pairechallenge one-shot #14, "The Future": Lullabye
Title: Lullabye
Characters/Paring: Peter/Claire
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3418
Spoilers/Warnings: Some snippets from S1/2, but other than that nothing.
Summary: It all started with a message from the future: Don't fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes. :(
A/N: If you couldn't tell by the wordcount, I'm pretty sure this is the longest and most involved one-shot I've EVER written. The basic scraps of the idea (pretty much just the summary) were playing with me, but until "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" by BIlly Joel came on shuffle I had no inspiration. Then this came out. At the risk of sounding pretentious (I really hope I don't), I'm pretty sure this is the only thing I've ever written that has turned out exactly how I wanted it to. This is best read with the actual song playing in the background, so there'll be bit of a Youtube vid you can press play for. :) I really hope you guys like this! The lullaby is apparently an old Italian lullaby called "Stella Stellina," and the rough translation of the lyrics I used, according to the site I got it from, is this: "Star, little star / the night is approaching: / the flame is tottering"
someday we'll all be gone,
but lullabyes go on and on...
they never die;
that's how you and i
will be
--Billy Joel, "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)"
His future self’s words from so long ago rung in his head: Don’t fall in love with her. Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain. A beaten expression crossed over Peter’s face as he tucked Claire’s sleeping form more closely against him, and he tried hopelessly to stop the frenetic beating in his heart as she breathed gently against the crook of his neck.
Don’t fall in love with her, he had said in that cryptic way, and he hadn’t understood his words then. But he did now, and it cut him through his chest to think of what it meant. It will only bring her pain.
He loved her. Don’t fall in love with her. He craved her touch, her smile, her laughter, her friendship and companionship. It will only bring her pain. He needed her. He needed her and, somehow, Peter knew Claire needed him, too, in a way that completely defied any sense of normalcy they may have had left in their chaotic lives.
Don’t fall in love with her. It was too late. He already had, but he could still fix it. He could fix this. Whatever it was he had warned himself against could still be avoided. It will only bring her pain. It didn’t have to happen.
Peter Petrelli buried his face into Claire Bennet’s hair, breathing in her scent as if to last him a lifetime, and he found himself beginning to sing an old Italian lullaby his mother had often sang to him as a child under his breath; “Stella stellina... la notte si avvicina... la fiamma traballa.”
Don’t fall in love with her. His fingertips grazed her cheek as he pulled back, and he peered down at her face for just a moment more before sidling silently out of the bed and slipping his shirt on. It will only bring her pain.
“Ti amo. I love you, Claire,” he whispered, and he crept out of the lower section of the boat and onto the open deck outside. He made sure to check that the Virtuoso was tightly secure and that his car keys were easily seen before he lifted himself into the sky, letting the darkness envelop him completely as he flew away from his destiny.
Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.
--------------
He bumped into her in the hallway, and there was that spark -- that spark that was so often portrayed and spoken about in movies and books, but he had always believed to be a myth. He hadn’t been expecting it -- not here, not now -- but there it was, and some instinct from deep within bubbled up inside of him as he smiled at her, and she smiled at him.
“It gets better,” he told her, just so she would turn around and he could see her face again; so he could see that sad, little smile one last time before he died. “Life after high school. It gets a lot better.”
--------------
On the day she graduated from college he was in the crowd, watching the ceremony from the corner of the old, un-airconditioned gym. When he heard her name called he stood up straighter, peering over the heads of the other robed students as she crossed the makeshift stage, shook all the appropriate hands and received her diploma.
She smiled out at the crowd, but it wasn’t the radiant beaming smile he had expected it to be -- it was the same sad, little smile that he would always associate with her.
Peter let out a low, heavy breath as Claire disappeared down the other side of the stage and rejoined the sea of students.
He had told her that life after high school got better, so why was her smile still so sad?
--------------
“When I met you, I finally felt like I was part of something.”
He hated the sight of her tears, especially when he knew he couldn’t do anything to stop them; when he knew they were partly because of him. He wished he could just stop the world, for just the two of them, so he could take her in his arms and whisper to her that everything would be all right.
