musesandlyrics | 2.11 A Perfect Murder Quote
2.11. "When you wake up tomorrow, all this will seem like a bad dream."
A Perfect Murder
Co-written with randybyname
Peter Petrelli was trying for once to get some normality back in his life. Ironic given he had a new ability to content with. He'd had his chance at normal when his father had taken his original ability, but the timing had been off. He couldn't exactly bail while his father and Pinehearst existed, he'd also had to get an ability back, and lucky for him Suresh's formula had given him a variation of his original power. Only now he wasn't so much a sponge. He could pick and choose, and only kept one ability at a time.
Only in the face of finally defeating Sylar, Peter had needed an out. He needed normality, and he needed to leave the City that had been his home for so long. He needed somewhere he wasn't just Nathan Petrelli's brother, or Angela Petrelli's son. He wasn't the guy who had almost blown up New York. He wasn't a fugitive. He wasn't even a hero.
New Jersey wasn't so far away that he couldn't return to New York if he was needed, and Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had given him a job as a nurse. It was returning to something that he used to love. Something that once upon a time he had been happy to define him. He'd never been ashamed of being a nurse, but the rest of his family had been. As much as he loved them, Peter still needed to find out exactly who he was. Things had been changing so quickly, he'd lost track.
He crossed the street to the hospital, courier bag slung across his body. It was his second week on the job, and he was starting to find his rhythm. In fact, he was even looking forward to it. He didn't have a huge burden on his shoulders from needing to the save the world, or to change the future. For once, he didn't know what the future would hold.
Randy had been trying to get a hold of Mel after her sister left her a voicemail about the footballer. She had been in a meeting with one of her new teachers for the semester when the call came in, so she had missed it, and now she was just dying to know how the whole thing went down. After leaving a return message on her sister's voicemail, Randy had tossed her cell phone onto the passenger's seat of her car and started heading out of the university to head home. Sure, it was all probably technically in walking distance, but not when she had a gazillion heavy text books to lug around with her. She had just stopped by the bookshop on campus to collect the last of what she needed for her final year. She was distracted, and she knew it. Plus, her head was sore and her nose was itchy, almost like she felt when she was getting a cold.
She scratched at her nose as she turned out of the university and onto the street. The hospital, and Matty's workplace was just a few blocks away because it was attached to the university and one of the biggest places med students went for their prac. Randy herself would probably even end up there when she started practicing. It suited her. She loved Princeton. She had never been a big city girl to pull off living in New York. It never much appealled to her. It was just when she was turning onto the main street leading to her neighbourhood that she was overcome in a wave of sneezes that took her by surprise. She didn't even have a chance to hit the brakes, which panicked her. But only for a second before she heard a loud thump as the last sneeze wracked her body and she screamed, hitting the brakes, but it was too late. Did she just hit someone?
"Oh my god, oh my god, no!" she whimpered, struggling to fumble out of her seatbelt in her haste. Her heart was up in her throat as she threw herself out of the car and stumbled around to the front of it. Another scream was cut off in a terrified gasp of shock. A guy was lying on the road in front of her car. She had hit someone with her car! "Oh shit! Oh my god! Are you okay?" She crouched down beside him, her hands trembling as she started to cry. Was he even conscious?!
Peter hadn't even really noticed the car, his iPod on, and his head clearly not on where he was going. He'd had a brief glance either way to check for any speeding cars, but he hadn't noticed the one that had hit him. He also wasn't sure how long he'd been out. There was a brief moment when everything had gone black, and then as if to make the pain worse for him, the world around him came piercing back in glaring sunlight, and muffled sounds. He grunted, trying to move to sit up. The back of his head was aching, and he was sure someone was stabbing him in the arm, or maybe his arm wasn't even attached.
Okay, so maybe there was a downside to not having his old power. He couldn't heal. He couldn't get up from this without a scratch. He'd survived a fall from a building without dying, but getting hit by a car? That was going to be the end of him. Peter grunted again, adding a couple of curses.
