Heroes: Runaways (Part 2/4)
Title: Heroes: Runaways (Part 2/4)
Disclaimer: Heroes owned by NBC, Runaways concept owned by Marvel.
Summary: Kidnapping and running away seems a reasonable reaction if one discovers one’s parents are supervillains, in any universe.
Characters: Nathan Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Angela Petrelli, Kaito Nakamura, Hiro Nakamura, Charles Deveaux, Simone Deveaux, Mr. Linderman, Niki Sanders.
Rating: PG
Thanks to: wychwood, for beta-reading.
Author’s note: This is what encouragement of insane plot bunnies results in. Also, despite appearances, this is not an AU. (All will be explained in later parts; for now, I’ll just say that the Heroes universe has a couple of canonical devices which come in handy that way.)
Part I
II. Methods of Communication
“That was James,” Angela said, putting the phone down. “Our limousine has been found. Empty, of course. And Nathan has made as many cash withdrawals as he could from his account within an hour of the… incident.”
“My son isn’t stupid,” her husband said in one of his typically inappropriate displays of paternal pride. She gave him a withering look, but when Linderman said, “all current appearances to the contrary, hm?”, she decided for a united front.
“Oh, please,” Angela said. “There are more important things to be done than baiting each other now.”
“What I want to know,” Kaito Nakamura said, glowering, “is how this could have happened in the first place. I entrusted my son, who has been taught respect of House Nakamura from the day he was born, to your care, and your idiotic profligate of an offspring kidnaps him!”
Angela’s husband put down the glass of whiskey he had been holding with a bang.
“Don’t you dare insult my son!”
“Maybe my English vocabulary is failing me,” Kaito said sarcastically, “but he did get that girl pregnant. And now he has managed to involve various children, including mine, in a criminally ill-planned enterprise. How would you call such a person in English, then, eh?”
In moments such as these, Angela wondered whether maturity was a superpower given solely to her. She closed her eyes and prayed for patience. When she opened them again, her voice was chilling.
“Let us get to the point, please. Which is that if the security cameras in Charles’ garage are anything to go by, several of the children have manifested. Years ahead of plan. And of course they found out things they should not. We have to focus on damage control.”
“Not on finding them?” Charles said, raising his eyebrows.
“Please,” Angela said again. “I know my son. Give him a day or two with children and teenagers, maximum, without any nanny to take them off his hands, and he’ll be returning them to us in pathetic gratitude.”
“And here I thought Nathan was brilliant with children,” Linderman murmured. She did not dignify this with a response, but continued:
“Unless, of course, all of you make it an issue of male pride and posturing by sending someone after him, which will prolong this unpleasant interlude. No, leave him alone. And give him time to think about what he truly wants. As I said, I know my son. He’s probably realizing already that he won’t be elected dog catcher in this city with this kind of behaviour, let alone anything else. He’ll return, so will the other children, and then we just have to find a way to, well, deal with certain premature revelations.”
The maid appeared, and said there was a visitor for Mrs. Petrelli. Angela sighed and followed her. The men traded significant looks.
“She might have a point there,” Linderman said.
“Americans,” Kaito said scornfully. “I, for one, am not leaving my son in the company of unworthy companions.”
“I hate to bring this up,” Charles said, “but has anyone considered that if young Nathan was, hm, spontaneous enough for his current actions, and doesn’t return to his old ambitions as soon as his mother predicts, he might be capable of talking to…”
“The police?” Mr. Petrelli interrupted him. “Never. He’s a Petrelli. The only time we talk to cops is when we cross-examine them and destroy their testimony in court.”
“Oh no, not the police,” Charles said. “The press. Now, Dan might be able to pass off anything that happens in Las Vegas as the Roswell aliens or sightings of Elvis, but this is New York. Besides, a reporter would love a story about the Petrelli heir going on a rampage without any supernatural tie-ins anyway.”
“We have to get them back as quickly as possible,” Linderman conceded. “Well, then. I happen to have several teams experienced in discreet, off-the-radar operations. Bennet and his partner aren’t suitable since we want him to raise the girl, but Thompson should do nicely.”
***
Nathan had experience with getting fake IDs; it was something he used to do before college in order to visit bars without getting caught, and some of his sources were still around, so that was what he did before leaving New York City, after giving Nicole some money to shop for baby supplies. Then they headed north. She wanted to drive.
“You don’t have a driver’s license,” Nathan said. She rolled her eyes.
“You’re such a stick-in-the-mud. Tell you what, you wouldn’t last five minutes in a holding cell before someone beat the crap out of you.”
“Yes, he would,” Peter said loyally. “He learned self defense in the Navy, right, Nathan?”
“I paid for the car,” Nathan said, ignoring them both, though it would have been more accurate to say he paid the rental for it under a fake name, “and that means I’m driving. End of debate.”
Talk of holding cells and the Navy were equally unwelcome. After learning of fire, he had been given two week’s leave before having to report back and complete his transfer to Bosnia. Which left ten days, after which he would be a deserter in addition to everything else if he didn’t return to his old life. Now, single fathers within the military were not unheard of. It would be difficult, but not impossible. Chances were he could plead this new situation and get transferred back to somewhere within the United States, and he could then raise Claire in Texas, Florida or wherever he’d be stationed. What he definitely wouldn’t be able to do was to go to law school after finishing his service, and all of that was ignoring what he’d just found out about his parents, let alone his current company.
