Revelations pt 8
Title: Revelations
Author: SLynn
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairs: Ensemble, Matt, Peter/Claire
Spoilers: AU after "Fallout"
Beta By: tripp3235
Disclaimer: I’m just borrowing and will return them all when I’m done, virtually untouched.
Summary:
In the end is the beginning. Part three of my 'Apocalypse' arc. The entire timeline can be found HERE!
Previous chapters for just this story found HERE!
x-posted heroes_fic/paire_love
Chapter 8: Revisions
“This is incredible,” Mohinder said, his eyes never leaving the pages before him. “Absolutely incredible. I’ve never heard of anything like this. He has to be the only pre-cog with this broad of a scope.”
Jenny gave him a stiff smile, continuing to gaze at the group gathered round the table.
They were back in one of her conference rooms, a room Matt knew well. It was typically where he and Jenny spent a lot of time alone, but not today. Today they were all there; all going through the massive amounts of writings Anthony had created for Jenny’s benefit.
“So you give him a picture or a name and…”
“It’s not that easy,” Jenny interrupted Mohinder before he could finish. “You have to have a connection to the person. A real one. You have to know something about them.”
Matt said nothing, just looked down at the paper in his hand and nodded slightly as he recognized his own name written several times upon it. Jenny certainly knew enough about him to feed to Anthony.
He didn’t bother to read it; it wasn’t worth the effort it would take on his part. Jenny wouldn’t show them anything really important, Matt was positive of that. There was no point. Besides, with everyone else in the room reading to themselves, Matt could pretty much hear the general point of it all.
“Wow,” Nathan said, dropping his paper as he threw back his head and rubbed his eyes. “That’s quite a forecast. How long have you known?”
“He wrote this nearly a year ago,” Jenny answered. “That’s when I first started making plans.”
“If you’ve known that long,” Matt began, “how come you’re still trying to figure out exactly what they did to me? If this is the end result of the plague, if this future is it, why not…”
“Because I didn’t know at first you were the source,” Jenny interrupted.
“But you did know I was at Primatech,” Matt returned.
Jenny glared at him momentarily before getting to her feet and pacing around the room.
“Yes,” she finally admitted. “I did. They’d told me so themselves. They thought I’d be interested, as close as we are. They thought I’d find it amusing.”
“I’m sure you did,” Matt said flatly.
“Yes, actually,” said Jenny with a smile. “They did not, however, tell me that they were implanting a virus in you or that this virus was the prototype to one they hoped would wipe out any one with an active power. Despite their numerous errors, they are not stupid.”
“So you’d asked Anthony, to what exactly?” Nathan asked, turning slightly in his seat to look into Jenny’s eyes. “Write about your future? See what was in store for you?”
“Yes.”
“And you got this?” Nathan continued. “You asked for your future and got the end of the world.”
“I asked him to show me specifically when I would meet Matt again,” Jenny clarified, sounding strained and almost embarrassed. “When he could not do that, I asked him why and that is when he started to write this up.”
Matt looked at the paper he’d previously been ignoring with renewed interest.
“So this is my death,” he said quietly, catching Claire’s attention.
“You’ve done it then,” Mohinder said. “According to this future, Matt should have died six months ago. He should have died the night the colony was raided. How did you alter it?”
“I started by sending Franco back,” Jenny answered. “That alone changed a lot of things, but not the plague. It still happens, only now it doesn’t begin with Matt; it begins with some girl named Lori who was stupid enough to get caught by Primatech and used as a guinea pig.”
“How do you know that?” Nathan asked.
“Because,” Jenny said bitterly, “your brother refuses to cure her. First it’s the girl, than your boogeyman Mr. Sylar, and then Peter the Great, himself. They become the first to go. It escalates from there, spreading from city to city until eventually…”
“Peter?” Claire said. “He’s there? Primatech has him?”
Jenny nodded briskly in reply.
“How did you get Antony to write about Peter?” Mohinder asked.
“I guess I just know enough about him,” Jenny answered vaguely.
“But Claire would survive it,” Nathan said, sounding confused. “If the whole point of abducting Claire was to take the cure out of circulation, to ensure that the creators themselves were not affected, why would they release it without first ensuring that that was done?”
“You seem to know an awful lot about the plan,” Jenny returned, eyebrow raised.
“Yes, well…” Nathan stammered. “It was why they wanted her before, I’d assume it was why they still want her.”
“It is,” Jenny answered.
“So?” Mohinder prodded. “Why would they risk it? Why start it while Claire…”
“Are none of you actually reading the papers before you?” Jenny interrupted harshly. “They start because by then she’s already dead.”
