Chapter 28
Includes a cut scene from Four Months Later between Nathan and Angela
Characters: Angela, Kaito, Peter, Nathan & Claire
There had been only three people in Angela Petrelli's life that she had been able to keep secrets with. Her husband, Charles Deveaux and Kaito Nakamura. She had started out in this life at such a young age, all Angela knew anymore were secrets. And now facing her life with over thirty years of experience in it, all she seemed to know these days was death. Arthur, Charles and now her son, Peter, even Nathan was dead to her, by his account only not hers.
So, when Kaito called her and told her he had received a death card, she wasn't sure if she could handle it. But she did, she always did.
"I got one too," she told him.
"Meet me on the roof."
And she knew just where he meant.
When the boy left their side, Angela mustered up all her strength as she approached him, always still looking regal. "Let me see it." Her voice had a timbre in it as if softly she wanted to say "it just can't be true."
"Someone's playing a trick," she told him and she believed it, at the moment.
Kaito felt otherwise. And when he railed on about redemption and saving his soul -- the regrets of their evil deeds, Angela Petrelli understood. But when he accused her of doing nothing for her Peter, after everything he knew about her, she slapped him, hard, across the face. How dare he. This, should could not take.
"Angela," he called her name, stopping her from leaving. "I am leaving for Japan tonight. I suggest you disappear as well."
She appreciated that after all these years, he still cared for her, but she was too angry to say anything back, too bull-headed and in denial, to in a fury to acknowledge it . For deep down inside, Angela still blamed herself for Peter's death. She hadn't just slapped Kaito because of how hard he knew she had worked, but because she couldn't bear to hear the truth.
Kaito felt they were all in grave danger, but Angela didn't listen, or maybe she did. It was only after she left Kaito's sight that it hit her - that Angela Petrelli feared for her life. Or maybe the whole thing had been a front and she always knew the threat to be true?
After all, when she found her death card outside Peter's apartment, her heart raced, her breath was labored and her adrenaline seemed to rise. No one Angela ever knew who got such a card, lived to tell about it.
This time Angela couldn't rely on herself. Now Angela had no one to turn to, no one to save her - no one to love anymore. In her desperation, Angela went to the only person somewhat left in her life, she went to see Nathan. After all, no matter what, she was his mother.
Only this time Angela's old tactics didn't work anymore, for Nathan was wise to them. Angela was now the pre-cog who cried wolf and it was nothing she hadn't created and nothing she hadn't brought upon herself.
"I'm in trouble." Angela held in all her emotions not to break in front of her son, a man who only hours before had called her "evil" right to her face.
"Trouble? Trouble how?" Nathan seemed to only care for the drink in front of him.
"It's complicated... suffice it to say, I'm afraid for my life..." Nathan still cared as much as he did in Peter's apartment that afternoon, maybe even less. "Things that your father and I did, people we were involved with. And now our past is coming back to haunt us." That was an understatement.
"Yeah, well, the past has a way of doing that, Ma." He looked at her coldly and downed the drink in his hand.
"Nathan, please, I am so serious." She didn't like his attitude one bit
And then he seemed to fade off as he went on about the past, sadly, sentimentally, about Peter, the bottles of Arthur's scotch Nathan use to steal as a teen, his accident with Heidi - all things that couldn't be changed. But Angela knew from experience looking at the past would do nothing but crush her son deeper into the bottle he had already climbed into.
She knew how crushing the past can be and it was the pushing of it away that had created her entire personality.
"It's the past, Nathan." She said forcefully. "You can't let it destroy you." she told him and then slowly crossed to his other side. And then, again, Angela chose the wrong tactic as her voice, cold and calculated, breathed the words. "And if you're looking for redemption, I'm asking you as your mother. Save me."
And he grabbed her by the shoulders, leaned his head against hers and it felt so good, oh how she missed her boys - how she missed human contact - a human touch. But much like Arthur, there was more to a simple touch. And just like Angela, there was a different motive behind his actions, as Nathan Petrelli spoke his most biting blow yet.
