Exposed 3x18, Part 2
Peter and Matt stalked down the corridor, Hana behind them, a watchdog. According to Matt she'd been captured by the Company a few years back, by Noah. Peter wasn't surprised. He was sure that by now, Noah had probably been acquainted with all the evolved humans at some point or another. She had escaped and then Matt said he didn't know - but he'd heard she'd died.
She was highly qualified, and that was really all that mattered now, he supposed.
The plan was for Matt to use his power to disguise them - get them in. That had worked. They were on the top floor, with all the sensitive information and no trouble so far, but Peter knew it was just a matter of time before Noah interfered. Noah would be harder than guards.
Especially because of Claire.
"In here." Hana kicked open a door, one labelled 'Operations'. "Being nearer to a computer makes it easier for me." She ignored the man inside, leaving him for Matt and Peter to take care of. He ended up finishing his lunch in the hall.
Peter leaned around Hana, skimming through the information.
A chat, like the one they'd seen at Isaac's loft popped up.
'CHECK IT OUT.'
A video appeared on screen - a video of the night Nathan had gotten them all on the plane. Peter grinned.
"Matt. I think we've got them."
Hana's eyes popped open at the same time.
"I know where Daphne is."
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"Sir, you better check this out.." One of his tech's called.
Noah peered over at the screen.
Peter, Matt and.. His eyes narrowed. Hana Gitelman?
But Hana Gitelman...
She didn't exist anymore.
"We have a problem."
Danko swore under his breath, heading for the door, one hand clenched in a fist, the other wound tightly around a gun.
Noah felt around in his jacket for his piece, wrapping his fingers round it for comfort. It didn't come.
The security team ushered Danko back into the room, a blank look on their faces.
Nathan swore, louder and much more colorfully than Danko had. Noah clenched his jaw.
Matt smirked up at the screen.
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Claire snuck out of the room, a quick glance behind her to make sure he hadn't woken up. She'd been careful, making sure not to bump into the corner of their bed and carefully opening the door so it wouldn't creak. She had seen a payphone went they came in - she had a call she needed to make.
"Hello, Bennet house." Claire sunk back against the wall, her hand flying to her mouth at the sound of her mother's warm Texan drawl.
"Hey." She cleared her throat. "Mom."
"Claire!" Her mother exclaimed, sounding so relieved it hurt. "God, I haven't spoken to you in three months! You know I don't know how to use that internet mail thing! Does it really take you that long to pick up a phone and call your dear old mother?" Claire smiled. Her mother sounded more happy than angry, but she could hear the small amount of reproach her mom held.
"I'm sorry, mom.." She sighed, smiling as she twirled the phone cord in her hands. "It's been a little crazy over here."
"Well, that's no excuse," her mom grumbled, "but it'll do for now. How's Angela? Still as frosty as ever? Have you seen much of Peter?"
Claire sighed, going along with the lie her father seemed to have wove. "Not as much as I've liked." She said truthfully. Sylar's words from earlier tugged at her chest and she rubbed at her sore eyes. "Mom, do you think I'm..." She took a deep breath. "Do you think I'm a victim?"
There was a brief moment of silence over the phone and then Sandra sighed, as she did when she felt people were being stupid about something. "Now why on Earth would you think that?"
"I was just thinking.. If someone really wanted to hurt someone I loved - you, dad... I couldn't do anything. I wouldn't be able to do anything. And everyone -" she said this with vehemence, "is able to hurt me. And mom, I hate it. I hate being so helpless and.." She drew in a shuddering breath. "I want to come home."
"And what is stopping you? I'd be thrilled if you walk through that door right now. You talk as if someone's holding you against your will." There was a pause. "Is someone holding you against your will?"
Claire laughed. "No, no.." She glanced up toward the room she was sharing with Sylar. "No one's holding me back. I have to go, though. I'm supposed to be exploring. Give my love to dad - tell him.." She debated leaving him a clue.
"You can tell him yourself..." Claire's throat closed as she heard her mom call for her dad. She hadn't been prepared for this. She heard the mad dash her father made for the phone, his voice sharpen and go 'Claire?' as he reached for the phone, she felt her breath catch in her throat.
"Claire? Claire, tell me where you are."
"I'm not going to. I just called to say I love you and - " The phone was yanked out of her hands and she found herself pressed back against the phone-booth wall by her throat. Sylar slammed the phone back onto the hook with such force she was surprised it didn't break.
"Well, well, Claire. Tired of me already?" Sylar hissed. Claire looked into his face, his eyes dark with anger and his hair tousled. She swallowed hard.
"I didn't tell him anything." Claire pushed at his forearms. "He doesn't know where we are. Now, put me down."
