Frankie is good with cars (exsweetheart) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-01-14 18:14:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | alice, mona vasquez |
Who: Clara and Frankie
What: Curious Clara helps skeptical Frankie come to an epiphany
Where: Frankie's shop
When: Wednesday, afternoon-ish?
Warnings: None.
Clara had gotten restless. Like always, she’d just started walking, because that seemed the best way to discover something new. She didn’t have patients yet, and she hadn’t started any formal studies. All of that had been put aside when the Reavers came, and now she was trying to figure out the best way to start.
The garage drew Clara’s attention because of the high windows, which was a strange reason to notice something, but there it was. Never one to question her first instinct, Clara curiously walked toward the building, stepping over fallen things and destruction on the sidewalk, holding up the hem of her long blue dress as she approached.
Clara peeked in the front of the garage, where there was a register and counter, and she considered calling out, but there was something about the place that begged to be explored, and explorers never announced themselves. And, anyway, there was no one there to call out to.
It wasn’t abandoned, which was the first thing Clara noticed. It was too clean, too used, but it was still and quiet, and there was something marvelous about that silence. It was one of her eccentricities, she knew, to find place mysterious when they were very mundane, but she didn’t question it. Instead, she walked to the door labeled Employees Only, and she pushed it open soundlessly.
It was a quiet day, but Frankie wasn’t too surprised. The shop didn’t usually get busy until rush hour, when people started getting off work, anyways. With the added stress of the zombie apocalypse- reaver apocalypse, or whatever those things were called- she could imagine that getting their cars fixed was not exactly a top priority at the moment. She couldn’t wait until next week, when people started realizing exactly how damaged their cars were and started pouring in with the repairs. She would definitely need to hire someone else to help out if Mere wasn’t back by then.
The problem with quiet days was that Frankie didn’t know what to do with herself. With Mere around, at least she had someone to talk to, but ever since he took his leave, it was just her and those creepy blue parasites. They used to only come out at night, and only when someone was badly injured, but with the whole zombie business, they were everywhere, all the time now. It had gotten better in the past day or so, but there were a still a few stray ones hanging around the shop. Frankie was sure that they were real, even if nobody else could see them. She’d been given enough weird looks to know that this was not something she could tell anyone.
On this particular afternoon, as Frankie sat in her office, a small blue parasite sat at the corner of her desk, taunting her. She just glared at it. It looked so innocent, sitting their by itself, but Frankie knew better. The moment she got a paper cut or scratched herself on some scrap metal, it would jump on her and start sucking away her life force. Folding her arms over her desk, she placed her chin on top of them and frown. “What do you want from me?” She was actually speaking to one of them, but there wasn’t anyone around to catch her acting like a crazy person, “I don’t understand! Why are you here?” She continued to speak to the parasite with her office door wide open, unaware than anyone had entered the shop at all.
Clara had heard the voice as she neared, and she’d slowed her step and proceeded quietly. She’d peeked in the door, just at the corner through the doorjamb, and she’d noticed the young woman inside. She’d been about to introduce herself through said doorjamb, but then the young woman began talking to nothing at all.
Ever the observer, Clara had remained quiet, and she’d listened to the questions asked of the empty corner of desk. She hadn’t expected an answer, but she knew the young woman thought there was something there. And who was Clara to say that there wasn’t? Reality was shaped by the senses, and the woman behind the desk believed she was talking to something, something that wanted something from her.
Clara waited a moment longer, just in case the nothing spoke, and then she moved into the doorway proper and cleared her throat, hands clasped primly behind her back. “Perhaps it can’t answer,” she said, Southern accent thick and slow.
The second she heard someone clear her throat, Frankie sat up straight and searched for the source. A look of deep distrust passed over her face as she noticed the blonde girl standing in the doorway. She looked harmless enough, but so did the parasites when they weren’t sucking out your life force. “Are you lost?” She frowned, clearly avoiding the subject, “This area is staff only.”
“I was exploring,” Clara admitted, taking a step into the room and moving closer to the corner of the desk, where she could still see nothing at all. “What do you see there?” she asked the young woman, reaching out as if to touch the space that was so entirely blank to her.
“Nothing,” Frankie lied, but it was obvious that she was hiding something as the strange girl reached out to the parasite. She flinched as her fingers nearly ran through the creature. Nobody should be making contact with those things, not even nosey girls who explored in places they shouldn’t. “Look,” She stood up and walked to the other side of her desk, “What I do or don’t see doesn’t concern you. Do you need help with something? Do you have a car that needs fixing?”
Clara shook her head, and she didn’t even have the decency to look chagrined. “I saw the garage, and it caught my attention. And then I heard your voice coming from inside, and I kept on walking. I observe people, things, and I can maybe help with whatever you think you’re seeing on that desk.” A pause. “If you want help, that is. Do ya?” she asked, touching the empty space again, just so that she could catalogue the girl’s reaction.
“Stop it,” Frankie swatted the girl’s hand away with an annoyed huff, as she reached for the parasite again. It was clear that the girl wasn’t going to leave without a proper answer, and it wasn’t like she had anything better to do. Besides, if she was being honest, she probably did need a little help. “We can talk,” She wasn’t promising anything, “Just stop touching it, okay?” It was Frankie’s way of admitting, without really admitting, that she had indeed seen something at the corner of her desk.
Clara wasn’t, to her understanding, touching anything. But she pulled her hand back, and she sat across from the desk, straightening her skirts around her as she looked at Frankie expectantly. “I’m Clara,” she said by way of introduction. “What was I touching?”
