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| Scene Title | Petrelli Secret Rebel Base |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After talking with Asami, Kaylee decides she's ready to be made whole. That fix brings out something neither of them could have anticipated. |
| Date | January 16, 2021 |
Petrelli Manor, Upper East Manhattan
It had been a busy day.
The Petrelli Mansion had been full of people. Things were happening in her home that according to others is illegal. Highly illegal. There was so much excitement among the others, but… It had been too much for Kaylee. It was hard to explain how overwhelming it all was, enough that a few times she had pondered running. For her family, she stayed. For her nephew who was slumbering away in another room, she stayed.
The only place of solace left to her was the dance studio.
That’s where Asami finds the heiress, though she isn’t dancing like the music — Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor — would suggest. Instead she sits sideways on an antique couch near the large picture window, wrapped in a shawl, only half watching the darkness outside. The blonde holds a picture frame against her chest.
“Do you think my husband knew about all this?” Kaylee asks her sudden visitor, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the solemn notes of the final movement. Reddened blue eyes turn to her friend who brought the chaos to her doorstep. “About all that,” she nods to the world outside the door Asami came through. “Do you think that’s what… got him and Peter killed?” her voice catches. Slowly, she nods, answering her own question, “I do.” Kaylee has to blink away sudden tears, looking away from the other woman.
Swallowing back her emotions, Kaylee’s sounds scared, “And now, my children are possibly headed down that same path.” Lips tremble, forcing her to bite her lip to stop it, though it doesn’t stop the tears.
Asami slowly lowers herself into a sit on the end of the couch. Despite the tensions of the day, the wild way it started— to the even more incredulous way it progressed— she rests a hand on Kaylee's leg in a gesture of comfort. It's so hard to know what to say to the pain of loss in general. It's even worse with the revelations that have hung over them today.
"It won't be the same path," is the only comfort she can think to offer, her countenance calm and assured despite the way her brow wants to furrow in concern— not just for Kaylee's emotional sake, but for the sake of facing that broken thing she sees in her friend. Something she's tried hard to avoid looking directly at this entire day. "Whatever happened to Nathan and to Peter… they had to face it alone. Brynn and Jac aren't alone. They have me, they'll have Violette, they'll…"
With a small smile, Asami asserts, "They'll have you."
The leg under Asami’s hand flinches, but after a moment of tension it relaxes again. Kaylee takes a moment to brush a finger under teary eyes. “Safety in numbers,” Kaylee says with a humorless huff, understanding. But… “A handful of you against all of the government, cause that’s going to end well.”
Kaylee grimaces at her own words and offers an apologetic look, cause it sounded far worse then she really wanted too.
Pulling the picture away from her chest, Kaylee looks sad when she looks at it and then offers it to Asami. It was a picture of a happy moment; Kaylee, Nathan and a very young Brynn. Kaylee looked so young. “What if I’m not strong enough to protect them? Nathan was the strong one, even when I got so sick and they told us I might not be able to have kids of my own. He never gave up hope and wouldn’t let me.” She sniffs back tears and drops her gaze to her hands.
“I… don’t know if I can do this, Asami. It’s… overwhelming. I keep thinking about how much has changed and now I let my girls…” Kaylee can’t finish that thought, her voice cracking again. “If something happens to them…..Not sure I could forgive myself.”
Looking down at the photograph offered to her, Asami takes it — holds the weight of everything it means in her hands and appreciates it. It's hard for her to relate directly, having no children of her own, no loss to reckon with like Kaylee's. But she has her own circumstances— how she'd do anything for the nephew she's met but once in person; her sympathy and awareness of the pain her sister went through in her own attempts to conceive.
Then there's the present. Asami knows what she feels herself— putting the Petrelli family at risk just by her being here; her own nervous worry that something terrible might happen to them as a result of harboring her.
What could happen to them now that she's seen they were missing pieces of themselves, and could reach into them to fix it.
"I'm sorry," she apologizes solemnly, softly. "I never meant to bring so much to you, to put all of this on your shoulders. I never would have thought that…"
Well, that her entire home would be filled with others with repressed superpowers. Asami furrows her brow. She shakes her head once as she looks back up. "You can do this, Kaylee. I know it's overwhelming. … Fuck, I know it's overwhelming." She lets out a short breath, setting down the frame on her lap. "But this is just day one. No one can be expected to just… lean into this. You've already done so much to support your daughters, to support… me."
