"I just...wanted to knows my mutter." Who: Hanna, Neena, and Clarice. What: Clarice ports Hanna to Neena's, talks, etc. When: 3/24, pretty much the exact hour of the mall events. Where: Neena's house. Rating/Warnings: R. Triggers for brief mentions of both Neena and Hanna's backstory, gun violence, torture, drugging, player character death... honestly, it's a good log, but none of these people's lives are tame. Status: Complete.
“Uhm.” Hanna said, looking around. She wasn’t entirely surprised by being teleported, but having it done by a very pretty pink woman was something else entirely. With a nice butt. She darted her eyes.
Clarice raised her eyebrows at Neena as if asking ‘you okay? Need me to stick around?’
Neena didn't even know what the hell she was doing. She'd spent... what, the last month? Trying to avoid this girl, and now the wide-eyed blonde was staring in her living room.
Staring at her woman. Neena squinted a bit at Hanna, then glanced back over at Clarice, then glanced back to Hanna and ran her hand up against the back of her neck, "Hi."
She glanced back at Clarice and raised both of her own eyebrows, as if to say 'save me'.
“Hi..” Hanna rubbed the back of her neck in a manner eerily similar to Neena.
Clarice fought back a grin, because Hanna was adorable. She shrugged a shoulder. “I’m going to get you guys dinner. You should talk alone a bit anyway.”
Oh that wasn't cool. Neena was going to get Clarice for that later, and her look said as much. Being left alone with Hanna was the last thing she wanted, but she knew better than to say otherwise. Clarice had already proven to her just how stubborn she was.
So she let out a bit of a sigh, and headed for the kitchen, "You want something to drink, kid? I know I do."
Clarice blew Neena a kiss before porting out. Hanna blinked her eyes, then followed Neena into the kitchen, nervously. “I would like some water, please.” She was careful to be polite, and felt out of her element. This was her mother?
Neena definitely wasn't the picture of mothering, and nothing about her living space said she was all that mothering, either. It was practically spartan, and kept immaculately clean. Even the kitchen was clean, though there were a few plates in the sink from a recent takeout run.
She opened the fridge and pulled out a beer for herself, then got Hanna a glass of nice, filtered ice water off the door. "Beer for me, ice water for you." She handed the water glass to the girl, then opened her beer up and set it down on the counter. After a quick glance at Hanna, she turned back towards the cupboards and opened one up.
The contents of it were sparse, but on the top shelf was a secret stash of junk food.
"And... let's see... Do you like twinkies? Sno-balls? Cheetos?"
Hanna took it all in quickly. It was nice, she liked that. She liked how clean it was. She could get used to that. After the rich meals Dite had fed her, though, twinkies sounded a little... delicious! "Twinkies! You can never go wrong with twinkies! I've never had sno-balls..."
She sat on a chair and stared at Neena, unnervingly.
"You've never had a sno-ball?" Neena's eyebrows raised a bit and she grinned as she grabbed an extra sno-ball just for Hanna. If Hanna really was her daughter, it was possible that the affinity for sno-balls was inherited. Honestly, it was a crying shame the girl had never had one before now.
She set the snacks down on the kitchen table next to Hanna, then rescued her beer and took a seat, "Try that first. Sno-balls are the closest God ever got to snack-cake perfection. Seriously."
“Really?” Hanna picked one up and sniffed it. She liked the smell, so took a bite. It was a messy bite, and judging by the look on her face it was the single best bite of anything she’d ever had. She mumbled something, swallowed some water then cleaned her mouth with a napkin. “Wow!”
"Pretty fucking amazing, huh?" Neena asked, grinning. Swearing in front of a teenager was probably a bad thing, but she figured if Hanna'd been traveling around the world, she'd probably heard worse. In many different languages.
She leaned back in her chair a bit, opening her own sno-ball and taking an extremely clean bite of it before grabbing her beer, "So. I uhm. I really don't know where to start with all of this or what you really want to know. I know there's some stuff that you really should know, even if you don't want to... And I have no idea if you'll understand it or not. But you seem like a pretty bright kid."
After a pause, she glanced off towards... anywhere that wasn't Hanna, and added, "You get that from your father, he was a genius."
