Participants:
| Scene Title | The Good With The Bad |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Abby makes good on her offer to talk to Peter, and they discuss the difficulties of living with a power that carries a legacy. |
| Date | October 18, 2009 |
Manhattan
"I'm surprised you took the risk to come out here…" It's the first thing said after the protracted silence during the walk back from the ruins of the New York Public Library. Midtown's shattered heart is quiet in the way tombs are, only the peripheral noise of the rest of the city carries beyond the concrete barricades that block off main roads. Despite best efforts to keep people out of Midtown, there's simply too many ways in, and not enough manpower to police the entire border. Alleyways, streets, and empty lots where once whole buildings stood serve as back entrances to the ruins.
"You seem like someone who has a lot to lose," Peter's voice continues, his dark silhouette following at the back of the young blonde woman leading him towards a particular place outside the border of the devastated center of Manhattan. "Police patrols wouldn't be too friendly on you for tresspassing, not out there. Not to mention Humanis First, gangs, or even a structural collapse that sends you down into a subway system with broken legs." He has the most polite of conversational topics. "You… never seemed like a risk taker."
Slipping out from behind a fifteen foot tall concrete barrier, where it fails to meet up flush between the corner of a building, Peter looks left and right on a busy street with heavy traffic. His blue eyes squint at the headlights, one brow raised as he searches for Abby, finding her just a few feet away at the side of a parked car. "You're not really what I expected…" He says quietly, walking along the sidewalk towards the passenger's side, staring back over his shoulder towards a passing police cruiser, then looks anxiously back to the blonde as she unlocks the driver's side door.
"Were you expecting wings maybe? Or a bible under one arm and holy water in another?" The empty sports bag in one hand, her messenger bag in another. "Have to say, you are not what I expected either, with all that i've been told. Both you and… you." A glance this way and that, she's stepping around the barricade after him then pointing to a still standing building and the pale green hybrid SUV parked there.
"I came here a lot before. With Phoenix, when I was called to help them. Fix their hurts. I met Sylar out here once. Was saved by an invisible man and got to keep my faith" She glances over to the tall dark haired man. "You're brothers in a spot of trouble. Tracy Strauss, from what I can gather, knows there's two of him. Figure, Peter should get to know that, if you haven't squished him to where he can't hear or see or anything else like that."
"I'm not sure what you've been told…" Peter says as he opens the passenger side door and climbs up inside of the too big for a tiny blonde vehicle, looking down at the ground before reaching out and pulling the door shut with a slam. He turns, looking towards Abby in the driver's seat and shakes his head. "I'm Peter," says the man with eyes that she recognizes on a face she doesn't, "it's not— " there's a huff of breath and his gloved hands fold in his lap. "I'm not sure how much you know about what's happening to me, but I have to imagine you know something," blue eyes track back to her from his lap, "otherwise you wouldn't have invited me along here."
There's a hesitant smile after that, brows raising in a way that almost makes him look harmless, scve for the way the scar seems to harden his features. "Unless you're just as desperate for someone to talk to as everyone else in this city is." His eyes divert to his folded hands, "it wouldn't be unheard of."
"I don't think anyone who's has Francois and Kazimir in them ever understand what on gods green earth is happening to them" Said tiny blonde who's really not that tiny - maybe next to all the six foot behemoths that she knows she is - hefts herself up into the SUV. It fits her really. Far better than say a VW beetle.
"Eileen told me that I should probably meet you, given what's residing in you. She was supposed to extend an invitation to my bar, tell you to come on into the backroom and let the girls know you were there. Either you've been busy or she hasn't had the time to pass the invitation along" Her seatbelt is fastened, clicking into place by pink laquered fingers before she even puts the keys into the ignition. "Don't worry, i'm a good driver. You won't die"
Only once Peters put his seatbelt on - not an option to skip - She turns the vehicle on and starts to pull out. "Suppose we should formally introduce? I'm Abigail Marie Beauchamp. Rumor has it, you are Peter Petrelli. I've only ever cleaned up your messes, never quite saw you up close. Pleasure to meet you. Sorta. If you do need to talk, you can always stop by the bar. It's sorta, neutral ground for I swear just about every group out there"
There's just a blank stare from Peter to Abby during that entire one-sided conversation, blue eyes staring across at her as if something was terribly wrong. When he looks away, brows are furrowed and his gloved hands are wringing together, it's the same haunted look he had in his eyes when Cardinal announced what he did to everyone at the Library, but this isn't so much Peter's guilt as Kazimir's that shows on his face.
