Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.
AN: Thanks for the reviews, as always, and thanks for everyone who put this story on their alerts. Special thanks today go to my beta, Miss S, for Sandra worrying about all the wrong things. Thanks also to Miss S for never being able to remember the names of Nathan's sons.
15
Claire won't tell them what happened.
That's not entirely true. Nathan knows what happened, any idiot could figure that one out, and when Sandra very cautiously asks her if Sylar – if he – Nathan can't even think about that, not again. But the point is that when Sandra asks her, Claire says no. And that's all she'll tell them. She doesn't say at what point she went catatonic, and Nathan prays and hopes that it was near the beginning, preferably before that tiny saw got clogged with thick red blood, and long blonde hairs, and little scraps of –
Nathan's on fire with the rage he feels. Didn't know he could feel this much. He can't stop pacing along the narrow hallway. They're outside the bathroom. Even Sandra. And Claire's inside, in the shower, rinsing off the blood and crying, Nathan can hear his daughter crying, and he can't do a single thing about it.
Bennet's standing there with his arms folded. His wife has her little dog in her arms, and she looks down at the dog like she's whispering to it, but from the snatches of words Nathan picks up she's praying, hushed and fervently. Peter's leaning against the wall, staring at the ground, looking like he wants to die. And Nathan is pacing. And all of them, all of them, are stained with Claire's blood. There was so much of it in that room, on her. No one but Claire Bennet could bleed enough to cover two families and live to cry her heart out in the shower.
"We'll get him." Bennet says to Sandra. It's all the comfort he can offer.
But it's Nathan who replies. "We? Who exactly is we? You and me? Peter? Peter's lost his abilities, Bennet. Peter can't do a damn thing to stop Sylar, or even to find him, and neither can I. And neither can you."
Bennet looks at Peter in surprise, but at that second his phone rings.
"What."
Pause.
"Send it over." Pause. "No, I understand. She's here. Safe." Bennet turns away, but Nathan can hear the bitterness in his voice. "It's already happened."
When he hangs up, he just waits. And after a moment, he's got Painting 2/8 on his phone. Whoever he was talking to has found it too late. Sandra puts her hand over her mouth, and tears come into her eyes. Nathan holds out his hand for the phone. After a pause that sets his teeth on edge, Bennet hands it over.
Oh, no. Seeing it is – Nathan turns away with an angry exclamation, but the image is burned onto his eyelids and he can't unsee it. A girl lying on her back. Open eyes staring at the ceiling. Her head – the top of her skull has been removed and sits neatly under the table, beside a small silver thing all clotted with pieces of her. And seated behind her, long, deft fingers in her brain, a dark figure bends over her. Nathan assumes this is Sylar. He can't remember seeing him before. But he won't forget the cruel face, the heavy eyebrows, and Alex Manion is never going to fool Nathan, not this time. Nathan won't forget any of it. He feels sick with anger. The way Sylar leans so close to Claire that he could kiss her, if he wanted, or – as he seems to be doing – whisper things to her. Nathan hopes to God Claire was gone by then.
"I want to see it."
Peter. Peter, who couldn't save her from this. Peter, who can't heal. Peter, who looks like he's going to do something stupid. "No, you don't." Nathan says firmly.
"Nathan." Peter looks up at him. "I want to see it."
Nathan wants so badly to protect Pete from this, but there's something in his face that makes him hand over the phone without another word. Peter looks at it for a long time.
And then, when Nathan's sure Peter's going to break down in tears, his brother looks up from the phone with grim determination. In a low voice, he says, "I don't need abilities to find that son of a bitch and take him apart."
There's an answering gleam in Bennet's eye. He nods.
Nathan shakes his head. "Look at us." He demands. "You've got a gun. I can fly. We're all mad as hell, but none of that's going to help us. He can move things with his mind, blow up a city if he wants, hell, we don't know the half of what he can do, and now he can heal from anything. We're not going to catch him this way. I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to New York – all of us – and then I'm going to Washington and I'm doing what I should have done a long time ago. I'm taking this to the President."
