Suppression

Participants:

sf_brynn2_icon.gif sf_jac2_icon.gif

Scene Title Suppression
Synopsis sə-ˈpre-shən. Noun. The act of ending or preventing something by force.
Date March 10, 2021

After a few days of rain, the sun has emerged, and even in New York City, one can tell that spring is on its way. The sky is blue, crisp and clean after the cleansing rain, with puffy white clouds that bring to mind Pixar movies and children’s books. The greenbelts around the posh apartment complexes of the Upper East sides are vivid and right after the soak, and buds are appearing on the ends of tree branches. It’s what some might call a perfect day.

For the two sisters who have been trying to resume some sort of normalcy after the strange events of the last couple of months, it’s an opportunity to get outside and stretch their legs. Their neighborhood isn’t so busy with pedestrians that it should be too loud for Jac’s newfound power — there’s the rare nanny out walking a stroller or a jogger running by, but the distractions are brief and fleeting.


Upper East Side, Manhattan


Ever since the day Everything Changed in their house, Brynn has been trying desperately to act like things are normal. Mom's strange moments aside, it's been mostly quiet. She has been doing a lot of photography around the parks. It's the time of year when colors start exploding around New York. So today with her camera over her shoulder just in case something catches her eye, she scuffs along with Jac. "Is it too loud for you?"

Usually it's Jac asking that.

And it sounds weird coming from Brynn.

Jac, face partially obscured by her arms folded behind her head, casts a sidelong look at her sister. It feels nice being outside, after the rain has always been one of her favorite times to escape the house — especially when she was little and splashing in puddles was all the rage, although she's not above splashing if the whim takes her.

“It's just distracting,” the younger Patrelli laments. “Like… when we're trying to talk at a dinner party and the television and radio are both on.”

The traffic on this block is usually fairly light — mostly only residents of the luxury apartments need to come down this street, though delivery trucks and service vehicles drive by now and then as well. There’s nothing extraordinary about seeing a black sedan with tinted windows or a plain white box truck or an Amazon truck with its smiling arrow painted on the side.

All of these vehicles share the street with them, among others.

Jac can pick up thoughts from the cars almost like she’s tuning in and out of radio stations. Little blips of thoughts, tiny soundbytes, ping her mind, unbidden. Most of them are easy enough to ignore.

…can’t believe I forgot the dry cleaning…

…better tip this time…

…going to be late…

…that’s them…

The last is accompanied by a tone of urgency, almost a thrill or excitement coloring the thought, making it sharper, if not necessarily louder, than the rest of the white noise that’s become the backdrop for Jac’s headspace.

"Are you getting any better at blocking it out or anything?" Brynn asks curiously. She herself is struggling a little with going in and out of phase when she wants to — she keeps doing it when she's surprised, though. She's really grateful not to have Jac's ability, honestly. She already deals with learning to filter out excess noise just from the cochlear implant. She did share what she could about how she does that, though! She doesn't know if it helps Jac, but it's better than nothing, right?

“I guess?” Jac had given up on going to school, instead communicating with her teachers over email and having work sent home. It wasn't the best solution, though, not if she's ever going to figure out her own new powers. Especially if she's going to keep things secret.

Casting her eyes over to the cars that drive by, Jac puffs out her cheeks. “Sometimes it's easier. Like how the murmuring drone sounds when we're in a restaurant. Or on an airplane.” An example she's pretty sure her sister would be able to relate to; that buzz of so many voices mixing together where you might catch a word every now and then, but in general it's just noise that fills the air.

Most of the vehicles, and even the pedestrian passersby, are no more registered than those sounds she was alluding to. Nothing really pops as unusual, not even the snippets of thought that she catches. Until that one thought. Even though it, like all the others on the walk, seems inconsequential, there’s something about the inner voice that tingles. Jac turns her face more toward the street, her head tilting very slightly.

