I Died In Odessa

Heroes50.10: The Battle of Marathon

2007-06-12T16:17:19Z

Title: The Battle of Marathon
Rating: PG
Summary: Ellen is the best nurse on Long Island, and the only one who knows what Peter Jones and his bodyguard Claude are hiding.
Notes: For heroes50 prompt #10: Run.

Having Athena's mind, Achilles' heel,
She's mythological, this modern woman.
Torn from the chariot, a loosened wheel
Which kept the chariot upon its course
She runs ahead, beyond the fallen horse.
-- Witter Bynner

Ellen Battle had a secret, and it was this: she was fast.

Not just fast, but super-fast. Super-duper fast, even. It was what made her the best nurse in Long Island -- hell, all of New York, probably the country, possibly the world. She was where she needed to be when she needed to be there; she could run an IV faster than anyone, and when someone called a code blue she was just there almost before their hand left the button. It had gotten her some strange looks before she arranged for all her shifts to be with the ER, where nobody noticed stuff like that.

The emergency room at East Hampton General paid well and it was discreet, because aside from tending to the sprains, breaks, cuts, and contusions of the island's support staff, it dealt with the sprains, breaks, cuts, contusions, overdoses, domestic violence, alcohol poisoning, and other embarrassments of the ridiculously wealthy. It was not unfamiliar for a long dark sedan to pull up in front of the emergency room's gates and a group of bodyguards to quietly help someone into the reception area.

Ten in the morning was a pretty quiet time in the ER, so Ellen was on the spot when two men walked in, one of them obviously a bodyguard (scruffy, tall, faintly menacing) and the other obviously some little rock star who'd got himself in a jam (Ellen didn't follow the gossip rags). The rock star was barefoot, wearing khakis and a coat too big for him.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked the bodyguard.

"Checkin' him in," the man replied. "Need to look for concussion."

"Did he have a fall?"

The man smiled. "You could say that."

***

Peter Jones was a good name for a rock star, Ellen decided. It was plain but it had that too-plain feel, like it was probably an assumed name and he'd been doing wicked things under another name.

Mr. Jones looked okay, but he couldn't remember who he was or who his bodyguard was, or how he'd gotten to Montauk. The bodyguard didn't know either, though he did seem to know more than he told.

"He doesn't have any ID on him," she said to the bodyguard, who introduced himself as Claude.

"No. He was naked when I found him."

"Naked?"

"Yup. Way the hell out by Lake Montauk. Had to break into a hotel and steal him some clothing. They won't thank me for that, I reckon."

"Well, that's pretty resourceful," she said.

"You get used to it," he answered.

"Is he very famous?"

He glanced sidelong at her. "Eh?"

"He's a rock star, isn't he? He looks like a rock star. All that hair," she said, and hung one hand over the side of her face in an imitation of Mr. Jones's hair. Claude laughed.

"Not very famous," he said. "Famous enough to keep this quiet, though. We understand each other?"

He was a little scruffy and rough around the edges, but he had nice blue eyes, and clearly he cared about Mr. Jones.

"Of course," she said. "Is there anything I can get you?"

"Cup'a coffee would be -- " he stopped, because in the time it had taken him to say "coffee" she'd run to the nurse's station, filled a cup, grabbed a few packets of sugar and creamer, and run back. He blinked. " -- favourite..."

"We just made a new pot," she explained. He dumped in three packets of sugar and stirred; his nice blue eyes narrowed above the cup as he sipped. "Does he live on Long Island?"

"No...no, New York," he said. "He had a bit of an...explosion with his brother, disappeared for a bit. Brother told me to find him, I went and found him."

"It must be really interesting, working for famous people."

"Christ, I'm an employee," he said, apropos of nothing. She was about to ask him what he meant when the doctor appeared.

"Mr...?" he said, offering his hand to Claude.

"Just Claude, thanks," Claude replied.

"Well, Mr. Jones seems to be all right -- there's no bruising that I can see and he seems lucid, if a little perplexed. I'd like to do an MRI to check his brain for bleeding, however, and put him on an EEG."

"Go to," Claude said. Ellen, already at Peter's bedside and prepping him for the scan, glanced back to see Claude watching her again. He was a sharp one; she'd have to be careful.

***

Peter, if that really was his name, didn't know who this Claude character was or how he himself had ended up on an island in the middle of a bigger island at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. He was glad they'd finally made it to a hospital, since he did definitely want to know why he couldn't remember anything.

Oh, little fragments surfaced; all these medical machines seemed very familiar, and so did Claude's face, but there was an instinctive mistrust attached to it, a feeling that the man who'd brought him to the hospital was not, perhaps, his best friend.

Still, there was a warm bed and lunch was on its way and someone was trying to fix him, so he couldn't be too unhappy about life.

"Chow's on," said Ellen, the nurse who'd helped him check in. She was carrying a tray with a covered plate, a bowl of soup, and a Diet Coke on it. "Thought you might like a little treat after the MRI," she added, indicating the Coke.

"It wasn't so bad," he said, though the feeling of being encased in several feet of loud, clicking plastic had almost made him scream. He'd felt like a cockroach had eaten him whole and was just waiting to digest him.

"You're a trooper, Mr. Jones." She set the tray down on the table and moved it over the bed, but when he sat up a little it bumped into his knee and the open can of soda went flying.

She started to say "Oh, damn" but before she could finish Peter suddenly found himself holding the can upright, liquid actually flying back into it.

There was a pause. She looked at him; he looked at her. Then, carefully, she maneuvered the table into place, plucked the can from his hand, and poured it into a cupful of ice.

"There you go, that's nice," she said.

"Did you see that?" he asked.

"See what?" she said, and after all he was in a hospital for memory loss, perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him.

***

The doctors wouldn't tell Claude the results of the MRI and Claude knew it, but that was what invisible men were made for.

"Do you see this?" the ER doctor asked, glancing at the specialist who'd come into the room and given Claude the open door he needed. The specialist examined the computer screen.

"Seems normal enough to me."

"Mr. Jones has severe, total memory loss."

"Well, it must be somatic, then."

"I don't think so. Take a look at this." A tap on the keyboard and a different image came up, a lot of lines and dots and things. Claude tilted his head. Bennet had always handled the medical side.

"That looks like..." the specialist pursed his lips.

"Yeah, it does."

What does it look like? Claude thought impatiently. He didn't have time for medical drama.

"You think he's had ECT?" the ER doctor asked, when the specialist didn't answer.

Oh god. ECT.

Claude closed his eyes against the memories -- one terrible three-month experiment, controlling dangerous people using electrodes and switches and no. Not thinking about that now.

"Could be," the specialist said, bringing him back to reality. "Who is this kid?"

"Intake nurse -- Battle -- said she thinks he's a rock star or something. Seen his bodyguard?"

"No, why?"

"He's huge and terrifying. I make Battle deal with him. Charms him like a cat with a lion."

"No history of mental illness?"

"Not much of a history of anything, we're still trying to pull his records. But if it is ECT, there's no going back, is there?"

"The kid's a clean slate. He walks, he talks, he has no memory and never will."

There was a rap at the door and the nurse -- Ellen, the woman with the odd way of being where she needed to be almost before she needed to be there -- came inside. As she did, Claude slipped through the door and out, shaking off his invisibility in the empty corridor.

