Heroes -- Cutting Room Floor
Dec. 6th, 2006 06:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anythingbutgreyMy first Heroes fanfiction. Score.
Title: Cutting Room Floor
Rating: PG-13 for some curse words
Pairing: Zach/Claire
Spoilers: Through 1.11
Distribution: Ask first.
A/N: Title inspired by Rent lyrics: "Why is our entire year strewn on the cutting room floor of memory?" This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine and feel free to point them out so I can fix them.
Summary: I'm going to count backwards and when I get to zero you will wake up.
5.
She comes to him with a proposal. They haven't spoken since sixth grade when he thinks he might have helped her carry a big box of something and she smiled at him. Now, she comes to him with a proposal and she looks about as confused about it as he does.
"Why are you asking me to do this?" he asks.
She stomps out a laugh. "Because," she says, "you're such a loser that no one would believe you even if you did say something."
He's used to this by now, and doesn't flinch. "But don't you have a thousand other pep squad pals who can do this just as well?"
"Look," she says, turning, "if you don't want to help me --"
"No," he says. "I'll help."
She smiles and something he can't put his finger on shifts inside of him. "Good."
Every time she throws herself off a building he's terrified she was wrong, or that her indestructibility was only temporary or something would just not work and she'd be a bundle of dead Claire and he'd just be frozen. Every time she's okay, and every time he feels his heart stop like he's afraid hers might.
"Why me?" he asks the day of the fire, but before the fire.
"I don't know," she shrugs. "Why me?"
4.
She tells him, “I’ve been crying and I don’t know how to stop.”
He wants to smash Brody’s face in with a baseball bat. No. He wants to slowly skin Brody alive and make him eat cow shit at the same time.
No, no. Better idea –
“Zach? Are you there?” She sounds weak and tired and oh, so tired, and he thought being dead wouldn’t make her so tired because it’s eternal rest, isn’t it and God – she was dead he wants to kill Brody but he can’t do that but he could, Brody’s still in the hospital, he’s oh so defenseless, all it would take was a pillow, it would be so easy, but Claire wouldn’t stand for it she’s too good dead Claire, oh, God, dead Claire, so cold I think I’m going to be sick.
“That bastard,” he lets out, his voice catching on something. “That bastard. You should have called me earlier, Claire, you should have told me.”
“So you could have what?” she says and she’s angry and he doesn’t know why she doesn’t understand that he just wants to protect her, but she doesn’t need protecting even though she was dead. “What are you going to do, Zach? What could you do to protect me?”
“You were dead, Claire.” He thought saying it would make it make sense, help him deal with it, make him less angry but it doesn’t. Saying it feels like an out of body experience and his voice sounds emptier than it should.
“Don’t say that.”
“But you were!” He can’t stop yelling, he’s yelling, she doesn’t need to be yelled at, idiot, “You were dead and that asshole would have killed you and it’s only by some miracle that you’re alive and, Jesus Christ, Claire, I –“ He wants to say, I almost lost you, I need to hold you, I need to touch you and make sure you’re okay, I need to see you to believe you, I think I’m falling in love with you and that scares me too, but he doesn’t.
“It wasn’t a miracle, Zach,” she says, annoyed, and that actually brings him comfort, maybe she’ll be okay. “It was just my freak self doing its thing. I’m fine. No big deal.”
“It’s a definite deal, Claire.” He doesn’t want to press it because all that really matters is that it’s not a big deal to her so that she’ll be okay, but he knows she’s just lying, she was dead and it was scary and she knows what it’s like there and he wants to ask but he can’t because people aren’t supposed to come back from the dead just like Claire was never supposed to be dead because Claire can’t die because if she does he doesn’t know what to do and why does he need her so much?
“It’s done,” she says. “He doesn’t even remember anything. The doctors said it’s head trauma.”
“Will he recover?” he asks, thinking that maybe when he remembers Brody will just kill himself, which would make everyone’s lives a lot easier.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t believe I ever felt anything for him,” she says and it’s quiet too quiet she didn’t mean to say that maybe it’s hard to control your speech after you come back from the dead.
“Well, I can’t either,” he says and tries to make a joke out of it because jokes make people feel better and he wants her to feel better be better be whole again.
She laughs just a little and it’s probably for his benefit but it’s honestly the most amazing sound he’s ever heard because he almost never heard her laugh again because Brody killed Claire and maybe one day that will start making sense. “You’re caring too much, Zach,” she says and her voice sounds stronger now. "It's not a big deal. I'm fine."
