friendofcasper (friendofcasper) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-11-27 22:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | brianna winters, flynn russo |
A Deep Dive, Part Two
Who: Brianna/Flynn
Where: Las Vegas, Lux
When: After Thanksgiving
Content Warnings: Some Mentions of Past Violence and Death
"Flynn, what is it?" she asked, keeping the urgency from creeping into her voice.
“Remember how I told you that my dad died last Christmas? He left his house in Henderson to me, the one I grew up in. Every time I step foot in there, it’s like I’m a kid again.” Flynn finished off the remainder of the dark beer and pushed the empty glass aside. “Afraid, lonely, with no control over my life. Feeling like I was the reason why my dad was alone, like every time he looked at me, just…pure disappointment.” He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling briefly before continuing. “Anyway, I had been trying to get it sold, but it’s just been sitting there empty. And one night, I went to check on it, and some people had broken in.” Flynn paused to let Brianna process these pieces of information before he continued recounting that night’s events.
She nodded, listening intently to not just what he was saying, but also the story between the words spoken. "Go on," she said, her eyes on his face.
He nodded too, taking another breath before launching into the rest of it. “They didn’t want to leave, and they had trashed the place. I don’t even know why it was such a big deal to me. I don’t have any really good memories of that place. And like logically, I know that I could have just turned around and left, called someone else to deal with it.” Flynn shook his head slightly, as though confused at himself. Which, honestly, he sort of was. “But I got so angry, and then it was like something was encouraging me, and I don’t remember actively doing it, but the next thing I knew, the room was filled with spirits. And they were angry, too, and the doors all locked. The people who had broken in couldn’t get out.” He looked across the table at Brianna. “I had trapped them inside with the dead. And it sounds crazy, but I think I scared them to death. I did nothing to stop it.”
And there it was, the truth, laid out for her to react to however she was going to. He couldn’t pull it back now.
While it wasn't what she'd expected, because she really didn't know what to expect, it wasn't freaking her out, or whatever he'd expected. Which for a moment made her wonder why not. Was there something wrong with her? Or had what she'd been exposed to during her training numbed her to the point where it was no longer possible to freak her out.
She nodded, taking in all the words and mulling through them. Then she looked at him. "Can I ask something? And you can say no, if you want, it's okay."
Flynn raised an eyebrow, watching her carefully for a moment before answering. “You can ask me anything.” And he meant it.
"I… " She paused, looking around the alcove and wondering if this would even work in here. But she decided it was worth a try. She'd listened to his admission, and felt she needed to reach out to him, both for her own understanding, and his. "Something I learned right here, in Lux, was another… way of connecting," she told him. She looked down at her hands and indicated the sleeves that covered her arms. "I have always been able to sense what people were feeling when I touched them, but here, during Beltane, I learned I could also communicate with someone. You saw and felt, or at least heard me when we had dinner." She stopped for a moment and looked at him.
"Is it okay if I touch you?" She looked at him. "And when or if we do this, if you are willing, will you share what happened with me?"
He looked at Brianna with a mixture of emotions plainly displayed on his face. Surprise, confusion, and perhaps a glimmer of hope. “If you’re sure that you want to,” he told her slowly. He remembered very clearly that night at Le Breeze, when her voice floated through his head so clearly. And then he realized; she wasn’t getting up and leaving. She wasn’t looking at him any differently. Carefully, he mimicked Angharad’s earlier movements and put his hand upon the table, palm up, within her reach. “It’s okay,” Flynn told her. “I’ll share it.”
She nodded silently, looked down at his hands, and swallowed. It had been different when it was with Brian, she had had some experience of what contact with him might reveal. Flynn was a complete unknown, other than what she'd seen of what he could do. And this event had been serious enough he'd been hesitant to tell her, until now.
Inhaling softly she placed her hands in his, closed her eyes and let her breath out slowly. Immediately a chill ran through her, trickling up her arms, a shiver curling down her spine. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced before. She tightened her grip slightly, almost as if to steady herself, as if she'd almost lost her footing and needed something to stop from falling.
An image formed, a man, older, looking concerned, tired, but also resigned to his fate. His face was somehow vaguely reminiscent of someone, and her eyes widened as she saw it morph into Flynn. There was a sadness, and pain, and a deep unabiding sense of remorse, a self loathing that welled up. She shuddered at the depth of this, and her eyes flew open. "Did you say your father died in this house?" she asked, her eyes now focused on Flynn's.
