fic: what's past is prologue (passage)
Title: What's Past Is Prologue
Rating: PG-13 (possibly disturbing imagery)
Characters: Claude, assorted
Disclaimer: I do not own, and am not profiting. Duh.
Spoilers: As with everything in the Passage universe, only vaguely through some of S2.
Teaser: Before it happens, this is how it starts.
In the beginning, there is a woman with no ability who would like to save the world.
This woman performs the first bag and tag under twelve pairs of watchful eyes, tracks down a young man who spooks and vanishes and wavers back into sight as the woman takes him to the States. She’s the last one to find out his name before it is disregarded and when they decide to keep him, she’s the first one to train him to work with one of them.
There is an incident during his training, and then another several years later when he has his own partner.
The second is the one that leads to problems.
There is a positive test in a bathroom in Russia. There is a young father in the dark because the woman with the new food cravings now knows what happens to children born into the Company. There is a faked death, a new job opportunity for the man without awareness of approaching fatherhood thousands of miles away.
And then there is a girl who doesn’t exist sent away where her mother can keep her out of the white rooms.
This girl can’t wear socks because sometimes there are static shocks, and she has a stutter and too much energy. The girl presses her face to the glass and watches eagerly when there are lightning storms in the distance. At four there is a ruined toaster, and then a smoking bed; at five, there are bent and twisted plastic toys.
The mother is now dead, murdered by the man who painted all this before it happened, who hangs the future on his walls and has no interest in his son who never appears in his paintings, who will do nothing.
(This is wrong, and he will be privately embarrassed about this later.)
When the girl is six, there is a painting that never happens because of a dream that does.
There is a call in the middle of the night, a rescue from a fire and then an adoption to the weakest member of the group, the member who is easiest to use, who is too young to understand why the world cannot be saved. King Midas tries his best, has the best intentions and paves the road as they test to see how far the needle jumps.
Somewhere else, a mother becomes a grandmother.
When the girl is eight, there is a blackout in Ohio; at nine, there are glass walls and IVs and nothing else.
The invisible man learns about the man who paints, digs out files and tapes of things that happen in examination rooms and then digs deeper. One night he vanishes and wavers back and talks to the man in the bottom of the building who remembers everything that came before, a man who tells the invisible man everything the Company doesn’t.
There is still no knowledge of the daughter who doesn’t exist, the one who’s on another level zapping the fly she’s found in the corner of her room, who has no windows to press her face against.
There is a betrayal by a trusted partner, a shooting on the bridge, and the invisible man disappears.
The invisible man cares for his birds where the astral projector in the wheelchair put him to keep him safe after the first twelve turn against each other, and stays far away from the grandmother who frightened him years before, who once saved the daughter he still doesn’t know about.
(Sometimes the place where the bullets hit still hurt, a trick his mind plays on him.)
The holding pattern will continue for years, will include visits by the electric girl down to the man who knows everything, and then the grandmother’s granddaughter will cut her hand and be different, special. There is a girl who loves her daddy as much as she is capable of this emotion, and a father trying to save his daughter from a monster.
The world is saved, and much later the electric girl finally meets the cheerleader.
(This is the painting that was stolen from the heroin addict months before, the one his father never knows about, the one that Angela Petrelli memorizes and destroys, burns to ashes like the girls should have years before.)
The invisible man learns the last secret from the grandmother on the roof.
He doesn't find the situation as funny as he would if he weren't involved.
The electric girl begins to doubt, tries to figure out what was in the black spaces where there’s nothing now. The man who painted a death that never happened takes the cheerleader from the father, and things come apart because King Midas steals the cheerleader back too late to make a difference.
When the invisible man tries to save the electric girl, there is a betrayal in the building where she grew up, where her birth father was trained. The cheerleader gets out alone and the electric girl is saved, carried out and given to the cheerleader’s father because she’s not safe with her own.
When it happens, the electric girl is as unaware as her father once was.
