O Negative
Title : O Negative
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairings: Peter/other character, Peter/Caitlin, Peter/Claire
Rating: R (adult themes, violence)
Disclaimer: No money is made. Only fun.
Spoilers: AU from 2.06 - The Line, which means Adam doesn’t exist and Peter doesn’t find his memory back.
Summary: Nothing lasts forever, everybody knows that. He just thinks it’s unfair that only the exception can witness how merciless the rule is.
Archiving: heroes_fic, heroes_peter, peter_otp, paire_love, peter_caitlin.
Author’s Notes:
A while ago, saestina wrote Face in the Crowd, a fabulous fic about Claire struggling with immortality. She gave me the nod to write Peter’s part, and this is it!
Thanks to her for the beta-read, of course, and for poking my muse with her amazing fic.
Face in the Crowd by saestina
O Negative
Peter is O negative.
Those gifted with O negative blood type are the only ones whose blood matches everyone else’s. That’s why they are called universal donors.
A lot of people told Peter to avoid blood drives because once they donate, the medical authorities never miss an opportunity to harass universal donors in order to have more of their blood.
As soon as he turned 18, he went anyway. He felt like he had a duty, like he was granted with a blood he couldn’t not share without feeling guilty. So he went, all smiling crookedly and thanking the nurses for their voluntary work while he sat happily in the blue armchair as they inserted the syringe in his arm. As predicted, they called him again a few months later, requesting more of his blood. So he went again. And again. And again. Until he got fed up and told them that ‘there’s only so much blood one man can give’ dryly over the phone, but they kept trying anyway.
He liked to help, to feel useful, but sometimes his universal blood felt more like a curse than a gift, and he wished he had another blood type. Those A negatives and B positives seemed so much more free than he was, because they could be the average, occasional donors. They could choose to give or not to give.
When he became a nurse, he joined the voluntary staff every time there was a blood drive in town. He was glad to help, but he was also glad to avoid being in the armchair. After all, it was the only way to evade it. The only effective way to stop being the giver was to become the taker.
There was no middle camp for special donors.
Of course, Peter doesn’t remember any of this today. He doesn’t know his blood type, and he doesn’t even know that he had been a nurse. He knows exactly what to do if someone faints, gets burned, gets cut or chokes, but he doesn’t know how he knows it. He knows his body rejects bullets and tattoos, but he doesn’t know much more about his own flesh.
His hand freezes in the act of shaving, and he turns his face towards the mirror. Once more, the cut he just accidentally made near his jaw has immediately disappeared. He glances at the razor he’s still holding in his hand and notices the red stains on the blades.
He doesn’t remember the first time he shaved and how he learned. Did someone show him - a father, an older brother maybe - or did he learn by himself? He knows that if he bled normally, he would need nothing more than a cloth of cold water or a tissue. Yet he’s not sure if he knows this because he used to bleed like a normal person or if it’s just another piece of trivia from the what-to-do-when-someone-gets-cut part of his brain.
He puts the razor down, leans against the counter and sighs as he stares into his own eyes
through the mirror.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
*
The sirens of ambulances and police cars follow one another. Crescendo, decrescendo. In the distance, the passing of cars and the horns of taxis form a background noise that Peter doesn’t notice. The sounds of the city-that-doesn’t-sleep simply do not reach to his conscience. That’s how he knows he’s a true New Yorker.
There are seven different cereal boxes in his pantry. That’s how he knows he doesn’t enjoy cooking much.
He’s only beginning to associate all the things that people say about him with the reflection he sees in the mirror. Most of the time he doesn’t understand the things they say, but even when their words make sense to him, they’re never like real memories. He makes it his duty to watch all the movies he owns in his library, and he doesn’t understand why some move him more than others. He wants to clean up his place and get rid of the things he considers useless, yet the mere thought of throwing them away makes his stomach hurt. And that’s something no one can explain to him.
He knows his abilities are a blessing. He knows it because everybody keeps telling him. When Peter confesses he’s not sure he’s doing what he’s meant to, Nathan says he never has. When he says that it’s because he doesn’t know himself enough yet, that there are still too many pieces missing in the puzzle of his life, Nathan answers that his abilities were the piece that had been missing his whole life.
Nathan says he’s doing exactly what he wanted, but Peter doubts he’d been a big enough
dreamer to think he would one day practice heroism as a job.
The thought amuses him. Special Agent, that’s what’s written on his paycheck.
When Matt Parkman offers him a job in the Public Security, which will give him access to privileged information and resources in order to save the world, he accepts it with enthusiasm.
After all, every day of the year and every hour of the day someone somewhere needs him.
Only, no one warns him about the volume of work. Because he is physically inexhaustible, no one cares about his work conditions, and he quickly sets records of overtime.
He’s not the first one to go from eager worker to unsatisfied employee, but that’s not something one would expect of Superman. Apparently, when routine settles in, even saving the world can become nothing more than a job. But his main dissatisfaction probably comes from the fact that saving the world never really makes it better a place. It only keeps it the way it is, maintains a status quo that rarely improves. He feels like every time he patches a hole somewhere, something rips apart somewhere else.
*
‘The twenty-one year old man has been apprehended this morning in Oakland. Authorities still don’t know how he managed to freeze his victims…’
‘Turn it off,’ Caitlin says, obviously bored.
‘You’re closer to the remote,’ Peter answers, half asleep against her shoulder.
‘You can shut it with your mind,’ Caitlin retorts.
Peter sighs, gets off the couch, walks to the TV and pushes the power button.
‘I’ve been using my mind all day,’ he says, walking towards the bathroom.
‘Well, if only you had chosen a normal job in the first place…’
‘Don’t start again.’
Peter probably would answer with something more elaborate if he didn’t just realize that his toothbrush is still packed in his travel bag.
‘Can I use your toothbrush?’ he calls out from the bathroom, too tired to even consider retrieving his own.
‘Sure. Make yourself at home,’ she answers sarcastically.
*
He’s been watching the water roll down the street through the window for about fifteen minutes. His eyes still blurred with sleepiness, he doesn’t even think to drink the coffee he’s holding with one hand. He suddenly wakes up from his torpor and hits his forehead with his other hand.
‘Oh shit. Hurry up, there’s a viaduct about to collapse in San Francisco!’
Three months later, Caitlin catches him staring at the yellow leaves piling up on the lawn across the street instead of making himself ready for a super urgent mission. He doesn’t wait for her to ask him what he’s doing.
‘I think I’m becoming cynical,’ he states.
*
Peter has now three purposes in life:
1) Learning as much as possible about who he used to be;
2) Deciding what he’ll do once the world finally gets better;
3) Staying in bed with Caitlin as late as possible in the morning;
none of which he manages to do as much as he’d like. And none of which includes saving the world.
Only, the world has other ideas.
*
He celebrates his 30th birthday like a kid attempting to smile as he unwraps an undesired Christmas gift. In spite of the pats in the back and the champagne flowing like water, he can’t chase away the thought that his best years may be behind him, and he can’t even remember them.
The emptiness and confusion caused by his memory wipe are appeased a bit with Virginia’s birth. The recovery of his memories doesn’t have the same importance now that he has new and beautiful ones to create for his daughter.
*
Unfortunately, the world doesn’t get better.
They may improve the infrastructure, hire more and more employees and train more and more recruits, but it makes no difference. No one can replace Peter Petrelli.
You promised your nephew you’d bring him to the zoo for his birthday? That’s unfortunate, because if you don’t get your ass in Madison High School right now, there will be gunfire that will kill twenty-six and injure another forty-seven. Your wife is delivering your second child? That’s very touching, but hurricane Vince is about to hit Florida and the whole evacuation process will be useless without a semi-god’s intervention. You’re tired? You need a vacation? Understood, but right now there’s a software terrorist who has infiltrated the Stock Exchange network and threatens to cause an economic crash worthy of 1929.
Peter does what they tell him he’s always done. He sighs and goes on saving the world.
*
One day he learns that a teenaged boy he saved from death eight years ago is now the leader of a neo-Nazi group that’s about to launch a sophisticated brand of anthrax in schools with high ethnicity populations. In light of what they know about his ability, it’s very likely that Peter will have to wound him seriously.
That’s where he truly starts fathoming the meaning of the word desensitization.
*
That’s around the period where he swears reading small characters gives him headaches and therefore buys reading glasses. That’s also around the time he grows a beard. He says he does it in order to save time in the morning, but in truth he does it to appease Caitlin’s discomfort in not finding wrinkles on his face while she finds more and more on hers.
He attributes this to his rapid cellular regeneration but only in an indirect way. He supposes that because his body is inexhaustible, it doesn’t keep the traces of tiredness that would only emphasize the more subtle traces of his aging.
To Nathan, seeing his brother’s new facial hair immediately recalls the time when he himself wore an impressive beard.
‘Are you sure you’re alright, Pete?’ Nathan worries. ‘You’re not doing a burn-out or something?’
Peter takes a few seconds to think.
‘That’s a good question.’
*
When Alice speaks about her dad’s powers in kindergarten, everybody thinks it’s very cute.
‘Your Daddy does magic tricks?’ the tutors ask.
For Virginia’s part, she’s stopped talking about her father’s abilities since it isn’t logical to not believe in Santa Claus anymore but to still believe your daddy can fly.
One day, Alice asks why he doesn’t use his powers to make them millionaires. He takes her on his knees and tries to make her understand why stealing is bad. Seeing her half-understanding, he adds ‘what would Daddy do with a million dollars anyway, huh?’
‘You wouldn’t work anymore,’ she says with a sad pout.
*
The straw that breaks the camel’s back occurs when he has to stop a ruthless rapist in California and therefore cannot save a school bus from an avalanche in Vermont.
He shows up in his boss’ office with a resignation letter and states his conditions for staying clearly: he saves the world from Monday to Friday, between 8 AM and 9 PM. For the rest, the world had better be truly ending since he has two young daughters he would very much like to see grow up.
