I have a knack for perceiving things

[pythianwoman]

Zoey was done with this place. Done with the science experiments and the pain and the living as a labrat within these too-white walls. The only thing, the only person who had helped to make things bearable had been Dahlia, taken by the Order of Morta a year after they’d taken her. Her best friend. Her only friend. The one person in the entire facility who knew the depths of her visions. Who had witnessed them at their worst, blood streaming down her cheeks as she lay in her lap.

Together they came up with an escape plan. It had been a plan long laid. Carefully worked on, carefully made. Every detail and every contingency covered. They had to.

Dahlia serves as a distraction, while Zoey slips away, silent and unseen to unlock every single door she can get her hands and stolen keycard on. On and on, door after door... until it’s time. Until their moment has arrived. “DAHLIA, NOW!” she shouts, voice pitched to carry to her partner in crime.

Chaos erupts, alarm bells filling the air and red emergency lights filling the too-white halls with an eerie red glow, and Zoey doesn’t hold back as she fights her way through the Order guard and orderlies, channelling all of her rage, all that they had done to her, into her viciously graceful takedowns. She doesn’t linger, though, doesn’t do more than she absolutely has to in order to keep them off of her as she runs through the corridors that have been her cage for too many fucking years.

And then she is bursting out of the sturdy double doors serving as her escape route, racing for the treeline with the Order’s footsoldiers in hot pursuit. She doesn’t stop until she’s lost them, until there’s no longer the sound of them chasing her. Until she no longer feels the sharp prickles of warning along her skin.

There’s no way for Zoey to miss Dahlia’s scream. And it’s a beacon, letting her know where her best friend is. It’s a cause for worry, too. Had the Order caught up with her? Had they recaptured her? She refuses to leave with her, refuses to escape without her. So she takes off, racing towards the sound.

... To find nothing. Dahlia is gone.

ShitshitshitSHIT. She swears, if they’ve taken her again she will raze the building to the fucking ground. She will ruin them. No more. They’ve made her a weapon and she will use all she has, all she IS, against them if they’ve retaken Dahlia.

There’s a smudge of a footprint on the ground, and Zoey kneels, brushes her fingertips against it. Images and sounds flicker through her mind. Dahlia, a young man she doesn’t recognize (although names appear almost in time with his face. The Séance. Klaus Hargreeves. Number Four.)

"Are-- are you... The Séance?"

"I- I have to-- go. I have to go somewhere safe. I can't stay here, they're coming. They're coming! I can't be here. You can't let them find me. Please!" Dahlia is so scared, so terrified...

He’s draping something over Dahlia’s shoulders. His coat. He’s keeping her warm. Keeping her safe. "It's not safe." "Where do we go?" Dahlia reaches for his hand.

The visions fade as quickly as they came, the last thing she sees is a house, with Klaus and Dahlia walking inside through the front door. The Order doesn’t have her. Didn’t catch her. Zoey exhales softly, before rising to her feet. Okay. She knows who Dahlia is with and where they’re going. Her first bit of business is getting out of the dirty, torn grey scrubs that had been their uniform during their time with the Order. So she can pass for something like normal. Even if she hasn’t been that in a very long time.

Real clothes. And then she finds Dahlia.

The clothes are easy enough. A little application of powers and a little bit of theft and soon she’s hiding in a secluded corner and stripping out of her scrubs before sliding into the overlarge clothes she’d made off with. She feels a thousand times better, once the last vestiges of the Order have been stripped away from her. Other than the scars and the trauma. But she’s dressed like a fucking human again. And she has actual shoes. She hasn’t worn more than slippers since she was fifteen years old.

Before long she’s standing down the street from the house she saw in her vision. The one she saw Dahlia and Klaus, enter. There is the thought of just busting the fucking door down. But she won’t. Not yet, anyway. Klaus helped Dahlia, and for that, it earns him a brief bit of... not quite trust. But politeness. For the fucking moment.

So she strides across the street and knocks on the door.

Comments

[n5]

Five was in the middle of working in his equations and trying to figure out how exactly their house has become some sort of time-dimension portal and why my more random siblings kept showing up. Part of it was his fault, this much he knew, because of the time and space jumps he had to perform to bring his family back from the Apocalypse and then help Ben.

But he didn't know why, which was immensely frustrating, and by the time the door rings his blazer and his left hand were covered in chalk dusk from writing his equations on the nearest wall -the kitchen- since it was easier to clean. He was closer to the front door and Mom was nowhere to be seen, which meant that Zoe was greeted by a brunette kid regarding her with guarded suspicion. Nothing against her, Five had learned to be wary of unexpected guest who might or might not try to kill them all, that was all.

