Fire and Ice

Spoilers: Anything up to the end of season 2.

A/N: Set in Season 2, a few weeks after Nathan Petrelli is healed of his injuries that are a result of Peter’s nuclear explosion.


Nathan Petrelli can barely look at himself long enough in the mirror so he can shave. He knows he must, but he shakes so badly he can hardly hold the razorblade. His daughter is arriving in New York City today. She wants to spend some time with him. He has to look presentable. He feels like he might faint.

He resents her for this. He is dreading this. But he is not able to turn her away. He already knows exactly why she is coming, what to expect after all of Claire’s phone calls and conversations about the person whose name Nathan can barely even whisper without wanting to break down and cry, to hide behind the curtain of self-loathing and alcoholic solitude he has fashioned for himself.

Today is the start of the second week of his attempt to cut down on his alcohol consumption, and it isn’t getting easier, not one single fucking bit; it is actually getting worse. The dull ache that resides in his chest sharpens to a deadly point as the need for alcohol spikes in his blood. He regrets the decision he made the day Claire told him she was coming: to try to stop drinking, to at least try to look like he is coping.

He is failing miserably, and he knows it.

Claire misses her uncle, and she knows Nathan misses his brother, but she doesn’t know the whole truth of it. There is no possible way Claire can hurt as badly as he does. She has only known Peter Petrelli less than a year.

Nothing hurts like the finality of Peter is never coming back. The razorblade falls from his hand with a soft splash into the sink, and Nathan’s body weakens as the tremors take him again. He wipes the shaving cream from his face and staggers to the bedroom, buries himself under the covers, blocking out all lights and sounds of the outside world. His sickness fades as he falls into sleep, into dreams of his brother, dreams of Peter.

This dream is always the same. He sees his brother standing before him on Kirby Plaza, his glowing, burning hands held out in front of him, beckoning him closer. Peter is only an arm’s length away, but Nathan can never seem to touch him, let alone take him in his arms and push skyward as he has done before in his waking life. In this dream, unlike that night, Nathan is always afraid because he knows how it feels to be burned alive. He knows he will be consumed if he reaches Peter, but because he loves his brother more than he loves himself he tries anyway. The short distance between them may as well be infinite. He can not reach him. The fact he can not help Peter, that he can not save him chills him, wounds him like a blade.

Nathan wakes up, convinced that if he just keeps his eyes closed a little longer, wishes a little harder, Peter will be lying there next to him alive and whole, not splintered into radioactive fragments high above the city where he lived his short twenty-seven years.

Nathan reaches out and his arm comes down on an empty cold place instead, on what used to be his brother’s side of this bed.

He tosses and turns under his covers, but he knows it is time to try again. He crawls out of the bed and goes into the bathroom once more. Surprisingly, he is able to hold the blade this time without fear of his hand shaking and inadvertently cutting his own throat. He falls into this ritual and thinks back over the events of the past few months, remembering each with great clarity. Nathan’s thoughts gravitate to one memory in particular as he performs this mindless task.

Heidi is angry and impatient with his incessant drinking, his piteous moping and his introverted distance, and she is finally confronting him about it. Suddenly, he is telling her the secret he promised he would never divulge, not ever, not to anyone: he and Peter were closer than brothers should ever be.

Even as the words spill from his mouth, Nathan doesn’t expect Heidi to understand, of course. He knows what she will say. And she does.

Who in their right mind takes their little brother as their lover?

Nathan can not answer her, for he silenced that question long ago. He has come to accept that what he and Peter had was something beyond need, beyond love, beyond blood. He and his little brother were doing this for longer than he has even known Heidi. Peter is the great love of his life. Not Heidi.

At first, Heidi is speechless. Then she cries. Then she screams. She tells him he is sick and twisted and will never let him see his children again if it is the last thing she does, and Nathan believes her.

Heidi keeps her promises, being the only one in their now broken marriage that ever did.

The thought of being kept away from his two young sons hurts him deeply, but Nathan does not even have the will to fight her, and he signs the custody papers without a second thought.

The next thing he knows, he is staying in his brother’s apartment and he is served with divorce papers.

Enough of this, he tells himself as he washes that memory from his mind, the last trace of shaving cream from his face. He has to concentrate on the present. His blood is now screaming for a drink, and his daughter Claire is knocking on the front door.

What a cruel joke, he thinks.

Nathan Petrelli is a lawyer, and more recently a politician. He is a master of deceit, of covering up and twisting the truth, especially to himself. He knows that by letting her in, he is effectively substituting for his two young sons an illegitimate teenage daughter who barely knows him from a hole in the wall, just so that he can still call himself a father.

