Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2008-04-05 03:25 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2008-04-05 03:25 pm
Claire - Coming Back from the Black
Fandom: Heroes
Title: Coming Back from the Black
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iluvroadrunner6
Rating: FRT
Characters: Claire Bennet, Peter Petrelli, mentions of Adam Monroe
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fic_variations Prompt: resurrection (#1)
Content Warning: Spoilers through 211: Powerless.
Summary: Four times Claire Bennet came back from the dead and one time she didn't.
Author's Note: N/A
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Heroes. They're owned by NBC. However, any and all original characters are mine, so please do not use them without my permission.
The first time she realized that something wasn’t quite right, she had been hit by a car.
She had been crossing the street to make her way home at night, and the car had careened around the corner out of nowhere. She could still remember the crunch of her bones as her body flew over the car and the eerie black her mind slipped into as her body collided with the pavement again. It was only a few minutes, and then she felt things start to move, her body popping the bones back into place as internal organs rearranged themselves back into their proper places and things righted themselves again.
When she was finally back in sound enough mind to push herself to her feet again, she looked down and saw that there wasn’t a mark on her. She was all in one piece, and it was almost as though what had happened, never had. It was scary. It was thrilling, and as Zach would say, pretty freakin’ cool, but scary nonetheless.
She made her way home, and disappeared into her room, not wanting to face any of her family at the moment. She was too confused, too concerned with what was happening to her to deal with them. Besides, what was she supposed to do if her mom asked her how her day was?
“Oh, it was great! Cheerleading practice went well, and on the way home I got hit by a car and walked away without a scratch!”
Yeah—so not happening.
***
She wanted to tell Zach. She really did. He was the only one she thought she could trust, and it was just a matter of time before he found out. He was also the only person who probably wouldn’t think she was a freak just on principle. Well, she was a freak, but that wasn’t really the point. If Zach also came to the same conclusion, he wasn’t going to run away screaming. In fact, he’d probably be pretty excited about it. But that was another story all together.
She stood at the top of the structure, staring down at the ground and trying to find the will to jump off. She knew she couldn’t die—it was physically impossible—but she could still feel the butterflies fluttering in the bottom of her stomach. Natural human reaction, really—but she just couldn’t dispel the voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her What if this time it doesn’t work?
She swallowed that thought to the back of her mind, and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before launching herself off the top of structure, letting the rush of wind whistle past her ears as she plummeted to, if she hadn’t been a freak, what most certainly would have been her death.
It was only black for a moment, before things came into focus again, and she pushed herself to her feet, and started pushing things back into place, and looked up at the camera with a grim look on her face—half due to the fact that she almost just died, and half because she was worried about what was going to happen between her and Zach, a heavy sigh coming out before speaking.
“My name is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt number 6.”
***
This wasn’t the first time she’d come back from death, but this was the first time she had been so—cold. She didn’t like being stretched out like this—exposed and open. She knew it wasn’t her fault—she had been ‘dead,’ after all—but it was still disconcerting. And it was the first time she had actually stayed dead long enough to make it to the morgue.
She wasn’t sure how that had happened. She had never been dead for more than a minute before, and this time, she had been dead for hours. It wasn’t right. Something had to have changed things—something had altered the equation.
It wasn’t until weeks later, when she pulled the piece of glass out of Peter’s head that she would finally understand the significance of the bloody stick sitting in the pan next to the autopsy table. It was then that she understood that nothing was meant to last forever. And if there was the will and the way, everything would eventually die.
That was just the way things had to be.
***
Getting shot was like nothing Claire had experienced thus far. That was expected as she had never been shot before, but she still expected certain things to be the same, but that really wasn’t the case. She’d fallen from great heights, felt every bone in her body break but the concussion that she felt from the gunshot shocked her more than anything else.
It ripped through her body, turning her inside out before she had even realized what had happened, tearing about blood vessels, muscle and skin before stopping in the sinewy threads of her heart muscle. She was thrown backwards, hitting the ground before she had even realized what had happened, but what probably surprised her the most was the fact that there was no pain. Her mind didn’t have enough time to even register it before everything went dark and she couldn’t realize anything at all.
When she woke up, coughing and sputtering, she came to the conclusion that getting shot? Really not so much fun. But she had a feeling in the pit of her stomach that that wouldn’t be the last time it happened.
