...I think I made the right choice to stay away from most Heroes posts so I won't get spoiled so shortly before the season starts now that I've managed to be unspoiled for a year. (Well, it feels like a year!)

Some areas just aren't pretty -- which is to say I really, really need to stay away from the TV Tropes Wiki. I hate that place, and yet their failiness so often sucks me in. :(

other than figure she must have managed to talk Claire into an uneasy alliance/apprenticeship. Ruling over strangers just wouldn't do.

Oh, absolutely. Leaving aside that the Bennets would be dead in that universe, I don't think there's any possible way that either Claire or Angela could have coped with that kind of loss -- of power, of hope -- alone. But what a twisted relationship that would be! By accepting Angela's help specifically, I think Claire very much would have been going back on her S1 rejection of Petrelli values. I can see her as a cold mini-Angela, trying the only thing that might work. Peter's reaction, had he gotten home to see that version of Claire, no doubt would have been horrified (and yet, I think he probably would have been sucked down too).

And was that whole touch-plus-verbal-slap playing the family game or what?

Absolutely. Oh, Petrellis. Why so crazy?