Thanks for all the kind reviews, as usual. And also as usual, I don't own anyone here except Sophia. )
Chapter Twenty
"The Ten Commandments"
The trials of revolution had given Peter many skills over the years; some supernatural and some simply the talents of a weathered soldier. One of his more useful powers was the ability to set his mental alarm clock, making his body wake up whenever he pleased.
While he drifted off to sleep, circa midnight, with Claire's bare body in his arms, he set it to roughly five AM. And, as expected, just as the sun was peaking over the horizon of Washington D.C, Peter's tired eyes opened to meet the daybreak.
The house was as quiet as a church. Not even the ceiling fan made a sound as it hypnotically spun, round and round above their heads. Peter broke the silence by shifting slightly in his covers, triggering various creaks and ruffles as the bed replied.
Claire was still deep into slumber, her lips parted and chapped. Peter longed to kiss them, to take the dryness and chill away, but he knew that would wake her. Then again, Claire seemed to be so lost in sleep that Gettysburg probably wouldn't arouse her from her dreams.
Peter didn't chance it. He ever-so-gently slipped his arms away from her, moistening his own lips. As soon as his body was away from hers, a small whimper came out of her throat. She shivered, her body curling into itself to keep warm.
Claire's covers were down around her waist, so every inch of flawless flesh on her upper body was open to the cold. The skin on her arms and back was prickled with goosebumps from the frigid air, every little blonde hair standing upright. The only things protected and warmed were her lovely breasts. Claire's arms crossed over them so just her flushed, rounded cleavage was visible.
Peter gently grabbed the top hem of her sheets and pulled them up to his lover's shoulders, sheltering her from the merciless air conditioning. A thankful moan came from Claire as her body shimmied down into the covers, burying herself in newfound heat.
The elated young man smiled and allowed himself one kiss to her cheek before sliding out of the bed to start a new day.
xxx
When Claire woke up hours later, Peter was nowhere to be seen.
She didn't notice at first. As her mind slowly meandered into consciousness, she automatically assumed he was lying naked beside her, just as sunken into the mattress as she. But with the first tentative move of her leg, her heart rate sped up when she didn't bump into anything.
"Peter?" Claire drowsily groaned. She rolled over and spread out her limbs, physically searching for any sign that she wasn't alone. But the toes of both feet reached the sides of the bed, and all that was left of Peter was his scent on the pillows.
Claire sat up too fast, dizzying herself with a blinding headrush. "Peter?" she called again. She craned her head and looked into her master bathroom, but he was absent from there too.
A quick glance at the clock told her it was 11:32. Claire couldn't even recall the last time she had slept so late. Between an FBI job at the crack of dawn and saving the world with their little golden trio, there hadn't been much time to get all her winks.
Claire's joints, though unbreakable, moved like the Tin Man's from the Wizard of Oz. The entire process of getting out of bed, throwing her surprisingly neat hair into a ponytail, and putting on some almost-normal clothes took far longer than it should have. But in the end, she at least looked decent. If anything, underneath her T-shirt and jeans and no-fuss hair, she was glowing quite radiantly.
If asked by anyone other than Sylar or Peter, Claire would have blamed her shine simply on the great sex. But she knew deep down it was love that was truly liable- sheer, undeniable love for Peter that threatened to make her heart explode out of her chest. She'd always loved him in one way or the other: first as a teenage schoolgirl crushing on her white knight, then as family (with the occasional illicit thoughts). Even when they reunited and she saw what a shell of a man he'd become…even then she was a little bit in love with him, but that was mostly spurred by pity. However, now…now Claire Bennet could only think and breathe him in the purest way possibleShe let the aroma of his body, still lingering all throughout the room, seep into her lungs until her knees felt weak.
There was one main difference between the affection she felt for him now, and all those other times. Claire loved him for no other reason than for who he was. She didn't care about his actions, or whatever title he was going by, be it "hero" or "uncle". Claire loved Peter. She lovedevery bone in his body that been thrice broken and re-healed by her essence. She loved his imperfections: the crooked smile, the scars that etched valor into his skin for eternity, the slight hero-complex.
