Participants:
Also Featuring:
| Scene Title | For the Things I'll Do |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Lost in a world she doesn't understand, Odessa comes face to face with a fork in the garden. |
| Date | June 28, 2018 |
The world can be a tricky place, filled with unanswerable questions and unknowable truths. Watching the sun set on a world that is not her own, Odessa Woods is forced to reconcile the fact that it may be months, at the shortest, before she is reunited with her husband and the world she knows. Yet at the same time, she may only have months to spend with her mother, before being separated from her by the gulf that divides worlds.
Western Staten Island is a peaceful and isolated place to contemplate these facts of life. Tenement buildings are overgrown with leafy vegetation, sapling trees sprout up from demolished cellar holes, and sunlight reflects off of the dark bay of Arthur Kill. Across the water, the ruins of Jersey City look like something out of a science fiction film, with crumbling concrete and rusted out hulks of firebombed cars. This world is a nightmare from which she cannot awake, and Odessa is as trapped here as the sun is trapped in the sky, ever sinking toward a dark horizon.
The vegetation reminds her of the garden she’s been talking about planting for years but never has. If she gets home, she’ll stop talking about it and she’ll just do it.
Or she won’t.
Odessa stands well away from the edge of the rooftop she’s climbed up to. She enjoys the view of the horizon, but prefers not to be reminded of how far there is to fall. “It’s like a metaphor for my life,” she mutters to herself as she drops to a crouch to examine a wild violet peeking out from the moss under her feet.
This place in this moment could be like home in some ways, if she closes her eyes and focuses on the smell of earth, flowers, and greenery. She wonders how anyone can look at this place and condemn the world she lives in as wrong.
The clank of an old fire-escape behind Odessa settles her nerves, rather than puts them on edge. Over her shoulder, following the length her shadow cuts across the roof, she sees another blonde climbing up past the rusted HVAC equipment. In the bright summer sunlight, Julie Forunier-Raith looks identical to how Odessa remembers her from her own world, a fellow prisoner-patient, a science experiment trapped behind glass who has yet to find her own wings. But here, in the now, she seems more free than any bird.
Julie’s clothes don’t look becoming of a nurse; jeans with holes in them, sneakers smudged in dirt, an ill-fitting black t-shirt screen-printed with a yellow moon. Slipping an elastic off of her wrist, she ties her hair back into a ponytail and approaches with thoughtful purpose. “This makes us even,” is spat out with a level of reserved bitterness that Odessa cannot possible know the details of, their past in her own world are nothing like they are here, but Julie remains a constant. She remains someone who knows Odessa’s life trajectory, just for reasons not entirely understood by the woman in front of her. Reaching out to Julie was a guess. One that paid off.
“Memory loss is a serious sign of permanent and likely fatal cognitive failure. Given what happened to you in the arcology, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Julie diagnoses based off of a convenient lie as she clears the distance between the two, “but I’ve read enough about you to know you don’t plan for the long term. I won’t waste my breath trying to heal a patient who won’t listen.” Blue eyes flick to view Odessa sidelong as Julie comes to stand at her side. “What do you want to know about yourself?”
There are certain people Odessa will make like the shrinking violet at her feet for. It’s as much a defense mechanism as anything else she does. At this point, she’s used to the idea that most people are going to be hostile toward her, rather than friendly. Desdemona Desjardins is woefully low on friendships. It puts Odessa at a disadvantage that, while frustrating, is all too familiar. Arthur changed that for her before. Where the Odessa of this world will find a hand up…
Richard Ray only has so much influence.
Still, the tone of Julie’s voice stings. It had been a huge gamble to bet on her help here, as much as she’d have been a sure bet in her own world. What would she like to know about herself? How Des ruined this relationship might be a good place to start, if ultimately unhelpful.
“Given I can’t recall what happened to me in the Arcology, I suspect your diagnosis is sound.” Another convenient lie. “I’ve read what they’ve written about me too,” she’d had to, as painful as it had been. “Not much sense in planning beyond a certain point for someone like me, is there?” Odessa smiles sadly as she climbs to her feet. The height difference between herself and the other blonde isn’t enough to allow any hint of impressiveness. “I want to know what happened to my ability and how I can make it work again.” The way it works - or doesn’t, it feels at times - is terrifying. She’s meant to rule over time and not be ruled by its eternal marching orders.
That isn't what Julie expected to be asked. One brow raises, and she treads forward and reaches into her back pocket, retrieving a somewhat crushed pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “Okay,” she murmurs, cigarette between her lips and hands shielding the flame of her lighter from the rooftop wind.
