The Myth of Second Chances
Part 1
Of Small Apocalypses The rain hits him, absurdly precise, like someone up "Claude
Rains, you are surrounded. Come out immediately with your hands up-"
the megaphone-amplified voice comes to an awkward halt – "come out And when the laugh crosses into howl territory, reality sinks in fully. No illusions, no apologies. Just the truth. The rain feels sharp, slicing into his skin unrepentantly, mingling with sweat and blood – something But it's not just a myth that when you're about to die, everything feels more And
he doesn't know if it's a blessing or a curse, or some mocking
combination of the two – but it's not like he's got the time to figure
that out, now does he? He stops laughing when he runs out of air, but the rain keeps pouring. When Claude was eight years old (and no, he wasn't actually It was hot and dry, and when night fell he thought that nobody would ever find him. That he'd just disappear. And he thought that it would be far more fun to die in the rain.
A sharp bark of laughter escapes his throat, bitter with irony.
---
Claude Rains runs, and the world burns.
And he'd stop to laugh at this cliché-ridden, epic mess of a soap opera, if it wasn't all so painfully, surreally real.
When he sees the mushroom cloud, painted like a frozen, grotesque comic in the distance, he forgets to breathe, and he can't look away.
He should feel something – anything – but he just stands there, transparent to the world, staring numbly at a torn horizon.
It starts to rain, just a slow dribble at first, soon washing over the world like somebody has turned on a global fire sprinkler.
The world burns, and Claude Rains doesn't stop running.
---
The real kicker about the end of the world is that it's not really the end at all, now is it? It just likes to pretend it is. But the world, in all its supposedly 'ended' glory, is still there, burnt and scarred and wholesomely pathetic – a broken toy still clinging to the illusion of survival, still trying to keep going as if nothing happened, expecting everyone to do the same; like some deranged, deformed Energizer Bunny. No goal or future – just extended battery-life.
The apocalypse – not all it's cracked up to be.
Claude drowns lousy metaphors in piss-tasting beer – a lethally effective mixture that helps murder risky lines of thought, that strangles feelings, leaving him comfortably hollowed out and blank.
It's funny really, how people are so desperate to cling to any promise of normality, to anyone who's willing to hold them tight and tell them that everything will be alright, sweetie. It was just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.
It doesn't even have to be a very good liar.
Even in this shoddy, dusty, pitiful excuse for a bar, people are praying to the television – empty, hypnotized shells searching for electronic salvation. Peter's (all dead now – another thought that he chokes the life out of with a well-placed swig) firm-jawed, slick wanker of a brother, recently elected congressman, talks about strength and unity and hope; hypocritical bullshit wrapped in a neat, polished-to-shine package, spoon-fed across the nation and worldwide.
Strength. Unity. Hope.
Each word more illusory, more insulting than the last.
And it's the last one that gets him.
Claude snorts, shoves a greasy bar patron out of the way, and slams the door on his way out.
---
Claude runs. Doesn't spend more than one night in one place, fuelled by old ghosts and phantom paranoia.
It doesn't matter. He doesn't matter.
There are days when even he forgets he exists.
---
He hitches an invisible ride with a fuzzy-looking man who vaguely resembles a washed-out, overweight cocker spaniel.
'Leaving on a Jet Plane' plays on the radio, and the man stops the car at the side of the road, hands shaking as he reaches for his bag, taking out an old handgun.
Claude's reflexes are dulled by inertia, giving him no chance to respond as the cocker spaniel man puts the gun in his mouth and, at an amateurish and crooked angle, still manages to successfully splatter his brains all over the windshield.
When Claude goes through his stuff (never been the most sensitive type, and the nuclear holocaust didn't help him much on that front), he finds a newspaper clipping depicting a young cocker spaniel lady, smiling awkwardly at the camera, blissfully unaware of the article title.
America Remembers.
'Leaving on a Jet Plane' is playing on the radio.
And Claude is tired of running.
---
New York doesn't smell of strength or unity or hope. Nor does it smell of death or destruction or loss.
Nothing poetic like that.
It smells of sewers in mid-repair, of sweat and dust.