It would simplify things somewhat if he just put Simone and Hiro on the next train back to Manhattan. Not Peter, not after what he had heard his mother say, and not Nicole because at least she was older than the rest, and frankly, being alone with a baby scared him. Nathan was a firm believer in the mystical female knowledge of How To Deal With Babies, though he had to admit that the fact his mother had employed ever-changing nannies with both her sons did at least put a question mark on the universality of his theory.
There were the questionable ethics of sending Simone and Hiro back to parents who were as lunatic as his own, but damn it, they weren’t his family. Nathan wasn’t responsible for them. Not in the slightest. He couldn’t help them, they couldn’t help him, the only sensible thing under the circumstances was to send them back. As soon as he spotted a train station, he’d buy them a ticket and do just that.
Hiro tapped his shoulder and whistled something Nathan didn’t recognize.
“It’s the music from E.T., from when all the kids’ bikes go up in the air,” Peter translated helpfully. “You know, with the moon behind them.”
Shit, Nathan thought. Either Hiro still assumed Nathan had an airplane at his disposal, or he was being metaphorical and wanted to say he saw their escape as a grand Spielbergian adventure, complete with guaranteed happy ending. Someone really should disabuse him of the notion that there were heroes in real life, let alone heroes named Nathan Petrelli. Nothing but John Williams compositions seemed to work as reliable methods communication, so Nathan went through his cinematic memories and then came up with the theme from Jaws, which couldn’t be whistled, so he had to sing it. Pointing at himself, he said: “Da.. da.. dadadada…”
“What kind of crack are you on, and how come you didn’t share?” asked Nicole. Hiro, however, nodded. Nathan’s hope that Hiro had understood he was in the company of a shark, even a young one currently not at the top of his game, was immediately dashed when Hiro put his finger on his lips and dived behind the backseat. Evidently he thought Nathan had meant they had to be stealthy and quiet while escaping, or something like that.
“You shouldn’t take drugs,” Simone said primly. “Either of you. I don’t like people who take drugs. Just say no.”
There should be a train station soon. Or maybe he had missed it. Somehow.
“Maybe that’s it,” Peter said thoughtfully. “Maybe Mom and Dad were on drugs, and Mr. Linderman is an evil overlord making everyone else do his evil bidding through them.”
“My Dad doesn’t take drugs,” Simone said, insulted.
“Did it look like Linderman was in charge, Pete?” Nathan said exasperatedly, and regretted it a moment later. Of course Peter would want to believe there was an excuse for their parents. He was twelve, and he was Peter. Peter threw himself back on the seat, arms crossed, and a moment later the baby began to cry, as if in sympathy.
“You suck as a parent,” Nicole informed Nathan. “I told you she needed to change diapers ages ago.”
The Fredonia Motel on the highway was a far cry from what Nathan was used to, but that was the point, and besides, he really needed to get out of the car. Nobody would bat an eyelash if he rented three rooms for the night. Well, maybe they would, which was why it was good to have a cover story on hand.
“Wife? What?” Nicole asked, sounding insultingly horrified. “Look, if that was my baby, I’d have gotten pregnant at fourteen or something. What kind of skank do you think I am?”
Nathan considered not replying to that and gave her a look. In truth, he hadn’t taken it into account so far, but…
“You look older than sixteen,” he said, reassessing her. She did. She also had a nice figure, which her red tank top and tight jeans did nothing to hide. Of course, he was far too mature to be remotely interested in a teenager like her, but those were good breasts and actually great legs.
“Gee, thanks,” she said. “Look, can’t we go to a good hotel and you say I’m the au pair or something, your lordship? Or are you being cheap again? You got more money out of those ATMs than I ever saw in my life.”
“If we go to the kind of hotel that has suites for people with au pairs, Nicole,” Nathan said, irritated, “we would be found within a few hours.”
“If you say so,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “And anyway, I told you to call me Niki. My father and Mr. Linderman call me Nicole, and you aren’t either of them. I think I want a name change.”
“We should all have new names,” Peter said. “Code names, secret identities. Also, next time we rescue someone, we should be in costume.”
Before Nathan could say there wasn’t going to be a next time, Niki asked, indicating Peter, Hiro and Simone:
“And if that’s our daughter, who are they supposed to be, huh? Your other children? The ones you had when you were eleven or something, from three different mothers?”
“Ew,” Simone said immediately and wrinkled her nose.
“Guess you were that much of a boy slut,” Nicole continued relentlessly.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Nathan said, raising his hands. “No one is anyone’s - we’ll just hope they don’t ask, and if they do, I’ll say I’m your social worker and you are all a bunch of difficult-to-educate children on a probationary trip.”
This shut everyone up, except Hiro, who followed Nathan to the reception. “What?” Nathan growled. Hiro handed over the video game he had brought to the Petrelli mansion and rubbed his fingers together in the universal gesture for money counting. Nathan realized the boy had to believe they had stopped at this crappy motel because they couldn’t afford anything else, and was offering to sell his treasured possession to help with that.
“Oh, no,” he said, feeling oddly constricted in his throat. “It’s just, we’re undercover, in disguise…”
Think musically, he told himself, as Hiro continued to look earnestly at him, holding out his video game. In a mixture of inspiration and desperation, Nathan came up with the James Bond theme. Hiro’s face transformed into a beaming smile, and he responded with the Jaws theme Nathan had tried earlier. Nathan nodded.