"You're doing everything you can. And if it came down it, I know you would fight to protect them tooth and nail. Even if you weren't whole, you'd do anything for them. Everything." She gives another small smile. "Give yourself credit for what you have done, what you are doing. Even if it's overwhelming… you're still doing so much."
"You're stronger than you know, Kaylee," Asami tells her, a touch of strain to her voice as she looks directly at her, sensing the piece of her that's out of place.
“And in just that one day my world’s been flipped upside down and will never be the same,” Kaylee says thickly, her voice full of unshed tears. “and I now… I… feel like I’m running a secret rebel base.” That thought gets a sad laugh out of her.
“I won’t lie and say I don’t regret just a little letting you in,” Kaylee says apologetically, unable to look at Asami, “A part of me wishes I could go back to not knowing, to being blissfully unaware of the… shit that is clearly going on in the shadows. It was easier.” She rolls her eyes at herself though and sighs; almost like she’s resigned to the fact that it won’t ever happen.
“Can… Can I ask you a question?”
Kaylee finally looks up from playing with the edge of her shawl, to the woman at the end of the couch, brows furrowed. “What do you mean I’m not whole?” It’s an innocent question, full of the woman’s confusion. Feet slide off the couch, so that Kaylee can twist to sit up straight.
“You mean I’m like all of them?” Kaylee’s voice quiets further, the edge of fear returning, but she's trying to understand, wants to understand. “Were they not whole either?”
The thought the Petrelli mansion has become a rebel installation brings a crack of a smile to Asami's face as well. She ruffles her hand on Kaylee's leg. "Yavin Base, at least until the next snowfall. Then we're Hoth Base." Ridiculous as it is, she could go for codenames for each safe place they determine. It doesn't even sound like a bad idea.
When Kaylee swings her legs to the ground, Asami looks back up and over to her, letting the frame lay on the space between them. The question she poses brings the Japanese woman to begin to bite at her lower lip, looking off for a moment. But even not looking at Kaylee doesn't help her not remember what she's seen that's wrong with her. A wrong that Asami knows she could right.
She knows it well by now.
Uncertainly, she begins to shake her head. "Maybe whole's not the right word. You're there. You're you, the same way they were them, just…" Her jaw works several times before she settles on the word that screams inside her, admitting she sees Kaylee as: "Broken."
Grinding the heel of her palm against her knee, Asami puts effort into the moment, trying to quiet the compulsion that gets harder to ignore the more she acknowledges it. "V… Violette called it negation, right? I-I see what they took from you to make that happen. Maybe? I— that makes sense, right? But I just see that something's not right. That something's been broken."
She shakes her head, turning to look outside the window. "I see that when I look at you now, and I've known you for years. It was never there before, but now, it's— it's practically the only thing I can see." Her mouth firms into a line before she sets her chin on the back of the couch. "And if I'm being honest? That scares me, too."
“You’re such a nerd,” Kaylee accuses her friend affectionately in an attempt to lighten things a little. It was something she never grew up as… When did she ever have time for the fun things? Her life had been school, dance and community; later it was the girls and the company.
Taking a breath, Kaylee murmurs the word Asami used for her, moving to pick up the photo and turn it over to look at it again. “Broken?” Blonde brows tip upward. She couldn’t make herself feel insulted by it. “That… that feels right.” Though for Kaylee it’s meant something else for so long. Since her husband’s death, it’s how she’s felt… even before then after she got sick. “It’s kind of felt like something is missing, I’ve always thought it was Nathan’s loss… or the fact I got sick. Maybe it was this too?” Though how do you miss something you never had?
Kaylee’s focus moves beyond the photo to an unknown point. “This all is an unfair burden to you, Asami.” Her head turns just enough to let her clearly see the other woman out of the corner of her eye. “No one should have that heavy weight set on their shoulders alone.”
Fingers tighten around the photo when she looks at it again, her throat works against a surge of emotion. But suddenly, her eyes close tight and she takes a deep breath.
“Fix me.”