He may be the most powerful man in the world, he says, but he’s still a family guy first and for all.
Oh, and just because he doesn’t get rings under his eyes doesn’t mean he isn’t tired.
*
For the first time in a lifetime, he can finally go to the school meetings, attend to Virginia’s ballet recital and drive Alice to her swimming lessons on Saturday mornings.
He doesn’t pay too much attention to the other parents’ thoughts about how young he looks to have children that old and all the prejudices that go with them.
Anyway, it’s not like he’s going to make the effort of using his abilities outside of work.
*
One day they give him an office with his name on the door. He thinks it’s funny - it’s not like his job is about paper work - but it amuses him to have a place where he can put Alice’s drawings. Until the day he recognizes his mother in one of the drawings.
First he is intrigued by the strange pleasure his six-year-old daughter takes in drawing a grandmother she hasn’t even known, but then he worries. The monochromatic and detailed portraits and scenes Alice draws show a young and elegant woman who doesn’t
resemble the old lady in fur coats he knew during the last years of her life.
When Nathan sees the drawings, he wipes a tear from the corner of his eyes and confirms that they well and truly show scenes of their childhood.
Alice can draw the past.
Someone who has great ambitions for his child would have preferred her to have another kind of ability. But for a man who lost his memory, there could be no more beautiful gift.
*
Thanks to his daughter’s ability that he is now able to control better and better, Peter knows the face of all those he has gained an ability by.
When he asks Nathan who the distressed cheerleader is, his brother shrugs.
‘Just a girl you saved in Texas. She’s vanished.’
He doesn’t bother listening to Nathan’s thoughts in that moment, because why would he lie about that?
*
He always uses his mind-reading ability with civility, when he suspects that people are lying or hiding something, for instance. The rest of the time, he turns it off just like most of his abilities. However, he sometimes catches people’s thoughts before he has the time to turn it off.
Nathan often thinks about a teenager with golden curls and big green eyes. Peter supposes that she was his famous first love or a girl he crushed over when he was young. He thinks it’s very cute, but really, it’s none of his business.
The only moments when he uses his mind-reading without restraint is when he chases
dangerous people and when Virginia brings a new boyfriend home.
That may be the reason why Virginia’s boyfriends never last.
*
When the beard becomes fashionable again with teenagers and university students, Peter is forced to shave off the last thing that allowed him to maintain a certain normality for his family.
Hands on his hips, he stares at the reflection of his freshly shaven face with severity. He calls for Caitlin, and she rushes into the bathroom, worried.
‘What is it?’
He turns around and crosses his arms, averting his gaze.
‘Seriously, do I look like a forty-four year old man?’
She slowly shakes her head, as if she’s been fearing that moment longer than he
knows.
The doctors he consults the next day do nothing to clarify the situation. They have never seen any case like this, they have no certitude, they don’t dare to speculate too much, blah blah. The only thing they can assert is that his skeleton is twenty-seven years old, and he really doesn’t need the reading glasses he brings with him everywhere.
‘But I do age, right?’ he insists.
The sorry shrugs of the experts don’t satisfy him, and the few bad jokes about the night cream he’s going to save don’t amuse him.
He hears a slightly envious feeling in the mind of one of the doctors, and he admits to himself that he should at least feel a tiny bit of joy, but in truth, he’s nothing but terrified.
*
At first, they all treat it like a weird game. The girls find it amusing to call him Peter instead of Dad, and Caitlin finds it amusing to make-believe she’s dating a man fifteen years younger than her. Only, the game gets old faster than they had expected.
The girls don’t know how to answer their friends when they say things like ‘Why do you listen to him? He’s not even your father!’ It becomes even more disturbing when Virginia’s best friend admits to finding her mom’s boyfriend cute.
‘People look at me like I’m a pervert,’ Caitlin confesses one day.
‘But aren’t you?’
‘Shut up, young man,’ she jokes. Because joking is the last thing they can do before reaching the point where they’ll have to pretend to be nephew and aunt.
*
When a megalomaniac tyrant is elected for president and a paranoiac is appointed to head of the FBI, Peter has enough insider information to foresee what the next step will be. The government can’t really get to him, but they can get to his children, and as far as he knows, he won’t be there forever to protect them. So in three weeks, the lease is canceled, their things packed, the money transferred, and Peter and Caitlin leave America almost as quickly as they had arrived twenty years ago.
They expect their teenage kids to whine and sulk, but the girls understand that it’s for their own safety and both seem to mature five years in a few months.
Ireland is the most obvious destination, but Peter knows the government will look for him
everywhere and Corke will be the first place they look, so they settle in Edinburgh instead for the simple reason that Caitlin has always loved the city.
In Edinburgh, Peter goes back to nursing, which almost feels like vacation, and Caitlin opens a small café she ironically calls Café Montréal.
They are just starting to adapt to their new European life when the "American Witch Hunt for the Specials" hits the news on a random Tuesday evening. No one says a word, but they all think that it was a close shave.
*
When both their girls make it to college, they decide it’s time to move again. Virginia is in Birmingham and Alice is in Oxford - no less - so they settle in between, very aware that it won’t be for long.
*
Peter walks Alice down the aisle, and it would almost be a normal wedding if only he wasn’t pretending to be her brother. He smiles in amusement when the priest talks about him as if he were dead.
How sorry I am that Mr. Petrelli couldn’t be among us today, but I am confident that he’s watching us from above.
Oh yeah, he’s watching. And he’s listening. Unlike Virginia, Alice never wanted to hear a word of what her father thought of her boyfriends. Now his baby girl is about to vow eternal love to a man he’s heard enough thoughts from to know exactly why they won’t last.
But she’s happy, and that’s all that matters for now. And really, it could be worse.
*
When they have lived in every big city in the UK, they start trying other countries, which is stressful because of the language but pleasing because of the weather. They even try Slovenia because they’ve never heard about it, and this random choice proves to be the best so far. Caitlin often complains that she’s too old to move so often, so they decide to settle in the Netherlands for good, where they can be special without anyone caring.
In Utrecht they discover a small organization called Evolved United whose mission is to help evolved individuals in more repressive countries and defend their rights. Peter embarks on a few occasional missions, and his services are so useful that he is rapidly promoted to mission chief.
For the first time in sixty-two years of existence, he finally feels like he’s doing what he’s meant to do. He doesn’t try to stop hurricanes anymore, but he still saves a significant part of the world in a way that allows him to connect with people.
He and Caitlin are conscious of living an amazing life until Peter starts having nightmares again, all of them of Alice and her baby boy.
He flies to London where she works at the British Museum with the finest historians in the world (while her husband doesn’t do much, but that’s something he tries to not think about too much), pretending to just miss his "sister" and "nephew". The "missing" part, at least, isn’t a lie.
He spends three months with them until the nightmares stop. He then goes back to Utrecht, his mind half-salved.
*
Peter never hurts anyone unless they’re really bad guys. When he learns the news of his daughter and grandson’s death in a car accident, though, a few people get propelled away into walls.
*
Following Alice’s death, it takes eight doctors and a gargantuan dose of Haitian pills to stop him from traveling back to undo the accident.
The first time he and Caitlin attend group therapy for parents who’ve lost a child, they pretend to not know each other in order to avoid questions. They pretend it’s only a coincidence if they both lost their daughters in recent car accidents. Hers was thirty-four while he says his was six. The other members of the group don’t suspect anything until it slips out that Peter’s daughter ‘was the one driving’.
Later they find another kind of group therapy. It is based on prayer, but they decide to try it anyway. Everybody agrees that children are not meant to die before their parents, that it’s not natural, that it’s a mistake. Most also agree that their children didn’t belong to them and that God only lent them for awhile; those who don’t believe in God acknowledge that the next step for them will be to find faith again.
Only Peter’s genes don’t allow him to believe in God. ‘I’m a Darwinian and I’ve never been so proud of it,’ he spits bitterly when his turn to speak comes.
It’s no surprise that this second group therapy is also aborted.
Eventually, he does learn to live with his guilt and finally admits that he’s not responsible for his daughter’s death, thanks to three psychiatrists, eight psychologists and fourteen years of individual therapy. But does he really get over it?
*
When Nathan dies, it doesn’t crush him like his daughter’s death did, but although distance has kept them apart for the past decades, he is nonetheless devastated.
He then realizes that no matter how long you lived, the first decades of your life are still determining more than half the things you do. After eighty-two years of living, there are still too many pieces missing and seeing some of them in drawings is just not enough.
*
After Caitlin dies, he stops painting the future. He prefers the past.
*
For the next twenty-three years, Evolved United and saving people like himself from inhuman treatments becomes his life. The organization now has branches all over the world except in the countries where the repression is too intense for them to set up.
The US is still one of those countries, and although it is unlikely that they torture or terminate people because of their DNA, he knows absolutely nothing of what has become of his nephews.
When he finally comes across the list of evolved Americans, he skims through it with
anxiousness until he gets to the letter P.
…
Eva Petrelli Deceased
David Petrelli Deceased
Monty Petrelli Deceased
Nathan Petrelli Deceased
Peter Petrelli Deceased (really?)
Simon Petrelli Deceased
Steve Petrelli Trenton, NJ
….
He closes his eyes for a moment. That’s about what he was expecting, but to see a stroke over the names of so many people he has or could have known somehow makes it more definite. More inevitable. Every name that appears on any list will disappear from it some day. Nothing lasts forever, everybody knows that. He just thinks it’s unfair that only the exception can witness how merciless the rule is.
A few hours of research and he finds out that Steve Petrelli is a twelve years old kid who lives somewhere in New Jersey with his mother, Kim Richards, ex-wife of Julian Petrelli, son of David Petrelli, son of Simon Petrelli, son of Nathan Petrelli.
He saves the information in the useless-things-that-could-become-paramount-some-day part of his brain.
*
He works so unrelentingly that his bosses have to force him to take vacations until Virginia’s sickness becomes too advanced, and he has to quit in order to take care of her.