And most importantly of all, she loved that he cherished her in return, for that was far more valuable than any ring, kiss, or night of passion that he could give her.
She looked over at her- no, their- messy bed, and her joy went a little dull. Claire had hoped that the first thing she would see in the morning, this day and every day for the rest of her life, would be Peter beaming at her. Or, at the very least, his arm wrapped around her body, keeping her warm.
Oh well, she thought. Welcome to real life.
All she really had the power to do at this point was to go downstairs and look for him.
The first thing Claire saw as she descended the staircase was a lanky, dark-haired frame curled up in her favorite living room recliner. As she advanced further down, she saw the man to be Sylar, long limbs pulled to his body and a hardback novel held in his tapered fingers.
Though she liked Sylar and all, Claire had to admit she was a little disappointed.
Sylar looked up from his book, which Claire recognized on closer inspection as A Midsummer Night's Dream. His sharply angled face was warm and inviting, as if this was his home she was visiting instead of the other way around.
"Good morning, Claire," he said brightly, putting the book down, open-faced, on his lap. "It looks like you slept well."
Claire nodded absentmindedly, almost forgetting to greet him back. "Er…yeah. Twelve hours, I think."
"I doubt you were sleeping for all twelve of them, though," Sylar wisely remarked.
Claire took a moment out of her unease for Peter to gape at him, scandalized. She scoffed. "Oh, ha-ha."
Peter's brother was not ashamed or abashed. "Don't look at me. You asked for it when you pestered me about Niki on the ride home."
The embarrassment washed off of Claire's face with a smile. She dug the tip of one foot into the carpet before lightheartedly owning up, "Okay. I guess I did sort of ask for it."
Once their banter was out of the way, her concern about Peter came crawling back. She went solemn and quietly asked. "Um…do know where Peter is?"
"Sorry. He was gone when I woke up," Sylar informed her. "But he did leave a note." The man pointed to a yellow Post-it note stuck to a cabinet in the kitchen. Claire looked back at him in curiosity before stepping into the other room, her hand reaching for the small piece of paper.
She scanned over it and rolled her eyes slightly at Peter's messy penmanship.
Claire and Sylar-
Went to run an errand. I'll be back around noon
(and I'll pick up lunch on the way home).
Love, Peter
"An errand?" Claire frowned, heading back to the living room with Peter's note still in hand. She looked up and peered at Sylar. "What errand?"
"Perhaps he wants to surprise you," Sylar suggested with a sly smirk, pretending to be interested in his shoelaces.
Claire crossed her arms and tried to look exasperated with him, but the blush of her cheeks and humble shifting of her shoulders gave her true elation away. "D'you know more than you're telling me?"
Sylar sat back in the recliner and sighed. "Truthfully, no. But why else would he be out? The world's about to end. I doubt he needs groceries and socks."
Claire giggled and stuck the Post-it playfully to Sylar's forehead. "You're right, as usual."
Sylar took the sticky note off his face and set it between two pages of A Midsummer Night's Dream, craftily using it as a bookmark. Just as he set the novel back on Claire's end table, the far off noise of a door opening, accompanied by the rustling of plastic bags, sounded throughout the house.
"Hey! I'm back!"
Had Sylar not known better, he would have thought Claire had super-speed in addition to indestructibility. She went from mulling about the living room to helping Peter all in the period of about three seconds.
"I can get it, Claire," Peter chuckled, pulling the bag out of her reach. "Go sit down. I'll be there in a second."
"Why did you go out?" she persisted, ignoring his suggestion. "Don't tell me you spent all that time getting sandwiches."
Peter did not reply right away. He set down their lunch on the kitchen table and casually leaned against the island before finally answering her question.
"I was…" He hesitated, and lowered his voice. "I was just at the bank." Off her confused look, he clarified, "Checking on my trust fund. It's been bugging me lately."
Claire accepted his answer well enough, but her instincts ribbed her to question him further. "You picked a weird time to look it up."
He shrugged. "I'm in town. Besides, the situation tonight has the potential to go really bad, whether we like or not."
"What, so you expect to die?"
