Title: Unsung Heroes
Author: Romako (on fanfiction.net) and then I join in to co-author on chapter 7. He gave me permission to post this on livejournal since I'm the one with an account here.
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble. Working towards Clach.
Summary: What will happen as Zach joins Claire as she embarks on her journey with the rest of the Heroes? What will happen as the bomb approaches, and what consequences will it bring to the Heroes? AU as of Unexpected. No connection between Sylar and Mohinder.
Genre: Adventure/Romance
Rating: PG-13
Unsung Heroes
By: Ro
Ch.1: Reunited
AN’s
Heroes doesn’t belong to me, I’m just taking the characters on a different path
Thoughts in italics
Thoughts heard by Matt in bold italics
Since it’s pretty obvious whose thinking what in the Zach/Claire scenes, it seems kind of pointless to differentiate them.
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Odessa, Tx
Late afternoon
Claire’s POV
“My name is Claire Bennet, and as far as you know, that was attempt number one.”
As much as she hated the sounds of her bones grinding back into place, Claire couldn’t help but smile as she got up from the ground to see Zach there with his video camera. How many times had they been here before? She had lost count. How many times had she been there without Zach? One time too many. These past few months she had been focused on one thing only: her freakish healing powers.
At first, all she could think about was how to hide it from her snobbish, cheerleader friends. God forbid they might find out and toss her off the heights of the high school food chain.
Then Zach came back into her life. Okay, in all honesty, she’s the one who chose to confide in him, but same difference right? Whatever. Anyway, the point is that Zach turned out to be the best friend she ever had. He was totally cool with her freaky healing powers, but a little shocked at first. Can ya blame him? Zach even went out of his way to make sure she got elected homecoming queen; she could still remember his smile when he told her she got the freak vote. By far the happiest moment of her life, but the whole punching Jackie thing came in at a close second. She had it coming, that bitch.
So fast forward to the day after homecoming, normal day right? I wish! It turns out that that scary black guy erased Zach’s memory!! I lost the only person who really knew me and cared….
Claire would never forget that feeling, the intense pain of loss, the pain of knowing that she was truly alone in a world full of people who wanted to kill her. She knew that that she couldn’t do this alone, so she brought Zach back here, to show him her powers again. Now they were back at the bridge, Zach had that cute, confused but understanding look on his face, and she was determined to rebuild what she had with Zach. And what would that be, exactly?
“You can stop posing now, Miss homecoming queen.”
“Oh….uh, right….”
“We should be heading back, it’s pretty dark already”
“Aww is the big, bad sci-fi geek afraid of the dark?”
“No! It’s just that some of us can’t regenerate our arms and legs if we have accidents.”
As Claire fell into step at Zach’s side she suddenly realized she felt at home. More so than when she was at her own home. Walking this familiar path with Zach was…nice. So nice, apparently, that she didn’t notice the nail sticking out of the railroad tracks until after she tripped over it. Luckily Zach was there to catch her before her head was impaled by the nails in front of her. Not that it would have mattered if he didn’t, but Claire still took a few seconds to thank whatever big being was out there for returning Zach to her.
“God, were you always this clumsy?”
“Shut up!”
“Ow!”
For the rest of the walk home, all Zach could think about (besides the sore spot on his arm where Claire hit him) was how right it felt to have her in his arms. Careful man, she’s a cheerleader, and if what she says is true, the shit’s about to hit the fan in so many ways…
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Matt Parkman
New York
Jeez, why can’t these damn meter maids ever cut a brother some slack?!
After handing out what felt like his hundredth parking ticket for the day, Matt Parkman came to one very obvious conclusion: Most people are assholes, even more so when you can hear what they keep to themselves. Sometimes he thought that this gift was more trouble than it was worth, then he remembered that day with his wife…Good times, Good stuff…
“Have a nice day sir.”
Shove it pig “Thank you officer.”
That’s it! I need to get out of here!!
Once he got done with his report, Matt took off on of his “quiet walks”, times where he took off to find a secluded place to think and enjoy the silence in his head. After the false confession he gave to the board he had been busted down to the slowest beat in town and it was driving him crazy.
This gift, however annoying, meant something. He was supposed to be doing something with it, something important. That’s when he heard it, the story of Nathan Petrelli. He was some big wig politician in training in New York who had a brother who supposedly jumped off a building and survived. Maybe this Petrelli brother was like him, maybe he had some gift, maybe he could help Matt figure out the connection between Sylar and this Mr. Bennet character.
However, there was one flaw with that plan: the baby. Janice just found out she was having a baby; he was going to be a father! He couldn’t abandon his wife and child when they needed him, but didn’t making this world a safer place for both of them by catching Sylar count?
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Zach’s Place
Odessa, TX
Zach’s POV
What a day. There is no way my life could get any weirder
As Zach lay on his bed, he thought about the happenings of the past few days. First he wakes up with a major headache and chunks of time where he can’t remember what he was doing, then he gets dragged out to an old bridge by his old friend turned cheerleading snob, Claire Bennet. Suddenly, he’s watching her hurt herself over and over and heal all the damage.
According to Claire, Zach’s memory had been wiped away by some person who also has powers and works for Claire’s dad. Despite the strangeness of it all, he believed her, wholeheartedly. Not because of some movie-like rush of memories or anything, but because when he was with her it felt natural and right. He remembered the hurt in her eyes and the pain in her voice when Claire told him about how she realized he didn’t remember anything. Whatever happened, he needed to make sure she never felt like that again, he may not remember much about her, but that look cut him pretty deep. She said he was her friend right? Well friends have each other’s backs, even if one spent years tormenting the other. She did seem like a whole new person, like someone who had much greater burdens on their shoulders than the food chain.
And just how am I supposed to help her?? She’s the one with the wolverine healing, and there must be others out there like the memory wipe guy and this Peter Petrelli. I don’t even have any powers…
Zach looked up at his computer and the proverbial light bulb went off, followed by a worried sigh.
That’s a start, but something tells me life is gonna get real sucky real fast. At least I’ll have her to keep me company in a jail cell if things get ugly…
End of Chapter One
Chapter 2: It's gonna be a long day...