Fic: Into the Living Sea, Part I (A)
Sep. 15th, 2008 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brighteyedjillFinal title: Into the Living Sea
Pairings: Nathan/Peter, brief Peter/OMC, featuring Angela Petrelli, with special guest appearances by other members of the Heroes ensemble
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest, emotional abuse, angst
Notes: Rockin’ groovy thanks go to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blithesea for the trailer. Further thanks to redandglenda for the beta, and thanks to jaune_chat for late-night phone calls and pithy comments.
Summary: After the events of Don’t Look Back, Nathan Petrelli has his brother committed to a mental institution. Peter suspects that Nathan’s reasons for locking him up have more to do with Nathan’s nervousness about his campaign and his guilt over his sexual relationship with Peter than with any noble concern for Peter’s well-being. In his attempts to get Nathan to relent, Peter unwittingly makes things worse, and then much worse.
******
I am! Yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
- From Written in Northampton County Asylum by John Clare
******
“No, I haven’t yet. It’s not until Tuesday. Well ask Jamie. Doesn’t she keep track of that crap?”
Nathan’s voice cut through Peter’s grogginess. He struggled to open his eyes, and caught sight of Nathan, ear to his cell phone. “Well have her look at the damn calendar.” Nathan turned and met Peter’s eyes.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back in a few.” Nathan snapped the phone shut and brushed a hand across Peter’s forehead. “Peter?”
“Nathan?” Peter’s voice was hoarse. “What is this?”
Nathan pulled up a chair next to the bed and took Peter’s hand. “You’re in the hospital, Peter.”
Peter closed his eyes. He didn’t feel hurt. The last thing he remembered was being on the roof of the hospital with Nathan, when he’d finally flown, finally walked across air. He remembered going back to his apartment with Nathan, remembered falling asleep in Nathan’s arms. Then nothing. He pulled himself upright and looked around, taking in the pale pink walls, the sparse furniture: bed, chair, table. There was no IV, no monitoring equipment, no call button. “This isn’t a hospital,” Peter said, and struggled to climb out of bed.
Nathan put a firm hand on his chest and pushed him back down. “Yes it is Pete.”
Peter’s eyes flew past Nathan’s hand down to the edge of the bed where leather straps dangled. “You… What did you do?”
“You need to be in a safe place where you can work through these problems you’re having.”
“You had me committed?” Peter stared at him, and Nathan met his gaze calmly. “I don’t need to be in a mental hospital. I am not crazy!”
“Peter, you tried to kill yourself.”
“I did not try to kill myself. We flew, Nathan. You said so yourself.”
“I was lying.” Nathan didn’t even have the decency to flinch when he said it. “I didn’t want you to jump off another building. I would have said anything.”
“You saw it. I flew, Nathan! Twice!”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the shrinks?”
Peter tried to catch his breath. Suddenly Nathan’s hand, which had felt like a comforting weight on his chest, seemed to be crushing him. “We flew,” he said, pushing through the hitch in his throat. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to.” Nathan leaned over to press a kiss to Peter’s lips. Peter opened his mouth to pull Nathan in, to make this all a Grimm tale in which Peter could beak the spell on the prince with a kiss. Nathan pulled away. “I love you,” he said without meeting Peter’s eyes. “See you soon, kiddo.”
--
Our Lady of Mercy Hospital and Rehabilitation Center didn’t exactly live up to the horrors Peter remembered from watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Peter was surprised at how normal his fellow inmates seemed: no screaming, gibbering loonies, rocking back and forth in a corner, no one who seemed violent. Everyone here was the quiet kind of mad. Peter should have known: only the best for the Petrelli family.
The orderlies were an interchangeable mix of burly men in blue scrubs. They stood unobtrusive sentinel in hallways, in the gym, anywhere the patients gathered in groups. They weren’t threatening, particularly. They were just there. During his first few days Peter began to recognize individual orderlies, although he didn’t have names to put with them yet: the bald orderly who always smelled like pizza, the young blond one who had a crush on Nurse Emma, the old guy with all the nose hair.
Nurses he could charm names out of: Caroline, and Jade who worked the early mornings, and good old Helen with her throaty cackle, souvenir of a lifetime of smoking.
The place was small, so it didn’t take Peter long to get the lay of the land. The encouraging news was that Our Lady of Mercy wasn’t exactly maximum security. If Peter couldn’t actually break out, at least he should be able to sneak a phone call. Peter tried flirting with the night-shift nurse, Kara. She smiled at him and laughed at his jokes, but when he slipped in a casual comment about the phone, her laughter fled. She called an orderly (the red-head with the Thundercats tattoo) to escort him back to his room.
Nathan must have given the staff very specific instructions. He was playing this game well, but there was no doubt in Peter’s mind that it was a game: a little slap on the wrist to remind Peter that he had to behave. If he wanted to get out of here, Peter was going to have to get creative.
--
The chief psychiatrist, Doctor Barrister, wore wire-rim glasses and spoke in a soothing baritone that threatened to lull Peter to sleep. His desk was a huge oak monstrosity paired with a huge leather swivel chair. Barrister seemed like he would be more at home in a lecture hall than an examining room.
“Tell me about these dreams you have,” Barrister said. His pen was poised to take notes.
From the other side of the desk, Peter glared at him. “They’re not dreams.”
“Okay, Peter. What do you call them?”
“I don’t know. Visions? They’re not dreams.”
“All right.” Barrister managed to sound both reasonable and infuriating. Peter was torn between trying to prove to this guy that he wasn’t crazy and messing with him so he would think Peter was genuinely nuts. “Tell me about your visions, Peter.”
“I can fly.” That was the truth, crazy or not.
“I see.” Barrister wrote something in his notebook. “Where does this happen?”
“In the city. Once, I was sitting with one of my—the man I take care of, and then I just got up and took off, out the window.”
“Flying away from your responsibilities?”
“No,” Peter said immediately. Peter didn’t have responsibilities, not really. No one had ever trusted him with anything important.
“Where do you fly to, Peter?”
“Around.” He’d never really thought about it. Just getting off the ground would be enough, for starters.
“If you could fly anywhere, where would you fly?”
To Nathan. He’d fly to Nathan. But he didn’t say that.
--
Nathan didn’t come to see him. Visiting hours came and went: Thursday, Friday, Saturday. No visitors allowed on Sunday, and Peter attended the service in the on-site chapel.
Peter discovered that practically the entire population of Our Mother of Mercy attended mass. The chapel was small but well-appointed: cushioned pews and stained glass windows featuring the saints. Peter read the plaques by the windows as he waited for the others to file in: Saint Dymphna, patron saint of those confined in asylums, pray for us. Job, protect us against depression. Amabilis, we ask your intersession against possession by devils.
One of the patients, a woman with long gray hair done up in a tight braid, tapped Peter on the shoulder and pointed to a window featuring a pretty red-headed woman in a flowing yellow dress. “That’s Saint Vivian,” the woman explained. “She died in a madhouse after refusing to let her family turn her into a prostitute. Pray to her for protection against insanity.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Peter said. The woman nodded and went to take her seat in the pews. Peter took one last glance at Saint Vivian’s upturned, beatific face, and then found a seat for himself.
When the priest entered, an ancient man with a sparse white beard, everyone stood still and silent. Peter didn’t know mad people could be so well-behaved. Once mass began, Peter was surprised to discover how much he could still recite along with the rest of the congregation.
“I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do,” they all intoned together, and Peter with them.
Peter remembered attending church with his mother when he was little. About halfway through the mass, when he’d start to get fidgety, Angela’s hand would close warningly on his arm. Whenever Nathan was home from school and came to church with them, though, there was no need for her chastisement. Peter was content to stare at his brother all through the homily. Nathan was the master of sitting still, and Peter strove in all things to follow his example.
