Claire woke to the sound of a fire alarm and the feeling of water trickling down her cheeks.

She took a breath, her throat and lungs immediately filling with smoke. She coughed, struggling to catch her breath even as her lungs continuously healed themselves in the wake of the damage. She could hear screams, coughs, and cries, each somehow more distant than the last. It took her a few moments to realize that her eyes weren't open yet.

She carefully opened them, struggling to sit up. Her entire body screamed in protest, and as she looked down at her body, her stomach turned.

Her leg was twisted at nearly a ninety-degree angle just below her knee, the bone sticking out of the tattered skin. The stark white of the bone against the dark red carpet beneath her leg was startling, and she found herself staring for a long moment, thinking back to the video of her body being cut up and her leg torn from her hip. She took a long breath, though it did no good as the smoke again assaulted her lungs, sending her into a coughing fit. She reached down, staring at her hands in a morbid fascination as she realized that two fingers on her left hand were missing. Already her body was attempting to heal, new bones poking through the skin, but she didn't have time to wait. She grabbed her leg below the knee with her remaining fingers, not allowing herself any time to think before she yanked it down, pulling the bone down into a straight position.

She could hear a scream, closer to her this time, and it took her a moment to realize it was her own voice. The pain that she had longed for was back, and she couldn't remember for a moment why she'd missed it. She knelt to the side, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the carpet alongside the blood and debris. She thought she saw one of her missing fingers a few feet away.

She stood slowly, her newly healed leg screaming as she placed weight on it. The entire room was in chaos. There were bodies everywhere, some whole and others in pieces. The reporters in the front row were all dead. Claire found her eyes drawn to one, who was holding their intestines in one hand and the notebook in the other, their eyes glazed over and staring right where Peter used to be.

Peter.

Claire turned quickly, but he was gone. For a moment she felt relief, knowing that his body wasn't there. If there was no body, he could still be alive. She ignored the screams and groans of the wounded, pushing past bodies and blood and making her way backstage. Nearly every guard was dead, their throats slit or bodies riddled with bullets. The sound of the fire alarm and the steady trickle of water from the ceiling were nearly deafening, and the red lights produced by the alarm provided her only line of sight; the electricity was cut.

"Peter!" she screamed, not stopping to think that she was giving away her position. It didn't matter; she just needed to find him. Her mind struggled to make sense of what had happened. She remembered questions about Sylar, gunshots, and leading Peter backstage as quickly as she could before an explosion that rocked the entire room, the entire building. There was plaster on the ground, and as she looked up she realized that she could see straight up the floor above them.

No one human could have survived this.

She pushed the thought away, silently cursing Peter for his stubborn refusal to accept her power permanently. She'd warned him something like this could happen, that it was only a matter of time before something happened, but even she hadn't imagined something of this magnitude. It didn't make sense. They had protocol. They had metal detectors, screenings, and security; nothing should have made it past.

She paused, realizing that she didn't know where she was going. There was no sign of Peter backstage. She closed her eyes, trying to relax, even as her body screamed for her to push on. She needed help. Gabriel would be able to find him with his abilities, surely. He'd picked up so many since the hospital that even Claire couldn't keep track, using his newfound empathy.

"Gabriel!" Her voice didn't travel far, but she knew that he would hear her if he was nearby. He was probably already looking for Peter; maybe he'd already found him. Claire opened her eyes, stepping around the bodies on the floor and back out into the main area. She climbed carefully over limbs and bodies, knowing that she could still save many of these people, knowing that she didn't care so long as she could find Peter and save him.

She made her way into the hallway, though it was just as desolate as the ballroom. There were streaks of blood on the floor, many leading to the front doors, though one led further into the building. Claire felt her body move as though separate from her mind as she followed the trail leading further into the building, no longer able to call out even as the smoke began to clear the further she left the ballroom behind.

The blood stopped at a door farther down the hallway. She paused for only a moment before bursting through the door, and Peter's name died on her lips.

He was sitting at a chair in the middle of the room, his arms taped to his sides. There was a TV monitor directly in front of him, a light blinking on the screen as though it were recording. Claire ignored it, her eyes only on her uncle's prone form. He wasn't moving.

"Peter!" she screamed, stepping further into the room. There was no one there anymore; whoever had taped him to the chair was long gone. She ran to his side, slipping in the thick puddle of blood by his feet. His entire shirt was soaked, and she felt panic clawing at her chest as she looked around, searching frantically for something to cut herself with, to heal him. There was a paper cutter on the nearby desk and she grabbed it, slicing her wrist with abandon and pressing the wound to the first cut she saw on Peter's arm where his shirt was ripped.