All three men flipped through the pages searching for that point in Anthony’s rough draft of the future. Claire moved through her own stack of papers as well, not nearly as eager as the rest.
“You,” Nathan said, having found it first. “You.”
“You’re surprised?” Jenny asked.
“Why would you do that?” Mohinder asked, obviously surprised. “If Claire is the only one that could save you… why?”
“Keep reading.”
Matt couldn’t do it. No matter how he tried to calm himself down, no matter how hard he tried to reign in his nervous energy, he couldn’t concentrate hard enough to make anything meaningful out of the words before him. Again, there were words he recognized like his own name, even Claire’s, but everything else just looked garbled.
Looking around the table he saw Mohinder, Nathan and Claire all looking lost in thought, but those thoughts could not be heard in his head. Jenny, despite the flaw in her inhibitors, had not removed them from either Nathan or Matt. They were too good of a punishment to abandon, and right now it was doing its job well. Matt was too keyed up to hear anything. He was too worried about Claire to concentrate.
“What’s wrong, Matt?” Jenny asked, seeing he was the only one not reading. “Having a hard time making it out? Maybe Claire will fill you in.”
Matt turned instantly to Claire who was sitting at his side. She was wide-eyed and pale, shaking her head slightly indicating she would not be repeating what she read to anyone.
“But this… this isn’t… this hasn’t happened either,” Mohinder finally said, the first to find his voice. “This…”
“I know,” Jenny said, her smile deflating as she sat back down in her chair at the head of the table. “I stopped it.”
“You stopped yourself,” Nathan muttered under his breath, still looking at the page he was holding as if it was some kind of ghastly deformity.
“So now what?” Claire asked tentatively. “I can see why knowing the future can be… I can see why you’d want to know… How do we change it? How do you know what to do to change it? This only tells us what’s going to happen. It doesn’t tell us how to stop it.”
“One step at a time,” Jenny answered. “You do it one step at a time. I sent Franco up to the colony and immediately Anthony began rewriting Matt’s future. I began planning my assault and again, the future was rewritten. That was the one. That was the one…”
Jenny trailed off uncharacteristically, looking up at the ceiling and shaking her head.
“He said you changed it,” Nathan said after a long pause.
“Yes,” admitted Jenny. “I did. I didn’t follow it exactly and… Well, now we can change it again.”
Matt tried to focus in once more on her thoughts, but couldn’t. He desperately wanted to know what she’d done that had thrown everything off again, but either Jenny had learned to keep him out or he still was too upset to throw off the inhibitor.
“So, as of right now,” Nathan said, “how does it end?”
“I don’t know yet,” Jenny answered. “I read… I read that ending last night. And today, when I saw it coming true I honestly didn’t know what to do next.”
“So you took us to Anthony,” Mohinder provided.
“Yes.”
“But he hasn’t had time to draft up anything new,” Nathan continued. “He hasn’t had time to write up a complete ending so you’re just guessing? Waiting? What?”
“Until he has something new,” Jenny said, sounding pained, “you will all stay in new quarters. Together. Initially you were to be kept together, so we’ll go back to that plan. I just… I ask, for all of our sakes, that you don’t do anything stupid. That you don’t try anything. It’s not just me… I’m sure if it was only me that was to die, you wouldn’t care, but that’s not the case. This plague is real. It will kill every single person like us. And if that isn’t enough, think of yourselves. You’ll die too. One way or another.”
Everyone remained quiet until she’d left shortly after her little speech. Each of them choosing to say nothing until they were escorted to their new quarters which consisted of two bedrooms, a common room and a private bath. It was still locked and guarded, but it was a relief to be all together again.
“Is this real?” Mohinder asked Matt as soon as the door was shut on them.
“If it isn’t she went through an awful lot of trouble to make us believe it is,” Nathan answered before Matt had the chance, flopping down onto the couch and shutting his eyes to the harsh fluorescent lights above him.
“Well?” Mohinder asked, still focusing on Matt.
“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully, sitting down in the nearest chair. “I couldn’t hear anything. I was too… I don’t know. I think she’s telling the truth but I don’t have anything to base it off of.”
“She was certainly scared,” Claire added, taking the chair next to Matt’s.
“I don’t see why,” Nathan retorted. “I didn’t see anything in there about her getting disemboweled.”
“What?” Matt nearly yelled. “Who gets disemboweled?”
“No one,” Claire said, throwing Nathan a dirty look. “He’s making that up.”
