Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.
AN: Thanks for the reviews! I missed Iagus's review which asked about Peter's dream, but that's going to come clear in – probably – the next chapter. Since this fic is now going to be a big long story, expect the chapters to get longer and longer too. Hope you're all still enjoying it!
11
Dad's been quiet all day. Thoughtful, and worried. Claire knows he didn't notice her absence last night because he would definitely have called her on it. And it's not about the car getting stolen, either. They went over that, and over it again, and then again with Mom a couple of times, and between the shouting and the disappointment Claire felt – actually, relieved. She didn't deserve a car as a birthday present; she deserved to go to jail. Being yelled at took some of the guilt away, even if the guilt and the yelling were about totally different things.
Now she feels better. Cleansed, kind of. But tonight Dad's mood's been getting steadily darker, and Claire worries: it's not about the car. And it's not about West. And because their lives are so monumentally fucked up these days, that still leaves a whole lot of options, none of them good.
She wonders – insanely – if it's Sylar.
XxX
They're sitting around watching TV when the knock comes at the door. It's nighttime; no one's expected. Dad goes very still.
"Into the office," he says, very quietly.
Mom, Lyle and Claire get up and move softly toward the office. Claire's the last one in, and as she shuts the door, she sees her dad take a gun from the drawer of the side table.
The door opens, and there's silence. Claire looks at Peter, standing ready, and sees a faint pattern of blue light flickering along his palms. He doesn't seem aware of it and it shocks her – horror rises up in her and she imagines the light growing, and glowing, and Peter staring at his hands and then at her, the gun between them –
"Get inside," Dad says curtly. The door closes and the light's gone. Claire almost wonders if she imagined it; Mom and Lyle don't seem to have noticed anything.
Mom opens the office door at Dad's command and they're there, improbably, standing in the middle of Claire's living room like a couple of ghosts. Nathan's cleaned up and Angela's white, doing her imperial best not to shiver, and her face is all scratched and Dad is staring angrily at them both.
"What the hell are you doing here," he asks, and says some stuff about the house being watched, but no one's really listening, despite the fact that he's Dad and he's angry and he's got a gun. Nathan's looking past Claire with his soul in his eyes, and Peter's pushing past her and then they're hugging, and it's like there's no one else in the room.
"Nathan, oh God. Ma."
There's a lot of hugging, and exclamations, and tears shining in people's eyes, and Claire's own vision gets kind of fuzzy for a minute. She blinks, furiously, and keeps it together while introductions are made – even when Peter starts and looks like he's been hit by a truck and holds onto the table for balance, and she can see the memory exploding in him. That blue light flickers again, tracing the outline of his hands, and this time Claire's sure she's not imagining it. Angela touches his shoulder and a tiny crackling light jumps out to her, throwing her hand violently away.
"Peter," she says, undaunted, taking his arm and stroking it, gently. "Calm down now. It's all right."
Peter closes his eyes and breathes, slowly. The house lights flicker violently, and go out. Sparks fly briefly in the darkness and Mr Muggles barks shrilly once – twice – before the lights come on again.
But now the crackling blue light's gone and it's just Peter, pale but normal, with his mother patting his arm and looking at him as though she'd never planned to make him a murderer. Mom's holding Lyle to her and she's caught Claire's arm and they're staring, stock-still in the silence.
"Get your stuff," Dad says to them angrily, and then turns on Nathan. "They're watching the house, Petrelli; they're going to be here any minute. Do you have any idea what you've done, coming here like this?"
Nathan says, "How long have you had my brother?"
"No," Peter says, raising his eyes from the tabletop. Angela's hand with its long red nails steadies him, but he looks clear now. Together. Himself again, in a way that makes Claire want to pack her stuff like Dad said and run away and never come back. Peter shakes his head. "No, it's not the Company. It's just some kid watching Claire, I saw him the first night I came here."
"A kid?" Dad says, incredulously.
"A flying kid," Peter clarifies.
"West?"
It just slips out, and suddenly all eyes are on Claire. But she can't believe it – he's been spying on her? That's so – creepy.
Dad puts the gun down. "You're sure?"
"Yeah."
"And you didn't tell me?"
Peter just raises an eyebrow.
"And you?"
"This guy – said he could fly. It was just this thing, a stupid argument, and then he hovered… I didn't tell him anything." Claire says, hardly knowing what she's saying.
So that's all it was, and all the secrecy, the careful routine, the hiding of secrets behind closed curtains was all for the benefit of creepy West being a huge creep. It occurs to Claire that if it weren't for Dad's suspicion, Peter would never have had to spend that first night in her room. None of this would have happened. Nathan wouldn't be looking at her like that, with that awful sympathy – Claire wouldn't be avoiding Peter's gaze right now, scared of what she might see.
"So why are you here?" Dad asks Nathan. He's relaxed a little now that they're not expecting the Company to bust open the door, but he's still hostile, and as the Bennets and the Petrellis seat themselves on opposite sides of the living room it feels like a line's being drawn. Claire stays standing.
"Someone tried to kill Ma," Nathan says. "Same person who killed Kaito Nakamura."
Claire notices Mom look at Dad, warningly, and doesn't know what it means.
"We came here for Claire," Angela says coolly. For a near-miss murder victim, or for a woman who's just got her dead son back, she's very composed. "She needs to be with her family."
"Claire is with her family," Mom says, affronted. "My husband went to a whole lot of trouble to make us disappear, to hide Claire from the Company, and now you want to take her to New York? Again? Where they can come and get her any time they want?"
She's getting herself worked up, but Dad puts his hand on her knee in a quieting gesture. He's got the Plan look again.
