Fic: The 4400; "What You Leave Behind" (Kevin/Tess)
Title: What You Leave Behind
Fandom: The 4400
Pairing: Kevin/Tess
Rating: G
Word Count: 2461
Summary: Filling in the blanks with Tess between "Wake-Up Call" and "The Ballad of Kevin and Tess"
A/N: As if any of you have the slightest idea or even care.
It was time for one of her one-on-one session with Dr. Clayton. They sat across from each other in his counseling room in to two big, brown, faux-leather chairs. Tess was curled up in hers, knees to her chin looking more like a small child than her nineteen (physical) years.
"I spoke to Kevin today," Dr. Clayton was saying. She just kept staring vaguely in the direction of a painting of some potted flowers. "He was asking if it would be okay to visit you."
Tess shifted her gaze to look directly at him. "He's not Kevin," she said.
"Now, Tess-"
"He's not Kevin," she said louder, "Kevin wouldn't leave me." She surged from the chair and started pacing. "He left me. He's not Kevin, not anymore." He left her and became someone else. He left her just like they left her, taking their plans with them. Those agents had come back, wanting more details on the tower, how it worked. But she didn't know. Gone. All gone. Hope gone.
She felt the stinging at her eyes and her breath catch. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to give this quack nor the doctors in the submarines that satisfaction. Doctor. He was one of them now. She didn't know "Dr. Burkhoff." She knew Kevin. She wanted Kevin back. "I want Kevin back!"
"And he wants to see you."
She whined in frustration. Clearly he was too stupid to understand. She flopped back in her chair. "I want my Kevin."
"Kevin's better now. Doesn't that make you, as his friend, happy?"
"I didn't want him to leave."
"You were prepared to leave him," Clayton reminded her.
She sucked in her lower lip and bit it hard to keep it from trembling, but it only caused her eyes to sting more. A couple tears slid down her face. "I wanted to have him with me, I thought they wouldn't allow it. But it was the other way around." The last sentence was spoken in barely a whisper. She curled up on herself again and stared into space.
"I think it would be good for you to talk to him."
Tess slouched in her chair and pouted.
A week later Tess was led by an orderly to the visiting center. She had never been there before. Her parents and older sister were dead, and even when they weren't she never saw them. There had been cards at Christmas, Easter, and birthdays, but the Doerners did their best not to acknowledge the family's shame.
The room was painted a serene sky-blue. Tables and chairs were scattered about, comfier-looking than the furniture in the hospital's rec room. There were a few other patients there, conversing with friends and family members. At one table sat a man alone. He stood when she got closer, but Tess kept her head down, refusing to look at him, seeing only the brown shoes and khaki-colored pant legs.
"Look who's here, Tess," Bryan, the orderly, said.
"Hello, Tess," the man said. She turned her head and closed her eyes. This wasn't Kevin. Kevin didn't talk. He never had to for her to understand him, for them to understand each other.
She was maneuvered to sit at the table. Set down like a doll. "You know where I'll be if you need anything, Doc."
"Oh. Yes. Thanks."
Bryan walked away. Tess kept her head down, her hair curtaining out the rest of the world. Her hands clenched in her lap. She lifted her eyes only enough to see his hands folded together on top of the table, his fingers tapping against each other nervously.
They sat in silence for several minutes. It was almost normal. She gathered her courage and finally tilted her head up to look at him. Kevin had been pale, hair mussed, always hunched over on himself. This man sat straighter, his hair neatly combed flat, his complexion healthier. It was familiar, but not the same, and yet she liked it, and hated herself for the betrayal. She quickly darted her eyes away again.
"I am so sorry."
Tess flinched. His voice was strange, not at all how it was in her head when she had translated his silent looks and gestures. "I wish you had been right, Tess. I would have missed you terribly, but at least you would have been happy. And you wouldn't hate me."
"I don't hate you." Her eyes widened, surprising herself with the declaration.
