damned_institute | Day 54: Sun Room

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Day 54: Sun Room

[From here. All your top posts shall be mine.]

Peter entered the Sun Room with a dour expression. Goody, he was the first one here. Fancy that. Pick of the couches was his then. Eeeny meeny miney...moe. Peter stalked over to what he knew from experience was the fluffiest couch in the room and eased himself into its downy soft embrace. Ordinarily he would have just pounced on that sucker, but yeah. His arm was in a sling for a reason. He sighed and wormed his way into a full body sprawl. He didn't care if it was irresponsible of him. This shift's only mission was to remain as still as possible.

Of course, being the first one in here had some stipulations. With great opportunity came great responsibility. Which today, came in the form of a soft meow from below. Then the sound of puncturing fabric, advancing upwards towards him. More meows, independent of one another and even more tiny punctures.

Peter Parker was now officially the cat sitter.

"...Oh hi... lonely kittens," he said uneasily as the first scrambled over the edge of the cushion. It padded towards his face. "No no, kittens don't belong near faces." He gently picked it up and put it on his chest. Two more crawled over the edge.

He had never really had a pet growing up. And he didn't hang out with a lot of people with cats or dogs, either. So of course, he didn't have a good idea of how to properly handle most animals without ticking them off. It looked like he was going to have to make up for lost time now, as the cats' numbers swelled to four. Two were exploring his legs, another batted at a fraying string on his sling, and the first stumbled back towards his face and mewed plaintively. Peter frowned and gave it a ginger pat on the head. That seemed to to the trick. He put it back on his chest again and scratched behind its ears.

"You guys had better not start doing that claw thing on my leg. I can't reach right now, but revenge will be mine if you do."

"Meeeeew!"

"I'm still petting you! Geez."

[For Elle Bishop.]

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Talk about anticlimactic.

Eyebrows knit together in confusion, shoulders slumping in disappointment, Claire appeared altogether vexed with how something she'd been convinced was so monumentally life-shaking didn't even warrant concern from her uncle. In fact, by all appearances, he didn't even care, yet she'd been biting her nails to the quick all morning trying to figure out how to get around being honest.

The smile, she could tell, was meant to be reassuring. But, how good is meaning to be reassuring when it's coupled with him talking about how marginal her issues really are? What if Pete put it together and found out she was a freak and all of the things Noah had warned her about came -- Well. They were already kind of coming true. Being locked up, the experimentation … but still.

That didn't mean there was nothing that could go wrong based on Pete finding out about her ability. He was her … well, maybe not quite friend, but they were friendly and that was something. If he found out what a freak she was, that'd all be gone, and she'd be back to square one tearing her hair out over this Bella issue that …

That until now she'd managed to put out of her mind. Her lips tightened in frustration and she just shook her head.

"You don't understand," she dismissed him. Except, of course, that he did. He just hadn't had a paranoid father drilling into his head the worst case scenario, or stumbled upon his ability at the tail end of puberty when her self-image was at stake. "You're just assuming all of that; how much do you really know about him?" She paused, winding up for a rant that probably fell into seriously histrionic territory. At least she managed to keep her voice pretty low, even though the dramatics strained it.

"I can regrow my bones, Peter. I could get hit by a train, or jump off the Empire State Building and just walk away. People don't just take that in stride. It's not like I'm ADHD or something; I'm a complete freak. Sure, he's probably not gonna go all Landel or anything, but that doesn't mean he's gonna accept it with open arms."

Maybe he should have expected her reaction, but Peter had forgotten that Claire really hadn't been here long; she wasn't used to the laidback attitude that the grand majority of people here had when it came to powers. Still, getting an attitude from her about it wasn't really what he'd been prepared for, and he watched her with a slight frown on his face.

Luckily, it was something that was pretty simple to rebut. He didn't want to make this some sort of contest about whose life sucked more, but if the girl needed a reality check, then that was what was going to have to happen. "Yeah, and I almost blew up New York," he pointed out. "I've got more powers than I know what to do with." Usually, anyway. It didn't stand out nearly as much here, but there had still been that night on the courtyard. There was no way of knowing if any of the patients who'd witnessed that were even still around, but...