"No, you're not." Period. The end. Dead. She's not okay, neither of them are okay and he wishes Claire were with him so he could touch her or see her or smell her or touch her or touch her and never stop.
3.
He thinks Homecoming is an absurd tradition, which obviously means she would love it. They do that, counter-balance each other. It's important to her, so he makes it happen. He tells himself it isn't any large act, but every time he convinces someone to vote for her for Homecoming Queen he sees her face smiling and smiling. When she wins he's almost hesitant to tell her what he's done for her -- after all, they say the best deed is that which is done with no prospect of reward. But he realizes this is a stupid idea, so he tells her. He's saying things he shouldn't be saying and implying things he shouldn't be implying and Jesus, Zach, why don't you just tell her you love her after you tell her that you did this because it was important to her, how more obvious can you get, idiot. He hands her Chandra Suresh's book and he wishes he could frame the look on her face and keep it forever. It throws him, how suddenly her face shifts and the way she's looking at him like she could see right inside of him and rip him apart with a word. Or maybe he could tear her apart, maybe that's what it is. The power struggles they exhibit confuse him -- he's not supposed to have power over a girl who spends the majority of her life in a cheerleading outfit and her face is hinting that he might.
When Jackie walks over he thinks he might kill her just for ruining his few minutes of open Claire-Zach flirtation but then it gets worse, it gets much worse because what guy isn't always afraid someone's going to call him gay in high school? For an instant he doesn't know what to do because what if Claire believes her? He hears a thud and Jackie's on the floor and Claire's fist is red, but only for a second. He wishes he knew how he and Claire got to this point.
That night, he's in her room which is intimidating enough because he is in Claire Bennet's room and WHO THE HELL ARE WE AGAIN? Her room smells of lillies. She asks him to the dance and he freezes. It's too much, his head spins, his throat dries up, and he can't be Claire's date because that would change everything, and he thinks of his hand on the small of her back, and dancing with her, and her body pressed against him and smelling of lillies, and he knows that he couldn't go back from that, but she could. She could wake up the day after and decide, well, that was fun, but being popular was far more interesting. He'd be left standing with a video camera and too many memories and what would it matter? He imagines running to her, tapes in hand, screaming Look, look see? We were a team, you and I, can't you see? Don't you remember us, Claire? And then in true bitchy Claire fashion she would say the old cliche, There is no us, Zach. God, you're such a freak. They both throw the word "freak" around. They think it will comfort them, make them okay to be freaks in a world of the freakish. But everyone's denying it, even him, even when he tells her he's accepted himself, he likes himself, I like who you are, I just wish you liked who you are.
He tells her there are a million reasons why he can't go to the dance with her, but there's really only one. He loves her and he wants it to stop because he knows it will end horribly. But he can't stop. He's been past stopping for a long, long time.
2.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for her, Zach,” her father says. “I do. But you’re too much of a liability. Even she’s too much of a liability.”
“What are you going to do to me?” he shakes. He’s lying on a table and it’s too cold and there’s some guy standing in a corner not talking and just being creepy and her father is obviously some cold-hearted scientist doing experiments on people like Claire, but Zach isn’t like Claire, so he’s obviously just going to die for knowing too much, and this is straight out of a bad old movie, when did his life become a film they show on television at 3 in the morning?
“I’m not going to hurt you,” her father says, trying to soothe him, but that’s impossible and all he can think is I can’t leave Claire with him, Claire Claire ClaireClaireClaire.
“You’re going to hurt her instead,” he realizes.
“I would never hurt Claire, Zach. I’m doing this to help her.”
“How is making her feel even more alone going to help her? God,” he says, but God isn’t listening, “you really don’t get it.”
Her father’s voice is smooth. “I’m protecting her.”
Zach stops, only for a second. “And what do you think I’m doing?”
Her father sighs. “Don’t worry, Zach. You won’t even remember. Neither will she. You’ll both live separate lives and it’ll be okay, you’ll see.”
He wants to say: But I love her, but I don’t know how to live without her, but she keeps me going in a world of self-denying freaks, but I need her, but she needs me, but we need each other, everyone needs someone and Claire doesn’t need or want you, you stupid fucking son of a bitch, but he doesn’t. He says, “I hate you.”
Her father says, “I know.”
When he feels the memories getting sucked out of him he yells and yells and doesn’t even realize he’s screaming her name.
1.
Two weeks after he loses an afternoon and she calls him and he doesn’t understand, he goes to her. Her window is open. He gets a ladder and climbs up. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He knows he’s never been in her room, but it smells like lilies and he doesn’t feel like he shouldn’t be there.
