Title: What Can You Do?
Rating: PG, KAuthor: wicked18writer
Summary: Post-Exploded NY
Pairing: Claire/Nathan bonding, (no not bondage, you perv, he's her dad)
Disclaimer : I do not own Heroes but someday I will.
A/N : So I just watched an episode of heroes, I got all my HW and essays written for class tomorrow so I decided to treat myself by writing something I wasn't being graded on or was required too. Yeah, I'm a nerd.
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"So Claire, what can you do?"
Claire looked at Nathan Petrelli, the man that was supposed to be her biological father and she couldn't help but hate him in that moment.
He was her father, this was the first conversation they've ever had and he wants to know what type of freak to classify her as? In her bio-parent reunion fantasy she wanted him to hug her and tell her he wanted her to be his daughter and give her some reason like he was a spy for the government and was taken to Brazil to spy or something when she was born so he never new she existed but now that he did he wanted to be her father. But, he met with Meredith in Odessa. Nathan paid her bio-mom off so she would keep quiet about her illegitimate child, especially during election season. Nathan wasn't a spy. He didn't always know about her but, one month ago he found out and he didn't care. He just wanted her to go away, stay hidden.
In her bio-dad reunion fantasy the first thing Nathan asked her was if she had any questions for him. Nathan asked her if her parents had been good to her. If her life was happy. If she had a boyfriend. What her favorite color was. In Claire's fantasy Nathan asked her about her, just not about the freak part of her. So when the first thing out of her bio-dad's mouth was "what can you do?" Claire felt the familiar feeling of the wind being knocked out of her as her fantasy reunion was suddenly obliterated by reality.
Claire was mad, sad, and disappointed. The question hung in the air between them, the tension was palpable and neither new how to break it. Until, suddenly Claire felt the devil on her left shoulder tackle the angel on her right.
"So I guess Peter is the good brother." Claire saw the familiar flare in Nathan's eyes; it was the flare of sibling rivalry. She smirked and in her head applauded her self for hitting a nerve.
Nathan looked angry and then ashamed or bashful. He looked down out his folded hands and sighed.
"I guess that wasn't exactly the most tactful thing to say, considering we just met."
"And that you're my father." As soon as the word 'father' left her lips, Nathan's head snapped up.
"Yeah." Both looked away. They didn't know what to say or do to make the tension dissipate. Claire looked around the empty studio. There was a painting on the floor of the explosion in New York. All the easels had paintings on them. Several were on the floor, some of the paintings were in tact but most were torn and had broken frames. Claire got up and moved toward the corner where on a torn piece of canvas she saw a bright red color; the color was red like her school colors at home. She was drawn to the painting. She moved some debris out of the way to find a painting of a blonde cheerleader.
"What's that?" Nathan moved behind her, stooping down to where she was squatting on the floor.
"It's a painting of a cheerleader." Nathan smiled.
"Is it you?" Claire snapped her head to look at the smile on Nathan's face. He was trying. Trying to connect with her on some level. She felt sick.
"No, it's not me." She moved the torn fabric back in place so Nathan could see the whole picture. It was Jackie; her head split open, blood on the floor of the girl's bathroom, Sylar looming in the background. When she looked back at Nathan his smile was gone. Somehow Claire felt bad that she had scared his smile back into hiding. Claire had a feeling Nathan was the kind of person who didn't smile a lot, at least not unless a camera was pointed at him, but those were fake politician-y smiles and they didn't count.
"It's my frien-enemy Jackie Wilcox from back home. It was the Homecoming game and all the cheerleaders where in the locker room getting ready. Jackie was pissed at me because I was named prom queen over her and I punched her in the face and I was supposed to be grounded therefore absent in which case she would've been the queen but, I showed up." Claire picked up the painting and Nathan picked up an easel.
"Sylar, the special people, power stealing, brain eating, psycho murder killed her because he thought she was me." Claire put the painting on the easel and stood back to admire it.
"You know Claire what happened to your friend wasn't your-"
"My fault, yeah yeah. I got the whole 7th Heaven speech from my real dad. I know the only person who killed Jackie was Sylar but still." Claire frowned at the painting, trying to sort out her thoughts so she could express them in a way Nathan could understand.
