Nobody's Hero
Title: Nobody's Hero
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Peter/Claire, Peter/Niki, Andy/Claire
Rating: R
Summary: Companion piece to Hiding. Takes place in the String Theory/Five Years Gone universe. Peter's thoughts.
A/N: I really recommend you read (or reread) Hiding because some of the scenes from that fic are referenced here. Once again, any constructive criticism you have would be greatly appreciated! Thanks to nayden and sweetbelle07 for the betaing! :)
His head is roaring. Pounding. The pain is so fierce that he can't open his eyes, afraid that the light will only make things worse.
It takes Peter all of two seconds to change his mind. The bomb. New York.
He's in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines and tubes, but he frees himself as quickly as he can. His whole body is aching, his sudden movements giving way to nausea, but he doesn't care. He has to know what happened.
Stumbling over to the window, clinging to his IV, he rips open the curtains. The sunlight hits him just as painfully as he had suspected and his eyes water with tears. He wipes them away, staring outside at the city.
Total destruction is all he sees. Smoke clogs the sky, firetrucks and police cars stand out in the dirty streets, and skyscapers lay in huge block pieces on the ground, surrounded by dead bodies.
So much for being a hero.
"Hello, Peter," says a voice, a familiar voice, and Peter turns.
"Ma," he says, limping toward her.
She meets him halfway, and he crushes her in a hug, not wanting to let her go. They stand there in the middle of his hospital room and Peter starts to shake. "It really happened, it really - I was the bomb. I killed all those people." When he starts to cry into his mother's neck, she doesn't complain, just holds him steady.
After awhile, she tells him, "Nathan's okay," and she strokes his hair.
"And Claire?" he asks, eyes closed, though he already knows she's okay. She's indestructible.
His mother tenses and Peter pulls away from her, searching her eyes with his own.
"Claire," she says, her voice flat. "She's dead, Peter."
Peter sways on his feet, overcome. All goes black before he even hits the ground.
*
When he comes to, he's back in the hospital bed.
Claire can't be dead, she can't be. He had saved her in Odessa, she could heal, she wasn't supposed to be able to die. He would have felt it if she had died, the same way he had felt Ted die, the same way he had felt so many others like him die.
"My son? Has anyone seen my son?" he can hear a voice from outside yell. He looks past the door and sees a blonde woman with tear stained cheeks pacing back and forth. "His name is Micah, has anyone seen him?"
He sees a woman approach her, place a hand on her shoulder, tell her that her son is dead. She crumples to the floor, sobs, and Peter feels her pain as if it's his own.
It isn't until later that Peter finds the note by his bedside from Claire, telling him she's alive and to stay away from her.
*
"Peter, you need to let go." Niki's voice slices through the darkness and Peter turns away and gets out of the bed.
"I have let go," he says.
"Then why do you think of her when you're with me?" Niki says, emotion choking her voice. "She's your niece, Peter."
Peter glares at her.
"We have to make a promise to each other," Niki continues. "To let go. We can't live like this anymore."
She sits up in bed, and he sees how her eyes look toward the mirror across the room.
"Okay," he says. Walking swiftly over to the mirror, he picks it up and shatters it. Niki winces, but he doesn't notice.
He looks down at the shard of glass in his hands, and Peter knows what he must do.
Lifting it to the top of his forehead, he doesn't hesitate. He brings it down hard, diagonally across his face, gritting his teeth at the sharp pain. The blood is warm on his skin, running down his cheeks and neck, and he thinks of anything and everything but his niece.
*
Peter visits her in California once. She looks different, acts different, tells him her name is Tracy. Leaves him sitting at the table with a half-eaten piece of pie and a hole in his heart.
He follows her wherever she goes, visits her at least once a week. He lies to Niki, says he's going wherever, and teleports to the current city she's staying in. Claire's father alerts Peter every time his daughter moves, knowing that Peter would never betray her to the authorities, that all Peter's ever wanted is for Claire to be safe.
Of course, Claire's safety isn't the only reason he goes to her. He misses her, every part of her. The smile that used to light up her entire face and just make her glow, the laugh that made him want to laugh, too, the way she would talk to him as if he was the only person in the world who mattered, the way she would hug him at every possible opportunity...
