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: Not sure about what I had Peter and Claire do with the tickets here, but I'm not entirely up on airline rules and procedures, so I decided to go with this (Particularly since I couldn't think of another explanation for how Peter and Caitlin were able to get from Cork to Quebec on such short notice, given that I somehow doubt Ricky's gang would be willing to give Peter enough money to get fresh tickets to pursue such an apparent wild goose chase; the 'exchanging tickets' idea only made sense)
AN 2: Just to let you know, the encounter between Noah, the Haitian and Ivan as Noah and the Haitian searched for the last six paintings in the Series of Eight happened the same way here as it did in the show; any differences in dialogue that might have been caused by Noah thinking about Peter's presence are so minor as to not be worth writing about
A Leap to Safety
Claire almost couldn't believe how rapidly things had turned out since she'd first seen Peter on her bedroom floor. Just a few days ago she'd been thinking that she'd have to live her life pretending that the one really cool thing that had ever happened to her- hell, that the only really important thing she'd ever done- hadn't actually happened, and now, here she was, sitting beside the guy who was potentially the most powerful man on the planet as they flew all the way to Montreal.
She wasn't sure how she should be feeling in this situation, really; there were so many potential responses to the current crisis- the most powerful guy alive didn't remember who he was or what he could do; it wasn't exactly an easy situation to be in- that she still wasn't entirely sure how she should feel about it.
On the one hand, they didn't know what they were getting into by doing on this particular little 'search', given that they still had no way of knowing why Peter had painted them outside that building, or even how Peter had gone from being several hundred feet above New York to being in a metal box somewhere (She couldn't remember if he'd ever mentioned where he thought the box had been)…
But, on the other hand, she was doing something to help the guy who might be the most powerful man on the planet- and the guy who was definitely her hero- find out who he was and what had happened to him.
It might sound a little childish, but how could she not be enthusiastic about that?
Mainly, though, Claire supposed that she was just grateful that things had all gone according to plan so far. Her father had accepted the story that she'd joined the cheerleading squad easily enough; he hadn't been happy about her applying for cheerleading without his permission, of course, but she'd been able to convince him to let her 'continue' it (So long as she avoided dating for now, admittedly, but that was something she wasn't exactly keen on doing at the moment anyway).
With an effective cover story now provided, Claire had thus been able to convince her father to allow her to go to a 'competition' that the cheerleaders had signed up for prior to her joining the team, calling May- the girl who'd given her the form- to ask the other girl to provide her with a cover story if her parents tried to check up on her story (The excuse she'd given still made Claire smile; she'd told May that she wanted to spend time with a boyfriend her parents didn't know about, which wasn't that far from the truth if you allowed for the fact that Peter just considered himself to be her boy friend and her parents' own ignorance of the depth of her feelings for him).
With a cover story sorted out, Claire had left early that morning- shortly after her father had left on some work thing he hadn't told them much about-, Peter subsequently joining her after phasing out of the upper wall to land on the ground below, subsequently healing his injuries with her power before the two of them headed for the airport, the fall short enough so that there was minimal blood and only a couple of broken bones needing to be re-set after the initial pain had passed. Having managed to get his bones back into position, Peter had taken Claire's hand and the two of them had turned invisible before heading for the nearest main street, Claire subsequently hailing a taxi to take them the rest of the way using some of the money she'd stored away following the move
They both acknowledged that the rest of Claire's family wouldn't take long to realise that Peter wasn't in his room- and, hence, that Claire hadn't gone to a cheerleading event; not even her father at his most paranoid would think that she'd deliberately put Peter in danger-, but hopefully when they got back they'd have discovered some clues regarding what had actually happened to Peter during the last four months, which would hopefully negate any lies that they might have told. Her dad might freak out about how Claire was putting them at risk by attracting attention, but the way Claire saw it, taking a sick day off was hardly going to get people that freaked out, and it was all for a good cause anyway; how could her father complain about her trying to figure out what had happened to Peter?
