Safe - Chapter 19
Characters: Peter/Claude-centric ensemble
Rating/Warnings: Hard PG-13, for strong language.
Word count: 2,200ish.
Spoilers: AU; at most 1.07 ("Nothing To Hide").
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine but the words.
Summary: Holocaust-era Heroes
A/N: Ted has a visitor. ( Previous chapters)
Claude has not been to work for two days. The paperwork for the bookshop is all there, in the desk drawers. Rent, bills, everything. Theo hasn't looked at it, though.
"While I'm gone, it's all yours, mate. Look after it as long as you can, an' maybe we'll be able to come back. If any of this madness ever ends." Serious expression on Claude's face, though as ever, little room for sentiment.
He nods, wide-eyed. "All right ... " Theo's always been happy for Claude to run the place; honestly doesn't want the responsibility. "But you will come back?"
Claude shrugs. "Probably. But we might have to disappear for a bit, first."
Theo snorts. "Well, that's your forte."
Brief hand on his shoulder, and the invisible man is gone.
Now, Theo puts off sorting through the day's post. Scowls as he messes around with the piles of books on the floor, cramming them in too tightly on the shelves as if in defiance of anyone who might actually want to buy them.
Stupid regime. He might've considered himself almost happy there for a while, but now he's reluctantly in charge of a bookshop, and the only man who might have been his friend is gone.
Theo's opinion of those bastard Nazis is hitting a new low.
Claude never asked him, and Theo was grateful. Had been ready, his first few weeks in the job, to snarl "Mind your own business," but Claude never actually brought it up. Eventually, it dawned on him that Claude had a few secrets of his own, and appreciated not being asked about those.
They didn't talk a lot, and that was fine with Theo. He hadn't talked much to anyone since Karin died, and didn't particularly see a reason to start now.
When the police began insisting that all specials wear the yellow star, Theo was too low, languishing in repressed, furious apathy, to pay much attention. If they really wanted to find him, they would - no doubt there were records in Arnhem. He didn't really want to think about home anymore, so he ignored the memories of the perfect yellow flowers that faded too quickly on the tombstone. Tried not to think about frail hands, pale, dancing freckles gone forever still. She was dead, so what was the point?
Of course, he thinks about her all the time anyway.
He makes himself a pot of tea on the stove in the tiny kitchen to the rear of the shop. Strange, just setting out one cup and saucer. The weather is wet and windy again today, and he feels the grey of it seeping into his bones, nestling there as it does every winter, leeching away hope.
It's quiet - business has been slow of late, for all that the city is full of refugees fleeing Germany -Not as though it's any better here. It's late morning before Theo even sells a book: some obscure treatise on witchcraft in the middle ages. Its author, like most in their - his - little store, long since consigned to obscurity. The old man, who has barely any Dutch and even less German, smiles and nods from beneath bushy white eyebrows; their brief conversation is conducted in pidgin meanderings that take in Italian, Hebrew and very halting English. The gentleman shuffles out of the shop with his prize and the door sweeps shut behind him against the mat, sounding a faint, dull ping of the bell fixed there. Theo doesn't see another customer until past two o'clock.
When the shop door does open again, Theo looks up from his place on the floor where he is reshelving a row of outsize books. A policeman stands there, round face beaten pink and impatient by the weather.
Theo stands, dusts his hands on his trousers. Crap.
The officer purses his lips and frowns at Theo. "Are you Theo van Spraag?"
"Yeah." What do you want?
His suspicions are confirmed. "I'm looking for Claude Rains. It's very important that I find him. Do you have any idea where he might be?"
As if I'd tell you. "No."
The policeman steps further into the shop, and Theo instinctively mirrors this intrusion, steps behind the desk. He doesn't like the way this man is looking at him; is uncomfortable with scrutiny at the best of times.
The policeman's eyes sweep the room, his head at an angle that reminds Theo of the players in an orchestra. Listening. Theo has a sudden, wild thought that Claude has not gone at all, but is actually still here, invisible and watching; he feels a flicker of guilt for the tea spilled on the carpet yesterday. Not that Claude was exactly fastidious about such things.