"You… I had no idea," Peter breathes out, "that you knew about Francois." There's a swallow, dry and uncertain as he looks up to Abby, brows furrowed. "I guess it only makes sense, why what happened, happened. I guess in a way, it's fitting, karmically. Our scores are evened out, once again, Francois and I." He says he's Peter, but then he goes and says something like that. It's a confusing juxtaposition of personalities.
"Eileen, she…" Dark brows crease together, and Peter's face is intermittantly lit by the yellow glow of streetlights as they pass overhead on the way through traffic. "Things have been hectic, lately, with all of us. She may have told me, and I may've forgotten. My memory…" he looks up to her with a squint, "it isn't exactly what it used to be."
"She's got a lot. It was never something pressing anyways." Abigail's pinky finger flicks out to trigger the left turn signal. "It's mixed up with his? With kazimir's?" She looks over as her foot presses down on the break so that she can stop for the red light. "I hope Kazimir's a better companion than Francois. Francois is an egotistical piece of work that I just want to brain over the head" There's a sigh tacked onto the end. "Thinks he knows better and boss me around" The light turns green and her foot eases off the pedal and turns onto the the streets that will lead them to Old Lucy's. "At least your not spouting things in french, thank the lord on high. How much of it has seeped into you?"
There's a laugh, one not quite Peter's as his head shakes. "Good to know the old Frog has not— " then it dawns on him, looking over to Abby with a brow raised. "He speaks to you?" The thought never truly dawned on him before, that the situation he's facing now others may have gone through. "I knew Francois' ability was like mine, that he received it from another, but I had always assumed… " there's a worried look in his eyes, tension mounting in his features as he turns to watch a car slowly pass by in an adjacent lane out his window.
"I'm not sure what you're asking." He finally admits, even if Peter's tone of voice indicates a little hesitance, like he thinks he knows what she's asking, but is afraid to admit it. "You might want to— " then, interjecting, he brandishes a finger towards the roadside, "oh, there's an empty spot." Streetside parking in New York City, always a prize to be cherished.
"There's parking at the bar. I own it, there is always parking. People park in my spot, they get tow'd" Have no mercy on those who will obstruct her ability to keep a vehicle in New York. "Yes he talked to me, but not in the fashion that you think. I don't think anyone's been telling you much of anything and I'm a little afraid to even say it, because you keep referring to 'Francois and I' and talking like you personally know him" There's a purse of lips as she drives the two more blocks to the bar and with another maneuver of pinky finger, brakes and shifting gears, she's pulling into her spot behind the building that houses her home and her bar.
"Doens't come with a manual does it? How to use it, how to cope with it. It's all live and learn, stumble and pick yourself up. Only, I had the one that's inherently benevolent, and your stuck with…" The opposite. "Have you tried giving it away? If you don't want it anymore"
"You own a bar?" Peter's brows both raise as he nods his head slowly, a look of modest surprise crossing his face before it shifts to amusement. He had taken the wrong impression of her, second hand and first hand. Eyes lingering out the passenger-side window as the SUV turns in to the parking lot of Old Lucy's, Peter's voice seems more distant now. "People don't understand exactly what's going on with me, and I can't rightly blame them either…" there's a shake of his head, and Peter rests his elbow up by the window, fingers spread across his forehead, tracing the mark of his scar lightly.
"There's no real… anything for what we have." There's a smile offered to his own reflection, then blue eyes meet Abigail's reflection in the glass. "We being you and I, not— myself and— " he grimaces, shaking his head as he turns to look up at the bar out the front window. "Kazimir learned how to use it through empyrical study, and somewhere along the line that turned into self-loathing. If it was something you could just… give awat, like an unwanted gift?" One black brow raises, and Peter looks to Abby directly, "he would have found it."
