Participants:
| Scene Title | Your Legacy |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Nightmares in sleep and life are unforgiving. |
| Date | February 10, 2020 |
Trafford Home, Bay Ridge
"We're doing our best here with what we have. We got what Census information we could- -Yes, I know, bureaucracy blah-blah-blah- -"
Rinsing the last suds off of plates, Delilah's sink empties of water while she pins her phone to shoulder with the angle of her chin, eyes on the fenced yard beyond the window. Outside, the gabbing of kids. Walter knows to stay close to adults, and so do most of the others on the street. A few errant ragamuffins here and there, of course.
The voice on the other end of the phone has something new to say, and whatever it is coaxes a long-suffering chuckle from the redhead.
"Okay. I know you do what you can for things like this, Ms. Short. If you want to make it up you could always pass us a little plot for a playground." Dee tilts to the side, peering out the window as a ten-year old parkours over her fence. Mph. Others actually use the gate.
"Heh, alright. Thank you. I really appreciate your time. …Mhm. That'll be perfect, you can send it to the council mail?" The mudroom door clacks against the frame, and Dee tosses a look over her shoulder. "Thanks again. Yep, I will. Be seeing you." A muttered 'buh-bye' before a couple things all at once; phone closed, boy running, "SHOES!", boy backpedaling.
"Sorry- -I got the mail for you." Walter, be-socked, comes padding in, and back out, leaving the envelopes on the kitchen table before skittering away. "I'm gonna call Matthew, okay? Okay!"
Delilah is left momentarily bewildered, just pressing her lips together in his wake. Okay.
Two in one night. At least earlier there was a spell of ease. A manila envelope with a laminated card, one of them. Walter had been ridiculously stoked to get a registration card- - a stark as hell difference from her first one.
Short-range Situational Teleportation
It was the best she could do. He'd tried to practice, but it never does much. Negation meds now and again. There hasn't been someone to show him,
except, perhaps, himself.
Delilah knows that it's the intensity that pushes her son's changes. For now. Bad dreams do it, sometimes.
The first one wasn't so bad. A thump-bump-bump on the stairs. A moment taken to gather him up and help him back to bed. Sitting there until he fell back to sleep. It was the trip again- - just the spookiness of bland halls and uncertainty.
The second… plasma and screams, crumbling walls, a person made of nerves…. A hard fall and a likely bruise. He's here with her now.
Delilah balances a thin laptop on her knees, feet on an ottoman, sat on the old couch in her downstairs. Beside her, laid out, Walter with his head against her thigh, sound asleep under the touch of fingers in his hair. Spreadsheet saved, closed. Abstract wallpaper peers back, dim light warmed by filter. Fingertips linger on the touchpad, cursor tentatively wandering to browser.
It wouldn't hurt, would it? She knows just a little. The beginning. Ish. The middle, moreso. Pieces. Kyle, if not Kyla.
Thanks, Grandad. I love you anyway.
And that's the truth.
Several searches later, the internet offers the same basic things she already knew about her Grandfather's legacy. Company-side. Not Company, just… company. It sours her to see Pinehearst's name come lurching out of the bog again, but thankfully she knew of it already. The absorption of Renautas' company after the market plunged and Walter was long dead.
She can still hate it.
Asshole.
Brown eyes move down to the boy stirring in slumber, Lilah's hand setting again atop hair. He always stays asleep like this. So what if he turns into a Momma's Boy? That's great.
The further she goes the more intent she becomes, naturally. Connection spotty as it is sometimes, she has the patience to skim old articles. It's no wonder the twins are where they ended up. Father forced out, the Institute rolling in to scoop up the ashes of Pinehearst.
Yamagato, after that.
Would they know anything more? Would it even be worth finding out?
Delilah opens up the site to Yamagato's Safe Zone branch, staring ahead at the sleek menus and shining photos, stalled.
The further the rabbit hole goes, the worse it seems to get. Just thinking about the compass, the hunters, and Cambridge- - Everything before- - Everything after, it always catches her off guard, the way faces and places and everything come whistling back like a dervish.
Then the war, of course. A plateau of everything wrong.
Did it all start with him? With her family? Even the Company, she holds hope that it, at the very least, didn't. But they were… still there.
The cascade of Renautas through the years isn't a clean one. By the end, the waterfall trickles to mud and blood. Now, just one more chunk of Yamagato.
Is there anything left? Could she- - is there even a way for reparation after all this time?
This can't be his legacy. A slow decay into- - It wasn't him, at the start, or at the end.
Sometimes lost in the middle, but he always found his way back.
In everything.
"Mum?"
It hurts.
"Mum- -" Delilah feels her eyes fail to blink back tears, vision filled with a mix of screen and bleary red-headed boy as her head comes back down, wounds closing the cellar doors against the wind. "…what's…"
"I- I'm- -" Okay? No. She's not. But… she can't say it to her son's face. Blue eyes squint back at Delilah's hesitation, and her hand claps the computer closed. The heel of her palm scrubs at her cheek, knuckles against the other.
"Mnm, 's ok." Walter's still half gone when he mutters this, and dozes off again sprawled half over Lilah's lap. Somewhere in there, his miniature lizard-brain thinks it was a hug. For Dee, it was. And that's enough. She slides her legs up onto the couch, and tugs Walter's tiny body close.
"…I hope so, little love."