Fic: "What do you go home to?" (Heroes)
Title: What do you go home to?
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Lyle Bennet, the Bennets, Mr. Muggles, mentions of others
Pairings: none
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: all of Heroes season 2
Disclaimer: I don't own "Heroes" and I won't own "Heroes" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: about 6900
Status: one-shot, finished
Author's Note: written for heroes_fest (prompt 39: What Lyle does while he's offscreen)
Summary: Apparently, Lyle's really good at pretending to be extra-normal. Like normal squared, or normal cubed, or so indistinguishable that nobody ever bothers to acknowledge his existence.
-
Lyle tries really hard not to think about the weeks he spent with Mom in the shelter, waiting for Dad and Claire to show up and rescue them. (Or for some Company goon to show up and finish them off. Or hold them hostage. Or leave them braindead husks of nothing.)
Nobody ever talks about the lost weeks, which is okay. It makes it a lot easier to pretend to be normal once they find the house in California. And apparently, Lyle's really good at pretending to be extra-normal. Like normal squared, or normal cubed, or so indistinguishable that nobody ever bothers to acknowledge his existence.
-
Living in California isn't so bad, Lyle sometimes thought. It wasn't so different from Texas except that it was the exact opposite. Sort of like moving from the North Pole to the South Pole and having the polar bears switch to penguins. Except not really, because Lyle's still a Texas boy and he cannot deal with temperatures even close to freezing outside of his freezer and it's not like he would ever live in there.
(Well, except for that one time when he was 7 and it was that hot summer, probably about 115 outside and the air conditioner busted and in the couple of hours that it had taken Dad to get a replacement, Claire had convinced him that they would just take all of the food out of the fridge and go and live inside there, except that they hadn't both fit in the fridge together and she had convinced him that he needed to get in the freezer since he was the smaller one, but after 20 minutes, he realized that an ice cube tray was sticking to his arm and started screaming to be let out.)
But still, his original point remained. California and Texas were like the Poles except that they were hotter and had more people. Although, Lyle wouldn't have minded if there were a few less people around, since going to a school with thousands of kids ended up to be twice as boring as a normal-sized one.
Whatever. Bigger crowds made it easier to blend in.
Change "those crazy hippies!" to "those crazy fundies!" and he was all set.
-
When Lyle heard about Claire's ability for the first time that stuck, when she came back from a fatal gunshot wound, he could remember kind of freaking out. First he thought it was freakish to have such a freak for a sister. Then he thought it was kinda cool that she couldn't get hurt. Then he worried about her. Then he worried about what it meant for their whole family. Then he got a headache.
Later, Claire told him that it wasn't the first time he found out. "Tell me what happened," he'd pleaded.
"I had these stupid tapes," she said, "Of me healing from every injury I could think of. And I left one laying around and you found it."
He couldn't remember that. "What'd I do?"
Claire laughed. "Well, first you called me a freak. Then, you threatened to tell Mom and Dad and sell the tape online and become a millionaire." It sounded like his typical response. "And somewhere in the middle of there, you went after me with a stapler."
"I did what?"
Claire giggled, hard. Twice. "You were pretty freaked out. You locked yourself in the car and refused to come out for a while. But eventually I convinced you not to tell Mom and Dad."
Lyle didn't have to ask if he told them, because he knew he wouldn't. He tried to laugh along with Claire, but it didn't work too well.
Lyle had always been the good secret-keeper of the family, and when he promised not to tell he never did. He just couldn't figure why Dad had decided to wipe his memory. It wasn't like he was going to tell anybody, ever.
-
On Lyle's first day of school, Dad drove Claire to school in her brand new car and Lyle took the bus. "Better get used to the schedule now," Dad had said, before grabbing Claire's keys off the table.
He didn't live close enough to walk to school any more, and the kid he was stuck next to smelled like burnt patchouli and something probably illegal. And at the end of the ride, which was less bumpy than the other bus rides he remembered, his back was aching and his head was buzzing; but he didn't see the infamous car exchange, so that was something.
And when Claire's brand new car was stolen a few days later, because she had left it unlocked, Lyle couldn't help the snickering. Of course, he did it privately, in his room, where he pretty much did everything. He didn't say anything about it to Claire, but whenever someone mentioned cars or driving, he looked at her and smiled. They were siblings, she knew what he meant.
-
Lyle had noticed that Mom was really quiet in the house; and at first he thought it was probably like she thought that they still needed to act like they were deep undercover even though she was inside where nobody would really notice her.
But when he found her passed out on the couch three times in a week with Mr. Muggles eating the remains of what looked like a burrito, he realized that it was because she was hiding the headaches.
Lyle was so tired of the secrets in the family. So he put a blanket over her, and then he put "The Princess Bride" into the VCR. He got a glass of water, in case she was thirsty, and some tissues and tylenol just in case. Then, he sat on the floor next to the couch, grabbed Mr. Muggles for his lap and let his mom stroke the back of his head whenever there was a tense scene. (He was really glad that laughing didn't make her head hurt worse.)
-
There was a weird stain on the couch when Lyle went to go watch "Terminator 2" on the big TV. And Mr. Muggles was chewing on something that looked kind of like an eraser or a toe or something.
Knowing Claire, it probably was her toe. She was already outside staring at nothing and pretending to be paranoid that somebody was watching her. But if Claire actually thought that somebody was going around staring at her through the window, she would probably put on some actual clothes. She was so weird.
-
There are Tae Kwan Do classes in California way better than the ones back home, except he has to make sure that he doesn't excel.
Between the constant stunting of his martial arts prowess and the part where Dad forgets to pick him up from class 3 times in a row, Lyle can feel the excitement for Tae Kwan Do bleeding right out.
-
When mom asked him what he wanted for Christmas, she said she wanted to get him something extravagant and fancy, but something that would make him feel at home in their new house. So he chose Guitar Hero, all of them, and two extra controllers just in case.
He never actually used the extra controllers 'cause Claire thought the game was way too hard and she didn't have the time to practice, and Mom was hopeless at every single video game ever created, and it wasn't like Dad would ever just show up after dinner and see Lyle's amazing fret prowess and decide to join in. Plus, he didn't actually have any friends in California yet; so it was just him and Mr. Muggles.
Mr. Muggles was actually the best Guitar Hero partner ever, though. He would stand a few feet back from the screen and stare intently at what was going on. He hated the orange button too, so whenever that would come up, he'd yip once. After a while, Lyle had learned to hit the orange button whenever Mr. Muggles barked, and Mr. Muggles never missed a single one. The only thing that Mr. Muggles didn't like was the crazy 80s hair metal, which was kind of useful. If he wanted the dog out of his room, he'd just put on "Cherry Pie."
And Lyle was pretty damn good at Guitar Hero, too; could make it through all of "No One Knows" on the Expert level. Claire liked to watch him sometimes, sit on the beanbag by his bed and just hang for a while, but she never says anything.
Except that one time when she mentioned that he was way better than West, but he wasn't supposed to know that she was dating West. Yet another example of how his sister was completely incapable of keeping a secret.
-
Lyle didn't exactly understand Dad's rationale for letting Claire use the car without the obligation to give him rides to places sometimes.
"Claire needs the car," Dad said, "Because if she were to get mugged on the street, the attacker might accidentally discover her ability." Lyle thought it was stupid, since if she got in a car accident and got smooshed or something, all of the police and rescue teams would see her heal from that; but Dad never listened to his arguments.
And Lyle lived in probably the only family in the world where if he were attacked from behind with a jagged, broken beer bottle, his parents would be glad that he wasn't able to immediately heal the wounds. Not that he would probably ever be attacked from behind, since he was in 3rd geup in Tae Kwan Do, but still.
