Title: Waves
Author: freak-pudding
Disclaimer: Heroes is the property of NBC International and Tim Kring. No copyright infringement intended.
Summary: Change rolls past and through them, threads tangling and twining together, unbreakable. Or so they all thought.
Author's Notes: Prologue was just gut reaction to watching Homecoming the first time around. AU, I guess? Claire definitely isn't Nathan's kid in this one. Expect rambliness and lack of cohesive posting schedule. That is all.
Prologue
Mohinder has a list at the bottom of his bag, of all the people he wants to apologize to.
It is extensive and detailed; a person's name is followed by the time, date, and particular nature of the offense. Some names have small marks at the side, to indicate the number of times he could have apologized, but chose not to. Some are smudged, old and crossed-out for new names, new offenses. Almost half are circled in bright red pen, a few less in orange, and the rest in dark green.
He'd gotten bored one night, correcting his students' exams, and he thought the list could use some organization. If anything, his color scheme only made matters worse.
The lines arc up and down the page, splintering, intersecting—two incidents represented by the same color, because they involve the same person or the same circumstances. Some lines fall into each other, weaving up and down, crooked straight lines that meet and diverge. Several lines pass through a crosshatch of dark blue: some stop within, others continue on.
This dark patch is halfway down the page; it represents his father's death.
At the bottom of the paper, it says simply Peter Petrelli.
"All passengers, Flight 48, now boarding."
His father had given him the idea first—he remembers, when he was a child, the sheaves of parchment piled along the back of his father's office wall taller than he'd been. He'd tried reading them sometimes, but the names were written in letters he hadn't mastered.
"Papa? What are these?"
"It is a list, Mohinder."
"Of what, Papa?"
"Of the many wrongs I must right."
He rises and shuffles into line slowly, casting a brief eye around the terminal, and hands his boarding pass across the counter. Los Angeles is sweltering, even by his standards, and he can feel the hot air spill across his face from the poorly latched walkway.
"You got family waiting for you?"
"I'm sorry?"
"I said, do you have family waiting for you?"
Mohinder stares, the reflexive response not quite making it to his spine. The woman asking is bottle-blonde, face microwaved to a wrinkled, burnished orange. She has no interest in his answer.
"No," he sputters, after a long moment. "I have no family."
- - -
Eight-thirteen.
She tastes blood on her tongue and stops, collapsing halfway down the forum steps. Someone screams behind her, but it's only the ricochet of the game, and the clock glows green above her head.
She doubles back, because she's all alone and the moon is high enough now—it's almost like daylight.
In the hallway the trophy case is smashed, pieces of locker doors curled against the wall. She sees a broken pipe among the tatters of last year's team photos. The weight is reassuring in her hands, and her fingertips test the jagged end before there's a crash behind her and she runs from the building.
She finds them both sprawled beneath the homecoming banner, heads cradled in blood. The man who killed Jackie is twitching, and Claire buries the pipe in his chest, palms slicing and closing over.
The other guy, the almost-boy, her savior, is glassy-eyed, mouth a perfect startled o. She kneels beside him, lifts his bleeding face into her lap and cries.
"Claire! Claire!"
Words are thick on her barbed-wire tongue, but her father's bursting from the shadows a moment later, beaded in sweat.
"Oh God, Claire; you're alright!"
He slides right onto her, arms enfolding, searching out phantom cuts.
"I'm fine, Dad," she hears herself say. "I'm not hurt."
"God, Claire," he says, gripping her tight. "I thought—I thought…"
"We should call the police,' she mumbles into his shoulder. "They're both dead."
Her father looks down, at Claire's hand stroking the red-soaked hair of the boy in her lap. He gently presses two fingers to his neck.
"Claire," he says quietly, withdrawing his hand. "We need to leave."
"We can't," Claire insists, pulling away from her father. The boy's face tilts out, bathed in orange glow. She wishes she knew his name.
Two shadows appear at the top of the hill, and her dad's face clears.
"I can't just leave him here," Claire says. "He saved me."
Her father's face hardens; he's thinking, hand reaching out over the boy's head.
"Alright, Claire," he sighs, light splintering over his glasses. "We'll take them."
- - -
Nathan is alone when it happens.
Someone's wife had gotten a little too wild, tipping her glass of dark red wine all over his shirt, and he'd excused himself from the party to change.
He's standing in front of the bureau, a black tie in one hand, blue in the other, when he's blindsided by the unspoken revelation.
Somewhere in the world, Peter is dead.