Participants:
| Scene Title | Time Travel Soap Opera |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Their lives are one. |
| Date | January 8, 2021 |
It was on his way through the city that Richard suddenly realized he was passing through Elmhurst, and a certain brownstone was only a few blocks away - just a few blocks away from a very awkward conversation he’s been trying to figure out when he should have.
Fuck it, he decided, and turned to head down familiar but rarely-driven roads to visit an old friend.
Elmhurst
Gillian Childs' Townhouse
January 8th
3:27 pm
Richard pulls off the sunglasses he’s wearing, clicking the legs closed and sliding them into his pocket as he stands there before the door, hesitating. He’s nicely dressed, suit and tie and all, since he’s coming from a business meeting.
Maybe I should’ve changed to civvies, he muses to himself, feeling awkward. Finally he shakes his head and reaches out to depress the doorbell, hand drawing back to fold with the other behind him as he waits, shifting slightly in an unconscious way that betrays his anxiety.
As the door opens, Gillian’s eyebrow raises in surprise, even though she had already peaked through the curtains to see who had knocked on the door before even opening. She always confirmed before she opened the door, because otherwise, she would have her hand on a hidden weapon, just in case— Perhaps she still did, anyway, because one of her hands was resting very near a table next to the door. “You’re making me feel underdressed, Richard,” she says in her usual husky voice, a hint of a laugh to it.
She was definitely more casual, in something comfortable enough to wear around the house and easy to move in, but not anything like she had worn back when they had briefly been— more than friends. Her hair was closer to its natural shade of brown, and her eyes looked tired, but something similar to how his sister looked these days. Sometimes sleep was difficult when headaches came and went, but at least she seemed to be moving fine today.
Even if the handicap set up at her home had more use now than it had even when Jolene had needed it in the past. For a moment, she bites her lower lip, looking into the main room of the townhouse for a moment, then she nods to herself as if making a small decision. “Wasn’t expecting you, but I hope it’s nothing too— ” There’s a suddenly worried hitch. Jac was working with Raytech more and more, after all. “Is something wrong with Jac?”
“Sorry,” Richard replies with a rueful smile, “I was in the area and I didn’t have time to get changed when I decided to head over, ah… no, no, Jac’s fine. I mean, she’s not fine but nothing new, I mean…”
He stops himself from the anxious babbling, drawing in a slow breath, shoulders raising and then dropping as he exhales the breath slowly to steady himself, “You know what I mean. She’s fine, I’m not here about her.”
There’s a moment’s pause as he takes her in, something wistful crossing his expression before he dismisses it with a shake of his head. “Um— is Jolene home? I had something that I needed to tell her— and you— about, mostly her but you need to know too. Sorry for dropping by unexpectedly like this…”
Awkward, hesitant Richard is new, really.
“Who’s at the door?” A man’s voice calls from nearby. It takes until he comes into view for Richard to piece the improbably to the real.
Peter Petrelli, sans scar, comes into view, crutches under his arms, ambling up behind Gillian. There is not a single look of recognition in his eyes when he sees Richard. Just a lopsided smile and a concerned look to Gillian as he reaches her side. “Everything ok?”
Richard stares at Peter for a long moment. Then he looks at Gillian. Peter. Gillian.
Please reboot the Richard.
“Don’t look so shocked. You’re the one who helped break the universe to get his wife back,” Gillian responds with a small sigh, looking back towards Peter with a soft smile that was too fond. The relief that nothing was wrong with Jac didn’t really get to last long, cause, well—
There was this big secret that was finally out. Not that she had particularly been hiding it. Most of the people whom she had wanted to know knew, and she hadn’t sworn any of them to secrecy. Any of them could have told Richard at any time, but she’s sure now that most of them had decided it must have been her own business to tell. “I’m honestly surprised you didn’t know anyway. Come on in, before you let all the heat out.”
Since she already compared it to him breaking the universe to get Liz back, perhaps it was an interesting story. “He’s not our Peter,” she does say rather quickly before he can get too far. “Our Peter died just like we had always assumed. Do you remember Richard at all?” she asks, looking back at Peter now, curious.
After Richard’s brain has caught up with the rush of emotions that came with seeing Peter, he brings one hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Good,” he mutters, “If it was our Peter I’d… anyway.”