He watches her, hoping that she'll sparkle and shine, hoping that he can catch a glimpse of the old Claire. But she moves through her life dully, without purpose, without joy, and he knows that the girl he loved is gone, buried somewhere with the man he used to be.
So he doesn't visit her anymore, because the sad, little smile on her face breaks his heart.
*
They're having the same conversation that they've had a million times. She asks him why he can't let go, he shoots back the same question. But this time it's different, because he's leaving. He's going to change it all back to the way it was. He has to help Hiro in any way that he can, to prevent that bomb from going off, to prevent everything from going to hell. Do something heroic for once in his life.
Niki doesn't understand, even after he confesses after all these years that he was the one who exploded. She just doesn't understand him at all. "You walk out that door, you don't come back," she says as he stops by the door to pick up his jacket, and he pauses only briefly before he leaves.
*
The red glow of his hands fades as he looks at Sylar in horror.
Peter can feel his own skin warming, ridding itself of the frostbite that Sylar just covered him with, and he's looking at the man across from him, who should be burnt from Peter's radioactive hands right now. But he's not burned - it doesn't appear as if Peter had touched him at all.
Peter blinks back the confusion, his heart starting to pound sickeningly fast. With a wave of his hands, he literally brings the building down around them. Sylar is buried beneath the rubble, and Peter waits. A few seconds pass and Peter lets out a breath, wondering if Sylar is trapped.
But then he stands up with a evil grin on his face, and Peter staggers backwards. The gashes on Sylar's skin close up, the scratches on his cheeks disappear into his face, and he snaps his oddly angled arms into place.
Peter freezes. Claire.
Standing there, shock spilling over him, he is distracted. Sylar throws him into a wall, and he can feel the bones in his back break.
Claire.
The bones start to heal, and Peter lets out a strangled cry of grief. He stands, Sylar laughing, taunting him. "Five years...five years I waited to take her power. Now I'm unstoppable."
Peter feels his mouth twitch in rage, his eyes burn, his blood rush madly through his veins.
"Save the cheerleader, save the world," Sylar says scornfully, and the words sound grotesque coming from his lips. He cocks his head slightly to the side, watching Peter shake. "You failed, Pete. You didn't save the world," and now he's circling around him. He pauses, leans close to Peter's ear, his voice lowering to a whisper. "And your niece...poor, pretty Claire...you didn't save her after all, did you?"
Suddenly, Claire's flashing through Peter's mind, the way she used to be, all curling blonde hair and a wide smile. Snippets of time with her is all he can see - Claire running toward him, terrified, on her Homecoming night, Claire begging him to take her flying, their first and only kiss...
Without any kind of control over his powers, Peter throws Sylar violently through the wall aross from them - into the same room where Parkman killed Hiro seconds ago, where the Ando and Hiro from the past have probably just gone back to their time. Peter is inside the room in an instant, where Sylar is picking himself off the floor.
But it doesn't matter that Sylar's healing now, because Peter's rage is so much that it can't be rivaled. Before Sylar is even standing up completely, Peter jerks out a hand and telekinetically summons the sword on Hiro's back. In two quick steps he has reached Sylar and he swings as hard as he can.
Sylar's head rolls off of his neck and Peter brings the sword down again, directly into Sylar's brain, but he's not satisfied at all. His hands are white around the hilt of the sword and he can't stop shaking.
"Sylar?" says a voice, and Peter realizes that Mohinder is still in the room. Parkman is lying dead on the ground, his gun clutched in Mohinder's brown hands. Mohinder approaches Peter, grips his shoulder bracingly, and it's this touch that snaps him out of the anger-induced trance he's in.
The sword drops from his hands, clattering to the ground, and he lets out a scream. His hands are in his hair, clutching and tearing at it, and soon it's hanging down the front of his face. He feels like he's lost in the past more than ever, Claire's laugh reverberating throughout his mind and it's too much...it's too much.
Without saying a word to Mohinder, he teleports directly to Nathan's house. He runs throughout the rooms of the house until he finds her. She's spread out on the carpet, her blood stained into the floor, the top of her head several feet from her body. The sight makes him sick and he fights back the urge to vomit as he sinks down onto his knees next to her.
