Que Sera Sera - 2
Title: Que Sera Sera - 2
Author: cameroncrazed
Rating: PG (language) (rating's going to go way up soon;) )
Pairings: none for now (eventually Sylar/Claire)
Spoilers: up to 3.04, although I’m ignoring major parts of season 3 (Claire go bad? Never!)
Disclaimer: You know in chapter 1, I said I owned nothing? Yeah, that still holds true.
Chapter One
Rubbing at his eyes, tired from staring at that blank piece of paper for so long, he steps out into the night, readjusting his book bag as he starts the long trek back to his dorm room. School could be kinda cool, sometimes, but on exam nights, Lyle wonders why he’d ever wanted to be in college; being a semi-adult sucks at times, and he’d love nothing more than to go back home, let his Dad and Mom handle everything, back to a time when all he had to do was eat, bathe occasionally, and pester Claire.
Sighing, he tries to yank his train of thought back onto his classes instead of his family, because if he doesn’t, he knows he’s going to start crying again over Mom, and studly college men don’t cry like babies on the campus sidewalks. He bites his lip, and just focuses on walking faster, getting back to his room faster. He’s so focused on speed walking that he’s almost startled when his cell phone starts ringing. Looking down at the caller ID, he sees it’s Claire.
“Bennet. Lyle Bennet.” He knows that she’ll laugh at his stupid attempt at being suave, but that’s half the reason he does it.
“Lyle?” It’s the only thing she can say before she starts sobbing, unable to speak.
He freezes in his tracks, terrified of what could be making her cry like that. “What’s happened?”
“What makes you think something’s wrong?” Her voice is an octave too high to be casual. “Can’t I just call you for no reason?”
“You never have before, and you haven’t cried like that since Mom died.” He knows, he just knows why she’s calling now. “How did Dad die?”
“Oh, Lyle.” She sighs. “Dad’s not dead; it’s just that… can you come home for a few days, maybe this weekend?”
She’s never asked him to come home before; he starts running towards his dorm, wondering how fast he can throw some clothes in a bag and get to the train station. “I’ll be there tomorrow, sis.”
He hangs up before she yelps “Don’t go to the house!”
- - - - - - - - - -
Even though he knows he should be asleep, even though he’s suddenly exhausted, Sylar can’t look away from his son - his son! - long enough to close his eyes. He’d never even entertained the vague concept of having children before, never expected to have fatherhood abruptly thrust on him. Noah moans in his sleep, then grunts, and Sylar wonders again if he’s laid him in the crib correctly, if the nightclothes are comfortable, if he’s done everything he’s supposed to do. Angela had provided all the material things he and Noah might need, but no answers, no helpful books and guides. When he’d called her for the fourth time in twenty minutes, frantic over bath time, she’d laughed and hung up on him. He’d tried calling Claire, but she wasn’t answering her cell phone, and he didn’t know any other women to call for help.
Noah grunts again, then jerks awake. Before Sylar can react, Noah’s wide awake and screaming bloody murder. His first instinct is to clap his hands over his ears, but Sylar reaches into the crib and hesitantly picks him up, cradling him against his shoulder. He takes a delicate sniff, and then sighs in relief. “Well, buddy, I’m guessing you’re hungry?”
The screams get louder, and Sylar floats a bottle over to them as he settles back into the rocking chair.
- - - - - - - - - -
Claire isn’t there at the train station to meet him, but Lyle’s not surprised. He hails a cab, and tosses his bag into the back.
“Where to?” The cabbie asks, seemingly bored, and Lyle has to think about his answer. If there’s something seriously wrong with Dad, they should be at the hospital… but Claire hadn’t mentioned anything like that. He gives the man their home address instead, hoping that if they’re not there, someone would have left a note for him.
He tries to hide his nervousness on the way home, but the shaking of his legs gives him away.
The cabbie notices, but doesn’t say anything until they pull in front of the Bennet house. “Hey kid, you want me to wait for you?”
Lyle notices the car in the driveway, a shiny clean Nisson with a Primatech sticker plastered over the bumper, and shakes his head, knowing that he can always borrow the car if need be. “Nah. Thanks though.”
He grabs his bag, pays the man, and crawls out of the car. As he heads up the drive, which seems to grow longer with each step, he looks at the car again then does a double-take; when had his father put a baby seat in the backseat, and why?
Sudden non-stop screams distract him from the car, and they confuse him even more; it’s not Dad, it’s not Claire, why would anyone else be in his house screaming, and why do they sound like that? He cautiously unlocks the front door and pushes it open; more screams assault his ears, but he also hears a man cajoling the screamer to be a good boy and to stop that noise. Lyle is officially weirded out now, and wonders if vagrants or something had broken in. Holding his bag in front of him, as if it can protect him, he ventures a few more steps into his house.
“Ewww, Noah! God!” A man yelps, and Lyle recognizes the voice.
“Sylar?”
This is just too strange for words now.
