Night 52: M111-M120 Hallway
When the intercom rang through the cold room and the lights shut off in time with the click of the unlocking door, Edward remained where he was, staring at the space where the liquefied dinner had been sitting. For the second time that day, he wondered if he could starve here. Being in no condition to hunt and having no energy to keep the rotten,
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"I don't know. I thought she would, but …" That obviously wasn't the case. So much for all that trust. It stung a little -- okay, well, a lot. She'd done such a good job of opening up to Bella lately and, well, sure, she didn't tell the girl her whole life story, but she'd shared a lot of herself that she hadn't shared with anyone, but … well, anyone but Peter or her dad. And that was serious for Claire. But, apparently, that trust was one-sided. Really, she should have guessed as much, considering how she'd been forced to reveal her secrets to some extent on that first night, but … well, apparently, her optimism wasn't entirely quashed.
She bit back the disappointed look, though it was still clear in the wrinkle of her forehead and the sadness in her eyes.
"It's gotta be an ability, I mean, they're super common here, right? What else could it be? And it explains why Bella knew they were limited and knew that people here had them when she was telling me about it. But, what kind of lame ability is impenetrable skin when it can't even stop you from getting burned?" It didn't add up -- not in the slightest. She was beyond trying to keep her thoughts inside at this point. Any thought process was a productive one, because they were going to need to find some way around whatever ability was keeping Edward's skin from letting them put Claire's blood into his bloodstream.
Well. Not every thought process. Bleeding on his burns had been a pretty stupid one, all things considered, and probably super disgusting. That wasn't going to get her blood pumping through him. But, if he ate it, wouldn't his stomach just break it down and ruin any healing component? Claire was ready to tear her hair out, so she crossed her arms over her chest instead to resist the compulsion.
"Maybe if I just show him what I can do, he'll trust me and work with us." It was a great plan, except that she didn't have anything handy to cut herself with. Downfall #33892085 of being trapped inside an asylum -- no pointy objects, if the staff could help it. A needle really wasn't going to cut it for the dramatics that showing off her ability usually required.
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Claire seemed particularly bothered by what had just happened in there, and while he wanted to ask her about it, he wasn't really sure how to phrase it in a way that wouldn't just worsen her mood. Instead, he decided to focus on the current problem; there would always be some other time when he could get the full story, if there was one.
The girl had a point about Edward's ability seeming a bit inconsistent, but... "It's probably weakened the same way yours is, right? So maybe his skin is still impenetrable to sharp objects, but not so much with burns. Either way, we're going to need to find some sort of alternative." It was possible the three of them inside the room were discussing that right now, but then why had they forced them to leave? Clearly something was going on.
As much as Peter didn't like the idea of Claire having to make a show out of her abilities, it did seem like a good plan. If they were honest about their own knowledge (and relative comfort) with the existence of powers, then things might go a lot smoother in general.
"It's worth a shot," he agreed after taking a moment or two to think. "I don't really know why they want to refuse, when Bella brought us all this way and Edward clearly needs to be healed, but hopefully we can get through to them." This whole situation had gotten far more complicated than necessary, but Peter was doing his best to keep calm and work through it.
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"I don't get it, either. Maybe she didn't want to tell us for him -- like it's his decision or something, you know?" Defending her when she was busy feeling betrayed was probably the closest to physical pain that Claire was going to get without the effects of whatever monster had been creeping around the second floor. Reminded, she took a shifty look around the hallway, suppressing a shudder. That wasn't something she wanted to remember.
She hesitated a little, chewing on her lip as she considered bringing it back up -- but Peter wouldn't want to hear about it, and he probably didn't want to talk about what he'd seen, either. Whatever it was, it was probably just as bad as what she'd seen, and this was hardly the time for it when they were supposed to be focusing on making sure Edward was okay instead of fixating on themselves.
"I'll try to corner her about it later," she said in a final, decisive way. "They have pens in all the desks, right? I don't have anything with me I could hurt myself with …" Boy, was that a weird statement to make, but she figured Peter would understand.
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Granted, the news was probably going to spread if they kept using the girl's blood to heal people, but Claire seemed okay with that prospect, which Peter was glad for. He wouldn't have minded using his own blood, if he could be sure that it would work so long as he extracted it when he was near Claire, but all of that just seemed so iffy. It was easier to use Claire's, he had to admit.
While Claire had seemed distracted by something for a moment, she didn't voice her concerns, instead moving on to their current plan. It wasn't much of one, and the girl seemed to realize that too. "I guess a pen would work, but it would probably hurt a lot," he told her with a frown. While he realized that pain wasn't as big of a deal for Claire, it still wouldn't be pleasant.
"It's possible one of them has something, even if it's just a scalpel." It made him wish he'd brought one along, but he hadn't thought of it. "I mean, I have my shovel, but..." Peter wasn't going to hit Claire over the head with a big, blunt gardening tool, even if she asked him to. It would be much easier if she could just cut her palm open, or something along those lines.