But he couldn’t do that -- not anymore -- so he did the next best thing; he brushed her tears away with the back of his hand, and if he lingered for a bit too long he didn’t care. “It’s funny,” he murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching up, “I felt the same thing when I met you.”
--------------
Claire’s wedding was beautiful. She wore her mother’s dress, and it fit all the curves of her body perfectly. It was an outdoor wedding, small, held in a quaint little park in Texas fifteen minutes away from where she had grown up. Her fiancé was tall and blonde with a face that looked perpetually angry even when he was smiling.
His name was Kyle, and Peter felt a twinge of hate stir inside of him when the priest told him to kiss the bride. Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain, he had to remind himself in order to quell the sudden urge he had to run up to Claire and sweep her off her feet in her new husband’s place. He kept himself in a watchful silence underneath his veil of invisibility.
Claire’s life was something Peter was no longer a part of, and his clapping echoed hollowly with the rest of the congregation’s.
--------------
One year, eight months, nineteen days. That’s how long it took him to recover most of his memories, and he showed up at her doorstep in Costa Verde with short, cropped hair and a sheepish smile on his face.
“Hey,” he whispered, anxious for a reason he couldn’t really explain as she stared at him with a gaping mouth and wide eyes.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to... well, I couldn’t remember anything, and I was in Ireland, but I remember now and I’ve really, really missed you,” he blurted and rambled in embarrassment.
To his immense relief the smile that spread across her face wasn’t small or sad, even with the tears building in the corners of her eyes. Claire ran to him, crushing Peter in a hug with a strength he couldn’t imagine her having. She buried her face in his chest, and her tears soaked through his shirt.
“Peter!” He could hear Claire sobbing and laughing all at once. “Peter, Peter, Peter! Oh my God, you’re alive! You’re alive. You’re here. I knew you couldn’t be dead!”
“Of course I’m not dead,” he laughed lightly, circling her shoulders with his arms, tracing patterns absentmindedly on her back. “I know you.”
“Promise you’ll never leave me again.” Claire pressed herself more closely against him, as if afraid he was going to just disappear again. “Please promise me.”
He didn’t even think about it. He just said “I promise” as if it were the only option he really had.
--------------
He wasn't sure how many years passed before he saw her again, but it felt like a lifetime... and perhaps it had been. Yet, still, from the corner of his eye he could see the flash of her golden hair even in the heart of Los Angeles, raising her hand to hail a taxi across the street. Over the blurs of speeding cars he turned and met her gaze, and Claire’s hand fell numbly back to her side, her eyes widening with recognition.
"Peter?" he could see her whisper even if he couldn't hear her speak, and all that he had worked for crumbled under her gaze. He moved without thinking, waving his hand in a mixture of surprise and disbelief.
‘Don’t move’ he saw her enunciate clearly and with an air of finality, and Peter could only nod dumbly in response, following her with his eyes as she sprinted to the nearest crosswalk and cut off an angry taxi driver. And then she was standing before him, panting heavily and staring at him as if he had grown an extra head.
“Hey,” he mumbled, grinning the same sheepish grin he had the last time they had been reunited.
“Hi,” she replied blankly, and Peter didn’t even have time to prepare himself before she decked him in the jaw.
--------------
Peter drummed his fingers nervously against the edge of the banister, gaze darting from the top of the steps to his watch. Not that time really mattered when he could just move past it, but still.
“Claire!” he called, twisting his head a bit in an attempt to get a better view of the top of the staircase.
“I’m coming! Geez,” Claire grumbled as she reached the top of the stairs and hurried down the steps. She frowned at him as she reached the bottom, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You sound like Nathan when he’s getting Monty and Simon ready for one of his political things.”
“I resent that,” Peter pouted. “Besides, this isn’t one of Nathan’s political things. This is Claire-and-Peter time. You can’t have Claire-and-Peter time without the Claire.” He eyed her pointedly.
“You know, you haven’t exactly told us what we’re doing,” Claire countered, casting him a suspicious looking glance out of the corner of her eye. “You’re being kind of mysterious.” Peter smirked, shrugging a shoulder.
“What can I say? I’m an enigma of mysteriousness.”
“Being an enigma means that you’re mysterious, you dork,” Claire laughed, dodging away quickly when he swiped playfully at her with his hand. “Seriously, though. Where are we going?”
