Chapter Three

After Nathan was born, before she held him for the first time, Arthur sat by Angela’s bedside and held her hand, just like he had done after each of her miscarriages. After the first one, he crawled into bed with her and cradled her in his arms. After her second, he held her head while she cried. But, when Nathan was born Angela and Arthur said and did almost nothing; the silence said it all.

Arthur clenched her hand in his as Angela gazed off and out an empty window frame, it felt so surreal. She had seen Peter so many times in her dreams that she felt inside as if she didn’t just gain a son, but lost another. It would not be the last time she would have that feeling.

It was as if the doctors had told her that Peter had died, because now he would never be. It all had to be wrong, because two sons seemed so right. It was like her entire world didn’t make sense anymore. But, once she first heard Nathan cry, she knew at least she had him, at least she had Arthur. It would not be the last time Angela would feel she had to push on for the one son she had left.

And then Arthur left her alone. Her husband had gone off to war. And when a Petrelli made a promise, they kept it – at least they tried to. Arthur Petrelli had enlisted in the army, as his father had before him and his father before him. The Petrelli family believed service to one’s country was important, something to be proud of. And now, finished with law school there were no more legitimate reasons left not to not be called off to war. A Little Over A Year and a Half Later

1968 was a hard year. Another Kennedy killed, Martin Luther King; violent riots at the democratic convention in Chicago. The world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket, and Angela Petrelli watched it all on TV, along with scenes of a war she knew her husband was caught up in. Alone at this time, with a young son, it was hard not to grow up. It was hard not to lose one’s faith. It was a time where people who said they wanted to change the world were soon becoming discouraged and filled with malaise.

During this time Angela was sure to hug and kiss Nathan as much as she could. Nathan was all she had and she clung to him like ivy. As much as she would to Peter once Nathan had grown and entered his father’s world, no longer needing a mother. But, even back then, at such a young age, Angela could see Nathan had an independent soul, just like his father. Yet, others would say, just like his mother. Nathan still did not take to clinging to Angela as well as his brother would in the future. As soon as he could walk, Nathan started to walk away from her – walk away and never turn back. One night she had a dream he flew. She didn’t know what to make of it. At that moment there was no way she could. In fact she soon forgot it for at least eight or ten years.

"Rose...," Angela called to her housekeeper, as the woman was about to leave for the night.

Rose was an older woman, about fifty, with dark red hair that was cut just above her shoulders.

"Could you mail this for me, it’s a letter to Mr. Petrelli." She was telling Arthur that Nathan had taken his first steps. And a part of her wished she could travel with the letter and see first hand how her husband was doing, to ease her worry, to ease her pain.

All of a sudden Angela’s eyes grew heavy. She saw flashes of something so fast her brain couldn’t process them as anything, but large flashes of light.

"Mrs. Petrelli...?" called Rose, as Angela felt her body sinking to the ground and the marble foyer floor below her.

Angela could hear herself fall to the ground in an echoy thud. Her eyes slowly started to close, but for moments afterward she could hear the noise around her. Rose calling off for help, the pattering of her feet next to Angela’s head. She tried to fight it, but Angela felt like something more powerful was pulling her –to where she had no idea.

When Angela’s eyes opened she found herself in a dream-like state. She was in an unknown land to her -- a war zone. She lifted herself off the ground looking around as if on a foreign planet. She knew instantly it was a dream, but it was different, more complex and it had more detail then she had experienced before. She had always dreamed of places she had been, or would go, this was a place Angela would never go: Vietnam.

Angela could see everyone and everything, but they couldn’t see her. She saw Arthur and his team gunned down - all dead, blood staining the letter she had written him. She called out to Arthur, but he could not hear her. He hung on, but it didn’t look good. The bullets had gone clear through him.

A young blonde, British boy, the medic she thought, put his hands to Arthur’s wounds and he was instantly healed. His wounds were no more. It wasn’t possible, she thought, but she had seen it with her own eyes. Still, Angela feared it was only wish fulfillment and that she was in fact dreaming of Arthur’s death. It frightened her to her core.

Angela turned to run, but ran right into something. Someone who knew she was there. Someone who could touch her, notice her and grab her as her weight was sent into his body, stopping her at full force. She was face-to-face with a young man standing in front of her. She looked up into his deep brown eyes, eyes that were somehow her own yet her husband’s color.

"Nathan?" she spoke in shock.

"What have you done, Ma?" he said sullen and straight faced.