But there is one thing they share: Peter. Nathan was in love with him, and Claire hero-worshipped him, but love is still love. They both loved Peter Petrelli.

Peter who saved the cheerleader. Peter who threw himself off a goddamned building just to prove he could fly. Peter who spent his young life helping others face the end of theirs. Peter who smiled graciously in the face of death and sauntered right past it. How can he be gone? How can he be lost? How can Peter be only remnants of a nuclear explosion, scattered forever into the atmosphere?

Nathan remembers that Claire is waiting at the door. He yells, “I’ll be right there!”

He can not face this sober. He just can’t. Nathan gives in to the demon. He goes into the kitchen, opens the cupboard and takes out the bottle that is hidden there. Just one, he swears to himself. Just to take the edge off.

The liquor burns down his throat, warms his stomach, and he feels somewhat relieved. The intoxicating curtain closes over him, temporarily covering the gaping wound in his heart that is left because Peter is never coming back.

He swings the apartment door inward, and sees those words reflected in Claire’s green eyes right before she throws her arms around him and sobs softly into his chest, her forehead pressing against his breastbone. He cradles his hand around her soft blonde head and holds her tightly, and he thinks maybe Claire has not needed to know Peter for very long to mourn him just as badly as he does. She is Nathan’s daughter, after all. Peter is her family too.

What Nathan does not know is that Claire, his daughter, this girl he barely knows, is his dead brother’s other lover. Nathan doesn’t have any idea how many of the nights that Peter did not spend by his side were spent with Claire.

Claire Bennet doesn’t think she can tell her father this, because who in their right mind takes their uncle as their lover? Nathan Petrelli is a wreck already, a broken man. He has lost his wife, his sons, his job, his home, his reputation. Claire is the gossamer thread that holds the last of her biological father’s sanity together; at least that’s what she thinks, anyway. To tell her father what she had with Peter would be like cutting Nathan’s last lifeline, and hers as well. To lose Nathan would be to lose the only connection she has left to Peter.

Claire cries into Nathan’s chest, and her face is pressed so hard into him that his chest hair is tickling her nose. Despite the tickle, she notices he smells good, sort of like pine trees, and this strikes her as ridiculously funny and she pulls back, laughing hysterically.

Nathan eyes her and asks, his voice somber and serious, “Why are you laughing, Claire?”

Claire can not answer as she continues to laugh, and Nathan turns away, going back towards the kitchen. He thunders, “What is so goddamned funny?”

The tone and volume of his voice scares her out of her throes of laughter, and she catches her breath and follows him through the apartment, trying not to look around too much. To be surrounded by all of Peter’s earthly possessions, all of these things that he has chosen and handled and used, knowing that he no longer exists, this kills her inside, and she wonders how Nathan can stay here day in and day out and not go crazy with grief.

Claire gets her answer as she sees Nathan take a drink straight out of the bottle, no longer caring about his promise for just one. Claire’s juvenile fit of laughter has sent him over the edge.

“I’m sorry, I--” she begins, but Nathan cuts her off.

“So am I. ” He sighs heavily, his voice soft now. “Maybe it was a bad idea for you to come. I’m not the best company right now, Claire.”

She is relieved that he is not angry, so Claire tries a little more humor as a palliative. “It’s okay. You’re my dad, so you can yell at me.” She smiles and sits down at the table next to him. She lays her right hand over his left, and she turns his hand palm up and laces their fingers together.

“It’s been really hard, Nathan,” she manages, closing her throat against more tears. “The hardest thing is not knowing for sure. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we could have a memorial service, or if he had a gravestone, or something. It’s not fair to be caught in limbo like this.”

Nathan scoffs as the alcohol hits his system in a rush, bringing pent-up anger forth. “I don’t need a fucking gravestone to mark the day Peter was born, what day he died. I don’t need a memorial service to remind me of every moment I spent with my little brother, from the time he was in diapers until I let him fly away and explode. All I know is that I’m losing my fucking mind trying to live without him.” He takes another drink out of the bottle and catches her eyes over its rim. Claire thinks for a moment that he is going to say something else, something important, but the look flickers and fades.

Nathan agonizes, “I’m such an idiot. What the hell kind of role model am I, drinking like this in front of you?”

Claire doesn’t have an answer. She knows it is his way of dealing with his loss. “It’s all right,” she says. She is not excusing him, but she does understand.

She watches his face as he closes his hazel eyes and takes another long swallow, his lips curving slightly around the edge of the bottle. He is gripping the bottle very tightly, his arm shaking. Nathan opens his eyes, and they shine with tears.