Peter tenderly took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye, calming her with his silent conviction. "I'm not expecting anything. I'm just making a Plan B, so, if worst-case scenario happens, we'll be taken care of. I mean, it doesn't even have to do with me dying. What if we lose and Sophia activates the machine? This whole house would be gone. That money could save you some trouble with that. It's just extra insurance, Claire. No big deal."
He sealed his words with a reassuring kiss to her forehead, and he went back to preparing lunch.
Claire uncomfortably rubbed her arm, not entirely soothed. "How long have you been gone?"
Peter distracted himself with digging through the bag, getting out everyone's lunches. "I think I left at ten."
"Really? I thought I heard you get up around five."
There was a beat, and for a split second, Peter's stopped in his busying about. But in another blink of an eye, he was back to normal. "Bathroom," he casually replied. "I came back to bed after that, but you must have gone to sleep again."
"Yeah," Claire murmured. She looked up and stared at him, Peter, with his handsome face and unusually good mood. The man telekinetically removed three plates from the cupboard and all the needed utensils, setting the table in a perfectly organized manner. Whether Peter was a true Petrelli or not, Angela still raised him, and his neat freak rearing had a tendency to show in times like this.
Claire felt awkward, just standing there, watching him do all the work. Thus, she headed to the refrigerator to work on getting the drinks ready. The blaze and buzz she felt when she woke up had diminished a bit. Even after all of Peter's explanations, she still felt like she didn't have the whole picture.
The young woman took an ice tray out of her freezer and clumsily dumped the contents into three separate glasses. She took a deep breath, paused, and looked up at Peter once again.
"Peter?"
He was unwrapping a sandwich that looked sort of like turkey on rye. He didn't look at her. "Mmhmm?"
"I love you," she timidly stated.
This time, Peter's stop in motion was obvious. His gaze was suddenly locked upon Claire, and he tentatively set the sandwich down on a plate, almost missing the ceramic dish entirely.
Without warning, an unknown light took over his dark features. He picked up the plate and walked over to her, a very clever, Peter-ish look on his face.
"Take a bite of this."
Claire felt like she'd been slapped in the face. Didn't he hear her at all? "Peter-." But his insistent expression and undeniable nudging told her that there was something deeper to this.
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she took the sandwich from him. Yet Claire looked deeply into his striking observance of her, now somber, and her heart cracked a bit. She hadn't realized how important this was to him. It reminded her of the typical Peter of old- just trying to be sweet.
So she chose to indulge him by sinking her teeth in as enthusiastically as possible. She bit into the turkey and rye and lettuce and tomatoes, as expected. And one other ingredient that made a loud crunch.
Claire's eyes widened and she set her lunch back down on the plate, hardly knowing what to say. Her heart suddenly filled with emotion and all doubts about Peter were vaporized.
"You put potato chips on my sandwich!" Claire exclaimed, her face lighting up like a Christmas tree. Peter seemed proud and modest at the same time, sort of like how one appears when their friend unwraps a gift from them.
"But…but how did you know?"
"Because I love you too," he answered serenely, before pressing his all-telling lips against hers. Claire melted as soon as they made contact, and if she wasn't so hungry, she wouldn't have minded pulling him into the nearest closet and having a little repeat of last night…
Yet Peter broke off their kiss before it could get anywhere near that. And, as much as Claire would be content to simply lean against the counter with him and indolently make out, Sylar's abrupt entering of the room stopped that from happening too.
"Claire?" said a low, intelligent voice from behind her "Please tell me that Helena ends up with Demetrius."
Claire tried to remember A Midsummer Night's Dream from high school. "Uh…I think everyone ends up together in the end. It's a comedy, not a tragedy."
Sylar sighed in relief. "Good. Hermia has two men that want her and Helena's all alone. That not exactly balanced."
"Don't worry," Peter replied, smirking. "I'm sure 'Helena' has a 'Niki-a' out there somewhere that wants to date her."
Sylar gave his brother a sardonic stare. "Very funny, Lysander."
"Is that book what took you so long to come out here?" Peter asked, slapping Sylar's ham-and-cheese on a slightly cracked dish.
"I wanted to get to the end of Act III. It's really starting to pick up."
Peter handed him the sandwich with a respectful but bewildered smile. "You're the only one I know who reads Shakespeare for fun."
