DVD Commentary: Runaways (Heroes)
Nov. 7th, 2007 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI still owe one DVD commentary. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shizuka_blooms wanted Heroes: Runaways, which is rather lengthy, and time, as always, is an issue, so I'm taking a leaf from yahtzee63 and will just comment on one chapter. It certainly was the Heroes story I enjoyed writing most so far, and about the craziest thing I've done.
"Runaways" is a Marvel comic series created by Brian K. Vaughan, who as it happens these days also writes for Lost. (TV and comics: a small world.) The basic premise: a couple of teenagers - and one small child - find out that their parents are really supervillains, and, well, run away. Now, here I was, missing yet again scenes between Nathan and Hiro, and toying with the idea of "five encounters between Nathan Petrelli and Hiro Nakamura which never happened". The first scenario I came up with was that Nathan gets asked to babysit Hiro at some point while Kaito is in New York with Hiro, as we know he was, to hand over Claire to Noah Bennet as seen in the Company Man flashback. Then I thought: wait a minute. How would Nathan have reacted if he had found out about the Claire thing? How would Hiro and Peter as children have reacted to the news that their parents are Up To No Good? And then it hit me that this was basically the set-up for Runaways, with the older generation in the roles of the Pride. A plot bunny was born. Which got shamelessly encouraged by certain other people who know who they are.
Prologue
Later, Angela Petrelli decided that the whole thing was solely and exclusively Kaito Nakamura’s fault.
Obviously, since this story was written before s2 started, I had no idea about the Angela/Kaito affair. If I had, their dialogue would have been slightly different but not much, since at this point the older generation is in the process of breaking apart anyway.
It was Kaito’s whimsical decision to bring his nine-year-old son along that set the entire regrettable series of events in motion. Admittedly, at the time Angela thought this particular whim could be useful. Her own oldest son had turned up in New York against expectations, and she needed something to distract him. Nathan was supposed to be on his way to Bosnia already. But after what he believed to be the death of Meredith Gordon and her child, he had asked for a leave of absence to go to their burial, and now he was in New York, saying he needed to talk to her and his father. Nothing could be more inconvenient, not because Angela knew the truth about the supposed deaths – her conviction that a parent who couldn’t lie smoothly to their child was a hopeless incompetent was well tested – but because the toddler was here as well, waiting to be handed over to her foster family. Of course, the odds of Nathan finding out about this and somehow spotting the girl were slim, but still, they existed while both were in the same city, and Angela didn’t like playing the odds. Which was why Kaito’s offspring came in so handy.
“Nathan will take care of your boy,” she told Kaito. “He’s brilliant with children.”
This was bending the truth somewhat – Angela’s true opinion of Nathan’s skills in that department was more along the lines of “Nathan tolerates his younger brother who hero worships him” – but if Kaito chose to believe her, it was clearly his fault, given their decades of acquaintance. In any event, one glimpse had shown her Kaito’s son was bound to be positively exhausting, which was just what was needed.
“Nathan is?” Charles Deveaux asked, sounding interested and somewhat sceptical. Then his eyes crinkled in a smile. “In that case, I shall entrust Simone to his care as well while we talk things over. She has been a bit despondent since her mother’s remarriage, and it would be selfish of me not to encourage her social life, such as it is at her age. Besides, my dear, isn’t your younger son bound to feel neglected if his brother is focusing on someone else? That way, the focus will spread.”
I happen to see Charles Deveaux in a less positive light than most of fandom, to wit, I think at the very least, he was a manipulative son of a bitch and not that morally superior to Angela. Which incidentally makes him interesting. Here, he is clearly Up To Something.
Trust Charles to go for the benevolent angle while foisting his useless daughter on them. The way he was able to make everyone believe he was doing them a favour while exploiting them was something Angela immensely admired. Besides, the girl might not show any signs of having a power, but in this particular case, she would serve well enough as a distraction.
“But of course, Charles, dear,” Angela replied, matching his gentle smile with one of her own.
Daniel Linderman coughed. “In that case… you know, I didn’t come alone from Vegas.”
It was originally "Alex Linderman", in honor of Malcolm McDowell's most famous role, but then one of the official websites gave us his first name as Daniel, so I edited. Also, I should say here that the conversations between the elders deliberately took their cue from the Pride, i.e. the parents in "Runaways"; the fact they bicker in a mundane way as in any parent get together when they're not plotting human sacrifices and world doom is part of the charm of the first "Runaways" volume.
They all looked at him.
“Dan, you didn’t,” said Angela, who had her own reasons for taking the prospect of a new Linderman offspring somewhat personally.
This was when we still suspected Angela had a fling with Linderman. Though in this case, this is about something different; she wants her son to become future leader, and if Linderman has an offspring of his own, he might not support that idea anymore.
“Oh, no,” he said hastily. “I simply decided it was time to study one of my projects a little more closely. Hal Sanders’ daughter. Sixteen and already in juvenile detention, which admittedly might come in useful in the long term, but I thought I might as well make an entrance as a benefactor. She seems to think I have unsavoury designs on her, so putting her together with a couple of children will hopefully prove I see her in quite a different light.”
Nathan, Hiro and Peter were a given; I wanted the group to contain girls as well, other than baby Claire, and Simone was obvious since Charles was an important player. I then toyed with the idea of giving Linderman an OC child and realized how stupid I was, considering he canonically kept track of Niki her entire childhood. So Niki it was.
Under other circumstances, Angela would not have agreed to let a sixteen-year-old fresh from juvenile detention anywhere near her older son who, if Meredith the white trash from Texas was anything to go by, seemed to have a type. On the other hand, if there was any time when Nathan could be guaranteed not to notice this girl as a woman, it would be now. And besides. Distraction was the name of the game.
Angela isn't completely wrong on either Nathan's type or his current lack of interest due to the shock of Claire's and Meredith's "deaths", but not completely on both counts, either. Regarding Niki's age: I was guessing, though in restrospect I simply could have looked up Jessica's tombstone in "Six Months Ago", assuming that they were twins.
“Then we’re all set,” Angela announced brightly, and swept away to tell her son the happy news.
***
Part I: Other people’s children
Nathan’s college education had ensured his familiarity with the Sartre quote about hell being other people. Right now, he felt inclined to modify this to “hell is other people’s children”. He wondered whether this was some karmic payback for the way he had failed Claire. He should have married Meredith. He should have been there when that fire broke out; he would have been able to save them, both of them.
No, I don't think Nathan spend the next fourteen years guit-tripping, but going by the way he reacts when Meredith calls him in "Run!" - the shocked "I went to your funeral" and telling Angela "I cared for Meredith once; I owe her more than this, I owe them both", I think it's safe to assume the Meredith affair wasn't a one night stand with a broken condom, and the baby that resulted from it something more than a responsibility he wasn't prepared to handle. So his immediate reaction to their supposed deaths - and such deaths, too, burning alive - would be Nathan at his most vulnerable. Which is important in order to make his reaction later plausible.
