Fic: Left Behind (the Bennet family, Peter Petrelli, PG)
Title: Left Behind
Rating: PG
Words: 2400
Characters: Sandra Bennet, Lyle Bennet, Mr. Muggles, Claire Bennet, Noah Bennet, Peter Petrelli
Warnings: Angst - a whole fuckin' lot of angst. Off-screen character death.
Spoilers: Through the end of S2
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not writing this for profit.
A/N: This came to me absolutely out of nowhere at lunch today. I wrote it extremely quickly, so I hope there aren't any glaring typos. Part of my
mission_insane fic quest, for the quote prompt "It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all" (Albert Camus). Also x-posted at
heroes_fic.
Summary: You can try to put the pieces of your life back together, but it will never be anything like it was before it was broken.
“It just needs your signature, there at the bottom.”
Sandra stared at the paper for a long time before laying the pen down. She shook her head slightly.
“Mrs. Bennet?”
She sighed. “I thought...I guess I thought this might make him change his mind. Maybe this would make him realize that all this foolishness isn’t worth it, and if he’d just quit...what he’s doing...and come back here, that we could all work through this together.”
She kept looking down at the paper, at the graceful signature that was already on there. There wasn’t any hesitation in those letters, no sir, none at all. She glanced into the family room where Lyle was sunk down on the sofa, with only the top of his head sticking up. Last week’d been his 15th birthday, and he didn’t rate even a phone call. Just a perfunctory card with a check inside. Oh, she knew Noah’s whole “staying away from the family is part of the deal that keeps you safe” story by heart. But, damn it, it was the boy’s birthday. She started getting mad all over again.
Five seconds. That was all the time it took to sign. Five seconds and the door was slammed shut on the last 20 years of her life.
She was vaguely aware of talk about filings and alimony, and of showing the lawyer out the door, and then she realized she was standing behind the sofa, watching some silly cartoon over top of her son’s head.
“Can we go back to Odessa?” Lyle asked without turning around.
“Odessa?”
“All my friends are there. And Grandma. And...I don’t like it here any more.”
Sandra smoothed his hair back. “Sure, sugar. We still own that lot. We can call a builder tomorrow, see about -”
“No!” Lyle stopped for a second, like he was startled by his own shout. “Not there. Somewhere else.” Where there aren’t any memories, Sandra wanted to add for him.
“Whatever you want, baby.” She kissed the top of his head, but he still didn’t stir. She sniffled and then scooped up Mr. Muggles from the back of the couch, and hurried to the den and shut the door behind her
Rule #1 of being a single mom was going to be: never let the children see you crying.
* * * * * * *
With the housing market being what it was, she had a hard time finding a buyer, and as it was, they lost money on it - she lost money on it. Even though Odessa was in the same bind, she still had to settle for a little townhouse with three teeny bedrooms. Noah sent money like clockwork, and hadn’t even protested her lawyer’s demands, but still, Claire kept reminding her to think about holding back a nest egg for the future.
Claire. Sounding just like her daddy. Noah’d always been the one to handle money and finances and all that stuff. Thank the Lord she had Claire to help her get through it all.
And then Claire left, too.
“I know you think it’s dangerous, Mom. But you know, I can’t get hurt.”
“Yes, Claire. Yes, you can. They might not be able to kill you, but they can cut you up and stick little skewers in your eyes and, and, I don’t know...”
“Mom!” Claire reached out for her hand. “I can take care of myself. Besides, I’ll have Peter there. And Dad will be nearby.”
“Your father is working for the people you want to go up against!” Sandra took a deep breath. “You are seventeen years old, Claire Bennet.”
“I’ll be eighteen in five months. And if you don’t let me go now, I’ll go then anyway.”
“You don’t even have a high school diploma!”
“Peter says he can get me into the school he and - and Nathan went to. He says he’ll give me a ride every day, to and from. And if I try to skip school, he’ll tell on me.”
Sandra sank back into the chair. “I wanted you to go to college,” she said quietly.