"You'll be okay," she whispered, pressing down harder on the wound when it didn't immediately begin to knit back together. As the moments passed and he didn't stir, she began to panic in earnest. His chin was touching his chest, and his shoulders weren't moving with his breath. She reached out slowly, tilting his chin up towards her to see his eyes, when he suddenly slipped out of her fingers.

She stared in silent horror as his head slid down his body, farther and farther from his neck, before falling on the ground by her feet.

"I couldn't have you bringing him back."

Claire was vaguely aware of a male voice behind her, but all she could see was Peter's head, his eyes closed, sitting by her feet in a puddle of blood. The voice came closer, and she felt a hand touch her shoulder, fingers gripping her skin painfully.

"Can't have you coming back, either."

Her body reacted before her mind caught up. She grabbed the hand on her shoulder and twisted it as hard as she could, hearing a satisfying pop and a hiss of pain. She stumbled to her feet, turning to face a man she hadn't seen when she entered the room.

He looked to be in his mid to late forties, standing tall before her in a dark blue suit, holding his now broken wrist in his hand. He had dark brown hair, slightly streaked with gray, combed to the side, the neatness a stark contrast to the chaos of the room around him. He had a long beard, and beneath it Claire could see the grimace of pain.

"I should have known it wouldn't be as easy with you," he said. Claire barely heard him. She was distant, disconnected from her body and the room around her. All she felt was an intense anger, a hatred she hadn't experienced in decades, not since she saw Nathan and Meredith's bodies, Noah's body.

"You killed him."

Her voice wasn't her own. It was harsh, cold. She reached for the gun she kept on her person, only to find that it had been knocked off in the explosion. The man noticed and smirked, shaking his head.

"You were too late," he said, and Claire felt the flush of anger even as she raced forward, grabbing the paper cutter from where she'd dropped it on the floor. The man stepped easily out of the way, evading her frantic attack even as she swung. She felt his good hand on the back of her neck, his fingers digging painfully into her skin, his breath on her ear as he spoke.

"It was nice to meet you, Claire," he said. She felt the cool metal of the gun in the back of her head, and there was only a moment to panic as she realized he knew about the spot, the one place that could halt her healing. She opened her mouth to retort, but all she felt was a blinding flash of pain, and then nothing.

Claire was 16 again, standing in front of a train, her arms outstretched and eyes closed as Peter saved her from herself.

He was her hero then in every sense of the word, taking the pain from her shoulders and bearing it himself. His selflessness had been her guiding light for years, her sense of what was right in a world that was so often wrong.

His willingness to forgive, to heal, was something she'd always envied. It was a large part of the reason she'd been able to forgive Gabriel. Knowing that Peter had done the same, had seen something in him, meant more to her than she'd ever told either of the two men in her life.

And somehow, he was gone now. She knew that, despite the fact that nothing felt real right now. She couldn't remember how she knew, but the aching hole in her chest spoke of something ripped violently ripped out and thrown away, something important.

She was back in Costa Verde, in her old home. She saw Nathan, Meredith, and her father, all sitting at the kitchen table. She saw Peter, standing in her kitchen, smiling as he made her pancakes.

"Are we all dead?" she asked, and his eyes glinted, a hint of sadness behind them.

"You aren't," he said, and she woke up.

Claire recognized Gabriel's apartment as soon as she opened her eyes. She'd been there before, though not often. His walls were lined with bookshelves, each packed to the brim with various titles that she'd never read, from classic literature to repair manuals. There was a finished puzzle on the table, the one he had told her about at the diner, though it was half knocked on the floor now. There was a bundle of bloody cloth sitting on top of it, a single bloody bullet and a pair of pliers off to the side.

Her eyes moved slowly around the room, landing on the figure that sat in an armchair in the corner. He was asleep, his chin resting on his chest, and Claire felt her heart jump into her throat at the sight. She half-expected his head to tumble to his feet, but instead his shoulders shifted slightly, his eyes opening and meeting hers.

Claire didn't have time to react before he was across the room, his long legs carrying him faster than she'd ever seen him move before. She felt herself drawn into his arms before she could react. He wrapped her in his arms, holding her tightly to his chest. She could hear his heart beating quickly through the thin fabric of his shirt, could feel the stubble on his chin as he rested it on top of her head.

She had never hugged him before. Despite knowing this new side of him for 20 years, they had never been this intimate before. She felt a flush spread across her cheeks even as she returned the embrace, finding comfort in his touch despite their sordid past. She felt the sob clawing its way out of her chest, and it wasn't long before she was crying openly, her tears soaking the fabric of his shirt. She wasn't sure if she imagined the wetness on the top of her head.

"Peter," she gasped, and felt Gabriel's arms tighten around her, somehow pulling her even closer.

"I know." She felt the response deep in her gut, and she knew then that he was gone, truly gone, and that nothing she could do would ever bring him back.