***
She wasn’t the same girl he’d known. She had retained some of the things that made her Claire, but that was mostly just to add to the façade. She wasn’t the same girl, hadn’t been for several hundred years. A several hundred years of tutelage with a man who had taught her to blend in, be the same as everyone else. A man who had experience in these things—who may have been slightly out of his mind, but he was charming and convincing, and he understood immortality in a way that Peter didn’t, and Peter never would.
True, he had the same power now too, but still—he didn’t understand things the way Adam did. Adam had been alive for four hundred years before he and Claire had met, and now they had gone through the centuries together, her as his protégée and watchdog. Because there was no denying that Adam was crazy—that he needed someone to watch out for him and make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else, and if that someone needed to be her, then so be it. She had the longevity. She would be there for him so long as he needed her to be. Adam Monroe became her burden to bear, and she would take that on her shoulders and carry it out the best she could.
But now the years were getting to be to trying on her. It was starting to weigh down on her shoulders more than she ever thought it could and it was painful. It hurt to see people do the things they did to each other, and with every war and every gruesome battle, she felt the edges of her world get torn apart. She wanted to still believe that human beings were fundamentally good, and she couldn’t do that if she kept living like this. So in order to do that, she needed to be dead. And Peter was the only one she trusted to follow through with this.
“Are you sure, Claire?” he asked, his face contorting as she presented him with the knife. The years had been hard on him too, and his heart was harder than it used to be, but underneath he was still the same Peter. They had outlived a lot together, but he was going to wind up outliving her.
“Positive,” she said with a nod. He took the knife from her with shaking fingers and she turned away from him, sweeping her hair out of the way so that her neck was exposed. “Right to the brainstem. And don’t pull it out when you’re done, or I’ll come back.”
“What should I do with your—” He hesitated slightly, not sure how exactly to say what he wanted to say. “—when its over. What should I do?”
“Bury me,” she said with a nod. “Just make sure that—”
“The knife doesn’t come out,” he nodded. “I got it.”
She turned back to him for a moment, giving him a small smile, before turning her back to him again. Her eyes fell closed as she felt his hand on her shoulder, steadying herself, and she took a deep breath, waiting patiently for darkness to come.
Title: Coming Back from the Black
Author:
iluvroadrunner6Rating: FRT
Characters: Claire Bennet, Peter Petrelli, mentions of Adam Monroe
fic_variations Prompt: resurrection (#1)Content Warning: Spoilers through 211: Powerless.
Summary: Four times Claire Bennet came back from the dead and one time she didn't.
Author's Note: N/A
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Heroes. They're owned by NBC. However, any and all original characters are mine, so please do not use them without my permission.
The first time she realized that something wasn’t quite right, she had been hit by a car.
She had been crossing the street to make her way home at night, and the car had careened around the corner out of nowhere. She could still remember the crunch of her bones as her body flew over the car and the eerie black her mind slipped into as her body collided with the pavement again. It was only a few minutes, and then she felt things start to move, her body popping the bones back into place as internal organs rearranged themselves back into their proper places and things righted themselves again.
When she was finally back in sound enough mind to push herself to her feet again, she looked down and saw that there wasn’t a mark on her. She was all in one piece, and it was almost as though what had happened, never had. It was scary. It was thrilling, and as Zach would say, pretty freakin’ cool, but scary nonetheless.
She made her way home, and disappeared into her room, not wanting to face any of her family at the moment. She was too confused, too concerned with what was happening to her to deal with them. Besides, what was she supposed to do if her mom asked her how her day was?
“Oh, it was great! Cheerleading practice went well, and on the way home I got hit by a car and walked away without a scratch!”
Yeah—so not happening.
***
She wanted to tell Zach. She really did. He was the only one she thought she could trust, and it was just a matter of time before he found out. He was also the only person who probably wouldn’t think she was a freak just on principle. Well, she was a freak, but that wasn’t really the point. If Zach also came to the same conclusion, he wasn’t going to run away screaming. In fact, he’d probably be pretty excited about it. But that was another story all together.
She stood at the top of the structure, staring down at the ground and trying to find the will to jump off. She knew she couldn’t die—it was physically impossible—but she could still feel the butterflies fluttering in the bottom of her stomach. Natural human reaction, really—but she just couldn’t dispel the voice in the back of her head that was screaming at her What if this time it doesn’t work?
