She Likes To Watch

Participants:

vf_cardinal_icon.gif vf_peyton_icon.gif

Scene Title She Likes To Watch
Synopsis A tidbit of knowledge from another world is confirmed in this one… and Cardinal gets Peyton on board with a plan.
Date December 8, 2011

Peyton's Subway Car


The abandoned subway car that Peyton has claimed rests on a less-traveled track, far from the center of the hub. The outside of it has been graffitied over in a myriad of colors, the words and symbols obscuring one another so it has coalesced into an abstract painting at a glance, though some individual words or letters can be made out in the faint light. A crank lantern gives the interior just a little bit of light, illuminating the inside, though it seems to be almost out.

Peyton is asleep on one of the benches inside, a sleeping bag beneath giving the bench a little bit of cushion, and an old, threadbare quilt tucked around her body. With her blue hair fallen away from her face and the pale silver light of the lantern illuminating the interior of the train car, her skin seems to almost glow and there's a rare, sweet, almost angelic quality to her face when she isn't smirking as she usually does when she's awake.

It's in silence that Richard Cardinal kneels beside the bench, the shadows having flowed up to form flesh and bone and clothing once more. The light of the lantern a little dimmer with him adding to the shadows around her. He watches her face with a faint smile, and then finally reaches over to gently brush a bit of hair away from her brow in a brush that he hopes will awaken her without too much panic.

"Hey, lover," he greets quietly.

Her eyes slowly open, half-lidded as she looks up at him, and she makes a soft, waking noise, before tugging him down for a kiss. "Hey," she murmurs, stretching a bit, but not sitting up. "Is it morning?" It's hard to tell in the tunnels beneath the ground — no true sunlight to be found down here, and she hasn't seen the sun in so many years, as evidenced by her porcelain complexion.

"Were you outside?" she asks, curiously, always eager to hear his stories of his adventures beyond the locked door. The stories are either very boring or very harrowing, but they don't seem to stop her desire to know.

A lean down, and he returns that kiss, drawing back then with a low chuckle. "I think so… and no, I was carrying out our little shadow mission for our good friend K-Mart," he replies casually, a single brow arching as he looks down to her, fingertips brushing lazily through her hair, "Found out quite a bit of… interesting information from our weepy piano-playing friend."

"Every mission you do is a shadow mission," Peyton points out, her eyes lidding lazily as his fingers pull through her hair. "Did you? I haven't seen Magnes yet. He's probably trying to figure out a way to save us all." She lowers her voice — there may be people outside on the tracks or thin walkway that could overhear them, if they tried — or if they had keen ears. "If the crazy Quantum Leap shit's true, it makes more sense, some of what he said. That he was going to find a way to save us — that he was having trouble adjusting to the apocalypse, like it was a surprise to him, you know? But he could just be fucking nuts. I wouldn't rule it out," she says, sitting up and reaching for a backpack nearby to pull out a half-empty bottle of whiskey. It's a terrible brand, but beggars can't be choosers. Handing it to him, she asks, "What'd she say?"

Cardinal rocks back to his heels as she sits up, and then he pushes fully up to his feet. A step in, a turn and he drops to sit on the bench beside her - an arm going around her shoulders, his other going for the bottle of whiskey. "I think it's true," he admits, the tip of his tongue moistening his lips, "She knew… stuff about me that I hadn't told anyone here. Not even you. Izzy knew some of it, but some other stuff? Never told a soul."

He tilts the bottle back for a swig of cheap whiskey, coughing a few times as it goes down before rasping, "She knew you too."

Her expression turns quizzical, brows coming together as she glances at him from the side. "Really?" she says skeptically. "She doesn't seem like our type of people, does she? She seems so…" she thinks for a moment. "I don't know. Nice?" It's a compliment, really. She laughs, realizing that it sounds like she's saying he's not nice, and she turns to kiss him and apologize. "I mean, you're nice, but you're not like proper. And you know I like bad boys, so trust me, I'd rather have you not all proper."

She takes the bottle for her own swig — she doesn't cough, but she knew what to expect. Her voice is rough, though, when she speaks again. "So she just told you everything that K told us?"
"Oh, I see how it is," he teases her back, leaning in to return that kiss - his teeth catching her lower lip playfully as she pulls away. "I'm not nice. Uh huh." He winks, and then he throws his head back, looking at the ceiling. "She needs some chick named Gillian Childs that's—" A vague motion upward, "Out there somewhere. Maybe the Vs have her, I don't know. Seems like that Magnes guy, with Ruiz maybe, can make a door… but they need her for some reason. Gonna have me do some recon when they find her."

Then he adds, ever so casually, "Oh, and she told me you like to watch."

Peyton sighs dramatically as he pulls away to go back to talking about more serious things, though she did the same a moment before. Turnabout maybe fair play, but it's not fun, in this case. That perplexed expression returns as he speaks of Gillian Childs, Ruiz, Magnes, and doors. "Huh," is all she has to say to that.

At that last comment, though, her brows lift, and her lips quirk to the side in a smirk. "I what?" she says, and on someone other than Peyton, it might come off as shocked and prim. She looks like she finds it funny, though.

"Oh, you know… like I said, she knew us, or some other version of us…" Cardinal turns his head back to look down to her, eyebrows raising a little and a smirk twitching to his lips, "…names, addresses… secret fuckin' abilities to see through the eyes of people… you know." An easy shrug, "Stuff."

"Weird," she says, with a shake of her head. "I can't imagine another version of you. Or me."

But then there's the mention of clairvoyance.

Oh.

Oh.

