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

[its_notabigdeal]

[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.”



1551 words

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[heroslayer]

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."

[its_notabigdeal]

Claire can handle a lot of things. She wants Sylar to stay, and she wants them to try and hold themselves together, but she also can't handle the resentment that would come with keeping him somewhere that he didn't want to be. And knowing Sylar, that could manifest in many different ways. Maybe it was fear, or maybe it was something else, but she isn't going to tie him down to something he doesn't want to be in. It's counterproductive, and she knows it.

"If you want to go, go," she says softly. "I won't hold you to this. But I need ... I need to finish this my way."

[heroslayer]

He closes his eyes again, taking the time to entertain the notion. He could just steal someone else's face and fade into the background. Turn things to gold and set up a chain of pawn shops to sell that at -- never the same place twice -- so he wouldn't leave a trail. Get an apartment somewhere and maybe a pet and live in anonimity until his neighbors realize he's not getting any older, then move on.

He recognizes the irony in even thinking about it, how he wanted so badly to be something more, something special, someone, and now he's considering leaving it all behind, and he huffs out a sigh of a laugh, the sound vaguely bitter. He'd be bored in a month -- some things never change -- and even if he somehow found ways of keeping his attentions fixed on pretending to be normal, he doesn't want to leave Claire. He can't. She's all he has left and even after his reform, he's never been good at making friends and he doesn't want to try. They won't last -- not like Claire will. Not like Peter was supposed to.

Sighing, he squeezes his eyes shut tighter and shakes his head. "I'll stay. We'll do it your way."

[its_notabigdeal]

She knows she probably doesn't deserve this, but when he agrees, she's immensely grateful. She doesn't want to lose him any more than he wants to lose her, and that one concession is enough to make her breathe a little easier.

"Thank you."

[heroslayer]

He hums in lieu of saying you're welcome and lapses into silence for a few minutes, contenting himself to leaning against the car door, the numbness he felt earlier creeping back in slowly and thankfully. As unhealthy as it is, it at least keeps him from snapping at her again over something small and stupid or from feeling like he's going to be sick. Or, worse yet, cry. He won't admit it to Claire, but there was a few seconds there where he'd actually been on the verge of tears.

Eventually, finally, he reaches up to rub at his eyes and opens them, staring blankly out the window for lack of anything better to do. "Did he say how long it'd be before they got here?"

[its_notabigdeal]

She shakes her head as she looks over at him again, before glancing down at her watch. "It shouldn't be long. They aren't that far away."

[heroslayer]

"Good." As empty as he is right now, he still has enough feeling -- enough sense -- to want to be as far away from here as possible as soon as possible.

[its_notabigdeal]

And she's right -- it isn't long before the rest of the division arrives to clean up the mess. She goes through the questions and debriefing as though she's on autopilot, just trying to get through the motions without causing any more trouble than she already had. Once she finally manages to get away from them, she realizes the state that she's in -- covered in blood, and more of a mess than she would like.

Once she gets permission to leave, she moves back to the car and waits. He didn't leave for her, so she won't leave without him. it's just a matter of when they would let him go.

[heroslayer]

He gets out of the car when she does, moving to lean on the hood of the car to watch as they debrief her. He hasn't been able to hear from this distance in the better part of a century, so he can't make out what they're saying, but he can't say he'd be able to process any of it even if he could. His interest is just a means of passing the time, something vaguely more interesting than the ceiling of the car to hold his attention until they come to question him, and eventually that time comes.

She comes back, he goes up to bat, answering what he figures are similar if not the same questions as they put before her. He barely pays enough attention to process and answer, his thoughts caught in resin again, and when they dismiss him, he returns to the car robotically, sliding back into his seat and just sitting there for a moment before he starts the car.

"Home, James?" There's no humor in his voice, just exhaustion, and yet in spite of that, he wonders how many miles he can put between them and this place before he has to stop.

[its_notabigdeal]

She waits until he's back in the car before visibly slumping. She's exhausted and done with this situation, and she really just wants to go home, wash the blood off her and curl up into bed.

"Please," she says softly, leaning against the car window again. "I want to be as far from here as possible."

[heroslayer]

Nodding, he stares at the wheel for a moment as if he has no idea what it is or how it works, then puts his hands on it, throwing the car into reverse abruptly. He backs out of his parking spot, casting one final look at their handler and his group, still there and making phone calls, trying to put the pieces in order, and puts the car in drive, rolling away from this disaster slowly.

[its_notabigdeal]

She doesn't look back and see what they're leaving behind. She keeps her eyes forward, doing her best to try and force the images out of her mind and keep her mind thinking ahead.

