for the_muses_stage: picture prompt (rp with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
its_notluck and <lj
Oct. 15th, 2009 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heroslayer“You don’t think we’re a bit old to be going to a carnival?” It was a simple question, maybe a touch hypothetical, tossed at her biological father in a rather flippant manner as she walked along beside him. Tilting her head, Claire studied Nathan Petrelli with an assessing gaze as the sounds of bells, laughter and other cheerful noises continued to dance around them.
She would have never guessed he’d come to these things willingly but it had actually been him who suggested checking out the carnival near her university. She had thought about telling him no but it was rare that he would actually offer to spend time with her and so she took it because she didn’t know when the offer would come again.
Taking another bite of her corn dog, she waited for his answer.
"Ma seemed to think the same thing," he replied, casting a glance over his shoulder to watch as not the first group of teenagers they'd seen that night meandered by, talking and laughing loudly. He couldn't say he didn't feel old, given the fact that this place seemed to be overrun by people younger than his daughter, but well. "I don't know -- I thought it would be fun."
That and when he'd seen the poster, he'd almost felt compelled to come.
"It is." She assured him, not wanting him to think she wasn't having fun. She didn't want him to be disappointed since he was clearly trying hard to reach out to her. She glanced sideways at the group of teenagers that were probably only a couple years younger than her and yet she felt decades older. Resisting the urge to sigh, she looked at him again before offering a smile at him. "It's kind of cool that you asked me to come."
Glancing away, probably to avoid any shy or awkward moment, she looked around and then brightened. "Hey, they have a House of Mirrors." She veered off course, heading to the side. She didn't see the guy who was sitting nearby, twirling a knife between his fingers as he watched them closely. She was rather focused on the fun attraction. "I used to love these when I was little. I could just spend hours in them."
He followed after her, jamming his hands into his pockets, and looked up at the building with a frown on his lips. "Dad dragged us off to a carnival once -- Pete begged him for weeks, and I guess he just got tired of hearing him go on about it. You know how Peter can be." A pause in which he shrugged, and then he was continuing. "It was the first and only time we ever got to go, though. Not only did dad think it was kind of ... over the top, but Peter got lost in a House of Mirrors for about an hour and a half. No one could find him, so excuse me if I'm a little skeptical."
The corners of Claire's mouth twitched as she listened to the story about Peter bugging his dad about going to the Carnival. It was nice hearing those kinds of stories, to hear that there had been some happy times. It almost made her feel included somehow. "Well, how about I promise not to get lost?" She smirked, turning around to walk backwards as she flashed him one of her cute smiles. Walking up the steps, she chuckled. "You can even stay out here if you want. I just want to take a quick dash around."
Then she turned around, disappearing inside with a smile of anticipation.
Nathan sighed as she ran off into the House, lingering outside for a few minutes before his curiosity and his desire to make sure Claire didn't get lost got the better of him. Shaking his head, already feeling like this was a bad idea, he ducked into the building and took a moment or two to look around, trying to get his bearings, before calling out for her. "Claire?"
When no answer came, he made a face, swearing under his breath as he shot a glance back at the door behind him. He could just head back out the way he'd come in, round the building to find the exit, and wait for her there. It was the logical thing to do, he was sure, and yet he couldn't help but press further into the maze of mirrors. What exactly possessed him, he didn't know, and he was half-certain that he was going to get lost, himself -- he'd left out the part of the story with Peter where he'd gotten lost too while trying to track down his brother -- but there was no turning back now.
Especially not when a second glance over his shoulder found the way he'd come in inexplicablly missing.
"Great," he murmured to no one in particular, shooting his reflection in the nearest mirror a withering look. "I swear to God, Claire, if I get lost in here and Ma has to call the cops to come get me out ... "
There was no answer for him, no response from his daughter, but there was a flash of dark green fabric reflected on the mirrors that surrounded him. It was too fast to be tracked and gone before it could be traced, leaving Nathan seemingly alone once more.
