Participants:
| Scene Title | Sorry I Called |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Melissa calls Peter for help, and he decides to clean up her mess. |
| Date | July 2, 2010 |
This has not been a good week for Melissa Pierce. Not a good week at all.
When morning comes, and most of the good boys and girls are getting up, eating breakfast, and getting ready for work, Melissa is passed out on her couch, trying to get a few minutes of sleep, if only to escape for a time. The table next to her is full of stuff. A pill bottle, her phones, sodas and bottles of water, things to munch on…and a pistol. All kept within arm's reach, to allow her to grab them without moving much more than her arm.
The woman herself certainly looks like she's seen better days. The cuts on her arms look like they're healing well enough, but there's one hell of a bruise on the side of her face, high, close to her temple. She's still wearing the pants she wore the night before, but her boots are gone, and all she's wearing above the waist is a black sport's bra. The lack of anything covering her ribs leaves more bruises naked to the eye, dark angry spots that look like they'll be painful to touch. Or perhaps just painful period.
The TV is on, about halfway through Blazing Saddles, because really, who wouldn't be cheered by Blazing Saddles? The front door is unlocked, leading to the impression that she was too distracted to think about locking it. It could also be why the kitchen is a mess. Her shirt lays on the table, a wet rag dumped in the sink…And an empty bottle of tequila rests on the counter. What the hell did she do last night?
The shadow that slides into her house doesn't need to use the front door, it's hard to say exactly where he did come in from. Maybe the cracks in the floorboards, maybe a window or a gap beneath the back door. The inky silhouette that spills across Melissa's floor belongs to the man she'd left a drunken voicemail for just after midnight. Leading two lives and working twice as hard to do it, Peter Petrelli finds himself drawn to Melissa's home too many hours later than he wanted to.
Rising up from the shadow as if it were the surface of water, Peter slowly takes on a solid form, shadows clinging dark to him before light equalizes and his approach to the sofa creaks across the floor. Dark eyes alight to the ceiling, listening for the footsteps of the young man who shares this residence with Melissa, before crouching down at the side of her sleeping form.
He can't just heal her and be gone, the pain of the repair would jostle her awake. That much has Peter reconsidering things, his own actions, and his involvement of Melissa into Messiah. "Maybe I was wrong…" is whispered as he reaches a hand out to her shoulder, shaking gently.
"Melissa," Peter says in a hushed tone as he carefully tries to rouse her awake.
There are no other sounds. Kendall hasn't yet returned home. Other than Francois and Peter, she hasn't called anyone, so Kendall doesn't know to come home yet.
Unlike the last time that Peter woke Melissa, she wakes quickly, and too fully. But it still takes a moment for her to realize that the person standing over her isn't just someone she knows, but someone she trusts, someone she invited. In that moment, she's reaching out towards the table, only to have her hand still halfway there as she peers at Peter.
"Oh, it's you," isn't the most warm of greetings, especially not when given in a soft, tense voice, but it's a greeting. She reaches out again, though rather than reaching towards the gun to defend herself, fingers stretch towards the bottle of pain pills and the water that sits next to them. "Sorry I had to call you. Know you probably wish I'd called anyone else," she says, and it's not hard to detect a note of bitterness.
"Shut up," is all Peter has to say as he reaches out his hand, fingertips gently touching across Melissa's ribs, head shaking slowly from side to side. There's a slow sigh from Peter, a look out to the pill bottles and the bottle of alcohol, brows furrowing and lips downturning into a frown. He's not going to lecture her — yet.
"I don't know if I can fix this," Peter admits a bit awkwardly. "I mean, I can, but I don't know what will happen if I use my ability on you again so soon after doing it before. I'm not like Gabriel, I… I can't just figure things out by looking at them." There's a hint of jealousy there too, each of them thinking the grass greener on the other side. "I know you can't go to a regular hospital, but… you're going to need to get an X-Ray on these ribs. I don't… I don't know about your head."
Peter lifts up a gloved hand, lightly brushing fingertips over Melissa's temple, exhaling a weary sigh. "I know a guy," Peter says quietly, "lives out in Greenwich Village. He's not associated with the Ferry, but he's a street doc. Does stuff on the side, I think he's a healer— Evolved. I don't know him personally, but both West and Knox have gone to him before. He used to work here out of Staten Island. Goes by the name Constantine Filatov."
