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The Not-So-Average Girl
Once Claire was satisfied that Peter was safe (and she was not thinking about how it had felt when he kissed her forehead like that; she was trying to stop New York being blown up, this was not the time to get caught up in a crush), she turned her attention to the questions that she hadn't been able to focus on earlier.
"So… what are you all doing here?" she looked curiously around the room at Kim, Ron and their new friends. Her hands still felt a bit tender from where she had literally regrown her skin, but when the alternative had been to let Peter explode, she could cope with sore fingers for a while.
"Sylar broke Hiro's sword," Ando explained. "We come here to fix it, and…"
"Hiro's dad was in the back room," Ron finished.
"Hiro's dad?" Claire looked at Ron incredulously. "Wait a- I thought you said he went back to Japan?"
"We thought he did," Ando shrugged. "He wish to talk with Hiro about something; Hiro chose to listen."
"To the guy who… didn't he try and make you both go back to Japan earlier?" Claire looked uncertainly at Ando and Ron.
"Hiro… want to be true hero," Ando said.
"And seeing his future self probably means he's trying to over-compensate right now," Ron observed.
"Saw his future?" Claire said in surprise.
"We didn't mention that we got all that info from a trip to the future?" Ron put in.
"You didn't." Kim gave Ron a pointed stare. "You only told me that Hiro's sword was broken and kept sending me new instructions on where to meet you to deal with it; you didn't say anything about where you've been before it broke."
"And… you were in the future?" Claire looked at Ando and Ron with a new sense of… she wasn't even sure how to define what she suddenly felt. The idea that Peter and that artist he was copying had painted a future tragedy was one thing, but the idea that they could actually travel to the future…
"Yeah, but it sucked," Ron shrugged. "I mean, New York was decimated after the explosion, people like us were being hunted for what we were, Sylar had replaced Peter's brother and become President to make sure he was the only guy with powers- oh, and you told me that we had to make sure that you stayed close to Peter until we dealt with Sylar!"
"I told- you met me in the future?" Kim looked at Ron with a cautious grin as she processed that particular sentence.
"Oh yeah; actually, we met both of you," Ron grinned at Kim and Peter, before his expression faltered and he focused on Kim. "Which reminds me; future you basically told me to tell you to take care about how often you rely on your… staying alive thing."
"Are you saying my ability has a downside?" Kim's cautious grin shifted to a more intense expression.
"More that… as you explained it, it's basically that you relied on it so much that your body wouldn't even let you leave Peter alone for that long because everything was so bad you only really felt safe with him…"
"Right…" Kim nodded, before she gave a cautious shrug out of a lack of any other ideas for how to respond. "Well, at least I know about that now…"
"Talking of knowing things," Peter glanced over at Claire, "you… might want to call your dad."
"Her dad?" Kim repeated. "Why would we want to-?"
"He was at Doctor Suresh's apartment with Ted and some of the others," Peter said.
"Which means he's probably working with Doctor Suresh, right?" Ron asked.
"We… there's no reason not to think that, anyway," Peter nodded, before he looked at Claire. "And considering how we left…"
"Fine," Claire nodded, as she walked over to the desk and picked up the phone. "Do you have the number for Suresh's flat?"
"Doesn't your dad have a-?"
"Do we really want to rely on the idea that my dad brought the phone I know about with him when he's actively hunting a superpowered serial killer?" Claire pointed out.
"She's right," Kim nodded. "It's probably pretty much standard procedure for active agents not to use a personal phone on that kind of assignment in case they're caught and someone manages to use their phone to find who they are… and wow, that's weird."
"What weird?" Ando looked at her.
"I… didn't even think about what someone would do in that kind of situation; I just… knew it," Kim clarified, looking around the room with a cautious smile. "This… I wonder what else I could just know if someone brought it up near me?"
"Something we can think about later," Peter said, as he checked his wallet and passed Claire a card. "There; pretty sure that's Doctor Suresh's home number."
