Fic: The Child is Gone
Title: The Child is Gone
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Claire Bennet, Peter Petrelli (+mentions of ensemble)
Pairing(s): Hints of Claire/Peter
Rating: PG13 (mentions of death and torture)
Word Count: 437
Summary: She’s seen horrors people others cannot even imagine. And she’s lived through it all, she has no choice but to. However, eternal life comes with a cost.
AU
Written for heroes_contest’s prompt “Price”
I made a banner yay!
Life used to be in Technicolor. It used to be filled with flashing smiles, hugging bodies. All scenes used to shine and glow, like freshly printed photographs.
She used to get up in the morning, tickle Mr. Muggles’s ears, spar with Lyle over French toast, then race to school. She used to put on a uniform and smile, she used to wave around pompoms and feel as if she was important.
On her days off, she’d jump off of bridges, leap in front of moving trains, enter burning wreckage. Her death attempts were videotaped in order to prove that she was much more than a normal cheerleader.
Now, she simply lives.
It’s not like she has much of a choice. She has tried to die, several times. Death just won’t obey her calls, will not head her frantic begging.
She stands still and watches the horrors unfold. She is not scared of blood, although she still remembers that, when she was young, the sight of her own blood used to make her faint. She is not scared for torture. She has seen enough horrific scenes that now she just looks at them without caring. They are just facts, like the innocent bodies piled up on the streets.
She has seen too much, she no longer cares.
The child is gone.
…
The day they bury him, the sky is gray and water soaks the earth. People stand weeping into their hands. The girlfriends and wives burry they tear streaked faces into their lover’s chest. The stoic men soothe the crying women with calming words, soft patterns etched into their heaving backs. But the men do not care.
They only want to comfort of bed sheets and sweaty, entangled limbs.
The grieving crowd walks away in pairs and groups, no one alone to face their grief. No eyes notice the brown-haired girl, blond roots starting to show, as she walks towards the grave, reading the name engraved on the gray marble surface.
Peter Petrelli
She doesn’t toss down flowers, they would not be appropriate. Instead she digs into her pockets, pulling out two bullets and letting them fall with a metallic ting on the casket.
She is alone now, and she should not be surprised. He had promised, a long time ago, that they would be together forever. That, one day people would forget who they were, that they could be Peter and Claire.
But things do not always happen as you planned. After all, she had planned to start a family, to grow old and wrinkled, to die… but her life came with a cost.
To live forever, death is the price you pay.