They need resources. Men. Abilities. They need the government to protect the people from Sylar, from people like Sylar. The Company has only managed to contain him, and they're not exactly sympathetic to the Petrellis anymore. Or to Noah Bennet. Bennet and Peter argue with him. They want to keep this secret. They talk about the danger, the experiments, the terror of remaking the Company on a governmental scale. But Nathan knows he's right. They just don't have the firepower to bring in someone like Sylar, to protect other people's daughters from what Nathan's daughter has gone through today, to protect other fathers from this fury that's threatening to take him to pieces.
He never realised that he loved her before.
But now he does. And it changes everything.
The argument only stops when Claire comes out of the bathroom. She's wearing jeans and a grey sweater, and she's pulled her damp hair back into a low bun. There's something of Peter in the way she looks now, that self-loathing, but Nathan is surprised to see that there's more of her father – more of Bennet, that is.
"I can find him. I can find him and trap him. Dad can shoot him in the back of the head. I don't know if that'll kill him for good, but it'll hold him still long enough for us to cremate him."
Bennet and Sandra both look taken aback – but in very different ways. Sandra opens her mouth to speak. But Claire cuts her off. "Mom, I really don't want to hear anything about loving my enemy right now."
It's Nathan and Peter's turn to recoil. Nathan remembers too late that Claire doesn't know about the future Peter saw.
"No, honey. That's not what I was going to say." Sandra says stiffly. "That man is a murderer, and we execute murderers. But it is not your job to catch him."
At this, Bennet is nodding in agreement. And so is Peter. And so, for that matter, would Nathan, if Claire didn't raise her chin and suddenly remind him of his mother.
All she says is, "He can't hurt me anymore."
They follow Claire downstairs. Nathan can't figure out what the strange tone of her voice meant – there was despair, and a deep assurance, and somewhere under it an acceptance of the kind he's only heard from Ma. What is it, he wonders with a sudden chill, that Claire could accept about herself that could make her sound like Ma.
Her brother's in the living room. Staring at the mute TV. And Nathan feels sorry for him, poor kid, he shouldn't have to deal with any of this. None of them should.
And then of course Ma calls, and Nathan has to tell her what happened, and she doesn't sound surprised. Just sad. She demands that he bring Claire home. Looking up at Bennet, Nathan says he's working on it. He's trying to convince Bennet, but once again, Claire takes the discussion into her own hands.
"Either we go to New York and do it there, or Nathan and Peter stay til we're done. It's too risky for us to try to do this alone." She tells Bennet.
There's something in Bennet's face that Nathan can't read. Approval, maybe. She sounds so much like him. And then maybe disapproval and a little fear, because after all she does sound so much like him right now. "You're not doing anything. You're seventeen years old, Claire. Sylar is our business."
"No. I am asking you to help me. If you don't want to, I'll go to New York with Nathan and Peter. If they don't want to help me…" Claire shrugs. "I'll go to Angela. Then I'll go to Matt. Then I'll work my way down the list until everyone's turned me down. Then I'll do it alone."
"No. Absolutely not." Bennet fixes her with that cold Company man stare.
Claire goes to reply, but then her face changes. "Lyle. Turn up the TV."
A kid has been found dead. Recently – within the last hour. A kid Claire knows. A kid Peter knows. "It's that flying kid."
"West." Claire says flatly. "I told him about West. And he killed him. He didn't even know West had an ability. He just killed him because I knew him."
The news leaves no doubt about it. Strange markings, ritual mutilation, an unspecified sharp instrument that Nathan knows is Sylar's rapidly healing brain. He seems to have found out about the ability. Bennet looks angry. "He might as well have signed it." He says in disgust. "The Company will be here any minute. Looks like we're going to New York after all."
He looks at Nathan, who feels this is unfair. He didn't want to win the argument like this. Without another word Claire gets up and heads toward the stairs, Peter following after like she's got him on a string.
"Don't, Claire. Please don't do this." He asks her earnestly.
She stops two steps up, so she can look down at him. Looks into his eyes. That old connection holds between them, that old electricity, and for a moment Claire looks like she's struggling not to go down there, into arms that Nathan knows would open for her now. Would still, and would always open for Claire, to hold her and enfold her, because Peter is nothing if not stupid.
But Claire shakes her head and looks away. Her hand drifts up as if to push back a stray curl. Lingers on her unmarked forehead. "That's what I said to him."
Something breaks inside Peter. Nathan can see it. He stumbles back, reaching for the banister, and Claire goes up the stairs without looking back.
But Peter is nothing if not a hero.
