Threshold

Participants:

matthew_icon.gif robyn4_icon.gif rue3_icon.gif

Scene Title Threshold
Synopsis Rue comes to deliver a bone chilling revelation, and by the end of it all Robyn is reaching her threshold for all of this shit.
Date September 12, 2019

Kaleidoscope Studios, Bay Ridge


It's not normal to hear music filtering out of the building at 218 41st St. Not anymore, at least. Once upon a time, the complex had once held a small array of businesses. Now, it's top floor had been converted to living space, to be a home, while the bottom floor was still undergoing renovations - renovations that were almost complete. Soon, Kaleidoscope Studios would be opening as only fully functional recording studios in the Safe Zone.

But that won't be for several weeks.

For now the building's owner sits in a partially furnished lobby, fingers resting lightly against the keys of a cheap and portable keyboard. Robyn Quinn doesn't make much of a habit of playing music anymore, but buying space to open a studio made it an inevitability that she would dip her toes back in again after playing around with some ideas nearly a year ago.

Fingers move somewhat awkwardly across the keys as she plays a melody, trying her best not to let the occasional missed key or discordant note give her too much pause. She should be in the studio space proper, but while she's had the bell on the lobby door rigged to play chimes both in the lobby and up in her home to notify her when someone has arrived, it isn't set up in the recording space intentionally.

And besides, last time she was upstairs she was pretty sure Matthew was sleeping.

So instead she's dragged out a keyboard and set up in the lobby. Today, she waits for Rue Lancaster. When she had called her up and asked if they could get together, it had been a surprise to Robyn. They'd spoken a few times since she had left Wolfhound behind, but she had always felt a sort of tension in their conversations - the same sort she'd felt in the days before her last mission with the mercenary group.

Of course she'd agreed to meeting though - her place, since she was still unsure of leaving Matthew alone for too long, even if it meant having to explain that situation to Rue, which she wasn't at all prepared for. The only stipulation was that Rue bring food (with the promise of reimbursement from Robyn, at least).

Of course, now she wasn't even paying attention to the front door, anymore, instead focused on the keys in front of her.

Rue sits in her Jeep across the street from the building for a long moment, just staring at it. It’s a culmination - or nearly so - of a dream she knows Robyn’s held for a very, very long time. It was a dream she once hoped to help her achieve as her partner. For the melancholy that stirs in her, pride is the stronger emotion, and it’s allowed to quash the lingering bittersweet feeling.

Unfastening the seatbelt, Rue lets out a quiet sigh as she pops open the door and climbs out of the vehicle, grabbing the handles of a plastic sack of takeaway settled on her passenger seat as she goes.

A hand on the door, Rue steps across the threshold after only a half second of hesitation. Her heart clenches at the sight of her friend at the keys and she stands there silent, watching and listening.

There's no singing to match the keys yet - one thing at a time, after all, but it's when the chime of the door opening finally registers in Robyn's ears that she looks up to find Rue standing at the doorway. Fingers cease their almost dance like movements, stilling against the tops of keys as she looks over to her expectantly.

Her gaze lasts a moment before a bit of a smirk forms on her face, eyes returning to the keyboard in front of her. "Long time, no see," she offers to her friend as she slides her chair back and rises upwards. "I was starting to get too hungry for words," follows it in Robyn's particular brand of sarcastic teasing tone.

She's dressed more casually than Rue has seen her in the last year, if nothing else - jeans, a barely buttoned denim shirt with a black undershirt, and a black choker mark, in fact, perhaps the most casual Robyn herself has ever known herself to dress in the past year.

"How're you doing, Rue?" tone in these words is a bit more cautiously probing - it's not every day that someone, much less Rue, reaches out to her. "Wasn't expecting you to want to come by my neck of the woods."

That someone is eavesdropping isn’t immediately obvious to Robyn. But for someone like Rue Lancaster, who has spent the better part of the last half-decade training under a CIA agent and acting as an intelligence officer for a paramilitary group, finding Matthew Parkman Jr loitering near the top of the open stairs in the industrial-style lobby. She can see his shoes, easily surmise that he’s sitting, and just lingering the way children are wont to do when they need to know how others talk about them when they’re not around.

Not that Rue used to do that as a child or anything.

“I’m doing,” is Rue’s noncommittal response to how she is. But she’s smiling all the same. The door is swung shut quietly behind her. She takes a moment to take in the room, by all appearances merely curious. By all instincts, noting various possible egresses, looking for signs of surveillance equipment and—

Shoes.

Rue’s eyes don’t linger on the shoes of their young interloper, lest she make it obvious she’s noted his presence. Instead, she turns her attention back to Robyn and makes her way forward with their supper. “I even made them throw in extra fortune cookies.” A holdover from past lunch dates together. She doesn’t forget little details like that.