Instead, they were dead, and his attempt to talk with his parents about the suspiciously convenient timing of those deaths was delayed by having a Japanese boy who didn’t speak a word of English foisted on him. And Charles Deveaux’s spoilt brat of a daughter, who had instantly demanded access to her own tv, since Peter and the Japanese boy, Hiro, had bridged language difficulties via a video game she wasn’t in the least interested in. And a sulky blonde teenager with some connection to Linderman who had started by asking him where the booze in the house was.
At some point, Niki became an alcoholic, since she's in AA in Six Months Ago, but right now she's simply being a teenager. Also, I'm assuming that the Jessica personality did not manifest between Hal's departure and his seeking out Niki again in Six Months Ago, which means Niki must have had another method to act out.
“You’re not allowed to drink,” Nathan said tersely.
Unintentional irony, I swear. But fits with Simone's anti-drug-rants later in this story, don't you think?
“Didn’t ask for your permission, dickhead,” she shot back.
“Naaaaathan,” Peter yelled, “tell him that jets totally don’t move that way. My brother’s in the Navy,” he added proudly.
“I don’t understand,” Hiro said in Japanese, which was one of the few phrases Nathan actually knew, having read Shogun.
My beta doubted this, but Nathan recognizes the phrase - Wakarimasen - for the same reason I did when visiting Japan years ago. Reading Shogun as a teen is educational, people. Sort of.
Peter made an upward motion with his hand and pointed to Nathan.
“Nathan’s a pilot. He flies,” he explained. “Like in Top Gun, you know?”
Hiro’s eyes lit up. “Top Gun,” he repeated. Evidently its fame had made it across the Pacific. “Flying Man,” he added, surprisingly in English, pushing his glasses up and looking at Nathan with new interest.
He just has to call Nathan that.
“More like The Great Santini,” Simone Deveaux commented, wandering in. “My Dad says you’re all Pat Conroy characters. I’ve read the book, you know. Not just watched the movie like some people. Anyway, my Dad says some of your staff must have talked to Pat Conroy because he’s totally describing your family in all of his books.”
Presumably, know-it-all thirteen year old girls were supposed to be charming. In some universe.
Young Simone owes something to Hermione Granger, I admit it. Which worked for me. Incidentally, the Petrellis are Pat Conroy characters. But Charles Deveaux commenting on their dysfunctionality is still something of a running gag in my stories, because he's as damaging to his own daughter, just in a different way.
“Didn’t you want to watch tv?” Nathan asked. He had figured she’d be safe to leave unsupervised and had put her in one of the guest rooms.
“It doesn’t work, it just shows my Dad’s roof for some reason,” she replied.
“You people live in a palace and you don’t even have a tv that works?” the blonde teenager, whose name was Nicole, said sarcastically. “Figures. Rich people are all cheap.”
wychwood questioned "Nicole" as too upper class, but that is actually her what her father consistently calls her in Six Months Ago, so I'm assuming it is her full name, and that she went to "Niki" partly to become someone else. (Ahem.) Linderman would have introduced her as Nicole when bringing her to the Petrellis, though. BTW, I wouldn't put it past Linderman to have thoughts just in the opposite direction of Angela's with this and banking on Nathan noticing Niki.
“Our tvs do work,” Nathan said wearily.
If you've ever baby-sat, you feel for Nathan here.
“Not that one,” Simone insisted. Meanwhile, Hiro pulled at Nathan’s sleeve, repeated “Top Gun” and added a lot of incomprehensible Japanese, making the flying motion again. At a guess, Nathan had been asked to whisk the lot of them to the next airport and take them all for a ride. He opened his mouth to say “no,” which should be understandable enough, but somehow the expectant eyes behind the glasses were a match to Peter’s well-practiced hopeful puppy look.
Hiro Nakamura and his Nathan-disarming charm. It's canon!
Nathan shut his mouth again, deciding to deal with Simone’s tv problem instead. It would be easiest to put her into yet another room with a tv, but he was fairly certain she had lied and just wanted to irritate him, so he said he’d have a look.
“Come along,” he told Nicole.
“Going to take me to the booze after all?”
“No, just not leaving you alone,” Nathan said tersely, and dragged her with him, followed by Simone and for some reason both Peter and Hiro, who wandered after them.
As it turned out, the tv screen in the guest room Nathan had dumped Simone into did indeed show the rooftop of the Deveaux building with its distinctive architecture, but said rooftop wasn’t unoccupied anymore. Instead, Nathan recognized his parents, Charles Deveaux, Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Linderman, who were evidently having some kind of meeting.
In the original "Runaways", the kids found the secret passage leading them to the chance to observe their parents in supervillain action by accident... they thought. Later, it turned out this wasn't quite so coincidental. Here, the discovery isn't a coincidence, either, as Nathan will figure out in the next chapter.
It wasn’t hard to figure out they were watching some kind of security feed, though why on earth a security camera observing the Deveaux building was connected to a tv in the Petrelli residence was anyone’s guess. What made Nathan freeze on the spot instead of concluding instantly that watching this in current company was a breach of family discretion, and he should switch it off, was the fact that there was someone else on the rooftop as well. His mother was currently holding a small, very small child, a child that couldn’t be more than two years, if that.
It can’t be, Nathan thought. But he had a photo, a photo Meredith had sent him, a photo he had stared at just recently during the whole flight from Texas to New York.
Meredith having given him a photo of the baby is a pretty safe bet, no matter whether you assume emotional or mercentary motives or both.
“I’ve gone through the personnel files,” Linderman said. “Bennet is the perfect choice, Angela, I assure you.”
“He’d better be,” Nathan’s father commented. “The girl is our granddaughter, after all.”
Peter made a surprised noise. Nathan remained frozen. The girls frowned, and Hiro asked something in Japanese which nobody replied to.
“Kaito will handle the transfer, then,” Nathan’s mother said matter-of-factly. “I’d rather not have your Mr. Bennet meet us.”
Mr. Nakamura nodded and asked whether there were any new developments regarding “the prophecy”.
“I’m collecting all the precogs I can find,” Linderman replied. “There are variables, but they all agree on two things. The explosion will happen, one way or the other. And one of us will rule the country in the aftermath.”
There was a short silence; the toddler took this as a signal to start crying, and Angela Petrelli handed her over to Mr. Nakamura. Then she said, voice very serious:
“Then maybe it should happen.”
“Angela,” Charles Deveaux protested.
“Think about it, Charles,” she said. “No more running in circles, working in small steps that get undone just as quickly. We could really change the world.”
“The dragon offered Kensai the power to unite the country, and to lead it,” Kaito Nakamura muttered, “but there was a price. There is always a price. What will cause the explosion? Is there certainty about this as well?”
“That, too, will be one of us,” Linderman said mildly, his eyes not leaving Angela Petrelli’s face. “Or rather, one of our children.”
She grew pale. Then she pressed her lips together. “Even so.”
