fic: A Couple Of Days - Part One.
Fic title: A Couple Of Days.
Artist credit(s): lucky-star79 and tielan
Art link: here and here.
Genre: Het.
Pairing: Peter/Claire.
Rating: R
Word Count: 25,563 (7566 in this post.)
Warnings/Spoilers: Incest, non-graphic sex, violence, spoilers for S1 & S2 and some ideas taken from S3 pictures.
Summary: Set immediately after the end of Powerless, Claire's rushes to be with Nathan and Peter. Her blood saves Nathan's life, but things spiral out of control as they're forced to go on the run. With Noah and Sylar on their tails and Peter beginning to unravel, can Nathan and Claire keep things together long enough to survive the threat from the Company and the threat that Peter might pose?
Notes: Holy crap, I actually did this. Wow. Huge, massive, thanks to my two betas, good cop ladyanne525 and bad cop twistdmentality for putting up with my 'I think there's something missing...', 'I don't wanna do this anymore' whining, and to my two artists for creating awesome art, and to my parents and the academy and... *ahem* Onwards, to the story!
Banner by lucky-star79.
Odessa, Texas. 2012
“Phase one is complete.” Sylar smirks, walking up to him with a leisurely pace. “Petrelli won't be going anywhere for a while.”
“And you hit them with the smoke bomb?”
Sylar hooks his thumbs through his belt loops, and rocks back on his heels. There's no holster there; it's further proof that he doesn't need one - he can kill you with a click of his fingers and he doesn't intend to let anyone forget it, even if they think they have him tamed. “Did you doubt I would?” He holds his hand out. “A job well done.”
The muscles in Noah's jaw twitch and he draws his gun. “Let's not get ahead of ourselves.”
Sylar sneers. “You're not going to catch anything.”
Bennet ignores him, disregards him like so many have done for so long now. Sylar smiles. It's best this way.
*
Five years earlier.
The television is the first thing to be unpacked, at Lyle's insistence, and it's droning on in the background as Claire empties boxes onto the ground, sorting out the things that are important from the things that really aren't. Just a few days ago she would have been glad at being able to stay - hadn't she refused to go, hadn't she been the master of her own fate? But now, the thought of Salt Lake City would be wonderful. The thought of walking back into that school and facing West makes her cringe, because she still feels like she's right, even after the pains her dad has gone to in order to keep the whole family safe - and that feeling of betrayal from West still lingers.
“-trelli shot at a press conference in-”
She whips around at the newsreaders voice as Lyle switches to another channel.
“Turn that back on,” she all but shouts as she runs to join him.
“What?”
She snatches the remote out of his hand and bashes the buttons until she finds a news channel. And there it is, breaking news running along the bottom of the screen, shaky footage showing a panicked crowd: 'Former Congressman Nathan Petrelli shot at a press conference in Odessa, Texas'. She recognises Officer Parkman waving the crush of reporters away and yelling for a doctor. Unconsciously, she takes a step back and gasps, remote slipping from her fingers.
When she sees Peter, holding his brother, his face a mask of shock, tears well in up her eyes. As guilty as she feels about it, they're not from sadness, but rather a bitter kind of elation at seeing her uncle alive. Bitter, because if he'd been alive all this time, then where has he been? They're not feelings she often lets herself have; she'd buried them deep when they came to Costa Verde, but now they're exposed and she doesn't think she could ignore them even if she wanted to.
There's not much time to act, the decision is barely made on a conscious level before her Mom's car keys are in her hands and she's running to the car - stealing it, really, not that it matters now. She's out of the driveway and on the road to Texas before Lyle can react.
She's going home, maybe in more ways than one.
*
They worked on him for as long as they could, had him in surgery for hours, leaving the family gathered outside - all pointedly not asking Peter where he'd been this whole time. As it started to get dark and Heidi took the boys to the waiting room to sleep on the couch, the doctors pronounced Nathan dead.
“They're taking him down for an autopsy,” Matt says quietly, before draining the last of his vending machine coffee and crushing the plastic cup in his palm.
“Fuck!” Peter's wound tight as a spring, but with frustration, not the grief that Matt would expect at a time like this. “We need Adam. Where the hell's Hiro?”
“What are you talking about?” Matt drops down next to him in the creaky hospital chair. “Who are Hiro and Adam?”
Peter scrubs his hands over his face and into his hair. “Hiro Nakamura. You know, the little Asian guy, and Adam Monroe- he can heal, his blood healed Nathan before. Shit.” He drops his head into his hands and mutters to himself.
“Like Claire?”
Peter raises his head slightly. “Who's Claire?”
“What do you mean, 'who's Claire?'- she's your niece. She's Nathan's daughter.”
“Nathan doesn't-” Peter stops, mouth moving like he's talking with the mute button on. He shakes his head and frowns, drawing in a deep breath. “Uh...”
And then, as if Matt had summoned her, Claire appears at the end of the hallway. “Peter!”
Peter stands and almost stumbles at the sight of her - small and blonde - and suddenly he knows why he had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind every time he saw a blonde in Ireland. She runs at him, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, and all but throws herself into his arms, which are ready and waiting to catch her without any input from him.
Inside his head, it's like a cacophony of sound - his own memories rushing back to claim the vacant spaces in his mind, and Claire's thoughts, so open to him that she's like a book he's read a thousand times.
He wraps his arms around her and she presses her face into his shoulder, her feet just barely touching the ground.
“Claire, Claire, Claire,” he whispers over and over, like it'll help imprint her on his mind so he'll never forget her again. Her fingers curl around his upper arms and he has to clamp down on the less than appropriate thoughts creeping in as he remembers the other telepath in the room. Gently, he pushes her back, though she continues to hold on to his arms.
He brushes some of the hair off her face. “Claire, what are you doing here?”
“I saw- it was on the news. I called around all the hospitals and...” She presses a hand to her mouth. “God, I'm sorry. I just- we thought you were dead. Where have you been?”
“I know; I'm sorry.” He bends so that they're at eye level. “I promise, I'll tell you everything later, but right now-”
“You need my blood.” At his frown, she manages a smile. “This isn't my first go around, Peter.”
“Right. Well, they've taken him down to the autopsy room.” He turns to Matt. “Can you get us in there?”
“I can probably do that,” Matt replies.
“Oh.” Claire pulls a face. “I hope they haven't opened him up yet. That's never nice to come back from.”
From that moment onwards, Peter knows that Claire will continually amaze him.
*
The autopsy room is cold and clinical and sparse, and it's only when they get in there that Claire recognises it as the place where she was once resurrected so violently. She grits her teeth and rubs at her ribs.
“You've got about ten minutes,” Matt tells them. “I told the medical examiner to have a coffee break.” He stays by the door as Peter finds a vein and takes some of her blood.
“Aren't you coming in?” he asks Matt.
Matt looks over at where Nathan has been laid out, sheet pulled back to reveal the first incisions made into his chest. There are cuts going down both shoulders, down his chest, in a 'Y' shape.
“Yeah, I'll pass on this one, thanks.”
Peter shrugs, smirking a little at Matt's discomfort, but it's obvious - to Claire at least - that he can hardly bear to even glance Nathan (because then the unthinkable question remains: what if this doesn't work?). Maybe that's why he stares at her so much.
“Okay,” he says quietly, any pretence at being jovial dropping away. He takes a shaky breath and approaches Nathan's body.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “I can do it, if you want.”
He clears his throat and shakes his head. “It's okay. This'll work.”
She wonders whose benefit he's saying it for more; his or hers.
He pushes the needle in carefully and injects the blood, and a wild thought tears through her mind - what if he's been dead too long? What if it only works on the near dead, not the actual dead? Peter's eyes widen slightly and he stares down at a spot on the metal gurney. Claire stands completely still, and Matt keeps on watching for people coming down the hall.
“Look,” she murmurs, watching as Nathan's sallow hand begins to pink. Peter's head jerks up, and he mumbles 'thank god' before pressing two fingers to Nathan's neck.
Nathan takes his first wheezy, rattling breaths as the cuts on his chest heal up. His eyes snap open.
“Nathan? Nathan, are you okay, can you hear me?” Peter pulls his hand away from his brother's neck and holds up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
He bats Peter's hand away and pushes himself up onto his elbows. “Fuck off, I just got shot for Christ's sake.”
“Like that's a big deal,” Claire says punching him lightly on the arm. It's so incredibly inappropriate that Peter laughs a little, ducking his head, that crooked smile that makes her toes curl appearing.
“Uh huh,” he says, frowning at her. “Am I naked here? Is this the morgue? Was someone performing an autopsy on me?”
“It's best not to think about it,” Claire tells him, taking a white coat that's hanging on a hook and passing it to him. “It gets a little brain-bendy.”
“That's your professional opinion?” he snaps at her. “Turn around.”
She hears him get off the gurney with a squeak and tell Peter to stop fussing. “As it happens, yes it is.”
Matt kills any further conversation with an urgent, “Okay, we have to go now.”
“And how the hell am I supposed to get out of here?” Nathan asks. “I am a dead man walking.”
She turns back as Nathan crosses his arms over his chest and raises an eyebrow at Peter.
“Um,” Peter begins, biting his lip.