“Let’s just say...” Peter clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Let’s just say I thought you should get the whole experience for your first Fourth of July in New York. Now come on, grab a sweatshirt. Where we’re going it might get a little chilly.”
* * * * *
The sunset reflected ethereally off of the Upper New York Bay, and Claire shut the door to Peter’s car wordlessly as she gazed out at the docks -- more specifically, at the humble looking sailboat that bobbed gently in the water.
“You have a boat?” Claire blurted out candidly, “You have a boat, and you didn’t tell me? Or is it Nathan’s and we’re just hijacking it?”
Peter shook his head as he climbed into the boat and checked on the sails and rudder. “No, she’s mine. Well, she was my dad’s before he died. Nathan never really liked open water -- I think he had a traumatic experience in the ocean before I was born, or something -- so this was the only thing my father really chose to share with me instead of him.” He smiled wistfully. “Once a month in the summer he’d take me out sailing and teach me how to use her, little by little, and when I was eleven I was an ‘expert’ sail boater. He stopped taking me when I was thirteen, but he gave me permission to use her whenever I wanted to, and when he died he left her to me.”
Claire glanced at the name scrawled on the side of the boat. “‘Virtuoso’?”
“My dad named her,” Peter told her simply before standing up and reaching out his arm. “Okay, all set. Come on board, we have to get out on the water before the fireworks start.”
Claire grabbed ahold of Peter’s arm and let him lift her aboard, and as soon as she was seated they were moving. Peter bit his lower lip in concentration as he used his telekinesis to control all the parts of the boat, turning the boom to outstretch the sail more and steering them towards the center of the bay.
After about ten minutes he let the sail fall back, and the Virtuoso slowed gradually until she was floating in place. Peter dropped the anchor down just as the first set of fireworks started going off in Manhattan. Then there was another, and another, and another, and it seemed as though they were surrounded by explosions of colour and light.
“Holy shit,” Claire goggled in disbelief, standing up and hanging carefully onto the mast as she turned her head to gaze all around her. “This beats Disney by a long shot.”
“Wait for it.” Peter grinned as he stepped up behind her, placing his hand at the small of her back to guide her gently towards the Statue Of Liberty. “The main event hasn’t even started yet.”
Claire’s eyes darted from one place to another in the sky as the fireworks went off around them, and for a few moments she had a hard time believing that this wasn’t the main event. Then there was a sudden stillness as all of the fireworks seemed to stop simultaneously, and the Statue Of Liberty lit up against the night -- and then she glowed. The fireworks’ lights radiated off of her, illuminated the sky and the water in a myriad of colours.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Peter smiled as he leaned forward, and Claire settled back into his chest on instinct. He wrapped an arm around her middle, resting his chin on her shoulder as he stared out at the water and sky. “It’s my favourite part of the year. It’s what makes me proud to be a New York citizen.”
The finale of the show sprang to life, shooting up into the air one after another and exploding against each other. All was silent after that, the smoke drifting slowly through the air like black dragons and thick shadows.
Claire shivered, whether from the cold air above the water or from her proximity to Peter she wasn’t sure, but suddenly his breath against her neck was sending tremors down her arms.
“Are you cold?” Peter asked lazily, and she shook her head.
“No. I’m -- Peter?”
“Hm?”
Claire took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You... you promised you’d never leave me, right?”
“Of course,” Peter answered instantly, voice laced with confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she assured him. “Just... don’t freak out, okay?”
“Okay,” Peter promised, loosening his grip as Claire started to turn herself around in his arms. Eventually her forehead was pressed against his chest, and she tilted her head anxiously up to look him in the eye.
Softly, hesitatingly, she pushed herself up and pressed her lips against his.
Peter went rigid for just a moment before sighing low in his throat, bringing his hands up to cup Claire’s face, his fingers splaying in her hair and his thumbs grazing the skin just below her ears. Somewhere in the back of his mind an old warning tried to make itself heard, but the gentle slant of her lips against his simply blew everything else in his mind away.