“This is so like a bad trip. Your parents are all crazy supervillains,” Nicole said in disgust. “Let me out of here!”
Only then did Nathan notice he was still holding her elbow, the remote control of the tv in his other hand where Simone had put it earlier. Peter looked at him, wide-eyed, then to the tv screen, then to Nathan again, and said his name. Nathan unfroze and pressed the off switch on the remote. Later, he would regret this, as learning more would certainly have been helpful, but right now, he couldn’t bear to listen for another second. His parents and everyone else on that roof certainly did sound like they were insane, or in some Bond movie, or both. Most importantly, though, they had his daughter and intended to hand her over to some employee of Linderman’s. Even in his most suspicious moments, he hadn’t expected that kind of betrayal.
That's our Nathan: goes in instinctive denial about the superhero/villain stuff and focuses on the personal instead. Though the personal is enormous, in this case. In the comics, the kids watched their parents sacrifice a human being, which doesn't happen here except in a metaphorical way, but still. I was also thinking of Claire saying "then why didn't she let you know I'm alive?" to Nathan in How to stop an exploding man.
He was twenty-two years old, but right now, he felt as young as the rest of them. He swallowed, then decided he had to think the full implications through later. Now, he had to act.
“You – you all stay here,” he said to them. “I’m going there.”
“What are you, deaf?” Nicole asked. “No way I’m staying, I told you.”
“Then leave. I don’t care. I have to go and get my daughter,” Nathan said, throwing years of self-censorship and lessons in lies and discretion overboard.
“That baby is your daughter?” Nicole asked, a note of softness creeping into her voice.
“You can’t go there,” Simone said unexpectedly. “When my dad has these meetings, nobody is let through security who’s not invited. But I, um, could go. I mean, I know all of the security guys, plus if I say I need to see him they’ll believe me and let me through. And I could get the baby for you, get her outside our penthouse at least.”
Think of Simone helping out Hiro and Ando by giving them a picture for Linderman.
This sounded actually both practical and sensible, even to Nathan whose inner Petrelli was telling him he was currently lacking both qualities, and would he wait until there was an opportunity to allow his parents to provide some kind of explanation?
But he had stood and watched an empty coffin be lowered into a grave only two days ago, and he wasn’t feeling too sensible right now. Still, some parts of him apparently functioned on autopilot.
“Why would you do that?” he asked Simone, halfway between distrust and numbness.
Nathan's inbred cynicism is useful, because I bet some readers were wondering as well.
“Parents belong with their children,” she said in a small voice.
This is why I had Charles mention earlier he and Simone's mother are divorced and she has issues because of that.
It was probably a good thing that she didn’t know he hadn’t adhered to that principle during the last two years.
“You’re not going to go away with the baby,” Peter said.
“Peter…”
“Not alone. I’m coming with you. And this explosion thing they talked about, Nathan, they said one of us would…”
Peter is still in a "what the hell?" stage about the whole revelations, but the idea that Nathan could go away did go through first, and by the nature of Petrelli sibling co-dependence, he's not intending to stay behind. On the other hand, he also noticed far more than Nathan did that there are more things at stake here; he did get the implication of "explosion" and "aftermath".
“Ex-plo-sion?” Hiro repeated, and Peter gesticulated with both arms, nodded towards the tv screen where the images of their parents had just faded away, then pointed towards them and exhaled air in what was supposed to sound like something blowing up. The alarm on Hiro’s face deepened.
Hiro getting some idea of the big picture, as in show canon, was important as wel.
“You should go now,” Nicole told Simone. “Before the crazies stop talking and get back. And you,” she looked at Nathan, “no way you can take care of a baby alone. You’re a lousy babysitter, you know that? Who’d you practice on, anyway, him?” she finished jerking her chin in Peter’s direction.
“Hey!” said Peter.
Well, Nathan did, you know. Nannies not withstanding.
“Plus I’m not going back to Vegas with that Linderman guy if he wants to blow up people so he can rule the country, or whatever. I’m coming with you to look after the baby. You have cash, right? I mean, you’re rich.”
Niki is completely bluffing here. At 16, she has no idea of how to look after babies. If you've read the entire story, you'll notice she always gets out of doing the actual changing diapers etc.; in other words, Nathan gets conned here . As for Niki's motives, she's genuinenly freaked out about what they heard and accordingly distrustful of Linderman, but she's not ready to be on her own, Nathan is rich, and she's vaguely interested in him. She does feel sorry for the baby.
While she was talking, Hiro had taken the remote control from Nathan and switched the tv back on. By now, his father was speaking, but not in English. He had switched to Japanese, and whatever he said was making Hiro look more horrified by the second.
Had to give Hiro the full "my father is Up To No Good" experience, too, and hey, if Company employees like Noah later speak Japanese, I'm reasonably sure the elders would be capable of it.
In the midst of reeling from the news that his daughter was alive, his parents were involved in some sort of lunatic conspiracy, his brother wanted to run away with him and he himself was about to kidnap Claire back when the only plan for her future he currently had had originated with some booze-addicted teenager from Las Vegas, Nathan felt a pang. He was an adult. He had a job; he could leave and never come back in this house again. This boy, on the other hand, was stuck with a parent who apparently was as mad and bad and dangerous to know as Nathan’s, and would be for the next decade at least.
One of our children.
It's not that Nathan is incapable of caring for non-family members, it's just that he always starts with Hiro.
First things first. He had to focus; had to be useful. Maybe then things would start making sense again. Get Claire back, explain things to Peter; anything else would have to wait.
“Okay,” he said to Simone. Somehow, the rest of them interpreted this as meaning them as well, starting with Hiro, whose horror started to transform into resolve, as he pointed towards the view screen, then towards himself, saying “stop”.
Hiro: wanting to save the world in any universe.
Quite how this led to all of them squeezed in the big limousine, with the Petrelli chauffeur having been told Nathan would drive himself, Nathan could not have said. He knew that if he thought this through, he’d stop, he’d regret, he’d remember there was a reason why he didn’t marry Meredith despite having been in love with her, that he had wanted a shining future for himself just as much as his parents had. But ever since he got the phone call about that fire in Texas, he had been going through what-ifs and i-should-haves, and now he was offered a second chance. He had to take it. He had to.
See above re: Nathan at his most vulnerable; at any later point, he probably would have at least needed much coercion from Peter or other sources, but not right now.
Simone had been right about the tightened security in the Deveaux building, but she was also right about being let through. “I want to see my daddy,” she cried, tears rolling, and the guards shrugged and conceded; Simone passed the guards while the rest of them had to wait in the limousine parked in the garage.
“Can all girls do that? Cry whenever they want to, I mean?” Peter asked Nathan, as they watched Simone disappear into the elevator leading up to the penthouse. It was something easier to wonder about than how long their parents had been lying to them and what made two rational beings believe in prophecies, or what “us” as in “one of us” meant; Peter might genuinely be interested or he might have made the question up to distract Nathan, because Peter did things like that, even at 12. Nathan shrugged.