She has only seen Nathan Petrelli cry once in the short time she has known him, back when Peter’s lifeless body was delivered by Dr. Mohinder Suresh along with a vague explanation and an uneasy apology. Peter lived through that, thanks to her healing ability. But Claire’s ability did not save him this time. Peter isn’t coming back this time. Claire can virtually read that thought on Nathan’s face, and she is sure this will be the second time she sees her father cry.

As his tears come down, her heart aches, and she is stricken; she has never truly noticed just how much he looks like Peter. Or maybe she just misses Peter so badly that her mind is playing tricks on her. If she squints through the blur of her own tears, she can almost imagine he is a slightly older version of Peter.

Nathan takes a deep shuddery breath and words tumble out of him so fast Claire doesn’t even understand him. She wonders if he’s even speaking directly to her. All she knows is his voice sounds a lot like Peter’s too.

Claire watches Nathan talk, not even hearing his confession. She is too lost inside her own thoughts. She tries desperately to stop comparing him to his brother; she knows it isn’t fair to Nathan’s existence or to Peter’s memory for her to do this. She pushes away her thoughts of Peter and concentrates on Nathan, trying to see the man he is and not the man her unconscious mind is wishing he were. Despite the resemblance he carries to his younger brother, her father is an entity all his own, entirely different, and Claire realizes she barely knows anything about this man who contributes to half her bloodline.

“Let’s not talk about Peter anymore,” she says softly.

Nathan looks horrified. This is definitely not the response he expected. Has she even heard a word he said?

He asks her this question, and she admits she wasn’t listening, and she apologizes. Nathan actually looks kind of relieved, but still extremely uneasy; tension has built in him, and it seems as if at any moment he is going to jump out of his chair and bolt from the room.

Claire sees Peter in him again, and she knows it is her guilt over their clandestine relationship that keeps making this happen. Deep inside, she needs Nathan to know. No matter the consequences. She has to tell him about her and Peter. And she does.

Nathan listens as she tells him a very similar version of what she didn’t hear him say. After a moment of silence, her confession hanging heavy in the air, Nathan begins to laugh. She can’t believe this. He is the one laughing now, at her.

Claire is incensed. This is not the reaction she has expected. “Why are you laughing at me? I was in love with Peter, and you’re laughing?”

Indeed he is, his shoulders rolling forward, the tears that stream down his face now ones of amusement. Claire swears if he doesn’t stop in the next few seconds she is going to hit him.

He does stop, and hardly able to breathe, he groans, “I was in love with Peter too! You weren’t listening when I told you!” He pauses, and continues, his voice serious again, “It’s not really all that funny. It’s actually kind of scary. I’m just drunk. But I’m not lying.” He chuckles again, but Claire gives him a warning look that fades to shock as she absorbs his words.

She utters, “You…and I…were both sleeping with him?"

Nathan nods, and he is done for. He is laughing hysterically once again, and this time, Claire joins in. She knows something about Nathan now, that’s for sure. There is something shining in his eyes just then, something that lights a fire in her; the unfolding mystery of him excites her in a way it shouldn’t, in the same way Peter had not so long ago.

If Nathan notices, he does not let it show. “Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems, we never speak of it again, all right?” Nathan says. “Petrelli family secret?”

Claire nods, eyes wide, her mind still reeling. Nathan and Peter were lovers? As in, two men? Brothers?

She has questions, but they’re obviously the curious, too personal kind that she is sure Nathan won’t want to answer, so she bites them back. She hears the nervousness in her voice as she replies, “All right. Well, it’s--ah--nice to be on the same page, I guess.”

“I guess,” Nathan agrees. He screws the cap onto the bottle and puts it back in its hiding place in the cabinet that holds Peter’s mismatched plates and bowls. He turns around and rest his hands on her shoulders. “It’s nice to know there’s someone in this world that misses him just as much as I do.”

He drops a fatherly kiss on top of her head and Claire inwardly berates herself for thinking about him in a sexual way. Yes, Peter was her uncle, but Nathan is her father.

Is this what Nathan means by “Petrelli family secret”? Is this something that runs in their genetics, this undeniable attraction to blood relatives? A disturbing image takes shape in her mind: her father and her uncle making love with each other. But as the fantasy plays out in her head, she is not so much disturbed by it as she is excited at the thought of the two of them together. She tries not to, but she can not help imagining herself in Peter’s place.

A shock like a electric current crackles through her thighs and her lower belly as she watches Nathan leave to use the bathroom. He is so much like Peter, yet so not.

