Archive of Our Own

it's death for the living (yes, i am a ghost)
title: it's death for the living (yes, i am a ghost)
fandom: Heroes
summary: Peter and Elle have various encounters over the years, years during which each one goes through phases of either denying or accepting their pasts, until one encounter in which a revealed truth poses another phase altogether. (AU post 3x10)
characters/pairings: Peter/Elle
genre: Angst/Romance
rating: T
note: This is AU in the sense that although Claire lives past the eclipse, Sylar does not, hence changing some scenarios, including some seen in the last couple of episodes. Title taken from "The Big Fight" (Stars) b/c I am that creative, & it goes with it. I nearly tore out my hair when I thought I lost this fic, but fortunately I found it, took to writing the latter half of it, and went through a few revisions. So, here it is. Enjoy. :)~*~Lock the door. Throw away the key. Leave me alone. Don’t come near me. I’m a disease.

It becomes a chant. Her chant.

Why it is that Gabriel dies, and she lives, is beyond her comprehension level. All her fault, she believes, and maybe she’s right.

Eventually Arthur Petrelli comes by her prison cell, but she knows by the look in his eyes that it’s not to find her a savior (much less to be one) and it’s not to get her out into the field again. No, he’s there to kill her, but a phone rings, he threatens “another time, then” and he’s gone.

She’s not very much relieved that her time hasn’t come.

Three days pass without a word. One day she goes without food. Only nourishment she has is the water bottle somewhere underneath the sorry excuse for a cot in that room.

The afternoon that follows that day, her mouth is dry, her throat feels like it’s choking in on itself, and her stomach might as well be collapsing. Her lids are heavy, and she’s sure anything she hears or sees is (ten to one) a hallucination. So when she thinks she hears the door to her cell opening, and she sees footsteps coming towards her, and she abruptly blacks out, she hopes she’s not imagining her death.

---

When she wakes up with soft material curled up in the fist of her hands, something cushioning her head, and rays of a sun pulling her lids back, she almost believes it was all a nightmare. That she’ll get up off this white-sheet covered mattress, and walk out a door that leads to a father alive and kicking, even if it’s still very much a life within what may as well be a prison. Of course, she doesn’t completely believe it. Paranoia kicks in instead, and the foreign room and clothes on her send her on high alert.

With soundless footsteps, she treads across the room, and silently she opens the door, peeks outside.

She doesn’t see a thing, but she hears noises coming from somewhere nearby. Voices, murmurs, and maybe glass clinking against another surface.

She sucks in a deep breath, and quietly tiptoes in the direction of the voices. She’s around the corner in seconds, and when she squints, she can make out at least one of the three people sitting around a table, eating.

“Mohinder?” she speaks, one hand behind her back, crackling with electricity.

The man in question stands up abruptly, with his hands up, as if in defense.

“Elle,” he acknowledges, nods his head. Slowly, he walks over to her, and at that she brings her hand forward to show her weapon.

“We’re not your enemies, Elle,” he assures her.

“What am I doing here?”

Then he tells her of how the fight against Arthur Petrelli came to an end, albeit with imperfect results. Some people were still divided, and a portion of the formula had survived the fight, but for the most part, Arthur Petrelli had failed (the “not exactly” part was something they were trying not to concentrate too much on, at the moment).

After Arthur Petrelli had been killed, Matt headed a raid of the cells, to determine who was being kept there, whom to release under supervision, and whom to aide in their freedom.

“I’m guessing I fall under category number two,” Elle scoffs, trying to hide the small ache in her chest.

“Elle, you need to understand that your history--”

“No, I get it. You should’ve left me there, anyway,” she shrugs.

Mohinder eyes her, wonders the extent of the effects on her due to her being held in the cell, and moreover, the effect of Sylar’s death. From what he had heard, it had not been her fault. She had been injured, and Bennett (along with a handful of others) had wanted Sylar’s death for quite some time. She must have really cared for him.

