Fic: "Somewhere in Sands," Heroes, gen, R.
Title: "Somewhere in Sands" 1/2
Author: monimala
Fandom: Heroes (and slightly Carnivale)
Rating: R for adult language and sexual content
Pairing: gen, with mentions of Claire/the Haitian and Isaac/Monica.
Word Count: 12010
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my insane idea.
Summary: Written for heroes_bigboom. A sequel to One of Us, a 1930s carnival AU. The carny, Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show, it ain't exactly a place where a body would really consider themselves alone.
Notes: This isn't really a two-parter. It's just broken up into two posts because of the length!
Notes2: Check out the accompanying heroes_bigboom fan art done by futuresoon right here, but only AFTER you've read the story, as it is spoiler-y.
"Somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds."
--William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
They stop 26 miles out of Odessa because Linderman's trailer blew a wheel. While the rousties all run about like chickens with their heads cut off to make sure His Majesty's chariot is fixed up in a cinch, the performers all get out for a spell so they can stretch. Nathan stays inside, locked tight, knowing that if he steps out into the dust, Hiro will probably come find him to shout, "Flying Man!" and tell him how 26 miles means 'Marathon.' He's been reading up on his history, all the books of Suresh's that Mohinder has crammed up on his shelves, hoping it'll help him with his English. To tell the truth, it ain't helped a damn. But Nathan doesn't have the heart to say so.
So he listens to the noise of Teddy and Alejandro shouting back and forth about jacks and spares, hears Gabe offering Meredith a pack of smokes in exchange for a fuck, and he shuts his eyes and thinks about the act. They've got at least another night on the road, but he goes over it in detail. It doesn't hurt any, and it passes the time.
The Flying Petrellis work without a net. Nobody else across the circuit knows how they do it. No wires, no tricks, nothing except two men soaring through the air in perfect precision. Everything Nathan does is with perfect precision. He never takes one wrong step. He times each jump, knows exactly which hand comes off the trapeze first and how many fingers he needs to catch on to Pete in mid-air. It's how Nathan's always been.
Except once.
One time.
He's been paying for that one time ever since.
It's trapped him here, another piece in Linderman's collection. Forever in his service. Walking the tightrope twice a night and doing back flips for peanuts. A long time ago, in another lifetime, he was just a boy who ran away from New York to join the carny. He never thought Pete would follow him. He never thought he was going to stay. He never thought they were going to end up calling it home. But this is who they are now: No wires, no tricks, nothing except two men soaring through the air in perfect precision.
Ten minutes later, the caravan gets going again. Every truck, every trailer. On to the next town, on to the next scam. On to another crop of suckers who'll pay ten cents to look at Meredith's goods and a quarter to sample them. He hears his beautiful, perfect daughter singing "Camptown Races," at the top of her lungs. And he wishes she'd never been born.
**
Claire leaves his things scattered all over. Sometimes, it takes him hours to find his turban, his father's astrology book, and his left slipper. And at the end of a two-show day, he's just too worn out to yell at her. Besides, he reckons if he raises his voice or his hand to her, she'll pitch a fit and find another place to bunk… and Mohinder's just grown too used to her being underfoot. And if he really wants to look close, really wants to reach into the mists and pull on the sciences, and all that other bullshit he feeds the rubes every night, he'd admit that he just plain hates being alone.
It's a funny conundrum. The carny, Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show, it ain't exactly a place where a body would really consider themselves alone. He goes to the pump and runs into the Fat Lady, the Bearded Lady, and the He/She… and that's all just Candy, ten thousand faces in one. The crew putting up the Ferris wheel always takes a good two hours, and the joints on the old machine scream like a burning witch. On any given day, Isaac is flirting with one of the cooch girls and getting knocked on his butt for being too fresh… or maybe they just don't like his cornpone jokes. There's always someone around, always noise, always something happening.
Mohinder still feels like he don't belong. Like he's a fake. Like he's just playing dress up and he could leave the circuit at any time and no one would notice. Except when Claire crawls into bed beside him. She's family. Like Peter used to be, before he decided to start minding his brother again and quit playing rebel in Mohinder's trailer.
Peter used to believe everything out of his mouth was gospel. Better than any sucker in the crowd who really believed his line about taming a lion with a simple chant. Then he started flying… and now he never comes down.
Maybe that's the problem… Mohinder's feet ain't never been anywhere but firmly on the ground. He's never soared through the sky. And he ain't certain that Pete would catch him in mid-air.
Now, it's only Claire who breaks his fall.
