"Less Determined Men Would Call It Fate," Heroes, Bennet/Nathan
Title: Less Determined Men Would Call It Fate
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Bennet/Nathan
Rating: PG-13 (sorry!)
Word Count: 7157
Genre: Slash
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 3x03.
Summary: Fifteen years ago they were different men and they caught each other at the worst possible moment.
Author’s Notes: Written for the always and utterly sublime karaokegal’s birthday; she requested some Noah/Nathan (but I still can’t call him anything other than ‘Bennet’; I don’t know why! I think it’s because he’s old enough to be my father in spite of the fact he is really seriously kind of sexy). Also I’ve taken a few vague liberties with timelines and ages since I don’t know how old the majority of these people are meant to be. I didn’t write this in chronological order and therefore made it really unnecessarily complicated for myself… ah well. Hope you like my lovely :)
{This story is told backwards, which is either interesting and awesome or pretentious and confusing. If it’s the latter, just copy and paste it into a word document in chronological order ;D}
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw their weight around.
- Jon Boden
Now
No one tries to stop him; no one tries to arrest him at all as Bennet walks back into the place he swore he wouldn’t return to. He has nowhere else to go, though, and he knows that now. He straightens his tie, fixes his impenetrable smirk in place, and strides through the corridors as though he owns the place. What’s coming next is uncertain and it would daunt a lesser man, but Bennet finds himself weirdly looking forward to what’s coming. He tries not to think about what this says about him; after all, he already knows.
Level Five is empty and quiet and damaged. Satisfaction and anxiety mingle inside him, though he doesn’t let his expression flicker.
Angela Petrelli’s smile is smug, but she really doesn’t know everything. And Bennet is going to keep it that way for as long as he can. Nathan could prove to be a hidden ally, or his downfall, and he won’t know which until it’s too late; still, it would be nice if Angela doesn’t know either. He’ll play this game until he runs out of pieces, and won’t ever look back.
He can’t shake the feeling that, somewhere, Claude is still laughing at him.
Two Hours Ago
Politics is kind of like the fling you can’t quite leave alone; you could be with the love of your life but you’d still fuck them just once more, just because you have to.
Nathan thinks the analogy could use some work and he kind of wants to know why the Higher Power in charge of all this shit would choose to make him quite so indiscriminate and unfaithful, but anyway Tracy Strauss, who looks just like another mistake he already made last year, has managed to talk him back into the game.
He tells himself he isn’t excited.
The apartment is quiet; Linderman isn’t around, which is great because Nathan honestly does not want to know what is going on there, and Pete who may or may not be His Brother From The Future has mercifully gone somewhere else as well. It’s the first time he’s been truly alone since he died, and the sunlight oozing through the windows is quietly reassuring.
The banging on his door is urgent, and he reluctantly goes to answer it.
Noah looks like he’s had better days, composure strong but shredded around the edges, and Nathan’s heart starts hammering because there’s a gun in Noah’s waistband. God saw fit to spare him but still Nathan feels a little queasy whenever he sees a firearm of any kind. He thinks it’s probably to be expected.
“Sylar,” Noah spits. “Sylar attacked Claire.”
All the air rushes out of Nathan’s chest and he steps aside to let Noah in.
“Is she-”
“She’s alive,” Noah tells him, kicking the door shut, and Nathan bows his head, relief flooding him. He’s lost his daughter once and he’s not sure he can do it again. “She’s traumatised, but she’s alive.”
Nathan feels the first traces of anger warming inside him. He hasn’t been angry in days, and it’s kind of liberating, in a sick sort of way. “You were supposed to protect her!” he yells.
“I was being held prisoner!” Noah shouts back. “Where the hell were you?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?” Nathan demands. “I got shot.”
All the tension seems to leave Noah; he now seems faintly amused. Nathan doesn’t understand, and says as much.
“I was shot recently too,” Noah explains.
Nathan is not impressed. “Yeah? Did you die?”
Noah shrugs minutely. “Actually… yes.”
Nathan wonders detachedly if, since they’re both halves of the same man (i.e Claire’s father), the same things have to happen to them. If really they’re only one person, trying to bury his emotions under layers of determination and cynicism. Not that he’ll say it aloud.
“Looks like God is on your side too,” he observes.
Noah chuckles softly. “God’s not on your side,” he replies. “You’re just a bastard who is luckier than he has any right to be.”
Nathan glares, but he doesn’t have the patience to argue philosophy and logistics with Noah Bennet.
“So what about you?”
Noah’s smirk widens. “Takes one to know one,” he points out.
If they were friends, they could compare notes on dying. They could share stories and talk about the cold and have heated debates over whether or not there was white light at the end. But they won’t give in, won’t share that inch with each other; fifteen years ago they were different men and they caught each other at the worst possible moment. Things have changed, and they won’t ever go back. After all, Nathan has made his living out of refusing to look back.
“I’m back in politics,” he says, to fill up the silence. There’s an inescapable tension between him and Noah; as though any moment the whole thing could descend into unforgivable violence and they’ll have the deception they can barely talk about out with teeth and fists and blind white fury until someone draws first blood and then doesn’t stop. They could be friends, maybe they should be friends, given that they’re both Claire’s father, but they won’t be. The Biblical cliché is love thy neighbour; but Nathan thinks an exception can be made in this case.
Noah smiles slightly. “I won’t vote for you.”
They’ll keep pushing this, waiting to see what happens. Perhaps they’ll just always resent each other for a drunken night of cracked emotions that happened too long ago, or maybe this is just how everything plays out when one man steals another man’s daughter and then lies to him about it.
“I’ll get revenge,” Noah offers; it seems to be his turn to try and stave off the inevitable and maybe he should just go away before they have to make that choice. “I’ll get revenge for both of us.”
Nathan nods with genuine feeling but says nothing for a moment; Claire wants answers to questions he can’t face and he doesn’t know most of the things she needs, but she remains the little girl who gurgled away in her cot while his mother glared and threatened disinheritance while forcing him to swear not to tell Peter. “Thank you,” he manages at last. “I’ll do what I can.”
There’s that flash in Noah’s eyes, as though something has ultimately shattered through his frustrating equilibrium; Nathan’s finally pushed this envelope a little too far and it’s ripped.
“Will you have time for her, given your career?” he asks, voice gravelly and calm but there’s an edge there. Nathan reflects that they should just have beaten each other up long before it ever got to this point. “Or will you be too busy trying to get yourself assassinated to protect her?”
“Because, oh right, you were standing there between her and Sylar,” Nathan snaps back, wounded. He will not be blamed for being shot. He will not. “Oh, wait. Where were you?”
He’s hit a nerve; Noah slams him against the wall, forearm against his throat. He’s strong, trembling slightly with fury, and Nathan wonders if it’ll be slightly ironic or just God being a dick if he survives being shot dead only to be strangled in his own hall.
They’re both breathing hard, and it’s been a long time. Nathan digs his nails into Noah’s arm, forcing it away from his windpipe so he can breathe, and stares into those blue eyes with fury of his own. Noah slams Nathan’s arm down, holding him still, and the air is thick with enraged anticipation. But Claire is his daughter and he loves her, in spite of everything, and it’s kind of cruel to pretend that it’s her they’re fighting about.
Noah still has Nathan’s wrists pinned to the wall, refusing to let him move, and Nathan knows that Noah can and probably has killed someone with his bare hands. Still, he glares as hard as he can, and wills Noah to react.
Their mouths crash together with a force almost hard enough to bruise and this is about the only way to ensure that they both won’t end up dead. It won’t end well; but they will both almost certainly still be alive and from now on they might be able to treat each other with civility, or something approaching it. Nathan greedily bites Noah’s mouth open, struggling to free his hands, desperate to feel something other than exhausted and powerless. Desperate to put an end to fifteen years of curiosity and resentment. Crushed against the wall by Noah’s determined strength, Nathan reflects that this is really where they’ve been all along; only they’ve been hiding behind stiff words and their very best poker faces. That’s all stripped away now, though, the glasses bumping Nathan’s face and Noah’s thigh pushing between his.
He comforts himself with the knowledge that this can hardly make things any worse.
Six Months Ago
Sandra seems happy enough picking out new paint schemes, Claire is quietly devastated about losing that slightly suspicious best friend of hers, and Lyle has chosen not to say a word about the whole thing. Bennet leaves the Haitian in California with his family while he sorts out one last piece of insurance.
It has been almost two weeks since he watched the Petrelli brothers explode in a curling supernova above New York City. Nathan turned up; Peter didn’t. Claire cries behind locked doors when she thinks he can’t hear, but that will pass. Bennet waits until Nathan has been discharged from hospital, and then goes to find him in his new apartment; apparently Nathan no longer wants to live in the Petrelli Mansion.
“It’s you,” Nathan observes calmly, stepping back from the door and allowing Bennet to enter. “If you’ve come to abduct me again, I won’t fight you.”