Nathan sat up straight, opening his eyes as he smirked.
“It was bad enough without you adding to it,” Mohinder said as he leaned back against the wall.
“Lighten up,” Nathan said, growing restless. “It didn’t happen.”
“That doesn’t mean it won’t,” Mohinder said tersely.
“What exactly did everyone read?” Matt finally had to ask.
“Nothing,” Claire said staring down first Mohinder and then Nathan.
“It was obviously something,” Matt continued.
“Really, Matt,” Mohinder said, trying to calm him down. “You’re better off not…”
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“Don’t,” Claire said firmly.
“You probably should,” Nathan added. “Just in case. If you don’t…”
Without thinking, without realizing what he was really doing, Matt turned to Mohinder and pushed the command to ‘talk’ into his head. It was an instinctive act driven by his need to know what everyone was so afraid of. To get an answer he desperately wanted that no one seemed willing to provide.
“You did it,” Mohinder blurted out, speaking automatically without stopping. “In the papers, you did it this morning. Jenny became enraged after you initially pushed her out of your head. When she did get back inside she had you hallucinating and you did it. You killed Claire. After that, she let you kill yourself.”
As soon as he’d finished, Mohinder shook his head as if he was coming out of a daze.
“Matt,” Claire started to say, but as soon as she reached out and touched his arm he got to his feet and shrugged her off. He headed directly for the closest bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
“I told you not to tell him,” Claire said, wheeling on Mohinder.
“I don’t… I don’t know why I did,” he admitted. “I wasn’t going to, Claire. Honestly. I… I think he made me.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Claire said half-heartedly, remembering too well the order he’d issued in her head earlier that day which she had felt compelled to obey.
“Maybe not on purpose,” Nathan added. “But hasn’t he been spending a lot of quality time with Ms. Yi? Alone. I’m sure she’s taught him a thing or two about persuasion.”
Claire stared at Nathan, not liking all of the connotations his words implied.
“I really didn’t want to do it, Claire,” Mohinder repeated as he sat down in Matt’s empty place.
Claire stood up, nodding curtly before heading toward the room Matt had entered.
“Leave him,” Nathan advised as Claire placed her hand on the doorknob. “He’ll be fine. Probably just need a few minutes alone.”
Claire fought back a bitter reply, opening the door instead to go and join Matt.
Author: SLynn
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairs: Ensemble, Matt, Peter/Claire
Spoilers: AU after "Fallout"
Beta By: tripp3235
Disclaimer: I’m just borrowing and will return them all when I’m done, virtually untouched.
Summary:
In the end is the beginning. Part three of my 'Apocalypse' arc. The entire timeline can be found HERE!
Previous chapters for just this story found HERE!
x-posted heroes_fic/paire_love
Chapter 8: Revisions
“This is incredible,” Mohinder said, his eyes never leaving the pages before him. “Absolutely incredible. I’ve never heard of anything like this. He has to be the only pre-cog with this broad of a scope.”
Jenny gave him a stiff smile, continuing to gaze at the group gathered round the table.
They were back in one of her conference rooms, a room Matt knew well. It was typically where he and Jenny spent a lot of time alone, but not today. Today they were all there; all going through the massive amounts of writings Anthony had created for Jenny’s benefit.
“So you give him a picture or a name and…”
“It’s not that easy,” Jenny interrupted Mohinder before he could finish. “You have to have a connection to the person. A real one. You have to know something about them.”
Matt said nothing, just looked down at the paper in his hand and nodded slightly as he recognized his own name written several times upon it. Jenny certainly knew enough about him to feed to Anthony.
He didn’t bother to read it; it wasn’t worth the effort it would take on his part. Jenny wouldn’t show them anything really important, Matt was positive of that. There was no point. Besides, with everyone else in the room reading to themselves, Matt could pretty much hear the general point of it all.
“Wow,” Nathan said, dropping his paper as he threw back his head and rubbed his eyes. “That’s quite a forecast. How long have you known?”
“He wrote this nearly a year ago,” Jenny answered. “That’s when I first started making plans.”
“If you’ve known that long,” Matt began, “how come you’re still trying to figure out exactly what they did to me? If this is the end result of the plague, if this future is it, why not…”
“Because I didn’t know at first you were the source,” Jenny interrupted.
“But you did know I was at Primatech,” Matt returned.
Jenny glared at him momentarily before getting to her feet and pacing around the room.
“Yes,” she finally admitted. “I did. They’d told me so themselves. They thought I’d be interested, as close as we are. They thought I’d find it amusing.”