-
So Lyle was just minding his business alone in his room all night, like he usually did, but then when he went out to get some soda because he was thirsty and he looked out the window. He didn't know why he looked out the window, it was probably because when you're in a room with windows your eyes just automatically look there. But his dad was standing outside in his stupid purple shirt talking with someone who looked so much like the Haitian.
So much like the Haitian that he probably was the Haitian, which meant that Dad was working with the Haitian again; which meant that he had like, 45 seconds before the memory would be all gone. Lyle snuck out of the kitchen, suddenly only needing a drink of water from the bathroom.
He didn't think that Dad had seen him, but he couldn't be sure. So Lyle snuck under his covers and pretended very hard to be asleep. He liked his memories, he liked his memories, he liked his ability to be able to remember things.
-
At first, Lyle hadn't wanted to admit that maybe Mom had some brain damage. But he knew it was true because Mom's forehead would get a pained little scrunchy headache line and whenever Dad saw it, he would look down like he was ashamed.
And Dad should be ashamed, because it was his own stupid fault.
Lyle was ashamed, too, for not realizing it sooner.
-
After two days with a clear recollection of seeing the Haitian on his porch, Lyle decided to create a super secret log of events, to make sure that he wasn't missing any memories.
First, he cleaned out his internet cache extra super well, then organized his documents, then created a hidden folder inside of his "School Papers" folder. In this folder, he had three other folders, all of which were filled with random soft-core porno that he grabbed from online. The one labeled "xfro:okm" had a hidden folder inside of it, and inside that hidden folder was a password-protected zip file. He hid the password in a notepad document inside of a hidden folder inside of his Music folder, just in case. Then, he created all sorts of random hidden folders inside of most of his other folders that had names like "hot now sexy time girl". It was a brilliant plan.
So he just had to make sure that he wrote in a formatless .doc format, then label it according to his alphanumeric dating system, then put it through the encoding program he had hidden on the computer, (and he had a different encoding for each entry, because he wasn't an idiot, and he used the alphabet in order of the qwerty system, except backwards starting from the middle row.) Then, he just dropped the entry into the zip file and closed all of the applicable folders before clearing his cache and signing off the computer.
He figured that it would take his dad at least a full day to be able to get all of his files. That is, unless the Haitian decided to search through his memories to find the process. So Lyle tried to forget how he formatted the system outside of the essential parts, created secret keyboard shortcuts to help that out.
And it wasn't like he could just do nothing. They were his memories. He wanted to know if he was missing anything. (He kept the backup flashdrive on his keychain.)
-
On Mondays, when Claire had practice and Dad had the mandatory staff meetings, Angela Petrelli called their house.
If Mom wasn't around, Lyle would answer the phone. Mom had been doing it for a couple of months, in secret, and Lyle found that he didn't care. Mrs. Petrelli was always really polite, and the first time they talked she already knew his name.
He had tried to get answers out of Claire one time, but she wouldn't answer them. All Claire ever said was, "She's a terrible woman with a heart made of ice! Ice and something else that's probably really disgusting and terrible, like toxic sludge or something."
But Lyle couldn't see that. He knew that Mrs. Petrelli knew about Claire's ability, so she knew Claire couldn't get hurt. But still, she called every week to check up on her indestructible granddaughter's health.
It made Lyle wish even harder that he had grandparents of his own.
-
Claire and her stupid boyfriend were all over each other on the couch, being completely ridiculous. What kind of an idiot listens to music from a cell phone? It wasn't like Claire's room didn't have a stereo, plus they each only got one side of the headphone. Claire couldn't even use a headphone splitter; and there was no way know how to change from stereo to mono so she didn't miss half the side of the song.
She was probably listening to something really terrible, too. Like Snow Patrol, five years after it was released and everybody that had made it their song had already broken up. Or a hip-hop love ballad.
Lyle had no idea how Claire could deal with having a boyfriend dumb enough to encourage her to do such dumb stuff. She was supposed to be smart.
Whatever. It was really none of his business if his stupid sister couldn't keep her cuddling off of the couch in plain view of all windows where she could be spotted and grounded for the rest of eternity and listened to terrible music with a guy that had a girly haircut. Lyle was going to go listen to some Explosions in the Sky.
-
One day, Lyle decided to act like the man he wanted to be. He prepared his argument and calmly asked his dad to talk.
"I was thinking," he said, "Since Claire gets to do cheerleading so long as she doesn't date, and since I don't actually do any competitive sports, that it would be fair if I were allowed to date someone."
"No," Dad said without thinking. "Why, do you have anyone in mind?"
"No," Lyle replied, but not so quickly that he gave the impression of hiding anything, "I just figured that it would be fair..."
"You're too young to date," Dad said, "And it's not safe." Lyle was all ready to talk about the three pregnant girls in his science class and how he had never ever done anything to compromise their cover, but Dad said, "End of discussion." And raised his eyebrow threateningly.
And when Dad said, "You're lucky to get Tae Kwan Do," as Lyle was walking out the room, it took all of of his energy not to turn around and flip Dad the bird.
-
Lyle gets these headaches sometimes, but he doesn't tell anybody.
When he looked it up on Wikipedia, the symptoms said they were probably migraines. Migraines like Mom had.
Mom got the migraines from the brain-wiping. Lyle's brain has been wiped too. Mom had serious brain damage.
Mom gets cluster headaches sometimes. Lyle's headaches are usually just migraines. But still.
The family doesn't need 2 brain damaged members. He keeps it to himself.
It's a lot easier when he just doesn't focus on anything that he's forgotton.
-
Back in Texas, Lyle had a bunch of friends. It wasn't like he was the most popular guy in his grade or anything like that, but he could go to a party and be friendly with 30 people and he had like 4 friends that he'd known all his life and things were fine. (Friends that probably thought he was dead or something, when he thought about it.)
In California, Lyle's only friend is Mr. Muggles, and he really does not like to dwell on that. So he has nobody to talk about hot girls with, or to compare History notes with or even to just hang out with when his house gets unbearable and he needs a place to chill. And Mr. Muggles really sucks at sharing tacos.
But whatever, at least he has somebody. And it's not like Mr. Muggles ever really criticizes him for anything. And he's a really good foot-warmer, so that's something.
-
Whenever Lyle very politely asks Claire if she would please stop stuffing her face with all of the chicken tacos and learn to share, all she ever does is yell, "Shut up, Lyle!" And kick him, like he's the one with the crazy healing ability!
-
So he was sitting outside, reading "The Catcher in the Rye," and all of the sudden it occured to Lyle that he couldn't remember his 5th birthday party.
The logical part of his brain said that of course he had a birthday party when he turned 5, but he can't remember it. He can't remember anything about turning 5, whether he had friends or cake or anything like that. And he's suddenly really freaking creeped out.
So he went inside to see his mom. "Mom," he said conversationally, "Did I have a birthday party when I was 5?"
"Of course you did, Honey," she said, chopping onions for the soup.
"What happened there?"
"Well," Mom said, then paused. "You know, it's the funniest thing, I can't quite remember." Lyle's ribcage got too tight. "I'll have to think on that one. I know you had one..."
He grabbed the knife from his mom and started doing the carrots. "It's okay, Mom," he said, "I don't really need to know right now. I'll finish doing up the vegetables."
"Thank you, Lyle," she cooed. "I'm afraid I'm getting a bit of a headache...."
"Why don't you grab Mr. Muggles and go lay on the couch for a while?" Lyle dropped the celery into the pot. "I can take care of supper from here."
Mom made a soft noise and sunk on to the couch, Mr. Muggles in her lap. It was the onion that was making Lyle's eyes water.