--------------
Claire busied herself in the kitchen of her apartment while Peter stood awkwardly just inside the doorway, glancing around at the sparse decorations in the room. A few odd books -- some he recognized as his own classics; god, how old were they now? -- littered a bookcase in the corner, their pages bent and yellowed. There was a tattered old stuffed bear sitting in the crook of the couch, holding a red heart in its paws. And there was a box with a small stack of papers in it. He frowned as he bent to look at it, eyebrows rising in surprise.
“Are these all college degrees?” he asked, breaking the silence they had been in since she had punched him in the middle of the street. He had followed her wordlessly back to her apartment. Claire had made a bee-line for the kitchen -- apparently she hadn’t lost her nervous habits over the years.
“Um, yeah,” she responded, peeking at him from over the counter before disappearing below it again. He could hear her rummaging through pans. “I needed something to do with my time.”
“I’d say that’s time well-spent,” Peter commented, frowning as he heard some pans bang against each other. “Claire?”
“What?”
“You do realize you’re going to end up not cooking anything, right?”
He heard her stop, letting out a deep sigh as she shut the drawer and appeared again. “Yeah. I know.” There was a pause as she matched his gaze. “You left.”
“I know.”
“You promised me that you’d never leave me,” she said softly, her face crumpling in on itself. Peter moved towards her quickly, wiping at the tears that threatened to fall from her eyes.
“I know, I know,” he whispered, waiting a second before saying, “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t make up for it. But... I’m sorry. I am.”
“But you wouldn’t change it,” Claire concluded, and Peter nodded solemnly as she rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I scared you away.”
“No!” Peter shook his head, gripping Claire’s shoulders and forcing her to look at him again. “God, no, Claire, you didn’t. I wasn’t scared of us.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against her forehead, against the tip of her nose. “I was never scared of us. I was scared for us. Nobody would have understood.”
“They didn’t have to find out,” Claire protested sharply, and Peter smiled sadly at her.
“They would have. If we had started something... if we had really started something after that night, I wouldn’t have been able to stop. They would’ve found out eventually, and we both would have destroyed ourselves over it. Don’t you get it?”
Something in the back of his mind clicked at those words, and Peter frowned as he tried to sort it out.
I don’t get it.
You will.
And he did. Over one hundred years later, Peter finally understood the message he had received.
“It was worth waiting out a century of loneliness for an eternity of happiness,” he said, mostly to himself, but Claire glanced up sharply.
“What did you say?”
Peter just laughed, gathering Claire up in his arms in a firm embrace and kissing her soundly on the lips.
“I get it, Claire,” he told her excitedly as he set her back on the floor, brushing a hand through his hair. “I finally get it.”
“Uh, I don’t,” Claire shot back, hand reaching up to her mouth. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain it to you later,” Peter promised. “But right now, I have to go. I’ll be back--” He bent forward to kiss her again. “I’ll be back, and this time... this time I promise... I won’t ever leave your side again.” He pressed his face into the side of her head, breathing in deeply and murmuring in her ear, “Stella stellina... la notte si avvicina... la fiamma traballa. I’ll be back. I love you, Claire. I’ve always loved you.”
Peter took a step back, smiled that easy lopsided smile of his, and disappeared.
--------------
Peter Petrelli was having one hell of a week. First he found out he could fly -- the idea still amazed him no matter how many times he thought it -- then he had found time frozen on the subway by a Japanese man from the future. He met Isaac and found out that his ability was more complex than just simple flight, and now this.
It was strange, staring down his own face. His future counterpart looked serious and had very, very old eyes -- too old for his young face. This him couldn’t be from too far in the future, could he?
“What is it with you guys and subways?” Peter asked in confusion, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “And, uh. Where’s your scar? The Japanese guy -- Hiro -- he said I had a scar. Does this mean we changed the future?”
“That’s not important,” his future self said. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. I’m here with a different message than what Hiro gave you.” He glanced around him -- Peter figured more from habit than anything else since the people on the subway were frozen around them -- before catching his gaze again. “Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.”
What? “I don’t get it.”
He smiled thinly, glumly. “You will.”
Peter blinked, and the subway jerked back into motion. When he opened his eyes again the other him was gone -- just as fast as he had come in the first place.
The words rang confusingly in his head.
Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.
