Logs // Family [Evan, Terry, Scott, Forge, Dani, Catseye]

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Some things are sometimes inevitable. A return to the point of beginning, that had nothing to do with places or events, but just with people and hopes and dreams. Evan Smith finally finds his way to the mansion, under a pretext most mundane. Car accidents are part of every day life in a sense after all, aren't they?

Staring up at the mansion, Evan swallowed, trying to work up the courage to ring the doorbell. He figured the guy who had opened the main gates for him was probably going to wonder at one point if no one rang the bell, and inform someone inside, but thankfully, that hadn't happened so far. Or so he hoped.

Leaving him to screw up his courage, after having gone this far, and reach out to press the button. And step back, blinking at the stately sounding bell ringing inside.

This is just so insane. What am I doing?

Terry detoured on her way to the rec room at the sound of the doorbell.  "Got it," she called over her shoulder to anyone else who might be nearby and strolled through the foyer, bare feet making almost no noise against the wood floor.  She pulled the door open without checking to see who it was first.  She smiled as cheerfully as she could manage at the young man on the porch, managing to project welcome in spite of her still livid bruises.  "Hi, can I help you?"

Normal. Short and redheaded and cute, and Evan stared for a moment, mouth open with nothing coming out. Huh - also in a scuffle with some other kid, he deduced, not at all unfamiliar with that sort of bruises. So. Very. Normal. "Uh. Hi." And then, regaining control of his wits. "Yeah! Um... I have a accident report here? Someone driving a blue sports car hit my Jeep last week..." He trailed off a bit nervously, trying not to glance inside - of course the first person to answer wouldn't somehow happen to have purple hair, what was he thinking? He was probably doing this for nothing and would owe someone one hell of an apology. "I don't suppose you have a car with the license plate..." He rattled off the numbers, never once checking on the accident and police reports he was holding.

Terry's eyes went wide, "Someone scratched the car?  I hadn't heard anything about that... Oh, Mother Mary, Mr. Summer's going to have a conniption.  Do yeh know who was driving?"  She backed up from the door. "Yeh'd best come in." The thought of injury to the car rattling her enough that her careful New York accent slipped in favor of her native lilt.  "I'll get Mr. Summers for yeh.  What was yer name?"

"Evan. Evan Smith." Automatically, Evan reached out, hand outstretched in greeting. He stepped inside, pretending not to have noticed the question about who was driving, hoping not to give himself away too soon. To be here, just because of a glimpse of someone, which reminded him of something which he should have let go long ago... "Thank you."

Terry shook his hand firmly and smiled at him.  "It's no trouble." She paused, wondering what she should do with him while she went to get Scott.  "Sure it's the least I can do.  Follow me, all right?"  She took him to one of the quieter rooms, probably a former sitting room but used more for studying these days.  "Have a seat.  I won't be gone long."

"Sure thing, miss." Nodding politely, Evan sat down, feeling vaguely guilty for letting her worry so. And starting to wonder at exactly how much trouble he was getting himself into for following up on what had to have been a figment of his imagination...

I'm sorry sir, but I saw this person with hair the same color as a kitten of mine used to have and...

Groaning faintly, Evan let his shoulders slump, burying his face in his hands.

~*~

Scott heads downstairs to investigate this mysterious claim of an accident with his precious car. Evan, as it turns out, isn't all that good a liar when the chips are down, but sticks to his story faithfully while keeping it as simple as possible, hanging on to threads of memories never truly forgotten.

Scott, absently fiddling with the bandages on his hand as he followed Terry down the front hall, was trying not to let on how perplexed he was. He would have noticed if there'd been any damage to his car, especially if this accident had happened when Forge had borrowed it. Given that he and Jean had just taken something of a roadtrip with it. Unless... oh, to heck with it. He'd sort it out, he told himself, giving Terry a reassuring smile. She was looking at him sideways as if she expected him to explode.

Evan, still waiting in the side study looked up as soon as he heard the footsteps in the hallway, Terry's face hovering briefly in the doorway with an oddly not so reassuring smile before ducking to the side. The man who walked in was not one of those he thought he'd seen and Evan found himself holding his breath as he rose to his feet.

In way over his head did not begin to describe the situation he'd placed himself in.

