Evicted

Participants:

doyle_icon.gif kaylee2_icon.gif mcrae3_icon.gif

Scene Title Evicted
Synopsis Kaylee returns home to the safehouse after her Dinner at the Petrelli mansion. The reaction from others over where she was, gets the telepath understandably evicted from her home.
Date January 26, 2010

Sweat Lodge


Almost curfew when the door to McRae's safe house opens to admit a certain telepath, a voice is heard outside the house, where someone keeps watch. Kaylee chuckles and shuts the door behind her and is quick to kick of her flats and shed her coat leaving her in the nice white dress she wore to dinner at the Petrelli mansion. Hooking her finger in her shoes she moves quietly through the house angling for her room.

There is a small smile on her lips as she moves through the hall, fingers reaching back to start letting her hair down. The evening had gone much better then she thought, despite Peter's sudden panic at the end of it. There is a little shake of her head at the memory of how quickly he had shuffle them out of there.

Passing by Doyle's room, she pauses to knock on his door and offer a, "I'm home Eric," before moving on to head for her room.

Just after she steps past it, the door creaks open, Doyle's arm raising up to rest on the doorframe as he leans out a bit; brows raising at the dress she's wearing, his tone twisting wry and a half-smile curling his lips, "Well, well, someone have a hot date tonight?"

Grinning, Kaylee stops and does a little turn. "Like it?" A hand brushes at the fabric, it reminded her somewhat of the one in her nightmares, it was an impulse buy. "And no.. I didn't have a date. I haven't dated in months really." She chides, moving to quickly toss her shoes in her room. The telepath does return to lean against the wall next to his door, studying him. "Now… don't get mad…but.." She cautions before she drops the bomb, "Peter took me to talk to his mother."

A simple blue-plaid button-up shirt and a pair of khaki pants are worn by the puppeteer this evening, and there's a few bits of bright, garish pink on his hands here and there. No shoes, he's in his fluffy slippers with the sew-on googly eyes if she looks down. "Looks good," Doyle says quietly, managing a faint smile that fades at the latter, lips pursing in a brief grimace, "I told you, Kay, you shouldn't trust him…"

"Oh.. stop Eric. He's fine." Kaylee comments blandly moving to grab his hand, turning to look at the color. Eyes flick up to arch a brow. "Been busy doing some painting?" But then she quickly lets the hand go. "Something changed in Peter. When I met him his eyes were blue.. he… didn't seem so… I don't know. Broken." Looking thoughtful she pushes off the wall, hand patting his cheek. "Come on, buddy… I'll make us some hot chocolate."

There's a flash of alarm in Eric's eyes at the mention of who his mother is, and he reaches over to seize her arm sharply. "Kaylee— jesus. Do you— do you even know how dangerous this is? You're just going to— to hang out with these people? Go to dinner with them? I can't believe what I'm hearing, here— after everything they've done…"

There is shock on Kaylee's face when she's grabbed, she jerks her hand out of his grip. "Eric!" She snaps, then realizing she's being loud she lowers her voice. "Look… I am not an idiot." Taking a step away she glares at him. "There are things I could be doing for the Ferrymen.. but I can't do it with the way things are."

"Look I went to her to see if she could find out if that trip to LA, screwed my chances at going back to college." Kaylee sighs giving him a pained look. "I want to go back to school, Eric.. For that…." She takes a deep breath and drops another bomb. "For that I need to register." She grimaces waiting for his reaction.

As she pulls away, Doyle just looks at her with a shocked expression. "You can't… you can't do that, you're just— just going to walk up to them with open arms? After all the— bullshit they've done, the prisons, the— fuck— Adam? You can't be serious! They're just— just going to use you, turn you into a weapon, or something, turn you against us!"

"I am not going to turn against you! I won't let them." Kaylee exclaims in frustration, spreading her hands before her. "I am trying to do the right thing." Moving to grip his arms this time, she gives hims a look pleading for understanding "She even warned me against telling the truth on my registration." Finger squeeze his arms lightly. "More importantly… I found out there is nothing out there on me being in LA.. They have no proof." She doesn't say why… with his mood he'd take it wrong.

The puppeteer leans in and forward as the blonde's hands grasp his arms, his eyes nearly bulging as he snarls back at her, "That's what they always say! They're always doing the right thing when they round us up, when they toss us in fucking holes in the ground to rot, without even the courtesy of shooting us first!"

Eric pulls away from her sharply, stalking over towards the window to take a look out into the night, as if expecting black sedans and spotlights to suddenly emerge from the darkness, his teeth chewing on his lower lip. "You're buying into their bullshit, Kaylee. Sure! They'll let you go to school, and give you pretty things, and then you'll show up in a fucking suit, telling us that you're doing the right thing by helping FRONTLINE relocate us to some— some holding facility!"

