Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it
Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.
AN: Thanks for the reviews! I've taken a long break on this fic because, while it was originally intended to be quite short, I've decided to make it a total re-imagining of Season Two, and I was figuring out how things would work. So thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy this chapter. Thanks today go to Miss S. for cheerleading bits and pieces, any mistakes left are my own. I know the chapters are really short, but they'll get longer as the fic progresses.
9
"Have you told him yet?"
The kitchen's too damn close to the office. Claire shuts the refrigerator door and thinks fast. "West? How'd you get this number?"
A quick glance shows an empty doorway, but she takes her glass of water outside, just in case. "Is someone listening?"
"Was," Claire says, keeping her voice down. "Look, I haven't. And I'm not going to."
Nathan expresses his disbelief instantly, with a little of the old high-handed, big-shot politician decisiveness. He's obviously coming back to himself.
It takes her a while to talk over him. "Would you just listen? He has to stay here for now, I told you that, and if I tell him now . . . I don't know. It could just be really uncomfortable, or he could even run, and if he runs, they're going to find him. Believe me."
"Have you told him anything?"
"Have you told your mom?"
He's silent for a long time, long enough for Claire to give up. She sighs. "I told him I'm sixteen, that we're just friends and it was a mistake. He knows it's not going to happen again."
Strange, that it shouldn't feel horrifically weird talking to Nathan about this. He tells her she's god damn right it's not going to happen again, and a whole lot of stuff about how Peter's not going to be fooled that easily, and that he's going to go nuts when he remembers, and what exactly does she think he's going to feel when he finds out they've been keeping this from him?
"He can blame me," Claire says firmly. "As far as he's concerned, you didn't know anything about it." The argument begins again, but she knows how to play on Nathan's sense of duty, on his desire to protect his brother, and eventually she beats him down. She's won. But she feels so empty.
"Don't worry about coming down yet. I made a mistake, Nathan, and I'm fixing it. I can handle this. You have to let me be the strong one here."
"You're going to fix your mistake by not letting him remember who you are? Guess you take after your dad."
"No, I'm lying to him to protect him. Can't think where I got that one."
"Must be Ma." Claire can hear a reluctant smile in Nathan's voice and imagines, absurdly, that he's proud of her.
The conversation comforts her, makes her feel like the Plan is the right thing to do after all. She's been having some doubts. A lot of doubts. Destiny-sized doubts. But as she hangs up the phone and heads back inside, Claire feels strong again and cold, like a statue. Like she can pull the trigger this time, because now it's not New York she's trying to save, it's her family, her families. And the only person she has to sacrifice is herself.
"Butler's not your real name, is it?" Peter asks Claire when she passes the office, standing in the shadows behind the doorway. They haven't really been on speaking terms since yesterday's altercation, and the question sounds more like an accusation. Claire wonders, with a shiver of dread, what it is Peter's remembered now.
"What do you think?" she replies noncommittally.
"Is it Petrelli?"
Claire stares at him, lost for words. But he doesn't look – she doesn't know – like she might expect him to look if he knew: not mad, or beaten down, or consumed with self-loathing; just expectant.
"No," she manages, at last.
He frowns. Claire's going to just keep walking, but the idea halts her, makes her think Claire Petrelli: a name she's thought to herself on two very different occasions. In two very different contexts. Is your name Petrelli?
Well, is it? Claire wonders.
It's not Nathan's betrayed daughter, but the girl who smiled into Peter Petrelli's eyes in a deserted high school hall that says, "What made you think that?"
And Peter says, "I had a dream," the way he always does, like it was incontestable proof. He folds his arms and looks at her like she might confess. But she doesn't.
XxX
Claire has a dream of her own that night.
She's at her old high school, in the locker room, and for some reason Jackie's decided they're going to have practice right there. She wants to do a stunt, and Claire's nominated as the flyer. Claire's never the flyer; there have always been thinner, lighter girls than her on the squad: even in a dream, this seems an unreasonable request. The lights flicker, and Claire's uneasy.
But Jackie is adamant. And so into the centre of the group Claire goes, her right foot in one girl's grasp, her hands on two girls' shoulders. Jackie's meant to be behind her, but as Claire rises into the air and her left foot is caught, she can't feel anyone grasping her ankles. Jackie's not there. The lights flicker, and go out.
Claire falls. There's a swooping feeling in her stomach and her hands fly out, and there's a confusion of grasping hands and digging elbows, but she's falling straight backwards, into the dark, and no one's there to catch her.
The crack her head makes as it hits the floor reverberates. Shatters through her shattered skull. Louder than anything she's ever heard, final in a way Claire has not found these bone-breaking sounds to be in a year. There are no more sounds from the other girls, and Claire realises that she's alone.
Or not. No. The darkness shifts and lifts, barely, and for a moment the dark figure seems to be Peter, but she knows it's not. And then his cap comes into view, and the figure leans over her, his face a shadow – she's never seen it. And that's the most frightening part, that the man has no face, though Claire also knows that she can't move and that her skull is broken open, her blood all over the ground and on his hands and that no one's coming this time. The man – Sylar – has no face.
Claire screams.
Wakes up, in the dark, on her back, and for one horrible moment feels the wetness of blood under her head before she realises that it's sweat. Just sweat.
xXx
Dad starts to trust Peter alone in the house as he begins to come back to himself, and Claire takes to the unexpected freedom of school. That guy West starts talking to her again, and he's actually kind of funny, once you get past the stupid 'quirky alien guy' defences. He's lonely under all that, and despite the annoying quirks she recognises that loneliness; responds to that, rather than the dorky façade.
But Claire has an accident. It's nothing to her, but it seems to mean a lot to West. Like a whole lot. The look on his face as her tendons reattach and her skin slides smoothly back into place is – complicated, somehow. Not really as scared as she'd imagined. It reminds her of something, and it's not until the next day, when Claire regains the confidence to let West approach her, that she remembers what it is.
"Please say something," she begs, breathless and wide-eyed.
He smiles and leans down towards her. "I can fly," he confides.
And the deja-vu is a double shot. West looked like Meredith when he saw her power, that was who it was, Meredith who hadn't been freaked out by what Claire could do because she, too, had been a freak. And now West sounds so very much like Peter.
"You can – fly?"
Claire incorporates West into the Plan. It's not really that hard, she likes him fine now, and the Petrelli resemblance works in his favour – she can acknowledge that. Sick and twisted as it is, she has to acknowledge it.
That night they fly.