Rolling his tongue over the inside of his cheek, Peter's brows crease into a furrow. "I… I think you should go see him. I can get you something for the pain, bandage your ribs up, but… You're going to need something more than that." Then, of course, comes the more important question.
"Who did this to you?"
Mention of Peter 'fixing' her has Melissa pointing towards him rather than going for her pain meds. "No. You're not healing me. That's not why I called. Francois said wrapping my ribs was fine. I just couldn't do it myself." Her eyes close as she relaxes back. "I didn't want to call you, Peter. I didn't…" She shakes her head slowly and sighs.
"I don't know the names of the guys who did this. They were anti-evolved jackasses, just like the guy on Tuesday. Ran into 'em last night comin' out of a bar. Saw 'em vandalizing some evolved's shop. Told 'em to stop, so they called me an evo-lovin' freak and decided to knock the shit out of me before getting in some practice kickin' my ribs in. Does it really matter?"
"And I couldn't even make it upstairs, so I sure as hell can't drive, so this Constantine guy is out."
"I can drive." Peter says with a stern expression, pushing himself up to stand as he looks down at Melissa's bruised ribs, brows furrowed and lips halfway pulled down into a frown. He can't really look at Melissa, not with her hair as dark as it is, not with her battered form reminding him of something terrible he saw in a vision.
So he turns, and when Peter crosses his arms over his chest, he starts to pace away from the sofa. "It matters to me, it matters that you were obviously so drunk that you couldn't even defend yourself. Four, five, six armed men shouldn't be a problem for you— not with your ability. You want me to trust you with something as important as being my second, and you can't even take care of yourself?"
Peter turns around, brows furrowed and dark eyes flicking across the sofa, then down to the couch, the liquor bottle and then back to Melissa. "Did they get away, the guys who did this to you? And where'd it happen. I don't care if you don't think it's important, it is."
That was clearly a low blow, and one that gets Melissa sitting up abruptly, though she only makes it halfway before she has to stop, letting out a gasp of pain. "You wanna know why I was that drunk, Peter? Do you? Because I promise you I have one hell of a good reason," she snaps. Then, as though he'd answered yes, she starts talking.
"Monday…well, you know what happened Monday. Tuesday I nearly got myself blown up when some asshole decided to blow up himself and a fucking ice cream cart around a bunch of kids and innocent people, all to get rid of a few evolved. I strain my ability keeping the person who saved me from being in pain, and then the next day I go on my first mission with you. You won't hardly look at me, and then what do I do? I do the job. No problem right? Except I'd never killed anyone before in my life," she says, the last words said more in a quiet hiss than anything else.
"Don't get me wrong, Peter, I did the job. I'll do it again, but I think I'm entitled to one fucking night of being drunk as hell after I make my first kill. It wasn't like I had a boyfriend I could have hold me, or even anyone I could talk to about it. So I got drunk. And yes, the assholes got away. The bouncer ran 'em off. Was a bar not too far from here. Why? You gonna go beat 'em up for me?"
She shakes her head. "I'll find the guys who did this, Peter. I'll make them regret it. And I'll do the job for you, whether you trust me or not. But last night aside, you know I did good in Montana. And you should know that you can trust me. Now hand me my goddamned shoes and take me to this fabulous healer, would ya?" she asks as she works herself into a sitting position, then starts to stand up as slow as she can.
"Shooters…" is Peter's only response to that whole tirade, and it has Peter reaching for his phone in his jacket as he walks across the living room towards where Melissa keeps her shoes. "Knox," is spoken into the phone curtly, before a ringing sound comes over the receiver as he is connected to the requested line. Bending down to pick up Melissa's sneakers, Peter hesitates when he hears a voice over the other end of the line.
"Hey, it's Peter. I'm sorry for bothering you so early, I know you just got back into town. I was wondering if you could do me a favor?" Straightening, Peter twists and offers a look over his shoulder to Melissa, then turns and carries the sneakers over, settling them down on the coffee table. "Could you take Risa and head out to Shooters? I need her to do a postcognitive sweep of the area outside of the bar, about…" there's a glance up to Melissa, then away, "twelve hours ago at the most? I'm looking for faces and names of some Humanis First thugs that got a hold of Melissa."
