its_notabigdeal | self-inflicted exhile } { oh my fair North Star, I have held to you dearly

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self-inflicted exhile } { oh my fair North Star, I have held to you dearly

[

heroslayer is used with permission while Peter is an NPC because ... well, yeah.]

Peter Petrelli is dead.

Claire isn’t even sure when it happens, but it does.

One minute, he’s standing right there in front of her, and the next he’s gone, scattered into the tiniest of pieces across the room. His blood hangs in the air like a fine mist that catches in her mouth and weighs heavy and coppery against his tongue. She can’t even make a sound when it happens because it’s all too fast. There’s no warning she can issue, nothing she can say. It’s just—over.

Odessa is where it began and Odessa is where it ends.

Peter is dead.

In one fraction of a second, her family is gone.

***

It's fifty years after she takes their powers public that they’re approached.

It’s probably the biggest mistake she’s ever made, but they’re living with it. Her, Peter … Sylar. The balance is tentative and most of the time Claire doesn’t trust him, but Peter holds them together. He reminds them why they have their abilities, why they do the things they do. For a while they hide. They bury who they are so far down that sometimes Claire forgets, or can delude herself into believing she’s normal for a little while.

Then Peter will do something … heroic. She’ll have to give him her ability, and they’ll relocate and start from square one all over again. Peter can never seem to hold on to her power for long. It’s a thing with him. He takes advantage of what’s in front of him, and she always jokes that one day, that’s going to get him killed.

Years go by, and one day, a man in a suit tracks them down and makes them an offer. The government needs people with powers to help police the people with powers. Claire’s revelation all those years ago sent most of them into hiding, but there are some that use it to their advantage. They terrorize. The government feels that people could stand to learn a lesson from the master.

They’re hesitant. Sylar’s been driving the hard road to redemption for almost as long as Claire has been with them, and placing him back in that line of temptation is dangerous. But redemption takes risk, and risk often comes with reward. They agree.

Their handler is stiff, but friendly, and the way he speaks reminds her of her father. At first, the missions are easy. People with abilities like Elle’s, or Meredith’s, just looking to cause damage more than actual evil being present. Slowly, the three of them become a team. A well oiled machine that does more good for the world than they could have dreamed of doing in their past fifty years of hiding. They were heroes. Maybe they didn’t have a cape, or wear tights. Maybe aren’t the grand scale heroes of comic book lore, but they help, and they believe that that, one way or another, has to count for something.

And more than anything else, they are a family. They’re all that each other has left, and for once, the world seems to be a bit more of a welcoming place.

***

Johan Resnick is not their average target.

His ability is destructive in a way no one can anticipate. Everything he touches simply disintegrates in his hands. All it takes is a bit of bare skin contact, a small puff of an explosion, and whatever it was is gone. Resnick is a terrorist, and his attacks are pointed and messy, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake that makes Claire sick to her stomach. She’s almost a hundred years-old and has seen the worst that the world has to offer, but the way Resnick strikes stirs something in her that she thought she has gotten past.

She blames Peter.

He holds onto his humanity like a coveted piece of gold, clinging to it like it’s the last good thing in his life. It’s so easy for Claire to just shut it all off, to tell herself that in a hundred years, they’ll all be dead and she’ll still be there, but Peter reminds her what it’s like to smile. He reminds her how to be happy, how to love again, and she holds on to those parts of herself for him. She tells herself that he’s doing it for her and Sylar, so they don’t go cold like the rest of the world seems to, but she knows that that’s wrong. That humanity is who Peter is. She’s scared of the person he’d be without it.

It takes them three months to find Resnick, and when they do, they corner him in an empty warehouse not far from Odessa, Texas. She doesn’t even realize that’s where they are until they pass the sign on the way in to town. The town has changed so much she barely even recognizes it, but there’s something about it that still feels like home. It brings a smile to her face while she’s working a case where she shouldn’t be smiling, and it feels good. At least for a little while.

She and Peter take point and go through the front door, while Sylar goes around the back. Peter is always with Claire, just in case he needs her ability after doing something … heroic. Peter always teases her that he doesn’t need a babysitter—up until he gets hurt and needs her to heal him all over again. They’re slowly making their way through each of the rooms, and it takes Clare a minute to register the fact that she knows where they are. She knows exactly where they are.

“This is Primatech.”

