Participants:
| Scene Title | Meant To Be |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Some things were, some things weren't. |
| Date | September 21, 2010 |
Construction is done. The changes needed to pull of what the place out in Soho will be, has finally been finished. The kitchen attached to the bar re-arranged to accommodate the baking needs of the business. The large oak bar polished and waiting to be used, another counter opposite, glass fronted and shelves laid out within, waiting to showcase the desserts, a door leading back into the kitchen. No desserts offered up yet, the place silent as a grave while the last few needs of paperwork are seen to. Tables spread out, two chairs per, some have more. Soon the place will open, barring it's mistress going to jail or worse, and if so, there's plans in place for it to open regardless without her.
Said mistress waits in the late late morning light near the front window of the place, a little hole in the soap that covers the windows of the gothic looking front. When it opens, there may even be some live music at times, who knows. Who knows if the place will even succeed. It's no Old Lucy's and you won't find dancing on the table here. Recipe cards are being sorted, having spent her time since release when not running around getting ready to be married, or dealing with overbearing threatening bitches or drunken frenchmen, writing down the recipes she knows, calling her mom to send some from her collection and the church ladies, Delilah's and Liz's. Something for everyone. A stabucks cup, two of them, sit waiting for the other person to come in and collect it.
The other person, in a normal world, would be someone with a degree from a culinary school. In a normal world, the other person would legitimately be looking to make a living working at a food-service establishment in New York. This isn't a normal world, and the other man isn't a professional baker, he just cooks like one.
The gentleman who shows himself in to the unopened bakery is not quite the rogue that Abigail Beauchamp may have been expecting, given his background and identity. He's tall, older than Abigail by more than a decade, his hair receeding and thin, a soft sandy brown color. The wire-rimmed glasses that rest on the bridge of his nose are round-lensed, harkening back to memories of Edward Ray, but this broad-shouldered and square-jawed man is no weasely mathematician from Massachusetts.
Niklaus Zimmerman looks like someone's kindly uncle, with his cardinan sweater worn over a button-down shirt and tie, khaki pants and brown leather loafers. He seems like he would be more at home behind a white pickett fence than the iron bars or coffin that would be awaiting him had the world at large any idea of his whereabouts.
"Good morning," is stilted sounding, a thick German accent from Niklaus offered as he closes the door and looks across the distance from the entrance to the table by the front windows that Abigail is sitting at. "I ah, you must be fraulein Beauchamp, yes?"
The other person, in a normal world, would be someone with a degree from a culinary school. In a normal world, the other person would legitimately be looking to make a living working at a food-service establishment in New York. This isn't a normal world, and the other man isn't a professional baker, he just cooks like one.
It's been several weeks since Abby has seen Niklaus Zimmerman, and in the weeks since his inability to get paperwork through the Ferrymen, he seems to have cleaned up surprisingly well. He's just as tall as she remembers, and that he's older than Abigail by more than a decade seems more obvious now that he looks less like a homless person. The wire-rimmed glasses that rest on the bridge of his nose are round-lensed, harkening back to memories of Edward Ray, but this broad-shouldered and square-jawed man is no weasely mathematician from Massachusetts.
Niklaus now looks like someone's kindly uncle, with his cardinan sweater worn over a button-down shirt and tie, khaki pants and brown leather loafers. He seems like he would be more at home behind a white pickett fence than the iron bars or coffin that would be awaiting him had the world at large any idea of his whereabouts.
"Good morning," is stilted sounding, a thick German accent from Niklaus offered as he closes the door and looks across the distance from the entrance to the table by the front windows that Abigail is sitting at. "I ah, hope you have not been waiting too long, no? I am unaccustomed still to the traffic in this city. It has been a long time since I have had to deal with it." Then, as if a curse, Niklaus murmurs, "busses."
"Last time I was on a bus, it was hanging halfway off a bridge. I really love my SUV even though it's a pain in the but to park sometimes and you have to keep a lot of change on you. But then again, it does park itself" She flashes a smile up at the German when he comes in, her habit to leave the store door unlocked while she's there is not something that she's bound to stop doing.