Peter’s favorite part of the service was the kiss of peace. Angela would give each of her boys an affectionate peck on the cheek, and Peter got to kiss Nathan, too. Even when they were older, attending Easter or Christmas mass with their parents meant at least once chance to kiss before God.
Nathan had to be messing with Peter, to put him in a Catholic mental institution.
On the way out, Peter made another examination of the stained glass windows. They were lit with spotlights; the chapel was actually an interior room. No escape this way. At least, not by mortal means.
--
Peter’s first plan was simply to wait Nathan out. Nathan’s Congressional campaign couldn’t possibly see any benefit from having his brother locked up in an institution, so Peter was sure he wouldn’t be left in here for long. If Peter behaved, didn’t pitch a fit, didn’t act like a crazy person, he knew Nathan would relent. Peter simply had to demonstrate that he could play nice.
The problem with this plan was that Peter had never enjoyed being idle. Day after day passed with nothing to do and no word from his family. Inmates (or “residents,” as the staff called them) weren’t allowed to watch television or read the newspaper. Movies (PG or G-rated only) were shown in the recreation room each evening, and the residents stared at them, expressions unchanged whether the night’s offering was Happy Feet or Casablanca.
During the day there were other activities available: crafts and library time and group exercise. Nurses tried to engage Peter with balsa-wood sculpture projects or puzzles of landscapes or finger-painting. Never in his life had Peter felt such a complete void of purpose. Working with hospice patients had involved a lot of waiting, but it never felt useless, not like this.
Peter tried talking to the other residents and found that, for once in his life, he didn’t have the right social capital to build friendships. The old woman who’d told him about Saint Vivian smiled at him from time to time, but she spent most of every day sitting in the corner with her rosary. The other residents ignored Peter or, when he made an effort to participate in activities, admitted him indifferently.
One day during breakfast, a young woman, blonde pixie-cut hair framing an earnest face, asked Peter, “What are you doing here?”
He said, “My brother wanted me out of the way,” and gave her a charming smile.
She frowned at him. “But what’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said with a shrug.
“Nothing?”
Peter kept smiling.
The woman glared and walked away.
--
The most interesting and most painful part of each day was Peter’s session with Doctor Barrister.
Today Doctor Barrister had on a brown suit and a cornflower blue tie with a yellow striped button-up. Peter considered telling him he was clashing, but decided he didn’t want to do Barrister any favors. Instead, he sat quietly on the couch and waited.
At his desk, Barrister signed a few more documents with a flourish, before coming to sit in his armchair across from Peter: no desk between them today. “What did you do this morning, Peter?”
“Nothing.”
“Same as yesterday, then.”
“Exactly the same, yeah.” Peter was beginning to suspect that the boredom was deliberate, to wear patients down and make them so eager for stimulation that they’d gladly spill all their secrets to the doctors.
“Why do you think you don’t fit in here, Peter?”
“Because there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Barrister settled back in his chair. “So why are you here, Peter?”
“Nathan put me in here.” Peter sounded petulant, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. He was bitter.
“Why do you think Nathan would want you to be here?”
“I’m an embarrassment,” Peter said. Sharing his thoughts like this, with a relative stranger, was oddly liberating. Peter had never gone to therapy before. Angela had always said therapy was something for the nouveau riche, who didn’t realize the importance of keeping matters in the family. But now Peter was starting to understand what all the fuss was about.
“Why do you say you’re an embarrassment, Peter?”
“I don’t do what the family wants.”
“And how does that make you feel, Peter?”
“Angry, I guess.” Angry. Sad. Lost. Maybe even depressed.
“Tell me more about that.”
“I don’t deserve to be here.”
“And?” Barrister prompted, pen poised.
“And what?”
“So why are you here, Peter?”
“I told you. Nathan.”
“And why does Nathan want you here?”
“I don’t know,” Peter muttered. He was starting to get angry with himself for sounding so petulant. He hated feeling like a spoiled child.
“Is that the truth, Peter?” Barrister asked. Peter slumped in his seat and said nothing. “If Nathan was here right now, and I asked him why he brought you here, what would he say?”
“He’d say I tried to kill myself.” In fact, he was probably saying it all over town. There had probably been a press conference.
“Why did you try to kill yourself, Peter?”
“I didn’t,” he snapped.
“If we asked Nathan, what would he say? Would he say you tried to kill yourself?”
Peter paused. Mentally ill people didn’t know they were mentally ill. Peter had dealt with enough dementia in his time to understand that the mind could play tricks. And now that Barrister brought it up, Peter wasn’t sure of his own version of the story; it was a bit fuzzy. Nathan, on the other hand, seemed pretty sure about what he’d seen. “I… I jumped off a building,” Peter said slowly. “He was there when I jumped.”
“Why did you jump off a building, Peter?”
A perfectly reasonable question. “I thought I could fly.”
“Can you fly, Peter?”
He didn’t know the answer to that. And he was starting to feel a little queasy. Did he honestly think he could fly? Had he really flown? “I don’t know.”
--
Plan A wasn’t working. It had been a week, and Nathan hadn’t called, hadn’t visited, hadn’t written. They’d fought before; they were brothers, and closer than brothers, and it was bound to happen. In the past, they’d sometimes gone weeks without speaking, but this was different. This time, Nathan wanted Peter to know he was being punished.
Peter’s new plan was to fold; let Nathan think he’d won this round. Once Peter was out of this place, he’d talk to Ma and convince her to take a vacation with him somewhere until the campaign was over. Nathan would probably be glad to have both of them out of the way. During craft time, he asked one of the orderlies for a pen and paper, and wrote Nathan a letter.
As he sat in the recreation room composing a letter, the orderly (the skinny black man who wore a Claddagh ring) kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn’t try to jab the pen through his eardrum or anything similarly destructive. Peter composed a plea for release thinly veiled as an apology.
Dear Nathan,
I’m sorry for the worry I have caused you and Mother. In the past few weeks I have made many changes in my life, and I have not dealt with this transition as well as I should have done. I regret my selfish actions, and I apologize for not considering the family name and in particular your professional obligations before acting. I am prepared to behave more prudently in the future. Please accept my assurances that my continued incarceration is no longer necessary. I look forward to returning home and lending every possible assistance to your campaign.
Best regards,
Peter
He knew making it so formal was a bit bratty, but if he was going to admit defeat, he could at least do it in style. He at least hoped Nathan would show the letter to their mother; she’d be so proud.
--
Nathan finally paid a visit on Friday. An orderly (the Latvian man with the mustache) ushered Peter into the visitor’s room and left at Nathan’s curt nod. As soon as the door shut behind him, Nathan said, “Nice letter.”
Peter smiled smugly. “I used my best handwriting.”
“Cute, Peter, but you’ve only been here a week. I think you should give it more of a chance.”
Peter blinked. “A chance?”
“To help you.”
Peter waited for a sign that Nathan was joking, but none came. “Do you really think I’m crazy?”
Nathan straightened his tie and looked out the window. “That would be the only conclusion a person could make from your behavior.”
Peter slid out of his chair and came around to sit on the edge of the table in front of Nathan. “This is ridiculous.”
Nathan glanced at the windowless door before wrapping a hand around Peter’s hip. “I’m not doing this to punish you, Peter.” His eyes were fixed somewhere on the wall over Peter’s left shoulder.
“I don’t believe you. I’ve said I’ll be good.” He reached down to press a kiss to Nathan’s lips, but Nathan turned his head at the last minute, and Peter’s kiss landed on his cheek. “What’s wrong?”
Nathan continued looking resolutely away. “We’re in a mental institution, for starters. We’re not doing this here.”