As things have just gotten six or seven layers even more awkward, he accepts the invitation and walks in, giving the man in crutches a look up and down. “If you don’t, you must be from a pretty divergent line… where’re you from, Petrelli?” He tries to make his voice sound amiable. He really does.
“Uh,” is Peter’s catch-all answer for all of this. He takes a half-step back, ambling into the house on his crutches. “That’s—not an easy question to answer.” He looks Richard up and down, then Gillian, but from the relaxed posture Gillian has he seems to ease up.
“Sorry I don’t remember you. It—doesn’t mean we haven’t met. I’m…” Peter briefly motions to his head. “It’s a little scrambled eggs up there. But if we have met before, I don’t remember it at all.”
“Yeah, his memory is a bit swiss cheese,” Gillian says with a hint of an apology to the way she smiles. It’s surprising what he does remember sometimes, honestly, but at the same time, it’s also given her a chance to make new memories altogether. “But I didn’t ask if he’d remembered Argentina, honestly. It wasn’t exactly my favorite topic of discussion.” Especially since he hadn’t really even been himself some of the time, or did damn well trying to pretend he wasn’t, at least. “But he helped us in Detroit. Lene and I. Golden Eyed Eve probably would have killed me if he hadn’t jumped in front of the lightning bolt she’d thrown at me. That’s why he’s— like this. He’s got some major neurological damage.”
Kind of like Lene used to have, but she doesn’t say that.
As they move into the study, one of the two cats in the house looks up from his perch. Chandra has been more aloof than before, perhaps due to age, but he doesn’t get up to rub against the legs of anyone and instead just looks up from his nap spot on a nearby table and casts a wary look in Richard’s direction, before putting his head back down and closing his eyes again.
“Since I already had the house set up for this I offered to let him stay. Course now I need it sometimes too…” she glances down at her right hand, opening and closing her grip to test it. Today seems to be a good day, at least.
“That’s probably… for the best, honestly, I think at best our relationship in any timeline has been ‘complicated’,” admits Richard, bringing both hands up to make finger-quotes around them, “And I can’t blame you for shit that your counterpart from this one did.”
He’d be a hypocrite of the highest order if he did, after all.
The sight of the old cat brings a slight, nostalgic smile to his lips, and he steps over to reach out and rub his ears briefly. “Richard Ray. So, uh— “ He glances between the two, “Is Jolene home too? She needs to hear this probably most of all.” A flicker of a look to Peter, then back to Gillian.
Peter’s expression in a guarded one as he considers Richard, looking him up and down. Still, he regards Gillian’s ease with pointed trust. “She’s upstairs,” Peter says with a glance to Gillian, then back to Richard. “I’ll go get her.”
Then, in an instant, Peter disappears in a heat-mirage haze of rainbow colored lights. Richard’s only seen that teleportation in one other place before.
“Now,” a voice can be heard saying over the tinnitus whining. “Now!” Baruti Naidu screams into the air, as if someone was listening. No radio, no headset, just demanding the heavens answer. In the moment before the world makes sense, Chess can see someone appear beside Baruti.
A flare of rainbow light. Pink hair, and sad eyes.
Baruti Naidu and Val Swift vanish without a trace.
Detroit.
“What does Lene have to hear?” Gillian asks as she moves to sit down, dropping heavily into one of the couches in the front lounge. She doesn’t appear to be at all surprised with the display of ability that he’d used, but then again, she apparently has been living with Peter for a while now. “Sorry you had to find out like this, Richard,” she adds after a moment.
One of the two cats that frequent the house pokes their head into the room, but looks warily at Richard before continuing onward to their nap spot. At least they don’t seem to be running away hissing— as it probably would have from the black at least in the past.
“But I’m sure this is the least of the things you have to worry about these days.”
In the aftermath of those rainbow lights, Richard stiffens slightly - staring at the space where Peter was, before slowly exhaling a breath, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Well,” he murmurs, “I guess that explains where he’s been for the last few years…”
His hand drops, sweeping off in a vague motion through the air, “Ah, I’d rather tell you both— all three of you, actually— together, so I don’t need to explain it over and over. And it’s fine. Peter and I have never really… gotten along.” Ironically, they got along better when he was Kazimir.