If Peter Petrelli had no memory then that meant he had no way to unlock his power -- one power in particular, which was best defined as the power to make an entire city go boom if he got upset. In fact, he might not even have it anymore. Wiped clean out of his brain. Perhaps he couldn't access any of his powers anymore.

Claude had gone the death-to-escape route once. There was no reason Peter couldn't now. Find a quiet place to keep the boy, train him properly from scratch, control what powers he took and when, teach him how to be the perfect Empath.

He might not be a Company man anymore, but Company indoctrination was hard to break. Peter went from annoying student to helpless ward to science experiment in less time than it took to blink. He found himself standing at the foot of Peter's bed, studying him with clinical detachment.

"Hi," Peter said, and he smiled at Claude, and there he was back at helpless ward again.

Still, the minute it got out that Peter was alive, someone would come after him. The Company, his brother, the police...

"Put some clothes on," Claude said. "We got to get out of here."

"Why?"

"S'not safe. We got to -- "

"Mr. Jones isn't going anywhere."

Claude turned to find Ellen standing behind him. He reached out to take her arm and pull her inside the privacy curtains but she was suddenly three feet away on his left. He feinted and there she was on his right, just in time for his arm to shoot out and his hand to catch her elbow.

"You're fast but you're not clever," he said through his teeth, holding tight to her arm. "I've got ten years experience on you and I know what you can do."

"Did she just..." Peter asked, behind them, but neither one paid the slightest attention.

"Let me go," she said.

"No," he answered.

"You're just going to hold onto my elbow forever? You'll get a cramp."

"I'll switch hands," he said.

"Excuse me," Peter said.

"You can't take Mr. Jones out of the hospital, he's not well."

"I can and will and you have no idea just how unwell he is."

"He can do what I do," Ellen replied.

"He can do a lot of things."

"HEY! PATIENT OVER HERE!" Peter shouted, and both of them glanced at him. "Let go of her. You're my bodyguard, you have to do what I tell you."

"I'm not your bodyguard, I'm your bloody saviour," Claude said, and turned back to Ellen. "I let you go, you stay right here and we discuss this before you go running off to sound the alarm. Otherwise the whole hospital's going to know what you can do."

"Okay," she said, and he let his hand fall. As far as he could tell, she stayed where she was, but with the fast ones sometimes it was hard to know.

Claude looked from her face to Peter's, then back, wondering just how much he could get away with. Not much, probably.

"Your name is Peter Petrelli," he said to Peter, who looked at him blankly. "You're the younger brother of Congressman Petrelli of New York. Who, I might add, is a complete wanker. You," he said, turning to Ellen, "are fast. Faster than any human being ought to be. You're just there suddenly. Bet you ran track in high school."

"All state," she muttered.

"Thought so."

"There are other people like me? Other...really fast people?"

"Am I really fast?" Peter asked.

"World's full of people who're different. In different ways. Me? I disappear," Claude said, and vanished to prove his point. Peter squeaked, because that was Peter all over. Ellen stared, and before he knew it he'd been shoved hard in the shoulder. He reappeared.

"You," he said, pointing at Peter, "can do what we do. You're...special among the special."

"Why?" Peter asked.

"If I knew the answer to that, princess, I wouldn't be here," Claude said. "And there isn't time. There're going to be questions about him, and sooner or later someone's going to add up who he is. I need to get him out of here. Now."

Both of them looked at him mistrustfully, and he couldn't really blame them. He waited, counting the seconds, knowing from long experience that people needed time to make up their minds.

"Where will you take him?" Ellen asked.

"Somewhere safe. He's dangerous, to you, to himself, to me. Got to show him how to control it. Got to get him away from people."

"I'm not dangerous," Peter said.

"How d'you know?" Claude retorted. Peter opened his mouth, closed it, and frowned. "We got to run. I swear I will tell you what you need to know but we got to run."

***

It couldn't have been Ellen who helped the crazy rock star and his psycho bodyguard escape. It stood to reason, because two minutes after someone called them a cab and got them out the door and destroyed Jones's intake records, she was in the cafeteria, halfway through a tuna fish sandwich. Nobody was that fast.

Nobody.

END

Heroes50.9: Petrus Polaris

2007-06-09T00:16:23Z

Title: Petrus Polaris
Rating: PG for language
Summary: The search for Peter's body leads Claude to Star Island, and a strange glittering sculpture on the southernmost edge.
Notes: Petrus Polaris translates to "Peter the Fixed Star". For heroes50 prompt # 9: Jump.

"And children digging naked in the sand
Will find my shell and on it scratch new words
That soon will blossom out," he said, "and bear
New fruit, strange to the tongue of men and birds."
-- Malcolm Cowley

Star Island was a long way from New York, way the fuck-hell out at the tip of Long Island. It wasn't a place men like Claude were allowed, men without bank accounts and shined shoes and a yacht. The entire island was owned by a corporation. It wasn't even open in the winter. The island was closed.

He hitched a ride with a delivery driver as far as Lake Montauk, but no deliveries went to Star Island. It was self-sufficient, isolated, with its own water and electricity separate from the mainland, if you could call Long Island a mainland. The driver left him about four miles from the land-bridge to the island and moved on.

Molly Walker had put a pin in a map on Star Island, when he asked her where Peter's body was. An island within an island, in a bay on the isolated spit of land. He'd no idea what was there, but the allegory was making him uneasy. Peter had fallen to earth in a place cut off from everything and everyone. Claude could draw the inference right enough.

He walked across the bridge that afternoon and stopped at the turnoff for some fancy resort or other, with a beach on his left, a parking-lot beyond it. To the right was a hotel of some kind; he could see a blue cover on an obscenely big swimming pool. Past that was more beach, populated here and there with scrubby clutches of brush.

When he was nine he'd gone to the seaside with his parents and in an isolated patch of ground he'd found a dead deer, too small to be anything but an infant. The skin was stretched tight, head pulled back as the ligaments shortened, eyes long gone, bones showing under the skin on the legs. He wasn't quite certain what he would do, what he could do, if he found Peter like that.

Pitch him into the water. Tell Petrelli the body was found, and pitch him into the water and give him a burial at sea. He'd be of some use, at least, feeding the bay's beasties.

He turned left and moved on, walking on the edge of the road, invisible out of habit though there was nobody there. Desolate and mostly paved. Lovely.

Night fell before he'd finished quartering the northern portion of the tiny island. He found a snack machine near the tennis courts (seriously? Tennis courts?) and broke into it for dinner. He'd had worse. There were tarp-covered boats moored at docks near an empty hotel and he slept uneasily in one of them, dreaming that the moorings had come undone and he was drifting out to sea, the Atlantic freezing the doors and windows, trapping him inside an iced-over cave.

He'd had just about e-fucking-nough of this.

In the morning he went south, half-intending to walk back off the island and get the hell out of this horror-fest, but he wasn't going to tell Petrelli he'd found where Peter fell and only looked at half the island. As he walked past the turnoff he went south, through the small parking lot and around the edge of a building. Just this last little rounded piece of land, manicured grass lawn leading down to the beach.

The beach, where something was glittering at the water line.

Just some arsehole's water-ski, he decided, but he investigated anyway. Drawing closer, it looked like a large sculpture of some kind, and closer still it looked like --

"Peter," he said, quietly.

The waves washed up and around the glittering thing. Spikes of ice stuck out at odd angles, slowly elongating as the water around them clung and froze. The tide should be eroding the ice, not freezing to it. It formed a kind of -- not a cage, though almost -- more like a cradle.

