25.5.2. Grieve
They're both gone.
Enough losses have piled up, enough tragedy, enough battles, to force forward movement. There isn't time to stop, really. Too many things need doing, as always. First Arthur to stop, then Nathan's foolishness to try and control, then Sylar to monitor in his new role, ensuring that what she has left doesn't leave her completely. Things start to fall apart, and there's Bennet to call, and Parkman to make demands of, and Peter to try and monitor, and a Company to think about putting back together. She keeps herself busy so as not to think, because the moment she stops...
When "Nathan" won't answer his cell phone something inside of her freezes. The longer the silence grows, the colder she gets. The night is dark, shadows stretching across the floor with decades of memories, and as she lets her fingers curl tight around a wine glass, staring out through glass windows at an empty stretch of lawn, the past is as real as the dreams that haunt her.
They're both gone.
Hiro failed, and Arthur...Arthur was already healed when Peter got there. She knows what that means. It doesn't seem right, doesn't seem possible, and some part of her refuses to accept it, even now. He can't be gone, not really, not after everything, not by something so simple, something so little, so inconsequential. Not just like that, a touch, a gust of wind, and the shaping force of her life is blown out of it. Friend, enemy, lover, beloved, betrayer, betrayed. No one so alive could simply go, could they? But she doesn't dream about him anymore, and there's an empty hollow inside of her that answers the question she's never managed to put into words. Even now, she can't say the word, just let the memories slip through her, and ache for the loss of what was and what could have been and what never was and what never will be. Every regret piles up, threatening to smother her, and she is not a woman who regrets anything. Her hand trembles as she raises the glass, takes a sip of the wine. The silence of the house is deafening, and when she yanks her thoughts with deliberation away from golden hair and calculating blue eyes that could soften in a way few got to say, her treacherous mind slips to something even more horrifying.
They're both gone.
There was so much blood. Gore is something she should have accustomed herself to, part and parcel of the business in which they chose to indulge to hide themselves from the world, but not that blood, not his, never his. A parent, a mother, should never lose a child, and not like that. Was it her fault, somehow? Her hubris, her pushing him, his need to prove himself, to live up to her expectations? He was never a match for Sylar. Her gambit to control the killer had backfired--had he taken his revenge that way? He hadn't even bothered with Nathan's power just...slaughtered him as if he were nothing. A shudder runs over her, and she closes her eyes to block out the images, but they only imprint themselves on the back of her eyelids. Even if they find him, even if he calls back, he isn't hers, not truly. Her son, her firstborn, the one she groomed to take his father's place in this world and their plans is gone, and only a shadow of a semblance remains, etched on the consciousness of his murderer and tenuously held there by bonds too easily severed.
For weeks, months, she's told herself she's accepted her losses, gone on with the game, because what else can she do? The trembling in her fingers, the tears she can't seem to fight back, and the sobs that threaten to break free tell her now how deep her denial has set in. There's nothing to be done, of course. They all have to go on. That's what he'd say, even.
Tomorrow she'll go back to the fight, head held high, smile in place, the woman he'd expect her to be. Tonight, finally, she lets the tears come, sinking onto the carpet, one hand pressed against the patio door as she rests her forehead against it and sobs.
They're both gone.
And even if she wins it all, nothing will ever bring them back.
Enough losses have piled up, enough tragedy, enough battles, to force forward movement. There isn't time to stop, really. Too many things need doing, as always. First Arthur to stop, then Nathan's foolishness to try and control, then Sylar to monitor in his new role, ensuring that what she has left doesn't leave her completely. Things start to fall apart, and there's Bennet to call, and Parkman to make demands of, and Peter to try and monitor, and a Company to think about putting back together. She keeps herself busy so as not to think, because the moment she stops...
When "Nathan" won't answer his cell phone something inside of her freezes. The longer the silence grows, the colder she gets. The night is dark, shadows stretching across the floor with decades of memories, and as she lets her fingers curl tight around a wine glass, staring out through glass windows at an empty stretch of lawn, the past is as real as the dreams that haunt her.
They're both gone.
Hiro failed, and Arthur...Arthur was already healed when Peter got there. She knows what that means. It doesn't seem right, doesn't seem possible, and some part of her refuses to accept it, even now. He can't be gone, not really, not after everything, not by something so simple, something so little, so inconsequential. Not just like that, a touch, a gust of wind, and the shaping force of her life is blown out of it. Friend, enemy, lover, beloved, betrayer, betrayed. No one so alive could simply go, could they? But she doesn't dream about him anymore, and there's an empty hollow inside of her that answers the question she's never managed to put into words. Even now, she can't say the word, just let the memories slip through her, and ache for the loss of what was and what could have been and what never was and what never will be. Every regret piles up, threatening to smother her, and she is not a woman who regrets anything. Her hand trembles as she raises the glass, takes a sip of the wine. The silence of the house is deafening, and when she yanks her thoughts with deliberation away from golden hair and calculating blue eyes that could soften in a way few got to say, her treacherous mind slips to something even more horrifying.
They're both gone.
There was so much blood. Gore is something she should have accustomed herself to, part and parcel of the business in which they chose to indulge to hide themselves from the world, but not that blood, not his, never his. A parent, a mother, should never lose a child, and not like that. Was it her fault, somehow? Her hubris, her pushing him, his need to prove himself, to live up to her expectations? He was never a match for Sylar. Her gambit to control the killer had backfired--had he taken his revenge that way? He hadn't even bothered with Nathan's power just...slaughtered him as if he were nothing. A shudder runs over her, and she closes her eyes to block out the images, but they only imprint themselves on the back of her eyelids. Even if they find him, even if he calls back, he isn't hers, not truly. Her son, her firstborn, the one she groomed to take his father's place in this world and their plans is gone, and only a shadow of a semblance remains, etched on the consciousness of his murderer and tenuously held there by bonds too easily severed.
For weeks, months, she's told herself she's accepted her losses, gone on with the game, because what else can she do? The trembling in her fingers, the tears she can't seem to fight back, and the sobs that threaten to break free tell her now how deep her denial has set in. There's nothing to be done, of course. They all have to go on. That's what he'd say, even.
Tomorrow she'll go back to the fight, head held high, smile in place, the woman he'd expect her to be. Tonight, finally, she lets the tears come, sinking onto the carpet, one hand pressed against the patio door as she rests her forehead against it and sobs.
They're both gone.
And even if she wins it all, nothing will ever bring them back.