“Can't you just make the both of you invisible?” Claire asks, and he closes his eyes for a second before smiling at her.
“Yeah. Huh, forgot that too.” He grabs Nathan's hand and they fade out.
By now, Matt's frantically signalling for them to get out, and she walks with him out into the hallway.
Act upset. She clearly hears Matt's voice inside her head, and she looks up at him, startled.
Quickly, he repeats, act upset.
She's never been good at pretending to cry, she'd tried a few times when she was a kid to get out of trouble, but the tears just would never come. It wasn't as if she never cried, far from it, it just had to be about something real. She called up her worst memory, and hoped nobody was listening in.
Sitting on a bed in a nasty motel, the night after Kirby Plaza, her parents were outside the door having one of their very quiet, very civilised 'disagreements', which for them was the equivalent of a knock down drag out fight. Lyle was in the bathroom, doing whatever boys his age did in the bathroom, and she was alone for the first time since the explosion.
It started first in her chest, a tight clenching feeling like someone was squeezing her very tight, and she had to bend forward on the bed to stop from crying out. Her breathing quickened to gasps, and she tried without success to quell the panic leaking out of her. Then the tears came, warming her cheeks, and she cried without a sound, rolling onto her side and curling into a ball. When her parents came back in, she heard her mom wonder aloud if she'd fallen asleep, and she shut her eyes tight until she felt a blanket being tucked gently around her and the television clicking off.
It was the first and last time she allowed her emotions the control her like that.
Matt wraps an arm around her shoulders as if to comfort her as two medical examiners round the corner. They look at her sympathetically as the tears roll down her face. Matt rubs her back, and for a moment she can pretend that he's really comforting her, because she needed the release more than she'd realised.
When they get far enough away, Matt laughs a little. “You're good at this.”
She wipes at her cheeks and sniffs. “Yeah, I'm good at this.”
*
Out in the parking lot, they use a parked ambulance as cover.
“You're going to need to lie low for a while,” Matt says.
“Someone just tried to assassinate me, Parkman, I think lying low is an understatement in this situation.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “You are just sunshine and puppies all the time, aren't you, Nathan?”
They glare at each other, and as always, Peter feels the need to diffuse the tension. “Where are you going now, Matt?”
“Home,” he answers. “I've got a kid to take care of.”
Nathan snorts. “And I've got two, apparently.” He looks at Claire. “You need to home too, Claire. Your parents are probably out of their minds with worry.”
“I'm not going-” she begins, as Peter starts to say: “I think she should-” They both blush.
“Go ahead,” she says.
“I was just going to say, I think maybe Claire should stay with us for a while, it- it isn't safe.”
“It isn't safe with us, you mean,” Nathan points out.
“They're gonna know I was here, though,” Claire argues. “The Company are everywhere, and I can't bring that home to my family, and my dad isn't around at the moment so...”
“We can't just leave her, Nathan,” Peter pushes, looking at her almost excitedly. She knows the feeling - the idea of spending time with him, even under these circumstances, is practically driving her crazy.
Nathan sighs. “Fine, but just for a couple of days, until we get something sorted out.”
“Yay!” Claire exclaims, then sobers. “I know a cafe where we can regroup and think up a plan.”
They say goodbye to Matt, and, in a flash it seems, Peter scoops her up in to his arms.
“W-what are you doing?” she stammers, trying not to get too comfortable.
“Burnt Toast, right?”
She nods.
“Follow me, Nathan,” he says before shooting up into the sky, and goddamn if it doesn't feel a million times better than with West.
*
Two weeks later
The door opens slowly, with a painfully drawn out creeeeeak, and Claire drops down on her knees, feeling underneath the bed for the baseball bat that Nathan had brought back a couple of days ago. With it in hand, she tiptoes towards the door and lifts the handle up to her chest.
She's never hit anyone with a bat before; all her attempts at playing baseball as a kid had ended with the bat a good couple of feet behind her. She tightens her grip, closes her eyes and swings.
“Whoa, there!”
She opens her eyes and finds the bat stopped inches away from Peter's surprised face.
“Shit, sorry.” She drops it and blushes.
He holds a carton up for her to see. “Beware Italians bearing stolen hair dye?”
“What are you doing, creeping in here so early?” she snaps, switching to righteous irritation because it's so much easier than having to get over the embarrassment of trying to beat your uncle to death while still in your bunny pyjamas. “Shouldn't we have a secret knock, or something?”
He smirks. “You're really getting into this, aren't you? Would you like a secret handshake too?” At her scowl, his says, “I thought you might still be asleep - which it kind of seems like you were.”
“I sleep lightly, Peter.” She takes the carton of dye off him. “You really think this is going to disguise me? I mean, I'm still going to look like me, aren't I?”
Reaching out, he twists a strand of her hair around his finger. “Your hair's very noticeable. They won't be looking for a dark-haired Claire Bennet. It'll make a difference.”
Her breath catches as he continues to twist the strand, seemingly unaware of the effect it's having on her.
“Peter,” she says softly. His gaze flickers to her face and he steps back, clearing his throat.
“Where's Nathan? You shouldn't be alone in here.”
“He went to get food; he was getting cabin-fever. I told him I'd be okay.” She snags a robe off the back of the door and slips it on, knotting it tightly. The extra layer between them makes her feel a touch less anxious.
Peter's mouth flattens to a hard line. “He should have waited for me to get back.”
“You both need to stop fussing over me.” She settles down on one of the twin beds, and Peter sits down next to her - not too close, not so that they're touching, but still close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating off of him. She imagines that he's always very warm, but maybe that's just the way he makes her flush. “It's Nathan you should really worry about, I can look after myself.”
“Yeah,” he sighs, draping an arm around her and pulling her in to lean against him. She glances sideways at his palm on her shoulder and swallows hard.
They've been hiding out in the various motels, this being the fifth, for the past two weeks - getting by on what cash they could pool from their wallets and turning Peter's talents to breaking and entering. Nathan's disappearance hit the news the night they left, implicating the former congressman's 'unstable' younger brother in the theft of his corpse, and now not only do they have to evade the Company and the hit men, they also have to evade the cops.
Claire hadn't been mentioned in any of the reports; her dad's influence she supposes. Maybe the deal he'd cut has allowed her freedom to live in the open, but the idea of it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Who suffers so that she's safe? They killed Nathan when he tried to reveal the truth, they'd locked Peter up in the very place that she would have been had it not been for her dad - she doesn't want to bargain. You aren't supposed to bargain with the enemy.
And to be completely truthful, she doesn't want to leave either of them yet. Finally, after a year of hero worship and bitterness, she's getting to know two of the most pivotal men in her life. She learns that Nathan worries about everyone, that he's always the responsible one in any given relationship, and that he forces down the guilt for past mistakes by acting like a self-confident ass. By the way he talks about Angela, especially when he reluctantly tells Claire and Peter about Claire's entrance into the world (since, after all, Peter was only a kid and all the drama happened away from home), she can see how he feels like he was forced into situations he couldn't control and she identifies so strongly it almost hurts. It's an instant bond that she's glad for, because he's still gruff and uncommunicative most of time, but at least now she gets why.
And Peter. Her hero. Her hero who she barely even knew, and who became the symbol of everything good and the counterpoint to every argument and upset since that day in Kirby Plaza: 'Well, Peter would never make me abandon my one lone friend and move across the country. Peter would just snap his fingers and make everything right again'.
She finds out that he's ticklish, though she hasn't yet found the courage to test it herself, but Nathan's tackled him in rare displays of happiness, the kind that make Claire realise why Peter told her and continues to tell her what a great guy he is. Peter giggles too, snorts sometimes, and blushes more than she thinks is normal. He's touchy-feely, with Nathan and with her, and she doesn't want to racially stereotype, but it must be an Italian thing, because she doesn't know any other guy who acts quite like that.
He tells her about how he discovered his powers and how they work, and demonstrates the less dangerous ones. He tells her about what happened after the explosion, about being captured, about Elle (she has to take a moment to collect herself when that particular name comes up), Adam, his time in Ireland - though he seems to skirt around that for some reason - and his flirtation with the dark side. She wants to make a bad Star Wars joke when he says it, but she bites down on that, because his recounting seems almost like a confessional and he's happier once it’s done, reaching over to hug her. She savours it just a bit too much.
He honestly isn't doing a thing to dissuade her hero worship or her growing crush.
*
He knows he shouldn't do it - skimming her mind is right up there with reading her diary (if she had one, writing down what's going on right now could get a lot of people killed) - but as the days pass he can't help himself. When he touches her, he can feel the thrill she gets from it, and if he lingers for just a second too long, maybe it's to see whose butterflies those really are.
He makes a promise to himself not to dig. If she's not thinking about it consciously or if she's pushing it down then it's hers to keep. After all, he wouldn't break into a house to look at someone's stuff, but he might peer through the windows. The stuff that's out there on the surface though, the stuff that sings to him so loud that he'd swear she was doing it on purpose if he didn't know that she had no clue about his telepathy? That stuff's fair game, he doesn't need to feel bad about that. Or, at least, that's what he tells himself.
