Author's Notes: My first Heroes fanfiction! Hopefully the first of many, but then I always say that and it doesn't usually happen, so we'll see. Suffice to say that I have more ideas where this came from. Basically, this is an imagined conversation between Claire and West which takes place during Kindred, just before their conversation on the beach – you'll see I ended the fanfic with the same words that begin the conversation (makes for a slightly odd ending, but any more and I'd just be writing up the episode). I've only seen up to Episode 8 of Season 2, so I don't know if West finds out at another time that Claire is adopted, but in my fanfic he finds out here.
Slight spoilers for the last episode of Season 1, How To Stop an Exploding Man.
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes. If I did I would bring Charlie back to life and re-grow Peter's hawt emo hair. I can't decide which loss saddened me more TToTT
(I'm kidding, it was Charlie really).
West landed gently on a little beach not too far from school – at least, it didn't seem like they'd been flying for long, although maybe Claire had just been too caught up in the giddy realisation that she wasn't alone to notice time passing. The location was beautiful: a blue cloudless sky and golden sand, sheltered on the left by huge, dark rocks; it had 'romantic' written all over it. Claire envied West for all the great little spots he must be able to find during his flights. Hopefully he'd take her to more of them.
West set Claire down on the warm sand and sat down next to her. For a little while, neither of them said anything; West glanced at Claire once or twice but didn't break the silence. Eventually, she spoke, still gazing into the middle distance.
"I know someone else who can fly."
"Really?" asked West, his tone and expression a mixture of surprise and slight disappointment that he wasn't the first flyer Claire had met.
"Yeah…"
They lapsed into silence again; Claire was obviously lost in thought. West waited for as long as he could bear before asking, "Who?"
Claire hesitated, but then took the plunge; after all, she was the one who had brought it up. "My biological father," she replied, turning to look West straight in the eyes. He looked a little taken aback, but not out-and-out shocked.
"Your biological father? Then you're…"
"Adopted, yeah." Claire's voice held a hint of challenge, daring him to pity her, perhaps, or shun her for being different, even though he'd already shown her that different was more than okay in his book; hell, different was great. In a high school full of brainless robots, the aliens (as West had nicknamed them) were like oxygen. They were what kept him going.
"That's really cool," said West, and Claire raised an eyebrow at him. After a moment she appeared to decide that he was being sincere, and smiled.
"He flies differently to you, though."
"Really?" asked West. He hadn't been aware that there were different ways of flying.
"Yeah. You're more… gentle when you fly, more graceful." Again she favoured him with her wistful, slightly sad smile, and West felt something inside his chest glow with warmth even as he wished he could wipe the sadness in her expression away. "Whereas my biological father," she stumbled slightly over the two words, as if unused to saying them, "would just take off straight into the air like a rocket, really fast." Claire angled her palm vertically and pushed it upwards to demonstrate the movement.
Of course, Claire had only ever seen Nathan Petrelli fly once: as he shot into the air with his younger brother in his arms, heroically sacrificing himself to save New York from the impending nuclear explosion. At the time Claire had been more preoccupied with her own safety and that of everyone around her, still reeling from almost having to shoot her uncle and hero point-blank in the chest. She'd gone over the memory so many times since, though, and that little detail had lodged in her mind.
West watched Claire's expression darken, lost in contemplating what was obviously a bad memory. He touched her hand in an attempt to bring her out of it, and she jumped slightly.
"He sounds really cool," West said with an encouraging grin. "I'd love to be able to fly fast, but I still haven't quite got the hang of it yet. It's not been that long since I found out I could do it in the first place."
"I like the way you fly," Claire told him, and West felt his heart lift so much that he almost rose into the air and floated above the sand. He wanted to lean forward and kiss her, but there was something else he was curious about first.
"So how long have you known what you could do?"
"Less than a year," Claire responded. "It started nine, maybe ten months ago when I got a cut – a deep one; I had to have stitches – that just… went away in less than an hour."
"Wow," said West, grinning and shaking his head in disbelief. "I'd love to be able to heal myself."
"I think yours is cooler," Claire countered.
Author's Notes: And the rest, as they say, is history! I hope that you enjoyed that, and I especially hope that my characterisations were okay, since this is my first time writing them. Please press the little button below and let me know!