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| Scene Title | The Pawn and the Prince, Part II |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Kara awakens, safe and sound in Providence, after a traumatic experience. |
| Date | ?? September 2019 |
Still reeling from the shockwave, Peter feels himself being hauled by his ankle across the floor, grasping at the broken floorboards to try and find some measure of purchase. At the same time, Adam is struggling up onto his hands and knees, exhaling a shuddering breath as he paws at the length of broken wood and glass embedded in his abdomen. He looks up, toward where Eileen is running and starts to stand, holding a hand to his bleeding midsection.
Adam locks eyes with those that once belonged to Sibyl black. They stare back at him, fiery and unblinking, familiar and alien all in one. Even in the midst of this chaos, as Kara pivots to train herself on another target, as Byron hauls Peter Petrelli across the room by his ankle, Adam feels at once alone and surrounded by the eyes staring back at him. He opens his mouth to shout a warning and then
he is gone
Adam is unraveled like a spool of thread made from ground beef. His clothing disintegrates, spidery veins of flesh peel up and away from him in a soundless scream. He is disassembled inch by inch in the blink of an eye, erupting upwards in a gout of disassembled organs, bones, and other matter sprayed like a fine mist through the air, against the wall, and raining down on Kara in ribbons.
At the same moment Peter lashes out with his own telekinetic grasp, trying to latch onto something to hold himself in place. He grabs at the ceiling beam, but the old wood cracks in the middle and splits, swinging the wooden beam down and squarely into Kara like a croquet mallet. She’s launched off of her feet and straight back through a railing, her head smashing against the floor with
????
She doesn't remember dreaming, just recalls what seems like an eternal ebb and flow of light and dark. The world, cold and dark, gave way to the world, soft and warm and dim, gave way to the world— blindingly bright and uncomfortable— gave way to the world…
A shift in the ambient light draws her attention in her own personal dark, eyes moving beneath lids. The shadow pauses then. Try as she might to wake, it doesn't come easily. Muscles fight her, jaw tightening with the effort to push through and properly come to.
“Easy…” The voice is muffled, practically underwater. As Kara’s vision clears around the edges, she can tell that there is someone nearby. Disorientation comes next, a sense of vertigo. She’s aware now that she’s lying down. In pain — throbbing limbs and aching spine — barely able to move.
“You’re pretty badly hurt.” The figure across from Kara says. “Just relax.”
It's Eileen.
In an ideal world, Kara would comply. In an ideal world, she'd also know where she was, and how much time has passed.
But all she remembers— what surfaces from the fog of memory— makes her panic. "Gray." she utters, hoarse. Her eyes have just enough time to glimpse her form before they close again. They're heavy, despite the urgency she feels. Her body isn't listening through all the aches. She stirs, but it's not enough. "You have to run."
The silence of their surroundings when memory dictates there should be chaos hasn't quite sunk in yet.
“That was a while ago,” the Briton says with a sympathetic raise of her brows, reaching out to gently lay a hand on Kara’s shoulder. “You were badly hurt, there was… an attack.” She dips her head down, gray-green eyes scanning the taller blonde. “You were knocked unconscious, you’ve been out for days.”
Those pale eyes turn to look at the window, through which a hazy, rainy forest of pine trees is visible. Somewhere in Providence no doubt. “What’s the last thing you remember?” She asks, easing back into her chair by Kara’s bedside.
Kara cringes. It's been days? She places her palms flat against the bed, trying to lift herself up.
Pain has other plans.
A hiss of breath escapes her, the sharp pain giving her better clarity even if it keeps her on her back. Her eyes flicker open again, turning to better see Eileen. Is she safe? Is she whole?
The question posed to her is given some consideration after she sees the Englishwoman appears to be fine. Kara looks up toward the ceiling, collecting her thoughts. "We were waiting. There was a teleporter. Monroe…" Her brow twitches as she tries hard to recall the conversation. Those details are harder. "appeared."
