Heroes

Participants:

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Also Featuring:

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Scene Title Heroes
Synopsis After more than a year avoiding her fate, Jolene Petrelli finally comes to face her father.
Date October 2, 2006

Warm sunlight shine sthorugh tall windows into a spacious, white-walled bedroom. An enormous bed takes up much of the living space. Asleep in th ebed, a gray-haired man's dark skin contrasts sharply with the cream-colored comforter. An IV stand sits next to him, plastic tube running to the back of his hand. A heart-rate monitor and respirator sit adjacent to the IV stand, softly beeping and hissing.

Out the bedroom windows, a rooftop patio is splashed with green vegetation, crawling ivy and small planted flowers. A pigeon coop looks untended, though appearances can be deceiving.


The Deveaux Building

Manhattan

October 2, 2006


Beside the bed, Peter Petrelli — with his mop of side-swept brown hair and dressed in hospital scrubs — sleeps silently. Head listed to the side, his brows pinch together, eyes moving side-to-side swiftly beneath his eyelids, fast asleep and yet dreaming. Across his lap, a newspaper declaring news about increased solar activity and an upcoming eclipse is left untended.

The sound of the door opening jostles him awake, and he looks to a woman his age sliding in from the hall. She has a purse over her shoulder, keys clutched in one hand, sweeping dark, curly hair from her face with the other hand as it lifts from the doorknob. Her eyes settle on Peter, a bittersweet smile briefly visible. "Simone," Peter says in a half-surprised whisper, reorienting himself to the waking world.

"How's he doing?" She asks, slowly and quietly closing the door behind herself. Her keys are deposited on a small table by the door, and Peter quietly folds up the newspaper in his lap and rests it on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry. Did I scare you?"

Simone takes her coat off and heads over to the bed where her father is. In the background, the steady beeping of a heart monitor and hiss of the respirator creates a rhythm to the room.

"No." Peter stammers. "No, I just, uh, I keep having these amazing dreams every time I close my eyes, and… nevermind, um… he likes me to read him the stocks page." He motions to the newspaper after that, briefly drawing Simone's attention to it before she looks back at him.

"Has he been conscious at all?" Simone asks as Peter rises from his seat.

"No," Peter admits, briefly looking back to where Charles lays in the bed.
Been a week now. I think he's close. A couple more days, maybe." When his attention settles back on Simone, Peter manages a lopsided frown, brows briefly furrowed together. He steps to Simone's side, then leans in to check Charles' pulse, comparing it to the heart-rate monitor. Peter then sets his stethescope into his ears and checks Charles' breathing with a touch of the stethescope to the upper part of the sleeping man's chest.

Simone looks over to Peter, briefly smiling again, before she looks back to her father. "You know, I don't know what he'd do without you. You got a real gift."

Peter glances up at her, his smile as crooked as his frown was. "Just doing my job."

Shaking her head, Simone crosses her arms over her chest. "No. You're like a son to him."

"Well, then…" Peter hooks the stethescope around his neck and looks awkwardly away from Simone. "…that would make us like brother and sister. Might be a little awkward if I ever wanted to ask you out." He looks back to her, nervous smile and all.

She meets his stare, brows raised, silent and drawing in a slow and patient breath. "I'm— sorry.' Peter fumbles over himself. "That was, uh, that was inappropriate."

"No, it— " Simone fumbles as well. "It's sweet. I'm dating somebody, and— "

Struggling to extricate himself from a conversational trap of his own making, Peter fumbles over himself again. "Yeah, no, really. It's… okay." H ehesitates, motioning across the bed over his shoulder. "I need to change his IV."

Simone takes a step back from the bed, giving Peter room to work. "I'm sorry," her eyes square on her feet, "No," then to the window, "Of course." Simone smiles awkwardly, turns, and walks away.

Out on the roof, a young red-haired woman leans away from one of the windows, exhaling a slow sigh. "I always imagined he'd be… smoother." Jolene Chevalier draws in a slow and steady breath, then steps away from the window and creeps across the rooftop balcony, making sure ot stay out of sight of the bedroom.

Moving to the fire escape, she glances down over the side of the building to the street many floors below. It wasn't an easy climb, but getting to this rooftop is one of the things the wasteland prepared her for, even if she never had to navigate it in quite such a manner before. As she crosses the rooftop, she talks softly to herself, hiding in the shadow of the pigeon coop.

"Hi, dad," Lene whispers, wrinkling her nose. "Hi, Peter." She rolls her eyes. "Hey there!" She makes a noise in the back of her throat. "Uh, hhh…" her green eyes flick to the side. "Hi, I'm your daughter you'll never…" she sighs, slouching up against the wood wall of the coop, lookin gin through a chickenwire opening to one of the cooing pigeons.

