The Price of a Memory, Part 4/17
Title: The Price of a Memory (4/17)
Characters: Claude, Peter, Mohinder, special guest appearances by Molly and Nathan
Pairings: Peter/Claude eventually
Rating: R
Warnings: slash
Spoilers: Through the end of Season One. Possible minor spoilers for Season Two, though the story is not meant as speculation about how the spoilers will actually play themselves out on the show.
Summary: A few months after the events of How to Stop an Exploding Man, Claude meets Peter again to find he’s not the person Claude once knew. Now Claude has to find out why.
Disclaimer: Heroes and the associated characters don’t belong to me.
Previous Parts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
The Price of a Memory
Part 4/17
Finding the right door in a building of doors that all looked the same to him was pretty much trial and error for Peter, even on his best days. It all came down to which lock his key fit into and he usually had to try a few before he found the right one. By now, the other tenants in the building were used to him and, at Mohinder’s request, had become reasonably tolerant of Peter’s inability to find his own way home. Actually, some were more tolerant than others. The old lady in the floral nightgown he’d run into a few minutes ago hadn’t exactly offered him cookies and lemonade but she had written down Mohinder’s apartment number on a sticky note for him before sending him on his way. With this in hand and his key in the lock, he should have been confident that he had the right place. Except for one thing.
There were voices coming from inside the apartment. The voices weren’t loud like people fighting about something but the pace of the words and the tension with which they were spoken indicated some kind of debate. After a minute, Peter decided that one of the voices definitely belonged to Mohinder, which was reassuring. Less reassuring was the fact that he couldn’t place the second voice, which was gruff and loud. Anxiously, he tried to think if there had been another person in the apartment when he’d left that morning. A guest he might have forgotten. He didn’t usually block people out like that but once when his mother had come to stay with them at Nathan’s house, he’d kept forgetting she was there. So it wasn’t like it couldn’t happen. It would just mean that he’d have to stand there and fake it for a few minutes until he either remembered the person or was caught in his lie. Neither prospect was particularly inviting.
Taking a deep breath, Peter opened the apartment door and stepped inside to find Mohinder sitting in one of the armchairs, a second man looming almost guiltily across the room from him. The door to Molly’s room was open a crack and he could see her peeking out of it. Everyone seemed frozen in place and for a minute Peter thought maybe he’d walked into some kind of bizarre hostage situation. But then Mohinder stood, ready to greet him as he walked in.
“What’s going on?” Peter asked.
“Peter Petrelli,” Mohinder said in an awkwardly formal tone, “I’d like you to meet Claude. Claude, this is Peter.”
“’Lo,” the stranger said, fixing a narrow, blue-eyed gaze on Peter.
Peter stared back openly, taking in the somewhat haggard appearance of this new person, something niggling in the back of his mind all the while. Graying hair and shaggy beard, clothes that looked like they’d been fished out of a box someone had left on the curb…Peter had learned not to force these little sparks of recognition, knowing that they generally led him nowhere. But this time he couldn’t let it go and finally it came to him.
“You’re the crazy guy from the coffee place this morning.”
Mohinder tittered uncomfortably.
Claude arched an eyebrow. “Funny,” he said. “I was about to say the same thing about you.”
“What are you doing here?” Peter asked slowly.
“Claude is interested in my father’s work,” Mohinder said, stepping in quickly. “He had heard my name and found my address but didn’t know what I looked like. When he approached you at the café this morning, he thought you were me.”
“Oh,” Peter said, thinking how unlikely it sounded that someone as un-Indian as him could ever be mistaken for someone named Mohinder Suresh. But the significance of Mohinder’s tone, which seemed to suggest that Claude’s interest in the subject was more than that of another genetics professor, distracted him from pressing the issue. He cleared his throat. “It’s invisibility. Isn’t it?”
Claude’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “Sorry?” he said.
“Your power,” Peter replied. “You…turn invisible.”
“What makes you say that?” Claude asked, adopting a guarded expression.
Peter shifted, realizing suddenly that he shouldn’t have said anything. For all he knew, Claude was here because he wanted Mohinder to cure him. Maybe he was ashamed of what he could do, the same way Nathan was.
But Claude seemed to be waiting for him to go on, so he managed to mumble, “The way you were looking at me this morning.” He remembered looking up from his paper and seeing Claude there at the table next to him, watching what he was doing. And not just in that idle sort of way that sometimes happened in public places when two strangers found themselves in each other’s eye line. Claude had been actively looking at him, studying him. Peter bit his lip. “You were staring at me like you thought I couldn’t see you.”