“Disguise,” Hiro repeated Nathan’s earlier word. “Undacova.”
“Undercover.”
“Undacovel.”
“Un-der-co-ver.”
“Agent,” Hiro said firmly instead, and Nathan found himself smiling as he reached the reception. In the end, the receptionist was sublimely uninterested in anything but the money, and gave Nathan the keys for three rooms.
The disposal of the rooms appeared to Nathan self-evident: he would share one with Claire, Niki would share with Simone, and Peter with Hiro. His would be in the middle, which meant he would be able to keep eyes and ears on all of them. Nobody objected. Unfortunately, as soon as Nathan held Claire, the smell hit him, and reminded him of what Niki had been pointing out for the last two hours. He looked at her pleadingly.
“Oh no,” Niki said sharply. “I said she needed to change diapers. I didn’t say I’d do it. I’ve had enough of shit and vomit in juvenile detention. You do it.”
At least she carried all the shopping bags with diapers, babyfood and soothing oil into his room as if they didn’t weigh more than a feather. Then she left. Nathan found himself trying to wash his baby daughter with a very ratty-looking hotel towel, afraid he’d break her, and felt inadequate on every level, which was an unfamiliar and very unwelcome sensation.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was an uncle?” Peter asked, standing in the doorframe. “And what happened to her mother anyway? Why did Mom and Dad -“ He made a helpless gesture. “I don’t get this, Nathan. When did you get married, and why was that such a big secret?”
“Because I didn’t marry her, Pete,” Nathan said quietly. “I - she’s dead, now. I thought Claire was, too, before I saw her on that screen.”
He realized he had no idea whether this was true. If Claire was alive, then maybe so was Meredith. On the other hand, if Meredith had died in the fire, if it hadn’t been all lies, it made his parents’ actions somewhat more understandable. They hadn’t wanted Claire as part of his life, but they didn’t want to leave her to social services, either.
Except that Linderman wasn’t an adoption agency, there was still that ominous talk about explosions, prophecies, ruling the country and “one of us”, and besides, they had let him believe Claire was dead. That was what it came down to. Dead. They had wanted him to think she didn’t exist anymore.
She looked clean now, and he grabbed the oil for her skin. Peter came closer, and crouched beside him, looking at the baby.
“She’s so tiny,” he said in wonder.
“She’s almost two,” Nathan said. “Though you were bigger at her age,” he admitted. He looked from Claire to his brother, and the hopelessness of the entire situation took his breath away. He couldn’t support a baby and a twelve-year-old boy, not on his Navy pay, and anyway, his parents would never permit Peter to live with him. They wouldn’t go through official channels, but one day he’d come home and would find them gone, both, because his mother knew how to punish, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do to get them back.
Kidnapping only worked once.
There was another possibility. They could disappear. Really, genuinely disappear. Go to Canada, traditional destination of deserters, start a new life where no one knew them. He’d still have to find some job to put them through the next decade, but maybe then he’d be able to go back to law school, after, when Peter was an adult and Claire a bit older. Maybe he wouldn’t have to give up on the whole of his future. At least become a lawyer. He’d be good at that, no matter the country; it was the way his mind had been trained to work. Pop had given him affidavits to read before he was ten, and had made him argue cases with him, looking for weaknesses that…
Nathan sat back on his heels. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen this until now.
“What is it, Nathan?” Peter asked with a slight frown.
“Nothing,” Nathan said, finished the ointment, and wrapped Claire up again, hoping he got it right. “Peter, you should go back to Hiro. This has to be worst for him. He doesn’t even understand half of what’s going on. You can’t leave him alone now.”
As Petrelli manipulations went, this one was a bit blatant, but it worked. Peter probably knew Nathan was hiding something, but he also knew what Nathan had said about Hiro was true, and so he got up and moved to the door.
“He really did freeze everyone except me in the garage, you know,” he said before leaving, sounding challenging and sullen at the same time. “If you’re so concerned about him, you should say thank you and tell him how cool that was.”
Nathan waited a while after Peter had left, passing the time with feeding Claire. This, he actually had some experience with. Meredith had let him do it the last time he had seen her and Claire both, an uneasy, awkward visit, full of unspoken words. Besides, he had done it a couple of times for Peter. He felt on safer ground, and imagined Claire looked somewhat more confidently at him with her eyes that weren’t either Meredith’s or his but utterly her own. She didn’t recognize him yet, of course she didn’t, but she would. She would.
Niki was having a smoke outside in the corridor; she must have bought the cigarettes along with the baby stuff from the money he had given her, as he didn’t recall her having them when she came to the mansion.
“That little Miss Virtue thought I was doing drugs again,” she explained, jerking her chin to her and Simone’s room. “She told me it wasn’t something she should see, and I should be a better role model. Jeez. I thought rich kids all party non-stop and end up in rehab by the time they’re thirteen. Between you and her, you’re totally disillusioning me.”
Nathan found himself amused against his will.
“If it helps, I did the drunken frat boy thing a couple of times,” he said. “Hey, could you look after Claire for a while? She’s clean now,” he added hastily. Niki threw down her cigarette and crushed it beneath her heel.
“Sure,” she said, and took the child from him.
“If you get tired of carrying her, you can put her in the bed in my room,” Nathan said.