The request is said quickly, as if Kaylee was afraid to lose the sudden spark of courage she’s managed to find at the center of all her fear.
Asami blinks, her gaze tearing from the window back to Kaylee when she makes her sudden decision. It's an unfair burden, she had said. For her to do this alone.
The compulsion itches. It calls. Yes. She'd not be alone if she fixed Kaylee.
Nevermind the people she'd already reached inside and awakened.
"Are you sure?"
She's too eager to wait for that confirmation, to have a sincere conversation about it. Asami barely has the words out before she plants both hands on the couch cushion to scoot herself closer, lifting her arms as soon as she's within reach. Her eyes fix to Kaylee's, her focus becoming piercing.
Her pupils dilate and narrow, and the warm brown of her eyes shift to a burning gold. For all the intensity of her expression, the tension in her hands and posture relax.
"D̴̺̭͘͝o̴̩̪͓̩̍̍͗n̷̪̘̹̋̾̈́̇'̴͍̫͚̃t̷̢̟̒ ̴̥̻̥̹̈́͂w̵̩͚̭͉̐ȏ̴̧̙͚̀͗̏r̶̝̯̽̂̉̉r̷̦̖͛̒ͅy̴͎̱̬̥̐,̵̠̋̊͆ ̸̩̒K̴͈̊͐ą̵͙̗́͒̒ỳ̷̝͇̠͉̂̿l̴̡͉̱̖͛͗́e̶̜͚͎͊̃̕ë̵͜.̷͈͊̒͒"
She can fix her.
It happens in an instant, when Asami’s eyes lock on Kaylee’s and her fingers press hard against the curve of her skull. Kaylee feels it like a pressure opening inside of her head, like her sinuses clearing for the first time in her life. Ears popping after a long airplane ride. A sense of palpable relief followed by a sharp stabbing pain in all of her joints that brings on a wave of overwhelming panic.
Kaylee acts in reflex, shoving Asami in the chest to push her off. But the movement comes with the force of a spooked horse and Asami rockets backwards away from Kaylee across the dance studio and into the mirrored wall above the mounted ballet barre. The mirror shatters when Asami’s back smashes into it and she bounces off like a ragdoll, hitting the floor amid a shower of clattering glass fragments, tearing the barre off from the wall on her way down.
Kaylee immediately recognizes her mistake. The ache in her arms has turned into a dull warmth, like the sensation of a pulled muscle without the pain. Fear and anxiety spike, her head swims and legs buckle as she staggers toward the nearest wall and extends a hand to catch herself, and promptly puts her hand through the drywall as if it were paper.
When Kaylee jerks her hand out of the wall she tears the hole bigger on the way back, leaving crumbling shards of drywall scattered at her feet.
Kaylee stares at her trembling hands, one of which was now covered in a fine dusting of plaster, and can’t seem to think clearly through all the fear that was trying to suffocate her. She regretted asking Asami to fix her, she had no idea… she’d end up being able to punch through walls. Everything was being broken by just a touch. Including… Kaylee’s breath catches in her throat.
Asami!
Spinning around, Kaylee sees her friend laying there among the shards of glass. “No nonono.” She hurries to the other woman, but stops herself just short of touching the woman, fingers outstretched. Tears blur her vision, as she crouches down - ignoring the shards of glass under her feet - and softly calls her name, “A-a-asami.” Her voice is wavering and barely holding together. Arms wrap around herself trapped behind her bent knees, afraid to even touch her phone to call.
“Please, please be okay,” Kaylee whines out on the edge of breaking into sobs, wanting desperately to reach out to Asami.
The music playing through the speakers continues to flow, mournful, melancholic. Until it ends, and then there's just Kaylee's strains of concern.
Asami shifts on the ground, the elbow of her sweater digging into the dance floor in an attempt to find purchase to lift her face off the ground. "I told you…" she coughs out as she starts to push herself up.
"You're stronger than you know."
She smiles for that, her eyes shifting from warm amber back to brown again. Her grin fades as she goes back to picking herself up. Sitting up on her knees, surrounded by the shards of mirror, she slowly peels her hands up to make sure there's no glass stuck to her before, she gently presses a hand to her chest. "Luckily, I don't think I broke anything." A small laugh follows, one that barely touches on the relief she has for that.