Whatever — whoever — that one urgent thought came from, it’s soon outshadowed by a much louder one closer by. A young woman, who looks to be in her late teens, comes around the corner a few yards away. It doesn’t take Jac’s ability to see she’s distraught; black mascara streaks her face and she furiously types messages into her phone. For Jac, the stranger’s pain and anger overshadow everything else — it’s like she’s screaming her very emotions into the teenager’s ears, and it pierces through everything.

Why doesn’t he love me? Am I not pretty enough? How could he do this to me? How could he leave me? How could he just ghost me like this?

The crying stranger looks up as she sees the two girls, giving them an embarrassed and wavering smile before she presses her lips together to stifle a sob.

Sympathy crosses Brynn's face as she spots the crying person. Poor thing — I hate it when someone gets upset like that in public. They're always so embarrassed. She nods an acknowledgement that she sees the woman but then tactfully averts her eyes to her sister. "I'm sure you'll get to the point where you'll be able to ignore the background noise, just like we don't really hear the traffic noise anymore. I mean… it won't be as easy as I made it sound, I'm sure!" She doesn't want Jac to think she's making light of the difficulty, she just wants to be supportive.

Head swiveling, Jac finds the crying girl just as Brynn does. With one hand, she reaches up to rub at a spot near her temple. Her brows knit when the young woman looks their way, drawing together in a mix of sympathy and vague, distracted annoyance. Unlike Brynn, she doesn't look away.

“Sure,” she agrees with a shrug. Jac shakes her head slightly and huffs out a breath. “Until then, it's just hearing everything that… I don't need to know.”

It’s the moment they look away — Jac to the brokenhearted woman, Brynn to her sister — that someone in the passenger side of the box truck launches something in the direction of the Petrellis. Jac catches sight of it on her periphery along with awareness of the single word NOW being thought loud enough to break through the noise of the fraught woman in front of them.

But there’s no time to act, no time to determine what the dark, spiralling object is before it hits a brick fence post a few feet away from them.

A few seconds later, the world is silent but for a ringing in her ears and for the thoughts that register — or don’t — in Jac’s mind. By the time she sits up, bloodied from small pieces of shrapnel, she’s struck by the fact that none of the cars stop; there’s no rush to get away from an explosion, or to come to the aid of the girls under attack. There’s no horn blasts, no fear in their thoughts — they simply keep driving.

The woman is no longer there. There’s no sign she ever was.

Brynn finds herself in anguish and locked in a world blocked out by an angry red shade, as if her eyes were closed and facing the western sun. Blood and tears stream down her face, swollen already from debris from the brick wall, where the grenade hit closest to her.

How are they still alive…

Jac hears the thought despite the silence and apathy around her, and senses the general irritation in it, the resignation of someone having to do more work. They need to move.

Brynn's hands fly to her face and she instinctively makes a thin sound that might be a scream… but she can't hear anything and it doesn't have the volume of a full-throated scream. She staggers under the sense of vertigo that came with the abrupt, forceful cessation of sound around her along with the shock of pain. Brynn! Jac’s voice is an urgent but distant thing inside her head as she lifts shaking hands to touch her face and feels the warmth of her blood. Beside her, she can sense her sister moving slowly, a familiar hand grasping her coat sleeve and then her wrist.

Terror is all she can feel — deaf from birth and now… dear God, is she blind?! Raw panic sets the petite brunette into hyperventilating. Brynn we have to go! Her hands are nearly as bloody as her face when Jac gets to her.

Fighting through the haze of disorientation, Jac manages to pull herself and her sister upright. One hand presses against her own ear to muffle the piercing tinnitus, the other pulls Brynn’s hands from her face. We have to go now. We need to run. She can't impress enough on how important it is that they run if she were yelling the words, and so she pushes and tugs on Brynn to get her moving.

A look shoots over her shoulder as she takes those first steps. That the rest of the world is unaware of what just happened registers somewhere in the back of her mind. More important is locating the vehicle, the one that's targeted them.