"Gabriel bestowed it on me accidentially. I was… dying, or maybe I was dead, I'm not sure." There's a crease of Peter's brows, "It happened the same way for Kazimir. He had been shot, I had been shot… we were both dying, and someone with the power came to us, and it just…" he motions from himself to the dashboard, "woosh." Blue eyes alight back to the blonde. "How was it for you?"
"I'm betting Kazimir didn't give it away because he didn't WANT to give it away at the start. Five bucks, in the end, he wanted to keep it. GOd above only knows, I still do to the very core of who I am and … Francois stated, that it can be given away, if the person wants to, if they're willing. Heart and soul. Whether it's the same with you, I don't know."
She stays seated, hands falling to her lap and the car idling as she listens to Peter. "I was five, he says I was five. My Dah pretty much confirmed it. Out in the woods, Francois I guess was dying and… I came across him. I don't remember. I just know what Hiro Nakamura told me, and what my dah told me when I asked. I came running back and yelling about a frenchman dying in the woods. I didn't know about it till I was twelve and I healed a bird in front of walmart"
Off goes the seatbelt, keys killed in the engine and pulled out while she opens the door. Well, the bar. "And no Judging Mr. Petrelli. I inherited it. I didn't outright buy the bar. Isabelle gave me a job and when she was killed, her will left it to me. So, I sold half of it to her sister and it pays for my EMT training and it's run in her memory. I suppose, that I need to bring you in the back way so that you don't accidentally hurt anyone? Skin to skin still bad?"
"Hiro?" Peter's eyes go wide, followed by a hesitant smile and a dip of his head down. "I… I haven't seen Hiro since he rescued me from Moab." Scratching at the side of his head, he looks out the window and hestantly opens the door, eyes upturned to the signage on the front of the bar before he turns to look back at Abby, sliding out of the SUV and bringing the door closed. "You owe me five dollars…" he says with a reluctant smile, trying to make light of an unhappy fact. "I may be Peter, but some of what made Kazimir him is as much a part of me as my own memories and dreams. He didn't want what he had, never wanted it, right up to the end. I can't say I blame him."
Circling around the front of the SUV, Peter tucks his gloved hands into the pockets of his dark woolen pea-coat. "I'm not a leper or anything, I can go in through the front if you want to. I'm covered up enough," he notes with a crease of his brows, "but I'm not exactly fond of loud places either. So… if you weren't intending on taking me out for a drink," his lips crack into a smiel, "then maybe we should just walk and talk without so much noise."
Moving to Abby's side, Peter lowers his voice and looks down at the pavement underfoot. "So Francois was dying, you were saying?" He looks back up to her with a weary stare. "How… old are you?"
"No bar it is. I was gonna offer you a drink, but we can walk, if you prefer coffee, there's a starbucks two blocks over" The messenger bag is fetched, wallet produced and she hands over a crisp five dollar bill. "I make good on my bets Peter. I haven't seen hiro since.. Well it's been a long while. I worry about him. Time traveling japenesemen are hard to find and it can't be easy doing what he does. Can't be easy for anyone these days"
She digs a jacket from the backseat though, slipping it on and doing it up to ward against the cold night air before there's a nod with her chin in the direction of the coffee shop. More than enough time before curfew. "I'm 20, but I look.." Well, no ones ever told her how old she actually looks. "How old are you?"
One hand waves lightly in protest to the notion of coffee. "No I… I have a hard enough time sleeping as it is." The bags under his eyes are a testament to that. "Just conversation would be enough, especially considering what you know." Letting his gloved hands returnt o the pockets of his coat, Peter scuffs the toe of his shoe against the ground, then looks out to the traffic as he watches a police cruiser roll by, keepng it in his periphery until it's out of sight.
"Hiro… He's probably doing what he thinks is best. He's obsessed with trying to fix what's gone wrong in the past, thinks he can figure out a way to try and prevent the bomb from happening…" there's a guilty expression on his face with that said, eyes averted from Abby. "I think he's just not willing to come to terms with the fact that you can't change the past."
