Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.

AN: Thanks so much for the reviews. I had to scrap lots of the story and start again, because I just hate season two so much, which is why it's been so long since I updated last. But the story is on its feet and running again! I hope you enjoy it.

12

Peter Petrelli looks at himself in the bathroom mirror, and he doesn't look away. This might be the hardest thing he has ever had to do.

He knows everything now. And the magnitude of it, the total irreversibility of what he's done overwhelms him. The memories his amnesiac self had replayed over and over in that house are stripped of their warmth. That one honest night, when they'd done only what they'd wanted to from the beginning – Claire, looking up at him, her fingers moving tenderly through his hair –

He drops his own gaze. Then forces it up again.

No. Look. See yourself, Peter Petrelli.

Healer, Hero. The man who only wanted to help people, to save them. He is brutal, as he must be now, and so, staring into his own dark eyes, he says it.

"I raped her."

So quiet he can barely hear himself. His sixteen year old niece. A girl who trusted him. She'd called him her hero. Sitting in the police station covered in blood, and he can't tell which scarlet stains are his, and which are hers. Peter feels sick, his last hug from Claire lingering on his skin, in his heart, staining him red.

She'd been right to say those things to him. Sleeping with an underage girl in her parents' house… but they hadn't slept together. Peter had raped her. A minor, a child, Nathan's child. His niece. Her hero.

You call it destiny?

And everything he's ever done with her is wrong now. All those moments that felt so perfect are wrong. And all those moments that crushed his heart and whipped the breath from him are right – letting her walk away. Telling her to go, to run. Calling her his niece for the first time, and the look she gave him, then, though it had had to be said.

Having her lie to him.

His stupid idealism seems very far away, now. When I saw you, I knew you were mine… I had a dream. Everything they'd fought so hard for had gone wrong, in hundreds of tiny, irreversible ways, and they were sinking, Peter and Nathan, and there was no help coming. The only thing he could do was rise, and trust his heart to a flimsy lifeboat and the man in the horn-rimmed glasses.

And then Nathan, and the Company, and Adam Munroe, and Elle – and his body and mind had been stuck in that cell, but his heart had been safe. Hidden hundreds of miles away. And nothing they'd done to him had mattered.

Adam – he should probably get to Adam. Adam would be looking for him. And, Elle, too –

From the sink. To the mirror. His eyes again, and Peter is honest, again. Elle. Elle, with her blonde ponytail, and he knows, of course, had known even at the time why it had been so easy to fool her.

Because you wanted your niece.

He shuts his eyes. He can't look anymore. He was supposed to keep her safe. And he goes around and around in his mind, stuck in a loop, a nightmare – the simplicity of it, saving the world. Facing Sylar in the Plaza. Facing Claire. How it had felt like the same thing.

And around it goes. Simple comic book silhouettes and blank spaces where the dead girls are supposed to be. And underneath all of it, Peter remembers every time he ever touched her – from taking her hand, her arm, pulling her away from danger – to taking off her sock, because he can't stand even that thin piece of cloth between them.

God, taking off Claire's sock. How can he be this way?

Ma and Nathan are talking in the other room. Quietly. Silent Ma, whose thoughts he's never been able to hear. It had hurt so much, his memories burning away. It had hurt so much, having them all spill back. Ma tells Nathan Claire's perfectly safe where she is, and Nathan asks her what it is she wants. They've never known, her boys. It's never occurred to Peter to try and hear her thoughts, but of course he can't. He's never been able to.

Nathan is reciting prayers, nursery rhymes, the Pledge of Allegiance in his mind. Peter can't pick up anything behind it, but the fact that he's doing it at all says everything. Clever trick. He can't clear his mind. He doesn't want to see Nathan, maybe not for a hundred years. And yet it's better than Claire's real father knowing – he thinks about Noah – I'll put you down myself. That had been kindness. He wants to laugh, or maybe to scream.

The door opens quietly.

Ma looks at him with soft eyes. She strokes his arm, gently, like before. His forehead, like she did when he had a fever and couldn't sleep. Her red nails in his peripheral vision are a memory older than conscious thought. For a second Peter just gives himself up to it, and all the looping thoughts become good ones. The shame falls away and he feels Claire and Nathan both in his heart, reconciled. Just love, after all.