Her thoughts are pretty PG-13, all things considered. When she's relaxing she's normally thinking about her family or about Nathan or, and this gives him a happy tingly feeling that he's possibly too comfortable with, about him. She considers how awful it must have been being locked up, how horrible it would be to lose your powers. She thinks about what a bitch Elle is, and worries that she might turn into Adam, and occasionally there's a whisper in her mind that even she refuses to acknowledge; that she's glad Peter was locked up and then had amnesia, because at least that meant he hadn't stopped caring about her for all those months. But she pretends she hasn't thought it and frowns, shaking her head and flicking the channels again on the tiny television set. He'd like to tell her that she doesn't need to feel bad; he's glad too, because he can't imagine having to leave her but still having the memories - but then his secret would be out and he wouldn't be able to learn everything he can about her.
He gives her one final squeeze around the shoulders and kisses the top of her head, much to both of their delights, then points to the hair dye.
“How do you feel about being a bottle brunette?”
*
Noah Bennet, Hartsdale, New York.
Every action that Bob makes is controlled; he's got an iron will and he can bend anyone to it, through manipulation or through threats. Right now the latter is the case, as he slows his speech down and forces Noah to sit and listen like a good little boy.
“I'm... disappointed with your work so far, Noah.” His eyes twinkle like it's all some big joke. “You let three very important, very dangerous people escape from under your nose.”
Noah slams his palm down on the table. “Claire is not dangerous, she's been caught up in something she doesn't understand, and if you do anything to-”
Bob holds up a placatory hand. “Bennet, please, you and I are both perfectly aware that your little girl quite clearly understands the implications of her actions. After all, you raised her, and you're a good father, aren't you, Noah? I somehow doubt that the young Mr. Petrelli had to try particularly hard to talk her into joining his merry band, if you know what I mean.”
Noah leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath. “What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to find them. They are all valuable resources to the Company.”
“Valuable enough to be brought in unharmed?” Noah schools his voice to sound even, but there's already a hint of a smirk appearing on Bob's face.
“Oh, I don't know, an autopsy of Claire's brain would certainly yield interesting results.”
“Mohinder would never do that.”
“Yes, well. Doctor Suresh is expendable. And the quality of his work has suffered severely since Parkman absconded with the child.” He folds his hands on the desk. “The reason I've called you in here, Noah, is to make you an offer.”
Noah inclines his head. Bob smiles.
“I'm going to let you bring them in yourself, as harmed or unharmed as you wish. When they're found, you can take Claire home to the bosom of her family, and you'll be left alone - for a time.”
“The catch?”
“Ah, see that's why I like you, Noah, you're a man who likes to get down to business, no games. An admirable quality. The catch is you have a partner.”
He shakes his head. “No, I work alone now. It's better that way.”
Bob's chair scrapes back as he stands, and Noah quickly follows suit. “You seem to be under the impression that this is a choice. No. It's either you and your partner, or I let Elle take the case. Our girls are less than BFF, are they not?” He leans over and presses the 'talk' button on his intercom. “Please send him in.”
Noah turns as the door opens. Stops. Stares. Turns back to Bob. “You- You are kidding me.”
In the doorway, leaning against the frame in an expensive suit, Sylar sneers at him.
“I don't kid. You know Sylar's the only one who can bring down Peter. Now-” He walks round the desk to stand between the two men. “You'll be in control, Noah, we'll provide you with tranqs to knock him out, should the situation arise.”
Noah remains silent.
“It's either you and him or Elle and him. Who do you trust to get an outcome acceptable to you and your family?”
Sylar's sneer spreads to a wide grin. At his sides, Noah's hands clench to fists and itch, itch to connect with the other man's face, tear his throat out, empty a round of bullets into his head-- but no, that won't help. Rash actions won't help him find Claire. Rash actions will get him killed and leave his beautiful daughter to the mercy of Sylar and Petrellis. And it all boils down to that one thing, finding Claire and saving Claire. He's killed to protect her before, and on this subject, he has no morals to compromise.
He's not in the best position; he knows that, Bob knows that, that fucking bastard across from him knows that - but realistically, how else is he going to pull this off? He'll get his hands dirty if he has to.
“Fine,” Noah says finally. “I'll go along with this. But you already knew I was going to say that.”
Bob claps him on the back. “Good man!”
*
Nathan, Claire & Peter.
Sleeping arrangements are awkward to say the least. It's best that the three of them aren't seen together, just that extra precaution to not raise suspicion, and that means that normally Peter hides and Nathan wears a baseball cap and hangs around in the background while Claire pays for a room. Sometimes they're lucky and they get a twin room, sometimes they're less lucky and they get a double room, and sometimes, when there's been a new news report and they decide it's best that both Peter and Nathan make themselves scarce, they're really unlucky and end up in a single room.
They always insist Claire takes the bed. They try to outdo each other in gentlemanliness and they get into mock fights to make her laugh. Sometimes she wonders what it would have been like, being a Petrelli - almost certainly not this, the easy conversation and the confessions and the strong bond that she already feels tying itself around them.
Tonight, the disappearance is headline news again, with fake breakthroughs in the form of doctored CCTV footage, and Claire finds herself on a lumpy mattress, the light of the street lamps casting crisscrossing shadows through the blinds onto her face. Illuminated numbers tell her that it's past three in the morning and she sighs heavily, pushing herself into a sitting position and getting off the bed. Nathan's sleeping with his head back in the one chair in the room and there's ratty old blanket over him. Peter's nowhere to be seen, which doesn't surprise her - he often disappears and they don't ask any more where he goes.
She shakes Nathan awake. “Hey,” she whispers.
He wakes with a start. “Huh? What's going on?”
She rubs his arm and crouches down beside him. “Take the bed, Nathan, I can't sleep.”
“No, y-you need to-” He's cut off by a yawn and she takes the opportunity to tug him out of the chair.
“My body's a temple, Nathan, I'll be fine, don't argue with me.” She pushes him gently onto the bed and he flops down onto the pillow.
“If you're sure,” he mumbles, and then he's out cold. She's found that he sleeps like the dead (a funny simile, all things considered) and he's awful to wake up in the mornings, he's always in a foul mood. Peter, on the other hand, never seems to sleep at all; he's always awake with the dawn and ready for action.
She opens the door quietly and steps out on to the walkway. This particular motel has a courtyard where all the cars are parked, and she watches as men sneak out of their vehicles with ladies she would guess aren't their wives.
A warm hand touches the small of her back. She jumps.
Peter appears next to her. “Hey, don't worry, it's just me. I raided the vending machine, want some?” In his palm he holds a couple of chocolate bars, and she takes the bigger one.
“The way to a girl's heart, Peter,” she says, and tears the foil open. His eyes follow her hand as it moves up to her mouth, and his staring makes a giggle well up inside her, building in her throat until she covers it with a hiccup and bumps him with her hip.
“What're you thinking about, Pete?”
He frowns at the nickname. Nathan calls him that enough, but he doesn't seem to like it from her.
“Our next stop, mostly, and getting some more money. And, maybe, you going home.” He glances at her, his face half covered in shadow.
“Home? I can't go home, Peter, you know that.” Panic clutches at her chest and she takes a deep breath to calm herself.
“You haven't been implicated in anything, Claire, you wouldn't get in trouble if you went home. Don't you miss your family?”
She looks back down at the cars and idly picks at the wooden railing with her fingernails. “Yeah, of course I do, of course, but they're safer without me. And even if I'm not publicly implicated, they sure as hell know what I've done by now. You know better than anyone what the Company is capable of.”
“Won't... won't your father protect you?” He leans into her, and looks at her face searchingly.
She shakes her head. “He can't protect me.” But maybe you can, she thinks.
He pauses, and then nods. “Okay, I won't bring it up again. Promise.” He wraps an arm around her like he had before, and this time she feels confident enough to lean her head on his shoulder.
*
Claire isn't lying when she says her family wouldn't be safe with her around; she really believes that, Peter can tell, but she isn't being completely truthful either. She doesn't really think that her father can't protect her, and more importantly, that's barely even a consideration for her. Peter knows that Noah made a deal to keep the Bennets safe, and he also knows that Claire doesn't care about that now. Her feelings are all over the place and she doesn't appreciate anything that complicates her decision to stay with them - that's why she lies to Nathan, twists the truth just so, so that it seems like they're all in the same boat, that none of them have an option with this.
And strangely enough, Peter's happy to let that pass like she wasn't broadcasting those thoughts loud and clear. He's enjoying the time it's taking for them to feel each other out, and if all he has to do is pretend to be normal, non-mind-reading boy to let this continue? He can do that.
*
Peter steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist. The door's ajar to let the steam escape from the windowless room, and the place is so small that he can clearly hear Claire's bubbly voice and Nathan's low laugh. He's glad that they seem to be getting on; after the start they had, it's a minor miracle.
“I've never been there before,” she's saying, “it might be fun.”
“You haven't travelled a lot, then?”
“Shut up, I've been on a plane before!”
“Domestic or international?”
There's a pause, then another: “Shut up!”, and Peter can just imagine Claire's cute little frown and slightly too hard arm punch. He sticks his head around the door.
“Hey, what's going on?”
Claire stares at his chest, and he catches something along the lines of ooh, wet floating on the top of her mind. Nathan's eyes narrow as he answers.
