Chapter Fifteen

“Checkmated”

Central Park

New York

Peter heard the voices first, far off, unhappy murmurs that faded in and out of his hearing. Matt’s was the only one he could really recognize, but a couple female tones and Japanese accents appeared every now and then.

Slowly, his other senses returned, with the least useful ones first. Because, that, of course, was how life seemed to work. Peter soon became aware that his mouth still tasted like vomit and wherever he was smelled of cherry blossoms, but this didn’t help him figure why the ground was so prickly. Or why the air was so cool. Or where am I???!!

“Mmmblgggg…..”

“Peter? Peter, are you awake?”

Claire. That was Claire, and she was right beside him. Peter tried to speak, open his eyes, or touch her, anything to reply. The best he could manage was a small nod that she fortunately saw.

“Oh…good…now, c’mon, let’s get you up…”

Peter felt small hands on his back and shoulder, trying to prop him in a sitting position, but this plan failed. Claire was tough when the situation called for it, but she didn’t have much for muscle. And trying to hold up at least seventy pounds of dead weight proved to be too much for her.

“C-..la…ire…” Peter managed to cough out, lifting his heavy lids and taking an eyeful of the night sky. It turned out that Hiro had teleported them to Central Park, accidentally arriving five hours into the future (“I still need-o practice,” Hiro sheepishly admitted). Night had already approached, and the prickyness that Peter was passed out on was just grass.

He didn’t see much before a head full of blonde hair flooded his vision. Claire leaned over him, looking him directly in the face, while her long waves cascaded down and tickled his cheeks.

“Are you okay?” she asked, swallowing hard.

Gritting his teeth, Peter nodded, and propped himself up on his elbows with her aide.

“Gonna be,” he croaked. Blinking a few times to clear his vision, he took count of his company. “Everyone here? Everyone make it out?”

Claire’s face fell, and she looked anywhere but him. “Kind of.”

Forcing himself to sit up properly, Peter pressed on. “So…Sylar still has your dad?”

At the mention of Bennet, Claire’s tears finally started spilling down her face. “No. My dad’s dead. He sacrificed himself so that we all could get out.”

“Oh God,” whispered Peter, closing his eyes and shaking his head in shock. Pushing away his own emotions, he tried to console Claire by wrapping his arms around her small frame. But even he knew that this was futile. The girl had just lost her own father, and in a way, it had been their fault. Peter’s fault for being too weak, and getting knocked out…

“I know what you’re thinking,” sniveled Claire, pulling back. “You think it’s your fault.”

Peter’s mouth gaped at her ability to read him, before he looked away shamefully. Claire fell into his arms once again.

“If there’s one person’s fault it isn’t, then that would be you, Peter. If we didn’t have you, we-we’d all have been killed,” Claire stammered into his shoulder.

“She’s right,” agreed a baritone from behind them. Matt Parkman stood in just his undershirt, with several strips of cloth- torn up pieces of his regular shirt- slung over his forearm. He kneeled down beside the pair and handed Claire a large, washcloth-sized section. Peter followed her with his eyes as she got up to go moisten it at one of the water fountains.

“You saved a lot of lives back there,” Matt continued. “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

“But Bennet-,”

“He chose his fate,” Matt interrupted bleakly. “He could have gotten away. But he didn’t want to risk Claire not getting out. He died with a purpose, and I think that’s all he really wanted. Don’t beat yourself up about it, Peter. You fought as hard as you could, but it was just too late. Sylar planned it from the beginning. It was a trap, all along.”

Peter buried his face in his hands, feeling, if possible, worse. The dream. The dream had tried to tell him, but his mind had been on other things that night. He hadn’t been paying attention, and it cost the life of someone Claire loved. How long was thing going to keep up; the deaths? First Simone, now Bennet. Who was going to be next? No one was safe, not even Peter himself. And then what about Sylar? The only thing they really learned out of the whole experience was that their enemy was literally unkillable.

A cool cloth rubbing against his ear broke him out of his reverie. Claire was slowly cleaning off the blood that had poured out of his pounding ears. Luckily, he wasn’t having problems with it now, but he still crossed his fingers that no planes would fly over any time soon.

Speaking of problems, Matt was grimacing and rubbing his chest, as he sat down on a park bench. The two-ton truckful of aspirins he’d chucked down before the fight had killed a lot of his chest pain when it mattered, but stress and fatigue were bringing out the soreness again.

“Hey, I think I can help with that,” Peter offered, catching the officer’s ache. Matt hesitated and Peter held one arm up innocently.