“The place seems nice,” she offers. “What’ve you been up to since you managed to break free of our clutches?” No, seriously, what’s up with the kids shoes on the stairs?

Seems nice. A grin spreads across Robyn's face, growing until she suddenly throws her arms open in a theatrical motion. "Welcome to Kaleidoscope Studios, the birth of the new New York music scene!" With a flourish, she motions to a door off to one side. "Equipped with two fully functional and well-equipped recording rooms, competitive rates, and a ton of passion!"

Her arms stay put for a moment longer before falling back to her side. "That's the sales pitch, at least." She doesn't look back to Rue, instead looking back towards the stairwell. "And we live upstairs. I don't think I could live without a studio after The Verb."

Another noncommittal shrug, and she turns back to Rue. "Besides this, not much else. Work, by and large. Looking into the stuff that's too small for you lot. And you? You've been well, I hope."

Eyes drift to the bag of Chinese food, and the smirk becomes something a little more genuine. "The cookies'll be a good treat for later." There's a certain reserved appreciativeness in her voice that's subtle - but well known enough to Rue to pick it up. It's not begrudging, but it's certainly not openly voiced.

The shoes have moved. Rue can see the boy — nearly a teenager — coming down the stairs and into view. Mousy and disheveled hair, thin and long-limbed, large eyes upturned to focus on the woman whose voice he recognized from his nightmares. Matthew Parkman Jr pauses when he actually sees Rue, swallowing audibly and then looking away. He glances over to Robyn, then back down to the floor again.

For a moment, Matthew looks uncertain of whether to stay or go, so he lingers at the bottom of the stairs. His shoulders hunch forward, making him look even smaller. He seems better. Better than the last time Rue saw him. Even if better is measured in tiny, incremental amounts with someone who survived what he did. With someone who lost what he has.

“We?” The redhead asks with an arched brow. She gets her answer when the boy descends the stairs. The second brow shoots up to join the first. “Well, well…” She schools her look of surprise back into something softer and hopefully less intimidating to the young boy. “My name’s Rue Lancaster,” she tells Matthew. “I didn’t realize you’d come to live with Miss Quinn here.”

Miss Quinn. That sounded strange even from her.

“Do you like Chinese food? I brought enough to share if you’d like to join us.” Even if that means she’ll have to shelve some of what she’s here to talk about. At least for a little while. Rue has every confidence that she and Robyn will be able to get some time in private eventually.

Miss Quinn. The look that Robyn gives Rue borders on incredulous, seemingly taking as taken aback as much as Rue finds it strange. "Miss Quinn? Come on, I'm not my-" Mom. She stops before the word can leave her lips, frozen in time for a moment before she lets out a weary sounding chuckle. "I guess I am now," she says in a low voice, before looking back over her shoulder.

"Matthew, you're welcome to join us to eat if you'd like. I wasn't sure if you were awake or not, so I figured I'd bring some up to you." The extra order of sesame chicken Robyn had requested suddenly makes sense. Slowly she turns to look at him more directly, smiling as she does. "Rue is a good friend of mine, and has been for years." Friend might have sometimes been a stretch, but it works for this - and hey, at least she doesn't call her February. All of this is to say you can trust her, because if there's anyone Robyn knows can be trust, Rue's at the top of that list.

Clearing her throat, she waves him in. "Or did you need something? I'm sorry I wasn't upstairs if you did." It seems like all her attention has turned to Matty now, as she rises from her stool and moves the keyboard aside so she can start towards the young boy.

“I know,” Matthew says belatedly, though it’s not clear to what exactly. He doesn’t really answer anything else, so much as he just shows himself out of the room and through an adjacent doorway that eventually leads into the kitchen. There’s a shoulder-slumped frustration in his posture, but also something else that’s hard to pin down. Which, by and large, has been the definition of Matthew since he started living with Robyn. He’s a good, kind kid, but he has his trauma and dealing with it is challenging, even with his SESA-appointed therapy sessions.

The sound of the refrigerator opening and things rattling around seems like an obstinate jab on Matthew’s part at the food Rue brought. Rue and Robyn both remember being that age.

When did that happen? Rue mouths to Robyn once Matthew’s out of the room, her own expression one of incredulity. But the unvoiced question is a rhetorical one. It doesn’t matter when in the grand scheme of things.

“Is this a bad time?” This time the question is asked aloud, albeit in a soft voice. “I could just drop off the food and…” Fuck off. But then Rue shakes her head and ruffles her fluffy curls with one hand as she moves further inside to set the food down on the nearest convenient surface (that isn’t also a piece of expensive music equipment - Rue knows better).

“I really do need to talk to you.” Whether it’s a bad time or not. “I think you’re going to want to hear what I managed to uncover recently.”