Peter moved his mouth to Nathan’s ear. “Then check me out and let’s go home,” he breathed, and flicked his tongue out to trace the shell of Nathan’s ear.
Nathan grabbed Peter’s shoulders and pushed him back to arm’s length. “We’re not doing this, Peter. It’s dangerous for me, and it’s bad for you.”
Now Peter started to feel nauseous. “What do you mean?”
“You’re sick, Peter, and this is the best place for you.”
Peter slid down onto the floor and reached up to put his hands on Nathan’s knees. “I am not crazy. I think this place might be making me crazy.”
“Well, if it’s that short a trip, then it’s probably best you were in here to begin with.” Nathan pushed Peter’s hands off of him and went to stand by the window.
After a moment, Peter joined him. “Can you tell me something, honestly?” Peter asked.
“Sure.” Nathan said it so easily that it couldn’t have been a sincere promise. Peter decided to ask his question anyway.
“Am I in here just because of the election?”
“I was worried about you. I don’t have time to watch you twenty-four hours a day and make sure you don’t take another swan dive off a high-rise,” Nathan said. That didn’t answer the question.
“You can’t afford for me to kill myself while you’re running for office.”
Nathan grabbed Peter by the back of his neck and pulled him in sharply. “You are not going to kill yourself. You will not do that to me and Ma. What we went through with Dad was enough. So get your head straight.” He let go, and Peter stumbled back a step. Nathan went back to staring out the window, and Peter watched him for a long moment, considering. Nathan’s non-answer, his knee-jerk reaction, had given Peter cause for suspicion.
“It is just that, right?” he asked. “You’re worried I’m depressed. You’re not….” He pressed a hand against Nathan’s chest. Nathan batted the hand away and went back to sit at the table. Peter watched him carefully. His movements were sharp, jerky, too controlled. No one else, except perhaps Angela, would have noticed, but Peter had learned to recognize when Nathan was hiding something. “You locked me up because I’m in love with you?”
“Don’t say that,” Nathan snapped. He straightened his tie.
“You’re using this as an excuse to…” He couldn’t even find the words.
“This should have stopped a long time ago, Pete.” His words were too short, clipped and deliberate. “It should never have started. But this, all of this crap you’ve been hurting yourself with? I can’t help but think if you weren’t so worried about… You need to focus on yourself.”
“You think I’m crazy to be in love with you.”
Nathan pretended he hadn’t heard that. “You’re sick, Peter. In here, they can help you deal with your depression.”
Peter came to stand right next to the table, but Nathan wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Have you been practicing this conversation? Because I don’t think you’re listening to me.”
Nathan stood abruptly. “I should go.”
“Don’t you walk out of here.” Peter scrambled to get between his brother and the door, but Nathan brushed him off like a fly. “Nathan! Tell me why you’re doing this.”
Nathan paused with his hand on the door handle. For the smallest of moments, Peter thought he was going to explain. Then he said, “I have a busy campaign schedule the next ten days or so. I won’t be able to fit in another visit until the fourteenth. You understand.” And he left.
Peter sat down at the table and stared after Nathan until the orderly (the Latvian again) came to take him back to the activity room, where he spent the rest of the afternoon staring out the window. Loving Nathan, wanting Nathan to care about him, wanting to be with Nathan was not a mental illness. Or if it was, it wasn’t something that drugs and therapy could fix. And if they couldn’t do anything for him here, he had to get out and do something about it himself.
--
Peter wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. It seemed so simple. All the widows in the facility had bars, of course, but not the window in Doctor Barrister’s office.
An orderly (the one with shaggy brown hair and a crooked nose) brought him to the office at the usual time. Doctor Barrister wasn’t there, but Peter slid into his usual chair anyway. The orderly gave him a stern look, and Peter returned a guileless smile that he hoped conveyed how harmless he was. No history of violence. Well-behaved, polite young man. The orderly edged closer to the door, and Peter kept up his vacant smile. “Stay,” the orderly said finally, then stepped outside to have Doctor Barrister paged.
The smile dropped from Peter’s face. There would be enough time. He sped to the window and threw it open. It was the old fashioned kind, with no screen. Perfect.
Outside, the sky was very blue, brighter than Peter remembered, and cloudless. He threw one foot up on the sill and jumped, concentrating on that sky. That brilliant blue seemed so close.
He heard screaming that he thought came from the building, and only then did Peter realize he was falling.
--
Peter woke up back in his room. His whole body ached, and his left ankle throbbed viciously. Angela sat at his bedside, watching him. Not reading, not filing her nails, just waiting for him to open his eyes.
“Ma?” His throat was scratchy. He desperately wanted a drink of water.
“Your ankle is sprained, and you bruised a rib,” she said immediately.
He closed his eyes again so he wouldn’t have to see her expression of disappointment and disgust. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“You’re lucky it was only the second story.” She waited until he opened his eyes to continue. “You’re a fool, Peter.”
“Where’s Nathan?” he asked meekly.
“He’s busy, Peter. He has a life and a career, and he cannot afford to come running every time you get into trouble.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I need to talk to him.”
“He told you he’d be back on the fourteenth, and he will be.”
“Does he know I jumped out a window?”
Angela’s frown deepened. “Are you doing this for his attention? I will not help you hijack Nathan’s future.”
“I’m not… I never wanted…”
Angela waited for him to stumble into silence. “Your brother loves you, Peter. Never doubt it. But what you’re doing now could destroy him.”
Peter swallowed hard. “I don’t want that. I just…” It seemed like there was something crucial he need to articulate, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He wondered if they’d given him pain meds; the edges of his vision seemed fuzzy.
“You have to let him go, Peter.” Angela rubbed a hand tenderly over his forehead. “Do you think when he’s a Congressman that he’ll be able to drop everything and come running every time you get your heart broken?”
“What does this have to do with my being in here?”
“I know how close you two are,” she said, brushing his bangs aside. “I know, Peter.”
Peter forgot how to breathe for a moment. He searched her eyes, trying to figure out what she meant by that.
“I’ll be here for you, Peter. I’ll always be here. But it’s time to let Nathan go.”
--
Peter couldn’t identify the drugs by the shape and color of the pills they gave him. One was white, two were pink, and there was one big round yellow pill. The drugs made Peter lightheaded. Nurse Helen said, “Don’t sweat it, honey. That’ll go away once you get used to the dosage.” At the moment, though, it was distracting.
Now that he’d jumped out a window, Peter attained something of a celebrity status among the other residents. The pixie-cut woman came to talk to him during craft time, setting her macaroni sculpture down right in the middle of Peter’s puzzle.
“Nurse Kara says you’re delusional,” she announced happily. “How’s your leg?”
Peter flexed his ankle within the confines of its bandage. It ached. “They say it’s not broken.”
“Too bad,” she said. “Might have been nice to have a visit to the hospital. The real hospital, I mean.” She daubed a spec of glue onto her sculpture—it might have been a castle, or perhaps a buffalo—and affixed a new piece of macaroni. “I saw your mother when she came to visit. You’re a Petrelli, yes?”
“Yeah. How did you—?”
“We run in the same circle. Well, ran. No running allowed in here, is there? I’m an Aster. Of the Sutton Place Asters.”
“Oh.” And Peter actually did remember the Asters. They’d been at his parents’ dinner parties regularly; they were in some sort of import business.
“I’m an embarrassment,” the Aster girl continued. “Well, hysterical and impulsive, but being an embarrassment is the worst symptom, at least in my mother’s eyes.”
“Hold on…” A memory floated at the edge of Peter’s consciousness. “Rebekah, right?”
She nodded excitedly and clapped her hands. “Gone but not forgotten.”