“Claire?” he asks. She’s crying and he doesn’t like it. He has learned that people who are crying make other people feel very uncomfortable.
“Zach?” she stutters, wiping her face. “What are you doing here?”
He pauses. “People keep asking me why I’m not hanging out with you,” he concedes. “And then I try to tell them that I haven’t hung out with you ever and they look at me like I’ve grown an extra three heads, and they’re all blue.”
“Yeah,” she says and that’s it.
“Do you know what they’re talking about?” He knows she does, but he doesn’t know why he knows that.
“Yeah,” she says, quieter than he knew he could hear.
“Why don’t I know what they’re talking about?” He’s dreading her answer. In his head someone that sounds like him but isn’t him yells, Your lost afternoon, idiot. People don’t just lose time like that. Idiot.
“My father?” It’s an answer but a question and he doesn’t know why.
“We were friends?” he says, sitting on her windowsill.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice catching on something. “We were. I needed your help with something at first, but then it was –“ She stops, he watches, he waits for her to keep going, for some reason he needs for her to keep going and he wishes she would never stop talking. Her lips must taste like bubble gum, he thinks, then stops himself because where did that come from? He hasn’t talked to Claire in years. He has, actually, but he doesn’t remember. What the hell is going on here?
“Then it was what?" he presses.
“More.”
feedback = bff.
Title: Cutting Room Floor
Rating: PG-13 for some curse words
Pairing: Zach/Claire
Spoilers: Through 1.11
Distribution: Ask first.
A/N: Title inspired by Rent lyrics: "Why is our entire year strewn on the cutting room floor of memory?" This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine and feel free to point them out so I can fix them.
Summary: I'm going to count backwards and when I get to zero you will wake up.
5.
She comes to him with a proposal. They haven't spoken since sixth grade when he thinks he might have helped her carry a big box of something and she smiled at him. Now, she comes to him with a proposal and she looks about as confused about it as he does.
"Why are you asking me to do this?" he asks.
She stomps out a laugh. "Because," she says, "you're such a loser that no one would believe you even if you did say something."
He's used to this by now, and doesn't flinch. "But don't you have a thousand other pep squad pals who can do this just as well?"
"Look," she says, turning, "if you don't want to help me --"
"No," he says. "I'll help."
She smiles and something he can't put his finger on shifts inside of him. "Good."
Every time she throws herself off a building he's terrified she was wrong, or that her indestructibility was only temporary or something would just not work and she'd be a bundle of dead Claire and he'd just be frozen. Every time she's okay, and every time he feels his heart stop like he's afraid hers might.
"Why me?" he asks the day of the fire, but before the fire.
"I don't know," she shrugs. "Why me?"
4.
She tells him, “I’ve been crying and I don’t know how to stop.”
He wants to smash Brody’s face in with a baseball bat. No. He wants to slowly skin Brody alive and make him eat cow shit at the same time.
No, no. Better idea –
“Zach? Are you there?” She sounds weak and tired and oh, so tired, and he thought being dead wouldn’t make her so tired because it’s eternal rest, isn’t it and God – she was dead he wants to kill Brody but he can’t do that but he could, Brody’s still in the hospital, he’s oh so defenseless, all it would take was a pillow, it would be so easy, but Claire wouldn’t stand for it she’s too good dead Claire, oh, God, dead Claire, so cold I think I’m going to be sick.
“That bastard,” he lets out, his voice catching on something. “That bastard. You should have called me earlier, Claire, you should have told me.”
“So you could have what?” she says and she’s angry and he doesn’t know why she doesn’t understand that he just wants to protect her, but she doesn’t need protecting even though she was dead. “What are you going to do, Zach? What could you do to protect me?”
“You were dead, Claire.” He thought saying it would make it make sense, help him deal with it, make him less angry but it doesn’t. Saying it feels like an out of body experience and his voice sounds emptier than it should.
“Don’t say that.”
“But you were!” He can’t stop yelling, he’s yelling, she doesn’t need to be yelled at, idiot, “You were dead and that asshole would have killed you and it’s only by some miracle that you’re alive and, Jesus Christ, Claire, I –“ He wants to say, I almost lost you, I need to hold you, I need to touch you and make sure you’re okay, I need to see you to believe you, I think I’m falling in love with you and that scares me too, but he doesn’t.
“It wasn’t a miracle, Zach,” she says, annoyed, and that actually brings him comfort, maybe she’ll be okay. “It was just my freak self doing its thing. I’m fine. No big deal.”
