Title: Wake Up
Author: Emilie
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Claire POV
Rating: G
Summary: He's her hero, he wasn't supposed to end up like this.
Disclaimer: I do no own these characters. No profit is made, no offense intended.
Author's Note: Set after Fallout, so major spoilers for the episode, obviously. I...don't really know what to think with this fic. infovylentcrymz tells me it's good and I'm posting this on her opinion, because I've decided my own opinion of things I write can't be trusted. I'm annoying that way. I hope this is good and that everybody enjoys it!
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When Claire walked into the room and saw Peter lying in the hospital bed, motionless and looking so close to death, she felt as if she'd been struck paralyzed, unable to move. She'd known him for all of a day, not even that, and the sight of him brought down to nothing, needing the support of drugs and machines, tore her apart.
After a moment of standing by the doorway, hands desperately clutching onto her jacket and teeth gnawing at her bottom lip, she forced herself to take a step forward. She found herself walking all the way over to his bed and sitting down without another thought. Being closer, seeing the paleness of his skin and the line connected to his arm, pumping drugs into his system to keep his heart from failing, didn't help her in trying to keep calm. She convinced herself it was the fact that she always hated hospitals. Bad memories of her grandmother dying in one, of Brody.
Hesitantly, she lifted her hand to touch the top of his. She couldn't blame bad memories for the tears that came when she found that he wasn't as warm as he should've been. He wasn't as warm as he was the other night, when he held her arm and stood close to her, protecting her, saving her.
She pulled her fingers away from his skin, tucking her hands in her lap and closing her eyes. It hurt.
"You said you weren't like me." The beeping of the machine beside his bed seemed louder than it should've been, like she was sitting next to a church bell as someone rung it to announce something, a funeral maybe. That made it hurt more. "I guess you were tellin' the truth..."
Or else you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be doing this to me.
She opened her eyes, saw that he was still lying there, comatose and unresponsive, and shook her head.
"You went and saved me and then you left me here, alone." She rested her forehead in her hand, blocking her view of him. Her other hand fussed with a loose thread on his sheets, fingers shaking. "Why'd you have go and do that?"
It was silly of her to think he'd answer her back. It was silly of her to be sitting at the bedside of a man she barely knew and it was silly to want nothing more than for him to open his eyes and look at her and smile, too. The only thing sillier than wanting him to do all of those things was needing him to.
She needed Peter to get better so she wouldn't be alone. It was selfish of her but she did, she needed him to wake up. She needed it to stop hurting.
Finding the strength to look at him again, Claire carefully slipped her hand under his, feeling guilty for a moment. It was such an intimate thing to do. And when her thumb gently circled his knuckles, she stopped and reminded herself that this man was barely more than a stranger to her.
Even then, she didn't move her hand away.
"Can you wake up now?" She asked, trying to force a laugh, trying to act like this was some big joke that was being played on her and that he'd open his eyes and laugh too. Trying to pretend that this wasn't happening to her. "Please, Peter, wake up."
She said his name with the last bit of hope she had left. Lyle didn't remember, Zach didn't remember, her father didn't want her to remember. Peter was it, he was all she had.
When his eyes stayed closed tears finally fell, streaking down her cheeks. She squeezed his hand. Again, no response.
Leaning against the bed and she held his hand even tighter. It was starting to hurt even when she breathed. There were answers out there, answers to the questions that had been eating at her for the past six months and she needed to find them but she couldn't do it alone. She wouldn't.
She didn't allow herself to move away. She wasn't going to leave him, she couldn't. Peter fell five stories, he died, to save her life. There was no way she was going to repay him by leaving him like this. He wouldn't leave her.
Then, like a sign that was so sudden yet so faint, she swore she could feel something against her hand.
She looked down at her hands holding his and, through her tears, watched intently. His finger twitched again, so faint she barely caught it. She choked out a disbelieving laugh that sounded more like gasping for air.
It was probably nothing more a muscle spasm, but it gave her hope. And that was enough for her; it all was and no matter how long it took for him to wake up--he has to--it would be enough for her.
Because he was all she had left.
finis