Participants:
| Scene Title | Second Verse, Same as the First |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | How many times around this merry-go-round is too many? |
| Date | June 30, 2021 |
At nighttime, we know, sounds are amplified. Your cat may walk quietly in the sunshine, but as the world grows drowsy on top of its weariness for the wear, the cosmic remote turns the volume up to 50 and your cat’s every clack of her overgrown claws, every careful motion trained into her genetics by millennia of evolution, is suddenly audible as though hearing drums through a wooden floor, the tinkling little bell becoming hushed and secret conversations through a thin apartment wall. The vibrations are large and dramatic, avalanches of noise to drown out your head where in the daytime they would be a single drop of a leaf onto an idle hand on a bench. The cat’s claws seem longer today than they did yesterday. You wonder where the time has gone.
No matter the level of daytime familiarity one has with a place, then, there is an understandable eeriness with being there out of bounds. When night has long fallen, or is perhaps closer to leaving than to arriving, and your coworkers have largely gone home, and the lights are dimmed on purpose to combat the electric bill, the faux-marble floor tiling grabs the sound of footsteps and shakes it in clasped hands and throws it back out like dice. No amount of asbestos can abate the echoes of a rubber sole.
This is where Erin Gordon finds herself today - such as it is, today, when the dates have changed on the digital display but the body has yet to sleep - as she puts away her riot gear, infused with the scent of wood smoke from the least pleasant of causes. Casing her body as it does, the liquid smoke of the protective sausage is far more appetizing than the bodily gore she has just passively removed. Out of bounds seems like just the phrase right now.
Before Dawn
The fire is out, the workers dismissed, and amid the usual timeless scene of after hours at the precinct, a job which never rests or sleeps but only dozes in waiting, there is a light still on in Lieutenant Elisabeth Harrison’s office, likely the desk lamp that's always on when she's in there to illuminate what is certainly a good deal of nasty paperwork. Stripped down to her faded blue jeans and a white undershirt, and reticent to put on a proper top when technically no longer on duty, she knocks tentatively on her supervisor’s door.
“Hey. I can’t believe that I’m surprised you’re still here.”
The light in the office is always a giveaway that she hasn't left because it's always on when she's in there. She also always knows when there are people in the bullpen or at her office door well before they knock. So it's perhaps a little strange that she's not looking right at Erin when she opens the door and instead her head comes up sharply with an expression of … surprise. Even alarm.
Elisabeth is sitting not at her desk dealing with paperwork but on the floor in the back corner of her office with her arms wrapped around her knees, her face buried against them. Out of her armor, still wearing the clothes that were beneath the riot gear and her hair matted down in its braid by the rain and the smoke, her face is not swollen with tears; she's simply fighting to breathe correctly. She never made it out the door of her office before the events of the night caught up with her.
There is a distinct, loud bass hum like a low-frequency horn almost inside the lieutenant's office that should be perfectly audible complete with vibrations palpable out there in the bullpen, but it's not. The only indication of anything happening at all would have been if Erin had noticed everything in Liz's office trembling. But now that she's stepped within the field, it is loud and it is at such a low frequency that it makes the bones ache. And being seen in this state actually seems to intensify the reaction. "Wh-wh-wh-what are y-y-y—" Elisabeth cuts her words off, clenching her jaw and fighting to force her voice into compliance. It's not working and she can't demand to know why the other woman is still here. She can't play off this effect as something she has under control.
Her chin drops to her chest, and she focuses on riding out the full-blown panic attack that's been in progress for who knows how long.
“H-hey, yo, whoa whoa whoa,” Erin babbles as she notices what’s going on, rushing over to sit beside the symbol of strength curled up on the floor. She drops to the ground herself, on her knees, and wraps Liz into a tight and involuntary hug, suddenly aware of how much she needs both a shower and a hug herself. It would be deeply unnecessary to ask what is wrong; they both have some idea, even if it’s not exactly the same scene playing out in their heads.
Usually she would keep the line of professionalism between them, but Elisabeth is in no shape for that. She leans into the hug and focuses on just breathing. Slow counts of four she can't do yet, so it's three. At least she's not hyperventilating anymore, not that Erin saw that part.