“It’s a definite deal, Claire.” He doesn’t want to press it because all that really matters is that it’s not a big deal to her so that she’ll be okay, but he knows she’s just lying, she was dead and it was scary and she knows what it’s like there and he wants to ask but he can’t because people aren’t supposed to come back from the dead just like Claire was never supposed to be dead because Claire can’t die because if she does he doesn’t know what to do and why does he need her so much?
“It’s done,” she says. “He doesn’t even remember anything. The doctors said it’s head trauma.”
“Will he recover?” he asks, thinking that maybe when he remembers Brody will just kill himself, which would make everyone’s lives a lot easier.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t believe I ever felt anything for him,” she says and it’s quiet too quiet she didn’t mean to say that maybe it’s hard to control your speech after you come back from the dead.
“Well, I can’t either,” he says and tries to make a joke out of it because jokes make people feel better and he wants her to feel better be better be whole again.
She laughs just a little and it’s probably for his benefit but it’s honestly the most amazing sound he’s ever heard because he almost never heard her laugh again because Brody killed Claire and maybe one day that will start making sense. “You’re caring too much, Zach,” she says and her voice sounds stronger now. "It's not a big deal. I'm fine."
"No, you're not." Period. The end. Dead. She's not okay, neither of them are okay and he wishes Claire were with him so he could touch her or see her or smell her or touch her or touch her and never stop.
3.
He thinks Homecoming is an absurd tradition, which obviously means she would love it. They do that, counter-balance each other. It's important to her, so he makes it happen. He tells himself it isn't any large act, but every time he convinces someone to vote for her for Homecoming Queen he sees her face smiling and smiling. When she wins he's almost hesitant to tell her what he's done for her -- after all, they say the best deed is that which is done with no prospect of reward. But he realizes this is a stupid idea, so he tells her. He's saying things he shouldn't be saying and implying things he shouldn't be implying and Jesus, Zach, why don't you just tell her you love her after you tell her that you did this because it was important to her, how more obvious can you get, idiot. He hands her Chandra Suresh's book and he wishes he could frame the look on her face and keep it forever. It throws him, how suddenly her face shifts and the way she's looking at him like she could see right inside of him and rip him apart with a word. Or maybe he could tear her apart, maybe that's what it is. The power struggles they exhibit confuse him -- he's not supposed to have power over a girl who spends the majority of her life in a cheerleading outfit and her face is hinting that he might.
When Jackie walks over he thinks he might kill her just for ruining his few minutes of open Claire-Zach flirtation but then it gets worse, it gets much worse because what guy isn't always afraid someone's going to call him gay in high school? For an instant he doesn't know what to do because what if Claire believes her? He hears a thud and Jackie's on the floor and Claire's fist is red, but only for a second. He wishes he knew how he and Claire got to this point.
That night, he's in her room which is intimidating enough because he is in Claire Bennet's room and WHO THE HELL ARE WE AGAIN? Her room smells of lillies. She asks him to the dance and he freezes. It's too much, his head spins, his throat dries up, and he can't be Claire's date because that would change everything, and he thinks of his hand on the small of her back, and dancing with her, and her body pressed against him and smelling of lillies, and he knows that he couldn't go back from that, but she could. She could wake up the day after and decide, well, that was fun, but being popular was far more interesting. He'd be left standing with a video camera and too many memories and what would it matter? He imagines running to her, tapes in hand, screaming Look, look see? We were a team, you and I, can't you see? Don't you remember us, Claire? And then in true bitchy Claire fashion she would say the old cliche, There is no us, Zach. God, you're such a freak. They both throw the word "freak" around. They think it will comfort them, make them okay to be freaks in a world of the freakish. But everyone's denying it, even him, even when he tells her he's accepted himself, he likes himself, I like who you are, I just wish you liked who you are.
He tells her there are a million reasons why he can't go to the dance with her, but there's really only one. He loves her and he wants it to stop because he knows it will end horribly. But he can't stop. He's been past stopping for a long, long time.
2.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for her, Zach,” her father says. “I do. But you’re too much of a liability. Even she’s too much of a liability.”
“What are you going to do to me?” he shakes. He’s lying on a table and it’s too cold and there’s some guy standing in a corner not talking and just being creepy and her father is obviously some cold-hearted scientist doing experiments on people like Claire, but Zach isn’t like Claire, so he’s obviously just going to die for knowing too much, and this is straight out of a bad old movie, when did his life become a film they show on television at 3 in the morning?
