The Price of a Memory, Part 16/17
Title: The Price of a Memory (16/17)
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, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen
The Price of a Memory
Part 16/17
“Peter.”
Sitting on a bench in a deserted train station in the middle of the night, Peter looked up at the sound of his name to find Nathan standing there dressed in a brown overcoat and what appeared to be striped pajama bottoms, looking for all the world like a concerned father come to retrieve his kid from his first overnight stay at a friend’s house. In a way, that was what this felt like.
“What are you doing here?” Nathan said as he finally reached Peter. “What’s this about?”
“I wanted to see you,” Peter said, practically feeling the slap upside the head Claude would have delivered at the perceived sentimentality of that statement, had he been there.
But Peter had left Claude back in Isaac Mendez’s loft. Following their conversation, he’d felt the sudden and overpowering urge to go somewhere where he could clear his head. Buying the train ticket to Washington had been the easy part. Finding Nathan’s place once he was in Washington proved to be more difficult. Nathan had given him the address numerous times but, predictably enough, Peter had forgotten what it was. Without that, he’d been forced to call his brother--whose number he kept stored in his cell phone for the sake of convenience--to come pick him up. Not the least embarrassing way of starting a conversation.
“Are you okay?” Nathan asked, his hand finding Peter’s shoulder like it always did when he was worried.
“I will be,” Peter said.
For three days, that was the extent of their discussion about the reason behind Peter’s unannounced visit. There might have been more but Nathan wasn’t completely insensitive to the idea of giving a person some space and, besides that, he was busy at work. Apparently even important, heartfelt conversations with close family members required an appointment first.
While Nathan was doing what he could to rearrange his schedule, Peter was left to the mercy of Heidi, who was as hospitable as possible under the circumstances.
“Nathan misses you, Peter,” she said to him at the breakfast table one morning. “He worries about you all the time.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Peter replied.
Heidi gave him a politely skeptical look before sipping her coffee. “He mentioned the idea of bringing you here to live with us,” she said. “It would make him feel better if you were close by.”
Peter couldn’t tell from her tone exactly how she felt about this particular idea, though he could guess that she wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about it. He’d learned by now not to take stuff personally when it came to Heidi. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other. They actually got along pretty well, considering they were constant competitors for Nathan’s attention. But he knew his memory lapses made her nervous and that his living there would make her feel obligated to watch him twenty-four hours a day. In case he couldn’t remember what the warning labels on household cleaning products were for and accidentally let her kids drink poison.
For his part, Peter had no desire to spend anymore time in Washington than he had to but it wasn’t really like he had any kind of defense against the idea. He had no job or any kind of real life in New York. All he had were the people and he wasn’t sure he even had them anymore. Still, he told her, “I have friends back home. I can’t leave them.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Simon asked eagerly. He’d just begun noticing girls and was eager to live vicariously through his more experienced acquaintances. Meanwhile, Monty screwed up his face, clearly disgusted at his brother’s suggestion.
Peter hesitated. “Um, not exactly.”
Even as he said it, he felt his cheeks redden at the memory of Claude’s kiss. As always, the thought of it set off a slight thrill in the pit of his stomach, like dropping down that first hill on a roller coaster. That it had happened at all still didn’t feel quite real to Peter. Maybe it would have had he stuck around long enough for there to be a second round. But despite the slight sense of unreality, Peter also knew that of all the things that had happened to him in the past few weeks, this had been the one thing that made a bizarre sort of sense. The one thing that had given him the feeling of finally moving forward after he’d spent so much time stuck in one place.
It was a direction Peter was eager to explore, a leap he was more than willing to take. But before he could do that, he needed to find the remaining pieces of his lost past. And he needed them to come from Nathan.
Once breakfast was over and the boys were off to school, Peter went to his room where he spent the morning puzzling over a paperback he’d bought to read on the train ride. The story wasn’t complicated but he experienced the usual difficulties keeping track of the plot’s various movements as he went along. He was about fifty pages in, which was farther than he’d gotten with any book since his memory loss, and he wasn’t doing too badly, all things considered. The notes he kept stuck between the pages--an idea copped from his former self’s treatment of Dr. Suresh’s book--helped a little. It made for slow going, but it made him feel pathetically accomplished.
Just as he was about to clear page sixty, a knock came on the bedroom door.
“Can I come in?”
Nathan.