**
Niki doesn't really remember a time where she didn't dance the cooch. Maybe it's better that way, better to just put the past in the past and get up on the stage. It keeps her from putting on airs, like Meredith, who thinks she rules the tent just because she used to dance in a theatre in Tupelo with her clothes on. No, instead she just knows her place, knows her strengths.
They call her the Amazon, because she's tall and her body's hard from toil. She looks like she could fight anyone, anything, tooth and nail. Only she knows the fight's long gone out of her. What she does best now is survive.
"You're sellin' yourself short, Nicole," Mohinder tells her sometimes, when she's giving him a free fuck just because she's gone so long between tricks she reckons she's getting rusty. "You're more than a cooch girl. We're all *more*. We gotta be."
It's nice to hear, but the Professor's got too many dreams. He's always looking for something else, for something beyond. All she has is reality, and the fact that she's gotta put food on the table and tuck money in her garter, because some day Mr. Linderman's favor is gonna run out. Some day, he's going to decide that she's just not good enough to dance anymore. Some day, he's gonna decide that he doesn't want her boy learning his letters in the school tent with Claire and Molly once a week.
She'd damn near laughed herself sick when Bennet came to tell her Linderman wanted Micah to get some schooling, thought it was some kind of joke since everybody knows that nobody wants a colored boy to make something of himself. Anytime someone tries… he gets beat down. Lynched. She knows that. She's seen that. She's felt the tar and the feathers and the blood on the rope.
She presses a hand flat against her stomach, feeling the ache in her so heavy she could crumble to the ground. There are times Niki misses Micah's daddy so bad she could cry.
But she doesn't crumble. She doesn't cry. No, instead she just counts the steps for her and Monique's next routine. She remembers her place. She remembers her strengths.
**
The spikes go down in the fairgrounds outside a no-name backwater just along the New Mexico border. It's not his job to ask why, but he does anyhow, noting to the boss that there's no money to be made. What he gets in return is an icy glare that makes his blood run cold. So he chomps down on his cigar, lets himself out of the management's trailer, and goes to tell the boys to go ahead and put on the show for the fifteen sheep farmers, a preacher, and a handful of whores who won't do them a lick of good business.
Most of them take to it with the same tired and worn grit as always, but Gabe looks up from the axle on Shirley's cage and gives him a growl that makes the tiger's sound like a downright purr. "It's been ten days since we've had a decent haul, Bennet. You promised we were going towards money," he says, his eyes dark with the anger that some of the girls have been saying gives them the willies.
Bennet tells him to shut his trap or hit the road and get on with another outfit. With his hand on his gun the whole time. None of the rousties or the performers has ever given him much trouble, but there's a first time for everything. He's learned to be on his watch. It helps to have eyes like Claude, who shows up right behind his ear as soon as they're far enough away from Gabe. "That one's a bad egg," he says, coat flapping in the dusty breeze. "'Jandro says he's been making noises about mutiny. Thought you'd want to know."
"Mutiny? This isn't a pirate ship," he laughs, wearily, nodding at Matt and raising a hand as they pass little Claire and the Haitian man who might as well call himself her long, tall shadow. "Hell, this isn't even a rowboat."
"You're tellin' me." Claude slides his gun off his belt, and right back on, just because he can. "But we've been on the road a long time, and in case you haven't noticed, the country's gone to shit. Something's got to be done, Bennet, or they'll all start listening to Gabe just because they want an extra quarter in their pocket at the end of the night."
"They've already got extra in their pocket," he notes, without irony. "And it's because of Linderman that most of 'em ain't been strung up in some town square or shot for being a freak."
Claude nods at this piece of wisdom, conjuring a pack of smokes from somewhere and lighting them each one on the same match. "And it's because of Linderman that they're not using their talents to their full potential. Don't think they don't know that, Noah. Even the ones you think you have on your side… the Petrellis, Mohinder, the mind reader… they're more powerful than the management could possibly reckon."
"Like you, you mean?" For the first time since they broke camp in Odessa, Bennet smiles, inhaling deep on the rolled tobacco. "So tell me, Claude… why aren't *you* leading the mutiny?"
As he rounds the corner to his own trailer, Claude disappears. No answer to the question, not that Bennet expected one anyway. All he hears is the Invisible Man's quiet chuckle, and he doesn't have to reach for his back pocket to know his wallet is gone.
**
When they set up for the first show in No Hope (she asked Bennet, and no, Isaac sure as shit weren't kidding about the name), Claire just *knows* something is going to go wrong. She feels it in her bones. All the ones she breaks, and even the ones that she don't.