"If there was some way I could repay what you have done for me-"
"It wasn't me. It was them, their plans."
"I don't know 'them.' I don't see them. I don't know what they want from me." He shifted his chair around the table so they were side-by-side. He reached over and took her hand in his. "I know you. I care about you."
She slid her hand away, clenching it again. "What if that was their plan, too? Got to keep you close to me for it to work."
"I don't believe that."
"Lies! They didn't want me! My parents didn't want me! You don't want me!" She jumped from her seat, the chair scraping across the tile floor. "You left me!"
The noise and shouting brought Bryan back to the room. Before he reached them Kevin took her firmly by the shoulders and said, "I wish I could take you with me when I go, but I can't." Tess started sobbing. "Not yet."
"Kevin?"
"Okay, Doc, think Tess needs some rest now." Bryan turned her around.
"No!" She protested. Why were they taking him away again?
Three weeks later and she was back in Clayton's leather chair. "When is Kevin coming back?" She asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
The doctor looked up from his notepad. "Things didn't go very well last time, did they? We thought it best-"
"I'll be good this time. Promise."
Clayton nodded. "Okay."
Bryan escorted her to the visiting center again, but this time just following behind. Kevin immediately stood when he saw her, like some gentleman in an old romance novel. She didn't shy away from looking at him this time. He was smiling at her, tentative, hopeful. She stopped and stood right in front of him and his small smile faltered as she just scrutinized him. She could see it now. It really was Kevin. Same man, just a little shinier, better.
She took another step forward and flung her arms around him. Kevin staggered a little in surprise, but quickly recovered and returned the embrace. Tess felt tears again, but happy ones. She breathed deep. That was different, too, his scent. Before, like everyone, he had smelled of the standard-issued soap the hospital used. Now it was something sterile, a mix of chemicals, but not unpleasant. "You smell like science," she said, pulling away.
Kevin laughed. It was a new sound. It was the best sound she ever heard. He nodded to Bryan who was still hovering behind her, and the orderly gave them space and privacy. They sat at the table across from each other. "I'm sorry about before," started Tess. "I think I was angry. I'm not angry now."
"I know," he said, reaching out and patting her hands. "Tess," his tone changed curiously, "do you know what is I do? My work, I mean."
"You're a doctor. A genius doctor." She always knew she was right about that even if it did take several afternoons of sitting on the floor, her reading The Wizard of Oz aloud, before he learned how to braid her hair correctly.
He laughed again. A low chuckle that made butterflies in her chest. "Yes, but specifically in neurochemistry. Do you know what that is?"
"Brain stuff."
"Right, brain stuff. Like what makes yours and mine's brains different, and what can help make them less different."
Tess frowned. "You don't have to talk to me like I'm a baby." As she feared, he was becoming more Doctor Burkhoff and less Kevin all of a sudden, and the butterflies were wilting.
"What I'm trying to say is that I think I can help you, like you helped me. I've been talking to Dr. Clayton about your treatments and he's going to be giving you something different soon. I hope, I think, it will be right for you this time."
"Then you can take me with you."
"That's the idea."
Ah, hell, there were the tears again. It didn't matter. Let whoever was watching and listening get their fill, she couldn't hide her feelings anymore.
"I have to go now, Tess, but I'll see you again soon. And," he slid he his hands under the table and whispered, "I brought you something."
Tess put her hands under the table, too and smiled as the unmistakable feel and weight of a book was clandestinely placed in them. Later, alone in her room, she started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
A month later Tess was having a very bad day. First she was told Kevin had to cancel his visit due to some kind of emergency. Then, she was told she was being transferred to some kind of quarantine.
"But I'm not sick!" She insisted. It didn't matter, Federal orders. It wasn't fair. She only had a couple weeks left at Abendson if her new medication continued to perform well. She was getting stir-crazy. Her mind was so much clearer now. She understood so much more, she wanted to really experience the 21st century. She even started flirting with plans for her future, all of them involving one particular person. But now she was locked up even further away from the world.