There was a body in the center.

He touched one of the shoulder-high spikes and then tugged; it was solid, and when he licked his wet hand he tasted salt. The high-tide line was ten feet back up the beach. Peter had fallen, then, and some talent he'd picked up somewhere had frozen the water when he hit.

Claude was pissed off.

He jammed an elbow against the spike he'd touched and heard a crack, but it was the ice and not his bones. He picked up a nearby stone and hammered at it, fighting the barrier in silence, throwing his body against the thin wall of ice when he got past the edges. It shattered and rained frost down on the body and he hurdled the bottom of the wall easily, stepping over Peter and throwing himself against the other side until that too cracked and groaned. With a sudden explosion, the ice walls fell and the tide, coming up around them, began to wash the fragments away. It wetted his boots and they froze momentarily to the ice he stood on. He shouted and kicked, breaking free, and then turned around to see Peter's body, skin blue, one arm flung up over his face as if he were shielding himself.

Well. Petrelli would be pleased to have such a well-preserved corpse.

He lifted the body's hand from its face and got one arm under it, hauling it out of the ice and onto the sand. He stumbled and fell and started to laugh. Graceful Peter Petrelli, who could arrow through the air and read thoughts and heal himself, a dead-weight on top of his legs.

Then something flickered, and Claude went very still. He pulled his legs away from the body.

Peter lay with his head turned back like the dead deer, arms splayed, half his face crusted with sand. At his throat, a flicker. The skin stretched taut over something that flickered and jumped.

Oh god, there's something inside him, was his first thought -- some animal had crawled down his throat and was eating him from the inside. Except...

He raised his arm and fetched the body a ringing, powerful backhand against its cheek. The flicker continued, regular, a little faster now, jump jump jump jump.

It wasn't an animal or a trick of the light it was oh Christ it was a pulse Peter Petrelli you stupid fuck you've got a pulse.

Claude slapped him again and brought both hands down in fists on his chest, hard. Bones broke this time, sure enough, Peter's rib bones, and then there was a soft whurrr as they knit together again. He hit the boy again and again, harder than he'd dared when Peter was alive, and on the fourth or fifth or maybe tenth try, Claude wasn't sure, Peter screamed.

"Oh Jesus," Claude said, and grabbed him and pulled the boy up, holding Peter's head against his shoulders, cradling him as they sat on the sand. He could feel his pulse under one hand.

Jump. Jump. Jump.

A very small, very rough voice intruded into the perfect, brilliant rhythm of the pulse.

"Lemme go," Peter said weakly. "Who the hell are you?"

END

Heroes50.8: Sweet Molly Malone

2007-06-04T19:03:46Z

Title: Sweet Molly Malone
Rating: PG for language
Summary: Molly likes Mr. Rains, even though DL and Niki don't.
Notes: For heroes50, prompt 8: Freeze. This is the third story of the "Quest" series in The Invisible Cycle (see Table), and is meant to be read as part of a series of interlinked vignettes. Spoilers for the season finale.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
-- Robert Frost

Molly liked the man who came to see her. He treated her like a grownup.

Most adults talked to her as if she were a baby, as if she didn't know anything about the world. Even Dr. Suresh and Officer Parkman did it sometimes, though they were better about it than most grownups. Molly wasn't stupid, she was just trapped in a body that made people think she was. DL and Niki were okay about it, but they thought she and Micah couldn't hear a lot of the things they could. Including the argument with Mr. Rains.

"How did you find us?" Niki asked, real fear in her voice.

"I have sources," the man answered. His accent was neat, like Zazu in The Lion King. "I'm not here to hurt anyone."

"What sources?" DL asked. Molly liked DL, because he wasn't afraid of anything.

"Ah -- you're the one who killed Linderman, aren'tcha? Nathan Petrelli warned me about you."

"Then you shoulda took the warning and left us alone."

"Can't do that, mate. Your girl's a finder. I need her to find me something."

"What if he hurts you?" Micah asked, sitting on the floor next to her bed. They were both supposed to be asleep, but Micah had sneaked out of his room and into the funny little storage room that DL and Niki had set up for her. Niki had promised that once things had calmed down a little they'd get a new house, with a real bedroom for her. It was almost like having parents again, except that they had different rules and Niki made peanut butter sandwiches wrong (you were supposed to put the peanut butter in the fridge, everyone knew that). "Mom told him she wasn't going to let anyone else near you. Maybe she's afraid he's going to make you sick again."

"Dr. Suresh said that you can't catch the kind of sickness I had," Molly reminded him.

"Well, still. He might hurt you or kidnap you or something."

"He's just trying to find someone. I'm good at that. They ought to let me help," Molly said. "Finding people doesn't hurt me."

Micah made a dubious face.

"Besides, DL said he could talk to me if DL was there, and your dad won't let anyone hurt me."

"I could stay too," Micah offered.

"That's okay. You listen from the kitchen and if you hear anything happening then you can come in," Molly decided. "Your mom's coming -- go back to bed."

Micah scurried away, reaching his bed just in time (Molly knew where everyone in the house was, always) and she slept safe in the knowledge that Niki and DL and Micah would be there, and they wouldn't let anything happen to her.

***

Claude had no access to the Company's files, even if he'd wanted it; they were triple-locked, unhackable, and they weren't stored on an internet-accessible server. The only way to get to the files was to be on the inside, or know someone who was.

Fortunately, Claude knew Nathan Petrelli, which was almost as good. Petrelli knew Bennet, and Bennet knew of a girl named Molly Walker, a girl who could find things. Claude had known a finder once; Gustav, the skinhead ex-Catholic whom he'd driven literally to the brink of insanity in order to break him to Company standard, all those years ago. He guessed Gustav had died, or the company wouldn't have needed Molly.

Gustav hadn't been able to find the bodies of the dead; maybe Molly could, and Claude could discharge the debt he owed to Nathan for failing Peter. Petrelli had already said that Molly couldn't find his brother, but Claude knew a few tricks.

Hawkins showed him to the living room; the house still smelled of sausage and pancakes from breakfast. Molly was small and slight, though she looked somehow older than her nine years.

"Molly," Hawkins said. "This is Mr. Rains. You don't have to do anything he tells you."

Molly giggled and looked up from her coloring. "Hello, Mr. Rains."

"Claude's all right," Claude said, sitting a little stiffly on the couch. She sat on the other side of the coffee table, marker pens strewn around her. She was coloring a map of the United States. Ironic. "Reckon you know I'm here to ask for help."

"Yeah," she said, capping a blue marker and uncapping a green one.

"You been asked about Peter Petrelli before, haven't you."

"He's the exploding man," she said. "I told the other man I couldn't find him."

"Mr. Bennet?"

"Mm-hm."

Claude tapped his fingers against his lips. He'd never trained anyone this young; it'd been years since he'd even spoken to anyone under the age of twenty. Up till Peter Petrelli it'd been years since he'd spoken to anyone.

"You can't find him on account of him being dead," he said.

"That's right."

"Want to try an experiment with me?" he asked. She looked up, eyes narrowing.

"What kind of experiment?"

"T'see if you can find him even though he's dead."

"He's dead. What's the point of that?"

That was a damn good question. Claude studied her face.

"No point really," he said. "Cept people need to see things end."

She pursed her lips. "Okay. What do we do?"