“We were talking about where we should go next, weren't we, Claire,” he says.
She pulls her gaze up to Peter's face and smiles. “Yeah, yeah, that's what we were doing.”
“Look, Pete, my back isn't going to withstand many more motel beds. We've been thinking about getting some money together and heading north, maybe renting somewhere. Just until everything dies down.”
He always has to add that at the end, like some kind of disclaimer: 'just until...', even though the 'until' part of that statement keeps getting further away and less defined.
“Sure, that sounds good to me, but how are we going to get the money?”
“Well,” Claire says, exchanging a glance with his brother, “that's where you come in.”
*
They finally settle on a place that Peter feels comfortable with. Well, perhaps 'comfortable' is a stretch, but the force of Nathan and Claire combined wears him down enough to agree to it.
It's a large bank in Lincoln, Nebraska, big enough that Peter doesn't have to worry about someone's grandmother losing her pension, and it has a large vault where the money is kept behind steel-reinforced concrete doors, with multiple security cameras trained on it, and a twenty-four hour guard.
For Peter it's like taking candy from a baby.
They park their rented car across the street a couple of minutes past one in the morning, Nathan at the wheel with a baseball cap pulled down low.
“In and out, and then we'll head for the border,” Nathan tells him, turning the engine off.
Peter leans between the two front seats, Nathan on one side and Claire curled against the door on the other. “For someone who's supposed to uphold the law, you sure are getting into this, Nate.”
“Yeah, whatever. Out.”
Peter rolls his eyes and fades out. Nathan waits a second, then waves his hand through the empty air.
“I think he's gone,” he decides. Claire giggles and begins twisting her long dark braid between her hands.
“Want the radio on?”
She considers. “Mm, late night talk radio? Nah, I'll give it a miss.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Claire continuing to pick at her hair, Nathan staring out of the window.
“Are you... okay, Claire?” he asks finally. She drops the frayed end of her braid and pulls her knees up against her chest. They're almost into the middle of November, and the heat in the car makes condensation collect on the window and run down the back of Claire's neck. She rubs at it irritably and shifts for a better position.
“Yeah, I'm great; I'm sitting here freezing my ass off, waiting for my uncle to finish robbing a bank. Life is good.” The corners of her mouth quirk up enough to show him that she doesn't mean it too badly.
“You know what I mean. Girls your age-”
“Girls my age can't do this.” She scrapes her nails across the inside of her wrist, and even though he's seen what she can do before, he can't help but wince. “At least I hope not, because then I'd just be a cheerleader.”
“You could never just be anything, Claire,” he interrupts quickly. “Power or no power.”
“Thanks, you're not so bad yourself.” She pulls her sleeves down to warm her hands. “But to answer your question, I'm pretty good. I mean, this isn't where I thought I'd be, yeah, obviously, but... But I'm thinking more and more now that people like us don't get to have normal lives, and maybe we aren't meant to. Or, at least, I'm not.”
He opens his mouth to ask her what she means, but Peter materialises in the back seat with a bulging sports bag before he can speak.
“Shit, it's cold,” Peter complains, oblivious to having interrupted their conversation. “C'mon, Nate, let's go before we're caught.”
Nathan starts the engine and pulls away from the curb. Claire goes back to picking at her split ends and Peter leans against her seat and starts an easy conversation about what flavour of ice cream is the best. Nathan wishes he could chat like that, but he's probably never been relaxed enough in his life.
He drives until the sun comes up, and stops at a diner for coffee the colour and consistency of tar. Peter and Claire squeeze into one side of the booth, and Peter eats mostly off her plate. He used to do that with Nathan, even when he was old enough to know better and was eating in places far too fancy for communal dining.
This means something, but Nathan hasn't got the energy to analyse it, so he leaves them to their cute little arguments and cryptic little whispers and tries to ignore it when old ladies smile down approvingly at them as they pass by.
*
Noah & Sylar. Lincoln, Nebraska.
“-and that's it. There was no forced entry, the guard didn't see anything, there's nothing on the cameras and the local police already dusted for prints; there's nothing out of the ordinary there.” The little bank manager tugs on his cheap crumpled suit. “To be honest, we wouldn't have known anything was out of place if we hadn't been scheduled to move the money today.”
Noah nods and pretends to write in his notebook, though the page stays blank. The little man is very upset, almost a hundred thousand dollars in notes was removed from one of the lock boxes the previous night, and he kicked up the most almighty fuss over it, demanding that the FBI, CIA, NSA and every other acronymic agency get involved. Which is all to Noah's benefit, because someone pulled off a very extraordinary heist here, and maybe it's a coincidence, but he doesn't think so.
“Thank you, Mr Davis, I think I've got everything I need for now. If you remember anything, call me.” He hands the man a card with an untraceable cell phone number on it, and snaps his fingers at Sylar, who is busy looming over Lincoln's finest police officers. He looms - and smirks evilly - a lot, and generally always seems to planning something, but he never lets a thing slip, because he knows that Noah would shoot him without a second thought.
“This was Petrelli,” he says as they walk back to their car.
“Yes, thanks, I would never have guessed,” Noah snaps back, and pulls the car door open, picking up a map from the dashboard. He spreads it out over the hood and scrutinises it.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” He puts his finger on where the map is marked 'Texas' and traces his finger up. “They're not even trying,” he mutters. Sylar moves to look over his shoulder, and he straightens.
“They've been travelling north,” he says. “Pretty much in a straight line. They're going to try and cross over into Canada. Call the office and get them to close the border.”
Sylar doesn't say a word, just pulls his phone from his pocket, flips it open and hits speed dial. It worries Noah the most when he's docile like this, but he can't think about that right now - they're at most a day behind Claire and the brothers and he has to clench his fists tight to stop from letting the excitement show.
*
Nathan, Peter & Claire.
They stop at a gas station outside of Wyoming for food and fuel, and Nathan leaves Peter and Claire in the back seat while he does the shopping.
“Because,” he says in answer to their worried questions about being seen, “I'm going to go stir-crazy stuck in this car and I'm legally dead, so the police are not actually looking for me.” He slams the door closed and shouts for one of the attendants to fill the car up. He's still got that air of authority about him, even when no one knows who he is.
Peter unbuckles his belt and turns his body towards her. “How are you doing?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that.”
“Everyone as in...”
“Nathan, yeah.”
“And the answer would be...?”
“The answer would be, 'can we please get off this damn subject and move on'?”
He holds his hands up. “Sorry for caring, Claire.”
She laughs at the pouty little lines forming around Peter's mouth and nudges his knee with hers. “Don't sulk, silly.”
He leans his head against the seat. “Yeah, okay,” he says, watching her through half-lidded eyes, an easy smile on his face. They're completely in each other's space now, any of her past nervousness has evaporated, and she lets her hand rest on his thigh.
“Peter?”
“Hm?”
He pushes closer to her, or maybe she does; maybe they do it together, but it doesn't exactly matter to her any more because this moment has been two years in the making. She lifts her hand and places it on the back of his neck, letting her fingers sink into his soft hair. She licks her lips once, quickly, before pressing her mouth against his. His hand just brushes her upper arm, hovering there uncertainly, but his lips part anyway and she runs her fingers up through his hair, eliciting a low moan.
“Shit,” he mumbles against her lips. “Shit, Claire-” He pushes weakly at her chest. “Claire, we can't do this. Claire, stop.” He shoves her away and scoots back. “We can't do this.”
She fights hard to keep a light tone. “Why not?”
“Why not? Why do you think, Claire? You're my niece, not to mention that Nathan is just over there!” He waves towards the convenience store with a pained expression.
“It's not like we grew up together, Peter! You know there's something between us, and it isn't familial; I know you feel it too!”
His Adam's apple bops up and down, and his eyes go wide like a deer's caught in the headlights, pupils dilating. “I don't feel anything, Claire! I- I-”
“Then why do you flirt with me, all the time?” she hisses, leaning forward.
“I- that's just how I am. It- it's not you.”
“Really?” Her tone turns cold. “Really? Then you must be really very cruel, because you know how I feel.”
He's silent for a minute, then, quietly, “How would I know that?”
She laughs humourlessly, indicating towards her face. “This? Is not the face of an idiot, Peter. I know that Matt's telepathic, and I know that you absorb powers when you're close to people, and you spent a whole day with Matt. Do the math. If you've known everything I felt and flirted with me anyway, then you're just not the man I thought you were.”
“Claire...” Reaching out, he tries to take her hand but she snatches it away.
“Don't, okay?”
He glances out of the window. “Nathan's coming back. Can we talk about this later?”
“We can talk about this when you stop being such a pussy, Peter.”
The car door opens and Nathan slides in. “I got magazines, want one?”
Claire takes them without a word, looks through them and hands all but one back. “Thanks,” she mutters.
“Okay.” Nathan frowns. “Is everything all right? You two seem... kind of sullen.”
“I'm fine. We're fine.” She glares at Peter, then opens the magazine.
“Great, as long as my absence doesn't cause you bouts of suicidal depression.”
She snorts. “Yeah, no.”
“Just wanted to make sure.” He starts the engine and pulls back onto the interstate, turning the radio up loud to cover Peter and Claire's silence.
Part Two.