"No, no, no! Don't move! My brother's a nurse!" Randy cried, holding her hands out. What the fuck? What did the fact her brother was a nurse have anything to damn well do with it? It wasn't like she could whip Matt out of her handbag to do his nurse thing, or that his nursing skills were suddenly going to rub off on her! But she was panicked. That was her excuse for being hit with the stupid stick, and she wasn't budging from it. "My phone... I need my fucking phone..." she mumbled to herself and batted her hair out of her face and threw it over her shoulder. Why hadn't the Karma gods told her that morning to wear her hair back in preparation of hitting some poor bastard with her car?! She made another whimpering sound, sort of just hovering there as she tried to figure out what the hell to do. What did they do in the movies? That had to at least be a start, right? "I'm sorry!" she finally said, her voice raising a even further as she tried not to cry even more or maybe even wet her pants.
Peter wiggled the fingers on his other hand to test to see if he could at least feel them. At the sound of a woman's voice, he tried to open his eyes again. He caught a flash of blonde hair, and for a moment he thought Claire was there. Then he focused his eyes, and realised it wasn't his niece. He reached out, his fingers gripping her wrist. "Hurts..." he choked out.
No, he wasn't supposed to say that! It was supposed to be just a scratch so she didn't want to give herself a guilt-induced stroke. She touched his forehead lightly with her fingertips. "Do you need an ambulance? I should get an ambulance! I just need to find my phone. Why isn't anyone else driving on this road right now?! This is one of the busiest roads in Princeton and no one is fucking around to help a stupid cow out when she runs over someone! Oh god, I'm an attempted murderer!" She dragged her hair back off her face again when it infuriatingly flopped forward again into her eyes.
"I'm going to get my phone, okay?" she told him, leaning over him and managing to shield the light from his eyes. "You're not allowed to die on me or even do anything that stops you breathing! I'm not like my brother. I would really suck at CPR! So just... are you okay? I would offer you a pillow, but I don't have one." She pointed behind her. "I just have to get my phone. I can call an ambulance or my sister, because sister is really much more smarter than I am when it comes to shit like this. And to think I was going to be a babysitter..." she mumbled to herself, almost losing her balance where she was crouched beside him.
Peter tried to shake his head, but it hurt too much. "No, don't... I've got a phone. It's in my bag." Slowly he was starting to remember how to how to put sentences together. He was also starting to realise just which parts of him hurt. He highly suspected his arm was broken, and he was going to wind up with a massive lump on the back of his head. He couldn't take her panicking, though. He held onto her hand again, trying to get out a soothing noise, but it came out like a wheeze. "Please don't freak out. I'm okay. Just beaten up a little. Really not planning on dying here, promise. Just take a breath, okay?"
Randy looked down at him, wiping at her tears with her other hand. Now that she had stopped momentarily, she noticed something beyond him being a body sprawled on the road... he was cute. Oh hell, she was going to hell. Was she perving on someone she just nearly killed?! She tried to picture him with different colour hair, because the brunette hadn't been lost on her. "I'm supposed to be comforting you, that's the way it works when you get squished by a car. Unless it's a hit and run, but I wouldn't do that! I'm not some sort of murderer! I'm sorry I hurt you. I know it hurts. I broke my arm once when I was a kid, and then my sister broke hers the next day like some sort of freak twin thing, but it hurt like hell."
She was rambling and she knew it. She squeezed his hand and then released it to start digging around in his bag, paying absolutely no mind that she was rifling around in his personal things. Soon the entire contents of his bag were up-ended on the road side and she located the phone. "There's a really awesome hospital not far from here. I bet the ambulance comes right away. I'll come with you, my brother works there. I mean, if you want me to. You probably don't want anything to fucking do with me because I nearly killed you, right? I'll be quiet. I'll just, like, hover in the hallway until I know you're okay then bugger off before you can see me again. What's the number for the ambulance again?" She paused and cursed, pressing in 911 quickly. "Shit, don't answer that. I'm clearly losing my mind." She put the phone to her ear, waiting for the call to the connect. "I'm Randy by the way. O-Or Miranda Rose. Miranda Rose Murray in case you want to press charges."