“Not in that line of work any more,” Bennet replies smoothly. He takes Nathan in from the light bleeding through the closed blinds. He is looking remarkably good for a man who flew his radioactive brother into the sky and who was still up there when said brother blew up like an atomic bomb. He looks exactly the same as he used to; Bennet immediately becomes suspicious.
“I don’t know either,” Nathan tells him; apparently Bennet was staring a little bit too long. “I woke up one morning and the burns were gone. Like nothing happened.”
Nathan sighs, abruptly turning and heading down the hall into another room. Bennet follows.
“No news of Peter?”
Nathan’s voice catches. “No.” He coughs. “How’s Claire?”
“Coping,” Bennet responds. “And safe.”
“Don’t give much away, do you?” Nathan smiles, a trace of the shark still lingering behind the exhaustion. “Should’ve been a politician, really.”
Bennet would say that he’d have no stomach for the games, but he’d be caught in the lie so he remains silent and impassive.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Nathan’s voice is rough but not angry. Not yet. “All those years ago, you knew.”
“I suspected,” Bennet tells him; there’s no point in lying.
“I should hate you for that,” Nathan mutters. “You let me mourn her and all the while you had her.”
Bennet still says nothing.
“Meredith’s a bitch, you know?” Nathan’s laugh is sharp. “But I loved her. She was beautiful; I was still young enough to think that would be enough. My mother - my mother calls her my ‘folly’.”
Bennet could admit culpability here, his role in forcing Meredith to ignite from sheer terror, burning down her home and nearly taking her daughter with her. But there’s no sense in giving Nathan someone else to blame, and Bennet is not here for forgiveness; it’s something he neither needs nor wants. In the scheme of things, it is utterly irrelevant.
“She found out Claire was still alive,” Nathan continues, “And so of course she told me; first words out of her mouth were basically a request for hush money.”
Bennet would be angry but there isn’t much sense in it and he’s learned to save his fury for when it really actually matters. Besides, if it weren’t for Meredith and Nathan and their mistakes he would not have Claire. And if he did not have Claire then God knows what he would still be doing in the name of righteousness.
Nathan doesn’t seem bothered by his silence; he throws himself onto his couch, and he’s not the confident man grinning that infuriating grin on posters stuck all over the city. Now he’s just a man who made some choices he shouldn’t have made and lost his brother as the penalty.
“She’s… she’s amazing,” Nathan murmurs, slowly, like he doesn’t want to give the admission but he’s feeling honour-bound to do so. “You’ve done a good job.”
Bennet sits in a chair opposite Nathan, back straight, constantly alert. He’s done his best, which may not be the same thing, but circumstances haven’t exactly been on his side. Still, he did what he could with what he had, and if he was the kind of man who went to the effort to make other people feel better about themselves, he’d say it’s only because of Nathan that he’s the father he is today. Nathan and his drunken, inadvertent pep talk that he gave in a bar too many years ago. But he’s not going to say it because he can tell they’re going to refuse to be indebted to each other; both the fathers of the same little girl and so things can never be easy between them.
“I think she’ll want to keep in touch,” Bennet says quietly.
Nathan laughs humourlessly. “I wouldn’t want to keep in touch with me. I think Claire thinks I’m a monster.”
Bennet shakes his head. “You redeemed yourself,” he replies.
Nathan fixes him with a shrewd look. “Does that go for you as well?” he asks.
Bennet can’t figure out if it matters to Nathan or not; he thinks they’ve both met their matches. Nathan is more vulnerable than he is but politics has given him a nice thick façade to hide behind and all bets are off when it comes to who could win a staring competition. They really could out-bluff each other forever; although that may not actually be a good thing.
“It isn’t about me,” Bennet shrugs, as though it can be that simple.
Nathan almost smirks. He looks tired and wrung-out, though that’s forgivable. The man did essentially kill his brother, after all.
“Then why are you here?” Nathan asks, the edge of a razor beneath the innocuous words.
“I thought we should meet knowing the truth about each other,” Bennet replies. “Clear the air a little. Things are complicated enough without this becoming a problem.”
Nathan raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to forgive you?” he asks.
“I really don’t care,” Bennet tells him. “We’ve moved to California, to keep Claire safe. I thought you should know, but I’d prefer it if that didn’t become public knowledge.”
He doesn’t say don’t tell your mother because he knows that Angela Petrelli can be a very sore spot; Nathan is smart enough to figure it out anyway.
“Good.” Nathan nods decisively.
The silence strings between them, and it’s unusually tense given the fact that they shouldn’t matter to each other. In fact, they never have to meet again, if they choose not to. Nathan is staring at him as though trying to read something from Bennet’s inscrutable expression but of course he’s going to fail. There’s something stupid about this entire situation, which irritates Bennet no end because he’s never had much time for stupid.
“You should leave,” Nathan decides, apparently losing interest in the verbal chess between them; it’s a game neither of them are going to win, and they’ve both got too much dignity to bring up do you remember New York fourteen years ago?
“It’s Claire’s birthday in a month,” Bennet says clearly.
“I know,” Nathan replies. “I’ll… I’ll work something out.”
Bennet nods; he knows he can rely on Nathan to protect Claire as best he can. He’s turning to leave when Nathan says:
“Noah?”
Being called by his first name jars, and Bennet belatedly remembers that he gave it to Nathan in an attempt to stop Thompson finding out that he said things he shouldn’t to a complete stranger. He’s regretting that decision now, but Isaac Mendez wasn’t sitting beside him in that bar and he even if he had been he would probably have painted the wrong thing anyway. The future is fluid and confusing as hell and determinedly opaque.
“Yes?”
Nathan’s lips curl into an almost genuine smile. “I like the glasses, by the way.”
A lesser man would be disconcerted; Bennet merely smiles thinly back.
Eight Months Ago
Bennet is really not entirely sure why Thompson thinks that now would be a good time to bring Nathan Petrelli in. He can fly, which is of course abnormal, but it doesn’t seem to make him dangerous. He’s out in public, plastered all over walls in New York City - people are going to notice if Nathan Petrelli vanishes. Still, it’s not up to him and he’s never going to be suicidal enough to say ‘no’. Not with everything so damn fragile; he needs not to mess anything up, stay as far below the radar as he can so that when Claire needs his help he’ll be in a position to step in and help her.
It is strange, walking into a Vegas hotel room where Nathan Petrelli sleeps in the half-light with Niki Sanders draped across him. Petrelli’s loyalty to his wife is so very endearing. Fourteen years have changed the contours of Petrelli’s face a little but it is definitely him. Living and breathing and right there and Bennet allows himself exactly six seconds to be weak and remember the night of a drunken mistake, a wrong choice of action. Both of them caught at opposite ends of a sore spot. Fatherhood changes a man, and now, of course, Bennet knows with absolute certainty that Nathan Petrelli is Claire’s father.
It’s a relief that the Haitian can only clean out minds, not read them, because Bennet suspects that he would be in serious trouble if anyone else got their hands on his memory. In fact, Bennet may need to take a risk and get the Haitian to slide out that evening from Nathan’s mind. He can’t afford for anyone to find out. Claire’s safety could rest on it. His own safety could rest on it.
He won’t bother taking Niki in just yet; they’re just here for Nathan in his pyjama pants, his indiscretions clear from the rumpled sheets. Bennet hangs back and lets the Haitian wake him up, dragging Nathan from the bed without waking Niki and hustling him from the room. Bennet has a moment of hesitance - there’s something of Claire in Nathan’s bewildered eyes - but he forces himself to curl an unrelenting hand around Nathan’s bare upper arm. Warm skin and a hint of muscle and it is a great relief that Bennet has spent most of the last fifteen years mastering complete control over his mind and emotions, because a lesser man would falter. Would allow himself to be distracted; Nathan’s bare feet stumbling on the floors as they pull him down a back staircase where no one will see them. Bennet is not used to abducting people he has talked to; it makes the morally grey aspect just a little difficult. Nathan Petrelli is arrogant and has all the faults of a stereotypical politician right down to the inability to keep it in his pants with a freshly paralysed wife at home, but he is just a man whose daughter Bennet stole nearly fourteen years ago. It is just as well Bennet gave up on guilt - it would be somewhat crushing at the moment if he hadn’t.
One thing is certain; right now, Nathan doesn’t recognise him.
Bennet wonders if there is something Clark Kent about the set-up; add a little over a decade and a pair of glasses and suddenly he becomes unrecognisable. Then again, they were both drunk and it was a long time ago; it would be easier if Nathan just didn’t remember. They hurry through the underground parking, white sunlight spilling its way over them, and Nathan offers money as though they’re the kind of kidnappers who can be bought. But his eyes catch on Bennet’s face and maybe it’s been just long enough because Nathan makes no sign but Bennet knows that he has put two and two together and now he knows.
Nathan kicks him hard when Bennet lets himself be distracted by his phone and he’s privately impressed as Nathan frees himself from the Haitian and runs. There’s two ways this can go; and overall Bennet thinks it would be best if Nathan did not make it to Primatech. He gets out his gun, decision made, and they trap Nathan by a chain link fence.