Theo scowls at the officer, who frowns back at him.
"You've seen him. Recently, I mean."
It's not really phrased as a question, and Theo blinks. "Um ... not since Monday."
The other man searches his face; is apparently satisfied by this. "You really don't know where he is?"
He can't even remember the name of the family Claude mentioned. B-something? He wrote it on that bit of paper, tucked it away on a shelf in the map section of the shop where he working when Claude left.
-"If anything happens, go to this address. It's a safehouse." Claude hands him a piece of paper. It's the remains of a leaflet, something about a church service on the back, with an address scribbled in Claude's long, loping hand-
The dark-haired officer looks at him with sudden interest. "I'd appreciate a look at that bit of paper, Mr van Spraag."
It takes Theo a moment for this to sink in, and then -Oh, shit.
He doesn't quite know how he came to be backing away and into the corridor behind the shop. This is really stupid. Why are you-?
The policeman raises hands to pacify him, an expansive gesture, pleading calm. "I just want to ask you a few questions. You're not in any kind of trouble."
The hell I'm not. "Yeah, well, I don't know anything, all right?"
Floorboards beneath his feet now - pine, stained a resiny orange, and they remind him, like they always do, of Karin's violin. Couldn't bear to look at it, after; still hearing the echoes of Schubert and Brahms. Delicate fingers against ebony, painting glorious melodies for him in the twilight.
He didn't mean to destroy it.
When he takes the instrument from its case, it feels like a betrayal. The wood feels warm in his hands, as though she has just set it down for a moment, and he runs his fingers over the mottled grain, a thousand feelings screaming mutely against the smooth, reasonable curves.
Realises that he can smell burning.
He is horrified to see singed fingerprints appearing on the neck of the violin, and for a moment he thinks that this must be a dream, another nightmare wrung from him by grief. But the hand holding the body of the instrument begins to glow, and he feels varnish melting, sizzling and sticky against his palm like hot sugar.
The violin catches fire quickly and spectacularly, emitting great licks of orange as smoke curls from the curved holes in the body. He can't quite believe it. Eighty-year-old wood spits and splutters in his hands, and he wonders, distantly, why he can feel no pain.
The neck of the violin cracks with a twang of strings, and the burning wooden corpse lurches from his grasp, tumbles to the floor. And then, without thought, he's smothering the flames with a cushion, pressing down, suffocating it. Gone, damn it. Gone.
The glowing heat in his hands fades until they're as cold as the tears on his cheeks.
The cushion, decorated in Karin's hesitant embroidery, is ruined, and the violin is a mess of charred fragments, lying surprised and broken on the singed carpet. He sweeps the whole lot up and out; on a whim, buries the remains in the small kitchen garden behind the cottage.
The next day, unslept, he packs a small bag and leaves. Doesn't take his oboe; leaves all their sheet music on its shelves throughout the house. Karin would prefer it like that, he thinks.
The policeman's dark eyes are tightly focused on him. The man looks desperate, and Theo wonders what's so special about Claude, beyond the obvious, that the police need to send someone to pull the thoughts from out of his head.
What if he's doing it now-?
He's backed the length of the short corridor, and the other man knows it. "Just- answer my questions, all right? You-"
-and the policeman lunges for him. Spins him around, pinning him to the wall with an arm behind his back-
"OW!" Theo is not impressed. "Hey! What the hell-?"
"I just- need-" the policeman shoves him to the ground "-you to answer some-questions."
"No!" He's outraged, humiliated, sprawled there with his cheek against varnished wood and the policeman's knee in his back.
He'd swear the man actually chuckles; out of the corner of his eye, Theo catches the curve of a round cheek and the wry shake of a head. "I don't exactly need your permission. Now, where is Claude Rains?"
Theo seethes against the floor. I won't give you anything.
The officer leans low against him until Theo can see the gleam in his eye. "What about Peter Petrelli?"
