Starring:
Date: November 25, 2009
Summary:
Matt and Charlotte play head games with two of the kids in her care.
"Don't Look Now"
Orphanage, Germany
Jamie and Micah are sitting in the coat closet, the door to the closet closed as they chat softly. Jamie has her backpack on her lap, and Micah is hugging his knees to his chest. "Yeah. That'd be great! Too bad we can't go somewhere like that."
"Narnia would be awesome. It would be safe and… icy… although I guess that's not any different than here," Micah chuckles as he beams at Jamie. "And you'd never have to worry about anything. Not food. Not the government. Aslan would take care of us all. OR maybe we'd end up in another world. Something even better. I mean, if one world can exist in a wardrobe, why not others? Maybe in our world people would be like us. All people would be like us. They could fly or turn into water, or create ice… or speak to machines…" He grins.
Jamie grins and nods quickly and says, "Yeah, that'd be the best! No more having to hide. That'd be best for you I guess, 'cause in Narnia there wouldn't be many machines to talk to, huh?"
"Not a single one," Micah grins as he further tightens his grip on the hugged knees. "It would be quiet. Relaxing maybe." He forces a weak smile, "As it stands, my ability gives me such a … responsibility." He sighs and then forces a strained grin.
Meanwhile, Matt is in the midst of another conversation with Charlotte as they walk by. "--frustrating, waiting things out. Somebody's gonna get hurt, if they haven't been already. But... I guess it's the best we can do. Besides, Cass was right, my ability gives me such a respon--"
And there, he stops dead in his tracks. "Wait, did you hear that? Sounded like an echo." He didn't intend to be listening in on anyone's thoughts, just to see whether anyone unfamiliar was approaching or not, but he was distracted enough that something could have slipped.
Charlotte, walking with a little bag of sunflower seed,s shakes her head. "I didn't hear anything," she admits, easily. She, after all, cannot read minds. "But either way, I used to sing the praises of my ability. But maybe Lee's right, after all this. I can't help but htink abilities are absolutely terrible things now."
Jamie shakes her head a bit and says, "You just need a break. It'd be awful not to be able to use your power at all. It'ds be the same as letting them win, that way!" She quiets her voice some as she hears the voices nearby in the hall.
Micah smiles weakly as he shrugs. "I think it has more to do with my parents being gone… and … I haven't been able to contact my cousin." Pause. "And my aunt was a traitor who turned us in. But she's cool now… she froze a guy's arm off to try to help us escape. And I watched people get shot and stuff. And Peter get hit by a helicopter." He purses his lips. "All in all it's been a hard few months…"
Matt blinks. "Why would you think that?" Micah and Jamie would be able to hear his voice clearly now, he's leaning back against the closet door as he speaks. "They can be dangerous, but so can a lot of things— and think about what else they can do. All depends on the people using them."
"It's not that they're dangerous, it's that people like you and Micah are held to a higher standard of responsibility than just living your lives - which is a difficult task in and of itself, that not everyone succeeds at. It's not fair." She sighs, shaking her head as she moves to sit nearby. "For me, my ability has helped me survive and do things I never htought possible. But it seems like for others it just brinsg them closer to danger and unhappiness. I don't know, maybe I just don't use mine the same way. Maybe I'm not that good of a person."
Jamie whispers to Micah before the others get close and the conversation distracts her, "Lost my parents too. My mom died years ago, she was shot protecting me from robbers. My dad, dunno where he is, think maybe Joe killed him. Hope he's alive somewhere." Then the conversation outside gets louder, and she shuts up completely to listen.
Micah raises a finger to his lips, signalling Jamie to be quiet. His thoughts, however, are much more difficult to silence. <Don't look in the closet. If we stay quiet they won't look in the closet. The closet is my place of solace. Poor Jamie. What did I do? RIGHT. Focus. Don't look int he closet.>
"Oh, don't beat yourself up over it," Matt replies. "People have tried to hold me to standards for a long time, anyway— some of them made sense, some of them didn't."
Speaking of which, he's supposed to be helping watch for intruders. Who was that he heard a minute ago? Stop, concentrate…
No, he doesn't look in the closet - that would be way too simple. And the detective knows plenty of ways to mess with people's heads using nothing more than plain ol' psychology. Still blocking the door, he turns to Charlotte and silently mouths the words 'the video kids are right behind me'.
"What?" Charlotte isn't the quickest mouse in Mexico, but after a moment she does catch on. She silently groans - they're probably plotting and breaking rules in there. "I just want this all to be over," she sighs. "Everything seemed to go so much better before, it was quiet and everyone was safe."