"We're Petrellis, Ma. None of us deserve to be saved..."
And she never broke away from anyone with such rage and anger, her eyes ablaze, and in a moment. she was gone. The hell with him, she thought. She'd leave him to his misery and a past that wouldn't take her down with him - and she didn't cry, she just packed - she was too angry to cry.
And when she opened the paper the next day and saw what had happened, that Kaito was dead, she threw the paper down and never picked it up, and cried alone in her room. Alone like she always did, trying at first not to lose it completely, covering her mouth so her cries were silent, but just like when Arthur died and Peter died, it overtook her.
Angela cried because there was nothing she could have done about it, and because she loved him once. Because her life was becoming all too overwhelming. It was all coming to a head and Kaito seemed to be a breaking point.
And then when there were no more tears to shed, Angela Petrelli did what she always did. She dried her face, put the mask back on and faced the world.
When the police came to take her away for questioning, Angela Petrelli asked them to wait a moment while she got her purse. As she did Angela made sure to leave the door half ajar, so the officers wouldn't see her throw her passport in a foyer drawer.
"I'm ready now, " she told the officers and she freely followed them.
Angela wondered if she hadn't spent so much time packing, perhaps she would have missed the officers completely. But a woman of her means didn't go anywhere without at least two coats and a trunk full of shoes and jewelry.
A few hours later, Angela was back to very familiar territory these last months. A police station. Getting ready to be interrogated by a Parkman, how things never change, she thought to herself. And then Parkman and Fuller entered the room.
Angela Petrelli
Manhattan
An Hour Later
She all of a sudden had this uncontrollable feeling of fear. It was rare for Angela. Paranoia filled her being, as she sat alone in the interrogation room. She waited for Nathan to come and pick her up, just as he had done almost a year before, under completely different circumstances. She didn't think he would even come, but she had them call him because as her son told officer Parkman, "She has no one else." And it was the god's honest truth.
It seemed Maury Parkman's son was also a mind manipulator, a mind reader to start, with more potential than he himself seemed to know. That was good. Maybe it was best some people didn't know what they were capable of, at least that was good for Angela. She seemed almost proud, how she was able to scare him off with only her mind.
"Get out of my head!" And how good that felt.
Yes, you didn't mess with Angela Petrelli. She was the one that held the control. For control is knowledge and Angela had that in spades.
What she didn't know was while she thought of one Parkman, Angela was already being visited by another Parkman . The panic and fear that filled her at the moment was all being controlled by another person and not Angela Petrelli — Maury Parkman had entered the building.
Maury was out for revenge for not just himself, but for the revenge of another. Kaito was right ; they were in grave danger, and now, especially Angela, considering how Maury felt about her. But it was Maury's regard for Angela that saved her life. He took too much joy in the idea of torturing her before planning on having her kill herself. And that was his downfall and that was what saved Angela Petrelli's life. He liked it too much. Maury took his time.
She had locked the door first from the inside. All Maury's doing. Angela thought she was locking someone out, but she was locking herself in.
"Mom," Angela heard Peter's voice behind her.
"Peter?" she turned toward the sound in shock and dismay, her voice dripped with care. "Is that really you?"
"You killed me, Mom." He looked at her, his face was bloody and he appeared just like he had looked in her living room, when the Indian man had brought his body to her.
"No... No.." She shook her head and spoke in a soft rasp. "You're not real. This isn't real. It's a dream? Isn't it? I.. I.." She shook her head and her face looked vulnerable with fear.
"How can you live with yourself, Mom." He walked toward her with evil eyes.
"No. No. I didn't kill you. I didn't kill you. I tried to save you! I tried to save you. All of you." She cried in despair. And all Angela was arguing with was her own subconscious. "Everything I did. Everything I did – I did for you..." Her eyes were wet and her face pale. "No. No.." She sucked in her strength. "This can't be real. Can it? No. No. I know better than this. I do. This isn't real."