Peter? Boy wouldn't hurt a fly. Why would-
"Mr Petrelli," the policeman says reproachfully, close to his ear, "happens to be very dangerous individual. Where is he?"
-White paper, edges gently furry from Claude's neat tear down the fold: somewhere around Halfweg-
"Thank you, Mr van Spraag," and the pressure against his shoulder eases a little.
No! He-- a rush of fury and Theo ignites, feels the crackle of varnished timber against his hands. Oh no. Shit. Not now-
He feels the policeman's weight lift away from him in surprise, hears "Son of a-!"
Theo scrambles to his feet, hands pulsing hot and white as flames lick hungrily around two hand-shaped scorches on the floorboards.
The policeman stares at him, open-mouthed. Stares at the floor, stares at Theo again. "What the hell kind of gatverdamme freak are you?"
"What?" This from a man who- "What?"
"You're-" the man has apparently run out of words.
He can feel it building; struggles to hold it in. Anger lending greater friction. "Get out."
"What?" The policeman looks at him, incredulous.
"Get out. I'm not- You don't want to be here right now." Breath coming rapidly through flared nostrils, hands splayed. The glow from his hands painting the corridor in warm shades of orange.
"Oh, I don't think so - you're coming with me." And the officer grabs him by the sleeve. "Thomassen is going to be very interested in you."
"Get off me!" Theo tries to shake his arm free, keep his hands away from the other man; as they pass his face, he feels a wave of heat.
The floor is on fire.
"Shit!"
The policeman's attention is likewise distracted, and his grip on Theo's arm loosens. Flames are already licking up the doorframe that leads back into the shop; paint crackles and peels, turns black amid orange embers.
"Get out!" Theo snarls.
The other man snorts. "Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
They stand there glaring at each other.
"You know, this is your fault-" Fucking Nazis, everything they touch turns to shit-
The officer looks at him as though he were insane. "Come on! We have to get out, unless you want to burn to death."
It's Theo's turn to stare. "I'm on fire, in case you hadn't noticed."
The policeman ignores him. "Is there a back door out of here?"
Theo shakes his head. "No." Hands held away from him, burning brighter now. Helpless.
He sees the policeman look at him, make a decision. The officer grabs him and shoves him through the burning doorway, into the shop.
Oh, shit. No, no. No!
Claude's going to kill him.
Tinder-dry books and manuscripts, some preserved for centuries, burn brightly in the shelves around the doorway.
Oh, no.
The policeman tugs him towards the door. "Come on!"
Theo shoves back, impatiently. "Hey! My shop is on ... fire ..." Speech tails off as he realises that his hands are no longer burning.
The other man comes to the same realisation, eyes darting between Theo's hands and face, but grabs at him again. "We need to get out." Woodwork crackles and smoke billows across the low ceiling, muddying the room and scratching at their lungs.
Theo shakes him off. "It's my shop ... he left it with me ... "
Looking around, it's hopeless, he has to admit. The rest will go up in minutes.
Shit.
-If anything happens -
Yeah, this probably qualifies.
Theo swats the policeman away, runs to the bookshelf with the maps and atlases. The paper is still there, tucked in between An Atlas of Mysterious Sightings and The Arthur Myth In Europe.
That's mis-shelved-
The beams above his head creak, and that's enough. He runs from the shop; emerges, coughing, into the cold, wet afternoon just behind the policeman. Wisps of smoke follow them out.
They regard each other for a moment, blinking in the grey light, drawing deliciously wet air into their lungs.
And then the policeman lunges towards him.
Theo runs.
(Next chapter)
[A/N: I've been a little flexible in my interpretation of Ted's powers, here - hope that's OK with everyone. It just came out that way ... since radiation is much less widely understood (and measured!) in these times, I wanted something that would be a little more accessible from the point of view of the story and the people in it.
Also, I promised
futuresoon that there'd be Mohinder ... but this scene ran long! Next time, babe, sorry. And hey, you did say you wanted longer chapters ;) ]
x-posted to
heroes_fic
Rating/Warnings: Hard PG-13, for strong language.
