Heroes: Good Intentions, Part 2 - Reaction

[fool_of_ships]

Title: Good Intentions, Part 2 - Reaction
Author: fool_of_ships
Pairing: Peter/Mohinder
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: through 1.21 "The Hard Part"
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of characters, plot, or other elements copyrighted by TPTB of Heroes.
Summary: Life as a Petrelli is one big cover-up, but this is ridiculous.
Author's Notes: See Part 1.



"-even going to work!"

"If you have a better suggestion, let's hear it."

Peter breathes in, feeling as if he hasn't been doing much of that lately. A couple of thoughts later, he remembers why. He can dimly remember waking up after Odessa, screaming and sweating and shedding IVs, and he wonders why this is different. No dreams, no beeping, just the feel of his own bed-how'd I get here?-and his mother and Mohinder and Nathan-he made it-arguing in the next room. So who's holding his hand?

There's a sigh of relief above him, female, and a soft drawl says, "Oh good, he was right."

Peter opens his eyes, cautiously against the expectation of a headache which, against all odds, doesn't slam into him. He wonders if that's a sign that he's dreaming, especially combined with the blur resolving into familiarity two feet away. "Claire?"

"Yeah, it's me," she says, beaming. "You okay?"

His mouth tastes foul and he feels like he's been drained of the energy to roll over, but he's alive and there's no way he can complain about that. All in all, it's better than he expected. "I think so." It's an effort to talk, but he makes himself go on. "What happened? How'd you get here?"

She looks embarrassed. "I kind of…went looking for you," she admits, with a squirm. "Which it turns out was a good thing, 'cause when-"

"Claire?" Nathan's voice cuts in, and she turns toward the door. Peter looks too, but she's in his way and moving anything but his eyes is still too much of a challenge. "Is he awake already?"

"Yeah," says Claire, sounding…uncertain. It's the only way Peter can describe the change in her voice from when she was talking to him. He thinks he can hear her heartbeat speeding up too. Weird, and not just because of the hearing. "I-I can leave if you want. If it'd be-

"No," Peter says, and Nathan says it too.

"It's okay," Nathan continues, walking into the room. "You can stay. It's up to you." He rounds the bed to take a seat on the other side, smiling with obvious relief. "Hey, Pete."

"Hey," says Peter, listening in amazement to what he thinks is the creak of each individual bedspring. "You got here fast."

"Fast plane," says Nathan, and his thoughts say Peter decides it's not worth teasing him about tired arms, even if his current state of health gives him ultimate immunity. "You really gotta stop going meltdown on us."

"I know, but-" A sudden tickle assaults his throat, and reserves of energy from somewhere double him over. He can hear, over the coughing fit, more footsteps approaching, and in his mind there's a cacophony of The worst part, oddly, is that he can't get enough breath to tell anyone it's just a cough, he's not relapsing into Odessitis. Then, with no effort on his part whatsoever, the voices in his head go abruptly silent. A second later, a careful breath fails to catch, and he uncurls himself to try to sit up against the pillows. Nathan and Claire are both perched, ready to intervene, shooting nervous glances at each other. To his right, someone is holding out a glass of water, someone whose hand is dark-skinned and unfamiliar, and he looks up into a face fitting the same description. "Who…"

"He's an associate of mine," says Peter's mother, from the foot of the bed. "He just helped save your life, so I'd say you can trust him."

"You a doctor?" Peter asks him, and gets a solemn headshake in answer. He reflects that the telepathy would come in handy right about now, but he feels odd about trying it on a complete stranger, lifesaver or no. Instead, he reaches for the glass. Water's never tasted so good.

"So," his mother continues, as the man moves away to stand closer to her. "Now that you've returned to the land of the living, maybe you can elaborate on what your friend here-" she nods toward Mohinder, who's standing just inside the doorway, looking uncomfortable- "has told us about what happened."

"Jeez, Ma, go easy on him," says Nathan. "Both of them." He gives Peter an uneasy smile. "Dr. Suresh tells us you two had a run-in with Sylar."