"Oh, please," Claire snorted from the table. "Shakespeare's an easy read. Try reading some Nathaniel Hawthorne or Beowulf. That's when it really starts to suck."
Peter shuddered. "May 29, 1998. Best day of my life."
Sylar quickly did the math in his head. "Your graduation?"
"Uh-huh. I've never envied you more, brother. You don't remember a thing about high school."
Peter reached for his own sandwich as he sat down on a barstool. However, his joviality suddenly waned, slowly dissolving off his face until he was downright frowning.
"I'm gonna go put up my jacket," he announced, standing up. His fingers were already working to peel off his coat. "You guys go ahead and dig in. I'll be right back."
Peter wasn't sure if they didn't care, if they were good actors, or if they simply didn't notice the alarm that had passed his face just seconds ago. But by some miracle, as Sylar and Claire were occupied with their sandwiches, neither one of them noticed the real reason for Peter's departure: a suspicious, thin white envelope peeking out of his back trouser pocket.
He practically skated his way to the front foyer, paranoia kicking in as he began to feel non-existent eyes staring at his back. Peter opened the door to the coat closet and carelessly threw his jacket inside. When the door to the closet closed again, Peter was gone, having seemingly evaporated into thin air.
Well, not exactly; Peter was merely twelve feet above Sylar and Claire's heads as he tiptoed into the master bedroom, right after making a swift teleportation upstairs. He hadn't yet explored the whole house, so Claire's room would have to harbor his ink scripted secret for now.
Peter approached the vanity in the corner of the room, his eyes fixated on the small wooden drawer beneath its tabletop. He pulled open the drawer, saw that it was filled with old batteries and headphones and useless junk that Claire probably never looked for. He couldn't have asked for a better hiding place.
Yet he still stuck his crisp white envelope under a few other papers for good measure. It was better to be safe than sorry.
"Peter?!" hollered a female voice from downstairs. "Where are you?"
"Upstairs!" he immediately yelled back. "I'll be there in a minute!"
Peter turned back to the drawer and took a deep breath before gently pushing it shut. And then, with the frightening air of Angela Petrelli, he went back to brunch as though nothing had occurred.
xxx
It was midday, about an hour after their surprise lunch, when Claire finally entered her room. She expected it to be empty; on the contrary, a wiry, brunette young man was in her desk chair, scribbling into a spiral notebook.
Claire clutched her chest in surprise. "I didn't know you were in here."
Peter looked up, equally as startled. "Oh…hey."
Though his eyes were locked with hers, his hands moved of their own accord, quickly shutting the notebook. However much he tried to make the movement surreptitious, Claire, raised by a spy and trained in the FBI, was too smart for that.
"Whatcha writing?" she asked with innocent curiosity, making her way over to him. Peter's hands instinctively wanted to quiver, but he reached out with his mind, forcing them to stay calm.
He swallowed. "It's nothin'. Just a plan. I'm trying to get my thoughts together."
Claire cocked her head. "Well, I'm going on the mission too. Can I see?"
Peter pulled open the desk drawer and slipped the notebook inside. As soon as the cupboard was shut again, his muscles automatically relaxed. "Don't worry about it," he casually brushed off her question. "It's practically illegible, trust me."
Claire slowly nodded, only half-believing him, but still not wanting to press another issue into the ground. She'd been clingy enough for one day, she recognized with a cringe.
So instead, her voice took on a businesslike tone. "Can you use Molly's power to find Sophia? Is she in Washington yet?"
"Good idea," Peter acknowledged, sitting back in the chair to loosen his body. "Just gimme a minute."
His eyes closed and, however painful it was to think about the fiery Linderman woman, it was not hard to get a vivid image of her. Knowing a person well helps make this go faster, Molly once told him.
"She's still on the plane," Peter declared after a few seconds, eyelids still lowered. "I think…I think she's about an hour away, flying time."
He shook off the vision and brought himself back to reality, focusing on Claire's shapely body in his corporal sight to bring him back to Earth. But when Peter's gaze rose back to its normal place, her countenance, he saw with disappointment that Claire's teeth worked at her lower lip in anxiety.