He turned circles rapidly, trying to pin down whatever had flicked through the near-dark, but to no avail. There was nothing there, nothing he could see but himself making a fool of himself in the glass, and he pressed his mouth into a thin line. He didn't bother calling for his daughter again, though. Last time he checked, Claire hadn't been wearing green, and between feeling out of sorts lately and his own mild aprehension when it came to Mirror Houses, he was almost sure it was just a trick of his tired mind. Nothing to worry about, and that in mind he moved forward again, trying to find a path through the mirrors as the sounds of the carnival grew more and more distant.
As he got a little deeper into the House of Mirrors, everything got a little more still and silent but there was a sense of being watched now. There might have even been another blur or two though at times it was hard to tell what color they were as they went by so fast. Either way, his game face had faded and he was starting to feel a bit uneasy. It was the soundlessness more than anything that was getting to him now -- like being stuck in a silent movie and stalked by the big bad -- and he made an effort to move through the building as loudly as possible. It seemed a better choice than calling out again and end up running into some old woman with her grandkids and look like a lunatic.
A few more minutes spent weaving between the glass, though, and he wasn't so sure his public image mattered so much anymore. "Hello?"
"Hello." The rough sounding voice behind him was a touch amused. When Nathan turned around, he would find a tall looking man watching him as he leaned against one of the passages, his arms crossed over his chest. He was dressed in a dark green shirt and a dirty pair of jeans. "You lost or something?"
Nathan relaxed ever so slightly, reaching up to scrub a hand over his face in an effort to bite back a sigh. "Yeah. Well, uh, sort of. I'm looking for my daughter -- she ran in here a few minutes ago, and I haven't seen her since."
"Tiny blonde?" He brought his hand up to somewhere near his shoulder. "Kind of cute? She passed by that way a few minutes ago, I think. Could have been the other way though." The left corner of his mouth almost curled into a smile. "This place can be kind of confusing. Has a way of playing with your head and twisting things around." He nodded, making a swirling motion with his hand.
"So I noticed." He grimaced, casting a sharp, suspicious glance at one of the mirrors off to his side, sure he'd seen something that wasn't him or the newcomer in it. When nothing seemed to be there, he shook his head, turning his attentions back to the other man. "But yeah, that's my daughter."
"You sure about that?" He asked it casually though his expression said there was nothing casual about the question. "You don't look too sure about anything at the moment." His gaze flickered purposefully over towards the mirror where Nathan had just glanced, thinking he had seen someone who wasn't really there with them. Or maybe there was a third person.
"About Claire being my daughter?" For reasons he couldn't pin down, he hesitated for a moment before he answered, his mind a million miles away. "Yeah, I'm sure."
And whatever Nathan thought he had seen in the mirrors had actually been there, too, as a woman's voice floated down the cooridor. "Don't be so hard on him. Samuel seems to think these last few weeks have been enough." The source, a towering blonde woman, appeared from behind the glass at his side and drifted over to Nathan's new friend idly.
Now he gave a ghost of a smile at the sound of the female voice that was joining them. Turning his head a little, he looked at the towering blonde that was joining them and then he glanced back at Nathan with a small smirk. "He does look a bit lost, doesn't he?"
"You look like you're haunted by something." It was something he could understand as he straightened, shifting over to make room for the beauty.
"It's not fair," she agreed, folding her arms over her chest. "What they did to him ... "
Nathan frowned. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Not fair at all. He never had a choice and what kind of family does that." Even as he said it, there was a flicker in his eyes as he looked at her but it was gone when he looked back at Nathan. "How long have you not felt right? Like you don't fit in your own skin?"
Briefly, she mirrored his expression -- something dark, there and then gone -- and then she was raising her eyes back to the politician, silent. Nathan just continued to look sour. "Six weeks or so. And if you know me so well, smart ass, you should know that my life hasn't exactly been coming up roses, lately. I've been stressed. I'm ... getting older. It's understandable."
"It's not feeling older and you know it. Actually, you've probably been feeling better than you've felt in a long time. At least physically you do, but that's not what we're talking about." He narrowed his eyes. "You feel wrong -- like you're not yourself. Like you're a different man these days."