“You should know,” Nicole said to him, and Peter, getting the implication, looked mildly offended.
Because 16-years-old girls are mean to twelve-years-old boys like that.
Hiro had been busy scribbling something on a piece of paper the entire time, and now evidently had finished; he pressed it in Nathan’s hands. Nathan looked down. It was a series of stick figures. Several of them were standing on top of a skyscraper and were obviously meant to represent their parents. Then there was another group, presumably themselves, standing in front of an airplane, with an arrow drawn between the tallest of them and the plane. This seemed to mean Hiro had taken the Peter’s Top Gun explanation to mean that Nathan had his own plane and could fly them away. It got worse from there. Next, the groups were duelling each other with swords, and then, confusingly, they were holding hands in front of a fire and a number of dancing teddy bears. Looking expectantly at Nathan, Hiro hummed the main Star Wars theme. Peter looked over Nathan’s shoulder, and the scowl on his face turned into a beaming smile.
You should have seen me smile, too, when I got this idea, because John Williams scores as a communication method solved the problem of not letting Hiro have English vocabulary he doesn't possess at the start of the show, and yet allowing him to communicate with the rest of the groups. It's appropriately geeky for Hiro, Peter would be enough of a genre fan to translate at the start, and there are enough film scores which Nathan plausibly could know, too.
“Right,” he said. “We have to redeem them! Make them return to the light side! After rescuing your baby and getting away, of course.”
Trust Hiro and Peter to have the redemption idea.
Hiro nodded eagerly, humming a few notes from the Imperial March and then switching to yet another melody from Star Wars. Nathan, who had watched all three movies when they were originally released, refused to recognize the third.
If anyone is wondering, it's "Luke and Leia" from "Return of the Jedi'", because Hiro is thinking of Luke telling Leia he has to go to Vader and try to reach the good in him.
It was already somewhat embarrassing that he knew the second wasn’t actually called Darth Vader’s theme. Not to mention that Peter and Hiro seemed to have inherited their parents’ insanity full force, no pun intended. Unfortunately, this meant Nathan had to be responsible for them. They couldn’t take care of themselves, and Peter definitely shouldn’t be left alone with their parents. As for Hiro…
Be sensible, his inner Petrelli told him. You’re not going to kidnap anyone, least of all strange Japanese children. Forget your career, you’re going to end up in prison for that. Your daughter, fine, that’s legal, because she is your daughter, and they sure as hell don’t have any claim on her, but none of the others.
“Wow,” Nicole said, sounding impressed. “That was fast.”
There was Simone. With the baby. And some confused security people first calling, then chasing after her. Nathan pushed the passenger-side door open and began to drive towards her.
“Jump in,” Peter called excitedly, but the first of the guards had reached her, and held her by her shoulders. Nathan got out, uncertain what he would do; to his surprise, Nicole did as well, with no hesitation at all. She ran towards the guard holding Simone and punched him.
Everyone in this story has their turn at heroic moments. This is one of Niki's. Plus of course it's one of several examples of Our Heroes manifesting early.
The guy went down, and Simone would have as well, if Nathan hadn’t stood in front of her to catch her and the child. He had no memory of taking any of the steps between getting out of the car and reaching her; it was as if he was there in a blink, propelled by nothing but overwhelming need.
Yes, he flew those few steps without realising.
No time to think about that now, or how no sixteen-year-old girl should be able to punch out a trained security guard. Who didn’t move as he lay on the floor.
“Back to the car,” Nathan yelled, and they did. By now, the other security guards were only at arms’ length behind them, and one of them pulled a gun. There was another odd moment of disconnect, because from one second to the next, the man did not have his gun anymore, and nor did his last remaining colleague. Later, Nathan thought, later, and handed over Simone and Claire to Niki as he got into the driver’s seat. Ignoring all caution, he did his best imitation of a 70s cop on wheels. The limousine could take it. His heart hammered as they raced out of the garage.
“That was so cool,” Peter said. “Nathan, did you see what Hiro did?”
Nathan had no idea what Peter was talking about.
“He made everyone freeze except us, and then we took the guns from the guards,” Peter continued happily. “Right after you did that fly jump thing and Nicole punched out the other guy.”
Which means Peter absorbed the power from Hiro and hence was able to move with him.
Peter has gone insane, Nathan thought. The whole thing with Ma and Pa has been too much for him.
Well, what would you think?
On the other hand, it hadn’t been his parents who had just exposed a couple of minors to a kidnapping, assault and car chase. He’d be lucky if he made it ten blocks without getting arrested.
You won’t be. You know why? Because your parents do not want any of this go public, and nor, I’d bet, do any of the others. They’ll go after you, absolutely, but not through the police.
Thinking like a Petrelli could be helpful now and then. He still didn’t slow down the car.
“Are you trying to get us killed, you nut?” Nicole hissed.
“Shut up, Nicole,” Nathan said, as trying to drive fast on a New York street tended to make one lose one’s hardly won adult maturity.
“Your kid just peed on me,” she replied, and then added another non sequitur. “So I guess you can call me Niki.”
“So did you see it? “ Peter insisted.
“I can’t believe I did that,” Simone whispered. “It was so easy, too! They had given the baby to one of our servants to feed and were still out on the terrace, talking. I said I just wanted to hold her, and she let me.”
“Your old man is going to thrash the life out of you,” Nicole said matter-of-factly. Simone looked horrified, either at the assumption about fathers this statement showed or because she believed it was a possibility. Probably not the latter. The few times Nathan had seen Charles Deveaux at his parents’ parties, he had appeared to be a gentle, mild person. But then again, so did Mr. Linderman. Both of whom had helped his mother to fake the death of her granddaughter and hand her over to strangers.
It's the former. Charles would never beat his daughter. But Niki, even with partly blocked memories, still comes fresh from a childhood full of abuse and would automatically draw such a conclusion.
“No, he’s not,” Peter said and then showed this wasn’t a statement of faith in Charles Deveaux, by adding: “Because she’s staying with us. Right, Nathan? We’re like the rebels running away from the Empire now. We just have to find a good hideout.”
It doesn't even occur to Peter Nathan wouldn't want to take the others along or would want to ditch them.
Hiro, face covered with sweat as after a great physical exortion, nodded, which Nathan could see in the mirror, then he put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder and said gravely: “Han Solo. You. Millennium Falcon?”
There was no way in which his life could get any more lunatic, Nathan thought,
Oh, Nathan. You so naive.
and then he heard a noise that made his heart stop. Claire giggled. It was more a gurgle, admittedly, but still, a happy sound from his daughter, whom he had only seen five times in her short life, and then she had been silent each time, not even crying, as if she know he was a stranger by choice and didn’t deserve to hear anything.
All his actions today had been insane, but right here, right now, he thought that it had been worth it.