After taking a drag off of her cigarette, Julie looks at Odessa with a focused intensity. Her pupils dilate wide, then narrow down to small points. It takes a few unblinking moments, but then the young blonde finally bats her eyelashes and blinks away from the dead-eyed stare. She doesn't immediately say anything.
It takes Julie a good long while of watching Odessa in abject confusion before she finally, breathlessly asks, “What the fuck?”
”Over There”
Upper West Side
Manhattan
November 19, 2014
Police are gathered outside of a grocer, standing around a congested knot of traffic where a passenger car collided with a garbage truck. Th accident isn't severe, but the vehicles are blocking the road and the police are trying to calm the irate drivers as they shout and swear at one-another. Inside the grocer, Odessa Price watches the scene with a paper ticket marked 8 in one hand. The line of people at the butcher counter isn't too long, but the seventy-five year old woman who holds ticket 4 is taking forever to get her deli meats.
The past two weeks have been strange. The world Odessa has found herself in stranger, but in many ways mercifully welcoming. This world's Odessa is married, has friends, has a family, gainful employment, and a surprisingly smaller amount of blood on her hands in spite of the work she does for Pinehearst. Today, being a Saturday, that work is more family focused rather than business. Woods is going to be cooking dinner, Peter is coming over with Gillian, and he had his heart set on cooking steaks from Nicolli’s on West 83rd street.
This life could be so much worse.
Des has made friends in this world in her time here so far. The first thing she did was run to her brother’s side and explain her situation. That action led to her meeting with others from Mateo’s world, and Lynette from this one. It’s taken a lot of effort not to simply hide herself away from this world. If she’s stuck here, she’ll have to integrate, and so she’s doing her best. Even if she is citing migraines for her off behavior and the fact that she doesn’t seem to remember things she should.
This dinner with Peter and Gillian is nerve-racking to say the least. Des glances about, feeling anxious but doing her best not to put it on display. She makes a show of looking back at the accident outside. That’s enough to put any reasonable person slightly on edge, after all.
If she’s going to stay here, and maybe part of her wants to, she’s going to need to find out more about her other self so she can more fully step into her shoes. Des smiles to herself as she takes out her phone and starts looking up icebreaker party games. Maybe she can get the others to reveal more about her.
Or maybe today’s the day she dies. That outcome wasn't on the list of expected ends for her day.
And yet…
Des felt the pressure change of someone trying to manipulate time at the same moment she felt the biting sting and flush of agony in her back. It breaks her concentration, allows the world to grind to a halt around her and particles of her own blood that escaped her mouth to hang weightless in the air. She sees a reflection in the glass behind her, dark, angry. She sees the curving blade of a sword protruding from her midsection with a spreading rose of blood through light fabric.
“Tsuini.”
Desdemona Desjardins had no reason to expect Hiro Nakamura to appear out of nowhere and run her thorough. Odessa Price, certainly, they'd been playing that game of cat and mouse for a while. But this…
Hiro twists the blade and forces Odessa to the floor, surrounded by people waiting in line for their corned beef and turkey. Feet from the police. And yet an infinite number of moments in time apart.
A gurgling cry escapes Des’ parted lips as she hits the floor.
Odessa Woods has a lot of friends in this world, but Hiro Nakamura is not among them.
“Hi…ro.” Blood from her throat is spat out of her mouth. It figures the one person she used to fear, who saved her life more than once and gave her hope, would turn out to found those initial fears. “You got… the wrong girl,” she chokes out. His princess is in another castle in another world.
Or maybe the one person who would know something was wrong with her is the other master of time. Odessa doesn’t have much time to dwell on it as she coughs up more blood, her vision beginning to go dark at the edges.
Momentary confusion flashes across Hiro’s face, watching Odessa in her injured state. No venom, no ire, no grenade hidden in a pocket. He relaxes his grip on his sword, leaves it wedged in the wound, but does not wrench it around further. Kaito would not be so merciful, not since Kimiko was murdered, not since the world burned out from under him. But as Kaito has repeatedly reminded Hiro, he is not his father.
“Explain,” is Hiro’s anxious demand, and he is both aware and unaware of the possibilities at play here. He takes a knee at Odessa’s side, looking at the blood spilling around her, and knowing that there is not a great deal of time for this transaction to complete.
”Over Here”
Arthur Kill Harbor
Ruins of Staten Island
June 28, 2018
“Explain,” Julie angrily demands as she looks Odessa up and down. “Your ability is… it’s— even with what happened in the arcology it shouldn't look like this. You're a temporal manipulator not…” She flippantly waves one hand in Odessa’s direction.
