Heroes: The Butterfly Effect

By TrinityVixen

Heroes derives this episode title from chaos theory. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Volume Three, Chapter Two – “The Butterfly Effect”

Mrs. Petrelli walks through chaos. She turns corners in an endless maze of hallways and counts the dead. Hiro, run through with his own sword, left in a doorway. Matt Parkman, throat slashed, dropped into a computer chair. Peter, her own dear Peter, an unhealed gash across his chest, thrown into a door and stuck there. Granddaughter Claire struggling with a man who feeds on her fear; one blink later, he’s taken off her head. Mr. Bennet staring sightlessly up from the ground.

Mama Petrelli turns on her heels as the four responsible for the carnage present themselves for inspection. Adam Monroe stands next to Tracy Strauss (or Niki/Jessica Saunders). With their pale coloring and matching, humorless grimaces, they look like demented twins (and isn’t that funny). Parkman Sr. and the man we will come to know as Knox stand a little ways away. None of them smile or enjoy the havoc they’ve created, but they’re not apologizing for it either.

Sylar comes up behind her and places his hands on her shoulders. Is he protecting her? Introducing her? The others seem receptive. No one of them has organized better destruction than this woman, after all. She would be worthy of them. Perhaps that is what scares her most, scares her into waking from the dream.

(Her dream sequence must have been so much fun to shoot. Everyone loves a good death scene, and some of our heroes met fairly gruesome ends.)

Mama P barges into her son’s apartment to scold his future replacement and stops dead. Future!Peter is working out the web of causality using Future!Hiro’s method of different colored strings pinned to maps, newspaper clippings and pictures. He knots nexuses of cascading events to single moments in time. He promises he can work it out.

Mama P is not having any of it. “You never were as smart as you thought you were. I see a few more years on this planet hasn’t changed that. You don’t screw with time!” Why? Because if a butterfly flaps its wings, the wind, the world moves differently. Future!Peter is a lot bigger than a butterfly, and he’s already creating tornadoes. Future!Peter brushes her off, snidely informing her he only hopes he doesn’t destroy anyone he knows.

Too late, his darling mother informs him. He’s done too much already just by telling Claire not to do anything. “She listened to you. Ending up being where she wasn’t supposed to be and had a pretty bad day because of it.” Mama Petrelli could win trophies for understatement. Also, she should be in charge of recapping this series. She invites him to discover for himself the mess he’s made.

That mess is still in California, cleaning up broken glass. (Broken—get it? Subtlety this is not.) Mrs. Bennet tries to draw her daughter out with the usual offerings: unconditional support, love, and outrage on Claire’s behalf. She wants to know what happened (but she doesn’t) so they can fix it. It has to be on Claire’s time, but she keeps pressing for details she says she doesn’t need. Claire can only reassure her mother so far—no, that didn’t happen, that wasn’t what Sylar was after.

Would it have been easier to resolve Claire and her mother’s feelings if “that” had happened? If Sylar had raped her, the violation (which was already just as bad) would have had an unfortunate but common human analogue they could both understand. Instead, they clean up glass. A shard digs into Claire’s hand; she feels nothing, no pain. Mrs. Bennet asks if that isn’t how this works. No, it’s not. It’s really, really not. Rape breaks things. What Sylar did he would consider fixing things. He fixed Claire, but because he is broken, his approximation of what is “fixed” is just broken in another guise.

Claire, broken: “I don’t feel anything. It didn’t hurt. There’s no pain. I heal, but I always feel everything. That pain…I’m always so grateful for because it’s the only time I know I’m still human.” And now she thinks that pain is gone.

So Claire goes back to the video tape. She sets up a camera at a train yard to do some v-blogging. (I believe the cool kids call it “vlogging.”) The last time she taped herself dying, she had a witness; the video was a conversation. This time, it’s a confession. “If you can’t feel anything, do you still have a soul?” She thinks the pain is gone. Like her bio-dad, she’s gone spiritual now that the physical cannot measure her worth for her. Yes, Claire, you’re still human; you still have a soul. You knew enough to value pain, and you’re in pain for not being able to hurt. But you do hurt, ergo you are human. (In his grief over killing his mother, Sylar was human. Once.)

