Chapter Sixteen

“Lost At Sea”

Peter Petrelli and Claire Bennet

Lower East Side, Apartment 1407

Claire was usually a good sleeper, especially in Peter’s marshmallow of a bed. But tonight, despite all of the muscle melting road-blocks that had been thrown her way, slumber still had its gates locked.

She craned her neck up, head feeling like it weighed a ton, and saw 1:53 shining in red. A rustle and frustrated groan from the living room diverted her attention. Peter had taken the couch again, mostly because it was the first thing in the apartment that he could collapse onto. Somehow, he’d managed to strip himself of his jeans and overshirt, but after, not a sound was heard from his resting place.

Now, he was just as sleepless as Claire, tossing around and trying to find a comfortable position. But no matter what he did, his eyes wouldn’t close. Perhaps it was the weight of the day, all of the thoughts that Peter and Claire wanted to consider. There were too many memories, concerns, fears buzzing in the back of their skulls, so consciousness plagued them.

Claire, for instance, could not get the image of Bennet’s death out of her head. She’d been doing more silent weeping in the last hour then thinking, and she couldn’t even get consent to cry herself to sleep.

Meanwhile, Peter kept thinking Sylar Sylar Sylar like a mantra. Sylar was still out there. Sylar wanted to kill him. Sylar could show up at their window in that very instance and decapitate the both of them. It wouldn’t have been so scary if Sylar was stoppable, and the whole situation terrified Peter with its unexpected dangers. Peter had been so confident, so sure that Sylar could be squashed like a bug in no time, single-handedly by him no less. The outcome had been all the more dastardly.

Claire swallowed, moistening her parched throat. “Peter.”

It took a second, but Peter did look up from his make shift bed. “Claire?” he croaked. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“I can’t sleep either. Come to bed.”

Peter frowned, and even in the darkness, Claire could sense it.

“We might as well be insomniacs together,” she further elucidated, and a small smile stretched across Peter’s lips.

“Alright.”

Abandoning his sheets and pillow, he dragged himself twenty feet to his bed. Peeling back the covers and plopping onto the mattress like a dead weight, a meaningless moan hummed from his throat.

Claire pulled the covers back over them and snuggled closer to him. Peter turned onto his back and slid an arm under her, pulling her by the waist, flush up against his side. Claire finally sighed in peace, resting her cheek and a palm on his chest. Heartbeat. The rise and fall of breath. Life. She’d learned today, and yesterday from Simone’s death, how fragile it actually was. Being indestructible took away her perspective, and spending most of her time with another self-healer was not a big help. She realized that she and Peter would have to watch everyone else around them die at some point. Nathan, Sandra, Matt, Niki, adorable Hiro, little Lyle. All of them would age, wither, and die, while Peter and Claire would stay in youthful limbo.

Guess it gives a new meaning to’ together forever’, Claire thought half-sardonically, giving Peter’s chest an affectionate stroke at the contemplation. Not that she would mind. If there was one person she could pick to life out an eternity with, it would be the man that currently held her in his arms, in his bed.

Judging by the sudden kiss Peter pressed to the top of her head, Claire had a feeling that he just heard her thoughts. Smiling in contentment, she finally was able to reach closure, close her eyes, and drift to another world with him.

*

It came as quite a shock for Claire to wake up at noon with her limbs entwined with Peter’s, and she took a few moments to remember what had happened last night. Breathing a sigh of relief for they were both clothed, she relaxed her head on his chest once more. His face had turned to hers in the night, just a few inches away, and his exhalations made his bangs flutter. Claire giggled and noticed how adorably cute he was while he slept. Peter was a handsome guy by day, but he still had “please-love-me” puppy dog eyes and pouty lips when he wanted to that made him more charmingly boyish then most men.

The satisfaction was short lived, however, as she heard Peter’s cell phone ringing in the other room.

Claire tried to slip out of Peter’s hold as smoothly as possible, but by the time she had gotten out of bed, he still ended up stirring awake. Sighing, Claire pranced to the living room to answer the phone, which read PARKMAN on the caller ID.

“Hey Matt?” were the first words that Claire spoke that day.

“Claire? Is Peter there?”

“No, he’s trying to wake up,” Claire snorted, looking over at her bedmate, who was yawning tiredly, rolling over, and trying to go back to sleep.

