Fic: "Somewhere in Sands," Heroes, gen, R (2/2)
Part one is here.
Title: "Somewhere in Sands"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Heroes (and slightly Carnivale)
Rating: R for adult language and sexual content
Pairing: gen, with mentions of Claire/the Haitian and Isaac/Monica.
Word Count: 12010
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my insane idea.
Summary: A sequel to One of Us, a 1930s carnival AU. The carny, Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show, it ain't exactly a place where a body would really consider themselves alone.
All Peter ever wanted to be was a hero, like in the pictures. Like Rudolph Valentino. For the longest time, he thought Nathan was the real thing. His big brother, so amazing, so smart. So when Nathan ran away from home, he did, too. When Nathan joined the carny, he did, too. Nathan decided they'd start doing the trapeze, he named the act, he choreographed every jump, and Pete just followed him.
Hell, he reckons the only place he never followed his big brother was into Meredith's bed, but that's mostly because Nathan told him she was poison and that he'd sooner kill Meredith than "let that evil bitch get her claws into you, too." Gosh. If that weren't the most powerful warning a man could get, Pete didn't know what was.
Tonight, when Ted came running, screaming for help, Nathan didn't even move. He stayed in the trailer, just shaking his head and quietly saying, "You go on, Pete."
"You heard him. They need us. Come on, Nathan, we have to go." But no matter what he said, Nate wouldn't budge. So, for the first time since he bunked with Mohinder during his Years of Rebellion, Pete didn't do any following. He led. All by himself.
Now he's a hero, like he's always wanted to be.
Only it don't feel like he thought it would.
No, when Pete's drinking down half a soda pop in one gulp and slumping against the divan on Mohinder's platform on the midway, he feels like he's going to throw up. His skin is hot, damp, and all he can hear is that boy in the seat screaming for his mama over and over. Even when the seat was fixed, solid and upright, the kid just looked at the air where Pete was floating, like he could see him even though he was invisible, and said, "I want my mama."
He barely remembers his own mama now.
It's been so long.
He remembers she smelled like fancy flowers and bourbon and disapproval. She always wore black dresses in the latest fashion and made him wear starched neckties. Nathan says she's still alive, that she's in fine health and she misses them.
For the first time since his Years of Rebellion, Pete wonders if his amazing, smart big brother is a liar. If they're all a bunch of liars here, just making up stories and pretending to be something they ain't. "Why didn't Nathan come with me, Mo? Why didn't he help?" he asks, nearly choking on his last mouthful of the warm, fizzy soda.
Mohinder looks at him and shrugs, his turban falling askew. "Beats me," he drawls, like a born and bred Texan. Though, honestly, he don't even know if he was born in the Black Hole of Calcutta or what. "But you did a great thing tonight. You saved that kid. You saved our hides."
The problem is Pete ain't sure their hides are worth saving.
**
None of them really expect to find Gabriel when they spread out through the camp. Mohinder stops her by the geeks, tells her over the clucking of chickens that still have their heads that they figure the yellow-bellied coward's done run off already. For all Gabe's talk of mutiny and more money, none of the other rousties went with him, and they all swear up and down they didn't know he jimmied the Wheel.
Half of Niki believes them. The other half don't.
And none of her is all that surprised when she comes back to the cooch and finds Monique all alone entertaining a couple of the rubes who were too cotton-brained on moonshine to even care that the carny almost had a genuine catastrophe on their hands.
"Ain't she wit' you, Nicole?" Monique asks, stopping playing peek-a-boo with her brassiere long enough for the worry to show in her eyes.
"No… no, we were gonna do a circle and meet back here."
That settles it, don't it?
Meredith is gone, too.
The high-falluting bitch who thought she ruled the tent just because she used to dance in a theatre in Tupelo with her clothes on… she's gone and left the tent behind for that traitorous, murderous weasel who nearly killed some poor mother's little boy just for a laugh. She'd always run off into the towns after a show, taking Claire's pay and spending it in the saloons. She'd come back stinking of whiskey and bragging loud with big plans to run away to California and be in the talkies. They all knew that one day, she just wasn't going to come back. That day is today.
"Oh, Lord," she whispers, flinching as the full weight of that sinks in. As the gramophone skips on the record and begins to scratch, uselessly, along the rim.
Oh, Lord, someone's gonna have to tell Claire that her mama left her and didn't even say goodbye.
Niki whirls from the tent to find Micah and hold him tight.
**
Nathan nurses Linderman's fine bourbon sip by sip, listening to the crowd winding down and spilling out the entry gates. He pushes the thick velvet curtain from the window to watch the torches of everyone looking for Gabe go out one by one, until all that's left are the twinkling, bare bulbs that hang over the carnival and the half slice of the moon.
"You knew this would happen," he accuses. "From the second you brought him in."
"Not this precisely, but yes. I suspected his instability would manifest somehow. Naturally Bennet kept me abreast of the situation."
The old man sounds completely unconcerned, like they're in his mother's parlor discussing the weather and not how one of his roustabouts nearly brought ruination down on their heads. His Majesty is so far above his peasants' petty concerns. What's a broken Ferris Wheel? What's a dead kid or two or six? He summoned Nathan to his trailer even as Teddy was running to his and Pete's for help, and Nathan's not dumb enough to turn down an invite from the management, even if his little brother looks at him like he just fell from grace. They're outside No Hope, after all. It's only fitting.
"Miss Gordon's gone with him as well, in case you were wondering."
No, he wasn't actually wondering, and he has to laugh at the "Miss Gordon." Only Mr. Linderman would give the same courtesy to a common whore that he would to a lady. It's all the same to him. People are just things, all with a price, all something he can buy or sell or trade. One soul is as good as another. "I don't care about her, about them, and you know it. All I care about are Claire and Peter. I want to take them away, back home. They deserve better than this."
"Claire is my star attraction, Nathan. This unfortunate incident with her mother changes nothing. She's still mine, still part of my grand plan. You and your brother are free to return to New York any time you choose, of course," Linderman notes with something that almost sounds like regret. "I trust you'll give Angela my regards. Your mother was quite a force to be reckoned with in her day. She could have headlined any playbill on the circuit."
He's barely aware of it when the glass in his hand breaks. It's only the sting of the liquor seeping into the cuts in his palms that tells him he's bleeding.
Linderman knows as well as he does that leaving Claire behind at the carny is not an option. As long as she's here, the Flying Petrellis and their act are here. Another piece in Linderman's collection. Forever in his service.
"Why did you send for me tonight?" he hisses past the pain, clenching his fist and hoping, uncharitably, that he squeezes enough blood out to stain the expensive Turkish rug covering the floor.
"I merely wanted to inquire if you'd perfected that double back flip you'd been planning to add to your routine."
Right. And he's Teddy Roosevelt. "What's your grand plan, Linderman?" he demands. "You ever going to tell me that? And don't try and tell me it involves a double back flip or a somersault."
"Oh, no, Mr. Petrelli, it certainly does not," Linderman chuckles, lounging back on his claw foot sofa like he's a barker selling to a whole slew of suckers. "I can assure you that it has much, much more flash."
His Majesty is a born liar. The perfect showman even though no audience will ever see him in the center ring or up on the tightrope. Somewhere, P.T. Barnum's rolling over three times in his grave.
Nathan picks shards of glass out of his skin one by one, pours himself a fresh dose of bourbon, and watches the greatest show on earth.
**
Mohinder's surprised that things get quiet, that things settle down and folks go back to their trailers and tents after closing down for the night. But with five men on watch around the perimeter, including Bennet and Claude, there's not much else to do besides wait. Wait for sleep, wait for another screech of gears or another scream. Wait for Gabriel to do whatever it is that the Ferris Wheel was supposed to keep them all from knowin'.
The carny ain't as dumb as Gabe thinks; it ain't as helpless.
Otherwise, Linderman wouldn't have put them all together. Sure it's dancers and daredevils and soothsayers and tiger tamers, but it's an army, too. Each one of 'em are soldiers, armed to the gills.
Except him, of course. He's just the drummer boy, banging on the stretched skin, good for nothing except sounding alarm.
The candle by his bed is nearly burned down. The wick flickers. The wax is spilling down from the edge of the table in intricate spirals, and Mohinder sighs, taking off his bent spectacles and setting them aside. "'What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'" he quotes, softly, closing the book he was pretending to read and holding his place between the pages with his thumb.
Claire looks up at him, her dark eyes all red and bleary with tears, rubbing at her watery nose with the back of her hand. "What in tarnation are you going on about?"
"Something's slouching right along side us, to wherever we're going next. Can't you feel it?" he wonders, adding, "Yeats," when she scowls. "He's an Irishman. I reckon I'd like to go to Ireland some day. And Spain and Japan and India."
"Then go, why don'tcha? Say hello to my mama if you see her there." She turns over, pulling the blanket over her head and pretending to be in a snit, only he knows it's so he won't see her cry some more.
She took it mighty rough when they told her Meredith ran off with Gabe. Buried her face in the Haitian's stomach, squeezed him so hard it likely would've broke a smaller man in half. The Haitian man held her for as long as he could before he looked at Mohinder with something like pleading. He didn't even have to talk, not that Mohinder expected him to. It was all right there in his eyes: "Take her from me, mon ami, take her before I take her in the way that would make Nathan string me up."
Getting strung up by Nathan is a common fear on the circuit. Nobody looks at Claire too hard if they can help it. Mohinder doesn't look at her at all, in fact. He just smacks the lump under the blanket with Mr. Yeats. "Be thankful, Darlin'. Your mama is a bitch, and she don't love you like the rest of us do."
