(no subject)
Title: The Price of a Memory (14/17)
Characters: Claude, Peter, Mohinder, special guest appearances by Molly and Nathan
Pairings: Peter/Claude eventually
Rating: R
Warnings: slash, AU
Spoilers: Through the end of Season One. AU after that but shares some parallels with certain elements from the new season.
Summary: A few months after the events of How to Stop an Exploding Man, Claude meets Peter again to find he’s not the person Claude once knew. Now Claude has to find out why.
Disclaimer: Heroes and the associated characters don’t belong to me.
Previous Parts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen
The Price of a Memory
Part 14/17
Peter’s last clear memory of his old apartment was of the party he’d thrown there to celebrate his graduation from nursing school, the same night of Nathan’s crash. A year had passed since then but in the dust that had gathered in his absence he could still see evidence of himself having been there more recently than that, from the half-used bar of soap in the bathroom to the October issue of TV Guide sitting open on the coffee table. Nathan had kept up the rent on the place for him in the hope that Peter would someday be able to live on his own again despite his frequent memory lapses. And the place did hold a certain familiarity--more so sometimes than Mohinder’s apartment for all that it was a relic from the remembered part of his former life. But nothing about it felt like home to him anymore. Standing in it, he felt like a stranger trespassing on the ghostly territory of his forgotten self.
He’d come here with the intention of packing a suitcase and making his way to the nearest train station or airport but once inside, he couldn’t keep himself from lingering a moment, reflecting on all that he’d lost. Stuffed in a drawer in the dresser were unframed pictures of his family and friends. He pulled them out in piles, flipping through them, looking for the unfamiliar faces. But in the people he didn’t recognize he didn’t find a woman who might be Simone Deveaux or a man who might be her boyfriend, Isaac. He didn’t find Claude. Mostly the pictures were of himself and Nathan at varying ages, all taken at events that were firmly planted in the more stable part of Peter’s memory: Nathan’s wedding, Peter’s high school graduation, their father’s last birthday, Christmas a few years ago, the hospital just after each of Nathan’s kids were born. These were the memories he’d gotten to keep.
The ones that were lost to him were represented mostly in hints he’d left himself around the room. On a notepad next to the unmade bed he found scribbled in his own handwriting over and over a mysterious phrase: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” A crumpled newspaper by the couch carried the story of Nathan’s public acknowledgement of Peter’s suicide attempt. A copy of the book Mohinder’s father had written peeked out of an old messenger bag.
The book Mohinder’s father had written.
Peter paused, staring at the book from across the room. Covered in plastic, there was a bar code on the front that indicated it had come from the library. Picking it up, a small receipt fell out from between the pages, fluttering to the floor. He bent to retrieve the scrap of paper and saw that it was a reminder of the book’s due date: September of last year.
His first thought was of the massive overdue fines he must have accrued in his time away. His second was to wonder what the he’d been doing with Dr. Suresh’s book way back in September.
Maybe he’d been researching what he’d known back then of Nathan’s ability to fly. But the large collection of notes stuck between the pages seemed too elaborate for idle curiosity. He flipped through the assorted cryptic messages he’d left himself, hastily scribbled comments like, “Human flight…develops in adulthood?” and “Nakamura--time teleportation.” “Save the cheerleader, save the world” made several more appearances.
Sitting down with the book in hand, he started from the beginning, reading the text and following along with the notes he’d written. The urgency of his situation forgotten, time slid by as he paged through the volume, attempting to figure out what he’d been trying to tell himself back then and why. Had he known he was going to lose his memory? Was this some kind of last ditch effort to preserve his knowledge? If so, he really could have done a better job writing things that might actually have made sense upon re-reading.
About halfway through the book, he paused. At this point, the notes he found no longer belonged just to himself--someone else’s handwriting had intruded on his. Had, in fact, trampled over his in some places. The second person’s writing was cramped and sloppy, the messages taunting rather than enlightening or helpful. “Peter Petrelli is a great bloody git” was scrawled across one page. “Nathan Petrelli cheats at children’s board games” was on another. There was even one that said, “Angela Petrelli makes small babies cry.” These mild, uninspired insults were littered throughout, all of them aimed at Peter or a member of his family.
