The Price of a Memory

Part 2/17

Normally, Claude wasn't interested in using his ability for amateur surveillance purposes. Voyeurism, yes. Surveillance, well…three days spent in Suresh's flat unseen and he was ready to stab himself in the eye with a spoon out of sheer boredom. Little had he known when he'd started that the little tiff between Peter and Suresh would be the highlight of the whole operation, that most of his task would involve watching people try to ignore each other and sleep.

At least, Suresh slept. The little girl too if the silence coming from behind the closed bedroom door was any indication. But the most Peter could generally pull off was what Claude could only suppose was his best impression of what he thought a sleeping person should look and sound like. It might have been convincing enough to the untrained eye but from nights spent crashing in the boy's flat back in the days of their training sessions, Claude knew what Peter was like when he was asleep and this wasn't it. For one, Peter snored like a freight train. Windows rattled. Babies cried. That sort of thing. It was the kind of snoring that couldn't be stopped by turning him onto his side or his back. Throwing objects at him from across the room never had an effect either, no matter the size of the object or the force with which it was thrown. Maybe it was possible for Peter to sleep quietly, as he was pretending to do now on top of the air mattress that had been set up for him in the corner, but if he did, it wasn't the kind of sleep that made any difference in the morning.

Point being, when the crack of dawn finally came around and Peter stirred without any evidence of the usual transitional stages between sleep and wakefulness, Claude was ready for it.

With more stealth than Claude ever would have thought to give him credit for, Peter managed not to wake Suresh where he slept on the couch as he crept about the place, dressing and scribbling a cryptic note reading "Coffee" before slipping out the door.

As Claude followed Peter down the sidewalk, he reflected on what he'd managed to learn about the boy's situation so far, which was easy because it basically amounted to nothing. Turned out that somewhere in the months since Claude had seen him last Peter had given up that irritating habit he'd always had of filling every sodding second with essentially useless verbal outpourings and instead developed a tolerance for long, sustained silences. His newfound taciturnity might have been welcome enough under different circumstances. Now it was just damn inconvenient as it meant that what little information Claude had been able to gather came almost exclusively from that first argument between Peter and Suresh.

What had become clear was that Peter wasn't merely offering his services to Suresh as some kind of part-time nanny to an overprotective parent figure. At any rate, it wasn't like Peter went home at the end of the day. Instead, he seemed to actually be living with the geneticist. Separate beds would have been clue enough that they weren't having sex despite Claude's initial suspicions but then there was the way Suresh acted like some kind of self-appointed caretaker to Peter. There was no wiping of asses, but the man did have a tendency to hover, always watching Peter out of the corner of his eye like he couldn't be trusted with sharp objects. That was strange enough in itself but then there was the fact that the girl did it too sometimes. If Peter noticed, he showed surprising restraint by not saying anything. For his part, it drove Claude insane.

Eventually, Peter came to a small corner coffee shop about two blocks away from Suresh's building. This early, the place was just opening but apparently Peter was worth unlocking the door for a bit early to the two women working inside.

"Morning, Peter," the younger of the two women said in greeting as she stepped aside to let him in.

"Kind of early today, aren't you?" the heavier, older woman asked from where she'd been taking chairs down off the tables. "Where's your cute friend? The one from Iraq or wherever." The question wasn't subtle. It wasn't meant to be.

"India," Peter corrected automatically. "Actually, I thought I'd let Mohinder sleep in this morning. You know, get out of his hair for a while." Then, because even he was not an idiot of such epic proportions that he didn't know what the woman had meant by asking, he added, "I left him a note. He'll know where I am."

"If you say so," the woman said as she finished with the chairs. She winked at Peter, not exactly lecherous but definitely a bit condescending.

The younger woman--a mousy thing with thin brown hair loosely pulled back to better show off her inhumanly cheerful early morning smile--stood waiting by the register behind the counter, hands already poised over the buttons. "The usual, right?" she asked.

That was when it happened. Claude saw it clearly, even from the distance at which he was standing. Peter's expression, which had been one of polite, friendly openness since he'd entered the shop, suddenly melted into a blank puddle of confusion as if the girl had just asked him his opinion on the finer points of quantum theory rather than a simple question about his breakfast food preferences. For a moment, he blinked at her helplessly, flailing like an actor forgetting his lines on opening night.

The girl waited longer than was really necessary before she threw him a line. "Coffee," she said, pushing the corresponding button on the register as she spoke. "Danish. Newspaper."

"Oh, right," Peter said, digging through his pockets and opening his wallet. Rather than cash, he handed her what looked like a debit card. Trust fund still in tact, then. "Thanks, Tracey," he added as the girl arranged his order for him and handed him his change.