Robyn watches as Matthew retreats to the first floor's kitchen - one that will see much less use than the one upstairs, but she keeps none the less stocked for the both of them, and for when the studio starts taking clients. She's been down here a lot lately when she's not at Fort Jay as of late, so finding it nicely furnished isn't too much of a surprise. She gives a smile, trying to portray kindness as well as she can. She knows she has a long way to go in getting they boy's trust, but she's trying every day.

Looking back to Rue, she mouths back April and Adopted, since that's what the situation effectively is regardless of how either her or Matthew may view it. "Of course it's not," she replies is a more familiar, almost flippant voice. "If it was a bad time, I'd have said 'f— heck no I don't have the time." Yes, Robyn Quinn is censoring herself. "You can't leave until I pay you for the food, at least."

Which she clearly has no intention of doing now.

Her brow knits together as she considers Rue and her words, glancing back over her shoulder in the direction Matthew has disappeared in. "We can move to the studio, if you'd rather. I trust him to have free reign of the place. I used to use studio space for private discussions back in the day all the time." She leans back, crossing her arms. "I'm curious what I'd want to hear that inspired you to come all the way out here, though."

Again, Rue lifts her brows, this time in response to Robyn’s self-censorship. She does not, however, laugh. As much as she’d really, really like to. She has too much respect for her friend and what she’s taken on to do that. Not everyone would adopt a kid with the kind of trauma Matthew Parkman, Junior carries.

“I was in town anyway,” is actually true, and delivered with a shrug of Rue’s shoulders. “I don’t think we need soundproofing.” It’s not that kind of conversation. Or, maybe it should be, but Rue’s got a different definition of what counts as sensitive information.

There’s a smile, but it doesn’t last long. “It’s… about Lottie.”

"Lottie?" Robyn blinks, visibly confused. It doesn't last, her eyes abruptly widening a slight bit. Her posture stiffens, her expression darkens, and for a moment she stares down Rue like the other woman had just directly insulted her. A finger taps repeatedly on the top of her keyboard for a moment before her looks back over her shoulder towards the guest kitchen.

"Matthew, when you find what you like, would you please head back upstairs?" Normally she'd feel bad about dismissing him in such a manner, but the way she turns back to Rue, the spy can see a bit of anxiety brewing beneath that suddenly stormy exterior.

"Lottie," she repeats as she crosses her legs. "What does my mother have to do with anything?" She has an idea, but… she's hoping for better.

Fine,” Matthew whisper-shouts from the kitchen in a frustrated tone. There’s a noisy clatter-clank of the door as he shut it. Briefly, the young man slips out through an open doorway and casts a look over at Rue that is, in some ways, distracting. Rue’s seen plenty of scared children in her life. The look that Matthew gives her is a frightened one, though passive in the way victims of abuse appear subtly frightened when presented with a triggering situation.

Sucking in a slow breath, Matthew rolls his shoulders forward and heads to the stairs without another word. He needn’t say anything more though, because his actions spoke loud enough. As loud as his stompy footfalls on each step up.

Rue’s expression is carefully neutral as she makes eye contact with Matthew. Internally, her heart breaks for the boy. It can’t be easy to see her again after what happened to him the last time he laid eyes on her. She wants to say something assuring, like they won’t be long, but instead she holds her tongue. It’s Quinnie’s show there. Her boy, her rules.

After he’s gone, Rue drops into a seat and licks her lips before beginning. “Wolfhound was doing some investigation into what sorts of secrets Caspar Abraham was keeping. We found evidence of your mother having worked for The Company. And…”

Rue’s head tilts to one side slowly, gaze apologetic as it lands on her friend, lips forming a tight line. “She was involved in something.” She shakes her head. That doesn’t begin to cover it. “Something big. Something possessed her. She had gold eyes.” She doesn’t have to explain the implications of that. They’re both well aware of what happened at Geopoint and beyond.

Matthew is the furthest thing from Quinn's mind, as she stares at Rue while she shares her new found discoveries with her. She might not have minded, but now that's a moot point. She stares into Rue's eyes for a long moment, assessing and considering. In that moment, she looks more cold and calculating than perhaps Rue has seen her since she left Wolfhound, if ever.

"I would assume this some sort of idiotic prank," she notes in a flat tone, tilting her head back slightly - the effect of looking down her nose at Rue is lost due to the other's height, but damn if it's not implied, "by you and your friends at Wolfhound. If I thought you would joke about something like this." She knows Rue knows better than to jest about her mother.

But there's more to it than just that.

"Would you believe," she starts, leaning back forward a bit with a growing smirk on her face, that one that just barely hints at the mad hatter she keeps inside herself, "that you're not the first person to tell me that mum worked for the bleedin' Company?" Her voice rises significantly as she reaches the end of her sentence, slipping a slight bit back into her natural accent. A hand slams down on the counter next to her food, and she lets out a forced chuckle. "An' last time, it was that she worked in Antarctica! Now you're tellin' me she got all…" She motion, a hand moving in a circle as she thinks of her words.

