Disclaimer: I don't Heroes, and the fundamental concept of this story was inspired by rain and leaves' "Four Months Later" and is used with his permission
Feedback: I'd like it, trust me
AN: Just to clarify, the scene where Claire cut off her little toe is referenced here, but I didn't write it because it happened pretty much the same way as it did in the show; Peter was upstairs at the time and Claire was just curious to see just what her powers could be capable of
A Leap to Safety
As Claire sat up in her bed the next morning- Peter now safely 'tucked away' in their new guest room to help their efforts to keep him safe-, casually perusing the copy of Activating Evolution she'd apparently been 'given' yesterday, she allowed herself a slight smile at the thought of how well things were going with Peter's new 'training'.
They hadn't actually started working on his ability to access his old 'rolodex' yet, of course- given that he couldn't remember the people he'd met Claire still wasn't sure how she was going to help him access his other powers right now-, but they'd tested his ability to use her power by giving him slight scratches with scissors or knives while they were up in her room, Claire increasing the distance between them each time to get a better idea of his 'range' (Claire had also carried out her own private 'test' in the living room while her mother was cleaning, cutting off her little toe to see how her power would cope with that, but she wasn't ready to start hacking off Peter's limbs; she still had no real idea how accurately he was able to copy powers and didn't want to risk him being unable to precisely duplicate that aspect of her abilities).
They'd also gone over some of the things that had been in Peter's pockets when he'd appeared- Claire had cleaned them out after he'd fallen asleep shortly after his arrival in the hope of finding something to explain what he was doing there-, but nothing had provided them with any clear idea what had happened to him between Kirby Plaza and him waking up in that metal crate he'd been in before he teleported into her room. The plane tickets from New York to Montreal failed to fill in any of the blanks- until they knew more about what had happened to him, neither of them were willing to go there in case it was a trap arranged by whoever or whatever had erased his memory-, and his passport hardly told them anything they didn't already know. The assorted dollar bills of mixed amounts naturally failed to provide them with any new pieces of the puzzle they were currently trying to figure out, and the folded pamphlet that accompanied the bills seemed to be nothing more than some information about the flight service the ticket had been booked with.
(There'd also been the picture of Peter standing beside Nathan, of course, but Claire had hidden that away for the moment; she didn't want to give Peter a reason to contact anyone else until he'd remembered more about why they had to keep things quiet (The fact that she hadn't wanted to risk the sight of him with her bio-dad triggering any memories about their real relationship was not the main reason she'd done that; there wasn't even enough of a physical resemblance between her and Nathan for him to make that connection).)
Right now, though, with Peter asleep in the guest room and her parents still not awake, Claire had decided to take the opportunity to peruse the book that she'd discovered in the drive after seeing that 'West' kid hurrying away from the window; even if she didn't exactly like the thought of him knowing something like that about her- and she'd need to come up with a lie about that as soon as possible; she could not have him running around knowing the truth about her-, she had to admit that the book was kind of interesting…
"Hey," her father's voice said, breaking her out of her train of thought and prompting to look up to see him standing in the door of her room. "Your mom made waffles."
"Uh… OK," Claire said, uncertain what else she could say in this kind of situation; she could be polite, at least, but she still wasn't sure how things were going to be with her insistence that Peter remain and her father's apparent desire to get him out of the house. "I'll be down in a minute."
"You were right to be angry," her father said as he stepped into the room, not even waiting to better determine how she might feel about his entrance, moving to sit down on a chair near her bed. "You tried to talk to me and I lost my temper. I'm sorry."
"No, it's fine," Claire said, shaking her head reassuringly; the last thing she wanted was to make him too annoyed with her in case it endangered Peter. "I shouldn't have ambushed you with all those questions-"
"No, of course you should, Claire," her father replied, shaking his head as he looked sympathetically at her. "I've asked you to carry around a heck of a secret, and.… I think sometimes I don't appreciate how difficult that must be. Peter gives you someone you can be yourself with; in a situation like this, you… well, you could probably use someone like that, and I should just be grateful that you managed to find someone who we can both trust to be discreet about it."
He smiled reassuringly at her. "So, if you have anything you want to ask me, as long as we're in the privacy of our own home, please, ask away."
Claire didn't need to think much about what question she could ask; the most obvious thing she wanted the answer to was already clear in her mind.
"If someone here found out about Peter or me, what would happen?"
"We'd have to leave California immediately," her father replied, his tone and expression grim as he looked at her. "Go deeper into hiding; maybe forgo schools and jobs altogether. And as for Peter…"
He sighed slightly. "Well, that would really all depend on what kind of situation we were in at the time; if whoever found out about us knew about him, we'd take him with us, but if they only knew about him, we'd have to send him off somewhere else to stop anyone finding out why we were hiding someone who could do… everything that Peter could do…"
After a moment's silence, evidently giving Claire time to contemplate what he had said, her father smiled slightly at her in a reassuring manner. "That's worst-case scenario, though; even if we have to leave, it may never come to that."