“If I could explain it, I wouldn’t be asking you what’s going on, would I?” Odessa rests one hand on her hip and tips her head to the side, brows lifted expectantly. “I’m supposed to be a temporal manipulator. It’s what I was born to be.” Wasn’t she? She was an experiment after all. The science wasn’t particularly exact.
That hand drops back to her side again a moment before she buries her fingers in her dark hair, nails raking her scalp. Restlessly, she paces back and forth, eyes on the horizon for three rounds. Finally, her gaze turns back to Julie. “What am I, if not what I’ve always been?”
“Your file says you were a temporal manipulator, But— ” Julie looks at Odessa with a puzzled expression. “I don't know what you are. I can't even… put words to it. It’s like… it's like you're a piece of sand being covered into a pearl. I can't…” Julie shakes her head slowly.
“Whatever you did in the arcology, whatever happened to Darren when you killed him…” Julie swallows tightly, throat working up and down. “I think it changed you. I think it… broke you. Because you're not…”
Julie slides her tongue over her lips and steps closer to Odessa, cigarette in one hand and the other tucking her lighter into her back pocket. “I never got to thank you for… saving us.”
“That was an accident.” Odessa’s probed enough into what happened when her counterpart acquired Darren’s ability to know that she at least believes that much. “I didn’t mean to kill him.” And while it’s not her burden to bear, she can imagine. It’s not like regret is a foreign concept to her.
She inclines her head graciously when Julie offers her thanks. “You’re welcome.” While she doesn’t know what Des did, precisely, she has some notions. “We’re cut from the same cloth, you and I. Which,” Odessa takes a step back, “is why I’m going to ask you to keep your distance, and your hands where I can see them.”
Julie levels a dead, blue-eyed stare on Odessa that lacks any of the empathy or warmth it had a moment ago. As a warm summer breeze spreads across the rooftop, she takes a step forward. “Why?” Julie asks, looking Odessa up and down, “are you afraid I’d stab you in the back?”
”Over There”
Upper West Side
Manhattan
November 19, 2014
“Explain!” Hiro demands again, his hands shaking.
It would be so much easier to just lay down on the floor, wouldn’t it? Des stares at the tiles a moment, not even really watching the way her blood flows along in the small cracks between them. It’s his shout that brings her back to the moment again.
“I’m from another timeline.” The pain makes her stutter, but determination keeps her going. She can’t die here of all places. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end. “There was some kind of… accident. I think we switched places. We’re supposed to be… friends, you and I.” Of a sort, anyway. He saves her life, she repays it by being some kind of continual fuck-up, and this is probably how he’s wanted it all to play out many times before for all she knows.
The look of incredulity on Hiro’s face only lasts so long. For a moment it’s clear that he intends on finishing Odessa off on principle, that she’s woven a lie too big for once. But then the tension in his wrists abates, his conscious mind throttles his unconscious one, and he swallows dryly against the cloying feeling of cotton in his mouth. “You can’t do that,” Hiro says with a measure of uncertainty in that declaration, looking to the wound he’s inflicted on someone who may not in truth be his enemy. He doesn’t feel her trying to fight him for control over this encapsulated moment. She’d fight.
“Baka,” Hiro chides himself as the sensation of rushing and movement floods all around Odessa, and she disappears from the deli floor and reappears in an unfamiliar street where it is night time and not day, and the honk of horns and city lights indicate that time is no longer stopped. The alley he shares with Odessa is cobblestoned and damp from recent rain. Across the street, she can see a sign in German that is illegible to her, but the caduceus symbol next to the writing is universal for hospital.
He still hasn’t removed the sword. That, at least, is stemming the tide of bleeding.
“How are you here? Did you come with the others? With Harrison and Varlane?” Hiro narrows his eyes, still demanding, still searching for some lie to prove to him that she is the monster he’s been looking for, that’s been looking for him.
Des stares blearily at the sign. For a moment, she thinks she can’t read it because the blood loss has addled her brain. Recognition, in so far as it can, does kick in however. “I swear, if this is Dessau…”
It doesn’t matter.
“No. I don’t know how. One moment, home. Next, here. It’d be a hell of a trick… if I could replicate it.” Des tries to smile at this grand joke at her own expense, but can’t quite make her mouth contort into the right shape. “We’re from the same time… but they’re still them. I became her.”
None of this makes sense to Hiro, and he reconciles that with a pinch of his brows together and a downward turn of his lips into a frown. “How is that possible? You… you switched minds?” Stranger things have happened, but only just.