"Claire," he voice breaks as he wraps his arms around her body and holds her against him. His eyes close as he draws her closer, fingers stroking her bloodied face. "I'm so sorry, Claire, I'm so sorry..."
When he starts to sob, he can't stop - he's crying for everything that's happened in the last five years, for his brother, for his friends, for his beautiful Claire. His chest is burning and oh God, it hurts.
You're totally my hero. He can see her in his mind, saying it to him, and then it replays, over and over. Her cute smile, her fingers tapping on the side of the door, the way she looked him briefly up and down. It's all he can see.
All he had ever wanted to do was protect her, keep her safe. Safe from the world, from himself. He hadn't managed to save her after all, hadn't come through for her in the end, hadn't been her hero. He was nobody's hero. He never had been.
*
Peter takes her body back to Texas, buries her in the backyard of her old, burnt down house. Then he goes to Midland, because he knows that's where she lived, where she had fallen in love with some guy named Andy. He leaves the kid a note, meets him when his shift is over, and tells him who he is.
Andy is taken aback. "Sandra? You know her? Where is she? I've been worried sick about her. We were supposed to get married, go to L.A. - "
Peter tells him the whole story, of her real name, her real hair color (as if such trivial things matter), and her power.
When he tells Andy that Claire has died, the boy breaks down right there in the diner, and Peter wraps an arm around him awkwardly as he cries.
*
He goes back to L.A., even though there is nothing left there for him now. There's nothing left for him anywhere. He stares at himself in the mirror, at his scar, and is for once glad to have it. It will always remind him of her.
There is a knock on the door and he goes to answer it. Niki is standing there, eyes red from crying. She looks at him, reaches out and touches his cheek. "I heard about Claire," she says softly, her voice trembling. "I'm so sorry, Peter."
His body softens as she hugs him, holds him close. He's missed her, but he pushes her away. "Why are you here, Niki?" He steps back, putting distance between them.
"Peter - "
He cuts her off, even though he had asked her a question. He's too tired for this, can't handle this right now. "Nothing's going to change." He stares at her fiercely. "You can't let go, I can't let go...I'm not letting Claire go. Never."
"Peter - "
"I won't do it, Niki!" he shouts.
"I'm not asking you too," she says softly, and he does a double-take.
"What?"
"Peter, I'm pregnant," she says and it feels like someone has just socked him in the stomach. "I found out a week ago."
A week ago. The day Claire died.
He can't wrap his head around it. For the past five years, it's as if he's been attacked from all sides constantly, and this is no different. A baby. Him? A father? He'd never imagined this in his wildest dreams, had never seen himself with a family, with a child.
He stands in stunned silence for a few good five minutes before Niki clears her throat. "You don't have to be a part of its life if you don't want to," she says, wringing her hands nervously. "I just thought you should know."
"No, I, uh..." he paces back and forth, running a hand through his hair quickly before looking at Niki, "I want to. I want to."
When Niki smiles, it's the happiest he's ever seen her, and it's the happiest he's been for a long time.
*
The two of them move to New York City and it's finally starting to look the way it did before he blew it up. Niki gives birth on a cold, windy day, in the same hospital that Peter's been in many times before. It's a baby girl, the doctor proclaims, and when Peter holds her in his arms, he feels complete.
They name her Claire.
*
Peter helps Claire onto her bicycle, and Niki's standing in the background wondering if it's really safe to be teaching their child to ride a bike in the alley behind their apartment. "She wants to learn," Peter says, half-smiling down at the six-year-old.
She looks nothing like him, or Niki for that matter; has swirly blonde hair and green eyes, rosy cheeks and a mischievious smile.
He lets the bike go, watches her ride, and wonders, not for the first time, what Claire would think of his little girl.
But then his daughter starts to scream and he's torn from his thoughts as her bicycle topples over. He's at her side in a flash, grabbing her before she hits the ground. "Gotcha!" he exclaims, acting as if he hadn't been scared out of his wits by seeing her fall, and she giggles.
Twisting his hair with her fingers, she says, "Daddy, you're my hero," and he feels, for the first time in years, that this is destiny.
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SEE the complete list of fic I've written.
