Title: Stop Calling
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: PG/K+
Spoilers: The first season finale and 2x01
Warning: Again, SPOILERS for 2x01, unbeta-ed
Characters: Claire, Nathan (mentions of ensemble)
Disclaimer: All NBC's and none of mine. I make no money from this. Also, please remember that fiction is fictional.
Summary: "You need to stop, Claire. This isn't helping either of us."
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They go to the hospital with the others even though the EMT guy fixed her dad up already. She doesn't know any of these people, except maybe the cop, and she can't bring herself to care at the moment why they're hurt. She thinks that probably makes her a bitch, but she doesn't care. She wants to run up to people and scream that the only reason they're even alive is because she just watched her uncle and her father explode, but she can't. She can't, so she pretends to watch the two kids while the grown ups do whatever it is they do in a hospital, and she pretends not to notice her dad's whispered conversation with the Indian-looking guy, and she pretends that she can still feel how every bone in her body broke a few hours ago because it's better than feeling nothing.
There's a window in the waiting room, and she keeps looking out it, not really knowing what she expects to see. There's no sign of the explosion that was the family she rejected, no black spot falling from the sky like a body, no Superman flying over the buildings with someone in his arms. There's nothing but stars and sky, but she keeps staring out the window until the sun comes up. It burns her eyes as she stares into it, but she still doesn't care. She'll heal. It's what she does.
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They don't listen to the news during the ride. She asks, once, for her mom to change it. Her mom gives her a funny look, but does it, and they listen for a while until the first mention of the missing Congressman from New York comes up and her dad changes it back to a music station.
"How about we ignore the rest of the world for a while," he says. "A nice chance to relax for a change, right Clairebear?"
She's feeling generous so she smiles at him in the rear-view mirror and makes herself believe he's doing it to protect her.
She wishes he wouldn't. Protecting her just seems to end badly for everyone.
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Congressmen from New York apparently don't rank that high on California news, so the first thing she does when they finally get a computer in their new "home" is go to his election website. It's stupid, she knows, because it's not like there's going to be anything about the bomb or some message only she's going to understand, like it's some movie or something. It's just a copy of Nathan's speech, which is a good one, she guesses, if you ignore the fact that he gave it while letting his brother and daughter go off to explode half the city.
There's nothing that helps her with whatever it is she thought she needed help with, so she clears the history twice and empties the cache like Zach showed her and doesn't question why she's hiding it and pretends that it's not kind of pathetic when she tries again the next day.
She doesn't know what to do when the message changes.
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She doesn't have his number. She realizes this with a rather hysterical laugh that she's his daughter and yet she didn't bother to get his phone number. There's so many things wrong with that but none of it actually helps her with contacting him.
Not that she really knows what she'd say, anyways. 'Thank you for almost getting yourself killed because I couldn't fire a freaking gun?' 'Sorry I couldn't kill your brother so you had to do it yourself?' 'Hey, by the way, did you happen to notice if Peter managed not to die?' 'How the hell did you survive a nuclear bomb since, hey, been there, done that, not fun?' But she needs to call him. She can't explain why, she just needs to like she needed to find Peter, like she needed to get away from her grandmother.
She doesn't know why she calls Peter's apartment, other than it's just as easy finding his number as it was his address. She doesn't know why she isn't surprised when Nathan picks up the phone, either.
"Peter?"
"No. It's... it's just me. Claire." She manages to resist the urge to add your daughter,' but just barely. The silence on the other end makes her almost reconsider.
"He's not here. You... I can't do this. Don't call again."
It's a long time after he hangs up that she manages to put down the phone.
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She calls again the next night. And the next. And the next. She remembers hearing something about doing the same thing and expecting different results is, like, the definition of insanity, but what's one more freakish thing to add to the list.
"You can't keep calling me."
He always says it. She always ignores him.
"You can always stop answering, you know."
She never says that. But they both always hear it.
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"He moved us to California."
"Do you really think your father wants you telling that to people, Claire?"
"It's like he did it on purpose," she goes on, as if he didn't speak. "Like he knew and wanted to keep me as far away from New York and my family as possible. I bet if we knew Japanese he'd move us across the ocean too." She doesn't actually mean what she says. But she hates it here and she hates that they need to be here and she hates that she can't really blame him for it, but she does anyway.
"Your family. And here I thought you already had a family."
It's the first time she hangs up first. It's not the last.
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She finds a copy of the book Zach gave her in the bargain book rack in some book store she wanders into one day, bored out of her mind because starting a new school at the end of a semester would apparently be too obvious.
"There's a chapter in Dr. Suresh's book about radiation or whatever. He says that the person causing it would be like the eye of a hurricane, which I guess means he might be in pain like Ted was but not actually get hurt. So even if he didn't heal like me he'd live through it."
"I'm well aware that Peter's alive, Claire. You're not telling me anything I don't already know."
"Then why are you acting like he died? You really think he'd want you to-"
"Stop. Just… stop calling me, Claire."
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"I heard, you know. About you resigning. And, you know, about Heidi. I'm sorry."
"Are you really going to keep doing this?"
"He wouldn't want you to throw your life away like this, Nathan. You know he wouldn't."
"I think I know more about my brother than some girl who knew him for a few weeks, related or not."
"Then you know he's going to be pissed at you when he gets back."
"You need to stop, Claire. This isn't helping either of us."
"Yeah, well. I'll move on when you do."
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"Calling isn't going to magically make him answer, you know."
"And drinking yourself into a coma will?"
"Congratulations, you sound just like your grandmother."
She wants to throw the phone against the wall. She wants to scream at him that, yes, his life sucks, but so does hers, and what the hell is so wrong with wanting to miss him together? But she doesn't, because next time he might not answer and then she'd be alone in missing him and she doesn't think she'd survive that. So instead, she asks what she's wanted to ask since she first heard his voice.
"How are you even alive?"
The silence goes on so long that she starts to think he's hung up or fallen asleep or just plain ignoring her, until she hears a sigh on the other end.
"God, Claire... What the hell says I really am?"
She wishes she had an answer for that.