Nathan shifted uncomfortably. Truthfully, he had been feeling different -- disjointed, like nothing in his life connected or was ever really his in the first place -- but he hadn't bothered to bring it up with anyone. His mother would have suggested a mid-life crisis, and that was the last thing he wanted to hear right now. He couldn't go to Bennet because as much as he trusted him to do a job and do it well, Noah had never struck him as a people person. And Pete was far too busy these days to even return his phone calls.
He'd tried to write it off as being distracted with the things he'd done to his friends, and his efforts to try and find a way to make up for the atrocities he'd committed, but that explination felt flat, somehow. He just felt off, and he didn't like being called on it. "What are you suggesting?"
The blonde met a question with a question. "What do you remember about before you started feeling like this?"
"My brother and I -- we took care of a few things that had been causing problems in our personal lives for a couple've months." He shot her a look that suggested what, exactly, they'd taken care of was none of her business. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Do you remember everything that happened on that day clearly?" It was a simple enough question but the answer was complicated, he was sure. "Think very hard about what happened on that day you and your brother handled that problem in your life? Is it all there?"
He couldn't quite recall it all. There had been the fight with Sylar, the psycho sonovabitch had knocked him through a window, and then -- what? He frowned, brows knitting together as he tried to recall, but it was like coming up against a brick wall. There was nothing there, and beyond that to even try thinking about it made him shudder, bile rising in his throat as something in the back of his head started screaming at him, distantly.
Whatever the feeling the missing memory had brought, whatever his subconscious was trying to tell him, he either ignored it entirely or interpreted it wrong, shaking his head. What he needed was to get away from these crazy people -- not try and figure out what had happened that day. "It doesn't matter," he answered finally, his tone strangely hollow where he'd meant it to be commanding. "What matters is finding Claire. You wanna get out of my way?"
He watched quietly as Nathan struggled to remember what had happened that day, to remember it all clearly. He flicked a look over at the beautiful woman at his side, an entire conversation passing between them in just a few seconds as they held each other's gaze. When Nathan started to speak again, he looked back at the other man and then stepped to the side with a grand sweeping motion of his arm. "We're not the ones holding you back and keeping you trapped."
"Whatever." That wasn't quite as forceful as he hoped either, but it didn't stop him from starting forward, marching past the two carnies with a look from under his eyebrows for each of them.
Turning to watch Nathan as he stalked past, he watched the man in question disappear before he looked over at the woman to his left. "Guess that's that." He turned then, disappearing back the other way as he could only hope they had given the man the right nudge.
"I guess so," she agreed, then she was following him back into the dark.
Nathan, meanwhile, had broken into a run. What, exactly, he was trying to get away from, he wasn't sure, but in that instant, he was damn sure something worse than a couple of weird carnies was chasing him through the building, jumping from mirror to mirror, inescapable. And even as the sounds of the outside world started filtering back in through the walls, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being hounded. He shot a glance over his shoulder, turned back to make sure whatever it was hadn't gotten ahead of him, and ran straight into Claire.
He gasped, taking a few steps backwards, his expression wild and haunted, and for more than just his run-in with Claire. He looked -- and felt, honestly -- almost traumatized, even if he couldn't explain why. "Claire? Jesus, I've been looking all over for you."
The grunt exploded out of her as she slammed into a wall of chest and she had to grab onto him to steady herself. As she tilted her head up to look at Nathan, her hands dropped away as though she had been burned and then she was searching his gaze for something. "I ... yeah, I got lost." She felt like she was going to be sick.
"Can we go? I'm not feeling so good." She knew it sounded stupid considering she couldn't get sick but she just didn't want to be there anymore.
He looked at her, his expression shifting from half-terrified to almost bewildered. He didn't argue, though, instead nodding sharply. "Yeah." A beat, and then he repeated, "Yeah, let's go."
"Okay, thanks."
Offering him a thin smile, she lead them out of the door that seemed to have magically appeared at their side. And as they came back out into the carnival proper, life and light teeming around them, he took a look around, a part of him hoping to spot the two that had been inside, another part all but cringing at the idea of seeing them again any time soon. Thankfully they seemed no where in sight, but even so, he couldn't begin to shake the feeling that something was very wrong.
Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 2818
Note: The use of Lydia is not aimed at any specific journal. This is also a companion piece to this fic, going through what happened to Nathan!Sylar while he and Claire were separated -- that's why the beginnings are the same. Based on this picture.
She would have never guessed he’d come to these things willingly but it had actually been him who suggested checking out the carnival near her university. She had thought about telling him no but it was rare that he would actually offer to spend time with her and so she took it because she didn’t know when the offer would come again.
Taking another bite of her corn dog, she waited for his answer.
"Ma seemed to think the same thing," he replied, casting a glance over his shoulder to watch as not the first group of teenagers they'd seen that night meandered by, talking and laughing loudly. He couldn't say he didn't feel old, given the fact that this place seemed to be overrun by people younger than his daughter, but well. "I don't know -- I thought it would be fun."
That and when he'd seen the poster, he'd almost felt compelled to come.
"It is." She assured him, not wanting him to think she wasn't having fun. She didn't want him to be disappointed since he was clearly trying hard to reach out to her. She glanced sideways at the group of teenagers that were probably only a couple years younger than her and yet she felt decades older. Resisting the urge to sigh, she looked at him again before offering a smile at him. "It's kind of cool that you asked me to come."
Glancing away, probably to avoid any shy or awkward moment, she looked around and then brightened. "Hey, they have a House of Mirrors." She veered off course, heading to the side. She didn't see the guy who was sitting nearby, twirling a knife between his fingers as he watched them closely. She was rather focused on the fun attraction. "I used to love these when I was little. I could just spend hours in them."
He followed after her, jamming his hands into his pockets, and looked up at the building with a frown on his lips. "Dad dragged us off to a carnival once -- Pete begged him for weeks, and I guess he just got tired of hearing him go on about it. You know how Peter can be." A pause in which he shrugged, and then he was continuing. "It was the first and only time we ever got to go, though. Not only did dad think it was kind of ... over the top, but Peter got lost in a House of Mirrors for about an hour and a half. No one could find him, so excuse me if I'm a little skeptical."
The corners of Claire's mouth twitched as she listened to the story about Peter bugging his dad about going to the Carnival. It was nice hearing those kinds of stories, to hear that there had been some happy times. It almost made her feel included somehow. "Well, how about I promise not to get lost?" She smirked, turning around to walk backwards as she flashed him one of her cute smiles. Walking up the steps, she chuckled. "You can even stay out here if you want. I just want to take a quick dash around."
Then she turned around, disappearing inside with a smile of anticipation.
Nathan sighed as she ran off into the House, lingering outside for a few minutes before his curiosity and his desire to make sure Claire didn't get lost got the better of him. Shaking his head, already feeling like this was a bad idea, he ducked into the building and took a moment or two to look around, trying to get his bearings, before calling out for her. "Claire?"
When no answer came, he made a face, swearing under his breath as he shot a glance back at the door behind him. He could just head back out the way he'd come in, round the building to find the exit, and wait for her there. It was the logical thing to do, he was sure, and yet he couldn't help but press further into the maze of mirrors. What exactly possessed him, he didn't know, and he was half-certain that he was going to get lost, himself -- he'd left out the part of the story with Peter where he'd gotten lost too while trying to track down his brother -- but there was no turning back now.
Especially not when a second glance over his shoulder found the way he'd come in inexplicablly missing.
"Great," he murmured to no one in particular, shooting his reflection in the nearest mirror a withering look. "I swear to God, Claire, if I get lost in here and Ma has to call the cops to come get me out ... "
There was no answer for him, no response from his daughter, but there was a flash of dark green fabric reflected on the mirrors that surrounded him. It was too fast to be tracked and gone before it could be traced, leaving Nathan seemingly alone once more.
He turned circles rapidly, trying to pin down whatever had flicked through the near-dark, but to no avail. There was nothing there, nothing he could see but himself making a fool of himself in the glass, and he pressed his mouth into a thin line. He didn't bother calling for his daughter again, though. Last time he checked, Claire hadn't been wearing green, and between feeling out of sorts lately and his own mild aprehension when it came to Mirror Houses, he was almost sure it was just a trick of his tired mind. Nothing to worry about, and that in mind he moved forward again, trying to find a path through the mirrors as the sounds of the carnival grew more and more distant.
