Heroes50.10: The Battle of Marathon
Title: The Battle of Marathon
Rating: PG
Summary: Ellen is the best nurse on Long Island, and the only one who knows what Peter Jones and his bodyguard Claude are hiding.
Notes: For heroes50 prompt #10: Run.
Having Athena's mind, Achilles' heel,
She's mythological, this modern woman.
Torn from the chariot, a loosened wheel
Which kept the chariot upon its course
She runs ahead, beyond the fallen horse.
-- Witter Bynner
Ellen Battle had a secret, and it was this: she was fast.
Not just fast, but super-fast. Super-duper fast, even. It was what made her the best nurse in Long Island -- hell, all of New York, probably the country, possibly the world. She was where she needed to be when she needed to be there; she could run an IV faster than anyone, and when someone called a code blue she was just there almost before their hand left the button. It had gotten her some strange looks before she arranged for all her shifts to be with the ER, where nobody noticed stuff like that.
The emergency room at East Hampton General paid well and it was discreet, because aside from tending to the sprains, breaks, cuts, and contusions of the island's support staff, it dealt with the sprains, breaks, cuts, contusions, overdoses, domestic violence, alcohol poisoning, and other embarrassments of the ridiculously wealthy. It was not unfamiliar for a long dark sedan to pull up in front of the emergency room's gates and a group of bodyguards to quietly help someone into the reception area.
Ten in the morning was a pretty quiet time in the ER, so Ellen was on the spot when two men walked in, one of them obviously a bodyguard (scruffy, tall, faintly menacing) and the other obviously some little rock star who'd got himself in a jam (Ellen didn't follow the gossip rags). The rock star was barefoot, wearing khakis and a coat too big for him.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked the bodyguard.
"Checkin' him in," the man replied. "Need to look for concussion."
"Did he have a fall?"
The man smiled. "You could say that."
***
Peter Jones was a good name for a rock star, Ellen decided. It was plain but it had that too-plain feel, like it was probably an assumed name and he'd been doing wicked things under another name.
Mr. Jones looked okay, but he couldn't remember who he was or who his bodyguard was, or how he'd gotten to Montauk. The bodyguard didn't know either, though he did seem to know more than he told.
"He doesn't have any ID on him," she said to the bodyguard, who introduced himself as Claude.
"No. He was naked when I found him."
"Naked?"
"Yup. Way the hell out by Lake Montauk. Had to break into a hotel and steal him some clothing. They won't thank me for that, I reckon."
"Well, that's pretty resourceful," she said.
"You get used to it," he answered.
"Is he very famous?"
He glanced sidelong at her. "Eh?"
"He's a rock star, isn't he? He looks like a rock star. All that hair," she said, and hung one hand over the side of her face in an imitation of Mr. Jones's hair. Claude laughed.
"Not very famous," he said. "Famous enough to keep this quiet, though. We understand each other?"
He was a little scruffy and rough around the edges, but he had nice blue eyes, and clearly he cared about Mr. Jones.
"Of course," she said. "Is there anything I can get you?"
"Cup'a coffee would be -- " he stopped, because in the time it had taken him to say "coffee" she'd run to the nurse's station, filled a cup, grabbed a few packets of sugar and creamer, and run back. He blinked. " -- favourite..."
"We just made a new pot," she explained. He dumped in three packets of sugar and stirred; his nice blue eyes narrowed above the cup as he sipped. "Does he live on Long Island?"
"No...no, New York," he said. "He had a bit of an...explosion with his brother, disappeared for a bit. Brother told me to find him, I went and found him."
"It must be really interesting, working for famous people."
"Christ, I'm an employee," he said, apropos of nothing. She was about to ask him what he meant when the doctor appeared.
"Mr...?" he said, offering his hand to Claude.
"Just Claude, thanks," Claude replied.
"Well, Mr. Jones seems to be all right -- there's no bruising that I can see and he seems lucid, if a little perplexed. I'd like to do an MRI to check his brain for bleeding, however, and put him on an EEG."
"Go to," Claude said. Ellen, already at Peter's bedside and prepping him for the scan, glanced back to see Claude watching her again. He was a sharp one; she'd have to be careful.
***
Peter, if that really was his name, didn't know who this Claude character was or how he himself had ended up on an island in the middle of a bigger island at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. He was glad they'd finally made it to a hospital, since he did definitely want to know why he couldn't remember anything.
Oh, little fragments surfaced; all these medical machines seemed very familiar, and so did Claude's face, but there was an instinctive mistrust attached to it, a feeling that the man who'd brought him to the hospital was not, perhaps, his best friend.