“Yeah,” Peter called back, laying the book open and face down on the night table next to the bed where he was sitting as Nathan came into the room, shutting the door behind him.
“Mind if I sit?” Nathan asked, gesturing to the chair at the desk that had been set up in the corner of the room.
Peter lifted a shoulder. “It’s your house,” he said.
Nathan rolled his eyes, pulling out the chair and setting it in front of the bed so that when Peter pushed himself to the edge of the mattress, they sat squarely facing each other. Nathan settled into place, his expression unusually serious even for him. Peter, on the other hand, couldn’t keep a straight face.
“This is too weird,” he said.
“What is?” Nathan asked.
“I feel like we’re about to have the sex talk all over again,” Peter said.
Nathan grimaced. “Jesus, Pete,” he said. “If this is your way of trying to break the ice, all I can say is bringing up one of the most awkward experiences of my life isn’t really the way to do it.”
Peter shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad.”
But it really had been. Maybe slightly more informative than the fire and brimstone their family pastor had given him at his mother’s request, but definitely not worth the embarrassment of sitting through Nathan’s awkward lecture about how some kids were getting the “wrong kind of information” off the internet (been there, done that) or from their friends at school (had the t-shirt). The sidebar on the correct use of a condom had made it all just that much more horrifying. The only thing that could have made it worse was a demonstration on a banana, but that particular honor had fallen to Peter’s high school health teacher, a lesson from which he had never fully recovered.
“Well, look at it this way--it was good practice for when you have to sit Monty and Simon down to have the same talk with them,” he said. At Nathan’s thunderous expression, he added, “You know…many, many years from now. Possibly on their wedding days.” It went without saying that Nathan wasn’t yet fully aware of his older son’s blossoming interest in the opposite sex.
“Just for that, I’m making you do it,” Nathan said.
“Like hell,” Peter said with a snort.
Nathan sighed, looking down at his hands, loosely folded in his lap. The mood in the room shifted palpably.
“What are you doing here, Pete?” he asked. “What’s this about?”
It was the exact same question he’d asked in the train station that first night.
Peter hesitated, looking down at the garish floral pattern of the bed’s comforter, tracing it with his finger. “I want to meet the Haitian,” he said.
For a moment, Nathan’s mask of diplomacy slipped and he looked honestly taken aback. He covered his surprise quickly, schooling his expression into carefully practiced neutrality. But his voice was tight when he asked, “Did you remember the Haitian or did someone tell you about him?”
His tone didn’t exactly leave any doubt as to who that possible someone might be.
“I didn’t remember,” Peter admitted.
Something flickered in Nathan’s eyes. Something distinctly like betrayal. Stiffly, he asked, “And what else did he tell you?”
“The better question,” Peter said, “is what else you told him not to tell me.”
For a moment, they sat frowning at each other, matching mild glares before Peter broke away, looking toward a nondescript painting of a basket of fruit on the opposite wall, addressing it instead of his brother.
“Claude mentioned that he had a talk with you while you were in New York,” he said. “All he told me was that someone called the Haitian had taken my memories from me. I assumed you would know something about that.”
“And what if I do?”
“I want to talk to him,” Peter said, repeating his earlier request.
“To what end?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said. He looked down at his hands. “It’s not just the lapses. I mean, having to write everything down a million times so I won’t forget, taking almost the entire day to read the newspaper, not remembering which door is mine in an apartment building full of doors. All of that sucks but I’m learning to deal with it because I know it’s probably never going to go away.”
Nathan looked pained at this but said nothing.
“I’m sick of people knowing more about me than I know,” Peter said. “You. Mohinder. Claude. I feel like I blacked out at some party and did some really embarrassing thing nobody will tell me about.” He shook his head. “I know stuff like that can’t be fixed. Claude already told me I won’t remember. But I at least need to know why.”
“And did you ever stop to think maybe it would be better if you didn’t know?” Nathan asked. He moved to the edge of his chair, leaning forward so that Peter was forced to look him in the eye. “Peter, I need you to believe that if I didn’t tell you about the Haitian or anything else about that missing time before, it’s because I had good reason not to. You have to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Peter said. “But I want this. I’m sure.”
Nathan looked unconvinced.
Peter bit his lip. “I know why I jumped that day,” he said, playing his last card. “Claude didn’t tell me but I kind of figured it out after something else he said about this time he tried to get me to fly by throwing me off a building. I know what I was trying to do and why you lied to the press about it afterward.”
