WHO: Claire Bennet (future) WHERE: a random beach WHEN: Tuesday, November 8; sunrise WHAT: Remembering. RATING: rated A for slight angst STATUS: complete as is unless someone wants to join for any reason.
November 8. It might be the year 2005 now, New York might be safe now, but there would never be a time when that date wasn't seared into Claire's mind. For nearly five years, the anniversary of the day New York was destroyed had been something that meant memorializing the loss of lives and the loss of freedom. In reality, the anniversary, by Claire's biological time, had been shortly after she arrived, but most things conformed to the calendar they all found themselves following now. Just seeing the date on the calendar was enough to legitimize it.
Claire watched the sunrise over the city from her spot in the sand, thoughts not on the problems that surrounded Gabriel, but on the last five years of her life, a life that had changed irrevocably the day New York was lost. Five million gone in that initial explosion and countless more after that at the hands of a government run by a monster wearing her father's face. Families torn apart, freedom lost and safety something that was only a longed-for memory, rather than any reality. Hiding who she was, losing those she loved to death or distance, knowing that the things she suffered were repeated across the country. It might not have been flames and fallen angels, but it had still been hell.
Toeing the sand with her bare foot, Claire traced a random pattern, her attention inward rather than outward. Peter blamed himself for the destruction of the city and those lives lost because he had been the one to explode, something he had lived with for the last five years in their own timeline and the time he had lived in Los Angeles. Claire blamed herself for the destruction of the city and those lives lost because she had failed to play her part, something that had only coalesced when she had learned the truth after arriving here.
Save the cheerleader, save the world.
She had been saved to be a piece in the domino line, so her actions could touch the next person. In her case, she had been saved to be there and reason with Nathan so he wouldn't leave New York, so he would go to Peter and fly them away to keep Peter from exploding in the city. The other timeline was proof of that, of those actions that had saved the city, and Claire had been over those hours with others, questioning what had been said and what had been done to understand where it all changed, even though she was certain of when it had.
She had been saved to make a difference, but hadn't, because she had left the city before the crucial point. Instead of staying to fight, she had left on her dad's insistence. For most of the five years after the explosion, Claire had carried 'what if' guilt, but here, knowing the truth, she carried the weight of all of those deaths and everything that had come from in the years after, a far deeper and darker guilt.
That timeline, that life, was behind her, but she couldn't forget it, wouldn't forget it. It was a lesson in being needed someplace but not being there to fulfill her role, a lesson she didn't take lightly, and a mistake she wouldn't repeat again.