When Dad came back from work, Lyle kind of wanted to take his knife and stab it right in the center of that stupid purple shirt, but he didn't. Mom needed Dad to comfort her through the headache. Dad held the family together; Dad should probably not be stabbed.
-
It wasn't like Lyle didn't want a real relationship with his dad; it was just that Claire and everything else took up so much time.
He understood the principle, the kid throwing tampons in the back of the room gets the most attention from the teacher. Still sucks, though.
-
In health class, they were doing a unit on world cuisine. Which would have been okay, except that when the teacher asked for a call of hands of everyone that had ever eaten fish and chips, Lyle not only found his hand frozen, he suddenly had a headache so bad that he passed out and had to be escorted to the nurse's office.
It took a little convincing to get the nurse not to call his family, and it was a hard when he could barely concentrate on anything but the steel wool rubbing behind his eyes. "Please don't call my Mom," he said, looking downtroddenly at the floor, "She's got this brain condition that gets worse when she's stressed out, and I was just up reading the "Of Mice and Men" all night to make sure I was okay for English class this morning so it's really just that I haven't gotten much sleep and please don't worry her, I can promise I won't do it again..."
"Okay," the nurse said, "So long as you promise not do it again."
"I will," he said, thankfully. (But he didn't promise, because when you make a promise, you have to keep it.)
And the nurse let him sleep on the cot for the rest of school, woke him up when it was time to get ready for the bus, and gave him a note to give to his teachers excusing his medical absence. Lyle was unexpectedly proud of how well he was able to manipulate the situation. Until it made him feel like his Dad. Then he was just a little queasy on top of headachey.
-
Sometimes he really missed the sound of twangy voices on the radio. So bad that it was almost a physical ache, and so strong that it interrupted his reading. And he couldn't just open up his favorite radio station from home and stream it on to the computer, 'cause Dad said it was essential to be as separate from Texas as possible. (And Lyle never bought the CDs because he never needed to get them when the songs were on the radio all the damn time.)
Those times, he'd go find his mom and offer to help make her a pie. Whenever Mom made pies, she'd start by letting him help; but at the end he was the fetcher and official bowl-stirrer and not allowed to touch the ingredients. Halfway through, too, Mom would start singing the good songs. Her voice sounded more like home than the radio, and he got pie out of the deal.
-
Mom sits next to Lyle's bed whenever he has a headache and takes a cool washcloth and wipes at his forehead. She even does it the right way, by wrapping it in ice cubes so it isn't gross and wet. Sometimes, she'll make him soup or hum him one of his favorite songs, or she'll tell the story about the day that Dad accidentally took her to a swingers club when he thought it was a seafood restaurant.
Dad sometimes stands in the doorway for a couple of minutes and asks for his symptoms.
Lyle is really glad that Mom decided to be the stay-at-home parent.
-
Lyle was on the computer after finishing his daily log and searching "random article" on Wikipedia when he got an instant message. This was a problem, because the only two people on his IM list were Dad and Claire, and Dad only let him have it so that the family could quickly reach each other when there was a surprise waffle night.
The random im said, "How do you know the Haitian?"
Lyle unplugged his internet jack straight from the wall. Suddenly, he was on the fourth step of the exploding heart technique.
The message repeated itself, even though he didn't have an active internet connection.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he responded.
"You have encrypted files that mention the Haitian," it said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he responded. Wikipedia wouldn't load. Gmail wouldn't load. Nothing else would load.
"You have a deeply encoded signal that starts from California," it said.
"There are no Company headquarters in California," it said.
Lyle was giving it 20 seconds and then calling his dad and possibly crying.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. Then, "I don't have any internet access, how are you sending this to me?"
"I'm Wireless," it typed, "I can hack into any electronic messaging device anywhere." There was a pause for about 14 seconds. "I am not affiliated with the Company."
Lyle typed, "I can't trust anyone that can hack into my computer and read my encrypted files, especially one that repeatedly mentions an unclarified yet ominous subject."
"I promise I'm not involved with the Company," it replied.
"I can't trust you," he typed. "I have no way of knowing what kind of agent you are, there's no way to prove anything."
"My name was Hana Gitelman," it typed, "My consciousness was absorbed into the internet as I destroyed the Company's primary tracking system."
"I can't trust you," he typed. "I don't know the Haitian."
"Your encrypted files mention him," she said. Paused. "Your encrypted files mention that he gave your mother brain damage."
"If you mention my mother again, I will throw this computer out of a window and never touch one again," Lyle typed.
"I think I know who you are," she wrote. "You cannot tell your father that I'm alive and contacted you."
"You cannot tell anyone where this computer is located." he typed, "Or about my mother, or about my encrypted files. If they find us, we'll have to move again and it will be a huge pain to live without any kind of computers allowed. Also, I can probably ruin you."
"I won't tell if you won't tell," she wrote.
"Agreed," he replied, and immediately shut off his computer.
-
When Lyle first figured out what Claire's ability meant, for everybody, he wasn't exactly sure what to do. He wondered if her blood could maybe heal him if he got hurt really bad or something, or fix Mom's memory problems, but then he remembered that she was adopted so it wasn't like she was blood-related to any of them. It would be really rude to ask, too.
And he wasn't sure what to tell her about it. He couldn't say he was okay with it when he would be lying.
Every time Lyle tried to ask her to please not take out the cookies with her bare hands, or to wait for the garbage disposal to turn off before she grabbed the spoon, Claire told him to shut up. And he couldn't get the words out right to say that every time he saw her hurt like that, it made his chest hurt and made him want to run for the nearest first aid kit and call the paramedics.
Lyle couldn't just shut off his heart when he saw a member of his family getting hurt. And he was scared that if he did, when saw it happen to someone else, that maybe its first instinct might be to watch and see how the injury healed itself.
-
So English class wanted another paper on some sort of old science fiction classic, and Lyle decided to do something by HG Wells. His twisted rationale was that you really couldn't get more old-school scifi than that, so he picked "The Invisible Man," because it was apparently a classic.
The problem started after he had decided to watch the movies in addition to reading the book. Lyle sat down at the kitchen table with a copy of the 1933 version of the DVD but when his eyes slid over the production credits to see if he recognized any of the actors, his brain skidded to a stop. A bad stop, full stop, full of immediate pain and a ripping sensation all down his neck.
For a few minutes, Lyle sat at the table with his head in his hands and unable to move or drop the movie or do anything while the back of his head buzzed and he lost his peripheral vision. When his mom came to sit next to him, her face was covered in TV static.
"Lyle, honey?" Her voice felt like a blanket full of cactuses, "What's wrong?" Somebody was stabbing him in the eye with an icepick was what's wrong.
He had to swallow a lot before his voice would work. "My head," he gasped. He stumbled over the table to get to the bathroom, where he puked up his lunch and breakfast and probably pizza from the night before.
Mom came behind him with a damp washcloth, "What were you doing, Lyle? What happened?" He crouched for a few more minutes until the retching subsided. "Do you want me to put the movie on?"
"No," he growled, "No, don't touch it!" Lyle didn't want his mom hurting, no matter what. "Just leave it. I just want to go to bed now, please."
-
Sometimes, when he'd had a particularly hard day, Lyle just wanted to go up to Mom and scream at her to just leave Dad already. All he did was hurt everybody and then erase their memories so he could do it again. (Well, he could also make a pretty good chili, but that was only every other Wednesday night.)
But he never did, because every time he opened his mouth to do it he remembered how it was, just him and Mom, waiting for Dad to come find them again. And he could imagine what it might be like if they knew he would never actually come back for them.