"I haven’t done anything, I didn’t... what did I do? He’s dead isn’t he? Your father?" She was a wreck of emotions.

"You killed, Peter." He grabbed her by both her arms.

"Peter?" Her stomach turned. "No, no. I didn’t kill Peter, the doctors –they.. they killed Peter."

Just then the medic came up behind Angela and put his hand on her shoulder, "Let me help you Angela." He spoke in sweet tones.

Angela turned and looked at the medic, he looked nice enough, kind, but when Angela turned back toward Nathan he burst into flames, just like in her other dreams.

Angela screamed and then she was awake, in her own bed, with a doctor standing over her.

"Mrs. Petrelli…" The doctor took hold of her by the shoulder. "You passed out, Mrs. Petrelli. You’re alright," he assured her.

Angela took a depth breath and nodded her head. "Water." She took another breath. "Could I have a glass of water?" Her voice was raspy for a moment.

"Has this happened before?"

"No...," Angela said softly. "No." She was telling a half truth, of course. The dreams had happened before, she had just never passed out from one.

"Could you be pregnant, Mrs. Petrelli?" The doctor inquired.

Angela looked at the doctor with tearful eyes. That one really stung. "No." She sucked in her emotion. "No," she said softly.

"Her husband’s at war," Rose threw in quickly.

"I’m sorry," said the doctor.

"You didn’t know." Angela tried to stand, but Rose and the doctor stopped her.

"Don’t stand…" said the doctor. "Don’t stand."

But Angela wouldn’t listen and she stood anyway. "I want to see my son."

"Nathan’s fine, Mrs. Petrelli," Rose assured her.

"I need to see him." Angela left the room, she could not be stopped.

"That woman is so protective of that boy, " Rose remarked. "It’s like she thinks there’s a bomb around every corner."

"I see it all the time--This happens. When a women’s husband goes off to war. It’s a control issue. She can’t control what happens to her husband, herself..."

"So she tries to control what happens to her son," Rose finished.

"I’m sure it’s nothing. If she passes out again, call me. We’ll run some tests." He picked up his doctor bag from the dresser. "She’s probably just racked with worry. I see it with army wives all the time. Delicate little things, ya know?" How blind the doctor was to this woman, to women in general.

~

Angela slowly walked into Nathan’s room. She gripped the doorframe for a moment and took a breath. She took long strides toward his crib and laid her long fingers across her son’s chest. She held in her tears like the Hoover Dam.

"What were you trying to tell me, Nathan?" she tried to ask the baby, knowing full well he could never actually answer her.

This would be the time that if Arthur were around he’d tell her, "They’re just dreams, Angie." But, Angela Petrelli knew her dreams meant something more. That her dreams were more than just dreams; that they were special. They just had to be, because the alternative was too scary to bear. That would be when Arthur would say, "We all want to be special, but unfortunately that’s just not the case. To be special, you have to work at it. You must take action."

When Arthur Petrelli came back from the war he was a changed man. And being a changed man, he changed Angela, and perhaps not for the good, perhaps not even for the better. But, change is change; it’s just what it is. He was moody and distant. Angela didn’t know what to make of it and she feared that she couldn’t do enough to help him; that she wouldn’t know how.

She had grown so much, being alone with Nathan, for almost two years, while Arthur was away, but she still had so much more to go. At the beginning they felt like strangers to each other. It was hard. To hard for such a young couple only married less than five years.

War is hell, and it makes you lose a part of yourself – a part of yourself one never gets back. It would soon do the same to Angela. She just had no idea yet. She had no idea her husband would be bringing another war back home with him. No idea at all that war was about to knock on her own door.

And when a year or so later, maybe a few months, maybe almost two years – it's hard to remember - she was sure she saw the medic from her dream again, but yet not in dream, her stomach jumped. There he was in real life, off in the distance of Central Park, watching her and Nathan. He was too far away to tell for sure, but Angela felt something when she saw him, even at such a far distance, something in the pit of her stomach. The man held a notebook in his hands and Angela was sure he didn’t know she knew he was watching her. Then Arthur approached her and Nathan, causing her to turn and greet him for a moment. It was only a moment, too brief to even mention, but when Angela turned back to where the man had stood, he was gone -- vanished from sight so quickly that it caused Angela to have that first thought -- that first thought that maybe what was happening to her was just what she had feared the most in life. It was the first time that Angela Petrelli feared she might be going crazy.