Nathan’s expression slackened ever so slightly before clouding over.
“Fine,” he said, rising from his chair. “If you’re absolutely sure this is what you want, then I’ll see what I can do.”
It was another three days before they were able to contact the Haitian. Peter had assumed Nathan would have some way of communicating with the mysterious man on his own but it turned out they needed to go through their mother first and she wouldn’t do it without first trying to talk Peter out of it. Over the phone, she was icier than usual, which was saying something. It wasn’t that she was the most affectionate woman to begin with but for Peter she’d always reserved a certain amount of warmth. Her obvious disappointment was almost enough to get him to back down but in the end they reached an agreement that ended with her saying, “I love you, Peter but I think you’ll be sorry. In fact, I know you will.”
With that ominous warning echoing in his mind, Peter went with Nathan the next night to a neutral, anonymous meeting place about an hour outside the city. They drove in silence, Nathan still bristling after the harsh reprimand he’d received from their mother for letting slip the information that had allowed Peter to make this decision in the first place. For his part, Peter became increasingly apprehensive with each passing mile.
The location chosen for the meeting was an empty parking lot next to a ramshackle building in the middle of nowhere. It was hard to tell from the boarded-up windows and sagging roof, but the place must once have been some kind of roadside diner or bar, long since out of use. Not exactly the most welcoming place.
“You don’t have to do this,” Nathan said once they’d parked. “We can drive back now and just forget that any of this ever happened if that’s what you want.”
“No,” Peter said. “I’m all right.” Still, he didn’t move.
Nathan made no comment.
“Where is he?” Peter asked.
Nathan peered through the windshield at the dark, seemingly empty parking lot. “I think he’s more for emerging from shadows than standing out in the open where people can see him.”
“Well, that’s just about the least comforting thing I’ve heard all day,” Peter said before taking off his seatbelt and stepping out of the car.
It was a cool enough night but the breeze was warm as Peter walked to the center of the deserted lot, hands deep in his pockets. He turned a circle, looking around for any indication that there was someone there besides him and Nathan. He saw no one until he made the full turn and then, standing a few feet away in the direction he’d originally been facing, was a well-dressed, expressionless man who didn’t so much as blink as Peter fought back what would have been a pretty embarrassing gasp of surprise.
“Peter Petrelli,” the man greeted him, his voice smooth and accented.
“You must be…,” Peter began but trailed off when he realized he didn’t know the man’s name.
“Yes,” the man said before he could ask. “I understand you’ve come to me for answers.”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “I was told you took away my memories.”
“And you want to know which memories I took?” the Haitian prodded when Peter hesitated.
“No,” Peter said. “I know what you took. Sort of. What I need to know is why.”
The Haitian shot a curious glance at Nathan’s car before returning his attention to Peter. “That is an interesting question,” he said. “But a more interesting question is how you know to ask that question in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Consider that the people I usually take memories from do not generally know that anything has been taken from them,” the Haitian replied. “They live on without knowing that there are hours, days or even months of their lives missing unless someone tells them so and even then they cannot believe that it is true. But you are aware of the time you have lost. You have always known something is missing.”
“Kind of hard not to notice,” Peter said. “Waking up one day and six months have passed since I went to sleep.”
The Haitian didn’t so much as smile.
“So, what? Are you saying you…messed up?” Peter asked.
“No,” the Haitian said. “I did as was requested of me.”
“Requested by who?”
“By you,” the Haitian said.
Peter’s heart felt suddenly like it had turned to lead. His stomach dropped unpleasantly.
Without waiting for Peter to reply, the Haitian went on. “The memories I took were unwanted,” he said. “The life you were living after the bomb in New York was, as you told me at the time, no kind of life. You were afraid that what had happened there would happen again and you had no desire to go on as you were. At the same time, you knew that if I erased your memories, your powers would go with them. Despite everything that had happened--”
“I didn’t want that,” Peter finished for him.
The Haitian said nothing.
“So I asked you to…what?”
“Breadcrumbs,” the Haitian said.
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Breadcrumbs?”
“Yes,” the man said. “That’s what you called it.”
“I wanted clues,” Peter surmised after a moment of thought. “A way to lead myself back in case I ever needed to access my powers again.”
“A likely event considering the nature of the world we live in,” the Haitian replied.
“So you made it so I would know something was missing,” Peter said. “What else did you do? How did you know what to leave behind?”
