Okay, I already know that I'm not going to be able to fit all the necessary warnings/pairing info into the synopsis bar, so please read this before you proceed.
WARNINGS: Incest, violence, fucked-up relationships
Pairings: Claire/Peter, Peter/Claude, Nathan/Niki, Niki/D.L., Matt/Mohinder, Mohinder/Sylar, Micah/Molly, all varying degrees of UST/RST
Spoilers: To the end of season one and then AU.
Notes: Written for heroesbigboom last summer, and only just now got around to posting. Will have at least one sequel, hopefully by the end of this summer if I can get off my butt and finish the last damn scene.
Incidentally, this is meant to be read as one long story, but I couldn't get it to upload in one file, so it's split in two.
Enjoy.
Bone Deep
Change is inevitable. It is the most fundamental aspect of evolution. The world changes, and those that change with it are the ones who are able to survive.
That's what life is all about, in the grand scheme of things. Survival. It's a biological imperative of almost every species, written into the deepest parts of the brain. Survival is all-important. Family ties, friendships, useless social constructions made by humans to prove that they are superior- all fall by the wayside when it comes down to survival.
Sometimes, you have to lose everything before you are ready to change. And sometimes, the changes you make aren't for the better.
CLAIRE BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS
She kept coming back to the bridge.
It wasn't like she jumped off it, or anything. (Well, except for that one time, which was just curiosity. Testing her limits, and everything. She'd eaten eight of her daddy's pancakes afterwards, and he'd watched her with a knowing eye, but he hadn't said anything. He did that a lot these days.) She wasn't self-destructive, or whatever buzzword label a shrink would try and slap on her. She wasn't trying to hurt herself, to try and chase the high that came from the rush of pain before the wound healed itself. Her body didn't interpret pain quite like anyone else's, she'd discovered; that's how she could do what she did without going insane.
Anyway, that wasn't why she came back to the bridge. She came back here because that's where it felt like everything started- she'd watched her dad get shot on this bridge, take a bullet and lose his memories for her, and the Haitian had driven her off to a new life and a woman that had turned out to be more dangerous than any of Dad's enemies. They'd only wanted to play with her insides, maybe her brain if she was unlucky. Angela Petrelli had been playing with millions of lives, for reasons she still didn't understand.
Talk about playing for keeps.
She came back to this bridge because she was finally realizing that it didn't matter what kind of powers you had, you could never really turn back the clock. Not even Hiro Nakamura, wherever he was now. He could travel in time, but he couldn't make everything go back to the way it was before. You were always going to know what happened. It was always going to change you.
"Hey."
She twisted around, shielding her eyes against the sun, and smiled up at her Dad. "Hey."
He crossed the road (silently, God, how had she never noticed before how quietly he moved? Normal men didn't walk like that) and sat down next to her, his longer legs dangling off the edge a foot away from hers. "You want to talk about it?"
"Not really," she said. It wasn't like she needed to say anything, anyway. He knew exactly what was on her mind.
"You got another letter from New York today," her Dad said, head tipped back, addressing the sky. He wasn't looking at her.
"Congressional postmark?" she said bitterly. Wordlessly, he offered the letter. "Toss it out."
"Still don't want to hear what he has to say?"
She didn't know why he was encouraging her. It wasn't like he liked Nathan Petrelli any more than she did. He'd tried to take her away. Yeah, when the chips were down he saved the day, sort of, but he didn't have to. She'd had it under control. If he hadn't stepped between them she would have shot Peter and he would have been fine, when she got the bullet out, anyway, and then he wouldn't be-
"You know how they say you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your family?"
He looked like he was trying to suppress a smile. "Yeah?"
She grabbed the letter, ripped it in half, and tossed it off the bridge. "That's crap."
NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY
"Micah! C'mon, buddy, it's time for school!"
Micah stuck his head out from his room, scowling. "How come you never yell at Molly?"
She restrained a sigh from sheer force of will. They had this conversation every. single. morning. "Because Molly is always awake, dressed, and eating breakfast while you're still dragging your butt out of bed, mister. If you got up on your own, then I wouldn't have to yell, capisce?" She reached out and rubbed one hand over his curly hair. "Now get your stuff and come into the kitchen. I've got French toast."
"Alright!" he said, his good mood restored by the promise of his favorite breakfast. Just like magic, she thought wryly. And who said parenting was boring?
Molly was, of course, already seated at the kitchen table, making her way unhurriedly through a plate of French toast. Her backpack was sitting next to the door, the girlish pink making an odd contrast next to Micah's no-nonsense black one. Niki was still getting used to the sight of it every morning, though she'd long ago settled to the sight of Molly at the breakfast table. Just another one of those odd quirks, she thought. It'd pass eventually.
"Is Micah up yet?" Molly asked, pausing in her steady progress through breakfast to give Niki an oddly solemn look. Molly was such a bright and energetic child normally that Niki sometimes forgot what she'd been through. It only showed at the odd moment, like now, and only then if you were looking closely.
"Yeah, sweetie, he's just getting his stuff. He'll be in in a minute."
"Good," Molly said. "If he doesn't hurry, he won't have time for breakfast."
Niki had this conversation every morning, too. Apparently her children were unaware that she was able to read a clock. "He'll make it."
D.L. wandered into the room, looking pissed off at the universe. Despite that fact, she still crossed the room and gave him a good-morning kiss. His expression brightened immediately, and she smiled back. She didn't think she'd ever got tired of the way he responded to her.
Unfortunately, the scowl came back immediately as he caught sight of the backpacks by the door. "The car's still in the shop."
"What?"
"I said-"
"No, I heard you. It's just that it was supposed to be fixed yesterday."
"Yeah, well, tell that to the shop." Disgusted, he stomped across the kitchen to pour himself a glass of orange juice. Molly watched him like he was some sort of exotic animal in a zoo- dangerous in theory but safely behind bars. "They say it can't be done before tomorrow, at the earliest."
"Oh, for-" She stopped herself from kicking the wall, and instead contented herself with just a little fist-clenching. D.L. had already patched three holes in the living room. She wasn't going to start with the kitchen, too. "I don't suppose any of your friends would be willing to lend us a ride to school?" He'd gotten a job working security on the local college campus, (an opportunity that had Nathan's fingerprints all over it, since both their records were less than stellar) and he'd quickly charmed over most of the other men (and women) on staff.
He shook his head. "Not a chance. I just got off the phone with Dave- his daughter's sick, so he's staying home to keep an eye on her."
"Perfect, just perfect," she said. Micah came skidding in, one shoelace only half-tied. "Micah, sweetie, tie your shoe before you eat," she reminded him absent-mindedly, her mind still focused on the problem at hand. "I don't suppose that Mohinder-"
"Buried in lab work," D.L. said. "Again."
Molly did look up from her breakfast at this, her little face darkening with concern. Niki wanted to slap Mohinder, and not for the first time. Their Doctor Suresh was affectionate, protective, charming, and firm with Molly- all the hallmarks of a good parent. Except for the part where he'd get stuck in his own little scientific world and completely forget about the real one and the little girl that was waiting for him to come by and visit.
Micah climbed into the chair next to her, plate balanced precariously on one hand. Niki watched carefully, ready to jump forward if his grip loosened, but the plate made it to the table without incident. He really was a lot more graceful than she gave him credit for. Kind of like his dad.
"You tried his cell-"
"A couple times already," D.L. said. "Whatever he's doing, he's gone till someone sends his ass home."
"Great." Then she spotted the car pulling up in front of the house. "Or maybe we can see if our friendly local politician is up for emergency ride-giving."
D.L. glanced out the window, his frown getting blacker at the sight of Nathan Petrelli getting out of his sleek sports car. "Damn it, Niki, you know how I feel about that guy," he said. "It's not natural, the way he comes around here all the time."
Nathan had his reasons, not that D.L. would be any happier if he knew what they were. "Relax, D. His kids go to the same school- it's not like it's that far out of the way."
"Doesn't he have servants to do the driving for him?"
"Yes, but he said he likes driving his kids in the morning, because it's the one time of the day that he's got them all to himself." Which wasn't the only reason he liked a chance to talk to Molly alone, not that D.L. needed to know that. "Which you'd know if you listened once in a while, instead of standing around glaring. He got us started over here, made sure the kids are going to a good school. You could be a little nicer."
"Yeah, I guess." He didn't look any happier about it, though, and truthfully, she didn't blame him. Nathan didn't have to come by and visit as often as he did just to talk to Molly, who'd call him in a heartbeat if she thought she'd found Peter. Not to mention the potential damage to his budding career. The few days he'd gone missing, only a day after his triumphant landslide victory (something she had her son to thank for, apparently; that shape shifting bitch had a lot to answer for, if anyone could find her) had been bad enough, but if they caught wind of this little quirk, they'd have a field day.
That didn't stop her from answering the door when he knocked, though. She reasons of her own.
NATHAN PETRELLI- PETRELLI MANSION, NEW YORK CITY
Dear Claire-
His mother was there when he got home, sitting on the couch with Heidi, looking smug and secretive. By itself, that would have been bad enough, but Heidi was wearing the same expression.
And his day had been going so well.
I know you don't want to hear from me. The resounding silence from your end of the country has been answer enough. But I'm going to keep writing anyway. Eventually, if I can find him, I hope that you will forgive me. Or at least think about it.
He thought about just walking past, ignoring them and the problem they presented completely, but despite the extreme temptation the idea presented he couldn't quite go through with it. Heidi was still his wife, and he still loved her. Even if, lately, she hadn't really been herself.
Then again, he didn't really have room to talk on that score.
"Nathan," his mother purred, looking far too pleased with herself for his peace of mind. His heart sank at her next words. "We were just talking about you."
"Nothing bad, I hope?" he said lightly, bending down to kiss Heidi on the cheek. "If you want, I can go up and let you two gossip in peace."
"All good things," Heidi assured him. "You've been doing such a wonderful job so far, Nathan. Your mother agrees with me."
"Does she now," Nathan said, shooting a look at his mother. She just smiled back, enigmatically. "Well, I've only had office for three months. It's a bit too soon to be casting accolades my way, isn't it?" Especially since I wouldn't have won that election without Linderman's interference. And there's no doubt in my mind that my mother knows it.
"It's never too soon," Heidi said with a smile.
"Well, time will tell, I guess," Nathan said, and rested one hand on her shoulder. "I think I'm going to go up and check on the boys. They in bed yet?"
"No, Annie's giving them their baths," Heidi said.
"Well, a little soapy water never hurt any politician," he joked, and started towards the doorway. His mother's voice halted him in his tracks.
"Nathan?"
He didn't turn around, not all the way. Just enough to see that Angela and Heidi were both looking at him with the same dangerous smile- eerily alike with their coloring and clothes. Heidi could be her daughter, instead of her daughter-in-law. "Yes, Mom?"
"Maybe you could have breakfast with us tomorrow, instead of going into work early."
"Maybe," he said, and left the room.
There's a girl here- you probably saw her, there at the end. Molly. She's a Sector, which means that she can find things. Or people. Especially people, actually. I see a lot of her these days, and I keep hoping that she can find Peter. She hasn't been able to yet, but I know he's alive, Claire. I don't know how he's blocking Molly, or why he won't come home, but he's out there somewhere, doing his own thing as usual, without remembering to think about the rest of us. He'll come back eventually, though. Peter always does.
His steps were unusually heavy as he climbed the front staircase. It had been a long enough day if you were just counting the politics, and not his early-morning visit to the Sanders household. (Technically Sanders-Hawkins, but he found it easier to think of it as Niki's domain, with the scowling D.L. as an interloper. Never mind that the man was her husband.) He didn't really have the extra time that it took to make it out to their little house and back, just to drive Molly and Micah to school, but what was one more favor against all the others that had piled up? He'd owe them all of that and more if only Molly could find his brother.
He could still remember the solemn look on her little face as her hand wavered over the map in her lap, sitting in the backseat of his car this morning. It was a world map; at this point, he'd settle for a country, even a continental region, anyplace where he could start looking. But her hand had stayed steady on the pin as it swept over the open book, and when she'd opened her eyes she'd frowned at him and shaken her head, just like she'd done all the other times that he'd asked.
He didn't care. He'd keep asking. He'd do anything to find Peter, to even know that he was okay, even if he could see him. See him and touch him and know that he was okay- and shake him until his perfect, orthodontia-white teeth rattled right out of his head, the little bastard.
I know that you're probably going to tear this up just like I'm guessing you tore up all the others, but I'm still going to keep writing. You're my daughter, even if you don't want to acknowledge that right now. I have to keep trying. Just in case.
MOHINDER SURESH- HELIX LABORATORIES, NEW YORK CITY
"Do you even know what time it is?"
Mohinder blinked as he looked up from the computer screen. "I'm sorry?"
Officer Parkman smirked at him as he tapped the face of the clock that someone had pointedly placed in plain sight in front of his workstation. Not that it had helped. "It's way past your bedtime."
Almost three in the morning. Lord, Molly was going to kill him. After Niki took him apart for making everyone worry, again. "No, I hadn't realized."
"Well, it's time to pack up. Get at least a little sleep before you go see the rugrat tomorrow."
"Molly's in school tomor-"
"It's Friday night."
Mohinder deflated. "Oh."
Matt laughed good-naturedly and clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't worry about it. You genius types live in a different world or you wouldn't be geniuses, right? Molly understands that."
Maybe, but Niki didn't. And he'd seen perfectly well what Niki could do to someone who pissed her off- and that was before she'd adopted Molly. Though watching her slam that parking meter into Sylar's face had been sweet, indeed. "I suppose," was all he said. "Thank you for stopping by, though. You're right, I probably do need to go home for a time."
