A/N: So I started writing this before spoilers for the new season started leaking.... soooooo let's pretend that there was some kind of weird warp in the space time continuum and now we're all in this cute little AU together yay party!!!!
I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D
Scattered to the Wind
We live in a vacuum: the more things change, the more they will stay the same. If we remove an element, another will surely take its place. There will always exist those who possess special abilities. There will always exist those who wish to possess special abilities, but do not. There will always exist those who wish to take special abilities away. Chaos will always strive for order.
Shortly after the dissolution of the original Company, and the imminent failure of its doomed, federally-backed descendents (can a government truly hunt its citizens forever without repercussion?), a new entity breathed its first breath - its infancy like an ominous thundercloud, dark and elusive; its distant rumble a promise of mayhem on the horizon, beginning in the distance yet growing slowly on its steady, constant westward march. It was nothing but a cloud until it was upon us, flashing lightning and threatening to devour.
We would learn to fear the rich, intelligent, and curious. Such scientific curiosity was a jagged, ugly, formidable weapon to be wielded by those with ambition on the right shoulder and technology on the left, and a certain amount of disposable income acting as a siege engine. This new entity had no name, no Building 26, no government to regulate or ultimately dispose of it, and certainly took notice when Nathan Petrelli finally disappeared.
~*~*~
Noah Bennett was NOT a good cook. He was an abysmal failure in the kitchen, and a danger to himself and others. In spite of that, Noah Bennett was also the kind of man that would stop at nothing to protect his family, which included prolonging the continued separation from his wife and children, even when the relationship between them was starting to repair. It was clear to him that, regardless of his current path in life, his past (replete with blazing guns, trails of bodies, and mysterious alibis, just to name a few things) was the sticky, magnetic kind with hazardous side effects to those he loved. So, as a result, he was currently burning an attempt at waffles on a Saturday morning while cursing wildly and nursing a singed thumb. Alone.
He gingerly placed his thumb under the cold water from the faucet and, not for the first time in the past ten minutes, briefly thought of Sandra. She was able to make magic with a stove, a sink, and some other minor implements. A wave of sorrow washed over him as he lowered his head to let it rest on the cool countertop. For so many years he had been surrounded by people able to do magic things. And family. He thought of Claire. An exemplary young woman handed an extraordinary set of circumstances, she truly knew how to make lemonade when life handed her lemons. Perhaps she learned that from her mother - although, he added grimly, nothing took care of lemons like a 9mm. She never ceased to make him proud, working to finish her final year in college somewhere smack dab in the middle of the country, close to no one she knew. She had the same idea he had - the more distance she kept around herself, the safer people would be. Maybe she was more like him than he gave himself credit for. Maybe he should call her. Maybe he should just focus on getting some waffles made.
Rising, turning off the faucet, and moving to dispose of yet another failed venture at taking care of himself in a proper manner, he allowed his gaze to travel to the bay window in the kitchen of his modest, Costa Verde apartment, taking in some early morning California sunlight. He had let them all go... just let them all walk out of his life. And they were safe. Glancing at the clock, he determined that it was almost 10:00am in Texas, where Lyle and Sandra were. He was certain they weren't as hungry as he was. He missed Texas.
"I am Batman," he stated simply to himself, his mind drawing a very near comparison, even if the imagery was somewhat comical. His life was full of people with special abilities and, while he possessed none himself, he was still useful and very much alive regardless of their absence. His tools were grim determination, a tendency toward the appearance of ruthlessness where necessary, the ability to keep his wits about him in the face of acute adversity (and that's an understatement), and it didn't hurt to also have really, really good aim. If he hadn't resigned himself to putting down his gun in an attempt to slip into anonymity like everyone else involved in the past few incarnations of the Company (as either an employee or a victim), picking up an ordinary office job and moving into an ordinary apartment while trying to learn how to make some ordinary damn freakin' waffles, well.... well he wouldn't be making any damn freakin' waffles, that's for sure. He sighed.
"How would Batman make waffles..." he muttered to himself, and before he could remember that Batman had an Alfred, his reverie was interrupted by a very vigorous and determined knocking on his front door.
~*~*~
Matt Parkman's gulping breath was a deafening rush in his ears, and he could feel his pulse pounding in his sweating temples as he hurried to get the car packed. Only the bare essentials: clothes, soap, female sanitary junk for Molly and Janice. Several rounds of ammo. Don't panic. He thought of the man who was currently unaware he was the object of his family's destination and laughed nervously at their similarities and their differences. He didn't dwell on it though - he didn't have time. Their lives depended on what little time they had - and also depended on their ability to regroup with Noah Bennett. The chase had begun. Sylar had awakened, and he was very, very angry. And Angela Petrelli was quite dead.
Janice was in the back seat, yelling her demands for answers while she clutched their young son to her in an attempt to console him which only scared him further in the process. His terrified wails were her only competition to see who had the better volume. Matt knew well that they both had an admirable set of lungs. Molly was pale yet kept a stiff upper lip while she pulled on her seat belt in the front. This was not the first time she'd run from a monster. This monster. Janice was becoming more frantic the longer her live-in ex-husband took to respond which was only made worse by the fact that Matt couldn't hear anything over the sound of his own fear and the screeching tires as they tore away from their Los Angeles driveway, never to see that house again. The car became suddenly and uncomfortably silent when Molly turned and whispered her question with a single word.