It's a long few minutes. It's not just that the bass rumble in the room makes it nearly impossible to hold a conversation, it is also that once Erin has her arms around the blonde it's clear that her body is trembling just as hard as the objects in the room. The calming process takes a little time – the tremors in both the woman and the room slow to a much more manageable feeling of a hum of vibration that runs along the skin like shivers instead of being a swell of sound like being in the middle of a foghorn.
When Elisabeth finally drops her head back against the wall, she looks even more exhausted than she had in the field when she used her power to snuff fire. "Th-th-thanks," she offers in a weary tone. "S-s-sorry you had t-t-to s-s-see…" She grits her teeth and waits a long moment, pulling the stutter under control. "Sorry you had to walk in on that." God, it's going to be a long night.
Erin laughs without humor, wiping a surprise tear from her left eye, and backs off, sitting on one hip with her knees bent to the side on the floor, which had previously been cold but was now somehow warmed by the sonic vibrations. “You think I wasn’t feeling the same way?” She fusses with a paperclip that was knocked off of some surface or another, rotating it on the axis of her finger in the bend, skittering it across the floor and back. “Well, maybe not exactly the same, but I did fall through a chair again earlier.”
Continuing to skitter and avoid eye contact, she continues, “I’m sorry too, though. I know you prefer to feel things…alone.” She looks back up, her mouth a slanted line, a grimace of feeling a line has been crossed and it’s her own fault.
The soft, bitter huff of laughter holds no amusement. "No," Elisabeth tells her quietly. "I don't prefer that. It's just the way things are most of the time. I… have too many people counting on me to lose my shit where they can see it. Doubt kills people… and letting them see my doubts would scare them." She has spent a lot of her adult life taking care of the people around her, trying to show a confident front even when confidence is the last thing she's feeling.
The admission is hard for her, though, and Elisabeth glances at Erin with an exhausted half-smile. "Can't look like you're afraid or don't know what you're doing if you want someone to follow you into hell, Erin." Or that's the lie Elisabeth tells herself to keep on going, keep pretending she's fine. She's not the first and she won't be the last to do that. Finally dragging one hand up into her matted hair, the blonde grimaces at the feel of her ponytail. That needs a shower in the worst way. "Seeing the Hunters—"
There's the low swell of sound that she fights to squash back to a low-level hum again. "Fuck," she mutters. She doesn't have to tell Erin, clearly.
Erin starts for a moment when she hears her commanding officer use her first name, rather than her last, but when the shock bounces away as quickly as it came, it is replaced with warmth, almost embarrassment at the astonishing simplicity of being a person and not a title. She finds herself seeing that it was something she didn’t realize she missed, that feeling of comfort and protection and acknowledgement, and it hurts to wonder how long she’d been needing that without being aware that the possibility had ever existed. It is jarring, the recognition that the inner child is still alive, that it has always been alive, that it always will be alive, and that it wants to be rocked now that it wakes. What do you do with that, at age 36, on the floor of your boss’ office, feeling misplaced transference of basic human emotion when all that brought it on was the use of your first name? How do you express that joy and love even to yourself, how do you face the sheer cliff face of that need for care and support, when it feels so juvenile to think with words? It’s no wonder that we turn to the bottle in this field!
She looks up above and sees the dangling light fixtures swing slightly when the hum starts again, and then back at Elisabeth. “I suppose you can’t really hide how you’re feeling when things like that-” she jabs her thumb upwards, “-can happen, but to be honest, Lieutenant, I’m getting really goddamn sick of this cop machismo. We’ve got literal empaths on the force, and what, we aren’t allowed to show any sort of vulnerability? No weaknesses? It’s disgusting and unrealistic. You’d think, being Expressives, we would have some sort of power to change the culture, and yet here we are. I hesitate to follow anyone who is perfect into a storm like that, because perfect is just hiding big fucking chasms underneath.”