"Just sorting through some recipe's is all. The coffee is still really hot." SHe rises up from her seat, palms flat on the table to greet him, but no offer of a handshake, or a hug. "Welcome to your new job. Cardinal, I think, was really happy when he found out that I wanted to drag you in to bake"
There's a reflexively apologetic grimace at Abigail's story of her last time riding on a bus. Lifting up one hand to scratch at the back of his neck, Niklaus glances back in the direction of the offered coffee, though keeps his proximity to Abigail for now. "It's… I have been in Richard's hair quite a bit lately, living with his Elisabeth. It— I need a place of my own, a place to rest my head and not be so directly under foot. The new building has been nice, but still— I am at his charity. I appreciate all that Richard has done for me, but a man cannot live on charity alone."
Moving to pull out a chair opposite of theo ne Abby had been seated in, Niklaus dips down into the chair and looks up to the blonde. "I am not a formal baker," he admits guiltily, "but I lived with a baker in Belgium for some many years in my youth, worked as an understudy to him. It— is more hobby than occupation, a way to relieve stress." Then, worriedly, Niklaus looks down to the table. "Has Richard told you what else it is I do?"
"That you're evolved? You picked my dog up off the floor Niklaus without touching him. I'm evolved too. I turn into fire." Abigail shrugs her shoulders. "If I wanted a formal baker, I'd park outside a culinary school and find a pastry chef. I like to bake and I bake good. Delilah bakes good and there's another person I know of who is good in the kitchen too. I'm not looking for someone who can create visual masterpieces. I want someone who can bake really good stuff. The presentation doesn't need to be like… the Mona Lisa. It's just gotta taste how the Mona Lisa looks or this place will never be off the ground"
His coffee is pushed over, creamers and sugars waiting to be added if he wants it. "Sometimes, a person puts more love into a hobby, perfecting it, than they do their job. Liz raved about your baking. I'd really like, if you came in this week, and just made a few things. Couple things, each day, of your choice, and we taste it. All of us. We figure out what's working, what's not. What we want to add, what we don't."
A chocolate cake recipe is passed "This place is going to be a dessert bar. You can come in, have a really good coffee or espresso, a alcoholic drink, and a piece of cake, pie, cinnamon bun, cupcake, you name it. Turnovers, souffle, that sort of thing. A place to go on a date, or when you just got off a bad day at work and need some small highlight to your day or just.. a place where you won't drop 60 bucks to stare at someone you might never go on another date with. There's times when… I just want something sweet and something… intimate"
"Presentation is extremely important," Niklaus notes sternly with one brow raised, then cracks a smile and offers a breathy laugh. "I mean, it— you know…" one hand is waved dismissively in the air, "baking is serious business." That he's smiling might mean it is a joke, or it might mean that Niklaus is trying to mask a subtly unhinged nature behind good-naturedness. Par for course for most of Abigail's friends and associates, so he should fit in right well.
"Intimate is a good setting for this, it is not so New York in here, if you know what I mean?" Folding his hands in front of himself on the table, Niklaus eyes the coffee in front of himself and just lifts a hand, dissuading sugar or cream, taking it black as he reaches out to take the cup in both hands.
"Your plan," Niklaus notes with a tip of his head down to the coffee, "I like it, I think it will work. Richard has told me he needs me tomorrow, for what yet I do not know, but he said we were going on a field trip of sorts then became very cagey." One brow lifts at the emphasized word. "But there should be time, yes, time enough for baking. Though— I still do not have legal papers to be in this country. There have— there are complications that have happened, it seems? Our police friend is in trouble, and now I am left without."
"He's in trouble because of me. I got hospitalized and the results of the blood tests didn't match up with the registry database. There are others in the NYPD that we can go to. The Ferry suggest that it's better to register as an evolved if you are evolved, but dumb down a lot what you can do, if you can. I don't know rightly what you can do but with the different name on the ID, you can probably get away with dumbing down whatever it is that you do. Or that you're unmanifested, be surprised when it turns red and not blue" Abigail offers up.
"I at least have the birth certificates," Niklaus offers as a consolation, shaking his head and smiling wearily before lifting up his coffee and taking a long sip. "I will worry about the paperwork as it comes, for now, I do not even know if I will be good enough to have your company in this fine business of yours. It is fine, though, if you had doubts. Warm, pleasing on the eyes…" there's a crack of Niklaus' lips into a smile, "a mirror of its owner, it would seem."
Quickly following through after that shameless moment of hitting on Abigail, Niklaus sets his coffee down and brings up an unexpected question. "You have me curious," the German notes with a raise of his brows, "how did you, a sweet young woman such as yourself, come to meet a man like Richard Cardinal?"
