Hamistagan
Warnings/Spoilers: Anyone who has seen episode 1x17 is good to go. I think that's it. Oh, yeah, adultery. But who cares about that, anyway?
Summary/Notes:Despite "In the Winter Cold", this was the first Heroes piece I wrote, or more precisely, I wrote pieces of this before "In the Winter Cold".
Disclaimer: Don't own the characters or Heroes, if I did, it'd probably be called The Bennet Whoring Show. So, written out of purely fun purposes.
Noah Bennet drives.
He drives home from his work, where he has been for so long he's forgotten how it was like not to be at the Company, not to lie to Sandra.
For the whole time he's been living his life at the Company – a lifetime (Claire's lifetime) – he's been doing it dutifully, with a sense of righteousness, never once stopping to think about the other side – except the other side was right beside him, really. Invisible to all, true, but he could sense Claude. Had imagined he could sense him during most of his days, in this last seven years.
He was a family man, a father figure, and yet, he got out of his comfortable bed, this perfectly safe environment that was his house every morning, with a gun and a purpose – a purpose that kept getting rather blurry as the years went by (especially that year, the year resumes itself as the sounds of Claire's cries at night and the sounds of a gunshot coming far away, from a distant bridge) - , and so, sometimes, when the mood would strike him and he'd actually be admired at himself by realizing he still had something resembling a conscience whatsoever, he'd ask himself at what side of the line he stood: on these days, he'd wonder. He was a company man with an assignment to fill, only somewhere along the line, –
Well, what if it was Claire?
- he wasn't anymore. Somewhere, sometime during all these years, life was getting harder and assignments were also getting harder to see as simply his duty, –
You're just gonna off me like nothing?
- somewhere, the gun attached to his side started getting heavier and the lies no longer fit on the tip of his tongue.
I'm just a paper salesman.
Time passed and the thrilling sensation of greater good passed too, replaced by a strangely familiar restlessness, that his subconscious could swear had a name, if only his conscious would allow it to be acknowledged, -
Evidently, I think you're a better man than they do.
- and if he were to be honest with himself, there was always something (someone) missing, at the passenger sit as he drove (like now, Bennet looks at his side, imagining an invisible man. How do you imagine an invisible man, see him?), at the Company hallways as he walked (the quiet steps no longer there), even at his own home (one, two, three, four people at the table, always seeming like there should be a fifth one, sitting at the far side of it. Some days, Bennet would look over and fantasize about a light breathing only he could hear – a light breathing meant only for him to hear. On those days, Noah wouldn't let Sandra get near him).
He stared at the night sky and was surprised to find that what was staring back at him was plain, pitch-black, and not grey.