He is three inches taller than his brother was, his upper body is more defined, and he does not keep his dark chestnut hair anywhere near as long as Peter’s ridiculously cute, floppy style. The more she watches Nathan, the more she notices and admires his differences, and the more she misses Peter. What a cruel joke, she thinks.

Claire is entranced at the way Nathan’s back and shoulder muscles slide gracefully beneath his skin as he reaches for the doorknob. He slips into the bathroom, out of her sight, and air from the breath she has been holding whooshes out of her lungs. She squeezes her thighs together against a deep ache, and she is momentarily shocked that her panties have soaked through.

What surprises her most about this is how easily she pushes the guilt away.

She did not intend for this to happen before she got on that plane this morning, but she will not lie to herself--she now wants Nathan, just like she wanted Peter so long ago. Wanting Peter had been wrong, but wanting Nathan is even more kinds of wrong.

But she is a Petrelli, and so is he. She wonders just how long it will be before Nathan wants her in return. She is, after all, living proof that Nathan Petrelli does not see a difference whether he takes a lover who is male or female.

Nathan returns to the kitchen table, now fully dressed, wearing a button-down collared shirt that is clean but has seen better days, and is slightly wrinkled. This along with his worn-in jeans is a far cry from the polished three-piece suits he wore during his days as an assistant district attorney, during his short-lived stint as Congressman. He has not buttoned the shirt up all the way, and she can see a bit of his chest hair poking out from underneath.

Enough of this, she thinks. Claire shakes off her thoughts and suggests, “Do you want to watch television or something? I don’t really feel like going out and seeing the sights tonight. Sitting on that plane for six hours made me tired, if you can believe it.”

Nathan says, “Sure. There’s a movie on the Sundance Channel that I was thinking of watching. It starts at nine, I think.” He rummages through a drawer, and he pulls out a menu. “There’s a Chinese place down the block that makes the best beef chow mein you ever tasted. What do you say?”

Claire relaxes, and falls back into thoughts of this man as her father and nothing more. “Sounds great.” She gives him a bright, warm smile, and he returns it with one of his own.

“I’ll order. You go relax, maybe take a shower if you want. I know that’s the first thing I like to do after I get off a damn airplane. I guess you know where the bathroom is. I put towels in there for you.” He picks his phone up off the table, and Claire ducks into the living room and grabs the items she needs out of her suitcase.

She steps under the hot spray of the shower, and laughs to herself about Nathan’s plane comment. How many times could he have needed to use an airplane since he found out he could fly?

***

Half an hour later, they are sprawled side by side on the couch in front of the television, sharing beef chow mein and vegetable fried rice, watching the opening scenes of an old independent film. They finish their meal, and Claire snuggles up to Nathan, and he puts his arm around her. Nathan pulls a throw blanket over them both, and after about ten more minutes of the movie, not the best choice, they nod off.

***

Ninety minutes later, Claire wakes up to the movie’s rousing exit music. She is still quite tired, and her eyes drift shut again. She moves closer to the solid warmth next to her. She wonders if she is really awake, or if she has fallen asleep again and dreaming--she is confused at her unfamiliar surroundings, but quickly realizes she is in Peter’s apartment. She has to be dreaming--Peter is here next to her. It makes her happy and sad to dream of her lost love. But dreams are all she has left of Peter.

Claire sighs, and she kisses his neck, slips a hand beneath his shirt, and is momentarily paralyzed. This is not Peter.

Claire’s eyes fly open, and she sees that her hand is inside her father’s shirt. She pulls her hand back and watches to see if he has noticed, but he doesn’t move at all.

Claire breathes a sigh of relief, and slips out from under Nathan’s arm gingerly as not to wake him. From their prior phone calls to each other, she knows his sleep cycle has been erratic since Peter’s death--disappearance, the hopeful part of her mind insists--his nights wrought with nightmares and bouts of insomnia.

He still doesn’t move a muscle; Nathan is out cold, and he is snoring softly, his head resting on his arm. She looks toward the bedroom door, and knows she has to wake him: there is no way she can bring herself to sleep in Peter’s bed. Nathan doesn’t seem to let it bother him all that much, and she has no problems with sleeping on the couch.

She shakes him awake, and he gets up and nearly sleepwalks into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him. Claire changes into a nightgown, settles herself into the warm place that he has vacated, and she drifts off once again.

***

Nathan takes off his shirt and lies down, and soon as his body hits the bed he is asleep again, and he falls instantly into his recurring Peter-dream.
Only this time, something is different. Peter is there, his large brown eyes wide, his hands emitting that deadly radiation-fueled glow, but before Nathan can even try to reach across that arm’s length that keeps them apart, Peter explodes, right in the middle of Kirby Plaza.

