Title: Sometime Around Midnight
Prompt: "Sometime Around Midnight" by Airborne Toxic Event
Fandom: Heroes, AU post 4.14 "Let It Bleed"
Pairings/Characters: Peter Petrelli, Claire Bennet, canon
Dislcaimer: All publicly recognizable characters herein belong to Tim Kring and respective owners. All lyrics herein belong to Airborne Toxic Event and respecitve owners. This is for entertainment purposes only.
Summary: You know that she'll break you in two.
Notes: This is technically a song-fic. I tried to do something less cliched by incorporating the lyrics into the narrative. All italicized lines are lyrics from the song, in order.
It starts sometime around midnight.
Or, at least, that's when you lose yourself for a minute or two.
You've been here for too long and you know it. Your drink has already been refilled twice and you still don't feel anything. Not a good sign. You should leave, you know that too. But you can't yet because you haven't seen her and this is her birthday and you promised.
You think about it as you stand under the bar lights, smoke and booze curling around your head, darting in and out of your nostrils in a unpleasant yet familiar way. The band plays some song about forgetting yourself for awhile and you fall into the lyrics. You don't want to remember so many things. You don't want to remember how you met. How you left. Why you're here. To celebrate the 140th birthday of a girl who only looks 25. That, like her, you'll never die - a side effect of touching her that you can no longer turn off.
She walks in, her arm around some guy you've never bothered meeting and the piano's this melancholy soundtrack to her smile, so bittersweet and forced. She's still beautiful, though her hair is brown instead of blonde and her smiles don't reach her eyes, and that white dress she's wearing makes your heart stop because it's too much like a wedding dress and that makes your chest hurt.
You haven't seen her for awhile, even by your standards. Two decades. So much longer than any separation before that. And yet your heart still beats faster when she steps into the room. It's like your blood itself can sense her presence. You don't doubt the possibility. Not after everything you've seen.
She hasn't acknowledged you yet but you know that she's watching. She's improved her covert skills over the years, a consequence of being in and out of the Company and its multiple offshoots and adaptations. Now she's laughing with her boyfriend and she's turning in that white dress, showing off the carefree attitude she's faking.
But you see the truth: she's holding her tonic like a crutch, her grip on the glass tightens and loosens and she sips it before she speaks to anyone. It doesn't affect her, you remember, but she drinks it anyway. A force of habit, she used to say. You remember that habit. It developed because of you, you think. You aren't sure because nothing was ever good then, but you're fairly certain.
Alcohol isn't the same for you. You feel it. You aren't sure why. You never asked, never cared. It was a good escape during the bad times. You aren't sure you'd give up the feeling even now when the room's suddenly spinning.
She catches your eye and your breath catches in your chest. The room spins slowly now as she walks up and asks how you are. You don't answer the question. She lifts a hand and pushes her brown hair behind her ear and the air conditioning is just right so you can smell her perfume and you recognize it. You gave it to her on her eightieth birthday. It's spicy and exotic and it drags a memory up from your soul. Like you've stepped through time again. You can see her lying naked in your arms as you ward off the chill of a New York winter morning, the scent of her new perfume clinging to the sheets and your skin.
And so there's a change in your emotions as you look at her and all these memories come rushing like feral waves to your mind. Of a Texas high school hallway and a pretty little cheerleader with a sad little smile. Of your niece. Of a rooftop and a pretty little girl in black who makes your pain disappear with her fingers and words. Of your band aid.
Of the bathroom of a DC apartment and pretty little girl with a tear-stained face who will outlive everyone she loves. Of your broken porcelain doll. Of the curl of your bodies like two perfect circles entwined. Of your lover. Of fights and tears and always coming home to the pretty little girl who loved you. Of your soul mate. Of the last day of fifty years. Of empty drawers and shattered mirrors. Of broken hearts.
You remember like your life was lived in a single day and you feel hopeless and homeless and can't speak for want of words. The lines of her face, her hair, her eyes turn blurry and you're lost in the haze of the wine.