Claire makes an outraged noise and kicks his shin. But a couple minutes later, her bright blond head pokes out onto the pillow next to his. "What do you mean something's slouchin'?" she demands. "You mean Gabe? Crawling like the low dog he is?"
Yeah, he means Gabe.
But he means something else, too.
Mohinder can almost see the shape of it, if he squints. Something big, something coming together like points on a map. He don't need the mystic power of the Orient for that. The signs are everywhere. No Hope. No Hope. No Hope.
**
They expect him to come back to the carnival, slinking in after dark like a thief. He doesn't, of course. He and Meredith commandeer a pickup truck from town and go on ahead. When they're a full three days ahead, well into New Mexico, they hole up in a rented room above a saloon and wait for the caravan to catch up.
He'll kill Alejandro first. He should have the night he killed his sister, made them a matched pair in the grave. He does so hate leaving things unfinished. And that's what this all is right now: unfinished.
"I don't get it," Meredith whines, a ball of flame dancing from one fingertip to the next as she lounges on the narrow bed. "I thought you were going to get 'em, Gabriel… bleed them all dry."
"Patience," he tells her, remembering the clocks and how the hands slipped, fraction by fraction, to each new minute, each new hour. "Just have a little patience and you'll see the streets run red."
He lets her fuck him to pass the time, even though he finds the act generally distasteful. Sex has never rattled his chains. Forget about it. Only death has that privilege.
He twists 'Jandro's neck bright and early one morning when he's setting up the camp's pump at the well. He doesn't crack his skull, doesn't bust him open. There's no point. No, with this one, as it will be with Bennet and the Hindoo, there's only the momentary thrill. Meredith is appeased by the five dollars he finds in the dead man's pockets. But for him, the whole business barely whets his appetite.
You see, he has a list.
The little princess is at the end, not that her slut of a mother knows it.
And there's at least a dozen names before her. A dozen gifts.
"Patience," he tells himself, sliding his hand down the fly of his trousers. "Just have a little patience."
**
Hiro and Ando find Alejandro propped up beside the well like a broken scarecrow. Bennet's never seen two people move so fast, a literal blink, and suddenly they're in front of him, rattling on in English and Japanese. The only word he manages to catch is the only one that matters: "Gabriel."
They get a party out there before Claire can go off in search of water for her tenth bath of the day and they bury 'Jandro nice and proper. Mohinder even says a few words out of the Good Book, since Suresh had more than one copy stashed away. Parkman makes a joke about trying to earn his own keep as a rabbi before stopping mid-sentence 'cause he likely hears someone's brain telling him to shut up. When they break and head back towards the trailers and tents, Bennet pretends he don't see the fear in the Indian's eyes, pretends he doesn't understand it completely.
Him and Mohinder, they're the two people left in this outfit who ain't got nothin' but human wits and human strength to rely on. Everybody from the cook to the Fat Lady's got power. Gabriel knows that. Gabriel's gonna come for them and try and pick them off like a wolf thinning the weak from the herd.
Bennet checks his gun even though he knows it's loaded. He cleaned the barrel and put the six bullets in the chamber himself this morning. Human wits and human strength, they're enough when used right. He knows that. The dead men he's left in his wake know that, too. He ain't afraid of facing down a pissant coward like Gabriel Gray and he isn't afraid to end up in the ground either. Every man has his time. He's just figuring on Gabe's time being up before his own.
He gathers up all the men in the big tent --and Niki, even though she doesn't quite know why, and it's probably better that way-- and tells them in the plainest possible terms that they're under siege. He never served, but he knew a couple of fellas who fought in the Great War who ended up on the circuit, and he feels a little strange talking to the roustabouts and performers like they're soldiers, but he figures it ain't all that much different from the usual orders he barks.
He tells them all to stick together, to never go anywhere alone, to make sure someone's watching the women and children at all times, and most importantly… "If you see that slimy, little sonofabitch, you use every weapon you got. I don't care who's watching or what's going on. If he comes at you, it's survival over discretion."
The news is met with varying degrees of shock, disbelief and agreement, and a laugh from Claude, mostly because Claude hates for anyone to think that he takes Bennet seriously. The man's like a mouthy housewife. If they were actually married, he'd be offended that Claude only loves him when no one's looking.
He checks his revolver again as they walk together to Mr. Linderman's trailer.
It'll work when used right.
It has to.
**
Monique ain't never watched Isaac paint. It's something she just too afraid to pick up… holding that brush and making pictures come alive. Three days after 'Jandro meets Le Bon Dieu, Isaac leaves her bed and goes to the big tent with his colors.
They're parked just outside the Roswell town limits, and though no one feels quite like putting on a show, the banners are up and the lights are strung because, as Bennet told 'em Mr. Linderman said, "If carnivals stopped for every dead roustabout, they would all be out of business." Linderman is cold like ice, and just thinkin' on him makes her cold, too, so she grabs Meredith's feather-lined robe (she won't be needing it, n'est ce pas?) and follows Isaac, thinking maybe this once, she'll watch him make magic. Maybe it'll keep her warm.
What she finds, though, ain't warm so much as it burns. Isaac didn't even leave her an hour before, but he's managed to make a mess of Linderman's precious white canvas tent. One whole big section of it. It's reds and oranges and grays and looks like blood and clouds. When she looks close, she sees that only Isaac's eyes are still white. All white.
"Cheri… cherie what is *wrong* wit' you? What are you doing?" she gasps, grabbing his shoulder.
Isaac pushes her off, hard enough so that she stumbles to the ground. She can see the needle pricks on his arms. He's been flying, and not like the Petrellis. He don't even see her, not really. He's too high. Isaac ain't never laid a hand on a woman otherwise. He's too sweet, too fine, like the spun sugar candy they sell on the midway.
"Linderman, he's gonna kill you," she warns, not even needin' second sight.
"Linderman already knows," he tells her, before turning back to the tableau drying on the wall. "Linderman's seen it in watercolor."
His shoulders go low, then, and even though he got his back to her, she knows his eyes are Isaac eyes once more. If he's talkin', he ain't under whatever fever drove him from her arms tonight.
"It's different this time, though, querida. I don't know why… but it's different." He waves at a dark patch in the corner; a shape that looks like it might be a man. "I was… I was almost there."
Before she burst in on him like a madwoman, he means. Her cheeks turn hot, and she gets up real slow. "I'm sorry." And then, before she even knows it, his paintbrush is in her hand. Something tells her which colors to pick from his palette, which way to pull the bristles. It's like a whisper. The same one that tells her how to cook a gumbo and how to do the Charleston. She helps him. She fixes what he left undone. She catches the fever, too.
It feels like hours later when they're cozy in each other's arms, staring at the masterpiece. She sees the whole picture now, the fire and the death, and she sees two faces she knows caught inside it. It's the most terrible thing she ever saw. "What *is* it, Isaac?"
He only says one word, muffling it against her hair, and it's enough to chill her down to the bone even though she has no idea what it means.
"Alamogordo."
**
"Alamogordo, my dear Nathan," Linderman murmurs, chuckling softly and staring at the torn piece of circus tent that now spans half the wall of his trailer. "It's really and truly elementary."
Ain't nothin' elementary about it, he thinks, forgoing his mother's fancy speech at least in his own head. The carny's buried a trail of bodies between this stop and Roswell and Mr. Linderman insists on holding cocktail parties to crow about his all important, motherfucking plan and show Isaac's work like it's a masterpiece at the Louvre.
"It's all coming together, you see, at that remarkable place."
"No, Mr. Linderman, I don't see. All I see is a two bit dog and pony show that ain't even going to have a pony by the time we get to your 'remarkable' place… and for what?" He scoffs, and the Spanish wine Linderman bade him try tastes like the foulest moonshine as he holds it too long in his mouth. "So you can get yourself a nice suntan in the middle of fucking nowhere?"
"Oh, but you *are* tragically shortsighted, aren't you? Well, I can hardly blame you since seeing the future isn't among your particular talents," Linderman sighs. "You have no idea that in just a few short years, less than a decade really, what happens at Alamogordo will decide the fate of the world… and I plan to be a vital part of that decision."
"Would you stop talking in riddles? Our people are *dying*." Alejandro, then Candice, then Eden. Gabriel picked the girls off so easy even though they left the camp in a pair. Then he got ambitious. He got Matt, who they were using to stand guard because surely a mind reader could hear the enemy coming. When the Haitian carried his headless body into the center tent, Nathan couldn't help but think that maybe Matty had been right… maybe he' woulda been better off making his living as a rabbi.
Mohinder stood over Parkman's fresh grave and looked at them all. He said, "It should've been me. Every last one of these shoulda been me."
When Claire hugged him tight and said, "Don't you talk like that, Mo. Don't you *ever* talk like that," Nathan was infinitely glad it hadn't been.
"More people will die in the years to come. Millions. I'm trying to prevent that." His Majesty's voice is soft, nearly sincere, but the blue of his eyes burns like the center of a flame. "We have the technology to prevent that here in our midst, Nathan. How much do you think our Department of Defense would pay to have someone like Claire on their side in the trenches? A girl who can withstand any tank, any bullet, any large-scale explosion?" He waves, theatrically, at the giant cloud in Isaac's picture.
"You’re a monster," Nathan hisses, pretending he doesn't see the unmistakably female shape in the middle of it. The tiny, beautiful, Claire shape.
"Nonsense. If I were a monster, I would be making deals with Germany, would I not? It's fortunate that the leader of their party has no use for my kind," Linderman says this with a caustic note, and Nathan would be sympathetic, except that he knows the boss man has no loyalty to anyone. He's learned that the hard way.
