Title: Spoils of War
Rating: PG-13
Pairings/Characters: Peter/Claire
Warnings: violence, angst, incest
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring, NBC et al
A/N: Thanks to finnigan_geist for beta'ing!
Summary: In the IABD-verse, Claire fights alongside Peter before losing him and when Pinehearst offers to strike a deal, she is more than willing to negotiate terms.
The mission is reckless and stupid. Typical. Claire's bones don't ache, she isn't weary from the fight, and the only thing she feels at all is a chilling certainty. They're losing.
She thinks the rest of the Resistance can feel it too, but she never asks. They'll grin at her, smile through the streaked blood and ash on their cheeks, lit from within with righteous determination. They think they'll fight to their last breath, when she knows they'll die, naïve and cowardly, struck down by the viciousness of their own ideals. Instead, she nods along in the mission briefing, grim look offered to Peter when they are paired again, fighting down the flicker of hope that his presence always brings.
And then she follows orders.
The government has containment facilities all along the Gulf Coast and little regard for either Geneva or basic human decency. The walls are gray cement and heat radiates off of them. Each turn, each corridor, each cranny of the cramped monstrosity Claire has found herself lost within exhales musty, wet heat onto her skin. It feels like the Texas summers of her girlhood, but she never had the tang of fresh blood in her mouth back then.
The stench permeates the air, and Peter grimaces at her side. It's more than blood unsettling him. Underneath the scent of fresh human blood there is another, softer note of sickening sweetness. Not unexpected, but unpleasant and disheartening nonetheless: gaseous power suppressant.
"Another left," he whispers to her, expression determined. "The lab is behind another security door after that."
Claire nods shortly. Hiro is working the other side of the facility, opening cell doors with all the quickness his dampened ability will allow. He's good at what he does, fierce with an eager edge that is too common on their side, untempered and unhardened by the fight so far. And that's why he's protected, a bitter part of Claire thinks. He's never been inside one of the laboratories, never strapped to one of the tables – he's spared all its grotesque reality.
A shift of guards walks past them, military fatigues a soft swish nearly covered by the dull, mechanical hum of the air cycling. Their guns are untouched by their side, but Claire's fingers itch for her own sidearm. It's cool and heavy on the small of her back. The sweat gathering at her hairline trickles downward, outlining her spine and then her gun.
She'd love nothing more than to shoot these bastards, but they're gone too soon.
"Go," she says. Peter lets go of her hand, shimmering to invisibility as she leaves the sphere of his ability. It's an imperfect application. She can see his outline, moving like a particularly animated cut of glass.
It's the best they've got.
Claire slides her hand behind herself, retrieving the comforting weight of her gun. Her father's gun. Back to the wall, she grips it tightly in two hands, a quick kiss to the barrel the only acknowledgment of its significance. Peter has six minutes before the next patrol, before they have to be gone. They all know it's not enough. Whoever is in the lab, however many there are, someone will be left behind.
They can't save everyone. Claire came to terms with that long ago. She knows Peter never did.
Sweat slicks her palms, sticks her black tank to her back. Dark hair falls into her face as she waits, glaring at the door. Her vision goes red, alarms flaring to life around her.
"Claire!" someone shouts, voice a tinny, overwhelmed whisper against the noise. Hiro. Claire turns in place, gun cocked. "We must go!"
"No!" Claire shouts, pushing him away with force. She can feel her expression flatten, body pulsing cold anger. "We have six minutes."
Six minutes until she will see Peter again, safe on the other side of the mission.
"No, we don't!" Hiro says, taking hold of Claire once more and pulling. They are outside, in the sweltering Louisiana night before Claire knows it. Spite makes her turn in his grasp, elbow into the softness of his stomach. He groans at the blow, but leaves her to shout her frustration into the night. He is a silent, dark outline in the moonlight – hair cropped short, glasses long ago shed – when he takes hold of her again, teleporting them both back to base.
Six minutes become six months.
***
Armistice day: unearned and unasked for. The Resistance tries not to resent Pinehearst for their interference. Claire may be the only one who succeeds.
There is some kind of official ceremony with the President. Nathan is there, Arthur and Angela. Sylar, of all fucking people, subs in as a representative for the Resistance, sweater vest and Clark Kent glasses no cover for his psychosis. It's a family reunion.
Claire doesn't go. She watches silently from the bunker, in what passes for a mess hall. Everyone else is tense, footsteps falling angrily on the floor as James paces and Elle's fingernails tap out an irritating staccato that echoes in the chilly underground room. Matt's silver clatters repeatedly onto the table as he starts and stops eating dinner.
