Title: The Melancholy Heart
Rating: PG-13
Heroes Het Award Winner 2009: 2nd Place Best Linderman Characterization
Characters: Linderman/various, Angela
Disclaimer: I own nothing
Spoilers: Vol 3 Episode 8 - Villains & The War Buddies Graphic Novel.
Summary: In the end all that really matters is love - for behind ever Villain, is a broken heart.
Notes: Thank you to fangirljen for posting about Corinthians and how it fit so well into Heroes (IE Linderman's Casino name) - it inspired me to finish this fic and find a through line.
From 1 Corinthians
The Way of Love
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, [1] but have not love, I gain nothing.
The Melancholy Heart
Daniel Linderman had always had a penchant for brunettes. It was something he couldn't explain, it was just who he was. His first girlfriend, who broke his heart at ten years old, had dark, long locks and matching lashes. When his family moved from Yorkshire, England, to Maine when he was fourteen, the trend continued.
Still, Linderman with all his charms found himself feeling more at ease in the arms of a book, than the arms of a woman. And when at the age of seventeen he manifested and scared his parents so much he was sent from the house, Daniel grew more and more introverted. Five days after his eighteenth birthday he was on his way to Vietnam as a medic, looking for perhaps a purpose to his life. Perhaps his power of healing could help others, perhaps he could help save the world.
War did not help Daniel Linderman. At the age of twenty-two he found himself released from the army feeling even more lost and broken. He had no family, no loved ones and he hadn't been out on a real date that didn't involve a hooker from Hanoi.
That was when he met Linda. Someone must have known what he liked when they sent her and he found himself pouring his heart out to her and holding his head against her chest - wanting to feel the warmth of woman, her smell, her breath. But like most of the people Daniel trusted in life, she betrayed him, tried to steal his power and the next thing he knew, she was dead.
"War is hell," he had told her under by the glow of the campfire light, before they made love for the first time. Now Daniel was beginning to think the war at home was far worse than anything he had seen in Laos - he had no idea how truthful his thoughts would be.
When Daniel Linderman first met his friend Arthur Petrelli's wife, his war buddy, he noticed her beauty, he noticed her long brunette hair, but that was about it. Well, he also noticed how her necklace dangled down her dress when she bent over to pick up her son, but that was something any man would notice and know not to do in front of the woman's husband - especially Arthur Petrelli.
Angela and Daniel became great friends, they all became friends, but she was always Arthur's wife or Charles's confident or even Kaito's lover. And soon all his dealings were with Arthur as Angela's hands in the Company fell more and more into the background, and Daniel's hair went from blonde to white.
It wasn't something Daniel noticed right away, that he started to care for Angela, to love her in a way a man shouldn't about another man's wife. It didn't help that Daniel never seem to be able to catch up to the years he had lost in his own mind, in war, in his ineptitude with women. He had relationships, but they never seemed to work out. He envied Arthur's power and family - he had all the things Daniel didn't and as long as Arthur was in control, he would never fully have them himself. And although he grew into a cocky young man who was confident enough in his charms to have his pick of women, that didn't mean his heart was filled with luck. It didn't mean under the surface it all just fell into place.
He married once, briefly - a blonde, a small girl, she had a kindness of heart that was so refreshing to him, after living in such a world of deceit and anger, blood and death. He still wore the wedding band sometimes out of habit, really out of his sense of lost for her. But she was weak, she had a power and she died in his arms and that was all Daniel would say about it. The life, the madness was too much for her and he watched it take her away from him. Still, Daniel pushed on, putting her memory behind him, cursing the heavens that the gods were out to get him, that he couldn't heal the world one person at a time - what he had already known for so long - that life was cruel. And time passed.
It didn't happen over night, his affection for Angela, after all when they met he was still a boy , as much as he tried to pretend he still wasn't, and she was nearly thirty, married with a child. Out of all the other men in the group, he was actually the closest in age to Angela, four years apart - but here was a woman who had lived the life of an adult far longer than Daniel had and so he seemed younger than his years - that soon would change. Adam would help with that, Adam would help them all in many ways, for his experience knew where people are best fooled - in their hearts.