Future!Peter interrupts her attempted splattering. He’s outraged—he’s crossed time to protect lives, what is she doing? “What does it look like? Trying to get hit by a train!” Heh, indeed. Future!Peter redirects, goes for the soft approach, consolation instead of confrontation. He fails because he is too impatient to empathize; he only wants to know how this is his failure. Future!Peter is on Peter Time. He wants to be guilty, so he can be a martyr (because a martyr is still a savior). Sylar is invulnerable now, and Claire is broken. But woe is Peter, whose fault everything is. Dude, it’s your fault! No one is supposed to feel bad for you. Just stop doing stupid s***!

Future!Peter’s neediness overpowers Claire’s own. She rescues him—no, no, it was her fault. Dumb, useless girl and her dumb, useless powers that didn’t stop Sylar. She’s been a victim all of her life. Maybe that could change, though, if Future!Peter stopped flagellating himself and taught her how to use her powers to better defend herself? No! No! He must suffer in responsibility alone! Alone! He vanishes, still moaning about how he can’t help her lest he make things worse. Claire considers how the one man who ever treated her like she had a brain was the one who concerned himself only with her brain.

Speak of the devil, and the Devil shall appear and mess your face up. Two Company agents try to take Sylar down and get killed. The Alchemist and his daughter watch the video of the take-down. (I really thought the video was a joke. Sylar looked more like he was doing the Macarena than using telekinesis.) The Alchemist, contrary to what Future!Peter thinks, is pretty sure that everything is actually Elle’s fault. She stammers, opting to defend rather than martyr herself, and promises she can do better. She’ll capture Sylar all by herself. With one hand tied behind her back!

Daddy isn’t impressed. “Why should I keep putting you into a position where you’re just going to be letting me or yourself down again? That’s not fair to either of us, is it?” Elle storms off for a good cry.

Tracy Strauss and Governor Malden go point/counter-point on who they should get to fill New York State’s vacant US Senate seat. Tracy is pushing Nathan Petrelli, Malden is worried that he’s a little too hot from all the religiosity noise. He’s right: Nathan is political kryptonite. No one would touch him. (Except John McCain. He’d make Satan himself his running mate if he thought it would win votes.)

Malden revisits Nathan’s disastrous candidacy: he got into Congress, lasted all of a month and then gave it up for “personal reasons.” Malden thinks the press will eat him and Petrelli both for breakfast. He’s not wrong. Niki points out that Nathan’s first electoral victory was a landslide in jaded old New York City; his newfound religious conviction is winning people over; and he has undeniable charisma. She’s not wrong. Tracy is damned determined and persuasive because that’s what the governor pays her for. He gives her the go ahead to get Nathan Petrelli on board.

En route to Texas, Tracy is ambushed by…THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO!? (Er, pardon my enthusiasm.) It’s William Katt, you see, and he’s supposed to be a reporter. Tracy’s got the “No comment” thing down to an art, even when he shifts from her assumption—that he wants to talk about the senate seat—to his purpose: her. “Las Vegas stripper becomes K Street Ice Queen. Big story.” He has pictures from Niki’s webpage. She, rightly, assumes that any kid could do that with five minutes and a laptop. (Her kid could.) The Greatest American Hero says he’s running with the story with or without her input. (He’s never heard of “libel”?) Tracy smiles through a threat to kill him if he does and takes off for Texas.

Nathan is audibly praying for absolution but not so loud that it’s not still private when Tracy walks into his hospital room. He turns to see a woman he thinks is Niki. “Speaking of sin…” he deadpans. (Awesome.) Tracy is used to men leering, no doubt, and just launches into her sales pitch. Nathan is horribly confused by what he assumes is yet another con. Linderman has been around and now Niki shows up? Seems familiar. He tells Niki to level with him because he’s not falling for it this time.