And on that mushy note, I end the commentary for this chapter, heading off to rewatch the scene with Nathan and his sons from Kindness of Strangers again.
shizuka_blooms wanted Heroes: Runaways, which is rather lengthy, and time, as always, is an issue, so I'm taking a leaf from yahtzee63 and will just comment on one chapter. It certainly was the Heroes story I enjoyed writing most so far, and about the craziest thing I've done. "Runaways" is a Marvel comic series created by Brian K. Vaughan, who as it happens these days also writes for Lost. (TV and comics: a small world.) The basic premise: a couple of teenagers - and one small child - find out that their parents are really supervillains, and, well, run away. Now, here I was, missing yet again scenes between Nathan and Hiro, and toying with the idea of "five encounters between Nathan Petrelli and Hiro Nakamura which never happened". The first scenario I came up with was that Nathan gets asked to babysit Hiro at some point while Kaito is in New York with Hiro, as we know he was, to hand over Claire to Noah Bennet as seen in the Company Man flashback. Then I thought: wait a minute. How would Nathan have reacted if he had found out about the Claire thing? How would Hiro and Peter as children have reacted to the news that their parents are Up To No Good? And then it hit me that this was basically the set-up for Runaways, with the older generation in the roles of the Pride. A plot bunny was born. Which got shamelessly encouraged by certain other people who know who they are.
Prologue
Later, Angela Petrelli decided that the whole thing was solely and exclusively Kaito Nakamura’s fault.
Obviously, since this story was written before s2 started, I had no idea about the Angela/Kaito affair. If I had, their dialogue would have been slightly different but not much, since at this point the older generation is in the process of breaking apart anyway.
It was Kaito’s whimsical decision to bring his nine-year-old son along that set the entire regrettable series of events in motion. Admittedly, at the time Angela thought this particular whim could be useful. Her own oldest son had turned up in New York against expectations, and she needed something to distract him. Nathan was supposed to be on his way to Bosnia already. But after what he believed to be the death of Meredith Gordon and her child, he had asked for a leave of absence to go to their burial, and now he was in New York, saying he needed to talk to her and his father. Nothing could be more inconvenient, not because Angela knew the truth about the supposed deaths – her conviction that a parent who couldn’t lie smoothly to their child was a hopeless incompetent was well tested – but because the toddler was here as well, waiting to be handed over to her foster family. Of course, the odds of Nathan finding out about this and somehow spotting the girl were slim, but still, they existed while both were in the same city, and Angela didn’t like playing the odds. Which was why Kaito’s offspring came in so handy.
“Nathan will take care of your boy,” she told Kaito. “He’s brilliant with children.”
This was bending the truth somewhat – Angela’s true opinion of Nathan’s skills in that department was more along the lines of “Nathan tolerates his younger brother who hero worships him” – but if Kaito chose to believe her, it was clearly his fault, given their decades of acquaintance. In any event, one glimpse had shown her Kaito’s son was bound to be positively exhausting, which was just what was needed.
“Nathan is?” Charles Deveaux asked, sounding interested and somewhat sceptical. Then his eyes crinkled in a smile. “In that case, I shall entrust Simone to his care as well while we talk things over. She has been a bit despondent since her mother’s remarriage, and it would be selfish of me not to encourage her social life, such as it is at her age. Besides, my dear, isn’t your younger son bound to feel neglected if his brother is focusing on someone else? That way, the focus will spread.”
I happen to see Charles Deveaux in a less positive light than most of fandom, to wit, I think at the very least, he was a manipulative son of a bitch and not that morally superior to Angela. Which incidentally makes him interesting. Here, he is clearly Up To Something.
Trust Charles to go for the benevolent angle while foisting his useless daughter on them. The way he was able to make everyone believe he was doing them a favour while exploiting them was something Angela immensely admired. Besides, the girl might not show any signs of having a power, but in this particular case, she would serve well enough as a distraction.
“But of course, Charles, dear,” Angela replied, matching his gentle smile with one of her own.
Daniel Linderman coughed. “In that case… you know, I didn’t come alone from Vegas.”
It was originally "Alex Linderman", in honor of Malcolm McDowell's most famous role, but then one of the official websites gave us his first name as Daniel, so I edited. Also, I should say here that the conversations between the elders deliberately took their cue from the Pride, i.e. the parents in "Runaways"; the fact they bicker in a mundane way as in any parent get together when they're not plotting human sacrifices and world doom is part of the charm of the first "Runaways" volume.
They all looked at him.
“Dan, you didn’t,” said Angela, who had her own reasons for taking the prospect of a new Linderman offspring somewhat personally.
This was when we still suspected Angela had a fling with Linderman. Though in this case, this is about something different; she wants her son to become future leader, and if Linderman has an offspring of his own, he might not support that idea anymore.
“Oh, no,” he said hastily. “I simply decided it was time to study one of my projects a little more closely. Hal Sanders’ daughter. Sixteen and already in juvenile detention, which admittedly might come in useful in the long term, but I thought I might as well make an entrance as a benefactor. She seems to think I have unsavoury designs on her, so putting her together with a couple of children will hopefully prove I see her in quite a different light.”
Nathan, Hiro and Peter were a given; I wanted the group to contain girls as well, other than baby Claire, and Simone was obvious since Charles was an important player. I then toyed with the idea of giving Linderman an OC child and realized how stupid I was, considering he canonically kept track of Niki her entire childhood. So Niki it was.
Under other circumstances, Angela would not have agreed to let a sixteen-year-old fresh from juvenile detention anywhere near her older son who, if Meredith the white trash from Texas was anything to go by, seemed to have a type. On the other hand, if there was any time when Nathan could be guaranteed not to notice this girl as a woman, it would be now. And besides. Distraction was the name of the game.
Angela isn't completely wrong on either Nathan's type or his current lack of interest due to the shock of Claire's and Meredith's "deaths", but not completely on both counts, either. Regarding Niki's age: I was guessing, though in restrospect I simply could have looked up Jessica's tombstone in "Six Months Ago", assuming that they were twins.
“Then we’re all set,” Angela announced brightly, and swept away to tell her son the happy news.
***
Part I: Other people’s children
Nathan’s college education had ensured his familiarity with the Sartre quote about hell being other people. Right now, he felt inclined to modify this to “hell is other people’s children”. He wondered whether this was some karmic payback for the way he had failed Claire. He should have married Meredith. He should have been there when that fire broke out; he would have been able to save them, both of them.
No, I don't think Nathan spend the next fourteen years guit-tripping, but going by the way he reacts when Meredith calls him in "Run!" - the shocked "I went to your funeral" and telling Angela "I cared for Meredith once; I owe her more than this, I owe them both", I think it's safe to assume the Meredith affair wasn't a one night stand with a broken condom, and the baby that resulted from it something more than a responsibility he wasn't prepared to handle. So his immediate reaction to their supposed deaths - and such deaths, too, burning alive - would be Nathan at his most vulnerable. Which is important in order to make his reaction later plausible.