Claude looked sidelong at Hawkins, who stubbornly refused to budge from the doorway.

"How d'you find people?" he asked. "Y'think about what they're like? What you know 'bout them?"

"Sure."

"Figures," he sighed. God, the whole world was composed of Peter Petrellis. "Right. Try this instead. Think about what he looks like. You remember what he looks like, eh?"

"Sort of. His hair was all in his eyes. And he was glowing."

For the first time, Claude felt a stab of -- pity? empathy? -- something bitter and unhappy, some emotion for Peter. Poor kid. Alone and frightened of his power...

Oh, Christ. Snap the fuck out of it, arsehole.

"Think about what he looked like. Lookit this," Claude said, and offered her a wadded, crumpled map of Manhattan and the surrounding area, all the way out to Block Island on the brink of the Atlantic Ocean.

"I need a pin," she said, fumbling in her pocket for a box of brightly-coloured push-pins. She took one out and held it ready.

"Right. Now, ignore what you know."

She giggled. "How do I do that?"

"Put it up somewhere. Fold it up and put it in a pocket in your head. Got that?"

She opened her eyes, and he held up a finger. Hurriedly, she closed them again.

"Got it?"

"Got it," she said.

"Right then. Think 'bout what he looks like. Just what he looks like."

"What colour are his eyes?" she asked.

"Brown," he said, without thinking.

"M'kay. I know what he looks like now," she said.

"Now find what looks most like him."

Both men watched as Molly raised a hand, the push-pin clenched in her small fingers. They were so young now -- this girl wasn't even old enough to go to a PG-13 movie on her own. Younger than he'd been, and he'd been one of the youngest when Linderman --

No need to think about Linderman right now.

Molly's hand zipped back and forth across the map of New York and Long Island, closing in and darting away again. Finally she fell still, the pin hovering over the eastern tip of Long Island, near Montauk.

She started to tremble.

"What'd you do to her?" Hawkins asked, as Molly's body shook.

"Isn't my doing, friend," Claude said. Molly's teeth began to rattle against each other -- no, to chatter with cold. Hawkins reached out to shake her out of it, but she continued to tremble, and the beds of her small fingernails started to turn blue.

"What the hell -- " Hawkins rose to shake both her shoulders, but Claude shoved him back with a well-placed hand on his chest.

The plastic of the pin crackled in her hand as she moved it downward. She shoved it in so hard it went through the paper and into the table, shattering as it went. The second it was down she opened her eyes and shrieked in pain.

To his credit, Hawkins didn't punch Claude first; he went to the girl and wrapped his arms around her from behind, pressing his cheek to hers. She was pale all over and a light dusting of frost sat on her lips where her breath had condensed.

"Get the hell out of my house," Hawkins said, glaring up at him. Claude stood, staring down at them in shock. "Get out before I kill you."

Claude glanced at the doorway from the kitchen to the living room. A young boy stood there, holding a small paring knife. Behind him, Niki Sanders was gripping the doorframe so tightly that it was splintering.

This was turning ugly fast.

He snatched up the paper, pulling it around the remains of the broken pin, and ran for the front door. Sanders was after him as soon as he moved, but once he got outside he disappeared -- she stopped on her front lawn but he put three blocks between himself and that house before he allowed himself to stop for breath, just in case.

He hated himself for a lot of things he'd done for the Company, but you learned to live with it.

He didn't think he could do that to a child again.

She'd literally frozen up. He had no idea if she was supposed to do that, but he highly doubted it. Something about finding Peter was different...

His first instinct was to believe that the boy was in a morgue somewhere, but deep down there was also a flicker of hope, of belief that the only way finding a dead man would affect Molly like that was if he wasn't actually dead.

He looked down at the map. There was a small, ragged hole at the northern tip of Long Island. Not actually in the land, but in the water. Or in something that was in the water.

He pressed the edges of the paper down with a thumbnail, filling in the hole. An island in a little bay at the extreme north of Long Island.

Star Island.

Stay put, mate. I'm coming.

***

When Molly opened the door the next day, there was a man in a uniform standing on the front step.

"I have a delivery, is your mommy at home?" the man said, in the most annoying possible voice.

"Who's it for?" she asked.

"It says...Molly Walker. Does she live here?"

"That's me," Molly said.

"All right," the man laughed. "Sign here."

Molly signed, annoyed, and was presented with a brown-wrapped box. She shook it, and something inside thudded softly against the sides.

Micah helped her open it; styrofoam peanuts cascaded everywhere as she pulled out a small teddy bear, wrapped in protective plastic. A note was pinned to it -- Sorry, kid. CR. -- and there was a metallic key sticking out of its side.

"It's a musicbox inside the bear. Wind it up!" Micah said excitedly.

Molly did as ordered, and a soft, tinny-sounding tune began to play. She knew the song; her dad used to sing it to her. She hugged the bear tightly as they listened.

In Dublin's fair city, where girls are so pretty,
Twas there that I met my sweet Molly Malone,
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow
Crying "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o!"

Alive, alive-o!
Alive, alive-o!
Cockles and Mussels
Alive, alive-o!

END

Heroes50.7: Black Tom's Well

2007-06-04T19:02:59Z

Title: Black Tom's Well
Rating: PG for language
Summary: Even the best in the business can't find Peter, but Claude still has a few ideas -- and, once he gets ashore, a much bigger problem than one missing Empath.
Notes: For heroes50, prompt 7: Swim. This is the second story of the "Quest" series in The Invisible Cycle (see Table), and is meant to be read as part of a series of interlinked vignettes. Spoilers for the season finale.

Leave him, for rest alone can cure --
If cure there be --
This waif upon the sea.
He is of those who slanted the great door
And listened -- wretched little lad --
To what they said.
-- Trumbull Stickney

The lead diver on the search party could breathe underwater. Actually not breathe underwater so much as go without breath. He could also arrow through the waves and the deep-sea water like a fish. Claude reckoned it was some kind of modified telekinesis. He'd never encountered anything like it, which was saying something.

"This is a fool's errand," said the captain of the ship, standing on the foredeck, looking out at the windswept bay off the coast of Long Island. It was their last day in Long Island Sound before moving on to Raritan Bay, and from there north to either Lower New York Bay or Jamaica Bay, depending on weather and the search crew's recommendations. Claude was an unannounced passenger on the ship; he saw no reason to tip his hand to a bunch of sailors and rescue-divers, especially since the lead diver had been provided by Bennet. Claude didn't know where he'd gotten the man or where Bennet was now, but he was damned if he'd show his face.

"Think we won't find a body?" the mate asked.

"If it was afloat it'd wash ashore and if it was washing ashore it'd be on the beach by now," the captain answered. Neither one apparently knew what they were looking for; nobody but the lead diver did. The rest seemed to think they were recovering a body thrown out of a light aircraft, possibly as a mob hit, probably as evidence for the DA's office. "Been eaten, maybe. Or sunk and got stuck. Been known to happen."

Young Tom, the one Bennet had found, hauled himself up over the side rail and began stripping off his gear. He met the captain's querying look with a headshake, then squinted past him through where Claude would have been if he were visible.

Claude swore, occasionally, that the boy looked directly at him. But that was impossible, of course.

"Good day's work, Tom," the captain said. "Go wash up and get some rest. We'll try again along the coast with searchlights once it gets dark."