End~
Characters/Paring: Peter/Claire
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3418
Spoilers/Warnings: Some snippets from S1/2, but other than that nothing.
Summary: It all started with a message from the future: Don't fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes. :(
A/N: If you couldn't tell by the wordcount, I'm pretty sure this is the longest and most involved one-shot I've EVER written. The basic scraps of the idea (pretty much just the summary) were playing with me, but until "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)" by BIlly Joel came on shuffle I had no inspiration. Then this came out. At the risk of sounding pretentious (I really hope I don't), I'm pretty sure this is the only thing I've ever written that has turned out exactly how I wanted it to. This is best read with the actual song playing in the background, so there'll be bit of a Youtube vid you can press play for. :) I really hope you guys like this! The lullaby is apparently an old Italian lullaby called "Stella Stellina," and the rough translation of the lyrics I used, according to the site I got it from, is this: "Star, little star / the night is approaching: / the flame is tottering"
Click to viewsomeday we'll all be gone,
but lullabyes go on and on...
they never die;
that's how you and i
will be
--Billy Joel, "Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)"
His future self’s words from so long ago rung in his head: Don’t fall in love with her. Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain. A beaten expression crossed over Peter’s face as he tucked Claire’s sleeping form more closely against him, and he tried hopelessly to stop the frenetic beating in his heart as she breathed gently against the crook of his neck.
Don’t fall in love with her, he had said in that cryptic way, and he hadn’t understood his words then. But he did now, and it cut him through his chest to think of what it meant. It will only bring her pain.
He loved her. Don’t fall in love with her. He craved her touch, her smile, her laughter, her friendship and companionship. It will only bring her pain. He needed her. He needed her and, somehow, Peter knew Claire needed him, too, in a way that completely defied any sense of normalcy they may have had left in their chaotic lives.
Don’t fall in love with her. It was too late. He already had, but he could still fix it. He could fix this. Whatever it was he had warned himself against could still be avoided. It will only bring her pain. It didn’t have to happen.
Peter Petrelli buried his face into Claire Bennet’s hair, breathing in her scent as if to last him a lifetime, and he found himself beginning to sing an old Italian lullaby his mother had often sang to him as a child under his breath; “Stella stellina... la notte si avvicina... la fiamma traballa.”
Don’t fall in love with her. His fingertips grazed her cheek as he pulled back, and he peered down at her face for just a moment more before sidling silently out of the bed and slipping his shirt on. It will only bring her pain.
“Ti amo. I love you, Claire,” he whispered, and he crept out of the lower section of the boat and onto the open deck outside. He made sure to check that the Virtuoso was tightly secure and that his car keys were easily seen before he lifted himself into the sky, letting the darkness envelop him completely as he flew away from his destiny.
Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.
--------------
He bumped into her in the hallway, and there was that spark -- that spark that was so often portrayed and spoken about in movies and books, but he had always believed to be a myth. He hadn’t been expecting it -- not here, not now -- but there it was, and some instinct from deep within bubbled up inside of him as he smiled at her, and she smiled at him.
“It gets better,” he told her, just so she would turn around and he could see her face again; so he could see that sad, little smile one last time before he died. “Life after high school. It gets a lot better.”
--------------
On the day she graduated from college he was in the crowd, watching the ceremony from the corner of the old, un-airconditioned gym. When he heard her name called he stood up straighter, peering over the heads of the other robed students as she crossed the makeshift stage, shook all the appropriate hands and received her diploma.
She smiled out at the crowd, but it wasn’t the radiant beaming smile he had expected it to be -- it was the same sad, little smile that he would always associate with her.
Peter let out a low, heavy breath as Claire disappeared down the other side of the stage and rejoined the sea of students.
He had told her that life after high school got better, so why was her smile still so sad?
--------------
“When I met you, I finally felt like I was part of something.”
He hated the sight of her tears, especially when he knew he couldn’t do anything to stop them; when he knew they were partly because of him. He wished he could just stop the world, for just the two of them, so he could take her in his arms and whisper to her that everything would be all right.
But he couldn’t do that -- not anymore -- so he did the next best thing; he brushed her tears away with the back of his hand, and if he lingered for a bit too long he didn’t care. “It’s funny,” he murmured, the corner of his mouth twitching up, “I felt the same thing when I met you.”