"If you can't remember what day it is? Yeah, I'd say so." Matt gave him that slightly-flat smile that always reminded Mohinder that this wasn't just any police officer, this was a man who'd faced down Sylar (though almost fatally), and a man who could, in fact, read minds. Just in case, Mohinder kept his thoughts as blank as possible.
Matt's expression didn't change. "Anyway, since you're done for the night, why don't I walk you down," he suggested. "Make sure you don't make a run back for your lab."
Mohinder made a face at him as he shut down the computer and reached for his coat. "I think I can avoid the temptation."
"Yeah, well, I'm not taking any chances," he said. "Niki and D.L. have their thing on Sunday, remember? Just think how much trouble I'll be in if I let you molder away up here." Matt's grin was irrepressibly boyish.
"Oh, good Lord," he groaned. "The dinner."
"You forgot about that, too, didn't you?"
"I'm sure I would have remembered in time," Mohinder protested.
"Or not," Matt replied, holding the door for him on the way out. "You need an assistant, or something. Someone who can get you out when you start going cross-eyed from staring at that screen."
"I thought that's what I had you for," he said, impossibly dry.
"Yeah, well, maybe you should go for something younger and blonder."
"Don't let Niki hear you say that."
"Or Congressman Petrelli," Matt said. "He's the one funding this thing, after all."
Mohinder thought of Nathan Petrelli, and the way he looked around Niki, which was a very different look than he'd given to his wife, the one time Mohinder had been introduced to her. "Actually, I think he might be the first one to agree with you," he mused, and Matt threw his head back and laughed.
MICHAEL DUPONT- NEW YORK CITY
When Michael dreamed, he dreamed someone else's life.
Some nights he dreamed in shades of red. Bright candy-apple red, like blood when it was fresh, welling out of the wound, and then slowly darkening as it dripped and pooled and congealed. His hands were always the brighter red, he knew. The sky was always the darker, making him think vaguely of sin and damnation and apocalypse, though Michael wasn't a believer.
Somebody else was.
The dreams always ended with the man. He looked like Michael, only his eyes were determined and fierce (Was he the believer? What did he believe in so strongly, to make him look like that?) and the light around his hands wasn't blood-bright; it was blue, like September skies and stormy seas. It was the only thing that was different, the one thing that was unlike all the others and the only relief from the red, and Michael always remembered him when he woke up, even when the other parts of the dream faded from memory. If asked, he could draw the planes of the man's face in exacting detail, the curl of his hair and the set of his shoulders, a photo impression in black and white. (He didn't like colors all that much, anymore.)
Sometimes he didn't have the red dream. Sometimes, he fell asleep and it was like opening his eyes in someone else's body. He'd walk around, an unwilling passenger, and smile at people he didn't know, and speak in a voice not his own. He hated those dreams, until he looked down, and he saw that his hands were blue. He always woke up smiling from those dreams.
Sometimes, the two dreams became one and the same.
Those nights, he woke up screaming.
CLAIRE BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS
Her dad wasn't there when she got home, but her mom was, making biscuits in the kitchen while Mr. Muggles danced around her feet, begging for scraps or just attention. Her mom smiled when she came in, so she made an effort to smile back. Her mom had been pretty accepting about the whole, freakish ability to heal herself, thing, and anyway it wasn't her mom's fault that she was having a bad day.
Besides- biscuits.
Correctly interpreting her expression, her mother winked as she slid one batch out of the oven. "Just in time, darlin'," she said. "Careful now, they're still mighty hot."
Claire had the best mom ever. Biscuits, and she still conveniently "forgot" that Claire wouldn't be bothered by picking up the pan barehanded, much less the biscuits.
"I'm always careful," she lied cheerfully, and took three biscuits back up to her room with her. Well, her mom was making another batch. And what with breaking her arm earlier, she was pretty hungry.
She was just starting on her math homework and munching through her last biscuit when she heard something smack against the window. When she went over and stuck her head outside to see what was going on, she got hit in the forehead with a flying rock.
"Nice aim, genius," she shouted down at Zach as she wiped the blood off her forehead. He had the good grace to look sheepish. "What are you doing down there anyway, you maniac? The phone was invented for a reason."
"Yeah, but that's boring," he said with a grin, and she sighed before going down to let him in.
"Ooh, biscuits," he said when he saw the half-eaten one still in her hand, and headed straight for the kitchen. Claire's mom just laughed and filled up a plate for them. "Growing boys need their food," she said, while Zach grinned like a choirboy and made her mom glow with her Proud Parent Look ™. Parents loved Zach; it was a totally unfair advantage.
"Hey, what about me?" Claire said, ignoring the fact that she'd had three already.
"You do any more growing and your dad's gonna get a complex 'bout his height," her mom said. "And nobody wants to see that."
Zach faked an elaborate shudder, and Claire glared at him, glad that her mom's back was turned and she couldn't see.
"C'mon, you," she told him, snagging his sleeve with two fingers. "Up. You can help me with my math homework."
"Yes, ma'am," he said with a grin.
"And bring the biscuits!"
Half an hour later, the biscuits were gone and the dreaded algebra beast was whipped into submission, and Claire figured it was safe enough to broach the topic of what he was really doing here. "Okay, so what's up with you?"
"What? Nothing's up." He could keep a secret like nobody's business, and she had reason to know, but about some things? He really just, couldn't lie. At all. At least not to her.
"Don't even try it, buster. You didn't come over for mom's biscuits."
"A guy can't just stop by to visit a friend?" he tried, but wilted when she pinned him down with a Look. (She'd learned it from her mom. To this date, she couldn't think of a single time it hadn't worked. Well, except for the one time she'd been foolish enough to try it on her dad.)
"Normally? Yes. With that look on your face? No. C'mon, spill."
"Hey, why don't we talk about your great day instead?" he suggested brightly. "How's school out in the boondocks?"
"Oh please, like Odessa High is such a metropolis," she laughed. "It's nice," she added noncommittally. "Peaceful."
It was hell. Their home had been completely wiped out- but of course the Company had set up another one, almost identical, when it was still trying to trap her Dad into telling them where she was. She couldn't live there anymore, and neither could her Dad- and her mom and Lyle had gone along with it. They'd moved out into the country, away from people and prying eyes and dangerous questions, and her family had paid extra to send her to a different school, one where nobody knew her or what a freak she was. Sure, a couple of them had heard that she'd been elected Homecoming Queen, or that she'd been attacked on Homecoming Night, and a few of them even knew that she was the same Claire Bennet whose house had blown up, but for the most part they were farmer's kids, or rebels who'd been kicked out of other schools, and they didn't much care what she got up to as long as she left them alone.
She didn't know anyone there, and sort of thought that she wasn't likely to start making friends anytime soon. It wasn't that she didn't want to, it was just- how could she get closer to someone like that again, knowing that she had this deep dark secret that she could never tell? It sort of put a damper on the whole process.
So she stuck to herself, studied hard, and spent a whole lot of time with her family and Zach. He biked out almost every day, now. Her mom had started setting an extra place at the table without thinking about it, and even Lyle had gotten to the place where he could admit that Zach was "kind of cool, for a weirdo." She knew he had other friends- he'd proven his networking skills when he got her elected for Homecoming- and she wondered what they thought about him never being around. She'd never quite gotten the courage to ask, childishly afraid that if she said it out loud, he'd stop coming around so much, and she'd be on her own again.
"So now it's your turn," she said, turning the internal hamster wheel off and instead focusing a smile towards Zach that she knew for a fact was nauseatingly cheerful. "What's got you acting all weird? It's a not a boy or something is it?" Zach's face did something complicated, and her eyes went wide in response. "Ohmigod it is a boy, isn't it? Tell me everything, right now," she ordered, slapping him on the arm. He rubbed it, frowning at her.
"Jesus, your brain is scary sometimes," he said, shoving her back lightly. "It's not a boy. Or, well, it is, but it's not like that. I think I found someone else with a power."
"You what?" she said. This was so far from anywhere she'd expected this conversation to go that she had to stop and burn a little mental rubber before she could get the metaphorical car turned around and going the right direction. "Are you serious? What can he do?"
"Uh, he grows plants, I think," Zach said.
"You think? You didn't ask him?"
"Hell, no, I didn't ask him. What was I supposed to say? 'Hey, I'm Zach and I know a girl that can jump off a building and walk away!" He'd totally think I was nuts, or one of those government guys like your Dad was. It'd go over real well."
She ignored the bit about her dad and said, "So if he didn't tell you, how do you know what he does?"
"He's growing pot in his basement," Zach said matter-of-factly.
She didn't bother to hold back the snort of derision. "Guess what, Einstein: half the county is growing pot in their basement. Welcome to small town America."
"No, I know, but you need all kinds of lights and stuff to get the right conditions, right? He just had a whole patch of the stuff, totally in the dark, and I've never seen 'em grow that big."
"Right," she said, but this time her tone was a little more thoughtful. "We'll get to what you were doing in the guy's house looking at his pot plants later-" Zach winced. "- but it sounds like you might- might, mind you- have something there."
"Hah, knew it," Zach said. "So you're gonna come see him with me tomorrow, right? You can do that thing with the knife that I still can't watch, so he knows that we're not some kinda freaks."
"Uh, Zach?" she said. "I hate to break it to you, but…"
He grinned back at her. "Well, okay, yeah. So he knows that we're not out to get him or something, anyway."
"Sounds like a plan."
He hesitated a moment, then said, "You gonna tell your Dad?"
"Well," she said. "Maybe afterwards. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?" Plus she didn't want to get her Dad involved with any other kids with powers, not just yet. It wasn't that she didn't trust him or anything, but… Yeah. He'd worked for the Company a long time, and he kept making these business trips even though he didn't actually have a job anymore, and she honestly didn't know what he was doing- was maybe a little afraid to ask. After all, there were plenty of people with powers in the world, but she was the only one in the world who was his daughter. His circle of people he cared about was pretty damn small, and she wasn't sure what the rules were for the people who were outside that circle.
"Yeah, I guess," he said. He leaned a little closer to her, she noticed, as if he could protect her from her Dad's parental wrath. It was sweet, she thought. Surprisingly so, even after everything- him exploring her powers with her, him losing his memory, her telling him again because it didn't feel right to do it without him, going to New York and coming home and needing somebody because she felt like inside she was one big wound, bleeding as if from the loss of an arm, or a leg. She'd mourned Peter that much. She'd needed someone to confide in, to be rock-steady and funny and commonsense. In short, she'd needed Zach, and he'd been there in spades.
Maybe it shouldn't surprise her that he was a little overprotective, she thought. He was about as un-macho as they came, but he was still a guy, and she'd given him plenty of reason to think that she needed someone to step in for her. He probably wasn't too far wrong, at least normally. The last person she needed protection from, though, was her Dad. At least she'd finally learned that, for sure and for certain.
"So," she said brightly, turning and looking cute at him from under her eyelashes. He tensed, knowing something bad was about to follow. "Is he cute?"
To her utter, utter delight, he blushed.
MICAH SANDERS- COLDWOOD ACADEMY, NEW YORK CITY
SAMANTHA48616e61: Aren't you supposed to be in class right now?
MicahSanders500: I've got study hall right now.
Micah glanced up from his computer screen when he heard Molly laughing across the room. He couldn't quite see her- she was ducked down behind her monitor, whispering to whoever was next to her- but he'd know that giggle anywhere. It always made him grin, even when he wasn't with her, sharing the joke.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Then why aren't you studying?
MicahSanders500: Because I'm caught up on all my homework and don't have any tests or quizzes due any time soon. Jeez, you're worse than Mom.
SAMANTHA48616e61: I'll take that as a compliment.
MicahSanders500: You would.
He didn't normally talk to grownups like that, not unless he was playing around with his dad, but Hana wasn't really your average grownup. She wasn't really a person at all; just terabytes of information spread out over a thousand computers all over the world, and held together with something suspiciously virus-like that tied the whole thing into a shadow-copy of a person. She was the first true AI, self-created and self-replicating. He'd asked a supercomputer to run a tracking program that kept an eye on her, so he knew that she got bigger all the time, scanning and storing information the way she never got to when she was alive. According to her, there wasn't much to regret about losing a human body, and a lot that she'd gained.
Micah didn't understand that, but then again, he had a family, people who'd miss him if he died. Hana didn't have anyone but him, and she didn't meet him till after she was dead. He didn't understand some of the things she talked about, betrayal and vengeance and all that stuff, but he did understand about losing people, because he almost lost his dad. He'd cried for like a week after that, when he was alone and nobody could make fun, and that was when his dad was just in the hospital for a gunshot wound (GSW, the medical file said, would have been fatal if it had been an inch to the left. Micah had spent a lot of time making friends with the hospital computers to get ahold of that), alive and not buried in a box in the ground, like Hana's family.
But it wasn't just about how much he'd miss people. It was how much they'd miss him, too. Who'd make pancakes with Mom on Sunday mornings? Who'd play football with Dad? Who'd look out for Molly if he was stuck in a computer?
SAMANTHA48616e61: Watch your tongue, mister.
MicahSanders500: Wouldn't it be watching my fingers? Since I'm typing, not talking.
SAMANTHA48616e61: You're a terror.
SAMANTHA48616e61: I bet you give your mom gray hairs, don't you?
MicahSanders500: Well, she says she's a natural blonde.
SAMANTHA48616e61: And you're rude, too.