"All… fuckin' possessed you said?" Gold eyes. That detail sits on the forefront of Quinn's mind, racking her brain for if she's heard about people with gold eyes besides Geopoint, Sunspot, et. al. "Now Richard Ray's routinely full a' more shit than a port-a-john in Queens, but you? You wouldn't play with something like this." Leaning in closer, unnaturally gray eyes stare into Rue's once more.

"Tell me every. Last. Bit."

Perhaps,” comes a voice neither Rue nor Robyn’s from just feet away. The sound of an old man’s voice is startling, as is his presence lingering by the wall, dressed in a crisp black suit, one hand tucked into a pocket and a chalk white brow raised, “I might be able to offer some further insight.”

renautas_icon.gif

Walter Renautas stands neither tall nor imposing, yet his presence seems to fill the room. He is an unfamiliar face to these two, his British accent both precise and warm, like someone speaking in the language of a popping fireplace on a cold autumn’s night.

Rue opens her mouth to start to proclaim her innocence. That she would never make so macabre a joke about someone so important to an old friend. Something about being around Robyn makes Rue feel like a stammering twenty-something again, and she hates it.

That girl disappears completely as the steel-willed woman shaped by the war steps back into her place at the sound of an unfamiliar voice. One hand immediately curls into a fist, her jaw setting as her gaze hardens and settles on the intruder. Startled doesn’t begin to cover it, but she looks less ruffled than rankled.

“Friend of yours?” the redhead asks without tearing her eyes away from Renautas’ commanding figure.

Being constantly startled by Matthew has somewhat prepared Robyn for a moment like this, at least from a younger voice. Physically, she hides her surprise well with just the slightest shudder - but the way the light around them dims momentarily is a dead giveaway to her surprise and dismay.

She doesn't look at Renautus, though she clearly registers his voice. Rue can catch the barest of an eye twitch. "You know, they call someone's home their kingdom. And here, I thought I was past the days of people invading mine." She doesn't take her eyes off Rue as she speaks, letting out a dramatically heavy sigh as she stands back up straight.

"No, no friend of mine," Robyn says with a motion to herself and a dramatic tone in her voice. She swivels her gaze over to Renautus, before tilting her head at him. "But I suspect a friend of my mother’s?" She stares at Renautus, considering him as the light around them momentarily dims once more. After a moment, a smirking smile forms on her face, and she moves to turn a chair towards him and sit down.

Arms she leans lazily against the arm of the chair, quirking an eyebrow at him; and unvoiced and dramatic way of bidding him to continue. She know she should be worried, scared - particularly now having a truer idea of what her mother had been up to. And though she may be, all she tries to portray in the moment is a cool sort of arrogance.

“You suspect correctly,” Renautas indicates with an incline of his head toward Robyn. “I… apologize for the abruptness of this interlude, but it is difficult to pin down an opportune moment in history for this conversation to take place.” As he finishes that sentence, Renautas closes his eyes and sighs to himself, then forces an awkward smile. “Perhaps I should elaborate.”

Stepping through a table like a ghost, Renautas tucks one hand into the pocket of his slacks, unbuttoning his suit jacket with his other hand. “I am a visitor from another point in history, one further back than you and Ms. Lancaster inhabit. I have projected my consciousness forward, and at present am in search of answers regarding a moment in history redacted by the Company. I am, in part, here at the behest of a man I believe you both may know.”

Don’t say it.

“Richard Ray.”

Motherfucker.

There is a very, very strong urge to turn back to her friend and ask what the fuck is literally wrong with her brain that this is how she’s responding to this situation, but that would break whatever attempt Rue’s making at presenting a unified front in the face of an unknown.

Which is to say, Robyn Quinn’s particular brand of crazy doesn’t register as the same level of threat as someone who’s literally walking through solid objects right now. She has to admit that’s a neat trick, however.

Some of the tension rolls out of Rue’s shoulders at the mention of everyone’s favorite chessmaster. It’s an annoyance and a relief at once to have his name invoked. With a heavy sigh, she decides, “Fuck it, I’m all in.” Shaking her head, and resigning herself to the fact that very little in the world she’s inhabited since surviving the first explosion in Midtown makes any sense whatsoever, Rue shrugs her shoulders. Her hands slap against the sides of her thighs as if to provide punctuation. “How can we help, McFly?”