Word count: 2,200ish.
Spoilers: AU; at most 1.07 ("Nothing To Hide").
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine but the words.
Summary: Holocaust-era Heroes
A/N: Ted has a visitor. ( Previous chapters)
Claude has not been to work for two days. The paperwork for the bookshop is all there, in the desk drawers. Rent, bills, everything. Theo hasn't looked at it, though.
"While I'm gone, it's all yours, mate. Look after it as long as you can, an' maybe we'll be able to come back. If any of this madness ever ends." Serious expression on Claude's face, though as ever, little room for sentiment.
He nods, wide-eyed. "All right ... " Theo's always been happy for Claude to run the place; honestly doesn't want the responsibility. "But you will come back?"
Claude shrugs. "Probably. But we might have to disappear for a bit, first."
Theo snorts. "Well, that's your forte."
Brief hand on his shoulder, and the invisible man is gone.
Now, Theo puts off sorting through the day's post. Scowls as he messes around with the piles of books on the floor, cramming them in too tightly on the shelves as if in defiance of anyone who might actually want to buy them.
Stupid regime. He might've considered himself almost happy there for a while, but now he's reluctantly in charge of a bookshop, and the only man who might have been his friend is gone.
Theo's opinion of those bastard Nazis is hitting a new low.
Claude never asked him, and Theo was grateful. Had been ready, his first few weeks in the job, to snarl "Mind your own business," but Claude never actually brought it up. Eventually, it dawned on him that Claude had a few secrets of his own, and appreciated not being asked about those.
They didn't talk a lot, and that was fine with Theo. He hadn't talked much to anyone since Karin died, and didn't particularly see a reason to start now.
When the police began insisting that all specials wear the yellow star, Theo was too low, languishing in repressed, furious apathy, to pay much attention. If they really wanted to find him, they would - no doubt there were records in Arnhem. He didn't really want to think about home anymore, so he ignored the memories of the perfect yellow flowers that faded too quickly on the tombstone. Tried not to think about frail hands, pale, dancing freckles gone forever still. She was dead, so what was the point?
Of course, he thinks about her all the time anyway.
He makes himself a pot of tea on the stove in the tiny kitchen to the rear of the shop. Strange, just setting out one cup and saucer. The weather is wet and windy again today, and he feels the grey of it seeping into his bones, nestling there as it does every winter, leeching away hope.
It's quiet - business has been slow of late, for all that the city is full of refugees fleeing Germany -Not as though it's any better here. It's late morning before Theo even sells a book: some obscure treatise on witchcraft in the middle ages. Its author, like most in their - his - little store, long since consigned to obscurity. The old man, who has barely any Dutch and even less German, smiles and nods from beneath bushy white eyebrows; their brief conversation is conducted in pidgin meanderings that take in Italian, Hebrew and very halting English. The gentleman shuffles out of the shop with his prize and the door sweeps shut behind him against the mat, sounding a faint, dull ping of the bell fixed there. Theo doesn't see another customer until past two o'clock.
When the shop door does open again, Theo looks up from his place on the floor where he is reshelving a row of outsize books. A policeman stands there, round face beaten pink and impatient by the weather.
Theo stands, dusts his hands on his trousers. Crap.
The officer purses his lips and frowns at Theo. "Are you Theo van Spraag?"
"Yeah." What do you want?
His suspicions are confirmed. "I'm looking for Claude Rains. It's very important that I find him. Do you have any idea where he might be?"
As if I'd tell you. "No."
The policeman steps further into the shop, and Theo instinctively mirrors this intrusion, steps behind the desk. He doesn't like the way this man is looking at him; is uncomfortable with scrutiny at the best of times.
The policeman's eyes sweep the room, his head at an angle that reminds Theo of the players in an orchestra. Listening. Theo has a sudden, wild thought that Claude has not gone at all, but is actually still here, invisible and watching; he feels a flicker of guilt for the tea spilled on the carpet yesterday. Not that Claude was exactly fastidious about such things.