“I will, Mom.” Claire’s face was earnest. “I promise. There’s all kinds of colleges in New York. But I need to do this. I can help people. What if...what if I hadn’t had to hide this for so long? What if there’d been someone I could talk to, who had told me I wasn’t a freak? Maybe things would have turned out differently.”
Sandra laughed at that, because the only other thing she could do was cry.
* * * * * * *
“Lyle? What’s wrong?”
He wiped his face before he turned around and tried to deny he was out of sorts, so she put on her stern one, determined to drag it out of him.
“Sometimes the rumors just get to me, you know?”
“What rumors?”
“You know. About why we left town for a while, and why Dad didn’t come back.”
She hadn’t known, but then, she wasn’t too shocked. Any town’ll fill with gossip when it senses there’s more to a story than meets the eye, and their family sure had one heck of a story now.
“So what’s so awful that you just couldn’t take it?”
He shrugged and fiddled with a pen on his desk for a few seconds, before finally saying, “One of my friends asked me...he said that people are saying that Dad was molesting Claire. That that’s why you kicked him out and brought us back here. And why Claire ran away.”
“Oh, sugar -”
“Sometimes I wish he had,” Lyle blurted. “If it was something like that, then I could tell people why he was gone. What am I supposed to say? My dad isn’t here because he hunts superheroes? And my sister, if you cut her head off, a new one will grow in its place? And she hunts superheroes with him?” He shook his head and threw the pen against the wall angrily. “Everyone else can talk about their dad who ran off with a waitress, or their mom who drinks too much, but I can’t talk to anyone about my life!”
“You can talk to me.”
Lyle smiled at her, but it was forced. The kind of smile you give to try to keep from hurting someone else’s feelings.
“But you’d rather talk to your friends, instead of your crazy ol’ mom.” The smile became softer, more real.
“I’m sorry, sugar pie,” Sandra said softly. She wanted to tell him that one day he’d find people he could trust to talk to, but...where? The same place his sister and his dad had found them?
Lyle shrugged. “I’m okay, Mom.”
* * * * * * *
I’m proud of you, son. I know you’ll knock ‘em dead.
Sandra sniffed as she flipped the card shut. Even Lyle’s high school graduation couldn’t drag Noah away from his exile.
She looked over at the tall young man adjusting his tie in the hallway mirror. In the last couple of years, he’d gotten amazingly studious and obedient, never giving her a lick of trouble - “compensation”, some of the books she’d read called it. Sometimes she worried about him, but then, he’d gotten himself into Brown. He couldn’t be too maladjusted, could he?
He turned around and smiled at her. He didn’t need mind-reading or any other strange power to know exactly what she was thinking. “Quit staring at me like you’re afraid you’ll forget what I look like, Mom. I know it’s the other side of the country, but I’ll still be here all summer. And then I’ll be home again at Thanksgiving.”
She smiled back. “At least you’re going on to college. Unlike your sister.”
“C’mon, Mom. Claire’s a different kind of person. She leads a different kind of life.”
“I know.” Sandra hesistated, then said, “I’m glad you lead this one.”
“I used to be jealous of her. She could do something that no one else could. I thought it made her more interesting than all the rest of us.” Lyle kissed her forehead. “But to tell you the truth? I’m glad we lead this life, too.” He suddenly grabbed her in a big bear hug.
“Lyle Bennet! You are wrinkling my shirt! I am not going to your graduation ceremony looking like some little old bag lady!”
Her son just laughed as he grabbed his cap and gown.
* * * * * * *
She kept the townhouse, even though it was way more space than she needed. But Claire’s room was still there, and Lyle’s, though the times when they themselves were there stretched further and further apart. Lyle changed his major from philosophy to interior design to architecture, and she read books about Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Claire’s round face never changed - never - and one Christmas, she realized that Claire looked like the younger sibling now. She had to leave the room for a few minutes till she’d shaken off the sadness.
She had a part-time job down at a local craft store, helping ladies pick out scrapbooking paper and rubber stamps. She did it mainly to get out of the house and keep herself busy. Noah sent her more than enough money to live on, even though the kids were both gone, and sometimes there was a note inside the envelope asking how she was. She always replied to him, but she’d made her choices and he’d made his, and these were the paths they’d chosen to follow.
