Dead Passerine Express

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deckard_icon.gif teo_icon.gif

Scene Title Dead Passerine Express
Synopsis Apparently Deckard has taken up assisted skydiving and recruitment work for Phoenix as well as Manhattan's other latest sport: killing pigeons. Except not exactly! Teo arrives in time to be a conciliatory chauffeur who otherwise cruelly denies Flint a nap on the way over. They gossip about a lot of good-looking Evolved girls they both know, but not exactly like that, either.
Date December 28, 2008

Earlier that evening: Deckard sends Teo a text to the effect that he nearly died again, Sylar apparently tried to pull off Abigail's head, and there is an Evolved pizza boy hunting Sylar down.


Staten Island

There's something about the fringes of Staten Island that will always inspire sentiments of unease. After the bomb, much of Staten Island has fallen into glorious disrepair, so much so that places that were already in stages of decay look more like monuments to entropy than once urban settlements in decline. While much of the island was suburban residential areas before the bomb, there were two crowning moments that drove this borough of New York into an early grave. The first was the mass exodus of survivors and panicked people fleeing Manhattan. They came by foot, bicycle and car across the bridges to Staten Island, all manner of desperate and frightened people flooding into a crowded place. While some fled through to New Jersey, others simply couldn't — or wouldn't — go further. This, like in Queens, led to an eventual chaos that would in time eclipse the pandemonium in the eastern edge of New York after the bomb.

Staten Island was in the direct path of the fallout from the explosion, and after thousands fled to the island, the entire populace was forcibly evacuated. Those few that managed to stay, clung to their homes desperately, and those few who did would suffer from radiation sickness and the ever-escalating crime rate. By the time Staten Island got the "all clear" from the government, the damage had already been done.

What was one suburban neighborhoods and parklands is now a monument to decay. Houses lie in various states of disuse and ruin, and like much of New York has seen property values nosedive. Few want to move out to a formerly irradiated zone, and even fewer want to return to a place so rife to violent crime. Now, much of Staten Island lies in various states of decay. Houses abandoned by families that fled the city, were forced into forclosure and were never resold, or simply places where entire families went missing and are now squatted in by any number of transients line the once peaceful streets. Staten Island is a home to crumbling infrastructure, spotty electricity, and people who wish to remain undiscovered by law enforcement. Few police will willingly go into this now infamous island.


Deckard has found a bench. The opposite end of it is occupied by a dead pigeon. Freshly dead. Bloodied feathers stick to ancient iron and wood in isolated clumps, with thicker gore pasted messily across the corresponding arm rest and sidewalk. There are a lot of dead pigeons, actually. Four or five scattered around the street in various states of horrible death.

A car is approaching through the darkness, twinned pair of terrestrial stars counterpoint to the static twinkle intermittently allowed through from above by the passage of clouds blowing past like skeins of dirty cotton. It's a bunny. Rabbit. The car, that is, Volkswagon. Teo likes it. Family car, a small one; gives the bizarrest allusion and illusions of ordinary decency. It's all black, except for the headlights which pick the way ahead out in sharp, near-fluorescent white.

Except for the pigeon's carcasses, which show in various shades of red and the glistening pink of surprised flesh. A few yards past the park bench and its choreography, the Rabbit stops. The passenger window opens without the engine dying, and a wedge of Teo's face shows through, one big blue eye and a blanched line of profile. "You going to eat that, signor?"

There's a undead surrealism to the turn of Deckard's head after the sound of the approaching Volkswagon. No squinting, flinching, or recoiling against the bleaching wash of the headlights. The gun in his lap is holstered beneath overcoat and suit coat before Teo's voice pipes up to confirm what the metal in his head suggests. After, he glances to the nearest bird and pushes up onto his feet, muttering unintelligably about doggie bags as he makes his way over to the car door and fumbles it open.

The actual re-sitting process occurrs in silence, with only the clunk of the door closing after him serving as confirmation that he's in and safe and whatever. He does not buckle his seatbelt.

In light of the near death experience that Teo had been texted about, this disquiet seems right and natural. Insofar as there's nothing right or natural about it. The old man might not be the most free and easy conversationalist under the best of circumstances, but there's usually something for him to curse out or tear down.

Teo does his best to neither stare nor strain his hearing as Flint gets in. He has had enough weird-looking or absurdly injured friends that his best is pretty good. He shifts gears and, glancing backward past the rearview, hangs a sharp U-turn into the opposite lane, with only the faintest bump and scrape to indicate he came dangerously near the snow-filled edge. "You look a little better than shit," he offers, by way of compliment. "Need a doctor? Abby? Band aids? Whisky?"

The hour is such that there's an audible scuff when Deckard scratches at his jaw. Stubble in its ever diligent effort to return to its status quo bristle. When his hand falls again, he shrugs. Whatever kind of heart-faltering panic he was in when he sent the text seems to have passed. He's worn out and unhappy and he can't feel his fingers, all of which seem to be common themes lately.