Claude followed Tom down into the belly of the search cruiser, smallish but still big enough for the lead diver to have his own room. It was filled with a small bed and a large table, on which was tacked a map of the waters surrounding Manhattan and its sister islands. The young man uncapped a pen, still dripping wet, and made a small red X next to the area they'd been searching in. Above, they could hear the footsteps of the rest of the team as they came aboard.

He studied the map as Tom stripped out of his wetsuit. Claude was used to seeing unself-conscious nakedness; it was just one of those things you encountered when you spent most of your time invisible. It didn't really interest him anymore, and he'd never been much for voyeurism. Which was a shame, because if anyone could benefit from his talents, it was someone who liked to watch.

Tom stepped into the tiny shower cubicle and Claude heard the water running. He traced the search efforts with his finger, trying to divine what Petrelli's aim was. He clearly thought the body had fallen straight down, if a body existed at all.

In his mind, he could see the explosion pure as it had occurred. Nathan Petrelli, soaring away from Manhattan and out to sea, trying to get over the northwestern edge of Long Island. Velocity high enough, he let Peter go and Peter soared onwards while Petrelli dropped like a stone -- not falling but flying straight downwards, getting as far from the explosion as possible.

The explosion might stop Peter in midair, or it might propel him forward in the same arc...

Claude looked up. The water had stopped, and young Tom was standing in the doorway, wearing a pair of goggles filled with water and looking directly at him. He froze.

"I can see you," Tom said, tapping the side of the goggles. "I thought I could before, when the water was running into my eyes, and I was right. If you move, I'll sound the alarm."

Claude straightened, slowly. Tom tilted his head.

"You're like me," the man said. "Different. Invisible. That's pretty great. Are you always invisible?"

"No," Claude said, and appeared. Tom held a towel up to his face and lifted the goggles, letting the water run down his cheeks.

"You must bend light around yourself somehow. The water shows all kinds of freaky refractions," he continued, walking to the bed and pulling out a drawer underneath it, dressing himself without haste or concern. "Did Bennet send you to spy on me?"

"No. Petrelli did."

Tom gave him a brief smile and shrugged into a shirt. "Same difference."

"Not in my book."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Petrelli never tried to shoot me."

Tom grinned.

"Your captain thinks you're twaddling uselessly," Claude said, indicating the map. "He thinks you won't find anything."

"Maybe not, but nobody else can, so..." Tom shrugged. "You know who we're looking for, I guess."

"Peter Petrelli's body. You're a gift to big brother from Bennet. Why?"

"Petrelli saved his daughter. She was there the night..." Tom puffed up his cheeks and made an exploding gesture with his hands. Claude thought of Claire, who he hadn't seen in nearly eight years, now. Little yellow-haired Claire. "Anyway, Bennet told me the Company's falling apart, so I might as well be useful to someone. He's trying to find Petrelli too, but not having any luck."

"What's he doing?" Claude asked sharply.

"Don't know. He called me from Texas, said he was doing all he could, but they needed my help." Tom shrugged. "It's what I'm paid for, I figured why not?"

Peter Petrelli, soaring through the explosion over Long Island Sound...

"Do you think he's dead?" Claude asked. Tom frowned.

"Why wouldn't he be? I mean, he exploded, is what I was told. But if that's true he'd just be bits and pieces, and we're not likely to find those in the water. An explosion like the one I saw over New York...he'd be in chunks about this big. Perfect for fish food," Tom said, holding up a fist. Claude reminded himself that Tom didn't know Peter, didn't know Claude knew Peter; it wasn't his fault. It was just a job.

He'd survive the explosion, but not the fall.

Unless, of course, he was conscious enough to be able to fly. Or even just to slow his fall.

"You're from the Company, aren't you? Even if you report to Petrelli?" Tom asked, curiously.

"I used to be."

"Used to be? Who leaves the Company?"

"Malcontents and traitors," Claude murmured. "Ghosts who aren't quite ghosts."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You never saw me, Tom, and I wasn't here. If you like your life, you stick to that story."

Tom's eyes widened.

"Did you ever meet an unpleasant bloke named Gustav, from the Company?"

Tom shook his head.

"Probably for the best. Keep lookin'; I've got a hunt of my own to follow."

Claude disappeared as he left. It was another day before they put back into port, but he waited patiently; if he saw Tom squinting through water in his eyes, once in a while, he paid it no mind.

He was walking away from the docks, in fact, barely on solid ground again, when he saw the newspaper. He stopped; he blinked; he rummaged in his pockets for spare change and shoved it carelessly into the machine, tossing most of the newspaper away and only saving the front page.

Congressman Petrelli Inherits An Empire, it read. Subhead: Las Vegas Entrepreneur Leaves A Fortune To The Freshman.

Claude leaned back against a light-pole, startled, and tried to read the article. The words were a little unsteady in front of his eyes, especially when he reached the second paragraph.

If the will goes unchallenged, Petrelli stands to inherit half-ownership in all of Linderman's business enterprises, assets, and investments. Linderman's holdings at the time of his death total approximately three hundred million dollars. In a recently-added clause, the will assigns co-ownership to a British citizen named Caedmon Heaton. International police sources say that Mr. Heaton has been registered as a missing person for nearly fifteen years.

"You fuck," Claude said, feeling suddenly as though he were drowning. "Linderman, you absolute fuck, you've outed me. Fuck!"

Congressman Petrelli's office had no comment when contacted.

END

'Below the castle is a curious low building covering an ancient well, approached through a passage of stout masonry with arched roof. Legend has it that Black Tom Fairfax hid, whilst being pursued, in the well and it is haunted by his fear. Noises and strange unaccountable sounds have been heard issuing from the well.' -- Harry Speight, on Black Tom's Well, from the book "Lower Wharfedale"

Heroes50.6: Nathan's Inheritance

2007-06-01T14:54:58Z

Title: Nathan's Inheritance
Rating: G
Summary: Claude meets the Great Nathan Petrelli, and explains his family to him.
Notes: For heroes50, prompt 6: Fly. This is the first story of the "Quest" series in The Invisible Cycle (see Table), and is meant to be read as part of a series of interlinked vignettes. Spoilers for the season finale.

The huddled warmth of crowds
Begets and fosters hate;
He keeps, above the clouds,
His cliff inviolate.
When flocks are folded warm,
And herds to shelter run,
He sails above the storm,
He stares into the sun.
-- Elinor Wylie

Claude read about the explosion in a stolen newspaper in Wisconsin, which he figured was safely far enough from New York and from the Company. He didn't like Wisconsin, any more than he'd first liked Texas or New York, but he knew a place could grow on you.

What really itched at him was the feeling that he was moving around with invisible blankets wrapped round his body, invisible blindfolds over his eyes. Layer on layer of hiding; first dead to the Company, then dead to Peter (at least, figuratively) and now twice-vanished from Company view...all the secrecy was weighing on him in a way it never had in Odessa.

He didn't like Peter much, but he'd liked having someone to talk to.

So he went back to New York. He had to walk carefully here, like a tightrope, but it was better than the smothering, suffocating, blinding secrecy. He figured Peter had probably died; healing was all very well, but healing from a nuclear blast that came inside-out? Even if he survived the blast, the explosion had been high up enough in the sky that he probably hadn't survived the fall.

Good boy, though. He'd got out of the city. Claude had failed him, but the kid hadn't failed himself.