Evan Smith, whoever he was, looked very, very nervous, Scott thought, and extended his hand - the broken one, which made him sigh, then lower it and offer the other. "I'm Scott Summers," he said amiably enough. "I own the car in question, although I wasn't driving it at the time." He offered Evan a slight smile. "Why don't we sit back down?"

"Sir!" Reaching out to shake the man's hand in greeting, careful in the gesture by reflex and wondering a bit at meeting two people in a row who seemed to be hurt, Evan nodded shortly, before reluctantly settling back on his chair once Scott had sat down himself. And then got right back up again, accident report in hand, to hand it over to him. "I'm sure whoever was driving the car didn't have any bad intentions..." he trailed off, the general comment not at all implying anything... bad. Really. Or so he hoped.

Scott thought about what Catseye had posted, and gave Evan another slight smile. "They - the people borrowing the car last week - may have been in something of a rush. Was there much damage to your Jeep?" Something was definitely off here.

"Um. The report goes through what was there..." This wasn't going to fly and he was in deep trouble. But how in the world did you explain the insane to someone who looked to calm and reasonable? He tried to smile politely, feeling entirely out of his depth and not just a little bit desperate.

Definitely something off. "Can I see it?" Scott asked lightly, extending a hand. "I'll have  to know the details. For insurance, as well as for talking to the students involved..."

Terry flashed a smile at Evan then ducked away, slightly preoccupied trying to figure out exactly what had happened.  The only place the car had been recently was that trip that Forge, Catseye and Kylun took.  Kylun didn't drive, she knew and she didn't think Catseye did either.  And since Mr. Summers was going to want to talk to Forge anyway, she was sure...  Terry jogged off to find Forge and see what answers she could get.

~*~

One by one, people are drawn to the scene, be it by purpose or accident, until the one person directly concerned by all of this also shows up, drawn by the voices and the sound of her name being spoken aloud.

"You think every road is practice for the Indy 500, so maybe you did scratch it," Dani pointed out, advancing on Forge as if making him head towards the red room, "Just be a man and admit it."

"Like hell!" Forge shouted, voice echoing off the walls. He was more than offended by the implication, he was flat-out angry. "Telling me I hit a car and didn't know it would have been like telling you that you had a baby and didn't notice it. Like... like telling Da Vinci he painted a third eye on the Mona Lisa! I do NOT have car accidents, and in the earth-shattering event that I did? I'd remember!"

Dani slowed down as the emotion hit her, "Calm down, Hahkota! It was just a suggestion, ain't like you lose time or nothing, ain't it? Just thought that maybe you forgot in a whirl of inspiration to build a whirlygig."

"SO not my fault!" Forge insisted, walking backwards into the door to push it open with his hip, arguing with Dani as he walked. "I am an excellent driver, no, I'm more than an excellent driver. I make Emerson Fittipaldi look like an eight year old at a Pinewood Derby. That car is practically a work of art, I'd no sooner scratch it than I'd cut off my other arm!"

Turning around, Forge caught sight of Mr. Summers standing with his arms folded and gulped. "I'm telling you, I brought your car back in pristine condition, you can ask Kylun or Catseye, we didn't hit any..."

Only then did Forge notice the young man on the couch, and his mind immediately leaped into action. He was familiar, maybe five or six years older than Forge, not a student, where had he seen him before...

"...holy shit," Forge squeaked out, recognizing the family resemblance, then setting his jaw and planting his feet. "If you came around looking to start some trouble, oh man, are you ever in the wrong place for it."

"Trouble?" Evan blinked, forgetting everything about the paper in his hands or the man seated in front of him as he rose to his feet. "Naw, I'm not looking for trouble, man. But you had a cat with you. A purple cat." It hadn't been hair, that was the only explanation - someone with the cat on their shoulders? His cat? Were they calling her Catseye now, or was that the person who now had his cat, he wonderd, even as he tried to remember the glimpse of the other person he'd seen, trying to match up the silhouette to the kid in front of him. "That was you near the car, wasn't it?"

Forge just stared, as everything fell into place. The missing piece.

Connection.

"You made the poster," he blurted out. "You knew, fifteen years ago, you knew there was a purple kitten. I was RIGHT!" Pacing rapidly across the floor, Forge walked back and forth, stroking his chin in thought. "You knew the cat was gone, and her hair's distinctive enough that you remembered. Fifteen years, damn, I'm good."