Not the original building, no. Not the one that Meredith blew up when Sylar dosed her with adrenaline. But it is still Primatech, a company building that was rebuilt in its place so that they could continue to do the work they did. Angela never had been one to give up without a fight, and Claire knows that in the end, the Company did as much good as they did harm. Being back in those walls, though, brings back a flood of memories she hasn’t even thought about in years. It reminds her of a simpler time—a time when she felt a little more human.

“It is?” Peter glances around, following her eyes to try and find the familiar indicators, lowering his weapon for all of a moment. It takes him a minute before recognition follows, and he smiles. “Wow. Funny the things that last.”

She nods for a moment, before looking over at him with a smirk, moving ahead with her gun poised. “You know, we first met in this town. All three of us.” She then makes a face. “If you had told me back then that I’d be used to sharing a car with Sylar, let alone living with him? I probably would have called you crazy.”

Peter laughs. “Things do have a way of working out for the best, don’t they?”

She’s quiet for a moment, before a small smile crosses her face, and she nods. “Yeah. I guess they do.”

They come up on the door where Resnick is holed up, and Peter puts a finger to his lips, before signaling that he would go in first. He always went first. It is his way of protecting her, even though he knows she doesn’t need it. She nods, and he pauses, before kicking down the door and making her way inside. He angles right, and she goes left. Her side of the room is clear, and just as she turns to check on him, she sees him.

“Peter, look—”

She can’t even finish the sentence, before Peter is just gone. The only evidence anything has happened lies in the fine red mist that now covers her completely. She has gotten used to wearing her own blood—it comes with her ability—but the feel of someone else’s is foreign and uncomfortable. The smell of it alone is enough to make her sick, and she can feel the bile rising in her throat.

“Don’t you all know by now,” Resnick says slowly, starting to advance on her as he pulls the other glove from his hand. All it had taken was one touch. One touch to kill one of the few people in her life she had left, and she wants to hurt him, but she can’t even bring herself to raise the gun in her hand. It suddenly feels like a hundred pound weight, and she’s frozen in place, unable to move. “It never pays to be the hero.” He’s telling that to the wrong member of their merry band.

Claire learned that a long time ago.

Doesn’t stop her from trying anyway.

There’s something in the way he says it that snaps her out of it, and the gun is suddenly up and firing. It’s two solid shots to his shoulder that aren’t quite fatal, but enough to blow him away from her and has him stumbling to the ground. The panic has passed, and now all that’s left is rage. She keeps the gun poised in front of her, a heavy glare on her face, as she advances on him.

“Stay still. This is going to hurt.”

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"He deserves it," he answers calmly, rolling one shoulder in a shrug. Other than that, though, he doesn't move, his body apparently much more open to suggestion than what's actually working of his conscious mind is. "When I'm done, he'll never be able to hurt anyone again. Maybe if he's lucky, I'll even put him out of his misery."

"There are easier ways to do that," she says softly, still trying to get him to back away. She knows that without Peter, she'll lose some piece of him, that a lot of the time, Peter was what was keeping Sylar together, but ... if he went all the way back to who he used to be, Claire isn't sure that she has the strength to bring him back again.

She's not Peter. Peter would have never let him get this far.

"I can do it," she says again, raising the gun in her hand. "One shot and he never hurts anyone else again." And Claire was a good shot, if nothing else.

He glances up at her, something small and lost and childlike in his eyes, but as his anger before did, it disappears before too long, and he looks away, back down to Resnick. He wets his lips with his tongue, the corners of his mouth tugging upwards into a ghost of a sneer and shakes his head. "He doesn't deserve easy."

Never mind the fact that he's pretty sure Peter didn't suffer for how quickly it was over (he hopes) -- Resnick deserves to suffer. Even if it's not making him feel any better, whatever hollow place he's fallen into stripping the pleasure from it, he deserves it. It might not be what Peter would have wanted, but it's right. It's justice.

That in mind, his fingers twitch again and something a little further up in the other man's arm shatters with a sick crunch. Resnick doesn't even scream this time, just whimpers, his body going into shock.

Edited 2011-04-09 17:23 (UTC)

The thing is, it's not justice. Not in Claire's eyes. They are supposed to stop him, not torture him, and there is nothing about this that sits right with her. Whatever little speck of humanity that didn't die with Peter bubbles up in the put of her stomach, and she knows that this isn't right.

