Thanks to everybody that has reviewed/alerted for this story. I always appreciate the feedback. It's a little weird to say that this is finally the end since I've been working on it for so long, but without further ado - the final chapter to Saving Gabriel!
November 26, 2010
Claire held her eyes shut so tightly that it took a moment to realize light was shining behind them, and that her arms, which had been previously shielding her father were unmistakably empty. She cracked the lids open slowly, fearful of what might be found, but ultimately realized that she was no longer where she had been. Primatech and all its nightmares had dissolved away to be replaced by a cheerfully lit drawing room. She turned about to find herself back in the Petrelli family home surrounded by grimly expectant faces.
Angela reclined in her stiff backed chair, a photo of Nathan in one hand and her liquor glass in the other. Noah stood by with his hands clasped behind him and shoulders squared, tensed for what was to come, his glasses shining in the light as pristinely as they always had. And a rather weary looking Hiro stumbled back from Claire's side. The time traveler's eyes were blood shot as he exhaustedly held up fingers for examination that had been dotted with the trickle of blood from his nose.
All of her memories from the past four years came rushing back at her with tidal force. "Sylar…" Everything was exactly as it had been. For all of her effort spent in the past, absolutely nothing had changed. Claire looked them all in the eyes, using the last of her restraint to hold back the wave of tears that wanted nothing more than to refresh those that still lingered on her lashes from all that time ago. "I failed."
"We know." Noah came to her side to wrap his daughter in his arms as though he hadn't seen her in ages, when by the clock ticking on the mantle she could see that not even a minute had passed since her departure. "We've been waiting a long time for this."
"I don't understand… Why?"
Ice clinked about in the bottom of Angela's glass, and her eyes shone with the most vile of intentions. "You," Claire snarled, the simple word almost ripping from her throat as a growl. "You knew." She tore herself from her father's embrace to approach her grandmother with the flush of blind fury rising beneath her skin. "You knew this whole time! Why? Why would you send me back to stop Sylar when you knew I was going to fail?"
Hiro worriedly looked on from the chair that had caught his collapse, but remained without the reserve energy to speak or calm the situation. Noah came to grab her by the shoulders recognizing that given half a prod more she might crack and become physically violent with the older woman. He may not have cared much for Angela's well being at that particular point in the time, but he didn't want to see his baby girl sink to that kind of level.
"There was never any way to stop Sylar." Petrelli ruefully smiled into the mouth of her glass before draining the last amber drop from its chilled depths. "Time is a fickle creature," she continued to muse, almost to herself. "Every decision we make, every action taken, it all ripples outward affecting everything else. It's the butterfly effect. Step on the wrong butterfly and years later a million people will die."
Angela turned her hardened eyes up to look at Claire, trembling with rage. "The timeline had to be preserved except for one little detail…" She placed her glass and Nathan's picture down with the brand of violent serenity that can be only created from years of discipline in torment. Sliding from her seat, resembling so much the viper prepared to strike, Angela snaked her aging palm over the concealed curvature of her granddaughter's rounding stomach.
"Mom? Anybody home?" Peter wandered around the corner, distractedly flicking through screens on his cell phone with his medical bag in tow. "Ma -" He caught himself as he looked up at the scene unfolding. "Uh…" His confused glance caught the bulge of niece's stomach under the overly large black shirt tainted with darker spatters of blood on the sleeves. "Is there something you guys need to tell me?"
Claire wriggled from Noah's grasp and Angela's unwelcome touch. She rushed over to her bewildered uncle, latching on to his arm. "Peter, you have to help me!"
He looked between her and the others before leaning down to speak to her in a low tone, catching on to the air of foul play in the room. "Claire, why do you look like your six months pregnant when I just saw you…" He tried to remember the last time he had seen her face to face. With all of the long hours spent on paramedic duty and the craziness that Sylar and the carnival had brought into their lives he couldn't remember the last time he had actually spent time with her, but he knew that it sure as hell wasn't long enough for that kind of event to take place without his notice. "Who's the father?"
She swallowed hard before answering, not sure whether he would blow up, storm out, or fall into the detached ambivalence of strong disapproval. "Sylar."
Peter's eyebrows drew together. He was definitely angry, and more than a little confused which didn't help the situation, but he didn't pull away from her and for that Claire was grateful. He rolled his eyes back to his mother, no doubt catching on that she had played a hand in it. "I believe Mr. Nakamura is in need of your assistance, Peter," Angela coolly indicated the presence of the fading Japanese man. "I called you here for him. We'll explain everything. Please," she placated.
