Endangered Species (Heroes)
Endangered Species
Heroes (NC-17, Claire/ Niki/ Jessica, with a large helping of Nathan)
Author's Notes: Written on the occasion of projectjulie's birthday because she's a rock star. With thanks to lizbee who did the speed read and told me that some words are just not meant to be spoken by Ali Larter. Ah, it's like getting the band back together. Also, I'm tempted to call this 'Cliki.' Who's with me?
The room is brighter than Claire imagined; larger too. She expected a grey cell, a cot, a high window, prisoner of war style. Instead there is a skylight, a bed, a brightly patterned quilt, a desk, a lamp, magazines and books, a two-seater couch, and a woman watching a flat-screen television. She’s turned away from them but Claire recognizes the blonde hair hanging in a loose ponytail over the back of the couch.
They are separated from her by inch-thick, industrial strength glass. Appearances aside, it’s still a prison. “She shouldn’t be here,” Claire says.
“She’s dangerous,” Nathan says. “To herself and to others.”
He looks unimportant in his collared t-shirt and jeans; he could be a tourist. The Galapagos Islands are full of them this time of year. Getting to the compound without someone recognizing the Vice President of the United States isn’t easy. Fortunately, Nathan has more than politics at his disposal. They take a short cut: straight up into the air and down again at the compound helipad. Under any other circumstance, Claire would enjoy flying with her father. If she was someone else. If he was someone else.
“She should be with her son,” Claire says.
“Her son is in prison for murder,” Nathan says.
“Linderman killed Micah’s father,” Claire says. “He would have killed me too - he would have killed all of us if someone hadn’t stopped him.”
Nathan stares ahead, his face impassive. Claire can see him reflected in the glass. She can see both of them. They don’t look alike. She got most of her genes from her mother.
“I’m keeping her safe,” Nathan says.
”Is that what you tell my uncle?” No one has seen Peter in months. The official story is that he’s been institutionalized in Canada since the ‘cleansing.’ Nathan isn’t giving anything away but Claire suspects Niki isn’t the only inhabitant of the island compound.
Nathan purses his lips, and lifts his chin. He looks like a politician caught in a lie. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says, and he walks away, leaving her to stare at the glass between her and Niki.
At an unseen signal the glass parts, opens wide enough for a person to step through. Niki turns around at the sound of the glass opening.
She frowns when she sees Claire. “It’s you,” she says.
“I would think you’d be happy to receive visitors,” Claire says, taking a seat on the opposite side of the couch. “I know how much you hate being forgotten, Jessica.”
“I get plenty of attention without you,” Jessica says. “You’d be amazed how often daddy comes to visit.”
Claire laughs. “Is that the best you can do?” she says. “You really have been here a long time. You don’t believe Nathan is here to see you any more than I do.”
Jessica rolls her eyes. “Fine. We’re so lonely we’re happy to see even your pathetic little face. Feel better?”
“Much better,” Claire says. “Can I speak to Niki now?”
“What do you want to speak to the mouse for?” Jessica says, she leans over and breathes hotly against Claire’s ear. “She’s way too sexually repressed for you. You know, you two would never have gotten anywhere if not for me.”
”Is that so?” Claire says. Jessica runs the back of her fingers along Claire’s neck, down over her collar bone, and dragging slowly over Claire’s breast. Claire doesn’t mind, not the way she used to. Putting up with Jessica is part of being with Niki. Niki and Jessica have an understanding, so Claire and Jessica have an understanding. That’s how they work. Nathan doesn’t understand and neither does Claire’s grandmother, but Claire can cut off her fingers and grow them back again so she’s used to being inexplicable.
“You were always a little vixen,” Jessica says. “Even when you were sixteen, you were on fire. My sister didn’t know what to do with you.”
Claire’s heard this story before, and maybe parts of it are true. When Niki and Jessica work together, eyes on the same prize, it’s difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. Even Niki says she isn’t sure.
Not that it matters. It’s Niki who Claire talks to, who needs Claire as much as Claire needs her. It’s Niki who took a sixteen year old freak of nature and made her feel like she belonged. “Jessica,” Claire says, “I want to speak to Niki. You know what happens when Niki doesn’t get to speak to me.”
Jessica pouts, thrusting her bottom lip out in a truly child-like pose. Niki has ways of punishing Jessica, making sure Jessica remembers who was in this body first. She keeps Jessica under sometimes, doesn’t let her out to play. Jessica hates being controlled but she hates being hidden even more. She’s learned to compromise too.