Blue eyes lift up to Abby, followed by a frown. "Twenty?" The mental math is quick enough to finish, and he just closes his eyes and nods his head. "I'm sorry you have to bear the burden of what Francois did. It kept him alive for a long time, as long as I— " he winces, "as long as Kazimir was around." Then, struggling with the thought, he adds. "I… I'm going to be thirty in December."
"Burden's not mine to bear anymore Peter. Edward Ray sent Tyler Case to see to that. I won't look twenty forever. Touching me, isn't going to kill you. I don't hold it anymore. I'm not Gods special snowflake as I called it, before I know that it was something else. But you have the burden, along with others. You said back at the Library that, we didn't know what happened there, out in Kirby Plaza. Was it an accident?"
No coffee, drinks maybe, after they headed back. So there's a bench at a bus stop and she heads for that. Defaced, gum stuck underneath it and scorch marks from bored teenagers who have nothing better to do but hold a lighter to wood and plastic.
"You know what you're going to do with it? With the antithesis to what I was? Surely there has to be some good to it, if there's some bad to what I had"
Peter's not really sure how to answer any of it, really, as he followed Abby towards the bus stop. He keeps even pace with her, eyes down on his feet as he circles around the walled shelter around the bench. Stepping inside, he doesn't sit right away, just lingers near the bench anxiously. "Tyler Case?" The name is only familiar from his work at Pinehearst and the explosive end of that on the roof, but the implications of what Case's ability could do to someone like he and Abby causes him to be lost in thought for a moment's time. "I— so you're not— " blue eyes snap back to her, watching as she settles down on the bench. There's that crease of his brows again, reconsidering the blonde for the second time in one night.
But the talk of what happened at Kibry Plaza kills wherever that thought process was going. "I never meant to hurt anyone." It comes so much as a whisper. "Sylar," not Gabriel, not then, "was there. He was going to— I— " dark rbows crease together and Peter just shakes his head slowly. "I lost control of an ability, I couldn't… it just happened." And that's how he explains the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. It just happened.
He's quiet, staring down at his feet, shoulders hunched forward. "There's a little good in everything if you look hard enough. I'm hoping that… that I can find some." In this ability, in this life, the statement is left intentionally open-ended.
"I'm not. It's in someone else now. Taken away before I was ready to give it and I've been searching for a way to get it back" She lapses into silence though, watching him like he watched her with her hands in her lap. When he hangs his head ot stare at his feet Abigail cranes her neck to look up. "Accidents, happen. Do you forgive yourself for it? For not being able to control it and letting it get the better of you?"
"No." That too, is quiet. Peter's eyes have a distant stare, focused somewhere away from the conversation down at his feet. It's only when he realizes the awkward silence beginning to set in, does he move away from the shelter wall and come to sit down on the bench beside Abby. "No I… I don't forgive myself, I haven't earned that yet." It's hard to say which of him is speaking right now, or if that discrimination even matters.
"He has to die," Peter says abruptly, looking up to the young woman at his side. "To pass it on," there's a tilt of his head in a reluctant nod. "If we're so much opposites, it only makes sense. This ability, it passes on to save a life. When someone is dying, it jumps to them and heals what ails them, it lets them have a second chance." Then, with a furrow of his brows he adds. "Francois' ability fled him when he was dying. I think that might be the difference, why Kazimir could never give it away. Why I can't give it away."
"Gabriel didn't die. Gabriel was negated and I killed it. You. I killed something" The grimace on her face when she says those words is not hidden. We could find a negator, it could be done again. If you wanted it." Blue on blue in the streetlight. "You have a chance to make sure too, right now, that what Kazimir did with that gift, that ability, ends with you. That it's not used to wipe out a world that's only learning of the gifts that it's been seeded with before it all has time to bloom. That's your job now Peter"
Abigail sighs softly, scraping her heel on the pavement. "I haven't forgiven myself for killing you, it, him, whatever you want to call… it. If that's just one person-" Then the guilt on his shoulders must be enormous, unfathomable. "You'll earn it, some day Peter. That forgiveness of self. You have mine. We can't all have perfect control can we?"