It didn’t take much to guess just who might have written these things but it was still a shock to Peter when he flipped to a chapter speculating on the psychological consequences of having a special ability and saw a note in the margin, written straight on the page rather than a sticky note like the others. “Claude Rains, Invisible Man, 193?,” it read. The note was signed with a barely legible name: Claude.
Peter ran his fingers over the words, feeling the indent the press of the pen had made on the page. And of course it was pen because Claude wasn’t really the type to deface public property in pencil just to avoid getting charged for damage. Peter wondered if he had seen this before, if he had noticed any of Claude’s added commentary before he’d forgotten Claude altogether. Was it really possible that he’d been stupid enough to let the invisible man--the man who had tried to kill him--get close to him not once but twice?
Eyes getting tired as the morning began to creep in, Peter lifted the book closer to his face to better see the blurring words on its pages. As he did, a few leafs in the back arched off the cover and a piece of paper slipped out from underneath.
What now?
Picking the paper up from where it had fallen on the floor, Peter was able to focus his vision enough to see the address written there. He lingered over it, re-reading the street name and apartment number several times before something clicked in his mind and he realized it wasn’t just any address he was looking at. It was Mohinder’s address. Safely kept here among all these other scraps of information he hadn’t seen or touched since at least November.
Mouth dry, mind reeling, he almost didn’t hear the knock on the door when it came. Light and unthreatening, it repeated itself several times while Peter held his breath, willing his visitor to go away.
“Peter?” Mohinder’s voice came through the thick wood. Peter dropped the piece of paper with the address on it as if touching it had somehow brought Mohinder here. “It’s Mohinder Suresh.” Because he always felt the need to specify both his first and last names, as if Peter might forget or as if he was still trying to separate himself from his father. “If you’re in there, please open the door. Peter?”
Peter shifted, his movement knocking the book on his lap to the floor with a loud thump. He winced but didn’t go to the door.
“I heard that,” Mohinder observed dryly. “I’m alone, if that helps.”
Peter didn’t move.
Mohinder heaved a sigh, audible even through the door. “Claude told me what happened,” he said. “I know I can’t possibly understand the confusion you must be feeling right now. But I have answers for you. Things you deserve to know. Things I should have told you from the beginning.”
Slowly, Peter unfolded himself from where he sat on the floor. He opened the door, chain lock still in place, and peered out at Mohinder from behind it.
“I have your address written down in an old library copy of your father’s book,” he said by way of greeting. “Why? Did we know each other before?”
Slightly taken aback by the abruptness of Peter’s question, Mohinder managed to nod just once. “We did,” he said.
Peter felt the urge to slam the door in Mohinder’s face but didn’t.
“When?” he asked.
“We met back in late September or early October,” Mohinder said. “I had just come to New York and was following up on some research my father left after his death. I came across a lead that brought me to your brother. What happened after that is a long story involving my shouting at him like a lunatic in public and being carried off by armed bodyguards but eventually that encounter with Nathan led me to you. Or, rather, it led you to me.” He swallowed. “You showed up on my doorstep wanting to discuss my father’s work. Just as you did a second time, more recently. The time that you remember.”
Mohinder told the story carefully, eyeing Peter and monitoring his reaction closely. Peter listened and absorbed the information. None of it meant anything to him but somehow it was enough that he unhooked the chain on the door and stepped aside in wordless invitation, allowing Mohinder to enter his apartment.
Once inside, Mohinder looked around the cramped space with interest, taking in the sight of the posters on the walls and the books on the floor. He caught sight of the notepad that had been moved from the table beside Peter’s bed to the table in front of the couch and picked it up, his lips moving slightly as he read to himself the message Peter had written about the mysterious cheerleader.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve been here,” Peter guessed as an almost nostalgic look passed over Mohinder’s face.