As for Angela, slowly, day-by-day, Daniel noticed how he felt when when she laughed or gently touched his hand. She was a woman with the beauty that could bewitch a thousand men, a face to launch a thousand ships, but it was more – an intelligence, a fire. Daniel found himself coming to the house to meet Arthur a little bit earlier than he should - just to have a few moments to talk with her in the garden, but that was few and far between, until his glimpse of her was relegated through the crack of Arthur's study door.
Mostly they talked at parties and when the group was at Primatech, but he was always Arthur's right-hand man - and when Adam was put away Daniel's role in the Company became even clearer and his mind the more bitter.
Adam was just another person Daniel had trusted - believed in. It was the last time Daniel would have a role model - he would be his own role model and he never looked back. Daniel would have no children to leave the world to and so he would have to do something that counted - that meant something - to save the world at any cost.
In Vegas, at the Corinthian hotel, Mr. Linderman was always top dog - he had created the world and the power he wanted, on his own terms. But back in New York he was still subject to Arthur's power - as much as in public and in court they pretended otherwise. And that meant looking at Angela as if she was a doll in a glass case. He had to sit by and watch while Arthur destroyed her, took her life, her children and let her world crumble. But maybe it was best she didn't remember any of the pain, yet the more he watched it happen, the more it put a sick feeling in his stomach. The same feeling in his stomach Arthur had made him feel during the war - after all it was Arthur Petrelli who had opened the door to the war Daniel Linderman still fought . He was the man who had made the first push - "For the greater good, " he said.
But it was when Daniel Linderman watched Arthur do it to her in person, take away her memories like that - so violently, as she held the knife in her hand, helpless, he couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't watch the madness destroy another life - he couldn't watch Arthur destroy her.
It also didn't get past Mr. Linderman that with Arthur out of the way, he would be the one with the power, the one in control. But he still let her decide, he gave her the choice.
She was shocked to see him in her house. "Arthur's downtown," she told him, always assuming anytime Daniel was at her home, it was to do business with Arthur - that was of course the roles they now played. And after he made his case, she let him place his hands on her head and their fate was sealed.
"Nathan!" Angela exclaimed, her memories now restored - she knew all the truths.
"To save Nathan, he has to die." He told her through the tears of his own pain for her. "It's the only way."
"Yes." She nodded her head through tears. "I know."
And he watched Angela put a set of wind chimes in the window. He saw a glow leave her eyes and it scared him.
"You should leave now, Daniel." She told him coldly and she almost mechanically went back to cutting her carrots, hard and fast. The sound of the metal hitting the wood of her cutting board was all that could be heard in the now silent house.
Then one night, after Arthur was gone and the bomb plot was well underway - Daniel came to call - he had asked to see her.
The living room was dark and it was obvious she knew Daniel was standing behind her. The small lights in the room made Angela's house almost look golden.
"Thank you for coming in the back; I can't chance Nathan seeing you here." She turned slightly. "You understand."
"Of course." He took slow steps into the living room.
Angela turned around and looked at Daniel straight on.
Linderman noticed the look in her eyes. It was that same look he saw in her kitchen months before - a deep sadness. "Angela…" He looked for the words. " Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Do for me?"
"I mean to say, I..." He took a few steps. "You've seen so distant sometimes, far removed, I just thought..."
"Did you really think that twenty odd years of bad memories flooding back to me at one time wouldn't affect me in some way?" She turned away from him for a moment. "It's a lot to deal with; I'm dealing with it in my own way."
"I suppose I took the scars from one place and placed them in another." He paused. "I am sorry I did that to you, Angela."
"Don't be sorry. Please." Her eyes moistened and she looked at him again. "You set me free. I needed to know the truth. You saved me, you saved Nathan's life, Daniel. It was what had to be done."
"You know in times like these, sometimes friends need each other. To be there for each other." He walked to her and put his hand on her shoulder and his eyes glittered with charm.
"I want to be there for you, if you'll let me?"
She nodded her head and walked away from Daniel. "A woman such as yourself has needs, Angela. With Arthur gone. You're still young, sexy -"
Angela smirked. "Are you advising me to take a lover, Daniel?"
"Well, more like.. ..Offering up my services." He smirked and raised his eyebrows at her. " If you're so inclined?"
"Daniel?" She paused and looked at him dumfounded. "You're propositioning me?" She eyed him in her way.
He smirked. "Well, I wouldn't use those words - I'd think something..."
Angela walked away.
"I'm sorry. I've overstepped my bounds."