There's a faint smile at Abby's words, and Peter lowers his head. "What happened to Gabriel was different. He didn't have the ability passed on to him, he was possessed by Kazimir. It's… what happened to me is what happened to Kazimir. He had been shot, dying, and his father — who I'm certain had the ability before Kazimir — accidentally bestowed it upon him while praying at his son's side." Blue eyes track from the traffic towards the blonde. "Kaizmir could be expelled from someone because he was an irritant, he didn't belong there. This here, now, it's as much a part of me as yours was to you. Being around a negator didn't send Francois flying out of your body, because that's not what was going on."
Staring down at his feet again, Peter scuffs them across the pavement. "I think you did kill him, Kazimir." There's a furrow of his brows, "everyone else that's in there too, all their impressions. But I don't anyone counted on what happened with Gabriel," he adds, looking back up. Shifting awkwardly, Peter settles back against the bus-stop bench, eyes drifting to graffiti scrawled in sharpie marker on the ceiling. "He had just the right collection of abilities, just the right intuition, just the right everything to be able to replicate the facets of this power, and in a way just the right timing ot save my life with it, and bestow it on to me." There's a sigh at that thought, and Peter's head tilts down to look to Abby. "Have you tried to see what would happen with a negator and the new host of Francois' ability?" Topics of forgiveness are cast aside, for now; It's an ongoing process.
"No" She confesses to the older man. "i've been trying to find a way to get it back. Being a selfish twit. I haven't even been trying to help him learn how to better use it. Francois rearing his head didn't help matters. I don't even know if he wants it gone or not. We see each other so infrequently as it is" Abigail shrugs her shoulder. "That… method never even crossed my mind. I've been near a negator now and then and you're right, it never did anything, short of the inability to use the gift. I don't know how it would go with him."
There's a huff, soft one, from the blonde. "Don't even know how I'd suggest it to him and the negator, well, no ones seen him, so I'd have to go find another. Can't just walk into a police station and say 'hey, can i have the name of a negator? I need to test out a theory about these two evolved abilities that aren't really evolved and whether one can be forcibly ejected from it's current 'vessel'-" Her fingers come up in quotations marks at the last word. "And enter back into me" There's a roll of blue eyes. 'Heavens, if he calls me a vessel ever again, I don't care if it's in Flint, I'll smack a palm across his cheek"
"I know one," Peter states in a quiet tone of voice, "and the woman that's his keeper owes me a few favors." It's as much of the truth as he's willing to part with. "If you're really that intent on getting it back, then that might be your best bet. Alternatively, who's the person who has it?" One dark brow raises, "I mean, does he actually deserve to have an ability like…" Francois rearing his head. It finally clicks, it wasn't a turn of a phrase, it was literal. Peter's eyes go wide and his head quirks to the side like some puzzled puppy.
"Francois." He leans towards Abby, blue eyes narrowing, "Francois speaks through him? Has— " his flustered hesitation may be unwarranted, "did that ever happen with you? Strange dreams, memories that weren't your own?" Whatever Peter's looking for, the corraly may be lost in that she's been a host since she was just a little girl. There's no telling how growing up with a Frenchmen inside of her molded her as a youth in ways more subtle or insidious than Deckard's current predicament.
"I was little girl peter. I don't.. I don't remember. I haven't frankly called my Dah to ask questions. I get the impression that it rears it's head when there's a need. The memory, the sentient part of it, said as much. I don't know, all I know if from a journal that francois wrote in, during his time in possession of it. Maybe, because I was so young and where I grew up, how I grew up. Maybe it prepared me for what I had to do. I mean, what are the odds really, peter, of me having moved here, to New York, if I hadn't been in possession of it or well, it of me?"Very low if you ask her.
"I know who has it. He doens't think he deserves it and if you had asked me in the weeks after it all happened, I would have said no. But now" The corners of her mouth turn up, a proud smile, a faint one. "He deserves it. He deserves good in his life. So much bad had happened. I think he deserves it and all the goodness that comes with it and the purity"
At the opposite street corner, a lean accumulation of hard edges and sharply defined hollows filters like a stir of soot out of the shadows at an alley's shamble-fanged maw. As soon as industrial orange light has found purchase across the hard line of his brows and the grizzled bristle at his narrow jaw, identification is a matter of glancing up to see him standing there. Watching.