Two men are questioning her identity, and it’s really starting to grate on Tracy’s nerves. Does Nathan think he knows her? Nathan: “The word ‘biblically’ comes to mind.” Tracy bounces, leaving her card and her offer with Nathan while he works out his recognition problems on his own. As she walks out, Linderman nods to her, but she doesn’t respond. Linderman knows Tracy isn’t Niki and that everything is as she says, not as Nathan thinks it is. Linderman dangles the thread of destiny. It is not an accident that someone eerily like Niki is pulling him back into politics. He says this is God’s plan; Nathan says he’s full of it.

Also full of it: Future!Peter. He drops in to see Nathan, who tells him about the senate seat offer. Future!Peter’s response is a less sincere take on “Wow, how nice for you.” Nathan’s seriously conflicted (because that’s what Nathan lives for) about having that kind of power. Last time people trusted him to lead, he almost let Manhattan (and his brother) explode. With great power, and all that jazz.

Future!Peter: “Pshaw, you wouldn’t do that. But let’s talk about me some more.” He loses the disguise and starts confessing like a dying whore. Yes, he shot Nathan, but it was Nathan’s fault, see, because he was going to tell the world about supers, and that dooms the future. Nathan’s like, “I respond to your crazy…how?” He swears he’s not about to tell people now, but that’s not what Peter wants. Future!Peter wants him to forgive the shooting—Nathan’s still alive, so no harm, no foul, right? Nathan wants to know, while they’re on the subject, if the future is in peril, which is the best way to save it? By taking the senate seat or by giving it up? Future!Peter has no answers because things are different, but Nathan definitely needs to make the right choices. No pressure!

Elle attempts to impress Daddy with her deductive reasoning: Sylar’s coming to the Company to snack on the supers in custody. She’s right, but it’s already too late because the Alchemist has already been de-brained. Give Elle credit, she goes straight to Noah Bennet, tosses him a gun, gives him the sit-rep and stands back so he can kick ass. Present!Peter, in another cell, tries to get Elle’s attention, but she’s too focused on getting to Bennet for help. He tortured her once for information, and he’s still a better daddy than her own.

She is still too late. Sylar is already here, easily knocking Elle aside and calmly waiting for Mr. Bennet to come out so he can say hello. Mr. Bennet rudely returns the greeting with a volley of bullets. Sylar doesn’t bother to stop them with telekinesis; he wants to make an impression. Bennet gapes as the bullets pop out of Sylar’s body. Sylar’s death mask reforms into a smile. “Ouch.” He has completely healed, and Mr. Bennet is completely boned. And by the way: “I got that from your Claire.” Sylar has made himself a member of many families, more than he even knows.

Sylar swats at Bennet and returns to Elle. Many families, he tells her. “Look what your daddy used to be able to do.” He changes Bennet’s gun into gold, another parlor-trick power he only collected to get at one better, like using Zane Taylor to get at Mohinder’s list: go through the Alchemist, get to Elle. Except her powers are unstable, and she electrocutes everything in the immediate area when Sylar starts cutting. Sylar is blown back, taking the full brunt of the blast.

The generators go down; Elle fades in and out of consciousness. In one moment, Present!Peter, in the body of an inmate named Jesse, is checking to see if she’s all right. He has to escape and leave her behind. (He’d never be able to convince anyone that he wasn’t Jesse anyway.) An indeterminate time later, she sees Mr. Bennet dragging an unresponsive Sylar into a cell. She’s out again.

Nathan calls Tracy back: he’ll be senator if she’s on his staff. He needs an ally. She agrees, hanging up in a hurry when she sees the Greatest American Hero in the parking garage. He’s still working the Niki-is-Tracy thing, now with audio-visual aid. He got his hands on the Niki/Nathan sex tape that Linderman’s people recorded. Tracy is grossed out and totally mesmerized. It’s hot stuff, but this could really embarrass her in front of her boss. He let her make the call about Nathan-for-senate and he won’t believe her when she says it’s not her. (She’d never be able to convince anyone that she wasn’t Niki. She and Present!Peter should talk.) TGAH’s not letting up; he pitches salacious titles for his article, trying to get a rise out of her.

