The Price of a Memory
Part 5/17
If there was one thing Claude knew about Peter it was that the boy was utterly predictable and that memory loss had probably made him even more so. With that in mind, he bypassed Suresh's flat the next morning despite his promise to show up bright and early and went straight to the coffee shop where he knew he'd find Peter. Not only was he there, but he was sitting at the same table with the newspaper piled in front of him, the sections arranged in the same order as before. The only thing that was different was the untouched blueberry muffin at his elbow--no cheese danish or bagel today. Apparently Tracey had been up to her old tricks again.
Instead of approaching Peter right away, Claude lingered at the counter. The slightly petulant look of frustration on Peter's face as he worked his way through one of the longer articles at the front of the paper's political section was not unfamiliar after yesterday, but the way it wasn't hidden behind a curtain of hair hanging in his face was. Claude had come damn close to taking a pair of scissors to those maddening strands of hair on more than one occasion. But now they were gone, he almost missed them. The new, shorter cut stank of someone else's effort to make Peter look more presentable, more adult. Probably Nathan Petrelli had insisted on the change.
"Can I help you, sir?"
Claude looked around at the near echo of the same words Peter had used to get his attention the day before. This time they came from little Tracey, staring up at him from behind the counter. Seeing she had his attention, her eyes darted briefly to Peter and Claude knew she was wondering if he was some kind of pervert come to stalk or terrorize her favorite customer.
The demands of being visible for once were such that Claude couldn't bypass the "customers only" rule of sitting in a café and so he was obliged to fish around in his pockets for loose change with which to buy a cup of coffee. Of course, this being a fancy coffee shop rather than a roadside diner, Claude's choices were a little more complicated than "regular" or "decaf." As the girl reeled off to him his list of options, he could only stare at her blankly and repeat several times over, "Just coffee." Eventually, he was given what he wanted: a steaming mug of black, bitter liquid.
Carrying his beverage over to Peter's table, he hovered over the boy a minute, waiting to be noticed. As he did, he caught a glimpse of the article that had Peter so thoroughly flummoxed and caught sight of a headline about Congress and some decision they'd made the day before that may or may not adversely affect the good people of New York. Peter ran his finger across the lines of each paragraph, his lips moving silently with each word. Claude noticed that his teeth were slightly clenched and guessed that this was far from the first or even second time Peter had tried to read the thing, more than likely searching for references to his brother.
Suresh had told him that Peter was no longer capable of reading books because he had trouble keeping track of the plots. Apparently this problem extended to newspaper articles as well and while this one wasn't exactly short, Peter's inability to absorb the information he found there disturbed Claude in an unnamable way.
After a minute, Peter seemed to sense that he was being watched. He twisted around in his chair and looked up at Claude, a frown tugging at his lips. Claude had taken into consideration the possibility that Peter wouldn't know him right away and so waited with more patience than was his custom for the penny to drop. Finally, a flash of recognition lit the boy's face and he gave a crooked smile.
"The invisible man," he said, his voice hushed in case he was overheard by any of the shop's other patrons.
"The Forgetful Wonder," Claude replied, heedless of the volume of his own voice.
Peter pulled a face. "Is that the best you can do?" he asked and for a second it felt like the old days, trading barbs with an opponent who, Claude hated to admit, was maybe a little better armed in the wit department than he would have originally thought.
"Best I could do on short notice. It's not like I lay awake at night trying to think of these things," Claude said gruffly, sitting down uninvited in the seat across from Peter, who didn't protest. "Sorryif it doesn't quite match up to the imaginative achievement of your own effort."
"The invisible man? That's classic," Peter said. "The fact that your name is Claude just makes it funnier."
"Oh, aye. Adds that special bit of nuance," Claude said, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, when did you--" He stopped himself just in time.
"When did I what?" Peter asked.
"Nothing," Claude finished limply. He'd been about to ask when Peter had become so educated on the subject of old horror movies. Before, Peter had never caught on to the rather clever reference Claude had woven into his assumed name. But this new Peter had figured it out straight away. Faster than anybody ever had before, that was for certain.
"Does your arm still hurt?" Peter asked after a minute, nodding toward where Claude had started unconsciously rubbing at his own arm, looking to soothe the lingering soreness from where Suresh had taken his blood the day before.
That had been a dirty trick, the blood test. Not like he'd never done one before. After all, they didn't just let you walk in off the street and work for a secret government agency posing as a paper company, did they? But that had been part of a professional procedure. In comparison, Suresh was amateur hour and downright unsettling besides what with the little makeshift lab he'd set up in his own bedroom. It was Claude's guess that most of the equipment being kept there was for Molly's benefit, given her mysterious condition. But it still creeped him the hell out.
If he gave in at all it was only because Suresh had spent ten minutes boring him half to death with his self-important droning about how understanding more about Claude and his abilities might help them figure out a way to trigger Peter's memories down the line. He had a point, but that hadn't made Claude any happier about being taken advantage of in such a blatant and unexciting manner.
To Peter, all he could say was, "Bit sore is all."