Artist credit(s): lucky-star79 and tielan
Art link: here and here.
Genre: Het.
Pairing: Peter/Claire.
Rating: R
Word Count: 25,563 (7566 in this post.)
Warnings/Spoilers: Incest, non-graphic sex, violence, spoilers for S1 & S2 and some ideas taken from S3 pictures.
Summary: Set immediately after the end of Powerless, Claire's rushes to be with Nathan and Peter. Her blood saves Nathan's life, but things spiral out of control as they're forced to go on the run. With Noah and Sylar on their tails and Peter beginning to unravel, can Nathan and Claire keep things together long enough to survive the threat from the Company and the threat that Peter might pose?
Notes: Holy crap, I actually did this. Wow. Huge, massive, thanks to my two betas, good cop ladyanne525 and bad cop twistdmentality for putting up with my 'I think there's something missing...', 'I don't wanna do this anymore' whining, and to my two artists for creating awesome art, and to my parents and the academy and... *ahem* Onwards, to the story!
Banner by lucky-star79.
Odessa, Texas. 2012
“Phase one is complete.” Sylar smirks, walking up to him with a leisurely pace. “Petrelli won't be going anywhere for a while.”
“And you hit them with the smoke bomb?”
Sylar hooks his thumbs through his belt loops, and rocks back on his heels. There's no holster there; it's further proof that he doesn't need one - he can kill you with a click of his fingers and he doesn't intend to let anyone forget it, even if they think they have him tamed. “Did you doubt I would?” He holds his hand out. “A job well done.”
The muscles in Noah's jaw twitch and he draws his gun. “Let's not get ahead of ourselves.”
Sylar sneers. “You're not going to catch anything.”
Bennet ignores him, disregards him like so many have done for so long now. Sylar smiles. It's best this way.
*
Five years earlier.
The television is the first thing to be unpacked, at Lyle's insistence, and it's droning on in the background as Claire empties boxes onto the ground, sorting out the things that are important from the things that really aren't. Just a few days ago she would have been glad at being able to stay - hadn't she refused to go, hadn't she been the master of her own fate? But now, the thought of Salt Lake City would be wonderful. The thought of walking back into that school and facing West makes her cringe, because she still feels like she's right, even after the pains her dad has gone to in order to keep the whole family safe - and that feeling of betrayal from West still lingers.
“-trelli shot at a press conference in-”
She whips around at the newsreaders voice as Lyle switches to another channel.
“Turn that back on,” she all but shouts as she runs to join him.
“What?”
She snatches the remote out of his hand and bashes the buttons until she finds a news channel. And there it is, breaking news running along the bottom of the screen, shaky footage showing a panicked crowd: 'Former Congressman Nathan Petrelli shot at a press conference in Odessa, Texas'. She recognises Officer Parkman waving the crush of reporters away and yelling for a doctor. Unconsciously, she takes a step back and gasps, remote slipping from her fingers.
When she sees Peter, holding his brother, his face a mask of shock, tears well in up her eyes. As guilty as she feels about it, they're not from sadness, but rather a bitter kind of elation at seeing her uncle alive. Bitter, because if he'd been alive all this time, then where has he been? They're not feelings she often lets herself have; she'd buried them deep when they came to Costa Verde, but now they're exposed and she doesn't think she could ignore them even if she wanted to.
There's not much time to act, the decision is barely made on a conscious level before her Mom's car keys are in her hands and she's running to the car - stealing it, really, not that it matters now. She's out of the driveway and on the road to Texas before Lyle can react.
She's going home, maybe in more ways than one.
*
They worked on him for as long as they could, had him in surgery for hours, leaving the family gathered outside - all pointedly not asking Peter where he'd been this whole time. As it started to get dark and Heidi took the boys to the waiting room to sleep on the couch, the doctors pronounced Nathan dead.
“They're taking him down for an autopsy,” Matt says quietly, before draining the last of his vending machine coffee and crushing the plastic cup in his palm.
“Fuck!” Peter's wound tight as a spring, but with frustration, not the grief that Matt would expect at a time like this. “We need Adam. Where the hell's Hiro?”
“What are you talking about?” Matt drops down next to him in the creaky hospital chair. “Who are Hiro and Adam?”
Peter scrubs his hands over his face and into his hair. “Hiro Nakamura. You know, the little Asian guy, and Adam Monroe- he can heal, his blood healed Nathan before. Shit.” He drops his head into his hands and mutters to himself.
“Like Claire?”
Peter raises his head slightly. “Who's Claire?”
“What do you mean, 'who's Claire?'- she's your niece. She's Nathan's daughter.”
“Nathan doesn't-” Peter stops, mouth moving like he's talking with the mute button on. He shakes his head and frowns, drawing in a deep breath. “Uh...”
And then, as if Matt had summoned her, Claire appears at the end of the hallway. “Peter!”
Peter stands and almost stumbles at the sight of her - small and blonde - and suddenly he knows why he had a nagging feeling in the back of his mind every time he saw a blonde in Ireland. She runs at him, sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, and all but throws herself into his arms, which are ready and waiting to catch her without any input from him.
Inside his head, it's like a cacophony of sound - his own memories rushing back to claim the vacant spaces in his mind, and Claire's thoughts, so open to him that she's like a book he's read a thousand times.
He wraps his arms around her and she presses her face into his shoulder, her feet just barely touching the ground.
“Claire, Claire, Claire,” he whispers over and over, like it'll help imprint her on his mind so he'll never forget her again. Her fingers curl around his upper arms and he has to clamp down on the less than appropriate thoughts creeping in as he remembers the other telepath in the room. Gently, he pushes her back, though she continues to hold on to his arms.
He brushes some of the hair off her face. “Claire, what are you doing here?”
“I saw- it was on the news. I called around all the hospitals and...” She presses a hand to her mouth. “God, I'm sorry. I just- we thought you were dead. Where have you been?”
“I know; I'm sorry.” He bends so that they're at eye level. “I promise, I'll tell you everything later, but right now-”
“You need my blood.” At his frown, she manages a smile. “This isn't my first go around, Peter.”
“Right. Well, they've taken him down to the autopsy room.” He turns to Matt. “Can you get us in there?”
“I can probably do that,” Matt replies.
“Oh.” Claire pulls a face. “I hope they haven't opened him up yet. That's never nice to come back from.”
From that moment onwards, Peter knows that Claire will continually amaze him.
*
The autopsy room is cold and clinical and sparse, and it's only when they get in there that Claire recognises it as the place where she was once resurrected so violently. She grits her teeth and rubs at her ribs.
“You've got about ten minutes,” Matt tells them. “I told the medical examiner to have a coffee break.” He stays by the door as Peter finds a vein and takes some of her blood.
“Aren't you coming in?” he asks Matt.
Matt looks over at where Nathan has been laid out, sheet pulled back to reveal the first incisions made into his chest. There are cuts going down both shoulders, down his chest, in a 'Y' shape.
“Yeah, I'll pass on this one, thanks.”
Peter shrugs, smirking a little at Matt's discomfort, but it's obvious - to Claire at least - that he can hardly bear to even glance Nathan (because then the unthinkable question remains: what if this doesn't work?). Maybe that's why he stares at her so much.
“Okay,” he says quietly, any pretence at being jovial dropping away. He takes a shaky breath and approaches Nathan's body.
“Are you okay?” she asks. “I can do it, if you want.”
He clears his throat and shakes his head. “It's okay. This'll work.”
She wonders whose benefit he's saying it for more; his or hers.
He pushes the needle in carefully and injects the blood, and a wild thought tears through her mind - what if he's been dead too long? What if it only works on the near dead, not the actual dead? Peter's eyes widen slightly and he stares down at a spot on the metal gurney. Claire stands completely still, and Matt keeps on watching for people coming down the hall.
“Look,” she murmurs, watching as Nathan's sallow hand begins to pink. Peter's head jerks up, and he mumbles 'thank god' before pressing two fingers to Nathan's neck.
Nathan takes his first wheezy, rattling breaths as the cuts on his chest heal up. His eyes snap open.
“Nathan? Nathan, are you okay, can you hear me?” Peter pulls his hand away from his brother's neck and holds up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
He bats Peter's hand away and pushes himself up onto his elbows. “Fuck off, I just got shot for Christ's sake.”
“Like that's a big deal,” Claire says punching him lightly on the arm. It's so incredibly inappropriate that Peter laughs a little, ducking his head, that crooked smile that makes her toes curl appearing.
“Uh huh,” he says, frowning at her. “Am I naked here? Is this the morgue? Was someone performing an autopsy on me?”
“It's best not to think about it,” Claire tells him, taking a white coat that's hanging on a hook and passing it to him. “It gets a little brain-bendy.”
“That's your professional opinion?” he snaps at her. “Turn around.”
She hears him get off the gurney with a squeak and tell Peter to stop fussing. “As it happens, yes it is.”
Matt kills any further conversation with an urgent, “Okay, we have to go now.”
“And how the hell am I supposed to get out of here?” Nathan asks. “I am a dead man walking.”
She turns back as Nathan crosses his arms over his chest and raises an eyebrow at Peter.
“Um,” Peter begins, biting his lip.
“Can't you just make the both of you invisible?” Claire asks, and he closes his eyes for a second before smiling at her.