She’s just had her sixth transfusion of his blood in two days when Peter lets the word ‘dying’ pierce through all the layers of denial he has coated his conscience with over the years. At the rare moments when she opens her eyes, he rushes to her side and bombards her with desperate hugs, rather inefficient care and repetitive questions about how she feels and what she needs.
She doesn’t have the strength to answer aloud, but he hears her answer in her thoughts.
‘I don’t need anything, Dad. Right now I think I can do more for you than you can do for me.’
Two days later her eyes open wide, and she looks at him with pity.
‘I’m sorry to leave you alone, Daddy. I’m so so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ she thinks, unable to stop the motto.
The doctors tell Peter that she is living her last hours. They are wrong, since her condition starts getting better during the night. The next day she starts talking again, and three days later she can eat normally.
Peter sees this like a miracle. He promises God to believe in Him again against all logic if only He lets his daughter live for a bit longer.
He spends a week of ecstatic joy, watching his ninety-four year old baby be reborn again before his eyes. Incapable of letting go of her hand, he covers her with ridiculous attentions and starts making plans for them. He will take care of her all the time and build a palace in the countryside and travel all around the world with her, although he’s not supposed to use this ability for anything else but the common good.
And then one morning, her condition worsens again.
When she lets out her very last sigh, he silently holds her against his shoulder. He doesn’t say a word. All he does is shake his head in refusal and denial. He shakes his head for half an hour before a nurse puts a hand on his other shoulder.
She tries to explain to him that it’s normal, that it happens all the time. ‘They just come back for a while before going. It’s like they need to confirm that they can’t stay anymore.’
Peter knows. It’s called the ‘last remission’. Unfortunately, even former hospice nurses aren’t beyond false hopes.
‘You had to see this coming, son,’ the old nurse adds as if she was talking to a teenager. ‘Your grandmother was very sick. You know, she would have gone eventually. Everybody dies.’
Somehow in the middle of his sobs, he manages to let out a bitter laugh.
‘I wish that was true.’
*
No one hears of Peter Petrelli again. Newspapers and bills pile up in front of his door,
messages accumulate on his answering machine, and the list of evolved people in distress gets longer and longer.
It seems like Peter Petrelli has disappeared from the face of the Earth.
After a few years of absence, his name is struck off Evolved United’s list of mission chiefs. From now on, his name appears on the other list. The one of wanted evolved people. Once again, he goes from pursuer to pursued.
When they spare no expense and send their best recruits to look for him, he decides to go
back to the States. Traveling doesn’t stress him, because if anything goes wrong, he’s still an invisible flying man. As for the great repression, it doesn’t scare him either, because he’s so much more than just an invisible flying man.
*
Steve Petrelli lives two blocks away from his old apartment in Manhattan, and Peter takes it as a sign. When he knocks at his door and presents himself as his great-great-great-uncle, the young man shuts the door in his face. He spends two months trying to get in touch with him and explain to him that he only wants to know him, but Steve generally answers with something like ‘I don’t need no sugar daddy, I’m nobody’s bitch.’ In the face of his complete defeat, Peter decides that he will take care of his grand-grand-grand-nephew against his will if he has to.
After one week of searching and spying, he discovers that Steve Petrelli has the ability to play every song he has ever heard with just about every musical instrument existing. He also learns that Steve is a walking cliché : musician, unstable, junkie and gay. Not exactly what he was expecting of one of Nathan Petrelli’s heirs, but one thing is for sure: Steve needs help, and Peter has nothing else to do.
He cleans up his place and pays his rent, flushes his drugs and discourages his dubious company the best he can with the indirect means he has, but everything he does only makes Steve more unstable. The more Peter intervenes, the more Steve thinks he’s going crazy and the more he uses. When Peter tries to work it out by leaving a note saying that he’s Steve’s guardian angel, urging him to get clean and reminding him the importance of safe sex, Steve seems to hit the bottom. He goes straight into detox, saying that the shit is really messing with his head.
For eight months, Peter supports him in his hellish journey without being seen. When Steve gets out of rehabilitation, determined to stay clean, Peter realizes that he cannot show himself again without risking to ruin the fragile balance he had silently helped him build.
The satisfaction of having saved the last member of his family keeps Peter going for a short while, until there’s nowhere left to go.
*
Tears mist his reflection. He wipes them away, but every time his reflection appears more clearly he is overwhelmed with a new wave of sobs. For a moment he evaluates the potential efficacy of suicide by dehydration but concludes hastily that it would take way too long.
He knows there is a spot in the back of his head that just needs to be pushed to end his misery. It is one of the things he knows without knowing why he knows it.
He manages to regain some control over the shaking of his hands and places a second mirror at the nape of his neck. He grabs the gun with his other hand and aims it straight at the place he thinks is the infamous spot. He takes a few seconds to choose his last thoughts and shoots.
He wakes up thirty seconds later, shattered pieces of the small mirror surrounding him and red spatters of O negative blood covering the walls.
Desperation turns into rage and a sob turns into a scream as he throws away the gun hard
enough to make a hole in the wall.
*
After the fourth attempt, he doesn’t take the time to choose his last thoughts anymore.
*
From the Brooklyn Bridge he stares into the eye of New York City’s landscape. In times past, he thought of it as the city he didn’t blow up. Then he thought of it as the city he didn’t recognize. Today it’s the city that doesn’t need him anymore.
The frailty of life is so deeply anchored in us that there is something disturbing, even obscene, about a man who decides that his own flesh isn’t worth a thing. Yet, for a man who has valued life so much in the past, he is not the disturbed one.
He sometimes mistreat his body for no other reason than the fact that it’s of no consequence, although maybe he’s also punishing it for making him live a never-ending martyrdom.
For a decade, he spends his days drawing the past, trying desperately to live in it.
The rest of his time, he tries things, just to see if maybe this or that will work, hoping that one day he won’t wake up. Like the Brooklyn Bridge, for instance. Nathan always said he was drama queen anyway.
Surprisingly, the most useful ability to a suicidal man is invisibility. It allows him to hide from the attention of the kind souls who would try to protect him from himself. In short, the best way to become a ghost is to be one.
He stands and walks along the edge of the bridge. Every time he looks down he sees Nathan looking up, and he doesn’t understand why this image comes to him with so much force. He supposes it has something to do with the fact that Nathan is dead, and he’s about to join him.
Peter takes the gun from his pocket and breathes what could be his last breath. If his calculations are right, he should remain unconscious long enough to drown. Maybe it’ll work, or maybe not. He’s way past false hopes.
What he hasn’t accounted for, though, is the sound of the gun shot and the fact that the moment he falls unconscious, he’s not invisible anymore, therefore extremely visible and audible to the hundreds of people in the hundreds of cars waiting in line on the bridge.
*
His not very subtle dive from the Brooklyn Bridge earns him a theatrical recapture from the waters and an imprisonment in a very special prison/mental health institute in New York, until he manages to escape through a combination of abilities.
He almost feels sorry for the young agents and doctors who thought they could make their careers by catching and studying the uncatchable.
In addition to being at the top of Evolved United’s list, he is now at the top of the FBI’s and probably the CIA’s and more. He doesn’t quite understand why everybody wants him so badly - because he could be extremely useful or because he could be extremely dangerous?
He goes back to Europe, first settling in Utrecht, then in Corke, then in Rome, then in Ljubljana, then in Edinburgh. In short, every place that brings back strong memories.
*
In Edinburgh he walks in on a young woman searching his apartment.
It amuses him, so he watches her for a few minutes and realizes her face is familiar. He freezes time and searches the pockets of her trench coat for ID.
Clémence Wernaer, Evolved United.
The name rings a bell, so he deduces that she must be one of the promising recruits who’s been at his heels lately.
Fond of making fun of all the idiots still trying to catch him, he makes himself visible and starts time again, standing with his arms crossed just a few inches from her. She jumps and lets out a scream of surprise loud enough to make him step back.
Peter doesn’t have the time to form a single thought before his entire perceptual field disappears around him. He can’t see, hear, or feel anything anymore. For endless minutes, there is nothing more than his thoughts bumping into each other, panicked by the total lack of sensation. In the middle of this perceptual nothingness, he tries to move, but he can’t feel his body, as if his members, viscera, soul and the entire outside world don’t exist anymore. He tries to deploy the whole of his abilities at once, but he is still cut off from any external or internal stimuli.
And suddenly he finds his senses again. He regains consciousness of the contact of his knees and hands against the floor, of the smell of his own apartment he thought was scentless and of the taste of his own saliva he thought was tasteless. He looks up and sees the young woman lying at the bottom of the wall, seemingly dead. He realizes that he’d propelled her with telekinesis and that her bewitchment probably broke when she lost consciousness.
Propelling people against walls is something he has done a million times in his multiple careers, most of the time only to scare them or to get them out of his way. He did injure a few, but that was rarely his purpose. He has been pissed off and lost control, but he’s never, ever had knocked someone out brutally enough to send them into unconsciousness.
Maybe that’s the reason why he feels his stomach hurt at the sight of the lifeless body on the other side of the room. Or maybe it’s because she’s a woman - is that considered sexism in 2153? He stops wondering and crawls to her side to check her vital signs. She’s alive, but in a bad shape.
What a surprise it is for the young people at Edinburgh’s Evolved United to see none other than Peter Petrelli enter their quarters carrying Clémence Wernaer in his arms. They all look at him, eyes wide open in shock as he sets her down at his feet. One of them runs to the injured woman and thanks him for bringing her back.
‘It’s nothing,’ he says, looking down. It would take too long to explain how grateful he is that she made him feel dead for a few seconds.
‘She’s good. She… kind of had me for a minute.’ He takes his leave and says ‘Just don’t send anyone else’ before going out, realizing it’s the first time he has talked to anyone in thirty years.
*
He keeps surrounding himself with images of bygone days, but something in him has changed since the incident. Memories are not enough to fill his days anymore. Having nothing to lose, he shows back up at Evolved United in Edinburgh. It is a brand new branch, counting young and inexperienced but dynamic recruits. Their quarter is nothing but a small and shady basement they’ve decorated with posters and flags, yet Peter thinks it’s a welcoming place.