“You are not dumb.” She rubbed at her arm, and sipped at her water again. She felt awkward, sitting here. Like there was something she should be doing and her body was too nervous to sit still, yet she sat perfectly still. “Erik is not my father, who is?”
"I'm not dumb, I'm just not a genius," Neena corrected. She took another swig off of her bottle, while wondering if this situation could actually get more awkward. Were mothers supposed to hug their children or something? But she wasn't a mother. She contributed DNA to this child, but she'd given up on motherhood 16 years ago. Was Hanna expecting something she couldn't really provide?
Did she still want to try and provide it?
She let out a sigh and got up, cleaning up the remains of their snack mess, "His name was Milo Thurman. We got married about... maybe a half a year before you were conceived? I don't remember the specifics."
“They took me from you,” Hanna said, more as a statement than a question. It was something she already knew, and didn’t need to ask about. “And from him? Where is he?”
"They attacked late at night, we were sleeping. Milo and I got separated in the mess, and I wasn't... as good, as I am now. At defending myself, or killing people. I was knocked out and hurt. When I woke up in the hospital the next day..." Neena took a deep breath, and let it out. There'd been plenty of years to get space from this, but Hanna returning just made it all feel like she'd never had that space at all.
"They had a lot of bad news for me that day. Everything I cared about was gone. He's gone, Hanna. It got complicated, but he's gone."
“I am sorry.” The girl put her water down, and leaned over to put her hand on her mother’s arm. She didn’t know this Milo. She’d never seen his face, but she’d had time to accept Neena’s face. A lot of time. The file wasn’t the only picture of her she had. She always had a photocopy on her, safely inside her shirt along with a picture of Sophie.
The touch wasn't unexpected. Neena still jumped a bit, though she didn't move Hanna's hand away. In fact, she looked down at it for a while. Tears rimmed at the edges of her eyes, but she still didn't cry. Instead, she got up from her chair and motioned for Hanna to follow her.
Through the living room, and into the second bedroom, which was set up like a war room. A table and a desk were stacked neatly with files and piles of photographs. Big maps were on the walls, including satellite photos. One of the maps was marked with pins. Neena had been hard at work tracking down various Cerberus facilities, but that wasn't why she lead Hanna into the room. She opened up the closet, and pressed her finger against the lock on one of the safes inside.
It clicked open, and she rummaged in it before pulling out a box, "I haven't opened this box in years, but maybe now's a good time. There's some... pictures. And other things."
Like their wedding rings.
Hanna chewed on her lip as she followed Neena. Her sharp eyes took in the war room, quickly and with enough detail to know where she might consider doing something about it. But then she looked at Neena and the box and forgot about all of that. She approached, and then hugged Neena from behind.
The hug nearly made Neena jump out of her skin. She wasn't a hugger, and lately on top of that her spine felt like it had a will of its own. She wasn't sure she'd ever get used to that feeling.
But she stood still for a few minutes and let Hanna hug her, before turning around and patting the girl's shoulder. She handed the box to her daughter, her voice rougher than before, "Here. You can have anything in here you want. I know it isn't... much. I'm not much for nostalgia. But this is the life that got stolen from you, and I think you're entitled to something. Kind of... a keepsake."
“But isn’t it important to you?” She asked, looking at Neena and then now at the box. Carefully, she opened it. She didn’t know if she’d even want anything, but she didn’t want to reject Neena. Her mother seemed like a good person.
"Not as important to me as it might be to you," Neena replied, softly. She didn't want to get into her own personal feelings for Milo. They were greatly in conflict and she didn't want Hanna to think poorly of her own father.
“Okay.” She looked into the box, clutching it tightly in her hands. She pulled out simple wedding bands, and a photo, and looked at them closely. Then she set the box on the desk. She put a photo of Milo and Neena on the desk, and the bands, and a watch.
Then she pulled an envelope out of her shirt and carefully opened it. Inside was a photocopy of the picture of Neena she had, and a photobooth picture of a girl with reddish brown hair. She set them down on the desk as well.
Neena watched her work, silently. The girl was laying everything out in a very orderly fashion, one that resonated with her on an almost spiritual level. Then she noticed the the picture of herself in the envelope, and something made her reach her hand out to touch it, "You actually kept this?"
“Yes. It’s...all I had to go on, besides the files. The files are in a safe place but I wanted to..” Hanna shrugged a shoulder. She didn’t know how to say that she wanted a connection. She looked back down at the objects, chewing her lip. She needed a safer place than on her person for all of them.