Claude moves through the streets, some too empty, others too crowded. There's a faint hysteria hovering in the air, a neurotic static electricity that bounces off people, seeps into the walls of wrecked buildings and lingers.
Little shrines to the dead decorate the street corners, now vacant.
The shadows of evaporated people are painted crudely over sidewalks.
He's a ghost walking a half-dead city, and isn't that just bloody fitting.
The world's sense of dramatic irony has left the Deveaux building mostly intact. The old rooftop is covered in white dust, sprinkled in rubble, providing a twisted artistic view of the broken city.
The tacky cherub statues are still there, guarding the purposeless circle (he'd hunt down the architect personally if he didn't think kitsch karma would catch up with the poor sod eventually), and not for the first time he gets the distinct impression that the angelic little bastards are laughing at him, mocking the world.
Cute, that. Really cute.
He paces back and forth, hand at the back of his neck, struggling against the countless flashes of memory tied to this place, plaguing it like a silent, bitter melody.
A few steps towards the ledge and there's Bennet, wearing his awkwardly stoic rookie shell, looking down at his newest 'assignment' like she's a tiny alien. A tiny alien he would die to protect.
Don't get too close.
Maybe he was the one who should've listened to that infinitely useful piece of advice. But he was never great at following orders, anyway.
Step behind the pigeon coop and Peter's making his ridiculous 'determined' face, like a puppy with digestion problem, but still managing to snap the stick in half as if it were a toothpick. And he remembers lighting up from the inside for the first time in years. Pathetic, how strong an effect human contact that didn't reek of use and abuse (which isn't to say Peter and he didn't have their… moments) had on him. How hope – a quaint, uninvited sense of purpose – tingled at his fingertips no matter how many times he'd told it to scoot – or beat it with a stick.
A swift turn and then the taser dart is penetrating his skin – shocking and a raw blast from the past – shattering his memory piggy bank in all its repressed glory. And this is what happens when you give in to hope, kids – it comes back to taser you in the arse.
Claude stops in his tracks as he suddenly realizes –
The pigeons are gone.
It's just an insignificant minor detail – he didn't really expect them to stay. And what are a few useless birds in light of a million lives erased in a single moment, anyway? But finally the foundations of frosted numbness holding him together – dead to the world, dead to himself – shake, and all the guilt and the anger and the blinding pain rise up in a fucking tsunami, tearing out of his lungs, clawing and breaking and strangling him until he can barely see, until his throat burns.
He slams his fist against the building wall hard enough to crack bone.
Blood on his knuckles and white pain to numb all other sensation, if only for a moment – and he slides down to the floor, trying to find the will to breathe.
Claude shuts his eyes and releases an empty laugh that echoes against broken walls.
There's no place like home.
---
He wakes up in cold sweat, an intrusive sound grazing against a battered consciousness. It's late in the evening – night even, and he's not alone.
Measured footsteps, careful yet drawn with quiet, resolute assurance.
He stays still – fucking statuesque – but his heart is beating so fast it can stop any moment, blood overheating in his veins until everything's at boiling point, flooding his vision in violent reds.
Then again, he doesn't have to look to know who it is. Eight years together and seven apart will do that to you.
Christmas cards were in short supply this year, so it's nice to know the Company hasn't forgotten him after all.
Rookie's back on the hunt.
And Claude may be an animal, but he won't be trapped like one.
It's far too late for hide-and-seek now. It's a whole different game, with a different set of rules. He gets to his feet, tails the dark silhouette without making a sound, barely even breathing. If there's one thing his illustrious career in Primatech Paper had taught him, is that there's a perilously thin line between hunter and hunted. A balance that hangs on the thread of a single misstep.
It's a balance his old partner is well-familiar with, and a few moments later Bennet stops abruptly, turns at just the right angle – bloody disturbing how efficient the son of a bitch has gotten – but the deafening thumping of blood in Claude's ears wins out, and he launches himself at his former partner, tackling him down to the dusty roof surface. He drowns Bennet's groan of surprise with a punch as an old familiar beast stirs at the back of his mind, burning through his chest, bloodthirsty and vengeful, unnervingly quiet.