Thinking of Molly, he once again peeked over the edge of the monitor- just to check up on her. She was laughing, she was probably okay, but he had to make sure. Dad had told him to look out for her, not that he needed to be told. He'd always look out for Molly.
It wasn't hard to figure out why she was giggling so hard- Simon Petrelli was doing his impersonation of his Dad on TV, complete with the fake smile. Molly thought it was funny, but Micah thought it was kinda weird. Mr. Petrelli came around a lot, drove them to school sometimes, but he wasn't like Dad. He didn't know how to talk to kids. He tried, but it was always… well, weird. They knew Simon because his dad had gotten him and Molly into the same class- making sure that they had "friends" in place, which was the kind of dumb thing only a parent would do- but they actually liked Simon, who wasn't as stuck-up as his dad seemed sometimes. And Simon made fun of his dad like, all the time, which Micah thought was a little weird. Then again, if he had Mr. Petrelli as his Dad, he'd probably make fun of him too.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Micah
Maybe he could go over there, he thought. He'd gotten here late and the only station available had been all the way over here on the wrong side of the room, but some people had left now, and there were seats over there where they were. He could go over there, get in on the joke. He knew Simon wouldn't mind. They had an understanding.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Micah
Micah knew everyone thought he was just a kid, but he totally wasn't. And Simon was a little weird sometimes, and he didn't know anything about computers at all, which Micah totally didn't understand, but he was older than anyone gave him credit for, too. His parents were gone all the time and his brother had his own friends and so Simon had learned how to have fun on his own, just like Micah. So they understood each other, and they both took care of Molly. It worked out, since Micah wasn't in all of her classes, and he wasn't always there to keep an eye on her. She was littler than them, and she got scared sometimes, and people picked on her. Simon watched out for her too, and for reasons Micah hadn't been here long enough to know, nobody messed with him. So it was okay.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Micah
SAMANTHA48616e61: Micah
SAMANTHA48616e61: MICAH!
Finally glancing back at the screen, he frowned at the blinking row of messages.
MicahSanders500: What?
SAMANTHA48616e61: There's a tracking program following you.
Probably the supercomputer he'd set to following her. It usually didn't hang around when he was talking to her, but it got bored sometimes. Micah didn't blame it. He'd told it that it could leave her alone if it wanted, but it told him it was fine, it could always calculate pi if things got too slow. It must have gotten curious, though, if it was lurking this close.
MicahSanders500: It's just this supercomputer I know. It's saying hi.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Are you sure?
Well, yeah, he was sure. Just in case, he let his hands flatten out along the keyboard, feeling his way through the cord and into the hard drive, and from there into the network. The massive, lurking, multicolored thing that was Hana was off to his left, obscuring anything that might be hiding around her, but he took her word for it and looked around anyway. And there it was, off to his right, just on the edges of his standard perimeter of awareness. He stretched out, trying to say hello, but the program shied away, staying just out of recognition range.
It was odd, but it felt like the program he knew, as far as he could tell. It was probably just staying back so Hana wouldn't notice that it was following her, not him. He gave it a little mental nod of approval, and pulled back out of the network.
MicahSanders500: Yeah, it's fine.
Across the room, Molly giggled again. He craned his neck, but this time he couldn't see what was going on, and he was curious.
MicahSanders500: Hey, I'm gonna go hang out with Molly and Simon. Talk to you later?
SAMANTHA48616e61: I'm not going anywhere.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Till next time.
Micah signed off the computer with a thought, and then grabbed his backpack and headed over to join the fun.
NOAH BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS
He couldn't remember the last time he'd been mad enough, or scared enough, to yell for thirty minutes straight.
Claire had always been the good girl, the one who got decent grades and didn't have delinquent boyfriends or get into trouble. Lyle had been the problem child, the one who never did what he was told, barely pulled C's, and was caught stealing a candy bar, of all godforsaken things. Claire was Daddy's girl, and Lyle, maybe because he knew that, didn't want anything to do with his parents at all, most days.
He'd always thought that if he ever would lose his temper like this again, it would be because of Lyle. He'd even factored in Claire's… unusual talents, but what he'd forgotten was her determined and absolute stubbornness.
That, he was sure, she got from her biological parents. He wasn't stubborn. He was merely patient.
And this newest stunt of hers… Not something she could have gotten from him, either by genetics or observation. He never would have done something so incurably stupid as to go and confront someone like her without insurance, backup (oh, that's right, she had Zach with her) or even a plan. It was one of the dumbest things he'd ever heard of, and he'd spent years working with a partner who picked pockets for the hell of it on every job they ever did.
The yelling was over, since he'd finally gotten control of himself and sent her to her room. She'd gone without any protest, which meant that he'd probably scared her almost as much as she'd scared him. Good.
But of course, the remorse eventually set in and he remembered that she was his daughter, she'd been through a lot, she was just doing what she thought was right the best way she knew how, which she had learned from him. So after he'd had some time to calm down, he went upstairs to see what she was doing.
She was curled up on her bed with a sketchpad in her lap. She didn't look up when he opened the door, so he stood in the doorway for a minute, just watching her. God, she still seemed so young. Just sixteen years old, still his baby girl. Almost seventeen now, though, and she'd seen a hell of a lot more, done a hell of a lot more than most girls five years her senior. She'd made the kind of decisions most adults of any age couldn't handle, and she'd made the right ones with grace and courage. In short, she was a lot older than she seemed in every way that meant something, and that was something that he wasn't sure he was ready to think about just yet.
"I didn't know you could draw," he said.
She looked smoothly up from her work, no jerk of surprise, which meant that she'd known he was there. Most people couldn't stand to be watched like that; it was a technique that had served him well during his years with the Company. But Claire had always been content with him watching her, no matter how much he stared sometimes.
"I've been trying to learn," she said. "I figured a painting saved my life; learning how to do something more than stick figures seemed like a good way to say thanks."
Interesting that she thought of it that way. Mendez had come through for him in the end, though ultimately it was a different dark-haired, handsome young man who'd swooped in to save the day. He thought that it wasn't really "art" or even the painter that she was paying back with this little project, but someone else altogether.
"Are you any good?" he asked.
She shrugged, turning the pad facedown on the bedspread with a wry smile. "Getting better, anyway," she said. "I guess it helps having a vision of the future to guide your hand, huh?"
He just tilted his head and looked at her over the rims of his glasses. "You're talking about Peter," he said, because Isaac was dead before she ever got a chance to meet him, and because there was only one person that Claire was ever really thinking about, and that was Peter. Not for the first time, he wondered just what part of herself she'd left behind on that fateful piece of New York cement, but he was too afraid to ask. She'd tell him, or she wouldn't. He was used to living in suspense when it came to her.
"Yeah," she said. "It was the first power he ever really controlled, did you know that?"
"No, I didn't," he said. "He tell you that?"
"Dad, we ran around New York for two days. What, you think we didn't talk at all the whole time?"
He hadn't thought about it at all, really. He'd had other things on his mind. For weeks all he'd been able to think about was saving Claire, protecting Claire, keeping Claire away from the Company. He'd done a lot of bad things to a lot of people who'd done nothing to deserve it except have the wrong genes, and he didn't regret it as much as he should. But he'd be damned if he'd see the same done to Claire. Biology, fate, whatever had sent Peter her way- he'd been willing to help Noah with that goal, and that's all Noah had cared about.
He was starting to think about it now, though. A blind man couldn't have missed the way she was grieving for the man, and other than some kind of hero-worship crush, he honestly had no idea why.
"I suppose not," he said. "The two of you were close, then?"
To his surprise, she just shrugged. "Close as we could be when we didn't really know each other," she said, with a wisdom that shouldn't still surprise him but did. "I mean, I went to New York to find him, and we saved each other's lives and all, but two days is still just two days, and we were mostly talking about our powers, Sylar, him exploding, that sort of thing. He's got a whole life of his own that I don't know anything about." Her fingers knotted in her lap. "I don't even know what kind of ice cream he likes."
She still talked about him in the present tense, absolutely certain that he was still alive. Noah didn't share her faith. He'd never met an Empath before, didn't know the limits of their powers, but he last time he'd seen Peter the man had been having trouble controlling even the one power, let alone any others. He had his doubts about Peter's ability to resurrect, not that he was enough of an idiot to say that to Claire. And for all he knew, she could be right and him wrong. But he didn't think so.
"Well, I don't know about ice cream," he said, deliberately keeping his tone light, "but most people have things they don't tell other people. It's human nature to keep secrets."
"Something you know a lot about," she said.
He froze, then tried to pretend that he hadn't. "I lied to protect you, Claire, you know that." He knew that his voice was uneasy- too uneasy, Christ, he used to know how to lie. Or maybe it wasn't him, maybe it was just that he couldn't lie to Claire, sitting there on her girly pink bed and looking at him with her wide, too-old eyes. By some amazing trick of fate, this amazing creature was his daughter. He couldn't lie to her, not anymore.
"I'm not an idiot, Dad, I can figure out what you used to do for the Company."
Despite himself, he flinched. There was no way that she could possibly know the extent of it, but even her meager understanding of the Company was enough to send chills down his spine when he thought about her, imaging him that deeply involved. It was true, of course. He was one of the best field agents in the continental United States, and he knew it. But his loyalties, once in conflict, were unquestionably with his family.
"I'm done with the Company," he said, steadily enough. "I burned all my bridges trying to protect you."
"Are you sure?" she said.
Christ. "Claire, you can't possibly think-"
"You still take all those business trips, Dad. One a week, like clockwork. And since I know you're not really employed anymore, I've gotta wonder where you've been going."
Of course. It explained a lot, now that he thought about it. And, in retrospect, it'd been stupid not to tell her, if only because he should have known she'd come to this sort of conclusion. And do something like-
Realization hitting belatedly, he said, "Is that why you didn't tell me about that boy until after you saw him? You were worried that I'd take him away?"
She turned away from him, her shoulder rising in a defensive half-shrug as she toyed with the edge of the comforter. "It crossed my mind."
He wanted to laugh. Once again, he'd underestimated her and her stubborn ability to ignore the dangers and do exactly what she thought was right. He didn't have any excuse- he should have learned from last time, and anyway, he knew she'd gotten it from him. She sure as hell hadn't gotten it from Nathan Petrelli.
He abandoned the doorway in favor of sitting on the edge of the bed, though he couldn't get her to meet his gaze. "Claire, I'm not still working for the Company," he told her, annoyed and relieved. "I'm taking it apart."
She did look at him, finally, her eyes going wide with shock. "You what?"
"I've been taking out key facilities and data storage hubs," he said. "Encouraging certain employees to take a long vacation, things like that." Some of them hadn't wanted a vacation. Those people were now enjoying a nice long one at the bottom of various rivers. He'd never flinched from the unpleasant parts of his job, not that Claire had to know that.
Of course, there were a few people that had gone missing that he hadn't had a chance to touch. And they weren't the pencil-pushers and higher-ups, not like the ones he was taking out. The others who'd gone missing were all operatives- not like Claude had been, or even the Haitian, but unpartnered Talents, black-ops even in an organization as secret as the Company. Someone else was out there, working off the books, and Noah didn't have the faintest idea who, or even what they were trying to accomplish. But that was a worry for another day.
"We got rid of the tracking system," one of them anyway, and the other was under the care of two of the more dangerous Talents he'd heard of, "but the Company was still intact. I've been trying to change that."
She uncurled a little, something like hope on her face. "So you haven't been chasing down people like me?"
"No," he told her, putting a hand on one cotton-covered shoulder. "If anything, I've been helping them."
"So when I found out about Jake-" she said.
"You should have come to me, yes," he said. "I can help you, Claire, and anyone you can find." He was less sincere than he sounded about the last part, since as far as he was concerned family came first, but he had a feeling that he was supposed to be making amends somehow, and this was as good a way as any. Fitting, if nothing else. "A lot of things could have gone wrong today, you have to understand that. Not everyone can accept their powers as gracefully as you. Some of them are going to be dangerous. And I know you trust Zach, but I really think I'm better backup for this sort of thing." He tried out a smile, tentative. "At least I hope you think I'm a better shot than Zach. I'm gonna be kinda insulted if you don't."
She seemed to come to some sort of decision, and she reached out to hug him. "Oh, Daddy, of course I do," she said. "But you've gotta tell me about stuff like this, okay? I can't make good decisions if I don't know what's going on, you know that."
He looped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, smiling a little bit foolishly. "Okay," he agreed, though he knew he wouldn't be able to keep that promise. "Okay. From here on out, we're a team."
"Sounds like a plan to me," she said, and her smile was so brilliant, he didn't regret the lie at all.
MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY
Mohinder stuck his hands in his pockets and looked around the cluttered living room, trying not to feel too acutely out of place.
Family dinners like this were completely outside of his normal realm of experience, as his family hadn't been close enough for this kind of event in years. For the first time in months, he truly felt like a foreigner in a strange land.
Molly was in the adjoining family room, giggling as Simon Petrelli chased her around in circles. Micah was over by the grill with his father, but Mohinder couldn't help but notice the way his eyes followed Molly's laughing form.
There was going to be trouble there, in a few years. They weren't siblings, no matter how much paperwork Nathan Petrelli had pushed through, or how much Niki thought of Molly as her own. As far as the formidable Mrs. Sanders was concerned, Molly had been her daughter from the moment she had held the trembling little girl and kept her safe from the Boogie Man.
Molly, on the other hand, loved Niki, trusted her, even obeyed her well enough, but Mohinder knew that she did not think of Niki as her mother. Her parents were dead, and all the love in the world was not going to change that. She had a new family, albeit a rather odd one, but Micah was her friend, not her brother. And Mohinder knew that Micah, for all that he was still a child, was very aware of that fact.