"Look, I even told Peter about how I had powers. Yeah, he seemed a little weirded out that I was so open about it, but it wasn't like he was calling me a freak and saying that I needed to be hanged or anything like that." Even in the real world, Peter had been willing to reveal what he was capable of, and while most people treated it with suspicion at first, it was hard to avoid something that was right in front of you.

More than that, anyone who was going to suddenly decide to avoid you because of finding out about something like that probably wasn't worth associating with in the first place. Figuring that that was something Claire needed to hear, Peter continued: "Look, if you tell him about what you can do and he decides not to be your friend because of it, then he's probably not worth it, all right?"

What Claire didn't realize was that there was no way she was going to be able to hide her power from anyone she wanted to be close to, especially not in a place like this where a monster could attack her out of nowhere. She either had to accept that it was going to happen, or she had to distance herself from everyone; Peter knew what option he would pick.

His casual reference to the near-explosion in Kirby Plaza shut her up pretty quickly, but there was still an impudent edge to her expression and the way her lower lip was jutted out wasn't exactly helping matters. He hadn't lived through the last six months with her. He didn't understand -- couldn't understand. She couldn't tell him what she'd been through because of her ability, couldn't tell him that Sylar had torn her apart for it.

The reassurances, as hard as he was trying, didn't mean anything. They were just another item in the long stream of things that Peter couldn't understand because of what he didn't know yet. He hadn't heard what Sylar had done to her, hadn't seen what Steve Canfield's family had done to him. He didn't understand yet that they were never going to be accepted. Even if he thought Pete had only seemed a 'little weirded out' it was only because he didn't know.

At least, that's what she had convinced herself of. Her own paranoia, combined with what had been drilled into her for months upon months by her father and the Company had made her incapable of the kind of trust that Peter still had, trust that Claire was sure was simply motivated by a certain degree of naivete. Landel and the Company weren't the worst of it.

"I never should have expected you to understand," she shook her head slowly, sitting back in her chair like she was ready to turn and run. The look in her eyes almost claimed that he had, in some capacity, betrayed her by not getting why she was so scared by the concept alone of someone knowing what she could do. How could he not see how life-shaking that was?

Bella had been hard enough to accept and she had plenty of time in the moment to get used to the idea and Claire had been distracted by her own acceptance of her slowed ability -- but look at how that had turned out, in the end. Nothing good could come of what they could do.

"It has to be so easy for you here. You can just turn it off, pretend you're normal any time you want as long as you're not around one of us. Well, we don't all have it that easy, Peter. We don't all have friends to spare." Her lips tightened in disapproval and she shook her head slowly. "Some of us are a little short on people to trust." Her tone made it clear that he was wavering on the edge of being removed from that minority. Of course, that would leave her with … well, an approximate no one.

"You saw what happened with Bella. She lied to me. To my face, she never trusted me with anything. Why is it so wrong for me to want to keep that removed from the equation? To want something simple for once in my life?" If she was aware of her own shining hypocrisy in the moment, it wasn't apparent by the look on her face or by the tone in her voice. Preaching her own need for dishonesty while complaining about how Bella had turned the tables and done the same to her.

So much for having Peter help her think up a good way to dismiss what had happened.

If Peter didn't know better, he would have thought that Claire's next comment was almost condescending; it was, at the very least, dismissive of him. He didn't understand, huh? Maybe he didn't. Their situations weren't exactly the same, but they were close enough that he thought they could talk about this sort of thing without it turning into some sort of argument. But he'd made a wrong turn somewhere, even if he was doing his best to help. Still, he got the feeling that at the moment, Claire was just going to brush aside anything that didn't fit what she wanted to hear.

He was caught between being annoyed with the girl and feeling for her; even if she was acting pretty unreasonable at the moment, that's because her life hadn't been reasonable for a long time now. Suddenly getting a power while in the middle of high school, learning that her real parents weren't at all what she'd expected, and having to deal with his family -- well, that was enough to make anyone act this way, right?

But then she started flinging words back at him, and while she had a point (he didn't have to be as scared of who he might hurt here if he lost control, that was for sure), it was that last phrase that made him stare at her with a harder expression on his face. "You think I have friends to spare?" No one here did, not when someone considered a friend could turn into a demon and try to kill you before inevitably getting killed for being dangerous.