Nathan offers threats. “I’ve seen your faces,” he points out; a simple statement of fact but his eyes linger on Bennet and there’s a memory there.
“That won’t be a problem,” Bennet replies, but even as he tells the Haitian to take Petrelli down, both he and Nathan know he won’t shoot, and while he keeps his face impassive he lets his eyes say Go. Now. Nathan bends his knees and launches himself into the sky, leaving a fresh white trail in his wake. Bennet forces himself not to smile; he’s privately impressed. Who knew Petrelli’s power was quite that interesting? And later, of course, there will be questions; but even the Haitian can testify that it was all by the book, and if Bennet hesitated a fraction of a second too long… well, it was an easy mistake to make (although, of course, he should be beyond making such mistakes; everyone knows that).
He stole Nathan Petrelli’s daughter and let him kiss him under a streetlight more than a decade ago, but Petrelli has been kept safe from the clutches of the Company. Bennet reasons that they’re about even.
He answers the call from Sandra, ignoring the Haitian’s faintly curious eyes on him, and from then on Claire is the only one who matters.
Fifteen Years Ago
“Stop scowling at me like you’re five years old,” his mother orders. “It’s childish.”
Nathan straightens his tie, with difficulty. Everything aches, and the task of pretending that nothing at all is wrong is wearing him down. He holds his shoulders stiff, and for a moment swears he smells Meredith’s cigarettes on the air. Bitter nostalgia, and his mother’s frown deepens.
“Peter is worried about you,” she asserts quietly.
There is no response that he can give to that. Nathan has gotten used to Peter’s emotions being shrink-wrapped; his little brother being held safe from the cold cruelty of the world. Nathan is the eldest, the corrupt one, and the firm lines of his mother’s mouth have never let him forget it.
“He hero-worships you,” his mother adds, the curl of her lip showing only too clearly how she feels about that; as if Nathan doesn’t feel guilty enough. “Don’t let him down.”
Nathan turns on her, anger bleeding stickily out from behind his façade. “My daughter is dead,” he snarls. “My daughter is dead and this is not about Peter!”
His mother sighs, flicking imaginary lint from her skirt.
“There’s no need for jealousy.”
Nathan reflects detachedly that his mom is actually kind of a monster. He thinks he knew it before, but since the explosion… well, she’s been acting like it’s a relief. Like the fire was a helpful accident to clean up all of Nathan’s inconvenient mistakes. If she hadn’t been with him the night Meredith and Claire burned to death in Kermit, Nathan would swear blind that she had arranged this.
“I’m getting out of here,” he says firmly.
“You can’t go anywhere,” his mom replies, slow, even, and certain. “You need to go and repair the cracks in your marriage before it’s too late.”
Worry about Peter; worry about Heidi; Nathan can’t help wondering when his mom will schedule time to worry about him. She probably won’t, all things considered; Nathan will just have to play Happy Families and patch together a Special Big Brother Grin for the next time he sees Pete. ‘Cause God forbid they ever let the truth out. People are dead, and no one but Nathan cares.
There’s something considerably surreal about this situation.
“I’m getting out of here,” he repeats, harder. His mom repeats her you can’t leave schtick, and Nathan ignores her, walking away.
After all, you’re not a man until you can openly acknowledge that your mom is a bitch and unhook yourself from her fingernails. At least, that is what Nathan is going to tell himself.
The sidewalks are damp; they glitter black under the streetlights and Nathan attempts to remember when the last time he really slept was. Sometime before The Phone Call, anyway, and his life was not supposed to be this stupid and tragic and complicated. He’s always been embarrassingly obvious about what he actually wanted. He’s always known what he wants, and then he sets about going to get it.
He starts with scotch.
Nathan knows that he should know that mixing grief and alcohol is a stupid idea; but nonetheless he keeps going because the encroaching numbness is a relief. It’s nice to have something else in his head but guilt and obligation and helpless rage, regardless of what he’s replacing them with. Anything that keeps him from reflecting on what he could have done, or what he should have done and all those other stupid damn possibilities that are all a little late now. Unless he finds someone with some kind of special magical powers that enable them to turn back time, Claire and Meredith are staying gone.
The bartender has lost interest and left him the bottle by the time the other man walks in and sits down two stools from Nathan. He looks about as tired as Nathan feels, downing his first drink in one without flinching. Nathan feels a corner of his mouth flick up in an ugly attempt at a smile; misery loves company and he’s drunk enough to want to make a stupid mistake. Any kind of stupid mistake at all.
His mother always forgets to include kind of masochistic when she lists his faults. He’ll have to tell her that sometime; she’d hate to know she was leaving anything out.
“Bad day?” Nathan asks quietly.
The man gives him a perfunctory glance - there’s a swift flash of blue eyes that catch Nathan’s - and then he turns back to the apparently far more interesting task of trying to take the edge off. And if the tension in the guy’s shoulders is any indication, then God what an edge it’s going to turn out to be.
At the other end of the bar, a blonde woman sticks a cigarette between her lips and lights; Nathan watches and wants to be physically sick. He’s never smoked, but Meredith never seemed to be able to stop, and he learned to breathe the smoke second hand. She had an old green lighter in her pocket that never seemed to run out. He tears his gaze from the woman, a grimace curling on his mouth, and pours himself a drink. It’s messy, and spills all over the bar, but he doesn’t particularly care.
The blue-eyed man is watching him, Nathan notices; not saying anything and not being obvious about it, but Nathan can tell that he’s being observed. Measured and quantified. He feels like the other man is judging him; sifting straight through Nathan’s soul and highlighting all the bits he doesn’t like. Then again, Nathan doesn’t need to be liked at the moment; he’s not really feeling all that fond of himself at the moment. Grief and self-pity and he keeps trying to tell himself that it’s not his fault.
“It’s not been a bad day; just a complicated one,” the other man tells him finally, voice a low rumble of sound. He doesn’t look directly at Nathan, and he isn’t fidgeting like Nathan is; he seems like the kind of man who only moves when it’s necessary, who doesn’t waste anything. He seems like he’d have the kind of self-control that Nathan can only dream of.
Nathan’s teeth clink on his glass.
“My day’s been bad,” he murmurs, mouth wet with liquor. “Pretty bad fucking week, actually.”
There’s silence. The other man ignores him for a moment, and then turns to him and raises an inquisitive eyebrow. It’s not exactly inviting, but it indicates at least an obligatory curiosity.
Nathan sort of wants to elaborate but suspects that if he says the words aloud he will actually crumple into pieces. Pete is a great brother and Nathan would love for him to be his confidante; but he’s barely thirteen and there are some things you just can’t say to your little brother. Sometimes, there isn’t anyone you can say what you actually want to say to; it’s something he’s been learning in recent years. He served, fought for his country like the good little son he was meant to be, and now he tries to ignore the fact his father spends more time with the mysterious Mr Linderman than he does at home with his mother, and somewhere along the line Nathan has acquired a wife and most of his life in, say, the last five years has been a series of increasingly stupid accidents.
“Why’s your day been complicated?” he manages eventually, deflecting. As usual.
The other man’s mouth curls slightly; it’s not a smile. It’s almost like he’s calculating.
“I’m going to need a name,” he decides at last.
Nathan is fully aware that his mom will rip him to shreds if she ever finds out he went out and got drunk and spilled his sorry, stupid story to a random stranger; it’s kind of expected that he’ll go into politics one day, and of course Meredith and Claire will have to be buried and forgotten. No one must ever know. But he’s tired and if this screws up his life then, well, it almost seems fitting.
“Nathan,” he gives. He doesn’t offer a surname and it isn’t asked for. He pours himself another glass, wondering exactly how wrecked he already is, and waits.
“Noah.” A quiet admission, and Nathan nods, swallowing another burning mouthful.
“So why’s your week been complicated, Noah?”
The exchange of names seems to have entered them into a contract of truth or something; they’re still separated by two barstools, keeping a careful distance, but Nathan can tell he’s going to end up giving everything away. It’s that sort of an evening.
“I’m a father,” Noah murmurs at last.
Nathan’s mouth cracks into an ugly smile. Of all the fucking things… he wonders if this is irony or not.
“Congratulations,” he offers, the word flat and tasteless against his tongue. He doesn’t mean it.
Noah shrugs minutely, neatly flicking the top button of his shirt open and loosening his tie. He’s almost too tidy; tidy to a degree that’s slightly creepy. He could just be a regular businessman, out for a drink after work, but Nathan sense that he isn’t.
“It was unexpected,” he says calmly. “My wife is thrilled. I’m…” His mouth flickers, it’s nearly a rueful smile but is smoothed away too fast. “I’m disconcerted.”
Nathan can drink to that; and does. “Fatherhood changes things,” he murmurs.
Noah turns to look at him a little too fast. “You have a child?”
Nathan laughs humourlessly; this is not the way to honour Claire’s memory, really it’s not, but everything about his relationship with his daughter was inadequate and undignified so it figures this should be too. “Had a child,” he corrects.