In that moment, he's nothing but instinct and pain. A second blow to the jaw stuns Bennet enough for Claude to find the gun holstered under Bennet's jacket, to pull it out and press it against his chin.
Finger brushes the trigger.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
For a second, the roof is engulfed in dead silence.
"Claude."
The upside of invisibility is that he doesn't have to talk back, doesn't have to acknowledge.
The downside is that the bastard can't look him in the eye so he can kill him properly.
It would be so easy. To let his finger slip and put an end to this sorry game, to wipe his past into a clean, sterile slate in one instant.
He shoves the gun harder against bone – how about a fuckin' reaction, mate? You think I'm playin' here? – finding perverted pleasure in the wince it gets, the sped-up breath, the first genuine flash of fear in the Bennet's eyes; not quite the Company-manufactured robot he likes to pretend he is.
None of it reaches Bennet's voice. "Are you going to kill me invisible?"
"You think you deserve better, friend?"
Only hitched panting passes between them, and when Bennet finally speaks, his voice barely rises over the wind.
"No."
Funny. It's the only answer he would have accepted.
He hasn't been real for months, and making an exception now, and for the son of a bitch who betrayed him, who efficiently and obediently ripped him apart as soon as his masters barked the order - well, there aren't really any words to describe the idiotic hypocrisy of that, are there?
And idiotic hypocrite he apparently is – or more likely, a sentimental moron, which is even worse - because he barely even thinks about it, just shimmers in; feels his spine tingle at the sensation - alien in its familiarity - at the sudden exposure.
He may be the one with the gun, but he feels naked. And Bennet's clear, penetrating gaze makes it much worse.
"Thank you," Bennet says after a bout of silence. "I appreciate it."
Claude gives an ugly snort. Good to know that little Noah Bennet hasn't forgotten his sodding manners. Rookie is nothing if not polite.
And Bennet is still looking, straining his neck against the pressure of metal, breathing hard but still looking right into him.
This was a mistake. He should've stayed invisible. Should've let the gun go off like it was bloody supposed to.
Bit too late for that now.
Now he's supposed to think and consider and remember - and he can't even tell whose heart is beating out of control, whose breathing sounds like an asthmatic dog in mid-seizure. Without the wall they're not company man and special, not hunter and hunted. Just old friends with too much blood between them.
So yeah, it would be easy to shoot. So easy it's downright impossible.
He keeps the gun pressed hard for a few more moments – let the bastard sweat – before tossing it a few feet away; could keep it to himself, but unfortunately he's allergic to firearms.
Now what?
Protective layer of invisibility gone, and there's nothing to shield him from the world. He's suddenly aware of sensation and it's like a resurrected limb, or a straight razor sliding on oversensitive skin. The clear night air is freezing; the moon is brighter - more blinding than looking straight into the sun.
Bennet's expression changes – a short-lived moment of relief, and then something else. Bennet moves – reaches out with the kind of assured hesitation only he has the capacity for, and fingers stroke his cheek – Claude doesn't – can't - react, feather-light touch igniting a tension that threatens to set him on fire.
Bodies pressed together, mouths too close and craving an intimacy that shouldn't even exist. Nothing should exist between them, not even vacuum, but his nerves are on end, an ache going through his bones and muscles, drenched in separation and desperation and need. Lips all but brushing against each other.
Oh, that's just bloody beautiful.
Seven odd years on the run are bound to fuck you up pretty damn royally. And the sad and maddening thing is that seven can't erase eight. Only highlight them.
But then the trance breaks and he bolts away from Bennet, instantly sliding back into the land of the see-through. Cowardice – now there's familiar ground.
Bennet stays still in his horizontal position, looks around. Then gets to his feet, brushing the dust off his clothes in a manner so damn calm that Claude struggles with the impulse to knock him down again, just to watch the wanker's mask slip. But he also knows him well enough to read past the composed shell, see the awkward apprehension he's so keen on hiding. "Claude? Are you alright?"
He doesn't dignify that with a response.
"I just want to talk," only a mild waver disrupts impeccably reasonable words.
"Not much in the mood for a chat," he spits out in reply, building more distance, more space between them. "Sorry."