"You mean to sell my daughter to the U.S. government like she's some piece of combat armor, and you think it's going to save the goddamn world?" Nathan breaks what must be his fifteenth or sixteenth piece of Linderman's glassware. "How can you do that to her? She's just a little girl. She's *my* little girl and I will fucking kill you with my bare hands before I let you auction her off…"
"Well, her *and* Ted, really. They should come as a package deal, don't you think? Given his unique talents?" Linderman chuckles, not even listening to his litany of threats. No, they're promises. They are absolutely promises. "Destruction and the indestructible. Thanks to Hiro Nakamura's rather distinct ability to jump time, I'm going to have Claire emerge from their precious test, on these very grounds where we've laid our camp, from the center of that glorious atomic weapon… and then offer them a weapon that can be fired more than once."
"There's only one problem with that." The trailer door bangs all the way open, sounding like the crack of a gunshot. Nathan instinctively knows it can't be good that Bennet is standing there, his face grey and his lips white. The man growls, adjusting his thick-framed glasses. "We just found Teddy dead two miles outta camp. Carved up like a Christmas ham."
Nathan chokes on the sudden knot in his throat.
He doesn't want to ask.
Linderman does it for him. "And his brain?"
"Gabe took it. Gabriel goddamn cut him open and took it," Bennet whispers.
Just like with everyone else since 'Jandro.
"But why…? What does he *do* with them?" he wonders, aloud, finally giving voice to the morbid question that's been plaguing everyone in the show.
For just the barest second, His Majesty actually looks afraid. Then it's gone, and his air of not giving a damn is firmly back in place. "Why, he eats them, of course. To absorb the abilities."
Nathan barely makes it past Bennet in time to puke fancy Spanish wine into the dirt.
**
She takes her first steps in years onto the hot, white sands just outside Alamogordo. There's nothing for miles except the desert and the sun.
It's been a real long time since she's been out, since she's been free. Her man always called it another kind of slavery, being trapped inside a body and not knowing how to get out. Seeing freedom so close and never being able to touch it. Never being able to hold Micah, who's as much her son as he is Niki's. That was the worst. Just pain of the worst kind, especially after they let her man swing for walking down the wrong road with a white woman. She'd almost ripped them all to pieces, those little, fucking pigs with their ropes and their tar and their hoods. Except the baby needed her. Needed Nicole. So she went back into bondage, she clapped herself in irons so her lips could say "no, sir," and "yes, sir," and her feet could tap the Can-Can.
Now she's emancipated. She's taking her first, real breath of good, clean air.
Only it tastes like blood and ashes.
She hears the snap of a twig somewhere off in the distance. A footstep. And that's all she needs to know that trouble is coming. That slimy, no-good, Gabriel, sneaking towards their henhouse like he's some kind of sly fox. Back to pilfer again, to kill again. To fight them from the shadows like the coward he is.
Even though she can still feel the chains, she's ready.
They call her the Amazon.
Because war is what she was born for.
**
Nathan ain't the one who tells her she's in danger. No. It ain't even Peter. Nathan tells Peter, who tells Mohinder, who tells her. Sometimes, Claire wishes her daddy was like the kind in storybooks… the kind that picks flowers from the gardens of beasts all to make his little girl happy. Instead, he's the kind that barely speaks to her, just stands far off and scowls something awful.
"He does love you, you know," Mohinder says, just as she's about to slam out of the trailer and go give Nathan a good piece of her mind. "He's just one of those strong, silent types who can't show it."
"Horse puckey," she says, because the last time she said "bullshit," Mohinder washed her mouth out with soap. Held her head under the pump and everything. "The Haitian's strong and silent and I know he loves me lots. I don't think Nathan even *likes* me."
A look crosses Mohinder's face that she can't even begin to describe, and then he sighs, rubbing at the creases between his eyebrows. He ain't had a good time of it since Gabe started killing everyone. Claire knows he half-expects to be next. She told him there's no way that'll happen, not with her around. "Sweetheart," he says, softly, using his Mystic Voice. "Do you really think a man like him would stay here if he didn't have somethin' to stay for? Do you reckon *any* of us would stay here without you?"
Her mama seems to be living without her just fine, she wants to say. But she doesn't. His face is too sad, too worried. She throws her arms around him and hugs him on impulse. "I'll be fine, " she says. "I don't care what stupid Mr. Linderman has planned for me. I won't do it. He can't make me."
Mohinder's "yes, he can," stays unspoken, but she hears it anyway. Just like she hears everything the Haitian never says. Mohinder makes a big show of wiping off his cheek after she plants a big, wet kiss on it. She tells him to go find Nicole if he wants anything with more bite to it, and when she bangs out of the trailer, she doesn't turn towards Nathan's. He can stick all his worryin' about her in his pipe and smoke it. No, she knows exactly where she's going… to the flatbed truck hitched to Shirley's cage, where the Haitian is always sacked out, staring up at the stars.
The old tiger is asleep, her grizzly muzzle on her twitching paws. She's like a big ol' pussycat. Claire's had half a mind to toss her a ball of thread to see if she'd play with it, except Monique would likely kill her for wasting it. They need it for mending. They need it for shrouds.
The Haitian's sitting up in the truck bed, eyes open and distant, like he's seeing something she can't. Like he's using his powers. But somehow he knows she's there. His hand swipes out, catches hers as she's scrambling up beside him. He squeezes her fingers, and then whatever it is he's doing inside his head is done, and he whispers her name.
She whispers his. She's the only one who knows it. The only one he told. "You know what Mr. Linderman wants from me, don't you?"
He nods, pulling her to sit between his legs, resting his chin on top of her head. "I will protect you, cherie." His voice is a low rumble that she feels all the way down to her toes. "Don't you fret."
"I don't want you to protect me." She twists around to look at him, at his big, dark eyes. Like Mohinder's, they're sad and worried. She hates it. She just goddamn hates it that everyone does nothing but worry about her. That she's what is keeping them all trapped here in the carny. "All I need is for y'all to love me. That's all," she declares, poking him in his big, solid chest.
"I can do that, too," he chuckles. "I already do."
He stops laughing when she kisses him on the mouth. It's not teasing, like when she kissed Mohinder. It's not smooth or practiced, like her mama with her johns. It lands funny, and her teeth click against his, and she thinks, "Oh gosh, I am so stupid," as the blush goes from her cheeks down her neck, to all the way beneath her shirt. "I love you, too," she tells him, ducking her head and praying she just dies from mortification and saves Mr. Linderman the trouble of parading her around to the highest bidder like a prize horse.
But then the Haitian's big, warm hand slides into her hair, cradles her and makes her look back up at him. His gentle, white smile is the brightest thing in his dark face and he's the handsomest man she's ever seen. Even more than Isaac, who looks like a movie star. He does the kissing this time, and it's perfect.
For just a few minutes in the back of a truck, with the stars out and a big cat sleeping nearby, Claire doesn't care that her number is up. She's the safest she's ever been in her life.
**
Gabriel picks a new name after he kills Ted. With the blood still slick on his fingers and the power coursing through him, he calls himself 'Sylar.' Meredith thinks it's stupid, but not quite so stupid when he backhands her hard enough to send her sprawling into the dust. *Fucking asshole,* he hears her think. He knows the ripple of flame is coming before she even unleashes it, and meets it with a burst of energy hot enough to neutralize it in mid-air.
Oh, yes. This will do nicely, he thinks.
He'll raze Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show to the ground. Take them all inside him. Come one, come all. That will be something to see.
Then, the world will be his.
He whistles as he makes his way back to the campsite, hands in his pockets; he even stops to do a little soft shoe like a player in a vaudeville show. They've got the Amazon on guard duty now… as if the bitch is any match for him.
*No one* is a match for him now.
**
Bennet warns him against murdering the boss, and not out of any lingering sense of loyalty. No, he ain't Linderman's man at all. "It'll cause chaos in the ranks, Nathan, and they're already on edge," he warns, mildly, as Nathan bends over a list of the crew and the showmen. He scratches names down with the ink pen for a few minutes, in each column: Trust and Don't Trust. That fool Mendez, who Claire was sweet on last summer, goes in the second. He's too high most of the time for his loyalty to count for anything. Niki goes there, too, because he knows she's got her own baby to worry about, and she'll see to Micah before she even thinks twice about what Linderman has planned for his daughter. Hiro, the other part of the grand design, goes right beneath Niki, because as far as Nathan can tell, the kid's so grateful to "Meester Rinderman," that there ain't no nudgin' him. Even if they could get Ando to explain the straight facts.
After a minute, he makes a third column: Dead, and sets down all the people they've lost to Gabriel. "Why do you think His Majesty's not worried about Gabe?" he asks, aloud.
Bennet takes off his glasses and rubs at them with the untucked tail of his shirt. He chews on the question for a spell, which only makes Nathan respect him more. "Honestly, Petrelli? I reckon he thinks his band of merry men --meanin' us-- is going to get the jump on Gabriel, and that he can just use him at the Trinity test site instead of Ted."
He swears a good, blue streak, settling back in his chair and staring out the tiny window, where Monica's washing out their costumes in a tin washtub. "And how many of the merry men have got to die before we catch the sonofabitch?" he demands. "We are meant for more than this, and if I could take Pete and Claire and just fly the fuck back East, I would."
"Can't you?" Bennet sits down on the edge of his mattress, elbows on his knees. "This is what I ain't understood since I been here: Why do any of you stay? Most of you are twice as powerful as him."
"I think most stay because it's all they got. There ain't no jobs out there, and under the big top, at least they can *do* something… and we don't have to hide. We can be who we are." That's why they stay. As for why he doesn't leave… Nathan sighs, heavily, revealing Linderman's trump card, his goddamn ace in the hole. "The carny's the only home, the only family, Claire's ever known. If I tried to take her… you know that girl… she'd just find her way back here. She's not gonna leave Suresh or the Haitian."