She sat on her cot in a warehouse-like building with the other 4400s that hadn't yet displayed symptoms of the mysterious disease. The rumor was that those with abilities couldn't use their powers anymore. Funny, she had an ability, didn't she? It wasn't one used consciously, and after the incident with the tower she never really thought about it. What was it those NTAC people said? Compulsion? Making people do things against their will. It was like something out of her sci-fi novels (well, a lot her life was), or that spell in Harry Potter: the Imperius Curse.
She hadn't really known she had been doing it then. But now? She looked around the large room and the arrangement of beds, a few tables with games to stave off the boredom. There was an armed guard at the entrance. She went up to him. "You should unlock this door."
The guard smirk. "Nice try. Not that easy, sis."
Tess narrowed her eyes and concentrated. "You should unlock this door."
The guard blinked once, turned around, and entered his code. The keypad lit green and she could hear the deadbolt release. "Thank you. You can lock it again." The guard turned to do so and Tess went back to her cot. The guard continued his duties without comment. Tess smiled secretly to herself.
She was being discharged tomorrow.
"I want to be there."
"No!" Tess said into the phone. "They're just passing me off right away to a social worker who's taking me to the half-way house."
"But-"
"Let me get settled. Then we can hang out the next day."
Kevin sighed, then coughed. Tess frowned. Was he sick? She pleaded with him to be patient. She promised to call tomorrow and then arrange for them to meet-up the next day.
Tess went back to her room and looked in the mirror. Her hair was too long and limp. She couldn't even remember the last time she wore make-up. Probably that night before her sixteenth birthday.
The next day, Jade, her social worker, greeted her at reception. She had met with Jade a couple times already. They had talked about what Tess wanted to do on her first day out.
"We'll have some money to buy a couple new outfits. You'll need something for job interviews at least."
"Job interviews?" Tess' eyes widened. She didn't know how to do those. She never even thought about work.
"It's okay. I'm here to help with that, too."
Jade took Tess' luggage: only a duffel bag, mostly filled with paperback books. "Hey, bobby soxer , you ready for this?"
Tess took a deep breath. Her nerves tingled, she couldn't deny she was equally scared as excited.
They went to a department store first where Jade helped with the "interview suit" and Tess got to choose a couple new outfits herself. It was a little difficult. The clothes and styles were not really to her tastes. Most of the skirts were too short or didn't have the proper fullness. She chose one though, that actually went past her knees and didn't hug her hips, and a pair of jeans. "Don't roll the cuffs up," Jade advised as they headed to the check out with the clothes and handful of cosmetics.
Next was a salon where Tess got a haircut. The stylist somehow managed ot make her long-neglected hair curl softy behind her shoulders. "Gorgeous!" Jade cheered.
Tess had two roommates at the half-way house who Jade also worked with. But Tess was getting tired, and really only had one person she wanted to socialize with. She unpacked her bags and made her call. On the way to the house, Jade had pointed out a nice little café not far from the house and she told Kevin to meet her there.
"It's a date," Kevin promised, and Tess' heart almost burst.
She walked to the café wearing her new skirt and the blouse from the interview suit. One of her roommates helped with her make-up, it'd been a while and the objects as well as the fashion had changed in the past fifty years. She saw Kevin before he saw her. He stood outside the café, shuffling his feet, hands shoved in his pockets. She practically ran the rest of the way to him.
"Tess!" He had only a moment to acknowledge her before she threw herself in his arms. She held on tight, and thought maybe she could spend the rest of her life right here, never letting go. But Kevin did let go, and held her at arm's length. "Look at you." he touched her hair, tucking a lock behind her ear.
As she returned the look-over, her smiled faded a little. He had paled somewhat since she last saw him. He even started coughing, but tried covering it up by clearing his throat. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, better than fine," he insisted, taking both her hands in his. "Let's get some coffee and talk a walk. There is something I'm doing I want to tell you about. I may need your help."
