The Price of a Memory
Part 15/17

Claude had been in Isaac Mendez's loft exactly once in his life--a field trip with Peter during which they'd watched from secret corners as Simone Deveaux made fools of both him and her painter boyfriend, proving Claude's point that she was, in fact, just like "all the rest." There hadn't been much time to sightsee back then but lurking invisibly a respectable distance behind the boy as he wandered about among the paintings, all hushed like someone in a museum or church, Claude was able to appreciate the exact scope of Mendez's talent for capturing the future, especially now that it was all past.

Among the many grisly scenes Mendez had predicted so accurately, Claude searched for the one painting that hadn't completely escaped his notice the first time around but didn't see it anywhere. Most of the paintings that featured Peter showed him as some sort of awkward secret identity without a superhero persona to back it up--all long limbs, wide eyes and floppy hair. But there had been that one piece that showed him in a moment of triumph--lifting himself into the air, arms spread out like wings, a slight smirk on his face. The sole piece of evidence that Peter's forgotten past hadn't all been violence and gore. So of course it was nowhere to be found, no matter how many times Claude looked.

And unfortunately, invisibility wasn't much of a cover when the silence of the loft made even the squeak of his shoes on the floor sound like gunfire. So it wasn't much of a surprise when, without turning, Peter addressed the thin air around him as he gestured toward a particular painting that had captured his interest.

"I don't get this one," he said.

Without coming out from under his veil of invisibility, Claude walked up behind Peter and took a closer look. In the painting, he saw Peter sitting on the sidewalk next to a demolished cab. Half his leg appeared to be missing but not as though it had been cut off. Instead it seemed to fade from sight below the knee. The boy looked stunned by whatever it was that had just happened. Claude recognized that look. He placed the moment easily.

"You know that vision you keep having of me throwing you over the side of a building?"

Peter didn't answer. Maybe he thought Claude was switching channels on him.

"Well, that's the aftermath there."

"The aftermath?" Peter asked.

"Aye," Claude said. "You managed to impale yourself on an innocent taxi cab. Christ, you were livid with me after that."

Peter winced, pressing down slightly on his torso through his shirt as if checking to make sure it was all still there. "Impaling myself on a cab doesn't exactly sound like something I would have the chance to be livid about afterward," he said.

Claude chose that moment to make himself visible and, as if sensing this, Peter looked over his shoulder at him. The boy did his best to appear calm as he faced the man he'd only recently accused of trying to murder him but they were standing close enough that Claude imagined he could hear the thud of Peter's heart against his ribcage. His feet shuffled restlessly as if he was barely resisting the urge to run again.

"Thing is, I wasn't trying to kill you that night," Claude said. "Don't get me wrong. If you did happen to die, it wasn't any skin off my back. But I wasn't trying to kill you."

"Then what were you trying to do?" Peter asked.

"I was trying to make you fly, you idiot," Claude said. "Up to then you'd only managed to hover a bit and that was only when you were around your big brother. You were proving to be especially daft when it came to accessing your powers without the person who'd given you that power in the first place standing close by. We were working on a time schedule, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and toss you off into the deep end. So to speak." He cleared his throat. "Except you didn't swim like I thought you would. You just soft of…floated." Claude could feel the metaphor falling apart on him even as he said it.

"Floated?" Peter asked.

"Aye, equally effective when trying not to drown but not exactly the result I was looking for," Claude said. "Also, the heartfelt speech you gave me afterward about holding on to your feelings about your benefactors in order to access their powers was pretty sickening. But then, I'm not really the kind to have warm fuzzies about high school cheerleaders."

"Save the cheerleader, save the world," Peter said.

"Yes, we've all heard it a dozen times," Claude said. "She's the one who gave you the power to heal, in case you were wondering why you didn't stay dead that night." He eyed the painting of Peter's dead body laying beneath the homecoming sign while the cheerleader girl hovered in the background.

"So I…died the night I fell on that cab?" Peter asked.

"Yeah," Claude said. "And once before that. A couple of times since then as well. Once in front of Suresh, in fact."

"Jesus," Peter muttered. "So I can't die?"

"You don't have to sound so disappointed," Claude said. "Anyway, I don't know that you can't die, especially considering your current state of forgetfulness. I just know that back then you couldn't be killed by your own or any other hand. Chances are you could probably still get sick like anyone else but my opinion is if you can survive turning into a nuclear explosion, you can survive just about anything."

Claude didn't realize what he'd said until Peter's eyes widened and his jaw dropped just slightly.

"Guess Suresh didn't mention that, then," Claude said. He smiled weakly. "Surprise."

"The bomb," Peter said. He looked down at the floor, the mural of New York engulfed in flames. "That was me."