“You went to my high school. We were just kids when you…”
“Got knocked up? Don’t forget getting beaten up by my druggie boyfriend and losing the baby,” she said, brandishing a piece of pasta. “All very embarrassing.”
“That was years ago.”
“Well, the embarrassment doesn’t go away, Petrelli.” She daubed another glue spot onto her sculpture. “How gauche would it be for my parents to bring me home? Having to explain at parties where I’ve been for the past seven years.” She shuddered. “No thank you.”
“So… Is there something wrong with you?”
“I’m hysterical. That’s the diagnosis. And…” She lowered her voice and leaned in to whisper to Peter. “I’m a sexual deviant.”
Peter suppressed a smile. “How long do you have to stay here?”
“As long as my parents want.” At Peter’s snort of disapproval, she continued. “Daddy built the east wing, you know. If he asks them to keep me, they’ll keep me.”
--
Logically, Peter knew that Doctor Barrister wasn’t getting smaller. He’d come to the conclusion that the drugs just made him seem farther away. Today Barrister seemed positively tiny there, back behind the desk again. The Latvian orderly was in the room today, hovering behind Peter, just as a precaution. He, too, seemed smaller.
“I’d like to talk about your father, Peter,” Barrister said.
“Then talk,” Peter muttered. It took a great deal of effort to get even those words across the gulf that separated here from there. If only everything didn’t seem so distant.
“How did your father die?” Barrister asked.
“Heart attack,” Peter said automatically. It took him a few seconds to remember that was a lie. “He killed himself.”
“How did you feel about that, Peter?” Barrister had his head cocked to the side like a puppy. With his glasses, which magnified his eyes, and his large ears, the whole picture was rather comic. But puppy had asked him a question…About his father, maybe?
“I didn’t know it was suicide,” Peter said. “Not until recently.”
“Why did your father kill himself?”
“He was depressed,” Peter said gravely. That must mean Arthur hadn’t prayed enough to Saint Vivian. Or maybe the saints had ignored him. Either way, Arthur was just as dead.
“How do you know he was depressed?”
“I didn’t know.” Peter shrugged. “My mother told me.”
“Do you think you would know if someone was depressed?”
Peter opened his mouth to answer, and closed it again, because obviously he had not known. Hadn’t even suspected.
“How about your brother?” Barrister asked. “Did he know?”
“Yes,” Peter admitted.
“Do you trust his judgment?”
That was part of the problem. “Yes I do.”
--
The orderly with dark, curly hair like an angel escorted Peter into the visitor’s room. Nathan was there, attention absorbed in his Blackberry. The angelic orderly closed the door and left them alone.
“You don’t really think I’m sick, do you?” Peter asked as he slipped into the chair across the table from Nathan.
“I wouldn’t have put you in here if I didn’t,” Nathan said distractedly.
“How did you know Dad was depressed?”
Nathan glanced up from his phone and raised an eyebrow. “Are you adding paranoia to your list of symptoms now?”
“How did you know about Dad?”
“He drank. He picked fights with me, and with Ma. He didn’t enjoy going to work anymore.” Nathan rattled off the signs like a grocery list, half his mind on whatever important e-mail he was reading.
“And from that you were sure?”
“Yes. It was fairly obvious.”
“And now you’re sure about me.”
“Peter,” he began warningly.
“What are my symptoms?”
Nathan looked at him a moment like he was sure Peter didn’t want to hear the answer to this. When Peter said nothing, he sighed. “Delusions. You say you have visions, you think you can fly. You jumped off a building. And you would have jumped off another one, too.” He returned to his phone.
“And out a window,” Peter muttered. “Don’t forget that one.”
“What?” Nathan’s head snapped up and suddenly Peter had his undivided attention. “What did you say?”
“Didn’t Mom tell you? I jumped from my shrink’s office.”
“Here? When—?” Nathan leaned forward to grab Peter’s wrist, then stopped himself. “Never mind.” Nathan recovered quickly. “Are you okay?”
“Mostly, yeah,” Peter said. His thoughts were coming slower these days, but he knew there was something wrong with this reaction to his “accident.” “Why didn’t anyone tell you?” Peter asked. “I thought you’d come see me…”
Nathan sat back and loosened his tie. “You don’t need to jump out a window to get my attention, Peter.”
“No. Apparently even that doesn’t work.”
Nathan slid his phone into his pocket and regarded his little brother critically. “Why did you do it?”
“I was trying to escape. To fly away.”
“And you couldn’t?” Nathan sounded almost puzzled.
“No. Obviously. I fell.” Peter crossed his arms over his chest and settled back in his chair before he processed Nathan’s question. “Wait, you seem surprised,” he said as the strangeness of Nathan’s response dawned on him. “I’m not crazy. I’ve flown before and you knew it!”
“No,” Nathan said firmly. “No. Peter, that’s ridiculous.”
Peter was out of his seat in a flash, kneeling next to Nathan. “You know I’m not crazy, and you’re still letting them keep me here?”
“You’re not well, Peter.”
“You mean I’m an embarrassment,” Peter said bitterly. “I am not insane, Nathan. Tell them!”
“This? This behavior is irrational and yeah, crazy.”
“Is that so?” Peter grabbed Nathan’s arm, digging his fingers in hard. “What about locking up your brother so you won’t have to deal with your emotions. Is that rational?”
Nathan stood. “I’m leaving, Peter.”
“Don’t walk away from me!” He jumped after Nathan and pushed him hard. Normally Nathan was more than Peter’s equal in a fight, in brotherly and not-so-brotherly tussles, but he obviously hadn’t been expecting an attack. He stumbled backwards, his foot caught on the chair leg, and he went down on his back with a startled grunt. Taking advantage of his momentary incapacitation, Peter pounced, straddling Nathan’s chest and grabbing his shoulders to shake him. “Tell them the truth!” he yelled. “You know I’m not crazy! Tell them!”
The commotion brought the nearest orderly (the angelic one, who must have been waiting just outside) bursting into the room. He just gaped for a moment—altercations like this were unheard of at Our Lady of Mercy, so he could hardly be blamed for hesitating—before Nathan snapped, “Get a nurse, damnit!”
The orderly ducked back into the hall to shout for help.
Meanwhile, Nathan tried to shove Peter off him. Peter barely managed to keep his seat by staying over Nathan’s center of gravity, using all the tricks his big brother had imparted back when Peter announced he wanted to go out for wrestling back in high school. Nathan twisted to buck Peter off, and Peter pressed his hands down onto Nathan’s shoulders. “Get off,” Nathan growled.
Peter wanted to shake him into submission, wanted to pull the truth from his mouth, wanted to wound Nathan the way he’d been wounded. Instead, he kissed him. For a moment, it was beautiful, just as Peter remembered: firm and salty and home.
Then Nathan hit him. Pain burst along the side of Peter’s jaw, and he found himself on his back, staring up at Nathan, who stood with fists clenched at his sides, eyes dark with anger.
The angelic orderly burst back into the room, followed by two other orderlies and Nurse Jade. They hovered momentarily until Nathan shouted, “For God’s sake, sedate him or something.”
Two orderlies reached for Peter, and immediately he sprang into action, trying to struggle out of their grasp. Nurse Jade fumbled for a needle while the three orderlies wrestled Peter into submission, pressing him into the floor while he writhed and continued shouting at his brother, “Tell them! Fuck you, Nathan, tell the truth!” Finally the orderlies had Peter’s leg sufficiently immobilized for Jade to jab the needle into. The last thing Peter saw as he slipped into unconsciousness was Nathan walking out of the room without a backward glance.