He follows. And Nathan belatedly realises that he has to catch up to them. Someone's going to need to sort out the scene they're going to make, and it can't be Bennet or his wife. "I better take this one," he tells the Bennets. "I know Peter."
He takes the stairs two at a time.
"You weren't there to protect me."
"You sent me away!"
"I had to."
They'd be shouting if it weren't so dangerous. When Nathan clears his throat they turn to him. "Am I interrupting?"
Claire says he's not. Peter – who, Nathan reminds himself, doesn't know that he knows damn well why Claire had to send him away – says he is. Claire goes back to throwing things haphazardly into a gym bag. She's mad, and Peter's mad, and they're hurting each other but it's better than before, when Nathan held an indestructible shell that breathed but didn't live. When Peter looked like he might save Sylar the trip and blow his own brains out.
"You can't do this. I know what you're feeling right now, Claire, but you can't go after Sylar. You're not thinking straight."
Quietly, Claire says, "I'm thinking straight for the first time in my life, Peter. I know what's important now."
"Yeah? What's that?" he challenges. Peter folds his arms and gives her that look he uses when he thinks your argument is retarded.
Family is important, Nathan thinks. Love. Wherever you find it.
"What's important is never having anyone do anything like that to me again."
More than her words, the look on her face sends a chill down Nathan's spine.
Peter drops all pretence of it being a rational argument. He goes to her like he can't help it, and Nathan guesses he can't. He holds her upper arms – not quite an embrace. Claire's allowing it.
Nathan's allowing it.
In impassioned tones, Peter says, "I can't let you get hurt again. I just can't. Please."
Something changes in her face. And Nathan's scared. Whatever she's going to say, he doesn't want her to say it. It's going to be something terrible and sarcastic, something to do with her awful acceptance, and… it's going to hurt his brother. But she bites it back. And Nathan thinks she might lean into Peter, just slightly, before she steps out of his grasp. She shows him – them – a nail file. The metal kind with a blunt, triangular end, for cleaning dried gore out from under your fingernails. And before anyone can stop her, Claire flips her sleeve back and drags that blunt end across the soft skin of her inner arm. The file cuts awkwardly, painfully through her skin, leaving ragged edges, and Nathan hears the sound Peter makes but it doesn't matter, he's looking at the important thing now and the important thing is Claire's face. There's nothing there.
"Claire," Nathan begins. But – he doesn't know.
"I can't feel anything." He can't see Peter's face right now, but his back is stiffening, and he knows Peter's feeling the horror Nathan feels as Claire goes on. "The water was too hot on my back. But I didn't notice until I saw blisters on my hands. I felt water. No heat. No pain. So I took the file. And I tried – and then I tried again. I feel nothing."
As if to punctuate her speech, Claire pushes the point down hard and her arm tenses to pull. But Peter, thank God, isn't frozen to the spot and he snatches the file out of her hands. Claire looks up at him as if he's taken a pen off her. Like she's wondering what the fuss is about. Why he's thrown the horrible little thing to the floor.
"He can't hurt me, Peter." Claire says simply. "Not again."
"Peter." Nathan says sharply. Peter is checked in the motion of reaching out to her, and his arms fall lamely to his sides. He sits down heavily on her bed. On Claire's bed. Nathan wishes he wouldn't sit there.
He wishes Peter wouldn't be so obviously desperate to touch his daughter.
"Claire. Honey." It feels weird calling her that now that she's here to hear it. But Nathan perseveres, coming towards her. "You've been through a lot today. This thing – whatever it is – it's going to pass."
"And then you strong men get to take turns guarding me every second of the day, is that it? I get a bodyguard to share my room. Obviously. You want the top bunk, Nathan? We'll bar the windows so he can't fly in, how's that sound. You can follow me to the bathroom, stand outside with Matt Parkman to make sure I'm still alive in there. Hell, why doesn't Angela sit outside the shower?" Her voice is rising. "Dad and Peter can take it in shifts to follow me around all day, shooting anyone who looks at me funny. Sounds great. Until you die."
"Claire – "
"Until you die, Nathan. And my dad. And my mom. And Lyle. And your kids, you know, those brothers of mine – Milo and Otis or whatever the fuck. Until Angela and Matt Parkman and the Haitian and every fucking person we know is dead, and it's just me and Sylar. Forever."