And then Ma stands back and lets him pace. Peter forgets what he thought a moment ago. Feels comfort, and knows that somehow it's all going to be okay, though his mind protests, presenting the evidence against again. But he can think clearly now.

"Say goodbye." Ma advises. Yes. He should.

By the time Peter gets to the Bennet house the cool night has cleared him, cleansed him. The lights are all still on and he's surprised, when he sees Claire's alarm clock, to find that it's not three in the morning at all – it's just ten. Peter puts his gift down on her desk. It's the first thing she sees when she walks through the door.

Claire stops. He can see her back, her long hair, and tries to imagine her expression. Slowly, she approaches the desk. Her fingers graze the cheap plastic. The fake jewels on the silver crown wink in the low light. She turns around. She hasn't picked it up.

"You were the Homecoming Queen," Peter says. "But you never got your crown."

"I didn't think you'd want to see me."

That hurts.

"I'll always want to see you," he says, but bites back the rest of it. If you shot me I'd die happy, seeing you. The day I saw your picture, my life came together. All these things he's poured into the gift of a plastic tiara, shut away, mute but pleading. Everything he can't say is in it.

She shakes her head, and Peter knows she's going to say something stupid, pointless. A cliché. Like: You shouldn't be here. Something people say in movies when they don't feel anything real. But he does. They do. It hurts like drowning, water so cold it burns. Claire's pink and her eyes are wet. There's a terrible weight on his chest crushing the life from him, and he feels like it would go away in a second if he could just find the right thing to say to Claire now. Just hold her. Like if he held her now, took her in his arms, destiny would lock into place and the world would rearrange itself around them.

Instead, Peter feels like he's dying.

He means to say Don't, to cut her off, but what comes out is: "Come here."

"No."

It hurts. But it's right. Claire's right.

And the only way Peter can tell anymore what's good, what's right, is to see if it hurts. Claire looks at him like she learned that a long time ago.

"You have to go." Claire says quietly.

He knows. But a thought rises out of her, whispers in his mind. It hurts, Claire is thinking. It hurts, it hurts. It hurts.

"It hurts," Peter says. He doesn't mean to.

Claire looks at him steadily.

"We heal."

And that's the end. Their next goodbye will be in front of their families, quiet, polite. For this one Claire has nothing she can give him but her honesty. And it hurts. That means it's right.

Claire's right.

They heal.

The next morning blood and bone are smashed and torn beyond repair. The pain is as fresh as ever. Nothing has knit together. They heal. But Peter wonders how long it will take.

Spilt blood in her heart, in her strained expression, his heart torn to shreds and once again, Peter can't tell which wounds are hers and which are his. Noah and Sandra and Lyle are saying goodbye to him. He can barely hear them. Peter wants to do something, and though he knows its stupid, and though Nathan is reciting and Ma is silent and Noah is thinking in Japanese and that alone should scare him, he does it.

Peter takes Claire's hand and presses his necklace into it. "For your birthday," he says, looking down into her eyes. "For a lot of birthdays, I guess."

"Peter, I can't take this."

"It's not much, for seventeen birthdays. The only thing I have right now." Peter tries to make her understand. "I want you to have it. I want you to wear it. I want you – not to forget. One thing. That's all."

Claire takes the necklace. She thanks him. And then she asks her mother to put it on her. Of course she wouldn't have asked him, he knows that, and he knows he couldn't lift her hair right now, brush her neck with his fingertips. Still, it feels good to see the heavy helix around Claire's neck.

And then Nathan cuts in and hugs Claire. Steps right in front of Peter. He's never seen Nathan touch her before, but he hugs his daughter naturally, passing an affectionate hand over her hair as they part. "If anything happens," he says, his gaze lifting to Noah briefly, "You call us."

Noah nods. Claire tries to smile. But it doesn't work.

Ma only says, "Bye, dear." She and Claire hold each other's stare for a moment. Ma has never said she's sorry for what she did. She hasn't mentioned it at all. All the same Peter sees something identical in their resolute expressions, in their different ways of being cruel.

"Time to go, Pete." Nathan says.

Ma smiles at him and touches his cheek. She steps into Nathan's arms and they are gone. And so is Peter.

Funny, he thinks. He hadn't known he could still fly. Hadn't given it a thought.

They rise, and Claire sinks, and very soon Peter can't see the helix at all.