Hands curl into fist as they drop to her sides, Kaylee glares at the puppet man's back, teeth clenched tight. "I'm doing this so I can go back to college… get an education so I can do more then just paint houses." She makes a gesture at the house. "As it is we're gonna lose the one home we have when FRONTLINE sweeps through."

A frustrated sound is made at the back of her throat. "Look.. she owed me.. I needed a favor. And yes.. I plan to register. But not as a telepath. God.. if I did that, yes… YES… I would probably get thrown in a hole." Kaylee gives Doyle a pained look. "I don't know what else to say to you, to get you to understand."

Outside the window, there are no black sedans and spotlights. Merely an empty street, wide, a derelict school on the other side bearing no residual evidence that it is frequently misappropriated by tiny mutant refugees for play-time or physical education. Crickets, a whisper of marine wind, quiet, a moon the color of ash.

Well: quiet's relative.

"What's goin on here?" A figure fills the door, big by average standards, almost huge for Doyle and Kaylee's. McRae's an old man, so there's genuine sleep blinking unsteadily out of his eyes, one intact and the other bridged by scar tissue. One can imagine the degree of stridence to have reverberated through the walls to have gotten him out of the bed and down here. Since Carolina died, the old weather king has withdrawn considerably, content to keep the company of paper ledgers and supply lists, delegating other duties to Felicity, Doyle, Jericho, and Chuckles.

"No," Doyle whirls towards Kaylee, his face turning dangerously serious, brows raised sharply and a hand lifting, one finger extended to shake at Kaylee, "No, we are not losing our home. I won't let them take this away, I won't let you— "

He breaks off at that sleep-thickened question from the old man, his teeth snapping together shut and lips twisting in a grimace as he looks from the blonde to McRae and back again, before bursting out with, "She's having dinner with Company agents— with Mrs. Petrelli even! Talking about going off to get— get registered, and they're going to fix everything for her, and— she just— you know what they're like, you talk some sense into her!"

"It… is not like that." Kaylee growls at Doyle, she rarely allows herself to get angry. There are reasons for that. Turning to McRae, she eyes him warily. She sighs and starts to explain for the leader of the house. "I did go see Mrs. Petrelli at the insistence of her son Peter. He recommended I do.. I did." Glancing at Doyle to give him a look. "I went cause she owes me for saving her life… I went to see if she cold find out what is out there on me.. You know.. Police reports.. Company files."

"I want to go back to college and work on a law degree or something like that…. Do something more for the Ferry then painting houses and raking leave." She throws her hands out and says almost sounding defeated. "To do that I have to register…. I didn't know if I went to the police station if I'd be picked up for being an idiot."

Hands fall to her side heavily and fingers curl into the white fabric of the dress she was wearing. "No one.. knows anything/…" A look is shot to Doyle again.. And she moves stepping closer. " About this place… or my association with it. Or anything Ferry." She moves so that the puppeteer has to look at her. "I didn't say anything about it cause I care about you.. and the people I work with everyday. And I know I can't trust everyone fully. I am not an idiot, Eric Doyle." That last bit not only is spoken, but is loud in his head.

Shaman's surprise is obvious. His silvery brows incline on his forehead, engraving lines above them; he looks at Kaylee as if fully expecting her to declare that the puppeteer is exaggerating. It would be understandable for him to exaggerate. After everything they'd been through. Moab Fed Pen had been very long and very, very unkind. He pushes a thumb across his scarred eye, as if the keloid ridged across there had given the minute musculature in his face an uncomfortable stiffening that's getting in the way of manifesting emotion properly.

He listens to both of them for what feels like a long time. The weather doesn't change, and nor does his face. His eyes are pale slivers inlaid into his weathered features, and his fingers are closed inert around his unlit flashlight. The sweater that ensconces his torso seems to muffle and hide all evidence even of his breathing. "We're nothing to them, Kaylee," McRae answers, finally. His voice sounds like a rolling stone. "You save her son's life, we protect the most singularly unique, gifted children of their country.

"But she would trade anybody in this house for hers. Profit, power, hate— and fear. All those things are connected. They're as likely to help us as to harm us— just look at the Lighthouse. The man responsible for the Linderman Act shelters children like we do. Yes, the Ferry runs those risks every day: the network couldn't work without it, but they're risks.

"Are you going to see her again?" The final question grinds out on a gravelly register. He turns his domed head to stare at Kaylee.

As those words echo in Doyle's head, he flinches briefly… hand twitching slightly at his side, and she can feel his power brush against her briefly with a silent shriek of unseen cables, stiffening her spine for a moment before he forces his ability back. He makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, one hand raising up to slap against his mouth, fingers molding his cheeks and jaw roughly before he turns to stalk into the kitchen fully, leaving her to answer McRae.

Damn it, there's got to be booze here somewhere.

"I don't know." Kaylee states in exasperation, giving McRae a matter of fact look. "She's Peter's mother… I don't think I can avoid her forever, if that's what your asking… especially since I was the one that pulled out of that coma… look… " She shoot a look at Doyle as she feels his ability for a brief flicker, but relaxes when it loosens. "I'm not doing this to hurt anyone." Her voice calmer as she some of her determination flows out of her in face of the Patriarch of the house. "I just needed to know how much trouble I was in after helping Adam."

