Characters: Mostly Peter, with some others making appearances later on.
Setup: Set right after "Exposed" (and my own fic "Touch and Go") and following Peter through "Shades of Gray" and most of "Cold Snap", simply wondering how he might have fared at the time. It's turned slightly AU now with the events of "Cold Snap" and the revelation who Rebel is (and it probably was just one or two days, not four), but all in all, it still works well as an in-between. How he got from Washington to New York, how he recovered from his injury, how he knew where to find his mother, right down to how he picked up that grey coat - it's all here. Enjoy. :D
Reviews and comments welcome!
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One life at a time
The room was cool, smelly, and in semi-darkness. And it was cluttered. There were pieces of furniture in various states of disrepair, cabinets full of detergents, brooms and mops, cardboard boxes piled as high as the ceiling with waterstains at the bottom, and bundled stacks of the Washington Post, a cursory sample of which proclaimed them to be from the mid-eighties.
A bit of light shone through two tiny windows half obscured by all manner of junk, telling Peter it was day when he woke. What time of day, he couldn't tell; it was too dark in his corner of the room to see his watch.
He guessed he could have done worse for a temporary hideout. There had been a pile of mattresses in one corner, all smelling faintly of cat piss, but after some searching, he'd found a flowery shower curtain to cover them with, and put Nathan's coat on top of that. A water tap in the back wall was functional as well. There were two exits – the one through which he'd come, a ramshackle wooden door opening to the roof, and a door that obviously opened into the building on the other side, locked from without. Peter had lodged a piece of wire in the keyhole to keep away anyone entering the storeroom by accident – and to have at least a minute's warning if anyone tried to enter it not by accident.
So far, he had been lucky, at least as far as he could tell. He had a feeling he must have slept for a long time – the painkillers hadn't done much for the pain but had left him rather drowsy – and nobody had tried to enter the storage room. He'd hoped for something of the sort after assessing the state the place was in. The caretaker here was probably a lot like the one in the house in which Peter lived. When the heating failed or all the light bulbs in the hall decided to burn through simultaneously again, it usually took ages before you were able to get hold of the guy.
He sat up slowly, but still the movement sent a stab of pain through his left shoulder. He gave a silent curse. This wasn't the best environment to wait for a wound to heal, but he saw no other way. His first instinct, right after dropping off his memory stick at the network news building, had been to think of ways how he could locate and free Matt or Daphne, or any of the others, but he had to concede he was easy prey right now, and would be captured or killed long before he even came close to achieving anything. He was feeling woozy even after the drugs must have worn off, and he faced the fact that he'd probably caught an infection, which would be hard to treat without access to antibiotics.
One life at a time, he thought bitterly. And right now, that's gotta be mine. He took some small comfort in the fact that, at least, Matt wouldn't be able to strap a bomb to his chest and blow up the White House while he was in custody.
He had considered, briefly, to try making it to California and borrow Claire's ability. The prospect of seeing a friendly face and be rid of his gunshot wound within seconds had been extremely tempting, but he had been forced to discard the idea in the light of the huge downsides. He wasn't even certain he could fly that far in his present state, and other ways of travel were too risky. Even if it hadn't been for that, he didn't want to draw Claire into this mess again. He had no doubts that she would be more than willing to be pulled into any mess as long as she thought she could help, but the Bennet house would be watched, and God knew what Danko's goons would do if he learned that Claire, or Noah, had helped him. Peter harboured no illusions anymore that Danko, not Nathan, was running the operation these days. The conversation with his brother had made that amply clear to him. Nathan had bitten off more than he could chew, and the surplus had come to bite him in the ass.
Peter realised that a lot of his anger at Nathan had cooled. It was still there, but the hot fury at his brother's betrayal had been replaced by head-shaking incredulity as he recalled how deeply serious, and utterly clueless, Nathan had been just after rescuing him from falling off that roof. Quite obviously, he was still convinced he was doing the right thing, and was genuinely appalled at how everyone was just rejecting his well-meant offers for help. He might have promised to keep Peter safe if he turned himself in, and he had definitely meant it, and it startled Peter just how little Nathan realised that there was no way he could guarantee something like that. Things had passed Nathan completely by, and he still conveyed the impression that he hadn't even realised.
