Participants:
| Scene Title | Goodwill Towards… |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Early morning train, early morning surprise. Peter leaves off a game of mutual, prodding evasiveness long enough to offer a human gift. |
| Date | October 10, 2009 |
Queens is the largest in area and the second most populous of the five boroughs of New York City. Located on the western portion of Long Island, Queens managed to avoid much of the physical ruin attributed to the Bomb. However, Queens on whole suffered from something far more significant in the wake of the explosion that tore apart New York — Economic crisis. With much of Queens relying on industrial productivity for its commerce, it was the mass exodus of many businesses from the New York area following the bomb that crippled the borough.
With refugees pouring in from the western portions of New York following the destruction of Midtown, Queens was inundated with homeless of all walks of life. Food shortages, coupled with the collapse of Queens business centers and the strain put on local police only furthered what would become one of the most embarassing mishandling of a crisis situation the city had ever seen. Weeks after the bomb hit, riots swept through New York by the panicked populace, this was felt most hard in Queens, where food riots ravaged the businesses that dared remain open. Shea Statium was used as temporary shelter for bomb refugees, and the riots that swept through Queens enveloped the stadium as well, resulting in a remarkable loss of life in the chaos.
Ever since, Queens has settled down from the turbulent weeks following the nuclear explosion. But while its scars may not be as physical as Midtowns are, Queens suffers just as the rest of New York does, under the shadow of that broken skyline to the west and the collapse of its social and economic centers. Queens is now a ghost of its former self, slowly struggling to recover from the damage done.
Early moning in Queens is much like the rest of New York City during the fall; cold, dirty and unfortunate. It's alongside Main Street in the neighborhood of Flushing in Queens that finds on particularly clear-skied morning on a cold autumn day tobe one for auspicious meetings. Seated on a bench a the Flushing train terminal, Peter Petrelli stares off at the blue haze of dawn on the horizon, watching the shadows be burned away by the emergent light coming from the eastern edge of Long Island. Gloved hands tucked into the pockets of his woolen pea coat, he staves off the morning chill in quiet contemplation, breath not quite visible anymore since morning's light has risen.
Planning to head towards Manhattan, Peter stays seated as he hears the telltale roar and squeak of the 6:15 train coming down those old tracks. The gleaming chrome of the vessel is paralell to an unscheduled arrival moving at almost the same time. There'd never be a scheduled arrival for the subway train that arrives at exactly 6:17am every morning at the Flushing station, because Fort Hero is not on any known rail map produced by the government.
No one questions the handful of business associates who occasionally get off at that stop, and as the 6:15 to Manhattan comes shrieking to a stop, hiding that 6:17 from nowhere, Peter rises up off of his bench and begins to move towards the doors as they hiss open. Hesitation only comes when he looks at the other train, one brow raised in question. It's on the other side of the platform, that an arrival from Fort Hero is taking her stop in Queens.
Like two ships passing in the night, goes the saying. Today is a day for auspicious meetings, though, not passings.
There is rarely such a thing as sleeping in when one works for a company like the Company. Early to bed, early to rise, early to cause some poor Evo's demise. Ho hum. To Peter's observation of the Mystery Train, the simultaneous opening of its doors all down the line is blocked off from view by the walls and windows of the other train sitting between them; it isn't until both trains have passed away in an eardrum-splitting SCREEECH and twin, mechanical grumblings into darkness that the platform is re-exposed. Two or three people, their only commonality their basically formal apparel, are already peeling off towards the distant escalator that will— eventually— lead them upwards into the cold haze of daylight.
One lone figure has stayed behind, at least momentarily. Blonde hair drapes in a fan from one ear, obscuring the face of the slim woman it belongs to for two seconds before she straightens her head, finished fiddling whatever had been bothering her on her back. Blue blazer, black slacks. Heels. Peter almost doesn't need to see her face to know—
When Elle catches sight of him from afar, gaze drifting upwards, it actually takes her a moment of gaping to make her remember to promptly narrow her eyes.
