Participants:
| Scene Title | No Understanding |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | None of the normal human residents of Apartment 106 are in today, but two non-residents drop by to take care of the nonhumans in their absence. If there's answers in the conversation that ensues, they're largely lost beneath the questions. |
| Date | April 23, 2010 |
Le Rivage: Abby's Apartment
There's things in life that often times seem pre-ordained. Moments in a person's life that feels entirely staged, despite being completely coincidential on the surface. Is there such a thing as destiny, or fate? The man inviting himself into the home of Abigail Beauchamp used to believe in both of those things, used to consider that he himself had a destiny to fulfill. Now, looking back on it, Peter Petrelli has come to wonder if it was just the naievete of youth that had him so idealistic.
The door to apartment 106 in Le Rivage creaks open at his intrusion, key still in the door as he leans inside, red scarf pulled up over his mouth and black wool jacket crusted with ice from the sleet falling down outside. "Abby?" Peter's voice rings out in the largely empty apartment, and with a scuff of his boots he quietly steps inside, keeping the door ajar behind him. "Alex?" He's really not hoping for the latter to answer, they've never gotten along well.
When silence is all that greets Peter, he takes one more step in, tugging down the scarf from his mouth to tuck under his chin, one leather-gloved hand scrubbing at his mouth as brown eyes avert to the hardwood floor and the muted silhouette of gray daylight coming in through the windows. Reaching into the pocket of his long coat, he withdraws a cell phone, flipping it open with the intent of making a call, but something else on the screen has him hesitating. He'd missed a text message, and he'd come here for nothing.
She'd tell him that no one's here, but he already knows. The statement becomes superfluous in that moment, and then it passes from her thoughts.
Instead, the girl simply leans a shoulder against the doorpost, bare foot scuffing softly against the carpet with her final step. Loose blonde hair untouched by sleet and arms free of any jacket speak to her lack of ventures outdoors today; but then, this building is also the closest thing she has to a home. "There is always something," Tamara remarks quietly, her voice as weary as the dark circles under her eyes. "But irritation is blinding." Turquoise fabric rustles with the upward motion of the girl's arm, fingers shoving hair back out of her face. "Good advice to stop for roses; there weren't any, of course, but it's nice to think about them."
For all the things he's suffered, Tamara's ability to appear like a ghost out of nowhere still makes Peter practically jump out of his skin. Jerking a look to the sound of her voice, Peter's breath hitches in the back of his throat, dark brows furrowed and head tilting to the side, lips parting in some semblance of confused scrutiny. "You…"
There's a distant noise in the apartment, the twitter of a bird having been woken from the relative commotion. Peter hesitates as he watches the young woman, brows furrowed and head tilted to the side. The last time he'd seen her was when he left her unconscious at the Lighthouse on their way back from Antarctica, of all places. How many times had fate tried to draw people there, almost like a warning. If he'd listened to the signs, maybe things would've been different.
"You're… you live here?" Peter's voice hitches in the back of his throat on the verge of an assertion, but hesitates as he watches her come in, moving closer than she ever had in the past. How she of all people knows that the danger of their proximity has passed is uncertain to Peter, but then… she does seem to know too much. "Tamara?" How many years has it been since they were first introduced? Enough.
"No," the girl replies, smiling faintly at Peter. "Only visited. Someone had to remember to feed the cat." She slides into the room on the heels of those words, walking past her conversational partner without the slightest hesitation; doesn't even recall the way she reacted, that first time he tried to approach her, or even dosing herself with suppressant in the heart of Moab so that he could safely get them out. All Tamara judges by is that there are no adverse consequences now… which can be both a blessing and curse.
"You can feed the bluebird," she offers over a shoulder to Peter. "Well — the one that's here," Tamara amends a beat later, a qualifier that matters only in her thought process. Padding into the kitchen, skin whispering against linoleum, the seeress adds: "You're tall enough." The statement is halfway facetious; and really, she can reach the top of the fridge. But now she doesn't have to.
"Yeah I— " Peter looks down to his cell phone, brows furrowed and dark eyes scanning the text he'd missed from earlier.
Abigail: At Francois'. Can you stop by my apt. and feed the pets?
Those dark brows of Peter's crease together and he hastily tucks the phone into his pocket, then takes a few steps towards the door Tamara had come in from, removing his key from it and slowly sliding it shut. "You're okay… ish." Ish being the operable suggestion. "I… I wasn't really sure after what happened at Moab. I never… " Peter's eyes wander to the key in his gloved hand, then back up to Tamara. "I never got to thank you for what you did back then, I owe you." Curling his palm around the key, Peter's eyes sweep into the direction of one of the adjacent rooms, but instead veers off and towards the kitchen after Tamara, more so for her than what's on top of the refrigerator.
"I didn't know you knew Abby," Peter offers conversationally, even as he's silently trying to size up the enigma that she represents, pausing by the refrigerator and glancing up on top, then back over to Tamara. "I guess everyone does, after a fashion…" there's an unconscious crook of a smile there.