"I'd think the blood would tell you that," says Claire, acidly, and Nathan and his mother both glare at her. More weird, but even stranger is the sudden realization that everybody else's thoughts aren't all that's gone from Peter's mind. So is the soft undercurrent of breathing and heartbeats that he's not quite sure why he was hearing just moments ago. He reaches for the telepathy, even though he can't really control it; and then for Claude's invisibility, not thinking of how it would shock people until he comes up with a jarring nothing.

Nathan's noticed that he's not answering. "Peter? You all right?"

Peter wants to answer, but he can only trust three out of five people in the room. "It's gone," he says, hoping Nathan will understand. "It's just all…not there."

"What's gone?" Nathan asks, but his expression says he knows.

"All of it," Peter says. Telekinesis, prophecy; he'd try flight if he wasn't sure it would either kill him or get him landed in a mental ward. "It's like-"

"You are being blocked," the unfamiliar man cuts in. His accent is familiar but Peter can't place it. Something like French. "It was to keep you from overloading."

"What, you're-" Peter begins, then realizes what's really been said. Number one, the man knows what he can do; and number two, he's talked about it in front of Peter's mother. Her expression, when he looks at her, is a study in trying not to be smug. "You know about this?"

"She knows, Pete," Nathan answers, somewhere between grim and amazed. "I don't know how but she knows everything."

"Not everything," Peter mutters. He reaches to push back his hair, and he's confused when his fingers run out of bangs long before they ought to. "Crap, who cut my hair?"

"Sylar started it," says Mohinder, and Peter remembers that, barely. It was sort of hard to think while his head was being sliced open. "I think your mother took the opportunity to finish the job."

"It looks better, Peter," his mother says. "More professional."

"You just wanted an excuse." Girls went crazy over that hair, he thinks, wondering how long it's going to take to regrow and if it'll be worth it. Probably be out of fashion by the time I get it back the way it was.

"So what if I did? It was long overdue. I was beginning to think we'd have to sedate you."

"Yeah, that's great, Mom," Peter says. "Kick a guy when he's down." It must be a parental thing, he decides, wanting your children's hair to be neat and short no matter their ages. He wonders what ace Monty has up his sleeve.

"Not funny, Peter," she returns. "Do you have any idea how close you came to dying?"

"What, was it closer than last time?" It looks like he's lost a lot less than two weeks, unless Mohinder's gone out and gotten beat up again.

"Possibly," says the unfamiliar man. Haitian, that's it. "You may have died today. It would be hard to tell."

"So why am I not in a hospital?" Peter asks. "Like last time?"

"Because we didn't have to resort to that," his mother answers. "You might not recall how useless the hospitals were last time, but we do. We had an alternate solution and we used it."

"I am not an 'alternate solution,'" Claire snaps, glaring at her.

"So…" Peter closes his eyes, working it through. "You were here the whole time? You made me heal?"

"Well, first it was more like keeping you alive," says Claire. "While everybody else was fighting about what to do next."

"I…I don't understand," says Peter. "I mean, this…mimicking, isn't that what would've killed me?" There's a lot more he doesn't understand than just that, but he doesn't know what to ask about the rest. He's beginning to think he'd rather pick information out telepathically than have to drag it out in words.

"That is why I blocked you," says the Haitian man. "Your symptoms were quick to resolve." He looks as if he knows more than he's letting on, but he probably looks that way by default. "You are fortunate that your niece was available, or we could not-"

"Wait," says Peter, holding up a hand, glad it isn't shaking. "Niece? What niece, I only have nephews." He's wondering if maybe the guy picked the wrong word, and then he notices how quiet Nathan is being, and how red Claire's face is getting. He can't speak for a second, till the equal sign ahead of the four is firmly established. "Wait, you…Claire?"

"Um, surprise?" she says, smiling weakly.

"Thanks for being discreet about it," says Nathan, glaring at the Haitian, who shrugs.

