curiously_cora | (no subject)

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Coraline knew what she had to do. Coraline hid him out of sight and threw the key at the creature in front of her. Its head snapped up away from the little boy, button eyes narrowing at Coraline and long red claws curling into her palms. She smiled at Coraline, blood and gore covered her dress, as she stepped forward and away from Sawyer towards her. Coraline stepped back, she had to get her away from him. She wouldn't let her hurt anymore kids.

"Come on, what are you scared of? Me? I'm just a thing, a kid and you're scared of me! You're pathetic!" Coraline shouted at her. The buttons flashed and then she was moving, her body elongating and twisting into the monster she truly was. She was scared, she was terrified of her but she had to be brave. She had to save him. The Sawyer Other Mother creature moved quicker than Coraline remembered, her claws reaching out to grab her and Coraline let out a shriek, stumbling backwards onto a hallway floor that hadn't been there a moment ago.

Looking behind her confused, Coraline stared at the long hallway for a moment before remembering she needed to run. Scrambling backwards, Coraline rolled back and up onto her feet in one fluid motion and it was only then that she saw or rather didn't see. The Other Mother was gone, the boy was gone, the room was gone and only a long hallway remained in both directions. A long hallway with no windows, no doors and eerie flickering lights.

"I don't understand," Coraline said quietly, turning around on the spot as she tried to figure out what was going on. The place was silent except for the ticking that echoed down the corridor. Coraline felt an unease spread through her body at the noise. This place was wrong and she had to get the Other Mother and then she had to getout. Coraline ran down the corridor screaming. "Where are you? Come on! Come out and face me you coward!"

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Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.

Steady in the background, but jarring with her pulse, time was moving forward in quick, halting steps. It made Claire feel small, the steady beat which she had no control over, but held her captive to its effects. Shadows stretched further down the hall without any obvious source, and dust began to coat the lockers with a sleepy gray color as she walked, sneakers tapping against the linoleum. Anytime now, she'd be outside. Anytime now, she'd be stepping out the front entrance of Union Wells, her family's minivan parked not a few yards away with Lyle tapping his foot impatiently inside. But the further she walked, the more she realized that she'd lost count of the classrooms lining the hall, lost track of how long she'd been walking, because each second lost its value as more passed by. Breath growing short, Claire broke into a run, wheezing as her shoes thudded against the floor and tears ran down her cheeks.

"You can run, Claire," a deep voice sounded from above, echoing down the hall. Sending a terrified glance over her shoulder, Claire tripped and fell with a sickening snap, gasping as she grasped her ankle. Broken.

You can run, Claire.

Coraline stopped suddenly, looking around for the source of the voice. Looking up at the flickering lights Coraline began to walk backwards as she heard the sound of laughter, female laughter and that awful ticking sound. There were school lockers, endless school lockers that Coraline had lost count of and one girl on the floor of the hallway.

"Claire?" Coraline yelled though her voice barely carried down the long hall. Coraline ran towards her friend screaming her name though it sounded like a whisper "Claire!"

The white of bone peeked through muscle and sinew, blood pumping loud in her ears and never in time with the clock. Further down the hall, someone whispered, the words indistinct, and it only frightened Claire more as her face blanched from the pain. She didn't cry anymore, she didn't gag, simply bit down hard enough on her lower lip to draw blood and yanked suddenly at her leg until everything cracked back into place. Gasping for breath, Claire pulled herself back onto her feet, dizzy and forgetting which way she'd come from in the first place.

All of the lockers seemed to be stretching upward, toward a ceiling growing further and further from her.

"Peter," she whimpered under her breath, tears easily spilling over as she tried to decide which way to run. "Peter was here, where did Peter go?"

The more time she spent in this corridor, the less safe Coraline felt. It was cold and quiet, too quiet except for the ticking. That awful ticking. It was horrible. Coraline ran to Claire, skidding along the floor as she came to a halt.

"Claire are you o...kay," Coraline said, slowing down as she watched Claire push her broken bone back in. She wanted to tell her no, that she'd hurt herself but then she was fine. It was... healing. "Your... foot? Erm, Peter? I don't know. There was a house back that way but then it was gone and I don't know how to get back. There was- something bad there and I think it's coming Claire, we need to go."