"Fucking… of course." Robyn sucks in a deep breath. That dramatic arrogance falls away as Robyn narrows her eyes - and this time, it's a genuine sense of malice that seems to linger in them for a moment. "Of course this is a story that involves moving across the timeline. What good one doesn't!" Eyes flick over to Rue. "Port-O-John in Queens," she repeats on the subject of Richard… well, he says Ray, a curiosity not lost on Robyn given that she remembers when Richard started using that as his last name.

The SESA agent leans over towards Rue, motioning for her with one hand. "Hey, Rue, remember the time I told you about when Magnes and I set Egypt on fire? Or when I got my ribs broken in, like, 1880 something? Or oh, hey, that time I saw myself die in front of- well! A few ways."

There's a moment of lingering silence, before she leans back into her seat and folds her hands into her lap, staring ahead at Renautas. "I hate time travel stories," she states flatly. "But you're already here, and it's about the woman I miss more than anyone else in my life." It's only at the end that some genuine emotion creeps back into Robyn's voice - she can't help it. "So… please. I need to know what happened."

“As do I,” Renautas says with some fatigue in his voice, shoulders slacking some. If ghosts spanning time can have tension it appears as though they can also find relief from it. Tired old eyes scan the room, looking past Rue and Robyn to something beyond with a worried crease of his brows. But whatever it is Renautas is seeking, there is nothing to find.

“As do we all.”


Fort Hero, Medical Facility

Long Island, New York

July 8th

1982


The soft beep of an EKG is the first thing to draw Robyn and Rue’s focus. One moment they were in Robyn’s flat, but the next as if they had blinked and the world around them vanished, they were in a hospital room. The walls are concrete here, with an X-Ray display mounted on the wall showing an X-Ray of someone with a fatally fractured spine at the 3rd, 4th, and 5th vertebrae.

The EKG is connected to a woman laying in a somewhat upright hospital bed, her dark hair fanned out like a halo behind her head. Charlotte Roux looks young, looks strikingly like Robyn save for blotchy dark circles around her eyes as though she’d been given two black eyes and a once-over with a crowbar for good measure. At her bedside, the tall and broad-shouldered silhouette of Arthur Petrelli cuts a historically anachronistic shadow. For a moment it’s as jarring as Charlotte, to see this figure plucked from the pages of history and stood up like a cardboard cutout at a book signing.

past-arthur_icon.gif past-roux_icon.gif

Charlotte’s bruises around her eyes are fading before Robyn and Rue’s eyes. Which is right about when the man sitting with his back to them, a man on a stool facing Arthur Petrelli across the divide of Charlotte’s body speaks up in a clipped British accent. “Daniel can’t bring back the dead,” the blonde says, looking down to his right arm where his sleeve is rolled up and a transfusion tube is connected to a main artery. Robyn’s eyes follow the plastic hose across the bed to her mother’s arm.

Dead?” Charlotte asks in a dry voice, and it appears this conversation was already in progress. “What— the fuck do you mean dead?”

“Adam brought you back,” Arthur says, bringing this tableau into sharp and terrifying focus. That suited blonde Brit on the stool is none other than the infamous Adam Monroe.

past-adam_icon.gif

The sound of glass shattering is the first sign something may be wrong besides the scene before them, Quinn's glass slipping out of her fingers and shattering against the armrest of her chair. There may have been a venomous barb or disaffected commentary, but it dies in Quinn's throat as the room changes around her and Rue.

Her eyes lock on the sight of her mother, widening visibly. "W-what…" Whatever she was expecting, this wasn't it. She wasn't expecting to actually see Charlotte Roux again for the first time in years. Before she realises it, she's making her way over to her mother's bedside, not even thinking as she reaches to her mother's shoulder.

When her hand sinks through her like a ghost, her arm recoils back. Hand placed over her mouth, she stares down at Charlotte, tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes. At least… until Adam Monroe is pointed out. And then she can't take her eyes off him.

The world shifts and changes and Rue shuts her eyes for a moment, as though that will help it be any less surreal when she opens them again. It’s a bit like what Cassandra can do with her ability, but not quite the same. There’s no stepping into someone else’s shoes. She’s not living someone else’s memory. Just playing voyeur to it.

“This must be what happened after what I saw…” That explains how Charlotte Roux was still alive and well up until a few years ago. Rue glances around the space, noting details. Anything that might be helpful later. Without context, it’s hard to know what’s important. The presence of Petrelli and Monroe, at least, is nothing if not relevant.

She seeks out Renautas, letting confusion write itself onto her expression. Rue doesn’t ask if this is his doing, or remark about how incredible it is. Both things are obvious enough as to not need stating.

Renautas exists at first only in Rue’s periphery, but the more she looks for him the clearer he is to see. “Interesting,” Renautas says as he advances on the scene, and it’s in this moment that Rue and Robyn realize they’re as much phantoms in this moment as he is. “This must be… before the events in Antarctica,” he muses to himself, placing a hand at his chin and slowly piecing parts of a puzzle together in his mind. All the while, the interaction between the three figures in the past continues without regard to the unseen observers.

