Title: Post-Mortem
Author: kenzimone
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Rating: R
Summary: Claire Bennet does not know what she had expected death to be like, but it certainly wasn't this.
Note: This was written as an alternative continuation of 103 – One Giant Leap way back in October. Thanks to eekz for the beta.

One thing that Claire Bennet will never forget is the sensation of waking up, of taking her first breaths after what seems like a long, deep sleep, and feel the chill of a cold steel table sink into her skin. She'll forever remember the sight of her chest sliced open, the flabs of skin unfolded like an unbuttoned shirt, and her heart, which should be beating in fast, erratic bursts, lying in a steel basin to her left – exposed and stilly bleeding out.

There's a sheet covering her from the waist down, and she swings her legs over the edge of the table and pulls it around her shoulders. Her hands are deceptively unshaking as she gently lifts her heart and then her liver out of the bowls placed before her.

Her ribs have been sawed through, and it's a simple task of gently digging her fingers into her flesh and pulling at her sternum – her breastbone pops free without too much force, and she tries to recall mind-numbing Biology lessons as she carefully places the organs back into their rightful places.

She watches as the heart turns counter-clockwise with a slick noise and the veins and arteries move through blood to reconnect to it on their own, thready capillaries creating a deliacte weave inbetween; it's like watching spiderwebs form out of thin air, and her heart lurches once, twice, before it settles into an abnormal pattern that is not quite like anything she's ever experienced before.

By the time her liver is in its proper place and the jagged edges of her breastbone have molded back into her ribs, her heart is beating like it hasn't done anything else in the past seventeen years.

...

It takes her some time to find her way out of the morgue; it's dark and cold, and she wraps the sheet around her shoulders as tightly as she can. There hasn't been much time to think until now, and the thoughts come barreling one after another in fast succession:

Oh my gosh, Mom and Dad! And Lyle! Dead dead dead – they think I'm dead!

There is a sliver of light cast against the floor; not much, but it's enough, and she stumbles out of the double doors of the morgue and into a gloomy corridor with flickering flourescent lights and the strong smell of floor cleaner hanging like a mist in the air.

The second surprise of the day is her father, and the total lack of shock on his face as she crashes right into the embrace of his arms.

...

The world has not yet begun to make sense again, and when she flashes back to reality there is a hand closing around her own, and her father is pressing a bag against her chest, his lips moving. A crackle in her ears, like surfacing after a deep dive, and she's back.

"-spected I'd find you here," her father is saying. "There's no time. Here, take this." He lifts her arm to support the bag's weight. "I brought you some clothes, whatever I could find."

There are bloody smears on his suit, handprints of her own size, and she feels the plastic bag slip out of her grasp, blood making her hold slippery and useless. The bag hits the floor hard but with a dull thump, her favorite pair of jeans peeking out from its opening.

"You need to leave now." Her father looks over his shoulder, and she realizes that his odd behavior – the way he reaches up to adjust his glasses, the way he still hasn't let go of her left hand – is nothing strange at all, but a display of fear.

It's the first time she's seen her father as this nervous, hunted man, and it terrifies her.

"There's no time," he says again, releasing her hand; opening it, she sees crushed hundred dollar bills smeared in red. "Take a cab to the airport; there's a ticket to New York waiting for you at the check-in counter."

She chokes on something that tastes like panic, but her father covers her mouth with the palm of his hands; in the reflection of his glasses she can see her own blue eyes, wide and dismayed, looking back at her.

"Go to New York," her father is saying, "then disappear. Take another flight somewhere else, or get lost in the crowds – it doesn't matter. Don't call, don't write, and don't draw attention to yourself."

She's struggling very hard to breathe now, her lungs threatening to burst in a phantom need for oxygen.

"If you think you're being followed, run."

Then the hand is gone from her mouth, and joined by another to gently cup her face.

"I am so, so sorry, sweetheart." There's a hitch in his voice that makes her want to cry. "I didn't mean to do it, but I did. I'm sorry. You need to leave now, before they come."

Her skin feels cold and clammy when he releases her and takes a step backwards and straightens his back, looking more like the father that raised her. "Go."

She doesn't hesitate, doesn't think twice; she scrambles for the bag on the floor, pulling the sheet tighter around her chest, and takes off running down the hallway.

The last she sees of her father-by-name is his reflection in the swinging doors of the exit; the last thing she hears is an echo of what she thinks is an 'I love you' chasing her down the corridor.

...