Practically running, with Brynn’s sleeve captured in a tight grip, Jac’s path takes them to the nearest alley. You have to hide. You have to call Mom or Asami. Or both seems to be an implied suggestion as she guides her sister into the space between buildings, searching frantically for somewhere that Brynn can hide. Tell them…

Her head swivels to look over her shoulder again before she abandons the elder Petrelli girl in the shelter of a doorway, obscured by a dumpster and pile of trash bags. I’ll find you, she promises her sister as she steps away and starts running again.

Jac checks behind her as her shoes slap the pavement. Puddles splash, no longer out of unnecessary fun, but because trying to avoid them would be costly. There’s no one else! The thought screams with as much panic as she feels, with the intent to make it seem true. It’s only me! What do you want?! Hopefully when they — whoever they are — return, they'll believe that there's only one Petrelli left.

As she nears the mouth of the alley, the black sedan screeches to a stop. The front and back passenger doors open and two dark suited men jump out. Jac can see the gun in one of their hands; the sun bounces off what looks like a blade in the other man’s.

Dark sunglasses cover each of their faces as they face her. When she looks over her shoulder, she sees the other side of the alley blocked by the white box truck. Her only consolation is that Brynn isn’t visible, tucked behind the dumpster as she is — or perhaps even further out of sight.

When she looks back at the two men, it’s just in time to see the silver blade come at her, followed closely by a second. Ducking one will probably put her into the path of the other, or vice versa. In that same second, part of her registers the other man lifting his hand, aiming the pistol at her. There isn’t time to run. There isn’t anywhere to hide.

Jac's voice in her brain helps quell some of her panic, but Brynn is absolutely a liability. She stumbles as Jac pushes her into a jog, and she's already breathless just from the terror. As she is secreted behind the dumpster, she finally manages to gather her thoughts enough to be somewhat coherent. Run, Jac! I'll call!

She can feel the vehicles in the alleyway, sense Jac's feet running that way. She still can not see, but there's some kind of white noise in her ear now — the implant maybe shorted out or something, she has no idea. She doesn't know if she'll be safe inside the wall behind her, but maybe on the other side? She leans backward and concentrates on phasing through it, tumbling into a whole mess of something on the other side of that brick. She isn't even getting up before she has her phone out and is telling it,

"Text Mom and Asami — People trying to grab us! Jac is running! — Send!"

Thank god for having learned to speak and for voice commands.

Jac twists and skids, aborting first the escape into the street that's blocked by the sedan. The second path, down the alley to the far end, is abandoned also when she sees that way impassable too. A wave of fear leaves a queasy feeling in her stomach. Heart hammering against her chest, she swings around to face the nearer vehicle and the two men who've climbed out.

It leaves her with almost no time to react. She sees something coming at her, something that flashes in the sunlight. Before Jac can parse what it is, before she can realize there is a second knife thrown and a gun tracking her movements, she throws herself sideways, away from the mouth of the alley and the sunglasses men.

Toward freedom?

Pavement leaves some painful scrapes where the teen crashes against it. But none of it compares to the burning cold pain that lances through her back below her ribs or the or the sickeningly intense pain that cramps her leg. Jac smacks into the asphalt, struggling to gather her senses before pain and panic overwhelm her.

Brynn can’t see what’s on the other side of the wall, can’t hear the surprised gasp of the housekeeper cleaning the room that the bleeding young woman has just phased into. The familiar scent of bleach and toilet cleaner hint to Brynn she’s in a bathroom and that she’s phased through the wall from the alley into the adjoining apartment.

Unseen, the maid drops her cleaning supplies, giving herself the sign of the cross as she begins to back out of the open doorway to the hallway, then turns and runs.

Feeling around her with her free hand, Brynn quickly realizes she's in a bathroom from the feel of the tile and the scents. Her heart is beating so hard in her chest, she can't tell if the thudding in her ears is just her blood pressure or her hearing settling from the explosion.


