Heroes50.9: Petrus Polaris
Title: Petrus Polaris
Rating: PG for language
Summary: The search for Peter's body leads Claude to Star Island, and a strange glittering sculpture on the southernmost edge.
Notes: Petrus Polaris translates to "Peter the Fixed Star". For heroes50 prompt # 9: Jump.
"And children digging naked in the sand
Will find my shell and on it scratch new words
That soon will blossom out," he said, "and bear
New fruit, strange to the tongue of men and birds."
-- Malcolm Cowley
Star Island was a long way from New York, way the fuck-hell out at the tip of Long Island. It wasn't a place men like Claude were allowed, men without bank accounts and shined shoes and a yacht. The entire island was owned by a corporation. It wasn't even open in the winter. The island was closed.
He hitched a ride with a delivery driver as far as Lake Montauk, but no deliveries went to Star Island. It was self-sufficient, isolated, with its own water and electricity separate from the mainland, if you could call Long Island a mainland. The driver left him about four miles from the land-bridge to the island and moved on.
Molly Walker had put a pin in a map on Star Island, when he asked her where Peter's body was. An island within an island, in a bay on the isolated spit of land. He'd no idea what was there, but the allegory was making him uneasy. Peter had fallen to earth in a place cut off from everything and everyone. Claude could draw the inference right enough.
He walked across the bridge that afternoon and stopped at the turnoff for some fancy resort or other, with a beach on his left, a parking-lot beyond it. To the right was a hotel of some kind; he could see a blue cover on an obscenely big swimming pool. Past that was more beach, populated here and there with scrubby clutches of brush.
When he was nine he'd gone to the seaside with his parents and in an isolated patch of ground he'd found a dead deer, too small to be anything but an infant. The skin was stretched tight, head pulled back as the ligaments shortened, eyes long gone, bones showing under the skin on the legs. He wasn't quite certain what he would do, what he could do, if he found Peter like that.
Pitch him into the water. Tell Petrelli the body was found, and pitch him into the water and give him a burial at sea. He'd be of some use, at least, feeding the bay's beasties.
He turned left and moved on, walking on the edge of the road, invisible out of habit though there was nobody there. Desolate and mostly paved. Lovely.
Night fell before he'd finished quartering the northern portion of the tiny island. He found a snack machine near the tennis courts (seriously? Tennis courts?) and broke into it for dinner. He'd had worse. There were tarp-covered boats moored at docks near an empty hotel and he slept uneasily in one of them, dreaming that the moorings had come undone and he was drifting out to sea, the Atlantic freezing the doors and windows, trapping him inside an iced-over cave.
He'd had just about e-fucking-nough of this.
In the morning he went south, half-intending to walk back off the island and get the hell out of this horror-fest, but he wasn't going to tell Petrelli he'd found where Peter fell and only looked at half the island. As he walked past the turnoff he went south, through the small parking lot and around the edge of a building. Just this last little rounded piece of land, manicured grass lawn leading down to the beach.
The beach, where something was glittering at the water line.
Just some arsehole's water-ski, he decided, but he investigated anyway. Drawing closer, it looked like a large sculpture of some kind, and closer still it looked like --
"Peter," he said, quietly.
The waves washed up and around the glittering thing. Spikes of ice stuck out at odd angles, slowly elongating as the water around them clung and froze. The tide should be eroding the ice, not freezing to it. It formed a kind of -- not a cage, though almost -- more like a cradle.
There was a body in the center.
He touched one of the shoulder-high spikes and then tugged; it was solid, and when he licked his wet hand he tasted salt. The high-tide line was ten feet back up the beach. Peter had fallen, then, and some talent he'd picked up somewhere had frozen the water when he hit.
Claude was pissed off.