At first he shows up now and then, when he feels like it, and stands aside. He listens a lot and rarely speaks, takes part in the operations that please him and displays a half smile when he knows that the youngsters’ plans are destined for failure.
The thing is, however silent he remains most of the time, when he does speak, they listen. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say they drink his words in and follow him blindly. They look forward to hearing his views and seek his opinion. They respect his integrity - with the abilities he has, he could rule the world, yet he doesn’t! It’s not without surprise that he realizes every one of them admire him and some even venerate him. He doesn’t know when and how it happened, but he has to admit it: he’s a legend.
For those young idealists with surprising talents, he’s a role model. He’s the hero of today’s heroes. Cute, isn’t it? he thinks, detached.
One day, someone tackles the subject of God’s existence, and everybody agrees that no
evolved individual can afford to believe.
To their great surprise, the least enthusiastic atheist is their immortal and almighty elder.
‘I don’t know if God exists,’ Peter says, ‘but if He does, He sucks big time… Or He’s a cruel bastard.’
*
As proud as the whole gang is to have Peter among them, Clémence Wernaer is particularly proud that she was the one who half-caught him.
He is told that she used to live in Belgium and used her ability to help those suffering from chronic pain when the United parent company approached her two years earlier. They’d thought she was the only one whose ability could match or neutralize Peter’s.
From his point of view, she should be the one the others admired, the one they listened to and made their leader, not him and his gloomy face. But even she seems convinced that he is the greatest of the great and the wisest of the wise.
Soon he notices that her admiration isn’t just admiration anymore. When he shakes his head and says ‘you worship me too much’, she looks at him with bright eyes, as if he was the eighth wonder of the world.
‘No I don’t,’ she answers, suffused with peaceful conviction.
He tries to put a name on this form of worship Clémence seems to have for him. Caitlin used to look at him like he was a blessing when most of the time he was a curse, but never had she looked at him in this unnameable way. He’s pretty sure no one has ever looked at him like that, like his mere existence overjoys them. Like he is their personal hero.
If someone had, he would remember.
Because in truth, he likes it. A lot.
*
Several times he catches Clémence staring at him. When his eyes meet hers, she averts her gaze and blushes behind her freckles.
That’s how he discovers a new ability of his: the power of his smile. He seldom smiles, so every time he does smile at her - and yes, he does it on purpose - he can swear he’s just made her day.
One evening, her look is so insisting and languorous that he can’t deny it anymore. This brilliant and charming lady is actually in love with him, and he’s pretty certain she doesn’t see him as a 170 years old man.
That may be what wakes the thirty-year-old in him. He tells her he has something to show her in the stock room, and she follows him like a young girl would follow her rock star idol.
If he was a few decades younger, he’d think he was way too old.
As soon as the door is shut behind them, he grabs her by the shirt and kisses her with a fever he didn’t think himself capable of anymore.
‘Can you love a very old man?’ he says, catching his breath.
‘Can you stop time for a little while?’ she answers.
*
Peter doesn’t prove to be very good at the whole rock star thing since he spends four years with Clémence.
After making love, he lies on her breast, and she caresses his forehead until he falls asleep. He often asks her to use her ability on him so that his senses are numbed, and he can forget he exists. Peter enjoys this bizarre ritual that makes him go from feeling extremely alive to feeling dead, as if he can’t bear everything in between.
With the passing of time, he begins smiling without even realizing it. He even starts laughing again. He starts training recruits, planning operations, becoming the mastermind of Edinburgh’s Evolved United. Before he knows it, he doesn’t ask Clémence to use her ability on him anymore.
For her part, she would like to start a family and brings up the subject more and more often. He explains that she’s not the problem, that it’s him, that he can’t bear to watch a child of his own die again.
She understands, but he notices the way she looks at children and pregnant women and tries to not hear the glaring craving for maternity that constantly resonates in the back of her mind.
It is no surprise for Peter the day she takes his hands and forces him to sit beside her. The tears roll like a river on her cheeks as she tells him that she’s leaving him, that she can’t wait for her life anymore. Her pain is real, he can feel it, and so is her fear. She fears he will get angry and lose it and hurt her. He feels disgusted with himself - what kind of man is he to scare the only person he has in the world?
She swears to be careful, and he swears to not spy on her. He wishes her good luck and tells her he’ll miss her. He tells himself he’ll miss her ability, too.
*
Clémence’s departure marks the end of his resurface phase.
He becomes invisible again, witnesses the activities of a generation of people he now knows he cannot mix with anymore.
He’s had his ‘last remission’. He came back for a while to better leave.
He wanders for weeks, the time it takes to plan his very last grand adventure: the quest for the spot.
He’s going to fight The Cruel Bastard. He will find a way to die; that’s his new purpose in life.
*
He asks Joe to do him the favor of finding the spot. As expected, Joe refuses and begs him to stay, calling upon all the ones who need him.
Someone somewhere will always need him, Joe insists. Only, Peter has heard that one too many times.
So he steps to his next plan, which is nearly as simple.
*
He throws down the jute bag on the table. The leader of the gang makes a sign to one of his men who immediately moves closer and starts counting the money.
‘25 000 euros,’ Peter states.
‘For what kind of job?’, the man asks.
‘Basically, killing me.’
The man frowns and scratches his balding forehead. ‘Killing you! Is that poetry or
something? You know, we’re simple people. Please go straight to the point…’
‘No, I really want you to shoot me and make sure I’m as dead as I can be. I’ll tell you exactly what to do.’
‘Why would you pay someone to kill you?,’ asks the man, almost amused.
‘Because I need to die,’ Peter answers matter-of-factly. ‘Do you really want to hear the story of my life before doing this business?’
The man scrutinizes him for a few seconds and lets out a nonchalant laugh.
‘No way. Look, I’m sorry that your life sucks, but jump off a bridge or swallow some pills, I don’t know.’
‘You’ll spit on 25 000 euros easily earned?’ Peter says. Easily stolen, he thinks, glad Alice isn’t watching.
‘Yeah, I don’t know who you’re working for, but I’m not falling for your trap.’
After several minutes of arguing, Peter reaches the limit of his patience.
In a fraction of a second, the knife hidden in the pocket of the man standing near the door is on the table, and Peter is opening the skin of his arm along its length. The men step back, shocked but fascinated as they watch the wound close up spontaneously.
‘Believe me now?’
‘Yeah, and that’s exactly why I won’t do it,’ the man answers. ‘Killing a man who can’t get killed? Couldn’t sound more like a frame. Who’s sending you? What do you want?’
The man doesn’t have the time to finish his sentence before he finds himself pinned to the wall and unable to breathe. As the room goes dark, his men are propelled to every corner.
‘I am not working for anyone. If I wanted to turn you in you and your mob, I could do it in a snap. You could blink and find yourself and your buddies in a cell or lethally electrocuted. So as you may have understood by now, I can get anything I want except death. So do yourself a favor.’
The lights come on again, and the man falls on the ground. Peter doesn’t wait for him to get back on his feet before sitting down and giving his instructions.
‘There’s a spot in the back of my head, I don’t know exactly where it is but you need to find it. If you see me regenerate, you have to shoot me again and again until my eyes turn white. That’ll mean I’m dead. The next thing you need to do is make sure no one retrieves the bullet. Do whatever you want with my body, as long as you make it impossible for the bullet to be retrieved. If you don’t, I will come back, and believe me, I will haunt you.’
*
All he can see is the men’s shoes coming and going. All he can hear is the babble of everybody shouting over everyone else. Things like ‘Jesus’ and ‘Holy fuck,’ and ‘That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.’ Some seem to argue. He can hear a man saying ‘Stop it, it’s useless’ over another saying ‘That’s just impossible’.
A few minutes later, a face appears close to his.
‘I’m sorry, man. There is no spot.’
*
He exits the basement, leaving everything behind: the money, the gun, even his coat. Like a zombie, he staggers to the door, completely confused. He has just taken 23 bullets in the head, and although he knows his flesh is everything-proof, he feels like he has just been through a cranial trauma.
Outside, the midday sunlight is so bold and aggressive that everything appears white. He makes a few steps towards the street, his hand covering his eyes against the blinding rays. As he totters, some people look at him with curiosity, others with horror. It is then that he looks down and realizes he’s covered with blood from head to waist. He shouldn’t care, but a word hits his mind forcefully.
‘O Negative.’
His eyes lock on his bloody hands, a series of images streaming into his mind with surgical precision. The same acrid smell, the same viscosity and sticky sensation against his temples. The déjà vu impression is so intense that he falls to his knees. The memories assailing him have nothing to do with his precedent rebirths. They are from a far older time.
He recognizes his own hands. The same hands with the same blood. His very first rebirth. His original regeneration. The very first time he felt his broken body rebuild itself in the middle of the blackish pool of his precious blood on the ground of Union Wells High School stadium. His very first immortal breath.
There’s always someone somewhere who needs you…
The revelation hits him so hard that if he wasn’t already down, he would collapse again.
‘Claire.’
*
The first thing he does is not getting rid of his stained clothes or taking a hot shower, because this prosaic reality is secondary to the immensity of his regained memories. He searches for his old sketchbooks, holding the drawings of his past in front of him as tears well up in his eyes.
He recognizes everything.
All the impressions, reactions and emotions he couldn’t explain to himself now make sense.
Engrossed, he spends weeks drawing the past, not to live it anymore but for the mere joy of remembering. And then, in the middle of all the monochromatic, detail-rich sketches in Alice’s style appears a colorful drawing. Naive and dramatic, drawn in the style of Isaac Mendez.
Claire, sitting on a wrought-iron bench near Charles Bridge in Prague, her hair floating in the wind. Her smile is no longer sad, and her eyes are no longer innocent. For the rest, he can tell she hasn’t changed.
Vivid before his eyes, past and future meet.
Now he has both.