"Is it?" And Peter disappeared. The lights went off in the entire building, or did they?
And Angela Petrelli started screaming. She thought she was being attacked, attacked by something she couldn't see, slashed and knocked about. Perhaps literally scaring the life out of her. What Angela Petrelli had no idea about was that she was doing it to herself. She was doing what she had been doing for years, slowly killing herself when she thought she was defending herself. And then it all stopped.
Matt Parkman broke the glass in the interrogation room with a chair and the spell was broken. It was then that Angela knew it was Maury, for only another person with Maury's abilities could stop him, other than the Haitian. Knowing it was Maury made her even more fearful.
And as her son hugged her and consoled her, he told her it would be alright. And as blood marks appeared on her skin, Angela Petrelli's eyes darted around the room waiting for it all to start again, fearful her attacker was still around.
Nathan had never seen his mother fear anything that much. It was a look in her eyes he had never seen. It was pure fear because it was a place Angela Petrelli had been before. So many years ago. The circumstances were just different.
"Who did this to you, Mrs. Petrelli?" Matt asked her and he pried her death card from her clenched fist. She had no idea how it had gotten there, or even how she had separated herself from her jacket - the last she remembered, the death card had been in her purse.
When Angela got a call in the hospital from her grandsons, she knew it was Nathan's doing, and maybe there was hope for them yet. But Angela would have no more of her sons involved in her business. The stakes were higher now. Maury's attack had knocked some sense into her - going to Nathan for help was stupid on her part, she knew that now.
And Angela knew that Maury attacking her in public, of her surviving, the self-made marks on her face and body, everything would arouse suspicion. And Angela Petrelli knew after all the sacrifices she had made for her secrets, this time she would have to sacrifice herself. The few for the many. Too many people would lose if Angela's secrets were revealed - if people found out what people like her could do. This time, Angela was the collateral damage.
The world, her family and anyone else with an ability would be at risk – if the world found out and Angela knew that couldn't happen. It would be the demise of so much - of not just people like her, but the world - she had seen that future and it was never pretty. Of all of her secrets, Angela Petrelli knew those were secrets that were even bigger than her.
So, Angela Petrelli sacrificed the few for the many. She wasn't looking to be a martyr, it was just the right thing to do. Thirty years of training in the cause didn't even make her flinch at the idea - of going to jail for her secrets.
She needed to stop the investigation. It needed to end with her. And so Angela Petrelli confessed to killing Kaito Nakamura.
"I did it. I killed Kaito Nakamura." What horrible irony, she thought. She was sure this would give Maury more satisfaction than her own death.
She begged Matt Parkman in her head. She begged him for her family, for their secrets, for himself, for others. He had no idea what damage it could do. "Let it go." She was begging for Nathan's life. "Let it go." She was begging for the future.
And when Nathan told her he knew she couldn't have killed Kaito Nakamura, she told him, defeated. "I've done so many bad things in my life. It really doesn't matter what crime I confess to." And she believed it with her whole heart. And in a sense she was punishing herself for her own sins, for the greatest sin of all she felt – for killing Peter.
And she begged Nathan, from her own experience, to get himself cleaned up, to get his family back. After all, it had been her own fault that Heidi had left. Angela was trying to make amends for the sins she knew she had committed in the name of her family.
"Don't let your children hate you, not if you can help it." And that line made her voice quiver, for it was the truth.
She had let her children hate her and it had been the wrong choice, she wouldn't allow her only remaining son to follow in her footsteps. It was always her main goal, Angela just saw her life a little clearer now. Her regrets were more defined and larger a list
And she begged her son not to dig deeper, not to look for redemption. She had been so wrong. It was all too real now and she knew there was real danger at hand, it was all different now - Maury was around.
"...You'll just get yourself killed. And I can't bear to lose another son." Her eyes were full of tears and pain.
And when Nathan hugged her, she hugged him for dear life, because Angela Petrelli needed it. And because she knew it would be for the last time.