“I’m sure you did,” Matt said flatly.
“Yes, actually,” said Jenny with a smile. “They did not, however, tell me that they were implanting a virus in you or that this virus was the prototype to one they hoped would wipe out any one with an active power. Despite their numerous errors, they are not stupid.”
“So you’d asked Anthony, to what exactly?” Nathan asked, turning slightly in his seat to look into Jenny’s eyes. “Write about your future? See what was in store for you?”
“Yes.”
“And you got this?” Nathan continued. “You asked for your future and got the end of the world.”
“I asked him to show me specifically when I would meet Matt again,” Jenny clarified, sounding strained and almost embarrassed. “When he could not do that, I asked him why and that is when he started to write this up.”
Matt looked at the paper he’d previously been ignoring with renewed interest.
“So this is my death,” he said quietly, catching Claire’s attention.
“You’ve done it then,” Mohinder said. “According to this future, Matt should have died six months ago. He should have died the night the colony was raided. How did you alter it?”
“I started by sending Franco back,” Jenny answered. “That alone changed a lot of things, but not the plague. It still happens, only now it doesn’t begin with Matt; it begins with some girl named Lori who was stupid enough to get caught by Primatech and used as a guinea pig.”
“How do you know that?” Nathan asked.
“Because,” Jenny said bitterly, “your brother refuses to cure her. First it’s the girl, than your boogeyman Mr. Sylar, and then Peter the Great, himself. They become the first to go. It escalates from there, spreading from city to city until eventually…”
“Peter?” Claire said. “He’s there? Primatech has him?”
Jenny nodded briskly in reply.
“How did you get Antony to write about Peter?” Mohinder asked.
“I guess I just know enough about him,” Jenny answered vaguely.
“But Claire would survive it,” Nathan said, sounding confused. “If the whole point of abducting Claire was to take the cure out of circulation, to ensure that the creators themselves were not affected, why would they release it without first ensuring that that was done?”
“You seem to know an awful lot about the plan,” Jenny returned, eyebrow raised.
“Yes, well…” Nathan stammered. “It was why they wanted her before, I’d assume it was why they still want her.”
“It is,” Jenny answered.
“So?” Mohinder prodded. “Why would they risk it? Why start it while Claire…”
“Are none of you actually reading the papers before you?” Jenny interrupted harshly. “They start because by then she’s already dead.”
All three men flipped through the pages searching for that point in Anthony’s rough draft of the future. Claire moved through her own stack of papers as well, not nearly as eager as the rest.
“You,” Nathan said, having found it first. “You.”
“You’re surprised?” Jenny asked.
“Why would you do that?” Mohinder asked, obviously surprised. “If Claire is the only one that could save you… why?”
“Keep reading.”
Matt couldn’t do it. No matter how he tried to calm himself down, no matter how hard he tried to reign in his nervous energy, he couldn’t concentrate hard enough to make anything meaningful out of the words before him. Again, there were words he recognized like his own name, even Claire’s, but everything else just looked garbled.
Looking around the table he saw Mohinder, Nathan and Claire all looking lost in thought, but those thoughts could not be heard in his head. Jenny, despite the flaw in her inhibitors, had not removed them from either Nathan or Matt. They were too good of a punishment to abandon, and right now it was doing its job well. Matt was too keyed up to hear anything. He was too worried about Claire to concentrate.
“What’s wrong, Matt?” Jenny asked, seeing he was the only one not reading. “Having a hard time making it out? Maybe Claire will fill you in.”
Matt turned instantly to Claire who was sitting at his side. She was wide-eyed and pale, shaking her head slightly indicating she would not be repeating what she read to anyone.
“But this… this isn’t… this hasn’t happened either,” Mohinder finally said, the first to find his voice. “This…”
“I know,” Jenny said, her smile deflating as she sat back down in her chair at the head of the table. “I stopped it.”
“You stopped yourself,” Nathan muttered under his breath, still looking at the page he was holding as if it was some kind of ghastly deformity.
“So now what?” Claire asked tentatively. “I can see why knowing the future can be… I can see why you’d want to know… How do we change it? How do you know what to do to change it? This only tells us what’s going to happen. It doesn’t tell us how to stop it.”
“One step at a time,” Jenny answered. “You do it one step at a time. I sent Franco up to the colony and immediately Anthony began rewriting Matt’s future. I began planning my assault and again, the future was rewritten. That was the one. That was the one…”
Jenny trailed off uncharacteristically, looking up at the ceiling and shaking her head.
“He said you changed it,” Nathan said after a long pause.