It can't be.

She also knows that she can't stop him -- she doesn't have the power to. So she does the only thing she can do.

She lifts the gun and pulls the trigger.

Not at him -- at Resnick. It takes one bullet to the forehead, and he's gone. He won't hurt anyone, ever again. But she knows that it's small comfort to someone who's already been hurt.

Sylar doesn't look up at her, doesn't protest Claire ruining his ideas of right and wrong, doesn't even say a word, he just steps back, staring at the neat little hole she made in Resnick's head, blankly. Belatedly he lowers his hands, then takes another step back and another and another until his back is pressed up against the wall behind him. He slides down it slowly, balances his elbows on his knees and buries his fingers in his hair. It's not much of a reaction, not the anger Claire was hoping for, but it's something other than the cold that's been coming off him since he stepped into the room. As is the fact that his breathing is odd, a scream or a sob or both stuck on his lips.

She isn't hoping for anger, she just wants something that isn't cold detachment from the rest of the world. As long as she knows that he's feeling something with her in this, she'll be fine.

She watches him as he backs towards the wall, and drops the gun to the ground. It clatters probably a bit too loudly, but she didn't care. She wants it out of her hand and away from her. She pauses for a moment, before starting to make her way closer. She wishes she knew what he needs, but they've never been in this situation before.

And the idea that she would have to comfort him never really occured to her.

"Sylar?"

He looks at her from between his elbows silently, his jaw working like he wants to say something. He's not sure where to begin, though, or which statement would be the least pointless right now, his thoughts racing circles around him and wrapped in cotton all at the same time.

He could tell her that it's his fault, and it is -- if he'd been there sooner, if he hadn't gotten caught up in remembering the history here, hadn't taken a wrong turn, he would have caught more than just the end of Peter. He would have been able to do something. It's his fault, but he knows that she'll either dismiss him or, worse yet, agree, and things will go back to how they were a hundred or so years ago, and he's not sure he can take that right now, the cold he's still clinging to more glass than ice now that Resnick's dead and it's really, truly over.

He could say that he wishes Nakamura were still alive, wishes that he could be called in to fix this, or better yet -- or so a small, dark part of him thinks -- that he could find him and take and fix it himself. He doubts the latter will go over well, though, and the former is just wishful thinking. Nakamura's dead, just like Peter, and has been for some time, now.

He could say any number of things, really, but all that comes out, all that isn't as useless as he feels right now is, "We should leave."

Not that he makes any motion to get up from the floor.

Edited 2011-04-09 21:44 (UTC)

She nods, before moving closer and reaching for his arm gently. "Let's do that, then. Let's leave."

She wants to get out of here. She wants to leave the smell of blood and death, and just go, but she can't leave without him. She can't lose track of the one person she has left.

He lets her touch his fingers to his arm and gets to his feet, though he puts none of his real weight on her. As much as he doesn't feel like doing anything right now, he can do that much himself -- he needs to, to just put one foot in front of the other under his own power, or he'd just get to his feet and stand there. As it is, he lingers there for a moment, before heading to the door. He's not sure where there going to go now, but at least they're getting out of here.

She's quiet until they reach the doors to the outside. When that first gulp of fresh air hits her lungs, it turns her stomach so quickly that she's bounding over to the nearest bush and promptly losing her lunch. She's actually surprised she's managed to hold it together for as long as she had, but she has always managed to do better when there is someone else's problems to focus on. It has a way of keeping her from dealing with her own.

When she's finished, she straightens slowly, eyes glancing between the car that they came in and the man she is with. She takes a deep breath, wipes her mouth and tries to make sure her words don't come out too shaky.

"I should call this in." Their handler is going to want to know what happened.

"Probably," he agrees distantly, his eyes focused on the building behind them as if he expects Peter to come trailing out behind them.

The part of him that wished for Nakamura, the logical part, knows that's not possible, that Peter's gone, but some other part of him, the part that's keeping his heart racing and his thoughts behind smoked glass is holding out hope. This has to be a nightmare or a sick joke or something. Peter can't be dead. This isn't how it was supposed to happen -- he was supposed to live as long as him and Claire. They're all supposed to be together forever.

It occurs to him almost belatedly that Resnick wasn't the only one in shock, but he's not sure what to do with that knowledge. It doesn't change anything. He still keeps hoping this isn't real.