"I never said you couldn't help to bring Sylar in." Nathan says sharply. Angry, though, she's so beautiful. Like Peter. "I'm saying that this thing, with the pain, you can't let it break you. It's okay to be scared. It scares the shit out of me. But, Claire – no more nail files. Okay?"
Just Claire and Sylar, forever. It was sick, the way he looked at her, Peter said, and he knows a thing or two about sickness. Claire has no idea, not yet, that there are worse things Sylar can do to her than hurt her. Nathan is more than ever convinced that he needs some big guns on this one – the biggest he knows. He's going to mobilise the United States government to find this son of a bitch, and take him apart. Slowly. Carefully. Testing the limits of his stolen ability. Making him suffer for as long as his immortal body can take it.
Nathan puts aside the vivid revenge fantasy and comes to Claire, ignoring Peter for once, because this is just about her. Because he loves her. And it has changed everything. Carefully, and very gently, looking into her trusting eyes, Nathan smooths her hair. And then he runs his hand through it, his fingers hooking on the part where the hair tie binds it, going over it again. Passing through the blonde hair, stroking her scalp soothingly, the way Ma used to do when he was a kid. "Can you feel that?" he asks her gently.
"Yes." Her eyes close. And Nathan sees a glimmer of tears on her lashes. Then she opens them again, and the look in them is despairing. "You didn't say Peter."
He frowns. "What? When?"
"I said it would come down to Sylar and me. And you didn't say Peter." Her gaze shifts past him, to the shattered man sitting on her bed. Like her heart is breaking, Claire tells Peter, "You have a bruise on your face. And your knuckles are raw."
"I'm sorry." That sounds like all the explanation Peter can give her right now. Nathan can hear the huskiness in his voice, and again that image of Peter with a gun is terrifying him. Peter's hands clutch at the bedspread. His head is bowed.
And Claire crumples inside. Like a puppet with the strings cut. Nathan thinks she needs him to hug her again, but she goes to move past him, to Peter, and he has to catch her around the waist. "Claire, no." he warns.
There's no telling what she might do – and actually, the damage is done. Peter looks up at the sound of Nathan's voice, and he catches Claire looking at him like a fallen angel staring up into Heaven, and he knows. Nathan pulls her into his arms. Hides her face from Peter. He wishes she wouldn't look at Peter like that.
He wishes Claire wouldn't be so obviously desperate to touch his brother.
"Claire? Sweetheart?"
Sandra, thank God. Bennet has never liked Nathan, and he's pathologically possessive of his family – hadn't even liked seeing Nathan hold Claire in that house of death. Nathan's just her father. Bennet's her dad. Nathan lets Claire go. And with a shiver of horror he sees that his tie clip has left a red mark on her forehead.
But Claire – won't have felt it.
"Your mother emailed Noah plane tickets," Sandra says to him. Claire takes the band out of her hair and pulls it back again, fixing the mess Nathan made of the bun. "Four of them. I'm guessing the two of you are… getting back on your own."
She's not comfortable with the flying. Fair enough. But now Nathan has to think about what he's going to do next. He wants to take Claire with him. But Claire's got Bennet, and right now, Nathan wouldn't bet on Sylar if it came down to him and Bennet, no matter what abilities he's got. And Claire's wearing that almost-Angela look again, and Nathan's not entirely sure he'd bet on Sylar if it came down to the two of them, either. And Nathan wants to take care of Peter, after all, and it looks like Peter needs him more. All the same, he asks. "You want to travel with your mom?"
"Yeah. Thanks."
Nathan doesn't like leaving them. He doesn't even like flying with Peter. This time he hugs his brother close, because having him this side Nathan can keep a strong grip on him. He can't see quite as well this way. But the momentary vision he has of Peter letting go, mid-air, is making Nathan as paranoid as Bennet. So he holds on tight. All the way home.
X
The more Sandra sees of the Petrelli family, the less she likes them. Well, that's not quite true – she likes Peter. No one could help liking Peter. But as for the others… Noah warned her about Angela, and yes, she was just as big a witch as he'd said – not that the word Noah had used had been witch. Sandra doesn't exactly relish the prospect of living in a house that Angela Petrelli regards as hers. And that Nathan Petrelli is too smooth, too charming. When he hugged Peter, that first time, and then when he was holding Claire in her bedroom Sandra saw a human side to him that was actually quite likeable. But still, there's something about him that sets her nerves on edge.