”Over Here”
Arthur Kill Harbor
Ruins of Staten Island
June 28, 2018
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Julie notes to Odessa, taking one more step forward. “Stab you,” she enunciates, “in the back.” She lifts her cigarette up, taking a drag, and then raises one brow slowly. “Because if you’re worried, you could always just… stop time, and slip away.” There’s a broken anger in Julie’s eyes, nothing like the rosy-cheeked young woman that works for Doctor Luis in Cambridge in her world. How many bridges had this world’s Odessa burned? How many backs had she stabbed to get here? How different were the two, really?
“You know as well as I do what happens when someone becomes an unknown integer in our circles. They either get locked up to get solved for x, or they’re removed from the equation entirely for mucking it all up.” Odessa has the good grace to look apologetic, and she does the courtesy of not backing away a second time when Julie again advances.
Beyond apologetic, Odessa is saddened. That she mistrusted the other woman, that there’s no bridge for the water to pass under. “I’m sorry. I’m used to the world being against me. I don’t know who to trust here.” She winces faintly at the slip. Who to trust here.
“I don’t understand how my ability works anymore. I’m scared, okay?”
“You brought this on yourself when you killed Darren. I can’t believe y— ” Julie is cut off from her sentence as she lifts off of her feet and is thrown backwards across the rooftop, tumbling, bouncing, and skidding to a groaning stop on the other side of the roof. Behind her, a low-hanging cloud of black smoke slowly begins to rise up into the form of a bearded old man with a long, thin face and deeply sunken eyes. He stares not at Julie’s prone form behind him, but at the morsel situated at the edge of the roof ahead of him.
“Well now, isn't this a surprise?” The voice is unfamiliar, as is his face, a hollow-cheeked boogeyman come out of the sunset like the specter of death. “I remember you,” Samson Gray croons as he takes one thin-legged step forward. “From the newspapers…” he smiles, slowly, with yellow teeth visible. “You've got a curious ability.”
Behind Samson, Julie struggles to push up onto her hands and knees, blood trickling from her mouth and nose where she struck the roof. She coughs, once, trying to hide the noise behind her hand.
“I didn’t mean to— ” Odessa’s eyes go wide as the younger woman is flung back. “Julie!” A step forward is aborted when that smoke begins to take shape between them. Rather than move further back, she steps to the side, trying to put more space between herself and the rooftop’s edge, if not between herself and the attacker.
This Odessa doesn’t have the history with Samson Gray that the one who belongs here does. The hate doesn’t spark instantly. The fear is certainly there, but not as strong as it should be. She still believes her ability can get both herself and Julie out of this situation, but she’ll happily try the knife in her boot first.
“Can’t believe everything you read in the papers, mister.”
One of Samson’s eyes narrow slowly, a squint, and he’s looking Odessa up and down like she’s an unfamiliar cat who wandered into his house. “Well, this is fascinating.” A high-pitched whistle slips past Samson’s lips, scrambling neurological signals from the brain to the body, causing Odessa’s muscles to tighten up and her back to go rigid. A sonic paralytic, both fascinating and terrifying in the moment. With Odessa frozen in place, Samson slowly strides forward with the weary gait of a man short on time. Something, coincidentally, Odessa happens to be in abundance of.
“You know, Karen had an ability a lot like yours,” Samson admits as he slowly closes the distance, heedless to Julie’s slow rise to her skinned knees, then shakier rise to her feet. “But not quite like yours, really. Because you…” Samson raises two fingers, and Odessa can feel a telekinetic caress gently brush along her cheek like an extension of Samson’s hand. “You’re… doing something.” A piece of the puzzle slots into place, and Samson tilts his head to the side in slow inspection of his catch, aware of the blonde behind him picking up her knife from the rooftop by a tingle at the back of his neck. A prickling danger sense that has time and again saved his wretched life, even if it couldn’t save its original owner.
“What are you doing here?” Samson asks, releasing the paralytic hold on Odessa’s body as he stands close enough for her to smell the cigarettes on his breath. There could be many ways to interpret his question, so Samson makes it crystal clear.
“In this world?”
Over There
Berlin
Germany
November 19, 2014
There’s a distant sound of a police siren, and Hiro fires a look back to Odessa after a quick glance at the street. “Is Arthur alive in your world? Did he not alter your memories in that one? Why don’t you hate me?” Hiro can’t understand what’s happening, let alone why, even if on paper there’s an explanation. How could one Odessa be so different from the other?
“No.” Des shakes her head slowly to the question. “No, he’s dead. I don’t hate you, because you save me time and time again.” Slowly, she begins to lean to one side. She wants so desperately to lay down.
