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Scene Title | Indefinitely |
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Synopsis | Kaylee goes searching for answers in a place she's looked once before. |
Date | April 6, 2011 |
???
There is no other word to most accurately describe the system of tunnels under New York City other than network, not only because that's what it is, but because — at least in the mind of Hannah Kirby — they're linked together with long strings of electric lights as well as narrow cement corridors that twinkle above Kaylee's head like stars, and although it fails to provide the illusion of daylight below ground, it provides the telepath with more than enough illumination to navigate the labyrinth she's found herself in the middle of.
They're like what she might dress her Christmas tree with if she had nothing except miles of extension cords and bulbs that vary in size between thumbnail and fist and in shades ranging from a soft white glow to something more golden in hue. Occasionally, she comes across a section in need of repair, sparking or flickering, but for the sheer number of glass vessels and length of wire involved, it's an impressive sight to behold.
There are sections of tunnel she recognizes and sections she does not — long, sprawling passageways that narrow to points where people can only walk through it single file, then broaden out again to flat pieces of clean track a train could fit through if trains still ran.
And, at least in this reality, they don't. Not just under Midtown, either — Kaylee knows the area around Grand Central Terminal like she knows the lines on the palm of her hand.
This goes indefinitely beyond that.
It's enough to make the telepath give a huffed sigh of frustration.
Hands resting on Kaylee's hips, eyes cast upward forcing her head to tilt back a little, her lips are pressed into a line. This hadn't been what she had been looking for. She wanted to see the crumbling skyscrapers and try to find the dream she knows they must be associated with.
She studies those false stars for a time before finally deciding to find an exit. To step out of the tunnels and into the wide open world again. Kaylee wasn't going to do that standing around staring at twinkling lights above her head.
Being as all this was merely an illusion of a comatose woman's mind, booted feet make hardly no sound unless she things about it. Then the sound echos around Kaylee, bouncing back to her. The pressing darkness makes her thankful for the lights. Staving off some of the claustrophobia she feels at times in those tunnels.
"Do you trust him?" asks a voice, and it doesn't belong to Hannah. It's distinctly Reynard, or the man Kaylee has come to know as Reynard. As she rounds the next corner, she comes upon the pair of them standing in an open doorway beside one another, Hannah's dark hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. Walter's is much the same, though slightly shorter and red. He leans his shoulder into the frame and Hannah reaches up to rest a hand at the small of his back, then rests her head against his bicep as they look into a room at something— someone that Kaylee, from her vantage point, cannot see.
"I don't know," she says in a soft but rough voice. "But I think we ought'a give him a chance, at least. He deserves one, after everything he's been through."
Stopping at the corner, Kaylee leans against the wall with a hand pressed to the cold bricks, or cold as she remembers them. Blonde hair slides against her shoulder blades as her head tilts to listen, focusing on the words spoken. Studying both familiar figures, of course, one being he head she's currently sifting through.
She doesn't stand there long, her gaze drifting to the doorway curiously. The telepath takes a step towards the door and hesitates. Maybe she shouldn't… but…
Kaylee finds herself moving forward towards the door way, intent on taking a peek past them. To see who they could possibly be talk about.
Kaylee isn't quite tall enough to look over Walter's shoulder, but she can easily angle a glance around Hannah — what she sees is a young man with sharp features and hair shaved too close to his scalp for Kaylee to determine what colour it is, though his eyes are a startling shade of blue. He sits on the edge of a bed on the far side of the room, his hands in a clasp, shirtless with thick bandaging around a lean middle.
Unlike Hannah and Walter, who do not so much as bat an eyelid at the telepath's presence, he lifts his chin and meets the telepath's gaze, saying nothing.
Walter is pulling the door shut a moment later, a heavy metal thing that howls on its hinges. Notable, perhaps, that he does not lock it.
It occurs to Kaylee that she's standing in the middle of a memory, or the closest approximation to it. Hannah steps away from the door first, followed by Walter, and together the pair sets off down the corridor at a leisurely stride.
It's a set pattern, one point in a long sequence of past events that Hannah has likely been repeating since the last time Kaylee was here.
It also explains why she hasn't woken up. There is comfort in the familiar.
Comfort in knowing how things end.
Memory or not it's instinct that has Kaylee stepping out of the way of the pair, though she doesn't follow right away. Leaning against the wall for a moment, she ponders out her situation. She watches them walk away, before glancing at the door and eyes narrow as she thinks of that figure sitting there.
Not really her business.
Hands press flat to the wall and she pushes away, moving after Hannah and Reynard. They've gotten far enough ahead of her, that Kaylee has to reach out and slow the memory. Their strides becoming something like how a person would look walking in slow motion. It gives her time to catch up to them, before letting the memory play out again.
She follows for them for a moment, trying to decide her next course of action. Her ability already feeling out the walls around her, testing this diversion.
What does she not want Kaylee to see?
It works for the amount of time it takes Kaylee to count to either five or six, if the number of seconds that pass actually mean anything at all in this place, or translate to what's happening back in the infirmary's reality, the telepath's hand clasped firmly around Hannah's — there's psychic tug then, resistance like a bass snapping up bait at the end of a fishing line and starting to run with it.
Hannah and Walter resume moving in normal time, coming to stop in front of another door, this one with a valve that needs to be turned before it can be opened.
She doesn't. Not right away. Brown eyes blink and she raises a hand, gesturing for Walter to stop.
"Wait," she tells him. "Something isn't right."