"I bet," Peter said. "He's getting better at finding the veins, though. Molly used to hide because she hated the way he'd have to stick her three or four times before he found the right spot. I offered to help but he wouldn't let me do it myself, so I had to show him the right way."
"Medical training or drug addict?" Claude asked, though he already knew the answer.
"I went to school to be a nurse before…" He gestured to his head. "Anyway, Mohinder must have your test results today. That's what you're here for, right? Kind of exciting."
Claude gave Peter a bland look. "Not like a pregnancy test, mate," he said. "Don't need the stick to turn blue to tell me I can turn invisible, do I?"
"Hmm," Peter said musingly, making a show of studying Claude from across the table. "I don't know. I've never actually seen you do it."
"You bloody well have," Claude protested.
"When?" Peter challenged.
"Yesterday," Claude replied. "I was sitting next to you for hours before you saw me there. Looked right through me a couple of times, you did."
Peter considered this for a moment before shaking his head. "I'm not convinced," he said and it sounded more like a phrase he'd picked up from Suresh than one he might ever have used on his own.
Claude leaned across the table, nearly nose to nose with Peter now. To his credit, the boy didn't flinch back or away. "I could do it right now if I wanted to," he said.
The corner of Peter's lips climbed into a mischievous smile. "In front of everybody?" he said, eyeing the people that surrounded them. Claude looked with him and noticed that Tracey and now Meg were watching him and Peter from behind the counter looking like they were about two seconds away from phoning Suresh.
"Nah," he said, looking down into his cup of coffee, which had grown cold as they talked. "Wouldn't want to scare off your mates over there."
Peter glanced over his shoulder at the two women before turning back to Claude. "Oh, them," he said, his mood dampening at Claude's refusal.
"What do you say it like that for?" Claude asked.
"No reason," Peter said, tearing a few crumbs off the muffin but not eating it. "They're nice enough ladies but Mohinder asked them to keep an eye on me and sometimes they take it a little too seriously. Like, I wish I could turn invisible just so they would stop watching me all the time."
"That is one of the perks," Claude said.
Peter gave him a grim smile. "It's not like I don't appreciate their concern. I know they're just trying to help. Mohinder too. It just…gets annoying. Actually, the whole thing gets annoying. The fact that I even need help."
"You mean with the forgetting things?" Claude asked.
Peter nodded.
Claude began playing with the corner of one of the brown paper napkins he'd been handed at the counter. "How did it happen?" he asked. "Were you…in an accident or something?"
"Not that I know of," Peter said. "Actually, it was my brother who was in an accident. About nine or ten months ago. He was okay but his wife Heidi was paralyzed for a while."
"For a while?" Claude said. "I was not aware that being paralyzed after a horrific car accident was something you could be cured from."
"Neither was I," Peter said. "But I remember being in the hospital with Nathan when the doctors told him about it and I've seen pictures of her in a wheelchair. But she walks fine now. I don't know how. They don't talk about it." He sighed. "I definitely remember being told, though. It's one of the last things I remember before…"
"Before what?" Claude prompted.
"Before I woke up one day and I was almost a whole year older than I remembered being," Peter said. "My dad was dead, Nathan had been elected to Congress, Heidi could walk…" He stopped himself with effort, looking out the window now at his side rather than at Claude, gazing at the people passing by out on the sidewalk.
"And that's all you remember, is it? Waking up one day and it was all gone. Just like that."
Distracted, Peter shrugged loosely. "I guess," he said. "Those first days are kind of a blur. Mostly I remember feeling really tired all the time. And I felt…like I'd done something wrong. Like Nathan was upset with me for some reason."
Interesting.
"So you don't remember anything from the time in between? It's all just a blank, is that it?" Claude pressed, beginning to wonder how far Peter was going to let him push before shutting him out.
Peter nodded.
"You've no idea whatsoever what happened to you during that time."
"No," Peter said.
Claude let go of the napkin he'd begun shredding. "Tell me, did you not think to ask someone?"
Peter seemed mildly offended at this. "Who is there to ask?" he said. "The last thing I remember is graduating from nursing school. I made a few friends there but it's not like any of them stop by to say hello or anything so I'm kind of assuming that whatever happened, I lost touch with them. Maybe I made some new friends but none of them seem to be around either." He shook his head, lips pressed tight. "All that's left is Nathan and every time I try to ask him, he just feeds me some line about not forcing the memories."
Surprised by Peter's sudden vehemence, Claude let the silence settle between them. Whatever had happened, it seemed obvious no one had pushed Peter down a convenient flight of stairs and gotten lucky about which memories stayed and which ones fled. Suresh had told him Nathan Petrelli didn't want anybody prying into the source of Peter's memory loss. Was he just protecting him in his usual misguided way or was there something else to Petrelli's insistence that Peter not remember?
Deciding not to push the subject any further for the moment, Claude caught Peter's eye and nodded toward the sunny day outside the window. "What do you say you and I ditch Suresh for a bit and I give you that demonstration I promised on the perverted past times of invisible men?"
Peter's expression turned from sullen to mildly intrigued. "We're not going to murder anybody, are we?"
"Not today," Claude said. "That's the more advanced class."
Peter grinned. "Just making sure," he said.