"No." Angela paused for a moment. "You're fine." She poured herself a drink. "I'm flattered." But she didn't sound like she was about to say yes, far from it. She took a swig of her drink.
"Don't you miss it?" He said softly and seductively.
"I'm mourning my husband, Daniel." She had a cold look in her eyes. "There are a lot of things I miss."
"After what he did to you - that man never deserved you, Angela."
Angela turned and snapped at Daniel. "Can't I mourn the loss of the man he used to be - can't I mourn the life I had? Don't I at least deserve that!?"
"Even if it wasn't a life at all?" He got into her face. "Filled with lies and manipulation - he kept you in a cage, Angela."
"You think I don't know that!?" The emotion came to her eyes and her mouth sputtered as she held it in. "But it was still my life and it's gone - I wanted to learn the truth - I asked for it. And I wouldn't do it any differently. But that doesn't mean I can't mourn for it and the husband I lost - the love- even if he died a long time before I killed him. Can't I mourn for that?"
Daniel's eyes turned to compassion. "Yes. Yes. Yes, you can."
Angela nodded her head through her tears, "Thank you." And she found herself leaning closer and kissing Daniel - but it was more of a needy kiss - it had passion, but it appeared sad for some reason - on both sides of the fence.
"Angela," Daniel said breathlessly. "I love..."
Angela put her finger to his mouth. "If you tell me you love me, this won't happen." She held in her emotion like it was about to burst out her ears. "I never want to hear another man tell me he loves me."
Daniel nodded his head to let her know he understood.
It was awkward at first. Even though there wasn't that much of a difference between their ages, even now Angela couldn't help but see Daniel as that boy she first met in her foyer. And compared to the last twenty years of her life, he made love like a young man, but with a sense of sadness. It didn't leave Angela's head that Daniel could have had any showgirl or young cocktail waitress he wanted. Still, here he was in her bed - the bed she once shared with Arthur. Still, they both needed each other - they needed a few moments of happiness - at one point, they both even laughed. For it was more like two friends and not lovers - even though she knew it meant more to him than it did to her. They were both broken, lost souls - two people feeling let down by love and the world. They were human.
Daniel woke up the next morning to an empty bed. He heard the shower and knew he hadn't been abandoned. He felt pretty satisfied with himself. One didn't know, even Daniel himself, if it was his night with Angela, or the fact that he had officially taken over every role in Angela's life that Arthur once filled - the only thing next was a father figure to her children.
He got dressed and was putting on his jacket when she came out of the bathroom in her black and white robe, her hair was wet and she held a hair brush in her hand - her face was rigid, half cold and half awkward.
"I didn't want to wake you." Angela told him, gripping the brush in her hand.
"No. No. It's quite alright." He put his tie around his neck. "I wasn't leaving."
She awkwardly smiled. "It might be best if you did." There was a short pause, before she corrected herself. "Nathan is picking me up for lunch, he can't find you here." She averted her gaze for a moment.
"Of course." He nodded his head. "Angela..."
"This can't happen again." She interrupted him, firm and solid – looking at him dead in the eye.
Daniel took a deep breath. "I know."
Angela looked as if she wanted to say she was sorry, but she didn't.
Daniel picked up his shoes and sat down on the bed to put them on.
Angela sat down next to him. "You are and always will be my dear, dear friend." She set her hand on his hand and leaned in. She smirked and leaned closer to his ear. "It was lovely."
He took her hand and whispered in her ear. "To be ever the more cliche, so are you." He then kissed her on the cheek, which reminded her more of the man he used to be and it was surprising to her, and they parted as adults.
She would never love him like she did Arthur and he would never care for anyone like he did her - as much as he wanted to, it just wasn't his fate. Perhaps, it was just the idea of her that intrigued him - of what she represented – the life he always wanted – the life Arthur had.
And as he left her house he remembered something Angela asked him before she fell asleep.
"Do you think love can exist if it's only one sided?"
"I don't know."
"I don't think it can." She said with her eyes sleepy. "Not anymore." She paused. "Love is far too overrated for my taste, these days."
And Angela slowly fell asleep and dreamed of the future.
In the present, Daniel Linderman stepped into the car he had called for himself and wondered what was worse, the life of false love he had broken Angela from, or the life of no love he seemed to have doomed her to. All he knew was she was like him now and there was nothing he could do about it.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
~Corinthians