Meanwhile


On the other side of the wall, fate finds itself on Jac Petrelli’s side, and fate rides a Vespa.

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Passing the mouth of the alley just as those two blades strike the petite teenager, Daphne Ayer’s brown eyes widen in alarm. Seeing the second agent lift his gun, she cries out, “No!” and jumps off.

The red-and-white Vespa continues on its path without her. The agent turns, distracted, but the bullet hits Jac anyway, on the right side of her chest, and she falls backward with the force and pain of it. Her next breath feels like she’s inhaled shards of glass.

Suddenly, everything slows down for Jac and Daphne.

The agents seem to move in slow motion — slower, like a DVD inching forward a few frames at a time. The first agent’s thumb moves toward the trigger again. They see the flash of fire as the bullet leaves the barrel, and the bullet floating in the air.

If it hits one of us, would it even puncture our skin? Is an idle thought Daphne has time to think, and Jac has time to hear, despite the agony she’s in.

Daphne says aloud, “Let’s not find out.”

Just as the Vespa finally crashes into the wall at slow speed, Daphne’s arm loops around Jac’s waist and she scrunches her face up in concentration…


The Breaking Pint, DUMBO, Brooklyn


…and they fall into the backroom of her bar.

Jac collapses heavily onto the floor. One hand, shaking and trembling, cautiously explores the growing wetness that's making her shirt cling to her chest and ribs. Eyes, wide and wild with terror and pain, dart this way and that to pick up odd details in the unfamiliar room. As her head turns to bring more of the space into focus, she finds Daphne and her strength and resolve crumble.

Chin quivering, the teen makes a feeble attempt to push herself away from the woman. The motion made does little more than shift her small frame a foot or less. Tears sting her eyes and cut tracks through the thin layer of grime on her face. “Who…” Voice thick with the effort to speak through fear, Are you? trails off to leave the question unfinished.

Pressing her lips together, Jac stares at Daphne. Hopefully Brynn is okay. Tears blur her vision until she blinks them away. I don't want to die. And their mom and Asami know about the attack. A shuddering breath works its way past a soundless sob.

Daphne presses on the wound in Jac’s right side — there’s no exit wound, which means less blood, but it depends on where the bullet is if that’s truly good news or bad.

“Shit, shit, this looks bad. I’m calling 9-1-1, okay? Can you put pressure on that?” she asks, trying to maintain pressure while trying to dig out her cell phone from her pocket with one hand. “Why can’t I fucking picture the hospital?” she cries out, trying to picture it so she can teleport the girl — secret powers be damned — and failing, with nothing but a growing headache for her effort.

But Jac’s phone also buzzes with an alert, and it’s easier for Daphne to reach, so she pulls it out instead, bloody fingers smearing across the glass.

Mom
11:13 a.m.
Where are you two?????

“I’m Daphne. Your mom’s texting. Wants to know where you are,” Daphne says. She pushes the button to call, sets the phone on speaker, and then finishes pulling out her phone to call 9-1-1. The phone rings just once before it’s picked up.

“Jac? Jac?! Are you okay?! Where are you, sweetie?” Is the first thing said as soon as Kaylee hears the click of the phone. Her voice is pitched high with pure parental panic. “Where’s your sister?!”

Jac splits a frightened, tear streaked look between the phone and Daphne. Her jaw quivers when her mom’s voice comes over the line, but she struggles to find anything resembling an answer.

Daphne throws Jac a wide-eyed look at the mention of a sister, but jumps in to answer swiftly. “Ma’am, I have Jac with me at my bar, the Breaking Pint in Brooklyn. She’s seriously injured and I’m—”

The dispatcher answers on the other line: “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“I have a gunshot victim at 13 Main Street, DUMBO, backroom of the Breaking Pint. Also a couple of knife wounds? She’s a teenager,” Daphne says hurriedly. “The attackers aren’t here.” How she’s going to explain that one, she doesn’t know. “Jac, where’s your sister? Her mom says she has a sister, but I didn’t see her.”