“She’s asleep,” Jessica says, scowling.
“Wake her up,” Claire says. “Now.”
Jessica’s face goes blank, and then her eyes narrow, focusing, getting used to the light. Her mouth falls open suddenly, and her eyes go wide. “Claire!” she says, and she throws her arms around Claire, pulls her in so tight Claire forgets to breathe. “I thought I'd never see you again.”
Claire turns her head to kiss Niki on the lips. “I would have come sooner," she says. "As soon as I knew about this-" She holds up her hand to encompass the room. "- Place, I wanted to come. I had to swear I wouldn't tell."
Niki frowns. “You promised Nathan? Claire - is that wise?”
Nathan survived the cleansing by selling out his friends. Naturally, Niki doesn’t trust him, but neither does Claire. “It’s okay,” Claire says. "I'm his daughter." It sounds simpler than it is, but she has twenty-four hours and she’s not going to spend it worrying about Nathan.
"What about Micah?" Niki asks. "Have you seen him?"
No one has seen him. Not even his lawyers. Like many of the 'specials' he's considered too dangerous to be imprisoned in an ordinary facility. Nathan made arrangements, and that’s all he told Claire. For all she knows he’s in the cell next door. She hopes not. For all the bad things her father has done she still clings to the belief that even he wouldn’t do that to Niki. She shakes her head. "I'll find him," Claire says. "I'll make him tell me where he is."
Niki bites her lip, like she’s holding something inside. Claire knows that look. They wish they could start again, from the beginning. Five years ago they saved the world. Now they are hunted for their own safety, like they’re an endangered species being forced to breed in captivity. If only they'd known.
"How is Jessica?" Claire asks.
"Angry," Niki says. "She blames me, of course. Still -" She laughs ruefully. "-With no one else to talk to we're getting along better than we ever have."
“She said my father comes by sometimes.”
Niki nods. “Jessica tried to break his neck the first time. It didn’t stop him.” She shrugs. “Maybe he feels guilty?”
“Did he tell you anything?” Claire asks. “About the others?”
“He told me about Micah - what he did. He told me Micah was alive and he told me you were safe.” She reaches out to touch Claire’s face, the back of her hand against Claire’s cheek. Her touch is the same as Jessica’s, only softer, more careful. “He doesn’t want to do this, Claire.”
Claire shakes her head. “You don’t have to lie for me, Niki,” she says. “I’m not sixteen anymore. You don’t have to protect me.”
“I guess not,” Niki says. “You made it here, after all.” She looks thoughtful. “I missed your twenty-first birthday, didn’t I?”
“It wasn’t much of a celebration.” Her grandmother took her for a cosmopolitan on the Upper West Side. It was the first time Claire had been outside in months.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Niki says. She puts her hand under Claire’s chin, tilts her to meet Niki’s lips. “I promise,” she whispers. She’s so close Claire can feel her breath on Claire’s lips. They kiss, and Claire forgets everything from her twenty-first birthday, to her captivity at the hands of her grandmother and biological father, to the fact that she hasn’t seen her adoptive family in so long she’s forgotten what they look like.
They undress under the covers because Claire isn't sure who's watching, despite the assurances of privacy Nathan gave her. Niki says she's stopped caring and Jessica is an exhibitionist anyway but there's no way Claire’s performing for a camera, especially if it means her father might see the results.
They line up alongside each other, bare skin against bare skin, legs tangled in legs and mouths on every part of each other’s body they can reach. When they are like this, everything fades away: the loss of Claire’s family and friends, her innocence, the cleansing and the subsequent cover-up, and her relationship to the benevolent dictator who pulled the strings. She's left with Niki and everything they have between them, the memories of their time together in New York, the sadness they shared and their resolve to be the people they once were, no matter what.
Niki taught Claire everything about love, about making love. She had her first orgasm with Niki, although she wondered if that wasn’t Jessica. Sometimes she wonders if the difference is as large as they pretend. Sometimes she wonders if it matters. She still remembers it, her legs parted, her head thrown back against the couch in Peter's New York apartment as Niki kneeled between Claire's legs and worked Claire with her tongue, fingers inside, scissoring and flexing.
In those first few days after the world didn't explode, after Peter and Nathan disappeared into the sky, everything was chaos. DL took Micah, Jessica was out of control, and Claire was just trying to breathe again, feel like she did a year ago when she turned fifteen and discovered she had breasts.
