Title: White Walls
Summary: Claire offers Peter only two choices. Future Heroes fic.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: A look into a rather dark future for Peter and Claire. Spoilers up to 1x11.
Characters: Peter, Claire
Three beeps followed by a hiss of the door opening. That's the only sign that he gets to tell him that he's going to have visitors today. He leans back against his chair, idly wondering if he looks alright. He hasn't combed for months now. He knows he looks like shit.
Without preamble, she steps into his white-walled world. She's still a tiny little thing, he thinks amusedly. All bravado, not so long ago. She wears her hair in a neat bun high up her head. She's wearing a dark-grey suit, and she looks oh-so-somber.
He cocks his head to one side. "Hello, Claire." He says in his most menacing voice, a reference to a joke they used to share, but he can't remember anymore. Somewhere in the facility, there are volumes and volumes of the different personalities and memories that dwelled in Peter.
As he expected, she doesn't smile. He's not used to not reading people's thoughts anymore, and is surprised when he actually wonders what she's thinking right now. "Hello, Peter." She says.
She seats herself across him. Elbows resting on the table, he clasps his hands, unclasps it, and raises up his empty hands questioningly. "To what do I owe this pleasure? I'm sure you didn't just come in here because you missed me."
Her gaze doesn't falter. It brings him some strange sort of comfort that she is not afraid of him. He did not really have to ask, not really: He knows why she's there.
"This is the last time this will be offered to you, Peter." She puts his files on the table between them. He does not look at them, does not even touch them. He knows what's inside. Instead, he smiles some more.
"You're still so beautiful, Claire. Regeneration does wonders for your skin, it really does."
She rolls her eyes in exasperation. If not for security reasons, and that she was the only one that Peter would agree to talk to, she would have given up the task of trying to convince him to be sensible a long time ago. He's been so far gone; she wasn't sure if there was anything left to save in him. "This is your last appeal, Peter. Submit yourself to rehabilitation or they'll execute you."
He's also prone to mood swings. "And I said NO!" at the last word, he slams his right hand into the table, papers flying in a sudden psychic explosion. There is a murderous light in his eyes, and for a few moments there is no sound other than the papers fluttering to the ground, white against white.
Claire says nothing, but he can see that there is an equally dangerous light in her eyes. There are paper cuts on her cheeks, slivers of red rapidly closing upon themselves. "Do you really want to do this, Peter?" she asks, deathly calm. She draws out her handkerchief to wipe off any remaining blood, doing so in small, unhurried actions.
He stands up and flings his chair across the room with one hand, it clatters and the sound echoes in the room. "When did you become like this, Claire?! When did you become such a GODDAMN BITCH?!" he spits this with all the venom he could muster.
She is unfazed, continues on as if nothing has happened. "The process has improved, Peter, there's a ninety percent chance of recovery." At the word recovery there is an altered tone to her voice, and he sees that she's pleading. Like she's saying, Please, don't make this any harder than it already is.
He puts one hand over his face, tired of this old dance. "I don't want to be some fucking government experiment, Claire. Jesus, where's your humanity?"
She is cold and guarded again. "Funny you should ask that. You're the second one to even do these experiments, Peter." She reaches out a hand, and the papers scattered on the floor fly up, arranging themselves into a neat little pile as it was before.
"I had no choice." He states it simply, unrepentant and not regretful.
"Yes, yes you did, Peter." And she seems so vulnerable now, a child hiding under her grown-up clothes, chiding another child. "But you had to be…you had to be…" her mouth twisted into a bitter, ironic smile. "…a hero."
"So why don't you just let them kill me, Claire? Why are you keeping me around if you think I'm just a glorified container of Sylar's psyche?" he paces around the room like a restless caged animal, which he is.
She turns away from his question, eyes fixed on the table. "I ask myself that all the time."
Silently, it amazes them both how closely their lives had once intertwined, to end up trying to whisper secrets to one another from separate cliffs.
"Was it worth it, Peter? Doing what you did? To yourself? To us?"
"I don't know." He pauses from his pacing and leers at her. It's hard to remember what Peter looked like before that condescending leer. "How about you, Claire? Do you like being the government's little patchwork quilt? Taking a little bit Micah, of Teddy, in you? What did they tell you: That you're the only one who can survive that kind of surgery? Is that what Mohinder told you? You think you're better than me? Do they want to perfect it with me, too? To take out what they put in?" the words came rushing out, harsh and fast.
Her eyes are dry, but her voice is full of anger. And even hate. "They were already dead when I went through the process. I did it to stop YOU, Peter. You don't understand because you probably don't remember all of it, but you turned into something else. You thought you could contain him, but you couldn't, not really."
"I remember what happened, Claire." He leans on the table, shadowing her. He feels her tense slightly, feels the small hairs on the back of her hair rise. He grins wickedly. "I remember how you ran."
She closes her eyes. She sees New York burning in her mind's eye, sees all the people she's lost. Her unborn child—Peter's child. "I wasn't strong enough back then." She says softly.
"So you had to turn into something just like Sylar. Just like me."
"I'm not like you. Don't you dare compare me to what you've done, and until now, all you care about are…your abilities." At last, the cool façade has fallen away, and there is a steely look of contempt in her green eyes. He sees that what she sees is a monster, a mockery of what he had been.
They are both standing now, on opposite sides of the white, four-walled room. She stands out in sharp relief out of the unending white—the lines of her jaw, the stray strand of hair falling over her forehead, the tense way she holds her shoulders. Outside this world, he knew that she was someone. Someone important.
Someone who saved the world. Saved the world from him. He feels an insane urge to laugh at the thought.
"I think we're done here." He says finally, unclenching his fist. On cue, the door of his cell hissed open. She stands there for a moment longer, memorizing his face. Rehabilitation or execution, and he has chosen the latter. He knows she will not plead his case: She knows better than anyone how volatile and dangerous he has become. This may be the last time that she will be seeing him. Her gaze finally rests on the scar etched in a slash across his forehead, the reminder of what Peter had done to himself.
"Goodbye, Peter."
She turns to leave.
"Claire."
She pauses.
He inhales deeply, sniffs, looks down. For a moment he looks like he did back then, at the beginning. He thinks, with the part of his mind that is still completely Peter This is the last time that I'm ever going to see her. He knows that the government, and Claire herself, would not risk another visit.
He wants to say, I'm sorry, but something ropes in him. Sylar, all those people he—and himself—killed. Their voices are not kind. He wants to say something to let her remember. It hadn't all be horror and sadness.
And so he says nothing. She looks at him a little while longer, and she looks sad. He is reminded of that other time, he was also in a jail cell…he can't remember anymore. She was…young. And so was he.
How did you know? That you're like me?
When the men in white coats finally come, she watches from behind glass windows. He does not fight, has given up fighting. Somewhere in his head, Sylar is screaming. He smiles to himself, and prepares himself for flight.