“I don't know,” Jac’s voice is reedy with emotion, half answering Kaylee even though Daphne’s filled in some details. She sucks in a shuddering, painful breath and exhales a pair of quiet sobs. “I left her. I tried to… those guys… I left her in the alley. Mom…” Another stuttering breath is pulled in.

Squeezing her eyes shut sends new tears down her cheeks. “She’s hiding…” The teen’s voice wavers. She hopes Brynn is hiding. “Those… the guys chasing us…”

They can hear Jac’s mom starting to panic, her breathing quickening when she hears the words ‘gunshot victim.’ “O-o-oh… oh.. Oh gawd. J-j-jac. She’s been shot, Asami… she’s…”

But then she stops and the line seems to go silent for a long moment.

“We’re coming, Jac,” Kaylee’s voice is flat, devoid of any emotion, and completely calm. “Asami! Get me there. Now. And then go find Brynn.” There is a growl in those words, clearly spoken to someone else with a slight edge of disdain.

The words are hardly spoken across the receiver before there's a shuffle of noise from the front of house near the bar. "She said backroom, so that's got to be…"

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Surreal as it gets, Asami pushes open the door into the backroom then stands out of the way to allow the mama bear in Kaylee Valerie to make her way in first. The shorter Japanese woman looks to the injured teen for only a moment before shooting Daphne a look that's half-bewildered, half-apologetic. "Hang up on them," she asks briskly. "We've got this."

She understands implicitly that the aforementioned alley is likely not out back here.


Upper East Side, Manhattan


Brynn must look a complete fright, her face and hands covered in blood. The hand that has her cell phone in it remains clenched right around the device, desperately hoping for a response. She doesn't know where she is, and she is scared to death. Lifting a shaky, bloody hand to her face, Brynn touches her eyes carefully, trying to figure out why she can't see. Is her sight gone or is it just a wave of blood in her eyes from something hitting her face or what?

The message from her mother comes almost immediately with a haptic buzz she can feel.

Mom
11:13 a.m.
Where are you two?????

Even the gentlest touch against the skin around her eyes is painful, sending waves of stinging pain through the top portion of her face. She can feel tiny bits of something rough around the corners of her eyes, and when Brynn blinks, trying to rid them of the wash of blood and tears, it reminds her of the time she got a single grain of sand in her eye but a hundredfold worse. Every blink is agony, and with every blink, she knows she’s moving those miniscule bits of shrapnel across the delicate tissues of her eyes, possibly doing further damage.

She can’t hear the maid in the other room calling the police.

Worse, she can’t see the two agents, just getting into their car, as they pick up the call on the police scanner, and step back out, turning their heads in unison toward the door that leads to the apartment Brynn phased into.

Trembling in shock, Brynn's hand clutches her phone in a death grip. Resetting her receiver properly over the magnet didn't help and somewhere in the back of her mind she suspects that the explosion screwed up the electronics in the receiver. She can't tell how badly her words might be slurring, between the terror and the shaking, and she can't tell if she's crying or if it's blood still running down her face.

Assuming the buzzing phone is Kaylee, though, she tries again to send with voice text. "Mama, help! They threw a bomb at us by the park. I… I can't see or hear. Jac ran. She… she's trying to lead them off. I'm scared!"

Kaylee receives the text, voice to text errors due to Brynn’s crying:

Brynn
11:15 a.m.
Mama, hope threw a bomb at us by the bark I can’t see your hear Jack ran she is trying to leave them off I’m scared

Mom
11:17 a.m.
What? You’re making no sense! Call me!

Caught as she is with probably both blood in her eyes and potentially gravel actually damaging them and her implant electronics not working properly, all Brynn can tell is that she's on a floor in a bathroom and she fights to get to her feet without losing her buzzing phone. She can't answer because she has no idea what's being asked.