Some people found the love of their lives at a very early age. Mohinder was one of them- his was just called "science."
Mohinder was just grateful that the whole mess was not going to be his to deal with. He was Molly's… something, honorary uncle perhaps? But she didn't live under his roof, and ultimately there was no real reason that she was his responsibility beyond his own nagging sense of guilt and the oddly intense biological imperative to protect one who shared your blood. It meant that he'd be there for her to the best of his ability, but it would be Niki and DL who would handle the fallout, when it inevitably came.
"They're great kids, aren't they?"
He turned around, a smile coming readily to his face as he saw who was beside him. "Matt. I was beginning to think that you'd abandoned me to go through this on my own."
"After how much effort I put into getting you here? Not a chance." Matt grinned back, comfortably. "Besides, I'm always up for free food. It's totally unfair, you know, that Niki looks like she does, can break a man in half without breaking a nail, and she can cook."
"I'm sure she would be delighted at that description," Mohinder said, but he secretly agreed. Niki had had her share of problems, he could put that much together from the pieces she'd told him and what he'd heard from her son and husband, but she'd come through them mostly intact and in dangerous fighting trim, metaphorically speaking. Molly wasn't the only reason the Congressman kept showing up at the house.
And since Mohinder knew that he was not exactly the most observant of men when it came to other people, he could be sure that if it was something he'd noticed, then D.L. had noticed it as well. Which certainly explained why DL was always glaring at the man, on the rare occasion that Mohinder had seen them together.
"Yeah, well," Matt said, tucking his thumbs through his belt loops. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the heavy winter coat he'd worn outside folded messily over his arm, and he looked oddly pared-down out of the uniform Mohinder had grown used to seeing him in. It shouldn't be this startling to see him in street clothes, since that was what he'd been wearing the night they'd met, but it was. Dangerously so. "I wasn't planning on telling her."
"Mum's the word," Mohinder assured him absently. His mind had already gone back to the children. "We are very lucky with them," he said. Simon had finally given up the chase, and Molly was taunting him from the safety of Niki's side. "They're the next generation, all of them."
Matt made some noise of surprise. "That's Petrelli's kid," he said. "You're telling me…"
"It's likely, yes. His father can fly, and his uncle was- is- a powerful rarity even among those with the marker." Internally, he winced. If Nathan had heard him referring to Peter in the past tense, he wouldn't be standing here right now.
"So the genetic marker breeds true," Matt said, sounding fascinated. "Always?"
"I've hardly had enough time to even start the necessary studies, but from what we've seen so far, yes," Mohinder said. "Nathan's brother has a power as well as himself, making it likely that it's a recessive genetic trait instead of a dominant one. His illegitimate daughter, by way of another woman with the marker, has powers, and the same is true for Niki, D.L., and Micah. Within a certain amount of reasonable doubt, if two parents have the marker, then their offspring will have it as well."
"So my parents had powers," Matt said. He sounded disbelieving. Everyone always liked to believe that their parents couldn't keep secrets, Mohinder thought. And they were almost always wrong.
And anyway, that supposition was false. He shook his head. "We don't know when, or how, the marker enters a family a line," he said. "At a certain point in its evolution, it could merely function as a carrier, passing down to the next generation but not yet reforming the body's molecular structure to adapt to their ability. It's entirely possible that your parents had no abilities at all, and were entirely unaware of their own genetic uniqueness."
"Now that I can believe," Matt said, and if he sounded bitter, Mohinder didn't know why. He had never met the Parkmans, and judging by Matt's use of the past tense, he would never have the chance. Not that he would have anyway, he told himself. They weren't that kind of friends. "But if I had a kid, would he or she have abilities, too?"
"It depends," Mohinder said, startled. He wasn't sure why- it was a natural extension of the conversation- but perhaps it was the way Matt said it, abrupt and almost… harsh. It was at odds from his usually easy-going demeanor. "As I said, based on limited evidence it seems that if the mother has the marker, your child would as well. I can't say one way or another with any degree of assurance if the mother didn't have the marker. I simply don't have enough evidence, at this point, to predict any potential outcomes." He glanced over, curious. "Why? Are you planning on having kids any time soon?"
"No, I'm not planning on it," he said. "But things don't always happen according to plan." He seemed withdrawn, suddenly, and thoughtful. Mohinder wasn't sure what to say, and the silence between them stretched awkwardly, neither of them quite sure what they were supposed to say next. Niki's yell of, "Food's up, come and get it!" broke the spell, and they both grinned at each other in matching relief before glancing quickly away and going to be social and, more importantly, get dinner.
NATHAN PETRELLI- MENDEZ STUDIOS, NEW YORK CITY
The problem with being the person who took care of things, Nathan thought bitterly, was that there was pretty much never anyone to take care of you.
It was a self-indulgent line of thinking, but Nathan figured he was about due for a little self-indulgence tonight. He'd spent three months trying to do the right thing for everyone else, and he was damn well tired of it.
He'd sponsored Mohinder, gotten him set up in his own lab space that Nathan had bought using Petrelli family money. He'd helped Niki and D.L. and their children in their move to New York, finding them a ridiculously cheap house out in the suburbs, making sure that D.L. got a job, calling in favors to get both of the kids into the same prestigious private school his own children attended. Micah, at least, needed the higher quality of education, and Molly needed Micah. He wasn't so hard-hearted that he hadn't realized that.
And he'd let Claire be, contenting himself with a steam of letters and a home they wouldn't have to rebuild, even though he wanted to be down there, wanted to grab her away from the hot reaches of Texas and bring her home with him, where she belonged. He wanted to explain himself and have her listen. He wanted for her not to hold a pointless grudge against him for acting the only way that he knew how. What he wanted was his daughter, and from the deafening silence that echoed up from Texas, it didn't look like he was going to get his wish anytime soon.
At least she was alive, he told himself. Even that wouldn't have been true, if it had been left to him. He'd done everything in his power to keep Peter from going to save the cheerleader, and if Peter had listened to him, for once in his life, he wouldn't have saved her and he never would have found out who she was. His daughter would have lived and died ten states away and he never would have known of her existence, if it weren't for Peter.
Peter and his quests and his dreams and visions. Peter was the dreamer, Nathan was the practical one who kept him out of trouble (mostly), and the two of them balanced each other out. Nathan had once told Peter that he didn't know who he would be without his brother, and this was the absolute truth. Because Peter had been missing for months, and Nathan had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. This was Peter's territory, and all Nathan could do was fake it with the best of 'em, and hope that Peter made his way home soon.
There weren't any answers here, not among these relics of a dead artist who only wanted to save the world. And the man who'd tried to end it, too, he supposed. It was easy enough to tell the work apart, despite the fact that their styles were identical- Sylar had only ever painted himself, and Isaac had painted everything but. Peter, of course, had painted everything.
Nathan scowled downwards, tempted to kick something. All roads led back to Peter, always. Even the stain at his feet- they'd managed to clean the blood up, mostly- reminded him of Peter, wide-eyed in death on his fucking coffee table, even though the battle that took place on this floor had nothing to do with Peter, except to lead a madman one step closer to Peter's fate. He couldn't get away from the shade that haunted him, all the memories of the brother he'd never been able to ignore but had always taken for granted… Even his daughter reminded him of Peter, because Peter had been the one to find her, not Nathan.
Yes, all roads led back to Peter. They always had. He just hadn't noticed.
His phone rang, interrupting his musings. He answered without looking at the screen- "Petrelli."
There was a slight pause, and then Heidi's voice in his ear. "Nathan? It's past dinnertime, and Billings said that you left the office hours ago."
Mentally he cursed his assistant, for whom a large part of his job was to lie fluidly, effectively, and without conscience. If Nathan's wife had called asking where he was, Billings was supposed to come up with a decent excuse for Nathan's absence. Unfortunately, Heidi at her best could charm Satan himself, so he couldn't really blame Billings. He was still planning on having a nice long talk with the man tomorrow about who actually signed his paycheck, though.
"I'm fine, dear," he lied. "Just meeting up with an old friend for a few drinks, lost track of time. I should be home shortly."
There was another pause for him to sweat out. She wasn't in a wheelchair anymore, but by God, she still managed to work the guilt factor with everything she had. He wished it didn't work on him as well as it did. "Alright, dear," she said finally. "Make sure to have a story for the boys tonight, since they missed you at dinner."
A final twist of the knife before she clicked the phone shut without a goodbye- that was the woman he'd married. It shouldn't still surprise him what she could do to him, just how much she could get to him, but it did. She'd never been anybody's pawn, but she'd always been so sweet at heart, brave and caring and generally wonderful, which was how he'd fallen in love with her long after he'd started thinking that he didn't know how. She'd changed though, since her "miracle" recovery, since Peter's explosion, since he'd gone missing for three days and woke up in his own bed with no memory of what had happened since the white light of a nuclear blast seared the back of closed eyelids. He tried not to think about how different she was, how cruel and manipulative she'd gotten, and the way that Nathan's mother was almost always by her side, these days. He usually didn't lie to himself, but sometimes it was just easier to live in denial. And he needed all the easy he could get.
So, in summary: his brother was missing, he didn't trust his wife, he'd made himself responsible for a handful of lives just because they happened to share a certain genetic marker, Claire still wasn't talking to him, and he was very possibly falling in love with the very married mother of two that he saw almost every day.
It was entirely typical of his life, then, that here he was in a dead man's studio, on his daughter's birthday, totally alone.
Just like always.
CLAIRE BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS
"Lyle, if you put those dirty paws of yours near that cake one more time-"
Lyle snatched his hand back from the cake as if burned, but defiantly stuck the two fingers of icing he'd hooked from the edge into his mouth, despite the threatening way their Mom fingered her wooden spoon. Claire grinned as he promptly made a horrible face. Lyle hated dark chocolate. Served him right.
"Kill you," he mouthed at her, and she just grinned wider. It was her birthday. There wasn't a damn thing he was going to do to her today, and he knew it.
"Get out of the kitchen, you two, and make trouble somewhere else," Mom ordered. "Claire, your Dad's setting up in the living room. Go bother him." They obeyed, but not without Claire giving him an extra smirk, just because she could.
"I'm gonna kill you in your sleep one of these days, I swear," Lyle grumbled.
"Yeah, good luck with that," she said. "You want me to give you the bullet back, just as a souvenir of your failure?"
"You're such a bitch," he said, but it was affectionate, as little-brother whining went. Unlike the first time around, when he'd accidentally stumbled over her tapes on his own, she and Dad had had a chance to prepare him, first, and he'd reacted a little bit better. Marginally. He hadn't threatened to sell her out on YouTube, anyway. And he'd been downright friendly about the whole idea, once he'd gotten over his freak-out. He even teased her about it, which was his way of saying that he was cool with it. She'd gotten lucky.
"Yeah, because you're a paragon of maturity," she shot back, and then veered off towards the living room before he could think up a good comeback. It was all in the timing, that's how you dealt with Lyle. You just had to have a good exit line in place.
She headed down the side hall, relishing the shady cool of the big, rambling farmhouse they'd lived in ever since she and Dad had come back from New York. Her mom and Lyle had been staying in a Company safe house while people worked on their old house, but they'd come home to a letter from a realtor stating that a deed to a farm had just been written over to her father's name, if they'd just come in and sign…? It had Nathan Petrelli's fingerprints all over it, of course, but as much as she'd wanted to storm and stomp her foot and tell him what he could do with his damn charity, she'd taken one look at her mother's grateful face and kept quiet.
And, against her will, she'd come to love this place. They only owned the farmhouse and a few grassy acres, but they were surrounded by fields that had lain fallow for years, and whenever she felt too confined by the four walls around her she could just wander outside and explore, and there was no one to tell her to go away and mind her own business. And the house itself was magic, big enough for all of them and then some and in surprisingly good repair. Or maybe not such a surprise- she really couldn't picture Nathan Petrelli providing his only daughter with anything but the best, whether she was talking to him or not. He wanted to take care of her, and he did. Simple.
Only it wasn't so simple. He wasn't her Dad, and she didn't owe him a damn thing, and she didn't see why she should make nice with him when they didn't have anything in common but a few genes. He felt responsible, she guessed, or guilty, or he imagined some connection that just wasn't there. Or maybe some combination of all the above, she didn't know. All she knew was that there was only one member of the Petrelli family that she wanted anything to do with, and he was missing.
Her Dad wasn't in the living room, but Zach was, leaning against one wall and surveying the small pile of presents stacked on the coffee table. "You're not getting a lot of loot this year, are you?" he said. "Guess it's because you're seventeen. Not much of a landmark. Sort of stuck in the middle."
"Or, it's because half of that stuff is gift cards, so they're mostly giving me money." She punched him in the upper arm. "Dork."
"Ow," he said, leaning out of harm's way. "Not all of us have super-healing powers, you know. The rest of us have to deal with our bruises the old-fashioned way."
"Yeah, whatever." She leaned next to him and bumped his shoulder with hers. "So, what'd you get me?"
He snorted. "Like I'm going to tell you after you punched me," he said. "You'll just have to wait till it's time to open it."
"Hey, c'mon. I tell you, like, the hugest secret ever, and you can't even tell me what you gave me for my birthday? Totally unfair."
"Life is a hard, cruel place," he said, and grinned at her.
She narrowed her eyes. Time to play dirty. "So, about Jake," she said sweetly. "What's going on with you two?"