“I won’t get tired,” she replied, and he left. It took him an hour with the car to find the next town with a few hotels and motels; he made a phone call from one of the public phones there. Having been given the number of all the parents whose children he had been supposed to supervise in case of an emergency proved to be unexpectedly useful, as the one for Charles Deveaux turned out to be a direct line, not even intercepted by a secretary.
“Well, Nathan,” Charles Deveaux said in his good-humoured, rumbling voice, “I must say this is a surprise.”
“Is it?” Nathan retorted. “And here I thought you were waiting for my call.”
“Now why would I do that?”
Nathan held his hand over the phone so Simone’s father wouldn’t hear him take a deep breath. If his guess wasn’t true, he would be even more screwed by this call. “Because,” he replied, “someone has to be responsible for that security feed we saw of your rooftop. Complete with sound. Transmitted to a view screen in our house. I bet it would have ended up on whichever tv we switched on, at a time where my parents were guaranteed not to be there. Now call me crazy, Mr. Deveaux, but I don’t think my parents set that up. I think you did. You wanted us to see what we saw.”
There was a slight pause. “That’s an interesting theory, Nathan,” Charles Deveaux said.
“I think so,” Nathan responded, refusing to elaborate further. He waited. Sometimes, you have to wait out your opponent, his father used to say to him. Make him talk first. If he does, then you know you have him.
“You realize I’m tracing this phone call,” Charles continued.
“I’m sure you are,” Nathan said.
“Well, it seems Angela was right after all. You do want to be found, don’t you?”
“Actually, no,” Nathan said. “Look, I don’t care why you did it. Maybe you’re playing some kind of power game with my parents, maybe this is some kind of test for me and the others, I don’t know. But going by everything I’ve heard about Mr. Linderman, he doesn’t like being bugged without his knowledge. Didn’t my father get him out of an accusation of murdering an FBI agent who tried that, just recently?”
“You’re definitely your parents’ son.”
“I guess we all are,” Nathan said. “And your daughter is your daughter. She was a bit shocked by what she saw, but she still has a high opinion of you. After all, you didn’t say anything too incriminating during that conversation. Now why is that, Mr. Deveaux?”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“To a new life, I hope,” Nathan said. “A good one. For me, my brother and my daughter. We children of the idle classes do like our comfort. I have a first class education, Mr. Deveaux, and I want to put it to use, which I can’t if I’m reduced to slave labour in order to survive. I also want my brother and my daughter to have the same kind of opportunities. I think you get my meaning.”
“I think I do. So you want a new life with new identities and regular financial support. I must say, Nathan, I am appalled. Not at the blackmail. But you didn’t even mention the explosion. You really do only care about yourself and your family. For someone who is supposed to be a future leader, that is an appallingly petty vision.”
Maybe it was because he wasn’t old enough not to react to disapproval from authority figures, and maybe it was because there was truth in those words, but they stung.
“Perhaps,” Nathan said tonelessly. “Or perhaps I should take you as my role model. Since you were so onboard with finding a new family for my daughter, maybe I should find one for yours. I’ll call you tomorrow, Mr. Deveaux. Maybe we will both have some news for each other by then.”
Hanging up, he closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them again, he had restored his best façade, the one Peter didn’t like and had once called his Dad-face. Before he drove back to the Fredonia Motel, he remembered something, checked out the local phone registry and found what he was looking for.
Hiro and Peter were busy with the video game again when Nathan came into their room, but they looked up when he entered. Nathan cleared his throat and handed over the three trade paperbacks he had bought to Hiro. Peter looked amazed and just the slightest bit jealous for a moment. He wasn’t used to Nathan paying attention to anyone outside the family. Hiro looked at his present: the comics versions of Episodes IV, V and VI of Star Wars.
“I figured you must have read them in Japanese,” Nathan said. “You probably know them by heart. Those are the English words. That should help with the vocabulary problem.”
Hiro pushed up his glasses, questioningly. What the hell, Nathan thought. At this point, he had no dignity to lose. Besides, it was the only cinematic equivalent of the learning of a foreign language he could be certain Hiro was familiar with. He mimicked a gesture he dimly recalled.
“E.T. phone home,” he said, and self consciously hummed a few bars from the melody Hiro had used earlier today. Hiro looked at the Star Wars trade collections, then at Nathan, and eagerly nodded.
“Hai,” he said. “E.T. Engrish. Star Wars.” He opened one of the volumes, searched for something, and then slowly, carefully said. “I-will-learn-the-ways-of-the-folce.”
“You do that,” Nathan said, and left the two to it. Claire was in his room, in the bed, sleeping. So was Niki, next to her. With her eyes closed, Niki looked younger instead of older, and he felt a bit ashamed for having noticed her figure earlier. In an utterly remote and uninterested way, of course. He considered waking her up, but there was something in the way she lay there with Claire in her arms that reminded him of Meredith, just a little bit, and so he watched the two of them for a while, and then decided to sleep on the floor. It shouldn’t be tougher than life in the barracks anyway.
***
When Nathan woke up, the first thing he noticed was a stiff neck. The next was two unknown men standing in the doorway of his room. One of them had a gun aimed at him.
“That’s a tranquilizer gun, Mr. Petrelli,” said the other one wryly. “Now I’d rather not tell Aaron here to use it, but that is your choice. Why don’t you get up so we can introduce ourselves properly? My name is Thompson.”