Noah nods, decisively, and his eyes dip to where the alcohol level in Nathan’s bottle has slid right down without him noticing. He gets off his barstool, and comes to join Nathan, raising his hand to catch the bartender’s attention.
“Can we get another one?”
An hour or so later, the bar is cool and wet against Nathan’s cheek. Heidi has been fobbed off with shitty excuses so won’t be expecting him home tonight, but his mother… his mother is going to be very angry. And Nathan really isn’t sure that a grown man should be as afraid of his mom as Nathan is of his; but it’s not a thought he’s going to dwell on.
“You’ve been hazy with the details,” he points out.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Noah replies placidly. He’s less drunk than Nathan - not that that would be a particularly hard achievement - and still wonderfully collected. Nathan wonders if it would be highly inappropriate to say my mom would love you to a man he’s just met.
“Cliché,” Nathan mutters.
Noah sighs. “My life is held together with clichés now,” he says. And doesn’t elaborate. He’s not good at elaborating, Nathan is discovering.
“Children change things,” Nathan says, pushing a hand against the edge of the bar to get himself upright again.
“That’s what my boss said,” Noah replies. “I’m meant to look after this kid, she’s my daughter now… but there’s a chance I could lose her.” His lips curl without amusement. “Actually, it’s pretty much a certainty I’ll lose her. So I’m her father but there’s… there’s a ticking clock.”
Nathan could ask but he knows Noah won’t tell him and anyway he’s not entirely sure that he cares. He’s too selfish for curiosity.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, and his voice is steady and certain. Noah frowns at him. “It doesn’t matter if you’re her father for fifty years or fifty minutes, you have to give her everything you have or you’ll never forgive yourself.”
He wasn’t expecting the words to come out like that, but they did, and even Noah looks surprised. Then he reaches into his pocket and draws out a wad of bills, dropping some onto the bar.
“Come on,” he says.
“What?” Nathan asks.
“I’m being kind,” Noah replies, a trace of bemusement in his voice as though this is not a normal thing at all. “I think it’s time you took a cab and got home.”
Nathan does not want to go home ever again but he’s not a kid any more and it’s time he took some responsibility for himself. He nods reluctantly, and attempts to get to his feet. Noah catches him as Nathan’s legs threaten to fold out beneath him, steady hands gripped tight around Nathan’s upper arms.
It’s starting to rain again; a light drizzle that sticks to Nathan’s face and makes the whole world a little blurred. He’s just about walking on his own, Noah’s hand warm on his shoulder, just in case.
“I had a daughter,” he mutters, dully, just to say it to someone because he knows he can never say it aloud again.
They stop beneath a streetlight; it’s quiet and there are hardly any people around. It’s starting to rain a little harder, drops catching on Nathan’s eyelashes and slipping down his neck. It seems like a perfectly fucking fitting end to his day. And Noah’s hand is still on his shoulder.
Nathan doesn’t even think about it when he leans forward, doesn’t let himself think about it as he moves and his mouth touches Noah’s. He should stop, but he doesn’t, and interestingly enough Noah doesn’t pull away either. It’s a pretty bad kiss; they’re both varying degrees of drunk and it’s raining and still Nathan doesn’t particularly care.
When they part, Noah fixes him with a firm stare and says: “What was her name?”
Nathan shakes his head. He’s not going that far, not ever. Not with anyone. “No,” he murmurs, and leans in again because now he’s screwed up once he might as well screw up again.
Noah jerks back, away from him. “What was her name.”
Nathan bows his head; he’s getting soaked, and the chill is settling into the drunkenness and making him feel worse than ever. “Claire,” he mutters eventually, tone tight and bitter. “Her name was Claire.”
Noah’s blank expression doesn’t change, but he takes a step back. And then, saying nothing, he turns and walks away into the rain. Nathan doesn’t call after him, doesn’t want to call after him. He just sighs, running a damp hand over his face, and decides to take Noah’s advice. He really does need to go home.
Also Fifteen Years Ago
Claude is still laughing about it two days later, because he doesn’t have the emotions of a normal person. In the early days, Bennet thought this might be because of his Abnormal Abilities; now he knows it’s just because Claude is Claude. Antisocial, cynical, and sadistically amused by everything as though the world is just one very long pageant created solely for his entertainment (“And tell me how you know it’s not,” Claude said to him one night when they were too drunk. Bennet does his best not to get drunk around Claude because it’s dangerous. Not because Claude could hurt him - it’s just dangerous).
“I thought you’d have gotten over it by now,” Bennet grits, trying not to look too hard at the baby girl lying in the badly-assembled crib.
“Nah, this is like the gift that keeps on giving,” Claude replies cheerfully. He leans over to tickle the baby - Claire, Bennet reminds himself - and she gives an obedient giggle. “And she’s cute, as small scream-y things go.”
“She likes you,” Bennet observes. He doesn’t say I don’t think she likes me because it sounds ridiculous and pathetic and Bennet is most definitely not ridiculous and pathetic.
“Babies like me,” Claude agrees. “I play the best games of peekaboo in the world.”
Children and animals do like Claude; it is true. It’s just the rest of the world that finds him impossible to deal with.
“She’s just…” Bennet sighs. “She’s very small.”
“Babies really only come in one size,” Claude points out, and then a grin spreads across his face. “If you really want to back out, go tell the Seventh Samurai you can’t do this.”
Bennet is not suicidal, but then he doesn’t think Claude is either.
“[Kaito] would probably kill you if you knew you called him that,” he says.
“Yes.” Claude is still tickling Claire, a little smile on his face that Bennet hasn’t seen before. Apparently everyone but him in this damn Company of sociopaths possesses paternal instincts, and yet he’s the one that’s been left holding the baby. “But he’ll have to find me first, won’t he?”
Claude addresses the question to Claire, who gives a happy squeal. Bennet can’t quite suppress a smirk, though it fades quickly enough. He understands the need to keep things internal - what if the girl manifests? - but he can’t help thinking that trying to combine a baby and the dangerous and violent twilight world of the Company is a spectacularly bad idea. Not that he can voice this aloud.
“Have you told Mrs Bennet she’s a mum yet?” Claude asks cheerfully.
“No,” Bennet admits. He’s still trying to find the words; he and Sandra had begun discussing the possibilities of adoption, but now he has a baby right here, he’s not sure how to tell her.
“I would tell her soon,” Claude warns. “After all, not many husbands come back from their business trips with random babies. Might help if it doesn’t come as a complete shock.”
Bennet glares at him. Claude shrugs; he knows he’s the one in the right. And he does have a point.
“I will tell her,” Bennet insists, and then wonders why he’s letting Claude nag him. Over the course of the last year, he’s started to forget the one of them label stuck over his partner; and that’s dangerous. All of this is dangerous.
Claude tickles one of Claire’s tiny hands with his fingertip, and smirks as her reflexes clench her fingers around his. She looks so small next to Claude; and for a moment Bennet remembers that she could be one of them; an innocent little baby who could yet rip the world apart. If anything, it makes her more disconcerting than ever.
“You’re doing that repressed freaking-out thing that you do,” Claude observes without looking at him. “And sooner or later you’re going to explode into bits of sarcasm and glares and, I don’t know, sodding duty or something and I’ll have to train up another partner.”
Bennet stares coldly at him, and stays silent.
“Get out of here for a while,” Claude offers. “I’ll keep an eye on the little one. Go, call your wife, get a little bit of space. Because I’m not going to have a lot of patience if you have some kind of breakdown.”
“I’m not going to have a breakdown,” Bennet all but snaps. “It’s all going to be fine.”
Claude shrugs. “Well, eventually. Little Claire will have her mum and her dad… and I’ll be her godfather-type person who spoils her rotten.”
Bennet raises an eyebrow. “Do you seriously think that you’ll be having an active role in her life?” he asks.
Claude’s smile has a hint of sadness in it, but it’s wiped away after a flat second, like it was never ever there, and Bennet knows better than to call him up on it. “Shush,” Claude murmurs. “And go away.”
Bennet considers staying here and getting ever more stir-crazy, and he wonders if there will be some kind of punishment for leaving his brand new daughter in the company of Claude Raines, who is not exactly anyone’s number one choice for childcare; but he does need to find somewhere relatively private to talk this through with Sandra, and he needs to take a couple of steps back and get a little perspective on the situation. Most fathers have nine months to get used to the idea of having a brand new tiny life coming to live with them; Bennet has had two days. Anyone would be disconcerted, he reasons.
It was raining earlier; now the air is thick and wet and clings to every breath Bennet takes. He doesn’t hate New York, though it isn’t home; why [Kaito] insisted on dragging him to an entirely different state to hand over his unexpected daughter is slightly lost on Bennet, but it’s not something he’ll ever bring up. He knows better than to think he has a choice in any of this, and so picks the first phone booth he comes to, takes a breath, and dials.
“Hello Sandra. I know, I’ve missed you too. Listen; I have some news…”
The rain starts up again.