--------------
Claire’s wedding was beautiful. She wore her mother’s dress, and it fit all the curves of her body perfectly. It was an outdoor wedding, small, held in a quaint little park in Texas fifteen minutes away from where she had grown up. Her fiancé was tall and blonde with a face that looked perpetually angry even when he was smiling.
His name was Kyle, and Peter felt a twinge of hate stir inside of him when the priest told him to kiss the bride. Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain, he had to remind himself in order to quell the sudden urge he had to run up to Claire and sweep her off her feet in her new husband’s place. He kept himself in a watchful silence underneath his veil of invisibility.
Claire’s life was something Peter was no longer a part of, and his clapping echoed hollowly with the rest of the congregation’s.
--------------
One year, eight months, nineteen days. That’s how long it took him to recover most of his memories, and he showed up at her doorstep in Costa Verde with short, cropped hair and a sheepish smile on his face.
“Hey,” he whispered, anxious for a reason he couldn’t really explain as she stared at him with a gaping mouth and wide eyes.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to... well, I couldn’t remember anything, and I was in Ireland, but I remember now and I’ve really, really missed you,” he blurted and rambled in embarrassment.
To his immense relief the smile that spread across her face wasn’t small or sad, even with the tears building in the corners of her eyes. Claire ran to him, crushing Peter in a hug with a strength he couldn’t imagine her having. She buried her face in his chest, and her tears soaked through his shirt.
“Peter!” He could hear Claire sobbing and laughing all at once. “Peter, Peter, Peter! Oh my God, you’re alive! You’re alive. You’re here. I knew you couldn’t be dead!”
“Of course I’m not dead,” he laughed lightly, circling her shoulders with his arms, tracing patterns absentmindedly on her back. “I know you.”
“Promise you’ll never leave me again.” Claire pressed herself more closely against him, as if afraid he was going to just disappear again. “Please promise me.”
He didn’t even think about it. He just said “I promise” as if it were the only option he really had.
--------------
He wasn't sure how many years passed before he saw her again, but it felt like a lifetime... and perhaps it had been. Yet, still, from the corner of his eye he could see the flash of her golden hair even in the heart of Los Angeles, raising her hand to hail a taxi across the street. Over the blurs of speeding cars he turned and met her gaze, and Claire’s hand fell numbly back to her side, her eyes widening with recognition.
"Peter?" he could see her whisper even if he couldn't hear her speak, and all that he had worked for crumbled under her gaze. He moved without thinking, waving his hand in a mixture of surprise and disbelief.
‘Don’t move’ he saw her enunciate clearly and with an air of finality, and Peter could only nod dumbly in response, following her with his eyes as she sprinted to the nearest crosswalk and cut off an angry taxi driver. And then she was standing before him, panting heavily and staring at him as if he had grown an extra head.
“Hey,” he mumbled, grinning the same sheepish grin he had the last time they had been reunited.
“Hi,” she replied blankly, and Peter didn’t even have time to prepare himself before she decked him in the jaw.
--------------
Peter drummed his fingers nervously against the edge of the banister, gaze darting from the top of the steps to his watch. Not that time really mattered when he could just move past it, but still.
“Claire!” he called, twisting his head a bit in an attempt to get a better view of the top of the staircase.
“I’m coming! Geez,” Claire grumbled as she reached the top of the stairs and hurried down the steps. She frowned at him as she reached the bottom, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “You sound like Nathan when he’s getting Monty and Simon ready for one of his political things.”
“I resent that,” Peter pouted. “Besides, this isn’t one of Nathan’s political things. This is Claire-and-Peter time. You can’t have Claire-and-Peter time without the Claire.” He eyed her pointedly.
“You know, you haven’t exactly told us what we’re doing,” Claire countered, casting him a suspicious looking glance out of the corner of her eye. “You’re being kind of mysterious.” Peter smirked, shrugging a shoulder.
“What can I say? I’m an enigma of mysteriousness.”
“Being an enigma means that you’re mysterious, you dork,” Claire laughed, dodging away quickly when he swiped playfully at her with his hand. “Seriously, though. Where are we going?”