Part III
Disclaimer: Heroes owned by NBC, Runaways concept owned by Marvel.
Summary: Kidnapping and running away seems a reasonable reaction if one discovers one’s parents are supervillains, in any universe.
Characters: Nathan Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Angela Petrelli, Kaito Nakamura, Hiro Nakamura, Charles Deveaux, Simone Deveaux, Mr. Linderman, Niki Sanders.
Rating: PG
Thanks to: wychwood, for beta-reading.
Author’s note: This is what encouragement of insane plot bunnies results in. Also, despite appearances, this is not an AU. (All will be explained in later parts; for now, I’ll just say that the Heroes universe has a couple of canonical devices which come in handy that way.)
Part I
II. Methods of Communication
“That was James,” Angela said, putting the phone down. “Our limousine has been found. Empty, of course. And Nathan has made as many cash withdrawals as he could from his account within an hour of the… incident.”
“My son isn’t stupid,” her husband said in one of his typically inappropriate displays of paternal pride. She gave him a withering look, but when Linderman said, “all current appearances to the contrary, hm?”, she decided for a united front.
“Oh, please,” Angela said. “There are more important things to be done than baiting each other now.”
“What I want to know,” Kaito Nakamura said, glowering, “is how this could have happened in the first place. I entrusted my son, who has been taught respect of House Nakamura from the day he was born, to your care, and your idiotic profligate of an offspring kidnaps him!”
Angela’s husband put down the glass of whiskey he had been holding with a bang.
“Don’t you dare insult my son!”
“Maybe my English vocabulary is failing me,” Kaito said sarcastically, “but he did get that girl pregnant. And now he has managed to involve various children, including mine, in a criminally ill-planned enterprise. How would you call such a person in English, then, eh?”
In moments such as these, Angela wondered whether maturity was a superpower given solely to her. She closed her eyes and prayed for patience. When she opened them again, her voice was chilling.
“Let us get to the point, please. Which is that if the security cameras in Charles’ garage are anything to go by, several of the children have manifested. Years ahead of plan. And of course they found out things they should not. We have to focus on damage control.”
“Not on finding them?” Charles said, raising his eyebrows.
“Please,” Angela said again. “I know my son. Give him a day or two with children and teenagers, maximum, without any nanny to take them off his hands, and he’ll be returning them to us in pathetic gratitude.”
“And here I thought Nathan was brilliant with children,” Linderman murmured. She did not dignify this with a response, but continued:
“Unless, of course, all of you make it an issue of male pride and posturing by sending someone after him, which will prolong this unpleasant interlude. No, leave him alone. And give him time to think about what he truly wants. As I said, I know my son. He’s probably realizing already that he won’t be elected dog catcher in this city with this kind of behaviour, let alone anything else. He’ll return, so will the other children, and then we just have to find a way to, well, deal with certain premature revelations.”
The maid appeared, and said there was a visitor for Mrs. Petrelli. Angela sighed and followed her. The men traded significant looks.
“She might have a point there,” Linderman said.
“Americans,” Kaito said scornfully. “I, for one, am not leaving my son in the company of unworthy companions.”
“I hate to bring this up,” Charles said, “but has anyone considered that if young Nathan was, hm, spontaneous enough for his current actions, and doesn’t return to his old ambitions as soon as his mother predicts, he might be capable of talking to…”
“The police?” Mr. Petrelli interrupted him. “Never. He’s a Petrelli. The only time we talk to cops is when we cross-examine them and destroy their testimony in court.”
“Oh no, not the police,” Charles said. “The press. Now, Dan might be able to pass off anything that happens in Las Vegas as the Roswell aliens or sightings of Elvis, but this is New York. Besides, a reporter would love a story about the Petrelli heir going on a rampage without any supernatural tie-ins anyway.”
“We have to get them back as quickly as possible,” Linderman conceded. “Well, then. I happen to have several teams experienced in discreet, off-the-radar operations. Bennet and his partner aren’t suitable since we want him to raise the girl, but Thompson should do nicely.”
***
Nathan had experience with getting fake IDs; it was something he used to do before college in order to visit bars without getting caught, and some of his sources were still around, so that was what he did before leaving New York City, after giving Nicole some money to shop for baby supplies. Then they headed north. She wanted to drive.
“You don’t have a driver’s license,” Nathan said. She rolled her eyes.
“You’re such a stick-in-the-mud. Tell you what, you wouldn’t last five minutes in a holding cell before someone beat the crap out of you.”
“Yes, he would,” Peter said loyally. “He learned self defense in the Navy, right, Nathan?”
“I paid for the car,” Nathan said, ignoring them both, though it would have been more accurate to say he paid the rental for it under a fake name, “and that means I’m driving. End of debate.”
Talk of holding cells and the Navy were equally unwelcome. After learning of fire, he had been given two week’s leave before having to report back and complete his transfer to Bosnia. Which left ten days, after which he would be a deserter in addition to everything else if he didn’t return to his old life. Now, single fathers within the military were not unheard of. It would be difficult, but not impossible. Chances were he could plead this new situation and get transferred back to somewhere within the United States, and he could then raise Claire in Texas, Florida or wherever he’d be stationed. What he definitely wouldn’t be able to do was to go to law school after finishing his service, and all of that was ignoring what he’d just found out about his parents, let alone his current company.