"I'm not with the Company anymore." It shouldn't come as a surprise, considering he's not wearing the signature suit - and the gun isn't Company-issued either - but it still hits him hard. Hard enough that his mind goes blank, short-circuited at the implications and possibilities. "Not for a few months now."
"Don't care who you're with, long as you're not anywhere near me."
He's lying, but not really, and it's not like miscommunication is the greatest of their problems. He doesn't have the patience or mental serenity to try and maneuver through the web of foreign emotion that Bennet's reappearance has so effortlessly triggered.
"This is bigger than us," Bennet stresses, and there's the zealous annoyance that marked him as Company boy scout through and through, resurfacing stronger than ever. The big picture. The greater fucking good. "We need to-"
A flash of enraged movement and Claude's hands are entangled in Bennet's coat, face twisted in a snarl.
"There's no 'we'. And only thing you need to do, rookie, is get the hell off my roof, before I throw you off. Don't think I'll be quite this sentimental next time."
He shoves Bennet away and waits. For a stupid split second he hopes that Bennet stays anyway, that his stubborn, bullheaded streak wins this one – but Bennet just sighs, turns, and leaves without a word.
And then it's just him and the other ghosts.
---
The news is particularly charming this morning. Vice President Petrelli dramatically informs the world about a genetic mutation that allows people to develop special abilities, and weaves a fairy tale about a man named Sylar - the monster who annihilated New York.
Just like that, the Company is becoming a joke - a childish, nostalgic little dream.
And reality is swallowed by a much bigger nightmare.
---
His dreams reek of death. At least, the better ones do.
The nightmares are the ones that bring back hope. They're warm and soft and smell like family. They lie and tell him that someone cares, that he matters - and he almost believes it. There's a whisper tickling his ear, saying something reassuring, a hand touching his cheek and he wants to reach out -
And then he wakes up alone in debris, inhaling more dust than air.
He meets the end of the world anew each morning. It doesn't get any prettier.
He thinks about running away – Europe, Asia, the fucking North Pole even – but they're nothing but stray, lost daydreams. It doesn't matter anymore. He doesn't get much further than the roof these days.
His hand hurts. At first he thinks he can ignore it – just a soddin' hand, don't be a baby - but soon enough it starts feeling like somebody shoved a bloody firecracker under his skin.
Punching walls, while great fun for the whole family, apparently isn't the healthiest of activities.
Finding himself a doctor would be a good, logical decision, but that would mean letting the world see him, and he would rather die. Besides, seeking proper medical attention lacks the pastoral post-apocalyptic survival appeal.
He raids a pharmacy and a liquor store instead, and dulls the pain in a vicious haze.
---
The second time Bennet pays him a visit, Claude almost throws him off the roof.
Sadly, the emphasis is on the almost, not on the throwing. And much as he'd like to blame his damaged hand for the performance anxiety, it really comes down to the fact that Bennet would break permanently, and even though the bastard more than deserves it - that's something Claude just can't have.
He still pushes him in the vague direction of the ledge – it's the thought that counts, and it gives him some miniature degree of control over the situation. "I told you not to come back." Whatever threatening note he intends is lost underneath a hoarse and uneven voice. His rage feels hollow, mechanical. "Thought you were good at followin' orders."
"Actually," Bennet corrects, "you just said you wouldn't be quite so sentimental."
Claude snorts, finding a momentary comfort of familiarity in Bennet's anal-retentive observation of the day. "It's called readin' between the lines. Useful skill to have, actually, especially when death threats are involved."
He takes a few steps to side, and Bennet's gaze manages to follow his movement despite lack of visual aids.
"If you wanted to kill me, you would've done it by now." And it's simple statement of fact, not speculative in the least. He'd love to prove Bennet wrong – wrap his fingers around his neck and choke that calm, impassive air right out of him - but the painfully aggravating truth is that the son of a bitch is right.
He can't kill him. He can't even seem to hurt him right.
"Maybe I was just waitin' for an opportunity to make it more painful. Did you think of that?"
Bennet frowns, briefly looks away. But if Claude's rusted ability to read his old partner is still reliable, the gesture is less about discomfort and more about tactical regrouping of thoughts.