Angela Petrelli

Manhattan

"Delusions of Grandeur…," explained the doctor as they stood in the Petrelli foyer.

It was the first time she heard the words. The words she would record in her memory. Words she saw drip off the man’s lips as if the were a tidal wave crashing toward her.

"My husband’s just depressed," she snapped in a defensive denial.

"Your husband has been through a lot, Mrs. Petrelli…"

"Don’t talk to me like I don’t know - I’m not a simple woman, doctor. I ask that you speak to me as honestly and direct as you would be with anyone else." She knew the doctor’s misogynistic tendencies and she wouldn’t stand for it. " I know…I understand what war can do to a man. I’m not naive or blind. Don’t let my young face deflect the issue. I’m older than I look."

"Yes, I’m sorry. But, the truth is your husband – whatever his experience was -- being that close to death –– It can happen, seeing almost your entire platoon killed, you ask yourself why? Why was I spared? Only he’s taken that to a high extreme, he doesn’t just think he’s invincible – he thinks he was… " The doctor stopped, feeling it wasn’t his place to say. He knew the reason Arthur had been drummed out of the Army, but he didn’t feel right telling the man’s wife. This would become clear to Angela much later. "I’m telling you as his wife, so you can keep an eye out. I’m sure he’ll tell you himself what happened, the truth, when he’s ready. All I know Mrs. Petrelli is that your husband is sick, normal but sick. He needs help. He needs medication and counseling. It won’t all go away on it’s own. And then he’ll see that he didn’t live because he’s invincible – he was just lucky. Pure human luck. And he should be happy for what he has. His life and his family. What he needs is time." He put his hand on her shoulder.

"Thank you doctor," she nodded her head.

Angela helped the doctor to the door.

~

As the doctor left the Petrelli home he passed a young man in the street.

"Excuse me?" The blond young man asked in his British tones. "That home you just ventured out of, that wouldn’t happen to be the Petrelli home would it?"

"Yes, it is." The doctor nodded his head and walked off down the sidewalk.

"Thank you, sir," said Daniel Linderman calling after him.

Linderman took the notebook that had been in his hand and set it back in his pocket. In the notebook on a single page, among many other names was written, Arthur Petrelli, New York City, NY, and next to it in Daniel Linderman’s hand was the address that stood before him..

Daniel looked at the large house, smiling to himself. He would later remark to Arthur and Angela how on first sight he thought it looked like a castle. He was dressed in a suit and tie with a very nice trench coat. He looked older than he had ever looked and was a far cry from that lost traveler he had been after the war, roaming the countryside looking for a home. Daniel Linderman was still a lost soul, and he didn’t trust people that was for sure, well too many people, but now Daniel Linderman had a purpose. He had a purpose and soon for a short time, he would have a home.

Daniel walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

The door opened and Angela appeared. Daniel was caught by her youth and beauty, seeing her up close for the first time. He would tell her this years later.

"I’m looking for, Arthur Petrelli –– is this the Petrelli home – I was looking for a man I fought in the war with?"

"Yes, I’m his wife," Angela felt she knew the man from somewhere, but she didn’t know from what or where yet.

"Oh, forgive me, I didn’t realize he had such a.... young wife – is he…"

Angela still doesn’t know if Daniel was trying to flatter her, or if she looked younger close up. After all Linderman had been the man in the park watching her, but she didn’t realize that yet.

"Who is it Angela?" Arthur appeared in the doorway and his face grew almost white when he saw the man standing there. For weeks later Angela would simply know the man by what Arthur referred to him as, "The man who won the purple heart with me."A week after that she would finally learn his full name.

Arthur waved Angela away, and as she left the two men to chat it suddenly all dawned on her. This was the man, the blond British boy, was the man from her dream. The man who had told her he could help her. The man from the park, he was real. She was not crazy.

"Angela, I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back." Arthur’s voice trailed to her so fast that by the time Angela heard it the two men were gone.

Angela picked up Nathan from his play pen; Arthur must have set him there when he had followed Angela to the door. Little Nathan held an Angel toy in one hand and a toy plane in the other as he made soft noises in her arms. Angela couldn’t take her eyes off the door.

Holding her son, Angela slowly walked to the door and watched as the blonde man and her husband walked off toward the park.

Perhaps the help Angela has asked for had come. Perhaps, this was the man who would help her, help her to help herself. And make her dreams become real.

Next Chapter: Adam