Tension is Peter's immediate response, any time Elle Bishop is observed he has to ask himself; will she risk electrocuting me in public? Usually that internal answer is always a safe yes. But at the moment, best as his fuzzy memory can recall, there's no reason for her to, outside of Elle being Elle. Managing to straighten himself out, Peter stares across the gap of the two rialway platforms. It isn't possible for her to — from here — ascertain the one glaring difference in Peter's presence, save that he has a better taste in clothing than usual. His eyes make contact with hers, seeming lighter in this morning ambiance somehow, and then begins to walk alongside the platform as a brisk pace, towards where concrete stairs eventually rise up and meet a bridge that overpasses the rails and connects the platform.
His pace picks up and he hustles up the stairs, keeping track of Elle with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow up until he gets on to the footbridge that spans the rails, arched chainlink fending on either side baring only a four foot sliver of sky above. He stops, there, at one end of the footbridge, waiting for her. Heels and stairs take longer after all.
Just as swiftly when she sees Peter bustling off, Elle spins on her heel to close the gap in one sweeping, mirroring path, head never swiveling enough to indicate that she's tracking him with no less intensity. To all appearances, she's uncaringly confident— overconfident— that he won't be leaving her range anytime soon, no matter what he does. Heels might take longer overall, especially on stairs, but Peter won't have long to wait at the top.
And the nice thing about 6:17 AM: people. Not many of them. There aren't none, so it isn't completely safe for Elle to go buzzy-happy, but just maneuver things around the right way…
"I can't believe I'm seeing you here," are the first words to be casually vocalized as she approaches, click-click-clicking on the concrete beneath. Finally she halts at some distance away; a hand settles onto one of her hips, which she leans into, feet planted comfortably apart.
Casual, with unreadable intent, but it's unarguably true.
"To be honest I can't believe it either," Comes the rough, rasping tone of Peter Petrelli's voice, is a far cry from what it once was, sounding like he's taken up smoking. "I should have been on the Manhattan bound train, but curiosity got the best of me…" Gloved hands fold behind Peter's back, and his dark silhouette moves slowly to close the remaining distance between himself and Elle. It's only once they're just out of arm's reach that she makes out what was too hard to discern at a distance. Peter's eyes are wrong.
Gone is that pupy-dog brown, instead they are a cold blue as soft in hue as the sky. Dark circles hang around Peter's eyes, his cheekbones seem just a bit more pronounced than usual, and he's lost close to twenty pounds since Elle last saw him. "It's a nice morning, isn't it?" Comes the unusually eloquent question, one brow raised and head canted to the side. "What brings you out here to Queens this morning?"
Somehow Elle always manages to catch Peter when he's looking most like a drained, starving dog. Must be some kind of gift. Then again, when has he actually been -aglow with health and happiness-, lately?
His last question, in all its eloquence, goes ignored. "I could ask you the same thing. I'm headed up to the Bronx to meet someone." she lies with a shrug in her voice.
She doesn't take a step closer, but as she tilts her head to one side, her eyes settle upwards onto his and lock there— first appraisingly, then with a growing question. "Did you— get contacts? Or no, let me guess; some new ability." But no contacts on brown as dark as Peter's could produce that shade of light, translucent blue. She looks like she knows it, too, and has already chosen the latter as her guess. Sure she has memory problems, but hardly any like this.
"I heard they turned Primatech into a parking lot," Peter notes with a raise of his brows and a crooked smile, dodging her question the same way she dodged his. "I haven't been there yet, bad memories overall." There's a considering look afforded to the blonde, and a half step is taken closer to her, staring down with the curious smile a cat does to a mouse. Normally these encounters usually go the othe rway around. "I'm actually headed out to Manhattan for a little while, I've got some business to handle with my mother." His comatose mother.