All of a sudden, Claire was no longer alone, blinking up at the other girl and unable to recognize her for all of half a minute— before she then realized that it was Coraline, and that Claire hadn't been in school for months now, and that she'd been to this other island that everyone claimed was impossible to escape, an island that occasionally made the impossible happen. (Then again, what right did Claire have to talk of the impossible when all of her wounds always healed perfectly, without leaving a single scratch, within minutes?)

"I'm fine, my foot's fine," she breathed, hoping that Coraline wouldn't make too much of it. She didn't know how it was that the both of them had been transported back to Odessa, but if she were to guess, she'd say that it was Sylar. Somehow, he'd managed to escape alive, she thought. Somehow, he'd managed to find his way to the island and he was trying for Claire's power all over again, while also getting her friends involved. Not wanting to talk about her ability, Claire reached out for Coraline's wrist with a slightly frenzied expression. "But you're right, we need to get out of here now. Sylar's behind this. I don't know which way to go, but we need to run before he finds the both of us."

The ticks grew deeper in the background, slower, the sound almost seeming to move through water.

"That's- Claire, did you do that?" Coraline asked curiously with wide eyes. If Coraline wasn't so terrified, so scared deep to her bones she would have proclaimed loudly that Claire was the coolest person ever. But she didn't, she just half smiled at her friend. "It's okay, if you did."

Coraline looked down the corridor, moving ahead of Claire before stopping. She didn't notice the small poster of a boy blowing bubbles, she didn't notice his button eyes either.

"I think we should go this way. There's bad things the other way, she's that way." Coraline said, holding out her hand for Claire. "Who's Sylar?"

"I didn't— I didn't really do anything," Claire replied quickly, voice hushed and immediately tinged with guilt. Although she wanted nothing more than to be completely honest with those who had been so kind to her since her arrival, such as Coraline, Mary Jane, and Thalia, there were times when Claire felt that exposing them to the truth was only putting them in the way of more danger. It made her feel remarkably like her father, thinking along those lines, but maybe he had a point. No, Claire was sure that he did, because for all that their world had crumbled apart over the last year, Noah Bennet had still kept his family safe for so long.

Besides, she reasoned to herself, it wasn't entirely a lie. Claire herself hadn't actively done anything to make her body fix itself, and had she a choice in the matter, she would choose to suffer the same amount of pain that everyone else did. Either way, she quickly got to her feet and looped an arm around Coraline's waist, casting harried glances over her shoulder.

"And Sylar is— he's a really bad guy, and he wants to hurt me. He'll probably hurt you, too, if he gets the chance, so we need to run, and if he catches up to us, I need you to just run for yourself, okay?" Claire breathed, taking the both of them in the direction Coraline suggested. "Anyway, you were saying there are bad things the other way? What things?"

Coraline nodded, accepting the answer. However Claire had done that or whatever had done that to Claire, she didn't have to tell Coraline even if not knowing would kill the curious girl. It wasn't her secret and she knew what it felt like to have people stare at you because you were different.

"I won't let him. It's okay Claire, I've faced monsters, really bad peopel before. I won't let him hurt you," Coraline said moving in the direction she'd indicated. The hallway was long, the tick tock noise was unbearable and it was cold too in places like snow cold. "A... A monster. She looks like my mum but she's not. She kills children so she can absorb their energy to live off. And- and she tried to kill me but I got away."

"No, you— you don't need to protect me," Claire tried to explain, even as the both of them hurried down the hall, Claire reaching out with her hand until she found Coraline's. There was something comforting about having someone's hand to hold close, and it made even the burden of knowing that she would have to protect someone and throw all caution about what she was to the wind easier to bear. Gradually, however, the endless hall of lockers grew more intimidating. Prospects felt grim. "Sylar can't hurt me in the way that he can hurt other people, it's— it's hard to explain. But he can do things that you've never imagined. So you need to hide, and I can keep him busy, and—"

She breathed, looking over her shoulder, seeing shadows stretch along the linoleum floors.

"I won't let that thing pretending to be your mom hurt you. I—" Claire bit her lower lip, before deciding that there probably wasn't much use to hiding anymore. "I don't know why, I don't know how it started, but I can heal, Coraline. Whenever I get hurt, it heals right away. So you don't need to worry about me."

Coraline threaded her fingers through Claire's squeezing tight. It was so much easier being brave for a little boy than it was being brave for herself.