ETA: I changed some of the userpics for this journal! Check 'em out and let me know what you think. :)
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Peter/Claire, Peter/Niki, Andy/Claire
Rating: R
Summary: Companion piece to Hiding. Takes place in the String Theory/Five Years Gone universe. Peter's thoughts.
A/N: I really recommend you read (or reread) Hiding because some of the scenes from that fic are referenced here. Once again, any constructive criticism you have would be greatly appreciated! Thanks to nayden and sweetbelle07 for the betaing! :)
His head is roaring. Pounding. The pain is so fierce that he can't open his eyes, afraid that the light will only make things worse.
It takes Peter all of two seconds to change his mind. The bomb. New York.
He's in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines and tubes, but he frees himself as quickly as he can. His whole body is aching, his sudden movements giving way to nausea, but he doesn't care. He has to know what happened.
Stumbling over to the window, clinging to his IV, he rips open the curtains. The sunlight hits him just as painfully as he had suspected and his eyes water with tears. He wipes them away, staring outside at the city.
Total destruction is all he sees. Smoke clogs the sky, firetrucks and police cars stand out in the dirty streets, and skyscapers lay in huge block pieces on the ground, surrounded by dead bodies.
So much for being a hero.
"Hello, Peter," says a voice, a familiar voice, and Peter turns.
"Ma," he says, limping toward her.
She meets him halfway, and he crushes her in a hug, not wanting to let her go. They stand there in the middle of his hospital room and Peter starts to shake. "It really happened, it really - I was the bomb. I killed all those people." When he starts to cry into his mother's neck, she doesn't complain, just holds him steady.
After awhile, she tells him, "Nathan's okay," and she strokes his hair.
"And Claire?" he asks, eyes closed, though he already knows she's okay. She's indestructible.
His mother tenses and Peter pulls away from her, searching her eyes with his own.
"Claire," she says, her voice flat. "She's dead, Peter."
Peter sways on his feet, overcome. All goes black before he even hits the ground.
*
When he comes to, he's back in the hospital bed.
Claire can't be dead, she can't be. He had saved her in Odessa, she could heal, she wasn't supposed to be able to die. He would have felt it if she had died, the same way he had felt Ted die, the same way he had felt so many others like him die.
"My son? Has anyone seen my son?" he can hear a voice from outside yell. He looks past the door and sees a blonde woman with tear stained cheeks pacing back and forth. "His name is Micah, has anyone seen him?"
He sees a woman approach her, place a hand on her shoulder, tell her that her son is dead. She crumples to the floor, sobs, and Peter feels her pain as if it's his own.
It isn't until later that Peter finds the note by his bedside from Claire, telling him she's alive and to stay away from her.
*
"Peter, you need to let go." Niki's voice slices through the darkness and Peter turns away and gets out of the bed.
"I have let go," he says.
"Then why do you think of her when you're with me?" Niki says, emotion choking her voice. "She's your niece, Peter."
Peter glares at her.
"We have to make a promise to each other," Niki continues. "To let go. We can't live like this anymore."
She sits up in bed, and he sees how her eyes look toward the mirror across the room.
"Okay," he says. Walking swiftly over to the mirror, he picks it up and shatters it. Niki winces, but he doesn't notice.
He looks down at the shard of glass in his hands, and Peter knows what he must do.
Lifting it to the top of his forehead, he doesn't hesitate. He brings it down hard, diagonally across his face, gritting his teeth at the sharp pain. The blood is warm on his skin, running down his cheeks and neck, and he thinks of anything and everything but his niece.
*
Peter visits her in California once. She looks different, acts different, tells him her name is Tracy. Leaves him sitting at the table with a half-eaten piece of pie and a hole in his heart.
He follows her wherever she goes, visits her at least once a week. He lies to Niki, says he's going wherever, and teleports to the current city she's staying in. Claire's father alerts Peter every time his daughter moves, knowing that Peter would never betray her to the authorities, that all Peter's ever wanted is for Claire to be safe.
Of course, Claire's safety isn't the only reason he goes to her. He misses her, every part of her. The smile that used to light up her entire face and just make her glow, the laugh that made him want to laugh, too, the way she would talk to him as if he was the only person in the world who mattered, the way she would hug him at every possible opportunity...
