Participants:
| Scene Title | You Have Not Been Forgotten |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Amidst prison yard violence, Helena and Alex receive an unexpected message. |
| Date | February 21, 2009 |
Moab Prison Facility - Yard
He can't touch Helena. But he can talk to her. So Al is playing chess with Helena, on a board scratched in the dust, with little stones with the characters for the pieces scratched into them. At the moment, he's staring at the current game with the beetlebrowed frown of a chimp confronted with a calculus problem, only occasionally glancing up at her. The board's in front of him, right before the fence - apparently Helena's pieces get moved according to her orders.
Helena is actually kind of a horrible chess player, which some might argue does not bode well for her leadership skills. Mere chain link fencing seperates the women's yards from the men's, but the skyline of the prison is punctuated by armed guards, so it's not as if climbing is a terribly lucrative idea. She sits calmly at a table not far from where Alex has the game laid out. She still looks worn and weary, but not as much as before. They must have given her a break for a few days before they'll try again. "Queen's rook to Rook Five." she says, after a moment.
Some distance away from Alexander's turned back, one of the other prisoners has taken note of the nearness of a representative of the boy team to one of the girls across the fence. Some idle fiddling and folding at a piece of paper eventually abandoned in favor of staring, the big man shifts enough on his cold bench to pass a glance over his shoulder at the nearest guard, who doesn't seem terribly concerned. Another shift of weight hints at a near stand, though he doesn't move just yet. Definitely thinking about it, though.
Hugh obediently shifts the piece over. The frown deepens. He glances up at her. "Man. I'm awful at this," he admits, before letting a sheepish grin curl at the corner of his lip.
"So am I." Helena says, and leans forward to peer over. "Am I winning?"
Al has a flash of insight, and indicates the next series of moves with a dusty fingertip. "Well, you about to fight us to a draw, see. I walked right into a trap," he says, pulling a face. "Story of my fuckin' life, ain't it?" There's only a tinge of bitterness to his voice.
"None of that." Helena chides. Whenever one of them seems to draw even a little into despair, the other is there to put the verbotten stamp on it. Then, with faint earnesty, and because she has been holding it in and she still hasn't asked today (she asks every day), "Did you see him?" Ever hopeful.
They are playing a game with marks in the dust and pieces. This much Boxer can see from afair, thumbs tapped together in his lap with restless energy once the bit of paper has been tucked away. Another glance over at the guard earns him a dirty, suspicious kind of look, and cowed, he finally pushes up off the bench to start dragging his way across the yard for the fence.
Alexander doesn't answer Helena, beyond a quick shake of his head. He gives Boxer the wary look of someone expecting a beating, or an attempt at such, coming up to his feet in scrambling haste. His gaze flickers up, around, over - guards at the perimeter, guards down in the yard, but who actually has their eyes on him.
Helena doesn't stand up - if she did, it would make them look like they're Up To Something. The blonde can't be more than twenty or twenty-one, and she keeps her seat with the serenity of the doomed as she watches Boxer approach.
Boxer is a big guy. Tall and broad and not all that friendly looking, really, he slows to a stop some ways down the fence when Alex scambles to his feet, still some ten or fifteen feet away when his attention tips back down to the makeshift board. "I have seen you out here before, talking." This is apparently what passes for a 'hullo,' wherever he's from. His accent suggests Russia with some harsher contamination from Brooklyn.
She's relatively safe on the other side of the fence. Al is ….in the same cage. "Yeah?" he asks, with a decided chill to his tone, levelling that wary look from under red brows at Boxer, even as he angles himself so he can't easily be caught by a rush against the fence. Not from Boxer, at the moment.
Helena regards Boxer a moment from across the metal twinings that seperate divides the yard into men's and women's. "Hello." she says calmly, and then, "Yes. What of it?" The inquiry doesn't seem particularly defensive - she sounds more curious than tough-jailbird.
"Ooh, you are a tough guy, eh?" When Al's brows level, Boxer's lift, laugh lines bracing in around either side of a smile at the younger man's expense. His hands raise away from his sides, though — palms out and open, non-threatening. "You should relax. There is nothing of it, unless you would like to make something of it. I am only curious." He might qualify as polite if he wasn't poking fun at Alex at the same time, but his lessened smile is genuine enough when he turns it down onto Helena. "I am Robert."