Handshakes all around, camera flashes, and then commentary from talking heads. Claire turns the volume up, leaning forward to skim the treaty details from the charts and summaries that flash on the screen.
Eyes fervid and bright, her mouth forms the words before she realizes it, "Prisoner release."
Elle scoffs in the background.
"What prisoners? The ones they haven't tortured to death?"
Claire's never had a hard time hating Elle, but her words bring a sudden surge of anger – if only to hide her self-loathing. She was letting herself hope again. Peter always did have that effect on her.
Heedless of Elle's pregnancy, she slams her up against the wall. Elle's skull connects with a satisfying crack. It almost drowns out the sudden clamor of noise from the flood of fighter that were not in the room before. Claire manages to push her again, harder, into the concrete before Matt and Ando haul her away. A protective circle forms around Elle, James shaking his head at Claire in shock and disappointment.
It's enough to make Claire wish she hadn't left her gun on her bunk.
***
Each release is highly publicized, coordinated and choreographed by the good folks at Pinehearst. Some depict stringy, thin young men Claire doesn't recognize stepping into the sunlight and blinking as if for the first time. Some show healthier, happier prisoners – women, primarily – looking bewildered at the attention and as refreshed as if they had just emerged from a long spa treatment. Arthur and Nathan are in each frame of each camera shot, slick suits and shadowed expressions drawing the eye.
There is no one left in the bunker to criticize Claire for watching, for hoping. She is left to do it to herself.
Hiro was the last to leave, with an odd, tempered clap on the shoulder. He must have seen a better future for her once and is only now resigning himself to reality.
Peter does not get a public release. Instead, Claire awakens one day in her cold, narrow bunk to find a letter tucked under the thick metal door. She stretches her shoulders, then her legs, warming up for her morning workout as she glares across the room. The envelope is fine bone white, stark against the ashen gray, dirty concrete floor. It may well be official stationary. She frowns, wondering sarcastically if she's been invited to a party. When she can bear the incongruity no more, she stalks over, stooping to pick it up, back prickling with paranoia all the while.
It is an invitation, after all. A single word, in tight, elegant script: upstairs.
Claire doesn't recognize the hand, and maybe that's why she is unworried as she goes up. Her gun is cool in her grasp and her long, unbound hair brushes against her tank top covered shoulders with every swaying, casual step. The reinforced steel door to the outside creaks under her weight. She strains, leaning into it, and only just prevents herself from stumbling when it gives under the pressure. The sun is higher in the sky than she would have thought, noon light creating bright green patches and deep shadows filtered through the canopy above.
"Claire," Arthur says. He is leaning against a black town car, smile lining his face. "You're late."
"Sorry for the inconvenience," she replies flatly.
"You sell yourself short. You're far more than that – to the government and to me."
Claire stares at him. "Is this a recruitment speech? Because I'm not interested."
Arthur laughs and there is dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Not your recruitment, Claire. Peter's." Claire's heart stops beating for a moment. The snap of a branch under her foot is loud in her ears as she steps closer, almost unwillingly. Her shoulders are squared, gun still tight in her grasp. She is ready to raise it, to just fucking shoot him, when he continues, amusement at her own words a low, dark undertone in his voice. "I want you to come see him. Help me with him. I need him on my side and you're the only one who can talk to him. He is being... uncooperative."
"You have Peter," Claire whispers.
"Now, Claire, where else would he be? Of course he's with his family."
Claire looks away, stung by the unsaid words. He is with his family, but Claire is not. Arthur didn't come for her. Peter was at Pinehearst all this time, while Claire slept in the bunker with ghosts and rats.
She steps closer still, smile broad and fierce as she comes close enough to touch her grandfather. She barely has to tilt her head up to look him in the eye – and again she feels the chilling frission of genetic attraction, dissonant echoes of like and unlike. Family is her father, tall and protective and human. It is her mother, quirky and odd and smiling. It is not this, these people, violent and charming as snakes.
Claire supposes family is dead.
"What are you waiting for?" she asks, brushing close to open the car door behind him and then slipping in. She can hear his chuckle even with the door closed and shivers.
The drive is silent but for the creaking of leather on leather as Claire shifts around the backseat – first uncomfortably, and then moves from the window to beneath the skylight, casting her gaze upward at the shifting chiaroscuro of forestry and light.
