Starring:
Summary: Charlotte manages to talk to Mohinder, and to woo him to the dark side. They have cookies.
Date It Happened: January 19th, 2008
Log Title Going Once, Going Twice
Isaac's Loft / Reed St. Laboratories
Mohinder knows people have been trying to reach him. His voice mail box is almost full.. his physical mail stack goes untouched. On top of the various items requiring investigation, there's now the death.. scratch that, murder of Kaito Nakamura to add to the mess Company employees are dealing with already. Most of the major legwork is fortunately not something Mohinder has been assigned to and it's been easy for him to get away with locking himself in his lab. Where he currently is, as he's going back over the formula he was making for Niki.
And of course, the P.R. rep feels that her business takes at least some level of priority, particularly considering the personal questions she needs to ask…about Niki Sanders. She left the Indian Doctor a voicemail that she was coming. She's tired of playing games, and wants him to feel secure, feel like he can be ready for her, so he can have a gun or the cavalry or whatever else needed to make him not be on edge. Why can't he be like most men and just feel better with the food she brings? There's no food this time, despite what she promised Lawrence. Instead there's a girl, knocking on the window with her mitten. She can barely be seen, with the hat pulled over her head and the scarf wrapped around her face.
Mohinder almost doesn't hear the knock on the window. He's past the point of frustration kicking in, now he's just tenaciously revisiting his formula structure and testing drawn samples left in the lab. While the knocking could easily be dismissed, there's still that feeling of being watched. (The cameras don't count.) He looks up, irritation marring his features for a moment as he checks the camera feed from the hallway. The bundled up girl isn't immediately recognized, yet he gets up anyway to answer the door. As he unlocks the door, he's not unarmed. Since the kidnapping, his Company issued gun is never far away. The door is opened in a cautious manner as he asks, "Yes? Can I help you?"
Charlotte has a bag hanging from her elbow, a very slender one. She's wringing her hands and hugging them close to her chest as she looks up at him. Clearly, the cold doesn't suite her. "Doctor Suresh? I left you a message, I've been trying to get ahold of you." While the whole recruiting thing is technically her priority, she's very concerned about Niki, and thus she couldn't let Suresh get away that easy. Still, there's concern in her eyes. After what Lawrence said about the man, she's apt to worrying. It's a trait, and she can't help it. Poor man.
Mohinder blinks once, twice, then recognition sets in. "Oh yes, Charlotte, I do apologize. Please, won't you come inside?" He opens the door further, allowing Charlotte to enter, "I haven't quite been able to get to my messages. I haven't forgotten about you wanting to speak with me further." Not exactly true, he did temporarily forget until the reminder showed up at his door.
Charlotte steps inside. "Thank you, Doctor." She says, stepping inside with another sigh. Each time she steps inside a room from the cold, there's the same happy sigh from her. She's spent the last four years in Texas: cold doesn't agree with her. "I'm sorry, if this is a bad time…well no, I really can't try again later." She's a nice person and all, but with some people you just have to assert some dominance. Mohinder is one of those people. "At least, not for the personal issue I needed to speak with you about."
Mohinder shuts the door and locks it behind Charlotte as he leads the way down the stairs. "I can prepare some tea if you would like some." He's not the type to really keep cocoa around, although he might have a packet or two for Molly. "No, no, it's quite alright. You asked to speak with me and I said I would talk to you. To be honest, anytime can be a bad time," he says with a faint smile. "So what did you want to ask me?"
Charlotte shakes her head as to the offer of tea. "No, thank you, I'm quite alright. Just being out of the cold is a wonderful refreshment." She keeps her hat on, opens her jacket and lets her scarf hang loose. She doesn't take it off just yet. As she follows him down slowly into the main part of the lab, she opens her bag and begins to dig around. "Well, of course, I do want to speak with you some more about Pinehearst, but if my time with you is limited, I'm afraid I have a higher priority." She pauses long enough to look up towards the man. "I need to talk about Niki Sanders."
Mohinder inclines his head in a nod, directing Charlotte to a seat as he takes one himself. "Since your organization is currently tending to her.. It is only logical for you to want to discuss Niki." He hasn't even begun to get comfortable before he's up again, disappearing into the lab. He's not gone but a moment before he's returning with the file he's compiled on Niki. "This is about her amnesia, am I assuming correctly?"
Charlotte frowns softly as she slips down into the chair, setting the bag in front of her. She watches him, curiously, her eyebrows raising in surprise as he mentions it. "How did you know about her amnesia? If she had it before the attack, she…" She pauses, realizing she probably shouldn't say too much, but then remembering that she has nothing to hide. A new open-door policy, that' what she decided would be the best to gain Mohinder's trust and hopefully help him look at Pinehearst with a serious eye. "If she had it before the attack, she would have remembered you. But she doesn't."