His stomach growled, and he was reminded that he probably hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours. With a groan, he crept to the edge of his makeshift bed to get a better look at his watch, and saw that it was already past 9 PM. Not so much daylight left, then. He would have to wait until it was fully dark before he could leave his hideout – he was not going to fly down from here in broad daylight – to get some food, and some more dressing material. Ruefully, he thought of Matt's ability, which would have come in extremely handy here. Or Claude's, which would have been about as useful. Now, he'd have to rely on the couple of bucks he still had in his pockets, and hope he would think of something to better his situation soon.
An hour later, Peter was on his way in search of a 7-Eleven, jacket pulled over his left arm to partially obscure the sling. Nathan's coat would have been useful here, but he'd decided to leave it in the loft – the rather unfavourable combination of Nathan's aftershave and cats' piss was guaranteed to make anyone suspicious if they came too close.
He was lucky again. Nobody looked at him longer than necessary as he paid for a couple of plastic-wrapped sandwiches, compresses, medical tape and some more disinfectant. He was already out of the store when he remembered his flash drive. If he had assessed the situation correctly, the story of US citizens being rounded up and herded onto a plane by the government had to be all over the newspapers. For a moment, he was about to head back into the store, but then forewent the idea as being too likely to rouse suspicion. He'd have to find a vending machine. That shouldn't be too hard. He had probably passed a few on his way here but overlooked them.
Two blocks from the convenience store, he saw a dark-red dispenser of the Washington Examiner standing on the corner of the street, fumbled for some coins in his pocket until he saw it was free, and nearly dropped them anyway as he saw the headline: Capitol Hill narrowly escapes bomb explosion.
Peter was at the dispenser in what felt like less than a second, pulled open the lid, only to find there weren't any copies left. Shakily, he crouched down to look at the remaining issue behind acrylic glass, and found himself staring at a photo of Matt Parkman, looking eerily like all those paintings now littering Isaac's loft in Manhattan, with the White House visible in the background. He couldn't make out much of Matt's face; there was another figure there, seen from behind, but the glass was blinded in several spots, so he couldn't make out all of it.
Narrowly escapes, he reminded himself. Narrowly escapes. Matt's gotta be alright. He steadied himself against the vending machine to read as much as he could of the article.
Washington, DC. A man with a bomb strapped to his chest kept the DC Police on tenterhooks for half an hour on Sunday night, until the bomb was defused, apparently with the help of Junior Senator Nathan Petrelli—
Peter hit the dispenser in fury. It hurt, but damn, it had been worth it.
The reasons for the attempted assault are still unclear, says spokesperson Sharon Baldric. It seems that the man, a former police officer from Los Angeles and New York City who has been making a living with bodyguard duties for the past months before surprisingly quitting his service four days ago and disappearing from New York, never made any demands or issued any threats, and no other links to known terrorist activity have surfaced. Eyewitnesses report that the man was knocked to the ground after the bomb was defused, and taken into custody.
Senator Petrelli refused to comment on the situation, even his own involvement with it, causing some speculation about a possible link with material that surfaced earlier that evening, giving hints that the US government has expanded the influence of the Patriot Act…
Peter broke off. He'd had enough. He realised his knees were shaking as he got to his feet again, furious at himself for not being there when Matt had been on the verge of levelling Capitol Hill, furious at Nathan for being a goddamn hypocrite, and furious at Danko, whose handwriting was all over this. Matt had been in custody. There was no way for him to stage all of this. And even if there had been, he definitely would have made demands or issued threats if any of this had been his idea.
And now Matt was back in Building 26, Danko finally had his proof to the world that specials were dangerous and needed to be put down rather than detained, and Peter's ground-breaking revelation that the government was moving against innocent citizens had been moved to page five, along with recent developments that would leave the country in doubt whether they were so innocent in the first place.
He noticed that several people were watching him with interest, but none of them was making a move towards him yet. Peter turned abruptly and started to walk back to his hideout, but not on the most direct path. He cast furtive glances around every now and then to see if anyone was following him, but after a while, he was sure nobody did.