Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.
AN: Thanks Iagus! Choices is pretty hard (but fun, honestly!) to write because of the format; it's definitely going to continue, and end, but there may not be a lot of rapid updates. I'm really sorry, I hope you bear with me. And thanks for your comment on this (ages ago) that you liked Peter not being the reluctant one - I know he'd normally know better, but since when did Peter not follow his heart, dreams, instincts (however insane) with total determination? Anyway, that's how I think it'd be. But I'm not saying that means anything for this fic so no spoilers there!
10
Nathan sits on the knowledge as long as he can, trying to trust Claire's judgement. Claire's obviously, terribly, flawed judgement. But the shocks have been coming hard and fast the past few weeks, or the past year, and when a man falls to his death one night it's the trigger Nathan needs.
"I need you to find someone for me." Nathan says.
He's talking with Matt Parkman just outside the room where his mother sits, suspected of having killed Kaito Nakamura. He's just arrived and knows she doesn't want to see him, and he doesn't know what to think. Unbelievable, that he might really be suspecting Ma of having murdered Kaito. But then she'd planned to murder point-seven-per-cent of the world, and in the face of that, the killing of one old Japanese guy doesn't really seem like all that much.
"We don't do that." Parkman says firmly. Few days ago he'd have dismissed Nathan, looked at him with that pity reserved for those who've fallen hard and fast.
But Nathan's not some drunken loser anymore – sure, everything in his life is going to hell again, and his family's in danger, but Nathan's ready to deal with it now. Because Peter's alive.
Peter's alive, and that makes the whole sorry mess worth working out. It makes Nathan stand taller than he has in months. Keeps him off the sauce. He hasn't touched a drop since Claire's first call. Parkman sees something of this, maybe, and maybe that's why he looks like he's about to say something else when the first scream comes tearing through the station.
Nathan's running. Without thinking about it, without fear or anticipation he's running toward the sound, and when he finds her kneeling on the floor, her face a mask of terror, blood dripping from the deep scratches, Nathan realises that nothing has ever mattered. Nothing will ever matter. Nothing she does, has ever done, is ever going to change the way Nathan feels about his mother. And he holds her tightly, so very conscious of how small she is now, and tells her everything's okay, it's okay.
And it is.
Nathan stays with Ma as she's processed, questioned, whatever. He sits beside her and feels a cold fury unfolding within him for the unknown assailant. Fury, not fear, even when he sees the picture of her with the helix smeared on it in blood; Nathan knows he's going to find the son of a bitch who hurt his mother, and kill him. He's going to find this Company who's threatening his brother, his daughter, and he's going to deal with them too. And he's going to get his wife and his sons back, and no one is going to stand in his way.
It's okay.
It doesn't matter what they've done, any of them.
It's okay.
Nathan brings his mother back to Peter's apartment, where he shaves and changes his clothes. Ma's face, white under the red gouges, reminds him of Claire's pale, tragic look. They need to pull themselves together, all of them; Nathan can't stand to see them looking like that. He likes Claire bright-eyed and defiant, and his mother cool and composed. Omniscient. And it's true that she knows more than she's telling, particularly about tonight's attack, but she just looks vulnerable tonight. Like her secrets aren't precious, so much as too awful to reveal.
He needs to wipe that look from her eyes, and when he rejoins her, clean-shaven and sober, what he tells her does it at once.
"Alive."
"Yes. And Matt Parkman's going to find him for us."
"Parkman . . ." Ma says, and her voice weakens for a moment. Then, "Yes," she says confidently, "He will."
After the months of guilt, and mourning, and fighting, they're somehow united again. Nathan understands the destructive power in Ma – in Peter, in Claire, in himself – and his solution is so simple, he could laugh. They've expended it on one another and almost destroyed the world. But now he plans to bring them all together, to unite them, and to turn that darkness outward and onto the ones who deserve it. Nathan almost feels sorry for his enemies, whoever they are – almost.
Later, Ma sits in state in Parkman's apartment; bolt upright in her chair, surveying Parkman with a cool gaze. Molly Walker looks at the picture on Nathan's cellphone and smiles.