Peter gave her a weak smirk, closing his eyes for a moment as he tried to block out the light again. The rambling was actually a comfort. Like something he could hang onto to make sure he didn't slip into unconsciousness. Not that closing his eyes was helping. He reluctantly opened them again, trying to watch her. She was pretty, he wasn't in so much pain that he didn't notice. He was kind of hating the fact that he was meeting her under these conditions. It had been a long, long time since he'd flirted with anyone. It was hard to flirt when it felt like he'd just been hit by a car.
Okay, he had been hit by a car.
"I'm not going to press charges, Randy. Also not going to make any Austin Powers jokes. Mostly because I think laughing would make me hurt more. I'm Peter. Peter Petrelli. In case you want to come visit me in hospital. You don't need to be nervous. I'm okay. Just hurting."
Randy put the call in with the paramedics, giving them Peter's name and the location. She put his phone back into his bag, even though she had emptied it of everything else. "It's okay. It's a running joke in my family. I'm a bit of a tom boy, so I didn't want the girly name when I was a kid, so it just stuck. I figured if it was good enough for one of the Jackson 5, it was good enough for me." She took his hand again and automatically started to carefully stroke his hair to try and make him feel better. "I really am sorry. I think I'm getting a cold or something and I was sneezing, and it was just bad timing. Are you seeing double? Do you feel sick? You don't look so good. Want me to lie down with you? I don't even have a band-aid to offer you."
Peter wanted to tell her to take another breath, but he had a feeling the fact that his head started to spin had nothing to do with how fast she was talking. "Ah... no double, yeah a little, that's so tempting, and it's okay about the band-aid. Not even sure it'd do much right now. You like the Jackson 5?"
"Well, technically no. I mean, Michael is okay, but the others didn't do much for me. But he was famous, and he was a boy, so I could talk myself into it being exactly what I wanted. There isn't a lot of non-girly names you can drag from Miranda Rose, and my brother and sister used to pull the piss even more by calling me Rosie because they knew it drove me up the wall. Only, when you hit puberty, Randy goes from an innocent boy's name to a not-so-innocent context. Like, when someone says balls and you really want to not snigger, but you do anyway." Randy was never the sort to be conventional, so she actually did shift and lie down on the road next to him, still holding his hand. "Did I mention my brother was a nurse? Which is beside the point, but he has friends who are doctors in the ER, so you're going to be fine. I'm going to probably keep saying that to try and convince myself because I'm so so sorry I hit you. I've probably ruined your whole week now."
"Yeah, you did mention your brother was a nurse. Several times if my memory's still working." Peter smiled, amused at the fact that she was lying in the road with him. He was trying to listen for the sound of sirens, but given they were near a hospital, it was hard to tell if any of them were for him yet. For all he knew they wouldn't bother with sirens. "It's funny, because I happen to be a nurse, too. It's been a while since I've been hurt."
Randy winced slightly. "Sorry, I don't mean to try and fly a flag out his ass, even if I do think he's awesome. I mean, he's my big brother. Of course he's awesome. I just... my brain seems to think telling you that will bring you medical attention quicker, and you're seriously a nurse? Maybe you know him? Do you work at Princeton Plainsboro? Only, he's only been there a short time. He finished Yale and then had a placement back there before getting the job here. But he's home now and I'm glad he is." There were sirens coming in the distance and she prayed they were for them. "Awhile? How long's a while? Now I've gone and screwed up your track record, which bloody sucks. I'm sorry!"
"It's okay," Peter murmured, his concentration lapsing as the urge to close his eyes returned with force. He fought it off, squeezing Randy's hand as he looked at her again. "I have a big brother. I'm sure I'm guilty of the same thing. Or I was. Guess we grew apart." He frowned, the thought of Nathan Petrelli giving him mixed feelings. He had idolised his brother once upon a time. "Yeah, I work at the same hospital. Not sure I know your brother, but maybe. I'm still learning who everyone is. I'm just as new. It's good you got your brother again. Lucky. You sound like you really care about him. Being that close to family is a rare thing."