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Bennet/Nathan
Rating: PG-13 (sorry!)
Word Count: 7157
Genre: Slash
Spoilers: Up to the beginning of 3x03.
Summary: Fifteen years ago they were different men and they caught each other at the worst possible moment.
Author’s Notes: Written for the always and utterly sublime karaokegal’s birthday; she requested some Noah/Nathan (but I still can’t call him anything other than ‘Bennet’; I don’t know why! I think it’s because he’s old enough to be my father in spite of the fact he is really seriously kind of sexy). Also I’ve taken a few vague liberties with timelines and ages since I don’t know how old the majority of these people are meant to be. I didn’t write this in chronological order and therefore made it really unnecessarily complicated for myself… ah well. Hope you like my lovely :)
{This story is told backwards, which is either interesting and awesome or pretentious and confusing. If it’s the latter, just copy and paste it into a word document in chronological order ;D}
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw their weight around.
- Jon Boden
Now
No one tries to stop him; no one tries to arrest him at all as Bennet walks back into the place he swore he wouldn’t return to. He has nowhere else to go, though, and he knows that now. He straightens his tie, fixes his impenetrable smirk in place, and strides through the corridors as though he owns the place. What’s coming next is uncertain and it would daunt a lesser man, but Bennet finds himself weirdly looking forward to what’s coming. He tries not to think about what this says about him; after all, he already knows.
Level Five is empty and quiet and damaged. Satisfaction and anxiety mingle inside him, though he doesn’t let his expression flicker.
Angela Petrelli’s smile is smug, but she really doesn’t know everything. And Bennet is going to keep it that way for as long as he can. Nathan could prove to be a hidden ally, or his downfall, and he won’t know which until it’s too late; still, it would be nice if Angela doesn’t know either. He’ll play this game until he runs out of pieces, and won’t ever look back.
He can’t shake the feeling that, somewhere, Claude is still laughing at him.
Two Hours Ago
Politics is kind of like the fling you can’t quite leave alone; you could be with the love of your life but you’d still fuck them just once more, just because you have to.
Nathan thinks the analogy could use some work and he kind of wants to know why the Higher Power in charge of all this shit would choose to make him quite so indiscriminate and unfaithful, but anyway Tracy Strauss, who looks just like another mistake he already made last year, has managed to talk him back into the game.
He tells himself he isn’t excited.
The apartment is quiet; Linderman isn’t around, which is great because Nathan honestly does not want to know what is going on there, and Pete who may or may not be His Brother From The Future has mercifully gone somewhere else as well. It’s the first time he’s been truly alone since he died, and the sunlight oozing through the windows is quietly reassuring.
The banging on his door is urgent, and he reluctantly goes to answer it.
Noah looks like he’s had better days, composure strong but shredded around the edges, and Nathan’s heart starts hammering because there’s a gun in Noah’s waistband. God saw fit to spare him but still Nathan feels a little queasy whenever he sees a firearm of any kind. He thinks it’s probably to be expected.
“Sylar,” Noah spits. “Sylar attacked Claire.”
All the air rushes out of Nathan’s chest and he steps aside to let Noah in.
“Is she-”
“She’s alive,” Noah tells him, kicking the door shut, and Nathan bows his head, relief flooding him. He’s lost his daughter once and he’s not sure he can do it again. “She’s traumatised, but she’s alive.”
Nathan feels the first traces of anger warming inside him. He hasn’t been angry in days, and it’s kind of liberating, in a sick sort of way. “You were supposed to protect her!” he yells.
“I was being held prisoner!” Noah shouts back. “Where the hell were you?”
“Haven’t you seen the news?” Nathan demands. “I got shot.”
All the tension seems to leave Noah; he now seems faintly amused. Nathan doesn’t understand, and says as much.
“I was shot recently too,” Noah explains.
Nathan is not impressed. “Yeah? Did you die?”
Noah shrugs minutely. “Actually… yes.”
Nathan wonders detachedly if, since they’re both halves of the same man (i.e Claire’s father), the same things have to happen to them. If really they’re only one person, trying to bury his emotions under layers of determination and cynicism. Not that he’ll say it aloud.
“Looks like God is on your side too,” he observes.
Noah chuckles softly. “God’s not on your side,” he replies. “You’re just a bastard who is luckier than he has any right to be.”
Nathan glares, but he doesn’t have the patience to argue philosophy and logistics with Noah Bennet.
“So what about you?”
Noah’s smirk widens. “Takes one to know one,” he points out.
If they were friends, they could compare notes on dying. They could share stories and talk about the cold and have heated debates over whether or not there was white light at the end. But they won’t give in, won’t share that inch with each other; fifteen years ago they were different men and they caught each other at the worst possible moment. Things have changed, and they won’t ever go back. After all, Nathan has made his living out of refusing to look back.
“I’m back in politics,” he says, to fill up the silence. There’s an inescapable tension between him and Noah; as though any moment the whole thing could descend into unforgivable violence and they’ll have the deception they can barely talk about out with teeth and fists and blind white fury until someone draws first blood and then doesn’t stop. They could be friends, maybe they should be friends, given that they’re both Claire’s father, but they won’t be. The Biblical cliché is love thy neighbour; but Nathan thinks an exception can be made in this case.
Noah smiles slightly. “I won’t vote for you.”
They’ll keep pushing this, waiting to see what happens. Perhaps they’ll just always resent each other for a drunken night of cracked emotions that happened too long ago, or maybe this is just how everything plays out when one man steals another man’s daughter and then lies to him about it.
“I’ll get revenge,” Noah offers; it seems to be his turn to try and stave off the inevitable and maybe he should just go away before they have to make that choice. “I’ll get revenge for both of us.”
Nathan nods with genuine feeling but says nothing for a moment; Claire wants answers to questions he can’t face and he doesn’t know most of the things she needs, but she remains the little girl who gurgled away in her cot while his mother glared and threatened disinheritance while forcing him to swear not to tell Peter. “Thank you,” he manages at last. “I’ll do what I can.”
There’s that flash in Noah’s eyes, as though something has ultimately shattered through his frustrating equilibrium; Nathan’s finally pushed this envelope a little too far and it’s ripped.
“Will you have time for her, given your career?” he asks, voice gravelly and calm but there’s an edge there. Nathan reflects that they should just have beaten each other up long before it ever got to this point. “Or will you be too busy trying to get yourself assassinated to protect her?”
“Because, oh right, you were standing there between her and Sylar,” Nathan snaps back, wounded. He will not be blamed for being shot. He will not. “Oh, wait. Where were you?”
He’s hit a nerve; Noah slams him against the wall, forearm against his throat. He’s strong, trembling slightly with fury, and Nathan wonders if it’ll be slightly ironic or just God being a dick if he survives being shot dead only to be strangled in his own hall.
They’re both breathing hard, and it’s been a long time. Nathan digs his nails into Noah’s arm, forcing it away from his windpipe so he can breathe, and stares into those blue eyes with fury of his own. Noah slams Nathan’s arm down, holding him still, and the air is thick with enraged anticipation. But Claire is his daughter and he loves her, in spite of everything, and it’s kind of cruel to pretend that it’s her they’re fighting about.
Noah still has Nathan’s wrists pinned to the wall, refusing to let him move, and Nathan knows that Noah can and probably has killed someone with his bare hands. Still, he glares as hard as he can, and wills Noah to react.
Their mouths crash together with a force almost hard enough to bruise and this is about the only way to ensure that they both won’t end up dead. It won’t end well; but they will both almost certainly still be alive and from now on they might be able to treat each other with civility, or something approaching it. Nathan greedily bites Noah’s mouth open, struggling to free his hands, desperate to feel something other than exhausted and powerless. Desperate to put an end to fifteen years of curiosity and resentment. Crushed against the wall by Noah’s determined strength, Nathan reflects that this is really where they’ve been all along; only they’ve been hiding behind stiff words and their very best poker faces. That’s all stripped away now, though, the glasses bumping Nathan’s face and Noah’s thigh pushing between his.
He comforts himself with the knowledge that this can hardly make things any worse.
Six Months Ago
Sandra seems happy enough picking out new paint schemes, Claire is quietly devastated about losing that slightly suspicious best friend of hers, and Lyle has chosen not to say a word about the whole thing. Bennet leaves the Haitian in California with his family while he sorts out one last piece of insurance.
It has been almost two weeks since he watched the Petrelli brothers explode in a curling supernova above New York City. Nathan turned up; Peter didn’t. Claire cries behind locked doors when she thinks he can’t hear, but that will pass. Bennet waits until Nathan has been discharged from hospital, and then goes to find him in his new apartment; apparently Nathan no longer wants to live in the Petrelli Mansion.
“It’s you,” Nathan observes calmly, stepping back from the door and allowing Bennet to enter. “If you’ve come to abduct me again, I won’t fight you.”