Hands tucked deep into his pockets and collar turned high around the cables drawn taut up the back of his neck, he filters out a smoggy breath and…sneezes.
"Purity…" Peter says with a shake of his head, "you haven't seen what else that ability can do, have you?" There's accusation in Peter's words, a look in his eyes that speaks of something unsettling left unsaid. "My ability can heal people, after a fashion, it takes and it gives. Like you said, there's a little good in everything bad, but— " he shakes his head and looks down at his feet, gloved hands wringing with a creak of the material in his lap. "There's a little bad in everything good too."
Peter's downcast stare fails to notice Deckard, fails to bristle with that same uneasiness that he had down in the subway beneath Midtown. Too far away to really feel his stomach churning, all he can do is dwell on what isn't said, and hope to change the topic back to clearer waters. "As long as he's helping people with it… that's what Francois would do." There's not much conviction behind Peter's words. "Who is he?"
"Now listen here Peter Petrelli. I didn't get this at age thirty. I got this at twelve, and spent a few years hiding it from my parents. I'm afraid that my experience with it has been nothing but healing. It was news to me that it could do anything but heal and it's horrified me ever since. So you can wipe that look off your face. It's not like I had some memory trying to help me along and likely, twelve years old wasn't old enough to learn that you can do something so horrid with it as kill someon-"
She notices Flint when Peter asks who it is. She doesn't answer, just looks across the street and to the identical streetlamp that Flint lurks under with a disapproving look. Abigail's cheeks turn red and she looks away, eyes going somewhere else but Flint or Peter.
A second sneeze averted with a chuffed breath and a pass of gloved hand across the bridge of his nose, Flint focuses again with a hard blink in time to note Abigail looking away rather than smiling or waving or otherwise doing anything to ameliorate the uneasy bristle about his posture from afar. Hesitation is rife in a shift of his weight up and back into the near promise of retreat.
…Up until he looks Peter over for the second time, and the scar across the younger man's face falls into sharp relief. From there, his brows hardly have time to hood before the long muscles in his legs have stirred themselves into a deliberate advance, boots treading quiet over cold concrete.
Him.
Peter pushes up from his seat the moment everythng makes sense. The awkward feeling he felt in the subway station when he laid eyes on Flint, Abby's aversion of her eyes as he started coming over, the fact that they were together at the Ferrymen meeting. Without so much as a word to Abby, Peter comes up off of the bench and starts walking to the curb. Blue eyes scan the road as he meets Deckard's stride in the empty space just past the curb where the bus will eventually be pulling up some fifteen minutes from now. His shoes click on the asphalt underfoot, and blue eyes meet blue eyes as he stares across at Deckard.
There's really nothing that can be said, no exchange of words, just the subtle creak of leather gloves as fingers wind into fists. For the faintest moment, it looks like Peter might just wind up and slug him across the jaw. But the violence never comes, just the tension, and the murmured greeting of, "Hey."
They're both fantastic conversationalists.
They can't see Abigail's eyes. They're closed as Flint sets in across the street towards them and Peter seems to have much the same idea. She didn't need to even speak, as usual. Body language gives it away. What was comfortable with peter, is suddenly nervous, on edge.
Worried.
There's coffee on Deckard's breath at close range, warm and thick in haze misted orange past a slivered show of his teeth.
There's also whiskey.
The height advantage here is his, and he takes it, scruffy chin tipped up at just enough of an angle to ensure the chill of his glare finds Peter's at a distinctly uneven level. He's also gained weight since either of them saw him last, and might almost pass for a normal human being if not for the way his lifted hackles line out through the set of his shoulders and the hollow clamp of his jaw. Alcohol stink included, it's all behavior better suited to the prison yard than a bus stop. Even a bus stop in New York City.
"What do you want with her?"
"She owes me five dollars," comes the terse response from Peter with a quirk of his head to the side. "So you're him?" Blue eyes drift down to Deckard and then back up again, blue eyes meeting again. "You're… taller, you know, standing up." There's a crack of a smile across Peter's face, and the tension in his shoulders relaxes as the shorter man takes a step back up on to the curb and one step aside. "We were just talking, I ran into her in Midtown," because that's a great place for Abby to be, "and I followed her home."