Once at the airport, they'd managed to exchange the New York-Montreal tickets for Coasta Verda-Montreal ones, which at least gave them a bit of extra money due to the exchange rate (Admittedly it wasn't much, but Claire wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth at a time like this; every little helped, after all). So far the flight had gone fairly smoothly, even if the in-flight movie had been nothing to write home about; Claire just hadn't really felt in the mood for Enchanted at a time like this, with it just reminding her that, in the end, she'd never get her 'True Love's Kiss' (The brief one she'd received from Peter when he'd arrived didn't really count… and why the hell was she thinking about Peter like that; he was her uncle, remember?!)…
"Claire?" Peter said to her left, prompting Claire to glance back at him as he looked curiously at her. "You OK?"
"Yeah… I'm fine," Claire replied, nodding briefly at Peter as she turned to look out of the window once again. "Just… well, y'know… I'm just wondering what we'll find when we get to… whatever that place is."
Peter smiled.
"Hey," he said, reaching over to take her hand, giving it a brief, affectionate squeeze as he smiled at her. "We'll find it, OK?"
Before Claire could make any response to that, Peter had leaned over and briefly kissed her near her left cheekbone, pulling back with a slight smile on his face as she looked at him.
"I already saved you from a killer once," he continued, smiling at her in that warm manner that made Claire's stomach do… things… she didn't like to think about (You were not supposed to react that way to your uncle kissing you on the cheek!) as he spoke. "How hard can checking out a building be?"
Once again, Claire was left in what she was rapidly coming to think of as a 'Peter Moment' (God, how was it possible for him to be that good at putting her at ease?).
Here she was, flying all the way to Montreal without her parents' knowledge, harbouring thoughts about her uncle that were definitely illegal in at least several states, possibly due to encounter God only knew what…
And yet, even in that situation, all it took was one smile from Peter and she felt like she could do anything.
Neither of them noticed the sixteen-year-old boy flying after their plane at speeds that should have been impossible for the human form to maintain without some form of protection against the winds that were currently blowing against him, his fists clenched as he glared at the plane ahead of him.
West Rosen might be hanging back from his top speed to avoid overshooting his mark- he could normally go at just under the speed of sound if he really pushed himself-, but it was clear that he was having to fight the urge to go faster, if only to see the look on Claire's face.
Right now, though, impressing Claire with his speed wasn't what he wanted; what he wanted was to find out what the hell this guy was doing taking her to Montreal of all places, and then show her that he was a way better choice than some weird older guy who painted stuff and dragged her around the country on wild goose chases…
A few hours later, the plane having landed and the two of them having stopped for a brief snack at the airport (Neither aware of their 'stalker' as he watched them off to the side, waiting for his moment), Peter and Claire found themselves standing on the corner of a quite street, looking at the building on front of them as Peter studied the painting he'd just removed from their bag, nodding thoughtfully as he compared the image in his hands with the scene before them.
Overall, it looked pretty much exactly as he'd painted it; the street sign on the corner was accurate, the church seemed to be approximately the right distance away- the way the painting presented the image made it slightly harder to accurately estimate scale-, the building in front of them even had that strange symbol above its door…
"Looks like we found it," Claire said, breaking into his train of thought as she looked at him, an uncertain smile on her face. "Ready?"
"With you and my abilities?" Peter replied, smiling slightly back at her as he rolled up the painting and slipped it back into his bag. "You bet."
It was a stupid thing to focus on, Claire knew, but even as they walked into the warehouse before her, she couldn't help but feel proud of the fact that Peter had put her before his abilities when saying what he needed here.
After she'd spent so long feeling like her ability was pretty much useless for anything but defensive purposes, it was really…
Well, it was kind of cool to know that he valued her presence that much.
If he'd only-
NOT gonna go there! Claire sharply told herself, stopping that train of thought before it could go much further.
