A Mother's Love

Participants:

angela_icon.gif kaylee2_icon.gif peter_icon.gif

Also featuring:

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Scene Title A Mother's Love
Synopsis Kaylee Thatcher's disobedience of Adam as a result of Susan Amann's psychic geas sends her and Peter Petrelli on a journey to wake the matriarch of the Petrelli Family.
Date October 14, 2009

Petrelli Mansion


It's been a long time since he was in this room, and for all the time it's been it's changed enough so that he doesn't recognize it any longer. The soft click of a door shutting behind Peter Petrelli sounds too much like the hammer drawing back of a gun, it sets hairs up on the back of his neck, too much anxiety in this building, too much anxiety coming back home again after so long. The young blonde girl at his side isn't Claire, it isn't his neice who should be here with him, but rather someone who most definitely should not be anywhere near the Petrelli Manor — but Kaylee Thatcher has changed in the last month almost as much as Peter has.

Pale shafts of light from the cloudy skies outside come spilling in through the tall windows in this enormous room, high ceilings and white painted walls are hung with portraits of a happy family long since shattered. Where once was a desk, bookshelves and all the furnishings of his father Arthur's private study, there now rests a hospital bed, beeping heart-rate monitor, and a respirator that connects to the tube going in to a tired old woman's mouth.

Her dark hair is fanned out around her head where she lay on the bed, eyes closed and seeming older than he last remembers her. Peter is silent, here, save for the muffled thump of his shoes on the hardwood floor as he approaches the bedside. He hesitates, staying out of arm's reach, and turns to look back at Kaylee. Gone, now, is his defiant demand to see his mother, gone is his haughtyness and stubborn determination.

In the face of Angela Petrelli in a coma, Peter is once more her little boy, and despite all reason he's afraid that he may be losing his mother.

Fingers tremble slightly, as Kaylee tucks a lock of hair that escaped a loose braid at the back of her head. The fine tremor isn't from nerves, it's from the slowly increasing failure of her muscles as the cells die away little by little. It is why tonight is so important, at least for her. Part of it anyhow, another part of her feels like she needs to do this, a sort of atonement for blindly following a man and watching him kill a woman in cold blood.

The telepath doesn't move from the door right away, eyes watching Peter approach first, it seems wrong to intrude on a moment like that. Tugging at the plaid flannel shirt and brushes at the jeans a few sizes too big for her, Kaylee feels woefully under dressed for being in such a fancy place, but when she left her apartment, she didn't bring much with her. Her fidgeting stops when he glances back at her and Kaylee steps forward, her worn biker boots, softly thumping along.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Kaylee gets her first good look at a rather important woman, her expression softens some as she imagines her mother in the same position. Her head turns slightly so she can look up at Peter, giving him an encouraging though nervous smile, before she brushes by him, to his mothers side. A hand rests on the hospital bed as the blonde leans over some, her head tilting as if aligning her head with older womans. There is the first brush of Kaylee's ability, as she asks Peter softly. "Is it alright if I touch her? Contact makes things easier." Her voice barely goes above a whisper as if afraid that she'll wake the comatose woman.

There's something of an awkward expression that flashes across Peter's face as he worriedly looks from Angela to Kaylee, then back again. "I…" hesitance as well, he's truly not certain if this is really such a good idea. "I don't see why not." But he's not going to tell Kaylee that. "I— I don't know what my father did to her, Kaylee." A look is given to the door, brows furrowed, hoping he can bore a hole through the wood with his mind to get a look at what Robert Caliban must be doing on the other side. Unfortunately, the days of wishful thinking and spontaneous abilities are long since over.

"Do what you do…" It's the best advice he can give as he makes his way towards a padded wooden chair next to the bed. Slowly, Peter settles down into it, looking up at his mother, then over towards Kaylee with furrowed brows, that scar across his face somehow deeper in the pale lighting here. "Just— be careful." The concern is unusual, especially for how he was acting when they first arrived.

"I'll be right here," the chair creaks as he settles down into it, "just— I'll be here if you need me." For whatever good he can do, aside from kill both people in the room in a dusty fashion. He's hardly a help to anyone these days. Part of him doesn't even want to be in the room, but that part of him wants to be around Caliban even less.