"I can't believe she's actually doing this," she whispered. "We've been talking about it for a long time, but…I always felt like it would never really happen, you know?"
Peter touched her arm in a chaste, comforting caress. "I do. I felt the same way the first time I saw Isaac's paintings of you."
"What made you do it?"
"Do what? Come and rescue you?"
Claire gently ran her fingertips down the side of his face, across the scar that was now dulled and slightly faded with time. "Yeah. It could have been a wild goose chase."
"But it wasn't. It was an innocent girl's life on the line," Peter reminded her firmly. "Your life."
She ducked her head in sheepishness. Peter lowered his hands to her waist and lovingly pulled her into his lap, their faces now just a few inches apart.
"You didn't know I was the cheerleader back then."
"I didn't care," Peter huskily insisted. "You looked so…terrified in those paintings. And I just kept thinking about how sixteen-year-olds shouldn't have to face things like that."
"We were facing Sylar," Claire recalled, her voice beginning to choke. "Our Sylar, Peter. I can't even believe that. I love him to death as your brother but I don't…was that really the same man that threw you off the balcony? That shoved a piece of glass in your head? That killed Jackie?"
"It doesn't matter. He brought us together, didn't he?" Peter's smile was crooked and infectious, spurring a grin to come out of Claire as well.
"I guess he kind of did," she admitted.
They stared at each other for several long seconds, both waiting for the other to do something, or maybe nothing. The comfortable silence was rather nice sometimes. It consoled, it spoke, it soothed.
Peter craned forward to brush a kiss across the corner of her mouth, but he missed his chance by just a hair. Apparently, Claire's acceptance of their situation truly started to sink in, enough where her mind was on another matter now: something not nearly as pleasant as her lover.
Sophia.
Claire untangled herself from his body and didn't bother to smooth out the creases in her t-shirt. Peter could read her like a book, though he didn't know if that was his problem or hers. She clearly had nothing bad to say about him, but behind her eyes were cogwheels of anxiety and meditation.
Peter recognized the exact same look radiating from her as she watched him driving through New York traffic to Kirby Plaza, all those years ago.
"Keep working on that plan, okay?" Claire interrupted his thoughts with her motherly-Claire voice.
Peter's reaction time was dim. "Plan?"
The young woman gestured to the desk drawer, frowning slightly. "The one you were working on when I came in."
"Oh! Right." Peter's voice trailed off as he ran a thumb over his lips, phasing into concentration again. Claire headed towards the doorway, to leave him to his thoughts, before a musing of her own creation stumbled out of her mouth.
"And Peter?" she asked, turning around and resting her fingertips against the doorframe. Peter squinted at her fingers, which tapped innocently on the wood, and it seemed so familiar to him, but damn if he couldn't place it.
"What?" he softly responded.
Claire's cheeks pinked, but her face radiated confidence. "Thanks for shooting me, two weeks ago."
Peter smirked. "I can't say the same about you smacking me afterwards."
Claire giggled. "You were right, though. That saved my life. Again."
She fully expected one of two things from him: a witty retort or a humble rebuttal. One was the side of this new, darker Peter that she was just now getting used to, and the other would make her heart melt with the Peter of her childhood; the gallant hero with the emo hair that threw himself off bridges and buildings to save her life.
But what he actually said was much quieter and shy, a reflection on the Peter who had molded himself out of her resin. The man whose love for her controlled his every action. The man who was a merger of many faulty models which somehow made a perfect product.
"You're welcome, Claire-bear. You would have done the same for me. "
xxx
Nathan had used the euphemism "boot on my neck" in reference to Sophia more than once in his life. But later that day, as soon as the redhead arrived in Washington, it became a literal reality.
The President squirmed as Sophia's heel dug into his jugular. "My daughter has informed me that you went mysteriously absent for a couple hours yesterday afternoon. Care to tell us what you were up to? A round of golf with the Secretary of State, maybe?"
"The Secretary of State is more of a billiards guy, actually," Nathan snarked back through his pain. Sophia pressed harder down on his neck and he bit back a hiss.
"Well if that's the case," Sophia gaily replied, "then you must have been out for a different reason. And by all means, withhold information, please. I'm dying to watch some good torture."