That night in her jail cell, after Angela painfully gave up her engagement ring to the guards, her last vestige of the outside world, she sat in the dark and hoped Maury would come and put her out of her misery, but she knew he wouldn't. For he was right, her own present was far more of a nightmare then anything Maury could show her.
Her friends were dead, her life was a mess, her future unknown. Angela Petrelli had the final nail hammered into her coffin, but she was still breathing - that was the cruelest part of all.
That night Angela had a dream that Adam had killed Harry - she now knew what was going on. Adam had escaped and he had killed Kaito. And worse of all, Adam was working with Maury. Adam's brain had always been too evolved to be manipulated by Maury, and without his power , Maury was easy prey to Adam.
"But once I'm done with Maury..." she saw Adam tell Harry. "I'll just kill him, too." He always loved to gloat.
For it didn't matter how valuable Maury was, because Adam Monroe cared more for revenge than sense - it consumed him whole - it was his Achilles heal.
Adam killed Harry right in front of his death card. Adam caught Harry in his car at a rest stop in New Jersey, halfway between New York City and Pennsylvania. While across the country, Maury killed Paula Gamble as her death card was left unopened in her mailbox.
As each founder was killed in different states and countries, their death cards were filed away as evidence by the local police department, never to see the light of day. And so the murders were never connected, the lines of communication never opened and, therefore, Angela Petrelli would sit in jail - which was fine by her.
Perhaps she could have spoken up, saved some of her friends lives, but Angela Petrelli said nothing because who would believe her.
And besides, that meant giving away her own secrets - past and future. Adam by his mere presence would give it away. And so each night before it happened , Angela would see her friends killed by Adam and Maury and there was nothing she could do about it. There was nothing she could do but watch, just like all the times before.
But much like Kaito, Angela thought to herself, "Perhaps we all deserve it." And she did believe that.
It didn't mean it was any easier watching them all die. But then again it was something Angela was very used to. It was what had made her seem cold to others. She had seen it all, literally, and crying didn't change anything. Angela had to cut out her own heart, but the irony of it all was Angela Petrelli never cut out her own heart, she was just very good at pretending most of the time that she had.
And when another Parkman pulled her secrets from her mind Angela felt just like she had so many years before. She felt violated and humiliated and angry. And she fought and she fought hard, for all Angela Petrelli had left were her secrets. It was all she had to hold on to.
And when a Petrelli made a promise, they kept it. She owed Victoria, She would not give up her secret, but in the end, as blood dripped out of her nose, Angela was once again defeated. For this was a power Angela Petrelli was no match for.
"If you take this secret from me, you're not just like your father," she looked at the blood dripping off her fingers. "you are him." And then Angela looked at Matt with daggers in his eyes.
But Matt Parkman had to do what he felt was right, what he felt was saving Victoria's life. Angela thought all Matt was doing was putting the bullet into Victoria himself. Maybe if Angela had let the info out sooner, perhaps Victoria Pratt wouldn't have been killed, but perhaps not.
Matt did what Angela had been doing her entire life. He picked the lesser of two evils to do what he felt was for the greater good. It was his first lesson.
The next day Angela was informed she was being released and Nathan was on his way to pick her up. She asked if along with a change of clothes he could bring her make-up and nail polish.
As Angela got dressed, she noticed the cuts and bruises on her body and they felt so foreign to her, like a forgotten friend she hadn't seen in years. It had been so long since Angela had seen cuts or bruises on her body, she almost didn't recognize what they were. Linderman had healed her so many times, she didn't remember what it felt like or looked like. She ran her fingers along the red slashes on her face and the purple marks on her legs trying to remember if bruises turned yellow first or if that came later, if the marks on her face were deep enough to scar - and how long it would take before she knew. She almost became curious about them the way a baby feels when they first find out they have fingers and toes. Was a person human anymore if they could no longer see their scars or the consequences of their actions? Angela didn't think so, for her scars ran deeper and no magic blood or Daniel Linderman's power could take those away. The difference now was Angela looked just how she felt. And then Angela Petrelli apply her make-up.