"Thanks," Claire said, dialling the number at the bottom of the small card. As she entered the last digit, Claire spent a few moments staring at the number on the screen as though she had suddenly forgotten how to use it before she hit the 'CALL' button.
"Hello?" a familiar voice said at the other end.
"Dad," Claire said firmly.
"Claire?" her father said anxiously. "What happened? Where are you? Did that man-?"
"Peter would never hurt me, Dad; he just had… a bad reaction to a new ability," Claire said, taking care to reach over and place a reassuring hand on Peter's arm as she spoke. "He's not a danger to anyone; we're just… we needed to get to our friends."
"Your friends?" her father repeated. "Your mother and I have been out of our minds-!"
"Because your friend from Haiti couldn't wipe mine?" Claire interjected, moving away from Peter to stand behind the counter; she wasn't going to hide her conversation from her friends, but at the same time she wanted to make it clear she was dealing with this on her own. "Maybe running away wasn't the smartest call I could have made, but at least I could trust that the people I was running away with wouldn't try and erase my memory if I did something they didn't approve of."
"I was trying to protect you-"
"By taking away my ability to choose?" Claire countered. "Dad, just erasing things doesn't change the fact that they happened; I have the right to make my own choice. I was willing to accept the fact that you lied about my parents because you maybe just didn't want me to feel bad-"
"You know about that?"
"And thank you for admitting to that," Claire said bitterly. "If you couldn't find them you could have just said; you didn't have to… hire actors or bring in other agents or whatever you did-"
"I may have killed your birth mother."
Claire only just remembered to grab the nearby desk to stop herself falling over at that statement.
"My… my mother?" she repeated. "You killed her?"
"He what?" Ron and Kim yelled in shock, while Peter and Ando looked at her sympathetically.
"It wasn't intentional-"
"Not intentional?" Claire repeated, glad to see that her friends were just as sceptical as she felt at that statement. "How do you do something like that by accident?"
"Your mother had the ability to generate fire."
"Oh," Claire said, various unpleasant images springing to mind that might reasonably justify that explanation. She might be lucky enough to have a relatively passive power, but if Peter could lose control of any of his powers like he had earlier… and if her mother had been scared enough…
"So… what?" she asked, deciding to focus on the obvious questions. "You tried to capture her and things went wrong?"
"At the time, it was speculated that she was tipped off that we were coming and tried to escape, but she lost control of her powers in a panic," her father explained. "None of the bodies were ever conclusively identified as hers, but among all the other casualties-"
"I get it," Claire cut him off, not wanting further reasons to picture her unknown mother being apparently destroyed by her own powers. "And where did I fit into this?"
"The fire spread through her apartment complex so rapidly she… as far as we can tell, didn't have time to retrieve you from your rooms. You were… found… after it was all over, and DNA testing was able to confirm that you were Meredith's daughter, even if we couldn't explain how you survived at the time."
"I… see," Claire said. She thought about yelling at him more about not sharing this with her earlier, but right now there were more urgent matters to focus on. "So… if that's what happened to my mother… what about my birth father?"
"I was never told anything," her father replied, accepting the clarification with no obvious reaction. "An old… he was a partner of mine early on… had a theory that someone was acting to conceal that side of your heritage from everyone else, but he was always a bit hostile about our work; it could just as easily be that nobody genuinely knew anything."
"Are you seriously suggesting that someone working with you had a conspiracy theory about your work?" Claire asked incredulously. "You're already a genuine conspiracy case-"
"Which can make people even more paranoid when they know what there is to be worried about," her father observed. "The point is… bringing up the truth about your mother felt like it would have involved bringing up everything that happened around your adoption, and I had so few answers I didn't feel right sharing them with you at that time. If I couldn't give you the full truth… well, I decided that a comforting lie was better."
"That wasn't your choice to make."
"I felt like it was."
"You know, this is the main reason I've been staying with Peter since this happened," Claire observed. "At least he tries to explain himself when he makes decision like this that are going to affect my life."
