The Price of a Memory
Part 11/17

"I'll never understand how a man who resides in a single room apartment furnished with only a filthy mattress can possibly have the audacity to call my home a shit hole."

The comment came from Suresh, who looked around the cramped, closet-like space critically, hands held stiffly at his sides as if he was afraid to touch anything in it. His gaze passed right over Claude, who had pressed himself invisibly against the far wall upon hearing footsteps outside the door.

Suresh waited a few beats.

"I know you're here. I had Molly find you for me."

Damn.

"Using innocent little girls to do your dirty work for you again?" Claude said. "That's low, Suresh. Even for you."

"Well, it's not as though I could look you up in the phone directory," Suresh remarked dryly, unfazed as Claude appeared before him. "It's been days since we last saw you. I was afraid of what might have happened to you after your…meeting with Nathan Petrelli."

"Well, he didn't have my body thrown in a Dumpster or anything," Claude said.

"I can see that," Suresh replied.

Claude moved over to the window, running his fingers over the leaves of a potted plant that looked on its last legs, all brown and shriveled.

"I take it the Forgetful Wonder found his way home all right, then. Or did you have to use your little tracking system on him as well?"

"Forgetful Wonder?"

"Peter," Claude clarified.

"Yes, I know who you meant," Suresh said, rolling his eyes. "But…Forgetful Wonder?"

"I'm still working on it."

Amusement tugged alarmingly at one corner of Suresh's lips. "Peter's fine," he said. "A little distant since his meeting with his brother, perhaps but otherwise in one piece."

"Then all's well that ends well," Claude said. "This has been a fun little chat but I really--"

"What happened?" Suresh asked.

Claude stuffed his hands in his pockets, trying his best to look as reticent as possible, hoping Suresh would take the hint and not push him. But as Suresh stubbornly waited for an answer, it occurred to Claude that maybe the good doctor deserved to know the truth. Maybe it was time to share the burden a bit.

"If we're going to talk about this, can we do it outside?"

"Outside?" Suresh said. "Why can't we do it here?"

"Because I don't really live here and I don't want the junkie who does to come back in the middle of things," Claude said. "Follow me."

To his credit, Suresh kept his silence as they made their way up onto the roof of the building. Claude had been spending most of his time there lately, brooding over what Petrelli had told him in the hotel room that day. Lucky thing for Molly. Normally, Claude wasn't in the habit of lingering in one place for very long. Any other day and Suresh might have traveled halfway across the city to find he had already gone. But something had been keeping him still over the past week. Frozen in place, really. He'd found himself unable to go to Suresh or Peter but also unable to simply run away from it. Maybe in a dark corner of his mind he'd been waiting for this. Waiting for one of them to come to him.

Up on the roof, Suresh squinted in the sunlight, turning toward Claude expectantly.

"I'm packing in," Claude said finally.

Suresh blinked. "Packing in?" he repeated, the less than elegant phrase sounding awkward in his cultured professor's voice. "I don't understand. Did Nathan Petrelli threaten you?"

"Funnily enough, he didn't," Claude said, though he rather thought the threat had been implied right along with the phrase "honoring Peter's wishes."

"Then why?" Suresh said.

Claude toed the ground. "Have you ever heard of a man called the Haitian?"

Suresh shook his head.

"Surprising, that. Considering he's a close personal friend of your pal Noah Bennet," Claude said. "You know. Tall guy. Horn-rimmed glasses."

"How do you know about Bennet?" Suresh asked.

"Long story," Claude said. "And since we don't have time for a lively game of six degrees of separation just now, I'll spare you the effort of asking and just tell you that the Haitian is a man who specializes in screwing with people's minds. He has other talents too--he can disrupt another person's ability to access their powers, for example. Quite charming, really. But mostly he's used for cleaning out people's memories."

Suresh's eyes widened as he made the connection. "So you're saying this Haitian man…is the cause of Peter's memory loss?" he asked slowly.

Claude nodded.

"Then he attacked Peter?"

"No," Claude said. "That is, the way Nathan Petrelli tells it, the Haitian was an invited guest in the Petrelli household when he did what he did to Peter's memory."

Suresh considered this a moment, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "So you were right," he said. "It wasn't the bomb at all. Peter's family had his memory erased by this man, this Haitian." Being what he was, Suresh managed to sound both outraged and fascinated at the same time.

"Close," Claude said.

"Close?"

"It wasn't his family that did it," Claude said. "It was Peter himself. Special request."

Suresh paled.

"I don't understand," he said.