It would simplify things somewhat if he just put Simone and Hiro on the next train back to Manhattan. Not Peter, not after what he had heard his mother say, and not Nicole because at least she was older than the rest, and frankly, being alone with a baby scared him. Nathan was a firm believer in the mystical female knowledge of How To Deal With Babies, though he had to admit that the fact his mother had employed ever-changing nannies with both her sons did at least put a question mark on the universality of his theory.
There were the questionable ethics of sending Simone and Hiro back to parents who were as lunatic as his own, but damn it, they weren’t his family. Nathan wasn’t responsible for them. Not in the slightest. He couldn’t help them, they couldn’t help him, the only sensible thing under the circumstances was to send them back. As soon as he spotted a train station, he’d buy them a ticket and do just that.
Hiro tapped his shoulder and whistled something Nathan didn’t recognize.
“It’s the music from E.T., from when all the kids’ bikes go up in the air,” Peter translated helpfully. “You know, with the moon behind them.”
Shit, Nathan thought. Either Hiro still assumed Nathan had an airplane at his disposal, or he was being metaphorical and wanted to say he saw their escape as a grand Spielbergian adventure, complete with guaranteed happy ending. Someone really should disabuse him of the notion that there were heroes in real life, let alone heroes named Nathan Petrelli. Nothing but John Williams compositions seemed to work as reliable methods communication, so Nathan went through his cinematic memories and then came up with the theme from Jaws, which couldn’t be whistled, so he had to sing it. Pointing at himself, he said: “Da.. da.. dadadada…”
“What kind of crack are you on, and how come you didn’t share?” asked Nicole. Hiro, however, nodded. Nathan’s hope that Hiro had understood he was in the company of a shark, even a young one currently not at the top of his game, was immediately dashed when Hiro put his finger on his lips and dived behind the backseat. Evidently he thought Nathan had meant they had to be stealthy and quiet while escaping, or something like that.
“You shouldn’t take drugs,” Simone said primly. “Either of you. I don’t like people who take drugs. Just say no.”
There should be a train station soon. Or maybe he had missed it. Somehow.
“Maybe that’s it,” Peter said thoughtfully. “Maybe Mom and Dad were on drugs, and Mr. Linderman is an evil overlord making everyone else do his evil bidding through them.”
“My Dad doesn’t take drugs,” Simone said, insulted.
“Did it look like Linderman was in charge, Pete?” Nathan said exasperatedly, and regretted it a moment later. Of course Peter would want to believe there was an excuse for their parents. He was twelve, and he was Peter. Peter threw himself back on the seat, arms crossed, and a moment later the baby began to cry, as if in sympathy.
“You suck as a parent,” Nicole informed Nathan. “I told you she needed to change diapers ages ago.”
The Fredonia Motel on the highway was a far cry from what Nathan was used to, but that was the point, and besides, he really needed to get out of the car. Nobody would bat an eyelash if he rented three rooms for the night. Well, maybe they would, which was why it was good to have a cover story on hand.
“Wife? What?” Nicole asked, sounding insultingly horrified. “Look, if that was my baby, I’d have gotten pregnant at fourteen or something. What kind of skank do you think I am?”
Nathan considered not replying to that and gave her a look. In truth, he hadn’t taken it into account so far, but…
“You look older than sixteen,” he said, reassessing her. She did. She also had a nice figure, which her red tank top and tight jeans did nothing to hide. Of course, he was far too mature to be remotely interested in a teenager like her, but those were good breasts and actually great legs.
“Gee, thanks,” she said. “Look, can’t we go to a good hotel and you say I’m the au pair or something, your lordship? Or are you being cheap again? You got more money out of those ATMs than I ever saw in my life.”
“If we go to the kind of hotel that has suites for people with au pairs, Nicole,” Nathan said, irritated, “we would be found within a few hours.”
“If you say so,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “And anyway, I told you to call me Niki. My father and Mr. Linderman call me Nicole, and you aren’t either of them. I think I want a name change.”
“We should all have new names,” Peter said. “Code names, secret identities. Also, next time we rescue someone, we should be in costume.”
Before Nathan could say there wasn’t going to be a next time, Niki asked, indicating Peter, Hiro and Simone:
“And if that’s our daughter, who are they supposed to be, huh? Your other children? The ones you had when you were eleven or something, from three different mothers?”
“Ew,” Simone said immediately and wrinkled her nose.
“Guess you were that much of a boy slut,” Nicole continued relentlessly.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Nathan said, raising his hands. “No one is anyone’s - we’ll just hope they don’t ask, and if they do, I’ll say I’m your social worker and you are all a bunch of difficult-to-educate children on a probationary trip.”
This shut everyone up, except Hiro, who followed Nathan to the reception. “What?” Nathan growled. Hiro handed over the video game he had brought to the Petrelli mansion and rubbed his fingers together in the universal gesture for money counting. Nathan realized the boy had to believe they had stopped at this crappy motel because they couldn’t afford anything else, and was offering to sell his treasured possession to help with that.
“Oh, no,” he said, feeling oddly constricted in his throat. “It’s just, we’re undercover, in disguise…”
Think musically, he told himself, as Hiro continued to look earnestly at him, holding out his video game. In a mixture of inspiration and desperation, Nathan came up with the James Bond theme. Hiro’s face transformed into a beaming smile, and he responded with the Jaws theme Nathan had tried earlier. Nathan nodded.