"Because the treatment I was giving her caused lapses in memory. Somehow she must have been injected with the final round during the fight. The syringe was found used. Prior to us being kidnapped, I was advising her against further treatment." Mohinder drops back into his chair. He doesn't offer the file yet, most of it might as well be in a foreign language unless you're a scientist. "She came to me, asking for help in regards to her multiple personality disorder. With her abilities, this disorder.. was more extreme than your average case. You could say her personality was fractured. Instead of simply thinking she was another person, she truly was. We have at least three documented personalities on file."
Charlotte takes the time to read the file, even though she never graduated high school. If there's a fragment of a sentance in there she can understand, she wants it. As she listens, the girl bites softly on her lower lip. No dimples to be seen today, it seems. "Is it permanent, the memory loss?" She asks, doe-brow eyes filling with a flood of concern for her one (and only) friend. "And..is it going to get worse? I'm sorry, Dr. Suresh, I'm not…I don't understand a lot of this medical stuff." She pats the file in front of her. "But I do understand that I'm worried about Niki. Is she cured of the personalities? Is her mind going to get worse? Does she need more treatment?"
"That's quite alright if you don't understand it. I'm working on trying to reverse the matter without causing any further damage. I explained the risks to her beforehand, yet Niki was desperate. Other treatments rendered her.. for a lack of better explanation, useless." Mohinder reaches to take his files back, "She couldn't tend to herself let alone her own son. As for whether or not she's cured of these personalities, time will have to tell. In the meantime, she should probably be rehabilitated as anyone who is suffering from memory loss. As of this moment, I'm not successful with further research on the matter.. seeing as Pinehearst has my patient."
Charlotte reaches into her own bags, taking out a file of her own. "Would these help?" She asks, looking up at Mohinder again to read his reaction. She slides the file across the table. There's almost no personal written work in it, it's all raw date. Blood pressure, brain scans, x-rays, an entire workup done of the woman when she was admitted to the Pinehearst facilities. "Niki's not at Pinehearst anymore." She explains. The hat comes off, and the girl ruffles her hair. Even when it's sticking up in several ways, it still manages to look cared for. "What should I watch for, as a sign that she's getting worse or better?"
Mohinder looks surprised at the offering of the files. He takes them and starts going through them, slowly, looking for anything that could help him. At the admission that Niki's no longer at Pinehearst, he glances up sharply at Charlotte. ".. I see.. any sign of a secondary personality. Random outbursts of violence that are unexplained. I would recommend that she stay under surveillance. For her own safety and that of others. Her ability is super human strength. I would have been monitoring her myself if we hadn't of been interrupted. To see if her ability had been dampened by the formula, or if it is simply forgotten."
Charlotte nods softly as she listens, wringing her hands, almost like a concerned parent. "I believe Pinehearst may not be aware of the fact that you were treating her. Our doctors said that it was…what was the phrase…um…medically induced trauma, is that it? That doesn't sound like what you're telling me. As far as Niki's treatment goes, I'm reluctant to put her back in touch with people from her old life, as she's asked me not to." Hence why Niki hasn't gone home yet. "I'm not sure how she'll feel about the surveillance either, but I'll speak with her." She sits up, peering at the pages in his hands, not that they mean diddly to her. "Does any of that…help at all?"
".. What? No, no, that's not right. She did this for her son," Mohinder sets the papers down and pushes up from his seat. Pacing behind his chair, he rakes his hands through his hair, tousling the messy curls. "Niki Sanders would do anything for her son, even ruin her own mental state. I need to be the one working on her treatment. I did this at her request… Yes.. some of this data helps."
Charlotte nods. "I'll speak to her again, Doctor Suresh. I'm not a doctor or anything of the like. But we're friends, her and I, and I'm abiding by her wishes in this matter. She knows about Micah, and about Mister Hawkins." So too, it seems, does Charlotte. "But she's told me that right now, she doesn't want to go back to that and have to pretend to be something that she doesn't know how to be. I promise, Doctor, that I'll speak to her on it. But I can't force her to do anything that she doesn't want to do."
".. I see.. still.. this isn't right.. I should go see Micah, and explain to him why Niki hasn't come home. He'll unfortunately understand the situation." It wouldn't be the first time his mother has gone away for treatment. Mohinder looks at odds with himself as he wages an internal debate. "I understand the reasoning, but Micah.. She did this for him. A mother desperate to be able to care for her child."