Next Chapter
Master Post
Pairings: Nathan/Peter, brief Peter/OMC, featuring Angela Petrelli, with special guest appearances by other members of the Heroes ensemble
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Incest, emotional abuse, angst
Notes: Rockin’ groovy thanks go to
blithesea for the trailer. Further thanks to redandglenda for the beta, and thanks to jaune_chat for late-night phone calls and pithy comments. Summary: After the events of Don’t Look Back, Nathan Petrelli has his brother committed to a mental institution. Peter suspects that Nathan’s reasons for locking him up have more to do with Nathan’s nervousness about his campaign and his guilt over his sexual relationship with Peter than with any noble concern for Peter’s well-being. In his attempts to get Nathan to relent, Peter unwittingly makes things worse, and then much worse.
******
I am! Yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
- From Written in Northampton County Asylum by John Clare
******
“No, I haven’t yet. It’s not until Tuesday. Well ask Jamie. Doesn’t she keep track of that crap?”
Nathan’s voice cut through Peter’s grogginess. He struggled to open his eyes, and caught sight of Nathan, ear to his cell phone. “Well have her look at the damn calendar.” Nathan turned and met Peter’s eyes.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back in a few.” Nathan snapped the phone shut and brushed a hand across Peter’s forehead. “Peter?”
“Nathan?” Peter’s voice was hoarse. “What is this?”
Nathan pulled up a chair next to the bed and took Peter’s hand. “You’re in the hospital, Peter.”
Peter closed his eyes. He didn’t feel hurt. The last thing he remembered was being on the roof of the hospital with Nathan, when he’d finally flown, finally walked across air. He remembered going back to his apartment with Nathan, remembered falling asleep in Nathan’s arms. Then nothing. He pulled himself upright and looked around, taking in the pale pink walls, the sparse furniture: bed, chair, table. There was no IV, no monitoring equipment, no call button. “This isn’t a hospital,” Peter said, and struggled to climb out of bed.
Nathan put a firm hand on his chest and pushed him back down. “Yes it is Pete.”
Peter’s eyes flew past Nathan’s hand down to the edge of the bed where leather straps dangled. “You… What did you do?”
“You need to be in a safe place where you can work through these problems you’re having.”
“You had me committed?” Peter stared at him, and Nathan met his gaze calmly. “I don’t need to be in a mental hospital. I am not crazy!”
“Peter, you tried to kill yourself.”
“I did not try to kill myself. We flew, Nathan. You said so yourself.”
“I was lying.” Nathan didn’t even have the decency to flinch when he said it. “I didn’t want you to jump off another building. I would have said anything.”
“You saw it. I flew, Nathan! Twice!”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the shrinks?”
Peter tried to catch his breath. Suddenly Nathan’s hand, which had felt like a comforting weight on his chest, seemed to be crushing him. “We flew,” he said, pushing through the hitch in his throat. “Don’t do this.”
“I have to.” Nathan leaned over to press a kiss to Peter’s lips. Peter opened his mouth to pull Nathan in, to make this all a Grimm tale in which Peter could beak the spell on the prince with a kiss. Nathan pulled away. “I love you,” he said without meeting Peter’s eyes. “See you soon, kiddo.”
--
Our Lady of Mercy Hospital and Rehabilitation Center didn’t exactly live up to the horrors Peter remembered from watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Peter was surprised at how normal his fellow inmates seemed: no screaming, gibbering loonies, rocking back and forth in a corner, no one who seemed violent. Everyone here was the quiet kind of mad. Peter should have known: only the best for the Petrelli family.
The orderlies were an interchangeable mix of burly men in blue scrubs. They stood unobtrusive sentinel in hallways, in the gym, anywhere the patients gathered in groups. They weren’t threatening, particularly. They were just there. During his first few days Peter began to recognize individual orderlies, although he didn’t have names to put with them yet: the bald orderly who always smelled like pizza, the young blond one who had a crush on Nurse Emma, the old guy with all the nose hair.
Nurses he could charm names out of: Caroline, and Jade who worked the early mornings, and good old Helen with her throaty cackle, souvenir of a lifetime of smoking.
The place was small, so it didn’t take Peter long to get the lay of the land. The encouraging news was that Our Lady of Mercy wasn’t exactly maximum security. If Peter couldn’t actually break out, at least he should be able to sneak a phone call. Peter tried flirting with the night-shift nurse, Kara. She smiled at him and laughed at his jokes, but when he slipped in a casual comment about the phone, her laughter fled. She called an orderly (the red-head with the Thundercats tattoo) to escort him back to his room.
Nathan must have given the staff very specific instructions. He was playing this game well, but there was no doubt in Peter’s mind that it was a game: a little slap on the wrist to remind Peter that he had to behave. If he wanted to get out of here, Peter was going to have to get creative.
--
The chief psychiatrist, Doctor Barrister, wore wire-rim glasses and spoke in a soothing baritone that threatened to lull Peter to sleep. His desk was a huge oak monstrosity paired with a huge leather swivel chair. Barrister seemed like he would be more at home in a lecture hall than an examining room.
“Tell me about these dreams you have,” Barrister said. His pen was poised to take notes.
From the other side of the desk, Peter glared at him. “They’re not dreams.”
“Okay, Peter. What do you call them?”
“I don’t know. Visions? They’re not dreams.”
“All right.” Barrister managed to sound both reasonable and infuriating. Peter was torn between trying to prove to this guy that he wasn’t crazy and messing with him so he would think Peter was genuinely nuts. “Tell me about your visions, Peter.”
“I can fly.” That was the truth, crazy or not.
“I see.” Barrister wrote something in his notebook. “Where does this happen?”
“In the city. Once, I was sitting with one of my—the man I take care of, and then I just got up and took off, out the window.”
“Flying away from your responsibilities?”
“No,” Peter said immediately. Peter didn’t have responsibilities, not really. No one had ever trusted him with anything important.
“Where do you fly to, Peter?”
“Around.” He’d never really thought about it. Just getting off the ground would be enough, for starters.
“If you could fly anywhere, where would you fly?”
To Nathan. He’d fly to Nathan. But he didn’t say that.
--
Nathan didn’t come to see him. Visiting hours came and went: Thursday, Friday, Saturday. No visitors allowed on Sunday, and Peter attended the service in the on-site chapel.
Peter discovered that practically the entire population of Our Mother of Mercy attended mass. The chapel was small but well-appointed: cushioned pews and stained glass windows featuring the saints. Peter read the plaques by the windows as he waited for the others to file in: Saint Dymphna, patron saint of those confined in asylums, pray for us. Job, protect us against depression. Amabilis, we ask your intersession against possession by devils.
One of the patients, a woman with long gray hair done up in a tight braid, tapped Peter on the shoulder and pointed to a window featuring a pretty red-headed woman in a flowing yellow dress. “That’s Saint Vivian,” the woman explained. “She died in a madhouse after refusing to let her family turn her into a prostitute. Pray to her for protection against insanity.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Peter said. The woman nodded and went to take her seat in the pews. Peter took one last glance at Saint Vivian’s upturned, beatific face, and then found a seat for himself.
When the priest entered, an ancient man with a sparse white beard, everyone stood still and silent. Peter didn’t know mad people could be so well-behaved. Once mass began, Peter was surprised to discover how much he could still recite along with the rest of the congregation.
“I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do,” they all intoned together, and Peter with them.
Peter remembered attending church with his mother when he was little. About halfway through the mass, when he’d start to get fidgety, Angela’s hand would close warningly on his arm. Whenever Nathan was home from school and came to church with them, though, there was no need for her chastisement. Peter was content to stare at his brother all through the homily. Nathan was the master of sitting still, and Peter strove in all things to follow his example.
Peter’s favorite part of the service was the kiss of peace. Angela would give each of her boys an affectionate peck on the cheek, and Peter got to kiss Nathan, too. Even when they were older, attending Easter or Christmas mass with their parents meant at least once chance to kiss before God.