And after everything that she'd gone though, Mom didn't deserve a broken heart and broken marriage on top of it. And Mr. Muggles would not deal with the separation well at all.
-
He accidentally left his room in the middle of a huge fight between Claire and Dad, but it wasn't his fault that he was hungry and they were standing in front of the fridge. It was something about Claire's supposed non-existant dating life, again.
So Lyle just rummaged through the bag of leftovers. When there was a pause in the conversation, he only tried to say, "Does anybody know if there are any chicken soft tacos left?"
But halfway between the "chicken" and "soft," Claire yelled, "Shut up, Lyle!" So he just grabbed a beef one and went back to his room. Mr. Muggles could have all the stuff that fell out.
-
At the end of the quarter, he handed Mom his report card and didn't stick around to see the results.
She came into his room, though, and waited until he was done with "Free Bird" before giving him a hug and a little squeeze on his shoulder.
"Solid straight Bs," she said. "Perfect, Lyle."
He didn't say anything because he didn't want to cry in front of her. It wasn't like he didn't already know that there was no way he was going to be able to go to MIT. Everyone had to make sacrifices.
-
When Claire walked into his room without knocking, even though she wasn't supposed to, and saw him doing his morning stretches, she'd called him a freak. Lyle took offense to that, and briefly considered honing his supreme Tae Kwan Do skills to beat her up. (It wasn't like she'd be able to show any marks to prove it!)
But he wouldn't do that, and not only because it was against his moral code. And not just because everybody said it was important to be nice to family. And not just because he was waiting for Claire to realize that he'd stopped calling her a freak and reciprocate. And not just because that time he'd pinched her at the breakfast table Mom wouldn't let him have a fourth waffle.
-
Dad was supposed to keep the secrets for the family and was supposed to be the one keeping them safe from the Company and instead he was going on secret trips without telling anyone and lying to Mom about where he was going even though he promised not to.
Lyle wanted to throw up and punch his dad and possibly get puke on Dad's stupid shoes. Whenever anybody said how much he resembled his dad, Lyle wanted to puke on them too. He wasn't like his dad, not at all. And he didn't want to be, especially when he had to watch Mom act like she didn't realize that he was keeping secrets from her again.
And Lyle bet he knew what the real problem was. Dad had had forgotten about consequences. He was just so used to making a mistake and then walking in and having everyone's memories erased to fix it and that was why Mom was brain damaged. Dad didn't even realize that he had to be more careful because there weren't supposed to be any take-backs and he had a take-back and he kept using it until he forgot how do stuff without it.
Lyle hated it.
-
Lyle was still kind of scared that one day he'd wake up and all of his memories of Claire would suddenly be gone, like he never had a sister at all. And instead of having a huge Claire shaped hole in his heart, all his memories would give him would be a massive headache whenever anybody said, "Shut up, Lyle!"
And it wasn't a fear that ever got any better, since there was nobody in the house that he could tell about it.
He could imagine Dad rationalizing it, to keep Claire safe, to make sure that she had a for-real normal life somewhere far away from them. (Dad even already did it to himself.)
So Lyle knows what he would do if he saw the Haitian somewhere coming towards him. He'd say, "If you're going to erase Claire from Mom and my memories, please think about my Mom. She can't take any more memory wiping, please don't do it to her. Hide her somewhere, or at least let her die peacefully. She deserves better than to die from trying to remember her life." Well, he'd try to say that. He doesn't know if the Haitian would let him finish the speech, and Lyle always seems to imagine himself braver and better-spoken than he actually is.
-
Lyle's really glad that he's not special. Sometimes, kind of.
He's better at blending in with the background anyways; and Lyle likes the idea of not having to constantly be on the run. And he can see how bad Claire is with dealing with it, and how it just messed everything up for her and made her get a stupid boyfriend. It's just that right now he's getting the consequences for something that isn't his fault and won't ever be his fault and shouldn't even apply to him just because his sister's bio-parents had mutant DNA.
And if Lyle had some kind of power, he would probably would get into some kind of ridiculous hijinks involving sausage links, a turkey baster and feral kittens. That was how his luck went.
So yeah, he's ready to be totally normal again.
-
On the second day from hell, both of Lyle's parents forgot to pick him up from school and Claire was in cheerleading practice and since he had stayed in the library studying, with permission, that meant that he was stuck at the school a couple of miles from home with no cell phone reception and no ride.
He had to beg some random stranger to let him use her cell phone to call his house, but he didn't get an answer for an hour. For about half of that, Lyle was almost a little bit afraid that they had just left California completely and forgotten about him.
The random cheerleader stopped examining her nails and said, "I'm gonna need my phone back soon, so you should try calling again now."
Lyle dialed home again. His mom picked up on the fourth ring, "Noah?"
"No, Mom," he said, "Lyle. My cell phone died and I'm stranded at school."
"Oh God," Mom said, "Oh God, Lyle. Your sister's been kidnapped. Dad's on his way to go get her back."
"I'll run home, Mom," he vowed.
-
Sometimes Lyle wonders if his Dad thinks that Lyle thinks that everything would've been better if they hadn't adopted Claire at all, that he regrets ever having met Claire.
But he doesn't ever think that. Not even when it gets bad. She's family.
-
Claire came back late, covered in blood. But her shirt wasn't ripped, so it wasn't hers.
It was Dad's.
She said that Dad was dead, and he kind of blanked out after that between the part where he hadn't eaten all day and he was sick from worrying and Mom was just wailing so loud.
-
He had a dream where Mr. Muggles was the Grand Emperor of the World (capital letters required). And his first official order was for homemade tacos with extra cheese and ground toe meat. Then, he conquered all of Asia and started mandatory dog shows in every town across his nation. He erected gigantic golden statues of himself in every major city. And in his grand palace, there was a fountain the size of a swimming pool, full of Squirt.
-
Lyle didn't touch the ashes at the funeral because he didn't want to.
He didn't look at Mom or Mr. Muggles.
He didn't listen to Claire's eulogy.
He didn't look at the ocean.
Lyle imagined the face of the people that did this to his family, the faces of the Company, how they were all blurred out in his memories but almost distinct when he imagined the annual picnics. He imagined taking his a blowtorch to the Company, turning them to ashes. "Look at what you've done to my family," he'd yell.
He'd make them notice his broken family so that maybe he wouldn't have to. When Claire threatened to expose the secret, he understood. (Just like him, she probably wouldn't do it.)
-
A few days after they went to California, before things had begun to feel a little bit settled, Lyle found his Dad hiding in the kitchen. He could see back of Mom and Claire cuddling close on the couch, Mr. Muggles probably between them. He could hear Mom cooing over the toy poodle breed and Claire agreeing that Mr. Muggles could definitely beat that ridiculous excuse for a pomeranian.
He grabbed a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the freezer. Dad was silently standing next to him, turned to give him a spoon. Lyle knew what his dad was thinking, because he was thinking it too.
After dropping the ice cream on the counter, Lyle grabbed Dad's shoulder for attention. "Teach me how to shoot a handgun," he'd said.
Dad nodded.
-
No matter what Mom said, Lyle didn't have a father any more.
He had a zombie. There was this guy that was resurrected from the dead and he was supposed to be Lyle's father, but he wasn't. He was a zombie henchman for the bad guys, he just walked and talked like Lyle's dad, but he wasn't.
Noah Bennet was dead. Noah Bennet had died trying to save his daughter from kidnappers, trying to keep his family safe and togther. Zombiedad wanted to fracture and splinter them apart and break Mom's heart so bad that she got splinters from it.
Lyle Bennet was not going to stand for it. (Neither would Mr. Muggles.)
Nobody was allowed to do that to his family.
