All that's Left to Burn
title: All that's Left to Burn
fandom: Heroes
summary: The mark that indicates where the flames began lies on the surface of the wooden floor like a black ‘X’ drawn for a dangerous trail to be walked. Bait that tiptoes in circles, making you spin until you drop and can’t go on. She was that ‘X.’
characters/pairings: Peter, Claire (mentions of Peter/Elle)
genre: Angst/General
rating: T
note: Written in response to heroes_contest 's challenge 'picture.' A slight AU mixture of the five years gone universe & the villians 'verse.
~*~
The mark that indicates where the flames began lies on the surface of the wooden floor like a black ‘X’ drawn for a dangerous trail to be walked. Bait that tiptoes in circles, making you spin until you drop and can’t go on. She was that ‘X.’
And still he laments everything.
Five years later, someone will ask him about the scar on his face. They won’t know the real him, so they’ll listen and believe the story he’ll tell them of some mugging gone wrong. Other times, he decides, he’ll tell them it was a psycho with a cutting complex. On the days when his heart is the heaviest, he’ll tell them of the great fire that turned his life upside down. It won’t make much sense, but he’ll tell them anyway, and they’ll call him crazy behind his back. At least those days, not a lie will have possessed nor passed him.
Five years later, someone will ask him about the scar on his face. They’ll know enough to realize that the scar on his face could be disposed of if he only conjured up an ability of his. They won’t understand, so they’ll ask why he keeps the scar. Most times, he’ll tell them he’s tried, but has found it impossible. But he’ll add a dosage of truth by saying, “some cuts are too deep to ever heal.” They only know for sure that he’s being metaphorical when, once in a grand while, he tells the story of the grand fire that turned his life upside down. No names or specifics will be narrated, but they’d be quick enough to realize the fabled woman was in fact real once.
“Her name was Elle. She used to come in here, sit with the patrons, talk ‘em up, scare ‘em sometimes. She sure told off quite some girlfriends,” says the waitress of a bar tucked in the outskirts of New York City.
“You sure?” asks the petite woman with long, dark brown strands tucked into a tight ponytail.
“Course I am. You don’t forget someone like that--especially when they stop coming so suddenly. Haven’t seen her or that boy o’ hers that’d come by sometimes, either.”
“What was his name?”
“Oh, that one I ain’t so sure of…but hold on, I’ve got a picture of ‘em. But you gotta let me know why you questioning so much.”
The brunette leans over the bar counter, narrows her eyes, and sharply says, “How much do you want for the picture?”
The waitress laughs. She nods her head, and shrugs, “another forty should do it.”
---
A corner of the photograph is bent, but aside from that, it’s in near perfect condition. She doesn’t understand the bar owner’s obsession with the…couple that up and disappeared years ago. The waitress had to sneak into the owner’s little office and pick a lock to get to the picture, but she did it. Only reason for the obsession maybe, thought the waitress, was that the building the pair occupied burned to the ground sometime after the girl stopped going to the bar--but neither one was found in the remains of the building. Some were found dead, some escaped alive, but no one was identified as either Elle or that boy of hers.
“Peter,” she tells herself as she shoves the picture in the car compartment.
“This town is where they lived, then?” the car passenger asks.
“Yes,” she confirms.
“What were you able to learn about them?”
She stares ahead of her, at the broken blocks of concrete making up the road they’re to make a u-turn on after she starts the car. She has a blank stare, though anger rages within her heart.
“Claire.”
Matt places a hand on her shoulder, but she pushes it off hastily.
“If she’s dead--if she’s really dead, thank God. The bitch deserved it, Matt, I don’t care what it’s done to Peter.”
“What if he’s dead too?”
“That’s impossible,” she spews, having forced herself to believe that since the explosion. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that he survived. She had to believe he survived whatever occurred five years back, too.
“It’s a possibility,” he states crisply, nonchalantly.
“Tell him that when we find him.”