Nathan had to be messing with Peter, to put him in a Catholic mental institution.
On the way out, Peter made another examination of the stained glass windows. They were lit with spotlights; the chapel was actually an interior room. No escape this way. At least, not by mortal means.
--
Peter’s first plan was simply to wait Nathan out. Nathan’s Congressional campaign couldn’t possibly see any benefit from having his brother locked up in an institution, so Peter was sure he wouldn’t be left in here for long. If Peter behaved, didn’t pitch a fit, didn’t act like a crazy person, he knew Nathan would relent. Peter simply had to demonstrate that he could play nice.
The problem with this plan was that Peter had never enjoyed being idle. Day after day passed with nothing to do and no word from his family. Inmates (or “residents,” as the staff called them) weren’t allowed to watch television or read the newspaper. Movies (PG or G-rated only) were shown in the recreation room each evening, and the residents stared at them, expressions unchanged whether the night’s offering was Happy Feet or Casablanca.
During the day there were other activities available: crafts and library time and group exercise. Nurses tried to engage Peter with balsa-wood sculpture projects or puzzles of landscapes or finger-painting. Never in his life had Peter felt such a complete void of purpose. Working with hospice patients had involved a lot of waiting, but it never felt useless, not like this.
Peter tried talking to the other residents and found that, for once in his life, he didn’t have the right social capital to build friendships. The old woman who’d told him about Saint Vivian smiled at him from time to time, but she spent most of every day sitting in the corner with her rosary. The other residents ignored Peter or, when he made an effort to participate in activities, admitted him indifferently.
One day during breakfast, a young woman, blonde pixie-cut hair framing an earnest face, asked Peter, “What are you doing here?”
He said, “My brother wanted me out of the way,” and gave her a charming smile.
She frowned at him. “But what’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said with a shrug.
“Nothing?”
Peter kept smiling.
The woman glared and walked away.
--
The most interesting and most painful part of each day was Peter’s session with Doctor Barrister.
Today Doctor Barrister had on a brown suit and a cornflower blue tie with a yellow striped button-up. Peter considered telling him he was clashing, but decided he didn’t want to do Barrister any favors. Instead, he sat quietly on the couch and waited.
At his desk, Barrister signed a few more documents with a flourish, before coming to sit in his armchair across from Peter: no desk between them today. “What did you do this morning, Peter?”
“Nothing.”
“Same as yesterday, then.”
“Exactly the same, yeah.” Peter was beginning to suspect that the boredom was deliberate, to wear patients down and make them so eager for stimulation that they’d gladly spill all their secrets to the doctors.
“Why do you think you don’t fit in here, Peter?”
“Because there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Barrister settled back in his chair. “So why are you here, Peter?”
“Nathan put me in here.” Peter sounded petulant, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. He was bitter.
“Why do you think Nathan would want you to be here?”
“I’m an embarrassment,” Peter said. Sharing his thoughts like this, with a relative stranger, was oddly liberating. Peter had never gone to therapy before. Angela had always said therapy was something for the nouveau riche, who didn’t realize the importance of keeping matters in the family. But now Peter was starting to understand what all the fuss was about.
“Why do you say you’re an embarrassment, Peter?”
“I don’t do what the family wants.”
“And how does that make you feel, Peter?”
“Angry, I guess.” Angry. Sad. Lost. Maybe even depressed.
“Tell me more about that.”
“I don’t deserve to be here.”
“And?” Barrister prompted, pen poised.
“And what?”
“So why are you here, Peter?”
“I told you. Nathan.”
“And why does Nathan want you here?”
“I don’t know,” Peter muttered. He was starting to get angry with himself for sounding so petulant. He hated feeling like a spoiled child.
“Is that the truth, Peter?” Barrister asked. Peter slumped in his seat and said nothing. “If Nathan was here right now, and I asked him why he brought you here, what would he say?”
“He’d say I tried to kill myself.” In fact, he was probably saying it all over town. There had probably been a press conference.
“Why did you try to kill yourself, Peter?”
“I didn’t,” he snapped.
“If we asked Nathan, what would he say? Would he say you tried to kill yourself?”
Peter paused. Mentally ill people didn’t know they were mentally ill. Peter had dealt with enough dementia in his time to understand that the mind could play tricks. And now that Barrister brought it up, Peter wasn’t sure of his own version of the story; it was a bit fuzzy. Nathan, on the other hand, seemed pretty sure about what he’d seen. “I… I jumped off a building,” Peter said slowly. “He was there when I jumped.”
“Why did you jump off a building, Peter?”
A perfectly reasonable question. “I thought I could fly.”
“Can you fly, Peter?”
He didn’t know the answer to that. And he was starting to feel a little queasy. Did he honestly think he could fly? Had he really flown? “I don’t know.”
--
Plan A wasn’t working. It had been a week, and Nathan hadn’t called, hadn’t visited, hadn’t written. They’d fought before; they were brothers, and closer than brothers, and it was bound to happen. In the past, they’d sometimes gone weeks without speaking, but this was different. This time, Nathan wanted Peter to know he was being punished.
Peter’s new plan was to fold; let Nathan think he’d won this round. Once Peter was out of this place, he’d talk to Ma and convince her to take a vacation with him somewhere until the campaign was over. Nathan would probably be glad to have both of them out of the way. During craft time, he asked one of the orderlies for a pen and paper, and wrote Nathan a letter.
As he sat in the recreation room composing a letter, the orderly (the skinny black man who wore a Claddagh ring) kept a close eye on him to make sure he didn’t try to jab the pen through his eardrum or anything similarly destructive. Peter composed a plea for release thinly veiled as an apology.
Dear Nathan,
I’m sorry for the worry I have caused you and Mother. In the past few weeks I have made many changes in my life, and I have not dealt with this transition as well as I should have done. I regret my selfish actions, and I apologize for not considering the family name and in particular your professional obligations before acting. I am prepared to behave more prudently in the future. Please accept my assurances that my continued incarceration is no longer necessary. I look forward to returning home and lending every possible assistance to your campaign.
Best regards,
Peter
He knew making it so formal was a bit bratty, but if he was going to admit defeat, he could at least do it in style. He at least hoped Nathan would show the letter to their mother; she’d be so proud.
--
Nathan finally paid a visit on Friday. An orderly (the Latvian man with the mustache) ushered Peter into the visitor’s room and left at Nathan’s curt nod. As soon as the door shut behind him, Nathan said, “Nice letter.”
Peter smiled smugly. “I used my best handwriting.”
“Cute, Peter, but you’ve only been here a week. I think you should give it more of a chance.”
Peter blinked. “A chance?”
“To help you.”
Peter waited for a sign that Nathan was joking, but none came. “Do you really think I’m crazy?”
Nathan straightened his tie and looked out the window. “That would be the only conclusion a person could make from your behavior.”
Peter slid out of his chair and came around to sit on the edge of the table in front of Nathan. “This is ridiculous.”
Nathan glanced at the windowless door before wrapping a hand around Peter’s hip. “I’m not doing this to punish you, Peter.” His eyes were fixed somewhere on the wall over Peter’s left shoulder.
“I don’t believe you. I’ve said I’ll be good.” He reached down to press a kiss to Nathan’s lips, but Nathan turned his head at the last minute, and Peter’s kiss landed on his cheek. “What’s wrong?”
Nathan continued looking resolutely away. “We’re in a mental institution, for starters. We’re not doing this here.”
Peter moved his mouth to Nathan’s ear. “Then check me out and let’s go home,” he breathed, and flicked his tongue out to trace the shell of Nathan’s ear.