It is not a long drive. The Resistance bunker is jarringly near the Pinehearst building, still within the map boundaries that share that name. The less charitable members of the Resistance thought Peter selected the location to thumb his nose at his father. Others, innocent of the animosity in the family, thought the proximity spoke to a secret treaty of mutual support. Claire knows the truth is more mundane, less brave and far less cunning: these were the only woods Peter really knew. He pretends, but he is still no kind of fighter.
Arthur's big hands are light and gentle on the wheel, drawing Claire's eyes. He looks up, eying her in the rear view window, amused paternalism in his voice making her shiver as he chuckles, "We're almost there, Claire."
The Pinehearst grounds are as anti-septic as they looked on television, and Arthur carelessly slides the car to a halt in front of the main doors, tossing the keys to a passing doctor and commanding her to park it in his spot. Everything is sleek and shiny inside. It makes Claire's skin itch and she reaches again and again for her piece.
Arthur catches her one time and offers a lying smile to her, depressing a shining silver button inside the elevator as the doors close with a whoosh.
"You don't need that here, Claire."
He keeps saying her name.
"Where are we going?" Claire growls. There was an autumn chill to the air in the bunker, but one Claire had long been inured to. She can feel cold – she feels heat and pressure and all manner of things – and dismissex it like everything else that was no use to her. She isn't going to get frostbite; she doesn't need a jacket.
But there is something cold and dry to the air that hisses from the Pinehearst vents. Claire feels suspicion surge in her – drugs – before she dismisses the idea. Arthur would never cripple himself that way.
"To see Peter," Arthur returns easily. "We've had to keep him in isolation since retrieving him. He's still so weak."
She tosses him a sharp look, his tone catching in her mind. It's wrong for his words, for the intent she wants to draw from it. Claire wants to ask him what that means, but the elevator chimes a high, tinny sound and the doors slide open.
The corridor is harshly lit and two guards linger at the far end. One, a diminutive blonde with straight hair and a flat expression, tilts her head to the side, assessing Claire. Her partner sets his shoulders, offering a wide smile, white teeth set off sharply against his dark skin.
"Daphne, Knox," Arthur acknowledges with a nod. "Report."
"Same old, boss," Daphne says breathlessly. "He just lies there. Boring."
"I don't pay you to be entertained," Arthur snaps. Daphne averts her eyes and Claire blinks a bright blur of motion from her eyes, only just realizing that Daphne has fallen back a few steps in fear once Arthur's dark expression clears, satisfaction with her obedience replacing it.
"He's afraid," Knox says. He looks pleased with this answer; Arthur does not. "He's always afraid."
"You're not supposed to get that close. He'll take your power and then we'll have even more trouble on our hands." Arthur looks at Claire, eyes measuring her, waiting for an emotional response to his statement, a sign of rebellion. She looks back with calm steel – she doesn't care what he means, only that she sees Peter – and he nods. Without looking again to Daphne and Knox, Arthur orders, "Both of you, leave."
They walk a few more paces down the hall; Claire notes how few rooms there are. Each seems like a large suite. It would almost pass for a hotel, if not for the large glazed windows opening into the room and the heavy iron doors. They come to a stop before a room that has the curtains drawn. Claire presses her hand to the window, swallowing as she nonetheless tries to peer in.
"What do you want me to do?"
Arthur steps to her side, a warm, heavy hand falling on her shoulder.
"Remind him what this family has to offer." He presses a key card into her hand and Claire looks up at him in surprise. "Take all the time you need."
Claire turns the card over in her hand, looking to it and then back to the window. Arthur's footsteps land heavily on the tiles, fading as he leaves her behind, almost trembling at the tumultuous mix of feelings churning within. She feels weak and foolish, like a little girl and she clenches her teeth until she hears them creak. She wonders if it would hurt if they splinter – she always wonders anew if something will hurt, even though she knows deep down it will not – but she stops abruptly, reminding herself she doesn't want to deal with that.
She's here to see Peter and she doesn't want him to see her spattered with blood. There have already been too many times of that.
Claire swipes the card and opens the door to a small, spartanly furnished sitting room. She turns, walking past a partition, and she finds Peter laying on the bed, just as Daphne said. His back is to her, and the room is nothing like the holding cell in Odessa, but she feels a sudden rush of memory regardless. She sways, holding out a hand to catch herself.
"Peter," she breathes. He turns on his side and all soft sentimentalism is swept from her heart in one swift blow. As she looks at him. As she sees his face.
A deep, red weal slashing across his face. It is ugly and Claire hates herself for the sound she makes at the sight.
Peter looks at her blearily; it is clear that Arthur is right, he is still weak, and likely drugged as well. His voice is a dry rasp when he asks, "Claire?"