“Not in that line of work any more,” Bennet replies smoothly. He takes Nathan in from the light bleeding through the closed blinds. He is looking remarkably good for a man who flew his radioactive brother into the sky and who was still up there when said brother blew up like an atomic bomb. He looks exactly the same as he used to; Bennet immediately becomes suspicious.
“I don’t know either,” Nathan tells him; apparently Bennet was staring a little bit too long. “I woke up one morning and the burns were gone. Like nothing happened.”
Nathan sighs, abruptly turning and heading down the hall into another room. Bennet follows.
“No news of Peter?”
Nathan’s voice catches. “No.” He coughs. “How’s Claire?”
“Coping,” Bennet responds. “And safe.”
“Don’t give much away, do you?” Nathan smiles, a trace of the shark still lingering behind the exhaustion. “Should’ve been a politician, really.”
Bennet would say that he’d have no stomach for the games, but he’d be caught in the lie so he remains silent and impassive.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Nathan’s voice is rough but not angry. Not yet. “All those years ago, you knew.”
“I suspected,” Bennet tells him; there’s no point in lying.
“I should hate you for that,” Nathan mutters. “You let me mourn her and all the while you had her.”
Bennet still says nothing.
“Meredith’s a bitch, you know?” Nathan’s laugh is sharp. “But I loved her. She was beautiful; I was still young enough to think that would be enough. My mother - my mother calls her my ‘folly’.”
Bennet could admit culpability here, his role in forcing Meredith to ignite from sheer terror, burning down her home and nearly taking her daughter with her. But there’s no sense in giving Nathan someone else to blame, and Bennet is not here for forgiveness; it’s something he neither needs nor wants. In the scheme of things, it is utterly irrelevant.
“She found out Claire was still alive,” Nathan continues, “And so of course she told me; first words out of her mouth were basically a request for hush money.”
Bennet would be angry but there isn’t much sense in it and he’s learned to save his fury for when it really actually matters. Besides, if it weren’t for Meredith and Nathan and their mistakes he would not have Claire. And if he did not have Claire then God knows what he would still be doing in the name of righteousness.
Nathan doesn’t seem bothered by his silence; he throws himself onto his couch, and he’s not the confident man grinning that infuriating grin on posters stuck all over the city. Now he’s just a man who made some choices he shouldn’t have made and lost his brother as the penalty.
“She’s… she’s amazing,” Nathan murmurs, slowly, like he doesn’t want to give the admission but he’s feeling honour-bound to do so. “You’ve done a good job.”
Bennet sits in a chair opposite Nathan, back straight, constantly alert. He’s done his best, which may not be the same thing, but circumstances haven’t exactly been on his side. Still, he did what he could with what he had, and if he was the kind of man who went to the effort to make other people feel better about themselves, he’d say it’s only because of Nathan that he’s the father he is today. Nathan and his drunken, inadvertent pep talk that he gave in a bar too many years ago. But he’s not going to say it because he can tell they’re going to refuse to be indebted to each other; both the fathers of the same little girl and so things can never be easy between them.
“I think she’ll want to keep in touch,” Bennet says quietly.
Nathan laughs humourlessly. “I wouldn’t want to keep in touch with me. I think Claire thinks I’m a monster.”
Bennet shakes his head. “You redeemed yourself,” he replies.
Nathan fixes him with a shrewd look. “Does that go for you as well?” he asks.
Bennet can’t figure out if it matters to Nathan or not; he thinks they’ve both met their matches. Nathan is more vulnerable than he is but politics has given him a nice thick façade to hide behind and all bets are off when it comes to who could win a staring competition. They really could out-bluff each other forever; although that may not actually be a good thing.
“It isn’t about me,” Bennet shrugs, as though it can be that simple.
Nathan almost smirks. He looks tired and wrung-out, though that’s forgivable. The man did essentially kill his brother, after all.
“Then why are you here?” Nathan asks, the edge of a razor beneath the innocuous words.
“I thought we should meet knowing the truth about each other,” Bennet replies. “Clear the air a little. Things are complicated enough without this becoming a problem.”
Nathan raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to forgive you?” he asks.
“I really don’t care,” Bennet tells him. “We’ve moved to California, to keep Claire safe. I thought you should know, but I’d prefer it if that didn’t become public knowledge.”
He doesn’t say don’t tell your mother because he knows that Angela Petrelli can be a very sore spot; Nathan is smart enough to figure it out anyway.
“Good.” Nathan nods decisively.
The silence strings between them, and it’s unusually tense given the fact that they shouldn’t matter to each other. In fact, they never have to meet again, if they choose not to. Nathan is staring at him as though trying to read something from Bennet’s inscrutable expression but of course he’s going to fail. There’s something stupid about this entire situation, which irritates Bennet no end because he’s never had much time for stupid.
“You should leave,” Nathan decides, apparently losing interest in the verbal chess between them; it’s a game neither of them are going to win, and they’ve both got too much dignity to bring up do you remember New York fourteen years ago?
“It’s Claire’s birthday in a month,” Bennet says clearly.
“I know,” Nathan replies. “I’ll… I’ll work something out.”
Bennet nods; he knows he can rely on Nathan to protect Claire as best he can. He’s turning to leave when Nathan says:
“Noah?”
Being called by his first name jars, and Bennet belatedly remembers that he gave it to Nathan in an attempt to stop Thompson finding out that he said things he shouldn’t to a complete stranger. He’s regretting that decision now, but Isaac Mendez wasn’t sitting beside him in that bar and he even if he had been he would probably have painted the wrong thing anyway. The future is fluid and confusing as hell and determinedly opaque.
“Yes?”
Nathan’s lips curl into an almost genuine smile. “I like the glasses, by the way.”
A lesser man would be disconcerted; Bennet merely smiles thinly back.
Eight Months Ago
Bennet is really not entirely sure why Thompson thinks that now would be a good time to bring Nathan Petrelli in. He can fly, which is of course abnormal, but it doesn’t seem to make him dangerous. He’s out in public, plastered all over walls in New York City - people are going to notice if Nathan Petrelli vanishes. Still, it’s not up to him and he’s never going to be suicidal enough to say ‘no’. Not with everything so damn fragile; he needs not to mess anything up, stay as far below the radar as he can so that when Claire needs his help he’ll be in a position to step in and help her.
It is strange, walking into a Vegas hotel room where Nathan Petrelli sleeps in the half-light with Niki Sanders draped across him. Petrelli’s loyalty to his wife is so very endearing. Fourteen years have changed the contours of Petrelli’s face a little but it is definitely him. Living and breathing and right there and Bennet allows himself exactly six seconds to be weak and remember the night of a drunken mistake, a wrong choice of action. Both of them caught at opposite ends of a sore spot. Fatherhood changes a man, and now, of course, Bennet knows with absolute certainty that Nathan Petrelli is Claire’s father.
It’s a relief that the Haitian can only clean out minds, not read them, because Bennet suspects that he would be in serious trouble if anyone else got their hands on his memory. In fact, Bennet may need to take a risk and get the Haitian to slide out that evening from Nathan’s mind. He can’t afford for anyone to find out. Claire’s safety could rest on it. His own safety could rest on it.
He won’t bother taking Niki in just yet; they’re just here for Nathan in his pyjama pants, his indiscretions clear from the rumpled sheets. Bennet hangs back and lets the Haitian wake him up, dragging Nathan from the bed without waking Niki and hustling him from the room. Bennet has a moment of hesitance - there’s something of Claire in Nathan’s bewildered eyes - but he forces himself to curl an unrelenting hand around Nathan’s bare upper arm. Warm skin and a hint of muscle and it is a great relief that Bennet has spent most of the last fifteen years mastering complete control over his mind and emotions, because a lesser man would falter. Would allow himself to be distracted; Nathan’s bare feet stumbling on the floors as they pull him down a back staircase where no one will see them. Bennet is not used to abducting people he has talked to; it makes the morally grey aspect just a little difficult. Nathan Petrelli is arrogant and has all the faults of a stereotypical politician right down to the inability to keep it in his pants with a freshly paralysed wife at home, but he is just a man whose daughter Bennet stole nearly fourteen years ago. It is just as well Bennet gave up on guilt - it would be somewhat crushing at the moment if he hadn’t.
One thing is certain; right now, Nathan doesn’t recognise him.
Bennet wonders if there is something Clark Kent about the set-up; add a little over a decade and a pair of glasses and suddenly he becomes unrecognisable. Then again, they were both drunk and it was a long time ago; it would be easier if Nathan just didn’t remember. They hurry through the underground parking, white sunlight spilling its way over them, and Nathan offers money as though they’re the kind of kidnappers who can be bought. But his eyes catch on Bennet’s face and maybe it’s been just long enough because Nathan makes no sign but Bennet knows that he has put two and two together and now he knows.
Nathan kicks him hard when Bennet lets himself be distracted by his phone and he’s privately impressed as Nathan frees himself from the Haitian and runs. There’s two ways this can go; and overall Bennet thinks it would be best if Nathan did not make it to Primatech. He gets out his gun, decision made, and they trap Nathan by a chain link fence.
