What If...
By Jorge Quinones
Disclaimers: Professor Xavier, Wolverine/Logan, and the characters pertaining to the comics that comprise the X-Men Universe belong to Marvel Comics, and much props to Stan "The Man" Lee and Jack "The King" Kirby for their genesis. Claire Bennet, and the characters of the awesomeness that is Heroes belong to NBC Universal, Inc. The story elements written within this fanfic are my ideas and belong to me. This was written for fun, not profit. I'm just borrowing the characters for a while. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it. We fanfic writers thrive on feedback, and all comments/questions/flames/etc. are welcome. Thank you, and enjoy!
Chapter 2
Claire Bennet had seen enough movies and TV shows to have a fairly good grasp of how not to run away from home. She kept to by-roads, traveling mostly at night and mostly through the woods parallel to those roads during the day. Necessities, such as food and water, were bought at mom-and-pop grocery stores, the kind without surveillance cameras, and always paid in cash. She was rather proud of the fact that she had never spent any of her allowance on childish things, but that she had opted to wait for a rainy day. Today, about a month since the fateful night she had first read the letter from Prof. Xavier, was such a day.She passed several motels before she finally found one with the words she had been looking for: No ID or credit card required. To the rest of the world she no longer looked like the high school cheerleader she had been. Her clothes had been especially chosen to give her a more mature look. The simple glasses and french braid of her hair complemented the look. The easiest way to hide is in plain sight, she had told herself on he onset of her journey.
The clerk behind the counter looked like he had seen better days, as had the motel itself. His hair was stringy and greasy; stubble adorned a pale and gaunt face; food stains upon his thread-bare shirt stood testament to too many washings and not enough detergent.
"A room for the night," she said as she reached into her jacket pocket for her money.
The man's eyes never left the dusty TV as he reached for a key under the counter. He carelessly dropped it on the counter and reached for a lit cigarette in an over-burdened ashtray.
"Twenty bucks, write your name and room number in the book." His annoyance at having been interrupted during his program was clearly evident in his voice.
Claire wordlessly placed a twenty on the counter and scribbled in the dirty book near the telephone.
Joan Summers/Rm 103
A common enough name, I suppose, she thought as she pocketed the keys and made her way out the office's door. The sound of the clerk's hand blindly looking for the money on the counter was lost amid another boom of thunder echoing through the weeping heavens.
Room 103 wasn't quite as bad as the last motel Claire had stayed in. This time around the cockroaches actually scattered when she turned on the lights. Unfortunately the mouse in the corner seemed quite content to continue nibbling on whatever it was he was eating. Claire decided she'd just as soon not find out what that was.
Besides, Claire mused as she unceremoniously dropped her backpack on the disheveled bed, it's not like I have to worry about an infection from a bite.
Roughly seven months ago, Claire had discovered she possessed the miraculous ability to heal near-instantaneously from virtually any wound. Thus far the only injury that had taken her out of commission had been a head wound where a piece of wood had lodged itself in her cranium. Although it had not killed her, Claire had remained in a state of torpor until the wooden fragment had been extracted.
"I wonder if I'm a vampire." Claire blurted out suddenly as she thought back to the night in question. She looked into the mirror behind the TV. The finely tanned face of a girl who had spent many a long hour practicing cheerleading routines in the baking Texas sun stared back. "Guess not," the reflection replied with a chuckle.
Claire rummaged through her backpack for a bottle of water and her traveling map. She briefly scanned the map before finding the approximate location of the motel she currently resided in. Highlighter in hand, she drew a small yellow circle on the map and traced a line along the road she had traveled to a pink circle some ways down. The ride from the Semi driver had definitely helped out.
I'll have to remember to pay back Snowman when this is over, Claire thought as she giggled at the kindly trucker's CB handle. She took a mental note of how much cash she had left, figuring in about how much she'd spent thus far and how much distance she'd covered. She sighed as she looked again at her map. A month of travel with half her budget gone and she was still in Texas, although not by much.
"Well, Joan," she said, looking at her reflection, "looks like we're going to have to get a job."
To Be Continued...