Her brow furrows, her expression crumpled, her face a little pink from fury and feeling. “Like you. Right now. You’re clearly having an emotional response to this. And me? Me? I killed a guy today. I didn’t just kill him, though. Or her? Who knows? I obliterated them beyond recognition. Beyond…” She grapples for words for a moment, fumbling. “Beyond existing at all. I know he was one of the bad guys, or whatever we tell ourselves, but that was a person who was born and lived, and I reduced them to nothing. I used so many disposable face wipes when we got back that I think I’m creating a new fatberg right under the building, and I still don’t feel clean.”
Indeed, her cheeks have raw patches forming that the moisturizer will need to make extra efforts to amend. It’s making her all verklempt, anger and vulnerability and invisibility and death.
Blue eyes study Erin thoughtfully, and Elisabeth finally says softly, "It's not about not showing vulnerability or being perfect – it's about not completely losing it in front of terrified people who are looking to me because they think I know what to do. I don't mind letting you see that I'm worried, that I understand the call I'm making has flaws and I'm concerned about them. But if I watch the person who is supposed to be leading us react like this in the field? If they're so unsure of what they're doing that they're literally frozen? I can't have faith in that leader – and I don't expect you to either."
Her smile is a little forced as she reaches out and now she's the one who wraps an arm around the other officer. "Losing my shit here, where the battle is done and it's just those of us who fought it? This is where I'm supposed to lose it. With my team." She leans her head against Erin's and says quietly, "You had to make a choice today that none of us should ever have to make. Is it the first time that you've made that choice in the line of duty when it's not in the middle of a war?"
Erin stiffens somewhat at both the touch and the question, but forces herself to relax. This is, after all, exactly what she had just opined: that vulnerability is not a bad thing, and that it’s okay to feel. It conflicts deeply with her instinct to cut off, run away, pretend it never happened.
“I mean, no. Not at all. We’ve all had to make that choice before, right? None of us like using our weapons, and those of us who do should be forced to take a mandatory leave. But yes, in a way, because never like that, never so completely have I annihilated another person. My ability lets me pass through things, not blow them up. It’s–”
She swallows her words, drawing away somewhat to look at Elisabeth, wry and uncertain and uncomfortable. “But you have. You don’t … you weren’t on the floor for nothing.”
She wasn't having a panic attack over blowing the flamethrower's gas canister to smithereens and turning that guy to blobs of flesh out there. But the things she is having the panic attack over are not as relevant to what Erin is dealing with as something that happened a lot longer ago.
Blowing out a long breath, Elisabeth once more drops her head back against the wall. She keeps contact with Erin in the form of that arm around her shoulder and searches for the right words. "A few times," she finally acknowledges quietly. "The one that perhaps is most similar to what just happened with you was the night I fought at Pinehearst." She meets Erin's eyes. "It was a bad fight, and Petrelli had a lot of different abilities, including one that allowed him to split into duplicates of himself. Each of those had different power sets. And in the middle of the fight, I basically came face to face with one of them. Gillian Childs is an augmenter. I remember that she reached out and grabbed my hand, and I …. Turned my ability on Arthur." She pauses.
"Ultrasound is used to do things like destroy kidney stones, Erin. Sound can crack bone or liquify organs." She swallows hard. "There was nothing left of Arthur Petrelli's clone but a bloody mist hanging in the air. I sort of remember that moment. But I remember more that when I came to later, I also found out that I'd obliterated a clone of Gillian's and I'd hurt several other members of my own team because the blast wasn't as controlled as I'd planned. I'd never been augmented before and had no idea what to expect. One guy lost his leg because he was within the field of sound that I created." She doesn't mention that she also hurt herself very badly in the middle of that – the more important point is about the aftermath of literally turning a man to bloody misty bits small enough to defy gravity and hang in the air for a time. "I had a hard time dealing with the fact that I didn't just cause someone to be obliterated, like in an explosion or something, but that my own power was capable of vibrating a human apart if I pushed it high enough."
Erin grimaces. It is far too easy to imagine what the scene looked like. “That’s…is that…” She frowns. “Is that what inspired the Banshee? It seemed too personal a question to ask, but here we are. It’s helpful to hear your experience, really. I just don’t know how to hold this horrible feeling. I really don’t. How are we so important as to make these horrible choices, to think that we have that sort of power?”