[heroslayer]

Sylar casts her one final glance as they get back on the road, then looks away, focused on their destination, his face blank, his breathing growing progressively stranger as they get further and further away. At some point, he pulls off to the side of the road and gets out, without warning or explanation, and disappears into the wall of scrub brush along the side of the highway. He comes back, pawing furiously at his mouth with the back of his hand, and gets back in the car, still silent, then they're on their way again, as if nothing has happened, as if he hadn't just thrown up on the side of the road.

When they get to the motel, he swings into their usual parking space and gets out, leaning against the frame of the car, staring at the building as nonplussed as he'd looked at the streering wheel earlier.

[its_notabigdeal]

Claire pushes out of the car and closes the door behind her. She pauses for a moment, trying to get a feel of what he's thinking, but she was never all that great at getting inside his head. Right now, it's probably best not to even try.

"I ... I need to clean up." Peter's blood is starting to itch against her skin, and she needs to get it off her. Now. "I'll ... I'll be inside."

[heroslayer]

He nods mutely, casting her a sideways glance, and after a moment more, he moves to follow her inside.

When she heads for the bathroom, he takes a long sweeping look around, his eyes drifting across their things, scattered around the room. His own clothing folded into a neat pile on top of the dresser. A bag they keep of first aid supplies that they've never really touched in all their time together, but Peter insisted upon, just in case. And so on and so forth, their lives splayed out like the wreckage of a tornado across the tiny space.

He drifts over to the closet and pulls out one of Peter's shirts, his fingers fisting the fabric, his first thought one of irrational anger. Peter is gone and for the briefest instant, he wants to destroy anything and everything that ever belonged to him in retribution. He thinks better of it, though, knows that that won't teach him anything or earn him his ire -- he's gone -- and starts to put the shirt back only to stop short when he spots one of Peter's hairs clinging to the collar.

He stares at it for what feels like forever, then delicately tugs it free of the shirt and closes his eyes, pulling the last of Peter into him, adding him to the repertoire of faces he's collected over the years. He shifts, just to make sure he has it, has him, and without turning back, he wheels back on the room, moving to find Peter's things one at a time, suddenly frantic.

He wants his memories. He needs them. And while all of their history together and their history before isn't trapped in this room, it's at least a start. He can find other things later. He can keep Peter like he kept his mother, back when he was working for Danko, and take him out when ever he needs advice or help. Or, better yet, maybe he can convince himself he is Peter. It should be too hard, as unstable as he is at the moment, and Claire needs Peter more than she needs him. He can do that for her.

Determined, he snatches the spare pair of shoes Peter has taken to keeping in the corner from their resting place, and closes his eyes again, this time drawing memory from the item, moments of their lives together burning themselves onto the insides of his eyelids. He sets them down when he's drained them dry and moves onto the next thing and the next and the next.

He's been through dozens of rapid fire memories when he hears Peter's voice behind him. "You can't just do this."

"Not like you can stop me, Peter," he shoots back, casting a glance over his shoulder to sneer at Peter, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Peter gets up, curling his fingers into fists so tightly his nails break skin. "You really want to hurt Claire like this?"

"I won't be. She needs you more than she needs me" Sylar uncurls his hands, half moons of fingertips where Peter tore up his hand -- their hand -- healing slowly. He's barely aware of the feeling, though, barely aware that this conversation is all in his head, his body doing the work for him, shifting back and forth erratically so he can have a conversation with a dead man, and goes back to picking through Peter's things.

From across the room, Peter just scowls at him.

[its_notabigdeal]

She turns the water up nice and hot, enough to scald if she could still feel pain. She can't, but she can feel the heat and see the blisters on her skin, and while she knows water up that high isn't going to last long, she doesn't really need it too. Just enough to get the blood away.

As much as she needs to get it off her, there's a small, irrational part of her mind that wants it to stay. That's the last piece of her family. That's one of the last vestiges of her blood, and Claire's alone. She has no family. She's just one little girl who happens to be cursed with the ability to outlive everyone around her, and it sucks. It's a vast, despairing feeling, one that ends in her curled up on the floor of the shower, face buried in her hands, and crying her eyes out until the shock of the water running cold hits her.

It's the sudden change in sensation that seems to snap her out of it a bit, and she wipes at the edges of her face, letting the cold water run over her for a moment, before climbing out and drying off. By the time she's dressed, she's the picture of composure again, wet hair hanging loosely around her shoulders, but when she exits the bathroom, it all goes to Hell all over again.

All she sees is Peter.

There's a brief flicker of hope that lands in the pit of her stomach, but it's followed by the crushing realization that Sylar can shapeshift. It can't be Peter, because Peter's dead. No amount of hoping can change that. And instead, she's just angry. Of all the mental breakdowns he can have regarding their situation, he chooses that?

"What are you doing?"