Nathan & Angela Petrelli
Manhattan
The press outside the jailhouse was blinding. As soon as they caught sight of her and of Nathan, who exited first, the yelling and the flash bulbs were overwhelming.
"Mrs. Petrelli! Mrs. Petrelli. Why did you confess? Do you know who did it?"
"Are you protecting the killer!?" A another one shouted.
It was a sea of people and passing by them felt like she was being pushed by a wave, Angela said nothing and let nothing show on her face. Although it was hard to not see stars from the flashes of the cameras.
"Mr. Petrelli!" The reporters in the crowd shouted to Nathan who pushed through the crowd without committing a felony, not liking the free-for-all at all, the frenzy. "Were the personal reasons why you stepped down from office due to the disappearance of your brother, Mr. Petrelli."
"Is it true the reason you stepped down was over the death of your brother? Who is your mother protecting?"
"No comment!" Nathan opened the car door and made sure his mother got in first, before getting into the back seat after her.
Mother and son sat in silence the entire ride. Angela didn't seem too thankful or pleased with her release from jail, but then Nathan wasn't in the best of moods himself. But then they were both broken people now.
Nathan was becoming what Angela didn't want him to be, what she had tried to shield him, Peter and Claire from.
Angela was surprised when they reached Peter's apartment and not her own home. Nathan got out and opened the door for his mother, it was habit, it was the way he was brought up, but he still didn't speak to her.
Nathan walked into the apartment first, walking into the living room . Matt was waiting for them . Nathan looked like he might explode, he was still angry. Obviously, Angela was there to give answers again.
"I suppose I have you to thank for my early release from Jail." She looked at Matt.
"You didn't kill anyone, Ma" Nathan had his back to her and wouldn't look at her.
And when Matt showed her Victoria's death card and told her she was dead, she looked at the picture with sadness and a feeling of "she didn't deserve it."
"Where is Adam going next?" Matt asked her.
Nathan snapped in before Angela could answer. "How long are we going to suffer for your sins? For your generation's deeds?"
Angela, with one quick and fast gesture, handed Victoria's death card over to Matt. She was done with it.
"Adam wanted revenge on those of us who betrayed him. It's done now. Let it go, Nathan. It's over." She had worked so hard,there was nothing more to do. She had accepted her fate, so should he. There was nothing more to fight for, no one else to save. He was living in the past again.
And when Nathan told her Peter was alive, it was like the entire screen in front of her flipped, as if a movie frame stuck in the projector. She wasn't sure she heard it right and her body was caught.
"And he's working with Adam. They both killed Victoria Pratt." Matt continued. "Their fingerprints are all over the murder scene."
And the tears and emotion came to Angela's face and her head bobbled from the strain and she gave out a huge painful sigh. For all her sins really had come home to roost. For now Adam was manipulating her and Arthur's son, just as he had done to them, so many years ago.
She walked to Nathan and he wouldn't take her gaze. It was painful. "It all went so wrong. " She walked away from Nathan slowly as she talked, thinking back on everything she had done in her life, everything she was capable of. She stopped and told the men her tale.
"Thirty years ago, a group of us came together to change the world." She gritted her teeth holding in her emotion, "To fix it." She held in her hatred for what had transpired.
Angela Petrelli did not hold her past in any sense of nostalgia, not like Linderman or Bob did. She was in fact disgusted by it. "And Adam ... had a perspective on history that was compelling , and we believed in him. I did." She gestured with her head, oh what a fool she had been. "Linderman... your father.."
"Bob said you locked him away..." Nathan wanted answers.
"Nooo...' She said soft and breathy. "Not at first." She remembered how she had once looked up to Adam, how she had once trusted him. "In the beginning, I helped him." She wasn't very proud of that, but it was the truth. She also knew how much she believed in him, how much she had believed.