“Let’s just say...” Peter clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Let’s just say I thought you should get the whole experience for your first Fourth of July in New York. Now come on, grab a sweatshirt. Where we’re going it might get a little chilly.”
* * * * *
The sunset reflected ethereally off of the Upper New York Bay, and Claire shut the door to Peter’s car wordlessly as she gazed out at the docks -- more specifically, at the humble looking sailboat that bobbed gently in the water.
“You have a boat?” Claire blurted out candidly, “You have a boat, and you didn’t tell me? Or is it Nathan’s and we’re just hijacking it?”
Peter shook his head as he climbed into the boat and checked on the sails and rudder. “No, she’s mine. Well, she was my dad’s before he died. Nathan never really liked open water -- I think he had a traumatic experience in the ocean before I was born, or something -- so this was the only thing my father really chose to share with me instead of him.” He smiled wistfully. “Once a month in the summer he’d take me out sailing and teach me how to use her, little by little, and when I was eleven I was an ‘expert’ sail boater. He stopped taking me when I was thirteen, but he gave me permission to use her whenever I wanted to, and when he died he left her to me.”
Claire glanced at the name scrawled on the side of the boat. “‘Virtuoso’?”
“My dad named her,” Peter told her simply before standing up and reaching out his arm. “Okay, all set. Come on board, we have to get out on the water before the fireworks start.”
Claire grabbed ahold of Peter’s arm and let him lift her aboard, and as soon as she was seated they were moving. Peter bit his lower lip in concentration as he used his telekinesis to control all the parts of the boat, turning the boom to outstretch the sail more and steering them towards the center of the bay.
After about ten minutes he let the sail fall back, and the Virtuoso slowed gradually until she was floating in place. Peter dropped the anchor down just as the first set of fireworks started going off in Manhattan. Then there was another, and another, and another, and it seemed as though they were surrounded by explosions of colour and light.
“Holy shit,” Claire goggled in disbelief, standing up and hanging carefully onto the mast as she turned her head to gaze all around her. “This beats Disney by a long shot.”
“Wait for it.” Peter grinned as he stepped up behind her, placing his hand at the small of her back to guide her gently towards the Statue Of Liberty. “The main event hasn’t even started yet.”
Claire’s eyes darted from one place to another in the sky as the fireworks went off around them, and for a few moments she had a hard time believing that this wasn’t the main event. Then there was a sudden stillness as all of the fireworks seemed to stop simultaneously, and the Statue Of Liberty lit up against the night -- and then she glowed. The fireworks’ lights radiated off of her, illuminated the sky and the water in a myriad of colours.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Peter smiled as he leaned forward, and Claire settled back into his chest on instinct. He wrapped an arm around her middle, resting his chin on her shoulder as he stared out at the water and sky. “It’s my favourite part of the year. It’s what makes me proud to be a New York citizen.”
The finale of the show sprang to life, shooting up into the air one after another and exploding against each other. All was silent after that, the smoke drifting slowly through the air like black dragons and thick shadows.
Claire shivered, whether from the cold air above the water or from her proximity to Peter she wasn’t sure, but suddenly his breath against her neck was sending tremors down her arms.
“Are you cold?” Peter asked lazily, and she shook her head.
“No. I’m -- Peter?”
“Hm?”
Claire took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You... you promised you’d never leave me, right?”
“Of course,” Peter answered instantly, voice laced with confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she assured him. “Just... don’t freak out, okay?”
“Okay,” Peter promised, loosening his grip as Claire started to turn herself around in his arms. Eventually her forehead was pressed against his chest, and she tilted her head anxiously up to look him in the eye.
Softly, hesitatingly, she pushed herself up and pressed her lips against his.
Peter went rigid for just a moment before sighing low in his throat, bringing his hands up to cup Claire’s face, his fingers splaying in her hair and his thumbs grazing the skin just below her ears. Somewhere in the back of his mind an old warning tried to make itself heard, but the gentle slant of her lips against his simply blew everything else in his mind away.