The Haitian catches her eye across the center ring as she dusts herself off and heads back towards the ladder for another run- through. He hates watching her do it, and she knows he feels she ought to do something less dangerous, like taking tickets or grifting shills on the midway. Once, she said the same about him and Shirley's act, and he actually quit being all strong and silent and told her, "The tiger and I have an understanding, cherie, you and the ground do not." It's sweet that he worries. Nobody else really does anymore. They're all too used to seeing her fall. Or too busy counting the change her show brings in.
She wouldn't know. She never sees a lick of it. Mama always takes her cut, tucks it down into her blouse and heads into the nearest town. "I'm investing, Sweetie," she always says. Yeah. She's investin' all right. On liquor and smokes and men.
Claire takes the ladder two rungs at a time, and the higher she gets, the more of the tent she can see. As always, there's Gabe, in a corner, banging on a spike that's likely been banged to death already. Mohinder told her that Claude reckons that Bennet ought not trust Gabe as far as he could throw him. Claire can't throw Gabriel far at all; she still doesn't trust him. Especially when he's staring up at her, like she's wearing a dress (she ain't) and he can see her panties (he can't).
It scares her. It adds to the goose bumps already layering her skin. Isaac says that Gabe's trying to rile up half the rousties. Something about getting them to want more pay or they walk. Only Claire ain't as gullible as Isaac and the others want to believe she is. She's seen too much. She's been too much. The way Gabe looks at her, it ain't about money. It's about power. Whatever has the boys all stirred up is just that… stirring.
She screams the whole way down this time. Makes the Haitian come running. He starts shaking the devil out of her as she's popping her arms back into place and cracking her neck. He cusses away in more French and Haitian than anyone in the show's probably ever heard. Hell, most people still think he's a dummy. Then, suddenly, he's hugging her in his arms, so tight there's no way Gabe can see her. He tells her she's safe, that she's always going to be safe as long as he's here to watch over her.
"The ground understands me just fine," she whispers against the crisp fabric of his shirt. "And so do you."
**
His brilliance is wasted on the carny. Gabriel knows that. He's just biding his time. He's being patient. Meticulous. Like the poor, pitiful watchmaker he worked for before the Crash. Hunched over his gears and levers. Tick, tick, tick. The old man shot himself when the market went belly up, and even though Gabe loved the gorgeous cacophony of similar shots echoing all over the city, he went West. He found Linderman. He found a man with a plan, a philosophy, and a collection of freaks whose wonders and powers had no equal.
Unfortunately, Linderman has no appreciation for Gabe's own vision. He and his asinine little foot soldier, Bennet, think that all he's good for is hammering spikes and digging ditches. Grunt work. Menial tasks. Nothing that requires the least bit of finesse or care. Forget about it. He's meant for bigger things than that.
He's so, so far beyond all these illiterate fools.
He laughs, softly, to himself when he leaves the center tent, jauntily waves 'hello,' at Alejandro, and spares a small moment of regret that he had to bury the man's idiotic sister just outside Lawrence, Kansas. Maya was a stunning creature, stupid and trusting but stunning. And her gift, as he'd learned when they dug an extra wide latrine ditch for ten plague victims one night, was too volatile. He couldn't afford the risk.
He killed her quietly, and replaced her just as effortlessly. Meredith talks too much; she loves the sound of her own voice, but she makes beautiful fire. And she's hungry, like he is. Her ambition is a tool he can easily manipulate… and discard when he no longer needs it.
Now he has nothing standing in his way. Just flying fools and disappearing men and boys who miss their mothers.
They are absolutely no match for him. None of them. Not them or the stupid suckers they usher in for the show. And he can't wait to crack open Claire's pretty little skull and feast on her brains as her precious, pathetic crowd of admirers looks on. As they're helpless to watch him become completely and utterly unbreakable.
Oh, what a glorious moment that will be.
What a triumph.
He will have no equal.
He hunches over gears and levers. He steps back from the Ferris Wheel and smiles. Tick, tick, tick.
**
Monique didn't learn how to dance until she was near sixteen. She'd been working the circuit for about a year, stuck on kitchen duty for Carnivale, until one day she sat for a spell and watched Libby and Dora Mae work out some steps. Just like that, her feet started tapping. That's how she's always been. How she learned to cook a good stew and wring a chicken's neck, how she learned to darn a sock and drive an automobile. All she's got to do is watch.
Sometimes, it feels like she's spent her whole life watching. "You watch, and you learn, cherie," her gran-mere always told her. "Ain't no cause for a jeune-fille to be stupid, you hear?"