“No,” Mohinder said, the admission coming more easily than Peter had expected. “I actually didn’t know for sure that you still had this place. I came here as a last resort.”
For the first time, Peter noticed Mohinder’s somewhat haggard appearance and realized the other man must have been up all night, roaming the city, looking for him.
“The last time I was here, I had come to make amends,” Mohinder said. “That is, I was feeling guilty about the way I’d treated you when you’d first introduced yourself to me as…as someone with a personal interest in my father’s research. You see, I hadn’t yet had any personal experience with the reality of special abilities in humans, so I was naturally a bit skeptical. I was not as open as I should have been to the information you were trying to give me at the time.”
Mohinder continued to speak carefully but not as though he expected Peter to jump in and start filling in the blanks at any minute. Instead, he seemed to be allowing for the fact that Peter no longer had any connection to the idea of a Mohinder who didn’t welcome him into his home the way he had that second time. The time Peter could remember.
“You couldn’t give me any evidence to support the claims you were making and so I turned you away,” Mohinder went on. “But in the days that followed, certain events took place that led me to question whether I’d made the right decision. Before I could decide whether or not to approach you, your brother found me. It turned out that you had been through some traumatic experiences of your own since I’d last seen you and he believed you were getting ready to flee. He wanted me to help him stop you.”
Peer raised an eyebrow at this but said nothing.
“We formed a somewhat unlikely alliance that led the both of us here.” He indicated Peter’s apartment. “Your brother tried to get you to listen but I’m afraid after our earlier encounter, my presence hindered his attempt rather than aided it. You, on the other hand, were quite impressive. You managed to lull your brother into a false sense of security and then promptly made a run for it.”
Peter felt his eyes widen at his own, unremembered audacity. “I did not,” he said. “Did I?”
“You did,” Mohinder said. “We both went after you but by the time we reached the hallway you were already gone.” His expression darkened somewhat and he hesitated. “The window was open. We thought you’d--” He cut himself off.
Peter smiled ironically. “You thought I’d jumped.” He was beginning to wonder if there were any stories about his former life that didn’t end with him taking leaps from tall buildings.
“No,” Mohinder said. “We thought you’d flown.
A deafening silence rang suddenly in Peter’s ears.
“What?” he said, a sharp edge to his voice.
“We thought you’d flown out the window,” Mohinder said. “Like Nathan can fly. In fact, I continued to believe that until recently when I found out the truth.”
“Which is what?” Peter asked, incredulous.
“Claude,” Mohinder said. “He was there that day. He told me he caught you on your way out and hid you from Nathan and me. We ran right past you without any idea that you were there.” He swallowed. “You were invisible, Peter. The both of you were invisible.”
“Claude…turned me invisible?” Peter asked, struggling to understand.
“No,” Mohinder said. “You were invisible.” A significant pause. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Peter considered carefully. He flexed his fingers, looking down at them as if they might disappear before his eyes. The idea seemed impossible to him and yet what Mohinder was suggesting felt strangely close. More close than anything Peter had been told about his past life so far.
“Peter, when you came to me the second time around, you wanted to discuss with me my father’s work and how it related to your suspicions about your brother’s powers,” Mohinder said. “But the first time you came to me it was because you were having suspicions about your own powers. More than suspicions, actually. You wanted to discuss with me the experiences you had been having.”
Peter shook his head helplessly. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“I’m not,” Mohinder said.
“You have it wrong,” Peter insisted more forcefully.
“I don’t,” Mohinder replied with equal force. “I’ve lied to you long enough, thinking you would stumble on the truth on your own. That you would discover your powers all over again the way you did the first time. But you haven’t and given the recent turn of events, I thought it was time for me to tell you what I know.”
Peter swallowed. “So you’re saying I can turn invisible and fly or just that you thought I could fly and found out I could turn invisible?” he asked.
“I’m saying you can do both,” Mohinder said. “And much more. You can fly because your brother flies. You can turn invisible because Claude does. You can also draw the future, heal yourself from grievous injuries, dream prophetically, read people’s thoughts, move objects with your mind…the list goes on. Even I don’t know the full extent of it.”
Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Except I can’t do any of that,” he said.
“You can,” Mohinder said. “I’ve seen you do it. It’s just that you’ve forgotten how.”
Peter’s thoughts felt like they were moving in slow motion. Like somewhere in this conversation he’d lost the ability to actually understand anything Mohinder was saying.
“Claude has a word for a person of your talent,” Mohinder said.
“Empath,” Peter said, remembering it only as he said it, unsure why it had stuck with him. The idea had seemed like a myth to him when Claude had first told him about it. It just hadn’t seemed possible that someone could be that powerful. And now Mohinder was telling him…
“An empath, yes,” Mohinder said. “That’s what you are. You absorb the abilities of others. Not unlike a sponge.”
He sensed that Mohinder was about to go into his professorial lecture mode and raised a hand to stop him. “Why should I believe you?” he asked. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time. You acted like I’d never met you before when you know all this stuff about me. You’ve seen me do all these things. Why should I trust you now?”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t,” Mohinder said wearily. “I leave that decision entirely up to you. But before you make it, there’s something you should know.”
“And what would that be?”
“Your memories,” Mohinder said. “I understand you’ve been having visions of Claude throwing you off of a rooftop. That you believe he once tried to kill you and may still be after you.”
“Yeah,” Peter said.
“Then you should know that, as I understand it, your memory of Claude throwing you is real,” Mohinder said. “But I don’t believe he meant to kill you.”
“Then why did he do it?”
Mohinder sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him that,” he said. He pulled something out of the pocket of his jacket, a scrap of paper with something neatly printed on one side. “I brought this in case you needed more convincing than I was prepared to give, which I’m sure you do.”
Peter took the paper. On it was written another address, this one unfamiliar to him.
“Isaac Mendez’s loft,” Mohinder said by way of explanation.
“Isaac Mendez,” Peter repeated slowly. “Simone Deveaux’s boyfriend.” He looked up. “I thought he was dead.”
“He is,” Mohinder said. “He was murdered a few months back. When he died, you were able to take over the rent on his loft. You felt it was important to preserve Mendez’s work and, I believe, wished to use his workspace for your own projects. This according to your brother who, I might add, warned me never to let you go there if you did happen to remember that it existed.” He cleared his throat. “I believe at this point Claude would insert some sarcastic comment on just how far your family’s fortune stretches given that you’re able to keep up the rent on so many living spaces in this city. I’ll refrain from doing the same but I thought it was important to let you know I’m secretly thinking it.”
Peter smiled briefly at this. “Just one thing,” he said. “What would I need a workspace like that for? I’m not a painter.”
“Perhaps not,” Mohinder said. “But you had to get your ability to draw the future from somewhere.” He nodded toward the paper with Isaac Mendez’s address. “I believe this is it.”
Peter took a moment to consider this. Mohinder rocked on his heels a little and it seemed the conversation had exhausted itself.
“I really should be going,” he said. “I’ve left Molly alone with Claude all night while I looked for you. Probably not one of my better ideas.”
Peter couldn’t think of anything to say to this.
“You don’t have to come back,” Mohinder said. “I’ll understand if you don’t. But just promise me you’ll at least go there.” He indicated the piece of paper Peter held.
“I will,” Peter said. “Thank you.”
Part Fifteen
Hey, everyone! I hope you enjoyed the new chapter. I just wanted to write a quick note to let you all know that real life this week has been pretty eventful for me. I was offered (and accepted) a new job that is going to be taking up more of my time than my current one. Suffice to say, I'm terrified. But never fear--the last three chapters of this story will be posted no matter what. I'll have a better idea of what my schedule will be like once I've settled in but right now I'm thinking that it's a matter of switching my usual weekly post from Fridays to Sundays. Nothing is definite yet as far as that goes (I might actually still get in one last Friday post next week before switching) but I thought I'd let y'all know what's going on. Thanks so much for reading! I hope you continue to enjoy as the story begins to come to an end!