“There were specific memories and notions you asked me not to touch,” the Haitian said. “A handful of them. I did as I was told.”
“My brother’s ability to fly,” Peter said.
“Yes.”
“The day I first tried to fly.”
Another nod.
Peter bit his lip. “I remembered Claude too.”
“Then you remembered him for a reason,” the Haitian said.
Peter was silent for a moment as these revelations began to weigh on him. “I pressed the reset button,” he said grimly.
“In a manner of speaking,” the Haitian replied.
He glanced back at the car. Nathan still sat behind the wheel and in the pale moonlight, he could see his brother’s face turned toward them, watching the exchange carefully. He thought of Nathan’s insistence that, instead of telling Peter what he knew, Peter should have to remember on his own. Did he really believe that Peter could remember or had he just been trying to protect him from what he thought Peter didn’t want himself to know?
“I won’t remember anything else, will I?” Peter asked. “Beyond those breadcrumbs, I mean.” Claude had said as much. He just wanted to make sure.
“No,” the Haitian said. “And I cannot give back what has been taken. That is not how my gift works.”
“You should have that printed on a business card or something. Like a disclaimer,” Peter remarked. When the Haitian said nothing, he asked, “What about the memory lapses I have? The not being able to remember people’s names or where I live. Was that something I asked for too?”
“Another clue wrapped in a natural side effect of what I do,” the Haitian replied.
“Will it ever get better?”
“I cannot say,” the Haitian said. “But it will get worse if more is erased from your memory. You should know that should you ever decide that your new memories are ones you cannot live with.” There was a faint rebuke in the other man’s words.
“I understand,” Peter said. “Thanks for coming.”
The Haitian inclined his head slightly. Without a word, he turned and walked away. Peter watched him go until he’d disappeared in the darkness. Probably back to a car he had parked somewhere, hidden. After a minute, Peter made his way back to Nathan.
“That didn’t take long,” he said as Peter got in.
“He’s not exactly a verbal guy,” Peter said.
“Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
Peter nodded.
“And?”
“And what?”
“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “How do you feel about it?”
Peter looked out the window, into the blackness of the surrounding night. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.
Part Seventeen
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, Part Fourteen, Part Fifteen
The Price of a Memory
Part 16/17
“Peter.”
Sitting on a bench in a deserted train station in the middle of the night, Peter looked up at the sound of his name to find Nathan standing there dressed in a brown overcoat and what appeared to be striped pajama bottoms, looking for all the world like a concerned father come to retrieve his kid from his first overnight stay at a friend’s house. In a way, that was what this felt like.
“What are you doing here?” Nathan said as he finally reached Peter. “What’s this about?”
“I wanted to see you,” Peter said, practically feeling the slap upside the head Claude would have delivered at the perceived sentimentality of that statement, had he been there.
But Peter had left Claude back in Isaac Mendez’s loft. Following their conversation, he’d felt the sudden and overpowering urge to go somewhere where he could clear his head. Buying the train ticket to Washington had been the easy part. Finding Nathan’s place once he was in Washington proved to be more difficult. Nathan had given him the address numerous times but, predictably enough, Peter had forgotten what it was. Without that, he’d been forced to call his brother--whose number he kept stored in his cell phone for the sake of convenience--to come pick him up. Not the least embarrassing way of starting a conversation.
“Are you okay?” Nathan asked, his hand finding Peter’s shoulder like it always did when he was worried.
“I will be,” Peter said.
For three days, that was the extent of their discussion about the reason behind Peter’s unannounced visit. There might have been more but Nathan wasn’t completely insensitive to the idea of giving a person some space and, besides that, he was busy at work. Apparently even important, heartfelt conversations with close family members required an appointment first.
While Nathan was doing what he could to rearrange his schedule, Peter was left to the mercy of Heidi, who was as hospitable as possible under the circumstances.
“Nathan misses you, Peter,” she said to him at the breakfast table one morning. “He worries about you all the time.”
“He doesn’t have to,” Peter replied.
Heidi gave him a politely skeptical look before sipping her coffee. “He mentioned the idea of bringing you here to live with us,” she said. “It would make him feel better if you were close by.”