What happened?” Charlotte gasps out, and in her panic a brief flush of light rolls up from her collarbones through her neck and flushes under her skin like sunlight blooming through the gauzy fabric of a sundress. Neither Adam nor Arthur seem surprised by the momentary flood of light, nor are they alarmed by it.

“An accident,” is how Arthur chooses to frame it, shooting a warning look to Adam who grows quiet. “Charlotte, what do you remember?” That question elicits a confused look from the brunette, her attention falling momentarily on Adam’s tense features, then back to Arthur.

“We were in New Mexico,” Charlotte says hesitantly, “We… the Looking Glass,” her eyes scan from side to side as memories come back. “We were testing the solar energy emissions. Oh my god,” Charlotte starts to sit up, “did it work!?” That she doesn’t remember elicits a look from Adam to Arthur that shows not surprise, but regret.

“Like I said, there was an accident,” Arthur reiterates. “A structural support broke free, landed on you. We had you flown back east, you’re at Fort Hero now. Like I said, you… were dead for almost seventy-two hours.” That revelation causes Charlotte to fall back against her pillow, staring vacantly up at the ceiling.

Adam, making a soft sound in the back of his throat, slowly eases off of the stool beside Charlotte’s bed. Carefully, he disconnects the transfusion tube from his arm, pinching it off as he does the same for Charlotte. “You’ll be fine,” Adam says candidly, “maybe a little headache, but you’ll be fine.”

For a moment, Charlotte stares up vacantly at the ceiling. “I…” she blinks through briefly present tears, then looks at Arthur. “I should get back to work, then. If I’m fine.”

“In due time,” Arthur says, gently laying a hand on Charlotte’s shoulder. “Right now, I want you to rest. We’ve got to make some…” Arthur glances at Adam, then back to Charlotte, “recalibrations to the device before we fire it up again.” This time there is no protest from Adam, just a squared look down at his feet. Guilt, momentarily, crosses his features along with sweat beading on his brow.

“I think we may need to go further ahead,” Renautas suggests, looking to Rue and Robyn.

Something snaps Robyn out of staring at Adam, finally bringing her back to her mother. "Three days… she was dead for three days…" she murmurs as she continues trying to process this information. "And all they fed her was bullshit." That's assuming that Rue is correct, but this - assuming it too isn't a fabrication - seems to corroborate what her friend had just told her.

As Adam disengages the transfusion tube, her eyes follow it back to him, and her lips thin. "I had heard he could do things like this; him and Claire, once. But…" Robyn stays at her mother's bedside, drifting between her and Adam. Arthur isn't paid much mind; the occasional glance over brings back too much that she still remembers from her visions the year previous - and for once, those are feelings she doesn't want to indulge.

"I-" At Renautas' remark about continuing forward, Robyn starts to protest. It dies in the back of her throat, and instead her shoulders sink. It's clear she doesn't want to leave her mother's beside, phantasmal as she may be. "Wait," she squeaks out after a moment. "New Mexico. She was at Sunspot…" Remembering what she was told about the events there earlier this year, her posture straightens. "What in the hell happened there this time?" A question that may not get answered today, but one that she hopes will be eventually. Slowly her eyes drift back to Adam, more thoughts brewing behind her eyes.

"I was told she worked in Antarctica by Richard…" Though it's likely that, as a member of the Company she had many stations. "Did they put her there after this?"

“If I’d been possessed by some kind of slice-demon and had my neck snapped, I’d honestly want you to lie to me about it,” Rue offers quietly as a counterpoint. There is a sort of kindness to bullshit at times.

Normally, Lancaster would unabashedly drink in every detail of the scene, pry into it and ask questions. The fact that she literally cannot pry into anything in a physical sense is, of course, its own deterrent. The fact that this is an intimate moment for her friend makes her feel like an intruder. She tries to take up as little space as she can, but is unwilling to ask to exit this ride.

Monroe is still out there. The big fish. Gathering every last scrap of information about the man - the kind of information there’s no other way to gather - is paramount. “What else can you show us?”

Renautas looks to Rue, one brow raised. “Many things,” is his indirect and unhelpful answer. It’s Robyn, ultimately, who draws the old phantom’s focus. “Antarctica? Ah, yes, with Mr. Drucker… I’ve been down that path already, but I can’t seem to place the significance of what happened. Ms. Gitelman was, likewise, unhelpful in my assembling of the facts in any clear order. Though, to her credit, she did try.”

As Renautas looks past Robyn to Charlotte, his brows furrow and he watches the way in which Arthur seems tentative and nervous around her. “Perhaps the answers lie… a bit closer to the final moment.”