“You should eat,” Mohinder advises after a moment.

---

She eats mindlessly, wanders hopelessly in the small, rented apartment of Mohinder’s and those other two - Matt and Daphne - for days on end. Eventually, she’s taken to an apartment of a couple of women (a mother and daughter) who had fought against the use of the formula. Supposedly retired, and only wanting to aide people like themselves just live, they’d taken in a few others like Elle.

Elle abhors it - she feels like some foster kid taken in just because of some pity. She feels like a charity case, and like she doesn’t fit in, but she stays because really, where does she have to go? She’s a danger to everyone, a danger to society, and the one person to whom she could relate and made her believe that a killer like herself could be normal, is now dead because she couldn’t save him.

As time passes (a month and two weeks, to be exact) however, she sees there’s something tangible about the daughter, who is only two years older than she is.

“I’m tired of sitting around and doing nothing. Maybe my mom prefers helping people by showing them a normal life, but me…I, I need to use my powers some other way. Not just like this.”

Elle almost likes her.

---

It’s a painstakingly slow process, but they do it.

They gather money, search others like themselves out, and find a way to help those already in the fight. They run off one night. Jackie (the daughter) leaves her mother a note, albeit a vague one, and Elle leaves a note as well. Just a simple “thank you” along with some money, because whether she liked to admit it or not, that mother was the closest thing she had to a mother since her mother left her life.

Elle remembers the first four days exactly, because they do not sleep for three nights straight. They walk for miles on end, find an abandoned car, drive across a couple of states, and meet up with a group who has some contact with “those big heroes” as they sarcastically call them (and they all know a few of “those big heroes” names, but out of maybe paranoia or maybe even respect, those names are not said).

In the morning after joining the group, they’re attacked, but if anything, Elle is always prepared.

It is that morning - when they see Elle use her powers full-blast, with skill and trajectory very few had even witnessed before - that they know they are dealing with that rumored girl. Daughter of one of the facility managers, relationship to Sylar, threat to Claire Bennett. Whispers and rumors abound, and more apparently, fear runs through them all. Except Jackie, who insists on Elle remaining.

Elle is grateful, but she knows it’s not long before the group will thrust her forward and make her at least co-leader.

She hates when that happens. But she doesn’t object to the position, because really, there’s no choice.

*

Peter’s the one to take his own father’s life.

He can almost feel the chill run through Nathan’s body when he does. And just as quickly, Nathan and everyone else scurries off who-knows-where to reconvene.

Peter stays on the spot from which he killed his father. Minutes pass over, while everyone else runs around and/or tries to gather themselves around him.

Minutes later he’s at his father’s old desk, half-listening to the Haitian and Noah Bennett talk about “the next step” when he hears Matt walk in and begin to ramble on about the people they’ve found and such.

Peter only reacts to the name Elle, and says, “just…get her away from here. Make sure she doesn’t interfere with anything we’re doing.”

He thinks maybe he’ll kill her if she does.

---

Anytime he sees Claire, he imagines a gun ringing out with a bullet, shooting her. The shooter smirks as Claire is unable to heal, and something dark beats against his chest.

There are moments in which he believes it is that shot that turns Claire into that…dark woman that shoots him in the future. Those are the moments he blames the shooter for Claire’s ultimate misfortune.

Claire sees it in him, but she only says, “I survived. I’m fine.” She doesn’t tell him that she’s better for it because her actual, real, human, near-death made her see that she had too much left to learn to go around trying to be a big damn hero. The less reminders of that time, the better.

---

It is only weeks later that Peter wills himself to ask about Elle, if only to prod at his heart further.

“She’s yet to seem quite like herself, which may be a good thing were it not for the dark cloud she seems to carry over her head all of the time,” Mohinder says.

Peter doesn’t see how that’s any different than her usual demeanor.

“Delia tells me that she walks around like a broken-hearted child, but that she’s of no harm despite the fits and overreactions she has at times,” Mohinder goes on, “and she seems to be getting along with Delia’s daughter, Jackie.”