"I'm fine," is croaked out ahead of a raspy clearing of his throat. He sniffs, swallows down whatever noxious gunk that cleared out, and tips his head back to the window to watch the passing of what few lights still glow on their own out here. "No permanent damage."

Half an hour's worth of slaughtering pigeons might qualify as therapy in someone's book. Maybe. Teo isn't sure. He tries to put things together in his head, which would probably go better if asking questions and rudeness seemed to increase proportionally together. The unsympathetic jerk that stubbornly clings to existence at the back of Teo's personality is happy that somebody seems worse off than he is, these days.

The rest of his personality notices the faint sneer of that small bit, suffers a pang, and takes a hand off the wheel to find Kleenex somewhere in his pocket. Offers it sidelong, unintrusive, as they come up on a red light. "Did the pizza boy get out all right?"

"I didn't shoot him." Not the most reassuring of reassurances. Deckard narrows his focus from the street to the glass that separates him from it, studying his own red-lit reflection with a faint scowl for a few seconds before he shifts to face forward again. "I hit him. Should have kicked him while he was down." The kleenex gets a glance, followed by a more 'fuck you' flavored look when the offer is misinterpreted. He doesn't need a tissue.

Jaw clamped against a vitriolic remark along the same lines, he rankles his nose and hooks a pair of fingers around the lift of the door lock. "He'll be fine until he finds what he's looking for. I took his number in the off chance you want to talk to him."

It's fairly obvious from his face that Teo hadn't realized that the pizza boy had been the one who nearly killed his fr— h— Deckard. Teo's eyebrows go up, and he takes a moment too long to press the car forward when the light changes again, off-kilter with something of mingled relief. "Oh. Shit," he says, intelligently. "I thought…" You read somebody was near killed and Sylar's in the next sentence, it doesn't occur to you that the pizza boy is the perp. "I thought wrong.

"Mi diaspace." For the tissue also. He retracts the little packet back into the interior of his coat and fumbles with the newfound awareness that there's a pizza boy out there who might be maimed by means other than firearms. More lights are coming out, the closer they get to the bridge. There's even a pedestrian there, a brown paper bag in han. Blank with surprise, Teo asks: "You think I should talk to him?"

"I don't know." Deckard's just some guy. Who somehow winds up having these conversations with people. Voice still roughed by its exposure to the cold and an all around crappy evening, he looks over Mr. Brownbag with something akin to jealousy in passing.

There's silence while he watches his own hand flex stiffly open and closed, then: "He's one of few who might actually have a slightly better chance of not dying after talking to you. He flies. Sticks to walls. And he's worried about Abigail." The information dump is followed by a muffled yawn while he finally starts to relax. And while they're on the subject, "Pam is curious too."

Consternation creases Teo's brow. A slightly better chance of not dying after—? One of the few? What are the many, then? Hey. He glances over and is greeted by the gaping, soggy, bristle-framed hole of Deckard in the midst of yawning. His expression eases back to neutral when it becomes apparent that the older man isn't trying to be difficult, that he can't help it, and asking him not to would be like requesting the sea to not be wet.

"Grazie. I'll look in on his crusade. Pamela—" he ends the sentence with the missing syllables of her name in lieu of a declaration. Stripper-vet. Probably talks to animals. He remembers. "Last time I saw her, she was the kind of curious that pokes at shiny shit in the dirt with a really long stick. You talked to her? Could you put on your seatbelt?" The one question follows the previous in an equally harmless tone of query, divergent though the subjects are. Manhattan's coming up. There are traffic cameras and cops and fines.

"Pam is a good-looking stripper. I could talk to her about cat food and be happy. And Magnes was trying to kill me, so. I didn't really have much of an option there." That's sketchy longhand for 'you don't have to thank me for everything.' Or something. He rolls his eyes closed again after the smile, irises bereft of their ghastly light. He saw it. He doesn't smile back.

"A cop showed up after you left. She had a casual conversational relationship with him too. And me. Lots of questions about Mr. Mike Burrows and what he gets up to when he isn't wandering around Central Park in the middle of the night." For all that his voice is rough with cynicism, there's no distant chill or creeping heat behind his delivery. "She seems like kind of an idiot."
Especially if she's BFF with the police. She's hot, though. You have a lot of hot friends."

Always one to be difficult, Teo doesn't look especially inclined to withdraw his gratitude. Pam is a stripper-veterinarian. Cat food would come easier. Magnes tried to kill him; Deckard hadn't needed to get his number. There isn't a lot the young Sicilian is going to do when dismissed, however. The older man has a rare talent for modesty, which works out pretty charming because he wouldn't admit to it, either.

A slight crease takes up residence on his brow when Flint says Eve has cop friends. Deeper when he says Eve is altogether dumb. The officer wasn't Trask, he suspects immedately, if Deckard isn't whining about his sudden 'short-sightedness' upon proximity. He doesn't think Deckard minds girls with brains proportioned small relative to other things. He frowns more, before easing his expression.

"She's different," he says. Then, by way of agreement, "Evolution's been uncharacteristically kind." Tik tik, turn signal. The bridge ribbons shadows over the nose of the car. "New Year's plans?"