Peter couldn’t tell from her tone exactly how she felt about this particular idea, though he could guess that she wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about it. He’d learned by now not to take stuff personally when it came to Heidi. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each other. They actually got along pretty well, considering they were constant competitors for Nathan’s attention. But he knew his memory lapses made her nervous and that his living there would make her feel obligated to watch him twenty-four hours a day. In case he couldn’t remember what the warning labels on household cleaning products were for and accidentally let her kids drink poison.
For his part, Peter had no desire to spend anymore time in Washington than he had to but it wasn’t really like he had any kind of defense against the idea. He had no job or any kind of real life in New York. All he had were the people and he wasn’t sure he even had them anymore. Still, he told her, “I have friends back home. I can’t leave them.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” Simon asked eagerly. He’d just begun noticing girls and was eager to live vicariously through his more experienced acquaintances. Meanwhile, Monty screwed up his face, clearly disgusted at his brother’s suggestion.
Peter hesitated. “Um, not exactly.”
Even as he said it, he felt his cheeks redden at the memory of Claude’s kiss. As always, the thought of it set off a slight thrill in the pit of his stomach, like dropping down that first hill on a roller coaster. That it had happened at all still didn’t feel quite real to Peter. Maybe it would have had he stuck around long enough for there to be a second round. But despite the slight sense of unreality, Peter also knew that of all the things that had happened to him in the past few weeks, this had been the one thing that made a bizarre sort of sense. The one thing that had given him the feeling of finally moving forward after he’d spent so much time stuck in one place.
It was a direction Peter was eager to explore, a leap he was more than willing to take. But before he could do that, he needed to find the remaining pieces of his lost past. And he needed them to come from Nathan.
Once breakfast was over and the boys were off to school, Peter went to his room where he spent the morning puzzling over a paperback he’d bought to read on the train ride. The story wasn’t complicated but he experienced the usual difficulties keeping track of the plot’s various movements as he went along. He was about fifty pages in, which was farther than he’d gotten with any book since his memory loss, and he wasn’t doing too badly, all things considered. The notes he kept stuck between the pages--an idea copped from his former self’s treatment of Dr. Suresh’s book--helped a little. It made for slow going, but it made him feel pathetically accomplished.
Just as he was about to clear page sixty, a knock came on the bedroom door.
“Can I come in?”
Nathan.
“Yeah,” Peter called back, laying the book open and face down on the night table next to the bed where he was sitting as Nathan came into the room, shutting the door behind him.
“Mind if I sit?” Nathan asked, gesturing to the chair at the desk that had been set up in the corner of the room.
Peter lifted a shoulder. “It’s your house,” he said.
Nathan rolled his eyes, pulling out the chair and setting it in front of the bed so that when Peter pushed himself to the edge of the mattress, they sat squarely facing each other. Nathan settled into place, his expression unusually serious even for him. Peter, on the other hand, couldn’t keep a straight face.
“This is too weird,” he said.
“What is?” Nathan asked.
“I feel like we’re about to have the sex talk all over again,” Peter said.
Nathan grimaced. “Jesus, Pete,” he said. “If this is your way of trying to break the ice, all I can say is bringing up one of the most awkward experiences of my life isn’t really the way to do it.”
Peter shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad.”
But it really had been. Maybe slightly more informative than the fire and brimstone their family pastor had given him at his mother’s request, but definitely not worth the embarrassment of sitting through Nathan’s awkward lecture about how some kids were getting the “wrong kind of information” off the internet (been there, done that) or from their friends at school (had the t-shirt). The sidebar on the correct use of a condom had made it all just that much more horrifying. The only thing that could have made it worse was a demonstration on a banana, but that particular honor had fallen to Peter’s high school health teacher, a lesson from which he had never fully recovered.
“Well, look at it this way--it was good practice for when you have to sit Monty and Simon down to have the same talk with them,” he said. At Nathan’s thunderous expression, he added, “You know…many, many years from now. Possibly on their wedding days.” It went without saying that Nathan wasn’t yet fully aware of his older son’s blossoming interest in the opposite sex.
“Just for that, I’m making you do it,” Nathan said.
“Like hell,” Peter said with a snort.
Nathan sighed, looking down at his hands, loosely folded in his lap. The mood in the room shifted palpably.
“What are you doing here, Pete?” he asked. “What’s this about?”
It was the exact same question he’d asked in the train station that first night.
Peter hesitated, looking down at the garish floral pattern of the bed’s comforter, tracing it with his finger. “I want to meet the Haitian,” he said.
