|
|
The Rise and Fall
by Nicola
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: #1.11, 'Fallout'
Claire sits on top of the world. Close enough, anyway.
It's not the Empire State Building. It's not even close to being that high. But when she looks down, the people below are miniature, driving their toys cars. It's an anonymous apartment building and to get to the roof she has to climb out of a top floor window and shin up the drainpipe. For someone else it would be a feat of astonishing stupidity, but for her it's just… Tuesday afternoon.
Hiro sits beside her. Even though he has made it clear that he Does Not Approve of her behavior, she knows that he likes it up here just as much as she does. He chatters to himself in Japanese under his breath and then quiets, looking out at Manhattan, which has been spread out at their feet. In this moment it seems to exist for them and them alone.
Claire swings her legs, sitting on her hands and clicking her heels against the concrete outer wall. The air up here feels thin—it makes her feel breathless; wonderfully alive. Sometimes, when she is out here, the view is picture postcard perfect: the flawless blue of the sky, with buildings that look like they have been precisely shaded using coloring pencils. But she prefers today's smog and cloud; the charcoal-heavy skyline, grim and imposing; an encroaching sunset that is merely a smudge of sulphur-yellow.
"Okay," Hiro says, breaking her reverie. He smiles slightly as he looks over at her.
"Okay? You're ready? You mean—" she breaks off as Hiro squeezes his eyes shut. He vanishes.
She exhales, readjusting to her sudden aloneness.
Claire is eighteen. She's still shorter than she'd like. That growth spurt her mom promised never came; those long deer legs she imagined never appeared. She's still short, stumpy, prone to gaining weight around her middle. (She figures these must be inherited things. It gives her the tiniest insight into what her real parents must have been like. Maybe she'll borrow one of Peter's medical texts—research further. She's become a regular Nancy Drew when it comes to finding out more about her birth parents and yet she still knows next to nothing.) In a lot of ways, she's still the same. She still likes mint-choc-chip better than all other ice-cream; she still won't eat anything containing carrots; she still hates the way her hair gets if she doesn't use hot oil treatments. She's still kind of a bitch.
It's surprising—that the last seven months haven't changed her more. Peter says it shows strength of character, but she wonders if it's just callousness. How can all those losses not have damaged her? And there have been so many losses, really. It's not just the big ones—her dad, Zach—that hurt. It's the small ones, too. Like never getting to graduate high school; not being able to go to her own prom. Losses like the fact that when she lost her virginity, it was sticky with drying-blood (his as well as hers; neither fatal) and filled up with emotions like desperation and fear—so full of those other things that love didn't even seem a part of it. Losses like the fact that she doesn't even have friends anymore—just other people who are freaks like her.
Hiro reappears. One minute she is alone and then, as she glances to her left, he is there with her. She starts, involuntarily, scraping her arm on the sharp edge of the building in her surprise. Her arm heals instantly, but a single drop of blood lands on her skirt. "Shoot," she murmurs, before refocusing her attention on Hiro.
"How was it?" she asks eagerly. "What did you see?"
"Fourth of July, 1995," Hiro says. "Odessa, Texas. Centurion park. A man bought you an ice-cream and it ended up all over your new dress."
Claire grins. "My dad. He bought me the ice-cream. My mom was upset about the dress, but I didn't care. Because I had ice-cream and there were fireworks. Did you see the fireworks?"
"Yes, I saw the fireworks." Hiro sounds a little reluctant as he speaks. He frowns slightly, and then smiles, although he manages only an echo of her ear-splitting smile.
"Tell me more," she says.
"I've told you everything. You already know all these things, anyway."
Claire ignores him. She stares into space and says, "I remember the grass had just been cut and it smelled… it smelled tangy. Sort of sweet."
"Yes, sweet," Hiro replies, "it smelled sweet."
"That's, like, my favorite smell. That day was…" She trails off and then blinks rapidly. "We looked happy, right? All of us, even my mom, even if she was mad about the ice-cream. We were happy?"
"Claire…" he begins, frowning again.
