i wonder how often i will use this icon now
Okay, so enough people expressed interest in seeing the forever-incomplete WWII AU, and I have nothing to do for the next half-hour, so posting it should take up at least a few minutes. THE STORY BEHIND THIS: My brother collects RPG sourcebooks, regardless of whether or not he plans to ever actually use them; one day, he brought home the main book for Godlike. Godlike takes place in an alternate version of WWII where superheroes began manifesting shortly before the war, on both sides. (The Germans first, actually. With a flying man, nonetheless.) Needless to say, I gobbled up this book like a delicious sandwich, even if I knew the chances were slim I was ever going to play it. (I do this with pretty much every RPG sourcebook that comes into my possession.) Years later, I got into Heroes. You know this part of the story already. And one day, I was trying to think of what Heroes fic I could write next, when I remembered that one RPG that was lying around the house somewhere...
I made a few changes; in this fic, abilities started manifesting in the first World War, not the second, mostly because I wanted to at least mention the previous generation. In this history, the US joined the war shortly after it started, due to having developed a significant partnership with the British in regards to parahuman research. And of course I ignored the RPG's characters and main events (excepting pre-existing battles and so forth), because, well, I wanted the Heroes gang to be the one making all the waves. But I make no bones about the fact that the story was very, very influenced by Godlike, even if it's not really a crossover. (It even has the same sectional format as the sourcebook--character bios interspersed with bits of prose and history.) So.
As I mentioned earlier, bits are missing. I never got around to writing much of Hiro and Ando, or Mohinder and Sylar, or Claire, or Isaac and Simone, or...you get the picture. And while technically the last section could serve as an end, I'd definitely planned to have more that led up to it, and probably a further coda beyond it. There's a bio in there that I just never finished. I never got around to adding the S2 characters, either, beyond one or two brief name-checks, and pretty much everything I have about the previous generation has been Jossed to hell and back by S3. But it's an AU, yeah? That's totally a legitimate excuse.
The primary pairing is Peter/Nathan, though there's some Matt/Ted undertones in it if you squint, and originally there was some Peter/Claude but I edited it into gen. This is not a happy story. This is probably the most depressing story I've ever written.
All that being said, here's 12,878 words of an R-rated unfinished story in two parts; read them as you will.
From Darwin’s Grandchildren: A History of Parahumanity, by Dr. Mohinder Suresh (published 1976)
They could not explain it. Science does not give immediate answers. But when the swamps of mud and corpses at Ypres lit up with fire and thunder, and the shores of the Somme turned to glass, answers had to be found.
…
Trauma. Severe psychological distress. A medic surrounded by soldiers he could not save, or a man with a gun to his head, or a mother who finds enemy soldiers at the door-some words and concepts had not yet reached the minds of men, but it was not impossible to draw the connections. Of the 1,036 confirmed manifestations during the Third Battle of Ypres, over 850 had stories of feeling a great anger, grief, or fear directly before their abilities came into the fore. The rest either died on the field or vanished shortly thereafter.
…
---
From The American Pageant: From the Colonies to the Present (published 1997
The Golden Age of the Golden Brigade
When the USA officially entered the war, they drafted as many of their known specials as possible. Unfortunately, this was not many-over half the initial parahumans in the first war had died during or shortly after the conflict, and while the Depression had manifested a large number of them, many of those also died in the wretched conditions that spawned them. Regardless, they did possess a few with genuine combat abilities, and several dozen whose abilities would prove useful either on the home front or as base personnel. Among these were Nicole Sanders, Matthew Parkman, Theodore Sprague, Zane Taylor, David Walker, Betty Wilmer, Charlene Andrews, and Sarah Ellis. The Coalition base in England had its specials. Now it needed to decide what to do with them.
The answer came in the form of Nathan Petrelli, the first American to officially manifest on the battlefield of the second war. As the son of the famed Shield, he achieved instant national recognition, and the Coalition instantly realized that publicity could be one of their greatest assets-in addition to boosting Allied morale to incredible levels, it could also give the Germans pause to consider what they were dealing with. As the Shield had been given a name by his fellow soldiers, Nathan Petrelli received a name from his new employers, and so began the Golden Brigade. The Brigade was made up of six American parahumans-Petrelli, Sanders, Sprague, Parkman, Ellis, and Wilmer-and served as the primary Allied parahuman force for the first three years of the war. Petrelli, Sanders, and Sprague were the most publicized members, and as such received the most patriotic names (for the Coalition was very determined that the Brigade be seen as extremely American): the Eagle, Lady Liberty, and the Torch. Parkman, Ellis, and Wilmer were less active in combat, though they did also receive names; Mister Mentalist, Sarah Sly, and Mirage were less flashy, but nevertheless vital persuade members of the group.
For three years, they fought for truth, justice, the American way, and mom’s apple pie. They were responsible for the estimated deaths of over 4,000 German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian soldiers-with Petrelli and Sprague alone accounting for over 2,700 of these figures. Countless comic books, radio plays, and movies were based on their exploits.
On June 15th, 1941, British forces under the command of Field Marshall Sir Percival Wavell launched an attack against the Axis lines at the Halfaya Pass on the border of Egypt, hoping to drive out or destroy the German soldiers, tanks, and planes occupying the region. Churchill himself ordered a large quantity of British tanks to be sent to the region, confident that he was assuring an easy victory. The Coalition generously added to the pile the aid of the Golden Brigade, eager to capitalize on the victory’s impending boost in Allied morale. Unfortunately for them, however, Erwin Rommel did not particularly want to lose. The German tanks proved to be far superior to anything the British had to offer, and they were hiding a few parahumans of their own. The three-day battle, known as both Operation Battleaxe and the Battle of Sollum, ended in a horrible defeat for the Allies, and the once-presumed morale boost was turned on its head. More than that, however, the battle claimed the life of Sarah Sly and severely injured the Torch, Mister Mentalist, and Lady Liberty. The Golden Brigade was crippled.
After the tragedy of the Battle of Sollum, the Coalition decided to unofficially retire the Brigade for fear of reminding the public of the great loss. The remaining members were sent to permanently live on the Coalition base, providing support from there and only venturing into the field for individual missions. Mister Mentalist, who had never been overly fond of participating in combat, became an interrogator for the Blue Team. Lady Liberty attempted to stay with her family as much as possible, though the invaluable nature of her ability forced her to go on more missions than she would have liked. Mirage became another member of the Blue Team. The Torch was seen as being increasingly unstable, and went into psychiatric treatment, though it would later prove to merely be a bandage on a gaping wound. The Eagle remained the only truly active member of the Brigade, going on every mission the Coalition even vaguely thought of, returning to the base only for mandatory downtime. The Golden Brigade went quiet, but its members remained, waiting for the time when they would be genuinely needed once more.
---
From Truth, Justice, and the American Super: A History of Parahuman Propaganda in the Great Wars (published 2002)
The story of Captain Nathan Petrelli is a well-known and frequently-lauded one; he was the golden boy of the Corps, the action hero of every American child, the comic book character come to life-of course, there were a lot of people who fell under the latter category, but he was one of the few who had comic books about him. Women in every Allied country swooned over him. Most of the Allied soldiers wanted to be him. There was no denying it-Nathan Petrelli was the brightest star in the pantheon of American heroes. And his story, of course, had to match up.
His father was a soldier in the Great War, one of the first Americans to manifest; his mother was a hard-working housewife, determined to aid the war in any way possible, organizing hundreds of volunteers for collecting any of the myriad supplies the war effort required. He was raised in an environment of discipline, patriotism, and determination for success. Like his father, he joined the military, though he opted for the Navy rather than the Army; like his father, he went into law. Though his father was one of the greatest specials of the war-they referred to him as the Shield-Nathan didn’t manifest until, oddly, the day he was deployed to England. Once the Corps realized what it had on their hands-a man who could travel through the air faster than a bullet could hit him, who could drop a grenade right into the enemy camp-they moved him directly towards the front in Paris, to fight alongside the rest of the Golden Brigade in the Battle of the Bastille.
His work in the Golden Brigade brought about a number of military victories, and even when not in battle, his skills proved highly useful in the transportation of vital documents and, on some occasions, vital persons. Captain Nathan Petrelli’s charisma and all-American background turned him into the perfect poster boy for the Brigade, and it wasn’t long before he became the poster boy of the entire war effort; the military, recognizing the value of a good public hero, procured for him the sort of name and uniform all the great military specials had grown to adopt. The uniform was a modified Corps uniform, dyed and embroidered with an insignia across the chest; the name, granted to him by a particularly patriotic general, was the Eagle. Der Schwartzer Adler, the Germans allegedly called him.