The empath unhappily removed himself from Claire after a meaningful look that promised he would side with her on whatever issues they were about to present, and pulled out his stethoscope and a pin light to examine Hiro. Once Peter had started checking for vital signs and the dilation of the pupils, Angela began recalling the basic details of their time warping schemes.
"I'm sorry about all of this," Noah whispered as he sidled up her side. Claire couldn't even bring herself to look at him. All of her ire from his part in her supposed mission to save the world from Sylar as well as that which he played in Nathan's demise rolled between them like a wall of ghosts past. "If I had known what she was going to do… Claire, I never would have let this happen. You have to believe me on that."
"You never would have let this happen?" she sneered back at him without the courtesy of eye contact, choosing instead to watch her uncle at work. "You mean, you never would have let me go back in time? You never would have let me have Gabriel's baby? Or you wouldn't have stopped me from killing him when I had the chance?" Claire rolled her eyes up at him with the sting of venom in her words. "What makes you think you had any more choice in all of this than I did?"
Noah deflated with a sorrowful sigh. With his shrugging shoulders and slouched stance he appeared much older, and much more tired than she remembered. "None of us had a choice in this, but…" He turned his gaze off into the distance to remember something from years ago. "Angela told me, after Primatech, that if we ever wanted a chance at stopping Sylar then we couldn't tell you about what had happened. There was something about a time, space continuum, and that in the end -" Noah turned back to his daughter to occupy all of her attention. "I don't pretend to understand any of this, Claire Bear, but I think this might be our only shot. In the end we take down Sylar. Nathan, and Meredith, and everyone else that he's killed, they don't have to die."
"You what?" Peter shouted from the other end of the room effectively interrupting their conversation. He wrung his hands through his hair as he tried to control his temper. "Sylar was right about you," he pointed at his mother. "You really raised the bar for evil incarnate this time, Mom."
"He took my son!" she screeched at him. "Sylar slit his throat and watched him bleed to death. He killed my son." Her wild shrieks died down to a breathless tear that fell down the slope of her cheek. Angela wiped the drop away with renewed vigor, her tone dipping down to a dangerous rasp. "And now, I want him to know what that feels like."
She couldn't take anymore. Claire had had her fill of the scheming and manipulating and reached her breaking point for the day. She stormed out of the room and away from everyone that had used her for their own devices. In the haven of the upstairs, she let herself have a moment of peace in a steaming hot shower, bursting at the seams beneath its cleansing waters unafraid of anyone discovering her weakness. She didn't bother trying to put the dirty, stained jeans back on. Pulling the shirt back on, with the intention of only wearing it long enough to cover herself while she made it to the room that Angela kept for her, she had to stop and marvel.
It moved. She hadn't been ready to believe it up until then, that there was actually a child inside of her. A living, breathing, human being growing inside of her. Her son. Gabriel's son. Claire roamed her fingers over the stop of her stomach, looking on in wonder as the mass shifted from one side to another. She had heard of bubbles being used to describe such a sensation but it felt a weak comparison at best. There were no words that could readily come to her mind to note the feeling of her baby moving within her. She found herself wondering what he was doing in there. What he might be thinking about. What would he look like the first time she saw him? Would he have his father's looks? Hers? The thought of a nice middle ground brought an irrevocable smile to her face that remained even after reality brought back the meaning of whose child it was.
Claire meandered into her room in search of clean clothing baggy enough to fit until she could find something better. During the mild frustration of such a task though, one of her teddy bears leaning against the pillows of her bed caught her attention. It was almost solid white, but with a little pink in the ears and smile, holding a rose. She felt like she hadn't seen it in forever, that it belonged to someone else's life. Had her father given it to her? She combed over all of the past bears that he had brought home as gifts for her, but the one she held didn't fit in with them. No. It was one that Gabriel had given her because he had seen her looking at it through the window of a store. The memory of the smile he had graced her with when she told him about how it reminded her of the collection Noah had given her put a matching one on her own lips. "Maybe we can start our own collection," he had blushed as he handed it to her. But she left it behind in Gabriel's apartment. How in the world had it ended up there?
"Feeling nostalgic, Claire?"
The low, velvety rumbling of the voice sent ice to chill in her veins. "I know I certainly am seeing you wear that again." She didn't have to turn around to know who it was, but hysterical disbelief took control of the action. Sylar leaned against her doorway, arms folded over his chest and token smirk painting his features, casual and nonchalant as ever.