"Then…" Her blue-greens flicker as they examine the ceiling, her panic returning. She remembers actions, if not words. Kara turns to Eileen. She doesn't ask it aloud, but she does ask how. How did they survive? How did they escape? "—Byron make it?" is what gets voiced of it, that kind of unknown more important to have immediately answered. "The others?" Everyone outside.
“Everyone’s fine,” is Eileen’s quick response, lifting up her hand to brush an errant lock of hair from Kara’s face. “Here, I… I got something, it’ll help with the pain.” A small pill bottle is produced from off a table beside the bed. “I’ll… get you some water.” She adds, slowly rising up from her chair.
“What do you recall about the meeting?” Eileen asks, walking across the small kitchenette and to a sink across from the nook Kara’s bed has been placed in. It feels temporary, like there should be a table and chairs here, not a folding cot. “Do you remember what we were meeting with Adam for?” There’s worry in Eileen’s voice again as she reaches for a glass by the sink, turning on the tap for water rather than going out to a pump.
It's a small thing, the way Kara's eyes widen when Eileen brushes her bare hand across her brow, the way her eyes lock onto the Englishwoman's. Pain had helped wake her, but something else drives her now. When Eileen steps away, she takes in a breath to steel against the pain of moving and pushes herself to her elbows. She takes note in a way she hadn't before how they're not back at the Factory, how no one else is here save for them.
She looks immediately for her gun, any gun, and doesn't find one within reach. Kara pushes herself up into a sitting position with minimal outward distress save for a tightening of her eyes, sliding one leg off the bed. Her heart is racing, a fact she works to conceal.
"Gray, just go ahead and ask me who the President is so I can get it wrong already," Kara says, levity in the pain. It's a joke. Her gaze is unfocused while she weighs what to do next, and then slides back to the Englishwoman, the nature of her expression different than before. Less overtly at ease. "Be honest," she asks despite that. "What all did I break?"
She's listening harder now to how Eileen responds, hanging on her every tic with an intensity she can't exactly hide.
“I don’t know,” is Eileen’s honest answer as she turns off the tap. “I think you might’ve cracked your skull some, but it’s hard to say. You were bleeding bad for a couple of days, some bruised ribs judging from the…” she motions with the glass of water in Kara’s direction, “bruises on your side.” She makes her way back over, offering the glass of water out to Kara, then motions to the pill bottle with her head.
Hysingla ER 30 mg
“It’ll put you on your ass, but it’ll be better than being in constant pain. There’s only two left,” Eileen says with a hint of apology in her voice, coming to sit back in the chair, offering the glass of water out. “It won’t last long, but… I’m hoping I can find something else soon. But,” Eileen looks down at the floor, then back up to Kara.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Eileen reminds, gently.
That glass of water is considered for a long moment. Kara wants to reach past and grab a hold of 'Eileen's' forearm, pull her into a choke, demand to know who she really is. If she were less injured, she's sure she could.
But for now, this stranger wearing Eileen Gray's face seemed to want to help her.
Why?
"That's more than I've come to expect out of this country, this reality," she says regarding the painkillers. She'll continue to pretend this is Eileen for now. "I'll survive with whatever we have. If this is it, this is it…" Kara takes the water, sets it on her knee. "Maybe I should wait until the pain gets unbearable."
She looks up at Eileen, beginning to frown. She'll need to answer the question, it seems. "I remember…" the munitions chaplain recounts. "Monroe desperately trying to contact us. Peace, a truce, whatever you want to call it— he wanted it for some reason, right after picking a fight. I remember there was division, but that we went to hear him out."
Her voice lowers. "What did you think of what he said? His warning that you're in danger from … whatever that child was?"
The crease at Eileen’s brows is an expression she doesn’t often affect. Showing concern like that is dangerous when cohabitating with so many predators. It’s a moment of vulnerability unlike her. “Danger?” She looks at Kara suspiciously, then down to the floor. It only hits her in that moment that she had said the word reality, but the betrayal of that fact just looks like more incredulity at the concept of danger.