[heroslayer]

He drifts back across the room, his expression vacant, his skin crawling uncontrollably with all the fury of an angry ant colony, and pauses in front of the mirror by the dresser. The shift settles when he stops, his face his own again, and he turns on her making a face, all the life returning to his eyes. "Having a conversation."

Micah interrupting him with his mother stopped his madness last time; now he seems stuck in some sort of loop, moving back to where "Peter" was a moment before, every inch of visible skin in riot as he crosses the room again. He's back to Peter when he stops, and he huffs out an incredulous sigh, shaking his head. "He's being an idiot. He doesn't get it."

[its_notabigdeal]

She watches as it transpires, eyes wide in horror as Sylar shifts into Peter again. There's his voice, every tone, every inflection is there, and she's flashing back to decades earlier, when she found out that Nathan was really Sylar, masquerading in her father's skin the entire time. She hated him for it then, and there's a part of her that always will, but he can't do this again. Not with Peter. Not when she knows he's dead.

"Stop it," she demands. Her voice is even and cold, that's not going to change. "Now."

[heroslayer]

Back to the mirror, back to himself, and he's shaking, trembling faintly under the weight of all that's happened and the punishment his mind is inflicting on his body. He takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment, planting his hands on the dresser to support himself as he hunches over it, and shakes his head. "I can't."

He means that in all senses of the word. He needs to keep Peter, needs to be him, and his body is running with that, his features running like hot wax into Peter's. And Peter grits his teeth, letting the breath Sylar took out a sigh, and catches Claire's reflection in the mirror. "He thinks you need me more than you need him. It's like ... "

He shifts again, groaning. He's long since gotten used to the pain of shapeshifting, but as rapid fire as this is, it's too much. It didn't come and go like this when he was Nathan, and who knows how much time he put between the shifts when he was having his conversation with his mother. He wouldn't know now, either, if Claire wasn't here or if every shift wasn't turning to agony as the ghost of Peter and his memories -- or his own subconscious or whatever -- wars against him being Peter for too long. Nathan was too stubborn to die; Peter's too stubborn to let him have what he wants. It must be a Petrelli thing.

"Just -- just let me be him. Please."

[its_notabigdeal]

No. No, she is not going through this again. She's not going to have Peter only to lose him again when Sylar decides he wants to be in control again. She's not going to deal with this madness when she's supposed to be grieving. She can't.

She moves forward, grabbing him by the shoulders and spinning him around, before delivering a square punch to his jaw. Years ago, it may have been a slap, but she knows he can take more than that.

"Snap out of it," she growls, looking him dead in the eye. "And get it together."

[heroslayer]

He stares at her for a moment, stunned, and his skin crawls again, threatening one final revolt against him before stilling finally. He grits his teeth, getting the handle on himself she demanded, and pushes past her, something between hurt of the emotional variety and anger painted on his face as he walks away. Not that he goes very far -- he just marches off away from her to study one of the walls intently.

[its_notabigdeal]

She's pretty angry herself. The punch helps some of the rage subside, but there's still anger there. How he even considered that a viable option escapes her, but then again, she realizes that she gave up trying to understand the way his mind worked a long time ago.

"You can't be him," she says, words tight and tense. "You can't just shift into him had have it fix things. That's not the way the world works."

[heroslayer]

"You need him more than you need me. You always have," he says softly, echoing what he told her as Peter a moment before. "I don't blame you. He's all the family you have left. He's a better person than I could ever be. I've tried so hard to be like him, for him, but he's still Peter. And I'm still just me."

He pauses, taking a shuddering breath, and leans his forehead against the wall, his eyes falling closed again. "I've never asked you or Peter for anything. Anything I've ever wanted, I've kept to myself because half the time I still don't know what I'm allowed to have -- what's selfish, what's like I used to be -- but I'm asking you for this. Peter, he's -- I need him just as much as you do. It wouldn't hurt either of us to lose me. If it had been me instead of him ... "

Another pause, another shuddering breath. "Please."

[its_notabigdeal]

She may be angry, but she listens. She understands. She gets it. But she can't give it to him, no matter how much he may want it. She makes her way over to one of the beds and sits down on it, burying her face in her hands, trying to just breathe for a minute. There's a part of her that wants to say yes! and just let him do it, regardless of the consequences, but she knows that it won't fix anything.

Not really.

"No," she says softly, as her face reemerges. "It won't be the same. You know it, and I know it." She looks up at him, eyes soft, and just sighs. "He's gone, Sylar. We have to accept that."

[heroslayer]

He makes a small noise at the back of his throat, chokes on it, and turns to put his back to her, so that she won't be able to see that he's crying. It takes him a good few minutes to be certain that his voice won't betray him, either, and when he does finally say something, it's even softer than before. "I'm not sure I can."