“Yes,” admitted Jenny. “I did. I didn’t follow it exactly and… Well, now we can change it again.”
Matt tried to focus in once more on her thoughts, but couldn’t. He desperately wanted to know what she’d done that had thrown everything off again, but either Jenny had learned to keep him out or he still was too upset to throw off the inhibitor.
“So, as of right now,” Nathan said, “how does it end?”
“I don’t know yet,” Jenny answered. “I read… I read that ending last night. And today, when I saw it coming true I honestly didn’t know what to do next.”
“So you took us to Anthony,” Mohinder provided.
“Yes.”
“But he hasn’t had time to draft up anything new,” Nathan continued. “He hasn’t had time to write up a complete ending so you’re just guessing? Waiting? What?”
“Until he has something new,” Jenny said, sounding pained, “you will all stay in new quarters. Together. Initially you were to be kept together, so we’ll go back to that plan. I just… I ask, for all of our sakes, that you don’t do anything stupid. That you don’t try anything. It’s not just me… I’m sure if it was only me that was to die, you wouldn’t care, but that’s not the case. This plague is real. It will kill every single person like us. And if that isn’t enough, think of yourselves. You’ll die too. One way or another.”
Everyone remained quiet until she’d left shortly after her little speech. Each of them choosing to say nothing until they were escorted to their new quarters which consisted of two bedrooms, a common room and a private bath. It was still locked and guarded, but it was a relief to be all together again.
“Is this real?” Mohinder asked Matt as soon as the door was shut on them.
“If it isn’t she went through an awful lot of trouble to make us believe it is,” Nathan answered before Matt had the chance, flopping down onto the couch and shutting his eyes to the harsh fluorescent lights above him.
“Well?” Mohinder asked, still focusing on Matt.
“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully, sitting down in the nearest chair. “I couldn’t hear anything. I was too… I don’t know. I think she’s telling the truth but I don’t have anything to base it off of.”
“She was certainly scared,” Claire added, taking the chair next to Matt’s.
“I don’t see why,” Nathan retorted. “I didn’t see anything in there about her getting disemboweled.”
“What?” Matt nearly yelled. “Who gets disemboweled?”
“No one,” Claire said, throwing Nathan a dirty look. “He’s making that up.”
Nathan sat up straight, opening his eyes as he smirked.
“It was bad enough without you adding to it,” Mohinder said as he leaned back against the wall.
“Lighten up,” Nathan said, growing restless. “It didn’t happen.”
“That doesn’t mean it won’t,” Mohinder said tersely.
“What exactly did everyone read?” Matt finally had to ask.
“Nothing,” Claire said staring down first Mohinder and then Nathan.
“It was obviously something,” Matt continued.
“Really, Matt,” Mohinder said, trying to calm him down. “You’re better off not…”
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“Don’t,” Claire said firmly.
“You probably should,” Nathan added. “Just in case. If you don’t…”
Without thinking, without realizing what he was really doing, Matt turned to Mohinder and pushed the command to ‘talk’ into his head. It was an instinctive act driven by his need to know what everyone was so afraid of. To get an answer he desperately wanted that no one seemed willing to provide.
“You did it,” Mohinder blurted out, speaking automatically without stopping. “In the papers, you did it this morning. Jenny became enraged after you initially pushed her out of your head. When she did get back inside she had you hallucinating and you did it. You killed Claire. After that, she let you kill yourself.”
As soon as he’d finished, Mohinder shook his head as if he was coming out of a daze.
“Matt,” Claire started to say, but as soon as she reached out and touched his arm he got to his feet and shrugged her off. He headed directly for the closest bedroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
“I told you not to tell him,” Claire said, wheeling on Mohinder.
“I don’t… I don’t know why I did,” he admitted. “I wasn’t going to, Claire. Honestly. I… I think he made me.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Claire said half-heartedly, remembering too well the order he’d issued in her head earlier that day which she had felt compelled to obey.
“Maybe not on purpose,” Nathan added. “But hasn’t he been spending a lot of quality time with Ms. Yi? Alone. I’m sure she’s taught him a thing or two about persuasion.”
Claire stared at Nathan, not liking all of the connotations his words implied.
“I really didn’t want to do it, Claire,” Mohinder repeated as he sat down in Matt’s empty place.
Claire stood up, nodding curtly before heading toward the room Matt had entered.
“Leave him,” Nathan advised as Claire placed her hand on the doorknob. “He’ll be fine. Probably just need a few minutes alone.”
Claire fought back a bitter reply, opening the door instead to go and join Matt.