Fort Hero

Long Island, New York

November 8th

1984


A frigid gust whips across the concrete rooftop bringing with it stinging, wind-driven rain. Lightning traces arcs through the clouds overhead and a thin sheet of ice has crusted the rooftop. A metal door to the roof access slams open, followed by the frame of a dark-haired woman bundled in a winter coat striding out into the storm.

Drucker!” Charlotte Roux screams to the sky. Rain soaks into her sweater, clings to her hair, and as lightning illuminates the sky it casts the massive shape over her in stark silhouette. It is a satellite dish, massive and rectangular, humming loudly and pointed in the direction of the New York City. Standing on scaffolding around the dish, a dark-haired man in a rainsoaked turtleneck shouts down at Charlotte.

past-drucker_icon.gif

It’s finished!” He screams down to her, “Tell Bob to try again!” She can barely hear him over the howl of the wind, over the storm, over the thunder. In the west, in the direction the dish is pointed, the scintillating lights of a massive aurora pierce through the clouds over New York City.

Robyn and Rue cannot feel the cold here, or the rain, yet still they are given to a chill.

Robyn offers a glance over in Rue's direction, nonplussed at her comment. Still.. "That's fair," she relents rather than snap back. "I guess I just…" She trails off as Rue asks what else he can show them. The answer they get is exactly the one she expects, causing her shoulders to slump a bit.

"So she really was there…" Robyn only ruminates on this for a moment, before she blinks and looks up at Renautas. "Wait, Gitelman? You went to see Hana?" Puzzlement forms on Robyn's face as she tries to connect why Hana would be seeing anything involving her mother, but that makes four people now who have viewed her in her Company years. If there was any room for denial about how little she knew about her mother, it was all gone now.

In an instant, light flashes across her eyes, a hand raised instinctively to shield them from the brightness of the lightning. She reflexively recoils, looking at their surroundings like a confused kitten might - confused not because of her surroundings, but because the light doesn't burn her eyes for once. Her eyes turn to the sky, to the aurora. A small sound, a gasp, escapes her lips as her eyes fall on the aurora, and for the first time she realises that she isn't seeing everything in drab black and whites. No, this scene around her is in colour.

And it's as beautiful as it is horrifying.

Her shoulders tense, somewhat out of fear. "Is this what it looked like last year?" she whispers out lou, eyes transfixed on the phenomenon in the sky. At least, untilher mother shouts up at Drucker.

Once more she finds herself momentarily transfixed, but not just by her mother's presence. She has questions plenty swirling in her mind right now. Who the hell is Drucker? When is this? What is 'the final moment'?

None of them are voiced. Instead she watches, trying her best not to shiver despite the lack of real cold.

Rue flashes a small grin to Renautas. Cryptic old bastard. But a very useful one, clearly. When the scenery repaints itself again, it’s the aurora that captures the Hound’s attention. So it really had happened before - if any of this was to be believed, anyway. If Benji could show her the future, it seems reasonable enough to her that this man could show them the past. It’s all someone else’s memories in the end.

The question of the reliability of memory and the narrator does occur to her, but like Robyn, Rue doesn’t give it a voice. Her heart sinks a bit at the mention of the Major, and it draws her eyes to the conversation shouted over the howling wind.

“What were they trying to do here?”

“That's what I'm trying to find out, my dear,” Renautas says with a hint of wonder in his voice, “but my ability was never meant for such… precision tuning. I try to find grains of sand in the riverbed of time, and hope they are in order.” As the old man speaks, Charlotte unclips a boxy walkie talkie from her belt, shielding her face from the rain with one hand as she holds it up to her ear.

Bob!” Charlotte shouts, “it's done! Drucker fixed it! Over!” The wind whips across the roof, through the intangible bodies of Renautas, Robyn, and Rue.

«This is the last one! No more chances!» A voice crackles over the Walkie. «I'm sorry Ellie,» is quieter, «one more time!»

Sucking a deep breath, Robyn tries her best to not take her eyes off her mother, despite how distracting everything around them is. Despite the rain, the aurora, the lightning and thunder, the colour, she manages to keep an eye on her. "Bob?" She takes several steps closer to Charlotte, eyes drifting up to Drucker. "Wait, Ellie… That's Bob Bishop, then?"

“Gotta be,” Rue murmurs in agreement regarding the identity of Bob-on-the-radio. It’s well-documented the horrors that man put his daughter through. This seems to just be another entry on the list of those sins.

Robyn purses her lips. She shouldn't be surprised, this is Company business after all. But that Elle Bishop is involved at what must be a very young age makes her grit her teeth. Were there things like this in her past that she couldn't remember? Donna Dunlap had some sort of connection to her mother, who knows how long she had remained a Company agent without Robyn's knowledge.