Nathan grabbed Peter’s shoulders and pushed him back to arm’s length. “We’re not doing this, Peter. It’s dangerous for me, and it’s bad for you.”
Now Peter started to feel nauseous. “What do you mean?”
“You’re sick, Peter, and this is the best place for you.”
Peter slid down onto the floor and reached up to put his hands on Nathan’s knees. “I am not crazy. I think this place might be making me crazy.”
“Well, if it’s that short a trip, then it’s probably best you were in here to begin with.” Nathan pushed Peter’s hands off of him and went to stand by the window.
After a moment, Peter joined him. “Can you tell me something, honestly?” Peter asked.
“Sure.” Nathan said it so easily that it couldn’t have been a sincere promise. Peter decided to ask his question anyway.
“Am I in here just because of the election?”
“I was worried about you. I don’t have time to watch you twenty-four hours a day and make sure you don’t take another swan dive off a high-rise,” Nathan said. That didn’t answer the question.
“You can’t afford for me to kill myself while you’re running for office.”
Nathan grabbed Peter by the back of his neck and pulled him in sharply. “You are not going to kill yourself. You will not do that to me and Ma. What we went through with Dad was enough. So get your head straight.” He let go, and Peter stumbled back a step. Nathan went back to staring out the window, and Peter watched him for a long moment, considering. Nathan’s non-answer, his knee-jerk reaction, had given Peter cause for suspicion.
“It is just that, right?” he asked. “You’re worried I’m depressed. You’re not….” He pressed a hand against Nathan’s chest. Nathan batted the hand away and went back to sit at the table. Peter watched him carefully. His movements were sharp, jerky, too controlled. No one else, except perhaps Angela, would have noticed, but Peter had learned to recognize when Nathan was hiding something. “You locked me up because I’m in love with you?”
“Don’t say that,” Nathan snapped. He straightened his tie.
“You’re using this as an excuse to…” He couldn’t even find the words.
“This should have stopped a long time ago, Pete.” His words were too short, clipped and deliberate. “It should never have started. But this, all of this crap you’ve been hurting yourself with? I can’t help but think if you weren’t so worried about… You need to focus on yourself.”
“You think I’m crazy to be in love with you.”
Nathan pretended he hadn’t heard that. “You’re sick, Peter. In here, they can help you deal with your depression.”
Peter came to stand right next to the table, but Nathan wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Have you been practicing this conversation? Because I don’t think you’re listening to me.”
Nathan stood abruptly. “I should go.”
“Don’t you walk out of here.” Peter scrambled to get between his brother and the door, but Nathan brushed him off like a fly. “Nathan! Tell me why you’re doing this.”
Nathan paused with his hand on the door handle. For the smallest of moments, Peter thought he was going to explain. Then he said, “I have a busy campaign schedule the next ten days or so. I won’t be able to fit in another visit until the fourteenth. You understand.” And he left.
Peter sat down at the table and stared after Nathan until the orderly (the Latvian again) came to take him back to the activity room, where he spent the rest of the afternoon staring out the window. Loving Nathan, wanting Nathan to care about him, wanting to be with Nathan was not a mental illness. Or if it was, it wasn’t something that drugs and therapy could fix. And if they couldn’t do anything for him here, he had to get out and do something about it himself.
--
Peter wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. It seemed so simple. All the widows in the facility had bars, of course, but not the window in Doctor Barrister’s office.
An orderly (the one with shaggy brown hair and a crooked nose) brought him to the office at the usual time. Doctor Barrister wasn’t there, but Peter slid into his usual chair anyway. The orderly gave him a stern look, and Peter returned a guileless smile that he hoped conveyed how harmless he was. No history of violence. Well-behaved, polite young man. The orderly edged closer to the door, and Peter kept up his vacant smile. “Stay,” the orderly said finally, then stepped outside to have Doctor Barrister paged.
The smile dropped from Peter’s face. There would be enough time. He sped to the window and threw it open. It was the old fashioned kind, with no screen. Perfect.
Outside, the sky was very blue, brighter than Peter remembered, and cloudless. He threw one foot up on the sill and jumped, concentrating on that sky. That brilliant blue seemed so close.
He heard screaming that he thought came from the building, and only then did Peter realize he was falling.
--
Peter woke up back in his room. His whole body ached, and his left ankle throbbed viciously. Angela sat at his bedside, watching him. Not reading, not filing her nails, just waiting for him to open his eyes.
“Ma?” His throat was scratchy. He desperately wanted a drink of water.
“Your ankle is sprained, and you bruised a rib,” she said immediately.
He closed his eyes again so he wouldn’t have to see her expression of disappointment and disgust. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“You’re lucky it was only the second story.” She waited until he opened his eyes to continue. “You’re a fool, Peter.”
“Where’s Nathan?” he asked meekly.
“He’s busy, Peter. He has a life and a career, and he cannot afford to come running every time you get into trouble.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I need to talk to him.”
“He told you he’d be back on the fourteenth, and he will be.”
“Does he know I jumped out a window?”
Angela’s frown deepened. “Are you doing this for his attention? I will not help you hijack Nathan’s future.”
“I’m not… I never wanted…”
Angela waited for him to stumble into silence. “Your brother loves you, Peter. Never doubt it. But what you’re doing now could destroy him.”
Peter swallowed hard. “I don’t want that. I just…” It seemed like there was something crucial he need to articulate, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He wondered if they’d given him pain meds; the edges of his vision seemed fuzzy.
“You have to let him go, Peter.” Angela rubbed a hand tenderly over his forehead. “Do you think when he’s a Congressman that he’ll be able to drop everything and come running every time you get your heart broken?”
“What does this have to do with my being in here?”
“I know how close you two are,” she said, brushing his bangs aside. “I know, Peter.”
Peter forgot how to breathe for a moment. He searched her eyes, trying to figure out what she meant by that.
“I’ll be here for you, Peter. I’ll always be here. But it’s time to let Nathan go.”
--
Peter couldn’t identify the drugs by the shape and color of the pills they gave him. One was white, two were pink, and there was one big round yellow pill. The drugs made Peter lightheaded. Nurse Helen said, “Don’t sweat it, honey. That’ll go away once you get used to the dosage.” At the moment, though, it was distracting.
Now that he’d jumped out a window, Peter attained something of a celebrity status among the other residents. The pixie-cut woman came to talk to him during craft time, setting her macaroni sculpture down right in the middle of Peter’s puzzle.
“Nurse Kara says you’re delusional,” she announced happily. “How’s your leg?”
Peter flexed his ankle within the confines of its bandage. It ached. “They say it’s not broken.”
“Too bad,” she said. “Might have been nice to have a visit to the hospital. The real hospital, I mean.” She daubed a spec of glue onto her sculpture—it might have been a castle, or perhaps a buffalo—and affixed a new piece of macaroni. “I saw your mother when she came to visit. You’re a Petrelli, yes?”
“Yeah. How did you—?”
“We run in the same circle. Well, ran. No running allowed in here, is there? I’m an Aster. Of the Sutton Place Asters.”
“Oh.” And Peter actually did remember the Asters. They’d been at his parents’ dinner parties regularly; they were in some sort of import business.
“I’m an embarrassment,” the Aster girl continued. “Well, hysterical and impulsive, but being an embarrassment is the worst symptom, at least in my mother’s eyes.”
“Hold on…” A memory floated at the edge of Peter’s consciousness. “Rebekah, right?”
She nodded excitedly and clapped her hands. “Gone but not forgotten.”
“You went to my high school. We were just kids when you…”
“Got knocked up? Don’t forget getting beaten up by my druggie boyfriend and losing the baby,” she said, brandishing a piece of pasta. “All very embarrassing.”
“That was years ago.”