Nathan shields his eyes, a ridiculous maneuver since he knows he will die instantly, but surprisingly he feels no pain as Peter’s body disintegrates into a billowing cloud of hellfire. The flare fades and dies out, and when he looks down at himself, he sees that he is untouched. Peter is gone, but someone else is there beside Nathan, standing right next to him. Claire turns toward him and looks as though she is about to burst into tears.

Ash is falling from the sky above them, cascading down around them, and before he even knows what is happening, he is holding her in his arms, and he is kissing her in a way no father is supposed to kiss his daughter. She smells like summer, like strawberries fresh from the vine, and she tastes like sweet honey. Nathan is beside himself at how wrong this is, how right this is, he knows it’s not real, it’s just a dream as his hands slide over her stomach, pulling her shirt up and over her head. His mouth wanders down her neck, her clavicle. His tongue caresses the swell of her sun-kissed breast, over one hard rosebud nipple. He cups his hands around her, pulling her closer, and he drinks in all he can of her--

Nathan wakes, his body covered in sweat, his erection digging painfully into the mattress. He rolls over onto his back and has just enough time to yank down his pants and close his hand around himself before his lower body contracts and a stream of seed pours over his fingers, down his wrist. And after it ends, he is shocked to find that he has remained hard.

Nathan Petrelli has not had a wet dream in over a year, and he is absolutely mortified at himself for where his mind has taken him while he slept. Claire is his daughter, and his seventeen-year-old daughter at that. She had been Peter’s lover. But then again, so had he.

What kind of fucked-up love triangle is this? he agonizes, wiping himself up with a handful of tissues from the box on the nightstand.

Nathan punches his pillow angrily. He first saw it in her eyes at the kitchen table earlier in the evening. He had to excuse himself and go to the bathroom to force away disturbing, enticing thoughts of her, and wait for his suddenly raging hard-on to fade. He had felt it again when Claire was sitting close to him while they watched the opening scenes of that terrible movie. He had pulled the blanket over them so she would not notice his erection yet again straining at the fabric of his pants, and it had taken him nearly ten minutes to will his heart to stop pounding madly in his chest. He had fallen asleep on the couch with an uncomfortable pressure in his groin, his testicles painful and swollen. No wonder this happened.

Despite all these guilty feelings, Nathan knows he isn’t going to be able to run from this. He tried to run from his feelings for Peter this exact same way, and look how that turned out.

But maybe this is exactly what he needs. He is almost positive Claire wants him as well. The guilt of his relationship with Peter eventually faded, and when it finally did, their love had become transcendental, sacred to them both. Anything that might take place with Claire might follow this same path.

Nathan reassures himself with this, and he is able to calm down finally. The heated, pulsing ache between his legs eases and diminishes, and he relaxes somewhat. But he knows he will not fall asleep again.

Nathan reaches into the drawer of the nightstand and finds a book he started one night long ago after he and Peter argued about some goddamned thing he can’t remember now. Too much of Peter has slipped from his mind in these last few weeks because of all the drinking.

He picks up the book and creeps into the kitchen, and decides he will sit here and read quietly until he feels his eyelids grow heavy once more. He thinks about retrieving the bottle from the cabinet, but he discovers for the first time in this last week he doesn’t feel like he needs it, not right this minute anyway. Nathan knows his fight with the demon is far from over, however. He knows how his body betrays him, how cruel an illness alcohol withdrawal is. He may need what is left in the bottle later on, so he makes a cup of chamomile tea instead.

***

When Claire wakes this time, it is one A.M., the kitchen light is on, and she knows Nathan is in there. She wanders into the kitchen, where he sits at the table drinking a cup of herbal tea and reading a book.

She barely stifles a laugh--she has never thought about what Nathan does with all the free time that is no longer taken up by his work. At least he does not drink all the time.

Claire knows then that she has barely even scratched the surface of what makes her father the man he is. He is no longer a public figure. He is not larger than life. He is just a man, a father without his children, a husband without his wife, a brother without his brother. At this moment in time, Nathan Petrelli is only himself. He is lonely and broken and struggling.

And her next thought brings her right back to where she was earlier. Claire wonders what it would feel like to touch him, to take him in her arms and comfort him with her body, to lay beneath him and allow him to fill her, lose himself in her.

Nathan looks up and notices that she is staring at him, and his gaze becomes stern, concerned, even somewhat alarmed. He asks, “Claire? You all right?”

For a second Claire is convinced that Nathan has seen all the wanton thoughts in her head, but then reminds herself that Peter was the mind-reader, not him. Nathan can only fly.