Brows lift slightly at the reaction, Kaylee takes a moment to cast a look over her shoulder. It's hard to tell if it's a part of the memory, or Hannah is reacting to what she's done. The coincidence gives her pause.
Interesting.
So watching the dark haired woman, Kaylee continues to run her mental fingers along the seams, looking for an opening that might give her access to more. She does have a mission to find what she believes is a dream of a dark future. Only applying a light pressure, to see if it's her or the something within the memory drawing the unconscious woman's attention.
She gets her answer in the form of a softly spoken, "Kaylee?"
A part of Kaylee wants to keep applying that pressure to feel the fabric of it shred, free herself to find that one thing that she came for. Temptation has been something she's fought since she left Adam's employ. It's silky sweet calling, making her grip on this memory tighten as if she might.
Just as she feels the seam wanting to split, Kaylee stops. What was she doing?!?
Taking a deep breath, she eases off her ability some, leaving the loop of memory intact. She was better then that. She liked Hannah and maybe that's what stayed her hand, so to speak. To dig like that would be back sliding into something she once was.
Guilt twists as her gut.
"Yeah," the telepath answers instead.
Hannah tips her head to the side, but it's a fractional movement, same as the narrowing of her eyes, so dark they appear almost black in the hallway's ethereal glow. Walter gives her a quizzical look.
That's to be expected. Walter is imaginary. Still, Hannah places a hand on his arm as if to reassure him, and although his posture doesn't grow anymore relaxed, he does not demand answers for her strange behaviour. "This some sorta training exercise?" she asks what she perceives to be an empty corridor, directing her voice toward where she believes Kaylee's originated from.
Training — ?
"Not so much no," comes the soft reply from her, as Kaylee moving a little closer. "More like a search for answers." She doesn't reach out to Hannah, keeping her distance still. Blue eyes study Walter for a long moment.
"You've been under so long and there are things…" The telepath trails off, moving towards the door with the valve. Curious. " …happening." Fingers touch it, run along the curve of metal. Pondering more then likely, if she might open it herself. "I take it you've undergone training against telepathic prying." A touch obvious, but still she asks.
Hannah purses her lips, plainly considering, and as Kaylee moves closer, she draws back, edging Walter aside. She feels what she cannot see, and raises the hand not on Walter's arm as if to reach out and touch the telepath, but the tips of her fingers hover a few inches away from her face instead, and this close Kaylee can see the how cracked and raw they are, how dirty and brittle her nails. One of her hands has a strip of gauze looped loosely around it, stained red-brown with blood at the knuckles.
"What kinda question is that?"
"Dreams." Kaylee leans back a little not letting Hannah touch her, though the condition of her fingers is noted. Her gazes lifts to focus on the other woman's face. "That's why I am here. Unusual dreams that seem to glimpse whats too come. I think you may have experienced one of these."
Looking up at the twinkling lights again, Kaylee adds. "So I came back to look. To check out what I saw the last time. See if it fits into the puzzle."
"Dreams," Hannah repeats, and her mouth forms around something else — another word, maybe a name without any sound to accompany it. She exhales and looks back to the door, then tilts a look up at Walter. She's fitting pieces into a puzzle as well.
You've been under so long, Kaylee said.
"I haven't had any dreams," she tells the telepath, lowering her hand. She gives Walter's arm a firm, tight squeeze. "Not the kind you're after, anyhow," is a gentle addendum. Then, "But maybe I can help you out if you do the same for me. I don't wanna be under."
That has Kaylee's interest, chin tilting up a little. "So you might have an idea of what I am talking about." It's half a question really. Not really concerned how she might know, more to the idea that she might be able to help.
Lord know the scale of what's been happening has been overwhelming.
Looking around them, Kaylee presses out again, testing seeing if she can pull this woman from her loop. "I can try," she finally whispers, reaching out to finally touch the tips of Hannah's fingers willing the woman to see her. "And I could use the help. These dreams," she lets the worry and unease show, "are worrying people."
"Okay," Hannah says. Okay. As Kaylee exerts mental pressure on the barrier the other woman has erected between them, she senses something begin to give, and although the world around her does not change or shift, there's a quality to it that wasn't there before — a kind of trasparency that Kaylee doesn't recognize until Hannah blinks, and the smallest smile hooks up the corner of her mouth.
She can see her. Walter takes an abrupt step back out of sheer surprise, colliding with the wall behind him with enough force to send a bang echoing down the line when his head accidentally connects with a metal pipe beside the door. He hisses out a curse under his breath. Swings a hand back to grasp at his head.
"You're always so clumsy."
Hannah places both her hands on the door and asks Kaylee gently with her deer eyes if she'll do the same.
The bang of head to pipe has Kaylee cringing. "Sorry," is said without thought to the image of Walter. Figment of Hannah's imagination or not… owie. It's one of those things you can almost feel yourself, sympathize with, cause at some point in your life you've rattled your own brain against something.
When she glances at Hannah, brows tick up just a little, before she looks at the door. Turning towards it she studies it, head tilting a little and eyes unfocused for a moment. Then gently, long fingers move to splay across the door, palms pressing there as she leans her weight into it slightly. She angles a look at Hannah and gives her a small smile. "Okay," she echos, with a short nod.
Hannah's fingers curl around the wheel. Walter's hands lay atop Hannah's. "On the count of three," she intructs them, starting to turn it. "One."
There's a low clunk that rattles through the door, causing it to shudder under Kaylee's hands. Hannah pauses, uncertain. Then, with a reaffirming glance at the telepath, continues to rotate the wheel. "Two."
"Three." The lock releases, a weight lifts, and the world is suddenly filled with light—