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ic information
Name: Claude Rains
Fandom: Heroes
Age: 41
Sexuality: Straight
Classification: Evolved Human
Abilities: Invisibility
Alignment: Neutral (leaning towards Good)
Point in Canon: Volume Four
Brief History: Born in Manchester in 1964, Maxwell Russell started out in life just like most people do. He was the youngest in a family of five, the only boy in a family that already had two girls. Maxwell's youth was normal, full of siblings squabbles, school, rugby, football, and the various other activities that mischievous Manchester boys got into. It wasn't until just after finishing his A-levels that things started to change for Max. Or rather, that he started to change.
It came on all at once, waking up one morning to his parents and sisters panicking because he wasn't there. It was a confusing and disorienting scene to arise to, especially since as far as he could figure, he was laying in his bed just as clear as day. Perplexed and unsure exactly what was going on, Max watched his family for a long while before stepping out into the hallway and paced around them, confused as to way they were still panicking over him being gone when he was standing right next to them. That was, until he looked into a mirror and realized that he couldn't see himself, either.
He didn't understand what had happened, but whatever it was, he spent the rest of the day trying to turn it off, trying to make himself visible to his family again as they frantically called the police and filed reports and left to comb the neighborhood. Frustrated and unsuccessful, Max dissolved into tears in the middle of his floor before passing out from the sheer exhaustion and stress. He struggled and struggled with turning the ability of the next week, knicking bits of food off of his sisters plates when they weren't looking and taking showers whenever everyone else was out of the house. He was relieved when, almost exactly a week later, the ability turned itself off, and this time, he awoke to relieved and frantic hugs and exclamations of joy that he was all right.
That feeling of relief was short lived, however, when his parents shoved him into counseling sessions for former runaways. He submitted to them grudgingly and talked as little as he could. It was impossible to explain that he'd been in the house the whole time, after all. The only people he even bothered to try and explain it to were his sisters, neither of whom believed him. They thought that he needed help just as much as his parents did. One doctor lead to another, and after recommendations form the counselor that his closed off attitude wasn't going to get him the help that he needed, his parents insisted that he submit himself to a psychological evaluation. So, at twenty years of age, Maxwell Russell was bundled up and shipped off to the local state facility for a full weekend evaluation.
That stay, however, lead to one of the largest changes in his life and probably one of his biggest mistakes.
During his stay in the institution, Max happened to talk to one of the visitors. They'd struck up a conversation initially, and Max had felt obligated to at least keep up small talk (not to mention, he was actually rather lonely here, but he didn't want to admit that). The man, an individual by the name of Charles Deveaux, gave him a business card before he left, telling Max that if he ever wanted or needed to talk about anything (he seemed to take extreme care stressing the anything) after he was released to contact him about it.
After the evaluation that gave Max a clean bill of health, what had happened still weighed heavily on his mind, and eventually, he gave in, contacting Charles, who not only listened to his entire explanation but didn't seem at all baffled or even perturbed by it. Instead, the instant that he had finished, Max was offered a job. Not exactly the end to the conversation that he'd expected, but he accepted quite readily. He'd been struggling for work in England. Charles even offered to help him in getting all of the proper visa paper and such. So, a couple months later, Max was on his way to the United States.
It wasn't until after he got there and was told what he would be doing (after a little bit of training to get his ability under control) that Max decided that he didn't want to drag his family into this mess. After some convincing, Charles agreed to keep his real identity a secret from the rest of the co-workers and allow him to operate under an assumed name. Being the type of person with the dry wit that he had, Max chose the name 'Claude Rains' for himself.
Introduced to the Company facilities in Hartsdale, New York, Claude is partnered with a former solider named Haram, an old hand at all of this. Haram didn't want much to do with Claude at first. He was a gruff personality, hard to content with. But, luckily, Claude was a Manchester boy. He was used to dealing with gruff personalities. After a rather raucous fistfight and a couple of stiff drinks, it was almost like they'd known each other forever.