It works. Tracy Strauss, the Ice Queen of K Street, makes grabby hands at the DVD player. In the struggle, she seizes TGAH’s arm and we find out that “Ice Queen” isn’t a figurative title. He freezes solid in a second, so cold that he shatters before he even hits the ground. Scream stuck in her throat, Tracy flees.

(Do all of Niki’s personalities have their own superpowers? Is she a multi-personality Sylar? More powers than the one and you start to go crazy: Sylar and his homicides, Niki/Jessica/Gina/Tracy and theirs, Peter and his God complex.)

It might cheer her up to know that Nathan has discovered an unpleasant secret of his own. He plays chess with Linderman, outlining all the ways being senator will be different from being congressman. No outside influence. This means you, Linderman. The night nurse on her rounds scolds Nathan for being up late. He needs to be in bed. He can play with himself later. (Ooh, yes please.) Linderman is only in Nathan’s head—oops, did he forget to mention that? Great, thinks Nathan, so much for that fresh start.

Sylar is on a slab in Level Five, and Elle watches him. Mama Petrelli calls her out, spoiling for a fight. “Quite a little mess you’ve made here.” Elle pitches a hissy because Mama P is taking over the Company and the Alchemist isn’t even room temperature yet. Mama P says, “Go cry about Daddy some place else. No, really. Get lost.” Elle dissembles. “I-We caught Sylar!”

Mama P, like she’s talking to a child: “Good for you! Your electrical outburst also shut down the grid, letting out a dozen inmates who are just as bad or worse. And Noah Bennet is gone, too.” (I LOVE THIS. Noah Bennet is a separate problem unto himself and just as dangerous as all twelve supers with anti-social personality disorders.) Elle flounders, trying to promise to do better. Mama P enlightens her: the Alchemist might have been a demanding, demeaning boss, but he was the only one who thought Elle was worth a damn. Things have changed, and the Company’s efficiency expert (that would be Mama P, too) has determined that Elle is dead weight. You’re fired, baby.

“I have worked for this company my entire life. What am I supposed to do now?” Elle is crying. Mama P all but holds her nose against the stench of failure. “I suppose you’ll have to get yourself another life.” I wonder if one comes standard with the Company’s severance package? Elle is dismissed without another word. Mama Petrelli looks indulgently at Sylar.

Mr. Bennet stops home long for a Claire-bear hug. He chokes up asking if she’s all right. “No, but I’m better now.” Still broken, his Claire. She sees his gun on his desk. “You’re not staying, are you?” He can’t. The bad people are out and he can’t not act. He introduces her (and us) to the Level Five villain roster: Knox (the man who kills Claire in Mama P’s dream) absorbs fear and turns it into personal strength; Flint controls flame like Claire’s bio-mom; “The German” controls magnetism; and last but not least, Jesse Murphy, the man currently housing Present!Peter’s consciousness, manipulates sound.

Except that even though Claire can read as much about Jesse on the file Mr. Bennet shows her, he doesn’t tell her that last power. He says she doesn’t want to know. (Hmm, sounds familiar.) These are villains. They’re just evil. We aren’t supposed to sympathize with them or care about where they came from, and we will probably never learn it either. They are not characters;, they’re just plot devices. Bennet needs to go stop them before they destroy the world because he’s the baddest ass the world has.

Claire wants to come with as a partner. She helped save New York City. That’s a creative re-imagining of her role, isn’t it? She frames it as though she was the only one willing to shoot Peter when he was about to explode, but really she was given the gun because she was the only one Peter would trust to do it. (I’m sure Mr. B would have done it, no sweat.) Bennet says he’s killing the bad guys so Claire doesn’t have to. But what if she wants to? Claire has been the puppet for too long. She wants agency. And if that’s what a gun will get her, that’s what she’ll take.

Beside, what if the bad guys make house calls? Sylar did. Bennet’s way ahead of her. He brings out Claire’s bio-mom, another pyrokinetic. (Hi, Meredith!) “She’s here to make sure you all stay safe. You’re in good hands. Is this Meredith’s redemption play? The Bennets can have no idea how awfully Claire ended the last reunion with her bio-mom. Too bad. No one listens to Claire, no one talks with her. They talk at her, plan around her, wrap her in cotton and keep her safe. How is safe working for you, Claire?

