Logs:Worked Up

Worked Up
Dramatis Personae Desi, Gaétan, Sera
In Absentia Lucien, Elie, Matt	2023-07-31 "{Do you think he gave Matt to them, too?}"
Location <NYC> Tessier Residence, Greenwich Village
The upper floor is taken up by the master bedroom and three smaller ones. The guest room at the end of the hall is perpetually made up and ready for visitors. The other two smaller bedrooms, in strange departure from the rest of the house's style, seem decorated more with younger occupants in mind. One of them, styled largely in purples and blues with a strong butterfly motif, has a bunk bed and an antique writing desk. The other is very green, its bedspread green-and-black striped; the walls are covered with a host of movie posters. Between the two bedrooms stands a bathroom, cheerfully decorated with colourful mosaic fish in its tiles. Sera has been sequestered in her bedroom for much of the previous week, and while this isn't the first time she's emerged there is a sort of hesitation in her very short sojourn. She's not in pajamas, but as lounging-around-the-house clothes go she's definitely erring heavily on the side of comfort if she does fall back into bed: a soft purple hand-me-down t-shirt with the fading silhouette of the Great Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke, and black shorts with rainbow piping. A quiet spill of hope and worry and excitement escapes her -- though it's just as quickly tucked back away -- as she goes to knock on Gaétan's door. There's a short delay from inside -- the shifts in Gaétan's flat and dulled emotional landscape are very small, sluggish tremors that tilt vaguely towards stress -- towards annoyance -- towards relief -- though not making it all the way towards any of these feelings before subsiding back into a bleak numbness. "S'open." Inside, Gaétan is slouched across his couch, though he's struggling back upright after the knock. A number of suitcases and boxes are shoved, closed, into the corner. Sera opens the door and hovers on the threshold for a moment before stepping inside. "Hi." She looks kind of pale and unwell, and doesn't seem to know what to do with her hands, absent a book. "Sorry I didn't make it out to Ohio -- for the occupation, I mean. Welcome home." She glances at the pile of things in the corner with another whisper of uncertain worry. "Maybe I should have given you more time to settle back in, though..." "S'cool, Ohio really sucks. I can't imagine Ohio with the flu would be any better." Gaétan tucks himself small into a corner of the couch, legs folded up beneath him. "You look shitty. Are you feeling better?" "I've never been to Ohio, but I'll take your word for it." Sera sits on -- not the opposite corner of the couch, but she leaves him some space, anyway. "Thanks. I'm feeling mostly better." She pauses, pulls her knees up to her chest and braces her heels on the edge of the couch. "I saw you on the news, that was brave. Good for your numbers, too. But, brave." An excited scrambling of dog from downstairs precedes Desi, who a moment later trots up the stairs. She must have come from a client meeting or something of the sort, because she's wearing a mint green skirt suit, sheer hose, a respectable updo and noticeable makeup along with a sensible gray purse. "Gaétan," she breathes, her relief palpable to Sera, at least, along with the embarrassment that follows, an actual blush intensifying the one she'd carefully applied. "{I hope the trip back wasn't too awful. I heard Columbus was a wreck.}" She shrugs out of her jacket as she slips inside and tosses it and her purse over the back of the desk chair before sinking to the couch between the younger Tessiers. "{I'm so glad you're home.}" "I am not in any rush to set my rig back up, I have no idea how I follow all that. People are gonna be expecting some wild Prometheus stories and I definitely do not want --" Gaétan's mouth presses tight, his head shaking. He glances up swiftly at the sound of Desi's footsteps, and his gaze freezes on her for a solid few seconds. "Oh -- oh. No, um, it was." He shrugs, fingers brushing at the soft fabric of the couch cover. "{S'always easy to sleep around Luci anyway,}" sounds a little wry. "When you're ready, maybe you can kind of...play it cool?" Sera suggests, tilting her head to look at Gaétan. "Like you don't need to monetize your trauma to get views. That's impressive, and you can use that." She glances between her sort-of siblings when Desi arrives, quieting the swell of whatever it is that almost but doesn't quite spills over. "{I can go and let you catch up,}" she offers tentatively, but doesn't actually get up. Desi folds her hands primly in her lap. "{I doubt you much want to catch up, and I don't want to interrogate you. It's enough to have you back, and we can both go if you need to rest.