Peter doesn't want to try to think of how his brother must be feeling right now, especially since his own thoughts are saying This explains so much and he can feel a huge grin spreading across his face. Why Nathan hadn't been on fire to come home from his Texas posting that time, maybe even why he'd packed up and jetted back out there even though it meant missing seeing Peter compete in Science Olympiad. More importantly, Peter has a name now for the connection he feels with Claire. Not that "mutual life-saving" wasn't succinct enough, but "family" feels better to say when it's a full truth. "Don't get all bent about it, Nathan," he says. "She turned out all right." He gives Claire a conspiratorial wink and feels indescribably happy when she grins back.

"Yes, disobedient and reckless just like you," his mother puts in. "She'd have been better to go on to Canada like we arranged."

"And be Vivian Lewis?" Claire responds, making a face.

"And be safe."

"And be conveniently undetected until the campaign's over," Peter adds, glaring at Nathan and his mother and getting only level gazes back. "Jesus, Nathan, you could-"

"Watch your mouth," his mother admonishes. "There are children present."

"My other dad wouldn't care," says Claire. Peter's sure she was intending to say my real dad.

"Your other dad isn't here. And I doubt he'd appreciate you repaying his sacrifice like this."

"Sacrifice?" Peter asks. It has the air of something he doesn't want to have happened to Claire's…adoptive father. "Is he…all right?"

"I don't know," Claire admits, miserably. "I hope so."

"What happened?"

Claire picks at a loose thread on the comforter. "His company found out I could heal. They wanted to…I don't know, kidnap me. So he sent me away, with his partner." She half-nods toward the Haitian man, who stays silent, looking strangely guard-like. "I didn't want to go to Canada."

Peter wants to ask more, but he's not sure how long he's going to be able to stay awake and coherent, and there are more urgent things he needs to know. "Did you call the police?"

"Against my better judgment, no." His mother flickers a disapproving glance toward Nathan. "We apparently need to wait until you feel better."

"You want him answering questions like this?" Nathan returns. "Suresh told you, Ma. This is gonna bring in the FBI and Peter's on their shit list. We can't have this before the election."

"And what are the chances we won't?" his mother asks. "Sooner or later someone is going to call the police and if it's us at least we'll have spin and a timeline." She's making sense, but something tells Peter she doesn't have the whole story. "As for answering questions, we can either magically recover the prodigal son and shut him up in a hospital, or have him stay missing. Invisible, if you will," she adds, gazing steel at Peter.

"Hospital's too risky," says Nathan. "Orderlies will talk if you buy them pizza. Peter, you think you can stay out of sight?" He winks, and Peter smiles in spite of his confusion.

"How do you all know…" Peter begins, and notices Mohinder shifting uncomfortably at the edge of the room as people glance at him.

"You disappeared, halfway at least, when you went rogue," Mohinder says, almost apologetically. "They asked me, and I told them. Should I not-"

"No, no, it's okay," Peter assures him. If he can't tell this stuff to his family, who can he tell? But it sounds like there are some things he still can't tell them about… "What else did I do?" he asks Mohinder, with as intense a look as he dares, hoping his meaning gets through. "It's all kinda blurry after…you know," he adds, drawing a finger across his forehead.

Mohinder holds his gaze for a moment without speaking, then glances cautiously around at the rest of the room. "You did quite a few things," he says, finally. "Telekinesis, cryogenesis, levitation, invisibility of course. That's all I was able to identify before I fell." He touches careful fingers to the scrape on his chin. "You healed yourself, afterward. You weren't making a whole lot of sense, but I think you said you wished you could heal me and Zane as well."

"Zane?" Peter asks, wishing for the telepathy back. He trusts Mohinder, especially seeing as his family appears to believe the story being told, but he'd like not to look too surprised by every invention.

"The…other man," says Mohinder, looking toward the floor. "You were too late for him." He sighs, just on the believable side of theatrical. "Maybe it's better if you don't remember-"

"No, no…I should know," says Peter, and it's the truth. If there's a story being assigned to how Sylar ended up in Mohinder's apartment, he wants to hear it. "Was he…your friend?"

"I don't know what he was," Mohinder admits, shrugging. "He called himself Zane Taylor, who knows if that was his real name. I met him while looking for people with abilities. We'd just returned from Montana yesterday."