“Kara told me you took me as an infant… You had to have a reason.” Des looks up at the other temporal manipulator with a pleading gaze. “You always have a reason.” Blue eyes shut as she releases a shuddering sigh. Just a few moments like this. Maybe that will help.
“Odessa,” Hiro squeezes her shoulder, rousing her back to waking as he looks frantically to the hospital. He’d finally gotten the drop on his deadly shadow after all this time, and it turned out to be the wrong one. “Odessa I— ” There’s so much in what she said that he wants to respond to, it shows in his face, but the dark red stain on the ground below her demands even more of his attention.
“Kara isn’t your mother.” Hiro stresses with his brows furrowed, tone urgent. “I— never kidnapped you. That’s a lie Arthur drilled into your mind, I tried to tell you— another you before, but you refused to listen. Odessa, whoever your mother is— was— it isn’t Kara. She was born on the same day you were. Arthur, he… he did something to your memory and Kara’s, and I don’t know why. My own father won’t explain what he knows about you. He says it’s too dire.”
Hiro looks back at the hospital again, then furrows his brows and levels his hand on Odessa’s shoulder. “You need a doctor.”
Des startles and looks up at Hiro once more. Right. She knows that she needs to stay alert. How many times has she made others do the same? All this medical knowledge in her head and it all feels useless right now. “I am a doctor,” she quips weakly.
She smiles ruefully. “I had a feeling. Her ability doesn’t work right with me. I… She didn’t look like my mother. Like Rianna…” Des reaches up and puts her hand on Hiro’s arm now that she doesn’t think she’ll lose it. “But she doesn’t know. That’s unfair… Please, Hiro. You have to find my brother. You have to find Mateo and tell him…” Pitching forward, she begins to cough, fingers tightening around the man’s arm. Blood spatters the ground, indistinguishable from what still flows from wound. “You have to tell him it’s okay.” She doesn’t expect to survive this. Doesn’t know if she deserves to, even if the sins she’d be dying for aren’t her own.
“You can tell him yourself.” Hiro supposed. He's not sure how all of this is supposed to work. “Don't make me regret this,” Hiro warns, placing a hand on Odessa’s shoulder and closing his eyes before the two whisk away from the alley he was going to abandon her in and instead into an unoccupied hospital room — judging from the change of scenery outside — somewhere in the American southwest. Odessa slides in her own blood on the tile floor, and Hiro carefully grips his sword and then teleports it to the foot of the hospital bed and out of her body.
Blood, and a burst of emerald light, spills forth from the injury. Hiro’s eyes grow wide when he sees that flash of light and glitter of emerald sparks. Odessa can feel the reflexive sensation, the strings around her fingers. A doctor may not be able to save her in time, but she's right — she is a doctor, and she has the best medicine available.
The power to rewind time.
“My power always did do its best to save me… Even when it’s not mine.” She half-expected that he would leave her, and her instincts would kick in and leave her frozen until help arrived. Instead, she has new instincts, and Des isn’t sure they’re better. “This is gonna suck,” she mutters. “Stick around for the light show.”
Holding her hands in front of her stomach, she focuses on the moments that led up to this one. To say it’s an entirely new sensation would be a lie. She’s felt the desire to turn things back since she acquired Darren’s ability. After what happened to him, she’s been reluctant to try it herself. If anyone should suffer the consequences of what his ability can do, it should be her after all this time. The curious thing will be to find out if the two abilities clash the way they did when Darren first brought her back, or if they work in harmony. Des isn’t sure which is preferable anymore.
Des catches hold of an invisible string with a hooked index finger and begins to circle it in the air. Counterclockwise seems to make the most sense when rewinding time, doesn’t it? Instead of feeling the string go taut and bringing it to a halt, there seems to be an infinite amount of give. She can just keep winding back and back and back… But it’s missing something.
Darren always had a source of energy.
“Give me your hand.” Des doesn’t even bother to try and wipe away the blood on her left hand before holding it out toward Hiro. “Please.”
Hiro looks at Odessa, an Odessa, and one with knowledge and capabilities beyond any he could possibly hope for. “When this is said and done,” Hiro says resolutely, “I need to take you to my father. But that will have to wait until,” Hiro squints, “late 2014? It's 2013 right now, right?” There's a twitch at one of Hiro’s eyes. Jaunts like this were so dangerous, but sometimes, necessary.
Reaching out, Hiro takes Odessa’s hand. “Maybe we can— ”
Maybe nothing.