She changes into jeans and a T-shirt in the back of a cab on the way to the airport, ignoring the all too frequent glances of the driver in the rear view mirror. As promised, there is a ticket waiting for her at the check-in and, four hours after she woke to find herself declared dead, she's in the air and on her way to a foreign city.

...

She's not used to being watched; she's never had to stay inconspicuous, or had to blend into groups of people to avoid detection. It's far worse than being followed, she thinks; they're already waiting for her.

There's nothing special about them, but she knows anyway - can sense it in the way they carry themselves, in the abscence of their humanity. They perch behind the glass walls of the second floor, gazing down; skirt the edges of the crowds, peering into the masses with hands hanging loosely at their sides. Dangerous.

Or maybe it's all in her head.

She latches on to the family in front of her and tries to look a part of their conversation; laughs when they laugh, walk as close as she dares to the youngest daughter. Then they make a sudden turn, and she's left unprepared, floundering in the middle of a sea of people.

Quick movement to her right, and she does what her father told her – she runs.

...

At a walking pace, moving forward in a bustling airport terminal is not that hard; go with the flow, and you're not likely to find too much resistance amongst your fellow travellers. When you're running, however, it's like moving in water; regardless of how fast you want to go, you never quite make it, and with your heart beating wildly in your ears and your chest tightening and trapping your lungs behind bars of bone, you're sure you never will.

She pushes against women and men, stumbles and crashes into luggage, feels her feet fold beneath her and her legs give away but grasps at whatever she can find – stray luggage carts, benches, arms of people nearby - and hoists herself back up and headfirst into the next crowd.

She feels dizzy and terrified and she's not sure who's chasing her – if she's even being chased – but she's too petrified to risk a glance over her shoulder. She rounds a corner, evades a large potted plant, and rushes past food stands and the wonderful smell of newly cooked meals.

She has to get out, but she doesn't know where 'out' is, and the signs overhead are too many and too cloesly spaced – she doesn't dare look up in case her eyes are needed on the ground. One false step, one fall, and it's over.

...

When she is finally greeted by the warm trickle of artificial light streaming in through the large glass doors leading out of the terminal, it's like dawn coloring the sky a soothing pink after a night of horrors. She hits them straight on, and when she stumbles outside the streetlights blind her and the crisp night air turns her breath into a fine mist that dissovles before her eyes.

There are three cabs waiting by the curb. One is empty, the driver nowhere to be seen, and the second one is in the process of being occupied by an elderly couple with a lot of suitcases, but the third one is free, and she pleads with her legs to move quicker, to pump faster.

It's almost as if she can feel the breaths of her persuers on the back of her neck, and she dives into the backseat of the cab, palms wildly smacking at the top of the door in an attempt to lock it.

"Go! Go!"

The throng of people pouring out of the terminal is cut in half by three men, tall and dark and imposing, and she ducks into the seats as the cab's engine revs and it pulls away from the curb.

She spends five minutes hunched over, arms wrapped around her waist, eyes tightly closed and breaths coming in short gasps.

...

The driver, she discovers when she's regained her composure enough to sit up and glance at the rear view mirror, has brown eyes. They're staring at her intently and she squirms because, while she can handle leering looks and being mentally undressed, this is something new; this gaze that has pinned her and cut her open again and picked out the best pieces of her. It knows all her secrets, even the one she's worked the hardest to hide.

"Were you being chased?" the driver asks, refocusing his attention on the road. His English is accented, and she watches thick black curls dance against his forehead before she turns to look out the window.

"No."

He laughs, and it's a nice laugh, one she could never imagine one of Them having. She's seventeen, and completely alone, and so very, very afraid, that it's no wonder that the next time her eyes meet his through the mirror she finds herself crumbling.

"Yes."

He nods, as if processing the information. She finds herself trying to gauge his reaction, but his face remains unexpressive and his eyes focused on the road ahead; maybe, she thinks, out of all the strange and crazy things he hears on a day-to-day basis, this one's not that strange or crazy at all?

The cab goes over a dip in the road and she rocks slightly in the seat, but the suspension is soft and she lets her head drop back against the headrest; she imagines the back seat as a confessional and the plexiglass dividing it from the driver as the lattice seperating the priest from the sinner.

In another place, in another time, she would ask him to share some of the stories he's heard; maybe smile as he desrcibes a particularly eccentric old man or a comcially feuding couple, and watch his eyes dance in tune with her laugh.

Not today though, not when she's supposed to be dead and imagines she can still detect a hint of lifeless grayish-blue marring the skin of her fingertips.