Sylar's hands shifted, his hands settling on her hips, holding her to the wall. She glared down at him, beating at his shoulders.
"No." She kicked at him, but he pressed her only further against the glass, his body sandwiched between her legs.
"What did you tell them?" Sylar hissed, pressing her hands back to keep her from hitting at him.
"It's none of your business." Claire snarled, pushing against him.
"Did you tell them where we were?" He pressed, his eyes dark and wild.
"No, why would I do that?" Claire growled, trying to yank her hands from his. "The whole point of -" she grunted, "our deal was that my family and you would never have to come into contact with each other."
He looked at her for a moment, his expression blank before he let her go abruptly. She fell to the floor with a start, her legs impacting hard with the ground. She stumbled and winced at the non-pain.
"So what, Claire?" He asked, his back toward her. His voice was so rough, so coarse it sounded like a growl. "Are you going to just stay here with me until every one of your family has turned to dust? Is that the big plan?"
Claire's heart sank. She'd been putting the question out of her mind for weeks now. She had no plan.
"Are you going to pretend that you can stop me from killing?" He asked again, snorting.
"I don't know." She said quietly. And then she took a step toward him, and stepped in front of him so that she could look him in the eye.
"But I am done with you telling me what I am." She took another step toward him, getting right up in his face. "I am not a victim, Sylar. I decided my own fate, I came here of my own volition. Sure, my circumstances aren't ideal, but I saved my family, didn't I? And that was all I wanted. Just because you have more abilities, more 'power'?" She quirked an eyebrow at him. "It doesn't mean you decide what I am." She lifted her chin. "I do. And I." She punctuated her pause with a prod to his chest. "Am." Another poke, harder. "Not your victim. Or anyone's." She turned her back on him, slamming the door to the phone booth so hard he could still hear the sound of the door slamming three minutes later.
Damn super-hearing.
Ando pulled over a few meters short of the White House.
"We're almost there, Hiro." Ando whispered to Hiro's sleeping form. He wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing.
He knew these people were big - after all, Senator Petrelli was involved. And Hiro didn't have his powers...
He took a deep breath, clenching his hands tightly. A small red spark flew into the air.
He felt Hiro stir and wake. He didn't break his gaze from the tall, iconic building that seemed to loom over them.
"We do this -" Hiro said quietly, "how we do everything."
He glanced over at his childhood friend, who looked uncharacteristically solemn.
"We do this together."
Nathan slunk into the black limo, slumping back onto the seat.
"Nathan." His mother's clipped tone forced him to open his eyes and peer at her from where he was sitting.
"Ma." He closed his eyes, allowing himself to breathe, before he got himself back into control.
"Are you helping him?"
His mother's eyes flicked to his, and then volley-balled back to the tinted windows. "Don't be ridiculous, Nathan."
"Well, someone is -" he pushed. "Someone's out there, and they're calling themselves Rebel."
His mother smirked at that. "I assure you, if I was to start a revolution, I'd come up with something a little more original."
Nathan continued as if she hadn't interrupted. "Peter and Matt Parkman - they've got someone new with them." He glanced at her, searching for some sign of recognition, but her expression remained unreadable, if not just slightly tense.
"Who?" She asked, her tone light.
"Hana Gitelman." At the name, his mother's hands folded around themselves tightly, her fingers playing with the gold band she had yet to abandon on the ring finger of her left hand.
"Noah says she was captured by Primatech. That she died there." Nathan leaned forward. "Is there something you're not telling me?"
Angela sighed, slumping back into her seat. "The game has changed, Nathan. Even I don't know what's going to happen now."
"Why not?"
"There are too many players now - too many variables changed. This wasn't supposed to happen - this is..." His mother trailed off, looking at something beyond him, beyond the limo sitting outside building number 26, Washington DC.
"This is?" He prompted. His mother seemed to snap back to herself, a small smile playing on her lips.
"This is quite extraordinary."
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They'd been going at 170 miles an hour when Sylar had ordered her to pull over, stop outside an old, boarded up diner called Big Jims.
He seemed so... Familiar with the place, and yet in awe of it as well.
It put her on edge.
She could tell Luke was slightly antsy too - she couldn't blame him. Sylar was acting... Off.
He was acting like he'd found a box of old photographs and was trying to blow off the dust.
He ripped off the boards that covered the doors and windows and stepped in.
She followed him in - and she saw.
She saw his face as he ran his fingers over the walls - behind the chair, and then he'd broken off a piece of wood, seemingly at random, and went over to it, ran his fingers under the spot and came back with a toy car.
Her fingernails dug into her palms.
She'd never seen him - quite like this, not even when he'd had that nightmare. He stared at the toy car, seemingly lost in thought for a few moments, before his face changed. He whispered something, and the blankness on his face turned to anger and he threw it into the wall. Instinctively, she put a hand on his arm, trying to calm him or help or... Something.