"Not particularly. Just not up for another beating and another round with security hitting me for fighting," Al says,bluntly. He doesn't get any closer. "Al," he adds, no doubt extraneously. Being the only ex-cop on that level is enough to win you the sort of local celebrity you don't want to have.
"I'm Helena." the blonde manages a smile, weary though her eyes are. "Did you just arrive, Robert? They're starting to gather quite a collection, aren't they? Like their own personal Evolved zoo."
"I have been here. One month, maybe two. Sometimes I do not feel like talking. Today…" Boxer trails off, head tipped in vague acknowledgement of the fact that today is a better day, for some reason. "Helena and Al. You are friends?"
"Yes," Al says, crisply. "Why?" He's still poised for fight or flight, but not moving. The dust of the yard eddies around his ankles.
"We are." Helena choruses her own agreement. "I think you've been here longer than us, then. I…" she trails off, frowns. "I've lost track of time, a little."
"You know if you leap up in a panic any time anyone tries to speak with you, you are asking for it, Carrot Top." Boxer's 'r's roll with more emphasis there, light eyes narrowed at the persistence of his terse manner of address. "I have lost track also. I do not really think it matters, anyway."
Al merely shrugs at that, still eyeing Boxer warily. "I don't know, either," he allows….and sounds dismayed at the admission. He's standing a little ways from the fence that divides the womens' and mens' sections of the yard, watching the Russian like he expects the bigger man to lunge for him.
"It matters to me." Helena says, her voice betraying only a small portion of her anxiety. "It helps me keep track of what's real and what isn't."
"Wake up, eat food, play in the dirt, eat again, go to sleep." Fingers laced idly through chain link, Boxer allows some of his weight to suspend itself from the fence, almost too lazily at ease in the yard. He keeps his eyes on Al, not doing all that much to ease the expectation that he might lunge afterall. "What else is there to be unreal?"
Al still looks as if he'd love to have a burrow to hide in. Like the coyotes that sing at night beyond the walls. He doesn't answer.
"It depends on what they want from you." Helena answers honestly. "And they want quite a bit from me." Her fingers curl into her palms, nails biting flesh. "But I won't give it to them."
This morning had been busy at Moab, mid-night transfer of prisoners becoming the norm, to keep people out of the yard when new faces are brought in. Which means the afternoon release into the yards comes with an influx of new inmates once they have passed screening and have been successfully neutralized. For all of their confusion, the handful of men and women being released through the double-pairs of sliding chain-link doors from the primary facility and into the recreation yard are brothers and sisters to their fellow inmates now.
Among them, one particularly rough looking young man is already beginning to lead his way into the forefront of the security detail's attention. Shoving past the other inmates, this rugged looking, young black man runs both of his hands over his short hair, scowling as he turns and backpedals through the thin layer of snow on the ground, lookin gup at the razorwire fences, security cameras and sentry towers filled with armed guards. "Son of a bitch!" He shouts, dragging his thick fingers down along either side of his face, "This ain't fuckin' real. This ain't fuckin' real."
A smoldering stare is given as one of the more shaken prisoners tries to settle a hand on his shoulder, and the young inmate slaps the hand away, grabbing him by the wrist as he steps in, pointing one finger up into his face, "Don't you touch me! Don't you dare touch a fuckin' hand on me! I ain't no joke, you ain't got no idea who I am!"
Frightened, the wiry old man in his late fifties that the younger, stronger, angrier in mate threatens looks like a frightened animal, just trying to get away, even as his hand is restrained. "You ain't shit to me, this place — all a'this? It ain't shit." Through his teeth come the last few words, rising up to bring his face closer to the old man's, "An when I get outta' here, you best not be in my way old man."
"It is no wonder you are getting beaten like a little girl with that attitude, you know. They like it when you are afraid. No offense to you, crazy girl." This is apparently Helena's new name, gifted in solemn seriousness just before the ruckus of incoming prisoners stirs up back at the facility's maw. Still hanging onto the fence, Boxer swings his weight a little sideways — just enough to peel his attention off of Alexander and onto the disagreement occuring over his shoulder. "Oh boy."