“Well, the embarrassment doesn’t go away, Petrelli.” She daubed another glue spot onto her sculpture. “How gauche would it be for my parents to bring me home? Having to explain at parties where I’ve been for the past seven years.” She shuddered. “No thank you.”
“So… Is there something wrong with you?”
“I’m hysterical. That’s the diagnosis. And…” She lowered her voice and leaned in to whisper to Peter. “I’m a sexual deviant.”
Peter suppressed a smile. “How long do you have to stay here?”
“As long as my parents want.” At Peter’s snort of disapproval, she continued. “Daddy built the east wing, you know. If he asks them to keep me, they’ll keep me.”
--
Logically, Peter knew that Doctor Barrister wasn’t getting smaller. He’d come to the conclusion that the drugs just made him seem farther away. Today Barrister seemed positively tiny there, back behind the desk again. The Latvian orderly was in the room today, hovering behind Peter, just as a precaution. He, too, seemed smaller.
“I’d like to talk about your father, Peter,” Barrister said.
“Then talk,” Peter muttered. It took a great deal of effort to get even those words across the gulf that separated here from there. If only everything didn’t seem so distant.
“How did your father die?” Barrister asked.
“Heart attack,” Peter said automatically. It took him a few seconds to remember that was a lie. “He killed himself.”
“How did you feel about that, Peter?” Barrister had his head cocked to the side like a puppy. With his glasses, which magnified his eyes, and his large ears, the whole picture was rather comic. But puppy had asked him a question…About his father, maybe?
“I didn’t know it was suicide,” Peter said. “Not until recently.”
“Why did your father kill himself?”
“He was depressed,” Peter said gravely. That must mean Arthur hadn’t prayed enough to Saint Vivian. Or maybe the saints had ignored him. Either way, Arthur was just as dead.
“How do you know he was depressed?”
“I didn’t know.” Peter shrugged. “My mother told me.”
“Do you think you would know if someone was depressed?”
Peter opened his mouth to answer, and closed it again, because obviously he had not known. Hadn’t even suspected.
“How about your brother?” Barrister asked. “Did he know?”
“Yes,” Peter admitted.
“Do you trust his judgment?”
That was part of the problem. “Yes I do.”
--
The orderly with dark, curly hair like an angel escorted Peter into the visitor’s room. Nathan was there, attention absorbed in his Blackberry. The angelic orderly closed the door and left them alone.
“You don’t really think I’m sick, do you?” Peter asked as he slipped into the chair across the table from Nathan.
“I wouldn’t have put you in here if I didn’t,” Nathan said distractedly.
“How did you know Dad was depressed?”
Nathan glanced up from his phone and raised an eyebrow. “Are you adding paranoia to your list of symptoms now?”
“How did you know about Dad?”
“He drank. He picked fights with me, and with Ma. He didn’t enjoy going to work anymore.” Nathan rattled off the signs like a grocery list, half his mind on whatever important e-mail he was reading.
“And from that you were sure?”
“Yes. It was fairly obvious.”
“And now you’re sure about me.”
“Peter,” he began warningly.
“What are my symptoms?”
Nathan looked at him a moment like he was sure Peter didn’t want to hear the answer to this. When Peter said nothing, he sighed. “Delusions. You say you have visions, you think you can fly. You jumped off a building. And you would have jumped off another one, too.” He returned to his phone.
“And out a window,” Peter muttered. “Don’t forget that one.”
“What?” Nathan’s head snapped up and suddenly Peter had his undivided attention. “What did you say?”
“Didn’t Mom tell you? I jumped from my shrink’s office.”
“Here? When—?” Nathan leaned forward to grab Peter’s wrist, then stopped himself. “Never mind.” Nathan recovered quickly. “Are you okay?”
“Mostly, yeah,” Peter said. His thoughts were coming slower these days, but he knew there was something wrong with this reaction to his “accident.” “Why didn’t anyone tell you?” Peter asked. “I thought you’d come see me…”
Nathan sat back and loosened his tie. “You don’t need to jump out a window to get my attention, Peter.”
“No. Apparently even that doesn’t work.”
Nathan slid his phone into his pocket and regarded his little brother critically. “Why did you do it?”
“I was trying to escape. To fly away.”
“And you couldn’t?” Nathan sounded almost puzzled.
“No. Obviously. I fell.” Peter crossed his arms over his chest and settled back in his chair before he processed Nathan’s question. “Wait, you seem surprised,” he said as the strangeness of Nathan’s response dawned on him. “I’m not crazy. I’ve flown before and you knew it!”
“No,” Nathan said firmly. “No. Peter, that’s ridiculous.”
Peter was out of his seat in a flash, kneeling next to Nathan. “You know I’m not crazy, and you’re still letting them keep me here?”
“You’re not well, Peter.”
“You mean I’m an embarrassment,” Peter said bitterly. “I am not insane, Nathan. Tell them!”
“This? This behavior is irrational and yeah, crazy.”
“Is that so?” Peter grabbed Nathan’s arm, digging his fingers in hard. “What about locking up your brother so you won’t have to deal with your emotions. Is that rational?”
Nathan stood. “I’m leaving, Peter.”
“Don’t walk away from me!” He jumped after Nathan and pushed him hard. Normally Nathan was more than Peter’s equal in a fight, in brotherly and not-so-brotherly tussles, but he obviously hadn’t been expecting an attack. He stumbled backwards, his foot caught on the chair leg, and he went down on his back with a startled grunt. Taking advantage of his momentary incapacitation, Peter pounced, straddling Nathan’s chest and grabbing his shoulders to shake him. “Tell them the truth!” he yelled. “You know I’m not crazy! Tell them!”
The commotion brought the nearest orderly (the angelic one, who must have been waiting just outside) bursting into the room. He just gaped for a moment—altercations like this were unheard of at Our Lady of Mercy, so he could hardly be blamed for hesitating—before Nathan snapped, “Get a nurse, damnit!”
The orderly ducked back into the hall to shout for help.
Meanwhile, Nathan tried to shove Peter off him. Peter barely managed to keep his seat by staying over Nathan’s center of gravity, using all the tricks his big brother had imparted back when Peter announced he wanted to go out for wrestling back in high school. Nathan twisted to buck Peter off, and Peter pressed his hands down onto Nathan’s shoulders. “Get off,” Nathan growled.
Peter wanted to shake him into submission, wanted to pull the truth from his mouth, wanted to wound Nathan the way he’d been wounded. Instead, he kissed him. For a moment, it was beautiful, just as Peter remembered: firm and salty and home.
Then Nathan hit him. Pain burst along the side of Peter’s jaw, and he found himself on his back, staring up at Nathan, who stood with fists clenched at his sides, eyes dark with anger.
The angelic orderly burst back into the room, followed by two other orderlies and Nurse Jade. They hovered momentarily until Nathan shouted, “For God’s sake, sedate him or something.”
Two orderlies reached for Peter, and immediately he sprang into action, trying to struggle out of their grasp. Nurse Jade fumbled for a needle while the three orderlies wrestled Peter into submission, pressing him into the floor while he writhed and continued shouting at his brother, “Tell them! Fuck you, Nathan, tell the truth!” Finally the orderlies had Peter’s leg sufficiently immobilized for Jade to jab the needle into. The last thing Peter saw as he slipped into unconsciousness was Nathan walking out of the room without a backward glance.
Next Chapter
Master Post
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 10:40 pm (UTC)*goes and eats a ton of cookies to restore her sugar levels of happiness*
no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 11:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-16 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-19 01:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-20 09:37 pm (UTC)Nathan, you bastard. Not even a magnificent bastard; just a bastard.
I can't wait to find out what happens next! Kiss kiss kiss.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-21 10:03 pm (UTC)