Until Claude had a good handle on his powers, though, they weren't going to be assigned any missions. So, whenever he wasn't being trained, Claude took the time to practice on his own, fading into invisibility and attempting to slip into the lower levels and restricted areas. That was how the young Claude Rains came across the...well, not so young Adam Monroe. Overhearing another English accent, Claude was baffled when he came across something that looked, for all intents and purposes, like a cell. After lingering, invisible and silent, for a long moment in the corridor, Claude spoke up to the man who was rambling to himself. Once he got over the shock of talking to thin air, Claude and Adam settled into a habit of chats. Claude would stop by whenever he was back in New York, slipping past all of the security with an ease that was almost disgusting.
It wasn't until after Haram 'retired' three years into his work with the Company, and he was left to break in a new partner by the name of Noah Bennett that Claude stopped having as much time to visit Adam. He was almost permanently transferred to the Texas branch of operations, leaving him only able to get back to New York on business maybe once or twice a year. Not that he really minded much. Noah turned out to be a good partner, a good asset to the Company, and a good friend. Claude grew to really enjoy being around Noah's family, a luxury that he hadn't allowed himself since coming to work for the Company, new or old.
That all changed several years down the line, after his conscious and idealism had been stretched to the breaking point. Being expected to kill a child, age shifter or not, was perhaps the point that Claude knew that he couldn't do this anymore because if he did, he would lose himself entirely to the job. Violence was not the answer that he saw, but sadly, none of the others seemed to much care.
The job had been wearing on him lately, the things that they were asked to do were getting more extreme, and this was the final straw. He wasn't going to do it anymore. He couldn't, in good conscience, hunt his own people and treat them like they were nothing more than cattle to be slaughtered if they felt threatened. Not long after the assignment, Claude used some of the allotted downtime after intense missions and went to New York, stopping at Charles's place and explaining the situation to him. Advancing years and failing health had removed the Company from Charles's hands years before, and he'd often expressed to Claude during the times that he visited that he didn't like the path that it was taking. It wasn't surprising to Claude when Charles agreed to help him hide if and when the time ever came.
Sadly, it wasn't long much more than a year after that that the Company marked him as a traitor. It wasn't an incorrect mark considering he'd been spending the last several months getting potentials off of their radar and making sure that they were out of the Company's hands. He was in the room when Noah was ordered to kill him, to take him somewhere remote in the guise of a mission, and to just leave him there for the animals. Claude, however, had gotten quite close to Noah in that time and considered him to be a better man, and certainly not the type who could gun down a friend in cold blood just because he was told to. He had Claire. Certainly Noah could understand why he'd done what he'd done.
Claude was devastated when it turned out that he was wrong.
He was just lucky that all of the bullet wounds that Bennett put into him weren't exact kill shots. A few inches to the left, a couple to the right, and he wouldn't have been able to be patched up when he was dragged off the bank of the river and to a hospital later that day. Since he didn't have any ID on him as he'd lost it at some point, he was registered as a John Doe, no hits for the Company and for that he was thankful. As soon as he was recovered, he disappeared out of the hospital and back into the world, living as a shadow among the crowd. Or rather, a transparency among the crowd.
He stole to get by. He broke into other people's houses when they weren't home in order to attend to his needs. He did whatever it took, all the time growing more and more bitter as he observed humanity at its worst. Eventually, the young boy who had been so friendly with everyone that he met and had treasured his friends turned into a twisted old men who was convinced that the whole of the human race was only capable of the worst when they were being honest.
Of course, then Peter bloody Petrelli had to barge into his life and spoil that little fantasy.
It had been awhile since Claude had come across an empath. And still, the ones that he had come across weren't at all like this. Their powers were always limited to one specific thing, usually healing, but this was a completely different development. And Petrelli's determination to master his ability, not for himself but for everyone else, was particularly stomach churning. After being dogged by the boy through the streets of New York back to one of Charles's buildings that the old man (who was the only one that actually knew Claude was still alive) had been allowing him to squat in one of the empty apartments, Claude relented and agreed to train Peter, even if it had been a long time since he'd trained someone.