"Then why don't you all go?"
Nathan jumps just about three feet in the air when Peter suddenly appears out of thin air. No telling how long he's been in the trailer, how long he's been invisible, and how much he's heard. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, Pete?" he demands, practically leaping from his seat to rattle his brother's teeth.
"I'm listening," Peter says, shoving him back and blowing his long hair out of his face like he used to when he was just a kid. "I'm listening, and you should listen to me. There ain't nothin' you all can do that I can't. I can fly, I can paint, I can be Hiro if I want to, and I can fall fifty feet and walk away from it. So go. If Linderman's got me, he don't need you or Claire. Hell, I reckon I can be his new star attraction. Go through my paces for a pretty penny *and* the Army if he wants."
Nathan barely hears Bennet pick up his ink pen over the buzzing between his ears. He stumbles back, shaking his head and saying, "No. No, Peter, there's got to be another way."
"There might be," Peter says, the set of his jaw mulish. "But this is a good one, and you know it. Me for you and Claire and everyone she loves. Linderman would take that deal if he knew just how much I can do."
Bennet just looks at them both, one eyebrow raised over the horn-rim of his glasses, and picks up Nathan's list. It says everything he's not saying. He's added to it. Under the Trust column. Peter's name. Underlined twice.
A minute later, the pen is wrested from Bennet's fingers and Claude's name appears there, too.
Nathan's really not surprised to see the bastard.
No, he's just hopeful. For the first time in 100 miles.
**
She hauls Gabriel in like a squawking chicken ripe for the geek to bite off its head, pinching his neck ignoring his string of insults. It ain't nothin' she hasn't heard before. Whore. Bitch. Negro lover. Though she can't fathom how Gabe even knows the last one since her D.L. was dead long before she joined the carny. Unless Meredith told him. Meredith that lily-livered little slut, who didn't even show her face when her partner tried to cut her throat. Probably hiding above some dive, drowning in liquor.
"Let me go, Niki… let me go, or I will destroy you," Gabriel says, his hands glowing red like Teddy's used to.
"I'm not Niki," she says, tartly, before knocking his lights out.
She tosses him right square in the middle of the midway, figures it's the perfect place for the biggest freak of all, and yells for everyone to gather with the tar, the feathers, and the rope. She knows what a horrible way it is to die, and knows there's no one else on God's green earth who deserves to suffer it more.
And then Mr. Linderman walks up with the kids. One hand on Micah's shoulder, one hand on Molly's. Smiling like he's their granddaddy bringing them to the fair. Only the spectacle is her with her foot on Gabe's neck. "Now, Jessica," he says, even though she's never told a soul her name. "Is this really necessary?"
Micah's eyes are big in his face. Her boy's looking at her like he's never seen her before. And he reaches for Molly's hand and holds it tight. "Mama? What's going on?"
What goes on is that Linderman's wrinkled fingers dig into his shoulders. He looks at her with that perfect smile, and she knows he can take life from her son just as sure as he can give life to the vegetable garden that always springs up no matter where they set spikes.
When Bennet, Nathan, Peter, and Claire and the rest all spill from the tents and the trailers, Jessica feels her head start to grow light. She starts to see Niki banging on her eyelids, screaming to get out. "Let me handle this," she yells, knocking against her skull. "For God's sake, let me handle this. Do not let him hurt our son."
She feels her foot slip down to the sandy earth.
She whispers, "It's okay, Micah. It'll be all right."
The only chicken being handed to the geek is her.
**
The entire show spills into the midway when Nicole starts hollering. His blood goes cold, and Mohinder tarries only enough to reach beneath the bed and grab the long knife he only brings out for special occasions… usually times where Mohinder the Mystic and the Amazing Kensei are doing a dual show and Hiro needs to pretend to choke the blade down, right down to the jeweled hilt.
He remembers his father used to tell him it came from the court of Mughal emperors, that it traveled the seas just like Chandra Suresh did, and they both found their home at the carnival. So many of his father's things have a home here. Mohinder knows every single thing in the trailer is inherited. The only thing that's his own is the people outside.
He hits the dirt running, and skids to a stop when he sees Niki towering over a body crumpled on the ground, and her boy, Micah, standing along with little Molly by the boss man. The illustrious management. Actually walking amongst the masses. He grips his knife hard enough for the ruby on the hilt to cut into his palm. This ain't good. This ain't good at all.
Because the closer he gets, the more obvious it is that the sack of trouble on the ground is Gabriel, and he's starting to wake up.
"Let's handle this without shedding anymore blood, shall we?" suggests Mr. Linderman, who sounds like he's gathered them all for some kind of fancy dress ball and not for a lynching. "I'm sure the children would prefer that. They're far too young to witness such horrors. Just leave Mr. Gray to me."
"Like Hell!" This comes from Claire, who pulls away from the Haitian man, both hands on her hips like when she's sassing him for making her keep up with her reading. *What do I need to read for, Mohinder? What am I gonna do with schoolin'?* "Gabe's hurt too many of our kin," she cries. "He's gotta pay."
Nathan, Bennet, Claude, and Peter all flinch. The sun is glinting off Bennet's pistol. They're all ready to make some kind of move. Just say the word. Only he don't know the word or the move.
That's when Gabe starts to laugh. A rusty, wheezing sound, 'cause it's likely Niki knocked the tar out of him. That dark, cold part of Niki that he ain't ever even seen himself. It probably ain't nothing compared to Gabe, who murdered so many members of the family like he was swatting flies. He starts to get up, slow, making a performance outta it. "You stupid old man," he sneers. "You stupid, stupid, old man. You really think you can handle me? And you, Princess… you little bitch." Gabriel's hands begin to glow.
"Claire!" He sees the red energy burst headed towards her and he's moving before he even knows it, knocking into her, knocking her to the ground.
He covers her with his body, his heart hammering loud in his chest. He hears something sizzle, something burn, and a chorus of screams. Claire shoves at his chest, "Lemme up, Mohinder," she yelps. "I'm the one person he *can't* hurt," she reminds.
Oh, Lord. She's right.
They scramble to their feet, but it's too late. Six people on the ground dead, all in a blink. Burned beyond recognition except he recognizes them anyway. Willie, the cook, who came to 'em after serving in the Great War. West, one of the rousties, who said he got his name because he was born on the edge of the Pacific and was always whining about not joining the Flying Petrellis. Two more men, two more women. None of 'em performers, but each of them a brother, a sister, or a friend. Each one of them someone who belonged here.
Just like he does. If only to do one thing.
Mohinder sees past his anger just enough to know he's still got his knife.
He launches himself towards the makeshift center ring, ready to bring the house down.
"No!" Peter shouts, and all of a sudden he's there, between Mohinder and Gabriel, who's charging up for another round of hellfire and damnation. "Stop it, Gabe!" he yells, grabbing the other man in some horrible echo of a hug.
"My name is *Sylar*."
He's all red now, not just his hands. Like he's standing in the center of a candle flame. Mohinder can feel the heat coming off of him, and he hears Molly's high-pitched keening as Peter's hair catches and starts to burn, too. Everyone starts yelling and crying, then. There's so much noise. Ten thousand times louder than the joints on the Ferris Wheel.
Niki yells Micah's name like someone's tearing her heart out.
Claire's sobbing for her uncle and calling Gabe every dirty name in the book and she hits Mohinder so hard he has to grab her little fists to make her stop.
And then everything happens in a blur.
Hiro grabs Molly and Micah and jumps with them to the far side of the camp.
Nobody has to translate for him. He just does it.
The Haitian clocks Linderman clean upside the head and then keeps his hands on either side of the old man's face, doing whatever it is he does to make people forget.
Nathan shouts, "Pete! Pete, you don't have to do this!"
Only he does. Mohinder knows he does. He's being a rebel again. Flying high on his own terms. He takes Gabriel with him high into the sky… and then they vanish, like they were never there at all.
**
All Pete ever wanted to be was a hero, like Rudolph Valentino.
The closest he gets to being The Sheik is being in the desert. Burning hot. So hot, he can't see, can't feel. He only knows that he's still got Gabriel pinned against his chest as they go wherever it is they're going. Alamogordo, he thinks. Only that's where they *are*. Just like that. The same sand, the same sky.
He doesn't know if it's the past, the future, or yesterday.
He just knows it hurts. It hurts to fly. It hurts to let Gabriel drop like a stone. It hurts because he has no eyelids, no lips and his brain is burning.
And then the earth shakes with a loud BOOM!
Everything goes from red-hot to white-cold.
To nothing.
Except the smell of his mama's perfume…
**
His Majesty called the test site "Trinity," whispering it with reverence like he really meant the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. When Nathan stands there, it's amidst the bodies, still smelling of fire and brimstone. He's with everyone else who's left of Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show. Not so many people at all. He looks at Mohinder, he looks at the Haitian, and he thinks the name Trinity is fitting for a different reason. They're the three men in Claire's life who matter most to her… even if she doesn't realize yet that he deserves that honor.
Nathan knows he ain't been the most comforting of fathers. That he raises his voice or doesn't use it at all more than he's ever actually talked to her. That's gonna change. Starting today. Starting now.
He takes three, long strides to reach her.
And he pulls her into his arms, holds her tight like she's always holding everybody else, and murmurs three words he should've said a dozen years sooner. "I love you."
Claire squeezes him around the middle, her cheek warm and wet against the front of his shirt. "Thank you," she whispers, adding… "Daddy."
Nathan cradles her close, savoring that one, beautiful word, and, later, when he breaks down and starts to mourn for Pete, he leans on her. His Invincible Girl holds onto him; she tells him she can bear the weight.