She swallowed that thought to the back of her mind, and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before launching herself off the top of structure, letting the rush of wind whistle past her ears as she plummeted to, if she hadn’t been a freak, what most certainly would have been her death.
It was only black for a moment, before things came into focus again, and she pushed herself to her feet, and started pushing things back into place, and looked up at the camera with a grim look on her face—half due to the fact that she almost just died, and half because she was worried about what was going to happen between her and Zach, a heavy sigh coming out before speaking.
“My name is Claire Bennet, and that was attempt number 6.”
***
This wasn’t the first time she’d come back from death, but this was the first time she had been so—cold. She didn’t like being stretched out like this—exposed and open. She knew it wasn’t her fault—she had been ‘dead,’ after all—but it was still disconcerting. And it was the first time she had actually stayed dead long enough to make it to the morgue.
She wasn’t sure how that had happened. She had never been dead for more than a minute before, and this time, she had been dead for hours. It wasn’t right. Something had to have changed things—something had altered the equation.
It wasn’t until weeks later, when she pulled the piece of glass out of Peter’s head that she would finally understand the significance of the bloody stick sitting in the pan next to the autopsy table. It was then that she understood that nothing was meant to last forever. And if there was the will and the way, everything would eventually die.
That was just the way things had to be.
***
Getting shot was like nothing Claire had experienced thus far. That was expected as she had never been shot before, but she still expected certain things to be the same, but that really wasn’t the case. She’d fallen from great heights, felt every bone in her body break but the concussion that she felt from the gunshot shocked her more than anything else.
It ripped through her body, turning her inside out before she had even realized what had happened, tearing about blood vessels, muscle and skin before stopping in the sinewy threads of her heart muscle. She was thrown backwards, hitting the ground before she had even realized what had happened, but what probably surprised her the most was the fact that there was no pain. Her mind didn’t have enough time to even register it before everything went dark and she couldn’t realize anything at all.
When she woke up, coughing and sputtering, she came to the conclusion that getting shot? Really not so much fun. But she had a feeling in the pit of her stomach that that wouldn’t be the last time it happened.
***
She wasn’t the same girl he’d known. She had retained some of the things that made her Claire, but that was mostly just to add to the façade. She wasn’t the same girl, hadn’t been for several hundred years. A several hundred years of tutelage with a man who had taught her to blend in, be the same as everyone else. A man who had experience in these things—who may have been slightly out of his mind, but he was charming and convincing, and he understood immortality in a way that Peter didn’t, and Peter never would.
True, he had the same power now too, but still—he didn’t understand things the way Adam did. Adam had been alive for four hundred years before he and Claire had met, and now they had gone through the centuries together, her as his protégée and watchdog. Because there was no denying that Adam was crazy—that he needed someone to watch out for him and make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else, and if that someone needed to be her, then so be it. She had the longevity. She would be there for him so long as he needed her to be. Adam Monroe became her burden to bear, and she would take that on her shoulders and carry it out the best she could.
But now the years were getting to be to trying on her. It was starting to weigh down on her shoulders more than she ever thought it could and it was painful. It hurt to see people do the things they did to each other, and with every war and every gruesome battle, she felt the edges of her world get torn apart. She wanted to still believe that human beings were fundamentally good, and she couldn’t do that if she kept living like this. So in order to do that, she needed to be dead. And Peter was the only one she trusted to follow through with this.
“Are you sure, Claire?” he asked, his face contorting as she presented him with the knife. The years had been hard on him too, and his heart was harder than it used to be, but underneath he was still the same Peter. They had outlived a lot together, but he was going to wind up outliving her.
“Positive,” she said with a nod. He took the knife from her with shaking fingers and she turned away from him, sweeping her hair out of the way so that her neck was exposed. “Right to the brainstem. And don’t pull it out when you’re done, or I’ll come back.”
“What should I do with your—” He hesitated slightly, not sure how exactly to say what he wanted to say. “—when its over. What should I do?”
“Bury me,” she said with a nod. “Just make sure that—”
“The knife doesn’t come out,” he nodded. “I got it.”
She turned back to him for a moment, giving him a small smile, before turning her back to him again. Her eyes fell closed as she felt his hand on her shoulder, steadying herself, and she took a deep breath, waiting patiently for darkness to come.
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I'm glad you liked it. (And that icon is adorable.)
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Thanks :)