He jammed an elbow against the spike he'd touched and heard a crack, but it was the ice and not his bones. He picked up a nearby stone and hammered at it, fighting the barrier in silence, throwing his body against the thin wall of ice when he got past the edges. It shattered and rained frost down on the body and he hurdled the bottom of the wall easily, stepping over Peter and throwing himself against the other side until that too cracked and groaned. With a sudden explosion, the ice walls fell and the tide, coming up around them, began to wash the fragments away. It wetted his boots and they froze momentarily to the ice he stood on. He shouted and kicked, breaking free, and then turned around to see Peter's body, skin blue, one arm flung up over his face as if he were shielding himself.
Well. Petrelli would be pleased to have such a well-preserved corpse.
He lifted the body's hand from its face and got one arm under it, hauling it out of the ice and onto the sand. He stumbled and fell and started to laugh. Graceful Peter Petrelli, who could arrow through the air and read thoughts and heal himself, a dead-weight on top of his legs.
Then something flickered, and Claude went very still. He pulled his legs away from the body.
Peter lay with his head turned back like the dead deer, arms splayed, half his face crusted with sand. At his throat, a flicker. The skin stretched taut over something that flickered and jumped.
Oh god, there's something inside him, was his first thought -- some animal had crawled down his throat and was eating him from the inside. Except...
He raised his arm and fetched the body a ringing, powerful backhand against its cheek. The flicker continued, regular, a little faster now, jump jump jump jump.
It wasn't an animal or a trick of the light it was oh Christ it was a pulse Peter Petrelli you stupid fuck you've got a pulse.
Claude slapped him again and brought both hands down in fists on his chest, hard. Bones broke this time, sure enough, Peter's rib bones, and then there was a soft whurrr as they knit together again. He hit the boy again and again, harder than he'd dared when Peter was alive, and on the fourth or fifth or maybe tenth try, Claude wasn't sure, Peter screamed.
"Oh Jesus," Claude said, and grabbed him and pulled the boy up, holding Peter's head against his shoulders, cradling him as they sat on the sand. He could feel his pulse under one hand.
Jump. Jump. Jump.
A very small, very rough voice intruded into the perfect, brilliant rhythm of the pulse.
"Lemme go," Peter said weakly. "Who the hell are you?"
END
Rating: PG for language
Summary: The search for Peter's body leads Claude to Star Island, and a strange glittering sculpture on the southernmost edge.
Notes: Petrus Polaris translates to "Peter the Fixed Star". For heroes50 prompt # 9: Jump.
"And children digging naked in the sand
Will find my shell and on it scratch new words
That soon will blossom out," he said, "and bear
New fruit, strange to the tongue of men and birds."
-- Malcolm Cowley
Star Island was a long way from New York, way the fuck-hell out at the tip of Long Island. It wasn't a place men like Claude were allowed, men without bank accounts and shined shoes and a yacht. The entire island was owned by a corporation. It wasn't even open in the winter. The island was closed.
He hitched a ride with a delivery driver as far as Lake Montauk, but no deliveries went to Star Island. It was self-sufficient, isolated, with its own water and electricity separate from the mainland, if you could call Long Island a mainland. The driver left him about four miles from the land-bridge to the island and moved on.
Molly Walker had put a pin in a map on Star Island, when he asked her where Peter's body was. An island within an island, in a bay on the isolated spit of land. He'd no idea what was there, but the allegory was making him uneasy. Peter had fallen to earth in a place cut off from everything and everyone. Claude could draw the inference right enough.
He walked across the bridge that afternoon and stopped at the turnoff for some fancy resort or other, with a beach on his left, a parking-lot beyond it. To the right was a hotel of some kind; he could see a blue cover on an obscenely big swimming pool. Past that was more beach, populated here and there with scrubby clutches of brush.
When he was nine he'd gone to the seaside with his parents and in an isolated patch of ground he'd found a dead deer, too small to be anything but an infant. The skin was stretched tight, head pulled back as the ligaments shortened, eyes long gone, bones showing under the skin on the legs. He wasn't quite certain what he would do, what he could do, if he found Peter like that.
Pitch him into the water. Tell Petrelli the body was found, and pitch him into the water and give him a burial at sea. He'd be of some use, at least, feeding the bay's beasties.