Characters: Claude, Peter, Mohinder, special guest appearances by Molly and Nathan
Pairings: Peter/Claude eventually
Rating: R
Warnings: slash, AU
Spoilers: Through the end of Season One. AU after that but shares some parallels with certain elements from the new season.
Summary: A few months after the events of How to Stop an Exploding Man, Claude meets Peter again to find he’s not the person Claude once knew. Now Claude has to find out why.
Disclaimer: Heroes and the associated characters don’t belong to me.
Previous Parts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, Part Eight, Part Nine, Part Ten, Part Eleven, Part Twelve, Part Thirteen
The Price of a Memory
Part 14/17
Peter’s last clear memory of his old apartment was of the party he’d thrown there to celebrate his graduation from nursing school, the same night of Nathan’s crash. A year had passed since then but in the dust that had gathered in his absence he could still see evidence of himself having been there more recently than that, from the half-used bar of soap in the bathroom to the October issue of TV Guide sitting open on the coffee table. Nathan had kept up the rent on the place for him in the hope that Peter would someday be able to live on his own again despite his frequent memory lapses. And the place did hold a certain familiarity--more so sometimes than Mohinder’s apartment for all that it was a relic from the remembered part of his former life. But nothing about it felt like home to him anymore. Standing in it, he felt like a stranger trespassing on the ghostly territory of his forgotten self.
He’d come here with the intention of packing a suitcase and making his way to the nearest train station or airport but once inside, he couldn’t keep himself from lingering a moment, reflecting on all that he’d lost. Stuffed in a drawer in the dresser were unframed pictures of his family and friends. He pulled them out in piles, flipping through them, looking for the unfamiliar faces. But in the people he didn’t recognize he didn’t find a woman who might be Simone Deveaux or a man who might be her boyfriend, Isaac. He didn’t find Claude. Mostly the pictures were of himself and Nathan at varying ages, all taken at events that were firmly planted in the more stable part of Peter’s memory: Nathan’s wedding, Peter’s high school graduation, their father’s last birthday, Christmas a few years ago, the hospital just after each of Nathan’s kids were born. These were the memories he’d gotten to keep.
The ones that were lost to him were represented mostly in hints he’d left himself around the room. On a notepad next to the unmade bed he found scribbled in his own handwriting over and over a mysterious phrase: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.” A crumpled newspaper by the couch carried the story of Nathan’s public acknowledgement of Peter’s suicide attempt. A copy of the book Mohinder’s father had written peeked out of an old messenger bag.
The book Mohinder’s father had written.
Peter paused, staring at the book from across the room. Covered in plastic, there was a bar code on the front that indicated it had come from the library. Picking it up, a small receipt fell out from between the pages, fluttering to the floor. He bent to retrieve the scrap of paper and saw that it was a reminder of the book’s due date: September of last year.
His first thought was of the massive overdue fines he must have accrued in his time away. His second was to wonder what the he’d been doing with Dr. Suresh’s book way back in September.
Maybe he’d been researching what he’d known back then of Nathan’s ability to fly. But the large collection of notes stuck between the pages seemed too elaborate for idle curiosity. He flipped through the assorted cryptic messages he’d left himself, hastily scribbled comments like, “Human flight…develops in adulthood?” and “Nakamura--time teleportation.” “Save the cheerleader, save the world” made several more appearances.
Sitting down with the book in hand, he started from the beginning, reading the text and following along with the notes he’d written. The urgency of his situation forgotten, time slid by as he paged through the volume, attempting to figure out what he’d been trying to tell himself back then and why. Had he known he was going to lose his memory? Was this some kind of last ditch effort to preserve his knowledge? If so, he really could have done a better job writing things that might actually have made sense upon re-reading.
About halfway through the book, he paused. At this point, the notes he found no longer belonged just to himself--someone else’s handwriting had intruded on his. Had, in fact, trampled over his in some places. The second person’s writing was cramped and sloppy, the messages taunting rather than enlightening or helpful. “Peter Petrelli is a great bloody git” was scrawled across one page. “Nathan Petrelli cheats at children’s board games” was on another. There was even one that said, “Angela Petrelli makes small babies cry.” These mild, uninspired insults were littered throughout, all of them aimed at Peter or a member of his family.