"You're not stupid," Isaac tells her, pulling her behind the canvas of the tent and kissing the back of her hand like he's some fancy gentleman caller. Oui, she's got a few smarts, so she knows that M'sieu Isaac just wants a piece of her because Claire's too little, too sweet, like a peach that ought not be plucked. Isaac is too crazy for the likes of the petite, and not just because his eyes are wide with opium and his arms have bites from where the dragons he likes to chase leave their mark. "Estas hermosa," he says against her cheek, smelling sharp and coppery like his paints. "You're beautiful."
Merde. Beauty don't mean shit. It can't be eaten; it can't be bought and sold. Which is a right funny thing for a cooch dancer to say, but she done seen enough ugly girls in the tents to know it ain't about their faces. No man really cares about the faces, because a pair of tits is a pair of tits and everyone looks alike in the dark, n'est ce pas?
Monique learned to fuck by watching, too. Peeking through the curtains in the whorehouse, wondering where gran-mere had gone and why the parish priest told her this was church. Ain't no way what she saw was a body taking communion.
So when Isaac acts like what they're doing is something sacred, she knows better. She tells him to hush, to save the pretty Spanish talk for someone else. She slips her hand inside his pants, closes around him, and he bunches up her dress as, together, they put his cock inside her. "Dieu," she whispers, because it's been since before Odessa and she always gets the last pick of the johns. He rocks into her and she bites down on his shoulder so Meredith won't hear. They do it fast, as the lights go up on the midway and the tinny music of the carousel gets going.
Isaac tells her pretty things anyway. He says she's "bella," and prays to "Dios," and when his mouth grazes her tits, she can almost believe he cares that they're hers.
Yeah, she's learned this dance right here real good. Just like that, her feet start tapping.
**
He feels it the second something goes wrong. There's just a tension in the air, a heaviness to the dust, and he doesn't have to draw on any hoodoo or psychic powers, he just *knows*. Years in the game have taught him that. He tosses the stub of his cigar to the ground, grinding it under the heel of his shoe, and takes off running towards the Wheel even before the gears start screeching and the normal hubbub of the carny is torn apart by screams.
Bennet skids to a stop just ten feet from the gathering crowd and his stomach turns over. The very top car is swinging loose, with a little kid scared clean out of his mind just barely hanging on. Teddy, his fists red with anger, is arguing with 'Jandro, insisting that he checked every single screw, every single gear, and Bennet tells him to shut the Hell up because now ain't the time to place blame, it's the time to fix this shit before the kid dies and the fifteen sheep farmers from No Hope burn down their show.
"Get the Petrellis," he hisses to Ted, and not just to get him the Hell away from the crowd before he blows the kind of gasket *nobody* can fix. "Get the Petrellis, and the Haitian *now*."
He feels Claude behind him, that barely-there ripple of motion, and he knows what the man is thinking even before he whispers it out loud. "Gabe." Yeah, this has Gabe's fingerprints all over it. It's a message, a warning, and a promise.
"The man's a lunatic, Bennet."
"No kidding."
Mohinder, Matty and two of the girls start threading through the crowd, calming the shrieks and the murmurs with promises of free dances and fortunes told. And it hasn't even been five minutes before Pete nods to him, nods to Claude, and flies up, unseen, towards the dangling seat. Meanwhile, Claire, still in the rags of her costume from the dive she just finished, scampers up the side of the Wheel like it's one of her 50-foot ladders. It's a feat of daring nobody would've dreamed of paying for, watching her climb with a wrench clutched her tiny hand. And it's all part of the act.
The Haitian never takes his eyes off her, ready to catch her if she falls. But Bennet needs him for more than that, and he knows it. The split second Peter fuses the seat back together with the metal manipulating power he absorbed from Christ knows where, the Haitian works his magic.
Nobody will remember seeing Pete fly the kid down to the ground and set him safely on the ground. All they'll remember is Claire with the wrench, saving the day, and the Ferris Wheel grinding slowly to let the rest of the riders off. The precious minutes in between will be nothing but a haze, a buzzing, something to take a headache powder for.
Sure, they could've used Hiro and stopped time, but by the time they got Ando to explain what they needed done, the kid probably would've hit the ground, and that would've been the end of it… the end of them. This way, Bennet knows, was more efficient. And efficiency is key. Linderman's Traveling Show can work like a well-oiled machine when it wants to. He's made sure of that.
Later, after the seats in the center tent are filled again and the Haitian is putting Shirley through her paces, Claude offers him a pull from his flask and an unsolicited but very good piece of advice.
"We're going to have to kill him, you know. No matter what the boss man says. He's a bigger liability than an asset, and we can't have it. There's too much at risk."
Yeah, he does know that.
Years in the game have taught him that, too.