Charlotte looks down at her hands again, smiling a soft, sad smile. "I'd appreciate it if you would speak with Micah. I went to see him myself, but unfortunately having a new face in this town makes you the enemy of everyone." Including Mohinder. She looks back up at him. "You may not see it as right, Dr. Suresh, but in reality we can't condemn Niki for her choice. For one, she's had a harder life than most women, and at every turn she's done the right thing. If we don't give her some space sooner or later, goodness only knows what'll become of her. As it is, right now she's able to make a few choices for her better than anyone else can. She knows how she feels, with no constraints of the past or the future, no worries. Until she decides to go back to her old life or we manage to reverse the amnesia…well I think it's the best form of mental healing. Extreme, perhaps, but she's had extreme damage inflicted on her physically and emotionally in the past, and that kind of damage needs an extreme kind of healing."
"And Micah doesn't need to know about a competing Company, if you want to put it that way. I'm a familiar face to him, he and my ward are playmates." Mohinder doesn't look as if he likes being told what's what by someone not of the medical profession, but the words are kept to himself. "I want in on her recovery," he says simply yet with insistence.
Charlotte cocks her head to the side slightly as she looks over Mohinder. "The only difference is that ours doesn't contain people like Niki Sanders. We simply help them. There's more than one person out there with problems like Niki's, problems tied to their abilities." She lowers her hands to her lap, smoothing them over her dress-pants before she turns her gaze to Mohinder once more. "I didn't tell Micah anything of the sort, Dr. Suresh. One day I'm going to have to find out what it would take to gain your trust, or even a margin of it."
"You're preaching to the choir, Charlotte," Mohinder states with a little more bite to his tone than he meant to be there. "I also think that you might not be fully aware of the dangers out there that people with abilities can pose. Not everyone is harmless. There are those who mean to manipulate, murder, torture, because they that they are better than everyone else. Some people have to be contained for public safety. The same reasoning as you would put an ordinary human mass murderer behind bars." The laugh that comes from Charlotte's last words is harsher than intended, sparked by exhaustion, and just the sudden way 'trust' sounds humorous. "I'm not in the habit of trusting many these days."
"So I've noticed." She adds with a soft smile of her own, but it's quick and the bite in his words adds a flush to her cheeks, almost as if she's embarrassed. "But just because people have abilities, that doesn't mean they're dangerous. I know there are dangers, Dr. Suresh. I'm simply wary of anyone who contains people without trial or public oversight. But call me a romantic in my views if you must." She pauses for a moment, then tilts her head the other way as she regards his expression. "You could help Niki, and people like her."
"I of all people know that," Mohinder says harshly. "It's my life's work, my father's before me. I work with people everyday who are harmless, and some who are not so harmless." Mohinder seems to realize his temper is rising as he falls quiet, trying to get it back under control. "Can you imagine the public outcry, the political and social nightmare that would erupt if it was widely accepted that people have abilities? I know I've lectured, trying to raise awareness around the world. Very few are willing to accept the merest possibilities. Those you work with and encounter daily with a power? It's a frighteningly small percentage of the world's population.. as for helping her and others. That's why I'm with my current employer."
Charlotte shrugs softly. His anger still makes her uncomfortable, perhaps even nervous. "Which is why I want you to consider Pinehearst seriously, Dr. Suresh. We're not trying to call a press conference and announce it to the world. We're trying to understand. What is this, what causes it, why is it different in different people? Why does it hurt some people, like Niki, and how can we help. Understanding through learning and education is all we're doing. Although we do draw the line at abduction." A glimpse of her dimples may be seen at that tiny little joke, though if it's a reference to the Company or the man who abducted Mohinder, Niki and Nathan…that's anyone's guess.
The wind seems to go out of Mohinder's sails as Charlotte speaks. "Sometimes.. unfortunately.. discretion is required in dealing with subjects." He's not completely defending kidnapping, or the methods of the Company. Charlotte's visit today wasn't needed to help him question his position further. He's with the Company because they came to him, a few carrots were dangled, then there's Molly. There were also no other options a year ago. "Charlotte, you have my apologies. My temper is not directed at you, nor are my frustrations. I should just pack my things, return home to Chennai with Molly."
Charlotte smiles gently at his apology, taking it, like she seems to take most everything that everyone says, to heart. "Is Chennai where you think your questions will be answered? That's where you were in the beginning, wasn't it? The questions and problems of the world still exist there just as they do everywhere else." She glances down, and says softer, almost as if to herself, "Trust that from someone who knows." But her attention is on him again in just a moment. "We have state-of-the-art facilities, Doctor, and we would certainly make sure that both you and Molly were looked after. Besides…" She adds with a playful look. "It's much harder to break into a facility with security details and elevators if someone wishes to kidnap you again."