Grimacing, Peter steps away from the sofa and waves one hand distractedly in the air. "No, no she's— she'll be alright. I just… can you do that for me?" There's a pause, a slow dip of a nod from Peter and his tone softens. "Thanks, Knox. I owe you one." Clicking his phone shut, Peter's slow to turn back and face Melissa.
This may be her mess, but it seems like he wants to clean it up.
Melissa frowns at Peter as she listens to the phone call, her head tilting. "Why did you do that?" she asks, voice soft and slow, before heading into the kitchen to retrieve her shirt. She manages to hide the pain on her face until her back is to Peter, but that just shoes off the cuts from Tuesday's explosion that are dotted all along her back.
When she comes back in, she's carefully working the shirt on, making only one sound of pain when it causes her to move wrong, then she's sitting back down to get started on her shoes. "I told you I'd find the guys. Why…" She trails off and shakes her head, looking very intently at her shoes.
"We take care of each other," Peter explains quietly, "you'd do the same thing if someone attacked Risa or Thalia or anyone else." Running a hand through his hair, Peter huffs out a tired sigh, dark circles still heavy around his eyes. It's evident from the tiredness and weakness in his expression that he hasn't gotten any sleep, and the EMT uniform he's wearing is clear enough indication that he'd just come in off of work.
"Put your shoes on," Peter insists, stepping away from Melissa and tucking his cell phone back into his pocket, slowly treading across the floor towards the front door of the house, then steps aside to peer out one of the windows, then back to Melissa. "Do you have a car?" That's probably something he should have asked earlier.
Melissa looks up, to watch Peter as he moves away, a frown on her face. "Yeah…I have a car. But look. Just give the address, give the guy a call so he's expecting me. I'll take a cab. You get some sleep. I don't give a damn if you go home and sleep, or use the bed upstairs. If you can get eight straight, good. If you can get more, wonderful." She pauses, then adds, "Eat something first, then sleep." Even mad at him, mad at her week, she's still trying to take care of him.
"You going to twitch your nose and wish a cab into existence out here?" Peter asks with a sarcastic tone of voice, arms crossing over his chest. "There's no public transportation out here. Just— get your mock ID my mother made for you and give me your keys and shut up and let someone do something for you for once in your life. I'll sleep when— " Peter's brows furrow, and his expression suddenly shifts to show as if he was remembering something.
There's a crease of Peter's brows, his head shakes from side to side and he looks around the apartment. "I… just had the weirdest sense of Deja Vu." He manages a smile at that, then dismissively shakes his head. "Give me your car keys, and we'll get going."
Melissa's brows lift when he mentions the ID. She didn't know he was aware of that. But then her head tilts and she looks curiously at him. "You'll sleep when I sleep? Is that what you were gonna say?" There's a lengthy pause, then Mel scoops up her phones and wallet off the table, dropping them into pockets. "If it is, I can agree to that," she says in as casual a tone as she can manage. "I didn't sleep much last night. Few minutes at a time." And she didn't sleep at all on the plane ride back from Montana. Guilt is great for giving you insomnia.
The car keys are picked up next, and dangled out towards him. "Your chariot awaits. Just…ignore the blood. Daphne and Nadira bled in it a little on Tuesday. On the way to see the doctor."
Snatching the keys from Melissa, Peter gives the brunette a furrow of his brows and a sigh. "Come on…" he breathes out reluctantly, turning towards the front door in slow pace, making sure Melissa can keep up with him as battered as she is. He stops, though, on noticing that the front door is unlocked, turning the knob and pushing the door open, looking back over his shoulder to Melissa with a disapproving frown before stepping out with clunking footsteps onto the porch.
"Don't forget you live on Staten Island, okay?" Peter offers in subtle warning to Melissa as he holds the door open for her to step out onto the front porch, "lock your door, okay? You never know what crazy people will just invite themselves into your house."
The front door is pulled closed, and as Peter departs the screen door groans shut and slams against the frame. As the two make their departure from that little green house towards Melissa's car parked on the sidewalk, they are both unaware that they are being watched. Up on the second floor, shadowed in the window, the silhouette of a man watching them leave is barely visible, a secret shadow observing from afar.
Rupert Carmichael steps into view for just a moment, eyes narrowed and brows furrowed, before disappearing deeper into the house.
Unnoticed.