It was like opening up a scab that had healed over and revealing the red rawness underneath. He felt each emotion again like he was reliving it, and realized that Brianna could sense it all, too. Flynn watched her with equal parts fascination and regret, his hands not moving. He wanted to stop, to comfort her, which felt strange since it was all coming from him in the first place. Slowly, he nodded, and cleared his throat to speak. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, something squeezing in his throat. “He did. Christmas Eve, all alone. They said he had a stroke.” There was a slight tremor in his voice and a heat behind his eyes that he attempted to push back. “That’s the worst part. He was alone and now I am, and I feel just like him. And part of me is sorry for him and the other part…” Flynn closed his eyes. “I think I might have hated him a little.”
Even as he spoke she was seeing things, figures and faces, form and dissolve, some of them confused, some sad, some angry, or distracted, or in pain, and surprisingly a few even laughing. Her mouth opened to speak but instead there was nothing that came out at first, and her eyes seemed to glaze over. Then a voice, not Brianna's, started to speak. “Flynn? Is… is that you? Are you okay?”
That voice caught him off guard. He had experienced enough people talking through him to know what that meant, but the difference is that they had all been dead. And as far as he knew, the person asking about his well-being wasn’t. Flynn swallowed hard, visibly shaken. He hadn’t spoken to her since a random phone call on his twelfth birthday. It had come from a blocked number and lasted three minutes. And he hadn’t seen her face since he was nine. “Mom?” Something was working in his jaw as his eyes remained glued to Brianna’s face. “Am I okay?” A strange laugh bubbled up in his throat, but when it escaped his lips, it sounded more like a quiet, dry sob. He shook his head slowly. “No, not really.” His gaze dropped back down to their joined hands. “Not for a long time.”
A tear rolled down Brianna’s face from eyes that were not hers.To the observer her skin appeared to age, whether it was a trick of the lighting in Lux, or something else. “I’m sorry,” came from her throat, strangled by a combination of a sob and cough. As her body shook with the action Brianna’s fingers tightened on Flynn’s hands, as if afraid of losing their grip. “I’m so sorry.” The air of desperation in the voice cried out. “I couldn’t… not again… please forgive me.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused and temporarily distracted from the tempest of emotions this interaction was having on him. Flynn watched as Brianna seemed to shift, chameleon-like, in front of him. It was her hands that he squeezed back, not his mother’s. His mother wasn’t really there, hadn’t been there in over fifteen years. “What couldn’t you do again?” Forgiveness wasn’t something he had ever considered. Instead, he had opted to try to push her out of his mind completely. To pretend he had never needed her, anyway.
And as if a dam wall burst, words gushed out of Brianna’s mouth in another woman’s voice. “Flynn, I lost my mother because of the gift she had, that you have, I was so lost and alone, and it was only your father who stopped me from doing anything bad, and then you, my beautiful boy, were just like her, the same, I couldn’t go through it again, lose someone I loved so much, so I ran. Left the two men I loved most, the one who saved me from myself, and the one I cherish so much, I failed you both.” The last words were choked and another cough racked Brianna’s body. A gasp of air filled cluttered lungs as the spasms passed and a slightly more haggard face looked at Flynn. “My boy, my own swashbuckling young Flynn,” she said breathily, her eyes imploring, searching his face, the voice fading as it said, “it’s all my fault…”
Flynn was frozen. His body had gone rigid as those words processed in his head. His grandmother had been like him? He hadn’t known her, had never met her because she had died long before he was born. And the last person who could have answered any questions about her was dead, too. There was a flare of anger that welled up within him. They had made him feel like he was crazy. They could have told him at any point that he wasn’t alone, that there was someone else that had been like him. And what had she meant, that his grandmother had died because of their ‘gift’? The voice was fading away, and Flynn didn’t even try to ask her to stay.
After a few moments of silence, his breath shaking, he spoke again. “Brianna?” he asked tentatively. Flynn let go of her hands and moved closer to her so that he was sitting directly next to the psychic. “Are you okay?”