“I promise, I won’t hurt you,” he swore, then gestured to one of the strips of torn T-shirt on Matt’s arm. Matt obliged, handing him a small piece, which Peter folded into a small square as best he could. Then, summoning up the little power he could, he froze the cloth solid, and handed it back to Matt.

“Wrap it up in another cloth and apply pressure to your right pectoral. Your heart’s located right under there. A hot compress would work better, but I don’t have that power yet.”

“That’s right; you’re a nurse, aren’t you?” Matt recalled, following Peter’s instructions. Peter shrugged back and just sat silently, focusing on the feeling of Claire washing away the blood on the side of his face. After he was cleaned up, she headed back to the water fountain, and filled a small Styrofoam cup with water. Peter gulped it down appreciatively, ridding his mouth of the nasty taste that lingered.

 “How did that happen to you, anyway?” she asked, once the foam cup was empty.

“Sylar used my power against me,” Peter explained gravely. “I absorbed his super-hearing and he set off all his grandfather clocks.”

Claire looked both horrified, and realized, “That’s why you were screaming.”

“I felt my own eardrums rupture,” Peter added bluntly. “It was actually kind of a relief, compared to the pain that Sylar was causing me. You think turning up your music too loud is bad? Multiply that by as high as you can count.”

Claire squeezed his arm and looked upon him with utmost sympathy. Peter returned the gaze, in respect to her familial loss, and then turned to Matt.

“How are the others? Hiro, Ando, Jessica.”

“Uh, Niki, actually. Her name is Niki.” Matt scratched his head, bewildered. “We still don’t know how to explain it. She doesn’t remember a thing. The last thing she remembers is being in Vegas with her husband and kid. Now she’s a mess…freaking out about what ‘Jessica’ has done. I don’t know what to make of it. I guess she’s just crazy, or something got out of whack when she bumped her head.”

“Yeah, she acted the same way when she woke up at the watch shop,” frowned Peter. “Maybe she’ll be okay after getting a good night’s sleep.”

“Right. Hiro and Ando are both fine. Weirded out by Sylar, but they’ll be okay.”

“Did they tell you about what he did? Sylar? W-when Hiro cut off his head?”

Matt squirmed. “Yeah, they did. Said he picked his head right off the ground. He’s not human, I’m telling you.” 

Peter was struck with a coughing fit too soon to reply to Matt’s claims. Claire pulled him too his feet, stood flush up against his side, and wrapped her arm around his waist to help him stand. Peter’s supported his weight onto her shoulder gratefully, though was careful to distribute it enough so she wouldn’t be crushed.

“I’ll take you for a walk. It’ll help shake off the exhaustion,” she expounded, leading Peter away from Matt, the park bench, and the rest of the pack.

After they’d strolled a good distance a way, Matt headed back to the others in their band of mutants. Niki was sitting against a tree trunk, rubbing her head, while Ando and Hiro were still talking in rapid Japanese. Matt wondered if Niki’s head hurt because of the bruise, or because she was forced to listen to all the excited gibberish coming out of the mouths of the other men.

Matt smiled at her warmly as he sat down beside her. “Hey. Anything coming back to you?”

“Nothing,” Niki replied, dejectedly dropping her hands into her lap. “I can never remember things when Jessica comes. It’s just…never been for this long a period before. It’s usually just for a couple hours…”

“I still don’t know what to tell you, except that Jessica was a hell of a lot different then you,” Matt replied, chuckling slightly as he inspected the wound on her temple.

Niki chuckled back wryly as well. “Yeah, I don’t make it killing people a hobby.”

“Oh,” Matt smirked. “I just thought she was a lot bitchier.”

“Usually she works for herself though. Jessica would backstab our mother if she was paid enough money. I don’t understand…why was she helping you?”

Matt frowned as he readied a bandage for her forehead. “Er...why our mother?”  

Niki took in a breath. “My sister, Jessica. She was….she died.”

Matt put a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. “I’m sorry,” was all he could really say. With the knowledge that Jessica had been a real person, he began to rethink the suspicion that Niki was crazy. After all, she didn’t seem mad or raving. She just seemed like a defeated mom that wanted to know what was happening to her. They were both alike, really. Normal people that had their lives turned upside down by the bad timing of evolution and natural selection. Hiro and Peter embraced their abilities, and Claire was warming up to hers. Matt and Niki, however…they were still in the same boat; the little canoe that hadn’t left the starting line yet.