Zach scowled at the subject change. "Nothing's going on with us," he said, twitching his arm away as if afraid she was going to hit him again. "He's an Arborpath. He grows plants. Since I seem to have some experience dealing with freaky people, even if I don't remember half of it-" and he bent a stern look in her direction, "-we talk. That's it."
"He confides in you!" she chirped. "You have a connection. This is good."
"And you have an overactive imagination," he said. "There is nothing going on with me and Jake. He's not even my type."
"I'm sorry, tall, dark, and handsome isn't everybody's type? Please." She snorted. "Next thing I know I'm gonna be catching you two making out in the shed."
"Hey, I don't want to know about your weird fantasies," he said, making her laugh.
"I'm gonna find out what's going with you two soon enough," she threatened. "And you know it. You might as well give it up now and spare yourself the agony that awaits."
He gave her the eyebrow in response, but before he had a chance to say anything, her Dad came in with the cake in his hands, all candles lit. Mom and Lyle followed right behind, grinning, and no sooner had her Dad set the cake down on the sideboard then they all started singing.
At the top of their lungs.
Claire winced, hard, and resisted the urge- barely- to clap her hands over her ears in sheer auditory self-defense. She loved her family, she really did, but while her Dad had a pleasant enough baritone, Lyle had taken after their Mom by having a piercingly bad singing voice. Next to her, Zach shook with silent laughter and sang along, too, not that she could hear him over the racket Mom and Lyle were making.
She reeled a little after it was over, out of sheer relief. Thank God, it was over.
Then she heard something else. "Are my ears ringing, or is that the doorbell?"
Everyone fell silent, and after a second the sound of the doorbell came again. "I'll get it," Claire said, already heading for the door. Anything to avoid round two of singing.
"No, Claire, it's your birthday. I've got it," her Mom said, but Claire just smiled and waved her down.
"Nah, it's okay. Make sure to cut me a big slice of that cake, okay?" she said, and headed down the hallway for the door, whistling "Happy Birthday."
The doorbell rang a third time as she neared the foyer, and she glared at the door. "I'm coming, I'm coming, hold your horses-" she said, fighting with the sticky deadbolt. "Impatient son of a-"
Peter grinned up at her from the bottom step. "Happy birthday," he said. "Got any cake?"
MICHAEL DUPONT- NEW YORK CITY
He liked to draw, a little. Well. A lot, actually. He'd been terrible at it when he was a kid, a stick-figures-at-best kind of guy, but he'd always loved it. And he'd gotten better as an adult. Practice made perfect, and all that. Sometimes it felt like another's skill moving through his hands when he said with pencil and pad, staring out the window. It was a fanciful thought, but he was given to fanciful thoughts these days. It seemed like a good way to be.
This was a good place for drawing. It had a window with a fairly good view of the streets below, and if he wanted he could watch the people below, little ants running around in their own strange little lives, or look out and up, above the tops of the tall buildings, and study the shapes that clouds made. Did it say something about you as a person, he wondered, what you saw in the clouds? Maybe it was like that test, the one with the inkblots, that supposedly said whether you were crazy or not.
Michael didn't know if he was crazy. The clouds didn't give him any clues. When he drew them he drew smiles and frowns, whales breaking through the waves, a sword clenched in a strong, competent fist, a ticking clock, a smear of blood. He didn't know what it meant, if it meant anything. But he did like watching the clouds.
Sometimes, he didn't sit near the window at all. The rest of the apartment wasn't much to speak of, just a place with a cramped living room and a water-stained kitchen and medical books stacked high on the bedroom floor where the previous occupant was too lazy or too busy to put up shelves, but it was a home of sorts. Not his home, maybe, but he liked being here, among all the things of the blue man. He even knew the blue man's name, now, from the letters that had been piled up just inside of the door. Peter Petrelli.
It was a good name, he thought. A good name for a hero.
He drew Peter Petrelli, sometimes, instead of the clouds. He drew all the things he saw in his dreams, but the only ones that he kept are the ones of Peter. Peter wasn't frightening, not like the other man. Peter made him feel safe inside, looking at the stark black lines on the page.
He didn't know why he dreamed the things he dreamed. He just liked to draw.
CLAIRE BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS
There he is, she thought, almost mindlessly. There he is. He was standing right in front of her, hale and healthy except for-
Almost of its own volition, her hand stretched out to touch the thick, ropy scar that bisected his face and like magic, he was there, vaulting up to the top step with one easy leap and putting himself within reach. Just where she'd always wanted him to be. Jesus, Peter-
The scar was deep, starting above his right eye and curving diagonally down across the bridge of his nose and trailing away to a stop under his left cheekbone. It felt slick and alien under her fingers as she cupped his face in her hand, her thumb stroking wonderingly where it had cut close- too close- to his eye. It looked like something had split his skull completely open, and the same strange force that had allowed her to walk away from bridge jumps and car accidents and house fires had reknit the flesh as best as it knew how.
I saved you after all, she thought hysterically. I saved you-
His hand snapped up, faster than her eye could follow, and gripped her wrist with a kind of constrained gentleness that spoke volumes as to how hard he was trying not to break it. His eyes bored into hers, intense in a way that made her breathless, and she didn't understand the warning he was trying to give her, and she didn't care. He was alive. He was here. He'd come back to her, and that was all she gave a damn about.
She wrenched her wrist from his grip and flung her arms around him, pulling him into a hug with every ounce of strength at her disposal. After one tense, endless second, he relaxed and hugged her back, laughing into her hair.
"Don't worry," he whispered. "I'm really here."
"You damn well better be," she whispered back, "because if I'm hallucinating this, I'm gonna follow you down into the grave and drag your ass back myself."
He laughed again, hugging her tighter, almost lifting her off her feet. "I'll hold you to that," he said, his voice gravelly. "If anyone could do it, Claire Bennet, you'd be the one."
He set her down, and she took a step back, hastily wiping the tears from her eyes. "But, when? And how? You've been missing for months, Peter, and I was starting to worry that you really weren't going to make it back, and here you are! Like, like, some kind of miracle or something!"
"You're the miracle, Claire." He smoothed a lock of hair away from her face, his knuckles brushing butterfly-light against her cheek. "If I'd never met you, I never would have survived the explosion. I owe you more than I can ever repay."
"Oh, screw that," she said, surprising them both with her vehemence. "You stopped Sylar. You saved New York. You don't owe anybody anything, least of all me."
"All right, then," he said, and draped one arm around her shoulders, hugging her close to his side. "How's about we make a deal, then. You look after me, I look after you. That sound good to you?"
"Yeah," she said, and hugged him back. Having the whole lanky length of him pressed against her side, warm and alive and here, felt so damn good. "It's a deal."
"Oh, this is lovely as colts frisking in the sun," a disembodied voice snapped from Peter's other side. "But I'm tired and hungry, and this 'un promised me cake. So you think we could get off the doorstep, maybe?"
She blinked as someone materialized in front of her, tall- taller than Peter, over six feet, probably, and he looked like he hadn't seen a razor or a good meal in weeks. He was dirty, scowling, and a complete and total stranger to her. And he was standing on her front doorstep.
"Try the living room," she said, trying to keep her shock off her face. "Down the hall, second door on your left. Dad should be cutting the cake."
The man snorted, shook his head. "Bennet. Yeah, this should be good." Then he turned his back and stalked off down the hall, without bothering to introduce himself or explain what he was doing, here, in her house. She sent a wild look up at Peter, who just shrugged and smiled ruefully.
"That's Claude," he said. "He's… not really a people person. And he doesn't like your Dad. Come on, let's go keep them from killing each other, okay?"
"Why not," she said blankly, and followed Peter back into the house. Because, hell, Peter was alive. What was a surly stranger who hated her Dad compared to that?
NOAH BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS
He couldn't believe his eyes.
He'd known Claude was alive. A little hard to miss it, what with Peter wandering around invisible in the weeks before the explosion. He'd seen the two of them, pacing around that rooftop, through the infared night-scope, but he hadn't seen Claude since that fateful day on the bridge so many years ago. Seeing him here, now, with Peter Petrelli (alive!) in tow, was the kind of strange that even he needed a moment to adjust to.
Finally he said "Long time, no see," because sometimes you just had to resort to the inane.
Claude evidently disagreed, because he gave a horsey snort of disgust and said, "That's the best you can come up with? You shot me twice, knocked me off a bridge, then ten years later you track me down and taser me. And the best you've got is, 'Long time no see?'"
Well. Claude certainly hadn't changed any. "For the record, I wasn't tracking you at all," he said. "There was a psychopath stalking my daughter, and I was using Mendez to find him. Finding you was merely an accident."
Claude sneered. "Petrelli's fault, no doubt."
"The painting was of Peter," Noah allowed.
"Fuckin' typical." He stalked from one end of the couch to the other, the tails of his long coat swirling restively behind him. (Long coat? In Texas? He must have come from New York. That, or his blood really did run with ice, but that had never been scientifically proven.)
"And yet you're here with him," Noah said. "Dragged by your ear, it looked to me."
"Yeah, well." Claude stuck his hands in his pockets and looked like he was fighting the urge to hunch his shoulders defensively. No sense of body language, Claude. Never needed to learn it. "It's complicated."
Noah let out a bark of laughter. "I'll say," he said. "Why don't you start at the beginning? Like, say, what are you doing here?"
Claude looked at him reproachfully. "'s not the beginning," he said. "Taught you how to report better than that, didn't I?"
"I knew how to give a report long before I met you and the long, long list of regulations that you broke, of which reporting properly was only the first," Noah said steadily. "It's the beginning for me."
"Fair 'nough." He started pacing again, the soles of his boots scuffing noiselessly against the carpet. He always did like to move when he was thinking things through, which was a habit Noah had worked him damn hard to break, since it had almost gotten them killed a time or two on a mission. Claude liked to think that he'd played the mentor, but the truth was his previous partner had been such a maverick that it had taken Noah most of the length of their partnership to train him in operating procedures. Training that Claude had put to good use when he went off the grid; he would have been caught a year in, at the most, if Noah hadn't taught him the things he needed to survive. Later on, Noah hadn't been sure that he hadn't done it for just that reason, no matter how much of the rulebook he'd quoted at his ex-partner.
"Peter found out that you were knockin' off some of the key Company men."
Noah automatically looked toward the doorway, worried that Claire would hear, but Claude shook his head. "The boy'll have her for hours yet, believe you me," he said. "Though I would've thought you'd've learnt your lesson about keeping secrets."
"Some things are need-to-know basis only," Noah said. "Which I would've thought you'd learned the hard way."
"I learned a lot about trusting people, sure," Claude snarled, then visibly reined himself in. "That's not the point. Point is, that Company-issue pistol of yours is getting quite a workout, only this time you're going after the Company itself, not the freaks it's after. Th' boy caught wind of what you were up to, an' after that trying to keep him out of Odessa was like trying to rope the damn wind." He shook his head, almost fondly. "Force of nature, that boy. And he's got a protective streak a mile wide when it comes to your daughter. He wants to look out for her, and as it happens he's on board with your little plan, so here we are. Against my advice," he added.
Noah took a split second to process, which he did without changing his expression in the slightest. There was a reason he'd been partnered with a stealth Talent like Claude; he could blend into a room better than any invisible man. "You're the ones who've been taking out the others," he said. "I knew there was someone, the body count was a little higher than I could account for, but I never thought…" He shook his head. "I didn't even believe Peter was alive. Claire tried to tell me, but I saw that explosion."
"The boy's an Empath, you twit," Claude said. "And since he's close as peas in a pod with that girl of yours, that mean's he's a Healer, too. Or did you forget that little tidbit?"
"I've never seen anyone heal back from that," Noah said. "And I doubt you have either, or you wouldn't look quite so ridiculously smug."
Claude shook his head. "You haven't slipped any," he said wonderingly. "Hard to believe you're such a blockhead about your own daughter. Or did you forget who her real parents were?"
"We're her real parents," Noah snapped back. "We've earned it."
"If you say so," Claude said. "Her biological parents then, however you like it. A pyrokinetic who blew up the damn room and walked out as sweet as you please, and that snake politician can break the bloody sound barrier when he flies. Of course she can heal that well, you damn fool. And if she can heal like that, then Peter can too."
"That's not quite how it works," Noah said.
"Maybe not with the other Empaths you had, but Peter's different. That one's like nothing you've ever seen, and nothing you'll ever see again. You remember that when you're working with him, and maybe we won't get into as much trouble as he usually manages."
Noah blinked. "We?"
"Why the hell do you think I let him drag my sorry arse all the way down to this godforsaken town? Christ, Bennet, grow a fucking brain. We're here to help, you wanker. Like I would've come for anything else," he said with a scowl. "As it happens you know a bit more about the Company infrastructure than I do, and even Peter can only go so far without a little inside info. So here we are."
"Here you are," Noah echoed. "And what if I don't want your help?"
"Then you're crazy, not that it matters," Claude said. "Didn't you listen to a word I said? Peter's decided, and not a man alive has been born that can change his mind when he's got the bit between the teeth."
"So you're saying I have no choice," Noah said. "We have to…" He almost couldn't say it, the whole idea was too funny. "…Work together," he said. "To take out the Company."
"What's left of it, yeah," Claude said. "It took a hit when some bint with a techie Talent took out their satellite, and we've been making a few inroads since, but yeah, we're here to wipe it out. Get to the snake's head, so to speak."
"And I suppose the only thing I can do is invite you into my home and make the best of it," Noah said.
"Got it in one," he said, and finally sat down on the couch, which seemed to be a signal that the argument was over, so Bennet sat down too. "I don't much want to be here either, but I'll stay out of your way if you stay out of mine."
