teasing. It's forced, but only Ruiz knows her well enough to tell. "Destiny, this is Odessa— " she almost says her married name, but stops short. She had her own experience with one of her doubles being surprised at who she married. No need to force that on these two. "She's traveling with us," she ends, even though that much is obvious. As for the much wider age difference, she turns to Ruiz to put a hand on his arm. "We are curious about your history with your brother," she says to Destiny, "but I think we'll let you and Odessa have your turn at twenty questions first."

Because meeting yourself is sort of an odd experience. She wants them to have a moment to adjust.

“It’s good to see you ag—” Destiny begins, only to be cut off.

“Old?” Odessa leans back from her enthusiastic younger self and glances back to Mateo and Lynette as if to ask for assurance. “I’m not old.” She drops the handshake and blushes faintly, embarrassed by her defensiveness about something so insignificant.

Destiny’s shoulders come up toward her ears. Although she and Odessa are the same height, she seems much smaller in the way she carries herself. Even more so when she shrinks up like that. “You’ve gotta be pushing seventy, right?”

What?!

“Sixty?”

Odessa takes a step back and gapes at Destiny now, gesturing vaguely for someone to say something about this personal affront.

“No, no!” Destiny waves her hands in front of her, eyes big as she realizes she’s actually offended her other self. “It’s okay! I know your secret!”

As the sister he’s actually known the longest gets defensive, Ruiz smiles with a kind of amusement but also waves his hands as if to promote his innocence on the mention of her age before looking back at the younger version of his sister in surprise and to shake his head. No. No she definitely was not that old.

The lack of Lynette revealing the secret he felt they would all be dancing around for a while, her older self’s married name, doesn’t surprise him. Though “Destiny” using his name still did. Not to mention the sheer mystery of Destiny herself.

“What secret?” Is what he asks, though, deciding to go with the simple question.

"Destiny, you're going to make her faint," Lynette says, smile turning crooked. "Don't worry, Des. She's too young. Everyone over twenty looks old to her. Even though we have aged remarkably, right?" She looks at Ruiz, there, amusement more genuine for a moment.

On the matter of Odessa's secret, Lynette tilts her head in thought. "Wouldn't it work the other way, Destiny? If she stops time for everyone but herself, she would continue to age while no one else did. So she would look older than she is on paper. Which— Odessa, if you're actually a teenager, we're going to have to talk." This is a tease, trying to make the moment a little more jovial.

Destiny looks back and forth between the assembled group with a mixture of confusion and wonder. “You’re,” she points to Mateo, “exactly as old as you’re supposed to be. But I’ve always been the older sibling because you’re only— Wow, you’re ten now!” She laughs softly, genuinely pleased and somewhat shocked to realize exactly how old that really makes her elder brother. Or the man who should be her brother, at any rate.

“Thank you,” Odessa murmurs to Lynette, feeling some modicum of vindication at it being proclaimed that she’s aged remarkably. It removes some of the sting from whatever well-intentioned ramble Destiny’s gone on.

The girl’s eyes then settle on the identical woman, asking in a whisper, “You stop time? Like for everyone?”

Odessa frowns faintly, sounding almost nervous as she answers with her own questioning, “Yes?”

“That’s so cool!” Destiny jumps up and down in place, clapping her hands with excitement. “I wish I could do that!”

What?

Yep, he’s ten now, and that still makes Ruiz grin even though he often hasn’t gotten to joke about it much. Not too many years from now his own daughter will have technically have had more birthdays than he has. It’s one of those logistic jokes, not at all related to abilities, but it seemed even funnier when it seems his younger sister both older than him birthday wise but so young physically. “Yes, you both are beautiful and young, but also beautifully mature, too.” Something he is now suspecting that Destiny might not be for a while.

Physically at least. At her rendition that stopping time for everyone is cool and how she wishes she could do that, he starts to realize what that might mean. “Wait, let me see your watch,” he asks quietly, moving forward to gesture her hand up. He had learned to recognize when it was running slow, even if he wasn’t a watch maker or anything, but it was his way of knowing if his sister was taking her meds. She often wasn’t. Which he had believed had been what killed her, even if he long knew it was a lie to cover up her true murderer.