A faint smile’s offered over to her, “Unfortunately. I wish that wasn’t true, but— speaking of things to worry about, how are you doing? And Jac?”
Peter’s voice ring through the house from not far away. “Hey! Jolene! Richard Ray’s here!” He calls up the stairs. There’s some thumping footfalls that follow, carrying over Richard and Gillian’s heads. Lene is on her way.
Eyes following the noise upstairs, Gillian’s expression softens a little for the moment, before she looks back down at Richard and nods a bit, “We’re doing as well as we can given the circumstances. I’m handling things better than Jac, I think. But she’s young, and unfortunately, certain situations made her believe that abilities gave worth. I think it has very negatively affected her self-esteem to suddenly be without again. I’ve tried to remind her that others around her never had abilities in the first place and managed to do amazing things, or lost their abilities and still got them back— that it’s not hopeless for her, but…”
It’s difficult to convince a teenager sometimes. “She’s thrown herself into school work— but also into researching what happened to us, sometimes to worrying levels…” Worrying for her. But she’s tried to allow it as much as she can, even if she’s said no to things that Jac certainly had wanted her to say yes to. “I wouldn’t allow her to do some of the more dangerous experiments that they were asking, though, but that didn’t stop some people.”
As she’s sure Richard does now.
As she speaks, she flexes her hand again, as if making sure she still has feeling.
“Yeah. She had a lot of exposure to that ‘Children of the Eclipse’ rhetoric that Monroe had borrowed from Mazdak…” A heavy sigh, Richard’s head shaking slowly, “I don’t blame her for being so obsessed with wanting to know what happened to her, what’s happening too her… hopefully we can find some answers soon.”
He glances to the stairs, and then back to Gillian, admitting quietly, “I do worry about you. Are you sure you’re doing alright?”
Whatever answer Gillian might have given Richard in confidence is stalled behind the arrival of Jolene from the hall. Gillian’s time-spanned daughter looks better than the last time Richard saw her in the aftermath of the events in Detroit. She rakes a hand through her hair, surprised to see Richard, even if Peter had given her a heads-up.
“Uh oh, did we forget to pay some sort of robot insurance bill?” Lene jokes, cracking a lopsided smile.
“Wait, robot insurance?” Peter asks at her back, closing the distance on his crutches. Jolene makes a patient—if exasperated—face and looks back at her father, shaking her head in a quick no. Peter realizes how silly his own question sounded just a smidge too late to avoid that hit to his dignity.
“Right,” Peter mumbles, “right. Right.”
“Besides the headaches and the occasional numbness, I’m doing fine. It was actually kind of a relief to me, not having to contain my ability every moment of every day for fear I would cause someone to spontaneously combust,” Gillian says with a grin, before looking up at the two as they enter. The presence of those two might well have a big thing to do with how she’s doing so well, honestly.
“Careful about making jokes like that, he might actually decide to get us a robot maid or something… though I know we’d all love to have one to clean up after the cats sometimes.” After a moment, “Actually, do you have robot maids yet? Because that might be really helpful in the future.”
“I mean, I *have* been trying to reach you about your robot’s extended warranty…” A quip from Richard, though the sight of Jolene brings a warm smile to his lips, “You’re looking well, ‘Lene— and no, but we do have some amazing robotic vacuums. Think roombas with tentacles.”
He pauses as if giving them time to do that, “Yeah, now you understand why they aren’t on the market yet.”
Then he waves a hand dismissively, “Anyway, uh— I had something I needed to let you know about, and honestly Gillian and technically Peter deserve to know too, so. Before I start, uh…”
Pulling a paper, he fumbles with it for a moment, glancing up, back down, hesitating, then offering it out towards Lene. “Can you— confirm this is from your home timeline?”
A faded New York Times article. But not one that was ever published. Not here.
Two Dissidents Killed in DHS Operation
July 11th, 2023CARSON CITY, NEVADA—Two anti-government dissidents were killed following an altercation with DHS Agents. The Department of Homeland Security was alerted to the presence of two anti-government dissidents earlier in the week thanks to a tip from a neighbor who recognized one of the tenants from a local news bulletin.
The dissidents, believed to be Gillian Childs and her son Nathan, were members of the notorious Phoenix organization responsible for the bombing of the Department of Evolved Affairs Detention Center in Quincy, Massachusetts just last year.