The End.
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairings: Peter/other character, Peter/Caitlin, Peter/Claire
Rating: R (adult themes, violence)
Disclaimer: No money is made. Only fun.
Spoilers: AU from 2.06 - The Line, which means Adam doesn’t exist and Peter doesn’t find his memory back.
Summary: Nothing lasts forever, everybody knows that. He just thinks it’s unfair that only the exception can witness how merciless the rule is.
Archiving: heroes_fic, heroes_peter, peter_otp, paire_love, peter_caitlin.
Author’s Notes:
A while ago, saestina wrote Face in the Crowd, a fabulous fic about Claire struggling with immortality. She gave me the nod to write Peter’s part, and this is it!
Thanks to her for the beta-read, of course, and for poking my muse with her amazing fic.
Face in the Crowd by saestina
O Negative
Peter is O negative.
Those gifted with O negative blood type are the only ones whose blood matches everyone else’s. That’s why they are called universal donors.
A lot of people told Peter to avoid blood drives because once they donate, the medical authorities never miss an opportunity to harass universal donors in order to have more of their blood.
As soon as he turned 18, he went anyway. He felt like he had a duty, like he was granted with a blood he couldn’t not share without feeling guilty. So he went, all smiling crookedly and thanking the nurses for their voluntary work while he sat happily in the blue armchair as they inserted the syringe in his arm. As predicted, they called him again a few months later, requesting more of his blood. So he went again. And again. And again. Until he got fed up and told them that ‘there’s only so much blood one man can give’ dryly over the phone, but they kept trying anyway.
He liked to help, to feel useful, but sometimes his universal blood felt more like a curse than a gift, and he wished he had another blood type. Those A negatives and B positives seemed so much more free than he was, because they could be the average, occasional donors. They could choose to give or not to give.
When he became a nurse, he joined the voluntary staff every time there was a blood drive in town. He was glad to help, but he was also glad to avoid being in the armchair. After all, it was the only way to evade it. The only effective way to stop being the giver was to become the taker.
There was no middle camp for special donors.
Of course, Peter doesn’t remember any of this today. He doesn’t know his blood type, and he doesn’t even know that he had been a nurse. He knows exactly what to do if someone faints, gets burned, gets cut or chokes, but he doesn’t know how he knows it. He knows his body rejects bullets and tattoos, but he doesn’t know much more about his own flesh.
His hand freezes in the act of shaving, and he turns his face towards the mirror. Once more, the cut he just accidentally made near his jaw has immediately disappeared. He glances at the razor he’s still holding in his hand and notices the red stains on the blades.
He doesn’t remember the first time he shaved and how he learned. Did someone show him - a father, an older brother maybe - or did he learn by himself? He knows that if he bled normally, he would need nothing more than a cloth of cold water or a tissue. Yet he’s not sure if he knows this because he used to bleed like a normal person or if it’s just another piece of trivia from the what-to-do-when-someone-gets-cut part of his brain.
He puts the razor down, leans against the counter and sighs as he stares into his own eyes
through the mirror.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
*
The sirens of ambulances and police cars follow one another. Crescendo, decrescendo. In the distance, the passing of cars and the horns of taxis form a background noise that Peter doesn’t notice. The sounds of the city-that-doesn’t-sleep simply do not reach to his conscience. That’s how he knows he’s a true New Yorker.
There are seven different cereal boxes in his pantry. That’s how he knows he doesn’t enjoy cooking much.
He’s only beginning to associate all the things that people say about him with the reflection he sees in the mirror. Most of the time he doesn’t understand the things they say, but even when their words make sense to him, they’re never like real memories. He makes it his duty to watch all the movies he owns in his library, and he doesn’t understand why some move him more than others. He wants to clean up his place and get rid of the things he considers useless, yet the mere thought of throwing them away makes his stomach hurt. And that’s something no one can explain to him.
He knows his abilities are a blessing. He knows it because everybody keeps telling him. When Peter confesses he’s not sure he’s doing what he’s meant to, Nathan says he never has. When he says that it’s because he doesn’t know himself enough yet, that there are still too many pieces missing in the puzzle of his life, Nathan answers that his abilities were the piece that had been missing his whole life.
Nathan says he’s doing exactly what he wanted, but Peter doubts he’d been a big enough
dreamer to think he would one day practice heroism as a job.
The thought amuses him. Special Agent, that’s what’s written on his paycheck.
When Matt Parkman offers him a job in the Public Security, which will give him access to privileged information and resources in order to save the world, he accepts it with enthusiasm.
After all, every day of the year and every hour of the day someone somewhere needs him.
Only, no one warns him about the volume of work. Because he is physically inexhaustible, no one cares about his work conditions, and he quickly sets records of overtime.
He’s not the first one to go from eager worker to unsatisfied employee, but that’s not something one would expect of Superman. Apparently, when routine settles in, even saving the world can become nothing more than a job. But his main dissatisfaction probably comes from the fact that saving the world never really makes it better a place. It only keeps it the way it is, maintains a status quo that rarely improves. He feels like every time he patches a hole somewhere, something rips apart somewhere else.
*
‘The twenty-one year old man has been apprehended this morning in Oakland. Authorities still don’t know how he managed to freeze his victims…’
‘Turn it off,’ Caitlin says, obviously bored.
‘You’re closer to the remote,’ Peter answers, half asleep against her shoulder.
‘You can shut it with your mind,’ Caitlin retorts.
Peter sighs, gets off the couch, walks to the TV and pushes the power button.
‘I’ve been using my mind all day,’ he says, walking towards the bathroom.
‘Well, if only you had chosen a normal job in the first place…’
‘Don’t start again.’
Peter probably would answer with something more elaborate if he didn’t just realize that his toothbrush is still packed in his travel bag.
‘Can I use your toothbrush?’ he calls out from the bathroom, too tired to even consider retrieving his own.
‘Sure. Make yourself at home,’ she answers sarcastically.
*
He’s been watching the water roll down the street through the window for about fifteen minutes. His eyes still blurred with sleepiness, he doesn’t even think to drink the coffee he’s holding with one hand. He suddenly wakes up from his torpor and hits his forehead with his other hand.
‘Oh shit. Hurry up, there’s a viaduct about to collapse in San Francisco!’
Three months later, Caitlin catches him staring at the yellow leaves piling up on the lawn across the street instead of making himself ready for a super urgent mission. He doesn’t wait for her to ask him what he’s doing.
‘I think I’m becoming cynical,’ he states.
*
Peter has now three purposes in life:
1) Learning as much as possible about who he used to be;
2) Deciding what he’ll do once the world finally gets better;
3) Staying in bed with Caitlin as late as possible in the morning;
none of which he manages to do as much as he’d like. And none of which includes saving the world.
Only, the world has other ideas.
*
He celebrates his 30th birthday like a kid attempting to smile as he unwraps an undesired Christmas gift. In spite of the pats in the back and the champagne flowing like water, he can’t chase away the thought that his best years may be behind him, and he can’t even remember them.
The emptiness and confusion caused by his memory wipe are appeased a bit with Virginia’s birth. The recovery of his memories doesn’t have the same importance now that he has new and beautiful ones to create for his daughter.
*
Unfortunately, the world doesn’t get better.
They may improve the infrastructure, hire more and more employees and train more and more recruits, but it makes no difference. No one can replace Peter Petrelli.
You promised your nephew you’d bring him to the zoo for his birthday? That’s unfortunate, because if you don’t get your ass in Madison High School right now, there will be gunfire that will kill twenty-six and injure another forty-seven. Your wife is delivering your second child? That’s very touching, but hurricane Vince is about to hit Florida and the whole evacuation process will be useless without a semi-god’s intervention. You’re tired? You need a vacation? Understood, but right now there’s a software terrorist who has infiltrated the Stock Exchange network and threatens to cause an economic crash worthy of 1929.
Peter does what they tell him he’s always done. He sighs and goes on saving the world.
*
One day he learns that a teenaged boy he saved from death eight years ago is now the leader of a neo-Nazi group that’s about to launch a sophisticated brand of anthrax in schools with high ethnicity populations. In light of what they know about his ability, it’s very likely that Peter will have to wound him seriously.
That’s where he truly starts fathoming the meaning of the word desensitization.
*
That’s around the period where he swears reading small characters gives him headaches and therefore buys reading glasses. That’s also around the time he grows a beard. He says he does it in order to save time in the morning, but in truth he does it to appease Caitlin’s discomfort in not finding wrinkles on his face while she finds more and more on hers.
He attributes this to his rapid cellular regeneration but only in an indirect way. He supposes that because his body is inexhaustible, it doesn’t keep the traces of tiredness that would only emphasize the more subtle traces of his aging.
To Nathan, seeing his brother’s new facial hair immediately recalls the time when he himself wore an impressive beard.
‘Are you sure you’re alright, Pete?’ Nathan worries. ‘You’re not doing a burn-out or something?’
Peter takes a few seconds to think.
‘That’s a good question.’
*
When Alice speaks about her dad’s powers in kindergarten, everybody thinks it’s very cute.
‘Your Daddy does magic tricks?’ the tutors ask.
For Virginia’s part, she’s stopped talking about her father’s abilities since it isn’t logical to not believe in Santa Claus anymore but to still believe your daddy can fly.
One day, Alice asks why he doesn’t use his powers to make them millionaires. He takes her on his knees and tries to make her understand why stealing is bad. Seeing her half-understanding, he adds ‘what would Daddy do with a million dollars anyway, huh?’
‘You wouldn’t work anymore,’ she says with a sad pout.
*
The straw that breaks the camel’s back occurs when he has to stop a ruthless rapist in California and therefore cannot save a school bus from an avalanche in Vermont.
He shows up in his boss’ office with a resignation letter and states his conditions for staying clearly: he saves the world from Monday to Friday, between 8 AM and 9 PM. For the rest, the world had better be truly ending since he has two young daughters he would very much like to see grow up.
He may be the most powerful man in the world, he says, but he’s still a family guy first and for all.
