Logs:Of Eggs and Expositions (Or, Lost Worlds)
| Of Eggs and Expositions (Or, Lost Worlds) | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-07-28 "We can feel insane about it together." |
| Location
<NYC> Gaétan and Nanami's apartment | |
Sera has not been standing in front of the door for very long. Just a few seconds, her bright green eyes still and unfocused. By the time she does knock, there's a kind of conciliatory comfort rippling out from her in gentle waves. She's dressed as though coming from a Renaissance festival, in a green tunic with a pattern of tessellated leaves, a wide shimmery gray sash around the waist, soft tan leather trousers, and tall brown boots. Her hair has grown down past her shoulders in several interlocking braids of varying types and thickness, and she's just a bit taller than she was last week. Other than a few scabbed-over cuts on her face and arms, she does not look physically worse for wear, but despite her best biokinetic efforts, she is clutching the strap of her shoulder bag tight and standing very stiffly, as though bracing for something. "Oh my god." Kavalam has no doubt been here since the short walk from the taxi -- he did, after all, pay for it, and they got into the building somehow -- but he's being far less careful than Sera with his own abilities so she can easily be forgiven for the lapse. He's got keys jingling in his hand and is pressing past Sera to unlock the door and open it. He looks mostly the same, though the plain button-down he's wearing looks suspiciously similar to the richly-embroidered one he was in a week ago when he was here last, and there's a tracing of pale red cuts healing on his arm that bear striking resemblance to the vine-and-flower patterning it had had. He slips in, shucking his sandals off at the door and beelining to the kitchen to get a bottle of rum and a couple glasses. "Jesus!" Gaétan has been about to open the door when Kavalam does it for him, and he stumbles a startled step backwards. He's in jeans and a rumpled Lost! tee, hair mussed and a couple days' shadowing of stubble on his face. His eyes are wide, a mixture of relief and anger and worry fighting for dominance as he looks between the other two. "Have you been with her the whole time? You could have called or -- everyone's been worried sick about you, where'd you --" His gaze is lifting, focusing on her hair with a blank uncomprehension that swallows the rest of his concerns. Sera's eyes widen fractionally at Sudden Kavalam, which puts a minute hitch in her steady biokinetic resonance. And another, when Kavalam has pushed past and she sees Gaétan's shirt. "Chu désolé." She raises her eyes to study Gaétan's face with an intense diligence, as though she hasn't seen him in a very long time. "I never meant to make anyone worry. I got lost, and couldn't call." One of her hands loosens, but as she peels it from the death grip she had on the bag strap, she suddenly doesn't seem to know what to do with it. "May I come in?" "White people," Kavalam is muttering with an incredulous irritation when Sera asks to come in. He goes to drop himself down on the couch, pouring two glasses of rum. He doesn't drink his own; he's slouching down into the corner of the sofa and clutching the glass tight. "You anyway wouldn't have answered." This first answer is a little sharp but he relents in short order: "She was with Lucien." Gaétan's brows pinch, and his own baffled annoyance is a much milder echo of Kavalam's. He gestures her in, and locks the door behind the others. "Are you okay?" He is still studying Sera, searching. "Did he -- What happened?" "I'm okay." Sera steps inside and sinks to the floor to pull off her boots. "It's just that I was in another dimension for a while, and now everything here feels strange. I can make it less annoying." Her offer of comfort intensifies, soft and inviting and easy to lean into. "Or you can feel strange with me." She stops in the middle of her task, wiggling her toes through the soft flexible footwear. "I don't know if or when Luci's coming back." Kavalam's irritation only grows -- first at Gaétan's question and then that the intensified biokinetic feedback from Sera. He's getting to his feet sharply, stalking to the other side of the living room in, perhaps, some attempt to outdistance this radiating feeling. "Stop that." He does take a slug of the drink, now. "Did you even care he was gone? Then? Now? I hope he stays." Despite this assertion there's a grief, first thick and choking and then oddly muted in Sera's pacifying aura, which in turn only prompts a fury that, too, cannot find the legs to properly stand. "I hope he gets one grand life away from all of you." "Stop that." From Gaétan this is less annoyed and more tired. He leans back against the closed door, "You were what? He -- what?" It's hard to tell exactly what he's feeling, here, closer to Sera; the stir of emotion in him is muddled, muted, not-quite-disbelief, not-quite-horror, not-quite-guilt. He rubs his temple, which does nothing to clear the artificially-enforced comfort from it. Some other time he might have been defensive, but though his eyes snap to Kavalam he doesn't, still just trying to work his way through this news. "But where is he? Where were you?" Sera stops that, and for an instant the ambient spill of the self it had overshadowed is sensible as a dizzying intricate weave of grief, regret, anger, loneliness, determination, and plain physical hunger. She patiently gathers all that in, as well. "Another dimension. We were asked not to talk about it. It would probably be better for him if he didn't come back, but I suspect he will." She bites her lower lip. "Mother says he's unstable, delusional, dangerous. She's wrong. He's hurting but not any of those other things." She twitches a small smile. "Well. He is dangerous. But if he'd wanted to hurt us at any point he could have. Instead he followed me to another world to keep me safe and take care of me and get me home. Or, back to Earth, anyway." "Another dimension," Kavalam says in time with Sera. "They were there longer. I went looking. If she really thought he was