Claire didn't know that, but the fact that she was assuming that his life here was easy was enough to get under his skin, especially since he'd done what he could to only tell her what she needed to know. He'd tried to spare her his own problems as much as he could.

In fact, it was that building anger with the girl that actually spurred Peter to call her on her hypocrisy the moment that she started talking about Bella. Did Claire really not realize the huge flaw in what she was saying? It was true that Peter didn't know much about Bella either, but that didn't matter in this case; it was the principle of the matter.

"Bella is doing the exact thing you want to do, Claire -- keeping secrets. How can you fault her for hiding a secret that she has when you're trying to alienate your friends in the same way?" If Claire thought that she was going to make a ton of friends by acting paranoid and distant, then she had it all wrong. People always responded better to openness; people didn't like it when things were kept from them. Claire clearly didn't like it, if the way she'd reacted to what Bella had done was any indication.

For a moment, she was rendered speechless, mouth dumbly agape and flustered offense building in her face, mounting with a certain degree of pinkness in her cheeks. People had called her out pretty often on having stupid plans; they'd turned around and showed her how unprepared she could be for things, patronized her, but it wasn't often that someone actually called her out on being a hypocrite. No part of her had even braced or been prepared for something like that.

Mostly, she was mad because she could see where he was right. With her attention drawn to it, while she tried to formulate some kind of counterargument, she couldn't really deny in her heart of hearts that there was something very similar about the idea of Bella trying to protect herself and Edward by keeping secrets and the way that Claire had learned to protect herself through lies.

But the immature, stubborn, 17-year-old part of her remained firm and resolute.

"That's different," she proffered up her paper thin argument, looking more and more absurdly childish with the way she set her jaw and, whether she was aware of it or not, pouted. And she had honestly managed to rationalize a difference in her mind, even if she chose to just leave her argument there with Peter so that he couldn't smash his way right through it.

There was no way, Claire convinced herself, that Bella had gone through anything close to what Claire had -- the kind of life-scarring, earth-shattering emotional agony that changed a person entirely and rendered them unable to trust. No one could possibly understand the deep levels on which she'd had her safe space violated and ripped away from her, be it from her father ordering his partner to glean every bad memory out of her mother's mind until it nearly killed her, or watching him work with Sylar after everything the man had put her through.

Those circumstances were hers to bear, and they were hers to deal with. They were her free pass to being as paranoid and hypocritical as she felt was necessary to protect herself from ever letting herself get hurt again -- physically, or emotionally.

That wasn't much of a response, but it was telling in its own right. Claire didn't have any good proof behind her point, and so she was leaving it at that. Peter knew better than to keep arguing with her; if he did that, it would just degenerate into them pointlessly taking shots at each other so that they could be the one to come out "on top." He knew better than to fall into that trap.

It was clear that Claire wasn't going to see his side of things, so all he really could do at this point was try to reassure her or give her some advice. Maybe that's what he should have done in the first place, but it wasn't like he could go back and fix it now. Besides, while Claire was being difficult now, maybe she would think back on some of this later.

"Well, in that case, let's hope that he didn't realize what happened," he said with a sigh, leaning back in his seat and running a hand through his hair. He was pretty exasperated with his niece at the moment, but he was going to do what he could to hold that in and try to help anyway.

"I mean, if he's really as normal as you think he is, then he'll probably find a way to justify what he saw, right?" And if Claire just denied it up and down like she was probably planning to, then the other Peter would at least get the picture and leave the whole subject alone. That wasn't a very good solution, but he knew better than to get involved in this sort of mess. He wasn't going to go behind the girl's back and talk to "Pete," but he was also only going to vouch for her normality unless she specifically asked him to.

That seemed fair to him, seeing how the girl had completely refused to listen to him -- and had even condescended to him.

If he's really as normal as you think he is … The phrase brought a grim, tense look to Claire's face. At least some of the animosity had died down, and she was just left with a kind of guilty, uncomfortable feeling. None of what Pete had done the previous night was normal. He could be the MVP for his state in soccer and he still should've felt something kicking at that door. Then, hoisting her up like a rag doll and running like he had … it had to be some kind of augment. An ability.