Tucking his gloved hands into his pockets, Peter's eyes drift to look back at the blonde sitting on the bus stop bench. "I think she's got a lot to talk to you about, actually. More than she really should have to say to me, at least." He turns back to Deckard, breath coming out as a light fog in the cold evening air. "I'm Peter," he doesn't offer out his hand, just to be safe.
Would the earth just swallow her whole, right here, right now. It doesn't, but ask and ye shall recieve. There's a scuffle, bang, some yelling at the adjacent building that happens to the be the bar. Out the door goes a bottle, a couple glasses and the bouncer and someone are wrestling. The lord on high is thanked, profusely for the distraction. "Flint, your welcome to come up after you've talked with Peter. He's, he's got kazimir's ability" Which should be enough said as the blonde is getting up and heading for her business. "Hey! Hey you! No fighting in my fucking bar, do you hear me?! You fight, you get the hell out" She's off, a tirade of epic proportions leaving her mouth that flints maybe sorta heard of before and peter, well, he's never.
Followed her home from Midtown. To say Flint looks horrified would be an exaggeration, but there's definitely a delayed element of 'Wait-what-the-fuck did you just say?' to the squint that tracks from a look at Abigail all the way back up to Peter's refreshed vantage point back on the curb. He doesn't have a chance to ask for clarification before bottles and people go a-whirling out of Abigail's bar, and quicker than he can find enough spare neurons to respond, she's off seeing to that and he's still here standing in the street with his mouth open looking to be on the angrier end of muddled.
Again, his eyes lift back to Petrelli, and again, he rakes his glare around the younger man's person like a pick. "What are you talking about?" is what he winds up asking instead of that what-the-fuck thing, although with little concession made for the difference in tone the less accusatory of the two questions should entail. He doesn't give his name, either — Abigail already said it for him.
Peter's focus is torn away from Flint when the disturbance at the bar calls Abby up from her bench and away from the awkward tension. He watches her retreat with furrowed brows, one step taking him back towards that bench the two were sharing before pausing to turn and look over at Flint, almost having forgotten he had asked a question. "I ah…" it's not a easy thing to explain, "we were talking about you, I guess." He guesses. "Your ability. Francois. Probably…" he manages something of an awkward smirk, "all the things you were hoping we weren't really talking about. I… It wasn't really my idea." He deflects, stepping back over to the bench to sit down and fold his hands in his lap.
"It's really— I don't really think it's my business, but she seemed a bit lost about the whole thing. She knows a lot more about it than I thought she did, and right up until just before you showed up, I thought it was still hers." A sway of Peter's head to the side brings his stare back up the older, taller, and lanker man's frame. "Is this as awkward for you as it is for me?"
A LIKELY STORY. Peter doesn't look excessively trustworthy, with the big scar and the black clothes and the floppy hair and the unholy darkness snarled up into his viscera like razor wire. Flint has fallen into taking him in sideways as a result, familiar distrust bent into a into a lift at one brow while Abby does her Thing and the bar fight is muffled down and muzzled before it can go nuclear.
Fortunately, as far as diversions go, Abigail is an effective one. Some of the aggressive tension tempered into Deckard's shoulders has faded by the time he finally steps up onto the curb. Out've arm's reach, mind, attention split warily between Old Lucy's and Peter posted between here and there. "I dunno." Probably code for yes given that he manages to find something else to look at for the second it takes him to answer. "Why 'lost'?"
Of all the parts of that conversation for Flint to pick up, that's the one Peter wanted touched the least. He makes an uncomfortable sound, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck with one gloved hand. "She says she wants what you have back. That she's been… unfocused, on helping you learn how to use the ability because she's so tangled up in her own selfishness." Brows furrow, "That and the Francois thing." Even saying the name makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, he can't really explain the reaction well. "I think she just needs to find a way to define herself outside of what the ability gave her. You know, something that makes her happy, makes her feel fulfilled?" He obviously doesn't know Flint well at all.