"You sound sad," Randy noted. "Not just because your head hurts, either." She raised up a little to see his face, taking in his features a little more with a concerned frown on her face. "Did you lose your brother?" she asked, hearing the sirens closing in a little.
Peter met her gaze briefly before he looked past her and focused on a passing cloud. "It's complicated." He'd lost his brother a couple of times, and had no idea how he was ever going to explain it to her. "I'm sorry... it's just a long story, and I'd rather not drag this, ah, meeting down."
Randy managed to not point out the fact that it was already pretty much rock bottom considering she hit him with her car, he was bleeding, waiting for an ambulance and lying on a dirty road. But she caught herself and bit down on her lip. She knew he wasn't one of her test subjects. If he didn't want to talk about something, he didn't have to, especially not to her. She didn't get a chance to say anything else when the ambulance pulled up and the paramedics were swooping on them. She pulled herself up off the ground and stood back, chewing on the tip of her thumb as she watched. Why did she feel some sort of connection to this guy?
Peter tried to hold Randy's gaze, even as the paramedics worked around him. There was just something about her, and he needed to keep looking at her to give himself something to keep grounded, and to keep conscious. He hoped she did find him, because even struggling with the pain, and even after she'd hit him with her car, he wanted to see her again. Peter understood better than most that Fate had a funny way of working. "Randy," he rasped, just before he got loaded into the ambulance.
"I'll just... um... just..." Randy stammered, panicking a little as she pointed back to her car. She tugged on the female paramedics arm. "Can you just wait a second?" She didn't wait for an answer. She ran back to her car and plucked the keys from the ignition, grabbing up her phone from where it fell onto the passenger side floor and then locked the car. She was back in moments, wringing the strap of her bag anxiously. "I'm coming," she insisted and climbed into the back of the ambulance after him before they could all tell her to get fucked. She expected protests, but none came, so she just grabbed Peter's hand again, swallowing. She had no explanation why she was doing this. She just was, and to the fuck with it.
Words: 3229 | All muses referred to with permission
A Perfect Murder
Co-written with randybyname
Peter Petrelli was trying for once to get some normality back in his life. Ironic given he had a new ability to content with. He'd had his chance at normal when his father had taken his original ability, but the timing had been off. He couldn't exactly bail while his father and Pinehearst existed, he'd also had to get an ability back, and lucky for him Suresh's formula had given him a variation of his original power. Only now he wasn't so much a sponge. He could pick and choose, and only kept one ability at a time.
Only in the face of finally defeating Sylar, Peter had needed an out. He needed normality, and he needed to leave the City that had been his home for so long. He needed somewhere he wasn't just Nathan Petrelli's brother, or Angela Petrelli's son. He wasn't the guy who had almost blown up New York. He wasn't a fugitive. He wasn't even a hero.
New Jersey wasn't so far away that he couldn't return to New York if he was needed, and Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital had given him a job as a nurse. It was returning to something that he used to love. Something that once upon a time he had been happy to define him. He'd never been ashamed of being a nurse, but the rest of his family had been. As much as he loved them, Peter still needed to find out exactly who he was. Things had been changing so quickly, he'd lost track.
He crossed the street to the hospital, courier bag slung across his body. It was his second week on the job, and he was starting to find his rhythm. In fact, he was even looking forward to it. He didn't have a huge burden on his shoulders from needing to the save the world, or to change the future. For once, he didn't know what the future would hold.
Randy had been trying to get a hold of Mel after her sister left her a voicemail about the footballer. She had been in a meeting with one of her new teachers for the semester when the call came in, so she had missed it, and now she was just dying to know how the whole thing went down. After leaving a return message on her sister's voicemail, Randy had tossed her cell phone onto the passenger's seat of her car and started heading out of the university to head home. Sure, it was all probably technically in walking distance, but not when she had a gazillion heavy text books to lug around with her. She had just stopped by the bookshop on campus to collect the last of what she needed for her final year. She was distracted, and she knew it. Plus, her head was sore and her nose was itchy, almost like she felt when she was getting a cold.