”Over Here”
Arthur Kill Harbor
Ruins of Staten Island
June 28, 2018
“Oh, don't look so surprised,” Samson says with a fond, knife-like smile. “They came for me, wanting to scramble my eggs,” he notes with a circular motion at the side of his head. “They should have learned. They should have learned.”
Erratic and unpredictable, Samson tightens a telekinetic grip around Odessa’s throat, just enough to remind her that he's there. “So,” Samson croons, “what’re you doing here?”
He feigns ignorance of Julie’s slow approach, but his smile is getting bigger.
The emotions cycle quicker than Odessa can really process them. Terror, awe, confusion, anger. A tear slides down her cheek and she makes no attempt to try to reach and wipe it away. Instead, she stares incredulous at Samson and starts to put the pieces together. A mosaic? No…
No.
Odessa lifts her chin and stares up at Samson. “How?” How could he possibly know that she - at least her mind - isn’t from this world? “Who are you?” She’s attempting to distract with questions of her own, and forcing herself not to track Julie’s progress across the roof. All she wants to do is shout for the other woman to run.
“You don't know?” Samson raises his brows, finding the irony hilarious. “Back in my day, the Company kept me on retainer. I was Arthur Petrelli’s attack dog, if there was someone he wanted put in the ground off the books. They called me. But,” Samson flashes Odessa a smile. “They didn't know what I am. Didn't figure it out until after…”
Samson raises two fingers, and a sudden driving sensation painfully presses against Odessa’s brow. “Until after I split your old man’s head wide open, and got this ability from him.” It isn't like Sylar, it isn't a knife. Samson’s telekinetic ability is like a hammer and chisel and it slams against Odessa’s brow with a crack that splits skin and sends blood into her eyes.
“T’think, I was looking for a regenerator, when this was right nearby.” As if to punctuate Samson’s sentence, Julie lunges in with her knife, but with a flick of his free hand Samson sends it spinning out of her grip and into her stomach. Then with a flick of two fingers he launches her off of the roof and out of sight.
“Rude,” Samson teases, never breaking eye contact with Odessa.
“My what?” Odessa doesn’t get a chance to contemplate the notion that the man in front of her killed her father - for all she knew, there was no one to fill that role in her creation - before the pain in her skull is blinding.
Odessa shrieks at the top of her lungs not just from the pain, but at the sight of the knife plunging into Julie’s abdomen, and being unceremoniously thrown from the roof. “No!” Every muscle in her body is screaming now, she needs to escape this. Somehow. Desperately, she tries to use her ability against him. Hold him in place so she can break free and search for Julie.
She’s terrified it won’t work.
She should have been more worried about getting what you ask for.
Over There
Berlin
Germany
November 19, 2014
An explosion of lambent green energy corsucates through Hiro’s arm like fireworks. Sparking
Like high-voltage electricity in contact with water. His fingers grip uncontrolably to Odessa’s arm and a howling noise of agony slips free from his lips. A panicked look rises in Hiro’s eyes as Odessa wracks on the floor, writhing and screaming in a half dozen echoes of her own voice. Hiro, too, drops to one knee and clenches his eyes shut, teeth gnashed together and jaw clenched tightly. A moment later, there’s an explosion of light and Odessa releases Hiro’s arm and flies backwards against the foot of the bed, jostling the Kensei sword from where it was set, landing with a clatter in her lap.
As she opens her eyes, a haze of green energy flaring around her, Odessa sees not Samson Gray the hunter, but Hiro Nakamura sitting on the floor and clutching his arm, gasping for breath and vulnerable.
Odessa gasps for air, reaching up to touch her forehead and amazed when her fingers come away without the sticky warmth of blood. She wraps her other hand tightly around the hilt of the sword in her lap and stares in shock and terror at Nakamura.
“Did you save me?” she asks, unsure of what else could have happened. It hasn’t yet occurred to her that she’s swapped back to herself. Not until she looks up and catches sight of a muted reflection in polished metal. The blonde hair is hard to miss.
Hiro’s eyes settle down on the sword wound in Odessa’s abdomen, still there. He blinks through the pain and confusion, the same pain that comes throbbing into her. A sword, covered in blood in her lap, Nakamura looking dazed and injured.
He’d tried to kill her.
“Odessa— ”
The woman pulls herself to her feet, clutching the sword and dragging the tip on the ground behind her as she moves forward. “You took me from my mother and delivered me into that hell. You’ve tried so hard to destroy everything we’ve built. This peace that we enjoy.”
It takes effort to maneuver the sword, but Odessa presses it against Hiro’s sternum and leans her weight against it just enough to show her intent. “I should kill you. But I just met a man who said he killed my father.” Her eyes narrow dangerously. Neither of them have much time, ironically.