Brianna slumped down in the chair when he let go of her hands, her head swinging slowly back and forth as tears fell onto the black fabric of her dress. “What happened?” she croaked, clearing her throat as she slowly lifted her head. Her eyes blinked, rapidly, then slowing as she wiped at her face, quickly withdrawing a handkerchief from her clutch and dabbing at the where the tears were finally subsiding. Slowly it all started coming back to her, and her eyes widened as she looked at Flynn. “Was that… I’ve never…” She stopped and looked around the private alcove, her hands on the arms of her chair, fingers gripping to check it was real. She was trying to piece together what had happened.
“That’s never happened before,” she finally said, a little tentatively, relieved when she heard the words in her own voice. Her eyes blinked, now clear again. One hand let go of the arm of the chair and she pressed in on her chest, hand on her sternum as she took a few deep breaths, her lungs as clear as normal, again much to her relief.
“I know how weird it feels, after,” Flynn told her gently, watching her with concern on his face. “I’ve had spirits communicate through me, but never someone alive.” Tentatively, he reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to offer some comfort. As confused as he was about what he had just learned, he worried how it would affect Brianna, if it was too overwhelming for her to deal with. “Do you need anything? Can I do anything?” He felt a little helpless. It wasn’t a good feeling.
She felt his worry, his concern and the helplessness, and shook her head. While it had been a completely different experience from what she had expected, she was basically okay. There was a slight fuzziness around the edges of her eyesight, and she was thirsty, incredibly thirsty, but otherwise she felt okay, and told Flynn this. “Maybe some water would be good,” she admitted, still sitting a little slumped in her chair and not sure she wanted to deal with standing up right at that moment. “Would you mind?”
Flynn nodded, letting his hand drop from her shoulder as he moved to stand up. “No, of course not,” he told her. “I’ll be right back, okay?” He exited the alcove and returned to the bar where he had ordered their drinks earlier. His head was buzzing, and he didn’t even notice accidentally bumping into someone with his shoulder. He mumbled an apology. “Can I have two glasses of water, please?” Flynn asked the bartender. “Big ones?” The medium took out his phone while he waited, scrolling rather mindlessly. So his grandmother could see ghosts, too. He wasn’t sure if that newfound knowledge was comforting or not, considering that she had died of a massive heart attack when she wasn’t much older than his father had been. Had it been because of something she had seen? Did someone do something to scare her? Flynn’s mind flashed back to the two bodies he had left behind.
Would the same thing eventually happen to him? Or would seeking out enough power and knowledge be enough to protect him? The two glasses were slid across to Flynn and he thanked the bartender before grabbing one in each hand and returning to Brianna. “Here you go. How are you feeling?”
Brianna took the offered glass gratefully and nodded before emptying the glass in one go. "Wow, that… was good," she said, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand as she placed the empty glass on the table. As she had sat there she had gone over what had happened, what she had seen and felt, and had a number of questions for Flynn.
"I'm OK, really," she said, reassuringly as she straightened up a little. "But I have so many questions, both about your experiences and your mother… because correct me if I'm wrong, but that's who it was, wasn't it?"
He slid the other glass toward her. Thankfully he had ordered two. Flynn took a deep breath and nodded, leaning back against his seat. “Yeah, that’s who it was. I haven’t spoken to her since I was twelve.” He wiped the condensation from the glass off onto the knee of his pants and let out a quiet sigh that Brianna might have missed if they had been in the main room of Lux. “I don’t know if I was really talking to her or like the memory of her. I don’t know how it works. Is it like a phone call?” He looked over at the brunette and smiled somewhat sadly. “I’m just kind of thinking out loud. I know you might not have the answers to any or all of those questions.” He tugged on his sleeves again, a nervous habit. “What questions do you have?”
As she listened to him talking she was feeling the emotions that the encounter had stirred in him, and recognised some of those in herself. And she was recalling what had transpired, what she'd seen. For the time being she decided to just stick with the channeling part of the event. "When you've had the spirits communicate through you, what did you see? And feel? Were you still seeing 'here', as in where you were when it happened?"
“When it first started happening -- and it wasn’t very often -- I didn’t really remember much of it,” Flynn recounted, letting his hands fall to his sides as he spoke. “But it always seemed to happen at the least opportune moments, like once when I was in class. People just assumed I was making it up.” The medium shrugged; the embarrassment he had felt then had mostly faded away entirely. “Eventually I learned that you need to really focus to keep a piece of yourself when it happens. Now I can tell where I am, what I’m saying. But it takes a while afterward to get all of yourself back. It’s a weird feeling, someone trying to take you over, even if it’s brief.” He looked at Brianna empathetically.