Something is telling her that staying right here might be bad, though. She feels her way along the sink, moving slowly to try to find a way out of her dark and quiet world.

At the front of the apartment, the agents pound on the door. “NYPD!” one shouts. When the door opens, he flips a badge at the housekeeper, who points down the hall toward the bathroom Brynn occupies.

“Thank you, ma’am. You can go,” the knife throwing agent tells the woman, and she bobs her head in gratitude, then grabs a huge purse from near the door and runs out into the street, only too eager to get away from the bloody-faced woman she saw in the bathroom she had just cleaned.

The agents begin to make their way down the hall, gun drawn, knives out.

She may be a woman grown, but in this instant Brynn is reduced to a sobbing, hiccuping, terrified child, deaf and in total darkness knowing only that she can taste blood. Her progress around the bathroom is hampered by her stumbling over things that fell when she came through the wall and although she can figure out what's the toilet and stuff, she has no idea which wall will have a door, much less that there's anyone else out in the hall with weapons.


The Breaking Pint, DUMBO, Brooklyn


Attempting to pull those details from Jac's mind, though, produces a warbling feedback through Asami's thoughts, and she furrows her brow almost like she's in pain. "Jac, I've— I've gotta shut your power off. Then I'm going to go find Brynn. All right?"

“Ma’am?” the dispatcher asks as Daphne blinks at the arrival of Asami and Kaylee Petrelli. Her eyes widen when she puts together the familiar features and name that somehow didn’t click together. If her heart could pound any harder, it would.

“How — oh. Right.” Daphne knows how they got there so fast. The same way she did.

She looks back to Jac and frowns; the teenager is so pale, and she can feel the blood still seeping from the wounds beneath her hands. “She’s— just hurry.”

Jac's eyes roll to the sound of a door opening. She stares at her mom and Asami, confused and scared, mouth moving in search of understanding.

Heart pounding, Asami opts not to wait for permission in this case. Forgiveness can come later, if ever. For now…

She lifts her hand in Kaylee's direction to single her out from the deadening pulse of negation that's uncapped from her being, eyes glazing over with focus as she balances that act with digging through Jac's mind for a visual of where she and Brynn were. Thoughts are herded in the direction she needs them to go, and she breathes out, "I've got it."

Just before vanishing from sight in a whisper of sound.

There is a nod at Asami starts, Valerie making sure to stay away until Asami vanishes. Only then does she approach the youngest Petrelli. Kneeling next to Jac, Valerie gently, lovingly tucks a strand behind the girls ear, even though she looked ready to break something.


Upper East Side, Manhattan


Dozens of feet away, Asami appears in a whisper of sound in the alley, head turning this way and that to find signs of Brynn— only to come up short. "Shit," she breathes as she completes another 180 just to be sure. "Shit." Her eyes flutter shut just after focusing on the signs of what must have injured Jac, and she exhales a breath to clear her thoughts.

To open her mind. To listen, like a radar, for thoughts nearby. She strains, walking further back from the site of the explosion. "Come on," she whispers. "Come on…"

Go slow! You can do this! Just move slower! Oh God, OW! Where is the flipping DOOR? The panicked thoughts of a familiar mind are pretty well as loud as klaxons as Brynn fights to keep some semblance of calm amid her terror. (She's failing. Calm is the exact opposite of where she is right now.) She can feel that she's standing between two sinks, and she puts her back to the wall between them to squeeze down into the smallest ball she can make of herself there and buries her face against her knees, sobbing into them. Please, Mommy, find me.


The Breaking Pint, DUMBO, Brooklyn


“Thank you for calling us,” Valerie says gruffly to the other woman, while typing out a text to the one person she trusts with Jac’s well-being. “I know someone who can heal her.” She doesn’t say who, in case Isaac wishes to keep his privacy.