--end--
July 28, 2008
Title: "Somewhere in Sands"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Heroes (and slightly Carnivale)
Rating: R for adult language and sexual content
Pairing: gen, with mentions of Claire/the Haitian and Isaac/Monica.
Word Count: 12010
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my insane idea.
Summary: A sequel to One of Us, a 1930s carnival AU. The carny, Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show, it ain't exactly a place where a body would really consider themselves alone.
All Peter ever wanted to be was a hero, like in the pictures. Like Rudolph Valentino. For the longest time, he thought Nathan was the real thing. His big brother, so amazing, so smart. So when Nathan ran away from home, he did, too. When Nathan joined the carny, he did, too. Nathan decided they'd start doing the trapeze, he named the act, he choreographed every jump, and Pete just followed him.
Hell, he reckons the only place he never followed his big brother was into Meredith's bed, but that's mostly because Nathan told him she was poison and that he'd sooner kill Meredith than "let that evil bitch get her claws into you, too." Gosh. If that weren't the most powerful warning a man could get, Pete didn't know what was.
Tonight, when Ted came running, screaming for help, Nathan didn't even move. He stayed in the trailer, just shaking his head and quietly saying, "You go on, Pete."
"You heard him. They need us. Come on, Nathan, we have to go." But no matter what he said, Nate wouldn't budge. So, for the first time since he bunked with Mohinder during his Years of Rebellion, Pete didn't do any following. He led. All by himself.
Now he's a hero, like he's always wanted to be.
Only it don't feel like he thought it would.
No, when Pete's drinking down half a soda pop in one gulp and slumping against the divan on Mohinder's platform on the midway, he feels like he's going to throw up. His skin is hot, damp, and all he can hear is that boy in the seat screaming for his mama over and over. Even when the seat was fixed, solid and upright, the kid just looked at the air where Pete was floating, like he could see him even though he was invisible, and said, "I want my mama."
He barely remembers his own mama now.
It's been so long.
He remembers she smelled like fancy flowers and bourbon and disapproval. She always wore black dresses in the latest fashion and made him wear starched neckties. Nathan says she's still alive, that she's in fine health and she misses them.
For the first time since his Years of Rebellion, Pete wonders if his amazing, smart big brother is a liar. If they're all a bunch of liars here, just making up stories and pretending to be something they ain't. "Why didn't Nathan come with me, Mo? Why didn't he help?" he asks, nearly choking on his last mouthful of the warm, fizzy soda.
Mohinder looks at him and shrugs, his turban falling askew. "Beats me," he drawls, like a born and bred Texan. Though, honestly, he don't even know if he was born in the Black Hole of Calcutta or what. "But you did a great thing tonight. You saved that kid. You saved our hides."
The problem is Pete ain't sure their hides are worth saving.
**
None of them really expect to find Gabriel when they spread out through the camp. Mohinder stops her by the geeks, tells her over the clucking of chickens that still have their heads that they figure the yellow-bellied coward's done run off already. For all Gabe's talk of mutiny and more money, none of the other rousties went with him, and they all swear up and down they didn't know he jimmied the Wheel.
Half of Niki believes them. The other half don't.
And none of her is all that surprised when she comes back to the cooch and finds Monique all alone entertaining a couple of the rubes who were too cotton-brained on moonshine to even care that the carny almost had a genuine catastrophe on their hands.
"Ain't she wit' you, Nicole?" Monique asks, stopping playing peek-a-boo with her brassiere long enough for the worry to show in her eyes.
"No… no, we were gonna do a circle and meet back here."
That settles it, don't it?
Meredith is gone, too.
The high-falluting bitch who thought she ruled the tent just because she used to dance in a theatre in Tupelo with her clothes on… she's gone and left the tent behind for that traitorous, murderous weasel who nearly killed some poor mother's little boy just for a laugh. She'd always run off into the towns after a show, taking Claire's pay and spending it in the saloons. She'd come back stinking of whiskey and bragging loud with big plans to run away to California and be in the talkies. They all knew that one day, she just wasn't going to come back. That day is today.
"Oh, Lord," she whispers, flinching as the full weight of that sinks in. As the gramophone skips on the record and begins to scratch, uselessly, along the rim.
Oh, Lord, someone's gonna have to tell Claire that her mama left her and didn't even say goodbye.
Niki whirls from the tent to find Micah and hold him tight.
**
Nathan nurses Linderman's fine bourbon sip by sip, listening to the crowd winding down and spilling out the entry gates. He pushes the thick velvet curtain from the window to watch the torches of everyone looking for Gabe go out one by one, until all that's left are the twinkling, bare bulbs that hang over the carnival and the half slice of the moon.
"You knew this would happen," he accuses. "From the second you brought him in."
"Not this precisely, but yes. I suspected his instability would manifest somehow. Naturally Bennet kept me abreast of the situation."
The old man sounds completely unconcerned, like they're in his mother's parlor discussing the weather and not how one of his roustabouts nearly brought ruination down on their heads. His Majesty is so far above his peasants' petty concerns. What's a broken Ferris Wheel? What's a dead kid or two or six? He summoned Nathan to his trailer even as Teddy was running to his and Pete's for help, and Nathan's not dumb enough to turn down an invite from the management, even if his little brother looks at him like he just fell from grace. They're outside No Hope, after all. It's only fitting.
"Miss Gordon's gone with him as well, in case you were wondering."
No, he wasn't actually wondering, and he has to laugh at the "Miss Gordon." Only Mr. Linderman would give the same courtesy to a common whore that he would to a lady. It's all the same to him. People are just things, all with a price, all something he can buy or sell or trade. One soul is as good as another. "I don't care about her, about them, and you know it. All I care about are Claire and Peter. I want to take them away, back home. They deserve better than this."
"Claire is my star attraction, Nathan. This unfortunate incident with her mother changes nothing. She's still mine, still part of my grand plan. You and your brother are free to return to New York any time you choose, of course," Linderman notes with something that almost sounds like regret. "I trust you'll give Angela my regards. Your mother was quite a force to be reckoned with in her day. She could have headlined any playbill on the circuit."
He's barely aware of it when the glass in his hand breaks. It's only the sting of the liquor seeping into the cuts in his palms that tells him he's bleeding.
Linderman knows as well as he does that leaving Claire behind at the carny is not an option. As long as she's here, the Flying Petrellis and their act are here. Another piece in Linderman's collection. Forever in his service.
"Why did you send for me tonight?" he hisses past the pain, clenching his fist and hoping, uncharitably, that he squeezes enough blood out to stain the expensive Turkish rug covering the floor.
"I merely wanted to inquire if you'd perfected that double back flip you'd been planning to add to your routine."
Right. And he's Teddy Roosevelt. "What's your grand plan, Linderman?" he demands. "You ever going to tell me that? And don't try and tell me it involves a double back flip or a somersault."
"Oh, no, Mr. Petrelli, it certainly does not," Linderman chuckles, lounging back on his claw foot sofa like he's a barker selling to a whole slew of suckers. "I can assure you that it has much, much more flash."
His Majesty is a born liar. The perfect showman even though no audience will ever see him in the center ring or up on the tightrope. Somewhere, P.T. Barnum's rolling over three times in his grave.
Nathan picks shards of glass out of his skin one by one, pours himself a fresh dose of bourbon, and watches the greatest show on earth.
**
Mohinder's surprised that things get quiet, that things settle down and folks go back to their trailers and tents after closing down for the night. But with five men on watch around the perimeter, including Bennet and Claude, there's not much else to do besides wait. Wait for sleep, wait for another screech of gears or another scream. Wait for Gabriel to do whatever it is that the Ferris Wheel was supposed to keep them all from knowin'.
The carny ain't as dumb as Gabe thinks; it ain't as helpless.
Otherwise, Linderman wouldn't have put them all together. Sure it's dancers and daredevils and soothsayers and tiger tamers, but it's an army, too. Each one of 'em are soldiers, armed to the gills.
Except him, of course. He's just the drummer boy, banging on the stretched skin, good for nothing except sounding alarm.
The candle by his bed is nearly burned down. The wick flickers. The wax is spilling down from the edge of the table in intricate spirals, and Mohinder sighs, taking off his bent spectacles and setting them aside. "'What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?'" he quotes, softly, closing the book he was pretending to read and holding his place between the pages with his thumb.
Claire looks up at him, her dark eyes all red and bleary with tears, rubbing at her watery nose with the back of her hand. "What in tarnation are you going on about?"
"Something's slouching right along side us, to wherever we're going next. Can't you feel it?" he wonders, adding, "Yeats," when she scowls. "He's an Irishman. I reckon I'd like to go to Ireland some day. And Spain and Japan and India."
"Then go, why don'tcha? Say hello to my mama if you see her there." She turns over, pulling the blanket over her head and pretending to be in a snit, only he knows it's so he won't see her cry some more.
She took it mighty rough when they told her Meredith ran off with Gabe. Buried her face in the Haitian's stomach, squeezed him so hard it likely would've broke a smaller man in half. The Haitian man held her for as long as he could before he looked at Mohinder with something like pleading. He didn't even have to talk, not that Mohinder expected him to. It was all right there in his eyes: "Take her from me, mon ami, take her before I take her in the way that would make Nathan string me up."
Getting strung up by Nathan is a common fear on the circuit. Nobody looks at Claire too hard if they can help it. Mohinder doesn't look at her at all, in fact. He just smacks the lump under the blanket with Mr. Yeats. "Be thankful, Darlin'. Your mama is a bitch, and she don't love you like the rest of us do."
Claire makes an outraged noise and kicks his shin. But a couple minutes later, her bright blond head pokes out onto the pillow next to his. "What do you mean something's slouchin'?" she demands. "You mean Gabe? Crawling like the low dog he is?"