Snapping his fingers, he looked over at Evan, narrowing his eyes. "So who'd you come looking for? Your kitten, or your sister?"

"My sister? You're insane!" Shaking his head, Evan stared at Forge in pure shock.

"Okay. Hold on," Scott said flatly, looking from one to the other. "I should point out that I'm one of the headmasters here, and we're talking about one of my students. What precisely is going on and who wants to explain?"

Forge folded his arms across his chest, managing to try and look as smug as he could. "Unless I'm wrong - and I am rarely wrong - he got the license number of your car and did a reverse search through DMV databases to get the address here. There wasn't any accident, sir. I told you, I brought the car back in the same condition I borrowed it in." He shrugged a shoulder towards Evan, still undecided as to how to treat him.

"I didn't expect him to show up here, I have to admit. But... this is Evan Smith. He's Catseye's older brother."

Staring at Forge in blank shock, Evan shook his head, never even hearing Scott. "Stop saying that! Sister? You sick little… my sister's dead. She died as a baby! Mom never got over it and we never even talk about it, Dad has us move so no one would bug her about it, how the hell did you know that? How did you know?"

Evan's eyes narrowed and he took a step forward at that, one first clenched tightly… and then stopped, staring over Forge's shoulder with a stunned, disbelieving look.

Lavender eyes, the pupils slits like a cat's stared back at him in mingled confusion and worry, a slight frown taking over as Catseye stepped into the room to stand between him and Forge. The voices had been loud and Forge speaking her name had been enough to draw her attention.

Evan's field of vision narrowed down to only one thing, the rest forgotten as he backed away, stopping only when he hit the wall. He stared at the girl in front of him, no sound coming from him until the feeling of the wall behind him finally broke through his shock.

"It can't be…" Thoughts whirling madly, pieces clicking into place with disturbing finality, one by one. Evan tried to make sense of a world seemingly gone mad, the only answers he found leading to something he didn't want to contemplate. "Had a baby sister… died, crib death. Dad said so… kitten got out the back door… I found the prints during the snow storm, I know the kitten was outside, it can't be… I looked…"

"Catseye remembers the snow." It was one of her earliest memories, an odd sensation of cold that never ended, chased her everywhere. Until she'd been lifted up in the air, teeth securely holding the back of her neck, to be finally deposited into warmth, with other small purring bodies. "Catseye does not remember…" she stopped at that, the hair on the back of her neck rising slightly. There was something about his scent. "Catseye does not…"

"You…" A sob escaped him as he sagged against the wall, reaching out towards Catseye with a trembling hand. "God it really is you. The same eyes and-" his eyes flicked towards the tail swishing gently behind Catseye and then back to her hair. And then a slow, naked horror dawned in his eyes. "I stopped looking. I stopped looking I stopped looking oh my god I stopped looking…"

Without knowing why, Forge took a few steps forward, putting a hand on the back of Evan's shoulder. "You were six years old," he said quietly. "You believed what they told you. It's not your fault." He looked across the room at Catseye, then nodded and gripped his shoulder again. "It's not your fault."

Unsure what to do, only knowing that somehow seeing her was making things worse and having no idea how to deal with the situation, Catseye did the only thing that made sense to her. With a shush of fabric, cloth shifted to collar and moments later, a purple paw pushed against Evan's knee insistently.

With a small, strangled sound Evan let himself sink to the ground, a ragged sob escaping him at the sight of the full grown, purple cat scrambling up to rest both paws on his chest, whiskers tickling at his cheek briefly before Catseye settled against him with an unsteady, uncertain purr. Crying fitfully, Evan wrapped both arms around the cat, holding on for dear life. "Stopped looking… oh god, so sorry…"

Scott closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and trying to banish the sudden welling of sadness that had come along with the shock and understanding. So unfair, he thought wistfully. All of this. For both of them. The cat... the girl who'd been lost in the snow, or the boy who'd remained behind. He opened his eyes again, nothing but compassion in his expression as he looked down at Catseye and her brother. "It's all right," he said softly to Evan. "Forge is right. You didn't know." He saw, as he moved closer, something he hadn't expected, something that made his own eyes sting behind his glasses. Never thought that cats had tear ducts...