Her hand reached out for the second glass of water while she listened, taking a mouthful before lowering the glass back to the table. “Yes, that is a little like it felt,” she nodded, her brow slightly furrowing with concentration. “It was like I was watching one of those movies where you’re looking through the eyes of the character, hearing their voice, seeing what they’re seeing. Big difference was I was also feeling what she was feeling.” The frown deepened with worry and she reached over and carefully picked up one of his hands and held it.
“Believe me when I say I understand if you don’t ever want to see or speak to her again, I can completely relate to that,” she told him with an intensity she didn’t normally display, “but if you want to find out more, or even just reach out, maybe we can? When you’re ready?”
He looked down at their hands, the sight becoming a familiar one that night. He appreciated the understanding that Brianna had shown him. There was a part of Flynn, deep down, that was afraid the rug would be pulled out from under him. That part of it seemed too good to be true, but that was his own baggage talking. The medium knew that. It just wasn’t always easy to ignore. He looked up, into her eyes, and nodded. “Maybe,” he conceded. “I know there are ways to find her that go beyond a simple internet search. When I’m ready...if I’m ever ready.” Flynn gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
“I want to thank you, Brianna,” he told her. “For suggesting this, for listening.” He smiled. “For not running. I appreciate you.”
Brianna was a little surprised at his thanks, not completely sure what he’d expected. The temptation to ‘peek’ was huge but instead she looked down at where he was holding her hand. She knew she was starting to like him, but given her most recent experiences, on top of all her past history, she knew it was only a pathway to pain to let herself feel there was anything more to it. “It’s nice to be appreciated,” she replied, forcing her smile to widen as she lifted her eyes to meet his again. “And why would I run away from the person who gave me my own ‘gnome home’,” she added with a soft laugh, looking for a way to lighten the moment before she said something she knew she may end up regretting. Instead she simply offered, “and I’m here, if and when you’re ever ready.”
“I am, too. If you ever need me for anything,” Flynn told her sincerely. He watched the way she smiled, how it didn’t seem to quite reach her eyes, and gave her a look of concern. He leaned toward her slightly, her hand still in his. His thumb brushed against her wrist. “What are you thinking?” he asked her quietly.
She broke eye contact, ducking her head as she blinked rapidly, her mind spinning a little.
‘That I need to be more careful when I bring someone to Lux, that I really need to talk to Cassandra, or Angharad, that I need another glass of water…’
When she lifted her head she sighed and smiled. “That a lot has happened tonight, and I’m still trying to figure it all out,” she told him truthfully. He had enough to deal with, she knew that now, and didn’t need any of her own baggage to add to the load. She paused before continuing. “The things that happened at your house, your father’s house, that you didn’t want to tell me about before? Why didn’t you want to tell me?”
“Well, truthfully, the only other person I’ve told kind of ran out of my life after I did so,” Flynn admitted. “Ellie. Though in the interest of transparency, I probably could have broken the news a little better.” That was the kind of realization that sometimes only came in hindsight. He knew he had been abrupt. “I was in a weird headspace then. It had just happened, I was feeling...not scared, but kind of alienated. Like no one could possibly understand why I had done it, especially because I didn’t even know why I had done it.”
She nodded as she listened, and could understand how weird it must have been, both the experience itself, and then trying to tell someone you cared about what had happened. And how weird that would have sounded - it was still strange to him, from what she could tell during his ‘sharing’. And then she shook her head lightly, “not sure how you could have done it differently then,” she told him.
To have caused the death of anyone took a toll, so many times she had felt what Radek and Jake and the others had gone through, and their battles had been fought on completely different fields. From what Flynn had told her, the fact that he hadn’t even tried to stop it, had to have been hard on him, and she could see that it was still something he felt strongly about. It had been what she had expected to see and feel when she had asked to try to ‘connect’ with him, but that had gone in a completely different direction. “Do you think you’re any closer to understanding why you didn’t stop them.. it?” she asked quietly.