As he got a little deeper into the House of Mirrors, everything got a little more still and silent but there was a sense of being watched now. There might have even been another blur or two though at times it was hard to tell what color they were as they went by so fast. Either way, his game face had faded and he was starting to feel a bit uneasy. It was the soundlessness more than anything that was getting to him now -- like being stuck in a silent movie and stalked by the big bad -- and he made an effort to move through the building as loudly as possible. It seemed a better choice than calling out again and end up running into some old woman with her grandkids and look like a lunatic.
A few more minutes spent weaving between the glass, though, and he wasn't so sure his public image mattered so much anymore. "Hello?"
"Hello." The rough sounding voice behind him was a touch amused. When Nathan turned around, he would find a tall looking man watching him as he leaned against one of the passages, his arms crossed over his chest. He was dressed in a dark green shirt and a dirty pair of jeans. "You lost or something?"
Nathan relaxed ever so slightly, reaching up to scrub a hand over his face in an effort to bite back a sigh. "Yeah. Well, uh, sort of. I'm looking for my daughter -- she ran in here a few minutes ago, and I haven't seen her since."
"Tiny blonde?" He brought his hand up to somewhere near his shoulder. "Kind of cute? She passed by that way a few minutes ago, I think. Could have been the other way though." The left corner of his mouth almost curled into a smile. "This place can be kind of confusing. Has a way of playing with your head and twisting things around." He nodded, making a swirling motion with his hand.
"So I noticed." He grimaced, casting a sharp, suspicious glance at one of the mirrors off to his side, sure he'd seen something that wasn't him or the newcomer in it. When nothing seemed to be there, he shook his head, turning his attentions back to the other man. "But yeah, that's my daughter."
"You sure about that?" He asked it casually though his expression said there was nothing casual about the question. "You don't look too sure about anything at the moment." His gaze flickered purposefully over towards the mirror where Nathan had just glanced, thinking he had seen someone who wasn't really there with them. Or maybe there was a third person.
"About Claire being my daughter?" For reasons he couldn't pin down, he hesitated for a moment before he answered, his mind a million miles away. "Yeah, I'm sure."
And whatever Nathan thought he had seen in the mirrors had actually been there, too, as a woman's voice floated down the cooridor. "Don't be so hard on him. Samuel seems to think these last few weeks have been enough." The source, a towering blonde woman, appeared from behind the glass at his side and drifted over to Nathan's new friend idly.
Now he gave a ghost of a smile at the sound of the female voice that was joining them. Turning his head a little, he looked at the towering blonde that was joining them and then he glanced back at Nathan with a small smirk. "He does look a bit lost, doesn't he?"
"You look like you're haunted by something." It was something he could understand as he straightened, shifting over to make room for the beauty.
"It's not fair," she agreed, folding her arms over her chest. "What they did to him ... "
Nathan frowned. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Not fair at all. He never had a choice and what kind of family does that." Even as he said it, there was a flicker in his eyes as he looked at her but it was gone when he looked back at Nathan. "How long have you not felt right? Like you don't fit in your own skin?"
Briefly, she mirrored his expression -- something dark, there and then gone -- and then she was raising her eyes back to the politician, silent. Nathan just continued to look sour. "Six weeks or so. And if you know me so well, smart ass, you should know that my life hasn't exactly been coming up roses, lately. I've been stressed. I'm ... getting older. It's understandable."
"It's not feeling older and you know it. Actually, you've probably been feeling better than you've felt in a long time. At least physically you do, but that's not what we're talking about." He narrowed his eyes. "You feel wrong -- like you're not yourself. Like you're a different man these days."
Nathan shifted uncomfortably. Truthfully, he had been feeling different -- disjointed, like nothing in his life connected or was ever really his in the first place -- but he hadn't bothered to bring it up with anyone. His mother would have suggested a mid-life crisis, and that was the last thing he wanted to hear right now. He couldn't go to Bennet because as much as he trusted him to do a job and do it well, Noah had never struck him as a people person. And Pete was far too busy these days to even return his phone calls.