*

Peter and Claire stumbled slowly down one of the park’s sidewalks in silence. Claire was used to seeing a sea of glitter whenever she looked up into the night sky, but the lights of New York scared the stars away. It was one of the few things she detested about city-life. There were no front lawns, either, and too much traffic. But this place, Central Park, was like an oasis in the desert. No one was there, and for the first time in good week, Claire saw and felt real grass.

They walked along some more, and without realizing it, Claire’s tight clutch on Peter’s arm to help him walk had slipped into a lazy clasp on his hand. His posture was relatively straight by now, as a lot of the soreness and fatigue had been shaken off like Claire had suggested it would.

“Peter?” Claire inquired when they were a good distance away from the group. Peter looked down.

“What’s going on?”

“There…in Sylar’s shop…right after you passed out…my dad…he, um…well, he told me to tell you something. They were pretty much his last words, his last wishes, I guess.”

Peter stopped and turned her to face him, moving his hands to her upper arms. “What, what was it?”

Claire dithered. “I’m only telling you because he was so obsessive about it, but you don’t have to do this. Remember, it was spoken from my dad, so he obviously thinks I’m the most important person on the whole freaking planet…”

“Claire…” Peter pressed on, gently, and she sighed.

“He wants you to protect me with your life. Those were his exact words before Sylar…Sylar pulled him into the fire. But that’s unfair, you don’t have to-,”

“No,” shushed Peter. “I’ll do it. I swear, I’ll do everything I can to live up to your dad’s last wish. It’s important, Claire.”

The determined look in his eyes dared her to protest any more. And with that, their entire status quo was balanced and restored again. Claire felt back to the way she had when he asked her favorite color, baked her crappy lasagna, and awoke to see him accidentally asleep at her footboard. What was this emotion anyway, that had made her happy to see him at all times, even in the beginning when she barely knew him? Even when he was brooding and out of control? That pleasurable sensation she felt in her stomach whenever he said her name…Claire. Peter would always lower his voice, just barely sigh it out, no matter what he was talking about. This wasn’t a crush; Claire knew what those felt like. It was something deeper, but entirely more subtle at the same time.

And staring up into those tenderly piercing eyes in the middle of Central Park…she had an epiphany. She’d been a little bit in love with Peter all along. It was fueled her to care about him, to look after her hero as he had protected her all those times. There was just something about Peter that she hadn’t realized that she loved until it was gone; lost into the dark pools of anger and resentment. But now, Peter was whole again, uncorrupted again, and the flood of feelings that Claire felt pump into her bloodstream almost made her swoon.

“I just realized something,” she told him, finally able to really trust him again. Peter looked down at her expectantly.

“You…make me feel safe again.”

“Claire,” Peter said, and there he did it again, murmuring out her name like he’d lose himself if he said it louder. Then, he looked her square in the face, and smiled the same way he did in the hallway at Union Wells High.

Unexpectedly, Peter bent down, pressing their foreheads together, and lightly brushed his nose against hers in a barely-there Eskimo kiss. Former bonds, mostly moral, holding him back suddenly shattered. This was the perfect moment in the cloud of chaos that had been floating around their lives for the past few days. All of Peter’s other emotions were already drained; why not pour self-control away as well?

With seven days left till the end of the world, what harm could a little affection do at this point?

Peter’s hands each roamed their separate ways. The right snaked down and rested on Claire’s elbow as the left went upwards, eventually cupping her jaw line. Somehow, Claire hands ended up flat against his chest, and he felt a pleasant shiver squirm under his skin. Admittedly, he would have preferred there be no cloth in between her delicate hands and his toned torso, but she was only seventeen…

Still, that wasn’t doing a thing to stop him from tilting her face up to meet his, and gently brushing his lips on the corner of her mouth. Even amidst all the tension, he was still inclined to give her a chance to pull back.

Like she was going to have any of that. Instead of backing off, Claire hands journeyed up to the nape of his neck, and she pressed her lips full against his. Her vigor spurred his own as she breathed warmth and energy into him, making him stand taller and hold her tighter. Peter took on the task of deepening the kiss while still keeping it tender. That’s what Claire deserved; not some antsy make-out session, but a real kiss fit for a Disney princess.

To  Claire, kissing Peter was just like getting a feel of his personality: gentle and sweet on top, but with a pure fire in the underbelly that was begging to get out. He tasted musky, handsome, and quiet, and never had she noticed any of these things in boys she had kissed before. Never how they tasted, or how they made her feel. Just…what had she noticed? All those worthless crushes hadn’t meant anything at all. None of the drama had, and though adults often complained about how they wished to be kids again, well, Claire liked adulthood quite much. Except for the murder, and the psychopaths, that is.