Ish is indeed the operative element of that sentence. Resting one hand on the counter's edge, Tamara smiles up at Peter, silently affirming his statement. The smile dims as he continues speaking, her own brow creasing in turn, and the girl shakes her head. It isn't exactly a no and it isn't exactly a dismissal… but there's something in that subject she doesn't care to touch, and the motion makes that clear.
"Thank the sunrise, or the rising tide; the river passes as it did. The mirror only was —" The seeress turns away from Peter, facing the sink; looks towards the wall behind it, without seeing anything so small and confining as a room. "And the mirror was not enough." She says this with calm acceptance rather than rancor, ducking down to open the cupboard under the sink and retrieve a packet of cat food.
"I never understood you…" Peter admits with a bit of sheepish honesty, turning towards the refrigerator and grabbing the bag of birdseed perched atop it, the brown paper bag crinkling in his gloved hand. "…you remind me of Hiro," he asserts, not bothering to obfuscate the identity of the time traveller, not from Tamara. "Not exactly, but the way you talk about things like they've already happened." There's a flick of brown eyes back to Tamara, and Peter steps out from the kitchen, glancing around the living room with a squint, he actually has no idea where her bird is, save for the distant chirp he hears every now and then.
"How does it work?" Peter asks a bit optimistically, as if she could perhaps give him a straight answer. "What you do, what you see? Or— do you even see? Is it instinct?" There's admittedly curiosity driving him, the urge to discover answers to something that's always been a mystery at the back of his mind. Two years ago he wouldn't have been this forward, time's changed him in more ways than he realizes.
Tamara sighs quietly, even as she picks up the cat's food bowl and rinses out old residue. "Not many did. And some words were more than pennies." The clean bowl is filled from the packet, empty wrapper relegated to the garbage; with that chore tended to, she too slips out of the kitchen, breathing a good-naturedly exasperated huff at Peter. Hooking a hand on his arm, the girl tugs him in the direction of Pila's keep. If you won't look then I guess I'll have to show you.
"Is it seeing, to stand in the river?" Releasing Peter's arm so she can brush fingertips against the bars of the bird's cage, smiling softly at the avian within, Tamara shrugs one shoulder. "Water in your feet and sun on your eyes, if you're lucky; and the waterfall whispering to your ears, never so far away." She steps back then, a single pace, but room enough for him to tend to Pila. "What is instinct? What is not?" are the questions turned back around to him, Tamara offering a tired, rueful smile.
Nervousness in the contact has Peter tense when Tamara hooks that arm around his and leads him to where Pila's caged in Abby's bedroom. Brown eyes flit across the unfamiliar corner of the apartment, then back to Tamara with a scrutinizing eye to her answer. "What happened to you…" isn't so much a question as a vocalized notion of pity. The smile Peter offers is a sad one, and the lift of his gloved hand to her shoulder comes with only the gentlest of squeezes. There isn't really an answer that would satisfy Peter, and truth be told Tamara doesn't recall the answer herself. Maybe she would like to know as much as he would.
"I can sympathize…" Peter offers quietly, eyes only leaving Tamara's when Pila noisily demands attention with a flutter of her wings and a hop on her perch, vocalizing her loneliness and disappointment that it's the wrong Italian here right now. "…having an ability that makes being like everyone else difficult."
Noisily uncurling the top of the seed bag, Peter pops out a corner to a point and then tips it between the bars, carefully tilting the bottom of the bag up as he pours seed into the little plastic hanging basket. "I wish I could help…" but then he can't be certain that he's not, either. She's tricky like that.
"Choice and consequence," Tamara states cryptically; what it's intended to answer or address… is anyone's guess. "Glove in hand, and it's not the kind that could be taken off." She leans forward to press her nose between the cage bars, offering Pila a warmer, less poignant smile. Then the girl steps back, half-turning to face Peter, expression somber. "Try not to make the spiral faster," she says softly. "If you could." Watching Peter for a moment more, she breaks off, moving out of the bedroom.
Peter stays still when Tamara moves, his eyes focused distantly on the floor, or perhaps through it. When he finally realizes that she's moved, his head quirks up and he twists to follow her movement. "Wait— " he abruptly splutters, spilling a few seeds on the floor before he remembers to tip the bag back up. "What do you mean, I— " Peter curls his fingers tightly around the top of the bag, hustling after Tamara through the bedroom, coming to pause in the doorway leading out.
"I don't understand…" Everyone says it to Tamara, eventually, either with their eyes or with their lips, or with their actions. It's the latter that often hurts the most, but at least for Tamara it isn't a hurt that lasts for too long.
Tamara pauses, half-twisting to look back at him over her shoulder. "No one does," she says quietly, her smile softly bittersweet, never reaching those tired blue eyes. "Not even the mirror."
Discomfiting words, and the last ones the seeress speaks before she slips into the hallway, their cryptic significance a void tangibly echoing from the apartment's walls.