Nathan Petrelli

"Nathan."

There's a part of her that can be proud about how utterly steady her voice is.

(Forget that she's got her hand resting just below her throat, fingers spread, as though trying to keep something in. Forget that she's stood poised like that, stood still, for the last five minutes.)

There's a part of her that she's doing her very best to ignore, to shove down and away. That will be for later, when everything is taken care of, when she's alone.

(Her sons are -- were -- very different, and while Peter never saw everything, he always seemed to see enough to know. And in turn, she always let him.

Not any more.)

And then there's the part of her that will do what has to be done. That will show Nathan the way. She's had her turn for grief.

Let him have his.

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Nathan turned toward her voice, and could see how she was standing. Poised, and yet something wrong.

"Where is he?"

He started to walk through the doorway, and then he caught sight of where she was looking. At the person laid out on the settee. Peter's head was tilted to the side, and as he got closer. He noticed the blood on his cheeks, but it was getting harder to see as tears began to obscure Nathan's vision of the grisly sight.

He knelt down by him, starting to cry.

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Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.

Victor Hugo. She lets the thought (his autobiography, it's in French at her bedside, she reads when she can't sleep and she'll be reading from it tonight) repeat, resonate: in a woman the flesh must be like marble.

"He's gone, Nathan."

She doesn't move, and her voice doesn't shake; the flesh must be like marble.

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But Nathan has his answer when he finally could make out Peter's clouded eyes staring at nothing.

"No, no." he cried.

He lifted him up to his arms, briefly remembering the times he picked him up as a baby, as a toddler, already looking out for his little brother. Burying his head into Peter's shoulders, trying not to think of how cold he was already.

"Peter. He isn't supposed to die this way! He wasn't supposed to die this way. He was wrong." Peter was wrong, and damn that bastard, Linderman was wrong too. But this meant the bomb wasn't to go off?

He finally lifted his head to glance over at his mother, "Oh what do we do?"

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Good boy.

Nathan has had his moment of initial shock. And now he's trying to figure out what has to be done.

And it's the only thing that can be done, really, if one looks at it with logic; a death under suspicious circumstances, a violent death, clearly, and with all the mess about Peter and the building and the trip to the hospital for the suicide attempt --

(One must look at it with logic.)

"We hide it."

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Nathan was indeed wondering, but he was thinking funeral arrangements possibly. Or finding out who did this to his brother.

Anything but what his mother stated.

He stared back at her, "What?"

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And she'll have to explain it. And in explanation --

"Till after the election." In explanation she can move. She can stop trying to hold it in; she can let her hand fall. "Last thing he would have wanted was to bring you down with him."

She's at their sides now, hands clasped loosely in front of her. Flesh as marble, marble as flesh.

(On a fundamental level she cannot bear to see her live son holding her dead son in his arms.

The challenge of humanity has always been to transcend its fundamental leanings.)

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Nathan had a feeling he already had brought him down. His life was crumbling right here now, by losing the one thing that helped balanced him.

Despite his own interests, and ambitions, and maybe because of them, and Linderman's recent words to him. He didn't care anymore.

"Why does it matter anymore? Peter's dead. I'm not having this conversation."

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Peter's dead.

That thought doesn't make sense. It's kind of like saying the grass is purple.

But Peter's dead.

(Except he was supposed to be like her, Claire thinks. He shouldn't be. He shouldn't.)

She hears Nathan come in and waits a minute, waits another, and then decides that she's here, and Peter was her--was her uncle, she guesses, and heads towards the room, slowing when she reaches the door frame.

She really, Claire realizes, has no idea what you say in a situation like this. (She doesn't think anyone could have ever been in one like this before.)

This isn't fair.

She knows that sentence, if nothing else, is very true.

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When Nathan noticed that his mother didn't answer, he glanced up toward her, and noticed she was looking across the way.

He turned his head the other way, and was definitely surprised to see who was standing in the door frame.

The cellphone picture was very poor comparison.

"Claire," he said, and finding this awkward. Meeting his long believed dead daughter while holding his dead brother in his arms.

This... definitely wasn't the kind of family reunion he'd ever expect.

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It doesn't really take that long to find the words she didn't think she had.