Permission given, Kaylee shifts sideways and rests a hip against the edge of the bed, being mindful of any tubes or wires. "Okay." Licking her lips, she leans towards Angela Petrelli, a hand moving to each side of the woman's head. "Not sure what I do, sometimes… " she murmurs as fingers tips gently touch the soft skin at the temples of the Petrelli family matron. Blue eyes flick over to Peter as he settles into the chair, her head unmoving. "If it's anything like I've felt before, it …. it won't be easy. But…." Her eyes go back to study Angela' face, "…I promise to do my best not to hurt her."

"Wish me luck," Kaylee says softly, after another deep breath. Her eyes slide close as she concentrates on the feeling of her mind slipping into the other woman's. Her head drops, the braid sliding off her shoulder to swing lazily. She doesn't feel it as all her focus is in sliding through the woman's mind looking for anything that might be keeping her under.

When Kaylee opens her eyes again, she finds herself faced with the same four walls that comprise the room where she was standing just a few moments ago, but with a few notable differences. No light penetrates the curtains hung over the window, though a sliver of star-studded sky is visible where the fabric flutters faintly in the breeze blowing in from outside. The sill, too, is covered in a thick layer of snow, and if Kaylee looks for it, she may detect the twin silhouettes of the World Trade Centers looming ominous where there should be a gap in the city's infamous skyline.

She isn't alone in the room, either. Instead of Peter, a young woman with a shock of short black and dark eyes like a hawk's hair sits at the bedside, her cheeks streaked with tears and ugly smudges of mascara that make her face look sunken and gaunt. Gone is the old harridan deteriorating beneath the sheets, replaced with a young boy of two or three, his skin so pale that he resembles death. When he exhales, the toddler's breath leaves blue-tinged lips in a thin rasp, and when he sucks it in again, it produces a terrible rattling sound that fills the room.

The woman clasps the boy's hand in her own, so small that even her slender fingers can close completely around it.

Eyes open slowly and Kaylee inhales sharply, eyes widening a bit as she notices the changes. She has only done this once before with Huruma and it wasn't this clear. A glance to the window and then down at the new figures, Kaylee quickly straightens from the bed. There is utter disbelief on her face and it takes her a few moments to compose herself. Pushing away the tight knot of fear, the blonde takes a hesitant step closer to the bed again, her attention on the young woman.

Kaylee bites her lip for a moment, chewing at it gently before deciding to address the figure. Hands curl into loose fists as she speaks low, offering a soft, "Hello?"

The woman turns her head and angles a pleading look over her shoulder at Kaylee. The expression on Angela Petrelli's face makes it clear that she doesn't recognize the stranger, though there's a shimmer of hope that crosses her austere features when she sees her standing there. She lets out a slow, shaky breath and raises her hand to her cheek, smearing at her tears and struggling to reclaim her composure. Dressed in dark colours that contrast with the string of pale pearls she wears around her throat, she blends in with the room's shadowy interior, outline blurred in some places where the memory — if that's what this is — is not quite accurate.

"Are you here to help my son?"

"I…. " Kaylee starts, but the words fail her for a moment as she moves up along side Angela, eyes going to the little boy in the bed. Her heart goes out to the woman, even if it is only a memory. "What's wrong with him?" she asks softly, moving to where she can get a good look at the toddler. Gazing at the blue lips, her finger itch to reach out and touch the young boys forehead, wondering if she touched him…. would he feel cold.

Her eyes reluctantly move from the child to study this younger version of Peter's mother. Her head tilts a bit as she regards the woman, "Besides the obvious… what is causing this?"

The boy's skin isn't just cold the touch: it's clammy. Sweat plasters hair as dark as his mother's to his forehead, and it occurs to Kaylee that the tiny shape sprawled out under the bedspread is the President of the United States — or will be, one day. "Bacterial meningitis," Angela says, her voice hoarse and accompanied by a low croak of desperate laugher almost too soft to be heard. Her fingers tighten around Nathan's hand, knuckles white, trembling. "I don't understand how this could have happened. We were so careful."

Brown flecked with hazel move from Kaylee to the yawning doorway behind her. No sound comes from the hallway except for the occasional creak of the house shifting around them. "Have you seen my husband?" she asks, then. "He's supposed to be here."