“Explain.”
Confusion lances through Hiro’s expression, changes fear to bewilderment, and it’s evident from posture and rage that he’s not talking to the same Odessa again. Only part of what she says makes any sense, only part of it has any semblance of meaning save for the point she makes very abundant against his chest. Hiro’s brows furrow, reaching out for his ability to teleport away and…
…nothing.
”Over Here”
Arthur Kill Harbor
Ruins of Staten Island
June 28, 2018
One moment she is trying to stitch closed a wound in her abdomen, another she is standing board-straight on the edge of a roof, a throbbing ache in her brow with blood warm on her temple, and Samson Gray standing just feet from her, staring her down with his head tilted to the side like a dog who heard an unusual noise.
“Your father,” Samson confirms, to what he has no way to realize is a different person. “Telekinesis, amusingly. Somehow I’d never gotten a handle on that one, I had to use tools to get the job done,” Samson tilts his chin up, “like a primate.” The look in his eyes is a troubling and familiar one, a man consumed by the hunger and a desire to understand and claim. Samson in his most diseased state.
From one sensation of terror to another. This time, the hope that Hiro Nakamura represented is absent. Eyes widen with recognition both of the face and of the subject matter. “This ability will kill you, Samson.” It’s all Des can think to do, but she knows that look. She used to delight in it in other circumstances. Reward it, feed it. Now she fears it like she should.
Something happened when she joined hands with Hiro, and she wonders if it went as far as she fears. Des scrunches her eyes shut tight and thinks as hard as she can about a place on the rooftop at Samson’s back. Or maybe she’s just praying.
That gives Samson a moment of pause, brows pinching together and chin lifting further to inspect Odessa down the length of his nose. He curls two fingers forward rather than pointing them at her, and she floats on a telekinetic hoist toward him. Those killer’s eyes sweep up and down her, and at this proximity she can smell the stink of sweat and cigarettes as an overpowering musk.
“You know what’s killing me?” Samson says in a coarse, gravelly voice beside Odessa’s face. “Cancer is killing me.” One gray brow lifts, and Samson looks Odessa up and down slowly, then reaches out yellow fingers to grab her chin and turn his face towards him. “I’m willing t’take my risks with whatever malfunction you’ve got.”
But as Samson raises his fingers again to point at her brow, he pauses and levels the same ask to her that he had Eve. “Unless you can tell me the name of somebody… who has the ability to regenerate from injuries.”
Her brain cycles through the possibilities without much prompting. She opens her eyes to stare back at him, too close now, clearly thinking. “I— ” She’s tried so hard to be better. Once she gave up a friend rather than give up a finger. Now she has to decide between her life and someone else’s.
This used to be much easier. Doing the right thing, statistically, seems to be what’s going to get her killed. The right thing would be to tell him to go to hell. “There’s another world. Where they can fix you. They can fix anything.” She isn’t sure she’s so glad to have left it. Especially given the situation. “I can find a way to get you there. And back home again, if you even wanted to leave.”
She’s not sure if she’s actually lying or not. Des supposes that’s what makes it a lie. But she believes it can be done. Just… perhaps not in the time frame Gray is hoping for. She’ll keep that detail to herself.
Samson’s eyes narrow slowly. “I figured,” is bitterly stated, without a moment of surprise at the mention of other worlds. But it’s with a rankle of his nose that Samson retorts with, “One: I don’t trust you to help me, two: I don’t believe you can.” The chisel of force slams down on Odessa’s brow again, briefly blotting out her vision in one eye as she reflexively arches her back.
“Last chance, before I take my chances with your ability.” Samson swings Odessa down from a standing position, slaps her back-first on the roof and straddles her like a hunter might an animal felled by an arrow. He points two fingers down, visible between her brows, and keeps the other hand flat and trembling, pinning her to the rooftop.
“Give me a name,” Samson demands.
Over There
Berlin
Germany
November 19, 2014
Dark eyes scan left and right, and Hiro looks back up to Odessa after drawing in a sharp, sudden breath. “I don’t know,” is Hiro’s sole answer to her, because he truthfully doesn’t know who killed her father. Not yet, not here. “I didn’t steal you, I’ve told you this a thousand times!” Hiro grimaces, feeling the press of the blade to his chest. The anger that he’d let go of in that deli, when he saw a different Odessa’s eyes, comes welling back. “Believe whatever you want,” is Hiro’s bitter resentment speaking through, “it won’t bring him back.”