His brother called him Nathan.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews
Lady Liberty
Name: Nicole Sanders.
Nationality: American.
Political Affiliation: No known political leanings.
Education: High school.
Rank: No official rank.
Decorations: None.
DOB: February 28th, 1910.
DOD: June 11th, 1979 (natural causes).
Known Parahuman Abilities: Sanders’ initial examinations proved her to be capable of throwing a 180-pound sandbag thirty feet, bending a 5” thick steel bar, and lifting a 2-ton car over her head. Shortly after the Coalition refused to grant her access to her son before more tests were completed, she also proved to be capable of throwing said 2-ton car through a plate glass window.
In addition to her feats of what the Coalition had come to term ‘advanced parastrength’, Sanders occasionally possessed a violent streak which could, under the right circumstances, provoke her into committing great acts of brutality. On one of these occasions, she ripped a Coalition soldier in half. While she went into a state of shock shortly afterwards, she was admitted for immediate psychiatric treatment. It lasted for approximately a week before she smashed through several hospital walls and broke out to find her son, whom the Coalition had been keeping along with her husband in a separate facility. After a tense confrontation with Coalition officer Major Bennet, Sanders consented to further studies on the condition that she be kept in close contact with her family. She never manifested any further abilities.
Further History: In 1930, Nicole Sanders gave birth to her son Micah in a crowded tenement in Las Vegas, Nevada. The father of the child, Daniel Hawkins, was involved in a fight some ten feet away. In the trauma of the conditions and the birth, Sanders managed to stand up and, while holding her son, punch one of Hawkins’ attackers through a wall. The ensuing panic led to a mass fleeing of the building, and in the crush of bodies, Sanders and her child were knocked to the floor. Hawkins grabbed hold of her hand and dropped them through three stories, granting them-once they had recovered enough to remember that a rush of people were heading straight for them-access to the street, and into relative safety.
While the panic had only caused minimal bruising, Hawkins was injured from the fight and Sanders was in no condition to go anywhere but a hospital. They barely made it to one, but the care was far from what Sanders required. By some twist of luck, the hospital had a tattered Coalition poster stuck to one of its walls, and in desperation, he used a hospital phone to call the number. Minutes later, a Coalition vehicle arrived and took all three of them away.
The Coalition provided Sanders and her son with sufficient medical care to get them into a stable physical state. They promised both her and Hawkins that the Coalition would give them everything they needed so long as they consented to simple testing. Both Sanders and Hawkins agreed to it, though they insisted that their son be left out of it. Sanders’ eventual reactions to the testing can be found above. In the end, the family was sent into Coalition housing, and they settled into it as peacefully as could be expected.
When the US joined the war, they were both conscripted into immediate service and sent to the new base in England, though, through her unique method of persuasion, Sanders convinced the Coalition to let her take their son with them. Once at the base, she made the further condition that neither she nor her husband would be both at the front at the same time; instead, one of them would always be available to take care of Micah. Sanders was given the choice to join the newly-forming Golden Brigade, though Hawkins was not; Sanders, who accepted, was given the name Lady Liberty to signify her new status as an American heroine.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews
The Torch
Name: Theodore ‘Ted’ Sprague.
Nationality: American of Polish descent.
Political Affiliation: Briefly suspected of socialist tendencies.
Education: Some high school.
Rank: First Lieutenant, US Army.
Decorations: Silver Star (1945, posthumous).
DOB: August 28th, 1909.
DOD: February 12th, 1945 (suicide).
Known Parahuman Abilities: Under Coalition tests, it was revealed that Sprague was capable of generating light and heat of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, whereupon the limitations of the facilities prevented any study as to whether he could go further. Sprague’s ability was known to fluctuate based on his mood; if he was calm, he could soothe it into a physically harmless ‘clean’ blast, merely destroying any electronic equipment in the area. This would soon be termed an electromagnetic pulse. If Sprague was particularly angry, however, the heat he generated could increase exponentially, and if the Coalition scientists had both been capable of measuring it and present at the Battle of the Bulge, they might have been astonished to discover the true extent of Sprague’s ability. As it was, however, the destruction he unleashed was more of a catastrophic nature than a scientific demonstration.
It was noticed, but never fully realized, that the burn victims Sprague’s blasts left behind all eventually suffered from ailments beyond the effects of mere fire. As time passed, many of Sprague’s former friends and companions developed various forms of cancer, including his close friend Matt Parkman. It was not until some years after the war that nuclear research evolved sufficiently to recognize the true nature of the Torch’s light.
Further History: Sprague was an unexceptional soldier in the US Army for the first twenty-eight years of his life. Said life-a high school dropout who found his way into the army out of sheer desperation-was widely publicized after he rose to fame in the Golden Brigade; unlike the Eagle, he had come from a more average class of humanity. During a military training exercise, Sprague grew frustrated with his commanding officer. The ensuing argument only enraged Sprague further, until, as he was on the verge of physical violence, a searing heat erupted from his skin, severely burning the CO as well as several other nearby soldiers.
As was protocol, the division reported his manifestation to the Coalition, and he was taken into immediate custody. He was classified as ‘extremely hazardous’ and the scientists who analyzed him warned the Coalition officers to keep him out of the public environment. This was accomplished only by allowing Sprague’s wife Karen to accompany him to the Coalition housing, where he learned to hone his ability to the extent where he could control it under most circumstances.
When the USA officially joined the war, Sprague was one of the first specials to be shipped to the Coalition base in England, and after the manifestation of Nathan Petrelli, one of the first to be added to the Golden Brigade. He was given the name The Torch, which he reportedly disapproved of; Sprague preferred to go by his real name, and indeed always referred to his fellow Brigade members by theirs. His service in the war was truly remarkable. Of the Brigade, he was inarguably the most dangerous; in one battle, he wiped out over one hundred Axis soldiers, but throughout his career, he was also responsible for the deaths of many Allied forces. This was continually covered up, as the Coalition did not want one of its golden boys to be seen as anything other than a beacon of moral purity. Sprague racked up the highest kill count of any other parahuman in the war.
When the Brigade was retired to the Coalition base in 1941, he grew restless and paranoid, convinced that the Coalition had some secret plan for him. Though the other members of the Brigade managed occasional combat missions, Sprague confined himself to the base, only calmed by his close friend Matt Parkman, who, it is generally believed, was the only thing keeping Sprague sane after the death of Karen in 1943. After that, Sprague’s instability grew to a dangerous level, and he was frequently placed under psychiatric care.
Sprague’s final mission came about in the Battle of the Bulge, where he famously detonated an unbelievable explosion and wiped out well over five hundred soldiers from both sides. Shortly after that, he committed suicide. He was awarded the Silver Star for distinguished service and buried next to his wife in a Coalition housing cemetery.
---
Peter never held a grudge against Nathan for being better-liked, better-known, the one their parents had high hopes for, the most special. It was just the way things were. When Peter was born, it was a surprise; he wasn’t expected, he wasn’t part of what his parents wanted. They did have plans for Nathan-be successful, be a lawyer, be a good man, be like your father. So it had always been that Peter’s parents hadn’t entirely known what to do with him, and so he didn’t know anything else. He was aware that other families seemed to have a more egalitarian approach to their children, but he had decided that his family was different. Nathan was considered more important because Nathan was more important. So that made it okay. Peter didn’t mind.
Besides, he was more connected to Nathan than anyone else, and that made him important, didn’t it? Other people were destined for fame and glory, but Peter was destined to help fame and glory, and that was a destiny too. If his purpose in life was to take care of Nathan, Peter could accept that. He’d do it anyway, even if he didn’t have to.
When Nathan went into the Navy, Peter was only ten, but he was still desperately worried about it; what if Nathan doesn’t come back? What if I’m not there when it’s important? What if things change when he comes back? What if-? Peter was capable of surviving on his own, but he didn’t think it would be much of an existence if Nathan wasn’t a part of it. It just wasn’t the way the world worked.
Nathan came back, though, and for all that he kept going away again-there was always so much school-he kept coming back, and Peter had settled into the idea that Nathan would never go away for real. School wasn’t dangerous, anyway. Maybe there was always a danger of accidents or some such, but Peter was confident Nathan would be able to handle any of that. That was what Nathan did.