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Unfortunately, the smile dropped quickly when he voiced concerns over how badly a pen might hurt. Of course. He didn't know yet. She'd been spending so much energy trying to keep him from finding out that it hadn't occurred to her that he would be taking the necessary precautions for how things used to be. She shut her eyes, releasing a stressed sigh and letting her eyebrows knit together in distress as she tried to find the right way to put it.
Really, there wasn't one, and she gave up the ghost quickly enough.
"No, it wouldn't. Peter, there's …" Something I need to tell you? Yeah, Sylar hacked my head open and dug around inside. No, that wasn't going to happen -- not after the looks she'd gotten from her mom over it and how flagrantly distracted and not caring he'd seemed when she'd told him about it. Sure, maybe he hadn't assaulted her like Brody had tried to, but this was worse. It was so much worse and she didn't need the looks to remind her how broken she was because of it.
Swallowing the memories down, she forced her eyes open. Did he have to look so open and innocent all the time? He was older than her, she wasn't supposed to feel this patronizing feeling over how naive he could be, but it was there, nagging nonetheless. She wanted to protect him from the horrible future -- her horrible future.
"I won't feel it," she forced out finally in a choked voice masked by stubbornness. Every pause, every time she blinked, it was like she was back in that house, clawing at the doors, running, crying, trapped. It was suffocating. "It's okay." But, it wasn't. It was anything but okay.
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Though it seemed like there was something else that he'd said that had been very much the wrong thing. He wasn't sure what the girl meant at first, or what he'd done that had bothered her so much, but he did his best to be patient until she got all of the words out.
What she said -- and more than that, the way that she said it -- caused him to stare at her in shock for a moment as he let it process. "Not at all?" he asked. "When did that happen?" Some might have considered the inability to feel pain a good thing, but Claire obviously wasn't happy with it, and Peter also knew that there were some clear downsides. There were people who didn't have abilities at all who were born with that defect -- congenital analgesia -- and it was a daily problem that they had to deal with.
If you couldn't feel pain, you could end up hurting yourself without even realizing it, and Claire had enough of a habit of throwing herself into danger already. Why hadn't she mentioned this before? Maybe it just hadn't occurred to her, with the gap in time between them, but it was sort of a big thing to overlook.
He wanted to reach out for her, to give her a hug or even grab her shoulder, but now didn't seem like the time. Bella or that man might be exiting the room any second now, and they needed to be ready. They would just have to talk about it more later, if Claire even wanted to. Though it felt like everything important just got pushed to the side, to be discussed "later," and that frustrated him.
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She took a quick, shifty look at the door beside them and she crossed her arms tightly over her chest -- this was a struggle, given the fact that she had forgotten to leave her bat and flashlight inside, but, well. It made her feel better, at least marginally, as it appeared she wasn't going to be getting that comforting feeling from Peter.
"About a week ago," she replied quickly. It was almost like she had to force the words out of her mouth, because suddenly she was blinking back tears and trying to pretend it didn't still bother her. After everything Meredith had done to try and get her to come to terms with it, it was supposed to be easier to talk about. But, it wasn't. Especially now that there was a very real threat of it happening again.
It.
The one thing she couldn't bring herself to tell Peter about. Was he going to ask why? She worried that she wouldn't be able to lie to him if he did. Not to his face, not when he looked so damn worried. But, he didn't need to know. He didn't need that on his conscience too. Between her and Elle and everything that had happened … he just didn't need to feel responsible, and she knew he would.
"I used to always feel it. It always hurt, but now …" Ever since Sylar had taken his telekinetic can-opener to her skull, "Nothing. No pain." She wanted to spill her guts -- not literally, of course, though the possibility was very real -- and just tell Peter everything. How much it worried her that she wasn't human anymore, that she was slowly slipping away from that and that maybe she'd lose her ability to feel other things too, but she wasn't going to burden him with it. She couldn't bring herself to.
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Well, she'd told him now, at least, though it seemed like even that was hard enough for the girl. Peter didn't know why the lack of pain was hitting her so hard, but maybe it was just another reminder of how different she was. The further away you got from normal, the more you felt like the word "freak" truly was applicable. Peter could understand that, even if he'd mainly embraced his powers. They didn't feel like as much of a gift when he could explode.
The question, of course, was how and why it had happened in the first place, but seeing how Claire hadn't offered any explanation, he was going to assume that she didn't know. Maybe her power was just developing and morphing in ways that they couldn't begin to predict. There was so little known about what they could do; this sort of thing could be normal for someone with regeneration, for all they knew.
"Look, Claire..." But before Peter could say anything else, the door to M114 opened and that man who'd interrupted them before stepped out and moved down the hall with a sour look on his face. That seemed to be the guy's default expression, though, and he was gone before Peter could even think of something to say.
