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Scene Title | A Kind of Fear |
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Synopsis | Helena Dean is subjected to the psychic powers of the man in the long black coat |
Date | February 14, 2009 |
?????
Dizzy.
Why is it so… warm?
Lights are blurry, but — oh — almost missed a step.
Wait, stairs? W-why are?
Oh— right, I needed to check on Peter. Well, wanted to— and…
Leaving his door partly open to allow light from the hallway into his room, there's a frustrated sound coming from inside. Within, Peter sits at a small and lopsided desk that has been shoved up against the far wall. Balancing on it is a large and oval mirror with a crack running through it, a triangle of glass at the edge missing. Peter is trying to peer into the mirror, holding up a pair of scissors near his brow, a look of tired concentration on his face.
A snip sound, then a hissing exclamation of profanity as he throws the scissors down in a frustrated venting of anger, "Damnit," He shakes his other hand, looking down at the fingertip as a long cut on his index finger slowly seals shut. "God damnit." He sits down in the chair, raking his hair back away from his face. It… looks like he was trying to cut his own hair, but was having a remarkably difficult not cutting himself in the process. On the table, there is also a straight razor, a small bowl, and a slightly dented can of shaving cream. It seems he didn't even try to go that far yet.
The tenement building…
What is she doing here? This is wrong. But she wants to be here, wants it so much that it hurts. This was a much simpler time in their lives, when PARIAH was still something like a family and Cameron was still alive and she and Peter were just starting to become aware of what was happening between them. At the time, they believed they were going to make the world so much better, and she'd been full of belief in the man scowling in the mirror.
It's so easy to sink into this. She steps forward
"Giving yourself a haircut isn't exactly the best idea. Why don't you let me do it?"
In this lighting, Peter looks like a wreck. The angle of the light hitting his face makes the dark circles under his eyes look even more pronounced from the savage beating Vinnie had given him, "Oh, hey." He offers Helena a warm smile, trying his best not to seem weary despite the fact. His eyes drift up and down her, and he laughs, shaking his head with a smile. "Yeah I… I'm kind've having a hard time" No small surprise there, and as he looks away from Helena, his eyes divert to the scissors he holds.
"I ah, the regeneration thing…" He pulls down on lock of his hair from the swept back coif, "I have to concentrate, really hard, to try and keep things from growing back. Haircuts— " He laughs, "It's too much for me to do at the same time, espescially when— " He cuts himself off, just smiling amiably before touching one hand to the split still on his upper lip. "Please?" He asks with a slight distortion to his voice from the cut at his mouth.
Helena pauses to peer at Peter a moment. He doesn't look right. Things are…incongruent, to say the least. Confused, she nonetheless allows herself to follow the pattern, running her fingers through Peter's hair briefly before she begins to cut. "Cameron hasn't spoken to me." she says. "Not really. Not since I know he's seen the paintings." Yes. That's how it went. Absently, in the back of her brain, an earworm begins.
It was like shooting a sitting duck/a little smalltalk, a smile/and baby I was stuck…
Peter makes a sound of acknowledgement, careful not to nod when he's focusing on not regenerating, and when Helena has scissors pointed near his eyes, "He's probably scared… Scared of it being right, of making the wrong decision and making it come true…" He smiles, understandingly, "Scared of something happening to you. A lot of this is resting on his shoulders; our lives, his choices. That's the kinds of decisions a leader has to make, and I see in Cameron — sometimes — a fear about that." He tilts his chin up at the touch of her hand, giving the girl easier access to his bangs. "He's doing a hard task that no one wants, and I don't envy him. But he's doing a good job, and that's what matters." Peter opens his eyes, looking at Helena's reflection in the mirror. "I'm just glad that he was able to help us stop Kazimir. I just — if it wasn't for Cameron…"
There's a shake of his head, eyes slowly lidding as Peter relaxes against the touch of Helena's fingers in his hair. "We still haven't heard back from Cat, Ygraine or Teo." His eyes close slowly, "Cameron hasn't told me where the rendezvous points are, since we abandoned the Library… I know they won't be stupid enough to come here." There's a laugh, one eye cracking open. "You think they'll go to Staten Island? I — I could start looking for them there."