"I know her. I saw her at Kirby Plaza. She's very pretty."
She is. Claire takes after Meredith in her looks – not surprising, then, that Nathan's folly in Texas was eventually followed by Peter's folly in Texas. Peter's sin, somewhere in California. The thought still makes him sick, and sad – just unutterably sad for those poor, damned kids. They never stood a chance.
But Nathan manages a smile for Molly, and for Ma, who he hasn't told – not that part, even though in some way he feels it's her fault.
"Can you find her, Molly?"
The little girl looks a moment longer at the picture. Then she nods.
Parkman looks on, disapprovingly, and Nathan understands why when Molly closes her eyes and her face slowly drains of colour. The small hand hovering over the map is shaking, a little, and he realises what the effort's doing to her.
"Here."
"Costa Verde," Nathan reads. He looks up at Ma.
Molly takes a deep breath, and lifts her eyes to Nathan.
"Be careful of her dad," she says, earnestly. "He was gonna shoot me once."
Improbably, the warning startles Nathan into a smile. "Me too," he replies. "Don't worry."
He gets up and ruffles Molly's hair, the way he did Simon's, and Monty's – the way he'd like to have ruffled Claire's, when she was this kid's age. A protective feeling comes over him, and he looks Molly in the eye when he thanks her.
"I gave you something," Parkman says, arms folded. "Tell me who attacked you, Mrs Petrelli."
They went over this in the station, but this time Ma softens, barely perceptibly, and nods. "When I have my granddaughter."
Parkman looks surprised, probably as surprised as Nathan feels. Unperturbed, Ma starts pulling on her gloves. Nathan fetches her coat and helps her on with it, pretending not to hear Molly's whispered enquiries to Parkman.
"How is she that girl's grandma?"
He assures her, in an undertone, that he'll tell her later. Nathan wonders what he's going to say, then wonders at himself for just assuming that Parkman would tell Molly a lie. This family, he thinks. It's built on lies. What happens when we take the lies away?
"Is that girl related to that guy that was gonna explode? But he's that guy's brother, right? And she's that guy's mom? I thought he was her boyfriend," Molly persists, and Parkman darts a furtive glance at Nathan.
"Not now," he tells her.
And –
"Have a nice flight," he tells Ma and Nathan, shaking their hands. But he won't quite meet Nathan's eye, and Nathan wonders, sickly, what Parkman's heard tonight.
If he thinks anything – hurtling through icy, pitch-black air, Ma clasped tight to him, her face against his shoulder – if he heard anything, he won't think Peter's still alive. He'll think it happened before. And he won't talk about it; he's not the type.
But Nathan's still troubled. He kind of wants to go back to Parkman and tell him they didn't know, to make excuses for them – he's made endless excuses for them, the past couple days, knowing that it wasn't their fault but still, in his heart, blaming them. But now he thinks Parkman's going to blame them, too, and he can't stand the thought of that.
Claire was meant to be his – Claire and Meredith. If he hadn't let them go they would have been his, and Pete – ten when Claire was born – would have seen her like a little sister, grown up with her. Somewhere along the line Meredith would have left Nathan, like the first time, leaving him free to marry Heidi and have his boys, too. They would have been a family, and maybe with a golden granddaughter to dote on Dad wouldn't have done what he did . . .
But that doesn't mean anything, none of it. Some stupid ideal family Nathan's dreamed up, and he's going off topic now and it's an effort, with the thought of Dad fresh in his mind, to bring himself back to the point, which is –
That it could have been different. That Peter and Claire could have met as goofy kid and baby niece, not as a pair of troubled, lonely young adults, connecting instinctively but not knowing why. Or how.
And Nathan wants to pour all that out to Parkman in one huge barrage of excuses, reasons. Why? Why . . . because Parkman can't be allowed to blame Peter and Claire for the way they light up when they're around each other. For anything they've done. Parkman can't be allowed to think the terrible things of Peter and Claire that Nathan thinks. Oh, God.
God.
Then Nathan stops thinking altogether, flying faster and faster through the night, lower still and lower as he approaches his destination, and lets the cold wind whip away his thoughts. God's not listening.