"It was never the same, after-" Bennet pauses, giving his first genuine stutter, "after you were gone." Oh, you pathetic little coward. An ugly sneer marks Claude's face, and rage finds a comfortable home again, settling in a cold burning somewhere between his hand and his chest. Bennet is oblivious, attempting a smile, "Quieter, for one."
Grinning darkly, Claude leans against the wall - standing upright is becoming a chore – shuts his eyes and clings to the childish notion that maybe if he pretends that Bennet doesn't exist, it will come true.
But Bennet, ignorant bastard that he is, just keeps on talking, and existing by extension. "Claude, I -" he takes a deep breath that turns into a throat-clearing cough, "I realize that you probably hate me right now, I understand that, but-"
A jolt of agonizing energy goes through him, and before he can even feel himself move, he's in Bennet's face, blood pumping to a frenzied beat.
"Oh, you understand, do you?"
Bennet's face goes carefully blank, shadowed by apprehension - beginning to construct an answer even now, because clearly there's no situation that's beyond Noah Bennet's precious control.
"You understand what it's like to choke on your own blood? Or to feel like you're just fadin' away with nothing to hold on to, and know that you'll just be conveniently forgotten by everyone you ever knew or cared about? And I bet you understand what it feels like to have your best friend stab you in the back, too - like you're just a dumb animal to be taken out the back and shot," his breath comes out in splatters and he focuses on the spikes of pain shooting through his arm, just lets the dull, twisted sensation guide him in a blind labyrinth of torn feelings - only stopping for a moment to take in Bennet's rapidly paling face, forcibly controlled breathing. To feel that he's getting a reaction that isn't calm and thought-out and fucking programmed.
"I trusted you. I thought you were better than them, but you just had to prove me wrong didn't you? Every bit the obedient little soldier they made you to be. Just followin' orders and collecting your biscuit. And now that arrangement isn't working out for you anymore, so you expect to kiss and make up, is that it?" He stops to collect a wild pant, to grab a handful of Bennet's shirt and spin him towards the broken landscape. "And that - you think that changes anything? That you just get to collect a get-out-of-shooting-your-partner-free card? That it earns you a clean slate?"
Bennet has the good sense to keep silent, at least, looking all but monochromic. A tremor shoots along Claude's skin and everything slows down. He releases his grip on Bennet's shirt, giving a stark grimace. "Just because everything else is fucked doesn't mean we get to make nice. Don't know what your mum taught you mate, but that's not how the world works."
He steps back, makes a strangled noise under his breath, and he doesn't know if it's a laugh or a huff or something that lacks human definition.
"So no, I don't hate you, rookie," his rage settles into a low hum in his bloodstream, energy seeping out until everything becomes all muted and faded around the edges, until he forgets what the point of this whole rant was, and why he's even supposed to care. "I just wish I never knew you. Would've saved us both a lot of trouble."
Bennet is rooted in place like a bleeding statue, gaze firmly directed downwards. Like a misbehaving child who's been put in the corner. Incredible - just fucking incredible. He eventually draws a breath that makes Claude suspect he hadn't actually been breathing through the entire lecture, and when he speaks it's his slow, reasonable voice again, "You don't mean-"
Claude throws his last reserve of energy into a violent shove, one that almost reintroduces Bennet to the roof surface, though unfortunately he manages to regain balance at the last moment. "Get the hell away from me. Or is that too subtle for you to understand? Do you want me to draw you a nice little diagram?"
Bennet doesn't ask for a diagram, and has the decency to look wounded before walking away.
Claude pretends the roof doesn't feel emptier when he's gone.
He's gotten bloody good at pretending.
---
In the seven years he'd played dead, Claude had done his share of downright idiotic things - but getting piss drunk was never one of them. Survival instinct played too strong a part, memories of horror holding a constant terrifying promise.
Self-preservation only goes so far, though, and self-destruction is far more appealingly human.
He can barely see reality these days; stuck between dark shivers and the frozen spider-web of pain that's spread from his hand to his entire body. Drinking doesn't help much, and it isn't supposed to.
He sees faces.