Go on to part 2
Author: monimala
Fandom: Heroes (and slightly Carnivale)
Rating: R for adult language and sexual content
Pairing: gen, with mentions of Claire/the Haitian and Isaac/Monica.
Word Count: 12010
Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my insane idea.
Summary: Written for heroes_bigboom. A sequel to One of Us, a 1930s carnival AU. The carny, Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show, it ain't exactly a place where a body would really consider themselves alone.
Notes: This isn't really a two-parter. It's just broken up into two posts because of the length!
Notes2: Check out the accompanying heroes_bigboom fan art done by futuresoon right here, but only AFTER you've read the story, as it is spoiler-y.
"Somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds."
--William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"
They stop 26 miles out of Odessa because Linderman's trailer blew a wheel. While the rousties all run about like chickens with their heads cut off to make sure His Majesty's chariot is fixed up in a cinch, the performers all get out for a spell so they can stretch. Nathan stays inside, locked tight, knowing that if he steps out into the dust, Hiro will probably come find him to shout, "Flying Man!" and tell him how 26 miles means 'Marathon.' He's been reading up on his history, all the books of Suresh's that Mohinder has crammed up on his shelves, hoping it'll help him with his English. To tell the truth, it ain't helped a damn. But Nathan doesn't have the heart to say so.
So he listens to the noise of Teddy and Alejandro shouting back and forth about jacks and spares, hears Gabe offering Meredith a pack of smokes in exchange for a fuck, and he shuts his eyes and thinks about the act. They've got at least another night on the road, but he goes over it in detail. It doesn't hurt any, and it passes the time.
The Flying Petrellis work without a net. Nobody else across the circuit knows how they do it. No wires, no tricks, nothing except two men soaring through the air in perfect precision. Everything Nathan does is with perfect precision. He never takes one wrong step. He times each jump, knows exactly which hand comes off the trapeze first and how many fingers he needs to catch on to Pete in mid-air. It's how Nathan's always been.
Except once.
One time.
He's been paying for that one time ever since.
It's trapped him here, another piece in Linderman's collection. Forever in his service. Walking the tightrope twice a night and doing back flips for peanuts. A long time ago, in another lifetime, he was just a boy who ran away from New York to join the carny. He never thought Pete would follow him. He never thought he was going to stay. He never thought they were going to end up calling it home. But this is who they are now: No wires, no tricks, nothing except two men soaring through the air in perfect precision.
Ten minutes later, the caravan gets going again. Every truck, every trailer. On to the next town, on to the next scam. On to another crop of suckers who'll pay ten cents to look at Meredith's goods and a quarter to sample them. He hears his beautiful, perfect daughter singing "Camptown Races," at the top of her lungs. And he wishes she'd never been born.
**
Claire leaves his things scattered all over. Sometimes, it takes him hours to find his turban, his father's astrology book, and his left slipper. And at the end of a two-show day, he's just too worn out to yell at her. Besides, he reckons if he raises his voice or his hand to her, she'll pitch a fit and find another place to bunk… and Mohinder's just grown too used to her being underfoot. And if he really wants to look close, really wants to reach into the mists and pull on the sciences, and all that other bullshit he feeds the rubes every night, he'd admit that he just plain hates being alone.
It's a funny conundrum. The carny, Linderman's Magical, Wonderful Traveling Show, it ain't exactly a place where a body would really consider themselves alone. He goes to the pump and runs into the Fat Lady, the Bearded Lady, and the He/She… and that's all just Candy, ten thousand faces in one. The crew putting up the Ferris wheel always takes a good two hours, and the joints on the old machine scream like a burning witch. On any given day, Isaac is flirting with one of the cooch girls and getting knocked on his butt for being too fresh… or maybe they just don't like his cornpone jokes. There's always someone around, always noise, always something happening.
Mohinder still feels like he don't belong. Like he's a fake. Like he's just playing dress up and he could leave the circuit at any time and no one would notice. Except when Claire crawls into bed beside him. She's family. Like Peter used to be, before he decided to start minding his brother again and quit playing rebel in Mohinder's trailer.
Peter used to believe everything out of his mouth was gospel. Better than any sucker in the crowd who really believed his line about taming a lion with a simple chant. Then he started flying… and now he never comes down.
Maybe that's the problem… Mohinder's feet ain't never been anywhere but firmly on the ground. He's never soared through the sky. And he ain't certain that Pete would catch him in mid-air.
Now, it's only Claire who breaks his fall.