She’s learned so much since then. She knows how to give the way Niki gave to her, she knows to bite the inside of her thigh, dip her tongue between Niki’s leg and suck, tease, kiss, lick until Niki is writhing in Claire’s hands, saying, “oh baby, like that, right there…’ and sometimes it might be Jessica - she’s never sure - but Niki is generous and she lets Jessica take over if it keeps her happy. Claire thinks it’s Jessica who lifts her hips off the bed, and says, “fuck me, baby, harder,” and cries out with pleasure when Claire slides one slick finger into Niki (or Jessica’s) ass.
It’s definitely Niki who pushes her down on the mattress and bites lightly at the pink aureole of Claire’s breast. The way she slides her tongue across Claire’s chest to the other breast, drawing a line down the centre of Claire’s chest to her abdomen; this is all Niki, tender and loving and needing Claire as much as Claire needs her.
She knows it’s Jessica, though, when her knees are pushed roughly to the sides, fingers inside her too quickly, two, three, four, and thrusting hard, in and out. She feels tongue and teeth and a low animal growl. “Going to make you come so hard, baby,” she says, and the question of whether it’s Jessica or Niki is forgotten as Claire arches into Niki’s mouth, throws her head back and comes like she’s exploding into fire.
Afterwards she curls against Niki’s side, head on Niki’s shoulder, blonde hair mixing with blonde.
“Will you be back?” Niki asks.
Claire doesn’t know the answer to that question. She made a promise to Nathan and she got twenty-four hours in return. What will another twenty-four hours take?
“Yes,” she says. Whatever it takes.
*
Nathan is there at the appointed time, waiting expectantly when the curtains part and the door opens. Niki turns away when she sees him, doesn't even wave when Claire takes one last look before he leads her away.
"Is everything okay?" Nathan asks.
"No," Claire says. She walks fast, walks ahead of him. She doesn’t want to be at his side. They put up a façade in public - the widower and his long lost daughter - but she won’t do it here, surrounded by the people he has wronged.
He puts his hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. "Claire, I’m-"
"Don't say it," she says. "Don't say you're sorry. You kept your promise; I'll keep mine, but don't expect me to forgive you."
"I won't," he says. "But maybe one day you'll understand…"
"Never," she says. “I will never understand you,” and this time when she walks away, he doesn't pull her back.
*
He didn’t ask for much. Not really. She went to work for him, took a room in the OEOB, not so close she aroused suspicion, but close enough for Nathan to keep an eye on her. Her official title is Aide to the Vice President but unofficially she's as much his captive as she’s ever been over these last three years. She goes out now, goes wherever she likes as long as she’s accompanied by her bodyguards and their orders (direct from the Vice President) to taser her if she moves more than ten feet away from them. She does real work, performs duties that only someone with her background and experience can be trusted to undertake. She protects her father from exposure, she helps him find others like them and she 'protects' them too. She hates herself for it at times, but when she rescues a twelve year old boy from an angry mob, she wonders what else they can do. At these moments she realizes, with a sinking feeling, that maybe she does understand him and she hates herself for that too.
She hears a report of a man who paints the future being sheltered in a farmhouse outside of Portland. She tells Nathan and they meet each others’ eyes with a look she’s come to know too well: they have to find him. It’s Isaac and they owe it to him to keep him safe. Their intelligence is only as good as the word on the street and when the word is on the street they’re not the only ones looking for him.
“Bring him in,” Nathan says, and she nods slowly, not needing a reason anymore. He stops her before she leaves, takes her hand almost tenderly. “It won't be like this forever, Claire,” he says.
"How can you be so sure?" she asks.
His eyes are dark and they’re nothing like hers but she understands the fear that hides in the corners, behind the grim determination and the too careful smile he puts on for the press. "It can't be," he says.
There are stories about 'specials' on the television every night, stories about the menace and the cleansing and how the government and some altruistic organizations are rounding them up, keeping them from harming ordinary people going about their ordinary lives. Claire sees Nathan in these stories sometimes and she feels sorry for him because the Nathan she knows walks the halls with a blank expression on his face, quietly mourning the loss of his wife, the children he sees irregularly, and the long disappeared brother who, Claire suspects, is probably hidden in a compound on a secluded Galapagos island. Nathan takes Claire back there sometimes, more often than she expected, and she wonders if it’s because he too needs to be around someone who loves him unconditionally. In these moments, she thinks she knows him, and maybe they have more than genetics in common.
She puts her head down, reads the briefing notes on her desk and she tries to believe in him. He’s all she has left, after all.