How about you, Future!Peter? Future!Peter pops into Level Five. Things are immediately, obviously not good. Present!Peter’s host body is gone. Mama P appears out of nowhere. What is he doing here? He put Peter away here because it was safe! Fact: Level Five is not so safe. He tells Mama P about the person he borrowed to be Peter’s host. “Jesse!?” This is the most hysterical she’s been all episode. She and Bennet both have a healthy fear of this person, which means all is the opposite of good. Future!Peter says the idea was that no one ever broke out. It didn’t happen. Well, dingus, you went and changed what happened. Everything changes when the butterfly flaps its wings. She tells him get her Peter back, now, and GO AWAY now plus one second.

Present!Peter-in-Jesse tries to call Nathan and warn him about Future!Peter. Knox cuts off the phone call, dragging Peter-in-Jesse back in time to see Flint roast some people alive to steal their SUV. Peter/Jesse wants to know what the F they’re doing. The German chides him for punking out on evil. The villains call for Peter/Jesse to join them. He listens to sirens and sees his alien reflection. He has to go. No one would believe him.

Back to Level Five. Mama P enters Sylar’s cell, unafraid. She sets to untying one of the restraints on his wrists, strokes his forehead. Sylar is some pit of asexuality that causes people to behave inordinately sexual around him—Mohinder, Maya, Claire, and now Mrs. Petrelli. Her care is supposed to be motherly; her touch is anything but. (I guess she’s allowed. This is usual for a Petrelli.) She sighs, “My sons have been such a disappointment. But you—I can give you what all boys crave from their mothers: inspiration, guidance, comfort. Isn’t that right, Gabriel?”

He’s too doped up to fight her, but he bats her away. He isn’t interested. “My name is Sylar and you are not my mother.”

“But I am, dear.” She sounds serious. “I am.” Sylar’s eyes get wide, as if he believes her. Sylar is part of many families, more than even he knows.

I cannot tell if this is a ploy on Mama P’s part. Gabriel has some catastrophic mommy issues, mostly for the sake of variety. (Not everyone can have a Bad Dad, no matter what this show’s track record.) Mrs. Petrelli could easily be grooming him to play a role she has designed and is simply pushing his buttons and projecting her own thwarted maternal instincts onto him in one fell swoop. Or she could be for real. On the one hand, she is manipulative and mercenary and would say anything to get what she wants; on the other, there was that uncomfortable moment between Sylar and Claire last episode which would fit well in the Petrellis-are-closer-than-family-ought-to-be rubric.

Oh well. To be continued…

Oops, forgot that some other people did stuff:

Hiro and Ando tracked the speedster thief down. Her name is Daphne Millbrook. They go after her, she gets away, but they’ve planted a tracker on her. She’s going after the other half of the formula and they’re going to get it first. There is increased tension and frustration between the friends over what Hiro saw (and is not getting over) in the future.

Mohinder’s superpowers give him a boner for Maya and they do it. All is well until Mohinder wakes up in the night with scales and dancing veins. Maybe you should have done some actual tests before shooting that crap into your arm, mm?

Matt’s still lost in the desert (story of his life). He meets another super who can paint the future and who painted the world exploding. The super says the world isn’t unfolding like in his visions. That’s a bad thing? They walk. No, really, that’s all that happens.

This season on Heroes: Mama P is still sweet-talking Sylar; injections give powers; Tracy jumps off a building; Bennet and Sylar partner up (!); Claire tortures Peter; and Sylar says Peter is just the same as him. (Brother, can you spare a power?)

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About TrinityVixen: There’s an asterisk on TrinityVixen’scollege transcript that assures anyone who reads it that, though there is no specific major, degree, or certificate for it, she did, in fact, complete some kind of creative writing program as an undergrad. Armed with that symbol of irrelevant experience, she has polluted the internet with her opinions and horrible fanworks ever since (and for quite a long while before). Living poor in New York until she finds a means to become independently wealthy, she must subsist on the juicy meat of fandom. Fandom and noodles. And instant soup.