That was a question he had been asking himself lately. “I think…” Flynn’s eyes flicked upward toward the ceiling as he tried to put his thoughts into a coherent explanation. “In that moment, I was tired of everything. Tired of the years I spent feeling like it was a burden, tired of trying to keep it separate and contained in order to live some kind of ‘normal’ life. And angry. It was so hard to keep it under control that I welcomed the chance to let it take over.” He paused to let those words hang in the air, a hand going to the back of his neck, a subconscious gesture that he did when struggling to express himself. “I think that’s why I’m driven now to learn everything I can about what I can do. To stop running away from it.”
This she understood completely. The years she had spent shielding herself were now giving way to her wanting to know what she could actually do if she knew what the extent of her abilities actually was. There were so many similarities, and yet from completely opposite directions. He had been alone the whole time, she had had either Juliet, or then the Immortals - just the few years at the beginning of university had she been on her own trying to fend for herself, and that time held most of her bad experiences. She had been engulfed by the thoughts and feelings of the living, he had been approached, and accompanied by those who’d passed. And now both of them had seen a little beyond the curtain, and wanted to know more about their abilities. Even tonight she had learned more, and it lifted the lid on another aspect, revealed a little more, and made her wonder what else there was.
As his hand returned to his lap from rubbing at his neck she reached over and held it, looking at him as she thought, ‘I get that. And tonight has again shown me I need to do the same. To stop hiding away, get past using shields to protect myself, and learn exactly what I can do, and how to control it.’ She was about to speak when she saw the expression on his face change.
He wasn’t sure that he would ever get fully used to ‘hearing’ her voice in his head while watching her not speak at all, it was pretty surreal. Flynn nodded and looked down at the table. “Maybe we can help each other with that,” he offered. Between his abilities and hers, he felt like there was a world of possibility to be explored, especially if they figured out a way to combine their power somehow. The idea perked him up considerably, and when he looked up at Brianna again, he was smiling. “That is, if you want to hang out with me again.” The medium tilted his head toward her while he waited for her response.
She realised he had heard her, and after looking down at where their hands were linked, smiled and looked up at him. “I’d like that, and I think I’d better start being a little careful about what I ‘think’ out loud!” she replied, a touch of colour now on her cheeks as she nodded.
Flynn laughed and shook his head decisively. “Nope, you’re not going to backtrack out of that one,” he told her, a teasing note to his voice. “Because what I’m hearing is the implication that you think things about me that you wouldn’t want me to hear.” His grin widened as he noted the way Brianna was slightly blushing. “You can tell me, I can take it. Is it the hairstyle?” He ran his fingers through the ends of his dark hair, which admittedly could have used a trim but he just hadn’t gotten around to it. “No, wait, I know. You don’t like my ‘pine fresh’ air freshener in my car. Well, I’ll have you know that I got that for free as a workplace perk.” He gently pulled her hand closer across the table, studying her closely and intently.
"You caught me, it's the air freshener, I could smell it even in the car park at Luckys!" she said with an exaggerated waving of her other hand in front of her nose. She squeezed his hand lightly as she laughed, a lightness she felt for the first time in longer than she could remember clear in her eyes. Sitting there, looking at him it started to feel like the road ahead, the search for the extent of her own abilities was now a challenge she could be excited about. Until now it had almost been a sense of trepidation, a foreboding that had hovered over what she might discover. It had held her back and made each new thing something to almost be feared, given what protection she had been afforded by the immortals.
"Thank you," she said softly. "For sharing this with me.'
Flynn put a hand on his chest, feigning a deeply wounded look. “What? I’m hurt. I thought everyone loved the smell of artificial pine.” He smiled to let her know that he was joking, just in case it was too obtuse, though he didn’t think it was strictly necessary with Brianna. They seemed to understand each other pretty well. “Thank you for making it easy to share it with you,” he told her. “Like I don’t ever want you to tell me what you think I want to hear. If you don’t agree with me, I want to know. But I also appreciate you being supportive.” He noticed the time on his phone.
“Do you mind if we head out?” he asked her, slightly apologetic. “I didn’t realize what time it was and I have work tomorrow. But I definitely want to do this again, soon. But maybe a little less intense conversational topics.” Flynn grinned.
Her head bobbed in agreement, again that feeling of lightness giving her a sense of joy she hadn’t felt in so long. And again she didn’t know if it was a part of the affect that Lux seemed to have, or what, but right then she didn’t really care. “Of course, and I’d like that too,” she replied, adding with a laugh, “and less intense conversational topics it is, for 100 points!”