Claude shrugged. "There's nothing to understand," he said. "Peter won't remember. He doesn't want to."

A moment of heavy silence passed between them.

"Anyway, it's his own damn fault," Claude went on when Suresh failed to react in any satisfactory way. "He should have learned better. This whole damn mess could have been avoided if only he'd learned better. If only…" He paused. "If only I'd taught him better."

Suresh raised an eyebrow. "It's not like you to self-flagellate," he said.

Claude shook his head. "He just wanted it to be easy, you know?" He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I couldn't make it easy for him."

Suresh rocked on his heels. "You have feelings for him, don't you?"

Claude stiffened at the seeming non sequitur. "If you count feeling like I want to bash his head in ninety percent of the time," he said. "But I think everyone who knows him feels that way at one point or another."

"And what about the other ten percent of the time?" Suresh asked shrewdly.

"That's when I want to choke him. And not in the fun way," Claude replied.

Suresh sighed.

"Look, how I do or don't feel about the boy has nothing to do with it," Claude said. "Not when he went and had us erased from his memory like we were nothing to him." He pressed his lips together, hearing the slight, traitorous waver of emotion in his own voice.

Suresh shifted. "May I ask you something?"

"Not if you're going to start in about all this feelings bullshit again," Claude replied.

"How did you feel when you first realized he didn't remember you?" Suresh asked as if Claude hadn't spoken.

Claude snorted. "You should know," he said. "Or don't you remember my slamming you up against a wall in front of Molly that day?"

"How could I forget?" Suresh said wryly. "But I mean the exact moment when he looked at you and you realized he didn't know who you were." By now, his brow had become furrowed and Claude knew he was stuck inside memories of his own. "Peter saved my life once. I watched him die doing it. It's painful to know he doesn't remember that. More painful to know even if I told him what had happened, it would still mean nothing to him. Like it was another person."

Claude gazed out toward the city, the tall buildings surrounding them. "He saved my life once as well," he said. "Afterward, I ran away from him thinking he'd betrayed me to some people I was trying to avoid. I just left him." He looked up, a warning glance at Suresh. "If you ever tell him I said it, I'll murder you in your sleep and I don't care if it doesn't mean anything to him to know but…I think what I hate most about his not remembering is the fact that I can't make that right."

Suresh looked at him with more sympathy than Claude was comfortable with; he had to look away.

"And there's nothing that can be done?" Suresh asked. "Nothing to undo the Haitian's work?"

"And go against Peter's wishes?" Claude said derisively. "No, he won't get his memories back. Not unless we find someone with the power to reverse what's been done but that might take some doing. Can't exactly put an ad in the paper."

Suresh continued to look disconcertingly pensive. "He won't remember anything that happened to him before," he said. "But I still believe he's not without his powers, though they may be buried."

Claude shook his head. "He didn't want his powers anymore. Maybe he doesn't deserve to have them back."

"And maybe it's more dangerous for him not to know," Suresh insisted. "I've been thinking about it ever since you offered to teach him. To nudge him in the right direction, as you put it. There are dangerous people out there with dangerous powers. Sylar was just one of them. Molly knows of at least one more, though it's nearly impossible to get her to talk about it. Whether he likes it or not, Peter is extraordinary and after what happened that night in Kirby Plaza, there are others who might begin to realize it too. He could become a target."

"Or he could be our best line of defense," Claude said with no small amount of irony.

"Perhaps our worst enemy, if we don't handle this correctly," Suresh mused. "You can't change what happened between the two of you, especially now that it's been erased from Peter's memory altogether. But maybe you can make it right. If you teach him again. So he learns this time."

Claude quirked an eyebrow. "For someone who didn't exactly want me around in the first place, you're awfully keen to have me back," he said. "Don't tell me I've done something to redeem myself to you."

Suresh looked vaguely ill at the idea. "If you really want to know, the truth is I never saw Peter light up so much as he did when he had a friend around he could talk to," he said. "Whatever feelings you may or may not have for him, it's my belief that he may or may not have the same feelings for you. I'd hate to see him lose that."

Suresh looked down at the street below them as Claude absorbed this.

"I think it's time we told him the truth," Suresh said eventually. "About everything."

"And what if we end up doing more damage than good?" Claude asked.

Suresh lifted his shoulders. "That's a risk we'll have to be willing to take." He threw a glance at Claude over his shoulder. "You threw him over the side once before, didn't you? Maybe it's time you did it again."

"Metaphorically speaking, of course," Claude said.

Suresh gave a careful, crooked smile. "Of course," he said.