Alex turns to watch the new inmates, expression gone cold and watchful, again. "And who is that?" he wonders, tone light, casual. "I don't remember it being that rough when we showed up."
"None taken." is Helena's mild reply. She too looks on at the newly arrived prisoner, her expression turning to one of pity. "He hasn't been really messed with yet, he's just in denial." World of difference, to her.
Growling, the young inmate slams his shoulder into the old man and lets go of his wrist a second too late, sending him toppling down onto the ground. He takes a step forward, slapping one hand onto his chest as dark eyes peer down at him, then swivel up to another prisoner watching with a slacked jaw, "You wanna' start something, bitch?" His brows lower, eyes narrowing, "I want all of you little shits to get it through your heads now!"
Behind chain-link fences, the guards watch like spectators at a cagefight as this wild inmate throws himself around with a head full of impotent rage, "That if any'a you screw with me, any of you!" He looks through the chain=link, pointing at the guards, "That means you too! I ain't needin' my power to know you bitches are afraid! Everybody's scared'a me, and if one'a you pigs so much as looks at me crooked — " His teeth click together, and the pinting finger curls towards the rest of his hand. "That's right." He croons out in a deep voice, taking a step back slowly. From one of the picnic tables scattered along the rec yard, the bespectacled former teacher from the midwest — McIntyre — looks up from his chess board and the other prisoners sitting around with him. His eyes fix on the new inmate, and it only takes a moment for their eyes to meet.
"You got somethin' to say to me?" The loud and aggressive new arrival spits out, taking a few steps forward. Where's Vinnie when you need someone put in their place? "You wanna' sit here and stare at me? Lemmie come give youa nice big close up!"
"Keep talking and you are going to get your pretty face broken," is Boxer's contribution from the fence, leer turned up at full blast and head cocked at a slack angle over the roll of his shoulder while the new guy does his thing, pointing and shoving and clicking teeth. "Then you will have a very hard time finding someone who will take you as their bitch."
A more quiet, "I don't know, maybe he will come say 'hello,'" is tipped aside for Alexander and Helena.
"You make it sound like an incentive," Al says, in a molasses slow drawl. He takes a few steps away from the fence, towards the new arrival. No attemptto conceal the fact that he's looking. Quite the opposite, in fact.
"Do you think you two could stop flirting for one second?" asks Helena with an air of studied politeness. She's openly watching the black man face off with McIntyre, her gaze interested. Truth be told, she's still not sure who McIntyre is, or if he's a plant, or what - things are very confused for her lately. It's hard for her to be afraid of the rebellious one facing off with the teleporter, though. It's the dynamics that interest her. Like watching an ant hill.
McIntyre's shaky hand over the white knife chess piece wavers as the tall man moves over, finding his focus caught instead by Boxer's shouted welcome. His eyes focus on the Russian, narrowing as he spits on the ground at his feet, then looks back to McIntyre, "Your lucky day, Chessman." With that, the thuggish inmate strides across the yard, head cocked to one side as he makes his way up to the pair by the fence, not quite noticing Helena's thin frame on the women's side yet.
"Sorry, I don' think I heard which one of you was tryin' to talk with the other's dick in their mouth." He spits the words out, stopping just within arm's reach as he looks over to Alexander, and just a little bit up towards Boxer. Despite being a little shorter than Boxer, he's just as broad-shouldered and strong looking beneath that disgusting orange jumpsuit. One hand moves up, scratching at the scar beneath his chin where he's had the injection, "Takes some big fuckin' balls to talk shit to me, which one'a you's got em?"
"We are not flirting. We are just having conversation, man to man." That clarified for Helena, Boxer straightens and lets his hand fall away from the fence, as it's looking like he might need both of them here in a minute. The Thug is studied in his approach, somewhat skeptically. He listens to the younger man speak in much the same manner, glancing to Alexander as if requesting confirmation that he is saying what he is saying. "I don't know. I admit my balls are not so large that I feel it is my duty to threaten Grandfather Chessman with their might." Boxer tips a look back at McIntyre, brows at a more uncertain lift, as if he's not sure where the appeal lies there. "Also, I am more the strong silent type. It must have been the red head."
Al doesn't reply. Not verbally, anyhow. Why go through all the feather-fluffing and squawking and spur-scratching. A fight's what Knox is after, a fight is what Knox gets. Rather than trying to sidle from Knox as he did Boxer. Al launches himself at the newcomer, set on bringing him down and keeping him there.