That’s how it went until the day she answered the merry chime of the doorbell to find a serious young man standing there, with dark exhausted circles under his brown eyes.
He was holding an urn.
“Oh, for pete’s sake,” she huffed without thinking. “I’ve been down this road before, mister.”
Then she read the name on the engraved plaque on the urn, and the next thing she knew, she was lying on the couch with a cold cloth on her forehead and the young man taking her pulse with a concerned look on his face.
“I’m so sorry to do that to you,” he said a few minutes later, sitting at her kitchen table. “But we didn’t want you to hear it over the phone - we wanted to tell you in person.”
Noah sat next to him, not making eye contact with her. His face was almost grey, and for the first time, it hit her that he was getting old.
She took a sip from the glass of water and said, “Look, Mister -”
“Peter. Please, call me Peter.”
“How did she die, Peter?”
Peter hesitated, and Noah said, “No. You don’t want to know, Sandra.” He looked up slowly and she could see the weight that was on him.
“They said it was quick, ma’am. She wasn’t in pain very long,” Peter added.
She wasn’t in pain very long. Sandra shuddered and swallowed. “Who did it?” she asked, and she realized her voice sounded as old as Noah’s.
They both hesitated again. “Peter,” she said, “I once asked my husband not to lie to me any more.” Noah bowed his head again. “And I’m going to make that request of you, now. Do you know who killed my little girl?”
Peter sat with his mouth open for a few seconds and then said, “There was a note next to her. It said, ‘It took me a while, but I finally managed to finish the job. Happy Homecoming!’ So…we know.”
Sandra looked back and forth between them in confusion, and Peter suddenly shot Noah a dirty look. “Oh,” she finally said. “This was something that happened…before…” Before Noah stopped having her memory erased when it was inconvenient for her to remember things.
“Yeah.” Peter gave Noah another look.
“Why?” She weakly twisted the Kleenex in her hand. “Why on earth would anyone want to kill Claire? What could they possibly get out of it?”
“It’s a little complicated.” Peter looked like he didn’t feel like un-complicating it, but that was okay. Right at the moment, she didn’t think she had the strength to listen to it, anyway. She felt like she was in a dream, and wished someone would come to wake her up. But there wasn’t anyone.
Peter excused himself to the restroom and she and Noah sat in silence. Till finally, for some reason, she said, “All I ever wanted out of life was to raise my kids with my husband in a nice quiet house.”
“I’m sorry.” Noah’s voice was barely audible and his eyes were full of tears. “I’m sorry.”
She stood up and brushed her pants off. “Would you like some tea?” she asked as she turned towards the fridge.
“For God’s sake, Sandra, sit down.”
She ignored him and started pulling glasses out of the cupboard.
“I tried calling Lyle, but I didn’t get an answer,” he went on.
“He’s in London right now. Doing some kind of internship. I think Rachel was flying out to visit him this week. He’s pretty close to asking her to marry him, you know.”
“No. I didn’t.” Noah stared at the table like he thought he could somehow pick apart the wood grain. He cleared his throat and asked, “Where’s Mr. Muggles? I was surprised he wasn’t the one greeting us at the door, instead of you.”
“I had to have him put down. Last year. Kidney failure. Doctor said we could hook him up to a dialysis machine. But his little face seemed so tired when he looked at me, and it just didn’t seem right to do that to him.”
“Oh, Sandra…”
“It happens,” she said briskly. “Time moves on for everyone else, too, not just you.”
They stayed that way in silence until Peter came back in and stopped in the doorway, looking like a deer caught in headlights. “Peter,” she said, “would you like some tea?”
For a second she thought he was going to say the same thing as Noah, but he paused and then said, “Tea would be nice, ma’am.”
She noticed as she held out the glass that the ice cubes in it were shaking back and forth. Instead of taking the glass, Peter cupped his hands over hers and squeezed them, tight. It must have hurt, because she felt the tears start running down her cheeks.