He turned left and moved on, walking on the edge of the road, invisible out of habit though there was nobody there. Desolate and mostly paved. Lovely.
Night fell before he'd finished quartering the northern portion of the tiny island. He found a snack machine near the tennis courts (seriously? Tennis courts?) and broke into it for dinner. He'd had worse. There were tarp-covered boats moored at docks near an empty hotel and he slept uneasily in one of them, dreaming that the moorings had come undone and he was drifting out to sea, the Atlantic freezing the doors and windows, trapping him inside an iced-over cave.
He'd had just about e-fucking-nough of this.
In the morning he went south, half-intending to walk back off the island and get the hell out of this horror-fest, but he wasn't going to tell Petrelli he'd found where Peter fell and only looked at half the island. As he walked past the turnoff he went south, through the small parking lot and around the edge of a building. Just this last little rounded piece of land, manicured grass lawn leading down to the beach.
The beach, where something was glittering at the water line.
Just some arsehole's water-ski, he decided, but he investigated anyway. Drawing closer, it looked like a large sculpture of some kind, and closer still it looked like --
"Peter," he said, quietly.
The waves washed up and around the glittering thing. Spikes of ice stuck out at odd angles, slowly elongating as the water around them clung and froze. The tide should be eroding the ice, not freezing to it. It formed a kind of -- not a cage, though almost -- more like a cradle.
There was a body in the center.
He touched one of the shoulder-high spikes and then tugged; it was solid, and when he licked his wet hand he tasted salt. The high-tide line was ten feet back up the beach. Peter had fallen, then, and some talent he'd picked up somewhere had frozen the water when he hit.
Claude was pissed off.
He jammed an elbow against the spike he'd touched and heard a crack, but it was the ice and not his bones. He picked up a nearby stone and hammered at it, fighting the barrier in silence, throwing his body against the thin wall of ice when he got past the edges. It shattered and rained frost down on the body and he hurdled the bottom of the wall easily, stepping over Peter and throwing himself against the other side until that too cracked and groaned. With a sudden explosion, the ice walls fell and the tide, coming up around them, began to wash the fragments away. It wetted his boots and they froze momentarily to the ice he stood on. He shouted and kicked, breaking free, and then turned around to see Peter's body, skin blue, one arm flung up over his face as if he were shielding himself.
Well. Petrelli would be pleased to have such a well-preserved corpse.
He lifted the body's hand from its face and got one arm under it, hauling it out of the ice and onto the sand. He stumbled and fell and started to laugh. Graceful Peter Petrelli, who could arrow through the air and read thoughts and heal himself, a dead-weight on top of his legs.
Then something flickered, and Claude went very still. He pulled his legs away from the body.
Peter lay with his head turned back like the dead deer, arms splayed, half his face crusted with sand. At his throat, a flicker. The skin stretched taut over something that flickered and jumped.
Oh god, there's something inside him, was his first thought -- some animal had crawled down his throat and was eating him from the inside. Except...
He raised his arm and fetched the body a ringing, powerful backhand against its cheek. The flicker continued, regular, a little faster now, jump jump jump jump.
It wasn't an animal or a trick of the light it was oh Christ it was a pulse Peter Petrelli you stupid fuck you've got a pulse.
Claude slapped him again and brought both hands down in fists on his chest, hard. Bones broke this time, sure enough, Peter's rib bones, and then there was a soft whurrr as they knit together again. He hit the boy again and again, harder than he'd dared when Peter was alive, and on the fourth or fifth or maybe tenth try, Claude wasn't sure, Peter screamed.
"Oh Jesus," Claude said, and grabbed him and pulled the boy up, holding Peter's head against his shoulders, cradling him as they sat on the sand. He could feel his pulse under one hand.
Jump. Jump. Jump.
A very small, very rough voice intruded into the perfect, brilliant rhythm of the pulse.
"Lemme go," Peter said weakly. "Who the hell are you?"
END