Peter sucked lightly on her bottom lip, and she opened her whole mouth to him in return. Claire moaned against his lips as he bent her head back slightly and took her mouth with even more passion, and yet it was still difficult to get over the shock that her feelings weren’t one sided.

Peter’s lungs burned by the time he broke away, and he tried to take in a gulp of air as surreptitiously as possible. Their interaction had left both of their chests heaving and their knees weak, and Claire blissfully remembered that it was only the first kiss.

While pulling her into an embrace, Peter vaguely mused that this was the part when the “I love you”s usually came. Of course, it was much too soon for that, so he obviously refrained. But Peter felt the need to say something. His heart wasn’t empty, and love wasn’t an all or nothing sort of deal. The only true fear he harbored was that Claire was simply a phase, a rebound sensation because he’d lose Simone and Claire was the only female around. His feelings had come in quite a rush…but what he was about to say was pure and honest, not a doubt in his mind.

“I care about you so much,” he whispered, stroking her frazzled tresses. She too was toying with the ends of his hair, tugging and pinching at the little black locks that were starting to curl out at the base of his skull. Claire then sighed and tiredly rested her head in the crook of his neck.

“Me too. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Peter beamed into her hair, but remained silent, simply rocking her back and forth. Eventually, Claire felt a kiss planted to her crown, and Peter’s arms slipping away from her body. They weren’t gone long, though, for a second later, he had her hand so tightly entwined with his that she couldn’t even tell whose fingers were whose.

“We should be heading back to the others,” he said, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“Mmm,” Claire murmured, letting go of his hand and linking her arms around his waist instead. Peter smiled to himself, and let his arm sling across her lower back, hand resting on her hip. It felt so natural, like her body was molded for his. When he tilted his hand to rest on top of hers, they started walking down the sidewalk and back to reality.

*

Hiro was the first one to notice Peter and Claire’s return, and on sight of their intimacy to one another, he ran up and gave them a big group hug.

“Cheerleader and Peta-ah together?”

Peter awkwardly rubbed his neck while Claire gave a small nod in reply. Hiro grinned and gave them another hug while Ando stood in the background, rolling his eyes. He hollered to Hiro in Japanese, probably saying something like “Leave them alone!”, for after that, the younger man backed off.

In the meantime, Matt and Niki were over by a large oak tree, Niki venting about her problems while Matt wrapped up the wounds on her forehead. It seemed that the two had hit it off pretty well, being in similar situations with families. Though, Niki was lucky enough to have a whole family of mutants. Matt was the sole freak in his home.

Aw. Look at them, Claire thought at Peter, as she pointedly looked at Matt and Niki.

“They’re both married. With children,” Peter muttered back. Claire simply shrugged in return.

Matt offered Niki a hand up, then they walked over to the rest of their crew. Matt arched an eyebrow at Peter off Claire’s arms wrapped loosely around the young man’s waist.

“Have a nice walk?” he asked, with a knowing glance.

“Meh. Not bad,” Peter replied, drawing Claire closer to him. His expression turned sly, and his eyes flitted towards Niki. “What were you doing?” Matt finally broke out into a grin.

“I love my wife,” Matt assured him. “Besides, we’re gonna need all the good feelings we can get after what just happened.”

Claire felt a pang in her heart at the memory of her father; seeing him pulled into the flames, over, and over again in her head. Peter picked a bad time to draw away from her, and she felt especially empty and naked without his warmth.

“What were we even thinking?” Peter asked to everyone, and no one. He sat down miserably on a park bench. “We’re not superheroes, we’re just people. Sylar’s a madman, and I…can we even do this at all?”

“We can do it!” Hiro piped optimistically. “We heroes! It is destiny!”

Peter was not so enthusiastic. “I’ve given up on destiny,” he grumbled. “We need to focus on the real problem here: the fact that New York is going nuclear in a week.”

Niki had no idea what he was talking about, so Peter was forced to explain the short, short, version of Isaac’s floorpocolypse and his own dreams of exploding men. Even afterward, Niki was still beyond confused.

“What about Sylar?” Matt reminded him. “We can’t just let that son of a bitch get away.”

“Well, if we can’t kill him, what’s the use?” asked Niki practically. “If the guy can survive getting his head chopped off, what can’t he survive?”

“Getting his brain cut out,” spoke Claire, out of the blue. “Sylar had to steal that ability from someone by cutting out their brain, and I doubt they’re still alive and kicking.”