She starts the ignition, drives the car onto the road, and makes a sharp u-turn as they head to the building that burned down five years ago that day. The one that still lies in its remains, as the city and state had instead preoccupied itself with the hunting down of people with out of the ordinary abilities.
---
He’s tired of the questions. And he’d like to blame the scar completely, but they’d still ask him questions.
“You could have stopped your brother from telling the world, but you didn’t. Why?”
And others were kinder. They didn’t try to question him, didn’t even try to talk to him. They simply tried their hand at killing him. They either ended up running away or daring him to kill them. Those were the ones instructed never to come near him ever again.
“Peter, we should just close this place down. We hardly make a cent off this place. It’d be cheaper to stop selling and just use this place as a sleeping quarters.”
He never answers to that. His brother tells him repeatedly that keeping the bar open is ridiculous. Aside from the finances, it only invites people who have vendettas against them in. Nathan can concern himself with such things, but Peter’s just plain tired.
He leaves every March 16th. Nathan knows that on this fifth year, he won’t return. Peter can’t handle the questions anymore, and he’s broken every mirror in the place, broken the windows at least ten times over. That March 16th he leaves everything in place. Nathan simply doesn’t find him on his bunk, or the outhouse, or the parking lot on that fifth anniversary. He’s gone.
---
“Take the picture with you.”
“Wha--why?”
“I don’t know. But just…something tells me you should take it.”
Matt’s helped her some in her search for Peter, and he’s provided some helpful hints on tracking him down. He refuses to do some of the dirty work, though. Tries avoiding reading minds as much as possible (he's so afraid of being caught, afraid of being experimented on like his Molly). Usually, he’ll send her in to ask the questions, but he always knows who to ask which is why she’s allowed him to help. That, and like her, he has his own vendetta.
The hunters killed Molly.
The hunters destroyed what Peter was. And Elle, she did something to him.
“Fine,” she says, opens the compartment, grabs the pictures, folds it, sticks it in her jeans pocket.
“Alright, let’s go.”
They step outside, ready to walk into the building that probably has very few stairways, and the ones that remain from the fire are probably fragile.
“How will we get up there?” she asks as they walk through a door-less entrance.
Matt sighs and turns in the spot he’s standing in. Blackened, dusty, and messy--the entire building is impossible to excavate for clues of what had really happened.
“We won’t.”
---
He’s never gone in. He stands against the railing of the bridge across the street of the building and watches the black bricks as the memories of that day run through his mind.
He sees everything.
Elle pacing the living room as she screamed. Elle marching up to him, with a finger pressed to his chest and her head tilted at him, and with regrets falling from her mouth. Elle wishing she’d never met him. Elle demanding him to turn back time and change their fates. Elle telling him that she’d lost the baby.
Peter watched an old Honda Civic roll up to the apartments, and he could see Claire and Matt sitting there, talking briefly. Then Claire grabbed something, and both stepped out of the car to go into the building.
He watched them as he stood there, remembering it all before he himself stepped in. But his memory stops short when he thinks of the baby lost before he dwells on the relationship that died and his love that burned.
He pushes himself off the railing and stalks towards the building. He heads towards the same entry that they had entered through, his feet dragging but his heart determined.
---
“Why the picture, Matt?”
“Huh?”
“The picture.”
Matt sighs and turns his eyes towards the ceiling.
“Because he comes here every year. I don’t know if he steps inside, or what he does while in the area, but I know he comes. And when he comes, you’ll have that picture. It might mean something for him.”
“But she warped his mind. Because of her, he distanced himself from his family--he distanced himself from me,” she unnervingly shouts, “because of her he stopped fighting.”
“That was my choice,” he yells from the entry way.
He has the fabled scar and the sight of it alone breaks her heart. Again. He looks in her direction, but not at her. More like at a spot behind her.
“All of it. It was all my choice. Loving her was my choice,” he laments.
Matt watches Peter’s hand, which play with fire.
“Peter,” he says.
“You should leave. Both of you,” is all Peter says as he walks towards the center of the building, all the while staring at a stairway to the far right of the west of the building.