- - - - - - - - - -
If he wasn’t so distracted with the mess in front of him and the fact that Noah wouldn’t stop wailing, Sylar might have heard the car pull up, the front door open, Lyle walking around, but as it was, he didn’t realize that there was someone else in the house until Lyle wanders into the kitchen, calling out his name.
“Gah!” Sylar spins around, baby clutched protectively, surprised by Lyle’s presence. As soon as he recognizes the Bennet boy, he calms down. “Oh, it’s just you. Glad you could make it home. Claire call you?” Noah starts crying again, and Sylar wonders if it would make him a bad father to start wearing ear plugs. “Hush, hush, it’s okay. We’ll get you a new diaper in a minute, buddy. Shhh.”
Lyle’s eyes go wide as he takes in the sight of Sylar and the baby. “What the fuck is this shit?”
“Language.” Sylar immediately admonishes, then wonders when he’d turned into his mother. “Shh, Noah, it’s okay, just don’t repeat those words when you get older.”
“But… but…” Lyle tries to make sense of what’s going on. “Is that your kid?”
“Yes.”
“But… but… you’ve worked with Dad for years, and neither he nor Claire ever mentioned you having a family before.” Lyle looks at him again, then looks at the baby. “And yeah, Claire called me.”
Sylar quickly realizes that while Claire might have called, she obviously hadn’t explained anything to Lyle. “Let me guess, she just told you to come home and didn’t tell you anything about the new addition to our family.” Noah shrieks again, trying to regain his father’s attention; it works, and Sylar’s nose crinkles as he realizes the task he’s going to have to perform unless Lyle knows something about dirty diapers. He sincerely doubts it.
Lyle falls back into one of the kitchen chairs, looking at Sylar and the baby again, trying to put together all the pieces of the puzzle and failing miserably. “Holy sh… crap. You knocked up Claire, and no one told me anything until now.” It’s the only thing that makes any sense to Lyle, and he has to admit that it doesn’t surprise him as much as it should.
“I did what to whom?” Sylar is too distracted with trying to find the diaper bag to pay to much attention to Lyle and to deny the allegation. “You ever changed a diaper before, kid?”
“No. Why would I? So, did you? Is that your and Claire’s son?” He wonders why no one had told him that he was an uncle earlier.
“She’s my niece, Lyle. No. He’s my son now, but he’s not hers.”
“But then why did you say ‘our family’ and talk about Claire and name him Noah and everything if that kid’s not hers, too? And what do you mean, ‘he’s my son now’? He wasn’t earlier?”
Sylar feels almost sorry for the boy, and decides to put off the bad news for a bit longer. “I’ll tell you everything in a bit. Here, hold him for awhile.” He pushes Noah into Lyle’s unwilling arms before the boy can blink.
The kid stinks, but Lyle doesn’t want to mention it; he’s sure that Sylar’s killed for a lot less provocation. He’s sticky and covered in something, and Lyle can only pray that it’s spilled formula, and it’s so strange to be holding a baby, he’s not even sure if he’s doing it correctly. It’s strange, and weird, and somehow kinda right.
- - - - - - - - - -
After calling Lyle, Claire spends the night just walking around town, trying to gather her thoughts. Dawn finds her down at the beach, staring out blankly over the ocean and letting the sound of the waves calm her nerves. She knows that she’d reacted badly, very badly, but she can’t help it. Even though they’d fought about it a thousand times, Claire had never expected that there would come a day when he wouldn’t be there to protect her, to treat her like his little girl. She almost laughs; they’d fought earlier that very day about how she wasn’t a child anymore, and then the first chance she got, she’d thrown a temper tantrum and pouted because she hadn’t got her way. She pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them, and cries.
Her phone rings, and she thinks for a few seconds about just chucking it into the water and not answering it. “Hello?”
“Claire.” Lyle’s voice is tight and he sounds angry. “Get your ass home right now.” He hangs up on her before she can respond, and she wonders what exactly Sylar’s told him.
- - - - - - - - - -
“What the hell, Claire!” Lyle lights in on her as soon as she slips in the back door of the house.
Sylar looks at the two of them, and mutters an excuse about putting Noah down for a nap; he runs out of the room before Claire can even ask him to stay.
She leans against the fridge, arms crossed protectively over her chest. “So, I guess you know.”
“I know that you abandoned our father when he needed you most. God, Claire, you gave him up to someone who’s basically a complete stranger!” Lyle runs his fingers through his hair like they’d seen Noah do a thousand times before when stressed.
She’s never seen Lyle so angry; he’s almost vibrating in rage, and she wonders if it would make him feel better to just go ahead and hit her. “Sylar’s not a stranger, Lyle. He’s a good man; he’ll take good care of Noah.”
“He’s not you or me. Why didn’t you take him, Claire? Why? And how can you talk about him like he’s not our father anymore? You’re so detached.”
None of her excuses seem to make much sense now; she can’t explain to him that she thought that refusing would make Angela somehow magically make things better. “Dunno.”