"I know you don't want me here." It's to her da--it's to Nathan, she thinks, but her eyes dart up to her grandmother (to Nathan and Peter's mother) as she says that, low and almost hoarse. "But I just want to see him." Her voice breaks, and then it's only hoarse again.

"I came all this way."

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Her gaze is level.

And she can see Nathan turn back to Peter, turn away from Claire -- and she can't blame him, not for that, not now -- but there's work to be done.

And Nathan has had his turn.

(Claire is a Petrelli. And they're all under her jurisdiction, there's no question about that.

Amid everything else --

She can feel sorry, deeply sorry, that this is Claire's introduction to her family. But there's no going back from here. There's only going forward, in a world without Peter in it.)

She gave Nathan his turn. Now, stately, august, calm, with authority: "Let the girl have her moment."

Nathan has had his.

She passes out of the room.

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There was much he wanted to say. And no, he didn't want her here now, or not like this. Wishing they could meet in better circumstances. Wishing that he had been there for her growing up.

He carefully placed Peter's body back down on the settee, and got up.

Peter's her uncle, she does have the right to say goodbye.

So he got up, and joined Angela out in the hall. Seeking comfort of any kind now.

And wondering how he's going to go on without his brother in his life.

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They're gone.

She didn't really pay attention to them leaving. They're just gone, and there's her.

And there's Peter.

She wonders, a little, if this is what she looked like on the autopsy table as she strokes his hair without thinking and looks at his face.

Claire doesn't know if she's crying or not.

"I didn't even get to know you." Now she can half cry, as she whispers. "You're the only one that made me feel safe."

She has to swallow around the lump in her throat.

"I thought you were like me."

He was supposed to be like her.

He's not supposed to be dead.

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But his skin is cool to the touch, and his eyes are glassy.

And there's something sharp hidden under the mass of dark hair.

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There is.

Her fingers brush against it, not quite cutting--or if it cuts, it's light enough she doesn't even know it before it heals--and Claire's breathing almost stops.

(If you cough up a bullet, it's like having a penny in your mouth and sucking on it. The taste is ridiculously similar. But it lingers, all through your mouth and throat and nose, for hours.)

She's careful when she moves his head, turns it, and sees the shard--it's bigger than she thought at the first touch--in his skull.

She almost wants to laugh.

It slides out with a sound that would turn her stomach if she hadn't had the skin burned off her body, if she hadn't heard that sound coming from inside her before, and she looks at the triangle of metal and the blood--less than she thought there would be--on it.

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The glassiness leaves Peter's eyes as the glass leaves his skull.

And then he sucks in a long breath of air, and starts to cough.

The first thing he's aware of is light, bright and yellow instead of dim and blue, and then pain, and a weird itching around the back of his head. He pushes himself up against the cushions -- cushions? -- and sees her, Claire, the cheerleader.

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There's coughing.

She's with Nathan just outside the room, and they're close, and then she hears coughing.

No seventeen-year-old girl Angela has ever known has ever sounded like that when she coughs. And there's only one other person in that room, and with what Claire can do --

It all comes together.

And she cannot stop the hope, cannot keep her voice steady --

"Peter -- "

-- flesh is flesh and marble is marble and Victor Hugo is nothing but an old dead fool and there's Peter sitting upright and breathing, very audibly, moving, alive.

She stands with her mouth hanging half-open, and she looks at the two of them (son and granddaughter, such a family she has, how incredibly, unbelievably lucky she is) and Angela finds that even if she knew what to say she can't make herself speak.

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He's catching his breath. (For breath is life --)

His mother's drawing room, they're in his mother's drawing room. And that's his mother's voice, and Nathan's just beyond her. He can remember -- Mohinder's apartment, blinding pain in his forehead, but it's distant, like something that happened a very long time ago.

And Claire's here. Claire, smiling through her tears, with a huge fucking chunk of bloodied glass in her hand.

The back of his head doesn't itch anymore. "You saved my life," he wheezes; half question, half thanks.

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Claire just smiles.

It's barely this side of a beam.

Her voice might be hoarse still, but the tears are forgotten entirely.

"Guess we're even now."

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It's easier to touch her face in answer than to speak.

Save the cheerleader, he thinks, numbly. Save the world.

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When he closes his eyes, she can move.

It's still with delicacy, with decorum that she settles on the end of the divan. It's with considerably less of both that she gathers Peter close.