She watches his eyes. They’re different. So unlike him. So hopeless. She follows him and his eyes. Was that where he lived? With her?
“Peter,” she says. He pays no attention to her so she stands in front of him and finally he looks at her.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he orders her.
“What? Peter, look, I don’t know why you’re being this way--this isn’t you.”
“You don’t know who I am, now move.”
He looks at her like she’s a stranger, a displeasing one at that. Breathing in deeply, she tilts her head up further and presses a finger to his chest.
“Listen, Peter, I may hate you for what you did and I may hate what you are now, but I still love you. And I need you. We need you, so we can change this.”
Without a second thought, he shoves her hand off. “Don’t look at me like that: you just remind me of her.”
---
He stands on the mark she wrote and he played out for her. And Claire gives him a look that make his memories continue.
There was so much bitterness in Elle’s eyes that night. So much pain. She was bombarded with her past and present, and she became a rage that tore his heart in two.
When their hands met with sparks that neither wanted to possess, but had vowed upon conjuring, and the jolts bolted to the ground beneath them, it was then that he had to let go. But he persisted in remaining on that spot.
Her eyes were closed while he watched electric outlets ignite and from there, the wood, furniture, and electrical items went up in flames.
She never said thank you, but she welcomed what she called her mercy from him. And he could only close his eyes as well. He drew up the last good memory they had before it all went to hell.
She had flown into his arms one afternoon, and screamed in his ears that she was pregnant. They were in the bar however, and thus he could barely hear her. But he heard her, and he kissed her. Then he smiled down at her as she buried her head in his chest with a playful expression. He saw a flash go off quickly, and turned to see the bar owner had taken a picture of them.
Peter always hated that bar, but a part of him understood Elle’s want of a chaotic scenery, because a part of him relished in it as well. But the second the flash disappeared, he resolved to never returning to such a scene again. Elle objected, but begrudgingly obliged.
She went at least one more time, though. He knew because she had the picture of them in that bar. She didn’t try to hide it. She hung it on their wall proudly. He wasn’t happy. They fought. As they tended to do.
Her pregnancy was supposed to change all that. Her pregnancy was supposed to make her more cautious and thoughtful, but it didn’t. Peter could never change her much, but it was just him and her, so if he could accept her, that was enough. But then another life came into play, and it threw him overboard. She couldn’t continue to be so careless when she had a life within her. A life that was a part of him just as it was a part of her.
Still, she was inexplicably happy over the pregnancy. And when she miscarried, it wasn’t her fault, but she blamed herself. And him. Herself for getting pregnant in the first place and thus being responsible for a life, and him for letting her share something so…sacred. It threw her overboard.
The building burned, but he kept in mind that image of the last time they had been truly happy.
---
Matt knows the world is going to burn this night. Or maybe it burned five years ago, because everything’s been so out of balance since then. Everyone took sides before that, but all of a sudden there was an amnesty of sorts, which was worse. No one communicated, no one formed plans, no one attempted to correct things. But Claire had remained determined and when she sought out help, Matt was there along with Hiro. But Hiro had his own way of doing things, and Hiro couldn’t agree with Claire.
Through some deranged sense of duty, though, Matt stuck with Claire. He had to get her out of this now, despite her protests.
He walks over to her, stands beside Peter, and eyes her.
“Give him it.”
Claire doesn’t want to. Every lasting reminder of Elle should remain buried. She was his torture and scar.
“Why do you keep the scar, Peter?” she dares ask.
“You have a picture of me and Elle.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. He isn’t ashamed to admit to reading her mind.
“Give me it.”
She shakes her head.
He doesn’t miss a beat. He isn’t afraid to call the object to him and in a millisecond, the photograph is in his hand. He falls back a step.
The photograph too had burned with their apartment and a large portion of the building. Now the original rests in the palm of his hand, and words spill from his mouth.