crazy then he would need help, no? Not one murder. Of course he has been hurting. A long time he's been hurting." The heat has drained out of his voice, and now the grief is rising higher again, together with a strained and guilty hope. He's returning to his seat as the intensity of Sera's biokinetic touch wanes, dropping into it heavily. "Do you really -- think he will come back." "Is he is still there? Is he safe? Why didn't -- how long?" Gaétan relaxes with the spill shifts -- for some value of relaxing, given that now the horror and guilt are clawing their way back up. His expression is a carefully studied blandness, and he's trudging into the kitchen, staring into his fridge for a while before pulling out some eggs. Chives. Boursin. "Murder? The hell are you talking about." "He was there when we left. I don't know if he's safe, but he's with someone who will try to keep him safe." Sera seems to have decided she's sitting with the shoes for now. "But I think he will come back. It's just a feeling, take it with a grain of salt. Whether he does or not, I'm going to be a better person. And if he does, I'm going to be there for him, like I'd meant to be but..." She frowns. "I'm trying to figure some things out. But mom kept saying she wanted to get him help but he refused..." She pulls her knees up to her chest, and gives off an ominous shudder of horror that she immediately clamps down on. "Wait, she knew, too?" Her eyes look kind of distant with the effort of corralling herself. "Matt killed Luci. I didn't know until Kavalam told me...not very long ago. Probably not very long ago." "Of course she knew. She was there goading him on. And then he died and none of you seemed to care, I didn't -- know what I should --" Kavalam's skinny shoulders are tightening, and he clenches his glass hard. Then exhales all at once, slumping back against the couch. Gaétan has been moving through the steps of Food somewhat on autopilot. Crack eggs, start to beat them. The beating speeds up here, though, in time with a spike of alarm, of anger. "What? And you didn't -- tell us, why -- what the -- Is he --" serious dies on his lips as he looks between the other two. "Are you sure?" Sera's alarm and anger come at once more dramatic and less. It swells to fill the apartment like an ominous pressure change before a storm, but she jerks it back with a quickness, and when she speaks there's little of it in her careful inflection. "Luci would have denied it if it weren't true, and he didn't say anything. I was going to talk to you about how to get mom away from Matt, but..." She trails off, staring abstractedly at the floor. "I'm sure," Kavalam answers, quick and brittle. "I was there in the house that night. I saw. Flèche was fussing and I went to see and I saw --" There's a shame, here, and fury, and a sick roiling horror that don't make it into Kavalam's sharp irritated features, eyes narrowed, voice clipped. "With my own eyes I saw them. I went to tell Mr. Summers and the Professor, but then after everyone was saying it was nothing, it was fine. The police didn't care. You didn't care. The Professor didn't care. What could I do, you think? Who could I have gone to? When I lost my whole world your brother he built me a home, and then he --" He swallows another mouthful of his drink. "Tomorrow you anyway won't remember where you heard this. If I had told you then and the whole world told you something else what would have happened? He still would have been dead. You'd only have felt a bit insane about it." Gaétan is steadily, methodically, continuing with his egg beating. Adding a bit of salt, pepper, tarragon to his eggs and whipping them some more before he clicks the stove on. There's a doubt in his mind that is only growing as Kavalam lists all the people who weren't suspicious about Luci's death, and he fixes his eyes hard on the pan as he starts to melt the butter. These doubts don't actually leave, but somewhere after he's looking up, frowning at Kavalam, some creeping aching understanding slipping in and staying his tongue. "You should stay here. Nami's stuff's mostly out, I've got room. You will have a home. Both of you. Whether he comes back or..." He swallows. "I had a lot of time to think, while we were lost. I already knew something about all of this was off, and now I know more." Sera's expression does not change, and she does not look up from the floor, but her power is easing out again, slow and deliberate. Her own sick horror and unsettled doubt pull toward the others instinctively, tempered by a quiet awe and an even quieter solace at their presence. She shares, as well, her own finely honed ability to maintain an appetite in the face of incomprehensible terrors. None of it eases the pain that resonates through them, really, but it does make it easier to feel out where it resonates. "I will think I heard about it from Mr. Summers and Joshua, and remember telling Gaé." Through and within and beneath all of it there's a new and unfamiliar sense of grounding. "We can feel insane about it together." Whether it's the others' replies or the sympathetic echo from Sera, Kavalam is easing as well -- still sick, still angry, but these things have faded to a low background rippling, and there's a comfort and appreciation that are rising up more prominent. "Okay but. One day," he replies, with a thin smile, "I think I would enjoy just a little bit of sanity." Gaétan huffs, sharp and amused, as he pours the eggs into the pan, adding the cheese in a careful stripe as they set. "Please. Realistic goals here, man." He's slicing up chives, small and neat, while it cooks, and for a while the very soft sizzlepopping of the pan is the only sound from the kitchen. When he finally emerges he's balancing three plates carefully in his hand, distributing the other two fluffy omelettes sprinkled neat with chives. He slumps down into the couch with his own, swiping the bottle of rum to gulp from it directly before he starts to eat. Despite the absently pleased-enough feedback from his senses his mouth is twisting critically to the side. "... always feel like I'm missing something." | |