"Yes?"

[pythianwoman]

The kid that opens the door gives Zoey a headache from the word go. She doesn’t know what’s going on with him but she sure as fuck knows that something is. She doesn’t have the time to sort shit out in her head and figure out what’s what. She needs to find Dahlia. The temptation to just barge past him is INTENSE, but someone in this house gave D aid. So they get a little politeness.

At least at first.

“I’m looking for D,” she starts, a soft English accent colouring her voice, and then she corrects herself, listening to her instincts. “Dahlia. Short. Been through a lot. Showed up wearing grey scrubs that looked like they were well worn.” Which is putting it mildly.

[n5]

There's a lot going on with Five, most of it not nice. But hey, if they start throwing stones because of messed up lives, no one in his house is safe from a boulder to the head.

Five raises an eyebrow at the first short and confusing explanation. After she elaborates, the air of distrust only grows. He knows who is the woman talking about and he also knows that Dahlia has been running from something, that much was obvious. If this woman had come to hurt her, they were going to have a problem. Five, however, gives her a smile.

"It's a big city, there are a lot of strange people and Dahlias around, why do you care about this one?"

[pythianwoman]

And there’s that. She tried to be patient, she really did. But Zoey has had enough. It has been a long fucking day. Week. ,I>Years. She doesn’t have time for this. She needs to see Dahlia for herself. Make sure she’s safe. (Make sure whoever lives here isn’t forcing her to stay; not that she thinks they COULD, if Dahlia set her mind to leaving. They're not the Order.) The kid (Five, he’s Five, he’s not a kid, he’s not a kid at all and fuck he hurts her head) is wasting her time.

So she looks at him, ice blue eyes blazing. “Because this one is FAMILY. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets for half our bloody lives, and she is my best friend. We have been through fucking hell together. And the only reason I didn’t kick your damn door down is because someone there helped her. I figured that earned a little bit of courtesy. SO,” she says with an icy smile. “If you’d be so kind as to take me to Dahlia, I’d appreciate it.”

[n5]

If talking for 2 minutes with a stranger that has no reason to trust her is what Zoe considers 'being patient' then she clearly never had the same level of nonsensical siblings as Five. He looks unimpressed by the tirade but it adds information about Dahlia that he had been missing, so it's not all a waste of time.

He's familiar with her kind of anxiety, though, the sort of anger born from concern and no time to waste. He eyes her another long moment, his own blue eyes returning the stare, before turning towards the living room, leaving the door open for her to walk into the house. If she tried anything, Five take care of it anyway.

"She's either in her room or with my brother." He doesn't know and he's not sure he wants to give her more details yet. Five brushes off the chalk from the front on his clothes as he keeps an eye on the strange woman. "What's your name?"

[pythianwoman]

No. It’s more that the bulk of her patience has already been used up. Burned away under the careful preparations of her escape with Dahlia. And when it comes to finding Dahlia after that? No, she’s got the bare minimum of patience to spare.

He could certainly try to stop her, anyway. The Order has made her into a weapon, and she would gladly put it to use to keep Dahlia safe. She’d torn a swath through over a dozen people the first time Dahlia’d been punished. It had doomed them both, in the end, but there hadn’t been any other choice. Not really. But she has no intention of doing anything for the moment.

She doesn’t waste the opportunity given, moving through the open door into the house proper. For a moment, she moves... almost primly. Properly, head up, back straight, steps measured. Uniform. (Everyone in unison, everyone the same.) Only she takes a breath, and it passes. She’s moving easily, relaxed. There’s an air of slouchiness to her, although perhaps that’s just because she’s no longer quite so posed. More hunter than primness. There are some things that take time to break.

“Zoey,” she says after a long moment. It’s been a long time since she’s been more than a letter and a number, more than a subject, more than the designation given to her by the Order. Speaking names aloud where anyone other than Dahlia could overhear had been... punished severely. They’d done everything they could to keep their captives from being people.

[n5]

Zoe should watch out not just for the Order but also the Time Commission. If she's as good as she thinks, she might get their attention too. Five is already expecting them to come barging into his house any day, which is part of why his hostility levels are off the charts.

Five eyes the way girl shift postures, body language often tells him more about people then heir words, and she makes him curious.

"I'm Five." That's it, if his tone of voice is anything to go by. A number for a name. Is the only thing he's ever known, the one he grew used to. He pauses after that seemingly fighting his still ever present wariness and his need to actually be a polite host. "Do you want something to drink?"