Rating: PG
Words: 2400
Characters: Sandra Bennet, Lyle Bennet, Mr. Muggles, Claire Bennet, Noah Bennet, Peter Petrelli
Warnings: Angst - a whole fuckin' lot of angst. Off-screen character death.
Spoilers: Through the end of S2
Disclaimer: Not my characters, not writing this for profit.
A/N: This came to me absolutely out of nowhere at lunch today. I wrote it extremely quickly, so I hope there aren't any glaring typos. Part of my
mission_insane fic quest, for the quote prompt "It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all" (Albert Camus). Also x-posted at
heroes_fic.
Summary: You can try to put the pieces of your life back together, but it will never be anything like it was before it was broken.
“It just needs your signature, there at the bottom.”
Sandra stared at the paper for a long time before laying the pen down. She shook her head slightly.
“Mrs. Bennet?”
She sighed. “I thought...I guess I thought this might make him change his mind. Maybe this would make him realize that all this foolishness isn’t worth it, and if he’d just quit...what he’s doing...and come back here, that we could all work through this together.”
She kept looking down at the paper, at the graceful signature that was already on there. There wasn’t any hesitation in those letters, no sir, none at all. She glanced into the family room where Lyle was sunk down on the sofa, with only the top of his head sticking up. Last week’d been his 15th birthday, and he didn’t rate even a phone call. Just a perfunctory card with a check inside. Oh, she knew Noah’s whole “staying away from the family is part of the deal that keeps you safe” story by heart. But, damn it, it was the boy’s birthday. She started getting mad all over again.
Five seconds. That was all the time it took to sign. Five seconds and the door was slammed shut on the last 20 years of her life.
She was vaguely aware of talk about filings and alimony, and of showing the lawyer out the door, and then she realized she was standing behind the sofa, watching some silly cartoon over top of her son’s head.
“Can we go back to Odessa?” Lyle asked without turning around.
“Odessa?”
“All my friends are there. And Grandma. And...I don’t like it here any more.”
Sandra smoothed his hair back. “Sure, sugar. We still own that lot. We can call a builder tomorrow, see about -”
“No!” Lyle stopped for a second, like he was startled by his own shout. “Not there. Somewhere else.” Where there aren’t any memories, Sandra wanted to add for him.
“Whatever you want, baby.” She kissed the top of his head, but he still didn’t stir. She sniffled and then scooped up Mr. Muggles from the back of the couch, and hurried to the den and shut the door behind her
Rule #1 of being a single mom was going to be: never let the children see you crying.
* * * * * * *
With the housing market being what it was, she had a hard time finding a buyer, and as it was, they lost money on it - she lost money on it. Even though Odessa was in the same bind, she still had to settle for a little townhouse with three teeny bedrooms. Noah sent money like clockwork, and hadn’t even protested her lawyer’s demands, but still, Claire kept reminding her to think about holding back a nest egg for the future.
Claire. Sounding just like her daddy. Noah’d always been the one to handle money and finances and all that stuff. Thank the Lord she had Claire to help her get through it all.
And then Claire left, too.
“I know you think it’s dangerous, Mom. But you know, I can’t get hurt.”
“Yes, Claire. Yes, you can. They might not be able to kill you, but they can cut you up and stick little skewers in your eyes and, and, I don’t know...”
“Mom!” Claire reached out for her hand. “I can take care of myself. Besides, I’ll have Peter there. And Dad will be nearby.”
“Your father is working for the people you want to go up against!” Sandra took a deep breath. “You are seventeen years old, Claire Bennet.”
“I’ll be eighteen in five months. And if you don’t let me go now, I’ll go then anyway.”
“You don’t even have a high school diploma!”
“Peter says he can get me into the school he and - and Nathan went to. He says he’ll give me a ride every day, to and from. And if I try to skip school, he’ll tell on me.”
Sandra sank back into the chair. “I wanted you to go to college,” she said quietly.