**
Niki doesn't really remember a time where she didn't dance the cooch. Maybe it's better that way, better to just put the past in the past and get up on the stage. It keeps her from putting on airs, like Meredith, who thinks she rules the tent just because she used to dance in a theatre in Tupelo with her clothes on. No, instead she just knows her place, knows her strengths.
They call her the Amazon, because she's tall and her body's hard from toil. She looks like she could fight anyone, anything, tooth and nail. Only she knows the fight's long gone out of her. What she does best now is survive.
"You're sellin' yourself short, Nicole," Mohinder tells her sometimes, when she's giving him a free fuck just because she's gone so long between tricks she reckons she's getting rusty. "You're more than a cooch girl. We're all *more*. We gotta be."
It's nice to hear, but the Professor's got too many dreams. He's always looking for something else, for something beyond. All she has is reality, and the fact that she's gotta put food on the table and tuck money in her garter, because some day Mr. Linderman's favor is gonna run out. Some day, he's going to decide that she's just not good enough to dance anymore. Some day, he's gonna decide that he doesn't want her boy learning his letters in the school tent with Claire and Molly once a week.
She'd damn near laughed herself sick when Bennet came to tell her Linderman wanted Micah to get some schooling, thought it was some kind of joke since everybody knows that nobody wants a colored boy to make something of himself. Anytime someone tries… he gets beat down. Lynched. She knows that. She's seen that. She's felt the tar and the feathers and the blood on the rope.
She presses a hand flat against her stomach, feeling the ache in her so heavy she could crumble to the ground. There are times Niki misses Micah's daddy so bad she could cry.
But she doesn't crumble. She doesn't cry. No, instead she just counts the steps for her and Monique's next routine. She remembers her place. She remembers her strengths.
**
The spikes go down in the fairgrounds outside a no-name backwater just along the New Mexico border. It's not his job to ask why, but he does anyhow, noting to the boss that there's no money to be made. What he gets in return is an icy glare that makes his blood run cold. So he chomps down on his cigar, lets himself out of the management's trailer, and goes to tell the boys to go ahead and put on the show for the fifteen sheep farmers, a preacher, and a handful of whores who won't do them a lick of good business.
Most of them take to it with the same tired and worn grit as always, but Gabe looks up from the axle on Shirley's cage and gives him a growl that makes the tiger's sound like a downright purr. "It's been ten days since we've had a decent haul, Bennet. You promised we were going towards money," he says, his eyes dark with the anger that some of the girls have been saying gives them the willies.
Bennet tells him to shut his trap or hit the road and get on with another outfit. With his hand on his gun the whole time. None of the rousties or the performers has ever given him much trouble, but there's a first time for everything. He's learned to be on his watch. It helps to have eyes like Claude, who shows up right behind his ear as soon as they're far enough away from Gabe. "That one's a bad egg," he says, coat flapping in the dusty breeze. "'Jandro says he's been making noises about mutiny. Thought you'd want to know."
"Mutiny? This isn't a pirate ship," he laughs, wearily, nodding at Matt and raising a hand as they pass little Claire and the Haitian man who might as well call himself her long, tall shadow. "Hell, this isn't even a rowboat."
"You're tellin' me." Claude slides his gun off his belt, and right back on, just because he can. "But we've been on the road a long time, and in case you haven't noticed, the country's gone to shit. Something's got to be done, Bennet, or they'll all start listening to Gabe just because they want an extra quarter in their pocket at the end of the night."
"They've already got extra in their pocket," he notes, without irony. "And it's because of Linderman that most of 'em ain't been strung up in some town square or shot for being a freak."
Claude nods at this piece of wisdom, conjuring a pack of smokes from somewhere and lighting them each one on the same match. "And it's because of Linderman that they're not using their talents to their full potential. Don't think they don't know that, Noah. Even the ones you think you have on your side… the Petrellis, Mohinder, the mind reader… they're more powerful than the management could possibly reckon."
"Like you, you mean?" For the first time since they broke camp in Odessa, Bennet smiles, inhaling deep on the rolled tobacco. "So tell me, Claude… why aren't *you* leading the mutiny?"
As he rounds the corner to his own trailer, Claude disappears. No answer to the question, not that Bennet expected one anyway. All he hears is the Invisible Man's quiet chuckle, and he doesn't have to reach for his back pocket to know his wallet is gone.
**
When they set up for the first show in No Hope (she asked Bennet, and no, Isaac sure as shit weren't kidding about the name), Claire just *knows* something is going to go wrong. She feels it in her bones. All the ones she breaks, and even the ones that she don't.