Fandom: The 4400
Pairing: Kevin/Tess
Rating: G
Word Count: 2461
Summary: Filling in the blanks with Tess between "Wake-Up Call" and "The Ballad of Kevin and Tess"
A/N: As if any of you have the slightest idea or even care.
It was time for one of her one-on-one session with Dr. Clayton. They sat across from each other in his counseling room in to two big, brown, faux-leather chairs. Tess was curled up in hers, knees to her chin looking more like a small child than her nineteen (physical) years.
"I spoke to Kevin today," Dr. Clayton was saying. She just kept staring vaguely in the direction of a painting of some potted flowers. "He was asking if it would be okay to visit you."
Tess shifted her gaze to look directly at him. "He's not Kevin," she said.
"Now, Tess-"
"He's not Kevin," she said louder, "Kevin wouldn't leave me." She surged from the chair and started pacing. "He left me. He's not Kevin, not anymore." He left her and became someone else. He left her just like they left her, taking their plans with them. Those agents had come back, wanting more details on the tower, how it worked. But she didn't know. Gone. All gone. Hope gone.
She felt the stinging at her eyes and her breath catch. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to give this quack nor the doctors in the submarines that satisfaction. Doctor. He was one of them now. She didn't know "Dr. Burkhoff." She knew Kevin. She wanted Kevin back. "I want Kevin back!"
"And he wants to see you."
She whined in frustration. Clearly he was too stupid to understand. She flopped back in her chair. "I want my Kevin."
"Kevin's better now. Doesn't that make you, as his friend, happy?"
"I didn't want him to leave."
"You were prepared to leave him," Clayton reminded her.
She sucked in her lower lip and bit it hard to keep it from trembling, but it only caused her eyes to sting more. A couple tears slid down her face. "I wanted to have him with me, I thought they wouldn't allow it. But it was the other way around." The last sentence was spoken in barely a whisper. She curled up on herself again and stared into space.
"I think it would be good for you to talk to him."
Tess slouched in her chair and pouted.
A week later Tess was led by an orderly to the visiting center. She had never been there before. Her parents and older sister were dead, and even when they weren't she never saw them. There had been cards at Christmas, Easter, and birthdays, but the Doerners did their best not to acknowledge the family's shame.
The room was painted a serene sky-blue. Tables and chairs were scattered about, comfier-looking than the furniture in the hospital's rec room. There were a few other patients there, conversing with friends and family members. At one table sat a man alone. He stood when she got closer, but Tess kept her head down, refusing to look at him, seeing only the brown shoes and khaki-colored pant legs.
"Look who's here, Tess," Bryan, the orderly, said.
"Hello, Tess," the man said. She turned her head and closed her eyes. This wasn't Kevin. Kevin didn't talk. He never had to for her to understand him, for them to understand each other.
She was maneuvered to sit at the table. Set down like a doll. "You know where I'll be if you need anything, Doc."
"Oh. Yes. Thanks."
Bryan walked away. Tess kept her head down, her hair curtaining out the rest of the world. Her hands clenched in her lap. She lifted her eyes only enough to see his hands folded together on top of the table, his fingers tapping against each other nervously.
They sat in silence for several minutes. It was almost normal. She gathered her courage and finally tilted her head up to look at him. Kevin had been pale, hair mussed, always hunched over on himself. This man sat straighter, his hair neatly combed flat, his complexion healthier. It was familiar, but not the same, and yet she liked it, and hated herself for the betrayal. She quickly darted her eyes away again.
"I am so sorry."
Tess flinched. His voice was strange, not at all how it was in her head when she had translated his silent looks and gestures. "I wish you had been right, Tess. I would have missed you terribly, but at least you would have been happy. And you wouldn't hate me."
"I don't hate you." Her eyes widened, surprising herself with the declaration.
"If there was some way I could repay what you have done for me-"
"It wasn't me. It was them, their plans."