"Poor baby." Kaylee murmurs with sympathy, fingers gently brush at the dark hair clinging to his forehead, before drawing her hand away slowly. Her brows drop slightly, as she recognizes the one day Commander in Chief. How odd, it hadn't occurred to her. Then it dawns on her, just how much more important what she is doing is. Talk about pressure. "Sounds awfully serious." Shouldn't he be in a hospital? She doesn't ask it out loud though, letting her hand drop limply at her side.

At the mention of her husband, Kaylee's whole body goes cold, lifting her eyes to the door. "No, Mrs. Petrelli. I haven't seen him, but I was sent to help you as best I can." Turning her attention to the older woman, Kaylee gives her a small, apologetic smile. "This though…." Kaylee motions to the toddler. "Is beyond me."

Angela's free hand snaps to life and bites nails into Kaylee's wrist with such ferocity that the pressure exerted on the younger woman's wrist breaks the skin and brings a thin trickle of blood to its surface as she wrenches it away from Nathan's face. "Don't," she hisses, tone taking on an even more haggard edge. "Don't you touch him."

But just as suddenly as the attack began, it abates and Angela releases Kaylee's wrist, the tension in her arm and in the veins of her neck growing visibly slack. A lump rises in her throat and she returns her attention to Nathan's sallow figure as she reaches out to replace the strands of hair that Kaylee adjusted. "Arthur. You have to find Arthur."

The reaction from Angela, startles Kaylee enough that she jumps visibly. Heart hammering in her chest, Kaylee takes her arm back slowly. The woman is obviously jumpy and she doesn't want to cause another reaction. A glance at the blood on her wrist, the telepath wipes it away without a thought, brushing it off on her jeans, while stepping away from the bedside. "But I'm here to help you." Kaylee points out, another nervous glance at the hallway. Her feet make no sound in this dream world as she makes her way to the door. "I'm suppose to help you find your way out of this." The words are almost murmurs as she glances out into the hall.

Suddenly, Kaylee steps back from the door and turns enough to look at Angela again. A brow lifted, her expression curious, "Why? Why find him?" Glancing at the door she wonders… "Is finding him the key to all this?"

"I don't need any help," Angela insists, the fingers at Nathan's brow drift down to his cheek where she traces a shape along the curve of his jaw with the same nails that drew blood just a few moments ago, though she either seems not to notice or care. Her touch is a mother's touch: ginger and feather soft, without any of the tentativeness that Kaylee showed in the waking world. She leans down, brushes her lips across the boy's forehead and elicits a plaintive whimper of "Ma" from his mouth, which in turn causes the corners of hers to crease into a smile.

"I'm exactly where I need to be."

Slowly, Kaylee moves to the end of the bed, gazing up it at the interaction of mother and child. She remembers her own mother doing the same for her when she was little. Hand lift to rest on the foot board of the medical bed, fingers curl tightly around it. No, this wasn't going to be easy, but she had to try.

"No… Mrs. Petrelli, it's not." Kaylee starts softly. "My name is Kaylee, I am a telepath." The tip of her tongue touches her bottom lip nervously before she continues. "Your in a coma. Your son, Peter…. He sent me here to bring you back to him. To him and the Pre…. Nathan." It feels funny calling the President by his first name. "This is simply…a…" She doesn't want to upset the woman by calling it a nightmare, so she goes for more tact. "..a memory."

Angela's lips form the name Peter without making any sound. "No," she says, her brow furrowing. "I don't have a son named Peter." Grudgingly, she tears her focus away from Nathan long enough to look at Kaylee — really look at her — from beneath the veil of her dewy lashes, painted eyelids weighed down by glittering tears and what little mascara is still left on them. A pair of pearl earrings that match her necklace glint briefly in the distant light of Manhattan seeping in through the bedroom window as she runs fingers through her hair and pulls it away from her face. Like Kaylee's footsteps, the sound of traffic rumbling by on the street outside is conspicuously absent.

"You— You're like me."

"I am evolved, yes. And trust me, Mrs. Petrelli." A small smile touches Kaylee's lips, "You do have a son named Peter. He brought me to your bedside, concerned about what has happened to you. I'm… guessing he's the youngest." Her eyes moves to the child in the bed briefly before, turning back to his mother. The young telepath seem to consider something, "You've been locked in this moment in time, cut off from your other memories." Eyes intense, Kaylee leans forward a bit, her weight pressed on the foot of the bed. "You need to remember them, your sons."

