Title: Sickening Feeling
Author: nikkinor
Rating: T
Spoilers: One Giant Leap and Collision.
Pairings: None
Word Count: 533
Disclaimer: I don't own the show Heroes or the character Claire Bennet.
Summary: "But this time she's crying for an entirely different reason."
----------------
She locks the bathroom door as fast as her shaking hands will let her and heavily leans her back against the old oak door. It's the same old door she'd put her back to in second grade when Tommy Linton pulled her hair so hard some of the hair came out, the same door she'd hid behind for hours after her best friend had read her diary to her whole eight grade class, and same door she'd cried beside after all of her previous boyfriends had dumped her.
But this time she's crying for an entirely different reason.
She remembers the way his hands felt, the horrifying look in his eyes, and the sound of her own desperate screams for help going unanswered in the gloomy night. She can't seem to remember anything after that. She doesn't recall pain or feeling of any kind, just cold for a few moments as her eyes opened to blurry lights and shady backgrounds. All she could feel was freezing metal over her body, and gradually the world had come into focus and she had been able to glance around her, and finally down at herself.
Her eyes had widened and her breathing stopped as she had seen the open Y shape cut down her body. She'd almost vomited over the side of the freezing metal slab, but she had swiftly replaced the urge to hurl with the need to get out of where ever she was and somehow find her way home. She had pulled her own skin back together, felt the tingling sensation her whole way home, and hadn't looked at it until now.
She moves from the door towards the white porcelain sink and the click of her bare feet echo through her mind as her heart pounds against her chest. As she pulls back the white coat with still shaking hands and fingers that can barley grasp the buttons, and she gets a sickening feeling that she'll see her rapid pounding heart staring back at her in the mirror, she's terrified of the thought that she might see her own ribs again.
Although fearful of what she'll find, she takes the coat off makes herself look at her reflection in the mirror. She doesn't find blood and bone or any other shocking sight in front of her. She only finds lightly tanned skin with that same freckle right beside her bellybutton. Her hand runs down her chest and abdomen, searching for soar spots or open wounds her tear filled eyes had missed. But her hand only matches her eyes report.
She gives herself a quivering little smile through the tears that now drip freely down her cheeks. She's alive, unharmed and the only scar she has to carry is emotional. She won't have to explain to her mother why she has a Y carved into her chest, she won't have to look her father in the eye and tell him how she woke up on an autopsy table, and most importantly, she can have her revenge on the person who put her through the events of last night and this morning.
She's going to kill him, like he thinks he did to her.