I feel a kind of fear
When I dont have you near
Unsatisfied, I skip my pride
I beg you dear…
Lovingly, Helena's hand slides through his hair. She smiles at him in the mirror, lowers her head, and presses her mouth to his pulse. Which she uses for the opportunity she takes to suddenly grip his hair tight and pull back his head, the hand holding the scissors now pressing its point to the very flesh she just kissed. "Who are you?" she hisses.
Jerking the head back with her fingers curled tightly into long, black hair hair, Helena can see Eileen Ruskin's terrified face shows nothing other than turbulent emotion and wide-eyed panic at the scissors to her throat. She sputters loudly, hands bound behind her back by the rope used to restrain her, tears wetting her cheeks, "E-Eileen — Munin — " She spits the last name out, "I — I already tol' you tha'. P-Please don't— " She hiccups out a sob, her whole body trembling as the scissor points dig slightly into her fraile, matchstick-like neck, "I — I'll tell you whatever you want, just — please n-no more — "
From across the room, where he leans up against the wall of the basement room with his arms folded, Alexander spits out, "Jus' fuckin' slit her throat, Hel. Or for fuck's sake Ah' will." His drawl comes cold and sharp, "You know what she did to Teo. She ain't never gonna' learn. Let's just dump her."
I used to think I was sensible
It makes the truth even more incomprehensible
'cause everything is new
And everything is you
And all Ive learned has overturned
What can I do…?
Staggering back, Helena drops the scissors, her hands going to her head. "Stop it!" she shrieks. "Do you hear me? Stop it! I am not playing your game!"
When the scissors hit the floor, there is a deafening sound of a thunderbolt, not the clink of metal on wood. With it comes a flash of lightning so bright and intense it floods the room, and when it fades back down again, there is nothing but the cold and slate gray skies of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, split down the middle and broken, rubble strewn in jagged lines where rebar still tries to hold it in place. "This is no game miss Beauchamp." All Helena can see from where the tractor-trailer truck was destroyed, is Sylar's broad-shouldered frame, once more possessed by the seethiing darkness of Kazimir Volken. He holds Abby aloft with one pale hand, the flesh at her throat turning an ashen gray color as the life begins to fade from her body. "Did you really think you were stronger than me? That your little God was greater than me?"
He shakes his head, holding up two fingers that point towards her brow, followed by a shearing sound of some kind of drill, and a spray of blood from her temple as her legs kick and swing wildly. "I'll show you a God, Miss Beauchamp."
That's not how it went down. The mistake was assuming that Cameron was alive, and from that moment on, Helena knew this was just - this was just a play, put on as a means to lure information out of her that she would otherwise never give up.
Dont go wasting your emotion
Lay all your love on me
Dont go sharing your devotion
Lay all your love on me
Build a wall, Claude had said. You can't keep them out, not really, but you can lock doors, and you can make them feel very unwelcome. It'll take effort to probe your mind, and once you realize that what they're showing you isn't the truth, cling to that.
Helena sinks to her knees, closing her eyes. "It's not real. It's not real." Her eyes are wet. That's real. "It's not real." Deliberately, she starts to dig her nails into her palms, wincing. Pain is good. Pain will keep all of this at bay.
Her eyes force shut.
Shut it out, block it out.
But—
Peter's smile lingers as he looks up at the sky, then around at the buildings, "Hey, you can open your eyes you know… As long as you're not afraid of heights." His hand on Helena's back moves up, resting between her shoulderblades as he says that. He speaks quietly, leaning in to talk as that sensation of weightlessness comes for but a brief moment, and then the feeling of gentle breeze as gravity takes its pull again. But even though Helena can feel where down is, she's ascending, floating gradually and slowly up from the rooftop. "I'm learning to become less angry. It helps having things to be happy about, having a reason to think things might be okay after all…"
In mid-air, Peter begins to turn with Helena in his arms, as if to show to her the skyline of New York from sixty feet above the rooftop. "Can't go too much higher, if we go above the other buildings someone might see us." He smirks, leaning his chin down towards the top of her head. "You know, I don't think I've ever met someone quite like you" His smile changes, becoming tinged with something more serious, "The world would be a much happier place if there were more people like you."