But Claire doesn't want to wait to hear what he's got to say. Suddenly the weight of it overpowers her – there's their presence in her home to start with, those Petrellis, with their resemblances to each other and their familiarity and their wrongness, their horrible out-of-placeness in this small town far far away from New York and its terrible secrets – and then there's him.
Peter, watching her with that dark, determined look he gets when he means to force a confrontation.
We need to talk.
Claire needs to run. But if she does, she knows Peter's just going to follow. Get her alone somewhere, and make her talk – or just talk to her, which would be just as bad because what the hell can Peter have to say to her right now?
That's Peter over there. The real Peter – and, because he said it himself, she feels that she can do it too – her Peter. The guy she trusts absolutely, the best friend she never knew she needed so badly until he showed up, and smiled at her. And trusted her, too.
She's so sorry. She's just so sorry.
But he doesn't know, and she'll never tell him, can't ever tell him about the four months between Kirby Plaza and his return. How she spent those four months seeing the world through panes of dirty glass and hearing people talking like they were separated from her by six feet of earth – or by thousands of miles of sky. Being normal and balanced and okay, because when all her energy went into keeping up the pretence it didn't leave so much room for thoughts of Peter; four months of thinking about anything but Peter as much as she could, because when she did the pain was overwhelming. She'd only known him a couple weeks, and the loss drowned her.
I miss him too, she said to Nathan.
And Nathan hung up, because Nathan didn't have any more idea of those four terrible months than Claire's family did.
But maybe he does now.
"I have something to show you," Dad says. "All of you." He looks like he would by far prefer to keep his secrets, but Mom's nodding encouragingly and leads the way into the office. Dad sits down at the computer desk and they stand behind him, moving around to make sure everyone can get a good view of the screen. It's awkward. Mom clearly doesn't want to be anywhere near Angela; with dad sitting down, Nathan towers over the rest of them, which feels weird for reasons Claire doesn't understand – and she's standing on the opposite end of the group from Peter.
When they're ready, Dad begins. He tells them about Isaac Mendez's eight hidden paintings, and about his unnamed 'man on the inside' who's been working to find them. He shows them the first painting – a man lying in a pool of blood.
"Kaito Nakamura."
It passes without comment. They've all seen the papers, even Claire and Lyle saw the front page.
"Today we found number eight."
For a second, Claire can't process the next image. She sees the glasses first and wonders why they're broken; sees the twisted hand and links it to the twisted body at the foot of the building. Sees a skirt and remembers being glad hers wasn't pleated. And then it all falls together.
And then it all falls apart.
It's Dad, and he's shot and he's dead, and in the background Claire's kissing some dark-haired guy and it could be anyone, but it's not. Her knees feel weak and her brain swims with it, seeing the awful simplicity of the painting, just like a panel in a comic book. She looks at Peter, can't help it, and he's looking back at her.
Dad turns around in his chair, and Claire realises everyone's looking at them.
"Oh I see," Angela says acidly, "Peter shoots you and runs away with his own niece. How obvious."
Claire drops Peter's gaze like it burns her. Which it does. She can feel his eyes still on her, and it's almost like he's touching her: her cheeks are hot, and though Angela's sarcasm was sharp enough to cut glass she's so afraid of how this looks to them.
"It could be anyone - "
Dad interrupts Nathan with more force than seems necessary. "No one's saying that it's Peter. No one's saying that any of this is going to happen – or that if it does, that what we're seeing here is the whole picture."
"I didn't die at Homecoming," Claire says.
"Neither did I," says Peter, folding his arms and – finally – looking away from her.
"Maybe Dad can do it too," Lyle says, sounding shell-shocked. "Maybe he's got a power, and it starts after - "
"No, honey." Mom says gently. She puts a hand on his sandy head and strokes his hair. Lyle just keeps staring at the picture.
"Isaac painted the future," Dad says to Lyle, "But it wasn't always as it seemed. Our actions can still change the timeline; Peter proved that at Claire's homecoming – and again at Kirby Plaza."
"The future's not written in stone," Nathan says, softly, to himself.
There's a long, quiet moment as they all regard Painting 8/8.
Angela's the first one to break the silence. She turns and directs Nathan toward the door, leading them all out into the living room. "Well, I think that's enough for tonight," she says briskly, picking up her gloves. "We'll find a hotel and come back in the morning. I'm sure you have a lot to talk about – and so do we."
"Claire's not going to New York," Dad says firmly.
Angela looks him up and down, and even though her face is all scratched up and she's as white as a sheet, she doesn't look remotely like a victim. "You may not always be around to protect her," she says, with deliberate cruelty.
Claire hates her for this. For everything. Mom, holding Lyle, looks like she wants to say something; Dad's lips are pressed together in a firm line. And then Peter moves in to break up the tension.
"Ma's right," he says, and it's clear he's not referring to her last comment. "We should let you guys… we should give you a moment."
Peter shakes Dad's hand. "Noah. Thank you for everything."
"Glad to see the man I knew," Dad replies, nodding. He's not looking at Angela.
Peter shakes hands with Mom, too, and then with Lyle, who barely seems to notice. And then he turns to Claire.
She's forced to meet his eyes – but, amazingly, there's no hatred in them. "Claire," he says, and his mouth quirks in a bittersweet smile.
"Peter. I missed you," Claire replies, and before she can say anything else he draws her into his arms and hugs her tightly. She hugs him back, burying her face in his shirt, and just for this moment the world's shut out and everything has come down to Peter's strong arms and the hot tears that she can't allow to escape.
Reluctantly, he lets her go.
"I'm glad you're yourself again," Claire says, echoing Dad's words, and hopefully imbuing them with a message Peter will understand. Now you understand what we did, and you know why I can't come to New York.
Hard as it is – and it is so hard, she can barely manage it – Claire lets him go. Cross the room to join his family, to say goodbye, to walk out the door.
And then he's gone.