Looking Further

Participants:

kincaid_icon.gif walter_icon.gif

Scene Title Looking Further
Synopsis The fallout is about what anyone who knows them would expect.
Date June 6, 2011

Studio K: Kincaid's Office


The small assistant Producer's office has become more of a bunk room as of late, most of the space taken up by a desk, with all the chairs removed to make room for a bedroll against the wall. The Assistance Producer, Kincaid Russo may not spend every night in his office, but it beats the long trip home under the circumstances. And he's slept in far worse accomidations, so in some ways this is still a luxury. But he's not sleeping right now, though it was likely he had been the night before, until he woke up for his morning coffee.

One of the biggest items in the room was a small television, a flat screen mounted on the wall and wired into the studio. For watching studio shows as they air, or news, or anything really. But no one's going to be watching on it anymore, from the two cracks in various locations. A solid crystal pyramid paperweight lays on it's side on the floor nearby, and a few feet away lays a cracked coffee mug, with spilled and mostly dried coffee on the floor and the wall under the television screen. A third item lays in that area, a small black box with a ribbon on it. The ribbon dislodged and the lid of the box slightly ajar.

And on the opposite side of the small office, on the bedroll laid on the floor sits a young man with blondish brown hair, knees drawn up towards his body with bruised knuckles pressed against his forehead and eyes closed.

Kincaid had been watching the morning news while he drank his coffee. And he didn't like what he heard.

Doors and windows, locked or not, are no obstacle to some people — in the years since Nathan Petrelli's announcement, profits in the security industry have skyrocketed as panicked Americans demand new solutions on how to protect themselves and their families against phasers, teleporters, and people like Walter Trafford. One moment, Kincaid is alone with the rough sound of his own breathing; the next, booted feet are coming down hard on the office floor, and the redhead's tall, lean frame occupies a space that had been until then empty.

Displaced air makes the ribbon ripple. Walter takes a step toward Kincaid, and if the fresh blood on the gauze bandage he has wrapped around his right hand suggests anything, it's that his initial reaction was similar to the one experienced by the man on the floor.

"Get up," he demands in a hoarse voice, raw from yelling at everyone and nobody.

While they may not have much in common, there was always one thing they did. Whether they wanted to or not. The bruised knuckles lower, a hint of blood on the forehead where the bruises had led to some cracks as well as he looks up. Eyes red and shining, Kincaid only needs one look at the man before he quickly rubs at his eyes to try and wipe away the traces.

Just because they share one thing in common doesn't mean he wants to cry in front of the older red head.

"What's the point?" he asks in a raspy defeatest voice even as he slowly pushes himself to his feet and looks up at the other man with blood shot and red rimmed eyes, but darker than natural eyes. Physical pain is easy to get rid of for him, but the worst pains aren't physical at all.

There is tension in Walter's arms, long and bare — he left his leather jacket wherever it is that he came from, and sweat plasters the opaque material of his wifebeater to his chest. His pants are worn and denim, no belt, making them hang low off flat hips. He lunges out with his wounded hand, grabbing a fistful of Kincaid's shirt, and slams him into the wall at his back with enough force to make it sound like a gunshot is booming through the room instead.

Pieces of plaster flake down onto the floor. Walter ran out of things to break back home, but there's still plenty left here — including Kincaid. "You're gonna tell me where your cunt of a mother is," he says, and although it lacks both volume and power, the threat of his arm pressed across the lower half of Kincaid's throat compensates for both.

The sounds that come out at the impact are more to do with the wind getting knocked roughly out of him than the pain that should accompany it. With the arm pressing against his throat, it takes some time for Kincaid to be able to get the breath in to answer.

The redness spreads on his cheeks a bit, though this time caused by a very different emotion.The darkened eyes fit anger better than sorrow, somehow.

"I don't know," he forces out, each word distinctly spaced with a harsh breath drawn through the hold. "My mother is not responsible for…"

The deliberate voice cuts off.

The corner of Walter's mouth hooks into a sneer, upper lip peeling back to show teeth. "Go on," he says and leans more of his weight into Kincaid's neck, "finish it."

There is a challenge in the pale blue of his eyes. He doesn't think Kincaid can. "Junie was her responsibility. She's sure as shit t'blame."

The sentance doesn't finish. For various reasons. Kincaid stops standing there and taking the punishment at this point, shifting his arms and pushing against the other man to try and regain some of his breath and position. To break free. Unfortunately Walter has an advantage, and the wall doesn't give enough room to move, so it's more just a struggle for struggle's sake.

The most he manages is to push himself up the wall even further, feet almost off the floor. It frees his neck just enough to manage more than one word in a breath.

"She was our responsibility too. We both knew what could have happened— what would have happened." And perhaps, one of them knew more than the other… "You want to take it out on someone, you don't have to look any further."

"You think I'm stupid, Russo?" Walter asks. "You think I don't know how your head works?" His arm is a steel bar, and as Kincaid struggles, shifting upward, Walter moves with him. Kincaid's heels are no longer touching the floor and the marginal space that existed between them has been completely eliminated; when Kincaid's chest expands, it has to contend with Walter's ballooning at the same time.

"You don't get the satisfaction, not this time. You wanna turn yourself into some kinda martyr, then the window's right over there, but I'm not gonna be the one to put you through it." To emphasize his point, he drops his arm, releasing Kincaid, and steers his foot into the wall beside him with another muffled clap of thunder. The steel toe of his boot leaves a shallow dent that would be more impressive if the studio was built of stronger stuff.

"You find her and you ask her what the fuck," he says, "or I will."

At the sudden impact of floor and the kick at the wall beside him, Kincaid stumbles away and winds up with a hand against his desk, the solidest and least disturbed object in the room. If the TV hadn't been enough to likely cost him his job, if he had a job after the outbreak finishes it's deadly buisness, the hole through the wall may have sealed it.

Not that his job matters much to him anymore these days.

"I'll find her," he says after he has a chance to catch his breath, using the desk as support. "This was their doing, not hers— they took her away, put her with her grandparents. They tried to get her to betray the Ferry— maybe this was the punishment when she didn't."

"I don't know," says Walter. "She stabbed your dad in the back pretty good." He scrubs his wrist across his nose but does not bother to draw himself up straight as he turns, steps over the coffee cup on the floor but not the spilled coffee itself, leaving a dark, wet print in the shape and texture of his boot's sole on his way toward the door.

Not only will Kincaid have to answer for the destruction of his office, but anyone who views the studio's security footage might want to ask him about the man exiting it as well. It isn't every day that the cameras catch someone coming out of the building when there's absolutely no evidence of that same someone going in.

He snags fingers around the door's handle and swings it out into the hall. For once, he isn't looking for the change of expression on Kincaid's face, assuming there's even a change at all.

There's just no gratification in it.

He leaves the door hanging open behind him.

The change in expression may not be seen, but if it were, the red head may notice the shifting from anger and defeatism to something akin to startlement and shock. The words Walter said give him plenty of time to leave the small office, into the building that's supposed to be under a kind of security lockdown, no less.

When Kincaid recovers enough to move, it's to dart the distance to the door, to press an arm against the doorframe as he sticks his head out, to look down the hall. Maybe he'd hoped the red head would still be there— but he doesn't even know exactly how much time has passed. A moment later his hand moves, the door slams shut as loud as the sound when he got slammed into the wall, a painting near the door dropping off the wall to shatter on the floor.


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