End.
Heroes (NC-17, Claire/ Niki/ Jessica, with a large helping of Nathan)
Author's Notes: Written on the occasion of projectjulie's birthday because she's a rock star. With thanks to lizbee who did the speed read and told me that some words are just not meant to be spoken by Ali Larter. Ah, it's like getting the band back together. Also, I'm tempted to call this 'Cliki.' Who's with me?
The room is brighter than Claire imagined; larger too. She expected a grey cell, a cot, a high window, prisoner of war style. Instead there is a skylight, a bed, a brightly patterned quilt, a desk, a lamp, magazines and books, a two-seater couch, and a woman watching a flat-screen television. She’s turned away from them but Claire recognizes the blonde hair hanging in a loose ponytail over the back of the couch.
They are separated from her by inch-thick, industrial strength glass. Appearances aside, it’s still a prison. “She shouldn’t be here,” Claire says.
“She’s dangerous,” Nathan says. “To herself and to others.”
He looks unimportant in his collared t-shirt and jeans; he could be a tourist. The Galapagos Islands are full of them this time of year. Getting to the compound without someone recognizing the Vice President of the United States isn’t easy. Fortunately, Nathan has more than politics at his disposal. They take a short cut: straight up into the air and down again at the compound helipad. Under any other circumstance, Claire would enjoy flying with her father. If she was someone else. If he was someone else.
“She should be with her son,” Claire says.
“Her son is in prison for murder,” Nathan says.
“Linderman killed Micah’s father,” Claire says. “He would have killed me too - he would have killed all of us if someone hadn’t stopped him.”
Nathan stares ahead, his face impassive. Claire can see him reflected in the glass. She can see both of them. They don’t look alike. She got most of her genes from her mother.
“I’m keeping her safe,” Nathan says.
”Is that what you tell my uncle?” No one has seen Peter in months. The official story is that he’s been institutionalized in Canada since the ‘cleansing.’ Nathan isn’t giving anything away but Claire suspects Niki isn’t the only inhabitant of the island compound.
Nathan purses his lips, and lifts his chin. He looks like a politician caught in a lie. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says, and he walks away, leaving her to stare at the glass between her and Niki.
At an unseen signal the glass parts, opens wide enough for a person to step through. Niki turns around at the sound of the glass opening.
She frowns when she sees Claire. “It’s you,” she says.
“I would think you’d be happy to receive visitors,” Claire says, taking a seat on the opposite side of the couch. “I know how much you hate being forgotten, Jessica.”
“I get plenty of attention without you,” Jessica says. “You’d be amazed how often daddy comes to visit.”
Claire laughs. “Is that the best you can do?” she says. “You really have been here a long time. You don’t believe Nathan is here to see you any more than I do.”
Jessica rolls her eyes. “Fine. We’re so lonely we’re happy to see even your pathetic little face. Feel better?”
“Much better,” Claire says. “Can I speak to Niki now?”
“What do you want to speak to the mouse for?” Jessica says, she leans over and breathes hotly against Claire’s ear. “She’s way too sexually repressed for you. You know, you two would never have gotten anywhere if not for me.”
”Is that so?” Claire says. Jessica runs the back of her fingers along Claire’s neck, down over her collar bone, and dragging slowly over Claire’s breast. Claire doesn’t mind, not the way she used to. Putting up with Jessica is part of being with Niki. Niki and Jessica have an understanding, so Claire and Jessica have an understanding. That’s how they work. Nathan doesn’t understand and neither does Claire’s grandmother, but Claire can cut off her fingers and grow them back again so she’s used to being inexplicable.
“You were always a little vixen,” Jessica says. “Even when you were sixteen, you were on fire. My sister didn’t know what to do with you.”
Claire’s heard this story before, and maybe parts of it are true. When Niki and Jessica work together, eyes on the same prize, it’s difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. Even Niki says she isn’t sure.
Not that it matters. It’s Niki who Claire talks to, who needs Claire as much as Claire needs her. It’s Niki who took a sixteen year old freak of nature and made her feel like she belonged. “Jessica,” Claire says, “I want to speak to Niki. You know what happens when Niki doesn’t get to speak to me.”
Jessica pouts, thrusting her bottom lip out in a truly child-like pose. Niki has ways of punishing Jessica, making sure Jessica remembers who was in this body first. She keeps Jessica under sometimes, doesn’t let her out to play. Jessica hates being controlled but she hates being hidden even more. She’s learned to compromise too.