Oh, and just because he doesn’t get rings under his eyes doesn’t mean he isn’t tired.
*
For the first time in a lifetime, he can finally go to the school meetings, attend to Virginia’s ballet recital and drive Alice to her swimming lessons on Saturday mornings.
He doesn’t pay too much attention to the other parents’ thoughts about how young he looks to have children that old and all the prejudices that go with them.
Anyway, it’s not like he’s going to make the effort of using his abilities outside of work.
*
One day they give him an office with his name on the door. He thinks it’s funny - it’s not like his job is about paper work - but it amuses him to have a place where he can put Alice’s drawings. Until the day he recognizes his mother in one of the drawings.
First he is intrigued by the strange pleasure his six-year-old daughter takes in drawing a grandmother she hasn’t even known, but then he worries. The monochromatic and detailed portraits and scenes Alice draws show a young and elegant woman who doesn’t
resemble the old lady in fur coats he knew during the last years of her life.
When Nathan sees the drawings, he wipes a tear from the corner of his eyes and confirms that they well and truly show scenes of their childhood.
Alice can draw the past.
Someone who has great ambitions for his child would have preferred her to have another kind of ability. But for a man who lost his memory, there could be no more beautiful gift.
*
Thanks to his daughter’s ability that he is now able to control better and better, Peter knows the face of all those he has gained an ability by.
When he asks Nathan who the distressed cheerleader is, his brother shrugs.
‘Just a girl you saved in Texas. She’s vanished.’
He doesn’t bother listening to Nathan’s thoughts in that moment, because why would he lie about that?
*
He always uses his mind-reading ability with civility, when he suspects that people are lying or hiding something, for instance. The rest of the time, he turns it off just like most of his abilities. However, he sometimes catches people’s thoughts before he has the time to turn it off.
Nathan often thinks about a teenager with golden curls and big green eyes. Peter supposes that she was his famous first love or a girl he crushed over when he was young. He thinks it’s very cute, but really, it’s none of his business.
The only moments when he uses his mind-reading without restraint is when he chases
dangerous people and when Virginia brings a new boyfriend home.
That may be the reason why Virginia’s boyfriends never last.
*
When the beard becomes fashionable again with teenagers and university students, Peter is forced to shave off the last thing that allowed him to maintain a certain normality for his family.
Hands on his hips, he stares at the reflection of his freshly shaven face with severity. He calls for Caitlin, and she rushes into the bathroom, worried.
‘What is it?’
He turns around and crosses his arms, averting his gaze.
‘Seriously, do I look like a forty-four year old man?’
She slowly shakes her head, as if she’s been fearing that moment longer than he
knows.
The doctors he consults the next day do nothing to clarify the situation. They have never seen any case like this, they have no certitude, they don’t dare to speculate too much, blah blah. The only thing they can assert is that his skeleton is twenty-seven years old, and he really doesn’t need the reading glasses he brings with him everywhere.
‘But I do age, right?’ he insists.
The sorry shrugs of the experts don’t satisfy him, and the few bad jokes about the night cream he’s going to save don’t amuse him.
He hears a slightly envious feeling in the mind of one of the doctors, and he admits to himself that he should at least feel a tiny bit of joy, but in truth, he’s nothing but terrified.
*
At first, they all treat it like a weird game. The girls find it amusing to call him Peter instead of Dad, and Caitlin finds it amusing to make-believe she’s dating a man fifteen years younger than her. Only, the game gets old faster than they had expected.
The girls don’t know how to answer their friends when they say things like ‘Why do you listen to him? He’s not even your father!’ It becomes even more disturbing when Virginia’s best friend admits to finding her mom’s boyfriend cute.
‘People look at me like I’m a pervert,’ Caitlin confesses one day.
‘But aren’t you?’
‘Shut up, young man,’ she jokes. Because joking is the last thing they can do before reaching the point where they’ll have to pretend to be nephew and aunt.
*
When a megalomaniac tyrant is elected for president and a paranoiac is appointed to head of the FBI, Peter has enough insider information to foresee what the next step will be. The government can’t really get to him, but they can get to his children, and as far as he knows, he won’t be there forever to protect them. So in three weeks, the lease is canceled, their things packed, the money transferred, and Peter and Caitlin leave America almost as quickly as they had arrived twenty years ago.
They expect their teenage kids to whine and sulk, but the girls understand that it’s for their own safety and both seem to mature five years in a few months.
Ireland is the most obvious destination, but Peter knows the government will look for him
everywhere and Corke will be the first place they look, so they settle in Edinburgh instead for the simple reason that Caitlin has always loved the city.
In Edinburgh, Peter goes back to nursing, which almost feels like vacation, and Caitlin opens a small café she ironically calls Café Montréal.
They are just starting to adapt to their new European life when the "American Witch Hunt for the Specials" hits the news on a random Tuesday evening. No one says a word, but they all think that it was a close shave.
*
When both their girls make it to college, they decide it’s time to move again. Virginia is in Birmingham and Alice is in Oxford - no less - so they settle in between, very aware that it won’t be for long.
*
Peter walks Alice down the aisle, and it would almost be a normal wedding if only he wasn’t pretending to be her brother. He smiles in amusement when the priest talks about him as if he were dead.
How sorry I am that Mr. Petrelli couldn’t be among us today, but I am confident that he’s watching us from above.
Oh yeah, he’s watching. And he’s listening. Unlike Virginia, Alice never wanted to hear a word of what her father thought of her boyfriends. Now his baby girl is about to vow eternal love to a man he’s heard enough thoughts from to know exactly why they won’t last.
But she’s happy, and that’s all that matters for now. And really, it could be worse.
*
When they have lived in every big city in the UK, they start trying other countries, which is stressful because of the language but pleasing because of the weather. They even try Slovenia because they’ve never heard about it, and this random choice proves to be the best so far. Caitlin often complains that she’s too old to move so often, so they decide to settle in the Netherlands for good, where they can be special without anyone caring.
In Utrecht they discover a small organization called Evolved United whose mission is to help evolved individuals in more repressive countries and defend their rights. Peter embarks on a few occasional missions, and his services are so useful that he is rapidly promoted to mission chief.
For the first time in sixty-two years of existence, he finally feels like he’s doing what he’s meant to do. He doesn’t try to stop hurricanes anymore, but he still saves a significant part of the world in a way that allows him to connect with people.
He and Caitlin are conscious of living an amazing life until Peter starts having nightmares again, all of them of Alice and her baby boy.
He flies to London where she works at the British Museum with the finest historians in the world (while her husband doesn’t do much, but that’s something he tries to not think about too much), pretending to just miss his "sister" and "nephew". The "missing" part, at least, isn’t a lie.
He spends three months with them until the nightmares stop. He then goes back to Utrecht, his mind half-salved.
*
Peter never hurts anyone unless they’re really bad guys. When he learns the news of his daughter and grandson’s death in a car accident, though, a few people get propelled away into walls.
*
Following Alice’s death, it takes eight doctors and a gargantuan dose of Haitian pills to stop him from traveling back to undo the accident.
The first time he and Caitlin attend group therapy for parents who’ve lost a child, they pretend to not know each other in order to avoid questions. They pretend it’s only a coincidence if they both lost their daughters in recent car accidents. Hers was thirty-four while he says his was six. The other members of the group don’t suspect anything until it slips out that Peter’s daughter ‘was the one driving’.
Later they find another kind of group therapy. It is based on prayer, but they decide to try it anyway. Everybody agrees that children are not meant to die before their parents, that it’s not natural, that it’s a mistake. Most also agree that their children didn’t belong to them and that God only lent them for awhile; those who don’t believe in God acknowledge that the next step for them will be to find faith again.
Only Peter’s genes don’t allow him to believe in God. ‘I’m a Darwinian and I’ve never been so proud of it,’ he spits bitterly when his turn to speak comes.
It’s no surprise that this second group therapy is also aborted.
Eventually, he does learn to live with his guilt and finally admits that he’s not responsible for his daughter’s death, thanks to three psychiatrists, eight psychologists and fourteen years of individual therapy. But does he really get over it?
*
When Nathan dies, it doesn’t crush him like his daughter’s death did, but although distance has kept them apart for the past decades, he is nonetheless devastated.
He then realizes that no matter how long you lived, the first decades of your life are still determining more than half the things you do. After eighty-two years of living, there are still too many pieces missing and seeing some of them in drawings is just not enough.
*
After Caitlin dies, he stops painting the future. He prefers the past.
*
For the next twenty-three years, Evolved United and saving people like himself from inhuman treatments becomes his life. The organization now has branches all over the world except in the countries where the repression is too intense for them to set up.
The US is still one of those countries, and although it is unlikely that they torture or terminate people because of their DNA, he knows absolutely nothing of what has become of his nephews.
When he finally comes across the list of evolved Americans, he skims through it with
anxiousness until he gets to the letter P.
…
Eva Petrelli Deceased
David Petrelli Deceased
Monty Petrelli Deceased
Nathan Petrelli Deceased
Peter Petrelli Deceased (really?)
Simon Petrelli Deceased
Steve Petrelli Trenton, NJ
….
He closes his eyes for a moment. That’s about what he was expecting, but to see a stroke over the names of so many people he has or could have known somehow makes it more definite. More inevitable. Every name that appears on any list will disappear from it some day. Nothing lasts forever, everybody knows that. He just thinks it’s unfair that only the exception can witness how merciless the rule is.
A few hours of research and he finds out that Steve Petrelli is a twelve years old kid who lives somewhere in New Jersey with his mother, Kim Richards, ex-wife of Julian Petrelli, son of David Petrelli, son of Simon Petrelli, son of Nathan Petrelli.
He saves the information in the useless-things-that-could-become-paramount-some-day part of his brain.
*
He works so unrelentingly that his bosses have to force him to take vacations until Virginia’s sickness becomes too advanced, and he has to quit in order to take care of her.