"I think I can manage it," Noah said mildly, who had every intention of doing exactly that. Claude was a combustible substance on the best of days, and Noah had no inclination to risk setting him off. He'd had enough of that before he'd shot the man. They'd both done their duty when it came to any kind of partnership. "And you've had plenty of practice."
"So that's it then," Claude said. "We're stuck till it's over. Working together. Living together." He let his head fall back and laughed. "God help us all."
NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY
D.L. and Nathan were having a stare-down in her kitchen when she got there, though on the surface it probably looked like they were having a pleasant conversation. The kids didn't seem to know what was going on, which was something, at least, but there were times that Niki was grateful she'd been born female, and this was one of them. Didn't men ever get tired of playing their little testosterone games?
She decided that it was up to her to interfere, since left on their own they'd probably keep staring and talking politely and wishing fiery deaths on each other, so she came into the kitchen and broke it up. "Nathan, hello," she said, with what she hoped was a casual smile. Wouldn't do to let the cretins know that she wanted to beat both of their stupidly male heads in. "Thanks again for doing this for us." Again.
"It's not a problem," he said, in what had to be the most blatant lie she'd ever heard, despite the fact that she had a fairly devious nine-year-old and she'd been kinda evil herself for a while there. Driving out here to pick up her kids had to take a huge chunk of time from his mornings that he probably couldn't afford as a busy junior Congressman, but he said it as blandly as if he lived right next door and did nothing but sit around all day and play house husband.
(He had his politician smile on, too. It was especially funny for her, because his politician smile looked remarkably like Micah's "power outage? What power outage? I certainly wasn't messing with the circuit breakers trying to figure out how they work" smile. Basically, neither one of them pulled off innocent particularly well. But then, this was New York City, and much like Las Vegas, nobody was much interested in electing any kind of innocent for anything.)
She let the lie stand, though. One way or another, he always managed to find an excuse to stop by at least once a week, and she wasn't selfish enough to take away the only hope he had for finding his brother. Not that Molly had had much success, but still. And if she always felt a flutter of anticipation when he called to say he'd be by to give the kids a ride, well, she was dealing with it. She had it control, mostly.
"Where are the boys?" she asked. Usually they came in with him, Monty trying to stand back and look like a grown-up while Simon scrambled up onto the chair next to Micah and Molly, saying hi and stealing bites of their breakfast, if they weren't fast enough to stop him. Simon was a child who was not unsure of his welcome or his friends. She wished that her kids had met more like him, but it wasn't likely at that snobby school of theirs.
(Shut, it, you, she told herself. Micah needs that school, and Nathan got him in without you even asking. Be grateful, and keep your mouth shut.)
"In the car," he said, rolling his eyes. She wondered at the gesture, and then, "I got Monty that new handheld game for his birthday. The two of them have been glued to that thing ever since. I think they'd take it to bed with them, if I let them."
She tried to hide her envy. She'd spent weeks looking for that thing when it came out, trying to get it in time for Micah's Christmas present, but she hadn't ever had a prayer. That sucker hit the shelves and vanished all in one day. She didn't really have the money for it, anyway. No matter how much Micah would love it, she'd have to wait till she could find it used.
"Well, you're all going to be late if you don't get moving," she said. "Micah, honey? Put your dishes in the sink and get your stuff, okay? We don't want to keep Mr. Petrelli waiting." This said pointedly towards her husband, who'd been doing just that with his little stare-down despite the fact that the kids had already finished their breakfast.
"Sure, Mom."
"Good man." She scrubbed the palm of her hand through his rough curls, just like D.L.'s had been back in the day when he'd actually let his hair grow, and guided him off towards the sink with a little push to the back of his neck when he picked up his dishes. Molly followed him out of the room, heading towards the living room with an intent expression on her little face. Some of her homework stuff had been left out there the night before, and God forbid the kid face the day without a complete collection of school supplies.
She took the opportunity to send D.L. another speaking look, but he avoided her eyes. Ah. He was up to something, then, not just the usual macho games. She started to worry, a little, because D.L. was usually pretty harmless, but she remembered the way he'd been when they'd first started dating, when she hadn't really liked him all that much and he'd decided to win her heart whether she wanted to give it or not. When D.L. wanted something, he usually found a way to get it, and he could be really goddamned sneaky when he wanted to. If he'd started plotting in earnest against Nathan, who wasn't exactly a beginner at mind games himself, she didn't want to be stuck here at ground zero. She just didn't.
Molly reappeared in the doorway a second later, biting her look and looking like she wanted something, but didn't quite know how to ask. Niki temporarily forgot about the men and went over to her, asking, "What is it, sweetie?" It she waited for Molly to feel comfortable enough to tell her what the problem was, she'd be waiting here all day, and none of them wanted that.
"I lost my favorite pen under the couch," Molly told her.
The simplest course of action would have been to send Molly off to school without the damn pen, and if it had been Micah, she would have, but this was Molly and Molly needed careful handling sometimes. She was oddly fussy about her school supplies, for reasons Niki didn't understand and probably never would, and it was usually simpler to just humor her, especially when it was something this harmless.
"Well, we'll just have to get it back, won't we?" She ruffled Molly's hair as she passed by, heading for the couch. "Gimme just a second. You'll be out of here in a jiff."
She knelt down and reached underneath, but couldn't feel the pen. Twisting so that her cheek was lying on the carpet and she could actually see her target, she did another sweep, but her seeking fingers couldn't quite reach the pen.
She supposed that was what she got for buying a couch that was quite that low to the ground. "Hangon, I can't… quite…" She got her other hand underneath and pressed upwards, levering the couch up a couple of inches. "Hah!" Pen in hand, she pulled back and let the couch thump back to the floor, straightening again and brandishing her prize.
Both Nathan and her husband were watching from the doorway, intent expressions on both their faces. Nathan was more polite about it, doing something complicated with his smile to make it seem like he wasn't doing anything in particular and she didn't want to blame him, did she? and D.L. was a lot less subtle, but still, she didn't think he'd appreciate the comparison.
She raised an eyebrow at both of them. "Is there something I can do for you gentlemen?"
"No, I'm good," said D.L.
D.L., of course, could phase through solid objects. His power wasn't exactly a secret to anyone in this house, including Nathan. There was no reason why he couldn't have reached through the couch when he saw she was struggling, and gotten the pen for her. Which meant that he'd wanted to see her lift the couch.
"You could have just asked," she pointed out. He grinned sheepishly.
"Always was a fan of Supergirl," he said. She rolled her eyes and handed the pen off to Molly.
"Here you go, hon. Now get Micah and tell him to hurry, would you? You're going to be late for school."
She nodded and ran off to retrieve her brother, who came back with her a split second later, backpack over his shoulder- he'd probably heard her talking to Molly and realized it was time to book. She gave them both a kiss on the cheek and sent them off with Nathan, who smiled his goodbye as he was practically towed out the door by her children. The bang of the door echoed through the kitchen, and in silence she and D.L. listened as the car started up, then backed out of the driveway and drove away.
"So," she said, and then stopped. She had no idea what she wanted to say.
"We need to talk," said D.L.
NATHAN PETRELLI- NEW YORK CITY
The problem with driving Niki's kids along with his is that it was hard to ask Molly for what he wanted. Secrets were a way of life for people like her (like him) and he understood that better than Peter ever had. Peter wanted to be all he could be, and that led to him becoming something he never wanted. Simone wanted to tell the world, and that got her dead. Nathan just wanted to hide, and he survived. He'd never dream of asking Molly for more than she wanted to give.
But for all that she was a quiet kid, shy, scared of her own shadow, she understood need in a way that few children did. Oh, kids always thought they needed something. They needed a new Playstation, something from the candy shop, an extra scoop of ice cream, they needed to stay up late and play outside in the rain even when it was freezing outside and wrestle on expensive furniture and have the coolest bike on the block. Kids, for the most part, equated "want" with "need" and it was usually a hard lesson, learning the difference.
He knew only the barest details of what had happened to Molly- that her parents were murdered, that Sylar had been the murderer, that he'd done it to get to her- but it was enough to tell him that Molly's hard lesson had been learned early on in life. The only things that Molly needed were to be loved, and to be safe, and to know that the people who loved her were safe too. And she understood that just as she needed those things, he needed to find Peter.
By the time he'd buckled in and put the car in motion, she'd pulled out the world map from under the seat and had it open across her lap, pin in hand, sweeping steadily and hopelessly over the open pages.
She kept it up for another minute or so while his eldest kicked at the back of his seat and his youngest gleefully blew up aliens in the front, but when she looked up and met his gaze in the rearview mirror, she shook her head. Like always.
Well, he hadn't expected any different. Not really. But he wasn't going to give up the one chance he had of finding his brother, and she understood that, too. That's why she kept trying, even when he didn't have a chance to ask. Because if her parents were lost instead of gone, she'd never give up, either.
With that settled, he turned his attention to the sullen boy sitting directly behind him. His boy, of course. Niki had raised Micah too well to kick at anyone's seat.
"Monty. Stop kicking my seat."
"But it's my turn! And Simon won't hand it over!"
"It," of course, being the handheld he'd gotten Monty for his birthday. Usually his boys were pretty good at sharing- witness the fact that Simon had his hands on the toy at all- but apparently, there were limits. The whole scene was a little alien to Nathan- not because he hadn't seen it played out a million times since Simon was two and Monty three (because they had… God, had they ever), but because it was never like this for him as a kid. Peter was so much younger than him that sharing toys was just never an issue.
He glanced at the clock and realized that it was, in fact, time for Simon to hand it over. They'd been time-sharing it for the last few days, but Nathan was almost to the point of giving up and letting them fight it out, because if they kept it up for much longer he was going to have a headache the size of Montana. "Simon, give your brother back his game."
"But I'm almost finished the level!" Simon didn't even look up from the screen. Nathan was pretty sure he'd never been that defiant of his father. Then again, he couldn't exactly regret not using his father as a role model of parenting, so he supposed it was a fair trade-off.
"Simon." He didn't bother to raise his voice, but then, he knew he didn't have to. It was the Obedience or Death voice. So far, it had never failed him.
"Alright, alright." Simon hit "save" and passed the game back to Monty, who attacked it with all the finesse of a rabid bear. Nathan shook his head. Kids.
With his distraction gone, Simon started twisting around in his seat, talking excitedly to Micah and Molly. Well, mostly Molly, since from what he could see of the backseat, Micah was leaning over Monty's shoulder to watch the game, and Monty was allowing it with the sense of camaraderie video games seemed to induce in all boys, no matter what their age. Molly, who was about as uninterested in video games as it was possible to be, was leaning forward and giggling at something Simon had said that Nathan couldn't quite catch.
Nathan had known they were friends. He'd gotten Micah and Molly into their school with exactly that hope, and Simon had talked about her and Micah, and they'd been to a couple cookouts at the Sanders household and the two of them had been thick as little thieves then, but he hadn't, until just this moment, realized how close they really were. Simon and Monty had always been friends with each other first and foremost (all brotherly squabbles aside) and he'd known the day would come that someone else would come along that would pry them apart, but he hadn't realized that the someone would be Molly.
He wondered what else he didn't know about his children. And he didn't like the possible answers.
NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY
Niki went very still at D.L.'s pronouncement. "Talk about what?" she asked. Her voice was falsely bright with unshed tension.
"I dunno, Nik, why don't you tell me. You're the one who's been acting so weird lately."
"I have not been acting 'weird,'" she said with all the asperity she could muster, but it rang false. Even she could hear it, but she couldn't seem to do anything about it, couldn't seem to find the right note to strike to make D.L. believe what she was saying.
And believe her he obviously didn't. "You have, Niki, and you know it. You're lucky the kids haven't noticed yet, but I have."
"There's nothing wrong," she insisted stubbornly.
"That so? If there's nothing wrong, then, why is it that you get up in the middle of the night, nine times out of ten? We share a bed, and you expect me not to notice when you aren't sleeping?"
"It's nothing," she said. "I don't want to talk about it." That last was true, at least. She didn't want to talk about this at all.
"Oh, come on, you're a shitty liar and you always have been, you can't possibly expect me to buy that. Ever since that congressman started coming around-"
She flinched.
He was silent for a long, excruciating minute. "So that's what it is," he said finally. His voice gave nothing away. "I wondered. I mean, a blind man would have seen the way he looks at you." She turned away and started fussing with the dishes to buy herself time before she had to come up with an answer. "What happened, Nik? Was he the replacement? Or was it just to work off a little of your debt?"
She whirled around, dishes falling back into the sink with a heavy clatter. Distantly, she was aware enough to hope that they hadn't broken, but most of her attention was focused on D.L., and the red haze of rage that was descending over her vision. "How dare you."
"I'm daring kind of a lot these days," he said. "So you're saying that it had nothing to do with Linderman? Because I'm gonna have a hard time believing it."
She couldn't quite bring herself to lie. "No, I'm not saying that-"
"Ha!"
"-But I am saying that it's a damn sight more complicated than that!"
"Let me guess," he sneered. "Jessica."
She blinked and had to force herself to keep from taking a step back from the force of the scorn in his voice. "As a matter of fact, yes."
"Yeah, right."
The muscles in her neck and shoulders locked into place. "Ex-cuse me?"
"You heard me. You know what, babe? I don't think you and Jessie were as separate as you liked to think you were. She might have been the one whoring herself out, but you were right there with her, enjoying the ride."