“Ah,” Claude said, seeming somehow disappointed at this. “Aye. Invisible man. That’s me.”
“Sorry,” Peter said. “I shouldn’t have--”
But Claude cut him off. “What’s it you do, then?”
Over Claude’s shoulder, Mohinder’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
“I have a brother who can fly,” Peter answered. “I think.”
“Good for him,” Claude said. Blue eyes penetrated his. “But what’s it you do?”
For a minute, Peter didn’t know what to say. He’d asked Mohinder one time whether the genetics that had determined Nathan’s power could also mean that he had some hidden ability of his own. One he didn’t know about yet. Mohinder had answered with what sounded like tactful evasiveness, saying something like it was always a possibility but that only time would tell. The implication being that he shouldn’t get his hopes up. Peter had been disappointed but also strangely relieved.
Still, all he could do in answer to Claude’s question was smile wryly and say, “I forget things. That’s what I do.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very useful power to me,” Claude replied.
Peter lifted his shoulders. “Well, I can’t sneak into locker rooms and peek at naked people,” he said, “but it might come in handy if I ever have to pass a lie detector test. Can’t lie if I don’t remember.”
“I’m offended you think I’d use my powers for such perverted nonsense as spying on naked people,” Claude said, affecting a mockingly prim tone.
Peter gave him a skeptical look. “Then what do you use it for? Other than sneaking up on people in coffee places.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Claude said, eyes narrowing in suspicion as if Peter was trying to extract government secrets from him. “Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll show you sometime. Seems I’m going to be hanging around a bit. Letting Suresh here study me and all that. Isn’t that right?” He threw Mohinder a glance over his shoulder.
Mohinder seemed startled to have been invited back into the conversation after having been excluded for the past couple of minutes. Recovering smoothly, he nodded, saying, “I’ll have to do some tests, of course.”
Claude seemed to pale slightly. “What kind of tests?”
“Well, a blood test for one.”
Claude frowned. “You didn’t say anything about a blood test.”
“Didn’t I?” Mohinder said a little too innocently. “I’ll need a sample to begin testing on. In fact, I have some equipment in the bedroom. If you like, we can start right now.”
Claude gave Mohinder a strained smile. “Oh, aye. Let’s. And while we’re at it why don’t we think up more lines that would sound at home in a bad porno? I mean, ‘equipment in the bedroom’? Are you joking?”
Mohinder rolled his eyes and gestured for Claude to follow him. Molly came running from the bedroom as soon as the two men disappeared inside, shutting the door behind them once she was out. She was quick to join Peter where he’d seated himself on the couch, sitting close. Her feet didn’t touch the floor and she kicked her heels against the cushions as they listened to the murmuring voices coming from inside the bedroom, unable to make out the words.
“He’s scary,” Molly said after a minute.
“Who is?” Peter asked. Not because he’d forgotten but because there were any number of people she could be talking about.
“The invisible man,” she replied. She looked up at him with wide eyes. “Does he scare you?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything to be scared of,” he said, not exactly sure what evidence he had to support that particular theory. Then again, the worst thing Claude had done to him so far was steal a cheese danish off his plate, so it wasn’t like he had any reason not to believe what he said.
Molly nodded, taking his opinion into careful consideration before discarding it. Peter couldn’t exactly blame her for being nervous around strangers, knowing what Mohinder had told him about the brutal murder of her parents at the hands of Sylar. He put an arm around her, squeezing her reassuringly against his side. She giggled.
“You were gone a long time this morning,” she said.
“I was?” Peter asked.
She nodded. “Is it because you’re mad at Mohinder?”
“No,” Peter said. “Why? Was Mohinder mad that I left?”
“He said your note was too short,” Molly replied.
“I thought it was concise,” Peter said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means it was short.”
“Oh,” Molly said. She shifted. “Did you get a newspaper?”
“Yup,” he said, feeling a slight twinge of annoyance that everyone else seemed to know so much more about his habits and routines than he did. First the girl at the counter--handing him his “usual” order without him being able to remember what it was--now this.
“Did you cross off the articles so you’d know which ones you’d read?” she asked. “Like we did the other day when I was helping you?”
She looked up at him hopefully.
“Of course,” he said. He didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth, which was that he’d forgotten all about the method she’d devised to help with the confusion that came when he tried to read a newspaper.
“You did it all by yourself?” she asked, beaming at him.
“All by myself,” he reassured her, feeling like an asshole.
“That’s good,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied, wondering if there would ever be a time when his progress was measured against more lofty standards than these. “I guess it is.”
