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black_sluggard) wrote2013-08-09 05:45 pm
(Fic) Black Edelweiss—Epilogue
Title: Black Edelweiss
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 1,886
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Chapter Thirty // MAIN
Epilogue
Angela Petrelli read over the words on the page opened up in front of her with a grim smile. It was the third time she had done so that evening. She had read it six times the day before, and the day before that she had read it so many times that she had completely lost count. It was an old ritual, one she hadn't had cause to enact for a very long time. Yet, two days ago, Angela had seen Konrad Reichardt for the first time in more than ten years, and for the first time in more than ten years she had been forced to put it into practice once again.
She had long taken her journals out of hiding by then—for with Arthur long gone, and Adam thought dead there had no longer been any reason to keep them hidden. It was a simple leather-bound notebook—the latest in a set that easily numbered more than two dozen. The oldest dated back more than twenty-five years, and this one had first been opened nearly sixteen years ago, perhaps half a year before Konrad had left the Company.
The book held her memories—her memories of Konrad, specifically.
It was something she and Kaito had begun to do only months after Konrad had absorbed the Ghost's ability. Others who had known him had each developed their own methods. Konrad's lover, Haram, had kept his tape recordings, though in the end the measure had proven insufficient to keep their relationship intact. Charles had occasionally taken the time to write their encounters into his long-term memory with his own ability, and had enjoyed some small success that way. Ivan had clearly also had his tricks, but whatever they were he had never shared them.
Neither Angela nor Kaito had felt that their letters and their journals and their long phone calls were sufficient, either, but it was what they had. Konrad had easily become one of Angela's dearest friends, and yet she had spent fifteen of the years in which she had known him missing him terribly. Yet Angela was nothing if not schooled in the art of enduring, and as usual she had done her best to adapt. Over the years Angela had found that if she was very thorough in her notes, and if she reread them enough times and took the time to imagine them fully, that the details could fold themselves easily amongst her real memories. Some of them she could still recall so clearly and cleanly that she might otherwise not have known the difference.
When Konrad had appeared to her in her dream more than a week ago, Angela had brought several of her journals out once more, and by now she had read most of them over again. And when Konrad had called her two days ago from the police station, Angela had made sure to take the most recent journal with her.
After their brief reunion Angela had spent nearly an hour in her car, still parked outside the station, carefully and quickly writing down everything about it that she could remember. In his last few years at the Company, Konrad had spent time in secret developing his control of the Ghost's ability, and by the time he had left his memory could often last for weeks a time. Angela had known she likely had the time to spare, but it had been so very long since she had seen him that she hadn't wanted to risk the chance of any part of it fading away.
Because time—along with her own ambition—had cost her so many things. She had lost her parents and her sister. She had lost the husband she had fought so hard to love, and her firstborn whom she had fought so hard to protect. She had lost far too many friends for her to count. Deceit had destroyed her relationship with her youngest son, and her granddaughter would almost certainly never trust her. And because she had driven Nathan's wife away—for the sake of secrets that now lay bared to the world—Angela would never have the chance to see her grandsons grow up.
Then, suddenly, for the first time in so long, it had seemed as if she might finally get something back...
Hope was something Angela had not felt since Nathan was killed, not truly. As much as she still loved Peter, after his brother's death she had thought she might never hope again. And now, as she sat there in her study, reading over the lines she had written two days before, she found herself wishing bitterly that she had been right.
Earlier that morning Konrad had called her, and through the same quirk of his ability that applied to a photograph or a recording she knew that the words he had spoken to her over the phone would stay with her. As her very last memory of him, they would probably stay with her for the rest of her life...
"Angela," he had greeted her, very carefully.
She had been surprised to hear his voice over the line. She had also been hopeful—the name that had appeared on her phone's display had been unfamiliar, but it was obvious that he wasn't calling her from a prison cell.
"Kunz," she had said, softly once she had found the words to speak. "Have you decided to reconsider my offer?"
Though she had know from his caution—almost immediately—why he was really calling. He hadn't answered her right away.
"I'm afraid not," Konrad had said finally, regret audible in his voice. "I just...I needed the chance to say goodbye."
And even though she had known it was coming, tears had stung her eyes.
"Konrad, please, let me talk to Noah—or Peter if it's Noah's agenda that's troubling you. We can find another way. You don't have to do this."
Over the line, Angela had heard him take a deep breath, releasing it as a sigh.
"Yeah, I do, Angie," he had said, quietly and slowly. "I know it's hard for you to believe it, but this is my choice."
