(Untitled)

[carefulwishes]

"And the precog?"

"Bring him in."

So Eden will. Did this particular precog paint her death? Yes. Is she a strong confident woman who won't let a little thing like that stop her? Yes. (A voice in her head whispers No, but that's the voice of her insecurities. She knows it well. She can ignore it. She has a job to do.) She hops the subway and keeps

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[viridian_hue]

When Isaac opens the door, he looks like death warmed over--what else is new?--and he's covered in paint--again, standard--and for a long moment, all he can do is stare at her. Maybe it's not the same girl. Maybe it's just a weird body-double thing. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Heroin does weird things to the body, to the mind, he knows that. He could be hallucinating, giving that girl's face to someone who reminds him of her. Or something. Way to rationalize.

"Can I help you?" he finally asks.

[carefulwishes]

Eden (forces herself to) smiles at him. "My name is Eden McCain, and I'm a big fan of your work."

It occurred to her that it was gruesome. Macabre. Gallows humour. She said it anyway.

"May I come in?"

[viridian_hue]

"Sure," he says, mystified and holds the door open for her, still staring. "It's a mess." The last is something like apology as he just looks. There's no mistaking it. It's the same girl. She's on a canvas in the corner, even. How's that for unsettling?

[carefulwishes]

Eden smiles, faint and distant and distracted and trying to be none of the above.

"You're an artist, you can get away with mess." She walks further into the studio, scanning a painting or two, but her gaze is caught by the mural on the floor.

He said he had to save the world. This doesn't look like it gets saved.

[viridian_hue]

"Perk of the profession, I guess," he agrees, hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his paint-stained cargoes, naphthol red smeared down his thigh like he wiped his hand there. He probably did. It's also the same red that's on the floor, in the flames of the explosion, but he's stared at that painting so many times, he almost doesn't see it anymore.

[carefulwishes]

Eden takes a few steps closer to the mural, but doesn't want to walk on it.

"Looks like hell," she comments softly, remembering searing heat and choking smoke from another lifetime.

[viridian_hue]

"More like Hell's Kitchen," Isaac says. He looks at it, then shrugs again. "I always figured Hell would be so cold it would burn. Not that, not really. That's...I don't know what that is." He feels like he can't speak English, his brain still cloudy from the last dose, still letting down, crashing down and he's sweating, trembling a little.

[carefulwishes]

Eden begins to pay attention to Isaac. She notices. "Some say hell is merely the absence of God. It's a pit where damned souls look up at paradise forever denied them."

Her gaze travels to some of the other paintings - and stops on the one of her. She doesn't freeze or gasp; she was prepared for this, wasn't she? She'll later deny that her eyes widened, though they did.

"How've you been, Isaac?" She turns back to him, composed. "Since we met?" It's obvious it hasn't been well; hence, why her tone is tinged with compassion.

[viridian_hue]

"It is you, I'm not hallucinating," he says in a rush, scratching his arm. "You're really you. Not just a...a person who looks like her, you're her..." He sighs and shakes his head. "I didn't think I'd ever see someone from there here, even if they're supposed to be here, I didn't think..."

He's rambling and, contrary to all the manners he ever learned, flops bonelessly into a rickety chair, still scratching, his expression wholly amazed.

[carefulwishes]

Some of the tightness leaves her shoulders. Common ground. Something to focus on. "God, I know, that place is such a head-trip." So are other things, too.

"You met many people who, ah, are supposed to be here but you saw there? I've only met one. My be-- my friend." She'd almost said best friend. God, what a grade school thing to say. "We'd been keeping that place a secret from each other. Oh, the giggles we shared when we found that out." She gives a quick cheesy, hearty laugh to illustrate.

[viridian_hue]

"Just one or two. I met a girl who could be alive now, but she's not..." Oh, lovely and lame, Isaac, way to go. He sighs, digging in to his arm, trying to get at the blood and bone itching beneath the surface. "I guess I see enough weird shit every day I don't know what's real anymore."

[carefulwishes]

"Oh?" Light curiosity is all that's in her voice. If her gaze wavers for a second, well, maybe something else caught her eye. There are lots of interesting things here, after all.

She listens to the rest, a small, sad smile on her face. She walks closer to him. There's no place to sit nearby that isn't splattered in paint, and she doesn't want to get her jeans messed up, so she settles for standing near him instead of sitting down like him.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "What we have....It can be so hard. So very hard."

[viridian_hue]

Isaac looks around the studio, paint and canvas everywhere, the smell of turpentine hanging and he sighs, looking back up at her through his greasy hair. "Look, there's shit for furniture, just my bed's clean and I swear to God I'm not trying to do anything funny, but that's about it for not sitting in paint. If you want to sit or anything."

It's a very deft avoidance of the discussion of what they can do. He doesn't know what he can do right now, not when Petrelli could just...take it from him and do it, too. Like everything else, really.

[carefulwishes]

"Thanks. Sitting would be lovely - I had to stand the whole time on the subway," Eden replies, looking at him expectantly.

After all, she can stop him if he does try anything funny.

[viridian_hue]

He gets up, moving a little sluggishly, and leads the way across the studio, kicking an empty coffee can out of the way as he does so. His bed's tucked away in a corner behind a curtain and bare, just a blanket wadded up at the foot and a fitted sheet that's mercifully dark, and he flops down on a corner of it, curling one leg under himself. "Mi case, su casa," he says with a little smile, just an upturn at the corners of his lips, barely there.

[carefulwishes]

"Gracias," Eden replies, shooting him a smile. She sits, a polite distance between them, leaning back onto her hand as she stretches her legs out, to get her feet off the ground. "Ah. Better."