Q&A: Will Arthur Petrelli and Gabriel meet face to face? Sorry, but no. That isn't a plot bunny that I have planned for this particular fic, but Arthur's mind reading of Angela could become an explanation as to how he knew about Sylar's empathetic capability in canon.

14

Close Encounters

March 12, 2006 - 3 days until 'Patient Zero' is discovered

Dr. Chandra Suresh initially failed to detect an evolved ability in Gabriel Gray whom he thought to be his 'Patient Zero' upon which he could found his theories and expand his credibility among the scientific community. However, little more than a month later, after Dr. Suresh had abandoned his research on Mr. Gray, the study returned with what had been described as "undeniable evidence of telekinesis". It is our belief that Mr. Gray's telekinetic capabilities were adopted from one Brian Davis of Number 3, 14 Berman Street, New York, NY 10003. Though Davis's body has never been recovered, nor solid evidence found of his untimely demise, the individual in question has reportedly been missing since April 18,2006. His ability for "being able to manipulate objects with only the power of his mind" was firmly documented in Dr. Suresh's work prior to his disappearance - research to which Mr. Gray had obtained access.

Gabriel John Gray, born June 2, 1977, inherited the ability of Intuitive Aptitude from his father Samson Gray. He was discovered as Dr. Suresh's 'Patient Zero' on March 15, 2006.

Claire glanced up from Gabriel's Primatech file, biting her bottom lip viciously. She only had three days left before Chandra would find him and the scientist was certainly proving to be a particularly stubborn thorn in her side. He had called Gabriel's apartment four times already, each attempt being more insistent than the last that he did indeed have the correct phone number and name. Thankfully Gabriel had been busy with a customer when Suresh had dialed for Gray and Sons. She could only count her blessings that he had come home with his arms full of grocery sacks and needing her assistance to check the mail the day before, allowing her to covertly intercept a written letter from none other than the good doctor.

Another stint of breaking and entering for research theft was too risky so Claire was left with two alternatives: obsessive stalking, her current venture, and putting to use the loaded revolver resting within the confines of her purse. She couldn't bring herself to dwell on the last thought for more than a few seconds at a time, but the more demanding Chandra became and the more frantic Claire grew with the deadline hanging around her neck like a noose, the more of a possibility it became. Perhaps a flesh wound would be warning enough but she doubted it. After the last week there was no doubt left in her mind about where Mohinder had inherited his tenacious persistence. She only knew that she was willing to do anything to keep Gabriel safe. And innocent.

"Where'd you go…" she muttered to herself, adjusting her binoculars from her stakeout position across the street and down the block. He had just been there a moment ago, pulled over in his cab and taking a break between fares. "Damn it!" Claire slammed her hands down on the dashboard of the car she had rented to follow the geneticist around. For an absent-minded professor he had an incredible talent for giving someone the slip. Or maybe just randomly wandering off. The jury was still out on which one it really was.

Muttering curses that would have made her mother blush to think that Claire knew such words under her breath the entire way, she sped across the city as quickly as rudely cutting through traffic lanes would allow. Roughly two blocks from Gabriel's shop she spotted Suresh purposefully strolling down the walkway in the direction of Gray and Sons. "Crap!"

Claire slid to a screech in a no-parking zone, not even caring if she got a ticket or towed. Thinking as quickly as she was capable, she snatched a black hooded sweatshirt of Gabriel's that had been left in the backseat and pulled the oversized garment on. Tugging the hood over her head, her face was completely swallowed along with the rest of her body, which was going to come in handy for concealing the gun that she tucked into the back of her waistband.

Secure in her obscurity, Claire jumped out of the car and stalked after Chandra, picking up her pace as she closed the distance between herself and the doctor. People gave her sideways looks and murmured worriedly, giving her a wide berth as she jaunted down the walk but she only had eyes for her target.

Breaking into a dead sprint, Claire ran right up to the doctor, hurling her body with the full force of her momentum into the man like a kamikaze to knock him back against the outer wall of the building next door to Gray and Sons. "Give me the bag!" she demanded from the shadows of her hood, ripping the revolver from her pants to point it in the terrified Indian's face. Suresh stuttered and fumbled for his satchel in his fear, and for a brief moment a venomous pang of guilt stabbed through her gut. But her tunnel vision faded to include a flickered wayward glance towards Gabriel's watch shop and that guilt was only for a moment. Chandra forked over his bag without argument and in her most acidic tone imaginable she instructed him to calmly walk back where he came from without looking behind him and only then would he not be harmed.