He turned towards her at this, his eyes cutting through her and seeing through her to Luke. She'd never seen him so angry, so ultimately furious - not even at her. It made her scared of him, for once in a very long time. Not scared of what he would do to other people, if he would hurt them, but of him in himself. She recoiled, her arm falling off his sleeve.
He'd never once asked Luke what his father was like - that had obviously been a mistake. He'd spent so much time wondering about what he was going to say to his father - the questions he'd ask him, that he'd never stopped to really consider what kind of man his father was.
If his father was like him.
A killer. A murderer.
He realized now that he hadn't wanted his father to be... Like him.
His mother's blood on the back of his father's car - the casual flick of his father's hands.
His mother's body lying still on the ground.
The rage coursed through him so fast he couldn't see. It flooded his brain, cut into his veins. He flung Luke against the wall so hard he was sure he heard a crack. And of course, as soon as he had Claire was there, shoving ll at his side and acting like the little hero-in-training she was.
He'd had enough of her too - her and her stupid heroics.
She was up against the wall too before she could blink.
"You know Claire, I've had enough of you trying to rein me in." He sneered. "You're beginning to ruin all my fun." She opened her mouth to speak but he shut it for her, so hard her teeth clicked.
"And you, Luke." He paused, thinking. "I don't even care enough to give you a monologue."
"You still need me to find your father." Luke smirked, and his desire to see the boy minus a scalp increased violently.
"No, I didn't forget." Sylar rasped. "I just remembered that when people are in pain..." He sliced into Luke's upper thigh, and Luke's high-pitched whine of pain burst forth from his mouth like a plead. Perhaps it was. "..They become a lot more receptive to giving me information."
"Sylar, stop it!" Claire was screaming at him again. "Luke, just tell him!"
"You really should listen to Claire." He cut small lines up Luke's calf, watching the way the blood seeped through the material of Luke's jeans. Luke's voice became a series of harsh panting and yells.
"Tell him, Luke." Claire's voice was softer now, but more firm. "Tell him and I'll heal you."
Luke was looking past Sylar, at Claire. He was looking at her like she was a hero, and with such hope; and he knew that everything he'd said, about her not being a hero, being just a victim was wrong. But he, he was just a villain.
"He lives about 3 hours from here, a trailer in the woods. You just keep going straight until you see a stop sign with the 'P' struck off and then you turn left. It shouldn't be hard to find after that." Luke said bitingly, his breaths becoming uneven.
Sylar let them both drop to the ground; Luke yelped in pain as his leg hit the floor and it wasn't before long that he heard Claire's feet scurrying across the floor to help him,
He looked away.
"I can't..." He heard Claire fumble for the words. "Sylar, I need your help." She muttered from behind him.
He turned to face her, eyes unfathomable. She held up a hand. "Cut me."
He didn't say anything, just moved toward her, crouching down on the balls of his feet. She felt like his eyes would burn her, and she could practically feel the flames licking their way across her skin.
He took her hand, drawing a finger over the pulse point gently and leaving a trail of blood behind it. Claire didn't flinch, she just moved her wrist over the blood that was seeping down Luke's leg. They watched as the skin knitted itself back together. "Do it again."
He did, and she held it over the largest wound on his thigh. The flesh sewed itself back together almost instantly.
He stood, gripping her wrist tightly in his. "We're going."
She glared at him, but didn't struggle. She gave Luke one last look from his place on the floor, and then he pulled her out of the dusty, half broken down diner and back to the car. She felt small standing next to him, and felt smaller when he'd shut the door to his side of the car. She felt scared - because she felt like something was ending, but she didn't know what.
She opted for transparency - bluntness.
"Why am I still here?" Claire asked, clutching her arms around herself. "You don't really need me anymore. And it's not like you can keep me around forever."
"No." Sylar jerks the car to a start. "But I'll need you when I go back to New York. Daughters are always good bargaining chips."
He smirked, and she thought it was crueler - bitterer than she'd ever seen it."And you have two fathers."
Hey! I think this update was slightly later than usual, I apologize. I think this chapter kind of changes the game a bit, and I'm slowly derailing of canon, tweaking bits and pieces and I'm really excited about that. I am however, going to be really, really busy so I can't guarantee regular updates. I mean, my updates were always kind of slow, but they might get slower. I'm really, really sorry if they do:( I will try my best, though and I promise that this will finish. Right now this is kind of my top priority, I've left multiple of my multi-chaps hanging (serves me right for starting so many at once) but I will probably get to those when I'm finished with this.
Also, I'd like to celebrate julyisfree updating MNTSK I AM JUST OVERJOYED *confetti pops*