Asami exits out of her euphoric high like someone's snapped their fingers in front of her face, looking shaken once the gravity of what she's done finally sinks in. Her head turns back up to Kaylee, realizing her upset.
"It's okay!" she stresses quickly, stumbling to her feet. Socks carefully sift through broken mirror shards. "I'm okay, Kaylee. You're okay."
“How am I okay?” Kaylee practically shrieks at Asami, her red eyes look up from her crouched position wide with terror at herself. “I barely touched a wall and punched a fucking hole through it.” Her voice is on the edge of hysterics. Just behind her Asami can see a bedroom - probably Kaylee’s own - through a decent size hole in the wall.
“What if I accidentally hurt the kids.” Just saying it has Kaylee breaking down into terrified sobbing. Seeming to curl up tighter, shoulders hunching as if afraid to move, afraid to touch anything.
Wandering through the debris, Asami hurries for her friend's sake. A piece of glass catches on her sock and she kicks it away scattering. There's time to worry about that later.
What's more important is reducing Kaylee's fear. As soon as she gets to her, she bends down (ow), and reaches out (also very ow) to touch her shoulder reassuringly. "Kaylee," she coos insistently, like she's trying to reach her through a particularly bad dream. To the woman on the floor, this all might as well be. Except…
"What if someone tries to put a hand on the girls and you purposefully punch them into the next township?" For all it sounds funny, unreal to say, she's soothingly serious. "You were just so worried you couldn't protect them, but now…"
This worked out so much better than she could have hoped, if only Kaylee could see. With time, maybe she would.
"Take a moment to freak out. That's totally okay. Puke, scream, cry, whatever you need to. —Except punch me again." Asami cracks a small smile at that while she crouches by Kaylee's side. "This is real. This is happening."
This is real. This is happening.
Those words are like ice-cold water running through Kaylee’s veins. Her mind runs through a myriad possible scenarios where she accidentally hurts one of her children, where she destroys something in public and can’t hide what happened, where she’s arrested by the government and locked away from her children until they’re adults. Panic sets in, and Kaylee starts to wonder if this had anything to do with Peter’s death, with his erratic behavior leading up to it.
Her heart races in her chest, and Asami can see the color drain from her face. As Kaylee slips into the stages of a panic attack, as her eyes unfocus and hands tremble, it feels as if the world is collapsing around her. It’s in the pit of that despair, as her reality folds in with darkening tunnel vision, that she feels a comforting hand on her shoulder.
Kaylee’s eyes reflexively fix on the broken mirror in front of her, where she sees herself fractured into a dozen splintered reflections. All of them panicked, afraid.
Except for one.
Kaylee’s hands steady. Her pupils dilate normally, and Asami can see her features soften in abrupt relaxation. She blinks blue eyes over to Asami, her stare dead-eyed like a shark’s. Kaylee watches this all happen from outside of her own body, as if these are not her words.
“You did this to me.” Kaylee hears herself say, and feels her hands clench into tight fists.
Asami's hand slips from Kaylee's shoulder, uncertainty entering her expression. Her reassuring smile fades, replaced with a blank look of her own. "Kaylee…?" Tension takes hold in her gut, a weightless fear blinking its way to her core.
“Kaylee’s not here right now.”
Slowly, the blonde woman unfolds herself from where she was huddled, crouching on the floor like a goddamn coward. The movement is graceful and smooth, showing power in the limbs of the trained dancer. With the shawl left to pool on the floor at her feet, Asami can see muscles tensed and ready to strike where the tank top she’s wearing doesn't cover.
Not once have those cold empty eyes move from Asami, it’s not unlike being stared down by a predator really. A sneer curls on her lips, angry at what Asami has done to her - to them - not even rationalizing that she asked for this. She hadn't. She lunges at the one responsible. Asami has to pay for it.
No!
There is a jerk of her muscles as the action is arrested before it starts. Angry blue eyes snap down to the shards of glass on the floor, more importantly, she’s looking at the reflection of herself as she pleads for her to leave Asami alone.
Don’t hurt her! Please!
There is a wicked and rather smug curl of her red lips before Kaylee suddenly launches herself at Asami with a yell of anger, fingers moving with every intention of clamping them around her neck like a vice and slam her up against the wall.