"But that's not for a few days, yet." Blue eyes look out to the train tracks, lips pursed thoughtfully. "Actually I have to go furniture shopping…" and it's as banal as it sounds, those blue eyes tracking back to Elle. "You're still with the Company, I take it? If— that is— there even is still a Company." He'll entertain the ruse, at least. "I can't say I've been bagged or tagged lately." A smile creeps up, one gloved hand coming up to lightly brush leather-clad knuckles against Elle's cheek, giving an awkward pns and needles tingle.
"Some very distant part of me is upset at how things ended with my former employment." Blue eyes track from his hand to Elle's eyes. "I have a present for you," he adds, his smile growing.
This mouse doesn't know it's supposed to be a mouse. As Peter comes one step nearer, it's only Elle's eyes that lift upwards to match his, not her chin; hers are just as musingly, coolly sharp as he remembers. "If I told you there wasn't, would you believe me?" she counters, answering that as if he'd meant it in total seriousness. Ask a half-serious question, get a half-serious reply. "Nobody's interested in bagging you right now. Also, you only get tagged once, genius." There she finishes, falling silent just in time for Peter to unexpectedly touch her cheek.
…Causing her to reach out, too, one hand quickly stretching after Peter's so she can try to -catch- it in a curious hold before it falls entirely. "Do that one more time." That's a murmured demand, partly as though she's daring him to do it again, partly as though she truly wants him to. "…Is this a present I'll like?"
"I don't think so…" Peter admits with a pleased smile at her reaction to the threat of the touch, "It's Odessa Knutson." Peter offers with a quirk of his head to the side, "I bet you've been wondering where she might have run off to." Reaching inside of his jacket, Peter retrieves a bottle used for refilling a syringe, turning it around to show the label reading Morphine. "She's addicted to painkillers, found me in a subway— " he pauses, looking down to the tracks, "I meet the most interesting women on the subway." Dark brows crease together and Peter's head jerks in a teasing quirk to the side as his brows go up.
"Odessa is staying at the Speakeasy Hotel and Casino in Red Hook," the bottle of Morphine is tucked away inside of his jacket quietly. "I have absolutely no need for her clinging around to me, and frankly I think she might actually be more unstable than you." Squinting at that comment, Peter's smile dims some. "I'd go pick her up, get her out of my hair." Then, considering, he folds his hands behind his back and watches Elle more closely as he adds, "if you tell her I sold her out, I'll deny it up and down, mind you. The last thing I need is her doing something violent to me."
"You'd just hand her over to the Company, even with your problems with your 'former employment.' Even though you know what'll happen to her." That's said with a notable pause from Elle, who does look a little intrigued bordering on pertubed. Not at the concept, so much, but at the fact that it's Peter Petrelli who's throwing a fat, juicy sheep back into the wolves' den — this isn't her former fellow agent, but the man who had busily worked for the opposite ideals right up till the point when he was tossed into Moab to rot.
It's enough so that she lets her hands retract back into her own possession. "Still, thanks." The issue has been dismissed with all the care of kicking something into a wastebasket, but if anything, she's watching more curiously than ever. "You ever gonna tell me what's up with your eyes?"
"Consider it a good will gift. You never know, Elle, I might need a favor from you from you some time, one that doesn't involve me getting electrocuted at the end, too." Dark brows kick up at that, and Peter tucks his gloved hands into the pockets of his peacoat. "Odessa's dangerous and most importantly unreliable. If I thought I could trust her at all, I wouldn't be doing this. But I think her track record shows she's not very trustworthy." Those blue eyes linger on Elle's, the question not getting a response as Peter takes a step back, shoulders raised into a hesitant shrug.
"You might see me sooner than you expect, if the wind is blowing in the direction I think it is, Elle." Looking over towards the rising sun, Peter offers a faint smile and a tilt of his head to the side. "I am glad you're alive, for what it's worth." He starts to make his way down the stairs, back towards the railway platform he had originally come down. "I've got a train to catch…" He pauses, just enough to look up one last time at her, squinting against the sunlightly. "Enjoy your present."