“She’s asleep,” Jessica says, scowling.
“Wake her up,” Claire says. “Now.”
Jessica’s face goes blank, and then her eyes narrow, focusing, getting used to the light. Her mouth falls open suddenly, and her eyes go wide. “Claire!” she says, and she throws her arms around Claire, pulls her in so tight Claire forgets to breathe. “I thought I'd never see you again.”
Claire turns her head to kiss Niki on the lips. “I would have come sooner," she says. "As soon as I knew about this-" She holds up her hand to encompass the room. "- Place, I wanted to come. I had to swear I wouldn't tell."
Niki frowns. “You promised Nathan? Claire - is that wise?”
Nathan survived the cleansing by selling out his friends. Naturally, Niki doesn’t trust him, but neither does Claire. “It’s okay,” Claire says. "I'm his daughter." It sounds simpler than it is, but she has twenty-four hours and she’s not going to spend it worrying about Nathan.
"What about Micah?" Niki asks. "Have you seen him?"
No one has seen him. Not even his lawyers. Like many of the 'specials' he's considered too dangerous to be imprisoned in an ordinary facility. Nathan made arrangements, and that’s all he told Claire. For all she knows he’s in the cell next door. She hopes not. For all the bad things her father has done she still clings to the belief that even he wouldn’t do that to Niki. She shakes her head. "I'll find him," Claire says. "I'll make him tell me where he is."
Niki bites her lip, like she’s holding something inside. Claire knows that look. They wish they could start again, from the beginning. Five years ago they saved the world. Now they are hunted for their own safety, like they’re an endangered species being forced to breed in captivity. If only they'd known.
"How is Jessica?" Claire asks.
"Angry," Niki says. "She blames me, of course. Still -" She laughs ruefully. "-With no one else to talk to we're getting along better than we ever have."
“She said my father comes by sometimes.”
Niki nods. “Jessica tried to break his neck the first time. It didn’t stop him.” She shrugs. “Maybe he feels guilty?”
“Did he tell you anything?” Claire asks. “About the others?”
“He told me about Micah - what he did. He told me Micah was alive and he told me you were safe.” She reaches out to touch Claire’s face, the back of her hand against Claire’s cheek. Her touch is the same as Jessica’s, only softer, more careful. “He doesn’t want to do this, Claire.”
Claire shakes her head. “You don’t have to lie for me, Niki,” she says. “I’m not sixteen anymore. You don’t have to protect me.”
“I guess not,” Niki says. “You made it here, after all.” She looks thoughtful. “I missed your twenty-first birthday, didn’t I?”
“It wasn’t much of a celebration.” Her grandmother took her for a cosmopolitan on the Upper West Side. It was the first time Claire had been outside in months.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Niki says. She puts her hand under Claire’s chin, tilts her to meet Niki’s lips. “I promise,” she whispers. She’s so close Claire can feel her breath on Claire’s lips. They kiss, and Claire forgets everything from her twenty-first birthday, to her captivity at the hands of her grandmother and biological father, to the fact that she hasn’t seen her adoptive family in so long she’s forgotten what they look like.
They undress under the covers because Claire isn't sure who's watching, despite the assurances of privacy Nathan gave her. Niki says she's stopped caring and Jessica is an exhibitionist anyway but there's no way Claire’s performing for a camera, especially if it means her father might see the results.
They line up alongside each other, bare skin against bare skin, legs tangled in legs and mouths on every part of each other’s body they can reach. When they are like this, everything fades away: the loss of Claire’s family and friends, her innocence, the cleansing and the subsequent cover-up, and her relationship to the benevolent dictator who pulled the strings. She's left with Niki and everything they have between them, the memories of their time together in New York, the sadness they shared and their resolve to be the people they once were, no matter what.
Niki taught Claire everything about love, about making love. She had her first orgasm with Niki, although she wondered if that wasn’t Jessica. Sometimes she wonders if the difference is as large as they pretend. Sometimes she wonders if it matters. She still remembers it, her legs parted, her head thrown back against the couch in Peter's New York apartment as Niki kneeled between Claire's legs and worked Claire with her tongue, fingers inside, scissoring and flexing.
In those first few days after the world didn't explode, after Peter and Nathan disappeared into the sky, everything was chaos. DL took Micah, Jessica was out of control, and Claire was just trying to breathe again, feel like she did a year ago when she turned fifteen and discovered she had breasts.