So instead of going to Peter's flat or the roof of the Deveaux building, Claude went to the Brother. The smug bastard on the posters. He wasn't even really sure why. Nathan Petrelli wasn't hard to find, nor was the lock on his office door hard to pick.

It was early morning and Petrelli wasn't there, but he would be soon. For lack of anything better to do, he examined the room while he waited. Claude let his eyes drift over the half-full packing boxes, the rows of legal binders, the photograph of Brother Nathan in a Naval Uniform, one of the two brothers with their mother, one of two young boys and a dark-haired woman (probably Petrelli's family)...

He stopped at the last photo, which was of a sleek-haired man in a dark suit. It looked familiar, and for a moment he didn't know why. Then when he did, he didn't know why it was here.

Augustine. Linderman's pet dreamer. A portrait of Augustine in amongst the family photographs --

"That was my father," said a voice behind him, and Claude turned around. Petrelli was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, looking unsurprised.

"Augustine," Claude replied. "I knew him."

"Linderman's dead, so you're not here from him. Primatech's had its head cut off, so you're probably not here from them. And if you'll excuse the assumption," Petrelli's eyes drifted over his rumpled clothing, "you don't look like you're here for political reasons."

"And you don't look like you're in mourning for y'dead brother," Claude answered. Petrelli's lips tightened.

"What do you know about Peter?"

"Nothing more than you," Claude replied, turning back to the photographs. "Not anymore."

"Who are you?"

"I was Peter's teacher," he answered. "Not a very good one, as it seems."

"Teacher?"

"He asked me to teach him to control what he could do."

Claude turned around and slid one hand along the back of a chair, looking down at it. When he looked up, Petrelli's face was an odd mixture of sadness and jealousy.

"Your father," Claude said, tilting his head at the photograph. "He was a dreamer. Big dreams. That was also his ability. He dreamed the future. Not very well or very coherently, but all the same." He looked sidelong at Petrelli. "Peter told me you can fly."

Petrelli rubbed the bridge of his nose, a gesture so like Augustine that it was hard not to laugh.

"Why are you here?" he asked. "Peter's dead. My father's dead. There's nothing for you here."

"I want you to tell me what happened," Claude replied.

"Peter lost control. I -- we went up."

"You flew. Took 'im with you." So Peter hadn't gotten out on his own. Claude had failed him and Petrelli hadn't. That bit deep.

"He couldn't on his own -- " Petrelli hesitated. "As far up as we could go, I let go and dropped. He kept going. I lived. He died."

"You're sure of that."

"He might survive an explosion but -- "

" -- not the fall. And if he lost control once -- "

" -- he'd lose it again and we'd have heard by now."

The two men looked at each other across the space of the room and the years between Nathan and Augustine, Nathan and Peter.

"I have people looking for the body. Quietly," Petrelli said finally.

"I'd like to help."

"Why?"

"Least I could do for the kid. He wasn't a bad kid."

"He was a hero."

"Believe that if it helps."

Petrelli stepped closer, almost hesitant -- as if anything Big Brother Nathan did was ever hesitant.

"You taught Peter," he said. "Control? How to...stop it?"

"You don't want my sort of teachin'," Claude replied. "You don't need it. Best for you if you forget I existed. Just point me towards your search party."

"My father," Petrelli said, as if he hadn't heard him. "Linderman told me he was weak."

"By your definition, I reckon so," Claude said.

"My definition?"

"You think strength is 'bout power. 'Bout control. Bet you fly high an' fast, don't you?" Claude said, stepping closer as well, circling Petrelli. "Floating, hovering, that's not for the likes of you. Speed. Altitude. And never for fun. Am I paintin' an accurate picture?"

"It's not supposed to be fun."

"Only for savin' your dyin' brother from committing mass murder."

Petrelli followed him with dark, thoughtful eyes.

"You don't want to learn how to use what you're given, 'less it serves a rational purpose. Strength is about knowin' what tools you got and how to use 'em. Still on the dot?"

"Did you lecture my brother like this?"

"Much worse."

"My father believed -- "

"Your father believed in people. Symbols. Dreams. He never got on in politics on account of he couldn't use people. You can. Linderman could. He used your father."

The shot hit home. Petrelli's eyes hardened. He opened his mouth to speak, and Claude looked down pointedly.

Those shiny politican's shoes were half a foot off the ground.

Petrelli looked down too, then closed his eyes and eased himself back onto solid earth.

"People change," he said, so quietly Claude almost didn't hear. He walked to his desk and took out a tablet of paper, scribbling a name and a telephone number on it. He tore it off and handed it to Claude. "Call this man. Tell him I'm sending you to supervise for me. If you find Peter's body..."

"I know how to cover things up," Claude said. "You mind your family, and I'll mind Peter."

"Call if you need anything."

"You won't see me again," Claude assured him, and disappeared.

END

Heroes50.3: Saint Augustine In Hell

2007-05-15T18:30:24Z

Title: Saint Augustine In Hell
Rating: PG
Summary: Augustine the dreamer has seen Claude die twice, but Claude is young enough to think himself immortal.
Notes: for heroes50, prompt 3: Dream.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
-- E.A. Robinson, "Richard Cory"

"It's time," Augustine said, seating himself in Claude's small kitchen.

"Time for what?" Claude asked, rummaging in the fridge. He came up with a grilled cheese sandwich in a tupperware box, smelled it, and put it in the microwave. Augustine looked disgusted.

"Time for things to begin to coalesce," Augustine answered. "Time for a coming-together. That's what Linderman calls it."

"Linderman can take his tenpenny words and -- "

"Claude, let's not be crude."

"Well, what's he want? I've been a good student, Christ knows I've tried to do what he says."

"That's just it," Augustine said. "How much good can we all do separately? You and Linderman like a puppy and a mastiff -- "

"I like that!"

"Deny it if you can. Me plugging away in politics, knowing I'll never get anywhere, and Thompson trying to be the first-rate scientist we both know he isn't. Charlie's making a killing and putting all his money in real estate, for crying out loud. It's all much too scattered."

"You're not proposing a commune," Claude taunted, eyeing Augustine's shiny black shoes, his quietly expensive suit, the leather briefcase he'd left by the door.

"No. I'm proposing a corporation. Or rather, Linderman is proposing it, through me. I've seen it, Claude; it's destiny," and here Augustine winced, an odd reaction Claude didn't associate with the solid, somber, dark-haired man.

"Your dreams, mate, are notoriously inaccurate at times," was all he said.

"They're dreams. They appear in symbols like everything in the subconscious does. Just because we aren't very good at interpretation yet doesn't mean they're wrong. I have big dreams, Claude. Realism hasn't got a place in dreams that big."

"Then pr'aps they're a little too big," Claude answered, taking the microwaved sandwich out of its box. He carried a bottle of beer to the table, democratically pouring half into a glass for Augustine, who toasted him and sipped.

"No dream is too big; at least if you fall short of high ambitions, you can say you reached," Augustine said. "Don't you have dreams, Claude?"

Claude chewed, thinking about this. "Not really. Do you dream about me?"

Asking any other man would have been strange and taboo. Augustine took it in stride.

"Yes."

"What about me?"

"You have a strange fate, Claude. You die twice."

"Lovely."

"I've seen that. And...sometimes, you know how you'll see something and it'll remind you of a dream, and you'll see a little fragment?"

"Sure," Claude said.

"When I see you, I remember gratitude. I don't know why, but today or tomorrow or at some point, I'll owe you."

