Glass Spiders (1/1, Gen, AU)

Jan 18, 2010 15:31

Title: Glass Spiders 1/1

Characters: HRG, Claire, Nathan, Peter, Others
Rating: PG-13 for themes

Type: Gen, AU

Disclaimer: Copyright of Heroes is held by the respective owners. No infringement is intended.

Spoilers: Through S4
Summary: HRG discovers a threat to Claire.
Notes: This story is set in the same AU as “Perchance To Dream.” For more about Caleb, an ARG character, click here. The complete lyrics of David Bowie's "Glass Spider" are here.


At dusk, Noah Bennet entered his daughter’s room within the two-bedroom apartment they now shared after the divorce. He heard David Bowie’s voice coming from her computer.

Up until one century ago, there lived in the Zi Duang province of an eastern country a glass-like spider. Having devoured its prey, it would drape the skeletons over its web, in weeks creating a macabre shrine of remains. Its web was also unique in that it had many layers like floors in a building.

At the top of this palace-like place, assembled with almost apparent care, were tiny, shining objects -- glass, beads, dewdrops. One could almost call it an altar. When the breeze blew through this construction, it produced sounds of wailing, crying -- tiny wails, tiny cries.

The baby spiders would get scared and search frantically for their mother.
But, the Glass Spider would have long gone, having known that the babies would survive somehow on their own.

Oh, the Glass Spider had blue eyes almost like a human's.
They shed tears at the wintered turn of the centuries…

“Hey, Baby.” Bennet and Claire embraced, kissing each other on the head. “Are you adding Bowie to your Eternity Collection?”

“Yup,” answered Claire. “He’s freakishly ageless, and he’s influenced a lot of musical styles. Like you said, influence is another kind of immortality.”

“It’s the safest kind, Claire,” assured Bennet. “You’ll be noticed if you act publicly. It’s better to inspire others to act for you - to be a muse, a…”

“A cheerleader,” finished Claire.

“Exactly,” said Bennet, smiling sadly.

Later that night, Bennet dreamed. Because he had been dead, he recognized when his living dream intersected the Deathscape. Claire’s living adoptive father saw Claire’s dead biological father, Nathan Petrelli, whom he had killed, trapped within a giant spider web. The web had many layers. On the layer below Nathan, a dark scene repeated itself, patterned forever in the death-pale silk…

“You’re lying, Delia,” said a distraught man with a knife. “I can see the spiders plain as I see you and Caleb. They’re hatching from both of you, and I’ve got to kill them, cut them out.”

“Please, God, make him listen to me!,” cried Delia, as he cut her. “Abner, you’re off your meds! They’re not real; they’ve never been!”

Tears streamed down the faces of man, woman, and boy, as Delia died of her wounds. Suddenly, Caleb started screaming. Eight black spider legs popped, crunched, and strained from his prepubescent back. Deathscape light played within his multiple green spider eyes. Abner, stricken, laughed maniacally as his illness manifested true in the boy. Strlcken, the real boy-spider grabbed the knife, ending the man.

Abner, a distraught man with a knife, began, again. ”You’re lying, Delia…”

Sensing there was nothing to be done, Bennet focused on logistics. “You’re trapped in a web looped with a man-spider’s manifestation,” he said to Nathan. “Claire and Peter will be returning that same man-spider’s body, tomorrow. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“And you shouldn’t start now,” said Nathan, “because they’re heading into a trap. I saw him and followed. He ordered the spider to put me here, so I wouldn’t make trouble.”

On the web layer below the doomed family, Nathan projected another image. A man cooed to Caleb, fully transformed within the Deathscape into a blue-eyed spider. “You’re a good boy. Yes, you are. Spelling where we needed them to be in your web.” The man talking to the spider as if he were a dog and not a tragedy was Adam Monroe.

“Thank you, Nathan. You’ve saved Claire.” Noah Bennet contemplated strategy, as he woke to a morning dawned with gray spider silk clouds.

character: claire bennet, rating: pg13, character: adam monroe, author: raissad, character: ofc, character: nathan petrelli, character: omc, character: mr. bennet (hrg/noah)

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