Lene approaches Richard and takes the article in hand, though she doesn’t look at it so much as stare at him for a long, troubled moment. When she finally does take the article in hand, she eases back toward the sofa and leans against the arm, scanning the newsprint in silence.
“How—” Lene starts to say, but her voice cracks when she does. Scrubbing her hand over her face, she keeps reading the article over and over. Peter twists on the sofa so as to get a look at it over her shoulder, then looks up to Richard with a biting expression.
“Where’d you get this?” Peter asks with a mixture of anger and fear in his voice.
Their reactions are the answers Richard needed.
While she can’t read the article as clearly as the other two passing it around, Gillian saw enough to get a vague idea of what was on said piece of paper and she presses her lips together in a visible frown, before reaching to put a hand on Jolene’s shoulder in comfort. In some kind of comfort. It wasn’t much, though, that she knew. There wasn’t much comfort that she could really give, after all. She wasn’t that Gillian, nor would she ever be. That had been, unfortunately, abundantly clear. She would have celebrated her daughter’s birth not too long ago had she been— she would have had a son who would be starting Peyton’s school by now—
But she would possibly never have met Jac. Certainly never have adopted her. Never had done any of the things that she’d done in the last decade.
And she would have never gotten to see the woman that Jolene had grown into. “I’m guessing this will be a long story?” she says quietly, voice carrying her usual husky tones.
The reactions are, in fact, all Richard needed to confirm where the scrap was from.
“Probably, but I don’t know all of it,” he asides to Gillian with a shake of his head at her statement, gaze sweeping back to Jolene, to Peter, and he offers them a slightly wan smile.
“It’s— mostly good news, though. I promise. A little weird maybe, but— ”
The next words also answer Peter’s question.
“Hiro saved them.”
Jolene says nothing—can’t. The invocation of Hiro Nakamura’s name alone has her blood freezing in her veins. He is as much of a legend in her time as he is now. But for Peter the reaction is wholly different. He puts a hand on his daughter’s hand and fixes Richard with a hopeful expression.
“Hiro.” Peter says with the breathy reverence of someone happy to hear from an old friend again. “How? Hiro was dead in—” He stops himself, realizing that linearity of events means nothing when you’re Hiro Nakamura. Instead, he laughs at the details and squeezes Jolene’s hand.
“Where are they?” Peter asks, trying not to be too excited. He looks at Gillian, then back to Richard. “When are they?” He realizes may be a better question.
It’s a strange sensation. On the one hand, Gillian feels the sudden elation and that hint of a face she’d seen in a dream, that boy from another life that wasn’t her own. That boy who had been born multiple times in multiple worlds who had been given the same name— “He’s alive?” she asks quietly, almost in a whisper. She’d pretty much given up hope of ever actually meeting any of them, not like she’d met Lene. But there’s that small moment where she looks up at Richard and— has that tiny hope.
It was almost enough to make her forget the possibility that there was another her also running around somewhere.
Jolene’s Gillian. Peter’s Gillian.
Almost. That sent another stab of emotion into her chest, but she pushed it down and focused on that glimmer of something else— even if she also felt a headache starting to come on.
“That’s… the complicated part,” Richard admits, bringing a hand up to rub against the back of his neck uncomfortably, “So— you know Hiro, he was dead set on not changing the past as much as he could— mostly because he didn’t really understand how time worked but that’s a complete tangent so I’m moving on— so he couldn’t just save them, he had to drop them somewhere that wouldn’t do that.”
“But there wasn’t any good future he could drop them in either, because— let’s face it, the wasteland didn’t have much of a future. So, he…” He draws in a slow breath, and looks down at his hands, “…he dropped them off with someone already outside their own time, who knew how not to fuck up the timeline too much.”
“Your, uh— your me. Back in the sixties.”
Peter’s back straightens, confusion in his eyes. He immediately turns to Gillian, looking at her with marked concern and uncertainty. He reaches out for her, taking one of her hands in his, giving it a firm squeeze as he tries to figure out how to wrap his head around any of that. For Peter, Richard was never the enemy. Peter died long before the Institute was an obvious threat.