He'd tried to write it off as being distracted with the things he'd done to his friends, and his efforts to try and find a way to make up for the atrocities he'd committed, but that explination felt flat, somehow. He just felt off, and he didn't like being called on it. "What are you suggesting?"
The blonde met a question with a question. "What do you remember about before you started feeling like this?"
"My brother and I -- we took care of a few things that had been causing problems in our personal lives for a couple've months." He shot her a look that suggested what, exactly, they'd taken care of was none of her business. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"Do you remember everything that happened on that day clearly?" It was a simple enough question but the answer was complicated, he was sure. "Think very hard about what happened on that day you and your brother handled that problem in your life? Is it all there?"
He couldn't quite recall it all. There had been the fight with Sylar, the psycho sonovabitch had knocked him through a window, and then -- what? He frowned, brows knitting together as he tried to recall, but it was like coming up against a brick wall. There was nothing there, and beyond that to even try thinking about it made him shudder, bile rising in his throat as something in the back of his head started screaming at him, distantly.
Whatever the feeling the missing memory had brought, whatever his subconscious was trying to tell him, he either ignored it entirely or interpreted it wrong, shaking his head. What he needed was to get away from these crazy people -- not try and figure out what had happened that day. "It doesn't matter," he answered finally, his tone strangely hollow where he'd meant it to be commanding. "What matters is finding Claire. You wanna get out of my way?"
He watched quietly as Nathan struggled to remember what had happened that day, to remember it all clearly. He flicked a look over at the beautiful woman at his side, an entire conversation passing between them in just a few seconds as they held each other's gaze. When Nathan started to speak again, he looked back at the other man and then stepped to the side with a grand sweeping motion of his arm. "We're not the ones holding you back and keeping you trapped."
"Whatever." That wasn't quite as forceful as he hoped either, but it didn't stop him from starting forward, marching past the two carnies with a look from under his eyebrows for each of them.
Turning to watch Nathan as he stalked past, he watched the man in question disappear before he looked over at the woman to his left. "Guess that's that." He turned then, disappearing back the other way as he could only hope they had given the man the right nudge.
"I guess so," she agreed, then she was following him back into the dark.
Nathan, meanwhile, had broken into a run. What, exactly, he was trying to get away from, he wasn't sure, but in that instant, he was damn sure something worse than a couple of weird carnies was chasing him through the building, jumping from mirror to mirror, inescapable. And even as the sounds of the outside world started filtering back in through the walls, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being hounded. He shot a glance over his shoulder, turned back to make sure whatever it was hadn't gotten ahead of him, and ran straight into Claire.
He gasped, taking a few steps backwards, his expression wild and haunted, and for more than just his run-in with Claire. He looked -- and felt, honestly -- almost traumatized, even if he couldn't explain why. "Claire? Jesus, I've been looking all over for you."
The grunt exploded out of her as she slammed into a wall of chest and she had to grab onto him to steady herself. As she tilted her head up to look at Nathan, her hands dropped away as though she had been burned and then she was searching his gaze for something. "I ... yeah, I got lost." She felt like she was going to be sick.
"Can we go? I'm not feeling so good." She knew it sounded stupid considering she couldn't get sick but she just didn't want to be there anymore.
He looked at her, his expression shifting from half-terrified to almost bewildered. He didn't argue, though, instead nodding sharply. "Yeah." A beat, and then he repeated, "Yeah, let's go."
"Okay, thanks."
Offering him a thin smile, she lead them out of the door that seemed to have magically appeared at their side. And as they came back out into the carnival proper, life and light teeming around them, he took a look around, a part of him hoping to spot the two that had been inside, another part all but cringing at the idea of seeing them again any time soon. Thankfully they seemed no where in sight, but even so, he couldn't begin to shake the feeling that something was very wrong.
Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 2818
Note: The use of Lydia is not aimed at any specific journal. This is also a companion piece to this fic, going through what happened to Nathan!Sylar while he and Claire were separated -- that's why the beginnings are the same. Based on this picture.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-15 06:47 am (UTC)