Matt still talked hurriedly. “Get him up and come to Isaac’s stat. Peter told me to call if Isaac painted anything important and…this is pretty damn big.”

“What?” Claire asked, all good feelings draining out of her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Just get over here. It’s something you two need to see.”

Claire lowered her voice and turned away from Peter. “And Isaac? Are you sure that he and Peter-,”

“I put in a good word for your boy,” Matt assured her. “Isaac’s not gonna welcome him in with open arms, but he’ll be civil. We’re all on the same side, here.”

“Good,” Claire exhaled, calmed. “I’ll get him up and bring him over.”

“See you later.”

Claire set Peter’s cell back on the computer table and headed back to the bedroom. Peter was hugging a pillow to his chest to make up for the lack of Claire between his arms. Claire smiled, sat beside him on the edge of the bed, and smoothed back the hair over his ear.

“Mmm,” Peter moaned, not opening his eyes. “What was that all about?”

“You’re pathetic,” Claire rolled her eyes, and Peter finally decided to open his. Watery brown orbs frowned up at her.

“Why?” he asked defensively.

Claire leaned down and kissed him on the cheek, then said in her sweetest voice, “Because you can’t even go thirty seconds after waking up without your day starting to suck.”

Matt Parkman, Hiro Nakamura, and Isaac Mendez

Isaac’s Loft, 215 Reed Street

“They’re late,” Isaac growled, pacing his studio, annoyed. Hiro eating breakfast (waffles, of course) at the table in the other side of the room, and Ando was still sound asleep on the couch. Matt tried to calm the starving artist down, while feeling a nagging trip of fear himself.

“Peter wasn’t up yet. He has to get dressed and stuff, remember?”

Isaac pointed to his most recent and now notorious painting. “But what if this has already come true! I told you, the future’s been getting closer for me lately! This might have just happened!”

“What happened?” called a male voice from the front doorway. Peter and Claire had arrived, looking rather confused, and Isaac’s eyes closed, at ease.

“Thank God, Claire, I thought that my painting…” he stammered, trying to focus his attention to the blonde instead of Peter. But the man kept up his questions.

“Where’s the painting?” Peter asked bluntly, leading Claire down to the ground floor where Isaac and Matt were. A large womanly shaped lump was covered by a blanket on Isaac’s bed, and Peter’s stomach churned when he realized what-who- it was.

The artist took a hard took at Peter, who gave a pretty stiff stare himself. Peter saw that Isaac’s eyes were bloodshot, possibly from crying, heroin use, or both. It wouldn’t have surprised him if a recovering addict shot up because of what he’d just lost. Most of Isaac’s heroin induced works were violent too, and judging from the artist’s fanatical state, this latest one probably was.

“See for yourself,” Isaac muttered back, pointing to the square canvas to the left. Peter walked over to face it head on, and was even more petrified at the sight in front of him, then when he saw his own death portrayed in paint.

Claire was lying in a pool of her own blood, the top of her head gruesomely sawed off. To her side, kneeling in the crimson liquid and sobbing into his hands, was Peter, who remained unscathed. Behind them was a large, shattered window that looked out over a New York morning, but other then that, it was impossible to tell where they were.

Claire started to near the painting, but Peter held up a hand.

“No. You don’t want to know,” he warned, trying to spare her the sight. Claire had enough on her plate without adding “seeing one’s own death” to the list.

Yet the girl ignored him. She walked over to him, and took in the sight as well, shuddering.

“When does this happen? Where? How do we stop it?!” Peter’s voice cracked, as he rounded on Isaac.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know, I just paint what I see,” Isaac murmured weakly.

Peter ran a frustrated hand through his locks and turned to Isaac again, “Do they always come true, huh?” he mumbled, desperate and hysterical. Claire came to prevent another breakdown, rushing to Peter and taking his hand in hers.

“Shh, it hasn’t happened yet,” she whispered in his ear, rubbing his shoulders soothingly. “Calm down; don’t get angry.”

Peter took her into his arms and held her there as if she would drop dead if he let her go. Swallowing any rough tension he had with Isaac, he cleared his mind and addressed the artist more sensibly.

“So now, we have to kill Sylar, stop me from exploding, and Claire’s life is on the line, too?”