--------------
Claire busied herself in the kitchen of her apartment while Peter stood awkwardly just inside the doorway, glancing around at the sparse decorations in the room. A few odd books -- some he recognized as his own classics; god, how old were they now? -- littered a bookcase in the corner, their pages bent and yellowed. There was a tattered old stuffed bear sitting in the crook of the couch, holding a red heart in its paws. And there was a box with a small stack of papers in it. He frowned as he bent to look at it, eyebrows rising in surprise.
“Are these all college degrees?” he asked, breaking the silence they had been in since she had punched him in the middle of the street. He had followed her wordlessly back to her apartment. Claire had made a bee-line for the kitchen -- apparently she hadn’t lost her nervous habits over the years.
“Um, yeah,” she responded, peeking at him from over the counter before disappearing below it again. He could hear her rummaging through pans. “I needed something to do with my time.”
“I’d say that’s time well-spent,” Peter commented, frowning as he heard some pans bang against each other. “Claire?”
“What?”
“You do realize you’re going to end up not cooking anything, right?”
He heard her stop, letting out a deep sigh as she shut the drawer and appeared again. “Yeah. I know.” There was a pause as she matched his gaze. “You left.”
“I know.”
“You promised me that you’d never leave me,” she said softly, her face crumpling in on itself. Peter moved towards her quickly, wiping at the tears that threatened to fall from her eyes.
“I know, I know,” he whispered, waiting a second before saying, “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t make up for it. But... I’m sorry. I am.”
“But you wouldn’t change it,” Claire concluded, and Peter nodded solemnly as she rested her forehead on his shoulder. “I scared you away.”
“No!” Peter shook his head, gripping Claire’s shoulders and forcing her to look at him again. “God, no, Claire, you didn’t. I wasn’t scared of us.” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against her forehead, against the tip of her nose. “I was never scared of us. I was scared for us. Nobody would have understood.”
“They didn’t have to find out,” Claire protested sharply, and Peter smiled sadly at her.
“They would have. If we had started something... if we had really started something after that night, I wouldn’t have been able to stop. They would’ve found out eventually, and we both would have destroyed ourselves over it. Don’t you get it?”
Something in the back of his mind clicked at those words, and Peter frowned as he tried to sort it out.
I don’t get it.
You will.
And he did. Over one hundred years later, Peter finally understood the message he had received.
“It was worth waiting out a century of loneliness for an eternity of happiness,” he said, mostly to himself, but Claire glanced up sharply.
“What did you say?”
Peter just laughed, gathering Claire up in his arms in a firm embrace and kissing her soundly on the lips.
“I get it, Claire,” he told her excitedly as he set her back on the floor, brushing a hand through his hair. “I finally get it.”
“Uh, I don’t,” Claire shot back, hand reaching up to her mouth. “What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain it to you later,” Peter promised. “But right now, I have to go. I’ll be back--” He bent forward to kiss her again. “I’ll be back, and this time... this time I promise... I won’t ever leave your side again.” He pressed his face into the side of her head, breathing in deeply and murmuring in her ear, “Stella stellina... la notte si avvicina... la fiamma traballa. I’ll be back. I love you, Claire. I’ve always loved you.”
Peter took a step back, smiled that easy lopsided smile of his, and disappeared.
--------------
Peter Petrelli was having one hell of a week. First he found out he could fly -- the idea still amazed him no matter how many times he thought it -- then he had found time frozen on the subway by a Japanese man from the future. He met Isaac and found out that his ability was more complex than just simple flight, and now this.
It was strange, staring down his own face. His future counterpart looked serious and had very, very old eyes -- too old for his young face. This him couldn’t be from too far in the future, could he?
“What is it with you guys and subways?” Peter asked in confusion, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “And, uh. Where’s your scar? The Japanese guy -- Hiro -- he said I had a scar. Does this mean we changed the future?”
“That’s not important,” his future self said. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. I’m here with a different message than what Hiro gave you.” He glanced around him -- Peter figured more from habit than anything else since the people on the subway were frozen around them -- before catching his gaze again. “Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.”
What? “I don’t get it.”
He smiled thinly, glumly. “You will.”
Peter blinked, and the subway jerked back into motion. When he opened his eyes again the other him was gone -- just as fast as he had come in the first place.
The words rang confusingly in his head.
Don’t fall in love with her. It will only bring her pain.
End~