Still, there was a warm bed and lunch was on its way and someone was trying to fix him, so he couldn't be too unhappy about life.
"Chow's on," said Ellen, the nurse who'd helped him check in. She was carrying a tray with a covered plate, a bowl of soup, and a Diet Coke on it. "Thought you might like a little treat after the MRI," she added, indicating the Coke.
"It wasn't so bad," he said, though the feeling of being encased in several feet of loud, clicking plastic had almost made him scream. He'd felt like a cockroach had eaten him whole and was just waiting to digest him.
"You're a trooper, Mr. Jones." She set the tray down on the table and moved it over the bed, but when he sat up a little it bumped into his knee and the open can of soda went flying.
She started to say "Oh, damn" but before she could finish Peter suddenly found himself holding the can upright, liquid actually flying back into it.
There was a pause. She looked at him; he looked at her. Then, carefully, she maneuvered the table into place, plucked the can from his hand, and poured it into a cupful of ice.
"There you go, that's nice," she said.
"Did you see that?" he asked.
"See what?" she said, and after all he was in a hospital for memory loss, perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him.
***
The doctors wouldn't tell Claude the results of the MRI and Claude knew it, but that was what invisible men were made for.
"Do you see this?" the ER doctor asked, glancing at the specialist who'd come into the room and given Claude the open door he needed. The specialist examined the computer screen.
"Seems normal enough to me."
"Mr. Jones has severe, total memory loss."
"Well, it must be somatic, then."
"I don't think so. Take a look at this." A tap on the keyboard and a different image came up, a lot of lines and dots and things. Claude tilted his head. Bennet had always handled the medical side.
"That looks like..." the specialist pursed his lips.
"Yeah, it does."
What does it look like? Claude thought impatiently. He didn't have time for medical drama.
"You think he's had ECT?" the ER doctor asked, when the specialist didn't answer.
Oh god. ECT.
Claude closed his eyes against the memories -- one terrible three-month experiment, controlling dangerous people using electrodes and switches and no. Not thinking about that now.
"Could be," the specialist said, bringing him back to reality. "Who is this kid?"
"Intake nurse -- Battle -- said she thinks he's a rock star or something. Seen his bodyguard?"
"No, why?"
"He's huge and terrifying. I make Battle deal with him. Charms him like a cat with a lion."
"No history of mental illness?"
"Not much of a history of anything, we're still trying to pull his records. But if it is ECT, there's no going back, is there?"
"The kid's a clean slate. He walks, he talks, he has no memory and never will."
There was a rap at the door and the nurse -- Ellen, the woman with the odd way of being where she needed to be almost before she needed to be there -- came inside. As she did, Claude slipped through the door and out, shaking off his invisibility in the empty corridor.
If Peter Petrelli had no memory then that meant he had no way to unlock his power -- one power in particular, which was best defined as the power to make an entire city go boom if he got upset. In fact, he might not even have it anymore. Wiped clean out of his brain. Perhaps he couldn't access any of his powers anymore.
Claude had gone the death-to-escape route once. There was no reason Peter couldn't now. Find a quiet place to keep the boy, train him properly from scratch, control what powers he took and when, teach him how to be the perfect Empath.
He might not be a Company man anymore, but Company indoctrination was hard to break. Peter went from annoying student to helpless ward to science experiment in less time than it took to blink. He found himself standing at the foot of Peter's bed, studying him with clinical detachment.
"Hi," Peter said, and he smiled at Claude, and there he was back at helpless ward again.
Still, the minute it got out that Peter was alive, someone would come after him. The Company, his brother, the police...
"Put some clothes on," Claude said. "We got to get out of here."
"Why?"
"S'not safe. We got to -- "
"Mr. Jones isn't going anywhere."
Claude turned to find Ellen standing behind him. He reached out to take her arm and pull her inside the privacy curtains but she was suddenly three feet away on his left. He feinted and there she was on his right, just in time for his arm to shoot out and his hand to catch her elbow.
"You're fast but you're not clever," he said through his teeth, holding tight to her arm. "I've got ten years experience on you and I know what you can do."
"Did she just..." Peter asked, behind them, but neither one paid the slightest attention.
"Let me go," she said.
"No," he answered.
"You're just going to hold onto my elbow forever? You'll get a cramp."
"I'll switch hands," he said.
"Excuse me," Peter said.
"You can't take Mr. Jones out of the hospital, he's not well."
"I can and will and you have no idea just how unwell he is."
"He can do what I do," Ellen replied.
"He can do a lot of things."