Besides, Petrelli the younger seemed quite convinced that he was going to destroy New York, rambling on about prophetic dreams the way he was, considering who he was, who he was often around, and the way that his ability seemed to work... Well, Claude wasn't about to risk it.
As much as he hates to admit it, Claude actually got rather fond of Peter turning the training exercises. When Noah and the Haitian showed up, he was enraged when he thought that he'd been betrayed by another friend. He was frankly quite relieved when it turned out to be that stupid junkie painter boyfriend of Charles's daughter that had turned him over. He'd never thought that boy was good news, and this just confirmed it. He left Peter to deal on his own, but quite frankly, Claude wasn't worry. He had the basic building blocks that he needed. And Peter was a smart kid. He'd work it out on his own.
Disappearing, Claude decided that it was about time that he returned home. England might not have been as large a country as the United States, but he knew it a lot better. There were plenty of places for him to hide and get along just fine. Living in England, Claude struggled to keep a thread on everything that was going on back in the United States, New York particularly. He kept track of the Petrelli family easily. They were very public, after all. So when Peter slipped off of the radar into 'missing' status, Claude couldn't help but be worried (not that he'd admit it). He stopped watching for news after that, though. There'd been no explosion. The kid had done it. Somehow.
It wasn't until he was watching football on a TV in a house that he'd broken into while the residents were on vacation when it was interrupted by a BBC special report. Assassination attempt on the former Congressman elect from New York. When the two Petrellis and Parkman flashed on the screen, Claude was barely able to hold his temper when they replayed the feed. He knew all too well what Nathan had been able to say, and he also knew exactly why he'd been shot. The bastard deserved it, as far as he was considered. Putting them all at risk like that was not only a stupid move but selfish as well. He couldn't possibly understand all of the politics that went into this, politician or not.
It was obvious to him that he had to take the necessary steps to not be on his own for once in his life. Claude didn't have many friends left, but Abby and Lee were ones that he counted among them. The three of them could watch each others' backs if it came to that. Even if Lee didn't have an ability, he was more than trustworthy as far as Claude was concerned.
There was a rather sudden addition to their triad when Elle Bishop ended up tracking him. She insisted that she was on her own, no longer with the Company, and she needed help. Claude had always had a soft spot for Elle when she was younger, and if it really was true, that her father was dead and Angela had kicked her out, he could only imagine how she felt right now. Her ability was going out of control as well, and it wasn't quite as simple she thought. It was nothing physical. It was how she was feeling. He'd seen it before, and even after her anger overwhelmed her and he ended up electrocuted (not the first time, certainly, but it still hurt), he still insisted that they bring her with them.
It was all a matter of forgiveness. She had a lot of baggage, but as soon as she let that go, she would be able to move on. He hoped that she understood that when she left. He'd tried his best to help, but Abby and Lee were not comfortable with Elle. They didn't have the history that he had with her, and thus, they didn't know that she didn't really want to hurt them. To them, she was dangerous and had to go. He wished he could have convinced her to stay, but there was only so much that you could do to help someone before they had to do it on their own. That was something he'd learnt the hard way a long time ago.
Things were quiet in London for a long time after that until they started hearing reports from the US about senator Nathan Petrelli backing a movement to defend American borders from an unnamed threat. Red flags went off in Claude's head, immediately making sure that Lee and Abby were safe before heading back to America to try and figure out exactly what was going on. His worst fears were realized when, not more than a few days after being in the country, the news report on people being rounded by the government broke. It wouldn't have been too much if he hadn't noticed the drug containers attached to their chests.
That was a Company trick, but even the Company wouldn't be this cruel. Nathan had stolen all of his mother's little secrets and handed them over to the United States government.
It was ashame he couldn't have just died when he was shot.