Frankie walked back to her side of the desk and sat down as well. “Hello Clara, I’m Francesca,” She gave the girl a tight, polite smile. She was starting to think that was a bad idea, after all, but she told the girl that they could talk and she intended on keeping her word. Closing her eyes for a second, she breathed deeply before continuing, “Sometimes I see these phantom bugs, the size of your hand, just crawling around the city. They used to only appear at night, but lately, they’ve been starting to appear during the day as well.” She purposely left out the part about sucking the life out of people, there was no need to scare the girl if she didn’t believe her to begin with.
Clara wished for a notepad or a recording device, but she hadn’t been planning on conducting and interview with a new test subject, so she didn’t have either on her at the time. “Have you seem ‘em since you crossed?” she asked, because that was generally her first question whenever she met someone who had something strange about them. She assumed they were Creations, and if they weren’t, well, they’d just think the question a crazy one. “Has anything changed at all, with them appearing more often? And do they hurt you any?”
“Yes, I guess I have,” Frankie raised an eyebrow, how did the girl know she was a creation? Furthermore, why did she believe her? Was she just humouring her? She felt like she was being interrogated, and it wasn’t a great feeling. Having never been to a shrink, Frankie had no real way of knowing what it felt like, but she imagined that it would feel a little bit like she did right now. Being analyzed was not something she particularly enjoyed, and she had to fight off the bitterness in her voice. “Other than what I said about them showing up in the daylight, they kind of just show up when there’s an accident,” She paused to think about the correct way to answer the next question, “They don’t hurt you, per se, but they’re always around when you’re hurt.”
Clara wasn't very good at putting people at ease. She had never had to soothe people in her job. Her subjects had been federal operatives, and they didn't have the leisure of getting up and walking away from her questions; it was a hard transition to laypeople as subjects. "Before or after injury?" she asked, sitting forward, expression one of curious interest. These creatures she saw, they could either foretell injury, in which case they were priceless, or they could simply appear as a result of injury - some sort of psychic vulture, perhaps?
Frankie was taken aback by how curious Clara seemed. It was a sick thing to be so interested in, but she supposed she only thought that because she’d been seeing them for almost ten years now. She’d seen how quickly they moved and the lives they’d almost finished off on countless occasions, but Clara had no way of knowing that. She thought about the question for a second before answering, “Both. If it’s a big accident, they’ll start showing up hours before the accident, but if it’s small, they won’t show up until after blood is shed.”
“Does anyone know you got this ability?” Clara asked, leaning forward a little more to see the edge of the desk from another angle. She was thinking about the CIA back home, about how they would exploit such an ability, and she was thinking about what it meant and how the things Francesca saw were generated. “Are they at a place before you arrive sometimes?” she asked, trying to figure out if it was Francesca causing the creatures, or if it was the incident itself, and if she could just see the manifestations. In short, she was curious.
The moment Clara said “ability”, something clicked in Frankie’s mind and her jaw went slack. Why had she never realized that this was her ability before? She’d been living in Seattle for ten years now and this never occurred to her? Frankie had to force herself not to smack herself in the forehead. Of course this was her ability, she wasn’t crazy, she was just a creation. This girl, this girl was smart. Probably off the charts IQ. They’d been talking for all of five minutes and she’d already figured out that she wasn’t crazy.
When Frankie finally spoke again, her tone was much lighter and there was a small smile on her face. “No, sweetie, no one knows because I didn’t even know!” She shook her head slightly. How had she never known? She took two deep breathes to calm herself before answering the next question, “I don’t look for them, but yeah, they’re usually around before I am.” She paused, watching Clara for a second. There are no coincidences, she thought to herself, Everything happens for a reason.
“You ain’t causing them, then, you don’t think?” Clara asked. Honestly, she wasn’t sure this was the girl’s Creation ability, but she didn’t say as much, not when Francesca seemed to feel it was a good thing for it to be. “We should run some tests,” she said, “and do some checking. It’ll be hard to find things about to happen, but we can figure out a way to make it work. People are willing to do almost anything for money, including stubbing their toe to see if you make something come on over to warn us about it,” she said.
“Would you be willing to do some testing?” Clara asked. This was different than her intended purpose of dragging people into a dreamworld to see how they handled the stress there, but it would do. She was itching to get working on something, after all.
“Causing them? I hope not,” Frankie had never thought about it that way, what if her being here was the reason why they who here too? She barely had enough time think before Clara launched into a spiel about testing and finding subject and trying to bring the parasites to them. “Wait, wait! Slow down, sweetie,” She held up her hands defensively, “Look, I’m all for finding out more about these things, but not at someone else’s expense. I’m not going to ask someone to hurt themselves, okay? Not even if we pay them.” And she sure as hell isn’t going to put anybody in the path of those parasites, not when she couldn’t actually do anything about them.
“I’m a scientist,” Clara assured her. “I’ll follow all the rules and keep in mind safety precautions. You just got to say if you’re willing to be involved, and I’ll start thinking about funding our experiments.” She looked harmless, long dress to the floor and blonde hair in curls, and she looked excited, too. “I’ll even stub my own foot, it if it helps ya agree,” she said hopefully. “You don’t have to make a choice right now,” she said, thinking this was the time to stand up and close the deal, and so she did. She stood, and she pulled a business card from her purse. It was from Musings, not from here at all, and it looked very formal and CIA, but her Aubade number was scribbled on the back as well. “You just take that and think a spell,” she said, putting the card on the desk. “I’ll let my ownself out, and I’ll be looking forward to hearing back from you.”
A scientist. Of course she was a scientist. Frankie opened her mouth to speak, but the girl was already standing up and handing her a very official looking business card. “Thanks, I’ll let you know,” she tried to keep her voice pleasant, but there was a skeptical look on her face. The next thing she new, the girl had left her office and she was all alone again. Just her, and the creepy blue parasite again, only now she was almost certain that she wasn’t crazy.