Theo scowls at the officer, who frowns back at him.
"You've seen him. Recently, I mean."
It's not really phrased as a question, and Theo blinks. "Um ... not since Monday."
The other man searches his face; is apparently satisfied by this. "You really don't know where he is?"
He can't even remember the name of the family Claude mentioned. B-something? He wrote it on that bit of paper, tucked it away on a shelf in the map section of the shop where he working when Claude left.
-"If anything happens, go to this address. It's a safehouse." Claude hands him a piece of paper. It's the remains of a leaflet, something about a church service on the back, with an address scribbled in Claude's long, loping hand-
The dark-haired officer looks at him with sudden interest. "I'd appreciate a look at that bit of paper, Mr van Spraag."
It takes Theo a moment for this to sink in, and then -Oh, shit.
He doesn't quite know how he came to be backing away and into the corridor behind the shop. This is really stupid. Why are you-?
The policeman raises hands to pacify him, an expansive gesture, pleading calm. "I just want to ask you a few questions. You're not in any kind of trouble."
The hell I'm not. "Yeah, well, I don't know anything, all right?"
Floorboards beneath his feet now - pine, stained a resiny orange, and they remind him, like they always do, of Karin's violin. Couldn't bear to look at it, after; still hearing the echoes of Schubert and Brahms. Delicate fingers against ebony, painting glorious melodies for him in the twilight.
He didn't mean to destroy it.
When he takes the instrument from its case, it feels like a betrayal. The wood feels warm in his hands, as though she has just set it down for a moment, and he runs his fingers over the mottled grain, a thousand feelings screaming mutely against the smooth, reasonable curves.
Realises that he can smell burning.
He is horrified to see singed fingerprints appearing on the neck of the violin, and for a moment he thinks that this must be a dream, another nightmare wrung from him by grief. But the hand holding the body of the instrument begins to glow, and he feels varnish melting, sizzling and sticky against his palm like hot sugar.
The violin catches fire quickly and spectacularly, emitting great licks of orange as smoke curls from the curved holes in the body. He can't quite believe it. Eighty-year-old wood spits and splutters in his hands, and he wonders, distantly, why he can feel no pain.
The neck of the violin cracks with a twang of strings, and the burning wooden corpse lurches from his grasp, tumbles to the floor. And then, without thought, he's smothering the flames with a cushion, pressing down, suffocating it. Gone, damn it. Gone.
The glowing heat in his hands fades until they're as cold as the tears on his cheeks.
The cushion, decorated in Karin's hesitant embroidery, is ruined, and the violin is a mess of charred fragments, lying surprised and broken on the singed carpet. He sweeps the whole lot up and out; on a whim, buries the remains in the small kitchen garden behind the cottage.
The next day, unslept, he packs a small bag and leaves. Doesn't take his oboe; leaves all their sheet music on its shelves throughout the house. Karin would prefer it like that, he thinks.
The policeman's dark eyes are tightly focused on him. The man looks desperate, and Theo wonders what's so special about Claude, beyond the obvious, that the police need to send someone to pull the thoughts from out of his head.
What if he's doing it now-?
He's backed the length of the short corridor, and the other man knows it. "Just- answer my questions, all right? You-"
-and the policeman lunges for him. Spins him around, pinning him to the wall with an arm behind his back-
"OW!" Theo is not impressed. "Hey! What the hell-?"
"I just- need-" the policeman shoves him to the ground "-you to answer some-questions."
"No!" He's outraged, humiliated, sprawled there with his cheek against varnished wood and the policeman's knee in his back.
He'd swear the man actually chuckles; out of the corner of his eye, Theo catches the curve of a round cheek and the wry shake of a head. "I don't exactly need your permission. Now, where is Claude Rains?"
Theo seethes against the floor. I won't give you anything.
The officer leans low against him until Theo can see the gleam in his eye. "What about Peter Petrelli?"