“Disguise,” Hiro repeated Nathan’s earlier word. “Undacova.”
“Undercover.”
“Undacovel.”
“Un-der-co-ver.”
“Agent,” Hiro said firmly instead, and Nathan found himself smiling as he reached the reception. In the end, the receptionist was sublimely uninterested in anything but the money, and gave Nathan the keys for three rooms.
The disposal of the rooms appeared to Nathan self-evident: he would share one with Claire, Niki would share with Simone, and Peter with Hiro. His would be in the middle, which meant he would be able to keep eyes and ears on all of them. Nobody objected. Unfortunately, as soon as Nathan held Claire, the smell hit him, and reminded him of what Niki had been pointing out for the last two hours. He looked at her pleadingly.
“Oh no,” Niki said sharply. “I said she needed to change diapers. I didn’t say I’d do it. I’ve had enough of shit and vomit in juvenile detention. You do it.”
At least she carried all the shopping bags with diapers, babyfood and soothing oil into his room as if they didn’t weigh more than a feather. Then she left. Nathan found himself trying to wash his baby daughter with a very ratty-looking hotel towel, afraid he’d break her, and felt inadequate on every level, which was an unfamiliar and very unwelcome sensation.
“Why didn’t you tell me I was an uncle?” Peter asked, standing in the doorframe. “And what happened to her mother anyway? Why did Mom and Dad -“ He made a helpless gesture. “I don’t get this, Nathan. When did you get married, and why was that such a big secret?”
“Because I didn’t marry her, Pete,” Nathan said quietly. “I - she’s dead, now. I thought Claire was, too, before I saw her on that screen.”
He realized he had no idea whether this was true. If Claire was alive, then maybe so was Meredith. On the other hand, if Meredith had died in the fire, if it hadn’t been all lies, it made his parents’ actions somewhat more understandable. They hadn’t wanted Claire as part of his life, but they didn’t want to leave her to social services, either.
Except that Linderman wasn’t an adoption agency, there was still that ominous talk about explosions, prophecies, ruling the country and “one of us”, and besides, they had let him believe Claire was dead. That was what it came down to. Dead. They had wanted him to think she didn’t exist anymore.
She looked clean now, and he grabbed the oil for her skin. Peter came closer, and crouched beside him, looking at the baby.
“She’s so tiny,” he said in wonder.
“She’s almost two,” Nathan said. “Though you were bigger at her age,” he admitted. He looked from Claire to his brother, and the hopelessness of the entire situation took his breath away. He couldn’t support a baby and a twelve-year-old boy, not on his Navy pay, and anyway, his parents would never permit Peter to live with him. They wouldn’t go through official channels, but one day he’d come home and would find them gone, both, because his mother knew how to punish, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do to get them back.
Kidnapping only worked once.
There was another possibility. They could disappear. Really, genuinely disappear. Go to Canada, traditional destination of deserters, start a new life where no one knew them. He’d still have to find some job to put them through the next decade, but maybe then he’d be able to go back to law school, after, when Peter was an adult and Claire a bit older. Maybe he wouldn’t have to give up on the whole of his future. At least become a lawyer. He’d be good at that, no matter the country; it was the way his mind had been trained to work. Pop had given him affidavits to read before he was ten, and had made him argue cases with him, looking for weaknesses that…
Nathan sat back on his heels. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen this until now.
“What is it, Nathan?” Peter asked with a slight frown.
“Nothing,” Nathan said, finished the ointment, and wrapped Claire up again, hoping he got it right. “Peter, you should go back to Hiro. This has to be worst for him. He doesn’t even understand half of what’s going on. You can’t leave him alone now.”
As Petrelli manipulations went, this one was a bit blatant, but it worked. Peter probably knew Nathan was hiding something, but he also knew what Nathan had said about Hiro was true, and so he got up and moved to the door.
“He really did freeze everyone except me in the garage, you know,” he said before leaving, sounding challenging and sullen at the same time. “If you’re so concerned about him, you should say thank you and tell him how cool that was.”
Nathan waited a while after Peter had left, passing the time with feeding Claire. This, he actually had some experience with. Meredith had let him do it the last time he had seen her and Claire both, an uneasy, awkward visit, full of unspoken words. Besides, he had done it a couple of times for Peter. He felt on safer ground, and imagined Claire looked somewhat more confidently at him with her eyes that weren’t either Meredith’s or his but utterly her own. She didn’t recognize him yet, of course she didn’t, but she would. She would.
Niki was having a smoke outside in the corridor; she must have bought the cigarettes along with the baby stuff from the money he had given her, as he didn’t recall her having them when she came to the mansion.
“That little Miss Virtue thought I was doing drugs again,” she explained, jerking her chin to her and Simone’s room. “She told me it wasn’t something she should see, and I should be a better role model. Jeez. I thought rich kids all party non-stop and end up in rehab by the time they’re thirteen. Between you and her, you’re totally disillusioning me.”
Nathan found himself amused against his will.
“If it helps, I did the drunken frat boy thing a couple of times,” he said. “Hey, could you look after Claire for a while? She’s clean now,” he added hastily. Niki threw down her cigarette and crushed it beneath her heel.
“Sure,” she said, and took the child from him.
“If you get tired of carrying her, you can put her in the bed in my room,” Nathan said.