“I will, Mom.” Claire’s face was earnest. “I promise. There’s all kinds of colleges in New York. But I need to do this. I can help people. What if...what if I hadn’t had to hide this for so long? What if there’d been someone I could talk to, who had told me I wasn’t a freak? Maybe things would have turned out differently.”
Sandra laughed at that, because the only other thing she could do was cry.
* * * * * * *
“Lyle? What’s wrong?”
He wiped his face before he turned around and tried to deny he was out of sorts, so she put on her stern one, determined to drag it out of him.
“Sometimes the rumors just get to me, you know?”
“What rumors?”
“You know. About why we left town for a while, and why Dad didn’t come back.”
She hadn’t known, but then, she wasn’t too shocked. Any town’ll fill with gossip when it senses there’s more to a story than meets the eye, and their family sure had one heck of a story now.
“So what’s so awful that you just couldn’t take it?”
He shrugged and fiddled with a pen on his desk for a few seconds, before finally saying, “One of my friends asked me...he said that people are saying that Dad was molesting Claire. That that’s why you kicked him out and brought us back here. And why Claire ran away.”
“Oh, sugar -”
“Sometimes I wish he had,” Lyle blurted. “If it was something like that, then I could tell people why he was gone. What am I supposed to say? My dad isn’t here because he hunts superheroes? And my sister, if you cut her head off, a new one will grow in its place? And she hunts superheroes with him?” He shook his head and threw the pen against the wall angrily. “Everyone else can talk about their dad who ran off with a waitress, or their mom who drinks too much, but I can’t talk to anyone about my life!”
“You can talk to me.”
Lyle smiled at her, but it was forced. The kind of smile you give to try to keep from hurting someone else’s feelings.
“But you’d rather talk to your friends, instead of your crazy ol’ mom.” The smile became softer, more real.
“I’m sorry, sugar pie,” Sandra said softly. She wanted to tell him that one day he’d find people he could trust to talk to, but...where? The same place his sister and his dad had found them?
Lyle shrugged. “I’m okay, Mom.”
* * * * * * *
I’m proud of you, son. I know you’ll knock ‘em dead.
Sandra sniffed as she flipped the card shut. Even Lyle’s high school graduation couldn’t drag Noah away from his exile.
She looked over at the tall young man adjusting his tie in the hallway mirror. In the last couple of years, he’d gotten amazingly studious and obedient, never giving her a lick of trouble - “compensation”, some of the books she’d read called it. Sometimes she worried about him, but then, he’d gotten himself into Brown. He couldn’t be too maladjusted, could he?
He turned around and smiled at her. He didn’t need mind-reading or any other strange power to know exactly what she was thinking. “Quit staring at me like you’re afraid you’ll forget what I look like, Mom. I know it’s the other side of the country, but I’ll still be here all summer. And then I’ll be home again at Thanksgiving.”
She smiled back. “At least you’re going on to college. Unlike your sister.”
“C’mon, Mom. Claire’s a different kind of person. She leads a different kind of life.”
“I know.” Sandra hesistated, then said, “I’m glad you lead this one.”
“I used to be jealous of her. She could do something that no one else could. I thought it made her more interesting than all the rest of us.” Lyle kissed her forehead. “But to tell you the truth? I’m glad we lead this life, too.” He suddenly grabbed her in a big bear hug.
“Lyle Bennet! You are wrinkling my shirt! I am not going to your graduation ceremony looking like some little old bag lady!”
Her son just laughed as he grabbed his cap and gown.
* * * * * * *
She kept the townhouse, even though it was way more space than she needed. But Claire’s room was still there, and Lyle’s, though the times when they themselves were there stretched further and further apart. Lyle changed his major from philosophy to interior design to architecture, and she read books about Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Claire’s round face never changed - never - and one Christmas, she realized that Claire looked like the younger sibling now. She had to leave the room for a few minutes till she’d shaken off the sadness.
She had a part-time job down at a local craft store, helping ladies pick out scrapbooking paper and rubber stamps. She did it mainly to get out of the house and keep herself busy. Noah sent her more than enough money to live on, even though the kids were both gone, and sometimes there was a note inside the envelope asking how she was. She always replied to him, but she’d made her choices and he’d made his, and these were the paths they’d chosen to follow.
