Participants:
| Scene Title | No Going Back |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Peter is confronted with the reality of a prophetic dream come true. |
| Date | February 5, 2009 |
The Moab Federal Penitentiary is an expansive multi-level prison designed by the United States Government in cooperation with the Company. The prison rests on sixty acres of government owned land in Moab, a remote and mountainous region of Utah bordering Canyonlands National Park. The prison is an enormous and fortified concrete structure containing both above-ground and subterranean prison cells. The above-ground cells feature narrow windows looking out over the prison grounds, and are known as Green Level, each progressive subterranean level is likewise color-coded, from yellow, to orange, to red. Only the most dangerous Evolved are detained on Red-Level, and are in sealed isolation chambers tailored to their specific abilities.
Morning.
A day of containment in Moab has not dulled the sting of the past day's events. The facility is like a ghost-town operating on clockwork, only a handful of prisoners seem to be present, well less than one-hundred overall. Injections at breakfast, and then recreation time outside. The bitter sting of imprisonment isn't the only one being felt as of late, it is the bitter sting of being so wrong that has condemned Peter Petrelli to an eternity of punishment of his own making. His secluded hiding place from the world, has turned into his own private concrete hell.
Words exchanged through the vents became fleeting over the course of the night, enough to determine what happened, and that the world itself isn't going to be ending any time soon — at least not at Kazimir Volken's hands. But this, the monumental loss of two people he called friends, and one he considers so much more to be lost to this place where people go to vanish. He skipped breakfast all together, hurrying out onto the field to find the bench seats near the twenty foot high chain-link fence that divides the women's half of the yard from the men's. He climbs up on to one of the picnic table seats, dressed in his one-piece gray prison jumper, hands folded and head down, facing the women's side of the prison yard, looking for some sign, some sight of the woman he knew.
Peter looks little like Helena remembers; it's been so long since she's seen him. His hair is longer, wild and unkempt, roughly unshaven. He looks so much like he did before they met, before she cleaned him up and turned him into someone that could be relied on. He climbed up so far, only to tumble back down again and lie in the dirt.
So focused on finding the woman he doomed to this prison, he forgets all about the man he consigned to this fate as well, the one he once called a friend.
Yeah. About that. Al's power is defanged, but his temper and his attitude are not. And with the real bad boys down in the underground, the redhead is a lowering presence amongst all the rest of the shorn sheep bleating and mingling in the yard - advancing over the bare ground like a personal stormfront. "Petrelli," he says, under his breath, as he comes up beside him. "I oughta beat you until candy comes out, you pansyass motherfucker," Nice to see you too, Pete. How's the weather been? He doesn't look directly at him. Helena's on the agenda, too.
Helena is thinner. Haunted in the eyes, bone weary, her eyes are almost too huge for her face. At breakfast she seemed unable to take her breakfast, didn't even try. She just pushed it away from herself at the table. The wardens watching didn't seem to think much of it at the time.
On the women's side, Helena tries to hide her interest in approaching the ajoining fence. She takes her time in the approach, until finally she comes to a nearby table, taking a seat, bending so her hair hides her face. Her conversation with Peter between the vents last night may have been found disturbing - she was toneless, and refused to answer any questions that pertained to anything but the details of their recent actions. At the bench, there is the faint lift of her head, half of her stark face, skin tight across her cheekbone, the other half cast in the shadow of her hair as she looks at the two men.
Alexander's bristling approach brings an askance look over Peter's shoulder, looking out to the redhead, to the scars across his eye. There's a narrowing of one eye as he looks at him — he hardly recognizes Alexander. But for all the look of surprise on his face, he can't give a verbal response to anything that's said, he just looks away and hangs his head again. It's only when he spots a form moving up to the fence that his attention is drawn away from the space between his feet, looking up with an undescribable expression of both confusion and horror as he fails to recognize Helena as Helena on first glance.
There's a swallow, dry and loud as Peter rises up from the bench, moving across the short divide between it and the fence, one hand raising to lace fingers thorugh the chains. "Lena," he practically vomits up the name from his nervousness, fingers cold against the metal. It's been forever since she's heard him call her by that nickname, the only person who calls her that. "I — " Just like with Alexander, there aren't words for this.
But when he lowers his head this time, he closes his eyes too.
"How's it been here in Club Med, Pete?" wonders Al, with a level of venom in his voice sufficient to give all those rattlers out there pause. "You havin' a grand old time, while we been out fightin' and dyin'." He's not raising his voice above the viper's hiss. The blue eyes fix on Helena, and the coldness in them warms, fractionally. "Girl. You okay?" he asks, softly.
Helena visibly flinches when Peter calls her Lena. "I'm fine. I - I'm didn't have breakfast." Nor dinner. She doesn't look up, when she speaks. "Like Bobby Sands." Except Bobby Sands died on his sixtieth day into his hunger strike. "There has to be a way to get out of here. We just need to figure it out. I don't know how long I can wait for the others to find us."
