Retrospect
Title: Retrospect
Author: AineRose
Rating: R for language
Pairings: None, though you can see if as Paire if you really want to
Characters: Peter, Claire
Word Count: 1,394
Notes: Written for oneshot challenge #27 at heroes_contest , “In Hindsight”.
Summary: In a post-apocalyptic world, Peter and Claire still have to save the world every week.
First ever Heroes fic. It's completely random.
And, first ever contest entry. So, *shrugs*, here it goes. Tell me what you think!
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When Peter woke up, he was lying on the floor, with at least a pound of dust in his mouth. He sat up, coughing violently, and glanced up to see Claire rock back onto her heels from her crouching position. She wore a look of deep relief, and then a sudden expression of anger. “Thank God,” she breathed, and swiftly punched him in the arm.
“Ow,” he complained, rubbing his arm even though she hadn’t caused him much real pain.
“You could have killed yourself, and stranded me!” She cried, and crossed her arms haughtily. “You’re lucky I don’t kill you.”
Peter ignored the obvious retort that killing him would only serve to strand her here for certain. At some point in his long life, he had learned that a response like that was unwise when dealing with his niece. Instead, he surveyed the damage, pushing himself onto the heels of his hands and noting the ashy dust on his clothes and the needle sticking out of his left arm. He removed it carefully, feeling his skin knitting together underneath. “Emergency transfusion?” he queried.
“Well I could hardly give you my power with you unconscious, now could I?” she huffed. “Plus, you have to hold onto Hiro’s grandson’s power or we will be completely fucked.”
Not for the first time, Peter had to stop himself from reprimanding her for cursing, and remind himself that this teenager in front of him was actually in her second century, and had earned the right to swear herself blue if she so chose. He scratched the back of his head, feeling more of the strange soot coating his hair.
“What happened?”
“What happened? You can’t hold on to more than one power at once, that’s what happened! You took Hiro’s power and turned off mine, came back here with me, and promptly started to decompose! Have you any idea how difficult it is to find a vein when the arm is turning to
ashes?”
He stared at her contemplatively. “Damn, I knew I was forgetting something. Oh, well. I guess hindsight’s 20/20.” He pushed himself off his hands and onto his feet, brushing the ashy remains of his skin and vital organs from his hands.
“That’s all you have to say for yourself?” she screeched, following him as he stumbled around in a circle looking for some kind of marker to tell them where they were. “Maybe if you had done, you know, the smallest bit of planning before stealing powers from a baby and rushing off here and attempting to change the course of history, we might not be where we are right now: lost in time and practically dead!”
“I’m practically dead; you’re as fit as ever.”
“Peter!” She grabbed onto his shoulder. “Stop and listen to me for a minute!” He looked at her closely and detected the urgency in her tone.
“What is there to talk about?” he sighed after a minute.
“The fact that you’re only standing up because my blood is running through your veins, for one thing. Who knows how long it’ll last?”
“All the reason to not waste time.” He set off again, but was this time impeded by her arm clothes-lining him at chest level.
“This is crazy, Peter.” She warned. “You can’t go in there, with no power except the ability to bend time and space, and a body that’s ready to poof like a vampire at any time!”
“There’s no such thing as vampires, Claire,” he scoffed.
“That’s seriously what you’re choosing to remark on?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Look, we have to do this. The world-“
“Will be destroyed if we keep messing with time!” she finished for him.
“-is fucked,” he finished.
She sighed and pushed her bangs out of her face. “I’m sick of saving the world,” she grumbled.
“Well,” he reasoned. “We haven’t destroyed the fabric of time yet, have we?”
“I hate this,” she grumbled mostly to herself, and scuffed the ground with her foot before following him.
They walked in silence for almost an hour, through grey industrial factory blocks that smelled of bleach and sulphur. They had long been accustomed to the acrid smoke burning their nostrils. The city seemed to be deserted, but in the odd spot a cockroach would scuttle past, or a small plant shoot would be found struggling to grow through the cracks in the concrete. They stopped at the first one they saw, Peter brushing his hand tenderly against the little white bud. “Feels like a long time since I last saw a flower,” he sighed.
Claire smiled. “Isn’t that why we’re here?” she asked. “If we do this right, the earth will be a lot healthier again.”
He tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace.
“Hey, does this remind you of anything?” She asked conversationally, as they stumbled over massive blocks of rubble. The game was a familiar one, designed to keep their brains and memories active as their bodies kept ticking away. The trick was to think of their most obscure memories in order to really exercise their minds. Claire was better at remembering than Peter, who had taken her powers at a much later age, and struggled with the inevitable deterioration in brain function.
“Soviet Russia, post World War II?” he asked lightly.
“We weren’t there,” she reprimanded him.
“I’ve seen movies though. You?"
She sighed and frowned in deep concentration for several minutes. “An episode of Bear Grylls,” she concluded finally. “He was demonstrating how to survive in an urban landscape after a bombing. Ate a pigeon egg.”
Peter laughed. “I can’t believe you remember that. I have no recollection of a Bear Grill.”
She shrugged. “Look it up later. Your turn. Make it a better one than last time.”
He scratched the back of his head thoughtfully and nearly stumbled over a thick metal wire sticking out of the ground. It took him a good half hour to think of anything, to the point where Claire got bored and demanded answers.
“I’m trying to remember,” he said distantly, “an ancient folk story I heard in Ireland.”
Claire stared at him in surprise. It was incredibly rare for Peter to remember anything from that long ago that wasn’t related to his family or the manifestation of their powers. “What do you remember?” she asked softly.
“It was something to do with a guy who left with a magical woman to go to a land of Eternal Youth. He went back to his family a year later to find out they were all dead and hundreds of years had passed. This woman, she told him he could go back as long as he stayed on her horse, but he saw someone who needed help and got off his horse. As soon as he touched the ground, though, he...went poof like a vampire,” he smiled.
“That’s amazing, Peter!” she enthused. “I can’t believe you can still remember that. Why do you look so pissed?”
“Not pissed,” he corrected. “Frustrated. I can’t remember his name, or hers, or the name of the place.” He gritted his teeth and exhaled forcibly. “I’m sure it was relevant.”
She patted him on the arm in consolation. “Keep mulling it over. I’m sure it’s still lodged deep down there in your brain somewhere.”
He gave her a despondent look that made him look like a basset hound, and Claire wondered if digging deep in the past like this was bringing up more memories than he might care to remember.
“That sounds like a regenerator, like me,” she tried to change the subject. “Or a time traveller. Doesn’t it?”
Peter shrugged. “Lots of folk tales have roots in truth. Maybe he was a Special.”
“That’d be cool,” she smiled. Something caught her attention. “Do you see that? Over the hill?”
Both of their faces took on expressions of grim determination. They climbed up the small hill and arrived at the top, where they could see a deep valley below them. There were drills everywhere, trucks, people with clipboards. The air was so thick with acrid black smoke that it was difficult to see all the way down.
“We need to find a Special with super strength,” Claire sighed. “Or something else good for fighting bad guys.”
Peter looked at her grimly. “We’ll have to do for now. You ready?”
She took a deep breath, and nodded.
They started down the hill.