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Journal:![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
worldweary
PB: Christopher Eccleston
Was This Character Held for You?: Yes
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Name: Kira
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ic information
Name: Claude Rains
Fandom: Heroes
Age: 41
Sexuality: Straight
Classification: Evolved Human
Abilities: Invisibility
Alignment: Neutral (leaning towards Good)
Point in Canon: Volume Four
Brief History: Born in Manchester in 1964, Maxwell Russell started out in life just like most people do. He was the youngest in a family of five, the only boy in a family that already had two girls. Maxwell's youth was normal, full of siblings squabbles, school, rugby, football, and the various other activities that mischievous Manchester boys got into. It wasn't until just after finishing his A-levels that things started to change for Max. Or rather, that he started to change.
It came on all at once, waking up one morning to his parents and sisters panicking because he wasn't there. It was a confusing and disorienting scene to arise to, especially since as far as he could figure, he was laying in his bed just as clear as day. Perplexed and unsure exactly what was going on, Max watched his family for a long while before stepping out into the hallway and paced around them, confused as to way they were still panicking over him being gone when he was standing right next to them. That was, until he looked into a mirror and realized that he couldn't see himself, either.
He didn't understand what had happened, but whatever it was, he spent the rest of the day trying to turn it off, trying to make himself visible to his family again as they frantically called the police and filed reports and left to comb the neighborhood. Frustrated and unsuccessful, Max dissolved into tears in the middle of his floor before passing out from the sheer exhaustion and stress. He struggled and struggled with turning the ability of the next week, knicking bits of food off of his sisters plates when they weren't looking and taking showers whenever everyone else was out of the house. He was relieved when, almost exactly a week later, the ability turned itself off, and this time, he awoke to relieved and frantic hugs and exclamations of joy that he was all right.
That feeling of relief was short lived, however, when his parents shoved him into counseling sessions for former runaways. He submitted to them grudgingly and talked as little as he could. It was impossible to explain that he'd been in the house the whole time, after all. The only people he even bothered to try and explain it to were his sisters, neither of whom believed him. They thought that he needed help just as much as his parents did. One doctor lead to another, and after recommendations form the counselor that his closed off attitude wasn't going to get him the help that he needed, his parents insisted that he submit himself to a psychological evaluation. So, at twenty years of age, Maxwell Russell was bundled up and shipped off to the local state facility for a full weekend evaluation.
That stay, however, lead to one of the largest changes in his life and probably one of his biggest mistakes.
During his stay in the institution, Max happened to talk to one of the visitors. They'd struck up a conversation initially, and Max had felt obligated to at least keep up small talk (not to mention, he was actually rather lonely here, but he didn't want to admit that). The man, an individual by the name of Charles Deveaux, gave him a business card before he left, telling Max that if he ever wanted or needed to talk about anything (he seemed to take extreme care stressing the anything) after he was released to contact him about it.
After the evaluation that gave Max a clean bill of health, what had happened still weighed heavily on his mind, and eventually, he gave in, contacting Charles, who not only listened to his entire explanation but didn't seem at all baffled or even perturbed by it. Instead, the instant that he had finished, Max was offered a job. Not exactly the end to the conversation that he'd expected, but he accepted quite readily. He'd been struggling for work in England. Charles even offered to help him in getting all of the proper visa paper and such. So, a couple months later, Max was on his way to the United States.
It wasn't until after he got there and was told what he would be doing (after a little bit of training to get his ability under control) that Max decided that he didn't want to drag his family into this mess. After some convincing, Charles agreed to keep his real identity a secret from the rest of the co-workers and allow him to operate under an assumed name. Being the type of person with the dry wit that he had, Max chose the name 'Claude Rains' for himself.
Introduced to the Company facilities in Hartsdale, New York, Claude is partnered with a former solider named Haram, an old hand at all of this. Haram didn't want much to do with Claude at first. He was a gruff personality, hard to content with. But, luckily, Claude was a Manchester boy. He was used to dealing with gruff personalities. After a rather raucous fistfight and a couple of stiff drinks, it was almost like they'd known each other forever.