And the vivisections will keep the cheerleader up at night.
Rating: PG-13 (possibly disturbing imagery)
Characters: Claude, assorted
Disclaimer: I do not own, and am not profiting. Duh.
Spoilers: As with everything in the Passage universe, only vaguely through some of S2.
Teaser: Before it happens, this is how it starts.
In the beginning, there is a woman with no ability who would like to save the world.
This woman performs the first bag and tag under twelve pairs of watchful eyes, tracks down a young man who spooks and vanishes and wavers back into sight as the woman takes him to the States. She’s the last one to find out his name before it is disregarded and when they decide to keep him, she’s the first one to train him to work with one of them.
There is an incident during his training, and then another several years later when he has his own partner.
The second is the one that leads to problems.
There is a positive test in a bathroom in Russia. There is a young father in the dark because the woman with the new food cravings now knows what happens to children born into the Company. There is a faked death, a new job opportunity for the man without awareness of approaching fatherhood thousands of miles away.
And then there is a girl who doesn’t exist sent away where her mother can keep her out of the white rooms.
This girl can’t wear socks because sometimes there are static shocks, and she has a stutter and too much energy. The girl presses her face to the glass and watches eagerly when there are lightning storms in the distance. At four there is a ruined toaster, and then a smoking bed; at five, there are bent and twisted plastic toys.
The mother is now dead, murdered by the man who painted all this before it happened, who hangs the future on his walls and has no interest in his son who never appears in his paintings, who will do nothing.
(This is wrong, and he will be privately embarrassed about this later.)
When the girl is six, there is a painting that never happens because of a dream that does.
There is a call in the middle of the night, a rescue from a fire and then an adoption to the weakest member of the group, the member who is easiest to use, who is too young to understand why the world cannot be saved. King Midas tries his best, has the best intentions and paves the road as they test to see how far the needle jumps.
Somewhere else, a mother becomes a grandmother.
When the girl is eight, there is a blackout in Ohio; at nine, there are glass walls and IVs and nothing else.
The invisible man learns about the man who paints, digs out files and tapes of things that happen in examination rooms and then digs deeper. One night he vanishes and wavers back and talks to the man in the bottom of the building who remembers everything that came before, a man who tells the invisible man everything the Company doesn’t.
There is still no knowledge of the daughter who doesn’t exist, the one who’s on another level zapping the fly she’s found in the corner of her room, who has no windows to press her face against.
There is a betrayal by a trusted partner, a shooting on the bridge, and the invisible man disappears.
The invisible man cares for his birds where the astral projector in the wheelchair put him to keep him safe after the first twelve turn against each other, and stays far away from the grandmother who frightened him years before, who once saved the daughter he still doesn’t know about.
(Sometimes the place where the bullets hit still hurt, a trick his mind plays on him.)
The holding pattern will continue for years, will include visits by the electric girl down to the man who knows everything, and then the grandmother’s granddaughter will cut her hand and be different, special. There is a girl who loves her daddy as much as she is capable of this emotion, and a father trying to save his daughter from a monster.
The world is saved, and much later the electric girl finally meets the cheerleader.
(This is the painting that was stolen from the heroin addict months before, the one his father never knows about, the one that Angela Petrelli memorizes and destroys, burns to ashes like the girls should have years before.)
The invisible man learns the last secret from the grandmother on the roof.
He doesn't find the situation as funny as he would if he weren't involved.
The electric girl begins to doubt, tries to figure out what was in the black spaces where there’s nothing now. The man who painted a death that never happened takes the cheerleader from the father, and things come apart because King Midas steals the cheerleader back too late to make a difference.
When the invisible man tries to save the electric girl, there is a betrayal in the building where she grew up, where her birth father was trained. The cheerleader gets out alone and the electric girl is saved, carried out and given to the cheerleader’s father because she’s not safe with her own.
When it happens, the electric girl is as unaware as her father once was.
And the vivisections will keep the cheerleader up at night.