Participants:
| Scene Title | What She Knows |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Three women on a rooftop, each knowing different things. |
| Date | June 16, 2009 |
Deveaux Building Roof
It's been some time since Gillian made the trek up to the roof of this broken building, and since then it's changed quite a bit. Certain details remain the same, but there's important differences. And important similarities. Standing in front of one of the two cherubs, she runs fingers over the bullet hole marring it forever. Dark hair is pulled back out of her face, collected into a hairtie near her neck, and she looks in better shape than when last seen. The deep cut on her cheek is barely a childhood scar by this point, invisible at a distance.
No outward sign of abilities running rampant, but the twinges of change wanting to happen, specifically in the sky above, but they aren't reaching their potential.
Helena knows Gillian is here. The unnatural shifts in the weather are not of Helena's making, and there's only one other person that she's met so far who can do what she does. She makes her way up the stairs with Cat cautiously, checking around before she steps out into the open even as she puts forth the effort to smooth out the weather. She carries a Mediterrenean climate with her, as Teo is so fond of calling it. "Gillian." she says carefully, studying the dark haired woman. Now, Gillian knows that Helena knows, but Helena knows know that Gillian knows that Helena knows. And for a change, Cat doesn't know any of it. This should be fun.
She too is cautious as the stairs are climbed and the roof emerged onto, Cat having compared the building's current state with the shape it had been in before the Vanguard had used it as a platform to shoot at Allen Rickham and Conrad did severe vibratory battle with the shooters inside. It amazes her the structure is still standing, and this makes her all the warier.
The other source of wariness is the meeting itself. Once she steps out onto the roof Cat's eyes undertake a slow and thorough study of Gillian as if to satisfy herself this is the real Miss Childs. Distance is also kept, perhaps five feet, to not permit any sudden reaching out and grabbing. For all she knows, they could be meeting Arthur.
The climate that Gillian seems to inspire isn't quite the same, colder and wet, like autumn as opposed to summer. Better than the winter she'd been trying to bring the last time they came in contact with each other. Letting her hand drop away from the bullet scar, she looks past the leader to the lieutenant and takes in a slow breath. "I'll get right to it— Peter's alive." It's said simply, with a kind of resignation in her eyes as she leans against the edge, practically sitting down next to the cherub. No move is made to get any closer at all. She doesn't give much pause as she continues, "He's crippled. Spine broken. Can talk and move his arms and he's rolling around in a wheel chair. Don't imagine it'll be permenant with the kinds of miracles you guys are known for, so that's the smallest of the problems."
A sigh escapes Helena's lips, a tension that was unnoticed but present in her shoulders allowing him to relax. "I knew it." she murmurs with relief. She stays out of Gillian's reach, and instead watches Gillian with curiously flat eyes. "Keep talking." she says carefully. "How do you know this? Gabriel didn't mention seeing you at Pinehearst. Did Peter contact you?"
She doesn't seem surprised on hearing this, Cat having agreed the night before about Peter not being dead until a body is seen, and maybe not even then. That Arthur himself is supposed to be dead, and they all know the falseness of that. There are questions forming in her mind, interrogatives she opts not to voice. Yet.
They knew, but she gives her head a small shake. Gillian didn't know, didn't believe he had been there until she touched him, actually. There's a hesitant pause. "No, I went to them," she says in a quiet rasped whisper. "I went to… try and see if I could find out a weakness, what he was after, what he wanted— anything— he wouldn't trust me for much longer, but I figured I might be able to find out something useful so I— so we could stop him." There's a lot of blanks that need filling in. "Pinehearst was the one that told me how I could help break you out of Moab. I'd told Teo, but I don't know if he passed that piece of info along."
"He's such a nice guy," Cat replies with sarcasm dripping from her voice. "It's almost embarrassing he got me so easily. Father sent me a message, at least I think he did. That could've been Arthur too. His message was a reply to my asking to meet about coordinating in regards to Pinehearst and the Company. It said to get out of the city, it's not safe, so I said we'd meet at the house in Hartford the next day."
"When I turned up, he wasn't there yet. The man who joined me looked like Father, sounded like Father. Said Arthur had snapped, that Gabriel and Peter came to Pinehearst and Arthur stole his ability. Said he thought Arthur killed him. Gabriel got away, he claimed, kidnapping one of Arthur's test subjects and Mother got hurt. He asked if I would help stop Arthur permanently, and I said yes. I let him touch me." The voice gets louder, filled with rage at herself and at him. "I let him touch me!"