“Yeah. Huh, forgot that too.” He grabs Nathan's hand and they fade out.
By now, Matt's frantically signalling for them to get out, and she walks with him out into the hallway.
Act upset. She clearly hears Matt's voice inside her head, and she looks up at him, startled.
Quickly, he repeats, act upset.
She's never been good at pretending to cry, she'd tried a few times when she was a kid to get out of trouble, but the tears just would never come. It wasn't as if she never cried, far from it, it just had to be about something real. She called up her worst memory, and hoped nobody was listening in.
Sitting on a bed in a nasty motel, the night after Kirby Plaza, her parents were outside the door having one of their very quiet, very civilised 'disagreements', which for them was the equivalent of a knock down drag out fight. Lyle was in the bathroom, doing whatever boys his age did in the bathroom, and she was alone for the first time since the explosion.
It started first in her chest, a tight clenching feeling like someone was squeezing her very tight, and she had to bend forward on the bed to stop from crying out. Her breathing quickened to gasps, and she tried without success to quell the panic leaking out of her. Then the tears came, warming her cheeks, and she cried without a sound, rolling onto her side and curling into a ball. When her parents came back in, she heard her mom wonder aloud if she'd fallen asleep, and she shut her eyes tight until she felt a blanket being tucked gently around her and the television clicking off.
It was the first and last time she allowed her emotions the control her like that.
Matt wraps an arm around her shoulders as if to comfort her as two medical examiners round the corner. They look at her sympathetically as the tears roll down her face. Matt rubs her back, and for a moment she can pretend that he's really comforting her, because she needed the release more than she'd realised.
When they get far enough away, Matt laughs a little. “You're good at this.”
She wipes at her cheeks and sniffs. “Yeah, I'm good at this.”
*
Out in the parking lot, they use a parked ambulance as cover.
“You're going to need to lie low for a while,” Matt says.
“Someone just tried to assassinate me, Parkman, I think lying low is an understatement in this situation.”
Matt rolls his eyes. “You are just sunshine and puppies all the time, aren't you, Nathan?”
They glare at each other, and as always, Peter feels the need to diffuse the tension. “Where are you going now, Matt?”
“Home,” he answers. “I've got a kid to take care of.”
Nathan snorts. “And I've got two, apparently.” He looks at Claire. “You need to home too, Claire. Your parents are probably out of their minds with worry.”
“I'm not going-” she begins, as Peter starts to say: “I think she should-” They both blush.
“Go ahead,” she says.
“I was just going to say, I think maybe Claire should stay with us for a while, it- it isn't safe.”
“It isn't safe with us, you mean,” Nathan points out.
“They're gonna know I was here, though,” Claire argues. “The Company are everywhere, and I can't bring that home to my family, and my dad isn't around at the moment so...”
“We can't just leave her, Nathan,” Peter pushes, looking at her almost excitedly. She knows the feeling - the idea of spending time with him, even under these circumstances, is practically driving her crazy.
Nathan sighs. “Fine, but just for a couple of days, until we get something sorted out.”
“Yay!” Claire exclaims, then sobers. “I know a cafe where we can regroup and think up a plan.”
They say goodbye to Matt, and, in a flash it seems, Peter scoops her up in to his arms.
“W-what are you doing?” she stammers, trying not to get too comfortable.
“Burnt Toast, right?”
She nods.
“Follow me, Nathan,” he says before shooting up into the sky, and goddamn if it doesn't feel a million times better than with West.
*
Two weeks later
The door opens slowly, with a painfully drawn out creeeeeak, and Claire drops down on her knees, feeling underneath the bed for the baseball bat that Nathan had brought back a couple of days ago. With it in hand, she tiptoes towards the door and lifts the handle up to her chest.
She's never hit anyone with a bat before; all her attempts at playing baseball as a kid had ended with the bat a good couple of feet behind her. She tightens her grip, closes her eyes and swings.
“Whoa, there!”
She opens her eyes and finds the bat stopped inches away from Peter's surprised face.
“Shit, sorry.” She drops it and blushes.
He holds a carton up for her to see. “Beware Italians bearing stolen hair dye?”
“What are you doing, creeping in here so early?” she snaps, switching to righteous irritation because it's so much easier than having to get over the embarrassment of trying to beat your uncle to death while still in your bunny pyjamas. “Shouldn't we have a secret knock, or something?”
He smirks. “You're really getting into this, aren't you? Would you like a secret handshake too?” At her scowl, his says, “I thought you might still be asleep - which it kind of seems like you were.”
“I sleep lightly, Peter.” She takes the carton of dye off him. “You really think this is going to disguise me? I mean, I'm still going to look like me, aren't I?”
Reaching out, he twists a strand of her hair around his finger. “Your hair's very noticeable. They won't be looking for a dark-haired Claire Bennet. It'll make a difference.”
Her breath catches as he continues to twist the strand, seemingly unaware of the effect it's having on her.
“Peter,” she says softly. His gaze flickers to her face and he steps back, clearing his throat.
“Where's Nathan? You shouldn't be alone in here.”
“He went to get food; he was getting cabin-fever. I told him I'd be okay.” She snags a robe off the back of the door and slips it on, knotting it tightly. The extra layer between them makes her feel a touch less anxious.
Peter's mouth flattens to a hard line. “He should have waited for me to get back.”
“You both need to stop fussing over me.” She settles down on one of the twin beds, and Peter sits down next to her - not too close, not so that they're touching, but still close enough that she can feel the warmth radiating off of him. She imagines that he's always very warm, but maybe that's just the way he makes her flush. “It's Nathan you should really worry about, I can look after myself.”
“Yeah,” he sighs, draping an arm around her and pulling her in to lean against him. She glances sideways at his palm on her shoulder and swallows hard.
They've been hiding out in the various motels, this being the fifth, for the past two weeks - getting by on what cash they could pool from their wallets and turning Peter's talents to breaking and entering. Nathan's disappearance hit the news the night they left, implicating the former congressman's 'unstable' younger brother in the theft of his corpse, and now not only do they have to evade the Company and the hit men, they also have to evade the cops.
Claire hadn't been mentioned in any of the reports; her dad's influence she supposes. Maybe the deal he'd cut has allowed her freedom to live in the open, but the idea of it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Who suffers so that she's safe? They killed Nathan when he tried to reveal the truth, they'd locked Peter up in the very place that she would have been had it not been for her dad - she doesn't want to bargain. You aren't supposed to bargain with the enemy.
And to be completely truthful, she doesn't want to leave either of them yet. Finally, after a year of hero worship and bitterness, she's getting to know two of the most pivotal men in her life. She learns that Nathan worries about everyone, that he's always the responsible one in any given relationship, and that he forces down the guilt for past mistakes by acting like a self-confident ass. By the way he talks about Angela, especially when he reluctantly tells Claire and Peter about Claire's entrance into the world (since, after all, Peter was only a kid and all the drama happened away from home), she can see how he feels like he was forced into situations he couldn't control and she identifies so strongly it almost hurts. It's an instant bond that she's glad for, because he's still gruff and uncommunicative most of time, but at least now she gets why.
And Peter. Her hero. Her hero who she barely even knew, and who became the symbol of everything good and the counterpoint to every argument and upset since that day in Kirby Plaza: 'Well, Peter would never make me abandon my one lone friend and move across the country. Peter would just snap his fingers and make everything right again'.
She finds out that he's ticklish, though she hasn't yet found the courage to test it herself, but Nathan's tackled him in rare displays of happiness, the kind that make Claire realise why Peter told her and continues to tell her what a great guy he is. Peter giggles too, snorts sometimes, and blushes more than she thinks is normal. He's touchy-feely, with Nathan and with her, and she doesn't want to racially stereotype, but it must be an Italian thing, because she doesn't know any other guy who acts quite like that.
He tells her about how he discovered his powers and how they work, and demonstrates the less dangerous ones. He tells her about what happened after the explosion, about being captured, about Elle (she has to take a moment to collect herself when that particular name comes up), Adam, his time in Ireland - though he seems to skirt around that for some reason - and his flirtation with the dark side. She wants to make a bad Star Wars joke when he says it, but she bites down on that, because his recounting seems almost like a confessional and he's happier once it’s done, reaching over to hug her. She savours it just a bit too much.
He honestly isn't doing a thing to dissuade her hero worship or her growing crush.
*
He knows he shouldn't do it - skimming her mind is right up there with reading her diary (if she had one, writing down what's going on right now could get a lot of people killed) - but as the days pass he can't help himself. When he touches her, he can feel the thrill she gets from it, and if he lingers for just a second too long, maybe it's to see whose butterflies those really are.
He makes a promise to himself not to dig. If she's not thinking about it consciously or if she's pushing it down then it's hers to keep. After all, he wouldn't break into a house to look at someone's stuff, but he might peer through the windows. The stuff that's out there on the surface though, the stuff that sings to him so loud that he'd swear she was doing it on purpose if he didn't know that she had no clue about his telepathy? That stuff's fair game, he doesn't need to feel bad about that. Or, at least, that's what he tells himself.
