Participants:
| Scene Title | Approaching Thunder |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Confinement by Homeland Security does wonders for Peter's mental stability, and his mind is left to wander to unexpected horizons in an inexplicable manner. |
| Date | January 9, 2008 |
????
Trees.
He's staring up through the branches of leafy trees. It's odd, the way sunlight filters down through the gren leaves, irregular patterns of shadow and light playing across the moss-covered ground where he lays. There's a silence, but a serene silence and not an ominous one.
How did he get outside?
With a tired groan, Peter Petrelli sits up from where he lays on a carpet of think, spongy moss, just a few feet away from a placid pool of crystal clear water. His eyes have a difficult time adjusting to the darkness of the forest floor against the shafts of light coming down from above. The trees are enormous, sindly and crooked the way trees get when near salt water.
Glancing down at his reflection in the water, Peter narrows his eyes and brings one hand up to his face, tracing fingertips over his brow where a scar should be. There's confusion, disbelief, and at the same time anxiety about where he is.
He's supposed to be on medication to suppress his abilities. What the hell is going on here?
Sitting up further, Peter presses one hand down into the moss; damp and soft. Then, tucking one leg under himself, he manages to shakily stand, one booted foot finding the security of the ground as he straightens. With his gaze still focused on the pool of water, something catches Peter's attention at the bottom.
It's concrete.
His eyes narrow, and Peter looks up again, vision less blurry now as he tries to focus on the enormous trees that seem to loom infinitely overhead. Then, with the contrast of light and dark leveling out, the true confusion can set in.
The trees that are everywhere here aren't alone, they grow around, within, and through the hollowed-out shells of concrete buildings. What he mistook for one of the trees earlier is a moss-encrusted telephone pole covered with climbing vines and colorful flowers.
Deeper into the wood, the broken silhouette of crumbling skyscrapers bristling with branches and leaves comes in full bloom. Impossibly large trees growing straight out of the sides of buildings that look devastated by some catastrophic event. But the sounds of nature here, the calls of birds and rustling wings, it isn't some grim or dark portend of what is to come.
It's an enigma.
On unsteady footing, Peter begins to make his way through the undergrowth, past shrubs growing up through sewer grates, past hanging vines dangling from lichen covered streetlights, and down the broken and upheaved streets mostly covered with wet soil and moss.
Things starts to look familiar as his mind finds ways of seperating the verdant scenery from the urban landscape. Street signs that rest at skewed angls, partially consumed in the sides of trees, one clearly reading "42nd Street."
It makes Peter's head spin; This is Midtown.
For what would be blocks if the city still stood, Peter walks. Eventually finding the tall concrete blocks used to divide the Ruins of Midtown from the rest of New York, through an opening in the wall once secured by FEMA and DHS. But when he steps out from under the green boughs of countless trees, when he wanders out of the forest, the world that reveals itself to him feels even more alien than ever.
The immediate presence of urban noise; of passing cars and honking horns assaults Peter's senses. Standing somewhere on the far east end of 42nd street, facing out towards the Hudson, gleaming skyscrapers reach up towards the heavens. Buildings both familiar and unfamiliar amidst the presence of pedestrian traffic.
Mixed in with the noise of the cars on the street is the whirr of electric cars, just as many on the road as there more familiar vehicles. Peter looks down to his hands, flexing them open and closed before staring up at the bright sun overhead in the cloudless sky.
As someone flies past.
With his mouth hanging agape slightly, Peter furrows his brows together in confusion. Three more people fly past, soaring through the air like birds without wings. He jerks his vision back to street level, feeling that rush of blood to his head as his heart throbs in his chest.
There's a woman across the street, touching her hand to the side of an ATM, and he can see the flickering screen going through transaction phases even as she has her eyes closed. Colors seem brighter, sharper, more lush. Everything seems different, feels different.
"Mister Petrelli." A voice from behind startles Peter into turning around and stumbling back a few steps to the sidewalk. There in front of him, a small and unassuming looking man with a receeding hairline holds up a pistol, sunlight reflecting off of his glasses.
Peter's eyes focus on the barrel of the gun, then on the man, then back on the barrel as the trigger is squeezed.
"No!" Screaming in a hoarse and dry voice, Peter bolts up from his cot, sweat beading on his brow and his heart racing in his chest, beating hard enough he fears it may burst out in any moment. Clutching one hand there, the prisoner of Homeland Security leans forward, exhaling a slow and wheezing breath as his neck tenses.
He looks down to his hand, shaking. Dark eyes lift up to look at the glass window of his cell, and at his scarred reflection in it. There's a modicum of relif in the familiarity of the four walls and his own face.
The sound of the gunshot will stay with him the rest of the night.
It was a sound of thunder.
 January 9th: Brothers In Arms |
 January 10th: Retched |