TBC
Characters: Claude, Peter, Mohinder, special guest appearances by Molly and Nathan
Pairings: Peter/Claude eventually
Rating: R
Warnings: slash
Spoilers: Through the end of Season One. Possible minor spoilers for Season Two, though the story is not meant as speculation about how the spoilers will actually play themselves out on the show.
Summary: A few months after the events of How to Stop an Exploding Man, Claude meets Peter again to find he’s not the person Claude once knew. Now Claude has to find out why.
Disclaimer: Heroes and the associated characters don’t belong to me.
Previous Parts: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
The Price of a Memory
Part 4/17
Finding the right door in a building of doors that all looked the same to him was pretty much trial and error for Peter, even on his best days. It all came down to which lock his key fit into and he usually had to try a few before he found the right one. By now, the other tenants in the building were used to him and, at Mohinder’s request, had become reasonably tolerant of Peter’s inability to find his own way home. Actually, some were more tolerant than others. The old lady in the floral nightgown he’d run into a few minutes ago hadn’t exactly offered him cookies and lemonade but she had written down Mohinder’s apartment number on a sticky note for him before sending him on his way. With this in hand and his key in the lock, he should have been confident that he had the right place. Except for one thing.
There were voices coming from inside the apartment. The voices weren’t loud like people fighting about something but the pace of the words and the tension with which they were spoken indicated some kind of debate. After a minute, Peter decided that one of the voices definitely belonged to Mohinder, which was reassuring. Less reassuring was the fact that he couldn’t place the second voice, which was gruff and loud. Anxiously, he tried to think if there had been another person in the apartment when he’d left that morning. A guest he might have forgotten. He didn’t usually block people out like that but once when his mother had come to stay with them at Nathan’s house, he’d kept forgetting she was there. So it wasn’t like it couldn’t happen. It would just mean that he’d have to stand there and fake it for a few minutes until he either remembered the person or was caught in his lie. Neither prospect was particularly inviting.
Taking a deep breath, Peter opened the apartment door and stepped inside to find Mohinder sitting in one of the armchairs, a second man looming almost guiltily across the room from him. The door to Molly’s room was open a crack and he could see her peeking out of it. Everyone seemed frozen in place and for a minute Peter thought maybe he’d walked into some kind of bizarre hostage situation. But then Mohinder stood, ready to greet him as he walked in.
“What’s going on?” Peter asked.
“Peter Petrelli,” Mohinder said in an awkwardly formal tone, “I’d like you to meet Claude. Claude, this is Peter.”
“’Lo,” the stranger said, fixing a narrow, blue-eyed gaze on Peter.
Peter stared back openly, taking in the somewhat haggard appearance of this new person, something niggling in the back of his mind all the while. Graying hair and shaggy beard, clothes that looked like they’d been fished out of a box someone had left on the curb…Peter had learned not to force these little sparks of recognition, knowing that they generally led him nowhere. But this time he couldn’t let it go and finally it came to him.
“You’re the crazy guy from the coffee place this morning.”
Mohinder tittered uncomfortably.
Claude arched an eyebrow. “Funny,” he said. “I was about to say the same thing about you.”
“What are you doing here?” Peter asked slowly.
“Claude is interested in my father’s work,” Mohinder said, stepping in quickly. “He had heard my name and found my address but didn’t know what I looked like. When he approached you at the café this morning, he thought you were me.”
“Oh,” Peter said, thinking how unlikely it sounded that someone as un-Indian as him could ever be mistaken for someone named Mohinder Suresh. But the significance of Mohinder’s tone, which seemed to suggest that Claude’s interest in the subject was more than that of another genetics professor, distracted him from pressing the issue. He cleared his throat. “It’s invisibility. Isn’t it?”
Claude’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “Sorry?” he said.
“Your power,” Peter replied. “You…turn invisible.”
“What makes you say that?” Claude asked, adopting a guarded expression.
Peter shifted, realizing suddenly that he shouldn’t have said anything. For all he knew, Claude was here because he wanted Mohinder to cure him. Maybe he was ashamed of what he could do, the same way Nathan was.
But Claude seemed to be waiting for him to go on, so he managed to mumble, “The way you were looking at me this morning.” He remembered looking up from his paper and seeing Claude there at the table next to him, watching what he was doing. And not just in that idle sort of way that sometimes happened in public places when two strangers found themselves in each other’s eye line. Claude had been actively looking at him, studying him. Peter bit his lip. “You were staring at me like you thought I couldn’t see you.”