Despite her father's attempted reassurance, even as he walked out of her room, Claire had already made up her mind about what she was about to do.
If Peter was going to stay (with her) safe, she had to convince West that he didn't see what he'd seen as soon as possible.
"It was a pedicure," she told West as soon as she saw him at his locker.
"I'm sorry?" West asked, looking for a moment as though he was trying to stop himself from laughing.
"The other night?" Claire replied; she knew that it wasn't the best cover story, but if she provided him with at least some kind of explanation maybe he'd be prepared to leave it at that and not poke around any further and discover Peter. "That's what I was doing; I was giving myself a pedicure."
"You're not very good at it," West replied, his tone making it clear that he didn't believe the story for an instant as he closed his locker and walked away, Claire close behind him.
"What is it with you creeping around my house at night anyway?" she countered, rapidly deciding to change tactics as she walked after him; maybe if she confronted him about his own inappropriate behaviour, he'd be less inclined to focus on what she'd been doing when he was there in the first place.
"Just tryin' to lend you a book," West replied, his voice suggesting that it was a perfectly reasonable thing to try and give someone a book at around ten o'clock at night.
"OK, y'know what?" Claire said, glaring slightly at him as she held her hands together in an attempt to better emphasis her point. "If I want to start a book club with you, I'll let you know; until then, just stay away from me."
"Will do," West said, turning back to face her directly. "Just walk me through this one last time; I didn't see you cut off your toe, is that right?"
"The bottle of nail polish fell over and it just looked like it was bleeding," Claire countered, privately wishing that she sounded as confident as she wanted to.
"Improvising is really not your forte-" West began, smiling at her as he spoke.
"Why are you such a smart-ass?" Claire yelled at him; she couldn't believe how effortlessly this guy was managing to annoy her!
"Why are you so bad at lying?" West retorted; he now seemed to be fighting the urge to laugh as he spoke to her.
"I'm not lying," Claire retorted, smirking at him in a manner that she hoped would reinforce her (Admittedly fictional) point and get him to back off.
"Fine then," West said, sounding almost dismissive about her story. "You gave yourself a pedicure, and your toe came off and then grew back on; works for me."
"I'm going to class," Claire groaned, walking past him in a manner that she was fairly certain would make it clear that she regarded him as an idiot for believing what he thought he'd seen.
"Don't do your nails on the way," West called after her as she stormed off.
She was beginning to realise why her father had insisted they move so far from Odessa; she was really not that good at lying to people…
As Claire sat down in biology class moments before the bell rang, she tried to ignore West as he sat down beside her- God, couldn't the guy take a hint?- and concentrate on the matter at hand; biology might not be her favourite subject, but at least yesterday's lesson had shown that she could find something interesting about it.
"All right," Mr Zern said, looking around at the group of students before him as he stood up at the front of the class. "Today we are talking about mitosis. Yes, West?" he added, as the boy in question raised his hand.
"I have a question about yesterday's topic; regeneration in lizards," West replied; Claire wasn't sure if she should feel relieved or frustrated that he didn't even have the decency to look at her as he potentially prepared to reveal her secret to everyone in the classroom. "Now I know you said humans couldn't regenerate, but what if a lizard were to mate with a human? Could their offspring do it? Because I think I met a lizard girl."
Claire couldn't believe it; did this guy had no sense of privacy as far as she was concerned? What the hell gave him the right to talk so… casually… about something that she thought she'd made it clear she wanted to keep to herself?
"This doesn't strike me as a productive conversation, West," Mr Zern replied; Claire was so stunned at West's lack of sensitivity that she barely even registered that at least Mr Zern didn't take his topic seriously.
"But seriously," West continued, once gain displaying a staggering lack of concern for her feelings as he continued to speak, "what if that lizard girl were to… accidentally… cut off her arm?"
As he turned briefly to look at Claire as he spoke, she tried to smile in a manner that suggested she was asking everyone to humour the crazy person she was sitting beside, but at the same time she knew that she was failing miserably.
"Or a leg?" West continued. "Or… you name the appendage… in some kind of… horrifying spa debacle?"
Claire briefly wondered if she could get away with at least slapping West on the grounds that he was being an idiot and distracting them from their lesson
"Where exactly are you going with this?" Mr Zern asked, his arms folded as he looked critically at West.
"Would said appendage reattach itself back onto her… lizard body?" West asked, his tone still that same mixture of casual and teasing that suggested he was about to give her away without actually doing so.
It was the amused smile on his face- as though he honestly thought he was doing nothing wrong by revealing her greatest secret to almost the entire class- that finally forced Claire past the point where she could take what she was hearing. Unwilling to hear this jerk talk about her any more- even if he wasn't saying her name-, she pushed her chair out, stood up, and walked out of the classroom; if anyone asked, she'd just say that she needed to go to the toilet due to a slight case of food poisoning or something like that.
