TITLE: Gas Station Roses
AUTHOR: Mnemosyne

Disclaimer: Not mine!
SUMMARY: Claire's sick and tired of being cooped up and alone.
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: General spoilers for S2 through 2x05, "Fight or Flight."
CHARACTER(S): Peter/Claire, pre-Paire, non-canon
WARNINGS: None!
NOTES:
Wow. This is the first story I've written in any fandom in ages, and it feels so weird to be posting it. I feel like I'm posting a story for the very first time! It's nothing earth-shattering or award winning, but hopefully you'll enjoy it. I hope you'll let me know if you do!

Claire took a bite of her toast and stared at the swirling snow on the other side of the window. Technically this little cabin was five miles from Canada, ten miles from Vermont, and about a billion, zillion miles from California, but realistically this little haven in northern New Hampshire was in the middle of NOWHERE. God, it still had DIAL-UP. Maybe it was petulant, but come ON. There were only so many moose a person could count before it got repetitive.

Peter was out. Again. Peter was always out. Okay, that was a little dramatic, but after being shipped to this backwood hideaway almost entirely against her will, Claire felt she was owed a little exaggeration. Peter was ALWAYS out, she was ALWAYS alone, her feet were ALWAYS cold, and she was getting tired of listening to the same radio station all day long. Peter had promised her cable, but it would have to wait until the snow cleared so he could get to the wires and manipulate them the way Micah had taught him. Until then it was all Lite FM, all the time.

Claire sighed and took another bite of toast while Cher sang about turning back time in the background. They'd been in this cabin for three weeks, but it felt like three years. After the fiasco with West in Costa Verde, followed by Peter's miraculous resurrection and Sylar's disastrous reappearance, she'd come to an agreement with her father: go into hiding until Mr. Bennet could find somewhere truly safe for their family to settle down. Mom and Lyle got to stay behind, since they couldn't regrow their limbs and were therefore boring; Claire was the only one who had to disappear. At first she hadn't minded too much. Spend time on the run with Peter Petrelli? Alone? Away from Vile Lyle? What wasn't to like?

Then they'd arrived here, at this godforsaken little cabin. Sure it was nice enough, relatively up-to-date except for the lack of cable TV and a decent internet connection. But it was so REMOTE. Claire hadn't realized how much she valued human companionship until she found herself spending almost every waking moment alone. She couldn't even walk downtown to the corner store, because there WAS no corner store. There was no downtown! Peter would stop every day at a gas station a few towns over to pick up a paper and restock the fridge, but other than that they were completely alone. No one even knew Claire existed, which, okay, was more or less the point; but still. If she stayed at home alone like this for much longer, she was going to go stark-raving bonkers. Peter would come home and find her foaming at the mouth, and wouldn't that be exciting for him?

Her toast was getting cold. She wrinkled her nose and stuffed the rest of it in her mouth, chewing mournfully as she bundled herself tighter in the quilt she'd brought from home; it still smelled like Starbucks and old math homework. She'd never been able to figure out what made her so special that she had to be secluded from the rest of the world. All she could do was heal; Peter was the one who could do everything. He'd even shown her a neat trick he'd picked up in Ireland, where he could shoot lightning out of his palms. When she was feeling particularly glum he'd use it to light the fire, knowing it would make her smile. He was always trying to make her smile, to make up for the fact that he had to keep her hidden away like some kind of princess in a fairytale tower. She tried to remind him that HE was the one who was really special, and she was just an interesting specimen of freakishness; but he never listened.

"Do you know what people would give to do what you can do, Claire?" he'd remind her earnestly. "I can disappear, do whatever I need to do to keep myself safe. You're the one who needs protection."

It was a hopelessly patronizing and slightly chauvinistic viewpoint, but he wouldn't listen to her arguments to that effect, and she always ended up going to bed angry and waking up with a headache.

And it had only been three weeks.

When she tried to interrogate him about what he did all day while she was stuck at home, he'd skirt around the issue and never give her a clear answer. She suspected he was doing something with her father to bring down the Company, but she couldn't be sure. Once or twice she'd caught him talking on his cellphone in hushed tones, but he always cut the conversation short when he caught sight of her. She'd managed to peek over his shoulder at an email he was sending the other week, but all she'd managed to glean was the name of the recipient: Mohinder. A man named Mohinder had been at Kirby Plaza last November. Did he have a power, too? Was he working with her father and Peter? Was he working with Peter alone? What was going on? Why wouldn't anyone TALK to her?

"It's for your own good, honey," her father had told her the one time she'd been able to talk to him since coming here.

For her own good. Yeah, right. Whatever. Let him say that when he came to visit her in her padded room at the local mental hospital, because she was officially going to go crazy. C-R-A-Z-Y. Crazy.