There's little Claire-Bear with the smile that could melt planets and ignite supernovas on the edge of the universe, running towards him with her arms stretched out for a hug. Demanding elaborate magic tricks from 'uncle Cwaude', which was somehow the nicest thing anyone had ever called him.
Every person he's ever bagged and tagged, pleading him to help them understand - to tell them what being Special means, and he has to tell them it means living in fear and hiding, being hunted and running until there's nothing left of you but a thin human shell. If you're lucky, that is.
And then there's Peter, lost expression somehow punctuated by that stupid hair; stubborn hope alight in brown eyes, mingled in frantic desperation; so bright and so close, looking to him for answers, for help.
A shining, burning gallery of his cowardice.
Masochism is nothing innovative, but it works.
---
"You know," Bennet's carefully leveled words ride at the very edge of his awareness, slipping in between devastating tides of hot and cold, of pain that's either too distant or too close, "soon you'll have to wrap yourself in bandages to be seen. I can bring toilet paper, if you'd like."
He moves his lips, maybe to talk, maybe to laugh, maybe to scream - but nothing comes out, so he doesn't bother – licks the sweat off them instead; it's more bitter than it should be, like seawater and blood.
Maybe he'll just go away on his own.
"Claude?"
Bennet's really too persistent a sod for his own good. A few inquisitive steps closer, and Bennet's infuriatingly clear voice interrupts his beauty rest yet again. "Are you there?"
He doesn't even attempt speaking this time, instead tries to make as little noise as possible, be the perfect invisible man - but Bennet somehow gets nearer without asking for directions, closer and closer until his foot bumps into Claude's knee, triggering an onslaught of intrusive sensation and his jaw snaps shut at the sudden contact, a hiss shuddering through his teeth.
"You're hurt," Bennet determinedly states the obvious, kneeling beside him and bringing his hand to Claude's forehead.
"Don't touch me," he grits out, lamely attempting to push the invasive bastard away, only to encounter a white paralyzing shock of pain.
It's got to be a truly miserable state he's in, if he can't even punch bloody Noah Bennet in the face.
Bennet concludes his uninvited inspection and stands up. "Hold on. I'll be right back."
Claude hopes he won't, that he'd be decent enough to just leave him be; let him fade away. But since when has Bennet been anywhere near decent?
The cold air bites into his flesh, digs in, cruel and unforgiving. He longs to disconnect entirely, to go away and never come back, but he can't. Not yet.
Footsteps again, but now with an accompanying echo, and when they close in he sees two pairs of feet. "Still a stubborn son of a bitch, huh?" It's a different voice, so familiar - impossibly familiar, as a matter of fact - but infected by a dark tinge of weary bitterness.
He groans and forces himself to look up. Shadows and bleak moonlight make way for an ugly scar splitting a pretty face; eyes that are aching to be hollow, touched by too much death.
Claude must be trapped in one of his vividly lucid nightmares again, because Peter Petrelli is alive.
He almost reaches out, needing to feel - but Peter has drawn back already, turning to Bennet.
"He needs a doctor. A real doctor. We don't have much time."
Bennet spares him a glance, nods. "Let's go, then."
He tries to fight them - last thing he needs is help from Bennet and a bloody empathic zombie - but he's about as effective as a lethargic squid - a winning combination of dizziness and nausea sends him over the edge, and he ends up finding grim satisfaction in throwing up on Bennet's shoes.
There's a mild sigh, and the world spins one last time before turning a distinctive shade of black.
--- The megaphone is having a break, and Claude takes a moment to He
tastes rain water trapped against his tongue, and it's better than the
best champagne he's ever had. Then again, he's always been of the
opinion that champagne is pretentious-wanker exclusive. But you can hardly expect rain to taste like beer. Some asshole takes up the megaphone again, and time runs preciously short. When Claude was fifteen years old, he turned invisible. Ever
had one of those dreams when you were a kid, that you're all alone in
the world? Everybody just went poof. You can do anything you like,
anything at all – the whole world is your playground. But there's no one else. And
it's the greatest fun you can ever have, until you get tired of it and
realize you don't want to play anymore. But you're trapped in it. And
you're completely terrified. Claude never woke up.