"We'll worry about paperwork as it's needed" She agree's, heat rising to her cheeks on the basis of his flirt. There's idle thought as to whether this would rile Caliban or make him puff with pride that someone's hitting on her. That a potential employee is hitting on her. "Sweet I may be Niklaus, I have more in common with Richard than one might imagine. It's a long story that maybe some day I'll go into while we're baking but needless to say, it involved an ex, the basement of a brothel, a healing ability and a bullet in the belly. I'm his moral conscience. If something bothers him, needs to justify it, make it right with the lord, he tends to call me up and see what I would do. If I can forgive him, he's fine with it, so it seems"
"Ah, so you're religious…" Niklaus says with a faint smile, "well, not everyone is perfect," he admits with a shrug of one shoulder. "If you say you are that trusted by Richard, then by proxy you are that trusted as well. I know my secret may not be an easy one to keep, but I will entrust you with it as I had before…" eyeing his coffee, Niklaus slowly shakes his head and rises up from his seat, even as a yellow cab is pulling up out front beyond his peripheral vision.
"I believe I need to use the water closet," Niklaus makes a vague hand gesture into the restaurant, "uh where, might it be?" One brow raises over the wire frames of his eyeglasses, considering Abigail thoughtfully, perhaps too thoughtfully at the mentions of brothels and bullets.
"Uh they're just around the corner back there, door that says restrooms above it" Abigail points out to him, curious as to what he could possibly entrust her with secret wise that she frankly didn't already know. "Take your time, all that you need, I don't have anything pressing today and still want to show you the back and see if t here's anything missing that you think we'll need" A sunny smiled beamed at him, still these days less real than it should be, as she returns to sorting through recipe's
"I am sure your kitchen is most acceptable, but," Niklaus cracks a smile, "I will see if it you insist, never the less. First, though, I must tend to more impending business." Grimacing, Niklaus turns from the table and begins weaving his way towards the doors marked with the restroom sign, adjusting his glasses ashe walks.
The moment Niklaus is out of sight, the front doors of the restaurant open, followed by the call of a familiar — if not somewhat harried — voice. "Abby?" Peter calls out inside, ducking in to the front door with an apologetic dip of his head, not quite yet noticing her by the soap-shrouded windows. He looks like he hasn't been to work today, in a black pea-coat and jeans, more casual than paramedic. He also looks like he's seen a ghost.
"Abby are you — " Turning to look right at where Abby's sitting, Peter exhales a sharp sigh and closes the door behind himself. "Can we talk?"
Crap, there's someone coming in and it's… Peter. Absent for ages and now resurfaced. She looks over towards the door that Niklaus has just gone into, worried, and then back to Peter. "Am I what? In one piece? Not in jail? Okay? So far, answer's yes to all of those questions, if a little dinged and my back feels like someone lit nerves on fire…" Might explain the super soft looking shirt she's wearing. "Peter, what are you doing here?"
"I'm— I'm sorry I haven't answered your texts, Abby. I— there's been a lot going on," looking over his shoulder, Peter checks around the main room with a furtive stare, looking ot see if anyone else is in here. "Turn— turn off your phone, pull the battery out, just in case." Marching over to where she's sitting, Peter scrubs one hand over his bearded chin and crouches down right beside where the blonde is sititng, reaching out to lay a hand on her knee, then lift another up to her shoulder.
"You're okay? I mean— you're— please tell me you're alright." Something is visibly bothering Peter, the worry he's showing is clearly for Abigail, but at the same time there's a certain haunted look behidn that concern, even as he squeezes her knee and pleads an answer again. "I'm sorry I wasn't there," he whispers wearily, brows creasing together, "I— I'm so sorry."
Abby hasn't seen Peter this shaken in all the time she's known him.
She hates taking the batteries out of her phone. Nature of her phone, she can't even do it. So she does the next best thing and out comes the faraday bag, so small, that she carries around for that purpose and shoves it down to the bottom of her purse and slides it across the floor away from them. Perils of the Iphone.
"I'm fine, I will be fine Peter. Elle fried my monitor, my back is raw, but physically I'm fine Peter. Robert stayed with me to make sure no one absconded with me. You were busy"
He's always busy but it's not like they're dating, they just ride the rigs together. "I'm in a bunch of legal trouble and I'm pretty beyond sure that I'm fired at work. I haven't stepped foot in and no ones called me for a shift. Peter…" peter, I have company, and he's in the bathroom. "Peter, what's wrong?" Not hard when he's down there to miss the GPS tracker around her ankle, unhidden by anything since she's wearing a skirt.