Hands clenched tightly together in her lap, Claire began to wring them some with the anxiety of trying to decide if that was for her to tell Peter or not. Normally, it wouldn't be a question, but … He hadn't exactly proven himself to care all that much. If it was so insignificant to him that someone had found out about her, why would he deserve to know about Pete?

He didn't. So, he kept her lips shut, and cast a slow, uncertain gaze back towards the younger Peter, suddenly wondering if he'd managed the same kind of secrecy.

"West didn't try to justify it," she responded as she turned back to Peter. But he didn't know about West, and that realization made her pause, trying to figure out how she could even explain … "He was … this guy. When my dad moved us all to Costa Verde, he --" A fond smile curled the edges of her mouth, thinking back on it. "He nearly hit me with his car on my first day." The look on her face, you'd think it was somehow a good memory. She shook it off, though.

"Anyway. He saw me heal once and now it's like I'm living the nightmare all over again and I swear if I don't come up with something to tell him, my head is going to explode. I don't even know if I would survive my head exploding!" Her voice was hushed, but she couldn't help blurting the last part out. Her dad might have yelled at her, but Peter had always been understanding about her need to talk about and dissect it.

For Claire to suddenly start to talk about things that he didn't know, a move to California and then meeting up with a guy who learned about her power and almost ran her over -- well, it was a bit overwhelming. It made Peter realize just how much he'd been missing out on, and he wondered if that was why he hadn't been able to give his niece the sort of response that she'd wanted.

But still, what she'd just revealed meant that this had happened to her before -- and if she was so scared of it, then chances were that it hadn't ended well the first time. Peter doubted that it was a good idea to ask her for more details on this West guy, seeing how Claire was already worked up enough.

Her last comment earned a frown from him; even though he knew she meant it as a joke, he wasn't finding it all that funny at the moment. Peter let out a sigh and shook his head. "Okay, what exactly happened, then? Maybe I can help you think of a decent explanation."

There was a lot of factors, after all. How dark it was, the sort of injury, and just how much the other Peter had seen afterward. Seeing how he was a nurse, he might be able to come up with a bullshit excuse for Claire's benefit. He didn't really like the idea of it -- it left a bad taste in his mouth -- but he didn't know how else to help her at this point.

She was secretly grateful he didn't push the West issue -- she'd tried, for obvious reasons, to keep her explanation brief, just to make sure he wouldn't feel like it was too much at once, and by all appearances, she'd succeeded. Peter seemed to be doing okay with just focusing on taking care of this now, instead of reaming her for being a hypocrite. Telling him what had happened last night was way easier than summarizing the past six months.

"The nurse came out of nowhere," or rather, it had felt like she did. She launched into the explanation with a deep breath, trying to keep her tone level and just focus on the facts instead of her worry. "She had these … I think the scalpels were her fingers. I know, it sounds weird, but …" A shrug was her only explanation for that one. The way she wielded them it was definitely too Edward Scissorhands to be anything else.

"She came at Pete and I got between them, and she cut my back up pretty badly. That's when it started getting really bad. We dropped our flashlights and I tried to get away to get my bat. Pete hit her and they started fighting while I got our flashlights back." It would be pretty stupid to lose them when that was the whole point of going up there, after all. "But, she was going to kill him. I got in the way and she --"

Shaking her head, Claire unconsciously reached up with one hand to cover the bottom of her ribcage and the upper portion of her stomach where the wounds had been.

"The cuts were really deep, and there was blood everywhere. Pete hit her again and got me out of there. When we were far enough away, he set me down and my stomach had already started healing. The cuts weren't completely gone or anything, but …" Another shake of her head. "They definitely didn't look like they should have. The night ended before I could say anything, but Peter, his face."

Scalpels for fingers, huh? Considering some of the other things that Peter had seen, he wasn't too shocked to hear it. It was pretty disconcerting to know that the women who treated them like mentally ill patients during the day then went out for their blood at night, but...

He briefly caught the eye of one of the women as she made her rounds and then looked away. They didn't know. They had no idea that some of the wounds that they treated in the morning were ones they themselves had caused. That was the feeling that he got, anyway. But how did they justify it to themselves? Were they just that brainwashed?