“I was burned. Elle left, but I didn’t,” he pauses. His eyes close momentarily, his breath stops short, but he picks back up--"I was burned badly. I stood there, couldn’t move. Something fell--the ceiling. Pipes and wires and…when I woke up, the building was still burning. I got up, I ran, I got out of there. No one saw me. It was dark, there were alleys, and somewhere along the way, there was a mirror. Hours later, somewhere not here, there was a mirror. I still hadn’t healed.”
His eyes flare open and he looks back at the photograph.
“It wasn’t as bad as when I exploded. But there was this cut on my face. I healed. But not all of me. The wound on my face…it was the most obvious. And the closest to my head. The kind that stopped people in their tracks and just begged for a story. The kind I needed to tell stories.”
He doesn’t say another word. He’s fixated on the photograph. Matt turns to him, and asks in a low whisper, “Elle left?”
“Hiro took her. I asked him to because Elle didn’t want me to know where she would go, so I wouldn’t look for her and find her.”
“Have you looked for her?” Claire asks fearfully.
“No,” Peter responds.
She openly exhales in relief.
“Because she’s better off without me. And I’m better off without anyone.”
Peter isn’t playing with fire anymore. He stopped when he walked towards the center of the building. But Matt still watches his hands in fear of him wanting to spark another fire.
“Snap out of it, Peter. We need to fix this whole mess,” Matt says.
“It’s too late.”
Claire grabs for him, but Peter’s resolute in his response. He’s emitting sparks, and Claire holds his shoulders, yelling, asking him to do her a favor.
Nothing is salvaged. Matt runs when he fails in stopping Peter, and Matt leaves Claire when he fails in pulling her away from Peter.
She stands there, yelling. She keeps her eyes fixed on his as his eyes faithfully remain on the photograph. But in a second, his eyes close and she looks down to see only dust in his palms. He’s gone. He’s etched his own truth and regrets, and has embedded the lives he's failed in saving on the veins of his heart.
A fire rages around her, and she hopes, she hopes he’ll heal. Instead, his scar festers, and he crumbles to dust in her palms.
fandom: Heroes
summary: The mark that indicates where the flames began lies on the surface of the wooden floor like a black ‘X’ drawn for a dangerous trail to be walked. Bait that tiptoes in circles, making you spin until you drop and can’t go on. She was that ‘X.’
characters/pairings: Peter, Claire (mentions of Peter/Elle)
genre: Angst/General
rating: T
note: Written in response to heroes_contest 's challenge 'picture.' A slight AU mixture of the five years gone universe & the villians 'verse.
~*~
The mark that indicates where the flames began lies on the surface of the wooden floor like a black ‘X’ drawn for a dangerous trail to be walked. Bait that tiptoes in circles, making you spin until you drop and can’t go on. She was that ‘X.’
And still he laments everything.
Five years later, someone will ask him about the scar on his face. They won’t know the real him, so they’ll listen and believe the story he’ll tell them of some mugging gone wrong. Other times, he decides, he’ll tell them it was a psycho with a cutting complex. On the days when his heart is the heaviest, he’ll tell them of the great fire that turned his life upside down. It won’t make much sense, but he’ll tell them anyway, and they’ll call him crazy behind his back. At least those days, not a lie will have possessed nor passed him.
Five years later, someone will ask him about the scar on his face. They’ll know enough to realize that the scar on his face could be disposed of if he only conjured up an ability of his. They won’t understand, so they’ll ask why he keeps the scar. Most times, he’ll tell them he’s tried, but has found it impossible. But he’ll add a dosage of truth by saying, “some cuts are too deep to ever heal.” They only know for sure that he’s being metaphorical when, once in a grand while, he tells the story of the grand fire that turned his life upside down. No names or specifics will be narrated, but they’d be quick enough to realize the fabled woman was in fact real once.
“Her name was Elle. She used to come in here, sit with the patrons, talk ‘em up, scare ‘em sometimes. She sure told off quite some girlfriends,” says the waitress of a bar tucked in the outskirts of New York City.