She’s just had her sixth transfusion of his blood in two days when Peter lets the word ‘dying’ pierce through all the layers of denial he has coated his conscience with over the years. At the rare moments when she opens her eyes, he rushes to her side and bombards her with desperate hugs, rather inefficient care and repetitive questions about how she feels and what she needs.
She doesn’t have the strength to answer aloud, but he hears her answer in her thoughts.
‘I don’t need anything, Dad. Right now I think I can do more for you than you can do for me.’
Two days later her eyes open wide, and she looks at him with pity.
‘I’m sorry to leave you alone, Daddy. I’m so so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ she thinks, unable to stop the motto.
The doctors tell Peter that she is living her last hours. They are wrong, since her condition starts getting better during the night. The next day she starts talking again, and three days later she can eat normally.
Peter sees this like a miracle. He promises God to believe in Him again against all logic if only He lets his daughter live for a bit longer.
He spends a week of ecstatic joy, watching his ninety-four year old baby be reborn again before his eyes. Incapable of letting go of her hand, he covers her with ridiculous attentions and starts making plans for them. He will take care of her all the time and build a palace in the countryside and travel all around the world with her, although he’s not supposed to use this ability for anything else but the common good.
And then one morning, her condition worsens again.
When she lets out her very last sigh, he silently holds her against his shoulder. He doesn’t say a word. All he does is shake his head in refusal and denial. He shakes his head for half an hour before a nurse puts a hand on his other shoulder.
She tries to explain to him that it’s normal, that it happens all the time. ‘They just come back for a while before going. It’s like they need to confirm that they can’t stay anymore.’
Peter knows. It’s called the ‘last remission’. Unfortunately, even former hospice nurses aren’t beyond false hopes.
‘You had to see this coming, son,’ the old nurse adds as if she was talking to a teenager. ‘Your grandmother was very sick. You know, she would have gone eventually. Everybody dies.’
Somehow in the middle of his sobs, he manages to let out a bitter laugh.
‘I wish that was true.’
*
No one hears of Peter Petrelli again. Newspapers and bills pile up in front of his door,
messages accumulate on his answering machine, and the list of evolved people in distress gets longer and longer.
It seems like Peter Petrelli has disappeared from the face of the Earth.
After a few years of absence, his name is struck off Evolved United’s list of mission chiefs. From now on, his name appears on the other list. The one of wanted evolved people. Once again, he goes from pursuer to pursued.
When they spare no expense and send their best recruits to look for him, he decides to go
back to the States. Traveling doesn’t stress him, because if anything goes wrong, he’s still an invisible flying man. As for the great repression, it doesn’t scare him either, because he’s so much more than just an invisible flying man.
*
Steve Petrelli lives two blocks away from his old apartment in Manhattan, and Peter takes it as a sign. When he knocks at his door and presents himself as his great-great-great-uncle, the young man shuts the door in his face. He spends two months trying to get in touch with him and explain to him that he only wants to know him, but Steve generally answers with something like ‘I don’t need no sugar daddy, I’m nobody’s bitch.’ In the face of his complete defeat, Peter decides that he will take care of his grand-grand-grand-nephew against his will if he has to.
After one week of searching and spying, he discovers that Steve Petrelli has the ability to play every song he has ever heard with just about every musical instrument existing. He also learns that Steve is a walking cliché : musician, unstable, junkie and gay. Not exactly what he was expecting of one of Nathan Petrelli’s heirs, but one thing is for sure: Steve needs help, and Peter has nothing else to do.
He cleans up his place and pays his rent, flushes his drugs and discourages his dubious company the best he can with the indirect means he has, but everything he does only makes Steve more unstable. The more Peter intervenes, the more Steve thinks he’s going crazy and the more he uses. When Peter tries to work it out by leaving a note saying that he’s Steve’s guardian angel, urging him to get clean and reminding him the importance of safe sex, Steve seems to hit the bottom. He goes straight into detox, saying that the shit is really messing with his head.
For eight months, Peter supports him in his hellish journey without being seen. When Steve gets out of rehabilitation, determined to stay clean, Peter realizes that he cannot show himself again without risking to ruin the fragile balance he had silently helped him build.
The satisfaction of having saved the last member of his family keeps Peter going for a short while, until there’s nowhere left to go.
*
Tears mist his reflection. He wipes them away, but every time his reflection appears more clearly he is overwhelmed with a new wave of sobs. For a moment he evaluates the potential efficacy of suicide by dehydration but concludes hastily that it would take way too long.
He knows there is a spot in the back of his head that just needs to be pushed to end his misery. It is one of the things he knows without knowing why he knows it.
He manages to regain some control over the shaking of his hands and places a second mirror at the nape of his neck. He grabs the gun with his other hand and aims it straight at the place he thinks is the infamous spot. He takes a few seconds to choose his last thoughts and shoots.
He wakes up thirty seconds later, shattered pieces of the small mirror surrounding him and red spatters of O negative blood covering the walls.
Desperation turns into rage and a sob turns into a scream as he throws away the gun hard
enough to make a hole in the wall.
*
After the fourth attempt, he doesn’t take the time to choose his last thoughts anymore.
*
From the Brooklyn Bridge he stares into the eye of New York City’s landscape. In times past, he thought of it as the city he didn’t blow up. Then he thought of it as the city he didn’t recognize. Today it’s the city that doesn’t need him anymore.
The frailty of life is so deeply anchored in us that there is something disturbing, even obscene, about a man who decides that his own flesh isn’t worth a thing. Yet, for a man who has valued life so much in the past, he is not the disturbed one.
He sometimes mistreat his body for no other reason than the fact that it’s of no consequence, although maybe he’s also punishing it for making him live a never-ending martyrdom.
For a decade, he spends his days drawing the past, trying desperately to live in it.
The rest of his time, he tries things, just to see if maybe this or that will work, hoping that one day he won’t wake up. Like the Brooklyn Bridge, for instance. Nathan always said he was drama queen anyway.
Surprisingly, the most useful ability to a suicidal man is invisibility. It allows him to hide from the attention of the kind souls who would try to protect him from himself. In short, the best way to become a ghost is to be one.
He stands and walks along the edge of the bridge. Every time he looks down he sees Nathan looking up, and he doesn’t understand why this image comes to him with so much force. He supposes it has something to do with the fact that Nathan is dead, and he’s about to join him.
Peter takes the gun from his pocket and breathes what could be his last breath. If his calculations are right, he should remain unconscious long enough to drown. Maybe it’ll work, or maybe not. He’s way past false hopes.
What he hasn’t accounted for, though, is the sound of the gun shot and the fact that the moment he falls unconscious, he’s not invisible anymore, therefore extremely visible and audible to the hundreds of people in the hundreds of cars waiting in line on the bridge.
*
His not very subtle dive from the Brooklyn Bridge earns him a theatrical recapture from the waters and an imprisonment in a very special prison/mental health institute in New York, until he manages to escape through a combination of abilities.
He almost feels sorry for the young agents and doctors who thought they could make their careers by catching and studying the uncatchable.
In addition to being at the top of Evolved United’s list, he is now at the top of the FBI’s and probably the CIA’s and more. He doesn’t quite understand why everybody wants him so badly - because he could be extremely useful or because he could be extremely dangerous?
He goes back to Europe, first settling in Utrecht, then in Corke, then in Rome, then in Ljubljana, then in Edinburgh. In short, every place that brings back strong memories.
*
In Edinburgh he walks in on a young woman searching his apartment.
It amuses him, so he watches her for a few minutes and realizes her face is familiar. He freezes time and searches the pockets of her trench coat for ID.
Clémence Wernaer, Evolved United.
The name rings a bell, so he deduces that she must be one of the promising recruits who’s been at his heels lately.
Fond of making fun of all the idiots still trying to catch him, he makes himself visible and starts time again, standing with his arms crossed just a few inches from her. She jumps and lets out a scream of surprise loud enough to make him step back.
Peter doesn’t have the time to form a single thought before his entire perceptual field disappears around him. He can’t see, hear, or feel anything anymore. For endless minutes, there is nothing more than his thoughts bumping into each other, panicked by the total lack of sensation. In the middle of this perceptual nothingness, he tries to move, but he can’t feel his body, as if his members, viscera, soul and the entire outside world don’t exist anymore. He tries to deploy the whole of his abilities at once, but he is still cut off from any external or internal stimuli.
And suddenly he finds his senses again. He regains consciousness of the contact of his knees and hands against the floor, of the smell of his own apartment he thought was scentless and of the taste of his own saliva he thought was tasteless. He looks up and sees the young woman lying at the bottom of the wall, seemingly dead. He realizes that he’d propelled her with telekinesis and that her bewitchment probably broke when she lost consciousness.
Propelling people against walls is something he has done a million times in his multiple careers, most of the time only to scare them or to get them out of his way. He did injure a few, but that was rarely his purpose. He has been pissed off and lost control, but he’s never, ever had knocked someone out brutally enough to send them into unconsciousness.
Maybe that’s the reason why he feels his stomach hurt at the sight of the lifeless body on the other side of the room. Or maybe it’s because she’s a woman - is that considered sexism in 2153? He stops wondering and crawls to her side to check her vital signs. She’s alive, but in a bad shape.
What a surprise it is for the young people at Edinburgh’s Evolved United to see none other than Peter Petrelli enter their quarters carrying Clémence Wernaer in his arms. They all look at him, eyes wide open in shock as he sets her down at his feet. One of them runs to the injured woman and thanks him for bringing her back.
‘It’s nothing,’ he says, looking down. It would take too long to explain how grateful he is that she made him feel dead for a few seconds.
‘She’s good. She… kind of had me for a minute.’ He takes his leave and says ‘Just don’t send anyone else’ before going out, realizing it’s the first time he has talked to anyone in thirty years.
*
He keeps surrounding himself with images of bygone days, but something in him has changed since the incident. Memories are not enough to fill his days anymore. Having nothing to lose, he shows back up at Evolved United in Edinburgh. It is a brand new branch, counting young and inexperienced but dynamic recruits. Their quarter is nothing but a small and shady basement they’ve decorated with posters and flags, yet Peter thinks it’s a welcoming place.