Pulling a chair out, Kaylee drops into it unceremoniously, hands resting in her lap as she gives McRae a forlorn look. "With everything going on.. Joseph's kidnapped, being tested on somewhere… this stuff Rebel is putting out there… FRONTLINE is practically on the doorstep of our home.." A hand motions a the house. "I'm trying to to figure out what to do with myself. I've been in this safe house.. sitting around feeling sorry for myself when I'm not working at Summer Meadow.. And I just…" She sighs and shakes her head.

"I don't know how to explain it."

A palpitating moment's silence. McRae turns his eyes from the lovely young mentalist to Doyle, whose reaction, whose flinch had not gone unnoticed despite the double-layered glaze of old man sleepiness and the background roar of private misery. It takes him only about a second, maybe two, to realize that something psychic had gone on there. "I can not forbid you from seeing Mrs. Petrelli, but as long as this safehouse is under my protection I'm going to ask any of her regular — associates to stay away.

"The people who live here need to want to avoid Mrs. Petrelli forever. No matter what unique relationship she has with vigilante justice." Of course he'd heard. If you've been in the Ferry long enough, you know about Phoenix, and the burning bird's origin story pries its taloned way out of the fetid carcass of a movement once known as PARIAH, and Peter's name is inextricably knotted into the association. "Other safehouses may be more lenient.

"I can help you make some calls. You'll have somewhere to stay." There's a gavel's solid finality in McRae's voice. The line is drawn in the sand. He steps across tiles to join Doyle in the kitchen, reaches up a cabinet to find tall and sturdy glasses— not quite pintglasses, but the closest available thing— and select three. "We should drink against hard feelings."

A bottle of bourbon's drawn from a cabinet, and Doyle sets it down against the counter; thumb brushing over the smooth glass, his lips twisting into a brief grimace as he stares down at it for a long moment, listening to the judgement of the weather king with sinking heart.

Wordless, he unscrews the bottle, bringing it up and tilting it towards the glasses one at a time, filling each up.

Closing her eyes against McRae's verdict, Kaylee gives a small nod of her head. Swallowing against the painful lerch in her heart, the telepath manages to say. "Yes, sir. I understand." The words are whispered and she looks down at her lap. "I'll…. find someplace.. don't worry." She assures him, before getting to her feet. "If it's all the same… I think I'll skip the drink." A glance at Doyle and then away. "I don't… I can't drink anyhow. Too dangerous." Her voice goes flat as she tries not to show just how much it hurts.

Her head comes up as Kaylee looks to McRae, "Thank you…" Her voice does catch now and she has to clear her throat. "Thank you, for protecting me all this time, sir… and for helping me." She manages a smile, but then turns away to leave the kitchen as the tears threaten.

Finally, finally, McRae's features waver slightly. His ironclad stoicity wobbles on its axis, and something behind the icy discs of his irises softens.

Trust a little girl to be responsible for breaking an old man's heart.

Apparently, it isn't something you get immune to. He closes his fingers around the third glass, finds himself pausing at the revelation that the calluses that his palms and digits had held throughout Moab have finally eroded away with the changes wrought by urban living. He was a farmer once. With a daughter. And those associations mean too much as often as they seem to command little change upon the world that frankly should owe people like himself, like Doyle, like Kaylee a litle more respect.

He tips the one share of bourbon neatly into Doyle's cup. "There's orange juice," he says to the telepath's back, but that is all.

"Kaylee…" An almost plaintive note from Doyle's lips as she starts to depart, his hand lifting as if to stop her - he could, after all, could make her stop, and stay, and never leave. To dance on his strings as a good doll instead of leaving them for their enemies' embrace, and never, ever hurt them like this.

He could. He wants to. But he doesn't.

That hand falls, as if a puppet's strings cut, and he scowls down at the glass, reaching over to take it up in his hand, gazing into the bourbon silently.

Stopping at the doorway, a hand rests on the door jam, but the young telepath's back stays to the two men in the kitchen. Kaylee's head turns slightly a there is a hint of moisture on her cheek. She gives a little shake of her head. "I get told not to dwell on my mistakes and pick myself up and keep going. But….." The hand moves off the door jam the wipe at the corner of her eyes. "… what do you do if you can't seem to do more then make mistakes. The more I try.. seems like the more mistakes I make."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you Eric…" Kaylee offers softly, ".. I know your only caring about all this… I care too.. but I can't just sit around… I know I have the potential to do more for all us." Kaylee glances back at a man who is one of her best friends, with tears in her eyes. "I'm sorry." The words are whispered, as she struggles not to start crying, but the emotions are there.

She turns away and disappears out of the kitchen into her own room, the sound of the door shutting reaching their ears.


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