The Haitian catches her eye across the center ring as she dusts herself off and heads back towards the ladder for another run- through. He hates watching her do it, and she knows he feels she ought to do something less dangerous, like taking tickets or grifting shills on the midway. Once, she said the same about him and Shirley's act, and he actually quit being all strong and silent and told her, "The tiger and I have an understanding, cherie, you and the ground do not." It's sweet that he worries. Nobody else really does anymore. They're all too used to seeing her fall. Or too busy counting the change her show brings in.
She wouldn't know. She never sees a lick of it. Mama always takes her cut, tucks it down into her blouse and heads into the nearest town. "I'm investing, Sweetie," she always says. Yeah. She's investin' all right. On liquor and smokes and men.
Claire takes the ladder two rungs at a time, and the higher she gets, the more of the tent she can see. As always, there's Gabe, in a corner, banging on a spike that's likely been banged to death already. Mohinder told her that Claude reckons that Bennet ought not trust Gabe as far as he could throw him. Claire can't throw Gabriel far at all; she still doesn't trust him. Especially when he's staring up at her, like she's wearing a dress (she ain't) and he can see her panties (he can't).
It scares her. It adds to the goose bumps already layering her skin. Isaac says that Gabe's trying to rile up half the rousties. Something about getting them to want more pay or they walk. Only Claire ain't as gullible as Isaac and the others want to believe she is. She's seen too much. She's been too much. The way Gabe looks at her, it ain't about money. It's about power. Whatever has the boys all stirred up is just that… stirring.
She screams the whole way down this time. Makes the Haitian come running. He starts shaking the devil out of her as she's popping her arms back into place and cracking her neck. He cusses away in more French and Haitian than anyone in the show's probably ever heard. Hell, most people still think he's a dummy. Then, suddenly, he's hugging her in his arms, so tight there's no way Gabe can see her. He tells her she's safe, that she's always going to be safe as long as he's here to watch over her.
"The ground understands me just fine," she whispers against the crisp fabric of his shirt. "And so do you."
**
His brilliance is wasted on the carny. Gabriel knows that. He's just biding his time. He's being patient. Meticulous. Like the poor, pitiful watchmaker he worked for before the Crash. Hunched over his gears and levers. Tick, tick, tick. The old man shot himself when the market went belly up, and even though Gabe loved the gorgeous cacophony of similar shots echoing all over the city, he went West. He found Linderman. He found a man with a plan, a philosophy, and a collection of freaks whose wonders and powers had no equal.
Unfortunately, Linderman has no appreciation for Gabe's own vision. He and his asinine little foot soldier, Bennet, think that all he's good for is hammering spikes and digging ditches. Grunt work. Menial tasks. Nothing that requires the least bit of finesse or care. Forget about it. He's meant for bigger things than that.
He's so, so far beyond all these illiterate fools.
He laughs, softly, to himself when he leaves the center tent, jauntily waves 'hello,' at Alejandro, and spares a small moment of regret that he had to bury the man's idiotic sister just outside Lawrence, Kansas. Maya was a stunning creature, stupid and trusting but stunning. And her gift, as he'd learned when they dug an extra wide latrine ditch for ten plague victims one night, was too volatile. He couldn't afford the risk.
He killed her quietly, and replaced her just as effortlessly. Meredith talks too much; she loves the sound of her own voice, but she makes beautiful fire. And she's hungry, like he is. Her ambition is a tool he can easily manipulate… and discard when he no longer needs it.
Now he has nothing standing in his way. Just flying fools and disappearing men and boys who miss their mothers.
They are absolutely no match for him. None of them. Not them or the stupid suckers they usher in for the show. And he can't wait to crack open Claire's pretty little skull and feast on her brains as her precious, pathetic crowd of admirers looks on. As they're helpless to watch him become completely and utterly unbreakable.
Oh, what a glorious moment that will be.
What a triumph.
He will have no equal.
He hunches over gears and levers. He steps back from the Ferris Wheel and smiles. Tick, tick, tick.
**
Monique didn't learn how to dance until she was near sixteen. She'd been working the circuit for about a year, stuck on kitchen duty for Carnivale, until one day she sat for a spell and watched Libby and Dora Mae work out some steps. Just like that, her feet started tapping. That's how she's always been. How she learned to cook a good stew and wring a chicken's neck, how she learned to darn a sock and drive an automobile. All she's got to do is watch.
Sometimes, it feels like she's spent her whole life watching. "You watch, and you learn, cherie," her gran-mere always told her. "Ain't no cause for a jeune-fille to be stupid, you hear?"