-
Author: arenotvalid aka smercy
Rating: PG
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Lyle Bennet, the Bennets, Mr. Muggles, mentions of others
Pairings: none
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: all of Heroes season 2
Disclaimer: I don't own "Heroes" and I won't own "Heroes" and I won't make any money from this.
Warnings: none
Word Count: about 6900
Status: one-shot, finished
Author's Note: written for heroes_fest (prompt 39: What Lyle does while he's offscreen)
Summary: Apparently, Lyle's really good at pretending to be extra-normal. Like normal squared, or normal cubed, or so indistinguishable that nobody ever bothers to acknowledge his existence.
-
Lyle tries really hard not to think about the weeks he spent with Mom in the shelter, waiting for Dad and Claire to show up and rescue them. (Or for some Company goon to show up and finish them off. Or hold them hostage. Or leave them braindead husks of nothing.)
Nobody ever talks about the lost weeks, which is okay. It makes it a lot easier to pretend to be normal once they find the house in California. And apparently, Lyle's really good at pretending to be extra-normal. Like normal squared, or normal cubed, or so indistinguishable that nobody ever bothers to acknowledge his existence.
-
Living in California isn't so bad, Lyle sometimes thought. It wasn't so different from Texas except that it was the exact opposite. Sort of like moving from the North Pole to the South Pole and having the polar bears switch to penguins. Except not really, because Lyle's still a Texas boy and he cannot deal with temperatures even close to freezing outside of his freezer and it's not like he would ever live in there.
(Well, except for that one time when he was 7 and it was that hot summer, probably about 115 outside and the air conditioner busted and in the couple of hours that it had taken Dad to get a replacement, Claire had convinced him that they would just take all of the food out of the fridge and go and live inside there, except that they hadn't both fit in the fridge together and she had convinced him that he needed to get in the freezer since he was the smaller one, but after 20 minutes, he realized that an ice cube tray was sticking to his arm and started screaming to be let out.)
But still, his original point remained. California and Texas were like the Poles except that they were hotter and had more people. Although, Lyle wouldn't have minded if there were a few less people around, since going to a school with thousands of kids ended up to be twice as boring as a normal-sized one.
Whatever. Bigger crowds made it easier to blend in.
Change "those crazy hippies!" to "those crazy fundies!" and he was all set.
-
When Lyle heard about Claire's ability for the first time that stuck, when she came back from a fatal gunshot wound, he could remember kind of freaking out. First he thought it was freakish to have such a freak for a sister. Then he thought it was kinda cool that she couldn't get hurt. Then he worried about her. Then he worried about what it meant for their whole family. Then he got a headache.
Later, Claire told him that it wasn't the first time he found out. "Tell me what happened," he'd pleaded.
"I had these stupid tapes," she said, "Of me healing from every injury I could think of. And I left one laying around and you found it."
He couldn't remember that. "What'd I do?"
Claire laughed. "Well, first you called me a freak. Then, you threatened to tell Mom and Dad and sell the tape online and become a millionaire." It sounded like his typical response. "And somewhere in the middle of there, you went after me with a stapler."
"I did what?"
Claire giggled, hard. Twice. "You were pretty freaked out. You locked yourself in the car and refused to come out for a while. But eventually I convinced you not to tell Mom and Dad."
Lyle didn't have to ask if he told them, because he knew he wouldn't. He tried to laugh along with Claire, but it didn't work too well.
Lyle had always been the good secret-keeper of the family, and when he promised not to tell he never did. He just couldn't figure why Dad had decided to wipe his memory. It wasn't like he was going to tell anybody, ever.
-
On Lyle's first day of school, Dad drove Claire to school in her brand new car and Lyle took the bus. "Better get used to the schedule now," Dad had said, before grabbing Claire's keys off the table.
He didn't live close enough to walk to school any more, and the kid he was stuck next to smelled like burnt patchouli and something probably illegal. And at the end of the ride, which was less bumpy than the other bus rides he remembered, his back was aching and his head was buzzing; but he didn't see the infamous car exchange, so that was something.
And when Claire's brand new car was stolen a few days later, because she had left it unlocked, Lyle couldn't help the snickering. Of course, he did it privately, in his room, where he pretty much did everything. He didn't say anything about it to Claire, but whenever someone mentioned cars or driving, he looked at her and smiled. They were siblings, she knew what he meant.
-
Lyle had noticed that Mom was really quiet in the house; and at first he thought it was probably like she thought that they still needed to act like they were deep undercover even though she was inside where nobody would really notice her.
But when he found her passed out on the couch three times in a week with Mr. Muggles eating the remains of what looked like a burrito, he realized that it was because she was hiding the headaches.
Lyle was so tired of the secrets in the family. So he put a blanket over her, and then he put "The Princess Bride" into the VCR. He got a glass of water, in case she was thirsty, and some tissues and tylenol just in case. Then, he sat on the floor next to the couch, grabbed Mr. Muggles for his lap and let his mom stroke the back of his head whenever there was a tense scene. (He was really glad that laughing didn't make her head hurt worse.)
-
There was a weird stain on the couch when Lyle went to go watch "Terminator 2" on the big TV. And Mr. Muggles was chewing on something that looked kind of like an eraser or a toe or something.
Knowing Claire, it probably was her toe. She was already outside staring at nothing and pretending to be paranoid that somebody was watching her. But if Claire actually thought that somebody was going around staring at her through the window, she would probably put on some actual clothes. She was so weird.
-
There are Tae Kwan Do classes in California way better than the ones back home, except he has to make sure that he doesn't excel.
Between the constant stunting of his martial arts prowess and the part where Dad forgets to pick him up from class 3 times in a row, Lyle can feel the excitement for Tae Kwan Do bleeding right out.
-
When mom asked him what he wanted for Christmas, she said she wanted to get him something extravagant and fancy, but something that would make him feel at home in their new house. So he chose Guitar Hero, all of them, and two extra controllers just in case.
He never actually used the extra controllers 'cause Claire thought the game was way too hard and she didn't have the time to practice, and Mom was hopeless at every single video game ever created, and it wasn't like Dad would ever just show up after dinner and see Lyle's amazing fret prowess and decide to join in. Plus, he didn't actually have any friends in California yet; so it was just him and Mr. Muggles.
Mr. Muggles was actually the best Guitar Hero partner ever, though. He would stand a few feet back from the screen and stare intently at what was going on. He hated the orange button too, so whenever that would come up, he'd yip once. After a while, Lyle had learned to hit the orange button whenever Mr. Muggles barked, and Mr. Muggles never missed a single one. The only thing that Mr. Muggles didn't like was the crazy 80s hair metal, which was kind of useful. If he wanted the dog out of his room, he'd just put on "Cherry Pie."
And Lyle was pretty damn good at Guitar Hero, too; could make it through all of "No One Knows" on the Expert level. Claire liked to watch him sometimes, sit on the beanbag by his bed and just hang for a while, but she never says anything.
Except that one time when she mentioned that he was way better than West, but he wasn't supposed to know that she was dating West. Yet another example of how his sister was completely incapable of keeping a secret.
-
Lyle didn't exactly understand Dad's rationale for letting Claire use the car without the obligation to give him rides to places sometimes.
"Claire needs the car," Dad said, "Because if she were to get mugged on the street, the attacker might accidentally discover her ability." Lyle thought it was stupid, since if she got in a car accident and got smooshed or something, all of the police and rescue teams would see her heal from that; but Dad never listened to his arguments.
And Lyle lived in probably the only family in the world where if he were attacked from behind with a jagged, broken beer bottle, his parents would be glad that he wasn't able to immediately heal the wounds. Not that he would probably ever be attacked from behind, since he was in 3rd geup in Tae Kwan Do, but still.
