Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.
Peter wakes with a start. His pulse is racing and the digital clock in the office is blinking 4:13, and he remembers – things. He's been dreaming about his past, but it's not coherent, it's just images and sounds and he can't figure out what they mean.
Bright, bright light, for one thing. Being in pain, in agony, and the pain slowly fading away. Claire sitting on her bed, crying – he frowns. Wasn't that yesterday? But it wasn't, no, because in his dream he wipes the tears off her face, and she can't be sitting on her bed, because they're outside.
Peter gets up and starts to pace. The dream's slipping away from him, and he claws at the fragments. Hundreds of balloons, red, white and blue. Flying, through a city – everyone has flying dreams, but this one feels real and thinking of the flying boy and the book, Activating Evolution, Peter doesn't rule it out as a memory.
He remembers people, but can't bring their faces to mind – the only one he can remember is a quiet, dark-eyed man whose face he doesn't recognize. Mr. Butler was there at some point, in the dream, and there's a painting of a man on fire, with white, glowing eyes. Peter can't make sense of this. But it feels so important, and for the first time, Peter knows that the memories are all still there, in his head. He just can't get to them.
He's still thinking about it when the rest of the household starts waking up, and by then he's piecing together some other things. Painting, for one thing, is important. Balloons are unimportant, but the faces they obscure are very, very important. And there's something about Claire he should know, but doesn't.
When she brings him some coffee, he decides to test his knowledge.
"Did you ever have a blue jacket? Dark blue, with white - " he doesn't know how to explain what the white bits were, but he can tell Claire knows what he's talking about. It emboldens him to ask the crazy question. "Claire, can I fly?"
"Yes," she says, faintly. Aha – she's wondering what else he knows, whether he remembers what he has come to think of as The Big Secret. "You – used to be able to fly. Someone you knew could fly, and when you were around him, you could fly too."
Him? It's got to be the floating boy. Peter didn't know him the way he instantly knew Claire, but then he didn't know Mr. Butler either. "Who is he?"
She hesitates, looking behind her to make sure the door's still closed before she answers. "He's your brother."
The floating boy looks sort of like him, but if he's Peter's brother why didn't he say anything the other night? Has his memory been wiped too? Peter remembers that he goes to Claire's school, and thinks about the phone call, and wonders if this isn't the Big Secret. But she's only been going to that school two days – it doesn't add up.
"Peter – do you remember the guy who wiped your memory?"
"What?"
"Think about him," she says earnestly. "You can do what he can do, if you just think about him. Like you could fly. Like you can do this."
Claire takes the stapler off the desk, and fires a staple into her hand. Before he can react, she pushes the stapler against his arm. "Ow! Jesus!"
He claps a hand to his arm and stares at her. But then Claire picks the staple out of her hand, and her blood is sucked back into the pinpricks like magic, like film run backwards. Peter pulls at the staple in his arm, and watches in fascinated horror as the exact same thing happens to him. There's no trace of a mark.