She hears and feels her breath catch, and while Peter is the one who saw enough to know, and that made it all right for her to let him see, Nathan and Claire are present, are watching.

Angela quite frankly doesn't give a rat's ass.

I won't cry, she thinks, I won't cry; it's overlaid by you were always my favorite, and alive.

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Peter leans against her, and his breathing steadies, slows.

They're going to have to figure out a way to explain this to her. But that can wait.

He says, "Mom --"

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I think that Linderman is betting on the wrong brother.

This from a dear friend of hers. Someone who knows.

But she'd been right, hadn't she? Peter can barely get out of his own way -- much less the way of that repulsive-looking piece of glass (that Claire is likely still holding; Angela has her eyes closed and that's more than fine by her, as she has no desire whatsoever to see that thing, to see Peter's blood on that thing).

She doesn't want to be right, and she doesn't want Claire to be holding that piece of glass, and she is both obscurely delighted and extremely irritated to find that she's angry.

It's not his head that she smacks (and not gently, either), but rather his shoulder, and she pulls back so he's at arm's length.

"Don't ever do that again, do you understand me?"

As things she could say go, it's...fairly predictable. But it's not about the words. It's about the sentiment.

And what on earth do you say?

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"I'm sorry," Peter says, and ducks his head.

There's blood spackled across his face, his own and Mohinder's and Simone's, and his matted hair is sticking out in all directions. For all that, he looks -- calmer than usual.

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Twenty-six years old. Still her favorite, no matter his faults and insecurities. Perhaps even because of them.

"You should be sorry." And no matter how she tries to smooth down his hair, it simply won't go. "Look at you, you're a mess."

Her tone, her face temper it: But you're my mess.

(If he's calmer than usual...she's not aware that she's reacting to it.)

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"It's okay, Mom." He touches her shoulder, gently, and tries to catch her eye. "I'm okay."

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Are you? she wants to ask, and doesn't. Wouldn't, no matter the presence of Nathan and Claire.

Instead she nods, and only when she can feel that her eyes are getting too bright to be entirely safe does she stand and say, briskly, "You'll want a shower. There's got to be something of yours in this house -- come upstairs when you're ready, I'll see what there is to find."

She doesn't look back as she goes, and she doesn't look at Nathan as she passes.

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Peter looks after her, frowning, and then -- finally -- at Nathan.

He doesn't say anything. Just looks.

Some kids fantasize about going to their own funerals; there's a reason Tom Sawyer is popular. Peter was one of those kids, then they'll be sorrys and all.

Nathan looks sorry. Claire's face is tearstained, his mother is closer to cracking than he's ever seen her, and Nathan looks like he's been shaken to the core, but it's not satisfying, not even in a small guilty way. Instead all he feels is a strange, detached clarity.

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Nathan was almost frozen to the spot where he stood for a few minutes. It's not possible, it can't be possible.

He thought his life was over, or one of the most important pieces of his life was dead. Here with Peter.

But he was here, breathing. *Alive.* How? And Claire, (his daughter) she seemed to know somehow. Knew that he could come back. What did she do? Somehow she saved them both.

And then other thoughts started in, remebering what Linderman had said to him.

My brother can come back from the dead... Even if he explodes. He would survive.

But all those people wouldn't.

Can that ever be sacrifice? Even in the name of saving the rest of the world? .07 Percent... is there ever an allowable number of casualties?

Even if it means becoming the leader he secretly wanted to become? He thought it was crazy to sacrifice his brother, but half of NY... knowing this.

Is it still so crazy? He honestly didn't know.

So he just set aside those thoughts as he finally approached his once again living brother.

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Peter's eyes are locked on his brother's face.

He still doesn't say anything, and he doesn't move, but he offers a small, rueful smile.

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Nathan doesn't say anything either at first. He then smiled warmly, and then in spite of Claire's presence, he came forward to embrace his brother fiercely in a tight hug. Clapping him on the back a few times.

"Glad to have you back, Pete." he said.

Nathan's eyes briefly glanced over toward Claire, and there was a silent look of gratitude, regret, and concern toward her.

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After a moment, Peter's arms lift, and he buries his face in Nathan's shoulder.

Muffled: "Yeah."

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