"What d'you think?" Lene asks the pigeon, mockingly.

"I think you're not supposed to be here," is a verbal response that sends a chill down Lene's spine. Jerking upright, she wheels around and looks wide-eyed at the man standing behind her, dressed in a zippered black jacket, soul-patch and pony-tail, distinctive sword on his back.

Hiro Nakamura.

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"Jesuschrist," Lene exhales, backing up into the coop with a jostle of the wood and a fluttered coo of the occupants. Catching her breath, Lene watches as a smile creeps up on Hiro's lips.

"No, just me." Hiro admits, brows raised slowly. "I was hoping more for a Batman thing, but… I suppose this will do." Hiro furrows his brows, and the pigeons stop cooing, stop moving entirely. Clouds cease tracking their way acros the sky, New York City grows hauntingly silent.

Lene widens her eyes, slowly leaning off of the coop. Briefly, she regards the pigeons frozen in time, then looks with a green-eyed stare back at Hiro. "You're not supposed to be here, Jolene. For a second I thought you might be with Samuel." Hiro dismissively waves one hand in the air, as if it doesn't matter now. "But, that doesn't change the fact you're where you could cause damage. I already had to move one disruption around…"

"H-How— how do you…" Lene can't quite finish the question, but Hiro taps his head as if that explains everything. Then, after a moment and putting pieces together. "Rhys."

Hiro purses his lips to the side, stretching his arms over his head and wandering away from her. "Well, that's no fun. It's like telling someone how a magician does his tr— " Jolene leaps at Hiro, grabbing him by the shoulders, "—aaaah!"

Spinning him around, Lene looks square in his eyes. "Hiro," she searches his for recognition. "C-Colonel Heller raided Pollepel Island, the— the whole army is there, we— we have to go and stop him from doing it. We can change— " Hiro places a finger on her lips, shaking his head slowly. Lene's eyes nearly cross, and she grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away slowly.

"We can't change anything," Hiro tilts his head to the side slowly. Lene opens her mouth, as if to counter that notion, but he keeps talking. "Jolene, you haven't seen what I've seen. Where I've been. You can't change the future, anymore than you can dry up a river by putting a rock in its path. The water just…" he spreads his hands apart from one another. "Forks."

Brows furrowed, she steps in and shoves him in the chest. "Bullshit!" In the stillness of frozen time, it is only Jolene's violent movement that disturbs her wild hair. "Bullshit, I— Pinehearst, Moab! It's all— "

"Still there." Hiro says with a hushed seriousness. "You're mistaking me for someone else," Hiro tries to explain. "You can't stop a raindrop by wishing for it," he adds opaquely. "Trust me, I tried. But this isn't… you could get lost here. Wind up somewhere you didn't depart from. Going back is dangerous, Jolene."

"Bullshit!" Jolene says again, shoving Hiro harder this time. "Walter— "

"Is different." Hiro interjects, now pushed back to one of the cherub statues. "Jolene, please. If you step on enough butterflies, you won't like the — " Jolene lunges in again, grabbing Hiro by the collar o fhis jacket.

"No," she urges, "you listen to me. I grew up in a fucking nightmare hellscape. We changed that!" There's sadness in Hiro's eyes more so than worry, but there's also pity, and sympathy. She's so much like her father.

Silent for a moment, Hiro just nods and gently brings his hands to Jolene's wrists, moving her hands away from his collar. "Seeing your father here, now, won't help anyone. Not the people you left. It will… things will change, Jolene. You won't be helping them, you'll be abandoning them for something different. Then, one day, there'll be two of you and…" he lets go of her wrists. "It's complicated."

Reaching up to dry the tears from her eyes, Jolene turns her back on Hiro so as to not let him see her cry. He doesn't pursue when she walks away, not physically, at least. "Go forward," Hiro warns her. "Let the past die."

That last phrase has Lene's brows pinching together. She turns to look back at Hiro, looking past him to the cherubs. Her green eyes sweep to meet Hiro's, and there's a look of recognition in her eyes. But it makes Hiro afraid, make shim prickle with anxious worry. His stomach turns, he's seen that look before.

"Thank you, Hiro." Jolene says with a sudden determination, and Hiro realizes what she's about to do. But before he can do anything to stop her, there's a sudden rush of air and she's gone.

Hiro stands there, one hand outstretchd as if he were going to grab her. He draws in a slow breath, then turns to look down at the pigeon in the coop, scowling.

"What're you looking at?"


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