Bringing his hands up to his face, Peter exhales a long and drawn out sigh through his fingers. Alexander's words sink into his bones and squeeze, pain felt in a way unimaginable. Running his hands up into his hair, Peter hunches forward and curls up into a ball for a moment, only straightening as he hears Helena speak. Dark eyes peer up through a cage of his fingers, "Don't — " He doesn't have a right to tell her what to do, and realization of that makes his voice hitch in his throat. But what else can he say? "They — They'll hook you up to an IV if you stop eating; put you downstairs." It sounds just as stupid as he thinks, and Peter just shakes his head, lowering it down into his hands again.
"You weren't…" He whispers down to his feet, "You weren't supposed to — " His eyes force shut tightly, a vague recollection of a dream flitting through the dark recesses of his mind. "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen." Though according to Edward, it is exactly how it happened, minus the world-ending virus.
"Yeah, well ,get on the horn with God, Petrelli, because plans have changed," Al says, and punctuates the statement by spitting off to one side. Dust in his throat, already. And nothing beyond those walls but sand, red rock, and Mormons. There's that restrained ferocity in his gaze, as he links fingers in the chain of the fence. "He's right, Helena. What do you think you're gonna accomplish by trying a hunger strike. We ain't the IRA, no news here to carry out story to the outside world. All it'd do is make you weak, slow."
"I'll think about it." Alex has a point, but she hates the idea of caving. Without her ability, being fit is all she has. She casts a brief look around at the women on her side. Maybe it realize like an HBO series. And she's awfully pretty. Abruptly, a laugh erupts from her like a hiccup, which she quickly swallows down before it's noticed. She casts another look toward the men, this time shifting to face them and pushing her hair out of her face. "It's the river, Peter. We altered the flow - the most important thing. But the river will find ways to return to its original course. We - " and by that she means Alex and herself. From her expression, note hateful, not angry, just bleak, she doesn't consider him part of the equation, "Can do it again." She look sup at the sky. "This is temporary." she promises to herself.
Letting his fingers fall away from the chain-link fence, Peter turn shis back on the ghost of Helena that stares reproachfully at him from through the links, like some Christmas Carol specter come to haunt his days with guilt. His jaw visibly tenses, dark eyes uplifting to Alexander for a moment as he takes a few steps away, considering just putting his back to this all. But, that is exactly what caused all of this. Instead, he falters in his stride, shoulders slouching as he turns to look up and over to Helena, eyes narrowed faintly. "Temporary?"
He can hardly believe heer words, "This — " Shaking his head, Peter covers one hald of his face with one hand, a stringy length of dark hair falling down the side of his face. "No one is…" He stops himself from being even more hopeless than usual, moving his hand down to wipe across his mouth as words once more fail him.
Just like he failed them.
Alexander eyes Peter scornfully, buzzed head canted to one side. "We weren't sitting on our asses while you were lounging around moping, Pete. And we ain't gonna start now. We get outta here, or we die,"
"It'll be okay," Helena's voice cruelly but accurately imitates Peter's tone last night. "I promise. Isn't that what you said?" Her tone is calm, perhaps infuriatingly so. She rises from the bench to approach the fence. Studies Alex solemnly, can only bear to look at Peter for a few moments and then mumbles, "I'll have lunch. I promise." She starts to reach for the chain links, thinks the better of it, and turns to walk away instead.
Looking out towards Helena, Peter's jaw slacks and he watches her retreating form move across the yard. His hand stays over his mouth, covering it to hide the fact that he's so surprised by her change in demeanor and appearance. His dark eyes track to Alexander, for just a moment seeking sympathy or consolation there, before remembering that he is the one who left them.
Then, his eyes settle on the number printed on Alexander's breast pocket — 0000117 — and his jaw tenses once more.
Down the hall, large glass windows view into sterile and steel-filled examination rooms. A young man stands with his back to the window, while a doctor dressed in white leans in to inject a long and thin syringe just below the right side of his jaw and up into his neck. His shaved head tilts to the side, and he winces slightly. The doctor pulls the long needle slowly out, and the man steps away, turning to look out the plate glass window towards Peter. The silvery scarring that can be seen up his neck — burns from electricity — identify him to Peter before his nametag does. Knight, Jesse Alexander - 0000117
He glares, coldly, at Peter as his escort continues to take him past the medical examination chambers. The stare is damning, one of bitter contemmpt, but there's no fire behind it. It's a stare of impotent rage, of fury without strength behind it, one of abandoned hope and dissolved ideals. But it is accusing, and the glare cuts just as sharp.
Peter just starts to take a slow, shaky step backwards as his hand finally lowers from his mouth. Bits and pieces of his Company counterpart's memories flicker and dance in his mind; the important and emotionally charged bits.
This isn't how it was supposed to happen.
But it did.
And now there's no going back.
 February 5th: Qapla' Balth je |
Previously in this storyline… Next in this storyline… |
 February 5th: DJ and the Geek Stick |