Instead, they were dead, and his attempt to talk with his parents about the suspiciously convenient timing of those deaths was delayed by having a Japanese boy who didn’t speak a word of English foisted on him. And Charles Deveaux’s spoilt brat of a daughter, who had instantly demanded access to her own tv, since Peter and the Japanese boy, Hiro, had bridged language difficulties via a video game she wasn’t in the least interested in. And a sulky blonde teenager with some connection to Linderman who had started by asking him where the booze in the house was.
At some point, Niki became an alcoholic, since she's in AA in Six Months Ago, but right now she's simply being a teenager. Also, I'm assuming that the Jessica personality did not manifest between Hal's departure and his seeking out Niki again in Six Months Ago, which means Niki must have had another method to act out.
“You’re not allowed to drink,” Nathan said tersely.
Unintentional irony, I swear. But fits with Simone's anti-drug-rants later in this story, don't you think?
“Didn’t ask for your permission, dickhead,” she shot back.
“Naaaaathan,” Peter yelled, “tell him that jets totally don’t move that way. My brother’s in the Navy,” he added proudly.
“I don’t understand,” Hiro said in Japanese, which was one of the few phrases Nathan actually knew, having read Shogun.
My beta doubted this, but Nathan recognizes the phrase - Wakarimasen - for the same reason I did when visiting Japan years ago. Reading Shogun as a teen is educational, people. Sort of.
Peter made an upward motion with his hand and pointed to Nathan.
“Nathan’s a pilot. He flies,” he explained. “Like in Top Gun, you know?”
Hiro’s eyes lit up. “Top Gun,” he repeated. Evidently its fame had made it across the Pacific. “Flying Man,” he added, surprisingly in English, pushing his glasses up and looking at Nathan with new interest.
He just has to call Nathan that.
“More like The Great Santini,” Simone Deveaux commented, wandering in. “My Dad says you’re all Pat Conroy characters. I’ve read the book, you know. Not just watched the movie like some people. Anyway, my Dad says some of your staff must have talked to Pat Conroy because he’s totally describing your family in all of his books.”
Presumably, know-it-all thirteen year old girls were supposed to be charming. In some universe.
Young Simone owes something to Hermione Granger, I admit it. Which worked for me. Incidentally, the Petrellis are Pat Conroy characters. But Charles Deveaux commenting on their dysfunctionality is still something of a running gag in my stories, because he's as damaging to his own daughter, just in a different way.
“Didn’t you want to watch tv?” Nathan asked. He had figured she’d be safe to leave unsupervised and had put her in one of the guest rooms.
“It doesn’t work, it just shows my Dad’s roof for some reason,” she replied.
“You people live in a palace and you don’t even have a tv that works?” the blonde teenager, whose name was Nicole, said sarcastically. “Figures. Rich people are all cheap.”
wychwood questioned "Nicole" as too upper class, but that is actually her what her father consistently calls her in Six Months Ago, so I'm assuming it is her full name, and that she went to "Niki" partly to become someone else. (Ahem.) Linderman would have introduced her as Nicole when bringing her to the Petrellis, though. BTW, I wouldn't put it past Linderman to have thoughts just in the opposite direction of Angela's with this and banking on Nathan noticing Niki. “Our tvs do work,” Nathan said wearily.
If you've ever baby-sat, you feel for Nathan here.
“Not that one,” Simone insisted. Meanwhile, Hiro pulled at Nathan’s sleeve, repeated “Top Gun” and added a lot of incomprehensible Japanese, making the flying motion again. At a guess, Nathan had been asked to whisk the lot of them to the next airport and take them all for a ride. He opened his mouth to say “no,” which should be understandable enough, but somehow the expectant eyes behind the glasses were a match to Peter’s well-practiced hopeful puppy look.
Hiro Nakamura and his Nathan-disarming charm. It's canon!
Nathan shut his mouth again, deciding to deal with Simone’s tv problem instead. It would be easiest to put her into yet another room with a tv, but he was fairly certain she had lied and just wanted to irritate him, so he said he’d have a look.
“Come along,” he told Nicole.
“Going to take me to the booze after all?”
“No, just not leaving you alone,” Nathan said tersely, and dragged her with him, followed by Simone and for some reason both Peter and Hiro, who wandered after them.
As it turned out, the tv screen in the guest room Nathan had dumped Simone into did indeed show the rooftop of the Deveaux building with its distinctive architecture, but said rooftop wasn’t unoccupied anymore. Instead, Nathan recognized his parents, Charles Deveaux, Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Linderman, who were evidently having some kind of meeting.
In the original "Runaways", the kids found the secret passage leading them to the chance to observe their parents in supervillain action by accident... they thought. Later, it turned out this wasn't quite so coincidental. Here, the discovery isn't a coincidence, either, as Nathan will figure out in the next chapter.
It wasn’t hard to figure out they were watching some kind of security feed, though why on earth a security camera observing the Deveaux building was connected to a tv in the Petrelli residence was anyone’s guess. What made Nathan freeze on the spot instead of concluding instantly that watching this in current company was a breach of family discretion, and he should switch it off, was the fact that there was someone else on the rooftop as well. His mother was currently holding a small, very small child, a child that couldn’t be more than two years, if that.
It can’t be, Nathan thought. But he had a photo, a photo Meredith had sent him, a photo he had stared at just recently during the whole flight from Texas to New York.
Meredith having given him a photo of the baby is a pretty safe bet, no matter whether you assume emotional or mercentary motives or both.
“I’ve gone through the personnel files,” Linderman said. “Bennet is the perfect choice, Angela, I assure you.”
“He’d better be,” Nathan’s father commented. “The girl is our granddaughter, after all.”
Peter made a surprised noise. Nathan remained frozen. The girls frowned, and Hiro asked something in Japanese which nobody replied to.
“Kaito will handle the transfer, then,” Nathan’s mother said matter-of-factly. “I’d rather not have your Mr. Bennet meet us.”
Mr. Nakamura nodded and asked whether there were any new developments regarding “the prophecy”.
“I’m collecting all the precogs I can find,” Linderman replied. “There are variables, but they all agree on two things. The explosion will happen, one way or the other. And one of us will rule the country in the aftermath.”
There was a short silence; the toddler took this as a signal to start crying, and Angela Petrelli handed her over to Mr. Nakamura. Then she said, voice very serious:
“Then maybe it should happen.”
“Angela,” Charles Deveaux protested.
“Think about it, Charles,” she said. “No more running in circles, working in small steps that get undone just as quickly. We could really change the world.”
“The dragon offered Kensai the power to unite the country, and to lead it,” Kaito Nakamura muttered, “but there was a price. There is always a price. What will cause the explosion? Is there certainty about this as well?”
“That, too, will be one of us,” Linderman said mildly, his eyes not leaving Angela Petrelli’s face. “Or rather, one of our children.”
She grew pale. Then she pressed her lips together. “Even so.”
“This is so like a bad trip. Your parents are all crazy supervillains,” Nicole said in disgust. “Let me out of here!”