“You don’t know? That’s even worse than a bad excuse!” He stares at her for a minute like he’s never seen her before, and it makes her feel even worse than she was already feeling.
“I don’t know, Lyle. I just… I was overwhelmed. I thought that they could do something to reverse it. I’m too young for all this. I just don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Lyle, if I couldn’t take him, how could you? I’ve got this house and a job and people that could help me like Sylar and Angela, but you’re just an eighteen year old freshman living in a dorm room with a roommate who wouldn’t take kindly to a three-month old. Be realistic.” She says it as gently as she can. “Sylar can take care of him much better than either of us.”
“I’d drop out of school; I’d find a way to make it work.” He snarls at her. “You know, maybe it’s because I’m his real son that I just care more. I thought you loved him, but you only love yourself.”
She wants to slap him, but she just turns and walks out of the house instead. No point staying where she’s not welcome.
- - - - - - - - - -
The car pulls up next to her and the window rolls down. “Get in the car” the driver commands her.
“Go away.” Claire’s perfectly happy to stay exactly where she is, huddled on a sidewalk outside the high school.
“Claire Elizabeth Bennet, don’t you take that tone of voice with me.” Angela snaps at her. “Now, get in the damned car before I drag you into it.”
“I said, go away!”
If she’d been looking, she would have seen Angela roll her eyes. “Lord, give me patience,” Angela sighs, “okay, we’ll do this the hard way. Agent Bennet, get in the car now.”
Claire’s too well trained to turn down an order when it’s addressed to her like that. She glares at Angela as she climbs into the passenger’s seat. “What do you want? Want to yell at me some more, too?”
“No, dear.” Angela shifts the car back into drive. “We have things to discuss. Yelling’s just going to have to wait. Have you had breakfast yet?”
- - - - - - - - - -
Neither of them says a word until they’re sitting in their booth at the small diner, meals ordered and coffee consumed.
“Now, we need to talk about a few things.” Angela takes a deep breath, and exhales sharply. “Things we should have discussed before now.”
“Like what? Like how you knew this was going to happen?” The long hours of thinking had led Claire to some interesting finds. “You knew, don’t deny it.”
“Of course I knew. When are you going to learn that I know everything, dear? I know things about you that you don’t even know yet.” Angela smirks at her, and Claire suddenly realizes where - who - Sylar had gotten his smirk from.
Claire knows that Angela’s playing a game with her; she’s expected to ask “so what else do you know?” but she doesn’t. She just plays with her fork for a minute, trying to figure out what to ask instead. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
Angela reaches across the table and grabs the fork away, sliding it to the side, before grabbing Claire’s hand in hers and squeezing lightly. “What do you want to happen?”
“I… I don’t know. I want to be able to stay here, keep on working, maybe with Sylar as my partner. I can do my father’s job.” Claire sighs. “I want to be able to keep seeing Noah, I don’t want Sylar to take him away from me, but that’s something I need to discuss with him and not you.”
“He’ll not take Noah away, there’s no way he’d do that to you or Lyle. Tell me, Claire, what role do you want to play in Noah’s life?”
It’s a topic that Claire had spent a lot of time pondering. “I guess I’ll be Cousin Claire, the regular babysitter. There’s nothing else for me.”
“There isn’t?” Angela gives her a look that Claire can’t quite interpret.
“It’ll just confuse Noah later if Sylar refers to me as Aunt Claire.”
Angela reaches across the table and grabs her other hand, holding both now. “What do you want, Claire? What do you really want?”
“I don’t know. Whatever’s best for Noah.”
“I’ve said that before, about my boys. I want whatever’s best for them. You said that like a true mother.” Angela squeezes her hands again. “A boy needs a mother, Claire, just as much as he needs a father. My Gabriel can’t be both for him, and he’s going to need some help with raising Noah. And besides parents and a home and possibly a puppy, a boy needs siblings, dear. Gabriel definitely can’t give him that alone.”
“Yeah, that wouldn’t be weird or anything.” Claire chooses to ignore the sudden lurch in her stomach and the increase in her pulse at the thought, ignoring it like she always had in the past, ignoring how her grandmother’s seemingly trying to set the two of them up.
Angela lets go of her hands, and leans back into the booth, smiling at her; it’s the smile that Claire’s deemed the ‘I-know-something-you-don’t’-satisfied-grin. She takes a sip of coffee before asking “Why would it?”
“Um… because Noah’s my father but I’d be his mother and his father is my uncle and his brother would be his grandson, and his grandmother would be his great-grandmother. We’d end up on the Jerry Springer show every other week. Oh, and Sylar’s not going to want me to play that particular role. It would just gross him out.”
Claire watches with narrowed eyes as Angela’s grin grows even wider and as her grandmother leans across the table again. “Do you want to know a secret?” Angela whispers.
She knows she should probably say no, that she’s probably playing right into Angela’s hands, but she can’t help it. “What?” she leans forward, resting her elbows on the table.
Angela smiles again. “Nathan’s adopted too.”