Claire is overtaken by a sudden, poignant memory of Peter. They are lying in Peter’s bed, sweaty, satiated and spent after a long night of lovemaking.

He tells her that after the destruction of New York is avoided, that he will fly her anywhere she wants to go, anywhere in the world. Just name a place, Claire, and I’ll take you there.

She smiles at the thought of just the two of them soaring through the sky, momentarily free, high above a world that would never accept the fact that she and Peter, niece and uncle, are in love with each other.

Peter never got to keep his promise to her.

Nathan can fly, she thinks. He gave that gift to Peter. Maybe if I ask him to, he’ll give it to me. Peter would want that.

Claire sits in the chair next to Nathan.

“Peter once promised me that someday he would take me anywhere I ever wanted to go, after he saved the world. He--he never got the chance,” she finishes, her voice breaking. Claire begins to cry, and Nathan looks at her for a second. He puts the book down and places an arm around her shoulders. His muscles are rigid against her, as if he is not comfortable touching her bare skin like this. She is wearing a periwinkle blue nightgown that covers her adequately, except instead of sleeves, it has thin straps that tie at the shoulders.

“You want to fly, is that it?” he asks, brushing away her tears with the pad of his thumb.

Claire answers with a nod, and a soft sob.

“Oh, Claire--no. I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t do that for you.” The sharp edge in his voice cuts her heart like an ice cold blade. He gets up and begins to pace.

The laughing, slightly drunken Nathan that she sat with at the kitchen table earlier in the evening is long gone, and in his place is a guarded, serious, almost stoic man, someone who buries all his pain deep inside, compressing it down like soft, malleable coal that over thousands of years takes the form of a diamond, hard and uncompromising.

“Nathan…please?” she asks.

He shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and his eyes lock with hers, pleading with her not to press this further.

Claire does anyway. She has always been stubborn like this. She is absolutely sure that is a Petrelli trait.

“Is it because of Peter that you won’t fly with me?” she demands.

Nathan starts to shake. “Claire--” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“Have you even flown once since that night on Kirby Plaza, Nathan?”

“Yes, Claire, I have. It isn’t that.” He looks down at his hands and concentrates on stilling them, once again desperately quieting the scream in his blood for alcohol. Much as he wants to, he can’t drink, not now. He knows that no matter what he tries to say to avoid it, Claire is going to force him to fly tonight, to carry her safely in his arms to a destination of her choosing.

Nathan does not want to do this. Peter wasn’t safe in his arms that night on Kirby Plaza. Yes, Claire is indestructible, but Peter was supposed to be also. Nathan reminds himself that she is not uncontrollably radioactive like Peter was, but he still can’t help but feel as if in flight he may be a danger to her.

Claire is silent. Her hands rest defiantly on her hips, and she glares at him with a hard green gaze. She is waiting for him to come up with a reason not to give her what she is asking for.

There is no reason, really. He just feels guilty because he was not able to save Peter. And because of that, Peter can’t fulfill his promise to her. Nathan decides that he will.

“Take off your shoes,” he demands. He goes to the fire escape door and flings it wide open; a warm night breeze fills the apartment.

Claire does as he asked. Nathan extends his arm and takes her by the hand, pulls her in close. She embraces him, and he lifts her in his strong arms. She tilts her face up towards him, her nose just inches from his, and she looks into his eyes, and sees that they are a strange greenish brown now. His eyes change color sometimes too, just like Peter’s, and she smiles at this.

Nathan gives her his own brilliant smile in return. “You’re gonna love this,” he promises. She is so happy he has changed his mind that she impulsively presses her lips to his cheek, catching the corner of his mouth. Nathan does not seem to notice.

Claire wants him to notice.

She does it again, but this time, she hits her mark precisely, and Nathan’s mouth opens slightly under her pressure, reluctance slowly giving into acceptance. Claire’s tongue breaches the barrier of his lips, darts inside, brushes against his own. He tastes her for a split second, and then abruptly pulls away with a sharp intake of breath.

Claire can see he is stunned by what he has allowed himself to do to her, but he shakes it off quickly. “Hold on tight,” he commands.

She circles her arms around him as forcefully as she can. Every muscle in Nathan’s body tightens, then releases, snapping forward like a rubber band, and suddenly the two of them are shooting into the dark black sky, and they are moving so fast and so high over New York City that Claire becomes lightheaded from the drop in the amount of oxygen in the air she breathes, but she adapts almost instantly.

The tall skyscrapers reach out towards them with their steel and concrete arms, their glass facades glimmering and their lights twinkling. He takes her over Central Park, Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty.