“I was never the one in any danger, Adam was. If he was picking a fight and then looking to be, I don’t know, diplomatic? That feels like a desperation play.” Eileen opines with a shake of her head. “He’s a snake and always has been.” Eileen stiffens, as if remembering herself, and sits up straight. “But you remember the fight, with Adam? Prior to the meeting?”
Kara is under no illusions that this is Eileen. There’s too many small details that don’t add up. Water straight from a tap is rare in Providence, requiring a functioning well and pump. Eileen’s eyes, her demeanor, her style of dress. It’s all vaguely right in the way someone who didn’t know her well would assume. But other details track in different directions. Whoever this is properly diagnosed her injuries, or at least she can surmise based on pain and stiffness and the fogginess of her recollection.
She also knows what an interrogation feels like. They trained her in the Marines on resisting interrogation techniques. One was a decoy interrogation, where a friendly face that seemed sympathetic was actually the interrogator. This isn’t quite the same scenario she drilled, but it’s close enough.
So she's being plied for information. But how much of what this stranger is asking is particularly damning? It doesn't seem as though their focus is the Remnant. No, it seems as though they're after intel on what might be their common enemy. For now, there didn't seem to be harm that could come from it.
For now, she'll play along. This little memory test doesn't hurt for establishing the ache in her head hasn't affected her long term memory.
"I remember the fight with Praxis," Kara clarifies, looking past Eileen's doppelganger to the window, considering the trees. Where were they? "I remember they came for our most valuable assets. Both material and personal. They succeeded, partially." Her eyes glass over, remembering a little too well how that encounter had ended. Her voice hollows. "They took her. She…"
Brows pinch together as one memory collides into another. Yi-Min was shot. But Adam … had said … something. The specifics of it elude her. It's not filled with anguish, no confirmation of death. Her mind wants to work to make sense of the blur, but she's overly cautious of letting it give her false hope.
Kara lets out an exhale.
If 'Eileen' asks for her to confirm who was taken, she's not sure she can play dumb any longer. So, she decides to turn it around hopefully before it gets there. "I need to know what we're facing now, Gray." Kara says firmly, looking back to the other figure. "I need you to tell me everything you know about Adam Monroe. I need to know what we're facing when it comes to him,"
Adam's very being unraveling flashes before her eyes, but she ignores it.
"because you and I both know that wasn't the end of it."
Incredulity creases the corners of Eileen’s eyes. She searches Kara’s expression and finds a lack of understanding. Trying to brush it off with a smile she slowly stands up, looking over to one of the windows, then out to the same trees Kara was counting. The number never seems to stay the same.
“Adam Monroe is a psychopathic murderer who nearly wiped out all life with a virus in the late seventies.” Eileen looks back to Kara, jaw set. “He was imprisoned for decades, until… until misguided people who thought they were doing good let him free. He's been a murderous plague ever since.”
Glancing down to the floor, Eileen seems to realize her emotional mask slipped some. When she looks back up to Kara, there's a frustrated look in her eyes. “It doesn't matter,” she says quietly first, then louder, “it doesn't matter.” Gray-green eyes look back to the window.
“It isn't your fight,” isn't something Eileen would say.
“Are we done here?” A voice asks from the ether, rough like sandpaper and smoky. Hauntingly familiar to Kara. Eileen looks to an empty point in space.
“Yes,” Eileen answers, “we’re done.”
The last thing Kara hears is a high-pitched whistling coming from all around her, shrill and yet at once soporific. A whistle that deprives her of her ability to move, but also causes her eyelids to sag and her muscles to slack. She can feel words slipping out of her mouth as a hoarse whisper.
The shadow moves away entirely.
And Kara Prince falls back to sleep.
????
Some time between an eternity and only moments later, the shadow's lack is something she belatedly notes and her eyes snap open.
The breath she takes in is almost overwhelming, engaging senses that haven't been in use for … as long as she was out for. The dust and must of the place she finds herself in carries a distinct scent, as does the cooling cup of tea that rests on the nightstand. Kara is aware of the light that slants in through the windows— late afternoon sun instead of morning, judging by the intensity and angle— and all the long shadows it casts around the space.
A space empty of other living beings
save for her.