"I lost my ability once too, never got it back. I know, at least a little bit, of what she's going through. She probably feels kind've helpless, might be wondering if she's useless or not. I think what she really might want," because a man who met her an hour ago is an expert on what she wants, "is just to be able to be needed. I don't think she's realized that's exactly what she has, if she was willing to try and help you through learning that ability better."
Deckard is listening. Or at least, trying very hard to listen, for all that absence of anything so soft and spongy as actual understanding impedes his efforts somewhat. Frustration hews tell-tale tension in along crow's feet and deepens the fuzzy lines furrowed in around his mouth. It's only a matter of silent seconds on his end before his demeanor starts to resemble that of a high-end stockbroker trapped next to a talkative homeless person on the subway, empathy struggling back and forth with more deeply interred impatience.
"I can't give it back to her," sounds like an excuse to his ears — enough so that he fails to make eye contact once again as he says it. He circles the topic like a nervous reef shark circling a diver, more cautious than he needs to be until he opts to divert altogether. There are less intimidating things in the sea to try and sink his teeth into. In another beat, the clear blue of his eyes has sought Peter's face back out of the orangey murk, whiskey-fuzzed edges already well-committed to memory.
"So, you saw her in the ruins and decided to follow her home to patch up her personal life."
"I didn't— " Peter huffs out a breath and covers his forehead with one hand, tiredly working the leather across his brow, fingers finding the mark of that scar monentarially, as if to remind himself of what skin he's in. "She was at the ruins of the public library. There was a meeting there, and I was meeting someone else. She happened to be there, and I— " Peter's expression crooks down to a frown hesitantly, "I left early, she said she wanted to talk, so…"
"I know she can't give it back to you." His expression is bordering on the duh side of things, but it tempers away quick enough. "She can't, and shouldn't get it back if she has the opportunity. She can live a normal life now, she isn't going to have to worry about watching everyone she loves grow old and die around her." The implication there is that it is now Deckard's problem.
Looking down the street, Peter's blue eyes settle on something distant, and he gets up to his feet slowly. "Flint," his eyes close and his shoulders rise and fall in a helpless shrug, "I think she just doesn't know what to do with herself. The bar's a good focus, but… I think she needs a purpose. I've been in her shoes before, it's not easy." There's an attempt at a smile, one that falls somewhat flat. "I'm… going to get on the bus," the sound of it's approach is slow behind Deckard. "I've got somewhere I should have been a while ago anyway."
Deckard has a lot of problems. The potential promise of this latest one doesn't surprise him as much as it probably should. He nods in the end, too unsure for the movement to be all that decisive against the hissing, brake-squealing backdrop of the bus's lumbering approach. In fact, belligerence has cowed down into awkward insecurity so fleetly that it might be difficult to believe there was any show of confidence there to begin with.
He looks to the bus as if he's not sure what it's doing stopping at a bus stop (for busses to stop at) and then maybe slightly resentfully back to Peter, who is young and verbose and ~sensitive~. Even his shrugs are sensitive. It's so hard to despise him that Deckard suddenly finds it easy, along with the surly capacity to furrow his brows and frown at him as if he's sure he's done something wronger than simply existing and hearing Abby out. Then, with that and a scuffing scratch at the back of his head, he moves to shoulder past the younger muppet towards the bar, leaving him and his bus to their fate.
The silence and lack of a goodbye gives Peter pause, blue eyes following Deckard's motion as the older man skirts away from the arrival of the bus. He can't fathom words to share that don't seem inapprioriate, given the silent departure of his counterpart. Instead, he just hangs his head and stares down at the pavement, listening to the whirr and click of the bus door sliding open and the hiss of air brakes. It could be that this was how Francois and Kazimir first parted ways, in a snowy field west of Berlin over sixty years ago. But the grimy backdrop of Manhattan's dirty skyline and the shrieking sounds of the city are a far cry from those days.
Somehow, though, generations apart, the animosity is still there beneath the surface. Turning towards the bus, Peter climbs aboard, hesitating only to peer out one of the windows to Old Lucy's, watching Deckard's retreat a moment longer as the doors slide shut, and the bus' engine roars as it starts to pull away from the curb, its dully glowing destination sign proclaiming Brooklyn.
They both have to head home to people who are waiting for them. In that way, this parting is just like it was then.