Her ability shifts gears a bit, she presses the woman to seek out those memories to reconnect to them. "«Remember your sons as they are now.»" It's a long shot, but Kaylee presses her will into it, hoping it could help her press past the barrier of her memories. "This…" A hand releases it's grip on the bed and gestures to the ailing kid, "This has past, Mrs. Petrelli. Nathan is grown and alive." Her mouth tugs into a lop-sided smile as she states slyly as if giving away a national secret. "He's President of the United States."

Angela's expression is fraught with emotion, and as Kaylee speaks, lines appear where there were none, giving her a slightly more worn and aged appearance. Reconnecting her memories is like pulling a single thread through a tapestry woven from colours so vibrant as to be blinding, filling the telepath's inner eye with brilliant flashes of light crowded around images that are diluted and hazy in comparison.

An older Nathan stands at an alter and dressed in a smart black tuxedo, Heidi at his arm with a long white dress trailing behind her as rose petals the colour of sunbleached linens dance through the air.

A flash of milky skin eclipsed against darker tan, both slick with sweat. The smooth hand of a woman with perfectly manicured nails follows the bow of an arching spine and tangles in headful of thick black hair, accompanied by a lipsticked mouth huskily breathing "Kaito" into her lover's ear.

In the next instant, Arthur Petrelli's arm bears down on an elegant column of throat with enough pressure to bruise and twist off air. Fury is written across his brooding features, dark brows lowered over even darker eyes and lips pressed into a firm, unrelenting line.

At Nathan's bedside, Angela lets out a small moan.

"That's right Angela…" Kaylee whispers with encouragement, switching to her first name. Blue eyes narrow in a grimace, against the onslaught of the other woman's memories, the telepath presses on, "This is only one memory. Break free of what Arthur did to you." Ignoring the building pressure in her own head, Kaylee's ability continues to press, to push to force those connections, to break apart whatever was done. She has to remember.

Hands slide off the hospital bed and Kaylee steps soft around the bed, her eyes on Peter's mother. Her voice drones on, coaxing the woman gently. "You have family that needs you, Angela." Kaylee's voice is smooth, slipping through the woman's memories trying to unlock them. The blonde's path takes her behind Angela's chair, where her own hands move to grip the other's shoulders, a gentle touch. "Peter…. Nathan… They need their mother. What child doesn't need the guidance of the woman that brought them into this world." Just saying that makes Kaylee think of her own mother, the young woman's stomach twist with a sense of home sickness.

Kaylee leans down slowly, there is something in her eyes that the other doesn't not see. When her mouth is next to the older woman's ear, then she whispers, "«Wake up, Angela.»" Though the words are soft, Kaylee pushes all her energy into that that command, willing her to open her eyes in the real word, to waken from her long slumber. "«Wake up. For your family.»"

In the waking world, Angela's eyes open to bloodshot whites and irises discoloured by age and the faint traces of cataracts edging in around their corners. She blinks to clear her eyes of the darkness that still fogs her vision, mouth elongating around a violent gasp that wracks her whole body and jerks her hips off the mattress as she sinks fingers into the sheets and bunches the cotton material between her knuckles. The noise she's making sounds more animal than human, but it's a noise — and more than she's ever than voiced in all the months she's been confined to the bedroom with a breathing tube insinuated in her windpipe.

Now what, Kaylee?

When Angela Petrelli wakes, Kaylee snaps back into her own body and is met with a stab of pain from overworking her ability like that. Nearly knocked off the bed, she realizes there isn't time to think about that, as the older woman is suddenly thrashing. Kaylee's brain doesn't seems to want to process what she's seeing. It takes a moment for her to snap too, "Mrs. Petrelli… It's okay." Her voice is slightly panicked, as her fingers hover anxiously, as she tries figure out the tubing going into her mouth. Slightly wide eyed, she glances at Peter and snaps a bit more then she means too. "How do you get this thing off her? Get it off." She's afraid to do anything to hurt the woman.

"«Shhh… Mrs. Petrelli, it's alright. Your safe.»" Eyes Squint and she grimaces as pain slices through her head, but Kaylee pushes it aside as best she can, as she tries to persuade the woman to calm. God, please don't let me have screwed this up. "Let us get the tube out."