Some time after Nathan went back to school, and some time before Peter got to move on to college, something happened. Peter wasn’t sure if it was an accident. If it was, it wasn’t a bad one. Nathan, though, seemed to think it was terrifying, and for weeks afterwards, he barely let himself be in the same room as Peter, which hurt. There was going away, and then there was staying away, and while Peter could handle the first one, the second one just made him feel queasy. It hadn’t been bad. He didn’t know why Nathan was so scared about it.
There were holidays, though, and times where Nathan had to be home, and he couldn’t stay away from Peter forever. Need was a two-way street. There was talking, and there was being silent, and Nathan said some things quietly, and Peter said some things slightly more loudly, and it ended with them staring at the floor. They talked again the next day, and the next day, and the next day. The day before Nathan had to go away again, Peter got what he wanted.
Time passed, and Peter was more and more comfortable with the idea. No amount of time made Nathan comfortable at all. He tried not to talk about it, even when it would have been safe to do so. But he never stopped, and he never pushed Peter away, and after a while, Peter wasn’t the one needing to be pushed, but that was fine. Peter was happy with it. Nathan wasn’t, but Peter didn’t think that really mattered. It was about what Nathan needed, not what he wanted; that was, after all, what being responsible for someone meant.
Heidi wasn’t really a problem. Peter liked her, anyway. Nathan needed her, too.
The war was unexpected and unnecessary, and of course Nathan signed up for it as soon as he could. Peter wanted Europe to just go away and stop bothering the rest of the world, but that wasn’t fair, especially since he wasn’t entirely certain what the rest of the world was like. It would be better to have a world in which he was vaguely familiar with at least some of it. He couldn’t let Nathan go, of course. The Navy had been one thing, but this was something entirely different, and he couldn’t let Nathan leave for so long in a place like that. So Peter did what he was supposed to, and followed him. None of the family wanted him to, of course, particularly not Nathan, but when had he cared about that? This was important.
Nathan’s manifestation was confirmation of two things: firstly, that Nathan was more important, and secondly, that Nathan did need him, because it wouldn’t have happened if Peter hadn’t been there. Now, though, everyone needed Nathan, and they may have had gained a safer home, but that didn’t stop Nathan from going away again, and again, and they didn’t always let Peter go with him. The separation made everything desperate and lonely, and the base wouldn’t stop running those damn tests, and he didn’t know anyone, and nothing had ever been so frustrating in his life, and then he was wandering aimlessly through the storage warehouses, and he found someone.
Griffin might have apparently lived on the base for years, but he was just as much a stranger as Peter was, and he didn’t seem to mind Peter being there. He knew things about the war and the continent and even specials in general that Peter had never thought to ask about. And he knew about the base, of course, he knew much more about the Coalition than anyone would ever tell Peter, and it was amazing to talk to him, and Peter wondered why nobody else did. There wasn’t anything wrong with Griffin that he could see. Which might have been the point, of course, because apparently you couldn’t always see him, but Peter always did.
After a while, Peter figured out that nobody talked to Griffin because they were afraid of him, which didn’t make any sense. Griffin might not have been particularly sociable, but he wasn’t dangerous. When he wasn’t out doing whatever it was his missions required him to do, he was mostly in one of the warehouses, reading. There were a lot of books on the base, if only because there wasn’t always very much to do when you weren’t being tested. One of the books wasn’t from the base, though. When Peter asked about it, Griffin told him that it had been one of his favorites when he was a kid, and he’d found it again after he manifested, and it seemed appropriate. It was where he’d gotten the name from.
Peter liked it, of course (it was a very good book, and a classic, too), but he wasn’t sure why Griffin would have wanted to name himself after a homicidal madman, no matter how appropriate the character’s primary aspect might have been. One particularly lazy day, Peter remembered that there had been a movie, long ago, though he hadn’t seen it. He asked Griffin if he knew about it. Griffin said yes, he had, and he’d rather liked it, but it hadn’t been made yet when he manifested.
A few months later, the theater in a nearby town was showing it; Peter managed to convince Colonel Bennet to let them go off-base to see it. It was a good movie, he thought. The actor playing the titular character, in particular, did an excellent job. Griffin seemed to think so too.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews
Jack Griffin (no official name)
Name: Jack Griffin (generally referred to as Griffin).
Nationality: British.
Political Affiliation: None.
Education: Varied.
Rank: Some unknown military rank (before transferred to Blue Team).
Decorations: Victoria Cross (1950, by petition of Major General Bennet).
DOB: Unknown.
DOD: Unknown.
Known Parahuman Abilities: Griffin could become invisible at will, vanishing utterly for as long as he wished. There did not seem to be any adverse side effects to staying invisible for lengthy periods of time, though it is suggested that the prolonged lack of interaction may have had some negative psychological impact. Griffin preferred to remain continuously unseen unless visibility was absolutely necessary.
Further History: The early details of Griffin’s life are largely unknown. It is assumed that he manifested as a young soldier in the first war, though the year and specific circumstances are uncertain. Some time after this, he acquired the name Jack Griffin from H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, appropriately enough. His real name remains unknown. The Coalition operations in Britain located him in 1924, shortly after instituting their Parahuman Detection program.
After initial assessment, Griffin was put into observation, though this was made difficult by there not being much to observe. He lived quietly and unobtrusively in the Coalition facilities until 1930, whereupon he was instated into the newly-created Blue Team. Griffin did extensive and undisclosed undercover and reconnaissance work for the Coalition for a further nine years.
When the second war started, he was relocated from the Coalition facilities in London to the more discreet base near the south end of the island, whereupon his abilities were put to use as a spy for the Allied side. Griffin’s work required him to spend prolonged periods of time in dangerous countries, and it was fully expected that there would be a mission from which he would not return, but he always came back with valuable and useful intelligence regardless of the risk. Many battles were won or avoided by the strength of his information.
During his years on the base, Griffin developed a friendship with Peter Petrelli, brother of the Eagle and an on-base medic. Major General Bennet, who had previously been the only one to interact with Griffin on any kind of regular basis, later said that this connection may have been the only thing keeping Griffin from simply fading into the background and vanishing from human contact permanently. This may, unfortunately, have been the case. When Petrelli failed to return from the battle that ended the Eagle’s life, and was declared to be presumed dead, Griffin could no longer be found at the Coalition base, and it is assumed that he left for good.
---
Colonel Bennet pushes his glasses up further on his nose. It’s not a necessary gesture, Peter knows-Colonel Bennet’s glasses are almost certainly always placed at the exact ideal location-but it’s a sign that he wants to reflect some kind of reaction, which Peter isn’t sure might be a good thing at this moment. “You want to know about Jack Griffin?”
Peter nods. “That’s his name, isn’t it? I ran into him in one of the storage areas. Nobody else seems to know anything about him, so…I thought I’d ask you, because you know everything here.” At least, he hopes Colonel Bennet does. The Coalition has too many secrets, and it’s nice to think that someone who appears to be at least vaguely benevolent might be willing to share a few.
“I don’t know everything, Peter.” Colonel Bennet is watching him carefully, but Colonel Bennet watches everyone carefully, so Peter isn’t sure what to think about that.
“But you do know about him, don’t you?” Peter presses on. “If he works here, you should know him.”
Colonel Bennet’s hands are immaculately positioned together on the desk. “I know him. What do you want to know?”
Peter pauses, because he hasn’t quite thought this through yet. “I…guess I want to know what he does here? He didn’t say.”
“Griffin’s part of the Blue Team,” Colonel Bennet says, and again Peter isn’t sure of how to take this, because that could mean anything. The people who work for the Blue Team are as varied as the work they do. Parkman’s all right, but Betty-Mirage, he remembers, she prefers her Brigade name-is just sort of creepy, and nobody will tell him what Molly Walker does, exactly. And then there’s Christophe, and he doesn’t know what to think about Christophe, either. Peter doesn’t know much of anything about the Blue Team. Now, though, he wants to.
“What does he do for them?” Peter asks, not even expecting a straight answer, but he has to ask.
“You could ask him that,” Bennet replies, and Peter has to admit he should have thought of that.
“I don’t want to bother him too much,” Peter explains, and this is largely true, but he thinks maybe Griffin might not mind him asking. Griffin doesn’t seem to mind him at all.
“Is there anything else you want to know?” Bennet asks politely. Bennet asks every question politely, except for when he asks them sternly.
Peter searches his brain for something, anything, he really wants to know that he couldn’t get from Griffin himself.