Hiro entered their proximity sometime during the commotion, and held a half-eaten waffle in his hand.

“We can change future,” he explained optimistically. “We just cannot change the past. The future to us is someone else past. They cannot change our future, for it happened already for them. It’s the past for them, and they can’t change it. But we can change it. It still our future.”

“The only people that can change the future are the ones that still haven’t had that future happen yet?” Matt surmised, scratching his head.

“I think that is why I came from the future,” Hiro nodded, taking a bite out of his Eggo. “Future me told Pet-ah to save the cheerleader, because Future me couldn’t do it himse-…er…myself. It was doomed for Future me, already, but-,”

“-if he got me to do it,” continued Peter, “because it hadn’t happened yet for me…”

“Right-o,” grinned Hiro. “The future is not decided yet. We can save Cheerleader Claire.”

Something clicked in Peter’s mind. Perhaps it was Sylar’s ability to see how things worked, or maybe his own twisted genius, but the reason for him exploding rolled out to him on a red carpet. All this time, he’d assumed it was an overload of power, but what if that wasn’t the case. What if, it was an overload of emotion?

“I need to talk to Claude,” he blurted out, reluctantly letting Claire go and heading towards the front door.

“But Peter!” Claire called, following after him, bewildered. Peter turned around and gave her a look that indicated that she, nor anybody, was to follow him.

“I’ll be back soon. Stay here,” Peter told her gently but firmly, and without a kiss goodbye, he strode out the entranceway.

Claude Raines and Peter

Columbus Park

Peter hadn’t sensed Claude at the Deveaux Building, but instead, here at Columbus Park. It was the same place that they had trained one day, the day that Peter discovered he had ice powers. It was a large enough park, but luckily, with Peter’s abilities, Claude wasn’t hard to locate.

“Claude!” he hollered upon seeing the invisible man sitting on a bench and feeding bread crumbs to some pigeons.

Claude looked up, his expression unreadable. “Peter! You made it out alive, I see.”

“Yeah, barely,” Peter replied glumly. “Bennet didn’t fare so well, though.”

The older man stood up from the bench and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Eh? Some broken bones?”

“Try death,” Peter mumbled back. Claude’s eyebrows shot up into his wispy bangs.

“Dead? You got him killed?!” Claude exclaimed incredulously. Off Peter’s defeated look, he moaned and slapped his hand to his forehead.

“You’ve got to be bloody kidding me! How did this happen?”

“He sacrificed himself so that we could escape. Me and Niki got knocked out, Ando and Hiro were distracted, there was a fire, Claire was trying to take car of me…God, it was a disaster. This morning hasn’t been much better. Isaac just unveiled his latest piece. It’s of Claire…” He hesitated, finding it hard to control his voice and actually say the words. “Claire gets killed by…Sylar.”

Claude’s eyes showed genuine fear. “Be on guard for now on, then. Don’t let my daughter out of your sight. If she dies because of your carelessness, I don’t care how indestructible you are, I’ll-,”

“No need for that,” muttered Peter. “I’d kill myself and save you the time.”

Weighing Peter’s gloomy rebuke, Claude sat back down on the bench. “How’s she taking all of this?”

Peter swallowed and shrugged helplessly. “It’s tearing her apart, but she’s trying not to show it. She’s trying to be strong for me, and help me, and I just…I don’t want her to feel like my crutch anymore. She needs out herself first, not me.”

“Why you telling me this? You should be telling her!”

Peter slumped onto the bench next to Claude. “I dunno. I did come here to talk to you about something, though. Hiro said something that sort of gave me an epiphany.”

“Hiro is the one that can stop time?”

“Yeah. Anyway…I saw that painting of Claire, and I realized…how would I feel if that came true? I’d be devastated; I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I can’t even imagine it right now; it’d be that awful. What if…the reason I explode is from all that emotional overload?”

Claude snorted. “You’re a time bomb, not a mood ring, mate.”

But Peter was unyielding. “What about save the cheerleader, save the world? If she lives, if we save her from this, I won’t feel grief, I won’t explode, and New York will be saved.”

“Your logic’s right, but your science is off,” Claude pointed out practically. “Humans don’t just explode from emotion. Can’t be done.”

“Humans can’t heal themselves, fly, or turn invisible either,” retorted Peter. “After all, I’m not really human anymore, am I?”