Kaylee
11:20 a.m.
Isaac. I need your healing. Jac was injured in a bombing. Where are you?

Looking up from the screen, Valerie eyes the wife of Kaylee’s assistant. There is no smile, just a request, “I need you to take us some place close to his location.”

Isaac
11:22 a.m.
On Fifth, heading to something I'd love to have an excuse to reschedule. Where are you, and where do I need to meet you?

Panic clenches in Jac's chest when suddenly the constant hum of voices is gone. She might have thought that being alone in her head again would be preferable, but the unexpected silence feeds her overwhelmed senses. Her eyes go wide, focused on Asami until the instant the woman vanishes. Then, breaths coming in short and shallow, her attention slips to her mom and Daphne. The teen tries twice more to describe where Brynn was, barely managing the details she'd already given. "I'm sorry," she amends on a third try, jaw quivering and voice thin. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…"

“The hospital might be qui—” Daphne begins before the word heal registers. There’s still no sound of sirens in the background yet, which is… ominous. “Where exactly? We need to hurry unless he can…” she doesn’t say the words, but she shakes her head, looking to Jac. “Shhhh, conserve your strength, kiddo.”

Valerie’s face softens a little, as even she can’t turn a cold shoulder to her daughter’s pain. Fingers brushes Jac’s cheek, before she sends another text.

Kaylee
11:23 a.m.
What is the closest landmark? Tell me and go there.

Maybe Isaac understood the urgency of the request, because the heiress doesn’t have long to wait. Ding!

“The Gridiron,” Valerie says, reading the name out loud. “Take me and then come back to tell Asami.” Standing, she scoops her daughter up without waiting for Daphne to tell her if she knows where that is or not. She only stands there, like the young woman weighs nothing and stares at the teleporter with an air of impatience.

The words might not be said, but Jac reads the meaning into their absence. “I don't want to die.” Her eyes jump from Daphne to Valerie and back again. “I don't want to die.” Fear lends an urgent thrill to her words. “Please. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.” Emotion thickens her words and muddles them together as she repeats her wants straight up until her mom gathers her up.

The motion is jarring. It interrupts the slurry of pleading with a tight cry of pain and labored breathing. Jac’s head rolls to her mom’s shoulder, lips pressing together even though it doesn't do much to stifle the shuddering, sobbing breaths.

“I haven’t done this before with anyone but myself,” Daphne warns, unsure if it’ll work with two people, but she lifts her chin with determination. She stands, covered in Jac’s blood, facing Valerie, putting a hand on her arm and another on the teenager’s shoulder.

She scrunches up her nose, closes her eyes, and thinks that there’s no place like the Flatiron Building.


Upper East Side, Manhattan


Just around the corner, Asami sees the housekeeper rushing away toward the subway station down the block. As she runs past the brick post that’s seen better days; the blood stains and broken bricks on the sidewalk mark this as the location of the explosion.

By concentrating on the doorway of the townhouse the woman probably fled from, Asami picks up, faintly, the thoughts of the men within. One’s thoughts are no nonsense, focused on finding Brynn and finishing the job.

The other’s thoughts are much more chilling: May as well enjoy the chase. I like it when they cry.

It’s the right house.

In the chilling thoughts overheard, Asami finds clarity. Her eyes harden, and she moves forward in a rush for the door to that building. The front door is no object, Brynn's ability leveraged to get into the front door. From there, she follows the sound of the mental voices she picks up on.

She finds but a single man standing in the hall by the open bathroom door, the one with the gun. Coldness enters her own thoughts as she lifts her hand, intent on ripping the gun from his through telekinesis, but…

Asami closes her eyes hard, willing everything to stop. When she opens them again, the men are frozen. A slow breath of relief leaves her as she moves forward, dodging around the aggressors to enter the home's bathroom quickly.

In Brynn's world of darkness, she knows none of this, sees none of this. All she does know is that a hand places itself on her shoulder, unknown in origin or nature until…

Brynn? Asami's voice comes to her from everywhere and nowhere, sounding strained nonetheless. I've got you. Come on, let's go.