-
So Lyle was just minding his business alone in his room all night, like he usually did, but then when he went out to get some soda because he was thirsty and he looked out the window. He didn't know why he looked out the window, it was probably because when you're in a room with windows your eyes just automatically look there. But his dad was standing outside in his stupid purple shirt talking with someone who looked so much like the Haitian.
So much like the Haitian that he probably was the Haitian, which meant that Dad was working with the Haitian again; which meant that he had like, 45 seconds before the memory would be all gone. Lyle snuck out of the kitchen, suddenly only needing a drink of water from the bathroom.
He didn't think that Dad had seen him, but he couldn't be sure. So Lyle snuck under his covers and pretended very hard to be asleep. He liked his memories, he liked his memories, he liked his ability to be able to remember things.
-
At first, Lyle hadn't wanted to admit that maybe Mom had some brain damage. But he knew it was true because Mom's forehead would get a pained little scrunchy headache line and whenever Dad saw it, he would look down like he was ashamed.
And Dad should be ashamed, because it was his own stupid fault.
Lyle was ashamed, too, for not realizing it sooner.
-
After two days with a clear recollection of seeing the Haitian on his porch, Lyle decided to create a super secret log of events, to make sure that he wasn't missing any memories.
First, he cleaned out his internet cache extra super well, then organized his documents, then created a hidden folder inside of his "School Papers" folder. In this folder, he had three other folders, all of which were filled with random soft-core porno that he grabbed from online. The one labeled "xfro:okm" had a hidden folder inside of it, and inside that hidden folder was a password-protected zip file. He hid the password in a notepad document inside of a hidden folder inside of his Music folder, just in case. Then, he created all sorts of random hidden folders inside of most of his other folders that had names like "hot now sexy time girl". It was a brilliant plan.
So he just had to make sure that he wrote in a formatless .doc format, then label it according to his alphanumeric dating system, then put it through the encoding program he had hidden on the computer, (and he had a different encoding for each entry, because he wasn't an idiot, and he used the alphabet in order of the qwerty system, except backwards starting from the middle row.) Then, he just dropped the entry into the zip file and closed all of the applicable folders before clearing his cache and signing off the computer.
He figured that it would take his dad at least a full day to be able to get all of his files. That is, unless the Haitian decided to search through his memories to find the process. So Lyle tried to forget how he formatted the system outside of the essential parts, created secret keyboard shortcuts to help that out.
And it wasn't like he could just do nothing. They were his memories. He wanted to know if he was missing anything. (He kept the backup flashdrive on his keychain.)
-
On Mondays, when Claire had practice and Dad had the mandatory staff meetings, Angela Petrelli called their house.
If Mom wasn't around, Lyle would answer the phone. Mom had been doing it for a couple of months, in secret, and Lyle found that he didn't care. Mrs. Petrelli was always really polite, and the first time they talked she already knew his name.
He had tried to get answers out of Claire one time, but she wouldn't answer them. All Claire ever said was, "She's a terrible woman with a heart made of ice! Ice and something else that's probably really disgusting and terrible, like toxic sludge or something."
But Lyle couldn't see that. He knew that Mrs. Petrelli knew about Claire's ability, so she knew Claire couldn't get hurt. But still, she called every week to check up on her indestructible granddaughter's health.
It made Lyle wish even harder that he had grandparents of his own.
-
Claire and her stupid boyfriend were all over each other on the couch, being completely ridiculous. What kind of an idiot listens to music from a cell phone? It wasn't like Claire's room didn't have a stereo, plus they each only got one side of the headphone. Claire couldn't even use a headphone splitter; and there was no way know how to change from stereo to mono so she didn't miss half the side of the song.
She was probably listening to something really terrible, too. Like Snow Patrol, five years after it was released and everybody that had made it their song had already broken up. Or a hip-hop love ballad.
Lyle had no idea how Claire could deal with having a boyfriend dumb enough to encourage her to do such dumb stuff. She was supposed to be smart.
Whatever. It was really none of his business if his stupid sister couldn't keep her cuddling off of the couch in plain view of all windows where she could be spotted and grounded for the rest of eternity and listened to terrible music with a guy that had a girly haircut. Lyle was going to go listen to some Explosions in the Sky.
-
One day, Lyle decided to act like the man he wanted to be. He prepared his argument and calmly asked his dad to talk.
"I was thinking," he said, "Since Claire gets to do cheerleading so long as she doesn't date, and since I don't actually do any competitive sports, that it would be fair if I were allowed to date someone."
"No," Dad said without thinking. "Why, do you have anyone in mind?"
"No," Lyle replied, but not so quickly that he gave the impression of hiding anything, "I just figured that it would be fair..."
"You're too young to date," Dad said, "And it's not safe." Lyle was all ready to talk about the three pregnant girls in his science class and how he had never ever done anything to compromise their cover, but Dad said, "End of discussion." And raised his eyebrow threateningly.
And when Dad said, "You're lucky to get Tae Kwan Do," as Lyle was walking out the room, it took all of of his energy not to turn around and flip Dad the bird.
-
Lyle gets these headaches sometimes, but he doesn't tell anybody.
When he looked it up on Wikipedia, the symptoms said they were probably migraines. Migraines like Mom had.
Mom got the migraines from the brain-wiping. Lyle's brain has been wiped too. Mom had serious brain damage.
Mom gets cluster headaches sometimes. Lyle's headaches are usually just migraines. But still.
The family doesn't need 2 brain damaged members. He keeps it to himself.
It's a lot easier when he just doesn't focus on anything that he's forgotton.
-
Back in Texas, Lyle had a bunch of friends. It wasn't like he was the most popular guy in his grade or anything like that, but he could go to a party and be friendly with 30 people and he had like 4 friends that he'd known all his life and things were fine. (Friends that probably thought he was dead or something, when he thought about it.)
In California, Lyle's only friend is Mr. Muggles, and he really does not like to dwell on that. So he has nobody to talk about hot girls with, or to compare History notes with or even to just hang out with when his house gets unbearable and he needs a place to chill. And Mr. Muggles really sucks at sharing tacos.
But whatever, at least he has somebody. And it's not like Mr. Muggles ever really criticizes him for anything. And he's a really good foot-warmer, so that's something.
-
Whenever Lyle very politely asks Claire if she would please stop stuffing her face with all of the chicken tacos and learn to share, all she ever does is yell, "Shut up, Lyle!" And kick him, like he's the one with the crazy healing ability!
-
So he was sitting outside, reading "The Catcher in the Rye," and all of the sudden it occured to Lyle that he couldn't remember his 5th birthday party.
The logical part of his brain said that of course he had a birthday party when he turned 5, but he can't remember it. He can't remember anything about turning 5, whether he had friends or cake or anything like that. And he's suddenly really freaking creeped out.
So he went inside to see his mom. "Mom," he said conversationally, "Did I have a birthday party when I was 5?"
"Of course you did, Honey," she said, chopping onions for the soup.
"What happened there?"
"Well," Mom said, then paused. "You know, it's the funniest thing, I can't quite remember." Lyle's ribcage got too tight. "I'll have to think on that one. I know you had one..."
He grabbed the knife from his mom and started doing the carrots. "It's okay, Mom," he said, "I don't really need to know right now. I'll finish doing up the vegetables."
"Thank you, Lyle," she cooed. "I'm afraid I'm getting a bit of a headache...."
"Why don't you grab Mr. Muggles and go lay on the couch for a while?" Lyle dropped the celery into the pot. "I can take care of supper from here."
Mom made a soft noise and sunk on to the couch, Mr. Muggles in her lap. It was the onion that was making Lyle's eyes water.