Peter nods his head once, then changes the subject. He feels as though he’s already heard too much on the subject.

---

Peter doesn’t say a thing when he hears that Elle has run off with that girl Jackie and is presumably working alongside people like them to continue fighting off those who insist on making the formula a reality.

Yes, they could use the help because there’s a strain out that’s giving some normal people some abilities, although the results are not completely ideal. And those people need to be held off, and in some cases, stopped, but Peter thinks it even worse that of all people, a person like Elle is working “for” the cause.

Peter only says a thing about the subject when he hears Elle is heading a group who’s earning quite the reputation.

“She has no business being out there, being a part of something like this! She’s dangerous, and for all we know, is just waiting to turn the tables on us!”

Matt hears him, but the words from Peter sound too biased, too objective, and all too bitter for his statement to really pertain to the one topic at hand.

**

The other day, Peter met with his brother Nathan.

Of all the things they discussed and argued over, it was one brief discussion that stuck out to Peter.

“Whatever it is that’s doing this to you, Pete, you’ve gotta deal with it.”

“This?”

“This…anger, this hurt. It’s not like you to hold that sort of thing in without at least trying to divulge or fight it.”

Peter swallows the entirety of the whiskey in the bottle, and signals to the waiter to bring him another cup.

“I’ll have a martini, thanks” - Peter hears the small voice only feet from him, and he wishes that third whiskey glass would come already so he as to drown the voice out quicker.

But his hearing senses pick it up, and he can hear her shuffling feet and hands fumbling around in what has to be her purse or bag.

His eyes shift to his left, and yes, it is her.

“Guess we had to run into each other sooner or later,” he says with a biting tone.

Elle stops rummaging through her bag. She looks over to him, and smiles weakly.

“Guess we just hoped it was much later than sooner.”

“Or never.”

Elle is off-put by his attitude, and she wants to run.

“I should go,” she says with a whisper.

“Here you go, miss,” the bartender says when he leaves her the drink. Elle looks at the drink, then at the floor.

Quickly, she pulls out her wallet, grabs some bills, and shoves them to the bartender. She looks right about ready to leave, but Peter says, “you paid for it, might as well drink it.”

Elle can hardly look at him without feeling like she’ll lose complete composure, but she does it (look at him, that is). She gives him another weak smile, and takes to her drink. She tries her best not to drink it too fast, nor too slow, and it is hard, but soon the drink is gone, and she hastily gets up.

“I--” she bites her lip, but the small gaze he shoots her says enough. And just as she reappeared in his life, she is gone.

---

He lays on the floor, barely breathing, not quite alive, nearly dead.

Peter momentarily forgets the pain in his neck, and doesn’t feel the wave of warmth crashing over him as he heals, as he is too preoccupied with Elle. He’s surprised she didn’t completely kill the man, but electricity is still crackling in her hand, so it seems the fight isn’t over for her.

It had become clear to Peter and a few others that information had been passing between the groups fighting against the virus and the groups advocating the virus. A subtle investigation had been put in effect to track down the people who were passing along information, and when it became clear that the person was affiliated with the group Elle was involved in, Peter decided to personally tackle the issue. But before he could attack, someone else had already - Elle.

He heard Elle yelling behind the building where the group was resting, and when he turned the corner, he saw Elle throwing a high voltage jolt at the traitor.

“You lied to us! You betrayed us and--”

“Elle!” Peter screamed, after watching how Elle had no intention of stopping her attack anytime soon.

Elle turned her head, and in that second that she was distracted, the traitor shook the earth beneath him with one stomp of his foot, causing Elle to fall. Peter immediately threw the man against the wall, but not without chucking a jagged piece of cement at Peter that scathed the base of his skin.

As soon as Elle was able to stand again, she continued her rampage of electricity. Peter screamed the first few moments, but then quieted and watched in near repulsion but simultaneous awe at Elle’s determination to torture the man. And then she stopped. She breathed heavily and kept her eyes fixed on him.