It didn’t take much to guess just who might have written these things but it was still a shock to Peter when he flipped to a chapter speculating on the psychological consequences of having a special ability and saw a note in the margin, written straight on the page rather than a sticky note like the others. “Claude Rains, Invisible Man, 193?,” it read. The note was signed with a barely legible name: Claude.
Peter ran his fingers over the words, feeling the indent the press of the pen had made on the page. And of course it was pen because Claude wasn’t really the type to deface public property in pencil just to avoid getting charged for damage. Peter wondered if he had seen this before, if he had noticed any of Claude’s added commentary before he’d forgotten Claude altogether. Was it really possible that he’d been stupid enough to let the invisible man--the man who had tried to kill him--get close to him not once but twice?
Eyes getting tired as the morning began to creep in, Peter lifted the book closer to his face to better see the blurring words on its pages. As he did, a few leafs in the back arched off the cover and a piece of paper slipped out from underneath.
What now?
Picking the paper up from where it had fallen on the floor, Peter was able to focus his vision enough to see the address written there. He lingered over it, re-reading the street name and apartment number several times before something clicked in his mind and he realized it wasn’t just any address he was looking at. It was Mohinder’s address. Safely kept here among all these other scraps of information he hadn’t seen or touched since at least November.
Mouth dry, mind reeling, he almost didn’t hear the knock on the door when it came. Light and unthreatening, it repeated itself several times while Peter held his breath, willing his visitor to go away.
“Peter?” Mohinder’s voice came through the thick wood. Peter dropped the piece of paper with the address on it as if touching it had somehow brought Mohinder here. “It’s Mohinder Suresh.” Because he always felt the need to specify both his first and last names, as if Peter might forget or as if he was still trying to separate himself from his father. “If you’re in there, please open the door. Peter?”
Peter shifted, his movement knocking the book on his lap to the floor with a loud thump. He winced but didn’t go to the door.
“I heard that,” Mohinder observed dryly. “I’m alone, if that helps.”
Peter didn’t move.
Mohinder heaved a sigh, audible even through the door. “Claude told me what happened,” he said. “I know I can’t possibly understand the confusion you must be feeling right now. But I have answers for you. Things you deserve to know. Things I should have told you from the beginning.”
Slowly, Peter unfolded himself from where he sat on the floor. He opened the door, chain lock still in place, and peered out at Mohinder from behind it.
“I have your address written down in an old library copy of your father’s book,” he said by way of greeting. “Why? Did we know each other before?”
Slightly taken aback by the abruptness of Peter’s question, Mohinder managed to nod just once. “We did,” he said.
Peter felt the urge to slam the door in Mohinder’s face but didn’t.
“When?” he asked.
“We met back in late September or early October,” Mohinder said. “I had just come to New York and was following up on some research my father left after his death. I came across a lead that brought me to your brother. What happened after that is a long story involving my shouting at him like a lunatic in public and being carried off by armed bodyguards but eventually that encounter with Nathan led me to you. Or, rather, it led you to me.” He swallowed. “You showed up on my doorstep wanting to discuss my father’s work. Just as you did a second time, more recently. The time that you remember.”
Mohinder told the story carefully, eyeing Peter and monitoring his reaction closely. Peter listened and absorbed the information. None of it meant anything to him but somehow it was enough that he unhooked the chain on the door and stepped aside in wordless invitation, allowing Mohinder to enter his apartment.
Once inside, Mohinder looked around the cramped space with interest, taking in the sight of the posters on the walls and the books on the floor. He caught sight of the notepad that had been moved from the table beside Peter’s bed to the table in front of the couch and picked it up, his lips moving slightly as he read to himself the message Peter had written about the mysterious cheerleader.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve been here,” Peter guessed as an almost nostalgic look passed over Mohinder’s face.