When Dad came back from work, Lyle kind of wanted to take his knife and stab it right in the center of that stupid purple shirt, but he didn't. Mom needed Dad to comfort her through the headache. Dad held the family together; Dad should probably not be stabbed.
-
It wasn't like Lyle didn't want a real relationship with his dad; it was just that Claire and everything else took up so much time.
He understood the principle, the kid throwing tampons in the back of the room gets the most attention from the teacher. Still sucks, though.
-
In health class, they were doing a unit on world cuisine. Which would have been okay, except that when the teacher asked for a call of hands of everyone that had ever eaten fish and chips, Lyle not only found his hand frozen, he suddenly had a headache so bad that he passed out and had to be escorted to the nurse's office.
It took a little convincing to get the nurse not to call his family, and it was a hard when he could barely concentrate on anything but the steel wool rubbing behind his eyes. "Please don't call my Mom," he said, looking downtroddenly at the floor, "She's got this brain condition that gets worse when she's stressed out, and I was just up reading the "Of Mice and Men" all night to make sure I was okay for English class this morning so it's really just that I haven't gotten much sleep and please don't worry her, I can promise I won't do it again..."
"Okay," the nurse said, "So long as you promise not do it again."
"I will," he said, thankfully. (But he didn't promise, because when you make a promise, you have to keep it.)
And the nurse let him sleep on the cot for the rest of school, woke him up when it was time to get ready for the bus, and gave him a note to give to his teachers excusing his medical absence. Lyle was unexpectedly proud of how well he was able to manipulate the situation. Until it made him feel like his Dad. Then he was just a little queasy on top of headachey.
-
Sometimes he really missed the sound of twangy voices on the radio. So bad that it was almost a physical ache, and so strong that it interrupted his reading. And he couldn't just open up his favorite radio station from home and stream it on to the computer, 'cause Dad said it was essential to be as separate from Texas as possible. (And Lyle never bought the CDs because he never needed to get them when the songs were on the radio all the damn time.)
Those times, he'd go find his mom and offer to help make her a pie. Whenever Mom made pies, she'd start by letting him help; but at the end he was the fetcher and official bowl-stirrer and not allowed to touch the ingredients. Halfway through, too, Mom would start singing the good songs. Her voice sounded more like home than the radio, and he got pie out of the deal.
-
Mom sits next to Lyle's bed whenever he has a headache and takes a cool washcloth and wipes at his forehead. She even does it the right way, by wrapping it in ice cubes so it isn't gross and wet. Sometimes, she'll make him soup or hum him one of his favorite songs, or she'll tell the story about the day that Dad accidentally took her to a swingers club when he thought it was a seafood restaurant.
Dad sometimes stands in the doorway for a couple of minutes and asks for his symptoms.
Lyle is really glad that Mom decided to be the stay-at-home parent.
-
Lyle was on the computer after finishing his daily log and searching "random article" on Wikipedia when he got an instant message. This was a problem, because the only two people on his IM list were Dad and Claire, and Dad only let him have it so that the family could quickly reach each other when there was a surprise waffle night.
The random im said, "How do you know the Haitian?"
Lyle unplugged his internet jack straight from the wall. Suddenly, he was on the fourth step of the exploding heart technique.
The message repeated itself, even though he didn't have an active internet connection.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he responded.
"You have encrypted files that mention the Haitian," it said.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he responded. Wikipedia wouldn't load. Gmail wouldn't load. Nothing else would load.
"You have a deeply encoded signal that starts from California," it said.
"There are no Company headquarters in California," it said.
Lyle was giving it 20 seconds and then calling his dad and possibly crying.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. Then, "I don't have any internet access, how are you sending this to me?"
"I'm Wireless," it typed, "I can hack into any electronic messaging device anywhere." There was a pause for about 14 seconds. "I am not affiliated with the Company."
Lyle typed, "I can't trust anyone that can hack into my computer and read my encrypted files, especially one that repeatedly mentions an unclarified yet ominous subject."
"I promise I'm not involved with the Company," it replied.
"I can't trust you," he typed. "I have no way of knowing what kind of agent you are, there's no way to prove anything."
"My name was Hana Gitelman," it typed, "My consciousness was absorbed into the internet as I destroyed the Company's primary tracking system."
"I can't trust you," he typed. "I don't know the Haitian."
"Your encrypted files mention him," she said. Paused. "Your encrypted files mention that he gave your mother brain damage."
"If you mention my mother again, I will throw this computer out of a window and never touch one again," Lyle typed.
"I think I know who you are," she wrote. "You cannot tell your father that I'm alive and contacted you."
"You cannot tell anyone where this computer is located." he typed, "Or about my mother, or about my encrypted files. If they find us, we'll have to move again and it will be a huge pain to live without any kind of computers allowed. Also, I can probably ruin you."
"I won't tell if you won't tell," she wrote.
"Agreed," he replied, and immediately shut off his computer.
-
When Lyle first figured out what Claire's ability meant, for everybody, he wasn't exactly sure what to do. He wondered if her blood could maybe heal him if he got hurt really bad or something, or fix Mom's memory problems, but then he remembered that she was adopted so it wasn't like she was blood-related to any of them. It would be really rude to ask, too.
And he wasn't sure what to tell her about it. He couldn't say he was okay with it when he would be lying.
Every time Lyle tried to ask her to please not take out the cookies with her bare hands, or to wait for the garbage disposal to turn off before she grabbed the spoon, Claire told him to shut up. And he couldn't get the words out right to say that every time he saw her hurt like that, it made his chest hurt and made him want to run for the nearest first aid kit and call the paramedics.
Lyle couldn't just shut off his heart when he saw a member of his family getting hurt. And he was scared that if he did, when saw it happen to someone else, that maybe its first instinct might be to watch and see how the injury healed itself.
-
So English class wanted another paper on some sort of old science fiction classic, and Lyle decided to do something by HG Wells. His twisted rationale was that you really couldn't get more old-school scifi than that, so he picked "The Invisible Man," because it was apparently a classic.
The problem started after he had decided to watch the movies in addition to reading the book. Lyle sat down at the kitchen table with a copy of the 1933 version of the DVD but when his eyes slid over the production credits to see if he recognized any of the actors, his brain skidded to a stop. A bad stop, full stop, full of immediate pain and a ripping sensation all down his neck.
For a few minutes, Lyle sat at the table with his head in his hands and unable to move or drop the movie or do anything while the back of his head buzzed and he lost his peripheral vision. When his mom came to sit next to him, her face was covered in TV static.
"Lyle, honey?" Her voice felt like a blanket full of cactuses, "What's wrong?" Somebody was stabbing him in the eye with an icepick was what's wrong.
He had to swallow a lot before his voice would work. "My head," he gasped. He stumbled over the table to get to the bathroom, where he puked up his lunch and breakfast and probably pizza from the night before.
Mom came behind him with a damp washcloth, "What were you doing, Lyle? What happened?" He crouched for a few more minutes until the retching subsided. "Do you want me to put the movie on?"
"No," he growled, "No, don't touch it!" Lyle didn't want his mom hurting, no matter what. "Just leave it. I just want to go to bed now, please."
-
Sometimes, when he'd had a particularly hard day, Lyle just wanted to go up to Mom and scream at her to just leave Dad already. All he did was hurt everybody and then erase their memories so he could do it again. (Well, he could also make a pretty good chili, but that was only every other Wednesday night.)
But he never did, because every time he opened his mouth to do it he remembered how it was, just him and Mom, waiting for Dad to come find them again. And he could imagine what it might be like if they knew he would never actually come back for them.