"No. But I could return to teaching at the university, try and put this madness behind me." Even though his expression and tone clearly state that Mohinder doesn't believe his own words. The man holds no loyalty to the Company, his loyalty is towards Molly, science, doing the right thing. "My work here is more or less at a standstill." The geneticist is still trying to fool himself, second guessing the leap he's considering. ".. Locks, security, it won't stop someone desperate enough to make the attempt. This place has security as well." He falls quiet, and when it seems he has nothing else to say, he adds, "Let me help with Niki, and I'll make my decision afterwards."
Charlotte nods softly. "And if someone wanted you for something, Dr. Suresh, a university is an easy place to get into." Not that any place is hard to get into if you're Charlotte Corday. But he doesn't know that. "The work in our facilities is far from at a standstill, indeed, I do believe our new Head of Research has quite a few new avenues to look into." She nods as she listens to his statement. "I'll bring her by, if she'll consent. I just have one favor to ask of you when I do, and it's purely personal. Please don't try to guilt her into going back to a life she's not ready to. I don't want to force her into anything if she feels she's unready."
At the mention of the new head of research, Mohinder's brows lift in curiousity. "I would be very interested in meeting her. If I am to work at your organization, I would have to be introduced to her regardless. Might I ask her name?" He's trying to think of researches who might have angled into that position. As to Charlotte's request, he nods his head. "I'll do my best not to." Meaning if it happens accidentally.. it happens. "Her mental state seems precarious and rushing is not good for her." In the meantime, he'll make sure there's a pair of eyes on Micah, even if he's staying with his cousin.
Charlotte cocks her head a little bit to the side. "I'm sure that when you do your best, Dr. Suresh, you're very careful." As in she trusts that no accidents will happen. "I'd be more than happy to introduce…" but she pauses, thinking a moment before moves her brown eyes to Mohinder again, smiling playfully. Not scared, at this point, just amused. "If you even need an introduction. I never said it was a woman." But he did. He must have someone in mind.
"Then I must have misunderstood when you said you would bring her by." Mohinder says apologetically. Charlotte could have been referring to Niki, but his mind can be a little one track at times. "Let me know when you have Niki's consent and I shall assist with her condition."
Charlotte nods. "I meant I'd bring Niki by. It shouldn't be long before I've spoken to her." After all, the two are living together. Not in the gay way, in the hay lets be friends mmmkay roomie sort of way. "You're welcome to keep the files, Doctor. I really hope they help. I know you're quite wary of me, but please believe that I'm quite concerned about Niki."
"No, I believe your concern. You wouldn't be coming here to the enemy camp as it were, otherwise." Mohinder offers a slight smile for Charlotte. "Just let me know when.. and I do resolve to get to my voice mail today and clean up my messages."
Charlotte can tell when a conversation is finished, so she begins to rise. Her scarf is tied tightly around her neck, to be pulled up over her face when she steps out into the frigid, frigid feel of the world above the mason-dixon line. "I'll be in touch very soon." SHe promises, giving him a dimpled smirk. At last, out come those dimples! She buttons her coat and pulls the hat down over her ears in preparation to leave. "And perhaps when you've made a decision, whatever that decision may be, Dr. Suresh, I might be able to ask you to join me for a cup of coffee." As shy as she is, she seems perfectly unshy in her statement. "Purely social, I assure you." Just in case he decides to get some elaborate scheme in his head about her trying to feed him mind control drugs or something.
"As I said.. I will help with Niki first, then make a decision." Mohinder's smile returns, more easily than it has during the conversation. When Charlotte rises from her seat, he escorts her to the door. No answer is made about the request to join her for coffee. He's one of the world's worst at small talk.
Charlotte blushes at his lack of response, but only lightly and it's covered by the scarf. It's an awkward feeling, to be sure, but far from the end of the world. "Niki's health is everyone's priority." She says, holding the purse on her elbow as before. "Stay warm, doctor, and do say hello to Lawrence for me. I'm rather sorry I missed him here today." But it was easier to talk business without him there. "He's a very interesting man." She moves to the door.
A very interesting man, and soon to be very pissed off at Mohinder too. "He'll be sorry he missed your visit." Or sorry he missed out on the possibility of more crepes? "I look forward to your call, and hopefully seeing Niki again soon." The door is unlocked and opened for Charlotte.
Charlotte pulls her hat down a little bit further, and nods to him. The scarf is pulled all the way up so only her eyes are visible. Mittens on, she ducks out the door and makes her way quickly down the way from wence she came. There's an unused alley about two blocks from here, and then she can get someplace /warm…./