Viktor Hargreeves

Sam no-showed to their hang yesterday. Today, texts to his phone won't go through. Lisbeth's, either.

Viktor knows. He has to see it for himself.

He walks, giving himself ample time to talk himself out of believing it's true. What are the odds they'd disappear together? Surely he'll walk into the bunker and look up into Lisbeth's camera, and he'll be let in.

But in his bones, he knows well before he can see the door open wide. When he looks up at the camera, he can feel that there's no one on the other side.

A wicked wind whips up. Viktor swaths himself in one last whisp of denial to soothe away the storm as he descends to the bunker below. Someone else is down there. He can feel it.

"Sam?" he calls, his voice small.

When Vanya was invited to play the theatre gala, she was thrilled. It offered substantial pay for a featured musicians and - what do you know - they need an experienced violinist. The audition pieces are complicated, but what violinist worth their salt can't play "The Devil Went Down to Georgia?"

By the time she found out the gig included glad-handing donors, it was too late to say no.

She considered more extreme measures of terminating her contract. Perhaps she could hide herself in green room trash. She'd have to wait until she was emptied into the dumpster to escape, but she thinks she can wait it out. Maybe she'll bring a book.

Her attitude changes when they mention in the final rehearsal that the dress code for men and women is the same. This is the best news Vanya's heard since the world didn't end on Valentine's.

So, Vanya gets a suit that very much on purpose does not resemble any suit she might have had in the past. The first time she tries it on, she finds she's smiling like a silly goon in the mirror.

It's been more than 6 months that she's been off those pills, now; she has her family and a fresh start. A whole range of feelings exist between anxious and resigned, and she has a ton of support when any of that gets to be too much.

Does that mean that she's feeling herself? Hell yeah.

The performance goes well, it seems. She hit all the right notes, she had a fucking blast with the double-stop harmonics and people were generally very kind. Of course they are. Very few people tend to tell others they suck to their faces right after a performance. A benefit, especially.

There's an elementary school principal chasing her down to try and make her into the entire music department and she's not about to do it. Vanya managed to dodge her once with a lucky swoop by a local radio DJ whose hand was way too low on her back.

It's possible she broke his champagne flute using mic feedback from the podium, but maybe he was just unlucky.

This second dodge gets intercepted. The woman catches her from across the room and powerwalks toward her. Vanya considers the garbage escape again, but she can't do that to this suit: one of the first really nice things she's ever owned. She's going to spiral. This woman is going to ask her to take a job she doesn't want and Vanya's going to say yes because she won't be able to help herself. Then she'll die slowly from the inside until she loses control of her powers and levels the city. She shuffles around a bit...

And she sees a man standing at a table, close enough that maybe she can arguably say she was engaged in a conversation. They happen to meet eyes at the same time. A few synapses fire.

"Excuse me," she says, eyes a little wider than the average person at rest. "You don't happen to have a cigarette, do you?"