“Ah,” Claude said, seeming somehow disappointed at this. “Aye. Invisible man. That’s me.”
“Sorry,” Peter said. “I shouldn’t have--”
But Claude cut him off. “What’s it you do, then?”
Over Claude’s shoulder, Mohinder’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly.
“I have a brother who can fly,” Peter answered. “I think.”
“Good for him,” Claude said. Blue eyes penetrated his. “But what’s it you do?”
For a minute, Peter didn’t know what to say. He’d asked Mohinder one time whether the genetics that had determined Nathan’s power could also mean that he had some hidden ability of his own. One he didn’t know about yet. Mohinder had answered with what sounded like tactful evasiveness, saying something like it was always a possibility but that only time would tell. The implication being that he shouldn’t get his hopes up. Peter had been disappointed but also strangely relieved.
Still, all he could do in answer to Claude’s question was smile wryly and say, “I forget things. That’s what I do.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very useful power to me,” Claude replied.
Peter lifted his shoulders. “Well, I can’t sneak into locker rooms and peek at naked people,” he said, “but it might come in handy if I ever have to pass a lie detector test. Can’t lie if I don’t remember.”
“I’m offended you think I’d use my powers for such perverted nonsense as spying on naked people,” Claude said, affecting a mockingly prim tone.
Peter gave him a skeptical look. “Then what do you use it for? Other than sneaking up on people in coffee places.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Claude said, eyes narrowing in suspicion as if Peter was trying to extract government secrets from him. “Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll show you sometime. Seems I’m going to be hanging around a bit. Letting Suresh here study me and all that. Isn’t that right?” He threw Mohinder a glance over his shoulder.
Mohinder seemed startled to have been invited back into the conversation after having been excluded for the past couple of minutes. Recovering smoothly, he nodded, saying, “I’ll have to do some tests, of course.”
Claude seemed to pale slightly. “What kind of tests?”
“Well, a blood test for one.”
Claude frowned. “You didn’t say anything about a blood test.”
“Didn’t I?” Mohinder said a little too innocently. “I’ll need a sample to begin testing on. In fact, I have some equipment in the bedroom. If you like, we can start right now.”
Claude gave Mohinder a strained smile. “Oh, aye. Let’s. And while we’re at it why don’t we think up more lines that would sound at home in a bad porno? I mean, ‘equipment in the bedroom’? Are you joking?”
Mohinder rolled his eyes and gestured for Claude to follow him. Molly came running from the bedroom as soon as the two men disappeared inside, shutting the door behind them once she was out. She was quick to join Peter where he’d seated himself on the couch, sitting close. Her feet didn’t touch the floor and she kicked her heels against the cushions as they listened to the murmuring voices coming from inside the bedroom, unable to make out the words.
“He’s scary,” Molly said after a minute.
“Who is?” Peter asked. Not because he’d forgotten but because there were any number of people she could be talking about.
“The invisible man,” she replied. She looked up at him with wide eyes. “Does he scare you?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything to be scared of,” he said, not exactly sure what evidence he had to support that particular theory. Then again, the worst thing Claude had done to him so far was steal a cheese danish off his plate, so it wasn’t like he had any reason not to believe what he said.
Molly nodded, taking his opinion into careful consideration before discarding it. Peter couldn’t exactly blame her for being nervous around strangers, knowing what Mohinder had told him about the brutal murder of her parents at the hands of Sylar. He put an arm around her, squeezing her reassuringly against his side. She giggled.
“You were gone a long time this morning,” she said.
“I was?” Peter asked.
She nodded. “Is it because you’re mad at Mohinder?”
“No,” Peter said. “Why? Was Mohinder mad that I left?”
“He said your note was too short,” Molly replied.
“I thought it was concise,” Peter said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means it was short.”
“Oh,” Molly said. She shifted. “Did you get a newspaper?”
“Yup,” he said, feeling a slight twinge of annoyance that everyone else seemed to know so much more about his habits and routines than he did. First the girl at the counter--handing him his “usual” order without him being able to remember what it was--now this.
“Did you cross off the articles so you’d know which ones you’d read?” she asked. “Like we did the other day when I was helping you?”
She looked up at him hopefully.
“Of course,” he said. He didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth, which was that he’d forgotten all about the method she’d devised to help with the confusion that came when he tried to read a newspaper.
“You did it all by yourself?” she asked, beaming at him.
“All by myself,” he reassured her, feeling like an asshole.
“That’s good,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied, wondering if there would ever be a time when his progress was measured against more lofty standards than these. “I guess it is.”
TBC