"I saw a man named Samuel Sullivan recently," he mused lightly as he slinked his way over to take a seat on the edge of her bed. "A barker at this most… appetizing little carnival." Somewhat oblivious to her shock, Sylar only saw Claire move towards him from the corner of his eye. As a knee-jerk reaction to all of their history, his hand automatically raised to take her body into his control. "Now, now, sweet Claire," he chuckled. "There won't be any screaming or stabbing today. Take a seat." The puppet master yanked her strings about until she mechanically sat down next to him, the teddy bear still in her hand as she went. Thankfully her monster had the good will to have her sit with her legs crossed, already knowing how the shirt would ride up around her thighs.
"I'm sure you already know all the juicy details of how your daddy and grandma Angie shoved Nathan into my head so we'll skip over that. What you may not know though, is that when a telepath like Parkman starts digging into your brain - no pun intended," he smirked, "it can lead to some very interesting, and very inconvenient identity problems." Sylar lifted the back of his hand to caress the side of her cheek, mistaking the familiar twinge for her disgust as it usually was. "Like how," he leaned forward to tuck a rogue lock of hair behind her ear, "some of us turn out like you, and others turn out like me. Have you ever stopped to think about how much we have in common, Claire?" Her eyes clenched shut at the retrieval of their old dialogue and he pulled back with a wicked grin. "You were adopted. I was adopted. We were both abandoned by parents who didn't want us, and raised by parents who didn't understand us. Both of our fathers were cold blooded killers which is," he chuckled again, "ironic because we can't be killed.
"I know these things probably seem arbitrary to you, but they're not. They're formative. The basic building blocks of our lives. And we have the same blocks. So how did we end up so far apart?"
Sylar took the teddy bear from her hand and spent a moment studying its fuzzy exterior. "I don't want to be alone, Claire. They told me that I needed a connection." When he peered back into her eyes his own had softened substantially, saddened by whatever memories he had found in the relic of their past. Rolling up his sleeve, he exposed a new tattoo to her, an effigy of her face. "Your face showing up in ink wasn't my choice. It's destiny showing me my desire. You're supposed to help me figure this all out."
He carelessly tossed the teddy bear over his shoulder to land on the pillows once more. "Thanks to our friend Lydia, I have a new tool to help with the process. She could see into the very depths of a person's soul just by touching them. And now, I can take all the answers I need straight from your pretty little head." Sylar took hold of the back of her neck and positioned her face where he wanted it. Looking down at her lips he suddenly seemed nervous though. Like the inexperienced Gabriel she had known before he appeared to be meticulously plotting out every move of what should have been a simple, straight forward procedure. And then he pressed their lips together.
The touch between them lasted half a heart beat, maybe. Sylar jerked back from her in wide eyed surprise for what he had seen. "Claire?" He gazed at her through pained chocolate brown eyes as if he were looking at something thought long lost but suddenly found. "I knew you'd come back to me someday." He released his hold on her instantly only to pull her face forward and crash their mouths together in desperation.
How do you make love stay?
"I followed you," he whispered in between ravaging kisses. "I looked for you, and I followed you. But then you weren't you. You acted like you didn't know me. Like I was just some monster that scared you. I never wanted to hurt you. I was just so angry that you would throw me away like that. Like everyone else did. It took me years to figure it out. That day when Stephen Canfield almost killed you and I touched your hand…" He shook his head at her with glassy eyes. "I saw it, Claire. I knew that you weren't my Claire. Not yet. So I had to wait. But I knew that you would come back to me."
Sylar pulled away to take her in. The necklace that he had made for her all those years ago draped down her neck to the collar of his shirt that hadn't been washed. "You just got back, didn't you?" And then his eyes fell further down to her stomach that he hadn't taken the time to notice before, though the information was already there. He lifted the black cloth away, drinking in the sight of the child that he had lost. Their son moved again under the palm that he placed on her tightened skin, and he dropped to his knees to press an anxious ear to her.
When he looked back upward she could see a timidly hopeful light within the depths of his eyes that she hadn't dared to think she would see again. As the brilliant, dopey smile spread across his face though, Claire knew that they had both finally found home.
"Gabriel?"
"He needs to get to a real hospital," Peter groused after Hiro's waning health. "I'm taking him," he indicated to both Noah and Angela so that there would be no confusion or argument about the matter. "And Claire is coming with us." He glared at his mother one more time before sweeping from the room in a huff to find his niece.
Noah shook his head with the saddest traces of a smile lifting up his perpetual frown. "How do you do it, Angela?"
"I told you," she stated as she took her previous chair and refilled her drink, "it's never good to know too much about the future." All traces of her faux tears gone from her eyes, Angela lifted a toast to her best agent. "Besides, I don't think we're finished just yet."
"But the rest is up to them."
"Indeed it is." She rolled her eyes up to the ceiling where she had already foreseen the events taking place above them. And with a wicked twinkle in her eye she took her drink. "The rest is up to them."