Am I Still Nathan Petrelli?, Chapter 12: Some Time Alone
After the Bennets left, Peter glanced in the direction his mother had gone. He pointed upstairs for more privacy from her. Nathan nodded and followed him quietly up the stairs.
Peter opened the door to Nathan’s room because to his memory it had an extra chair in it. It still did, sitting at a battered study desk. Peter pulled it out and sat down. He covered his eyes, thinking about what he’d just done to his mother and regretting it. Nathan wandered around half the room, his fingers trailing lightly over every object. He stopped next to the bedpost and jerked his hand away with an annoyed expression. He’d seen something he didn’t like. He sat down on the bed, pushing a box of old toys out of the way. Apparently their mother had been in here rearranging, some days or weeks ago.
Peter looked at Nathan. Nathan looked at him. “Thank you,” Nathan said.
Peter nodded. “What are brothers for?”
“Heh,” Nathan exhaled. “That went above and beyond the call of duty. You didn’t have to save him.”
Peter cocked his head, “Why were you trying to save him?”
“He’d changed. He’d really changed.” Nathan looked away at his small bookshelf of old law textbooks. “Our prisons, our system of justice, morality…” His eyes fell on a crucifix on the wall. “Faith. We’re supposed to have the idea that people can be rehabilitated, redeemed. I’m still a little pissed off I don’t have my own body, but I have my life back and it didn’t seem fair to kill him right after he’d become a good man.”
Peter inhaled slowly and exhaled. “What are you going to do with the one or two years you say you have left?”
Nathan looked up at the light fixture. “Serve out my term. See how much I can get done. I was thinking I’d try to hook up with Heidi again. The boys need a father in their life. If you did what I think you did, then mom will find a solution. She’s probably already got several leads.”
“A solution to what?” Peter asked.
“Too many powers. They make you unstable. They eat you up. Use your powers too much and they use you up instead. Some are more high energy than others.” He snapped his fingers and a tiny ball of lightning shot out into the air. “You might want to talk Claire out of being an organ donor.”
“An organ donor?”
“Yeah, she was talking about it the other day. I’m not sure how this stuff works exactly, but that might not be a good idea for her.”
“Huh. And what’s this stuff about an arrangement between Arthur Petrelli and Noah Bennet?”
“Oh, it’s bigger than that. It’s the Company. They had Rules. Like loyalty and obedience for everyone but the directors. All the old agents. They had a guy with a power like Parkman’s who burned the Rules into them. One of the Rules is not to interfere in the family matters of the directors.”
Peter nodded slowly. “That must be why the Haitian wouldn’t do it unless I agreed. He didn’t want to come between mom and I.”
Nathan shook his head. “Couldn’t.”
Peter cocked his head. “How do you know all this?”
“Dumb luck,” Nathan said. At Peter’s look, he explained, “A girl gave me her calling card. I was reading a book later in our library and I stuck the card in it to hold my place. I left the book there. When I came back later, it was gone. I thought someone must have reshelved it. But I couldn’t remember what book it was. I didn’t care about the book - I wanted to call the girl. I looked through half the books in there that looked right and couldn’t find it. So I got mad and decided to be methodical and go through every single book in the library - get them down, flip through them, find it. It was the fourth book of the 1936 Encyclopedia Britannica set. It had a false cover. Inside wasn’t encyclopedia entries. It was meeting notes. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but I came back to it later about a year after I’d learned to fly.”
Peter chuckled, “Did you ever get to call the girl?”
He nodded, “Oh, yeah. Mom had found the book and carried it upstairs, set it next to my bed.” He gestured at the nightstand. “Thought I’d finish reading it here after dinner.”
“What was in the notes?” Peter asked.
“Some of it was just income and expenses, account numbers and asset tracking. Not helpful. But here and there they’d have reports given by scientists and field agents and stuff, explaining what they’d found out about powers. People like Suresh.”
“Mohinder?” Peter asked.
“Well, Chandra. They also had their Rules in there and different stuff about the company. A lot of it was in code, usually not on purpose, but they used different words. Like someone who could fly was a valkyrie.”
“Valkyrie?” Peter smiled a bit. “That was the name of your plane in the Navy.”
Nathan smiled back. “Yeah, I named it. Seemed to fit: ‘Chooser of the Slain’.”
“Wow. I wish I’d seen that book.”
“It’s still down there as far as I know. They’re up to encyclopedia eight though. Come on, I’ll show you.”
“Okay.”
They padded downstairs quietly and walked into the library. Nathan knew exactly which book he wanted and went straight to it. He pulled it out… and stared at it, dumbfounded.
“What is it?” Peter took the encyclopedia from him and let it fall open. It was nothing but a terribly out-of-date encyclopedia. Nathan pulled out books five, six, seven and eight to find the same thing.
“They were here! I swear it, Peter! They were here,” he said.
“Hmpf.” Peter dropped book four on the reading table. “I believe you. But nothing’s ever that easy.”