Until Claude had a good handle on his powers, though, they weren't going to be assigned any missions. So, whenever he wasn't being trained, Claude took the time to practice on his own, fading into invisibility and attempting to slip into the lower levels and restricted areas. That was how the young Claude Rains came across the...well, not so young Adam Monroe. Overhearing another English accent, Claude was baffled when he came across something that looked, for all intents and purposes, like a cell. After lingering, invisible and silent, for a long moment in the corridor, Claude spoke up to the man who was rambling to himself. Once he got over the shock of talking to thin air, Claude and Adam settled into a habit of chats. Claude would stop by whenever he was back in New York, slipping past all of the security with an ease that was almost disgusting.
It wasn't until after Haram 'retired' three years into his work with the Company, and he was left to break in a new partner by the name of Noah Bennett that Claude stopped having as much time to visit Adam. He was almost permanently transferred to the Texas branch of operations, leaving him only able to get back to New York on business maybe once or twice a year. Not that he really minded much. Noah turned out to be a good partner, a good asset to the Company, and a good friend. Claude grew to really enjoy being around Noah's family, a luxury that he hadn't allowed himself since coming to work for the Company, new or old.
That all changed several years down the line, after his conscious and idealism had been stretched to the breaking point. Being expected to kill a child, age shifter or not, was perhaps the point that Claude knew that he couldn't do this anymore because if he did, he would lose himself entirely to the job. Violence was not the answer that he saw, but sadly, none of the others seemed to much care.
The job had been wearing on him lately, the things that they were asked to do were getting more extreme, and this was the final straw. He wasn't going to do it anymore. He couldn't, in good conscience, hunt his own people and treat them like they were nothing more than cattle to be slaughtered if they felt threatened. Not long after the assignment, Claude used some of the allotted downtime after intense missions and went to New York, stopping at Charles's place and explaining the situation to him. Advancing years and failing health had removed the Company from Charles's hands years before, and he'd often expressed to Claude during the times that he visited that he didn't like the path that it was taking. It wasn't surprising to Claude when Charles agreed to help him hide if and when the time ever came.
Sadly, it wasn't long much more than a year after that that the Company marked him as a traitor. It wasn't an incorrect mark considering he'd been spending the last several months getting potentials off of their radar and making sure that they were out of the Company's hands. He was in the room when Noah was ordered to kill him, to take him somewhere remote in the guise of a mission, and to just leave him there for the animals. Claude, however, had gotten quite close to Noah in that time and considered him to be a better man, and certainly not the type who could gun down a friend in cold blood just because he was told to. He had Claire. Certainly Noah could understand why he'd done what he'd done.
Claude was devastated when it turned out that he was wrong.
He was just lucky that all of the bullet wounds that Bennett put into him weren't exact kill shots. A few inches to the left, a couple to the right, and he wouldn't have been able to be patched up when he was dragged off the bank of the river and to a hospital later that day. Since he didn't have any ID on him as he'd lost it at some point, he was registered as a John Doe, no hits for the Company and for that he was thankful. As soon as he was recovered, he disappeared out of the hospital and back into the world, living as a shadow among the crowd. Or rather, a transparency among the crowd.
He stole to get by. He broke into other people's houses when they weren't home in order to attend to his needs. He did whatever it took, all the time growing more and more bitter as he observed humanity at its worst. Eventually, the young boy who had been so friendly with everyone that he met and had treasured his friends turned into a twisted old men who was convinced that the whole of the human race was only capable of the worst when they were being honest.
Of course, then Peter bloody Petrelli had to barge into his life and spoil that little fantasy.
It had been awhile since Claude had come across an empath. And still, the ones that he had come across weren't at all like this. Their powers were always limited to one specific thing, usually healing, but this was a completely different development. And Petrelli's determination to master his ability, not for himself but for everyone else, was particularly stomach churning. After being dogged by the boy through the streets of New York back to one of Charles's buildings that the old man (who was the only one that actually knew Claude was still alive) had been allowing him to squat in one of the empty apartments, Claude relented and agreed to train Peter, even if it had been a long time since he'd trained someone.