"Sylar?"
Matt didn't need to answer, no one needed to hear it, everyone knew. He had always known they were operating on borrowed time. Long before he had been coerced into the twisted plot that landed their pursuer into the body and mind of a deceased Nathan Petrelli he had expected to see him come for Molly and her painfully useful ability. Matt knew a man like Sylar would never forget something like that. Even after Angela's and Bennett's perverted plan succeeded, he knew it was only a matter of time before the spell broke and the beast woke up.
Immediately following the events that took place in Washington D.C. Matt brought his severed family together, believing that keeping them close was the only way to keep them safe - so different from Bennett who scattered his loved ones to the wind in an attempt to see them all disappear under the radar. The Bennetts weren't the only ones who scattered. The rest of the group of people he'd come to know as friends, people who had special abilities like he did, had spread to the corners of the earth attempting to build quiet, peaceful existences away from the eyes and ears of those who didn't have their best interests in mind (like psycho serial killers or deadly government organizations for example). The last he knew of Mohinder Suresh he was enjoying a brief sabbatical from a university somewhere in New Mexico to grow some grapes and work on a memoire. Hiro and Ando... well... as long as he didn't over-do it, Hiro could be any place at any time. Peter....
Peter. What were they going to tell Peter?
What were they going to tell Claire?
What were they going to tell Nathan's ex-wife and his other children?
They'd been lying to Nathan's family for five years. How could they have let that happen? What good could anyone possibly have thought could come from it? The only reason Matt had allowed himself to be involved in such a completely demented farce was that he truly believed their actions were a response to grief - a mother's grief... and that it would pass. He believed he was dealing with sane and rational people. He believed that the truth would eventually be offered to those who deserved and needed it, and that it wouldn't be five whole god-forsaken years later when that happened.
And more than that - they had caged a monster for 5 years. Monsters typically don't respond well to being caged - doesn't take a mind reader (like him?) to work that one out. And now that monster was loose - the buzz around the police channels he worked through was that the mother of a famous politician in D.C. had been found partially decapitated in her home - and he knew there were two more names on the list. He felt a wave of nausea hit him as his blood turned to ice. He had dragged his family into this. For a moment he thought he understood Noah Bennett - for a split second he wanted to stop the car, hand Janice the keys, and tell her to keep driving while he sat down waited for his death to come to him. Yet, just as he was a coward five years ago, he was a coward now as he pushed the gas pedal a little harder.
It was at that point he'd noticed how complacent he'd become. For a couple years after they'd returned to L.A. he'd kept a packed bag by the door and never let the gas tank dip down below three quarters of a full tank. He watched the needle bob slightly beneath one quarter and mentally kicked himself. Gripping dents into the steering wheel, he pulled into the filling station on the corner intending to get this errand out of the way as quickly as possible before tearing down the open highway.
"This'll only take a second," he told Janice over his shoulder while somberly exiting the vehicle. As he reached into his back pocket to extract his wallet he felt a prickly cold sensation at the periphery of his usually rather large awareness accompanied by a nearly imperceptible hiss or whine. His free hand reflexively tucked under his jacket to reach for the gun in his holster as he turned a slow half circle.
"No... not here... not now," he muttered under his breath. "Gimme a head start, something, you bastard..."
He scanned the area but saw nothing that would lead him to believe Sylar was anywhere near the area, and the skin on his forehead remained thankfully intact. Perhaps he was just being paranoid. Rightfully, gut wrenchingly paranoid. Making up for precious seconds lost he forced his attention back to his wallet, slipped a credit card out of it, and slid it into the machine attached to the gas pump. Naturally, as was his luck, the machine decided that this was the perfect moment to malfunction and it wouldn't take his card. He made a mad dash inside to pre-pay with cash, and was mulling over what the attendant inside had told him when he exited and saw the shadows on the horizon. There were three of them: human shaped but black - the kind of black that seemed to draw all light and sound into it - like human-shaped black holes. He watched them watching him as he pumped the gas, every nerve in his body tensed for flight.
As he and his family finally sped away, Matt recounted some of what he'd learned at the gas station to Janice.
"That was weird.... thought there was something wrong with the machine, but the gal behind the counter said the card was declined."
A phone call to the credit card company revealed that the card wasn't just declined nor was the account even cancelled. The account simply didn't exist at all.
Matt Parkman simply didn't exist at all.
~*~*~
He had been startled back into his own mind when he had cut himself shaving. Why that particular cut on that particular morning he had no idea. Fate had its own design, and its own roads and intersections. But when he winced his face rippled in his mirror reflection and immediately his mind had been assaulted by a torrent of conflicting images and memories. For a split panicked moment he had no idea where or who he was. As Sylar surfaced, he found himself slumped on the opulent marble tile of the bathroom floor next to a very large bathtub under an equally magnificent sink, pouring over every memory that led him to his current location. What he remembered first was how it felt to live the life of a man who had a family and was easily loved by those who surrounded him. The shock of waking back up to a truth that was so vastly different from that lie, to a life of abandonment, solitude, horror, confusion, and a vicious, unstoppable, and enslaving hunger.... it hurt. Badly. Sylar despised being hurt and hated being lied to. He punished liars. It was then that Angela Petrelli called to invite her son to lunch.
Sylar had work to do.