"You told me you thought being an empath might just be a bit dangerous," Claude said solemnly. "You were right."

"Is that why I don't remember?" Peter asked and from his weary tone Claude could guess that he was getting tired of having to ask that question all the time. "Because I…" He swallowed around the word rather than saying it aloud.

"I've no idea what damage blowing up like that might have done to you, though I've some idea you didn't get away entirely unscathed," Claude said. "But it's not the reason you walk around like a senile old lady, forgetting what your keys are for."

Peter seemed affronted. "I've never been that bad," he said.

"Maybe not, but you've come damn close on more than one occasion," Claude said.

"So I didn't lose my memory in the explosion," Peter said. "I wasn't in an accident. I didn't fall down the damn stairs and hit my head." He pressed his lips together. "What happened to me? Why can't I remember?" He gave Claude a sideways look. "You know. Don't you?"

Claude nodded.

"How did you find out?" Peter asked. "Or is that just something else you've known this entire time without telling me?"

"I had my suspicions," Claude said. "But I didn't know for sure what had happened to you until I sat down for a bit of a chat with your brother that day he was in New York. Just after you left, in fact."

Peter couldn't have looked more dismayed if he was being paid good money to do it.

"Don't look at me like that," Claude said. "I needed answers, didn't I?"

"And I don't?" Peter snapped with no small amount of bitterness in his voice.

"You didn't lose your memory. It was taken from you," Claude said.

Peter raised his eyebrows. "Well, that was easy," he said. "I was thinking we were going to do a whole song and dance routine where you gave me some lecture about the value of figuring it out on my own."

"Yeah, well, first of all, I'm not your brother," Claude said. "Second, we'd all die of old age waiting for you to come to the answers yourself." At Peter's indignant look, he added, "And for once I'm not talking about your obvious mental deficiencies. I'm talking about the nature of what was done to you. And why it was done."

Peter frowned at this and when he opened his mouth to ask his next question, Claude thought he knew what it would be. He was wrong.

"How did we know each other?" Peter asked. "Before."

Claude filled his chest with a breath, which he held momentarily before speaking.

"You saw me in a vision," he said. "You had some idea about this bomb that was going to blow up the city and you were convinced that you were that bomb. Apparently I was supposed to teach you how to control your powers so you wouldn't explode and take half the population with you. After some consideration, I agreed but you weren't really all that impressed with my teaching methods and I wasn't really all that impressed with your learning methods, so we didn't exactly get around to completing our lessons. Besides that, I thought you'd betrayed me to some people I didn't want finding me. I might have stormed off in something of a huff."

Peter pressed his lips together, clearly finding humor in this image. As if he hadn't done the same thing himself just a few days ago.

"Thing is, it's been going around in my head ever since that if I hadn't walked away you might not have exploded that night," Claude said. He hadn't meant to admit this but something about Peter's silence compelled him to reveal more than what he'd already said.

"Yeah, because we probably would have killed each other before I got the chance," Peter said wryly, a hint of a crooked smile forming in one corner of his mouth. "You threw me over a damn building!"

"Are you still harping on about that?" Claude said. "I swear, you're holding more of a grudge now than you did back when I originally did it."

"I am?" Peter said.

"Well, yeah," Claude said. "But probably only because back then you were too busy being mad about the fact that I had to punch you out in the middle of the street to keep you from going nuclear right in front of me." At Peter's look, he added, "Long story."

Peter turned toward the window. "I wish I could remember."

Claude sighed. "You won't," he said. "That's not the way it works with the Haitian."

"The Haitian?" Peter asked without turning around.

"He's the one took your memories," Claude said.

Peter's shoulders stiffened. The boy was silent for a long moment before asking, "You know what I hate most about all of this?"

"What's that?" Claude asked.

"It's old," Peter replied. "It's past. All I'm really doing is relearning all this stuff I already knew. I'm not moving forward. I'm not making anything…new."

Claude put a hand on Peter's shoulder then in what was meant to be an awkward gesture of comfort. But then the boy turned to face him and Claude leaned toward him and suddenly it all became something more. Something with lips pressed against each other and Claude's hand in Peter's hair and Peter's hands coming round and sliding up Claude's back. The kiss was both searing and strangely tentative: an exploration rather than a declaration. And maybe Suresh wasn't totally wrong. Maybe Claude had thought about it from time to time but when he did he hadn't thought that it would be like this.

Pulling away with obvious reluctance, Peter opened his eyes slowly, looking pleasantly confused.

"There," Claude said, stroking his thumb across Peter's cheek. "That's something new."

TBC

Thanks once again to those who left such great reviews! The last two parts should be up by the end of the week. I hope you continue to enjoy!