Claude leveled his gaze at the older man. He was twenty-one, arrogant enough to believe he was immortal and already cynical about the world.

"Is this your subtle way of makin' me go along with Linderman's new plan?" he asked suspiciously.

"No!" Augustine's eyes were wide and strangely innocent, an honest innocence.

"Well, I don't see as I have much choice. Bring me whatever papers you need and I'll make my mark," Claude said.

"Yes," Augustine prophesied. "You will."

He took the paperwork out of his briefcase and held out a pen with a smile. Claude signed on all the Xs, an illegible scrawl with a C as its only prominent, legible letter. He gave out his first name only, and that not his real name, much like the other youngsters Linderman had corralled and broke to harness. Claude was oddly proud of being one of them; he'd never had a disciplining hand showing him the way before.

Augustine, though older than Claude, had always gone by his first name alone as well, but Claude saw his signature as he flipped through the pages. Augustine Parnello, or possibly Painetti.

"Hope you know what you're doing, Gus," he said.

"I always do," Augustine replied, though there was a slight shudder in his voice as he said it. "It's the only thing to do."

Claude knew about the suicide attempt, and he knew Augustine tried to hold it together for the sake of his wife and kids. It was a hard thing, being a seer. Usually, in the stories, they went mad.

"Listen, if you ever..." he stopped, because he couldn't think of a way to say it that didn't make him sound like an arsehole. "You know I can keep a secret."

"I do, Claude, and thank you -- but I have so much work to do, I really can't stay..."

Augustine gathered the papers and put them back in the suitcase, shuffling them into a neat pile. Claude watched a little haplessly as he collected himself up, shook his hand absently, and headed for the door.

He was an odd bird, Augustine. A good man, if a little on the idealistic side. Sort of the boy who never grew up, always sketching castles in the sky that Linderman could believe might come true one day.

Claude had no such illusions, and would have no such illusions years later when it was -- though he had no way of knowing -- Augustine Petrelli's son he took under his wing and beat the snot out of on the rooftop of the Deveaux building, after Charlie Deveaux was dead.

He never had big dreams and certainly never thought he'd save the world. That was for the Augustines, the Lindermans. Who, it had to be said, bore an uncanny tempermental resemblance to Peter and Nathan Petrelli.

END

Heroes50.2: Allies and Enemies

2007-05-15T04:02:44Z

Title: Allies and Enemies
Rating: R
Summary: Claude could write a book about Empaths. (Claude/OFC)
Notes: For heroes50, prompt 2: Need

I HAVE no life but this,
To lead it here;
Nor any death, but lest
Dispelled from there;
Nor tie to earths to come,
Nor action new,
Except through this extent,
The realm of you.
-- Emily Dickinson

Empaths were fucking selfish.

Primatech had files on every person who passed through their hands, but of course they focused on the "special" ones. Claude's file was quite thick, because he voluntarily cooperated with the less-invasive testing. Empaths, though, didn't have files, because Primatech had never laid hands on one, wasn't even properly sure they existed. They just had one file marked "Empath" with vague eyewitness accounts, bits and bobs of information, even a copy of some old Finnish legend that seemed to be about one. Claude probably shouldn't have accessed the file, but Invisible men got used to sneaking around, and how else was he supposed to learn anything?

He encountered one in New York, after he left the company, and it opened his eyes wide. He could write a bloody book on Empaths once he got done with her. About how they stole from you because they knew they were somehow more than the rest, they believed they were destined for some greater path. About how they used a person until he had no more use and then buggered off.

He saw her for the first time in a bar; he was stealing food, she was wearing a miniskirt. Old story.

She couldn't have been more than twenty-two. She was built like a boy, but he'd give her that she worked what she had. He saw her light her cigarette without using any matches, and the man with her thought it was a trick. Claude didn't interfere, he just watched and followed her and the man until they reached -- her flat, his flat, didn't really matter. He didn't watch the rest; he'd grown out of that thrill a long time ago.

He did make a mental note, however, and he did go back to the bar and watch her pick up another man. He wondered what a firestarter was doing, fucking everyone she came across, but then he also saw her stop her drink from spilling, one night, catching the liquid with telekinesis and scooping the glass up around it before anyone else noticed.

The next night he offered himself up as bait, making no bones about what he was or what he could do. He was thirty-four.

She looked up when he appeared in front of her, gave him a cool once-over, and offered him her drink.

"Hello, stranger," she said.

"Stranger than you know," he answered, sipping. "Or maybe not?"

"You'd like to find out," she said, taking her drink back. He signaled the barman and ordered a beer; it cleaned out his mouth after her cheap scotch.

"I would, matter of fact."

"You're pretty forward."

"You're pretty young."

She smiled and dipped her head, a move designed to make a man writhe with desire. Claude sipped his beer.

"You're special," he said. She smiled, head still tilted slightly downwards. "What's your name?"

"Allison. Allie," she corrected.

"Allison Allie. Pleasure's all mine." He offered his hand. She glanced at it.

"You haven't told me your name, stranger."

"Bogart," he replied, because why ruin a perfectly good name by telling a stranger what it was.

"Seriously?" she asked, lifting a suddenly naive eyebrow. That was what caught him and ultimately got him in such deep trouble. Allie knew everything and did everything by design, but underneath she didn't know much at all and taking her by surprise became one of the few pleasures of his life. Perhaps that was designed too, but he didn't think so. Didn't want to think so. Quite possibly he was a fool over her.

She made small talk just long enough for him to finish his beer, and then asked if he wanted to find someplace they could drink a little more cheaply. He wasn't about to take her to his home, not bloodywell yet, but he broke them both into a penthouse suite and they raided the bar at will. The alcohol loosened her up.

Claude wanted her to talk, and because few of the men she met were interested in talk, she hadn't developed many ploys to get round it -- or even an awareness that she was doing it. He learned a good deal more about her that evening than she learned about him, especially since he let slip "facts" which were not facts at all. Some people knew how to lie, even when drinking.

He was familiar with the theory that events in youth impacted the formation of whatever ability they would show later in life. A child afraid of the dark might glow, an invisible man might have had a childhood where disappearing was necessary. He didn't know why she needed such intimate contact to absorb power, but rather innocently he assumed it had something to do with the rather witchy idea of swapping fluids. He watched her as they spoke -- watched her need intensify, her greed for what he had show through and twine itself up in sexual desire. She was attractive enough and he certainly wasn't going to say no, but it wasn't the intensity other men might have felt, the luckier ones who didn't know why she wanted them so badly, who thought it was actually about them.

He knew everything that should have warned him off of her, and he still let her take control, and that was where his being a fool came in.

When she came back from refilling her glass at the bar and her shirt was unbuttoned, she didn't return to her seat in the chair next to his. Instead she straddled his lap, kissed him, and tilted her drink against his lips.

"Why don't you take what you came for, Bogart," she asked in a husky voice.

"I thought you were the one who came here for something," he answered, but he was already pushing the shirt off her shoulders.

"There's a great big king-sized bed over there," she said, hips rolling against his. He caught his breath. "Want to make a mess?"

He bit her lip and shoved her off his lap with a single hand against her flat belly; she staggered backwards, then leaned forwards as he stood, pulling the t-shirt off over his head. There was a moment of caution in her eyes when she saw the gunshot scars, healed but still fresh and angry on his skin. It lasted barely a second, while she regrouped and reformulated her plan to include more caution. It was the second time he took her by surprise. It was addictive.