Elle finally looks up to Peter, only to drop her eyes to ground. Then her hands fall by her side as she ceases whatever remaining electricity from emitting.

“I don’t care what you do with this son of a bitch, but I never want to see him again,” she hastily says, turns on her heel, and heads back towards the building. Peter stares at her leaving figure, then looks to the man laying on the floor. He makes his way to him, kneels down, places a hand on his shoulder, and sends him to a place where someone else will take care of him - to Mohinder’s.

He stays there a minute or so more, then goes back down the path Elle had gone. He goes inside the building, ignoring the looks a few of the group members give him, but he doesn’t see Elle. He does, however, spot Jackie. “Where is she?” he asks.

Jackie licks her lips, crosses her arms over her chest, and drops her voice to a whisper . “When she gets like this--”

“I know. Just tell me.”

Jackie points to the stairs by the left of him. “Take a right at the top of the stairs. There’s a living room there. She should be in there, pacing.”

--

When she sees him, she immediately defends herself and these people - “I didn’t know. I swear, he was in this alone--I’ve checked everyone else out, talked to them, and yeah, it was just him. And I should’ve known but--”

“Okay,” he saves her from going on and on.

But he isn’t quite done. “But why were you so hard on him?”

Elle’s eyes harden and her hands tighten into fists. “We trusted him and that asshole--and now he’s made everyone look bad! These people who have worked and died for this fight! We--I--”

And she dissolves. She covers her mouth and turns her back to him.

“Yeah well, that’s what trust and distrust will do to you.”

By the time she’s turned back to him, there’s nothing but her and the room once again.

---

She’s already sulking on the ground, dried tears streamed across her face, but he still has fury pounding against his chest.

He doesn’t know what in the world possessed Daphne to invite Elle to the get together, but because she was there, only feet from them, the confrontation was inevitable.

“No one wants you here,” he told her with what he even knew to be the coldest stare he had ever possessed. The room was quiet in a matter of seconds, and it was that silence (that lack of protest) and his stare that made her draw back and scurry off into an empty corner of the old, abandoned house which Peter and co. occasionally resided in.

Peter chases after her, bursts in, and despite seeing her completely broken on the floor of a cold closet, and screams, “Why did you come?”

“Daphne invited me!” she screams back.

“She was being polite!”

Elle scrambles up. “Thanks for the newsflash,” she responds through gritted teeth and moves to rush past him, but he catches her arm and holds her in front of him.

“And no one--no one--asked for your help! Are you just trying to kill some of that guilt for hurting some people?! Or do you think it’s fun?! Why are you in this fight?!”

“Because I want to help! Because I don’t want anyone else to go through the hell I went through because of my powers! Because I believe in what you believe in - that this virus is going to be the death of everyone!”

Tears come anew, wet her eyelashes, make her eyes look like they’re glowing.

His hands fall from her arms. She leaves. He cracks his hand and the wall.

---

Two years later, the threat of the virus is gone. Claire is still Claire, Thank God. Nathan disappeared for months on end, but finally returned, still convinced that the right people with powers would do the world good, but with admittance that he went about it the wrong way.

The world has been eerily quiet for three weeks. He’s thankful for the rest from the fights and threatening visions of a crumbling world. It’s peaceful but he’s still alert.

---

Peter isn’t one for parties, but he feels compelled to attend one being thrown by a friend from medical school whom he miraculously got back in touch with. What is a life if it’s only filled by heroics and no normalcy after all?

Now he’s been at this party under two minutes, and all around him are carefree strangers with the rare, sober face lost in a crowd of conformity. Much like him. He’s searching out his friend as he pushed through the small groups and dancing peoples.

Finally, he spots him with a group of his own and Peter makes a beeline for him, taps him on the shoulder, and his friend turns around, hugs him and laughs.

“Hey, you made it!” he shouts over the loud noise.

Peter smiles back to him and nods. “Yeah.”