Her hand was around his throat before she was consciously aware of moving. She didn't know what she was trying to do, even, kill him, hurt him, prove a point? But before her hand could close and crush his windpipe into nothingness, he phased backwards out of her grip, smiling grimly.
"Touch a nerve?" he taunted. "You keep forgetting that I'm not your little congressional boy-toy. You can't hurt me."
Her fists clenched on nothing at her sides so she wouldn't reach out and try to do it again. "There's a bullet hole on your body that says different, lover."
"You don't have a gun on you now, Nikki."
Maybe not. "You want to know the truth? Yeah, I fucked him. Or rather, Jessica did. She had to step in, see, because I couldn't do it. I was going to walk away. And you know why?"
He didn't say anything.
"Because I'm a married woman," she told him, and left the kitchen.
CLAUDE RAINS- ODESSA, TEXAS
There was an art to moving silently. Some of the skills that were needed changed according to the environment- avoiding creaking floorboards as opposed to avoiding the crunch of broken glass, for example- but one thing always stayed the same. You had to move fluidly, with the flow of air, or you risked the slight breeze, the twitch of displaced air that could give you away. Claude had had several decades to learn the art, and he was a master of his craft.
He was exploring the farmhouse, slowly, room by room and floor by floor. He didn't like holing up somewhere if he didn't know every inch of the place, all of the creaky floorboards and vents and alcoves where an invisible man could press himself hard into the wall, hold his breath, and wait unnoticed while someone passed him by. It was taking him some time- the farmhouse Peter's rich, guilty brother had paid for was a rambling, two-story affair that was just about as old as it looked, and every time he thought he had his surroundings pinned down to the smallest detail, something else showed up to surprise him.
Beyond that, he was just curious. And he'd spent years exploring people's homes to satisfy his curiosity, and didn't see any reason to stop now.
He wanted to know Bennet, try and figure out what made him tick. This was the man that had fucking shot him, after all. For trying to protect someone who, at the core of it, was just like him. And maybe it was ten years ago and the wounds were long healed, and maybe Bennet was the reason the Company went down and he went much, much farther to protect his daughter than Claude had ever done, and maybe things were different, but that didn't meant that Claude had forgiven him. Understood him, maybe. Forgiven him, no. A fact that Bennet'd have to be blind to miss, but Peter played mediator well enough- could see the sensitive kid in an ambitious family all over him when he did, seems he'd had more than his fair share of practice- so they hadn't killed each other. Yet.
Didn't mean that he felt guilty spying on the man when Bennet didn't know he was there. Oh, on some level Bennet knew, the two of them had been partners for years, he knew how Claude operated- but he never knew exactly when Claude was spying on him, and that was just how Claude liked it. He wanted to know why Bennet had done it, beyond the obvious love for his daughter.
(Claude would bet every dollar to his name that Bennet hadn't talked to the girl about her power, hadn't let on just how powerful she was- Claude had never seen anyone heal like that, anyone, and he'd met his fair share of healers. Petrellis had the gene good and proper, you had to give them that. Any family that could throw out someone like Peter and then Claire a generation later had to have some good bloodlines somewhere.)
So far, he hadn't gotten any answers. None that he liked, anyway.
"But it doesn't want to grow. It's winter; it just wants to go back to sleep."
Bennet's voice was unbelievably patient as he said, for the fifth or sixth time, "Yes, but you're not a plant, Jake. You don't sleep all winter, not unless it's a snow day," he added, winning a grin from the gangly kid. "It'll take its cue from you, if you concentrate. Let it feel how awake you are, and it will wake up, too."
"Huh." The kid seemed to think about this, his head cocked to the side. "So I'm, like, bonding with the plant? Not just talking to it?"
"If you want to make yourself sound like a sci-fi novel, sure. It's a close enough analogy."
"Dude, I'm talking to plants," the kid said. Claude would have smacked him, but Bennet just smiled tolerantly. "I'm already living the sci-fi novel." But he reached out and spread his hands around the sides of the clay pot, his thumbs hooked over the top so that his fingernails were just barely dipped into the earth. He frowned in concentration, the creases at the corner of his eyes getting deeper, and then the plant, a common household flower shriveled up and gray because of the winter, straightened and filled out and flushed to a full, healthy green.
The boy opened his eyes and was greeted with Bennet's proud smile. "Well done," he said, and the kid fucking beamed.
Claude took off before he could see any more. He'd gone looking for answers and he'd found some, but Christ, what was he supposed to do with the knowledge that Bennet could teach? Not just teach, but teach well, better than Claude even, with the air of someone who'd been in that chair time and time again. Bennet always had been good at manipulating people, changing on a dime to show them the face they wanted or needed to see, but he'd always used it like leverage, pressuring and prying people till they gave up all their secrets. His job had ended the moment they brought the target back to the Company cells, and Claude's job had begun all over again. He'd never once seen Bennet interact with the targets any more than was necessary.
Now he was wondering just what Bennet had been doing, all those years Claude Rains had been dead to the world. How many people had Bennet taught like this, slowly opening them up to the full reaches of their power, pushing them this way and pulling them that until they blossomed under his seeking, relentless mind? Dozens, Claude would guess. And now the Company was slowly burning to ash under that same careful, manipulating hand, and all those people Bennet had used for his own advantage were free to live their lives as they chose.
There was something there, a simple truth that he just couldn't reach, but he was damned if he was going to stick around and watch Bennet cozen his newest project. He left the living room behind and went upstairs to find Peter.
Peter was where he always was, which was to say, near Claire. One way or another, Peter didn't stray far, mostly leaving the house only for missions and sticking close when he wasn't out saving the world, one Company operative at a time. He stuck close to Claude, too- telepathically, anyway. Claude had gotten used to the little psychic nudges that came throughout the day, and let himself nudge back as much as any non-telepath could. If he'd thought Peter was codependent before his explosion, it was nothing to the way he was now. Not that it reduced his effectiveness any- the boy was fucking scary when he put his mind to it- but the fact that Claude was one of his touchstones made it a hell of a lot less irritating than when he was worried what his brother would think all the time. Petty, but true.
Peter was lurking outside of her room- invisibly, of course, wouldn't do to have her mum wander by and see him playing stalker. Sandra was an infinitely hospitable woman, but even she probably had her limits. Seeing him again had thrown her, Claude knew- she was a lot sharper than her husband gave her credit for, she had to know some of the things that had gone on behind the scenes, but in the end it was the fact that he was here, alive that had sent her into a tailspin, not the fact that he was one of Them, just like her daughter. Sandra called it a gift from God. Claude didn't bother to correct her- the man Upstairs hadn't bothered with Claude since he was born, he wasn't about to pay tribute on the one thing that had made him special.
"You have got to stop doing this," Claude said. Peter was sitting on the floor across from the hall, his eyes fixed on the girly little nameplate on Claire's door, but he looked up when Claude came over and smiled his welcome.
"Stop doing what?" he asked, like he didn't know. Claude shook his head and slid down the wall to sit next to him.
"Stalkin' her like this. Girl's gonna get a complex if you don't ease off some."
"Relax, it's not like she can see me," he said. Claude just rolled his eyes.
"You never change," he grumbled, and no, Peter really didn't. He was needy, codependent, and at the same time oddly reluctant to actually do anything about it, demand the sort of emotional connection that he so obviously craved. Claude gave it to him anyway, because it cost him nothing, not anymore, and because Peter had given him a hell of a lot more in return. Claire, apparently, didn't know Peter quite so well, because she hung back a little, smiled a lot, and hugged him every chance she got. She was doing her best to treat him like her Uncle Peter, but it wasn't working all that well.
It was all a bit pathetic, really. Claude wanted to laugh at the two of them, but instead he was tempted to punch Peter in the face, just for being so thick. The girl was his niece, for crying out loud. Wasn't even legal age, and here he was, head over heels. Sitting in the dark and watching over her like it made a damn bit of difference.
Somewhere, deep inside, existed the knowledge that he was jealous. Claude liked to ignore that part of himself, even when it managed to sneak out and grab ahold of his mouth before his brain could intervene.
"Speakin' of changing, have you wandered in on 'er yet? I mean, I've seen the pretty niece all but bare a couple times, and let me tell you, she's young but she's got promise, if you know what I mean."
He stopped and almost cringed, waiting to get punched himself. Peter had a temper, sure, and they weren't averse to working out their frustrations by beating each other with sticks and calling it "training," but Peter had never struck him in anger, no matter how much Claude had goaded him. He'd never gone quite this far before, though, and all he could think was stupid, stupid, stupid, as Peter slowly swiveled his head to stare at Claude in the semidark.
"My advice, if you're interested," Peter said, and Claude realized that the bastard was smiling, "would be to not tell Claire about that."
And then he went back to staring at Claire's door, just like that, while Claude sat there and gawked at him. He'd never understand what went on in that boy's head, never. He knew Claude was wandering around, spying on a family that had all but adopted the both of them, and Claude tells him that he's been looking at Peter's crush of the century without her clothes on, and Peter doesn't even bother to warn him off proper.
What's he thinking? Claude wondered, not for the first time, and not for the last. What does he want? Peter always seemed so simple on the surface- want girl, save girl, stop bad guys, don't explode, save the world, and Claude understood all that. It was moments like these that he realized that he didn't understand Peter at all, didn't know a single fucking thing about whatever game Peter was playing.
Truth be told, he was happy enough just to be one of the pieces on the board. And if that wasn't the most pathetic thing about the lot of them, he didn't know what was.
MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY
Mohinder emptied his glass, set it down, and said, with no little amazement, "I think I'm drunk."
Next to him, Matt chuckled. "That you are, my friend," he said. "And I'm not far behind."
Mohinder couldn't remember why, exactly, he was drunk. The circumstances leading up to the two of them sitting on his couch and working their way through what seemed to be a good quantity of alcohol were all a long, hazy blur.
He didn't realize he'd said that out loud till Matt replied, "It's not like it was a special occasion, or anything. I just lured you out of the lab with the promise of food and booze."
Mohinder surveyed the carnage of bottles and glasses spread out over his coffee table. "Well, you accomplished the alcohol, at least."
"Oh, ye of little faith," Matt said. "I was just waiting for the right moment." He got to his feet, staggered a little, and then made his careful way into the kitchen. Mohinder let his head loll back against the headrest and listened to a variety of interesting thumps and rustles from the other room, and a minute later Matt reemerged with a bag of chips in one hand and a pan of something chocolatey in the other.
"Chips and brownies," Matt said proudly, nudging a couple bottles out of the way and depositing the pan on the table. "Food of choice for booze and hanging with your buddies."
Is that what we are? Mohinder thought, but didn't say aloud. He wasn't quite that drunk. "Did you bake them yourself?" he asked instead, surveying the brownies with no little amount of suspicion. He had no idea whether Matt could cook or not, but if he had to make a guess he'd lean towards most emphatically not.
"Nope," Matt said cheerfully, confirming Mohinder's suspicions. "The lady down the hall for me made 'em as a thank-you, since I fixed her door so it wouldn't stick anymore." He nabbed the first brownie and took a healthy bite, his eyes daring Mohinder to do the same. He did, gingerly, then with more enthusiasm as he realized that they were, in fact, delicious.
Half a pan of brownies and an indeterminate amount of chips later, Mohinder was a good deal drunker and much more careless with his words. "Tell me about your family," he said, which he never would have asked, not if he were in control of his faculties.
Matt didn't seem offended, however. "It's just me, now," he said. Mohinder made a sympathetic noise, and he just shrugged. "It's been a little while," he said, but there was a shadow in his eyes that said, not long enough. "My real father left when I was really young," he went on, around another mouthful of brownie. "So I don't know anything about him. My mom remarried after a while, and that was the guy I knew as my father. He was the one who got me into this business."
"Children of policemen often follow their parents into the force," Mohinder said. Matt said nothing. "And your mother? What is she like?"
A faraway look came into his eyes. "She was… Oh, I don't know, like everyone's mother, I guess. She liked to sew, and make sandwiches, and fuss at us when we weren't getting our work done, and take care of us when we were sick. Not a real independent woman, Mom," he said with a flash of humor. "She liked to stay at home and collect things."
"What sort of things?"
"Oh, everything. Stamps, coins, books, though she never read 'em. Dishes. Snowglobes."
"It sounds very like my father," Mohinder said. "Although his obsession was his research, but I on some level it is much the same urge. It took me weeks to go through all of the notes he'd left behind, and that's after the Company man, Bennet, had gone through and practically trashed the place."
"Good thing he's one the side of angels now, huh?" Matt said.
"I suppose," Mohinder said, as he still had his doubts about Bennet. He hadn't killed Molly when he could have, however, and he'd gone out of his way to help them once he'd made up his mind. "You arrived with him, if I remember, from Texas. What was it like, traveling across the country with the man who'd tagged you?"
"Road trip from hell," Matt laughed, and Mohinder, busy with a personal revelation, didn't press him.
They did have that kind of friendship.
This was a dangerous sort of thing for him to know, because he was so, so lonely. Eden was a long time ago, and she wasn't who she said she was anyway, and he missed having someone to be close to. And here was Matt, slouched loose and smiling on his couch, and his hands practically itched with the urge to reach out.
But he'd learned a lot about restraint since he came to New York. The last man he looked at like this turned out to be his father's killer, and Mohinder can't- won't- risk himself like that again. He just… can't.
So he took another drink, smiled back at Matt, and very sensibly kept his hands to himself.