She didn't have to say it. Neena understood completely. As much as she declared she wasn't one for nostalgia, she'd kept those bands on a chain around her neck for years afterwards before putting them away. She still had one of Booker's flashy lighters in her jacket pocket, and if she could get away with she'd have swiped something of Clarice's, too.
The older woman patted Hanna's shoulder, awkwardly, "I get it. I really do. But I don't really think all of this stuff is gonna fit in that little envelope. Do you have a backpack or something?"
“I do. It’s…” she gestured back towards the front door, where she’d dropped it.
"We could put some of this stuff away in there, if you want. Or find a safe place to store it. Is that pack all the stuff you own?" Neena knew all about keeping a utilitarian lifestyle, and she also knew about keeping safe deposit boxes places, to keep things safe. It was less of a concern for her now than it'd been in the past, but she still had at least a dozen safe deposit boxes littered throughout the world.
Hanna looked at the neatly arranged items, then at the box. Carefully, she put the watch and rings back, and then put the pictures on top of it. Then she closed the lid. “They will be safer here. I have my memories of how she looked, and of you nows.”
The German girl fidgeted with her fingers, then held the box out to Neena.
"Are you sure?" Neena took the box from Hanna with a certain amount of reverence, "You should have some of this, it seems like the right thing to do."
“I would like some of it but it will be safer there until I have a safer place,” Hanna said. She looked up at Neena. “I don’t even know if I can trusts you, but I have to.”
"You don't know if you can trust me!?" Neena blinked at Hanna, then flailed an arm in the air, "Kid, the only thing I've been doing since you got here is trying to protect you!"
She pulled her shirt aside, first to the left shoulder, then to the right, so that Hanna could see the freshly healed wounds there, then pointed at her hand. There was a new scar there from the hole the spy had put there, too, though Faiza had been kind enough to heal that one to full. Then she pointed down at her leg, "I took FOUR bullets for you. This month. Not even last month, but this month, I was drugged, handcuffed to a bed, and tortured for information. Why? Because they were looking for you. And they aren't going to fucking have you, and if you don't trust me then I don't know who else you can trust. I'm about ready to put my life on the line for you. Do you think I'd do that for just anyone?"
Hanna looked distraught. "I did not know! You've been directing me and telling me to do things when I've been just fine on my own for a year! I did not asks you to do this!" She folded her arms stubbornly. "I just...wanted to knows my mutter. But there are peoples after me. They tried to grabs me but I hurt them and ran, and then the red-head tried to be sweets to me and this man with claws got shot by her and..."
"Just because you've been fine for a year... Look, I'm older than you. You might have been trained for this but I've been living it for as long as you've been alive. I know exactly the kind of people who are after you because I used to work for them. Back then I didn't know how bad they were, but now that I do, I'm not letting them anywhere near you if I can help it. Only I can't help it, because you keep sneaking out or running off." Neena ran her hand up into her hair, and sighed. Well, Logan would get better at least, but that was distressing anyway.
"You want to know me... this is who I am." Neena waved around the place, "I am not a good person. I'm not a saint. I've done a lot of questionable things in my life and killed a lot of people. It doesn't matter if they deserved it. I'm hard, and I don't take any bullshit from people, and I'm unforgiving. It takes a lot for me to care about people or let them in. But if they came for you, I would kill every single one of them to keep you safe. I'd do anything to keep you safe. Anything in my power."
Hanna started to cry, and for once it wasn't an act.
Oh god no, not the crying. Neena didn't even know how to handle the crying. She rarely cried, herself.
"Hey... look..." Neena replied, awkwardly patting a hand against Hanna's shoulder, "I didn't mean to make you cry, I just... I'm not good at this."
Hanna shook her head and then wrapped her arms around Neena, burying her face into the woman’s chest. She didn’t know what to say or how to say it. She just felt like she didn’t deserve any of that. Neither of them did.
"Oh...kay..."
Neena wrapped her arms around the girl, and rubbed her back. Maybe she had a few motherly instincts after all, because she desperately wanted to comfort this girl. She closed her eyes, and rested her head on top of Hanna's, "Shh... hey... it'll be alright."