“Glad you did! And hey, have you met my girlfriend, Elle?”

Peter blinks and shakes the turn his stomach may have made at the name, because surely it can’t be her, and even if it is, why should it make freeze?

A woman standing just inches from his friend turns around then, her shoulder-length blond hair whisking, and her blue eyes immediately catching his.

“Nice to meet you, I‘m Peter,” Peter speaks as soon as the lump in his throat is gone. She looks caught off guard at his introduction, but she plays along. “Elle,” she smiles, shakes his hand, and immediately looks at her boyfriend. “I’m going to…” and she trails off as she points in any which direction.

After a minute with his friend, Peter excuses himself and follows the sound of Elle’s breath to the exit door left open with a small stone.

Peter pushes the door open and looks around. He sees Elle with her back against the wall opposite the door. Having heard the door open, she knew it would be Peter looking out at her, and she avoids his eyes. Immediately, she stands up straight and heads to the door, but Peter blocks it.

She crosses her arms over her chest, and Peter sees the goosebumps on her skin from the cold night air. She’s wearing a white halter and jeans, and the blouse reminds him of that time in the facility when he and she were in his cell and he pulled her close to him and--

In that blink in which he recalls that time in the facility, he shuffles his feet, looks at her face only to see her looking at the door behind him, and he steps out of her way.

Peter’s stomach turns when she doesn’t look him in his eyes the entirety of that night.

---

When Peter finds out that the little blond in his old friend’s life came and went just like that, relief washes over him. She’s a hazard to anyone and everyone.

---

Seven weeks after seeing her at that party, he spots her walking down the street. A white scarf is wrapped around her neck, a knitted hat sits atop her head, both assortments of the same variety as her knitted sweater. Her hands are stuffed in the pockets of her sweater, and she walks down the street with a steady pace and apathetic face.

And they've stopped in front of each other.

He did not call out to her, and neither did she, but they spotted each other, and there they stopped in the middle of the street.

“Elle.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says at the same time he opens his mouth.

“I wasn’t--”

“I don’t care. Everything’s another life. Just leave me alone.”

It’s in that instant that his throat burns and the guilt sets in for the salt he’s poured over her wounds over all those told and untold encounters.

---

There’s hatred, pity, guilt, and resentment in their kisses, but the heat is overwhelming and clothes fall, much like they do in a tangle of limbs on his bed.

The following morning, she pulls on her sweater, gets off the bed, and opens the door of his room to leave.

***

“Do you want to know why I broke up with him after seven months? Do you want to know why I was never able to tell him that I love him? Peter, do you want to know?!”

Peter paces back and forth in Elle’s apartment, furious at her and himself.

It was a one-night stand and they didn’t see each other for four months, but the darkness has clawed its way back into their lives, and the extraordinary have another fight on their hands.

Elle and Peter have ended up on the same side of the fight again, and after one particular reckless battle, he held her hand to feel some warmth. There was another kiss and really, they could not stop themselves thereafter.

Now it’s been six months of he and she doing something indefinable, and there have always been silly arguments, but this time this menial one has led to the argument of Elle’s inability to look Peter in the eyes for longer than ten seconds.

“If it’s going to give me a Goddamn answer, then yes, I want to know!”

“Because I loved him! Because I killed the first person to give me a chance! The first person who believed I could be so much more! Because of Gabriel!”

Peter scoffs. “He was going to kill you!”

“No, he was a changed man!”

“No, he wasn’t! He was going to kill you! I saw it--had he survived that day, he would have killed you that night, and then burn your remains. I. Saw. It.”

Tears spring to her eyes, but it’s too hard to breathe the moment she believes Peter. “Get out,” she tells him.

She had to know, Peter tells himself to kill the guilt, she needed to know.

---

Peter kisses her temple.

Over four years ago, he met this girl who knew nothing of the world. She only knew a world in which her father was always right, no one else could be trusted, and a prison that was home.