"You what?!" Nathan wasn't too happy himself.
"And in the end, Adam decided that the world just wasn't worth fixing and that it needed to be wiped clean with an unstoppable virus." She took a breath. "And just before it was too late. I ..." she remembered calling Kaito. "I came to realize how wrong it was."
"Did you?" Nathan questioned. "You and Linderman wanted to blow up New York to save the world. Doesn't sound to me like you've changed much at all, Ma."
Now was not the time to quibble over details as Angela Petrelli flashed to what she had seen so many years ago, a future where 97 percent of the world's population was killed by the virus. She turned quickly toward Matt and her son.
"Only someone with Peter's abilities could get to where the virus is stored. That's why Adam chose him."
Just like he had chosen her, chosen Linderman and Arthur. He picked people who would do for him what he could not do himself. Adam was a user and a manipulator; she had learned from the best.
"Where would that be, Mrs. Petrelli?" Matt asked her.
"Oddess. Texas." She looked at Matt. "Primatech." She looked at Nathan.
Nathan walked up to Angela with disgust, not even able to say anything. He tried to walk away - leave her and her lies behind.
Angela grabbed Nathan by the arm with full force, for she knew it was the only way she could get him to listen. Because it was just how important her words were and he had to understand. Angela never flinched - she had looked down people tougher than him.
"Adam will never quit. One bullet, right thought his head. It's the only way."
And then Angela's son left her side and this time she knew she might never get him back. And then before Matt could leave, inside her head, Angela told him if he couldn't stop Peter, he would have to kill him, too. For she knew that to save the world, she would have to let her son go. She knew that her own feelings were not as important as 97 percent of the population. Because Angela Petrelli knew from experience and her dreams what that virus could do - do to the world. She was sacrificing her own feelings, cutting out her own heart to save the world. It was the most unselfish thing Angela Petrelli had ever done and perhaps the first real unselfish act of her entire lifetime.
And although this Angela Petrelli would never know it, in a different future, all of her thoughts and reflection after the explosion and the virus would cause Angela to finally see her son Peter for what he really was, a person and not her child, not the savior she gave birth too, not just her hope's future, but the world's. That after all those years of cursing what she felt made her weak, her heart, she saw that it was the one thing that made her son the most powerful one of them all - in so many ways.
And in that different future, she would hold tough, not telling Peter who she was, because there was no time for that, but telling him who he was. Telling and showing him the pride and faith she had in him, that he was able to fly in the face of danger and do what she had been too weak to do, save the world.
For in the end, what made Angela Petrelli weak made her son the strongest. And perhaps he would be able to do what she had not been able to do: keep her hope alive. For after all the evils of the world are released, when the last of the visitors of Pandora's Box have left the building,what remains is hope. Hope that her sons would be able to save the world for the greater good. And it made her proud. Proud that they were her children, at what they were capable of, even with her as a mother. Maybe Angela's greater purpose was nothing more than giving birth to the saviors of the world. Perhaps sometimes , our children must finish what we were unable to finish.
And once again Nathan and Peter, Angela's gifts from god, saved the world.
Angela Petrelli
Manhattan
It was actually nice to be home, but Angela Petrelli didn't feel much like celebrating. Her house felt colder and lonelier than she had ever remembered as she roamed around her living room, playing with her wedding band and flicking the fingers attached to her engagement ring. And she could feel a new sense of confidence coming back to her, but she still waited. Waited for the news that both her sons were alive, or both of her sons were dead. Again, Angela Petrelli waited.
That was when her cell phone rang.
"Yes?" Angela answered to the voice on the other end of the phone. She listened to the voice and went into Arthur's study.
She took the remote to the television, sat down, and turned it on and when Nathan was shot she had to hold in her cries, literally as her eyes filled with tears, so much so it was a marvel they were being held in at all. For Angela would not show the person on the other end of the line, she would not show the Company that she was weak, that this was the way to break her. But of course, they already knew. No one at the Company didn't know that the soft spot in a Petrelli was their family. But Angela would show no weakness, she would be steel, as she watched the aftermath and she knew her son was dead.