"Rue. Do you think-"

The ground rumbles, a sonorous hum builds up in the air around the dish. “Drucker! Get down! Hurry!” Charlotte can see Drucker struggling, snagged on a bent piece of metal beside the dish. She drops the Walkie, running over to the ladder that ascends the side of the dish array. “Drucker get down!” Struggling to disentangle himself, Drucker looks up at the dish as an auroral green glow builds around the feed horn. He looks down to Charlotte, lips parted to say something, but he never gets the chance to.

The dish erupts in an explosion of coronal energy, a seething blast like that of a solar flare. It floods the night with brilliant light, bends around Charlotte as though she were surrounded by some unseen field. Drucker is silhouette by the blast, his scream swallowed by the deafening buzz and blinding flash of light that dispersed the aurora partly visible through the clouds and fires a concentrated beam of light southwest toward Manhattan.

Roybn doesn't get to finish her thought before she finds herself deafened and blinded by the exceptional blast of energy unleashed before them. Again she raises her hands to instinctively shield herself, despite it being entirely unnecessary. Watching the dish, her arms lower as she realises all of this energy is somehow parting around her mother.

"Mum… is this what you could do?" There's almost a shred of fear in her voice as her eyes widen. It's only when it passes and Charlotte starts to scream that her eyes find Drucker again. A hand covers her mouth as she feels her stomach turn. She has seen much worse in her life, and somehow this still manages to get to her.

Rue’s focus is pulled from the satellite dish and what’s about to happen when Robyn calls her her attention. She’s about to ask about what when the blast goes off. She too shields her face, but peeks out between two fingers as Drucker is struck by whatever massive beam of energy the equipment sends toward the aurora in the west.

As the blast fades, Drucker’s smoking body falls from the dish and lands sizzling on the rainy rooftop. Charlotte screams, scrambling across the floor and gasping in horror as she drops to her knees at his side. “No! No!

No!


Present Day


Charlotte’s scream and the blinding flash of the dish lingers in Rue and Robyn’s vision as though the moment were still echoing somewhere. But they are back in Robyn’s flat, still accompanied by the ghost of the Company’s past sins. Renautas makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, glancing down to the floor, then closes his eyes and shakes his head.

“Close, but… I'm missing something to tether to the moment more,” Renautas muses silently, never having truly answered Robyn’s earlier question about Hana either. He seems, like a man possessed, single-minded in his pursuit.

"Holy shit," she whispers between fingers. "That poor man." The anguish in her mom's voice echoes in the back of her mind, eyes still dazzled as they fade back into reality. Back into the monochrome wasteland she lives her life in. Her eyes go half lidded, and she falls silent.

“My god.” The aftermath is horrible, but her stomach no longer does flip flops at that sort of thing. Shaking her head as the world fades once more and reality reasserts itself, Rue turns her blue gaze back to Renautas. “Did any of that answer your question?” He’s not very forthcoming with the answers to any of theirs.

Exhaling a sigh that seems performative, Renautas shakes his head. “Unfortunately no, it only raised more questions. Richard Drucker and Charlotte Roux were performing research at a station in Antarctica for the Company, but neither Hana nor I were able to discern the exact nature of it, save that it had something to do with the sun and the… extant threat of an entity that was more powerful than the combined might of the entire Company.”

Renautas looks down to the floor, taking a few meandering paces through Robyn’s studio and through her furniture like a ghost. “I need more data,” he says with a crease of his brows. “I need more emotive connections. Perhaps— ”

Robyn?

Standing in the doorway, Matty Parkman looks at once concerned and confused with eyes darting around the room. “Who were you and Aunt Rue just talking to?”

Walter Renautas is gone.

Robyn is still staring at the spot where Drucker once hung, charred and lifeless. Eyes widen as she hears Walter's voice cut out, replaced by Matty's. Her back to him, he can't see how her eyes widen, and for a moment, she shakes and seethes as it's perceived that Renautas left because of Matthew's arrival.

She is silent for a moment, taking all the time to collect herself so that she doesn't yell. The last thing she wants to do is yell at Matthew, the kid doesn't deserve it and she knows it. It feels like it takes forever before she can center herself and turn back to face him.

"An old friend of my mother's stopped by," is what she offers through a strained smile. It's certainly not a lie, at least. She tries not to let her frustration leak into her voice. "He just left, though."

Probably for the best.

She turns back to face Rue, teeth clenched, and then she looks to the door. "So close," she whispers. "So fffflipping close." The self censor comes as she realises Matt might still be able to hear her.

Eyes closer, shoulders roll. A hand balls up into a fist and then unfurls twice, before finally she shakes her head. "I have to talk to Richard, once I-I've processed all this." There's one other goal that goes unvoiced, knowing the conclusions her friend may jump to.

She needs to talk to Adam Monroe, one way or another.


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License