11
Save Me, Maybe
February 29, 2006 - 15 days until 'Patient Zero' is discovered
"Claire!" Noah shouted to her, keeping his weapon trained on their target. "Do it, Claire! He's a killer!"
"Please, Claire." Sylar implored her, leaning forward on his knees to take hold of the revolver's barrel. He slowly moved the firearm up his stomach until it was held to his chest in her trembling fingers, just over his heart. "If I have to die today, I want you to be the one to do it." He shifted nervously when Noah took another step closer, finding his aim past his daughter. "Please, Claire. I don't want to be a monster."
"I can't," she sobbed. Tears streamed down her face as her shoulders shook and her stomach churned irritably. He thumbed away the evidence of her torment and watched helplessly as her mouth opened and closed stumbling for the right words to say. "I need to tell you something."
"Shoot, Claire!" her father shouted again.
She never got the opportunity to spill her secrets. Noah took another step and Sylar's fingers found hers in the metallic trigger loop. "Do it, Claire! Kill me!"
"I'm sorry."
Angela bolted upright in her chair with the dreamy echo of a gun shot still ringing in her ears. "Claire Bennet is here to see you now, Mrs. Petrelli."
"Send her in please," she answered, clicking off the intercom and leaning back into a relaxed position. Claire nervously twisted around in her seat several minutes later while her grandmother examined the file of information gathered on their target. "You've spent two weeks with Mr. Gray now and all you can report to me is that he favors peach pie?"
"There's nothing else to tell. He's just…"
"Gabriel?"
"Yeah." Angela gave her a scrutinizing once over and nodded knowingly. Claire fidgeted anxiously under the weight of the older woman's gaze, blurting out her explanation for the proposed change in mission plans and hoping that it wouldn't sound completely absurd when spoken aloud. After all, she was attempting to convince her to allow her son's future murderer to remain alive. "He is currently unaware of his capabilities and I think we should just focus on keeping it that way. If we could keep Suresh from -"
"I agree," she shrewdly noted with pursed lips. "It wouldn't do to throw away someone that could potentially be a valuable asset if there were another alternative."
"Gabriel isn't a toy," Claire glared. "He's a person. A human being."
"And not something to be manipulated?" Angela shot her a mocking smile of saccharine sweetness that didn't touch her eyes at all. "Tell me, Claire dear, what exactly is it that you think you've been doing this whole time? You've been gaining Mr. Gray's trust. Getting close to him and maneuvering him into a vulnerable position just as your original parameters instructed. At any moment you could have the access to terminate him should a threat become tangible. So please, Claire, tell me who has really been manipulating whom?"
She couldn't help but recoil at the ugly truth in the accusation. While Claire repeatedly opened and shut her mouth, fumbling for the right words to say, Angela continued. "I'll approve of this little idea of yours. For now. However, I am placing the responsibility of keeping Mr. Gray under control in your hands as well as the methods of removing Chandra from the equation. If a single life is lost because of a failure in this plan, you will immediately terminate Mr. Gray and not another word will be said about it. Do we have an understanding?"
"Yes, ma'am." She was forced to savagely chew on the inside of her bottom lip in order to avoid beaming a grin from ear to ear at her more stern counterpart.
"Angela, dear," a deep gravely male voice sounded from the door. Claire turned to see her very alive paternal grandfather stepping halfway into the office. "We have our reservations and it's getting late," he chided while tapping on the glass of an obscenely expensive wrist watch to demonstrate his point. "Hello, Claire," he greeted without hesitation. It wasn't any great surprise that he would know about her adventure through time or the details of their scheme, but the shock of seeing the future villain in the flesh caused her eyebrows to rocket upwards into her hairline.
"I'll only be another moment, Arthur," Angela assured with a light smile. There was an odd vibe hovering in the air between them all. Arthur Petrelli hadn't failed to notice his biological granddaughter's negative reaction to his presence, and neither had Angela, but no questions would be asked and no warnings would be issued.
"If all else fails we could just adopt him," Arthur chuckled without humor in reference to the target of the women's previous discussion. Oh my God… Did he just read my mind?
"Oh, honestly, where do you get these ideas?" Angela answered with a jovial roll of her eyes. A moment passed where he simply stood there staring at his wife. She had no doubt that he was gleaning some kind of unspoken information from her mind, perhaps more references to the future that Claire had lived or those which her grandmother surely dreamed about.
Arthur nodded quietly, a not so subtle smirk lifting the corner of his mouth as he turned his attention back to Claire. "Don't worry. Everything will turn out exactly like it's supposed to." What the heck does that mean? "Angela, don't forget about the reservations. Good-bye, Claire."
That wasn't awkward or anything, she thought to herself as her grandfather exited as silently as he had entered muttering something about empathy and being interesting. "I believe we're finished here." Angela dismissed her with the instruction that she should send her father in before leaving.
"Angela," Noah nodded in greeting, taking the seat before her desk.
"Noah."
"I take it you're on board with Claire's change in plans?"
"And what makes you say that?"
"It could have been the grin she was wearing, or the way she skipped down the hall."
Angela wore her own little smirk in response. "I do believe that girl is getting attached to her target."
"Unfortunately," Noah agreed with a downtrodden frown.
"It does make things more difficult, but no. The plan has not changed at all. We're still very much on track."
"But?"
"I've already seen how this is going to play out and my dream was quite clear."
"So Gabriel Gray is going to die?"
"I never said that."
"But that was the whole plan. Send Claire back in time. Assassinate him while he's powerless. Save your son and who knows how many other people…"
"Noah, Noah, Noah…" she sighed with a twisted twinkle in her eye. "Do you know what the butterfly effect is?"