“You sure?” asks the petite woman with long, dark brown strands tucked into a tight ponytail.
“Course I am. You don’t forget someone like that--especially when they stop coming so suddenly. Haven’t seen her or that boy o’ hers that’d come by sometimes, either.”
“What was his name?”
“Oh, that one I ain’t so sure of…but hold on, I’ve got a picture of ‘em. But you gotta let me know why you questioning so much.”
The brunette leans over the bar counter, narrows her eyes, and sharply says, “How much do you want for the picture?”
The waitress laughs. She nods her head, and shrugs, “another forty should do it.”
---
A corner of the photograph is bent, but aside from that, it’s in near perfect condition. She doesn’t understand the bar owner’s obsession with the…couple that up and disappeared years ago. The waitress had to sneak into the owner’s little office and pick a lock to get to the picture, but she did it. Only reason for the obsession maybe, thought the waitress, was that the building the pair occupied burned to the ground sometime after the girl stopped going to the bar--but neither one was found in the remains of the building. Some were found dead, some escaped alive, but no one was identified as either Elle or that boy of hers.
“Peter,” she tells herself as she shoves the picture in the car compartment.
“This town is where they lived, then?” the car passenger asks.
“Yes,” she confirms.
“What were you able to learn about them?”
She stares ahead of her, at the broken blocks of concrete making up the road they’re to make a u-turn on after she starts the car. She has a blank stare, though anger rages within her heart.
“Claire.”
Matt places a hand on her shoulder, but she pushes it off hastily.
“If she’s dead--if she’s really dead, thank God. The bitch deserved it, Matt, I don’t care what it’s done to Peter.”
“What if he’s dead too?”
“That’s impossible,” she spews, having forced herself to believe that since the explosion. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that he survived. She had to believe he survived whatever occurred five years back, too.
“It’s a possibility,” he states crisply, nonchalantly.
“Tell him that when we find him.”
She starts the ignition, drives the car onto the road, and makes a sharp u-turn as they head to the building that burned down five years ago that day. The one that still lies in its remains, as the city and state had instead preoccupied itself with the hunting down of people with out of the ordinary abilities.
---
He’s tired of the questions. And he’d like to blame the scar completely, but they’d still ask him questions.
“You could have stopped your brother from telling the world, but you didn’t. Why?”
And others were kinder. They didn’t try to question him, didn’t even try to talk to him. They simply tried their hand at killing him. They either ended up running away or daring him to kill them. Those were the ones instructed never to come near him ever again.
“Peter, we should just close this place down. We hardly make a cent off this place. It’d be cheaper to stop selling and just use this place as a sleeping quarters.”
He never answers to that. His brother tells him repeatedly that keeping the bar open is ridiculous. Aside from the finances, it only invites people who have vendettas against them in. Nathan can concern himself with such things, but Peter’s just plain tired.
He leaves every March 16th. Nathan knows that on this fifth year, he won’t return. Peter can’t handle the questions anymore, and he’s broken every mirror in the place, broken the windows at least ten times over. That March 16th he leaves everything in place. Nathan simply doesn’t find him on his bunk, or the outhouse, or the parking lot on that fifth anniversary. He’s gone.
---
“Take the picture with you.”
“Wha--why?”
“I don’t know. But just…something tells me you should take it.”
Matt’s helped her some in her search for Peter, and he’s provided some helpful hints on tracking him down. He refuses to do some of the dirty work, though. Tries avoiding reading minds as much as possible (he's so afraid of being caught, afraid of being experimented on like his Molly). Usually, he’ll send her in to ask the questions, but he always knows who to ask which is why she’s allowed him to help. That, and like her, he has his own vendetta.
The hunters killed Molly.
The hunters destroyed what Peter was. And Elle, she did something to him.
“Fine,” she says, opens the compartment, grabs the pictures, folds it, sticks it in her jeans pocket.
“Alright, let’s go.”
They step outside, ready to walk into the building that probably has very few stairways, and the ones that remain from the fire are probably fragile.