Her thoughts are pretty PG-13, all things considered. When she's relaxing she's normally thinking about her family or about Nathan or, and this gives him a happy tingly feeling that he's possibly too comfortable with, about him. She considers how awful it must have been being locked up, how horrible it would be to lose your powers. She thinks about what a bitch Elle is, and worries that she might turn into Adam, and occasionally there's a whisper in her mind that even she refuses to acknowledge; that she's glad Peter was locked up and then had amnesia, because at least that meant he hadn't stopped caring about her for all those months. But she pretends she hasn't thought it and frowns, shaking her head and flicking the channels again on the tiny television set. He'd like to tell her that she doesn't need to feel bad; he's glad too, because he can't imagine having to leave her but still having the memories - but then his secret would be out and he wouldn't be able to learn everything he can about her.
He gives her one final squeeze around the shoulders and kisses the top of her head, much to both of their delights, then points to the hair dye.
“How do you feel about being a bottle brunette?”
*
Noah Bennet, Hartsdale, New York.
Every action that Bob makes is controlled; he's got an iron will and he can bend anyone to it, through manipulation or through threats. Right now the latter is the case, as he slows his speech down and forces Noah to sit and listen like a good little boy.
“I'm... disappointed with your work so far, Noah.” His eyes twinkle like it's all some big joke. “You let three very important, very dangerous people escape from under your nose.”
Noah slams his palm down on the table. “Claire is not dangerous, she's been caught up in something she doesn't understand, and if you do anything to-”
Bob holds up a placatory hand. “Bennet, please, you and I are both perfectly aware that your little girl quite clearly understands the implications of her actions. After all, you raised her, and you're a good father, aren't you, Noah? I somehow doubt that the young Mr. Petrelli had to try particularly hard to talk her into joining his merry band, if you know what I mean.”
Noah leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath. “What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to find them. They are all valuable resources to the Company.”
“Valuable enough to be brought in unharmed?” Noah schools his voice to sound even, but there's already a hint of a smirk appearing on Bob's face.
“Oh, I don't know, an autopsy of Claire's brain would certainly yield interesting results.”
“Mohinder would never do that.”
“Yes, well. Doctor Suresh is expendable. And the quality of his work has suffered severely since Parkman absconded with the child.” He folds his hands on the desk. “The reason I've called you in here, Noah, is to make you an offer.”
Noah inclines his head. Bob smiles.
“I'm going to let you bring them in yourself, as harmed or unharmed as you wish. When they're found, you can take Claire home to the bosom of her family, and you'll be left alone - for a time.”
“The catch?”
“Ah, see that's why I like you, Noah, you're a man who likes to get down to business, no games. An admirable quality. The catch is you have a partner.”
He shakes his head. “No, I work alone now. It's better that way.”
Bob's chair scrapes back as he stands, and Noah quickly follows suit. “You seem to be under the impression that this is a choice. No. It's either you and your partner, or I let Elle take the case. Our girls are less than BFF, are they not?” He leans over and presses the 'talk' button on his intercom. “Please send him in.”
Noah turns as the door opens. Stops. Stares. Turns back to Bob. “You- You are kidding me.”
In the doorway, leaning against the frame in an expensive suit, Sylar sneers at him.
“I don't kid. You know Sylar's the only one who can bring down Peter. Now-” He walks round the desk to stand between the two men. “You'll be in control, Noah, we'll provide you with tranqs to knock him out, should the situation arise.”
Noah remains silent.
“It's either you and him or Elle and him. Who do you trust to get an outcome acceptable to you and your family?”
Sylar's sneer spreads to a wide grin. At his sides, Noah's hands clench to fists and itch, itch to connect with the other man's face, tear his throat out, empty a round of bullets into his head-- but no, that won't help. Rash actions won't help him find Claire. Rash actions will get him killed and leave his beautiful daughter to the mercy of Sylar and Petrellis. And it all boils down to that one thing, finding Claire and saving Claire. He's killed to protect her before, and on this subject, he has no morals to compromise.
He's not in the best position; he knows that, Bob knows that, that fucking bastard across from him knows that - but realistically, how else is he going to pull this off? He'll get his hands dirty if he has to.
“Fine,” Noah says finally. “I'll go along with this. But you already knew I was going to say that.”
Bob claps him on the back. “Good man!”
*
Nathan, Claire & Peter.
Sleeping arrangements are awkward to say the least. It's best that the three of them aren't seen together, just that extra precaution to not raise suspicion, and that means that normally Peter hides and Nathan wears a baseball cap and hangs around in the background while Claire pays for a room. Sometimes they're lucky and they get a twin room, sometimes they're less lucky and they get a double room, and sometimes, when there's been a new news report and they decide it's best that both Peter and Nathan make themselves scarce, they're really unlucky and end up in a single room.
They always insist Claire takes the bed. They try to outdo each other in gentlemanliness and they get into mock fights to make her laugh. Sometimes she wonders what it would have been like, being a Petrelli - almost certainly not this, the easy conversation and the confessions and the strong bond that she already feels tying itself around them.
Tonight, the disappearance is headline news again, with fake breakthroughs in the form of doctored CCTV footage, and Claire finds herself on a lumpy mattress, the light of the street lamps casting crisscrossing shadows through the blinds onto her face. Illuminated numbers tell her that it's past three in the morning and she sighs heavily, pushing herself into a sitting position and getting off the bed. Nathan's sleeping with his head back in the one chair in the room and there's ratty old blanket over him. Peter's nowhere to be seen, which doesn't surprise her - he often disappears and they don't ask any more where he goes.
She shakes Nathan awake. “Hey,” she whispers.
He wakes with a start. “Huh? What's going on?”
She rubs his arm and crouches down beside him. “Take the bed, Nathan, I can't sleep.”
“No, y-you need to-” He's cut off by a yawn and she takes the opportunity to tug him out of the chair.
“My body's a temple, Nathan, I'll be fine, don't argue with me.” She pushes him gently onto the bed and he flops down onto the pillow.
“If you're sure,” he mumbles, and then he's out cold. She's found that he sleeps like the dead (a funny simile, all things considered) and he's awful to wake up in the mornings, he's always in a foul mood. Peter, on the other hand, never seems to sleep at all; he's always awake with the dawn and ready for action.
She opens the door quietly and steps out on to the walkway. This particular motel has a courtyard where all the cars are parked, and she watches as men sneak out of their vehicles with ladies she would guess aren't their wives.
A warm hand touches the small of her back. She jumps.
Peter appears next to her. “Hey, don't worry, it's just me. I raided the vending machine, want some?” In his palm he holds a couple of chocolate bars, and she takes the bigger one.
“The way to a girl's heart, Peter,” she says, and tears the foil open. His eyes follow her hand as it moves up to her mouth, and his staring makes a giggle well up inside her, building in her throat until she covers it with a hiccup and bumps him with her hip.
“What're you thinking about, Pete?”
He frowns at the nickname. Nathan calls him that enough, but he doesn't seem to like it from her.
“Our next stop, mostly, and getting some more money. And, maybe, you going home.” He glances at her, his face half covered in shadow.
“Home? I can't go home, Peter, you know that.” Panic clutches at her chest and she takes a deep breath to calm herself.
“You haven't been implicated in anything, Claire, you wouldn't get in trouble if you went home. Don't you miss your family?”
She looks back down at the cars and idly picks at the wooden railing with her fingernails. “Yeah, of course I do, of course, but they're safer without me. And even if I'm not publicly implicated, they sure as hell know what I've done by now. You know better than anyone what the Company is capable of.”
“Won't... won't your father protect you?” He leans into her, and looks at her face searchingly.
She shakes her head. “He can't protect me.” But maybe you can, she thinks.
He pauses, and then nods. “Okay, I won't bring it up again. Promise.” He wraps an arm around her like he had before, and this time she feels confident enough to lean her head on his shoulder.
*
Claire isn't lying when she says her family wouldn't be safe with her around; she really believes that, Peter can tell, but she isn't being completely truthful either. She doesn't really think that her father can't protect her, and more importantly, that's barely even a consideration for her. Peter knows that Noah made a deal to keep the Bennets safe, and he also knows that Claire doesn't care about that now. Her feelings are all over the place and she doesn't appreciate anything that complicates her decision to stay with them - that's why she lies to Nathan, twists the truth just so, so that it seems like they're all in the same boat, that none of them have an option with this.
And strangely enough, Peter's happy to let that pass like she wasn't broadcasting those thoughts loud and clear. He's enjoying the time it's taking for them to feel each other out, and if all he has to do is pretend to be normal, non-mind-reading boy to let this continue? He can do that.
*
Peter steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist. The door's ajar to let the steam escape from the windowless room, and the place is so small that he can clearly hear Claire's bubbly voice and Nathan's low laugh. He's glad that they seem to be getting on; after the start they had, it's a minor miracle.
“I've never been there before,” she's saying, “it might be fun.”
“You haven't travelled a lot, then?”
“Shut up, I've been on a plane before!”
“Domestic or international?”
There's a pause, then another: “Shut up!”, and Peter can just imagine Claire's cute little frown and slightly too hard arm punch. He sticks his head around the door.
“Hey, what's going on?”
Claire stares at his chest, and he catches something along the lines of ooh, wet floating on the top of her mind. Nathan's eyes narrow as he answers.