"What were you doing in Montana?" asks Claire, saving Peter the trouble. Apparently the others haven't heard everything yet.

"Looking for more people from my father's list," says Mohinder. "I thought if someone went with me, to demonstrate…" He shakes his head. "Sylar must have followed me. We got back, last night. We were trying to regroup and all of a sudden he was just…there, in the apartment, and Zane was…gone."

How much truth is in what Mohinder is saying, Peter doesn't know, and he doesn't want to ask. The scary thing is, he's inclined to believe all of it. "And then I walked in," he deduces.

"I think there was an ass-kicking somewhere in the middle," says Claire, and Peter can see a ghost of smile twitching in Nathan's jaw.

"Unfortunately," Mohinder agrees. "He was after my computer. Thanks to Peter, he left without it." He smiles slightly. "Or Peter's brain."

"Leave it to Peter to frighten off the bad guy unintentionally and not remember any of it," says Nathan, letting the smile out.

Peter ignores him. "I really am sorry I couldn't help you more," he says to Mohinder. "Are you feeling any better?" He looks better, whether due to recovery time or better cleanup; Peter imagines he'll find the medicine cabinet severely ravaged.

"For now," Mohinder says. "Tomorrow may be a different story." He grimaces, presumably at the prospect of waking up and having to move around. "I'm not looking forward to sleeping on a motel bed."

"You can stay here," Peter says, impulsively, sitting up a little straighter. It's the least he can do in return for getting the other man messed up in this and effectively evicting him. "I can sleep on-"

"Don't be silly, Peter," his mother cuts in. "Dr. Suresh can stay at the house, we have plenty of room for guests." She looks Mohinder up and down in a way that has him crossing his arms. "You look like you could fit some of the clothes Peter left behind."

"Thank you very much, Mrs. Petrelli," says Mohinder, looking a little scandalized, "but if you wouldn't mind, I'd rather room with someone I've known more than a few hours."

"On a couch?" she asks. "With the kind of bruises you're acting like you have?"

"He can have the bed," says Peter. Mohinder isn't going to end up at his family's house if he can help it. "Mom, I'm a nurse, remember? I can help."

"Peter, you can't even stand up straight," his mother returns. "Both of you, come back with us."

"They should stay," the Haitian speaks up, startlingly. "To separate the ones in hiding. We should not give any seekers any more than we must." It makes sense; finding Claire would be a bonus to any authorities looking for Peter or Mohinder, and vice versa. Peter can see reluctant acceptance dawning around him, and avoids looking at Mohinder, to keep from giving his family any bonuses of another sort.

"What if Peter goes rogue again?" Nathan asks. "He could hurt you."

"I'm pretty certain that was a reaction to Sylar," says Mohinder. "That shouldn't happen again."

"What do you mean?" Nathan asks, and Peter coughs to try to cover the startled realization he knows is on his face. "Sylar could find him."

"He doesn't know who Peter is," Mohinder explains. "If Peter stays hidden, Sylar may never locate him."

"I can't retract every newspaper photo from the last six months," says Nathan. "We need better cover."

"My hair's different," Peter offers, and gets a dirty look. He hadn't thought of the publicity; he tries to think of something that might counter it. "Besides, I can do more than Sylar can. I could stop him now, I know it. I can do this, Nathan. I'll be fine."

Nathan watches him for a moment, unblinking, the town curmudgeon fighting the charms of the winsome newcomer. At length, he says, "We'll check up on you."

"How will they know it's not-" Claire begins.

"We'll call first," says Nathan. "If anybody shows up without calling beforehand, don't ask questions, just run."

Peter nods, unable not to smile. "We will."

"I don't like this," his mother says. "You're coming home if you have any trouble."

"We'll be fine, Mom," says Peter. "We'll call if we need you."

"We're calling the police once you're on your feet," she reminds him. "No sense letting some crazy cat lady light the fuse on this."

"Right, Mom." Peter realizes his family might still win the debate if they stay, and thinks of yawning to induce a real one. "Can I get some sleep?"