“How will we get up there?” she asks as they walk through a door-less entrance.
Matt sighs and turns in the spot he’s standing in. Blackened, dusty, and messy--the entire building is impossible to excavate for clues of what had really happened.
“We won’t.”
---
He’s never gone in. He stands against the railing of the bridge across the street of the building and watches the black bricks as the memories of that day run through his mind.
He sees everything.
Elle pacing the living room as she screamed. Elle marching up to him, with a finger pressed to his chest and her head tilted at him, and with regrets falling from her mouth. Elle wishing she’d never met him. Elle demanding him to turn back time and change their fates. Elle telling him that she’d lost the baby.
Peter watched an old Honda Civic roll up to the apartments, and he could see Claire and Matt sitting there, talking briefly. Then Claire grabbed something, and both stepped out of the car to go into the building.
He watched them as he stood there, remembering it all before he himself stepped in. But his memory stops short when he thinks of the baby lost before he dwells on the relationship that died and his love that burned.
He pushes himself off the railing and stalks towards the building. He heads towards the same entry that they had entered through, his feet dragging but his heart determined.
---
“Why the picture, Matt?”
“Huh?”
“The picture.”
Matt sighs and turns his eyes towards the ceiling.
“Because he comes here every year. I don’t know if he steps inside, or what he does while in the area, but I know he comes. And when he comes, you’ll have that picture. It might mean something for him.”
“But she warped his mind. Because of her, he distanced himself from his family--he distanced himself from me,” she unnervingly shouts, “because of her he stopped fighting.”
“That was my choice,” he yells from the entry way.
He has the fabled scar and the sight of it alone breaks her heart. Again. He looks in her direction, but not at her. More like at a spot behind her.
“All of it. It was all my choice. Loving her was my choice,” he laments.
Matt watches Peter’s hand, which play with fire.
“Peter,” he says.
“You should leave. Both of you,” is all Peter says as he walks towards the center of the building, all the while staring at a stairway to the far right of the west of the building.
She watches his eyes. They’re different. So unlike him. So hopeless. She follows him and his eyes. Was that where he lived? With her?
“Peter,” she says. He pays no attention to her so she stands in front of him and finally he looks at her.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he orders her.
“What? Peter, look, I don’t know why you’re being this way--this isn’t you.”
“You don’t know who I am, now move.”
He looks at her like she’s a stranger, a displeasing one at that. Breathing in deeply, she tilts her head up further and presses a finger to his chest.
“Listen, Peter, I may hate you for what you did and I may hate what you are now, but I still love you. And I need you. We need you, so we can change this.”
Without a second thought, he shoves her hand off. “Don’t look at me like that: you just remind me of her.”
---
He stands on the mark she wrote and he played out for her. And Claire gives him a look that make his memories continue.
There was so much bitterness in Elle’s eyes that night. So much pain. She was bombarded with her past and present, and she became a rage that tore his heart in two.
When their hands met with sparks that neither wanted to possess, but had vowed upon conjuring, and the jolts bolted to the ground beneath them, it was then that he had to let go. But he persisted in remaining on that spot.
Her eyes were closed while he watched electric outlets ignite and from there, the wood, furniture, and electrical items went up in flames.
She never said thank you, but she welcomed what she called her mercy from him. And he could only close his eyes as well. He drew up the last good memory they had before it all went to hell.
She had flown into his arms one afternoon, and screamed in his ears that she was pregnant. They were in the bar however, and thus he could barely hear her. But he heard her, and he kissed her. Then he smiled down at her as she buried her head in his chest with a playful expression. He saw a flash go off quickly, and turned to see the bar owner had taken a picture of them.
Peter always hated that bar, but a part of him understood Elle’s want of a chaotic scenery, because a part of him relished in it as well. But the second the flash disappeared, he resolved to never returning to such a scene again. Elle objected, but begrudgingly obliged.