She is at his side on the bed as quickly as she can be. He flinches away, muttering, "No. No, I won't believe it this time."
"Peter," Claire says again, reaching out to touch his face, scared by her own need to assure herself of his reality; ashamed of her hope that this is a trick and he is not this damaged. "It's me. It's not a trick."
His hazel eyes narrow and his lips thin as he glares at her.
"Do your research, Dad," he says to the air, jarring her. "Claire is blonde."
There is no suitable reaction to that beyond the quiver of ironic, angry laughter she can feel build in her diaphragm. Claire suppresses it, instead reaching out to slap Peter across the face.
"I dyed it for the missions. To blend in, remember?" she snaps at him. She is surprised to see a dim recollection gather in his eyes, some of the tightness in Peter's expression relaxing before he falls back from her once more. This time he leans laxly against the wall, one eye open to look at her as he lets loose a bitter laugh.
"What are you doing here?" he eventually asks. "How did you get in?"
He must think she's here to rescue him, Claire realizes. He doesn't even realize he has already been rescued.
"Arthur got me in," she says carefully, watching the dark flicker of fear in his face. "I'm going to fix you."
Peter's mouth twists. His eyes look so different now, the scar set between them hardening every look he gives. It's enough to make her move, fumbling for the knife in her boot while his low voice cracks on a question, "How?"
She's forgotten which boot. Has she forgotten the knife entirely? Furious and fast, Claire takes both of them off, only finding the knife in her right boot once she sees the hardened blood encrusting her once white sock. She must have cut herself putting the knife in while getting dressed.
She grins, brandishing the knife at Peter. He frowns.
"I'm going to cut that scar off," Claire explains. "Your body will regenerate and the skin will heal the way it's supposed to be."
Peter catches her wrist as she moves, leaving her kneeling on the bed, leaning over him, silver knife a hair's breadth from his face.
"Claire, no!"
"It'll heal right up," she insists. "And we won't have to live..."
"In the future Hiro warned us about?" Peter finishes for her. He shakes his head sadly. "We've been here for a long time, Claire."
The words chill Claire, freezing every hope she'd pretended she did not hold onto. They anger her too, flushing hot denial through her veins. Her Peter had never been so hopeless. He had never given up. She wants nothing more than to cut him, to hit him, to punish Peter for leaving her behind and coming back to her wrong.
Instead, she settles for kissing him, tears stinging her eyes. Peter is surprised and trying to pull out of the kiss; he gently pushes on her shoulders. But he is too weak and Claire overpowers him, pushing him onto his back on the bed.
"Claire," Peter gasps out. He is passive throughout their kisses, but he does not avoid them. Claire bites his lip, drawing a hiss from him before he adds, "Why now?"
"Why not?" she growls back, stripping off her shirt. There truly is nothing else for them to lose now.
After, Peter sleeps and Claire dresses again. Although Peter's room has no clock Claire can tell the a large amount of time has passed by the uneasy shift of the world beneath her feet and the strange beat of her heart. She has to pull herself away from him so many times, repress the urge to touch and linger at his side, caressing his face at that hateful scar.
Behind her, past the short wall that divides the so-called rooms, the door creaks open. Arthur steps into the room and his shadow falls just short of the bed. Claire meditates on the idea of standing, on the idea of shame and denial. She says nothing, brushing Peter's hair once more from his face.
"That was unorthodox," Arthur says.
"You were watching?" Claire asks, although she knows the answer. She should feel outraged, she thinks. "Now that is unorthodox."
"Effective, however," Arthur continues as if she had not spoken. "Do you think it worked?"
Claire stands, stretching before offering a shrug.
"I guess you'll see." She looks up at him. Arthur looks calm and relaxed – perhaps even pleased. She tells him, "You aren't going to separate us."
"I wouldn't dream of it. Now, why don't we go up to my office, Claire, and discuss your contract?"
Claire's posture stiffens, her gaze hardening as she looks up at Arthur.
"You said this was about Peter, not me."
"Maybe I changed my mind," Arthur says. He pushes her hair behind her ear, calloused hand scraping against the sensitive skin of her throat. Perhaps on someone else the touch would hurt. "Maybe you just gave me a way to keep you both."
Claire's insides give a delicate shudder and she realizes something. She wants this. She may be locked into the future they all fought against, but this she understands. It can be her new place in the world and her new family.
Her tone is sincere, if not soft, her expression mild, if not smiling, when she tells him, "I'm glad."