“Brilliant,” Peter nodded his head, smiling up at her. “Claire’s right; that’s really the only way.”

“Yeah, now we just have to figure out a plan to go with it,” Matt griped. Peter jumped up from his bench.

“No,” he proclaimed firmly. “Look where a plan got us last time. No, we just need to figure out his weak spots, all work together, and just go at it. We need to strike in whatever way we can, when we can.”

“Nice idea,” said Ando, looking at his watch, “but it’s getting late. We should probably head home…”

The other five nodded in agreement, and they all prepared to part ways for the night. Hiro and Ando teleported back to Isaac’s loft, where they were staying, while Matt turned to Peter.

“Listen, I’ll call you if Isaac paints anything significant.”

Peter seemed happy with that. “Good. I’ll visit Mohinder, the geneticist, too; see if there’s some biological way to take down Sylar.”

Niki, who was walking away, whipped her head back around. “Geneticist?” she confirmed, interested.

“Yeah, he’s working on a cure.”

“If this is what you all say it is,” Niki began. “If I have some sort of…power…the cure will fix it?”

Peter chewed it over. “That is, if he can get it working.”

A weight seemed to lift right off of Niki’s narrow shoulders. “I used to think I was going crazy, you know? I’d wake up in places I didn’t know about, like today, and whatever this is…it’s been ruining my life. Jessica kills people. IMPORTANT people, and she’s out of control. I just think a cure might get rid of her, and maybe I could go back to being normal…”

Perhaps Nathan hadn’t been so narrow-minded in his views after all. Peter’s brother had tried to sell the idea that there were people with powers they didn’t want, but Peter assumed that was just Nathan’s own selfishness talking. But upon meeting Niki, someone who was truly being brought down by whatever it was that she could do…

Maybe the cure wasn’t so wicked after all.

“I’ll tell Mohinder about you,” Peter assured her. Niki tried to smile gratefully, but it came out small and weak. Matt stepped in and offered to share a taxi with her, and they turned away from Peter and Claire. Their light conversation as they walked away was all Peter could hear over the traffic in the distance.

“You got a hotel room yet?”

“I don’t really know. No memory, remember.”

“I’m staying at this really great place, not that expensive, and I think there are some vacancies left.”

“That’d be great, thanks.”

Peter faced Claire and lightly encircled her hands with his. “You want to fly home?”

Claire snorted. “Do you actually have enough energy left for that?”

Peter grinned back, unusually giddy all of a sudden. “No.”

So they ended up haling a cab, which, though good for resting, was too good for thinking. Peter didn’t want to think; just feel. He didn’t want to think about Claire’s poor father, or the odious Sylar, or “Judgment Day” on November 8^th. He definitely didn’t want to think about Simone, or how on Earth he was going to make peace with Isaac and Nathan, or how much of a failure his whole plan had been.

Be the one we need.

It was almost impossible, though! How could he be the one they needed? Peter could barely keep himself together these days, let alone a team of superhumans, some of which that didn’t even know what they could do. Or were in denial about their powers (ahem, Nathan.). OR didn’t even have any powers, like Ando. Peter was simply a timid nurse with the most powerful abilities on the planet. Screw the whole “With great power, comes great responsibility” mantra. Who made the rule that the most powerful guy had to play leader?

Why not Matt; he was a cop, he stepped up to the plate a lot. Or Hiro? Hiro was a positive guy, also extremely powerful. Or hell, why not Claire? She was by far the smartest out of all of them, she was full of passion and care, and her ability also made her exceptionally powerful.

“I wish you were the one exploding. You’d know how to stop it.”

“Why can’t you stop it?” Claire asked fiercely. “You saved me, why can’t you save New York?”

“It’s…different. I was saving you from someone else, not myself.”

“It’s harder to save people from others. All you have to do to stop yourself is take a deep breath and stop.”

And she was right, all along, really. It was Peter that had ultimately stopped himself from turning any darker. His deep breath was taken in a pool of boiling bath tub water, but when he cam back up, he was a new man. Whenever his anger got out of control, it was thoughts of her and self-control that brought it back. He kept assuming that things were bigger then him, when in reality, they just wanted him to think that way. Score for Claude again, for calling that one.

But tonight, he was tired of thinking, and after mulling half-against his will, half-out of instinct, Peter let the only good thing in his life snuggle against his side. After that, all he did was feel.

Disclaimer: Though I can be awesome when I want to be, I still don’t own Heroes. So I can’t be as awesome as possibly. Sucks. But le sigh, I still don’t want any lawsuits. So there you go.