You mean to speak, to say something about the way it ended. Apologize, maybe. Forgive, perhaps. She's stolen away before you can offer a reprieve from the silence between you. It's her boyfriend. They've only been together for a few years. A blink of an eye in their lifetimes. You think she might be happy with him and it makes your throat close.
There's a cake. It's vanilla and you think that at least her boyfriend's done his homework. But there aren't enough candles on it, you know, and you cling to the thought that you are the only one here who knows her true age. You're the only one here who knows anything about Claire Bennet.
Except she goes by Abshire now and hasn't been a Bennet in decades.
There's toasts and cheers and laughter and then her boyfriend clears his throat and you know that your worst fear is being realized. The ring box is black and velvet and looks exactly like the one that's been sitting in your sock drawer for twenty years. She's uncertain, it's obvious by the way she's looking at him, kneeling before her and waxing sentimental about their bond and unbreakable love and other things you stop hearing.
You're too busy inspecting the look in her eyes. She knows you're watching her, the same as you knew before. You wait, holding your breath, until she looks from him to you and you see it. She doesn't believe the words he's saying. She doesn't but she wants too.
That's worse, you think.
And then her eyes are gone, back to him. She's smiling that pretty little smile you've always adored and she's nodding to him. She takes the ring on her finger, a sparkling diamond in a gold band, and they hug and kiss and everyone in the room claps. Except you.
There's a bit of chaos then. She is congratulated by her fake friends who know nothing of the lives she's lived before them or the lives she'll live once their dead and gone. They pass out cake and more drinks and you're off the side with the bartenders. You call them friends because they are, though they were only children the first time you stepped in here and now they are grown men.
You catch sight of her near the door and then she leaves; with someone? You don't know. You can't see anyone with her but you don't see her boyfriend - fiancé, you remind yourself. She seems to ignore the room but she makes sure you saw her. She looks right at you and bolts.
There's a familiar feeling running through your veins as she walks out the door: your blood boiling and your stomach in ropes. It's the same feeling you always got around her. And, the bartenders, your friends say, "What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost."
And you do, you're certain. The color is gone from your face and your blood wants to chase after her. It's a ghost of a feeling. The old siren's call that used to pull you to her side.
You follow. It's the only thing you can do. You've always followed.
The night is cold and you'll never understand why she picked Boston this time. She always liked warmer cities. There is snow falling and you walk under the streetlights as flakes settle in your hair and the wrinkles of your coat. You know which way she's gone. You can feel her drawing you. There are people on the sidewalk with you but you're too focused and you're too drunk to notice that everyone is staring at you.
It wouldn't matter if you had. You don't care what you look like. You catch a glimpse of that white dress and the world is falling around you.
She's a block away. You run.
You just have to see her.
It runs through your head. Over and over: You just have to see her.
You just have to see her.
She turns a corner. You follow down a gray alleyway.
You just have to see her.
She's stopped, looking at you. You stop too. It's too dim and you step toward her.
You just have to see her.
She's crying, you think. You hear the sniffling, can taste the tears in the air.
"Tell me you love me," she says.
You do. You always do. Always have.
"Tell me not to marry him," she says.
You do. She smiles that sad little smile. The tears dry up quickly now. You're her band aid too.
"Tell me you won't," you say and it holds so much more, begs for so much more, than you can actually say.
You hear the breath catch in her throat. She pauses. You wait. And now there's a thousand memories flashing behind her eyes instead of yours. And you can see every moment again. You witness a life of smiles and tears and words spoken. It's the unspoken ones that weigh heavily on you now. The proposal you never managed to make. The apology you couldn't vocalize.
She always just knew you. Knew, without words, how you were feeling, what you wanted to say. You'd never been a man of many words and she was a girl who hadn't needed many.
But she'd needed more than you'd given her.
She looks at you then and the distance between you is a chasm that she is hesitant to cross.
You watch her fight. Watch her battle herself.
It's him or you.
Happiness or love.
Her sad little smile is gone.
And you know that she'll break you in two.
Please review. Thank you for reading.
Sorry for the triple alerts, guys. is giving me serious formatting problems right now.