She went at least one more time, though. He knew because she had the picture of them in that bar. She didn’t try to hide it. She hung it on their wall proudly. He wasn’t happy. They fought. As they tended to do.
Her pregnancy was supposed to change all that. Her pregnancy was supposed to make her more cautious and thoughtful, but it didn’t. Peter could never change her much, but it was just him and her, so if he could accept her, that was enough. But then another life came into play, and it threw him overboard. She couldn’t continue to be so careless when she had a life within her. A life that was a part of him just as it was a part of her.
Still, she was inexplicably happy over the pregnancy. And when she miscarried, it wasn’t her fault, but she blamed herself. And him. Herself for getting pregnant in the first place and thus being responsible for a life, and him for letting her share something so…sacred. It threw her overboard.
The building burned, but he kept in mind that image of the last time they had been truly happy.
---
Matt knows the world is going to burn this night. Or maybe it burned five years ago, because everything’s been so out of balance since then. Everyone took sides before that, but all of a sudden there was an amnesty of sorts, which was worse. No one communicated, no one formed plans, no one attempted to correct things. But Claire had remained determined and when she sought out help, Matt was there along with Hiro. But Hiro had his own way of doing things, and Hiro couldn’t agree with Claire.
Through some deranged sense of duty, though, Matt stuck with Claire. He had to get her out of this now, despite her protests.
He walks over to her, stands beside Peter, and eyes her.
“Give him it.”
Claire doesn’t want to. Every lasting reminder of Elle should remain buried. She was his torture and scar.
“Why do you keep the scar, Peter?” she dares ask.
“You have a picture of me and Elle.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. He isn’t ashamed to admit to reading her mind.
“Give me it.”
She shakes her head.
He doesn’t miss a beat. He isn’t afraid to call the object to him and in a millisecond, the photograph is in his hand. He falls back a step.
The photograph too had burned with their apartment and a large portion of the building. Now the original rests in the palm of his hand, and words spill from his mouth.
“I was burned. Elle left, but I didn’t,” he pauses. His eyes close momentarily, his breath stops short, but he picks back up--"I was burned badly. I stood there, couldn’t move. Something fell--the ceiling. Pipes and wires and…when I woke up, the building was still burning. I got up, I ran, I got out of there. No one saw me. It was dark, there were alleys, and somewhere along the way, there was a mirror. Hours later, somewhere not here, there was a mirror. I still hadn’t healed.”
His eyes flare open and he looks back at the photograph.
“It wasn’t as bad as when I exploded. But there was this cut on my face. I healed. But not all of me. The wound on my face…it was the most obvious. And the closest to my head. The kind that stopped people in their tracks and just begged for a story. The kind I needed to tell stories.”
He doesn’t say another word. He’s fixated on the photograph. Matt turns to him, and asks in a low whisper, “Elle left?”
“Hiro took her. I asked him to because Elle didn’t want me to know where she would go, so I wouldn’t look for her and find her.”
“Have you looked for her?” Claire asks fearfully.
“No,” Peter responds.
She openly exhales in relief.
“Because she’s better off without me. And I’m better off without anyone.”
Peter isn’t playing with fire anymore. He stopped when he walked towards the center of the building. But Matt still watches his hands in fear of him wanting to spark another fire.
“Snap out of it, Peter. We need to fix this whole mess,” Matt says.
“It’s too late.”
Claire grabs for him, but Peter’s resolute in his response. He’s emitting sparks, and Claire holds his shoulders, yelling, asking him to do her a favor.
Nothing is salvaged. Matt runs when he fails in stopping Peter, and Matt leaves Claire when he fails in pulling her away from Peter.
She stands there, yelling. She keeps her eyes fixed on his as his eyes faithfully remain on the photograph. But in a second, his eyes close and she looks down to see only dust in his palms. He’s gone. He’s etched his own truth and regrets, and has embedded the lives he's failed in saving on the veins of his heart.
A fire rages around her, and she hopes, she hopes he’ll heal. Instead, his scar festers, and he crumbles to dust in her palms.