"Jackie…Jackie was a bitch. A major monster, but she was also once upon a time my best friend in a Mean Girls kinda way and when she died…" Claire walked away from the painting and went back to sit on the couch that Nathan and she started on.
"Jackie's dying words were 'run'. She told me with her last breath to run. She wanted to save me and in that moment I hated her because she reminded me how much I really liked her and how she used to be a really good friend and I know that if it wasn't for me she would be alive and maybe she would have become a better person later in life, because I know she had the potential too." Claire looked out the window at the destroyed city.
"I can't help but wonder how many people who died in the explosion had that kind of potential that I know Jackie had." Claire was tearing up. She turned her body away from Nathan so he wouldn't see. She heard him sign and she felt a little bad for laying all her teenage angst-y issues on him during their first bio-father daughter discussion but, she needed to talk about it and he was after all her father.
"The people who died probably were all bastards and were better off without them." Claire let out a loud 'ha', not a mocking 'ha' but a funny but not funny for a full laugh 'ha'.
"Claire, the people we didn't-couldn't save were just innocent casualties. Some were good people, some were bad and some were undecided. But non of it matters, not who they were or whom they could have become because they're dead." Claire turned to Nathan, he was twisting is wedding ring around his finger. His eyes never left to gold band. If Claire knew Nathan a little better she probably would have hugged him or put her head on his shoulder, seeking comfort as much as trying to give it. But, she didn't know him well. And suddenly the large gap between them on the couch felt as large as the Grand Canyon.
"That's kinda harsh don't you think?" Nathan didn't look up. He just kept twisting his ring.
"It's a harsh world." He looked up at her, right in the eyes. And, whoa he was in pain and he was tearing up. Seeing a man cry, any man, especially a calm, seemingly always in control man like Nathan tended, to in a word freak Claire the hell out.
"Hiro can still might-" Nathan gave her a hard look.
"Hiro can't change the past. He said so himself. All those people are dead and we can't save them." Claire was not used to being the ray of sunshine. Usually she just whined about how hard it was to be a freak, to be a freak that was being chased by a psycho powerful freak, and about the difficulty of maintaining secrecy. The look in Nathan's eyes, the stiffness in his jaw, the tension in his body, the despair in his voice told Claire what Nathan needed now was hope. She just didn't know how to give him any…she wasn't really sure she had any herself.
"You saved me." Nathan's eye's looked away from her face to his shoes.
"You flew me away from Peter before he exploded. You saved my life." Claire hated to lie to Nathan but he still wasn't looking at her. Claire was convinced she would have survived the explosion without Nathan's superman 'up, up, and away' getaway.
Claire was worried, she appreciated the paternal protectiveness of Nathan's heroic act but she was anxious that he might resent saving her when he found out what she could do. She could heal and she probably could have survived without him…his wife couldn't. He came looking for her. He abandoned his wife and kids and mother and came looking for his brother and his daughter. When he couldn't save Peter from himself he turned to her. She could have told him she'd be fine without him. She could have told him to help someone else. She could have said go back for your family but she didn't. She let herself get picked up and zoomed away, out of the range of the blast. A blast she could who have withstood.
She didn't want Nathan to regret saving her. She didn't want to tell him what she could do. She didn't want him to realize how selfish she was, how scared she was, how she just wanted to be taken care of and how when Nathan picked her up she felt like she didn't have to be strong any more and how she could stop being invincible for a second because Nathan was going to save her. Her dad.
Nathan looked back at Claire and smiled, "Well, I know now that your mother was 'air quotes' special. Like me and I know your special…" Claire gave a weak nervous terrified smile. She knew what was coming.
"So Claire, what can you do?"
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"Where does it come from—this quest, this need to solve life's mysteries when the simplest of questions can never be answered? Why are we here? What is the soul? Why do we dream? Perhaps we'd be better off not looking at all. Not delving, not yearning. But that's not human nature. Not the human heart. That is not why we are here."
-Mohinder
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