Yeah, he means Gabe.
But he means something else, too.
Mohinder can almost see the shape of it, if he squints. Something big, something coming together like points on a map. He don't need the mystic power of the Orient for that. The signs are everywhere. No Hope. No Hope. No Hope.
**
They expect him to come back to the carnival, slinking in after dark like a thief. He doesn't, of course. He and Meredith commandeer a pickup truck from town and go on ahead. When they're a full three days ahead, well into New Mexico, they hole up in a rented room above a saloon and wait for the caravan to catch up.
He'll kill Alejandro first. He should have the night he killed his sister, made them a matched pair in the grave. He does so hate leaving things unfinished. And that's what this all is right now: unfinished.
"I don't get it," Meredith whines, a ball of flame dancing from one fingertip to the next as she lounges on the narrow bed. "I thought you were going to get 'em, Gabriel… bleed them all dry."
"Patience," he tells her, remembering the clocks and how the hands slipped, fraction by fraction, to each new minute, each new hour. "Just have a little patience and you'll see the streets run red."
He lets her fuck him to pass the time, even though he finds the act generally distasteful. Sex has never rattled his chains. Forget about it. Only death has that privilege.
He twists 'Jandro's neck bright and early one morning when he's setting up the camp's pump at the well. He doesn't crack his skull, doesn't bust him open. There's no point. No, with this one, as it will be with Bennet and the Hindoo, there's only the momentary thrill. Meredith is appeased by the five dollars he finds in the dead man's pockets. But for him, the whole business barely whets his appetite.
You see, he has a list.
The little princess is at the end, not that her slut of a mother knows it.
And there's at least a dozen names before her. A dozen gifts.
"Patience," he tells himself, sliding his hand down the fly of his trousers. "Just have a little patience."
**
Hiro and Ando find Alejandro propped up beside the well like a broken scarecrow. Bennet's never seen two people move so fast, a literal blink, and suddenly they're in front of him, rattling on in English and Japanese. The only word he manages to catch is the only one that matters: "Gabriel."
They get a party out there before Claire can go off in search of water for her tenth bath of the day and they bury 'Jandro nice and proper. Mohinder even says a few words out of the Good Book, since Suresh had more than one copy stashed away. Parkman makes a joke about trying to earn his own keep as a rabbi before stopping mid-sentence 'cause he likely hears someone's brain telling him to shut up. When they break and head back towards the trailers and tents, Bennet pretends he don't see the fear in the Indian's eyes, pretends he doesn't understand it completely.
Him and Mohinder, they're the two people left in this outfit who ain't got nothin' but human wits and human strength to rely on. Everybody from the cook to the Fat Lady's got power. Gabriel knows that. Gabriel's gonna come for them and try and pick them off like a wolf thinning the weak from the herd.
Bennet checks his gun even though he knows it's loaded. He cleaned the barrel and put the six bullets in the chamber himself this morning. Human wits and human strength, they're enough when used right. He knows that. The dead men he's left in his wake know that, too. He ain't afraid of facing down a pissant coward like Gabriel Gray and he isn't afraid to end up in the ground either. Every man has his time. He's just figuring on Gabe's time being up before his own.
He gathers up all the men in the big tent --and Niki, even though she doesn't quite know why, and it's probably better that way-- and tells them in the plainest possible terms that they're under siege. He never served, but he knew a couple of fellas who fought in the Great War who ended up on the circuit, and he feels a little strange talking to the roustabouts and performers like they're soldiers, but he figures it ain't all that much different from the usual orders he barks.
He tells them all to stick together, to never go anywhere alone, to make sure someone's watching the women and children at all times, and most importantly… "If you see that slimy, little sonofabitch, you use every weapon you got. I don't care who's watching or what's going on. If he comes at you, it's survival over discretion."
The news is met with varying degrees of shock, disbelief and agreement, and a laugh from Claude, mostly because Claude hates for anyone to think that he takes Bennet seriously. The man's like a mouthy housewife. If they were actually married, he'd be offended that Claude only loves him when no one's looking.
He checks his revolver again as they walk together to Mr. Linderman's trailer.
It'll work when used right.
It has to.
**
Monique ain't never watched Isaac paint. It's something she just too afraid to pick up… holding that brush and making pictures come alive. Three days after 'Jandro meets Le Bon Dieu, Isaac leaves her bed and goes to the big tent with his colors.
They're parked just outside the Roswell town limits, and though no one feels quite like putting on a show, the banners are up and the lights are strung because, as Bennet told 'em Mr. Linderman said, "If carnivals stopped for every dead roustabout, they would all be out of business." Linderman is cold like ice, and just thinkin' on him makes her cold, too, so she grabs Meredith's feather-lined robe (she won't be needing it, n'est ce pas?) and follows Isaac, thinking maybe this once, she'll watch him make magic. Maybe it'll keep her warm.
What she finds, though, ain't warm so much as it burns. Isaac didn't even leave her an hour before, but he's managed to make a mess of Linderman's precious white canvas tent. One whole big section of it. It's reds and oranges and grays and looks like blood and clouds. When she looks close, she sees that only Isaac's eyes are still white. All white.
"Cheri… cherie what is *wrong* wit' you? What are you doing?" she gasps, grabbing his shoulder.
Isaac pushes her off, hard enough so that she stumbles to the ground. She can see the needle pricks on his arms. He's been flying, and not like the Petrellis. He don't even see her, not really. He's too high. Isaac ain't never laid a hand on a woman otherwise. He's too sweet, too fine, like the spun sugar candy they sell on the midway.
"Linderman, he's gonna kill you," she warns, not even needin' second sight.
"Linderman already knows," he tells her, before turning back to the tableau drying on the wall. "Linderman's seen it in watercolor."
His shoulders go low, then, and even though he got his back to her, she knows his eyes are Isaac eyes once more. If he's talkin', he ain't under whatever fever drove him from her arms tonight.
"It's different this time, though, querida. I don't know why… but it's different." He waves at a dark patch in the corner; a shape that looks like it might be a man. "I was… I was almost there."
Before she burst in on him like a madwoman, he means. Her cheeks turn hot, and she gets up real slow. "I'm sorry." And then, before she even knows it, his paintbrush is in her hand. Something tells her which colors to pick from his palette, which way to pull the bristles. It's like a whisper. The same one that tells her how to cook a gumbo and how to do the Charleston. She helps him. She fixes what he left undone. She catches the fever, too.
It feels like hours later when they're cozy in each other's arms, staring at the masterpiece. She sees the whole picture now, the fire and the death, and she sees two faces she knows caught inside it. It's the most terrible thing she ever saw. "What *is* it, Isaac?"
He only says one word, muffling it against her hair, and it's enough to chill her down to the bone even though she has no idea what it means.
"Alamogordo."
**
"Alamogordo, my dear Nathan," Linderman murmurs, chuckling softly and staring at the torn piece of circus tent that now spans half the wall of his trailer. "It's really and truly elementary."
Ain't nothin' elementary about it, he thinks, forgoing his mother's fancy speech at least in his own head. The carny's buried a trail of bodies between this stop and Roswell and Mr. Linderman insists on holding cocktail parties to crow about his all important, motherfucking plan and show Isaac's work like it's a masterpiece at the Louvre.
"It's all coming together, you see, at that remarkable place."
"No, Mr. Linderman, I don't see. All I see is a two bit dog and pony show that ain't even going to have a pony by the time we get to your 'remarkable' place… and for what?" He scoffs, and the Spanish wine Linderman bade him try tastes like the foulest moonshine as he holds it too long in his mouth. "So you can get yourself a nice suntan in the middle of fucking nowhere?"
"Oh, but you *are* tragically shortsighted, aren't you? Well, I can hardly blame you since seeing the future isn't among your particular talents," Linderman sighs. "You have no idea that in just a few short years, less than a decade really, what happens at Alamogordo will decide the fate of the world… and I plan to be a vital part of that decision."
"Would you stop talking in riddles? Our people are *dying*." Alejandro, then Candice, then Eden. Gabriel picked the girls off so easy even though they left the camp in a pair. Then he got ambitious. He got Matt, who they were using to stand guard because surely a mind reader could hear the enemy coming. When the Haitian carried his headless body into the center tent, Nathan couldn't help but think that maybe Matty had been right… maybe he' woulda been better off making his living as a rabbi.
Mohinder stood over Parkman's fresh grave and looked at them all. He said, "It should've been me. Every last one of these shoulda been me."
When Claire hugged him tight and said, "Don't you talk like that, Mo. Don't you *ever* talk like that," Nathan was infinitely glad it hadn't been.
"More people will die in the years to come. Millions. I'm trying to prevent that." His Majesty's voice is soft, nearly sincere, but the blue of his eyes burns like the center of a flame. "We have the technology to prevent that here in our midst, Nathan. How much do you think our Department of Defense would pay to have someone like Claire on their side in the trenches? A girl who can withstand any tank, any bullet, any large-scale explosion?" He waves, theatrically, at the giant cloud in Isaac's picture.
"You’re a monster," Nathan hisses, pretending he doesn't see the unmistakably female shape in the middle of it. The tiny, beautiful, Claire shape.
"Nonsense. If I were a monster, I would be making deals with Germany, would I not? It's fortunate that the leader of their party has no use for my kind," Linderman says this with a caustic note, and Nathan would be sympathetic, except that he knows the boss man has no loyalty to anyone. He's learned that the hard way.