“Why doesn’t anyone else care about him?” he blurts out, and regrets it immediately; he does want to know, but it doesn’t seem like the sort of question he should ask.
Colonel Bennet studies him. It makes Peter uncomfortable.
“As part of the Blue Team, Griffin’s isolated from the rest of the base,” Colonel Bennet says eventually. “Due to his insistence on constantly maintaining his ability, he isolates himself further. People tend to think he simply doesn’t want human contact. Based on my experience with him before the war, I believe this to be mostly true.”
“Mostly?” Peter asks. “That means you think there might be something else to it?”
“I don’t think he would reject it if it came to him, and you seem to have proved that,” Colonel Bennet says mildly. “And I believe he may have reasons for avoiding people in general. If you want to know them, you should ask him. They’re his to tell, not mine, as are most of the other things you want to know about him.”
“So you do know him, then,” Peter says, after a moment. “You’re not as unconcerned as everyone else is.”
“I’ve known him longer than anyone else has,” Colonel Bennet says, “and I have no reason to be afraid of him. I respect his abilities and acknowledge his humanity. So, yes, I do know him.” Colonel Bennet moves his hand to open a folder on his desk. Peter instinctively looks away from the contents-he’s not supposed to look at papers here.
“You can go now,” Colonel Bennet says, glancing up from the folder. “I suggest that you go talk to him.” Peter nods, and gets up from his chair. Once he’s through the door, he wonders if he should go back in, say one more thing-you said he always uses his ability, but I’ve never seen him do it-but obviously the Colonel’s busy, and it’s not a very good question. Not a question at all, really.
Peter makes his way back to his quarters. He doesn’t want to go back to the warehouse just yet until he thinks about just what it is he wants to ask.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews, updated by Hiro Nakamura (1990)
Charlene Andrews (no official name)
Name: Charlene ‘Charlie’ Andrews.
Nationality: American.
Political Affiliation: No known political leanings.
Education: College.
Rank: None.
Decorations: None.
DOB: July 16th, 1918.
DOD: March 21st, 1990 (natural causes).
Known Parahuman Abilities: Andrews could instantly recall anything she had ever seen, read, or heard. In essence it was a multi-sensory photographic memory; she could describe every detail of the scene, image, sound, or text no matter how long ago or how briefly she had seen or heard it. There seemed to be no limits to this ability, though it extended only to memory: if Andrews read a book on the construction of bombs, she would remember every step necessary, but she would not have the skills to do it.
Further History: Andrews had always possessed a good memory. When she was young, she won several competitions for her encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, and her mother claimed to have never required a grocery list when she took her daughter along with her-“she would remember everything we needed, so long as I’d mentioned it before we went.” Unlike the vast majority of parahumans, Andrews did not manifest in any loud, dramatic way; her ability was not initially triggered by trauma or emotion. Instead, it appeared to have simply grown on its own from the day she was born, quietly becoming stronger and stronger while never making itself obvious.
Andrews only turned herself into the Texas branch of the Coalition when she was twenty, having come to the conclusion that an ordinary human would not have been capable of remembering six pages of the dictionary word-for-word after skimming through them to find ‘ostentatious’.
The Coalition initially employed her as a records-keeper, under the presumption that it would be cheaper to hire one girl than maintain a warehouse of file cabinets. When the Coalition moved to England for the war, they took Andrews with them, aware that she was one of their greatest-and most subtle-resources. No one outside the Coalition and her immediate family was ever aware of her ability. For all intents and purposes, Andrews was little more than a sweet, cheerful receptionist.
During the war, she struck up a friendship with the expatriates Hiro Nakamura and Ando Masahashi, serving as one of the few people on the base who trusted them implicitly, perhaps because she took the (admittedly short) time to learn the language. When the war was over, Andrews took an extended leave of absence from the Coalition and spent several years abroad, traveling with her friends to various unknown locations. The Coalition, of course, continually attempted to track the three of them down, but they proved impossible to find. When they finally did return to the United States, Andrews severed all ties with the Coalition and took up a job as a librarian. Nakamura and Masahashi would still visit her on occasions.
In 1965, after the retirement of Major General Noah Bennet, she collaborated with him on an extensive book detailing their work in the war and the real role of the Coalition throughout it. Andrews died in 1990 and was buried in a cemetery in Midland, Texas. There is a small grove of cherry trees planted in Tokyo in her honor.
---
Sometimes she’s a redhead.
She likes red hair-it’s even more different than blonde, and she likes the sound of her Irish accent-and the men in the village like it too, which is all that matters. The men in the village have never not liked her, as far as she can tell; every time she goes down there, she returns with her goal fulfilled.
On occasion, she ruins marriages. She usually doesn’t mean to. The men don’t tell her they’re married, so it’s not her fault, is it? Sometimes when she goes back to the pubs, she sees men she met before, drinking desolate and depressed or angry and fuming, and she stays away from them; they wouldn’t want her, anyway. Most of them have learned their lesson.
Once, she was followed back to the base. The man demanded to know who she was, and the name she gave him-Patricia Brannigan (she was a redhead that day)-didn’t seem to convince him any more, so she made the countryside erupt in screaming devils, and he ran away. The next time she went down, she asked about him. They told her he never came back.
Every now and then, she has to go to another village, because people are starting to catch on; on more than one occasion, she’s been run out of town by jilted men and angry women. She’s been on the base for almost a year now, and she knows she’s going to have to travel further and further to get what she wants, but she doesn’t mind.
Usually, she’s blonde. She doesn’t like the color herself-it may be different, but maybe it’s too different; when she’s blonde, she feels like she’s losing something, but that doesn’t stop her. Blonde is beautiful. Tall (but not too tall) and blonde and perfect hips and breasts and face is beautiful. Her smiles are beautiful. Her laugh is beautiful. Everything about her is beautiful. She doesn’t mind losing something if she can have that instead.
The men and women on the base know what she does, and they don’t care; her eccentricities are not as bad as some. She doesn’t know all of what said some might be, but she knows there’s something wrong with the Eagle, and she knows she shouldn’t know any more than that, because she knows what it’s like to keep a secret. So she never looks into it, and if she wonders if being Peter might let her find out, she doesn’t do anything about it. She doesn’t interfere unless she’s told to. Or unless she needs to-but she doesn’t need to interfere with the Eagle just yet.
When she found out what she could do, she spent a day in her room looking in the mirror and crying. The next day, she packed her bags and hitched a lift to Oklahoma City, and from there she called the number on the poster outside the Post Office and life came to her in the form of a man in glasses in a car.
She’s nineteen years old now; she was sixteen when they sent her to the war, and she told them she was twenty-two, so now she’s twenty-five. She told them her real name, because she was young and scared, and she hates that they know it, but they gave her a new one, so she forgives them for knowing something. Mirage is a pretty name. She loves the idea of having a name for the public and the name for the private, and she doesn’t understand why the Torch only wants the latter.
Before the war, she lived in the Texas branch of the Coalition; she had the option of living in housing, but she didn’t want to live alone. For the first fifteen years of her life, she lived alone in a house with two parents and a school with fifteen hundred kids. Now she had the option of living with other people, and she chose to stay in the Coalition full-time, and the scientists and doctors and secretaries laughed at her jokes and showed her pictures of their kids and invited her to go drinking with them. She had her first drink when she was fifteen years and eight months old, and her perfect face hid the vomiting.
When the war came, she didn’t volunteer, but they sent her anyway. Her first fear about being in the Golden Brigade was that the world would know her name-her old name-but she talked to Colonel Bennet, and Betty Wilmer never left the records. Her first joy about being in the Golden Brigade was that the world did know her real name. Mirage was a pin-up girl in forty-eight states, two territories, and as many other countries as wanted her; if the Germans thought she was beautiful, she didn’t care.
Underneath the glitz and publicity, the Golden Brigade was something new and terrifying, but so was she. Men on the battlefield fell, gibbering, or ran away, and were left to be picked off by her fellow members or the other soldiers. The rest of the Brigade learned how to not be surprised by the monsters and demons and flames from the heavens. The other soldiers had problems, sometimes, but they weren’t as important, and the Coalition could take care of that.
They didn’t let her wear fatigues at first-she and Lady Liberty and Sarah Sly had to settle for skirts-but once she decided she could wear them anyway, the Coalition gave in and then every woman in the Coalition could wear them if they wanted to. She feels proud of that.