“I won’t get tired,” she replied, and he left. It took him an hour with the car to find the next town with a few hotels and motels; he made a phone call from one of the public phones there. Having been given the number of all the parents whose children he had been supposed to supervise in case of an emergency proved to be unexpectedly useful, as the one for Charles Deveaux turned out to be a direct line, not even intercepted by a secretary.
“Well, Nathan,” Charles Deveaux said in his good-humoured, rumbling voice, “I must say this is a surprise.”
“Is it?” Nathan retorted. “And here I thought you were waiting for my call.”
“Now why would I do that?”
Nathan held his hand over the phone so Simone’s father wouldn’t hear him take a deep breath. If his guess wasn’t true, he would be even more screwed by this call. “Because,” he replied, “someone has to be responsible for that security feed we saw of your rooftop. Complete with sound. Transmitted to a view screen in our house. I bet it would have ended up on whichever tv we switched on, at a time where my parents were guaranteed not to be there. Now call me crazy, Mr. Deveaux, but I don’t think my parents set that up. I think you did. You wanted us to see what we saw.”
There was a slight pause. “That’s an interesting theory, Nathan,” Charles Deveaux said.
“I think so,” Nathan responded, refusing to elaborate further. He waited. Sometimes, you have to wait out your opponent, his father used to say to him. Make him talk first. If he does, then you know you have him.
“You realize I’m tracing this phone call,” Charles continued.
“I’m sure you are,” Nathan said.
“Well, it seems Angela was right after all. You do want to be found, don’t you?”
“Actually, no,” Nathan said. “Look, I don’t care why you did it. Maybe you’re playing some kind of power game with my parents, maybe this is some kind of test for me and the others, I don’t know. But going by everything I’ve heard about Mr. Linderman, he doesn’t like being bugged without his knowledge. Didn’t my father get him out of an accusation of murdering an FBI agent who tried that, just recently?”
“You’re definitely your parents’ son.”
“I guess we all are,” Nathan said. “And your daughter is your daughter. She was a bit shocked by what she saw, but she still has a high opinion of you. After all, you didn’t say anything too incriminating during that conversation. Now why is that, Mr. Deveaux?”
“Is this going somewhere?”
“To a new life, I hope,” Nathan said. “A good one. For me, my brother and my daughter. We children of the idle classes do like our comfort. I have a first class education, Mr. Deveaux, and I want to put it to use, which I can’t if I’m reduced to slave labour in order to survive. I also want my brother and my daughter to have the same kind of opportunities. I think you get my meaning.”
“I think I do. So you want a new life with new identities and regular financial support. I must say, Nathan, I am appalled. Not at the blackmail. But you didn’t even mention the explosion. You really do only care about yourself and your family. For someone who is supposed to be a future leader, that is an appallingly petty vision.”
Maybe it was because he wasn’t old enough not to react to disapproval from authority figures, and maybe it was because there was truth in those words, but they stung.
“Perhaps,” Nathan said tonelessly. “Or perhaps I should take you as my role model. Since you were so onboard with finding a new family for my daughter, maybe I should find one for yours. I’ll call you tomorrow, Mr. Deveaux. Maybe we will both have some news for each other by then.”
Hanging up, he closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them again, he had restored his best façade, the one Peter didn’t like and had once called his Dad-face. Before he drove back to the Fredonia Motel, he remembered something, checked out the local phone registry and found what he was looking for.
Hiro and Peter were busy with the video game again when Nathan came into their room, but they looked up when he entered. Nathan cleared his throat and handed over the three trade paperbacks he had bought to Hiro. Peter looked amazed and just the slightest bit jealous for a moment. He wasn’t used to Nathan paying attention to anyone outside the family. Hiro looked at his present: the comics versions of Episodes IV, V and VI of Star Wars.
“I figured you must have read them in Japanese,” Nathan said. “You probably know them by heart. Those are the English words. That should help with the vocabulary problem.”
Hiro pushed up his glasses, questioningly. What the hell, Nathan thought. At this point, he had no dignity to lose. Besides, it was the only cinematic equivalent of the learning of a foreign language he could be certain Hiro was familiar with. He mimicked a gesture he dimly recalled.
“E.T. phone home,” he said, and self consciously hummed a few bars from the melody Hiro had used earlier today. Hiro looked at the Star Wars trade collections, then at Nathan, and eagerly nodded.
“Hai,” he said. “E.T. Engrish. Star Wars.” He opened one of the volumes, searched for something, and then slowly, carefully said. “I-will-learn-the-ways-of-the-folce.”
“You do that,” Nathan said, and left the two to it. Claire was in his room, in the bed, sleeping. So was Niki, next to her. With her eyes closed, Niki looked younger instead of older, and he felt a bit ashamed for having noticed her figure earlier. In an utterly remote and uninterested way, of course. He considered waking her up, but there was something in the way she lay there with Claire in her arms that reminded him of Meredith, just a little bit, and so he watched the two of them for a while, and then decided to sleep on the floor. It shouldn’t be tougher than life in the barracks anyway.
***
When Nathan woke up, the first thing he noticed was a stiff neck. The next was two unknown men standing in the doorway of his room. One of them had a gun aimed at him.
“That’s a tranquilizer gun, Mr. Petrelli,” said the other one wryly. “Now I’d rather not tell Aaron here to use it, but that is your choice. Why don’t you get up so we can introduce ourselves properly? My name is Thompson.”
Part III