A moment or two passes as she stares into the middle distance, grappling with the feeling of having destroyed, with the ethical dilemmas of whether good people can make bad actions, with the feeling that that blood mist is still in her lungs somewhere. She panics a little herself as her heart rate spikes and she forces herself to look away from her actions, away from the need for support, and redirects it onto the other blue-eyed cop in the room. It’s too much, too heavy, to see her own self, and she wonders if her brain won’t just fly into the sky if she focuses on it for too long.
“But I think that’s not why you were so upset right now, right?”
Elisabeth would like to laugh at the question about the Banshee – it has been a huge source of amusement for her that her husband weaponized her ability and got rich partially because of that. "I would venture to say that yes, what we saw that day inspired Richard when the company was being built," she agrees.
The answers to the rest of what the other woman has asked come slower.
“It isn't the failure that… that bothers me. It's… It's what we were willing to do when we thought we’d win. …The fuck is the point in living if we give up our humanity?”
She feels the tremor run through Erin at the thoughts, though she's not entirely certain of the exact content of those thoughts. She doesn't have to be. She squeezes Erin's far shoulder and whispers, "Breathe. Just … count the breaths and breathe."
“If we become just like them to get what we want, how the fuck do we live with ourselves if we even do make it away from here? How— how— h-how do we live with ourselves?”
"The kind of questions you're asking… aren't really the right ones," she finally says quietly. "We're not the important ones at all. We're just the ones who've volunteered for the duty to protect those who can't protect themselves. Not because it gives us power, not because we think we have the right. But because they don't. They don't have the right to try to kill people just because they're afraid of them. You didn't deliberately choose to obliterate him, Erin. His actions led him to where he was. You had to make a choice to stop him and you took the only way you thought you could. The rest?" She shakes her head. "The rest is just noise." Because Erin didn't become the monster, choosing the most expedient route just because it was the most expedient – she chose the only route available to her.
She has no idea if her words will help the younger woman. Sometimes Elisabeth feels so damn old. It's hard to remember she is barely 6 or 7 years older than Erin. She lets out a slow breath and admits, "No. No, that's not what I was upset about," she agrees softly. "For me, this time… it's about the Hunters and Humanis First. Pure Earth by any other name."
After the stress of the day, the exhaustion of heat and fire and body and water, the taking - and in Alli’s case, giving - of lives, Erin doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She hiccups a bit of both and puts her face in her hands, longing suddenly for a deep drink. There’s her name again, reminding her that she’s still here. It’s nearly as raw as her over-scrubbed skin.
“You know, I wasn’t even aiming for the gas tank. I was aiming for his leg. I think I need to get re-certified at the firing range.”
Deflecting with humor, as always. Liz’s words resonate with her, she feels them deeply and it’s what she’s always believed, but the words seem to sputter at the surface. The confusion between her brain and her body collapses and she chokes out a sob. She is torn between wanting her own feelings to be gone and wanting to make sure Liz is taken care of, too. But when you’re on the edge of breaking, and someone shows you genuine compassion, sometimes…
“I’m sorry. I think it’s just been a long day. And I’m tired. I came in here and you were on the floor and I want to hear what you have to say because it’s clearly very important and I trust you and respect you very much and now I am making it all about me and you’re upset too and I just–”
Now, finally, Elisabeth knows how to react. This? This she comprehends. This is a place she knows what to do. Clasping her hand around the back of Erin's neck, the blonde draws the younger officer to her shoulder and wraps her other arm tightly around. It's a gentle hold that Erin could refuse, but firm enough that it conveys a sense of security – it is okay for Erin to break, right here, right now. It's safe. "It's okay," she whispers. She doesn't shush the younger officer. Instead, she whispers quietly into her hair, "Erin, you're going to be okay. You did nothing wrong. I know it feels horrible and you're second-guessing yourself. But you saved a lot of lives today. It'll take time, but you're going to be okay."
God, she wishes it were as simple as being okay. Elisabeth better than most knows that 'okay' is never really quite as okay as anyone who takes a life would wish. But she holds Erin the same as she has held many other friends over the years, the same as they've held her when carrying the weight got too hard to bear. As she rocks and unconsciously hums a low tune to the sobbing woman, Elisabeth breathes out a soft sigh of relief that Erin's actually able to cry like this – to take the comfort that's offered. And in some way, it soothes a little bit of Liz's heart too, for now.