She’s learned so much since then. She knows how to give the way Niki gave to her, she knows to bite the inside of her thigh, dip her tongue between Niki’s leg and suck, tease, kiss, lick until Niki is writhing in Claire’s hands, saying, “oh baby, like that, right there…’ and sometimes it might be Jessica - she’s never sure - but Niki is generous and she lets Jessica take over if it keeps her happy. Claire thinks it’s Jessica who lifts her hips off the bed, and says, “fuck me, baby, harder,” and cries out with pleasure when Claire slides one slick finger into Niki (or Jessica’s) ass.
It’s definitely Niki who pushes her down on the mattress and bites lightly at the pink aureole of Claire’s breast. The way she slides her tongue across Claire’s chest to the other breast, drawing a line down the centre of Claire’s chest to her abdomen; this is all Niki, tender and loving and needing Claire as much as Claire needs her.
She knows it’s Jessica, though, when her knees are pushed roughly to the sides, fingers inside her too quickly, two, three, four, and thrusting hard, in and out. She feels tongue and teeth and a low animal growl. “Going to make you come so hard, baby,” she says, and the question of whether it’s Jessica or Niki is forgotten as Claire arches into Niki’s mouth, throws her head back and comes like she’s exploding into fire.
Afterwards she curls against Niki’s side, head on Niki’s shoulder, blonde hair mixing with blonde.
“Will you be back?” Niki asks.
Claire doesn’t know the answer to that question. She made a promise to Nathan and she got twenty-four hours in return. What will another twenty-four hours take?
“Yes,” she says. Whatever it takes.
*
Nathan is there at the appointed time, waiting expectantly when the curtains part and the door opens. Niki turns away when she sees him, doesn't even wave when Claire takes one last look before he leads her away.
"Is everything okay?" Nathan asks.
"No," Claire says. She walks fast, walks ahead of him. She doesn’t want to be at his side. They put up a façade in public - the widower and his long lost daughter - but she won’t do it here, surrounded by the people he has wronged.
He puts his hand on her shoulder, turning her to face him. "Claire, I’m-"
"Don't say it," she says. "Don't say you're sorry. You kept your promise; I'll keep mine, but don't expect me to forgive you."
"I won't," he says. "But maybe one day you'll understand…"
"Never," she says. “I will never understand you,” and this time when she walks away, he doesn't pull her back.
*
He didn’t ask for much. Not really. She went to work for him, took a room in the OEOB, not so close she aroused suspicion, but close enough for Nathan to keep an eye on her. Her official title is Aide to the Vice President but unofficially she's as much his captive as she’s ever been over these last three years. She goes out now, goes wherever she likes as long as she’s accompanied by her bodyguards and their orders (direct from the Vice President) to taser her if she moves more than ten feet away from them. She does real work, performs duties that only someone with her background and experience can be trusted to undertake. She protects her father from exposure, she helps him find others like them and she 'protects' them too. She hates herself for it at times, but when she rescues a twelve year old boy from an angry mob, she wonders what else they can do. At these moments she realizes, with a sinking feeling, that maybe she does understand him and she hates herself for that too.
She hears a report of a man who paints the future being sheltered in a farmhouse outside of Portland. She tells Nathan and they meet each others’ eyes with a look she’s come to know too well: they have to find him. It’s Isaac and they owe it to him to keep him safe. Their intelligence is only as good as the word on the street and when the word is on the street they’re not the only ones looking for him.
“Bring him in,” Nathan says, and she nods slowly, not needing a reason anymore. He stops her before she leaves, takes her hand almost tenderly. “It won't be like this forever, Claire,” he says.
"How can you be so sure?" she asks.
His eyes are dark and they’re nothing like hers but she understands the fear that hides in the corners, behind the grim determination and the too careful smile he puts on for the press. "It can't be," he says.
There are stories about 'specials' on the television every night, stories about the menace and the cleansing and how the government and some altruistic organizations are rounding them up, keeping them from harming ordinary people going about their ordinary lives. Claire sees Nathan in these stories sometimes and she feels sorry for him because the Nathan she knows walks the halls with a blank expression on his face, quietly mourning the loss of his wife, the children he sees irregularly, and the long disappeared brother who, Claire suspects, is probably hidden in a compound on a secluded Galapagos island. Nathan takes Claire back there sometimes, more often than she expected, and she wonders if it’s because he too needs to be around someone who loves him unconditionally. In these moments, she thinks she knows him, and maybe they have more than genetics in common.
She puts her head down, reads the briefing notes on her desk and she tries to believe in him. He’s all she has left, after all.
End.