For a moment, Nathan’s mask of diplomacy slipped and he looked honestly taken aback. He covered his surprise quickly, schooling his expression into carefully practiced neutrality. But his voice was tight when he asked, “Did you remember the Haitian or did someone tell you about him?”
His tone didn’t exactly leave any doubt as to who that possible someone might be.
“I didn’t remember,” Peter admitted.
Something flickered in Nathan’s eyes. Something distinctly like betrayal. Stiffly, he asked, “And what else did he tell you?”
“The better question,” Peter said, “is what else you told him not to tell me.”
For a moment, they sat frowning at each other, matching mild glares before Peter broke away, looking toward a nondescript painting of a basket of fruit on the opposite wall, addressing it instead of his brother.
“Claude mentioned that he had a talk with you while you were in New York,” he said. “All he told me was that someone called the Haitian had taken my memories from me. I assumed you would know something about that.”
“And what if I do?”
“I want to talk to him,” Peter said, repeating his earlier request.
“To what end?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said. He looked down at his hands. “It’s not just the lapses. I mean, having to write everything down a million times so I won’t forget, taking almost the entire day to read the newspaper, not remembering which door is mine in an apartment building full of doors. All of that sucks but I’m learning to deal with it because I know it’s probably never going to go away.”
Nathan looked pained at this but said nothing.
“I’m sick of people knowing more about me than I know,” Peter said. “You. Mohinder. Claude. I feel like I blacked out at some party and did some really embarrassing thing nobody will tell me about.” He shook his head. “I know stuff like that can’t be fixed. Claude already told me I won’t remember. But I at least need to know why.”
“And did you ever stop to think maybe it would be better if you didn’t know?” Nathan asked. He moved to the edge of his chair, leaning forward so that Peter was forced to look him in the eye. “Peter, I need you to believe that if I didn’t tell you about the Haitian or anything else about that missing time before, it’s because I had good reason not to. You have to trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Peter said. “But I want this. I’m sure.”
Nathan looked unconvinced.
Peter bit his lip. “I know why I jumped that day,” he said, playing his last card. “Claude didn’t tell me but I kind of figured it out after something else he said about this time he tried to get me to fly by throwing me off a building. I know what I was trying to do and why you lied to the press about it afterward.”
Nathan’s expression slackened ever so slightly before clouding over.
“Fine,” he said, rising from his chair. “If you’re absolutely sure this is what you want, then I’ll see what I can do.”
It was another three days before they were able to contact the Haitian. Peter had assumed Nathan would have some way of communicating with the mysterious man on his own but it turned out they needed to go through their mother first and she wouldn’t do it without first trying to talk Peter out of it. Over the phone, she was icier than usual, which was saying something. It wasn’t that she was the most affectionate woman to begin with but for Peter she’d always reserved a certain amount of warmth. Her obvious disappointment was almost enough to get him to back down but in the end they reached an agreement that ended with her saying, “I love you, Peter but I think you’ll be sorry. In fact, I know you will.”
With that ominous warning echoing in his mind, Peter went with Nathan the next night to a neutral, anonymous meeting place about an hour outside the city. They drove in silence, Nathan still bristling after the harsh reprimand he’d received from their mother for letting slip the information that had allowed Peter to make this decision in the first place. For his part, Peter became increasingly apprehensive with each passing mile.
The location chosen for the meeting was an empty parking lot next to a ramshackle building in the middle of nowhere. It was hard to tell from the boarded-up windows and sagging roof, but the place must once have been some kind of roadside diner or bar, long since out of use. Not exactly the most welcoming place.
“You don’t have to do this,” Nathan said once they’d parked. “We can drive back now and just forget that any of this ever happened if that’s what you want.”
“No,” Peter said. “I’m all right.” Still, he didn’t move.
Nathan made no comment.
“Where is he?” Peter asked.
Nathan peered through the windshield at the dark, seemingly empty parking lot. “I think he’s more for emerging from shadows than standing out in the open where people can see him.”
“Well, that’s just about the least comforting thing I’ve heard all day,” Peter said before taking off his seatbelt and stepping out of the car.
It was a cool enough night but the breeze was warm as Peter walked to the center of the deserted lot, hands deep in his pockets. He turned a circle, looking around for any indication that there was someone there besides him and Nathan. He saw no one until he made the full turn and then, standing a few feet away in the direction he’d originally been facing, was a well-dressed, expressionless man who didn’t so much as blink as Peter fought back what would have been a pretty embarrassing gasp of surprise.