"I know. It was unavoidable," she said.
She understood, but it didn't mean she liked it. In the madness, your secrets can be used against you as a weapon and secrets kill. Angela knew that and she had tried and again failed to save her child from it. She knew that the secrets were paramount over everything and there was nothing she could do about it. Angela Petrelli was in the mob and in the mob, snitches are silenced. Yes, Angela Petrelli understood it, it doesn't mean she had to like it.
"You do know that you've now opened Pandora's Box." And she hung up her phone as her head trembled from the pain of holding in her hurt.
But still, she would not let herself cry, because if she cried that meant it was over, that meant Nathan was dead. Finally, as her head bobbled from side to side from the strain and she turned off the television set, one small tear bled from Angela Petrelli's left eye. It wasn't over. It just couldn't be. And she wouldn't let it be.
She had to remind herself of the hope at the bottom of Pandora's box. Not faith, but hope. Hope was what Charles had seen in Peter's eyes. And Angela Petrelli had hope. She finally had hope. It was small, but she had to have it. She had to have it to survive. She was, after all, a capable woman.
"And you know the rest..." Angela spoke in her head. Peter let his mother go, dissolved the images from his family's brains and Angela was pulled out of her life and back into her present.
Claire Bennet, Peter, Nathan & Angela Petrelli
Manhattan
It was night now and Angela Petrelli took a large breath through her nose as she was thrown from her nightmare and back into her living room. And there was Nathan, alive and Claire and Peter all looking at her.
She took in a deep breath and her head bobbled. She sighed large, three times, and took two steps back.
Her family just looked at her, unable to speak.
And that was when it was all just too overwhelming for Angela – reliving her life –reliving all that pain. Her entire body seemed to shut down and Angela Petrelli cried full out for the first time in a long time. It was messy and uncontrollable and weak and everything Angela didn't want to be seen as, but that was just what it was. And she turned from her family not wanting to look at them. Not wanting to show them.
Peter looked at Nathan, he couldn't take it anymore and he walked toward his mother, turned her around and hugged her.
Angela was shocked. Yet, Peter's hug felt like that drink of water in the desert, it made her feel alive again, and she let a cry out as she felt his body wrap around her.
"I thought you'd hate me..." she cried through dripping tears and emotion, her voice was gravelly and husky.
"No.. Ma...' Nathan was finally in the moment with them. "No. Ma.' He shook his head and walked toward her. He took hold of her form. Nathan was still confused, not knowing what had just happened, unsure how to react, but he knew he had to hug her, hug her for now.
And after Angela was able to calm down and she looked at her sons with pride, Peter took his finger and lifted her tears from her cheek.
"You can put all that behind you, Mom." Peter told her. "It's what we do next, that's what's important."
Angela smiled through her tears.
"We can help ya, Ma." Nathan spoke.
Angela looked at Claire, who was just standing there. Her eyes were wet and she looked as stunned as Nathan, but she said nothing.
"You don't have to–" Angela spoke. "You don't have to say anything." She nodded her head.
"I'm not ready yet, I'm sorry." Claire said honestly.
Angela nodded her head. She understood.
After a moment, Claire spoke two words softly. "Thank you."
"I can take that." Angela said through her stifled tears.
And together they all closed Pandora's Box.
They closed the door. But, of course, when one door closes, another opens. For it is never over. The center cannot hold, things always fall apart and Angela Petrelli waited for the other shoe to drop, for it always did. Time is like gravity - it always pulls itself back on course.
Old habits die hard. And no one tells all their secrets - especially Angela Petrelli.
THE END
I want to thank everyone for coming this far with me. I have had a great joy bringing this to people and I hope you felt the same. It was a lot of hard work - if I entertained you or moved you - please show your support and review. For those who have, my love goes out to you for your support and love.
Thank you.
Enjoy Season Three