Only then did Nathan notice he was still holding her elbow, the remote control of the tv in his other hand where Simone had put it earlier. Peter looked at him, wide-eyed, then to the tv screen, then to Nathan again, and said his name. Nathan unfroze and pressed the off switch on the remote. Later, he would regret this, as learning more would certainly have been helpful, but right now, he couldn’t bear to listen for another second. His parents and everyone else on that roof certainly did sound like they were insane, or in some Bond movie, or both. Most importantly, though, they had his daughter and intended to hand her over to some employee of Linderman’s. Even in his most suspicious moments, he hadn’t expected that kind of betrayal.
That's our Nathan: goes in instinctive denial about the superhero/villain stuff and focuses on the personal instead. Though the personal is enormous, in this case. In the comics, the kids watched their parents sacrifice a human being, which doesn't happen here except in a metaphorical way, but still. I was also thinking of Claire saying "then why didn't she let you know I'm alive?" to Nathan in How to stop an exploding man.
He was twenty-two years old, but right now, he felt as young as the rest of them. He swallowed, then decided he had to think the full implications through later. Now, he had to act.
“You – you all stay here,” he said to them. “I’m going there.”
“What are you, deaf?” Nicole asked. “No way I’m staying, I told you.”
“Then leave. I don’t care. I have to go and get my daughter,” Nathan said, throwing years of self-censorship and lessons in lies and discretion overboard.
“That baby is your daughter?” Nicole asked, a note of softness creeping into her voice.
“You can’t go there,” Simone said unexpectedly. “When my dad has these meetings, nobody is let through security who’s not invited. But I, um, could go. I mean, I know all of the security guys, plus if I say I need to see him they’ll believe me and let me through. And I could get the baby for you, get her outside our penthouse at least.”
Think of Simone helping out Hiro and Ando by giving them a picture for Linderman.
This sounded actually both practical and sensible, even to Nathan whose inner Petrelli was telling him he was currently lacking both qualities, and would he wait until there was an opportunity to allow his parents to provide some kind of explanation?
But he had stood and watched an empty coffin be lowered into a grave only two days ago, and he wasn’t feeling too sensible right now. Still, some parts of him apparently functioned on autopilot.
“Why would you do that?” he asked Simone, halfway between distrust and numbness.
Nathan's inbred cynicism is useful, because I bet some readers were wondering as well.
“Parents belong with their children,” she said in a small voice.
This is why I had Charles mention earlier he and Simone's mother are divorced and she has issues because of that.
It was probably a good thing that she didn’t know he hadn’t adhered to that principle during the last two years.
“You’re not going to go away with the baby,” Peter said.
“Peter…”
“Not alone. I’m coming with you. And this explosion thing they talked about, Nathan, they said one of us would…”
Peter is still in a "what the hell?" stage about the whole revelations, but the idea that Nathan could go away did go through first, and by the nature of Petrelli sibling co-dependence, he's not intending to stay behind. On the other hand, he also noticed far more than Nathan did that there are more things at stake here; he did get the implication of "explosion" and "aftermath".
“Ex-plo-sion?” Hiro repeated, and Peter gesticulated with both arms, nodded towards the tv screen where the images of their parents had just faded away, then pointed towards them and exhaled air in what was supposed to sound like something blowing up. The alarm on Hiro’s face deepened.
Hiro getting some idea of the big picture, as in show canon, was important as wel.
“You should go now,” Nicole told Simone. “Before the crazies stop talking and get back. And you,” she looked at Nathan, “no way you can take care of a baby alone. You’re a lousy babysitter, you know that? Who’d you practice on, anyway, him?” she finished jerking her chin in Peter’s direction.
“Hey!” said Peter.
Well, Nathan did, you know. Nannies not withstanding.
“Plus I’m not going back to Vegas with that Linderman guy if he wants to blow up people so he can rule the country, or whatever. I’m coming with you to look after the baby. You have cash, right? I mean, you’re rich.”
Niki is completely bluffing here. At 16, she has no idea of how to look after babies. If you've read the entire story, you'll notice she always gets out of doing the actual changing diapers etc.; in other words, Nathan gets conned here . As for Niki's motives, she's genuinenly freaked out about what they heard and accordingly distrustful of Linderman, but she's not ready to be on her own, Nathan is rich, and she's vaguely interested in him. She does feel sorry for the baby.
While she was talking, Hiro had taken the remote control from Nathan and switched the tv back on. By now, his father was speaking, but not in English. He had switched to Japanese, and whatever he said was making Hiro look more horrified by the second.
Had to give Hiro the full "my father is Up To No Good" experience, too, and hey, if Company employees like Noah later speak Japanese, I'm reasonably sure the elders would be capable of it.
In the midst of reeling from the news that his daughter was alive, his parents were involved in some sort of lunatic conspiracy, his brother wanted to run away with him and he himself was about to kidnap Claire back when the only plan for her future he currently had had originated with some booze-addicted teenager from Las Vegas, Nathan felt a pang. He was an adult. He had a job; he could leave and never come back in this house again. This boy, on the other hand, was stuck with a parent who apparently was as mad and bad and dangerous to know as Nathan’s, and would be for the next decade at least.
One of our children.
It's not that Nathan is incapable of caring for non-family members, it's just that he always starts with Hiro.
First things first. He had to focus; had to be useful. Maybe then things would start making sense again. Get Claire back, explain things to Peter; anything else would have to wait.
“Okay,” he said to Simone. Somehow, the rest of them interpreted this as meaning them as well, starting with Hiro, whose horror started to transform into resolve, as he pointed towards the view screen, then towards himself, saying “stop”.
Hiro: wanting to save the world in any universe.
Quite how this led to all of them squeezed in the big limousine, with the Petrelli chauffeur having been told Nathan would drive himself, Nathan could not have said. He knew that if he thought this through, he’d stop, he’d regret, he’d remember there was a reason why he didn’t marry Meredith despite having been in love with her, that he had wanted a shining future for himself just as much as his parents had. But ever since he got the phone call about that fire in Texas, he had been going through what-ifs and i-should-haves, and now he was offered a second chance. He had to take it. He had to.
See above re: Nathan at his most vulnerable; at any later point, he probably would have at least needed much coercion from Peter or other sources, but not right now.
Simone had been right about the tightened security in the Deveaux building, but she was also right about being let through. “I want to see my daddy,” she cried, tears rolling, and the guards shrugged and conceded; Simone passed the guards while the rest of them had to wait in the limousine parked in the garage.
“Can all girls do that? Cry whenever they want to, I mean?” Peter asked Nathan, as they watched Simone disappear into the elevator leading up to the penthouse. It was something easier to wonder about than how long their parents had been lying to them and what made two rational beings believe in prophecies, or what “us” as in “one of us” meant; Peter might genuinely be interested or he might have made the question up to distract Nathan, because Peter did things like that, even at 12. Nathan shrugged.
“You should know,” Nicole said to him, and Peter, getting the implication, looked mildly offended.