Nathan let out a grim chuckle. "I can handle torture."
"Yes. But you handle death?"
For once, the President was empowered by her words rather than degraded by them. "You're not going to kill me. You want the information I carry. I can't tell you when I'm dead."
Linderman let out an incoherent sound, somewhere between a moan and a thoughtful hum. "Haven't you grown clever?" she confessed, a note in her voice that sounded almost impressed. "Indeed."
She released him from her makeshift guillotine and began pacing the conference room, her steps leading her around the edges of the huge board table. Nathan's body wanted to shiver in fear, but his military mask was on today. He couldn't let her smell his dread. Even more importantly, he couldn't let her take what he knew. Revealing that Peter planned on attacking her was one thing. It probably wasn't that much of a shock anyway. But spilling the beans on his daughter's whereabouts, his own plans, and various other things they talked about in their clandestine meeting was a totally other ballgame of privacy.
"As much as I'd like to do this the slow, hard, painful way, time is of the essence. I'll have to rip it out of you." Sophia pulled her cell phone from her waistband, but before pressing a number on the speed dial, she peered up at him deviously. "And after that, we shall then see how much you really fear death."
The older woman turned away and muttered into her phone for hardly a minute as Nathan stood on the other side of the room, cracking his throbbing neck. Sophia had barely snapped her phone shut before Elisa Thayer slipped into the room.
"You want me to do this, Mom?" Elisa arched an eyebrow. "I thought you wanted him all to yourself."
Sophia tsked and waved a hand in Nathan's direction, shooing her daughter over to him as if he was a mess she had to clean up. "No time for frivolity today. We've hardly two hours to spare before the launch. I want to know if there's any plans he's hiding."
She glanced quickly at Elisa, who took the cue. The younger woman walked to where Nathan was, his frame tall and scowling, and she pulled out a chair for him.
"Sit," the daughter said tersely. Nathan glowered at her but followed her order. He knew when to give and when to take.
Elisa remained standing behind him, hovering over his shoulder and practically breathing down his neck with her menacing presence.
Sophia stopped at the edge of the conference table, pressing her slender hands upon the table. "Where were you, Nathan?"
"Just takin' a stroll. Might have run into a couple people on the way," Nathan replied evenly.
Sophia's brow crinkled, but she didn't punish him just yet. "And who might you have run into?" she continued. Nathan felt Elisa's fingers slide onto his shoulders, her nails digging sharply into his jacket.
"That's where it becomes a bit fuzzy," Nathan said pleasantly. "I think it might have been Peter. He kept going on about how he's gonna kick your ass."
"Peter Petrelli is dead," Sophia bitterly answered.
Nathan's voice was nearly proud. "Actually, unless he managed to miraculously turn mortal in the past twenty-four hours, to my knowledge, he's uh, pretty damn alive."
He internally smirked as he saw Sophia's confidence begin to crumble. Yet he had to admit, the woman was one tough broad. For what it was worth, she handled figurative blows to the gut rather well.
Unfortunately for Nathan, "handling her pain" didn't fare well for himself. Sophia gestured to Elisa, and the younger redhead tightened her grip on Nathan's collarbone. The man screamed as his cells were ripped apart, every individual molecule that Elisa touched rotting with the force of her ability. She eventually let go, and on another prompt from her mother, she brushed a hand over Nathan's black wounds. The flesh came back to life miraculously as Elisa revived the cells. If she'd had her own way, she would have left Nathan with his minor case of St. Anthony's Fire.
Elisa Thayer could control the death or life of any organism by touching it. Of course, the very building blocks of humans, cells, were also organisms, and Elisa had trained for years to learn how to focus her energy on those individual living chambers. On a broader spectrum, she could kill Nathan's entire being just by touching him, but Mama Linderman wasn't done with the eldest Petrelli quite yet.
The politician winced and shrugged his shoulders, trying to shake off the ache that Elisa just evoked on him. He had gotten used to her power by now, having been tortured by it many a time. But Nathan was at least thankful that he had to face Elisa rather then Sophia's shadow creature.
Sophia moved closer to him. "Fine, then. You say you saw Petrelli. Where is he now?"