“No,” Mohinder said, the admission coming more easily than Peter had expected. “I actually didn’t know for sure that you still had this place. I came here as a last resort.”
For the first time, Peter noticed Mohinder’s somewhat haggard appearance and realized the other man must have been up all night, roaming the city, looking for him.
“The last time I was here, I had come to make amends,” Mohinder said. “That is, I was feeling guilty about the way I’d treated you when you’d first introduced yourself to me as…as someone with a personal interest in my father’s research. You see, I hadn’t yet had any personal experience with the reality of special abilities in humans, so I was naturally a bit skeptical. I was not as open as I should have been to the information you were trying to give me at the time.”
Mohinder continued to speak carefully but not as though he expected Peter to jump in and start filling in the blanks at any minute. Instead, he seemed to be allowing for the fact that Peter no longer had any connection to the idea of a Mohinder who didn’t welcome him into his home the way he had that second time. The time Peter could remember.
“You couldn’t give me any evidence to support the claims you were making and so I turned you away,” Mohinder went on. “But in the days that followed, certain events took place that led me to question whether I’d made the right decision. Before I could decide whether or not to approach you, your brother found me. It turned out that you had been through some traumatic experiences of your own since I’d last seen you and he believed you were getting ready to flee. He wanted me to help him stop you.”
Peer raised an eyebrow at this but said nothing.
“We formed a somewhat unlikely alliance that led the both of us here.” He indicated Peter’s apartment. “Your brother tried to get you to listen but I’m afraid after our earlier encounter, my presence hindered his attempt rather than aided it. You, on the other hand, were quite impressive. You managed to lull your brother into a false sense of security and then promptly made a run for it.”
Peter felt his eyes widen at his own, unremembered audacity. “I did not,” he said. “Did I?”
“You did,” Mohinder said. “We both went after you but by the time we reached the hallway you were already gone.” His expression darkened somewhat and he hesitated. “The window was open. We thought you’d--” He cut himself off.
Peter smiled ironically. “You thought I’d jumped.” He was beginning to wonder if there were any stories about his former life that didn’t end with him taking leaps from tall buildings.
“No,” Mohinder said. “We thought you’d flown.
A deafening silence rang suddenly in Peter’s ears.
“What?” he said, a sharp edge to his voice.
“We thought you’d flown out the window,” Mohinder said. “Like Nathan can fly. In fact, I continued to believe that until recently when I found out the truth.”
“Which is what?” Peter asked, incredulous.
“Claude,” Mohinder said. “He was there that day. He told me he caught you on your way out and hid you from Nathan and me. We ran right past you without any idea that you were there.” He swallowed. “You were invisible, Peter. The both of you were invisible.”
“Claude…turned me invisible?” Peter asked, struggling to understand.
“No,” Mohinder said. “You were invisible.” A significant pause. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Peter considered carefully. He flexed his fingers, looking down at them as if they might disappear before his eyes. The idea seemed impossible to him and yet what Mohinder was suggesting felt strangely close. More close than anything Peter had been told about his past life so far.
“Peter, when you came to me the second time around, you wanted to discuss with me my father’s work and how it related to your suspicions about your brother’s powers,” Mohinder said. “But the first time you came to me it was because you were having suspicions about your own powers. More than suspicions, actually. You wanted to discuss with me the experiences you had been having.”
Peter shook his head helplessly. “You’re wrong,” he said.
“I’m not,” Mohinder said.
“You have it wrong,” Peter insisted more forcefully.
“I don’t,” Mohinder replied with equal force. “I’ve lied to you long enough, thinking you would stumble on the truth on your own. That you would discover your powers all over again the way you did the first time. But you haven’t and given the recent turn of events, I thought it was time for me to tell you what I know.”
Peter swallowed. “So you’re saying I can turn invisible and fly or just that you thought I could fly and found out I could turn invisible?” he asked.
“I’m saying you can do both,” Mohinder said. “And much more. You can fly because your brother flies. You can turn invisible because Claude does. You can also draw the future, heal yourself from grievous injuries, dream prophetically, read people’s thoughts, move objects with your mind…the list goes on. Even I don’t know the full extent of it.”
Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Except I can’t do any of that,” he said.
“You can,” Mohinder said. “I’ve seen you do it. It’s just that you’ve forgotten how.”
Peter’s thoughts felt like they were moving in slow motion. Like somewhere in this conversation he’d lost the ability to actually understand anything Mohinder was saying.
“Claude has a word for a person of your talent,” Mohinder said.
“Empath,” Peter said, remembering it only as he said it, unsure why it had stuck with him. The idea had seemed like a myth to him when Claude had first told him about it. It just hadn’t seemed possible that someone could be that powerful. And now Mohinder was telling him…
“An empath, yes,” Mohinder said. “That’s what you are. You absorb the abilities of others. Not unlike a sponge.”
He sensed that Mohinder was about to go into his professorial lecture mode and raised a hand to stop him. “Why should I believe you?” he asked. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time. You acted like I’d never met you before when you know all this stuff about me. You’ve seen me do all these things. Why should I trust you now?”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t,” Mohinder said wearily. “I leave that decision entirely up to you. But before you make it, there’s something you should know.”
“And what would that be?”
“Your memories,” Mohinder said. “I understand you’ve been having visions of Claude throwing you off of a rooftop. That you believe he once tried to kill you and may still be after you.”
“Yeah,” Peter said.
“Then you should know that, as I understand it, your memory of Claude throwing you is real,” Mohinder said. “But I don’t believe he meant to kill you.”
“Then why did he do it?”
Mohinder sighed. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask him that,” he said. He pulled something out of the pocket of his jacket, a scrap of paper with something neatly printed on one side. “I brought this in case you needed more convincing than I was prepared to give, which I’m sure you do.”
Peter took the paper. On it was written another address, this one unfamiliar to him.
“Isaac Mendez’s loft,” Mohinder said by way of explanation.
“Isaac Mendez,” Peter repeated slowly. “Simone Deveaux’s boyfriend.” He looked up. “I thought he was dead.”
“He is,” Mohinder said. “He was murdered a few months back. When he died, you were able to take over the rent on his loft. You felt it was important to preserve Mendez’s work and, I believe, wished to use his workspace for your own projects. This according to your brother who, I might add, warned me never to let you go there if you did happen to remember that it existed.” He cleared his throat. “I believe at this point Claude would insert some sarcastic comment on just how far your family’s fortune stretches given that you’re able to keep up the rent on so many living spaces in this city. I’ll refrain from doing the same but I thought it was important to let you know I’m secretly thinking it.”
Peter smiled briefly at this. “Just one thing,” he said. “What would I need a workspace like that for? I’m not a painter.”
“Perhaps not,” Mohinder said. “But you had to get your ability to draw the future from somewhere.” He nodded toward the paper with Isaac Mendez’s address. “I believe this is it.”
Peter took a moment to consider this. Mohinder rocked on his heels a little and it seemed the conversation had exhausted itself.
“I really should be going,” he said. “I’ve left Molly alone with Claude all night while I looked for you. Probably not one of my better ideas.”
Peter couldn’t think of anything to say to this.
“You don’t have to come back,” Mohinder said. “I’ll understand if you don’t. But just promise me you’ll at least go there.” He indicated the piece of paper Peter held.
“I will,” Peter said. “Thank you.”
Part Fifteen
Hey, everyone! I hope you enjoyed the new chapter. I just wanted to write a quick note to let you all know that real life this week has been pretty eventful for me. I was offered (and accepted) a new job that is going to be taking up more of my time than my current one. Suffice to say, I'm terrified. But never fear--the last three chapters of this story will be posted no matter what. I'll have a better idea of what my schedule will be like once I've settled in but right now I'm thinking that it's a matter of switching my usual weekly post from Fridays to Sundays. Nothing is definite yet as far as that goes (I might actually still get in one last Friday post next week before switching) but I thought I'd let y'all know what's going on. Thanks so much for reading! I hope you continue to enjoy as the story begins to come to an end!