"HEY! PATIENT OVER HERE!" Peter shouted, and both of them glanced at him. "Let go of her. You're my bodyguard, you have to do what I tell you."
"I'm not your bodyguard, I'm your bloody saviour," Claude said, and turned back to Ellen. "I let you go, you stay right here and we discuss this before you go running off to sound the alarm. Otherwise the whole hospital's going to know what you can do."
"Okay," she said, and he let his hand fall. As far as he could tell, she stayed where she was, but with the fast ones sometimes it was hard to know.
Claude looked from her face to Peter's, then back, wondering just how much he could get away with. Not much, probably.
"Your name is Peter Petrelli," he said to Peter, who looked at him blankly. "You're the younger brother of Congressman Petrelli of New York. Who, I might add, is a complete wanker. You," he said, turning to Ellen, "are fast. Faster than any human being ought to be. You're just there suddenly. Bet you ran track in high school."
"All state," she muttered.
"Thought so."
"There are other people like me? Other...really fast people?"
"Am I really fast?" Peter asked.
"World's full of people who're different. In different ways. Me? I disappear," Claude said, and vanished to prove his point. Peter squeaked, because that was Peter all over. Ellen stared, and before he knew it he'd been shoved hard in the shoulder. He reappeared.
"You," he said, pointing at Peter, "can do what we do. You're...special among the special."
"Why?" Peter asked.
"If I knew the answer to that, princess, I wouldn't be here," Claude said. "And there isn't time. There're going to be questions about him, and sooner or later someone's going to add up who he is. I need to get him out of here. Now."
Both of them looked at him mistrustfully, and he couldn't really blame them. He waited, counting the seconds, knowing from long experience that people needed time to make up their minds.
"Where will you take him?" Ellen asked.
"Somewhere safe. He's dangerous, to you, to himself, to me. Got to show him how to control it. Got to get him away from people."
"I'm not dangerous," Peter said.
"How d'you know?" Claude retorted. Peter opened his mouth, closed it, and frowned. "We got to run. I swear I will tell you what you need to know but we got to run."
***
It couldn't have been Ellen who helped the crazy rock star and his psycho bodyguard escape. It stood to reason, because two minutes after someone called them a cab and got them out the door and destroyed Jones's intake records, she was in the cafeteria, halfway through a tuna fish sandwich. Nobody was that fast.
Nobody.
END
Rating: PG
Summary: Ellen is the best nurse on Long Island, and the only one who knows what Peter Jones and his bodyguard Claude are hiding.
Notes: For heroes50 prompt #10: Run.
Having Athena's mind, Achilles' heel,
She's mythological, this modern woman.
Torn from the chariot, a loosened wheel
Which kept the chariot upon its course
She runs ahead, beyond the fallen horse.
-- Witter Bynner
Ellen Battle had a secret, and it was this: she was fast.
Not just fast, but super-fast. Super-duper fast, even. It was what made her the best nurse in Long Island -- hell, all of New York, probably the country, possibly the world. She was where she needed to be when she needed to be there; she could run an IV faster than anyone, and when someone called a code blue she was just there almost before their hand left the button. It had gotten her some strange looks before she arranged for all her shifts to be with the ER, where nobody noticed stuff like that.
The emergency room at East Hampton General paid well and it was discreet, because aside from tending to the sprains, breaks, cuts, and contusions of the island's support staff, it dealt with the sprains, breaks, cuts, contusions, overdoses, domestic violence, alcohol poisoning, and other embarrassments of the ridiculously wealthy. It was not unfamiliar for a long dark sedan to pull up in front of the emergency room's gates and a group of bodyguards to quietly help someone into the reception area.
Ten in the morning was a pretty quiet time in the ER, so Ellen was on the spot when two men walked in, one of them obviously a bodyguard (scruffy, tall, faintly menacing) and the other obviously some little rock star who'd got himself in a jam (Ellen didn't follow the gossip rags). The rock star was barefoot, wearing khakis and a coat too big for him.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked the bodyguard.
"Checkin' him in," the man replied. "Need to look for concussion."
"Did he have a fall?"
The man smiled. "You could say that."
***
Peter Jones was a good name for a rock star, Ellen decided. It was plain but it had that too-plain feel, like it was probably an assumed name and he'd been doing wicked things under another name.
Mr. Jones looked okay, but he couldn't remember who he was or who his bodyguard was, or how he'd gotten to Montauk. The bodyguard didn't know either, though he did seem to know more than he told.
"He doesn't have any ID on him," she said to the bodyguard, who introduced himself as Claude.
"No. He was naked when I found him."