He doesn't look anything like Sandra's daughter. But there is a resemblance, one she can't quite put her finger on. That's the part that irritates Noah. He's jealous. And sure, Sandra can see herself being jealous of Meredith Gordon, if she ever showed up. That would make sense. But what she finds so objectionable about Nathan Petrelli – besides his casual arrogance, that is – she can't figure out.
Thinking about the Petrellis distracts Sandra from thinking about Claire. What happened to Claire today. Claire's trying to be cool and self-possessed, and when Peter has gone, she manages to maintain it. Peter, with his heart always on his sleeve, is the only one who can prompt an emotional reaction from Claire, and Sandra realises now that it's been that way for months. With him gone, her daughter is acting scarily like Noah.
Once, though – in the plane, when the stewardess advises passengers to fasten their seatbelts and Claire hasn't heard – Sandra leans over to do it for her, and Claire's terrified reaction frightens her worse than anything else today. Without saying anything about it, Sandra lets Claire unfasten her belt as soon as the stewardess has passed by. She lays her sweater in her lap. And then, in the town car Angela Petrelli sends to pick them up, Claire leaves the seatbelt alone. And Sandra doesn't say a word. She doesn't know why Claire can't stand the seatbelt. She doesn't want to know.
Not ever.
"I knew it was a mistake for Peter to leave you." Angela declares, the moment they walk in the door. She embraces Claire, coolly – Sandra's surprised that Claire lets her. And oh, poor Peter. He can hear them. "This should never have happened."
"But it did."
"And now we have to make the best of it." Angela concludes. The same tone. Angela and Claire. The same cool gaze, meeting each other's eyes, understanding what they see there. It's the first clear resemblance Sandra's seen between Claire and a Petrelli. She hates it. Why couldn't Claire have been more like Peter?
Peter and Nathan are already in the living room. Nathan stands up to greet them, but after a haunted glance at Claire, Peter just hangs his head. Sandra's heart aches for him. She wants to go over there and give him the hug, not the mention the apology, his own mother owes him. The poor boy has done the best he could to save Claire. Over and over. Everyone's blaming themselves for what's happened – with the possible exceptions of Nathan and Angela Petrelli – but Peter is taking on far too much of the burden.
"How did you know I was – " Claire begins. Pauses. Seats herself. Rephrases. "How did you know to come to Costa Verde?"
Cool and collected. Or, at least, trying. Whenever her eyes happen upon Peter something flickers in them, and Sandra sees Claire's fingers flex slightly. She's trying not to look at Peter.
Peter and Nathan exchange a loaded glance. "I had a dream last night. I called you – to make sure you were okay. Then I went to the future to save you. Three years from now, and your family was gone, and you had this one close friend. He came to see you, and it was Sylar. And you didn't know. He was working for the Company, and when he saw me, we fought, and he injected me with something. Twice. I don't know what it was. But I can't use any of my abilities. I had just enough – I don't know. Whatever it is. I got home to the right time, but not the right place, I was here. And then the second shot kicked in. It was a tranquilliser. I tried to tell Ma and Nathan before I passed out."
Peter just stops, there. Noah and Angela look at one another.
"Sylar." Claire says.
Peter nods. Doesn't meet her eyes.
"That's great, Peter. How about you tell me that story again – except this time, try to do it without lying to me."
Her voice is cold as Noah's can be. Peter pretends not to understand. Poorly. No liar, Peter Petrelli. Nathan, evidently giving up on this barebones account of the future, spreads his hands before him in apology. "There are parts he's leaving out." He admits. "But it's nothing that could help. The important thing is, Peter knew you'd be meeting a man calling himself Alex Manion about this time, and he knew that man was Sylar."
"You called me," Claire says to herself. She's trying to work something out. And something hits her. "Peter. I want to talk to you."
Seeing Claire's sweet, familiar face drawn and white like this is scaring Sandra, but worse, it's hurting her. And hearing her talk to poor Peter with ice in her voice, in her eyes, is hurting her as much as it's apparently satisfying Angela. "Claire – " Sandra starts, in chorus with Noah. She stops them both with a look.
"I want to talk to Peter alone for a minute."