She remembers Sollum with vivid detail, and she remembers Sarah Sly burning under the Torch’s misplaced fire, and Mister Mentalist crumpling under the weight of all the mental screams, and Lady Liberty trapped underneath a pile of twisted metal, and the Eagle falling from the sky, and hiding herself in German clothes. And she remembers the horrible, crushing feeling she couldn’t make go away, no matter how perfect she was.
So she goes to the villages, and men tell her they love her, and she’s still beautiful. They tell her she’s beautiful. They tell her she’s perfect.
So she is.
Part Two
I made a few changes; in this fic, abilities started manifesting in the first World War, not the second, mostly because I wanted to at least mention the previous generation. In this history, the US joined the war shortly after it started, due to having developed a significant partnership with the British in regards to parahuman research. And of course I ignored the RPG's characters and main events (excepting pre-existing battles and so forth), because, well, I wanted the Heroes gang to be the one making all the waves. But I make no bones about the fact that the story was very, very influenced by Godlike, even if it's not really a crossover. (It even has the same sectional format as the sourcebook--character bios interspersed with bits of prose and history.) So.
As I mentioned earlier, bits are missing. I never got around to writing much of Hiro and Ando, or Mohinder and Sylar, or Claire, or Isaac and Simone, or...you get the picture. And while technically the last section could serve as an end, I'd definitely planned to have more that led up to it, and probably a further coda beyond it. There's a bio in there that I just never finished. I never got around to adding the S2 characters, either, beyond one or two brief name-checks, and pretty much everything I have about the previous generation has been Jossed to hell and back by S3. But it's an AU, yeah? That's totally a legitimate excuse.
The primary pairing is Peter/Nathan, though there's some Matt/Ted undertones in it if you squint, and originally there was some Peter/Claude but I edited it into gen. This is not a happy story. This is probably the most depressing story I've ever written.
All that being said, here's 12,878 words of an R-rated unfinished story in two parts; read them as you will.
From Darwin’s Grandchildren: A History of Parahumanity, by Dr. Mohinder Suresh (published 1976)
They could not explain it. Science does not give immediate answers. But when the swamps of mud and corpses at Ypres lit up with fire and thunder, and the shores of the Somme turned to glass, answers had to be found.
…
Trauma. Severe psychological distress. A medic surrounded by soldiers he could not save, or a man with a gun to his head, or a mother who finds enemy soldiers at the door-some words and concepts had not yet reached the minds of men, but it was not impossible to draw the connections. Of the 1,036 confirmed manifestations during the Third Battle of Ypres, over 850 had stories of feeling a great anger, grief, or fear directly before their abilities came into the fore. The rest either died on the field or vanished shortly thereafter.
…
---
From The American Pageant: From the Colonies to the Present (published 1997
The Golden Age of the Golden Brigade
When the USA officially entered the war, they drafted as many of their known specials as possible. Unfortunately, this was not many-over half the initial parahumans in the first war had died during or shortly after the conflict, and while the Depression had manifested a large number of them, many of those also died in the wretched conditions that spawned them. Regardless, they did possess a few with genuine combat abilities, and several dozen whose abilities would prove useful either on the home front or as base personnel. Among these were Nicole Sanders, Matthew Parkman, Theodore Sprague, Zane Taylor, David Walker, Betty Wilmer, Charlene Andrews, and Sarah Ellis. The Coalition base in England had its specials. Now it needed to decide what to do with them.
The answer came in the form of Nathan Petrelli, the first American to officially manifest on the battlefield of the second war. As the son of the famed Shield, he achieved instant national recognition, and the Coalition instantly realized that publicity could be one of their greatest assets-in addition to boosting Allied morale to incredible levels, it could also give the Germans pause to consider what they were dealing with. As the Shield had been given a name by his fellow soldiers, Nathan Petrelli received a name from his new employers, and so began the Golden Brigade. The Brigade was made up of six American parahumans-Petrelli, Sanders, Sprague, Parkman, Ellis, and Wilmer-and served as the primary Allied parahuman force for the first three years of the war. Petrelli, Sanders, and Sprague were the most publicized members, and as such received the most patriotic names (for the Coalition was very determined that the Brigade be seen as extremely American): the Eagle, Lady Liberty, and the Torch. Parkman, Ellis, and Wilmer were less active in combat, though they did also receive names; Mister Mentalist, Sarah Sly, and Mirage were less flashy, but nevertheless vital persuade members of the group.
For three years, they fought for truth, justice, the American way, and mom’s apple pie. They were responsible for the estimated deaths of over 4,000 German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian soldiers-with Petrelli and Sprague alone accounting for over 2,700 of these figures. Countless comic books, radio plays, and movies were based on their exploits.
On June 15th, 1941, British forces under the command of Field Marshall Sir Percival Wavell launched an attack against the Axis lines at the Halfaya Pass on the border of Egypt, hoping to drive out or destroy the German soldiers, tanks, and planes occupying the region. Churchill himself ordered a large quantity of British tanks to be sent to the region, confident that he was assuring an easy victory. The Coalition generously added to the pile the aid of the Golden Brigade, eager to capitalize on the victory’s impending boost in Allied morale. Unfortunately for them, however, Erwin Rommel did not particularly want to lose. The German tanks proved to be far superior to anything the British had to offer, and they were hiding a few parahumans of their own. The three-day battle, known as both Operation Battleaxe and the Battle of Sollum, ended in a horrible defeat for the Allies, and the once-presumed morale boost was turned on its head. More than that, however, the battle claimed the life of Sarah Sly and severely injured the Torch, Mister Mentalist, and Lady Liberty. The Golden Brigade was crippled.
After the tragedy of the Battle of Sollum, the Coalition decided to unofficially retire the Brigade for fear of reminding the public of the great loss. The remaining members were sent to permanently live on the Coalition base, providing support from there and only venturing into the field for individual missions. Mister Mentalist, who had never been overly fond of participating in combat, became an interrogator for the Blue Team. Lady Liberty attempted to stay with her family as much as possible, though the invaluable nature of her ability forced her to go on more missions than she would have liked. Mirage became another member of the Blue Team. The Torch was seen as being increasingly unstable, and went into psychiatric treatment, though it would later prove to merely be a bandage on a gaping wound. The Eagle remained the only truly active member of the Brigade, going on every mission the Coalition even vaguely thought of, returning to the base only for mandatory downtime. The Golden Brigade went quiet, but its members remained, waiting for the time when they would be genuinely needed once more.
---
From Truth, Justice, and the American Super: A History of Parahuman Propaganda in the Great Wars (published 2002)
The story of Captain Nathan Petrelli is a well-known and frequently-lauded one; he was the golden boy of the Corps, the action hero of every American child, the comic book character come to life-of course, there were a lot of people who fell under the latter category, but he was one of the few who had comic books about him. Women in every Allied country swooned over him. Most of the Allied soldiers wanted to be him. There was no denying it-Nathan Petrelli was the brightest star in the pantheon of American heroes. And his story, of course, had to match up.
His father was a soldier in the Great War, one of the first Americans to manifest; his mother was a hard-working housewife, determined to aid the war in any way possible, organizing hundreds of volunteers for collecting any of the myriad supplies the war effort required. He was raised in an environment of discipline, patriotism, and determination for success. Like his father, he joined the military, though he opted for the Navy rather than the Army; like his father, he went into law. Though his father was one of the greatest specials of the war-they referred to him as the Shield-Nathan didn’t manifest until, oddly, the day he was deployed to England. Once the Corps realized what it had on their hands-a man who could travel through the air faster than a bullet could hit him, who could drop a grenade right into the enemy camp-they moved him directly towards the front in Paris, to fight alongside the rest of the Golden Brigade in the Battle of the Bastille.
His work in the Golden Brigade brought about a number of military victories, and even when not in battle, his skills proved highly useful in the transportation of vital documents and, on some occasions, vital persons. Captain Nathan Petrelli’s charisma and all-American background turned him into the perfect poster boy for the Brigade, and it wasn’t long before he became the poster boy of the entire war effort; the military, recognizing the value of a good public hero, procured for him the sort of name and uniform all the great military specials had grown to adopt. The uniform was a modified Corps uniform, dyed and embroidered with an insignia across the chest; the name, granted to him by a particularly patriotic general, was the Eagle. Der Schwartzer Adler, the Germans allegedly called him.
His brother called him Nathan.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews
Lady Liberty
Name: Nicole Sanders.
Nationality: American.
Political Affiliation: No known political leanings.
Education: High school.
Rank: No official rank.
Decorations: None.
DOB: February 28th, 1910.