“Can you only stop time for yourself? Are you always stopped? Does time move differently for you? Are we talking really fast or really slow or… how does music sound to you?” Now there’s an onslaught of questions suddenly and he glances back at the mature beautiful women with an apology for them as well as the teen.

Lynette chuckles when Ruiz devolves into all those questions, and she reaches over to put her hand on his arm. "It's alright, love, we're all curious." She can't help but be indulgent of his quirks. It's part of what she loves about him. She looks over at Destiny, adding her own question to the pile. "Are you not also a time manipulator? Or does it work differently for you?"

So far, all the versions of herself had the same power, although the applications were often drastically different.

Des’ demeanor shifts as the questions come in. “I’m not supposed to talk about it…” It was fine when she thought they already knew, but because they don’t, she’s suddenly having second thoughts about how forthcoming she should be about her own apparent secret. She stares at her older self for a long moment, as if asking if she can trust her.

But if she can’t trust herself, then who can she trust?

“Time works differently for me. It just… doesn’t affect me like it should. If I hold real still, everything stops. But as soon as I move again, that’s it. I don’t… I don’t really have any control over it. It’s just how it is.” Destiny shrugs, a little helpless in the face of her own explanation. No one’s ever managed to unravel the mystery of what she can do. She’s always just hid it away.

“Music sounds like calm,” she adds as almost an afterthought, looking to Mateo. “Sometimes it felt like if we sat together real quiet, we could hear the noises in each other’s heads.” The look that draws from her double is one of understanding, and sympathy.

The sound in each other’s heads.

That earns a startled look for a moment, as if Ruiz was surprised to hear her word things like that, but then not surprised at all. Most people didn’t know about that. Lynette knew, and now really knew. The Kaylee they’d left behind in the previous world because she had found love had known, because she could hear it. And his Odessa had known, because they talked about the way their abilities behaved. “My Des’ ability didn’t work like that. She could stop time in the immediate area, or for specific people if she wanted. But not for long and not… not like that.” No, that was very different.

As he says that he’s rubbing the watch on his wrist. My Des.

With a quiet glance toward the Odessa that was present, he takes in a slow breath and looks back at the younger one. “My world was destroyed by Vanguard too. By a virus that they released. Elisabeth and Magnes appeared one day and gave us hope that we could use my ability to move to another world. We did. But not before I lost you. My you.”

And then he glances toward Lynette, dark eyes sad. “And the Lynette from my world, too.”

Lynette puts her hand on Ruiz's back, a piece of comfort at that reminder of all he's lost. She lingers in a moment of silence for the two women she never got to meet. Ruiz has told her enough about them, though, that she feels a connection to them all the same.

"It's interesting, isn't it? How the worlds we came from shaped our powers. You've had to hide in yours, and it's made your power just that much different." It's a turn away from the grief, as they all have had enough of it. Back to a topic she sees as less heavy.

Des blinks her wide eyes as she listens to the explanation of how the Ruizes come from different worlds, and how other versions of her are different. She isn’t sure she would have believed it before her time in the Ark, with the Looking Glass.

“Wow.” The girl lets out a low whistle. “That’s wicked.” But her smile is short-lived, because there was sorrow there too. They’d known loss. She understands that well.

The shift away from her age has calmed Odessa down and given her much to contemplate. She isn’t sure how best to ask the question she wants to ask, and it’s written in the lines of her face. She decides it’s best done like a band-aid. Just be done with it. “Do you know your parents, Destiny? I’ve only met my mother. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find her.”

Des’ mouth drops open in a soft o shape. “I… Yeah. I guess it’s okay if I tell you guys.” Finally tired of standing, the girl leads everyone below deck where they can sit around a table and talk, out of the night air.

Once she takes her seat, Des begins her tale. “I was born in Odessa, Texas — way far away from here. Sometimes Jimmy calls me that,” her gaze flickers to her older self, “Odessa.” She smiles a little. Apparently she doesn’t mind the nickname. “When I was still little, Mateo came to live with us. He was Special, like me, and needed somewhere to go. So my mom and dad adopted him.”

Odessa’s head turns to look at Mateo, like maybe if she studies him, she’ll find some way to remember this. Even though this isn’t their history that Destiny is recounting.