"I can accept that," her father said (Claire wasn't going to think about the hurt tone in his voice; the man had lied to her for years, she had a right to be angry with him right now). "Anyway, given the number you called, I take it you want to talk to Doctor Suresh?"
"We need to work out what we're going to do about Ted Sprage," Claire replied; whatever her issues with her father as a person at the moment, he at least had experience in dealing with superhumans. "Considering that everything we've found out so far suggests that someone is going to blow up New York… we're not saying that Ted's going to do anything on purpose, but we need to work out alternatives."
"And you're not worried about your friend?"
"Peter can control himself and we're here to help him do that; Ted… I'm not saying he's a bad guy, but Peter has options that Ted just won't have," Claire said, hoping that Ted wouldn't learn what she'd said and think she was dismissing him as a hopeless case. Her reasoning was just that Peter's mimicry gave him access to other powers that gave him ways to get away or help control himself if he had another 'meltdown', whereas if Ted had an 'accident' that was basically it for everything around him.
"We'll get back to you," Noah said at last. "Shall I call this number in an hour or so?"
"That should work," Claire responded, before her eyes narrowed. "But if you try anything, remember that Peter can teleport and he's already beaten your power-blocking guy before; if we don't like what's happening, we're out of there."
"Fair enough," her father responded before he ended the call.
"I take it that wasn't Doctor Suresh?" Ron asked.
"It was my dad," Claire nodded at Ron. "He'll call us back later."
"And we're trusting him now?"
"We're trusting that he wants to stop Sylar as much as we do," Claire affirmed, before she shook her head. "Beyond that… I don't know."
"And nobody's saying you have to figure it out any time soon," Peter nodded at her. "Trust me, nobody's going to judge you for feeling conflicted about your dad; look at what I've been putting up with from my brother for years."
"Yeah, trying to present you as going mad is crossing a few lines," Ron smiled over at Peter before he winced. "Uh… sorry if that came across a bit-"
"I get it," Peter smiled reassuringly at Ron, before he looked over at Ando. "Getting back to Sylar… when he broke Hiro's sword, did he grab it by the blade and then do something to the metal?"
"How-?" Ando looked at him in shock.
"We saw it in a sketch of Isaac's," Peter answered, anticipating Ando's question before he looked grimly around at the others. "And the next one in that particular set was me facing Sylar… somewhere."
"Alone?" Ando asked.
"Alone in that picture," Kim stated resolutely. "It's not like we were looking at a full-page spread of… wherever you were; it would be easy for someone to be off to the side."
"Maybe," Peter nodded at her even as his expression turned grim. "But that doesn't mean I want to risk it; right now I'm basically the only one here who can hope to match Sylar if he goes all-out, but if he gets to the girls we're going to be in new kinds of trouble."
"I choose to take that as a compliment and point out that we're not just going to sit back while you go off into a dangerous situation-" Kim began.
"And I'm not asking you to stay out full-time; I just want you to be careful about it," Peter assured her. "Sylar's tough enough as it is; if he managed to take any of our abilities…"
"Point," Kim nodded in acknowledgement; the last thing any of them wanted was Sylar acquiring any kind of enhanced survival skills, whether that was Kim's instincts or Claire's healing. "So assuming the picture itself is inevitable, what do we do to make sure we can control how we get to that point?"
"Focus on keeping Ted away from Sylar?" Ron put in.
"That's a start," Peter nodded at Ron. "If we can make sure Sylar doesn't acquire that ability, we can at least keep the damage contained to a local level…"
Looking over at Kim, Claire wasn't sure how to feel about the grim expression on her friend's face, as she simultaneously understood what Kim must be thinking and dreaded the thought of things going that far.
If Sylar was as powerful as he seemed so far, keeping him contained wasn't a practical option unless that Haitian guy was able to block his powers and was willing to just sit outside Sylar's cell for the rest of the villain's life, but the thought of just planning to outright kill someone…
