taxonomites | 005: [Visual] [Location: Walking around near the Sanctuary] No news is good news.

(OOC: This is a canon update to Heroes 4x08: Shadowboxing. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

It had been a bad day from the moment she had woken up. The idea of getting some kind of memory upgrade wasn't new to Claire, but the memories were. She could clearly remember Gretchen saying that she wasn't like her before she left, and how lonely she had felt sleeping in an empty dorm room. Her dad had almost killed Becky - to protect her, as usual. He wanted her to have the millions of normal things that she wanted but was never going to get. If Becky wasn't standing in her way, someone else would be.

As she started out of the Sanctuary, her thoughts drifted back to Sylar and his 'identity crisis'. She wanted to believe that she was wrong, but everything in her said otherwise. Every time she tried to think up another way to explain what Angela had said to her, she came up empty. And it wasn't just what she had said, it was the fact that she had never heard anything about Nathan being in trouble after that. Nathan hadn't mentioned it and didn't have any memories beyond that day. She kept catching up to the way things could have been at home, but his mind wasn't doing that. His memories stopped in that hotel room.

Gretchen was lucky to have gotten out when she could, because she was right; this was everyday life for Claire. The people she cared about were always in trouble. If they didn't leave, they ended up hurt or killed. It wasn't always her fault, but it was her life. She couldn't expect other people to give up theirs just because she cared about them. The truth was, she asked enough of people just by expecting them to believe that she had been through everything that she said she had. And she needed to stop trying to fix problems that were bigger than her with the first solution that came to mind.

Claire quickened her pace, turning her tablet on, then off, then on again as she walked. She wanted to check in on Nathan and talk to Peter, but she wasn't sure that she should do that right away. "Hey, it's -" she stopped talking, rubbing her eyes tiredly and continuing to move away from the Sanctuary.

"Nevermind, just..." If she couldn't form a sentence, she probably shouldn't have been trying to start a conversation with anyone. "Just, forget I said anything."

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"Nothing huge. We saw each other again." Avoiding eye contact did a lot to keep her from noticing how worn out he was. Other things would have also prevented her from asking about that. "Gretchen decided that being my roommate wasn't worth the risk, so." Why hadn't she expected that? It would have hurt a lot less if she had known it was coming. She should have realized that it would be too much for her.

"I haven't seen the rest of your family in a while." That meant Nathan and Angela, although one worried her more than the other. "I guess we've all been busy."

"I haven't either." He half-shrugged. "Noah and I found that kid we were looking for, Jeremy? And I got his healing ability. By the time I got back to the hospital, Hiro was gone. But... I haven't seen Mom since I invited her over for breakfast. She spent the entire time worrying where Nathan was."

Then he made a face. "And then Nathan showed up at my apartment. So, I guess everything is okay." Peter didn't want to worry her. Nathan was oddly clingy when he showed up at the apartment. But, telling Claire that wouldn't do anyone any good.

"He did?" Claire looked up, genuinely surprised to hear that. She didn't want to hope that it meant Nathan was alive. For all they knew, it was Sylar posing as Nathan and they hadn't caught up to it yet. "Was he alright? What did he say?" she continued, asking questions quicker than he could answer them.

He blinked a few times and let himself catch up to her barrage of questions before trying to answer them. He ran his hand down his face again and exhaled. Should he lie to her to make her feel better? Peter wasn't really sure if it was Sylar posing as Nathan, or if really was Nathan. It could have easily been that Gabriel's mind was flooded with Nathan's memories from when he tried to become Nathan. Which meant that, it could have really been Nathan that came to his apartment.

"He was a little worried. Though, might of been because he was wearing plaid." Peter said with a smile. "He's a senator, Claire. He's going to be busy. And Mom probably has been her nosy self. So that with having to clean up Building 26? I can see why he isn't around."

Edited 2009-11-11 06:05 (UTC)

She nodded, not buying it because it just didn't feel right. Nothing that should have eased her minds did much to comfort her, in spite of the effort Peter was making to try to convince her that Nathan was okay. "So you've seen your mom?" Now that was a different direction to take the conversation in, and one that might still tell her something.

"Was she weird..er than usual? I mean, you didn't notice anything different with her?"

Why the hell would she want to know about his Mom?

"Not really. Haven't seen her since the whole breakfast thing. She's usually antsy when she hasn't seen Nathan anyways." He shrugged slightly and ran his hand up to his hair to pull his bangs back. "After trying to heal Hiro? The hospital got really busy. There was a crash, lot of people were injured. I don't see my family a lot anymore."

Peter debated telling her about Emma. He could see the two of them getting along.

"Antsy," she repeated, dwelling on that when she should have been listening to Peter talk about the crash. When she became aware of how quickly she had gotten distracted, Claire snapped out of it with a sigh. "Sorry, Peter, I...you must think I'm as bad as your mom." And wasn't that a horrible comparison that she was never, ever making again if she could help it. She pushed her hair away from her face and took a deep breath.

"What else is happening?"

He got the feeling that she really didn't want to hear about the rest of what was going on. Not that it really mattered, he supposed. Just the fact he was probably going to end up putting himself into coma by healing so many people, trying to save lives, and meeting someone else with an ability. He didn't reply to her remark about his Mom. Claire and her had their similarities... but, they were also really different.

Just not about Nathan.

"Nothing." He answered briefly and looked over his shoulder. The tablet wasn't angled so that Claire could see anyone next to him in bed. That'd be sort of awkward.

Claire knew from how quickly he'd stopped talking about it that he didn't appreciate the way her thoughts had pulled her away from his conversation. She didn't have anything to explain it but things that she didn't want to say, which meant delaying the inevitable and upsetting him more, or allowing him to understand why she couldn't stop worrying about this. "I think something bad happened, Peter," she said finally, in a voice so low that she half hoped that he hadn't heard her.

"I remembered something, and when I think about it...I asked someone and he said it would be possible. That what I think happened could have, but it's the last thing that I want to believe." She liked hearing that Nathan was fine, busy and just a little off. And maybe Angela really was just like that when it came to Nathan, but how did they explain the rest of it.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this."

"Claire." He said gently as he looked back at the tablet. He had heard her but was trying to keep his voice down from waking Max up. He actually leaned over the side of the bed so he didn't have to talk as loud.

"Did you... ever think that maybe you're obsessing?" Peter asked gently. "I'm not... saying that what you're thinking is wrong, impossible, or that I don't want to hear it. I'm just worried you're looking for things that aren't there and you're upsetting yourself more by it." He moved his hair from his face again. "What did you remember?"

Alarms went off in her head as soon as Peter said she was obsessing. She bit down on her bottom lip to keep from saying anything before he could finish, and shook her head at the opportunity he'd given her to explain. If he could call it that, then he didn't want to hear it. He thought it was all in her head; something to make Sylar sound as awful as he was.

"Nevermind. I'm sorry I bothered you." And with that, she turned off her tablet and set it back on the bracelet on her wrist. It had taken too much for her to work up the nerve to get as far into it as she had with Peter, she didn't have it in her to listen to him call it something it wasn't. She didn't want to believe that it was true, it just felt that way.

"God dammit." He muttered and hung his head as soon as Claire turned off the tablet. Son of a bitch. Why was it whenever he expressed he cared about someone from home, it always back fired? Peter hit the floor hard with his hand before pulling back up on to the bed and putting his face in his pillow. Then threw the tablet across the room.

005: [Visual] [Location: Walking around near the Sanctuary] No news is good news.

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