“We were talking about where we should go next, weren't we, Claire,” he says.
She pulls her gaze up to Peter's face and smiles. “Yeah, yeah, that's what we were doing.”
“Look, Pete, my back isn't going to withstand many more motel beds. We've been thinking about getting some money together and heading north, maybe renting somewhere. Just until everything dies down.”
He always has to add that at the end, like some kind of disclaimer: 'just until...', even though the 'until' part of that statement keeps getting further away and less defined.
“Sure, that sounds good to me, but how are we going to get the money?”
“Well,” Claire says, exchanging a glance with his brother, “that's where you come in.”
*
They finally settle on a place that Peter feels comfortable with. Well, perhaps 'comfortable' is a stretch, but the force of Nathan and Claire combined wears him down enough to agree to it.
It's a large bank in Lincoln, Nebraska, big enough that Peter doesn't have to worry about someone's grandmother losing her pension, and it has a large vault where the money is kept behind steel-reinforced concrete doors, with multiple security cameras trained on it, and a twenty-four hour guard.
For Peter it's like taking candy from a baby.
They park their rented car across the street a couple of minutes past one in the morning, Nathan at the wheel with a baseball cap pulled down low.
“In and out, and then we'll head for the border,” Nathan tells him, turning the engine off.
Peter leans between the two front seats, Nathan on one side and Claire curled against the door on the other. “For someone who's supposed to uphold the law, you sure are getting into this, Nate.”
“Yeah, whatever. Out.”
Peter rolls his eyes and fades out. Nathan waits a second, then waves his hand through the empty air.
“I think he's gone,” he decides. Claire giggles and begins twisting her long dark braid between her hands.
“Want the radio on?”
She considers. “Mm, late night talk radio? Nah, I'll give it a miss.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Claire continuing to pick at her hair, Nathan staring out of the window.
“Are you... okay, Claire?” he asks finally. She drops the frayed end of her braid and pulls her knees up against her chest. They're almost into the middle of November, and the heat in the car makes condensation collect on the window and run down the back of Claire's neck. She rubs at it irritably and shifts for a better position.
“Yeah, I'm great; I'm sitting here freezing my ass off, waiting for my uncle to finish robbing a bank. Life is good.” The corners of her mouth quirk up enough to show him that she doesn't mean it too badly.
“You know what I mean. Girls your age-”
“Girls my age can't do this.” She scrapes her nails across the inside of her wrist, and even though he's seen what she can do before, he can't help but wince. “At least I hope not, because then I'd just be a cheerleader.”
“You could never just be anything, Claire,” he interrupts quickly. “Power or no power.”
“Thanks, you're not so bad yourself.” She pulls her sleeves down to warm her hands. “But to answer your question, I'm pretty good. I mean, this isn't where I thought I'd be, yeah, obviously, but... But I'm thinking more and more now that people like us don't get to have normal lives, and maybe we aren't meant to. Or, at least, I'm not.”
He opens his mouth to ask her what she means, but Peter materialises in the back seat with a bulging sports bag before he can speak.
“Shit, it's cold,” Peter complains, oblivious to having interrupted their conversation. “C'mon, Nate, let's go before we're caught.”
Nathan starts the engine and pulls away from the curb. Claire goes back to picking at her split ends and Peter leans against her seat and starts an easy conversation about what flavour of ice cream is the best. Nathan wishes he could chat like that, but he's probably never been relaxed enough in his life.
He drives until the sun comes up, and stops at a diner for coffee the colour and consistency of tar. Peter and Claire squeeze into one side of the booth, and Peter eats mostly off her plate. He used to do that with Nathan, even when he was old enough to know better and was eating in places far too fancy for communal dining.
This means something, but Nathan hasn't got the energy to analyse it, so he leaves them to their cute little arguments and cryptic little whispers and tries to ignore it when old ladies smile down approvingly at them as they pass by.
*
Noah & Sylar. Lincoln, Nebraska.
“-and that's it. There was no forced entry, the guard didn't see anything, there's nothing on the cameras and the local police already dusted for prints; there's nothing out of the ordinary there.” The little bank manager tugs on his cheap crumpled suit. “To be honest, we wouldn't have known anything was out of place if we hadn't been scheduled to move the money today.”
Noah nods and pretends to write in his notebook, though the page stays blank. The little man is very upset, almost a hundred thousand dollars in notes was removed from one of the lock boxes the previous night, and he kicked up the most almighty fuss over it, demanding that the FBI, CIA, NSA and every other acronymic agency get involved. Which is all to Noah's benefit, because someone pulled off a very extraordinary heist here, and maybe it's a coincidence, but he doesn't think so.
“Thank you, Mr Davis, I think I've got everything I need for now. If you remember anything, call me.” He hands the man a card with an untraceable cell phone number on it, and snaps his fingers at Sylar, who is busy looming over Lincoln's finest police officers. He looms - and smirks evilly - a lot, and generally always seems to planning something, but he never lets a thing slip, because he knows that Noah would shoot him without a second thought.
“This was Petrelli,” he says as they walk back to their car.
“Yes, thanks, I would never have guessed,” Noah snaps back, and pulls the car door open, picking up a map from the dashboard. He spreads it out over the hood and scrutinises it.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” He puts his finger on where the map is marked 'Texas' and traces his finger up. “They're not even trying,” he mutters. Sylar moves to look over his shoulder, and he straightens.
“They've been travelling north,” he says. “Pretty much in a straight line. They're going to try and cross over into Canada. Call the office and get them to close the border.”
Sylar doesn't say a word, just pulls his phone from his pocket, flips it open and hits speed dial. It worries Noah the most when he's docile like this, but he can't think about that right now - they're at most a day behind Claire and the brothers and he has to clench his fists tight to stop from letting the excitement show.
*
Nathan, Peter & Claire.
They stop at a gas station outside of Wyoming for food and fuel, and Nathan leaves Peter and Claire in the back seat while he does the shopping.
“Because,” he says in answer to their worried questions about being seen, “I'm going to go stir-crazy stuck in this car and I'm legally dead, so the police are not actually looking for me.” He slams the door closed and shouts for one of the attendants to fill the car up. He's still got that air of authority about him, even when no one knows who he is.
Peter unbuckles his belt and turns his body towards her. “How are you doing?”
“Everyone keeps asking me that.”
“Everyone as in...”
“Nathan, yeah.”
“And the answer would be...?”
“The answer would be, 'can we please get off this damn subject and move on'?”
He holds his hands up. “Sorry for caring, Claire.”
She laughs at the pouty little lines forming around Peter's mouth and nudges his knee with hers. “Don't sulk, silly.”
He leans his head against the seat. “Yeah, okay,” he says, watching her through half-lidded eyes, an easy smile on his face. They're completely in each other's space now, any of her past nervousness has evaporated, and she lets her hand rest on his thigh.
“Peter?”
“Hm?”
He pushes closer to her, or maybe she does; maybe they do it together, but it doesn't exactly matter to her any more because this moment has been two years in the making. She lifts her hand and places it on the back of his neck, letting her fingers sink into his soft hair. She licks her lips once, quickly, before pressing her mouth against his. His hand just brushes her upper arm, hovering there uncertainly, but his lips part anyway and she runs her fingers up through his hair, eliciting a low moan.
“Shit,” he mumbles against her lips. “Shit, Claire-” He pushes weakly at her chest. “Claire, we can't do this. Claire, stop.” He shoves her away and scoots back. “We can't do this.”
She fights hard to keep a light tone. “Why not?”
“Why not? Why do you think, Claire? You're my niece, not to mention that Nathan is just over there!” He waves towards the convenience store with a pained expression.
“It's not like we grew up together, Peter! You know there's something between us, and it isn't familial; I know you feel it too!”
His Adam's apple bops up and down, and his eyes go wide like a deer's caught in the headlights, pupils dilating. “I don't feel anything, Claire! I- I-”
“Then why do you flirt with me, all the time?” she hisses, leaning forward.
“I- that's just how I am. It- it's not you.”
“Really?” Her tone turns cold. “Really? Then you must be really very cruel, because you know how I feel.”
He's silent for a minute, then, quietly, “How would I know that?”
She laughs humourlessly, indicating towards her face. “This? Is not the face of an idiot, Peter. I know that Matt's telepathic, and I know that you absorb powers when you're close to people, and you spent a whole day with Matt. Do the math. If you've known everything I felt and flirted with me anyway, then you're just not the man I thought you were.”
“Claire...” Reaching out, he tries to take her hand but she snatches it away.
“Don't, okay?”
He glances out of the window. “Nathan's coming back. Can we talk about this later?”
“We can talk about this when you stop being such a pussy, Peter.”
The car door opens and Nathan slides in. “I got magazines, want one?”
Claire takes them without a word, looks through them and hands all but one back. “Thanks,” she mutters.
“Okay.” Nathan frowns. “Is everything all right? You two seem... kind of sullen.”
“I'm fine. We're fine.” She glares at Peter, then opens the magazine.
“Great, as long as my absence doesn't cause you bouts of suicidal depression.”
She snorts. “Yeah, no.”
“Just wanted to make sure.” He starts the engine and pulls back onto the interstate, turning the radio up loud to cover Peter and Claire's silence.
Part Two.