For over three years, he’d hated that girl who ended up being a lover to that murderer, Sylar, and had nearly killed Claire.

But he takes them out of the equation, thinks of her past, thinks of the small changes he’s seen in her over their encounters over the years, and the guilt and fear that still dominates her. And he knows (as his fingers push aside the strands of hair that cover her hair, and as his eyes drink up the features of her face), he knows he loves her nonetheless.

Elle’s a scared child that needs tending after. Meaning, she’s human. Every person, every youth, every adult, and any and every sort of senior needs tending after. Through direct or indirect forces, though clear or invisible, every person has that caring hand. And although Elle has her special features, her subtle changes of guidance he’s seen in her from their encounters over the years have gone to show that she’s steadily easing into a transitional redemption. By deciding to fight the good fights, by letting her dependency on her powers go little by little, and by not begging and clinging to acceptance like she used to. Yet, she still has her faults and idiosyncrasies, all of which only make Elle, Elle.

The one he’d always tried to hate, and was angry at for making so many mistakes, and for making others and herself hurt. Because fate is a tricky hand, but somewhere in the cards that he and the whole universe have dealt in order to defy fate, Elle and love have always been in the deck.

Elle’s eyes flutter open, and Peter’s fingers stop just on her left cheek.

“Was he really going to kill me?”

He’d lie, but he cannot.

He nods ‘yes.’

“Why?”

He could say, “because it was in his nature” or “because he was an idiot”, but no answer is right or appropriate.

“I don’t know,” he answers, and her eyes close. He feels droplets pass through his fingers, signaling the tears coming from her. Then they stop.

“Peter?” she breathes as her eyes remain shut.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve hurt each other, like me and Gabriel hurt each other. So does that mean you’ll hurt me again?”

“People fight, Elle, and sometimes they’ll say things they don’t really mean. And I’ve said everything that I meant. You hurt me through the people I love, so I hurt you by making you hate the one thing you were most afraid of - yourself. We were stupid, and it was juvenile. But I won’t do that again. I would never lay a hand on you. And I could never want you anywhere far away from me.”

Elle takes his hand and presses his knuckles to her lips. She leaves a lingering kiss, then brings his hand to her chest. “Stay with me tonight?”

His nod in the dark is pointless, so he just lies next to her, adjusts himself, and holds her close as they drift to sleep.

And the next morning, they lay together on the bed, their hands intertwined as they stare at the ceiling.

“I had a miscarriage. Mohinder told me that’s why they found me unconscious the day Arthur Petrelli was killed. He said he tried saving the baby, but he couldn’t.”

Peter squeezes her hand. He feels her nails press into his skin, but then she stops, and she shifts her body closer to his.

In a low whisper, she also admits, “I never told anyone that - only Mohinder knew.” Peter holds her as she curls up and grips his shirt. He rubs her back as she cries, and as his heart wrenches. She’s been through hell and back, and they’ve still got their demons. He loves her, and he knows she believes that, and although she also knows that she loved the idea of her and Gabriel more than anything, it’ll take more time to let it all go since she’s only just come to that realization. Time, they say, is the only remedy, but for once he has a hold of something he not only can wholeheartedly believe in, but something has a hold of him that’s a world outside of the norm and the extraordinary - it’s something in a league of its own.

---

Over time, it’s Peter’s hand that exudes peace during war, warmth amidst chaos.

Over time, Elle realizes what love is not, and what love is. When she realizes that, it takes time for her to accept it (not deny it) and drink it in for what it is, whilst accepting that some natures of it are simply inexplicable and beyond human comprehension.

He doesn’t push and she doesn’t pull, and there are dull moments, but it’s never fake. They never make sense, much less to the people around them, but it doesn’t discount who they are as individuals or what they are as a couple. Because they aren’t a couple, but rather Peter and Elle who have fought more battles than possibly imagined, and survived sufficient wars to know nothing is really over except for the search of neutral ground that lets you breathe when you’re drowning.