But Jolene…
“No.” Jolene says, bolting up from her seat to stand. “A—absolutely fucking not!” Her voice cracks as she shouts. “There’s no way—there’s—you’re wrong.” The hate in her eyes, the betrayal, the anger is so real and palpable. “He’d—why would he leave my mom with that—that fucking monster!”
Jolene doesn’t realize what she’s said until it leaves her mouth. Tears well up in her eyes, her hands cover her mouth. She looks as mortified as she does enraged.
The two cats of the house react strongly to the sudden shift of emotion within the room, both looking up and then Smudge deciding to jump off her spot on a bookshelf and disappear, as if the stress had made her decide she would rather be elsewhere. The large ginger puts his head back down and closes his eyes again, perhaps too old for this shit.
On the other hand, Gillian closes one eye, as if straining at the idea of this situation. Hiro Nakamura wasn’t someone she knew very well. He had helped her at one point, and worked against her at another, but this… “Lene,” she says quietly. “It’s possible he had a plan to try to— I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t know how bad that man was going to become.” Or had he? Or had he hoped to change what could happen somehow? Time travel was nothing if not confusing. If she ever managed to see Hiro Nakamura again, she was going to have some words with him.
And part of her wanted to have words with herself, too. “I can’t believe that I— any me honestly— would have stood by and let him do half the things that he did.” He. Not Richard. This Richard wasn’t that one. Anymore than she was that Gillian. She couldn’t help but rub her wrist, where that black handprint poked out under the sleeve.
She had nearly died in Institute hands. Twice.
Oh yeah, this is going about as well as Richard expected it would. Jolene’s reaction is like a knife in the gut, but he tries not to let it show.
“He wasn’t… he wasn’t always a monster,” he observes quietly, “Maybe Hiro hoped that she’d rein him in, there was a time that we were— close.” He looks up, over to Gillian with a faint smile before looking back over to Jolene.
“By all accounts she was— happy, but— you don’t need to take my word for it. Your brother’s still alive. He could tell you more.”
A hard swallow as he straightens up, trying to get the information out without his own feelings getting the better of him. “He’s going by Athan Stone, he was— one of the Ferry’s backers, probably because he knew they were going to exist before they even did. I haven’t— approached him at all. Don’t feel like I— I don’t think I have the right to.”
Peter’s brows pinch together, his eyes unfocus into something more distant than the room. He blinks a few times, one hand coming up to the side of his head.
He tilts his head to the side, "Why are you calling me Rock?" With his brows furrowed together the way they are, it makes it easier to see the definition in the scar that crosses his face.
He gets enough to answer his curiosity, though. "It seems to fit. Peter means rock, after all.”
Peter snorts softly, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Nate Petrelli masquerading as Athan Stone was both the worst, and most amusing thing, Peter could imagine. Jolene doesn’t seem to find any humor in the situation.
“This is bullshit,” Lene says with a tightness in her voice and tears still in her eyes. “There’s no way—there’s no way he—he—” She grapples with the notion that her brother either never knew she came here, or that he did and didn’t contact her. “This is bullshit!” Lene shouts, clenching her fists and throwing her arms down to her side, small pulses of violet light crackling in her fists.
“Lene,” Peter says, reaching out for her, but she swats his hand away with a crackle-snap of her power discharging when she touches him, and Peter recoils from the sensation. Lene freezes, realizing what she’d done, and then ducks her head down and storms out of the room. Peter looks torn, between Richard and his news, and Jolene’s emotions. He looks at Gillian, frozen in indecision.
Resting her hand on the arm of the chair, Gillian stands and moves toward Lene. The movements are slower than she would like them to be, but everything has been slower since her stroke. At least she’s not in pain at the moment— physically. Emotions are another story. This whole thing is causing her chest to tighten and her face to feel warm. There might also be tears in her eyes, but she’s trying to ignore them. “Lene, I understand— you’re frustrated. You wonder why he hasn’t come to see you yet. And why did you have to find out— like this.” Through Richard. Instead of Nate— Athan Stone— himself telling them? She knew because she felt the same way about it, as well.
Well. Gillian knew the answer to that.
She couldn’t help but look at Peter, because well, that was the answer right there. He was a Petrelli.
“But he may have also known who Richard became in your world and— knew how you might take it if— “ If this were true? And it seemed like it was. “He still should have come and seen you himself. If he knew you were here.”