Because 16-years-old girls are mean to twelve-years-old boys like that.
Hiro had been busy scribbling something on a piece of paper the entire time, and now evidently had finished; he pressed it in Nathan’s hands. Nathan looked down. It was a series of stick figures. Several of them were standing on top of a skyscraper and were obviously meant to represent their parents. Then there was another group, presumably themselves, standing in front of an airplane, with an arrow drawn between the tallest of them and the plane. This seemed to mean Hiro had taken the Peter’s Top Gun explanation to mean that Nathan had his own plane and could fly them away. It got worse from there. Next, the groups were duelling each other with swords, and then, confusingly, they were holding hands in front of a fire and a number of dancing teddy bears. Looking expectantly at Nathan, Hiro hummed the main Star Wars theme. Peter looked over Nathan’s shoulder, and the scowl on his face turned into a beaming smile.
You should have seen me smile, too, when I got this idea, because John Williams scores as a communication method solved the problem of not letting Hiro have English vocabulary he doesn't possess at the start of the show, and yet allowing him to communicate with the rest of the groups. It's appropriately geeky for Hiro, Peter would be enough of a genre fan to translate at the start, and there are enough film scores which Nathan plausibly could know, too.
“Right,” he said. “We have to redeem them! Make them return to the light side! After rescuing your baby and getting away, of course.”
Trust Hiro and Peter to have the redemption idea.
Hiro nodded eagerly, humming a few notes from the Imperial March and then switching to yet another melody from Star Wars. Nathan, who had watched all three movies when they were originally released, refused to recognize the third.
If anyone is wondering, it's "Luke and Leia" from "Return of the Jedi'", because Hiro is thinking of Luke telling Leia he has to go to Vader and try to reach the good in him.
It was already somewhat embarrassing that he knew the second wasn’t actually called Darth Vader’s theme. Not to mention that Peter and Hiro seemed to have inherited their parents’ insanity full force, no pun intended. Unfortunately, this meant Nathan had to be responsible for them. They couldn’t take care of themselves, and Peter definitely shouldn’t be left alone with their parents. As for Hiro…
Be sensible, his inner Petrelli told him. You’re not going to kidnap anyone, least of all strange Japanese children. Forget your career, you’re going to end up in prison for that. Your daughter, fine, that’s legal, because she is your daughter, and they sure as hell don’t have any claim on her, but none of the others.
“Wow,” Nicole said, sounding impressed. “That was fast.”
There was Simone. With the baby. And some confused security people first calling, then chasing after her. Nathan pushed the passenger-side door open and began to drive towards her.
“Jump in,” Peter called excitedly, but the first of the guards had reached her, and held her by her shoulders. Nathan got out, uncertain what he would do; to his surprise, Nicole did as well, with no hesitation at all. She ran towards the guard holding Simone and punched him.
Everyone in this story has their turn at heroic moments. This is one of Niki's. Plus of course it's one of several examples of Our Heroes manifesting early.
The guy went down, and Simone would have as well, if Nathan hadn’t stood in front of her to catch her and the child. He had no memory of taking any of the steps between getting out of the car and reaching her; it was as if he was there in a blink, propelled by nothing but overwhelming need.
Yes, he flew those few steps without realising.
No time to think about that now, or how no sixteen-year-old girl should be able to punch out a trained security guard. Who didn’t move as he lay on the floor.
“Back to the car,” Nathan yelled, and they did. By now, the other security guards were only at arms’ length behind them, and one of them pulled a gun. There was another odd moment of disconnect, because from one second to the next, the man did not have his gun anymore, and nor did his last remaining colleague. Later, Nathan thought, later, and handed over Simone and Claire to Niki as he got into the driver’s seat. Ignoring all caution, he did his best imitation of a 70s cop on wheels. The limousine could take it. His heart hammered as they raced out of the garage.
“That was so cool,” Peter said. “Nathan, did you see what Hiro did?”
Nathan had no idea what Peter was talking about.
“He made everyone freeze except us, and then we took the guns from the guards,” Peter continued happily. “Right after you did that fly jump thing and Nicole punched out the other guy.”
Which means Peter absorbed the power from Hiro and hence was able to move with him.
Peter has gone insane, Nathan thought. The whole thing with Ma and Pa has been too much for him.
Well, what would you think?
On the other hand, it hadn’t been his parents who had just exposed a couple of minors to a kidnapping, assault and car chase. He’d be lucky if he made it ten blocks without getting arrested.
You won’t be. You know why? Because your parents do not want any of this go public, and nor, I’d bet, do any of the others. They’ll go after you, absolutely, but not through the police.
Thinking like a Petrelli could be helpful now and then. He still didn’t slow down the car.
“Are you trying to get us killed, you nut?” Nicole hissed.
“Shut up, Nicole,” Nathan said, as trying to drive fast on a New York street tended to make one lose one’s hardly won adult maturity.
“Your kid just peed on me,” she replied, and then added another non sequitur. “So I guess you can call me Niki.”
“So did you see it? “ Peter insisted.
“I can’t believe I did that,” Simone whispered. “It was so easy, too! They had given the baby to one of our servants to feed and were still out on the terrace, talking. I said I just wanted to hold her, and she let me.”
“Your old man is going to thrash the life out of you,” Nicole said matter-of-factly. Simone looked horrified, either at the assumption about fathers this statement showed or because she believed it was a possibility. Probably not the latter. The few times Nathan had seen Charles Deveaux at his parents’ parties, he had appeared to be a gentle, mild person. But then again, so did Mr. Linderman. Both of whom had helped his mother to fake the death of her granddaughter and hand her over to strangers.
It's the former. Charles would never beat his daughter. But Niki, even with partly blocked memories, still comes fresh from a childhood full of abuse and would automatically draw such a conclusion.
“No, he’s not,” Peter said and then showed this wasn’t a statement of faith in Charles Deveaux, by adding: “Because she’s staying with us. Right, Nathan? We’re like the rebels running away from the Empire now. We just have to find a good hideout.”
It doesn't even occur to Peter Nathan wouldn't want to take the others along or would want to ditch them.
Hiro, face covered with sweat as after a great physical exortion, nodded, which Nathan could see in the mirror, then he put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder and said gravely: “Han Solo. You. Millennium Falcon?”
There was no way in which his life could get any more lunatic, Nathan thought,
Oh, Nathan. You so naive.
and then he heard a noise that made his heart stop. Claire giggled. It was more a gurgle, admittedly, but still, a happy sound from his daughter, whom he had only seen five times in her short life, and then she had been silent each time, not even crying, as if she know he was a stranger by choice and didn’t deserve to hear anything.
All his actions today had been insane, but right here, right now, he thought that it had been worth it.
And on that mushy note, I end the commentary for this chapter, heading off to rewatch the scene with Nathan and his sons from Kindness of Strangers again.
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Date: 2007-11-07 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 08:34 pm (UTC)Wonderful commentary. <3