"What kind of things?" Coraline asks before she can stop herself. If she wasn't so scared she would have laughed, even in the face of danger she still had so many questions. "You can heal? Claire that's- you're a superhero."

Coraline looked at Claire in awe, her eyes widening as she glanced behind them. Coraline watched as the approaching shadows stretched out. "They shouldn't do that, should they? I mean, what's casting the shadows. There's nothing there." Coraline said wishing she hadn't asked that question almost immediately. She could hear laughter amongst the tick-tock, very feminine laughter.

Claire liked to think that she was a fairly confident girl. She knew that she had her strengths, and had plenty of backbone to spare— she wasn't afraid of standing up to those in higher positions than herself if there was a good cause, and definitely had never been afraid to champion the needs of those who could do with just a little bit of protecting. As far as high school kids went, what she'd gone through lately was more than enough to shoot her above her peers in some ways (but behind in others). But being that type of confident also meant knowing full well what sorts of weaknesses she had as well. Being realistic.

"I'm... not a superhero, Coraline," she breathed with a shake of her head, not forlorn or timid, just resigned. "A superhero saves people. A superhero isn't the one always getting saved. I'm just a cheerleader, a cheerleader named Claire."

But when Coraline looked back, Claire followed suit, eyes widening at the shadows stretching across the tile and laughter pealing, echoing down the hall. She'd never heard that laughter before, and it jarred against her nerves like the strings of a tired violin. "I don't know," Claire muttered as they continued to hurry along. "I don't know what that is, or— I've never heard a laugh like that before, either. Sylar doesn't laugh. Not like that."

"Of course you are, you have super powers that means you're a superhero. Even superheroes need saving sometimes, even superheroes are normal people." Coraline said as Claire turned towards the laughter.

Coraline knew that laughter. She knew that laughter and she knew the smile, the cruel smile that went with it. Coraline shuddered as her hands tightened around Claire's. If Claire could heal, wouldn't that make her the perfect daughter for the Other Mother always in pain and always healing feeding her and making her grow stronger.

"We have to go Claire, we have to run. We need to go now, she can't get you." Coraline said panicked as she glanced at the shadows and the tick tocking noise and the hallways that went on and on forever.

"No, I'm really not," Claire insisted, even though she stopped still in her tracks and tried to step in front of Coraline, not caring that she was shorter, because she was still better equipped in the end to deal with any sort of villain or monster, or so she believed. Even as she felt a chill run up her spine, cold as ice, she shook her head. "Powers are just powers, it's what you do with them that counts and I can't... do anything. I can't save people, I've tried, but people just end up dying because of me, that's all. If powers were all that people needed, then villains wouldn't exist."

A piano played off in the distance, keys out of tune and echoing unpleasantly through the hallway.

"Look, Coraline, you need to run," Claire insisted. "I can't save you, but I can stall whoever she is. She can't hurt me. I can't die, not unless— I just can't die for good, okay?"

"Well, you're doing something now. You're helping me, that makes you a hero Claire." Coraline said. Coraline wished she had a power but she didn't. She could see things clearly because the stone was magical, it could protect her too but Coraline wasn't special. Coraline was just really, really curious.

And it had gotten her into trouble.

"That's it you can't die and if you can't die then she won't need anyone else. She can kill all the kids she wants, she'll get stronger and bigger and hurt people because she can.. She feeds off energy, she drains them." Coraline said. She'd enough for Coraline to have felt it the drained Coraline, just a little bit but next day. She'd been tired and weak. "So, you need to run or we need to run but she can't get you. She can't."

Coraline was so focused on her, that she never thought about what the music was or the ticking.

Although she was tempted to shake her head, to point out that helping Coraline was something that any sane person should have offered to do, Claire kept quiet on the matter instead. Even if she wasn't a hero, the last thing either of them needed was to debate over the matter and waste precious time. She took a deep breath, watching as Coraline put together all of the facts and went on about how it wouldn't be right to let Claire be fed on by this creature, this false woman, for the rest of her neverending life.

And maybe that was true, Claire thought, but better one person captive than for the monster to take more and more.

"Look, if she gets me— or even if Sylar gets me, I stand a lot better of a chance of escaping than someone who can— they can't keep me forever. So run, Coraline, I'll take care of this."

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