Then she slid her hands up his shoulders and that was addictive too, the first time he'd been touched in months, touched with intention anyway.

"How virginal," she said, eyes following the flushed spread of arousal down his chest. He kissed her to shut her up, then hitched up her skirt to make her gasp again.

Very few men had probably ever been her equal in brains, and he imagined that only a handful had been her equal in bed, on account of it. She liked to give the illusion that he had control, taller and broader than she was -- but that was a lie, because she could do things with her tongue that made his eyes roll back in his head. When he finally came, her thighs around his hips, her fingers clawing his arms and her head thrown back on the pillows, they both disappeared.

"It was good for you, then," he murmured, against her shoulder.

She laughed.

He might even have fallen in love with her eventually, but after two months off-and-on, midnight sex that she made clear was only one of her adventures, she said she was leaving the city because she'd got what she came for, and disappeared as effectively as he had. Perhaps really it had something to do with him finding out about what her daddy did to her; perhaps most of her power had to do with those old wounds.

She took his brains for a while and his heart a little bit and all of his power. It had been worth it to learn what he now knew, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt.

He never let another student get quite that close, and things seemed to work all right for a while.

***

Same shit, different Empath.

Claude thought that Peter Petrelli was hungry too, hungry and needful and demanding. The boy followed him, forced him into some kind of twisted mentorship with the threat of New York's imminent destruction. Another asshole Empath.

Except...Peter took freely, without even choosing to, without really even wanting to. He had no desire for more, which was unique in Claude's experience, perhaps because Peter had grown up with everything his heart desired. He had never wanted for anything.

Except. As Claude peeled back the layers, yanked them forcefully off actually, he found Peter hadn't had everything. Nearly, but not quite. He wanted approval, and he wanted love. The former, Claude could provide, if grudgingly, because Peter never openly asked and was pathetically grateful for any he was given. The latter -- well, Claude made a point of not sticking around long enough for something like that. Bennet's taser attack gave him the perfect excuse, really.

Peter Petrelli was probably no exception to his experience; a man with his need to fix unfixable things would break your heart sooner or later.

Empaths. Selfish, greedy people, the lot.

heroes50.1: Jim In A Bottle

2007-05-10T03:33:28Z

Title: Jim In A Bottle
Rating: PG
Summary: Jim knew how to grant wishes. Claude wasn't certain what to wish for.
Notes: For heroes50, prompt 1: Wish

"For I would be mending my spirit,
Forgetting these days that are bad,
Forgetting companions too shallow,
Their quarrels and arguments thin,
Forgetting the shouting Muezzin:" --
"I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn.
-- Vachel Lindsay

The Company didn't have a name for what Jim did.

It wasn't just that he could see your past and future together in a single handshake. Jim saw the world differently, as a series of interconnected links. He accepted his imprisonment in the Primatech sub-basement with calm detachment, asking only for a set of Tinker Toys. He built amazing models out of them, too: squat and complex wheels, towering airy constructions, monsters, DNA strands. With one tug of a stick, he could change their whole shape -- and he did the same thing with reality. When Claude asked him what they were, he gave each a name; this one is Mr. Thompson, that one is Mr. Bennet, this one is the Company, that one is a little girl named Eden, you haven't met her yet.

Jim's talent was that he could pick out the strand of a person's life and see where it led and where it had been. If you went to him and said, I wish I had a nice girl, he could tell you where she was, or at least what you could do to find her. If you made a wish, Jim couldn't grant it, but he could tell you how to grant it for yourself.

Claude stood at the observation window, watching Jim build another one of his insanely complicated models, and crossed his arms.

"He just wants a bit of a walk," he said to Thompson. "Stretch his legs, that's all. I don't see the harm; he's not the sort to do a runner."

"Policy is against it," Thompson replied.

"Policy doesn't live in a cell in the basement."

"I'll see what I can do."

It was so complicated with Thompson. He couldn't bend the rules, not even a little, to allow a clearly harmless and innocent soul out to stand in the sunlight for a bit. He had to get permission, forms signed in triplicate, and a house-arrest anklet. It took two weeks.

"It worked," Jim said delightedly. "You did it, Claude!"

"Course I did," Claude replied, standing in the scrub behind Primatech's factory facade. Jim stretched his arms and turned his face up to the harsh Texas sun.

"Can I go anywhere?" he asked.

"Within reason."

"Let's go for a walk."

It was the first of many walks they took; Linderman wanted Jim kept happy because Jim could show them the way to the future, infallibly, building security and safety just like he built his little models. So, Claude got tapped as chaperone and Jim got his walks. Better Claude than Bennet; Bennet was a good man but he could be a little intimidating, and Claude was much better with the Company's -- guests. He didn't frighten them, and Bennet had a tendency to pull out The Menace even when he didn't mean to. It wasn't his fault; he could Menace like any old thing and Claude appreciated that, but it was inappropriate at times.

"You must have a wish, Claude," Jim said to him one day, as they walked his favorite trail, down the gully to where the residential subdivisions began and the grass was lushly green even in high summer. "Everyone tells me what they wish for eventually. Don't you have one?"

"Do you want me to?" Claude asked.

"Well, I'm just curious. Everyone wants something. Me, I wanted three squares a day and all the Tinker Toys I could handle. Your people kindly provide. So -- what is it you want? I can help, you know I can, and I like to help."

Claude walked, hands hooked in his pockets, thinking that Texas was too bloody hot.

"Do you get more I Wish I Could or I Wish I'd Never?" he asked.

"People don't say they wish they'd never. People don't think that much about the past. Do you?"

"I wish I'd never joined Primatech," Claude said. "Don't tell me how I might've pulled that off, I know already."

"Well, you won't always be their prisoner," Jim said. "I will, but then I like my cage."

"Won't I?" Claude said curiously.

"Do you want to get out? I can show you how."

Claude glanced around, and Jim smiled.

"They're not listening."

"If I did..."

"It's a simple thing. I'll arrange it. There's a little boy in Iowa -- all you have to do is bury him," he said. "Do your best to make sure the Company never finds him. If you do that, in two years' time you'll be free."

"Will I?" Claude asked, annoyed at the hunger in his own voice.

"Freedom's a scary thing, Invisible Man. You sure you want it?"

Claude nodded. Jim smiled.

"Your wish is my command," he said.

***

It was a year and a half before the Company found out about the boy in Iowa.

Jim had already died; a disturbing number of special people tended to die of brain ailments, nervous-system disorders, and strokes, and Jim proved to be another point on the statistical graph. At least it was quick; he went to bed and never woke up. Massive stroke. Claude missed him. Even when he wanted to throttle him for having told Claude how to get free without warning him that three gunshot wounds would be involved.

Jim granted wishes, in the sense that Satan had; you had to be very careful what you wished for, lest you find yourself a bit overwhelmed by the result.

On the colder days in New York, when Claude cursed the weather and the people and his own deceased state, he thought of Jim standing in the sunlight in Texas and wasn't sure it was worth it. Perhaps a sub-basement room and three square meals a day was preferable to all this intense freedom. Jim in his little bottle, free from care, seemed a comfortable proposition.

On the other hand, on the sunny spring days when the people closed comfortingly around him and there were pretty girls sunbathing in the park, he hope Jim had found a nice afterlife full of Tinker Toys.