That jerk of movement toward her accompanied with the cold words is all that Asami needs to scramble back into thin air, floating back with all the speed of a run— floating up like she's a leaf on the wind. The seeming moment of second-guessing is all she needs to escape the throttling lunge before it's completed. She spirals up, safe for now.
The high ceiling in the dance studio serves her well here, gives her space to think while she tries to figure out…
Asami's eyes glaze over, looking slightly to the side of Kaylee's body. Her lips part as she hears something so different in tenor than the venom that'd just been directed her way. She hears Kaylee— the real her.
Trapped.
"No," she says to herself with dread. No, no, no! It'd not been like this with the others. They'd not turned out like this!
"Kaylee, I can hear you in there," Asami voices below, mournful and worried. Concerned about what to do next. She does the only thing she can think of— does what Kaylee would do, were she herself. She thinks of Kaylee's children and their safety.
"Hang on. I promise, I— I'll fix this!" Her head turns away from Kaylee, toward the wall she'd started to put a hole through into her bedroom. Asami brings her arms forward and then back to her sides like she's swimming, angling down not at the hole in the wall, but the solid drywall next to it.
At the speed of a run, still floating through the air, she passes directly through the wall like it's not even there. There's a clatter from the other side of the wall, books falling. Through the hole, Asami can be seen stumbling and running out the bedroom and into the hall, down toward the girls' rooms.
Once Asami is through the wall, she hears something big and heavy crash into the wall making the whole room vibrate and knock a vase of black-eyed susans off her dresser.
Back in what is left of the dance studio, Kaylee gives a scream of frustration while she watches the couch - she just happened to throw after Asami - slowly tilt to one size and fall over from where it impacted against the wall, leaving a drywall and mirror filled crater in its wake.
You could have killed her! Screams the trapped woman in the broken mirror shards as the angry blonde approaches the wall.
“That’s the point,” Kaylee growls, pulling back a fist. “Now shut the fuck up.” Kaylee’s eyes widen from the depths of the mirror piece before the fist connects with and through the wall. Then using that hole and the previous one, the woman wearing her face pulls out a large section of wall and delicately steps through it.
“Asami.” Is called in a disturbingly calm-sounding, sing-songy voice as not-Kaylee calmly stalks the fleeing prey. Knuckles crack as she steps out of the room into the hall. “Olly olly oxen free,” she sings with a wicked smile.
Too astonished, too scared at this point to have found her own voice, Asami scrambles down the hall, skidding on carpet as she barrels nearly past the closed bedroom door at the end of it. She wrenches the door handle down, throwing it inward. "Brynn!" she shouts into the bedroom. "Something's wrong, we have to get to—"
Safety.
Hearing the sing-song of her name brings Asami's head whipping back around, looking back down the hallway. Frustration with the sudden turn of events overwhelms everything else, and suddenly, words find their flow again. "Who the hell are you?" she demands to know, one fist clenching by her side. "What have you done with Kaylee?"
Kaylee’s eyes widen and her pupils narrow to fine points at that question.
But should Brynn step forward out of her room, she'll see none other than her mother stalking down the hall, even if it's with a look so very unlike her.
It's the crashing of things into (through) walls that woke the deaf young woman — the vibrations are not normal. She paused just a moment after waking to grab her receiver to affix it to the port behind her ear, which is the only reason the door doesn't smack her as it flies open.
Asami's shout back down the hall scares the shit out of her. Who did what to her mom?!?! The petite brunette rushes for the door, her heart racing a million miles an hour in her chest. As she steps into the hall, though, she stops dead at the sight of her mother. She has never seen that expression before.
"M-Mama?" she stammers out in a small, terrified voice. "Mama, what's wrong?" She hasn't called Kaylee mama in that tone since Kaylee told her Nathan was dead. It's a tone all mothers recognize in their child, even when that child is all grown up and 50 years old. The one that comes only in the worst times of life, that says they are lost and confused and scared and just need their mommy to hold them for a moment and shield them from a world that no longer makes sense.
It flips like a switch. One moment Kaylee is outside of her body, watching herself commit violence and destruction. The next she is standing in the aftermath of it, feeling her heart pounding inside of her chest. Her hands are shaking, stomach turning with anxiety and nausea. She is frozen where she stands, and Asami can feel whatever part of her subconscious was in control has receded into the back of her mind.