She scratched at her nose as she turned out of the university and onto the street. The hospital, and Matty's workplace was just a few blocks away because it was attached to the university and one of the biggest places med students went for their prac. Randy herself would probably even end up there when she started practicing. It suited her. She loved Princeton. She had never been a big city girl to pull off living in New York. It never much appealled to her. It was just when she was turning onto the main street leading to her neighbourhood that she was overcome in a wave of sneezes that took her by surprise. She didn't even have a chance to hit the brakes, which panicked her. But only for a second before she heard a loud thump as the last sneeze wracked her body and she screamed, hitting the brakes, but it was too late. Did she just hit someone?
"Oh my god, oh my god, no!" she whimpered, struggling to fumble out of her seatbelt in her haste. Her heart was up in her throat as she threw herself out of the car and stumbled around to the front of it. Another scream was cut off in a terrified gasp of shock. A guy was lying on the road in front of her car. She had hit someone with her car! "Oh shit! Oh my god! Are you okay?" She crouched down beside him, her hands trembling as she started to cry. Was he even conscious?!
Peter hadn't even really noticed the car, his iPod on, and his head clearly not on where he was going. He'd had a brief glance either way to check for any speeding cars, but he hadn't noticed the one that had hit him. He also wasn't sure how long he'd been out. There was a brief moment when everything had gone black, and then as if to make the pain worse for him, the world around him came piercing back in glaring sunlight, and muffled sounds. He grunted, trying to move to sit up. The back of his head was aching, and he was sure someone was stabbing him in the arm, or maybe his arm wasn't even attached.
Okay, so maybe there was a downside to not having his old power. He couldn't heal. He couldn't get up from this without a scratch. He'd survived a fall from a building without dying, but getting hit by a car? That was going to be the end of him. Peter grunted again, adding a couple of curses.
"No, no, no! Don't move! My brother's a nurse!" Randy cried, holding her hands out. What the fuck? What did the fact her brother was a nurse have anything to damn well do with it? It wasn't like she could whip Matt out of her handbag to do his nurse thing, or that his nursing skills were suddenly going to rub off on her! But she was panicked. That was her excuse for being hit with the stupid stick, and she wasn't budging from it. "My phone... I need my fucking phone..." she mumbled to herself and batted her hair out of her face and threw it over her shoulder. Why hadn't the Karma gods told her that morning to wear her hair back in preparation of hitting some poor bastard with her car?! She made another whimpering sound, sort of just hovering there as she tried to figure out what the hell to do. What did they do in the movies? That had to at least be a start, right? "I'm sorry!" she finally said, her voice raising a even further as she tried not to cry even more or maybe even wet her pants.
Peter wiggled the fingers on his other hand to test to see if he could at least feel them. At the sound of a woman's voice, he tried to open his eyes again. He caught a flash of blonde hair, and for a moment he thought Claire was there. Then he focused his eyes, and realised it wasn't his niece. He reached out, his fingers gripping her wrist. "Hurts..." he choked out.
No, he wasn't supposed to say that! It was supposed to be just a scratch so she didn't want to give herself a guilt-induced stroke. She touched his forehead lightly with her fingertips. "Do you need an ambulance? I should get an ambulance! I just need to find my phone. Why isn't anyone else driving on this road right now?! This is one of the busiest roads in Princeton and no one is fucking around to help a stupid cow out when she runs over someone! Oh god, I'm an attempted murderer!" She dragged her hair back off her face again when it infuriatingly flopped forward again into her eyes.
"I'm going to get my phone, okay?" she told him, leaning over him and managing to shield the light from his eyes. "You're not allowed to die on me or even do anything that stops you breathing! I'm not like my brother. I would really suck at CPR! So just... are you okay? I would offer you a pillow, but I don't have one." She pointed behind her. "I just have to get my phone. I can call an ambulance or my sister, because sister is really much more smarter than I am when it comes to shit like this. And to think I was going to be a babysitter..." she mumbled to herself, almost losing her balance where she was crouched beside him.