Nathan offers threats. “I’ve seen your faces,” he points out; a simple statement of fact but his eyes linger on Bennet and there’s a memory there.
“That won’t be a problem,” Bennet replies, but even as he tells the Haitian to take Petrelli down, both he and Nathan know he won’t shoot, and while he keeps his face impassive he lets his eyes say Go. Now. Nathan bends his knees and launches himself into the sky, leaving a fresh white trail in his wake. Bennet forces himself not to smile; he’s privately impressed. Who knew Petrelli’s power was quite that interesting? And later, of course, there will be questions; but even the Haitian can testify that it was all by the book, and if Bennet hesitated a fraction of a second too long… well, it was an easy mistake to make (although, of course, he should be beyond making such mistakes; everyone knows that).
He stole Nathan Petrelli’s daughter and let him kiss him under a streetlight more than a decade ago, but Petrelli has been kept safe from the clutches of the Company. Bennet reasons that they’re about even.
He answers the call from Sandra, ignoring the Haitian’s faintly curious eyes on him, and from then on Claire is the only one who matters.
Fifteen Years Ago
“Stop scowling at me like you’re five years old,” his mother orders. “It’s childish.”
Nathan straightens his tie, with difficulty. Everything aches, and the task of pretending that nothing at all is wrong is wearing him down. He holds his shoulders stiff, and for a moment swears he smells Meredith’s cigarettes on the air. Bitter nostalgia, and his mother’s frown deepens.
“Peter is worried about you,” she asserts quietly.
There is no response that he can give to that. Nathan has gotten used to Peter’s emotions being shrink-wrapped; his little brother being held safe from the cold cruelty of the world. Nathan is the eldest, the corrupt one, and the firm lines of his mother’s mouth have never let him forget it.
“He hero-worships you,” his mother adds, the curl of her lip showing only too clearly how she feels about that; as if Nathan doesn’t feel guilty enough. “Don’t let him down.”
Nathan turns on her, anger bleeding stickily out from behind his façade. “My daughter is dead,” he snarls. “My daughter is dead and this is not about Peter!”
His mother sighs, flicking imaginary lint from her skirt.
“There’s no need for jealousy.”
Nathan reflects detachedly that his mom is actually kind of a monster. He thinks he knew it before, but since the explosion… well, she’s been acting like it’s a relief. Like the fire was a helpful accident to clean up all of Nathan’s inconvenient mistakes. If she hadn’t been with him the night Meredith and Claire burned to death in Kermit, Nathan would swear blind that she had arranged this.
“I’m getting out of here,” he says firmly.
“You can’t go anywhere,” his mom replies, slow, even, and certain. “You need to go and repair the cracks in your marriage before it’s too late.”
Worry about Peter; worry about Heidi; Nathan can’t help wondering when his mom will schedule time to worry about him. She probably won’t, all things considered; Nathan will just have to play Happy Families and patch together a Special Big Brother Grin for the next time he sees Pete. ‘Cause God forbid they ever let the truth out. People are dead, and no one but Nathan cares.
There’s something considerably surreal about this situation.
“I’m getting out of here,” he repeats, harder. His mom repeats her you can’t leave schtick, and Nathan ignores her, walking away.
After all, you’re not a man until you can openly acknowledge that your mom is a bitch and unhook yourself from her fingernails. At least, that is what Nathan is going to tell himself.
The sidewalks are damp; they glitter black under the streetlights and Nathan attempts to remember when the last time he really slept was. Sometime before The Phone Call, anyway, and his life was not supposed to be this stupid and tragic and complicated. He’s always been embarrassingly obvious about what he actually wanted. He’s always known what he wants, and then he sets about going to get it.
He starts with scotch.
Nathan knows that he should know that mixing grief and alcohol is a stupid idea; but nonetheless he keeps going because the encroaching numbness is a relief. It’s nice to have something else in his head but guilt and obligation and helpless rage, regardless of what he’s replacing them with. Anything that keeps him from reflecting on what he could have done, or what he should have done and all those other stupid damn possibilities that are all a little late now. Unless he finds someone with some kind of special magical powers that enable them to turn back time, Claire and Meredith are staying gone.
The bartender has lost interest and left him the bottle by the time the other man walks in and sits down two stools from Nathan. He looks about as tired as Nathan feels, downing his first drink in one without flinching. Nathan feels a corner of his mouth flick up in an ugly attempt at a smile; misery loves company and he’s drunk enough to want to make a stupid mistake. Any kind of stupid mistake at all.
His mother always forgets to include kind of masochistic when she lists his faults. He’ll have to tell her that sometime; she’d hate to know she was leaving anything out.
“Bad day?” Nathan asks quietly.
The man gives him a perfunctory glance - there’s a swift flash of blue eyes that catch Nathan’s - and then he turns back to the apparently far more interesting task of trying to take the edge off. And if the tension in the guy’s shoulders is any indication, then God what an edge it’s going to turn out to be.
At the other end of the bar, a blonde woman sticks a cigarette between her lips and lights; Nathan watches and wants to be physically sick. He’s never smoked, but Meredith never seemed to be able to stop, and he learned to breathe the smoke second hand. She had an old green lighter in her pocket that never seemed to run out. He tears his gaze from the woman, a grimace curling on his mouth, and pours himself a drink. It’s messy, and spills all over the bar, but he doesn’t particularly care.
The blue-eyed man is watching him, Nathan notices; not saying anything and not being obvious about it, but Nathan can tell that he’s being observed. Measured and quantified. He feels like the other man is judging him; sifting straight through Nathan’s soul and highlighting all the bits he doesn’t like. Then again, Nathan doesn’t need to be liked at the moment; he’s not really feeling all that fond of himself at the moment. Grief and self-pity and he keeps trying to tell himself that it’s not his fault.
“It’s not been a bad day; just a complicated one,” the other man tells him finally, voice a low rumble of sound. He doesn’t look directly at Nathan, and he isn’t fidgeting like Nathan is; he seems like the kind of man who only moves when it’s necessary, who doesn’t waste anything. He seems like he’d have the kind of self-control that Nathan can only dream of.
Nathan’s teeth clink on his glass.
“My day’s been bad,” he murmurs, mouth wet with liquor. “Pretty bad fucking week, actually.”
There’s silence. The other man ignores him for a moment, and then turns to him and raises an inquisitive eyebrow. It’s not exactly inviting, but it indicates at least an obligatory curiosity.
Nathan sort of wants to elaborate but suspects that if he says the words aloud he will actually crumple into pieces. Pete is a great brother and Nathan would love for him to be his confidante; but he’s barely thirteen and there are some things you just can’t say to your little brother. Sometimes, there isn’t anyone you can say what you actually want to say to; it’s something he’s been learning in recent years. He served, fought for his country like the good little son he was meant to be, and now he tries to ignore the fact his father spends more time with the mysterious Mr Linderman than he does at home with his mother, and somewhere along the line Nathan has acquired a wife and most of his life in, say, the last five years has been a series of increasingly stupid accidents.
“Why’s your day been complicated?” he manages eventually, deflecting. As usual.
The other man’s mouth curls slightly; it’s not a smile. It’s almost like he’s calculating.
“I’m going to need a name,” he decides at last.
Nathan is fully aware that his mom will rip him to shreds if she ever finds out he went out and got drunk and spilled his sorry, stupid story to a random stranger; it’s kind of expected that he’ll go into politics one day, and of course Meredith and Claire will have to be buried and forgotten. No one must ever know. But he’s tired and if this screws up his life then, well, it almost seems fitting.
“Nathan,” he gives. He doesn’t offer a surname and it isn’t asked for. He pours himself another glass, wondering exactly how wrecked he already is, and waits.
“Noah.” A quiet admission, and Nathan nods, swallowing another burning mouthful.
“So why’s your week been complicated, Noah?”
The exchange of names seems to have entered them into a contract of truth or something; they’re still separated by two barstools, keeping a careful distance, but Nathan can tell he’s going to end up giving everything away. It’s that sort of an evening.
“I’m a father,” Noah murmurs at last.
Nathan’s mouth cracks into an ugly smile. Of all the fucking things… he wonders if this is irony or not.
“Congratulations,” he offers, the word flat and tasteless against his tongue. He doesn’t mean it.
Noah shrugs minutely, neatly flicking the top button of his shirt open and loosening his tie. He’s almost too tidy; tidy to a degree that’s slightly creepy. He could just be a regular businessman, out for a drink after work, but Nathan sense that he isn’t.
“It was unexpected,” he says calmly. “My wife is thrilled. I’m…” His mouth flickers, it’s nearly a rueful smile but is smoothed away too fast. “I’m disconcerted.”
Nathan can drink to that; and does. “Fatherhood changes things,” he murmurs.
Noah turns to look at him a little too fast. “You have a child?”
Nathan laughs humourlessly; this is not the way to honour Claire’s memory, really it’s not, but everything about his relationship with his daughter was inadequate and undignified so it figures this should be too. “Had a child,” he corrects.