Besides, Petrelli the younger seemed quite convinced that he was going to destroy New York, rambling on about prophetic dreams the way he was, considering who he was, who he was often around, and the way that his ability seemed to work... Well, Claude wasn't about to risk it.
As much as he hates to admit it, Claude actually got rather fond of Peter turning the training exercises. When Noah and the Haitian showed up, he was enraged when he thought that he'd been betrayed by another friend. He was frankly quite relieved when it turned out to be that stupid junkie painter boyfriend of Charles's daughter that had turned him over. He'd never thought that boy was good news, and this just confirmed it. He left Peter to deal on his own, but quite frankly, Claude wasn't worry. He had the basic building blocks that he needed. And Peter was a smart kid. He'd work it out on his own.
Disappearing, Claude decided that it was about time that he returned home. England might not have been as large a country as the United States, but he knew it a lot better. There were plenty of places for him to hide and get along just fine. Living in England, Claude struggled to keep a thread on everything that was going on back in the United States, New York particularly. He kept track of the Petrelli family easily. They were very public, after all. So when Peter slipped off of the radar into 'missing' status, Claude couldn't help but be worried (not that he'd admit it). He stopped watching for news after that, though. There'd been no explosion. The kid had done it. Somehow.
It wasn't until he was watching football on a TV in a house that he'd broken into while the residents were on vacation when it was interrupted by a BBC special report. Assassination attempt on the former Congressman elect from New York. When the two Petrellis and Parkman flashed on the screen, Claude was barely able to hold his temper when they replayed the feed. He knew all too well what Nathan had been able to say, and he also knew exactly why he'd been shot. The bastard deserved it, as far as he was considered. Putting them all at risk like that was not only a stupid move but selfish as well. He couldn't possibly understand all of the politics that went into this, politician or not.
It was obvious to him that he had to take the necessary steps to not be on his own for once in his life. Claude didn't have many friends left, but Abby and Lee were ones that he counted among them. The three of them could watch each others' backs if it came to that. Even if Lee didn't have an ability, he was more than trustworthy as far as Claude was concerned.
There was a rather sudden addition to their triad when Elle Bishop ended up tracking him. She insisted that she was on her own, no longer with the Company, and she needed help. Claude had always had a soft spot for Elle when she was younger, and if it really was true, that her father was dead and Angela had kicked her out, he could only imagine how she felt right now. Her ability was going out of control as well, and it wasn't quite as simple she thought. It was nothing physical. It was how she was feeling. He'd seen it before, and even after her anger overwhelmed her and he ended up electrocuted (not the first time, certainly, but it still hurt), he still insisted that they bring her with them.
It was all a matter of forgiveness. She had a lot of baggage, but as soon as she let that go, she would be able to move on. He hoped that she understood that when she left. He'd tried his best to help, but Abby and Lee were not comfortable with Elle. They didn't have the history that he had with her, and thus, they didn't know that she didn't really want to hurt them. To them, she was dangerous and had to go. He wished he could have convinced her to stay, but there was only so much that you could do to help someone before they had to do it on their own. That was something he'd learnt the hard way a long time ago.
Things were quiet in London for a long time after that until they started hearing reports from the US about senator Nathan Petrelli backing a movement to defend American borders from an unnamed threat. Red flags went off in Claude's head, immediately making sure that Lee and Abby were safe before heading back to America to try and figure out exactly what was going on. His worst fears were realized when, not more than a few days after being in the country, the news report on people being rounded by the government broke. It wouldn't have been too much if he hadn't noticed the drug containers attached to their chests.
That was a Company trick, but even the Company wouldn't be this cruel. Nathan had stolen all of his mother's little secrets and handed them over to the United States government.
It was ashame he couldn't have just died when he was shot.
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worldwearyPB: Christopher Eccleston
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