"You're making sense. You must need sleep." His mother smiles and steps forward as Nathan engulfs him in a hug, settling for a quick authoritative squeeze of his arm once Nathan's let go.

"Thanks," says Peter, as Claire is twisting her jacket between her fingers, unsure what to do about leaving. "I won't break," he tells her, and she smiles, that smile from a hundred yards above a taxi, and hugs him as if she only half believes it.

"I want to stay," she says as she pulls away. "Can I stay?" she asks the room at large.

"Let's let the walking wounded recover," says Nathan. "We can come back later."

Claire stops herself halfway to a pout and waves instead. "If you see Sylar, kick his ass," she says, on her way out the door behind the Haitian, grinning at the ahem from her grandmother.

"Will do," says Peter, and then they're gone and the loudest sound is Mohinder fastening the locks. It's as if something has lifted from his chest, and it has nothing to do with the sudden return of his ability to levitate above the bed.

"Should you be doing that?" Mohinder asks, coming back into the bedroom. He's not limping much, now; it must have been a simple strain.

"I'm fine," Peter says, touching back down. "Or I'd have been sick again from Claire sitting with me."

"True." Mohinder takes a careful seat at the foot of the bed. "Did I confuse you at all?"

"Only a little," says Peter. "How many acting classes did you take at school, anyway?"

Mohinder chuckles. "Was I that convincing?"

"You've got to have been," says Peter. "They'd have noticed if you sounded fake." He thinks a moment, then decides to ask his question. "How much did you actually, you know, lie?"

"Less than I thought I'd have to," he says. "I did meet Sylar while searching for people with abilities, he did call himself Zane Taylor, and we did go to Montana. He…stole an ability while we were there. Extrasensory hearing." He's looking a little ill, and Peter feels as sorry for asking as he is glad Mohinder survived the experience.

"I'm sorry," Peter says, not knowing what else to do.

"So am I," says Mohinder. "If I'd known, I could have…" He trails off, staring into space, then looks back to Peter. "Your turn. What's this about exploding?"

He realizes he should have expected the question, but it catches him by surprise. "It was…a dream I had in Texas, last time I got sick. I was in the middle of the street, outside Nathan's campaign office, and you and all sorts of other people were running away from me. And then…I started glowing and…well, exploded," he explains, feeling silly. "It might be what makes New York explode in the future."

"Since when is New York going to explode?" asks Mohinder, and Peter remembers he's never been to Isaac's loft to see the floor mural.

"Since Isaac Mendez painted it," Peter says. "You remember, we were going to go see him."

"I remember," Mohinder muses. "I do regret the way I acted toward you that day."

"Apology accepted." Peter feels a little better about the situation somehow, with that old business resolved, and he smiles. "You should've come, really," he says. "I finished a painting Isaac couldn't. You'd have loved it."

"A painting of what?" Mohinder asks.

"Um, a dead cheerleader," says Peter, feeling almost embarrassed. "Not Claire. Obviously."

"Obviously."

They sit for a few moments, Peter thinking of explosions and powers and lies, wondering what thoughts Mohinder is lost in but not curious enough to try to listen. Eventually, Mohinder says, "You should do what you said you'd do and get some rest."

"Good idea." Peter swings his legs over the edge of the bed and moves to stand, but Mohinder makes a sound of protest and he stops. "What? I'm okay, I'm just moving to the couch."

"No," says Mohinder, standing, blocking the door. "You live here, you take the bed."

"Exactly why I'm taking the couch," Peter counters. "I'm just exhausted. You're all bloody."

"I'm not kicking you out," Mohinder maintains. "Show me where the blankets and the aspirin are and I'll be fine."

Peter knows he's not telling the whole truth, but he doesn't have the stamina to fight back anymore. "Okay. You have pajamas? Toothbrush?"

"I never unpacked," says Mohinder. "Everything from Montana is still in the bag. Luckily."

Peter nods and tucks his legs back up under him. He lets himself think that this just might work. "Okay. Make yourself at home."

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7