"I'm probably not going back to work either," isn't said with any kind of appreciation to it, but instead an apologetic squeeze of Abby's knee as he looks over to the moved purse, then back up to the blonde. "I— talked with Cardinal, we compared notes. I think— he thinks that Rupert Carmichael might have been— my mind might ot be right." That much, it seems, horrifies Peter. "I don't know what he did to me, if— if he did anything to me, but we're going to find out. I have— I need to… I have to try and play things cool, I can't let Rupert know what's going on, I can't— I can't tell anyone."
Brows furrowing together, Peter slowly shakes his head from side to side. "I just— I wanted to warn you, that something… the next few weeks are going to be hard, Abby. But I promise you I'm trying to make it right for everything that's been going on. I just… I didn't want you to worry, and— and I was worried about you."
"Peter, my new baker is in the bathroom…." Her hand coming up to cover his mouth, settle her palm over his lips. They flicker to the doorway that leads to the mens and lady's bathroom then back to Peter. "I'm marrying Robert" She whispers. "In a few days, we're going to go get married. He wants me to move in with him, he's going to find a place for us. Only Francois knows, I'm trying to keep it… quiet. But you deserve to know since you've been living with me, helping me." Back and forth her eyes go, looking to see when Niklaus might start coming back.
"Rupert is bad, if you need any help from the Ferry, let me know, i'll bring it up to council if I can or… find others that will help" ABigail pulls her hand back, frowning at Peter, tucking a stray strand of hair away. "Don't worry about me. I got Cat for a lawyer and Pretty sure if I have to go to jail it won't be for very long"
New baker? Looking over his shoulder, Peter furrows his brows and exhales a strained sigh, then looks back to Abby, lips parted and his expression visibly conflicted. As if only now suddenly aware that he has his hands on the merchandice, he lifts his hand off of Abby's knee, expression vacillating between goofy and apologetic. "You— you and— and Mister Caliban?" He isn't on a first-name basis with his mother's aide.
"Abby that— that's…" he hesitates, "that's wonderful." The smile he offers her doesn't quite reach his eyes, but it isn't wholly insincere. "I mean if— if he makes you happy then, I mean— who'm I to judge? I— I only wish I had something like that, you know?" Self-depricating commentary aside, Peter's slow shake of his head comes before he moves to stand, looking down at Abby with a slightly more honest smile.
"I can't prove Rupert did anything to me, yet, but— but we're working on it. If you need any help with your problem, I mean, you know my mother would do whatever she can for you. Especially if you and Caliban are— " there's an exasperated laugh as Peter lifts one hand and rubs it at the back of his neck.
"I— I'm going to get my stuff out of your apartment this week, I have a couple people I'm going to ask about a place to stay, I'm just— I'll figure it out. I just— I didn't want to disappear and worry you… especially not now, not when you have so much to look forward to, even with the trouble."
"If he makes me happy" Liz said that too. The all to common statement of people who don't approve of something, but it's not their place to say otherwise. Makes her wish that she hadn't said it. Fingers curl in towards palms and she sighs. "I don't know when we're moving in with each other, but if you feel you need to leave now then…" She won't object. "Take what you need to take with you, dishes or the like, anything, I know your Dorchester place isn't very stocked" With furniture.
"Can I.. ask you to .. no.." No, wouldn't work. Last she'd need if shit goes to hell in a hand basket is a letter of recommendation from the 'head' of messiah on file. "Just be safe Peter and i'm not gonna go to your mother. There's enough hands in my legal pot that… more would complicate an already complicated situation and I broke the law and… I need to take the consequences"
"It's a bullshit law," Peter affirms with a furrow of his brows, "you know it, I know it, the Ferry lives to oppose it. You don't need to face the consequences any more than anyone the Ferrymen ship out of the city needs to." Preaching is something unlikely for Peter, something unusual, save for the speeches he feels compelled to make when trying to keep Messiah together. But how much of those thoughts are even his own? One conversation with Richard Cardinal, and now Peter Petrelli is questioning his own identity.