But it really wasn't that difficult for her to believe. For all the pain that she had seen over the years, Angela knew that her life of regrets hardly held a candle to his. Having found a way to divorce himself from the sorrow of his past, it did not surprise her at all that he would choose to do so again.
Given the chance, she half thought she might have done the same.
"I understand," she had said, the words tasting like defeat.
And she had understood that much. It was his choice, and as much as she might have wanted to break down and beg him to stay, she couldn't. And though he had never asked it of her, Angela had made a promise to herself that she would not interfere, not in this.
"And the key?" she had asked him finally.
She had heard his brief snort of laughter.
"I'm sure Detective Ryan will find a good use for it," Konrad had replied.
And she could tell from the sound of his voice that he was smiling, and in spite of everything she had found herself joining him. But the pleasant silence between them could not last, and in the end it had been Konrad who broke it.
"Je suis vraiment désolé," Konrad had told her. "J'aimerais—"
"Je sais," Angela had interrupted, sighing softly. She knew the inherent cruelty of wishes only too well. "Goodbye, Kunz."
"Goodbye, Angela. Take care."
Angela's heart had held such hope at the start of this affair—hope that there was some way for Konrad to survive the predicament he had found himself in. That hope now lay broken—though she supposed he still would survive it...in some capacity. Her dreams never lied, but very often they deceived. She had fallen prey to their ambiguity before, and it had cost her the life of her oldest son. Now, she knew she had to accept that the man she had seen in her dream of Noah's new organization may not have been Konrad, not in truth.
Though she still wasn't happy at the thought.
Angela closed the notebook with a frown. She opened the desk drawer beside her and laid it carefully inside. As she did so, the small black box beside it caught her eye. Her frown deepened.
That box contained Sylar's watch—his namesake. They had taken it from the monster's unconscious form just before Matt Parkman had tried to force the killer into the likeness of her son, and Nathan's death had left her feeling so numb that it had been several hours before she had even realized she still had it. And she probably should not have kept it, but her reasons for doing so had nothing to do with the man who had murdered her son...
Konrad had once owned a very similar watch, long ago. It had belonged to his father, he had once said. Knowing how very little remained of his life before the war, it must have meant a very great deal to him. But only a few years after his tragic acquisition of the Ghost's ability, Angela had noticed it missing from his wrist. She had asked him what happened to it—hoping, as she did, that she had not asked once already and forgotten. When he told her that he had lost it, Konrad had seemed absolutely heartbroken, his eyes distant and impossibly sad—or he must have, for she had written this impression down in great detail in her records.
Upon seeing Sylar's watch Angela had remembered, and remembering she had decided to keep it. Just in case. In case Konrad ever resurfaced. She had thought that if he did, one day she could have it repaired and give it to him as a gift. Though she had been well aware that it would never properly replace the one given to him by his father—it wasn't the same watch, whatever it looked like, and it never would be—she had thought perhaps that owning it would make it easier to remember the one he had lost.
Back then, Angela's grief in the wake of Nathan's death had left her clinging desperately to exactly that sort of foolish pretense.
Angela closed the desk drawer without touching the box inside, but it remained in her thoughts nonetheless. That watch had been in her dream as well—repaired, in her visions, as she had so far only imagined. She had been resistant to the possibility that its state could possibly reflect on Sylar himself—though it had been his, once, and she had heard the same sounds of ticking mechanisms that had always seemed to precede the killer's appearances when he saw fit to haunt her dreams. She had resisted the idea because she hadn't wanted to believe that Peter could possibly be right—Sylar was a monster, a murderer, a damaged, soulless thing that could not be fixed, and no amount of effort on her son's part would ever change that.
And—to paraphrase Freud—sometimes a watch was just a watch. Just because Konrad wasn't there to receive it didn't mean it couldn't still be repaired...
After all, Angela thought to herself with a very faint smile, it couldn't hurt for her to meet this Detective Ryan for herself.
PREV: Chapter Thirty
"Je suis vraiment désolé." - "I'm truly sorry."
"J'aimerais—" - "I wish—"
End of Volume One: Black Edelweiss
Next, Volume Two: Rosemary
Author's Note: That's the end of part one. Part two is...still kind of in progress. It's not quite as fully formed as this story was when I first began posting it, so I don't know how soon that one will be. In the mean time it feels good to get this full part finished. And I can finally remove the WIP tags and stop worrying about running out of chapters on FF.net and AO3.