She reaches out, taking his hand and squeezing it between her palms. "I was just a kid. I don't know if I'm remembering it right."
"You were happy," he says quietly. "You were definitely happy."
Her relief is immense. She drops his hand and looks out at the darkening skyline. She resumes swinging her legs, kicking her feet against the wall.
"Okay," she says decisively. "I know where I want you to go next."
"I don't think we should play this game anymore, " he says. "It's too…" He makes a frustrated gesture with his hands, hunching his shoulders. "It's not responsible! I'm not using my power the way it's supposed to be used."
"We're not hurting anyone. You're not changing anything. When you go back there, you're just… checking it out. And you said it yourself, you need to get better at using your power. Be more precise when you travel back. It's good practice!" She gives him her most imploring, puppy dog-esque look. "Please, Hiro."
His face breaks into an impish, conspiratorial smile and she thinks, bingo! "Just once more," she adds.
"Okay," he replies. "Where to?"
She breathes out slowly and then says, in the clearest voice she can muster, "August 2nd, 1989. Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. The maternity ward."
Hiro screws up his face in concentration and disappears.
She is glad for his simple affection for her; his unquestioning faith. She is also glad that he is no great mathematician. It does not occur to him to do the math, to figure out that he's going back to her date of birth.
On Claire's birth certificate, it says she was born in New York. How she got from New York to Texas is another mystery; one that's probably easy to solve and would reveal a lot of things she doesn't want to know about her adoptive father. But what she really wants to know—needs to know, will maybe go insane if she doesn't find out—is who her birth parents are.
"Claire."
It's Hiro's voice in her ear, but this time she doesn't flinch.
"Why did you ask me to go back there?" he asks, and she can't help but notice that he sounds shaken.
"Because your power's better than mine?" She feels petulant, suddenly. There hasn't been anyone to call her on her childishness recently. "What's the point," she mutters, "in being… indestructible? I can't change anything. Not really."
She senses Hiro's hesitation. It must have been bad, what he saw. Not the picture postcard scene: proud mom and dad and their happy, gurgling baby. Not perfect at all.
Claire jumps.
It's not an ostentatious jump. It's just a little nudge, hands braced, a little shuffle off the edge—until she's no longer perched on the roof, but plummeting hundreds of feet to her death. She picks herself up nonchalantly, snapping limbs back into place, examining the damage to her skirt.
A little girl in the street screams, staring at her with wide eyes. A man rushes to her aid. A consensus is quickly formed: she jumped from a second-floor window; she's stupid, irresponsible, lucky to be alive. Only the little girl seems resistant to believing this collective mind-wipe; she continues to stare at Claire in awe. Claire is glad when she is ushered away by her mother.
Claire re-enters the apartment block just as Hiro rushes down the final flight of stairs. When he reaches her, he hugs her quickly. He mutters something in Japanese, with what sounds like relief. When he releases her, he continues to hold onto her shoulders, fixing her at arm's length.
She looks at him hard. "Tell me what you saw."
He ignores her and says instead, "This game of ours"—he smiles, lop-sided, hopelessly affectionate—"it's been… a ploy. All along. A ploy."
"No," she says and means, yes. "Tell me. Please."
He sighs and she gets an inkling of what is coming. "Your parents were not there," he says. "An off-duty nurse found you in an alley across town. She was the one who brought you into the hospital. You were four days old. And you were… Something happened. They found you covered in blood. A lot of blood. It was all over you, dried, stuck to your skin.
"I'm sorry, Claire, I do not have any answers for you."
Hiro lets go of her. She walks a few steps and realizes she feels dizzy. Hiro is still speaking, asking if she needs anything, if he can help at all. "It's okay, I'm okay," she murmurs mindlessly.
She exits the apartment block, gesturing vaguely for Hiro to leave her alone. The gloomy, unremarkable sunset has produced an equally murky and light-polluted dusk. She walks three blocks before she realizes that her left leg is still broken, twisted all the way round, so that her foot is back-to-front. She doesn't bother to snap it back into place.
December 2006
|
|
|
|