}" She swallows, not very noticeably, and the "but" lurking behind her words finally surfaces, "{But...it really was Mother who picked you up from school?}" "{Why would you go.}" Gaétan frowns, and whatever twinge is starting to rise in him flattens back out at the question. "{Yeah.}" His fingers clench down harder on the arm of the sofa. "{I was fine, I would've been home soon enough if --}" Here his mouth just clamps shut again, as he lets out a slow breath. There's a shiver of cold anger that ripples through him when he speaks again: "{Luci said she was dead but she's been there this whole time.}" Sera hugs her knees a little tighter, the anger that washes through her finding an echo of horror, though the spill of her power this time is only the faintest suggestion of either. "{Why would he lie about that?}" she asks, sounding small and lost. "{Oh my gods...}" Desi covers her mouth with one hand, her disbelief and horror not so faint. "{I saw the interviews, but--I don't know what I thought. That it couldn't really be her. But it wouldn't've been the first time...}" She glances at Sera with a profound disquiet and worry that she tries to dismiss as she turns back to her brother. "{I don't want to believe that he did, but he--identified her. Or, that's what he told us.}" Her shoulders square and she takes a deep breath, collecting herself. "{Mother and Luci never got along, and at the time...}" She shakes her head. "{It's complicated. I can see why he'd lie, which is awful enough, but I can't see that he would have done that to her.}" "{It was really her. He said he saw her body but she never even died, they just put her in --}" Gaétan represses a shudder, trying with less success to push his nauseated horror back down. "{Luci hates her,}" he says to Sera, more bluntly. "{He's always hated her, back since before he left us the first time, I just didn't think --}" He shakes his head, eyes fixed numbly across the room on his still-packed bags. Sera opens her mouth and closes it again. Her power has slipped her control more fully now, drawing her into Gaétan's distress as it draws him into her grief and longing, tugging at Desi's calm as well. "{Do you think he gave her to Prometheus? How would he even have known...}" Her eyes widen more. "{Do you think he gave Matt to them, too?}" Desi shakes her head slowly, but it's hard to say what she's denying, exactly, if anything. "{I don't know. Luci wouldn't have wanted to hurt Matt, I'm sure of that. But Matt was dying, and...}" Her calm is fraying and re-knitting into the shape of Sera's--and through her, Gaétan's--horror. "{We don't know what happened. We need to find out, but it won't do us any good to guess.}" She looks from one teenager to the other. "{I'll do some digging. Do you know how to get in contact with Mother again?}" Gaétan is slower to answer than Desi. He's still just staring, blankly ahead, though Sera can feel the chaotic churn inside him, echoes of his siblings' grief and horror mingling with his own fury. "{Matt was dying. I think if you push Luci far enough, there's a lot that he'd --}" He closes his eyes, slumping back against the back of the couch. The heel of his hand presses hard against his eye, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a growing headache there. "{Yeah. I have her number. Almost thought about staying out there.}" Something less definable than these other feelings flutters, quiets again. "{... missed you guys, though.}" Sera curls tighter in on herself, but her power is unfurling deliberately, encompassing Desi now. She teases out the practiced calm, smooths it over, and weaves it back through herself to Gaétan with only a touch of her quiet wonder and the worry that lingers beneath. "{We missed you, too.}" Desi subsides a little, her disquiet remaining even with her composure bolstered. "{I'm glad you came back.}" She folds her long legs onto the couch, pulls Sera gently to her side, and shifts closer to Gaétan. "{We'll figure this out. Together.}"