"Naked?"
"Yup. Way the hell out by Lake Montauk. Had to break into a hotel and steal him some clothing. They won't thank me for that, I reckon."
"Well, that's pretty resourceful," she said.
"You get used to it," he answered.
"Is he very famous?"
He glanced sidelong at her. "Eh?"
"He's a rock star, isn't he? He looks like a rock star. All that hair," she said, and hung one hand over the side of her face in an imitation of Mr. Jones's hair. Claude laughed.
"Not very famous," he said. "Famous enough to keep this quiet, though. We understand each other?"
He was a little scruffy and rough around the edges, but he had nice blue eyes, and clearly he cared about Mr. Jones.
"Of course," she said. "Is there anything I can get you?"
"Cup'a coffee would be -- " he stopped, because in the time it had taken him to say "coffee" she'd run to the nurse's station, filled a cup, grabbed a few packets of sugar and creamer, and run back. He blinked. " -- favourite..."
"We just made a new pot," she explained. He dumped in three packets of sugar and stirred; his nice blue eyes narrowed above the cup as he sipped. "Does he live on Long Island?"
"No...no, New York," he said. "He had a bit of an...explosion with his brother, disappeared for a bit. Brother told me to find him, I went and found him."
"It must be really interesting, working for famous people."
"Christ, I'm an employee," he said, apropos of nothing. She was about to ask him what he meant when the doctor appeared.
"Mr...?" he said, offering his hand to Claude.
"Just Claude, thanks," Claude replied.
"Well, Mr. Jones seems to be all right -- there's no bruising that I can see and he seems lucid, if a little perplexed. I'd like to do an MRI to check his brain for bleeding, however, and put him on an EEG."
"Go to," Claude said. Ellen, already at Peter's bedside and prepping him for the scan, glanced back to see Claude watching her again. He was a sharp one; she'd have to be careful.
***
Peter, if that really was his name, didn't know who this Claude character was or how he himself had ended up on an island in the middle of a bigger island at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. He was glad they'd finally made it to a hospital, since he did definitely want to know why he couldn't remember anything.
Oh, little fragments surfaced; all these medical machines seemed very familiar, and so did Claude's face, but there was an instinctive mistrust attached to it, a feeling that the man who'd brought him to the hospital was not, perhaps, his best friend.
Still, there was a warm bed and lunch was on its way and someone was trying to fix him, so he couldn't be too unhappy about life.
"Chow's on," said Ellen, the nurse who'd helped him check in. She was carrying a tray with a covered plate, a bowl of soup, and a Diet Coke on it. "Thought you might like a little treat after the MRI," she added, indicating the Coke.
"It wasn't so bad," he said, though the feeling of being encased in several feet of loud, clicking plastic had almost made him scream. He'd felt like a cockroach had eaten him whole and was just waiting to digest him.
"You're a trooper, Mr. Jones." She set the tray down on the table and moved it over the bed, but when he sat up a little it bumped into his knee and the open can of soda went flying.
She started to say "Oh, damn" but before she could finish Peter suddenly found himself holding the can upright, liquid actually flying back into it.
There was a pause. She looked at him; he looked at her. Then, carefully, she maneuvered the table into place, plucked the can from his hand, and poured it into a cupful of ice.
"There you go, that's nice," she said.
"Did you see that?" he asked.
"See what?" she said, and after all he was in a hospital for memory loss, perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him.
***
The doctors wouldn't tell Claude the results of the MRI and Claude knew it, but that was what invisible men were made for.
"Do you see this?" the ER doctor asked, glancing at the specialist who'd come into the room and given Claude the open door he needed. The specialist examined the computer screen.
"Seems normal enough to me."
"Mr. Jones has severe, total memory loss."
"Well, it must be somatic, then."
"I don't think so. Take a look at this." A tap on the keyboard and a different image came up, a lot of lines and dots and things. Claude tilted his head. Bennet had always handled the medical side.
"That looks like..." the specialist pursed his lips.
"Yeah, it does."
What does it look like? Claude thought impatiently. He didn't have time for medical drama.
"You think he's had ECT?" the ER doctor asked, when the specialist didn't answer.
Oh god. ECT.
Claude closed his eyes against the memories -- one terrible three-month experiment, controlling dangerous people using electrodes and switches and no. Not thinking about that now.
"Could be," the specialist said, bringing him back to reality. "Who is this kid?"
"Intake nurse -- Battle -- said she thinks he's a rock star or something. Seen his bodyguard?"
"No, why?"
"He's huge and terrifying. I make Battle deal with him. Charms him like a cat with a lion."