That’s how it went until the day she answered the merry chime of the doorbell to find a serious young man standing there, with dark exhausted circles under his brown eyes.
He was holding an urn.
“Oh, for pete’s sake,” she huffed without thinking. “I’ve been down this road before, mister.”
Then she read the name on the engraved plaque on the urn, and the next thing she knew, she was lying on the couch with a cold cloth on her forehead and the young man taking her pulse with a concerned look on his face.
“I’m so sorry to do that to you,” he said a few minutes later, sitting at her kitchen table. “But we didn’t want you to hear it over the phone - we wanted to tell you in person.”
Noah sat next to him, not making eye contact with her. His face was almost grey, and for the first time, it hit her that he was getting old.
She took a sip from the glass of water and said, “Look, Mister -”
“Peter. Please, call me Peter.”
“How did she die, Peter?”
Peter hesitated, and Noah said, “No. You don’t want to know, Sandra.” He looked up slowly and she could see the weight that was on him.
“They said it was quick, ma’am. She wasn’t in pain very long,” Peter added.
She wasn’t in pain very long. Sandra shuddered and swallowed. “Who did it?” she asked, and she realized her voice sounded as old as Noah’s.
They both hesitated again. “Peter,” she said, “I once asked my husband not to lie to me any more.” Noah bowed his head again. “And I’m going to make that request of you, now. Do you know who killed my little girl?”
Peter sat with his mouth open for a few seconds and then said, “There was a note next to her. It said, ‘It took me a while, but I finally managed to finish the job. Happy Homecoming!’ So…we know.”
Sandra looked back and forth between them in confusion, and Peter suddenly shot Noah a dirty look. “Oh,” she finally said. “This was something that happened…before…” Before Noah stopped having her memory erased when it was inconvenient for her to remember things.
“Yeah.” Peter gave Noah another look.
“Why?” She weakly twisted the Kleenex in her hand. “Why on earth would anyone want to kill Claire? What could they possibly get out of it?”
“It’s a little complicated.” Peter looked like he didn’t feel like un-complicating it, but that was okay. Right at the moment, she didn’t think she had the strength to listen to it, anyway. She felt like she was in a dream, and wished someone would come to wake her up. But there wasn’t anyone.
Peter excused himself to the restroom and she and Noah sat in silence. Till finally, for some reason, she said, “All I ever wanted out of life was to raise my kids with my husband in a nice quiet house.”
“I’m sorry.” Noah’s voice was barely audible and his eyes were full of tears. “I’m sorry.”
She stood up and brushed her pants off. “Would you like some tea?” she asked as she turned towards the fridge.
“For God’s sake, Sandra, sit down.”
She ignored him and started pulling glasses out of the cupboard.
“I tried calling Lyle, but I didn’t get an answer,” he went on.
“He’s in London right now. Doing some kind of internship. I think Rachel was flying out to visit him this week. He’s pretty close to asking her to marry him, you know.”
“No. I didn’t.” Noah stared at the table like he thought he could somehow pick apart the wood grain. He cleared his throat and asked, “Where’s Mr. Muggles? I was surprised he wasn’t the one greeting us at the door, instead of you.”
“I had to have him put down. Last year. Kidney failure. Doctor said we could hook him up to a dialysis machine. But his little face seemed so tired when he looked at me, and it just didn’t seem right to do that to him.”
“Oh, Sandra…”
“It happens,” she said briskly. “Time moves on for everyone else, too, not just you.”
They stayed that way in silence until Peter came back in and stopped in the doorway, looking like a deer caught in headlights. “Peter,” she said, “would you like some tea?”
For a second she thought he was going to say the same thing as Noah, but he paused and then said, “Tea would be nice, ma’am.”
She noticed as she held out the glass that the ice cubes in it were shaking back and forth. Instead of taking the glass, Peter cupped his hands over hers and squeezed them, tight. It must have hurt, because she felt the tears start running down her cheeks.