Peter tried to shake his head, but it hurt too much. "No, don't... I've got a phone. It's in my bag." Slowly he was starting to remember how to how to put sentences together. He was also starting to realise just which parts of him hurt. He highly suspected his arm was broken, and he was going to wind up with a massive lump on the back of his head. He couldn't take her panicking, though. He held onto her hand again, trying to get out a soothing noise, but it came out like a wheeze. "Please don't freak out. I'm okay. Just beaten up a little. Really not planning on dying here, promise. Just take a breath, okay?"
Randy looked down at him, wiping at her tears with her other hand. Now that she had stopped momentarily, she noticed something beyond him being a body sprawled on the road... he was cute. Oh hell, she was going to hell. Was she perving on someone she just nearly killed?! She tried to picture him with different colour hair, because the brunette hadn't been lost on her. "I'm supposed to be comforting you, that's the way it works when you get squished by a car. Unless it's a hit and run, but I wouldn't do that! I'm not some sort of murderer! I'm sorry I hurt you. I know it hurts. I broke my arm once when I was a kid, and then my sister broke hers the next day like some sort of freak twin thing, but it hurt like hell."
She was rambling and she knew it. She squeezed his hand and then released it to start digging around in his bag, paying absolutely no mind that she was rifling around in his personal things. Soon the entire contents of his bag were up-ended on the road side and she located the phone. "There's a really awesome hospital not far from here. I bet the ambulance comes right away. I'll come with you, my brother works there. I mean, if you want me to. You probably don't want anything to fucking do with me because I nearly killed you, right? I'll be quiet. I'll just, like, hover in the hallway until I know you're okay then bugger off before you can see me again. What's the number for the ambulance again?" She paused and cursed, pressing in 911 quickly. "Shit, don't answer that. I'm clearly losing my mind." She put the phone to her ear, waiting for the call to the connect. "I'm Randy by the way. O-Or Miranda Rose. Miranda Rose Murray in case you want to press charges."
Peter gave her a weak smirk, closing his eyes for a moment as he tried to block out the light again. The rambling was actually a comfort. Like something he could hang onto to make sure he didn't slip into unconsciousness. Not that closing his eyes was helping. He reluctantly opened them again, trying to watch her. She was pretty, he wasn't in so much pain that he didn't notice. He was kind of hating the fact that he was meeting her under these conditions. It had been a long, long time since he'd flirted with anyone. It was hard to flirt when it felt like he'd just been hit by a car.
Okay, he had been hit by a car.
"I'm not going to press charges, Randy. Also not going to make any Austin Powers jokes. Mostly because I think laughing would make me hurt more. I'm Peter. Peter Petrelli. In case you want to come visit me in hospital. You don't need to be nervous. I'm okay. Just hurting."
Randy put the call in with the paramedics, giving them Peter's name and the location. She put his phone back into his bag, even though she had emptied it of everything else. "It's okay. It's a running joke in my family. I'm a bit of a tom boy, so I didn't want the girly name when I was a kid, so it just stuck. I figured if it was good enough for one of the Jackson 5, it was good enough for me." She took his hand again and automatically started to carefully stroke his hair to try and make him feel better. "I really am sorry. I think I'm getting a cold or something and I was sneezing, and it was just bad timing. Are you seeing double? Do you feel sick? You don't look so good. Want me to lie down with you? I don't even have a band-aid to offer you."
Peter wanted to tell her to take another breath, but he had a feeling the fact that his head started to spin had nothing to do with how fast she was talking. "Ah... no double, yeah a little, that's so tempting, and it's okay about the band-aid. Not even sure it'd do much right now. You like the Jackson 5?"