A moose shambled through the snow outside. Six, Claire added to her mental tally.

That did it. She was done. Forget it, she was NOT spending another minute here with nothing to do but count the same moose over and over again. Throwing off her blanket she hopped down from the windowseat and scampered into her bedroom, alight with purpose and energy. She didn't know where she was going to go, but she was not spending another second here. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was better than nothing.

When Peter walked through the front door a half-hour later, she was on her hands and knees on the floor of the den, trying to rescue her mitten from under the couch. "Claire?" he asked, puzzled. "What are you doing?"

Dammit, dammit, dammit. Caught in the act. "I was going to try and get some fresh air," she puffed, straining her arm to reach the wayward mitten. "But I can't... reach... my... glove.. Ooof!"

The couch suddenly lifted off the floor and hovered a couple of feet above her head. When Claire glanced over her shoulder, she saw Peter standing there with a pair of grocery bags in his arms. He had his hand extended and was clearly levitating the sofa for her benefit. "Better?" he asked helpfully.

Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. "Much," she said with a tight smile. She grabbed the mitten and crawled out of the way. "Thanks."

"No problem." The sofa came back to earth and Peter walked into the kitchen. "I saw a moose on my way up the drive. Did you see it?"

She wanted to laugh but settled for a sigh. "Yeah."

"It was HUGE. Biggest one I've seen so far."

"Yeah." She closed her eyes and leaned back with a thump! as her head hit the wall.

"That never gets old, you know? The wildlife. The quiet. It's so different from New York. Don't you think?"

"I'm from Texas, Peter," she reminded him without opening her eyes.

"It's still different, though."

"Yeah, I guess."

She listened to him rustle about in the kitchen for a few minutes more. Eventually things went quiet, and she opened her eyes.

A small bouquet of pink and red roses was hovering in front of her face.

"I thought you might want some cheering up," Peter murmured as she gaped at the bouquet. He was leaning against the wall beside the windowseat, arms crossed over his stomach as he watched her delicately pluck the flowers out of the air. "I know it must get claustrophobic, spending all day in this place with nobody for company and nothing to do. I promise, Claire, I'm trying to make it better for you. We'll work something out. I just need to figure some things out before I bring you into everything that's going on." He had his earnest eyes turned on again, and they melted their way right past all her defenses, just like they always did. "I promise."

Claire blinked and was surprised to feel a couple of tears wash down her cheeks. "You bought me flowers?" she asked stupidly, and felt herself blush at the obviousness of the question.

Peter blushed in return, so she didn't feel like SUCH an idiot for asking. "Lou, at the gas station; his wife has a hot house. She grows roses all year round, and they sell them next to the lotto tickets." He offered her a lopsided smile. "He asked who I was buying them for, and I told him I was getting them to cheer my house up a bit." He tilted his head. "Did it work?"

She smiled and felt a couple more tears streak down her cheeks as she nodded, hugging the little bouquet to her chest.

His answering smile was wider than the last "Have you ever built a snowman?" he asked.

She blinked in confusion. "I'm sorry?"

Peter nodded to the goose down jacket and fur-topped snow boots she wore. "Since you're all dressed up for the snow," he explained. "Do you want to build a snowman? We've still got some daylight left."

Ten minutes ago she'd been planning to run away. Now she was standing here, hugging her flowers and watching Peter change his regular boots for snow boots, and wondering why she'd wanted to leave. Her life was officially weird.

"Did Lou at the gas station say anything else?" she asked a minute later as they stepped out into the whirling snow.

"Only that I should get a woman in my house if I really wanted to cheer it up," Peter answered with a grin, securing the door behind them.

Claire laughed. "What did you say to that?" she teased, running her fingers through the snow drift that butted up against the side of the cabin.

"I told him I'm working on it," Peter answered, utterly straight-faced but with a twinkle in his eye.

Claire grinned. "Good answer," she said with an approving nod before hitting him square in the chest with a snowball.

"Hey!" Peter laughed, dusting himself off. "What-?"

But Claire was already off and running, bounding through the snow on her short but strong cheerleader's legs and feeling ten feet tall. Peter was laughing as he gave chase, and Claire knew he'd catch her even before she made it around the next corner of the cabin. She didn't care; it was nice to run.

She felt Peter's arms close around her waist and he pulled her, laughing, down into the snow. Yes, it was nice to run, she decided, as she stuffed a handful of snow down his shirt and he dropped some down the back of her neck. It was nice to run, but it was nicer to have somewhere to run back to, with a crackling fire, a pair of brown eyes, and the summery promise of gas station roses.

THE END