Tears spill down Odessa’s cheeks. She’s angry, but she’s scared above everything else. Everything she’s seen in the past two weeks, the discrepant histories… There are a million reasons for someone to lie to her. But the lie, if that’s what it is, has been a comfort for years.
“I hate you. I have hated you for so long.” There’s a struggle that shows in her face. To kill him now, or to give him the chance to kill her later? Odessa stares down into his eyes, ascertaining.
“Take me to your father. Let me hear the whole truth.”
Hiro swallows noisily, feeling a prickling in his fingers as she releases the temporal threads that could allow him to run with or without her. Steadying his breathing, Hiro watches Odessa with a thoughtful stare for a moment, considering the woman in front of him and the things that his father knows about her. But what weighs Hiro’s response is also who she is, what she did to people who trusted her, and how she carved her way up Pinehearst’s ladder with a knife and a smile.
She can’t be trusted.
“No.” Hiro says before the air around him collapses on his absence with a rush and a pop.
Like that, she lets him slip through her fingers. Her greatest adversary. “No!” She cries out, furious with herself. With his sword still in her hand, she hacks at the space where he was just seconds ago. Over and over again, shrieking furiously until she collapses into a heap on the floor.
The path to getting what she wants has never been a short or direct one. She will have to be patient and wait for another opportunity.
If it ever comes.
For now, Odessa has to hope a doctor is coming. She should have killed him while she had the chance.
Because as the strength leaves her from her exertion and she collapses onto the hospital floor, he may yet have killed her.
”Over Here”
Arthur Kill Harbor
Ruins of Staten Island
June 28, 2018
“Give me. A. Name!” Samson shouts, spewing cigarette stink into Odessa’s face.
Des trembles and lets out a pathetic whine. There are two names in the front of her mind, one she knows won’t give him the result he wants, and one that could solve some of her own problems if the acquisition got messy enough.
“No. I won’t.” She sucks in a breath, nearly chokes on it for all the smoke that seems to come with it, and closes her eyes. “I hope this ability kills you before the cancer can, you son of a bitch.”
Fury crosses Samson’s face, and he raises his hand with two fingers pointed down at Odessa’s head. “You first,” he spits out before he is punched so hard in the side of his head that it knocks a tooth out. Samson jerks away from Odessa and rolls across the rooftop like a bundle of sticks thrown carelessly aside. Standing nearby where Samson was, Mara Angier has her sleeves rolled up and straps to her suspenders dropped down to hang at her side.
“Get the fuck away from her.” Mara spits out, curling her hands into fists and stepping around in front of Odessa. Samson, slowly struggling up onto his hands and knees, wipes the side of his hand at his mouth and stares at Mara with wide-eyed confusion. There’s a look of abject horror on his face, disbelief, and something Odessa has never seen in the old hunter before.
Fear.
A moment later, Samson explodes into a pillar of smoke and rises up into the air, then funnels down over the side of the building through the branches of trees, disappearing out of sight. Mara takes a half step forward, then jerks to look over her shoulder at Odessa. Wordless concern is painted across her face.
When she regains control of her body again, Des scrabbles to a sitting position and starts the foot or so back until she hits the edge of the rooftop. She stares incredulously between Mara and Samson, expecting the scene to turn into a horrible nightmare any moment.
Instead, he flees.
Silence follows as Des stares up at Mara with wide eyes. Then, she begins sobbing, hugging her knees tightly to her chest and burying her face against them. Her head is throbbing and she knows she needs to find help, but she can’t begin to pursue that in earnest while she’s trying to process everything that’s just happened in such a short span of time.
Brows furrowed, Mara looks back at Odessa only after she’s sure that Samson isn’t coming back. Swiftly, she takes a knee at her daughter’s side and presses a hand to her back, brows knit in concern but demeanor far less conversational than how “Sera” might have handled this. Gingerly pulling Odessa’s bangs back from her face to see the cut on her brow, Mara threads some of that hair behind Odessa’s ear.
“You’re safe now,” Mara says with a certain confidence, unaware of the feat she just accomplished. “C’mon, we need to get you patched up. Make sure you’re okay…” her eyes flick over to where Samson disappeared to again, then rests her hand at the back of Odessa’s head.
“Who the hell was that?” Mara asks back after her daughter, unaware of the bitter irony.
“S- Samson Gray. The man who made me an orphan.” Slowly, Des forces herself to calm down. Deep breaths and frequent glances around to make sure the rooftop is still clear. She’s still shaking when she begins to uncurl from around herself. Even though she’s properly faced death more than once, this felt like the end for sure. Twice over.
“What year is it?”
Mara doesn’t have a good response for either.
$6:22:13$