She turns away from him to call their handler, letting her weight rest against the hood of the car. She isn't even sure she believes it either, and it will probably hit her hours from now, once the adrenaline has faded, but for right now, she's just focusing on the things she can do. Not the things she's supposed to be feeling.

He watches her for a moment idly, blankly, then rounds the car to get in the driver's seat. He doesn't bother to start it up -- he doesn't want the engine sound to get in the way of her phone call -- but he does put the keys in the ignition, going through the motions as he casts another glance back at the building. Any minute now, Peter will walk out and join them. Any minute now.

Claire hopes for it herself, but as she talks to her handler, the more real it becomes. The feeling alone is enough to make her feel sick again. She swallows it down, though, and eventually makes her way around to the passenger's side of the car.

"What'd he say?" he asks, starting the car finally. He's not sure he really wants to know, but maybe if he does, it'll give him some sense of purpose. A reason to drive away from all of this. He needs something or he'll be sitting here forever, glancing over his shoulder or to the rear view mirror, hoping that Peter will somehow magically join them.

She sighs as she slumped back into the seat. "To wait here. He's going to send a team to clean things up and fill us in on the story that they're gonna use for the press."

It isn't what she wants to do either, but she's going to follow protocol on this. The last thing she needs is the government thinking she has something to hide. She's disappeared and gone off the radar before, but that doesn't mean she liked it.

So much for that idea.

He echoes the sigh, turning the car off again, and sinks back in his seat, his head falling back on the headrest so he can stare at the ceiling. It beats checking for Peter compulsively, he supposes. "Right."

She sighs as she leans back in the seat, drumming her fingers against her thigh. This is not good. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know." He closes his eyes as reality slowly starts to set in and his stomach starts twisting in knots. He figures maybe it'll help, but it doesn't. He's starting to wonder why he counts on anything anymore when everything today has been wrong. He reaches up, pressing his fingers to the corners of his eyes, and takes a few slow, deep breaths, hoping for the cold again, even though hope has gotten him all of no where today. "It's -- I keep just sort of ... expecting Peter to show up. That this'll all turn out to be a joke. Or a dream."

"I know what you mean," she said softly, sinking into the car seat a little more. He was the one that had held them together. Made sure that they weren't alone. Now, she wasn't sure she had the force of will to get Sylar to stay, and if she lost him ...

... She might not have always liked the guy, but she doesn't want to be alone either.

He hums and shifts a bit uncomfortably in his seat, nausea creeping up on him slowly, bile stinging the back of his throat. He takes another deep breath -- in through his nose, out through his mouth -- and settles, resting his head against the window slowly. This way, he figures, if (when) he needs to be sick, he can just open the door and lean out. He's not quite to that point yet, though.

"We could just ... leave."

"And go where?" Go back to hiding again? Claire isn't sure if she could do it. They have fought for what they have for so long, Claire isn't sure if she could just give it up. With or without Peter.

"I can't hide anymore, Sylar."

"And this is better?" He pushes away from the window, raising his head to look at her sharply, anger, however belated, sliding up his spine and spreading out, its white-hot fingers wrapping tightly around his heart. He's grown up emotionally in the last few decades, but his temper has nothing to do with age. He flashes her a look -- the bastard child of a disgust and undirected rage. "Just -- just sitting around taking these stupid assignments? How long before we get another one like this? How long before I end up dead, too? How long before you do?"

Claire's eyes narrow as she turns to face him, arms crossing in front of her chest. "At least I feel like I'm accomplishing something. I don't have to hide who I am, I can just ... be. I can't go back to that other world."

She can't go back to being the invisible person in the crowd again. It hurt too much to never have anything that lasted.

He stares at her for a moment, incredulous and half tempted to hit her as hard as he can, knock her out and drag her off away from their handler and this life. His fingers curl into fists reflexively at the thought, but he can't bring himself to do it. It's her choice and he's pretty sure taking her away from this won't earn him any points; he just lost one of the two people he's ever been able to call friend in his entire pathetic life and he doesn't want to lose the other. Not yet. Not even if it'll probably end like that anyway, with him all alone when history repeats itself, however long that takes.

He closes his eyes tightly and sinks back against the window, trying to remember how to breathe through the anger and the hurt. "Whatever."

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