"I don't know 'them.' I don't see them. I don't know what they want from me." He shifted his chair around the table so they were side-by-side. He reached over and took her hand in his. "I know you. I care about you."
She slid her hand away, clenching it again. "What if that was their plan, too? Got to keep you close to me for it to work."
"I don't believe that."
"Lies! They didn't want me! My parents didn't want me! You don't want me!" She jumped from her seat, the chair scraping across the tile floor. "You left me!"
The noise and shouting brought Bryan back to the room. Before he reached them Kevin took her firmly by the shoulders and said, "I wish I could take you with me when I go, but I can't." Tess started sobbing. "Not yet."
"Kevin?"
"Okay, Doc, think Tess needs some rest now." Bryan turned her around.
"No!" She protested. Why were they taking him away again?
Three weeks later and she was back in Clayton's leather chair. "When is Kevin coming back?" She asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
The doctor looked up from his notepad. "Things didn't go very well last time, did they? We thought it best-"
"I'll be good this time. Promise."
Clayton nodded. "Okay."
Bryan escorted her to the visiting center again, but this time just following behind. Kevin immediately stood when he saw her, like some gentleman in an old romance novel. She didn't shy away from looking at him this time. He was smiling at her, tentative, hopeful. She stopped and stood right in front of him and his small smile faltered as she just scrutinized him. She could see it now. It really was Kevin. Same man, just a little shinier, better.
She took another step forward and flung her arms around him. Kevin staggered a little in surprise, but quickly recovered and returned the embrace. Tess felt tears again, but happy ones. She breathed deep. That was different, too, his scent. Before, like everyone, he had smelled of the standard-issued soap the hospital used. Now it was something sterile, a mix of chemicals, but not unpleasant. "You smell like science," she said, pulling away.
Kevin laughed. It was a new sound. It was the best sound she ever heard. He nodded to Bryan who was still hovering behind her, and the orderly gave them space and privacy. They sat at the table across from each other. "I'm sorry about before," started Tess. "I think I was angry. I'm not angry now."
"I know," he said, reaching out and patting her hands. "Tess," his tone changed curiously, "do you know what is I do? My work, I mean."
"You're a doctor. A genius doctor." She always knew she was right about that even if it did take several afternoons of sitting on the floor, her reading The Wizard of Oz aloud, before he learned how to braid her hair correctly.
He laughed again. A low chuckle that made butterflies in her chest. "Yes, but specifically in neurochemistry. Do you know what that is?"
"Brain stuff."
"Right, brain stuff. Like what makes yours and mine's brains different, and what can help make them less different."
Tess frowned. "You don't have to talk to me like I'm a baby." As she feared, he was becoming more Doctor Burkhoff and less Kevin all of a sudden, and the butterflies were wilting.
"What I'm trying to say is that I think I can help you, like you helped me. I've been talking to Dr. Clayton about your treatments and he's going to be giving you something different soon. I hope, I think, it will be right for you this time."
"Then you can take me with you."
"That's the idea."
Ah, hell, there were the tears again. It didn't matter. Let whoever was watching and listening get their fill, she couldn't hide her feelings anymore.
"I have to go now, Tess, but I'll see you again soon. And," he slid he his hands under the table and whispered, "I brought you something."
Tess put her hands under the table, too and smiled as the unmistakable feel and weight of a book was clandestinely placed in them. Later, alone in her room, she started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
A month later Tess was having a very bad day. First she was told Kevin had to cancel his visit due to some kind of emergency. Then, she was told she was being transferred to some kind of quarantine.
"But I'm not sick!" She insisted. It didn't matter, Federal orders. It wasn't fair. She only had a couple weeks left at Abendson if her new medication continued to perform well. She was getting stir-crazy. Her mind was so much clearer now. She understood so much more, she wanted to really experience the 21st century. She even started flirting with plans for her future, all of them involving one particular person. But now she was locked up even further away from the world.