“I’m not going to hurt you,” her father says, trying to soothe him, but that’s impossible and all he can think is I can’t leave Claire with him, Claire Claire ClaireClaireClaire.
“You’re going to hurt her instead,” he realizes.
“I would never hurt Claire, Zach. I’m doing this to help her.”
“How is making her feel even more alone going to help her? God,” he says, but God isn’t listening, “you really don’t get it.”
Her father’s voice is smooth. “I’m protecting her.”
Zach stops, only for a second. “And what do you think I’m doing?”
Her father sighs. “Don’t worry, Zach. You won’t even remember. Neither will she. You’ll both live separate lives and it’ll be okay, you’ll see.”
He wants to say: But I love her, but I don’t know how to live without her, but she keeps me going in a world of self-denying freaks, but I need her, but she needs me, but we need each other, everyone needs someone and Claire doesn’t need or want you, you stupid fucking son of a bitch, but he doesn’t. He says, “I hate you.”
Her father says, “I know.”
When he feels the memories getting sucked out of him he yells and yells and doesn’t even realize he’s screaming her name.
1.
Two weeks after he loses an afternoon and she calls him and he doesn’t understand, he goes to her. Her window is open. He gets a ladder and climbs up. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. He knows he’s never been in her room, but it smells like lilies and he doesn’t feel like he shouldn’t be there.
“Claire?” he asks. She’s crying and he doesn’t like it. He has learned that people who are crying make other people feel very uncomfortable.
“Zach?” she stutters, wiping her face. “What are you doing here?”
He pauses. “People keep asking me why I’m not hanging out with you,” he concedes. “And then I try to tell them that I haven’t hung out with you ever and they look at me like I’ve grown an extra three heads, and they’re all blue.”
“Yeah,” she says and that’s it.
“Do you know what they’re talking about?” He knows she does, but he doesn’t know why he knows that.
“Yeah,” she says, quieter than he knew he could hear.
“Why don’t I know what they’re talking about?” He’s dreading her answer. In his head someone that sounds like him but isn’t him yells, Your lost afternoon, idiot. People don’t just lose time like that. Idiot.
“My father?” It’s an answer but a question and he doesn’t know why.
“We were friends?” he says, sitting on her windowsill.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice catching on something. “We were. I needed your help with something at first, but then it was –“ She stops, he watches, he waits for her to keep going, for some reason he needs for her to keep going and he wishes she would never stop talking. Her lips must taste like bubble gum, he thinks, then stops himself because where did that come from? He hasn’t talked to Claire in years. He has, actually, but he doesn’t remember. What the hell is going on here?
“Then it was what?" he presses.
“More.”
feedback = bff.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-06 11:47 pm (UTC)This was amazing and if you don't write more, well I know you will so I won't even think that ;) You better! ♥
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 12:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:17 am (UTC)in section 2 some cold-hearted scientist during experiments... should be "doing". and her father says, trying to sooth him... should be "soothe".
those are the little mistakes i found. and i pretty much love this. i love the way you use these run-on kind of stream-of-conscious sentences, especially in the third section (which i think is my favorite). you've got zack down exactly how i picture him thinking. and him in her room (both times) was just perfect and write more of this, okay?
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 01:51 am (UTC)Claire/Zach is adorable, and I feel like you've really gotten into Zach's head. The run-on sentences worked so well in this piece, fitting perfectly. Nice job. I can't wait to see more from you! :)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 02:26 am (UTC)heh and I ♥ the fact that you addressed he can't totally forget when other things will still remind him he's missing a section of his life :)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 03:24 am (UTC)There are a serious shortage of good Zach/Claire fics out there, so I really hope you write more soon.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-08 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-08 02:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-08 03:05 am (UTC)ILU.
I love THIS! I was all sad this weekend because there didn't seem to be any Heroes fic about them, and now there IS and you wrote it and it's GOOD.
GLEE.
(you should write more fic about them! Yes!)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-09 09:24 pm (UTC)The ending was perfect. I love it.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-10 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-05 04:05 am (UTC)So I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask for a favor--
PLEASE, PLEASE write some more Zach/Claire. It won't save the cheerleader or the world, but it just might save my sanity.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 05:39 am (UTC)Re: distribution, is it okay if I rec this? I think many more people should get to hear about this fic. :D
no subject
Date: 2007-04-30 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-12 03:18 pm (UTC)"Then it was what?" he presses.
"More."
Guh. I just melted into a puddle of goo.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-31 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-31 02:06 pm (UTC)Aha!
Date: 2011-07-15 10:19 am (UTC)