"No problem," she said, watching with ill-concealed concern as Peter took his food and made his way over to a table by the window, his back to the rest of the shop.

The older woman came up to Tracey, her back slightly to Peter and her lips barely moving as she said, "That was a little mean, don't you think?"

"What was?" Tracey said innocently.

"I thought he usually got a bagel…not a danish," the older woman said.

Tracey lifted her shoulders, staring down at the keys on her register. "I just wanted to see if he'd notice," she said.

"Should we call Dr. Suresh, do you think?"

They watched for a moment as Peter, sitting at his table, separated out the sections of the morning newspaper before piling them up in the order in which he planned to read them. The way they were looking at him, this might have been a particularly disturbing manifestation of a terrible mental disorder but Claude had seen the boy do this before and while he wasn't about to deny that it was a freakishly anal habit, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary either.

Tracey lifted her shoulders. "He seems okay today," she said. "Aside from the not remembering what to order." She bit her lip, as if trying to convince herself. "Anyway, Peter said he left a note this time." Mostly she just sounded like she didn't want to deal with Peter's keeper this early in the morning.

"Yeah, and for all we know the note could say he up and left for Albuquerque or Xanadu," the older woman said, rolling her eyes. "Just keep in mind if Dr. Suresh comes storming in here in the middle of the afternoon like he did that first day, I'm not going to be the one who calls him off this time. All right?"

"Whatever, Meg," Tracey said, waving off her co-worker.

"Peter is a sweetheart," Meg mused, "but I'd feel better if he wasn't out wandering the streets by himself like this."

Before they had a chance to continue their conversation, another customer came up to the counter and the two women moved to their separate corners, ready to do their work. Meanwhile, Claude debated his options. He didn't fancy sitting around watching Peter read his newspaper all morning but the potential entertainment value of Suresh causing a scene when he found out where his errant flat mate had gone was too much to pass up. He settled himself at the table next to Peter, facing him as he went about what was obviously a familiar morning routine.

Claude would not have thought it possible, but it turned out that Peter was even slower at reading the morning paper than Claude remembered. The glacial pace at which he worked his way through the various articles seemed a bit unnecessary to Claude, who had always believed that no one actually read whole articles all the way to the end before they lost interest and moved on to the next headline. But Peter seemed unusually determined to absorb each piece of information as he read it, running the tips of his fingers along the lines of each paragraph, combing over certain articles several times, occasionally even stopping in the middle and starting over again as if afraid he might have missed something important. The whole thing reminded Claude of that Greek character, the one who was condemned to roll a stone up a hill only to have it roll down on him again before he could reach the top. No wonder his mind started to wander after a while.

"Can I help you with something?"

Invisible as he believed himself to be, Claude could hardly be blamed for assuming the polite query was directed at someone else. However, when he came back to himself enough to move his gaze from the finger Peter had been dragging across the page as he read to the boy's face, he noticed that it wasn't the day's headlines the boy was staring at anymore. Instead, Peter was looking at him. Straight at him. Not through him or off to the side of him but actually seeing him where he sat at the next table, caught staring like some pervert.

Nobody sees me. He had a sudden flash of himself roaring this at Peter the first time they'd met, throwing him against a wall in the middle of the street. Back then, Peter had approached him out of some misplaced sense of morality, having witnessed Claude picking the pockets of unsuspecting strangers for personal gain and wanting to stop him. If Peter had seen underneath the veil of invisibility back then, it was because he was too daft to realize his abilities were causing him to pick up on Claude's own powers. This time it was merely a slip in his disguise caused by the idleness of watching someone read a newspaper for hours on end. It didn't happen often and it hadn't happened in a long time, but it was happening now and Claude struggled to think of a response, preferably one that included a clever variation on the phrase "I meant to do that."

Meanwhile, Peter was still staring at him from over the top of the Arts and Leisure section. His expression was increasingly uncertain.

"Are you okay?" he asked slowly as if Claude might not understand.

Claude's voice became a high-pitched mockery of what Peter might have sounded like if he were an actual girl rather than a theoretical one. "Am I okay, he says. 'Can I help you with something.' I'm hurt, honestly."

Any response Peter might have had was brought up short as Claude slid from the chair at his own table to the free one at Peter's. Thoughtfully, Claude picked up the untouched pastry sitting on Peter's plate and took a large bite out of it before remembering exactly how much he hated cheese-filled breakfast goods. He chewed with effort.

Mouth full, he asked, "Is that really how you greet an old friend?"