He watches her, hoping that she'll sparkle and shine, hoping that he can catch a glimpse of the old Claire. But she moves through her life dully, without purpose, without joy, and he knows that the girl he loved is gone, buried somewhere with the man he used to be.
So he doesn't visit her anymore, because the sad, little smile on her face breaks his heart.
*
They're having the same conversation that they've had a million times. She asks him why he can't let go, he shoots back the same question. But this time it's different, because he's leaving. He's going to change it all back to the way it was. He has to help Hiro in any way that he can, to prevent that bomb from going off, to prevent everything from going to hell. Do something heroic for once in his life.
Niki doesn't understand, even after he confesses after all these years that he was the one who exploded. She just doesn't understand him at all. "You walk out that door, you don't come back," she says as he stops by the door to pick up his jacket, and he pauses only briefly before he leaves.
*
The red glow of his hands fades as he looks at Sylar in horror.
Peter can feel his own skin warming, ridding itself of the frostbite that Sylar just covered him with, and he's looking at the man across from him, who should be burnt from Peter's radioactive hands right now. But he's not burned - it doesn't appear as if Peter had touched him at all.
Peter blinks back the confusion, his heart starting to pound sickeningly fast. With a wave of his hands, he literally brings the building down around them. Sylar is buried beneath the rubble, and Peter waits. A few seconds pass and Peter lets out a breath, wondering if Sylar is trapped.
But then he stands up with a evil grin on his face, and Peter staggers backwards. The gashes on Sylar's skin close up, the scratches on his cheeks disappear into his face, and he snaps his oddly angled arms into place.
Peter freezes. Claire.
Standing there, shock spilling over him, he is distracted. Sylar throws him into a wall, and he can feel the bones in his back break.
Claire.
The bones start to heal, and Peter lets out a strangled cry of grief. He stands, Sylar laughing, taunting him. "Five years...five years I waited to take her power. Now I'm unstoppable."
Peter feels his mouth twitch in rage, his eyes burn, his blood rush madly through his veins.
"Save the cheerleader, save the world," Sylar says scornfully, and the words sound grotesque coming from his lips. He cocks his head slightly to the side, watching Peter shake. "You failed, Pete. You didn't save the world," and now he's circling around him. He pauses, leans close to Peter's ear, his voice lowering to a whisper. "And your niece...poor, pretty Claire...you didn't save her after all, did you?"
Suddenly, Claire's flashing through Peter's mind, the way she used to be, all curling blonde hair and a wide smile. Snippets of time with her is all he can see - Claire running toward him, terrified, on her Homecoming night, Claire begging him to take her flying, their first and only kiss...
Without any kind of control over his powers, Peter throws Sylar violently through the wall aross from them - into the same room where Parkman killed Hiro seconds ago, where the Ando and Hiro from the past have probably just gone back to their time. Peter is inside the room in an instant, where Sylar is picking himself off the floor.
But it doesn't matter that Sylar's healing now, because Peter's rage is so much that it can't be rivaled. Before Sylar is even standing up completely, Peter jerks out a hand and telekinetically summons the sword on Hiro's back. In two quick steps he has reached Sylar and he swings as hard as he can.
Sylar's head rolls off of his neck and Peter brings the sword down again, directly into Sylar's brain, but he's not satisfied at all. His hands are white around the hilt of the sword and he can't stop shaking.
"Sylar?" says a voice, and Peter realizes that Mohinder is still in the room. Parkman is lying dead on the ground, his gun clutched in Mohinder's brown hands. Mohinder approaches Peter, grips his shoulder bracingly, and it's this touch that snaps him out of the anger-induced trance he's in.
The sword drops from his hands, clattering to the ground, and he lets out a scream. His hands are in his hair, clutching and tearing at it, and soon it's hanging down the front of his face. He feels like he's lost in the past more than ever, Claire's laugh reverberating throughout his mind and it's too much...it's too much.
Without saying a word to Mohinder, he teleports directly to Nathan's house. He runs throughout the rooms of the house until he finds her. She's spread out on the carpet, her blood stained into the floor, the top of her head several feet from her body. The sight makes him sick and he fights back the urge to vomit as he sinks down onto his knees next to her.
