March 2007, Cautionary tale

[ellectrical]

She's not standing anymore.

It's not usually cold like this; Elle never lingers for the water to sting as it slowly evaporates off her skin. There's water in her eyes as they blink open, her hair matted and blocking her view. She raises a hand to brush it aside –

- but she can't. She pulls stubbornly at her wrist again before she sees the thin chains binding it to the chair arm.

Finally, she looks up to Bennet standing over her with a sink sprayer. He sets it aside.

"I need to speak to your father."

She meets his eyes full on, sparks already glowing under her hands as she speaks – "What, do you think this is my first day?"

Elle's not thinking – not thinking about how she can't feel her feet, about how cold her hands are – she doesn't care about it, she can only hear the crackling and buzzing and all she can feel is the need to lash out. Her left hand turns up, and the blue sparks snap back into her skin, trapped by the water. But it doesn't hurt yet. Not until it's crackled down to the bucket of water in which Bennet's bound her feet. And with nowhere else to go, it crackles back over her, all at once.

(parents sin)

A standard electric chair emits 2000 volts into the condemned's body over a period of fifteen seconds, meant to render him or her unconscious and stop the heart, followed by a lower voltage surge that severely burns the internal organs, with the body temperature reaching as high as a 128°F. It often doesn't work, and has to be done over, and over, and over, putting the condemned through excruciating pain before he or she finally dies. Flesh inevitably burns onto the electrodes attached to the condemned's body and needs to be cleaned off later. Fortunately for Elle, Noah Bennet knows just how many times her strained, overworked body can go through such extreme exposure to electric shock. Even if her brain is perfectly damaged so as not to remember it. She can take it.

(children suffer)

It's ten seconds.


She doesn't know she's breathing, but she must be – her head's thrown back and she's screaming but suddenly she's not because she can't breathe and the Bennet's ceiling fades into a –

(glass room with an -)

– gray mesh like spider web covering her eyes, she closes them and her head falls and there are still sparks everywhere and she struggles to open her mouth and do something besides scream.


(She's been this before – she knows it, screaming until the acute asphyxiation kicks in and she can't scream or breathe but she's not supposed to get out of it but this isn't a memory, there's no image, no knowledge, just something familiar in the ache in her throat and every frayed nerve -)


Her eyes open when she can breathe again. They're not even damp.



(that's what they'd do)




"Stings like a bitch, huh?"


She doesn't answer him. Her breathing slows, her eyes aren't wet; Elle looks back at Bennet with as much defiance as before.

"I know all about your ability, Elle."

"You don't know anything about me," she snaps, though it comes out more like a gasp. He moves closer to her.

"I was there," he continues, his voice much quieter. "When they brought you in. You were a normal girl –"

Elle almost scoffs at this, but she doesn't have the breath for it.

"- unicorns and rainbows. And then the testing began. The brain isn't built to take that much electricity."

And her thoughts stop, she can't remember what – her eyes return to him.

"You poor girl."

It's almost immediate – "My father would never let that happen."

Bennet leans still closer. "Your father was leading the charge."

"I don't remember any of that," she returns.

"No memories, huh?" he asks, not sounding surprised. "Kind of like someone took them away?"









She can't think about it now. He's a liar, they're all –

"Why do you think I worked so hard to keep the Company away from Claire?"

what they will do, not even you can recover from the life your abilities would bring you, you deserve better they'd cut you, they'd test you, they'd push you so far past your capacity for pain that you'd wish you could die


She'd never cared.

"I didn't want her to become –"

whorebratbitchslut

"-you."

They're all liars.

(Is that supposed to be about me?
You tell me.)





Bennet's speaking again – "... make a trade, you for Claire."

Clark had asked if no one had ever done anything nice for her because they wanted to, not because they had to.

It's too bad he won't hear her answer.

She looks up at Bennet, and her eyes are growing damp for the first time.

"What if he doesn't want to make a deal?"

Bennet's voice nearly brushes reassuring now. "You'd be surprised what a father would do for his daughter."

Bennet's eyes flicker to his wife as he says it – it's the first time Elle notices her in the room, trained eyes snapping to the marks on her wrist before rising to see the flying boy. And what does he mean to say to her? Elle doesn't understand it. What will a father do for his daughter? Hadn't he just claimed her father let – hadn't they all – hadn't Bennet – done the same to countless others? What was it a father would do for his daughter?

Let one daughter take it so his wouldn't have to?



Elle gives him the number anyway, and he finally steps away from her, pulling her phone out of his pocket as he turns.

She can't hear her father's voice. It's just as well.

"You touch my daughter and I'll kill yours. And then I'll kill you." She's used to threats as a way of greeting. Elle stops paying attention to the conversation, but unwilling to let her mind wander, all she can do is focus on how far she can move her hands.

Bennet closes the phone, turns back to her, and sprays her with the sink again.

"West." He says something quietly to the boy before leaving the room with his wife, and Elle looks away. She can't let her skin spark up again, and she doesn't let her gaze leave her hand, and every small, continued effort to pull them back, she doesn't let herself think about anything else because this is all she can do. This job.

His job.





And so she doesn't wonder, when Bennet returns to strike her across the head with just enough force to knock her out (and not enough to kill her), if there's really much more damage such concussive force can do.





[ooc: Most dialogue lifted from Heroes 2x09, "Cautionary Tales."]