After a moment, Erin backs up a bit, looking deeply ashamed. “Thank you. I’m sorry. Today was, like, not even that bad compared to the war. I just keep wondering if I ruined an opportunity for us to get more information, too, but honestly I think it just hits different when you’re expecting to go help put a fire out, and then…I don’t know, those stupid fucking robots show up again…”
The expression on Liz's face when Erin backs up is not embarrassed. It's simple kindness and sympathy. "Yeah," she says softly. "Believe me, I did not see that coming." She leans sideways to pluck a box of tissues off the bottom shelf of her bookcase and holds it out to Erin. Such catharsis is generally a little messy, after all. She's quiet for a moment while she tries to sort out what, and how much, to say. But it's clear to her that Erin needs to know she's not alone.
"For a minute out there, I didn't know where I was," Elisabeth finally admits quietly. She gestures to her ear. "No one knows it, but I'm actually deaf on one side and pretty hard of hearing on the other because of an RPG explosion. So… I use my ability at low levels all the time. I always keep my ability tuned to certain frequencies. Certain… sounds. I can't help it anymore, it's pretty much automatic. The footsteps were out of place, so I tuned in closer… and the hy—" Her voice cuts off because there's a subtle rise in that nearly inaudible sound that has been battering the room since before Erin entered. "Hyd-d-d-draulics," she stammers out. "I could hear them. And I had a flashback. There in the mud, we were… as far as I knew, we were in No Man's Land and they were hunting."
Such simple words to convey such a depth of reactions. The tremors, the panic, the low-level subwoofer-like hum that brushes the hair on the arms to attention. She has been up close and personal with HunterBots, clearly.
The hair on Erin’s arms does indeed stand at attention, and it is unclear whether it is due to the sound or the feeling in Liz’s voice, and she gratefully takes the tissue and mops up her face a bit. She’s squeezing the moist, wadded-up tissue in her palm progressively harder as Liz talks, until she notices she’s soaked it more with palm sweat than tears or snot and chucks it at the wastebin. Unbelievably, it makes it in. Perhaps the sound amplifies her aim, too; she almost always misses.
“I’m so sorry, Liz. I had no idea you were deaf. Sometimes I wonder if our abilities don’t manifest or heighten somehow due to our physical or emotional barriers. Are you okay? What…what happened then, if I may ask? I know, it’s so rude, whenever you have a trauma people seem obsessed with hearing it in their own morbid way, like they want to hold some part of it or make it happen again or something, but…I guess I want to know so that I can–”
What? Know this part of her boss better? That’s definitely a weird line, she keeps telling herself, but then, being a cop isn’t exactly the same as being a civilian. The relationships have different dimensions when you are responsible for protecting the life of the person whose arm is wrapped around your shoulders, and vice-versa.
What? Have an understanding of what she’s been through? What purpose does that serve? Is it invasive? Is it relevant? Will it drive a wedge between them rather than charter a boat towards mutual understanding?
What? Feel a little less lonely in all of this? In the world, in the job, in the work, in the terrible choices we make on this squad? How self-centered can you be?
“- help next time, I guess. If they showed up here, they’re going to show up again. So much new and bad is happening, so fast.”
As always, Elisabeth is a little careful in the way she phrases herself because Erin doesn't know about the timeline hopping. But it's not like it's all that different than the war here in some ways.
"I actually didn't know it myself until several months ago," she admits. "RPG exploded too close to me while I was evacuating with some people from a spot where we were pinned down. It was so automatic, I didn't even know that it happened. In the times I've been negated since then, I chalked up the fact that everything sounded muffled to it being in my head." A wry grin is shot to Erin. "Even before that happened, though, I used to avoid my helmet in armor because it felt muffled. Richard always rode me about it because that was all in my head – I could hear just fine. I am just so used to how sound moves the air around me that the absence of that movement on my skin was noticeable to me even though it didn't affect my actual hearing."