She just wished that she could feel certain that Peter hadn't picked up on it; the slight smile on his face could have just been from the fact that they might be about to find out more about his past, but it could just as easily have been him hearing what she'd just thought after he'd accessed Detective Parkman's power…
However, further concerns about what powers Peter might or might not be using were pushed aside as they walked into the warehouse, Claire's eyes scanned their surroundings for any kind of clue about why Peter's painting might have 'directed' them here. She might not understand how that power of his actually worked, but after she'd seen Peter paint Ted before he'd even met the 'radioactive man' in question- as well as him painting Kirby Plaza before they even 'knew' that the final fight with Sylar would take place there-, she wasn't going to ignore what the paintings 'said' (For lack of a better term; in Claire's opinion, thinking of the paintings as 'showing' them something suggested that the paintings were just something to watch without actually making any impact on people).
After a brief walk through a light-coloured entrance hallway, Peter opened another door, revealing a large, darkened room that seemed to be filled with objects. Peter reached over to turn a light on, but even when illuminated the room failed to provide them with any immediate answers. All that seemed to be inside the warehouse was a large collection of boxes- a ridiculously large collection of boxes, in Claire's opinion; why did people feel the need to gather all this stuff together?- along with various assorted random artefacts. Just from the door they'd entered by, Claire could see several chairs turned upside-down on top of some of the boxes, a grandfather clock that didn't look like anyone had wound it up for years, some unlabeled files, old flags with a symbol that Claire couldn't identify- a different one from the one outside, but that was all that she could say for sure-, and even what looked like an old chandelier of all things.
"What is this place?" Claire asked, looking in confusion around the room as they walked even further into it,
"I don't know…" Peter muttered, glancing around the room before his eyes settled on something. Turning to look at what he was currently staring at, Claire saw a small note pinned to a decent-sized mirror on top of some kind of cabinet, an old-fashioned-looking lamp and a golden-coloured goblet just in front of it.
Walking over to the mirror, Peter grabbed the note off its surface, staring briefly at it before he glanced around at his surroundings once again.
"Someone knew I was coming…" he muttered, evidently wishing he knew more about whatever was going on, before he turned the note over and began to read it, the confusion that had already been on his face growing more obvious as he read. "'We were right about the Company. The world is in danger. It's up to us. Adam'."
He looked anxiously up at Claire. "Does that… mean anything to you?"
"Well… I don't know any Adam, but I think Iknow about the Company he mentioned there," Claire replied, carefully going over what she remembered overhearing about her father's work with the Company; she didn't think now was the best time to tell him that her adopted dad had used to work for the group she was telling him about. "If he's talking about the right Company, they're a group who go around testing people with abilities for some reason; apparently they generally operate by abducting people with abilities, testing what they can do, and then kill them, erase their memory of the abduction, or recruit them…."
Noting Peter's still confused expression, Claire could only shrug helplessly. "That's pretty much it; I… well, when I was told everything about them I was more interested in getting away from them than in finding out more…"
"OK, so we know what Company he's talking about, but… what's he talking about here?" Peter asked, looking around the room in evidently growing frustration; Claire briefly wondered if he was trying to tap into some kind of vision power that he might have 'absorbed' since she last saw him. "I don't know about… any of this! 'The world is in danger'? From something that this 'Company' did? What am I supposed to do?"
"We'll figure it out," Claire said, stepping forward to look comfortingly at Peter, a slight smile on her face as she walked up to him. "I'm not going to give up on you, Peter; you're my hero."
Hero…
It didn't do much to really express just how much he meant to her, but, as she wrapped her arms around him, revelling in the feel of his body against hers (No matter how sick society might call it, she just couldn't stop loving him; couldn't she at least be allowed to enjoy these little things?), she had to admit that it still felt pretty good to see him smile even slightly at that.
"I just want to know where to go…" Peter muttered, his eyes squeezed shut as he held Claire in his arms, the younger girl closing her own eyes as she held him close, wishing that she could give him the answers he sought…