"No history of mental illness?"
"Not much of a history of anything, we're still trying to pull his records. But if it is ECT, there's no going back, is there?"
"The kid's a clean slate. He walks, he talks, he has no memory and never will."
There was a rap at the door and the nurse -- Ellen, the woman with the odd way of being where she needed to be almost before she needed to be there -- came inside. As she did, Claude slipped through the door and out, shaking off his invisibility in the empty corridor.
If Peter Petrelli had no memory then that meant he had no way to unlock his power -- one power in particular, which was best defined as the power to make an entire city go boom if he got upset. In fact, he might not even have it anymore. Wiped clean out of his brain. Perhaps he couldn't access any of his powers anymore.
Claude had gone the death-to-escape route once. There was no reason Peter couldn't now. Find a quiet place to keep the boy, train him properly from scratch, control what powers he took and when, teach him how to be the perfect Empath.
He might not be a Company man anymore, but Company indoctrination was hard to break. Peter went from annoying student to helpless ward to science experiment in less time than it took to blink. He found himself standing at the foot of Peter's bed, studying him with clinical detachment.
"Hi," Peter said, and he smiled at Claude, and there he was back at helpless ward again.
Still, the minute it got out that Peter was alive, someone would come after him. The Company, his brother, the police...
"Put some clothes on," Claude said. "We got to get out of here."
"Why?"
"S'not safe. We got to -- "
"Mr. Jones isn't going anywhere."
Claude turned to find Ellen standing behind him. He reached out to take her arm and pull her inside the privacy curtains but she was suddenly three feet away on his left. He feinted and there she was on his right, just in time for his arm to shoot out and his hand to catch her elbow.
"You're fast but you're not clever," he said through his teeth, holding tight to her arm. "I've got ten years experience on you and I know what you can do."
"Did she just..." Peter asked, behind them, but neither one paid the slightest attention.
"Let me go," she said.
"No," he answered.
"You're just going to hold onto my elbow forever? You'll get a cramp."
"I'll switch hands," he said.
"Excuse me," Peter said.
"You can't take Mr. Jones out of the hospital, he's not well."
"I can and will and you have no idea just how unwell he is."
"He can do what I do," Ellen replied.
"He can do a lot of things."
"HEY! PATIENT OVER HERE!" Peter shouted, and both of them glanced at him. "Let go of her. You're my bodyguard, you have to do what I tell you."
"I'm not your bodyguard, I'm your bloody saviour," Claude said, and turned back to Ellen. "I let you go, you stay right here and we discuss this before you go running off to sound the alarm. Otherwise the whole hospital's going to know what you can do."
"Okay," she said, and he let his hand fall. As far as he could tell, she stayed where she was, but with the fast ones sometimes it was hard to know.
Claude looked from her face to Peter's, then back, wondering just how much he could get away with. Not much, probably.
"Your name is Peter Petrelli," he said to Peter, who looked at him blankly. "You're the younger brother of Congressman Petrelli of New York. Who, I might add, is a complete wanker. You," he said, turning to Ellen, "are fast. Faster than any human being ought to be. You're just there suddenly. Bet you ran track in high school."
"All state," she muttered.
"Thought so."
"There are other people like me? Other...really fast people?"
"Am I really fast?" Peter asked.
"World's full of people who're different. In different ways. Me? I disappear," Claude said, and vanished to prove his point. Peter squeaked, because that was Peter all over. Ellen stared, and before he knew it he'd been shoved hard in the shoulder. He reappeared.
"You," he said, pointing at Peter, "can do what we do. You're...special among the special."
"Why?" Peter asked.
"If I knew the answer to that, princess, I wouldn't be here," Claude said. "And there isn't time. There're going to be questions about him, and sooner or later someone's going to add up who he is. I need to get him out of here. Now."
Both of them looked at him mistrustfully, and he couldn't really blame them. He waited, counting the seconds, knowing from long experience that people needed time to make up their minds.
"Where will you take him?" Ellen asked.
"Somewhere safe. He's dangerous, to you, to himself, to me. Got to show him how to control it. Got to get him away from people."
"I'm not dangerous," Peter said.
"How d'you know?" Claude retorted. Peter opened his mouth, closed it, and frowned. "We got to run. I swear I will tell you what you need to know but we got to run."
***
It couldn't have been Ellen who helped the crazy rock star and his psycho bodyguard escape. It stood to reason, because two minutes after someone called them a cab and got them out the door and destroyed Jones's intake records, she was in the cafeteria, halfway through a tuna fish sandwich. Nobody was that fast.
Nobody.
END