"Well, technically no. I mean, Michael is okay, but the others didn't do much for me. But he was famous, and he was a boy, so I could talk myself into it being exactly what I wanted. There isn't a lot of non-girly names you can drag from Miranda Rose, and my brother and sister used to pull the piss even more by calling me Rosie because they knew it drove me up the wall. Only, when you hit puberty, Randy goes from an innocent boy's name to a not-so-innocent context. Like, when someone says balls and you really want to not snigger, but you do anyway." Randy was never the sort to be conventional, so she actually did shift and lie down on the road next to him, still holding his hand. "Did I mention my brother was a nurse? Which is beside the point, but he has friends who are doctors in the ER, so you're going to be fine. I'm going to probably keep saying that to try and convince myself because I'm so so sorry I hit you. I've probably ruined your whole week now."
"Yeah, you did mention your brother was a nurse. Several times if my memory's still working." Peter smiled, amused at the fact that she was lying in the road with him. He was trying to listen for the sound of sirens, but given they were near a hospital, it was hard to tell if any of them were for him yet. For all he knew they wouldn't bother with sirens. "It's funny, because I happen to be a nurse, too. It's been a while since I've been hurt."
Randy winced slightly. "Sorry, I don't mean to try and fly a flag out his ass, even if I do think he's awesome. I mean, he's my big brother. Of course he's awesome. I just... my brain seems to think telling you that will bring you medical attention quicker, and you're seriously a nurse? Maybe you know him? Do you work at Princeton Plainsboro? Only, he's only been there a short time. He finished Yale and then had a placement back there before getting the job here. But he's home now and I'm glad he is." There were sirens coming in the distance and she prayed they were for them. "Awhile? How long's a while? Now I've gone and screwed up your track record, which bloody sucks. I'm sorry!"
"It's okay," Peter murmured, his concentration lapsing as the urge to close his eyes returned with force. He fought it off, squeezing Randy's hand as he looked at her again. "I have a big brother. I'm sure I'm guilty of the same thing. Or I was. Guess we grew apart." He frowned, the thought of Nathan Petrelli giving him mixed feelings. He had idolised his brother once upon a time. "Yeah, I work at the same hospital. Not sure I know your brother, but maybe. I'm still learning who everyone is. I'm just as new. It's good you got your brother again. Lucky. You sound like you really care about him. Being that close to family is a rare thing."
"You sound sad," Randy noted. "Not just because your head hurts, either." She raised up a little to see his face, taking in his features a little more with a concerned frown on her face. "Did you lose your brother?" she asked, hearing the sirens closing in a little.
Peter met her gaze briefly before he looked past her and focused on a passing cloud. "It's complicated." He'd lost his brother a couple of times, and had no idea how he was ever going to explain it to her. "I'm sorry... it's just a long story, and I'd rather not drag this, ah, meeting down."
Randy managed to not point out the fact that it was already pretty much rock bottom considering she hit him with her car, he was bleeding, waiting for an ambulance and lying on a dirty road. But she caught herself and bit down on her lip. She knew he wasn't one of her test subjects. If he didn't want to talk about something, he didn't have to, especially not to her. She didn't get a chance to say anything else when the ambulance pulled up and the paramedics were swooping on them. She pulled herself up off the ground and stood back, chewing on the tip of her thumb as she watched. Why did she feel some sort of connection to this guy?
Peter tried to hold Randy's gaze, even as the paramedics worked around him. There was just something about her, and he needed to keep looking at her to give himself something to keep grounded, and to keep conscious. He hoped she did find him, because even struggling with the pain, and even after she'd hit him with her car, he wanted to see her again. Peter understood better than most that Fate had a funny way of working. "Randy," he rasped, just before he got loaded into the ambulance.
"I'll just... um... just..." Randy stammered, panicking a little as she pointed back to her car. She tugged on the female paramedics arm. "Can you just wait a second?" She didn't wait for an answer. She ran back to her car and plucked the keys from the ignition, grabbing up her phone from where it fell onto the passenger side floor and then locked the car. She was back in moments, wringing the strap of her bag anxiously. "I'm coming," she insisted and climbed into the back of the ambulance after him before they could all tell her to get fucked. She expected protests, but none came, so she just grabbed Peter's hand again, swallowing. She had no explanation why she was doing this. She just was, and to the fuck with it.
Words: 3229 | All muses referred to with permission