“Peter Petrelli,” the man greeted him, his voice smooth and accented.
“You must be…,” Peter began but trailed off when he realized he didn’t know the man’s name.
“Yes,” the man said before he could ask. “I understand you’ve come to me for answers.”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “I was told you took away my memories.”
“And you want to know which memories I took?” the Haitian prodded when Peter hesitated.
“No,” Peter said. “I know what you took. Sort of. What I need to know is why.”
The Haitian shot a curious glance at Nathan’s car before returning his attention to Peter. “That is an interesting question,” he said. “But a more interesting question is how you know to ask that question in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Consider that the people I usually take memories from do not generally know that anything has been taken from them,” the Haitian replied. “They live on without knowing that there are hours, days or even months of their lives missing unless someone tells them so and even then they cannot believe that it is true. But you are aware of the time you have lost. You have always known something is missing.”
“Kind of hard not to notice,” Peter said. “Waking up one day and six months have passed since I went to sleep.”
The Haitian didn’t so much as smile.
“So, what? Are you saying you…messed up?” Peter asked.
“No,” the Haitian said. “I did as was requested of me.”
“Requested by who?”
“By you,” the Haitian said.
Peter’s heart felt suddenly like it had turned to lead. His stomach dropped unpleasantly.
Without waiting for Peter to reply, the Haitian went on. “The memories I took were unwanted,” he said. “The life you were living after the bomb in New York was, as you told me at the time, no kind of life. You were afraid that what had happened there would happen again and you had no desire to go on as you were. At the same time, you knew that if I erased your memories, your powers would go with them. Despite everything that had happened--”
“I didn’t want that,” Peter finished for him.
The Haitian said nothing.
“So I asked you to…what?”
“Breadcrumbs,” the Haitian said.
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Breadcrumbs?”
“Yes,” the man said. “That’s what you called it.”
“I wanted clues,” Peter surmised after a moment of thought. “A way to lead myself back in case I ever needed to access my powers again.”
“A likely event considering the nature of the world we live in,” the Haitian replied.
“So you made it so I would know something was missing,” Peter said. “What else did you do? How did you know what to leave behind?”
“There were specific memories and notions you asked me not to touch,” the Haitian said. “A handful of them. I did as I was told.”
“My brother’s ability to fly,” Peter said.
“Yes.”
“The day I first tried to fly.”
Another nod.
Peter bit his lip. “I remembered Claude too.”
“Then you remembered him for a reason,” the Haitian said.
Peter was silent for a moment as these revelations began to weigh on him. “I pressed the reset button,” he said grimly.
“In a manner of speaking,” the Haitian replied.
He glanced back at the car. Nathan still sat behind the wheel and in the pale moonlight, he could see his brother’s face turned toward them, watching the exchange carefully. He thought of Nathan’s insistence that, instead of telling Peter what he knew, Peter should have to remember on his own. Did he really believe that Peter could remember or had he just been trying to protect him from what he thought Peter didn’t want himself to know?
“I won’t remember anything else, will I?” Peter asked. “Beyond those breadcrumbs, I mean.” Claude had said as much. He just wanted to make sure.
“No,” the Haitian said. “And I cannot give back what has been taken. That is not how my gift works.”
“You should have that printed on a business card or something. Like a disclaimer,” Peter remarked. When the Haitian said nothing, he asked, “What about the memory lapses I have? The not being able to remember people’s names or where I live. Was that something I asked for too?”
“Another clue wrapped in a natural side effect of what I do,” the Haitian replied.
“Will it ever get better?”
“I cannot say,” the Haitian said. “But it will get worse if more is erased from your memory. You should know that should you ever decide that your new memories are ones you cannot live with.” There was a faint rebuke in the other man’s words.
“I understand,” Peter said. “Thanks for coming.”
The Haitian inclined his head slightly. Without a word, he turned and walked away. Peter watched him go until he’d disappeared in the darkness. Probably back to a car he had parked somewhere, hidden. After a minute, Peter made his way back to Nathan.
“That didn’t take long,” he said as Peter got in.
“He’s not exactly a verbal guy,” Peter said.
“Did you find out what you wanted to know?”
Peter nodded.
“And?”
“And what?”
“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “How do you feel about it?”
Peter looked out the window, into the blackness of the surrounding night. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.
Part Seventeen