In any case, that wasn't exactly the point. At first, when Claire described the way she'd been cut on her back, he'd thought that maybe the situation would be salvageable. He also couldn't help noticing that with the way Claire was explaining it all, "Pete" sounded pretty competent in a fight. It was something to keep in mind, though he also knew that after this incident, the kid might be someone he'd be forced to avoid. Which was a shame, because Peter had liked him from their brief conversation.

Still, things only got worse from there, and Peter couldn't help wincing slightly as Claire finished up. It did sound pretty bad, he had to admit. But still, how much could her wounds have really healed? And there still would have been blood all over her shirt, so that might have masked it.

"Wasn't it dark?" he asked. "Alternatively, it does seem pretty clear that the healing rate is faster here for everyone, so you can try and use that excuse." Though that generally happened overnight, not in a matter of minutes like that. Still, there were some options, some ways that she could at least let the kid know that the subject was not up for discussion, and that they were best pretending it had never happened.

"His flashlight was on me," she replied with a kind of resigned shake of her head. There was no denying that he'd seen what he saw, there was just trying to find a good way to explain why it might be that way. The darkness wasn't a good enough cover by any means. "I keep thinking maybe blame it on the adrenaline or something. Or, I mean, we were on the second floor, maybe he was hallucinating, but …"

But, she couldn't willingly bring herself, especially in a place like this where everyone walked around all day trying to drill into their heads that they were insane, to try and convince someone that they were crazy and had hallucinated something very real. Trying to explain it away was one thing, but that was just too messed up.

"I can't do that to him," she summarized. "Every time I try and think of a new approach, it just makes me think more and more that the only option is to just … avoid him or come clean." And, for one, avoiding people in a tightly packed institute was harder than it seemed. For another, she couldn't just avoid him when he knew her secret. Sure, she wasn't too worried about it spreading here, but she still wanted to know that he wasn't going to just go talking about it.

For a moment, she paused in her lengthy rebuttal of Peter's plan to stop and look at him -- really look at him. It hadn't occurred to her that the healing rate for other people in the institute had been heightened too. That seemed kind of unfair, considering she'd been yanked down the ladder.

"People here heal fast?" Now that she thought back on it, the wounds Bella had suffered in her shoulder should have taken a lot longer than five days to heal, but by appearances, she was using it normally and back to rights already. From Claire's perspective, though, when she didn't stop to think about it, it was easy for those kinds of things to go missed. After all, when you were used to your wounds zipping shut in five seconds, a night felt like a lifetime.

Trying to argue that it was adrenaline would be pretty weak, especially if the kid knew even the slightest thing about how bodies worked. Adrenaline could keep someone from feeling pain in a moment of crisis, yes, but faster healing? That just wasn't something that was generally thought to be possible. And yet everyone was experiencing a certain amount of it here.

Hallucination would have been her best bet, but Claire obviously didn't feel comfortable making a friend question his sanity just for the sake of protecting herself. Honestly, Peter was glad to know that. He realized that she wanted to feel safe, but there was such a thing as taking it too far.

If it was really down to the two options that Claire had provided, then Peter didn't know if there was any advice he could give her. When it was between cutting ties or being completely open with someone, that was a decision that someone had to make alone. It was the stark truth of the matter, and maybe Claire was starting to realize that.

Still, the general faster rate of healing was still something she could try to hide behind, if she wanted to. Peter nodded when she asked the question. "Yeah, believe me. Having treated wounds before, I'm sure mine have been healing too fast." He paused and then looked at her directly. "And that was even when you weren't around, so don't think it's that. I've seen it in other people, too. They aren't confined to crutches or wheelchairs nearly as long as they should be."

It was something he'd put a good amount of thought into before, first because it was strange and second because it didn't make sense. Why make things easier for them? But... "I think it's because, in the end, they want us going out and exploring at night. We can't really do that if we're crippled." Or not as easily, anyway; he'd still seen people heading out while on crutches or in wheelchairs at night, but it was risky as hell.

The fact that the staff appeared to want them exploring at night sent shudders through Claire's spine. There was no good approach to that kind of info. Either she sat in her room brooding the whole time or she stepped up and headed out and walked into whatever web they wanted to coax her into. None of it was good news. She folded her arms in a way that was more like hugging herself, rubbing her hands over her upper arms to try and ease the discomfort. Creepy.