Nathan teases, “I thought you said you were too tired to go out and see the sights tonight, Claire.”

“I guess I changed my mind,” Claire answers. They are over open water now, and she can see tiny ships sailing along on the ocean. She is stunned by the beauty of their bird’s eye view of this immense, wonderful city, this expanse of dark churning ocean, and a sudden euphoria settles over her.

Nathan’s hand cups her cheek gently, and he says, “Beautiful, isn’t it? I told you you’d love it.”

Claire looks into his eyes and because she is still somewhat giddy, she can only think of one thing to do, and she kisses him again. Nathan is expecting it this time, and he does not hold back. Nathan’s heart races in his chest, and she can feel the force of it vibrating in her own as Nathan crushes her against him. His fingers pull the knots from the straps of her nightgown, one and then the other, and they flutter in the wind. He buries his face into her breasts, and his mouth moves over her flesh and finds the pink node at the center of each, pulling with his teeth and fondling with his tongue. Claire gasps and moans, and she feels his hand slip beneath her nightgown, stroke the inside of her thigh, and pull her white cotton panties to the side, pressing one finger to the very base of where her body is cleft. He rotates his fingertip gently on this spot, and he groans, “Oh, God. Claire. Please tell me why I am doing this.”

“Because I want you to, Nathan,” she insists. “Because you want to.”

He takes his hand away and her panties along with it, and he resumes his worship of her neck and shoulders and breasts, murmuring incoherent words against her flesh.

She imagines that he is telling her a story through her skin, into her blood, a story of unforgivable desire, a story that she would have never expected from the man who should have been there to rock her to sleep as a child. Instead he is here rocking them both, dipping his tongue into her mouth, licking and sucking at her skin while they soar high above the sparkling dark Atlantic waters.

She grips his shoulders and breathes in, and imagines for a moment that she can smell soft dry grass heated by the sun, hickory wood burning, wildflowers. Those are the scents she associates with childhood, the scents she associates with her adoptive father.

Nathan is nothing like that, and somehow that makes this beautifully right instead of tragically wrong.

Centering herself, Claire breathes in again, her face pressed into the hollow of his shoulder. Nathan’s lips raise gooseflesh on her neck as he kisses her below her ear, traces her hairline. Nathan smells of ice-capped peaks and trees that glower in majestic complacence, sitting high above everything else that exists below. His body pressed against hers is rigid, his hands on her demanding. He is forbidden, dangerous and beautiful, and she can not control him, nor does she want to. Nathan is an insurmountable force, and she is faltering, sliding down that steep slope, but he is there to stop her descent and catch her before she cascades over the edge.

And suddenly, she is burst into a pit of fiery churning need.

He plunges two fingers into her core, and Claire finds that not all of Nathan is diamond hard and steel sharp. He is moaning softly, almost under his breath, driving those two fingers into her repeatedly, and as he buries his hand up to the knuckles into her, that brisk penetration seems to break apart inside her, an eruption, lava spilling, burning, flowing deep into the crevices below her surface, until she is filled with the beginnings of something she knows she needs: an explosion of her own.

Nathan’s teeth are still scoring her bare flesh, and he is clutching her tightly in just one arm. She looks over Nathan’s shoulder to see that his clothes have been lost on a current of air that spins further and further away from their path of flight. She knows Nathan will not drop her as he uses their speed to keep her safe in his grasp while he discards her soft satin nightgown and it flutters away into the starlit sky, falling further behind them, wind filling the blue fabric until it billows out into the shape of a moon, then small as a star. They are entirely naked, and still they fly.

Nathan pulls her legs around his waist, and the heat of his nude skin melds into hers, surprising against the chill of the air that never ceases its howling call as they fly together through the night sky. She can feel every plane of his muscular body as he settles her against him, and he is so warm, the very center of him hard and hot against her.

“Do you really want this, Claire?” he groans into her shoulder. “I need to hear you say you want this from me.”

Claire can’t say anything just yet; she answers by arching her body into him, briefly trapping his hardness between her belly and his. She grinds her hips and rotates them, the base of him rubbing against her most sensitive place, and she finally moans, “Yes, Nathan.”

He is satisfied with her response and wastes no time. Nathan pulls her lower and closer, angling her slightly, his erection aiming perfectly toward the center of her, and he burns brighter than the sun as he fills her entirely. White heat flows into her, softens her inside until he has opened her fully, until she has molded around him. His hand cradles her back and his other hand holds her lower thigh, anchoring her body to his as he pistons his hips in deep searching thrusts that light fires of pleasure along every nerve within her. Claire cries out and digs her fingernails into his skin, and he moans with each infliction of these small crescents of pain. She can do nothing but wonder what he might be thinking at this very moment as he accelerates them toward a forbidden place where no father and daughter are ever meant to travel.