Helena is up on her feet in an instant, pressed against the chain-link, her fingers curling into it. "Alex! Alex! Don't - they'll send you down to Red!" And she'll never see him again. "Stop it, stop it!!" Her eyes dart frantically to the guards, waiting to see if they're going to move in and break it up. Her eyes dart over to of all people, McIntyre, but it's not like he can do anything about it, right? Her gaze then slides to Robert - not that he could do anything about it either. Well, maybe he could, but she's not expecting him to.
Someone like Knox doesn't often get lunged at, for all the years he's been with organized crime, it's been half as many since someone went after him willingly. Alexander tackles him to the ground, reminding him that behind these bars and on these drugs, he's not Knox anymore, he's nothing other than Benjamin Washington — just a man.
Alexander gets the first hit, a slug square to Knox's jaw, and the second strike on Jesse's record for violence in the yard. A few scuffles here and there, the guards overlook, but when it comes down to flared tempers and fglying fists, the alarms start sounding and the cage doors begin sliding open. "Yeah, that's it, that's right." The pinned inmate snarls, reaching up to grab one of Alexander's ears before laying a punch square into his jaw. "That's what I'm talkin' about!" The power behind Benjamin Washington's punch doesn't turn Alexander's head into a likeness of shattered watermelon as it normally would, instead the muscled and tough young man merely sends the redhead flying.
Knox rises up and drops back down on Alexander, bringing one fist up to collide with the side of Alexander's head, sending his jaw jerking to one side. "That's right, you gimme' what I want!" Another punch, sending Alexander's head jerking back again, but only until the redhead is able to bring up a leg and plant it square into Knox's stomach, knocking the now winded prisoner up into the air and flat on his back.
"Okay, uhhh, this is unexpected," Boxer informs himself, and Helena, mostly because she is in range to overhear while he stands there with his hands held away from his side and watches the fight. He takes a step to the left, then two more quickly to the right, orange jumpsuit trying to keep pace with the back and forth movement of body over body. He looks like he might reach in at one point, to attempt what, there's no telling — but he doesn't make his first official move until Knox is flat on his back. It comes in the form of a blunt soccer kick to the crotch.
If Al had any damn sense, he'd listen to Helena. If Al had any damn sense, he'd be crab-picking off the Georgia coast and living in a tin roof shack, like his ancestors back to the penal colony days. We've long since established Al has no damn sense.
Which means Al will do his level best to beat Knox into bloody unconsciousness until he's knocked out himself, or otherwise forced off the newcomer's prone body. He's bleeding from lip and nose, jaw already swelling, but still quite game for the fight. "That's what you want, huh?" he wonders, tone gone gravelly and dry.
Helena practically weeps. "Alex…" she says, her tone bereft. Her knees seem to give, her fingers still curled around the chain links as she starts to cry like yet again, her heart's been broken. They're going to take him away. They're going to put him in a pit and she's never going to see him again, and he was a touchstone of sorts, to keeping her spirit unbeaten, to knowing what's real. It may be a good thing her power is suppressed - the weather would not be kind.
There's nothing like a kick to the groin to bring a fight to a pretty solid close. While Boxer's foot doesn't quite hit the sweet spot fully, as it were, it gets the point across with enough zest to send Washington curling up onto his side, arms moving around his midsection in the moments before Alexander lands on top of him. Another punch, this time to Knox's head, and another, and another, blood pools along the thug's temple, and dark eyes flick up to Alexander, followed by a hand to his throat. His fingers squeeze, pushing up and lifting the young man off of his body. The veins in Washington's neck bulge out as he rises up to his feet and drives Alexander back against the fence with a loud, clattering ring, even as taser-wielding yard security begins throwing people out of their way, trying to get to the scene.
"T-this— " Blood comes out between his teeth as he speaks, "This is exactly what I want," one fist slams into Alexander's midsection, a hand still around his throat, and he leans past the redhead, bringing his mouth over Alexander's shoulder as he seems at a distance to spit out a litany of profanity.