And after everything that she'd gone though, Mom didn't deserve a broken heart and broken marriage on top of it. And Mr. Muggles would not deal with the separation well at all.
-
He accidentally left his room in the middle of a huge fight between Claire and Dad, but it wasn't his fault that he was hungry and they were standing in front of the fridge. It was something about Claire's supposed non-existant dating life, again.
So Lyle just rummaged through the bag of leftovers. When there was a pause in the conversation, he only tried to say, "Does anybody know if there are any chicken soft tacos left?"
But halfway between the "chicken" and "soft," Claire yelled, "Shut up, Lyle!" So he just grabbed a beef one and went back to his room. Mr. Muggles could have all the stuff that fell out.
-
At the end of the quarter, he handed Mom his report card and didn't stick around to see the results.
She came into his room, though, and waited until he was done with "Free Bird" before giving him a hug and a little squeeze on his shoulder.
"Solid straight Bs," she said. "Perfect, Lyle."
He didn't say anything because he didn't want to cry in front of her. It wasn't like he didn't already know that there was no way he was going to be able to go to MIT. Everyone had to make sacrifices.
-
When Claire walked into his room without knocking, even though she wasn't supposed to, and saw him doing his morning stretches, she'd called him a freak. Lyle took offense to that, and briefly considered honing his supreme Tae Kwan Do skills to beat her up. (It wasn't like she'd be able to show any marks to prove it!)
But he wouldn't do that, and not only because it was against his moral code. And not just because everybody said it was important to be nice to family. And not just because he was waiting for Claire to realize that he'd stopped calling her a freak and reciprocate. And not just because that time he'd pinched her at the breakfast table Mom wouldn't let him have a fourth waffle.
-
Dad was supposed to keep the secrets for the family and was supposed to be the one keeping them safe from the Company and instead he was going on secret trips without telling anyone and lying to Mom about where he was going even though he promised not to.
Lyle wanted to throw up and punch his dad and possibly get puke on Dad's stupid shoes. Whenever anybody said how much he resembled his dad, Lyle wanted to puke on them too. He wasn't like his dad, not at all. And he didn't want to be, especially when he had to watch Mom act like she didn't realize that he was keeping secrets from her again.
And Lyle bet he knew what the real problem was. Dad had had forgotten about consequences. He was just so used to making a mistake and then walking in and having everyone's memories erased to fix it and that was why Mom was brain damaged. Dad didn't even realize that he had to be more careful because there weren't supposed to be any take-backs and he had a take-back and he kept using it until he forgot how do stuff without it.
Lyle hated it.
-
Lyle was still kind of scared that one day he'd wake up and all of his memories of Claire would suddenly be gone, like he never had a sister at all. And instead of having a huge Claire shaped hole in his heart, all his memories would give him would be a massive headache whenever anybody said, "Shut up, Lyle!"
And it wasn't a fear that ever got any better, since there was nobody in the house that he could tell about it.
He could imagine Dad rationalizing it, to keep Claire safe, to make sure that she had a for-real normal life somewhere far away from them. (Dad even already did it to himself.)
So Lyle knows what he would do if he saw the Haitian somewhere coming towards him. He'd say, "If you're going to erase Claire from Mom and my memories, please think about my Mom. She can't take any more memory wiping, please don't do it to her. Hide her somewhere, or at least let her die peacefully. She deserves better than to die from trying to remember her life." Well, he'd try to say that. He doesn't know if the Haitian would let him finish the speech, and Lyle always seems to imagine himself braver and better-spoken than he actually is.
-
Lyle's really glad that he's not special. Sometimes, kind of.
He's better at blending in with the background anyways; and Lyle likes the idea of not having to constantly be on the run. And he can see how bad Claire is with dealing with it, and how it just messed everything up for her and made her get a stupid boyfriend. It's just that right now he's getting the consequences for something that isn't his fault and won't ever be his fault and shouldn't even apply to him just because his sister's bio-parents had mutant DNA.
And if Lyle had some kind of power, he would probably would get into some kind of ridiculous hijinks involving sausage links, a turkey baster and feral kittens. That was how his luck went.
So yeah, he's ready to be totally normal again.
-
On the second day from hell, both of Lyle's parents forgot to pick him up from school and Claire was in cheerleading practice and since he had stayed in the library studying, with permission, that meant that he was stuck at the school a couple of miles from home with no cell phone reception and no ride.
He had to beg some random stranger to let him use her cell phone to call his house, but he didn't get an answer for an hour. For about half of that, Lyle was almost a little bit afraid that they had just left California completely and forgotten about him.
The random cheerleader stopped examining her nails and said, "I'm gonna need my phone back soon, so you should try calling again now."
Lyle dialed home again. His mom picked up on the fourth ring, "Noah?"
"No, Mom," he said, "Lyle. My cell phone died and I'm stranded at school."
"Oh God," Mom said, "Oh God, Lyle. Your sister's been kidnapped. Dad's on his way to go get her back."
"I'll run home, Mom," he vowed.
-
Sometimes Lyle wonders if his Dad thinks that Lyle thinks that everything would've been better if they hadn't adopted Claire at all, that he regrets ever having met Claire.
But he doesn't ever think that. Not even when it gets bad. She's family.
-
Claire came back late, covered in blood. But her shirt wasn't ripped, so it wasn't hers.
It was Dad's.
She said that Dad was dead, and he kind of blanked out after that between the part where he hadn't eaten all day and he was sick from worrying and Mom was just wailing so loud.
-
He had a dream where Mr. Muggles was the Grand Emperor of the World (capital letters required). And his first official order was for homemade tacos with extra cheese and ground toe meat. Then, he conquered all of Asia and started mandatory dog shows in every town across his nation. He erected gigantic golden statues of himself in every major city. And in his grand palace, there was a fountain the size of a swimming pool, full of Squirt.
-
Lyle didn't touch the ashes at the funeral because he didn't want to.
He didn't look at Mom or Mr. Muggles.
He didn't listen to Claire's eulogy.
He didn't look at the ocean.
Lyle imagined the face of the people that did this to his family, the faces of the Company, how they were all blurred out in his memories but almost distinct when he imagined the annual picnics. He imagined taking his a blowtorch to the Company, turning them to ashes. "Look at what you've done to my family," he'd yell.
He'd make them notice his broken family so that maybe he wouldn't have to. When Claire threatened to expose the secret, he understood. (Just like him, she probably wouldn't do it.)
-
A few days after they went to California, before things had begun to feel a little bit settled, Lyle found his Dad hiding in the kitchen. He could see back of Mom and Claire cuddling close on the couch, Mr. Muggles probably between them. He could hear Mom cooing over the toy poodle breed and Claire agreeing that Mr. Muggles could definitely beat that ridiculous excuse for a pomeranian.
He grabbed a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the freezer. Dad was silently standing next to him, turned to give him a spoon. Lyle knew what his dad was thinking, because he was thinking it too.
After dropping the ice cream on the counter, Lyle grabbed Dad's shoulder for attention. "Teach me how to shoot a handgun," he'd said.
Dad nodded.
-
No matter what Mom said, Lyle didn't have a father any more.
He had a zombie. There was this guy that was resurrected from the dead and he was supposed to be Lyle's father, but he wasn't. He was a zombie henchman for the bad guys, he just walked and talked like Lyle's dad, but he wasn't.
Noah Bennet was dead. Noah Bennet had died trying to save his daughter from kidnappers, trying to keep his family safe and togther. Zombiedad wanted to fracture and splinter them apart and break Mom's heart so bad that she got splinters from it.
Lyle Bennet was not going to stand for it. (Neither would Mr. Muggles.)
Nobody was allowed to do that to his family.
-