As Gabriel wandered out from the back of his workshop a most curious oddity greeted him. He quirked his head to the side, squinting to understand what, why, or whom the bundle of black fluff was that came streaking by the window of the store.

Claire didn't stop running from the scene of her crime until she had gained almost four city blocks of distance. Panting for breath, she leaned against a building to calm her racing heart. Unfortunately rapid cellular regeneration didn't prevent her from being slightly out of shape due to excessive amounts of Gabriel induced relaxation and good eating.

Just in the nick of time, she happened to look upward from her fatigued stupor to see her Uncle Peter adjusting the earbuds of his Mp3 player as he rounded the next corner over on his way to pick up Arthur's golden pocket watch. A fresh surge of adrenaline fueled her escape into the alleyway where she leapt into the nearest open dumpster for cover. After her blissfully oblivious uncle had passed, Claire sat up to brush the sticky remains of garbage from her sweater. "It's official. The universe hates me."

"Gabriel?" she called out as she entered the apartment, jiggling her new key loose from the lock and shutting the door behind her. "Hello?" Claire stripped off her coat and hung it next to his and deposited her purse on the kitchen counter. She spent a minute thumbing through the mail and grabbing herself a drink before heading into the living room determined to drop onto the couch and refuse to move thereafter. Approximately two feet from reaching said sofa, she stopped dead in her tracks and held fast onto her breath.

Gabriel had just stepped out of the bathroom from a shower, unaware of her presence, modesty concealed by nothing but a white cotton towel wrapped tightly around his narrow waist. Gentle droplets of water continued to cascade down the slope of his neck from damp, spiky hair, onto the glorious planes of his chest and taut stomach. Maybe the universe still loves after me all…

Claire was completely immersed in the view of flexing muscle and dark swaths of masculine hair when he spotted her. "Claire! Oh jeez!" He dropped the extra towel that he had been palming through his hair, startled by the unexpected arrival, and skidded back into the bathroom slamming the door behind him. Several minutes later when he retreated from the bathroom fully clothed in a t-shirt and sweats she was still standing in place, dazed by what she had seen, and he was still flushed with embarrassment.

"You're home early," he started with an almost defensive tone of voice.

"Uh huh," was all she could manage when still being stuck in throes of a hormonal moment.

"Sorry about that. If I knew you were here… I wouldn't have…" He stopped speaking and furrowed his brows. "Why are you looking at me that way?"

Shaking her head free of the fantasy where she had imagined bounding across the living room and leaping into his arms to kiss him senseless among other things, she shrugged her shoulders and mumbled a, "Surprise?" before forcing herself to walk away.

Nope. The universe still hates me. Universe 2. Claire Bennet 0.

A few hours later saw the awkward couple sprawled out on the living room rug, tossing bites of popcorn at one another with a forgotten volume of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment left by the wayside. Amidst bursts of blushing laughter their game of Truth or Dare had devolved more into Truth than anything else as they were both feeling a little too lazy to actually move out of the comfort zone they had created.

"Okay, okay," Claire giggled, tossing another puff of popcorn into the air where Gabriel caught it with his mouth. "Most embarrassing moment?"

"Too many to choose from."

"Pick one!"

"Okay. I'm pretty sure being caught in nothing but a towel counts." She laughed, missing the bite of popcorn that he flicked at her so that it bounced off the end of her nose.

"What's the worst thing you've ever done?"

Rolling over, he groaned, "I don't like this game anymore."

"Come on." She perched on his shoulder to regain his attention. "It can't be that bad."

"Just drop it," he ordered irritably. She instantly shrank back at the sudden change his temperament. Sensing her ill ease in the slow quiet of her movements behind him, Gabriel sighed heavily. "I hurt someone once. Badly."

"What happened?"