CLAIRE BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS
Weirdly enough, Jake the arborparth turned out to be a pretty good cook. She hadn't really known much about him at first, other than the fact that he was a little older than her, made plants grow, was pretty cute and that her best friend totally had a crush on him, no matter how much Zach whined that it "wasn't like that." But then her Dad had started teaching him how to control his powers (and how weird was that, her Dad the mutant-hunter extraordinaire actually helping one out?) and that meant that Jake had started coming around a lot more. She was almost surprised to discover that she liked him. If nothing else, they always had their freaky-weird powers to talk about.
And he could cook. Well enough that her Mom let him have pretty much free reign over the kitchen, which was a previously unheard-of event in the Bennet household. But, well, it was a new era, out with the old and in with the new, and right now the New Thing was Jake in the kitchen and Claire sitting on the counter watching him with the fascination that a tone-deaf person had for a master pianist.
"It's really not that hard," he told her, his hands buried to the wrist in a huge lump of some sort of dough. He hadn't bothered to tell her what he was actually making.
"No, see, that is where you are wrong, my friend," she shot back. "It really is that hard." She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis, pleased at the quiet chuckle she got. She loved hamming it up with Jake. Zach always gave her that "I've lived next door to you since second grade and you're really not as funny as you think you are," long-suffering eye-roll. Jake was new and untried territory, and? He played along.
"You just like people cooking for you and don't feel like learning," he accused with a grin. "Your mom's got you spoiled."
"Maybe. But I have good reason to avoid learning. You've heard about the time I lost my fingers to the garbage disposal, right? And the time I managed to set my arm on fire trying to boil water? My kitchen mishaps are many and varied, and for the sake of my mom's peace of mind, I agreed to stay away from cooking-type things. It's really safer for all concerned."
"For you?"
"For the kitchen," she corrected, and laughed when his eyebrows went skyward. He knew what she could do, she'd broken a few bones to prove a point when she and Zach had gone to visit him that one time, but it still surprised him sometimes when she said something like that. He'd get used to it, she knew. Claude's powers, or Peter's, didn't seem to startle him so much, but she'd long ago accepted that there was something uniquely disturbing about her ability to heal. The ability to read minds, or teleport, or be invisible, those were fantastical things, something out of a comic book, where her power was disturbingly physical, relating the fantastic to the mundane. She was no Wolverine; didn't have steel claws or memory loss, just a deep knowledge of human anatomy, learned the hard way. She'd spent hours doing sketches of herself, layer by layer- bone and muscles and tendons and organs, all of the things she'd seen up close and personal.
These were drawings that she didn't show her Dad. Somehow, she didn't think he'd appreciate them.
"No, seriously, you don't believe me?" she said impulsively. "Check this out." She grabbed the long-handled lighter they used with the broken burner on the oven, and depressed the trigger, holding it up against her arm.
"Claire!" he shouted, leaping forward to stop her, and she danced backwards, avoiding his reaching hands.
"Chill, would you? It's just a little burn." She watched as the skin blackened and started to bubble, distantly aware of screaming nerve endings but not really worried about it. She'd never felt pain the way other people did, which is how she'd made it through the first couple weeks of cheerleading without dying. She wasn't sure if it was something that was related to her power, or just some built-in failsafe in her genetic code that made it possible for her to shake off deathly injuries and keep walking while they healed. She tended to think it was the latter, since Peter didn't have the same thing, couldn't take hits the way she could, and he otherwise mimicked her power exactly.
She was more worried about her t-shirt than her arm. Her mom had given her this shirt years ago, and she didn't want it getting burn marks all over it. Skin she could grow back; fabric, not so much.
"Am I interrupting something?" came an amused voice from behind her.
She whirled around, letting the flame die and tossing the lighter onto the counter. "Peter, hey! I didn't realize you were back yet."
"Just." He looked down at her arm, where the charred skin was already healing, crispy black flesh rolling away into pink, new skin. "Oddly enough, this doesn't look like cooking."
"Claire was demonstrating," Jake said, his voice as dry as if he hadn't been freaking out a minute before. "And I was cooking, until she decided to play show-and-tell." He went back to the counter and grabbed the dough. "I'll just get this in the oven and clear out. It's supposed to be a thank-you for Mr. Bennet for all the lessons he's been giving me, and it won't be much of a surprise if he shows up while I'm baking it."
"I think you've got some time," Peter said, amused. "He and Claude were still yelling at each other when I left." He looked over at Claire. "I got some stuff for you, this great bakery in Portland, but your Dad's got it. Just make sure you don't eat it all at once."
She put one hand on her hip, feeling the taut, not-quite-scar-tissue stretch and then loosen to the elasticity of normal skin. "That better not be a crack about my weight."
"Never," he said, and the prickle that went down her spine at the heavy sincerity in his eyes was eerily similar to the prickle of hair follicles pushing their way back through her skin. She met his gaze for one long moment, long enough to see the fine-edged tension around his eyes, and then made herself step back and away.
Jake cleared his throat. "Why don't you two clear out of the kitchen and let me finish, huh?" he said. Peter shrugged easily.
"Sure. I need a shower anyway," he said. She looked sharply at him, but he wandered out without adding anything else, and she didn't have any proof, anyway, just theories. There were never any mysterious stains on his clothes, no smell of blood or other bodily fluids, he never has so much as a hair out of place, but she knew perfectly well that he didn't need to get within spatter distance to cause injury. His compulsive need to shower every time he came back from one of the little "trips" he took with her father and Claude to "visit old friends" could just be a weird coincidence, but she didn't think so.
"You too, Claire," Jake said, nudging at her pointedly. "Let a man concentrate, would you?"
"Man, hah," she sneered, but she left when he got a little too close with his doughy hands. She liked this shirt.
She went into the living room and settled down with a magazine. Jake left about twenty minutes later, shouting back to tell Zach he'd see him tomorrow, and she'd grinned as she'd called back her affirmative. Ah, young love, she thought gleefully. She was so going to catch those two making out in the shed sometime soon.
Peter came back down and found her in the living room about twenty minutes after that. He didn't look significantly different, but the tightness around his eyes was gone, and she thought about how there was no good reason for a guy with short hair like Peter's to stay in the shower for forty minutes, but she didn't say anything. It wasn't really her business.
"Whatcha readin'?" he asked.
She lifted up the magazine, silently. He grinned. "Only the highest of literature for you, huh?"
"This is Texas," she said. "Be grateful I'm not reading Guns and Ammo."
Peter just grinned at her and then flopped backwards onto the couch, his long legs hooking over the end. "Oof." The top of his head was only inches from her curled-up legs, looking severely out of place in the homey living room. Her father ruled over the study, dark wood and darker leather, a man's room, but this was her mother's domain, and she'd decorated it in frills and pastels, the same way she'd decorated and redecorated the living room in their old house. Claire had grown up in a room like this, and it was as familiar to her as her own too-pink bedroom. But Peter, with his dark clothing and complexion and the ragged scar running down his face that she still hadn't quite gotten used to, made her feel abruptly alien in this frilly, comfortable room. Looking at him, she was increasingly aware that all of the weirdness that had come before was nothing to the sea-change that Peter was capable of inflicting on her, whether she was ready or not.
"You look tired," she said critically. He often seemed like the Energizer Bunny- just going, and going, and going until even Claude seemed ready to cry "Uncle!" (Okay, brain, she thought. You can stop helping. Any minute now.) Tonight, though, he was looking a little drawn around the edges, which was the same as limping exhaustion on anyone else.
"Claude ran me ragged," he said, his eyes closed and his face turned up to the cool breeze coming off the ceiling fan. "I thought it was bad when he was just beating me with sticks and calling me an idiot. If only I'd known how much worse it would be now that I'm apparently useful after all, I might have let myself stay blown up." His grin was silly and boyish, and she couldn't help but grin back, despite the pangs that the memory of That Night always seemed to bring back.
"So you're going after Company operatives, huh?" Unsubtle, maybe, abrupt subject-change, yes, but it worked. Peter's eyes snapped open and he gave her a sharp, upside-down stare. "How'd you-"
"Know? Funny how I'm not a complete idiot, isn't it?"
He smiled ruefully. "Yeah, trust me, I know. Your Dad's just a lot better at the whole, secret operations thing, I guess. I'm not exactly a brilliant liar."
And Claude wasn't much better, not that she'd say anything about it. She'd learned pretty quickly that insulting Claude just got Peter's back up, and that was exactly what she was trying to avoid. "So you're trying to dismantle the Company," she prompted again.
He huffed a laugh. "Yeah, I suppose you could put it that way. I never had any big master plan when I started this, you know. I just ran into a couple people who knew who I was and wanted to kill me pretty badly, and I stopped them. Then I found Claude and he was all for trying to turn some of the Operatives, so we did that instead. A few of them told me that there was someone working their way through the command-level guys, and I managed to put two and two together and figured out it was your father. So I came to help, however he needed me." His scar twisted strangely as he frowned- and she realized that she'd almost never seen him anything but smiling, not since he came back. It was a strange realization to make about someone as occasionally moody as Peter. "And that's what I do."
"So it's not just the operatives," she said. "Not if you're working for my Dad."
"With your Dad. It's a small thing, but I wouldn't want to be you if Claude heard you saying he worked for Bennet. They're not too fond of each other."
"Understatement," she said. It was like being in the middle of the Cold War, with the two of them, and Peter in the middle with Claire, doing his best to keep the peace. It was a little weird to live with sometimes. "Peter. Tell me seriously. Do you really think you can do it?"
"Take down the Company?" It must have been a rhetorical question, because Peter continued before she could answer in the affirmative. "I don't know. Maybe the Company really does need to exist, in one form or another- that's not my problem. We're trying to get to the head of it. Linderman used to run it, did you know?"
Claire hadn't known. "The mob boss from LA?"
"That's the one," Peter said. "He was working with my mother. They're the ones that got to Nathan. He wanted me to blow up, Claire. He wanted the explosion to happen, and he wanted to put Nathan into power. He had a vision of a whole new world, a world without sin." Peter sighed. She reached out automatically, touching his cheek, which was the closest part of him. He turned his face into her touch and smiled. "He's dead now, and I've been keeping an eye on Mom." Claire didn't even want to know how he was doing that, since he'd given every appearance of wanting to avoid New York. "The problem is that he had a silent partner, someone we didn't know about. If we can get to them, things might change. Do we need to take down the whole Company to do that? I sure as hell hope not."
Because his involvement in the process included a whole lot of pain and death, she inferred. Not for the first time, she wondered what had happened to Peter in the aftermath of his explosion. The Peter she'd known before could never kill, or torture, or whatever it was that made him feel so unclean. It couldn't have taken him that long to heal, not if he was like her, and from what she'd gotten from his story, he'd been on his own for a bit before he found Claude. What had he been doing all that time? Where had he gone, who had he met? Or had he just wandered on his own, alone and strange, untouched by the human race? The idea troubled her more than she liked to admit. Peter was so… open, except for the times when he shut down like Fort Knox. Peter needed people. How could he have gone so long without them?
She remembered Hiro Nakamura, who'd given Peter his ability to teleport, and could also travel in time. She had a terrible thought- just how long had Peter been gone, anyway?
She thought that she might never know the truth of it, and that was- okay. Not great, because her curiosity would probably always burn a little higher than was really good for her, but okay. Peter was here now. That was what really mattered.
Peter made a sort of half-awake mumble, and she realized that they'd been sitting silently for a long time- and also that her hand, which had been cupping his scarred cheek, had slid up and was slowly stroking his hair. She snatched her hand back as soon as she realize what she was doing, staring at it in horror like it was some separate entity, instead of part of her. What was she thinking? Well, obviously she wasn't thinking at all, or she wouldn't be sitting here, petting her uncle as if he was Mr. Muggles.
"Mm, don't stop," he mumbled, sleepily. "Feels good."
She stared down at him for a long moment- the long lines of him sprawled out over the couch, his thin, smooth hands, which would never again bear a callous, curled over the black t-shirt covering his lean belly, the stubble that shadowed his jaw because he never seemed to remember to shave, the eyelids that were closed halfway, his long lashes obscuring his dark, intelligent eyes, the slick, ropy scar that ran between them, the dark curls of his hair, still wet from his shower, that had left damp traces on her palms and between her fingers.
Then she lifted her hand to his head once more, and started, carefully, to stroke.
He emitted some sort of pleased rumbling noise, like a great cat, and a smile spread slowly across her face.
MICHAEL DUPONT- NEW YORK CITY
He liked to look in the mirror. Sometimes he'd go into the bathroom and put his hands flat on the counter and lean forward and just look. He'd lean back a while later and his palms would be tingling and he'd go back into the living room and look automatically towards the clock on the wall and realize that he'd been looking for hours.
He liked his face. It was a familiar face, all smiles, harmless-looking. His mom used to say that he had a "sunshine face," because when he was happy he "just brought the sunshine in." But that was a long time ago, he thought. He'd grown up since then. His smiles were different now, and his mom didn't think he brought the sunshine with him anymore.
He had blue eyes, which he hadn't gotten from his mom. He imagined that his dad had blue eyes like this, but the mop of hair was all his, and the freckles. He still looked like a kid, he thought. Like he'd never grown out of kites and toy trucks.
He liked that. It made him look innocent, different from the faces that looked back at him while he slept. Dark eyes looking back at him in the mirror, always dark eyes, every night, no matter what the dream. Sometimes they were kind and smiled like he did, and sometimes they were cold and hard and scary, but they were always dark, dark brown, not like him. Not at all.
He saw them every night, every single night, and if he need to spend a little time in front of the mirror making sure that his eyes were still blue, well, there was no one around to be bothered but him.
(cont. directly in part two of two.)