But in actuality, all he says is, "Helena Dean— Alexander Knight." Voice gruff and thick, "You have not been forgotten." Followed by quickly kneeing Alexander in the midsection, followed by a headbutt that knocks the redhead against the fence.
"Jesus Mary and Joseph," rolled out admidst more colorful Russian when Knox manages to keep on trucking post cheapshot and head beating, Boxer finally involves himself in full, right arm seeking to loop around Knox's neck from behind to wrest him away after the headbutt. He manages to look puzzled rather than all that angry or intense while he does it. Everyone here is very strange.
You know what happens when you strain to use powers that are having the hell suppressed out of them? It's like the mother of all summer ice cream brain freezes - like a knife stabbed up from the soft palate into the brain. And it's that pain that has Al dropping like a felled redwood, though Knox's headbutt helps more than a little. He rebounds back off the fence, staggers a step or two, and then simply crumples with all the grace of a stringcut marionette. The security swarming won't need to do anything to subdue him.
Knox's words cause Helena to cease crying immediately, and she steps back from the fence as much to keep out of harm's way at the arrival of the guards as it is to consider the man's words. Hope and suspiscion war inside her - he could be yet another plant. To let hope die means they've beaten her, but to trust in someone giving her the truth could also play her into their hands. Brushing her cheeks, she watches as the men are dealt with from just a few feet away, seperated only by thin twists of metal. She stares at Knox numbly, as if somehow by doing so she can puzzle him out.
The arm around Knox's neck has his legs kicking, hands grasping at the muscled forearm in an attempt to pry the other inmate off of him. His words are strangled out by the chokehold, fingers clawing ineffectually at hunter orange clothing. By now the security detail has arrived to the far end of the yard, one man moving in immediately towards Alexander, taser rifle trained down on the redhead, "Stay down! Stay down and roll onto your stomach! Down!" Another pair of security force storm towards Knox and Boxer, each one of the detail firing a pair of darts from their rifles, one striking Knox in the midsection, another hitting Boxer in the side. The volts of electricity sent surging thorugh the pair is enough to send Washington into further convulsions, jaw clamping down tightly as hissing breath presses otu through his teeth along with a pained shriek.
"Down on the ground now!" The security team shouts, alarms still sounding as the recreation yard on the men's side is beginning to be cleared. "Everyone back inside, hands behind your head!" The orders are shouted to everyone except Boxer and Knox, who have other more reflexive issues to worry about.
Boxer is not interested in holding onto his alliterative companion for any longer than he has to — a roll of his shoulders intended to fling the other man off his feet and down hard into the ground so that he can follow suit. Unfortunately he only makes it about halfway through that equation before security seeks to help him go down faster. He hangs on his feet for a few odd milliseconds, teeth bared and muscles seized impossibly taut around the lock of his knees and spine. One breath he's up, the next he's down and barely managing enough of a wheeze to curse with.
Helena backs away from the fence, checking to see if the orders are included for the women's side. Is it coincidence that Alex always gets into fights whenever she's around, or is it coincidence that she's always around whenever Alex gets into fights? She behaves as instructed, regardless, though a frisson of terror flutters through her - every time a yard period is over, it means it's possible they won't take her back to her cell, but to a room where they'll stick her and try to worm their way into her head again.
At the moment, Al doesn't have the muscle control or presence of mind to roll onto his belly as ordered. He's busy curling up in a ball, and trying to suck in air past having the wind knocked out of him.
As the guards restrain Boxer, Alexander and Knox with zip ties, both sides of the yard now are being emptied of their inmates, one scuffle is enough to send everyone back to their cells for the remainder of what was shaping up to be a fair day. But on the women's side, as the prisoners are dragged and pulled into seperate lines to keep the two doors that lead back into the prison clear, one of the prison officials pulls Helena aside as she's being divided up, taking her out of both lines.
Her hands are pulled behind her back, restrained with handcuffs, a more permanent restraint than the plastic ties used o the brawling men. "Come with me, Miss Dean." The guard intones in a deep voice, escorting her thorugh a narrow corridor of chain-link fence towards another entrance to the prison, and out of Alexander's line of sight as he painfully, blearily, watches Helena be separated from her group.
Time to go back in the hole.
 February 21st: The Blobbiest Blob |
Previously in this storyline… Next in this storyline… |
 February 21st: War Zone Medicine |