"He dropped the guise of being Father then. I don't know if it was by telepathy, illusions, or shapeshifting. Could be any of those. He ripped out my ability, threw me through the window, and set my parents' house on fire."
"When I went to see him the first time, I saw my dead sister. She sat down next to me in the lobby and told me she had unfinished business," Gillian says quietly, an admission she'd kept to herself for so long cause she didn't understand it, cause it was too difficult to admit to. But with everyone being fooled… that's just one of them. "After he told me how I could help get Peter out of Moab, I saw her again— and she told me I was doing the right thing." She laughs bitterly. "I actually believed her."
But not so much she could tell many people about it. It's crazy and it's stupid. "But you don't have to tell me not to trust him, I didn't go in there to get manipulated again, or lose this ability, or kiss his toes— I didn't even expect to find Peter. I went in there to find a way to fucking kill him." There's a mild snapping sound to her voice, before she leans against the edge again to breathe. There's that twinge of the weather wanting to shift, but not doing it.
"He wants Delphine and Gabriel back— he wanted me to do it. I ditched the cellphone he gave me in a cab and contacted you instead. He said he can't find Gabriel easily, but he can find her. "
"Why does everyone seem to think they can do this sort of thing by themselves?" Helena asks in rhetorical irritation. "No one person's going to be able to kill Arthur. No one person's going to be capable of any of what we're trying to do. Delphine is keeping herself on the move, but she's helping the people who got their powers messed with. That's her ability and it's why Arthur wants her - she can fix you, Gillian. She fixed Gabriel, and she fixed Cat. From what I gather, Peter didn't escape, and Arthur's probably convinced him somehow through an ability or just plain crafty-ness that he's the Good Guy. Otherwise he'd be here, he'd have come to find me." She turns back to look at Cat. "We need Liz, Alec, and Leo at the very least. Arthur's shown his hand and we need to figure out what to do about it, and we need to be smart."
"We need to learn if Father and Mother are alive, what their status is, they know more about him than I do," Cat asserts with a stern expression only partly concealing her emnity. "Likelihood is they're dead, given his move on me, unless he still needs them. I've not been able to reach either. Gillian, did you see any evidence of him having succeeded in creating the serum for bestowing abilities? That's the key to everything. If he has it, he can make a power grab. If he fails to get it, he gets stopped in his tracks. Maybe frustration over not having it yet is making him unhinged," she suggests.
"We can maybe use that to our advantage. Lead him to somehow believe what he needs is at a location or with a person and have a group keep him busy while snipers take head shots. This time, when he dies, measures need to be taken to make sure he's dead and stays dead."
"And we may have another advantage. He may have wanted me dead, may not have. He didn't make sure of me, could've thought the fire and being defenestrated would do the trick, or he may not have cared if I lived or died." She forms a cold smile, calculating. "It doesn't matter, really. The important thing, I think, is to perhaps make him believe I'm dead. Or at least still dispowered."
"Helena," Cat adds quietly, with some sympathy to her voice, "if Peter does come to you, be very careful. Refuse to believe it's really him, and absolutely do not let him touch you. Because if Arthur wants to move on you, that's probably how."
"If I wanted to do the whole thing on my own, would I be right here talking to you?" Gillian grumbles under her breath, pushing away from her perch on the edge of the room. "I know that about Delphine. I know what she does, I got it the first time. And I don't intend to get fixed right now. Not until this is over, so keep her the hell away from me," she adds, a stubborn set to her jaw. There's an anger in her voice, at being told things she already knows.
"I don't know if he has the formula or not. It didn't exactly come up. He was too interested in getting Delphine and Gabriel back…" She says, before looking back at Helena, "And even if it is Peter— don't trust him. You were right, he's pretty much brainwashed. Believes Gabriel attacked him while he tried to help Gabriel. He really wants me to help Gabriel, save him from himself— which is a total tune change on Peter's part, so I knew that he wasn't quite right in the head."
tHere's a pause, before she adds, "Also believes Delphine's a paranoid schitzo and is manipulating everyone she meets to believe she's right. So yeah— Peter's brainwashed as well as has a broken spine." A longer pause, more hesitation, "He wanted me to tell you he was okay— and that he misses you."