They are flying and fucking, pulling and pushing, giving and taking. Neither Nathan nor Claire cares about how wrong this is. He has just as much to offer her as any other man in the world, if not more. He is always her father, and right now he is her lover, just as his brother had been. Nothing could be more right to either of them.

Claire is approaching her climax now, and she can only hope that this is comparable to what Peter felt when he let his brother carry him away into burning, beautiful oblivion, when his atoms split and ignited over the New York City sky not so long ago. Nathan is taking her to as close as she can get to the place where Peter is now for all of time. Claire realizes that regardless of anything else, they both needed to take this journey together. Nathan’s velocity staggers dramatically, and she knows they have arrived.

Nathan’s body seizes, and the sound that tears from his throat is almost unheard over the howling, whipping wind as he explodes in her, a final flare of molten heat, and Claire is consumed right along with him. They flame brightly and then glow softly, flickering, then fluttering into bliss like fallen ashes.

They are laughing and crying and kissing, and Claire suddenly feels startlingly icy wind spearing across her flushed, damp skin. They drift over snow-capped mountains, and Nathan shivers as he slows his speed even more, his skin not impervious to the bitter cold like hers is. They hover now in this winter wonderland.

Her body glitters with ice crystals as her sweat freezes, turning her into a frost encrusted jewel. Claire knows his skin must be freezing too, and Nathan knows he is pushing it, endangering his life as he lingers too long in these sub-zero surroundings.

For the first time since he asked her permission, Nathan speaks. He whispers through clenched teeth, “I love flying over the mountains…it’s so unbearably cold, and I can hardly breathe. But this is where I feel him the most. This is where I can see him sparkle in the air, where pieces of him come together and fall on me. He is the snow that drifts down from the sky. Peter is here.”

Claire wants to cry; she has never heard anything quite like this from Nathan before. But he is absolutely right, because she feels it too. Peter really is here.

She runs her hands along his skin, trying to keep him warm. She manages, “I know. I know he is.”

Nathan is silent, and he is trying hard not to cry again.

“Nathan, we have to go,” she urges, knowing he doesn’t want to.

She hears him say I love you. Claire knows those words aren’t meant for her, but she doesn’t mind. She doesn’t have to hear Nathan say he loves her to know it is true. Nathan says those words to his brother because he needs to speak them, infinitely more than Peter ever needed to hear them.

Claire’s tears crystallize as they leak from her eyes, and she whispers the same words to Peter too.

After another moment, Claire feels Nathan’s muscles tighten as he increases his speed once again, and they crack the sound-barrier, a coil of cloud spiraling behind them.

The air is warming up, and Claire feels the ice on her skin melting and their altitude dropping as Nathan flies down towards earth. He alights on a dark secluded beach that glitters with soft, white sand. The salty tang of sea spray fills her nose as Nathan lays his daughter down just at the break of wet and dry sand, and he collapses, spent from his dual exertion. The water crashes against the shore and the very edges of the tide lap at their naked skin, rinsing away sweat and sand, washing over them, cleansing them both.

Nathan is shivering slightly, and he doesn’t know if it is from the effort he expended while in flight, from his alcohol withdrawal, or just because he is still cold from their short time spent over the mountains. Claire nudges herself closer to him, resting the soft curve of her belly and thigh over his hip, her leg over his, her golden blonde hair spilling like sunlight onto the planes of his chest. Her head drops down against his shoulder, and she shares her warmth with him.

“I know I can never be what you want, Claire,” Nathan says. He is cryptic about this, but she understands what he means because she has heard it before; he speaks in Petrelli code.

He is telling her that despite what they have just done together, he is still her father. He is telling her he knows it happened because he is Peter’s brother, and that he can never replace him. He is telling her that although he treasures what they have shared, it can never happen again.

Claire accepts this unconditionally. She tilts his face toward her, and kisses his lips softly for what she knows will be the last time. She runs her hand gently through his dark hair and sighs, “Nathan, I never wanted you to replace Peter. Tomorrow I want you to be my father again. But right now, I don’t want you to be anything else but this. Just be…you.”

“I can do that,” Nathan murmurs into her hair. He pulls Claire even closer, rests his hand on her hip, and they lie together there until the tide ebbs, until the shadows of night slip away. The sun rises on the horizon, warming and drying their water-drenched skin, bringing with it the renewed promise of another day.

***

A/N: Please don't forget to rate and review, even if it's only a sentence. Thanks for reading.