She sighs, and her head lolls to the side to meet his gaze in the rearview mirror. For a moment he simply looks at her, and then;

"What's your name?"

It wouldn't hurt, she guesses. After all, she knows his – it's printed on the card fitted to the plexiglass in front of her. Mohi- Mohinder. It's dark outside, occasional bursts of streetlights painting the interior of the cab a sickly yellow, but she can still clearly see the lines framing his eyes in the photo. He looks young and tired and utterly alone.

She can sympathise with that;

"I'm Claire."

In the mirror his eyes crinkle, and she can hear the smile in his voice. "Well hello, Claire. I'm Mohinder."

It's not quite as she pronounced it in her head, but she likes it better his way – less Texan drawl and much more exotic; a light lilt towards singsong, emphasis on the 'I'. It suits him, she thinks.

"Now," he continues, eyes changing from velvet-soft to those of a scientist, boring into her again - making her feel like a specimen writhing beneath a microscope. "Tell me, Claire – are you special?"

And really, what can she answer to that? So she doesn't, and her silence is enough of a confirmation.

...

Neither of them speak again until he pulls up outside an apartment building, killing the engine and turning in his seat.

"Here," he says, reaching out to her, and she finds a key dangling from inbetween his fingertips. "Third floor, apartment 308."

She blinks, unease bubbling in her stomach and rising up her throat. If this is what she thinks he's implying – no strings attached – then it is more than she had ever expected to find in the city. And that sets off warning bells, because it can't be, he can't not want something in return.

She purses her lips and moves her hand towards the door handle without even realizing it before his face smoothes out in understanding. "Oh, I'm sorry. I- You had no luggage, and they were chasing you. I assumed you had nowhere to go - you never told me where to take you. I didn't mean to-" He cuts himself off, and she imagines herself being able to see a tinge of red spread across his cheeks had the light been bright enough. "Tell me where to drop you off and I'll-"

"No," she says, because for a brief second she had been able to read the emotions and intents running across his features easier than she ever has anyone else. "No, it's okay. You're right - I don't have anywhere to go." Her fingers scrape against his as she takes the key, and while her mind screams at her not to do it and to get away, her heart tells her that yes, she can trust this man.

"My shift ends at two o'clock," Mohinder says, leaning back.

She runs her thumb over the face of the key. "308," she says, and he smiles gently.

...

The apartment looks well lived in. A bit messy, like someone had lost something and carelessly gone through and overturned everything in the flat to find the missing item, but there's a shower and a bed and a fridge with fresh food in it, and again, it's more than she hoped for.

The blood is thickly caked around the back of her head and her chest, and it takes some time to scrub it all off. The skin is left tinged pink and feeling sore but, when she steps out of the shower and looks in the mirror, she almost feels like herself again.

She slips back into her clothes, and sinks down onto the bed. She should probably wait for her kind samaritan to come home, but she's exhausted and it's close to midnight and she's certain there's a spare key somewhere for him to let himself in with.

She closes her eyes for just a second, and is lost.

...

When she wakes, it's to the smell of fried eggs. The clock on the wall by the door shows the time to be a little past two thirty AM, and she can hear the clatter of silverware coming from somewhere far away.

"I thought you might be hungry," a sillhouette in the doorway says, and when she doesn't reply Mohinder steps into the warm yellow glow of the streetlights flowing in through the bedroom window and pooling on the floor. "You should have something to eat."

She pushes herself up onto her elbows, groggily feeling the world spin for a moment or two, and a blanket she can't remember ever seeing before slips down her chest from the sudden movement. The bed dips slightly as Mohinder settles at the foot of it, and she swings her legs over the side and feels her feet connect with the wooden floor – remembers the grim discovery the last time she did something similar.

Mohinder is quiet, and she takes it as her que. "I woke up in a morgue this afternoon," she says, and then she simply crumbles; folds in and out and around herself and lurches to the left and before she knows it she's caught up in strong arms and there's a soothing voice whispering nothings in her ear.

She can't hold back now, it's too late for that, so she merely clings to the front of a shirt smelling vaguely of after-shave and lets this man she's just met rock her back and forth until the lights outside the windows go out and pink starts to seep into the morning sky.

She's got nothing left, so this is her new beginning – he is her new beginning. Him, and this small apartment, and the way his fingers curl carefully around the back of her neck. Special he had called her, and maybe he'll help her deal with this, maybe he knows what it's like. She'll ask him later on, when he's thumbed the tears from her cheeks and kissed her forehead, and then she will rise and help him open the windows to banish the smell of burnt eggs.