He stared after him for a moment before glancing over at Claire with a raised eyebrow and a shrug. "Well, just let me know if you ever need anything, okay?" Now seemed like a good time to grab her shoulder and give it a tight squeeze, so he did. It was brief, though, as he soon pulled back and glanced to the door that the man had just left. "Do you think it's all right for us to head back in now?"
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A better way like killing Sylar before he could get her ability this time. It was a second chance -- maybe she could save herself this time, instead of relying on Peter to do it. Instead of letting that bitterness that he nor her father had been around to help when she needed them that time.
When he squeezed her shoulder, it made it hard to keep up the brave face, but she gave him a convincing enough smile.
"Yeah. I'll let you know," she turned to look at the door, considering and chewing the inside of her cheek. It was a good distractor, thinking of whether or not Edward and Bella potentially wanted some more time to themselves to talk this out. Venom had seemed suitably rushed in his eagerness to get out of there, she imagined a cool down period might be necessary.
But, there wasn't really time for that, so they'd just have to deal, the same as she had to.
"I think it had better be," she responded firmly, giving a shrug and an expectant raise of her brow. "Edward needs to get healed. There's nothing to discuss -- we're going to have to do whatever it takes to get him healed and that's all there is to it." Which might mean bullying them into telling her and Peter why Edward's skin was so hard if they had no way to avoid it, but definitely wouldn't include him drinking it. That was just useless and gross.
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As the girl gave her own opinion about whether it was safe for them to head back in or not, Peter couldn't help smiling. She made it sound like they needed to put a gun to Edward's head in order to get him to agree to let them help him, which was kind of backward and counter intuitive. In the end Edward was the one who had to decide if he was going to get healed or not, but Peter wasn't sure what secret would be important enough that he'd rather keep those wounds them tell them the truth.
Between himself and Claire, Peter was pretty sure that they could get some sort of answer out of them, which was all that they needed. "Sounds good to me," he told the girl with a nod before turning back to the door.
[To here.]
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The hallway was as empty as it had been earlier, which meant that the two of them were just left with the awkwardness of the situation they'd just escaped from to talk about. Peter could have brought up the blood, but there wasn't much to say about it just then and he doubted that Claire would want to hear it. She had just helped out two people who had betrayed her trust, after all.
In that case, it was probably better if he just focused on their next step, whatever that might be. They clearly hadn't planned far enough in advance, which was good in that it meant that they'd been efficient for once, but was bad because now they were floundering.
"Was there anything else you wanted to do tonight?" he asked his niece with a slight frown. He wasn't trying to ignore what had happened, but he didn't want to force Claire to talk about it either. "Did you ever find out your fake name? We could try the file room again, maybe." Which reminded him that he really needed to look through his own file at some point, but that would obviously have to wait.
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As they ducked from the room, Claire intentionally avoiding Bella's gaze, she pushed it from her mind with the reassurance that Edward had claimed himself that the pain was gone entirely. It had to be the ability. Whether that was a relief or something to dread, she wasn't sure.
Apparently, though, Peter had a similar hope -- that they could just bury the problems long enough for them to not be problems anymore. Or, maybe he just knew it was what Claire would want to do. There was really no way of being sure without asking and defeating the purpose of the gesture entirely, so instead, she offered a grim shake of her head.
"Honestly? I don't know; I didn't really have anything in mind before I talked to Bella and I didn't get a name from any of the nurses." She looked back at Edward's door behind them, shutting it pointedly before looking back to Peter. Mostly, she just wanted to get as far away from there as possible.
"I might try to just go to sleep early, I mean, I think we can consider this a rousing success as far as making use of my ability goes, and I'm pretty sure we don't have much time left." She chewed on her lip, shifting her gaze to the left and then the right of the hall, realizing she'd been in such a rush to follow Bella that she didn't really remember which side they'd come in from. Hopefully Peter would. "Would you totally hate me if I asked you to walk with me back to my room?"
Mistrust had bred paranoia. If she couldn't trust Bella, then there was no one in this institute besides her uncle that she could, and that made those halls the last place she wanted to be alone, even if it was just a short walk.
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He wanted to tell Claire that she should make sure she figured out her fake name sooner rather than later if she wanted that file, but now really wasn't the time for him to be advising her. She might take it personally or consider it condescending, so he'd leave it for later, when he could make sure he didn't come off that way.
The idea of just turning in was a pretty revolutionary one, mainly because Peter never wanted to allow himself that sort of break. Still, it was a good idea, and he was more than happy to support other people doing it. He was almost tempted to just stay with Claire, and maybe they could actually talk about some of what had happened, but that was up to his niece.
Though when she asked him to be her escort, Peter couldn't help smiling; he nodded firmly. "Of course I wouldn't. I'm happy to take you anywhere you need to go. It's not like it's too far. And hey, maybe I'll stick around, if you aren't too tired." If Claire wanted to just get to sleep and leave it at that, then he would totally understand, but he would just have to wait to see what her reaction was.
For now, he led them down the hall, back the way they'd come earlier in the night.
[To here.]
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