However lacking Peter was in essential areas like common sense and planning skills, Claude had found in the past that the boy had a certain knack when it came to formulating vaguely amusing comebacks in the midst of verbal sparring. He wasn't quite the artist Claude like to think of himself as, but he was pretty good, even when taken by surprise. But today that talent seemed to have deserted him completely as he searched for a response. At first, Claude thought this was merely a delay caused by being unexpectedly accosted in public. But slowly he came to see that there was more to it than that. That Peter wasn't simply choosing his words but that he had descended into a confusion not unlike the blankness that had come over him when the girl had tried to take his order.

The boy, Claude realized, was seeing him, that much was true. He was seeing him but there was no recognition in that gaze. Peter had no idea who he was.

The bottom of his belly dropped out from under him and suddenly the aftertaste of the pastry became like thick vomit in his mouth.

"Sorry, mate," he said lamely before Peter could speak. "Thought you were someone else."

With that, he rose from the table, leaving behind an utterly speechless young man. He waited until he was outside to do his usual disappearing act.

His first thought was that he should leave. Remove himself from the situation entirely before he became too deeply involved as he had once before. Back then had been different, he told himself as he made his way along the sidewalk with his usual disregard for the safety of others. Back then it had been about moral obligations. Jaded as he'd become, even he couldn't have continued his life of invisible vagrancy knowing the city was going to be blown to hell by some kid who couldn't control his powers. No such obligation existed now. Lives were not at stake simply because Peter Petrelli couldn't remember that he preferred bagels to danishes. The world was not going to end because the boy had looked in the face of an old quasi-ally and seen a stranger.

Better to just walk away. Better to return to his regularly scheduled program and forget entirely about the brief interruption of the past few days. Yes, that was what he would do.

Except instead of doing that he was climbing the stairs up to Suresh's flat. There, he pounded on the door with his closed fist without pause until Suresh answered. The other man had no time to react before Claude had him by the collar of his shirt and was throwing him against the wall across the corridor, keeping him there with fingers wrapped around his neck.

"What did you do to him?" Claude growled, only just remembering to shed the cloak of invisibility as Suresh flailed and choked. Behind Claude, the little girl had started screaming.

"What did you do?" Claude repeated more forcefully, slamming Suresh against the wall once more for emphasis. "Tell me!"

"You're hurting him!" the girl cried.

She had a point. Suresh could hardly answer his questions if he couldn't breathe and for that reason only, Claude loosened his grip on the other man's throat and backed away a few steps. Molly immediately insinuated herself between the two of them, clutching Suresh's waist as he recovered himself with difficulty.

"What did you do?" Claude said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Suresh said in between gasps for air. Then, because being nearly choked to death had apparently done nothing to dissuade him from angering Claude unnecessarily, he added, "Furthermore, I have no idea who the hell you are."

"He's the man who's been watching Peter," the girl said. She peered up at Claude from where she'd half-hidden her face in Suresh's shirt. "Aren't you?"

Claude raised an eyebrow at Suresh. "That's just fucking scary," he said, pointing at Molly. Bending at the waist so he could better look her in the eye without losing the power to intimidate, he asked, "Is that what you do, then? You're like the freak girl with x-ray vision or something?"

She looked nothing less than offended by his assumption. "I kept hearing noises," she said. "Like footsteps. They were always around Peter."

"Fuck me," Claude mumbled.

"How long has this been going on?" Mohinder asked, eyeing Molly like she was going to get a good talking to later for not telling him this before now.

"A few days," Molly replied, shrinking a little. "Since the day you yelled at Peter for taking me to the park and then forgetting where we were going."

"Forgotten more than his subway lines, come to that," Claude muttered. "Which brings me back to my original question--"

"I didn't do anything," Suresh replied. "And even if I did, who are you to be asking me besides some strange man who's been invisibly stalking us for the past several days?"

Claude considered making something up. In the years since he'd gone more or less permanently undercover, there had been times when he'd surfaced long enough to interact with basically inconsequential people to whom he never gave his most commonly used name out of fear that the likes of Bennet or Thompson might still be looking for him. He thought of referencing one of those personas now but, in the end, had no desire to add to the confusion, which was already vastly out of proportion with his usual tolerance for such things.

"Name's Claude," he said. "I knew Peter back in the days when he was trying not to blow up the city." He sighed in mock nostalgia. "Yeah, me and Peter were great mates back in the day. Funny thing, I just saw him down to the coffee shop and he didn't seem to know who I was. Care to explain that, Dr. Suresh?"

Suresh hesitated. "I can't explain here," he said, sounding as if he didn't really want to explain at all but was finally beginning to understand that he wasn't being given a choice. "If you really want to know what's happened to Peter, perhaps you better come inside."

TBC