DOD: June 11th, 1979 (natural causes).
Known Parahuman Abilities: Sanders’ initial examinations proved her to be capable of throwing a 180-pound sandbag thirty feet, bending a 5” thick steel bar, and lifting a 2-ton car over her head. Shortly after the Coalition refused to grant her access to her son before more tests were completed, she also proved to be capable of throwing said 2-ton car through a plate glass window.
In addition to her feats of what the Coalition had come to term ‘advanced parastrength’, Sanders occasionally possessed a violent streak which could, under the right circumstances, provoke her into committing great acts of brutality. On one of these occasions, she ripped a Coalition soldier in half. While she went into a state of shock shortly afterwards, she was admitted for immediate psychiatric treatment. It lasted for approximately a week before she smashed through several hospital walls and broke out to find her son, whom the Coalition had been keeping along with her husband in a separate facility. After a tense confrontation with Coalition officer Major Bennet, Sanders consented to further studies on the condition that she be kept in close contact with her family. She never manifested any further abilities.
Further History: In 1930, Nicole Sanders gave birth to her son Micah in a crowded tenement in Las Vegas, Nevada. The father of the child, Daniel Hawkins, was involved in a fight some ten feet away. In the trauma of the conditions and the birth, Sanders managed to stand up and, while holding her son, punch one of Hawkins’ attackers through a wall. The ensuing panic led to a mass fleeing of the building, and in the crush of bodies, Sanders and her child were knocked to the floor. Hawkins grabbed hold of her hand and dropped them through three stories, granting them-once they had recovered enough to remember that a rush of people were heading straight for them-access to the street, and into relative safety.
While the panic had only caused minimal bruising, Hawkins was injured from the fight and Sanders was in no condition to go anywhere but a hospital. They barely made it to one, but the care was far from what Sanders required. By some twist of luck, the hospital had a tattered Coalition poster stuck to one of its walls, and in desperation, he used a hospital phone to call the number. Minutes later, a Coalition vehicle arrived and took all three of them away.
The Coalition provided Sanders and her son with sufficient medical care to get them into a stable physical state. They promised both her and Hawkins that the Coalition would give them everything they needed so long as they consented to simple testing. Both Sanders and Hawkins agreed to it, though they insisted that their son be left out of it. Sanders’ eventual reactions to the testing can be found above. In the end, the family was sent into Coalition housing, and they settled into it as peacefully as could be expected.
When the US joined the war, they were both conscripted into immediate service and sent to the new base in England, though, through her unique method of persuasion, Sanders convinced the Coalition to let her take their son with them. Once at the base, she made the further condition that neither she nor her husband would be both at the front at the same time; instead, one of them would always be available to take care of Micah. Sanders was given the choice to join the newly-forming Golden Brigade, though Hawkins was not; Sanders, who accepted, was given the name Lady Liberty to signify her new status as an American heroine.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews
The Torch
Name: Theodore ‘Ted’ Sprague.
Nationality: American of Polish descent.
Political Affiliation: Briefly suspected of socialist tendencies.
Education: Some high school.
Rank: First Lieutenant, US Army.
Decorations: Silver Star (1945, posthumous).
DOB: August 28th, 1909.
DOD: February 12th, 1945 (suicide).
Known Parahuman Abilities: Under Coalition tests, it was revealed that Sprague was capable of generating light and heat of 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, whereupon the limitations of the facilities prevented any study as to whether he could go further. Sprague’s ability was known to fluctuate based on his mood; if he was calm, he could soothe it into a physically harmless ‘clean’ blast, merely destroying any electronic equipment in the area. This would soon be termed an electromagnetic pulse. If Sprague was particularly angry, however, the heat he generated could increase exponentially, and if the Coalition scientists had both been capable of measuring it and present at the Battle of the Bulge, they might have been astonished to discover the true extent of Sprague’s ability. As it was, however, the destruction he unleashed was more of a catastrophic nature than a scientific demonstration.
It was noticed, but never fully realized, that the burn victims Sprague’s blasts left behind all eventually suffered from ailments beyond the effects of mere fire. As time passed, many of Sprague’s former friends and companions developed various forms of cancer, including his close friend Matt Parkman. It was not until some years after the war that nuclear research evolved sufficiently to recognize the true nature of the Torch’s light.
Further History: Sprague was an unexceptional soldier in the US Army for the first twenty-eight years of his life. Said life-a high school dropout who found his way into the army out of sheer desperation-was widely publicized after he rose to fame in the Golden Brigade; unlike the Eagle, he had come from a more average class of humanity. During a military training exercise, Sprague grew frustrated with his commanding officer. The ensuing argument only enraged Sprague further, until, as he was on the verge of physical violence, a searing heat erupted from his skin, severely burning the CO as well as several other nearby soldiers.
As was protocol, the division reported his manifestation to the Coalition, and he was taken into immediate custody. He was classified as ‘extremely hazardous’ and the scientists who analyzed him warned the Coalition officers to keep him out of the public environment. This was accomplished only by allowing Sprague’s wife Karen to accompany him to the Coalition housing, where he learned to hone his ability to the extent where he could control it under most circumstances.
When the USA officially joined the war, Sprague was one of the first specials to be shipped to the Coalition base in England, and after the manifestation of Nathan Petrelli, one of the first to be added to the Golden Brigade. He was given the name The Torch, which he reportedly disapproved of; Sprague preferred to go by his real name, and indeed always referred to his fellow Brigade members by theirs. His service in the war was truly remarkable. Of the Brigade, he was inarguably the most dangerous; in one battle, he wiped out over one hundred Axis soldiers, but throughout his career, he was also responsible for the deaths of many Allied forces. This was continually covered up, as the Coalition did not want one of its golden boys to be seen as anything other than a beacon of moral purity. Sprague racked up the highest kill count of any other parahuman in the war.
When the Brigade was retired to the Coalition base in 1941, he grew restless and paranoid, convinced that the Coalition had some secret plan for him. Though the other members of the Brigade managed occasional combat missions, Sprague confined himself to the base, only calmed by his close friend Matt Parkman, who, it is generally believed, was the only thing keeping Sprague sane after the death of Karen in 1943. After that, Sprague’s instability grew to a dangerous level, and he was frequently placed under psychiatric care.
Sprague’s final mission came about in the Battle of the Bulge, where he famously detonated an unbelievable explosion and wiped out well over five hundred soldiers from both sides. Shortly after that, he committed suicide. He was awarded the Silver Star for distinguished service and buried next to his wife in a Coalition housing cemetery.
---
Peter never held a grudge against Nathan for being better-liked, better-known, the one their parents had high hopes for, the most special. It was just the way things were. When Peter was born, it was a surprise; he wasn’t expected, he wasn’t part of what his parents wanted. They did have plans for Nathan-be successful, be a lawyer, be a good man, be like your father. So it had always been that Peter’s parents hadn’t entirely known what to do with him, and so he didn’t know anything else. He was aware that other families seemed to have a more egalitarian approach to their children, but he had decided that his family was different. Nathan was considered more important because Nathan was more important. So that made it okay. Peter didn’t mind.
Besides, he was more connected to Nathan than anyone else, and that made him important, didn’t it? Other people were destined for fame and glory, but Peter was destined to help fame and glory, and that was a destiny too. If his purpose in life was to take care of Nathan, Peter could accept that. He’d do it anyway, even if he didn’t have to.
When Nathan went into the Navy, Peter was only ten, but he was still desperately worried about it; what if Nathan doesn’t come back? What if I’m not there when it’s important? What if things change when he comes back? What if-? Peter was capable of surviving on his own, but he didn’t think it would be much of an existence if Nathan wasn’t a part of it. It just wasn’t the way the world worked.
Nathan came back, though, and for all that he kept going away again-there was always so much school-he kept coming back, and Peter had settled into the idea that Nathan would never go away for real. School wasn’t dangerous, anyway. Maybe there was always a danger of accidents or some such, but Peter was confident Nathan would be able to handle any of that. That was what Nathan did.
Some time after Nathan went back to school, and some time before Peter got to move on to college, something happened. Peter wasn’t sure if it was an accident. If it was, it wasn’t a bad one. Nathan, though, seemed to think it was terrifying, and for weeks afterwards, he barely let himself be in the same room as Peter, which hurt. There was going away, and then there was staying away, and while Peter could handle the first one, the second one just made him feel queasy. It hadn’t been bad. He didn’t know why Nathan was so scared about it.