“Can I stay here?” Hanna pulled away, wiping at her face. “I will not be a bother. I was a bother to Dite but …” She shrugged a shoulder. “I won’t invite my friend over.”
"I don't think you were a bother to that woman. She's way too big a sweetheart for that, and she cared for you a lot. I could tell." Neena protested.
Her hand was still patting at Hanna, and she let out a bit of a sigh, "I thought staying with her was better for you. She's more the motherly type. I thought you were happy. You can stay here if you want, sure. I'd prefer it. But... no friends here yet. Not until it's safe. This place is probably watched."
"I really liked her, but I don't think it would have gone anywhere," Hanna said, making a face. "She was sooo pretty..." Clearly, Hanna hadn't wanted as much a mother as she wanted something else from that woman.
Neena's eyebrows raised up into her hairline, "Well no, that was never going to happen. Not with a woman old enough to be your mother."
Hanna stuck out her tongue. “She is not that old. She is younger than you!” She thought so. The woman was a model and Hanna had done the internet research and decided she liked blondes.
"She's a Goddess, Kid, that means she's going to look younger than me forever. It doesn't mean she's actually younger than me," Neena corrected.
Now that the situation was lighter, Neena took the opportunity to put the box back away in the safe. Then she took a breath, let it out, and motioned Hanna over. "This first safe has weapons in it for me and Booker to use. If you ever need a weapon, I want you to have the code. The other safe is mine personally, and it's locked to my dna alone."
She let Hanna know the code for the first one while she put the box of Milo's things away in the second one. There was actually a fail safe for it, just in case something happened to her. Only Clarice had been given the code for that so far.
“Does that matter?” Hanna walked over, and nodded her head while she memorized the code. Then she replicated it in order to open the safe, and then reseal the safe. She didn’t touch the gun in there. She didn’t want to unless she had to.
"Of course it matters. You should be flirting with girls closer to your age. The gap between you and a woman like 'Dite is huge, and you don't have a lot of common ground. Plus, I'm pretty sure the love she had for you was more big sister in nature." Neena shook her head at the whole situation, smirking a bit.
There was actually a huge age gap between her and Clarice, too, but it mattered less when you hit twenty-one or so. They were both still considered adults, and Clarice's dreams had definitely matured her, "It'll matter less when you grow up a bit, but for now, you probably want to keep your sights set on girls like that one in your photo."
And speaking of Clarice, where'd she gone off to? Neena glanced down at her watch, and frowned, "Where the hell did mine go, anyway? Even if she'd gone to actual China for dinner she should've been back by now..."
“Probably.” Hanna still looked a little put out about it, but that was a crush. She decided she didn’t like crushes.
There was a flash of light, and the first thing that Hanna smelled wasn’t delicious Chinese, but smoke and explosives and blood.
Clarice looked a mess, but she didn’t look at all injured. She moved over to Neena. “Long story, but I’m okay. I need to get back out, but I wanted to tell you before you saw it on the news.”
Neena also recognized the smells, and her hand had almost instantly gone to reach for a weapon, before Clarice's words registered. Whatever was going on, was going on somewhere else. The look in Clarice's eyes said that it was bad, "...Do you guys need backup?"
She shook her head. “There’s only the clean up right now, and a lot of digging. Probably better to stay here. Just in case.” She glanced at Hanna, and then leaned in and whispered. “It was bad. We... we lost Faiza.”
"I... see." Neena's face turned to stone, and she nodded her head. There was nothing more to be said and Neena wasn't sure she was capable of words at the moment, anyway. Faiza. Faiza? The only doctor she'd learned to trust. That woman had saved her ass, saved everyone's asses, and she didn't deserve it.
The older woman felt like another weight had just been strung over her shoulders, but she stiffened those, too, and pressed a hand against Clarice's cheek. A reassurance that both of them were alright.
Clarice put her hand over Neena’s, and struggled to keep herself from losing it. She’d nearly died (maybe she had) and with Faiza and everything...she could use a good breakdown. But that would have to wait a few more hours. “I’ll be back soon. I promise. I’m okay. I’m okay.”
"You better be," Neena replied.
She waited for Clarice to blink back out, then glanced over at Hanna, "Stay here, Kid. I'll be right back."
So much for quitting smoking. Today seemed like the perfect day to pick the habit back up.