“Life was pretty normal. I guess as normal as it can be for someone like me. We all stayed together, keeping our secret, until Mateo grew up and left to find his real mom.” Des’ voice get small after that as she continues, “He wasn’t around when… When the world found out about people like us.”

It was interesting. Fascinating, even. And in this world they had been raised together and could remember it. Ruiz had known that they were connected, and known that they had a past together, that they had lived together as children. A big brother and a little sister. But this just made it more… real somehow. Parents that took him in. If the past he did remember hadn’t been entirely fabricated he could see why family members might try to have gotten him out of Argentina. A coup had been happening at the time. It had been a dangerous time.

He’d always thought his mother’s ability had protected him and her both, but things had gone differently in this world.

“If he had found his mom, she might have been dying. I— She had telepathy and it had led to a brain tumor. Though she may not have used it as much as mine.” The mother he remembered, at least. Families were… strange, especially when one didn’t remember all of their past as they found out.

Family was also more than blood, too. “We didn’t remember our past together, but I am pretty sure that we did live together when I was young in … in other worlds.” At least in his, probably in more. “I remembered playing the piano, or actually I suppose… my body remembered it. Our bodies. We learned together, learned duets. Duets we didn’t remember learning, parts we didn’t remember learning.” It had been part of how they found each other.

Playing a duet they never knew they learned, in a way they could have only learned together.

“But if I— he left when he grew up… that means you hadn’t even seen him in years and…” In a lot of years, if he gathered it correctly. “And you still tried to find him.”

"Of course she did," Lynette says, her smile warm as she looks to the younger Des and then to Ruiz. "She's a Ruiz." They seem to have a knack for doing what it takes for family.

She steps over to Destiny, her hand moving to the girl's shoulder. "I'm sorry we couldn't bring him to you. You should know that he found what he was looking for and he would have come home if he could have." She's seen enough of this Mateo in the Garden to know how his story ended. Her hand lifts to Destiny's cheek before she returns to Ruiz's side.

Sympathy is written in Destiny’s expression when Mateo explains the fate of his mother across timelines. She’s kept from dwelling on it too long by Lynette’s kindness. “I’m glad to know he found what he needed.” It makes her pain more bearable somehow. Less futile.

“Our parents were killed before the flood,” she admits in a small voice, that sorrow returning. It’s clearly a difficult subject. “We had been about to go into hiding after what happened with Mister Petrelli. But… it didn’t— Someone found us first. Dad managed to get me to Jimmy before he— ” Her voice breaks and the girl looks down at her feet. It’s been a long time since she’s talked about what happened to her family. Why she was an orphan brought taken in by the seemingly least-likely of men.

Odessa is left to contemplate whether it’s worse never having known her family, or having loved and lost them. She also finds herself looking down at her feet, mirroring her younger self. Her vision clouds with welling tears, recognizing the pain in her own voice.

It takes a moment, but Des waves off the concern and lifts her head. “That was a long time ago. Jimmy took me in and we went into hiding together. That’s when I stopped calling myself Destiny Price and became Destiny Ruiz. I hoped that if I took his name, it’d make it easier for him to find me.”

There’s a nod of understanding from Odessa. Finally, something that stayed consistent between the two of them. They’d both been Price.

“Then the world flooded,” Des adds almost flippantly. Like everybody knows that part. “Jimmy kept us alive and we’ve been sailing together ever since.”

She’s a Ruiz. That made Ruiz smile, looking sad as he looked between his sisters. Both from another world, neither the one he actually had had a past with. But still his sister, even then. Blood didn’t matter sometimes, they’d had a bond, whether they’d known it or not. As she explains the situation with her parents, the people who had taken him in in this world, he grimaced, sadness on his face. He didn’t know the Price’s. He’s not sure he ever would or could. Maybe the circumstances under which he’d come to live with them had been different enough that he had never even known them.

But he knew one thing immediately.

“I’m sorry that we weren’t there for you, but I’m grateful Woods was. He’s a good man in any reality.” All the Woods he’d met had been good men. And the ones he hadn’t met had been as well. He could tell from how Odessa had talked about hers. “But even if I wasn’t there then. I’m here now. And we’ll do whatever we can to help.”

That part, he can promise.


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