There were holidays, though, and times where Nathan had to be home, and he couldn’t stay away from Peter forever. Need was a two-way street. There was talking, and there was being silent, and Nathan said some things quietly, and Peter said some things slightly more loudly, and it ended with them staring at the floor. They talked again the next day, and the next day, and the next day. The day before Nathan had to go away again, Peter got what he wanted.
Time passed, and Peter was more and more comfortable with the idea. No amount of time made Nathan comfortable at all. He tried not to talk about it, even when it would have been safe to do so. But he never stopped, and he never pushed Peter away, and after a while, Peter wasn’t the one needing to be pushed, but that was fine. Peter was happy with it. Nathan wasn’t, but Peter didn’t think that really mattered. It was about what Nathan needed, not what he wanted; that was, after all, what being responsible for someone meant.
Heidi wasn’t really a problem. Peter liked her, anyway. Nathan needed her, too.
The war was unexpected and unnecessary, and of course Nathan signed up for it as soon as he could. Peter wanted Europe to just go away and stop bothering the rest of the world, but that wasn’t fair, especially since he wasn’t entirely certain what the rest of the world was like. It would be better to have a world in which he was vaguely familiar with at least some of it. He couldn’t let Nathan go, of course. The Navy had been one thing, but this was something entirely different, and he couldn’t let Nathan leave for so long in a place like that. So Peter did what he was supposed to, and followed him. None of the family wanted him to, of course, particularly not Nathan, but when had he cared about that? This was important.
Nathan’s manifestation was confirmation of two things: firstly, that Nathan was more important, and secondly, that Nathan did need him, because it wouldn’t have happened if Peter hadn’t been there. Now, though, everyone needed Nathan, and they may have had gained a safer home, but that didn’t stop Nathan from going away again, and again, and they didn’t always let Peter go with him. The separation made everything desperate and lonely, and the base wouldn’t stop running those damn tests, and he didn’t know anyone, and nothing had ever been so frustrating in his life, and then he was wandering aimlessly through the storage warehouses, and he found someone.
Griffin might have apparently lived on the base for years, but he was just as much a stranger as Peter was, and he didn’t seem to mind Peter being there. He knew things about the war and the continent and even specials in general that Peter had never thought to ask about. And he knew about the base, of course, he knew much more about the Coalition than anyone would ever tell Peter, and it was amazing to talk to him, and Peter wondered why nobody else did. There wasn’t anything wrong with Griffin that he could see. Which might have been the point, of course, because apparently you couldn’t always see him, but Peter always did.
After a while, Peter figured out that nobody talked to Griffin because they were afraid of him, which didn’t make any sense. Griffin might not have been particularly sociable, but he wasn’t dangerous. When he wasn’t out doing whatever it was his missions required him to do, he was mostly in one of the warehouses, reading. There were a lot of books on the base, if only because there wasn’t always very much to do when you weren’t being tested. One of the books wasn’t from the base, though. When Peter asked about it, Griffin told him that it had been one of his favorites when he was a kid, and he’d found it again after he manifested, and it seemed appropriate. It was where he’d gotten the name from.
Peter liked it, of course (it was a very good book, and a classic, too), but he wasn’t sure why Griffin would have wanted to name himself after a homicidal madman, no matter how appropriate the character’s primary aspect might have been. One particularly lazy day, Peter remembered that there had been a movie, long ago, though he hadn’t seen it. He asked Griffin if he knew about it. Griffin said yes, he had, and he’d rather liked it, but it hadn’t been made yet when he manifested.
A few months later, the theater in a nearby town was showing it; Peter managed to convince Colonel Bennet to let them go off-base to see it. It was a good movie, he thought. The actor playing the titular character, in particular, did an excellent job. Griffin seemed to think so too.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews
Jack Griffin (no official name)
Name: Jack Griffin (generally referred to as Griffin).
Nationality: British.
Political Affiliation: None.
Education: Varied.
Rank: Some unknown military rank (before transferred to Blue Team).
Decorations: Victoria Cross (1950, by petition of Major General Bennet).
DOB: Unknown.
DOD: Unknown.
Known Parahuman Abilities: Griffin could become invisible at will, vanishing utterly for as long as he wished. There did not seem to be any adverse side effects to staying invisible for lengthy periods of time, though it is suggested that the prolonged lack of interaction may have had some negative psychological impact. Griffin preferred to remain continuously unseen unless visibility was absolutely necessary.
Further History: The early details of Griffin’s life are largely unknown. It is assumed that he manifested as a young soldier in the first war, though the year and specific circumstances are uncertain. Some time after this, he acquired the name Jack Griffin from H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, appropriately enough. His real name remains unknown. The Coalition operations in Britain located him in 1924, shortly after instituting their Parahuman Detection program.
After initial assessment, Griffin was put into observation, though this was made difficult by there not being much to observe. He lived quietly and unobtrusively in the Coalition facilities until 1930, whereupon he was instated into the newly-created Blue Team. Griffin did extensive and undisclosed undercover and reconnaissance work for the Coalition for a further nine years.
When the second war started, he was relocated from the Coalition facilities in London to the more discreet base near the south end of the island, whereupon his abilities were put to use as a spy for the Allied side. Griffin’s work required him to spend prolonged periods of time in dangerous countries, and it was fully expected that there would be a mission from which he would not return, but he always came back with valuable and useful intelligence regardless of the risk. Many battles were won or avoided by the strength of his information.
During his years on the base, Griffin developed a friendship with Peter Petrelli, brother of the Eagle and an on-base medic. Major General Bennet, who had previously been the only one to interact with Griffin on any kind of regular basis, later said that this connection may have been the only thing keeping Griffin from simply fading into the background and vanishing from human contact permanently. This may, unfortunately, have been the case. When Petrelli failed to return from the battle that ended the Eagle’s life, and was declared to be presumed dead, Griffin could no longer be found at the Coalition base, and it is assumed that he left for good.
---
Colonel Bennet pushes his glasses up further on his nose. It’s not a necessary gesture, Peter knows-Colonel Bennet’s glasses are almost certainly always placed at the exact ideal location-but it’s a sign that he wants to reflect some kind of reaction, which Peter isn’t sure might be a good thing at this moment. “You want to know about Jack Griffin?”
Peter nods. “That’s his name, isn’t it? I ran into him in one of the storage areas. Nobody else seems to know anything about him, so…I thought I’d ask you, because you know everything here.” At least, he hopes Colonel Bennet does. The Coalition has too many secrets, and it’s nice to think that someone who appears to be at least vaguely benevolent might be willing to share a few.
“I don’t know everything, Peter.” Colonel Bennet is watching him carefully, but Colonel Bennet watches everyone carefully, so Peter isn’t sure what to think about that.
“But you do know about him, don’t you?” Peter presses on. “If he works here, you should know him.”
Colonel Bennet’s hands are immaculately positioned together on the desk. “I know him. What do you want to know?”
Peter pauses, because he hasn’t quite thought this through yet. “I…guess I want to know what he does here? He didn’t say.”
“Griffin’s part of the Blue Team,” Colonel Bennet says, and again Peter isn’t sure of how to take this, because that could mean anything. The people who work for the Blue Team are as varied as the work they do. Parkman’s all right, but Betty-Mirage, he remembers, she prefers her Brigade name-is just sort of creepy, and nobody will tell him what Molly Walker does, exactly. And then there’s Christophe, and he doesn’t know what to think about Christophe, either. Peter doesn’t know much of anything about the Blue Team. Now, though, he wants to.
“What does he do for them?” Peter asks, not even expecting a straight answer, but he has to ask.
“You could ask him that,” Bennet replies, and Peter has to admit he should have thought of that.
“I don’t want to bother him too much,” Peter explains, and this is largely true, but he thinks maybe Griffin might not mind him asking. Griffin doesn’t seem to mind him at all.
“Is there anything else you want to know?” Bennet asks politely. Bennet asks every question politely, except for when he asks them sternly.
Peter searches his brain for something, anything, he really wants to know that he couldn’t get from Griffin himself.
“Why doesn’t anyone else care about him?” he blurts out, and regrets it immediately; he does want to know, but it doesn’t seem like the sort of question he should ask.
Colonel Bennet studies him. It makes Peter uncomfortable.
“As part of the Blue Team, Griffin’s isolated from the rest of the base,” Colonel Bennet says eventually. “Due to his insistence on constantly maintaining his ability, he isolates himself further. People tend to think he simply doesn’t want human contact. Based on my experience with him before the war, I believe this to be mostly true.”
