On Borrowed Time 2
On Borrowed Time
FicFest prompt: Noah Bishop, 16, never knew his father growing up. But now with his mother seriously ill due to an unknown cause, Noah will have to hunt him down to save her life.
Characters: Noah Gray/Bishop, Elle Bishop, Gabriel Gray, Claude, Peter
Ships: Elle/Gabriel, Peter/Claire
Rating: pg13
Words: 5480
AN: Now COMPLETE and REVISED. As always, thanks to Emmy for her impeccable betaing.
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After our brief family angst-fest, there was not much Father and I had the chance to tell each other. Mostly because doctors and nurses rushed in at once, ready to do their check-ins, which proves that that glorious moment l just lived through was closely monitored.
We had stalled in the waiting room, where Peter already waited, arms crossed and bearing an apologetic look -surprise, surprise- flanked by a stoic-faced Claude.
There was so much I wanted to say- or yell, really- to them that I decided to just breathe in and swallow it all down.
I‘ve been leaning against the wall since them and now the tension sent off by each member of our reluctant brigade is truly beginning to make my head ache. I’m rather worried that Mom will wake before a familiar face has the chance to explain this huge mess and Claude’s composure doesn’t help as much as it usually does. My godfather has been standing right beside me, staring blankly ahead in make-believe indifference while occasionally darting cursory glances to both Sylar and me.
Sylar, who is sitting comfortably in front of me, observing without a blink every move of mine, with a kind of detached wonderment.
I can perceive the possibilities ticking in his overactive mind. He doesn’t understand me, and the concept of a family is something he gave up long ago, but at the same time there’s an eagerness pulsating underneath skin, like his whole world has been on standstill so far and these last events have brought time to suddenly flow according to its natural laws.
I am his son and he is my father, but we are to each other no more than a threatening alien presence. Strange, like life goes.
My mother stays unconscious for almost three hours, but Sylar keeps assuring he did everything he was supposed to flawlessly. Like his word mean anything.
To me, at least. Claude and Peter act like they are taking him at face value.
Finally, Claude and I are granted permission to see Mom and thankfully he does not move to follow after us.
When we come out of her room, he is nowhere to be seen. I decide that it’s quite likely that I’ll NEVER see him again. That’s fine with me.
Mom was the very picture of health when we saw her, and once she got the gist of everything all she wanted was to dress and go away.
But she wanted to have a private word with Peter first.
I don’t know what they talked about and I didn’t ask. I knew somehow that she wasn’t willing to talk about anything serious for now and personally, I was weary of drama.
She made a joke out of her new ability to self-regenerate “Of all the fucked up things Gabriel has done to me, this was the best!”, her grin too bright to be real, and we let her fake cheer spread to us.
We returned to our hotel room and hoped our life was about to return to its usual course.
Even the notion of seeing Adam again became comforting and I offered to call him to inform him of how we managed to resolve things.
“It doesn’t matter, Noah. Let go.” Mom dismissed the offer, shaking her head and smiling cattily, conflicting emotions swirling all around her.
I let go, and I try very hard to not consider if there are not way too many loose ends we are leaving behind, to truly move on.
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A few days after, I really wish I had not been so optimistic and easy-going.
You must understand I am, by nature, the kind of person who prefers avoiding all conflict until it’s possible and self-respecting. And my mother had been so close to death; I didn’t truly feel I had the right to insist that we leave New York as soon as we could book a flight. Even if staying made me jittery, especially since Claude gladly abandoned us to our own devices barely the morning after mom got out of the Company’s medical facility.
I don’t mean to sound resentful, but sometimes it’s not easy to understand why people act the way they do. How they can stand by you steadfastly one moment and just leave when they think you no longer need help.
Claude is more than trustworthy under duress, but when it’s about day-by-day, more mundane assistance, he’s quick to pull the plug on you. Simply, he is not the sort of person who can become entangled in others’ lives for long without becoming restless.
I accept it. Yet…sometimes, I wish we could be like any family. That my father had dumped my mother in a conventional way, that my mother wasn’t so terrified by normalcy that she needed to create a whole new identity to live with it, that my godfather was less scarred from his former career.
Nice fantasy and all, but if fantasies were realities, if we were more conventional, we wouldn’t be who we are.
And that would be a shame, because I like who we are, most of the time. Despite the undeniable complications.
So far, Mom’s done nothing but shopping and forcing me to have long walks in Central Park during this improvised vacation of ours. She wears her carefree façade so well that even I might be fooled if I paid less attention. It’s like she’s actually convinced herself she is fine and dandy and euphoric full-time, and I feel her good mood bubbling around her until those sparse moments when some figment of her gets alert and her posture gets stiffer, her gaze more suspicious.
It’s when I understand that, deep down, she is always looking out for a threat. And it’s also when I remember my mother used to be psychotic. Oh, she may be mostly okay today, but she is still the same frightened child who has stolen a monster’s skin to wear it proudly, like an armor. She is still the same woman who needed to forge false memories to begin anew.
It scares me a bit, but not as much as the matter I have not the spine to face directly.
Creepy as it is, I feel him stalking us. His attention presses on us like an impalpable weight, anywhere we go, almost anytime we leave the hotel.
I cannot see him or locate him clearly, but I know Sylar is biding his time, lingering in the shadows. He could be anybody we meet, from the grocery guy at the store to the kid at the park, and there’s nothing we can do to avoid it.
Mom knows it. I think, sometimes, that this is what makes her so giddy. The game, the rush of walking the line.
She loves him and she hates him and she scans strangers’ faces both hoping and dreading to catch him.
I am determined to ignore this twisted dance as long I will be able to. I’ll play the indifferent spectator like I was born in the role.
Not because I hate conflict or because I am glad we got Adam out of the equation, or because I am discreetly curious to know how this charade will turn out.
It’s because, honestly…I recognize the poetry of ineluctability when I see it.
Someday my father will run out of cowardice and will come for us. My mother will probably blast him a few times and then they will argue and eventually there will be a truce. There will be no happily-ever-after, because real life doesn’t work like that and my parents aren’t as ‘susceptible to death’ as the rest of us.
But they will have the remainder of their relative immortality to get over their issues, and if they really have to be unhealthy and dysfunctional until their very end, at least they will have the chance to be so together, not alone.
I suppose I can’t ask for anything better, can I?
end