Unseen to them both, the men in the hall jutter oddly like a poorly spliced film reel.

The instant the hand touches her shoulder, Brynn goes intangible. Her panic spikes again, her heart races, and yet another load of adrenaline dumps into her system. As her head comes up, Asami gets her first look at the damage to the young woman's face. It's possible that it's not as bad as it looks — wounds to the head and face have a tendency to bleed way more than generally expected. But it's evident that the young woman can't see to assist in her own retrieval.

It's only the voice in her head that keeps Brynn from sinking through the floor to run once more. Asami? Oh thank God! She has to fight this time to find her way back to solidity to let Asami grab her again. It takes precious seconds, and once she is solid, Asi can feel the seismic tremors of adrenaline and terror that are rattling the girl's whole body. Are they gone? Is Jac okay? Did you find her too? A beat passes and Brynn starts to cry again and begs, Please say Jac's okay.

Because if her little sister died protecting her, Brynn is not sure she herself will ever be okay again.

Asami's eyes widen on seeing Brynn's state, shocked at the injuries to her face. She sucks in a breath, and her control over the men in the hall slips.

The timing is perfect — if close shaves make for perfect timing. Just as Asami makes contact with Brynn, the first of the men in the hall pokes his head into the bathroom.

He’s as generic as every no-name agent in Hollywood movies, made to blend into the background and not be noticed. But his eyes are cold and calculating, and he aims not for Brynn first but Asami, firing his gun three times in swift succession.

All she can consciously think is thank god it's her shot and not Brynn. Her answer regarding Jac's wellbeing is cut off before transmission, her hand spasming on Brynn's shoulder as she lets out a cry of pain. She trembles before drawing Brynn closer, trying to shield her from any further shots or other injury.

Asami fumbles, trying hard to re-establish hold on the ability she lost grasp of, even if it's to execute a different aspect of it. I've got you, she promises Brynn. I've got y—

And then they're suddenly not there to be attacked anymore.


The Breaking Pint, DUMBO, Brooklyn


"I've got her," Asami calls thinly from the front of the bar, back where she and Valerie had first appeared. She doesn't sound well, and she'll place the blame entirely on the bullet that chipped her rib on its way into her lungs. There's naught left for her to do but wait out the unpleasantness of involuntarily healing that as well as the shot to her arm and abdomen.

Brynn and Jac's injuries will be a trickier situation than that.

We're safe now, she promises Brynn.

The feel of Asami's arms around her is a relief, though Brynn feels the other woman jerk. Asami? What's happ— —ening? The last of it is left unasked, a hiccup in blipping from one location to another. When they land and the assurance is given, Brynn's tremors get deeper. Shock is going to set in soon, along with an adrenaline crash the likes of which she's never known. The young woman clings to her rescuer, lost in a world of darkness and silence except for the hold Asami has.

The petite brunette tries to hold back tears — they are agony on her shredded eyes — but she can't. Her hands fist frantically around Asami's shirt and she is afraid to call out despite the assurance that they're safe. Around sobs that she valiantly attempts to stifle and hiccups that she can't control, Brynn calls out, "Hello? Can someone help us?" Her voice trails off and "please?" is almost a whisper.

They’re met with silence and an empty room before Daphne suddenly appears behind the bar. She looks pale, even for her, the energy to transport two people along with herself having taken a toll on the fledgling teleporter. She should probably be reaching for the coffee pot, but instead she reaches for the vodka bottle. The sight of Brynn, bloodied and blind, stays her hand, and she brings it shaking up to her mouth as her eyes widen in horror.

Struggling to keep her voice calm for Brynn’s sake, Daphne forces a cheerful tone into her words.

“Jac and Mrs. Petrelli are with Senator Faulkner of all people. Can I get either of you two a drink? On the house.”


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