"When you change one event in time and alter the course of history."
"Yes. If we can change just one little detail, one event, we could change everything. The trick is just finding the right butterfly to crush."
"So… Gabriel Gray lives even though the plan to kill him is still in progress…"
"I never said that either. At least, not in the way you're thinking."
"I'm thoroughly confused."
"Well, you know what they say. It's never good to know too much about the future."
Claire immediately flung herself into his arms the moment Gabriel opened his door. Her grocery bags flopped over his back while her hands eagerly looped over his shoulders and her lips smothered him with giddy enthusiasm. She pulled back after a moment to take in the silent shock of pleasant surprise written across his features. "I come bearing gifts," she said, wagging the two bags with a mischievous smile. "I thought we should celebrate so I brought frozen pizza and some cheap, awful beer."
"I was starting to think that you weren't coming back. After Virginia's the other night… I thought maybe you had decided to run away after all." The tone of his voice was light and airy as though he were attempting humor, but the half-hearted smile and sullen look in his eyes told her another story. Gabriel had missed her. Claire couldn't exactly explain to him that she had spent her time since their last meeting fanatically stalking an Indian geneticist that had just entered the county in hopes of seeking out an ill-fated 'patient zero' for supernatural power experiments though. That would just sound crazy.
She could however, distract him with a dose of affection that he always seemed to crave and had been recently deprived of. "Don't worry. You can't get rid of me that easy," she mumbled, each word breaking another grinning kiss. "You're stuck with me for-" No. Not forever. You can't live forever. There was an odd, completely unexpected pang of sadness to accompany that thought. Claire was quick to shake off any inner turmoil before her companion could pick up on the darkening of her emotional state.
Gabriel was blissfully oblivious to anything other than her words though. He didn't seem put out in any way by the thought of being "stuck" with her for any length of time. "I assume you got your client then? If there's a reason to celebrate?"
"I most certainly did, and tonight we're going to party like it's 1999!" He quirked a questioning brow at her. "You know… like the song? Prince? Oh, come on! That's like pop culture one-oh-one!" She narrowed her eyes at him as he shook his head. "You really need to get a TV."
He laughed off her declaration, citing that television was a common cause of brain rot while Claire busied herself with preheating his oven. "I used to drive my brother crazy playing that song over and over."
"You never mentioned having a brother before."
"Yeah, Lyle. He's back in Cal-Texas with Mom."
"I guess you'll be going back there. Now that you've got your guy and all." She turned around to view an expression plastered to his face like a mental storm cloud had gathered just over his head.
"I don't know… I might be staying for a while longer."
"What about your family? Larry?"
"Lyle." Something about the way his arms were crossed and his lip puckered out into a pout resembled a child ready to throw a temper tantrum. "Well… You know… I kind of have a reason to stick around now… And who knows? I might have to keep other people away from my client. Paper can be a very demanding job."
Gabriel perked up slightly at the thought but moderately remained in sulk mode. "And besides," Claire started again, moving in for a hug, "I have family here in New York too. Remember the whole being stuck with me thing?"
She couldn't remember exactly when it was that their lips began touching, only that it felt as though they had always been there in that way. She couldn't remember when the pizza had been forgotten, or the moment they had left the kitchen; only the strength in his hands when they gripped the backs of her thighs to lift her, and the security of being in his arms while he carried her to the couch. Claire couldn't really remember anything except the electric tingling ripping down her spine with his kiss and the desperate flushing of her skin in the wake of his touch. The warm weight of his body over hers, molding to her form was oddly comforting, building an altogether foreign sense of instinctual need within her. Strangled gasps of breath fell on deaf ears as her hands roamed the planes of his back and calloused fingers kneaded massaging circles into her ribs and down the path of her stomach. As with all things, his innate ability of understanding allowed him to navigate her body flawlessly, finding bundles of over sensitized nerves that screamed for attention.
It was only when the sound of the button popping on her jeans, breaking the waves of erratic panting, that either party partially returned to reality. Her hand found the back of his to halt the progress it was making. "We should stop," he mumbled against her neck in agreement with her silent protest. Gabriel sat up to run a frustrated hand through his already disheveled hair and met her questioning gaze. "I, um. I don't… I don't have any… you know." Claire continued to stare in a way that pressed him into self-conscious fidgeting. "It's been a while, okay?"
A stifled snicker escaped her. Gabriel scowled at her beyond the rosy tint of his blushing before slowly succumbing to a bout of self-deprecating humor. Together they shared a round of hearty laughter complete with sparse snorts that made them laugh even more.
Several hours later Claire woke to still darkness. She blinked her eyes a few times to adjust to the low light while she remembered where she was. A light blanket was draped over her shoulders and an arm hooked over her lower back, a warm body steadily rising and falling with breath below her. Gabriel's glasses glinted dully in the moonlight from the side table, his copy of Pillars of the Earth slung over the back of the couch, and the side of his face buried in the plastic covered cushion. She had dozed off during his reading, the baritone rumble of his voice in his chest and the steady beat of his heart lulling her to sleep sweeter than any lullaby.
Claire had never really noticed before how young he looked. She ghosted her fingers over his smooth complexion, the lines of thickly set hair, the dark curve of lashes resting over his cheek bones, and the fullness of his lips. Even with the ever present shadow of stubborn facial hair, Gabriel appeared soft in the peace of slumber. Innocent. Something that Sylar would have never allowed another person to witness.
"I can do this," she whispered to herself, slipping back into pleasant dreams without a single fear for her security. I can save you.
To Be Continued...