"You mean to sell my daughter to the U.S. government like she's some piece of combat armor, and you think it's going to save the goddamn world?" Nathan breaks what must be his fifteenth or sixteenth piece of Linderman's glassware. "How can you do that to her? She's just a little girl. She's *my* little girl and I will fucking kill you with my bare hands before I let you auction her off…"
"Well, her *and* Ted, really. They should come as a package deal, don't you think? Given his unique talents?" Linderman chuckles, not even listening to his litany of threats. No, they're promises. They are absolutely promises. "Destruction and the indestructible. Thanks to Hiro Nakamura's rather distinct ability to jump time, I'm going to have Claire emerge from their precious test, on these very grounds where we've laid our camp, from the center of that glorious atomic weapon… and then offer them a weapon that can be fired more than once."
"There's only one problem with that." The trailer door bangs all the way open, sounding like the crack of a gunshot. Nathan instinctively knows it can't be good that Bennet is standing there, his face grey and his lips white. The man growls, adjusting his thick-framed glasses. "We just found Teddy dead two miles outta camp. Carved up like a Christmas ham."
Nathan chokes on the sudden knot in his throat.
He doesn't want to ask.
Linderman does it for him. "And his brain?"
"Gabe took it. Gabriel goddamn cut him open and took it," Bennet whispers.
Just like with everyone else since 'Jandro.
"But why…? What does he *do* with them?" he wonders, aloud, finally giving voice to the morbid question that's been plaguing everyone in the show.
For just the barest second, His Majesty actually looks afraid. Then it's gone, and his air of not giving a damn is firmly back in place. "Why, he eats them, of course. To absorb the abilities."
Nathan barely makes it past Bennet in time to puke fancy Spanish wine into the dirt.
**
She takes her first steps in years onto the hot, white sands just outside Alamogordo. There's nothing for miles except the desert and the sun.
It's been a real long time since she's been out, since she's been free. Her man always called it another kind of slavery, being trapped inside a body and not knowing how to get out. Seeing freedom so close and never being able to touch it. Never being able to hold Micah, who's as much her son as he is Niki's. That was the worst. Just pain of the worst kind, especially after they let her man swing for walking down the wrong road with a white woman. She'd almost ripped them all to pieces, those little, fucking pigs with their ropes and their tar and their hoods. Except the baby needed her. Needed Nicole. So she went back into bondage, she clapped herself in irons so her lips could say "no, sir," and "yes, sir," and her feet could tap the Can-Can.
Now she's emancipated. She's taking her first, real breath of good, clean air.
Only it tastes like blood and ashes.
She hears the snap of a twig somewhere off in the distance. A footstep. And that's all she needs to know that trouble is coming. That slimy, no-good, Gabriel, sneaking towards their henhouse like he's some kind of sly fox. Back to pilfer again, to kill again. To fight them from the shadows like the coward he is.
Even though she can still feel the chains, she's ready.
They call her the Amazon.
Because war is what she was born for.
**
Nathan ain't the one who tells her she's in danger. No. It ain't even Peter. Nathan tells Peter, who tells Mohinder, who tells her. Sometimes, Claire wishes her daddy was like the kind in storybooks… the kind that picks flowers from the gardens of beasts all to make his little girl happy. Instead, he's the kind that barely speaks to her, just stands far off and scowls something awful.
"He does love you, you know," Mohinder says, just as she's about to slam out of the trailer and go give Nathan a good piece of her mind. "He's just one of those strong, silent types who can't show it."
"Horse puckey," she says, because the last time she said "bullshit," Mohinder washed her mouth out with soap. Held her head under the pump and everything. "The Haitian's strong and silent and I know he loves me lots. I don't think Nathan even *likes* me."
A look crosses Mohinder's face that she can't even begin to describe, and then he sighs, rubbing at the creases between his eyebrows. He ain't had a good time of it since Gabe started killing everyone. Claire knows he half-expects to be next. She told him there's no way that'll happen, not with her around. "Sweetheart," he says, softly, using his Mystic Voice. "Do you really think a man like him would stay here if he didn't have somethin' to stay for? Do you reckon *any* of us would stay here without you?"
Her mama seems to be living without her just fine, she wants to say. But she doesn't. His face is too sad, too worried. She throws her arms around him and hugs him on impulse. "I'll be fine, " she says. "I don't care what stupid Mr. Linderman has planned for me. I won't do it. He can't make me."
Mohinder's "yes, he can," stays unspoken, but she hears it anyway. Just like she hears everything the Haitian never says. Mohinder makes a big show of wiping off his cheek after she plants a big, wet kiss on it. She tells him to go find Nicole if he wants anything with more bite to it, and when she bangs out of the trailer, she doesn't turn towards Nathan's. He can stick all his worryin' about her in his pipe and smoke it. No, she knows exactly where she's going… to the flatbed truck hitched to Shirley's cage, where the Haitian is always sacked out, staring up at the stars.
The old tiger is asleep, her grizzly muzzle on her twitching paws. She's like a big ol' pussycat. Claire's had half a mind to toss her a ball of thread to see if she'd play with it, except Monique would likely kill her for wasting it. They need it for mending. They need it for shrouds.
The Haitian's sitting up in the truck bed, eyes open and distant, like he's seeing something she can't. Like he's using his powers. But somehow he knows she's there. His hand swipes out, catches hers as she's scrambling up beside him. He squeezes her fingers, and then whatever it is he's doing inside his head is done, and he whispers her name.
She whispers his. She's the only one who knows it. The only one he told. "You know what Mr. Linderman wants from me, don't you?"
He nods, pulling her to sit between his legs, resting his chin on top of her head. "I will protect you, cherie." His voice is a low rumble that she feels all the way down to her toes. "Don't you fret."
"I don't want you to protect me." She twists around to look at him, at his big, dark eyes. Like Mohinder's, they're sad and worried. She hates it. She just goddamn hates it that everyone does nothing but worry about her. That she's what is keeping them all trapped here in the carny. "All I need is for y'all to love me. That's all," she declares, poking him in his big, solid chest.
"I can do that, too," he chuckles. "I already do."
He stops laughing when she kisses him on the mouth. It's not teasing, like when she kissed Mohinder. It's not smooth or practiced, like her mama with her johns. It lands funny, and her teeth click against his, and she thinks, "Oh gosh, I am so stupid," as the blush goes from her cheeks down her neck, to all the way beneath her shirt. "I love you, too," she tells him, ducking her head and praying she just dies from mortification and saves Mr. Linderman the trouble of parading her around to the highest bidder like a prize horse.
But then the Haitian's big, warm hand slides into her hair, cradles her and makes her look back up at him. His gentle, white smile is the brightest thing in his dark face and he's the handsomest man she's ever seen. Even more than Isaac, who looks like a movie star. He does the kissing this time, and it's perfect.
For just a few minutes in the back of a truck, with the stars out and a big cat sleeping nearby, Claire doesn't care that her number is up. She's the safest she's ever been in her life.
**
Gabriel picks a new name after he kills Ted. With the blood still slick on his fingers and the power coursing through him, he calls himself 'Sylar.' Meredith thinks it's stupid, but not quite so stupid when he backhands her hard enough to send her sprawling into the dust. *Fucking asshole,* he hears her think. He knows the ripple of flame is coming before she even unleashes it, and meets it with a burst of energy hot enough to neutralize it in mid-air.
Oh, yes. This will do nicely, he thinks.
He'll raze Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show to the ground. Take them all inside him. Come one, come all. That will be something to see.
Then, the world will be his.
He whistles as he makes his way back to the campsite, hands in his pockets; he even stops to do a little soft shoe like a player in a vaudeville show. They've got the Amazon on guard duty now… as if the bitch is any match for him.
*No one* is a match for him now.
**
Bennet warns him against murdering the boss, and not out of any lingering sense of loyalty. No, he ain't Linderman's man at all. "It'll cause chaos in the ranks, Nathan, and they're already on edge," he warns, mildly, as Nathan bends over a list of the crew and the showmen. He scratches names down with the ink pen for a few minutes, in each column: Trust and Don't Trust. That fool Mendez, who Claire was sweet on last summer, goes in the second. He's too high most of the time for his loyalty to count for anything. Niki goes there, too, because he knows she's got her own baby to worry about, and she'll see to Micah before she even thinks twice about what Linderman has planned for his daughter. Hiro, the other part of the grand design, goes right beneath Niki, because as far as Nathan can tell, the kid's so grateful to "Meester Rinderman," that there ain't no nudgin' him. Even if they could get Ando to explain the straight facts.
After a minute, he makes a third column: Dead, and sets down all the people they've lost to Gabriel. "Why do you think His Majesty's not worried about Gabe?" he asks, aloud.
Bennet takes off his glasses and rubs at them with the untucked tail of his shirt. He chews on the question for a spell, which only makes Nathan respect him more. "Honestly, Petrelli? I reckon he thinks his band of merry men --meanin' us-- is going to get the jump on Gabriel, and that he can just use him at the Trinity test site instead of Ted."
He swears a good, blue streak, settling back in his chair and staring out the tiny window, where Monica's washing out their costumes in a tin washtub. "And how many of the merry men have got to die before we catch the sonofabitch?" he demands. "We are meant for more than this, and if I could take Pete and Claire and just fly the fuck back East, I would."
"Can't you?" Bennet sits down on the edge of his mattress, elbows on his knees. "This is what I ain't understood since I been here: Why do any of you stay? Most of you are twice as powerful as him."
"I think most stay because it's all they got. There ain't no jobs out there, and under the big top, at least they can *do* something… and we don't have to hide. We can be who we are." That's why they stay. As for why he doesn't leave… Nathan sighs, heavily, revealing Linderman's trump card, his goddamn ace in the hole. "The carny's the only home, the only family, Claire's ever known. If I tried to take her… you know that girl… she'd just find her way back here. She's not gonna leave Suresh or the Haitian."