She sat on her cot in a warehouse-like building with the other 4400s that hadn't yet displayed symptoms of the mysterious disease. The rumor was that those with abilities couldn't use their powers anymore. Funny, she had an ability, didn't she? It wasn't one used consciously, and after the incident with the tower she never really thought about it. What was it those NTAC people said? Compulsion? Making people do things against their will. It was like something out of her sci-fi novels (well, a lot her life was), or that spell in Harry Potter: the Imperius Curse.
She hadn't really known she had been doing it then. But now? She looked around the large room and the arrangement of beds, a few tables with games to stave off the boredom. There was an armed guard at the entrance. She went up to him. "You should unlock this door."
The guard smirk. "Nice try. Not that easy, sis."
Tess narrowed her eyes and concentrated. "You should unlock this door."
The guard blinked once, turned around, and entered his code. The keypad lit green and she could hear the deadbolt release. "Thank you. You can lock it again." The guard turned to do so and Tess went back to her cot. The guard continued his duties without comment. Tess smiled secretly to herself.
She was being discharged tomorrow.
"I want to be there."
"No!" Tess said into the phone. "They're just passing me off right away to a social worker who's taking me to the half-way house."
"But-"
"Let me get settled. Then we can hang out the next day."
Kevin sighed, then coughed. Tess frowned. Was he sick? She pleaded with him to be patient. She promised to call tomorrow and then arrange for them to meet-up the next day.
Tess went back to her room and looked in the mirror. Her hair was too long and limp. She couldn't even remember the last time she wore make-up. Probably that night before her sixteenth birthday.
The next day, Jade, her social worker, greeted her at reception. She had met with Jade a couple times already. They had talked about what Tess wanted to do on her first day out.
"We'll have some money to buy a couple new outfits. You'll need something for job interviews at least."
"Job interviews?" Tess' eyes widened. She didn't know how to do those. She never even thought about work.
"It's okay. I'm here to help with that, too."
Jade took Tess' luggage: only a duffel bag, mostly filled with paperback books. "Hey, bobby soxer , you ready for this?"
Tess took a deep breath. Her nerves tingled, she couldn't deny she was equally scared as excited.
They went to a department store first where Jade helped with the "interview suit" and Tess got to choose a couple new outfits herself. It was a little difficult. The clothes and styles were not really to her tastes. Most of the skirts were too short or didn't have the proper fullness. She chose one though, that actually went past her knees and didn't hug her hips, and a pair of jeans. "Don't roll the cuffs up," Jade advised as they headed to the check out with the clothes and handful of cosmetics.
Next was a salon where Tess got a haircut. The stylist somehow managed ot make her long-neglected hair curl softy behind her shoulders. "Gorgeous!" Jade cheered.
Tess had two roommates at the half-way house who Jade also worked with. But Tess was getting tired, and really only had one person she wanted to socialize with. She unpacked her bags and made her call. On the way to the house, Jade had pointed out a nice little café not far from the house and she told Kevin to meet her there.
"It's a date," Kevin promised, and Tess' heart almost burst.
She walked to the café wearing her new skirt and the blouse from the interview suit. One of her roommates helped with her make-up, it'd been a while and the objects as well as the fashion had changed in the past fifty years. She saw Kevin before he saw her. He stood outside the café, shuffling his feet, hands shoved in his pockets. She practically ran the rest of the way to him.
"Tess!" He had only a moment to acknowledge her before she threw herself in his arms. She held on tight, and thought maybe she could spend the rest of her life right here, never letting go. But Kevin did let go, and held her at arm's length. "Look at you." he touched her hair, tucking a lock behind her ear.
As she returned the look-over, her smiled faded a little. He had paled somewhat since she last saw him. He even started coughing, but tried covering it up by clearing his throat. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, better than fine," he insisted, taking both her hands in his. "Let's get some coffee and talk a walk. There is something I'm doing I want to tell you about. I may need your help."