Richard just winces at the outburst, one hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck as he looks down for a moment. “Sorry. I don’t have any— any more information, he never approached me so I figured I shouldn’t approach him,” he says quietly, “Figured I’d leave that to you all.”
Then he takes a step back towards the door, “I’ll— uh— I’ll just step out, then, I’m sure you don’t need me… complicating things.”
Peter sighs, running a hand through his hair. “No, Richard, you did the right thing. This isn’t an easy thing to untangle, and if… if Nate’s been here for—if he’s an adult now there’s no telling how he would’ve reacted to seeing you. Or what the other you told him.” Brows furrowed, Peter looks down at the floor, then over to Gillian, and finally back to Richard.
“Do we know what happened to that Gillian?” Peter wonders. “If she passed away then…” he makes a noise in the back of his throat, then shakes his head. “If there’s anything else you know.”
With a twinge of her eyebrow, Gillian looks back at Peter before focusing her attention on Lene— who knows what the other Richard had told Athan Stone all those years. How old had he been? She remembered a dream, seeing him as a child, seeing him older than that, when Lene was young, but how much of those dreams had been real and how much had been fantasy?
She always assumed it had all been real once she actually met Lene and they all had been the truth. Those small memories of the boy Nate would be all she would ever have— but maybe some of it had been her imagination, or the fever dreams of her H5-N10 infection.
Maybe she would get to see him as an adult, as she got to see Lene— But if their real mother was alive, did she have any right to see either of them? And did she have any right to…
Her thoughts trail off, with a small shake of her head, saying after the fleeing Richard. “Richard, wait. If she’s still alive, Lene and Peter have a right to know that too.”
As both of them tell him to stop, Richard halts awkwardly in the middle of the room moving back towards the door and merciful escape from this extremely uncomfortable situation. He looks between the two of them, lips pursing briefly as he tries to figure out how to phrase the news.
Finally, he just sighs, gaze dropping to the floor and his head shaking slightly. “No,” he says quietly, “Broome was keeping an eye on her and Nate after Samson killed him, but— she passed in two-thousand and two. I don’t know how, but— she would’ve been in her eighties at the time, so chances are it was just a— uh— an old age thing.”
He looks back up to Peter, hesitating before revealing, “Nate had— he had a daughter, but she got involved in the Civil War and passed during it. That’s honestly all I know, and I just learned this a couple weeks ago.”
A daughter hits Peter harder than he is prepared for. He crumples, bringing a hand up to his mouth as he looks from Richard to Gillian and back again. Grandchildren? He reels from the revelation, shocked into stunned silence.
His Gillian is dead, all over again. The story Lene had told him was hard enough to bear, but this—this hurt even more. Still, Peter has the presence of mind to look up and meet Richard’s as best as he can.
“Where…” Peter starts to say, but his voice cracks. He swallows, hard, and tries again. “Where is he now?”
A daughter who passed during the war—
And Jolene’s mother and Peter’s Gillian dead. Gillian had to keep reminding herself that it wasn’t her. Even when it felt like her. Even when she remembered those moments, those dreams that Benji Ryans had given her, those memories where she had been Gillian, or Gwen as she had gone by. It wasn’t her. She wasn’t dead. She didn’t grow old and die not long after the two towers had fallen. God, she had lived till her eighties? She couldn’t stop the tears that ran down her cheek, even if she kept telling herself it wasn’t really her.
But it was like when she learned that Stef had died.
It wasn’t her, but it was. Up until the moment that she had stopped being her she had been her. A piece of her that had followed a different path to an inevitable conclusion. No, it was her. And it was her family. Blinking, she looks at Peter, through vision blurred a little and she takes in a slow breath and moves closer to him, putting a hand on his arm.
A decade ago, she would have demanded to go with him. But now…
“Can I go with you?”
Peter nods to Gillian; silent affirmation. He wouldn’t think of going without her.
Richard is just looking more uncomfortable by the moment. He draws in a breath, looking to Peter at his question. “Washington. KC. Look for, uh, the *Petros* Foundation,” he replies quietly, “He’s the president of the whole… shebang there.”
He glances to Gillian, back to Peter - gauging their emotional states, maybe - and then he shakes his head at himself, turning to head for the door once more.
This time he doesn’t stop.