But what Asami can hear and Kaylee doesn’t vocalize is a name. The answer to Asami’s question, bouncing around in her subconscious.
The name…
Once she has control of her body again, Kaylee’s eyes widen and fill with tears. Hands cover her mouth to stifle the sob that sneaks past her attempts to hold it back. “I’m sorry, Asami. I’m so sorry….” Her voice trembles as she looks at her daughter and the woman she’d…. No Valerie… had just tried to kill.
Kaylee wants to go to her daughter and hug her tight, but she’s still afraid to touch anyone or anything. Instead she wraps her arms around herself. “I-I-I tried to stop her… b-b-but she’s too strong.” The tears just don’t want to stop. “Why did that happen? Why was she there? Oh god… I couldn’t control her.”
There was terror at the idea of not being able to control it. What would happen if she lost control in the wrong place? Around more people?
It takes a few moments for Asami to believe what she sees— to trust the danger has passed. She remains on edge, ready to have grabbed Brynn's hand and gone through the wall with her again, but… Kaylee is in tears. She's herself again.
The hand at her own side that had curled into a fist slowly relaxes.
"It's over now," she assures Brynn softly, laying a hand on her shoulder steadingly before taking a tentative step forward, her other hand lifted soothingly. Just the same as before.
She hopes that this doesn't stand to incur round two, but this time, she tries to tell herself she's more prepared. "It's okay. It's okay." Asami's eyes flit back and forth between Kaylee's. She continues to listen — listen — for sounds of distress popping up again. "It's okay now. You're you. You're yourself. That's all that matters."
"We're going to figure this out," she assures gently, as calmly as she can even though she's still shaken by just how close a call things were.
Brynn has never seen her mother lose it like this — not even when her father died. But there is one thing she knows to the bottom of her toes, to the depths of her soul: Mom won't hurt her.
The tiny brunette pulls free of Asami's touch effortlessly… she might have actually phased out partially, and she moves deliberately to Kaylee and wraps her arms around her mother. "It's okay, Mama. It's okay," she whispers. "Just breathe. Remember? Everything slows down when you breathe." It was the first thing Kaylee taught her as a child when she was scared to death — everything looks like a catastrophe when you're not not breathing through it.
Kaylee almost doesn’t return the hug, but something at the back of her mind told her it was okay. The arms that wrap around Brynn don't have the same strength that had, only moments before, gone through a wall like a wet paper towel. It was as if when Valerie left so did the ability. There is a soft sob, before she hugs her daughter tightly.
Just past the girls head, the matriarch of the family notices the mirror on the wall just behind Brynn. While the reflection was her, the wicked smile on those lips were not her’s. Valerie slowly looks over at Asami and a chill slides up her spine. While the girls were safe, Asami was another thing. She clearly didn’t share the same feelings about the woman that Kaylee had.
Kaylee was worried about Asami if Valerie manges to get to the surface again.
After a moment and a few deep breaths, Kaylee loosens the hug and pulls back from the young woman, though she still grips her shoulders. “Please, don’t be scared. We’d never hurt you, baby girl,” Kaylee says without thinking, fingers brushing strands of hair behind the girl’s ear. ‘We’ just slid out of her mouth so easily. She’d have to be careful about it, but she could also feel the truth in those words.
Her kids would always be safe around Valerie.
The 'we' could be waved off, too, easily enough— but Asami looks back up toward Kaylee cautiously and then past her, her arms beginning to wrap around herself.
She'd done this, by awakening Kaylee's power. It sinks in that this wasn't even the first time she'd caused damage today. It's a thought that cycles back to her all too late— a realization she should have had sooner, no matter her good intentions behind doing what she did.
At least Kaylee seemed to be calming down now, trusting herself more. Maybe for the moment, that's the best they could hope for.
"I'll, um— I'll head downstairs and let Jac know everything's fine," Asami starts to excuse herself, looking down as she skirts around the two to head for the stairs. "I'll— talk to you in the morning, Kaylee."
The Petrelli manor really was shaping up to be a rebel base. Now, if only they could keep it from falling in on itself, with all the superpowers now running through it.