This is almost too much. "I know what you're doing, you sons of bitches!" she shrieks, fighting Peter's grasp - it's not Peter, it's just not. "You won't corrupt this for me, you won't!" Try a new tactic. "Wake up, Helena. Wake up, Helena. WAKE UP, HELENA." This is her mind. These are her memories. And her brain makes the rules here.
Please, God. Let her wake up.
Peter struggles as Helena tries to fight free from his grasp, hands clinging to her as her shoulders struggle from side to side. But the man staring down at her had nothing in his eyes, nothing but a cold, brown and dead stare. Each punch to the side causes Peter to waver in the air, flying crookedly and then spiraling out of control from a headbutt and then another punch. Through clenched teeth, Peter snarls out, "This isn't murder then. If you're right, you'll be fine." Peter struggles with the writhing woman in his arms, gaining altitude further as he punches up through the swirling clouds drizzling rain down from above. The temperature drops considerably, freezing wind blowing hard and fast as the pair blast upwards out of the cloud cover as the warm orange glow of late afternoon sunlight shines across both of them.
There's something serene above the gray clouds, where the skies are blue once more, and everything is a dappled blanket of white and gold from the setting sun. Peter's ascent stops as the light shines across he and Helena, and he looks over at the struggling young woman with a furrowed brow. "It's them or me," he says with a grunting voice, "It's nothing personal, but I have to know." One hand presses against Helena's chest, trying to push her away, and then one strong telekinetic shove is all it takes to finish the job.
And she starts to fall.
For a moment, terror overwhelms her, because it feels so real, and there's nothing else she can do. But it's a long fall, and as she goes through the clouds, soft and white, and utterly insubstantial, she can't help but think - her mind, her memories, her rules.
It's a longshot. But if it fails, she's dead anyway, right?
Her body has been inundated with a chemical that prevents her from using her ability. But if this is the landscape of Helena's mind, then here, her ability works just fine, thank you. Those last few moments are spent thinking of how electrons positive and negative charge, ionizing the air. On the bridge it was hard. Here it's easy. And if there's one thing she'll do, in the moments before her body hits the ground, it'll be to see lightning arc in the sky, lightning that will hit that sunovabitch wearing Peter's face, who is trying so hard to assert his world into Helena's mind.
Do you know what happens when a psychic ghost is hit by lightning?
In her last seconds, Helena cannot help but hope:
The same thing that happens to everything else.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The steady sounds of an electro-encephelogram monitor the brainwaves of the woman restrained to the hospital gurney. A slow-drip IV injected into her arm keeps her sedade, even as her arms twitch and flick every so often from subconscious muscle movements. Her eyes dart back and forth behind closed eyelids, beads of sweat clinging to her brow.
"Claude Rains." Standing by the bedside, half-shadowed by the directed light of the heat lamp aimed at Helena Dean, a man in a long black coat folds his hands behind his back, giving that assessment. "She had contact and psychic conditioning with Claude Rains, former Company Agent." Face shadowed, the man in the long black coat turns to look towards a man in a labcoat next to him. "This won't be of much use without potentially causing irreperable damage to her, and I will not be party to that." The shadowed agent's voice grows quiet for a moment, circling around the side of the bed behind the orange-red glow of the heat lamp. "Knight's interrogation went similarly." Still lost in a haze of dreams — now all of them of her own making — Helena is only somewhat aware of the conversation happening around her. While it seems he was addressing the doctor at first, the glow if a cell phone against the shadows concealing the man's face indicates that the true recipient of this communication is no longer in the room.
"No, there's no progress what so ever. If I probe any further — " His words are clipped off as he is spoken over, "I am aware of that. No I — yes, I understand. Yes, Sir." The phone is flipped shut, and the man in the long, black coat looks over at the doctor. "Keep her sedated and return her to her room, we'll continue later."
"Right now she needs to rest."
![]() February 14th: Coccoon |
Previously in this storyline… Next in this storyline… |
![]() February 14th: The Bianco Identity |