“You’re as human as you choose to be,” the mentor replied. “That’s the difference between you and Sylar. He’s a murdering raving lunatic and you’re…empathetic. If you can just keep it together long enough to take him on the right way…”

“Keep it together?!” exploded Peter, rising to his feet again. “He killed Bennet! He killed Claire’s father! He deserves to be slaughtered!”

The dark smoke in him was thickening again, and he tried to sooth his soul with thoughts of Claire’s warm fingers tangled with his.

“This is not the time for you to get your revenge!” Claude lashed out just as harshly. “I knew someone a lot like you that got put six feet under the ground because she wanted revenge!”

“Who?” frowned Peter, chest heaving. Claude’s temper stilled as well, and he began his explanations.

“Tammy Gallagher. A pupil of mine, bout a year ago. Her daughter Karen ran away from home to go off with her boyfriend when the kids were in high school. Tammy tracked them down ten years later to go rough up the little bastard that she thought had brainwashed her daughter. They were married by then, the girl and whoever her mate was. Tammy walked into the house, didn’t come out. I’m not quite sure what happened to her in there, but I think it was an accident. Tammy had absorbed a psychic ability along the road somewhere, and she would have seen it coming.”

“How do you know she’s dead then, if she never came out of the house?”

“I saw her body,” Claude replied gravely. “I was the one that buried her. I lived in Virginia at the time, wandered around with her on the search for Karen.”

Peter rethought some of Claude’s story. “Wait. Did you say she absorbed a psychic ability?”

Claude smiled nostalgically. “Indeed, friend. She could do what you can do. Remember when we met and you told me your ability? What was the first thing I said to you?”

“Fantastic,” Peter recalled. “One of those.” He almost chuckled. “I should have known all along. You’ve trained other empaths.”

“Just Tammy, actually. You lot are quite a rare breed. It’s really the only reason I haven’t left you to explode, yet. Ye’ remind me of her. And you empaths are the only ones that can actually see me…”

Peter was silent, chewing over the tragedy that Claude had just revealed to him. A woman wanted justice, a powerful woman, and she had still been defeated by mere mortals. It just went to show that even the strongest of abilities was useless with irresponsibility.

“And that’s why you’ve got to control that temper,” chided Claude. “You’re reckless just like Tammy was. It’s already caused a death, maybe two, for you. It cannot happen again.”

“Sylar’s a murderer,” Peter mentioned haplessly. “He has to be stopped in some way.”

Claude rolled his eyes. “Who says that it has to be you that stops him?”

“I’m the only one that can!”

“Oh, now you’re just being arrogant. Another one of the deadly sins, might I add. Wanna give it a go for glutton and sloth? Collect all seven!”

Peter glared.

“Anyway, if you think you’re so high and mighty, why are you still teamed up with the Mini-Justice League? You said Hiro could stop time. Surely he could kill Sylar. Parkman could send him screaming to his knees with telepathic pulses.”

“Like they know how,” Peter sighed impatiently. “We have no idea how to…” He trailed off and looked up at Claude quizzically. The cogwheels in his brain were fitting together a brilliant idea.

“You can train them.”

Claude groaned. “What did I tell you about no Sunday School For The Special?”

“I’m serious! I barely know how to use these powers myself, but these people- they’re clueless! You have to help us, Claude.” Peter wasn’t exactly the begging type, but his self-titled “puppy sulk” was a frequent weapon of choice. “You’re all we’ve got.”

Whether it was the flattery, or that the boy had come to grow on him, Claude was not certain. But either way, it was still impossible to say no to that desperate, pleading, gaze.

“Why do I always budge for you kids?” Claude muttered indignantly, and Peter beamed. All of the young man’s previously murky expectations for the future did a 180 with Claude’s acceptance. If they could get trained, find a way to really stop Sylar, then Claire wouldn’t get killed! And Claire surviving=Peter not exploding. Hopefully.

“Great. I’ll bring them here tomorrow, same time.” And then he did something he had never dared do to before: he hugged Claude.

The invisible man was not too keen on that though. Shrugging off Peter’s loose embrace, he grumbled something about “Italians” and “touching.” Peter failed to care, however, because there was finally a beacon of hope for their ship lost at sea.

Because of Claude Raines, they were going to save the world.

*