"Then why don't you all go?"
Nathan jumps just about three feet in the air when Peter suddenly appears out of thin air. No telling how long he's been in the trailer, how long he's been invisible, and how much he's heard. "What the fuck do you think you're doing, Pete?" he demands, practically leaping from his seat to rattle his brother's teeth.
"I'm listening," Peter says, shoving him back and blowing his long hair out of his face like he used to when he was just a kid. "I'm listening, and you should listen to me. There ain't nothin' you all can do that I can't. I can fly, I can paint, I can be Hiro if I want to, and I can fall fifty feet and walk away from it. So go. If Linderman's got me, he don't need you or Claire. Hell, I reckon I can be his new star attraction. Go through my paces for a pretty penny *and* the Army if he wants."
Nathan barely hears Bennet pick up his ink pen over the buzzing between his ears. He stumbles back, shaking his head and saying, "No. No, Peter, there's got to be another way."
"There might be," Peter says, the set of his jaw mulish. "But this is a good one, and you know it. Me for you and Claire and everyone she loves. Linderman would take that deal if he knew just how much I can do."
Bennet just looks at them both, one eyebrow raised over the horn-rim of his glasses, and picks up Nathan's list. It says everything he's not saying. He's added to it. Under the Trust column. Peter's name. Underlined twice.
A minute later, the pen is wrested from Bennet's fingers and Claude's name appears there, too.
Nathan's really not surprised to see the bastard.
No, he's just hopeful. For the first time in 100 miles.
**
She hauls Gabriel in like a squawking chicken ripe for the geek to bite off its head, pinching his neck ignoring his string of insults. It ain't nothin' she hasn't heard before. Whore. Bitch. Negro lover. Though she can't fathom how Gabe even knows the last one since her D.L. was dead long before she joined the carny. Unless Meredith told him. Meredith that lily-livered little slut, who didn't even show her face when her partner tried to cut her throat. Probably hiding above some dive, drowning in liquor.
"Let me go, Niki… let me go, or I will destroy you," Gabriel says, his hands glowing red like Teddy's used to.
"I'm not Niki," she says, tartly, before knocking his lights out.
She tosses him right square in the middle of the midway, figures it's the perfect place for the biggest freak of all, and yells for everyone to gather with the tar, the feathers, and the rope. She knows what a horrible way it is to die, and knows there's no one else on God's green earth who deserves to suffer it more.
And then Mr. Linderman walks up with the kids. One hand on Micah's shoulder, one hand on Molly's. Smiling like he's their granddaddy bringing them to the fair. Only the spectacle is her with her foot on Gabe's neck. "Now, Jessica," he says, even though she's never told a soul her name. "Is this really necessary?"
Micah's eyes are big in his face. Her boy's looking at her like he's never seen her before. And he reaches for Molly's hand and holds it tight. "Mama? What's going on?"
What goes on is that Linderman's wrinkled fingers dig into his shoulders. He looks at her with that perfect smile, and she knows he can take life from her son just as sure as he can give life to the vegetable garden that always springs up no matter where they set spikes.
When Bennet, Nathan, Peter, and Claire and the rest all spill from the tents and the trailers, Jessica feels her head start to grow light. She starts to see Niki banging on her eyelids, screaming to get out. "Let me handle this," she yells, knocking against her skull. "For God's sake, let me handle this. Do not let him hurt our son."
She feels her foot slip down to the sandy earth.
She whispers, "It's okay, Micah. It'll be all right."
The only chicken being handed to the geek is her.
**
The entire show spills into the midway when Nicole starts hollering. His blood goes cold, and Mohinder tarries only enough to reach beneath the bed and grab the long knife he only brings out for special occasions… usually times where Mohinder the Mystic and the Amazing Kensei are doing a dual show and Hiro needs to pretend to choke the blade down, right down to the jeweled hilt.
He remembers his father used to tell him it came from the court of Mughal emperors, that it traveled the seas just like Chandra Suresh did, and they both found their home at the carnival. So many of his father's things have a home here. Mohinder knows every single thing in the trailer is inherited. The only thing that's his own is the people outside.
He hits the dirt running, and skids to a stop when he sees Niki towering over a body crumpled on the ground, and her boy, Micah, standing along with little Molly by the boss man. The illustrious management. Actually walking amongst the masses. He grips his knife hard enough for the ruby on the hilt to cut into his palm. This ain't good. This ain't good at all.
Because the closer he gets, the more obvious it is that the sack of trouble on the ground is Gabriel, and he's starting to wake up.
"Let's handle this without shedding anymore blood, shall we?" suggests Mr. Linderman, who sounds like he's gathered them all for some kind of fancy dress ball and not for a lynching. "I'm sure the children would prefer that. They're far too young to witness such horrors. Just leave Mr. Gray to me."
"Like Hell!" This comes from Claire, who pulls away from the Haitian man, both hands on her hips like when she's sassing him for making her keep up with her reading. *What do I need to read for, Mohinder? What am I gonna do with schoolin'?* "Gabe's hurt too many of our kin," she cries. "He's gotta pay."
Nathan, Bennet, Claude, and Peter all flinch. The sun is glinting off Bennet's pistol. They're all ready to make some kind of move. Just say the word. Only he don't know the word or the move.
That's when Gabe starts to laugh. A rusty, wheezing sound, 'cause it's likely Niki knocked the tar out of him. That dark, cold part of Niki that he ain't ever even seen himself. It probably ain't nothing compared to Gabe, who murdered so many members of the family like he was swatting flies. He starts to get up, slow, making a performance outta it. "You stupid old man," he sneers. "You stupid, stupid, old man. You really think you can handle me? And you, Princess… you little bitch." Gabriel's hands begin to glow.
"Claire!" He sees the red energy burst headed towards her and he's moving before he even knows it, knocking into her, knocking her to the ground.
He covers her with his body, his heart hammering loud in his chest. He hears something sizzle, something burn, and a chorus of screams. Claire shoves at his chest, "Lemme up, Mohinder," she yelps. "I'm the one person he *can't* hurt," she reminds.
Oh, Lord. She's right.
They scramble to their feet, but it's too late. Six people on the ground dead, all in a blink. Burned beyond recognition except he recognizes them anyway. Willie, the cook, who came to 'em after serving in the Great War. West, one of the rousties, who said he got his name because he was born on the edge of the Pacific and was always whining about not joining the Flying Petrellis. Two more men, two more women. None of 'em performers, but each of them a brother, a sister, or a friend. Each one of them someone who belonged here.
Just like he does. If only to do one thing.
Mohinder sees past his anger just enough to know he's still got his knife.
He launches himself towards the makeshift center ring, ready to bring the house down.
"No!" Peter shouts, and all of a sudden he's there, between Mohinder and Gabriel, who's charging up for another round of hellfire and damnation. "Stop it, Gabe!" he yells, grabbing the other man in some horrible echo of a hug.
"My name is *Sylar*."
He's all red now, not just his hands. Like he's standing in the center of a candle flame. Mohinder can feel the heat coming off of him, and he hears Molly's high-pitched keening as Peter's hair catches and starts to burn, too. Everyone starts yelling and crying, then. There's so much noise. Ten thousand times louder than the joints on the Ferris Wheel.
Niki yells Micah's name like someone's tearing her heart out.
Claire's sobbing for her uncle and calling Gabe every dirty name in the book and she hits Mohinder so hard he has to grab her little fists to make her stop.
And then everything happens in a blur.
Hiro grabs Molly and Micah and jumps with them to the far side of the camp.
Nobody has to translate for him. He just does it.
The Haitian clocks Linderman clean upside the head and then keeps his hands on either side of the old man's face, doing whatever it is he does to make people forget.
Nathan shouts, "Pete! Pete, you don't have to do this!"
Only he does. Mohinder knows he does. He's being a rebel again. Flying high on his own terms. He takes Gabriel with him high into the sky… and then they vanish, like they were never there at all.
**
All Pete ever wanted to be was a hero, like Rudolph Valentino.
The closest he gets to being The Sheik is being in the desert. Burning hot. So hot, he can't see, can't feel. He only knows that he's still got Gabriel pinned against his chest as they go wherever it is they're going. Alamogordo, he thinks. Only that's where they *are*. Just like that. The same sand, the same sky.
He doesn't know if it's the past, the future, or yesterday.
He just knows it hurts. It hurts to fly. It hurts to let Gabriel drop like a stone. It hurts because he has no eyelids, no lips and his brain is burning.
And then the earth shakes with a loud BOOM!
Everything goes from red-hot to white-cold.
To nothing.
Except the smell of his mama's perfume…
**
His Majesty called the test site "Trinity," whispering it with reverence like he really meant the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. When Nathan stands there, it's amidst the bodies, still smelling of fire and brimstone. He's with everyone else who's left of Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show. Not so many people at all. He looks at Mohinder, he looks at the Haitian, and he thinks the name Trinity is fitting for a different reason. They're the three men in Claire's life who matter most to her… even if she doesn't realize yet that he deserves that honor.
Nathan knows he ain't been the most comforting of fathers. That he raises his voice or doesn't use it at all more than he's ever actually talked to her. That's gonna change. Starting today. Starting now.
He takes three, long strides to reach her.
And he pulls her into his arms, holds her tight like she's always holding everybody else, and murmurs three words he should've said a dozen years sooner. "I love you."
Claire squeezes him around the middle, her cheek warm and wet against the front of his shirt. "Thank you," she whispers, adding… "Daddy."
Nathan cradles her close, savoring that one, beautiful word, and, later, when he breaks down and starts to mourn for Pete, he leans on her. His Invincible Girl holds onto him; she tells him she can bear the weight.
--end--
July 28, 2008