She shrugs a little and looks down. "I don't know if you could have helped out there when I flashed back. That… I'm sure a lot of us have similar problems if we are faced with those things again. All of this… it's dredging up a lot of buried things, you know?" She looks up at the younger woman. "Pure Earth trying to snatch people off the streets, tagging people's businesses, setting bombs at concerts? It's… it's like I never left. Like I'm just watching it happen and trying to figure out sometimes if I got chucked back in time just to relive this shit. And now they're bringing Hunters to bear too." Her jaw clenches hard.
"I've seen what the world becomes when people like that are in charge. But… I'm tired of a decade of fighting this fight." The confession is hard for her. Her tone reflects the darkness of dejection. "I came back to help build NYPD. I just wanted to train you guys. But Donovan…" Elisabeth smirks a little. "I'm a little too good at my job, I guess. Marcus talked me into this role. Wasn't supposed to be on the streets much." She drops her head to the wall once more. "But here we are." With all the nightmares that come with it.
Erin smirks herself. “It’s a bit like that Gandalf quote. The … what is it … the one he’s talking to Frodo about the crossroads of the journey they’re on, just before he falls in Moria? I don’t know if you’ve even seen the movie or read the book. It’s the line about all we can do is do what’s right with the time given to us, or something. One of my dads is a nut for Tolkien.” A beat. “Anyway. Sometimes I forget just how different our paths here were. You’re not that much older than me, but I’ve been on the force longer because I went through the Academy. But by going through the Academy, I was shielded from some parts of the war until I wasn’t, and then I lost myself for a few years. But who wasn’t lost then, I suppose. You’re right.”
She picks up a wadded tissue from the small pile amassed on the ground in front of her shins, aims again at the paper bin, and with the barely imperceptible squeak of used Kleenex on plastic bag, it lands neatly in again. She shoots a did you see that? Twice? There’s no way I’m going to do that a third time expression at Liz before continuing.
“I feel like – and please do forgive me if this is insubordinate – there’s been a lot of doubt in you recently. About the past, about now, about everything. Am I wrong?”
Elisabeth takes her time before responding to that question, really thinking about it. It's a troubling question. "Not…. doubt. Not exactly." The conflict about how to explain what she's feeling is evident in her features. "Now more than ever, the normal people of this city – of the country, and even the world really – need the protections of civilized society. Police to enforce the laws we all agreed to. Or… at least that the assholes we voted into office agree to, I guess." She grins a little. "The politics thing is just fucked up, but still… it's the best infrastructure we have. I just…"
She hesitates. "Sometimes I'm really really tired of knowing what I know, I guess," Elisabeth admits. "Once you see in technicolor, how do you go back to a black and white world, sort of?" The analogy isn't quite what she's looking for either, but maybe it's close enough. "I can't just go about my life and pretend that I can't see people being hurt or that people aren't out there doing shitty stuff. I just sometimes wonder, especially when it feels like living in a repeating loop, if there will come a time when it's okay to stop being the one who steps up. And I don't really see how I'll ever get to a point where I could convince myself it's okay to stop anyway." She shrugs. "Overdeveloped sense of responsibility, maybe?"
Her head thumps against the wall behind them a couple of times. "Doubt, crisis of faith, just dog-ass tired… I don't know what to call it. I'm just emotionally exhausted, I guess." And there's no end in sight for her – her husband is in another timeline trying to save the goddamned world again and she's here, doing what she can while waiting to see if the world is gonna end. Heh. "I think I just need a good night's sleep."
“I believe the term for that is ‘exhaustipated,’” Erin agrees, tossing another tissue. This one bounces sloppily off of the rim, everything but net. She edges herself over to place it in properly and then scoots back to her previous seat, the floor warm. “Not that you asked, but I will say that you do a lot. All the time. I feel like you’re always there with the answer, or to comfort someone upset, or to pick up the pieces, but you’ve got to pick up you, too. I know you know this. But if your heart isn’t in this, or if you needed to go somewhere else…well, I’d understand.” And follow, if you’d like. “Do you want to go out and get a drink or something? Just not be alone in all of this for a little while?”
Elisabeth looks sideways at the younger woman and smiles softly. "I would really, really like that."