Peter? Boy wouldn't hurt a fly. Why would-
"Mr Petrelli," the policeman says reproachfully, close to his ear, "happens to be very dangerous individual. Where is he?"
-White paper, edges gently furry from Claude's neat tear down the fold: somewhere around Halfweg-
"Thank you, Mr van Spraag," and the pressure against his shoulder eases a little.
No! He-- a rush of fury and Theo ignites, feels the crackle of varnished timber against his hands. Oh no. Shit. Not now-
He feels the policeman's weight lift away from him in surprise, hears "Son of a-!"
Theo scrambles to his feet, hands pulsing hot and white as flames lick hungrily around two hand-shaped scorches on the floorboards.
The policeman stares at him, open-mouthed. Stares at the floor, stares at Theo again. "What the hell kind of gatverdamme freak are you?"
"What?" This from a man who- "What?"
"You're-" the man has apparently run out of words.
He can feel it building; struggles to hold it in. Anger lending greater friction. "Get out."
"What?" The policeman looks at him, incredulous.
"Get out. I'm not- You don't want to be here right now." Breath coming rapidly through flared nostrils, hands splayed. The glow from his hands painting the corridor in warm shades of orange.
"Oh, I don't think so - you're coming with me." And the officer grabs him by the sleeve. "Thomassen is going to be very interested in you."
"Get off me!" Theo tries to shake his arm free, keep his hands away from the other man; as they pass his face, he feels a wave of heat.
The floor is on fire.
"Shit!"
The policeman's attention is likewise distracted, and his grip on Theo's arm loosens. Flames are already licking up the doorframe that leads back into the shop; paint crackles and peels, turns black amid orange embers.
"Get out!" Theo snarls.
The other man snorts. "Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
They stand there glaring at each other.
"You know, this is your fault-" Fucking Nazis, everything they touch turns to shit-
The officer looks at him as though he were insane. "Come on! We have to get out, unless you want to burn to death."
It's Theo's turn to stare. "I'm on fire, in case you hadn't noticed."
The policeman ignores him. "Is there a back door out of here?"
Theo shakes his head. "No." Hands held away from him, burning brighter now. Helpless.
He sees the policeman look at him, make a decision. The officer grabs him and shoves him through the burning doorway, into the shop.
Oh, shit. No, no. No!
Claude's going to kill him.
Tinder-dry books and manuscripts, some preserved for centuries, burn brightly in the shelves around the doorway.
Oh, no.
The policeman tugs him towards the door. "Come on!"
Theo shoves back, impatiently. "Hey! My shop is on ... fire ..." Speech tails off as he realises that his hands are no longer burning.
The other man comes to the same realisation, eyes darting between Theo's hands and face, but grabs at him again. "We need to get out." Woodwork crackles and smoke billows across the low ceiling, muddying the room and scratching at their lungs.
Theo shakes him off. "It's my shop ... he left it with me ... "
Looking around, it's hopeless, he has to admit. The rest will go up in minutes.
Shit.
-If anything happens -
Yeah, this probably qualifies.
Theo swats the policeman away, runs to the bookshelf with the maps and atlases. The paper is still there, tucked in between An Atlas of Mysterious Sightings and The Arthur Myth In Europe.
That's mis-shelved-
The beams above his head creak, and that's enough. He runs from the shop; emerges, coughing, into the cold, wet afternoon just behind the policeman. Wisps of smoke follow them out.
They regard each other for a moment, blinking in the grey light, drawing deliciously wet air into their lungs.
And then the policeman lunges towards him.
Theo runs.
(Next chapter)
[A/N: I've been a little flexible in my interpretation of Ted's powers, here - hope that's OK with everyone. It just came out that way ... since radiation is much less widely understood (and measured!) in these times, I wanted something that would be a little more accessible from the point of view of the story and the people in it.
Also, I promised
futuresoon that there'd be Mohinder ... but this scene ran long! Next time, babe, sorry. And hey, you did say you wanted longer chapters ;) ]
x-posted to
heroes_fic