gemma ford ϕ olivia dunham (freakishlygood) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2011-09-25 17:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | gemma ford, jason price |
Who: Gemma Ford and Jason Price (sort of) ----
What: Gemma’s out on a patrol and gets a dose of fear toxin. Olivia reacts accordingly.
Where: Gotham City and... Gotham City. It’s a little bit complicated.
When: 10 PM, Saturday, September 24, 2011
Warnings: Terror, parallel universes, and frighteningly helpful chemists?
Gemma had never been afraid of Gotham City. Not really. Fictional or no, it was still just a city, its people still people, even though some were definitely weirder than others. They didn’t scare her, either. Gemma had encountered her fair share of monsters, and Olivia Dunham even more. Olivia’s life – lives, really – was full of monsters, and only very rarely did they truly frighten her. Otherwise? She didn’t scare so easy. Neither did Gemma.
Not until tonight. Tonight, she couldn’t run away from the monsters fast enough.
But then she ran too far.
The light is different here. The air. The smell. The sound, yes, the sound especially. It’s... quieter. The rational part of her, completely silent now, would have wondered why that was; looking around, however, (and to everyone else but Gemma) it’s perfectly obvious. She’s the only one terrified.
Her fear is so intense, so all-consuming and so unlike her that rational thought is impossible and she keeps running, dashing headlong into the street and very nearly getting run over by a taxi. The cabbie shouts at her from behind the glass, but the wide-eyed and desperate woman rounds the car and seeks refuge inside it, making herself as small as possible in the backseat and murmuring over and over again like a broken little girl, “T-take me home, please, just get me – take me home...”
The cabbie stops shouting then, but somehow his silence is even more terrifying, and just when she can’t take it anymore and starts reaching for the door in a blind panic, he asks for an address – frozen now, she gives it to him on rote, and the car speeds away. The streets are so familiar, yet so unfamiliar that she can’t beat to look at them, and she spends the majority of the trip curled up in the back seat, face buried behind her knees and eyes shut tight, but even that doesn’t help to calm her down. There’s too much darkness behind her eyelids, and inside it she can only hear her racing heart, beating so fast and so loud and so out of her control ––
Oh, god, what is happening... Peter, I need my gun. Please, I’m not safe, somebody hurt me, they did this to me, please, Peter, my gun, I need my gun! Please, Peter...
And then, seconds or hours later, the cab stops. “This the right place?” the cabbie asks, and fearfully, Gemma peers out the window nearly laughs. She gave him the wrong address. This isn’t where she lives, this is where she used to live, the house she left seven years ago when she filed for divorce. But the fear has made her weak, too weak to protest, and she practically falls out of the car with a strangled cry of relief. When she looks back, the cab is gone (more eager to get rid of her than to get paid, apparently), and once again, she is alone.
Time seems to jump now. She doesn’t remember how she ended up on the grass, only that just a second ago she could’ve sworn she was still standing in the street, but the logistics are nothing now that she sees inside the house and comes face-to-face with her worst nightmare.
A man, a woman, and a baby are living in her house. The baby is happy, and her parents are obviously in love. He looks at her like Peter used to look at Olivia, and Gemma knows he is Peter, because Gemma knows that only he could put that look on her face. Because that is her face. She’s looking at herself. The other her. The happier her. The one who stole a life Gemma could never admit that she wanted.
That scares her more than anything, and she flees. She runs until she can’t run anymore, collapsing against a lamppost and clinging to it like it was the only solid thing left in the world. The wrong world. She cries out. A figure approaches her as her vision begins to darken, and with the last vestige of her energy, she babbles softly, “I need to go back. I’m not from here. Please. Please. Send me back...”
Jason Debney was working late in his private lab, an extension of the school lab he taught out of on campus just a few short blocks from Wyndam and Price law offices in New Jersey. His father’s law offices, and usually after Jason was done in the lab if it wasn’t too late he always headed over there to have a night cap with the old man and shoot the shit for awhile. At one point Jason had thought he wanted to be a lawyer, then along came Crane who sparked his real passion for science, but his father had understood. Richard Debney only ever wanted the best for his boys.
It was long past sunset and growing darker as he made his way the short distance to his father’s office, humming a soft tune under his breath that went nicely in time with his foot steps but the minute he saw the half-collapsed figure just a few feet away the tune stopped and he rushed over. She was clinging to the lamp post for dear life and mumbling unintelligibly, and while she looked familiar it was only a feeling of in passing. Maybe someone he’d gone to Princeton with? Whatever the case, she was in trouble, he could tell that much as soon as he bent over her and got a good look at her pupils.
“Send you back where, darlin’?” His southern drawl had never completely gone away despite how many years it’s been since he set foot back inside Texan borders. When he got no answer, only more unintelligible mutterings Crane spoke up in a similarly lazy drawl that they should get her back to the lab before ‘something more permanent happens’. Crane and Jason had never been on very agreeable terms but Jason knew he’d be a fool not to take his advice when he knew what he was talking about. This woman had been drugged, and from the looks of it not anything you’d find on the streets. He’d need to get a sample of her blood before giving her a diagnosis, though he was already near positive he recognized these symptoms. All too well.
Well, no time like the present. In one easy movement he swooped down and scooped up the frightened, mostly unconscious woman in his arms and carried her the short distance back to his lab so he could get right to work on her. He had students in the morning, but they’d have to wait. Right now this woman needed his full attention.