Her cheeks flush and her eyes widen. "The fuck? Only like one person here knows that." And it clearly wasn't Richard.

"Lucy," Richard deadpans, meeting her gaze and raising both eyebrows high, "You got some 'splaining to do."

"All right, Ricky," Peyton says with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head. She looks down at the bottle in her hands, fiddling with the yellowed label. "I can. Kain knows." Her dark eyes come up to find his, and there's a very unfamiliar look of something like contrition in her expression. "Not because I told him. He sort of guessed because back before all the shit hit the fan, I was this close to making it on the Linderman Casino black book." She smiles. "I'm fucking great at poker." Except for her lack of poker face, but that's less of an issue when you're playing the house. "So when he found me in here… you know. That's why I work with him."

"Yeah, well, you're lucky that Elisabeth knows you're hiding it now or she might've spilled it to the wrong person…" Richard snorts a bit, "I mean I'm gonna look all vulnerable and injured over here because you didn't tell me— " He's not looking like either. "— but someone else might've gotten weird about it." He gives her a level look, "You taking the drugs?" The negation drugs. Recreational pharmecuticals are fine.

She lifts a shoulder at the 'lucky' comment. "I've told people I'm not manifested. How can they prove otherwise?" she says, a little coolly. "That's fucking weird, someone knowing it that I don't even know. Like, yeah, if I was going to tell people, you'd know, of course, but it's not like I shouted it from the rooftops."

The question is ignored for the moment, and instead she takes another swig of the alcohol before passing it back to him. Instead of an answer, she volleys the question back at him. "Are you?"

"Obviously not," replies Cardinal with a roll of his eyes, "But I'm not even physical most of the time."

He crooks a brow back at her, "You're the one risking your ass. Well. And mine since you'd probably infect me pretty quick, but— I mostly was wondering to know if you've got access to it."

Peyton lifts a shoulder again. The question was rhetorical, of course. She uncaps the bottle to take another drink, and passes it his way again, clearing her throat a moment later. "You're physical often enough, even without being near me," she says. "Enough that it's a risk for you too. I haven't been outside since I got here." She knows that's not enough to protect her totally — it's a weak defense. Like talking to a teenager about safe sex.

"I do," she says simply. "But it's not magic. I can't just, you know, say I wanna see through Johnny Depp's eyes or something." She makes a sad face. "He's probably dead. How sad is that."

Cardinal sweeps one hand in an arc as if gesturing to the horizon. "I prefer to think he's out on the seas, surviving off fish on the deck of the Black Pearl with a half-dozen of Hollywood's most desperate starlets…" He reaches over for the bottle, then, and he nods slightly, "I'd yell at you, but… good. We might need that. So, it's gotta be someone you've met or something…?"

"That's a nice thought," Peyton says of the image of Jack Sparrow on the ocean — if a little silly. She chuckles at his words. "Ah, how sweet. You care," she says, though her tone's a bit wry — he already mentioned risking his ass, so it might not be totally about her.

The question gets a nod, and she brings her feet back up onto the bench, scooting down a little so that she can rest her head on his knee. "Someone I've met or someone I've seen through the eyes of someone else I'm looking through. And I need to, you know, know I know them. Enough to focus on them, bring them to my mind, you know?"
A swig of the whiskey, and Cardinal waggles the bottle through the air for a moment. "Useful…" He tilts his head, looking back to her, "So if I do go on this… recon mission, you can see what I'm seeing, and then anyone I spy on, you can spy on too?"

She tips her head. "Wow, that's…pretty smart. Yeah, I could do that," she says, lips curving into a smile, but it slips away. "Are you looking for Vanguard?" There's a difference, it seems, between going out to scavenge and avoiding the people trying to murder them, and actually going out to seek them out. "You have to promise to be more careful than usual. Like, I'll kill you if you get yourself killed. I'm serious." Whether she realizes the irony in that last sentence or not is unclear, but she does look worried about him.
"I think I will be." Richard crooks a smile, then, one hand lifting to brush a bit of hair from her brow as he teases, "Keep that up and I'm going to think you care, Pey." A nudge of his shoulder to hers, "I'm going to do my damndest. I want to survive too."

Peyton rolls her eyes at him, but it's with a small smile. "I'm afraid to hope there's away out of this," she admits. "But I guess we can try to help find one if so. Just… you know. Don't let everyone and their fucking brother know what I can do. Right now they think I'm just an idiot spoiled brat, and that's safer than knowing I can spy on any of them." She sits up again and rests her forearms on his shoulders, leaning forward until her head bumps his. "You must be really serious about all this helping and spying stuff if you haven't even asked me the dirt I have on people."

At that, Richard breathes out a snort. "Look…" He tilts his head in against hers, his eyes closing, "…I don't want to haunt the fucking ruins of a dead world for a thousand years, Peyton. And I don't want to watch you, or even that asshole Kain turn into fucking cherry cobbler. And all the dirt in the Hub isn't going to change any of that." His voice quiet, serious, "I know it makes me a sucker, but— if there's a way out for me, for us? I'm gonna do everything I can to make it happen. And God help anyone who gets in my way."

Peyton's big brown eyes widen a little when Richard grows so serious, so intense. She reaches up to trail a hand from his temple to his jaw. "It doesn't make you a sucker," she says quietly, solemnly, but then the corners of her mouth pull upward into a smile.

"You're kinda hot when you're being all heroic and shit, you know that? Come here," she says, fingers sliding from his jaw to his collar and tugging him forward to deeper, longer kiss that won't be interrupted with talk of abilities or people from parallel universes.


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