“Mostly?” Peter asks. “That means you think there might be something else to it?”
“I don’t think he would reject it if it came to him, and you seem to have proved that,” Colonel Bennet says mildly. “And I believe he may have reasons for avoiding people in general. If you want to know them, you should ask him. They’re his to tell, not mine, as are most of the other things you want to know about him.”
“So you do know him, then,” Peter says, after a moment. “You’re not as unconcerned as everyone else is.”
“I’ve known him longer than anyone else has,” Colonel Bennet says, “and I have no reason to be afraid of him. I respect his abilities and acknowledge his humanity. So, yes, I do know him.” Colonel Bennet moves his hand to open a folder on his desk. Peter instinctively looks away from the contents-he’s not supposed to look at papers here.
“You can go now,” Colonel Bennet says, glancing up from the folder. “I suggest that you go talk to him.” Peter nods, and gets up from his chair. Once he’s through the door, he wonders if he should go back in, say one more thing-you said he always uses his ability, but I’ve never seen him do it-but obviously the Colonel’s busy, and it’s not a very good question. Not a question at all, really.
Peter makes his way back to his quarters. He doesn’t want to go back to the warehouse just yet until he thinks about just what it is he wants to ask.
---
From the files of Charlene Andrews, updated by Hiro Nakamura (1990)
Charlene Andrews (no official name)
Name: Charlene ‘Charlie’ Andrews.
Nationality: American.
Political Affiliation: No known political leanings.
Education: College.
Rank: None.
Decorations: None.
DOB: July 16th, 1918.
DOD: March 21st, 1990 (natural causes).
Known Parahuman Abilities: Andrews could instantly recall anything she had ever seen, read, or heard. In essence it was a multi-sensory photographic memory; she could describe every detail of the scene, image, sound, or text no matter how long ago or how briefly she had seen or heard it. There seemed to be no limits to this ability, though it extended only to memory: if Andrews read a book on the construction of bombs, she would remember every step necessary, but she would not have the skills to do it.
Further History: Andrews had always possessed a good memory. When she was young, she won several competitions for her encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, and her mother claimed to have never required a grocery list when she took her daughter along with her-“she would remember everything we needed, so long as I’d mentioned it before we went.” Unlike the vast majority of parahumans, Andrews did not manifest in any loud, dramatic way; her ability was not initially triggered by trauma or emotion. Instead, it appeared to have simply grown on its own from the day she was born, quietly becoming stronger and stronger while never making itself obvious.
Andrews only turned herself into the Texas branch of the Coalition when she was twenty, having come to the conclusion that an ordinary human would not have been capable of remembering six pages of the dictionary word-for-word after skimming through them to find ‘ostentatious’.
The Coalition initially employed her as a records-keeper, under the presumption that it would be cheaper to hire one girl than maintain a warehouse of file cabinets. When the Coalition moved to England for the war, they took Andrews with them, aware that she was one of their greatest-and most subtle-resources. No one outside the Coalition and her immediate family was ever aware of her ability. For all intents and purposes, Andrews was little more than a sweet, cheerful receptionist.
During the war, she struck up a friendship with the expatriates Hiro Nakamura and Ando Masahashi, serving as one of the few people on the base who trusted them implicitly, perhaps because she took the (admittedly short) time to learn the language. When the war was over, Andrews took an extended leave of absence from the Coalition and spent several years abroad, traveling with her friends to various unknown locations. The Coalition, of course, continually attempted to track the three of them down, but they proved impossible to find. When they finally did return to the United States, Andrews severed all ties with the Coalition and took up a job as a librarian. Nakamura and Masahashi would still visit her on occasions.
In 1965, after the retirement of Major General Noah Bennet, she collaborated with him on an extensive book detailing their work in the war and the real role of the Coalition throughout it. Andrews died in 1990 and was buried in a cemetery in Midland, Texas. There is a small grove of cherry trees planted in Tokyo in her honor.
---
Sometimes she’s a redhead.
She likes red hair-it’s even more different than blonde, and she likes the sound of her Irish accent-and the men in the village like it too, which is all that matters. The men in the village have never not liked her, as far as she can tell; every time she goes down there, she returns with her goal fulfilled.
On occasion, she ruins marriages. She usually doesn’t mean to. The men don’t tell her they’re married, so it’s not her fault, is it? Sometimes when she goes back to the pubs, she sees men she met before, drinking desolate and depressed or angry and fuming, and she stays away from them; they wouldn’t want her, anyway. Most of them have learned their lesson.
Once, she was followed back to the base. The man demanded to know who she was, and the name she gave him-Patricia Brannigan (she was a redhead that day)-didn’t seem to convince him any more, so she made the countryside erupt in screaming devils, and he ran away. The next time she went down, she asked about him. They told her he never came back.
Every now and then, she has to go to another village, because people are starting to catch on; on more than one occasion, she’s been run out of town by jilted men and angry women. She’s been on the base for almost a year now, and she knows she’s going to have to travel further and further to get what she wants, but she doesn’t mind.
Usually, she’s blonde. She doesn’t like the color herself-it may be different, but maybe it’s too different; when she’s blonde, she feels like she’s losing something, but that doesn’t stop her. Blonde is beautiful. Tall (but not too tall) and blonde and perfect hips and breasts and face is beautiful. Her smiles are beautiful. Her laugh is beautiful. Everything about her is beautiful. She doesn’t mind losing something if she can have that instead.
The men and women on the base know what she does, and they don’t care; her eccentricities are not as bad as some. She doesn’t know all of what said some might be, but she knows there’s something wrong with the Eagle, and she knows she shouldn’t know any more than that, because she knows what it’s like to keep a secret. So she never looks into it, and if she wonders if being Peter might let her find out, she doesn’t do anything about it. She doesn’t interfere unless she’s told to. Or unless she needs to-but she doesn’t need to interfere with the Eagle just yet.
When she found out what she could do, she spent a day in her room looking in the mirror and crying. The next day, she packed her bags and hitched a lift to Oklahoma City, and from there she called the number on the poster outside the Post Office and life came to her in the form of a man in glasses in a car.
She’s nineteen years old now; she was sixteen when they sent her to the war, and she told them she was twenty-two, so now she’s twenty-five. She told them her real name, because she was young and scared, and she hates that they know it, but they gave her a new one, so she forgives them for knowing something. Mirage is a pretty name. She loves the idea of having a name for the public and the name for the private, and she doesn’t understand why the Torch only wants the latter.
Before the war, she lived in the Texas branch of the Coalition; she had the option of living in housing, but she didn’t want to live alone. For the first fifteen years of her life, she lived alone in a house with two parents and a school with fifteen hundred kids. Now she had the option of living with other people, and she chose to stay in the Coalition full-time, and the scientists and doctors and secretaries laughed at her jokes and showed her pictures of their kids and invited her to go drinking with them. She had her first drink when she was fifteen years and eight months old, and her perfect face hid the vomiting.
When the war came, she didn’t volunteer, but they sent her anyway. Her first fear about being in the Golden Brigade was that the world would know her name-her old name-but she talked to Colonel Bennet, and Betty Wilmer never left the records. Her first joy about being in the Golden Brigade was that the world did know her real name. Mirage was a pin-up girl in forty-eight states, two territories, and as many other countries as wanted her; if the Germans thought she was beautiful, she didn’t care.
Underneath the glitz and publicity, the Golden Brigade was something new and terrifying, but so was she. Men on the battlefield fell, gibbering, or ran away, and were left to be picked off by her fellow members or the other soldiers. The rest of the Brigade learned how to not be surprised by the monsters and demons and flames from the heavens. The other soldiers had problems, sometimes, but they weren’t as important, and the Coalition could take care of that.
They didn’t let her wear fatigues at first-she and Lady Liberty and Sarah Sly had to settle for skirts-but once she decided she could wear them anyway, the Coalition gave in and then every woman in the Coalition could wear them if they wanted to. She feels proud of that.
She remembers Sollum with vivid detail, and she remembers Sarah Sly burning under the Torch’s misplaced fire, and Mister Mentalist crumpling under the weight of all the mental screams, and Lady Liberty trapped underneath a pile of twisted metal, and the Eagle falling from the sky, and hiding herself in German clothes. And she remembers the horrible, crushing feeling she couldn’t make go away, no matter how perfect she was.
So she goes to the villages, and men tell her they love her, and she’s still beautiful. They tell her she’s beautiful. They tell her she’s perfect.
So she is.
Part Two