Deckard is just about as relaxed as Teo has ever seen him. There isn't much that can go terribly wrong in a car. You can wreck. That's about it. Psychotic murderers, flying pizza boys, arrest and the end of the world are all concerns for a more stationary state of existence. The flat of his chest rises and falls with easy regularity — ribcage obscured at his near side by the lump of the gun that makes its home there.

"Different." It's not an agreement, necessarily. Just that annoying repeating thing he tends to do when he thinks Teo's said something unreasonable. Ironically in this case it applies only to his opinion of women, and not to his split faith in evolution and patron saints. "No."

She is. She's a dream prophet and just a little insane, Teo would elaborate, if it was his business, but he knows it isn't, that that would hardly benefit the woman's case — and given his druthers, he'd rather not talk about the women in his life on any given day of it. His brain complains further, but his profile doesn't suffer much more in the way of furrows or shadows, though. Other things to scowl about at other times.

"You weren't around for Christmas. Those few days," he notes, finally, conveniently forgetting that his implied check-in probably would have been a more suitable bit to share in the park, when they'd been talking about Christmas, and plans, and not being creepy. Hopefully they're past the creepy. "Want a bottle of champagne to take to these no plans?"

"Holidays," says Deckard. This is not actually a complete sentence, but he seems to think it is, because he doesn't complete it. His eyes slant open again with a certain air of reluctance in recognition of the fact that Teo wants to talk and he is not, in fact, going to get in a nap on the way home. Ribs lifting wide around a sigh, he drops his right hand from its hook around the lock to roll down the window a couple of inches instead. The razor blast of the wind through the crack and directly into his face is enough to ensure that he stays awake and reasonably attentive, if Teo is going to start poking around private places.

"I don't drink champagne," he says dully to the window, pale eyes squinted against the encroaching cold. "But my wife does."

Some people speak with their hands. Understandably, Deckard can articulate lots of things with his eyelids instead. Rather belatedly, the younger man realizes that he'd been trying to catch some winks. Little oopsie. He thinks. If it were a bigger one, he'dve warranted more growling instead of that monosyllable bit of wife bullshitting. There's a slight shift in his eyes, apologetic, a ruddying of his ears almost imperceptible in the passing light from the street. "Okay," he says, blankly. "I… uuuh." The window's already open, slicing at them with a droning of cold air through the heat breathing up from the front. "Was gonna ask you about whether it went with Grace, but it can wait."

"You don't believe I'm married?" Deckard's lolls his head across his shoulder to lift his brows at driving Teo at a sideways sort of angle. The flare of his overcoat collar is left to catch the wind, funneling it uncomfortably down the back of his neck. "It's not impossible." Too lazy to be proper teasing, he's just being a dick. If Teo is going to be one inadvertently he can be one intentionally. So says the law of Deckard.

He rights his head again after the Grace question, attention wandering blankly over the street beyond. Still no glow, and even with the wind and cold air, he only looks partially conscious. "It went fine. On my end. On her end you have to consider that it was me she was talking to."

"You don't believe I'm married?" Deckard's lolls his head across his shoulder to lift his brows at driving Teo at a sideways sort of angle. The flare of his overcoat collar is left to catch the wind, funneling it uncomfortably down the back of his neck. "It's not impossible." Too lazy to be proper teasing, he's just being a dick. If Teo is going to be one inadvertently he can be one intentionally. So says the law of Deckard.
He rights his head again after the Grace question, attention wandering blankly over the street beyond. Still no glow, and even with the wind and cold air, he only looks partially conscious. "It went fine. On my end. On her end you have to consider that it was me she was talking to."

"You don't believe I'm married?" Deckard lolls his head across his shoulder to lift his brows at driving Teo at a sideways sort of angle. The flare of his overcoat collar is left to catch the wind, funneling it uncomfortably down the back of his neck. "It's not impossible." Too lazy to be proper teasing, he's just being a dick. If Teo is going to be one inadvertently he can be one intentionally. So says the law of Deckard.

He rights his head again after the Grace question, attention wandering blankly over the street beyond. Still no glow, and even with the wind and cold air, he only looks partially conscious. "It went fine. On my end. On her end you have to consider that it was me she was talking to."

Laws, breaking, cake. Something. Teo reassures him him promptly enough: "I don't believe you're married to a woman you'd bring champagne on New Year's." Which is more of a no than a yes, more dick than his accident of a moment, less than Flint had been. "I heard about a party. I'll get you a bottle from the surplus." He might mean 'steal,' but he's Teo. Doesn't steal. Plays chauffeur, wears his gun wrong.

"You're so self-loathing." There's a wry note in Teo's observation, almost teasing, which fades to sincerity in time for him to say, "Glad to hear it." He cranes his head to read the Chinese off an unfamiliar neon sign as the Rabbit hops off the bridge and finds its way to a brighter flow of automobile traffic, the boneyards of rotting ships and frozen pigeons abandoned to the night.


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December 28th: Old Comrades Reunite
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December 28th: Thrill Ride
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