He sat up to face her but refused to meet her eyes. He stared into the palms of his hands for a long pause mulling over the admission he was about to make. "You remember how I told you that I used to get picked on a lot when I was younger?"

"Yes."

"When I was in high school there was a guy named Dennis Cooper. He made it a personal mission to make my life a living hell. As if being shoved into my locker and publicly mocked on a daily basis weren't bad enough…" His eyes took on a cold distance with the memory. "One day, Dennis and a group of his friends decided that they were going to duct tape me to the flag pole. I tried to run away but I wasn't fast enough. Dennis grabbed me and started dragging me… I knew there wasn't any way that I could fight them all but I thought that maybe if I could just hit him hard enough to make him leave me alone…

"I swung my Physics textbook at his face as hard as I could. I don't know what happened to me, Claire. When I saw him fall down it was like something inside of me broke. All I could think about were all the times that he had tormented me. All the years of humiliation. So I hit him again. And again. And again.

"I didn't mean to hurt him that much. I just wanted to be left alone."

"Gabriel," Claire reached out to comfort him but he flinched away from the motion. "I know how that feels," she whispered.

"How could you?"

"There was a boy once, named Brody. I really liked him and I thought that he liked me back. It turned out that he really only liked one thing. He tried to force himself on me." His pupils dilated with hostile intentions in response to her confession, the color around them seeming to drain away until his eyes appeared to take on a nearly pitch-black hue. Though Gabriel kept perfectly still and silent, Claire didn't need his special ability to know exactly what was on his mind.

"He didn't succeed. But he did end up hurting me. Long story short, I ended up driving his car into a brick wall at seventy miles an hour." He quirked a questioning brow at her. "With him in it.

"He survived. The last time I checked they were having to teach him how to tie his shoes again though."

"Claire," his hand shot out to grab hers, pulling her close. He didn't even need to say the words and he knew it. They were written all over his face. 'That was a stupid idea. Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be alive? How badly you could have been hurt? What were you thinking?' "Never, ever, do anything like that again."

"Don't worry. I think I kind of learned my lesson the first time."

After what seemed like an eternity of sitting in silence, Gabriel ran his hands over her shoulders and moved her hair off to one side of her neck to trace his fingers over part of her collar. "Claire?"

"Hmm?"

"If Brody was injured that severely… How did you come out of the wreck unharmed?"

She shrugged slightly, not quite sure what pathetic excuse to make since the truth was clearly not an option. "I was wearing my seatbelt. He wasn't." Feeling the need for a change of subject before he could find a reason not to blindly accept her answer, Claire thought of another question for him that would help to lift the mood. "What's the wildest thing you've ever done for a crush?"

"Besides ask her to move in with me?" he laughed.

"Someone that isn't me," she clarified with an exaggerated sigh and roll of her eyes.

"Who said it was you?" he teased back.

"Oh, you!" Claire snatched a pillow from the couch to playfully whack him with.

"What's the wildest thing you've ever done for a crush?"

I mugged a scientist once. "I hid a guy in my closet for three days." That earned her an honest chuckle.

"Well, I've never done anything that exciting before. Wildest thing I've done for a crush… Um… I don't really know. I wrote a poem once for a girl I liked back in college."

"You write poetry?"

"Don't sound so shocked. I had a phase." Gabriel climbed to his knees and threw out his arm like some dramatic Shakespearian actor. "Of an angel they sing, the cherubs in heaven. But their song shall hold no candle's flicker to her flame. And when the sun shines it is with envy of her golden halo. I find myself wanting to call her name, for she is grace and the breath I take of spring's sweet air. In her glory I wait."

More than a little surprised, Claire stuttered, "And how far did your poem get you with this girl?"

"Let's just say that I found it a little ironic when she said she was from Nantucket," he explained with a devious smile, wagging his eyebrows. He caught another pillow in the face for that one. "Okay, not really," Gabriel laughed. "Actually she didn't even know that it was me who wrote it for her."

"Will you ever write a poem for me?" She meant it as a joke expecting him to blush and shrug it off, but instead he laid back down beside her and ran his fingers down her arm until he could take her hand.

"That was for you." He lifted her hand to kiss the back of it. "Because my angel's name is Claire."

Universe 2. Claire Bennet 1.

To be continued...