"Nice reminder. We just get to keep playing whatever game they're setting up for us on their playground." Somehow, she'd managed to work her way out of her teenage crisis mode and address the legitimate problem. As unsettling as it was, at least it had gotten her mind off the world-shattering event she perceived Pete seeing her heal to be. "This has to end, Peter. We can't just keep playing into their hands like this. I'm not saying the food fight was the right way, but …"

She shook her head. There was no good way to finish that sentence. He wouldn't agree, anyway, and they were short on time. Peter wanted the subtle approach to finding a way for everyone to get out, and Claire simply had a hard time sitting still. Different strategies for their vastly different personalities -- strategies that couldn't really be reconciled on an offhand comment about how she might just agree a little bit with what the rioters were trying to do.

Unlike some of her earlier responses, this time Claire was reacting in the way that would be expected of just about anyone. It was hard to go out night after night when it was both dangerous and expected of you, when you knew you were just playing along. But in this case, did they really have any other option? He rubbed at his eyes again, having gone down this road with his thoughts so many times already.

"At this point we either play into their hands or don't play at all," he pointed out. "In this case, refusing to play doesn't get us anywhere. It just means we stay in our rooms at night and I... I can't do that." It wasn't in his nature to sit around and do nothing while other people were risking their necks for the sake of making some kind of breakthrough. Maybe it was all pointless and he was getting himself hurt for no reason, but... he'd rather do that than be completely inactive.

Claire was right that the food fight wasn't the right way, and Peter honestly didn't have any better ideas. Maybe if he'd had more power -- if he could become invisible or even read minds -- there'd be something he could do. But he was at the point where all he could really do with his nonexistent power was recklessly toss himself into things at night. And really, what he focused on these days was helping others; he couldn't stop that.

The idea that they were in a deadlock wasn't exactly reassuring. Disheartening, maybe, was the right word for it, and she could see in Peter's body language that he felt the same way. There wasn't much point to dragging out something depressing like that, especially when they agreed on it. Certain things could be left on the unspoken level of agreement and at this point she was kind of wishing this was one of those things that had, even if she had been the one to push it.

"Yeah," she murmured understandingly, "me either." There was distance in her gaze as she stared down at her hands in her lap uselessly, feeling dwarfed by the sheer goliath of an issue that taking on the institute and Landel with it was proving to be -- she'd been hoping that by now, she'd be home. Especially now that her time in the institute was closing in on a week.

"I'll figure something out." The comment was decisive, but she suddenly backtracked some when she looked back up at him. "We'll figure something out. But, I've got to tackle this thing with Pete first, and …" She shook her head. It wasn't that Peter had been unhelpful. It was just that she'd screwed herself so several that any help at all was going to have to come in the form of a miracle. She'd been in worse spots before, though, and maybe if she delayed it just a little further …

"Maybe tomorrow we can get a group together or something. Round people up and come up with some kind of plan. If we want this to go anywhere, we need to work together. We need help."

Even if things didn't seem like they were likely to get better anytime soon, Peter was still glad to see that Claire hadn't lost that determination and confidence that he'd seen in her soon after they met. Maybe she didn't know how to fight and maybe she was still just a teenager, but the girl made up for all of that with her sheer force of will, which Peter admired. It was something they shared in common, after all.

"Yeah, you should focus on that first," he agreed when Claire brought up the other Peter. It was something that was clearly bothering her, so it wasn't like she was going to be able to focus until she took care of it. Peter wished he could have given her some better guidance there, but he could really only be moral support as she sorted through it herself. And he was going to have to try to be better about filling the role of the reassuring uncle, too.

As for getting a group together, that was something that Peter had sort of been working on already -- still, it was easier said than done. People got distracted or they didn't check the bulletin, and suddenly the information wasn't getting passed along the way it should have. "Yeah. I'll try to get a better idea of who's in that Search and Rescue club, too -- they're the ones who head upstairs on the experiment nights."

But it looked like they'd used up all of their time, since the intercom went off then -- which meant they were being herded back into the cafeteria. Peter let out a sigh and then gave his niece a weary glance. "Back to the grind. Look, good luck, okay? I'm sorry I couldn't help more." He stretched and slowly stood.

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Day 54: Sun Room

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