He doesn't look at her. Just gets off the couch and heads for the stairs. Claire goes after him. Nathan follows them – like before, Sandra notices, and wonders if these Petrellis do anything alone – and stops Claire at the foot of the stairs. Sandra can't hear what they're saying. But Nathan's talking to her in a low, earnest voice, leaning into her like… she's not sure. It reminds her of something, though, and it's not Noah. Nathan touches Claire's arm. Tilts his head. And when he's said his piece, and she's replied, his fingers tighten encouragingly on her upper arm before she turns to go.
Claire mounts the stairs. Nathan rejoins the party, slumping down in his seat. "She's going to go easy on him," he says to his mother. His gaze travels past her to the hall, the empty sweep of the staircase, and Sandra realises what it is she dislikes about Nathan Petrelli.
Angela invites her into the kitchen to help get some coffee going. She couldn't picture Angela doing anything domestic, but here she is, scooping dark ground coffee, prepping the machine. This is the perfect opportunity to raise the issue with Angela, but now that they're here in this cold kitchen, Sandra doesn't quite know how to begin.
"You have something you'd like to say," Angela suggests. She smiles. "Bless you, Sandra, you couldn't have been more obvious if you'd frogmarched me upstairs."
Sandra folds her arms. She does not need to be patronised by Angela Petrelli today. Frankly, she says, "I don't like the way your son is behaving."
"Which one?"
"Nathan. The way he acts with Claire… I'm going to be honest with you, Mrs Petrelli."
"You're welcome to call me Angela. And you are more than welcome to be honest with me."
"He flirts with her." Sandra blurts out. She flushes.
But Angela accepts her observation with equanimity. "There is an edge of flirtation to everything Nathan does," she says dryly. "That's why he makes such a good politician."
She takes cups down. Smiles to herself. She turns to Sandra to explain. "Nathan has never had a daughter before. Never had any sisters. And he went through his female cousins like there was a Scout badge at the end of it. Even Madeline, and she lives with a policewoman called Ricky in San Diego now." Angela frowns slightly. "I believe Madeline and Nathan still get together for a drink now and then – when Ricky's visiting her mother." She shrugs.
And that's that, for the Petrellis, Sandra thinks bemusedly. She thinks this is normal. Infidelity and incest is apparently all in a day's privilege for some families. And so, she reminds herself, are flying, time travel, and serial killers. She feels more sorry than ever for Peter – for Claire.
"Are you going to do something about it?" Sandra demands.
Angela's pouring coffee. "What would you like me to do? What exactly is Nathan doing wrong?"
"He's – touching her too often. He talks too close to her." Sandra's feeling flustered. Angela's acting like her concerns are meaningless. She goes to pick up two cups, but Angela takes her hands. Sandra wants to pull away from those long red nails.
"Nathan is exactly the same with Peter." Angela says mildly. That's right, he is. They sit close, and they talk close, and they're always touching one another quite casually. Sure. Sandra doesn't read anything much into that – they're brothers, they love each other. "And Claire doesn't notice anything strange about Nathan's behaviour. There isn't anything strange about it."
Sandra's seen Claire and Nathan together. There's nothing untoward in the way they talk to each other, look at each other. She sees that now. Nathan hasn't loved Claire since she was a little girl, since she was a baby, the way Sandra and Noah have; Claire's just a young woman Nathan knows now – one he's starting to love the way he loves his brother. And he's expressing it the only way he knows how. He's a charming man. Him being charming to Claire – to Peter – it's all the same thing. Nothing to worry about. Sandra relaxes. She's glad, after all, that they had this little talk.
Angela releases Sandra's hand. They take coffee through to the living room.
Sandra sits down between Noah and Lyle. Nathan goes and helps his mother with the last few cups. She smiles up at him. Touches his face affectionately. He's weary with the rough day they've had, but his eyes crinkle as he manages a smile for Angela.
Sandra thinks about the terrible things this woman has done to her family, and the terrible things the members of her family have done to one another. Noah reads her mind. He leans over and murmurs, "She really did a number on those boys."
Sandra rubs Lyle's back, thankful for his dear, ordinary, familiar self. She tries to remember Claire before all this, before Homecoming, and it feels like another life. Another girl. Noah takes her hand. Squeezes.
And Sandra wishes, with all her heart, that they could take their children out of this place, out of this time, and just –
Forget.