"You're not stupid," Isaac tells her, pulling her behind the canvas of the tent and kissing the back of her hand like he's some fancy gentleman caller. Oui, she's got a few smarts, so she knows that M'sieu Isaac just wants a piece of her because Claire's too little, too sweet, like a peach that ought not be plucked. Isaac is too crazy for the likes of the petite, and not just because his eyes are wide with opium and his arms have bites from where the dragons he likes to chase leave their mark. "Estas hermosa," he says against her cheek, smelling sharp and coppery like his paints. "You're beautiful."
Merde. Beauty don't mean shit. It can't be eaten; it can't be bought and sold. Which is a right funny thing for a cooch dancer to say, but she done seen enough ugly girls in the tents to know it ain't about their faces. No man really cares about the faces, because a pair of tits is a pair of tits and everyone looks alike in the dark, n'est ce pas?
Monique learned to fuck by watching, too. Peeking through the curtains in the whorehouse, wondering where gran-mere had gone and why the parish priest told her this was church. Ain't no way what she saw was a body taking communion.
So when Isaac acts like what they're doing is something sacred, she knows better. She tells him to hush, to save the pretty Spanish talk for someone else. She slips her hand inside his pants, closes around him, and he bunches up her dress as, together, they put his cock inside her. "Dieu," she whispers, because it's been since before Odessa and she always gets the last pick of the johns. He rocks into her and she bites down on his shoulder so Meredith won't hear. They do it fast, as the lights go up on the midway and the tinny music of the carousel gets going.
Isaac tells her pretty things anyway. He says she's "bella," and prays to "Dios," and when his mouth grazes her tits, she can almost believe he cares that they're hers.
Yeah, she's learned this dance right here real good. Just like that, her feet start tapping.
**
He feels it the second something goes wrong. There's just a tension in the air, a heaviness to the dust, and he doesn't have to draw on any hoodoo or psychic powers, he just *knows*. Years in the game have taught him that. He tosses the stub of his cigar to the ground, grinding it under the heel of his shoe, and takes off running towards the Wheel even before the gears start screeching and the normal hubbub of the carny is torn apart by screams.
Bennet skids to a stop just ten feet from the gathering crowd and his stomach turns over. The very top car is swinging loose, with a little kid scared clean out of his mind just barely hanging on. Teddy, his fists red with anger, is arguing with 'Jandro, insisting that he checked every single screw, every single gear, and Bennet tells him to shut the Hell up because now ain't the time to place blame, it's the time to fix this shit before the kid dies and the fifteen sheep farmers from No Hope burn down their show.
"Get the Petrellis," he hisses to Ted, and not just to get him the Hell away from the crowd before he blows the kind of gasket *nobody* can fix. "Get the Petrellis, and the Haitian *now*."
He feels Claude behind him, that barely-there ripple of motion, and he knows what the man is thinking even before he whispers it out loud. "Gabe." Yeah, this has Gabe's fingerprints all over it. It's a message, a warning, and a promise.
"The man's a lunatic, Bennet."
"No kidding."
Mohinder, Matty and two of the girls start threading through the crowd, calming the shrieks and the murmurs with promises of free dances and fortunes told. And it hasn't even been five minutes before Pete nods to him, nods to Claude, and flies up, unseen, towards the dangling seat. Meanwhile, Claire, still in the rags of her costume from the dive she just finished, scampers up the side of the Wheel like it's one of her 50-foot ladders. It's a feat of daring nobody would've dreamed of paying for, watching her climb with a wrench clutched her tiny hand. And it's all part of the act.
The Haitian never takes his eyes off her, ready to catch her if she falls. But Bennet needs him for more than that, and he knows it. The split second Peter fuses the seat back together with the metal manipulating power he absorbed from Christ knows where, the Haitian works his magic.
Nobody will remember seeing Pete fly the kid down to the ground and set him safely on the ground. All they'll remember is Claire with the wrench, saving the day, and the Ferris Wheel grinding slowly to let the rest of the riders off. The precious minutes in between will be nothing but a haze, a buzzing, something to take a headache powder for.
Sure, they could've used Hiro and stopped time, but by the time they got Ando to explain what they needed done, the kid probably would've hit the ground, and that would've been the end of it… the end of them. This way, Bennet knows, was more efficient. And efficiency is key. Linderman's Traveling Show can work like a well-oiled machine when it wants to. He's made sure of that.
Later, after the seats in the center tent are filled again and the Haitian is putting Shirley through her paces, Claude offers him a pull from his flask and an unsolicited but very good piece of advice.
"We're going to have to kill him, you know. No matter what the boss man says. He's a bigger liability than an asset, and we can't have it. There's too much at risk."
Yeah, he does know that.
Years in the game have taught him that, too.
Go on to part 2