The noise of a flush coming from the bathroom has Peter on edge, turning to look towards the noise, then back when he hears the sink's faucet turn on. "I— should go. Abby I— You're an amazing friend…" he says with a weary smile, more of a formal goodbye than anything he's ever been compelled to give before. "I— I didn't really desrerve to work with someone like you, or be let into your home, least of all after you found out what I do."
Swallowing noisily, Peter looks aside, eyes closing. "I just— I don't want you to think that I didn't appreciate everything you've done for me, and how you've put up with me. You're…" he snorts out an unexpected laugh, a smile ghosting across his lips as he looks back up to the blonde. "You're more like family than the people I'm actually related to."
"Get out of here Peter Petrelli before I cry and call your mom and tell her you made a girl cry. And make sure I have a really good wedding present too. I enjoyed being an EMT with you Peter. Crashing ambulances and all" She's speaking like this may be the last time she see's him. "You're not that much of an asshole, if someone's not dating you I guess. Now get, please" Abigail rises, pressing a kiss to his forehead palms to either side of his face and then pulls away. "Now get going, I'm doing a job interview" No comment on the legality of the law, she got caught and she of all people will at least try to fight it legally. "And don't you dare sic Rebel on my GPS. But if you wanna know where I am just… ask him, I won't mind"
Lifting up a hand to catch Abby's as it falls from his cheek, Peter gives it a squeeze, then smiles in weak manner before letting that hand fall away from his grasp. At the sound of the bathroom door opening, Peter's body jerks as if he were hit by some invisible, unseen force, but he isn't sent flying across the room, instead he simply discorporates, like a bank of fog hit by a strong wind. Self-ambulatory smoke is unnatural to watch, drifting in faint gray-white clouds down towrads the ground, then into a vent in the floor and out of sight, just as Niklaus rounds the corner from the bathroom.
"I apologize for the time," Niklaus comments with a wryness to his tone of voice, "when nature makes demands, I must heed the call of duty, yes?" There's a subtle play on words there with the word duty, but Niklaus tries not to linger on it. "Come, we shall see this kitchen of yours, and I will perhaps make you a crepe while I am here?"
Unaware of the man he just missed, Peter too is left wholly unknowing that he just came within a hair's breadth of finally finding Niklaus Zimmerman. Some things, though, weren't ever meant to be.
Today is proof of that.
There's a sheer look of surprise at what Peter has now managed to get for an ability and one that is far more convenient than Cardinal's. She's already standing when he comes out, rubbing her palms across her skirt and plastering the smile on her face. 'Crepes sounds like something that folks might just like to try when they come here and I am a bit starving"
Abigail heads his way, recipe's and the like abandoned, left on the table by the soaped window as she makes her way to Niklaus's side and towards the back. "One of the others who will be working here, she's someone who can exude stuff off her skin, hallucinogenic. But she'll be wearing long sleeves, and she's got pretty good control over her gift. The other person, she learns languages really fast, so you'll have someone to speak german to if you like it"
The door is smacked with her palm, moving inwards to admit the two of them into the kitchen with it's mixture of new and old appliances, things re-arranged to accommodate heavy duty mixers and everything one could think they'd need to bake and cook. "You three will have free reign to decide what's made. The only menu's available will be coffee and drinks, if folks will want to know what they want, they'll have to consult the wall out there, behind the counters, where we'll write in chalk what's available."
"Free reign of a kitchen and nothing but women as far as the eye can see," Niklaus notes witha breathy laugh as he strides in to the kitchen behind Abigail, hands tucking into the pockets of his khakis as he walks. "In the grand scheme of these things, I think that I may have to thank Richard for his generosity, it is not every day I find myself looking forward/ to a job or the people I will be working with." Though what Niklaus Zimmerman classifies as //jobs is not the standard definition.
Following Abby with an appraising smile, there's a genuine fondness in Niklaus' expression, a reminiscence of happier times in his earlier life, of times back in Germany, that even while on the run still manage to bring a look of wistful contentment to his face. "I appreciate this opportunity, Abigail," Niklaus intones with a slow nod, looking up and over to the closed kitchen door. "I will not disappoint you. Some things, they were meant to happen."
The optimistic outlook of Niklaus Zimmerman carries on into the morning hours, through the fabrication of a crepe to discussion of wines and complementary chocolates. For all that Niklaus Zimmerman seems to be a cultured food-lover from Europe, the carefully sculpted exterior of a sociopath is often alluring, until that polish begins to break down and everything comes apart.
But that won't be now, that won't be here.
Some things were meant to happen.