Noah nods, decisively, and his eyes dip to where the alcohol level in Nathan’s bottle has slid right down without him noticing. He gets off his barstool, and comes to join Nathan, raising his hand to catch the bartender’s attention.
“Can we get another one?”
An hour or so later, the bar is cool and wet against Nathan’s cheek. Heidi has been fobbed off with shitty excuses so won’t be expecting him home tonight, but his mother… his mother is going to be very angry. And Nathan really isn’t sure that a grown man should be as afraid of his mom as Nathan is of his; but it’s not a thought he’s going to dwell on.
“You’ve been hazy with the details,” he points out.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Noah replies placidly. He’s less drunk than Nathan - not that that would be a particularly hard achievement - and still wonderfully collected. Nathan wonders if it would be highly inappropriate to say my mom would love you to a man he’s just met.
“Cliché,” Nathan mutters.
Noah sighs. “My life is held together with clichés now,” he says. And doesn’t elaborate. He’s not good at elaborating, Nathan is discovering.
“Children change things,” Nathan says, pushing a hand against the edge of the bar to get himself upright again.
“That’s what my boss said,” Noah replies. “I’m meant to look after this kid, she’s my daughter now… but there’s a chance I could lose her.” His lips curl without amusement. “Actually, it’s pretty much a certainty I’ll lose her. So I’m her father but there’s… there’s a ticking clock.”
Nathan could ask but he knows Noah won’t tell him and anyway he’s not entirely sure that he cares. He’s too selfish for curiosity.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, and his voice is steady and certain. Noah frowns at him. “It doesn’t matter if you’re her father for fifty years or fifty minutes, you have to give her everything you have or you’ll never forgive yourself.”
He wasn’t expecting the words to come out like that, but they did, and even Noah looks surprised. Then he reaches into his pocket and draws out a wad of bills, dropping some onto the bar.
“Come on,” he says.
“What?” Nathan asks.
“I’m being kind,” Noah replies, a trace of bemusement in his voice as though this is not a normal thing at all. “I think it’s time you took a cab and got home.”
Nathan does not want to go home ever again but he’s not a kid any more and it’s time he took some responsibility for himself. He nods reluctantly, and attempts to get to his feet. Noah catches him as Nathan’s legs threaten to fold out beneath him, steady hands gripped tight around Nathan’s upper arms.
It’s starting to rain again; a light drizzle that sticks to Nathan’s face and makes the whole world a little blurred. He’s just about walking on his own, Noah’s hand warm on his shoulder, just in case.
“I had a daughter,” he mutters, dully, just to say it to someone because he knows he can never say it aloud again.
They stop beneath a streetlight; it’s quiet and there are hardly any people around. It’s starting to rain a little harder, drops catching on Nathan’s eyelashes and slipping down his neck. It seems like a perfectly fucking fitting end to his day. And Noah’s hand is still on his shoulder.
Nathan doesn’t even think about it when he leans forward, doesn’t let himself think about it as he moves and his mouth touches Noah’s. He should stop, but he doesn’t, and interestingly enough Noah doesn’t pull away either. It’s a pretty bad kiss; they’re both varying degrees of drunk and it’s raining and still Nathan doesn’t particularly care.
When they part, Noah fixes him with a firm stare and says: “What was her name?”
Nathan shakes his head. He’s not going that far, not ever. Not with anyone. “No,” he murmurs, and leans in again because now he’s screwed up once he might as well screw up again.
Noah jerks back, away from him. “What was her name.”
Nathan bows his head; he’s getting soaked, and the chill is settling into the drunkenness and making him feel worse than ever. “Claire,” he mutters eventually, tone tight and bitter. “Her name was Claire.”
Noah’s blank expression doesn’t change, but he takes a step back. And then, saying nothing, he turns and walks away into the rain. Nathan doesn’t call after him, doesn’t want to call after him. He just sighs, running a damp hand over his face, and decides to take Noah’s advice. He really does need to go home.
Also Fifteen Years Ago
Claude is still laughing about it two days later, because he doesn’t have the emotions of a normal person. In the early days, Bennet thought this might be because of his Abnormal Abilities; now he knows it’s just because Claude is Claude. Antisocial, cynical, and sadistically amused by everything as though the world is just one very long pageant created solely for his entertainment (“And tell me how you know it’s not,” Claude said to him one night when they were too drunk. Bennet does his best not to get drunk around Claude because it’s dangerous. Not because Claude could hurt him - it’s just dangerous).
“I thought you’d have gotten over it by now,” Bennet grits, trying not to look too hard at the baby girl lying in the badly-assembled crib.
“Nah, this is like the gift that keeps on giving,” Claude replies cheerfully. He leans over to tickle the baby - Claire, Bennet reminds himself - and she gives an obedient giggle. “And she’s cute, as small scream-y things go.”
“She likes you,” Bennet observes. He doesn’t say I don’t think she likes me because it sounds ridiculous and pathetic and Bennet is most definitely not ridiculous and pathetic.
“Babies like me,” Claude agrees. “I play the best games of peekaboo in the world.”
Children and animals do like Claude; it is true. It’s just the rest of the world that finds him impossible to deal with.
“She’s just…” Bennet sighs. “She’s very small.”
“Babies really only come in one size,” Claude points out, and then a grin spreads across his face. “If you really want to back out, go tell the Seventh Samurai you can’t do this.”
Bennet is not suicidal, but then he doesn’t think Claude is either.
“[Kaito] would probably kill you if you knew you called him that,” he says.
“Yes.” Claude is still tickling Claire, a little smile on his face that Bennet hasn’t seen before. Apparently everyone but him in this damn Company of sociopaths possesses paternal instincts, and yet he’s the one that’s been left holding the baby. “But he’ll have to find me first, won’t he?”
Claude addresses the question to Claire, who gives a happy squeal. Bennet can’t quite suppress a smirk, though it fades quickly enough. He understands the need to keep things internal - what if the girl manifests? - but he can’t help thinking that trying to combine a baby and the dangerous and violent twilight world of the Company is a spectacularly bad idea. Not that he can voice this aloud.
“Have you told Mrs Bennet she’s a mum yet?” Claude asks cheerfully.
“No,” Bennet admits. He’s still trying to find the words; he and Sandra had begun discussing the possibilities of adoption, but now he has a baby right here, he’s not sure how to tell her.
“I would tell her soon,” Claude warns. “After all, not many husbands come back from their business trips with random babies. Might help if it doesn’t come as a complete shock.”
Bennet glares at him. Claude shrugs; he knows he’s the one in the right. And he does have a point.
“I will tell her,” Bennet insists, and then wonders why he’s letting Claude nag him. Over the course of the last year, he’s started to forget the one of them label stuck over his partner; and that’s dangerous. All of this is dangerous.
Claude tickles one of Claire’s tiny hands with his fingertip, and smirks as her reflexes clench her fingers around his. She looks so small next to Claude; and for a moment Bennet remembers that she could be one of them; an innocent little baby who could yet rip the world apart. If anything, it makes her more disconcerting than ever.
“You’re doing that repressed freaking-out thing that you do,” Claude observes without looking at him. “And sooner or later you’re going to explode into bits of sarcasm and glares and, I don’t know, sodding duty or something and I’ll have to train up another partner.”
Bennet stares coldly at him, and stays silent.
“Get out of here for a while,” Claude offers. “I’ll keep an eye on the little one. Go, call your wife, get a little bit of space. Because I’m not going to have a lot of patience if you have some kind of breakdown.”
“I’m not going to have a breakdown,” Bennet all but snaps. “It’s all going to be fine.”
Claude shrugs. “Well, eventually. Little Claire will have her mum and her dad… and I’ll be her godfather-type person who spoils her rotten.”
Bennet raises an eyebrow. “Do you seriously think that you’ll be having an active role in her life?” he asks.
Claude’s smile has a hint of sadness in it, but it’s wiped away after a flat second, like it was never ever there, and Bennet knows better than to call him up on it. “Shush,” Claude murmurs. “And go away.”
Bennet considers staying here and getting ever more stir-crazy, and he wonders if there will be some kind of punishment for leaving his brand new daughter in the company of Claude Raines, who is not exactly anyone’s number one choice for childcare; but he does need to find somewhere relatively private to talk this through with Sandra, and he needs to take a couple of steps back and get a little perspective on the situation. Most fathers have nine months to get used to the idea of having a brand new tiny life coming to live with them; Bennet has had two days. Anyone would be disconcerted, he reasons.
It was raining earlier; now the air is thick and wet and clings to every breath Bennet takes. He doesn’t hate New York, though it isn’t home; why [Kaito] insisted on dragging him to an entirely different state to hand over his unexpected daughter is slightly lost on Bennet, but it’s not something he’ll ever bring up. He knows better than to think he has a choice in any of this, and so picks the first phone booth he comes to, takes a breath, and dials.
“Hello Sandra. I know, I’ve missed you too. Listen; I have some news…”
The rain starts up again.