Jamie nods a little to Micah, and grins a bit. But the grin fades as she listens. Dropping the pack gently beside her, she listens. Her thoughts aren't quite like Micah's. A bit more chaotic. Full of fear, fear she doesn't let on usually. But, at the same time, she's thinking, « Why could she think like this? Powers are the best things we have. They're what makes us us. » She, at least, doesn't seem to care if Matt comes in.
Micah remains silent continuing to hold a finger to his own lips, not as a reminder to Jamie, but to himself. <I'm not ALWAYS breaking the rules. Hard to break rules when they aren't laid out first. Besides sometimes rules need to be broken. Mom always broke rules. So did Dad. They lied to protect me. And now I lie to protect others.> He takes a breath and his thoughts continue, <If I hadn't been so dumb I could've protected Molly. AND other people on those trains. I made the mistake. I could've known. MY FAULT. Now I'm fixing it.>
While Matt takes note of all this - it's good to know, especially in the case of his erstwhile field general - he still doesn't cop to any of it out loud. (Besides, last time he even sorta went there, he just got Charlotte annoyed at him too.) Instead… he steps away from the door, winking at Charlotte, and does some lying of his own. "Then let's take a vacation! Me, you, the Bahamas… we could be sipping mai tais and no one would ever find us. There's plenty of others to watch the house for a while, right?"
Charlotte smirks a little bit. "Something like that would be nice. I went flying with Senator Petrelli a few days ago but…something like that, a real vacation, a real place to run away to…it sounds almost too impossible, even knowing what I can do."
Jamie grins at the talk of a vacation, then the thought flashes through her mind, « Oh, I wouldn't be going too. I'll be with Saul. Hiding. » 'With Saul' seems to have an edge of happiness to it, but hiding is an extreme flash of emotion. She hates the very idea of hiding, which flashes to, in her mind, being stuck on that bed with the tube in her nose.
<There's nowhere that we can actually get away from this stuff.> Micah thinks. He side glances Jamie and forces a smile. <Must stay pleasant for her. She's leaving after all. My fault. Everything is my fault. Probably even world hunger. Mom and dad dying is my fault. Molly getting caught is my fault. Cam and I getting caught. My fault.> And then the entire thought stream changes direction <I wonder whether that socialite's money would be useful. We might need stuff. Money is good for getting stuff.>
Whoa there, Micah, exaggerating much? Then again, given what happened to his parents - how recently? Matt wonders, and makes a note to ask later - it's hardly surprising that he'd still have trouble dealing with things.
Out loud, he sits down next to Charlotte, resting his hands in his lap as he leans back again. "Seriously, you should, after things clear up. Maybe sooner—" If they drag on longer, he almost adds, before thinking better of it. "It's a good time for it, too, how cold are the winters in Germany anyway?" Not as cold as Russia, considering what he remembers of its history, but then that's not saying much.
Charlotte chuckles. "I could lay on a beach. I've always wanted to have a reason - a real reason - to wear a bikini. I always thought I might manage it. Do you think I could?" She seems to fall very easily into the fantasy.
Jamie smiles back to Micah. The smile, as always, is honest. Jamie's got strong emotions that flash all the time. And she seems to have a strong mind, pushing down, burying the fear so it's not keeping her from being happy. That's why she's so cheerful all the time, she pushes everything aside with the thought, « I've already been through the worst, what can be worse? »
Crossing his arms over his chest, Micah rests his forehead on his knees and closes his eyes. His thoughts return to his parents and their untimely death. How DL had saved them by taking them to the safe while Niki held up the ceiling of the falling museum. And then when he went to get her… it all collapsed. He frowns. No more smile. Not even a fake one.
"—" Matt starts to say something, and then he takes a moment to actually consider it. What does he think about that, exactly? But then there's that decidedly different train of thought… "Something in a nice off-white, maybe," he murmurs, taking her hand and giving it a quick tug as he gets up again, whispering almost silently. 'Let's give them their privacy back.'
Charlotte gets up, following along. "It would be nice." But she can't pretend, she can't leave the kids with those thoughts. "But I'll never leave these kids," she promises, moving to follow Matt where he'll lead her.
Jamie speaks up… she can't help it, she's been trying to stay silent for Micah's sake, but she says, "Yes you will. You're gonna leave me in Paris somewhere." Whether the voice reaches out of the closet, the thought would.
"Yeah. Jamie's just going to be left somewhere," Micah murmurs to his legs. His head is still down. Buried even. The frown still plays on his lips. He's in a sullen mood it would seem. But then he adds, trying to find the silver lining for Jamie's benefit, "I bet the Eiffel Tower will be incredible though. And you'll have Saul."
Be nice, Matt projects backward at the teen and the pre-teen, meanwhile slipping an arm around Charlotte and guiding her firmly down the hallway. To head off another potential argument, but it ends up playing into the ideas in the back of his head at the same time.