"Claire," he voice breaks as he wraps his arms around her body and holds her against him. His eyes close as he draws her closer, fingers stroking her bloodied face. "I'm so sorry, Claire, I'm so sorry..."
When he starts to sob, he can't stop - he's crying for everything that's happened in the last five years, for his brother, for his friends, for his beautiful Claire. His chest is burning and oh God, it hurts.
You're totally my hero. He can see her in his mind, saying it to him, and then it replays, over and over. Her cute smile, her fingers tapping on the side of the door, the way she looked him briefly up and down. It's all he can see.
All he had ever wanted to do was protect her, keep her safe. Safe from the world, from himself. He hadn't managed to save her after all, hadn't come through for her in the end, hadn't been her hero. He was nobody's hero. He never had been.
*
Peter takes her body back to Texas, buries her in the backyard of her old, burnt down house. Then he goes to Midland, because he knows that's where she lived, where she had fallen in love with some guy named Andy. He leaves the kid a note, meets him when his shift is over, and tells him who he is.
Andy is taken aback. "Sandra? You know her? Where is she? I've been worried sick about her. We were supposed to get married, go to L.A. - "
Peter tells him the whole story, of her real name, her real hair color (as if such trivial things matter), and her power.
When he tells Andy that Claire has died, the boy breaks down right there in the diner, and Peter wraps an arm around him awkwardly as he cries.
*
He goes back to L.A., even though there is nothing left there for him now. There's nothing left for him anywhere. He stares at himself in the mirror, at his scar, and is for once glad to have it. It will always remind him of her.
There is a knock on the door and he goes to answer it. Niki is standing there, eyes red from crying. She looks at him, reaches out and touches his cheek. "I heard about Claire," she says softly, her voice trembling. "I'm so sorry, Peter."
His body softens as she hugs him, holds him close. He's missed her, but he pushes her away. "Why are you here, Niki?" He steps back, putting distance between them.
"Peter - "
He cuts her off, even though he had asked her a question. He's too tired for this, can't handle this right now. "Nothing's going to change." He stares at her fiercely. "You can't let go, I can't let go...I'm not letting Claire go. Never."
"Peter - "
"I won't do it, Niki!" he shouts.
"I'm not asking you too," she says softly, and he does a double-take.
"What?"
"Peter, I'm pregnant," she says and it feels like someone has just socked him in the stomach. "I found out a week ago."
A week ago. The day Claire died.
He can't wrap his head around it. For the past five years, it's as if he's been attacked from all sides constantly, and this is no different. A baby. Him? A father? He'd never imagined this in his wildest dreams, had never seen himself with a family, with a child.
He stands in stunned silence for a few good five minutes before Niki clears her throat. "You don't have to be a part of its life if you don't want to," she says, wringing her hands nervously. "I just thought you should know."
"No, I, uh..." he paces back and forth, running a hand through his hair quickly before looking at Niki, "I want to. I want to."
When Niki smiles, it's the happiest he's ever seen her, and it's the happiest he's been for a long time.
*
The two of them move to New York City and it's finally starting to look the way it did before he blew it up. Niki gives birth on a cold, windy day, in the same hospital that Peter's been in many times before. It's a baby girl, the doctor proclaims, and when Peter holds her in his arms, he feels complete.
They name her Claire.
*
Peter helps Claire onto her bicycle, and Niki's standing in the background wondering if it's really safe to be teaching their child to ride a bike in the alley behind their apartment. "She wants to learn," Peter says, half-smiling down at the six-year-old.
She looks nothing like him, or Niki for that matter; has swirly blonde hair and green eyes, rosy cheeks and a mischievious smile.
He lets the bike go, watches her ride, and wonders, not for the first time, what Claire would think of his little girl.
But then his daughter starts to scream and he's torn from his thoughts as her bicycle topples over. He's at her side in a flash, grabbing her before she hits the ground. "Gotcha!" he exclaims, acting as if he hadn't been scared out of his wits by seeing her fall, and she giggles.
Twisting his hair with her fingers, she says, "Daddy, you're my hero," and he feels, for the first time in years, that this is destiny.
FRIEND this journal for updates.
SEE the complete list of fic I've written.
ETA: I changed some of the userpics for this journal! Check 'em out and let me know what you think. :)