Nathan pretended to think it over a bit before sardonically answering, "I don't think I'm at liberty to answer that question."
Elisa's hands quickly wrapped around his neck and he screamed, the fire of death frightening his sensitive cells. A few moments later, even when it was all over, Nathan was still panting as this neck pulsated.
"If you don't where Peter is," Sophia restarted, beginning to grow impatient. "Then perhaps you know where we could find Claire, hmm? You know, they might even be staying together. It'd be a good place to start looking."
Nathan's smugness turned to stoic honor as soon as his daughter's name came out of Sophia's mouth.
"You don't go near my daughter."
"I'll think I'll be the judge of that. Elisa? If you will, please."
Elisa nodded and repeated her torture procedure once again, yet this time, it was on Nathan's chest. The man took it well, with a grunt and a shudder, before Sophia went back to her questioning.
"Where are your friends, Nathan? Where are Peter and Claire?"
Her shadow, a shapely minx in all black made itself known, slipping out of the darkness of the corner to stand beside her host. Nathan's eyes narrowed, though his bones started to tremble with trepidation.
"I don't know."
Elisa moved to give Nathan another cellular roasting, but Sophia raised a hand to stop her child. Elisa frowned, but backed off, waiting for her mother to take the lead. Nathan glanced back at the FBI Agent, only now realizing what a demanding chokehold Sophia Linderman held over everyone. Elisa Thayer intimidated him on a normal day, but when the woman was before her mother, she turned into an obedient soldier.
"Tell. Me," Sophia seethed, her normally cool demeanor thrown onto an open fire of fury.
Nathan looked past his interrogator, to the silhouette creeping up behind her. Her shadow was looming even more chillingly in the background, stretching higher and higher until it almost hit the ceiling and-
"TELL ME NOW!"
The wispy black dusk snapped from it's position, headed right towards Nathan's heart at eighty miles an hour. But Nathan's soldier sense and power of flight were faster, and he shot up into the air right as Sophia's shaded clone whipped viciously under his dress shoes.
And without warning, a staggered gasp came out of Elisa Thayer's throat, her hands clutched around her waist in horror.
Nathan could smell it before he saw it: the stench of burning flesh that rose up to greet him. He winced and lowered himself to the ground, surreptitiously ducking under the conference table while the other two were…distracted, to say the least.
Elisa looked down at her hands, which were covered with dried blood and ash. And where her entire abdominal cavity used to be, there was a huge, charred gap. Sophia's shadow had just burned a hole right through her.
"Mother," Nathan heard Elisa choke. Right after, the FBI agent's final note was accompanied by the sounds of a chair toppling and a body hitting the floor.
From under the table, the President could see Sophia's smooth legs and red high heels stampeding over to where her offspring had fallen. The daughter who had just died by Sophia's own hand, manslaughter or not.
Nathan was shaking like a leaf for a hundred different reasons. For one, he'd almost just had his entrails vaporized (something Elisa Thayer wasn't nearly as lucky in escaping). And now, he was in a tiny room with a psychotic murdering matriarch and the corpse of her dead daughter.
Sophia's frame shook as her rage was harnessed and diluted. She stared down the blank white wall with a gaze of hellfire and unstably proclaimed, "Petrelli…everything will proceed according to plan. Even if you send the wrath of your fellowman, this city will burn by my hands."
She let Elisa's cadaver leave her arms as she rose to her feet and stormed towards the exit. But just before she shouldered her way through the doors of the board room, Nathan Petrelli's strained voice halted her in her tracks. The man was on his feet now, hair tousled and suit dirty, but still standing tall.
"What about Peter?" he challenged halfheartedly. "Peter and his people. They won't let you get away with this."
Sophia's teeth were bared like a lioness repressing her hunger. She turned stiffly on her heel to face Nathan and her daughter's burnt corpse, her expression one of raw steel.
"Then let them come," she seethed. Her nails dug into her palms so sharply that tiny beads of blood began to surface on her skin. "Let them come, and let them die."
As she finally left Nathan to his thoughts, Sophia did not look back. True Lindermans never did.
xxx
Chapter Twenty-One
"The Golden Rule"
Coming Soon
xxx