She motions toward the door, "I came to try and give you information, but you seem to got it all figured out, so I'll just go."
Helena nods to Cat in dismayed agreement, but her reaction to Gillian's temper is one of exasperation. "Why don't you back up to the part ten seconds ago where you talked about how you went to Pinehearst by yourself with the intention of killing Arthur?" Helena volleys. "And here you go, running off again. Delphine's ability isn't just going to kick in the minute you're close to her. If you don't want to be fixed that's fine, but you better hope nothing happens to her in the interim while there's a chance she can fix it and you choose to stay as you are." Which at present, is just like Peter. Helena narrows her eyes, but keeps her suspicions at bay for the moment. "Are you more interested in walking off or actually having a say and a part in whatever plan we come up with to try and stop him?"
"Gillian," Cat begins in a quiet and calm voice, "you should stay with us. Against him, we need strength in numbers, to stick together. He can find you wherever you are, whenever he wants. If you don't bring him Gabriel and Delphine, he'll know you aren't on board with him, and probably come after you. Do you want to be alone if that happens? I heard what you said. You're not trying to kill him yourself, you went there to get information while you still could." She is, in fact, replaying what Gillian said in her mind word for word.
"We've not had much chance to get on the same page about Arthur," she adds, "I've collected a number of things, and you have. We can sit in front of the screen and compare notes, make sure we each have all the same data." She looks hopeful at the conclusion, when silence returns.
"The reason I asked for a non-sensetive location is cause he might come after me once he realizes I ditched his job assignment. I don't really want to lead him into the heart of a Phoenix safehouse where he's got dozens of people to suck powers out of, do you?" Gillian asks, the desire to continue the defensive argument settled down by Cat's memory replaying what she said and giving her a witness. It's difficult for her to keep all this up. The emotions are seeping through in ways she doesn't quite like.
"In some ways I would rather be alone when he comes after me. I could lose complete control over the powers I picked up— I could kill someone who isn't him— " Especially since she never got much in the way of her lessons. "Not to mention what he could do to the rest of you."
"You could kill a lot of people with the powers you've got." Helena points out. "And we still have a window before he realizes you're off mission. He's probably expecting it to take you some time. And we can use that to plan. If you want to keep your distance, we can't stop you. We have the means to contact you, so when we've come up with something, we can bring you up to speed." She shrugs, not knowing what else to say on the matter and still studying Gillian through narrowed eyes, despite herself.
"We can also think of ways to give him disinformation, to maybe have him believe you tried and were defeated," Cat suggests. "It's true him coming into the middle of a safe place isn't ideal, the best thing is a confrontation on our timetable and in the open where we can use snipers, but if we fight a defensive battle on his we stand better chances in a group. Most likely he knows this, also, and would choose luring people out one at a time. For you, Gillian, he may impersonate Gabriel." Gillian will do what she will do, Cat realizes, she's spoken her piece on that topic. Another is moved onto.
"How do we guard against that, verifying people are who they seem to be, when we can't rule out he has telepathy as his source of illusions?"
"Using Gabriel would be pretty dumb. Right now Gabriel isn't even coming withing touching distance of me," Gillian says with a shake of her head, so she doesn't think that'd be the case. If he'd wanted her ability, he'd be under a missconception if he used Gabriel. "As for telepathy— I'm pretty sure he has that— I don't know if it's how he makes illusions, but— I have telepathy and he's the only one I can think of that I got it from. I think he tried to read my mind, or— something. It was almost like his voice changed? And what he said echoed in my head— but there was this— It was like radio feedback. It happened again later when I found out I could carry on a whole conversation with telepathy." She can identify it so well thanks to the memory she'd gotten from Cat.
"I'll stick around with you for a while— he made a comment, I don't know how much truth it was with all his other lies— but he said he couldn't find Gabriel, cause of the abilities he got back. That finding him would be on me. He found Delphine, gave me address and directions and told me to call him if he moved…" So that narrows the window they thought they had where he'd notice. "I figured if I left the phone in a cab I could use the old 'I lost it, oops' excuse— and maybe say that Delphine gave me my old power back, so I suck and can't help him anymore— but I doubt that would work." She was winging it.
"It was suggested to me that he's not able to manage the clairvoyance so easily." Helena says, but doesn't explain herself. "I don't think this is the best place to start planning when we really need other heads in this too. If he's not watching you Gillian, then it should be safe for you to come back with us to the Village."