Blue eyes immediately go wide, and the sedate expression on Peter's face that has been there this whole long time is immediately washed away. Bolting up from the chair, blue eyes dart around the room, and then focus back on his mother. "What did you— " the accusation is snapped off as he looks towards her elevated heart rate on the display near her bed. "Move." Rushing around past Kaylee, Peter is mindful to tug on his gloves just a little tighter as hard-soled shoes scuff across the floor on his way over to to the bedside.

"She's been breathing on a ventillator for months," quickly pulling a rolling tray over, Peter gives the impression he might actually know what he's doing right now. "She's breathing on her own again and the tube is choking her." So, yes, let's get that tube out. Those black-leather clad hands quickly untape the tube from her mouth, one hand anxoiously placed to her brow. Hopefully she's too delerious to realize the unnatural tingling on her forehead from the touch. "I need you to breathe out, mom. Deep breath, breathe out."

He pulls, slowly, on the plastic tube. The sound isn't becoming of anyone, a wet gurgling as it's slid back and out from deep down Angela's throat, almost a foot of plastic tubing that is pulled up from her windpipe and left to lay on that rolling tray at the bedwide with a wet slap. His hand immediately jerks away form her forehead, pale blue eyes on Kaylee now, brows furrowed and that scar across his face seemingly more prominent now. "Did it work? What'd you do?" He's frantic, anxious. To think months ago he tried to kill her and Nathan in this very room.

Blinking away tears that have nothing to do with the visions Kaylee was privy to and everything with what she's seeing now, Angela's hand lashes out and closes around the leather of Peter's glove, seizing him by the wrist in much the same way she took hold of the other woman at Nathan's bedside, though her nails are much too brittle to do any real damage. Her eyes are bright. Alert. Swelling with moisture. This is the son she hasn't seen for what feels like an eternity and may well have been for all Kaylee and Peter know.

Although her grip is weak, it does not loosen, does not relent even when the fine hairs on the back of her neck and on her long, bare arms stand at attention, bristling with the innate knowledge that something is terribly wrong with her child. "My baby," she rasps, her weathered voice like sandpaper and crackling with the emotion she's too exhausted to show on her gaunt face. "My Peter. What's he done do you?"

Kaylee is more then happy to get out of Peter's way, relief on her face that someone knows what to. Though the sudden movement coupled with her splitting headache, makes the world reel slightly. A searching hand finds the chair Peter just left, fingers gripping as hard as they can while she concentrates on not letting her legs buckle.

When Peter looks back at her, he'd notice she seems to have developed a bloody nose, but she doesn't answer him, she just gives a little shake of her head, and motions to his mother with a tired smile. Attend to her, questions later, is what the gesture tells him.

Wiping the edge of her hand under her nose, Kaylee grimaces at the sight of blood and brushes it on the jeans, so lady like, but at least the jeans are old and ratty. She glances back at mother and son, staying silent hoping to stay unnoticed, as tears seem to threaten.

I did it. The relief pours through her even as her head threatens to split apart, even though what she did she feels is a betrayal to someone that cared about her. At that moment nothing mattered, the pain was worth it, for once Kaylee did something right and succeeded.

Speechless. For the first time in a long time, Peter has nothing to say. His eyes are wide, bright blue staring down where should be brown. He swallows, nosily and tensely, looking up to Kaylee as if uncertain of what to say to his own mother. He hesitates, making a wiping notion with his free hand under his nose to Kaylee, staring at her anxiously, before he finally looks back to the bed and makes eye contact with Angela again. Somewhere, deep inside of Peter, there is a sympathetic feeling of longing for parental connection from the ghost of Kazimir Volken wound so darkly around the young Petrelli's heart.

Eyes close, only to hide the fact that the man that is called Rock for all his emotional hardness by an old friend might start to cry. His hand becomes shaky, gloves pulling Angela's hand carefully away from his sleeve. "D— don't. It— it's not safe." The faint pin-prickling tingling of Angela's hand as he lets it go is warning enough, but not as much as those eyes are. "I'm— I'll be fine." It's a lie, and his turn to lie to his mother. It's the way this family works.

Strangely, amidst all of this, Kaylee hadn't noticed until now the weight off her chest seems lessened. While the degenerative ache and shakes are still there, tihs somehow seems to have made her feel better. Maybe it's an emotional response, maybe it's something more subtly insidious about Susan Amann's ability. But this is the best she's felt in weeks — bloody nose aside.


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