At first he shows up now and then, when he feels like it, and stands aside. He listens a lot and rarely speaks, takes part in the operations that please him and displays a half smile when he knows that the youngsters’ plans are destined for failure.
The thing is, however silent he remains most of the time, when he does speak, they listen. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say they drink his words in and follow him blindly. They look forward to hearing his views and seek his opinion. They respect his integrity - with the abilities he has, he could rule the world, yet he doesn’t! It’s not without surprise that he realizes every one of them admire him and some even venerate him. He doesn’t know when and how it happened, but he has to admit it: he’s a legend.
For those young idealists with surprising talents, he’s a role model. He’s the hero of today’s heroes. Cute, isn’t it? he thinks, detached.
One day, someone tackles the subject of God’s existence, and everybody agrees that no
evolved individual can afford to believe.
To their great surprise, the least enthusiastic atheist is their immortal and almighty elder.
‘I don’t know if God exists,’ Peter says, ‘but if He does, He sucks big time… Or He’s a cruel bastard.’
*
As proud as the whole gang is to have Peter among them, Clémence Wernaer is particularly proud that she was the one who half-caught him.
He is told that she used to live in Belgium and used her ability to help those suffering from chronic pain when the United parent company approached her two years earlier. They’d thought she was the only one whose ability could match or neutralize Peter’s.
From his point of view, she should be the one the others admired, the one they listened to and made their leader, not him and his gloomy face. But even she seems convinced that he is the greatest of the great and the wisest of the wise.
Soon he notices that her admiration isn’t just admiration anymore. When he shakes his head and says ‘you worship me too much’, she looks at him with bright eyes, as if he was the eighth wonder of the world.
‘No I don’t,’ she answers, suffused with peaceful conviction.
He tries to put a name on this form of worship Clémence seems to have for him. Caitlin used to look at him like he was a blessing when most of the time he was a curse, but never had she looked at him in this unnameable way. He’s pretty sure no one has ever looked at him like that, like his mere existence overjoys them. Like he is their personal hero.
If someone had, he would remember.
Because in truth, he likes it. A lot.
*
Several times he catches Clémence staring at him. When his eyes meet hers, she averts her gaze and blushes behind her freckles.
That’s how he discovers a new ability of his: the power of his smile. He seldom smiles, so every time he does smile at her - and yes, he does it on purpose - he can swear he’s just made her day.
One evening, her look is so insisting and languorous that he can’t deny it anymore. This brilliant and charming lady is actually in love with him, and he’s pretty certain she doesn’t see him as a 170 years old man.
That may be what wakes the thirty-year-old in him. He tells her he has something to show her in the stock room, and she follows him like a young girl would follow her rock star idol.
If he was a few decades younger, he’d think he was way too old.
As soon as the door is shut behind them, he grabs her by the shirt and kisses her with a fever he didn’t think himself capable of anymore.
‘Can you love a very old man?’ he says, catching his breath.
‘Can you stop time for a little while?’ she answers.
*
Peter doesn’t prove to be very good at the whole rock star thing since he spends four years with Clémence.
After making love, he lies on her breast, and she caresses his forehead until he falls asleep. He often asks her to use her ability on him so that his senses are numbed, and he can forget he exists. Peter enjoys this bizarre ritual that makes him go from feeling extremely alive to feeling dead, as if he can’t bear everything in between.
With the passing of time, he begins smiling without even realizing it. He even starts laughing again. He starts training recruits, planning operations, becoming the mastermind of Edinburgh’s Evolved United. Before he knows it, he doesn’t ask Clémence to use her ability on him anymore.
For her part, she would like to start a family and brings up the subject more and more often. He explains that she’s not the problem, that it’s him, that he can’t bear to watch a child of his own die again.
She understands, but he notices the way she looks at children and pregnant women and tries to not hear the glaring craving for maternity that constantly resonates in the back of her mind.
It is no surprise for Peter the day she takes his hands and forces him to sit beside her. The tears roll like a river on her cheeks as she tells him that she’s leaving him, that she can’t wait for her life anymore. Her pain is real, he can feel it, and so is her fear. She fears he will get angry and lose it and hurt her. He feels disgusted with himself - what kind of man is he to scare the only person he has in the world?
She swears to be careful, and he swears to not spy on her. He wishes her good luck and tells her he’ll miss her. He tells himself he’ll miss her ability, too.
*
Clémence’s departure marks the end of his resurface phase.
He becomes invisible again, witnesses the activities of a generation of people he now knows he cannot mix with anymore.
He’s had his ‘last remission’. He came back for a while to better leave.
He wanders for weeks, the time it takes to plan his very last grand adventure: the quest for the spot.
He’s going to fight The Cruel Bastard. He will find a way to die; that’s his new purpose in life.
*
He asks Joe to do him the favor of finding the spot. As expected, Joe refuses and begs him to stay, calling upon all the ones who need him.
Someone somewhere will always need him, Joe insists. Only, Peter has heard that one too many times.
So he steps to his next plan, which is nearly as simple.
*
He throws down the jute bag on the table. The leader of the gang makes a sign to one of his men who immediately moves closer and starts counting the money.
‘25 000 euros,’ Peter states.
‘For what kind of job?’, the man asks.
‘Basically, killing me.’
The man frowns and scratches his balding forehead. ‘Killing you! Is that poetry or
something? You know, we’re simple people. Please go straight to the point…’
‘No, I really want you to shoot me and make sure I’m as dead as I can be. I’ll tell you exactly what to do.’
‘Why would you pay someone to kill you?,’ asks the man, almost amused.
‘Because I need to die,’ Peter answers matter-of-factly. ‘Do you really want to hear the story of my life before doing this business?’
The man scrutinizes him for a few seconds and lets out a nonchalant laugh.
‘No way. Look, I’m sorry that your life sucks, but jump off a bridge or swallow some pills, I don’t know.’
‘You’ll spit on 25 000 euros easily earned?’ Peter says. Easily stolen, he thinks, glad Alice isn’t watching.
‘Yeah, I don’t know who you’re working for, but I’m not falling for your trap.’
After several minutes of arguing, Peter reaches the limit of his patience.
In a fraction of a second, the knife hidden in the pocket of the man standing near the door is on the table, and Peter is opening the skin of his arm along its length. The men step back, shocked but fascinated as they watch the wound close up spontaneously.
‘Believe me now?’
‘Yeah, and that’s exactly why I won’t do it,’ the man answers. ‘Killing a man who can’t get killed? Couldn’t sound more like a frame. Who’s sending you? What do you want?’
The man doesn’t have the time to finish his sentence before he finds himself pinned to the wall and unable to breathe. As the room goes dark, his men are propelled to every corner.
‘I am not working for anyone. If I wanted to turn you in you and your mob, I could do it in a snap. You could blink and find yourself and your buddies in a cell or lethally electrocuted. So as you may have understood by now, I can get anything I want except death. So do yourself a favor.’
The lights come on again, and the man falls on the ground. Peter doesn’t wait for him to get back on his feet before sitting down and giving his instructions.
‘There’s a spot in the back of my head, I don’t know exactly where it is but you need to find it. If you see me regenerate, you have to shoot me again and again until my eyes turn white. That’ll mean I’m dead. The next thing you need to do is make sure no one retrieves the bullet. Do whatever you want with my body, as long as you make it impossible for the bullet to be retrieved. If you don’t, I will come back, and believe me, I will haunt you.’
*
All he can see is the men’s shoes coming and going. All he can hear is the babble of everybody shouting over everyone else. Things like ‘Jesus’ and ‘Holy fuck,’ and ‘That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.’ Some seem to argue. He can hear a man saying ‘Stop it, it’s useless’ over another saying ‘That’s just impossible’.
A few minutes later, a face appears close to his.
‘I’m sorry, man. There is no spot.’
*
He exits the basement, leaving everything behind: the money, the gun, even his coat. Like a zombie, he staggers to the door, completely confused. He has just taken 23 bullets in the head, and although he knows his flesh is everything-proof, he feels like he has just been through a cranial trauma.
Outside, the midday sunlight is so bold and aggressive that everything appears white. He makes a few steps towards the street, his hand covering his eyes against the blinding rays. As he totters, some people look at him with curiosity, others with horror. It is then that he looks down and realizes he’s covered with blood from head to waist. He shouldn’t care, but a word hits his mind forcefully.
‘O Negative.’
His eyes lock on his bloody hands, a series of images streaming into his mind with surgical precision. The same acrid smell, the same viscosity and sticky sensation against his temples. The déjà vu impression is so intense that he falls to his knees. The memories assailing him have nothing to do with his precedent rebirths. They are from a far older time.
He recognizes his own hands. The same hands with the same blood. His very first rebirth. His original regeneration. The very first time he felt his broken body rebuild itself in the middle of the blackish pool of his precious blood on the ground of Union Wells High School stadium. His very first immortal breath.
There’s always someone somewhere who needs you…
The revelation hits him so hard that if he wasn’t already down, he would collapse again.
‘Claire.’
*
The first thing he does is not getting rid of his stained clothes or taking a hot shower, because this prosaic reality is secondary to the immensity of his regained memories. He searches for his old sketchbooks, holding the drawings of his past in front of him as tears well up in his eyes.
He recognizes everything.
All the impressions, reactions and emotions he couldn’t explain to himself now make sense.
Engrossed, he spends weeks drawing the past, not to live it anymore but for the mere joy of remembering. And then, in the middle of all the monochromatic, detail-rich sketches in Alice’s style appears a colorful drawing. Naive and dramatic, drawn in the style of Isaac Mendez.
Claire, sitting on a wrought-iron bench near Charles Bridge in Prague, her hair floating in the wind. Her smile is no longer sad, and her eyes are no longer innocent. For the rest, he can tell she hasn’t changed.
Vivid before his eyes, past and future meet.
Now he has both.
The End.